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

6 months to
3 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 4 7
Rank change year-on-year -7 +3 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,283 7,191 12,520
As % of all permanent jobs in England 7.81% 18.93% 14.99%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.45% 20.35% 17.53%
Number of salaries quoted 4,400 4,566 8,504
10th Percentile £27,500 £28,000 £26,250
25th Percentile £31,250 £36,250 £32,969
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £73,750 £68,750
90th Percentile £87,500 £90,000 £85,000
UK median annual salary £47,500 £52,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.52% +5.00% -9.09%

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 60,123 35,337 71,428
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 74.78% 93.01% 85.54%
Number of salaries quoted 38,109 20,607 53,811
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,625 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,500 £42,500 £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 £73,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £102,500 £93,750
UK median annual salary £58,599 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -2.34% +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 3 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 3 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 -4 1,935 £70,000 +7.69% 1,028
North of England -19 1,259 £42,500 -7.61% 653
South East -8 1,140 £45,000 -10.00% 751
Midlands -22 873 £39,250 -12.78% 454
North West -15 658 £42,500 -11.46% 361
South West -8 531 £43,500 -2.44% 276
West Midlands -22 515 £42,500 -14.14% 283
Yorkshire -12 478 £40,000 - 220
East of England -10 458 £40,000 -15.79% 255
East Midlands -6 355 £35,000 -10.83% 172
North East -17 123 £48,500 +7.78% 81
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
1 327 (5.20%) Microsoft Exchange
2 296 (4.71%) SharePoint
3 66 (1.05%) Confluence
4 55 (0.88%) Apache
5 53 (0.84%) CMS
6 44 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
7 32 (0.51%) Apache Spark
8 27 (0.43%) WordPress
9 25 (0.40%) IIS
10 15 (0.24%) SAS
11 13 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
12 11 (0.18%) nginx
13 10 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2013
14 8 (0.13%) Drupal
14 8 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2007
14 8 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2010
15 5 (0.080%) OpenStack
15 5 (0.080%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 5 (0.080%) Skype for Business
16 4 (0.064%) Moodle
Applications
1 419 (6.67%) Microsoft Office
2 328 (5.22%) Microsoft Excel
3 62 (0.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 45 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
5 38 (0.60%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.48%) Microsoft Project
7 14 (0.22%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.16%) Adobe Illustrator
9 9 (0.14%) Fusion 360
9 9 (0.14%) Maya
10 8 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 7 (0.11%) AutoCAD
11 7 (0.11%) Photoshop
12 3 (0.048%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.048%) Simulink
12 3 (0.048%) SOLIDWORKS
12 3 (0.048%) Trello
13 2 (0.032%) Elementor
