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 17 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 7 4 10
Rank change year-on-year -3 +6 +3
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,686 9,301 6,437
As % of all permanent jobs in England 12.98% 18.07% 14.90%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.56% 20.22% 15.93%
Number of salaries quoted 4,521 4,154 4,618
10th Percentile £26,500 £30,825 £28,290
25th Percentile £31,250 £40,000 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -18.18% - -
75th Percentile £65,000 £73,750 £75,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £87,500 £91,934
UK median annual salary £46,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -16.36% - -

All Process and 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 42,973 46,002 40,417
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 83.43% 89.38% 93.53%
Number of salaries quoted 25,566 23,576 31,202
10th Percentile £28,500 £35,000 £32,500
25th Percentile £36,750 £45,000 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%
75th Percentile £76,000 £80,000 £81,250
90th Percentile £96,250 £100,000 £100,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -2.44%

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 17 December 2025.

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 17 December 2025. 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 -2 1,974 £65,000 - 854
South East -3 1,379 £41,000 -19.56% 1,375
North of England -14 1,296 £45,000 -5.26% 1,275
Midlands -13 929 £38,000 -24.00% 779
North West -10 717 £47,683 - 572
South West -2 579 £40,000 -27.27% 506
West Midlands -16 551 £42,500 -22.73% 422
Yorkshire -4 468 £38,500 -14.44% 568
East of England -4 436 £35,000 -31.33% 718
East Midlands +2 377 £32,500 -7.14% 349
North East +3 111 £33,500 -33.00% 153
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
1 325 (4.86%) Microsoft Exchange
2 289 (4.32%) SharePoint
3 79 (1.18%) Confluence
4 47 (0.70%) IIS
5 46 (0.69%) Apache Spark
6 45 (0.67%) Apache
7 35 (0.52%) Apache Airflow
8 33 (0.49%) CMS
9 27 (0.40%) WordPress
10 10 (0.15%) Headless CMS
10 10 (0.15%) nginx
10 10 (0.15%) SAS
11 9 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 7 (0.10%) Anypoint
12 7 (0.10%) Apache Solr
13 6 (0.090%) HCL Notes
14 5 (0.075%) Camunda
14 5 (0.075%) Drupal
14 5 (0.075%) Exchange Server 2013
14 5 (0.075%) Umbraco
Applications
1 537 (8.03%) Microsoft Office
2 507 (7.58%) Microsoft Excel
3 88 (1.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 35 (0.52%) Maya
5 28 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
6 25 (0.37%) MS Visio
7 20 (0.30%) AutoCAD
8 16 (0.24%) Microsoft Project
8 16 (0.24%) Photoshop
9 14 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 12 (0.18%) Adobe Illustrator
10 12 (0.18%) SOLIDWORKS
11 11 (0.16%) Simulink
12 9 (0.13%) Adobe Premiere
13 5 (0.075%) Adobe After Effects
13 5 (0.075%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.075%) Trello
14 4 (0.060%) Autodesk Inventor
14 4 (0.060%) Chatbot
14 4 (0.060%) Notion
Business Applications
1 116 (1.73%) SAP S/4HANA
2 92 (1.38%) Dynamics CRM
3 45 (0.67%) NetSuite
