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

6 months to
21 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 4 8
Rank change year-on-year -5 +4 +5
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,550 7,980 10,123
As % of all permanent jobs in England 10.79% 18.29% 15.14%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.62% 19.73% 17.17%
Number of salaries quoted 4,520 3,932 7,357
10th Percentile £26,750 £30,500 £26,250
25th Percentile £31,000 £40,000 £33,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -18.18% +10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £65,473 £76,000 £70,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £90,000 £87,500
UK median annual salary £45,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -18.18% +10.00% -12.76%

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 48,095 40,444 58,965
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 79.20% 92.67% 88.20%
Number of salaries quoted 29,525 20,215 46,647
10th Percentile £29,000 £34,404 £29,750
25th Percentile £38,813 £46,250 £40,113
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £62,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% +13.64% -12.00%
75th Percentile £77,500 £82,500 £75,000
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £95,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,001 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -12.00%

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 February 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 February 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 -1 1,916 £67,500 +3.85% 851
North of England -16 1,359 £42,500 -10.53% 608
South East -3 1,275 £42,500 -19.05% 881
Midlands -14 874 £37,500 -28.57% 440
North West -15 731 £46,000 -8.00% 354
South West -4 586 £40,000 -24.53% 304
West Midlands -19 510 £42,500 -22.73% 272
Yorkshire -5 489 £38,000 -12.59% 185
East of England -5 430 £37,500 -26.42% 292
East Midlands +1 362 £35,000 - 167
North East -5 139 £45,000 -1.10% 81
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
1 341 (5.21%) Microsoft Exchange
2 284 (4.34%) SharePoint
3 78 (1.19%) Confluence
4 59 (0.90%) Apache
5 49 (0.75%) IIS
6 47 (0.72%) Apache Airflow
7 43 (0.66%) Apache Spark
7 43 (0.66%) CMS
8 29 (0.44%) WordPress
9 16 (0.24%) Palantir Foundry
10 12 (0.18%) nginx
11 10 (0.15%) SAS
12 9 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
14 6 (0.092%) Drupal
15 5 (0.076%) Exchange Server 2007
15 5 (0.076%) Exchange Server 2010
15 5 (0.076%) Exchange Server 2013
16 4 (0.061%) Apache Solr
16 4 (0.061%) Moodle
Applications
1 441 (6.73%) Microsoft Office
2 377 (5.76%) Microsoft Excel
3 82 (1.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 39 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
5 30 (0.46%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.43%) Maya
7 26 (0.40%) Microsoft Project
8 16 (0.24%) AutoCAD
9 13 (0.20%) Photoshop
10 10 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 9 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
12 8 (0.12%) Adobe Illustrator
12 8 (0.12%) Chatbot
13 5 (0.076%) Adobe Premiere
13 5 (0.076%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.076%) Trello
14 4 (0.061%) CATIA
14 4 (0.061%) Fusion 360
15 3 (0.046%) Elementor
