Problem-Solving Contract Job Trends in the North of England

Problem Solving
England > North of England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North of England requiring Problem-Solving skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 28 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 6 4
Rank change year-on-year -10 -2 +9
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 717 621 560
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 9.49% 15.57% 13.53%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.47% 17.52% 16.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 405 360 312
10th Percentile £278 £258 £278
25th Percentile £353 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% - -5.00%
75th Percentile £545 £565 £555
90th Percentile £626 £650 £622
England median daily rate £500 £490 £500
% change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 74 57 12
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.81 £13.43
25th Percentile £15.63 £17.30 £26.25
Median hourly rate £19.00 £20.26 £54.28
Median % change year-on-year -6.20% -62.68% +129.22%
75th Percentile £39.50 £34.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £81.38 £63.40 £77.63
England median hourly rate £19.48 £18.85 £16.23
% change year-on-year +3.34% +16.14% -69.76%

All Process & Methodology Skills
North of England

Problem-Solving falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in the North of England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 6,252 3,545 3,487
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 82.76% 88.89% 84.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,612 2,321 1,947
10th Percentile £310 £263 £300
25th Percentile £406 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £470 £500
Median % change year-on-year +6.38% -6.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £575 £580
90th Percentile £675 £671 £675
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 530 203 180
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.91 £13.75
25th Percentile £19.48 £17.41 £16.76
Median hourly rate £43.96 £22.63 £35.18
Median % change year-on-year +94.26% -35.67% +27.93%
75th Percentile £67.50 £36.38 £51.91
90th Percentile £77.00 £64.75 £70.00
England median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +63.02% -41.51% -3.37%

Problem-Solving
Job Vacancy Trend in the North of England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Problem-Solving relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England.

Problem-Solving job vacancy trend in the North of England

Problem-Solving
Daily Rate Trend in the North of England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Problem-Solving.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Problem-Solving

Problem-Solving
Daily Rate Histogram in the North of England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Problem-Solving in the North of England over the 6 months to 28 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Problem-Solving in the North of England

Problem-Solving
Hourly Rate Trend in the North of England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Problem-Solving.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Problem-Solving

Problem-Solving
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North of England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Problem-Solving in the North of England over the 6 months to 28 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Problem-Solving in the North of England

Problem-Solving
Contract Job Locations in the North of England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Problem-Solving within the North of England region over the 6 months to 28 September 2026. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
North West -11 353 £450 -4.05% 796
Yorkshire -5 294 £475 -3.80% 520
North East -13 72 £375 -16.67% 228
Problem-Solving
England

