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 16 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 4 8
Rank change year-on-year -5 +4 +5
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,536 8,090 10,096
As % of all permanent jobs in England 11.02% 18.20% 15.17%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.88% 19.71% 17.20%
Number of salaries quoted 4,494 3,857 7,320
10th Percentile £26,650 £30,750 £26,250
25th Percentile £31,000 £40,000 £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 £65,473 £76,000 £70,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £90,000 £87,500
UK median annual salary £45,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -18.18% +10.00% -13.04%

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 47,098 41,055 58,693
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 79.42% 92.38% 88.18%
Number of salaries quoted 28,809 20,170 46,430
10th Percentile £29,000 £35,000 £29,750
25th Percentile £38,750 £46,250 £40,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £62,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% +13.64% -12.00%
75th Percentile £77,500 £82,500 £75,000
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £95,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,350 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.86% +9.73% -12.00%

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 16 February 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 16 February 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 -1 1,920 £67,500 +3.85% 752
North of England -17 1,344 £42,500 -10.53% 592
South East -3 1,289 £41,500 -20.95% 861
Midlands -16 861 £37,500 -27.63% 451
North West -15 728 £46,000 -8.00% 345
South West -5 580 £40,000 -26.82% 314
West Midlands -19 500 £42,500 -22.73% 280
Yorkshire -6 478 £35,750 -17.82% 189
East of England -3 434 £37,500 -26.42% 282
East Midlands 0 359 £33,000 -5.71% 171
North East -5 138 £43,250 -9.42% 69
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 (5.05%) Microsoft Exchange
2 282 (4.31%) SharePoint
3 77 (1.18%) Confluence
4 57 (0.87%) Apache
5 48 (0.73%) IIS
6 45 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
7 43 (0.66%) CMS
8 42 (0.64%) Apache Spark
9 29 (0.44%) WordPress
10 16 (0.24%) Palantir Foundry
11 12 (0.18%) nginx
12 9 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 9 (0.14%) SAS
13 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
13 7 (0.11%) Apache Solr
14 5 (0.076%) Drupal
15 4 (0.061%) Exchange Server 2007
15 4 (0.061%) Exchange Server 2010
15 4 (0.061%) Exchange Server 2013
15 4 (0.061%) Umbraco
Applications
1 439 (6.72%) Microsoft Office
2 402 (6.15%) Microsoft Excel
3 84 (1.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 38 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
5 30 (0.46%) Maya
5 30 (0.46%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.40%) Microsoft Project
7 16 (0.24%) AutoCAD
8 13 (0.20%) Photoshop
9 11 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 9 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
10 9 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
11 7 (0.11%) Chatbot
12 6 (0.092%) Adobe Premiere
13 5 (0.076%) Adobe XD
14 4 (0.061%) Adobe After Effects
14 4 (0.061%) CATIA
