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 14 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 4 8
Rank change year-on-year -4 +4 +3
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 8,119 8,408 10,702
As % of all permanent jobs in England 8.62% 19.22% 14.75%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.70% 21.50% 18.14%
Number of salaries quoted 5,675 4,777 5,574
10th Percentile £27,750 £26,250 £26,750
25th Percentile £33,250 £31,250 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £46,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.26% -8.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £66,250 £67,500 £69,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £87,500 £85,000
UK median annual salary £47,500 £46,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +2.15% -7.00% -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 69,384 39,107 59,001
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.66% 89.38% 81.32%
Number of salaries quoted 48,904 22,532 38,701
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £37,500 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -12.00%
75th Percentile £80,000 £76,250 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £95,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.71%

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 14 August 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 14 August 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 2,229 £65,000 - 2,262
North of England -8 1,646 £45,000 +5.88% 904
South East -3 1,545 £45,000 +5.88% 1,101
Midlands -8 1,190 £42,500 +10.39% 660
North West -4 865 £45,000 - 467
South West -5 788 £45,000 +25.00% 496
West Midlands -9 653 £42,500 -5.07% 402
East of England -4 644 £42,500 +21.43% 393
Yorkshire -7 544 £42,500 +21.43% 310
East Midlands -9 534 £40,000 +14.29% 259
North East -8 237 £48,500 +25.00% 140
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
1 442 (5.44%) SharePoint
2 397 (4.89%) Microsoft Exchange
3 96 (1.18%) Confluence
4 59 (0.73%) CMS
5 51 (0.63%) IIS
6 50 (0.62%) Apache
7 38 (0.47%) Apache Airflow
7 38 (0.47%) Apache Spark
8 37 (0.46%) WordPress
9 21 (0.26%) SAS
10 13 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
11 11 (0.14%) nginx
11 11 (0.14%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.14%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 8 (0.099%) Exchange Server 2013
13 8 (0.099%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.086%) Drupal
14 7 (0.086%) OpenEdge
14 7 (0.086%) Tomcat
Applications
1 513 (6.32%) Microsoft Office
2 472 (5.81%) Microsoft Excel
3 82 (1.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 49 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
5 48 (0.59%) MS Visio
6 42 (0.52%) Microsoft Project
7 33 (0.41%) AutoCAD
8 16 (0.20%) Chatbot
9 15 (0.18%) Revit
9 15 (0.18%) Simulink
10 12 (0.15%) SOLIDWORKS
11 9 (0.11%) Trello
12 8 (0.099%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 7 (0.086%) Adobe Illustrator
14 6 (0.074%) Fusion 360
14 6 (0.074%) Navisworks
15 5 (0.062%) Lightworks
16 4 (0.049%) EPLAN
16 4 (0.049%) Photoshop
17 3 (0.037%) LaTeX
Business Applications
