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 1 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 4 7
Rank change year-on-year -3 +3 +4
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 9,560 8,020 10,387
As % of all permanent jobs in England 9.21% 18.58% 15.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.52% 20.84% 18.90%
Number of salaries quoted 6,418 4,512 4,252
10th Percentile £27,750 £26,250 £27,500
25th Percentile £32,750 £31,250 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £46,500 £45,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year +3.33% -14.29% -4.55%
75th Percentile £64,500 £65,000 £71,250
90th Percentile £83,750 £85,000 £85,000
UK median annual salary £46,500 £45,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +3.33% -14.29% -4.55%

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 76,388 38,475 54,955
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.58% 89.15% 82.30%
Number of salaries quoted 53,883 21,744 29,840
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,500
25th Percentile £42,215 £36,750 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -2.44%
75th Percentile £80,000 £76,250 £78,267
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £97,500
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £58,274
% change year-on-year +9.09% -5.62% -2.88%

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 1 October 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 1 October 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 2,395 £65,000 - 5,815
North of England -8 2,006 £45,000 - 1,840
South East -2 1,865 £41,585 +1.43% 2,007
Midlands -6 1,437 £42,500 +11.84% 1,287
North West -3 1,039 £45,000 -7.64% 945
South West -2 974 £45,000 +25.00% 966
West Midlands -7 809 £42,500 -0.28% 799
East of England -2 802 £43,250 +33.08% 897
East Midlands -7 626 £42,000 +27.27% 488
Yorkshire -7 608 £42,500 +26.87% 637
North East +6 365 £50,000 +49.25% 278
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
1 558 (5.84%) SharePoint
2 407 (4.26%) Microsoft Exchange
3 118 (1.23%) Confluence
4 63 (0.66%) IIS
5 53 (0.55%) Apache
6 52 (0.54%) CMS
7 49 (0.51%) Apache Spark
8 38 (0.40%) Apache Airflow
9 37 (0.39%) WordPress
10 18 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
11 13 (0.14%) Jupyter
11 13 (0.14%) SAS
11 13 (0.14%) WebLogic
12 12 (0.13%) nginx
13 11 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 11 (0.12%) WebSphere
14 9 (0.094%) Palantir Foundry
15 7 (0.073%) OpenEdge
16 6 (0.063%) CICS
16 6 (0.063%) Tomcat
Applications
1 669 (7.00%) Microsoft Office
2 615 (6.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 130 (1.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 66 (0.69%) Spreadsheet
5 60 (0.63%) MS Visio
6 56 (0.59%) AutoCAD
7 52 (0.54%) Microsoft Project
8 30 (0.31%) Simulink
9 28 (0.29%) Revit
10 19 (0.20%) SOLIDWORKS
11 17 (0.18%) Chatbot
12 13 (0.14%) EPLAN
13 11 (0.12%) Autodesk Flame
13 11 (0.12%) Baselight
13 11 (0.12%) Navisworks
14 9 (0.094%) Adobe Creative Suite
15 8 (0.084%) OrCAD
15 8 (0.084%) Trello
16 6 (0.063%) Fusion 360
16 6 (0.063%) Lightworks
Business Applications
1 92 (0.96%) Dynamics CRM
2 91 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
