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

6 months to
28 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 6,453 7,811 10,165
As % of all permanent jobs in England 10.44% 18.37% 15.14%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.24% 19.74% 17.17%
Number of salaries quoted 4,484 4,016 7,407
10th Percentile £26,750 £30,000 £26,250
25th Percentile £31,250 £39,000 £33,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,700 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -16.91% +10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £66,250 £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% -11.44%

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 48,733 39,572 59,217
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 78.83% 93.09% 88.20%
Number of salaries quoted 29,924 20,111 46,771
10th Percentile £29,250 £33,200 £29,750
25th Percentile £39,351 £46,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £62,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -11.29% +12.73% -12.00%
75th Percentile £77,500 £82,500 £75,000
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £95,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £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 28 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 28 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 -2 1,908 £67,500 +3.85% 734
North of England -17 1,364 £42,500 -10.05% 541
South East -4 1,242 £42,500 -19.05% 788
Midlands -16 854 £37,500 -25.00% 390
North West -15 721 £45,000 -10.00% 292
South West -3 563 £42,500 -19.05% 249
West Midlands -21 502 £42,500 -22.73% 235
Yorkshire -5 501 £35,000 -19.49% 187
East of England -7 414 £40,000 -20.00% 259
East Midlands -1 349 £35,000 -4.11% 155
North East -4 142 £45,000 - 76
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
1 320 (4.96%) Microsoft Exchange
2 279 (4.32%) SharePoint
3 80 (1.24%) Confluence
4 59 (0.91%) Apache
5 48 (0.74%) IIS
6 47 (0.73%) CMS
7 46 (0.71%) Apache Airflow
8 42 (0.65%) Apache Spark
9 31 (0.48%) WordPress
10 16 (0.25%) Palantir Foundry
11 11 (0.17%) nginx
12 10 (0.15%) SAS
13 9 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.11%) Drupal
15 6 (0.093%) Exchange Server 2007
15 6 (0.093%) Exchange Server 2010
15 6 (0.093%) Exchange Server 2013
16 4 (0.062%) Apache Solr
16 4 (0.062%) Moodle
Applications
1 440 (6.82%) Microsoft Office
2 358 (5.55%) Microsoft Excel
3 79 (1.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 38 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
5 30 (0.46%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
7 26 (0.40%) Maya
8 17 (0.26%) AutoCAD
9 12 (0.19%) Photoshop
10 10 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 10 (0.15%) SOLIDWORKS
11 9 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
12 8 (0.12%) Chatbot
13 5 (0.077%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.077%) Trello
14 4 (0.062%) CATIA
14 4 (0.062%) Fusion 360
15 3 (0.046%) Adobe Premiere
15 3 (0.046%) Elementor
15 3 (0.046%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 81 (1.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 69 (1.07%) Dynamics CRM
3 33 (0.51%) NetSuite
