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

6 months to
27 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 261 216 292
As % of all contract jobs in Berkshire 16.86% 16.55% 15.67%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 19.52% 18.02% 17.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 172 106 181
10th Percentile £219 £225 £205
25th Percentile £398 £400 £213
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £520 £400
Median % change year-on-year -8.65% +30.00% -23.81%
75th Percentile £542 £638 £575
90th Percentile £650 £651 £638
South East median daily rate £475 £500 £450
% change year-on-year -5.00% +11.11% -14.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 1 11
10th Percentile £14.50 - £30.41
25th Percentile £15.25 £26.00 £48.40
Median hourly rate £20.79 £27.00 £49.73
Median % change year-on-year -23.00% -45.71% -38.88%
75th Percentile £28.00 £28.00 £60.50
90th Percentile £97.00 - £61.60
South East median hourly rate £20.00 £23.50 £30.00
% change year-on-year -14.89% -21.67% -23.52%

All Process & 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 1,337 1,199 1,714
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Berkshire 86.37% 91.88% 92.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 917 652 980
10th Percentile £293 £260 £210
25th Percentile £403 £400 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -0.79%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £600
90th Percentile £650 £671 £675
South East median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% +1.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 36 91
10th Percentile £16.06 £26.13 £24.34
25th Percentile £20.57 £42.79 £45.21
Median hourly rate £58.00 £61.50 £60.14
Median % change year-on-year -5.68% +2.25% -7.48%
75th Percentile £91.81 £65.62 £67.50
90th Percentile £105.65 £76.35 £85.61
South East median hourly rate £23.58 £42.88 £48.40
% change year-on-year -45.02% -11.40% +9.38%

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 27 January 2026.

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 27 January 2026.

