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 17 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 4 8
Rank change year-on-year -5 +4 +5
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,539 8,047 10,099
As % of all permanent jobs in England 10.99% 18.23% 15.17%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.84% 19.72% 17.20%
Number of salaries quoted 4,516 3,830 7,320
10th Percentile £26,650 £30,750 £26,250
25th Percentile £31,000 £40,000 £33,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -18.18% +10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £65,640 £76,000 £70,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £90,000 £87,500
UK median annual salary £45,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -18.18% +10.00% -13.04%

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 47,255 40,797 58,701
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 79.44% 92.45% 88.17%
Number of salaries quoted 28,933 20,006 46,428
10th Percentile £29,000 £35,000 £29,750
25th Percentile £39,000 £46,250 £40,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £62,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% +13.64% -12.00%
75th Percentile £77,500 £82,500 £75,000
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £95,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,504 £55,000
% change year-on-year -9.10% +10.01% -12.00%

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 17 February 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 17 February 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 -1 1,930 £67,500 +3.85% 876
North of England -17 1,346 £42,500 -10.70% 625
South East -3 1,272 £42,500 -19.05% 892
Midlands -15 866 £37,500 -28.57% 451
North West -15 729 £46,000 -8.00% 364
South West -4 587 £41,250 -24.53% 327
West Midlands -19 503 £42,500 -22.73% 280
Yorkshire -6 479 £35,000 -19.54% 192
East of England -4 431 £37,500 -26.42% 296
East Midlands 0 361 £35,000 - 171
North East -5 138 £43,250 -9.42% 80
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
1 333 (5.09%) Microsoft Exchange
2 284 (4.34%) SharePoint
3 79 (1.21%) Confluence
4 58 (0.89%) Apache
5 48 (0.73%) IIS
6 46 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
7 44 (0.67%) CMS
8 43 (0.66%) Apache Spark
9 30 (0.46%) WordPress
10 16 (0.24%) Palantir Foundry
11 12 (0.18%) nginx
12 9 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 9 (0.14%) SAS
13 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
13 7 (0.11%) Apache Solr
14 6 (0.092%) Drupal
15 5 (0.076%) Exchange Server 2007
15 5 (0.076%) Exchange Server 2010
15 5 (0.076%) Exchange Server 2013
16 4 (0.061%) Umbraco
Applications
1 440 (6.73%) Microsoft Office
2 385 (5.89%) Microsoft Excel
3 85 (1.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 38 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
5 30 (0.46%) Maya
5 30 (0.46%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.40%) Microsoft Project
7 16 (0.24%) AutoCAD
8 13 (0.20%) Photoshop
9 11 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 9 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
10 9 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
11 7 (0.11%) Chatbot
12 6 (0.092%) Adobe Premiere
13 5 (0.076%) Adobe XD
14 4 (0.061%) Adobe After Effects
