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

6 months to
22 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 6,373 7,197 11,523
As % of all permanent jobs in England 9.41% 18.96% 15.15%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.12% 20.27% 17.46%
Number of salaries quoted 4,428 4,311 8,139
10th Percentile £27,000 £29,000 £26,250
25th Percentile £31,250 £37,500 £33,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,499 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -17.28% +10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £67,500 £75,000 £68,750
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 52,598 35,514 66,000
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 77.69% 93.57% 86.78%
Number of salaries quoted 32,587 20,343 51,251
10th Percentile £30,000 £32,000 £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% -11.29%

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 22 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 22 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% 1,055
North of England -18 1,295 £41,000 -11.83% 676
South East -6 1,192 £45,000 -11.71% 841
Midlands -19 852 £37,500 -21.88% 469
North West -17 657 £42,500 -11.46% 366
South West -7 537 £43,500 -12.12% 303
Yorkshire -7 507 £35,000 -17.65% 236
West Midlands -23 499 £42,500 -20.84% 278
East of England -10 427 £40,000 -20.00% 287
East Midlands -2 350 £35,000 -6.67% 190
North East -8 131 £45,000 - 87
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 (5.18%) Microsoft Exchange
2 287 (4.50%) SharePoint
3 79 (1.24%) Confluence
4 58 (0.91%) CMS
5 52 (0.82%) Apache
6 44 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
7 37 (0.58%) IIS
8 36 (0.56%) Apache Spark
9 29 (0.46%) WordPress
10 19 (0.30%) Palantir Foundry
11 16 (0.25%) SAS
12 12 (0.19%) nginx
13 9 (0.14%) Drupal
14 8 (0.13%) Anypoint
14 8 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2007
14 8 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2010
14 8 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
14 8 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 4 (0.063%) Headless CMS
15 4 (0.063%) Totara
Applications
1 445 (6.98%) Microsoft Office
2 341 (5.35%) Microsoft Excel
3 73 (1.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 35 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
5 33 (0.52%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
7 18 (0.28%) Maya
8 16 (0.25%) AutoCAD
9 13 (0.20%) Photoshop
10 10 (0.16%) Adobe Illustrator
11 9 (0.14%) Chatbot
12 8 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 8 (0.13%) 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 64 (1.00%) Dynamics CRM
2 40 (0.63%) SAP S/4HANA
3 32 (0.50%) 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%) Payment Gateway
11 7 (0.11%) Q-Pulse
11 7 (0.11%) Sage 200
12 6 (0.094%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 1,378 (21.62%) Azure
2 979 (15.36%) Microsoft 365
3 779 (12.22%) AWS
4 451 (7.08%) Power Platform
5 376 (5.90%) SaaS
6 283 (4.44%) GCP
7 273 (4.28%) Entra ID
8 169 (2.65%) Azure DevOps
9 165 (2.59%) GitHub
9 165 (2.59%) Serverless
10 125 (1.96%) Power Automate
11 104 (1.63%) Dynamics 365
12 92 (1.44%) Google Workspace
13 87 (1.37%) Amazon S3
14 81 (1.27%) PowerApps
15 80 (1.26%) AWS CloudFormation
15 80 (1.26%) AWS Lambda
16 76 (1.19%) GitHub Actions
17 74 (1.16%) Azure Data Factory
18 71 (1.11%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 408 (6.40%) DNS
2 377 (5.92%) Firewall
3 345 (5.41%) DHCP
4 241 (3.78%) VPN
5 214 (3.36%) WAN
6 210 (3.30%) TCP/IP
7 204 (3.20%) Wi-Fi
8 179 (2.81%) Broadband
8 179 (2.81%) LAN
9 126 (1.98%) VLAN
10 97 (1.52%) Wireless
11 89 (1.40%) VoIP
12 69 (1.08%) SD-WAN
13 52 (0.82%) Network Security
14 45 (0.71%) Remote Desktop
15 41 (0.64%) SAN
16 40 (0.63%) Internet
17 32 (0.50%) Structured Cabling
18 29 (0.46%) BGP
19 28 (0.44%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 372 (5.84%) Power BI
