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 1 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 4 7
Rank change year-on-year -3 +3 +4
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 8,408 8,374 10,629
As % of all permanent jobs in England 8.66% 19.13% 14.90%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.80% 21.57% 18.34%
Number of salaries quoted 5,842 4,740 5,099
10th Percentile £27,750 £26,250 £27,000
25th Percentile £33,250 £31,250 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £45,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% -10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £66,000 £67,500 £70,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £86,250 £85,000
UK median annual salary £47,203 £45,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +4.90% -10.00% -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 71,233 38,821 57,969
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.35% 88.70% 81.24%
Number of salaries quoted 50,689 22,542 35,770
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £42,000 £37,500 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% -8.00%
75th Percentile £80,000 £76,250 £76,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £95,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £56,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% -1.79% -6.67%

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 1 September 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 1 September 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 2,265 £65,000 - 4,761
North of England -8 1,698 £45,000 +7.14% 1,433
South East -4 1,613 £42,500 - 1,444
Midlands -7 1,231 £42,500 +10.39% 988
North West -6 883 £45,000 - 798
South West -4 838 £45,000 +25.00% 865
East of England -4 689 £42,500 +21.43% 671
West Midlands -8 689 £42,500 -0.28% 619
Yorkshire -8 551 £42,500 +21.43% 448
East Midlands -9 540 £41,000 +17.14% 371
North East -4 264 £48,250 +26.97% 209
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
1 481 (5.72%) SharePoint
2 398 (4.73%) Microsoft Exchange
3 103 (1.23%) Confluence
4 59 (0.70%) IIS
5 48 (0.57%) Apache
6 44 (0.52%) CMS
7 38 (0.45%) Apache Spark
8 37 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
9 35 (0.42%) WordPress
10 21 (0.25%) SAS
11 13 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
12 11 (0.13%) nginx
12 11 (0.13%) WebLogic
12 11 (0.13%) WebSphere
13 9 (0.11%) Jupyter
13 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 8 (0.095%) Exchange Server 2013
14 8 (0.095%) Tomcat
15 7 (0.083%) OpenEdge
16 5 (0.059%) CICS
Applications
1 538 (6.40%) Microsoft Office
2 487 (5.79%) Microsoft Excel
3 90 (1.07%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 47 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
5 46 (0.55%) MS Visio
6 43 (0.51%) Microsoft Project
7 33 (0.39%) AutoCAD
8 23 (0.27%) Simulink
9 18 (0.21%) Revit
10 16 (0.19%) Chatbot
11 10 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
12 8 (0.095%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 8 (0.095%) Trello
13 7 (0.083%) Adobe Illustrator
13 7 (0.083%) Autodesk Flame
13 7 (0.083%) Baselight
13 7 (0.083%) Fusion 360
14 6 (0.071%) EPLAN
14 6 (0.071%) Navisworks
15 5 (0.059%) Lightworks
