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

6 months to
7 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 4 7
Rank change year-on-year -5 +3 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,437 7,709 10,885
As % of all permanent jobs in England 10.07% 18.53% 15.22%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.83% 19.81% 17.36%
Number of salaries quoted 4,497 4,202 7,818
10th Percentile £26,875 £29,750 £26,250
25th Percentile £31,250 £38,750 £33,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £46,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -16.36% +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% -10.71%

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 50,162 38,910 62,694
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 78.46% 93.52% 87.66%
Number of salaries quoted 30,888 20,514 49,276
10th Percentile £29,750 £32,500 £29,440
25th Percentile £40,000 £45,185 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £61,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.84% +10.91% -12.00%
75th Percentile £77,500 £81,250 £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 7 March 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 7 March 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 -3 1,908 £67,500 +3.85% 1,081
North of England -16 1,363 £42,500 -10.53% 660
South East -5 1,228 £42,500 -17.48% 936
Midlands -16 851 £37,500 -25.00% 488
North West -16 728 £45,497 -9.01% 354
South West -3 564 £43,125 -17.86% 349
West Midlands -21 500 £42,500 -22.73% 275
Yorkshire -6 497 £35,000 -17.65% 227
East of England -7 420 £40,000 -20.00% 393
East Midlands -1 348 £35,000 -6.67% 210
North East -6 138 £45,000 - 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
1 333 (5.17%) Microsoft Exchange
2 282 (4.38%) SharePoint
3 81 (1.26%) Confluence
4 59 (0.92%) Apache
5 54 (0.84%) CMS
6 47 (0.73%) IIS
7 45 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
8 41 (0.64%) Apache Spark
9 31 (0.48%) WordPress
10 16 (0.25%) Palantir Foundry
11 12 (0.19%) SAS
12 11 (0.17%) nginx
13 8 (0.12%) Drupal
13 8 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2007
14 7 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2010
14 7 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
15 4 (0.062%) Headless CMS
15 4 (0.062%) Totara
Applications
1 448 (6.96%) Microsoft Office
2 347 (5.39%) Microsoft Excel
3 74 (1.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 38 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
5 32 (0.50%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
7 21 (0.33%) Maya
8 18 (0.28%) AutoCAD
9 13 (0.20%) Photoshop
10 11 (0.17%) SOLIDWORKS
11 9 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
12 8 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 8 (0.12%) Chatbot
13 5 (0.078%) Adobe XD
14 4 (0.062%) CATIA
14 4 (0.062%) Fusion 360
14 4 (0.062%) Trello
15 3 (0.047%) Elementor
15 3 (0.047%) InDesign
15 3 (0.047%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 74 (1.15%) SAP S/4HANA
2 65 (1.01%) Dynamics CRM
3 32 (0.50%) NetSuite
4 19 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
5 17 (0.26%) Endur
5 17 (0.26%) SAP CO
