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 13 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 4 6
Rank change year-on-year -8 +2 +7
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,240 7,624 12,652
As % of all permanent jobs in England 7.79% 19.62% 15.06%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.53% 21.01% 17.68%
Number of salaries quoted 4,400 4,510 8,477
10th Percentile £27,500 £27,750 £26,133
25th Percentile £31,250 £35,000 £32,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £69,543 £72,500 £68,000
90th Percentile £87,500 £88,750 £85,000
UK median annual salary £47,500 £51,763 £49,990
% change year-on-year -8.24% +3.55% -9.11%

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 59,242 36,291 71,575
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.97% 93.41% 85.20%
Number of salaries quoted 38,835 20,234 53,682
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,000 £29,000
25th Percentile £41,250 £42,000 £39,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year - +9.09% -12.00%
75th Percentile £80,000 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £102,500 £93,750
UK median annual salary £60,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year - +9.09% -9.84%

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 13 May 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 13 May 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 -5 1,876 £70,000 +7.69% 982
North of England -11 1,287 £42,500 -5.56% 683
South East -8 1,126 £47,125 -5.75% 762
Midlands -22 857 £40,000 -11.11% 431
North West -17 663 £45,000 -5.26% 374
South West -8 540 £43,500 +2.35% 309
West Midlands -25 506 £42,500 -11.46% 259
Yorkshire -12 491 £41,500 +3.75% 228
East of England -8 466 £40,839 -11.07% 262
East Midlands -10 348 £35,000 -12.50% 173
North East -17 133 £48,500 +7.78% 88
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
1 326 (5.22%) Microsoft Exchange
2 308 (4.94%) SharePoint
3 66 (1.06%) Confluence
4 59 (0.95%) CMS
5 54 (0.87%) Apache
6 41 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
7 31 (0.50%) Apache Spark
8 29 (0.46%) WordPress
9 28 (0.45%) IIS
10 15 (0.24%) SAS
11 14 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
12 10 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2013
13 9 (0.14%) Drupal
13 9 (0.14%) nginx
14 8 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2007
14 8 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2010
15 5 (0.080%) OpenStack
15 5 (0.080%) Skype for Business
16 4 (0.064%) Moodle
16 4 (0.064%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 410 (6.57%) Microsoft Office
2 328 (5.26%) Microsoft Excel
3 54 (0.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 47 (0.75%) Spreadsheet
5 38 (0.61%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
7 14 (0.22%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
8 9 (0.14%) Fusion 360
8 9 (0.14%) Maya
9 8 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 7 (0.11%) AutoCAD
11 6 (0.096%) Photoshop
11 6 (0.096%) SOLIDWORKS
12 4 (0.064%) Simulink
13 3 (0.048%) Adobe XD
13 3 (0.048%) Trello
14 2 (0.032%) Acrobat
14 2 (0.032%) Autodesk Inventor
