Problem-Solving Contracts in the Thames Valley

Problem Solving
South East > Thames Valley

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the Thames Valley requiring Problem-Solving skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Problem-Solving over the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 3 6 12
Rank change year-on-year +3 +6 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 322 362 308
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 21.31% 13.48% 10.51%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 22.95% 15.47% 11.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 190 200 220
10th Percentile £229 £205 £316
25th Percentile £363 £227 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £455 £522
Median % change year-on-year +9.89% -12.79% +15.94%
75th Percentile £600 £608 £617
90th Percentile £650 £651 £678
South East median daily rate £500 £475 £525
% change year-on-year +5.26% -9.52% +10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 26 9
10th Percentile £14.09 £13.00 £16.70
25th Percentile - £16.03 £26.08
Median hourly rate £14.20 £45.00 £48.40
Median % change year-on-year -68.44% -7.02% +339.00%
75th Percentile £20.50 £61.60 £66.00
90th Percentile £49.08 - £69.07
South East median hourly rate £18.82 £19.38 £56.99
% change year-on-year -2.86% -66.00% +26.63%

All Process and Methodology Skills
Thames Valley

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 Thames Valley.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,403 2,340 2,682
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 92.85% 87.12% 91.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 851 1,306 1,860
10th Percentile £300 £213 £320
25th Percentile £413 £369 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - +5.26%
75th Percentile £605 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
South East median daily rate £500 £500 £508
% change year-on-year - -1.53% +1.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 170 62
10th Percentile £14.20 £15.30 £18.60
25th Percentile £14.54 £19.48 £24.86
Median hourly rate £32.05 £45.00 £51.25
Median % change year-on-year -28.78% -12.20% +192.86%
75th Percentile £62.44 £64.57 £66.21
90th Percentile £78.03 £85.65 £79.19
South East median hourly rate £28.00 £47.50 £50.00
% change year-on-year -41.05% -5.00% +122.22%

Problem-Solving
Job Vacancy Trend in the Thames Valley

Job postings citing Problem-Solving as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley.

Job vacancy trend for Problem-Solving in the Thames Valley

Problem-Solving
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the Thames Valley

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Problem-Solving in the Thames Valley.

Daily rate trend for Problem-Solving in the Thames Valley

Problem-Solving
Daily Rate Histogram in the Thames Valley

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Problem-Solving in the Thames Valley over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Problem-Solving in the Thames Valley

Problem-Solving
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the Thames Valley

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Problem-Solving in the Thames Valley.

Hourly rate trend for Problem-Solving in the Thames Valley

Problem-Solving
Hourly Rate Histogram in the Thames Valley

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Problem-Solving in the Thames Valley over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Problem-Solving in the Thames Valley

Problem-Solving
Contract Job Locations in the Thames Valley

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 Thames Valley region over the 6 months to 1 May 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
Berkshire +2 245 £504 +3.28% 374
Buckinghamshire +12 51 £375 -16.67% 307
Oxfordshire +2 28 £500 +24.61% 209
Problem-Solving
South East