15 3 (0.046%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 87 (1.33%) SAP S/4HANA
2 72 (1.10%) Dynamics CRM
3 33 (0.50%) NetSuite
4 19 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
5 18 (0.27%) SAP CO
6 17 (0.26%) Endur
7 16 (0.24%) Shopify
8 14 (0.21%) Dynamics NAV
9 11 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
10 10 (0.15%) iTrent
10 10 (0.15%) SAP Business One
10 10 (0.15%) Workday HCM
11 9 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
11 9 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
11 9 (0.14%) SAP FI
11 9 (0.14%) SAP FI/CO
12 8 (0.12%) Maximo
12 8 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
12 8 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
13 7 (0.11%) Exchequer
Cloud Services
1 1,420 (21.68%) Azure
2 1,006 (15.36%) Microsoft 365
3 768 (11.73%) AWS
4 482 (7.36%) Power Platform
5 380 (5.80%) SaaS
6 284 (4.34%) Entra ID
7 250 (3.82%) GCP
8 179 (2.73%) Azure DevOps
9 159 (2.43%) GitHub
10 158 (2.41%) Serverless
11 134 (2.05%) Power Automate
12 109 (1.66%) Dynamics 365
13 91 (1.39%) Google Workspace
14 86 (1.31%) Amazon S3
15 84 (1.28%) PowerApps
16 79 (1.21%) AWS CloudFormation
16 79 (1.21%) AWS Lambda
17 67 (1.02%) PaaS
18 64 (0.98%) Azure Data Factory
19 63 (0.96%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 440 (6.72%) DNS
2 381 (5.82%) DHCP
3 366 (5.59%) Firewall
4 236 (3.60%) VPN
5 204 (3.11%) TCP/IP
5 204 (3.11%) Wi-Fi
6 197 (3.01%) WAN
7 166 (2.53%) LAN
8 129 (1.97%) Broadband
9 127 (1.94%) VLAN
10 96 (1.47%) VoIP
11 95 (1.45%) Wireless
12 62 (0.95%) SD-WAN
13 52 (0.79%) Remote Desktop
14 51 (0.78%) Internet
15 50 (0.76%) Network Security
16 45 (0.69%) SAN
17 31 (0.47%) BGP
18 30 (0.46%) Structured Cabling
19 29 (0.44%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 392 (5.98%) Power BI
2 282 (4.31%) SQL Server
3 146 (2.23%) Data Warehouse
4 135 (2.06%) Tableau
5 133 (2.03%) Relational Database
6 126 (1.92%) Amazon RDS
7 120 (1.83%) NoSQL
8 111 (1.69%) PostgreSQL
9 91 (1.39%) MySQL
10 71 (1.08%) Data Lake
11 67 (1.02%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 57 (0.87%) MongoDB
13 56 (0.85%) Amazon Redshift
14 52 (0.79%) Metadata
15 48 (0.73%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 46 (0.70%) DynamoDB
17 41 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
17 41 (0.63%) Big Data
18 40 (0.61%) Power Query
19 27 (0.41%) Redis
Development Applications
1 272 (4.15%) Git
2 230 (3.51%) JIRA
3 101 (1.54%) Jenkins
4 87 (1.33%) GitLab
5 56 (0.85%) Selenium
6 25 (0.38%) Visual Studio
7 22 (0.34%) Cypress.io
8 21 (0.32%) Maven
9 19 (0.29%) Burp Suite
9 19 (0.29%) Metasploit
9 19 (0.29%) TeamCity
10 18 (0.27%) Bitbucket
10 18 (0.27%) LabVIEW
10 18 (0.27%) Robot Framework
11 16 (0.24%) Cucumber
11 16 (0.24%) JUnit
11 16 (0.24%) Octopus Deploy
11 16 (0.24%) SonarQube
12 14 (0.21%) Snyk
13 12 (0.18%) CircleCI
General
1 3,372 (51.48%) Social Skills
2 1,991 (30.40%) Analytical Skills
3 1,516 (23.15%) Finance
4 418 (6.38%) Organisational Skills
5 360 (5.50%) Marketing
6 344 (5.25%) Law
7 323 (4.93%) Retail
8 304 (4.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 302 (4.61%) Manufacturing
10 288 (4.40%) Legal
11 286 (4.37%) Public Sector
12 274 (4.18%) Banking
13 183 (2.79%) Telecoms
