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

6 months to
11 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 6,586 8,066 9,903
As % of all permanent jobs in England 11.31% 18.02% 15.04%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.17% 19.57% 17.07%
Number of salaries quoted 4,506 3,859 7,214
10th Percentile £26,500 £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% -9.91%
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 46,489 41,225 58,019
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 79.81% 92.12% 88.13%
Number of salaries quoted 28,280 20,343 45,933
10th Percentile £29,000 £35,000 £29,750
25th Percentile £38,750 £46,250 £40,750
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 £82,100 £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% -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 11 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 11 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 1,945 £67,500 +3.85% 855
South East -3 1,328 £42,500 -19.05% 858
North of England -17 1,325 £42,500 -10.87% 596
Midlands -15 862 £37,500 -26.83% 459
North West -13 724 £46,000 -8.00% 352
South West -2 587 £40,000 -26.82% 322
West Midlands -18 502 £42,500 -22.73% 303
Yorkshire -6 465 £36,500 -16.09% 187
East of England -3 434 £36,500 -28.39% 277
East Midlands 0 358 £34,000 -2.86% 156
North East -4 136 £41,000 -14.58% 67
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
1 333 (5.06%) Microsoft Exchange
2 284 (4.31%) SharePoint
3 80 (1.21%) Confluence
4 56 (0.85%) Apache
5 49 (0.74%) IIS
6 45 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
7 42 (0.64%) Apache Spark
8 40 (0.61%) CMS
9 28 (0.43%) WordPress
10 16 (0.24%) Palantir Foundry
11 12 (0.18%) nginx
12 10 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 9 (0.14%) SAS
14 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.11%) Apache Solr
14 7 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
15 5 (0.076%) Drupal
15 5 (0.076%) Exchange Server 2010
16 4 (0.061%) Exchange Server 2007
16 4 (0.061%) Umbraco
Applications
1 446 (6.77%) Microsoft Office
2 442 (6.71%) Microsoft Excel
3 87 (1.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 38 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
5 32 (0.49%) Maya
6 29 (0.44%) MS Visio
7 26 (0.39%) Microsoft Project
8 16 (0.24%) AutoCAD
9 13 (0.20%) Photoshop
10 12 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 9 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
12 8 (0.12%) Adobe Premiere
12 8 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
13 7 (0.11%) Chatbot
14 5 (0.076%) Adobe After Effects
14 5 (0.076%) Adobe XD
15 4 (0.061%) CATIA
15 4 (0.061%) Fusion 360
15 4 (0.061%) Trello
16 3 (0.046%) Revit
Business Applications
1 95 (1.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 76 (1.15%) Dynamics CRM
3 33 (0.50%) NetSuite
4 20 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
5 18 (0.27%) Endur
5 18 (0.27%) SAP CO
6 14 (0.21%) Dynamics NAV
6 14 (0.21%) Oracle Payables
6 14 (0.21%) Shopify
7 12 (0.18%) iTrent
7 12 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
8 11 (0.17%) Oracle Assets
9 10 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
9 10 (0.15%) SAP Business One
9 10 (0.15%) Workday HCM
10 9 (0.14%) SAP FI
10 9 (0.14%) SAP FI/CO
11 8 (0.12%) JDE EnterpriseOne
11 8 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
12 7 (0.11%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 1,475 (22.40%) Azure
2 986 (14.97%) Microsoft 365
3 753 (11.43%) AWS
4 534 (8.11%) Power Platform
5 399 (6.06%) SaaS
6 271 (4.11%) Entra ID
