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

6 months to
23 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 4 8
Rank change year-on-year -5 +4 +5
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,509 7,931 10,164
As % of all permanent jobs in England 10.70% 18.32% 15.18%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.54% 19.74% 17.21%
Number of salaries quoted 4,484 3,930 7,378
10th Percentile £26,750 £30,500 £26,250
25th Percentile £31,000 £40,000 £33,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -18.18% +10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £65,473 £76,000 £70,000
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% -12.73%

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 48,060 40,168 59,043
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 79.03% 92.78% 88.19%
Number of salaries quoted 29,483 20,051 46,662
10th Percentile £29,000 £34,250 £29,750
25th Percentile £38,750 £46,250 £40,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £62,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% +13.64% -12.00%
75th Percentile £77,500 £82,500 £75,000
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 23 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 23 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 -2 1,899 £67,500 +3.85% 868
North of England -16 1,356 £42,500 -10.53% 596
South East -3 1,270 £42,500 -19.05% 865
Midlands -15 861 £37,500 -28.57% 426
North West -16 725 £45,749 -8.50% 345
South West -4 583 £40,000 -23.81% 279
West Midlands -19 502 £42,500 -22.73% 263
Yorkshire -6 492 £37,000 -14.89% 183
East of England -5 431 £37,500 -26.42% 280
East Midlands +1 357 £35,000 -2.10% 162
North East -5 139 £45,000 - 80
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
1 344 (5.28%) Microsoft Exchange
2 282 (4.33%) SharePoint
3 77 (1.18%) Confluence
4 58 (0.89%) Apache
5 48 (0.74%) IIS
6 46 (0.71%) Apache Airflow
7 44 (0.68%) CMS
8 42 (0.65%) Apache Spark
9 30 (0.46%) WordPress
10 16 (0.25%) Palantir Foundry
11 12 (0.18%) nginx
12 10 (0.15%) SAS
13 9 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
15 6 (0.092%) Drupal
16 5 (0.077%) Exchange Server 2007
16 5 (0.077%) Exchange Server 2010
16 5 (0.077%) Exchange Server 2013
17 4 (0.061%) Apache Solr
17 4 (0.061%) Moodle
Applications
1 441 (6.78%) Microsoft Office
2 378 (5.81%) Microsoft Excel
3 82 (1.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 39 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
5 29 (0.45%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.43%) Maya
7 26 (0.40%) Microsoft Project
8 16 (0.25%) AutoCAD
9 13 (0.20%) Photoshop
10 10 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 9 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
11 9 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
12 8 (0.12%) Chatbot
13 5 (0.077%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.077%) Trello
14 4 (0.061%) Adobe Premiere
14 4 (0.061%) CATIA
14 4 (0.061%) Fusion 360
15 3 (0.046%) Elementor
15 3 (0.046%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 87 (1.34%) SAP S/4HANA
2 69 (1.06%) Dynamics CRM
3 33 (0.51%) NetSuite
4 19 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
