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

6 months to
27 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 9,473 8,098 10,514
As % of all permanent jobs in England 9.15% 18.69% 15.53%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.46% 21.05% 18.89%
Number of salaries quoted 6,374 4,575 4,333
10th Percentile £27,750 £26,250 £27,500
25th Percentile £32,750 £31,250 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £46,500 £45,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year +3.33% -14.29% -4.55%
75th Percentile £64,500 £65,000 £71,250
90th Percentile £83,750 £85,000 £85,000
UK median annual salary £46,500 £45,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +3.33% -14.29% -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 76,043 38,474 55,663
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.46% 88.78% 82.23%
Number of salaries quoted 53,667 22,007 30,452
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,500
25th Percentile £42,000 £36,750 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £59,664
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -7.82% -4.27%
75th Percentile £80,000 £76,250 £78,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £97,500
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £58,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% -5.17% -3.33%

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 27 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 27 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 2,378 £65,000 - 4,336
North of England -8 1,983 £45,000 - 1,568
South East -3 1,845 £41,585 +0.20% 1,582
Midlands -7 1,421 £42,500 +11.84% 1,110
North West -3 1,027 £45,000 -7.64% 815
South West -2 974 £45,000 +25.00% 813
West Midlands -7 795 £42,500 -0.98% 667
East of England -2 789 £43,750 +34.62% 735
East Midlands -7 624 £42,000 +27.27% 441
Yorkshire -7 604 £42,500 +27.82% 534
North East +5 358 £50,000 +42.86% 234
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
1 554 (5.85%) SharePoint
2 409 (4.32%) Microsoft Exchange
3 118 (1.25%) Confluence
4 62 (0.65%) IIS
5 51 (0.54%) Apache
6 50 (0.53%) CMS
7 46 (0.49%) Apache Spark
8 37 (0.39%) WordPress
9 36 (0.38%) Apache Airflow
10 18 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
11 13 (0.14%) SAS
11 13 (0.14%) WebLogic
12 12 (0.13%) nginx
13 11 (0.12%) Jupyter
13 11 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 11 (0.12%) WebSphere
14 9 (0.095%) Palantir Foundry
15 7 (0.074%) OpenEdge
16 6 (0.063%) CICS
16 6 (0.063%) Ethereum
Applications
1 664 (7.01%) Microsoft Office
2 604 (6.38%) Microsoft Excel
3 126 (1.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 64 (0.68%) Spreadsheet
5 58 (0.61%) MS Visio
6 57 (0.60%) AutoCAD
7 51 (0.54%) Microsoft Project
8 30 (0.32%) Simulink
9 28 (0.30%) Revit
10 18 (0.19%) SOLIDWORKS
11 17 (0.18%) Chatbot
12 13 (0.14%) EPLAN
13 11 (0.12%) Autodesk Flame
13 11 (0.12%) Baselight
13 11 (0.12%) Navisworks
14 9 (0.095%) Adobe Creative Suite
15 8 (0.084%) OrCAD
15 8 (0.084%) Trello
16 7 (0.074%) Fusion 360
17 6 (0.063%) Lightworks
Business Applications
1 91 (0.96%) Dynamics CRM
1 91 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
2 83 (0.88%) NetSuite
