Problem-Solving Contract Job Trends in the West Midlands

Problem Solving
England > West Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the West Midlands requiring Problem-Solving skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 20 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 4 11
Rank change year-on-year -1 +7 -2
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 349 238 190
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 14.86% 15.34% 10.62%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 17.39% 17.56% 12.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 232 139 137
10th Percentile £258 £160 £263
25th Percentile £406 £320 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £435 £510
Median % change year-on-year +13.10% -14.71% -3.77%
75th Percentile £550 £591 £626
90th Percentile £600 £700 £693
England median daily rate £492 £500 £520
% change year-on-year -1.60% -3.85% -3.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 4 3
10th Percentile £14.20 £16.41 £19.93
25th Percentile £14.94 £16.63 £28.02
Median hourly rate £16.71 £19.12 £42.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.63% -54.48% +162.50%
75th Percentile £21.17 £21.63 £45.00
90th Percentile £28.15 £21.85 £46.50
England median hourly rate £18.50 £21.48 £25.50
% change year-on-year -13.87% -15.76% -22.73%

All Process & Methodology Skills
West Midlands

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 West Midlands.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 2,007 1,355 1,519
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 85.48% 87.36% 84.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,282 845 1,005
10th Percentile £263 £213 £275
25th Percentile £405 £400 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £490
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +7.14% -2.00%
75th Percentile £588 £612 £600
90th Percentile £675 £713 £688
England median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 87 47 79
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.70 £13.50
25th Percentile £16.19 £16.51 £17.61
Median hourly rate £20.50 £21.59 £24.65
Median % change year-on-year -5.05% -12.41% +39.27%
75th Percentile £26.18 £33.65 £48.75
90th Percentile £35.60 £52.50 £67.50
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -28.14% -12.50% +14.29%

Problem-Solving
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

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

Problem-Solving job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

Problem-Solving
Daily Rate Trend in the West Midlands

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

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

Problem-Solving
Daily Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Problem-Solving in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 20 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Problem-Solving in the West Midlands

Problem-Solving
Hourly Rate Trend in the West Midlands

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

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

Problem-Solving
Hourly Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Problem-Solving in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 20 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Problem-Solving in the West Midlands

Problem-Solving
Contract Job Locations in the West Midlands

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 West Midlands region over the 6 months to 20 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
Shropshire -2 95 £500 +14.94% 43
Birmingham -6 95 £488 +2.04% 71
Warwickshire 0 79 £500 -14.89% 63
Coventry -8 25 £413 +3.13% 19
Staffordshire +1 14 £210 -26.83% 31
Worcestershire -16 12 £550 +96.43% 23
Solihull -4 6 £575 +57.53% 1
Herefordshire -20 6 £600 +26.32% 10
Wolverhampton +3 2 £227 +145.68% 8
Walsall +2 1 £338 - 5
Problem-Solving
England