1 83 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
2 79 (0.97%) Dynamics CRM
3 52 (0.64%) NetSuite
4 27 (0.33%) Shopify
5 21 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
6 18 (0.22%) Magento
7 16 (0.20%) SAP ERP
8 15 (0.18%) IBM Planning Analytics
8 15 (0.18%) SAP Business One
9 14 (0.17%) Elite 3E
10 13 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
11 11 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
11 11 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
12 10 (0.12%) JDE EnterpriseOne
12 10 (0.12%) Oracle Applications
12 10 (0.12%) Sage X3
13 9 (0.11%) iTrent
13 9 (0.11%) Primavera
13 9 (0.11%) Sage 50
13 9 (0.11%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,684 (20.74%) Azure
2 1,254 (15.45%) Microsoft 365
3 1,008 (12.42%) AWS
4 672 (8.28%) Power Platform
5 382 (4.71%) Entra ID
6 356 (4.38%) SaaS
7 352 (4.34%) GCP
8 194 (2.39%) GitHub
9 192 (2.36%) Azure DevOps
10 189 (2.33%) Serverless
11 171 (2.11%) Dynamics 365
12 166 (2.04%) Power Automate
13 144 (1.77%) PowerApps
14 111 (1.37%) Microsoft Copilot
15 110 (1.35%) OneDrive
16 99 (1.22%) Amazon S3
17 90 (1.11%) GitHub Actions
18 89 (1.10%) AWS Lambda
19 81 (1.00%) AWS CloudFormation
20 75 (0.92%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 497 (6.12%) Firewall
2 452 (5.57%) DNS
3 382 (4.71%) DHCP
4 309 (3.81%) VPN
5 278 (3.42%) TCP/IP
6 210 (2.59%) WAN
7 203 (2.50%) Wi-Fi
8 201 (2.48%) LAN
9 164 (2.02%) Wireless
10 156 (1.92%) VLAN
11 141 (1.74%) Network Security
12 132 (1.63%) Broadband
13 105 (1.29%) VoIP
14 44 (0.54%) HTTP
14 44 (0.54%) Internet
15 43 (0.53%) SAN
16 42 (0.52%) SD-WAN
17 39 (0.48%) OSPF
18 38 (0.47%) BGP
19 34 (0.42%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 523 (6.44%) Power BI
2 410 (5.05%) SQL Server
3 145 (1.79%) Data Warehouse
4 142 (1.75%) MySQL
5 133 (1.64%) Amazon RDS
6 132 (1.63%) Relational Database
7 122 (1.50%) PostgreSQL
8 121 (1.49%) Tableau
9 110 (1.35%) NoSQL
10 97 (1.19%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 88 (1.08%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 64 (0.79%) MongoDB
13 61 (0.75%) Big Data
14 55 (0.68%) Data Lake
15 53 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
15 53 (0.65%) Power Query
16 45 (0.55%) Metadata
17 44 (0.54%) DynamoDB
18 41 (0.50%) Electronic Patient Records
19 32 (0.39%) Looker
Development Applications
1 369 (4.54%) Git
2 282 (3.47%) JIRA
3 127 (1.56%) Jenkins
4 111 (1.37%) GitLab
5 35 (0.43%) Selenium
6 33 (0.41%) Eclipse
7 31 (0.38%) Subversion
8 30 (0.37%) JUnit
9 29 (0.36%) Claude Code
10 28 (0.34%) Cucumber
11 26 (0.32%) Rational DOORS
12 24 (0.30%) Postman
13 22 (0.27%) Cypress.io
14 20 (0.25%) Bitbucket
15 19 (0.23%) Visual Studio
16 18 (0.22%) Oracle Forms
16 18 (0.22%) SonarQube
17 16 (0.20%) Chocolatey
18 14 (0.17%) MLflow
18 14 (0.17%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 3,925 (48.34%) Social Skills
2 2,463 (30.34%) Analytical Skills
3 1,599 (19.69%) Finance
4 611 (7.53%) Manufacturing
5 512 (6.31%) Organisational Skills
6 490 (6.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 472 (5.81%) Law
8 391 (4.82%) Retail
9 350 (4.31%) Marketing
10 324 (3.99%) Public Sector
11 304 (3.74%) Legal
12 302 (3.72%) Banking