3 40 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
4 36 (0.38%) Shopify
5 23 (0.24%) Oracle Payables
6 21 (0.22%) Dynamics AX
7 17 (0.18%) Workday HCM
8 16 (0.17%) Oracle Cash Management
9 15 (0.16%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 14 (0.15%) Dynamics NAV
10 14 (0.15%) Magento
10 14 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
11 13 (0.14%) Elite 3E
11 13 (0.14%) IBM Planning Analytics
11 13 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
11 13 (0.14%) SAP Business One
12 12 (0.13%) Oracle Applications
13 11 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
13 11 (0.12%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,785 (18.84%) Azure
2 1,450 (15.31%) Microsoft 365
3 1,060 (11.19%) AWS
4 802 (8.47%) Power Platform
5 468 (4.94%) Entra ID
6 398 (4.20%) SaaS
7 354 (3.74%) GCP
8 240 (2.53%) Azure DevOps
9 225 (2.38%) GitHub
10 206 (2.17%) Power Automate
11 195 (2.06%) Dynamics 365
12 183 (1.93%) Serverless
13 169 (1.78%) PowerApps
14 154 (1.63%) OneDrive
15 151 (1.59%) Microsoft Copilot
16 114 (1.20%) Amazon S3
17 105 (1.11%) GitHub Actions
18 97 (1.02%) Google Workspace
19 89 (0.94%) AWS CloudFormation
19 89 (0.94%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 525 (5.54%) Firewall
2 504 (5.32%) DNS
3 419 (4.42%) DHCP
4 356 (3.76%) VPN
5 299 (3.16%) TCP/IP
6 243 (2.57%) Wi-Fi
7 201 (2.12%) LAN
7 201 (2.12%) WAN
8 200 (2.11%) Wireless
9 178 (1.88%) VLAN
10 166 (1.75%) Network Security
11 110 (1.16%) VoIP
12 70 (0.74%) Broadband
13 66 (0.70%) Internet
14 40 (0.42%) SAN
15 38 (0.40%) HTTP
16 36 (0.38%) BGP
17 35 (0.37%) SSL
18 34 (0.36%) SD-WAN
19 32 (0.34%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 624 (6.59%) Power BI
2 426 (4.50%) SQL Server
3 161 (1.70%) Relational Database
4 151 (1.59%) Data Warehouse
5 140 (1.48%) MySQL
6 132 (1.39%) Amazon RDS
7 125 (1.32%) Tableau
8 123 (1.30%) PostgreSQL
9 99 (1.05%) NoSQL
10 91 (0.96%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 81 (0.86%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 70 (0.74%) Azure SQL Database
13 69 (0.73%) Big Data
13 69 (0.73%) Data Lake
14 65 (0.69%) MongoDB
15 64 (0.68%) Metadata
16 62 (0.65%) Power Query
17 42 (0.44%) DynamoDB
18 40 (0.42%) Electronic Patient Records
19 38 (0.40%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 389 (4.11%) Git
2 328 (3.46%) JIRA
3 149 (1.57%) Jenkins
4 119 (1.26%) GitLab
5 45 (0.48%) Claude Code
6 44 (0.46%) Selenium
7 42 (0.44%) Eclipse
8 35 (0.37%) JUnit
9 34 (0.36%) Subversion
10 32 (0.34%) Cucumber
11 27 (0.29%) Cypress.io
12 26 (0.27%) Oracle Forms
13 25 (0.26%) Postman
14 23 (0.24%) Rational DOORS
15 22 (0.23%) Bitbucket
15 22 (0.23%) TeamCity
16 19 (0.20%) SonarQube
17 16 (0.17%) LabVIEW
18 14 (0.15%) Maven
18 14 (0.15%) Visual Studio
General
1 4,763 (50.28%) Social Skills
2 2,774 (29.28%) Analytical Skills
3 1,873 (19.77%) Finance
4 912 (9.63%) Manufacturing
5 745 (7.86%) Organisational Skills
6 554 (5.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 545 (5.75%) Law
8 532 (5.62%) Retail
9 404 (4.26%) Marketing
10 400 (4.22%) Public Sector
11 362 (3.82%) Legal
12 320 (3.38%) Electronics
13 297 (3.14%) Aerospace
14 296 (3.12%) Banking
15 240 (2.53%) Telecoms
