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 23 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 4 7
Rank change year-on-year -3 +3 +4
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 9,334 8,087 10,271
As % of all permanent jobs in England 9.08% 18.89% 15.33%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.36% 21.29% 18.75%
Number of salaries quoted 6,314 4,538 4,353
10th Percentile £27,750 £26,250 £27,500
25th Percentile £32,750 £31,250 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,000 £45,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -14.29% -4.55%
75th Percentile £65,000 £65,000 £71,250
90th Percentile £85,000 £86,250 £85,000
UK median annual salary £46,901 £46,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +1.96% -12.38% -4.55%

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 75,504 37,986 54,786
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.43% 88.72% 81.76%
Number of salaries quoted 53,373 21,807 30,739
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,742 £32,500
25th Percentile £42,500 £37,500 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £58,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -5.17% -6.94%
75th Percentile £80,000 £76,250 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £97,500
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% -4.17%

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 23 September 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 23 September 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 -6 2,368 £65,000 - 5,454
North of England -9 1,936 £45,000 +4.65% 1,701
South East -4 1,818 £41,991 -1.20% 1,855
Midlands -7 1,393 £42,500 +10.39% 1,310
North West -4 1,002 £45,000 -7.64% 907
South West -2 962 £45,000 +25.00% 915
West Midlands -7 781 £42,500 -5.56% 800
East of England -2 772 £44,000 +32.11% 826
East Midlands -8 610 £41,750 +19.29% 508
Yorkshire -7 598 £42,500 +26.87% 565
North East +1 339 £50,000 +42.86% 245
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
1 546 (5.85%) SharePoint
2 406 (4.35%) Microsoft Exchange
3 118 (1.26%) Confluence
4 62 (0.66%) IIS
5 49 (0.52%) Apache
6 48 (0.51%) CMS
7 44 (0.47%) Apache Spark
8 36 (0.39%) Apache Airflow
8 36 (0.39%) WordPress
9 18 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
10 15 (0.16%) SAS
11 12 (0.13%) WebLogic
12 11 (0.12%) nginx
12 11 (0.12%) WebSphere
13 10 (0.11%) Jupyter
13 10 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 9 (0.096%) Palantir Foundry
15 7 (0.075%) OpenEdge
16 6 (0.064%) CICS
16 6 (0.064%) Tomcat
Applications
1 656 (7.03%) Microsoft Office
2 588 (6.30%) Microsoft Excel
3 122 (1.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 64 (0.69%) Spreadsheet
5 56 (0.60%) MS Visio
6 54 (0.58%) AutoCAD
7 48 (0.51%) Microsoft Project
8 30 (0.32%) Simulink
9 27 (0.29%) Revit
10 18 (0.19%) SOLIDWORKS
11 17 (0.18%) Chatbot
12 11 (0.12%) Autodesk Flame
12 11 (0.12%) Baselight
12 11 (0.12%) EPLAN
13 10 (0.11%) Navisworks
14 8 (0.086%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 8 (0.086%) Fusion 360
14 8 (0.086%) Trello
15 6 (0.064%) OrCAD
15 6 (0.064%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 92 (0.99%) Dynamics CRM
2 89 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