3 83 (0.87%) NetSuite
4 40 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
5 36 (0.38%) Shopify
6 24 (0.25%) Oracle Payables
7 20 (0.21%) Dynamics AX
8 17 (0.18%) Oracle Cash Management
8 17 (0.18%) Workday HCM
9 16 (0.17%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 14 (0.15%) Dynamics NAV
10 14 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
11 13 (0.14%) Elite 3E
11 13 (0.14%) IBM Planning Analytics
11 13 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
11 13 (0.14%) SAP Business One
12 12 (0.13%) Magento
12 12 (0.13%) Oracle Applications
13 11 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
13 11 (0.12%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,806 (18.89%) Azure
2 1,459 (15.26%) Microsoft 365
3 1,070 (11.19%) AWS
4 816 (8.54%) Power Platform
5 475 (4.97%) Entra ID
6 407 (4.26%) SaaS
7 355 (3.71%) GCP
8 246 (2.57%) Azure DevOps
9 227 (2.37%) GitHub
10 212 (2.22%) Power Automate
11 196 (2.05%) Dynamics 365
12 186 (1.95%) Serverless
13 172 (1.80%) PowerApps
14 159 (1.66%) OneDrive
15 156 (1.63%) Microsoft Copilot
16 116 (1.21%) Amazon S3
17 107 (1.12%) GitHub Actions
18 102 (1.07%) Google Workspace
19 90 (0.94%) AWS CloudFormation
20 89 (0.93%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 532 (5.56%) Firewall
2 510 (5.33%) DNS
3 419 (4.38%) DHCP
4 361 (3.78%) VPN
5 300 (3.14%) TCP/IP
6 248 (2.59%) Wi-Fi
7 203 (2.12%) LAN
8 201 (2.10%) WAN
9 200 (2.09%) Wireless
10 182 (1.90%) VLAN
11 169 (1.77%) Network Security
12 110 (1.15%) VoIP
13 66 (0.69%) Internet
14 61 (0.64%) Broadband
15 39 (0.41%) SAN
16 38 (0.40%) HTTP
17 37 (0.39%) BGP
18 35 (0.37%) SSL
19 34 (0.36%) SD-WAN
20 32 (0.33%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 632 (6.61%) Power BI
2 428 (4.48%) SQL Server
3 165 (1.73%) Relational Database
4 152 (1.59%) Data Warehouse
5 142 (1.49%) MySQL
6 133 (1.39%) Amazon RDS
7 129 (1.35%) PostgreSQL
8 128 (1.34%) Tableau
9 100 (1.05%) NoSQL
10 90 (0.94%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 80 (0.84%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 72 (0.75%) Big Data
13 71 (0.74%) Azure SQL Database
14 69 (0.72%) Data Lake
15 66 (0.69%) Metadata
16 65 (0.68%) MongoDB
17 60 (0.63%) Power Query
18 42 (0.44%) DynamoDB
19 40 (0.42%) Electronic Patient Records
20 37 (0.39%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 396 (4.14%) Git
2 334 (3.49%) JIRA
3 153 (1.60%) Jenkins
4 123 (1.29%) GitLab
5 45 (0.47%) Claude Code
6 44 (0.46%) Selenium
7 42 (0.44%) Eclipse
8 35 (0.37%) JUnit
8 35 (0.37%) Subversion
9 32 (0.33%) Cucumber
10 27 (0.28%) Cypress.io
11 26 (0.27%) Oracle Forms
12 25 (0.26%) Postman
13 24 (0.25%) TeamCity
14 23 (0.24%) Rational DOORS
15 22 (0.23%) Bitbucket
16 19 (0.20%) SonarQube
17 17 (0.18%) LabVIEW
18 15 (0.16%) Maven
18 15 (0.16%) MLflow
General
1 4,817 (50.39%) Social Skills
2 2,817 (29.47%) Analytical Skills
3 1,898 (19.85%) Finance
4 931 (9.74%) Manufacturing
5 763 (7.98%) Organisational Skills
6 556 (5.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 547 (5.72%) Law
8 543 (5.68%) Retail
9 408 (4.27%) Marketing
10 398 (4.16%) Public Sector
11 363 (3.80%) Legal
12 322 (3.37%) Electronics
13 301 (3.15%) Aerospace
14 299 (3.13%) Banking
