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

6 months to
10 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 6,550 8,120 9,935
As % of all permanent jobs in England 11.31% 18.02% 15.04%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.17% 19.59% 17.06%
Number of salaries quoted 4,482 3,839 7,238
10th Percentile £26,500 £30,750 £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% -9.91%
75th Percentile £65,598 £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% -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 46,216 41,458 58,251
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 79.82% 92.03% 88.17%
Number of salaries quoted 28,077 20,221 46,108
10th Percentile £29,000 £35,000 £29,750
25th Percentile £38,750 £46,250 £40,879
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £62,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -11.29% +12.73% -12.00%
75th Percentile £77,500 £81,250 £75,250
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 10 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 10 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 1,926 £67,500 +3.85% 925
South East -3 1,333 £42,500 -19.05% 882
North of England -17 1,320 £42,500 -10.70% 589
Midlands -15 861 £37,500 -27.63% 463
North West -15 723 £46,000 -8.00% 345
South West -2 580 £40,000 -26.36% 338
West Midlands -18 502 £42,500 -22.73% 296
Yorkshire -6 462 £35,750 -17.82% 187
East of England -3 428 £36,000 -29.37% 294
East Midlands 0 357 £33,000 -5.71% 167
North East -4 135 £41,000 -14.58% 67
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
1 332 (5.07%) Microsoft Exchange
2 283 (4.32%) SharePoint
3 77 (1.18%) Confluence
4 55 (0.84%) Apache
5 49 (0.75%) IIS
6 43 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
7 42 (0.64%) Apache Spark
8 40 (0.61%) CMS
9 28 (0.43%) WordPress
10 16 (0.24%) Palantir Foundry
11 12 (0.18%) nginx
12 10 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 9 (0.14%) SAS
14 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.11%) Apache Solr
14 7 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
15 5 (0.076%) Drupal
15 5 (0.076%) Exchange Server 2010
16 4 (0.061%) Exchange Server 2007
16 4 (0.061%) Umbraco
Applications
1 447 (6.82%) Microsoft Office
2 444 (6.78%) Microsoft Excel
3 90 (1.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 38 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
5 32 (0.49%) Maya
6 28 (0.43%) MS Visio
7 25 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
8 16 (0.24%) AutoCAD
9 13 (0.20%) Photoshop
10 12 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 9 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
12 8 (0.12%) Adobe Premiere
12 8 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
13 7 (0.11%) Chatbot
14 5 (0.076%) Adobe After Effects
14 5 (0.076%) Adobe XD
15 4 (0.061%) CATIA
15 4 (0.061%) Fusion 360
15 4 (0.061%) Trello
16 3 (0.046%) Elementor
Business Applications
1 101 (1.54%) SAP S/4HANA
2 75 (1.15%) Dynamics CRM
3 33 (0.50%) NetSuite
4 20 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
5 18 (0.27%) Endur
5 18 (0.27%) SAP CO
6 14 (0.21%) Dynamics NAV
6 14 (0.21%) Oracle Payables
6 14 (0.21%) Shopify
7 12 (0.18%) iTrent
