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

6 months to
9 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 4 7
Rank change year-on-year -5 +3 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,528 8,286 9,949
As % of all permanent jobs in England 11.32% 18.26% 15.05%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.18% 19.84% 17.07%
Number of salaries quoted 4,457 3,866 7,239
10th Percentile £26,500 £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% -10.00%
75th Percentile £65,473 £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 46,032 41,765 58,292
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 79.83% 92.04% 88.18%
Number of salaries quoted 27,930 20,347 46,131
10th Percentile £29,000 £35,000 £29,750
25th Percentile £38,750 £46,250 £40,800
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £62,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -11.29% +12.73% -12.00%
75th Percentile £77,500 £81,250 £75,333
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £95,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -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 9 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 9 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 1,922 £67,500 +3.85% 861
South East -3 1,330 £42,500 -19.05% 856
North of England -17 1,307 £42,500 -10.53% 611
Midlands -15 858 £37,500 -26.83% 449
North West -15 718 £46,000 -8.00% 349
South West -2 581 £40,000 -24.81% 340
West Midlands -18 499 £42,500 -22.73% 288
Yorkshire -6 456 £35,000 -19.49% 203
East of England -3 428 £36,500 -28.39% 281
East Midlands 0 357 £33,000 -5.71% 161
North East -4 133 £40,662 -15.29% 68
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
1 329 (5.04%) Microsoft Exchange
2 283 (4.34%) SharePoint
3 77 (1.18%) Confluence
4 55 (0.84%) Apache
5 49 (0.75%) IIS
6 43 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
7 42 (0.64%) Apache Spark
8 40 (0.61%) CMS
9 28 (0.43%) WordPress
10 16 (0.25%) Palantir Foundry
11 12 (0.18%) nginx
12 10 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 9 (0.14%) SAS
14 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.11%) Apache Solr
14 7 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
15 5 (0.077%) Drupal
15 5 (0.077%) Exchange Server 2010
16 4 (0.061%) Exchange Server 2007
16 4 (0.061%) Umbraco
Applications
1 448 (6.86%) Microsoft Office
2 442 (6.77%) Microsoft Excel
3 89 (1.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 38 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
5 32 (0.49%) Maya
6 27 (0.41%) MS Visio
7 25 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
8 19 (0.29%) AutoCAD
9 13 (0.20%) Photoshop
10 12 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 9 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
12 8 (0.12%) Adobe Premiere
12 8 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
13 7 (0.11%) Chatbot
14 5 (0.077%) Adobe After Effects
14 5 (0.077%) Adobe XD
15 4 (0.061%) CATIA
15 4 (0.061%) Fusion 360
15 4 (0.061%) Trello
16 3 (0.046%) Elementor
Business Applications
1 101 (1.55%) SAP S/4HANA
2 75 (1.15%) Dynamics CRM
3 30 (0.46%) NetSuite
4 20 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
5 18 (0.28%) SAP CO
6 16 (0.25%) Endur