13 2 (0.032%) Notion
13 2 (0.032%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 61 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
2 53 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
3 32 (0.51%) NetSuite
4 21 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
5 15 (0.24%) Shopify
6 14 (0.22%) Dynamics NAV
6 14 (0.22%) Magento
6 14 (0.22%) SAP CO
7 13 (0.21%) iTrent
7 13 (0.21%) SAP ERP
8 12 (0.19%) Endur
8 12 (0.19%) Maximo
9 11 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
10 10 (0.16%) Workday HCM
11 8 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
11 8 (0.13%) Elite 3E
12 7 (0.11%) Q-Pulse
12 7 (0.11%) SAP Business One
13 6 (0.095%) Payment Gateway
13 6 (0.095%) SAP PP
Cloud Services
1 1,301 (20.71%) Azure
2 942 (14.99%) Microsoft 365
3 784 (12.48%) AWS
4 467 (7.43%) Power Platform
5 330 (5.25%) SaaS
6 290 (4.62%) GCP
7 270 (4.30%) Entra ID
8 173 (2.75%) Serverless
9 164 (2.61%) GitHub
10 162 (2.58%) Azure DevOps
11 117 (1.86%) Power Automate
12 112 (1.78%) Dynamics 365
13 93 (1.48%) Amazon S3
14 86 (1.37%) Google Workspace
15 82 (1.31%) GitHub Actions
16 81 (1.29%) AWS Lambda
17 80 (1.27%) PowerApps
18 76 (1.21%) PaaS
19 72 (1.15%) AWS CloudFormation
19 72 (1.15%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 373 (5.94%) Firewall
2 361 (5.75%) DNS
3 300 (4.77%) DHCP
4 248 (3.95%) VPN
5 211 (3.36%) WAN
6 194 (3.09%) Wi-Fi
7 180 (2.86%) Broadband
7 180 (2.86%) LAN
8 178 (2.83%) TCP/IP
9 111 (1.77%) Wireless
10 109 (1.73%) VLAN
11 95 (1.51%) VoIP
12 65 (1.03%) SD-WAN
13 60 (0.95%) Network Security
14 51 (0.81%) SAN
15 38 (0.60%) Internet
16 34 (0.54%) HTTP
17 30 (0.48%) BGP
17 30 (0.48%) OSPF
18 28 (0.45%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 388 (6.18%) Power BI
2 276 (4.39%) SQL Server
3 122 (1.94%) Data Warehouse
4 112 (1.78%) NoSQL
5 111 (1.77%) Tableau
6 94 (1.50%) PostgreSQL
7 83 (1.32%) Relational Database
8 79 (1.26%) MySQL
9 67 (1.07%) Amazon RDS
10 64 (1.02%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 59 (0.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 55 (0.88%) Power Query
13 52 (0.83%) MongoDB
14 47 (0.75%) DynamoDB
15 45 (0.72%) Amazon Redshift
16 42 (0.67%) Data Lake
17 41 (0.65%) Big Data
17 41 (0.65%) Metadata
18 37 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
19 26 (0.41%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 267 (4.25%) Git
2 212 (3.37%) JIRA
3 113 (1.80%) Jenkins
4 105 (1.67%) GitLab
5 38 (0.60%) Selenium
6 23 (0.37%) Cucumber
6 23 (0.37%) Rational DOORS
6 23 (0.37%) Visual Studio
7 21 (0.33%) Cypress.io
7 21 (0.33%) Maven
8 20 (0.32%) Chocolatey
8 20 (0.32%) SonarQube
9 18 (0.29%) Bitbucket
10 17 (0.27%) CircleCI
11 16 (0.25%) Burp Suite
11 16 (0.25%) Metasploit
12 15 (0.24%) JUnit
12 15 (0.24%) TeamCity
13 13 (0.21%) LabVIEW
14 12 (0.19%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 2,929 (46.62%) Social Skills
2 1,871 (29.78%) Analytical Skills
3 1,341 (21.34%) Finance
4 413 (6.57%) Organisational Skills
5 364 (5.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 337 (5.36%) Marketing
7 314 (5.00%) Manufacturing
8 300 (4.77%) Law
9 282 (4.49%) Banking
10 272 (4.33%) Retail
11 260 (4.14%) Legal
11 260 (4.14%) Public Sector
12 156 (2.48%) Telecoms
13 139 (2.21%) Electronics
