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

6 months to
22 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 4 6
Rank change year-on-year -8 +2 +7
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,379 7,852 12,635
As % of all permanent jobs in England 7.74% 20.46% 14.91%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.50% 21.90% 17.59%
Number of salaries quoted 4,493 4,310 8,431
10th Percentile £27,500 £27,500 £26,110
25th Percentile £31,250 £34,000 £32,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £50,967 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -6.80% +1.93% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £71,250 £67,968
90th Percentile £87,500 £88,750 £85,000
UK median annual salary £47,500 £50,967 £49,244
% change year-on-year -6.80% +3.50% -10.47%

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 60,779 35,855 71,828
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.78% 93.41% 84.74%
Number of salaries quoted 40,146 19,238 53,727
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,000 £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 £73,288
90th Percentile £100,000 £102,500 £93,750
UK median annual salary £60,000 £59,648 £55,000
% change year-on-year +0.59% +8.45% -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 22 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 22 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 1,920 £70,000 +7.69% 933
North of England -11 1,319 £42,500 -5.56% 647
South East -7 1,145 £46,000 -1.08% 750
Midlands -22 874 £42,000 -6.67% 415
North West -17 678 £45,000 -5.26% 350
South West -8 553 £43,500 +8.75% 278
West Midlands -25 513 £42,500 -11.46% 257
Yorkshire -12 503 £41,500 +7.79% 225
East of England -7 479 £42,175 +0.42% 303
East Midlands -11 357 £35,000 -9.09% 157
North East -16 138 £48,445 +7.65% 83
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
1 329 (5.16%) Microsoft Exchange
2 320 (5.02%) SharePoint
3 70 (1.10%) Confluence
4 63 (0.99%) CMS
5 54 (0.85%) Apache
6 39 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
7 32 (0.50%) Apache Spark
8 31 (0.49%) IIS
9 28 (0.44%) WordPress
10 16 (0.25%) SAS
11 14 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
12 10 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2013
13 8 (0.13%) Drupal
13 8 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2007
13 8 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2010
13 8 (0.13%) nginx
14 6 (0.094%) OpenEdge
15 5 (0.078%) OpenStack
15 5 (0.078%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 5 (0.078%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 400 (6.27%) Microsoft Office
2 330 (5.17%) Microsoft Excel
3 50 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 48 (0.75%) Spreadsheet
5 37 (0.58%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
7 14 (0.22%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.16%) Maya
9 9 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
9 9 (0.14%) Fusion 360
10 8 (0.13%) AutoCAD
10 8 (0.13%) SOLIDWORKS
11 6 (0.094%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.063%) Simulink
13 3 (0.047%) Acrobat
13 3 (0.047%) Autodesk Inventor
13 3 (0.047%) Trello
14 2 (0.031%) Adobe XD
14 2 (0.031%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 61 (0.96%) Dynamics CRM
2 59 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
3 33 (0.52%) NetSuite
4 23 (0.36%) Salesforce CRM
5 19 (0.30%) Shopify
6 16 (0.25%) Magento
7 15 (0.24%) 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 (0.13%) Workday HCM
14 7 (0.11%) Elite 3E
14 7 (0.11%) IBM Planning Analytics
14 7 (0.11%) Q-Pulse
14 7 (0.11%) SAP Business One
15 6 (0.094%) Fidessa
Cloud Services
1 1,342 (21.04%) Azure
2 976 (15.30%) Microsoft 365
3 811 (12.71%) AWS
4 478 (7.49%) Power Platform
5 312 (4.89%) SaaS
6 282 (4.42%) GCP
7 267 (4.19%) Entra ID
8 171 (2.68%) Serverless
9 162 (2.54%) Azure DevOps
10 142 (2.23%) GitHub
11 127 (1.99%) Dynamics 365
12 116 (1.82%) Power Automate
13 93 (1.46%) PowerApps
14 91 (1.43%) Amazon S3
15 87 (1.36%) Google Workspace
16 76 (1.19%) PaaS
17 74 (1.16%) AWS Lambda
17 74 (1.16%) GitHub Actions
18 73 (1.14%) IaaS
