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 27 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
27 May 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 2 11
Rank change year-on-year -10 +9 -3
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 349 255 197
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 10.89% 18.56% 10.29%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.02% 20.88% 12.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 241 163 142
10th Percentile £300 £150 £233
25th Percentile £395 £281 £376
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £474 £454 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.48% -4.49% -5.00%
75th Percentile £550 £538 £587
90th Percentile £650 £638 £650
England median daily rate £500 £500 £511
% change year-on-year - -2.17% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 6 9
10th Percentile £13.10 £14.45 £14.29
25th Percentile £15.86 £17.59 £15.13
Median hourly rate £30.27 £34.50 £42.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.26% -17.86% +127.09%
75th Percentile £51.25 £50.38 £56.25
90th Percentile £67.84 £56.56 £72.50
England median hourly rate £21.35 £21.39 £16.23
% change year-on-year -0.19% +31.79% -68.02%

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 2,681 1,221 1,595
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 83.65% 88.86% 83.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,734 797 1,066
10th Percentile £313 £198 £273
25th Percentile £404 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £625
90th Percentile £675 £665 £750
England median daily rate £514 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.10% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 126 56 115
10th Percentile £14.82 - £11.09
25th Percentile £22.50 £12.62 £14.06
Median hourly rate £33.99 £18.87 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +80.13% -16.13% +3.73%
75th Percentile £67.19 £26.93 £41.13
90th Percentile £72.54 £50.00 £58.75
England median hourly rate £45.00 £28.00 £36.50
% change year-on-year +60.71% -23.29% -2.67%

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 27 May 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 27 May 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 27 May 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
Warwickshire 0 102 £525 -1.13% 62
Shropshire -16 87 £453 -0.95% 22
Birmingham -11 84 £450 +2.86% 75
Coventry -13 20 £516 +37.67% 17
Worcestershire -4 12 £563 +7.14% 15
Staffordshire -3 11 £313 +101.61% 28
Solihull -12 7 £493 +123.86% 4
Herefordshire -8 3 - - 5
Wolverhampton - 3 - - 3
Wednesbury - 1 - -
Brierley Hill - 1 £390 -
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 28 (8.02%) Confluence
2 27 (7.74%) SAS
3 10 (2.87%) Oracle Workflow
3 10 (2.87%) SharePoint
4 8 (2.29%) WebLogic
5 6 (1.72%) Oracle Self-Service HR
6 5 (1.43%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.29%) Appian
7 1 (0.29%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 1 (0.29%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 25 (7.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (5.16%) Microsoft Office
3 9 (2.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (1.43%) Adobe XD
4 5 (1.43%) Microsoft Project
4 5 (1.43%) Sketch
5 4 (1.15%) MS Visio
5 4 (1.15%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.86%) Navisworks
6 3 (0.86%) Revit
7 2 (0.57%) CATIA
8 1 (0.29%) Adobe Captivate
8 1 (0.29%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.29%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.29%) Fusion 360
8 1 (0.29%) InDesign
8 1 (0.29%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.29%) Trello
Business Applications
1 8 (2.29%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.72%) Oracle HRMS
3 3 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.86%) Teamcenter
4 2 (0.57%) NEC Housing
4 2 (0.57%) Remedy ITSM
5 1 (0.29%) Aareon QL
5 1 (0.29%) MIS ActiveH
5 1 (0.29%) OPENHousing
5 1 (0.29%) Orchard Housing
5 1 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.29%) SAP GRC
5 1 (0.29%) SAP QM
5 1 (0.29%) SAP Travel Management
Cloud Services
1 57 (16.33%) Azure