14 137 (2.18%) Presentation Skills
15 102 (1.62%) Documentation Skills
16 85 (1.35%) Games
17 82 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
18 79 (1.26%) Advertising
19 78 (1.24%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 875 (13.93%) Analyst
2 775 (12.33%) Senior
3 661 (10.52%) IT Support
4 580 (9.23%) Support Engineer
5 559 (8.90%) Developer
6 395 (6.29%) Lead
7 380 (6.05%) IT Engineer
8 300 (4.77%) IT Support Engineer
9 263 (4.19%) Support Analyst
10 247 (3.93%) Consultant
11 216 (3.44%) Architect
12 214 (3.41%) Support Technician
13 192 (3.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 191 (3.04%) Software Engineer
15 181 (2.88%) Business Analyst
16 174 (2.77%) 2nd Line Support
17 171 (2.72%) Systems Engineer
18 169 (2.69%) Technical Support
19 158 (2.51%) IT Technician
20 148 (2.36%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 233 (3.71%) .NET
1 233 (3.71%) React
2 207 (3.29%) HTML
3 175 (2.79%) CSS
4 153 (2.44%) REST
5 143 (2.28%) Node.js
6 117 (1.86%) RESTful
7 85 (1.35%) Middleware
8 81 (1.29%) SOAP
9 71 (1.13%) JSON
10 68 (1.08%) Spring
11 66 (1.05%) XML
12 62 (0.99%) Kafka
13 58 (0.92%) AngularJS
13 58 (0.92%) Vue
14 53 (0.84%) OAuth
15 51 (0.81%) Spring Boot
16 50 (0.80%) gRPC
17 49 (0.78%) Django
17 49 (0.78%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 406 (6.46%) Onboarding
2 400 (6.37%) Driving Licence
3 329 (5.24%) Self-Motivation
4 200 (3.18%) Management Information System
5 191 (3.04%) Cloud Native
6 168 (2.67%) Product Ownership
7 150 (2.39%) Distributed Systems
8 148 (2.36%) Analytical Mindset
9 145 (2.31%) Data Centre
10 112 (1.78%) Legacy Systems
11 101 (1.61%) Enterprise Software
12 91 (1.45%) Social Media
13 88 (1.40%) Mobile App
14 78 (1.24%) Data Structures
15 68 (1.08%) Low-Code
16 64 (1.02%) Algorithms
17 60 (0.95%) Security Posture
18 58 (0.92%) Video\Live Streaming
19 54 (0.86%) Virtual Team
20 52 (0.83%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 978 (15.57%) Windows
2 378 (6.02%) Linux
3 376 (5.98%) Windows Server
4 161 (2.56%) Windows 10
5 104 (1.66%) Android
6 97 (1.54%) Windows Server 2016
7 89 (1.42%) Apple iOS
8 84 (1.34%) Mac OS
9 51 (0.81%) Windows Server 2019
10 45 (0.72%) Unix
11 41 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 33 (0.53%) Windows Server 2012
13 32 (0.51%) CentOS
14 26 (0.41%) Ubuntu
15 23 (0.37%) VMS
16 18 (0.29%) Windows 7
17 15 (0.24%) Mac OS X
18 11 (0.18%) Debian
19 8 (0.13%) Windows 8
20 7 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,154 (18.37%) Continuous Improvement
2 996 (15.85%) Agile
3 911 (14.50%) Customer Service
4 676 (10.76%) CI/CD
5 669 (10.65%) AI
6 648 (10.31%) Decision-Making
6 648 (10.31%) Mentoring
7 615 (9.79%) Analytics
8 608 (9.68%) DevOps
9 552 (8.79%) ITIL
10 506 (8.05%) Project Management
11 501 (7.97%) Stakeholder Management
12 495 (7.88%) Business Intelligence
13 489 (7.78%) Computer Science
14 478 (7.61%) Software Engineering
15 447 (7.11%) Roadmaps
16 423 (6.73%) Cybersecurity
17 411 (6.54%) Coaching
18 350 (5.57%) Collaborative Working
19 345 (5.49%) CRM
Programming Languages
1 963 (15.33%) Python
2 859 (13.67%) SQL
3 409 (6.51%) JavaScript
4 333 (5.30%) Java
5 287 (4.57%) PowerShell
6 258 (4.11%) C#
7 187 (2.98%) TypeScript
