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

6 months to
4 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 6,232 7,195 12,531
As % of all permanent jobs in England 7.75% 18.72% 15.02%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.38% 20.11% 17.56%
Number of salaries quoted 4,367 4,569 8,489
10th Percentile £27,500 £28,000 £26,250
25th Percentile £31,250 £36,250 £33,000
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 60,045 35,779 71,352
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 74.70% 93.09% 85.50%
Number of salaries quoted 38,092 20,632 53,699
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,625 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,750 £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 £59,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -1.67% +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 4 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 4 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 1,915 £70,000 +7.69% 1,030
North of England -19 1,259 £42,500 -7.61% 645
South East -8 1,129 £46,000 -8.00% 749
Midlands -22 860 £39,250 -12.78% 448
North West -16 660 £42,500 -11.16% 358
South West -8 530 £43,500 -2.44% 282
West Midlands -23 507 £42,500 -13.27% 276
Yorkshire -12 478 £40,000 - 216
East of England -11 453 £40,000 -15.79% 266
East Midlands -7 350 £35,000 -9.09% 173
North East -18 121 £48,500 +7.78% 80
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
1 328 (5.26%) Microsoft Exchange
2 297 (4.77%) SharePoint
3 65 (1.04%) Confluence
4 56 (0.90%) Apache
5 53 (0.85%) CMS
6 44 (0.71%) Apache Airflow
7 33 (0.53%) 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%) Totara
Applications
1 412 (6.61%) Microsoft Office
2 326 (5.23%) Microsoft Excel
3 59 (0.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 45 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
5 38 (0.61%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.47%) 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 58 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (0.87%) Dynamics CRM
3 32 (0.51%) NetSuite
4 21 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
5 14 (0.22%) Dynamics NAV
5 14 (0.22%) Magento
5 14 (0.22%) SAP CO
5 14 (0.22%) Shopify
6 13 (0.21%) iTrent
6 13 (0.21%) SAP ERP
7 12 (0.19%) Maximo
8 11 (0.18%) Endur
8 11 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
9 10 (0.16%) Workday HCM
10 9 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
11 8 (0.13%) Elite 3E
12 7 (0.11%) Q-Pulse
12 7 (0.11%) SAP Business One
13 6 (0.096%) Payment Gateway
14 5 (0.080%) Sage 200
Cloud Services
1 1,294 (20.76%) Azure
2 938 (15.05%) Microsoft 365
3 780 (12.52%) AWS
4 467 (7.49%) Power Platform
5 327 (5.25%) SaaS
6 287 (4.61%) GCP
7 265 (4.25%) Entra ID
8 172 (2.76%) Serverless
9 163 (2.62%) Azure DevOps
9 163 (2.62%) GitHub
10 116 (1.86%) Power Automate
11 111 (1.78%) Dynamics 365
12 94 (1.51%) Amazon S3
13 86 (1.38%) Google Workspace
14 82 (1.32%) AWS Lambda
14 82 (1.32%) GitHub Actions
15 80 (1.28%) PowerApps
16 75 (1.20%) PaaS
17 72 (1.16%) AWS CloudFormation
17 72 (1.16%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 371 (5.95%) Firewall
2 360 (5.78%) DNS
3 299 (4.80%) DHCP
4 247 (3.96%) VPN
5 211 (3.39%) WAN
6 193 (3.10%) Wi-Fi
7 180 (2.89%) Broadband
7 180 (2.89%) LAN
8 176 (2.82%) TCP/IP
9 110 (1.77%) Wireless
10 109 (1.75%) VLAN
11 94 (1.51%) VoIP
12 65 (1.04%) SD-WAN
13 59 (0.95%) Network Security
14 50 (0.80%) SAN
15 38 (0.61%) Internet
16 34 (0.55%) HTTP
17 30 (0.48%) BGP
17 30 (0.48%) OSPF
18 28 (0.45%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 388 (6.23%) Power BI
