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 22 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 4 7
Rank change year-on-year -4 +3 +4
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 8,278 8,346 10,687
As % of all permanent jobs in England 8.67% 19.12% 14.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.78% 21.45% 18.17%
Number of salaries quoted 5,772 4,745 5,414
10th Percentile £27,750 £26,250 £26,750
25th Percentile £33,250 £31,250 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £45,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% -10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £66,250 £67,500 £70,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £87,500 £85,000
UK median annual salary £47,500 £46,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +3.26% -8.00% -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 70,254 38,904 58,804
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.55% 89.11% 81.08%
Number of salaries quoted 49,709 22,440 37,836
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £42,000 £37,500 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,500
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -0.90% -11.20%
75th Percentile £80,000 £76,250 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £95,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.71%

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 22 August 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 22 August 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 2,264 £65,000 - 3,422
North of England -8 1,678 £45,000 +5.88% 1,250
South East -3 1,579 £43,000 +1.18% 1,321
Midlands -8 1,204 £42,500 +10.39% 839
North West -6 881 £45,625 +1.39% 669
South West -4 819 £45,000 +25.00% 750
West Midlands -9 674 £42,500 -4.00% 524
East of England -3 662 £42,500 +21.43% 636
Yorkshire -8 546 £42,500 +21.43% 419
East Midlands -9 527 £41,000 +17.14% 316
North East -6 251 £48,000 +20.00% 184
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
1 461 (5.57%) SharePoint
2 395 (4.77%) Microsoft Exchange
3 103 (1.24%) Confluence
4 56 (0.68%) IIS
5 55 (0.66%) CMS
6 47 (0.57%) Apache
7 37 (0.45%) Apache Airflow
7 37 (0.45%) Apache Spark
8 35 (0.42%) WordPress
9 20 (0.24%) SAS
10 13 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
11 11 (0.13%) nginx
11 11 (0.13%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.13%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
12 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 8 (0.097%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.085%) OpenEdge
14 7 (0.085%) Tomcat
15 6 (0.072%) Drupal
Applications
1 530 (6.40%) Microsoft Office
2 476 (5.75%) Microsoft Excel
3 85 (1.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 48 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
5 47 (0.57%) MS Visio
6 42 (0.51%) Microsoft Project
7 34 (0.41%) AutoCAD
8 18 (0.22%) Simulink
9 16 (0.19%) Revit
10 15 (0.18%) Chatbot
11 11 (0.13%) SOLIDWORKS
12 8 (0.097%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 8 (0.097%) Trello
13 6 (0.072%) Adobe Illustrator
13 6 (0.072%) Autodesk Flame
13 6 (0.072%) Baselight
13 6 (0.072%) Fusion 360
13 6 (0.072%) Navisworks
14 5 (0.060%) EPLAN
14 5 (0.060%) Lightworks
