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

6 months to
30 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 6,423 7,041 11,754
As % of all permanent jobs in England 9.23% 19.11% 15.06%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.01% 20.50% 17.44%
Number of salaries quoted 4,462 4,406 8,252
10th Percentile £27,000 £29,000 £26,250
25th Percentile £31,250 £37,500 £33,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £46,538 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -15.39% +10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £67,500 £75,000 £68,750
90th Percentile £86,253 £90,000 £87,500
UK median annual salary £45,497 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -17.28% +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 53,484 34,346 67,400
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 76.90% 93.22% 86.37%
Number of salaries quoted 33,630 20,508 52,078
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,500 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £44,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -12.00%
75th Percentile £77,500 £80,563 £73,750
90th Percentile £98,750 £102,500 £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 30 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 30 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 1,977 £67,500 +3.69% 986
North of England -17 1,298 £41,000 -10.87% 662
South East -6 1,201 £45,000 -11.71% 802
Midlands -20 860 £37,750 -21.35% 478
North West -17 654 £41,500 -17.00% 365
South West -6 543 £43,500 -8.42% 308
Yorkshire -5 514 £35,000 -16.67% 222
West Midlands -25 507 £42,500 -20.83% 278
East of England -8 440 £40,000 -20.00% 288
East Midlands -2 350 £35,000 -10.26% 199
North East -7 130 £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
1 337 (5.25%) Microsoft Exchange
2 285 (4.44%) SharePoint
3 79 (1.23%) Confluence
4 58 (0.90%) CMS
5 51 (0.79%) Apache
6 45 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
7 36 (0.56%) Apache Spark
8 35 (0.54%) IIS
9 28 (0.44%) WordPress
10 16 (0.25%) SAS
11 14 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
12 12 (0.19%) nginx
13 11 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2013
14 10 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2007
14 10 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2010
15 9 (0.14%) Anypoint
15 9 (0.14%) Drupal
16 7 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 4 (0.062%) Apache Solr
17 4 (0.062%) OpenStack
Applications
1 454 (7.07%) Microsoft Office
2 342 (5.32%) Microsoft Excel
3 72 (1.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 37 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
5 34 (0.53%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
7 14 (0.22%) AutoCAD
7 14 (0.22%) Maya
8 12 (0.19%) Photoshop
9 11 (0.17%) Adobe Illustrator
10 10 (0.16%) Chatbot
11 8 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 6 (0.093%) Adobe XD
12 6 (0.093%) SOLIDWORKS
13 5 (0.078%) Fusion 360
14 4 (0.062%) Trello
15 3 (0.047%) Elementor
15 3 (0.047%) InDesign
15 3 (0.047%) Simulink
16 2 (0.031%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 61 (0.95%) Dynamics CRM
2 42 (0.65%) SAP S/4HANA
3 31 (0.48%) NetSuite
4 21 (0.33%) 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 12 (0.19%) Maximo
8 10 (0.16%) iTrent
8 10 (0.16%) Workday HCM
9 9 (0.14%) SAP ERP
10 8 (0.12%) Magento
10 8 (0.12%) SAP FI
10 8 (0.12%) SAP FI/CO
11 7 (0.11%) IBM Planning Analytics
11 7 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
11 7 (0.11%) Q-Pulse
11 7 (0.11%) Sage 200
12 6 (0.093%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 1,383 (21.53%) Azure
2 989 (15.40%) Microsoft 365
3 797 (12.41%) AWS
4 450 (7.01%) Power Platform
5 372 (5.79%) SaaS
6 295 (4.59%) GCP
7 271 (4.22%) Entra ID
8 169 (2.63%) GitHub
9 166 (2.58%) Azure DevOps
9 166 (2.58%) Serverless
10 121 (1.88%) Power Automate
11 103 (1.60%) Dynamics 365
12 89 (1.39%) Google Workspace
13 88 (1.37%) Amazon S3
14 81 (1.26%) GitHub Actions
15 80 (1.25%) AWS CloudFormation
15 80 (1.25%) AWS Lambda
16 77 (1.20%) Azure Data Factory
16 77 (1.20%) PaaS
17 76 (1.18%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 415 (6.46%) DNS