13 211 (2.60%) Electronics
14 196 (2.41%) Aerospace
15 190 (2.34%) Telecoms
16 166 (2.04%) Influencing Skills
17 149 (1.84%) Presentation Skills
18 113 (1.39%) Documentation Skills
19 92 (1.13%) Advertising
20 89 (1.10%) Games
Job Titles
1 1,040 (12.81%) Analyst
2 919 (11.32%) Senior
3 801 (9.87%) Developer
4 695 (8.56%) IT Support
5 571 (7.03%) Support Engineer
6 503 (6.20%) Lead
7 401 (4.94%) Consultant
8 397 (4.89%) IT Engineer
9 319 (3.93%) Support Analyst
10 307 (3.78%) Software Engineer
11 301 (3.71%) IT Support Engineer
12 275 (3.39%) Architect
13 256 (3.15%) Systems Engineer
14 251 (3.09%) Technical Support
15 248 (3.05%) Support Technician
16 217 (2.67%) IT Technician
17 206 (2.54%) Technical Engineer
18 194 (2.39%) Data Engineer
19 184 (2.27%) Technical Support Engineer
20 176 (2.17%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 363 (4.47%) .NET
2 312 (3.84%) React
3 258 (3.18%) REST
4 256 (3.15%) HTML
5 202 (2.49%) CSS
6 175 (2.16%) RESTful
7 150 (1.85%) Node.js
8 115 (1.42%) SOAP
9 104 (1.28%) Spring
10 103 (1.27%) AngularJS
11 99 (1.22%) JSON
12 96 (1.18%) Vue
13 91 (1.12%) Kafka
13 91 (1.12%) Middleware
14 87 (1.07%) ASP.NET
15 80 (0.99%) Web Services
16 78 (0.96%) OAuth
17 74 (0.91%) XML
18 68 (0.84%) Spring Boot
19 56 (0.69%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 517 (6.37%) Driving Licence
2 509 (6.27%) Onboarding
3 412 (5.07%) Self-Motivation
4 337 (4.15%) Management Information System
5 302 (3.72%) Cloud Native
6 233 (2.87%) Product Ownership
7 173 (2.13%) Data Centre
7 173 (2.13%) Legacy Systems
8 161 (1.98%) Distributed Systems
9 138 (1.70%) Enterprise Software
10 123 (1.51%) Analytical Mindset
11 114 (1.40%) Data Structures
12 112 (1.38%) Security Posture
13 102 (1.26%) NHS
14 101 (1.24%) Algorithms
15 92 (1.13%) AI Agents
16 90 (1.11%) Social Media
17 84 (1.03%) Robotics
18 82 (1.01%) Cyber Threat
18 82 (1.01%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 1,231 (15.16%) Windows
2 562 (6.92%) Linux
3 531 (6.54%) Windows Server
4 156 (1.92%) Windows 10
5 111 (1.37%) Windows Server 2016
6 104 (1.28%) Android
6 104 (1.28%) Mac OS
7 91 (1.12%) Apple iOS
8 53 (0.65%) Unix
9 46 (0.57%) Windows Server 2019
10 37 (0.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 36 (0.44%) Ubuntu
12 28 (0.34%) VMS
13 24 (0.30%) CentOS
14 12 (0.15%) Debian
14 12 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
15 9 (0.11%) FreeRTOS
15 9 (0.11%) Mac OS X
15 9 (0.11%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,976 (24.34%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,337 (16.47%) Agile
3 1,194 (14.71%) Customer Service
4 1,043 (12.85%) AI
5 984 (12.12%) Decision-Making
6 897 (11.05%) CI/CD
7 877 (10.80%) Mentoring
8 868 (10.69%) Stakeholder Management
9 767 (9.45%) Analytics
10 756 (9.31%) Software Engineering
11 743 (9.15%) DevOps
12 665 (8.19%) Cybersecurity
13 658 (8.10%) ITIL
14 651 (8.02%) Roadmaps
15 599 (7.38%) Business Intelligence
16 595 (7.33%) Computer Science
17 586 (7.22%) Project Management
18 579 (7.13%) Project Delivery
19 533 (6.56%) Collaborative Working
20 527 (6.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 1,280 (15.77%) SQL
2 1,181 (14.55%) Python
