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 3 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
3 Jun 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 2 12
Rank change year-on-year -10 +10 -4
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 348 268 195
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 10.90% 19.13% 10.03%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.98% 21.51% 12.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 240 172 137
10th Percentile £282 £151 £218
25th Percentile £388 £282 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £452 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.88% -4.95% -5.00%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £585
90th Percentile £645 £638 £647
England median daily rate £500 £500 £510
% change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 8 10
10th Percentile £13.06 £14.72 £14.71
25th Percentile £15.86 £22.53 £16.09
Median hourly rate £30.27 £31.61 £32.25
Median % change year-on-year -4.22% -2.00% +74.37%
75th Percentile £51.25 £46.13 £56.25
90th Percentile £67.84 £54.94 £72.50
England median hourly rate £21.35 £21.39 £16.23
% change year-on-year -0.19% +31.79% -68.96%

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 1,246 1,612
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 83.94% 88.94% 82.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,745 807 1,074
10th Percentile £313 £200 £263
25th Percentile £405 £375 £373
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £575 £585 £625
90th Percentile £675 £663 £746
England median daily rate £515 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -1.90% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 129 64 116
10th Percentile £14.82 £12.62 £11.09
25th Percentile £23.00 £13.49 £14.22
Median hourly rate £34.38 £22.05 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +55.90% -2.00% +7.30%
75th Percentile £67.84 £31.19 £40.81
90th Percentile £72.54 £50.00 £58.75
England median hourly rate £47.00 £28.60 £37.50
% change year-on-year +64.34% -23.73% +0.54%

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 3 June 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 3 June 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 3 June 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 -1 107 £525 +0.96% 69
Shropshire -17 84 £453 -1.63% 27
Birmingham -14 81 £450 +3.15% 71
Coventry -15 20 £516 +37.67% 16
Worcestershire -1 12 £563 +7.14% 18
Staffordshire -4 10 £306 +97.58% 28
Solihull -15 7 £493 +123.86% 6
Herefordshire -8 3 - - 4
Wolverhampton - 3 - - 4
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 (8.05%) Confluence
2 27 (7.76%) SAS
3 11 (3.16%) Oracle Workflow
4 10 (2.87%) SharePoint
5 8 (2.30%) WebLogic
6 6 (1.72%) Oracle Self-Service HR
7 5 (1.44%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.29%) Appian
8 1 (0.29%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 1 (0.29%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 25 (7.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (4.89%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (2.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (1.44%) Adobe XD
4 5 (1.44%) Microsoft Project
4 5 (1.44%) 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 (2.30%) 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 (16.38%) Azure
2 39 (11.21%) AWS
3 30 (8.62%) Power Platform
4 19 (5.46%) Microsoft 365
5 15 (4.31%) Azure DevOps
5 15 (4.31%) Entra ID
5 15 (4.31%) GitHub
6 11 (3.16%) GCP
7 8 (2.30%) Figma
8 7 (2.01%) Azure Data Factory
9 6 (1.72%) GitHub Actions
9 6 (1.72%) Serverless
