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

6 months to
21 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 6,341 8,004 12,655
As % of all permanent jobs in England 7.71% 20.38% 14.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.46% 21.83% 17.62%
Number of salaries quoted 4,462 4,496 8,459
10th Percentile £27,500 £27,500 £26,131
25th Percentile £31,250 £34,000 £32,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £50,929 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -6.73% +1.86% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £70,000 £67,984
90th Percentile £87,500 £88,750 £85,000
UK median annual salary £47,500 £50,445 £49,329
% change year-on-year -5.84% +2.26% -10.31%

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 60,622 36,670 71,820
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.76% 93.39% 84.79%
Number of salaries quoted 39,997 20,119 53,763
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 £73,410
90th Percentile £100,000 £102,500 £93,750
UK median annual salary £60,000 £58,033 £55,000
% change year-on-year +3.39% +5.51% -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 21 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 21 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 1,911 £70,000 +7.69% 959
North of England -12 1,308 £42,500 -5.56% 652
South East -8 1,136 £46,000 -1.08% 752
Midlands -22 872 £40,000 -11.11% 426
North West -17 674 £45,000 -5.26% 355
South West -8 549 £43,500 +3.48% 285
West Midlands -25 512 £42,500 -11.46% 270
Yorkshire -12 499 £41,500 +3.75% 226
East of England -6 475 £42,175 -0.76% 309
East Midlands -11 356 £35,000 -9.09% 156
North East -18 135 £48,445 +7.65% 82
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 (5.16%) Microsoft Exchange
2 316 (4.98%) SharePoint
3 70 (1.10%) Confluence
4 62 (0.98%) CMS
5 54 (0.85%) Apache
6 39 (0.62%) Apache Airflow
7 33 (0.52%) Apache Spark
8 29 (0.46%) IIS
9 27 (0.43%) WordPress
10 15 (0.24%) SAS
11 14 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
12 10 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2013
13 8 (0.13%) Drupal
13 8 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2007
13 8 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2010
13 8 (0.13%) nginx
14 6 (0.095%) OpenEdge
15 5 (0.079%) OpenStack
15 5 (0.079%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 5 (0.079%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 404 (6.37%) Microsoft Office
2 329 (5.19%) Microsoft Excel
3 50 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 48 (0.76%) Spreadsheet
5 37 (0.58%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.43%) Microsoft Project
7 14 (0.22%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.16%) Maya
9 9 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
9 9 (0.14%) Fusion 360
10 8 (0.13%) AutoCAD
10 8 (0.13%) SOLIDWORKS
11 6 (0.095%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.063%) Simulink
13 3 (0.047%) Acrobat
13 3 (0.047%) Autodesk Inventor
13 3 (0.047%) Trello
14 2 (0.032%) Adobe XD
14 2 (0.032%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 60 (0.95%) Dynamics CRM
2 59 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
3 32 (0.50%) NetSuite
4 23 (0.36%) Salesforce CRM
5 19 (0.30%) Shopify
6 16 (0.25%) Magento
7 15 (0.24%) Dynamics NAV
8 14 (0.22%) SAP CO
8 14 (0.22%) SAP ERP
9 13 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
10 12 (0.19%) iTrent
11 11 (0.17%) Maximo
12 9 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
12 9 (0.14%) Endur
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%) Fidessa
Cloud Services
1 1,339 (21.12%) Azure
2 969 (15.28%) Microsoft 365
3 806 (12.71%) AWS
4 474 (7.48%) Power Platform
5 310 (4.89%) SaaS
6 281 (4.43%) GCP
7 266 (4.19%) Entra ID
8 171 (2.70%) Serverless
9 163 (2.57%) Azure DevOps
10 143 (2.26%) GitHub
11 125 (1.97%) Dynamics 365
12 115 (1.81%) Power Automate
13 92 (1.45%) Amazon S3
14 91 (1.44%) PowerApps
15 85 (1.34%) Google Workspace
16 76 (1.20%) PaaS
17 75 (1.18%) AWS Lambda
17 75 (1.18%) GitHub Actions
18 73 (1.15%) IaaS
