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 22 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 4 7
Rank change year-on-year -3 +3 +4
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 9,268 8,104 10,359
As % of all permanent jobs in England 9.05% 18.94% 15.32%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.33% 21.35% 18.72%
Number of salaries quoted 6,270 4,548 4,419
10th Percentile £27,750 £26,250 £27,500
25th Percentile £32,750 £31,250 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,000 £45,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -14.29% -4.55%
75th Percentile £65,000 £65,000 £71,250
90th Percentile £85,000 £86,250 £85,000
UK median annual salary £46,587 £45,203 £52,500
% change year-on-year +3.06% -13.90% -4.55%

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 75,153 37,954 55,333
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.39% 88.70% 81.81%
Number of salaries quoted 53,163 21,787 31,186
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,250
25th Percentile £42,441 £37,500 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £57,965
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -5.11% -7.18%
75th Percentile £80,000 £76,250 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £96,750
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% -4.17%

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 22 September 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 22 September 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 -6 2,355 £65,000 - 4,094
North of England -9 1,919 £45,000 +5.88% 1,333
South East -4 1,800 £41,991 -1.20% 1,537
Midlands -7 1,386 £42,500 +10.39% 1,061
North West -4 992 £45,000 -7.64% 727
South West -3 956 £45,000 +25.00% 719
West Midlands -7 775 £42,500 -5.07% 638
East of England -2 768 £43,500 +31.37% 639
East Midlands -8 609 £41,500 +18.57% 422
Yorkshire -7 597 £42,500 +26.87% 426
North East 0 333 £50,000 +42.86% 196
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
1 548 (5.91%) SharePoint
2 407 (4.39%) Microsoft Exchange
3 117 (1.26%) Confluence
4 62 (0.67%) IIS
5 49 (0.53%) Apache
6 47 (0.51%) CMS
7 44 (0.47%) Apache Spark
8 36 (0.39%) Apache Airflow
8 36 (0.39%) WordPress
9 18 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
10 15 (0.16%) SAS
11 12 (0.13%) WebLogic
12 11 (0.12%) nginx
12 11 (0.12%) WebSphere
13 10 (0.11%) Jupyter
13 10 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 9 (0.097%) Palantir Foundry
15 7 (0.076%) OpenEdge
16 6 (0.065%) CICS
16 6 (0.065%) Tomcat
Applications
1 649 (7.00%) Microsoft Office
2 584 (6.30%) Microsoft Excel
3 120 (1.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 63 (0.68%) Spreadsheet
5 56 (0.60%) MS Visio
6 54 (0.58%) AutoCAD
7 48 (0.52%) Microsoft Project
8 30 (0.32%) Simulink
9 27 (0.29%) Revit
10 18 (0.19%) SOLIDWORKS
11 17 (0.18%) Chatbot
12 11 (0.12%) Autodesk Flame
12 11 (0.12%) Baselight
12 11 (0.12%) EPLAN
13 10 (0.11%) Navisworks
14 8 (0.086%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 8 (0.086%) Fusion 360
14 8 (0.086%) Trello
15 6 (0.065%) OrCAD
15 6 (0.065%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 92 (0.99%) Dynamics CRM
2 89 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
