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

6 months to
31 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 4 7
Rank change year-on-year -3 +3 +4
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 8,377 8,411 10,620
As % of all permanent jobs in England 8.62% 19.17% 14.90%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.74% 21.59% 18.34%
Number of salaries quoted 5,823 4,762 5,101
10th Percentile £27,750 £26,250 £27,000
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 £66,000 £67,500 £70,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £86,925 £85,000
UK median annual salary £47,085 £45,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +4.63% -10.00% -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 71,329 38,953 57,899
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.37% 88.79% 81.22%
Number of salaries quoted 50,672 22,634 35,794
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £42,000 £37,500 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% -8.00%
75th Percentile £80,000 £76,250 £75,949
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £95,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £56,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% -1.79% -6.67%

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 31 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 31 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 -6 2,260 £65,000 - 2,337
North of England -8 1,690 £45,000 +7.14% 979
South East -4 1,609 £42,500 - 1,160
Midlands -7 1,226 £42,500 +10.39% 737
North West -6 881 £45,000 -2.17% 501
South West -4 832 £45,000 +25.00% 639
East of England -5 688 £42,500 +21.43% 449
West Midlands -9 686 £42,500 -0.55% 439
Yorkshire -9 546 £42,500 +21.43% 333
East Midlands -9 538 £41,000 +17.14% 297
North East -5 263 £48,250 +25.32% 164
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
1 481 (5.74%) SharePoint
2 401 (4.79%) Microsoft Exchange
3 102 (1.22%) Confluence
4 58 (0.69%) IIS
5 48 (0.57%) CMS
6 46 (0.55%) Apache
7 37 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
7 37 (0.44%) Apache Spark
8 33 (0.39%) WordPress
9 21 (0.25%) SAS
10 13 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
11 11 (0.13%) nginx
11 11 (0.13%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.13%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.11%) Jupyter
12 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 8 (0.095%) Exchange Server 2013
13 8 (0.095%) Tomcat
14 7 (0.084%) OpenEdge
15 5 (0.060%) CICS
Applications
1 534 (6.37%) Microsoft Office
2 483 (5.77%) Microsoft Excel
3 88 (1.05%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 47 (0.56%) MS Visio
4 47 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
5 42 (0.50%) Microsoft Project
6 34 (0.41%) AutoCAD
7 23 (0.27%) Simulink
8 17 (0.20%) Revit
9 15 (0.18%) Chatbot
10 11 (0.13%) SOLIDWORKS
11 8 (0.095%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 8 (0.095%) Trello
12 7 (0.084%) Autodesk Flame
12 7 (0.084%) Baselight
12 7 (0.084%) Fusion 360
13 6 (0.072%) Adobe Illustrator
13 6 (0.072%) EPLAN
13 6 (0.072%) Navisworks
14 5 (0.060%) Lightworks
Business Applications
1 88 (1.05%) Dynamics CRM
