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

6 months to
10 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 6,239 7,381 11,180
As % of all permanent jobs in England 9.70% 18.71% 15.17%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.42% 19.96% 17.36%
Number of salaries quoted 4,368 4,197 7,999
10th Percentile £26,963 £29,400 £26,250
25th Percentile £31,250 £38,750 £33,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -18.18% +10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £67,500 £76,000 £70,000
90th Percentile £86,250 £90,000 £87,500
UK median annual salary £45,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -18.18% +10.00% -9.74%

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 50,229 36,970 64,405
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 78.08% 93.72% 87.37%
Number of salaries quoted 30,936 20,206 50,456
10th Percentile £29,800 £32,500 £29,010
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 £81,250 £75,000
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £95,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -11.41%

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 10 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 10 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 -2 1,877 £67,500 +3.85% 850
North of England -18 1,299 £42,500 -10.05% 592
South East -5 1,170 £43,000 -15.63% 866
Midlands -18 837 £37,500 -25.00% 430
North West -17 677 £45,000 -10.00% 313
South West -3 551 £42,750 -14.50% 311
West Midlands -21 501 £42,500 -22.73% 251
Yorkshire -6 490 £35,000 -17.65% 208
East of England -11 405 £40,000 -20.00% 324
East Midlands -3 333 £35,000 -6.67% 179
North East -6 132 £45,000 - 82
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
1 324 (5.19%) Microsoft Exchange
2 282 (4.52%) SharePoint
3 79 (1.27%) Confluence
4 59 (0.95%) Apache
5 54 (0.87%) CMS
6 45 (0.72%) Apache Airflow
6 45 (0.72%) IIS
7 41 (0.66%) Apache Spark
8 30 (0.48%) WordPress
9 17 (0.27%) Palantir Foundry
10 12 (0.19%) SAS
11 11 (0.18%) nginx
12 8 (0.13%) Drupal
12 8 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
13 7 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2007
13 7 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2010
13 7 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
14 4 (0.064%) Apache Solr
14 4 (0.064%) Moodle
Applications
1 438 (7.02%) Microsoft Office
2 337 (5.40%) Microsoft Excel
3 71 (1.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 37 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
5 31 (0.50%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
7 18 (0.29%) AutoCAD
7 18 (0.29%) Maya
8 14 (0.22%) Photoshop
9 11 (0.18%) SOLIDWORKS
10 10 (0.16%) Adobe Illustrator
11 9 (0.14%) Chatbot
12 8 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 5 (0.080%) Adobe XD
14 4 (0.064%) Fusion 360
14 4 (0.064%) Trello
15 3 (0.048%) CATIA
15 3 (0.048%) Elementor
15 3 (0.048%) InDesign
15 3 (0.048%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 60 (0.96%) Dynamics CRM
2 44 (0.71%) SAP S/4HANA
3 32 (0.51%) NetSuite
4 20 (0.32%) 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 10 (0.16%) iTrent