4 24 (0.36%) Shopify
5 22 (0.33%) SAP FI
6 21 (0.31%) SAP CO
7 18 (0.27%) SAP FI/CO
8 15 (0.22%) Endur
8 15 (0.22%) SAP Business One
9 14 (0.21%) Oracle Payables
10 12 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
10 12 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
11 11 (0.16%) Oracle Assets
11 11 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
12 10 (0.15%) Sage 200
13 8 (0.12%) Exchequer
13 8 (0.12%) JDE EnterpriseOne
14 6 (0.090%) Sage X3
14 6 (0.090%) SAP WM
14 6 (0.090%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 1,456 (21.78%) Azure
2 947 (14.16%) Microsoft 365
3 696 (10.41%) AWS
4 564 (8.44%) Power Platform
5 417 (6.24%) SaaS
6 289 (4.32%) Entra ID
7 233 (3.48%) GCP
8 174 (2.60%) Azure DevOps
9 138 (2.06%) Serverless
10 137 (2.05%) GitHub
11 108 (1.62%) Power Automate
12 100 (1.50%) Dynamics 365
13 76 (1.14%) PowerApps
14 74 (1.11%) AWS Lambda
15 73 (1.09%) Azure Data Factory
16 67 (1.00%) Amazon S3
17 62 (0.93%) OneDrive
18 59 (0.88%) AWS CloudFormation
19 57 (0.85%) Azure Synapse Analytics
20 56 (0.84%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 389 (5.82%) DNS
2 351 (5.25%) Firewall
3 328 (4.91%) DHCP
4 220 (3.29%) VPN
5 191 (2.86%) TCP/IP
6 183 (2.74%) WAN
7 180 (2.69%) Wi-Fi
8 169 (2.53%) LAN
9 117 (1.75%) VLAN
10 81 (1.21%) VoIP
11 78 (1.17%) Wireless
12 68 (1.02%) Broadband
13 65 (0.97%) Network Security
14 62 (0.93%) Remote Desktop
15 51 (0.76%) SAN
16 43 (0.64%) SD-WAN
17 42 (0.63%) Internet
18 27 (0.40%) Unified Communications
19 26 (0.39%) BGP
19 26 (0.39%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 480 (7.18%) Power BI
2 329 (4.92%) SQL Server
3 165 (2.47%) Relational Database
4 136 (2.03%) Tableau
5 133 (1.99%) Data Warehouse
6 131 (1.96%) MySQL
7 130 (1.94%) PostgreSQL
8 120 (1.79%) Data Lake
9 118 (1.76%) NoSQL
10 111 (1.66%) Amazon RDS
11 71 (1.06%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 66 (0.99%) SAP BW
13 58 (0.87%) MongoDB
14 47 (0.70%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 46 (0.69%) Metadata
16 44 (0.66%) Big Data
17 40 (0.60%) Azure SQL Database
18 38 (0.57%) DynamoDB
19 37 (0.55%) Amazon Redshift
20 36 (0.54%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 276 (4.13%) Git
2 262 (3.92%) JIRA
3 89 (1.33%) Jenkins
4 80 (1.20%) GitLab
5 55 (0.82%) Selenium
6 29 (0.43%) Cypress.io
7 24 (0.36%) Bitbucket
7 24 (0.36%) Visual Studio
8 17 (0.25%) Octopus Deploy
8 17 (0.25%) Robot Framework
8 17 (0.25%) SonarQube
9 16 (0.24%) LabVIEW
10 15 (0.22%) Maven
10 15 (0.22%) TeamCity
11 14 (0.21%) Snyk
11 14 (0.21%) WebDriver
12 13 (0.19%) JUnit
13 12 (0.18%) Cucumber
13 12 (0.18%) Subversion
14 10 (0.15%) Rational DOORS
General
1 3,697 (55.29%) Social Skills
2 2,042 (30.54%) Analytical Skills
3 1,607 (24.04%) Finance
4 440 (6.58%) Marketing
5 398 (5.95%) Retail
6 378 (5.65%) Law
7 354 (5.29%) Manufacturing
8 335 (5.01%) Organisational Skills
9 278 (4.16%) Legal
10 276 (4.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 273 (4.08%) Public Sector
12 257 (3.84%) Banking
13 196 (2.93%) Telecoms
14 170 (2.54%) Electronics
15 157 (2.35%) Presentation Skills
16 128 (1.91%) Games
17 96 (1.44%) Influencing Skills