2 84 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
3 69 (0.82%) NetSuite
4 32 (0.38%) Shopify
5 22 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
6 17 (0.20%) Magento
7 15 (0.18%) IBM Planning Analytics
8 14 (0.17%) Elite 3E
8 14 (0.17%) SAP Business One
8 14 (0.17%) SAP ERP
9 13 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
10 12 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
11 11 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
12 10 (0.12%) JDE EnterpriseOne
12 10 (0.12%) Oracle Applications
12 10 (0.12%) Sage X3
13 9 (0.11%) iTrent
13 9 (0.11%) Primavera
13 9 (0.11%) Sage 50
13 9 (0.11%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,717 (20.50%) Azure
2 1,313 (15.67%) Microsoft 365
3 1,024 (12.22%) AWS
4 701 (8.37%) Power Platform
5 407 (4.86%) Entra ID
6 366 (4.37%) SaaS
7 343 (4.09%) GCP
8 209 (2.49%) Azure DevOps
9 205 (2.45%) GitHub
10 185 (2.21%) Serverless
11 183 (2.18%) Dynamics 365
12 182 (2.17%) Power Automate
13 154 (1.84%) PowerApps
14 121 (1.44%) Microsoft Copilot
15 120 (1.43%) OneDrive
16 100 (1.19%) Amazon S3
17 92 (1.10%) GitHub Actions
18 86 (1.03%) AWS Lambda
19 82 (0.98%) AWS CloudFormation
20 80 (0.95%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 511 (6.10%) Firewall
2 470 (5.61%) DNS
3 397 (4.74%) DHCP
4 323 (3.86%) VPN
5 287 (3.43%) TCP/IP
6 211 (2.52%) Wi-Fi
7 200 (2.39%) WAN
8 197 (2.35%) LAN
9 181 (2.16%) Wireless
10 172 (2.05%) VLAN
11 152 (1.81%) Network Security
12 110 (1.31%) VoIP
13 108 (1.29%) Broadband
14 51 (0.61%) Internet
15 41 (0.49%) HTTP
16 40 (0.48%) SAN
17 35 (0.42%) OSPF
17 35 (0.42%) SD-WAN
18 34 (0.41%) BGP
18 34 (0.41%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 547 (6.53%) Power BI
2 416 (4.97%) SQL Server
3 143 (1.71%) MySQL
4 142 (1.70%) Data Warehouse
5 137 (1.64%) Amazon RDS
5 137 (1.64%) Relational Database
6 123 (1.47%) Tableau
7 116 (1.38%) PostgreSQL
8 104 (1.24%) NoSQL
9 94 (1.12%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 83 (0.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 64 (0.76%) Big Data
12 62 (0.74%) MongoDB
13 58 (0.69%) Azure SQL Database
14 57 (0.68%) Data Lake
15 52 (0.62%) Power Query
16 48 (0.57%) Metadata
17 43 (0.51%) DynamoDB
18 41 (0.49%) Electronic Patient Records
19 37 (0.44%) Looker
Development Applications
1 374 (4.46%) Git
2 297 (3.55%) JIRA
3 131 (1.56%) Jenkins
4 104 (1.24%) GitLab
5 40 (0.48%) Selenium
6 38 (0.45%) Eclipse
7 36 (0.43%) Claude Code
8 34 (0.41%) JUnit
9 33 (0.39%) Subversion
10 29 (0.35%) Cucumber
11 25 (0.30%) Postman
12 24 (0.29%) Rational DOORS
13 22 (0.26%) Cypress.io
14 21 (0.25%) Bitbucket
14 21 (0.25%) Oracle Forms
15 18 (0.21%) SonarQube
16 17 (0.20%) Visual Studio
17 16 (0.19%) Chocolatey
18 15 (0.18%) MLflow
19 14 (0.17%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 4,114 (49.11%) Social Skills
2 2,545 (30.38%) Analytical Skills
3 1,666 (19.89%) Finance
4 660 (7.88%) Manufacturing
5 545 (6.51%) Organisational Skills
6 504 (6.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 500 (5.97%) Law
8 416 (4.97%) Retail
9 360 (4.30%) Marketing
10 323 (3.86%) Public Sector
11 316 (3.77%) Legal
12 300 (3.58%) Banking
13 236 (2.82%) Electronics
14 220 (2.63%) Aerospace