19 71 (1.12%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 377 (5.95%) Firewall
2 357 (5.63%) DNS
3 290 (4.57%) DHCP
4 249 (3.93%) VPN
5 216 (3.41%) WAN
6 191 (3.01%) Wi-Fi
7 187 (2.95%) LAN
8 183 (2.89%) TCP/IP
9 174 (2.74%) Broadband
10 118 (1.86%) Wireless
11 113 (1.78%) VLAN
12 94 (1.48%) VoIP
13 71 (1.12%) Network Security
14 67 (1.06%) SD-WAN
15 54 (0.85%) SAN
16 41 (0.65%) BGP
16 41 (0.65%) Internet
17 39 (0.62%) OSPF
18 34 (0.54%) HTTP
19 32 (0.50%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 377 (5.95%) Power BI
2 278 (4.38%) SQL Server
3 122 (1.92%) Data Warehouse
4 106 (1.67%) Tableau
5 103 (1.62%) NoSQL
6 93 (1.47%) PostgreSQL
7 81 (1.28%) MySQL
8 78 (1.23%) Relational Database
9 75 (1.18%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 65 (1.03%) Amazon RDS
10 65 (1.03%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 52 (0.82%) Power Query
12 47 (0.74%) Amazon Redshift
12 47 (0.74%) Big Data
13 46 (0.73%) MongoDB
14 43 (0.68%) DynamoDB
15 37 (0.58%) Metadata
16 36 (0.57%) Data Lake
17 35 (0.55%) Azure SQL Database
18 26 (0.41%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 281 (4.43%) Git
2 203 (3.20%) JIRA
3 106 (1.67%) Jenkins
4 105 (1.66%) GitLab
5 32 (0.50%) Selenium
6 27 (0.43%) Rational DOORS
7 23 (0.36%) Maven
8 22 (0.35%) Visual Studio
9 21 (0.33%) Chocolatey
9 21 (0.33%) Cypress.io
10 19 (0.30%) Cucumber
11 18 (0.28%) SonarQube
12 17 (0.27%) CircleCI
13 15 (0.24%) Bitbucket
13 15 (0.24%) Burp Suite
13 15 (0.24%) Metasploit
13 15 (0.24%) TeamCity
14 14 (0.22%) JUnit
15 13 (0.21%) LabVIEW
15 13 (0.21%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 2,883 (45.47%) Social Skills
2 1,866 (29.43%) Analytical Skills
3 1,317 (20.77%) Finance
4 403 (6.36%) Organisational Skills
5 362 (5.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 331 (5.22%) Manufacturing
7 327 (5.16%) Law
8 322 (5.08%) Marketing
9 268 (4.23%) Public Sector
10 267 (4.21%) Legal
11 264 (4.16%) Banking
11 264 (4.16%) Retail
12 155 (2.44%) Telecoms
13 137 (2.16%) Electronics
14 133 (2.10%) Presentation Skills
15 101 (1.59%) Documentation Skills
16 90 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
17 87 (1.37%) Games
18 82 (1.29%) Advertising
19 72 (1.14%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 831 (13.11%) Analyst
2 798 (12.58%) Senior
3 653 (10.30%) IT Support
4 586 (9.24%) Developer
5 561 (8.85%) Support Engineer
6 408 (6.43%) Lead
7 392 (6.18%) IT Engineer
8 302 (4.76%) IT Support Engineer
9 273 (4.31%) Consultant
10 237 (3.74%) Support Analyst
11 224 (3.53%) Architect
12 221 (3.49%) Support Technician
13 213 (3.36%) Software Engineer
14 194 (3.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 191 (3.01%) Systems Engineer
16 167 (2.63%) IT Technician
16 167 (2.63%) Technical Support
17 162 (2.55%) Business Analyst
18 159 (2.51%) 2nd Line Support
19 151 (2.38%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 246 (3.88%) .NET
2 238 (3.75%) React
3 205 (3.23%) HTML
4 172 (2.71%) CSS
5 157 (2.48%) REST
6 127 (2.00%) Node.js
7 118 (1.86%) RESTful
8 91 (1.44%) SOAP
9 82 (1.29%) Middleware
10 79 (1.25%) Spring
11 75 (1.18%) JSON
12 68 (1.07%) XML
13 63 (0.99%) Kafka
14 62 (0.98%) AngularJS
14 62 (0.98%) Vue
15 55 (0.87%) gRPC
15 55 (0.87%) OAuth
15 55 (0.87%) Spring Boot
16 50 (0.79%) EDI
17 47 (0.74%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 382 (6.02%) Onboarding
2 381 (6.01%) Driving Licence
3 298 (4.70%) Self-Motivation
4 210 (3.31%) Cloud Native
4 210 (3.31%) Management Information System
5 181 (2.85%) Product Ownership
6 164 (2.59%) Data Centre
7 148 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
8 136 (2.14%) Analytical Mindset
9 112 (1.77%) Legacy Systems
10 94 (1.48%) Mobile App
11 92 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
12 91 (1.44%) Social Media
13 81 (1.28%) Data Structures
14 71 (1.12%) Low-Code
15 68 (1.07%) Algorithms
16 64 (1.01%) Virtual Team
17 60 (0.95%) Security Posture
18 59 (0.93%) Video\Live Streaming
19 52 (0.82%) Over-the-Top Content
Operating Systems
1 978 (15.42%) Windows
2 391 (6.17%) Linux
3 390 (6.15%) Windows Server
4 160 (2.52%) Windows 10