7 12 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
8 11 (0.17%) Oracle Assets
9 10 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
9 10 (0.15%) SAP Business One
9 10 (0.15%) Workday HCM
10 9 (0.14%) SAP FI
10 9 (0.14%) SAP FI/CO
11 8 (0.12%) JDE EnterpriseOne
11 8 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
12 7 (0.11%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 1,467 (22.40%) Azure
2 982 (14.99%) Microsoft 365
3 737 (11.25%) AWS
4 532 (8.12%) Power Platform
5 397 (6.06%) SaaS
6 268 (4.09%) Entra ID
7 232 (3.54%) GCP
8 181 (2.76%) Azure DevOps
9 159 (2.43%) GitHub
10 145 (2.21%) Serverless
11 125 (1.91%) Power Automate
12 104 (1.59%) Dynamics 365
13 79 (1.21%) Google Workspace
14 77 (1.18%) PowerApps
15 74 (1.13%) Amazon S3
16 72 (1.10%) AWS CloudFormation
17 70 (1.07%) AWS Lambda
18 68 (1.04%) PaaS
19 63 (0.96%) Azure Data Factory
20 62 (0.95%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 440 (6.72%) DNS
2 381 (5.82%) DHCP
3 355 (5.42%) Firewall
4 221 (3.37%) VPN
5 204 (3.11%) TCP/IP
6 195 (2.98%) Wi-Fi
7 181 (2.76%) WAN
8 151 (2.31%) LAN
9 125 (1.91%) VLAN
10 110 (1.68%) Broadband
11 95 (1.45%) VoIP
12 94 (1.44%) Wireless
13 56 (0.85%) SD-WAN
14 51 (0.78%) Remote Desktop
15 49 (0.75%) Network Security
16 46 (0.70%) Internet
16 46 (0.70%) SAN
17 30 (0.46%) Unified Communications
18 28 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
19 27 (0.41%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 446 (6.81%) Power BI
2 298 (4.55%) SQL Server
3 149 (2.27%) Relational Database
4 141 (2.15%) Data Warehouse
5 134 (2.05%) Tableau
6 124 (1.89%) Amazon RDS
7 120 (1.83%) NoSQL
8 116 (1.77%) Data Lake
9 115 (1.76%) PostgreSQL
10 106 (1.62%) MySQL
11 67 (1.02%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 66 (1.01%) SAP BW
13 57 (0.87%) MongoDB
14 53 (0.81%) Metadata
15 50 (0.76%) Amazon Redshift
16 47 (0.72%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 42 (0.64%) Big Data
17 42 (0.64%) DynamoDB
18 41 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
19 35 (0.53%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 266 (4.06%) Git
2 232 (3.54%) JIRA
3 95 (1.45%) Jenkins
4 79 (1.21%) GitLab
5 56 (0.85%) Selenium
6 25 (0.38%) Visual Studio
7 21 (0.32%) Maven
8 20 (0.31%) Bitbucket
9 19 (0.29%) Burp Suite
9 19 (0.29%) Cypress.io
9 19 (0.29%) Metasploit
9 19 (0.29%) TeamCity
10 18 (0.27%) Robot Framework
11 17 (0.26%) JUnit
11 17 (0.26%) LabVIEW
12 16 (0.24%) Octopus Deploy
13 14 (0.21%) Cucumber
13 14 (0.21%) Snyk
13 14 (0.21%) SonarQube
14 13 (0.20%) WebDriver
General
1 3,428 (52.34%) Social Skills
2 1,991 (30.40%) Analytical Skills
3 1,545 (23.59%) Finance
4 398 (6.08%) Organisational Skills
5 367 (5.60%) Marketing
6 341 (5.21%) Law
7 330 (5.04%) Retail
8 316 (4.82%) Manufacturing
9 297 (4.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 295 (4.50%) Legal
11 278 (4.24%) Public Sector
12 264 (4.03%) Banking
13 181 (2.76%) Presentation Skills
14 180 (2.75%) Telecoms
15 152 (2.32%) Electronics
16 114 (1.74%) Games
17 94 (1.44%) Influencing Skills
18 90 (1.37%) Documentation Skills
19 88 (1.34%) Financial Institution
20 84 (1.28%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 1,046 (15.97%) Analyst
