Problem-Solving Contracts in the North of England

Problem Solving
England > North of England

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the North of England requiring Problem-Solving skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Problem-Solving over the 6 months leading up to 3 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 3 6 16
Rank change year-on-year +3 +10 +4
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 684 626 451
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North of England 18.65% 12.95% 8.24%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 20.88% 15.45% 9.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 394 352 238
10th Percentile £258 £276 £313
25th Percentile £375 £380 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -9.52% +10.53%
75th Percentile £564 £550 £600
90th Percentile £662 £638 £680
England median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 63 66 19
10th Percentile £12.32 - £15.83
25th Percentile £18.11 £10.95 £20.25
Median hourly rate £22.14 £11.50 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +92.52% -58.18% +40.15%
75th Percentile £40.69 £28.16 £49.20
90th Percentile £63.40 £62.50 £67.65
England median hourly rate £21.27 £16.23 £50.75
% change year-on-year +31.02% -68.02% +103.00%

All Process and 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 3,276 4,052 4,926
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 89.31% 83.81% 89.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,117 2,415 3,348
10th Percentile £269 £300 £300
25th Percentile £375 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £466 £495 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.86% -1.00% -
75th Percentile £556 £582 £600
90th Percentile £650 £665 £688
England median daily rate £515 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -1.90% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 181 378 214
10th Percentile £12.82 £11.11 £10.63
25th Percentile £17.44 £12.55 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.08 £22.00 £23.15
Median % change year-on-year +13.98% -4.97% +15.75%
75th Percentile £50.00 £46.18 £43.68
90th Percentile £77.50 £64.61 £56.38
England median hourly rate £25.15 £38.12 £37.50
% change year-on-year -34.02% +1.65% +44.23%

Problem-Solving
Job Vacancy Trend in the North of England

Job postings citing Problem-Solving as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the North of England.

Job vacancy trend for Problem-Solving in the North of England

Problem-Solving
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the North of England

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Problem-Solving in the North of England.

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

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 3 July 2025.

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

Problem-Solving
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the North of England

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Problem-Solving in the North of England.

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

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 3 July 2025.

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 3 July 2025. 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 +8 393 £485 -0.62% 2,267
Yorkshire 0 256 £475 - 1,314
North East -5 34 £450 -14.29% 316
Problem-Solving
England