5 18 (0.28%) SAP CO
6 17 (0.26%) Endur
7 16 (0.25%) Shopify
8 14 (0.22%) Dynamics NAV
9 11 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
10 10 (0.15%) iTrent
10 10 (0.15%) Workday HCM
11 9 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
11 9 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
11 9 (0.14%) SAP Business One
11 9 (0.14%) SAP FI
11 9 (0.14%) SAP FI/CO
12 8 (0.12%) Maximo
12 8 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
13 7 (0.11%) Exchequer
13 7 (0.11%) Sage 200
Cloud Services
1 1,413 (21.71%) Azure
2 1,001 (15.38%) Microsoft 365
3 759 (11.66%) AWS
4 479 (7.36%) Power Platform
5 375 (5.76%) SaaS
6 282 (4.33%) Entra ID
7 249 (3.83%) GCP
8 177 (2.72%) Azure DevOps
9 159 (2.44%) GitHub
10 158 (2.43%) Serverless
11 132 (2.03%) Power Automate
12 108 (1.66%) Dynamics 365
13 92 (1.41%) Google Workspace
14 86 (1.32%) Amazon S3
15 85 (1.31%) PowerApps
16 79 (1.21%) AWS CloudFormation
16 79 (1.21%) AWS Lambda
17 67 (1.03%) PaaS
18 64 (0.98%) Azure Data Factory
19 63 (0.97%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 440 (6.76%) DNS
2 381 (5.85%) DHCP
3 365 (5.61%) Firewall
4 235 (3.61%) VPN
5 204 (3.13%) TCP/IP
5 204 (3.13%) Wi-Fi
6 199 (3.06%) WAN
7 167 (2.57%) LAN
8 127 (1.95%) Broadband
8 127 (1.95%) VLAN
9 95 (1.46%) VoIP
10 94 (1.44%) Wireless
11 63 (0.97%) SD-WAN
12 52 (0.80%) Remote Desktop
13 51 (0.78%) Internet
14 50 (0.77%) Network Security
15 45 (0.69%) SAN
16 30 (0.46%) BGP
16 30 (0.46%) Structured Cabling
17 29 (0.45%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 390 (5.99%) Power BI
2 277 (4.26%) SQL Server
3 145 (2.23%) Data Warehouse
4 135 (2.07%) Tableau
5 132 (2.03%) Relational Database
6 126 (1.94%) Amazon RDS
7 119 (1.83%) NoSQL
8 106 (1.63%) PostgreSQL
9 88 (1.35%) MySQL
10 70 (1.08%) Data Lake
11 67 (1.03%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 57 (0.88%) MongoDB
13 56 (0.86%) Amazon Redshift
14 52 (0.80%) Metadata
15 47 (0.72%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 46 (0.71%) DynamoDB
17 41 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
17 41 (0.63%) Power Query
18 40 (0.61%) Big Data
19 26 (0.40%) Redis
Development Applications
1 271 (4.16%) Git
2 229 (3.52%) JIRA
3 102 (1.57%) Jenkins
4 87 (1.34%) GitLab
5 56 (0.86%) Selenium
6 25 (0.38%) Visual Studio
7 22 (0.34%) Cypress.io
8 21 (0.32%) Maven
9 19 (0.29%) Burp Suite
9 19 (0.29%) Metasploit
9 19 (0.29%) TeamCity
10 18 (0.28%) Bitbucket
10 18 (0.28%) LabVIEW
10 18 (0.28%) Robot Framework
11 16 (0.25%) Cucumber
11 16 (0.25%) Octopus Deploy
11 16 (0.25%) SonarQube
12 15 (0.23%) JUnit
13 14 (0.22%) Snyk
14 12 (0.18%) CircleCI
General
1 3,345 (51.39%) Social Skills
2 1,983 (30.47%) Analytical Skills
3 1,500 (23.05%) Finance
4 421 (6.47%) Organisational Skills
5 361 (5.55%) Marketing
6 338 (5.19%) Law
7 320 (4.92%) Retail
8 305 (4.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 300 (4.61%) Manufacturing
10 286 (4.39%) Legal
10 286 (4.39%) Public Sector
11 272 (4.18%) Banking
12 187 (2.87%) Telecoms
13 182 (2.80%) Presentation Skills
14 149 (2.29%) Electronics
15 106 (1.63%) Games
16 99 (1.52%) Documentation Skills
17 88 (1.35%) Automotive
