Problem-Solving Contract Job Trends in the North West

Problem Solving
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North West requiring Problem-Solving skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 8 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 6 6 12
Rank change year-on-year 0 +6 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 375 298 279
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 15.29% 13.26% 10.38%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 17.27% 15.55% 11.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 236 169 163
10th Percentile £213 £206 £323
25th Percentile £325 £356 £403
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £463 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.70% -7.50% +12.36%
75th Percentile £525 £551 £585
90th Percentile £614 £625 £700
England median daily rate £483 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.50% - -7.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 11 18
10th Percentile £15.05 £13.70 £16.85
25th Percentile £17.30 £19.31 £19.51
Median hourly rate £20.26 £27.13 £35.94
Median % change year-on-year -25.33% -24.53% +29.93%
75th Percentile £45.88 £46.13 £46.18
90th Percentile £74.26 £68.18 £61.15
England median hourly rate £18.87 £19.50 £42.31
% change year-on-year -3.23% -53.91% +42.20%

All Process and Methodology Skills
North West

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 the North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 2,171 1,916 2,387
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 88.54% 85.27% 88.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,434 1,062 1,637
10th Percentile £213 £291 £276
25th Percentile £358 £394 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £568 £575 £600
90th Percentile £664 £656 £675
England median daily rate £505 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -3.81% -3.67% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 186 113 152
10th Percentile £15.56 £16.01 £16.25
25th Percentile £19.75 £21.25 £17.75
Median hourly rate £29.60 £32.50 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year -8.92% -8.45% +46.15%
75th Percentile £46.71 £51.91 £46.35
90th Percentile £69.35 £69.44 £64.88
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +18.67%

Problem-Solving
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

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

Problem-Solving job vacancy trend in the North West

Problem-Solving
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Problem-Solving.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Problem-Solving

Problem-Solving
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Problem-Solving in the North West over the 6 months to 8 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Problem-Solving in the North West

Problem-Solving
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Problem-Solving.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Problem-Solving

Problem-Solving
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Problem-Solving in the North West over the 6 months to 8 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Problem-Solving in the North West

Problem-Solving
Contract Job Locations in the North West

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 North West region over the 6 months to 8 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
Manchester -3 157 £458 +7.65% 280
Cheshire 0 142 £447 -10.60% 132
Merseyside +3 37 £225 -10.00% 59
Lancashire -2 34 £550 +10.00% 157
Cumbria +1 2 £475 -13.75% 14
Problem-Solving
England

