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 18 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 4 8
Rank change year-on-year -5 +4 +5
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,767 7,941 13,763
As % of all permanent jobs in England 8.12% 20.02% 14.46%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.12% 21.63% 17.64%
Number of salaries quoted 4,823 4,473 8,594
10th Percentile £27,260 £26,500 £26,000
25th Percentile £32,500 £32,500 £32,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £50,000 £49,500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +1.01% -10.00%
75th Percentile £67,750 £70,000 £67,500
90th Percentile £87,500 £87,500 £84,964
UK median annual salary £47,500 £50,000 £48,866
% change year-on-year -5.00% +2.32% -11.15%

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 60,860 36,708 78,024
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.03% 92.57% 81.96%
Number of salaries quoted 42,836 20,086 56,665
10th Percentile £30,750 £29,000 £29,440
25th Percentile £41,250 £40,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -12.00%
75th Percentile £80,000 £78,750 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK median annual salary £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -9.54%

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 18 June 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 18 June 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 1,952 £70,000 +7.69% 691
North of England -9 1,399 £42,500 -2.30% 557
South East -5 1,255 £45,000 +5.88% 752
Midlands -9 951 £42,000 -1.75% 410
North West -8 722 £45,000 -3.23% 320
South West -6 609 £43,500 +16.00% 282
West Midlands -9 544 £42,500 -5.56% 230
East of England -3 520 £45,000 +28.57% 239
Yorkshire -12 507 £41,500 +18.57% 164
East Midlands -11 404 £35,000 -6.67% 180
North East -14 170 £48,500 +21.25% 86
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
1 374 (5.53%) Microsoft Exchange
2 367 (5.42%) SharePoint
3 78 (1.15%) Confluence
4 63 (0.93%) CMS
5 52 (0.77%) Apache
6 40 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
7 35 (0.52%) IIS
8 34 (0.50%) Apache Spark
9 30 (0.44%) WordPress
10 16 (0.24%) SAS
11 14 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
12 12 (0.18%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 10 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
14 8 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2007
14 8 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2010
15 7 (0.10%) nginx
15 7 (0.10%) OpenEdge
16 6 (0.089%) Moodle
16 6 (0.089%) WebLogic
16 6 (0.089%) WebSphere
Applications
1 419 (6.19%) Microsoft Office
2 368 (5.44%) Microsoft Excel
3 63 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 44 (0.65%) Spreadsheet
5 35 (0.52%) MS Visio
6 32 (0.47%) Microsoft Project
7 14 (0.21%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 9 (0.13%) AutoCAD
8 9 (0.13%) SOLIDWORKS
9 8 (0.12%) Adobe Illustrator
10 7 (0.10%) Trello
11 6 (0.089%) Fusion 360
11 6 (0.089%) Photoshop
11 6 (0.089%) Simulink
12 3 (0.044%) Autodesk Inventor
12 3 (0.044%) Blender
12 3 (0.044%) Maya
13 2 (0.030%) Acrobat
