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 18 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 6 10
Rank change year-on-year -5 +4 +16
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 179 148 166
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 10.82% 15.88% 10.74%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.88% 17.60% 12.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 106 105 115
10th Percentile £313 £240 £313
25th Percentile £368 £375 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £463 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.70% -7.50% +11.11%
75th Percentile £517 £550 £575
90th Percentile £603 £673 £660
North West median daily rate £425 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -12.82% -2.50% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 3 3
10th Percentile £20.99 £13.39 £23.19
25th Percentile £41.56 £14.33 £38.11
Median hourly rate £70.00 £15.90 £65.92
Median % change year-on-year +340.25% -75.88% +255.17%
75th Percentile £155.31 £44.20 £79.44
90th Percentile £178.75 £61.18 £85.78
North West median hourly rate £63.50 £27.13 £11.20
% change year-on-year +134.10% +142.30% -59.29%

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 1,390 841 1,352
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 83.99% 90.24% 87.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 890 587 928
10th Percentile £310 £304 £313
25th Percentile £382 £400 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £466 £465 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.16% -7.00% -
75th Percentile £572 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £694 £694
North West median daily rate £463 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -2.63% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 99 34 73
10th Percentile £21.00 £15.95 £12.42
25th Percentile £29.25 £24.25 £13.50
Median hourly rate £57.50 £32.50 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year +76.92% +25.00% -30.29%
75th Percentile £77.50 £62.81 £57.50
90th Percentile £91.00 £76.75 £72.50
North West median hourly rate £45.46 £32.00 £21.00
% change year-on-year +42.06% +52.38% -40.00%

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 18 April 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 18 April 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 18 April 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 -1 7 - - 15
Stockport +3 3 £155 -69.00% 8
Salford +3 1 £168 -62.78% 12
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 10 (5.59%) Confluence
2 5 (2.79%) Apache
3 4 (2.23%) Apache Spark
3 4 (2.23%) SharePoint
4 3 (1.68%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 2 (1.12%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.56%) nginx
6 1 (0.56%) SAS
Applications
1 8 (4.47%) Microsoft Excel
1 8 (4.47%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (3.35%) MS Visio
3 4 (2.23%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (1.68%) Chatbot
4 3 (1.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (1.12%) Advent Geneva
1 2 (1.12%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (1.12%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.56%) Elite 3E
2 1 (0.56%) ResourceLink
2 1 (0.56%) SAP BPC
2 1 (0.56%) SAP HR
2 1 (0.56%) SAP PSCD
2 1 (0.56%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 33 (18.44%) Azure
2 28 (15.64%) AWS
3 20 (11.17%) Power Platform
4 14 (7.82%) Microsoft 365
5 8 (4.47%) Power Automate
