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

6 months to
13 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 4 7
Rank change year-on-year -6 +3 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,493 7,266 12,213
As % of all permanent jobs in England 8.62% 19.74% 15.10%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.37% 21.20% 17.57%
Number of salaries quoted 4,509 4,504 8,475
10th Percentile £27,125 £28,500 £26,250
25th Percentile £31,250 £37,250 £32,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% +10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £68,750 £75,000 £68,750
90th Percentile £87,500 £90,000 £85,000
UK median annual salary £47,085 £54,266 £50,000
% change year-on-year -13.23% +8.53% -9.74%

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 57,108 34,279 69,496
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 75.86% 93.11% 85.95%
Number of salaries quoted 35,996 20,481 53,320
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £42,500 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.17% +9.09% -12.00%
75th Percentile £78,500 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £103,750 £93,750
UK median annual salary £57,500 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -4.17% +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 13 April 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 13 April 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 -4 1,981 £67,500 +3.85% 1,043
North of England -17 1,303 £41,500 -9.78% 604
South East -7 1,190 £45,000 -11.71% 879
Midlands -21 909 £39,500 -16.84% 482
North West -18 673 £42,500 -11.16% 313
South West -8 557 £43,500 -5.43% 315
West Midlands -25 540 £42,500 -18.96% 273
Yorkshire -8 501 £37,500 -10.71% 212
East of England -9 452 £40,000 -20.00% 340
East Midlands -5 366 £35,000 -11.95% 210
North East -13 129 £48,445 +7.65% 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
1 341 (5.25%) Microsoft Exchange
2 284 (4.37%) SharePoint
3 74 (1.14%) Confluence
4 54 (0.83%) CMS
5 53 (0.82%) Apache
6 44 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
7 36 (0.55%) Apache Spark
8 30 (0.46%) IIS
9 27 (0.42%) WordPress
10 16 (0.25%) SAS
11 13 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
12 12 (0.18%) nginx
13 11 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2013
14 9 (0.14%) Anypoint
14 9 (0.14%) Drupal
14 9 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2007
14 9 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2010
15 6 (0.092%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 5 (0.077%) OpenStack
17 4 (0.062%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 438 (6.75%) Microsoft Office
2 354 (5.45%) Microsoft Excel
3 64 (0.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 41 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
5 37 (0.57%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.46%) Microsoft Project
7 12 (0.18%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.17%) Adobe Illustrator
8 11 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.17%) Photoshop
9 9 (0.14%) Maya
10 8 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 8 (0.12%) Fusion 360
11 5 (0.077%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.062%) SOLIDWORKS
