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

6 months to
15 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 4 8
Rank change year-on-year -4 +4 +3
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 8,173 8,375 10,618
As % of all permanent jobs in England 8.66% 19.16% 14.68%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.75% 21.45% 18.07%
Number of salaries quoted 5,715 4,779 5,537
10th Percentile £27,750 £26,250 £26,750
25th Percentile £33,125 £31,250 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £46,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.26% -8.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £66,250 £67,500 £69,750
90th Percentile £85,000 £87,500 £85,000
UK median annual salary £47,500 £46,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +2.15% -7.00% -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 69,561 39,049 58,759
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.70% 89.35% 81.24%
Number of salaries quoted 49,075 22,526 38,528
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £37,500 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -12.00%
75th Percentile £80,000 £76,250 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £95,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.71%

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 15 August 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 15 August 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 -6 2,238 £65,000 - 4,540
North of England -8 1,652 £45,000 +5.88% 1,303
South East -3 1,566 £44,250 +4.12% 1,385
Midlands -8 1,194 £42,500 +10.39% 861
North West -5 870 £45,125 +0.28% 709
South West -4 796 £45,000 +25.00% 699
West Midlands -9 660 £42,500 -5.07% 546
East of England -4 649 £42,500 +21.43% 600
Yorkshire -8 543 £42,500 +21.43% 426
East Midlands -9 531 £40,500 +15.71% 316
North East -8 239 £48,500 +25.00% 186
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
1 448 (5.48%) SharePoint
2 397 (4.86%) Microsoft Exchange
3 97 (1.19%) Confluence
4 58 (0.71%) CMS
5 54 (0.66%) IIS
6 50 (0.61%) Apache
7 38 (0.46%) Apache Airflow
7 38 (0.46%) Apache Spark
8 37 (0.45%) WordPress
9 21 (0.26%) SAS
10 13 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
11 11 (0.13%) nginx
11 11 (0.13%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.13%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 8 (0.098%) Exchange Server 2013
13 8 (0.098%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.086%) Drupal
14 7 (0.086%) OpenEdge
14 7 (0.086%) Tomcat
Applications
1 522 (6.39%) Microsoft Office
2 472 (5.78%) Microsoft Excel
3 82 (1.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 49 (0.60%) MS Visio
4 49 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
5 43 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
6 33 (0.40%) AutoCAD
7 16 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 16 (0.20%) Simulink
8 15 (0.18%) Revit
9 12 (0.15%) SOLIDWORKS
10 9 (0.11%) Trello
11 8 (0.098%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 7 (0.086%) Adobe Illustrator
13 6 (0.073%) Fusion 360
13 6 (0.073%) Navisworks
14 5 (0.061%) Autodesk Flame
14 5 (0.061%) Baselight
14 5 (0.061%) Lightworks
