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 16 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 4 7
Rank change year-on-year -4 +3 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,504 8,831 7,346
As % of all permanent jobs in England 12.18% 18.38% 14.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.04% 20.21% 16.49%
Number of salaries quoted 4,453 3,912 5,089
10th Percentile £26,500 £31,025 £27,335
25th Percentile £30,780 £40,000 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,000 £55,000 £54,000
Median % change year-on-year -18.18% +1.85% -1.82%
75th Percentile £65,640 £75,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £85,000 £88,698 £90,000
UK median annual salary £45,203 £55,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year -17.81% +4.76% -8.70%

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 43,256 43,688 44,559
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 81.00% 90.91% 89.78%
Number of salaries quoted 26,056 21,398 34,500
10th Percentile £28,742 £35,000 £31,250
25th Percentile £37,500 £46,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%
75th Percentile £76,250 £81,250 £79,000
90th Percentile £97,500 £100,000 £98,750
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%

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 16 January 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 16 January 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 1,948 £65,000 - 797
South East -3 1,333 £41,000 -21.90% 1,218
North of England -15 1,252 £45,000 -5.26% 746
Midlands -14 876 £38,500 -23.00% 538
North West -13 687 £47,683 -4.57% 353
South West +1 586 £40,000 -27.27% 474
West Midlands -18 510 £42,500 -22.73% 273
Yorkshire -4 441 £37,500 -13.79% 283
East of England -7 413 £35,000 -31.33% 482
East Midlands +1 365 £35,000 - 259
North East -3 124 £33,500 -33.00% 122
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
1 310 (4.77%) Microsoft Exchange
2 272 (4.18%) SharePoint
3 79 (1.21%) Confluence
4 52 (0.80%) IIS
5 51 (0.78%) Apache
6 43 (0.66%) Apache Spark
7 36 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
8 30 (0.46%) CMS
9 24 (0.37%) WordPress
10 13 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 10 (0.15%) nginx
11 10 (0.15%) SAS
12 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
12 7 (0.11%) Apache Solr
13 6 (0.092%) HCL Notes
14 5 (0.077%) Camunda
14 5 (0.077%) Drupal
14 5 (0.077%) Exchange Server 2013
14 5 (0.077%) Umbraco
15 3 (0.046%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 473 (7.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 470 (7.23%) Microsoft Office
3 93 (1.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 36 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
5 35 (0.54%) Maya
6 28 (0.43%) MS Visio
7 27 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
8 20 (0.31%) AutoCAD
9 16 (0.25%) Photoshop
10 14 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 11 (0.17%) Adobe Illustrator
11 11 (0.17%) SOLIDWORKS
12 9 (0.14%) Adobe Premiere
13 5 (0.077%) Adobe After Effects
13 5 (0.077%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.077%) Chatbot
13 5 (0.077%) Trello
14 4 (0.062%) CATIA
14 4 (0.062%) Fusion 360
