Problem-Solving Contract Job Trends in Berkshire

Problem Solving
South East > Berkshire

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in Berkshire requiring Problem-Solving skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 4 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 5 7 5
Rank change year-on-year +2 -2 +9
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 245 224 256
As % of all contract jobs in Berkshire 17.12% 14.10% 14.70%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 19.10% 15.68% 16.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 143 106 172
10th Percentile £219 £235 £205
25th Percentile £403 £475 £213
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £550 £400
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% +37.50% -20.00%
75th Percentile £538 £630 £538
90th Percentile £638 £651 £600
South East median daily rate £471 £500 £450
% change year-on-year -5.80% +11.11% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 4 8
10th Percentile £14.50 £22.33 £30.29
25th Percentile £17.50 £24.69 £43.90
Median hourly rate £20.79 £27.75 £48.40
Median % change year-on-year -25.08% -42.67% -
75th Percentile £38.42 £36.93 £50.19
90th Percentile £97.00 £50.74 £57.71
South East median hourly rate £19.00 £27.00 £42.45
% change year-on-year -29.63% -36.40% +24.46%

All Process and Methodology Skills
Berkshire

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 Berkshire.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,283 1,429 1,589
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Berkshire 89.66% 89.93% 91.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 843 785 956
10th Percentile £306 £315 £213
25th Percentile £413 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £543 £500
Median % change year-on-year -7.83% +8.50% -
75th Percentile £600 £638 £615
90th Percentile £650 £688 £696
South East median daily rate £500 £513 £523
% change year-on-year -2.44% -1.91% +1.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 75 45 70
10th Percentile £14.75 £22.85 £24.33
25th Percentile £18.87 £41.25 £48.40
Median hourly rate £37.28 £58.38 £61.45
Median % change year-on-year -36.14% -5.00% +22.90%
75th Percentile £77.50 £64.73 £67.75
90th Percentile £95.00 £75.19 £76.47
South East median hourly rate £22.00 £55.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year -60.00% +4.76% +21.84%

Problem-Solving
Job Vacancy Trend in Berkshire

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

Problem-Solving job vacancy trend in Berkshire

Problem-Solving
Daily Rate Trend in Berkshire

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Berkshire citing Problem-Solving.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Berkshire citing Problem-Solving

Problem-Solving
Daily Rate Histogram in Berkshire

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Problem-Solving in Berkshire over the 6 months to 4 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Problem-Solving in Berkshire

Problem-Solving
Hourly Rate Trend in Berkshire

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Berkshire citing Problem-Solving.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Berkshire citing Problem-Solving

Problem-Solving
Hourly Rate Histogram in Berkshire

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Problem-Solving in Berkshire over the 6 months to 4 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Problem-Solving in Berkshire

Problem-Solving
Contract Job Locations in Berkshire

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 Berkshire region over the 6 months to 4 December 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
Reading -6 87 £513 -5.96% 108
Wokingham +16 80 £445 -19.09% 13
Bracknell +1 22 £650 +33.33% 11
Slough -1 13 £475 +12.43% 33
Windsor -5 11 £475 -5.00% 5
Thatcham - 4 £535 -
Maidenhead - 4 £200 - 13
Problem-Solving
South East

