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 6 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 4 7
Rank change year-on-year -6 +3 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,420 7,104 11,884
As % of all permanent jobs in England 8.85% 19.39% 15.02%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.60% 20.81% 17.43%
Number of salaries quoted 4,467 4,463 8,300
10th Percentile £27,000 £28,750 £26,250
25th Percentile £31,250 £37,500 £33,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% +10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £68,263 £75,000 £68,750
90th Percentile £86,352 £90,000 £86,250
UK median annual salary £46,500 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -15.45% +10.00% -9.50%

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 55,362 34,133 68,175
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 76.33% 93.17% 86.17%
Number of salaries quoted 34,854 20,495 52,447
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £43,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.17% +9.09% -12.00%
75th Percentile £77,500 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £99,116 £103,750 £93,750
UK median annual salary £55,500 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -7.50% +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 6 April 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 6 April 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 -3 1,966 £67,500 +3.85% 986
North of England -19 1,288 £41,000 -10.87% 662
South East -7 1,189 £45,000 -11.71% 802
Midlands -19 881 £38,500 -18.95% 478
North West -17 662 £41,500 -14.43% 365
South West -7 551 £43,500 -8.42% 308
West Midlands -24 522 £42,500 -19.05% 278
Yorkshire -8 499 £35,500 -15.48% 222
East of England -9 445 £40,000 -20.00% 288
East Midlands -3 356 £35,000 -11.39% 199
North East -12 127 £45,497 +1.10% 92
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
1 338 (5.26%) Microsoft Exchange
2 282 (4.39%) SharePoint
3 77 (1.20%) Confluence
4 57 (0.89%) CMS
5 55 (0.86%) Apache
6 44 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
7 36 (0.56%) Apache Spark
8 34 (0.53%) IIS
9 28 (0.44%) WordPress
10 16 (0.25%) SAS
11 14 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
12 12 (0.19%) Exchange Server 2013
12 12 (0.19%) nginx
13 10 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2007
13 10 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2010
14 9 (0.14%) Anypoint
14 9 (0.14%) Drupal
15 6 (0.093%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 4 (0.062%) Moodle
16 4 (0.062%) OpenStack
Applications
1 447 (6.96%) Microsoft Office
2 353 (5.50%) Microsoft Excel
3 70 (1.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 37 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
5 36 (0.56%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
7 13 (0.20%) AutoCAD
8 12 (0.19%) Photoshop
9 11 (0.17%) Adobe Illustrator
10 10 (0.16%) Chatbot
11 9 (0.14%) Maya
12 8 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 7 (0.11%) Fusion 360
14 6 (0.093%) Adobe XD
15 5 (0.078%) SOLIDWORKS
16 4 (0.062%) Trello
17 3 (0.047%) Elementor
17 3 (0.047%) InDesign
17 3 (0.047%) Simulink
