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 19 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 4 8
Rank change year-on-year -4 +4 +3
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 8,230 8,401 10,668
As % of all permanent jobs in England 8.66% 19.20% 14.70%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.77% 21.51% 18.11%
Number of salaries quoted 5,745 4,783 5,476
10th Percentile £27,750 £26,250 £26,750
25th Percentile £33,250 £31,250 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £45,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% -10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £66,250 £67,500 £70,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £87,500 £85,000
UK median annual salary £47,500 £46,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +3.26% -8.00% -9.09%

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 69,923 39,061 58,921
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.56% 89.26% 81.17%
Number of salaries quoted 49,411 22,522 38,211
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,750 £37,500 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -12.00%
75th Percentile £80,000 £76,250 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £95,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.71%

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 19 August 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 19 August 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 2,248 £65,000 - 3,229
North of England -8 1,676 £45,000 +5.88% 1,163
South East -3 1,561 £42,500 - 1,296
Midlands -8 1,198 £42,500 +10.39% 818
North West -5 878 £45,000 - 613
South West -4 808 £45,000 +25.00% 652
West Midlands -9 667 £42,500 -4.00% 511
East of England -3 662 £42,500 +21.43% 603
Yorkshire -8 551 £42,500 +21.43% 388
East Midlands -9 528 £41,000 +17.14% 308
North East -7 247 £48,500 +21.25% 184
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
1 456 (5.54%) SharePoint
2 397 (4.82%) Microsoft Exchange
3 99 (1.20%) Confluence
4 57 (0.69%) CMS
5 55 (0.67%) IIS
6 48 (0.58%) Apache
7 36 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
7 36 (0.44%) Apache Spark
7 36 (0.44%) WordPress
8 21 (0.26%) SAS
9 13 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
10 11 (0.13%) nginx
10 11 (0.13%) WebLogic
10 11 (0.13%) WebSphere
11 9 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
11 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 8 (0.097%) Jupyter
13 7 (0.085%) OpenEdge
13 7 (0.085%) Tomcat
14 6 (0.073%) Drupal
Applications
1 526 (6.39%) Microsoft Office
2 472 (5.74%) Microsoft Excel
3 83 (1.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 49 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
5 47 (0.57%) MS Visio
6 42 (0.51%) Microsoft Project
7 34 (0.41%) AutoCAD
8 18 (0.22%) Simulink
9 16 (0.19%) Revit
10 15 (0.18%) Chatbot
11 11 (0.13%) SOLIDWORKS
12 9 (0.11%) Trello
13 8 (0.097%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 7 (0.085%) Adobe Illustrator
15 6 (0.073%) Fusion 360
15 6 (0.073%) Navisworks
16 5 (0.061%) Autodesk Flame
16 5 (0.061%) Baselight
16 5 (0.061%) EPLAN
16 5 (0.061%) Lightworks
Business Applications
1 83 (1.01%) Dynamics CRM
