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 5 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 4 8
Rank change year-on-year -4 +4 +5
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,498 8,901 6,935
As % of all permanent jobs in England 12.48% 18.27% 14.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.26% 20.22% 16.31%
Number of salaries quoted 4,391 3,923 4,806
10th Percentile £26,500 £31,000 £27,500
25th Percentile £31,000 £40,000 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,497 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -17.28% - -
75th Percentile £65,473 £75,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £85,000 £87,500 £91,250
UK median annual salary £46,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -16.36% - -2.91%

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 42,581 44,028 42,509
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 81.75% 90.38% 90.78%
Number of salaries quoted 25,429 21,729 32,838
10th Percentile £28,500 £35,000 £32,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,000 £43,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%
75th Percentile £76,250 £81,000 £80,000
90th Percentile £96,250 £100,000 £100,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%

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 5 January 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 5 January 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 -1 1,939 £65,000 - 1,465
South East -3 1,333 £42,500 -19.05% 1,392
North of England -16 1,240 £45,000 -5.26% 827
Midlands -12 900 £38,750 -22.50% 635
North West -11 695 £47,592 -1.55% 379
South West 0 582 £40,000 -27.27% 489
West Midlands -16 535 £42,735 -22.30% 332
Yorkshire -4 433 £33,500 -22.99% 351
East of England -7 412 £35,000 -31.33% 591
East Midlands +1 364 £35,000 -2.10% 274
North East 0 112 £33,500 -33.00% 109
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
1 319 (4.91%) Microsoft Exchange
2 275 (4.23%) SharePoint
3 78 (1.20%) Confluence
4 50 (0.77%) IIS
5 46 (0.71%) Apache
6 41 (0.63%) Apache Spark
7 34 (0.52%) Apache Airflow
8 29 (0.45%) CMS
9 24 (0.37%) WordPress
10 12 (0.18%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 11 (0.17%) nginx
12 10 (0.15%) SAS
13 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
13 7 (0.11%) Apache Solr
14 6 (0.092%) HCL Notes
15 5 (0.077%) Camunda
15 5 (0.077%) Drupal
15 5 (0.077%) Exchange Server 2013
15 5 (0.077%) Umbraco
16 4 (0.062%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 489 (7.53%) Microsoft Office
2 487 (7.49%) Microsoft Excel
3 92 (1.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 35 (0.54%) Maya
4 35 (0.54%) Spreadsheet
5 30 (0.46%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
7 20 (0.31%) AutoCAD
8 17 (0.26%) Photoshop
9 15 (0.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 12 (0.18%) Adobe Illustrator
10 12 (0.18%) SOLIDWORKS
11 9 (0.14%) Adobe Premiere
12 7 (0.11%) Simulink
13 5 (0.077%) Adobe After Effects
13 5 (0.077%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.077%) Trello
14 4 (0.062%) Autodesk Inventor
14 4 (0.062%) Chatbot
14 4 (0.062%) Fusion 360
Business Applications
1 112 (1.72%) SAP S/4HANA