2 39 (11.17%) AWS
3 32 (9.17%) Power Platform
4 19 (5.44%) Microsoft 365
5 16 (4.58%) Entra ID
6 15 (4.30%) Azure DevOps
6 15 (4.30%) GitHub
7 11 (3.15%) GCP
8 8 (2.29%) Figma
9 6 (1.72%) Azure Data Factory
9 6 (1.72%) GitHub Actions
10 5 (1.43%) Amazon S3
10 5 (1.43%) OneDrive
10 5 (1.43%) OpenShift
10 5 (1.43%) Power Automate
10 5 (1.43%) Serverless
10 5 (1.43%) Snowflake
11 4 (1.15%) dbt
11 4 (1.15%) Dynamics 365
12 3 (0.86%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 11 (3.15%) DNS
2 9 (2.58%) VPN
3 6 (1.72%) DHCP
3 6 (1.72%) Firewall
4 5 (1.43%) Intrusion Detection
5 4 (1.15%) BIG-IP
5 4 (1.15%) SD-WAN
5 4 (1.15%) TCP/IP
5 4 (1.15%) WAN
6 3 (0.86%) Internet
6 3 (0.86%) LAN
6 3 (0.86%) Network Security
6 3 (0.86%) VLAN
6 3 (0.86%) Wi-Fi
7 2 (0.57%) Remote Desktop
7 2 (0.57%) SAN
7 2 (0.57%) SSL
7 2 (0.57%) WAAS
8 1 (0.29%) Kerberos
8 1 (0.29%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (7.45%) Power BI
2 21 (6.02%) Data Warehouse
2 21 (6.02%) Pentaho
3 12 (3.44%) PostgreSQL
4 10 (2.87%) Metadata
4 10 (2.87%) SQL Server
5 7 (2.01%) Elasticsearch
5 7 (2.01%) MongoDB
6 6 (1.72%) Oracle Reports
6 6 (1.72%) Relational Database
7 4 (1.15%) MySQL
7 4 (1.15%) Power Query
7 4 (1.15%) Tableau
8 3 (0.86%) Amazon RDS
8 3 (0.86%) Amazon Redshift
8 3 (0.86%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 3 (0.86%) WebFOCUS
9 2 (0.57%) Big Data
9 2 (0.57%) Data Lake
9 2 (0.57%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 59 (16.91%) JIRA
2 49 (14.04%) Git
3 32 (9.17%) Jenkins
4 13 (3.72%) Selenium
5 7 (2.01%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 7 (2.01%) Postman
5 7 (2.01%) REST Assured
6 6 (1.72%) GitLab
7 5 (1.43%) JUnit
7 5 (1.43%) Zephyr
8 4 (1.15%) JMeter
9 3 (0.86%) Cucumber
9 3 (0.86%) WebDriver
10 2 (0.57%) Browser DevTools
10 2 (0.57%) Cypress.io
10 2 (0.57%) Gatling
10 2 (0.57%) Serenity BDD
10 2 (0.57%) TestRail
11 1 (0.29%) PetaLinux
11 1 (0.29%) Vite
General
1 181 (51.86%) Social Skills
2 142 (40.69%) Analytical Skills
3 47 (13.47%) Finance
4 18 (5.16%) Public Sector
5 16 (4.58%) Organisational Skills
6 11 (3.15%) Banking
6 11 (3.15%) Manufacturing
7 9 (2.58%) Legal
7 9 (2.58%) Local Government
7 9 (2.58%) Presentation Skills
8 8 (2.29%) Automotive
8 8 (2.29%) Influencing Skills
9 5 (1.43%) Electronics
9 5 (1.43%) Military
10 4 (1.15%) Marketing
11 3 (0.86%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (0.86%) Law
11 3 (0.86%) Retail
12 2 (0.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 2 (0.57%) Police
Job Titles
1 56 (16.05%) Analyst
2 32 (9.17%) Data Engineer
3 30 (8.60%) Developer
4 28 (8.02%) Lead
5 22 (6.30%) Senior
6 21 (6.02%) Business Analyst
7 20 (5.73%) Consultant
8 16 (4.58%) Architect
9 14 (4.01%) Data Analyst
10 12 (3.44%) Delivery Manager
11 10 (2.87%) Administrator
12 9 (2.58%) Business Intelligence Developer
12 9 (2.58%) Project Manager
12 9 (2.58%) SAP Consultant
12 9 (2.58%) Splunk Engineer
13 8 (2.29%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 7 (2.01%) Network Engineer
14 7 (2.01%) Scrum Master
14 7 (2.01%) Site Engineer
14 7 (2.01%) Site Reliability Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (4.30%) Spring
2 13 (3.72%) REST
3 11 (3.15%) Spring Boot
4 7 (2.01%) AngularJS
4 7 (2.01%) CSS
4 7 (2.01%) Elastic Stack
4 7 (2.01%) HTML
4 7 (2.01%) OpenTelemetry
4 7 (2.01%) RESTful
5 6 (1.72%) CSS3
5 6 (1.72%) HTML5
5 6 (1.72%) Middleware
5 6 (1.72%) React
6 5 (1.43%) Playwright
7 4 (1.15%) Oracle Fusion
8 3 (0.86%) FastAPI
8 3 (0.86%) Hugging Face
8 3 (0.86%) Node.js
8 3 (0.86%) PyTorch
8 3 (0.86%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 17 (4.87%) Cloud Native
2 16 (4.58%) Management Information System
3 13 (3.72%) Product Ownership
4 10 (2.87%) Data Centre
4 10 (2.87%) Onboarding
4 10 (2.87%) Operational Technology
5 9 (2.58%) SCADA
6 8 (2.29%) Self-Motivation
7 7 (2.01%) Analytical Mindset
8 6 (1.72%) Data Protection Act
8 6 (1.72%) Distributed Systems
8 6 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
9 5 (1.43%) Driving Licence
9 5 (1.43%) Legacy Systems
10 4 (1.15%) CSOC
10 4 (1.15%) Cyber Threat
10 4 (1.15%) Data Structures
10 4 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
