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

6 months to
31 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 4 7
Rank change year-on-year -5 +3 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,407 7,007 11,754
As % of all permanent jobs in England 9.15% 19.14% 15.05%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.91% 20.53% 17.42%
Number of salaries quoted 4,449 4,386 8,251
10th Percentile £27,000 £29,000 £26,250
25th Percentile £31,250 £37,500 £33,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -14.55% +10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £67,500 £75,000 £68,750
90th Percentile £86,500 £90,000 £87,000
UK median annual salary £45,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -18.18% +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 53,786 34,133 67,457
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 76.78% 93.22% 86.35%
Number of salaries quoted 33,742 20,386 52,114
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £43,762 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,163 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.06% +9.09% -12.00%
75th Percentile £77,500 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £98,750 £102,500 £95,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -10.57%

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 March 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 March 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 -3 1,972 £67,500 +3.85% 986
North of England -18 1,295 £41,000 -10.87% 662
South East -7 1,198 £45,000 -10.00% 802
Midlands -20 859 £38,250 -20.31% 478
North West -17 654 £41,500 -14.43% 365
South West -6 542 £43,500 -8.42% 308
Yorkshire -7 511 £35,000 -16.67% 222
West Midlands -25 506 £42,500 -20.26% 278
East of England -8 439 £40,000 -20.00% 288
East Midlands -2 350 £35,000 -7.89% 199
North East -9 130 £45,000 - 92
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
1 339 (5.29%) Microsoft Exchange
2 286 (4.46%) SharePoint
3 77 (1.20%) Confluence
4 55 (0.86%) CMS
5 51 (0.80%) Apache
6 45 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
7 36 (0.56%) Apache Spark
8 35 (0.55%) IIS
9 27 (0.42%) WordPress
10 16 (0.25%) SAS
11 14 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
12 12 (0.19%) nginx
13 11 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2013
14 10 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2007
14 10 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2010
15 9 (0.14%) Anypoint
15 9 (0.14%) Drupal
16 6 (0.094%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 4 (0.062%) Apache Solr
17 4 (0.062%) OpenStack
Applications
1 452 (7.05%) Microsoft Office
2 343 (5.35%) Microsoft Excel
3 72 (1.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 37 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
5 34 (0.53%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
7 14 (0.22%) AutoCAD
8 13 (0.20%) Maya
9 12 (0.19%) Photoshop
10 11 (0.17%) Adobe Illustrator
11 10 (0.16%) Chatbot
12 8 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 6 (0.094%) Adobe XD
13 6 (0.094%) Fusion 360
13 6 (0.094%) SOLIDWORKS
14 4 (0.062%) Trello
15 3 (0.047%) Elementor
15 3 (0.047%) InDesign
15 3 (0.047%) Simulink