7 10 (0.16%) Maximo
7 10 (0.16%) Workday HCM
8 9 (0.14%) SAP ERP
9 8 (0.13%) SAP FI
9 8 (0.13%) SAP FI/CO
10 7 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
10 7 (0.11%) Oracle Receivables
10 7 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
10 7 (0.11%) Q-Pulse
10 7 (0.11%) Sage 200
10 7 (0.11%) SAP Business One
Cloud Services
1 1,350 (21.64%) Azure
2 964 (15.45%) Microsoft 365
3 754 (12.09%) AWS
4 447 (7.16%) Power Platform
5 371 (5.95%) SaaS
6 279 (4.47%) Entra ID
7 257 (4.12%) GCP
8 168 (2.69%) Azure DevOps
9 164 (2.63%) GitHub
10 160 (2.56%) Serverless
11 124 (1.99%) Power Automate
12 103 (1.65%) Dynamics 365
13 95 (1.52%) Google Workspace
14 89 (1.43%) Amazon S3
15 82 (1.31%) AWS Lambda
15 82 (1.31%) PowerApps
16 80 (1.28%) AWS CloudFormation
17 73 (1.17%) GitHub Actions
18 70 (1.12%) PaaS
19 65 (1.04%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 404 (6.48%) DNS
2 372 (5.96%) Firewall
3 340 (5.45%) DHCP
4 237 (3.80%) VPN
5 210 (3.37%) TCP/IP
6 208 (3.33%) WAN
7 200 (3.21%) Wi-Fi
8 174 (2.79%) LAN
9 144 (2.31%) Broadband
10 127 (2.04%) VLAN
11 90 (1.44%) Wireless
12 86 (1.38%) VoIP
13 67 (1.07%) SD-WAN
14 49 (0.79%) Network Security
14 49 (0.79%) Remote Desktop
15 46 (0.74%) Internet
16 43 (0.69%) SAN
17 31 (0.50%) Structured Cabling
18 29 (0.46%) Unified Communications
19 28 (0.45%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 367 (5.88%) Power BI
2 277 (4.44%) SQL Server
3 139 (2.23%) Data Warehouse
4 124 (1.99%) Tableau
5 118 (1.89%) Relational Database
6 117 (1.88%) NoSQL
7 106 (1.70%) PostgreSQL
8 92 (1.47%) Amazon RDS
9 91 (1.46%) MySQL
10 65 (1.04%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 55 (0.88%) MongoDB
12 54 (0.87%) Amazon Redshift
13 50 (0.80%) Metadata
14 47 (0.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 46 (0.74%) DynamoDB
16 45 (0.72%) Data Lake
17 44 (0.71%) Power Query
18 41 (0.66%) Azure SQL Database
19 39 (0.63%) Big Data
20 26 (0.42%) Redis
Development Applications
1 279 (4.47%) Git
2 230 (3.69%) JIRA
3 102 (1.63%) Jenkins
4 97 (1.55%) GitLab
5 51 (0.82%) Selenium
6 28 (0.45%) Visual Studio
7 22 (0.35%) Cypress.io
8 19 (0.30%) Burp Suite
8 19 (0.30%) LabVIEW
8 19 (0.30%) Maven
8 19 (0.30%) Metasploit
8 19 (0.30%) TeamCity
9 18 (0.29%) Robot Framework
10 16 (0.26%) Octopus Deploy
11 15 (0.24%) Bitbucket
11 15 (0.24%) CircleCI
11 15 (0.24%) Cucumber
11 15 (0.24%) JUnit
11 15 (0.24%) SonarQube
12 14 (0.22%) Snyk
General
1 3,124 (50.07%) Social Skills
2 1,884 (30.20%) Analytical Skills
3 1,390 (22.28%) Finance
4 434 (6.96%) Organisational Skills
5 343 (5.50%) Marketing
6 312 (5.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 300 (4.81%) Retail
8 293 (4.70%) Law
9 292 (4.68%) Legal
10 286 (4.58%) Public Sector
11 284 (4.55%) Banking
12 261 (4.18%) Manufacturing
13 168 (2.69%) Presentation Skills
14 164 (2.63%) Telecoms
15 132 (2.12%) Electronics
16 100 (1.60%) Documentation Skills
17 98 (1.57%) Games
18 88 (1.41%) Financial Institution
19 86 (1.38%) Automotive
20 81 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 945 (15.15%) Analyst
2 744 (11.92%) IT Support
3 728 (11.67%) Senior