14 4 (0.061%) CATIA
14 4 (0.061%) Fusion 360
14 4 (0.061%) Trello
15 3 (0.046%) Revit
Business Applications
1 88 (1.35%) SAP S/4HANA
2 73 (1.12%) Dynamics CRM
3 34 (0.52%) NetSuite
4 20 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
5 18 (0.28%) SAP CO
6 17 (0.26%) Endur
7 15 (0.23%) Shopify
8 14 (0.21%) Dynamics NAV
9 12 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
10 11 (0.17%) iTrent
11 10 (0.15%) Oracle Receivables
11 10 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
11 10 (0.15%) SAP Business One
11 10 (0.15%) Workday HCM
12 9 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.14%) SAP FI
12 9 (0.14%) SAP FI/CO
13 8 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
14 7 (0.11%) Exchequer
14 7 (0.11%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 1,422 (21.75%) Azure
2 996 (15.23%) Microsoft 365
3 766 (11.71%) AWS
4 483 (7.39%) Power Platform
5 387 (5.92%) SaaS
6 280 (4.28%) Entra ID
7 243 (3.72%) GCP
8 181 (2.77%) Azure DevOps
9 160 (2.45%) GitHub
10 153 (2.34%) Serverless
11 129 (1.97%) Power Automate
12 106 (1.62%) Dynamics 365
13 87 (1.33%) Google Workspace
14 82 (1.25%) Amazon S3
15 79 (1.21%) PowerApps
16 76 (1.16%) AWS CloudFormation
16 76 (1.16%) AWS Lambda
17 67 (1.02%) PaaS
18 64 (0.98%) GitHub Actions
19 62 (0.95%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 437 (6.68%) DNS
2 379 (5.80%) DHCP
3 359 (5.49%) Firewall
4 232 (3.55%) VPN
5 204 (3.12%) TCP/IP
6 200 (3.06%) Wi-Fi
7 193 (2.95%) WAN
8 162 (2.48%) LAN
9 127 (1.94%) VLAN
10 124 (1.90%) Broadband
11 94 (1.44%) Wireless
12 93 (1.42%) VoIP
13 60 (0.92%) SD-WAN
14 52 (0.80%) Remote Desktop
15 51 (0.78%) Internet
16 48 (0.73%) Network Security
17 44 (0.67%) SAN
18 29 (0.44%) BGP
18 29 (0.44%) Structured Cabling
18 29 (0.44%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 394 (6.03%) Power BI
2 290 (4.43%) SQL Server
3 143 (2.19%) Data Warehouse
4 136 (2.08%) Relational Database
4 136 (2.08%) Tableau
5 126 (1.93%) Amazon RDS
6 119 (1.82%) NoSQL
7 111 (1.70%) PostgreSQL
8 99 (1.51%) MySQL
9 72 (1.10%) Data Lake
10 66 (1.01%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 58 (0.89%) MongoDB
12 55 (0.84%) Amazon Redshift
13 54 (0.83%) Metadata
14 46 (0.70%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 43 (0.66%) DynamoDB
16 41 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
16 41 (0.63%) Big Data
17 38 (0.58%) Power Query
18 30 (0.46%) Redis
Development Applications
1 273 (4.17%) Git
2 234 (3.58%) JIRA
3 99 (1.51%) Jenkins
4 84 (1.28%) GitLab
5 57 (0.87%) Selenium
6 24 (0.37%) Visual Studio
7 21 (0.32%) Cypress.io
8 20 (0.31%) Maven
9 19 (0.29%) Burp Suite
9 19 (0.29%) Metasploit
9 19 (0.29%) TeamCity
10 18 (0.28%) Bitbucket
10 18 (0.28%) LabVIEW
10 18 (0.28%) Robot Framework
11 17 (0.26%) JUnit
12 16 (0.24%) Octopus Deploy
13 14 (0.21%) Cucumber
13 14 (0.21%) Snyk
13 14 (0.21%) SonarQube
14 12 (0.18%) WebDriver
General
1 3,387 (51.80%) Social Skills
2 1,985 (30.36%) Analytical Skills
3 1,532 (23.43%) Finance
4 412 (6.30%) Organisational Skills
5 362 (5.54%) Marketing
6 349 (5.34%) Law
7 325 (4.97%) Retail
8 307 (4.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 297 (4.54%) Manufacturing
10 292 (4.47%) Legal
11 287 (4.39%) Public Sector
12 276 (4.22%) Banking
