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

6 months to
11 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 6,232 7,362 11,189
As % of all permanent jobs in England 9.66% 18.70% 15.16%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.37% 19.96% 17.36%
Number of salaries quoted 4,360 4,197 7,999
10th Percentile £26,988 £29,250 £26,250
25th Percentile £31,250 £38,750 £33,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,497 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -17.28% +10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £67,500 £76,000 £70,000
90th Percentile £86,250 £90,000 £87,500
UK median annual salary £45,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -18.18% +10.00% -9.83%

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 50,376 36,888 64,463
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 78.07% 93.67% 87.35%
Number of salaries quoted 31,062 20,202 50,479
10th Percentile £30,000 £32,500 £29,068
25th Percentile £40,000 £45,000 £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 £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% -11.31%

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 11 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 11 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 1,887 £67,500 +3.85% 750
North of England -17 1,290 £41,500 -12.63% 641
South East -5 1,170 £43,000 -15.63% 866
Midlands -18 836 £37,500 -24.25% 467
North West -17 661 £45,000 -10.00% 339
South West -4 543 £43,500 -13.00% 312
West Midlands -21 500 £42,500 -22.73% 270
Yorkshire -6 498 £35,000 -17.65% 228
East of England -10 405 £40,000 -20.00% 321
East Midlands -3 333 £35,000 -6.67% 192
North East -5 131 £45,000 - 84
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
1 321 (5.15%) Microsoft Exchange
2 278 (4.46%) SharePoint
3 79 (1.27%) Confluence
4 57 (0.91%) Apache
5 54 (0.87%) CMS
6 44 (0.71%) Apache Airflow
6 44 (0.71%) IIS
7 39 (0.63%) Apache Spark
8 29 (0.47%) WordPress
9 20 (0.32%) Palantir Foundry
10 13 (0.21%) SAS
11 11 (0.18%) nginx
12 8 (0.13%) Drupal
12 8 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
13 7 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2007
13 7 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2010
13 7 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
14 4 (0.064%) Headless CMS
14 4 (0.064%) Totara
Applications
1 438 (7.03%) Microsoft Office
2 336 (5.39%) Microsoft Excel
3 71 (1.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 38 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
5 32 (0.51%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
7 18 (0.29%) AutoCAD
7 18 (0.29%) Maya
8 14 (0.22%) Photoshop
9 11 (0.18%) SOLIDWORKS
10 10 (0.16%) Adobe Illustrator
11 8 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 8 (0.13%) Chatbot
12 5 (0.080%) Adobe XD
13 4 (0.064%) Fusion 360
13 4 (0.064%) Trello
14 3 (0.048%) CATIA
14 3 (0.048%) Elementor
14 3 (0.048%) InDesign
14 3 (0.048%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 60 (0.96%) Dynamics CRM
2 45 (0.72%) SAP S/4HANA
3 32 (0.51%) NetSuite
4 20 (0.32%) Salesforce CRM
5 17 (0.27%) Endur
5 17 (0.27%) SAP CO
5 17 (0.27%) Shopify
