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

6 months to
3 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 6,547 8,430 9,812
As % of all permanent jobs in England 11.58% 18.19% 15.01%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.46% 19.81% 16.98%
Number of salaries quoted 4,482 3,828 7,177
10th Percentile £26,500 £30,750 £26,250
25th Percentile £30,750 £40,000 £34,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -18.18% +10.00% -10.00%
75th Percentile £65,000 £75,000 £71,250
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 45,261 42,544 57,779
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 80.07% 91.82% 88.41%
Number of salaries quoted 27,393 20,509 45,841
10th Percentile £29,000 £35,000 £30,000
25th Percentile £38,750 £46,250 £41,227
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £61,500 £56,000
Median % change year-on-year -10.57% +9.82% -10.40%
75th Percentile £77,000 £81,250 £75,772
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 3 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 3 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 1,954 £65,000 - 1,109
South East -3 1,330 £41,000 -21.90% 888
North of England -17 1,289 £42,500 -10.53% 638
Midlands -15 868 £37,500 -28.57% 479
North West -14 710 £47,500 -5.00% 364
South West -2 582 £40,000 -27.27% 361
West Midlands -17 507 £42,500 -22.73% 309
Yorkshire -5 448 £34,000 -20.88% 210
East of England -5 423 £35,000 -31.33% 273
East Midlands +1 360 £33,000 -5.71% 170
North East -4 131 £40,662 -18.68% 72
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
1 323 (4.93%) Microsoft Exchange
2 285 (4.35%) SharePoint
3 75 (1.15%) Confluence
4 54 (0.82%) Apache
5 49 (0.75%) IIS
6 43 (0.66%) Apache Spark
7 41 (0.63%) Apache Airflow
8 38 (0.58%) CMS
9 27 (0.41%) WordPress
10 19 (0.29%) Palantir Foundry
11 12 (0.18%) nginx
12 10 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 10 (0.15%) SAS
13 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
13 7 (0.11%) Apache Solr
14 6 (0.092%) Exchange Server 2013
15 5 (0.076%) Drupal
15 5 (0.076%) Umbraco
16 4 (0.061%) Exchange Server 2010
16 4 (0.061%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 444 (6.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 443 (6.77%) Microsoft Office
3 89 (1.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 38 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
5 34 (0.52%) Maya
6 29 (0.44%) MS Visio
7 26 (0.40%) Microsoft Project
8 19 (0.29%) AutoCAD
9 14 (0.21%) Photoshop
10 12 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 9 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
11 9 (0.14%) Adobe Premiere
11 9 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
12 6 (0.092%) Chatbot
13 5 (0.076%) Adobe After Effects
13 5 (0.076%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.076%) Trello
14 4 (0.061%) CATIA
14 4 (0.061%) Fusion 360
14 4 (0.061%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 103 (1.57%) SAP S/4HANA
2 80 (1.22%) Dynamics CRM
3 32 (0.49%) NetSuite
4 25 (0.38%) SAP CO
5 17 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
5 17 (0.26%) SAP FI
5 17 (0.26%) SAP FI/CO
6 16 (0.24%) Endur
7 14 (0.21%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.20%) Dynamics NAV
8 13 (0.20%) Shopify
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 8 (0.12%) JDE EnterpriseOne
12 8 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
12 8 (0.12%) Sage 200
Cloud Services
1 1,477 (22.56%) Azure
2 974 (14.88%) Microsoft 365
3 741 (11.32%) AWS
4 532 (8.13%) Power Platform
5 399 (6.09%) SaaS
6 268 (4.09%) Entra ID
7 231 (3.53%) GCP
8 180 (2.75%) Azure DevOps
9 156 (2.38%) GitHub
10 149 (2.28%) Serverless
11 122 (1.86%) Power Automate
12 99 (1.51%) Dynamics 365
13 77 (1.18%) Amazon S3
13 77 (1.18%) PowerApps
14 75 (1.15%) Google Workspace
15 73 (1.12%) AWS Lambda
16 72 (1.10%) AWS CloudFormation
17 67 (1.02%) PaaS
18 63 (0.96%) Figma
19 61 (0.93%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 433 (6.61%) DNS
2 372 (5.68%) DHCP
3 359 (5.48%) Firewall
4 222 (3.39%) VPN