13 2 (0.030%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 68 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
2 63 (0.93%) Dynamics CRM
3 38 (0.56%) NetSuite
4 20 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.30%) Shopify
5 18 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
6 16 (0.24%) Magento
7 15 (0.22%) Dynamics NAV
8 14 (0.21%) SAP ERP
9 13 (0.19%) iTrent
10 11 (0.16%) Maximo
11 10 (0.15%) SAP CO
12 9 (0.13%) IBM Planning Analytics
13 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
13 8 (0.12%) Sage 50
13 8 (0.12%) SAP Business One
13 8 (0.12%) Workday HCM
14 7 (0.10%) Elite 3E
14 7 (0.10%) Fidessa
14 7 (0.10%) Oracle Applications
Cloud Services
1 1,473 (21.77%) Azure
2 1,081 (15.97%) Microsoft 365
3 865 (12.78%) AWS
4 517 (7.64%) Power Platform
5 318 (4.70%) SaaS
6 300 (4.43%) Entra ID
7 295 (4.36%) GCP
8 173 (2.56%) Serverless
9 160 (2.36%) Azure DevOps
10 147 (2.17%) GitHub
11 138 (2.04%) Dynamics 365
12 124 (1.83%) Power Automate
13 104 (1.54%) PowerApps
14 90 (1.33%) OneDrive
15 87 (1.29%) Amazon S3
16 79 (1.17%) Google Workspace
17 73 (1.08%) GitHub Actions
17 73 (1.08%) PaaS
18 68 (1.00%) AWS Lambda
18 68 (1.00%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 447 (6.61%) Firewall
2 402 (5.94%) DNS
3 348 (5.14%) DHCP
4 279 (4.12%) VPN
5 230 (3.40%) WAN
6 211 (3.12%) TCP/IP
7 205 (3.03%) LAN
7 205 (3.03%) Wi-Fi
8 182 (2.69%) Broadband
9 132 (1.95%) VLAN
9 132 (1.95%) Wireless
10 107 (1.58%) VoIP
11 94 (1.39%) Network Security
12 62 (0.92%) SD-WAN
13 47 (0.69%) Internet
14 46 (0.68%) BGP
15 44 (0.65%) OSPF
15 44 (0.65%) SAN
16 36 (0.53%) HTTP
17 29 (0.43%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 413 (6.10%) Power BI
2 295 (4.36%) SQL Server
3 131 (1.94%) Data Warehouse
4 109 (1.61%) Tableau
5 105 (1.55%) Amazon RDS
6 104 (1.54%) NoSQL
7 92 (1.36%) MySQL
7 92 (1.36%) PostgreSQL
8 89 (1.32%) Relational Database
9 77 (1.14%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 67 (0.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 55 (0.81%) Power Query
12 54 (0.80%) MongoDB
13 52 (0.77%) Big Data
14 47 (0.69%) Azure SQL Database
15 41 (0.61%) Amazon Redshift
15 41 (0.61%) Data Lake
16 39 (0.58%) Metadata
17 35 (0.52%) DynamoDB
18 24 (0.35%) Db2
Development Applications
1 280 (4.14%) Git
2 205 (3.03%) JIRA
3 98 (1.45%) Jenkins
4 97 (1.43%) GitLab
5 29 (0.43%) Rational DOORS
6 24 (0.35%) Selenium
7 22 (0.33%) JUnit
8 21 (0.31%) Cucumber
9 19 (0.28%) Cypress.io
10 18 (0.27%) Chocolatey
10 18 (0.27%) Maven
10 18 (0.27%) Visual Studio
11 17 (0.25%) Subversion
12 16 (0.24%) Burp Suite
12 16 (0.24%) Metasploit
13 15 (0.22%) Claude Code
13 15 (0.22%) Eclipse
14 14 (0.21%) SonarQube
14 14 (0.21%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
14 14 (0.21%) TeamCity
General
1 3,173 (46.89%) Social Skills
2 1,967 (29.07%) Analytical Skills
3 1,340 (19.80%) Finance
4 430 (6.35%) Organisational Skills
5 381 (5.63%) Manufacturing
6 366 (5.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 324 (4.79%) Law
8 306 (4.52%) Marketing
9 299 (4.42%) Retail
10 276 (4.08%) Legal
11 273 (4.03%) Public Sector
12 262 (3.87%) Banking
13 158 (2.33%) Telecoms
14 137 (2.02%) Presentation Skills
15 134 (1.98%) Electronics
16 126 (1.86%) Influencing Skills