6 14 (0.22%) Dynamics NAV
7 10 (0.16%) iTrent
7 10 (0.16%) Maximo
7 10 (0.16%) Workday HCM
8 9 (0.14%) SAP ERP
9 8 (0.13%) SAP FI
9 8 (0.13%) SAP FI/CO
10 7 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
10 7 (0.11%) Oracle Receivables
10 7 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
10 7 (0.11%) Q-Pulse
10 7 (0.11%) Sage 200
11 6 (0.096%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 1,349 (21.65%) Azure
2 960 (15.40%) Microsoft 365
3 755 (12.11%) AWS
4 444 (7.12%) Power Platform
5 369 (5.92%) SaaS
6 278 (4.46%) Entra ID
7 257 (4.12%) GCP
8 169 (2.71%) Azure DevOps
9 165 (2.65%) GitHub
10 160 (2.57%) Serverless
11 124 (1.99%) Power Automate
12 102 (1.64%) Dynamics 365
13 95 (1.52%) Google Workspace
14 88 (1.41%) Amazon S3
15 82 (1.32%) PowerApps
16 81 (1.30%) AWS Lambda
17 80 (1.28%) AWS CloudFormation
18 74 (1.19%) GitHub Actions
19 70 (1.12%) PaaS
20 66 (1.06%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 404 (6.48%) DNS
2 372 (5.97%) Firewall
3 340 (5.46%) DHCP
4 237 (3.80%) VPN
5 211 (3.39%) TCP/IP
6 208 (3.34%) WAN
7 201 (3.23%) Wi-Fi
8 174 (2.79%) LAN
9 151 (2.42%) Broadband
10 126 (2.02%) VLAN
11 90 (1.44%) Wireless
12 87 (1.40%) VoIP
13 67 (1.08%) SD-WAN
14 49 (0.79%) Network Security
15 48 (0.77%) Remote Desktop
16 45 (0.72%) Internet
17 43 (0.69%) SAN
18 31 (0.50%) Structured Cabling
19 28 (0.45%) BGP
19 28 (0.45%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 365 (5.86%) Power BI
2 274 (4.40%) SQL Server
3 137 (2.20%) Data Warehouse
4 123 (1.97%) Tableau
5 116 (1.86%) NoSQL
6 115 (1.85%) Relational Database
7 106 (1.70%) PostgreSQL
8 92 (1.48%) Amazon RDS
9 91 (1.46%) MySQL
10 65 (1.04%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 54 (0.87%) MongoDB
12 51 (0.82%) Amazon Redshift
13 50 (0.80%) Metadata
14 47 (0.75%) DynamoDB
14 47 (0.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 44 (0.71%) Data Lake
15 44 (0.71%) Power Query
16 41 (0.66%) Azure SQL Database
17 38 (0.61%) Big Data
18 26 (0.42%) Redis
Development Applications
1 277 (4.44%) Git
2 230 (3.69%) JIRA
3 102 (1.64%) Jenkins
4 96 (1.54%) GitLab
5 51 (0.82%) Selenium
6 28 (0.45%) Visual Studio
7 22 (0.35%) Cypress.io
8 20 (0.32%) TeamCity
9 19 (0.30%) Burp Suite
9 19 (0.30%) LabVIEW
9 19 (0.30%) Maven
9 19 (0.30%) Metasploit
10 18 (0.29%) Robot Framework
11 16 (0.26%) Octopus Deploy
12 15 (0.24%) Bitbucket
12 15 (0.24%) CircleCI
12 15 (0.24%) Cucumber
12 15 (0.24%) JUnit
12 15 (0.24%) SonarQube
13 14 (0.22%) Snyk
General
1 3,117 (50.02%) Social Skills
2 1,891 (30.34%) Analytical Skills
3 1,394 (22.37%) Finance
4 435 (6.98%) Organisational Skills
5 344 (5.52%) Marketing
6 319 (5.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 300 (4.81%) Retail
8 294 (4.72%) Law
9 291 (4.67%) Legal
10 287 (4.61%) Banking
11 286 (4.59%) Public Sector
12 260 (4.17%) Manufacturing
13 166 (2.66%) Presentation Skills
14 163 (2.62%) Telecoms
15 132 (2.12%) Electronics
16 104 (1.67%) Games
17 100 (1.60%) Documentation Skills
18 88 (1.41%) Financial Institution
19 81 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
20 76 (1.22%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 945 (15.16%) Analyst
2 742 (11.91%) IT Support