16 2 (0.031%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 59 (0.92%) Dynamics CRM
2 42 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
3 31 (0.48%) NetSuite
4 21 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
5 17 (0.27%) Endur
5 17 (0.27%) SAP CO
5 17 (0.27%) Shopify
6 14 (0.22%) Dynamics NAV
7 12 (0.19%) Maximo
8 10 (0.16%) iTrent
8 10 (0.16%) Workday HCM
9 9 (0.14%) Magento
9 9 (0.14%) SAP ERP
10 8 (0.12%) SAP FI
10 8 (0.12%) SAP FI/CO
11 7 (0.11%) IBM Planning Analytics
11 7 (0.11%) Q-Pulse
11 7 (0.11%) Sage 200
12 6 (0.094%) Oracle Payables
12 6 (0.094%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 1,379 (21.52%) Azure
2 991 (15.47%) Microsoft 365
3 794 (12.39%) AWS
4 447 (6.98%) Power Platform
5 369 (5.76%) SaaS
6 295 (4.60%) GCP
7 272 (4.25%) Entra ID
8 168 (2.62%) GitHub
9 165 (2.58%) Azure DevOps
10 164 (2.56%) Serverless
11 121 (1.89%) Power Automate
12 102 (1.59%) Dynamics 365
13 87 (1.36%) Google Workspace
14 86 (1.34%) Amazon S3
15 81 (1.26%) GitHub Actions
16 79 (1.23%) AWS CloudFormation
17 78 (1.22%) AWS Lambda
18 77 (1.20%) Azure Data Factory
18 77 (1.20%) PaaS
19 76 (1.19%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 415 (6.48%) DNS
2 382 (5.96%) Firewall
3 351 (5.48%) DHCP
4 252 (3.93%) VPN
5 215 (3.36%) WAN
6 213 (3.32%) TCP/IP
7 207 (3.23%) Wi-Fi
8 188 (2.93%) Broadband
9 180 (2.81%) LAN
10 127 (1.98%) VLAN
11 99 (1.55%) Wireless
12 83 (1.30%) VoIP
13 68 (1.06%) SD-WAN
14 54 (0.84%) Network Security
15 44 (0.69%) SAN
16 40 (0.62%) Remote Desktop
17 39 (0.61%) Internet
18 32 (0.50%) Structured Cabling
19 29 (0.45%) BGP
20 28 (0.44%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 374 (5.84%) Power BI
2 275 (4.29%) SQL Server
3 129 (2.01%) Data Warehouse
4 127 (1.98%) Tableau
5 120 (1.87%) NoSQL
6 112 (1.75%) Relational Database
7 110 (1.72%) PostgreSQL
8 93 (1.45%) Amazon RDS
9 92 (1.44%) MySQL
10 63 (0.98%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 54 (0.84%) MongoDB
12 50 (0.78%) Power Query
13 48 (0.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 47 (0.73%) DynamoDB
15 45 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
15 45 (0.70%) Azure SQL Database
16 42 (0.66%) Metadata
17 41 (0.64%) Data Lake
18 40 (0.62%) Big Data
19 26 (0.41%) Redis
Development Applications
1 284 (4.43%) Git
2 231 (3.61%) JIRA
3 110 (1.72%) Jenkins
4 95 (1.48%) GitLab
5 53 (0.83%) Selenium
6 30 (0.47%) Visual Studio
7 24 (0.37%) Cypress.io
8 19 (0.30%) Burp Suite
8 19 (0.30%) Maven
8 19 (0.30%) Metasploit
9 18 (0.28%) Chocolatey
9 18 (0.28%) LabVIEW
9 18 (0.28%) Rational DOORS
9 18 (0.28%) Robot Framework
10 17 (0.27%) CircleCI
10 17 (0.27%) TeamCity
11 16 (0.25%) Cucumber
12 15 (0.23%) Bitbucket
12 15 (0.23%) SonarQube
13 14 (0.22%) JUnit
General
1 3,149 (49.15%) Social Skills
2 1,936 (30.22%) Analytical Skills
3 1,394 (21.76%) Finance
4 447 (6.98%) Organisational Skills
5 361 (5.63%) Marketing
6 350 (5.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 314 (4.90%) Law
8 306 (4.78%) Retail
9 300 (4.68%) Banking
10 299 (4.67%) Legal
11 290 (4.53%) Public Sector
12 280 (4.37%) Manufacturing
13 163 (2.54%) Presentation Skills
14 152 (2.37%) Telecoms
15 145 (2.26%) Electronics
16 101 (1.58%) Documentation Skills
