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

6 months to
3 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 4 7
Rank change year-on-year -4 +3 +5
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 7,825 8,387 10,557
As % of all permanent jobs in England 8.51% 19.18% 14.58%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.53% 21.41% 17.93%
Number of salaries quoted 5,534 4,797 5,707
10th Percentile £27,750 £26,250 £26,250
25th Percentile £33,000 £31,750 £35,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £47,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £67,500 £67,500 £68,750
90th Percentile £85,250 £88,000 £85,000
UK median annual salary £47,500 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -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 67,880 39,178 58,873
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.83% 89.60% 81.29%
Number of salaries quoted 47,922 22,754 39,478
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,750 £31,000
25th Percentile £41,250 £37,500 £41,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -11.29%
75th Percentile £80,000 £77,500 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £95,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.33%

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 3 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 3 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 -5 2,160 £66,000 +1.54% 1,929
North of England -9 1,589 £45,000 +5.88% 831
South East -3 1,498 £45,000 +5.88% 1,017
Midlands -9 1,132 £42,000 +5.00% 588
North West -6 835 £45,000 -2.17% 425
South West -6 757 £45,000 +20.00% 449
West Midlands -10 630 £42,500 -5.56% 354
East of England -5 603 £42,500 +21.43% 358
Yorkshire -9 535 £42,500 +21.43% 294
East Midlands -10 498 £38,500 +8.45% 234
North East -15 219 £50,000 +34.23% 122
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
1 433 (5.53%) SharePoint
2 411 (5.25%) Microsoft Exchange
3 90 (1.15%) Confluence
4 62 (0.79%) CMS
5 51 (0.65%) Apache
6 44 (0.56%) IIS
7 40 (0.51%) Apache Airflow
8 37 (0.47%) Apache Spark
8 37 (0.47%) WordPress
9 19 (0.24%) SAS
10 13 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
11 11 (0.14%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.14%) WebSphere
12 10 (0.13%) nginx
13 9 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2013
13 9 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 7 (0.089%) Exchange Server 2007
14 7 (0.089%) Exchange Server 2010
14 7 (0.089%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.089%) OpenEdge
Applications
1 496 (6.34%) Microsoft Office
2 472 (6.03%) Microsoft Excel
3 86 (1.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 48 (0.61%) MS Visio
5 46 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
6 37 (0.47%) Microsoft Project
7 24 (0.31%) AutoCAD
8 16 (0.20%) Chatbot
9 10 (0.13%) Simulink
9 10 (0.13%) SOLIDWORKS
10 9 (0.12%) Trello
11 8 (0.10%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 8 (0.10%) Adobe Illustrator
11 8 (0.10%) Revit
12 5 (0.064%) Fusion 360
12 5 (0.064%) Lightworks
12 5 (0.064%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.038%) Autodesk Inventor
13 3 (0.038%) Civil 3D