2 272 (4.27%) SQL Server
3 129 (2.02%) Data Warehouse
4 124 (1.95%) Tableau
5 119 (1.87%) NoSQL
6 111 (1.74%) Relational Database
7 110 (1.73%) PostgreSQL
8 93 (1.46%) Amazon RDS
9 91 (1.43%) MySQL
10 65 (1.02%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 54 (0.85%) MongoDB
12 48 (0.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 47 (0.74%) Amazon Redshift
13 47 (0.74%) DynamoDB
13 47 (0.74%) Power Query
14 45 (0.71%) Metadata
15 44 (0.69%) Azure SQL Database
16 43 (0.67%) Data Lake
17 40 (0.63%) Big Data
18 26 (0.41%) Redis
Development Applications
1 283 (4.44%) Git
2 233 (3.66%) JIRA
3 109 (1.71%) Jenkins
4 98 (1.54%) GitLab
5 52 (0.82%) Selenium
6 31 (0.49%) Visual Studio
7 23 (0.36%) 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 (0.28%) Robot Framework
10 17 (0.27%) CircleCI
11 16 (0.25%) Octopus Deploy
11 16 (0.25%) Rational DOORS
12 15 (0.24%) Bitbucket
12 15 (0.24%) Cucumber
12 15 (0.24%) JUnit
13 14 (0.22%) SonarQube
General
1 3,161 (49.60%) Social Skills
2 1,937 (30.39%) Analytical Skills
3 1,413 (22.17%) Finance
4 448 (7.03%) Organisational Skills
5 366 (5.74%) Marketing
6 340 (5.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 312 (4.90%) Law
8 309 (4.85%) Retail
9 306 (4.80%) Banking
10 289 (4.53%) Legal
10 289 (4.53%) Public Sector
11 262 (4.11%) Manufacturing
12 172 (2.70%) Presentation Skills
13 162 (2.54%) Telecoms
14 137 (2.15%) Electronics
15 104 (1.63%) Documentation Skills
15 104 (1.63%) Games
16 85 (1.33%) Financial Institution
17 84 (1.32%) Influencing Skills
18 69 (1.08%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 937 (14.70%) Analyst
2 747 (11.72%) IT Support
3 746 (11.71%) Senior
4 642 (10.07%) Support Engineer
5 594 (9.32%) Developer
6 375 (5.88%) Lead
7 372 (5.84%) IT Engineer
8 314 (4.93%) IT Support Engineer
9 310 (4.86%) Support Analyst
10 255 (4.00%) Consultant
11 216 (3.39%) Architect
12 214 (3.36%) Business Analyst
13 208 (3.26%) Support Technician
13 208 (3.26%) Technical Support
14 194 (3.04%) 2nd Line Support
15 174 (2.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 170 (2.67%) Software Engineer
17 156 (2.45%) IT Technician
18 154 (2.42%) Systems Engineer
19 153 (2.40%) Technical Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 254 (3.99%) .NET
2 253 (3.97%) React
3 221 (3.47%) HTML
4 176 (2.76%) CSS
5 160 (2.51%) Node.js
6 119 (1.87%) REST
7 112 (1.76%) RESTful
8 71 (1.11%) AngularJS
9 67 (1.05%) Spring
10 66 (1.04%) Kafka
10 66 (1.04%) Middleware
10 66 (1.04%) Vue
11 60 (0.94%) Django
12 58 (0.91%) SOAP
13 55 (0.86%) JSON
13 55 (0.86%) XML
14 51 (0.80%) Flask
15 47 (0.74%) Spring Boot
16 45 (0.71%) FastAPI
17 44 (0.69%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 467 (7.33%) Driving Licence
2 445 (6.98%) Onboarding
3 392 (6.15%) Self-Motivation
4 204 (3.20%) Management Information System
5 179 (2.81%) Cloud Native
6 151 (2.37%) Analytical Mindset
7 145 (2.28%) Legacy Systems
8 134 (2.10%) Product Ownership
9 132 (2.07%) Distributed Systems
10 129 (2.02%) Data Centre
11 108 (1.69%) Enterprise Software
12 99 (1.55%) Mobile App
13 93 (1.46%) Social Media
14 83 (1.30%) Data Structures
15 70 (1.10%) Low-Code
16 61 (0.96%) Security Posture
17 57 (0.89%) Algorithms
17 57 (0.89%) Virtual Team
18 50 (0.78%) EPoS
19 48 (0.75%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 1,111 (17.43%) Windows
2 425 (6.67%) Windows Server
3 411 (6.45%) Linux
4 171 (2.68%) Windows 10
5 120 (1.88%) Windows Server 2016
6 113 (1.77%) Android
7 91 (1.43%) Mac OS
8 82 (1.29%) Apple iOS
9 61 (0.96%) Unix
10 56 (0.88%) Windows Server 2019
11 35 (0.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 35 (0.55%) Windows Server 2012
12 27 (0.42%) CentOS
13 23 (0.36%) Windows 7
14 20 (0.31%) Ubuntu
15 16 (0.25%) VMS
16 11 (0.17%) Mac OS X
16 11 (0.17%) Windows 8
17 8 (0.13%) Debian
18 6 (0.094%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,168 (18.33%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,052 (16.51%) Agile