15 4 (0.049%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 83 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
2 80 (0.98%) Dynamics CRM
3 53 (0.65%) NetSuite
4 27 (0.33%) Shopify
5 21 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
6 18 (0.22%) Magento
7 16 (0.20%) SAP ERP
8 15 (0.18%) IBM Planning Analytics
8 15 (0.18%) SAP Business One
9 14 (0.17%) Elite 3E
10 13 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
11 11 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
11 11 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
12 10 (0.12%) JDE EnterpriseOne
12 10 (0.12%) Oracle Applications
12 10 (0.12%) Sage X3
13 9 (0.11%) iTrent
13 9 (0.11%) Primavera
13 9 (0.11%) Sage 50
13 9 (0.11%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,700 (20.80%) Azure
2 1,264 (15.47%) Microsoft 365
3 1,014 (12.41%) AWS
4 678 (8.30%) Power Platform
5 387 (4.74%) Entra ID
6 357 (4.37%) SaaS
7 355 (4.34%) GCP
8 198 (2.42%) GitHub
9 197 (2.41%) Azure DevOps
10 191 (2.34%) Serverless
11 173 (2.12%) Dynamics 365
12 168 (2.06%) Power Automate
13 146 (1.79%) PowerApps
14 113 (1.38%) Microsoft Copilot
15 111 (1.36%) OneDrive
16 100 (1.22%) Amazon S3
17 92 (1.13%) GitHub Actions
18 89 (1.09%) AWS Lambda
19 81 (0.99%) AWS CloudFormation
20 78 (0.95%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 498 (6.09%) Firewall
2 455 (5.57%) DNS
3 384 (4.70%) DHCP
4 311 (3.81%) VPN
5 279 (3.41%) TCP/IP
6 210 (2.57%) WAN
7 204 (2.50%) Wi-Fi
8 202 (2.47%) LAN
9 164 (2.01%) Wireless
10 156 (1.91%) VLAN
11 143 (1.75%) Network Security
12 133 (1.63%) Broadband
13 106 (1.30%) VoIP
14 44 (0.54%) HTTP
14 44 (0.54%) Internet
15 43 (0.53%) SAN
16 41 (0.50%) SD-WAN
17 39 (0.48%) OSPF
18 38 (0.46%) BGP
19 34 (0.42%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 527 (6.45%) Power BI
2 413 (5.05%) SQL Server
3 145 (1.77%) Data Warehouse
4 143 (1.75%) MySQL
5 134 (1.64%) Amazon RDS
6 133 (1.63%) Relational Database
7 123 (1.50%) PostgreSQL
8 120 (1.47%) Tableau
9 110 (1.35%) NoSQL
10 97 (1.19%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 88 (1.08%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 64 (0.78%) MongoDB
13 61 (0.75%) Big Data
14 56 (0.69%) Data Lake
15 55 (0.67%) Azure SQL Database
16 53 (0.65%) Power Query
17 45 (0.55%) Metadata
18 44 (0.54%) DynamoDB
19 41 (0.50%) Electronic Patient Records
20 32 (0.39%) Looker
Development Applications
1 374 (4.58%) Git
2 286 (3.50%) JIRA
3 128 (1.57%) Jenkins
4 111 (1.36%) GitLab
5 35 (0.43%) Selenium
6 33 (0.40%) Eclipse
7 31 (0.38%) Subversion
8 30 (0.37%) JUnit
9 29 (0.35%) Claude Code
10 28 (0.34%) Cucumber
11 26 (0.32%) Rational DOORS
12 24 (0.29%) Postman
13 22 (0.27%) Cypress.io
14 20 (0.24%) Bitbucket
14 20 (0.24%) Visual Studio
15 18 (0.22%) Oracle Forms
15 18 (0.22%) SonarQube
16 16 (0.20%) Chocolatey
17 14 (0.17%) MLflow
17 14 (0.17%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 3,954 (48.38%) Social Skills
2 2,481 (30.36%) Analytical Skills
3 1,608 (19.67%) Finance
4 614 (7.51%) Manufacturing
5 514 (6.29%) Organisational Skills
6 491 (6.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 476 (5.82%) Law
8 396 (4.85%) Retail
9 352 (4.31%) Marketing
10 324 (3.96%) Public Sector
11 308 (3.77%) Legal
12 303 (3.71%) Banking