13 3 (0.038%) Navisworks
Business Applications
1 83 (1.06%) SAP S/4HANA
2 72 (0.92%) Dynamics CRM
3 52 (0.66%) NetSuite
4 20 (0.26%) Shopify
5 19 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
6 18 (0.23%) Magento
7 14 (0.18%) Elite 3E
7 14 (0.18%) IBM Planning Analytics
7 14 (0.18%) SAP Business One
7 14 (0.18%) SAP ERP
8 11 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
9 10 (0.13%) JDE EnterpriseOne
9 10 (0.13%) Salesforce CRM
10 9 (0.12%) Oracle Applications
10 9 (0.12%) Sage 50
10 9 (0.12%) Sage X3
11 8 (0.10%) iTrent
11 8 (0.10%) Maximo
12 7 (0.089%) Raiser’s Edge
12 7 (0.089%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,639 (20.95%) Azure
2 1,245 (15.91%) Microsoft 365
3 997 (12.74%) AWS
4 648 (8.28%) Power Platform
5 370 (4.73%) Entra ID
6 357 (4.56%) SaaS
7 346 (4.42%) GCP
8 185 (2.36%) Serverless
9 180 (2.30%) GitHub
10 177 (2.26%) Azure DevOps
11 167 (2.13%) Dynamics 365
12 160 (2.04%) Power Automate
13 141 (1.80%) PowerApps
14 107 (1.37%) OneDrive
15 101 (1.29%) Microsoft Copilot
16 97 (1.24%) Amazon S3
17 89 (1.14%) GitHub Actions
18 86 (1.10%) AWS Lambda
19 79 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
20 70 (0.89%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 491 (6.27%) Firewall
2 444 (5.67%) DNS
3 375 (4.79%) DHCP
4 300 (3.83%) VPN
5 269 (3.44%) TCP/IP
6 224 (2.86%) WAN
7 214 (2.73%) LAN
8 202 (2.58%) Wi-Fi
9 166 (2.12%) Wireless
10 150 (1.92%) VLAN
11 149 (1.90%) Broadband
12 138 (1.76%) Network Security
13 106 (1.35%) VoIP
14 47 (0.60%) Internet
15 46 (0.59%) SD-WAN
16 45 (0.58%) HTTP
17 41 (0.52%) OSPF
17 41 (0.52%) SAN
18 40 (0.51%) BGP
19 33 (0.42%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 503 (6.43%) Power BI
2 376 (4.81%) SQL Server
3 147 (1.88%) Data Warehouse
4 137 (1.75%) Amazon RDS
5 130 (1.66%) MySQL
6 118 (1.51%) Relational Database
6 118 (1.51%) Tableau
7 115 (1.47%) PostgreSQL
8 109 (1.39%) NoSQL
9 98 (1.25%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 87 (1.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 64 (0.82%) MongoDB
12 57 (0.73%) Big Data
12 57 (0.73%) Power Query
13 52 (0.66%) Data Lake
14 49 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
15 42 (0.54%) Metadata
16 40 (0.51%) DynamoDB
17 33 (0.42%) Amazon Redshift
18 29 (0.37%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 343 (4.38%) Git
2 270 (3.45%) JIRA
3 122 (1.56%) Jenkins
4 115 (1.47%) GitLab
5 37 (0.47%) Selenium
6 29 (0.37%) Claude Code
6 29 (0.37%) Eclipse
7 28 (0.36%) Cucumber
7 28 (0.36%) JUnit
7 28 (0.36%) Subversion
8 27 (0.35%) Rational DOORS
9 24 (0.31%) Cypress.io
10 23 (0.29%) Postman
11 20 (0.26%) Visual Studio
12 17 (0.22%) Bitbucket
12 17 (0.22%) Oracle Forms
13 16 (0.20%) Chocolatey
13 16 (0.20%) SonarQube
14 13 (0.17%) MLflow
14 13 (0.17%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 3,772 (48.20%) Social Skills
2 2,341 (29.92%) Analytical Skills
3 1,536 (19.63%) Finance
4 538 (6.88%) Manufacturing
5 491 (6.27%) Organisational Skills
6 445 (5.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 444 (5.67%) Law
8 372 (4.75%) Retail
9 332 (4.24%) Marketing
10 304 (3.88%) Public Sector
11 302 (3.86%) Legal
12 301 (3.85%) Banking
13 190 (2.43%) Telecoms
