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 23 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
23 Sep 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 20 7 8
Rank change year-on-year -13 +1 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 169 143 135
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 8.51% 14.31% 11.76%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.19% 15.94% 13.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 91 76 79
10th Percentile £250 £283 £259
25th Percentile £361 £395 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year - +5.56% -10.00%
75th Percentile £594 £581 £525
90th Percentile £713 £663 £618
North West median daily rate £450 £469 £463
% change year-on-year -4.05% +1.41% -4.24%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 15 4
10th Percentile £15.06 - £25.65
25th Percentile £24.04 £17.30 £46.13
Median hourly rate £40.00 £20.26 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +97.48% -66.24% +246.02%
75th Percentile £83.00 £21.44 £70.13
90th Percentile £178.75 £27.19 £83.85
North West median hourly rate £36.66 £20.26 £54.28
% change year-on-year +80.99% -62.68% +108.77%

All Process & 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 1,658 897 1,001
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 83.44% 89.79% 87.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 977 587 596
10th Percentile £313 £311 £313
25th Percentile £413 £400 £404
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £472 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.93% -5.60% -
75th Percentile £600 £581 £600
90th Percentile £700 £675 £688
North West median daily rate £500 £455 £488
% change year-on-year +9.89% -6.81% -2.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 164 65 33
10th Percentile £19.60 £15.06 £15.94
25th Percentile £32.73 £19.07 £22.00
Median hourly rate £57.50 £22.63 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +154.09% -35.34% +81.82%
75th Percentile £75.00 £35.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £79.63 £67.50 £89.30
North West median hourly rate £47.12 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +87.39% -40.84% +21.43%

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 23 September 2026.

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 23 September 2026.

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 23 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
Bolton +8 15 £160 -13.51% 21
Rochdale - 3 - - 6
Salford 0 2 £168 -79.06% 14
Oldham -3 2 - - 2
Bury -11 2 £634 - 3
Stockport -2 1 £140 -76.67% 18
Altrincham - 1 - - 22
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 3 (1.78%) Confluence
2 2 (1.18%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.59%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 1 (0.59%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.59%) CMS
3 1 (0.59%) SharePoint
Applications
1 13 (7.69%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (7.10%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (1.78%) Acrobat
4 2 (1.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.59%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.59%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 5 (2.96%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (1.78%) SAP ERP
2 3 (1.78%) Workday HCM
3 2 (1.18%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.59%) FIS Private Capital Suite
4 1 (0.59%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.59%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 24 (14.20%) AWS
1 24 (14.20%) Azure
1 24 (14.20%) Microsoft 365
2 13 (7.69%) Power Platform
3 9 (5.33%) GCP
3 9 (5.33%) GitHub
