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 11 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 4 7
Rank change year-on-year -4 +3 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,440 8,864 7,284
As % of all permanent jobs in England 12.32% 18.36% 14.71%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.16% 20.24% 16.38%
Number of salaries quoted 4,388 3,911 5,044
10th Percentile £26,500 £31,250 £27,075
25th Percentile £30,750 £40,000 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,000 £55,000 £54,500
Median % change year-on-year -18.18% +0.92% -0.91%
75th Percentile £65,000 £75,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £85,000 £88,225 £90,000
UK median annual salary £45,203 £55,000 £53,000
% change year-on-year -17.81% +3.77% -7.59%

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 42,481 43,790 44,458
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 81.29% 90.69% 89.78%
Number of salaries quoted 25,455 21,528 34,408
10th Percentile £28,560 £35,000 £31,500
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,628 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%
75th Percentile £76,250 £81,250 £80,000
90th Percentile £97,500 £100,000 £98,750
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%

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 11 January 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 11 January 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 1,927 £65,000 - 809
South East -3 1,325 £42,000 -20.00% 1,385
North of England -16 1,234 £45,000 -5.26% 833
Midlands -12 885 £38,500 -23.00% 576
North West -12 686 £47,842 -3.32% 361
South West 0 578 £40,000 -27.27% 547
West Midlands -17 523 £42,920 -21.96% 259
Yorkshire -4 433 £34,000 -21.84% 340
East of England -8 402 £35,000 -31.33% 589
East Midlands +1 361 £35,000 -2.10% 309
North East 0 115 £33,500 -33.00% 142
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
1 315 (4.89%) Microsoft Exchange
2 270 (4.19%) SharePoint
3 80 (1.24%) Confluence
4 51 (0.79%) IIS
5 46 (0.71%) Apache
6 41 (0.64%) Apache Spark
7 34 (0.53%) Apache Airflow
8 30 (0.47%) CMS
9 24 (0.37%) WordPress
10 13 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 11 (0.17%) nginx
12 10 (0.16%) SAS
13 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
13 7 (0.11%) Apache Solr
14 6 (0.093%) HCL Notes
15 5 (0.078%) Camunda
15 5 (0.078%) Drupal
15 5 (0.078%) Exchange Server 2013
15 5 (0.078%) Umbraco
16 3 (0.047%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 483 (7.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 479 (7.44%) Microsoft Office
3 92 (1.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 36 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
5 35 (0.54%) Maya
6 29 (0.45%) MS Visio
7 26 (0.40%) Microsoft Project
8 20 (0.31%) AutoCAD
9 16 (0.25%) Photoshop
10 14 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 12 (0.19%) SOLIDWORKS
12 11 (0.17%) Adobe Illustrator
13 9 (0.14%) Adobe Premiere
14 6 (0.093%) Simulink
15 5 (0.078%) Adobe After Effects
15 5 (0.078%) Adobe XD
15 5 (0.078%) Trello
16 4 (0.062%) Autodesk Inventor
16 4 (0.062%) Chatbot
16 4 (0.062%) Fusion 360
Business Applications
1 112 (1.74%) SAP S/4HANA