2 275 (4.41%) SQL Server
3 122 (1.96%) Data Warehouse
4 112 (1.80%) NoSQL
5 108 (1.73%) Tableau
6 94 (1.51%) PostgreSQL
7 80 (1.28%) Relational Database
8 78 (1.25%) MySQL
9 67 (1.08%) Amazon RDS
10 64 (1.03%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 59 (0.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 55 (0.88%) Power Query
13 52 (0.83%) MongoDB
14 47 (0.75%) DynamoDB
15 46 (0.74%) Amazon Redshift
16 42 (0.67%) Data Lake
17 41 (0.66%) Big Data
18 39 (0.63%) Metadata
19 36 (0.58%) Azure SQL Database
20 26 (0.42%) DB2
Development Applications
1 267 (4.28%) Git
2 211 (3.39%) JIRA
3 113 (1.81%) Jenkins
4 106 (1.70%) GitLab
5 38 (0.61%) Selenium
6 23 (0.37%) Cucumber
6 23 (0.37%) Rational DOORS
6 23 (0.37%) Visual Studio
7 21 (0.34%) Cypress.io
7 21 (0.34%) Maven
8 20 (0.32%) Chocolatey
8 20 (0.32%) SonarQube
9 18 (0.29%) Bitbucket
10 17 (0.27%) CircleCI
11 16 (0.26%) Burp Suite
11 16 (0.26%) 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 2,899 (46.52%) Social Skills
2 1,851 (29.70%) Analytical Skills
3 1,317 (21.13%) Finance
4 410 (6.58%) Organisational Skills
5 363 (5.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 333 (5.34%) Marketing
7 316 (5.07%) Manufacturing
8 296 (4.75%) Law
9 271 (4.35%) Banking
10 266 (4.27%) Retail
11 259 (4.16%) Public Sector
12 252 (4.04%) Legal
13 155 (2.49%) Telecoms
14 138 (2.21%) Electronics
15 137 (2.20%) Presentation Skills
16 102 (1.64%) Documentation Skills
17 85 (1.36%) Games
18 81 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
19 79 (1.27%) Advertising
20 77 (1.24%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 869 (13.94%) Analyst
2 772 (12.39%) Senior
3 650 (10.43%) IT Support
4 571 (9.16%) Support Engineer
5 555 (8.91%) Developer
6 389 (6.24%) Lead
7 379 (6.08%) IT Engineer
8 299 (4.80%) IT Support Engineer
9 260 (4.17%) Support Analyst
10 246 (3.95%) Consultant
11 212 (3.40%) Architect
12 210 (3.37%) Support Technician
13 191 (3.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 189 (3.03%) Software Engineer
15 179 (2.87%) Business Analyst
16 171 (2.74%) Systems Engineer
17 170 (2.73%) 2nd Line Support
18 166 (2.66%) Technical Support
19 153 (2.46%) IT Technician
20 147 (2.36%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 232 (3.72%) .NET
2 230 (3.69%) React
3 203 (3.26%) HTML
4 172 (2.76%) CSS
5 150 (2.41%) REST
6 142 (2.28%) Node.js
7 116 (1.86%) RESTful
8 85 (1.36%) Middleware
9 80 (1.28%) SOAP
10 69 (1.11%) JSON
10 69 (1.11%) Spring
11 64 (1.03%) XML
12 63 (1.01%) Kafka
13 58 (0.93%) AngularJS
14 57 (0.91%) Vue
15 53 (0.85%) OAuth
16 51 (0.82%) Spring Boot
17 50 (0.80%) gRPC
18 49 (0.79%) Web Services
19 48 (0.77%) Django
Miscellaneous
1 401 (6.43%) Onboarding
2 398 (6.39%) Driving Licence
3 325 (5.22%) Self-Motivation
4 195 (3.13%) Management Information System
5 189 (3.03%) Cloud Native
6 168 (2.70%) Product Ownership
7 149 (2.39%) Distributed Systems
8 144 (2.31%) Data Centre
9 143 (2.29%) Analytical Mindset
10 113 (1.81%) Legacy Systems
11 100 (1.60%) Enterprise Software
12 91 (1.46%) Social Media
13 88 (1.41%) Mobile App
14 76 (1.22%) Data Structures
15 66 (1.06%) Low-Code
16 63 (1.01%) Algorithms
17 60 (0.96%) Security Posture
18 58 (0.93%) Video\Live Streaming
19 54 (0.87%) Virtual Team
20 52 (0.83%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 969 (15.55%) Windows
2 377 (6.05%) Linux
3 373 (5.99%) Windows Server
4 160 (2.57%) Windows 10
5 104 (1.67%) Android
6 97 (1.56%) Windows Server 2016
7 87 (1.40%) Apple iOS
8 84 (1.35%) Mac OS
9 51 (0.82%) Windows Server 2019
10 44 (0.71%) Unix