6 16 (0.25%) Shopify
7 14 (0.22%) Dynamics NAV
8 10 (0.16%) iTrent
8 10 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
8 10 (0.16%) Workday HCM
9 9 (0.14%) Maximo
9 9 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
9 9 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
9 9 (0.14%) SAP ERP
10 8 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
10 8 (0.12%) SAP Business One
10 8 (0.12%) SAP FI
10 8 (0.12%) SAP FI/CO
11 7 (0.11%) Sage 200
Cloud Services
1 1,373 (21.33%) Azure
2 986 (15.32%) Microsoft 365
3 762 (11.84%) AWS
4 458 (7.12%) Power Platform
5 371 (5.76%) SaaS
6 286 (4.44%) Entra ID
7 259 (4.02%) GCP
8 172 (2.67%) Azure DevOps
9 163 (2.53%) GitHub
10 160 (2.49%) Serverless
11 127 (1.97%) Power Automate
12 106 (1.65%) Dynamics 365
13 96 (1.49%) Google Workspace
14 89 (1.38%) Amazon S3
15 84 (1.30%) PowerApps
16 81 (1.26%) AWS Lambda
17 79 (1.23%) AWS CloudFormation
18 70 (1.09%) GitHub Actions
19 68 (1.06%) PaaS
20 65 (1.01%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 418 (6.49%) DNS
2 373 (5.79%) Firewall
3 354 (5.50%) DHCP
4 241 (3.74%) VPN
5 217 (3.37%) TCP/IP
6 210 (3.26%) WAN
7 202 (3.14%) Wi-Fi
8 176 (2.73%) LAN
9 145 (2.25%) Broadband
10 128 (1.99%) VLAN
11 92 (1.43%) Wireless
12 91 (1.41%) VoIP
13 67 (1.04%) SD-WAN
14 51 (0.79%) Remote Desktop
15 50 (0.78%) Network Security
16 49 (0.76%) Internet
17 45 (0.70%) SAN
18 33 (0.51%) Structured Cabling
19 29 (0.45%) BGP
19 29 (0.45%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 375 (5.83%) Power BI
2 279 (4.33%) SQL Server
3 144 (2.24%) Data Warehouse
4 129 (2.00%) Tableau
5 123 (1.91%) Relational Database
6 119 (1.85%) NoSQL
7 108 (1.68%) PostgreSQL
8 98 (1.52%) Amazon RDS
9 92 (1.43%) MySQL
10 67 (1.04%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 56 (0.87%) MongoDB
12 55 (0.85%) Amazon Redshift
13 51 (0.79%) Metadata
14 50 (0.78%) Data Lake
15 48 (0.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 46 (0.71%) DynamoDB
17 43 (0.67%) Power Query
18 41 (0.64%) Azure SQL Database
19 39 (0.61%) Big Data
20 27 (0.42%) Redis
Development Applications
1 281 (4.37%) Git
2 235 (3.65%) JIRA
3 104 (1.62%) Jenkins
4 93 (1.44%) GitLab
5 54 (0.84%) Selenium
6 28 (0.43%) Visual Studio
7 22 (0.34%) Cypress.io
8 19 (0.30%) Burp Suite
8 19 (0.30%) LabVIEW
8 19 (0.30%) Maven
8 19 (0.30%) Metasploit
8 19 (0.30%) TeamCity
9 18 (0.28%) Bitbucket
9 18 (0.28%) Robot Framework
10 16 (0.25%) Octopus Deploy
11 15 (0.23%) Cucumber
11 15 (0.23%) JUnit
11 15 (0.23%) SonarQube
12 14 (0.22%) CircleCI
12 14 (0.22%) Snyk
General
1 3,243 (50.38%) Social Skills
2 1,949 (30.28%) Analytical Skills
3 1,460 (22.68%) Finance
4 441 (6.85%) Organisational Skills
5 362 (5.62%) Marketing
6 318 (4.94%) Retail
7 312 (4.85%) Law
8 311 (4.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 291 (4.52%) Legal
10 289 (4.49%) Banking
11 285 (4.43%) Public Sector
12 282 (4.38%) Manufacturing
13 174 (2.70%) Presentation Skills
14 173 (2.69%) Telecoms
15 136 (2.11%) Electronics
16 106 (1.65%) Games
17 104 (1.62%) Documentation Skills
18 87 (1.35%) Financial Institution
19 86 (1.34%) Automotive
20 83 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 964 (14.98%) Analyst