14 2 (0.032%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 60 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
2 57 (0.91%) Dynamics CRM
3 32 (0.51%) NetSuite
4 22 (0.35%) Salesforce CRM
5 18 (0.29%) Shopify
6 16 (0.26%) Magento
7 15 (0.24%) Dynamics NAV
8 14 (0.22%) SAP CO
8 14 (0.22%) SAP ERP
9 13 (0.21%) iTrent
10 11 (0.18%) Maximo
10 11 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
11 10 (0.16%) Endur
12 9 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
12 9 (0.14%) Workday HCM
13 7 (0.11%) Elite 3E
13 7 (0.11%) Q-Pulse
13 7 (0.11%) SAP Business One
14 6 (0.096%) IBM Planning Analytics
15 5 (0.080%) SAP PP
Cloud Services
1 1,305 (20.91%) Azure
2 949 (15.21%) Microsoft 365
3 786 (12.60%) AWS
4 473 (7.58%) Power Platform
5 310 (4.97%) SaaS
6 285 (4.57%) GCP
7 259 (4.15%) Entra ID
8 170 (2.72%) Serverless
9 160 (2.56%) Azure DevOps
10 148 (2.37%) GitHub
11 122 (1.96%) Dynamics 365
12 116 (1.86%) Power Automate
13 91 (1.46%) Amazon S3
14 87 (1.39%) PowerApps
15 84 (1.35%) Google Workspace
16 77 (1.23%) AWS Lambda
16 77 (1.23%) GitHub Actions
17 76 (1.22%) PaaS
18 73 (1.17%) IaaS
19 69 (1.11%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 370 (5.93%) Firewall
2 355 (5.69%) DNS
3 287 (4.60%) DHCP
4 246 (3.94%) VPN
5 213 (3.41%) WAN
6 188 (3.01%) Wi-Fi
7 185 (2.96%) LAN
8 176 (2.82%) TCP/IP
9 171 (2.74%) Broadband
10 115 (1.84%) Wireless
11 105 (1.68%) VLAN
12 92 (1.47%) VoIP
13 65 (1.04%) Network Security
13 65 (1.04%) SD-WAN
14 53 (0.85%) SAN
15 41 (0.66%) Internet
16 34 (0.54%) BGP
16 34 (0.54%) HTTP
17 33 (0.53%) OSPF
18 31 (0.50%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 383 (6.14%) Power BI
2 277 (4.44%) SQL Server
3 117 (1.88%) Data Warehouse
4 106 (1.70%) Tableau
5 102 (1.63%) NoSQL
6 88 (1.41%) PostgreSQL
7 80 (1.28%) MySQL
8 78 (1.25%) Relational Database
9 72 (1.15%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 64 (1.03%) Amazon RDS
10 64 (1.03%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 56 (0.90%) Power Query
12 48 (0.77%) MongoDB
13 47 (0.75%) Amazon Redshift
14 43 (0.69%) DynamoDB
15 41 (0.66%) Big Data
16 37 (0.59%) Data Lake
17 35 (0.56%) Metadata
18 34 (0.54%) Azure SQL Database
19 26 (0.42%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 276 (4.42%) Git
2 201 (3.22%) JIRA
3 105 (1.68%) Jenkins
4 104 (1.67%) GitLab
5 33 (0.53%) Selenium
6 25 (0.40%) Rational DOORS
7 22 (0.35%) Maven
8 21 (0.34%) Visual Studio
9 20 (0.32%) Chocolatey
9 20 (0.32%) Cypress.io
10 19 (0.30%) Cucumber
10 19 (0.30%) SonarQube
11 17 (0.27%) Bitbucket
11 17 (0.27%) CircleCI
12 16 (0.26%) TeamCity
13 15 (0.24%) Burp Suite
13 15 (0.24%) Metasploit
14 13 (0.21%) LabVIEW
14 13 (0.21%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
15 12 (0.19%) JUnit
General
1 2,845 (45.59%) Social Skills
2 1,846 (29.58%) Analytical Skills
3 1,311 (21.01%) Finance
4 403 (6.46%) Organisational Skills
5 363 (5.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 326 (5.22%) Marketing
7 324 (5.19%) Manufacturing
8 312 (5.00%) Law
9 268 (4.29%) Banking
10 265 (4.25%) Public Sector
11 261 (4.18%) Retail
12 251 (4.02%) Legal
13 153 (2.45%) Telecoms
14 138 (2.21%) Electronics
15 132 (2.12%) Presentation Skills
16 100 (1.60%) Documentation Skills