3 727 (11.67%) Senior
4 638 (10.24%) Support Engineer
5 582 (9.34%) Developer
6 363 (5.82%) IT Engineer
7 359 (5.76%) Lead
8 318 (5.10%) Support Analyst
9 307 (4.93%) IT Support Engineer
10 239 (3.84%) Consultant
11 221 (3.55%) Business Analyst
12 216 (3.47%) Technical Support
13 204 (3.27%) Architect
14 201 (3.23%) Support Technician
15 197 (3.16%) 2nd Line Support
16 168 (2.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 161 (2.58%) Software Engineer
18 159 (2.55%) Technical Engineer
19 157 (2.52%) IT Analyst
20 149 (2.39%) Technical Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 255 (4.09%) .NET
2 250 (4.01%) React
3 211 (3.39%) HTML
4 169 (2.71%) CSS
5 151 (2.42%) Node.js
6 121 (1.94%) REST
7 110 (1.77%) RESTful
8 75 (1.20%) AngularJS
9 68 (1.09%) Middleware
10 66 (1.06%) Spring
10 66 (1.06%) Vue
11 64 (1.03%) Kafka
12 57 (0.91%) SOAP
13 56 (0.90%) JSON
14 55 (0.88%) XML
15 53 (0.85%) Django
16 48 (0.77%) Flask
17 46 (0.74%) .NET Framework
18 45 (0.72%) Spring Boot
19 43 (0.69%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 480 (7.70%) Driving Licence
2 452 (7.25%) Onboarding
3 399 (6.40%) Self-Motivation
4 204 (3.27%) Management Information System
5 166 (2.66%) Cloud Native
6 149 (2.39%) Analytical Mindset
7 138 (2.21%) Legacy Systems
8 134 (2.15%) Product Ownership
9 116 (1.86%) Data Centre
10 115 (1.85%) Distributed Systems
11 107 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
12 99 (1.59%) Mobile App
13 91 (1.46%) Social Media
14 79 (1.27%) Data Structures
15 69 (1.11%) Low-Code
16 60 (0.96%) Algorithms
17 58 (0.93%) Security Posture
18 52 (0.83%) Virtual Team
19 48 (0.77%) EPoS
20 45 (0.72%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 1,101 (17.67%) Windows
2 424 (6.80%) Windows Server
3 393 (6.31%) Linux
4 166 (2.66%) Windows 10
5 116 (1.86%) Windows Server 2016
6 114 (1.83%) Android
7 94 (1.51%) Mac OS
8 79 (1.27%) Apple iOS
9 59 (0.95%) Unix
10 55 (0.88%) Windows Server 2019
11 34 (0.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 34 (0.55%) Windows Server 2012
12 25 (0.40%) CentOS
13 24 (0.39%) Windows 7
14 19 (0.30%) Ubuntu
15 15 (0.24%) VMS
16 11 (0.18%) Windows 8
17 10 (0.16%) Mac OS X
18 7 (0.11%) Debian
19 5 (0.080%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,135 (18.21%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,025 (16.45%) Agile
3 930 (14.92%) Customer Service
4 662 (10.62%) Mentoring
5 629 (10.09%) AI
6 621 (9.96%) Analytics
7 617 (9.90%) CI/CD
8 616 (9.88%) Decision-Making
9 597 (9.58%) DevOps
10 552 (8.86%) ITIL
11 549 (8.81%) Project Management
12 516 (8.28%) Business Intelligence
13 491 (7.88%) Computer Science
14 474 (7.61%) Stakeholder Management
15 433 (6.95%) Cybersecurity
16 411 (6.59%) Software Engineering
17 363 (5.82%) Process Improvement
18 354 (5.68%) Coaching
19 351 (5.63%) CRM
19 351 (5.63%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 936 (15.02%) Python
2 889 (14.27%) SQL
3 417 (6.69%) JavaScript
4 319 (5.12%) PowerShell
5 311 (4.99%) Java
6 276 (4.43%) C#
7 175 (2.81%) TypeScript
8 152 (2.44%) Bash
9 86 (1.38%) PHP
10 79 (1.27%) C++
11 68 (1.09%) Go
12 65 (1.04%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 50 (0.80%) Scala