14 4 (0.062%) Notion
Business Applications
1 113 (1.74%) SAP S/4HANA
2 92 (1.41%) Dynamics CRM
3 36 (0.55%) NetSuite
4 24 (0.37%) SAP CO
5 20 (0.31%) SAP FI
6 17 (0.26%) SAP FI/CO
7 16 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
8 15 (0.23%) Endur
9 14 (0.22%) Oracle Payables
9 14 (0.22%) Shopify
10 12 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
11 11 (0.17%) Oracle Assets
12 10 (0.15%) Dynamics NAV
12 10 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
12 10 (0.15%) Sage 200
12 10 (0.15%) SAP Business One
13 9 (0.14%) iTrent
14 8 (0.12%) JDE EnterpriseOne
15 7 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
16 6 (0.092%) Fidessa
Cloud Services
1 1,433 (22.03%) Azure
2 924 (14.21%) Microsoft 365
3 711 (10.93%) AWS
4 533 (8.19%) Power Platform
5 409 (6.29%) SaaS
6 267 (4.11%) Entra ID
7 211 (3.24%) GCP
8 183 (2.81%) Azure DevOps
9 154 (2.37%) GitHub
10 140 (2.15%) Serverless
11 112 (1.72%) Power Automate
12 95 (1.46%) Dynamics 365
13 75 (1.15%) PowerApps
14 74 (1.14%) Amazon S3
15 72 (1.11%) AWS Lambda
16 68 (1.05%) AWS CloudFormation
17 64 (0.98%) Azure Data Factory
18 62 (0.95%) Google Workspace
18 62 (0.95%) PaaS
19 57 (0.88%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 402 (6.18%) DNS
2 342 (5.26%) DHCP
3 329 (5.06%) Firewall
4 207 (3.18%) VPN
5 184 (2.83%) TCP/IP
6 179 (2.75%) Wi-Fi
7 161 (2.48%) WAN
8 137 (2.11%) LAN
9 116 (1.78%) VLAN
10 89 (1.37%) VoIP
11 84 (1.29%) Wireless
12 76 (1.17%) Broadband
13 58 (0.89%) Network Security
14 55 (0.85%) Remote Desktop
15 48 (0.74%) SAN
16 45 (0.69%) SD-WAN
17 44 (0.68%) Internet
18 29 (0.45%) Unified Communications
19 26 (0.40%) Structured Cabling
20 23 (0.35%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 447 (6.87%) Power BI
2 314 (4.83%) SQL Server
3 156 (2.40%) Relational Database
4 142 (2.18%) Tableau
5 135 (2.08%) Data Warehouse
6 126 (1.94%) PostgreSQL
7 120 (1.85%) MySQL
8 118 (1.81%) Data Lake
9 114 (1.75%) Amazon RDS
9 114 (1.75%) NoSQL
10 66 (1.01%) SAP BW
10 66 (1.01%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 61 (0.94%) MongoDB
12 58 (0.89%) Metadata
13 49 (0.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 48 (0.74%) Amazon Redshift
15 44 (0.68%) DynamoDB
16 43 (0.66%) Big Data
17 42 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
18 28 (0.43%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 257 (3.95%) Git
2 247 (3.80%) JIRA
3 97 (1.49%) Jenkins
4 80 (1.23%) GitLab
5 58 (0.89%) Selenium
6 25 (0.38%) Bitbucket
7 22 (0.34%) Cypress.io
7 22 (0.34%) Visual Studio
8 20 (0.31%) LabVIEW
9 19 (0.29%) Maven
9 19 (0.29%) SonarQube
9 19 (0.29%) TeamCity
10 18 (0.28%) Robot Framework
11 17 (0.26%) Octopus Deploy
12 16 (0.25%) Burp Suite
12 16 (0.25%) JUnit
12 16 (0.25%) Metasploit
13 14 (0.22%) Cucumber
13 14 (0.22%) Snyk
13 14 (0.22%) WebDriver
General
1 3,489 (53.64%) Social Skills
2 1,979 (30.43%) Analytical Skills
3 1,562 (24.02%) Finance
4 397 (6.10%) Marketing
5 350 (5.38%) Law
6 346 (5.32%) Manufacturing
7 345 (5.30%) Retail
8 339 (5.21%) Organisational Skills
9 289 (4.44%) Legal
10 276 (4.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 270 (4.15%) Public Sector
12 253 (3.89%) Banking
13 180 (2.77%) Telecoms
14 167 (2.57%) Presentation Skills