17 110 (1.63%) Documentation Skills
18 90 (1.33%) Aerospace
19 85 (1.26%) Advertising
20 78 (1.15%) Games
Job Titles
1 890 (13.15%) Analyst
2 837 (12.37%) Senior
3 690 (10.20%) IT Support
4 654 (9.66%) Developer
5 587 (8.67%) Support Engineer
6 412 (6.09%) IT Engineer
7 410 (6.06%) Lead
8 325 (4.80%) IT Support Engineer
9 296 (4.37%) Consultant
10 247 (3.65%) Support Analyst
11 241 (3.56%) Support Technician
12 236 (3.49%) Architect
13 231 (3.41%) Software Engineer
14 229 (3.38%) Systems Engineer
15 188 (2.78%) Technical Support
16 182 (2.69%) IT Technician
17 178 (2.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 164 (2.42%) Administrator
18 164 (2.42%) Senior Developer
19 161 (2.38%) 2nd Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 272 (4.02%) .NET
2 266 (3.93%) React
3 218 (3.22%) HTML
4 188 (2.78%) REST
5 183 (2.70%) CSS
6 143 (2.11%) Node.js
7 131 (1.94%) RESTful
8 102 (1.51%) SOAP
9 95 (1.40%) Middleware
10 86 (1.27%) JSON
11 82 (1.21%) Spring
12 78 (1.15%) Vue
13 72 (1.06%) AngularJS
14 69 (1.02%) XML
15 65 (0.96%) Web Services
16 63 (0.93%) Kafka
17 61 (0.90%) OAuth
18 55 (0.81%) gRPC
19 53 (0.78%) Spring Boot
20 50 (0.74%) EDI
Miscellaneous
1 405 (5.98%) Driving Licence
2 379 (5.60%) Onboarding
3 313 (4.63%) Self-Motivation
4 255 (3.77%) Management Information System
5 246 (3.64%) Cloud Native
6 188 (2.78%) Product Ownership
7 164 (2.42%) Data Centre
8 158 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
9 149 (2.20%) Legacy Systems
10 119 (1.76%) Analytical Mindset
11 97 (1.43%) Mobile App
12 93 (1.37%) Security Posture
13 86 (1.27%) Data Structures
14 84 (1.24%) Social Media
15 81 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
16 74 (1.09%) Algorithms
17 69 (1.02%) Low-Code
18 64 (0.95%) Virtual Team
19 63 (0.93%) Public Cloud
20 61 (0.90%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 1,082 (15.99%) Windows
2 474 (7.00%) Windows Server
3 453 (6.69%) Linux
4 167 (2.47%) Windows 10
5 130 (1.92%) Windows Server 2016
6 107 (1.58%) Android
7 88 (1.30%) Apple iOS
8 87 (1.29%) Mac OS
9 66 (0.98%) Windows Server 2019
10 43 (0.64%) Unix
11 40 (0.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 32 (0.47%) CentOS
12 32 (0.47%) Ubuntu
13 29 (0.43%) Windows Server 2012
14 25 (0.37%) VMS
15 14 (0.21%) Mac OS X
15 14 (0.21%) Windows 7
16 13 (0.19%) Debian
17 7 (0.10%) Windows 8
17 7 (0.10%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,375 (20.32%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,069 (15.80%) Agile
3 989 (14.62%) Customer Service
4 756 (11.17%) Mentoring
5 750 (11.08%) AI
6 736 (10.88%) CI/CD
7 716 (10.58%) Decision-Making
8 638 (9.43%) Analytics
9 631 (9.32%) DevOps
10 589 (8.70%) Software Engineering
11 575 (8.50%) Stakeholder Management
12 556 (8.22%) ITIL
13 527 (7.79%) Roadmaps
14 520 (7.68%) Computer Science
15 513 (7.58%) Cybersecurity
16 488 (7.21%) Project Management
17 479 (7.08%) Business Intelligence
18 441 (6.52%) Coaching
18 441 (6.52%) Collaborative Working
19 401 (5.93%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 1,039 (15.35%) Python
2 1,023 (15.12%) SQL
3 464 (6.86%) JavaScript
4 346 (5.11%) C#
5 345 (5.10%) Java
6 313 (4.63%) PowerShell