10 5 (1.44%) Amazon S3
10 5 (1.44%) OneDrive
10 5 (1.44%) OpenShift
10 5 (1.44%) Snowflake
11 4 (1.15%) dbt
11 4 (1.15%) Dynamics 365
12 3 (0.86%) Azure Storage
12 3 (0.86%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 11 (3.16%) DNS
2 9 (2.59%) VPN
3 6 (1.72%) DHCP
3 6 (1.72%) Firewall
4 5 (1.44%) 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%) SMTP
8 1 (0.29%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (6.90%) Power BI
2 22 (6.32%) Pentaho
3 19 (5.46%) Data Warehouse
4 12 (3.45%) PostgreSQL
5 10 (2.87%) Metadata
6 7 (2.01%) MongoDB
6 7 (2.01%) SQL Server
7 6 (1.72%) Elasticsearch
7 6 (1.72%) Oracle Reports
7 6 (1.72%) Relational Database
8 4 (1.15%) MySQL
8 4 (1.15%) Power Query
8 4 (1.15%) Tableau
9 3 (0.86%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (0.86%) Amazon Redshift
9 3 (0.86%) Oracle Database
9 3 (0.86%) WebFOCUS
10 2 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
10 2 (0.57%) Big Data
10 2 (0.57%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 59 (16.95%) JIRA
2 49 (14.08%) Git
3 32 (9.20%) Jenkins
4 13 (3.74%) Selenium
5 7 (2.01%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 7 (2.01%) GitLab
5 7 (2.01%) Postman
5 7 (2.01%) REST Assured
6 5 (1.44%) JUnit
6 5 (1.44%) Zephyr
7 4 (1.15%) JMeter
8 3 (0.86%) Cucumber
8 3 (0.86%) WebDriver
9 2 (0.57%) Browser DevTools
9 2 (0.57%) Cypress.io
9 2 (0.57%) Gatling
9 2 (0.57%) Serenity BDD
9 2 (0.57%) TestRail
10 1 (0.29%) PetaLinux
10 1 (0.29%) Vite
General
1 180 (51.72%) Social Skills
2 144 (41.38%) Analytical Skills
3 52 (14.94%) Finance
4 19 (5.46%) Public Sector
5 15 (4.31%) Organisational Skills
6 11 (3.16%) Banking
6 11 (3.16%) Manufacturing
7 9 (2.59%) Legal
7 9 (2.59%) Local Government
7 9 (2.59%) Presentation Skills
8 8 (2.30%) Automotive
8 8 (2.30%) Influencing Skills
9 5 (1.44%) Electronics
9 5 (1.44%) Military
10 4 (1.15%) Documentation Skills
10 4 (1.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 4 (1.15%) Marketing
11 3 (0.86%) Law
11 3 (0.86%) Retail
12 2 (0.57%) Billing
Job Titles
1 57 (16.38%) Analyst
2 34 (9.77%) Data Engineer
3 29 (8.33%) Lead
4 25 (7.18%) Developer
5 23 (6.61%) Senior
6 21 (6.03%) Business Analyst
7 18 (5.17%) Consultant
8 17 (4.89%) Architect
9 15 (4.31%) Data Analyst
10 13 (3.74%) Administrator
11 11 (3.16%) Delivery Manager
12 9 (2.59%) Project Manager
12 9 (2.59%) SAP Consultant
13 8 (2.30%) Splunk Engineer
14 7 (2.01%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 7 (2.01%) Network Engineer
14 7 (2.01%) Oracle Specialist
14 7 (2.01%) Scrum Master
15 6 (1.72%) Senior Manager
15 6 (1.72%) Support Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (4.31%) Spring
2 12 (3.45%) REST
3 11 (3.16%) Spring Boot
4 7 (2.01%) AngularJS
4 7 (2.01%) CSS
4 7 (2.01%) HTML
4 7 (2.01%) OpenTelemetry
4 7 (2.01%) RESTful
5 6 (1.72%) CSS3
5 6 (1.72%) Elastic Stack
5 6 (1.72%) HTML5
5 6 (1.72%) Middleware
5 6 (1.72%) React
6 5 (1.44%) Playwright
7 4 (1.15%) Oracle Fusion
8 3 (0.86%) FastAPI
8 3 (0.86%) Hugging Face
8 3 (0.86%) PyTorch
8 3 (0.86%) TensorFlow
8 3 (0.86%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 17 (4.89%) Cloud Native
2 15 (4.31%) Management Information System
3 13 (3.74%) Product Ownership
4 10 (2.87%) Data Centre
4 10 (2.87%) Operational Technology
5 9 (2.59%) Onboarding
5 9 (2.59%) SCADA
6 8 (2.30%) Self-Motivation
7 7 (2.01%) Analytical Mindset
8 6 (1.72%) Cyber Threat
8 6 (1.72%) Data Protection Act
8 6 (1.72%) Distributed Systems
8 6 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
8 6 (1.72%) Legacy Systems
9 5 (1.44%) Driving Licence
10 4 (1.15%) CSOC
10 4 (1.15%) Data Structures