3 83 (0.90%) NetSuite
4 39 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
5 34 (0.37%) Shopify
6 24 (0.26%) Oracle Payables
7 21 (0.23%) Dynamics AX
8 16 (0.17%) Oracle Cash Management
9 15 (0.16%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 14 (0.15%) Dynamics NAV
10 14 (0.15%) SAP Business One
10 14 (0.15%) Workday HCM
11 13 (0.14%) Elite 3E
11 13 (0.14%) IBM Planning Analytics
11 13 (0.14%) Magento
11 13 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
12 12 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
13 11 (0.12%) Oracle Applications
13 11 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
13 11 (0.12%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 1,789 (19.30%) Azure
2 1,441 (15.55%) Microsoft 365
3 1,064 (11.48%) AWS
4 796 (8.59%) Power Platform
5 454 (4.90%) Entra ID
6 405 (4.37%) SaaS
7 352 (3.80%) GCP
8 238 (2.57%) Azure DevOps
9 223 (2.41%) GitHub
10 207 (2.23%) Power Automate
11 200 (2.16%) Dynamics 365
12 190 (2.05%) Serverless
13 170 (1.83%) PowerApps
14 150 (1.62%) OneDrive
15 147 (1.59%) Microsoft Copilot
16 113 (1.22%) Amazon S3
17 104 (1.12%) GitHub Actions
18 94 (1.01%) Google Workspace
19 90 (0.97%) AWS Lambda
20 87 (0.94%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 529 (5.71%) Firewall
2 501 (5.41%) DNS
3 419 (4.52%) DHCP
4 357 (3.85%) VPN
5 297 (3.20%) TCP/IP
6 243 (2.62%) Wi-Fi
7 201 (2.17%) WAN
8 199 (2.15%) LAN
8 199 (2.15%) Wireless
9 182 (1.96%) VLAN
10 164 (1.77%) Network Security
11 109 (1.18%) VoIP
12 70 (0.76%) Broadband
13 62 (0.67%) Internet
14 43 (0.46%) SAN
15 38 (0.41%) HTTP
16 36 (0.39%) SD-WAN
17 35 (0.38%) SSL
18 34 (0.37%) BGP
19 32 (0.35%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 622 (6.71%) Power BI
2 434 (4.68%) SQL Server
3 157 (1.69%) Relational Database
4 152 (1.64%) Data Warehouse
5 141 (1.52%) MySQL
6 132 (1.42%) Tableau
7 131 (1.41%) Amazon RDS
8 120 (1.29%) PostgreSQL
9 103 (1.11%) NoSQL
10 93 (1.00%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 82 (0.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 70 (0.76%) Azure SQL Database
12 70 (0.76%) Big Data
13 68 (0.73%) Data Lake
14 65 (0.70%) MongoDB
15 62 (0.67%) Metadata
16 61 (0.66%) Power Query
17 43 (0.46%) DynamoDB
18 40 (0.43%) Electronic Patient Records
19 37 (0.40%) Looker
Development Applications
1 388 (4.19%) Git
2 326 (3.52%) JIRA
3 147 (1.59%) Jenkins
4 112 (1.21%) GitLab
5 42 (0.45%) Claude Code
5 42 (0.45%) Eclipse
6 41 (0.44%) Selenium
7 35 (0.38%) JUnit
8 34 (0.37%) Subversion
9 32 (0.35%) Cucumber
10 25 (0.27%) Oracle Forms
10 25 (0.27%) Postman
11 24 (0.26%) Cypress.io
12 22 (0.24%) Bitbucket
12 22 (0.24%) Rational DOORS
13 20 (0.22%) SonarQube
13 20 (0.22%) TeamCity
14 15 (0.16%) Chocolatey
14 15 (0.16%) LabVIEW
14 15 (0.16%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 4,646 (50.13%) Social Skills
2 2,749 (29.66%) Analytical Skills
3 1,823 (19.67%) Finance
4 853 (9.20%) Manufacturing
5 704 (7.60%) Organisational Skills
6 548 (5.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 538 (5.80%) Law
8 496 (5.35%) Retail
9 392 (4.23%) Marketing
10 384 (4.14%) Public Sector
11 356 (3.84%) Legal
12 295 (3.18%) Banking
13 291 (3.14%) Electronics
14 279 (3.01%) Aerospace
15 232 (2.50%) Telecoms
