Problem-Solving Job Trends in the West Midlands

Problem Solving
England > West Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the West Midlands requiring Problem-Solving skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 23 2 6
Rank change year-on-year -21 +4 +4
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 500 753 970
As % of all permanent jobs in the West Midlands 7.48% 21.30% 15.52%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 9.65% 23.08% 18.31%
Number of salaries quoted 370 391 760
10th Percentile £26,250 £29,250 £25,000
25th Percentile £30,250 £38,750 £29,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £53,688 £42,500
Median % change year-on-year -20.84% +26.32% -15.08%
75th Percentile £58,750 £65,000 £57,500
90th Percentile £73,750 £85,000 £67,500
England median annual salary £45,249 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -17.73% +10.00% -9.09%

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 permanent job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in the West Midlands.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 5,184 3,262 5,297
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the West Midlands 77.58% 92.25% 84.75%
Number of salaries quoted 2,864 1,724 4,209
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £26,250
25th Percentile £39,000 £41,250 £35,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £68,750 £68,750 £63,750
90th Percentile £82,500 £82,500 £77,500
England median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -12.00%

Problem-Solving
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

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

Problem-Solving job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

Problem-Solving
Salary Trend in the West Midlands

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Problem-Solving.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Problem-Solving

Problem-Solving
Salary Histogram in the West Midlands

Salary distribution for jobs citing Problem-Solving in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 18 March 2026.

