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

6 months to
21 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 8,243 8,373 10,692
As % of all permanent jobs in England 8.65% 19.16% 14.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.77% 21.48% 18.16%
Number of salaries quoted 5,750 4,765 5,429
10th Percentile £27,750 £26,250 £26,750
25th Percentile £33,313 £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 70,019 38,976 58,865
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.51% 89.20% 81.10%
Number of salaries quoted 49,558 22,475 37,906
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 21 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 21 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 2,261 £65,000 - 1,118
North of England -8 1,671 £45,000 +5.88% 851
South East -3 1,569 £43,000 +1.18% 1,039
Midlands -8 1,198 £42,500 +10.39% 653
North West -6 879 £45,250 +0.56% 417
South West -4 811 £45,000 +25.00% 537
West Midlands -9 667 £42,500 -4.00% 390
East of England -3 661 £42,500 +21.43% 384
Yorkshire -8 545 £42,500 +21.43% 313
East Midlands -9 528 £40,500 +15.71% 262
North East -6 247 £48,500 +21.25% 137
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
1 455 (5.52%) SharePoint
2 395 (4.79%) Microsoft Exchange
3 102 (1.24%) Confluence
4 56 (0.68%) CMS
5 55 (0.67%) IIS
6 47 (0.57%) Apache
7 37 (0.45%) Apache Airflow
7 37 (0.45%) Apache Spark
8 36 (0.44%) 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 (0.073%) Drupal
Applications
1 523 (6.34%) Microsoft Office
2 475 (5.76%) Microsoft Excel
3 84 (1.02%) 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 7 (0.085%) Adobe Illustrator
14 6 (0.073%) Fusion 360
14 6 (0.073%) Navisworks
15 5 (0.061%) Autodesk Flame
15 5 (0.061%) Baselight
15 5 (0.061%) EPLAN
15 5 (0.061%) Lightworks
Business Applications
1 84 (1.02%) Dynamics CRM
1 84 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
2 59 (0.72%) NetSuite
3 29 (0.35%) Shopify
4 21 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
5 17 (0.21%) Magento
6 15 (0.18%) IBM Planning Analytics
6 15 (0.18%) SAP Business One
6 15 (0.18%) SAP ERP
7 14 (0.17%) Elite 3E
8 13 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
9 12 (0.15%) Dynamics AX
10 11 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
11 10 (0.12%) JDE EnterpriseOne
11 10 (0.12%) Oracle Applications
11 10 (0.12%) Sage X3
12 9 (0.11%) iTrent
12 9 (0.11%) Primavera
12 9 (0.11%) Sage 50
12 9 (0.11%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,710 (20.74%) Azure
2 1,270 (15.41%) Microsoft 365
3 1,020 (12.37%) AWS
4 697 (8.46%) Power Platform
5 395 (4.79%) Entra ID
6 365 (4.43%) SaaS
7 358 (4.34%) GCP
8 207 (2.51%) GitHub
9 205 (2.49%) Azure DevOps
10 188 (2.28%) Serverless
11 176 (2.14%) Dynamics 365
12 175 (2.12%) Power Automate
13 149 (1.81%) PowerApps
14 115 (1.40%) Microsoft Copilot
15 111 (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 75 (0.91%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 499 (6.05%) Firewall
2 460 (5.58%) DNS
3 388 (4.71%) DHCP
4 310 (3.76%) VPN
5 285 (3.46%) TCP/IP
6 204 (2.47%) WAN
7 202 (2.45%) Wi-Fi
8 198 (2.40%) LAN
9 169 (2.05%) Wireless
10 158 (1.92%) VLAN
11 146 (1.77%) Network Security
12 127 (1.54%) Broadband
13 106 (1.29%) VoIP
14 48 (0.58%) Internet
15 43 (0.52%) HTTP
15 43 (0.52%) SAN
16 38 (0.46%) SD-WAN
17 36 (0.44%) OSPF
18 35 (0.42%) BGP
19 33 (0.40%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 544 (6.60%) Power BI
2 418 (5.07%) SQL Server
3 146 (1.77%) Data Warehouse
3 146 (1.77%) MySQL
4 136 (1.65%) Amazon RDS
4 136 (1.65%) Relational Database
5 123 (1.49%) Tableau
6 119 (1.44%) PostgreSQL
7 106 (1.29%) NoSQL