2 82 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
3 59 (0.72%) NetSuite
4 30 (0.36%) Shopify
5 21 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
6 17 (0.21%) Magento
7 15 (0.18%) IBM Planning Analytics
7 15 (0.18%) SAP Business One
7 15 (0.18%) SAP ERP
8 14 (0.17%) Elite 3E
9 13 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
10 11 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
10 11 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
11 10 (0.12%) JDE EnterpriseOne
11 10 (0.12%) Oracle Applications
11 10 (0.12%) Sage X3
12 9 (0.11%) iTrent
12 9 (0.11%) Primavera
12 9 (0.11%) Sage 50
12 9 (0.11%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,709 (20.77%) Azure
2 1,275 (15.49%) Microsoft 365
3 1,022 (12.42%) AWS
4 687 (8.35%) Power Platform
5 396 (4.81%) Entra ID
6 364 (4.42%) SaaS
7 357 (4.34%) GCP
8 206 (2.50%) GitHub
9 202 (2.45%) Azure DevOps
10 193 (2.35%) Serverless
11 176 (2.14%) Dynamics 365
12 174 (2.11%) Power Automate
13 147 (1.79%) PowerApps
14 113 (1.37%) Microsoft Copilot
15 111 (1.35%) OneDrive
16 101 (1.23%) Amazon S3
17 95 (1.15%) GitHub Actions
18 89 (1.08%) AWS Lambda
19 84 (1.02%) AWS CloudFormation
20 73 (0.89%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 506 (6.15%) Firewall
2 459 (5.58%) DNS
3 388 (4.71%) DHCP
4 310 (3.77%) VPN
5 285 (3.46%) TCP/IP
6 205 (2.49%) WAN
7 202 (2.45%) Wi-Fi
8 198 (2.41%) LAN
9 169 (2.05%) Wireless
10 158 (1.92%) VLAN
11 148 (1.80%) Network Security
12 127 (1.54%) Broadband
13 107 (1.30%) VoIP
14 47 (0.57%) Internet
15 44 (0.53%) SAN
16 43 (0.52%) HTTP
17 40 (0.49%) SD-WAN
18 37 (0.45%) OSPF
19 36 (0.44%) BGP
20 34 (0.41%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 535 (6.50%) Power BI
2 417 (5.07%) SQL Server
3 146 (1.77%) MySQL
4 139 (1.69%) Data Warehouse
5 136 (1.65%) Amazon RDS
6 133 (1.62%) Relational Database
7 124 (1.51%) Tableau
8 121 (1.47%) PostgreSQL
9 108 (1.31%) NoSQL
10 95 (1.15%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 86 (1.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 64 (0.78%) MongoDB
13 63 (0.77%) Big Data
14 57 (0.69%) Azure SQL Database
15 56 (0.68%) Data Lake
16 49 (0.60%) Power Query
17 44 (0.53%) Metadata
18 43 (0.52%) DynamoDB
19 41 (0.50%) Electronic Patient Records
20 35 (0.43%) Looker
Development Applications
1 371 (4.51%) Git
2 289 (3.51%) JIRA
3 129 (1.57%) Jenkins
4 110 (1.34%) GitLab
5 35 (0.43%) Selenium
6 34 (0.41%) Eclipse
7 31 (0.38%) Claude Code
7 31 (0.38%) Subversion
8 30 (0.36%) JUnit
9 27 (0.33%) Cucumber
10 25 (0.30%) Postman
11 24 (0.29%) Rational DOORS
12 20 (0.24%) Bitbucket
12 20 (0.24%) Cypress.io
13 19 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
13 19 (0.23%) SonarQube
13 19 (0.23%) Visual Studio
14 16 (0.19%) Chocolatey
15 14 (0.17%) MLflow
15 14 (0.17%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 3,999 (48.59%) Social Skills
2 2,494 (30.30%) Analytical Skills
3 1,633 (19.84%) Finance
4 634 (7.70%) Manufacturing
5 513 (6.23%) Organisational Skills
6 492 (5.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 481 (5.84%) Law
8 407 (4.95%) Retail
9 358 (4.35%) Marketing
10 327 (3.97%) Public Sector
11 312 (3.79%) Legal
12 304 (3.69%) Banking
13 223 (2.71%) Electronics
