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

6 months to
19 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 6,310 8,031 12,663
As % of all permanent jobs in England 7.70% 20.40% 14.95%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.44% 21.85% 17.62%
Number of salaries quoted 4,445 4,524 8,468
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 £68,000
90th Percentile £87,500 £88,750 £85,000
UK median annual salary £47,500 £50,890 £49,500
% change year-on-year -6.66% +2.81% -10.00%

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 60,429 36,751 71,864
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.71% 93.37% 84.83%
Number of salaries quoted 39,858 20,257 53,833
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 £73,750
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% -10.10%

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 19 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 19 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 1,896 £70,000 +7.69% 1,002
North of England -12 1,301 £42,500 -5.56% 671
South East -8 1,135 £46,000 -1.08% 790
Midlands -22 875 £40,000 -11.11% 419
North West -17 675 £45,000 -5.26% 363
South West -8 543 £43,500 +2.69% 312
West Midlands -25 512 £42,500 -11.46% 256
Yorkshire -13 496 £41,500 +3.75% 226
East of England -7 471 £42,175 -0.76% 281
East Midlands -10 359 £35,000 -9.09% 163
North East -18 130 £48,472 +7.72% 89
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 (5.18%) Microsoft Exchange
2 312 (4.94%) SharePoint
3 68 (1.08%) Confluence
4 62 (0.98%) CMS
5 53 (0.84%) Apache
6 39 (0.62%) Apache Airflow
7 30 (0.48%) Apache Spark
8 28 (0.44%) IIS
8 28 (0.44%) WordPress
9 14 (0.22%) SAS
10 13 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 10 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2013
12 8 (0.13%) Drupal
12 8 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2007
12 8 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2010
12 8 (0.13%) nginx
13 5 (0.079%) OpenEdge
13 5 (0.079%) OpenStack
13 5 (0.079%) Skype for Business
14 4 (0.063%) Tomcat
Applications
1 406 (6.43%) Microsoft Office
2 326 (5.17%) Microsoft Excel
3 51 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 48 (0.76%) Spreadsheet
5 36 (0.57%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.40%) Microsoft Project
7 14 (0.22%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
8 9 (0.14%) Fusion 360
8 9 (0.14%) Maya
9 8 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.13%) AutoCAD
10 7 (0.11%) SOLIDWORKS
11 6 (0.095%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.063%) Simulink
13 3 (0.048%) Acrobat
13 3 (0.048%) Adobe XD
13 3 (0.048%) Autodesk Inventor
13 3 (0.048%) Trello
14 2 (0.032%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 59 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
1 59 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.51%) NetSuite
3 23 (0.36%) Salesforce CRM
4 19 (0.30%) Shopify
5 16 (0.25%) Magento
6 15 (0.24%) Dynamics NAV
7 14 (0.22%) SAP CO
7 14 (0.22%) SAP ERP
8 13 (0.21%) iTrent
9 12 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
10 11 (0.17%) Maximo
11 10 (0.16%) Endur
12 9 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
12 9 (0.14%) Workday HCM
13 7 (0.11%) Elite 3E
13 7 (0.11%) IBM Planning Analytics
13 7 (0.11%) Q-Pulse
13 7 (0.11%) SAP Business One
14 6 (0.095%) Sage 50
Cloud Services
1 1,328 (21.05%) Azure
2 966 (15.31%) Microsoft 365
3 797 (12.63%) AWS
4 469 (7.43%) Power Platform
5 312 (4.94%) SaaS
6 283 (4.48%) GCP
7 260 (4.12%) Entra ID
8 170 (2.69%) Serverless
9 163 (2.58%) Azure DevOps
10 145 (2.30%) GitHub
11 122 (1.93%) Dynamics 365
12 113 (1.79%) Power Automate
13 91 (1.44%) Amazon S3
14 89 (1.41%) PowerApps
15 86 (1.36%) Google Workspace
16 76 (1.20%) GitHub Actions
16 76 (1.20%) PaaS
17 75 (1.19%) AWS Lambda
18 73 (1.16%) IaaS
19 69 (1.09%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 377 (5.97%) Firewall
2 358 (5.67%) DNS
3 291 (4.61%) DHCP
4 248 (3.93%) VPN
5 215 (3.41%) WAN
6 188 (2.98%) LAN
6 188 (2.98%) Wi-Fi