14 4 (0.061%) Fusion 360
14 4 (0.061%) Trello
15 3 (0.046%) Revit
Business Applications
1 94 (1.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 72 (1.10%) Dynamics CRM
3 34 (0.52%) NetSuite
4 20 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
5 18 (0.28%) SAP CO
6 17 (0.26%) Endur
7 15 (0.23%) Shopify
8 14 (0.21%) Dynamics NAV
9 12 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
10 11 (0.17%) iTrent
11 10 (0.15%) Oracle Receivables
11 10 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
11 10 (0.15%) SAP Business One
11 10 (0.15%) Workday HCM
12 9 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.14%) SAP FI
12 9 (0.14%) SAP FI/CO
13 8 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
14 7 (0.11%) Exchequer
14 7 (0.11%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 1,425 (21.80%) Azure
2 990 (15.15%) Microsoft 365
3 762 (11.66%) AWS
4 494 (7.56%) Power Platform
5 386 (5.91%) SaaS
6 279 (4.27%) Entra ID
7 241 (3.69%) GCP
8 180 (2.75%) Azure DevOps
9 158 (2.42%) GitHub
10 152 (2.33%) Serverless
11 129 (1.97%) Power Automate
12 105 (1.61%) Dynamics 365
13 85 (1.30%) Google Workspace
14 81 (1.24%) Amazon S3
15 79 (1.21%) PowerApps
16 75 (1.15%) AWS CloudFormation
16 75 (1.15%) AWS Lambda
17 65 (0.99%) PaaS
18 62 (0.95%) Figma
18 62 (0.95%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 434 (6.64%) DNS
2 377 (5.77%) DHCP
3 358 (5.48%) Firewall
4 229 (3.50%) VPN
5 205 (3.14%) TCP/IP
6 198 (3.03%) Wi-Fi
7 191 (2.92%) WAN
8 160 (2.45%) LAN
9 126 (1.93%) VLAN
10 124 (1.90%) Broadband
11 94 (1.44%) Wireless
12 93 (1.42%) VoIP
13 60 (0.92%) SD-WAN
14 52 (0.80%) Remote Desktop
15 51 (0.78%) Internet
16 48 (0.73%) Network Security
17 44 (0.67%) SAN
18 29 (0.44%) BGP
18 29 (0.44%) Structured Cabling
18 29 (0.44%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 406 (6.21%) Power BI
2 288 (4.41%) SQL Server
3 141 (2.16%) Data Warehouse
4 137 (2.10%) Relational Database
5 135 (2.07%) Tableau
6 126 (1.93%) Amazon RDS
7 117 (1.79%) NoSQL
8 110 (1.68%) PostgreSQL
9 99 (1.51%) MySQL
10 83 (1.27%) Data Lake
11 65 (0.99%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 56 (0.86%) MongoDB
13 54 (0.83%) Amazon Redshift
14 53 (0.81%) Metadata
15 46 (0.70%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 42 (0.64%) DynamoDB
17 41 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
17 41 (0.63%) Big Data
18 38 (0.58%) Power Query
19 33 (0.50%) SAP BW
Development Applications
1 269 (4.12%) Git
2 231 (3.53%) JIRA
3 97 (1.48%) Jenkins
4 82 (1.25%) GitLab
5 57 (0.87%) Selenium
6 24 (0.37%) Visual Studio
7 21 (0.32%) Cypress.io
8 20 (0.31%) Maven
9 19 (0.29%) Burp Suite
9 19 (0.29%) Metasploit
9 19 (0.29%) TeamCity
10 18 (0.28%) Bitbucket
10 18 (0.28%) LabVIEW
10 18 (0.28%) Robot Framework
11 17 (0.26%) JUnit
12 16 (0.24%) Octopus Deploy
13 14 (0.21%) Cucumber
13 14 (0.21%) Snyk
13 14 (0.21%) SonarQube
14 12 (0.18%) WebDriver
General
1 3,395 (51.94%) Social Skills
2 1,976 (30.23%) Analytical Skills
3 1,543 (23.61%) Finance
4 404 (6.18%) Organisational Skills
5 368 (5.63%) Marketing
6 348 (5.32%) Law
7 327 (5.00%) Retail
8 303 (4.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 303 (4.64%) Manufacturing
9 291 (4.45%) Legal
10 286 (4.38%) Public Sector
11 274 (4.19%) Banking