15 161 (2.48%) Electronics
16 120 (1.85%) Games
17 95 (1.46%) Influencing Skills
18 87 (1.34%) Automotive
19 80 (1.23%) Documentation Skills
20 78 (1.20%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,046 (16.08%) Analyst
2 792 (12.18%) Senior
3 681 (10.47%) IT Support
4 620 (9.53%) Support Engineer
5 582 (8.95%) Developer
6 450 (6.92%) Lead
7 353 (5.43%) Support Analyst
8 295 (4.54%) Technical Support
9 277 (4.26%) IT Engineer
10 250 (3.84%) Business Analyst
11 232 (3.57%) IT Support Engineer
12 226 (3.47%) Consultant
13 215 (3.31%) Architect
14 202 (3.11%) Technical Engineer
15 188 (2.89%) Technical Support Engineer
16 186 (2.86%) Support Technician
17 184 (2.83%) 2nd Line Support
18 165 (2.54%) Systems Engineer
19 161 (2.48%) Applications Support
20 154 (2.37%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 275 (4.23%) .NET
2 246 (3.78%) React
3 222 (3.41%) HTML
4 175 (2.69%) CSS
5 152 (2.34%) REST
6 133 (2.04%) Node.js
7 109 (1.68%) RESTful
8 97 (1.49%) AngularJS
9 71 (1.09%) Spring
9 71 (1.09%) XML
10 69 (1.06%) JSON
11 67 (1.03%) Vue
12 60 (0.92%) SOAP
13 59 (0.91%) .NET Framework
14 58 (0.89%) Kafka
15 57 (0.88%) ASP.NET
16 56 (0.86%) Middleware
17 48 (0.74%) Django
18 45 (0.69%) Flask
18 45 (0.69%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 521 (8.01%) Onboarding
2 507 (7.80%) Driving Licence
3 420 (6.46%) Self-Motivation
4 210 (3.23%) Management Information System
5 199 (3.06%) Analytical Mindset
6 161 (2.48%) Cloud Native
7 154 (2.37%) Legacy Systems
8 151 (2.32%) Product Ownership
9 119 (1.83%) Data Centre
10 115 (1.77%) Enterprise Software
11 72 (1.11%) Algorithms
12 70 (1.08%) Data Structures
13 67 (1.03%) Distributed Systems
13 67 (1.03%) Mobile App
14 65 (1.00%) Virtual Team
15 58 (0.89%) Low-Code
16 56 (0.86%) FMCG
17 49 (0.75%) Security Posture
18 46 (0.71%) EPoS
19 44 (0.68%) e-Learning
Operating Systems
1 1,090 (16.76%) Windows
2 430 (6.61%) Windows Server
3 406 (6.24%) Linux
4 162 (2.49%) Windows 10
5 113 (1.74%) Windows Server 2016
6 93 (1.43%) Mac OS
7 76 (1.17%) Android
8 68 (1.05%) Apple iOS
9 60 (0.92%) Unix
10 49 (0.75%) Windows Server 2019
11 31 (0.48%) Windows Server 2012
12 24 (0.37%) VMS
13 22 (0.34%) Windows 7
14 21 (0.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
15 10 (0.15%) CentOS
16 9 (0.14%) Ubuntu
17 7 (0.11%) Mac OS X
18 6 (0.092%) Windows Server 2008
19 4 (0.062%) OpenWrt
19 4 (0.062%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,116 (17.16%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,078 (16.57%) Agile
3 957 (14.71%) Customer Service
4 740 (11.38%) Analytics
5 650 (9.99%) AI
6 642 (9.87%) Mentoring
7 634 (9.75%) Decision-Making
8 626 (9.62%) Business Intelligence
9 618 (9.50%) Project Management
10 577 (8.87%) DevOps
11 557 (8.56%) ITIL
12 523 (8.04%) CI/CD
13 507 (7.80%) Computer Science
14 491 (7.55%) Cybersecurity
15 473 (7.27%) Stakeholder Management
16 447 (6.87%) Change Management
17 444 (6.83%) ERP
18 395 (6.07%) CRM
19 392 (6.03%) Data Analysis
20 390 (6.00%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,011 (15.54%) SQL
2 895 (13.76%) Python
3 381 (5.86%) JavaScript
4 337 (5.18%) C#
5 313 (4.81%) PowerShell
6 311 (4.78%) Java