8 151 (2.40%) Bash
9 90 (1.43%) C++
10 89 (1.42%) Go
11 82 (1.31%) PHP
12 63 (1.00%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 63 (1.00%) Scala
13 50 (0.80%) C
14 38 (0.60%) Rust
14 38 (0.60%) T-SQL
15 36 (0.57%) Kotlin
16 34 (0.54%) Bicep
16 34 (0.54%) R
17 32 (0.51%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 1,150 (18.30%) Degree
2 414 (6.59%) Security Cleared
3 257 (4.09%) SC Cleared
4 248 (3.95%) Computer Science Degree
5 213 (3.39%) DBS Check
6 179 (2.85%) Microsoft Certification
7 122 (1.94%) Master's Degree
8 110 (1.75%) CISSP
9 102 (1.62%) DV Cleared
10 96 (1.53%) Cisco Certification
11 87 (1.38%) A+ Certification
12 79 (1.26%) BPSS Clearance
13 78 (1.24%) PMI Certification
14 77 (1.23%) ACCA
15 68 (1.08%) CIMA
16 66 (1.05%) CCNA
17 63 (1.00%) PMP
18 58 (0.92%) Azure Certification
19 57 (0.91%) Network+ Certification
20 52 (0.83%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 314 (5.00%) QA
2 291 (4.63%) Data Quality
3 256 (4.07%) GDPR
4 173 (2.75%) SLA
5 156 (2.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 140 (2.23%) Cyber Essentials
7 139 (2.21%) NIST
8 112 (1.78%) PCI DSS
9 106 (1.69%) Accessibility
10 48 (0.76%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 34 (0.54%) SOC 2
12 33 (0.53%) ISO 9001
13 28 (0.45%) PMO
14 27 (0.43%) GRC
15 26 (0.41%) COBIT
16 19 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
17 14 (0.22%) GMP
18 12 (0.19%) TickIT
19 11 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 20000
19 11 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 662 (10.54%) Active Directory
2 288 (4.58%) Docker
3 178 (2.83%) Hyper-V
4 161 (2.56%) VMware Infrastructure
5 42 (0.67%) Terminal Server
6 41 (0.65%) Virtual Desktop
7 34 (0.54%) Firmware
8 24 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
9 19 (0.30%) vSphere
10 15 (0.24%) KVM
11 10 (0.16%) IAG
12 9 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
13 8 (0.13%) VMware Workstation
14 6 (0.095%) XenApp
15 4 (0.064%) Embedded Firmware
15 4 (0.064%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 4 (0.064%) VMware NSX
16 3 (0.048%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 3 (0.048%) Virtual Servers
17 2 (0.032%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 295 (4.70%) Terraform
2 236 (3.76%) Microsoft Intune
3 230 (3.66%) Kubernetes
4 146 (2.32%) Ansible
5 91 (1.45%) Grafana
6 82 (1.31%) SCCM
7 49 (0.78%) Prometheus
8 31 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
9 29 (0.46%) Nagios
10 23 (0.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 20 (0.32%) BMC PATROL
12 19 (0.30%) Kibana
13 15 (0.24%) Autotask
14 14 (0.22%) Argo
15 13 (0.21%) Puppet
16 12 (0.19%) Jamf Pro
16 12 (0.19%) Nessus
16 12 (0.19%) vCenter Server
17 10 (0.16%) Cisco CUCM
17 10 (0.16%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,635 (26.02%) Microsoft
2 244 (3.88%) VMware
3 189 (3.01%) Oracle
4 160 (2.55%) Google
4 160 (2.55%) SAP
5 136 (2.16%) ServiceNow
6 131 (2.08%) Cisco
6 131 (2.08%) Salesforce
7 112 (1.78%) Databricks
8 110 (1.75%) SolarWinds
9 93 (1.48%) Veeam
10 91 (1.45%) Splunk
11 80 (1.27%) Apple
12 73 (1.16%) Adobe
13 65 (1.03%) Dell
14 58 (0.92%) Red Hat
15 49 (0.78%) Dynatrace
16 47 (0.75%) Meraki
17 45 (0.72%) Typelevel
18 44 (0.70%) Fortinet