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 30 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 2 15
Rank change year-on-year -9 +13 -7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 99 118 49
As % of all contract jobs in Cheshire 14.00% 28.78% 9.53%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.79% 30.10% 11.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 76 80 27
10th Percentile £313 £230 £360
25th Percentile £350 £366 £479
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £497 £525
Median % change year-on-year -19.45% -5.42% +17.98%
75th Percentile £488 £584 £582
90th Percentile £557 £715 £621
North West median daily rate £420 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -11.58% -5.00% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 2 8
10th Percentile £23.40 £39.40 £14.00
25th Percentile £29.99 £44.50 £21.21
Median hourly rate £32.23 £53.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -39.77% +25.88% +83.59%
75th Percentile £86.00 £62.00 £43.75
90th Percentile - £66.80 -
North West median hourly rate £43.66 £28.13 £11.20
% change year-on-year +55.23% +151.23% -72.94%

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 627 392 444
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Cheshire 88.68% 95.61% 86.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 455 259 302
10th Percentile £313 £291 £301
25th Percentile £368 £356 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £460 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.17% -8.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £564 £562
90th Percentile £653 £640 £620
North West median daily rate £455 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -4.21% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 33 32
10th Percentile £13.47 £19.41 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.18 £16.73
Median hourly rate £27.22 £32.50 £26.66
Median % change year-on-year -16.25% +21.91% -4.72%
75th Percentile £85.00 £77.50 £40.00
90th Percentile £85.20 £86.00 £43.75
North West median hourly rate £45.46 £31.64 £23.56
% change year-on-year +43.68% +34.32% -36.85%

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 30 March 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 30 March 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 30 March 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
Knutsford -9 62 £393 -19.56% 6
Chester -1 18 £475 -33.33% 12
Warrington -11 9 £413 +79.35% 12
Crewe -1 5 £325 +11.68% 7
Macclesfield +3 1 £500 -9.09% 2
Alderley Edge 0 1 £400 - 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 16 (16.16%) Confluence
2 1 (1.01%) Apache
2 1 (1.01%) Camunda
2 1 (1.01%) CMS
2 1 (1.01%) JBoss
2 1 (1.01%) SharePoint
2 1 (1.01%) Tomcat
Applications
1 3 (3.03%) CATIA
1 3 (3.03%) Microsoft Excel
1 3 (3.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 3 (3.03%) MS Visio
2 2 (2.02%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (1.01%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (1.01%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (4.04%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (2.02%) SAP HCM
2 2 (2.02%) SAP Payroll
2 2 (2.02%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 33 (33.33%) Azure
2 32 (32.32%) AWS
3 10 (10.10%) GCP
4 9 (9.09%) Microsoft 365