15 243 (2.54%) Telecoms
16 200 (2.09%) Influencing Skills
17 181 (1.89%) Presentation Skills
18 156 (1.63%) Automotive
19 139 (1.45%) Documentation Skills
20 110 (1.15%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 1,238 (12.95%) Analyst
2 1,030 (10.77%) Senior
3 822 (8.60%) Developer
4 788 (8.24%) IT Support
5 620 (6.49%) Support Engineer
6 545 (5.70%) Lead
7 447 (4.68%) Consultant
8 424 (4.44%) Support Analyst
9 418 (4.37%) IT Engineer
10 325 (3.40%) Software Engineer
11 323 (3.38%) IT Support Engineer
12 290 (3.03%) Technical Support
13 275 (2.88%) Architect
14 269 (2.81%) Support Technician
15 245 (2.56%) IT Technician
16 240 (2.51%) Technical Engineer
17 237 (2.48%) Systems Engineer
18 225 (2.35%) Administrator
19 215 (2.25%) Technical Support Engineer
20 210 (2.20%) Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 405 (4.24%) .NET
2 394 (4.12%) Terraform
3 321 (3.36%) React
4 309 (3.23%) REST
5 262 (2.74%) HTML
6 198 (2.07%) CSS
7 182 (1.90%) RESTful
8 153 (1.60%) Node.js
9 123 (1.29%) Spring
10 118 (1.23%) SOAP
11 115 (1.20%) Web Services
12 107 (1.12%) AngularJS
13 106 (1.11%) JSON
14 99 (1.04%) ASP.NET
15 98 (1.03%) XML
16 97 (1.01%) Kafka
17 94 (0.98%) Middleware
18 88 (0.92%) Vue
19 83 (0.87%) Spring Boot
20 65 (0.68%) LangChain
Miscellaneous
1 704 (7.36%) Driving Licence
2 672 (7.03%) Onboarding
3 503 (5.26%) Self-Motivation
4 439 (4.59%) Management Information System
5 347 (3.63%) Cloud Native
6 254 (2.66%) Product Ownership
7 193 (2.02%) Enterprise Software
8 179 (1.87%) Data Centre
9 167 (1.75%) Legacy Systems
10 147 (1.54%) Robotics
11 138 (1.44%) Distributed Systems
12 124 (1.30%) Security Posture
13 123 (1.29%) AI Agents
14 121 (1.27%) Cyber Threat
15 119 (1.24%) Analytical Mindset
16 113 (1.18%) Data Structures
17 112 (1.17%) NHS
18 102 (1.07%) IoT
19 101 (1.06%) Algorithms
20 86 (0.90%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 1,402 (14.67%) Windows
2 577 (6.04%) Windows Server
3 554 (5.79%) Linux
4 163 (1.71%) Windows 10
5 122 (1.28%) Mac OS
6 106 (1.11%) Apple iOS
7 97 (1.01%) Android
8 96 (1.00%) Windows Server 2016
9 55 (0.58%) Unix
10 45 (0.47%) Windows Server 2019
11 30 (0.31%) Ubuntu
12 29 (0.30%) VMS
13 27 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 15 (0.16%) Embedded Linux
15 10 (0.10%) FreeRTOS
16 9 (0.094%) Debian
16 9 (0.094%) Rocky
17 8 (0.084%) CentOS
18 7 (0.073%) Windows Server 2012
19 5 (0.052%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,501 (26.16%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,564 (16.36%) Customer Service
3 1,498 (15.67%) Agile
4 1,229 (12.86%) AI
5 1,202 (12.57%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,110 (11.61%) Decision-Making
7 999 (10.45%) Mentoring
8 969 (10.14%) CI/CD
9 869 (9.09%) Analytics
10 814 (8.51%) Software Engineering
11 805 (8.42%) DevOps
12 800 (8.37%) Project Delivery
13 772 (8.08%) Cybersecurity
14 708 (7.41%) Business Intelligence
15 695 (7.27%) Project Management
16 682 (7.13%) Collaborative Working
17 676 (7.07%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 672 (7.03%) Roadmaps
19 666 (6.97%) ITIL
20 655 (6.85%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 1,415 (14.80%) SQL
2 1,224 (12.80%) Python
