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

6 months to
28 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 4 8
Rank change year-on-year -5 +4 +5
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 7,556 8,305 11,114
As % of all permanent jobs in England 8.38% 19.13% 14.45%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.35% 21.30% 17.69%
Number of salaries quoted 5,377 4,746 6,337
10th Percentile £27,560 £26,250 £26,250
25th Percentile £32,750 £32,000 £34,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £47,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £67,500 £67,500 £68,750
90th Percentile £85,550 £88,000 £85,000
UK median annual salary £47,500 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -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 66,548 38,995 62,835
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.82% 89.82% 81.69%
Number of salaries quoted 46,995 22,507 43,155
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,750 £30,000
25th Percentile £41,250 £38,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £56,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.19% +2.73% -11.29%
75th Percentile £80,000 £77,500 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £95,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.66%

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 28 July 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 28 July 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 2,102 £67,500 +3.85% 1,362
North of England -10 1,522 £45,000 +5.88% 708
South East -3 1,442 £45,000 +5.88% 857
Midlands -8 1,094 £42,000 +5.00% 491
North West -7 796 £45,250 -1.63% 347
South West -6 739 £44,000 +17.33% 339
West Midlands -9 612 £42,500 -5.56% 280
East of England -6 576 £42,500 +21.43% 289
Yorkshire -10 524 £42,500 +21.43% 250
East Midlands -10 478 £37,500 +5.63% 211
North East -15 202 £51,250 +36.67% 120
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
1 424 (5.61%) SharePoint
2 417 (5.52%) Microsoft Exchange
3 86 (1.14%) Confluence
4 65 (0.86%) CMS
5 52 (0.69%) Apache
6 42 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
7 39 (0.52%) Apache Spark
7 39 (0.52%) IIS
8 33 (0.44%) WordPress
9 19 (0.25%) SAS
10 13 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
11 11 (0.15%) nginx
11 11 (0.15%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.15%) WebSphere
12 10 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
13 9 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 8 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2007
14 8 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2010
15 7 (0.093%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.093%) OpenEdge
Applications
1 483 (6.39%) Microsoft Office
2 454 (6.01%) Microsoft Excel
3 83 (1.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 46 (0.61%) MS Visio
5 44 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
6 31 (0.41%) Microsoft Project
7 16 (0.21%) AutoCAD
7 16 (0.21%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.12%) Simulink
8 9 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
8 9 (0.12%) Trello
9 8 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.066%) Fusion 360
10 5 (0.066%) Lightworks