5 8 (8.08%) Entra ID
6 7 (7.07%) Apigee
6 7 (7.07%) Kong
7 6 (6.06%) GitHub
8 5 (5.05%) Power Platform
9 4 (4.04%) GitHub Copilot
10 3 (3.03%) Azure DevOps
10 3 (3.03%) OpenShift
11 2 (2.02%) SaaS
12 1 (1.01%) Akamai
12 1 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
12 1 (1.01%) AWS Lambda
12 1 (1.01%) Datadog
12 1 (1.01%) Google Workspace
12 1 (1.01%) IaaS
12 1 (1.01%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 8 (8.08%) DNS
2 6 (6.06%) Firewall
2 6 (6.06%) Network Security
3 5 (5.05%) DMZ
3 5 (5.05%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
3 5 (5.05%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
3 5 (5.05%) Kerberos
4 2 (2.02%) HTTP
4 2 (2.02%) LAN
4 2 (2.02%) WAN
5 1 (1.01%) DHCP
5 1 (1.01%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (8.08%) Relational Database
2 4 (4.04%) MySQL
2 4 (4.04%) PostgreSQL
3 3 (3.03%) SQL Server
4 2 (2.02%) MS Access
4 2 (2.02%) SAP HANA
5 1 (1.01%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (1.01%) Metadata
5 1 (1.01%) Power BI
5 1 (1.01%) Power Query
5 1 (1.01%) Star Schema
5 1 (1.01%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 29 (29.29%) JIRA
2 16 (16.16%) Git
3 10 (10.10%) GitLab
4 5 (5.05%) Jenkins
4 5 (5.05%) JUnit
5 4 (4.04%) Postman
6 3 (3.03%) Mockito
7 2 (2.02%) Zephyr
8 1 (1.01%) CircleCI
8 1 (1.01%) Gradle
8 1 (1.01%) IntelliJ
8 1 (1.01%) Maven
8 1 (1.01%) Selenium
8 1 (1.01%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 46 (46.46%) Analytical Skills
2 45 (45.45%) Finance
3 42 (42.42%) Social Skills
4 34 (34.34%) Banking
5 7 (7.07%) Retail Banking
6 6 (6.06%) Documentation Skills
6 6 (6.06%) Manufacturing
6 6 (6.06%) Public Sector
7 4 (4.04%) Influencing Skills
8 3 (3.03%) Aerospace
8 3 (3.03%) Automotive
8 3 (3.03%) Organisational Skills
9 2 (2.02%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (2.02%) Retail
10 1 (1.01%) Billing
10 1 (1.01%) Financial Institution
10 1 (1.01%) Investment Banking
10 1 (1.01%) Legal
10 1 (1.01%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 25 (25.25%) Analyst
2 21 (21.21%) Developer
3 19 (19.19%) Business Analyst
4 10 (10.10%) Java Developer
5 8 (8.08%) Architect
6 6 (6.06%) Technical Analyst
6 6 (6.06%) Technical Business Analyst
7 5 (5.05%) Applications Architect
7 5 (5.05%) Automation Engineer
8 4 (4.04%) Consultant
8 4 (4.04%) Full-Stack Developer
8 4 (4.04%) Payments Analyst
8 4 (4.04%) Payments Business Analyst
8 4 (4.04%) React Developer
9 3 (3.03%) Administrator
9 3 (3.03%) Programmer
9 3 (3.03%) Risk Analyst
9 3 (3.03%) SAP Consultant
9 3 (3.03%) Service Analyst
9 3 (3.03%) Technical Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (25.25%) REST
2 15 (15.15%) JSON
3 14 (14.14%) SOAP
4 13 (13.13%) Spring
4 13 (13.13%) Spring Boot
4 13 (13.13%) Swagger
5 11 (11.11%) RESTful
5 11 (11.11%) XML
6 9 (9.09%) HTML
6 9 (9.09%) OpenAPI
7 7 (7.07%) CSS
7 7 (7.07%) JMS
7 7 (7.07%) JWT
7 7 (7.07%) OAuth
8 6 (6.06%) React
9 5 (5.05%) HTML5
9 5 (5.05%) LDAP
10 4 (4.04%) CSS3
10 4 (4.04%) Hibernate
10 4 (4.04%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 13 (13.13%) Product Ownership
2 10 (10.10%) Cloud Native
3 8 (8.08%) Management Information System
3 8 (8.08%) SWIFT Messaging Network
4 6 (6.06%) Onboarding
5 4 (4.04%) Digital Wallet
6 3 (3.03%) Distributed Systems
