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 17 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 3 6 8
Rank change year-on-year +3 +2 -2
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 343 231 240
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 18.08% 12.31% 11.87%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 20.05% 14.84% 13.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 220 143 151
10th Percentile £220 £156 £206
25th Percentile £400 £330 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £450 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% -10.00% -
75th Percentile £552 £550 £655
90th Percentile £633 £638 £738
England median daily rate £488 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -2.50% -4.76% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 4 3
10th Percentile £15.13 £16.54 £13.87
25th Percentile £16.09 £18.10 £14.12
Median hourly rate £29.33 £19.99 £14.54
Median % change year-on-year +46.76% +37.45% -27.30%
75th Percentile £37.51 £21.63 £31.02
90th Percentile £44.00 £21.85 £40.91
England median hourly rate £18.87 £16.23 £51.42
% change year-on-year +16.27% -68.44% +89.18%

All Process and 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 1,711 1,557 1,727
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 90.20% 82.95% 85.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,081 980 1,162
10th Percentile £263 £231 £263
25th Percentile £400 £381 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% +2.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £625 £600
90th Percentile £688 £725 £725
England median daily rate £510 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.86% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 116 39 55
10th Percentile £12.62 £14.61 £15.50
25th Percentile £16.45 £16.38 £21.82
Median hourly rate £23.70 £23.60 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +0.40% -14.18% +55.19%
75th Percentile £31.00 £35.00 £48.75
90th Percentile £50.00 £53.05 £67.50
England median hourly rate £25.15 £42.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -40.82% -5.56% +33.65%

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 17 October 2025.

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 17 October 2025.

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 17 October 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
Birmingham +4 108 £450 -5.26% 96
Warwickshire +6 104 £495 -13.91% 61
Shropshire -4 47 £515 +18.66% 36
Coventry +3 28 £425 +6.25% 19
Staffordshire +5 12 £400 +6.95% 42
Solihull -1 12 £588 +65.49% 12
Worcestershire -12 12 £550 +96.43% 20
Herefordshire -3 7 £600 -5.51% 11
Walsall +2 2 £381 - 2
Wolverhampton 0 1 £188 +102.70% 6
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 17 (4.96%) SAS
2 9 (2.62%) Oracle Self-Service HR
2 9 (2.62%) Oracle Workflow
2 9 (2.62%) SharePoint
3 6 (1.75%) Apache
3 6 (1.75%) Confluence
4 5 (1.46%) Apache Spark
4 5 (1.46%) WebLogic
5 4 (1.17%) JBoss
6 3 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.87%) HCL Notes
6 3 (0.87%) SugarCRM
7 2 (0.58%) CMS
7 2 (0.58%) Drupal
7 2 (0.58%) IIS
8 1 (0.29%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.29%) nginx
8 1 (0.29%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.29%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 25 (7.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (4.66%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (2.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (2.04%) Microsoft Project
4 5 (1.46%) Revit
5 4 (1.17%) AutoCAD
5 4 (1.17%) Navisworks
6 3 (0.87%) Trello
7 2 (0.58%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 8 (2.33%) Oracle HRMS
2 7 (2.04%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (1.75%) SAP HR
4 5 (1.46%) SAP PM
5 4 (1.17%) Oracle Payables
5 4 (1.17%) Oracle Receivables
6 3 (0.87%) Dynamics CRM
6 3 (0.87%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.87%) Oracle EBS R12
7 2 (0.58%) Oracle Assets
7 2 (0.58%) Oracle ERP