18 2 (0.031%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 60 (0.93%) Dynamics CRM
2 43 (0.67%) SAP S/4HANA
3 32 (0.50%) NetSuite
4 21 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
5 18 (0.28%) Shopify
6 17 (0.26%) Endur
6 17 (0.26%) SAP CO
7 15 (0.23%) Dynamics NAV
8 13 (0.20%) Maximo
9 11 (0.17%) Magento
10 10 (0.16%) iTrent
10 10 (0.16%) Workday HCM
11 8 (0.12%) SAP FI
11 8 (0.12%) SAP FI/CO
12 7 (0.11%) IBM Planning Analytics
12 7 (0.11%) Q-Pulse
12 7 (0.11%) Sage 200
12 7 (0.11%) SAP ERP
13 6 (0.093%) Elite 3E
13 6 (0.093%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 1,390 (21.65%) Azure
2 996 (15.51%) Microsoft 365
3 796 (12.40%) AWS
4 480 (7.48%) Power Platform
5 356 (5.55%) SaaS
6 298 (4.64%) GCP
7 271 (4.22%) Entra ID
8 172 (2.68%) GitHub
9 168 (2.62%) Serverless
10 167 (2.60%) Azure DevOps
11 130 (2.02%) Power Automate
12 112 (1.74%) Dynamics 365
13 90 (1.40%) Amazon S3
14 88 (1.37%) Google Workspace
15 83 (1.29%) GitHub Actions
16 82 (1.28%) Azure Data Factory
17 81 (1.26%) AWS CloudFormation
17 81 (1.26%) PowerApps
18 78 (1.21%) AWS Lambda
19 76 (1.18%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 407 (6.34%) DNS
2 377 (5.87%) Firewall
3 348 (5.42%) DHCP
4 251 (3.91%) VPN
5 217 (3.38%) WAN
6 205 (3.19%) TCP/IP
7 203 (3.16%) Wi-Fi
8 185 (2.88%) Broadband
9 182 (2.83%) LAN
10 122 (1.90%) VLAN
11 101 (1.57%) Wireless
12 86 (1.34%) VoIP
13 69 (1.07%) SD-WAN
14 54 (0.84%) Network Security
15 46 (0.72%) SAN
16 40 (0.62%) Internet
17 34 (0.53%) Remote Desktop
18 32 (0.50%) Structured Cabling
19 30 (0.47%) BGP
20 29 (0.45%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 404 (6.29%) Power BI
2 272 (4.24%) SQL Server
3 136 (2.12%) Tableau
4 129 (2.01%) Data Warehouse
5 119 (1.85%) NoSQL
6 105 (1.64%) Relational Database
7 103 (1.60%) PostgreSQL
8 94 (1.46%) Amazon RDS
9 85 (1.32%) MySQL
10 67 (1.04%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 56 (0.87%) Power Query
12 54 (0.84%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 53 (0.83%) MongoDB
14 48 (0.75%) Azure SQL Database
15 47 (0.73%) DynamoDB
16 46 (0.72%) Amazon Redshift
17 41 (0.64%) Metadata
18 39 (0.61%) Data Lake
19 38 (0.59%) Big Data
20 26 (0.40%) Redis
Development Applications
1 277 (4.31%) Git
2 227 (3.54%) JIRA
3 114 (1.78%) Jenkins
4 98 (1.53%) GitLab
5 49 (0.76%) Selenium
6 29 (0.45%) Visual Studio
7 23 (0.36%) Cypress.io
8 20 (0.31%) Rational DOORS
9 19 (0.30%) Burp Suite
9 19 (0.30%) Metasploit
10 18 (0.28%) Chocolatey
10 18 (0.28%) Cucumber
10 18 (0.28%) Maven
10 18 (0.28%) SonarQube
11 17 (0.26%) CircleCI
11 17 (0.26%) LabVIEW
12 16 (0.25%) TeamCity
13 15 (0.23%) Bitbucket
13 15 (0.23%) Robot Framework
14 13 (0.20%) JUnit
General
1 3,112 (48.47%) Social Skills
2 1,952 (30.40%) Analytical Skills
3 1,395 (21.73%) Finance
4 450 (7.01%) Organisational Skills
5 366 (5.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 366 (5.70%) Marketing
6 313 (4.88%) Law
7 307 (4.78%) Retail
8 302 (4.70%) Banking
8 302 (4.70%) Legal
9 295 (4.60%) Manufacturing
10 287 (4.47%) Public Sector
11 159 (2.48%) Presentation Skills
12 149 (2.32%) Telecoms
13 148 (2.31%) Electronics
14 101 (1.57%) Documentation Skills
15 87 (1.36%) Games