10 4 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
10 4 (1.15%) Security Operations Centre
11 3 (0.86%) Distributed Applications
Operating Systems
1 35 (10.06%) Windows
2 23 (6.61%) Linux
3 10 (2.87%) Unix
3 10 (2.87%) Windows 10
4 9 (2.59%) Mac OS
5 8 (2.30%) Windows Server
6 5 (1.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 4 (1.15%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.29%) Embedded Linux
8 1 (0.29%) HPUX
8 1 (0.29%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 112 (32.18%) Agile
2 106 (30.46%) Continuous Improvement
3 75 (21.55%) CI/CD
4 60 (17.24%) DevOps
5 56 (16.09%) Migration
6 53 (15.23%) Business Intelligence
6 53 (15.23%) Stakeholder Management
6 53 (15.23%) Test Automation
7 52 (14.94%) Analytics
8 51 (14.66%) Data Modelling
8 51 (14.66%) ETL
9 49 (14.08%) AI
9 49 (14.08%) Scrum
10 45 (12.93%) Validation
11 40 (11.49%) Decision-Making
12 39 (11.21%) Generative AI
13 34 (9.77%) Data Pipeline
14 33 (9.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 31 (8.91%) Change Management
16 29 (8.33%) Data Integration
Programming Languages
1 84 (24.14%) SQL
2 44 (12.64%) Python
3 26 (7.47%) Java
4 14 (4.02%) Bash
4 14 (4.02%) PowerShell
5 12 (3.45%) PL/SQL
6 9 (2.59%) JavaScript
7 6 (1.72%) TypeScript
8 5 (1.44%) Perl
8 5 (1.44%) Shell Script
9 4 (1.15%) C#
9 4 (1.15%) C++
9 4 (1.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 4 (1.15%) Kusto Query Language
10 3 (0.86%) C
10 3 (0.86%) MATLAB
11 2 (0.57%) Bicep
12 1 (0.29%) SystemVerilog
12 1 (0.29%) Tcl
12 1 (0.29%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 106 (30.46%) Security Cleared
2 87 (25.00%) SC Cleared
3 48 (13.79%) Degree
4 13 (3.74%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (2.87%) DV Cleared
5 10 (2.87%) Microsoft Certification
6 9 (2.59%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (2.30%) Cisco Certification
8 7 (2.01%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 5 (1.44%) 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%) RHCA
11 3 (0.86%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 49 (14.08%) Data Quality
2 20 (5.75%) QA
3 14 (4.02%) Accessibility
4 8 (2.30%) SLA
5 6 (1.72%) PMO
6 5 (1.44%) GDPR
6 5 (1.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (1.44%) WCAG
7 3 (0.86%) Cyber Essentials
7 3 (0.86%) GRC
7 3 (0.86%) ISO 19650
7 3 (0.86%) ISO/IEC 12207
7 3 (0.86%) ISO/IEC 15288
8 2 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 20000
9 1 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.29%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.29%) ISO 14001
9 1 (0.29%) ISO 9001
9 1 (0.29%) NIST
9 1 (0.29%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 51 (14.66%) Docker
2 19 (5.46%) Active Directory
3 12 (3.45%) 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 51 (14.66%) Kubernetes
2 16 (4.60%) Ansible
3 13 (3.74%) Grafana
4 12 (3.45%) Terraform
5 11 (3.16%) Prometheus
5 11 (3.16%) SCCM
6 6 (1.72%) Kibana
6 6 (1.72%) Microsoft Intune
6 6 (1.72%) Puppet
7 4 (1.15%) Argo
7 4 (1.15%) CSIRT
7 4 (1.15%) PowerCLI
7 4 (1.15%) vMotion
8 3 (0.86%) Control-M
8 3 (0.86%) IBM Guardium
8 3 (0.86%) Nessus
8 3 (0.86%) Podman
8 3 (0.86%) vCenter Server
9 2 (0.57%) Jamf Pro
9 2 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 66 (18.97%) Microsoft
2 43 (12.36%) Oracle
3 27 (7.76%) ServiceNow
4 23 (6.61%) Talend
5 21 (6.03%) Denodo
5 21 (6.03%) SAP
6 18 (5.17%) Splunk
7 17 (4.89%) VMware
8 13 (3.74%) Cisco
9 8 (2.30%) Adobe
9 8 (2.30%) Atlassian
9 8 (2.30%) 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%) Nimble Storage
257 Problem-Solving jobs in the West Midlands