7 14 (0.21%) Oracle Payables
7 14 (0.21%) Shopify
8 13 (0.20%) Dynamics NAV
9 12 (0.18%) iTrent
9 12 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
10 11 (0.17%) Oracle Assets
11 10 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
11 10 (0.15%) SAP Business One
11 10 (0.15%) Workday HCM
12 9 (0.14%) SAP FI
12 9 (0.14%) SAP FI/CO
13 8 (0.12%) JDE EnterpriseOne
13 8 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
14 7 (0.11%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 1,457 (22.32%) Azure
2 974 (14.92%) Microsoft 365
3 736 (11.27%) AWS
4 528 (8.09%) Power Platform
5 397 (6.08%) SaaS
6 265 (4.06%) Entra ID
7 230 (3.52%) GCP
8 180 (2.76%) Azure DevOps
9 157 (2.41%) GitHub
10 146 (2.24%) Serverless
11 124 (1.90%) Power Automate
12 102 (1.56%) Dynamics 365
13 77 (1.18%) Google Workspace
14 76 (1.16%) PowerApps
15 74 (1.13%) Amazon S3
16 72 (1.10%) AWS CloudFormation
17 71 (1.09%) AWS Lambda
18 67 (1.03%) PaaS
19 63 (0.97%) Azure Data Factory
19 63 (0.97%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 436 (6.68%) DNS
2 378 (5.79%) DHCP
3 351 (5.38%) Firewall
4 217 (3.32%) VPN
5 202 (3.09%) TCP/IP
6 193 (2.96%) Wi-Fi
7 179 (2.74%) WAN
8 150 (2.30%) LAN
9 123 (1.88%) VLAN
10 110 (1.69%) Broadband
11 95 (1.46%) VoIP
12 94 (1.44%) Wireless
13 55 (0.84%) SD-WAN
14 51 (0.78%) Remote Desktop
15 49 (0.75%) Network Security
16 46 (0.70%) Internet
16 46 (0.70%) SAN
17 30 (0.46%) Unified Communications
18 28 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
19 27 (0.41%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 442 (6.77%) Power BI
2 298 (4.56%) SQL Server
3 149 (2.28%) Relational Database
4 140 (2.14%) Data Warehouse
5 133 (2.04%) Tableau
6 124 (1.90%) Amazon RDS
7 120 (1.84%) NoSQL
8 115 (1.76%) Data Lake
8 115 (1.76%) PostgreSQL
9 107 (1.64%) MySQL
10 66 (1.01%) SAP BW
10 66 (1.01%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 58 (0.89%) MongoDB
12 53 (0.81%) Metadata
13 50 (0.77%) Amazon Redshift
14 47 (0.72%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 42 (0.64%) Big Data
15 42 (0.64%) DynamoDB
16 41 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
17 34 (0.52%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 266 (4.07%) Git
2 231 (3.54%) JIRA
3 95 (1.46%) Jenkins
4 79 (1.21%) GitLab
5 56 (0.86%) Selenium
6 25 (0.38%) Visual Studio
7 21 (0.32%) Maven
8 20 (0.31%) Bitbucket
9 19 (0.29%) Burp Suite
9 19 (0.29%) Cypress.io
9 19 (0.29%) Metasploit
9 19 (0.29%) TeamCity
10 18 (0.28%) LabVIEW
10 18 (0.28%) Robot Framework
11 17 (0.26%) JUnit
12 16 (0.25%) Octopus Deploy
13 14 (0.21%) Cucumber
13 14 (0.21%) Snyk
13 14 (0.21%) SonarQube
14 13 (0.20%) WebDriver
General
1 3,414 (52.30%) Social Skills
2 1,981 (30.35%) Analytical Skills
3 1,540 (23.59%) Finance
4 391 (5.99%) Organisational Skills
5 369 (5.65%) Marketing
6 341 (5.22%) Law
7 330 (5.06%) Retail
8 320 (4.90%) Manufacturing
9 298 (4.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 293 (4.49%) Legal
11 277 (4.24%) Public Sector
12 263 (4.03%) Banking
13 181 (2.77%) Presentation Skills
14 180 (2.76%) Telecoms
15 153 (2.34%) Electronics
16 115 (1.76%) Games
17 97 (1.49%) Influencing Skills
18 89 (1.36%) Documentation Skills
19 88 (1.35%) Financial Institution