16 198 (2.09%) Influencing Skills
17 180 (1.90%) Presentation Skills
18 155 (1.64%) Automotive
19 135 (1.43%) Documentation Skills
20 111 (1.17%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 1,222 (12.90%) Analyst
2 1,015 (10.71%) Senior
3 819 (8.65%) Developer
4 782 (8.26%) IT Support
5 617 (6.51%) Support Engineer
6 537 (5.67%) Lead
7 442 (4.67%) Consultant
8 419 (4.42%) IT Engineer
9 415 (4.38%) Support Analyst
10 326 (3.44%) Software Engineer
11 323 (3.41%) IT Support Engineer
12 286 (3.02%) Technical Support
13 277 (2.92%) Architect
14 268 (2.83%) Support Technician
15 245 (2.59%) Systems Engineer
16 243 (2.57%) IT Technician
17 237 (2.50%) Technical Engineer
18 228 (2.41%) Administrator
19 212 (2.24%) Technical Support Engineer
20 208 (2.20%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 399 (4.21%) .NET
2 383 (4.04%) Terraform
3 316 (3.34%) React
4 305 (3.22%) REST
5 263 (2.78%) HTML
6 198 (2.09%) CSS
7 183 (1.93%) RESTful
8 151 (1.59%) Node.js
9 123 (1.30%) Spring
10 119 (1.26%) SOAP
11 112 (1.18%) Web Services
12 106 (1.12%) JSON
13 105 (1.11%) AngularJS
14 97 (1.02%) ASP.NET
15 96 (1.01%) Kafka
15 96 (1.01%) XML
16 94 (0.99%) Middleware
17 87 (0.92%) Vue
18 83 (0.88%) Spring Boot
19 64 (0.68%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 703 (7.42%) Driving Licence
2 663 (7.00%) Onboarding
3 500 (5.28%) Self-Motivation
4 432 (4.56%) Management Information System
5 337 (3.56%) Cloud Native
6 255 (2.69%) Product Ownership
7 186 (1.96%) Enterprise Software
8 178 (1.88%) Data Centre
9 164 (1.73%) Legacy Systems
10 144 (1.52%) Distributed Systems
10 144 (1.52%) Robotics
11 120 (1.27%) AI Agents
12 118 (1.25%) Cyber Threat
12 118 (1.25%) Security Posture
13 116 (1.22%) Analytical Mindset
14 112 (1.18%) NHS
15 111 (1.17%) Data Structures
16 103 (1.09%) IoT
17 98 (1.03%) Algorithms
18 86 (0.91%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 1,389 (14.66%) Windows
2 571 (6.03%) Windows Server
3 554 (5.85%) Linux
4 164 (1.73%) Windows 10
5 122 (1.29%) Mac OS
6 104 (1.10%) Apple iOS
7 96 (1.01%) Android
7 96 (1.01%) Windows Server 2016
8 55 (0.58%) Unix
9 45 (0.48%) Windows Server 2019
10 31 (0.33%) VMS
11 30 (0.32%) Ubuntu
12 27 (0.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 16 (0.17%) Embedded Linux
14 10 (0.11%) FreeRTOS
15 9 (0.095%) Debian
16 8 (0.084%) CentOS
16 8 (0.084%) Rocky
16 8 (0.084%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.053%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,464 (26.01%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,539 (16.25%) Customer Service
3 1,479 (15.61%) Agile
4 1,204 (12.71%) AI
5 1,176 (12.41%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,098 (11.59%) Decision-Making
7 992 (10.47%) Mentoring
8 959 (10.12%) CI/CD
9 856 (9.04%) Analytics
10 820 (8.66%) Software Engineering
11 794 (8.38%) DevOps
12 788 (8.32%) Project Delivery
13 756 (7.98%) Cybersecurity
14 701 (7.40%) Business Intelligence
15 686 (7.24%) Project Management
16 673 (7.10%) Roadmaps
17 668 (7.05%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 666 (7.03%) Collaborative Working
19 657 (6.94%) ITIL
20 644 (6.80%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 1,401 (14.79%) SQL
