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

6 months to
26 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 6,359 6,956 11,588
As % of all permanent jobs in England 9.28% 18.99% 15.05%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.00% 20.30% 17.39%
Number of salaries quoted 4,417 4,314 8,173
10th Percentile £27,000 £29,000 £26,250
25th Percentile £31,250 £37,500 £33,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -14.55% +10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £67,500 £75,000 £68,750
90th Percentile £86,253 £90,000 £87,500
UK median annual salary £45,497 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -17.28% +10.00% -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 53,002 34,266 66,641
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 77.33% 93.54% 86.56%
Number of salaries quoted 32,961 20,243 51,625
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,750 £29,000
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 £80,750 £74,000
90th Percentile £98,750 £102,500 £95,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -11.29%

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 26 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 26 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 1,965 £67,500 +3.85% 986
North of England -17 1,288 £41,000 -11.35% 662
South East -7 1,187 £45,000 -10.86% 802
Midlands -19 849 £37,750 -21.35% 478
North West -17 651 £41,500 -14.43% 365
South West -5 539 £43,500 -8.42% 308
Yorkshire -6 509 £35,000 -17.65% 222
West Midlands -25 502 £42,500 -20.83% 278
East of England -10 428 £40,000 -20.00% 288
East Midlands -2 344 £35,000 -10.83% 199
North East -9 128 £45,000 - 92
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
1 330 (5.19%) Microsoft Exchange
2 283 (4.45%) SharePoint
3 76 (1.20%) Confluence
4 57 (0.90%) CMS
5 52 (0.82%) Apache
6 44 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
7 37 (0.58%) Apache Spark
8 35 (0.55%) IIS
9 29 (0.46%) WordPress
10 17 (0.27%) SAS
11 14 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
12 12 (0.19%) nginx
13 9 (0.14%) Anypoint
13 9 (0.14%) Drupal
14 8 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2007
14 8 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2010
14 8 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
15 7 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 4 (0.063%) Apache Solr
16 4 (0.063%) OpenStack
Applications
1 445 (7.00%) Microsoft Office
2 340 (5.35%) Microsoft Excel
3 72 (1.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 35 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
5 33 (0.52%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
7 15 (0.24%) Maya
8 14 (0.22%) AutoCAD
9 12 (0.19%) Photoshop
10 10 (0.16%) Adobe Illustrator
10 10 (0.16%) Chatbot
11 8 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 7 (0.11%) SOLIDWORKS
13 6 (0.094%) Adobe XD
14 4 (0.063%) Fusion 360
14 4 (0.063%) Trello
15 3 (0.047%) Elementor
15 3 (0.047%) InDesign
15 3 (0.047%) Simulink
16 2 (0.031%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 62 (0.97%) Dynamics CRM
2 41 (0.64%) SAP S/4HANA
3 31 (0.49%) NetSuite
4 21 (0.33%) 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 11 (0.17%) Maximo
8 10 (0.16%) iTrent
8 10 (0.16%) Workday HCM
9 9 (0.14%) SAP ERP
10 8 (0.13%) SAP FI
10 8 (0.13%) SAP FI/CO
11 7 (0.11%) IBM Planning Analytics
11 7 (0.11%) Magento
11 7 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
11 7 (0.11%) Q-Pulse
11 7 (0.11%) Sage 200
12 6 (0.094%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,382 (21.73%) Azure
2 980 (15.41%) Microsoft 365
3 786 (12.36%) AWS
4 454 (7.14%) Power Platform
5 373 (5.87%) SaaS
6 287 (4.51%) GCP
7 271 (4.26%) Entra ID
8 168 (2.64%) GitHub
8 168 (2.64%) Serverless
9 166 (2.61%) Azure DevOps
10 125 (1.97%) Power Automate
11 104 (1.64%) Dynamics 365
12 90 (1.42%) Google Workspace
13 87 (1.37%) Amazon S3
14 80 (1.26%) AWS CloudFormation
14 80 (1.26%) AWS Lambda
14 80 (1.26%) PowerApps
15 79 (1.24%) GitHub Actions
16 76 (1.20%) Azure Data Factory
17 75 (1.18%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 411 (6.46%) DNS
2 381 (5.99%) Firewall
3 348 (5.47%) DHCP
4 248 (3.90%) VPN
5 213 (3.35%) WAN