2 772 (11.99%) Senior
3 760 (11.81%) IT Support
4 652 (10.13%) Support Engineer
5 589 (9.15%) Developer
6 382 (5.93%) Lead
7 363 (5.64%) IT Engineer
8 327 (5.08%) Support Analyst
9 308 (4.78%) IT Support Engineer
10 242 (3.76%) Consultant
11 229 (3.56%) Technical Support
12 222 (3.45%) Business Analyst
13 216 (3.36%) Architect
14 208 (3.23%) Support Technician
15 199 (3.09%) 2nd Line Support
16 169 (2.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 164 (2.55%) Technical Engineer
18 161 (2.50%) IT Analyst
19 160 (2.49%) Software Engineer
20 156 (2.42%) Technical Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 267 (4.15%) .NET
2 254 (3.95%) React
3 221 (3.43%) HTML
4 173 (2.69%) CSS
5 151 (2.35%) Node.js
6 131 (2.04%) REST
7 111 (1.72%) RESTful
8 79 (1.23%) AngularJS
9 71 (1.10%) Middleware
10 69 (1.07%) Vue
11 66 (1.03%) Kafka
11 66 (1.03%) Spring
12 61 (0.95%) SOAP
13 60 (0.93%) JSON
14 55 (0.85%) XML
15 53 (0.82%) Django
16 48 (0.75%) .NET Framework
16 48 (0.75%) Flask
17 45 (0.70%) Spring Boot
18 43 (0.67%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 545 (8.47%) Driving Licence
2 465 (7.22%) Onboarding
3 405 (6.29%) Self-Motivation
4 212 (3.29%) Management Information System
5 173 (2.69%) Analytical Mindset
6 171 (2.66%) Cloud Native
7 144 (2.24%) Legacy Systems
8 136 (2.11%) Product Ownership
9 135 (2.10%) Data Centre
10 114 (1.77%) Distributed Systems
11 108 (1.68%) Enterprise Software
12 93 (1.44%) Mobile App
13 83 (1.29%) Social Media
14 76 (1.18%) Data Structures
15 71 (1.10%) Low-Code
16 62 (0.96%) Algorithms
17 57 (0.89%) Security Posture
18 54 (0.84%) Virtual Team
19 51 (0.79%) EPoS
20 49 (0.76%) FMCG
Operating Systems
1 1,128 (17.52%) Windows
2 439 (6.82%) Windows Server
3 402 (6.25%) Linux
4 169 (2.63%) Windows 10
5 121 (1.88%) Windows Server 2016
6 112 (1.74%) Android
7 96 (1.49%) Mac OS
8 81 (1.26%) Apple iOS
9 60 (0.93%) Unix
10 55 (0.85%) Windows Server 2019
11 35 (0.54%) Windows Server 2012
12 34 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 25 (0.39%) CentOS
13 25 (0.39%) Windows 7
14 18 (0.28%) Ubuntu
15 16 (0.25%) VMS
16 11 (0.17%) Windows 8
17 9 (0.14%) Mac OS X
18 7 (0.11%) Debian
19 5 (0.078%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,153 (17.91%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,025 (15.92%) Agile
3 959 (14.90%) Customer Service
4 655 (10.18%) Mentoring
5 651 (10.11%) Analytics
6 636 (9.88%) Decision-Making
7 627 (9.74%) AI
8 616 (9.57%) CI/CD
9 603 (9.37%) DevOps
10 578 (8.98%) Project Management
11 556 (8.64%) ITIL
12 535 (8.31%) Business Intelligence
13 500 (7.77%) Computer Science
14 490 (7.61%) Stakeholder Management
15 448 (6.96%) Cybersecurity
16 408 (6.34%) Software Engineering
17 384 (5.97%) Change Management
18 369 (5.73%) CRM
19 368 (5.72%) Process Improvement
20 360 (5.59%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 948 (14.73%) Python
2 920 (14.29%) SQL
3 426 (6.62%) JavaScript
4 325 (5.05%) PowerShell
5 311 (4.83%) Java
6 293 (4.55%) C#
7 175 (2.72%) TypeScript
8 151 (2.35%) Bash
9 92 (1.43%) PHP
10 78 (1.21%) C++
11 68 (1.06%) Go