Problem-Solving
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West 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 23 (6.13%) SharePoint
2 20 (5.33%) Microsoft Exchange
3 13 (3.47%) Confluence
4 8 (2.13%) Apache
5 7 (1.87%) Exchange Server 2013
5 7 (1.87%) Skype for Business
6 4 (1.07%) Apache Airflow
7 2 (0.53%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 2 (0.53%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.53%) CMS
8 1 (0.27%) EPiServer
8 1 (0.27%) JBoss
8 1 (0.27%) Moodle
8 1 (0.27%) Mule
8 1 (0.27%) Mule ESB
8 1 (0.27%) SAS
8 1 (0.27%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.27%) WebLogic
Applications
1 32 (8.53%) Microsoft Office
2 29 (7.73%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (4.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 15 (4.00%) MS Visio
5 6 (1.60%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.27%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.27%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 28 (7.47%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (1.07%) ContrOCC
2 4 (1.07%) SAP EHS
2 4 (1.07%) SAP EWM
3 3 (0.80%) iTrent
3 3 (0.80%) Kondor
3 3 (0.80%) Maximo
4 2 (0.53%) Advent Geneva
4 2 (0.53%) Dynamics AX
4 2 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.53%) SAP Payroll
5 1 (0.27%) Finacle
5 1 (0.27%) NetSuite
5 1 (0.27%) SAP HCM
5 1 (0.27%) SAP HR
5 1 (0.27%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 57 (15.20%) Azure
2 53 (14.13%) AWS
3 39 (10.40%) Microsoft 365
4 22 (5.87%) GCP
4 22 (5.87%) GitHub
4 22 (5.87%) Power Platform
5 14 (3.73%) Serverless
6 11 (2.93%) SaaS
7 10 (2.67%) Amazon ECS
7 10 (2.67%) AWS Lambda
7 10 (2.67%) Datadog
7 10 (2.67%) OneDrive
8 9 (2.40%) Amazon SQS
9 8 (2.13%) Apigee
9 8 (2.13%) Entra ID
9 8 (2.13%) GitHub Actions
10 7 (1.87%) Amazon EventBridge
11 6 (1.60%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 6 (1.60%) AWS Fargate
11 6 (1.60%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 14 (3.73%) Network Security
2 12 (3.20%) Firewall
3 8 (2.13%) DNS
4 7 (1.87%) BGP
4 7 (1.87%) LAN
4 7 (1.87%) Skype
4 7 (1.87%) VLAN
4 7 (1.87%) WAN
5 6 (1.60%) Software-Defined Networking
5 6 (1.60%) WebEx
6 4 (1.07%) DMZ
6 4 (1.07%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
6 4 (1.07%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
6 4 (1.07%) HTTP
7 2 (0.53%) SAN
7 2 (0.53%) TCP/IP
7 2 (0.53%) VoIP
7 2 (0.53%) VSAN
7 2 (0.53%) Wi-Fi
8 1 (0.27%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (4.27%) Power BI
2 13 (3.47%) NoSQL
2 13 (3.47%) Relational Database
3 12 (3.20%) DynamoDB
3 12 (3.20%) MySQL
3 12 (3.20%) PostgreSQL
4 10 (2.67%) BigQuery
5 8 (2.13%) Amazon Aurora
6 7 (1.87%) Data Warehouse
7 6 (1.60%) Amazon RDS
7 6 (1.60%) Redis
7 6 (1.60%) SQL Server
8 5 (1.33%) RDBMS
9 4 (1.07%) MS Access
9 4 (1.07%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 4 (1.07%) Tableau
10 3 (0.80%) MongoDB
10 3 (0.80%) Power Query
10 3 (0.80%) Snowflake Schema
11 2 (0.53%) DB2
Development Applications
1 39 (10.40%) JIRA
2 31 (8.27%) Git
3 19 (5.07%) Jenkins
4 15 (4.00%) GitLab
5 7 (1.87%) JUnit
5 7 (1.87%) Selenium
5 7 (1.87%) SonarQube
6 6 (1.60%) Cucumber
7 5 (1.33%) Gradle
7 5 (1.33%) Maven
7 5 (1.33%) SonarLint
8 3 (0.80%) Cypress.io
8 3 (0.80%) TestRail
9 2 (0.53%) Grunt
9 2 (0.53%) gulp
9 2 (0.53%) Jasmine
10 1 (0.27%) Appium
10 1 (0.27%) CircleCI
10 1 (0.27%) Rational DOORS
10 1 (0.27%) Zephyr
General
1 187 (49.87%) Social Skills
2 139 (37.07%) Analytical Skills
3 104 (27.73%) Finance
4 36 (9.60%) Banking
5 33 (8.80%) Public Sector
6 15 (4.00%) Legal
7 11 (2.93%) Influencing Skills
8 9 (2.40%) Local Government
8 9 (2.40%) Manufacturing
8 9 (2.40%) Pharmaceutical
9 8 (2.13%) Law
10 5 (1.33%) Organisational Skills
10 5 (1.33%) Presentation Skills
11 4 (1.07%) Automotive
11 4 (1.07%) Games
11 4 (1.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 4 (1.07%) Telecoms
12 3 (0.80%) Electronics
12 3 (0.80%) Military
12 3 (0.80%) Retail
Job Titles
1 64 (17.07%) Developer
2 53 (14.13%) Analyst
3 30 (8.00%) Consultant
4 23 (6.13%) Administrator
5 21 (5.60%) Architect
6 19 (5.07%) Business Analyst
6 19 (5.07%) Java Developer
6 19 (5.07%) Senior
7 15 (4.00%) Lead
7 15 (4.00%) Platform Engineer
8 13 (3.47%) SAP Consultant
9 12 (3.20%) Service Analyst
10 10 (2.67%) IT Support
11 9 (2.40%) Project Manager
12 8 (2.13%) Full-Stack Developer
12 8 (2.13%) Service Desk Analyst
12 8 (2.13%) Support Analyst
12 8 (2.13%) Technical Architect
13 7 (1.87%) Operational Support Analyst
13 7 (1.87%) Operations Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (9.87%) Spring Boot
2 33 (8.80%) Spring
3 32 (8.53%) REST
