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 14 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 6 4
Rank change year-on-year -8 -2 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 763 621 567
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 9.87% 14.86% 13.74%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.85% 16.71% 16.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 436 360 317
10th Percentile £286 £257 £271
25th Percentile £358 £361 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% - -5.00%
75th Percentile £550 £550 £550
90th Percentile £638 £650 £604
England median daily rate £500 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 83 59 14
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.83 £13.99
25th Percentile £15.02 £17.30 £26.25
Median hourly rate £18.49 £20.26 £49.14
Median % change year-on-year -8.71% -58.78% +108.11%
75th Percentile £39.75 £32.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £77.00 £63.47 £75.87
England median hourly rate £19.48 £18.90 £16.23
% change year-on-year +3.10% +16.42% -68.32%

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 6,441 3,716 3,483
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 83.34% 88.90% 84.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,709 2,440 1,910
10th Percentile £313 £249 £299
25th Percentile £406 £369 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £470 £488
Median % change year-on-year +6.38% -3.59% -2.50%
75th Percentile £588 £563 £575
90th Percentile £675 £671 £650
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 578 210 179
10th Percentile £13.79 £14.20 £13.75
25th Percentile £18.49 £17.48 £17.88
Median hourly rate £43.96 £24.38 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +80.31% -30.34% +23.67%
75th Percentile £70.00 £41.46 £51.91
90th Percentile £77.88 £67.25 £70.00
England median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +59.05% -40.82% -5.56%

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 14 October 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 14 October 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 14 October 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 -7 379 £450 -1.64% 505
Yorkshire -5 302 £475 -4.04% 330
North East -8 84 £375 -16.67% 175
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 33 (4.33%) Confluence
2 30 (3.93%) SharePoint
3 13 (1.70%) Apache
4 11 (1.44%) Apache Airflow
4 11 (1.44%) Apache Spark
5 7 (0.92%) CMS
5 7 (0.92%) Microsoft Exchange
6 6 (0.79%) Jupyter
7 4 (0.52%) CICS
8 3 (0.39%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 3 (0.39%) IBM HTTP Server
8 3 (0.39%) nginx
8 3 (0.39%) Oracle HTTP Server
8 3 (0.39%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.39%) WebLogic
8 3 (0.39%) WebLogic Portal
8 3 (0.39%) WebSphere
8 3 (0.39%) WebSphere Application Server
8 3 (0.39%) WebSphere Portal
8 3 (0.39%) WordPress
Applications
1 47 (6.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 46 (6.03%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (1.44%) MS Visio
4 9 (1.18%) Microsoft Project