Problem-Solving
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North of England by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 28 (3.91%) SharePoint
2 23 (3.21%) Confluence
3 11 (1.53%) Apache Airflow
4 10 (1.39%) Apache
4 10 (1.39%) Apache Spark
5 7 (0.98%) CMS
5 7 (0.98%) Microsoft Exchange
6 6 (0.84%) Jupyter
7 4 (0.56%) CICS
7 4 (0.56%) WebLogic
8 3 (0.42%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 3 (0.42%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.42%) WebSphere
8 3 (0.42%) WordPress
9 2 (0.28%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.28%) nginx
9 2 (0.28%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
9 2 (0.28%) WebLogic Portal
9 2 (0.28%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 42 (5.86%) Microsoft Excel
2 41 (5.72%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (1.39%) MS Visio
4 8 (1.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.84%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.70%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.42%) Acrobat
7 3 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.28%) AutoCAD
8 2 (0.28%) Navisworks
8 2 (0.28%) Revit
9 1 (0.14%) CATIA
9 1 (0.14%) EngageOne
Business Applications
1 18 (2.51%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (1.53%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.56%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.42%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (0.42%) SAP ERP
4 3 (0.42%) Teamcenter
4 3 (0.42%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.28%) SAP HCM
5 2 (0.28%) SAP Payroll
5 2 (0.28%) SAP R/3
6 1 (0.14%) CA PPM
6 1 (0.14%) ENOVIA
6 1 (0.14%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.14%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.14%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 117 (16.32%) Azure
2 97 (13.53%) Microsoft 365
3 96 (13.39%) AWS
4 52 (7.25%) Power Platform
5 46 (6.42%) GCP
6 32 (4.46%) Entra ID
7 27 (3.77%) GitHub
8 19 (2.65%) Serverless
9 17 (2.37%) Azure DevOps
10 16 (2.23%) OpenShift
11 12 (1.67%) SaaS
12 11 (1.53%) Power Automate
13 10 (1.39%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 10 (1.39%) Microsoft Copilot
14 9 (1.26%) AWS Lambda
14 9 (1.26%) IaaS
14 9 (1.26%) OneDrive
15 8 (1.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 8 (1.12%) PowerApps
16 7 (0.98%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 46 (6.42%) VPN
2 40 (5.58%) Firewall
3 29 (4.04%) DNS
4 25 (3.49%) Network Security
5 24 (3.35%) LAN
5 24 (3.35%) WAN
6 21 (2.93%) Wi-Fi
7 18 (2.51%) Wireless
8 16 (2.23%) VoIP
9 15 (2.09%) DHCP
9 15 (2.09%) VLAN
10 14 (1.95%) TCP/IP
11 11 (1.53%) Cisco Nexus
12 10 (1.39%) BGP
12 10 (1.39%) OSPF
13 9 (1.26%) BIG-IP
13 9 (1.26%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
13 9 (1.26%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
13 9 (1.26%) WLAN
14 8 (1.12%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (5.16%) Power BI
2 28 (3.91%) SQL Server
3 22 (3.07%) Data Warehouse
4 19 (2.65%) MongoDB
5 14 (1.95%) Relational Database
6 11 (1.53%) Db2
7 10 (1.39%) PostgreSQL
8 9 (1.26%) Tableau
9 8 (1.12%) DataStage
10 7 (0.98%) Big Data
10 7 (0.98%) Metadata
10 7 (0.98%) NoSQL
11 6 (0.84%) Oracle Database
12 5 (0.70%) Data Lake
12 5 (0.70%) MySQL
12 5 (0.70%) Neo4j
13 4 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
13 4 (0.56%) Amazon Redshift
13 4 (0.56%) DynamoDB