6 7 (3.91%) Entra ID
6 7 (3.91%) GCP
6 7 (3.91%) GitHub
7 6 (3.35%) dbt
7 6 (3.35%) Serverless
8 5 (2.79%) Azure Data Factory
8 5 (2.79%) Azure DevOps
9 4 (2.23%) Azure AKS
9 4 (2.23%) Azure Monitor
9 4 (2.23%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 4 (2.23%) GitHub Actions
9 4 (2.23%) SaaS
10 3 (1.68%) Copilot Studio
10 3 (1.68%) Microsoft Copilot
10 3 (1.68%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 6 (3.35%) Firewall
2 4 (2.23%) Network Security
3 3 (1.68%) HTTP
4 2 (1.12%) DNS
4 2 (1.12%) LAN
4 2 (1.12%) SAN
4 2 (1.12%) VPN
4 2 (1.12%) WAN
4 2 (1.12%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.56%) BGP
5 1 (0.56%) DHCP
5 1 (0.56%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
5 1 (0.56%) Kerberos
5 1 (0.56%) OSPF
5 1 (0.56%) Reverse Proxy
5 1 (0.56%) SSL
5 1 (0.56%) Structured Cabling
5 1 (0.56%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (8.38%) Power BI
2 11 (6.15%) MongoDB
3 10 (5.59%) Data Warehouse
3 10 (5.59%) SQL Server
4 9 (5.03%) NoSQL
5 8 (4.47%) MySQL
6 6 (3.35%) PostgreSQL
6 6 (3.35%) Relational Database
7 4 (2.23%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
7 4 (2.23%) Big Data
7 4 (2.23%) BigQuery
7 4 (2.23%) DynamoDB
7 4 (2.23%) Snowflake Schema
8 3 (1.68%) Data Vault
8 3 (1.68%) Hadoop
8 3 (1.68%) Metadata
8 3 (1.68%) Oracle Database
8 3 (1.68%) Power Query
9 2 (1.12%) BusinessObjects
9 2 (1.12%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 23 (12.85%) JIRA
2 10 (5.59%) Git
3 7 (3.91%) Mockito
4 4 (2.23%) GitLab
4 4 (2.23%) Postman
5 3 (1.68%) Jasmine
5 3 (1.68%) Selenium
6 2 (1.12%) JMeter
6 2 (1.12%) SoapUI
General
1 81 (45.25%) Social Skills
2 65 (36.31%) Analytical Skills
3 46 (25.70%) Finance
4 26 (14.53%) Public Sector
5 11 (6.15%) Law
6 10 (5.59%) Banking
7 8 (4.47%) Organisational Skills
8 7 (3.91%) Telecoms
9 6 (3.35%) Influencing Skills
9 6 (3.35%) Legal
9 6 (3.35%) Manufacturing
10 4 (2.23%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (1.68%) Documentation Skills
12 2 (1.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 2 (1.12%) Retail
13 1 (0.56%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 43 (24.02%) Developer
2 34 (18.99%) Analyst
3 25 (13.97%) Senior
4 15 (8.38%) Java Developer
5 14 (7.82%) Administrator
6 13 (7.26%) Data Engineer
7 12 (6.70%) Business Analyst
8 10 (5.59%) IT Support
8 10 (5.59%) Lead
9 9 (5.03%) IT Analyst
9 9 (5.03%) Senior Analyst
9 9 (5.03%) Support Analyst
10 8 (4.47%) Architect
10 8 (4.47%) IT Support Analyst
11 7 (3.91%) Backend Developer
11 7 (3.91%) Full-Stack Developer
12 6 (3.35%) Mobile Developer
12 6 (3.35%) Senior Business Analyst
13 5 (2.79%) Software Engineer
13 5 (2.79%) Technical Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (10.61%) Spring
2 18 (10.06%) Spring Boot
3 17 (9.50%) Kafka
4 11 (6.15%) RESTful
5 9 (5.03%) AngularJS
5 9 (5.03%) HTML
5 9 (5.03%) ISPF
5 9 (5.03%) OAuth
5 9 (5.03%) OAuth2
6 8 (4.47%) CSS
6 8 (4.47%) React
7 7 (3.91%) ActiveMQ
7 7 (3.91%) JAX-RS
8 6 (3.35%) .NET
8 6 (3.35%) XML
9 5 (2.79%) REST
10 4 (2.23%) ARM Templates
10 4 (2.23%) CSS3
10 4 (2.23%) HTML5
10 4 (2.23%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 13 (7.26%) Onboarding
2 9 (5.03%) Mainframe
2 9 (5.03%) Mobile App
2 9 (5.03%) Product Ownership
3 6 (3.35%) Management Information System
4 5 (2.79%) Analytical Mindset
4 5 (2.79%) Self-Motivation
5 4 (2.23%) AI Agents
5 4 (2.23%) CMDB
5 4 (2.23%) Data Protection Act
5 4 (2.23%) Data Structures