5 8 (1.05%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 5 (0.66%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.39%) Acrobat
7 3 (0.39%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.26%) AutoCAD
8 2 (0.26%) Navisworks
8 2 (0.26%) Revit
9 1 (0.13%) EngageOne
Business Applications
1 18 (2.36%) SAP S/4HANA
2 9 (1.18%) Remedy ITSM
3 5 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (0.39%) SAP ERP
4 3 (0.39%) Teamcenter
4 3 (0.39%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.26%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.26%) SAP HCM
5 2 (0.26%) SAP Payroll
5 2 (0.26%) SAP R/3
6 1 (0.13%) CA PPM
6 1 (0.13%) ENOVIA
6 1 (0.13%) IBM Planning Analytics
6 1 (0.13%) Infor M3
6 1 (0.13%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.13%) SAP GRC
6 1 (0.13%) SAP Travel Management
Cloud Services
1 133 (17.43%) Azure
2 101 (13.24%) AWS
3 97 (12.71%) Microsoft 365
4 54 (7.08%) Power Platform
5 47 (6.16%) GCP
6 34 (4.46%) Entra ID
7 32 (4.19%) GitHub
8 27 (3.54%) Azure DevOps
9 21 (2.75%) Serverless
10 15 (1.97%) OpenShift
11 13 (1.70%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 13 (1.70%) SaaS
12 11 (1.44%) AWS Lambda
12 11 (1.44%) IaaS
12 11 (1.44%) Power Automate
12 11 (1.44%) PowerApps
13 9 (1.18%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 9 (1.18%) GitHub Actions
13 9 (1.18%) Microsoft Copilot
13 9 (1.18%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 46 (6.03%) VPN
2 43 (5.64%) Firewall
3 33 (4.33%) DNS
4 29 (3.80%) Network Security
5 26 (3.41%) WAN
6 24 (3.15%) LAN
7 22 (2.88%) Wi-Fi
8 18 (2.36%) Wireless
9 17 (2.23%) VoIP
10 15 (1.97%) DHCP
10 15 (1.97%) VLAN
11 14 (1.83%) TCP/IP
12 11 (1.44%) BIG-IP
12 11 (1.44%) Cisco Nexus
12 11 (1.44%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
12 11 (1.44%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
13 10 (1.31%) BGP
13 10 (1.31%) OSPF
14 9 (1.18%) WLAN
15 8 (1.05%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (4.72%) Power BI
2 27 (3.54%) SQL Server
3 21 (2.75%) Data Warehouse
4 19 (2.49%) MongoDB
5 17 (2.23%) Relational Database
6 11 (1.44%) Db2
6 11 (1.44%) PostgreSQL
7 10 (1.31%) Tableau
8 8 (1.05%) Big Data
8 8 (1.05%) DataStage
8 8 (1.05%) Metadata
9 7 (0.92%) Data Lake
9 7 (0.92%) Neo4j
9 7 (0.92%) Oracle Database
10 6 (0.79%) NoSQL
11 5 (0.66%) Amazon Athena
11 5 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
11 5 (0.66%) DynamoDB
11 5 (0.66%) MySQL
12 4 (0.52%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 62 (8.13%) JIRA
2 44 (5.77%) Git
3 36 (4.72%) Jenkins
4 23 (3.01%) GitLab
5 8 (1.05%) REST Assured
5 8 (1.05%) Selenium
6 7 (0.92%) Sonatype Nexus
7 6 (0.79%) Gatling
8 5 (0.66%) Cucumber
8 5 (0.66%) Maven
9 4 (0.52%) Cypress.io
9 4 (0.52%) Gradle
9 4 (0.52%) MSI
10 3 (0.39%) Claude Code
10 3 (0.39%) LoadRunner
10 3 (0.39%) Serenity BDD
10 3 (0.39%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.39%) Visual Studio
11 2 (0.26%) Burp Suite
11 2 (0.26%) Postman
General
1 386 (50.59%) Social Skills
2 302 (39.58%) Analytical Skills
3 163 (21.36%) Finance
4 81 (10.62%) Banking
5 60 (7.86%) Public Sector
6 48 (6.29%) Manufacturing