17 96 (1.50%) Games
18 81 (1.26%) Financial Institution
18 81 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
19 71 (1.11%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 935 (14.59%) Analyst
2 759 (11.85%) IT Support
3 752 (11.74%) Senior
4 646 (10.08%) Support Engineer
5 594 (9.27%) Developer
6 390 (6.09%) IT Engineer
7 381 (5.95%) Lead
8 327 (5.10%) IT Support Engineer
9 304 (4.74%) Support Analyst
10 246 (3.84%) Consultant
11 217 (3.39%) Support Technician
12 213 (3.32%) Architect
12 213 (3.32%) Business Analyst
13 194 (3.03%) 2nd Line Support
13 194 (3.03%) Technical Support
14 179 (2.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 175 (2.73%) Software Engineer
16 168 (2.62%) Systems Engineer
17 166 (2.59%) IT Technician
18 150 (2.34%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 246 (3.84%) React
2 245 (3.82%) .NET
3 222 (3.46%) HTML
4 179 (2.79%) CSS
5 160 (2.50%) Node.js
6 119 (1.86%) RESTful
7 117 (1.83%) REST
8 70 (1.09%) Spring
8 70 (1.09%) Vue
9 67 (1.05%) AngularJS
10 66 (1.03%) Django
10 66 (1.03%) Kafka
11 63 (0.98%) Middleware
12 57 (0.89%) Flask
12 57 (0.89%) SOAP
13 55 (0.86%) JSON
13 55 (0.86%) XML
14 50 (0.78%) gRPC
15 49 (0.76%) FastAPI
15 49 (0.76%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 448 (6.99%) Driving Licence
2 439 (6.85%) Onboarding
3 379 (5.92%) Self-Motivation
4 202 (3.15%) Management Information System
5 172 (2.68%) Cloud Native
6 149 (2.33%) Analytical Mindset
7 143 (2.23%) Product Ownership
8 141 (2.20%) Distributed Systems
9 137 (2.14%) Legacy Systems
10 136 (2.12%) Data Centre
11 103 (1.61%) Enterprise Software
12 96 (1.50%) Mobile App
13 93 (1.45%) Social Media
14 83 (1.30%) Data Structures
15 72 (1.12%) Low-Code
16 60 (0.94%) Security Posture
17 58 (0.91%) Video\Live Streaming
18 57 (0.89%) Virtual Team
19 56 (0.87%) Algorithms
20 51 (0.80%) EPoS
Operating Systems
1 1,122 (17.51%) Windows
2 427 (6.66%) Windows Server
3 419 (6.54%) Linux
4 172 (2.68%) Windows 10
5 123 (1.92%) Windows Server 2016
6 109 (1.70%) Android
7 90 (1.40%) Mac OS
8 87 (1.36%) Apple iOS
9 61 (0.95%) Unix
10 57 (0.89%) Windows Server 2019
11 39 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 37 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
13 29 (0.45%) CentOS
14 24 (0.37%) Ubuntu
15 22 (0.34%) Windows 7
16 19 (0.30%) VMS
17 13 (0.20%) Mac OS X
18 11 (0.17%) Windows 8
19 9 (0.14%) Debian
19 9 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,164 (18.17%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,032 (16.11%) Agile
3 959 (14.97%) Customer Service
4 686 (10.71%) AI
5 683 (10.66%) Mentoring
6 657 (10.25%) CI/CD
7 651 (10.16%) Decision-Making
8 627 (9.79%) Analytics
9 612 (9.55%) DevOps
10 604 (9.43%) ITIL
11 548 (8.55%) Project Management
12 521 (8.13%) Business Intelligence
13 504 (7.87%) Computer Science
14 484 (7.55%) Stakeholder Management
15 441 (6.88%) Software Engineering
16 420 (6.56%) Cybersecurity
17 395 (6.17%) Roadmaps
18 392 (6.12%) Coaching
19 368 (5.74%) Process Improvement
20 354 (5.53%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 987 (15.41%) Python
2 888 (13.86%) SQL
3 436 (6.81%) JavaScript
4 319 (4.98%) PowerShell
5 318 (4.96%) Java
6 268 (4.18%) C#