Problem-Solving
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Berkshire 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 15 (6.12%) Confluence
2 10 (4.08%) SharePoint
3 8 (3.27%) CMS
4 4 (1.63%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (1.22%) Anypoint
5 3 (1.22%) Apache
5 3 (1.22%) Apache Spark
5 3 (1.22%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.41%) Camunda
6 1 (0.41%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.41%) Smallworld
Applications
1 14 (5.71%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (2.86%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (1.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (1.63%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.82%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 3 (1.22%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.82%) Oracle ERP
2 2 (0.82%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.82%) SAP GRC
2 2 (0.82%) SAP MDG
3 1 (0.41%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.41%) Infor CloudSuite Industrial (formerly SyteLine)
3 1 (0.41%) Maximo
3 1 (0.41%) Oracle BRM
3 1 (0.41%) SAP WM
Cloud Services
1 87 (35.51%) Azure
2 79 (32.24%) AWS
3 55 (22.45%) GCP
4 19 (7.76%) Power Platform
5 16 (6.53%) Entra ID
6 11 (4.49%) GitHub
7 10 (4.08%) Azure DevOps
7 10 (4.08%) SaaS
8 9 (3.67%) Microsoft 365
9 5 (2.04%) Cloud Computing
9 5 (2.04%) GitHub Actions
10 4 (1.63%) AWS CloudFormation
10 4 (1.63%) dbt
10 4 (1.63%) Serverless
11 3 (1.22%) Amazon Cognito
11 3 (1.22%) AWS Lambda
11 3 (1.22%) Azure Functions
11 3 (1.22%) Azure Monitor
11 3 (1.22%) Boomi
11 3 (1.22%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 18 (7.35%) Network Security
2 17 (6.94%) DNS
2 17 (6.94%) TCP/IP
3 14 (5.71%) DHCP
4 12 (4.90%) Firewall
5 11 (4.49%) VLAN
6 7 (2.86%) WAN
7 5 (2.04%) MPLS
8 4 (1.63%) 5G
8 4 (1.63%) Internet
8 4 (1.63%) SAN
9 3 (1.22%) Broadband
9 3 (1.22%) VPN
9 3 (1.22%) Wi-Fi
9 3 (1.22%) Wireless
10 2 (0.82%) 2G
10 2 (0.82%) Intrusion Detection
10 2 (0.82%) SNMP
10 2 (0.82%) SSL
10 2 (0.82%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (6.94%) Relational Database
2 13 (5.31%) Power BI
3 10 (4.08%) Tableau
4 9 (3.67%) NoSQL
5 7 (2.86%) Data Warehouse
6 6 (2.45%) MongoDB
6 6 (2.45%) MySQL
6 6 (2.45%) PostgreSQL
6 6 (2.45%) SQL Server
7 4 (1.63%) Amazon RDS
7 4 (1.63%) RDBMS
8 3 (1.22%) Big Data
8 3 (1.22%) Hadoop
9 2 (0.82%) Data Lake
9 2 (0.82%) Oracle Database
9 2 (0.82%) SAP HANA
10 1 (0.41%) Amazon Athena
10 1 (0.41%) Metadata
10 1 (0.41%) Oracle BI Publisher
10 1 (0.41%) Redis
Development Applications
1 24 (9.80%) JIRA
2 13 (5.31%) Git
3 4 (1.63%) Jenkins
4 3 (1.22%) GitLab
5 2 (0.82%) Bitbucket
5 2 (0.82%) Cypress.io
6 1 (0.41%) Appium
6 1 (0.41%) Burp Suite
6 1 (0.41%) Gradle
6 1 (0.41%) Maven
6 1 (0.41%) Mocha
6 1 (0.41%) Selenium
General
1 142 (57.96%) Social Skills
2 102 (41.63%) Analytical Skills
3 25 (10.20%) Telecoms
4 23 (9.39%) Documentation Skills
4 23 (9.39%) Public Sector
5 17 (6.94%) Finance
6 12 (4.90%) Organisational Skills
7 10 (4.08%) Influencing Skills
8 9 (3.67%) Retail
9 6 (2.45%) Manufacturing
10 4 (1.63%) Automotive
10 4 (1.63%) Billing
11 3 (1.22%) Legal
12 2 (0.82%) Aerospace
12 2 (0.82%) Electronics
12 2 (0.82%) Marketing
12 2 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
13 1 (0.41%) Agriculture
13 1 (0.41%) French Language
13 1 (0.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 23 (9.39%) Analyst
1 23 (9.39%) Support Engineer
2 22 (8.98%) Architect
3 19 (7.76%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 17 (6.94%) Infrastructure Support
4 17 (6.94%) Infrastructure Support Engineer
5 15 (6.12%) Lead
5 15 (6.12%) Project Manager
6 13 (5.31%) Senior
7 12 (4.90%) Consultant
8 11 (4.49%) Developer
9 10 (4.08%) DevOps Engineer
10 9 (3.67%) Security Architect
11 8 (3.27%) IT Support
12 7 (2.86%) Support Analyst
13 6 (2.45%) AWS Engineer
13 6 (2.45%) Business Analyst
13 6 (2.45%) Cloud Engineer
14 5 (2.04%) Azure Engineer
14 5 (2.04%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (8.98%) REST
2 17 (6.94%) LDAP
3 16 (6.53%) SOAP
4 8 (3.27%) OAuth
4 8 (3.27%) scikit-learn
5 7 (2.86%) GraphQL
6 6 (2.45%) Pandas
7 5 (2.04%) NumPy
7 5 (2.04%) React
8 4 (1.63%) .NET
8 4 (1.63%) JSON
8 4 (1.63%) Node.js
8 4 (1.63%) OAuth2
8 4 (1.63%) OpenID