10 4 (1.15%) Security Operations Centre
11 3 (0.86%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 31 (8.88%) Windows
2 23 (6.59%) Linux
3 10 (2.87%) Unix
3 10 (2.87%) Windows 10
4 9 (2.58%) Mac OS
5 8 (2.29%) Windows Server
6 5 (1.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 4 (1.15%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.29%) Embedded Linux
8 1 (0.29%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 113 (32.38%) Agile
2 106 (30.37%) Continuous Improvement
3 73 (20.92%) CI/CD
4 59 (16.91%) DevOps
5 55 (15.76%) Business Intelligence
5 55 (15.76%) Migration
6 54 (15.47%) Data Modelling
7 53 (15.19%) Stakeholder Management
8 52 (14.90%) Analytics
9 51 (14.61%) AI
9 51 (14.61%) ETL
9 51 (14.61%) Scrum
9 51 (14.61%) Test Automation
10 45 (12.89%) Validation
11 41 (11.75%) Decision-Making
11 41 (11.75%) Generative AI
12 35 (10.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 33 (9.46%) Change Management
13 33 (9.46%) Data Pipeline
14 31 (8.88%) Data Integration
Programming Languages
1 80 (22.92%) SQL
2 43 (12.32%) Python
3 26 (7.45%) Java
4 15 (4.30%) Bash
5 14 (4.01%) PowerShell
6 12 (3.44%) PL/SQL
7 9 (2.58%) JavaScript
8 6 (1.72%) TypeScript
9 5 (1.43%) Perl
9 5 (1.43%) Shell Script
10 4 (1.15%) C#
10 4 (1.15%) C++
10 4 (1.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 4 (1.15%) Kusto Query Language
11 3 (0.86%) C
11 3 (0.86%) MATLAB
12 2 (0.57%) Bicep
13 1 (0.29%) SystemVerilog
13 1 (0.29%) Tcl
13 1 (0.29%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 102 (29.23%) Security Cleared
2 85 (24.36%) SC Cleared
3 49 (14.04%) Degree
4 14 (4.01%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (2.87%) DV Cleared
5 10 (2.87%) Microsoft Certification
6 9 (2.58%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (2.29%) Cisco Certification
8 7 (2.01%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 5 (1.43%) MCSE
10 4 (1.15%) Azure Certification
10 4 (1.15%) CCNA
10 4 (1.15%) CCNP
10 4 (1.15%) Master's Degree
10 4 (1.15%) OCP
10 4 (1.15%) Oracle Certification
10 4 (1.15%) PMI Certification
10 4 (1.15%) PMP
11 3 (0.86%) CISSP
11 3 (0.86%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 49 (14.04%) Data Quality
2 19 (5.44%) QA
3 14 (4.01%) Accessibility
4 7 (2.01%) SLA
5 6 (1.72%) PMO
6 5 (1.43%) GDPR
6 5 (1.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (1.43%) WCAG
7 4 (1.15%) ISO 19650
8 3 (0.86%) Cyber Essentials
8 3 (0.86%) GRC
8 3 (0.86%) ISO/IEC 12207
8 3 (0.86%) ISO/IEC 15288
9 2 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 20000
10 1 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.29%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.29%) ISO 14001
10 1 (0.29%) ISO 9001
10 1 (0.29%) NCSC
10 1 (0.29%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 52 (14.90%) Docker
2 20 (5.73%) Active Directory
3 12 (3.44%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (2.87%) vSphere
5 6 (1.72%) Hyper-V
5 6 (1.72%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (1.15%) Snort
7 3 (0.86%) VMware NSX
8 2 (0.57%) BitLocker
8 2 (0.57%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.29%) Microsoft App-V
9 1 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 52 (14.90%) Kubernetes
2 17 (4.87%) Ansible
3 13 (3.72%) Grafana
4 12 (3.44%) Terraform
5 11 (3.15%) Prometheus
6 8 (2.29%) SCCM
7 7 (2.01%) Kibana
7 7 (2.01%) Puppet
8 6 (1.72%) Microsoft Intune
9 4 (1.15%) Argo
9 4 (1.15%) CSIRT
9 4 (1.15%) PowerCLI
9 4 (1.15%) vMotion
10 3 (0.86%) Control-M
10 3 (0.86%) IBM Guardium
10 3 (0.86%) Nessus
10 3 (0.86%) Podman
10 3 (0.86%) vCenter Server
11 2 (0.57%) Jamf Pro
11 2 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 71 (20.34%) Microsoft
2 41 (11.75%) Oracle
3 27 (7.74%) ServiceNow
4 22 (6.30%) Talend
5 21 (6.02%) Denodo
5 21 (6.02%) SAP
6 19 (5.44%) Splunk
7 17 (4.87%) VMware
8 13 (3.72%) Cisco
9 8 (2.29%) Adobe
9 8 (2.29%) Atlassian
9 8 (2.29%) Red Hat
10 6 (1.72%) Google
10 6 (1.72%) Siemens
11 4 (1.15%) 3PAR
11 4 (1.15%) Autodesk
11 4 (1.15%) Citrix
11 4 (1.15%) F5
11 4 (1.15%) MuleSoft
11 4 (1.15%) Zscaler
246 Problem-Solving jobs in the West Midlands