7 2 (2.02%) Data Protection Act
7 2 (2.02%) Mobile Banking
7 2 (2.02%) Self-Motivation
8 1 (1.01%) Blackberry
8 1 (1.01%) CMDB
8 1 (1.01%) Cyber Threat
8 1 (1.01%) Data Structures
8 1 (1.01%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 1 (1.01%) Graphic Design
8 1 (1.01%) Hybrid Cloud
8 1 (1.01%) Online Banking
8 1 (1.01%) Replication
8 1 (1.01%) Video Editing
Operating Systems
1 5 (5.05%) Linux
1 5 (5.05%) Windows
2 3 (3.03%) Unix
3 2 (2.02%) Windows 10
4 1 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 56 (56.57%) Agile
2 32 (32.32%) CI/CD
3 29 (29.29%) Stakeholder Management
4 23 (23.23%) Change Management
5 22 (22.22%) DevOps
6 21 (21.21%) Requirements Gathering
7 17 (17.17%) Computer Science
7 17 (17.17%) Integration Patterns
7 17 (17.17%) Microservices
7 17 (17.17%) User Acceptance Testing
8 16 (16.16%) Continuous Improvement
8 16 (16.16%) Test Automation
9 14 (14.14%) Scrum
9 14 (14.14%) Validation
10 13 (13.13%) API Design
10 13 (13.13%) Translating Business Requirements
11 12 (12.12%) AI
11 12 (12.12%) Containerisation
11 12 (12.12%) Workshop Facilitation
12 11 (11.11%) Unit Testing
Programming Languages
1 21 (21.21%) Java
2 15 (15.15%) SQL
3 11 (11.11%) Python
4 9 (9.09%) PowerShell
5 8 (8.08%) JavaScript
6 7 (7.07%) TypeScript
7 3 (3.03%) Apex Code
7 3 (3.03%) Bash
8 2 (2.02%) ABAP
8 2 (2.02%) Shell Script
9 1 (1.01%) Bicep
9 1 (1.01%) C#
9 1 (1.01%) Korn
9 1 (1.01%) SOQL
9 1 (1.01%) SOSL
9 1 (1.01%) T-SQL
9 1 (1.01%) VBA
Qualifications
1 21 (21.21%) Degree
2 16 (16.16%) Computer Science Degree
3 14 (14.14%) BPSS Clearance
4 10 (10.10%) Security Cleared
5 4 (4.04%) PMI Certification
5 4 (4.04%) PMP
5 4 (4.04%) SC Cleared
6 3 (3.03%) AWS Certification
6 3 (3.03%) Azure Certification
6 3 (3.03%) CISA
6 3 (3.03%) CISSP
6 3 (3.03%) CRISC
6 3 (3.03%) HNC
6 3 (3.03%) NVQ Level 4
7 2 (2.02%) CISM
7 2 (2.02%) GIAC
7 2 (2.02%) ISTQB
7 2 (2.02%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
8 1 (1.01%) Cisco Certification
8 1 (1.01%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (13.13%) PSD2
2 11 (11.11%) QA
3 9 (9.09%) ISO 20022
4 8 (8.08%) SEPA
5 4 (4.04%) GRC
5 4 (4.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 4 (4.04%) NIST
5 4 (4.04%) PCI DSS
6 3 (3.03%) Data Quality
6 3 (3.03%) ISO 8583
7 2 (2.02%) GDPR
7 2 (2.02%) ISO/IEC 27005
8 1 (1.01%) PMO
8 1 (1.01%) SLA
System Software
1 14 (14.14%) Docker
2 9 (9.09%) Active Directory
3 6 (6.06%) VMware NSX
4 1 (1.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (1.01%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 14 (14.14%) Kubernetes
2 4 (4.04%) Ansible
2 4 (4.04%) Terraform
3 3 (3.03%) Grafana
3 3 (3.03%) Norton AntiVirus
3 3 (3.03%) SCCM
4 2 (2.02%) Argo
4 2 (2.02%) HP ALM
4 2 (2.02%) Prometheus
5 1 (1.01%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 1 (1.01%) CA Single Sign-On
5 1 (1.01%) Single Sign-On
5 1 (1.01%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 19 (19.19%) Microsoft
2 13 (13.13%) Oracle
3 8 (8.08%) SAP
4 7 (7.07%) MuleSoft
4 7 (7.07%) ServiceNow
5 6 (6.06%) VMware
6 5 (5.05%) Computacenter
6 5 (5.05%) F5
7 3 (3.03%) Google
7 3 (3.03%) McAfee
7 3 (3.03%) Salesforce
7 3 (3.03%) Snow
7 3 (3.03%) Splunk
7 3 (3.03%) Symantec
7 3 (3.03%) Workday
8 2 (2.02%) HP
9 1 (1.01%) Informatica
9 1 (1.01%) Red Hat
9 1 (1.01%) Sage
9 1 (1.01%) Sybase