3 83 (0.89%) NetSuite
4 39 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
5 34 (0.36%) Shopify
6 24 (0.26%) Oracle Payables
7 21 (0.22%) Dynamics AX
8 16 (0.17%) Oracle Cash Management
9 15 (0.16%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 15 (0.16%) Workday HCM
10 14 (0.15%) Dynamics NAV
10 14 (0.15%) Elite 3E
10 14 (0.15%) SAP Business One
11 13 (0.14%) IBM Planning Analytics
11 13 (0.14%) Magento
11 13 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
12 12 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
13 11 (0.12%) Oracle Applications
13 11 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
13 11 (0.12%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,797 (19.25%) Azure
2 1,443 (15.46%) Microsoft 365
3 1,071 (11.47%) AWS
4 798 (8.55%) Power Platform
5 457 (4.90%) Entra ID
6 405 (4.34%) SaaS
7 357 (3.82%) GCP
8 239 (2.56%) Azure DevOps
9 225 (2.41%) GitHub
10 207 (2.22%) Power Automate
11 200 (2.14%) Dynamics 365
12 190 (2.04%) Serverless
13 170 (1.82%) PowerApps
14 151 (1.62%) OneDrive
15 146 (1.56%) Microsoft Copilot
16 113 (1.21%) Amazon S3
17 105 (1.12%) GitHub Actions
18 94 (1.01%) Google Workspace
19 90 (0.96%) AWS Lambda
20 87 (0.93%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 526 (5.64%) Firewall
2 502 (5.38%) DNS
3 419 (4.49%) DHCP
4 358 (3.84%) VPN
5 298 (3.19%) TCP/IP
6 242 (2.59%) Wi-Fi
7 202 (2.16%) WAN
8 200 (2.14%) LAN
9 198 (2.12%) Wireless
10 182 (1.95%) VLAN
11 164 (1.76%) Network Security
12 109 (1.17%) VoIP
13 70 (0.75%) Broadband
14 62 (0.66%) Internet
15 44 (0.47%) SAN
16 38 (0.41%) HTTP
17 36 (0.39%) SD-WAN
18 35 (0.37%) BGP
18 35 (0.37%) SSL
19 32 (0.34%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 624 (6.69%) Power BI
2 433 (4.64%) SQL Server
3 157 (1.68%) Relational Database
4 151 (1.62%) Data Warehouse
5 141 (1.51%) MySQL
6 132 (1.41%) Amazon RDS
6 132 (1.41%) Tableau
7 122 (1.31%) PostgreSQL
8 102 (1.09%) NoSQL
9 93 (1.00%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 82 (0.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 71 (0.76%) Azure SQL Database
12 70 (0.75%) Big Data
13 67 (0.72%) Data Lake
14 66 (0.71%) MongoDB
15 63 (0.67%) Metadata
16 61 (0.65%) Power Query
17 43 (0.46%) DynamoDB
18 40 (0.43%) Electronic Patient Records
19 37 (0.40%) Looker
Development Applications
1 390 (4.18%) Git
2 327 (3.50%) JIRA
3 148 (1.59%) Jenkins
4 112 (1.20%) GitLab
5 45 (0.48%) Selenium
6 43 (0.46%) Claude Code
7 42 (0.45%) Eclipse
8 35 (0.37%) JUnit
9 34 (0.36%) Subversion
10 32 (0.34%) Cucumber
11 28 (0.30%) Cypress.io
12 25 (0.27%) Oracle Forms
12 25 (0.27%) Postman
13 23 (0.25%) Rational DOORS
14 22 (0.24%) Bitbucket
15 21 (0.22%) TeamCity
16 20 (0.21%) SonarQube
17 16 (0.17%) LabVIEW
18 15 (0.16%) Maven
18 15 (0.16%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 4,671 (50.04%) Social Skills
2 2,759 (29.56%) Analytical Skills
3 1,835 (19.66%) Finance
4 871 (9.33%) Manufacturing
5 715 (7.66%) Organisational Skills
6 551 (5.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 537 (5.75%) Law
8 505 (5.41%) Retail
9 395 (4.23%) Marketing
10 384 (4.11%) Public Sector
11 360 (3.86%) Legal
12 303 (3.25%) Electronics
13 299 (3.20%) Banking
14 286 (3.06%) Aerospace
15 232 (2.49%) Telecoms