Business Applications
1 88 (1.05%) Dynamics CRM
2 83 (0.99%) SAP S/4HANA
3 71 (0.84%) NetSuite
4 32 (0.38%) Shopify
5 25 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
6 17 (0.20%) Magento
7 15 (0.18%) IBM Planning Analytics
8 14 (0.17%) Elite 3E
8 14 (0.17%) SAP Business One
9 13 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
9 13 (0.15%) SAP ERP
10 12 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
11 11 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
12 10 (0.12%) JDE EnterpriseOne
12 10 (0.12%) Oracle Applications
12 10 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
12 10 (0.12%) Sage X3
13 9 (0.11%) Primavera
13 9 (0.11%) Sage 50
13 9 (0.11%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,726 (20.53%) Azure
2 1,318 (15.68%) Microsoft 365
3 1,033 (12.29%) AWS
4 707 (8.41%) Power Platform
5 406 (4.83%) Entra ID
6 366 (4.35%) SaaS
7 345 (4.10%) GCP
8 211 (2.51%) Azure DevOps
9 208 (2.47%) GitHub
10 187 (2.22%) Serverless
11 184 (2.19%) Dynamics 365
12 182 (2.16%) Power Automate
13 155 (1.84%) PowerApps
14 122 (1.45%) Microsoft Copilot
15 120 (1.43%) OneDrive
16 101 (1.20%) Amazon S3
17 95 (1.13%) GitHub Actions
18 88 (1.05%) AWS Lambda
19 84 (1.00%) AWS CloudFormation
20 81 (0.96%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 512 (6.09%) Firewall
2 473 (5.63%) DNS
3 400 (4.76%) DHCP
4 325 (3.87%) VPN
5 289 (3.44%) TCP/IP
6 215 (2.56%) Wi-Fi
7 198 (2.35%) WAN
8 195 (2.32%) LAN
9 183 (2.18%) Wireless
10 174 (2.07%) VLAN
11 153 (1.82%) Network Security
12 109 (1.30%) VoIP
13 108 (1.28%) Broadband
14 51 (0.61%) Internet
15 41 (0.49%) HTTP
16 40 (0.48%) SAN
17 35 (0.42%) OSPF
17 35 (0.42%) SD-WAN
18 34 (0.40%) BGP
18 34 (0.40%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 552 (6.57%) Power BI
2 417 (4.96%) SQL Server
3 142 (1.69%) Data Warehouse
4 141 (1.68%) MySQL
5 138 (1.64%) Relational Database
6 137 (1.63%) Amazon RDS
7 124 (1.47%) Tableau
8 115 (1.37%) PostgreSQL
9 103 (1.23%) NoSQL
10 94 (1.12%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 83 (0.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 65 (0.77%) Big Data
13 63 (0.75%) MongoDB
14 59 (0.70%) Data Lake
15 58 (0.69%) Azure SQL Database
16 53 (0.63%) Power Query
17 49 (0.58%) Metadata
18 43 (0.51%) DynamoDB
19 41 (0.49%) Electronic Patient Records
20 37 (0.44%) Looker
Development Applications
1 375 (4.46%) Git
2 298 (3.54%) JIRA
3 133 (1.58%) Jenkins
4 105 (1.25%) GitLab
5 40 (0.48%) Selenium
6 38 (0.45%) Eclipse
7 36 (0.43%) Claude Code
8 34 (0.40%) JUnit
9 33 (0.39%) Subversion
10 29 (0.34%) Cucumber
11 25 (0.30%) Postman
12 24 (0.29%) Rational DOORS
13 22 (0.26%) Cypress.io
14 21 (0.25%) Bitbucket
14 21 (0.25%) Oracle Forms
15 18 (0.21%) SonarQube
16 17 (0.20%) Visual Studio
17 16 (0.19%) Chocolatey
18 15 (0.18%) MLflow
19 14 (0.17%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 4,130 (49.12%) Social Skills
2 2,549 (30.32%) Analytical Skills
3 1,673 (19.90%) Finance
4 659 (7.84%) Manufacturing
5 550 (6.54%) Organisational Skills
6 504 (5.99%) Law
7 503 (5.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 415 (4.94%) Retail
9 356 (4.23%) Marketing
10 330 (3.92%) Public Sector
11 320 (3.81%) Legal
12 299 (3.56%) Banking
13 236 (2.81%) Electronics
14 221 (2.63%) Aerospace