7 177 (2.76%) TypeScript
8 153 (2.39%) Bash
9 88 (1.37%) PHP
10 87 (1.36%) Go
11 83 (1.30%) C++
12 73 (1.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 68 (1.06%) Scala
14 48 (0.75%) C
15 44 (0.69%) T-SQL
16 40 (0.62%) Kotlin
17 34 (0.53%) R
18 32 (0.50%) Apex Code
19 28 (0.44%) Bicep
20 27 (0.42%) Rust
Qualifications
1 1,304 (20.35%) Degree
2 478 (7.46%) Security Cleared
3 299 (4.67%) SC Cleared
4 251 (3.92%) Computer Science Degree
5 187 (2.92%) DBS Check
6 182 (2.84%) Microsoft Certification
7 132 (2.06%) Master's Degree
8 116 (1.81%) DV Cleared
9 107 (1.67%) CISSP
10 91 (1.42%) Cisco Certification
11 87 (1.36%) ACCA
12 84 (1.31%) BPSS Clearance
13 81 (1.26%) A+ Certification
14 76 (1.19%) CIMA
15 69 (1.08%) PMI Certification
16 66 (1.03%) CCNA
17 59 (0.92%) Network+ Certification
18 55 (0.86%) AWS Certification
18 55 (0.86%) PMP
19 51 (0.80%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 303 (4.73%) QA
2 274 (4.28%) Data Quality
3 241 (3.76%) GDPR
4 161 (2.51%) Cyber Essentials
5 158 (2.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 148 (2.31%) SLA
7 125 (1.95%) PCI DSS
8 115 (1.79%) Accessibility
8 115 (1.79%) NIST
9 52 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 32 (0.50%) SOC 2
11 31 (0.48%) ISO 9001
12 29 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
13 26 (0.41%) PMO
14 20 (0.31%) COBIT
14 20 (0.31%) GRC
15 14 (0.22%) GMP
16 11 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
17 10 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 10 (0.16%) ITGC
System Software
1 752 (11.74%) Active Directory
2 305 (4.76%) Docker
3 224 (3.50%) Hyper-V
4 172 (2.68%) VMware Infrastructure
5 63 (0.98%) Terminal Server
6 35 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
7 33 (0.52%) Firmware
8 31 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
9 14 (0.22%) KVM
9 14 (0.22%) vSphere
10 10 (0.16%) VMware Workstation
11 9 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
12 7 (0.11%) IAG
12 7 (0.11%) XenApp
13 6 (0.094%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 4 (0.062%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 2 (0.031%) BitLocker
15 2 (0.031%) VMware NSX
16 1 (0.016%) OpenDJ
Systems Management
1 290 (4.53%) Terraform
2 267 (4.17%) Microsoft Intune
3 220 (3.43%) Kubernetes
4 158 (2.47%) Ansible
5 93 (1.45%) Grafana
6 86 (1.34%) SCCM
7 58 (0.91%) Prometheus
8 30 (0.47%) Nagios
9 25 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
10 24 (0.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 22 (0.34%) BMC PATROL
12 19 (0.30%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.25%) Argo
14 14 (0.22%) Cisco CUCM
14 14 (0.22%) vCenter Server
15 13 (0.20%) Autotask
15 13 (0.20%) FortiGate
15 13 (0.20%) ZABBIX
16 12 (0.19%) Kibana
16 12 (0.19%) Puppet
Vendors
1 1,672 (26.10%) Microsoft
2 277 (4.32%) VMware
3 196 (3.06%) Oracle
4 165 (2.58%) SAP
5 159 (2.48%) Google
6 145 (2.26%) Cisco
7 140 (2.19%) ServiceNow
8 137 (2.14%) Salesforce
9 124 (1.94%) Veeam
10 123 (1.92%) SolarWinds
11 119 (1.86%) Splunk
12 112 (1.75%) Databricks
13 84 (1.31%) Apple
14 83 (1.30%) Adobe
15 71 (1.11%) Dell
16 64 (1.00%) Tanium
17 63 (0.98%) Brocade
17 63 (0.98%) Nimble Storage
18 54 (0.84%) Red Hat
19 52 (0.81%) Sage