Problem-Solving
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the West Midlands 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 51 (14.61%) SAS
2 14 (4.01%) Confluence
3 9 (2.58%) Apache
3 9 (2.58%) WebLogic
4 8 (2.29%) JBoss
4 8 (2.29%) SharePoint
5 4 (1.15%) HCL Notes
6 3 (0.86%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.86%) SugarCRM
7 2 (0.57%) Drupal
8 1 (0.29%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.29%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.29%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.29%) CMS
8 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.29%) nginx
Applications
1 20 (5.73%) Microsoft Excel
1 20 (5.73%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (2.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (2.01%) MS Visio
4 5 (1.43%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (1.15%) Adobe XD
5 4 (1.15%) Sketch
6 1 (0.29%) Revit
6 1 (0.29%) Trello
Business Applications
1 3 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
1 3 (0.86%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.57%) Oracle Payables
2 2 (0.57%) Oracle Receivables
2 2 (0.57%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
2 2 (0.57%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.57%) ResourceLink
2 2 (0.57%) SAP HR
2 2 (0.57%) Workday HCM
3 1 (0.29%) Aareon QL
3 1 (0.29%) Elite 3E
3 1 (0.29%) iTrent
3 1 (0.29%) Maximo
3 1 (0.29%) MIS ActiveH
3 1 (0.29%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.29%) OPENHousing
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.29%) Orchard Housing
3 1 (0.29%) SAP PM
Cloud Services
1 55 (15.76%) Azure
2 47 (13.47%) AWS
3 25 (7.16%) GCP
4 17 (4.87%) Microsoft 365
5 16 (4.58%) Power Platform
6 15 (4.30%) OpenShift
7 11 (3.15%) Azure DevOps
7 11 (3.15%) Serverless
8 10 (2.87%) Cloud Computing
9 8 (2.29%) Entra ID
9 8 (2.29%) Power Automate
9 8 (2.29%) PowerApps
10 7 (2.01%) Apigee
10 7 (2.01%) Cloud Functions
10 7 (2.01%) Datadog
10 7 (2.01%) GitHub
10 7 (2.01%) GitHub Actions
11 6 (1.72%) Akamai
12 5 (1.43%) SaaS
12 5 (1.43%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 20 (5.73%) VPN
2 12 (3.44%) DNS
2 12 (3.44%) Firewall
3 10 (2.87%) DHCP
4 9 (2.58%) TCP/IP
5 7 (2.01%) VSAN
6 6 (1.72%) Wireshark
7 5 (1.43%) WAN
8 4 (1.15%) MPLS
8 4 (1.15%) Wireless
9 3 (0.86%) BGP
9 3 (0.86%) IPsec
9 3 (0.86%) Junos
9 3 (0.86%) Network Security
9 3 (0.86%) SD-WAN
10 2 (0.57%) Broadband
10 2 (0.57%) LAN
10 2 (0.57%) VoIP
11 1 (0.29%) HTTP
11 1 (0.29%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (10.32%) Pentaho
2 15 (4.30%) Elasticsearch
3 14 (4.01%) Oracle Database
4 12 (3.44%) MongoDB
4 12 (3.44%) MySQL
4 12 (3.44%) Power BI
5 11 (3.15%) SAS Enterprise Guide
6 10 (2.87%) Data Warehouse
6 10 (2.87%) PostgreSQL
7 8 (2.29%) Relational Database
8 4 (1.15%) NoSQL
8 4 (1.15%) SQL Server
8 4 (1.15%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 3 (0.86%) SAS Visual Analytics
10 2 (0.57%) BusinessObjects
10 2 (0.57%) Hadoop
11 1 (0.29%) Apache Hive
11 1 (0.29%) Data Mining
11 1 (0.29%) GIS
11 1 (0.29%) SAP BW
Development Applications
1 83 (23.78%) Git
2 62 (17.77%) JIRA
3 57 (16.33%) Jenkins
4 23 (6.59%) Selenium
5 22 (6.30%) GitLab
5 22 (6.30%) JUnit
6 8 (2.29%) Eclipse
6 8 (2.29%) IntelliJ
7 2 (0.57%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 2 (0.57%) CircleCI
7 2 (0.57%) Liquibase
7 2 (0.57%) Postman
8 1 (0.29%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.29%) Jaeger
8 1 (0.29%) Mockito
8 1 (0.29%) REST Assured
8 1 (0.29%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.29%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 196 (56.16%) Social Skills
2 123 (35.24%) Analytical Skills
3 37 (10.60%) Finance
4 33 (9.46%) Public Sector
5 14 (4.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 14 (4.01%) Influencing Skills
6 13 (3.72%) Legal
6 13 (3.72%) Organisational Skills
6 13 (3.72%) Presentation Skills
7 8 (2.29%) Banking
7 8 (2.29%) Telecoms
8 7 (2.01%) Marketing
9 6 (1.72%) Documentation Skills
9 6 (1.72%) Military
10 5 (1.43%) Manufacturing
11 3 (0.86%) Law
12 2 (0.57%) Police
13 1 (0.29%) Electronics
13 1 (0.29%) Fire and Rescue
13 1 (0.29%) Social Housing
Job Titles
1 57 (16.33%) Analyst
2 36 (10.32%) Developer
3 21 (6.02%) Data Engineer
4 16 (4.58%) Business Analyst
4 16 (4.58%) Project Manager
5 15 (4.30%) IT Analyst
5 15 (4.30%) Splunk Engineer
6 14 (4.01%) Architect
6 14 (4.01%) Consultant
6 14 (4.01%) Lead
6 14 (4.01%) Site Engineer
6 14 (4.01%) Site Reliability Engineer
6 14 (4.01%) Test Specialist
7 13 (3.72%) Support Analyst
8 12 (3.44%) IT Support
8 12 (3.44%) Senior
9 11 (3.15%) 1st Line Support
9 11 (3.15%) Support Engineer
10 10 (2.87%) Infrastructure Analyst