8 4 (1.63%) PyTorch
8 4 (1.63%) TensorFlow
8 4 (1.63%) Web Services
9 3 (1.22%) HTML
9 3 (1.22%) SAML
9 3 (1.22%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 16 (6.53%) Analytical Mindset
2 12 (4.90%) Algorithms
3 10 (4.08%) Cloud Native
3 10 (4.08%) Management Information System
3 10 (4.08%) Security Posture
4 9 (3.67%) Mobile App
5 8 (3.27%) Data Protection Act
5 8 (3.27%) Enterprise Software
5 8 (3.27%) Self-Motivation
6 7 (2.86%) CMDB
7 6 (2.45%) Distributed Systems
7 6 (2.45%) Hybrid Cloud
7 6 (2.45%) Onboarding
8 5 (2.04%) Cyber Security Posture
8 5 (2.04%) PKI
9 4 (1.63%) Data Centre
10 3 (1.22%) Cloud Security Posture
10 3 (1.22%) Legacy Systems
10 3 (1.22%) Linux Command Line
10 3 (1.22%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 35 (14.29%) Windows
2 33 (13.47%) Linux
3 11 (4.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (1.63%) Windows Server 2019
5 3 (1.22%) Unix
5 3 (1.22%) Windows 10
5 3 (1.22%) Windows Server 2012
5 3 (1.22%) Windows Server 2016
6 2 (0.82%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.41%) Kali Linux
7 1 (0.41%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 56 (22.86%) CI/CD
1 56 (22.86%) DevOps
2 53 (21.63%) ITIL
3 52 (21.22%) Agile
4 41 (16.73%) Cybersecurity
4 41 (16.73%) Stakeholder Management
5 32 (13.06%) Change Management
5 32 (13.06%) Continuous Improvement
5 32 (13.06%) DevSecOps
6 31 (12.65%) SIEM
7 29 (11.84%) Project Management
7 29 (11.84%) Service Management
8 27 (11.02%) Disaster Recovery
8 27 (11.02%) Validation
9 26 (10.61%) ITSM
9 26 (10.61%) Test Automation
10 25 (10.20%) Decision-Making
11 22 (8.98%) Root Cause Analysis
12 21 (8.57%) Computer Science
13 20 (8.16%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 74 (30.20%) Python
2 33 (13.47%) PowerShell
3 29 (11.84%) SQL
4 21 (8.57%) JavaScript
5 20 (8.16%) Java
6 7 (2.86%) Bash
6 7 (2.86%) C#
7 6 (2.45%) Go
8 5 (2.04%) Kusto Query Language
8 5 (2.04%) R
9 4 (1.63%) Shell Script
10 3 (1.22%) C
10 3 (1.22%) C++
10 3 (1.22%) DataWeave
10 3 (1.22%) PHP
11 2 (0.82%) Groovy
11 2 (0.82%) T-SQL
12 1 (0.41%) ABAP
12 1 (0.41%) Jython
12 1 (0.41%) Perl
Qualifications
1 79 (32.24%) Security Cleared
2 65 (26.53%) SC Cleared
3 36 (14.69%) Degree
4 31 (12.65%) CISSP
5 18 (7.35%) CISM
6 17 (6.94%) Computer Science Degree
7 16 (6.53%) AWS Certification
8 15 (6.12%) Azure Certification
8 15 (6.12%) Microsoft Certification
9 14 (5.71%) PMP
10 12 (4.90%) Master's Degree
10 12 (4.90%) PMI Certification
11 11 (4.49%) Network+ Certification
11 11 (4.49%) Server+ Certification
12 10 (4.08%) Cisco Certification
13 8 (3.27%) CEH
14 7 (2.86%) GIAC
14 7 (2.86%) ISTQB
15 5 (2.04%) CCIE
15 5 (2.04%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (12.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 29 (11.84%) GDPR
2 29 (11.84%) NIST
3 25 (10.20%) QA
4 10 (4.08%) Data Quality
5 9 (3.67%) GRC
6 4 (1.63%) PCI DSS
6 4 (1.63%) PMO
6 4 (1.63%) SLA
7 3 (1.22%) EU AI Act
7 3 (1.22%) HIPAA
7 3 (1.22%) PSD2
8 1 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.41%) NIST 800
System Software
1 31 (12.65%) Active Directory
2 18 (7.35%) VMware Infrastructure
3 14 (5.71%) Hyper-V
4 8 (3.27%) Docker
5 5 (2.04%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.82%) NFS
6 2 (0.82%) VMware NSX
6 2 (0.82%) vSphere
7 1 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 18 (7.35%) Kubernetes
2 14 (5.71%) Ansible
3 12 (4.90%) Terraform
4 8 (3.27%) Red Hat Satellite
5 5 (2.04%) Kibana
6 4 (1.63%) SCCM
7 3 (1.22%) CloudHub
7 3 (1.22%) Microsoft Intune
7 3 (1.22%) NetBackup
8 2 (0.82%) BMC PATROL
8 2 (0.82%) Nessus
8 2 (0.82%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.41%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 1 (0.41%) Amdocs OSS
9 1 (0.41%) Grafana
9 1 (0.41%) Nmap
9 1 (0.41%) Puppet
9 1 (0.41%) QRadar
9 1 (0.41%) vRealize
9 1 (0.41%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 53 (21.63%) Microsoft
2 27 (11.02%) VMware
3 21 (8.57%) ServiceNow
4 19 (7.76%) CyberArk
4 19 (7.76%) Google
5 17 (6.94%) BeyondTrust
6 15 (6.12%) Oracle
7 11 (4.49%) Red Hat
8 10 (4.08%) Workday
9 8 (3.27%) Remedy
10 7 (2.86%) Cisco
10 7 (2.86%) SAP
11 6 (2.45%) FireEye
11 6 (2.45%) Splunk
11 6 (2.45%) Tanium
12 4 (1.63%) BMC
12 4 (1.63%) Fortinet
12 4 (1.63%) Juniper
12 4 (1.63%) Salesforce
13 3 (1.22%) HP