13 211 (2.58%) Electronics
14 199 (2.43%) Aerospace
15 189 (2.31%) Telecoms
16 167 (2.04%) Influencing Skills
17 150 (1.84%) Presentation Skills
18 114 (1.39%) Documentation Skills
19 92 (1.13%) Advertising
20 90 (1.10%) Games
Job Titles
1 1,049 (12.83%) Analyst
2 923 (11.29%) Senior
3 810 (9.91%) Developer
4 699 (8.55%) IT Support
5 567 (6.94%) Support Engineer
6 505 (6.18%) Lead
7 401 (4.91%) Consultant
8 395 (4.83%) IT Engineer
9 324 (3.96%) Support Analyst
10 309 (3.78%) Software Engineer
11 299 (3.66%) IT Support Engineer
12 278 (3.40%) Architect
13 257 (3.14%) Systems Engineer
14 250 (3.06%) Support Technician
14 250 (3.06%) Technical Support
15 220 (2.69%) IT Technician
16 206 (2.52%) Technical Engineer
17 195 (2.39%) Data Engineer
18 183 (2.24%) Technical Support Engineer
19 177 (2.17%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 368 (4.50%) .NET
2 314 (3.84%) React
3 259 (3.17%) HTML
4 258 (3.16%) REST
5 203 (2.48%) CSS
6 175 (2.14%) RESTful
7 151 (1.85%) Node.js
8 114 (1.39%) SOAP
9 105 (1.28%) Spring
10 103 (1.26%) AngularJS
11 99 (1.21%) JSON
12 96 (1.17%) Vue
13 91 (1.11%) Kafka
14 90 (1.10%) Middleware
15 89 (1.09%) ASP.NET
16 81 (0.99%) Web Services
17 79 (0.97%) OAuth
18 74 (0.91%) XML
19 69 (0.84%) Spring Boot
20 57 (0.70%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 521 (6.37%) Driving Licence
2 517 (6.33%) Onboarding
3 417 (5.10%) Self-Motivation
4 341 (4.17%) Management Information System
5 303 (3.71%) Cloud Native
6 234 (2.86%) Product Ownership
7 176 (2.15%) Data Centre
8 174 (2.13%) Legacy Systems
9 161 (1.97%) Distributed Systems
10 140 (1.71%) Enterprise Software
11 123 (1.50%) Analytical Mindset
12 115 (1.41%) Data Structures
13 112 (1.37%) Security Posture
14 102 (1.25%) NHS
15 101 (1.24%) Algorithms
16 93 (1.14%) AI Agents
17 92 (1.13%) Social Media
18 84 (1.03%) Robotics
19 83 (1.02%) Cyber Threat
20 82 (1.00%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 1,239 (15.16%) Windows
2 567 (6.94%) Linux
3 533 (6.52%) Windows Server
4 156 (1.91%) Windows 10
5 112 (1.37%) Windows Server 2016
6 105 (1.28%) Android
6 105 (1.28%) Mac OS
7 92 (1.13%) Apple iOS
8 54 (0.66%) Unix
9 46 (0.56%) Windows Server 2019
10 37 (0.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 35 (0.43%) Ubuntu
12 28 (0.34%) VMS
13 23 (0.28%) CentOS
14 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 12 (0.15%) Debian
16 9 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
16 9 (0.11%) FreeRTOS
16 9 (0.11%) Mac OS X
17 8 (0.098%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,997 (24.43%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,342 (16.42%) Agile
3 1,208 (14.78%) Customer Service
4 1,049 (12.83%) AI
5 990 (12.11%) Decision-Making
6 905 (11.07%) CI/CD
7 887 (10.85%) Mentoring
8 874 (10.69%) Stakeholder Management
9 773 (9.46%) Analytics
10 760 (9.30%) Software Engineering
11 751 (9.19%) DevOps
12 669 (8.19%) Cybersecurity
13 663 (8.11%) ITIL
14 653 (7.99%) Roadmaps
15 604 (7.39%) Business Intelligence
16 600 (7.34%) Computer Science
17 593 (7.26%) Project Delivery
18 592 (7.24%) Project Management
19 537 (6.57%) Collaborative Working
20 531 (6.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 1,290 (15.78%) SQL