18 90 (1.35%) Automotive
19 88 (1.32%) Documentation Skills
20 80 (1.20%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,054 (15.76%) Analyst
2 811 (12.13%) Senior
3 689 (10.31%) IT Support
4 621 (9.29%) Support Engineer
5 604 (9.03%) Developer
6 460 (6.88%) Lead
7 383 (5.73%) Support Analyst
8 320 (4.79%) Technical Support
9 253 (3.78%) IT Engineer
10 233 (3.48%) Consultant
11 229 (3.43%) Technical Engineer
12 221 (3.31%) Business Analyst
13 219 (3.28%) Architect
14 214 (3.20%) Technical Support Engineer
15 212 (3.17%) 2nd Line Support
16 208 (3.11%) IT Support Engineer
17 195 (2.92%) Support Technician
18 178 (2.66%) Applications Support
19 173 (2.59%) Systems Engineer
20 150 (2.24%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 289 (4.32%) .NET
2 260 (3.89%) React
3 241 (3.60%) HTML
4 198 (2.96%) CSS
5 150 (2.24%) REST
6 142 (2.12%) Node.js
7 137 (2.05%) RESTful
8 100 (1.50%) AngularJS
9 78 (1.17%) XML
10 73 (1.09%) JSON
11 71 (1.06%) Spring
12 64 (0.96%) Vue
13 63 (0.94%) Kafka
14 62 (0.93%) .NET Framework
15 60 (0.90%) ASP.NET
16 55 (0.82%) SOAP
17 50 (0.75%) Django
18 49 (0.73%) Web Services
19 45 (0.67%) GraphQL
19 45 (0.67%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 549 (8.21%) Onboarding
2 518 (7.75%) Driving Licence
3 419 (6.27%) Self-Motivation
4 221 (3.31%) Management Information System
5 211 (3.16%) Analytical Mindset
6 157 (2.35%) Cloud Native
7 151 (2.26%) Product Ownership
8 141 (2.11%) Legacy Systems
9 122 (1.82%) Data Centre
10 106 (1.59%) Enterprise Software
11 89 (1.33%) FMCG
12 86 (1.29%) Algorithms
13 71 (1.06%) Virtual Team
14 69 (1.03%) Data Structures
15 64 (0.96%) Distributed Systems
16 57 (0.85%) Security Posture
17 51 (0.76%) Mobile App
18 48 (0.72%) Low-Code
19 46 (0.69%) e-Learning
20 45 (0.67%) EPoS
Operating Systems
1 1,108 (16.57%) Windows
2 422 (6.31%) Windows Server
3 380 (5.68%) Linux
4 188 (2.81%) Windows 10
5 100 (1.50%) Windows Server 2016
6 94 (1.41%) Mac OS
7 79 (1.18%) Android
8 68 (1.02%) Apple iOS
9 56 (0.84%) Unix
10 44 (0.66%) Windows Server 2019
11 24 (0.36%) Windows 7
12 21 (0.31%) Windows Server 2012
13 19 (0.28%) VMS
14 17 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
15 9 (0.13%) Mac OS X
16 8 (0.12%) CentOS
17 7 (0.10%) Ubuntu
18 6 (0.090%) Windows Server 2008
19 4 (0.060%) OpenWrt
19 4 (0.060%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,180 (17.65%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,115 (16.68%) Agile
3 1,000 (14.96%) Customer Service
4 766 (11.46%) Analytics
5 658 (9.84%) Business Intelligence
6 633 (9.47%) Mentoring
7 627 (9.38%) AI
8 621 (9.29%) Decision-Making
9 605 (9.05%) Project Management
10 593 (8.87%) ITIL
11 587 (8.78%) DevOps
12 546 (8.17%) Cybersecurity
13 515 (7.70%) CI/CD
14 479 (7.16%) Computer Science
15 464 (6.94%) ERP
16 461 (6.90%) Stakeholder Management
17 437 (6.54%) Change Management
18 425 (6.36%) Data Analysis
19 402 (6.01%) CRM
19 402 (6.01%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 1,084 (16.21%) SQL
2 875 (13.09%) Python
3 394 (5.89%) JavaScript
4 366 (5.47%) C#
5 313 (4.68%) PowerShell
6 309 (4.62%) Java
7 144 (2.15%) TypeScript
8 117 (1.75%) Bash