2 93 (1.43%) Dynamics CRM
3 41 (0.63%) NetSuite
4 22 (0.34%) SAP CO
5 21 (0.32%) SAP FI
6 17 (0.26%) SAP FI/CO
6 17 (0.26%) Shopify
7 14 (0.22%) Endur
7 14 (0.22%) Oracle Payables
7 14 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
8 12 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
8 12 (0.18%) SAP Business One
9 11 (0.17%) Oracle Assets
10 10 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
10 10 (0.15%) Sage 200
11 8 (0.12%) JDE EnterpriseOne
12 7 (0.11%) iTrent
13 6 (0.092%) Exchequer
13 6 (0.092%) Fidessa
13 6 (0.092%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 1,437 (22.11%) Azure
2 911 (14.02%) Microsoft 365
3 702 (10.80%) AWS
4 541 (8.33%) Power Platform
5 415 (6.39%) SaaS
6 267 (4.11%) Entra ID
7 219 (3.37%) GCP
8 185 (2.85%) Azure DevOps
9 149 (2.29%) GitHub
10 137 (2.11%) Serverless
11 109 (1.68%) Power Automate
12 100 (1.54%) Dynamics 365
13 75 (1.15%) PowerApps
14 70 (1.08%) AWS Lambda
15 67 (1.03%) Amazon S3
15 67 (1.03%) Azure Data Factory
16 62 (0.95%) AWS CloudFormation
17 59 (0.91%) OneDrive
17 59 (0.91%) PaaS
18 58 (0.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 393 (6.05%) DNS
2 334 (5.14%) DHCP
3 323 (4.97%) Firewall
4 205 (3.15%) VPN
5 181 (2.79%) TCP/IP
6 174 (2.68%) Wi-Fi
7 167 (2.57%) WAN
8 141 (2.17%) LAN
9 113 (1.74%) VLAN
10 84 (1.29%) VoIP
11 77 (1.18%) Wireless
12 75 (1.15%) Broadband
13 64 (0.98%) Network Security
14 60 (0.92%) Remote Desktop
15 50 (0.77%) SAN
16 46 (0.71%) SD-WAN
17 42 (0.65%) Internet
18 29 (0.45%) Unified Communications
19 25 (0.38%) Structured Cabling
20 24 (0.37%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 454 (6.99%) Power BI
2 320 (4.92%) SQL Server
3 160 (2.46%) Relational Database
4 141 (2.17%) Tableau
5 136 (2.09%) Data Warehouse
6 130 (2.00%) PostgreSQL
7 122 (1.88%) MySQL
8 118 (1.82%) Data Lake
9 114 (1.75%) Amazon RDS
10 113 (1.74%) NoSQL
11 67 (1.03%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 66 (1.02%) SAP BW
13 62 (0.95%) MongoDB
14 55 (0.85%) Metadata
15 49 (0.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 44 (0.68%) DynamoDB
17 43 (0.66%) Big Data
18 41 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
18 41 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
19 33 (0.51%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 272 (4.19%) Git
2 246 (3.79%) JIRA
3 90 (1.39%) Jenkins
4 80 (1.23%) GitLab
5 57 (0.88%) Selenium
6 24 (0.37%) Cypress.io
6 24 (0.37%) Visual Studio
7 23 (0.35%) Bitbucket
8 19 (0.29%) LabVIEW
9 17 (0.26%) Maven
9 17 (0.26%) Octopus Deploy
9 17 (0.26%) Robot Framework
9 17 (0.26%) TeamCity
10 16 (0.25%) SonarQube
11 15 (0.23%) JUnit
12 14 (0.22%) Snyk
12 14 (0.22%) WebDriver
13 12 (0.18%) Cucumber
14 11 (0.17%) Metasploit
14 11 (0.17%) Subversion
General
1 3,521 (54.19%) Social Skills
2 1,977 (30.42%) Analytical Skills
3 1,570 (24.16%) Finance
4 421 (6.48%) Marketing
5 369 (5.68%) Retail
6 367 (5.65%) Law
7 343 (5.28%) Manufacturing
8 333 (5.12%) Organisational Skills
9 287 (4.42%) Legal
10 268 (4.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 262 (4.03%) Public Sector
12 250 (3.85%) Banking
13 187 (2.88%) Telecoms
14 166 (2.55%) Presentation Skills