13 185 (2.83%) Telecoms
14 183 (2.80%) Presentation Skills
15 151 (2.31%) Electronics
16 111 (1.70%) Games
17 97 (1.48%) Documentation Skills
18 87 (1.33%) Financial Institution
19 86 (1.32%) Automotive
20 85 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 1,006 (15.38%) Analyst
2 810 (12.39%) Senior
3 756 (11.56%) IT Support
4 648 (9.91%) Support Engineer
5 590 (9.02%) Developer
6 398 (6.09%) Lead
7 349 (5.34%) IT Engineer
8 339 (5.18%) Support Analyst
9 294 (4.50%) IT Support Engineer
10 254 (3.88%) Technical Support
11 246 (3.76%) Business Analyst
12 240 (3.67%) Consultant
13 221 (3.38%) Architect
14 194 (2.97%) Support Technician
15 189 (2.89%) 2nd Line Support
16 176 (2.69%) Technical Engineer
17 169 (2.58%) Technical Support Engineer
18 166 (2.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 165 (2.52%) IT Analyst
20 161 (2.46%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 277 (4.24%) .NET
2 261 (3.99%) React
3 238 (3.64%) HTML
4 191 (2.92%) CSS
5 149 (2.28%) Node.js
6 139 (2.13%) REST
7 112 (1.71%) RESTful
8 90 (1.38%) AngularJS
9 70 (1.07%) Spring
9 70 (1.07%) Vue
10 69 (1.06%) Middleware
11 63 (0.96%) SOAP
12 62 (0.95%) Kafka
13 61 (0.93%) JSON
14 56 (0.86%) XML
15 55 (0.84%) .NET Framework
16 53 (0.81%) Django
17 47 (0.72%) Flask
18 46 (0.70%) ASP.NET
19 45 (0.69%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 541 (8.27%) Driving Licence
2 493 (7.54%) Onboarding
3 415 (6.35%) Self-Motivation
4 211 (3.23%) Management Information System
5 188 (2.88%) Analytical Mindset
6 177 (2.71%) Cloud Native
7 172 (2.63%) Legacy Systems
8 150 (2.29%) Product Ownership
9 141 (2.16%) Data Centre
10 115 (1.76%) Enterprise Software
11 97 (1.48%) Distributed Systems
12 89 (1.36%) Mobile App
13 71 (1.09%) Data Structures
14 69 (1.06%) Low-Code
15 65 (0.99%) Algorithms
16 64 (0.98%) Social Media
17 60 (0.92%) Virtual Team
18 56 (0.86%) EPoS
19 53 (0.81%) FMCG
20 51 (0.78%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 1,131 (17.30%) Windows
2 461 (7.05%) Windows Server
3 431 (6.59%) Linux
4 158 (2.42%) Windows 10
5 142 (2.17%) Windows Server 2016
6 96 (1.47%) Android
7 95 (1.45%) Mac OS
8 79 (1.21%) Apple iOS
9 59 (0.90%) Unix
10 54 (0.83%) Windows Server 2019
11 31 (0.47%) Windows Server 2012
12 30 (0.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 24 (0.37%) Windows 7
14 17 (0.26%) VMS
15 16 (0.24%) CentOS
16 12 (0.18%) Ubuntu
17 9 (0.14%) Mac OS X
17 9 (0.14%) Windows 8
18 7 (0.11%) Debian
19 4 (0.061%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,130 (17.28%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,060 (16.21%) Agile
3 984 (15.05%) Customer Service
4 691 (10.57%) Analytics
5 672 (10.28%) Mentoring
6 640 (9.79%) AI
7 631 (9.65%) Decision-Making
8 596 (9.11%) Project Management
9 595 (9.10%) DevOps
10 590 (9.02%) CI/CD
11 565 (8.64%) Business Intelligence
12 537 (8.21%) ITIL
13 524 (8.01%) Computer Science
14 491 (7.51%) Stakeholder Management
15 474 (7.25%) Cybersecurity
16 427 (6.53%) Change Management
17 417 (6.38%) Software Engineering
18 395 (6.04%) ERP
19 391 (5.98%) CRM
20 377 (5.77%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 938 (14.34%) Python
1 938 (14.34%) SQL
2 419 (6.41%) JavaScript
3 320 (4.89%) PowerShell
4 319 (4.88%) Java
5 316 (4.83%) C#