10 10 (2.87%) IT Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (10.32%) REST
2 20 (5.73%) Elastic Stack
3 18 (5.16%) HTML
4 16 (4.58%) SOAP
5 14 (4.01%) pytest
6 13 (3.72%) HTML5
6 13 (3.72%) Node.js
6 13 (3.72%) RESTful
7 11 (3.15%) Play Framework
7 11 (3.15%) Spring
8 9 (2.58%) XML
9 8 (2.29%) CSS
9 8 (2.29%) EJB
9 8 (2.29%) Hibernate
9 8 (2.29%) J2EE
9 8 (2.29%) J2SE
9 8 (2.29%) JSON
9 8 (2.29%) React
10 6 (1.72%) .NET
10 6 (1.72%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 20 (5.73%) Management Information System
2 18 (5.16%) Self-Motivation
3 16 (4.58%) Onboarding
4 11 (3.15%) Cloud Native
4 11 (3.15%) Data Centre
5 10 (2.87%) Linux Command Line
5 10 (2.87%) Product Ownership
6 8 (2.29%) Security Posture
7 6 (1.72%) Data Structures
8 5 (1.43%) Driving Licence
8 5 (1.43%) Legacy Systems
8 5 (1.43%) Team-Oriented Environment
9 4 (1.15%) Data Protection Act
9 4 (1.15%) SCADA
10 3 (0.86%) Educational Technology
10 3 (0.86%) IoT
10 3 (0.86%) Learning Management System
10 3 (0.86%) NHS
10 3 (0.86%) PKI
10 3 (0.86%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 41 (11.75%) Linux
2 30 (8.60%) Unix
3 29 (8.31%) Windows
4 10 (2.87%) Windows 10
5 5 (1.43%) Windows Server
6 3 (0.86%) Mac OS
7 2 (0.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.29%) AIX
8 1 (0.29%) CentOS
8 1 (0.29%) Solaris
8 1 (0.29%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.29%) VMS
8 1 (0.29%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 136 (38.97%) Agile
2 109 (31.23%) DevOps
3 97 (27.79%) CI/CD
4 81 (23.21%) Continuous Improvement
5 65 (18.62%) Data Modelling
6 64 (18.34%) Stakeholder Management
7 63 (18.05%) Analytics
7 63 (18.05%) Scrum
8 62 (17.77%) Test Automation
9 55 (15.76%) Data Pipeline
10 49 (14.04%) ETL
11 43 (12.32%) Business Intelligence
11 43 (12.32%) Change Management
11 43 (12.32%) Containerisation
11 43 (12.32%) Data Integration
12 40 (11.46%) Project Management
13 39 (11.17%) Deployment Automation
14 36 (10.32%) Migration
15 35 (10.03%) Data Virtualisation
15 35 (10.03%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 74 (21.20%) SQL
2 70 (20.06%) Python
3 22 (6.30%) Bash
3 22 (6.30%) JavaScript
4 20 (5.73%) Java
5 15 (4.30%) PowerShell
6 13 (3.72%) Scala
7 9 (2.58%) Shell Script
8 8 (2.29%) Go
9 6 (1.72%) Perl
9 6 (1.72%) PL/SQL
9 6 (1.72%) TypeScript
9 6 (1.72%) VBA
10 5 (1.43%) C#
10 5 (1.43%) PHP
11 3 (0.86%) Ruby
12 2 (0.57%) Apex Code
13 1 (0.29%) ABAP
13 1 (0.29%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 98 (28.08%) Security Cleared
2 80 (22.92%) SC Cleared
3 47 (13.47%) Degree
4 22 (6.30%) Computer Science Degree
5 11 (3.15%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (2.29%) DV Cleared
6 8 (2.29%) Microsoft Certification
7 7 (2.01%) Master's Degree
8 6 (1.72%) Azure Certification
8 6 (1.72%) MCP
8 6 (1.72%) PMI Certification
8 6 (1.72%) PMP
9 5 (1.43%) MCDST
10 4 (1.15%) Cisco Certification
10 4 (1.15%) PRINCE2 Certification
11 3 (0.86%) AWS Certification
11 3 (0.86%) CCNA
11 3 (0.86%) CCNP
12 2 (0.57%) A+ Certification
12 2 (0.57%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 41 (11.75%) Data Quality
2 24 (6.88%) QA
3 10 (2.87%) PMO
4 7 (2.01%) GDPR
5 6 (1.72%) Accessibility
6 5 (1.43%) ISO 19650
6 5 (1.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (0.86%) WCAG
8 2 (0.57%) ISO 9001
8 2 (0.57%) NIST
8 2 (0.57%) SLA
9 1 (0.29%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 20000
9 1 (0.29%) NCSC
9 1 (0.29%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 87 (24.93%) Docker
2 20 (5.73%) Active Directory
3 14 (4.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (2.29%) vSphere
5 3 (0.86%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.29%) Firmware
6 1 (0.29%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 79 (22.64%) Kubernetes
2 22 (6.30%) Puppet
3 19 (5.44%) Ansible
4 15 (4.30%) Kibana
5 10 (2.87%) SCCM
6 9 (2.58%) Terraform
7 8 (2.29%) Grafana
7 8 (2.29%) vRealize
7 8 (2.29%) VxRail
8 6 (1.72%) CSIRT
8 6 (1.72%) Prometheus
9 3 (0.86%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.57%) Argo
10 2 (0.57%) BMC PATROL
10 2 (0.57%) HP ALM
11 1 (0.29%) Dell DRAC
11 1 (0.29%) Fluentd
11 1 (0.29%) logstash
11 1 (0.29%) NetBackup
11 1 (0.29%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 54 (15.47%) Microsoft
2 44 (12.61%) Oracle
3 35 (10.03%) Denodo
3 35 (10.03%) Talend
4 33 (9.46%) ServiceNow
5 31 (8.88%) Splunk
6 20 (5.73%) Cisco
7 16 (4.58%) VMware
8 15 (4.30%) SAP
9 13 (3.72%) Google
10 10 (2.87%) HP
11 9 (2.58%) AppDynamics
11 9 (2.58%) Dell
11 9 (2.58%) SolarWinds
12 8 (2.29%) BeyondTrust
12 8 (2.29%) CyberArk
12 8 (2.29%) IBM
12 8 (2.29%) webMethods
12 8 (2.29%) Workday
13 7 (2.01%) Salesforce