14 208 (2.53%) Aerospace
15 191 (2.32%) Telecoms
16 171 (2.08%) Influencing Skills
17 151 (1.83%) Presentation Skills
18 111 (1.35%) Documentation Skills
19 91 (1.11%) Advertising
20 88 (1.07%) Games
Job Titles
1 1,063 (12.92%) Analyst
2 920 (11.18%) Senior
3 815 (9.90%) Developer
4 700 (8.51%) IT Support
5 570 (6.93%) Support Engineer
6 507 (6.16%) Lead
7 410 (4.98%) Consultant
8 394 (4.79%) IT Engineer
9 331 (4.02%) Support Analyst
10 309 (3.75%) Software Engineer
11 301 (3.66%) IT Support Engineer
12 280 (3.40%) Architect
13 254 (3.09%) Technical Support
14 253 (3.07%) Systems Engineer
15 252 (3.06%) Support Technician
16 222 (2.70%) IT Technician
17 209 (2.54%) Technical Engineer
18 194 (2.36%) Data Engineer
19 185 (2.25%) Technical Support Engineer
20 174 (2.11%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 375 (4.56%) .NET
2 310 (3.77%) React
3 263 (3.20%) HTML
4 260 (3.16%) REST
5 204 (2.48%) CSS
6 176 (2.14%) RESTful
7 153 (1.86%) Node.js
8 113 (1.37%) SOAP
9 108 (1.31%) Spring
10 103 (1.25%) AngularJS
11 102 (1.24%) JSON
12 94 (1.14%) Vue
13 92 (1.12%) ASP.NET
14 91 (1.11%) Kafka
15 89 (1.08%) Middleware
16 82 (1.00%) Web Services
17 76 (0.92%) OAuth
18 75 (0.91%) XML
19 71 (0.86%) Spring Boot
20 58 (0.70%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 528 (6.42%) Onboarding
2 525 (6.38%) Driving Licence
3 424 (5.15%) Self-Motivation
4 343 (4.17%) Management Information System
5 305 (3.71%) Cloud Native
6 234 (2.84%) Product Ownership
7 178 (2.16%) Data Centre
8 174 (2.11%) Legacy Systems
9 164 (1.99%) Distributed Systems
10 145 (1.76%) Enterprise Software
11 121 (1.47%) Analytical Mindset
12 116 (1.41%) Data Structures
13 111 (1.35%) Security Posture
14 103 (1.25%) NHS
15 99 (1.20%) Algorithms
16 98 (1.19%) AI Agents
17 91 (1.11%) Social Media
18 88 (1.07%) Cyber Threat
19 87 (1.06%) Robotics
20 83 (1.01%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 1,253 (15.22%) Windows
2 560 (6.80%) Linux
3 544 (6.61%) Windows Server
4 156 (1.90%) Windows 10
5 114 (1.39%) Windows Server 2016
6 106 (1.29%) Android
7 104 (1.26%) Mac OS
8 93 (1.13%) Apple iOS
9 53 (0.64%) Unix
10 45 (0.55%) Windows Server 2019
11 34 (0.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 34 (0.41%) Ubuntu
12 29 (0.35%) VMS
13 21 (0.26%) CentOS
14 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 12 (0.15%) Debian
16 9 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
16 9 (0.11%) FreeRTOS
16 9 (0.11%) Mac OS X
17 7 (0.085%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,018 (24.52%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,353 (16.44%) Agile
3 1,224 (14.87%) Customer Service
4 1,063 (12.92%) AI
5 999 (12.14%) Decision-Making
6 911 (11.07%) CI/CD
7 886 (10.77%) Mentoring
7 886 (10.77%) Stakeholder Management
8 782 (9.50%) Analytics
9 762 (9.26%) Software Engineering
10 760 (9.23%) DevOps
11 678 (8.24%) Cybersecurity
12 666 (8.09%) ITIL
13 659 (8.01%) Roadmaps
14 608 (7.39%) Business Intelligence
15 607 (7.38%) Project Delivery
16 601 (7.30%) Computer Science
17 595 (7.23%) Project Management
18 543 (6.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 534 (6.49%) Collaborative Working
Programming Languages
1 1,294 (15.72%) SQL