16 197 (2.11%) Influencing Skills
17 172 (1.84%) Presentation Skills
18 142 (1.52%) Automotive
19 129 (1.38%) Documentation Skills
20 108 (1.16%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 1,217 (13.04%) Analyst
2 1,010 (10.82%) Senior
3 820 (8.79%) Developer
4 777 (8.32%) IT Support
5 616 (6.60%) Support Engineer
6 535 (5.73%) Lead
7 432 (4.63%) Consultant
8 420 (4.50%) IT Engineer
9 412 (4.41%) Support Analyst
10 328 (3.51%) Software Engineer
11 323 (3.46%) IT Support Engineer
12 280 (3.00%) Technical Support
13 278 (2.98%) Architect
14 264 (2.83%) Support Technician
15 245 (2.62%) Systems Engineer
16 243 (2.60%) IT Technician
17 233 (2.50%) Technical Engineer
18 224 (2.40%) Administrator
19 209 (2.24%) Technical Support Engineer
20 207 (2.22%) Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 395 (4.23%) .NET
2 391 (4.19%) Terraform
3 316 (3.39%) React
4 300 (3.21%) REST
5 267 (2.86%) HTML
6 202 (2.16%) CSS
7 186 (1.99%) RESTful
8 149 (1.60%) Node.js
9 124 (1.33%) Spring
10 119 (1.27%) SOAP
11 111 (1.19%) Web Services
12 108 (1.16%) AngularJS
13 107 (1.15%) JSON
14 98 (1.05%) XML
15 97 (1.04%) ASP.NET
16 94 (1.01%) Kafka
16 94 (1.01%) Vue
17 93 (1.00%) Middleware
18 82 (0.88%) Spring Boot
19 70 (0.75%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 664 (7.11%) Driving Licence
2 652 (6.99%) Onboarding
3 488 (5.23%) Self-Motivation
4 415 (4.45%) Management Information System
5 333 (3.57%) Cloud Native
6 262 (2.81%) Product Ownership
7 182 (1.95%) Data Centre
8 180 (1.93%) Enterprise Software
9 164 (1.76%) Legacy Systems
10 141 (1.51%) Distributed Systems
11 132 (1.41%) Robotics
12 122 (1.31%) Cyber Threat
13 121 (1.30%) AI Agents
14 118 (1.26%) Security Posture
15 116 (1.24%) Analytical Mindset
15 116 (1.24%) Data Structures
16 111 (1.19%) NHS
17 101 (1.08%) IoT
18 98 (1.05%) Algorithms
19 87 (0.93%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 1,391 (14.90%) Windows
2 567 (6.07%) Windows Server
3 560 (6.00%) Linux
4 166 (1.78%) Windows 10
5 123 (1.32%) Mac OS
6 110 (1.18%) Apple iOS
7 100 (1.07%) Windows Server 2016
8 97 (1.04%) Android
9 56 (0.60%) Unix
10 47 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
11 32 (0.34%) VMS
12 30 (0.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 30 (0.32%) Ubuntu
13 15 (0.16%) Embedded Linux
14 10 (0.11%) CentOS
14 10 (0.11%) Debian
14 10 (0.11%) FreeRTOS
14 10 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.086%) Rocky
16 7 (0.075%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,402 (25.73%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,500 (16.07%) Customer Service
3 1,470 (15.75%) Agile
4 1,191 (12.76%) AI
5 1,139 (12.20%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,079 (11.56%) Decision-Making
7 984 (10.54%) Mentoring
8 959 (10.27%) CI/CD
9 840 (9.00%) Analytics
10 819 (8.77%) Software Engineering
11 795 (8.52%) DevOps
12 776 (8.31%) Project Delivery
13 749 (8.02%) Cybersecurity
14 703 (7.53%) Business Intelligence
15 683 (7.32%) Project Management
16 677 (7.25%) ITIL
16 677 (7.25%) Roadmaps
17 655 (7.02%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 651 (6.97%) Collaborative Working
19 643 (6.89%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 1,403 (15.03%) SQL
