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 8 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 21 8 5
Rank change year-on-year -13 -3 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 170 139 148
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 8.46% 13.84% 12.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.05% 15.44% 14.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 102 74 85
10th Percentile £291 £297 £248
25th Percentile £401 £367 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £494 £461 £450
Median % change year-on-year +7.05% +2.50% -10.00%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £525
90th Percentile £710 £643 £608
North West median daily rate £450 £457 £463
% change year-on-year -1.48% -1.24% -6.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 16 5
10th Percentile £14.70 - £22.00
25th Percentile £24.00 £17.30 £37.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £20.26 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +97.48% -66.24% +246.02%
75th Percentile £77.00 £21.77 £62.50
90th Percentile £145.25 £46.95 £80.80
North West median hourly rate £24.19 £20.26 £48.50
% change year-on-year +19.43% -58.24% +115.70%

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 1,692 900 1,028
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 84.22% 89.64% 87.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 983 580 588
10th Percentile £330 £300 £313
25th Percentile £419 £387 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £461 £485
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -4.90% -3.00%
75th Percentile £618 £588 £588
90th Percentile £705 £678 £675
North West median daily rate £500 £450 £477
% change year-on-year +11.11% -5.66% -4.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 179 68 36
10th Percentile £19.00 £15.71 £15.96
25th Percentile £33.64 £19.02 £24.51
Median hourly rate £60.50 £22.63 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year +167.34% -37.14% +84.62%
75th Percentile £75.00 £35.50 £63.13
90th Percentile £78.75 £64.13 £83.75
North West median hourly rate £46.80 £25.15 £41.41
% change year-on-year +86.10% -39.28% +21.80%

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 8 October 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 8 October 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 8 October 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 +7 11 £160 -13.51% 27
Rochdale - 3 - - 3
Oldham -3 2 - - 3
Bury -11 2 £634 - 4
Salford -2 1 - - 14
Stockport -2 1 £140 -76.67% 15
Altrincham - 1 - - 17
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 (1.76%) Confluence
2 2 (1.18%) Microsoft Exchange
2 2 (1.18%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.59%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 1 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (0.59%) CMS
Applications
1 12 (7.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (5.29%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (1.76%) Acrobat
4 1 (0.59%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.59%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 4 (2.35%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (1.76%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (1.76%) SAP ERP
2 3 (1.76%) Workday HCM
3 1 (0.59%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.59%) Oracle Payables
3 1 (0.59%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 28 (16.47%) Azure
2 25 (14.71%) Microsoft 365
3 24 (14.12%) AWS
4 13 (7.65%) Power Platform
5 11 (6.47%) GCP
5 11 (6.47%) GitHub