3 583 (6.10%) JavaScript
4 508 (5.31%) C#
5 459 (4.80%) Java
6 389 (4.07%) PowerShell
7 285 (2.98%) TypeScript
8 252 (2.64%) C++
9 179 (1.87%) Bash
10 105 (1.10%) C
11 80 (0.84%) PHP
12 79 (0.83%) Go
13 78 (0.82%) T-SQL
14 75 (0.78%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 56 (0.59%) PL/SQL
16 55 (0.58%) R
17 53 (0.55%) Rust
18 49 (0.51%) Ruby
19 47 (0.49%) Shell Script
20 46 (0.48%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,665 (17.42%) Degree
2 892 (9.33%) Security Cleared
3 597 (6.24%) SC Cleared
4 338 (3.54%) Computer Science Degree
5 277 (2.90%) DBS Check
6 236 (2.47%) HNC
7 225 (2.35%) Microsoft Certification
8 204 (2.13%) DV Cleared
8 204 (2.13%) HND
9 185 (1.94%) Azure Certification
10 159 (1.66%) BPSS Clearance
11 146 (1.53%) CISSP
12 143 (1.50%) Cisco Certification
13 140 (1.46%) Master's Degree
14 102 (1.07%) PMI Certification
15 88 (0.92%) AWS Certification
16 87 (0.91%) ACCA
16 87 (0.91%) Chartered Engineer
17 85 (0.89%) CISM
18 81 (0.85%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 525 (5.49%) QA
2 479 (5.01%) Data Quality
3 383 (4.01%) GDPR
4 270 (2.82%) Accessibility
5 241 (2.52%) SLA
6 221 (2.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 191 (2.00%) Cyber Essentials
8 152 (1.59%) NIST
9 136 (1.42%) PCI DSS
10 72 (0.75%) PMO
11 51 (0.53%) ISO 9001
12 49 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 46 (0.48%) GRC
14 31 (0.32%) NCSC
15 30 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
16 23 (0.24%) SOC 2
17 22 (0.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
18 20 (0.21%) DO-254
18 20 (0.21%) GMP
18 20 (0.21%) Good Clinical Practice
System Software
1 919 (9.61%) Active Directory
2 375 (3.92%) Docker
3 287 (3.00%) Hyper-V
4 252 (2.64%) VMware Infrastructure
5 70 (0.73%) Firmware
6 63 (0.66%) Terminal Server
7 50 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
8 49 (0.51%) Virtual Machines
9 35 (0.37%) vSphere
10 27 (0.28%) Embedded Firmware
11 19 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
12 16 (0.17%) Virtual Servers
13 10 (0.10%) GPFS
13 10 (0.10%) StorNext
14 9 (0.094%) KVM
15 7 (0.073%) IAG
16 6 (0.063%) VMware NSX
17 5 (0.052%) ClearTrust
17 5 (0.052%) Squid
18 4 (0.042%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 372 (3.89%) Kubernetes
2 312 (3.26%) Microsoft Intune
3 148 (1.55%) Ansible
4 100 (1.05%) Grafana
5 74 (0.77%) Single Sign-On
6 66 (0.69%) SCCM
7 56 (0.59%) Prometheus
8 39 (0.41%) BMC PATROL
9 30 (0.31%) Jamf Pro
10 24 (0.25%) FortiGate
11 22 (0.23%) Argo
12 18 (0.19%) Functional Safety
13 17 (0.18%) Nagios
14 16 (0.17%) Kibana
15 15 (0.16%) Puppet
16 14 (0.15%) Progress Chef
17 12 (0.13%) logstash
17 12 (0.13%) Nmap
18 11 (0.12%) Autotask
19 10 (0.10%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 2,835 (29.65%) Microsoft
2 379 (3.96%) VMware
3 322 (3.37%) SAP
4 297 (3.11%) Google
5 273 (2.86%) Oracle
6 189 (1.98%) ServiceNow
7 184 (1.92%) Salesforce
8 173 (1.81%) Cisco
9 141 (1.47%) Databricks
10 137 (1.43%) Veeam
11 125 (1.31%) Splunk
12 115 (1.20%) Sage
13 95 (0.99%) Workday
14 94 (0.98%) SolarWinds
15 89 (0.93%) Apple
16 77 (0.81%) Fortinet
17 71 (0.74%) Tanium
18 69 (0.72%) HubSpot
19 64 (0.67%) Brocade
19 64 (0.67%) Nimble Storage