Problem-Solving Job Trends in England

Problem Solving
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in England requiring Problem-Solving skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 14 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 4 6
Rank change year-on-year -8 +2 +7
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,294 7,624 12,652
As % of all permanent jobs in England 7.80% 19.62% 15.06%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.55% 21.01% 17.68%
Number of salaries quoted 4,435 4,510 8,477
10th Percentile £27,500 £27,750 £26,133
25th Percentile £31,250 £35,000 £32,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £72,500 £68,000
90th Percentile £87,500 £88,750 £85,000
UK median annual salary £47,500 £51,763 £49,990
% change year-on-year -8.24% +3.55% -9.11%

All Process & Methodology Skills
England

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 England.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 59,681 36,291 71,575
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.92% 93.41% 85.20%
Number of salaries quoted 39,154 20,234 53,682
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,000 £29,000
25th Percentile £41,250 £42,000 £39,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year - +9.09% -12.00%
75th Percentile £80,000 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £102,500 £93,750
UK median annual salary £60,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year - +9.09% -9.84%

Problem-Solving
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

Problem-Solving job vacancy trend in England

Problem-Solving
Salary Trend in England

Salary distribution trend for jobs in England citing Problem-Solving.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in England citing Problem-Solving

Problem-Solving
Salary Histogram in England

Salary distribution for jobs citing Problem-Solving in England over the 6 months to 14 May 2026.

Salary histogram for Problem-Solving in England

Problem-Solving
Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Problem-Solving within the England region over the 6 months to 14 May 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
London -5 1,899 £70,000 +7.69% 976
North of England -11 1,292 £42,500 -5.56% 658
South East -7 1,138 £47,500 -5.00% 754
Midlands -21 864 £40,000 -11.11% 430
North West -17 668 £45,000 -5.26% 359
South West -8 544 £43,500 +2.35% 303
West Midlands -24 510 £42,500 -11.46% 260
Yorkshire -12 491 £41,500 +3.75% 221
East of England -7 467 £41,000 -10.72% 266
East Midlands -10 351 £35,000 -12.50% 171
North East -16 133 £48,500 +7.78% 85
Problem-Solving
UK