2 93 (1.44%) Dynamics CRM
3 38 (0.59%) NetSuite
4 23 (0.36%) SAP CO
5 21 (0.33%) SAP FI
6 17 (0.26%) SAP FI/CO
7 15 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
8 14 (0.22%) Endur
8 14 (0.22%) Oracle Payables
8 14 (0.22%) Shopify
9 12 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
10 11 (0.17%) Oracle Assets
10 11 (0.17%) Sage 200
10 11 (0.17%) SAP Business One
11 10 (0.16%) Payment Gateway
12 8 (0.12%) Dynamics NAV
12 8 (0.12%) iTrent
12 8 (0.12%) JDE EnterpriseOne
13 6 (0.093%) Fidessa
13 6 (0.093%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 1,418 (22.02%) Azure
2 911 (14.15%) Microsoft 365
3 692 (10.75%) AWS
4 535 (8.31%) Power Platform
5 412 (6.40%) SaaS
6 265 (4.11%) Entra ID
7 210 (3.26%) GCP
8 182 (2.83%) Azure DevOps
9 151 (2.34%) GitHub
10 136 (2.11%) Serverless
11 111 (1.72%) Power Automate
12 98 (1.52%) Dynamics 365
13 75 (1.16%) PowerApps
14 70 (1.09%) AWS Lambda
15 69 (1.07%) Amazon S3
16 64 (0.99%) AWS CloudFormation
16 64 (0.99%) Azure Data Factory
17 58 (0.90%) Google Workspace
17 58 (0.90%) PaaS
18 56 (0.87%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 395 (6.13%) DNS
2 337 (5.23%) DHCP
3 323 (5.02%) Firewall
4 204 (3.17%) VPN
5 185 (2.87%) TCP/IP
6 173 (2.69%) Wi-Fi
7 162 (2.52%) WAN
8 136 (2.11%) LAN
9 113 (1.75%) VLAN
10 86 (1.34%) VoIP
11 80 (1.24%) Wireless
12 75 (1.16%) Broadband
13 64 (0.99%) Network Security
14 56 (0.87%) Remote Desktop
15 49 (0.76%) SAN
16 43 (0.67%) Internet
16 43 (0.67%) SD-WAN
17 29 (0.45%) Unified Communications
18 26 (0.40%) Structured Cabling
19 23 (0.36%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 447 (6.94%) Power BI
2 316 (4.91%) SQL Server
3 156 (2.42%) Relational Database
4 140 (2.17%) Tableau
5 134 (2.08%) Data Warehouse
6 128 (1.99%) PostgreSQL
7 119 (1.85%) MySQL
8 116 (1.80%) Data Lake
9 115 (1.79%) Amazon RDS
10 111 (1.72%) NoSQL
11 66 (1.02%) SAP BW
11 66 (1.02%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 62 (0.96%) MongoDB
13 57 (0.89%) Metadata
14 48 (0.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 43 (0.67%) Amazon Redshift
15 43 (0.67%) DynamoDB
16 42 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
16 42 (0.65%) Big Data
17 29 (0.45%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 262 (4.07%) Git
2 246 (3.82%) JIRA
3 93 (1.44%) Jenkins
4 78 (1.21%) GitLab
5 58 (0.90%) Selenium
6 23 (0.36%) Bitbucket
6 23 (0.36%) Visual Studio
7 22 (0.34%) Cypress.io
8 20 (0.31%) LabVIEW
9 18 (0.28%) Octopus Deploy
9 18 (0.28%) TeamCity
10 17 (0.26%) Maven
10 17 (0.26%) Robot Framework
11 16 (0.25%) JUnit
11 16 (0.25%) SonarQube
12 14 (0.22%) Burp Suite
12 14 (0.22%) Metasploit
12 14 (0.22%) Snyk
12 14 (0.22%) WebDriver
13 12 (0.19%) Cucumber
General
1 3,478 (54.01%) Social Skills
2 1,954 (30.34%) Analytical Skills
3 1,550 (24.07%) Finance
4 406 (6.30%) Marketing
5 360 (5.59%) Law
6 350 (5.43%) Retail
7 341 (5.30%) Manufacturing
8 335 (5.20%) Organisational Skills
9 289 (4.49%) Legal
10 270 (4.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 253 (3.93%) Public Sector
12 251 (3.90%) Banking
13 182 (2.83%) Telecoms
14 169 (2.62%) Presentation Skills
15 162 (2.52%) Electronics
16 120 (1.86%) Games