20 84 (1.29%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 1,037 (15.89%) Analyst
2 815 (12.48%) Senior
3 734 (11.24%) IT Support
4 637 (9.76%) Support Engineer
5 589 (9.02%) Developer
6 432 (6.62%) Lead
7 334 (5.12%) Support Analyst
8 333 (5.10%) IT Engineer
9 279 (4.27%) IT Support Engineer
10 267 (4.09%) Technical Support
11 251 (3.84%) Business Analyst
12 222 (3.40%) Architect
12 222 (3.40%) Consultant
13 188 (2.88%) Support Technician
14 185 (2.83%) 2nd Line Support
15 183 (2.80%) Technical Engineer
16 175 (2.68%) Technical Support Engineer
17 164 (2.51%) IT Analyst
18 158 (2.42%) Software Engineer
19 155 (2.37%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 282 (4.32%) .NET
2 255 (3.91%) React
3 237 (3.63%) HTML
4 189 (2.90%) CSS
5 148 (2.27%) Node.js
6 146 (2.24%) REST
7 113 (1.73%) RESTful
8 91 (1.39%) AngularJS
9 70 (1.07%) Vue
10 69 (1.06%) Spring
11 66 (1.01%) JSON
11 66 (1.01%) Middleware
12 64 (0.98%) SOAP
13 63 (0.97%) XML
14 60 (0.92%) Kafka
15 58 (0.89%) .NET Framework
16 51 (0.78%) Django
17 50 (0.77%) ASP.NET
18 47 (0.72%) Flask
19 46 (0.70%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 523 (8.01%) Driving Licence
2 498 (7.63%) Onboarding
3 411 (6.30%) Self-Motivation
4 208 (3.19%) Management Information System
5 195 (2.99%) Analytical Mindset
6 173 (2.65%) Cloud Native
7 167 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
8 151 (2.31%) Product Ownership
9 135 (2.07%) Data Centre
10 119 (1.82%) Enterprise Software
11 88 (1.35%) Mobile App
12 86 (1.32%) Distributed Systems
13 70 (1.07%) Data Structures
14 67 (1.03%) Algorithms
14 67 (1.03%) Low-Code
15 64 (0.98%) Virtual Team
16 56 (0.86%) FMCG
16 56 (0.86%) Social Media
17 54 (0.83%) EPoS
18 52 (0.80%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 1,110 (17.00%) Windows
2 456 (6.99%) Windows Server
3 420 (6.43%) Linux
4 155 (2.37%) Windows 10
5 141 (2.16%) Windows Server 2016
6 93 (1.42%) Mac OS
7 85 (1.30%) Android
8 72 (1.10%) Apple iOS
9 57 (0.87%) Unix
9 57 (0.87%) Windows Server 2019
10 34 (0.52%) Windows Server 2012
11 27 (0.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 24 (0.37%) Windows 7
13 21 (0.32%) VMS
14 13 (0.20%) CentOS
15 9 (0.14%) Ubuntu
16 7 (0.11%) Debian
16 7 (0.11%) Windows 8
17 6 (0.092%) Mac OS X
17 6 (0.092%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,106 (16.94%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,061 (16.25%) Agile
3 972 (14.89%) Customer Service
4 735 (11.26%) Analytics
5 662 (10.14%) Mentoring
6 646 (9.90%) AI
7 629 (9.64%) Decision-Making
8 614 (9.41%) Business Intelligence
9 595 (9.11%) Project Management
10 582 (8.92%) DevOps
11 562 (8.61%) CI/CD
12 534 (8.18%) ITIL
13 522 (8.00%) Computer Science
14 484 (7.41%) Stakeholder Management
15 474 (7.26%) Cybersecurity
16 432 (6.62%) Change Management
17 425 (6.51%) ERP
18 417 (6.39%) Software Engineering
19 385 (5.90%) CRM
20 370 (5.67%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 950 (14.55%) SQL
2 927 (14.20%) Python
3 415 (6.36%) JavaScript
4 322 (4.93%) C#
4 322 (4.93%) PowerShell
5 318 (4.87%) Java
6 168 (2.57%) TypeScript
7 135 (2.07%) Bash
8 104 (1.59%) PHP
9 83 (1.27%) C++
10 60 (0.92%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 50 (0.77%) Go