3 563 (6.93%) JavaScript
4 466 (5.74%) C#
5 419 (5.16%) Java
6 349 (4.30%) PowerShell
7 253 (3.12%) TypeScript
8 220 (2.71%) C++
9 176 (2.17%) Bash
10 94 (1.16%) PHP
11 89 (1.10%) C
12 83 (1.02%) Go
13 69 (0.85%) T-SQL
14 65 (0.80%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 51 (0.63%) Shell Script
16 45 (0.55%) Perl
16 45 (0.55%) Rust
17 43 (0.53%) R
18 42 (0.52%) Scala
19 39 (0.48%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 1,399 (17.23%) Degree
2 739 (9.10%) Security Cleared
3 502 (6.18%) SC Cleared
4 313 (3.86%) Computer Science Degree
5 223 (2.75%) DBS Check
6 200 (2.46%) Microsoft Certification
7 175 (2.16%) DV Cleared
8 152 (1.87%) Azure Certification
9 148 (1.82%) Cisco Certification
10 143 (1.76%) CISSP
11 138 (1.70%) BPSS Clearance
12 122 (1.50%) Master's Degree
13 113 (1.39%) HNC
14 104 (1.28%) PMI Certification
15 87 (1.07%) HND
16 82 (1.01%) PMP
17 81 (1.00%) CCNA
18 79 (0.97%) CISM
19 75 (0.92%) CCNP
20 68 (0.84%) ACCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 473 (5.83%) QA
2 407 (5.01%) Data Quality
3 331 (4.08%) GDPR
4 231 (2.85%) Accessibility
5 230 (2.83%) SLA
6 207 (2.55%) Cyber Essentials
7 191 (2.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 159 (1.96%) NIST
9 146 (1.80%) PCI DSS
10 64 (0.79%) PMO
11 57 (0.70%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 41 (0.50%) GRC
13 35 (0.43%) ISO 9001
14 26 (0.32%) SOC 2
15 25 (0.31%) GMP
16 24 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
17 23 (0.28%) COBIT
18 20 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
18 20 (0.25%) WCAG
19 19 (0.23%) NCSC
System Software
1 818 (10.08%) Active Directory
2 370 (4.56%) Docker
3 274 (3.37%) Hyper-V
4 251 (3.09%) VMware Infrastructure
5 70 (0.86%) Terminal Server
6 55 (0.68%) Firmware
7 49 (0.60%) Virtual Desktop
8 36 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
9 34 (0.42%) vSphere
10 18 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
11 17 (0.21%) Embedded Firmware
12 15 (0.18%) KVM
13 7 (0.086%) IAG
13 7 (0.086%) XenApp
14 6 (0.074%) VMware NSX
15 5 (0.062%) ClearTrust
15 5 (0.062%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 5 (0.062%) Squid
16 4 (0.049%) Virtual Servers
17 3 (0.037%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 364 (4.48%) Terraform
2 327 (4.03%) Kubernetes
3 274 (3.37%) Microsoft Intune
4 157 (1.93%) Ansible
5 97 (1.19%) Grafana
6 78 (0.96%) SCCM
7 57 (0.70%) Prometheus
8 52 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (0.34%) Nagios
10 25 (0.31%) FortiGate
11 24 (0.30%) Jamf Pro
12 21 (0.26%) Puppet
13 15 (0.18%) Argo
14 13 (0.16%) Autotask
14 13 (0.16%) Kibana
14 13 (0.16%) Proxmox
15 12 (0.15%) Functional Safety
16 11 (0.14%) logstash
16 11 (0.14%) Nmap
17 10 (0.12%) Podman
Vendors
1 2,307 (28.41%) Microsoft
2 363 (4.47%) VMware
3 233 (2.87%) Oracle
3 233 (2.87%) SAP
4 229 (2.82%) Google
5 172 (2.12%) Cisco
6 162 (2.00%) ServiceNow
7 159 (1.96%) Salesforce
8 132 (1.63%) Veeam
9 129 (1.59%) Databricks
10 124 (1.53%) Splunk
11 116 (1.43%) SolarWinds
12 78 (0.96%) Tanium
13 74 (0.91%) Apple
14 71 (0.87%) Nimble Storage
15 70 (0.86%) Brocade
15 70 (0.86%) Sage
16 62 (0.76%) Fortinet
17 59 (0.73%) Dell
18 58 (0.71%) Palo Alto