5 203 (3.10%) TCP/IP
6 194 (2.96%) Wi-Fi
7 179 (2.73%) WAN
8 148 (2.26%) LAN
9 126 (1.92%) VLAN
10 108 (1.65%) Broadband
11 93 (1.42%) VoIP
12 91 (1.39%) Wireless
13 53 (0.81%) SD-WAN
14 52 (0.79%) Network Security
14 52 (0.79%) Remote Desktop
15 47 (0.72%) Internet
16 46 (0.70%) SAN
17 29 (0.44%) Unified Communications
18 28 (0.43%) BGP
19 26 (0.40%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 445 (6.80%) Power BI
2 305 (4.66%) SQL Server
3 154 (2.35%) Relational Database
4 138 (2.11%) Data Warehouse
5 134 (2.05%) Tableau
6 121 (1.85%) NoSQL
7 120 (1.83%) Amazon RDS
8 118 (1.80%) PostgreSQL
9 114 (1.74%) Data Lake
10 109 (1.66%) MySQL
11 66 (1.01%) SAP BW
11 66 (1.01%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 56 (0.86%) MongoDB
13 54 (0.82%) Metadata
14 50 (0.76%) Amazon Redshift
15 49 (0.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 45 (0.69%) Big Data
17 44 (0.67%) DynamoDB
18 41 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
19 31 (0.47%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 266 (4.06%) Git
2 230 (3.51%) JIRA
3 97 (1.48%) Jenkins
4 78 (1.19%) GitLab
5 57 (0.87%) Selenium
6 24 (0.37%) Visual Studio
7 20 (0.31%) Bitbucket
7 20 (0.31%) Cypress.io
7 20 (0.31%) Maven
8 19 (0.29%) Burp Suite
8 19 (0.29%) LabVIEW
8 19 (0.29%) Metasploit
8 19 (0.29%) TeamCity
9 18 (0.27%) Robot Framework
10 17 (0.26%) Octopus Deploy
11 16 (0.24%) JUnit
12 14 (0.21%) Cucumber
12 14 (0.21%) Snyk
12 14 (0.21%) SonarQube
12 14 (0.21%) WebDriver
General
1 3,446 (52.63%) Social Skills
2 1,984 (30.30%) Analytical Skills
3 1,554 (23.74%) Finance
4 375 (5.73%) Marketing
5 374 (5.71%) Organisational Skills
6 349 (5.33%) Law
7 332 (5.07%) Retail
8 327 (4.99%) Manufacturing
9 295 (4.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 293 (4.48%) Legal
11 279 (4.26%) Public Sector
12 263 (4.02%) Banking
13 179 (2.73%) Presentation Skills
14 176 (2.69%) Telecoms
15 152 (2.32%) Electronics
16 116 (1.77%) Games
17 96 (1.47%) Influencing Skills
18 87 (1.33%) Documentation Skills
18 87 (1.33%) Financial Institution
19 85 (1.30%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 1,040 (15.89%) Analyst
2 816 (12.46%) Senior
3 734 (11.21%) IT Support
4 650 (9.93%) Support Engineer
5 586 (8.95%) Developer
6 444 (6.78%) Lead
7 342 (5.22%) Support Analyst
8 332 (5.07%) IT Engineer
9 277 (4.23%) IT Support Engineer
9 277 (4.23%) Technical Support
10 251 (3.83%) Business Analyst
11 220 (3.36%) Consultant
12 217 (3.31%) Architect
13 192 (2.93%) Technical Engineer
14 188 (2.87%) Support Technician
15 183 (2.80%) 2nd Line Support
16 181 (2.76%) Technical Support Engineer
17 167 (2.55%) IT Analyst
18 161 (2.46%) Software Engineer
19 156 (2.38%) Applications Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 284 (4.34%) .NET
2 255 (3.89%) React
3 237 (3.62%) HTML
4 191 (2.92%) CSS
5 146 (2.23%) Node.js
5 146 (2.23%) REST
6 109 (1.66%) RESTful
7 93 (1.42%) AngularJS
8 71 (1.08%) Vue
9 70 (1.07%) Spring
10 66 (1.01%) JSON
11 64 (0.98%) Middleware
11 64 (0.98%) XML
12 62 (0.95%) SOAP
13 59 (0.90%) Kafka
14 57 (0.87%) .NET Framework
15 51 (0.78%) ASP.NET
16 50 (0.76%) Django
17 45 (0.69%) Flask
18 44 (0.67%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 523 (7.99%) Driving Licence
2 509 (7.77%) Onboarding
3 410 (6.26%) Self-Motivation
4 210 (3.21%) Management Information System
5 199 (3.04%) Analytical Mindset
6 172 (2.63%) Cloud Native
7 161 (2.46%) Legacy Systems
8 155 (2.37%) Product Ownership
9 128 (1.96%) Data Centre
10 118 (1.80%) Enterprise Software
11 84 (1.28%) Distributed Systems
12 83 (1.27%) Mobile App
13 71 (1.08%) Data Structures
14 69 (1.05%) Algorithms
15 66 (1.01%) Low-Code
16 64 (0.98%) Virtual Team
17 55 (0.84%) FMCG
18 54 (0.82%) Social Media
19 52 (0.79%) Security Posture
20 50 (0.76%) EPoS
Operating Systems
1 1,114 (17.02%) Windows
2 451 (6.89%) Windows Server
3 416 (6.35%) Linux
4 157 (2.40%) Windows 10
5 132 (2.02%) Windows Server 2016
6 94 (1.44%) Mac OS
7 82 (1.25%) Android
8 69 (1.05%) Apple iOS
9 58 (0.89%) Unix
10 55 (0.84%) Windows Server 2019