17 85 (1.36%) Games
18 84 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
19 77 (1.23%) Advertising
20 67 (1.07%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 853 (13.67%) Analyst
2 784 (12.56%) Senior
3 642 (10.29%) IT Support
4 572 (9.17%) Developer
5 557 (8.93%) Support Engineer
6 402 (6.44%) Lead
7 379 (6.07%) IT Engineer
8 294 (4.71%) IT Support Engineer
9 256 (4.10%) Consultant
10 243 (3.89%) Support Analyst
11 217 (3.48%) Architect
12 213 (3.41%) Support Technician
13 198 (3.17%) Software Engineer
14 189 (3.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 183 (2.93%) Systems Engineer
16 173 (2.77%) Business Analyst
17 162 (2.60%) Technical Support
18 161 (2.58%) 2nd Line Support
19 159 (2.55%) IT Technician
20 149 (2.39%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 242 (3.88%) .NET
2 235 (3.77%) React
3 205 (3.29%) HTML
4 174 (2.79%) CSS
5 154 (2.47%) REST
6 132 (2.12%) Node.js
7 112 (1.79%) RESTful
8 88 (1.41%) SOAP
9 84 (1.35%) Middleware
10 71 (1.14%) Spring
11 69 (1.11%) JSON
12 65 (1.04%) XML
13 59 (0.95%) Vue
14 58 (0.93%) AngularJS
14 58 (0.93%) Kafka
15 53 (0.85%) OAuth
16 51 (0.82%) Spring Boot
17 50 (0.80%) gRPC
18 48 (0.77%) EDI
19 46 (0.74%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 385 (6.17%) Driving Licence
2 378 (6.06%) Onboarding
3 305 (4.89%) Self-Motivation
4 202 (3.24%) Management Information System
5 196 (3.14%) Cloud Native
6 178 (2.85%) Product Ownership
7 158 (2.53%) Data Centre
8 148 (2.37%) Distributed Systems
9 138 (2.21%) Analytical Mindset
10 109 (1.75%) Legacy Systems
11 95 (1.52%) Enterprise Software
12 91 (1.46%) Mobile App
13 90 (1.44%) Social Media
14 77 (1.23%) Data Structures
15 69 (1.11%) Low-Code
16 65 (1.04%) Algorithms
17 61 (0.98%) Security Posture
18 60 (0.96%) Virtual Team
19 58 (0.93%) Video\Live Streaming
20 53 (0.85%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 965 (15.46%) Windows
2 385 (6.17%) Linux
3 376 (6.03%) Windows Server
4 160 (2.56%) Windows 10
5 104 (1.67%) Android
6 98 (1.57%) Windows Server 2016
7 85 (1.36%) Apple iOS
8 80 (1.28%) Mac OS
9 54 (0.87%) Windows Server 2019
10 45 (0.72%) Unix
11 40 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 32 (0.51%) Windows Server 2012
13 31 (0.50%) CentOS
14 26 (0.42%) Ubuntu
15 24 (0.38%) VMS
16 16 (0.26%) Windows 7
17 14 (0.22%) Mac OS X
18 10 (0.16%) Debian
19 7 (0.11%) Windows 8
19 7 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,154 (18.49%) Continuous Improvement
2 988 (15.83%) Agile
3 881 (14.12%) Customer Service
4 684 (10.96%) CI/CD
5 680 (10.90%) AI
6 670 (10.74%) Mentoring
7 650 (10.42%) Decision-Making
8 604 (9.68%) Analytics
8 604 (9.68%) DevOps
9 528 (8.46%) ITIL
10 502 (8.04%) Stakeholder Management
11 489 (7.84%) Software Engineering
12 484 (7.76%) Computer Science
13 481 (7.71%) Project Management
14 471 (7.55%) Business Intelligence
15 464 (7.44%) Roadmaps
16 420 (6.73%) Coaching
17 419 (6.71%) Cybersecurity
18 364 (5.83%) Collaborative Working
19 350 (5.61%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 951 (15.24%) Python
2 857 (13.73%) SQL
3 413 (6.62%) JavaScript
4 324 (5.19%) Java
5 284 (4.55%) PowerShell
6 277 (4.44%) C#
7 189 (3.03%) TypeScript