13 4 (0.56%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 55 (7.67%) JIRA
2 35 (4.88%) Git
3 32 (4.46%) Jenkins
4 21 (2.93%) GitLab
5 8 (1.12%) REST Assured
5 8 (1.12%) Selenium
6 7 (0.98%) Sonatype Nexus
7 6 (0.84%) Cucumber
7 6 (0.84%) Gatling
8 5 (0.70%) Maven
9 4 (0.56%) Cypress.io
9 4 (0.56%) Gradle
9 4 (0.56%) MSI
10 3 (0.42%) Claude Code
10 3 (0.42%) LoadRunner
10 3 (0.42%) Serenity BDD
10 3 (0.42%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.28%) Bitbucket
11 2 (0.28%) MSBuild
11 2 (0.28%) Subversion
General
1 365 (50.91%) Social Skills
2 292 (40.73%) Analytical Skills
3 163 (22.73%) Finance
4 76 (10.60%) Banking
5 56 (7.81%) Public Sector
6 45 (6.28%) Manufacturing
7 38 (5.30%) Organisational Skills
8 28 (3.91%) Legal
9 27 (3.77%) Documentation Skills
10 20 (2.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 19 (2.65%) Influencing Skills
12 15 (2.09%) Law
13 13 (1.81%) Retail
14 11 (1.53%) Telecoms
15 10 (1.39%) Automotive
16 9 (1.26%) Marketing
17 8 (1.12%) Aerospace
17 8 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
18 7 (0.98%) Financial Institution
19 6 (0.84%) Police
Job Titles
1 99 (13.81%) Analyst
2 82 (11.44%) Developer
3 65 (9.07%) Senior
4 55 (7.67%) Lead
5 47 (6.56%) IT Support
6 35 (4.88%) Support Engineer
7 33 (4.60%) Architect
8 26 (3.63%) IT Engineer
9 24 (3.35%) Administrator
9 24 (3.35%) Business Analyst
9 24 (3.35%) Network Engineer
10 22 (3.07%) IT Support Engineer
11 20 (2.79%) Consultant
12 18 (2.51%) Java Developer
13 17 (2.37%) Data Analyst
13 17 (2.37%) Data Engineer
13 17 (2.37%) Service Analyst
14 16 (2.23%) DevOps Engineer
14 16 (2.23%) Python Developer
14 16 (2.23%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (6.97%) Terraform
2 45 (6.28%) REST
3 26 (3.63%) Spring
4 23 (3.21%) Kafka
5 22 (3.07%) Spring Boot
6 21 (2.93%) Node.js
7 18 (2.51%) HTML
8 17 (2.37%) React
9 16 (2.23%) CSS
10 14 (1.95%) Playwright
11 10 (1.39%) .NET
11 10 (1.39%) OpenTelemetry
11 10 (1.39%) RESTful
12 9 (1.26%) FastAPI
12 9 (1.26%) JSON
12 9 (1.26%) OAuth
12 9 (1.26%) Web Services
12 9 (1.26%) XML
13 8 (1.12%) SOAP
14 7 (0.98%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 53 (7.39%) Cloud Native
2 48 (6.69%) Product Ownership
3 39 (5.44%) Onboarding
4 33 (4.60%) Data Centre
5 32 (4.46%) Self-Motivation
6 31 (4.32%) Data Protection Act
7 30 (4.18%) Enterprise Software
8 27 (3.77%) Driving Licence
9 22 (3.07%) Distributed Systems
10 20 (2.79%) Analytical Mindset
11 19 (2.65%) PKI
12 17 (2.37%) Data Structures
13 16 (2.23%) Management Information System
14 13 (1.81%) Legacy Systems
15 12 (1.67%) AI Agents
15 12 (1.67%) Mainframe
16 11 (1.53%) NHS
16 11 (1.53%) Public Cloud
17 10 (1.39%) Mobile App
17 10 (1.39%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 124 (17.29%) Windows
2 34 (4.74%) Linux
3 30 (4.18%) Windows 10
4 26 (3.63%) Windows Server
5 23 (3.21%) Apple iOS
6 21 (2.93%) Android
7 15 (2.09%) Unix
8 12 (1.67%) Mac OS
9 6 (0.84%) Solaris
10 4 (0.56%) zOS
11 3 (0.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 2 (0.28%) AIX
12 2 (0.28%) Data ONTAP
12 2 (0.28%) HPUX
12 2 (0.28%) Mac OS X
12 2 (0.28%) Oracle Linux
12 2 (0.28%) SUSE
12 2 (0.28%) VMS
13 1 (0.14%) Windows 7
13 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 175 (24.41%) Continuous Improvement
2 160 (22.32%) Agile
3 145 (20.22%) CI/CD
4 133 (18.55%) Stakeholder Management
5 106 (14.78%) DevOps
6 86 (11.99%) AI
7 82 (11.44%) Customer Service
8 77 (10.74%) ITIL
9 72 (10.04%) Migration