6 209 (3.29%) TCP/IP
7 206 (3.24%) Wi-Fi
8 178 (2.80%) Broadband
8 178 (2.80%) LAN
9 129 (2.03%) VLAN
10 98 (1.54%) Wireless
11 84 (1.32%) VoIP
12 69 (1.09%) SD-WAN
13 53 (0.83%) Network Security
14 44 (0.69%) SAN
15 40 (0.63%) Remote Desktop
16 37 (0.58%) Internet
17 32 (0.50%) Structured Cabling
18 29 (0.46%) BGP
18 29 (0.46%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 377 (5.93%) Power BI
2 281 (4.42%) SQL Server
3 130 (2.04%) Data Warehouse
4 127 (2.00%) Tableau
5 121 (1.90%) NoSQL
6 113 (1.78%) Relational Database
7 110 (1.73%) PostgreSQL
8 93 (1.46%) Amazon RDS
9 92 (1.45%) MySQL
10 64 (1.01%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 55 (0.86%) MongoDB
12 48 (0.75%) Power Query
13 47 (0.74%) DynamoDB
13 47 (0.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 46 (0.72%) Amazon Redshift
14 46 (0.72%) Azure SQL Database
15 44 (0.69%) Metadata
16 43 (0.68%) Data Lake
17 41 (0.64%) Big Data
18 26 (0.41%) Redis
Development Applications
1 285 (4.48%) Git
2 231 (3.63%) JIRA
3 111 (1.75%) Jenkins
4 98 (1.54%) GitLab
5 53 (0.83%) Selenium
6 30 (0.47%) Visual Studio
7 24 (0.38%) Cypress.io
8 20 (0.31%) Maven
9 19 (0.30%) Burp Suite
9 19 (0.30%) LabVIEW
9 19 (0.30%) Metasploit
10 18 (0.28%) Chocolatey
10 18 (0.28%) Robot Framework
11 17 (0.27%) CircleCI
11 17 (0.27%) TeamCity
12 16 (0.25%) Cucumber
12 16 (0.25%) Rational DOORS
13 15 (0.24%) Bitbucket
13 15 (0.24%) JUnit
13 15 (0.24%) SonarQube
General
1 3,141 (49.39%) Social Skills
2 1,938 (30.48%) Analytical Skills
3 1,404 (22.08%) Finance
4 444 (6.98%) Organisational Skills
5 365 (5.74%) Marketing
6 345 (5.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 314 (4.94%) Law
8 303 (4.76%) Retail
9 300 (4.72%) Banking
10 298 (4.69%) Legal
11 287 (4.51%) Public Sector
12 265 (4.17%) Manufacturing
13 164 (2.58%) Presentation Skills
14 154 (2.42%) Telecoms
15 138 (2.17%) Electronics
16 101 (1.59%) Documentation Skills
17 99 (1.56%) Games
18 84 (1.32%) Financial Institution
19 82 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
20 71 (1.12%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 930 (14.62%) Analyst
2 752 (11.83%) IT Support
3 749 (11.78%) Senior
4 640 (10.06%) Support Engineer
5 594 (9.34%) Developer
6 381 (5.99%) Lead
7 375 (5.90%) IT Engineer
8 317 (4.99%) IT Support Engineer
9 304 (4.78%) Support Analyst
10 248 (3.90%) Consultant
11 217 (3.41%) Support Technician
12 216 (3.40%) Architect
13 214 (3.37%) Business Analyst
14 197 (3.10%) Technical Support
15 193 (3.04%) 2nd Line Support
16 178 (2.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 169 (2.66%) Software Engineer
18 163 (2.56%) IT Technician
19 155 (2.44%) Systems Engineer
20 150 (2.36%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 252 (3.96%) React
2 251 (3.95%) .NET
3 219 (3.44%) HTML
4 178 (2.80%) CSS
5 162 (2.55%) Node.js
6 119 (1.87%) REST
7 114 (1.79%) RESTful
8 71 (1.12%) Vue
9 69 (1.09%) AngularJS
10 67 (1.05%) Spring
11 66 (1.04%) Kafka
12 64 (1.01%) Middleware
13 63 (0.99%) Django
14 58 (0.91%) SOAP
15 56 (0.88%) XML
16 55 (0.86%) JSON
17 54 (0.85%) Flask
18 48 (0.75%) Spring Boot
19 47 (0.74%) FastAPI
20 44 (0.69%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 448 (7.05%) Driving Licence
2 436 (6.86%) Onboarding
3 386 (6.07%) Self-Motivation
4 200 (3.15%) Management Information System
5 179 (2.81%) Cloud Native
6 151 (2.37%) Analytical Mindset
7 142 (2.23%) Legacy Systems
8 140 (2.20%) Product Ownership
9 134 (2.11%) Data Centre
10 133 (2.09%) Distributed Systems
11 105 (1.65%) Enterprise Software
12 96 (1.51%) Mobile App
13 93 (1.46%) Social Media
14 83 (1.31%) Data Structures
15 70 (1.10%) Low-Code
16 60 (0.94%) Security Posture
17 57 (0.90%) Virtual Team
18 56 (0.88%) Algorithms
19 50 (0.79%) EPoS
20 49 (0.77%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 1,108 (17.42%) Windows
2 422 (6.64%) Windows Server
3 415 (6.53%) Linux
4 169 (2.66%) Windows 10
5 120 (1.89%) Windows Server 2016
6 110 (1.73%) Android
7 89 (1.40%) Mac OS
8 82 (1.29%) Apple iOS
9 63 (0.99%) Unix
10 57 (0.90%) Windows Server 2019
11 39 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 35 (0.55%) Windows Server 2012
13 28 (0.44%) CentOS
14 22 (0.35%) Ubuntu
14 22 (0.35%) Windows 7