10 5 (0.066%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.040%) Autodesk Inventor
11 3 (0.040%) Civil 3D
11 3 (0.040%) Maya
11 3 (0.040%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 83 (1.10%) SAP S/4HANA
2 70 (0.93%) Dynamics CRM
3 49 (0.65%) NetSuite
4 19 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
5 18 (0.24%) Shopify
6 17 (0.22%) Magento
7 14 (0.19%) IBM Planning Analytics
7 14 (0.19%) SAP ERP
8 13 (0.17%) SAP Business One
9 12 (0.16%) Elite 3E
10 11 (0.15%) Dynamics AX
11 10 (0.13%) JDE EnterpriseOne
11 10 (0.13%) Salesforce CRM
12 9 (0.12%) iTrent
12 9 (0.12%) Maximo
12 9 (0.12%) Oracle Applications
12 9 (0.12%) Sage 50
13 7 (0.093%) Raiser’s Edge
13 7 (0.093%) Sage X3
13 7 (0.093%) SAP CO
Cloud Services
1 1,621 (21.45%) Azure
2 1,237 (16.37%) Microsoft 365
3 972 (12.86%) AWS
4 628 (8.31%) Power Platform
5 360 (4.76%) Entra ID
6 353 (4.67%) SaaS
7 345 (4.57%) GCP
8 184 (2.44%) Serverless
9 174 (2.30%) GitHub
10 171 (2.26%) Azure DevOps
11 161 (2.13%) Dynamics 365
12 152 (2.01%) Power Automate
13 139 (1.84%) PowerApps
14 107 (1.42%) OneDrive
15 98 (1.30%) Amazon S3
16 96 (1.27%) Microsoft Copilot
17 87 (1.15%) GitHub Actions
18 85 (1.12%) AWS Lambda
19 76 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
20 73 (0.97%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 490 (6.48%) Firewall
2 447 (5.92%) DNS
3 381 (5.04%) DHCP
4 300 (3.97%) VPN
5 268 (3.55%) TCP/IP
6 230 (3.04%) WAN
7 218 (2.89%) LAN
8 203 (2.69%) Wi-Fi
9 163 (2.16%) Wireless
10 157 (2.08%) Broadband
11 150 (1.99%) VLAN
12 130 (1.72%) Network Security
13 104 (1.38%) VoIP
14 49 (0.65%) SD-WAN
15 45 (0.60%) Internet
16 44 (0.58%) HTTP
17 41 (0.54%) BGP
17 41 (0.54%) OSPF
18 39 (0.52%) SAN
19 32 (0.42%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 491 (6.50%) Power BI
2 365 (4.83%) SQL Server
3 149 (1.97%) Data Warehouse
4 142 (1.88%) Amazon RDS
5 123 (1.63%) MySQL
6 118 (1.56%) Tableau
7 112 (1.48%) Relational Database
8 111 (1.47%) PostgreSQL
9 105 (1.39%) NoSQL
10 98 (1.30%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 88 (1.16%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 61 (0.81%) MongoDB
13 58 (0.77%) Power Query
14 57 (0.75%) Big Data
15 52 (0.69%) Data Lake
16 49 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
17 40 (0.53%) DynamoDB
18 38 (0.50%) Metadata
19 35 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
20 28 (0.37%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 325 (4.30%) Git
2 254 (3.36%) JIRA
3 117 (1.55%) Jenkins
4 111 (1.47%) GitLab
5 33 (0.44%) Selenium
6 29 (0.38%) Cucumber
7 27 (0.36%) Rational DOORS
8 25 (0.33%) Eclipse
8 25 (0.33%) JUnit
8 25 (0.33%) Subversion
9 24 (0.32%) Cypress.io
10 23 (0.30%) Claude Code
11 22 (0.29%) Postman
12 21 (0.28%) Visual Studio
13 16 (0.21%) Chocolatey
13 16 (0.21%) SonarQube
14 15 (0.20%) Bitbucket
15 14 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
16 13 (0.17%) Maven
16 13 (0.17%) MLflow
General
1 3,644 (48.23%) Social Skills
2 2,227 (29.47%) Analytical Skills
3 1,476 (19.53%) Finance
4 492 (6.51%) Manufacturing
5 460 (6.09%) Organisational Skills
6 409 (5.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 409 (5.41%) Law
7 358 (4.74%) Retail
8 312 (4.13%) Marketing
9 295 (3.90%) Legal