7 182 (2.88%) TCP/IP
8 172 (2.73%) Broadband
9 121 (1.92%) Wireless
10 112 (1.77%) VLAN
11 93 (1.47%) VoIP
12 69 (1.09%) Network Security
13 65 (1.03%) SD-WAN
14 53 (0.84%) SAN
15 41 (0.65%) Internet
16 39 (0.62%) BGP
17 38 (0.60%) OSPF
18 34 (0.54%) HTTP
19 31 (0.49%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 376 (5.96%) Power BI
2 275 (4.36%) SQL Server
3 118 (1.87%) Data Warehouse
4 105 (1.66%) Tableau
5 101 (1.60%) NoSQL
6 89 (1.41%) PostgreSQL
7 80 (1.27%) MySQL
8 76 (1.20%) Relational Database
9 73 (1.16%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 66 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
11 64 (1.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 52 (0.82%) Power Query
13 47 (0.74%) MongoDB
14 46 (0.73%) Amazon Redshift
15 45 (0.71%) Big Data
16 43 (0.68%) DynamoDB
17 36 (0.57%) Data Lake
18 34 (0.54%) Metadata
19 33 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
20 26 (0.41%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 279 (4.42%) Git
2 199 (3.15%) JIRA
3 106 (1.68%) GitLab
4 105 (1.66%) Jenkins
5 33 (0.52%) Selenium
6 26 (0.41%) Rational DOORS
7 22 (0.35%) Maven
7 22 (0.35%) Visual Studio
8 21 (0.33%) Chocolatey
8 21 (0.33%) Cypress.io
9 19 (0.30%) Cucumber
10 18 (0.29%) 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 13 (0.21%) LabVIEW
13 13 (0.21%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
14 12 (0.19%) JUnit
General
1 2,867 (45.44%) Social Skills
2 1,864 (29.54%) Analytical Skills
3 1,312 (20.79%) Finance
4 403 (6.39%) Organisational Skills
5 359 (5.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 329 (5.21%) Manufacturing
7 326 (5.17%) Marketing
8 324 (5.13%) Law
9 267 (4.23%) Retail
10 265 (4.20%) Banking
11 264 (4.18%) Public Sector
12 262 (4.15%) Legal
13 157 (2.49%) Telecoms
14 136 (2.16%) Electronics
15 134 (2.12%) Presentation Skills
16 103 (1.63%) Documentation Skills
17 90 (1.43%) Influencing Skills
18 85 (1.35%) Games
19 81 (1.28%) Advertising
20 71 (1.13%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 839 (13.30%) Analyst
2 789 (12.50%) Senior
3 649 (10.29%) IT Support
4 587 (9.30%) Developer
5 561 (8.89%) Support Engineer
6 405 (6.42%) Lead
7 385 (6.10%) IT Engineer
8 299 (4.74%) IT Support Engineer
9 269 (4.26%) Consultant
10 241 (3.82%) Support Analyst
11 221 (3.50%) Support Technician
12 220 (3.49%) Architect
13 208 (3.30%) Software Engineer
14 193 (3.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 189 (3.00%) Systems Engineer
16 167 (2.65%) Technical Support
17 165 (2.61%) IT Technician
18 161 (2.55%) Business Analyst
19 159 (2.52%) 2nd Line Support
20 150 (2.38%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 245 (3.88%) .NET
2 234 (3.71%) React
3 209 (3.31%) HTML
4 176 (2.79%) CSS
5 155 (2.46%) REST
6 124 (1.97%) Node.js
7 115 (1.82%) RESTful
8 90 (1.43%) SOAP
9 85 (1.35%) Middleware
10 75 (1.19%) Spring
11 73 (1.16%) JSON
12 67 (1.06%) XML
13 61 (0.97%) Vue
14 60 (0.95%) Kafka
15 58 (0.92%) AngularJS
16 55 (0.87%) gRPC
16 55 (0.87%) OAuth
17 54 (0.86%) Spring Boot
18 49 (0.78%) EDI
19 46 (0.73%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 384 (6.09%) Driving Licence
2 377 (5.97%) Onboarding
3 300 (4.75%) Self-Motivation
4 205 (3.25%) Cloud Native
4 205 (3.25%) Management Information System
5 180 (2.85%) Product Ownership
6 159 (2.52%) Data Centre
7 149 (2.36%) Distributed Systems
8 137 (2.17%) Analytical Mindset
9 111 (1.76%) Legacy Systems
10 93 (1.47%) Mobile App
11 91 (1.44%) Enterprise Software
12 90 (1.43%) Social Media
13 79 (1.25%) Data Structures
14 70 (1.11%) Low-Code
15 67 (1.06%) Algorithms
16 64 (1.01%) Virtual Team
17 62 (0.98%) Security Posture
18 59 (0.94%) Video\Live Streaming
19 52 (0.82%) Over-the-Top Content
Operating Systems
1 972 (15.40%) Windows
2 391 (6.20%) Linux
3 385 (6.10%) Windows Server
4 160 (2.54%) Windows 10
5 106 (1.68%) Android
6 100 (1.58%) Windows Server 2016
7 85 (1.35%) Apple iOS
8 80 (1.27%) Mac OS
9 58 (0.92%) Windows Server 2019
10 46 (0.73%) Unix
11 41 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 32 (0.51%) CentOS
