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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 5 7 14
Rank change year-on-year +2 +7 +5
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 366 287 249
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North West 16.76% 12.00% 8.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 18.87% 14.41% 10.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 214 172 129
10th Percentile £263 £213 £335
25th Percentile £364 £357 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £458 £481
Median % change year-on-year +3.83% -4.89% +6.89%
75th Percentile £550 £550 £575
90th Percentile £671 £600 £651
England median daily rate £488 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -2.50% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 9 15
10th Percentile £12.21 £23.40 £18.18
25th Percentile £17.30 £26.25 £20.82
Median hourly rate £20.26 £48.56 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -58.29% +76.58% +10.00%
75th Percentile £47.12 £62.50 £50.44
90th Percentile £66.04 £81.94 £75.00
England median hourly rate £18.85 £16.23 £54.56
% change year-on-year +16.14% -70.25% +122.33%

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 1,940 1,992 2,454
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 88.83% 83.31% 87.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,287 1,157 1,649
10th Percentile £299 £294 £275
25th Percentile £375 £400 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £493 £500
Median % change year-on-year -8.72% -1.40% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £595
90th Percentile £678 £675 £675
England median daily rate £510 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.86% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 132 108 162
10th Percentile £13.54 £16.43 £15.78
25th Percentile £17.36 £27.94 £18.13
Median hourly rate £25.15 £42.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -40.83% +21.43% +55.56%
75th Percentile £51.19 £57.63 £46.18
90th Percentile £71.32 £70.90 £66.80
England median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £43.90
% change year-on-year -41.51% -2.05% +51.38%

Problem-Solving
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Job postings citing Problem-Solving as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Job vacancy trend for Problem-Solving 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 18 September 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 18 September 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 18 September 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
Cheshire +2 156 £469 -7.81% 144
Manchester +4 150 £475 +5.56% 303
Lancashire +8 31 £450 -7.69% 198
Merseyside +1 22 £500 +100.00% 50
Cumbria -9 5 £313 -36.61% 16
Problem-Solving
England

Problem-Solving
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North West by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 17 (4.64%) Confluence
2 15 (4.10%) Skype for Business
3 14 (3.83%) Microsoft Exchange
4 13 (3.55%) SharePoint
5 8 (2.19%) Mattermost
6 7 (1.91%) Exchange Server 2013
7 6 (1.64%) JBoss
7 6 (1.64%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.82%) CICS
9 2 (0.55%) Apache Spark
9 2 (0.55%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.55%) WebSphere Application Server
10 1 (0.27%) Apache
10 1 (0.27%) Apache Airflow
10 1 (0.27%) CMS
10 1 (0.27%) EPiServer
10 1 (0.27%) Mule
10 1 (0.27%) Mule ESB
10 1 (0.27%) SAS
10 1 (0.27%) WebLogic
Applications
1 30 (8.20%) Microsoft Excel
2 23 (6.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 21 (5.74%) MS Visio
4 19 (5.19%) Microsoft Office
5 4 (1.09%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.55%) Simulink
7 1 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.27%) Trello
Business Applications
1 28 (7.65%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (1.37%) SAP EWM
3 4 (1.09%) ContrOCC
4 3 (0.82%) Maximo
4 3 (0.82%) SAP EHS
5 2 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
6 1 (0.27%) Dynamics AX
6 1 (0.27%) Finacle
6 1 (0.27%) IBM Planning Analytics
6 1 (0.27%) Kondor