4 19 (5.07%) RESTful
5 16 (4.27%) Kafka
6 15 (4.00%) React
7 12 (3.20%) HTML
7 12 (3.20%) JSON
8 11 (2.93%) AngularJS
8 11 (2.93%) OAuth
9 10 (2.67%) JMS
9 10 (2.67%) JWT
9 10 (2.67%) XML
10 9 (2.40%) CSS
10 9 (2.40%) Hibernate
10 9 (2.40%) SOAP
11 8 (2.13%) .NET
11 8 (2.13%) J2EE
11 8 (2.13%) OAuth2
12 6 (1.60%) Dropwizard
Miscellaneous
1 33 (8.80%) Product Ownership
2 18 (4.80%) Cloud Native
3 13 (3.47%) Onboarding
3 13 (3.47%) SWIFT Messaging Network
4 9 (2.40%) Mobile App
5 8 (2.13%) Analytical Mindset
6 7 (1.87%) Mainframe
6 7 (1.87%) Self-Motivation
7 6 (1.60%) Data Centre
7 6 (1.60%) Data Protection Act
7 6 (1.60%) Data Structures
7 6 (1.60%) Management Information System
7 6 (1.60%) N-Tier
7 6 (1.60%) Virtual Team
8 5 (1.33%) CMDB
9 4 (1.07%) Cyberattack
9 4 (1.07%) Distributed Systems
9 4 (1.07%) Enterprise Software
9 4 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
10 3 (0.80%) Fat Client
Operating Systems
1 46 (12.27%) Windows
2 20 (5.33%) Linux
3 16 (4.27%) Windows 10
4 12 (3.20%) Android
4 12 (3.20%) Windows Server
5 10 (2.67%) Apple iOS
5 10 (2.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (2.13%) Unix
7 2 (0.53%) Mac OS
8 1 (0.27%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 86 (22.93%) Agile
2 60 (16.00%) Continuous Improvement
3 58 (15.47%) CI/CD
4 51 (13.60%) Stakeholder Management
5 45 (12.00%) Change Management
6 41 (10.93%) Analytics
7 39 (10.40%) DevOps
7 39 (10.40%) Microservices
8 37 (9.87%) Containerisation
8 37 (9.87%) Project Management
9 34 (9.07%) Migration
9 34 (9.07%) Requirements Gathering
10 33 (8.80%) Test Automation
11 31 (8.27%) AI
11 31 (8.27%) SDLC
11 31 (8.27%) User Acceptance Testing
12 28 (7.47%) ITIL
13 27 (7.20%) Computer Science
13 27 (7.20%) TDD
14 26 (6.93%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 57 (15.20%) Java
2 53 (14.13%) SQL
3 44 (11.73%) Python
4 20 (5.33%) PowerShell
5 18 (4.80%) JavaScript
6 17 (4.53%) Bash
7 8 (2.13%) C#
7 8 (2.13%) Perl
8 6 (1.60%) CLIST
8 6 (1.60%) COBOL
8 6 (1.60%) JCL
8 6 (1.60%) REXX
8 6 (1.60%) TypeScript
9 5 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 5 (1.33%) Kotlin
9 5 (1.33%) T-SQL
10 4 (1.07%) Go
11 2 (0.53%) ABAP
11 2 (0.53%) Kusto Query Language
11 2 (0.53%) X++
Qualifications
1 67 (17.87%) Security Cleared
2 57 (15.20%) Degree
3 47 (12.53%) SC Cleared
4 22 (5.87%) BPSS Clearance
5 21 (5.60%) Computer Science Degree
6 11 (2.93%) Six Sigma Green Belt
7 10 (2.67%) Cisco Certification
8 8 (2.13%) CCDP
8 8 (2.13%) CCNA
8 8 (2.13%) CCNP
9 6 (1.60%) DBS Check
10 4 (1.07%) CBAP
10 4 (1.07%) CISSP
10 4 (1.07%) PMI Certification
10 4 (1.07%) PMP
11 3 (0.80%) A+ Certification
11 3 (0.80%) AWS Certification
11 3 (0.80%) Azure Certification
11 3 (0.80%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 3 (0.80%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (7.20%) QA
2 16 (4.27%) Data Quality
3 11 (2.93%) ISO 20022
4 10 (2.67%) SEPA
5 9 (2.40%) GDPR
5 9 (2.40%) PSD2
6 6 (1.60%) Accessibility
7 4 (1.07%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.53%) COBIT
8 2 (0.53%) HIPAA
8 2 (0.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 2 (0.53%) NIST
8 2 (0.53%) PMO
8 2 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.27%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 1 (0.27%) GRC
9 1 (0.27%) IEC 61508
9 1 (0.27%) ISO 26262
9 1 (0.27%) PMBOK
9 1 (0.27%) SLA
System Software
1 35 (9.33%) Docker
2 24 (6.40%) Active Directory
3 6 (1.60%) ACF2
3 6 (1.60%) RACF
3 6 (1.60%) Time Sharing Option
3 6 (1.60%) VMware NSX
4 4 (1.07%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.53%) ISA Server
5 2 (0.53%) vSphere
6 1 (0.27%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 38 (10.13%) Kubernetes
2 20 (5.33%) SCCM
3 18 (4.80%) Terraform
4 12 (3.20%) Microsoft Intune
5 6 (1.60%) CA Endevor
5 6 (1.60%) Tivoli
5 6 (1.60%) Tivoli Storage Manager
6 5 (1.33%) Grafana
6 5 (1.33%) Norton AntiVirus
6 5 (1.33%) Prometheus
7 4 (1.07%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 3 (0.80%) HP ALM
8 3 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.53%) Microsoft Clustering
9 2 (0.53%) QRadar
10 1 (0.27%) Ansible
10 1 (0.27%) Argo
10 1 (0.27%) Autotask
10 1 (0.27%) Jamf Pro
10 1 (0.27%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 96 (25.60%) Microsoft
2 49 (13.07%) SAP
3 22 (5.87%) Oracle
4 20 (5.33%) ServiceNow
5 14 (3.73%) VMware
6 10 (2.67%) Red Hat
7 9 (2.40%) Cisco
7 9 (2.40%) Citrix
8 8 (2.13%) Google
9 6 (1.60%) Splunk
9 6 (1.60%) Workday
10 5 (1.33%) F5
10 5 (1.33%) Gigya
10 5 (1.33%) McAfee
10 5 (1.33%) Symantec
11 4 (1.07%) Computacenter
11 4 (1.07%) IBM
11 4 (1.07%) IFS
11 4 (1.07%) Liquidlogic
11 4 (1.07%) MuleSoft