Problem-Solving Contract Job Trends in Cheshire

Problem Solving
North West > Cheshire

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in Cheshire requiring Problem-Solving skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 26 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 3 4
Rank change year-on-year -2 +1 +2
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 120 151 88
As % of all contract jobs in Cheshire 15.42% 22.50% 16.18%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 18.10% 24.96% 18.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 62 106 50
10th Percentile £242 £266 £325
25th Percentile £313 £359 £403
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £443 £463 £519
Median % change year-on-year -4.16% -10.84% +4.80%
75th Percentile £538 £534 £573
90th Percentile £561 £671 £589
North West median daily rate £450 £469 £475
% change year-on-year -4.05% -1.26% -1.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 2 0
10th Percentile £15.98 £26.85 -
25th Percentile £17.25 £27.38 -
Median hourly rate £18.49 £30.50 -
Median % change year-on-year -39.38% - -
75th Percentile £54.95 £33.38 -
90th Percentile £79.05 £33.75 -
North West median hourly rate £35.82 £20.26 £54.28
% change year-on-year +76.85% -62.68% +108.77%

All Process & Methodology Skills
Cheshire

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 Cheshire.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 663 605 469
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Cheshire 85.22% 90.16% 86.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 342 452 285
10th Percentile £300 £300 £329
25th Percentile £401 £358 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £447 £488
Median % change year-on-year +6.38% -8.41% -1.52%
75th Percentile £575 £524 £575
90th Percentile £625 £688 £650
North West median daily rate £500 £455 £488
% change year-on-year +10.01% -6.77% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 66 24 16
10th Percentile £16.01 - £16.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £12.82 £30.31
Median hourly rate £35.82 £17.13 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +109.17% -51.07% +27.27%
75th Percentile £85.00 £34.69 £43.75
90th Percentile £111.25 £67.25 £47.50
North West median hourly rate £46.80 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +86.08% -40.82% +28.79%

Problem-Solving
Job Vacancy Trend in Cheshire

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

Problem-Solving job vacancy trend in Cheshire

Problem-Solving
Daily Rate Trend in Cheshire

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Cheshire citing Problem-Solving.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Cheshire citing Problem-Solving

Problem-Solving
Daily Rate Histogram in Cheshire

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Problem-Solving in Cheshire over the 6 months to 26 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Problem-Solving in Cheshire

Problem-Solving
Hourly Rate Trend in Cheshire

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Cheshire citing Problem-Solving.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Cheshire citing Problem-Solving

Problem-Solving
Hourly Rate Histogram in Cheshire

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Problem-Solving in Cheshire over the 6 months to 26 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Problem-Solving in Cheshire

Problem-Solving
Contract Job Locations in Cheshire

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 Cheshire region over the 6 months to 26 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
Chester -2 27 £538 -6.52% 26
Knutsford -9 25 £443 +1.31% 13
Warrington +5 21 £325 +7.44% 30
Crewe -1 15 £313 +21.55% 6
Macclesfield 0 7 £525 +5.00% 11
Northwich - 3 £300 - 1
Congleton - 2 - - 3
Widnes - 1 - - 2
Problem-Solving
North West