7 2 (0.58%) Oracle General Ledger
7 2 (0.58%) Oracle iProcurement
7 2 (0.58%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 2 (0.58%) Remedy ITSM
7 2 (0.58%) ResourceLink
7 2 (0.58%) SAP GRC
7 2 (0.58%) SAP PSCD
7 2 (0.58%) Workday HCM
8 1 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 58 (16.91%) Azure
2 39 (11.37%) AWS
3 25 (7.29%) GCP
4 23 (6.71%) Microsoft 365
5 18 (5.25%) Power Platform
6 15 (4.37%) Azure DevOps
6 15 (4.37%) Serverless
7 12 (3.50%) GitHub
8 9 (2.62%) Dynamics 365
9 8 (2.33%) GitHub Actions
10 7 (2.04%) Apigee
10 7 (2.04%) Cloud Functions
10 7 (2.04%) PowerApps
11 6 (1.75%) Akamai
11 6 (1.75%) Cloud Computing
11 6 (1.75%) Entra ID
12 5 (1.46%) Amazon S3
12 5 (1.46%) SaaS
12 5 (1.46%) Salesforce Service Cloud
12 5 (1.46%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 21 (6.12%) VPN
2 20 (5.83%) Firewall
3 14 (4.08%) TCP/IP
4 11 (3.21%) DHCP
4 11 (3.21%) DNS
5 7 (2.04%) BGP
5 7 (2.04%) IPsec
5 7 (2.04%) Network Security
6 6 (1.75%) Wireshark
7 5 (1.46%) MPLS
7 5 (1.46%) SSL
7 5 (1.46%) WAN
7 5 (1.46%) Wireless
8 4 (1.17%) LAN
8 4 (1.17%) OSPF
8 4 (1.17%) VLAN
8 4 (1.17%) VoIP
9 3 (0.87%) Junos
9 3 (0.87%) Telepresence
9 3 (0.87%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (4.96%) Pentaho
2 14 (4.08%) PostgreSQL
3 13 (3.79%) Relational Database
3 13 (3.79%) SQL Server
4 12 (3.50%) MySQL
5 10 (2.92%) Elasticsearch
5 10 (2.92%) Power BI
6 9 (2.62%) NoSQL
7 7 (2.04%) Data Warehouse
7 7 (2.04%) Oracle Database
7 7 (2.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 7 (2.04%) Tableau
8 6 (1.75%) Big Data
8 6 (1.75%) MongoDB
9 5 (1.46%) Hadoop
10 3 (0.87%) Amazon RDS
10 3 (0.87%) GIS
10 3 (0.87%) OLTP
10 3 (0.87%) Oracle Reports
10 3 (0.87%) SAS Enterprise Guide
Development Applications
1 48 (13.99%) JIRA
2 42 (12.24%) Git
3 26 (7.58%) Jenkins
4 6 (1.75%) Selenium
5 5 (1.46%) GitLab
5 5 (1.46%) JUnit
6 4 (1.17%) Eclipse
6 4 (1.17%) IntelliJ
7 3 (0.87%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.87%) Sonatype Nexus
8 2 (0.58%) Android Studio
8 2 (0.58%) Gradle
8 2 (0.58%) Liquibase
8 2 (0.58%) MLflow
8 2 (0.58%) Postman
8 2 (0.58%) Visual Studio Code
8 2 (0.58%) Xcode
9 1 (0.29%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 1 (0.29%) Mockito
9 1 (0.29%) Zephyr
General
1 218 (63.56%) Social Skills
2 133 (38.78%) Analytical Skills
3 62 (18.08%) Finance
4 36 (10.50%) Public Sector
5 16 (4.66%) Legal
6 15 (4.37%) Telecoms
7 13 (3.79%) Marketing
8 12 (3.50%) Manufacturing
9 11 (3.21%) Documentation Skills
9 11 (3.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 11 (3.21%) Influencing Skills
9 11 (3.21%) Organisational Skills
9 11 (3.21%) Presentation Skills
10 9 (2.62%) Banking
11 6 (1.75%) Military
12 5 (1.46%) Automotive
12 5 (1.46%) Electronics
13 4 (1.17%) Retail
14 3 (0.87%) Law
15 2 (0.58%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 60 (17.49%) Analyst
2 38 (11.08%) Developer
3 24 (7.00%) Architect
4 21 (6.12%) Lead
5 20 (5.83%) Project Manager
5 20 (5.83%) Senior
6 18 (5.25%) Support Engineer
7 17 (4.96%) Business Analyst
8 15 (4.37%) Consultant
9 11 (3.21%) IT Analyst
9 11 (3.21%) Support Analyst
10 10 (2.92%) 1st Line Support
10 10 (2.92%) Data Analyst
10 10 (2.92%) Data Engineer
11 9 (2.62%) Administrator
12 8 (2.33%) Desktop Support
12 8 (2.33%) IT Support
12 8 (2.33%) Oracle Specialist
13 7 (2.04%) Cloud Developer
13 7 (2.04%) Technical Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (4.66%) REST
2 15 (4.37%) .NET
3 14 (4.08%) Node.js
4 13 (3.79%) HTML
5 12 (3.50%) Elastic Stack
5 12 (3.50%) SOAP
6 10 (2.92%) Web Services
7 9 (2.62%) RESTful
8 7 (2.04%) Spring
9 6 (1.75%) GraphQL
9 6 (1.75%) Play Framework
9 6 (1.75%) React
9 6 (1.75%) SAP Fiori
10 5 (1.46%) CSS
10 5 (1.46%) HTML5
10 5 (1.46%) Middleware
10 5 (1.46%) XML
11 4 (1.17%) EJB
11 4 (1.17%) J2EE
11 4 (1.17%) J2SE
Miscellaneous
1 18 (5.25%) Self-Motivation
2 13 (3.79%) Product Ownership
3 12 (3.50%) Onboarding
4 11 (3.21%) Management Information System
5 10 (2.92%) Data Centre
6 9 (2.62%) Cloud Native