11 41 (0.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 33 (0.53%) Windows Server 2012
13 32 (0.51%) CentOS
14 26 (0.42%) 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 1,138 (18.26%) Continuous Improvement
2 990 (15.89%) Agile
3 901 (14.46%) Customer Service
4 674 (10.82%) CI/CD
5 665 (10.67%) AI
6 641 (10.29%) Decision-Making
7 639 (10.25%) Mentoring
8 608 (9.76%) Analytics
8 608 (9.76%) DevOps
9 540 (8.66%) ITIL
10 501 (8.04%) Project Management
11 493 (7.91%) Stakeholder Management
12 490 (7.86%) Business Intelligence
13 485 (7.78%) Computer Science
14 476 (7.64%) Software Engineering
15 450 (7.22%) Roadmaps
16 416 (6.68%) Cybersecurity
17 410 (6.58%) Coaching
18 351 (5.63%) Collaborative Working
19 343 (5.50%) CRM
Programming Languages
1 953 (15.29%) Python
2 849 (13.62%) SQL
3 403 (6.47%) JavaScript
4 329 (5.28%) Java
5 283 (4.54%) PowerShell
6 256 (4.11%) C#
7 185 (2.97%) TypeScript
8 152 (2.44%) Bash
9 91 (1.46%) C++
10 89 (1.43%) Go
11 82 (1.32%) PHP
12 64 (1.03%) Scala
13 61 (0.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 48 (0.77%) C
15 38 (0.61%) Rust
15 38 (0.61%) T-SQL
16 36 (0.58%) Kotlin
17 34 (0.55%) Bicep
18 33 (0.53%) R
19 32 (0.51%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 1,139 (18.28%) Degree
2 415 (6.66%) Security Cleared
3 257 (4.12%) SC Cleared
4 246 (3.95%) Computer Science Degree
5 211 (3.39%) DBS Check
6 175 (2.81%) Microsoft Certification
7 120 (1.93%) Master's Degree
8 109 (1.75%) CISSP
9 102 (1.64%) DV Cleared
10 95 (1.52%) Cisco Certification
11 86 (1.38%) A+ Certification
12 79 (1.27%) BPSS Clearance
13 78 (1.25%) PMI Certification
14 75 (1.20%) ACCA
15 66 (1.06%) CIMA
16 65 (1.04%) CCNA
17 63 (1.01%) PMP
18 58 (0.93%) Azure Certification
19 56 (0.90%) Network+ Certification
20 52 (0.83%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 313 (5.02%) QA
2 294 (4.72%) Data Quality
3 253 (4.06%) GDPR
4 173 (2.78%) SLA
5 155 (2.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 139 (2.23%) Cyber Essentials
6 139 (2.23%) NIST
7 112 (1.80%) PCI DSS
8 110 (1.77%) Accessibility
9 48 (0.77%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 34 (0.55%) SOC 2
11 33 (0.53%) ISO 9001
12 28 (0.45%) PMO
13 27 (0.43%) GRC
14 26 (0.42%) COBIT
15 19 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
16 14 (0.22%) GMP
17 12 (0.19%) TickIT
18 11 (0.18%) HIPAA
18 11 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 657 (10.54%) Active Directory
2 284 (4.56%) Docker
3 176 (2.82%) Hyper-V
4 159 (2.55%) VMware Infrastructure
5 42 (0.67%) Terminal Server
6 41 (0.66%) Virtual Desktop
7 34 (0.55%) Firmware
8 20 (0.32%) 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 (0.096%) 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
1 294 (4.72%) Terraform
2 234 (3.75%) Microsoft Intune
3 229 (3.67%) Kubernetes
4 146 (2.34%) Ansible
5 91 (1.46%) Grafana
6 81 (1.30%) SCCM
7 49 (0.79%) Prometheus
8 31 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
9 29 (0.47%) Nagios
10 23 (0.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 20 (0.32%) BMC PATROL
12 18 (0.29%) 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%) WSUS
18 9 (0.14%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 1,619 (25.98%) Microsoft
2 241 (3.87%) VMware
3 185 (2.97%) Oracle
4 160 (2.57%) Google
5 156 (2.50%) SAP
6 131 (2.10%) Salesforce
6 131 (2.10%) ServiceNow
7 130 (2.09%) Cisco
8 111 (1.78%) Databricks
9 110 (1.77%) SolarWinds
10 92 (1.48%) Veeam
11 91 (1.46%) Splunk
12 80 (1.28%) Apple
13 72 (1.16%) Adobe
14 64 (1.03%) Dell
15 58 (0.93%) Red Hat
16 48 (0.77%) Dynatrace
17 47 (0.75%) Meraki
18 45 (0.72%) Typelevel
19 44 (0.71%) Fortinet