Problem-Solving
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North of England by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 38 (5.56%) Confluence
2 21 (3.07%) SharePoint
3 18 (2.63%) Microsoft Exchange
4 16 (2.34%) IBM Domino
5 13 (1.90%) Apache Spark
6 11 (1.61%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 8 (1.17%) Apache Airflow
7 8 (1.17%) Mattermost
7 8 (1.17%) Skype for Business
8 6 (0.88%) Apache
8 6 (0.88%) CICS
9 5 (0.73%) JBoss
9 5 (0.73%) Tomcat
9 5 (0.73%) WebSphere
9 5 (0.73%) WebSphere Application Server
10 3 (0.44%) IIS
11 2 (0.29%) SAS
12 1 (0.15%) Appian
12 1 (0.15%) CMS
Applications
1 38 (5.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 28 (4.09%) MS Visio
3 24 (3.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 20 (2.92%) Microsoft Office
5 6 (0.88%) Spreadsheet
6 5 (0.73%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.73%) Trello
7 2 (0.29%) Simulink
8 1 (0.15%) MadCap Flare
8 1 (0.15%) Maple
8 1 (0.15%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 18 (2.63%) SAP S/4HANA
2 9 (1.32%) Oracle EBS
3 6 (0.88%) Dynamics CRM
4 4 (0.58%) Remedy ITSM
4 4 (0.58%) SAP HR
5 3 (0.44%) Maximo
5 3 (0.44%) SAP CO
5 3 (0.44%) SAP EWM
5 3 (0.44%) SAP FI
5 3 (0.44%) SAP FI/CO
5 3 (0.44%) SAP Payroll
5 3 (0.44%) SAP PP
6 2 (0.29%) NetSuite
6 2 (0.29%) SAP MM
7 1 (0.15%) IBM Planning Analytics
7 1 (0.15%) SAP PS
7 1 (0.15%) SAP QM
7 1 (0.15%) SAP SD
7 1 (0.15%) SAP WM
7 1 (0.15%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 83 (12.13%) Azure
2 77 (11.26%) AWS
3 55 (8.04%) GCP
4 48 (7.02%) Power Platform
5 40 (5.85%) Microsoft 365
6 21 (3.07%) Amazon S3
7 18 (2.63%) Serverless
8 17 (2.49%) GitHub
9 16 (2.34%) AWS Lambda
10 13 (1.90%) Entra ID
11 12 (1.75%) PowerApps
11 12 (1.75%) SaaS
12 10 (1.46%) Azure DevOps
12 10 (1.46%) Dynamics 365
12 10 (1.46%) OCI
12 10 (1.46%) Power Automate
13 9 (1.32%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 8 (1.17%) Cloud Computing
15 7 (1.02%) Amazon EC2
15 7 (1.02%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 29 (4.24%) DNS
2 23 (3.36%) Firewall
3 21 (3.07%) Network Security
4 18 (2.63%) VPN
5 14 (2.05%) LAN
5 14 (2.05%) TCP/IP
6 13 (1.90%) WAN
7 11 (1.61%) Unified Communications
8 9 (1.32%) Intrusion Detection
9 8 (1.17%) DHCP
9 8 (1.17%) Skype
9 8 (1.17%) Softphone
9 8 (1.17%) WebEx
10 6 (0.88%) Ethernet
10 6 (0.88%) NAS
10 6 (0.88%) SAN
10 6 (0.88%) SD-WAN
11 5 (0.73%) BGP
11 5 (0.73%) DWDM
11 5 (0.73%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 38 (5.56%) Power BI
2 36 (5.26%) Oracle Database
3 25 (3.65%) SQL Server
3 25 (3.65%) Tableau
4 24 (3.51%) MongoDB
5 15 (2.19%) PostgreSQL
6 14 (2.05%) Flink
6 14 (2.05%) NoSQL
7 11 (1.61%) MySQL
8 10 (1.46%) Oracle Reports
9 9 (1.32%) BigQuery
9 9 (1.32%) Data Warehouse
10 8 (1.17%) Relational Database
11 7 (1.02%) DynamoDB
12 6 (0.88%) Amazon RDS
12 6 (0.88%) Amazon Redshift
13 5 (0.73%) Big Data
13 5 (0.73%) Power Query
14 4 (0.58%) Looker
14 4 (0.58%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 64 (9.36%) JIRA
2 46 (6.73%) Jenkins
3 44 (6.43%) Git
4 26 (3.80%) GitLab
5 13 (1.90%) JUnit
6 11 (1.61%) Maven
7 10 (1.46%) Selenium
8 9 (1.32%) Cucumber
9 7 (1.02%) Gradle
9 7 (1.02%) Postman
9 7 (1.02%) Sonatype Nexus
10 3 (0.44%) Hudson
10 3 (0.44%) JMeter
10 3 (0.44%) Visual Studio
11 2 (0.29%) Bitbucket
11 2 (0.29%) Cypress.io