17 95 (1.48%) Influencing Skills
18 87 (1.35%) Automotive
19 80 (1.24%) Documentation Skills
20 77 (1.20%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,039 (16.13%) Analyst
2 778 (12.08%) Senior
3 669 (10.39%) IT Support
4 612 (9.50%) Support Engineer
5 591 (9.18%) Developer
6 446 (6.93%) Lead
7 355 (5.51%) Support Analyst
8 296 (4.60%) Technical Support
9 266 (4.13%) IT Engineer
10 247 (3.84%) Business Analyst
11 229 (3.56%) Consultant
12 221 (3.43%) IT Support Engineer
13 214 (3.32%) Architect
14 206 (3.20%) Technical Engineer
15 192 (2.98%) Technical Support Engineer
16 185 (2.87%) 2nd Line Support
17 181 (2.81%) Support Technician
18 165 (2.56%) Systems Engineer
19 164 (2.55%) Applications Support
20 149 (2.31%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 275 (4.27%) .NET
2 252 (3.91%) React
3 229 (3.56%) HTML
4 180 (2.80%) CSS
5 151 (2.34%) REST
6 138 (2.14%) Node.js
7 115 (1.79%) RESTful
8 99 (1.54%) AngularJS
9 72 (1.12%) XML
10 70 (1.09%) JSON
10 70 (1.09%) Spring
11 67 (1.04%) Vue
12 59 (0.92%) SOAP
13 58 (0.90%) .NET Framework
13 58 (0.90%) ASP.NET
14 57 (0.89%) Kafka
15 51 (0.79%) Middleware
16 48 (0.75%) Django
17 46 (0.71%) Flask
18 45 (0.70%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 518 (8.04%) Onboarding
2 504 (7.83%) Driving Licence
3 412 (6.40%) Self-Motivation
4 211 (3.28%) Management Information System
5 197 (3.06%) Analytical Mindset
6 154 (2.39%) Cloud Native
7 153 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
8 147 (2.28%) Product Ownership
9 114 (1.77%) Enterprise Software
10 113 (1.75%) Data Centre
11 74 (1.15%) Algorithms
12 70 (1.09%) Data Structures
13 65 (1.01%) Distributed Systems
13 65 (1.01%) Virtual Team
14 63 (0.98%) Mobile App
15 61 (0.95%) FMCG
16 59 (0.92%) Low-Code
17 52 (0.81%) Security Posture
18 45 (0.70%) EPoS
19 43 (0.67%) e-Learning
Operating Systems
1 1,073 (16.66%) Windows
2 419 (6.51%) Windows Server
3 396 (6.15%) Linux
4 165 (2.56%) Windows 10
5 111 (1.72%) Windows Server 2016
6 92 (1.43%) Mac OS
7 76 (1.18%) Android
8 70 (1.09%) Apple iOS
9 60 (0.93%) Unix
10 48 (0.75%) Windows Server 2019
11 31 (0.48%) Windows Server 2012
12 23 (0.36%) VMS
13 22 (0.34%) Windows 7
14 20 (0.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
15 9 (0.14%) CentOS
16 7 (0.11%) Mac OS X
16 7 (0.11%) Ubuntu
17 6 (0.093%) Windows Server 2008
18 4 (0.062%) OpenWrt
18 4 (0.062%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,109 (17.22%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,069 (16.60%) Agile
3 950 (14.75%) Customer Service
4 732 (11.37%) Analytics
5 644 (10.00%) AI
6 627 (9.74%) Decision-Making
7 624 (9.69%) Business Intelligence
8 620 (9.63%) Mentoring
9 618 (9.60%) Project Management
10 566 (8.79%) DevOps
11 547 (8.49%) ITIL
12 511 (7.93%) CI/CD
13 499 (7.75%) Computer Science
14 490 (7.61%) Cybersecurity
15 467 (7.25%) Stakeholder Management
16 445 (6.91%) Change Management
17 444 (6.89%) ERP
18 397 (6.16%) Data Analysis
19 393 (6.10%) CRM
20 379 (5.89%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,019 (15.82%) SQL
2 860 (13.35%) Python
3 385 (5.98%) JavaScript
4 341 (5.30%) C#
5 305 (4.74%) Java
6 304 (4.72%) PowerShell
7 147 (2.28%) TypeScript
8 117 (1.82%) Bash