2 1,195 (14.52%) Python
3 573 (6.96%) JavaScript
4 481 (5.84%) C#
5 423 (5.14%) Java
6 359 (4.36%) PowerShell
7 256 (3.11%) TypeScript
8 223 (2.71%) C++
9 183 (2.22%) Bash
10 92 (1.12%) C
10 92 (1.12%) PHP
11 84 (1.02%) Go
12 69 (0.84%) T-SQL
13 65 (0.79%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 50 (0.61%) Shell Script
15 47 (0.57%) Rust
16 45 (0.55%) Perl
17 43 (0.52%) R
17 43 (0.52%) Scala
18 39 (0.47%) VBA
Qualifications
1 1,425 (17.31%) Degree
2 758 (9.21%) Security Cleared
3 510 (6.20%) SC Cleared
4 317 (3.85%) Computer Science Degree
5 230 (2.79%) DBS Check
6 201 (2.44%) Microsoft Certification
7 184 (2.24%) DV Cleared
8 164 (1.99%) Azure Certification
9 150 (1.82%) Cisco Certification
10 146 (1.77%) CISSP
11 141 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
12 129 (1.57%) Master's Degree
13 116 (1.41%) HNC
14 105 (1.28%) PMI Certification
15 95 (1.15%) HND
16 83 (1.01%) CCNA
17 82 (1.00%) CISM
17 82 (1.00%) PMP
18 75 (0.91%) CCNP
19 71 (0.86%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 478 (5.81%) QA
2 407 (4.95%) Data Quality
3 337 (4.09%) GDPR
4 231 (2.81%) Accessibility
5 229 (2.78%) SLA
6 201 (2.44%) Cyber Essentials
7 190 (2.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 162 (1.97%) NIST
9 146 (1.77%) PCI DSS
10 62 (0.75%) PMO
11 52 (0.63%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 39 (0.47%) GRC
13 33 (0.40%) ISO 9001
14 26 (0.32%) SOC 2
15 25 (0.30%) GMP
16 23 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
16 23 (0.28%) COBIT
17 22 (0.27%) NCSC
18 20 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
18 20 (0.24%) WCAG
System Software
1 834 (10.13%) Active Directory
2 376 (4.57%) Docker
3 278 (3.38%) Hyper-V
4 253 (3.07%) VMware Infrastructure
5 70 (0.85%) Terminal Server
6 57 (0.69%) Firmware
7 50 (0.61%) Virtual Desktop
8 40 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
9 36 (0.44%) vSphere
10 18 (0.22%) Embedded Firmware
10 18 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
11 14 (0.17%) KVM
12 7 (0.085%) XenApp
13 5 (0.061%) ClearTrust
13 5 (0.061%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 5 (0.061%) Squid
13 5 (0.061%) VMware NSX
14 4 (0.049%) GPFS
14 4 (0.049%) StorNext
14 4 (0.049%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 373 (4.53%) Terraform
2 332 (4.03%) Kubernetes
3 280 (3.40%) Microsoft Intune
4 159 (1.93%) Ansible
5 97 (1.18%) Grafana
6 77 (0.94%) SCCM
7 56 (0.68%) Prometheus
8 55 (0.67%) Single Sign-On
9 26 (0.32%) Jamf Pro
9 26 (0.32%) Nagios
10 25 (0.30%) FortiGate
11 22 (0.27%) Puppet
12 15 (0.18%) Argo
13 13 (0.16%) Kibana
14 12 (0.15%) Autotask
14 12 (0.15%) Functional Safety
14 12 (0.15%) Proxmox
15 11 (0.13%) logstash
15 11 (0.13%) Nmap
16 10 (0.12%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 2,356 (28.63%) Microsoft
2 370 (4.50%) VMware
3 240 (2.92%) SAP
4 237 (2.88%) Oracle
5 232 (2.82%) Google
6 170 (2.07%) Cisco
7 163 (1.98%) ServiceNow
8 157 (1.91%) Salesforce
9 132 (1.60%) Veeam
10 129 (1.57%) Databricks
11 123 (1.49%) Splunk
12 114 (1.39%) SolarWinds
13 78 (0.95%) Tanium
14 75 (0.91%) Apple
14 75 (0.91%) Sage
15 71 (0.86%) Nimble Storage
16 70 (0.85%) Brocade
17 62 (0.75%) Fortinet
18 58 (0.70%) Dell
19 57 (0.69%) Palo Alto