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

6 months to
26 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 4 8
Rank change year-on-year -8 +4 +5
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,458 7,745 12,666
As % of all permanent jobs in England 7.80% 20.38% 14.69%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.56% 21.82% 17.46%
Number of salaries quoted 4,561 4,288 8,457
10th Percentile £27,500 £27,500 £26,110
25th Percentile £31,691 £33,250 £32,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £50,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -5.94% +1.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £69,391 £71,063 £67,968
90th Percentile £87,500 £88,750 £85,000
UK median annual salary £47,500 £50,000 £49,000
% change year-on-year -5.00% +2.04% -10.91%

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 61,164 35,487 72,538
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.89% 93.36% 84.12%
Number of salaries quoted 40,556 18,984 54,206
10th Percentile £30,000 £29,779 £29,000
25th Percentile £41,250 £41,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year - +9.09% -12.00%
75th Percentile £80,000 £80,000 £72,761
90th Percentile £100,000 £102,500 £93,750
UK median annual salary £60,000 £58,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +2.56% +6.36% -9.84%

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 26 May 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 26 May 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 -5 1,918 £70,000 +7.69% 1,234
North of England -11 1,340 £42,500 -5.56% 667
South East -8 1,158 £46,663 +1.44% 711
Midlands -22 901 £40,000 -11.11% 416
North West -16 687 £45,000 -4.76% 371
South West -8 564 £43,500 +8.75% 297
West Midlands -23 525 £42,500 -11.46% 259
Yorkshire -11 509 £41,500 +10.67% 228
East of England -7 489 £42,500 +4.94% 265
East Midlands -10 372 £35,000 -9.09% 158
North East -17 144 £48,445 +7.65% 79
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
1 338 (5.23%) Microsoft Exchange
2 323 (5.00%) SharePoint
3 71 (1.10%) Confluence
4 63 (0.98%) CMS
5 55 (0.85%) Apache
6 38 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
7 34 (0.53%) IIS
8 31 (0.48%) Apache Spark
9 27 (0.42%) WordPress
10 16 (0.25%) SAS
11 14 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
12 10 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
13 8 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2007
13 8 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2010
14 7 (0.11%) Drupal
14 7 (0.11%) nginx
14 7 (0.11%) OpenEdge
15 5 (0.077%) Moodle
15 5 (0.077%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 5 (0.077%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 394 (6.10%) Microsoft Office
2 333 (5.16%) Microsoft Excel
3 54 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 48 (0.74%) Spreadsheet
5 38 (0.59%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
7 16 (0.25%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 9 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
8 9 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
9 8 (0.12%) AutoCAD
9 8 (0.12%) Fusion 360
10 6 (0.093%) Photoshop
10 6 (0.093%) Simulink
11 4 (0.062%) Maya
11 4 (0.062%) Trello