2 1,212 (12.79%) Python
3 580 (6.12%) JavaScript
4 503 (5.31%) C#
5 454 (4.79%) Java
6 391 (4.13%) PowerShell
7 278 (2.93%) TypeScript
8 253 (2.67%) C++
9 176 (1.86%) Bash
10 105 (1.11%) C
11 82 (0.87%) Go
12 80 (0.84%) PHP
13 78 (0.82%) T-SQL
14 75 (0.79%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 56 (0.59%) PL/SQL
16 52 (0.55%) R
16 52 (0.55%) Rust
17 49 (0.52%) Ruby
18 47 (0.50%) Shell Script
19 45 (0.48%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,643 (17.34%) Degree
2 883 (9.32%) Security Cleared
3 593 (6.26%) SC Cleared
4 333 (3.52%) Computer Science Degree
5 274 (2.89%) DBS Check
6 230 (2.43%) HNC
7 222 (2.34%) Microsoft Certification
8 200 (2.11%) DV Cleared
9 199 (2.10%) HND
10 185 (1.95%) Azure Certification
11 158 (1.67%) BPSS Clearance
12 146 (1.54%) CISSP
13 142 (1.50%) Cisco Certification
14 140 (1.48%) Master's Degree
15 101 (1.07%) PMI Certification
16 88 (0.93%) AWS Certification
17 87 (0.92%) ACCA
18 85 (0.90%) Chartered Engineer
19 84 (0.89%) CISM
20 79 (0.83%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 524 (5.53%) QA
2 465 (4.91%) Data Quality
3 377 (3.98%) GDPR
4 269 (2.84%) Accessibility
5 233 (2.46%) SLA
6 218 (2.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 190 (2.01%) Cyber Essentials
8 150 (1.58%) NIST
9 135 (1.43%) PCI DSS
10 70 (0.74%) PMO
11 49 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 49 (0.52%) ISO 9001
12 45 (0.48%) GRC
13 31 (0.33%) NCSC
14 28 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
15 22 (0.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 21 (0.22%) DO-254
16 21 (0.22%) SOC 2
17 20 (0.21%) GMP
18 19 (0.20%) Good Clinical Practice
System Software
1 908 (9.59%) Active Directory
2 376 (3.97%) Docker
3 285 (3.01%) Hyper-V
4 251 (2.65%) VMware Infrastructure
5 69 (0.73%) Firmware
6 63 (0.67%) Terminal Server
7 50 (0.53%) Virtual Desktop
8 48 (0.51%) Virtual Machines
9 35 (0.37%) vSphere
10 27 (0.29%) Embedded Firmware
11 19 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
12 14 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
13 10 (0.11%) GPFS
13 10 (0.11%) StorNext
14 9 (0.095%) KVM
15 7 (0.074%) IAG
16 6 (0.063%) VMware NSX
17 5 (0.053%) ClearTrust
17 5 (0.053%) Squid
18 4 (0.042%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 362 (3.82%) Kubernetes
2 309 (3.26%) Microsoft Intune
3 145 (1.53%) Ansible
4 97 (1.02%) Grafana
5 73 (0.77%) Single Sign-On
6 65 (0.69%) SCCM
7 55 (0.58%) Prometheus
8 39 (0.41%) BMC PATROL
9 27 (0.29%) Jamf Pro
10 24 (0.25%) FortiGate
11 22 (0.23%) Argo
12 19 (0.20%) Functional Safety
13 17 (0.18%) Nagios
14 15 (0.16%) Kibana
14 15 (0.16%) Puppet
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%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 2,798 (29.54%) Microsoft
2 376 (3.97%) VMware
3 319 (3.37%) SAP
4 289 (3.05%) Google
5 272 (2.87%) Oracle
6 185 (1.95%) ServiceNow
7 182 (1.92%) Salesforce
8 170 (1.79%) Cisco
9 136 (1.44%) Databricks
10 132 (1.39%) Veeam
11 123 (1.30%) Splunk
12 116 (1.22%) Sage
13 94 (0.99%) SolarWinds
14 92 (0.97%) Workday
15 87 (0.92%) Apple
16 75 (0.79%) Fortinet
17 71 (0.75%) Tanium
18 68 (0.72%) HubSpot
19 64 (0.68%) Brocade
19 64 (0.68%) Nimble Storage