Problem-Solving Contract Job Trends in Manchester

Problem Solving
North West > Manchester

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in Manchester requiring Problem-Solving skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 16 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 9 8 11
Rank change year-on-year -1 +3 +14
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 158 137 167
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 13.56% 12.71% 10.83%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.11% 14.17% 12.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 95 86 102
10th Percentile £308 £188 £328
25th Percentile £338 £356 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £458 £413 £500
Median % change year-on-year +10.91% -17.50% +12.36%
75th Percentile £550 £506 £597
90th Percentile £602 £613 £700
North West median daily rate £450 £455 £500
% change year-on-year -1.10% -9.00% +12.99%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 4 7
10th Percentile - £13.17 £15.36
25th Percentile £17.30 £14.93 £16.68
Median hourly rate £20.26 £26.45 £17.46
Median % change year-on-year -23.42% +51.49% -6.33%
75th Percentile £21.44 £51.00 £37.38
90th Percentile £27.19 £76.20 £63.20
North West median hourly rate £20.26 £26.28 £45.88
% change year-on-year -22.92% -42.73% +49.25%

All Process and Methodology Skills
Manchester

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 Manchester.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,046 967 1,369
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 89.79% 89.70% 88.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 703 581 978
10th Percentile £303 £294 £296
25th Percentile £373 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £585 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £675
North West median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 78 39 48
10th Percentile £17.30 £15.98 £15.74
25th Percentile £19.52 £22.75 £17.37
Median hourly rate £22.82 £32.50 £24.75
Median % change year-on-year -29.80% +31.31% -33.65%
75th Percentile £53.94 £44.38 £57.19
90th Percentile £64.13 £65.00 £76.10
North West median hourly rate £32.50 £32.01 £35.50
% change year-on-year +1.53% -9.83% +37.54%

Problem-Solving
Job Vacancy Trend in Manchester

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

Problem-Solving job vacancy trend in Manchester

Problem-Solving
Daily Rate Trend in Manchester

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

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

Problem-Solving
Daily Rate Histogram in Manchester

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Problem-Solving in Manchester over the 6 months to 16 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Problem-Solving in Manchester

Problem-Solving
Hourly Rate Trend in Manchester

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

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

Problem-Solving
Hourly Rate Histogram in Manchester

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Problem-Solving in Manchester over the 6 months to 16 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Problem-Solving in Manchester

Problem-Solving
Contract Job Locations in Manchester

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 Manchester region over the 6 months to 16 December 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
Salford +6 7 - - 23
Oldham 0 4 - - 21
Bury -1 3 - - 18
Bolton -8 2 £185 +12.12% 30
Cheadle - 1 £475 - 1
Stockport - 1 £600 - 29
Problem-Solving
North West