4 5 (2.96%) Power Automate
5 4 (2.37%) Azure DevOps
5 4 (2.37%) Entra ID
5 4 (2.37%) OpenShift
6 3 (1.78%) AWS Lambda
6 3 (1.78%) Google Sheets
6 3 (1.78%) Google Workspace
6 3 (1.78%) IaaS
6 3 (1.78%) Serverless
7 2 (1.18%) Azure Data Factory
7 2 (1.18%) Azure Stack
7 2 (1.18%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 2 (1.18%) dbt
7 2 (1.18%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 12 (7.10%) Firewall
2 10 (5.92%) VPN
3 6 (3.55%) DNS
3 6 (3.55%) Network Security
4 5 (2.96%) Wireless
5 3 (1.78%) BIG-IP
5 3 (1.78%) DHCP
5 3 (1.78%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
5 3 (1.78%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
5 3 (1.78%) LAN
5 3 (1.78%) VoIP
5 3 (1.78%) Wi-Fi
6 2 (1.18%) PABX
6 2 (1.18%) Software-Defined Networking
6 2 (1.18%) VLAN
6 2 (1.18%) WAN
7 1 (0.59%) Cisco Nexus
7 1 (0.59%) Ethernet VPN
7 1 (0.59%) SD-WAN
7 1 (0.59%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (7.10%) Data Warehouse
2 11 (6.51%) Power BI
3 10 (5.92%) SQL Server
4 8 (4.73%) Relational Database
5 7 (4.14%) DataStage
6 6 (3.55%) Db2
7 4 (2.37%) MongoDB
7 4 (2.37%) NoSQL
8 3 (1.78%) MySQL
8 3 (1.78%) PostgreSQL
8 3 (1.78%) Snowflake Schema
9 2 (1.18%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
9 2 (1.18%) DynamoDB
9 2 (1.18%) Power Query
9 2 (1.18%) Tableau
10 1 (0.59%) Data Lake
10 1 (0.59%) Data Vault
10 1 (0.59%) Looker
10 1 (0.59%) Metadata
10 1 (0.59%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 16 (9.47%) JIRA
2 9 (5.33%) Git
2 9 (5.33%) Jenkins
3 4 (2.37%) Gatling
3 4 (2.37%) REST Assured
4 3 (1.78%) Cucumber
4 3 (1.78%) GitLab
4 3 (1.78%) Selenium
4 3 (1.78%) Sonatype Nexus
5 2 (1.18%) Burp Suite
5 2 (1.18%) Gradle
5 2 (1.18%) LoadRunner
5 2 (1.18%) Mockito
5 2 (1.18%) Serenity BDD
5 2 (1.18%) SonarQube
5 2 (1.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
6 1 (0.59%) Claude Code
6 1 (0.59%) Cypress.io
6 1 (0.59%) Hudson
6 1 (0.59%) MSI
General
1 93 (55.03%) Social Skills
2 83 (49.11%) Analytical Skills
3 32 (18.93%) Finance
4 20 (11.83%) Banking
5 13 (7.69%) Manufacturing
6 11 (6.51%) Organisational Skills
7 10 (5.92%) Law
8 7 (4.14%) Legal
8 7 (4.14%) Telecoms
9 6 (3.55%) Public Sector
10 4 (2.37%) Retail
11 3 (1.78%) Automotive
11 3 (1.78%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (1.78%) Games
11 3 (1.78%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (1.78%) Marketing
12 2 (1.18%) Aerospace
12 2 (1.18%) Military
12 2 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
13 1 (0.59%) Retail Finance
Job Titles
1 29 (17.16%) Analyst
2 23 (13.61%) Developer
3 16 (9.47%) Administrator
4 14 (8.28%) Senior
5 13 (7.69%) IT Support
6 12 (7.10%) Architect
7 11 (6.51%) Lead
8 9 (5.33%) Support Analyst
8 9 (5.33%) Technical Administrator
9 8 (4.73%) Consultant
9 8 (4.73%) Data Engineer
9 8 (4.73%) IT Analyst
9 8 (4.73%) Software Engineer
10 7 (4.14%) IT Support Analyst
10 7 (4.14%) Senior Developer
11 6 (3.55%) AWS Engineer
11 6 (3.55%) Java Developer
11 6 (3.55%) Java Engineer
11 6 (3.55%) Service Analyst
11 6 (3.55%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (6.51%) Spring
1 11 (6.51%) Spring Boot
2 10 (5.92%) React
2 10 (5.92%) REST
2 10 (5.92%) Terraform
3 9 (5.33%) Kafka
4 5 (2.96%) HTML
4 5 (2.96%) Node.js
4 5 (2.96%) Playwright
5 4 (2.37%) CSS
5 4 (2.37%) Lightning Web Components
5 4 (2.37%) SOAP
6 3 (1.78%) AngularJS
6 3 (1.78%) RESTful
7 2 (1.18%) A2A Protocol
7 2 (1.18%) Model Context Protocol
7 2 (1.18%) Next.js
7 2 (1.18%) Quarkus
7 2 (1.18%) Spring Cloud
7 2 (1.18%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 19 (11.24%) Onboarding
2 10 (5.92%) Cloud Native
3 9 (5.33%) Data Protection Act
4 7 (4.14%) Driving Licence