11 2 (0.29%) REST Assured
11 2 (0.29%) SoapUI
11 2 (0.29%) SonarQube
12 1 (0.15%) CircleCI
General
1 384 (56.14%) Social Skills
2 272 (39.77%) Analytical Skills
3 155 (22.66%) Finance
4 53 (7.75%) Banking
5 43 (6.29%) Public Sector
6 28 (4.09%) Presentation Skills
7 25 (3.65%) Documentation Skills
7 25 (3.65%) Manufacturing
8 22 (3.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 22 (3.22%) Legal
9 21 (3.07%) Pharmaceutical
10 17 (2.49%) Police
11 16 (2.34%) Telecoms
12 12 (1.75%) Influencing Skills
13 11 (1.61%) Financial Institution
14 9 (1.32%) Organisational Skills
15 8 (1.17%) Law
15 8 (1.17%) Local Government
15 8 (1.17%) Marketing
15 8 (1.17%) Retail
Job Titles
1 119 (17.40%) Analyst
2 63 (9.21%) Developer
3 57 (8.33%) Architect
4 45 (6.58%) Senior
5 38 (5.56%) Business Analyst
6 32 (4.68%) Support Engineer
7 31 (4.53%) Lead
8 29 (4.24%) Support Analyst
9 28 (4.09%) Administrator
9 28 (4.09%) Consultant
10 26 (3.80%) Data Engineer
11 22 (3.22%) Microsoft 365 Administrator
12 18 (2.63%) Solutions Architect
13 15 (2.19%) IT Support
13 15 (2.19%) Java Developer
13 15 (2.19%) Project Manager
14 14 (2.05%) Coordinator
14 14 (2.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 13 (1.90%) Full-Stack Developer
16 12 (1.75%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (4.24%) REST
2 26 (3.80%) Kafka
3 25 (3.65%) React
4 21 (3.07%) HTML
5 19 (2.78%) RESTful
6 17 (2.49%) CSS
7 16 (2.34%) .NET
8 15 (2.19%) Spring
9 14 (2.05%) AngularJS
9 14 (2.05%) Spring Boot
10 10 (1.46%) Apache Beam
10 10 (1.46%) JDBC
10 10 (1.46%) Spark Streaming
11 9 (1.32%) Middleware
11 9 (1.32%) Node.js
11 9 (1.32%) SOAP
12 8 (1.17%) JSON
12 8 (1.17%) XMPP
13 7 (1.02%) TensorFlow
13 7 (1.02%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 39 (5.70%) Management Information System
2 24 (3.51%) Product Ownership
3 23 (3.36%) Data Protection Act
4 18 (2.63%) Data Centre
5 14 (2.05%) Virtual Team
6 13 (1.90%) Self-Motivation
7 12 (1.75%) Algorithms
7 12 (1.75%) Analytical Mindset
7 12 (1.75%) Legacy Systems
7 12 (1.75%) Linux Command Line
8 10 (1.46%) NHS
8 10 (1.46%) Onboarding
9 9 (1.32%) Cloud Native
9 9 (1.32%) Mainframe
10 8 (1.17%) Enterprise Software
10 8 (1.17%) Public Cloud
10 8 (1.17%) Security Posture
11 6 (0.88%) CMDB
11 6 (0.88%) Data Structures
11 6 (0.88%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 74 (10.82%) Windows
2 60 (8.77%) Linux
3 30 (4.39%) Windows Server
4 15 (2.19%) Android
4 15 (2.19%) Apple iOS
5 13 (1.90%) Unix
6 8 (1.17%) Windows 10
7 6 (0.88%) Windows Server 2016
7 6 (0.88%) zOS
8 5 (0.73%) Windows 8
8 5 (0.73%) Windows Server 2003
8 5 (0.73%) Windows Server 2008
8 5 (0.73%) Windows Server 2012
8 5 (0.73%) Windows XP
9 3 (0.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 2 (0.29%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 191 (27.92%) Agile
2 106 (15.50%) Decision-Making
3 93 (13.60%) Stakeholder Management
4 87 (12.72%) CI/CD
5 83 (12.13%) Migration
6 81 (11.84%) Continuous Improvement
7 75 (10.96%) Project Management
8 69 (10.09%) ITIL
9 62 (9.06%) Change Management
10 60 (8.77%) Analytics
11 58 (8.48%) DevOps
12 51 (7.46%) Scrum
13 50 (7.31%) Process Improvement
14 48 (7.02%) Business Intelligence
15 45 (6.58%) ITSM
16 44 (6.43%) Data Protection
16 44 (6.43%) Mentoring
16 44 (6.43%) Service Management
16 44 (6.43%) User Acceptance Testing