4 642 (10.29%) Support Engineer
5 576 (9.23%) Developer
6 362 (5.80%) IT Engineer
7 356 (5.71%) Lead
8 320 (5.13%) Support Analyst
9 306 (4.90%) IT Support Engineer
10 240 (3.85%) Consultant
11 219 (3.51%) Business Analyst
11 219 (3.51%) Technical Support
12 205 (3.29%) Support Technician
13 204 (3.27%) Architect
14 197 (3.16%) 2nd Line Support
15 168 (2.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 161 (2.58%) Technical Engineer
17 159 (2.55%) Software Engineer
18 157 (2.52%) IT Analyst
19 151 (2.42%) Technical Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 256 (4.10%) .NET
2 250 (4.01%) React
3 213 (3.41%) HTML
4 170 (2.72%) CSS
5 150 (2.40%) Node.js
6 123 (1.97%) REST
7 109 (1.75%) RESTful
8 77 (1.23%) AngularJS
9 68 (1.09%) Middleware
10 67 (1.07%) Vue
11 66 (1.06%) Spring
12 64 (1.03%) Kafka
13 58 (0.93%) SOAP
14 57 (0.91%) JSON
15 55 (0.88%) XML
16 53 (0.85%) Django
17 48 (0.77%) Flask
18 46 (0.74%) .NET Framework
19 45 (0.72%) Spring Boot
20 43 (0.69%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 491 (7.87%) Driving Licence
2 453 (7.26%) Onboarding
3 397 (6.36%) Self-Motivation
4 201 (3.22%) Management Information System
5 166 (2.66%) Cloud Native
6 146 (2.34%) Analytical Mindset
7 136 (2.18%) Legacy Systems
8 132 (2.12%) Product Ownership
9 116 (1.86%) Data Centre
10 112 (1.80%) Distributed Systems
11 104 (1.67%) Enterprise Software
12 93 (1.49%) Mobile App
13 85 (1.36%) Social Media
14 76 (1.22%) Data Structures
15 69 (1.11%) Low-Code
16 61 (0.98%) Algorithms
17 58 (0.93%) Security Posture
18 53 (0.85%) Virtual Team
19 48 (0.77%) EPoS
20 46 (0.74%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 1,102 (17.66%) Windows
2 424 (6.80%) Windows Server
3 390 (6.25%) Linux
4 169 (2.71%) Windows 10
5 116 (1.86%) Windows Server 2016
6 109 (1.75%) Android
7 94 (1.51%) Mac OS
8 80 (1.28%) Apple iOS
9 59 (0.95%) Unix
10 55 (0.88%) Windows Server 2019
11 34 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 34 (0.54%) Windows Server 2012
12 25 (0.40%) CentOS
13 24 (0.38%) Windows 7
14 19 (0.30%) Ubuntu
15 15 (0.24%) VMS
16 11 (0.18%) Windows 8
17 9 (0.14%) Mac OS X
18 7 (0.11%) Debian
19 5 (0.080%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,129 (18.10%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,014 (16.25%) Agile
3 929 (14.89%) Customer Service
4 658 (10.55%) Mentoring
5 623 (9.99%) AI
6 622 (9.97%) Analytics
7 618 (9.91%) Decision-Making
8 614 (9.84%) CI/CD
9 598 (9.58%) DevOps
10 552 (8.85%) Project Management
11 551 (8.83%) ITIL
12 518 (8.30%) Business Intelligence
13 493 (7.90%) Computer Science
14 472 (7.57%) Stakeholder Management
15 438 (7.02%) Cybersecurity
16 406 (6.51%) Software Engineering
17 361 (5.79%) Process Improvement
18 355 (5.69%) CRM
19 350 (5.61%) Change Management
19 350 (5.61%) Coaching
Programming Languages
1 938 (15.03%) Python
2 896 (14.36%) SQL
3 416 (6.67%) JavaScript
4 321 (5.15%) PowerShell
5 305 (4.89%) Java
6 278 (4.46%) C#
7 173 (2.77%) TypeScript
8 152 (2.44%) Bash
9 87 (1.39%) PHP
10 78 (1.25%) C++
11 67 (1.07%) Go
12 65 (1.04%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 49 (0.79%) Scala
14 44 (0.71%) T-SQL