11 33 (0.50%) Windows Server 2012
12 25 (0.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 24 (0.37%) Windows 7
14 23 (0.35%) VMS
15 14 (0.21%) CentOS
16 9 (0.14%) Ubuntu
17 7 (0.11%) Windows 8
18 6 (0.092%) Debian
18 6 (0.092%) Windows Server 2008
19 4 (0.061%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,115 (17.03%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,075 (16.42%) Agile
3 973 (14.86%) Customer Service
4 742 (11.33%) Analytics
5 669 (10.22%) Mentoring
6 650 (9.93%) AI
7 639 (9.76%) Decision-Making
8 614 (9.38%) Business Intelligence
9 602 (9.20%) Project Management
10 585 (8.94%) DevOps
11 563 (8.60%) CI/CD
12 540 (8.25%) ITIL
13 525 (8.02%) Computer Science
14 484 (7.39%) Stakeholder Management
15 479 (7.32%) Cybersecurity
16 435 (6.64%) ERP
17 434 (6.63%) Change Management
18 424 (6.48%) Software Engineering
19 386 (5.90%) CRM
20 374 (5.71%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 971 (14.83%) SQL
2 937 (14.31%) Python
3 411 (6.28%) JavaScript
4 333 (5.09%) C#
5 329 (5.03%) PowerShell
6 317 (4.84%) Java
7 163 (2.49%) TypeScript
8 141 (2.15%) Bash
9 107 (1.63%) PHP
10 82 (1.25%) C++
11 59 (0.90%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 49 (0.75%) Go
12 49 (0.75%) T-SQL
13 44 (0.67%) C
14 40 (0.61%) Scala
15 37 (0.57%) R
16 27 (0.41%) Bicep
17 24 (0.37%) Kotlin
18 23 (0.35%) Apex Code
18 23 (0.35%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,553 (23.72%) Degree
2 532 (8.13%) Security Cleared
3 336 (5.13%) SC Cleared
4 251 (3.83%) Computer Science Degree
5 178 (2.72%) Microsoft Certification
6 171 (2.61%) DBS Check
7 168 (2.57%) Master's Degree
8 123 (1.88%) DV Cleared
9 106 (1.62%) CISSP
10 94 (1.44%) BPSS Clearance
11 79 (1.21%) A+ Certification
11 79 (1.21%) Cisco Certification
12 77 (1.18%) ACCA
13 69 (1.05%) Network+ Certification
14 63 (0.96%) CIMA
15 60 (0.92%) CISM
16 59 (0.90%) PMI Certification
17 58 (0.89%) AWS Certification
18 54 (0.82%) HND
19 52 (0.79%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 342 (5.22%) QA
2 336 (5.13%) Data Quality
3 216 (3.30%) GDPR
4 182 (2.78%) Cyber Essentials
5 164 (2.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 142 (2.17%) Accessibility
7 129 (1.97%) PCI DSS
8 127 (1.94%) SLA
9 85 (1.30%) NIST
10 47 (0.72%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 31 (0.47%) ISO 9001
12 25 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
13 23 (0.35%) PMO
14 19 (0.29%) SOC 2
15 16 (0.24%) COBIT
15 16 (0.24%) 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
1 784 (11.97%) Active Directory
2 267 (4.08%) Docker
3 252 (3.85%) Hyper-V
4 147 (2.25%) VMware Infrastructure
5 91 (1.39%) Terminal Server
6 29 (0.44%) Firmware
7 25 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
8 21 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
9 18 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
9 18 (0.27%) vSphere
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%) BitLocker
15 2 (0.031%) HDFS
15 2 (0.031%) Postfix
15 2 (0.031%) RHEV
15 2 (0.031%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 274 (4.19%) Terraform
2 270 (4.12%) Microsoft Intune
3 206 (3.15%) Kubernetes
4 139 (2.12%) Ansible
5 73 (1.12%) Grafana
6 63 (0.96%) SCCM
7 47 (0.72%) Prometheus
8 42 (0.64%) BMC PATROL
9 28 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
10 20 (0.31%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 19 (0.29%) Nagios
12 18 (0.27%) Jamf Pro
13 14 (0.21%) Argo
13 14 (0.21%) Cisco CUCM
13 14 (0.21%) vCenter Server
14 12 (0.18%) FortiGate
14 12 (0.18%) Kibana
15 11 (0.17%) Nessus
16 10 (0.15%) Nmap
17 9 (0.14%) Autotask
Vendors
1 1,696 (25.90%) Microsoft
2 397 (6.06%) SAP
3 288 (4.40%) VMware
4 261 (3.99%) Oracle
5 162 (2.47%) Salesforce
6 152 (2.32%) Veeam
7 148 (2.26%) Cisco
8 145 (2.21%) Google
9 138 (2.11%) Splunk
10 131 (2.00%) SolarWinds
11 122 (1.86%) ServiceNow
12 107 (1.63%) Databricks
13 105 (1.60%) Adobe
14 92 (1.41%) Tanium
15 91 (1.39%) Brocade
15 91 (1.39%) Nimble Storage
16 70 (1.07%) Apple
17 57 (0.87%) Sage
18 54 (0.82%) Dell
19 53 (0.81%) HubSpot