5 4 (2.23%) Greenfield Project
6 2 (1.12%) Cloud Native
6 2 (1.12%) Data Centre
6 2 (1.12%) Distributed Systems
6 2 (1.12%) Driving Licence
6 2 (1.12%) Enterprise Software
6 2 (1.12%) FMCG
6 2 (1.12%) Legacy Systems
7 1 (0.56%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 12 (6.70%) Linux
2 10 (5.59%) Unix
2 10 (5.59%) Windows
3 8 (4.47%) Windows 10
4 5 (2.79%) Mac OS X
5 3 (1.68%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.56%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.56%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 48 (26.82%) Agile
2 30 (16.76%) Continuous Improvement
3 28 (15.64%) Microservices
4 24 (13.41%) Analytics
4 24 (13.41%) Test Automation
5 23 (12.85%) CI/CD
5 23 (12.85%) Data Modelling
5 23 (12.85%) Stakeholder Management
6 20 (11.17%) TDD
7 19 (10.61%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 18 (10.06%) Decision-Making
8 18 (10.06%) DevOps
8 18 (10.06%) Requirements Gathering
9 17 (9.50%) ETL
10 16 (8.94%) Business Intelligence
10 16 (8.94%) Change Management
11 15 (8.38%) Data Pipeline
12 14 (7.82%) BDD
12 14 (7.82%) Event-Driven
13 13 (7.26%) Conflict Resolution
Programming Languages
1 43 (24.02%) SQL
2 31 (17.32%) Java
3 15 (8.38%) Python
4 13 (7.26%) JavaScript
5 9 (5.03%) CLIST
5 9 (5.03%) COBOL
5 9 (5.03%) JCL
5 9 (5.03%) REXX
6 8 (4.47%) Kotlin
6 8 (4.47%) TypeScript
7 6 (3.35%) PowerShell
8 5 (2.79%) C#
8 5 (2.79%) T-SQL
9 4 (2.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 2 (1.12%) Bicep
10 2 (1.12%) Go
10 2 (1.12%) Groovy
10 2 (1.12%) VBA
11 1 (0.56%) ABAP
11 1 (0.56%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 18 (10.06%) Degree
2 17 (9.50%) Security Cleared
3 10 (5.59%) BPSS Clearance
3 10 (5.59%) Computer Science Degree
3 10 (5.59%) Microsoft Certification
4 9 (5.03%) A+ Certification
4 9 (5.03%) Network+ Certification
5 4 (2.23%) SC Cleared
6 3 (1.68%) CCNA
6 3 (1.68%) Cisco Certification
7 2 (1.12%) Azure Certification
7 2 (1.12%) MCSE
8 1 (0.56%) CCA
8 1 (0.56%) CCNP
8 1 (0.56%) CISM
8 1 (0.56%) CISSP
8 1 (0.56%) PMI Certification
8 1 (0.56%) PMP
8 1 (0.56%) SAP Certification
8 1 (0.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (10.61%) Data Quality
2 7 (3.91%) QA
3 4 (2.23%) GDPR
3 4 (2.23%) PMO
4 2 (1.12%) GRC
5 1 (0.56%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.56%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.56%) NIST
5 1 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.56%) SLA
5 1 (0.56%) WCAG
System Software
1 15 (8.38%) Active Directory
2 10 (5.59%) Docker
3 9 (5.03%) ACF2
3 9 (5.03%) RACF
3 9 (5.03%) Time Sharing Option
4 3 (1.68%) ISA Server
4 3 (1.68%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
5 1 (0.56%) VMware NSX
5 1 (0.56%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 11 (6.15%) Kubernetes
2 9 (5.03%) CA Endevor
2 9 (5.03%) Terraform
2 9 (5.03%) Tivoli
2 9 (5.03%) Tivoli Storage Manager
3 3 (1.68%) Grafana
3 3 (1.68%) Microsoft Intune
3 3 (1.68%) SCCM
4 2 (1.12%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.56%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 31 (17.32%) Microsoft
2 13 (7.26%) SAP
3 9 (5.03%) Oracle
4 8 (4.47%) ServiceNow
5 6 (3.35%) Databricks
6 4 (2.23%) Adobe
6 4 (2.23%) Splunk
7 3 (1.68%) CA Agile Central
7 3 (1.68%) Dell
7 3 (1.68%) Google
8 2 (1.12%) Advent
8 2 (1.12%) Atlassian
8 2 (1.12%) DocuSign
8 2 (1.12%) IFS
8 2 (1.12%) PagerDuty
8 2 (1.12%) Workday
9 1 (0.56%) Apple
9 1 (0.56%) Cisco
9 1 (0.56%) Netskope
9 1 (0.56%) VMware