3 961 (15.08%) Customer Service
4 686 (10.76%) Mentoring
5 676 (10.61%) AI
6 660 (10.36%) Decision-Making
7 643 (10.09%) CI/CD
8 638 (10.01%) Analytics
9 603 (9.46%) DevOps
10 582 (9.13%) ITIL
11 553 (8.68%) Project Management
12 518 (8.13%) Business Intelligence
13 504 (7.91%) Computer Science
14 483 (7.58%) Stakeholder Management
15 434 (6.81%) Cybersecurity
16 428 (6.72%) Software Engineering
17 385 (6.04%) Coaching
18 381 (5.98%) Roadmaps
19 370 (5.81%) Process Improvement
20 367 (5.76%) CRM
Programming Languages
1 968 (15.19%) Python
2 886 (13.90%) SQL
3 431 (6.76%) JavaScript
4 315 (4.94%) PowerShell
5 313 (4.91%) Java
6 277 (4.35%) C#
7 180 (2.82%) TypeScript
8 155 (2.43%) Bash
9 86 (1.35%) PHP
10 80 (1.26%) C++
11 78 (1.22%) Go
12 67 (1.05%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 58 (0.91%) Scala
14 47 (0.74%) C
15 44 (0.69%) T-SQL
16 40 (0.63%) Kotlin
17 35 (0.55%) R
18 34 (0.53%) Apex Code
19 27 (0.42%) Rust
20 26 (0.41%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 1,312 (20.59%) Degree
2 486 (7.63%) Security Cleared
3 300 (4.71%) SC Cleared
4 246 (3.86%) Computer Science Degree
5 189 (2.97%) Microsoft Certification
6 184 (2.89%) DBS Check
7 132 (2.07%) Master's Degree
8 121 (1.90%) DV Cleared
9 107 (1.68%) CISSP
10 90 (1.41%) Cisco Certification
11 86 (1.35%) BPSS Clearance
12 82 (1.29%) ACCA
13 79 (1.24%) A+ Certification
14 74 (1.16%) CIMA
15 65 (1.02%) CCNA
15 65 (1.02%) PMI Certification
16 60 (0.94%) Network+ Certification
17 55 (0.86%) AWS Certification
18 51 (0.80%) PMP
19 48 (0.75%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 302 (4.74%) QA
2 265 (4.16%) Data Quality
3 238 (3.73%) GDPR
4 161 (2.53%) Cyber Essentials
5 159 (2.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 139 (2.18%) SLA
7 127 (1.99%) Accessibility
8 124 (1.95%) PCI DSS
9 114 (1.79%) NIST
10 50 (0.78%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 33 (0.52%) ISO 9001
12 30 (0.47%) SOC 2
13 29 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
14 24 (0.38%) PMO
15 21 (0.33%) COBIT
16 19 (0.30%) GRC
17 13 (0.20%) GMP
18 12 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
19 10 (0.16%) ITGC
20 9 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 743 (11.66%) Active Directory
2 300 (4.71%) Docker
3 228 (3.58%) Hyper-V
4 162 (2.54%) VMware Infrastructure
5 63 (0.99%) Terminal Server
6 32 (0.50%) Firmware
7 30 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
8 29 (0.46%) Virtual Machines
9 14 (0.22%) KVM
9 14 (0.22%) vSphere
10 10 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
10 10 (0.16%) VMware Workstation
11 7 (0.11%) IAG
11 7 (0.11%) XenApp
12 6 (0.094%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.063%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 3 (0.047%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 2 (0.031%) BitLocker
15 2 (0.031%) vCloud
15 2 (0.031%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 285 (4.47%) Terraform
2 266 (4.17%) Microsoft Intune
3 223 (3.50%) Kubernetes
4 154 (2.42%) Ansible
5 92 (1.44%) Grafana
6 79 (1.24%) SCCM
7 60 (0.94%) Prometheus
8 30 (0.47%) Nagios
9 26 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
10 23 (0.36%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 22 (0.35%) BMC PATROL
12 20 (0.31%) Jamf Pro
13 15 (0.24%) Argo
13 15 (0.24%) Cisco CUCM
14 14 (0.22%) Autotask
15 13 (0.20%) ZABBIX
16 12 (0.19%) FortiGate
16 12 (0.19%) Kibana
16 12 (0.19%) vCenter Server
17 11 (0.17%) Puppet
Vendors
1 1,674 (26.27%) Microsoft
2 270 (4.24%) VMware
3 205 (3.22%) Oracle
4 176 (2.76%) SAP
5 160 (2.51%) Google
6 149 (2.34%) Salesforce
7 148 (2.32%) Cisco
8 134 (2.10%) ServiceNow
9 126 (1.98%) Veeam
10 122 (1.91%) SolarWinds
11 119 (1.87%) Splunk
12 110 (1.73%) Databricks
13 93 (1.46%) Adobe
14 83 (1.30%) Apple
15 65 (1.02%) Dell
16 64 (1.00%) Tanium
17 63 (0.99%) Brocade
17 63 (0.99%) Nimble Storage
18 54 (0.85%) Sage
19 50 (0.78%) Red Hat