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

6 months to
28 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 6,547 7,755 12,694
As % of all permanent jobs in England 7.87% 20.34% 14.65%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.64% 21.79% 17.45%
Number of salaries quoted 4,629 4,305 8,481
10th Percentile £27,500 £27,500 £26,043
25th Percentile £31,735 £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 £68,750 £71,250 £67,500
90th Percentile £87,500 £88,750 £85,000
UK median annual salary £47,500 £50,055 £49,000
% change year-on-year -5.10% +2.15% -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 61,552 35,586 72,734
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 74.01% 93.32% 83.95%
Number of salaries quoted 40,904 19,071 54,305
10th Percentile £30,000 £29,750 £29,000
25th Percentile £41,250 £41,250 £39,750
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 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £102,500 £93,750
UK median annual salary £60,000 £58,033 £55,000
% change year-on-year +3.39% +5.51% -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 28 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 28 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 1,943 £70,000 +7.69% 1,218
North of England -9 1,362 £42,500 -5.56% 649
South East -8 1,178 £46,000 - 701
Midlands -22 914 £42,000 -6.67% 387
North West -16 699 £45,000 -4.26% 365
South West -7 573 £43,500 +8.75% 274
West Midlands -23 535 £42,500 -11.46% 247
Yorkshire -11 514 £41,500 +9.21% 211
East of England -7 493 £43,500 +7.41% 261
East Midlands -10 375 £35,000 -9.09% 141
North East -17 149 £48,000 +6.67% 84
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
1 340 (5.19%) Microsoft Exchange
2 331 (5.06%) SharePoint
3 71 (1.08%) Confluence
4 64 (0.98%) CMS
5 53 (0.81%) Apache
6 37 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
7 34 (0.52%) IIS
8 30 (0.46%) Apache Spark
9 27 (0.41%) WordPress
10 17 (0.26%) SAS
11 14 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
12 10 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
13 8 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2007
13 8 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2010
13 8 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 7 (0.11%) Drupal
14 7 (0.11%) nginx
14 7 (0.11%) OpenEdge
15 6 (0.092%) Moodle
16 5 (0.076%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 400 (6.11%) Microsoft Office
2 339 (5.18%) Microsoft Excel
3 56 (0.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 48 (0.73%) Spreadsheet
5 40 (0.61%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.43%) Microsoft Project
7 16 (0.24%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 9 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
8 9 (0.14%) AutoCAD
8 9 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
9 8 (0.12%) Fusion 360
10 6 (0.092%) Photoshop
10 6 (0.092%) Simulink
10 6 (0.092%) Trello
11 5 (0.076%) Maya
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 62 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
2 61 (0.93%) Dynamics CRM
3 34 (0.52%) NetSuite
4 22 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
5 20 (0.31%) Shopify
6 16 (0.24%) Magento
6 16 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
7 15 (0.23%) Dynamics NAV
8 14 (0.21%) SAP CO
8 14 (0.21%) SAP ERP
9 11 (0.17%) iTrent
9 11 (0.17%) Maximo
10 9 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
10 9 (0.14%) Endur
10 9 (0.14%) IBM Planning Analytics
11 8 (0.12%) Sage 50
12 7 (0.11%) Elite 3E
12 7 (0.11%) Q-Pulse
12 7 (0.11%) SAP Business One
12 7 (0.11%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,387 (21.19%) Azure
2 1,004 (15.34%) Microsoft 365
3 835 (12.75%) AWS
4 493 (7.53%) Power Platform
5 321 (4.90%) SaaS
6 287 (4.38%) GCP
7 274 (4.19%) Entra ID
8 172 (2.63%) Serverless
9 168 (2.57%) Azure DevOps
10 146 (2.23%) GitHub
11 129 (1.97%) Dynamics 365
12 116 (1.77%) Power Automate
13 96 (1.47%) PowerApps
14 90 (1.37%) Amazon S3
15 87 (1.33%) Google Workspace
16 76 (1.16%) PaaS
17 74 (1.13%) GitHub Actions
17 74 (1.13%) OneDrive
18 73 (1.12%) IaaS
19 71 (1.08%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 398 (6.08%) Firewall