Salary histogram for Problem-Solving in the West Midlands

Problem-Solving
Job Locations in the West Midlands

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Problem-Solving within the West Midlands region over the 6 months to 18 March 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Birmingham -14 159 £47,500 -17.75% 90
Staffordshire -8 95 £30,750 -38.50% 36
Warwickshire -16 62 £32,500 -27.78% 34
Worcestershire -14 41 £37,500 -23.48% 29
Shropshire -14 30 £47,500 +8.57% 21
Herefordshire -4 24 £52,500 +4.48% 5
Coventry -18 20 £67,500 +12.97% 13
Solihull -4 16 £87,500 +59.09% 8
Dudley -3 6 £75,000 +114.29% 2
Halesowen -5 6 £32,500 -
Walsall -2 4 £44,000 -13.73% 5
Wednesbury -5 4 £42,500 -5.56%
Wolverhampton -24 3 £80,000 +146.15% 5
Kingswinford -5 2 £45,250 +20.67% 1
Tipton -7 1 £34,500 -
Sutton Coldfield -8 1 £28,000 -
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 40 (8.00%) SharePoint
2 24 (4.80%) Microsoft Exchange
3 6 (1.20%) Exchange Server 2007
3 6 (1.20%) Exchange Server 2010
3 6 (1.20%) Exchange Server 2013
3 6 (1.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 4 (0.80%) Apache
4 4 (0.80%) IIS
5 2 (0.40%) Confluence
6 1 (0.20%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.20%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.20%) NServiceBus
6 1 (0.20%) SAS
6 1 (0.20%) WebLogic
Applications
1 35 (7.00%) Microsoft Excel
1 35 (7.00%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (2.40%) Spreadsheet
3 8 (1.60%) AutoCAD
4 7 (1.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (1.40%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (1.40%) SOLIDWORKS
5 4 (0.80%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.40%) Trello
7 1 (0.20%) Abaqus
7 1 (0.20%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 19 (3.80%) Dynamics CRM
2 7 (1.40%) NetSuite
3 3 (0.60%) Dynamics NAV
3 3 (0.60%) SAP Business ByDesign
4 2 (0.40%) Infor CloudSuite Industrial (formerly SyteLine)
4 2 (0.40%) SAP MM
4 2 (0.40%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.20%) Exchequer
5 1 (0.20%) Raiser’s Edge
5 1 (0.20%) Sage X3
5 1 (0.20%) SAP Business One
5 1 (0.20%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 122 (24.40%) Azure
2 99 (19.80%) Microsoft 365
3 43 (8.60%) Power Platform
4 37 (7.40%) AWS
5 36 (7.20%) SaaS
6 35 (7.00%) Entra ID
7 20 (4.00%) Dynamics 365
8 16 (3.20%) Power Automate
9 15 (3.00%) PowerApps
10 11 (2.20%) OneDrive
11 9 (1.80%) Google Workspace
11 9 (1.80%) Serverless
12 8 (1.60%) Azure Data Factory
13 7 (1.40%) GCP
14 5 (1.00%) Amazon S3
14 5 (1.00%) AWS Lambda
14 5 (1.00%) Azure DevOps
14 5 (1.00%) Azure Sentinel
14 5 (1.00%) OCI
15 4 (0.80%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 31 (6.20%) VPN
2 25 (5.00%) DNS
3 24 (4.80%) Internet
3 24 (4.80%) WAN
4 23 (4.60%) DHCP
5 18 (3.60%) Firewall
5 18 (3.60%) LAN
5 18 (3.60%) Wi-Fi
6 9 (1.80%) SD-WAN
7 7 (1.40%) VLAN
7 7 (1.40%) VoIP
8 6 (1.20%) Broadband
8 6 (1.20%) Wireless
9 5 (1.00%) ADSL
9 5 (1.00%) Ethernet
9 5 (1.00%) Network Security
9 5 (1.00%) TCP/IP
9 5 (1.00%) VDSL
10 2 (0.40%) NAS
10 2 (0.40%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (7.40%) Power BI
2 17 (3.40%) SQL Server
3 12 (2.40%) MySQL
4 10 (2.00%) Oracle Reports
4 10 (2.00%) PostgreSQL
4 10 (2.00%) Relational Database
5 9 (1.80%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 7 (1.40%) Tableau
7 6 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 5 (1.00%) Amazon RDS
8 5 (1.00%) Crystal Reports
8 5 (1.00%) Data Warehouse
8 5 (1.00%) Power Query
9 4 (0.80%) Metadata
9 4 (0.80%) NoSQL
9 4 (0.80%) Redis
9 4 (0.80%) TimescaleDB
10 3 (0.60%) Data Mining
10 3 (0.60%) GIS
10 3 (0.60%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 20 (4.00%) Git
1 20 (4.00%) JIRA
2 7 (1.40%) JUnit
3 6 (1.20%) Maven
3 6 (1.20%) Mockito
4 5 (1.00%) GitLab
4 5 (1.00%) Jenkins
5 3 (0.60%) Appcelerator Titanium
6 2 (0.40%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
6 2 (0.40%) Visual Studio Code
7 1 (0.20%) Babel
7 1 (0.20%) Balsamiq
7 1 (0.20%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.20%) Cucumber
7 1 (0.20%) MLflow
7 1 (0.20%) Postman
7 1 (0.20%) Snyk
7 1 (0.20%) SoapUI
7 1 (0.20%) Vite
7 1 (0.20%) webpack
General
1 236 (47.20%) Social Skills
2 152 (30.40%) Analytical Skills
3 113 (22.60%) Finance
4 54 (10.80%) Manufacturing
5 40 (8.00%) Legal
5 40 (8.00%) Organisational Skills
6 33 (6.60%) Law
7 32 (6.40%) Public Sector
8 27 (5.40%) Retail
9 20 (4.00%) Marketing
10 12 (2.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 11 (2.20%) Banking
11 11 (2.20%) Presentation Skills
12 10 (2.00%) Automotive
13 8 (1.60%) Telecoms
14 7 (1.40%) Aerospace
15 6 (1.20%) Advertising
15 6 (1.20%) Documentation Skills
16 5 (1.00%) Games
17 4 (0.80%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 88 (17.60%) Analyst
2 83 (16.60%) Support Engineer
3 75 (15.00%) IT Support
4 56 (11.20%) IT Engineer
5 46 (9.20%) IT Support Engineer
6 45 (9.00%) Lead
7 44 (8.80%) Senior
8 43 (8.60%) Developer
9 38 (7.60%) Technical Support
10 35 (7.00%) Technical Engineer
10 35 (7.00%) Technical Support Engineer
11 31 (6.20%) Support Analyst