6 9 (2.62%) Data Protection Act
7 7 (2.04%) Security Posture
8 6 (1.75%) Team-Oriented Environment
9 5 (1.46%) Legacy Systems
9 5 (1.46%) SCADA
9 5 (1.46%) Virtual Team
10 4 (1.17%) IoT
10 4 (1.17%) Learning Management System
10 4 (1.17%) NHS
11 3 (0.87%) Data Structures
11 3 (0.87%) Linux Command Line
11 3 (0.87%) Mobile App
11 3 (0.87%) PKI
11 3 (0.87%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 40 (11.66%) Windows
2 31 (9.04%) Linux
3 21 (6.12%) Unix
4 12 (3.50%) Windows 10
5 7 (2.04%) Android
6 6 (1.75%) Mac OS
7 4 (1.17%) Check Point GAiA
8 3 (0.87%) Apple iOS
8 3 (0.87%) Windows Server
9 2 (0.58%) VMS
10 1 (0.29%) AIX
10 1 (0.29%) Amazon Linux
10 1 (0.29%) Solaris
10 1 (0.29%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.29%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 96 (27.99%) Agile
2 75 (21.87%) DevOps
3 60 (17.49%) CI/CD
4 54 (15.74%) Continuous Improvement
5 51 (14.87%) ITIL
6 49 (14.29%) Data Modelling
7 43 (12.54%) Business Intelligence
8 40 (11.66%) ETL
8 40 (11.66%) Stakeholder Management
9 39 (11.37%) Scrum
10 38 (11.08%) Project Management
11 34 (9.91%) Test Automation
12 33 (9.62%) Analytics
12 33 (9.62%) Migration
13 31 (9.04%) Change Management
14 29 (8.45%) Customer Service
15 27 (7.87%) Data Pipeline
16 25 (7.29%) Computer Science
16 25 (7.29%) Data Integration
17 24 (7.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 70 (20.41%) SQL
2 45 (13.12%) Python
3 20 (5.83%) JavaScript
4 14 (4.08%) PowerShell
5 13 (3.79%) Java
6 12 (3.50%) Bash
6 12 (3.50%) C#
7 9 (2.62%) Scala
7 9 (2.62%) TypeScript
8 8 (2.33%) VBA
9 6 (1.75%) Perl
9 6 (1.75%) Shell Script
10 5 (1.46%) Apex Code
10 5 (1.46%) Go
10 5 (1.46%) PHP
10 5 (1.46%) PL/SQL
11 3 (0.87%) ABAP
11 3 (0.87%) Ruby
12 2 (0.58%) Groovy
12 2 (0.58%) JSX
Qualifications
1 66 (19.24%) Security Cleared
2 51 (14.87%) Degree
3 47 (13.70%) SC Cleared
4 21 (6.12%) Computer Science Degree
5 13 (3.79%) DV Cleared
6 7 (2.04%) PMI Certification
6 7 (2.04%) PMP
7 6 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
7 6 (1.75%) MCP
8 5 (1.46%) Cisco Certification
8 5 (1.46%) Master's Degree
8 5 (1.46%) MCDST
8 5 (1.46%) Microsoft Certification
9 4 (1.17%) CCNA
9 4 (1.17%) CCSE
9 4 (1.17%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 3 (0.87%) AWS Certification
10 3 (0.87%) CCNP
10 3 (0.87%) CEH
10 3 (0.87%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (8.75%) QA
2 27 (7.87%) Data Quality
3 15 (4.37%) SLA
4 9 (2.62%) GDPR
4 9 (2.62%) PMO
5 4 (1.17%) Accessibility
5 4 (1.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (0.87%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.58%) ISO 19650
8 1 (0.29%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.29%) NIST
8 1 (0.29%) PSD2
8 1 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.29%) WCAG
System Software
1 42 (12.24%) Docker
2 21 (6.12%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (0.58%) Oracle RAC
4 2 (0.58%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.29%) Firmware
5 1 (0.29%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.29%) IAG
Systems Management
1 38 (11.08%) Kubernetes
2 11 (3.21%) Ansible
2 11 (3.21%) SCCM
3 10 (2.92%) Puppet
4 9 (2.62%) Terraform
5 8 (2.33%) Grafana
6 7 (2.04%) Kibana
7 6 (1.75%) CSIRT
7 6 (1.75%) Prometheus
8 4 (1.17%) FortiGate
9 3 (0.87%) Oracle RMAN
9 3 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.58%) Argo
10 2 (0.58%) BMC PATROL
10 2 (0.58%) Data Guard
10 2 (0.58%) HP ALM
10 2 (0.58%) Istio
10 2 (0.58%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 1 (0.29%) Cisco CUCM
11 1 (0.29%) Rsyslog
Vendors
1 57 (16.62%) Microsoft
2 43 (12.54%) Oracle
3 34 (9.91%) SAP
4 24 (7.00%) Splunk
5 17 (4.96%) Cisco
5 17 (4.96%) Denodo
5 17 (4.96%) Talend
6 16 (4.66%) ServiceNow
7 15 (4.37%) Google
8 11 (3.21%) Workday
9 10 (2.92%) CyberArk
9 10 (2.92%) Salesforce
10 7 (2.04%) BeyondTrust
10 7 (2.04%) F5
11 6 (1.75%) CheckPoint
11 6 (1.75%) iManage
12 5 (1.46%) HP
12 5 (1.46%) IBM
12 5 (1.46%) Juniper
12 5 (1.46%) Mitel