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

6 months to
6 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 6,476 7,557 10,610
As % of all permanent jobs in England 10.16% 18.34% 15.18%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.94% 19.63% 17.32%
Number of salaries quoted 4,528 4,042 7,621
10th Percentile £26,750 £30,000 £26,250
25th Percentile £31,250 £38,750 £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 £65,730 £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% -10.71%

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 50,059 38,488 61,242
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 78.51% 93.43% 87.64%
Number of salaries quoted 30,809 20,039 48,115
10th Percentile £29,500 £32,750 £29,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £46,250 £40,000
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 £103,750 £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 6 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 6 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 -2 1,908 £67,500 +3.85% 1,022
North of England -16 1,375 £42,500 -9.57% 658
South East -4 1,236 £42,500 -19.05% 893
Midlands -16 861 £37,500 -25.00% 464
North West -16 735 £45,000 -10.00% 357
South West -3 572 £42,500 -19.05% 333
West Midlands -20 506 £42,500 -22.73% 267
Yorkshire -6 500 £35,000 -17.65% 224
East of England -7 422 £40,000 -20.00% 346
East Midlands -1 352 £35,000 -4.11% 195
North East -6 140 £45,000 - 90
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 (5.10%) Microsoft Exchange
2 283 (4.37%) SharePoint
3 81 (1.25%) Confluence
4 59 (0.91%) Apache
5 54 (0.83%) CMS
6 48 (0.74%) IIS
7 45 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
8 41 (0.63%) Apache Spark
9 32 (0.49%) WordPress
10 16 (0.25%) Palantir Foundry
11 11 (0.17%) nginx
12 10 (0.15%) SAS
13 8 (0.12%) Drupal
13 8 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2007
14 7 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2010
14 7 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
15 4 (0.062%) Headless CMS
15 4 (0.062%) Totara
Applications
1 451 (6.96%) Microsoft Office
2 350 (5.40%) Microsoft Excel
3 77 (1.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 39 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
5 32 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
7 24 (0.37%) Maya
8 18 (0.28%) AutoCAD
9 13 (0.20%) Photoshop
10 11 (0.17%) SOLIDWORKS
11 10 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 10 (0.15%) Adobe Illustrator
12 8 (0.12%) Chatbot
13 5 (0.077%) Adobe XD
14 4 (0.062%) CATIA
14 4 (0.062%) Fusion 360
14 4 (0.062%) Trello
15 3 (0.046%) Adobe Premiere
15 3 (0.046%) CINEMA 4D
15 3 (0.046%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 73 (1.13%) SAP S/4HANA
2 70 (1.08%) Dynamics CRM
3 33 (0.51%) NetSuite
4 19 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
5 17 (0.26%) Endur
5 17 (0.26%) SAP CO
6 16 (0.25%) Shopify
7 14 (0.22%) Dynamics NAV
8 10 (0.15%) iTrent
8 10 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
8 10 (0.15%) Workday HCM
9 9 (0.14%) Maximo
9 9 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
9 9 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
9 9 (0.14%) SAP Business One
9 9 (0.14%) SAP ERP
10 8 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
10 8 (0.12%) SAP FI
10 8 (0.12%) SAP FI/CO
11 7 (0.11%) Q-Pulse
Cloud Services
1 1,385 (21.39%) Azure
2 992 (15.32%) Microsoft 365
3 762 (11.77%) AWS
4 465 (7.18%) Power Platform
5 374 (5.78%) SaaS
6 290 (4.48%) Entra ID
7 260 (4.01%) GCP
8 177 (2.73%) Azure DevOps
9 163 (2.52%) GitHub
10 159 (2.46%) Serverless
11 133 (2.05%) Power Automate
12 109 (1.68%) Dynamics 365
13 95 (1.47%) Google Workspace
14 88 (1.36%) Amazon S3
15 84 (1.30%) PowerApps
16 80 (1.24%) AWS Lambda
17 79 (1.22%) AWS CloudFormation
18 70 (1.08%) GitHub Actions
19 68 (1.05%) PaaS
20 66 (1.02%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 420 (6.49%) DNS
2 370 (5.71%) Firewall
3 356 (5.50%) DHCP
4 242 (3.74%) VPN
5 216 (3.34%) TCP/IP
6 209 (3.23%) WAN
7 204 (3.15%) Wi-Fi
8 175 (2.70%) LAN
9 145 (2.24%) Broadband
10 130 (2.01%) VLAN
11 93 (1.44%) VoIP