7 153 (2.35%) TypeScript
8 128 (1.97%) Bash
9 97 (1.49%) PHP
10 84 (1.29%) C++
11 58 (0.89%) T-SQL
12 53 (0.81%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 41 (0.63%) C
14 40 (0.62%) R
15 39 (0.60%) Go
16 34 (0.52%) Scala
17 27 (0.42%) MATLAB
18 26 (0.40%) VBA
19 24 (0.37%) Bicep
19 24 (0.37%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 1,572 (24.17%) Degree
2 539 (8.29%) Security Cleared
3 338 (5.20%) SC Cleared
4 243 (3.74%) Computer Science Degree
5 176 (2.71%) Microsoft Certification
6 173 (2.66%) Master's Degree
7 154 (2.37%) DBS Check
8 135 (2.08%) DV Cleared
9 107 (1.65%) CISSP
10 104 (1.60%) BPSS Clearance
11 83 (1.28%) Cisco Certification
12 80 (1.23%) ACCA
13 72 (1.11%) A+ Certification
14 66 (1.01%) CIMA
15 65 (1.00%) Network+ Certification
16 61 (0.94%) AWS Certification
16 61 (0.94%) PMI Certification
17 58 (0.89%) CISM
18 56 (0.86%) CCNA
19 55 (0.85%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 358 (5.50%) QA
2 343 (5.27%) Data Quality
3 201 (3.09%) GDPR
4 177 (2.72%) Cyber Essentials
5 166 (2.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 141 (2.17%) Accessibility
7 137 (2.11%) SLA
8 114 (1.75%) PCI DSS
9 81 (1.25%) NIST
10 48 (0.74%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 31 (0.48%) ISO 9001
12 29 (0.45%) PMO
13 25 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
14 16 (0.25%) GRC
15 15 (0.23%) COBIT
16 14 (0.22%) SOC 2
17 12 (0.18%) WCAG
18 11 (0.17%) ISO/IEC 20000
19 9 (0.14%) ISO 13485
20 8 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 19770
System Software
1 758 (11.65%) Active Directory
2 250 (3.84%) Docker
3 232 (3.57%) Hyper-V
4 146 (2.24%) VMware Infrastructure
5 84 (1.29%) Terminal Server
6 27 (0.42%) Firmware
7 26 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
8 20 (0.31%) VMware ESXi
9 17 (0.26%) vSphere
10 16 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
11 9 (0.14%) KVM
12 6 (0.092%) Virtual Servers
13 3 (0.046%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 3 (0.046%) vCloud
13 3 (0.046%) VMware Workstation
14 2 (0.031%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.031%) HDFS
14 2 (0.031%) ProxySG
14 2 (0.031%) RHEV
14 2 (0.031%) Xen
Systems Management
1 275 (4.23%) Microsoft Intune
2 258 (3.97%) Terraform
3 203 (3.12%) Kubernetes
4 130 (2.00%) Ansible
5 69 (1.06%) Grafana
6 60 (0.92%) SCCM
7 46 (0.71%) Prometheus
8 42 (0.65%) BMC PATROL
9 32 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
10 21 (0.32%) Jamf Pro
11 20 (0.31%) Nagios
12 18 (0.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 16 (0.25%) vCenter Server
14 14 (0.22%) Argo
14 14 (0.22%) Cisco CUCM
15 12 (0.18%) FortiGate
16 11 (0.17%) Kibana
17 10 (0.15%) Nmap
17 10 (0.15%) PaperCut
17 10 (0.15%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,699 (26.12%) Microsoft
2 420 (6.46%) SAP
3 284 (4.37%) Oracle
4 279 (4.29%) VMware
5 155 (2.38%) Salesforce
6 153 (2.35%) Cisco
7 139 (2.14%) Veeam
8 135 (2.08%) Google
9 130 (2.00%) Splunk
10 126 (1.94%) ServiceNow
11 123 (1.89%) SolarWinds
12 112 (1.72%) Databricks
13 87 (1.34%) Adobe
14 86 (1.32%) Tanium
15 84 (1.29%) Brocade
15 84 (1.29%) Nimble Storage
16 76 (1.17%) Apple
17 64 (0.98%) Sage
18 54 (0.83%) Dell
19 52 (0.80%) HubSpot