16 195 (2.10%) Influencing Skills
17 173 (1.87%) Presentation Skills
18 138 (1.49%) Automotive
19 125 (1.35%) Documentation Skills
20 108 (1.17%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 1,208 (13.03%) Analyst
2 1,002 (10.81%) Senior
3 814 (8.78%) Developer
4 776 (8.37%) IT Support
5 615 (6.64%) Support Engineer
6 532 (5.74%) Lead
7 430 (4.64%) Consultant
8 422 (4.55%) IT Engineer
9 408 (4.40%) Support Analyst
10 327 (3.53%) Software Engineer
11 325 (3.51%) IT Support Engineer
12 283 (3.05%) Architect
13 279 (3.01%) Technical Support
14 266 (2.87%) Support Technician
15 244 (2.63%) Systems Engineer
16 242 (2.61%) IT Technician
17 232 (2.50%) Technical Engineer
18 224 (2.42%) Administrator
19 208 (2.24%) Data Engineer
19 208 (2.24%) Technical Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 393 (4.24%) .NET
2 388 (4.19%) Terraform
3 313 (3.38%) React
4 296 (3.19%) REST
5 269 (2.90%) HTML
6 202 (2.18%) CSS
7 183 (1.97%) RESTful
8 146 (1.58%) Node.js
9 122 (1.32%) Spring
10 119 (1.28%) SOAP
11 112 (1.21%) Web Services
12 107 (1.15%) AngularJS
12 107 (1.15%) JSON
13 97 (1.05%) ASP.NET
13 97 (1.05%) XML
14 93 (1.00%) Kafka
14 93 (1.00%) Vue
15 92 (0.99%) Middleware
16 80 (0.86%) Spring Boot
17 70 (0.76%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 660 (7.12%) Driving Licence
2 650 (7.01%) Onboarding
3 485 (5.23%) Self-Motivation
4 408 (4.40%) Management Information System
5 327 (3.53%) Cloud Native
6 262 (2.83%) Product Ownership
7 186 (2.01%) Data Centre
8 179 (1.93%) Enterprise Software
9 164 (1.77%) Legacy Systems
10 139 (1.50%) Distributed Systems
11 129 (1.39%) Robotics
12 121 (1.31%) Cyber Threat
13 119 (1.28%) AI Agents
13 119 (1.28%) Analytical Mindset
14 116 (1.25%) Data Structures
14 116 (1.25%) Security Posture
15 111 (1.20%) NHS
16 102 (1.10%) IoT
17 96 (1.04%) Algorithms
18 86 (0.93%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 1,390 (15.00%) Windows
2 569 (6.14%) Windows Server
3 560 (6.04%) Linux
4 166 (1.79%) Windows 10
5 122 (1.32%) Mac OS
6 111 (1.20%) Apple iOS
7 99 (1.07%) Windows Server 2016
8 98 (1.06%) Android
9 56 (0.60%) Unix
10 48 (0.52%) Windows Server 2019
11 32 (0.35%) Ubuntu
11 32 (0.35%) VMS
12 29 (0.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 15 (0.16%) Embedded Linux
14 10 (0.11%) CentOS
14 10 (0.11%) Debian
14 10 (0.11%) FreeRTOS
14 10 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.086%) Rocky
16 7 (0.076%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,382 (25.70%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,494 (16.12%) Customer Service
3 1,464 (15.80%) Agile
4 1,187 (12.81%) AI
5 1,126 (12.15%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,073 (11.58%) Decision-Making
7 978 (10.55%) Mentoring
8 948 (10.23%) CI/CD
9 836 (9.02%) Analytics
10 811 (8.75%) Software Engineering
11 795 (8.58%) DevOps
12 773 (8.34%) Project Delivery
13 746 (8.05%) Cybersecurity
14 702 (7.57%) Business Intelligence
15 680 (7.34%) Project Management
16 674 (7.27%) Roadmaps
17 672 (7.25%) ITIL
18 652 (7.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 642 (6.93%) Computer Science
20 641 (6.92%) Collaborative Working
Programming Languages
1 1,402 (15.13%) SQL
2 1,214 (13.10%) Python
3 588 (6.34%) JavaScript