14 182 (2.78%) Presentation Skills
15 149 (2.27%) Electronics
16 108 (1.65%) Games
17 101 (1.54%) Documentation Skills
18 89 (1.36%) Automotive
19 87 (1.33%) Financial Institution
20 85 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 997 (15.22%) Analyst
2 815 (12.44%) Senior
3 766 (11.69%) IT Support
4 653 (9.97%) Support Engineer
5 583 (8.90%) Developer
6 404 (6.17%) Lead
7 353 (5.39%) IT Engineer
8 339 (5.18%) Support Analyst
9 298 (4.55%) IT Support Engineer
10 250 (3.82%) Technical Support
11 246 (3.76%) Consultant
12 236 (3.60%) Business Analyst
13 223 (3.40%) Architect
14 202 (3.08%) Support Technician
15 193 (2.95%) 2nd Line Support
16 177 (2.70%) Technical Engineer
17 170 (2.60%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 170 (2.60%) IT Analyst
18 169 (2.58%) Technical Support Engineer
19 163 (2.49%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 270 (4.12%) .NET
2 260 (3.97%) React
3 235 (3.59%) HTML
4 186 (2.84%) CSS
5 148 (2.26%) Node.js
6 139 (2.12%) REST
7 112 (1.71%) RESTful
8 87 (1.33%) AngularJS
9 69 (1.05%) Middleware
10 68 (1.04%) Spring
10 68 (1.04%) Vue
11 64 (0.98%) Kafka
11 64 (0.98%) SOAP
12 62 (0.95%) JSON
13 58 (0.89%) XML
14 53 (0.81%) .NET Framework
15 52 (0.79%) Django
16 47 (0.72%) Flask
17 45 (0.69%) Spring Boot
18 44 (0.67%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 547 (8.35%) Driving Licence
2 489 (7.47%) Onboarding
3 416 (6.35%) Self-Motivation
4 213 (3.25%) Management Information System
5 185 (2.82%) Analytical Mindset
6 175 (2.67%) Cloud Native
7 172 (2.63%) Legacy Systems
8 146 (2.23%) Product Ownership
9 144 (2.20%) Data Centre
10 115 (1.76%) Enterprise Software
11 100 (1.53%) Distributed Systems
12 89 (1.36%) Mobile App
13 73 (1.11%) Low-Code
14 70 (1.07%) Data Structures
15 66 (1.01%) Social Media
16 63 (0.96%) Algorithms
17 59 (0.90%) Virtual Team
18 55 (0.84%) EPoS
19 54 (0.82%) Security Posture
20 53 (0.81%) FMCG
Operating Systems
1 1,140 (17.40%) Windows
2 460 (7.02%) Windows Server
3 433 (6.61%) Linux
4 160 (2.44%) Windows 10
5 143 (2.18%) Windows Server 2016
6 99 (1.51%) Mac OS
7 98 (1.50%) Android
8 78 (1.19%) Apple iOS
9 59 (0.90%) Unix
10 55 (0.84%) Windows Server 2019
11 32 (0.49%) Windows Server 2012
12 30 (0.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 24 (0.37%) Windows 7
14 18 (0.27%) CentOS
15 17 (0.26%) VMS
16 13 (0.20%) Ubuntu
17 9 (0.14%) Mac OS X
17 9 (0.14%) Windows 8
18 8 (0.12%) Debian
19 4 (0.061%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,134 (17.31%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,047 (15.98%) Agile
3 989 (15.10%) Customer Service
4 689 (10.52%) Analytics
5 676 (10.32%) Mentoring
6 637 (9.73%) AI
7 635 (9.69%) Decision-Making
8 601 (9.18%) DevOps
9 598 (9.13%) Project Management
10 590 (9.01%) CI/CD
11 563 (8.60%) Business Intelligence
12 544 (8.31%) ITIL
13 525 (8.02%) Computer Science
14 493 (7.53%) Stakeholder Management
15 474 (7.24%) Cybersecurity
16 427 (6.52%) Change Management
17 409 (6.24%) Software Engineering
18 398 (6.08%) ERP
19 390 (5.95%) CRM
20 377 (5.76%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 943 (14.40%) Python
2 937 (14.31%) SQL
3 420 (6.41%) JavaScript
4 323 (4.93%) PowerShell
5 318 (4.85%) Java
6 310 (4.73%) C#
7 170 (2.60%) TypeScript