15 188 (2.24%) Telecoms
16 180 (2.14%) Influencing Skills
17 160 (1.90%) Presentation Skills
18 107 (1.27%) Documentation Skills
19 96 (1.14%) Automotive
20 93 (1.11%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 1,096 (13.04%) Analyst
2 920 (10.94%) Senior
3 812 (9.66%) Developer
4 720 (8.56%) IT Support
5 579 (6.89%) Support Engineer
6 514 (6.11%) Lead
7 417 (4.96%) Consultant
8 398 (4.73%) IT Engineer
9 355 (4.22%) Support Analyst
10 316 (3.76%) Software Engineer
11 307 (3.65%) IT Support Engineer
12 278 (3.31%) Architect
13 263 (3.13%) Technical Support
14 259 (3.08%) Systems Engineer
15 250 (2.97%) Support Technician
16 221 (2.63%) IT Technician
17 216 (2.57%) Technical Engineer
18 192 (2.28%) Data Engineer
19 191 (2.27%) Technical Support Engineer
20 181 (2.15%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 382 (4.54%) .NET
2 370 (4.40%) Terraform
3 306 (3.64%) React
4 274 (3.26%) REST
5 257 (3.06%) HTML
6 198 (2.35%) CSS
7 178 (2.12%) RESTful
8 147 (1.75%) Node.js
9 117 (1.39%) SOAP
10 115 (1.37%) Spring
11 104 (1.24%) JSON
12 101 (1.20%) AngularJS
13 94 (1.12%) ASP.NET
13 94 (1.12%) Web Services
14 92 (1.09%) Vue
15 89 (1.06%) Kafka
15 89 (1.06%) Middleware
16 81 (0.96%) XML
17 74 (0.88%) Spring Boot
18 72 (0.86%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 561 (6.67%) Onboarding
2 557 (6.62%) Driving Licence
3 437 (5.20%) Self-Motivation
4 351 (4.17%) Management Information System
5 310 (3.69%) Cloud Native
6 246 (2.93%) Product Ownership
7 181 (2.15%) Data Centre
8 178 (2.12%) Legacy Systems
9 151 (1.80%) Enterprise Software
10 149 (1.77%) Distributed Systems
11 119 (1.42%) Data Structures
12 114 (1.36%) Analytical Mindset
13 112 (1.33%) Security Posture
14 105 (1.25%) Cyber Threat
15 103 (1.23%) NHS
16 101 (1.20%) AI Agents
17 97 (1.15%) Robotics
18 90 (1.07%) Algorithms
19 86 (1.02%) Virtual Team
20 84 (1.00%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 1,284 (15.27%) Windows
2 562 (6.68%) Linux
3 548 (6.52%) Windows Server
4 159 (1.89%) Windows 10
5 112 (1.33%) Windows Server 2016
6 105 (1.25%) Mac OS
7 97 (1.15%) Apple iOS
8 93 (1.11%) Android
9 56 (0.67%) Unix
10 46 (0.55%) Windows Server 2019
11 31 (0.37%) Ubuntu
11 31 (0.37%) VMS
12 30 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 16 (0.19%) CentOS
14 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 11 (0.13%) Debian
16 10 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
17 9 (0.11%) FreeRTOS
17 9 (0.11%) Mac OS X
17 9 (0.11%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,091 (24.87%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,381 (16.42%) Agile
3 1,292 (15.37%) Customer Service
4 1,086 (12.92%) AI
5 1,018 (12.11%) Decision-Making
6 944 (11.23%) Stakeholder Management
7 913 (10.86%) Mentoring
8 909 (10.81%) CI/CD
9 787 (9.36%) Analytics
10 781 (9.29%) Software Engineering
11 760 (9.04%) DevOps
12 703 (8.36%) Cybersecurity
13 665 (7.91%) Roadmaps
14 658 (7.83%) ITIL
15 653 (7.77%) Project Delivery
16 628 (7.47%) Business Intelligence
17 617 (7.34%) Project Management
18 608 (7.23%) Computer Science
19 567 (6.74%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 556 (6.61%) Collaborative Working
Programming Languages
1 1,314 (15.63%) SQL
2 1,184 (14.08%) Python