12 48 (0.74%) T-SQL
13 46 (0.70%) C
14 39 (0.60%) Scala
15 36 (0.55%) R
16 27 (0.41%) Bicep
17 25 (0.38%) Apex Code
17 25 (0.38%) Kotlin
18 24 (0.37%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 1,532 (23.47%) Degree
2 532 (8.15%) Security Cleared
3 343 (5.25%) SC Cleared
4 250 (3.83%) Computer Science Degree
5 183 (2.80%) Microsoft Certification
6 168 (2.57%) Master's Degree
7 163 (2.50%) DBS Check
8 117 (1.79%) DV Cleared
9 103 (1.58%) CISSP
10 90 (1.38%) BPSS Clearance
11 80 (1.23%) A+ Certification
12 79 (1.21%) ACCA
13 75 (1.15%) Cisco Certification
14 69 (1.06%) Network+ Certification
15 65 (1.00%) CIMA
16 58 (0.89%) CISM
17 56 (0.86%) PMI Certification
18 55 (0.84%) AWS Certification
19 52 (0.80%) HND
20 51 (0.78%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 337 (5.16%) QA
2 319 (4.89%) Data Quality
3 216 (3.31%) GDPR
4 188 (2.88%) Cyber Essentials
5 168 (2.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 140 (2.14%) Accessibility
7 138 (2.11%) PCI DSS
8 130 (1.99%) SLA
9 86 (1.32%) NIST
10 45 (0.69%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 33 (0.51%) ISO 9001
12 26 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
13 21 (0.32%) PMO
14 20 (0.31%) SOC 2
15 16 (0.25%) COBIT
15 16 (0.25%) GRC
16 12 (0.18%) WCAG
17 9 (0.14%) ISO 13485
17 9 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 8 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 19770
System Software
1 781 (11.96%) Active Directory
2 263 (4.03%) Docker
3 259 (3.97%) Hyper-V
4 150 (2.30%) VMware Infrastructure
5 98 (1.50%) Terminal Server
6 28 (0.43%) Firmware
7 23 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
7 23 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
8 19 (0.29%) vSphere
9 16 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
10 9 (0.14%) KVM
11 7 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
12 6 (0.092%) VMware Workstation
13 4 (0.061%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 3 (0.046%) vCloud
15 2 (0.031%) HDFS
15 2 (0.031%) Postfix
15 2 (0.031%) RHEV
15 2 (0.031%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 2 (0.031%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 270 (4.14%) Terraform
2 265 (4.06%) Microsoft Intune
3 205 (3.14%) Kubernetes
4 137 (2.10%) Ansible
5 73 (1.12%) Grafana
6 63 (0.97%) SCCM
7 44 (0.67%) Prometheus
8 42 (0.64%) BMC PATROL
9 30 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
10 21 (0.32%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 20 (0.31%) Nagios
12 17 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
13 15 (0.23%) vCenter Server
14 14 (0.21%) Argo
14 14 (0.21%) Cisco CUCM
15 12 (0.18%) FortiGate
15 12 (0.18%) Kibana
16 11 (0.17%) Nessus
17 10 (0.15%) Nmap
18 9 (0.14%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,692 (25.92%) Microsoft
2 383 (5.87%) SAP
3 297 (4.55%) VMware
4 262 (4.01%) Oracle
5 166 (2.54%) Salesforce
6 160 (2.45%) Veeam
7 147 (2.25%) Google
8 145 (2.22%) Splunk
9 141 (2.16%) Cisco
9 141 (2.16%) SolarWinds
10 120 (1.84%) ServiceNow
11 104 (1.59%) Adobe
12 100 (1.53%) Databricks
13 99 (1.52%) Tanium
14 98 (1.50%) Brocade
14 98 (1.50%) Nimble Storage
15 67 (1.03%) Apple
16 59 (0.90%) Dell
17 55 (0.84%) Sage
18 51 (0.78%) HubSpot