7 45 (5.90%) Organisational Skills
8 29 (3.80%) Documentation Skills
9 26 (3.41%) Legal
10 23 (3.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 20 (2.62%) Influencing Skills
12 13 (1.70%) Aerospace
12 13 (1.70%) Presentation Skills
12 13 (1.70%) Retail
13 11 (1.44%) Law
13 11 (1.44%) Marketing
13 11 (1.44%) Telecoms
14 10 (1.31%) Automotive
14 10 (1.31%) Financial Institution
15 6 (0.79%) Police
Job Titles
1 98 (12.84%) Analyst
1 98 (12.84%) Developer
2 70 (9.17%) Senior
3 62 (8.13%) Lead
4 45 (5.90%) IT Support
5 34 (4.46%) Support Engineer
6 33 (4.33%) Architect
7 28 (3.67%) Consultant
8 26 (3.41%) IT Engineer
8 26 (3.41%) Network Engineer
9 25 (3.28%) Business Analyst
10 24 (3.15%) Administrator
11 22 (2.88%) IT Support Engineer
12 20 (2.62%) Data Engineer
12 20 (2.62%) Senior Developer
13 19 (2.49%) Java Developer
14 18 (2.36%) DevOps Engineer
14 18 (2.36%) Project Manager
15 17 (2.23%) Python Developer
15 17 (2.23%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 56 (7.34%) Terraform
2 53 (6.95%) REST
3 28 (3.67%) Spring
4 27 (3.54%) Kafka
5 24 (3.15%) Node.js
5 24 (3.15%) Spring Boot
6 19 (2.49%) HTML
7 18 (2.36%) React
8 15 (1.97%) CSS
8 15 (1.97%) Playwright
9 13 (1.70%) .NET
10 12 (1.57%) OpenTelemetry
10 12 (1.57%) RESTful
11 11 (1.44%) Web Services
12 9 (1.18%) Middleware
12 9 (1.18%) OAuth
12 9 (1.18%) SOAP
13 8 (1.05%) FastAPI
13 8 (1.05%) JSON
14 7 (0.92%) Lightning Web Components
Miscellaneous
1 61 (7.99%) Cloud Native
2 48 (6.29%) Product Ownership
3 44 (5.77%) Onboarding
4 38 (4.98%) Self-Motivation
5 35 (4.59%) Data Centre
6 34 (4.46%) Data Protection Act
7 33 (4.33%) Enterprise Software
8 27 (3.54%) Driving Licence
9 24 (3.15%) Distributed Systems
10 19 (2.49%) Analytical Mindset
11 18 (2.36%) Management Information System
12 17 (2.23%) PKI
13 15 (1.97%) Data Structures
13 15 (1.97%) Public Cloud
14 14 (1.83%) Virtual Team
15 13 (1.70%) Legacy Systems
15 13 (1.70%) NHS
16 12 (1.57%) Mainframe
17 11 (1.44%) AI Agents
18 9 (1.18%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 122 (15.99%) Windows
2 32 (4.19%) Linux
3 31 (4.06%) Windows 10
4 26 (3.41%) Windows Server
5 23 (3.01%) Apple iOS
6 19 (2.49%) Android
7 14 (1.83%) Unix
8 11 (1.44%) macOS
9 5 (0.66%) Solaris
9 5 (0.66%) zOS
10 2 (0.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 2 (0.26%) VMS
11 1 (0.13%) AIX
11 1 (0.13%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.13%) HPUX
11 1 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
11 1 (0.13%) SUSE
11 1 (0.13%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 193 (25.29%) Continuous Improvement
2 191 (25.03%) Agile
3 165 (21.63%) CI/CD
4 158 (20.71%) Stakeholder Management
5 118 (15.47%) DevOps
6 96 (12.58%) AI
7 82 (10.75%) Customer Service
8 76 (9.96%) Test Automation
9 73 (9.57%) ITIL
10 72 (9.44%) Migration
11 67 (8.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 66 (8.65%) Observability
13 65 (8.52%) Decision-Making
14 64 (8.39%) Analytics
14 64 (8.39%) Infrastructure as Code
15 62 (8.13%) Software Engineering
16 61 (7.99%) Data Protection
17 59 (7.73%) Microservices
18 57 (7.47%) Change Management