7 209 (3.09%) TypeScript
8 164 (2.42%) Bash
9 146 (2.16%) C++
10 94 (1.39%) PHP
11 88 (1.30%) Go
12 61 (0.90%) C
13 59 (0.87%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 58 (0.86%) Scala
15 51 (0.75%) T-SQL
16 47 (0.69%) PL/SQL
17 42 (0.62%) R
18 41 (0.61%) Rust
19 38 (0.56%) Kotlin
20 34 (0.50%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,113 (16.45%) Degree
2 547 (8.08%) Security Cleared
3 377 (5.57%) SC Cleared
4 265 (3.92%) Computer Science Degree
5 224 (3.31%) DBS Check
6 187 (2.76%) Microsoft Certification
7 120 (1.77%) Cisco Certification
7 120 (1.77%) CISSP
8 114 (1.68%) DV Cleared
9 109 (1.61%) Master's Degree
10 98 (1.45%) Azure Certification
11 81 (1.20%) BPSS Clearance
11 81 (1.20%) PMI Certification
12 76 (1.12%) CCNA
13 73 (1.08%) A+ Certification
13 73 (1.08%) PMP
14 69 (1.02%) ACCA
15 64 (0.95%) CIMA
16 59 (0.87%) CompTIA Security+
17 57 (0.84%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 369 (5.45%) QA
2 327 (4.83%) Data Quality
3 277 (4.09%) GDPR
4 196 (2.90%) Cyber Essentials
4 196 (2.90%) SLA
5 175 (2.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 161 (2.38%) Accessibility
7 149 (2.20%) PCI DSS
8 146 (2.16%) NIST
9 52 (0.77%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 44 (0.65%) PMO
11 35 (0.52%) ISO 9001
12 30 (0.44%) GRC
12 30 (0.44%) SOC 2
13 24 (0.35%) COBIT
14 20 (0.30%) GMP
15 19 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
16 16 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
17 15 (0.22%) IFRS
18 12 (0.18%) PERC
System Software
1 741 (10.95%) Active Directory
2 304 (4.49%) Docker
3 250 (3.69%) Hyper-V
4 216 (3.19%) VMware Infrastructure
5 70 (1.03%) Terminal Server
6 47 (0.69%) Virtual Desktop
7 35 (0.52%) Firmware
8 27 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
9 25 (0.37%) vSphere
10 16 (0.24%) KVM
11 15 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
12 10 (0.15%) IAG
13 8 (0.12%) Embedded Firmware
14 7 (0.10%) VMware Workstation
14 7 (0.10%) XenApp
15 6 (0.089%) VMware NSX
16 5 (0.074%) ClearTrust
17 4 (0.059%) Microsoft Virtual Server
17 4 (0.059%) Virtual Servers
18 3 (0.044%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 301 (4.45%) Terraform
2 259 (3.83%) Kubernetes
3 258 (3.81%) Microsoft Intune
4 148 (2.19%) Ansible
5 95 (1.40%) Grafana
6 80 (1.18%) SCCM
7 59 (0.87%) Prometheus
8 34 (0.50%) Nagios
9 30 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
10 19 (0.28%) FortiGate
11 18 (0.27%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 18 (0.27%) Kibana
12 16 (0.24%) Jamf Pro
13 15 (0.22%) vCenter Server
14 14 (0.21%) Argo
14 14 (0.21%) Autotask
15 12 (0.18%) Kubeflow
15 12 (0.18%) Puppet
16 11 (0.16%) Nessus
17 10 (0.15%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,857 (27.44%) Microsoft
2 325 (4.80%) VMware
3 188 (2.78%) Oracle
4 172 (2.54%) Google
5 157 (2.32%) SAP
6 153 (2.26%) Cisco
7 143 (2.11%) Salesforce
8 136 (2.01%) SolarWinds
9 128 (1.89%) Veeam
10 123 (1.82%) ServiceNow
10 123 (1.82%) Splunk
11 105 (1.55%) Databricks
12 81 (1.20%) Apple
13 73 (1.08%) Tanium
14 71 (1.05%) Nimble Storage
15 70 (1.03%) Brocade
16 63 (0.93%) Adobe
17 55 (0.81%) Dell
18 50 (0.74%) Red Hat
18 50 (0.74%) Sage