2 382 (5.95%) Firewall
3 352 (5.48%) DHCP
4 250 (3.89%) VPN
5 215 (3.35%) WAN
6 211 (3.29%) TCP/IP
7 208 (3.24%) Wi-Fi
8 188 (2.93%) Broadband
9 180 (2.80%) LAN
10 128 (1.99%) VLAN
11 100 (1.56%) Wireless
12 83 (1.29%) VoIP
13 68 (1.06%) SD-WAN
14 54 (0.84%) Network Security
15 44 (0.69%) SAN
16 40 (0.62%) Remote Desktop
17 39 (0.61%) Internet
18 32 (0.50%) Structured Cabling
19 29 (0.45%) BGP
20 28 (0.44%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 375 (5.84%) Power BI
2 278 (4.33%) SQL Server
3 133 (2.07%) Data Warehouse
4 130 (2.02%) Tableau
5 121 (1.88%) NoSQL
6 111 (1.73%) Relational Database
7 110 (1.71%) PostgreSQL
8 94 (1.46%) Amazon RDS
9 92 (1.43%) MySQL
10 63 (0.98%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 54 (0.84%) MongoDB
12 50 (0.78%) Power Query
13 48 (0.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 47 (0.73%) DynamoDB
15 46 (0.72%) Amazon Redshift
16 44 (0.69%) Azure SQL Database
16 44 (0.69%) Metadata
17 42 (0.65%) Data Lake
18 40 (0.62%) Big Data
19 26 (0.40%) Redis
Development Applications
1 286 (4.45%) Git
2 233 (3.63%) JIRA
3 110 (1.71%) Jenkins
4 95 (1.48%) GitLab
5 53 (0.83%) Selenium
6 30 (0.47%) Visual Studio
7 24 (0.37%) Cypress.io
8 20 (0.31%) Maven
9 19 (0.30%) Burp Suite
9 19 (0.30%) Metasploit
10 18 (0.28%) Chocolatey
10 18 (0.28%) LabVIEW
10 18 (0.28%) Rational DOORS
10 18 (0.28%) Robot Framework
11 17 (0.26%) CircleCI
11 17 (0.26%) TeamCity
12 16 (0.25%) Cucumber
13 15 (0.23%) Bitbucket
13 15 (0.23%) JUnit
13 15 (0.23%) SonarQube
General
1 3,159 (49.18%) Social Skills
2 1,948 (30.33%) Analytical Skills
3 1,403 (21.84%) Finance
4 448 (6.97%) Organisational Skills
5 366 (5.70%) Marketing
6 352 (5.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 312 (4.86%) Law
8 307 (4.78%) Retail
9 299 (4.66%) Banking
10 298 (4.64%) Legal
11 293 (4.56%) Public Sector
12 279 (4.34%) Manufacturing
13 162 (2.52%) Presentation Skills
14 153 (2.38%) Telecoms
15 145 (2.26%) Electronics
16 103 (1.60%) Documentation Skills
17 97 (1.51%) Games
18 83 (1.29%) Financial Institution
19 81 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
20 72 (1.12%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 939 (14.62%) Analyst
2 759 (11.82%) IT Support
3 751 (11.69%) Senior
4 645 (10.04%) Support Engineer
5 593 (9.23%) Developer
6 386 (6.01%) IT Engineer
7 382 (5.95%) Lead
8 325 (5.06%) IT Support Engineer
9 304 (4.73%) Support Analyst
10 247 (3.85%) Consultant
11 218 (3.39%) Architect
12 217 (3.38%) Support Technician
13 215 (3.35%) Business Analyst
14 196 (3.05%) Technical Support
15 193 (3.00%) 2nd Line Support
16 179 (2.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 174 (2.71%) Software Engineer
18 168 (2.62%) Systems Engineer
19 166 (2.58%) IT Technician
20 151 (2.35%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 247 (3.85%) .NET
2 246 (3.83%) React
3 223 (3.47%) HTML
4 180 (2.80%) CSS
5 160 (2.49%) Node.js
6 116 (1.81%) REST
6 116 (1.81%) RESTful
7 70 (1.09%) Vue
8 68 (1.06%) Spring
9 66 (1.03%) Kafka
10 65 (1.01%) AngularJS
11 64 (1.00%) Django
12 63 (0.98%) Middleware
13 57 (0.89%) SOAP
14 55 (0.86%) Flask
14 55 (0.86%) JSON
14 55 (0.86%) XML
15 50 (0.78%) gRPC
16 47 (0.73%) FastAPI
16 47 (0.73%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 451 (7.02%) Driving Licence
2 438 (6.82%) Onboarding
3 383 (5.96%) Self-Motivation
4 202 (3.14%) Management Information System
5 176 (2.74%) Cloud Native
6 150 (2.34%) Analytical Mindset
7 142 (2.21%) Product Ownership
8 141 (2.20%) Distributed Systems
8 141 (2.20%) Legacy Systems
9 136 (2.12%) Data Centre
10 104 (1.62%) Enterprise Software
11 95 (1.48%) Mobile App
12 93 (1.45%) Social Media
13 84 (1.31%) Data Structures
14 72 (1.12%) Low-Code
15 61 (0.95%) Security Posture
16 58 (0.90%) Video\Live Streaming
17 57 (0.89%) Virtual Team
18 56 (0.87%) Algorithms
19 51 (0.79%) EPoS
Operating Systems
1 1,124 (17.50%) Windows
2 429 (6.68%) Windows Server
3 420 (6.54%) Linux
4 174 (2.71%) Windows 10
5 124 (1.93%) Windows Server 2016
6 109 (1.70%) Android
7 90 (1.40%) Mac OS
8 87 (1.35%) Apple iOS
9 61 (0.95%) Unix
10 57 (0.89%) Windows Server 2019