18 87 (1.34%) Financial Institution
19 85 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 992 (15.24%) Analyst
2 814 (12.51%) Senior
3 767 (11.78%) IT Support
4 651 (10.00%) Support Engineer
5 575 (8.83%) Developer
6 400 (6.15%) Lead
7 354 (5.44%) IT Engineer
8 338 (5.19%) Support Analyst
9 299 (4.59%) IT Support Engineer
10 247 (3.79%) Technical Support
11 246 (3.78%) Consultant
12 234 (3.60%) Business Analyst
13 223 (3.43%) Architect
14 203 (3.12%) Support Technician
15 192 (2.95%) 2nd Line Support
16 176 (2.70%) Technical Engineer
17 169 (2.60%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 169 (2.60%) IT Analyst
18 168 (2.58%) Technical Support Engineer
19 164 (2.52%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 264 (4.06%) .NET
2 255 (3.92%) React
3 230 (3.53%) HTML
4 182 (2.80%) CSS
5 145 (2.23%) Node.js
6 134 (2.06%) REST
7 109 (1.67%) RESTful
8 83 (1.28%) AngularJS
9 69 (1.06%) Middleware
10 68 (1.04%) Vue
11 67 (1.03%) Spring
12 63 (0.97%) Kafka
13 62 (0.95%) SOAP
14 61 (0.94%) JSON
15 57 (0.88%) XML
16 52 (0.80%) .NET Framework
16 52 (0.80%) Django
17 47 (0.72%) Flask
18 44 (0.68%) FastAPI
18 44 (0.68%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 548 (8.42%) Driving Licence
2 482 (7.41%) Onboarding
3 413 (6.35%) Self-Motivation
4 217 (3.33%) Management Information System
5 187 (2.87%) Analytical Mindset
6 174 (2.67%) Cloud Native
7 171 (2.63%) Legacy Systems
8 143 (2.20%) Data Centre
8 143 (2.20%) Product Ownership
9 114 (1.75%) Enterprise Software
10 98 (1.51%) Distributed Systems
11 88 (1.35%) Mobile App
12 74 (1.14%) Low-Code
13 70 (1.08%) Data Structures
14 68 (1.04%) Social Media
15 62 (0.95%) Algorithms
16 59 (0.91%) Virtual Team
17 55 (0.84%) EPoS
18 53 (0.81%) FMCG
18 53 (0.81%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 1,142 (17.54%) Windows
2 459 (7.05%) Windows Server
3 430 (6.61%) Linux
4 161 (2.47%) Windows 10
5 143 (2.20%) Windows Server 2016
6 101 (1.55%) Android
7 99 (1.52%) Mac OS
8 78 (1.20%) Apple iOS
9 59 (0.91%) Unix
10 54 (0.83%) Windows Server 2019
11 32 (0.49%) Windows Server 2012
12 30 (0.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 25 (0.38%) Windows 7
14 19 (0.29%) CentOS
15 16 (0.25%) VMS
16 14 (0.22%) Ubuntu
17 10 (0.15%) Windows 8
18 9 (0.14%) Mac OS X
19 8 (0.12%) Debian
20 4 (0.061%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,131 (17.38%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,037 (15.93%) Agile
3 983 (15.10%) Customer Service
4 689 (10.59%) Analytics
5 667 (10.25%) Mentoring
6 634 (9.74%) AI
7 631 (9.69%) Decision-Making
8 599 (9.20%) Project Management
9 593 (9.11%) DevOps
10 585 (8.99%) CI/CD
11 561 (8.62%) Business Intelligence
12 542 (8.33%) ITIL
13 524 (8.05%) Computer Science
14 493 (7.57%) Stakeholder Management
15 471 (7.24%) Cybersecurity
16 425 (6.53%) Change Management
17 405 (6.22%) Software Engineering
18 393 (6.04%) ERP
19 385 (5.91%) CRM
20 375 (5.76%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 931 (14.30%) Python
2 927 (14.24%) SQL
3 413 (6.35%) JavaScript
4 320 (4.92%) PowerShell
5 312 (4.79%) Java
6 301 (4.62%) C#
7 168 (2.58%) TypeScript
8 141 (2.17%) Bash
9 94 (1.44%) PHP
10 75 (1.15%) C++
