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

6 months to
1 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 4 9
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +4
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,579 9,028 6,655
As % of all permanent jobs in England 12.65% 18.21% 14.68%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.40% 20.18% 16.08%
Number of salaries quoted 4,429 4,002 4,681
10th Percentile £26,500 £31,000 £28,000
25th Percentile £31,000 £40,000 £36,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -18.18% - -
75th Percentile £65,000 £75,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £85,000 £87,500 £91,934
UK median annual salary £46,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -16.36% - -1.41%

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 42,728 44,744 41,388
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 82.15% 90.24% 91.27%
Number of salaries quoted 25,461 22,347 32,089
10th Percentile £28,500 £35,000 £32,500
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,000 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%
75th Percentile £76,000 £81,250 £80,000
90th Percentile £96,250 £100,000 £100,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%

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 1 January 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 1 January 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 1,955 £65,000 - 1,036
South East -3 1,352 £41,500 -20.95% 939
North of England -14 1,257 £45,000 -5.26% 669
Midlands -13 914 £38,500 -23.00% 393
North West -9 706 £47,683 -1.36% 348
South West 0 588 £40,000 -27.27% 290
West Midlands -16 541 £42,500 -22.73% 236
Yorkshire -4 440 £35,750 -17.82% 231
East of England -6 419 £35,000 -31.33% 299
East Midlands +1 372 £35,000 -4.11% 154
North East -1 111 £33,500 -33.00% 102
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
1 324 (4.92%) Microsoft Exchange
2 281 (4.27%) SharePoint
3 78 (1.19%) Confluence
4 50 (0.76%) IIS
5 46 (0.70%) Apache
6 42 (0.64%) Apache Spark
7 35 (0.53%) Apache Airflow
8 30 (0.46%) CMS
9 25 (0.38%) WordPress
10 11 (0.17%) nginx
10 11 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 11 (0.17%) SAS
11 8 (0.12%) Headless CMS
12 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
12 7 (0.11%) Apache Solr
13 6 (0.091%) HCL Notes
14 5 (0.076%) Camunda
14 5 (0.076%) Drupal
14 5 (0.076%) Exchange Server 2013
14 5 (0.076%) Umbraco
Applications
1 504 (7.66%) Microsoft Office
2 498 (7.57%) Microsoft Excel
3 93 (1.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 35 (0.53%) Maya
5 34 (0.52%) Spreadsheet
6 30 (0.46%) MS Visio
7 24 (0.36%) Microsoft Project
8 20 (0.30%) AutoCAD
9 17 (0.26%) Photoshop
10 15 (0.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 12 (0.18%) Adobe Illustrator
11 12 (0.18%) SOLIDWORKS
12 9 (0.14%) Adobe Premiere
12 9 (0.14%) Simulink
13 5 (0.076%) Adobe After Effects
13 5 (0.076%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.076%) Trello
14 4 (0.061%) Autodesk Inventor
14 4 (0.061%) Chatbot
14 4 (0.061%) Fusion 360
Business Applications
1 112 (1.70%) SAP S/4HANA
2 95 (1.44%) Dynamics CRM