6 1 (0.27%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
6 1 (0.27%) SAP HR
6 1 (0.27%) SAP MM
6 1 (0.27%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 53 (14.48%) AWS
1 53 (14.48%) Azure
2 29 (7.92%) GCP
3 25 (6.83%) Microsoft 365
4 20 (5.46%) Power Platform
5 15 (4.10%) GitHub
6 13 (3.55%) Serverless
7 11 (3.01%) AWS Lambda
8 9 (2.46%) Amazon ECS
8 9 (2.46%) OneDrive
8 9 (2.46%) SaaS
9 8 (2.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 7 (1.91%) Datadog
11 6 (1.64%) Amazon SQS
11 6 (1.64%) Apigee
11 6 (1.64%) Dynamics 365
11 6 (1.64%) OpenShift
12 5 (1.37%) AWS Fargate
12 5 (1.37%) AWS Step Functions
12 5 (1.37%) Loggly
Communications & Networking
1 15 (4.10%) Skype
2 9 (2.46%) Network Security
3 8 (2.19%) Softphone
3 8 (2.19%) Unified Communications
3 8 (2.19%) VPN
3 8 (2.19%) WebEx
4 7 (1.91%) DNS
4 7 (1.91%) LAN
5 6 (1.64%) TCP/IP
6 4 (1.09%) DHCP
6 4 (1.09%) Firewall
6 4 (1.09%) Intrusion Detection
7 2 (0.55%) Calico
7 2 (0.55%) DMZ
7 2 (0.55%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
7 2 (0.55%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
7 2 (0.55%) VoIP
7 2 (0.55%) WAN
8 1 (0.27%) Internet
8 1 (0.27%) NX-OS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (4.10%) Power BI
2 11 (3.01%) NoSQL
3 10 (2.73%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (2.46%) BigQuery
4 9 (2.46%) DynamoDB
4 9 (2.46%) MySQL
4 9 (2.46%) Tableau
5 8 (2.19%) SQL Server
6 6 (1.64%) Amazon RDS
6 6 (1.64%) RDBMS
6 6 (1.64%) Redis
6 6 (1.64%) Relational Database
7 5 (1.37%) Amazon Aurora
7 5 (1.37%) Data Warehouse
8 4 (1.09%) Neo4j
9 3 (0.82%) Big Data
10 2 (0.55%) Amazon Redshift
10 2 (0.55%) MongoDB
10 2 (0.55%) Oracle Database
10 2 (0.55%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 45 (12.30%) JIRA
2 33 (9.02%) Git
3 29 (7.92%) Jenkins
4 16 (4.37%) GitLab
5 13 (3.55%) JUnit
5 13 (3.55%) Maven
6 11 (3.01%) Gradle
7 8 (2.19%) SonarQube
8 7 (1.91%) Cucumber
9 6 (1.64%) Selenium
10 5 (1.37%) SonarLint
10 5 (1.37%) Sonatype Nexus
11 3 (0.82%) Cypress.io
11 3 (0.82%) TestRail
12 2 (0.55%) Bitbucket
12 2 (0.55%) Grunt
12 2 (0.55%) gulp
12 2 (0.55%) Rational DOORS
13 1 (0.27%) Appium
13 1 (0.27%) Zephyr
General
1 215 (58.74%) Social Skills
2 162 (44.26%) Analytical Skills
3 94 (25.68%) Finance
4 38 (10.38%) Banking
5 23 (6.28%) Public Sector
6 22 (6.01%) Manufacturing
7 20 (5.46%) Pharmaceutical
8 19 (5.19%) Legal
9 10 (2.73%) Retail
10 9 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
11 8 (2.19%) Influencing Skills
11 8 (2.19%) Local Government
11 8 (2.19%) Presentation Skills
12 7 (1.91%) Law
13 6 (1.64%) Telecoms
14 5 (1.37%) Organisational Skills
14 5 (1.37%) Police
15 4 (1.09%) Automotive
16 3 (0.82%) Aerospace
16 3 (0.82%) Military
Job Titles
1 68 (18.58%) Analyst
2 48 (13.11%) Developer
3 36 (9.84%) Architect
4 26 (7.10%) Consultant
5 22 (6.01%) Senior
6 19 (5.19%) Business Analyst
6 19 (5.19%) Support Analyst
7 18 (4.92%) Java Developer
7 18 (4.92%) Support Engineer
8 14 (3.83%) Operational Support Analyst
8 14 (3.83%) Operations Analyst
8 14 (3.83%) Operations Support Analyst
9 12 (3.28%) Administrator
9 12 (3.28%) IT Support
9 12 (3.28%) Lead
10 11 (3.01%) Solutions Architect
11 10 (2.73%) SAP Consultant
11 10 (2.73%) Service Analyst
12 9 (2.46%) Coordinator
12 9 (2.46%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (8.20%) REST
2 25 (6.83%) Spring Boot
3 22 (6.01%) Spring
4 19 (5.19%) RESTful
5 16 (4.37%) React
6 15 (4.10%) HTML
7 13 (3.55%) Kafka
8 12 (3.28%) AngularJS
8 12 (3.28%) CSS
9 8 (2.19%) J2EE
9 8 (2.19%) SOAP
9 8 (2.19%) XMPP
10 7 (1.91%) JSON
10 7 (1.91%) Web Services
11 6 (1.64%) .NET
11 6 (1.64%) Dropwizard
11 6 (1.64%) JMS
11 6 (1.64%) JWT
11 6 (1.64%) Micronaut
12 5 (1.37%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 29 (7.92%) Management Information System
2 22 (6.01%) Product Ownership
3 18 (4.92%) Cloud Native
4 10 (2.73%) Onboarding
4 10 (2.73%) Self-Motivation
5 7 (1.91%) Algorithms
5 7 (1.91%) SWIFT Messaging Network
5 7 (1.91%) Virtual Team
6 6 (1.64%) Data Protection Act
6 6 (1.64%) Enterprise Software
6 6 (1.64%) N-Tier