15 188 (2.24%) Telecoms
16 179 (2.14%) Influencing Skills
17 159 (1.90%) Presentation Skills
18 107 (1.28%) Documentation Skills
19 92 (1.10%) Advertising
19 92 (1.10%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 1,091 (13.02%) Analyst
2 915 (10.92%) Senior
3 811 (9.68%) Developer
4 716 (8.55%) IT Support
5 580 (6.92%) Support Engineer
6 513 (6.12%) Lead
7 418 (4.99%) Consultant
8 397 (4.74%) IT Engineer
9 352 (4.20%) Support Analyst
10 312 (3.72%) Software Engineer
11 307 (3.66%) IT Support Engineer
12 279 (3.33%) Architect
13 263 (3.14%) Technical Support
14 257 (3.07%) Systems Engineer
15 247 (2.95%) Support Technician
16 218 (2.60%) IT Technician
17 217 (2.59%) Technical Engineer
18 192 (2.29%) Technical Support Engineer
19 191 (2.28%) Data Engineer
20 180 (2.15%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 381 (4.55%) .NET
2 367 (4.38%) Terraform
3 306 (3.65%) React
4 274 (3.27%) REST
5 258 (3.08%) HTML
6 199 (2.38%) CSS
7 179 (2.14%) RESTful
8 145 (1.73%) Node.js
9 117 (1.40%) SOAP
10 114 (1.36%) Spring
11 104 (1.24%) JSON
12 102 (1.22%) AngularJS
13 95 (1.13%) ASP.NET
14 93 (1.11%) Vue
15 91 (1.09%) Web Services
16 89 (1.06%) Kafka
16 89 (1.06%) Middleware
17 78 (0.93%) XML
18 73 (0.87%) Spring Boot
19 72 (0.86%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 554 (6.61%) Onboarding
2 553 (6.60%) Driving Licence
3 430 (5.13%) Self-Motivation
4 346 (4.13%) Management Information System
5 308 (3.68%) Cloud Native
6 247 (2.95%) Product Ownership
7 181 (2.16%) Data Centre
8 177 (2.11%) Legacy Systems
9 151 (1.80%) Distributed Systems
10 149 (1.78%) Enterprise Software
11 118 (1.41%) Data Structures
12 114 (1.36%) Analytical Mindset
13 112 (1.34%) Security Posture
14 102 (1.22%) Cyber Threat
14 102 (1.22%) NHS
15 100 (1.19%) AI Agents
16 96 (1.15%) Robotics
17 93 (1.11%) Algorithms
18 86 (1.03%) Virtual Team
19 84 (1.00%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 1,279 (15.27%) Windows
2 558 (6.66%) Linux
3 549 (6.55%) Windows Server
4 158 (1.89%) Windows 10
5 113 (1.35%) Windows Server 2016
6 104 (1.24%) Mac OS
7 97 (1.16%) Apple iOS
8 95 (1.13%) Android
9 55 (0.66%) Unix
10 46 (0.55%) Windows Server 2019
11 31 (0.37%) VMS
12 30 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 30 (0.36%) Ubuntu
13 16 (0.19%) CentOS
14 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 11 (0.13%) Debian
16 9 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
16 9 (0.11%) FreeRTOS
16 9 (0.11%) Mac OS X
17 8 (0.095%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,081 (24.84%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,371 (16.37%) Agile
3 1,285 (15.34%) Customer Service
4 1,076 (12.84%) AI
5 1,014 (12.10%) Decision-Making
6 935 (11.16%) Stakeholder Management
7 902 (10.77%) CI/CD
7 902 (10.77%) Mentoring
8 783 (9.35%) Analytics
9 778 (9.29%) Software Engineering
10 756 (9.02%) DevOps
11 701 (8.37%) Cybersecurity
12 666 (7.95%) Roadmaps
13 660 (7.88%) ITIL
14 641 (7.65%) Project Delivery
15 623 (7.44%) Business Intelligence
16 608 (7.26%) Project Management
17 605 (7.22%) Computer Science
18 560 (6.68%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 550 (6.57%) Collaborative Working