17 41 (5.99%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 93 (13.60%) Python
2 84 (12.28%) SQL
3 43 (6.29%) PowerShell
4 34 (4.97%) Java
5 26 (3.80%) JavaScript
6 24 (3.51%) Shell Script
7 20 (2.92%) Bash
7 20 (2.92%) PL/SQL
8 13 (1.90%) Perl
8 13 (1.90%) TypeScript
9 11 (1.61%) C#
10 9 (1.32%) Scala
11 8 (1.17%) JCL
12 6 (0.88%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 4 (0.58%) ABAP
13 4 (0.58%) COBOL
13 4 (0.58%) R
14 3 (0.44%) REXX
14 3 (0.44%) Ruby
14 3 (0.44%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 85 (12.43%) Degree
2 79 (11.55%) Security Cleared
3 58 (8.48%) SC Cleared
4 36 (5.26%) BPSS Clearance
5 28 (4.09%) Cisco Certification
6 27 (3.95%) Computer Science Degree
6 27 (3.95%) Microsoft Certification
7 16 (2.34%) ITIL Certification
8 12 (1.75%) CCNP
8 12 (1.75%) PMP
9 10 (1.46%) CCNA
10 9 (1.32%) A+ Certification
10 9 (1.32%) PMI Certification
11 8 (1.17%) DBS Check
12 7 (1.02%) Azure Certification
13 6 (0.88%) MCP
14 5 (0.73%) AWS Certification
14 5 (0.73%) CBAP
14 5 (0.73%) ISTQB
14 5 (0.73%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (4.09%) QA
2 23 (3.36%) GDPR
3 22 (3.22%) Data Quality
4 13 (1.90%) SLA
5 12 (1.75%) Accessibility
5 12 (1.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 10 (1.46%) PMO
7 7 (1.02%) PCI DSS
8 6 (0.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 5 (0.73%) NIST
10 4 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
10 4 (0.58%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 4 (0.58%) SEPA
11 3 (0.44%) AUTOSAR
11 3 (0.44%) COBIT
12 2 (0.29%) SOC 2
13 1 (0.15%) GRC
13 1 (0.15%) GxP
13 1 (0.15%) HIPAA
13 1 (0.15%) WCAG
System Software
1 53 (7.75%) Active Directory
2 37 (5.41%) Docker
3 16 (2.34%) VMware Infrastructure
4 13 (1.90%) vSphere
5 5 (0.73%) VMware NSX
6 4 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
7 3 (0.44%) Oracle RAC
7 3 (0.44%) Time Sharing Option
8 2 (0.29%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 2 (0.29%) Firmware
8 2 (0.29%) Job Entry Subsystem
8 2 (0.29%) Veritas Cluster Server
8 2 (0.29%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.15%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.15%) Microcode
9 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Virtual Server
9 1 (0.15%) RACF
9 1 (0.15%) Terminal Services
9 1 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.15%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 36 (5.26%) Ansible
1 36 (5.26%) Kubernetes
2 23 (3.36%) Terraform
3 14 (2.05%) SCCM
4 13 (1.90%) Microsoft Intune
4 13 (1.90%) Oracle RMAN
5 11 (1.61%) Single Sign-On
6 9 (1.32%) SCOM
7 5 (0.73%) Grafana
7 5 (0.73%) Puppet
7 5 (0.73%) vCenter Server
8 4 (0.58%) Istio
8 4 (0.58%) vRealize
9 3 (0.44%) Data Guard
9 3 (0.44%) Kibana
9 3 (0.44%) NetBackup
9 3 (0.44%) Progress Chef
9 3 (0.44%) Prometheus
9 3 (0.44%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
10 2 (0.29%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
Vendors
1 148 (21.64%) Microsoft
2 65 (9.50%) Oracle
3 42 (6.14%) SAP
3 42 (6.14%) ServiceNow
4 36 (5.26%) Cisco
5 33 (4.82%) Google
6 19 (2.78%) Commvault
6 19 (2.78%) Splunk
7 17 (2.49%) VMware
8 13 (1.90%) IBM
8 13 (1.90%) Red Hat
9 7 (1.02%) Infoblox
9 7 (1.02%) Veritas
10 6 (0.88%) Databricks
10 6 (0.88%) Remedy
11 5 (0.73%) BMC
11 5 (0.73%) Brio
11 5 (0.73%) Canon
11 5 (0.73%) CyberArk
11 5 (0.73%) Fortinet