16 80 (1.25%) Influencing Skills
17 78 (1.21%) Financial Institution
18 74 (1.15%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 925 (14.41%) Analyst
2 764 (11.90%) Senior
3 748 (11.65%) IT Support
4 641 (9.98%) Support Engineer
5 580 (9.03%) Developer
6 397 (6.18%) Lead
7 390 (6.07%) IT Engineer
8 324 (5.05%) IT Support Engineer
9 296 (4.61%) Support Analyst
10 247 (3.85%) Consultant
11 216 (3.36%) Support Technician
12 214 (3.33%) Architect
13 203 (3.16%) Business Analyst
14 191 (2.98%) Technical Support
15 190 (2.96%) 2nd Line Support
16 185 (2.88%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 184 (2.87%) Software Engineer
18 179 (2.79%) Systems Engineer
19 167 (2.60%) IT Technician
20 151 (2.35%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 249 (3.88%) React
2 246 (3.83%) .NET
3 223 (3.47%) HTML
4 182 (2.83%) CSS
5 151 (2.35%) Node.js
6 127 (1.98%) REST
7 122 (1.90%) RESTful
8 70 (1.09%) Vue
9 69 (1.07%) Middleware
10 68 (1.06%) Django
11 67 (1.04%) Spring
12 65 (1.01%) JSON
13 63 (0.98%) AngularJS
13 63 (0.98%) Kafka
13 63 (0.98%) SOAP
13 63 (0.98%) XML
14 59 (0.92%) Flask
15 50 (0.78%) gRPC
16 49 (0.76%) FastAPI
17 47 (0.73%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 432 (6.73%) Onboarding
2 429 (6.68%) Driving Licence
3 368 (5.73%) Self-Motivation
4 203 (3.16%) Management Information System
5 173 (2.69%) Cloud Native
6 153 (2.38%) Analytical Mindset
7 148 (2.31%) Product Ownership
8 145 (2.26%) Distributed Systems
9 137 (2.13%) Data Centre
10 136 (2.12%) Legacy Systems
11 100 (1.56%) Enterprise Software
12 95 (1.48%) Social Media
13 94 (1.46%) Mobile App
14 85 (1.32%) Data Structures
15 73 (1.14%) Low-Code
16 61 (0.95%) Security Posture
17 58 (0.90%) Video\Live Streaming
18 56 (0.87%) Virtual Team
19 54 (0.84%) Algorithms
20 50 (0.78%) Over-the-Top Content
Operating Systems
1 1,110 (17.29%) Windows
2 424 (6.60%) Linux
3 422 (6.57%) Windows Server
4 171 (2.66%) Windows 10
5 124 (1.93%) Windows Server 2016
6 106 (1.65%) Android
7 88 (1.37%) Apple iOS
8 87 (1.36%) Mac OS
9 63 (0.98%) Unix
10 56 (0.87%) Windows Server 2019
11 40 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 38 (0.59%) Windows Server 2012
13 30 (0.47%) CentOS
14 26 (0.40%) Ubuntu
15 22 (0.34%) Windows 7
16 20 (0.31%) VMS
17 14 (0.22%) Mac OS X
18 11 (0.17%) Windows 8
19 9 (0.14%) Debian
20 8 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,151 (17.93%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,036 (16.14%) Agile
3 952 (14.83%) Customer Service
4 684 (10.65%) Mentoring
5 681 (10.61%) AI
6 665 (10.36%) Decision-Making
7 658 (10.25%) CI/CD
8 649 (10.11%) Analytics
9 611 (9.52%) DevOps
10 594 (9.25%) ITIL
11 544 (8.47%) Business Intelligence
12 534 (8.32%) Project Management
13 494 (7.69%) Computer Science
14 491 (7.65%) Stakeholder Management
15 443 (6.90%) Software Engineering
16 416 (6.48%) Cybersecurity
17 411 (6.40%) Roadmaps
18 398 (6.20%) Coaching
19 373 (5.81%) Process Improvement
20 347 (5.40%) CRM
Programming Languages
1 998 (15.55%) Python
2 899 (14.00%) SQL
3 430 (6.70%) JavaScript
4 323 (5.03%) Java
5 308 (4.80%) PowerShell
6 265 (4.13%) C#
7 182 (2.83%) TypeScript
8 158 (2.46%) Bash
9 91 (1.42%) C++
