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

6 months to
9 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 6,493 7,120 12,021
As % of all permanent jobs in England 8.82% 19.48% 14.96%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.57% 20.92% 17.39%
Number of salaries quoted 4,504 4,480 8,388
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 £68,750 £75,000 £68,750
90th Percentile £86,500 £90,000 £86,000
UK median annual salary £47,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -14.55% +10.00% -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 56,122 34,027 69,121
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 76.20% 93.12% 86.02%
Number of salaries quoted 35,367 20,500 53,025
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £43,465 £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 £78,500 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £102,500 £93,750
UK median annual salary £57,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -5.00% +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 9 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 9 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 -4 1,988 £67,500 +3.85% 986
North of England -18 1,300 £41,500 -9.78% 662
South East -7 1,198 £45,000 -11.71% 802
Midlands -19 900 £38,500 -18.95% 478
North West -17 672 £42,500 -15.00% 365
South West -5 555 £43,500 -5.95% 308
West Midlands -24 534 £42,500 -19.05% 278
Yorkshire -8 503 £36,000 -15.29% 222
East of England -9 453 £40,000 -20.00% 288
East Midlands -3 363 £35,000 -12.50% 199
North East -13 125 £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
1 339 (5.22%) Microsoft Exchange
2 286 (4.40%) SharePoint
3 77 (1.19%) Confluence
4 55 (0.85%) CMS
5 54 (0.83%) Apache
6 44 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
7 36 (0.55%) Apache Spark
8 33 (0.51%) IIS
9 27 (0.42%) WordPress
10 16 (0.25%) SAS
11 13 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
12 12 (0.18%) nginx
13 11 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2013
14 9 (0.14%) Anypoint
14 9 (0.14%) Drupal
14 9 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2007
14 9 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2010
15 6 (0.092%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 5 (0.077%) OpenStack
17 4 (0.062%) Moodle
Applications
1 443 (6.82%) Microsoft Office
2 351 (5.41%) Microsoft Excel
3 66 (1.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 39 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
5 37 (0.57%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
7 13 (0.20%) AutoCAD
8 12 (0.18%) Chatbot
9 11 (0.17%) Adobe Illustrator
9 11 (0.17%) Photoshop
10 9 (0.14%) Maya
11 8 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 8 (0.12%) Fusion 360
12 5 (0.077%) Adobe XD
12 5 (0.077%) SOLIDWORKS
13 4 (0.062%) Trello
14 3 (0.046%) Elementor
14 3 (0.046%) Simulink
15 2 (0.031%) InDesign
15 2 (0.031%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 60 (0.92%) Dynamics CRM
2 47 (0.72%) SAP S/4HANA
3 33 (0.51%) NetSuite
4 20 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
5 18 (0.28%) Shopify
6 17 (0.26%) SAP CO
7 16 (0.25%) Endur
8 15 (0.23%) Dynamics NAV
9 13 (0.20%) Maximo
10 12 (0.18%) Magento
11 11 (0.17%) iTrent
12 10 (0.15%) Workday HCM
13 8 (0.12%) SAP ERP
13 8 (0.12%) SAP FI
13 8 (0.12%) SAP FI/CO
14 7 (0.11%) Elite 3E
14 7 (0.11%) IBM Planning Analytics
14 7 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
14 7 (0.11%) Q-Pulse
14 7 (0.11%) Sage 200
Cloud Services
1 1,394 (21.47%) Azure
2 995 (15.32%) Microsoft 365
3 805 (12.40%) AWS
4 489 (7.53%) Power Platform
5 354 (5.45%) SaaS
6 299 (4.60%) GCP
7 275 (4.24%) Entra ID
8 179 (2.76%) GitHub
9 172 (2.65%) Serverless
10 168 (2.59%) Azure DevOps
11 135 (2.08%) Power Automate
12 112 (1.72%) Dynamics 365
13 93 (1.43%) Amazon S3
14 88 (1.36%) Google Workspace
15 85 (1.31%) GitHub Actions
16 84 (1.29%) PowerApps
17 81 (1.25%) AWS Lambda
17 81 (1.25%) Azure Data Factory
18 80 (1.23%) AWS CloudFormation
19 74 (1.14%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 410 (6.31%) DNS
2 377 (5.81%) Firewall
3 352 (5.42%) DHCP
4 258 (3.97%) VPN
5 217 (3.34%) WAN
6 205 (3.16%) Wi-Fi