3 44 (0.67%) NetSuite
4 22 (0.33%) Shopify
5 21 (0.32%) SAP CO
5 21 (0.32%) SAP FI
6 17 (0.26%) SAP FI/CO
7 14 (0.21%) Endur
7 14 (0.21%) Oracle Payables
7 14 (0.21%) Salesforce CRM
8 13 (0.20%) SAP Business One
9 12 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
10 11 (0.17%) Oracle Assets
11 10 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
11 10 (0.15%) Sage 200
12 8 (0.12%) JDE EnterpriseOne
13 6 (0.091%) Exchequer
13 6 (0.091%) Sage X3
13 6 (0.091%) SAP ERP
13 6 (0.091%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 1,448 (22.01%) Azure
2 922 (14.01%) Microsoft 365
3 708 (10.76%) AWS
4 546 (8.30%) Power Platform
5 419 (6.37%) SaaS
6 273 (4.15%) Entra ID
7 227 (3.45%) GCP
8 183 (2.78%) Azure DevOps
9 148 (2.25%) GitHub
10 141 (2.14%) Serverless
11 109 (1.66%) Power Automate
12 102 (1.55%) Dynamics 365
13 75 (1.14%) AWS Lambda
13 75 (1.14%) PowerApps
14 71 (1.08%) Amazon S3
15 67 (1.02%) Azure Data Factory
16 61 (0.93%) AWS CloudFormation
17 60 (0.91%) OneDrive
18 58 (0.88%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 57 (0.87%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 396 (6.02%) DNS
2 337 (5.12%) DHCP
3 334 (5.08%) Firewall
4 214 (3.25%) VPN
5 185 (2.81%) TCP/IP
6 175 (2.66%) Wi-Fi
7 172 (2.61%) WAN
8 146 (2.22%) LAN
9 118 (1.79%) VLAN
10 84 (1.28%) VoIP
11 82 (1.25%) Wireless
12 75 (1.14%) Broadband
13 64 (0.97%) Network Security
14 61 (0.93%) Remote Desktop
15 50 (0.76%) SAN
16 48 (0.73%) SD-WAN
17 44 (0.67%) Internet
18 29 (0.44%) Unified Communications
19 26 (0.40%) BGP
20 25 (0.38%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 459 (6.98%) Power BI
2 321 (4.88%) SQL Server
3 161 (2.45%) Relational Database
4 140 (2.13%) Tableau
5 135 (2.05%) Data Warehouse
6 130 (1.98%) PostgreSQL
7 124 (1.88%) MySQL
8 118 (1.79%) Data Lake
8 118 (1.79%) NoSQL
9 115 (1.75%) Amazon RDS
10 67 (1.02%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 66 (1.00%) SAP BW
12 61 (0.93%) MongoDB
13 55 (0.84%) Metadata
14 48 (0.73%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 44 (0.67%) Big Data
15 44 (0.67%) DynamoDB
16 41 (0.62%) Amazon Redshift
17 40 (0.61%) Azure SQL Database
18 37 (0.56%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 271 (4.12%) Git
2 247 (3.75%) JIRA
3 93 (1.41%) Jenkins
4 81 (1.23%) GitLab
5 57 (0.87%) Selenium
6 28 (0.43%) Cypress.io
7 24 (0.36%) Visual Studio
8 23 (0.35%) Bitbucket
9 19 (0.29%) LabVIEW
10 17 (0.26%) Robot Framework
11 16 (0.24%) Maven
11 16 (0.24%) Octopus Deploy
11 16 (0.24%) SonarQube
11 16 (0.24%) TeamCity
12 14 (0.21%) JUnit
12 14 (0.21%) Snyk
12 14 (0.21%) WebDriver
13 12 (0.18%) Cucumber
14 11 (0.17%) Metasploit
14 11 (0.17%) Rational DOORS
General
1 3,588 (54.54%) Social Skills
2 1,999 (30.38%) Analytical Skills
3 1,592 (24.20%) Finance
4 432 (6.57%) Marketing
5 385 (5.85%) Retail
6 374 (5.68%) Law
7 344 (5.23%) Manufacturing
8 333 (5.06%) Organisational Skills
9 285 (4.33%) Legal
10 273 (4.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 263 (4.00%) Public Sector
12 252 (3.83%) Banking
13 193 (2.93%) Telecoms
14 169 (2.57%) Electronics
14 169 (2.57%) Presentation Skills
15 122 (1.85%) Games