19 71 (1.11%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 379 (5.94%) Firewall
2 360 (5.64%) DNS
3 293 (4.59%) DHCP
4 249 (3.90%) VPN
5 215 (3.37%) WAN
6 192 (3.01%) Wi-Fi
7 186 (2.92%) LAN
8 183 (2.87%) TCP/IP
9 174 (2.73%) Broadband
10 120 (1.88%) Wireless
11 114 (1.79%) VLAN
12 95 (1.49%) VoIP
13 71 (1.11%) Network Security
14 67 (1.05%) SD-WAN
15 54 (0.85%) SAN
16 42 (0.66%) Internet
17 41 (0.64%) BGP
18 39 (0.61%) OSPF
19 34 (0.53%) HTTP
20 32 (0.50%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 380 (5.96%) Power BI
2 278 (4.36%) SQL Server
3 121 (1.90%) Data Warehouse
4 108 (1.69%) Tableau
5 104 (1.63%) NoSQL
6 93 (1.46%) PostgreSQL
7 82 (1.29%) MySQL
8 78 (1.22%) Relational Database
9 75 (1.18%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 66 (1.03%) Amazon RDS
10 66 (1.03%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 52 (0.82%) Power Query
12 47 (0.74%) Amazon Redshift
12 47 (0.74%) MongoDB
13 46 (0.72%) Big Data
14 43 (0.67%) DynamoDB
15 38 (0.60%) Metadata
16 36 (0.56%) Data Lake
17 35 (0.55%) Azure SQL Database
18 26 (0.41%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 281 (4.41%) Git
2 203 (3.18%) JIRA
3 106 (1.66%) Jenkins
4 105 (1.65%) GitLab
5 32 (0.50%) Selenium
6 27 (0.42%) Rational DOORS
7 23 (0.36%) Maven
8 21 (0.33%) Chocolatey
8 21 (0.33%) Cypress.io
8 21 (0.33%) Visual Studio
9 19 (0.30%) Cucumber
10 18 (0.28%) SonarQube
11 17 (0.27%) CircleCI
12 15 (0.24%) Bitbucket
12 15 (0.24%) Burp Suite
12 15 (0.24%) Metasploit
12 15 (0.24%) TeamCity
13 14 (0.22%) JUnit
13 14 (0.22%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
14 13 (0.20%) LabVIEW
General
1 2,912 (45.65%) Social Skills
2 1,878 (29.44%) Analytical Skills
3 1,319 (20.68%) Finance
4 406 (6.36%) Organisational Skills
5 367 (5.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 333 (5.22%) Manufacturing
7 328 (5.14%) Law
8 324 (5.08%) Marketing
9 273 (4.28%) Public Sector
10 269 (4.22%) Legal
11 267 (4.19%) Retail
12 263 (4.12%) Banking
13 155 (2.43%) Telecoms
14 137 (2.15%) Electronics
15 135 (2.12%) Presentation Skills
16 100 (1.57%) Documentation Skills
17 90 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
18 87 (1.36%) Games
19 83 (1.30%) Advertising
20 74 (1.16%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 836 (13.11%) Analyst
2 804 (12.60%) Senior
3 655 (10.27%) IT Support
4 588 (9.22%) Developer
5 563 (8.83%) Support Engineer
6 411 (6.44%) Lead
7 394 (6.18%) IT Engineer
8 304 (4.77%) IT Support Engineer
9 277 (4.34%) Consultant
10 238 (3.73%) Support Analyst
11 227 (3.56%) Architect
12 223 (3.50%) Support Technician
13 215 (3.37%) Software Engineer
14 197 (3.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 192 (3.01%) Systems Engineer
16 168 (2.63%) IT Technician
17 167 (2.62%) Technical Support
18 164 (2.57%) Business Analyst
19 160 (2.51%) 2nd Line Support
20 152 (2.38%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 249 (3.90%) .NET
2 240 (3.76%) React
3 207 (3.25%) HTML
4 175 (2.74%) CSS
5 159 (2.49%) REST
6 127 (1.99%) Node.js
7 117 (1.83%) RESTful
8 92 (1.44%) SOAP
9 82 (1.29%) Middleware
10 79 (1.24%) Spring
11 76 (1.19%) JSON
12 69 (1.08%) XML
13 63 (0.99%) Kafka
14 62 (0.97%) AngularJS
14 62 (0.97%) Vue
15 55 (0.86%) gRPC
15 55 (0.86%) OAuth
15 55 (0.86%) Spring Boot
16 50 (0.78%) EDI
17 47 (0.74%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 384 (6.02%) Driving Licence
2 377 (5.91%) Onboarding
3 297 (4.66%) Self-Motivation
4 212 (3.32%) Management Information System
5 209 (3.28%) Cloud Native
6 182 (2.85%) Product Ownership
7 165 (2.59%) Data Centre
8 149 (2.34%) Distributed Systems
9 136 (2.13%) Analytical Mindset
10 113 (1.77%) Legacy Systems
11 95 (1.49%) Mobile App
12 92 (1.44%) Enterprise Software
13 90 (1.41%) Social Media
14 81 (1.27%) Data Structures
15 71 (1.11%) Low-Code
16 68 (1.07%) Algorithms
17 65 (1.02%) Virtual Team
18 60 (0.94%) Security Posture
19 59 (0.92%) Video\Live Streaming
20 52 (0.82%) Over-the-Top Content
Operating Systems
1 985 (15.44%) Windows
2 397 (6.22%) Windows Server
3 393 (6.16%) Linux
4 160 (2.51%) Windows 10
5 108 (1.69%) Android
6 101 (1.58%) Windows Server 2016
7 85 (1.33%) Apple iOS
8 81 (1.27%) Mac OS