12 4 (0.062%) Trello
13 3 (0.046%) Elementor
13 3 (0.046%) Simulink
14 2 (0.031%) Notion
14 2 (0.031%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 60 (0.92%) Dynamics CRM
2 48 (0.74%) SAP S/4HANA
3 32 (0.49%) NetSuite
4 20 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
5 19 (0.29%) Shopify
6 16 (0.25%) Dynamics NAV
6 16 (0.25%) Endur
6 16 (0.25%) SAP CO
7 13 (0.20%) Magento
7 13 (0.20%) Maximo
8 11 (0.17%) iTrent
9 10 (0.15%) Workday HCM
10 8 (0.12%) Elite 3E
10 8 (0.12%) SAP ERP
11 7 (0.11%) IBM Planning Analytics
11 7 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
11 7 (0.11%) Q-Pulse
11 7 (0.11%) Sage 200
11 7 (0.11%) SAP FI
11 7 (0.11%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 1,386 (21.35%) Azure
2 995 (15.32%) Microsoft 365
3 807 (12.43%) AWS
4 490 (7.55%) Power Platform
5 352 (5.42%) SaaS
6 301 (4.64%) GCP
7 277 (4.27%) Entra ID
8 178 (2.74%) GitHub
9 171 (2.63%) Serverless
10 168 (2.59%) Azure DevOps
11 134 (2.06%) Power Automate
12 112 (1.72%) Dynamics 365
13 94 (1.45%) Amazon S3
14 87 (1.34%) GitHub Actions
14 87 (1.34%) Google Workspace
15 83 (1.28%) AWS CloudFormation
16 82 (1.26%) AWS Lambda
16 82 (1.26%) PowerApps
17 81 (1.25%) Azure Data Factory
18 75 (1.16%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 409 (6.30%) DNS
2 378 (5.82%) Firewall
3 352 (5.42%) DHCP
4 257 (3.96%) VPN
5 218 (3.36%) WAN
6 204 (3.14%) Wi-Fi
7 202 (3.11%) TCP/IP
8 182 (2.80%) LAN
9 179 (2.76%) Broadband
10 118 (1.82%) VLAN
11 107 (1.65%) Wireless
12 92 (1.42%) VoIP
13 68 (1.05%) SD-WAN
14 60 (0.92%) Network Security
15 48 (0.74%) SAN
16 41 (0.63%) Internet
17 31 (0.48%) Structured Cabling
18 30 (0.46%) BGP
19 29 (0.45%) HTTP
20 28 (0.43%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 413 (6.36%) Power BI
2 276 (4.25%) SQL Server
3 130 (2.00%) Tableau
4 129 (1.99%) Data Warehouse
5 120 (1.85%) NoSQL
6 103 (1.59%) Relational Database
7 101 (1.56%) PostgreSQL
8 90 (1.39%) Amazon RDS
9 82 (1.26%) MySQL
10 71 (1.09%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 59 (0.91%) Power Query
12 56 (0.86%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 55 (0.85%) MongoDB
14 51 (0.79%) DynamoDB
15 47 (0.72%) Azure SQL Database
16 46 (0.71%) Amazon Redshift
17 42 (0.65%) Metadata
18 37 (0.57%) Big Data
18 37 (0.57%) Data Lake
19 25 (0.39%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 280 (4.31%) Git
2 223 (3.43%) JIRA
3 116 (1.79%) Jenkins
4 101 (1.56%) GitLab
5 50 (0.77%) Selenium
6 28 (0.43%) Visual Studio
7 23 (0.35%) Cypress.io
8 20 (0.31%) Cucumber
8 20 (0.31%) Maven
8 20 (0.31%) Rational DOORS
9 19 (0.29%) Bitbucket
9 19 (0.29%) Burp Suite
9 19 (0.29%) Metasploit
9 19 (0.29%) SonarQube
10 18 (0.28%) Chocolatey
11 17 (0.26%) CircleCI
12 16 (0.25%) TeamCity
13 15 (0.23%) LabVIEW
14 14 (0.22%) JUnit
15 13 (0.20%) Robot Framework
General
1 3,131 (48.22%) Social Skills
2 1,971 (30.36%) Analytical Skills
3 1,414 (21.78%) Finance
4 457 (7.04%) Organisational Skills
5 376 (5.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 358 (5.51%) Marketing
7 315 (4.85%) Manufacturing
8 314 (4.84%) Law
9 308 (4.74%) Retail
10 305 (4.70%) Banking
11 297 (4.57%) Legal
12 295 (4.54%) Public Sector
13 161 (2.48%) Presentation Skills