18 57 (7.47%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 115 (15.07%) Python
2 102 (13.37%) SQL
3 58 (7.60%) Java
4 53 (6.95%) PowerShell
5 31 (4.06%) JavaScript
6 16 (2.10%) TypeScript
7 14 (1.83%) Bash
8 12 (1.57%) C#
9 9 (1.18%) Shell Script
10 8 (1.05%) ActionScript
10 8 (1.05%) PL/SQL
11 7 (0.92%) Apex Code
11 7 (0.92%) Kotlin
11 7 (0.92%) R
12 6 (0.79%) COBOL
13 5 (0.66%) JCL
13 5 (0.66%) PHP
14 4 (0.52%) ABAP
14 4 (0.52%) Bicep
14 4 (0.52%) Scala
Qualifications
1 113 (14.81%) Security Cleared
2 90 (11.80%) SC Cleared
3 60 (7.86%) Degree
4 35 (4.59%) BPSS Clearance
5 23 (3.01%) Computer Science Degree
6 19 (2.49%) Cisco Certification
6 19 (2.49%) CISSP
7 15 (1.97%) Microsoft Certification
8 13 (1.70%) CCNP
9 12 (1.57%) PMI Certification
9 12 (1.57%) PMP
10 10 (1.31%) AWS Certification
10 10 (1.31%) HNC
11 8 (1.05%) CISM
12 7 (0.92%) A+ Certification
12 7 (0.92%) Azure Certification
13 6 (0.79%) CCNA
13 6 (0.79%) CEH
13 6 (0.79%) HND
13 6 (0.79%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 56 (7.34%) Data Quality
2 32 (4.19%) QA
3 25 (3.28%) Accessibility
4 20 (2.62%) SLA
5 14 (1.83%) GDPR
6 11 (1.44%) NIST
7 9 (1.18%) PMO
8 8 (1.05%) GRC
9 7 (0.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 6 (0.79%) PCI DSS
10 6 (0.79%) WCAG
11 4 (0.52%) NCSC
12 2 (0.26%) COSHH
12 2 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials
12 2 (0.26%) Def Stans
12 2 (0.26%) IEC 61508
12 2 (0.26%) MiFID
13 1 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
13 1 (0.13%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 1 (0.13%) HL7
System Software
1 73 (9.57%) Active Directory
2 51 (6.68%) Docker
3 30 (3.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (1.57%) Hyper-V
4 12 (1.57%) Virtual Desktop
5 9 (1.18%) vSphere
6 8 (1.05%) Firmware
7 6 (0.79%) Virtual Machines
8 5 (0.66%) Citrix Hypervisor
8 5 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
8 5 (0.66%) XenApp
8 5 (0.66%) XenDesktop
9 4 (0.52%) Oracle RAC
9 4 (0.52%) Virtual Servers
9 4 (0.52%) VMware NSX
10 2 (0.26%) KVM
11 1 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
11 1 (0.13%) NFS
11 1 (0.13%) RACF
11 1 (0.13%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 65 (8.52%) Kubernetes
2 28 (3.67%) Grafana
3 26 (3.41%) Microsoft Intune
3 26 (3.41%) Prometheus
4 23 (3.01%) SCCM
5 21 (2.75%) Ansible
6 10 (1.31%) Nessus
7 9 (1.18%) Control-M
8 7 (0.92%) IBM Guardium
9 6 (0.79%) McAfee ePO
10 5 (0.66%) Data Guard
10 5 (0.66%) FortiGate
11 4 (0.52%) Kustomize
11 4 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
12 3 (0.39%) Argo
12 3 (0.39%) Failover Clustering
12 3 (0.39%) Istio
12 3 (0.39%) vCenter Server
12 3 (0.39%) VxRail
12 3 (0.39%) WMI
Vendors
1 186 (24.38%) Microsoft
2 58 (7.60%) ServiceNow
3 42 (5.50%) SAP
4 37 (4.85%) Oracle
5 32 (4.19%) VMware
6 31 (4.06%) Cisco
7 24 (3.15%) Google
8 18 (2.36%) F5
8 18 (2.36%) Splunk
9 16 (2.10%) IBM
10 14 (1.83%) Palo Alto
10 14 (1.83%) Salesforce
11 13 (1.70%) Workday
12 12 (1.57%) Fortinet
13 11 (1.44%) Concur
14 10 (1.31%) Dell
14 10 (1.31%) Tenable
15 9 (1.18%) Apple
15 9 (1.18%) Red Hat
15 9 (1.18%) Remedy