12 65 (1.01%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 50 (0.78%) Scala
14 45 (0.70%) T-SQL
15 42 (0.65%) C
16 38 (0.59%) R
17 32 (0.50%) Apex Code
17 32 (0.50%) Kotlin
18 27 (0.42%) Bicep
19 25 (0.39%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 1,336 (20.76%) Degree
2 501 (7.78%) Security Cleared
3 318 (4.94%) SC Cleared
4 237 (3.68%) Computer Science Degree
5 186 (2.89%) Microsoft Certification
6 172 (2.67%) DBS Check
7 131 (2.04%) Master's Degree
8 111 (1.72%) DV Cleared
9 102 (1.58%) BPSS Clearance
9 102 (1.58%) CISSP
10 84 (1.30%) Cisco Certification
11 83 (1.29%) ACCA
12 82 (1.27%) A+ Certification
13 71 (1.10%) CIMA
14 64 (0.99%) Network+ Certification
15 63 (0.98%) PMI Certification
16 58 (0.90%) CCNA
17 54 (0.84%) AWS Certification
18 51 (0.79%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
19 49 (0.76%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 306 (4.75%) QA
2 257 (3.99%) Data Quality
3 223 (3.46%) GDPR
4 167 (2.59%) Cyber Essentials
5 165 (2.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 134 (2.08%) SLA
7 130 (2.02%) Accessibility
8 123 (1.91%) PCI DSS
9 99 (1.54%) NIST
10 48 (0.75%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 32 (0.50%) ISO 9001
12 28 (0.43%) Actionable Recommendations
13 25 (0.39%) SOC 2
14 22 (0.34%) PMO
15 20 (0.31%) GRC
16 19 (0.30%) COBIT
17 13 (0.20%) GMP
18 11 (0.17%) WCAG
19 10 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 20000
20 9 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 762 (11.84%) Active Directory
2 295 (4.58%) Docker
3 240 (3.73%) Hyper-V
4 163 (2.53%) VMware Infrastructure
5 70 (1.09%) Terminal Server
6 27 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
7 25 (0.39%) Virtual Machines
8 24 (0.37%) Firmware
9 16 (0.25%) vSphere
10 12 (0.19%) KVM
10 12 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.16%) VMware Workstation
12 7 (0.11%) IAG
13 6 (0.093%) Virtual Servers
14 5 (0.078%) XenApp
15 4 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 2 (0.031%) Postfix
16 2 (0.031%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 2 (0.031%) vCloud
16 2 (0.031%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 279 (4.33%) Terraform
2 273 (4.24%) Microsoft Intune
3 221 (3.43%) Kubernetes
4 148 (2.30%) Ansible
5 82 (1.27%) Grafana
6 76 (1.18%) SCCM
7 56 (0.87%) Prometheus
8 42 (0.65%) BMC PATROL
9 28 (0.43%) Nagios
10 27 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
11 22 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 18 (0.28%) Jamf Pro
13 15 (0.23%) Argo
13 15 (0.23%) Cisco CUCM
14 13 (0.20%) vCenter Server
14 13 (0.20%) ZABBIX
15 12 (0.19%) Autotask
15 12 (0.19%) Kibana
16 11 (0.17%) Nessus
17 10 (0.16%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,692 (26.29%) Microsoft
2 282 (4.38%) VMware
3 241 (3.74%) SAP
4 227 (3.53%) Oracle
5 164 (2.55%) Google
6 151 (2.35%) Salesforce
7 148 (2.30%) Cisco
8 136 (2.11%) Veeam
9 128 (1.99%) SolarWinds
10 123 (1.91%) ServiceNow
10 123 (1.91%) Splunk
11 101 (1.57%) Databricks
12 95 (1.48%) Adobe
13 83 (1.29%) Apple
14 71 (1.10%) Tanium
15 70 (1.09%) Brocade
15 70 (1.09%) Nimble Storage
16 58 (0.90%) Dell
17 56 (0.87%) Sage
18 49 (0.76%) HubSpot