14 176 (2.25%) Electronics
15 150 (1.92%) Influencing Skills
16 149 (1.90%) Aerospace
16 149 (1.90%) Presentation Skills
17 116 (1.48%) Documentation Skills
18 96 (1.23%) Advertising
19 90 (1.15%) Games
Job Titles
1 1,019 (13.02%) Analyst
2 909 (11.62%) Senior
3 782 (9.99%) Developer
4 706 (9.02%) IT Support
5 573 (7.32%) Support Engineer
6 478 (6.11%) Lead
7 402 (5.14%) IT Engineer
8 382 (4.88%) Consultant
9 308 (3.94%) Support Analyst
10 307 (3.92%) IT Support Engineer
11 293 (3.74%) Software Engineer
12 267 (3.41%) Architect
13 261 (3.34%) Systems Engineer
14 254 (3.25%) Support Technician
15 237 (3.03%) Technical Support
16 211 (2.70%) IT Technician
17 195 (2.49%) Data Engineer
17 195 (2.49%) Technical Engineer
18 175 (2.24%) Technical Support Engineer
19 171 (2.19%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 335 (4.28%) .NET
2 301 (3.85%) React
3 248 (3.17%) REST
4 245 (3.13%) HTML
5 195 (2.49%) CSS
6 169 (2.16%) RESTful
7 151 (1.93%) Node.js
8 115 (1.47%) SOAP
9 102 (1.30%) Spring
10 96 (1.23%) AngularJS
10 96 (1.23%) JSON
11 93 (1.19%) Middleware
12 90 (1.15%) Vue
13 86 (1.10%) Kafka
14 78 (1.00%) ASP.NET
15 75 (0.96%) Web Services
16 74 (0.95%) OAuth
16 74 (0.95%) XML
17 64 (0.82%) Spring Boot
18 50 (0.64%) LangChain
Miscellaneous
1 481 (6.15%) Driving Licence
2 480 (6.13%) Onboarding
3 398 (5.09%) Self-Motivation
4 312 (3.99%) Management Information System
5 295 (3.77%) Cloud Native
6 213 (2.72%) Product Ownership
7 181 (2.31%) Data Centre
7 181 (2.31%) Legacy Systems
8 170 (2.17%) Distributed Systems
9 122 (1.56%) Analytical Mindset
9 122 (1.56%) Enterprise Software
10 110 (1.41%) Security Posture
11 109 (1.39%) Data Structures
12 97 (1.24%) Algorithms
13 87 (1.11%) Social Media
14 84 (1.07%) NHS
15 79 (1.01%) IoT
16 78 (1.00%) Virtual Team
17 77 (0.98%) AI Agents
17 77 (0.98%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 1,218 (15.57%) Windows
2 556 (7.11%) Linux
3 528 (6.75%) Windows Server
4 165 (2.11%) Windows 10
5 122 (1.56%) Windows Server 2016
6 114 (1.46%) Android
7 102 (1.30%) Mac OS
8 98 (1.25%) Apple iOS
9 49 (0.63%) Unix
9 49 (0.63%) Windows Server 2019
10 39 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 34 (0.43%) Ubuntu
12 27 (0.35%) VMS
13 25 (0.32%) CentOS
14 14 (0.18%) Mac OS X
14 14 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
15 13 (0.17%) Debian
16 12 (0.15%) Windows 7
17 9 (0.12%) FreeRTOS
18 8 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,839 (23.50%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,269 (16.22%) Agile
3 1,149 (14.68%) Customer Service
4 988 (12.63%) AI
5 890 (11.37%) Decision-Making
6 888 (11.35%) CI/CD
7 847 (10.82%) Mentoring
8 792 (10.12%) Stakeholder Management
9 732 (9.35%) DevOps
10 731 (9.34%) Analytics
11 724 (9.25%) Software Engineering
12 664 (8.49%) ITIL
13 637 (8.14%) Cybersecurity
14 616 (7.87%) Roadmaps
15 583 (7.45%) Business Intelligence
16 570 (7.28%) Computer Science
17 555 (7.09%) Project Management
18 542 (6.93%) Project Delivery
19 514 (6.57%) Collaborative Working
20 501 (6.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 1,238 (15.82%) SQL
2 1,160 (14.82%) Python
3 547 (6.99%) JavaScript
4 440 (5.62%) C#
5 402 (5.14%) Java