2 370 (5.65%) DNS
3 307 (4.69%) DHCP
4 259 (3.96%) VPN
5 224 (3.42%) WAN
6 198 (3.02%) Wi-Fi
7 194 (2.96%) LAN
8 190 (2.90%) TCP/IP
9 177 (2.70%) Broadband
10 124 (1.89%) VLAN
11 122 (1.86%) Wireless
12 99 (1.51%) VoIP
13 80 (1.22%) Network Security
14 68 (1.04%) SD-WAN
15 51 (0.78%) SAN
16 44 (0.67%) BGP
17 43 (0.66%) Internet
18 42 (0.64%) OSPF
19 35 (0.53%) HTTP
20 32 (0.49%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 390 (5.96%) Power BI
2 289 (4.41%) SQL Server
3 130 (1.99%) Data Warehouse
4 109 (1.66%) Tableau
5 108 (1.65%) NoSQL
6 97 (1.48%) PostgreSQL
7 83 (1.27%) MySQL
8 80 (1.22%) Relational Database
9 79 (1.21%) Amazon RDS
10 77 (1.18%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 67 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 56 (0.86%) Big Data
13 53 (0.81%) Power Query
14 47 (0.72%) MongoDB
15 45 (0.69%) Amazon Redshift
16 41 (0.63%) DynamoDB
17 39 (0.60%) Metadata
18 38 (0.58%) Azure SQL Database
19 36 (0.55%) Data Lake
20 26 (0.40%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 289 (4.41%) Git
2 211 (3.22%) JIRA
3 100 (1.53%) GitLab
4 99 (1.51%) Jenkins
5 29 (0.44%) Rational DOORS
6 27 (0.41%) Selenium
7 21 (0.32%) Chocolatey
7 21 (0.32%) Visual Studio
8 20 (0.31%) Maven
9 19 (0.29%) Cypress.io
10 18 (0.27%) Cucumber
10 18 (0.27%) JUnit
11 17 (0.26%) CircleCI
12 15 (0.23%) Burp Suite
12 15 (0.23%) Metasploit
12 15 (0.23%) SonarQube
13 14 (0.21%) Subversion
14 13 (0.20%) Bitbucket
14 13 (0.20%) LabVIEW
14 13 (0.20%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 3,022 (46.16%) Social Skills
2 1,928 (29.45%) Analytical Skills
3 1,343 (20.51%) Finance
4 421 (6.43%) Organisational Skills
5 364 (5.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 350 (5.35%) Manufacturing
7 336 (5.13%) Law
8 321 (4.90%) Marketing
9 277 (4.23%) Legal
9 277 (4.23%) Retail
10 275 (4.20%) Public Sector
11 259 (3.96%) Banking
12 162 (2.47%) Telecoms
13 144 (2.20%) Electronics
14 134 (2.05%) Presentation Skills
15 106 (1.62%) Documentation Skills
16 97 (1.48%) Influencing Skills
17 84 (1.28%) Advertising
17 84 (1.28%) Aerospace
18 80 (1.22%) Games
Job Titles
1 856 (13.07%) Analyst
2 820 (12.52%) Senior
3 670 (10.23%) IT Support
4 626 (9.56%) Developer
5 575 (8.78%) Support Engineer
6 405 (6.19%) IT Engineer
7 402 (6.14%) Lead
8 316 (4.83%) IT Support Engineer
9 287 (4.38%) Consultant
10 245 (3.74%) Support Analyst
11 236 (3.60%) Support Technician
12 226 (3.45%) Architect
13 221 (3.38%) Software Engineer
14 211 (3.22%) Systems Engineer
15 194 (2.96%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 175 (2.67%) IT Technician
17 172 (2.63%) Technical Support
18 167 (2.55%) Business Analyst
19 164 (2.50%) 2nd Line Support
20 158 (2.41%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 264 (4.03%) .NET
2 250 (3.82%) React
3 210 (3.21%) HTML
4 180 (2.75%) CSS
5 172 (2.63%) REST
6 135 (2.06%) Node.js
7 123 (1.88%) RESTful
8 96 (1.47%) SOAP
9 85 (1.30%) Middleware
10 79 (1.21%) JSON
11 78 (1.19%) Spring
12 69 (1.05%) XML
13 67 (1.02%) Vue
14 64 (0.98%) AngularJS
15 63 (0.96%) Kafka
16 62 (0.95%) OAuth
17 56 (0.86%) gRPC
18 53 (0.81%) Web Services
19 52 (0.79%) Spring Boot
20 51 (0.78%) EDI
Miscellaneous
1 399 (6.09%) Driving Licence
2 382 (5.83%) Onboarding
3 299 (4.57%) Self-Motivation
4 221 (3.38%) Management Information System
5 213 (3.25%) Cloud Native
6 189 (2.89%) Product Ownership
7 166 (2.54%) Data Centre
8 152 (2.32%) Distributed Systems
9 132 (2.02%) Analytical Mindset
10 123 (1.88%) Legacy Systems
11 97 (1.48%) Mobile App
12 90 (1.37%) Social Media
13 87 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
14 84 (1.28%) Data Structures
15 72 (1.10%) Low-Code
16 70 (1.07%) Algorithms
17 66 (1.01%) Virtual Team
18 65 (0.99%) Security Posture
19 60 (0.92%) Video\Live Streaming
20 55 (0.84%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 1,011 (15.44%) Windows
2 412 (6.29%) Linux
2 412 (6.29%) Windows Server
3 165 (2.52%) Windows 10
4 110 (1.68%) Android
5 109 (1.66%) Windows Server 2016
6 86 (1.31%) Apple iOS
7 83 (1.27%) Mac OS
8 62 (0.95%) Windows Server 2019
9 45 (0.69%) Unix
10 40 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 32 (0.49%) CentOS