7 204 (3.14%) TCP/IP
8 181 (2.79%) LAN
9 179 (2.76%) Broadband
10 120 (1.85%) VLAN
11 106 (1.63%) Wireless
12 89 (1.37%) VoIP
13 69 (1.06%) SD-WAN
14 58 (0.89%) Network Security
15 48 (0.74%) SAN
16 41 (0.63%) Internet
17 33 (0.51%) Remote Desktop
18 32 (0.49%) Structured Cabling
19 30 (0.46%) BGP
20 29 (0.45%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 411 (6.33%) Power BI
2 278 (4.28%) SQL Server
3 134 (2.06%) Tableau
4 129 (1.99%) Data Warehouse
5 120 (1.85%) NoSQL
6 105 (1.62%) Relational Database
7 103 (1.59%) PostgreSQL
8 90 (1.39%) Amazon RDS
9 83 (1.28%) MySQL
10 71 (1.09%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 58 (0.89%) Power Query
12 57 (0.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 54 (0.83%) MongoDB
14 49 (0.75%) DynamoDB
15 47 (0.72%) Azure SQL Database
16 46 (0.71%) Amazon Redshift
17 42 (0.65%) Metadata
18 38 (0.59%) Big Data
18 38 (0.59%) Data Lake
19 25 (0.39%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 282 (4.34%) Git
2 223 (3.43%) JIRA
3 116 (1.79%) Jenkins
4 99 (1.52%) GitLab
5 50 (0.77%) Selenium
6 29 (0.45%) Visual Studio
7 24 (0.37%) Cypress.io
8 20 (0.31%) Cucumber
8 20 (0.31%) Maven
8 20 (0.31%) Rational DOORS
9 19 (0.29%) Burp Suite
9 19 (0.29%) Metasploit
9 19 (0.29%) SonarQube
10 18 (0.28%) Chocolatey
11 17 (0.26%) Bitbucket
11 17 (0.26%) CircleCI
11 17 (0.26%) TeamCity
12 16 (0.25%) LabVIEW
13 14 (0.22%) JUnit
14 13 (0.20%) Robot Framework
General
1 3,136 (48.30%) Social Skills
2 1,973 (30.39%) Analytical Skills
3 1,420 (21.87%) Finance
4 449 (6.92%) Organisational Skills
5 377 (5.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 363 (5.59%) Marketing
7 319 (4.91%) Law
8 309 (4.76%) Retail
9 307 (4.73%) Banking
10 304 (4.68%) Manufacturing
11 301 (4.64%) Legal
12 289 (4.45%) Public Sector
13 160 (2.46%) Presentation Skills
14 154 (2.37%) Telecoms
15 149 (2.29%) Electronics
16 101 (1.56%) Documentation Skills
17 86 (1.32%) Games
18 82 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
19 79 (1.22%) Financial Institution
20 77 (1.19%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 942 (14.51%) Analyst
2 786 (12.11%) Senior
3 746 (11.49%) IT Support
4 638 (9.83%) Support Engineer
5 581 (8.95%) Developer
6 404 (6.22%) Lead
7 394 (6.07%) IT Engineer
8 325 (5.01%) IT Support Engineer
9 294 (4.53%) Support Analyst
10 251 (3.87%) Consultant
11 217 (3.34%) Support Technician
12 216 (3.33%) Architect
13 206 (3.17%) Business Analyst
14 194 (2.99%) 2nd Line Support
15 191 (2.94%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 190 (2.93%) Software Engineer
16 190 (2.93%) Technical Support
17 182 (2.80%) Systems Engineer
18 165 (2.54%) IT Technician
19 149 (2.29%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 253 (3.90%) React
2 248 (3.82%) .NET
3 226 (3.48%) HTML
4 185 (2.85%) CSS
5 152 (2.34%) Node.js
6 132 (2.03%) REST
7 124 (1.91%) RESTful
8 71 (1.09%) Vue
9 70 (1.08%) JSON
9 70 (1.08%) Middleware
9 70 (1.08%) Spring
10 66 (1.02%) AngularJS
11 65 (1.00%) SOAP
11 65 (1.00%) XML
12 64 (0.99%) Kafka
13 63 (0.97%) Django
14 58 (0.89%) Flask
15 50 (0.77%) gRPC
16 48 (0.74%) FastAPI
16 48 (0.74%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 433 (6.67%) Onboarding
2 424 (6.53%) Driving Licence
3 362 (5.58%) Self-Motivation
4 208 (3.20%) Management Information System
5 179 (2.76%) Cloud Native
6 155 (2.39%) Analytical Mindset
7 154 (2.37%) Product Ownership
8 150 (2.31%) Distributed Systems
9 143 (2.20%) Data Centre
10 136 (2.09%) Legacy Systems
11 102 (1.57%) Enterprise Software
12 95 (1.46%) Mobile App
13 92 (1.42%) Social Media
14 84 (1.29%) Data Structures
15 76 (1.17%) Low-Code
16 65 (1.00%) Security Posture
17 59 (0.91%) Algorithms
18 58 (0.89%) Video\Live Streaming
18 58 (0.89%) Virtual Team
19 51 (0.79%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 1,108 (17.06%) Windows
2 422 (6.50%) Windows Server
3 420 (6.47%) Linux
4 172 (2.65%) Windows 10
5 124 (1.91%) Windows Server 2016
6 106 (1.63%) Android
7 91 (1.40%) Apple iOS
8 87 (1.34%) Mac OS
9 60 (0.92%) Unix
10 56 (0.86%) Windows Server 2019
11 41 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 38 (0.59%) Windows Server 2012
13 32 (0.49%) CentOS
14 27 (0.42%) Ubuntu