4 7 (4.14%) Public Cloud
5 6 (3.55%) Data Structures
5 6 (3.55%) Distributed Systems
5 6 (3.55%) Product Ownership
6 5 (2.96%) Enterprise Software
6 5 (2.96%) Legacy Systems
7 4 (2.37%) Management Information System
8 3 (1.78%) Blackberry
8 3 (1.78%) Data Centre
8 3 (1.78%) Private Cloud
8 3 (1.78%) Self-Motivation
8 3 (1.78%) Smartphone
9 2 (1.18%) AI Agents
9 2 (1.18%) Legacy Applications
9 2 (1.18%) Low-Code
9 2 (1.18%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 27 (15.98%) Windows
2 14 (8.28%) Windows 10
3 9 (5.33%) Unix
4 8 (4.73%) Linux
5 6 (3.55%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.59%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.59%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.59%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 35 (20.71%) Agile
1 35 (20.71%) CI/CD
2 34 (20.12%) Stakeholder Management
3 30 (17.75%) Continuous Improvement
4 22 (13.02%) Data Modelling
5 20 (11.83%) ITIL
5 20 (11.83%) Software Engineering
6 19 (11.24%) DevOps
7 18 (10.65%) Customer Service
8 17 (10.06%) Test Automation
8 17 (10.06%) Validation
9 16 (9.47%) Change Management
10 15 (8.88%) AI
10 15 (8.88%) Analytics
10 15 (8.88%) ERP
10 15 (8.88%) Microservices
11 14 (8.28%) Decision-Making
11 14 (8.28%) Technical Leadership
12 13 (7.69%) Data Pipeline
12 13 (7.69%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 32 (18.93%) SQL
2 25 (14.79%) Python
3 19 (11.24%) Java
4 8 (4.73%) PowerShell
5 6 (3.55%) JavaScript
5 6 (3.55%) PL/SQL
5 6 (3.55%) Shell Script
6 5 (2.96%) T-SQL
7 4 (2.37%) Apex Code
7 4 (2.37%) Bash
8 3 (1.78%) ActionScript
9 2 (1.18%) TypeScript
9 2 (1.18%) VBScript
10 1 (0.59%) Bicep
10 1 (0.59%) C#
10 1 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 1 (0.59%) Go
10 1 (0.59%) Kotlin
10 1 (0.59%) Perl
10 1 (0.59%) Rust
Qualifications
1 22 (13.02%) Security Cleared
2 18 (10.65%) Degree
3 13 (7.69%) SC Cleared
4 11 (6.51%) BPSS Clearance
4 11 (6.51%) Computer Science Degree
5 9 (5.33%) Microsoft Certification
6 7 (4.14%) A+ Certification
6 7 (4.14%) Network+ Certification
7 4 (2.37%) Cisco Certification
7 4 (2.37%) CISSP
8 3 (1.78%) CCIE
8 3 (1.78%) CCNP
9 2 (1.18%) CCIE Security
9 2 (1.18%) CCSP
9 2 (1.18%) CISM
9 2 (1.18%) CompTIA Security+
9 2 (1.18%) HNC
9 2 (1.18%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 2 (1.18%) PMI Certification
9 2 (1.18%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (14.79%) Data Quality
2 5 (2.96%) Accessibility
3 4 (2.37%) GRC
4 3 (1.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 3 (1.78%) NIST
5 2 (1.18%) PCI DSS
5 2 (1.18%) PMO
5 2 (1.18%) QA
5 2 (1.18%) SLA
6 1 (0.59%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (0.59%) NCSC
System Software
1 19 (11.24%) Active Directory
2 8 (4.73%) Docker
3 2 (1.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.59%) Oracle RAC
4 1 (0.59%) Virtual Desktop
4 1 (0.59%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.59%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 11 (6.51%) Kubernetes
2 4 (2.37%) Grafana
2 4 (2.37%) Microsoft Intune
2 4 (2.37%) Single Sign-On
3 3 (1.78%) Ansible
3 3 (1.78%) Prometheus
4 2 (1.18%) Istio
5 1 (0.59%) Data Guard
5 1 (0.59%) Progress Chef
5 1 (0.59%) Puppet
5 1 (0.59%) SCCM
5 1 (0.59%) SCOM
Vendors
1 39 (23.08%) Microsoft
2 20 (11.83%) SAP
3 19 (11.24%) ServiceNow
4 11 (6.51%) Oracle
5 8 (4.73%) Google
6 7 (4.14%) IBM
7 6 (3.55%) Splunk
7 6 (3.55%) Teradata
8 5 (2.96%) Adobe
8 5 (2.96%) Salesforce
9 4 (2.37%) Cisco
9 4 (2.37%) CyberArk
9 4 (2.37%) DocuSign
9 4 (2.37%) Dynatrace
9 4 (2.37%) F5
9 4 (2.37%) Workday
10 3 (1.78%) Concur
10 3 (1.78%) iManage
10 3 (1.78%) Intapp
10 3 (1.78%) Litera
572 Problem-Solving jobs in Manchester