Problem-Solving
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Cheshire 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 9 (7.50%) Confluence
2 3 (2.50%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.83%) Camunda
3 1 (0.83%) JBoss
3 1 (0.83%) Mule
3 1 (0.83%) Mule ESB
3 1 (0.83%) WebLogic
Applications
1 14 (11.67%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (3.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (2.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 3 (2.50%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.83%) CATIA
4 1 (0.83%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.83%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 9 (7.50%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (2.50%) Teamcenter
3 2 (1.67%) SAP HCM
3 2 (1.67%) SAP Payroll
4 1 (0.83%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.83%) ENOVIA
Cloud Services
1 27 (22.50%) Microsoft 365
2 19 (15.83%) Azure
3 16 (13.33%) AWS
4 8 (6.67%) Power Platform
5 7 (5.83%) Entra ID
6 4 (3.33%) GCP
7 3 (2.50%) AWS CloudFormation
8 2 (1.67%) AWS KMS
8 2 (1.67%) Azure Key Vault
8 2 (1.67%) Power Automate
8 2 (1.67%) PowerApps
8 2 (1.67%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 14 (11.67%) VPN
2 6 (5.00%) WAN
3 5 (4.17%) LAN
4 3 (2.50%) BIG-IP
4 3 (2.50%) DMZ
4 3 (2.50%) DNS
4 3 (2.50%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
4 3 (2.50%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
4 3 (2.50%) Firewall
4 3 (2.50%) SAN
4 3 (2.50%) SSL
5 2 (1.67%) BGP
5 2 (1.67%) Cisco Nexus
5 2 (1.67%) MPLS
5 2 (1.67%) OSPF
5 2 (1.67%) Remote Desktop
5 2 (1.67%) VLAN
5 2 (1.67%) Wi-Fi
5 2 (1.67%) Wireless
5 2 (1.67%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (5.00%) Power BI
2 2 (1.67%) Relational Database
2 2 (1.67%) SAP HANA
2 2 (1.67%) SQL Server
3 1 (0.83%) Metadata
3 1 (0.83%) MongoDB
3 1 (0.83%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 8 (6.67%) JIRA
2 3 (2.50%) GitLab
3 2 (1.67%) Cucumber
3 2 (1.67%) Git
3 2 (1.67%) Jenkins
4 1 (0.83%) Bitbucket
4 1 (0.83%) CANoe
4 1 (0.83%) Claude Code
4 1 (0.83%) Eclipse
4 1 (0.83%) JUnit
4 1 (0.83%) Maven
4 1 (0.83%) Postman
4 1 (0.83%) Robot Framework
4 1 (0.83%) Selenium
4 1 (0.83%) SonarQube
4 1 (0.83%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 59 (49.17%) Social Skills
2 52 (43.33%) Analytical Skills
3 26 (21.67%) Finance
4 16 (13.33%) Manufacturing
5 14 (11.67%) Banking
6 7 (5.83%) Automotive
7 6 (5.00%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (3.33%) Legal
8 4 (3.33%) Organisational Skills
9 3 (2.50%) Aerospace
10 2 (1.67%) Pharmaceutical
11 1 (0.83%) Aviation
11 1 (0.83%) Billing
11 1 (0.83%) German Language
11 1 (0.83%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.83%) Investment Banking
11 1 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 20 (16.67%) Analyst
2 14 (11.67%) IT Support
3 10 (8.33%) Support Engineer
4 8 (6.67%) Service Analyst
4 8 (6.67%) Service Desk Analyst
5 7 (5.83%) Desktop Engineer
5 7 (5.83%) Desktop Support
5 7 (5.83%) Desktop Support Engineer
5 7 (5.83%) Lead
5 7 (5.83%) Operations Analyst
6 6 (5.00%) IT Analyst
6 6 (5.00%) IT Operations Analyst
6 6 (5.00%) Operational Support Analyst
6 6 (5.00%) Operations Support Analyst
6 6 (5.00%) Security Engineer
6 6 (5.00%) Support Analyst
7 5 (4.17%) Developer
7 5 (4.17%) IT Engineer
7 5 (4.17%) IT Support Analyst
7 5 (4.17%) Senior
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (4.17%) JSON
1 5 (4.17%) REST
2 4 (3.33%) OAuth
2 4 (3.33%) XML
3 3 (2.50%) Middleware
3 3 (2.50%) Terraform
4 2 (1.67%) OpenID
4 2 (1.67%) SailPoint
4 2 (1.67%) SAML
4 2 (1.67%) Spring
5 1 (0.83%) HTML
5 1 (0.83%) Jakarta EE
5 1 (0.83%) JPA
5 1 (0.83%) Kafka
5 1 (0.83%) RESTful
5 1 (0.83%) Spring Boot
5 1 (0.83%) Spring MVC