15 42 (0.67%) C
16 36 (0.58%) R
17 33 (0.53%) Apex Code
18 32 (0.51%) Kotlin
19 27 (0.43%) Bicep
20 26 (0.42%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 1,299 (20.82%) Degree
2 489 (7.84%) Security Cleared
3 309 (4.95%) SC Cleared
4 235 (3.77%) Computer Science Degree
5 185 (2.97%) Microsoft Certification
6 174 (2.79%) DBS Check
7 126 (2.02%) Master's Degree
8 112 (1.80%) DV Cleared
9 103 (1.65%) CISSP
10 98 (1.57%) BPSS Clearance
11 83 (1.33%) Cisco Certification
12 81 (1.30%) ACCA
13 80 (1.28%) A+ Certification
14 71 (1.14%) CIMA
15 62 (0.99%) Network+ Certification
16 61 (0.98%) PMI Certification
17 59 (0.95%) CCNA
18 54 (0.87%) AWS Certification
19 49 (0.79%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
20 47 (0.75%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 296 (4.74%) QA
2 253 (4.06%) Data Quality
3 218 (3.49%) GDPR
4 162 (2.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 159 (2.55%) Cyber Essentials
6 133 (2.13%) SLA
7 123 (1.97%) Accessibility
8 117 (1.88%) PCI DSS
9 107 (1.72%) NIST
10 48 (0.77%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 32 (0.51%) ISO 9001
12 28 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
13 26 (0.42%) SOC 2
14 21 (0.34%) GRC
14 21 (0.34%) PMO
15 20 (0.32%) COBIT
16 13 (0.21%) GMP
17 10 (0.16%) WCAG
18 9 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 9 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 744 (11.92%) Active Directory
2 292 (4.68%) Docker
3 229 (3.67%) Hyper-V
4 160 (2.56%) VMware Infrastructure
5 63 (1.01%) Terminal Server
6 29 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
7 25 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
8 23 (0.37%) Firmware
9 15 (0.24%) vSphere
10 11 (0.18%) KVM
10 11 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.16%) VMware Workstation
12 7 (0.11%) IAG
13 6 (0.096%) Virtual Servers
14 5 (0.080%) XenApp
15 4 (0.064%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 2 (0.032%) Postfix
16 2 (0.032%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 2 (0.032%) vCloud
16 2 (0.032%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 281 (4.50%) Terraform
2 269 (4.31%) Microsoft Intune
3 224 (3.59%) Kubernetes
4 148 (2.37%) Ansible
5 86 (1.38%) Grafana
6 77 (1.23%) SCCM
7 59 (0.95%) Prometheus
8 42 (0.67%) BMC PATROL
9 28 (0.45%) Nagios
10 26 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
11 22 (0.35%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 19 (0.30%) Jamf Pro
13 15 (0.24%) Argo
13 15 (0.24%) Cisco CUCM
14 12 (0.19%) Autotask
14 12 (0.19%) Kibana
14 12 (0.19%) vCenter Server
14 12 (0.19%) ZABBIX
15 11 (0.18%) Nessus
16 10 (0.16%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,645 (26.37%) Microsoft
2 270 (4.33%) VMware
3 213 (3.41%) Oracle
4 193 (3.09%) SAP
5 161 (2.58%) Google
6 146 (2.34%) Salesforce
7 143 (2.29%) Cisco
8 128 (2.05%) Veeam
9 123 (1.97%) ServiceNow
10 119 (1.91%) SolarWinds
11 116 (1.86%) Splunk
12 101 (1.62%) Databricks
13 92 (1.47%) Adobe
14 85 (1.36%) Apple
15 64 (1.03%) Tanium
16 63 (1.01%) Brocade
16 63 (1.01%) Nimble Storage
17 56 (0.90%) Dell
18 54 (0.87%) Sage
19 49 (0.79%) HubSpot