Problem-Solving
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the Thames Valley by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 9 (2.80%) SharePoint
2 6 (1.86%) Apache Spark
3 4 (1.24%) BizTalk Server
3 4 (1.24%) Microsoft Exchange
4 3 (0.93%) Apache
4 3 (0.93%) Confluence
5 2 (0.62%) IIS
6 1 (0.31%) CMS
6 1 (0.31%) Headless CMS
6 1 (0.31%) Oracle Service Bus
6 1 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 1 (0.31%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.31%) Umbraco
Applications
1 19 (5.90%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (4.04%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (2.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.62%) AutoCAD
4 2 (0.62%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.62%) Revit
5 1 (0.31%) Adobe Premiere
5 1 (0.31%) CATIA
5 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 28 (8.70%) Oracle EBS
2 21 (6.52%) Oracle EBS R12
3 13 (4.04%) Maximo
3 13 (4.04%) Oracle ASCP
3 13 (4.04%) SAP S/4HANA
4 9 (2.80%) SAP Oil and Gas
5 4 (1.24%) Oracle ERP
5 4 (1.24%) Oracle Financials
6 2 (0.62%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.62%) Remedy ITSM
7 1 (0.31%) Oracle SCM
7 1 (0.31%) Primavera
7 1 (0.31%) Remedy AR System
7 1 (0.31%) SAP EWM
7 1 (0.31%) SAP GTS
7 1 (0.31%) SAP Travel Management
Cloud Services
1 78 (24.22%) Azure
2 42 (13.04%) AWS
3 25 (7.76%) Azure DevOps
4 21 (6.52%) GCP
5 15 (4.66%) Microsoft 365
6 10 (3.11%) Entra ID
7 9 (2.80%) Power Platform
8 7 (2.17%) Azure Data Factory
8 7 (2.17%) Azure Monitor
8 7 (2.17%) GitHub
8 7 (2.17%) SaaS
8 7 (2.17%) Snowflake
9 6 (1.86%) OCI
10 5 (1.55%) Azure AKS
10 5 (1.55%) Azure API Management
10 5 (1.55%) Cloud Computing
10 5 (1.55%) IaaS
10 5 (1.55%) PaaS
11 3 (0.93%) OneDrive
11 3 (0.93%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 23 (7.14%) MPLS
2 19 (5.90%) VPN
3 18 (5.59%) WAN
3 18 (5.59%) Wireshark
4 17 (5.28%) Ethernet
4 17 (5.28%) LAN
4 17 (5.28%) SAN
5 16 (4.97%) ATM
5 16 (4.97%) Frame Relay
5 16 (4.97%) GPRS
5 16 (4.97%) GSM
5 16 (4.97%) LTE
5 16 (4.97%) SDH
5 16 (4.97%) UMTS
6 14 (4.35%) Firewall
7 11 (3.42%) TCP/IP
8 9 (2.80%) DHCP
8 9 (2.80%) DNS
9 7 (2.17%) Internet
9 7 (2.17%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (3.73%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.42%) Data Warehouse
3 10 (3.11%) Data Lake
4 8 (2.48%) Azure SQL Database
4 8 (2.48%) Big Data
5 6 (1.86%) Power BI
6 5 (1.55%) MySQL
7 4 (1.24%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
7 4 (1.24%) MongoDB
7 4 (1.24%) PostgreSQL
7 4 (1.24%) Relational Database
8 3 (0.93%) Hadoop
8 3 (0.93%) MS Access
8 3 (0.93%) Oracle Reports
8 3 (0.93%) SSDT
9 2 (0.62%) BigQuery
9 2 (0.62%) Tableau
10 1 (0.31%) HDInsight
10 1 (0.31%) Impala
10 1 (0.31%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 24 (7.45%) JIRA
2 11 (3.42%) Selenium
3 9 (2.80%) Git
3 9 (2.80%) GitLab
4 7 (2.17%) Cucumber
5 5 (1.55%) Jenkins
5 5 (1.55%) REST Assured
5 5 (1.55%) Robot Framework
5 5 (1.55%) SonarQube
6 3 (0.93%) Snyk
