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 1 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 7 11
Rank change year-on-year -2 +4 +14
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 152 144 164
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 12.85% 13.41% 10.70%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.26% 14.85% 12.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 89 96 105
10th Percentile £309 £200 £321
25th Percentile £333 £359 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £450 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -10.00% +19.05%
75th Percentile £519 £513 £588
90th Percentile £600 £625 £700
North West median daily rate £447 £471 £500
% change year-on-year -5.05% -5.85% +15.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 4 5
10th Percentile £16.46 £13.17 £14.92
25th Percentile £17.30 £14.93 £16.25
Median hourly rate £18.78 £26.45 £17.22
Median % change year-on-year -29.01% +53.60% -8.01%
75th Percentile £21.44 £51.00 £19.75
90th Percentile £26.45 £76.20 £40.90
North West median hourly rate £20.26 £27.13 £45.88
% change year-on-year -25.33% -40.88% +37.49%

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 1,066 970 1,353
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 90.11% 90.32% 88.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 725 578 976
10th Percentile £306 £294 £301
25th Percentile £375 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £463 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.70% -7.50% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £645 £677 £675
North West median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 77 35 46
10th Percentile £17.30 £15.94 £15.75
25th Percentile £19.45 £21.25 £17.72
Median hourly rate £28.43 £32.50 £32.75
Median % change year-on-year -12.52% -0.76% -17.09%
75th Percentile £57.50 £33.75 £59.38
90th Percentile £64.25 £63.00 £75.63
North West median hourly rate £40.00 £30.20 £38.00
% change year-on-year +32.45% -20.53% +39.45%

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 1 January 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 1 January 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 1 January 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
Salford +8 7 - - 5
Oldham 0 4 - - 3
Bury -1 3 - - 2
Bolton -7 3 £185 +12.12% 25
Stockport - 3 £378 - 10
Cheadle - 1 £475 - 2
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 (3.95%) Apache
2 3 (1.97%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 3 (1.97%) Apache Airflow
2 3 (1.97%) Confluence
2 3 (1.97%) SharePoint
3 2 (1.32%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.66%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.66%) SAS
Applications
1 8 (5.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (3.95%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (2.63%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (1.32%) Chatbot
4 2 (1.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.66%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.66%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (2.63%) ContrOCC
2 3 (1.97%) Kondor
3 2 (1.32%) Advent Geneva
3 2 (1.32%) Dynamics AX
3 2 (1.32%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (1.32%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.66%) NetSuite
4 1 (0.66%) SAP BPC
4 1 (0.66%) SAP HR
4 1 (0.66%) SAP PSCD
4 1 (0.66%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 31 (20.39%) AWS
1 31 (20.39%) Azure
2 16 (10.53%) GCP