15 17 (0.27%) VMS
16 11 (0.17%) Mac OS X
16 11 (0.17%) Windows 8
17 9 (0.14%) Debian
18 6 (0.094%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,163 (18.29%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,046 (16.45%) Agile
3 949 (14.92%) Customer Service
4 686 (10.79%) Mentoring
5 681 (10.71%) AI
6 651 (10.24%) CI/CD
7 650 (10.22%) Decision-Making
8 632 (9.94%) Analytics
9 611 (9.61%) DevOps
10 595 (9.36%) ITIL
11 549 (8.63%) Project Management
12 525 (8.26%) Business Intelligence
13 505 (7.94%) Computer Science
14 483 (7.60%) Stakeholder Management
15 426 (6.70%) Software Engineering
16 424 (6.67%) Cybersecurity
17 388 (6.10%) Roadmaps
18 386 (6.07%) Coaching
19 368 (5.79%) Process Improvement
20 356 (5.60%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 980 (15.41%) Python
2 887 (13.95%) SQL
3 434 (6.82%) JavaScript
4 317 (4.99%) PowerShell
5 316 (4.97%) Java
6 270 (4.25%) C#
7 182 (2.86%) TypeScript
8 157 (2.47%) Bash
9 87 (1.37%) PHP
10 82 (1.29%) C++
11 78 (1.23%) Go
12 70 (1.10%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 59 (0.93%) Scala
14 47 (0.74%) C
15 45 (0.71%) T-SQL
16 40 (0.63%) Kotlin
17 34 (0.53%) Apex Code
17 34 (0.53%) R
18 27 (0.42%) Bicep
18 27 (0.42%) Rust
Qualifications
1 1,303 (20.49%) Degree
2 484 (7.61%) Security Cleared
3 301 (4.73%) SC Cleared
4 248 (3.90%) Computer Science Degree
5 188 (2.96%) Microsoft Certification
6 187 (2.94%) DBS Check
7 132 (2.08%) Master's Degree
8 117 (1.84%) DV Cleared
9 105 (1.65%) CISSP
10 91 (1.43%) Cisco Certification
11 86 (1.35%) BPSS Clearance
12 85 (1.34%) ACCA
13 82 (1.29%) A+ Certification
14 75 (1.18%) CIMA
15 67 (1.05%) PMI Certification
16 65 (1.02%) CCNA
17 60 (0.94%) Network+ Certification
18 56 (0.88%) AWS Certification
19 53 (0.83%) PMP
20 51 (0.80%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 308 (4.84%) QA
2 271 (4.26%) Data Quality
3 242 (3.81%) GDPR
4 161 (2.53%) Cyber Essentials
5 160 (2.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 145 (2.28%) SLA
7 124 (1.95%) PCI DSS
8 120 (1.89%) Accessibility
9 117 (1.84%) NIST
10 50 (0.79%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 32 (0.50%) ISO 9001
11 32 (0.50%) SOC 2
12 29 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
13 24 (0.38%) PMO
14 20 (0.31%) COBIT
14 20 (0.31%) GRC
15 14 (0.22%) GMP
16 12 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
17 10 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 10 (0.16%) ITGC
System Software
1 749 (11.78%) Active Directory
2 301 (4.73%) Docker
3 224 (3.52%) Hyper-V
4 169 (2.66%) VMware Infrastructure
5 63 (0.99%) Terminal Server
6 35 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
7 33 (0.52%) Firmware
8 31 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
9 14 (0.22%) KVM
10 13 (0.20%) vSphere
11 10 (0.16%) VMware Workstation
12 9 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
13 7 (0.11%) IAG
13 7 (0.11%) XenApp
14 6 (0.094%) Virtual Servers
15 4 (0.063%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 4 (0.063%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 2 (0.031%) BitLocker
16 2 (0.031%) VMware NSX
17 1 (0.016%) OpenDJ
Systems Management
1 289 (4.54%) Terraform
2 265 (4.17%) Microsoft Intune
3 224 (3.52%) Kubernetes
4 157 (2.47%) Ansible
5 94 (1.48%) Grafana
6 84 (1.32%) SCCM
7 59 (0.93%) Prometheus
8 30 (0.47%) Nagios
9 26 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
10 24 (0.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 22 (0.35%) BMC PATROL
12 19 (0.30%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.25%) Argo
14 15 (0.24%) Cisco CUCM
15 14 (0.22%) Autotask
15 14 (0.22%) vCenter Server
16 13 (0.20%) FortiGate
16 13 (0.20%) Puppet
16 13 (0.20%) ZABBIX
17 12 (0.19%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,671 (26.28%) Microsoft
2 274 (4.31%) VMware
3 203 (3.19%) Oracle
4 170 (2.67%) SAP
5 160 (2.52%) Google
6 146 (2.30%) Cisco
7 145 (2.28%) Salesforce
8 138 (2.17%) ServiceNow
9 125 (1.97%) Veeam
10 124 (1.95%) SolarWinds
11 120 (1.89%) Splunk
12 113 (1.78%) Databricks
13 85 (1.34%) Adobe
14 82 (1.29%) Apple
15 69 (1.09%) Dell
16 64 (1.01%) Tanium
17 63 (0.99%) Brocade
17 63 (0.99%) Nimble Storage
18 53 (0.83%) Red Hat
19 52 (0.82%) Sage