12 32 (0.51%) Windows Server 2012
13 27 (0.43%) 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 1,178 (18.67%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,000 (15.85%) Agile
3 891 (14.12%) Customer Service
4 692 (10.97%) AI
5 691 (10.95%) Mentoring
6 688 (10.90%) CI/CD
7 657 (10.41%) Decision-Making
8 608 (9.64%) DevOps
9 604 (9.57%) Analytics
10 531 (8.42%) ITIL
11 515 (8.16%) Stakeholder Management
12 502 (7.96%) Software Engineering
13 483 (7.65%) Computer Science
14 477 (7.56%) Roadmaps
15 471 (7.46%) Project Management
16 455 (7.21%) Business Intelligence
17 431 (6.83%) Coaching
18 430 (6.81%) Cybersecurity
19 372 (5.90%) Collaborative Working
20 355 (5.63%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 961 (15.23%) Python
2 864 (13.69%) SQL
3 418 (6.62%) JavaScript
4 324 (5.13%) Java
5 291 (4.61%) C#
6 285 (4.52%) PowerShell
7 189 (3.00%) TypeScript
8 156 (2.47%) Bash
9 117 (1.85%) C++
10 91 (1.44%) PHP
11 85 (1.35%) Go
12 61 (0.97%) Scala
13 57 (0.90%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 56 (0.89%) C
15 41 (0.65%) Rust
15 41 (0.65%) T-SQL
16 40 (0.63%) R
17 38 (0.60%) PL/SQL
18 35 (0.55%) Apex Code
18 35 (0.55%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,119 (17.73%) Degree
2 457 (7.24%) Security Cleared
3 296 (4.69%) SC Cleared
4 250 (3.96%) Computer Science Degree
5 216 (3.42%) DBS Check
6 186 (2.95%) Microsoft Certification
7 114 (1.81%) Master's Degree
8 110 (1.74%) DV Cleared
9 109 (1.73%) CISSP
10 105 (1.66%) Cisco Certification
11 88 (1.39%) A+ Certification
12 85 (1.35%) PMI Certification
13 84 (1.33%) BPSS Clearance
14 77 (1.22%) Azure Certification
15 71 (1.13%) PMP
16 70 (1.11%) ACCA
17 67 (1.06%) CCNA
18 64 (1.01%) CIMA
19 57 (0.90%) Network+ Certification
20 49 (0.78%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 322 (5.10%) QA
2 289 (4.58%) Data Quality
3 254 (4.03%) GDPR
4 192 (3.04%) SLA
5 147 (2.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 143 (2.27%) Cyber Essentials
7 136 (2.16%) NIST
8 124 (1.97%) Accessibility
9 111 (1.76%) PCI DSS
10 43 (0.68%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 34 (0.54%) ISO 9001
12 31 (0.49%) PMO
12 31 (0.49%) SOC 2
13 27 (0.43%) GRC
14 24 (0.38%) COBIT
15 19 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
16 14 (0.22%) GMP
17 12 (0.19%) IFRS
17 12 (0.19%) TickIT
18 11 (0.17%) PERC
System Software
1 658 (10.43%) Active Directory
2 278 (4.41%) Docker
3 181 (2.87%) Hyper-V
4 174 (2.76%) VMware Infrastructure
5 42 (0.67%) Terminal Server
5 42 (0.67%) Virtual Desktop
6 34 (0.54%) Firmware
7 22 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
8 20 (0.32%) vSphere
9 15 (0.24%) KVM
10 13 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.16%) IAG
12 7 (0.11%) VMware Workstation
12 7 (0.11%) XenApp
13 4 (0.063%) Embedded Firmware
13 4 (0.063%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 4 (0.063%) VMware NSX
14 3 (0.048%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 3 (0.048%) Terminal Services
14 3 (0.048%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 295 (4.68%) Terraform
2 237 (3.76%) Microsoft Intune
3 231 (3.66%) Kubernetes
4 149 (2.36%) Ansible
5 89 (1.41%) Grafana
6 82 (1.30%) SCCM
7 53 (0.84%) Prometheus
8 37 (0.59%) Nagios
9 31 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (0.35%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 18 (0.29%) Kibana
12 14 (0.22%) Autotask
13 13 (0.21%) Puppet
14 12 (0.19%) vCenter Server
15 11 (0.17%) Argo
15 11 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
15 11 (0.17%) Nessus
16 10 (0.16%) WSUS
16 10 (0.16%) ZABBIX
17 9 (0.14%) logstash
Vendors
1 1,662 (26.34%) Microsoft
2 257 (4.07%) VMware
3 179 (2.84%) Oracle
4 165 (2.61%) Google
5 153 (2.42%) SAP
6 142 (2.25%) Cisco
7 136 (2.16%) Salesforce
8 127 (2.01%) ServiceNow
9 111 (1.76%) SolarWinds
10 106 (1.68%) Databricks
11 98 (1.55%) Veeam
12 90 (1.43%) Splunk
13 79 (1.25%) Apple
14 70 (1.11%) Adobe
15 63 (1.00%) Dell
16 55 (0.87%) Red Hat
17 50 (0.79%) Dynatrace
18 48 (0.76%) Meraki
19 45 (0.71%) Typelevel
20 44 (0.70%) Fortinet