7 2 (0.62%) Burp Suite
7 2 (0.62%) Metasploit
7 2 (0.62%) QARun
7 2 (0.62%) SpecFlow
7 2 (0.62%) WinRunner
8 1 (0.31%) CMake
8 1 (0.31%) Eclipse
8 1 (0.31%) Oracle Forms
8 1 (0.31%) Subversion
8 1 (0.31%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 196 (60.87%) Social Skills
2 135 (41.93%) Analytical Skills
3 40 (12.42%) Finance
4 38 (11.80%) Telecoms
5 22 (6.83%) Organisational Skills
6 20 (6.21%) Manufacturing
7 14 (4.35%) Public Sector
8 10 (3.11%) Marketing
9 9 (2.80%) Retail
10 7 (2.17%) Legal
11 4 (1.24%) Agriculture
11 4 (1.24%) Electronics
11 4 (1.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 4 (1.24%) Law
11 4 (1.24%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (0.93%) Automotive
12 3 (0.93%) Billing
12 3 (0.93%) Influencing Skills
12 3 (0.93%) Pharmaceutical
13 1 (0.31%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 38 (11.80%) Analyst
2 32 (9.94%) Consultant
3 26 (8.07%) Lead
4 23 (7.14%) Developer
5 20 (6.21%) Oracle Consultant
6 19 (5.90%) Architect
7 17 (5.28%) Functional Consultant
7 17 (5.28%) Oracle Functional Consultant
7 17 (5.28%) Project Manager
8 15 (4.66%) IP Engineer
9 14 (4.35%) Test Engineer
10 13 (4.04%) Senior
11 12 (3.73%) Administrator
12 11 (3.42%) Data Analyst
12 11 (3.42%) Help Desk Support
12 11 (3.42%) Tester
13 9 (2.80%) DevOps Engineer
13 9 (2.80%) Network Engineer
14 8 (2.48%) Resilience Manager
15 7 (2.17%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (4.97%) REST
2 9 (2.80%) JSON
3 8 (2.48%) CSS
3 8 (2.48%) HTML
3 8 (2.48%) OAuth
3 8 (2.48%) Web Services
4 7 (2.17%) ARM Templates
5 6 (1.86%) .NET
6 5 (1.55%) Java EE
6 5 (1.55%) RESTful
7 4 (1.24%) PySpark
7 4 (1.24%) React
7 4 (1.24%) SOAP
8 3 (0.93%) .NET Core
8 3 (0.93%) Django
8 3 (0.93%) FastAPI
8 3 (0.93%) Flask
8 3 (0.93%) Oracle Fusion
8 3 (0.93%) XML
8 3 (0.93%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 25 (7.76%) Self-Motivation
2 15 (4.66%) Cloud Native
3 13 (4.04%) Life Science
3 13 (4.04%) Management Information System
4 12 (3.73%) Onboarding
5 10 (3.11%) Algorithms
5 10 (3.11%) Legacy Systems
5 10 (3.11%) Renewable Energy
6 8 (2.48%) Data Centre
6 8 (2.48%) Product Ownership
7 7 (2.17%) CMDB
8 6 (1.86%) CSOC
8 6 (1.86%) Cyber Threat
8 6 (1.86%) SCADA
9 5 (1.55%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (1.55%) EPoS
10 4 (1.24%) Cyberattack
10 4 (1.24%) Enterprise Storage
10 4 (1.24%) Hybrid Cloud
10 4 (1.24%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 39 (12.11%) Windows
2 31 (9.63%) Linux
3 20 (6.21%) Unix
4 14 (4.35%) Windows Server
5 5 (1.55%) Windows Server 2019
6 4 (1.24%) Mac OS
6 4 (1.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.93%) Android
7 3 (0.93%) Apple iOS
7 3 (0.93%) Windows 10
8 2 (0.62%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.31%) Embedded Linux
9 1 (0.31%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 53 (16.46%) Agile
2 47 (14.60%) Project Management
3 46 (14.29%) Migration
4 40 (12.42%) Stakeholder Management
5 39 (12.11%) DevOps
6 28 (8.70%) Test Strategy