4 19 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
5 17 (0.26%) Endur
5 17 (0.26%) SAP CO
5 17 (0.26%) Shopify
6 14 (0.22%) Dynamics NAV
7 10 (0.15%) iTrent
7 10 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
7 10 (0.15%) Workday HCM
8 9 (0.14%) Maximo
8 9 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
8 9 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
8 9 (0.14%) SAP Business One
9 8 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
9 8 (0.12%) SAP FI
9 8 (0.12%) SAP FI/CO
10 7 (0.11%) Sage 200
10 7 (0.11%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,386 (21.48%) Azure
2 974 (15.09%) Microsoft 365
3 770 (11.93%) AWS
4 474 (7.35%) Power Platform
5 363 (5.63%) SaaS
6 280 (4.34%) Entra ID
7 261 (4.04%) GCP
8 180 (2.79%) Azure DevOps
9 162 (2.51%) GitHub
10 158 (2.45%) Serverless
11 132 (2.05%) Power Automate
12 109 (1.69%) Dynamics 365
13 93 (1.44%) Google Workspace
14 87 (1.35%) Amazon S3
15 85 (1.32%) PowerApps
16 80 (1.24%) AWS CloudFormation
16 80 (1.24%) AWS Lambda
17 68 (1.05%) GitHub Actions
18 67 (1.04%) PaaS
19 65 (1.01%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 416 (6.45%) DNS
2 369 (5.72%) Firewall
3 355 (5.50%) DHCP
4 241 (3.73%) VPN
5 212 (3.29%) TCP/IP
6 206 (3.19%) WAN
7 202 (3.13%) Wi-Fi
8 173 (2.68%) LAN
9 142 (2.20%) Broadband
10 128 (1.98%) VLAN
11 94 (1.46%) VoIP
12 93 (1.44%) Wireless
13 66 (1.02%) SD-WAN
14 52 (0.81%) Remote Desktop
15 50 (0.77%) Internet
15 50 (0.77%) Network Security
16 48 (0.74%) SAN
17 33 (0.51%) Structured Cabling
18 31 (0.48%) BGP
19 30 (0.46%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 385 (5.97%) Power BI
2 279 (4.32%) SQL Server
3 144 (2.23%) Data Warehouse
4 134 (2.08%) Tableau
5 127 (1.97%) Relational Database
6 117 (1.81%) NoSQL
7 108 (1.67%) PostgreSQL
8 98 (1.52%) Amazon RDS
9 88 (1.36%) MySQL
10 66 (1.02%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 58 (0.90%) Data Lake
12 57 (0.88%) MongoDB
13 56 (0.87%) Amazon Redshift
14 52 (0.81%) Metadata
15 47 (0.73%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 46 (0.71%) DynamoDB
17 43 (0.67%) Power Query
18 41 (0.64%) Azure SQL Database
19 39 (0.60%) Big Data
20 27 (0.42%) Redis
Development Applications
1 274 (4.25%) Git
2 232 (3.60%) JIRA
3 103 (1.60%) Jenkins
4 91 (1.41%) GitLab
5 55 (0.85%) Selenium
6 27 (0.42%) Visual Studio
7 23 (0.36%) Cypress.io
8 20 (0.31%) Maven
9 19 (0.29%) Burp Suite
9 19 (0.29%) Metasploit
9 19 (0.29%) TeamCity
10 18 (0.28%) Bitbucket
10 18 (0.28%) LabVIEW
10 18 (0.28%) Robot Framework
11 16 (0.25%) Octopus Deploy
11 16 (0.25%) SonarQube
12 15 (0.23%) Cucumber
12 15 (0.23%) JUnit
13 14 (0.22%) Snyk
14 13 (0.20%) CircleCI
General
1 3,268 (50.64%) Social Skills
2 1,951 (30.23%) Analytical Skills
3 1,483 (22.98%) Finance
4 430 (6.66%) Organisational Skills
5 359 (5.56%) Marketing
6 329 (5.10%) Law
7 316 (4.90%) Retail
8 308 (4.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 291 (4.51%) Legal
10 289 (4.48%) Manufacturing
11 288 (4.46%) Public Sector
12 278 (4.31%) Banking
13 179 (2.77%) Presentation Skills
14 177 (2.74%) Telecoms
15 135 (2.09%) Electronics
16 108 (1.67%) Games
17 102 (1.58%) Documentation Skills