2 1,220 (13.07%) Python
3 588 (6.30%) JavaScript
4 502 (5.38%) C#
5 453 (4.85%) Java
6 394 (4.22%) PowerShell
7 276 (2.96%) TypeScript
8 252 (2.70%) C++
9 178 (1.91%) Bash
10 103 (1.10%) C
11 81 (0.87%) PHP
11 81 (0.87%) T-SQL
12 77 (0.82%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 77 (0.82%) Go
13 56 (0.60%) PL/SQL
14 52 (0.56%) Rust
15 51 (0.55%) R
16 47 (0.50%) Ruby
16 47 (0.50%) Shell Script
17 45 (0.48%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,627 (17.43%) Degree
2 875 (9.37%) Security Cleared
3 587 (6.29%) SC Cleared
4 332 (3.56%) Computer Science Degree
5 269 (2.88%) DBS Check
6 224 (2.40%) Microsoft Certification
7 216 (2.31%) HNC
8 201 (2.15%) DV Cleared
9 191 (2.05%) Azure Certification
10 189 (2.02%) HND
11 155 (1.66%) BPSS Clearance
12 149 (1.60%) CISSP
13 147 (1.57%) Cisco Certification
14 143 (1.53%) Master's Degree
15 105 (1.12%) PMI Certification
16 86 (0.92%) CISM
17 85 (0.91%) AWS Certification
18 84 (0.90%) ACCA
18 84 (0.90%) Chartered Engineer
19 83 (0.89%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 529 (5.67%) QA
2 467 (5.00%) Data Quality
3 376 (4.03%) GDPR
4 268 (2.87%) Accessibility
5 242 (2.59%) SLA
6 216 (2.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 190 (2.04%) Cyber Essentials
8 155 (1.66%) NIST
9 134 (1.44%) PCI DSS
10 67 (0.72%) PMO
11 50 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 46 (0.49%) GRC
12 46 (0.49%) ISO 9001
13 30 (0.32%) NCSC
14 26 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
15 23 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 22 (0.24%) SOC 2
17 21 (0.22%) DO-254
18 19 (0.20%) COBIT
18 19 (0.20%) Good Clinical Practice
System Software
1 911 (9.76%) Active Directory
2 378 (4.05%) Docker
3 285 (3.05%) Hyper-V
4 261 (2.80%) VMware Infrastructure
5 67 (0.72%) Firmware
6 63 (0.67%) Terminal Server
7 53 (0.57%) Virtual Desktop
8 49 (0.52%) Virtual Machines
9 36 (0.39%) vSphere
10 27 (0.29%) Embedded Firmware
11 20 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
12 13 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
13 10 (0.11%) GPFS
13 10 (0.11%) StorNext
14 9 (0.096%) KVM
15 7 (0.075%) IAG
16 6 (0.064%) VMware NSX
17 5 (0.054%) ClearTrust
17 5 (0.054%) Squid
18 4 (0.043%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 360 (3.86%) Kubernetes
2 310 (3.32%) Microsoft Intune
3 152 (1.63%) Ansible
4 95 (1.02%) Grafana
5 73 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
6 72 (0.77%) SCCM
7 53 (0.57%) Prometheus
8 27 (0.29%) Jamf Pro
9 26 (0.28%) BMC PATROL
10 23 (0.25%) FortiGate
11 22 (0.24%) Argo
12 18 (0.19%) Puppet
13 17 (0.18%) Functional Safety
14 16 (0.17%) Nagios
15 15 (0.16%) Kibana
16 13 (0.14%) Progress Chef
17 12 (0.13%) logstash
18 11 (0.12%) Nmap
19 10 (0.11%) Docker Swarm
19 10 (0.11%) Podman
Vendors
1 2,764 (29.61%) Microsoft
2 387 (4.15%) VMware
3 314 (3.36%) SAP
4 280 (3.00%) Google
5 270 (2.89%) Oracle
6 189 (2.02%) ServiceNow
7 178 (1.91%) Salesforce
8 170 (1.82%) Cisco
9 141 (1.51%) Databricks
10 131 (1.40%) Veeam
11 122 (1.31%) Splunk
12 115 (1.23%) Sage
13 96 (1.03%) SolarWinds
14 89 (0.95%) Apple
15 86 (0.92%) Workday
16 74 (0.79%) Fortinet
17 71 (0.76%) Tanium
18 67 (0.72%) HubSpot
19 64 (0.69%) Brocade
19 64 (0.69%) Nimble Storage