16 96 (1.46%) Influencing Skills
17 88 (1.34%) Automotive
18 82 (1.25%) Documentation Skills
19 77 (1.17%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,050 (15.96%) Analyst
2 796 (12.10%) Senior
3 661 (10.05%) IT Support
4 610 (9.27%) Support Engineer
5 608 (9.24%) Developer
6 459 (6.98%) Lead
7 368 (5.59%) Support Analyst
8 303 (4.61%) Technical Support
9 257 (3.91%) IT Engineer
10 243 (3.69%) Business Analyst
11 232 (3.53%) Consultant
12 223 (3.39%) Architect
13 212 (3.22%) Technical Engineer
14 209 (3.18%) IT Support Engineer
15 198 (3.01%) Technical Support Engineer
16 193 (2.93%) 2nd Line Support
17 188 (2.86%) Support Technician
18 172 (2.61%) Systems Engineer
19 170 (2.58%) Applications Support
20 146 (2.22%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 285 (4.33%) .NET
2 258 (3.92%) React
3 242 (3.68%) HTML
4 195 (2.96%) CSS
5 151 (2.30%) REST
6 146 (2.22%) Node.js
7 130 (1.98%) RESTful
8 99 (1.50%) AngularJS
9 73 (1.11%) XML
10 72 (1.09%) JSON
11 70 (1.06%) Spring
12 65 (0.99%) Vue
13 63 (0.96%) .NET Framework
14 59 (0.90%) ASP.NET
15 58 (0.88%) Kafka
15 58 (0.88%) SOAP
16 50 (0.76%) Middleware
17 49 (0.74%) Django
18 48 (0.73%) Web Services
19 46 (0.70%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 536 (8.15%) Onboarding
2 504 (7.66%) Driving Licence
3 415 (6.31%) Self-Motivation
4 218 (3.31%) Management Information System
5 200 (3.04%) Analytical Mindset
6 159 (2.42%) Cloud Native
7 150 (2.28%) Legacy Systems
8 147 (2.23%) Product Ownership
9 120 (1.82%) Data Centre
10 114 (1.73%) Enterprise Software
11 79 (1.20%) Algorithms
11 79 (1.20%) FMCG
12 71 (1.08%) Data Structures
13 68 (1.03%) Virtual Team
14 65 (0.99%) Distributed Systems
15 60 (0.91%) Mobile App
16 55 (0.84%) Low-Code
16 55 (0.84%) Security Posture
17 45 (0.68%) EPoS
18 43 (0.65%) e-Learning
Operating Systems
1 1,084 (16.48%) Windows
2 424 (6.44%) Windows Server
3 394 (5.99%) Linux
4 170 (2.58%) Windows 10
5 108 (1.64%) Windows Server 2016
6 90 (1.37%) Mac OS
7 76 (1.16%) Android
8 70 (1.06%) Apple iOS
9 60 (0.91%) Unix
10 45 (0.68%) Windows Server 2019
11 28 (0.43%) Windows Server 2012
12 22 (0.33%) Windows 7
13 21 (0.32%) VMS
14 18 (0.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
15 9 (0.14%) Mac OS X
16 8 (0.12%) CentOS
17 7 (0.11%) Ubuntu
18 6 (0.091%) Windows Server 2008
19 4 (0.061%) OpenWrt
19 4 (0.061%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,163 (17.68%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,103 (16.77%) Agile
3 957 (14.55%) Customer Service
4 755 (11.48%) Analytics
5 647 (9.83%) AI
6 640 (9.73%) Business Intelligence
7 635 (9.65%) Decision-Making
8 628 (9.55%) Mentoring
9 620 (9.42%) Project Management
10 584 (8.88%) DevOps
11 572 (8.69%) ITIL
12 516 (7.84%) CI/CD
13 502 (7.63%) Cybersecurity
14 499 (7.58%) Computer Science
15 473 (7.19%) Stakeholder Management
16 459 (6.98%) ERP
17 456 (6.93%) Change Management
18 418 (6.35%) Data Analysis
19 404 (6.14%) CRM
20 396 (6.02%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 1,040 (15.81%) SQL
2 871 (13.24%) Python
3 394 (5.99%) JavaScript
4 352 (5.35%) C#
5 308 (4.68%) Java
6 301 (4.58%) PowerShell