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 27 January 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
Wokingham +7 107 £431 -31.00% 13
Reading -7 87 £500 -9.09% 55
Windsor +2 16 £494 +9.72% 1
Bracknell +1 16 £625 +4.17% 10
Slough 0 14 £475 +98.80% 199
Thatcham - 3 £535 -
Hungerford - 2 - - 5
Maidenhead - 1 - - 3
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 (5.75%) SharePoint
2 13 (4.98%) Confluence
3 6 (2.30%) CMS
4 3 (1.15%) Anypoint
4 3 (1.15%) Microsoft Exchange
5 2 (0.77%) Apache
5 2 (0.77%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.38%) Camunda
6 1 (0.38%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.38%) Smallworld
Applications
1 11 (4.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (3.83%) Microsoft Project
3 7 (2.68%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (1.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.77%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 4 (1.53%) SAP MDG
2 2 (0.77%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.77%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.77%) SAP SD
3 1 (0.38%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.38%) Maximo
3 1 (0.38%) Oracle BRM
3 1 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.38%) SAP WM
Cloud Services
1 97 (37.16%) Azure
2 88 (33.72%) AWS
3 55 (21.07%) GCP
4 16 (6.13%) Power Platform
5 13 (4.98%) Azure DevOps
6 12 (4.60%) Entra ID
7 11 (4.21%) SaaS
8 10 (3.83%) Microsoft 365
8 10 (3.83%) Serverless
9 7 (2.68%) GitHub
10 5 (1.92%) GitHub Actions
11 3 (1.15%) Amazon Cognito
11 3 (1.15%) AWS CloudFormation
11 3 (1.15%) AWS Lambda
11 3 (1.15%) Azure API Management
11 3 (1.15%) Azure Functions
11 3 (1.15%) Azure Monitor
11 3 (1.15%) Boomi
11 3 (1.15%) Power Automate
12 2 (0.77%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 21 (8.05%) Network Security
2 17 (6.51%) DNS
3 16 (6.13%) TCP/IP
4 15 (5.75%) DHCP
5 11 (4.21%) VLAN
6 8 (3.07%) Firewall
7 6 (2.30%) MPLS
7 6 (2.30%) WAN
8 4 (1.53%) Internet
8 4 (1.53%) Intranet
8 4 (1.53%) VPN
9 3 (1.15%) 5G
9 3 (1.15%) BGP
9 3 (1.15%) SD-WAN
9 3 (1.15%) Wireless
10 2 (0.77%) 2G
10 2 (0.77%) Mobile Backhaul
10 2 (0.77%) NaaS
10 2 (0.77%) TACACS
10 2 (0.77%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (4.21%) Power BI
1 11 (4.21%) Relational Database
2 7 (2.68%) MongoDB
3 6 (2.30%) NoSQL
4 5 (1.92%) RDBMS
5 4 (1.53%) MySQL
5 4 (1.53%) Oracle BI Publisher
5 4 (1.53%) Oracle Reports
5 4 (1.53%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (1.53%) SQL Server
5 4 (1.53%) Tableau
6 3 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
6 3 (1.15%) Data Warehouse
6 3 (1.15%) Oracle Database
7 2 (0.77%) Big Data
7 2 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.77%) Hadoop
7 2 (0.77%) SAP HANA
8 1 (0.38%) Apache Cassandra
8 1 (0.38%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 21 (8.05%) JIRA
2 9 (3.45%) Git
3 8 (3.07%) Jenkins
4 4 (1.53%) HP UFT
5 2 (0.77%) Bitbucket
5 2 (0.77%) Burp Suite
6 1 (0.38%) Appium
6 1 (0.38%) Cypress.io
6 1 (0.38%) GitLab
6 1 (0.38%) Gradle
6 1 (0.38%) Maven
6 1 (0.38%) Selenium
General
1 147 (56.32%) Social Skills
2 117 (44.83%) Analytical Skills
3 26 (9.96%) Documentation Skills
3 26 (9.96%) Public Sector
4 16 (6.13%) Influencing Skills
5 14 (5.36%) Telecoms
6 12 (4.60%) Organisational Skills
7 10 (3.83%) Finance
8 6 (2.30%) Manufacturing
9 5 (1.92%) Retail
10 4 (1.53%) Billing
11 3 (1.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (1.15%) Marketing
12 2 (0.77%) Automotive
12 2 (0.77%) Electronics
12 2 (0.77%) Law
12 2 (0.77%) Legal
12 2 (0.77%) Presentation Skills
13 1 (0.38%) Advertising
13 1 (0.38%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 21 (8.05%) Analyst
2 19 (7.28%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 19 (7.28%) Senior
2 19 (7.28%) Support Engineer
3 17 (6.51%) Infrastructure Support
3 17 (6.51%) Infrastructure Support Engineer
4 16 (6.13%) Architect
4 16 (6.13%) Consultant
4 16 (6.13%) Lead
4 16 (6.13%) Project Manager
5 12 (4.60%) SIEM Engineer
6 10 (3.83%) Developer
7 9 (3.45%) Delivery Manager
8 7 (2.68%) Support Analyst
8 7 (2.68%) Technical Leader
9 6 (2.30%) IT Support
9 6 (2.30%) Project Planner
9 6 (2.30%) Service Manager
9 6 (2.30%) Site Engineer
9 6 (2.30%) Technology Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (8.81%) REST
2 21 (8.05%) LDAP
3 19 (7.28%) SOAP
4 6 (2.30%) GraphQL
4 6 (2.30%) Node.js
4 6 (2.30%) OAuth