8 96 (1.16%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 86 (1.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 63 (0.76%) MongoDB
11 62 (0.75%) Big Data
12 58 (0.70%) Azure SQL Database
13 56 (0.68%) Data Lake
14 52 (0.63%) Power Query
15 48 (0.58%) Metadata
16 42 (0.51%) DynamoDB
17 41 (0.50%) Electronic Patient Records
18 36 (0.44%) Looker
Development Applications
1 377 (4.57%) Git
2 293 (3.55%) JIRA
3 130 (1.58%) Jenkins
4 108 (1.31%) GitLab
5 36 (0.44%) Eclipse
6 35 (0.42%) Selenium
7 33 (0.40%) Subversion
8 32 (0.39%) JUnit
9 31 (0.38%) Claude Code
10 27 (0.33%) Cucumber
11 26 (0.32%) Postman
12 24 (0.29%) Rational DOORS
13 20 (0.24%) Bitbucket
14 19 (0.23%) Cypress.io
14 19 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
14 19 (0.23%) Visual Studio
15 18 (0.22%) SonarQube
16 16 (0.19%) Chocolatey
17 14 (0.17%) MLflow
17 14 (0.17%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 4,012 (48.67%) Social Skills
2 2,507 (30.41%) Analytical Skills
3 1,646 (19.97%) Finance
4 633 (7.68%) Manufacturing
5 515 (6.25%) Organisational Skills
6 496 (6.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 482 (5.85%) Law
8 406 (4.93%) Retail
9 360 (4.37%) Marketing
10 327 (3.97%) Public Sector
11 314 (3.81%) Legal
12 306 (3.71%) Banking
13 223 (2.71%) Electronics
14 208 (2.52%) Aerospace
15 190 (2.30%) Telecoms
16 174 (2.11%) Influencing Skills
17 154 (1.87%) Presentation Skills
18 109 (1.32%) Documentation Skills
19 90 (1.09%) Advertising
20 88 (1.07%) Games
Job Titles
1 1,074 (13.03%) Analyst
2 919 (11.15%) Senior
3 819 (9.94%) Developer
4 694 (8.42%) IT Support
5 570 (6.91%) Support Engineer
6 507 (6.15%) Lead
7 407 (4.94%) Consultant
8 389 (4.72%) IT Engineer
9 334 (4.05%) Support Analyst
10 308 (3.74%) Software Engineer
11 297 (3.60%) IT Support Engineer
12 278 (3.37%) Architect
13 260 (3.15%) Technical Support
14 253 (3.07%) Systems Engineer
15 247 (3.00%) Support Technician
16 220 (2.67%) IT Technician
17 213 (2.58%) Technical Engineer
18 195 (2.37%) Data Engineer
19 189 (2.29%) Technical Support Engineer
20 177 (2.15%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 376 (4.56%) .NET
2 371 (4.50%) Terraform
3 308 (3.74%) React
4 264 (3.20%) HTML
4 264 (3.20%) REST
5 204 (2.47%) CSS
6 179 (2.17%) RESTful
7 150 (1.82%) Node.js
8 115 (1.40%) SOAP
9 109 (1.32%) Spring
10 103 (1.25%) AngularJS
11 102 (1.24%) JSON
12 95 (1.15%) Vue
13 93 (1.13%) ASP.NET
14 90 (1.09%) Kafka
15 89 (1.08%) Middleware
16 87 (1.06%) Web Services
17 78 (0.95%) XML
18 76 (0.92%) OAuth
19 70 (0.85%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 533 (6.47%) Onboarding
2 526 (6.38%) Driving Licence
3 423 (5.13%) Self-Motivation
4 343 (4.16%) Management Information System
5 305 (3.70%) Cloud Native
6 238 (2.89%) Product Ownership
7 178 (2.16%) Data Centre
8 174 (2.11%) Legacy Systems
9 162 (1.97%) Distributed Systems
10 145 (1.76%) Enterprise Software
11 119 (1.44%) Analytical Mindset
12 117 (1.42%) Data Structures
13 110 (1.33%) Security Posture
14 103 (1.25%) NHS
15 99 (1.20%) Algorithms
16 97 (1.18%) AI Agents
17 91 (1.10%) Cyber Threat
17 91 (1.10%) Social Media
18 86 (1.04%) Robotics
19 84 (1.02%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 1,245 (15.10%) Windows
2 557 (6.76%) Linux
3 540 (6.55%) Windows Server
4 156 (1.89%) Windows 10
5 114 (1.38%) Windows Server 2016
6 105 (1.27%) Android
7 101 (1.23%) Mac OS
8 93 (1.13%) Apple iOS
9 54 (0.66%) Unix
10 45 (0.55%) Windows Server 2019
11 34 (0.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 33 (0.40%) Ubuntu
13 30 (0.36%) VMS
14 20 (0.24%) 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 2,031 (24.64%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,357 (16.46%) Agile
