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

6 months to
3 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 4 7
Rank change year-on-year -5 +3 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,405 7,004 11,830
As % of all permanent jobs in England 9.01% 19.16% 15.05%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.76% 20.57% 17.45%
Number of salaries quoted 4,447 4,389 8,284
10th Percentile £27,000 £29,000 £26,250
25th Percentile £31,250 £37,500 £33,188
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% +10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £68,596 £75,000 £68,750
90th Percentile £86,253 £90,000 £86,250
UK median annual salary £46,500 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -15.45% +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 54,454 34,050 67,812
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 76.60% 93.17% 86.25%
Number of salaries quoted 34,258 20,315 52,343
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £43,750 £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 £77,500 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £103,750 £95,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +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 3 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 3 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 -3 1,968 £67,500 +3.85% 986
North of England -18 1,285 £41,000 -10.87% 662
South East -7 1,190 £45,000 -11.71% 802
Midlands -18 875 £38,500 -19.79% 478
North West -17 655 £41,000 -17.17% 365
South West -6 549 £43,500 -8.42% 308
West Midlands -25 520 £42,500 -20.26% 278
Yorkshire -8 501 £36,000 -14.79% 222
East of England -9 437 £40,000 -20.00% 288
East Midlands -2 352 £35,000 -11.39% 199
North East -10 129 £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
1 341 (5.32%) Microsoft Exchange
2 286 (4.47%) SharePoint
3 77 (1.20%) Confluence
4 56 (0.87%) CMS
5 54 (0.84%) Apache
6 44 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
7 36 (0.56%) Apache Spark
8 33 (0.52%) IIS
9 27 (0.42%) WordPress
10 16 (0.25%) SAS
11 14 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
12 12 (0.19%) Exchange Server 2013
12 12 (0.19%) nginx
13 10 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2007
13 10 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2010
14 9 (0.14%) Anypoint
14 9 (0.14%) Drupal
15 6 (0.094%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 4 (0.062%) Moodle
16 4 (0.062%) OpenStack
Applications
1 451 (7.04%) Microsoft Office
2 345 (5.39%) Microsoft Excel
3 70 (1.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 37 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
5 35 (0.55%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
7 14 (0.22%) AutoCAD
8 12 (0.19%) Photoshop
9 11 (0.17%) Adobe Illustrator
10 10 (0.16%) Chatbot
10 10 (0.16%) Maya
11 8 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 7 (0.11%) Fusion 360
13 6 (0.094%) Adobe XD
13 6 (0.094%) SOLIDWORKS
14 4 (0.062%) Trello
15 3 (0.047%) Elementor
15 3 (0.047%) InDesign
15 3 (0.047%) Simulink
16 2 (0.031%) Acrobat
Business Applications
1 60 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