12 21 (4.20%) Architect
12 21 (4.20%) Senior Analyst
13 20 (4.00%) Business Analyst
14 18 (3.60%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 17 (3.40%) Applications Support
15 17 (3.40%) Instructor
16 16 (3.20%) Consultant
17 14 (2.80%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (3.40%) REST
2 16 (3.20%) React
3 15 (3.00%) .NET
4 8 (1.60%) HTML
5 7 (1.40%) CSS
5 7 (1.40%) JSON
5 7 (1.40%) Node.js
6 6 (1.20%) AngularJS
7 5 (1.00%) Vue
8 4 (0.80%) LAMP
8 4 (0.80%) Oracle Fusion
9 3 (0.60%) .NET Framework
9 3 (0.60%) GraphQL
9 3 (0.60%) Laravel
9 3 (0.60%) Razor View Engine
9 3 (0.60%) RESTful
9 3 (0.60%) Spring
9 3 (0.60%) Web Services
9 3 (0.60%) WinForms
9 3 (0.60%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 38 (7.60%) Driving Licence
2 33 (6.60%) Onboarding
3 28 (5.60%) Self-Motivation
4 23 (4.60%) Management Information System
5 19 (3.80%) Social Media
6 15 (3.00%) FMCG
7 11 (2.20%) Product Ownership
8 10 (2.00%) Enterprise Software
8 10 (2.00%) Legacy Systems
9 9 (1.80%) IoT
10 8 (1.60%) Analytical Mindset
11 7 (1.40%) Cyber Defence
11 7 (1.40%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 5 (1.00%) Data Centre
12 5 (1.00%) Data Structures
12 5 (1.00%) EPoS
12 5 (1.00%) Linux Command Line
13 4 (0.80%) Hybrid Cloud
13 4 (0.80%) Mobile App
13 4 (0.80%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 70 (14.00%) Windows
2 19 (3.80%) Windows 10
3 18 (3.60%) Linux
4 10 (2.00%) Apple iOS
5 9 (1.80%) Windows Server
6 6 (1.20%) Windows 7
7 2 (0.40%) Android
7 2 (0.40%) Unix
8 1 (0.20%) CentOS
8 1 (0.20%) Debian
8 1 (0.20%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
8 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 97 (19.40%) Continuous Improvement
2 78 (15.60%) Agile
3 62 (12.40%) Project Management
4 55 (11.00%) ITIL
5 54 (10.80%) Customer Service
6 51 (10.20%) Decision-Making
7 48 (9.60%) Analytics
7 48 (9.60%) Mentoring
8 43 (8.60%) CRM
9 42 (8.40%) Business Intelligence
10 41 (8.20%) Coaching
11 39 (7.80%) ERP
11 39 (7.80%) Roadmaps
12 36 (7.20%) Migration
13 33 (6.60%) Time Management
14 32 (6.40%) Customer Experience
15 31 (6.20%) Cybersecurity
16 30 (6.00%) AI
16 30 (6.00%) Stakeholder Management
17 29 (5.80%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 79 (15.80%) SQL
2 29 (5.80%) Python
3 23 (4.60%) JavaScript
4 18 (3.60%) Java
5 17 (3.40%) PowerShell
6 14 (2.80%) C#
7 12 (2.40%) PHP
7 12 (2.40%) T-SQL
8 9 (1.80%) Bash
8 9 (1.80%) C
8 9 (1.80%) TypeScript
9 8 (1.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 8 (1.60%) Ladder Logic
10 6 (1.20%) PL/SQL
11 5 (1.00%) R
12 4 (0.80%) C++
13 3 (0.60%) VB.NET
14 2 (0.40%) Delphi
14 2 (0.40%) Google Apps Script
14 2 (0.40%) VB
Qualifications
1 87 (17.40%) Degree
2 47 (9.40%) Security Cleared
3 33 (6.60%) SC Cleared
4 23 (4.60%) DBS Check
5 22 (4.40%) Microsoft Certification
6 13 (2.60%) Computer Science Degree
7 11 (2.20%) A+ Certification
7 11 (2.20%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (1.60%) CISSP
8 8 (1.60%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 7 (1.40%) ACCA
9 7 (1.40%) CIMA
9 7 (1.40%) CISA
9 7 (1.40%) CompTIA Security+
9 7 (1.40%) SSCP
10 6 (1.20%) MCITP
11 5 (1.00%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
12 4 (0.80%) AWS Certification
12 4 (0.80%) Oracle Certification
12 4 (0.80%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (5.80%) Data Quality
2 22 (4.40%) QA
3 20 (4.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 17 (3.40%) NIST
5 15 (3.00%) GDPR
6 10 (2.00%) Cyber Essentials
6 10 (2.00%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 7 (1.40%) SLA
8 5 (1.00%) ISO/IEC 20000
9 4 (0.80%) HIPAA
10 3 (0.60%) Actionable Recommendations
11 2 (0.40%) Accessibility
11 2 (0.40%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 2 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 19770
11 2 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.40%) SOC 2
12 1 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
12 1 (0.20%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 1 (0.20%) ISO 9001
12 1 (0.20%) WCAG
System Software
1 50 (10.00%) Active Directory
2 21 (4.20%) Docker
3 9 (1.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (1.00%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.40%) Firmware
5 2 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 25 (5.00%) Microsoft Intune
2 20 (4.00%) Kubernetes
3 13 (2.60%) Terraform
4 6 (1.20%) Ansible
5 3 (0.60%) Grafana
5 3 (0.60%) Nagios
5 3 (0.60%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.20%) Argo
7 1 (0.20%) AWS Copilot
7 1 (0.20%) FortiGate
7 1 (0.20%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.20%) Puppet
7 1 (0.20%) SCCM
7 1 (0.20%) Symantec Endpoint Protection
Vendors
1 148 (29.60%) Microsoft
2 28 (5.60%) Oracle
3 26 (5.20%) SAP
4 17 (3.40%) Cisco
5 12 (2.40%) Google
6 11 (2.20%) Salesforce
7 9 (1.80%) Databricks
7 9 (1.80%) HP
7 9 (1.80%) Sage
7 9 (1.80%) VMware
8 7 (1.40%) Infor
8 7 (1.40%) Meraki
8 7 (1.40%) ServiceNow
9 6 (1.20%) Dell
10 5 (1.00%) Epicor
10 5 (1.00%) Zscaler
11 4 (0.80%) Avaya
11 4 (0.80%) SolarWinds
12 3 (0.60%) Cognos
13 2 (0.40%) Kaseya