8 152 (2.44%) Bash
9 108 (1.73%) C++
10 88 (1.41%) PHP
11 85 (1.36%) Go
12 61 (0.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 61 (0.98%) Scala
13 54 (0.87%) C
14 42 (0.67%) T-SQL
15 40 (0.64%) Rust
16 38 (0.61%) R
17 36 (0.58%) PL/SQL
18 35 (0.56%) Kotlin
19 34 (0.54%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,127 (18.06%) Degree
2 446 (7.15%) Security Cleared
3 283 (4.54%) SC Cleared
4 252 (4.04%) Computer Science Degree
5 210 (3.37%) DBS Check
6 180 (2.88%) Microsoft Certification
7 115 (1.84%) Master's Degree
8 110 (1.76%) DV Cleared
9 105 (1.68%) CISSP
10 99 (1.59%) Cisco Certification
11 88 (1.41%) A+ Certification
12 82 (1.31%) BPSS Clearance
13 81 (1.30%) PMI Certification
14 72 (1.15%) ACCA
15 69 (1.11%) Azure Certification
16 66 (1.06%) PMP
17 65 (1.04%) CCNA
17 65 (1.04%) CIMA
18 57 (0.91%) Network+ Certification
19 48 (0.77%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 322 (5.16%) QA
2 294 (4.71%) Data Quality
3 246 (3.94%) GDPR
4 184 (2.95%) SLA
5 145 (2.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 140 (2.24%) Cyber Essentials
7 132 (2.12%) NIST
8 117 (1.88%) Accessibility
9 110 (1.76%) PCI DSS
10 44 (0.71%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 34 (0.54%) ISO 9001
12 31 (0.50%) SOC 2
13 27 (0.43%) GRC
13 27 (0.43%) PMO
14 24 (0.38%) COBIT
15 19 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
16 14 (0.22%) GMP
17 12 (0.19%) IFRS
17 12 (0.19%) TickIT
18 11 (0.18%) PERC
System Software
1 652 (10.45%) Active Directory
2 276 (4.42%) Docker
3 178 (2.85%) Hyper-V
4 168 (2.69%) VMware Infrastructure
5 42 (0.67%) Terminal Server
6 40 (0.64%) Virtual Desktop
7 34 (0.54%) Firmware
8 22 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
9 21 (0.34%) vSphere
10 15 (0.24%) KVM
11 12 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
12 10 (0.16%) IAG
13 7 (0.11%) VMware Workstation
14 6 (0.096%) XenApp
15 4 (0.064%) Embedded Firmware
15 4 (0.064%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 4 (0.064%) VMware NSX
16 3 (0.048%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 3 (0.048%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.048%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 290 (4.65%) Terraform
2 233 (3.73%) Microsoft Intune
3 230 (3.69%) Kubernetes
4 145 (2.32%) Ansible
5 85 (1.36%) Grafana
6 82 (1.31%) SCCM
7 48 (0.77%) Prometheus
8 32 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
9 31 (0.50%) Nagios
10 22 (0.35%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 18 (0.29%) Kibana
12 14 (0.22%) Autotask
13 13 (0.21%) Argo
13 13 (0.21%) Puppet
14 12 (0.19%) vCenter Server
15 11 (0.18%) Nessus
16 10 (0.16%) BMC PATROL
16 10 (0.16%) Jamf Pro
16 10 (0.16%) WSUS
17 9 (0.14%) logstash
Vendors
1 1,641 (26.30%) Microsoft
2 252 (4.04%) VMware
3 178 (2.85%) Oracle
4 161 (2.58%) Google
5 153 (2.45%) SAP
6 136 (2.18%) Cisco
7 132 (2.12%) Salesforce
8 128 (2.05%) ServiceNow
9 109 (1.75%) SolarWinds
10 105 (1.68%) Databricks
11 96 (1.54%) Veeam
12 89 (1.43%) Splunk
13 79 (1.27%) Apple
14 71 (1.14%) Adobe
15 63 (1.01%) Dell
16 57 (0.91%) Red Hat
17 48 (0.77%) Dynatrace
18 47 (0.75%) Meraki
19 45 (0.72%) Fortinet
19 45 (0.72%) Typelevel