4 500 (5.39%) C#
5 448 (4.83%) Java
6 396 (4.27%) PowerShell
7 273 (2.95%) TypeScript
8 250 (2.70%) C++
9 176 (1.90%) Bash
10 101 (1.09%) C
11 82 (0.88%) PHP
12 81 (0.87%) T-SQL
13 77 (0.83%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 73 (0.79%) Go
15 56 (0.60%) PL/SQL
16 51 (0.55%) Rust
17 50 (0.54%) R
18 47 (0.51%) Shell Script
19 46 (0.50%) Ruby
20 45 (0.49%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,619 (17.47%) Degree
2 866 (9.34%) Security Cleared
3 582 (6.28%) SC Cleared
4 332 (3.58%) Computer Science Degree
5 270 (2.91%) DBS Check
6 225 (2.43%) Microsoft Certification
7 211 (2.28%) HNC
8 197 (2.13%) DV Cleared
9 191 (2.06%) Azure Certification
10 185 (2.00%) HND
11 155 (1.67%) BPSS Clearance
12 147 (1.59%) CISSP
13 146 (1.58%) Cisco Certification
13 146 (1.58%) Master's Degree
14 105 (1.13%) PMI Certification
15 85 (0.92%) CISM
16 84 (0.91%) AWS Certification
17 83 (0.90%) ACCA
17 83 (0.90%) Chartered Engineer
18 82 (0.88%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 525 (5.66%) QA
2 464 (5.01%) Data Quality
3 372 (4.01%) GDPR
4 268 (2.89%) Accessibility
5 243 (2.62%) SLA
6 213 (2.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 189 (2.04%) Cyber Essentials
8 152 (1.64%) NIST
9 131 (1.41%) PCI DSS
10 67 (0.72%) PMO
11 50 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 46 (0.50%) GRC
13 44 (0.47%) ISO 9001
14 30 (0.32%) NCSC
15 25 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
16 23 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
17 21 (0.23%) SOC 2
18 20 (0.22%) DO-254
19 19 (0.21%) COBIT
19 19 (0.21%) Good Clinical Practice
System Software
1 911 (9.83%) Active Directory
2 375 (4.05%) Docker
3 285 (3.08%) Hyper-V
4 264 (2.85%) VMware Infrastructure
5 65 (0.70%) Firmware
6 63 (0.68%) Terminal Server
7 53 (0.57%) Virtual Desktop
8 48 (0.52%) Virtual Machines
9 37 (0.40%) vSphere
10 27 (0.29%) Embedded Firmware
11 21 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
12 13 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
13 10 (0.11%) GPFS
13 10 (0.11%) StorNext
14 9 (0.097%) KVM
15 7 (0.076%) IAG
16 6 (0.065%) VMware NSX
17 5 (0.054%) ClearTrust
17 5 (0.054%) Squid
18 4 (0.043%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 354 (3.82%) Kubernetes
2 307 (3.31%) Microsoft Intune
3 152 (1.64%) Ansible
4 94 (1.01%) Grafana
5 74 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
6 73 (0.79%) SCCM
7 53 (0.57%) Prometheus
8 27 (0.29%) Jamf Pro
9 26 (0.28%) BMC PATROL
10 24 (0.26%) FortiGate
11 22 (0.24%) Argo
12 18 (0.19%) Puppet
13 16 (0.17%) Functional Safety
13 16 (0.17%) Nagios
14 15 (0.16%) Kibana
15 13 (0.14%) Progress Chef
16 12 (0.13%) logstash
17 11 (0.12%) Nmap
18 10 (0.11%) Docker Swarm
18 10 (0.11%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 2,753 (29.70%) Microsoft
2 390 (4.21%) VMware
3 312 (3.37%) SAP
4 276 (2.98%) Google
5 269 (2.90%) Oracle
6 188 (2.03%) ServiceNow
7 177 (1.91%) Salesforce
8 169 (1.82%) Cisco
9 141 (1.52%) Databricks
10 131 (1.41%) Veeam
11 122 (1.32%) Splunk
12 116 (1.25%) Sage
13 96 (1.04%) SolarWinds
14 88 (0.95%) Apple
15 84 (0.91%) Workday
16 74 (0.80%) Fortinet
17 71 (0.77%) Tanium
18 66 (0.71%) HubSpot
19 64 (0.69%) Nimble Storage
20 63 (0.68%) Brocade