12 186 (2.85%) Telecoms
13 182 (2.78%) Presentation Skills
14 153 (2.34%) Electronics
15 111 (1.70%) Games
16 95 (1.45%) Documentation Skills
17 87 (1.33%) Financial Institution
18 85 (1.30%) Automotive
18 85 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 1,017 (15.56%) Analyst
2 812 (12.42%) Senior
3 755 (11.55%) IT Support
4 647 (9.90%) Support Engineer
5 590 (9.03%) Developer
6 411 (6.29%) Lead
7 344 (5.26%) IT Engineer
8 339 (5.19%) Support Analyst
9 292 (4.47%) IT Support Engineer
10 255 (3.90%) Technical Support
11 245 (3.75%) Business Analyst
12 237 (3.63%) Consultant
13 220 (3.37%) Architect
14 195 (2.98%) Support Technician
15 190 (2.91%) 2nd Line Support
16 177 (2.71%) Technical Engineer
17 170 (2.60%) Technical Support Engineer
18 166 (2.54%) IT Analyst
19 163 (2.49%) Infrastructure Engineer
20 159 (2.43%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 276 (4.22%) .NET
2 258 (3.95%) React
3 236 (3.61%) HTML
4 189 (2.89%) CSS
5 148 (2.26%) Node.js
6 140 (2.14%) REST
7 111 (1.70%) RESTful
8 90 (1.38%) AngularJS
9 70 (1.07%) Spring
10 69 (1.06%) Middleware
11 68 (1.04%) Vue
12 63 (0.96%) SOAP
13 62 (0.95%) JSON
14 61 (0.93%) Kafka
15 57 (0.87%) XML
16 55 (0.84%) .NET Framework
17 52 (0.80%) Django
18 47 (0.72%) Flask
19 46 (0.70%) ASP.NET
20 45 (0.69%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 536 (8.20%) Driving Licence
2 493 (7.54%) Onboarding
3 410 (6.27%) Self-Motivation
4 213 (3.26%) Management Information System
5 190 (2.91%) Analytical Mindset
6 175 (2.68%) Cloud Native
7 172 (2.63%) Legacy Systems
8 148 (2.26%) Product Ownership
9 141 (2.16%) Data Centre
10 116 (1.77%) Enterprise Software
11 97 (1.48%) Distributed Systems
12 89 (1.36%) Mobile App
13 71 (1.09%) Data Structures
14 68 (1.04%) Low-Code
15 64 (0.98%) Algorithms
15 64 (0.98%) Social Media
16 60 (0.92%) Virtual Team
17 56 (0.86%) EPoS
18 55 (0.84%) FMCG
19 50 (0.76%) CCTV
Operating Systems
1 1,129 (17.27%) Windows
2 462 (7.07%) Windows Server
3 428 (6.55%) Linux
4 158 (2.42%) Windows 10
5 142 (2.17%) Windows Server 2016
6 96 (1.47%) Android
7 95 (1.45%) Mac OS
8 79 (1.21%) Apple iOS
9 58 (0.89%) Unix
10 54 (0.83%) Windows Server 2019
11 31 (0.47%) Windows Server 2012
12 28 (0.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 23 (0.35%) Windows 7
14 17 (0.26%) VMS
15 15 (0.23%) CentOS
16 11 (0.17%) Ubuntu
17 9 (0.14%) Mac OS X
17 9 (0.14%) Windows 8
18 7 (0.11%) Debian
19 4 (0.061%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,121 (17.15%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,055 (16.14%) Agile
3 986 (15.09%) Customer Service
4 701 (10.73%) Analytics
5 670 (10.25%) Mentoring
6 639 (9.78%) AI
7 628 (9.61%) Decision-Making
8 596 (9.12%) Project Management
9 592 (9.06%) DevOps
10 585 (8.95%) CI/CD
11 578 (8.84%) Business Intelligence
12 537 (8.22%) ITIL
13 523 (8.00%) Computer Science
14 489 (7.48%) Stakeholder Management
15 473 (7.24%) Cybersecurity
16 430 (6.58%) Change Management
17 415 (6.35%) Software Engineering
18 408 (6.24%) ERP
19 390 (5.97%) CRM
20 376 (5.75%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 934 (14.29%) Python
2 933 (14.27%) SQL
3 419 (6.41%) JavaScript
4 318 (4.87%) Java
5 317 (4.85%) PowerShell
6 316 (4.83%) C#
7 167 (2.56%) TypeScript