Problem-Solving
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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
1 327 (5.20%) Microsoft Exchange
2 308 (4.89%) SharePoint
3 68 (1.08%) Confluence
4 59 (0.94%) CMS
5 55 (0.87%) Apache
6 41 (0.65%) Apache Airflow
7 32 (0.51%) Apache Spark
8 29 (0.46%) WordPress
9 28 (0.44%) IIS
10 15 (0.24%) SAS
11 14 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
12 10 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2013
13 9 (0.14%) Drupal
13 9 (0.14%) nginx
14 8 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2007
14 8 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2010
15 5 (0.079%) OpenStack
15 5 (0.079%) Skype for Business
16 4 (0.064%) Moodle
16 4 (0.064%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 413 (6.56%) Microsoft Office
2 333 (5.29%) Microsoft Excel
3 54 (0.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 48 (0.76%) Spreadsheet
5 38 (0.60%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.41%) Microsoft Project
7 14 (0.22%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
8 9 (0.14%) Fusion 360
8 9 (0.14%) Maya
9 8 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.13%) AutoCAD
10 6 (0.095%) Photoshop
10 6 (0.095%) SOLIDWORKS
11 4 (0.064%) Simulink
12 3 (0.048%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.048%) Autodesk Inventor
12 3 (0.048%) Trello
13 2 (0.032%) Acrobat
13 2 (0.032%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 60 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
2 57 (0.91%) Dynamics CRM
3 32 (0.51%) NetSuite
4 23 (0.37%) Salesforce CRM
5 18 (0.29%) Shopify
6 16 (0.25%) Magento
7 15 (0.24%) Dynamics NAV
8 14 (0.22%) SAP CO
8 14 (0.22%) SAP ERP
9 13 (0.21%) iTrent
10 11 (0.17%) Maximo
10 11 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
11 10 (0.16%) Endur
12 9 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
12 9 (0.14%) Workday HCM
13 7 (0.11%) Elite 3E
13 7 (0.11%) IBM Planning Analytics
13 7 (0.11%) Q-Pulse
13 7 (0.11%) SAP Business One
14 5 (0.079%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 1,315 (20.89%) Azure
2 953 (15.14%) Microsoft 365
3 791 (12.57%) AWS
4 475 (7.55%) Power Platform
5 315 (5.00%) SaaS
6 287 (4.56%) GCP
7 261 (4.15%) Entra ID
8 170 (2.70%) Serverless
9 160 (2.54%) Azure DevOps
10 148 (2.35%) GitHub
11 122 (1.94%) Dynamics 365
12 116 (1.84%) Power Automate
13 91 (1.45%) Amazon S3
14 87 (1.38%) PowerApps
15 85 (1.35%) Google Workspace
16 77 (1.22%) AWS Lambda
16 77 (1.22%) GitHub Actions
17 76 (1.21%) PaaS
18 73 (1.16%) IaaS
19 69 (1.10%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 371 (5.89%) Firewall
2 355 (5.64%) DNS
3 287 (4.56%) DHCP
4 246 (3.91%) VPN
5 213 (3.38%) WAN
6 188 (2.99%) Wi-Fi
7 185 (2.94%) LAN
8 181 (2.88%) TCP/IP
9 171 (2.72%) Broadband
10 117 (1.86%) Wireless
11 110 (1.75%) VLAN
12 92 (1.46%) VoIP
13 65 (1.03%) Network Security
13 65 (1.03%) SD-WAN
14 53 (0.84%) SAN
15 41 (0.65%) Internet
16 39 (0.62%) BGP
17 38 (0.60%) OSPF
18 34 (0.54%) HTTP
19 31 (0.49%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 384 (6.10%) Power BI
2 277 (4.40%) SQL Server
3 117 (1.86%) Data Warehouse
4 107 (1.70%) Tableau
5 102 (1.62%) NoSQL
6 89 (1.41%) PostgreSQL
7 80 (1.27%) MySQL
8 79 (1.26%) Relational Database
9 72 (1.14%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 64 (1.02%) Amazon RDS
10 64 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 57 (0.91%) Power Query
12 48 (0.76%) MongoDB
13 47 (0.75%) Amazon Redshift
14 43 (0.68%) DynamoDB
15 42 (0.67%) Big Data
16 37 (0.59%) Data Lake
17 35 (0.56%) Metadata
18 34 (0.54%) Azure SQL Database
19 26 (0.41%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 279 (4.43%) Git