6 9 (5.29%) Entra ID
7 5 (2.94%) Azure DevOps
7 5 (2.94%) IaaS
8 4 (2.35%) AWS Lambda
8 4 (2.35%) OpenShift
8 4 (2.35%) Power Automate
8 4 (2.35%) PowerApps
8 4 (2.35%) Serverless
9 3 (1.76%) Dynamics 365
9 3 (1.76%) Google Sheets
9 3 (1.76%) Google Workspace
10 2 (1.18%) Azure Stack
10 2 (1.18%) dbt
10 2 (1.18%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 14 (8.24%) Firewall
2 10 (5.88%) VPN
3 9 (5.29%) DNS
4 8 (4.71%) Network Security
5 5 (2.94%) BIG-IP
5 5 (2.94%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
5 5 (2.94%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
5 5 (2.94%) Wireless
6 3 (1.76%) DHCP
6 3 (1.76%) LAN
6 3 (1.76%) VoIP
6 3 (1.76%) Wi-Fi
7 2 (1.18%) PABX
7 2 (1.18%) Software-Defined Networking
7 2 (1.18%) VLAN
7 2 (1.18%) WAN
8 1 (0.59%) Cisco Nexus
8 1 (0.59%) Ethernet VPN
8 1 (0.59%) SD-WAN
8 1 (0.59%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (6.47%) SQL Server
2 10 (5.88%) Data Warehouse
2 10 (5.88%) Relational Database
3 9 (5.29%) Power BI
4 7 (4.12%) DataStage
5 6 (3.53%) Db2
6 3 (1.76%) MongoDB
6 3 (1.76%) Tableau
7 2 (1.18%) Data Lake
7 2 (1.18%) DynamoDB
7 2 (1.18%) Metadata
7 2 (1.18%) MySQL
7 2 (1.18%) NoSQL
7 2 (1.18%) Oracle Database
7 2 (1.18%) PostgreSQL
7 2 (1.18%) Power Query
8 1 (0.59%) Semantic Layer
8 1 (0.59%) Snowflake Schema
8 1 (0.59%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 1 (0.59%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 11 (6.47%) Jenkins
2 10 (5.88%) Git
2 10 (5.88%) JIRA
3 4 (2.35%) Gatling
3 4 (2.35%) REST Assured
4 3 (1.76%) Cucumber
4 3 (1.76%) GitLab
4 3 (1.76%) Selenium
4 3 (1.76%) Sonatype Nexus
5 2 (1.18%) Burp Suite
5 2 (1.18%) Gradle
5 2 (1.18%) LoadRunner
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%) Maven
6 1 (0.59%) MSI
General
1 90 (52.94%) Social Skills
2 74 (43.53%) Analytical Skills
3 33 (19.41%) Finance
4 19 (11.18%) Banking
5 10 (5.88%) Manufacturing
5 10 (5.88%) Organisational Skills
6 7 (4.12%) Legal
7 5 (2.94%) Influencing Skills
7 5 (2.94%) Law
7 5 (2.94%) Public Sector
8 4 (2.35%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (2.35%) Retail
8 4 (2.35%) Telecoms
9 3 (1.76%) Automotive
9 3 (1.76%) Games
9 3 (1.76%) Marketing
10 2 (1.18%) Aerospace
10 2 (1.18%) Military
10 2 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
11 1 (0.59%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 24 (14.12%) Analyst
2 21 (12.35%) Developer
3 14 (8.24%) Senior
4 13 (7.65%) Administrator
5 12 (7.06%) Architect
6 11 (6.47%) Lead
7 10 (5.88%) Consultant
7 10 (5.88%) Software Engineer
8 9 (5.29%) IT Support
8 9 (5.29%) Java Engineer
9 8 (4.71%) Data Engineer
10 6 (3.53%) Applications Packager
10 6 (3.53%) AWS Engineer
10 6 (3.53%) Data Analyst
10 6 (3.53%) Senior Developer
10 6 (3.53%) Service Analyst
10 6 (3.53%) Support Analyst
10 6 (3.53%) Technical Administrator
11 5 (2.94%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 5 (2.94%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (8.82%) REST
2 11 (6.47%) Spring
2 11 (6.47%) Spring Boot
3 10 (5.88%) Kafka
3 10 (5.88%) Terraform
4 9 (5.29%) React
5 6 (3.53%) Node.js
6 5 (2.94%) Playwright
7 4 (2.35%) .NET
7 4 (2.35%) HTML
7 4 (2.35%) Lightning Web Components
7 4 (2.35%) SOAP
8 3 (1.76%) CSS
8 3 (1.76%) GraphQL
8 3 (1.76%) Next.js
9 2 (1.18%) PySpark
9 2 (1.18%) RESTful
9 2 (1.18%) Spring Cloud
9 2 (1.18%) Vue
9 2 (1.18%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 20 (11.76%) Onboarding
2 12 (7.06%) Cloud Native
3 9 (5.29%) Data Protection Act
3 9 (5.29%) Distributed Systems
3 9 (5.29%) Public Cloud
4 7 (4.12%) Driving Licence