8 137 (2.10%) Bash
9 104 (1.59%) PHP
10 80 (1.22%) C++
11 62 (0.95%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 57 (0.87%) Go
13 48 (0.73%) C
13 48 (0.73%) Scala
14 46 (0.70%) T-SQL
15 36 (0.55%) R
16 28 (0.43%) Apex Code
17 27 (0.41%) Bicep
18 25 (0.38%) Kotlin
19 23 (0.35%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 1,471 (22.51%) Degree
2 539 (8.25%) Security Cleared
3 350 (5.35%) SC Cleared
4 247 (3.78%) Computer Science Degree
5 185 (2.83%) Microsoft Certification
6 169 (2.59%) DBS Check
7 160 (2.45%) Master's Degree
8 115 (1.76%) DV Cleared
9 105 (1.61%) CISSP
10 92 (1.41%) BPSS Clearance
11 82 (1.25%) ACCA
12 79 (1.21%) A+ Certification
13 77 (1.18%) Cisco Certification
14 68 (1.04%) CIMA
15 67 (1.03%) Network+ Certification
16 59 (0.90%) PMI Certification
17 58 (0.89%) CISM
18 54 (0.83%) AWS Certification
19 52 (0.80%) CCNA
20 51 (0.78%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 333 (5.09%) QA
2 285 (4.36%) Data Quality
3 230 (3.52%) GDPR
4 189 (2.89%) Cyber Essentials
5 171 (2.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 145 (2.22%) PCI DSS
7 137 (2.10%) Accessibility
8 126 (1.93%) SLA
9 92 (1.41%) NIST
10 46 (0.70%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 32 (0.49%) ISO 9001
12 27 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
13 23 (0.35%) SOC 2
14 19 (0.29%) PMO
15 18 (0.28%) COBIT
16 17 (0.26%) GRC
17 11 (0.17%) WCAG
18 9 (0.14%) ISO 13485
18 9 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 20000
19 8 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 781 (11.95%) Active Directory
2 276 (4.22%) Docker
3 265 (4.05%) Hyper-V
4 152 (2.33%) VMware Infrastructure
5 98 (1.50%) Terminal Server
6 27 (0.41%) Firmware
7 24 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
7 24 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
8 18 (0.28%) vSphere
9 15 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
10 10 (0.15%) KVM
11 8 (0.12%) VMware Workstation
12 7 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.061%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 3 (0.046%) IAG
14 3 (0.046%) vCloud
14 3 (0.046%) XenApp
15 2 (0.031%) HDFS
15 2 (0.031%) Postfix
15 2 (0.031%) RHEV
Systems Management
1 274 (4.19%) Terraform
2 273 (4.18%) Microsoft Intune
3 213 (3.26%) Kubernetes
4 142 (2.17%) Ansible
5 78 (1.19%) Grafana
6 68 (1.04%) SCCM
7 49 (0.75%) Prometheus
8 42 (0.64%) BMC PATROL
9 28 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
10 21 (0.32%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 21 (0.32%) Nagios
11 16 (0.24%) Jamf Pro
12 15 (0.23%) Argo
13 14 (0.21%) Cisco CUCM
13 14 (0.21%) vCenter Server
14 12 (0.18%) FortiGate
14 12 (0.18%) Kibana
15 11 (0.17%) Autotask
15 11 (0.17%) Nessus
16 10 (0.15%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,700 (26.01%) Microsoft
2 333 (5.09%) SAP
3 301 (4.61%) VMware
4 251 (3.84%) Oracle
5 166 (2.54%) Salesforce
6 159 (2.43%) Veeam
7 151 (2.31%) Google
8 148 (2.26%) Splunk
9 145 (2.22%) SolarWinds
10 144 (2.20%) Cisco
11 123 (1.88%) ServiceNow
12 102 (1.56%) Databricks
13 100 (1.53%) Adobe
14 99 (1.51%) Tanium
15 98 (1.50%) Brocade
15 98 (1.50%) Nimble Storage
16 76 (1.16%) Apple
17 57 (0.87%) Dell
17 57 (0.87%) Sage
18 51 (0.78%) HubSpot