10 66 (9.21%) Test Automation
11 63 (8.79%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 61 (8.51%) Analytics
13 58 (8.09%) Data Protection
14 57 (7.95%) Software Engineering
15 55 (7.67%) Change Management
15 55 (7.67%) Infrastructure as Code
15 55 (7.67%) Validation
16 54 (7.53%) Decision-Making
17 53 (7.39%) Microservices
18 52 (7.25%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 111 (15.48%) Python
2 101 (14.09%) SQL
3 57 (7.95%) Java
4 53 (7.39%) PowerShell
5 28 (3.91%) JavaScript
6 15 (2.09%) Bash
7 11 (1.53%) PL/SQL
7 11 (1.53%) TypeScript
8 9 (1.26%) C#
8 9 (1.26%) Shell Script
9 6 (0.84%) ActionScript
9 6 (0.84%) Apex Code
9 6 (0.84%) COBOL
9 6 (0.84%) R
10 5 (0.70%) ABAP
10 5 (0.70%) Go
10 5 (0.70%) Kotlin
10 5 (0.70%) PHP
10 5 (0.70%) T-SQL
11 4 (0.56%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 107 (14.92%) Security Cleared
2 83 (11.58%) SC Cleared
3 60 (8.37%) Degree
4 27 (3.77%) BPSS Clearance
5 25 (3.49%) Computer Science Degree
6 20 (2.79%) CISSP
6 20 (2.79%) Microsoft Certification
7 19 (2.65%) Cisco Certification
8 13 (1.81%) CCNP
9 10 (1.39%) AWS Certification
9 10 (1.39%) HNC
10 9 (1.26%) A+ Certification
10 9 (1.26%) PMP
11 8 (1.12%) Network+ Certification
11 8 (1.12%) PMI Certification
12 7 (0.98%) CompTIA Security+
13 6 (0.84%) Azure Certification
13 6 (0.84%) CEH
13 6 (0.84%) CISM
13 6 (0.84%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 53 (7.39%) Data Quality
2 30 (4.18%) QA
3 24 (3.35%) Accessibility
4 20 (2.79%) SLA
5 11 (1.53%) NIST
6 10 (1.39%) GDPR
6 10 (1.39%) GRC
6 10 (1.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.84%) WCAG
8 5 (0.70%) PCI DSS
8 5 (0.70%) PMO
9 2 (0.28%) COSHH
9 2 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials
9 2 (0.28%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.28%) IEC 61508
9 2 (0.28%) MiFID
9 2 (0.28%) NCSC
9 2 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.14%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.14%) HL7
System Software
1 74 (10.32%) Active Directory
2 50 (6.97%) Docker
3 30 (4.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 13 (1.81%) Hyper-V
5 9 (1.26%) vSphere
6 8 (1.12%) Virtual Desktop
7 7 (0.98%) Virtual Machines
8 6 (0.84%) Firmware
8 6 (0.84%) VMware ESXi
9 5 (0.70%) Citrix Hypervisor
9 5 (0.70%) XenApp
9 5 (0.70%) XenDesktop
10 4 (0.56%) Oracle RAC
10 4 (0.56%) Virtual Servers
10 4 (0.56%) VMware NSX
11 2 (0.28%) EMC RecoverPoint
11 2 (0.28%) KVM
11 2 (0.28%) NFS
11 2 (0.28%) SRDF
12 1 (0.14%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 58 (8.09%) Kubernetes
2 25 (3.49%) Grafana
2 25 (3.49%) Microsoft Intune
3 24 (3.35%) Prometheus
4 23 (3.21%) SCCM
5 20 (2.79%) Ansible
6 10 (1.39%) Nessus
7 9 (1.26%) Control-M
8 7 (0.98%) IBM Guardium
9 6 (0.84%) McAfee ePO
10 4 (0.56%) Data Guard
10 4 (0.56%) Kustomize
10 4 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
10 4 (0.56%) vCenter Server
11 3 (0.42%) Argo
11 3 (0.42%) Failover Clustering
11 3 (0.42%) Functional Safety
11 3 (0.42%) Istio
11 3 (0.42%) Oracle RMAN
11 3 (0.42%) VxRail
Vendors
1 175 (24.41%) Microsoft
2 64 (8.93%) ServiceNow
3 47 (6.56%) SAP
4 39 (5.44%) Oracle
5 32 (4.46%) VMware
6 30 (4.18%) Cisco
7 21 (2.93%) Google
8 20 (2.79%) Splunk
9 16 (2.23%) F5
10 15 (2.09%) IBM
11 13 (1.81%) Salesforce
11 13 (1.81%) Workday
12 12 (1.67%) Palo Alto
13 11 (1.53%) Concur
13 11 (1.53%) Remedy
14 10 (1.39%) Dell
14 10 (1.39%) Fortinet
14 10 (1.39%) Tenable
15 9 (1.26%) Red Hat
16 8 (1.12%) Citrix