2 204 (3.24%) JIRA
3 106 (1.68%) GitLab
4 105 (1.67%) Jenkins
5 33 (0.52%) Selenium
6 26 (0.41%) Rational DOORS
7 22 (0.35%) Maven
8 21 (0.33%) Cypress.io
8 21 (0.33%) Visual Studio
9 20 (0.32%) Chocolatey
10 19 (0.30%) Cucumber
10 19 (0.30%) SonarQube
11 17 (0.27%) Bitbucket
11 17 (0.27%) CircleCI
12 16 (0.25%) TeamCity
13 15 (0.24%) Burp Suite
13 15 (0.24%) Metasploit
14 13 (0.21%) LabVIEW
14 13 (0.21%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
15 12 (0.19%) JUnit
General
1 2,867 (45.55%) Social Skills
2 1,861 (29.57%) Analytical Skills
3 1,324 (21.04%) Finance
4 406 (6.45%) Organisational Skills
5 367 (5.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 331 (5.26%) Marketing
7 324 (5.15%) Manufacturing
8 320 (5.08%) Law
9 271 (4.31%) Banking
10 266 (4.23%) Public Sector
11 265 (4.21%) Retail
12 253 (4.02%) Legal
13 159 (2.53%) Telecoms
14 139 (2.21%) Electronics
15 134 (2.13%) Presentation Skills
16 101 (1.60%) Documentation Skills
17 86 (1.37%) Games
18 85 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
19 80 (1.27%) Advertising
20 68 (1.08%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 859 (13.65%) Analyst
2 790 (12.55%) Senior
3 645 (10.25%) IT Support
4 575 (9.14%) Developer
5 560 (8.90%) Support Engineer
6 405 (6.43%) Lead
7 381 (6.05%) IT Engineer
8 296 (4.70%) IT Support Engineer
9 259 (4.12%) Consultant
10 244 (3.88%) Support Analyst
11 219 (3.48%) Architect
12 213 (3.38%) Support Technician
13 202 (3.21%) Software Engineer
14 189 (3.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 184 (2.92%) Systems Engineer
16 173 (2.75%) Business Analyst
17 164 (2.61%) Technical Support
18 162 (2.57%) 2nd Line Support
19 159 (2.53%) IT Technician
20 151 (2.40%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 242 (3.84%) .NET
2 236 (3.75%) React
3 207 (3.29%) HTML
4 176 (2.80%) CSS
5 155 (2.46%) REST
6 132 (2.10%) Node.js
7 113 (1.80%) RESTful
8 88 (1.40%) SOAP
9 84 (1.33%) Middleware
10 73 (1.16%) Spring
11 71 (1.13%) JSON
12 66 (1.05%) XML
13 60 (0.95%) Vue
14 59 (0.94%) AngularJS
15 58 (0.92%) Kafka
16 55 (0.87%) gRPC
17 53 (0.84%) OAuth
17 53 (0.84%) Spring Boot
18 48 (0.76%) EDI
19 46 (0.73%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 387 (6.15%) Driving Licence
2 381 (6.05%) Onboarding
3 307 (4.88%) Self-Motivation
4 206 (3.27%) Management Information System
5 200 (3.18%) Cloud Native
6 178 (2.83%) Product Ownership
7 158 (2.51%) Data Centre
8 148 (2.35%) Distributed Systems
9 138 (2.19%) Analytical Mindset
10 112 (1.78%) Legacy Systems
11 95 (1.51%) Enterprise Software
12 91 (1.45%) Mobile App
13 90 (1.43%) Social Media
14 78 (1.24%) Data Structures
15 69 (1.10%) Low-Code
16 65 (1.03%) Algorithms
17 61 (0.97%) Security Posture
17 61 (0.97%) Virtual Team
18 58 (0.92%) Video\Live Streaming
19 53 (0.84%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 972 (15.44%) Windows
2 390 (6.20%) Linux
3 378 (6.01%) Windows Server
4 160 (2.54%) Windows 10
5 105 (1.67%) Android
6 99 (1.57%) Windows Server 2016
7 85 (1.35%) Apple iOS
8 81 (1.29%) Mac OS
9 56 (0.89%) Windows Server 2019
10 45 (0.71%) Unix
11 41 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 32 (0.51%) CentOS
12 32 (0.51%) Windows Server 2012
13 27 (0.43%) Ubuntu
14 24 (0.38%) VMS
15 16 (0.25%) Windows 7
16 14 (0.22%) Mac OS X
17 10 (0.16%) Debian
18 7 (0.11%) Windows 8
18 7 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,165 (18.51%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,002 (15.92%) Agile
3 887 (14.09%) Customer Service
4 690 (10.96%) CI/CD
5 688 (10.93%) AI
6 673 (10.69%) Mentoring
7 654 (10.39%) Decision-Making
8 613 (9.74%) Analytics
9 606 (9.63%) DevOps
10 530 (8.42%) ITIL
11 507 (8.06%) Stakeholder Management