Business Applications
1 86 (1.04%) Dynamics CRM
2 84 (1.01%) SAP S/4HANA
3 61 (0.74%) NetSuite
4 29 (0.35%) Shopify
5 21 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
6 17 (0.21%) Magento
7 16 (0.19%) SAP ERP
8 15 (0.18%) IBM Planning Analytics
8 15 (0.18%) SAP Business One
9 14 (0.17%) Elite 3E
10 13 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
11 12 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
12 11 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
13 10 (0.12%) JDE EnterpriseOne
13 10 (0.12%) Oracle Applications
13 10 (0.12%) Sage X3
14 9 (0.11%) iTrent
14 9 (0.11%) Primavera
14 9 (0.11%) Sage 50
14 9 (0.11%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,717 (20.74%) Azure
2 1,277 (15.43%) Microsoft 365
3 1,022 (12.35%) AWS
4 702 (8.48%) Power Platform
5 397 (4.80%) Entra ID
6 364 (4.40%) SaaS
7 358 (4.32%) GCP
8 208 (2.51%) Azure DevOps
9 207 (2.50%) GitHub
10 188 (2.27%) Serverless
11 180 (2.17%) Dynamics 365
12 176 (2.13%) Power Automate
13 150 (1.81%) PowerApps
14 116 (1.40%) Microsoft Copilot
15 112 (1.35%) OneDrive
16 99 (1.20%) Amazon S3
17 95 (1.15%) GitHub Actions
18 86 (1.04%) AWS Lambda
19 82 (0.99%) AWS CloudFormation
20 74 (0.89%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 501 (6.05%) Firewall
2 464 (5.61%) DNS
3 392 (4.74%) DHCP
4 315 (3.81%) VPN
5 287 (3.47%) TCP/IP
6 206 (2.49%) Wi-Fi
7 205 (2.48%) WAN
8 201 (2.43%) LAN
9 171 (2.07%) Wireless
10 160 (1.93%) VLAN
11 148 (1.79%) Network Security
12 127 (1.53%) Broadband
13 107 (1.29%) VoIP
14 48 (0.58%) Internet
15 43 (0.52%) HTTP
15 43 (0.52%) SAN
16 37 (0.45%) SD-WAN
17 36 (0.43%) OSPF
18 35 (0.42%) BGP
19 34 (0.41%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 548 (6.62%) Power BI
2 419 (5.06%) SQL Server
3 146 (1.76%) MySQL
4 144 (1.74%) Data Warehouse
5 136 (1.64%) Amazon RDS
6 135 (1.63%) Relational Database
7 124 (1.50%) Tableau
8 119 (1.44%) PostgreSQL
9 106 (1.28%) NoSQL
10 96 (1.16%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 86 (1.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 63 (0.76%) Big Data
12 63 (0.76%) MongoDB
13 58 (0.70%) Azure SQL Database
14 57 (0.69%) Data Lake
15 51 (0.62%) Power Query
16 48 (0.58%) Metadata
17 42 (0.51%) DynamoDB
18 41 (0.50%) Electronic Patient Records
19 36 (0.43%) Looker
Development Applications
1 378 (4.57%) Git
2 296 (3.58%) JIRA
3 129 (1.56%) Jenkins
4 108 (1.30%) GitLab
5 36 (0.43%) Eclipse
5 36 (0.43%) Selenium
6 33 (0.40%) Subversion
7 32 (0.39%) Claude Code
7 32 (0.39%) JUnit
8 27 (0.33%) Cucumber
9 26 (0.31%) Postman
10 24 (0.29%) Rational DOORS
11 21 (0.25%) Bitbucket
12 20 (0.24%) Cypress.io
13 19 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
13 19 (0.23%) Visual Studio
14 18 (0.22%) SonarQube
15 16 (0.19%) Chocolatey
16 14 (0.17%) MLflow
16 14 (0.17%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 4,037 (48.77%) Social Skills
2 2,520 (30.44%) Analytical Skills
3 1,657 (20.02%) Finance
4 636 (7.68%) Manufacturing
5 522 (6.31%) Organisational Skills
6 501 (6.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 486 (5.87%) Law
8 410 (4.95%) Retail
9 362 (4.37%) Marketing
10 327 (3.95%) Public Sector
11 317 (3.83%) Legal
12 306 (3.70%) Banking
13 224 (2.71%) Electronics
14 212 (2.56%) Aerospace