4 7 (4.12%) Product Ownership
5 6 (3.53%) Enterprise Software
5 6 (3.53%) Legacy Systems
5 6 (3.53%) Self-Motivation
6 5 (2.94%) Data Centre
7 4 (2.35%) Data Structures
7 4 (2.35%) Management Information System
8 3 (1.76%) Blackberry
8 3 (1.76%) Low-Code
8 3 (1.76%) Private Cloud
8 3 (1.76%) Smartphone
9 2 (1.18%) Hybrid Cloud
9 2 (1.18%) iPad
9 2 (1.18%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 28 (16.47%) Windows
2 15 (8.82%) Windows 10
3 9 (5.29%) Linux
4 8 (4.71%) Unix
5 6 (3.53%) Apple iOS
5 6 (3.53%) Windows Server
6 2 (1.18%) Android
7 1 (0.59%) Mac OS X
7 1 (0.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 40 (23.53%) Agile
1 40 (23.53%) CI/CD
2 35 (20.59%) Stakeholder Management
3 28 (16.47%) Continuous Improvement
4 23 (13.53%) Software Engineering
5 22 (12.94%) Data Modelling
6 21 (12.35%) DevOps
7 20 (11.76%) Decision-Making
8 19 (11.18%) Test Automation
9 18 (10.59%) AI
9 18 (10.59%) Technical Leadership
9 18 (10.59%) Validation
10 17 (10.00%) ITIL
11 16 (9.41%) Microservices
11 16 (9.41%) Observability
12 15 (8.82%) Customer Service
13 14 (8.24%) Analytics
13 14 (8.24%) Change Management
13 14 (8.24%) Performance Tuning
13 14 (8.24%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 30 (17.65%) SQL
2 28 (16.47%) Python
3 19 (11.18%) Java
4 11 (6.47%) PowerShell
5 7 (4.12%) JavaScript
6 6 (3.53%) PL/SQL
6 6 (3.53%) Shell Script
6 6 (3.53%) TypeScript
7 5 (2.94%) ActionScript
8 4 (2.35%) Apex Code
8 4 (2.35%) Bash
9 3 (1.76%) T-SQL
10 2 (1.18%) C#
10 2 (1.18%) Go
10 2 (1.18%) Kotlin
10 2 (1.18%) VBScript
11 1 (0.59%) Bicep
11 1 (0.59%) Perl
11 1 (0.59%) Rust
11 1 (0.59%) Swift
Qualifications
1 23 (13.53%) Security Cleared
2 15 (8.82%) SC Cleared
3 14 (8.24%) Degree
4 12 (7.06%) BPSS Clearance
5 8 (4.71%) Computer Science Degree
6 6 (3.53%) Microsoft Certification
7 4 (2.35%) A+ Certification
7 4 (2.35%) Cisco Certification
7 4 (2.35%) CISSP
7 4 (2.35%) Network+ Certification
8 3 (1.76%) CCIE
8 3 (1.76%) CCNP
8 3 (1.76%) DBS Check
9 2 (1.18%) CCIE Security
9 2 (1.18%) CCSP
9 2 (1.18%) CISM
9 2 (1.18%) City & Guilds
9 2 (1.18%) HNC
9 2 (1.18%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 2 (1.18%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (14.12%) Data Quality
2 6 (3.53%) Accessibility
3 3 (1.76%) GRC
3 3 (1.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 3 (1.76%) NIST
3 3 (1.76%) QA
4 2 (1.18%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.59%) Actionable Recommendations
5 1 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials
5 1 (0.59%) NCSC
5 1 (0.59%) PMO
5 1 (0.59%) SLA
System Software
1 20 (11.76%) Active Directory
2 9 (5.29%) Docker
3 5 (2.94%) Virtual Desktop
4 2 (1.18%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.59%) Oracle RAC
5 1 (0.59%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.59%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 15 (8.82%) Kubernetes
2 7 (4.12%) Microsoft Intune
3 5 (2.94%) Grafana
4 4 (2.35%) Single Sign-On
5 3 (1.76%) Ansible
5 3 (1.76%) Prometheus
6 2 (1.18%) Data Guard
6 2 (1.18%) Istio
7 1 (0.59%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.59%) Puppet
7 1 (0.59%) SCCM
7 1 (0.59%) SCOM
Vendors
1 41 (24.12%) Microsoft
2 17 (10.00%) ServiceNow
3 15 (8.82%) SAP
4 12 (7.06%) Oracle
5 8 (4.71%) Google
6 7 (4.12%) IBM
7 6 (3.53%) Apple
7 6 (3.53%) F5
7 6 (3.53%) Splunk
7 6 (3.53%) Teradata
8 5 (2.94%) Adobe
8 5 (2.94%) CyberArk
8 5 (2.94%) Salesforce
9 4 (2.35%) Cisco
9 4 (2.35%) DocuSign
9 4 (2.35%) Dynatrace
9 4 (2.35%) Workday
10 3 (1.76%) Concur
10 3 (1.76%) Intapp
10 3 (1.76%) Litera