12 92 (1.42%) Wireless
13 66 (1.02%) SD-WAN
14 53 (0.82%) Remote Desktop
15 50 (0.77%) Internet
16 48 (0.74%) Network Security
17 47 (0.73%) SAN
18 33 (0.51%) Structured Cabling
19 29 (0.45%) BGP
19 29 (0.45%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 377 (5.82%) Power BI
2 283 (4.37%) SQL Server
3 146 (2.25%) Data Warehouse
4 128 (1.98%) Tableau
5 127 (1.96%) Relational Database
6 119 (1.84%) NoSQL
7 108 (1.67%) PostgreSQL
8 98 (1.51%) Amazon RDS
9 93 (1.44%) MySQL
10 68 (1.05%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 56 (0.86%) Amazon Redshift
11 56 (0.86%) MongoDB
12 52 (0.80%) Metadata
13 50 (0.77%) Data Lake
14 49 (0.76%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 45 (0.69%) DynamoDB
16 43 (0.66%) Power Query
17 41 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
18 38 (0.59%) Big Data
19 27 (0.42%) Redis
Development Applications
1 280 (4.32%) Git
2 235 (3.63%) JIRA
3 104 (1.61%) Jenkins
4 93 (1.44%) GitLab
5 54 (0.83%) Selenium
6 28 (0.43%) Visual Studio
7 22 (0.34%) Cypress.io
8 19 (0.29%) Burp Suite
8 19 (0.29%) Maven
8 19 (0.29%) Metasploit
8 19 (0.29%) TeamCity
9 18 (0.28%) Bitbucket
9 18 (0.28%) LabVIEW
9 18 (0.28%) Robot Framework
10 16 (0.25%) Octopus Deploy
11 15 (0.23%) Cucumber
11 15 (0.23%) JUnit
11 15 (0.23%) SonarQube
12 14 (0.22%) CircleCI
12 14 (0.22%) Snyk
General
1 3,276 (50.59%) Social Skills
2 1,966 (30.36%) Analytical Skills
3 1,466 (22.64%) Finance
4 442 (6.83%) Organisational Skills
5 359 (5.54%) Marketing
6 320 (4.94%) Retail
7 313 (4.83%) Law
8 308 (4.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 293 (4.52%) Legal
10 288 (4.45%) Banking
10 288 (4.45%) Public Sector
11 284 (4.39%) Manufacturing
12 177 (2.73%) Telecoms
13 175 (2.70%) Presentation Skills
14 137 (2.12%) Electronics
15 109 (1.68%) Games
16 105 (1.62%) Documentation Skills
17 89 (1.37%) Automotive
18 87 (1.34%) Financial Institution
19 83 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 971 (14.99%) Analyst
2 776 (11.98%) Senior
3 770 (11.89%) IT Support
4 660 (10.19%) Support Engineer
5 593 (9.16%) Developer
6 378 (5.84%) Lead
7 361 (5.57%) IT Engineer
8 335 (5.17%) Support Analyst
9 306 (4.73%) IT Support Engineer
10 243 (3.75%) Consultant
11 240 (3.71%) Technical Support
12 222 (3.43%) Business Analyst
13 217 (3.35%) Architect
14 210 (3.24%) Support Technician
15 199 (3.07%) 2nd Line Support
16 172 (2.66%) Technical Engineer
17 169 (2.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 165 (2.55%) IT Analyst
19 164 (2.53%) Technical Support Engineer
20 159 (2.46%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 273 (4.22%) .NET
2 255 (3.94%) React
3 224 (3.46%) HTML
4 175 (2.70%) CSS
5 151 (2.33%) Node.js
6 133 (2.05%) REST
7 110 (1.70%) RESTful
8 81 (1.25%) AngularJS
9 70 (1.08%) Middleware
9 70 (1.08%) Vue
10 66 (1.02%) Kafka
10 66 (1.02%) Spring
11 62 (0.96%) SOAP
12 61 (0.94%) JSON
13 55 (0.85%) XML
14 53 (0.82%) Django
15 48 (0.74%) .NET Framework
15 48 (0.74%) Flask
16 45 (0.69%) Spring Boot
17 43 (0.66%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 548 (8.46%) Driving Licence
2 475 (7.33%) Onboarding
3 417 (6.44%) Self-Motivation
4 211 (3.26%) Management Information System
5 174 (2.69%) Analytical Mindset
6 170 (2.63%) Cloud Native
7 144 (2.22%) Legacy Systems
8 140 (2.16%) Product Ownership
9 134 (2.07%) Data Centre
10 112 (1.73%) Distributed Systems
10 112 (1.73%) Enterprise Software
11 93 (1.44%) Mobile App
12 83 (1.28%) Social Media
13 75 (1.16%) Data Structures
14 72 (1.11%) Low-Code
15 63 (0.97%) Algorithms
16 56 (0.86%) Security Posture
17 55 (0.85%) Virtual Team
18 53 (0.82%) EPoS
19 51 (0.79%) CCTV
Operating Systems
1 1,134 (17.51%) Windows
2 440 (6.79%) Windows Server
3 401 (6.19%) Linux
4 169 (2.61%) Windows 10
5 120 (1.85%) Windows Server 2016
6 114 (1.76%) Android
7 98 (1.51%) Mac OS
8 81 (1.25%) Apple iOS
9 60 (0.93%) Unix
10 54 (0.83%) Windows Server 2019
11 34 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 34 (0.53%) Windows Server 2012
12 26 (0.40%) Windows 7
13 25 (0.39%) CentOS
14 18 (0.28%) Ubuntu
15 16 (0.25%) VMS
16 11 (0.17%) Windows 8
17 9 (0.14%) Mac OS X
18 7 (0.11%) Debian