2 1,188 (14.54%) Python
3 568 (6.95%) JavaScript
4 473 (5.79%) C#
5 420 (5.14%) Java
6 354 (4.33%) PowerShell
7 255 (3.12%) TypeScript
8 220 (2.69%) C++
9 178 (2.18%) Bash
10 94 (1.15%) PHP
11 89 (1.09%) C
12 83 (1.02%) Go
13 70 (0.86%) T-SQL
14 65 (0.80%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 51 (0.62%) Shell Script
16 45 (0.55%) Perl
16 45 (0.55%) Rust
17 43 (0.53%) R
17 43 (0.53%) Scala
18 39 (0.48%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 1,408 (17.23%) Degree
2 748 (9.15%) Security Cleared
3 505 (6.18%) SC Cleared
4 315 (3.85%) Computer Science Degree
5 225 (2.75%) DBS Check
6 201 (2.46%) Microsoft Certification
7 181 (2.21%) DV Cleared
8 156 (1.91%) Azure Certification
9 149 (1.82%) Cisco Certification
10 144 (1.76%) CISSP
11 139 (1.70%) BPSS Clearance
12 123 (1.50%) Master's Degree
13 112 (1.37%) HNC
14 105 (1.28%) PMI Certification
15 87 (1.06%) HND
16 84 (1.03%) PMP
17 82 (1.00%) CCNA
18 80 (0.98%) CISM
19 76 (0.93%) CCNP
20 68 (0.83%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 475 (5.81%) QA
2 408 (4.99%) Data Quality
3 333 (4.07%) GDPR
4 234 (2.86%) Accessibility
5 232 (2.84%) SLA
6 207 (2.53%) Cyber Essentials
7 191 (2.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 159 (1.95%) NIST
9 146 (1.79%) PCI DSS
10 64 (0.78%) PMO
11 57 (0.70%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 40 (0.49%) GRC
13 35 (0.43%) ISO 9001
14 26 (0.32%) SOC 2
15 25 (0.31%) GMP
16 24 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
17 23 (0.28%) COBIT
18 20 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
18 20 (0.24%) WCAG
19 19 (0.23%) NCSC
System Software
1 823 (10.07%) Active Directory
2 371 (4.54%) Docker
3 273 (3.34%) Hyper-V
4 250 (3.06%) VMware Infrastructure
5 70 (0.86%) Terminal Server
6 55 (0.67%) Firmware
7 50 (0.61%) Virtual Desktop
8 37 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
9 35 (0.43%) vSphere
10 18 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
11 17 (0.21%) Embedded Firmware
12 15 (0.18%) KVM
13 7 (0.086%) IAG
13 7 (0.086%) XenApp
14 6 (0.073%) VMware NSX
15 5 (0.061%) ClearTrust
15 5 (0.061%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 5 (0.061%) Squid
16 4 (0.049%) StorNext
16 4 (0.049%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 368 (4.50%) Terraform
2 329 (4.03%) Kubernetes
3 276 (3.38%) Microsoft Intune
4 159 (1.95%) Ansible
5 97 (1.19%) Grafana
6 76 (0.93%) SCCM
7 57 (0.70%) Prometheus
8 54 (0.66%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (0.34%) Nagios
10 25 (0.31%) FortiGate
10 25 (0.31%) Jamf Pro
11 21 (0.26%) Puppet
12 15 (0.18%) Argo
13 13 (0.16%) Kibana
13 13 (0.16%) Proxmox
14 12 (0.15%) Autotask
14 12 (0.15%) Functional Safety
15 11 (0.13%) logstash
15 11 (0.13%) Nmap
16 10 (0.12%) Podman
Vendors
1 2,335 (28.57%) Microsoft
2 363 (4.44%) VMware
3 234 (2.86%) Oracle
3 234 (2.86%) SAP
4 233 (2.85%) Google
5 174 (2.13%) Cisco
6 165 (2.02%) ServiceNow
7 159 (1.95%) Salesforce
8 132 (1.62%) Veeam
9 130 (1.59%) Databricks
10 124 (1.52%) Splunk
11 116 (1.42%) SolarWinds
12 78 (0.95%) Tanium
13 76 (0.93%) Apple
14 71 (0.87%) Nimble Storage
14 71 (0.87%) Sage
15 70 (0.86%) Brocade
16 63 (0.77%) Fortinet
17 60 (0.73%) Dell
18 58 (0.71%) Palo Alto