6 335 (4.28%) PowerShell
7 250 (3.19%) TypeScript
8 215 (2.75%) C++
9 170 (2.17%) Bash
10 95 (1.21%) PHP
11 89 (1.14%) Go
12 82 (1.05%) C
13 68 (0.87%) T-SQL
14 65 (0.83%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 49 (0.63%) Scala
16 45 (0.58%) Rust
17 44 (0.56%) Shell Script
18 42 (0.54%) Perl
19 41 (0.52%) PL/SQL
20 40 (0.51%) R
Qualifications
1 1,303 (16.65%) Degree
2 695 (8.88%) Security Cleared
3 482 (6.16%) SC Cleared
4 299 (3.82%) Computer Science Degree
5 221 (2.82%) DBS Check
6 202 (2.58%) Microsoft Certification
7 156 (1.99%) DV Cleared
8 147 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
9 137 (1.75%) Azure Certification
10 134 (1.71%) CISSP
11 116 (1.48%) BPSS Clearance
12 115 (1.47%) Master's Degree
13 95 (1.21%) PMI Certification
14 85 (1.09%) HNC
15 82 (1.05%) PMP
16 80 (1.02%) CCNA
17 77 (0.98%) CCNP
18 72 (0.92%) CISM
19 70 (0.89%) ACCA
20 66 (0.84%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 446 (5.70%) QA
2 392 (5.01%) Data Quality
3 320 (4.09%) GDPR
4 225 (2.88%) SLA
5 216 (2.76%) Cyber Essentials
6 208 (2.66%) Accessibility
7 195 (2.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 161 (2.06%) PCI DSS
9 156 (1.99%) NIST
10 64 (0.82%) PMO
11 57 (0.73%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 38 (0.49%) GRC
13 34 (0.43%) ISO 9001
14 30 (0.38%) SOC 2
15 25 (0.32%) COBIT
16 24 (0.31%) GMP
17 21 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
18 20 (0.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
19 19 (0.24%) WCAG
20 18 (0.23%) Good Clinical Practice
System Software
1 809 (10.34%) Active Directory
2 369 (4.72%) Docker
3 277 (3.54%) Hyper-V
4 250 (3.19%) VMware Infrastructure
5 77 (0.98%) Terminal Server
6 47 (0.60%) Virtual Desktop
7 46 (0.59%) Firmware
8 34 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
8 34 (0.43%) vSphere
9 17 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
10 16 (0.20%) KVM
11 14 (0.18%) Embedded Firmware
12 10 (0.13%) IAG
13 7 (0.089%) VMware NSX
13 7 (0.089%) XenApp
14 5 (0.064%) ClearTrust
14 5 (0.064%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 5 (0.064%) Squid
15 4 (0.051%) VMware Workstation
16 3 (0.038%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 358 (4.58%) Terraform
2 325 (4.15%) Kubernetes
3 291 (3.72%) Microsoft Intune
4 157 (2.01%) Ansible
5 103 (1.32%) Grafana
6 81 (1.04%) SCCM
7 63 (0.81%) Prometheus
8 41 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
9 31 (0.40%) Nagios
10 25 (0.32%) FortiGate
11 23 (0.29%) Jamf Pro
12 20 (0.26%) Puppet
13 16 (0.20%) Argo
14 14 (0.18%) Autotask
15 13 (0.17%) Kibana
15 13 (0.17%) Proxmox
16 11 (0.14%) Docker Swarm
16 11 (0.14%) logstash
16 11 (0.14%) vCenter Server
16 11 (0.14%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 2,248 (28.73%) Microsoft
2 366 (4.68%) VMware
3 213 (2.72%) Oracle
4 206 (2.63%) SAP
5 200 (2.56%) Google
6 174 (2.22%) Cisco
7 161 (2.06%) ServiceNow
8 151 (1.93%) Salesforce
9 136 (1.74%) Veeam
10 133 (1.70%) SolarWinds
11 131 (1.67%) Splunk
12 118 (1.51%) Databricks
13 85 (1.09%) Apple
13 85 (1.09%) Tanium
14 78 (1.00%) Nimble Storage
15 77 (0.98%) Brocade
16 67 (0.86%) Sage
17 63 (0.81%) Dell
18 57 (0.73%) Fortinet
19 56 (0.72%) Palo Alto