6 169 (2.58%) TypeScript
7 139 (2.13%) Bash
8 104 (1.59%) PHP
9 81 (1.24%) C++
10 62 (0.95%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 57 (0.87%) Go
12 48 (0.73%) C
12 48 (0.73%) Scala
13 46 (0.70%) T-SQL
14 36 (0.55%) R
15 28 (0.43%) Apex Code
16 27 (0.41%) Bicep
17 25 (0.38%) Kotlin
18 23 (0.35%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 1,451 (22.19%) Degree
2 545 (8.33%) Security Cleared
3 354 (5.41%) SC Cleared
4 248 (3.79%) Computer Science Degree
5 186 (2.84%) Microsoft Certification
6 168 (2.57%) DBS Check
7 160 (2.45%) Master's Degree
8 117 (1.79%) DV Cleared
9 106 (1.62%) CISSP
10 94 (1.44%) BPSS Clearance
11 81 (1.24%) ACCA
12 79 (1.21%) A+ Certification
13 77 (1.18%) Cisco Certification
14 67 (1.02%) CIMA
14 67 (1.02%) Network+ Certification
15 60 (0.92%) PMI Certification
16 58 (0.89%) CISM
17 54 (0.83%) AWS Certification
18 52 (0.80%) CCNA
19 51 (0.78%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 334 (5.11%) QA
2 270 (4.13%) Data Quality
3 232 (3.55%) GDPR
4 191 (2.92%) Cyber Essentials
5 172 (2.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 145 (2.22%) PCI DSS
7 139 (2.13%) Accessibility
8 130 (1.99%) SLA
9 92 (1.41%) NIST
10 49 (0.75%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 31 (0.47%) ISO 9001
12 28 (0.43%) Actionable Recommendations
13 23 (0.35%) SOC 2
14 19 (0.29%) PMO
15 18 (0.28%) COBIT
16 17 (0.26%) GRC
17 11 (0.17%) WCAG
18 9 (0.14%) ISO 13485
18 9 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 20000
19 8 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 19770
System Software
1 782 (11.96%) Active Directory
2 279 (4.27%) Docker
3 264 (4.04%) Hyper-V
4 154 (2.36%) VMware Infrastructure
5 98 (1.50%) Terminal Server
6 28 (0.43%) Firmware
7 25 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
8 24 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
9 17 (0.26%) vSphere
10 15 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
11 11 (0.17%) KVM
12 8 (0.12%) VMware Workstation
13 7 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.092%) IAG
15 4 (0.061%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 3 (0.046%) vCloud
16 3 (0.046%) VMware NSX
16 3 (0.046%) XenApp
17 2 (0.031%) HDFS
17 2 (0.031%) RHEV
Systems Management
1 277 (4.24%) Terraform
2 276 (4.22%) Microsoft Intune
3 216 (3.30%) Kubernetes
4 144 (2.20%) Ansible
5 79 (1.21%) Grafana
6 69 (1.06%) SCCM
7 50 (0.76%) Prometheus
8 42 (0.64%) BMC PATROL
9 28 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (0.34%) Nagios
11 20 (0.31%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 16 (0.24%) Jamf Pro
13 15 (0.23%) Argo
14 14 (0.21%) Cisco CUCM
14 14 (0.21%) vCenter Server
15 12 (0.18%) FortiGate
15 12 (0.18%) Kibana
16 11 (0.17%) Autotask
16 11 (0.17%) Nessus
17 10 (0.15%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,706 (26.09%) Microsoft
2 306 (4.68%) SAP
3 303 (4.63%) VMware
4 253 (3.87%) Oracle
5 164 (2.51%) Salesforce
6 158 (2.42%) Veeam
7 152 (2.32%) Google
8 149 (2.28%) Splunk
9 146 (2.23%) Cisco
10 145 (2.22%) SolarWinds
11 122 (1.87%) ServiceNow
12 103 (1.58%) Databricks
13 101 (1.54%) Adobe
14 99 (1.51%) Tanium
15 98 (1.50%) Brocade
15 98 (1.50%) Nimble Storage
16 76 (1.16%) Apple
17 58 (0.89%) Dell
18 56 (0.86%) Sage
19 52 (0.80%) HubSpot