10 90 (1.40%) Go
11 84 (1.31%) PHP
12 79 (1.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 67 (1.04%) Scala
14 51 (0.79%) C
15 47 (0.73%) T-SQL
16 40 (0.62%) Kotlin
17 34 (0.53%) R
18 32 (0.50%) Rust
19 31 (0.48%) Apex Code
19 31 (0.48%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 1,264 (19.69%) Degree
2 466 (7.26%) Security Cleared
3 291 (4.53%) SC Cleared
4 248 (3.86%) Computer Science Degree
5 189 (2.94%) DBS Check
6 180 (2.80%) Microsoft Certification
7 129 (2.01%) Master's Degree
8 110 (1.71%) DV Cleared
9 106 (1.65%) CISSP
10 91 (1.42%) Cisco Certification
11 88 (1.37%) ACCA
12 85 (1.32%) A+ Certification
12 85 (1.32%) BPSS Clearance
13 76 (1.18%) CIMA
14 72 (1.12%) PMI Certification
15 67 (1.04%) CCNA
16 59 (0.92%) Network+ Certification
17 58 (0.90%) PMP
18 55 (0.86%) AWS Certification
19 52 (0.81%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 300 (4.67%) QA
2 288 (4.49%) Data Quality
3 245 (3.82%) GDPR
4 159 (2.48%) Cyber Essentials
5 158 (2.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 155 (2.41%) SLA
7 128 (1.99%) PCI DSS
8 121 (1.88%) NIST
9 116 (1.81%) Accessibility
10 51 (0.79%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 33 (0.51%) SOC 2
12 32 (0.50%) ISO 9001
13 30 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
14 25 (0.39%) PMO
15 20 (0.31%) COBIT
15 20 (0.31%) GRC
16 14 (0.22%) GMP
17 11 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
18 10 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 10 (0.16%) ITGC
System Software
1 744 (11.59%) Active Directory
2 305 (4.75%) Docker
3 220 (3.43%) Hyper-V
4 169 (2.63%) VMware Infrastructure
5 63 (0.98%) Terminal Server
6 35 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
7 34 (0.53%) Firmware
8 31 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
9 15 (0.23%) vSphere
10 14 (0.22%) KVM
11 10 (0.16%) VMware Workstation
12 9 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
13 7 (0.11%) IAG
13 7 (0.11%) XenApp
14 6 (0.093%) Virtual Servers
15 4 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 4 (0.062%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 2 (0.031%) BitLocker
16 2 (0.031%) VMware NSX
17 1 (0.016%) OpenDJ
Systems Management
1 299 (4.66%) Terraform
2 258 (4.02%) Microsoft Intune
3 224 (3.49%) Kubernetes
4 156 (2.43%) Ansible
5 94 (1.46%) Grafana
6 86 (1.34%) SCCM
7 57 (0.89%) Prometheus
8 30 (0.47%) Nagios
9 26 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
10 24 (0.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 22 (0.34%) BMC PATROL
12 18 (0.28%) Jamf Pro
13 15 (0.23%) Argo
13 15 (0.23%) vCenter Server
14 14 (0.22%) Autotask
14 14 (0.22%) Cisco CUCM
14 14 (0.22%) FortiGate
14 14 (0.22%) Kibana
15 13 (0.20%) Nessus
16 12 (0.19%) Puppet
Vendors
1 1,673 (26.06%) Microsoft
2 274 (4.27%) VMware
3 187 (2.91%) Oracle
4 162 (2.52%) Google
5 161 (2.51%) SAP
6 143 (2.23%) Cisco
6 143 (2.23%) ServiceNow
7 134 (2.09%) Salesforce
8 125 (1.95%) SolarWinds
9 121 (1.88%) Veeam
10 120 (1.87%) Splunk
11 119 (1.85%) Databricks
12 84 (1.31%) Adobe
13 82 (1.28%) Apple
14 71 (1.11%) Dell
15 64 (1.00%) Tanium
16 63 (0.98%) Brocade
16 63 (0.98%) Nimble Storage
17 55 (0.86%) Red Hat
18 50 (0.78%) Sage