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 8 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 4 9
Rank change year-on-year -2 +5 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 685 520 540
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 14.40% 15.23% 11.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.36% 17.44% 13.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 452 302 309
10th Percentile £213 £250 £185
25th Percentile £350 £361 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +11.11%
75th Percentile £538 £550 £587
90th Percentile £612 £625 £688
England median daily rate £492 £500 £517
% change year-on-year -1.60% -3.29% -4.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 43 22 24
10th Percentile £15.18 £12.17 -
25th Percentile £17.30 £16.19 £16.25
Median hourly rate £19.25 £25.43 £20.81
Median % change year-on-year -24.30% +22.23% -7.53%
75th Percentile £44.94 £40.38 £45.96
90th Percentile £69.41 £90.52 £46.18
England median hourly rate £18.82 £21.46 £32.32
% change year-on-year -12.30% -33.60% +3.76%

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 4,188 2,982 4,029
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 88.06% 87.32% 87.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,778 1,709 2,660
10th Percentile £223 £263 £285
25th Percentile £363 £381 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.63% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £550 £575 £594
90th Percentile £638 £669 £675
England median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.42% -2.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 259 138 198
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.00 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.22 £17.08 £17.73
Median hourly rate £33.00 £27.13 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +21.66% -22.50% +45.83%
75th Percentile £55.00 £45.76 £46.91
90th Percentile £69.25 £66.48 £63.75
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +27.14%

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 8 January 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 8 January 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 8 January 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 -2 354 £445 -4.46% 373
Yorkshire -5 280 £481 -3.75% 365
North East -3 58 £450 -18.18% 144
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 41 (5.99%) SharePoint
2 34 (4.96%) Confluence
3 32 (4.67%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (1.31%) Apache
5 7 (1.02%) Exchange Server 2013
5 7 (1.02%) Skype for Business
6 6 (0.88%) Apache Spark
7 4 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
8 3 (0.44%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 2 (0.29%) CMS
9 2 (0.29%) JBoss
9 2 (0.29%) Tomcat
10 1 (0.15%) CICS
10 1 (0.15%) EPiServer
10 1 (0.15%) Moodle
10 1 (0.15%) Mule
10 1 (0.15%) Mule ESB
10 1 (0.15%) NetWeaver
10 1 (0.15%) SAS
10 1 (0.15%) WebLogic
Applications
1 46 (6.72%) Microsoft Excel
1 46 (6.72%) Microsoft Office
2 26 (3.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 16 (2.34%) MS Visio
4 8 (1.17%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.73%) Acrobat
6 2 (0.29%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.15%) Siemens NX
7 1 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 36 (5.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.73%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.58%) SAP EHS
4 3 (0.44%) iTrent
4 3 (0.44%) Kondor
4 3 (0.44%) SAP EWM
4 3 (0.44%) SAP SCM
5 2 (0.29%) Advent Geneva
5 2 (0.29%) ContrOCC
5 2 (0.29%) Dynamics AX
5 2 (0.29%) SAP ERP
5 2 (0.29%) SAP Payroll
6 1 (0.15%) Finacle
6 1 (0.15%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.15%) SAP BPC
6 1 (0.15%) SAP HCM
6 1 (0.15%) SAP HR
6 1 (0.15%) SAP PSCD
6 1 (0.15%) SystmOne
6 1 (0.15%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 118 (17.23%) Azure
2 105 (15.33%) AWS
3 70 (10.22%) Microsoft 365
4 48 (7.01%) GCP
5 38 (5.55%) Power Platform