18 89 (1.38%) Financial Institution
19 88 (1.36%) Automotive
20 84 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 981 (15.20%) Analyst
2 796 (12.34%) Senior
3 754 (11.68%) IT Support
4 642 (9.95%) Support Engineer
5 587 (9.10%) Developer
6 383 (5.94%) Lead
7 353 (5.47%) IT Engineer
8 331 (5.13%) Support Analyst
9 297 (4.60%) IT Support Engineer
10 242 (3.75%) Consultant
11 240 (3.72%) Technical Support
12 233 (3.61%) Business Analyst
13 219 (3.39%) Architect
14 203 (3.15%) Support Technician
15 194 (3.01%) 2nd Line Support
16 172 (2.67%) Technical Engineer
17 169 (2.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 163 (2.53%) Technical Support Engineer
19 162 (2.51%) IT Analyst
19 162 (2.51%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 270 (4.18%) .NET
2 254 (3.94%) React
3 226 (3.50%) HTML
4 176 (2.73%) CSS
5 148 (2.29%) Node.js
6 134 (2.08%) REST
7 111 (1.72%) RESTful
8 81 (1.26%) AngularJS
9 70 (1.08%) Middleware
10 69 (1.07%) Vue
11 67 (1.04%) Spring
12 63 (0.98%) Kafka
13 62 (0.96%) SOAP
14 58 (0.90%) JSON
15 56 (0.87%) XML
16 53 (0.82%) Django
17 50 (0.77%) .NET Framework
18 48 (0.74%) Flask
19 45 (0.70%) Spring Boot
20 43 (0.67%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 540 (8.37%) Driving Licence
2 474 (7.35%) Onboarding
3 418 (6.48%) Self-Motivation
4 211 (3.27%) Management Information System
5 183 (2.84%) Analytical Mindset
6 173 (2.68%) Cloud Native
7 142 (2.20%) Legacy Systems
8 140 (2.17%) Data Centre
8 140 (2.17%) Product Ownership
9 112 (1.74%) Enterprise Software
10 111 (1.72%) Distributed Systems
11 93 (1.44%) Mobile App
12 80 (1.24%) Social Media
13 72 (1.12%) Low-Code
14 71 (1.10%) Data Structures
15 61 (0.95%) Algorithms
16 58 (0.90%) Virtual Team
17 55 (0.85%) EPoS
17 55 (0.85%) Security Posture
18 52 (0.81%) CCTV
Operating Systems
1 1,115 (17.28%) Windows
2 431 (6.68%) Windows Server
3 400 (6.20%) Linux
4 165 (2.56%) Windows 10
5 116 (1.80%) Windows Server 2016
6 110 (1.70%) Android
7 96 (1.49%) Mac OS
8 80 (1.24%) Apple iOS
9 60 (0.93%) Unix
10 54 (0.84%) Windows Server 2019
11 34 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 33 (0.51%) Windows Server 2012
13 26 (0.40%) Windows 7
14 22 (0.34%) CentOS
15 16 (0.25%) Ubuntu
15 16 (0.25%) VMS
16 10 (0.15%) Windows 8
17 9 (0.14%) Mac OS X
18 8 (0.12%) Debian
19 4 (0.062%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,152 (17.85%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,035 (16.04%) Agile
3 950 (14.72%) Customer Service
4 671 (10.40%) Analytics
5 664 (10.29%) Mentoring
6 636 (9.86%) Decision-Making
7 634 (9.82%) AI
8 612 (9.48%) CI/CD
9 604 (9.36%) DevOps
10 594 (9.21%) Project Management
11 548 (8.49%) Business Intelligence
11 548 (8.49%) ITIL
12 517 (8.01%) Computer Science
13 499 (7.73%) Stakeholder Management
14 459 (7.11%) Cybersecurity
15 413 (6.40%) Software Engineering
16 407 (6.31%) Change Management
17 381 (5.90%) CRM
18 372 (5.76%) ERP
18 372 (5.76%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 946 (14.66%) Python
2 927 (14.37%) SQL
3 415 (6.43%) JavaScript
4 326 (5.05%) PowerShell
5 318 (4.93%) Java
6 301 (4.66%) C#
7 173 (2.68%) TypeScript
8 148 (2.29%) Bash
9 94 (1.46%) PHP