11 32 (0.49%) Windows Server 2012
12 29 (0.44%) Ubuntu
13 25 (0.38%) VMS
14 16 (0.24%) Windows 7
15 14 (0.21%) Mac OS X
16 10 (0.15%) Debian
17 7 (0.11%) Windows 8
17 7 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,251 (19.11%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,043 (15.93%) Agile
3 938 (14.33%) Customer Service
4 727 (11.10%) AI
5 722 (11.03%) Mentoring
6 714 (10.91%) CI/CD
7 683 (10.43%) Decision-Making
8 626 (9.56%) Analytics
9 623 (9.52%) DevOps
10 541 (8.26%) ITIL
11 539 (8.23%) Software Engineering
12 538 (8.22%) Stakeholder Management
13 503 (7.68%) Computer Science
13 503 (7.68%) Roadmaps
14 477 (7.29%) Project Management
15 462 (7.06%) Business Intelligence
16 457 (6.98%) Cybersecurity
17 446 (6.81%) Coaching
18 404 (6.17%) Collaborative Working
19 375 (5.73%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 1,004 (15.34%) Python
2 941 (14.37%) SQL
3 446 (6.81%) JavaScript
4 334 (5.10%) Java
5 318 (4.86%) C#
6 293 (4.48%) PowerShell
7 198 (3.02%) TypeScript
8 156 (2.38%) Bash
9 130 (1.99%) C++
10 91 (1.39%) PHP
11 86 (1.31%) Go
12 63 (0.96%) Scala
13 58 (0.89%) C
14 57 (0.87%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 47 (0.72%) T-SQL
16 44 (0.67%) PL/SQL
17 43 (0.66%) R
18 41 (0.63%) Rust
19 37 (0.57%) Apex Code
20 34 (0.52%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,127 (17.21%) Degree
2 501 (7.65%) Security Cleared
3 332 (5.07%) SC Cleared
4 255 (3.89%) Computer Science Degree
5 221 (3.38%) DBS Check
6 187 (2.86%) Microsoft Certification
7 116 (1.77%) DV Cleared
8 115 (1.76%) Master's Degree
9 110 (1.68%) Cisco Certification
9 110 (1.68%) CISSP
10 86 (1.31%) Azure Certification
11 84 (1.28%) A+ Certification
11 84 (1.28%) BPSS Clearance
12 82 (1.25%) PMI Certification
13 69 (1.05%) CCNA
14 68 (1.04%) PMP
15 65 (0.99%) ACCA
16 60 (0.92%) CIMA
17 56 (0.86%) Network+ Certification
18 54 (0.82%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 340 (5.19%) QA
2 308 (4.70%) Data Quality
3 261 (3.99%) GDPR
4 198 (3.02%) SLA
5 157 (2.40%) Cyber Essentials
6 151 (2.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 140 (2.14%) Accessibility
8 138 (2.11%) NIST
9 115 (1.76%) PCI DSS
10 44 (0.67%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 35 (0.53%) ISO 9001
12 33 (0.50%) PMO
13 30 (0.46%) SOC 2
14 27 (0.41%) GRC
15 24 (0.37%) COBIT
16 22 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
17 15 (0.23%) GMP
18 12 (0.18%) IFRS
18 12 (0.18%) TickIT
19 11 (0.17%) PERC
System Software
1 678 (10.36%) Active Directory
2 289 (4.41%) Docker
3 204 (3.12%) Hyper-V
4 193 (2.95%) VMware Infrastructure
5 49 (0.75%) Terminal Server
6 43 (0.66%) Virtual Desktop
7 37 (0.57%) Firmware
8 26 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
9 20 (0.31%) vSphere
10 15 (0.23%) KVM
11 14 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
12 10 (0.15%) IAG
13 7 (0.11%) VMware Workstation
13 7 (0.11%) XenApp
14 5 (0.076%) Embedded Firmware
14 5 (0.076%) VMware NSX
15 4 (0.061%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 4 (0.061%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 4 (0.061%) Virtual Servers
16 3 (0.046%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 299 (4.57%) Terraform
2 244 (3.73%) Microsoft Intune
3 243 (3.71%) Kubernetes
4 144 (2.20%) Ansible
5 92 (1.41%) Grafana
6 82 (1.25%) SCCM
7 56 (0.86%) Prometheus
8 37 (0.57%) Nagios
9 32 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 18 (0.27%) Kibana
12 14 (0.21%) Autotask
13 13 (0.20%) vCenter Server
14 12 (0.18%) Argo
14 12 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
14 12 (0.18%) Puppet
15 11 (0.17%) FortiGate
15 11 (0.17%) Nessus
16 10 (0.15%) WSUS
16 10 (0.15%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,722 (26.30%) Microsoft
2 284 (4.34%) VMware
3 185 (2.83%) Oracle
4 171 (2.61%) Google
5 158 (2.41%) SAP
6 154 (2.35%) Cisco
7 137 (2.09%) Salesforce
8 130 (1.99%) ServiceNow
9 118 (1.80%) SolarWinds
10 110 (1.68%) Veeam
11 108 (1.65%) Databricks
12 99 (1.51%) Splunk
13 78 (1.19%) Apple
14 65 (0.99%) Adobe
15 58 (0.89%) Dell
16 53 (0.81%) Meraki
17 51 (0.78%) Red Hat
18 50 (0.76%) Dynatrace
18 50 (0.76%) Nimble Storage
18 50 (0.76%) Tanium