9 99 (1.48%) PHP
10 86 (1.29%) C++
11 62 (0.93%) T-SQL
12 53 (0.79%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 42 (0.63%) R
14 35 (0.52%) C
14 35 (0.52%) Go
14 35 (0.52%) VBA
15 30 (0.45%) Scala
16 27 (0.40%) MATLAB
17 26 (0.39%) Bicep
18 24 (0.36%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,590 (23.78%) Degree
2 505 (7.55%) Security Cleared
3 322 (4.82%) SC Cleared
4 242 (3.62%) Computer Science Degree
5 185 (2.77%) Microsoft Certification
6 177 (2.65%) Master's Degree
7 133 (1.99%) DV Cleared
8 118 (1.76%) DBS Check
9 114 (1.71%) CISSP
10 103 (1.54%) BPSS Clearance
11 100 (1.50%) Cisco Certification
12 87 (1.30%) ACCA
13 73 (1.09%) CIMA
14 69 (1.03%) CISM
15 68 (1.02%) HND
16 66 (0.99%) A+ Certification
17 65 (0.97%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
18 62 (0.93%) CCNA
19 61 (0.91%) Network+ Certification
20 59 (0.88%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 359 (5.37%) QA
2 313 (4.68%) Data Quality
3 214 (3.20%) GDPR
4 173 (2.59%) Cyber Essentials
4 173 (2.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 143 (2.14%) Accessibility
5 143 (2.14%) SLA
6 106 (1.59%) PCI DSS
7 85 (1.27%) NIST
8 54 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 32 (0.48%) PMO
10 30 (0.45%) ISO 9001
11 21 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
11 21 (0.31%) SOC 2
12 20 (0.30%) GRC
13 13 (0.19%) COBIT
13 13 (0.19%) WCAG
14 10 (0.15%) HIPAA
15 9 (0.13%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
16 8 (0.12%) ISAE 3402
System Software
1 766 (11.46%) Active Directory
2 271 (4.05%) Docker
3 222 (3.32%) Hyper-V
4 151 (2.26%) VMware Infrastructure
5 77 (1.15%) Terminal Server
6 35 (0.52%) Virtual Machines
7 32 (0.48%) Firmware
8 20 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
8 20 (0.30%) vSphere
9 15 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (0.075%) KVM
11 4 (0.060%) ProxySG
11 4 (0.060%) Virtual Servers
11 4 (0.060%) XenApp
12 3 (0.045%) BitLocker
12 3 (0.045%) Postfix
12 3 (0.045%) vCloud
12 3 (0.045%) VMware NSX
12 3 (0.045%) VMware Workstation
13 2 (0.030%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 290 (4.34%) Microsoft Intune
2 245 (3.66%) Terraform
3 217 (3.25%) Kubernetes
4 128 (1.91%) Ansible
5 58 (0.87%) Grafana
6 54 (0.81%) SCCM
7 42 (0.63%) BMC PATROL
7 42 (0.63%) Prometheus
8 26 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
9 22 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
10 18 (0.27%) Nagios
11 16 (0.24%) vCenter Server
12 14 (0.21%) Argo
12 14 (0.21%) FortiGate
13 13 (0.19%) PaperCut
14 12 (0.18%) Cisco CUCM
14 12 (0.18%) ZABBIX
15 10 (0.15%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 10 (0.15%) QRadar
16 7 (0.10%) Autotask
Vendors
1 1,770 (26.47%) Microsoft
2 438 (6.55%) SAP
3 274 (4.10%) VMware
4 261 (3.90%) Oracle
5 184 (2.75%) Cisco
6 151 (2.26%) Salesforce
7 144 (2.15%) ServiceNow
8 133 (1.99%) Google
9 129 (1.93%) Veeam
10 123 (1.84%) Databricks
11 118 (1.76%) Splunk
12 115 (1.72%) SolarWinds
13 86 (1.29%) Apple
14 79 (1.18%) Adobe
14 79 (1.18%) Nimble Storage
14 79 (1.18%) Tanium
15 77 (1.15%) Brocade
16 66 (0.99%) Sage
16 66 (0.99%) Workday
17 59 (0.88%) Dell