3 14 (9.21%) Power Platform
3 14 (9.21%) Serverless
4 13 (8.55%) GitHub
5 9 (5.92%) Amazon ECS
5 9 (5.92%) Amazon SQS
5 9 (5.92%) AWS Lambda
5 9 (5.92%) Datadog
5 9 (5.92%) SaaS
6 8 (5.26%) Microsoft 365
7 7 (4.61%) Amazon EventBridge
7 7 (4.61%) AWS Step Functions
7 7 (4.61%) GitHub Actions
8 6 (3.95%) Amazon EC2
8 6 (3.95%) AWS Fargate
8 6 (3.95%) Dynamics 365
9 5 (3.29%) Amazon S3
9 5 (3.29%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.63%) Firewall
1 4 (2.63%) Network Security
2 3 (1.97%) HTTP
3 2 (1.32%) LAN
3 2 (1.32%) VSAN
3 2 (1.32%) WAN
3 2 (1.32%) Wi-Fi
4 1 (0.66%) BGP
4 1 (0.66%) DHCP
4 1 (0.66%) DNS
4 1 (0.66%) IP Telephony
4 1 (0.66%) OSPF
4 1 (0.66%) SAN
4 1 (0.66%) SSL
4 1 (0.66%) Structured Cabling
4 1 (0.66%) VoIP
4 1 (0.66%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (7.89%) DynamoDB
1 12 (7.89%) NoSQL
2 10 (6.58%) Power BI
2 10 (6.58%) Relational Database
3 9 (5.92%) BigQuery
4 8 (5.26%) Amazon Aurora
4 8 (5.26%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (4.61%) MySQL
6 6 (3.95%) Amazon RDS
6 6 (3.95%) RDBMS
6 6 (3.95%) Redis
6 6 (3.95%) SQL Server
7 5 (3.29%) Data Warehouse
8 4 (2.63%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 3 (1.97%) MongoDB
9 3 (1.97%) Oracle Database
10 2 (1.32%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
10 2 (1.32%) Data Lake
10 2 (1.32%) DB2
10 2 (1.32%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 10 (6.58%) Jenkins
2 8 (5.26%) Git
3 7 (4.61%) JIRA
4 5 (3.29%) Gradle
4 5 (3.29%) Maven
4 5 (3.29%) SonarLint
4 5 (3.29%) SonarQube
5 4 (2.63%) GitLab
6 3 (1.97%) Jasmine
7 1 (0.66%) Cypress.io
7 1 (0.66%) Rational DOORS
7 1 (0.66%) Selenium
General
1 79 (51.97%) Social Skills
2 41 (26.97%) Analytical Skills
2 41 (26.97%) Finance
3 19 (12.50%) Public Sector
4 11 (7.24%) Banking
5 6 (3.95%) Manufacturing
6 4 (2.63%) Games
6 4 (2.63%) Law
6 4 (2.63%) Legal
7 3 (1.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 3 (1.97%) Organisational Skills
7 3 (1.97%) Telecoms
8 2 (1.32%) Electronics
8 2 (1.32%) Military
8 2 (1.32%) Presentation Skills
8 2 (1.32%) Retail
9 1 (0.66%) Automotive
9 1 (0.66%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.66%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.66%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 35 (23.03%) Developer
2 15 (9.87%) Administrator
2 15 (9.87%) Analyst
3 13 (8.55%) Architect
3 13 (8.55%) Senior
4 8 (5.26%) Data Engineer
4 8 (5.26%) Full-Stack Developer
4 8 (5.26%) Technical Architect
5 7 (4.61%) Business Analyst
5 7 (4.61%) Consultant
6 6 (3.95%) Installation Technician
6 6 (3.95%) Java Architect
6 6 (3.95%) Java Technical Architect
6 6 (3.95%) SAP Support
7 5 (3.29%) Java Developer
7 5 (3.29%) Lead
7 5 (3.29%) Project Manager
7 5 (3.29%) SAP Administrator
8 4 (2.63%) Backend Developer
8 4 (2.63%) Systems Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (12.50%) Spring Boot
2 14 (9.21%) Spring
3 9 (5.92%) RESTful
4 8 (5.26%) Kafka
5 7 (4.61%) AngularJS
5 7 (4.61%) OAuth
5 7 (4.61%) OAuth2
5 7 (4.61%) React
6 6 (3.95%) Dropwizard
6 6 (3.95%) ISPF
6 6 (3.95%) J2EE
6 6 (3.95%) JWT
6 6 (3.95%) Micronaut
7 5 (3.29%) .NET
7 5 (3.29%) Celery
7 5 (3.29%) Node.js
8 4 (2.63%) Elastic Stack
8 4 (2.63%) GraphQL
8 4 (2.63%) HTML
8 4 (2.63%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 8 (5.26%) Product Ownership
2 7 (4.61%) Mainframe
3 6 (3.95%) Cloud Native
3 6 (3.95%) Greenfield Project
3 6 (3.95%) Mobile App
3 6 (3.95%) N-Tier
4 5 (3.29%) Data Protection Act
5 4 (2.63%) Onboarding