Problem-Solving
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Manchester 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 6 (3.80%) Apache
2 4 (2.53%) Confluence
3 3 (1.90%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 3 (1.90%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (1.90%) SharePoint
4 2 (1.27%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.63%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.63%) SAS
Applications
1 9 (5.70%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (4.43%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (2.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (2.53%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.63%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.63%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 5 (3.16%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (2.53%) ContrOCC
3 3 (1.90%) Kondor
4 2 (1.27%) Advent Geneva
4 2 (1.27%) Dynamics AX
4 2 (1.27%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (1.27%) Maximo
5 1 (0.63%) NetSuite
5 1 (0.63%) SAP EWM
5 1 (0.63%) SAP HR
5 1 (0.63%) SAP PSCD
5 1 (0.63%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 31 (19.62%) AWS
1 31 (19.62%) Azure
2 16 (10.13%) GCP
3 14 (8.86%) Power Platform
3 14 (8.86%) Serverless
4 13 (8.23%) GitHub
5 10 (6.33%) Microsoft 365
6 9 (5.70%) Amazon ECS
6 9 (5.70%) Amazon SQS
6 9 (5.70%) AWS Lambda
6 9 (5.70%) Datadog
6 9 (5.70%) SaaS
7 7 (4.43%) Amazon EventBridge
7 7 (4.43%) AWS Step Functions
7 7 (4.43%) GitHub Actions
8 6 (3.80%) Amazon EC2
8 6 (3.80%) AWS Fargate
8 6 (3.80%) Dynamics 365
9 5 (3.16%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 5 (3.16%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.53%) Firewall
1 4 (2.53%) Network Security
2 3 (1.90%) HTTP
3 2 (1.27%) LAN
3 2 (1.27%) VSAN
3 2 (1.27%) WAN
3 2 (1.27%) Wi-Fi
4 1 (0.63%) BGP
4 1 (0.63%) DHCP
4 1 (0.63%) DNS
4 1 (0.63%) IP Telephony
4 1 (0.63%) OSPF
4 1 (0.63%) SAN
4 1 (0.63%) SSL
4 1 (0.63%) Structured Cabling
4 1 (0.63%) VoIP
4 1 (0.63%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (7.59%) DynamoDB
1 12 (7.59%) NoSQL
2 10 (6.33%) Power BI
3 9 (5.70%) BigQuery
3 9 (5.70%) Relational Database
4 8 (5.06%) Amazon Aurora
4 8 (5.06%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (4.43%) MySQL
6 6 (3.80%) Amazon RDS
6 6 (3.80%) RDBMS
6 6 (3.80%) Redis
6 6 (3.80%) SQL Server
7 4 (2.53%) Data Warehouse
7 4 (2.53%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 3 (1.90%) MongoDB
8 3 (1.90%) Oracle Database
9 2 (1.27%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
9 2 (1.27%) Data Lake
9 2 (1.27%) DB2
9 2 (1.27%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 10 (6.33%) Jenkins
2 9 (5.70%) JIRA
3 8 (5.06%) Git
4 5 (3.16%) Gradle
4 5 (3.16%) Maven
4 5 (3.16%) SonarLint
4 5 (3.16%) SonarQube
5 4 (2.53%) GitLab
6 3 (1.90%) Jasmine
7 1 (0.63%) Ant
7 1 (0.63%) Cypress.io
7 1 (0.63%) Eclipse
7 1 (0.63%) IntelliJ
7 1 (0.63%) JUnit
7 1 (0.63%) NUnit
7 1 (0.63%) Rational DOORS
7 1 (0.63%) Selenium
General
1 81 (51.27%) Social Skills
2 45 (28.48%) Analytical Skills
3 44 (27.85%) Finance
4 19 (12.03%) Public Sector
5 11 (6.96%) Banking
6 6 (3.80%) Manufacturing
7 4 (2.53%) Games
7 4 (2.53%) Law
8 3 (1.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 3 (1.90%) Legal
8 3 (1.90%) Pharmaceutical
8 3 (1.90%) Telecoms
9 2 (1.27%) Electronics
9 2 (1.27%) Military
9 2 (1.27%) Organisational Skills
9 2 (1.27%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (1.27%) Retail
10 1 (0.63%) Automotive
10 1 (0.63%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.63%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 37 (23.42%) Developer
2 15 (9.49%) Administrator
3 14 (8.86%) Analyst
4 13 (8.23%) Architect
4 13 (8.23%) Consultant
4 13 (8.23%) Senior
5 8 (5.06%) Full-Stack Developer
5 8 (5.06%) Technical Architect
6 7 (4.43%) Data Engineer
7 6 (3.80%) Business Analyst
7 6 (3.80%) Installation Technician
7 6 (3.80%) Java Architect
7 6 (3.80%) Java Developer
7 6 (3.80%) Java Technical Architect
7 6 (3.80%) Lead
7 6 (3.80%) SAP Support
8 5 (3.16%) Project Manager
8 5 (3.16%) SAP Administrator
8 5 (3.16%) SAP Consultant