9 96 (1.49%) PHP
10 79 (1.23%) C++
11 60 (0.93%) T-SQL
12 52 (0.81%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 40 (0.62%) C
14 39 (0.61%) R
15 36 (0.56%) Go
16 34 (0.53%) Scala
17 28 (0.43%) VBA
18 27 (0.42%) MATLAB
18 27 (0.42%) PL/SQL
19 23 (0.36%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,564 (24.29%) Degree
2 517 (8.03%) Security Cleared
3 332 (5.16%) SC Cleared
4 236 (3.66%) Computer Science Degree
5 175 (2.72%) Microsoft Certification
6 172 (2.67%) Master's Degree
7 142 (2.20%) DBS Check
8 130 (2.02%) DV Cleared
9 106 (1.65%) CISSP
10 101 (1.57%) BPSS Clearance
11 89 (1.38%) Cisco Certification
12 83 (1.29%) ACCA
13 70 (1.09%) A+ Certification
14 69 (1.07%) CIMA
15 65 (1.01%) Network+ Certification
16 61 (0.95%) CCNA
17 60 (0.93%) AWS Certification
18 59 (0.92%) CISM
18 59 (0.92%) PMI Certification
19 56 (0.87%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 359 (5.57%) QA
2 326 (5.06%) Data Quality
3 198 (3.07%) GDPR
4 176 (2.73%) Cyber Essentials
5 164 (2.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 137 (2.13%) Accessibility
7 135 (2.10%) SLA
8 112 (1.74%) PCI DSS
9 79 (1.23%) NIST
10 47 (0.73%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 32 (0.50%) ISO 9001
11 32 (0.50%) PMO
12 26 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
13 16 (0.25%) GRC
14 15 (0.23%) SOC 2
15 14 (0.22%) COBIT
16 12 (0.19%) WCAG
17 9 (0.14%) ISO 13485
18 8 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 19770
18 8 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 746 (11.58%) Active Directory
2 254 (3.94%) Docker
3 227 (3.52%) Hyper-V
4 145 (2.25%) VMware Infrastructure
5 84 (1.30%) Terminal Server
6 29 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
7 28 (0.43%) Firmware
8 22 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
9 17 (0.26%) vSphere
10 16 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (0.093%) KVM
12 5 (0.078%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.062%) ProxySG
14 3 (0.047%) BitLocker
14 3 (0.047%) vCloud
14 3 (0.047%) VMware Workstation
15 2 (0.031%) HDFS
15 2 (0.031%) RHEV
15 2 (0.031%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 2 (0.031%) Xen
Systems Management
1 273 (4.24%) Microsoft Intune
2 240 (3.73%) Terraform
3 199 (3.09%) Kubernetes
4 113 (1.75%) Ansible
5 61 (0.95%) Grafana
6 58 (0.90%) SCCM
7 43 (0.67%) Prometheus
8 42 (0.65%) BMC PATROL
9 30 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
11 18 (0.28%) Nagios
11 18 (0.28%) vCenter Server
12 15 (0.23%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 14 (0.22%) Cisco CUCM
14 13 (0.20%) Argo
15 12 (0.19%) FortiGate
16 11 (0.17%) PaperCut
17 10 (0.16%) ZABBIX
18 9 (0.14%) Nmap
19 8 (0.12%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,697 (26.35%) Microsoft
2 422 (6.55%) SAP
3 286 (4.44%) Oracle
4 278 (4.32%) VMware
5 158 (2.45%) Cisco
6 149 (2.31%) Salesforce
7 139 (2.16%) Veeam
8 132 (2.05%) Google
9 129 (2.00%) ServiceNow
10 128 (1.99%) Splunk
11 124 (1.93%) SolarWinds
12 108 (1.68%) Databricks
13 87 (1.35%) Adobe
14 86 (1.34%) Tanium
15 84 (1.30%) Brocade
15 84 (1.30%) Nimble Storage
16 76 (1.18%) Apple
17 67 (1.04%) Sage
18 55 (0.85%) Dell
19 50 (0.78%) HubSpot