10 293 (3.88%) Banking
11 288 (3.81%) Public Sector
12 179 (2.37%) Telecoms
13 157 (2.08%) Electronics
14 139 (1.84%) Influencing Skills
15 134 (1.77%) Presentation Skills
16 117 (1.55%) Aerospace
17 114 (1.51%) Documentation Skills
18 95 (1.26%) Advertising
19 88 (1.16%) Games
Job Titles
1 1,003 (13.27%) Analyst
2 885 (11.71%) Senior
3 755 (9.99%) Developer
4 717 (9.49%) IT Support
5 581 (7.69%) Support Engineer
6 449 (5.94%) Lead
7 408 (5.40%) IT Engineer
8 357 (4.72%) Consultant
9 315 (4.17%) IT Support Engineer
10 304 (4.02%) Support Analyst
11 282 (3.73%) Software Engineer
12 263 (3.48%) Systems Engineer
13 256 (3.39%) Architect
14 254 (3.36%) Support Technician
15 226 (2.99%) Technical Support
16 206 (2.73%) IT Technician
17 195 (2.58%) Data Engineer
18 189 (2.50%) Technical Engineer
19 170 (2.25%) Technical Support Engineer
20 169 (2.24%) 2nd Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 324 (4.29%) .NET
2 292 (3.86%) React
3 234 (3.10%) REST
4 232 (3.07%) HTML
5 185 (2.45%) CSS
6 158 (2.09%) RESTful
7 152 (2.01%) Node.js
8 113 (1.50%) SOAP
9 99 (1.31%) Spring
10 94 (1.24%) JSON
11 93 (1.23%) AngularJS
12 91 (1.20%) Middleware
12 91 (1.20%) Vue
13 84 (1.11%) Kafka
14 74 (0.98%) XML
15 71 (0.94%) OAuth
15 71 (0.94%) Web Services
16 70 (0.93%) ASP.NET
17 62 (0.82%) Spring Boot
18 54 (0.71%) gRPC
Miscellaneous
1 462 (6.11%) Driving Licence
2 449 (5.94%) Onboarding
3 378 (5.00%) Self-Motivation
4 290 (3.84%) Management Information System
5 289 (3.82%) Cloud Native
6 208 (2.75%) Product Ownership
7 181 (2.40%) Legacy Systems
8 179 (2.37%) Distributed Systems
9 177 (2.34%) Data Centre
10 124 (1.64%) Analytical Mindset
11 113 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
12 108 (1.43%) Security Posture
13 99 (1.31%) Data Structures
14 91 (1.20%) Algorithms
15 78 (1.03%) Social Media
16 76 (1.01%) IoT
17 75 (0.99%) Virtual Team
18 73 (0.97%) NHS
19 72 (0.95%) Mobile App
20 71 (0.94%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 1,205 (15.95%) Windows
2 545 (7.21%) Linux
3 527 (6.97%) Windows Server
4 169 (2.24%) Windows 10
5 130 (1.72%) Windows Server 2016
6 112 (1.48%) Android
7 100 (1.32%) Mac OS
8 96 (1.27%) Apple iOS
9 49 (0.65%) Windows Server 2019
10 46 (0.61%) Unix
11 37 (0.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 32 (0.42%) Ubuntu
13 27 (0.36%) VMS
14 25 (0.33%) CentOS
15 15 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
16 14 (0.19%) Mac OS X
16 14 (0.19%) Windows 7
17 13 (0.17%) Debian
18 9 (0.12%) FreeRTOS
19 8 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,719 (22.75%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,214 (16.07%) Agile
3 1,120 (14.82%) Customer Service
4 930 (12.31%) AI
5 863 (11.42%) CI/CD
6 837 (11.08%) Decision-Making
7 806 (10.67%) Mentoring
8 738 (9.77%) Stakeholder Management
9 709 (9.38%) DevOps
10 704 (9.32%) Analytics
11 695 (9.20%) Software Engineering
12 652 (8.63%) ITIL
13 602 (7.97%) Cybersecurity
14 581 (7.69%) Roadmaps
15 568 (7.52%) Business Intelligence
16 541 (7.16%) Computer Science
17 522 (6.91%) Project Management
18 505 (6.68%) Project Delivery
19 488 (6.46%) Collaborative Working
20 478 (6.33%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 1,218 (16.12%) SQL