5 1 (0.83%) Spring Security
5 1 (0.83%) Web Services
5 1 (0.83%) XML Messaging
Miscellaneous
1 11 (9.17%) Analytical Mindset
2 9 (7.50%) Enterprise Software
3 7 (5.83%) CMDB
3 7 (5.83%) Onboarding
3 7 (5.83%) Product Ownership
4 6 (5.00%) Distributed Systems
5 5 (4.17%) Data Centre
5 5 (4.17%) Self-Motivation
6 4 (3.33%) Cloud Native
6 4 (3.33%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (3.33%) PKI
6 4 (3.33%) Virtual Team
7 3 (2.50%) Client/Server
7 3 (2.50%) Cyber Threat
7 3 (2.50%) Data Structures
7 3 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
8 2 (1.67%) Algorithms
8 2 (1.67%) Industry 4.0
8 2 (1.67%) Robotics
8 2 (1.67%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 40 (33.33%) Windows
2 9 (7.50%) Linux
3 7 (5.83%) Mac OS
4 5 (4.17%) Apple iOS
5 3 (2.50%) Windows Server
6 2 (1.67%) AIX
6 2 (1.67%) Android
6 2 (1.67%) HPUX
6 2 (1.67%) Oracle Linux
6 2 (1.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (1.67%) Solaris
6 2 (1.67%) SUSE
6 2 (1.67%) Unix
6 2 (1.67%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 40 (33.33%) Continuous Improvement
2 31 (25.83%) Stakeholder Management
3 28 (23.33%) ITIL
4 26 (21.67%) Customer Service
5 17 (14.17%) AI
6 15 (12.50%) Agile
6 15 (12.50%) Data Protection
6 15 (12.50%) Incident Management
7 14 (11.67%) ITSM
7 14 (11.67%) Process Improvement
8 13 (10.83%) Change Management
9 12 (10.00%) CI/CD
9 12 (10.00%) Generative AI
9 12 (10.00%) Mentoring
9 12 (10.00%) Project Delivery
9 12 (10.00%) Root Cause Analysis
10 11 (9.17%) Computer Science
10 11 (9.17%) Risk Management
10 11 (9.17%) Service Management
11 10 (8.33%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 17 (14.17%) PowerShell
2 15 (12.50%) Python
3 10 (8.33%) SQL
4 6 (5.00%) Java
5 2 (1.67%) ABAP
5 2 (1.67%) C#
5 2 (1.67%) JavaScript
6 1 (0.83%) Assembly Language
6 1 (0.83%) Bash
6 1 (0.83%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 19 (15.83%) Degree
2 10 (8.33%) Security Cleared
3 9 (7.50%) BPSS Clearance
4 8 (6.67%) CISSP
4 8 (6.67%) Computer Science Degree
5 6 (5.00%) Cisco Certification
5 6 (5.00%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
6 5 (4.17%) HNC
7 4 (3.33%) AWS Certification
7 4 (3.33%) CompTIA Security+
7 4 (3.33%) HND
7 4 (3.33%) Microsoft Certification
8 3 (2.50%) A+ Certification
8 3 (2.50%) CCNA
8 3 (2.50%) CEH
8 3 (2.50%) MCSE
8 3 (2.50%) Network+ Certification
8 3 (2.50%) SC Cleared
9 2 (1.67%) Chartered Engineer
9 2 (1.67%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (13.33%) SLA
2 5 (4.17%) Data Quality
2 5 (4.17%) GRC
2 5 (4.17%) NIST
3 3 (2.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 3 (2.50%) QA
4 2 (1.67%) GDPR
4 2 (1.67%) IEC 61508
5 1 (0.83%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.83%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 17 (14.17%) Active Directory
2 6 (5.00%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (3.33%) Virtual Desktop
4 3 (2.50%) Docker
4 3 (2.50%) VMware NSX
5 2 (1.67%) Firmware
5 2 (1.67%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.83%) Microsoft Virtual Server
6 1 (0.83%) Virtual Servers
6 1 (0.83%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 14 (11.67%) SCCM
2 10 (8.33%) Microsoft Intune
3 3 (2.50%) Ansible
3 3 (2.50%) Functional Safety
3 3 (2.50%) Kubernetes
4 2 (1.67%) Grafana
4 2 (1.67%) Prometheus
4 2 (1.67%) WMI
Vendors
1 38 (31.67%) Microsoft
2 23 (19.17%) ServiceNow
3 9 (7.50%) Remedy
4 8 (6.67%) Workday
5 7 (5.83%) Splunk
5 7 (5.83%) VMware
6 6 (5.00%) Bomgar
7 5 (4.17%) F5
8 4 (3.33%) Atlassian
8 4 (3.33%) BeyondTrust
8 4 (3.33%) CrowdStrike
8 4 (3.33%) HP
8 4 (3.33%) Oracle
8 4 (3.33%) SAP
8 4 (3.33%) Siemens
9 3 (2.50%) Cisco
9 3 (2.50%) Dell
10 2 (1.67%) Forcepoint
10 2 (1.67%) Juniper
10 2 (1.67%) Red Hat