14 151 (2.33%) Telecoms
15 147 (2.26%) Electronics
16 104 (1.60%) Documentation Skills
17 87 (1.34%) Games
18 80 (1.23%) Automotive
19 78 (1.20%) Influencing Skills
20 76 (1.17%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 930 (14.32%) Analyst
2 787 (12.12%) Senior
3 736 (11.34%) IT Support
4 632 (9.73%) Support Engineer
5 577 (8.89%) Developer
6 407 (6.27%) Lead
7 391 (6.02%) IT Engineer
8 319 (4.91%) IT Support Engineer
9 290 (4.47%) Support Analyst
10 251 (3.87%) Consultant
11 221 (3.40%) Support Technician
12 219 (3.37%) Architect
13 198 (3.05%) Business Analyst
14 192 (2.96%) 2nd Line Support
14 192 (2.96%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 191 (2.94%) Software Engineer
16 187 (2.88%) Technical Support
17 184 (2.83%) Systems Engineer
18 168 (2.59%) IT Technician
19 152 (2.34%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 248 (3.82%) React
2 244 (3.76%) .NET
3 218 (3.36%) HTML
4 181 (2.79%) CSS
5 152 (2.34%) Node.js
6 137 (2.11%) REST
7 125 (1.93%) RESTful
8 73 (1.12%) JSON
8 73 (1.12%) Middleware
9 69 (1.06%) Spring
10 68 (1.05%) Vue
11 67 (1.03%) SOAP
11 67 (1.03%) XML
12 64 (0.99%) AngularJS
12 64 (0.99%) Kafka
13 60 (0.92%) Django
14 55 (0.85%) Flask
15 50 (0.77%) gRPC
16 49 (0.75%) Web Services
17 48 (0.74%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 434 (6.68%) Onboarding
2 420 (6.47%) Driving Licence
3 366 (5.64%) Self-Motivation
4 209 (3.22%) Management Information System
5 184 (2.83%) Cloud Native
6 159 (2.45%) Analytical Mindset
6 159 (2.45%) Product Ownership
7 152 (2.34%) Distributed Systems
8 145 (2.23%) Data Centre
9 134 (2.06%) Legacy Systems
10 100 (1.54%) Enterprise Software
11 94 (1.45%) Mobile App
12 91 (1.40%) Social Media
13 86 (1.32%) Data Structures
14 76 (1.17%) Low-Code
15 66 (1.02%) Security Posture
16 60 (0.92%) Algorithms
17 58 (0.89%) Video\Live Streaming
18 55 (0.85%) Virtual Team
19 52 (0.80%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 1,094 (16.85%) Windows
2 424 (6.53%) Windows Server
3 419 (6.45%) Linux
4 173 (2.66%) Windows 10
5 123 (1.89%) Windows Server 2016
6 105 (1.62%) Android
7 91 (1.40%) Apple iOS
8 87 (1.34%) Mac OS
9 58 (0.89%) Unix
10 57 (0.88%) Windows Server 2019
11 41 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 37 (0.57%) Windows Server 2012
13 32 (0.49%) CentOS
14 27 (0.42%) Ubuntu
15 22 (0.34%) VMS
16 20 (0.31%) Windows 7
17 18 (0.28%) Mac OS X
18 10 (0.15%) Debian
18 10 (0.15%) Windows 8
19 8 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,171 (18.03%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,046 (16.11%) Agile
3 956 (14.72%) Customer Service
4 693 (10.67%) Mentoring
5 684 (10.53%) AI
6 683 (10.52%) Decision-Making
7 675 (10.40%) CI/CD
8 659 (10.15%) Analytics
9 620 (9.55%) DevOps
10 594 (9.15%) ITIL
11 548 (8.44%) Business Intelligence
12 533 (8.21%) Project Management
13 501 (7.72%) Computer Science
14 499 (7.69%) Stakeholder Management
15 460 (7.08%) Software Engineering
16 431 (6.64%) Cybersecurity
17 430 (6.62%) Roadmaps
18 415 (6.39%) Coaching
19 367 (5.65%) Process Improvement
20 348 (5.36%) Collaborative Working
Programming Languages
1 1,002 (15.43%) Python
2 902 (13.89%) SQL
3 428 (6.59%) JavaScript
4 339 (5.22%) Java
5 306 (4.71%) PowerShell
6 266 (4.10%) C#