9 60 (0.94%) Windows Server 2019
10 43 (0.67%) Unix
11 40 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 32 (0.50%) CentOS
12 32 (0.50%) Windows Server 2012
13 27 (0.42%) Ubuntu
14 24 (0.38%) VMS
15 16 (0.25%) Windows 7
16 14 (0.22%) Mac OS X
17 10 (0.16%) Debian
18 7 (0.11%) Windows 8
18 7 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,203 (18.86%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,018 (15.96%) Agile
3 903 (14.16%) Customer Service
4 706 (11.07%) AI
5 703 (11.02%) CI/CD
6 701 (10.99%) Mentoring
7 667 (10.46%) Decision-Making
8 613 (9.61%) Analytics
9 608 (9.53%) DevOps
10 527 (8.26%) ITIL
11 522 (8.18%) Stakeholder Management
12 515 (8.07%) Software Engineering
13 489 (7.67%) Roadmaps
14 485 (7.60%) Computer Science
15 472 (7.40%) Project Management
16 454 (7.12%) Business Intelligence
17 437 (6.85%) Coaching
17 437 (6.85%) Cybersecurity
18 377 (5.91%) Collaborative Working
19 364 (5.71%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 970 (15.21%) Python
2 886 (13.89%) SQL
3 424 (6.65%) JavaScript
4 327 (5.13%) Java
5 298 (4.67%) C#
6 285 (4.47%) PowerShell
7 191 (2.99%) TypeScript
8 153 (2.40%) Bash
9 119 (1.87%) C++
10 86 (1.35%) PHP
11 84 (1.32%) Go
12 64 (1.00%) Scala
13 57 (0.89%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 56 (0.88%) C
15 44 (0.69%) T-SQL
16 41 (0.64%) PL/SQL
16 41 (0.64%) R
16 41 (0.64%) Rust
17 35 (0.55%) Apex Code
17 35 (0.55%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,122 (17.59%) Degree
2 464 (7.27%) Security Cleared
3 304 (4.77%) SC Cleared
4 251 (3.93%) Computer Science Degree
5 215 (3.37%) DBS Check
6 187 (2.93%) Microsoft Certification
7 115 (1.80%) Master's Degree
8 111 (1.74%) DV Cleared
9 108 (1.69%) CISSP
10 107 (1.68%) Cisco Certification
11 88 (1.38%) A+ Certification
12 86 (1.35%) BPSS Clearance
13 85 (1.33%) PMI Certification
14 79 (1.24%) Azure Certification
15 71 (1.11%) PMP
16 69 (1.08%) CCNA
17 68 (1.07%) ACCA
18 62 (0.97%) CIMA
19 60 (0.94%) Network+ Certification
20 50 (0.78%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 329 (5.16%) QA
2 295 (4.62%) Data Quality
3 258 (4.04%) GDPR
4 191 (2.99%) SLA
5 149 (2.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 146 (2.29%) Cyber Essentials
7 136 (2.13%) NIST
8 132 (2.07%) Accessibility
9 110 (1.72%) PCI DSS
10 45 (0.71%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 34 (0.53%) ISO 9001
12 32 (0.50%) PMO
13 31 (0.49%) SOC 2
14 27 (0.42%) GRC
15 24 (0.38%) COBIT
16 21 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
17 14 (0.22%) GMP
18 12 (0.19%) IFRS
18 12 (0.19%) TickIT
19 11 (0.17%) PERC
System Software
1 661 (10.36%) Active Directory
2 279 (4.37%) Docker
3 186 (2.92%) Hyper-V
4 182 (2.85%) VMware Infrastructure
5 43 (0.67%) Virtual Desktop
6 42 (0.66%) Terminal Server
7 34 (0.53%) Firmware
8 23 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
9 20 (0.31%) vSphere
10 15 (0.24%) KVM
11 13 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
12 10 (0.16%) IAG
13 7 (0.11%) VMware Workstation
13 7 (0.11%) XenApp
14 4 (0.063%) Embedded Firmware
14 4 (0.063%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 4 (0.063%) VMware NSX
15 3 (0.047%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 3 (0.047%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.047%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 295 (4.62%) Terraform
2 240 (3.76%) Microsoft Intune
3 234 (3.67%) Kubernetes
4 146 (2.29%) Ansible
5 88 (1.38%) Grafana
6 82 (1.29%) SCCM
7 53 (0.83%) Prometheus
8 37 (0.58%) 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%) Puppet
14 12 (0.19%) Jamf Pro
14 12 (0.19%) vCenter Server
15 11 (0.17%) Argo
15 11 (0.17%) Nessus
16 10 (0.16%) WSUS
16 10 (0.16%) ZABBIX
17 9 (0.14%) logstash
Vendors
1 1,668 (26.15%) Microsoft
2 264 (4.14%) VMware
3 188 (2.95%) Oracle
4 168 (2.63%) Google
5 153 (2.40%) SAP
6 147 (2.30%) Cisco
7 136 (2.13%) Salesforce
8 129 (2.02%) ServiceNow
9 111 (1.74%) SolarWinds
10 107 (1.68%) Databricks
11 100 (1.57%) Veeam
12 90 (1.41%) Splunk
13 79 (1.24%) Apple
14 70 (1.10%) Adobe
15 64 (1.00%) Dell
16 54 (0.85%) Red Hat
17 51 (0.80%) Dynatrace
18 50 (0.78%) Meraki
19 45 (0.71%) Typelevel
20 44 (0.69%) Fortinet