19 5 (0.077%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,154 (17.82%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,030 (15.90%) Agile
3 970 (14.98%) Customer Service
4 665 (10.27%) Mentoring
5 649 (10.02%) Analytics
6 632 (9.76%) Decision-Making
7 630 (9.73%) AI
8 616 (9.51%) CI/CD
9 604 (9.33%) DevOps
10 576 (8.89%) Project Management
11 557 (8.60%) ITIL
12 537 (8.29%) Business Intelligence
13 505 (7.80%) Computer Science
14 490 (7.57%) Stakeholder Management
15 459 (7.09%) Cybersecurity
16 412 (6.36%) Software Engineering
17 385 (5.95%) Change Management
18 379 (5.85%) CRM
19 367 (5.67%) Process Improvement
20 363 (5.61%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 947 (14.62%) Python
2 930 (14.36%) SQL
3 426 (6.58%) JavaScript
4 331 (5.11%) PowerShell
5 313 (4.83%) Java
6 303 (4.68%) C#
7 175 (2.70%) TypeScript
8 152 (2.35%) Bash
9 94 (1.45%) PHP
10 77 (1.19%) C++
11 68 (1.05%) Go
12 65 (1.00%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 50 (0.77%) Scala
14 46 (0.71%) T-SQL
15 41 (0.63%) C
16 38 (0.59%) R
17 32 (0.49%) Apex Code
17 32 (0.49%) Kotlin
18 27 (0.42%) Bicep
19 25 (0.39%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 1,350 (20.85%) Degree
2 506 (7.81%) Security Cleared
3 321 (4.96%) SC Cleared
4 238 (3.68%) Computer Science Degree
5 188 (2.90%) Microsoft Certification
6 169 (2.61%) DBS Check
7 132 (2.04%) Master's Degree
8 112 (1.73%) DV Cleared
9 103 (1.59%) CISSP
10 102 (1.58%) BPSS Clearance
11 86 (1.33%) Cisco Certification
12 83 (1.28%) A+ Certification
12 83 (1.28%) ACCA
13 71 (1.10%) CIMA
14 66 (1.02%) Network+ Certification
15 63 (0.97%) PMI Certification
16 59 (0.91%) CCNA
17 54 (0.83%) AWS Certification
18 51 (0.79%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
19 49 (0.76%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 308 (4.76%) QA
2 255 (3.94%) Data Quality
3 224 (3.46%) GDPR
4 168 (2.59%) Cyber Essentials
5 165 (2.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 138 (2.13%) SLA
7 129 (1.99%) Accessibility
8 122 (1.88%) PCI DSS
9 98 (1.51%) NIST
10 49 (0.76%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 33 (0.51%) ISO 9001
12 28 (0.43%) Actionable Recommendations
13 25 (0.39%) SOC 2
14 22 (0.34%) PMO
15 20 (0.31%) GRC
16 19 (0.29%) COBIT
17 13 (0.20%) GMP
18 11 (0.17%) WCAG
19 10 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 20000
20 9 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 765 (11.81%) Active Directory
2 294 (4.54%) Docker
3 240 (3.71%) Hyper-V
4 162 (2.50%) VMware Infrastructure
5 70 (1.08%) Terminal Server
6 27 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
7 24 (0.37%) Firmware
7 24 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
8 16 (0.25%) vSphere
9 12 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.17%) KVM
11 10 (0.15%) VMware Workstation
12 6 (0.093%) IAG
12 6 (0.093%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.077%) XenApp
14 4 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 2 (0.031%) Postfix
15 2 (0.031%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 2 (0.031%) vCloud
15 2 (0.031%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 280 (4.32%) Microsoft Intune
2 279 (4.31%) Terraform
3 220 (3.40%) Kubernetes
4 148 (2.29%) Ansible
5 82 (1.27%) Grafana
6 75 (1.16%) SCCM
7 56 (0.86%) Prometheus
8 42 (0.65%) BMC PATROL
9 28 (0.43%) Nagios
10 27 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
11 21 (0.32%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 18 (0.28%) Jamf Pro
13 15 (0.23%) Argo
14 14 (0.22%) Cisco CUCM
15 13 (0.20%) vCenter Server
15 13 (0.20%) ZABBIX
16 12 (0.19%) Autotask
16 12 (0.19%) Kibana
17 11 (0.17%) Nessus
18 10 (0.15%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,708 (26.37%) Microsoft
2 281 (4.34%) VMware
3 243 (3.75%) SAP
4 231 (3.57%) Oracle
5 165 (2.55%) Google
6 152 (2.35%) Salesforce
7 148 (2.29%) Cisco
8 136 (2.10%) Veeam
9 127 (1.96%) SolarWinds
10 123 (1.90%) Splunk
11 122 (1.88%) ServiceNow
12 101 (1.56%) Databricks
13 97 (1.50%) Adobe
14 82 (1.27%) Apple
15 71 (1.10%) Tanium
16 70 (1.08%) Brocade
16 70 (1.08%) Nimble Storage
17 58 (0.90%) Dell
18 57 (0.88%) Sage
19 50 (0.77%) HubSpot