6 3 (1.97%) CMDB
6 3 (1.97%) Data Centre
6 3 (1.97%) Data Structures
6 3 (1.97%) FMCG
6 3 (1.97%) SWIFT Messaging Network
7 2 (1.32%) Clustering
7 2 (1.32%) Enterprise Software
7 2 (1.32%) Self-Motivation
8 1 (0.66%) Analytical Mindset
8 1 (0.66%) Legacy Applications
8 1 (0.66%) Security Posture
8 1 (0.66%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 8 (5.26%) Linux
2 7 (4.61%) Unix
2 7 (4.61%) Windows
3 2 (1.32%) Apple iOS
3 2 (1.32%) Windows 10
3 2 (1.32%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.66%) Android
4 1 (0.66%) Mac OS
4 1 (0.66%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 31 (20.39%) Agile
2 21 (13.82%) DevOps
2 21 (13.82%) Microservices
3 20 (13.16%) Change Management
3 20 (13.16%) CI/CD
3 20 (13.16%) Stakeholder Management
4 16 (10.53%) Analytics
4 16 (10.53%) TDD
5 15 (9.87%) Containerisation
5 15 (9.87%) Design Patterns
5 15 (9.87%) Event-Driven
5 15 (9.87%) Test Automation
6 14 (9.21%) Event-Driven Architecture
7 13 (8.55%) Continuous Improvement
8 12 (7.89%) AI
8 12 (7.89%) ETL
8 12 (7.89%) Mentoring
9 11 (7.24%) Business Intelligence
9 11 (7.24%) Data Modelling
9 11 (7.24%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 30 (19.74%) SQL
2 29 (19.08%) Java
3 22 (14.47%) Python
4 7 (4.61%) JavaScript
5 6 (3.95%) C#
5 6 (3.95%) CLIST
5 6 (3.95%) COBOL
5 6 (3.95%) JCL
5 6 (3.95%) REXX
5 6 (3.95%) TypeScript
6 5 (3.29%) Kotlin
7 4 (2.63%) Bash
7 4 (2.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 4 (2.63%) Go
7 4 (2.63%) T-SQL
8 2 (1.32%) Groovy
8 2 (1.32%) X++
9 1 (0.66%) PowerShell
9 1 (0.66%) SAS Macro
9 1 (0.66%) Scala
Qualifications
1 17 (11.18%) Security Cleared
2 13 (8.55%) Degree
3 5 (3.29%) SC Cleared
4 4 (2.63%) BPSS Clearance
4 4 (2.63%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (1.32%) CCNA
5 2 (1.32%) Cisco Certification
5 2 (1.32%) PMI Certification
5 2 (1.32%) PMP
5 2 (1.32%) VCAP
5 2 (1.32%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 1 (0.66%) A+ Certification
6 1 (0.66%) CCA
6 1 (0.66%) CCNP
6 1 (0.66%) CISA
6 1 (0.66%) CISM
6 1 (0.66%) CISSP
6 1 (0.66%) MCSE
6 1 (0.66%) Microsoft Certification
6 1 (0.66%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (5.92%) Data Quality
2 7 (4.61%) QA
3 4 (2.63%) Accessibility
4 3 (1.97%) GDPR
5 2 (1.32%) HIPAA
5 2 (1.32%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.66%) GRC
6 1 (0.66%) IEC 61508
6 1 (0.66%) ISO 26262
6 1 (0.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.66%) NIST
6 1 (0.66%) WCAG
System Software
1 17 (11.18%) Docker
2 6 (3.95%) ACF2
2 6 (3.95%) RACF
2 6 (3.95%) Time Sharing Option
3 3 (1.97%) Active Directory
3 3 (1.97%) ISA Server
4 2 (1.32%) VMware NSX
4 2 (1.32%) vSphere
5 1 (0.66%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 18 (11.84%) Kubernetes
2 16 (10.53%) Terraform
3 6 (3.95%) CA Endevor
3 6 (3.95%) Tivoli
3 6 (3.95%) Tivoli Storage Manager
4 4 (2.63%) Grafana
4 4 (2.63%) Prometheus
4 4 (2.63%) SCCM
5 3 (1.97%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (1.32%) Microsoft Clustering
7 1 (0.66%) Argo
7 1 (0.66%) Jamf Pro
7 1 (0.66%) QRadar
Vendors
1 29 (19.08%) Microsoft
2 13 (8.55%) SAP
3 6 (3.95%) Oracle
4 5 (3.29%) Databricks
4 5 (3.29%) Gigya
4 5 (3.29%) Splunk
5 4 (2.63%) Adobe
5 4 (2.63%) Liquidlogic
5 4 (2.63%) ServiceNow
6 3 (1.97%) Apple
6 3 (1.97%) Bloomberg
6 3 (1.97%) Google
7 2 (1.32%) Advent
7 2 (1.32%) IFS
7 2 (1.32%) VMware
8 1 (0.66%) ArcSight
8 1 (0.66%) Aruba
8 1 (0.66%) CA Agile Central
8 1 (0.66%) Palo Alto
8 1 (0.66%) SnapLogic