15 21 (0.32%) VMS
16 20 (0.31%) Windows 7
17 18 (0.28%) Mac OS X
18 10 (0.15%) Debian
18 10 (0.15%) Windows 8
19 8 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,160 (17.87%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,041 (16.03%) Agile
3 963 (14.83%) Customer Service
4 691 (10.64%) AI
5 689 (10.61%) Mentoring
6 680 (10.47%) Decision-Making
7 673 (10.37%) CI/CD
8 662 (10.20%) Analytics
9 619 (9.53%) DevOps
10 590 (9.09%) ITIL
11 551 (8.49%) Business Intelligence
12 538 (8.29%) Project Management
13 497 (7.65%) Stakeholder Management
14 496 (7.64%) Computer Science
15 458 (7.05%) Software Engineering
16 425 (6.55%) Roadmaps
17 423 (6.51%) Cybersecurity
18 405 (6.24%) Coaching
19 365 (5.62%) Process Improvement
20 350 (5.39%) CRM
Programming Languages
1 1,005 (15.48%) Python
2 913 (14.06%) SQL
3 432 (6.65%) JavaScript
4 333 (5.13%) Java
5 308 (4.74%) PowerShell
6 274 (4.22%) C#
7 183 (2.82%) TypeScript
8 155 (2.39%) Bash
9 91 (1.40%) C++
10 89 (1.37%) Go
11 83 (1.28%) PHP
12 81 (1.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 65 (1.00%) Scala
14 53 (0.82%) C
15 49 (0.75%) T-SQL
16 39 (0.60%) Kotlin
17 34 (0.52%) Bicep
18 33 (0.51%) R
19 32 (0.49%) Rust
20 31 (0.48%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,272 (19.59%) Degree
2 460 (7.08%) Security Cleared
3 287 (4.42%) SC Cleared
4 257 (3.96%) Computer Science Degree
5 192 (2.96%) DBS Check
6 185 (2.85%) Microsoft Certification
7 131 (2.02%) Master's Degree
8 110 (1.69%) CISSP
9 109 (1.68%) DV Cleared
10 95 (1.46%) Cisco Certification
11 87 (1.34%) ACCA
12 86 (1.32%) A+ Certification
13 85 (1.31%) BPSS Clearance
14 76 (1.17%) CIMA
14 76 (1.17%) PMI Certification
15 68 (1.05%) CCNA
16 61 (0.94%) PMP
17 59 (0.91%) Network+ Certification
18 56 (0.86%) AWS Certification
19 55 (0.85%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 311 (4.79%) QA
2 296 (4.56%) Data Quality
3 251 (3.87%) GDPR
4 162 (2.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 161 (2.48%) Cyber Essentials
6 160 (2.46%) SLA
7 130 (2.00%) NIST
7 130 (2.00%) PCI DSS
8 119 (1.83%) Accessibility
9 51 (0.79%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 33 (0.51%) SOC 2
11 32 (0.49%) ISO 9001
12 30 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
13 26 (0.40%) PMO
14 22 (0.34%) COBIT
15 20 (0.31%) GRC
16 14 (0.22%) GMP
17 11 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
18 10 (0.15%) HIPAA
18 10 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 741 (11.41%) Active Directory
2 309 (4.76%) Docker
3 219 (3.37%) Hyper-V
4 172 (2.65%) VMware Infrastructure
5 63 (0.97%) Terminal Server
6 35 (0.54%) Firmware
6 35 (0.54%) Virtual Desktop
7 32 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
8 17 (0.26%) vSphere
9 15 (0.23%) KVM
10 10 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
10 10 (0.15%) VMware Workstation
11 7 (0.11%) IAG
11 7 (0.11%) XenApp
12 6 (0.092%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.077%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 4 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 3 (0.046%) VMware NSX
16 2 (0.031%) BitLocker
16 2 (0.031%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 299 (4.60%) Terraform
2 255 (3.93%) Microsoft Intune
3 232 (3.57%) Kubernetes
4 156 (2.40%) Ansible
5 96 (1.48%) Grafana
6 86 (1.32%) SCCM
7 55 (0.85%) Prometheus
8 29 (0.45%) Nagios
9 26 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
10 24 (0.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 21 (0.32%) BMC PATROL
12 18 (0.28%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.25%) Kibana
14 15 (0.23%) Argo
14 15 (0.23%) vCenter Server
15 14 (0.22%) Autotask
15 14 (0.22%) Cisco CUCM
15 14 (0.22%) FortiGate
16 13 (0.20%) Nessus
16 13 (0.20%) Puppet
Vendors
1 1,682 (25.90%) Microsoft
2 275 (4.24%) VMware
3 190 (2.93%) Oracle
4 168 (2.59%) SAP
5 160 (2.46%) Google
6 146 (2.25%) ServiceNow
7 145 (2.23%) Cisco
8 132 (2.03%) Salesforce
9 125 (1.93%) SolarWinds
10 121 (1.86%) Veeam
11 119 (1.83%) Splunk
12 116 (1.79%) Databricks
13 84 (1.29%) Adobe
13 84 (1.29%) Apple
14 73 (1.12%) Dell
15 64 (0.99%) Tanium
16 63 (0.97%) Brocade
16 63 (0.97%) Nimble Storage
17 56 (0.86%) Red Hat
18 50 (0.77%) Sage