8 142 (2.17%) Bash
9 98 (1.50%) PHP
10 75 (1.15%) C++
11 63 (0.96%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 58 (0.89%) Go
13 48 (0.73%) C
14 47 (0.72%) Scala
15 46 (0.70%) T-SQL
16 37 (0.56%) R
17 29 (0.44%) Apex Code
18 27 (0.41%) Bicep
19 26 (0.40%) Kotlin
20 24 (0.37%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 1,439 (21.97%) Degree
2 541 (8.26%) Security Cleared
3 352 (5.37%) SC Cleared
4 242 (3.69%) Computer Science Degree
5 185 (2.82%) Microsoft Certification
6 166 (2.53%) DBS Check
7 158 (2.41%) Master's Degree
8 115 (1.76%) DV Cleared
9 107 (1.63%) CISSP
10 97 (1.48%) BPSS Clearance
11 84 (1.28%) ACCA
12 81 (1.24%) Cisco Certification
13 80 (1.22%) A+ Certification
14 70 (1.07%) CIMA
15 67 (1.02%) Network+ Certification
16 61 (0.93%) PMI Certification
17 57 (0.87%) CISM
18 56 (0.85%) AWS Certification
19 54 (0.82%) CCNA
20 50 (0.76%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 324 (4.95%) QA
2 277 (4.23%) Data Quality
3 229 (3.50%) GDPR
4 192 (2.93%) Cyber Essentials
5 172 (2.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 147 (2.24%) PCI DSS
7 137 (2.09%) Accessibility
8 129 (1.97%) SLA
9 94 (1.44%) NIST
10 49 (0.75%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 34 (0.52%) ISO 9001
12 27 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
13 24 (0.37%) SOC 2
14 19 (0.29%) COBIT
14 19 (0.29%) PMO
15 18 (0.27%) GRC
16 11 (0.17%) WCAG
17 10 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 9 (0.14%) ISO 13485
19 8 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 19770
System Software
1 789 (12.05%) Active Directory
2 282 (4.31%) Docker
3 267 (4.08%) Hyper-V
4 156 (2.38%) VMware Infrastructure
5 98 (1.50%) Terminal Server
6 26 (0.40%) Firmware
6 26 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
7 24 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
8 18 (0.27%) vSphere
9 15 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.17%) KVM
11 8 (0.12%) VMware Workstation
12 7 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.092%) IAG
14 4 (0.061%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 3 (0.046%) vCloud
15 3 (0.046%) VMware NSX
15 3 (0.046%) XenApp
16 2 (0.031%) HDFS
16 2 (0.031%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 282 (4.31%) Terraform
2 276 (4.21%) Microsoft Intune
3 219 (3.34%) Kubernetes
4 143 (2.18%) Ansible
5 79 (1.21%) Grafana
6 71 (1.08%) SCCM
7 51 (0.78%) Prometheus
8 42 (0.64%) BMC PATROL
9 29 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
10 21 (0.32%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 21 (0.32%) Nagios
11 16 (0.24%) Jamf Pro
12 15 (0.23%) Argo
13 14 (0.21%) Cisco CUCM
13 14 (0.21%) vCenter Server
14 12 (0.18%) Kibana
15 11 (0.17%) Autotask
15 11 (0.17%) FortiGate
15 11 (0.17%) Nessus
15 11 (0.17%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,721 (26.27%) Microsoft
2 307 (4.69%) VMware
3 299 (4.56%) SAP
4 244 (3.73%) Oracle
5 162 (2.47%) Veeam
6 161 (2.46%) Salesforce
7 159 (2.43%) Google
8 152 (2.32%) Cisco
9 149 (2.27%) SolarWinds
9 149 (2.27%) Splunk
10 125 (1.91%) ServiceNow
11 105 (1.60%) Databricks
12 99 (1.51%) Adobe
12 99 (1.51%) Tanium
13 98 (1.50%) Brocade
13 98 (1.50%) Nimble Storage
14 78 (1.19%) Apple
15 57 (0.87%) Dell
16 56 (0.85%) Sage
17 52 (0.79%) HubSpot