2 42 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
3 30 (0.47%) NetSuite
4 21 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
5 18 (0.28%) Shopify
6 17 (0.27%) Endur
6 17 (0.27%) SAP CO
7 15 (0.23%) Dynamics NAV
8 12 (0.19%) Maximo
9 10 (0.16%) iTrent
9 10 (0.16%) Magento
9 10 (0.16%) Workday HCM
10 8 (0.12%) SAP FI
10 8 (0.12%) SAP FI/CO
11 7 (0.11%) Q-Pulse
11 7 (0.11%) Sage 200
11 7 (0.11%) SAP ERP
12 6 (0.094%) Dynamics AX
12 6 (0.094%) IBM Planning Analytics
12 6 (0.094%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 1,395 (21.78%) Azure
2 995 (15.53%) Microsoft 365
3 798 (12.46%) AWS
4 473 (7.38%) Power Platform
5 357 (5.57%) SaaS
6 301 (4.70%) GCP
7 272 (4.25%) Entra ID
8 170 (2.65%) GitHub
9 167 (2.61%) Serverless
10 165 (2.58%) Azure DevOps
11 129 (2.01%) Power Automate
12 111 (1.73%) Dynamics 365
13 89 (1.39%) Amazon S3
14 88 (1.37%) Google Workspace
15 82 (1.28%) Azure Data Factory
15 82 (1.28%) GitHub Actions
15 82 (1.28%) PowerApps
16 81 (1.26%) AWS CloudFormation
17 78 (1.22%) AWS Lambda
18 76 (1.19%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 408 (6.37%) DNS
2 378 (5.90%) Firewall
3 348 (5.43%) DHCP
4 251 (3.92%) VPN
5 216 (3.37%) WAN
6 210 (3.28%) TCP/IP
7 204 (3.19%) Wi-Fi
8 185 (2.89%) Broadband
9 181 (2.83%) LAN
10 123 (1.92%) VLAN
11 102 (1.59%) Wireless
12 86 (1.34%) VoIP
13 70 (1.09%) SD-WAN
14 55 (0.86%) Network Security
15 45 (0.70%) SAN
16 39 (0.61%) Internet
17 35 (0.55%) Remote Desktop
18 32 (0.50%) Structured Cabling
19 30 (0.47%) BGP
20 29 (0.45%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 397 (6.20%) Power BI
2 272 (4.25%) SQL Server
3 137 (2.14%) Tableau
4 130 (2.03%) Data Warehouse
5 120 (1.87%) NoSQL
6 107 (1.67%) Relational Database
7 104 (1.62%) PostgreSQL
8 94 (1.47%) Amazon RDS
9 87 (1.36%) MySQL
10 65 (1.01%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 53 (0.83%) MongoDB
11 53 (0.83%) Power Query
11 53 (0.83%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 47 (0.73%) Amazon Redshift
12 47 (0.73%) Azure SQL Database
12 47 (0.73%) DynamoDB
13 42 (0.66%) Metadata
14 41 (0.64%) Data Lake
15 38 (0.59%) Big Data
16 26 (0.41%) Redis
Development Applications
1 280 (4.37%) Git
2 224 (3.50%) JIRA
3 113 (1.76%) Jenkins
4 98 (1.53%) GitLab
5 51 (0.80%) Selenium
6 30 (0.47%) Visual Studio
7 24 (0.37%) Cypress.io
8 19 (0.30%) Burp Suite
8 19 (0.30%) Metasploit
8 19 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
9 18 (0.28%) Chocolatey
9 18 (0.28%) Cucumber
9 18 (0.28%) Maven
9 18 (0.28%) SonarQube
10 17 (0.27%) CircleCI
10 17 (0.27%) LabVIEW
11 16 (0.25%) Robot Framework
11 16 (0.25%) TeamCity
12 15 (0.23%) Bitbucket
13 13 (0.20%) JUnit
General
1 3,127 (48.82%) Social Skills
2 1,949 (30.43%) Analytical Skills
3 1,395 (21.78%) Finance
4 449 (7.01%) Organisational Skills
5 370 (5.78%) Marketing
6 361 (5.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 312 (4.87%) Law
8 310 (4.84%) Retail
9 304 (4.75%) Banking
10 300 (4.68%) Legal
11 291 (4.54%) Manufacturing
12 286 (4.47%) Public Sector
13 161 (2.51%) Presentation Skills
14 153 (2.39%) Telecoms
15 146 (2.28%) Electronics
16 100 (1.56%) Documentation Skills
17 89 (1.39%) Games
18 80 (1.25%) Influencing Skills
19 79 (1.23%) Financial Institution