15 190 (2.30%) Telecoms
16 174 (2.10%) Influencing Skills
17 154 (1.86%) Presentation Skills
18 110 (1.33%) Documentation Skills
19 90 (1.09%) Advertising
20 89 (1.08%) Games
Job Titles
1 1,078 (13.02%) Analyst
2 921 (11.13%) Senior
3 820 (9.91%) Developer
4 694 (8.38%) IT Support
5 570 (6.89%) Support Engineer
6 511 (6.17%) Lead
7 407 (4.92%) Consultant
8 389 (4.70%) IT Engineer
9 336 (4.06%) Support Analyst
10 308 (3.72%) Software Engineer
11 297 (3.59%) IT Support Engineer
12 278 (3.36%) Architect
13 259 (3.13%) Technical Support
14 253 (3.06%) Systems Engineer
15 245 (2.96%) Support Technician
16 218 (2.63%) IT Technician
17 212 (2.56%) Technical Engineer
18 194 (2.34%) Data Engineer
19 188 (2.27%) Technical Support Engineer
20 178 (2.15%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 378 (4.57%) .NET
2 372 (4.49%) Terraform
3 309 (3.73%) React
4 265 (3.20%) REST
5 264 (3.19%) HTML
6 204 (2.46%) CSS
7 180 (2.17%) RESTful
8 150 (1.81%) Node.js
9 115 (1.39%) SOAP
10 109 (1.32%) Spring
11 103 (1.24%) AngularJS
12 102 (1.23%) JSON
13 95 (1.15%) Vue
14 94 (1.14%) ASP.NET
15 90 (1.09%) Kafka
16 89 (1.08%) Middleware
17 88 (1.06%) Web Services
18 78 (0.94%) XML
19 75 (0.91%) OAuth
20 70 (0.85%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 538 (6.50%) Onboarding
2 530 (6.40%) Driving Licence
3 426 (5.15%) Self-Motivation
4 342 (4.13%) Management Information System
5 305 (3.68%) Cloud Native
6 240 (2.90%) Product Ownership
7 179 (2.16%) Data Centre
8 174 (2.10%) Legacy Systems
9 162 (1.96%) Distributed Systems
10 145 (1.75%) Enterprise Software
11 117 (1.41%) Analytical Mindset
11 117 (1.41%) Data Structures
12 110 (1.33%) Security Posture
13 102 (1.23%) NHS
14 99 (1.20%) Algorithms
15 98 (1.18%) AI Agents
16 91 (1.10%) Cyber Threat
17 90 (1.09%) Social Media
18 87 (1.05%) Robotics
19 84 (1.01%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 1,249 (15.09%) Windows
2 558 (6.74%) Linux
3 543 (6.56%) Windows Server
4 155 (1.87%) Windows 10
5 114 (1.38%) Windows Server 2016
6 106 (1.28%) Android
7 103 (1.24%) Mac OS
8 96 (1.16%) Apple iOS
9 54 (0.65%) Unix
10 46 (0.56%) Windows Server 2019
11 34 (0.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 32 (0.39%) Ubuntu
13 30 (0.36%) VMS
14 19 (0.23%) CentOS
15 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
16 11 (0.13%) Debian
17 9 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
17 9 (0.11%) FreeRTOS
17 9 (0.11%) Mac OS X
18 7 (0.085%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,040 (24.64%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,360 (16.43%) Agile
3 1,236 (14.93%) Customer Service
4 1,069 (12.91%) AI
5 1,004 (12.13%) Decision-Making
6 913 (11.03%) CI/CD
7 906 (10.94%) Stakeholder Management
8 892 (10.78%) Mentoring
9 783 (9.46%) Analytics
10 766 (9.25%) Software Engineering
11 761 (9.19%) DevOps
12 680 (8.21%) Cybersecurity
13 664 (8.02%) Roadmaps
14 663 (8.01%) ITIL
15 621 (7.50%) Business Intelligence
16 612 (7.39%) Project Delivery
17 599 (7.24%) Computer Science
18 598 (7.22%) Project Management
19 551 (6.66%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 538 (6.50%) Collaborative Working
Programming Languages
1 1,302 (15.73%) SQL
2 1,199 (14.48%) Python
3 576 (6.96%) JavaScript