12 3 (0.046%) Acrobat
12 3 (0.046%) Autodesk Inventor
13 2 (0.031%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.031%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 61 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
2 59 (0.91%) Dynamics CRM
3 34 (0.53%) NetSuite
4 23 (0.36%) Salesforce CRM
5 20 (0.31%) Shopify
6 16 (0.25%) Magento
7 15 (0.23%) Dynamics NAV
8 14 (0.22%) SAP CO
8 14 (0.22%) SAP ERP
9 13 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
10 12 (0.19%) iTrent
11 11 (0.17%) Maximo
12 9 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
12 9 (0.14%) Endur
13 8 (0.12%) IBM Planning Analytics
13 8 (0.12%) Sage 50
14 7 (0.11%) Elite 3E
14 7 (0.11%) Q-Pulse
14 7 (0.11%) SAP Business One
14 7 (0.11%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,356 (21.00%) Azure
2 996 (15.42%) Microsoft 365
3 824 (12.76%) AWS
4 476 (7.37%) Power Platform
5 316 (4.89%) SaaS
6 281 (4.35%) GCP
7 269 (4.17%) Entra ID
8 168 (2.60%) Serverless
9 162 (2.51%) Azure DevOps
10 147 (2.28%) GitHub
11 124 (1.92%) Dynamics 365
12 115 (1.78%) Power Automate
13 92 (1.42%) Amazon S3
13 92 (1.42%) PowerApps
14 87 (1.35%) Google Workspace
15 77 (1.19%) GitHub Actions
15 77 (1.19%) PaaS
16 74 (1.15%) IaaS
17 72 (1.11%) AWS Lambda
18 71 (1.10%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 389 (6.02%) Firewall
2 370 (5.73%) DNS
3 304 (4.71%) DHCP
4 253 (3.92%) VPN
5 220 (3.41%) WAN
6 192 (2.97%) Wi-Fi
7 191 (2.96%) LAN
8 185 (2.86%) TCP/IP
9 175 (2.71%) Broadband
10 121 (1.87%) Wireless
11 119 (1.84%) VLAN
12 96 (1.49%) VoIP
13 74 (1.15%) Network Security
14 67 (1.04%) SD-WAN
15 51 (0.79%) SAN
16 42 (0.65%) BGP
16 42 (0.65%) Internet
17 40 (0.62%) OSPF
18 33 (0.51%) HTTP
19 32 (0.50%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 380 (5.88%) Power BI
2 282 (4.37%) SQL Server
3 122 (1.89%) Data Warehouse
4 109 (1.69%) Tableau
5 105 (1.63%) NoSQL
6 95 (1.47%) PostgreSQL
7 83 (1.29%) MySQL
8 78 (1.21%) Amazon RDS
8 78 (1.21%) Relational Database
9 75 (1.16%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 64 (0.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 53 (0.82%) Big Data
11 53 (0.82%) Power Query
12 48 (0.74%) MongoDB
13 47 (0.73%) Amazon Redshift
14 43 (0.67%) DynamoDB
15 39 (0.60%) Metadata
16 35 (0.54%) Azure SQL Database
17 34 (0.53%) Data Lake
18 25 (0.39%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 282 (4.37%) Git
2 207 (3.21%) JIRA
3 104 (1.61%) GitLab
4 103 (1.59%) Jenkins
5 29 (0.45%) Rational DOORS
5 29 (0.45%) Selenium
6 21 (0.33%) Chocolatey
6 21 (0.33%) Visual Studio
7 20 (0.31%) Maven
8 19 (0.29%) Cucumber
9 18 (0.28%) Cypress.io
10 17 (0.26%) CircleCI
11 16 (0.25%) JUnit
12 15 (0.23%) Bitbucket
12 15 (0.23%) Burp Suite
12 15 (0.23%) Metasploit
12 15 (0.23%) SonarQube
13 14 (0.22%) TeamCity
14 13 (0.20%) LabVIEW
14 13 (0.20%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 2,956 (45.77%) Social Skills
2 1,900 (29.42%) Analytical Skills
3 1,324 (20.50%) Finance
4 406 (6.29%) Organisational Skills
5 363 (5.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 344 (5.33%) Manufacturing
7 327 (5.06%) Law
8 321 (4.97%) Marketing
9 273 (4.23%) Legal
9 273 (4.23%) Retail
10 269 (4.17%) Public Sector
11 261 (4.04%) Banking