20 73 (1.14%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 926 (14.46%) Analyst
2 755 (11.79%) Senior
3 752 (11.74%) IT Support
4 643 (10.04%) Support Engineer
5 584 (9.12%) Developer
6 395 (6.17%) Lead
7 390 (6.09%) IT Engineer
8 325 (5.07%) IT Support Engineer
9 299 (4.67%) Support Analyst
10 252 (3.93%) Consultant
11 215 (3.36%) Architect
11 215 (3.36%) Support Technician
12 203 (3.17%) Business Analyst
13 192 (3.00%) Technical Support
14 190 (2.97%) 2nd Line Support
15 182 (2.84%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 180 (2.81%) Software Engineer
17 172 (2.69%) Systems Engineer
18 165 (2.58%) IT Technician
19 149 (2.33%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 250 (3.90%) React
2 245 (3.83%) .NET
3 222 (3.47%) HTML
4 182 (2.84%) CSS
5 154 (2.40%) Node.js
6 127 (1.98%) REST
7 121 (1.89%) RESTful
8 73 (1.14%) Vue
9 69 (1.08%) Middleware
9 69 (1.08%) Spring
10 68 (1.06%) Django
11 67 (1.05%) AngularJS
12 64 (1.00%) SOAP
13 63 (0.98%) JSON
14 62 (0.97%) Kafka
15 61 (0.95%) XML
16 59 (0.92%) Flask
17 50 (0.78%) gRPC
18 49 (0.77%) FastAPI
19 48 (0.75%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 434 (6.78%) Driving Licence
2 426 (6.65%) Onboarding
3 371 (5.79%) Self-Motivation
4 204 (3.19%) Management Information System
5 173 (2.70%) Cloud Native
6 152 (2.37%) Analytical Mindset
7 147 (2.30%) Product Ownership
8 144 (2.25%) Distributed Systems
9 138 (2.15%) Data Centre
10 136 (2.12%) Legacy Systems
11 100 (1.56%) Enterprise Software
12 96 (1.50%) Social Media
13 95 (1.48%) Mobile App
14 86 (1.34%) Data Structures
15 73 (1.14%) Low-Code
16 61 (0.95%) Security Posture
17 58 (0.91%) Video\Live Streaming
18 57 (0.89%) Virtual Team
19 55 (0.86%) Algorithms
20 51 (0.80%) EPoS
Operating Systems
1 1,111 (17.35%) Windows
2 422 (6.59%) Linux
3 419 (6.54%) Windows Server
4 171 (2.67%) Windows 10
5 124 (1.94%) Windows Server 2016
6 107 (1.67%) Android
7 88 (1.37%) Apple iOS
7 88 (1.37%) Mac OS
8 62 (0.97%) Unix
9 57 (0.89%) Windows Server 2019
10 40 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 37 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
12 30 (0.47%) CentOS
13 26 (0.41%) Ubuntu
14 22 (0.34%) Windows 7
15 19 (0.30%) VMS
16 14 (0.22%) Mac OS X
17 11 (0.17%) Windows 8
18 9 (0.14%) Debian
18 9 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,150 (17.95%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,038 (16.21%) Agile
3 958 (14.96%) Customer Service
4 690 (10.77%) Mentoring
5 680 (10.62%) AI
6 662 (10.34%) Decision-Making
7 661 (10.32%) CI/CD
8 651 (10.16%) Analytics
9 608 (9.49%) DevOps
10 593 (9.26%) ITIL
11 540 (8.43%) Business Intelligence
12 533 (8.32%) Project Management
13 493 (7.70%) Computer Science
14 490 (7.65%) Stakeholder Management
15 439 (6.85%) Software Engineering
16 418 (6.53%) Cybersecurity
17 410 (6.40%) Roadmaps
18 401 (6.26%) Coaching
19 369 (5.76%) Process Improvement
20 348 (5.43%) CRM
Programming Languages
1 995 (15.53%) Python
2 895 (13.97%) SQL
3 427 (6.67%) JavaScript
4 326 (5.09%) Java
5 308 (4.81%) PowerShell
6 267 (4.17%) C#
7 181 (2.83%) TypeScript
8 157 (2.45%) Bash
9 89 (1.39%) Go
10 87 (1.36%) C++
11 85 (1.33%) PHP