6 6 (1.64%) Public Cloud
7 5 (1.37%) Mobile App
8 4 (1.09%) Analytical Mindset
8 4 (1.09%) CMDB
8 4 (1.09%) Cyberattack
8 4 (1.09%) Data Structures
8 4 (1.09%) Mainframe
9 3 (0.82%) VSAM
10 2 (0.55%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 36 (9.84%) Windows
2 20 (5.46%) Linux
3 11 (3.01%) Apple iOS
4 10 (2.73%) Android
4 10 (2.73%) Windows 10
5 8 (2.19%) Windows Server
6 7 (1.91%) Unix
7 5 (1.37%) Windows 8
7 5 (1.37%) Windows Server 2003
7 5 (1.37%) Windows Server 2008
7 5 (1.37%) Windows Server 2012
7 5 (1.37%) Windows Server 2016
7 5 (1.37%) Windows XP
8 2 (0.55%) zOS
9 1 (0.27%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.27%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 84 (22.95%) Agile
2 52 (14.21%) Stakeholder Management
3 50 (13.66%) CI/CD
4 48 (13.11%) Continuous Improvement
5 47 (12.84%) ITIL
6 43 (11.75%) Project Management
7 42 (11.48%) Migration
8 37 (10.11%) Decision-Making
9 36 (9.84%) Analytics
9 36 (9.84%) Change Management
10 32 (8.74%) SDLC
11 30 (8.20%) Microservices
12 28 (7.65%) Artificial Intelligence
12 28 (7.65%) Test Automation
13 27 (7.38%) Containerisation
14 26 (7.10%) Mentoring
14 26 (7.10%) Roadmaps
14 26 (7.10%) Strategic Thinking
15 25 (6.83%) ITSM
15 25 (6.83%) Requirements Gathering
Programming Languages
1 47 (12.84%) Java
2 42 (11.48%) SQL
3 32 (8.74%) Python
4 20 (5.46%) JavaScript
5 16 (4.37%) PowerShell
6 8 (2.19%) TypeScript
7 7 (1.91%) Shell Script
8 6 (1.64%) C#
9 3 (0.82%) Bash
9 3 (0.82%) COBOL
9 3 (0.82%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 3 (0.82%) JCL
9 3 (0.82%) Scala
10 2 (0.55%) Go
10 2 (0.55%) Kusto Query Language
10 2 (0.55%) VBA
11 1 (0.27%) C++
11 1 (0.27%) Perl
11 1 (0.27%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.27%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 56 (15.30%) Degree
2 43 (11.75%) Security Cleared
3 31 (8.47%) SC Cleared
4 19 (5.19%) Microsoft Certification
5 16 (4.37%) BPSS Clearance
6 15 (4.10%) Computer Science Degree
7 12 (3.28%) ITIL Certification
8 10 (2.73%) Six Sigma Green Belt
9 9 (2.46%) A+ Certification
10 6 (1.64%) Azure Certification
10 6 (1.64%) PMI Certification
10 6 (1.64%) PMP
11 5 (1.37%) DBS Check
12 4 (1.09%) AWS Certification
12 4 (1.09%) CBAP
12 4 (1.09%) CISSP
12 4 (1.09%) MCP
12 4 (1.09%) TOGAF Certification
13 3 (0.82%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 3 (0.82%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (5.74%) QA
2 12 (3.28%) GDPR
3 10 (2.73%) SEPA
4 9 (2.46%) Accessibility
4 9 (2.46%) Data Quality
5 7 (1.91%) ISO 20022
6 5 (1.37%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 5 (1.37%) PSD2
7 4 (1.09%) PCI DSS
8 3 (0.82%) COBIT
9 2 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.55%) GRC
9 2 (0.55%) PMO
9 2 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.27%) AUTOSAR
10 1 (0.27%) IEC 61508
10 1 (0.27%) ISO 26262
10 1 (0.27%) NIST
10 1 (0.27%) PMBOK
10 1 (0.27%) SLA
System Software
1 29 (7.92%) Docker
2 26 (7.10%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.55%) Firmware
4 2 (0.55%) VMware NSX
4 2 (0.55%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 29 (7.92%) Kubernetes
2 18 (4.92%) SCCM
3 12 (3.28%) Terraform
4 11 (3.01%) Microsoft Intune
5 8 (2.19%) SCOM
6 3 (0.82%) HP ALM
6 3 (0.82%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (0.82%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
7 2 (0.55%) Grafana
7 2 (0.55%) Istio
7 2 (0.55%) Microsoft Clustering
7 2 (0.55%) Norton AntiVirus
7 2 (0.55%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.55%) QRadar
8 1 (0.27%) Ansible
8 1 (0.27%) Argo
8 1 (0.27%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.27%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 104 (28.42%) Microsoft
2 49 (13.39%) SAP
3 20 (5.46%) ServiceNow
4 17 (4.64%) Oracle
5 14 (3.83%) Google
6 11 (3.01%) Cisco
6 11 (3.01%) Splunk
7 8 (2.19%) Red Hat
8 7 (1.91%) IBM
9 5 (1.37%) Canon
9 5 (1.37%) Gigya
9 5 (1.37%) VMware
10 4 (1.09%) F5
10 4 (1.09%) Liquidlogic
11 3 (0.82%) HP
12 2 (0.55%) Apple
12 2 (0.55%) Ariba
12 2 (0.55%) BMC
12 2 (0.55%) Salesforce
12 2 (0.55%) Symantec