7 185 (2.85%) TypeScript
8 156 (2.40%) Bash
9 92 (1.42%) C++
10 91 (1.40%) Go
11 82 (1.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 81 (1.25%) PHP
13 65 (1.00%) Scala
14 53 (0.82%) C
15 49 (0.75%) T-SQL
16 39 (0.60%) Kotlin
17 34 (0.52%) Bicep
18 32 (0.49%) Apex Code
18 32 (0.49%) Rust
19 31 (0.48%) R
Qualifications
1 1,259 (19.39%) Degree
2 459 (7.07%) Security Cleared
3 289 (4.45%) SC Cleared
4 258 (3.97%) Computer Science Degree
5 192 (2.96%) DBS Check
6 182 (2.80%) Microsoft Certification
7 129 (1.99%) Master's Degree
8 111 (1.71%) CISSP
9 110 (1.69%) DV Cleared
10 95 (1.46%) Cisco Certification
11 88 (1.36%) A+ Certification
12 86 (1.32%) ACCA
13 85 (1.31%) BPSS Clearance
14 79 (1.22%) PMI Certification
15 75 (1.16%) CIMA
16 67 (1.03%) CCNA
17 64 (0.99%) PMP
18 59 (0.91%) Network+ Certification
19 56 (0.86%) AWS Certification
20 53 (0.82%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 311 (4.79%) QA
2 298 (4.59%) Data Quality
3 252 (3.88%) GDPR
4 162 (2.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 162 (2.49%) SLA
5 159 (2.45%) Cyber Essentials
6 135 (2.08%) NIST
7 131 (2.02%) PCI DSS
8 113 (1.74%) Accessibility
9 50 (0.77%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 34 (0.52%) SOC 2
11 32 (0.49%) ISO 9001
12 30 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
13 27 (0.42%) PMO
14 23 (0.35%) COBIT
15 22 (0.34%) GRC
16 14 (0.22%) GMP
17 10 (0.15%) HIPAA
17 10 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 10 (0.15%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 734 (11.30%) Active Directory
2 308 (4.74%) Docker
3 216 (3.33%) Hyper-V
4 170 (2.62%) VMware Infrastructure
5 63 (0.97%) Terminal Server
6 36 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
7 35 (0.54%) Firmware
8 31 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
9 18 (0.28%) vSphere
10 15 (0.23%) KVM
11 10 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.15%) VMware Workstation
12 7 (0.11%) IAG
12 7 (0.11%) XenApp
13 5 (0.077%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 5 (0.077%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 3 (0.046%) VMware NSX
16 2 (0.031%) BitLocker
16 2 (0.031%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 299 (4.60%) Terraform
2 253 (3.90%) Microsoft Intune
3 236 (3.63%) Kubernetes
4 159 (2.45%) Ansible
5 97 (1.49%) Grafana
6 87 (1.34%) SCCM
7 56 (0.86%) Prometheus
8 29 (0.45%) Nagios
9 27 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
10 24 (0.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 21 (0.32%) BMC PATROL
12 17 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.25%) Kibana
14 15 (0.23%) Argo
14 15 (0.23%) vCenter Server
15 14 (0.22%) Autotask
15 14 (0.22%) Cisco CUCM
15 14 (0.22%) FortiGate
16 13 (0.20%) Nessus
16 13 (0.20%) Puppet
Vendors
1 1,687 (25.98%) Microsoft
2 274 (4.22%) VMware
3 187 (2.88%) Oracle
4 165 (2.54%) SAP
5 158 (2.43%) Google
6 148 (2.28%) ServiceNow
7 144 (2.22%) Cisco
8 133 (2.05%) Salesforce
9 126 (1.94%) SolarWinds
10 119 (1.83%) Splunk
10 119 (1.83%) Veeam
11 117 (1.80%) Databricks
12 83 (1.28%) Apple
13 82 (1.26%) Adobe
14 74 (1.14%) Dell
15 64 (0.99%) Tanium
16 63 (0.97%) Brocade
16 63 (0.97%) Nimble Storage
17 56 (0.86%) Red Hat
18 50 (0.77%) Dynatrace