Programming Languages
1 1,305 (15.58%) SQL
2 1,176 (14.04%) Python
3 570 (6.80%) JavaScript
4 488 (5.83%) C#
5 424 (5.06%) Java
6 369 (4.40%) PowerShell
7 254 (3.03%) TypeScript
8 226 (2.70%) C++
9 171 (2.04%) Bash
10 94 (1.12%) C
11 88 (1.05%) PHP
12 73 (0.87%) Go
13 71 (0.85%) T-SQL
14 70 (0.84%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 48 (0.57%) Perl
15 48 (0.57%) Rust
15 48 (0.57%) Shell Script
16 42 (0.50%) R
17 41 (0.49%) Ruby
18 38 (0.45%) VBA
Qualifications
1 1,464 (17.48%) Degree
2 783 (9.35%) Security Cleared
3 523 (6.24%) SC Cleared
4 322 (3.84%) Computer Science Degree
5 239 (2.85%) DBS Check
6 208 (2.48%) Microsoft Certification
7 190 (2.27%) DV Cleared
8 171 (2.04%) Azure Certification
9 150 (1.79%) CISSP
10 147 (1.75%) Cisco Certification
11 140 (1.67%) BPSS Clearance
12 135 (1.61%) Master's Degree
13 128 (1.53%) HNC
14 111 (1.33%) HND
15 105 (1.25%) PMI Certification
16 85 (1.01%) CISM
17 82 (0.98%) CCNA
17 82 (0.98%) PMP
18 75 (0.90%) CCNP
19 73 (0.87%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 494 (5.90%) QA
2 417 (4.98%) Data Quality
3 349 (4.17%) GDPR
4 236 (2.82%) Accessibility
5 223 (2.66%) SLA
6 202 (2.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 200 (2.39%) Cyber Essentials
8 165 (1.97%) NIST
9 141 (1.68%) PCI DSS
10 61 (0.73%) PMO
11 54 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 40 (0.48%) GRC
13 36 (0.43%) ISO 9001
14 25 (0.30%) NCSC
15 24 (0.29%) SOC 2
16 23 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
17 22 (0.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
18 21 (0.25%) COBIT
19 19 (0.23%) GMP
19 19 (0.23%) WCAG
System Software
1 854 (10.19%) Active Directory
2 359 (4.29%) Docker
3 284 (3.39%) Hyper-V
4 256 (3.06%) VMware Infrastructure
5 70 (0.84%) Terminal Server
6 59 (0.70%) Firmware
7 51 (0.61%) Virtual Desktop
8 44 (0.53%) Virtual Machines
9 35 (0.42%) vSphere
10 20 (0.24%) Embedded Firmware
11 18 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
12 12 (0.14%) KVM
13 8 (0.095%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.072%) GPFS
14 6 (0.072%) StorNext
14 6 (0.072%) XenApp
15 5 (0.060%) ClearTrust
15 5 (0.060%) IAG
15 5 (0.060%) Squid
15 5 (0.060%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 327 (3.90%) Kubernetes
2 282 (3.37%) Microsoft Intune
3 151 (1.80%) Ansible
4 92 (1.10%) Grafana
5 75 (0.90%) SCCM
6 62 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
7 48 (0.57%) Prometheus
8 27 (0.32%) Jamf Pro
9 26 (0.31%) FortiGate
10 21 (0.25%) Nagios
11 19 (0.23%) Puppet
12 15 (0.18%) Argo
13 13 (0.16%) Functional Safety
13 13 (0.16%) Kibana
14 12 (0.14%) Proxmox
15 11 (0.13%) Autotask
15 11 (0.13%) BMC PATROL
15 11 (0.13%) logstash
15 11 (0.13%) Nmap
16 10 (0.12%) Podman
Vendors
1 2,433 (29.04%) Microsoft
2 375 (4.48%) VMware
3 266 (3.18%) SAP
4 245 (2.92%) Google
5 239 (2.85%) Oracle
6 171 (2.04%) Cisco
6 171 (2.04%) ServiceNow
7 163 (1.95%) Salesforce
8 133 (1.59%) Veeam
9 128 (1.53%) Databricks
10 122 (1.46%) Splunk
11 110 (1.31%) SolarWinds
12 81 (0.97%) Sage
13 78 (0.93%) Tanium
14 75 (0.90%) Apple
15 71 (0.85%) Nimble Storage
16 70 (0.84%) Brocade
17 65 (0.78%) Fortinet
18 58 (0.69%) HubSpot
19 57 (0.68%) Workday