6 33 (4.82%) GitHub
7 23 (3.36%) Serverless
8 20 (2.92%) SaaS
9 19 (2.77%) OpenShift
10 16 (2.34%) Azure DevOps
10 16 (2.34%) Entra ID
11 14 (2.04%) Amazon ECS
11 14 (2.04%) AWS Lambda
11 14 (2.04%) GitHub Actions
12 13 (1.90%) Apigee
12 13 (1.90%) Google Workspace
13 10 (1.46%) Amazon S3
13 10 (1.46%) Amazon SQS
13 10 (1.46%) Datadog
13 10 (1.46%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 32 (4.67%) Firewall
2 26 (3.80%) Network Security
3 19 (2.77%) DNS
4 14 (2.04%) TCP/IP
5 13 (1.90%) LAN
5 13 (1.90%) WAN
6 8 (1.17%) BGP
6 8 (1.17%) Wi-Fi
7 7 (1.02%) DHCP
7 7 (1.02%) Skype
7 7 (1.02%) VLAN
7 7 (1.02%) WebEx
8 6 (0.88%) Software-Defined Networking
9 5 (0.73%) HTTP
10 4 (0.58%) DMZ
10 4 (0.58%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
10 4 (0.58%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 4 (0.58%) SAN
11 3 (0.44%) Internet
11 3 (0.44%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (4.23%) Power BI
2 28 (4.09%) PostgreSQL
3 21 (3.07%) SQL Server
4 20 (2.92%) Relational Database
5 19 (2.77%) MongoDB
6 18 (2.63%) NoSQL
7 16 (2.34%) Oracle Database
8 15 (2.19%) DynamoDB
9 13 (1.90%) MySQL
10 12 (1.75%) BigQuery
11 11 (1.61%) Power Query
12 10 (1.46%) Data Warehouse
13 8 (1.17%) Amazon Aurora
13 8 (1.17%) PowerPivot
14 7 (1.02%) Amazon RDS
14 7 (1.02%) Oracle Reports
15 6 (0.88%) RDBMS
15 6 (0.88%) Redis
16 5 (0.73%) DB2
17 4 (0.58%) MS Access
Development Applications
1 79 (11.53%) JIRA
2 55 (8.03%) Git
3 44 (6.42%) Jenkins
4 31 (4.53%) GitLab
5 10 (1.46%) Cucumber
6 9 (1.31%) Selenium
7 7 (1.02%) Cypress.io
7 7 (1.02%) Maven
7 7 (1.02%) SonarQube
7 7 (1.02%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (0.88%) Gradle
9 5 (0.73%) SonarLint
10 4 (0.58%) CircleCI
10 4 (0.58%) Mockito
10 4 (0.58%) Oracle Forms
10 4 (0.58%) Postman
10 4 (0.58%) TestRail
11 3 (0.44%) Jasmine
11 3 (0.44%) JMeter
12 2 (0.29%) SoapUI
General
1 378 (55.18%) Social Skills
2 226 (32.99%) Analytical Skills
3 187 (27.30%) Finance
4 81 (11.82%) Banking
5 79 (11.53%) Public Sector
6 27 (3.94%) Legal
7 14 (2.04%) Influencing Skills
7 14 (2.04%) Telecoms
8 13 (1.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 13 (1.90%) Manufacturing
9 12 (1.75%) Organisational Skills
10 10 (1.46%) Documentation Skills
11 8 (1.17%) Law
11 8 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
12 7 (1.02%) Local Government
12 7 (1.02%) Military
13 6 (0.88%) Electronics
13 6 (0.88%) Health Technology
13 6 (0.88%) Marketing
14 5 (0.73%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 111 (16.20%) Analyst
2 105 (15.33%) Developer
3 51 (7.45%) Business Analyst
4 46 (6.72%) Senior
5 40 (5.84%) Lead
6 34 (4.96%) IT Support
7 33 (4.82%) Consultant
8 30 (4.38%) Project Manager
9 29 (4.23%) Architect
10 28 (4.09%) Administrator
11 21 (3.07%) Java Developer
11 21 (3.07%) Software Engineer
12 20 (2.92%) Automation Engineer
12 20 (2.92%) Support Analyst
13 18 (2.63%) Platform Engineer
14 17 (2.48%) Data Engineer
14 17 (2.48%) IT Engineer
14 17 (2.48%) Support Engineer
15 16 (2.34%) Technical Analyst
16 14 (2.04%) Technical Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (5.40%) Spring Boot
2 34 (4.96%) Spring
3 31 (4.53%) REST
4 23 (3.36%) RESTful
5 21 (3.07%) Kafka
6 20 (2.92%) FastAPI
7 17 (2.48%) .NET
7 17 (2.48%) JSON
7 17 (2.48%) React
8 15 (2.19%) Node.js
8 15 (2.19%) XML
9 14 (2.04%) OAuth
9 14 (2.04%) SOAP
10 13 (1.90%) HTML
10 13 (1.90%) JWT
11 12 (1.75%) Elastic Stack
12 11 (1.61%) AngularJS
12 11 (1.61%) CSS
13 10 (1.46%) OpenTelemetry
14 9 (1.31%) JMS
Miscellaneous
1 62 (9.05%) Product Ownership
2 30 (4.38%) Onboarding
3 23 (3.36%) Cloud Native
4 17 (2.48%) Data Protection Act
4 17 (2.48%) Enterprise Software
5 16 (2.34%) Data Structures
5 16 (2.34%) Management Information System
6 14 (2.04%) Self-Motivation
7 13 (1.90%) CMDB
7 13 (1.90%) Data Centre
7 13 (1.90%) SWIFT Messaging Network
8 10 (1.46%) Algorithms
8 10 (1.46%) Legacy Systems
9 9 (1.31%) Greenfield Project
9 9 (1.31%) NHS
10 8 (1.17%) Analytical Mindset