9 4 (2.53%) Systems Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (12.03%) Spring Boot
2 15 (9.49%) Spring
3 9 (5.70%) RESTful
4 8 (5.06%) Kafka
5 7 (4.43%) AngularJS
5 7 (4.43%) J2EE
5 7 (4.43%) OAuth
5 7 (4.43%) OAuth2
5 7 (4.43%) React
6 6 (3.80%) .NET
6 6 (3.80%) Dropwizard
6 6 (3.80%) ISPF
6 6 (3.80%) JWT
6 6 (3.80%) Micronaut
7 5 (3.16%) Celery
7 5 (3.16%) Hibernate
7 5 (3.16%) Node.js
8 4 (2.53%) Elastic Stack
8 4 (2.53%) HTML
8 4 (2.53%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 8 (5.06%) Cloud Native
1 8 (5.06%) Product Ownership
2 7 (4.43%) Mainframe
3 6 (3.80%) N-Tier
4 5 (3.16%) Data Protection Act
4 5 (3.16%) Greenfield Project
4 5 (3.16%) Mobile App
4 5 (3.16%) Onboarding
5 4 (2.53%) Self-Motivation
6 3 (1.90%) Analytical Mindset
6 3 (1.90%) CMDB
6 3 (1.90%) Data Centre
6 3 (1.90%) Data Structures
6 3 (1.90%) FMCG
6 3 (1.90%) SWIFT Messaging Network
7 2 (1.27%) Clustering
8 1 (0.63%) PKI
8 1 (0.63%) Reference Data
8 1 (0.63%) Thin Client
8 1 (0.63%) Video Editing
Operating Systems
1 10 (6.33%) Windows
2 8 (5.06%) Linux
3 7 (4.43%) Unix
4 2 (1.27%) Apple iOS
4 2 (1.27%) Windows 10
4 2 (1.27%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.63%) Android
5 1 (0.63%) Mac OS
5 1 (0.63%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 33 (20.89%) Agile
2 22 (13.92%) Change Management
3 21 (13.29%) DevOps
3 21 (13.29%) Microservices
4 20 (12.66%) Analytics
4 20 (12.66%) CI/CD
5 19 (12.03%) Stakeholder Management
6 16 (10.13%) TDD
7 15 (9.49%) Containerisation
7 15 (9.49%) Continuous Improvement
7 15 (9.49%) Design Patterns
7 15 (9.49%) Event-Driven
8 14 (8.86%) Event-Driven Architecture
8 14 (8.86%) Test Automation
9 13 (8.23%) Mentoring
10 12 (7.59%) AI
11 11 (6.96%) Business Intelligence
11 11 (6.96%) Data Modelling
11 11 (6.96%) ETL
11 11 (6.96%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 30 (18.99%) SQL
2 29 (18.35%) Java
3 23 (14.56%) Python
4 7 (4.43%) C#
4 7 (4.43%) JavaScript
5 6 (3.80%) CLIST
5 6 (3.80%) COBOL
5 6 (3.80%) JCL
5 6 (3.80%) REXX
5 6 (3.80%) TypeScript
6 5 (3.16%) Kotlin
7 4 (2.53%) Bash
7 4 (2.53%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 4 (2.53%) Go
7 4 (2.53%) T-SQL
8 3 (1.90%) PowerShell
9 2 (1.27%) Groovy
9 2 (1.27%) Kusto Query Language
9 2 (1.27%) X++
10 1 (0.63%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 16 (10.13%) Degree
1 16 (10.13%) Security Cleared
2 7 (4.43%) Computer Science Degree
3 5 (3.16%) BPSS Clearance
3 5 (3.16%) SC Cleared
4 2 (1.27%) CCNA
4 2 (1.27%) Cisco Certification
4 2 (1.27%) GCIA
4 2 (1.27%) GCIH
4 2 (1.27%) PMI Certification
4 2 (1.27%) PMP
4 2 (1.27%) VCAP
4 2 (1.27%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
5 1 (0.63%) CCNP
5 1 (0.63%) CISA
5 1 (0.63%) CISM
5 1 (0.63%) CISSP
5 1 (0.63%) GSEC
5 1 (0.63%) Microsoft Certification
5 1 (0.63%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (6.96%) Data Quality
2 6 (3.80%) QA
3 4 (2.53%) GDPR
4 3 (1.90%) Accessibility
5 2 (1.27%) HIPAA
5 2 (1.27%) PCI DSS
5 2 (1.27%) PMO
6 1 (0.63%) GRC
6 1 (0.63%) IEC 61508
6 1 (0.63%) ISO 26262
6 1 (0.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.63%) NIST
6 1 (0.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 17 (10.76%) Docker
2 6 (3.80%) ACF2
2 6 (3.80%) RACF
2 6 (3.80%) Time Sharing Option
3 3 (1.90%) Active Directory
3 3 (1.90%) ISA Server
4 2 (1.27%) VMware NSX
4 2 (1.27%) vSphere
5 1 (0.63%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 18 (11.39%) Kubernetes
2 16 (10.13%) Terraform
3 6 (3.80%) CA Endevor
3 6 (3.80%) Tivoli
3 6 (3.80%) Tivoli Storage Manager
4 4 (2.53%) Grafana
4 4 (2.53%) Prometheus
4 4 (2.53%) SCCM
5 3 (1.90%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (1.27%) Microsoft Clustering
7 1 (0.63%) Argo
7 1 (0.63%) Jamf Pro
7 1 (0.63%) QRadar
Vendors
1 35 (22.15%) Microsoft
2 16 (10.13%) SAP
3 5 (3.16%) Gigya
3 5 (3.16%) Oracle
3 5 (3.16%) ServiceNow
3 5 (3.16%) Splunk
4 4 (2.53%) Adobe
4 4 (2.53%) Databricks
4 4 (2.53%) Liquidlogic
5 3 (1.90%) Apple
5 3 (1.90%) Bloomberg
5 3 (1.90%) Google
6 2 (1.27%) Advent
6 2 (1.27%) IBM
6 2 (1.27%) IFS
6 2 (1.27%) VMware
7 1 (0.63%) ArcSight
7 1 (0.63%) Aruba
7 1 (0.63%) Broadcom
7 1 (0.63%) Netskope