3 1,227 (14.89%) Customer Service
4 1,069 (12.97%) AI
5 1,003 (12.17%) Decision-Making
6 911 (11.05%) CI/CD
7 900 (10.92%) Stakeholder Management
8 890 (10.80%) Mentoring
9 784 (9.51%) Analytics
10 765 (9.28%) Software Engineering
11 758 (9.20%) DevOps
12 678 (8.23%) Cybersecurity
13 665 (8.07%) Roadmaps
14 660 (8.01%) ITIL
15 616 (7.47%) Business Intelligence
16 608 (7.38%) Project Delivery
17 600 (7.28%) Computer Science
18 598 (7.25%) Project Management
19 550 (6.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 535 (6.49%) Collaborative Working
Programming Languages
1 1,302 (15.80%) SQL
2 1,196 (14.51%) Python
3 574 (6.96%) JavaScript
4 479 (5.81%) C#
5 425 (5.16%) Java
6 361 (4.38%) PowerShell
7 255 (3.09%) TypeScript
8 223 (2.71%) C++
9 180 (2.18%) Bash
10 91 (1.10%) C
10 91 (1.10%) PHP
11 83 (1.01%) Go
12 71 (0.86%) T-SQL
13 69 (0.84%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 49 (0.59%) Shell Script
15 47 (0.57%) Perl
16 45 (0.55%) Rust
17 44 (0.53%) Scala
18 43 (0.52%) R
19 40 (0.49%) VBA
Qualifications
1 1,430 (17.35%) Degree
2 761 (9.23%) Security Cleared
3 511 (6.20%) SC Cleared
4 319 (3.87%) Computer Science Degree
5 229 (2.78%) DBS Check
6 203 (2.46%) Microsoft Certification
7 183 (2.22%) DV Cleared
8 166 (2.01%) Azure Certification
9 148 (1.80%) Cisco Certification
10 144 (1.75%) CISSP
11 140 (1.70%) BPSS Clearance
12 131 (1.59%) Master's Degree
13 117 (1.42%) HNC
14 106 (1.29%) PMI Certification
15 96 (1.16%) HND
16 83 (1.01%) CCNA
16 83 (1.01%) PMP
17 82 (0.99%) CISM
18 74 (0.90%) CCNP
19 70 (0.85%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 479 (5.81%) QA
2 411 (4.99%) Data Quality
3 337 (4.09%) GDPR
4 231 (2.80%) SLA
5 230 (2.79%) Accessibility
6 200 (2.43%) Cyber Essentials
7 190 (2.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 161 (1.95%) NIST
9 144 (1.75%) PCI DSS
10 62 (0.75%) PMO
11 52 (0.63%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 39 (0.47%) GRC
13 33 (0.40%) ISO 9001
14 25 (0.30%) SOC 2
15 23 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
15 23 (0.28%) GMP
16 22 (0.27%) COBIT
17 21 (0.25%) NCSC
17 21 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
18 19 (0.23%) WCAG
System Software
1 834 (10.12%) Active Directory
2 375 (4.55%) Docker
3 275 (3.34%) Hyper-V
4 251 (3.05%) VMware Infrastructure
5 70 (0.85%) Terminal Server
6 57 (0.69%) Firmware
7 50 (0.61%) Virtual Desktop
8 40 (0.49%) 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 (0.061%) ClearTrust
13 5 (0.061%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 5 (0.061%) Squid
13 5 (0.061%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.061%) VMware NSX
14 4 (0.049%) GPFS
14 4 (0.049%) StorNext
Systems Management
1 333 (4.04%) Kubernetes
2 276 (3.35%) Microsoft Intune
3 157 (1.90%) Ansible
4 96 (1.16%) Grafana
5 76 (0.92%) SCCM
6 58 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
7 55 (0.67%) Prometheus
8 26 (0.32%) Jamf Pro
8 26 (0.32%) Nagios
9 25 (0.30%) FortiGate
10 21 (0.25%) Puppet
11 15 (0.18%) Argo
12 13 (0.16%) Kibana
13 12 (0.15%) Autotask
13 12 (0.15%) Functional Safety
13 12 (0.15%) Proxmox
14 11 (0.13%) logstash
14 11 (0.13%) Nmap
15 10 (0.12%) Podman
15 10 (0.12%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 2,359 (28.62%) Microsoft
2 366 (4.44%) VMware
3 245 (2.97%) SAP
4 238 (2.89%) Oracle
5 234 (2.84%) Google
6 167 (2.03%) Cisco
7 166 (2.01%) ServiceNow
8 160 (1.94%) Salesforce
9 129 (1.56%) Databricks
9 129 (1.56%) Veeam
10 124 (1.50%) Splunk
11 111 (1.35%) SolarWinds
12 78 (0.95%) Tanium
13 74 (0.90%) Apple
13 74 (0.90%) Sage
14 71 (0.86%) Nimble Storage
15 70 (0.85%) Brocade
16 62 (0.75%) Fortinet
17 57 (0.69%) Dell
18 56 (0.68%) HubSpot