2 818 (12.49%) Senior
3 742 (11.33%) IT Support
4 645 (9.85%) Support Engineer
5 592 (9.04%) Developer
6 435 (6.64%) Lead
7 339 (5.18%) IT Engineer
7 339 (5.18%) Support Analyst
8 285 (4.35%) IT Support Engineer
9 266 (4.06%) Technical Support
10 253 (3.86%) Business Analyst
11 224 (3.42%) Consultant
12 223 (3.40%) Architect
13 189 (2.89%) Support Technician
14 185 (2.82%) 2nd Line Support
15 182 (2.78%) Technical Engineer
16 175 (2.67%) Technical Support Engineer
17 166 (2.53%) IT Analyst
18 158 (2.41%) Software Engineer
19 155 (2.37%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 284 (4.34%) .NET
2 257 (3.92%) React
3 240 (3.66%) HTML
4 192 (2.93%) CSS
5 148 (2.26%) Node.js
6 146 (2.23%) REST
7 114 (1.74%) RESTful
8 94 (1.44%) AngularJS
9 70 (1.07%) Vue
10 69 (1.05%) Spring
11 66 (1.01%) JSON
11 66 (1.01%) Middleware
12 64 (0.98%) SOAP
13 63 (0.96%) XML
14 60 (0.92%) Kafka
15 58 (0.89%) .NET Framework
16 52 (0.79%) Django
17 50 (0.76%) ASP.NET
18 48 (0.73%) Flask
19 46 (0.70%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 526 (8.03%) Driving Licence
2 501 (7.65%) Onboarding
3 411 (6.27%) Self-Motivation
4 208 (3.18%) Management Information System
5 196 (2.99%) Analytical Mindset
6 173 (2.64%) Cloud Native
7 169 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
8 151 (2.31%) Product Ownership
9 135 (2.06%) Data Centre
10 118 (1.80%) Enterprise Software
11 87 (1.33%) Mobile App
12 86 (1.31%) Distributed Systems
13 69 (1.05%) Data Structures
14 68 (1.04%) Low-Code
15 66 (1.01%) Algorithms
16 64 (0.98%) Virtual Team
17 56 (0.85%) FMCG
17 56 (0.85%) Social Media
18 54 (0.82%) EPoS
19 52 (0.79%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 1,116 (17.04%) Windows
2 458 (6.99%) Windows Server
3 421 (6.43%) Linux
4 158 (2.41%) Windows 10
5 141 (2.15%) Windows Server 2016
6 94 (1.44%) Mac OS
7 86 (1.31%) Android
8 71 (1.08%) Apple iOS
9 57 (0.87%) Windows Server 2019
10 56 (0.85%) Unix
11 34 (0.52%) Windows Server 2012
12 27 (0.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 25 (0.38%) Windows 7
14 21 (0.32%) VMS
15 13 (0.20%) CentOS
16 9 (0.14%) Ubuntu
17 8 (0.12%) Windows 8
18 7 (0.11%) Debian
19 6 (0.092%) Mac OS X
19 6 (0.092%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,115 (17.02%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,062 (16.21%) Agile
3 978 (14.93%) Customer Service
4 739 (11.28%) Analytics
5 662 (10.11%) Mentoring
6 645 (9.85%) AI
7 628 (9.59%) Decision-Making
8 618 (9.44%) Business Intelligence
9 598 (9.13%) Project Management
10 586 (8.95%) DevOps
11 566 (8.64%) CI/CD
12 538 (8.21%) ITIL
13 524 (8.00%) Computer Science
14 488 (7.45%) Stakeholder Management
15 476 (7.27%) Cybersecurity
16 434 (6.63%) Change Management
17 431 (6.58%) ERP
18 416 (6.35%) Software Engineering
19 388 (5.92%) CRM
20 372 (5.68%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 956 (14.60%) SQL
2 926 (14.14%) Python
3 417 (6.37%) JavaScript
4 324 (4.95%) PowerShell
5 322 (4.92%) C#
6 319 (4.87%) Java
7 168 (2.56%) TypeScript
8 136 (2.08%) Bash
9 105 (1.60%) PHP
10 83 (1.27%) C++
11 62 (0.95%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 50 (0.76%) Go
13 49 (0.75%) T-SQL