7 26 (8.07%) Project Delivery
7 26 (8.07%) Time Management
8 25 (7.76%) Collaborative Working
8 25 (7.76%) Test Automation
9 24 (7.45%) Data Migration
10 21 (6.52%) CI/CD
11 20 (6.21%) Validation
12 19 (5.90%) Continuous Improvement
13 18 (5.59%) Containerisation
13 18 (5.59%) Cybersecurity
13 18 (5.59%) Logistics
13 18 (5.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 17 (5.28%) Regression Testing
14 17 (5.28%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 48 (14.91%) Python
2 42 (13.04%) SQL
3 35 (10.87%) Java
4 21 (6.52%) PowerShell
5 14 (4.35%) C#
6 11 (3.42%) JavaScript
7 9 (2.80%) Bash
8 8 (2.48%) PL/SQL
9 6 (1.86%) Bicep
10 5 (1.55%) C++
10 5 (1.55%) Perl
11 4 (1.24%) Ruby
11 4 (1.24%) T-SQL
12 2 (0.62%) ABAP
12 2 (0.62%) C
12 2 (0.62%) R
12 2 (0.62%) VB
13 1 (0.31%) ActionScript
13 1 (0.31%) Scala
13 1 (0.31%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 37 (11.49%) Security Cleared
2 35 (10.87%) Degree
3 23 (7.14%) CCNP
3 23 (7.14%) Cisco Certification
4 21 (6.52%) SC Cleared
5 17 (5.28%) ISTQB
6 16 (4.97%) ISEB
6 16 (4.97%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 16 (4.97%) Master's Degree
7 11 (3.42%) CISSP
7 11 (3.42%) PMI Certification
7 11 (3.42%) PMP
8 10 (3.11%) Computer Science Degree
9 8 (2.48%) DV Cleared
10 7 (2.17%) CISM
10 7 (2.17%) GIAC
10 7 (2.17%) Microsoft Certification
11 5 (1.55%) Azure Certification
12 3 (0.93%) CIMA
12 3 (0.93%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (6.21%) QA
2 15 (4.66%) GDPR
3 12 (3.73%) Data Quality
4 8 (2.48%) HIPAA
4 8 (2.48%) NIST
5 7 (2.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (1.24%) PCI DSS
6 4 (1.24%) PMBOK
7 3 (0.93%) NCSC
8 2 (0.62%) SLA
9 1 (0.31%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.31%) COBIT
9 1 (0.31%) EU AI Act
9 1 (0.31%) GRC
9 1 (0.31%) PMO
System Software
1 19 (5.90%) Active Directory
2 13 (4.04%) Docker
3 5 (1.55%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (0.93%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.62%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.62%) NFS
5 2 (0.62%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (0.62%) VMware NSX
5 2 (0.62%) vSphere
6 1 (0.31%) Apache Flume
6 1 (0.31%) Citrix Hypervisor
6 1 (0.31%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 15 (4.66%) Terraform
2 14 (4.35%) Kubernetes
3 13 (4.04%) Ansible
4 8 (2.48%) Single Sign-On
5 5 (1.55%) Docker Swarm
5 5 (1.55%) Podman
6 4 (1.24%) NetBackup
7 3 (0.93%) Microsoft Intune
7 3 (0.93%) Puppet
8 2 (0.62%) Prometheus
8 2 (0.62%) SCOM
9 1 (0.31%) CASB
9 1 (0.31%) CSIRT
9 1 (0.31%) Grafana
9 1 (0.31%) SCCM
Vendors
1 74 (22.98%) Microsoft
2 35 (10.87%) Oracle
3 26 (8.07%) SAP
4 20 (6.21%) Juniper
5 18 (5.59%) Cisco
6 10 (3.11%) VMware
7 9 (2.80%) ServiceNow
8 8 (2.48%) Google
9 7 (2.17%) Databricks
10 6 (1.86%) Citrix
11 5 (1.55%) CyberArk
11 5 (1.55%) Dell
11 5 (1.55%) HP
11 5 (1.55%) Salesforce
12 4 (1.24%) 3PAR
12 4 (1.24%) Red Hat
12 4 (1.24%) Veritas
13 3 (0.93%) IBM
13 3 (0.93%) IFS
13 3 (0.93%) UiPath