12 157 (2.43%) Telecoms
13 142 (2.20%) Electronics
14 135 (2.09%) Presentation Skills
15 103 (1.59%) Documentation Skills
16 96 (1.49%) Influencing Skills
17 83 (1.29%) Advertising
18 82 (1.27%) Aerospace
19 78 (1.21%) Games
Job Titles
1 847 (13.12%) Analyst
2 813 (12.59%) Senior
3 667 (10.33%) IT Support
4 602 (9.32%) Developer
5 570 (8.83%) Support Engineer
6 405 (6.27%) Lead
7 395 (6.12%) IT Engineer
8 309 (4.78%) IT Support Engineer
9 282 (4.37%) Consultant
10 241 (3.73%) Support Analyst
11 233 (3.61%) Support Technician
12 226 (3.50%) Architect
13 215 (3.33%) Software Engineer
14 206 (3.19%) Systems Engineer
15 198 (3.07%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 176 (2.73%) IT Technician
17 174 (2.69%) Technical Support
18 164 (2.54%) 2nd Line Support
18 164 (2.54%) Business Analyst
19 156 (2.42%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 258 (4.00%) .NET
2 243 (3.76%) React
3 209 (3.24%) HTML
4 179 (2.77%) CSS
5 164 (2.54%) REST
6 127 (1.97%) Node.js
7 119 (1.84%) RESTful
8 94 (1.46%) SOAP
9 84 (1.30%) Middleware
10 79 (1.22%) Spring
11 77 (1.19%) JSON
12 69 (1.07%) XML
13 63 (0.98%) Vue
14 62 (0.96%) AngularJS
14 62 (0.96%) Kafka
15 61 (0.94%) OAuth
16 55 (0.85%) gRPC
17 53 (0.82%) Spring Boot
18 51 (0.79%) EDI
19 49 (0.76%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 392 (6.07%) Driving Licence
2 373 (5.78%) Onboarding
3 304 (4.71%) Self-Motivation
4 216 (3.34%) Management Information System
5 212 (3.28%) Cloud Native
6 185 (2.86%) Product Ownership
7 163 (2.52%) Data Centre
8 148 (2.29%) Distributed Systems
9 130 (2.01%) Analytical Mindset
10 121 (1.87%) Legacy Systems
11 96 (1.49%) Mobile App
12 90 (1.39%) Social Media
13 83 (1.29%) Data Structures
13 83 (1.29%) Enterprise Software
14 71 (1.10%) Low-Code
15 67 (1.04%) Algorithms
16 65 (1.01%) Virtual Team
17 62 (0.96%) Security Posture
18 60 (0.93%) Video\Live Streaming
19 54 (0.84%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 1,007 (15.59%) Windows
2 410 (6.35%) Windows Server
3 404 (6.26%) Linux
4 163 (2.52%) Windows 10
5 109 (1.69%) Android
6 108 (1.67%) Windows Server 2016
7 85 (1.32%) Apple iOS
8 80 (1.24%) Mac OS
9 62 (0.96%) Windows Server 2019
10 43 (0.67%) Unix
11 41 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 33 (0.51%) CentOS
13 32 (0.50%) Windows Server 2012
14 29 (0.45%) Ubuntu
15 24 (0.37%) VMS
16 16 (0.25%) Windows 7
17 14 (0.22%) Mac OS X
18 10 (0.15%) Debian
19 7 (0.11%) Windows 8
19 7 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,222 (18.92%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,029 (15.93%) Agile
3 923 (14.29%) Customer Service
4 708 (10.96%) Mentoring
5 706 (10.93%) AI
6 704 (10.90%) CI/CD
7 676 (10.47%) Decision-Making
8 613 (9.49%) Analytics
9 610 (9.45%) DevOps
10 532 (8.24%) ITIL
11 527 (8.16%) Stakeholder Management
12 522 (8.08%) Software Engineering
13 500 (7.74%) Roadmaps
14 491 (7.60%) Computer Science
15 471 (7.29%) Project Management
16 453 (7.01%) Business Intelligence
17 444 (6.88%) Coaching
17 444 (6.88%) Cybersecurity
18 391 (6.05%) Collaborative Working
19 370 (5.73%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 987 (15.28%) Python
2 910 (14.09%) SQL
3 434 (6.72%) JavaScript
4 332 (5.14%) Java