7 149 (2.26%) TypeScript
8 114 (1.73%) Bash
9 97 (1.47%) PHP
10 83 (1.26%) C++
11 61 (0.93%) T-SQL
12 51 (0.78%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 44 (0.67%) R
14 37 (0.56%) C
15 35 (0.53%) Go
15 35 (0.53%) Scala
16 33 (0.50%) VBA
17 28 (0.43%) MATLAB
18 25 (0.38%) Bicep
19 24 (0.36%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 1,594 (24.23%) Degree
2 516 (7.84%) Security Cleared
3 333 (5.06%) SC Cleared
4 246 (3.74%) Computer Science Degree
5 180 (2.74%) Master's Degree
6 179 (2.72%) Microsoft Certification
7 137 (2.08%) DBS Check
8 128 (1.95%) DV Cleared
9 110 (1.67%) CISSP
10 106 (1.61%) BPSS Clearance
11 100 (1.52%) Cisco Certification
12 88 (1.34%) ACCA
13 74 (1.12%) CIMA
14 65 (0.99%) CCNA
15 64 (0.97%) A+ Certification
15 64 (0.97%) CISM
16 63 (0.96%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 63 (0.96%) PMI Certification
17 62 (0.94%) Network+ Certification
18 59 (0.90%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 365 (5.55%) QA
2 327 (4.97%) Data Quality
3 206 (3.13%) GDPR
4 177 (2.69%) Cyber Essentials
5 168 (2.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 149 (2.26%) Accessibility
7 137 (2.08%) SLA
8 112 (1.70%) PCI DSS
9 81 (1.23%) NIST
10 50 (0.76%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 33 (0.50%) ISO 9001
12 32 (0.49%) PMO
13 25 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
14 19 (0.29%) SOC 2
15 18 (0.27%) GRC
16 14 (0.21%) COBIT
17 13 (0.20%) WCAG
18 9 (0.14%) ISO 13485
19 8 (0.12%) ISAE 3402
19 8 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 19770
System Software
1 745 (11.32%) Active Directory
2 262 (3.98%) Docker
3 227 (3.45%) Hyper-V
4 150 (2.28%) VMware Infrastructure
5 84 (1.28%) Terminal Server
6 31 (0.47%) Firmware
6 31 (0.47%) Virtual Machines
7 23 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
8 20 (0.30%) vSphere
9 15 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (0.076%) KVM
11 4 (0.061%) ProxySG
11 4 (0.061%) Virtual Servers
11 4 (0.061%) XenApp
12 3 (0.046%) BitLocker
12 3 (0.046%) vCloud
12 3 (0.046%) VMware Workstation
13 2 (0.030%) HDFS
13 2 (0.030%) RHEV
13 2 (0.030%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 278 (4.23%) Microsoft Intune
2 244 (3.71%) Terraform
3 208 (3.16%) Kubernetes
4 121 (1.84%) Ansible
5 59 (0.90%) Grafana
6 57 (0.87%) SCCM
7 43 (0.65%) Prometheus
8 42 (0.64%) BMC PATROL
9 29 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
11 18 (0.27%) Nagios
11 18 (0.27%) vCenter Server
12 15 (0.23%) Cisco CUCM
13 13 (0.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 13 (0.20%) Argo
14 12 (0.18%) FortiGate
14 12 (0.18%) PaperCut
15 10 (0.15%) ZABBIX
16 8 (0.12%) Nmap
17 7 (0.11%) QRadar
Vendors
1 1,727 (26.25%) Microsoft
2 429 (6.52%) SAP
3 288 (4.38%) Oracle
4 283 (4.30%) VMware
5 173 (2.63%) Cisco
6 148 (2.25%) Salesforce
7 142 (2.16%) ServiceNow
8 137 (2.08%) Veeam
9 134 (2.04%) Google
10 128 (1.95%) Splunk
11 125 (1.90%) SolarWinds
12 110 (1.67%) Databricks
13 87 (1.32%) Adobe
14 86 (1.31%) Nimble Storage
14 86 (1.31%) Tanium
15 84 (1.28%) Apple
15 84 (1.28%) Brocade
16 65 (0.99%) Sage
16 65 (0.99%) Workday
17 58 (0.88%) Dell