5 4 (1.53%) JSON
5 4 (1.53%) Pandas
5 4 (1.53%) React
5 4 (1.53%) Web Services
6 3 (1.15%) .NET
6 3 (1.15%) .NET Core
6 3 (1.15%) ARM Templates
6 3 (1.15%) NumPy
6 3 (1.15%) OAuth2
6 3 (1.15%) OpenID
6 3 (1.15%) SAML
6 3 (1.15%) scikit-learn
7 2 (0.77%) Microsoft Graph
7 2 (0.77%) Plotly
Miscellaneous
1 19 (7.28%) Analytical Mindset
2 11 (4.21%) Cyber Security Posture
2 11 (4.21%) Distributed Systems
3 9 (3.45%) Management Information System
3 9 (3.45%) Onboarding
4 8 (3.07%) CMDB
4 8 (3.07%) Self-Motivation
5 7 (2.68%) Algorithms
5 7 (2.68%) Cloud Native
5 7 (2.68%) Mobile App
6 5 (1.92%) Enterprise Software
6 5 (1.92%) PKI
6 5 (1.92%) Security Posture
7 4 (1.53%) Data Centre
7 4 (1.53%) Data Protection Act
7 4 (1.53%) Product Ownership
7 4 (1.53%) Replication
8 3 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
8 3 (1.15%) Linux Command Line
9 2 (0.77%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 32 (12.26%) Linux
2 31 (11.88%) Windows
3 12 (4.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (1.15%) Windows 10
5 2 (0.77%) Kali Linux
5 2 (0.77%) VMS
5 2 (0.77%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.38%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.38%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 63 (24.14%) CI/CD
2 60 (22.99%) ITIL
3 54 (20.69%) DevOps
4 52 (19.92%) Agile
5 48 (18.39%) Cybersecurity
6 40 (15.33%) Stakeholder Management
7 39 (14.94%) Continuous Improvement
8 36 (13.79%) DevSecOps
8 36 (13.79%) SIEM
9 33 (12.64%) Project Management
10 32 (12.26%) Change Management
10 32 (12.26%) Service Management
11 30 (11.49%) ITSM
12 29 (11.11%) Disaster Recovery
13 28 (10.73%) Test Automation
14 24 (9.20%) Decision-Making
15 23 (8.81%) Analytical Thinking
15 23 (8.81%) PRINCE2
16 22 (8.43%) Root Cause Analysis
16 22 (8.43%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 73 (27.97%) Python
2 42 (16.09%) PowerShell
3 25 (9.58%) Java
4 23 (8.81%) JavaScript
5 17 (6.51%) SQL
6 12 (4.60%) Kusto Query Language
7 11 (4.21%) Go
8 6 (2.30%) Bash
8 6 (2.30%) C#
8 6 (2.30%) TypeScript
9 4 (1.53%) VBScript
10 3 (1.15%) DataWeave
10 3 (1.15%) PHP
11 2 (0.77%) Groovy
11 2 (0.77%) R
11 2 (0.77%) T-SQL
12 1 (0.38%) Jython
12 1 (0.38%) Magik
12 1 (0.38%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 100 (38.31%) Security Cleared
2 83 (31.80%) SC Cleared
3 36 (13.79%) CISSP
4 21 (8.05%) Degree
5 19 (7.28%) CISM
6 14 (5.36%) GIAC
6 14 (5.36%) Microsoft Certification
7 13 (4.98%) CEH
8 12 (4.60%) Azure Certification
9 11 (4.21%) Network+ Certification
9 11 (4.21%) PMP
9 11 (4.21%) Server+ Certification
10 10 (3.83%) AWS Certification
10 10 (3.83%) Computer Science Degree
10 10 (3.83%) PMI Certification
11 8 (3.07%) ISTQB
12 7 (2.68%) Cisco Certification
13 5 (1.92%) A+ Certification
13 5 (1.92%) CCIE
13 5 (1.92%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (10.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 27 (10.34%) NIST
2 27 (10.34%) QA
3 24 (9.20%) GDPR
4 9 (3.45%) PMO
5 7 (2.68%) GRC
6 3 (1.15%) Actionable Recommendations
6 3 (1.15%) Data Quality
6 3 (1.15%) SLA
7 1 (0.38%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.38%) NIST 800
System Software
1 32 (12.26%) Active Directory
2 17 (6.51%) VMware Infrastructure
3 14 (5.36%) Hyper-V
4 5 (1.92%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (1.15%) Docker
6 2 (0.77%) NFS
6 2 (0.77%) VMware NSX
7 1 (0.38%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 19 (7.28%) Ansible
2 17 (6.51%) Kubernetes
3 12 (4.60%) Kibana
3 12 (4.60%) Red Hat Satellite
4 8 (3.07%) Terraform
5 4 (1.53%) Microsoft Intune
5 4 (1.53%) Nessus
6 3 (1.15%) CloudHub
6 3 (1.15%) SCCM
6 3 (1.15%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.77%) BMC PATROL
7 2 (0.77%) Nmap
8 1 (0.38%) Amdocs OSS
8 1 (0.38%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
8 1 (0.38%) Failover Clustering
8 1 (0.38%) OpenVAS
8 1 (0.38%) QRadar
8 1 (0.38%) vRealize
8 1 (0.38%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 47 (18.01%) Microsoft
2 30 (11.49%) VMware
3 22 (8.43%) CyberArk
3 22 (8.43%) ServiceNow
4 20 (7.66%) BeyondTrust
5 19 (7.28%) Google
6 18 (6.90%) Oracle
7 12 (4.60%) FireEye
7 12 (4.60%) Red Hat
7 12 (4.60%) Tanium
8 8 (3.07%) SAP
8 8 (3.07%) Workday
9 6 (2.30%) Cisco
9 6 (2.30%) Remedy
10 5 (1.92%) BMC
11 4 (1.53%) Fortinet
11 4 (1.53%) Juniper
11 4 (1.53%) Salesforce
12 3 (1.15%) MuleSoft
12 3 (1.15%) Splunk