10 8 (1.17%) Mainframe
11 7 (1.02%) Mobile App
11 7 (1.02%) Public Cloud
12 6 (0.88%) N-Tier
Operating Systems
1 83 (12.12%) Windows
2 73 (10.66%) Linux
3 21 (3.07%) Windows 10
3 21 (3.07%) Windows Server
4 18 (2.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 17 (2.48%) Unix
6 12 (1.75%) Android
7 10 (1.46%) Apple iOS
8 6 (0.88%) CentOS
8 6 (0.88%) Mac OS X
8 6 (0.88%) Ubuntu
9 5 (0.73%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.73%) VMS
10 4 (0.58%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 204 (29.78%) Agile
2 136 (19.85%) CI/CD
3 120 (17.52%) Continuous Improvement
4 116 (16.93%) DevOps
5 108 (15.77%) Stakeholder Management
6 73 (10.66%) Project Management
7 70 (10.22%) Containerisation
8 69 (10.07%) Test Automation
9 61 (8.91%) Decision-Making
9 61 (8.91%) Microservices
10 59 (8.61%) Migration
11 56 (8.18%) Change Management
12 55 (8.03%) Mentoring
13 54 (7.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 51 (7.45%) SDLC
15 50 (7.30%) ITIL
16 49 (7.15%) Analytics
16 49 (7.15%) Roadmaps
17 48 (7.01%) Business Intelligence
17 48 (7.01%) Customer Service
Programming Languages
1 110 (16.06%) Python
2 78 (11.39%) Java
3 76 (11.09%) SQL
4 37 (5.40%) PowerShell
5 35 (5.11%) Bash
6 26 (3.80%) TypeScript
7 24 (3.50%) JavaScript
8 20 (2.92%) C#
8 20 (2.92%) Shell Script
9 19 (2.77%) Perl
10 10 (1.46%) Go
11 9 (1.31%) Groovy
11 9 (1.31%) VBA
12 8 (1.17%) T-SQL
13 7 (1.02%) Ruby
14 6 (0.88%) CLIST
14 6 (0.88%) COBOL
14 6 (0.88%) JCL
14 6 (0.88%) REXX
15 5 (0.73%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 86 (12.55%) Security Cleared
2 73 (10.66%) Degree
3 57 (8.32%) SC Cleared
4 32 (4.67%) Computer Science Degree
5 28 (4.09%) BPSS Clearance
6 14 (2.04%) Cisco Certification
7 11 (1.61%) PMP
7 11 (1.61%) Six Sigma Green Belt
8 10 (1.46%) CCNA
8 10 (1.46%) CCNP
8 10 (1.46%) CISSP
9 9 (1.31%) AWS Certification
9 9 (1.31%) CCDP
10 7 (1.02%) PMI Certification
11 6 (0.88%) RHCE
12 5 (0.73%) Azure Certification
12 5 (0.73%) CISM
12 5 (0.73%) DBS Check
13 4 (0.58%) CBAP
14 3 (0.44%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 43 (6.28%) QA
2 24 (3.50%) Data Quality
3 21 (3.07%) GDPR
4 19 (2.77%) Accessibility
5 13 (1.90%) PSD2
6 12 (1.75%) ISO 20022
7 10 (1.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 10 (1.46%) PCI DSS
7 10 (1.46%) SEPA
8 8 (1.17%) SLA
9 6 (0.88%) HL7
9 6 (0.88%) NIST
10 5 (0.73%) PMO
10 5 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 4 (0.58%) WCAG
12 2 (0.29%) HIPAA
13 1 (0.15%) IEC 61508
13 1 (0.15%) ISO 26262
13 1 (0.15%) ISO 8583
13 1 (0.15%) PMBOK
System Software
1 73 (10.66%) Docker
2 44 (6.42%) Active Directory
3 15 (2.19%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (1.46%) Oracle RAC
5 8 (1.17%) VMware NSX
6 6 (0.88%) ACF2
6 6 (0.88%) Hyper-V
6 6 (0.88%) RACF
6 6 (0.88%) Time Sharing Option
6 6 (0.88%) vSphere
7 4 (0.58%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.44%) ISA Server
9 2 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
10 1 (0.15%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 81 (11.82%) Kubernetes
2 45 (6.57%) Terraform
3 42 (6.13%) Ansible
4 30 (4.38%) Grafana
5 24 (3.50%) SCCM
6 23 (3.36%) Prometheus
7 22 (3.21%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (1.46%) Control-M
8 10 (1.46%) Data Guard
8 10 (1.46%) yum
9 9 (1.31%) IBM Guardium
9 9 (1.31%) Nessus
10 8 (1.17%) Puppet
11 7 (1.02%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 6 (0.88%) CA Endevor
12 6 (0.88%) Tivoli
12 6 (0.88%) Tivoli Storage Manager
13 5 (0.73%) Kibana
13 5 (0.73%) Norton AntiVirus
14 4 (0.58%) EMC NetWorker
Vendors
1 159 (23.21%) Microsoft
2 65 (9.49%) SAP
3 48 (7.01%) Oracle
4 34 (4.96%) ServiceNow
5 31 (4.53%) VMware
6 23 (3.36%) Google
7 21 (3.07%) Splunk
8 18 (2.63%) Red Hat
9 16 (2.34%) Cisco
10 11 (1.61%) Databricks
11 10 (1.46%) Citrix
12 9 (1.31%) Adobe
12 9 (1.31%) F5
12 9 (1.31%) Tenable
12 9 (1.31%) Workday
13 8 (1.17%) Brio
13 8 (1.17%) IFS
13 8 (1.17%) Veeam
14 7 (1.02%) Computacenter
14 7 (1.02%) MuleSoft