12 495 (7.86%) Software Engineering
13 488 (7.75%) Computer Science
14 484 (7.69%) Project Management
15 472 (7.50%) Business Intelligence
16 467 (7.42%) Roadmaps
17 424 (6.74%) Coaching
17 424 (6.74%) Cybersecurity
18 366 (5.82%) Collaborative Working
19 352 (5.59%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 963 (15.30%) Python
2 862 (13.70%) SQL
3 416 (6.61%) JavaScript
4 326 (5.18%) Java
5 285 (4.53%) PowerShell
6 281 (4.46%) C#
7 189 (3.00%) TypeScript
8 156 (2.48%) Bash
9 111 (1.76%) C++
10 89 (1.41%) PHP
11 85 (1.35%) Go
12 62 (0.99%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 61 (0.97%) Scala
14 54 (0.86%) C
15 42 (0.67%) T-SQL
16 40 (0.64%) Rust
17 38 (0.60%) R
18 36 (0.57%) PL/SQL
19 35 (0.56%) Kotlin
20 34 (0.54%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,133 (18.00%) Degree
2 454 (7.21%) Security Cleared
3 289 (4.59%) SC Cleared
4 254 (4.04%) Computer Science Degree
5 211 (3.35%) DBS Check
6 181 (2.88%) Microsoft Certification
7 116 (1.84%) Master's Degree
8 110 (1.75%) DV Cleared
9 108 (1.72%) CISSP
10 100 (1.59%) Cisco Certification
11 88 (1.40%) A+ Certification
12 83 (1.32%) BPSS Clearance
12 83 (1.32%) PMI Certification
13 72 (1.14%) ACCA
14 70 (1.11%) Azure Certification
15 68 (1.08%) PMP
16 65 (1.03%) CCNA
16 65 (1.03%) CIMA
17 57 (0.91%) Network+ Certification
18 49 (0.78%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 323 (5.13%) QA
2 296 (4.70%) Data Quality
3 248 (3.94%) GDPR
4 191 (3.03%) SLA
5 149 (2.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 141 (2.24%) Cyber Essentials
7 135 (2.14%) NIST
8 120 (1.91%) Accessibility
9 111 (1.76%) PCI DSS
10 44 (0.70%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 34 (0.54%) ISO 9001
12 32 (0.51%) SOC 2
13 29 (0.46%) PMO
14 27 (0.43%) GRC
15 25 (0.40%) COBIT
16 19 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
17 14 (0.22%) GMP
18 12 (0.19%) IFRS
18 12 (0.19%) TickIT
19 11 (0.17%) PERC
System Software
1 655 (10.41%) Active Directory
2 279 (4.43%) Docker
3 178 (2.83%) Hyper-V
4 168 (2.67%) VMware Infrastructure
5 42 (0.67%) Terminal Server
6 41 (0.65%) Virtual Desktop
7 34 (0.54%) Firmware
8 22 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
9 21 (0.33%) vSphere
10 15 (0.24%) KVM
11 12 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
12 10 (0.16%) IAG
13 7 (0.11%) VMware Workstation
14 6 (0.095%) XenApp
15 4 (0.064%) Embedded Firmware
15 4 (0.064%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 4 (0.064%) VMware NSX
16 3 (0.048%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 3 (0.048%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.048%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 293 (4.66%) Terraform
2 235 (3.73%) Microsoft Intune
3 231 (3.67%) Kubernetes
4 146 (2.32%) Ansible
5 90 (1.43%) Grafana
6 82 (1.30%) SCCM
7 53 (0.84%) Prometheus
8 37 (0.59%) Nagios
9 33 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (0.35%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 18 (0.29%) Kibana
12 14 (0.22%) Autotask
13 13 (0.21%) Argo
13 13 (0.21%) Puppet
14 12 (0.19%) vCenter Server
15 11 (0.17%) Nessus
16 10 (0.16%) BMC PATROL
16 10 (0.16%) Jamf Pro
16 10 (0.16%) WSUS
16 10 (0.16%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,649 (26.20%) Microsoft
2 253 (4.02%) VMware
3 178 (2.83%) Oracle
4 162 (2.57%) Google
5 153 (2.43%) SAP
6 136 (2.16%) Cisco
7 135 (2.14%) Salesforce
8 128 (2.03%) ServiceNow
9 111 (1.76%) SolarWinds
10 106 (1.68%) Databricks
11 96 (1.53%) Veeam
12 90 (1.43%) Splunk
13 79 (1.26%) Apple
14 71 (1.13%) Adobe
15 63 (1.00%) Dell
16 57 (0.91%) Red Hat
17 49 (0.78%) Dynatrace
18 48 (0.76%) Meraki
19 45 (0.71%) Fortinet
19 45 (0.71%) Typelevel