3 571 (6.79%) JavaScript
4 489 (5.82%) C#
5 426 (5.07%) Java
6 372 (4.42%) PowerShell
7 255 (3.03%) TypeScript
8 228 (2.71%) C++
9 172 (2.05%) Bash
10 95 (1.13%) C
11 88 (1.05%) PHP
12 74 (0.88%) Go
13 71 (0.84%) T-SQL
14 70 (0.83%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 50 (0.59%) Rust
16 48 (0.57%) Perl
16 48 (0.57%) Shell Script
17 43 (0.51%) R
18 42 (0.50%) Ruby
19 40 (0.48%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 1,472 (17.51%) Degree
2 789 (9.38%) Security Cleared
3 527 (6.27%) SC Cleared
4 324 (3.85%) Computer Science Degree
5 242 (2.88%) DBS Check
6 206 (2.45%) Microsoft Certification
7 192 (2.28%) DV Cleared
8 170 (2.02%) Azure Certification
9 151 (1.80%) CISSP
10 146 (1.74%) Cisco Certification
11 141 (1.68%) BPSS Clearance
12 135 (1.61%) Master's Degree
13 128 (1.52%) HNC
14 112 (1.33%) HND
15 105 (1.25%) PMI Certification
16 85 (1.01%) CISM
17 82 (0.98%) PMP
18 80 (0.95%) CCNA
19 76 (0.90%) CCNP
20 73 (0.87%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 498 (5.92%) QA
2 421 (5.01%) Data Quality
3 353 (4.20%) GDPR
4 236 (2.81%) Accessibility
5 221 (2.63%) SLA
6 202 (2.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 200 (2.38%) Cyber Essentials
8 165 (1.96%) NIST
9 141 (1.68%) PCI DSS
10 62 (0.74%) PMO
11 55 (0.65%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 39 (0.46%) GRC
13 36 (0.43%) ISO 9001
14 25 (0.30%) NCSC
15 24 (0.29%) SOC 2
16 23 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
17 22 (0.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
18 21 (0.25%) COBIT
19 19 (0.23%) GMP
20 18 (0.21%) Good Clinical Practice
System Software
1 858 (10.20%) Active Directory
2 363 (4.32%) Docker
3 284 (3.38%) Hyper-V
4 257 (3.06%) VMware Infrastructure
5 70 (0.83%) Terminal Server
6 60 (0.71%) Firmware
7 51 (0.61%) Virtual Desktop
8 45 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
9 35 (0.42%) vSphere
10 21 (0.25%) Embedded Firmware
11 18 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
12 12 (0.14%) KVM
13 8 (0.095%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.071%) GPFS
14 6 (0.071%) StorNext
14 6 (0.071%) XenApp
15 5 (0.059%) ClearTrust
15 5 (0.059%) IAG
15 5 (0.059%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 5 (0.059%) Squid
Systems Management
1 329 (3.91%) Kubernetes
2 281 (3.34%) Microsoft Intune
3 153 (1.82%) Ansible
4 93 (1.11%) Grafana
5 76 (0.90%) SCCM
6 63 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
7 49 (0.58%) Prometheus
8 26 (0.31%) FortiGate
8 26 (0.31%) Jamf Pro
9 21 (0.25%) Nagios
10 19 (0.23%) Puppet
11 16 (0.19%) Argo
12 14 (0.17%) BMC PATROL
13 13 (0.15%) Functional Safety
13 13 (0.15%) Kibana
14 12 (0.14%) Proxmox
15 11 (0.13%) Autotask
15 11 (0.13%) logstash
15 11 (0.13%) Nmap
16 10 (0.12%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 2,455 (29.20%) Microsoft
2 377 (4.48%) VMware
3 266 (3.16%) SAP
4 247 (2.94%) Google
5 242 (2.88%) Oracle
6 172 (2.05%) ServiceNow
7 171 (2.03%) Cisco
8 163 (1.94%) Salesforce
9 134 (1.59%) Veeam
10 130 (1.55%) Databricks
11 123 (1.46%) Splunk
12 108 (1.28%) SolarWinds
13 83 (0.99%) Sage
14 78 (0.93%) Tanium
15 73 (0.87%) Apple
16 71 (0.84%) Nimble Storage
17 70 (0.83%) Brocade
18 66 (0.78%) Fortinet
19 58 (0.69%) HubSpot
20 57 (0.68%) Workday