14 46 (0.70%) C
15 40 (0.61%) Scala
16 37 (0.56%) R
17 27 (0.41%) Bicep
18 25 (0.38%) Apex Code
18 25 (0.38%) Kotlin
19 24 (0.37%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 1,524 (23.27%) Degree
2 531 (8.11%) Security Cleared
3 344 (5.25%) SC Cleared
4 250 (3.82%) Computer Science Degree
5 183 (2.79%) Microsoft Certification
6 165 (2.52%) Master's Degree
7 163 (2.49%) DBS Check
8 117 (1.79%) DV Cleared
9 103 (1.57%) CISSP
10 89 (1.36%) BPSS Clearance
11 80 (1.22%) A+ Certification
12 79 (1.21%) ACCA
13 75 (1.15%) Cisco Certification
14 70 (1.07%) Network+ Certification
15 65 (0.99%) CIMA
16 58 (0.89%) CISM
17 57 (0.87%) PMI Certification
18 55 (0.84%) AWS Certification
19 51 (0.78%) CCNA
19 51 (0.78%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 338 (5.16%) QA
2 321 (4.90%) Data Quality
3 220 (3.36%) GDPR
4 189 (2.89%) Cyber Essentials
5 167 (2.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 140 (2.14%) PCI DSS
7 139 (2.12%) Accessibility
8 130 (1.98%) SLA
9 87 (1.33%) NIST
10 46 (0.70%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 32 (0.49%) ISO 9001
12 26 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
13 21 (0.32%) PMO
14 20 (0.31%) SOC 2
15 17 (0.26%) COBIT
16 16 (0.24%) GRC
17 12 (0.18%) WCAG
18 10 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 20000
19 9 (0.14%) ISO 13485
20 8 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 19770
System Software
1 788 (12.03%) Active Directory
2 264 (4.03%) Docker
3 259 (3.95%) Hyper-V
4 151 (2.31%) VMware Infrastructure
5 98 (1.50%) Terminal Server
6 29 (0.44%) Firmware
7 24 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
8 23 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
9 18 (0.27%) vSphere
10 16 (0.24%) VMware ESXi
11 9 (0.14%) KVM
12 7 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
12 7 (0.11%) VMware Workstation
13 4 (0.061%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 3 (0.046%) vCloud
15 2 (0.031%) HDFS
15 2 (0.031%) Postfix
15 2 (0.031%) RHEV
15 2 (0.031%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 2 (0.031%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 271 (4.14%) Terraform
2 267 (4.08%) Microsoft Intune
3 207 (3.16%) Kubernetes
4 137 (2.09%) Ansible
5 75 (1.15%) Grafana
6 65 (0.99%) SCCM
7 46 (0.70%) Prometheus
8 42 (0.64%) BMC PATROL
9 30 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
10 20 (0.31%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 20 (0.31%) Nagios
11 17 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
12 15 (0.23%) vCenter Server
13 14 (0.21%) Argo
13 14 (0.21%) Cisco CUCM
14 12 (0.18%) FortiGate
14 12 (0.18%) Kibana
15 11 (0.17%) Nessus
16 10 (0.15%) Autotask
16 10 (0.15%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,698 (25.92%) Microsoft
2 384 (5.86%) SAP
3 298 (4.55%) VMware
4 261 (3.98%) Oracle
5 167 (2.55%) Salesforce
6 159 (2.43%) Veeam
7 149 (2.27%) Google
8 145 (2.21%) Splunk
9 142 (2.17%) Cisco
10 141 (2.15%) SolarWinds
11 120 (1.83%) ServiceNow
12 104 (1.59%) Adobe
13 101 (1.54%) Databricks
14 99 (1.51%) Tanium
15 98 (1.50%) Brocade
15 98 (1.50%) Nimble Storage
16 68 (1.04%) Apple
17 59 (0.90%) Dell
18 56 (0.85%) Sage
19 52 (0.79%) HubSpot