15 164 (2.52%) Electronics
16 120 (1.85%) Games
17 94 (1.45%) Influencing Skills
18 86 (1.32%) Automotive
19 81 (1.25%) Documentation Skills
20 77 (1.18%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,042 (16.04%) Analyst
2 785 (12.08%) Senior
3 659 (10.14%) IT Support
4 608 (9.36%) Support Engineer
5 607 (9.34%) Developer
6 450 (6.93%) Lead
7 357 (5.49%) Support Analyst
8 298 (4.59%) Technical Support
9 259 (3.99%) IT Engineer
10 248 (3.82%) Business Analyst
11 231 (3.55%) Consultant
12 222 (3.42%) Architect
13 212 (3.26%) IT Support Engineer
14 209 (3.22%) Technical Engineer
15 195 (3.00%) Technical Support Engineer
16 187 (2.88%) 2nd Line Support
17 184 (2.83%) Support Technician
18 168 (2.59%) Systems Engineer
19 166 (2.55%) Applications Support
20 146 (2.25%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 283 (4.36%) .NET
2 256 (3.94%) React
3 239 (3.68%) HTML
4 191 (2.94%) CSS
5 151 (2.32%) REST
6 143 (2.20%) Node.js
7 126 (1.94%) RESTful
8 100 (1.54%) AngularJS
9 74 (1.14%) XML
10 72 (1.11%) JSON
11 70 (1.08%) Spring
12 66 (1.02%) Vue
13 63 (0.97%) .NET Framework
14 59 (0.91%) ASP.NET
14 59 (0.91%) SOAP
15 56 (0.86%) Kafka
16 50 (0.77%) Middleware
17 48 (0.74%) Django
18 47 (0.72%) Web Services
19 46 (0.71%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 531 (8.17%) Onboarding
2 504 (7.76%) Driving Licence
3 415 (6.39%) Self-Motivation
4 212 (3.26%) Management Information System
5 200 (3.08%) Analytical Mindset
6 156 (2.40%) Cloud Native
7 152 (2.34%) Legacy Systems
8 146 (2.25%) Product Ownership
9 115 (1.77%) Data Centre
10 114 (1.75%) Enterprise Software
11 76 (1.17%) Algorithms
12 72 (1.11%) FMCG
13 71 (1.09%) Data Structures
14 67 (1.03%) Virtual Team
15 64 (0.98%) Distributed Systems
16 60 (0.92%) Mobile App
17 55 (0.85%) Low-Code
18 53 (0.82%) Security Posture
19 44 (0.68%) EPoS
20 43 (0.66%) e-Learning
Operating Systems
1 1,070 (16.47%) Windows
2 421 (6.48%) Windows Server
3 395 (6.08%) Linux
4 164 (2.52%) Windows 10
5 109 (1.68%) Windows Server 2016
6 91 (1.40%) Mac OS
7 75 (1.15%) Android
8 69 (1.06%) Apple iOS
9 60 (0.92%) Unix
10 46 (0.71%) Windows Server 2019
11 30 (0.46%) Windows Server 2012
12 22 (0.34%) VMS
12 22 (0.34%) Windows 7
13 18 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 8 (0.12%) CentOS
14 8 (0.12%) Mac OS X
15 7 (0.11%) Ubuntu
16 6 (0.092%) Windows Server 2008
17 4 (0.062%) OpenWrt
17 4 (0.062%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,140 (17.54%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,087 (16.73%) Agile
3 943 (14.51%) Customer Service
4 736 (11.33%) Analytics
5 649 (9.99%) AI
6 637 (9.80%) Business Intelligence
7 628 (9.66%) Decision-Making
8 623 (9.59%) Mentoring
9 619 (9.53%) Project Management
10 578 (8.90%) DevOps
11 560 (8.62%) ITIL
12 516 (7.94%) CI/CD
13 500 (7.69%) Computer Science
14 492 (7.57%) Cybersecurity
15 467 (7.19%) Stakeholder Management
16 454 (6.99%) Change Management
17 450 (6.93%) ERP
18 410 (6.31%) Data Analysis
19 399 (6.14%) CRM
20 382 (5.88%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 1,031 (15.87%) SQL
2 863 (13.28%) Python
3 390 (6.00%) JavaScript
4 350 (5.39%) C#
5 308 (4.74%) Java
6 299 (4.60%) PowerShell
7 148 (2.28%) TypeScript