14 44 (0.71%) T-SQL
15 42 (0.67%) C
16 39 (0.63%) Kotlin
17 36 (0.58%) R
18 33 (0.53%) Apex Code
19 27 (0.43%) Bicep
20 26 (0.42%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 1,296 (20.80%) Degree
2 487 (7.81%) Security Cleared
3 307 (4.93%) SC Cleared
4 237 (3.80%) Computer Science Degree
5 184 (2.95%) Microsoft Certification
6 175 (2.81%) DBS Check
7 123 (1.97%) Master's Degree
8 115 (1.85%) DV Cleared
9 103 (1.65%) CISSP
10 93 (1.49%) BPSS Clearance
11 84 (1.35%) Cisco Certification
12 81 (1.30%) ACCA
13 79 (1.27%) A+ Certification
14 71 (1.14%) CIMA
15 62 (0.99%) Network+ Certification
16 61 (0.98%) PMI Certification
17 60 (0.96%) CCNA
18 54 (0.87%) AWS Certification
19 48 (0.77%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
20 47 (0.75%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 296 (4.75%) QA
2 253 (4.06%) Data Quality
3 219 (3.51%) GDPR
4 160 (2.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 157 (2.52%) Cyber Essentials
6 132 (2.12%) SLA
7 126 (2.02%) Accessibility
8 118 (1.89%) PCI DSS
9 106 (1.70%) NIST
10 46 (0.74%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 32 (0.51%) ISO 9001
12 28 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
13 26 (0.42%) SOC 2
14 22 (0.35%) PMO
15 21 (0.34%) GRC
16 20 (0.32%) COBIT
17 13 (0.21%) GMP
18 10 (0.16%) WCAG
19 9 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 20000
19 9 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 740 (11.87%) Active Directory
2 292 (4.69%) Docker
3 230 (3.69%) Hyper-V
4 162 (2.60%) VMware Infrastructure
5 63 (1.01%) Terminal Server
6 29 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
7 25 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
8 24 (0.39%) Firmware
9 15 (0.24%) vSphere
10 13 (0.21%) KVM
11 11 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
12 10 (0.16%) VMware Workstation
13 7 (0.11%) IAG
14 6 (0.096%) Virtual Servers
15 5 (0.080%) XenApp
16 4 (0.064%) Microsoft Virtual Server
17 2 (0.032%) Postfix
17 2 (0.032%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 2 (0.032%) vCloud
17 2 (0.032%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 279 (4.48%) Terraform
2 267 (4.28%) Microsoft Intune
3 224 (3.59%) Kubernetes
4 149 (2.39%) Ansible
5 85 (1.36%) Grafana
6 77 (1.24%) SCCM
7 59 (0.95%) Prometheus
8 32 (0.51%) BMC PATROL
9 28 (0.45%) Nagios
10 26 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
11 22 (0.35%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 20 (0.32%) Jamf Pro
13 15 (0.24%) Argo
13 15 (0.24%) Cisco CUCM
14 12 (0.19%) Autotask
14 12 (0.19%) Kibana
14 12 (0.19%) vCenter Server
14 12 (0.19%) ZABBIX
15 11 (0.18%) Nessus
16 10 (0.16%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,643 (26.36%) Microsoft
2 272 (4.36%) VMware
3 212 (3.40%) Oracle
4 192 (3.08%) SAP
5 158 (2.54%) Google
6 145 (2.33%) Salesforce
7 144 (2.31%) Cisco
8 128 (2.05%) Veeam
9 124 (1.99%) ServiceNow
10 119 (1.91%) SolarWinds
11 116 (1.86%) Splunk
12 102 (1.64%) Databricks
13 92 (1.48%) Adobe
14 84 (1.35%) Apple
15 64 (1.03%) Tanium
16 63 (1.01%) Brocade
16 63 (1.01%) Nimble Storage
17 56 (0.90%) Dell
18 54 (0.87%) Sage
19 48 (0.77%) HubSpot