5 107 (1.69%) Android
6 101 (1.59%) Windows Server 2016
7 84 (1.32%) Apple iOS
8 81 (1.28%) Mac OS
9 59 (0.93%) Windows Server 2019
10 44 (0.69%) Unix
11 41 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 32 (0.50%) CentOS
12 32 (0.50%) 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 1,189 (18.75%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,013 (15.98%) Agile
3 899 (14.18%) Customer Service
4 706 (11.13%) AI
5 699 (11.02%) CI/CD
6 698 (11.01%) Mentoring
7 663 (10.46%) Decision-Making
8 608 (9.59%) Analytics
9 606 (9.56%) DevOps
10 524 (8.26%) ITIL
11 519 (8.18%) Stakeholder Management
12 512 (8.07%) Software Engineering
13 483 (7.62%) Roadmaps
14 482 (7.60%) Computer Science
15 471 (7.43%) Project Management
16 453 (7.14%) Business Intelligence
17 435 (6.86%) Coaching
18 432 (6.81%) Cybersecurity
19 376 (5.93%) Collaborative Working
20 361 (5.69%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 968 (15.27%) Python
2 879 (13.86%) SQL
3 420 (6.62%) JavaScript
4 327 (5.16%) Java
5 294 (4.64%) C#
6 284 (4.48%) PowerShell
7 191 (3.01%) TypeScript
8 154 (2.43%) Bash
9 118 (1.86%) C++
10 86 (1.36%) PHP
11 84 (1.32%) Go
12 64 (1.01%) Scala
13 57 (0.90%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 56 (0.88%) C
15 42 (0.66%) T-SQL
16 41 (0.65%) R
16 41 (0.65%) Rust
17 40 (0.63%) PL/SQL
18 35 (0.55%) Kotlin
19 34 (0.54%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,118 (17.63%) Degree
2 461 (7.27%) Security Cleared
3 302 (4.76%) SC Cleared
4 250 (3.94%) Computer Science Degree
5 214 (3.37%) DBS Check
6 187 (2.95%) Microsoft Certification
7 114 (1.80%) Master's Degree
8 110 (1.73%) DV Cleared
9 108 (1.70%) CISSP
10 107 (1.69%) Cisco Certification
11 89 (1.40%) A+ Certification
12 86 (1.36%) BPSS Clearance
13 85 (1.34%) PMI Certification
14 79 (1.25%) Azure Certification
15 71 (1.12%) PMP
16 69 (1.09%) CCNA
17 68 (1.07%) ACCA
18 62 (0.98%) CIMA
19 59 (0.93%) Network+ Certification
20 50 (0.79%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 324 (5.11%) QA
2 294 (4.64%) Data Quality
3 257 (4.05%) GDPR
4 192 (3.03%) SLA
5 147 (2.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 144 (2.27%) Cyber Essentials
7 135 (2.13%) NIST
8 129 (2.03%) Accessibility
9 109 (1.72%) PCI DSS
10 43 (0.68%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 34 (0.54%) ISO 9001
12 32 (0.50%) PMO
13 31 (0.49%) SOC 2
14 27 (0.43%) GRC
15 24 (0.38%) COBIT
16 21 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
17 14 (0.22%) GMP
18 12 (0.19%) IFRS
18 12 (0.19%) TickIT
19 11 (0.17%) PERC
System Software
1 657 (10.36%) Active Directory
2 280 (4.42%) Docker
3 183 (2.89%) Hyper-V
4 176 (2.78%) VMware Infrastructure
5 43 (0.68%) Virtual Desktop
6 42 (0.66%) Terminal Server
7 34 (0.54%) Firmware
8 22 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
9 20 (0.32%) vSphere
10 15 (0.24%) KVM
11 13 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
12 10 (0.16%) IAG
13 7 (0.11%) VMware Workstation
13 7 (0.11%) XenApp
14 4 (0.063%) Embedded Firmware
14 4 (0.063%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 4 (0.063%) VMware NSX
15 3 (0.047%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 3 (0.047%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.047%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 295 (4.65%) Terraform
2 239 (3.77%) Microsoft Intune
3 233 (3.67%) Kubernetes
4 147 (2.32%) Ansible
5 88 (1.39%) Grafana
6 82 (1.29%) SCCM
7 53 (0.84%) Prometheus
8 37 (0.58%) Nagios
9 31 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (0.35%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 18 (0.28%) 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 1,665 (26.26%) Microsoft
2 259 (4.08%) VMware
3 186 (2.93%) Oracle
4 166 (2.62%) Google
5 154 (2.43%) SAP
6 146 (2.30%) Cisco
7 134 (2.11%) Salesforce
8 128 (2.02%) ServiceNow
9 111 (1.75%) SolarWinds
10 108 (1.70%) Databricks
11 98 (1.55%) Veeam
12 90 (1.42%) Splunk
13 79 (1.25%) Apple
14 70 (1.10%) Adobe
15 64 (1.01%) Dell
16 55 (0.87%) Red Hat
17 51 (0.80%) Dynatrace
18 49 (0.77%) Meraki
19 45 (0.71%) Fortinet
19 45 (0.71%) Typelevel