2 1,128 (14.93%) Python
3 520 (6.88%) JavaScript
4 425 (5.62%) C#
5 388 (5.13%) Java
6 333 (4.41%) PowerShell
7 235 (3.11%) TypeScript
8 204 (2.70%) C++
9 166 (2.20%) Bash
10 93 (1.23%) Go
10 93 (1.23%) PHP
11 74 (0.98%) C
12 68 (0.90%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 68 (0.90%) T-SQL
13 58 (0.77%) Scala
14 44 (0.58%) R
15 41 (0.54%) PL/SQL
15 41 (0.54%) Rust
16 38 (0.50%) Perl
16 38 (0.50%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 1,225 (16.21%) Degree
2 654 (8.66%) Security Cleared
3 459 (6.07%) SC Cleared
4 280 (3.71%) Computer Science Degree
5 210 (2.78%) DBS Check
6 199 (2.63%) Microsoft Certification
7 143 (1.89%) Cisco Certification
8 135 (1.79%) DV Cleared
9 130 (1.72%) Azure Certification
10 127 (1.68%) CISSP
11 107 (1.42%) Master's Degree
12 96 (1.27%) BPSS Clearance
13 85 (1.12%) PMI Certification
14 80 (1.06%) CCNA
15 77 (1.02%) CCNP
15 77 (1.02%) PMP
16 69 (0.91%) ACCA
17 66 (0.87%) CISM
18 64 (0.85%) CIMA
18 64 (0.85%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 418 (5.53%) QA
2 374 (4.95%) Data Quality
3 303 (4.01%) GDPR
4 224 (2.96%) Cyber Essentials
5 219 (2.90%) SLA
6 196 (2.59%) Accessibility
7 193 (2.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 168 (2.22%) PCI DSS
9 150 (1.99%) NIST
10 61 (0.81%) PMO
11 57 (0.75%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 36 (0.48%) GRC
13 35 (0.46%) ISO 9001
14 32 (0.42%) SOC 2
15 24 (0.32%) COBIT
16 23 (0.30%) GMP
17 19 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
17 19 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
18 18 (0.24%) Good Clinical Practice
19 17 (0.22%) WCAG
System Software
1 810 (10.72%) Active Directory
2 365 (4.83%) Docker
3 282 (3.73%) Hyper-V
4 245 (3.24%) VMware Infrastructure
5 84 (1.11%) Terminal Server
6 48 (0.64%) Virtual Desktop
7 44 (0.58%) Firmware
8 33 (0.44%) vSphere
9 32 (0.42%) Virtual Machines
10 16 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
11 14 (0.19%) Embedded Firmware
12 13 (0.17%) KVM
13 10 (0.13%) IAG
14 7 (0.093%) VMware NSX
14 7 (0.093%) XenApp
15 5 (0.066%) ClearTrust
15 5 (0.066%) Squid
15 5 (0.066%) VMware Workstation
16 4 (0.053%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 3 (0.040%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 341 (4.51%) Terraform
2 308 (4.08%) Kubernetes
3 286 (3.79%) Microsoft Intune
4 151 (2.00%) Ansible
5 103 (1.36%) Grafana
6 81 (1.07%) SCCM
7 64 (0.85%) Prometheus
8 35 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
9 30 (0.40%) Nagios
10 24 (0.32%) FortiGate
11 22 (0.29%) Jamf Pro
12 17 (0.22%) Puppet
13 16 (0.21%) Argo
14 15 (0.20%) Autotask
15 13 (0.17%) Kibana
16 12 (0.16%) Proxmox
17 11 (0.15%) Docker Swarm
17 11 (0.15%) logstash
17 11 (0.15%) vCenter Server
18 10 (0.13%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 2,194 (29.04%) Microsoft
2 366 (4.84%) VMware
3 198 (2.62%) Oracle
4 195 (2.58%) Google
5 189 (2.50%) SAP
6 167 (2.21%) Cisco
7 153 (2.02%) ServiceNow
8 150 (1.99%) Salesforce
9 143 (1.89%) Veeam
10 140 (1.85%) SolarWinds
11 135 (1.79%) Splunk
12 119 (1.57%) Databricks
13 92 (1.22%) Tanium
14 85 (1.12%) Nimble Storage
15 84 (1.11%) Brocade
16 81 (1.07%) Apple
17 63 (0.83%) Dell
17 63 (0.83%) Sage
18 54 (0.71%) Fortinet
19 53 (0.70%) Palo Alto