8 115 (1.77%) Bash
9 99 (1.52%) PHP
10 80 (1.23%) C++
11 61 (0.94%) T-SQL
12 52 (0.80%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 43 (0.66%) R
14 37 (0.57%) C
15 35 (0.54%) Go
15 35 (0.54%) Scala
16 30 (0.46%) VBA
17 27 (0.42%) MATLAB
18 25 (0.38%) Bicep
18 25 (0.38%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 1,580 (24.32%) Degree
2 515 (7.93%) Security Cleared
3 332 (5.11%) SC Cleared
4 243 (3.74%) Computer Science Degree
5 176 (2.71%) Master's Degree
5 176 (2.71%) Microsoft Certification
6 138 (2.12%) DBS Check
7 129 (1.99%) DV Cleared
8 107 (1.65%) CISSP
9 104 (1.60%) BPSS Clearance
10 93 (1.43%) Cisco Certification
11 85 (1.31%) ACCA
12 71 (1.09%) CIMA
13 65 (1.00%) A+ Certification
14 63 (0.97%) CCNA
15 62 (0.95%) CISM
15 62 (0.95%) Network+ Certification
16 60 (0.92%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 60 (0.92%) PMI Certification
17 59 (0.91%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 364 (5.60%) QA
2 327 (5.03%) Data Quality
3 201 (3.09%) GDPR
4 177 (2.72%) Cyber Essentials
5 166 (2.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 143 (2.20%) Accessibility
7 135 (2.08%) SLA
8 112 (1.72%) PCI DSS
9 78 (1.20%) NIST
10 49 (0.75%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 32 (0.49%) ISO 9001
11 32 (0.49%) PMO
12 25 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
13 18 (0.28%) GRC
14 17 (0.26%) SOC 2
15 14 (0.22%) COBIT
16 13 (0.20%) WCAG
17 9 (0.14%) ISO 13485
18 8 (0.12%) ISAE 3402
18 8 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 19770
System Software
1 739 (11.37%) Active Directory
2 261 (4.02%) Docker
3 228 (3.51%) Hyper-V
4 150 (2.31%) VMware Infrastructure
5 84 (1.29%) Terminal Server
6 30 (0.46%) Firmware
6 30 (0.46%) Virtual Machines
7 24 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
8 19 (0.29%) vSphere
9 15 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (0.077%) KVM
11 4 (0.062%) ProxySG
11 4 (0.062%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.046%) BitLocker
12 3 (0.046%) vCloud
12 3 (0.046%) VMware Workstation
13 2 (0.031%) HDFS
13 2 (0.031%) Postfix
13 2 (0.031%) RHEV
13 2 (0.031%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 274 (4.22%) Microsoft Intune
2 241 (3.71%) Terraform
3 204 (3.14%) Kubernetes
4 115 (1.77%) Ansible
5 60 (0.92%) Grafana
6 57 (0.88%) SCCM
7 43 (0.66%) Prometheus
8 42 (0.65%) BMC PATROL
9 30 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
11 19 (0.29%) vCenter Server
12 18 (0.28%) Nagios
13 14 (0.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 14 (0.22%) Cisco CUCM
14 13 (0.20%) Argo
15 12 (0.18%) FortiGate
16 11 (0.17%) PaperCut
17 10 (0.15%) ZABBIX
18 8 (0.12%) Nmap
19 7 (0.11%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,709 (26.30%) Microsoft
2 424 (6.53%) SAP
3 287 (4.42%) Oracle
4 284 (4.37%) VMware
5 164 (2.52%) Cisco
6 148 (2.28%) Salesforce
7 138 (2.12%) Veeam
8 136 (2.09%) Google
8 136 (2.09%) ServiceNow
9 128 (1.97%) Splunk
10 125 (1.92%) SolarWinds
11 109 (1.68%) Databricks
12 87 (1.34%) Adobe
13 86 (1.32%) Nimble Storage
13 86 (1.32%) Tanium
14 84 (1.29%) Brocade
15 80 (1.23%) Apple
16 66 (1.02%) Sage
17 58 (0.89%) Dell
18 57 (0.88%) Workday