12 78 (1.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 68 (1.06%) Scala
14 49 (0.77%) C
15 44 (0.69%) T-SQL
16 40 (0.62%) Kotlin
17 34 (0.53%) R
18 33 (0.52%) Apex Code
19 32 (0.50%) Rust
20 30 (0.47%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 1,274 (19.89%) Degree
2 475 (7.42%) Security Cleared
3 297 (4.64%) SC Cleared
4 248 (3.87%) Computer Science Degree
5 188 (2.94%) DBS Check
6 184 (2.87%) Microsoft Certification
7 130 (2.03%) Master's Degree
8 114 (1.78%) DV Cleared
9 108 (1.69%) CISSP
10 93 (1.45%) Cisco Certification
11 88 (1.37%) ACCA
12 86 (1.34%) A+ Certification
13 84 (1.31%) BPSS Clearance
14 76 (1.19%) CIMA
15 72 (1.12%) PMI Certification
16 68 (1.06%) CCNA
17 59 (0.92%) Network+ Certification
18 58 (0.91%) PMP
19 56 (0.87%) AWS Certification
20 52 (0.81%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 302 (4.72%) QA
2 284 (4.43%) Data Quality
3 246 (3.84%) GDPR
4 161 (2.51%) Cyber Essentials
5 159 (2.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 152 (2.37%) SLA
7 126 (1.97%) PCI DSS
8 119 (1.86%) NIST
9 115 (1.80%) Accessibility
10 52 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 32 (0.50%) SOC 2
12 31 (0.48%) ISO 9001
13 30 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
14 26 (0.41%) PMO
15 20 (0.31%) COBIT
15 20 (0.31%) GRC
16 14 (0.22%) GMP
17 11 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
18 10 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 10 (0.16%) ITGC
System Software
1 744 (11.62%) Active Directory
2 303 (4.73%) Docker
3 221 (3.45%) Hyper-V
4 170 (2.65%) VMware Infrastructure
5 63 (0.98%) Terminal Server
6 35 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
7 33 (0.52%) Firmware
8 31 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
9 15 (0.23%) vSphere
10 14 (0.22%) KVM
11 10 (0.16%) VMware Workstation
12 9 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
13 7 (0.11%) IAG
13 7 (0.11%) XenApp
14 6 (0.094%) Virtual Servers
15 4 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 4 (0.062%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 2 (0.031%) BitLocker
16 2 (0.031%) VMware NSX
17 1 (0.016%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 296 (4.62%) Terraform
2 262 (4.09%) Microsoft Intune
3 223 (3.48%) Kubernetes
4 157 (2.45%) Ansible
5 94 (1.47%) Grafana
6 86 (1.34%) SCCM
7 56 (0.87%) Prometheus
8 29 (0.45%) Nagios
9 26 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
10 24 (0.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 22 (0.34%) BMC PATROL
12 19 (0.30%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.25%) Argo
14 15 (0.23%) Cisco CUCM
14 15 (0.23%) vCenter Server
15 14 (0.22%) FortiGate
15 14 (0.22%) Kibana
16 13 (0.20%) Autotask
16 13 (0.20%) Nessus
17 12 (0.19%) Puppet
Vendors
1 1,672 (26.10%) Microsoft
2 275 (4.29%) VMware
3 189 (2.95%) Oracle
4 164 (2.56%) Google
5 163 (2.54%) SAP
6 146 (2.28%) Cisco
7 140 (2.19%) ServiceNow
8 137 (2.14%) Salesforce
9 124 (1.94%) SolarWinds
10 122 (1.90%) Veeam
11 120 (1.87%) Splunk
12 118 (1.84%) Databricks
13 84 (1.31%) Adobe
14 83 (1.30%) Apple
15 71 (1.11%) Dell
16 64 (1.00%) Tanium
17 63 (0.98%) Brocade
17 63 (0.98%) Nimble Storage
18 56 (0.87%) Red Hat
19 50 (0.78%) Dynatrace