11 39 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 37 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
13 29 (0.45%) CentOS
14 24 (0.37%) Ubuntu
15 22 (0.34%) Windows 7
16 18 (0.28%) VMS
17 13 (0.20%) Mac OS X
18 11 (0.17%) Windows 8
19 9 (0.14%) Debian
19 9 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,170 (18.22%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,039 (16.18%) Agile
3 965 (15.02%) Customer Service
4 689 (10.73%) Mentoring
5 688 (10.71%) AI
6 657 (10.23%) CI/CD
7 652 (10.15%) Decision-Making
8 632 (9.84%) Analytics
9 611 (9.51%) DevOps
10 608 (9.47%) ITIL
11 554 (8.63%) Project Management
12 525 (8.17%) Business Intelligence
13 505 (7.86%) Computer Science
14 485 (7.55%) Stakeholder Management
15 440 (6.85%) Software Engineering
16 423 (6.59%) Cybersecurity
17 395 (6.15%) Roadmaps
18 393 (6.12%) Coaching
19 370 (5.76%) Process Improvement
20 358 (5.57%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 989 (15.40%) Python
2 891 (13.87%) SQL
3 436 (6.79%) JavaScript
4 318 (4.95%) PowerShell
5 315 (4.90%) Java
6 269 (4.19%) C#
7 179 (2.79%) TypeScript
8 155 (2.41%) Bash
9 88 (1.37%) PHP
10 87 (1.35%) Go
11 83 (1.29%) C++
12 73 (1.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 68 (1.06%) Scala
14 48 (0.75%) C
15 45 (0.70%) T-SQL
16 40 (0.62%) Kotlin
17 34 (0.53%) R
18 32 (0.50%) Apex Code
19 28 (0.44%) Bicep
20 27 (0.42%) Rust
Qualifications
1 1,309 (20.38%) Degree
2 483 (7.52%) Security Cleared
3 303 (4.72%) SC Cleared
4 252 (3.92%) Computer Science Degree
5 189 (2.94%) DBS Check
6 181 (2.82%) Microsoft Certification
7 132 (2.06%) Master's Degree
8 117 (1.82%) DV Cleared
9 106 (1.65%) CISSP
10 91 (1.42%) Cisco Certification
11 87 (1.35%) ACCA
12 85 (1.32%) BPSS Clearance
13 81 (1.26%) A+ Certification
14 76 (1.18%) CIMA
15 69 (1.07%) PMI Certification
16 66 (1.03%) CCNA
17 59 (0.92%) Network+ Certification
18 56 (0.87%) AWS Certification
19 55 (0.86%) PMP
20 52 (0.81%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 303 (4.72%) QA
2 277 (4.31%) Data Quality
3 241 (3.75%) GDPR
4 161 (2.51%) Cyber Essentials
5 160 (2.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 150 (2.34%) SLA
7 124 (1.93%) PCI DSS
8 117 (1.82%) NIST
9 116 (1.81%) Accessibility
10 51 (0.79%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 32 (0.50%) SOC 2
12 31 (0.48%) ISO 9001
13 29 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
14 26 (0.40%) 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
1 757 (11.79%) Active Directory
2 308 (4.80%) Docker
3 226 (3.52%) Hyper-V
4 173 (2.69%) VMware Infrastructure
5 63 (0.98%) Terminal Server
6 35 (0.54%) Virtual Desktop
7 33 (0.51%) Firmware
8 31 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
9 14 (0.22%) KVM
9 14 (0.22%) vSphere
10 10 (0.16%) VMware Workstation
11 9 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
12 7 (0.11%) IAG
12 7 (0.11%) XenApp
13 6 (0.093%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 4 (0.062%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 2 (0.031%) BitLocker
15 2 (0.031%) VMware NSX
16 1 (0.016%) OpenDJ
Systems Management
1 291 (4.53%) Terraform
2 267 (4.16%) Microsoft Intune
3 223 (3.47%) Kubernetes
4 158 (2.46%) Ansible
5 93 (1.45%) Grafana
6 87 (1.35%) SCCM
7 58 (0.90%) Prometheus
8 30 (0.47%) Nagios
9 25 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
10 24 (0.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 22 (0.34%) BMC PATROL
12 20 (0.31%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.25%) Argo
14 14 (0.22%) Autotask
14 14 (0.22%) Cisco CUCM
14 14 (0.22%) vCenter Server
15 13 (0.20%) FortiGate
15 13 (0.20%) Puppet
15 13 (0.20%) ZABBIX
16 12 (0.19%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,672 (26.03%) Microsoft
2 278 (4.33%) VMware
3 198 (3.08%) Oracle
4 168 (2.62%) SAP
5 161 (2.51%) Google
6 145 (2.26%) Cisco
7 141 (2.20%) ServiceNow
8 138 (2.15%) Salesforce
9 124 (1.93%) Veeam
10 123 (1.91%) SolarWinds
11 119 (1.85%) Splunk
12 112 (1.74%) Databricks
13 84 (1.31%) Adobe
14 83 (1.29%) Apple
15 72 (1.12%) Dell
16 64 (1.00%) Tanium
17 63 (0.98%) Brocade
17 63 (0.98%) Nimble Storage
18 54 (0.84%) Red Hat
19 53 (0.83%) Sage