10 79 (1.22%) C++
11 66 (1.02%) Go
12 65 (1.01%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 52 (0.81%) Scala
14 46 (0.71%) T-SQL
15 45 (0.70%) C
16 38 (0.59%) R
17 32 (0.50%) Kotlin
18 31 (0.48%) Apex Code
19 27 (0.42%) Bicep
20 25 (0.39%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 1,387 (21.49%) Degree
2 512 (7.93%) Security Cleared
3 325 (5.04%) SC Cleared
4 243 (3.77%) Computer Science Degree
5 181 (2.80%) Microsoft Certification
6 165 (2.56%) DBS Check
7 144 (2.23%) Master's Degree
8 115 (1.78%) DV Cleared
9 106 (1.64%) CISSP
10 100 (1.55%) BPSS Clearance
11 84 (1.30%) ACCA
11 84 (1.30%) Cisco Certification
12 81 (1.26%) A+ Certification
13 71 (1.10%) CIMA
14 66 (1.02%) Network+ Certification
15 63 (0.98%) PMI Certification
16 56 (0.87%) CCNA
17 55 (0.85%) AWS Certification
18 54 (0.84%) CISM
19 50 (0.77%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 307 (4.76%) QA
2 260 (4.03%) Data Quality
3 225 (3.49%) GDPR
4 167 (2.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 165 (2.56%) Cyber Essentials
6 136 (2.11%) Accessibility
7 133 (2.06%) SLA
8 121 (1.88%) PCI DSS
9 96 (1.49%) NIST
10 48 (0.74%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 32 (0.50%) ISO 9001
12 28 (0.43%) Actionable Recommendations
13 24 (0.37%) SOC 2
14 21 (0.33%) PMO
15 20 (0.31%) COBIT
16 19 (0.29%) GRC
17 11 (0.17%) WCAG
18 10 (0.15%) GMP
18 10 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 20000
19 9 (0.14%) ITGC
System Software
1 755 (11.70%) Active Directory
2 294 (4.56%) Docker
3 240 (3.72%) Hyper-V
4 160 (2.48%) VMware Infrastructure
5 70 (1.08%) Terminal Server
6 26 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
7 24 (0.37%) Firmware
7 24 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
8 17 (0.26%) vSphere
9 14 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
10 12 (0.19%) KVM
11 9 (0.14%) VMware Workstation
12 7 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.093%) IAG
14 4 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 4 (0.062%) XenApp
15 3 (0.046%) vCloud
15 3 (0.046%) VMware NSX
16 2 (0.031%) Postfix
16 2 (0.031%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 280 (4.34%) Terraform
2 274 (4.25%) Microsoft Intune
3 218 (3.38%) Kubernetes
4 148 (2.29%) Ansible
5 80 (1.24%) Grafana
6 75 (1.16%) SCCM
7 54 (0.84%) Prometheus
8 42 (0.65%) BMC PATROL
9 28 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
10 25 (0.39%) Nagios
11 21 (0.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 16 (0.25%) Jamf Pro
13 15 (0.23%) Argo
14 14 (0.22%) Cisco CUCM
14 14 (0.22%) vCenter Server
15 12 (0.19%) Autotask
15 12 (0.19%) Kibana
15 12 (0.19%) ZABBIX
16 11 (0.17%) FortiGate
16 11 (0.17%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,685 (26.11%) Microsoft
2 282 (4.37%) VMware
3 260 (4.03%) SAP
4 234 (3.63%) Oracle
5 160 (2.48%) Google
6 155 (2.40%) Salesforce
7 151 (2.34%) Cisco
8 136 (2.11%) Veeam
9 123 (1.91%) SolarWinds
10 122 (1.89%) ServiceNow
10 122 (1.89%) Splunk
11 103 (1.60%) Databricks
12 99 (1.53%) Adobe
13 79 (1.22%) Apple
14 71 (1.10%) Tanium
15 70 (1.08%) Brocade
15 70 (1.08%) Nimble Storage
16 58 (0.90%) Dell
17 56 (0.87%) Sage
18 50 (0.77%) HubSpot