5 308 (4.77%) C#
6 290 (4.49%) PowerShell
7 192 (2.97%) TypeScript
8 156 (2.42%) Bash
9 125 (1.94%) C++
10 85 (1.32%) Go
11 84 (1.30%) PHP
12 65 (1.01%) Scala
13 58 (0.90%) C
14 56 (0.87%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 45 (0.70%) T-SQL
16 41 (0.63%) PL/SQL
16 41 (0.63%) R
16 41 (0.63%) Rust
17 36 (0.56%) Apex Code
18 34 (0.53%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,123 (17.39%) Degree
2 491 (7.60%) Security Cleared
3 324 (5.02%) SC Cleared
4 252 (3.90%) Computer Science Degree
5 219 (3.39%) DBS Check
6 185 (2.86%) Microsoft Certification
7 114 (1.77%) DV Cleared
8 112 (1.73%) Master's Degree
9 108 (1.67%) CISSP
10 105 (1.63%) Cisco Certification
11 84 (1.30%) A+ Certification
12 83 (1.29%) BPSS Clearance
12 83 (1.29%) PMI Certification
13 81 (1.25%) Azure Certification
14 69 (1.07%) ACCA
14 69 (1.07%) PMP
15 65 (1.01%) CCNA
16 64 (0.99%) CIMA
17 56 (0.87%) Network+ Certification
18 52 (0.81%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 328 (5.08%) QA
2 301 (4.66%) Data Quality
3 258 (4.00%) GDPR
4 193 (2.99%) SLA
5 155 (2.40%) Cyber Essentials
6 149 (2.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 138 (2.14%) NIST
8 137 (2.12%) Accessibility
9 117 (1.81%) PCI DSS
10 43 (0.67%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 35 (0.54%) ISO 9001
12 32 (0.50%) PMO
13 31 (0.48%) SOC 2
14 27 (0.42%) GRC
15 24 (0.37%) COBIT
16 22 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
17 14 (0.22%) GMP
18 12 (0.19%) IFRS
18 12 (0.19%) TickIT
19 11 (0.17%) PERC
System Software
1 675 (10.45%) Active Directory
2 282 (4.37%) Docker
3 197 (3.05%) Hyper-V
4 188 (2.91%) VMware Infrastructure
5 49 (0.76%) Terminal Server
6 43 (0.67%) Virtual Desktop
7 38 (0.59%) Firmware
8 26 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
9 20 (0.31%) vSphere
10 15 (0.23%) KVM
11 14 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
12 10 (0.15%) IAG
13 7 (0.11%) VMware Workstation
13 7 (0.11%) XenApp
14 5 (0.077%) Embedded Firmware
14 5 (0.077%) VMware NSX
15 4 (0.062%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 3 (0.046%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 3 (0.046%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.046%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 297 (4.60%) Terraform
2 238 (3.69%) Microsoft Intune
3 237 (3.67%) Kubernetes
4 148 (2.29%) Ansible
5 91 (1.41%) Grafana
6 84 (1.30%) SCCM
7 56 (0.87%) Prometheus
8 37 (0.57%) Nagios
9 32 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 18 (0.28%) Kibana
12 14 (0.22%) Autotask
13 13 (0.20%) vCenter Server
14 12 (0.19%) Argo
14 12 (0.19%) Jamf Pro
14 12 (0.19%) Puppet
15 11 (0.17%) Nessus
16 10 (0.15%) FortiGate
16 10 (0.15%) WSUS
16 10 (0.15%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,687 (26.12%) Microsoft
2 278 (4.30%) VMware
3 185 (2.86%) Oracle
4 169 (2.62%) Google
5 155 (2.40%) SAP
6 150 (2.32%) Cisco
7 137 (2.12%) Salesforce
8 132 (2.04%) ServiceNow
9 118 (1.83%) SolarWinds
10 107 (1.66%) Veeam
11 105 (1.63%) Databricks
12 99 (1.53%) Splunk
13 78 (1.21%) Apple
14 67 (1.04%) Adobe
15 58 (0.90%) Dell
16 54 (0.84%) Red Hat
17 51 (0.79%) Dynatrace
17 51 (0.79%) Meraki
18 50 (0.77%) Tanium
19 49 (0.76%) Nimble Storage