11 63 (0.97%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 57 (0.88%) Go
13 48 (0.74%) C
14 45 (0.69%) T-SQL
15 44 (0.68%) Scala
16 36 (0.55%) R
17 29 (0.45%) Apex Code
18 27 (0.41%) Bicep
19 24 (0.37%) Kotlin
19 24 (0.37%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 1,433 (22.02%) Degree
2 539 (8.28%) Security Cleared
3 351 (5.39%) SC Cleared
4 240 (3.69%) Computer Science Degree
5 186 (2.86%) Microsoft Certification
6 164 (2.52%) DBS Check
7 155 (2.38%) Master's Degree
8 114 (1.75%) DV Cleared
9 108 (1.66%) CISSP
10 97 (1.49%) BPSS Clearance
11 84 (1.29%) ACCA
12 81 (1.24%) Cisco Certification
13 80 (1.23%) A+ Certification
14 70 (1.08%) CIMA
15 66 (1.01%) Network+ Certification
16 61 (0.94%) PMI Certification
17 56 (0.86%) AWS Certification
17 56 (0.86%) CISM
18 54 (0.83%) CCNA
19 50 (0.77%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 315 (4.84%) QA
2 273 (4.19%) Data Quality
3 226 (3.47%) GDPR
4 192 (2.95%) Cyber Essentials
5 170 (2.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 147 (2.26%) PCI DSS
7 137 (2.10%) Accessibility
8 129 (1.98%) SLA
9 94 (1.44%) NIST
10 49 (0.75%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 33 (0.51%) ISO 9001
12 27 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
13 24 (0.37%) SOC 2
14 19 (0.29%) COBIT
14 19 (0.29%) PMO
15 18 (0.28%) GRC
16 11 (0.17%) WCAG
17 10 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 9 (0.14%) GMP
19 8 (0.12%) ISO 13485
System Software
1 790 (12.14%) Active Directory
2 280 (4.30%) Docker
3 268 (4.12%) Hyper-V
4 157 (2.41%) VMware Infrastructure
5 98 (1.51%) Terminal Server
6 26 (0.40%) Firmware
6 26 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
7 24 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
8 18 (0.28%) vSphere
9 15 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.17%) KVM
11 9 (0.14%) VMware Workstation
12 7 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.092%) IAG
14 4 (0.061%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 4 (0.061%) XenApp
15 3 (0.046%) vCloud
15 3 (0.046%) VMware NSX
16 2 (0.031%) Postfix
16 2 (0.031%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 279 (4.29%) Terraform
2 277 (4.26%) Microsoft Intune
3 215 (3.30%) Kubernetes
4 144 (2.21%) Ansible
5 79 (1.21%) Grafana
6 72 (1.11%) SCCM
7 51 (0.78%) Prometheus
8 42 (0.65%) BMC PATROL
9 29 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
10 21 (0.32%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 21 (0.32%) Nagios
11 16 (0.25%) Jamf Pro
12 15 (0.23%) Argo
13 14 (0.22%) Cisco CUCM
13 14 (0.22%) vCenter Server
14 12 (0.18%) Autotask
14 12 (0.18%) Kibana
15 11 (0.17%) Nessus
15 11 (0.17%) ZABBIX
16 10 (0.15%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,716 (26.36%) Microsoft
2 308 (4.73%) VMware
3 296 (4.55%) SAP
4 237 (3.64%) Oracle
5 162 (2.49%) Veeam
6 160 (2.46%) Google
7 159 (2.44%) Salesforce
8 151 (2.32%) Cisco
9 149 (2.29%) SolarWinds
9 149 (2.29%) Splunk
10 125 (1.92%) ServiceNow
11 103 (1.58%) Databricks
12 100 (1.54%) Adobe
13 99 (1.52%) Tanium
14 98 (1.51%) Brocade
14 98 (1.51%) Nimble Storage
15 79 (1.21%) Apple
16 57 (0.88%) Dell
17 56 (0.86%) Sage
18 51 (0.78%) HubSpot