4 482 (5.82%) C#
5 426 (5.15%) Java
6 367 (4.43%) PowerShell
7 256 (3.09%) TypeScript
8 224 (2.71%) C++
9 180 (2.17%) Bash
10 91 (1.10%) C
10 91 (1.10%) PHP
11 83 (1.00%) Go
12 71 (0.86%) T-SQL
13 69 (0.83%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 49 (0.59%) Shell Script
15 47 (0.57%) Perl
16 45 (0.54%) Rust
17 44 (0.53%) R
17 44 (0.53%) Scala
18 40 (0.48%) VBA
Qualifications
1 1,438 (17.37%) Degree
2 764 (9.23%) Security Cleared
3 513 (6.20%) SC Cleared
4 319 (3.85%) Computer Science Degree
5 232 (2.80%) DBS Check
6 206 (2.49%) Microsoft Certification
7 185 (2.23%) DV Cleared
8 167 (2.02%) Azure Certification
9 149 (1.80%) Cisco Certification
10 143 (1.73%) CISSP
11 141 (1.70%) BPSS Clearance
12 131 (1.58%) Master's Degree
13 117 (1.41%) HNC
14 107 (1.29%) PMI Certification
15 98 (1.18%) HND
16 84 (1.01%) CCNA
16 84 (1.01%) PMP
17 82 (0.99%) CISM
18 75 (0.91%) CCNP
19 70 (0.85%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 484 (5.85%) QA
2 413 (4.99%) Data Quality
3 340 (4.11%) GDPR
4 233 (2.81%) Accessibility
5 231 (2.79%) SLA
6 202 (2.44%) Cyber Essentials
7 190 (2.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 160 (1.93%) NIST
9 144 (1.74%) PCI DSS
10 62 (0.75%) PMO
11 54 (0.65%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 38 (0.46%) GRC
13 33 (0.40%) ISO 9001
14 25 (0.30%) SOC 2
15 23 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
16 22 (0.27%) COBIT
16 22 (0.27%) GMP
17 21 (0.25%) NCSC
17 21 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
18 19 (0.23%) WCAG
System Software
1 837 (10.11%) Active Directory
2 374 (4.52%) Docker
3 277 (3.35%) Hyper-V
4 252 (3.04%) VMware Infrastructure
5 70 (0.85%) Terminal Server
6 57 (0.69%) Firmware
7 51 (0.62%) Virtual Desktop
8 40 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
9 35 (0.42%) vSphere
10 18 (0.22%) Embedded Firmware
10 18 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
11 13 (0.16%) KVM
12 7 (0.085%) XenApp
13 5 (0.060%) ClearTrust
13 5 (0.060%) GPFS
13 5 (0.060%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 5 (0.060%) Squid
13 5 (0.060%) StorNext
13 5 (0.060%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.060%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 332 (4.01%) Kubernetes
2 277 (3.35%) Microsoft Intune
3 157 (1.90%) Ansible
4 97 (1.17%) Grafana
5 75 (0.91%) SCCM
6 58 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
7 55 (0.66%) Prometheus
8 28 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
9 26 (0.31%) Nagios
10 25 (0.30%) FortiGate
11 21 (0.25%) Puppet
12 15 (0.18%) Argo
13 13 (0.16%) Kibana
14 12 (0.14%) Functional Safety
14 12 (0.14%) Proxmox
15 11 (0.13%) Autotask
15 11 (0.13%) logstash
15 11 (0.13%) Nmap
16 10 (0.12%) Podman
16 10 (0.12%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 2,378 (28.73%) Microsoft
2 368 (4.45%) VMware
3 249 (3.01%) SAP
4 238 (2.88%) Oracle
5 237 (2.86%) Google
6 170 (2.05%) Cisco
7 167 (2.02%) ServiceNow
8 161 (1.94%) Salesforce
9 130 (1.57%) Databricks
9 130 (1.57%) Veeam
10 124 (1.50%) Splunk
11 111 (1.34%) SolarWinds
12 78 (0.94%) Tanium
13 76 (0.92%) Sage
14 74 (0.89%) Apple
15 71 (0.86%) Nimble Storage
16 70 (0.85%) Brocade
17 62 (0.75%) Fortinet
18 57 (0.69%) Dell
19 56 (0.68%) HubSpot