7 238 (3.61%) GCP
8 182 (2.76%) Azure DevOps
9 160 (2.43%) GitHub
10 150 (2.28%) Serverless
11 126 (1.91%) Power Automate
12 105 (1.59%) Dynamics 365
13 83 (1.26%) Google Workspace
14 79 (1.20%) Amazon S3
15 78 (1.18%) PowerApps
16 75 (1.14%) AWS CloudFormation
17 73 (1.11%) AWS Lambda
18 67 (1.02%) PaaS
19 64 (0.97%) Azure Data Factory
20 62 (0.94%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 441 (6.70%) DNS
2 382 (5.80%) DHCP
3 357 (5.42%) Firewall
4 222 (3.37%) VPN
5 207 (3.14%) TCP/IP
6 198 (3.01%) Wi-Fi
7 183 (2.78%) WAN
8 153 (2.32%) LAN
9 126 (1.91%) VLAN
10 110 (1.67%) Broadband
11 95 (1.44%) Wireless
12 94 (1.43%) VoIP
13 56 (0.85%) SD-WAN
14 51 (0.77%) Remote Desktop
15 50 (0.76%) Network Security
16 46 (0.70%) Internet
16 46 (0.70%) SAN
17 30 (0.46%) Unified Communications
18 29 (0.44%) Structured Cabling
19 27 (0.41%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 447 (6.79%) Power BI
2 300 (4.56%) SQL Server
3 148 (2.25%) Relational Database
4 143 (2.17%) Data Warehouse
5 134 (2.03%) Tableau
6 125 (1.90%) Amazon RDS
7 122 (1.85%) NoSQL
8 116 (1.76%) Data Lake
8 116 (1.76%) PostgreSQL
9 106 (1.61%) MySQL
10 68 (1.03%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 66 (1.00%) SAP BW
12 57 (0.87%) MongoDB
13 53 (0.80%) Amazon Redshift
13 53 (0.80%) Metadata
14 47 (0.71%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 43 (0.65%) DynamoDB
16 42 (0.64%) Azure SQL Database
17 41 (0.62%) Big Data
18 35 (0.53%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 271 (4.11%) Git
2 236 (3.58%) JIRA
3 96 (1.46%) Jenkins
4 83 (1.26%) GitLab
5 56 (0.85%) Selenium
6 25 (0.38%) Visual Studio
7 21 (0.32%) Maven
8 20 (0.30%) Bitbucket
9 19 (0.29%) Burp Suite
9 19 (0.29%) Cypress.io
9 19 (0.29%) Metasploit
9 19 (0.29%) TeamCity
10 18 (0.27%) Robot Framework
11 17 (0.26%) JUnit
11 17 (0.26%) LabVIEW
12 16 (0.24%) Octopus Deploy
13 14 (0.21%) Cucumber
13 14 (0.21%) Snyk
13 14 (0.21%) SonarQube
14 13 (0.20%) WebDriver
General
1 3,443 (52.28%) Social Skills
2 2,002 (30.40%) Analytical Skills
3 1,545 (23.46%) Finance
4 398 (6.04%) Organisational Skills
5 368 (5.59%) Marketing
6 348 (5.28%) Law
7 333 (5.06%) Retail
8 311 (4.72%) Manufacturing
9 299 (4.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 292 (4.43%) Legal
11 280 (4.25%) Public Sector
12 270 (4.10%) Banking
13 185 (2.81%) Presentation Skills
14 180 (2.73%) Telecoms
15 152 (2.31%) Electronics
16 115 (1.75%) Games
17 92 (1.40%) Documentation Skills
18 90 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
19 88 (1.34%) Financial Institution
20 85 (1.29%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 1,043 (15.84%) Analyst
2 815 (12.37%) Senior
3 747 (11.34%) IT Support
4 649 (9.85%) Support Engineer
5 596 (9.05%) Developer
6 437 (6.64%) Lead
7 341 (5.18%) IT Engineer
8 339 (5.15%) Support Analyst
9 287 (4.36%) IT Support Engineer
10 266 (4.04%) Technical Support
11 253 (3.84%) Business Analyst
12 229 (3.48%) Consultant
13 224 (3.40%) Architect
14 190 (2.88%) Support Technician
15 187 (2.84%) 2nd Line Support
16 182 (2.76%) Technical Engineer
17 175 (2.66%) Technical Support Engineer
18 167 (2.54%) IT Analyst
19 158 (2.40%) Software Engineer
20 157 (2.38%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 286 (4.34%) .NET
2 262 (3.98%) React
3 242 (3.67%) HTML
4 194 (2.95%) CSS
5 152 (2.31%) Node.js
6 148 (2.25%) REST
7 114 (1.73%) RESTful
8 95 (1.44%) AngularJS
9 70 (1.06%) Vue
10 69 (1.05%) Spring
11 66 (1.00%) JSON
11 66 (1.00%) Middleware
12 64 (0.97%) SOAP
13 63 (0.96%) XML
14 61 (0.93%) Kafka
15 58 (0.88%) .NET Framework
16 52 (0.79%) Django
17 51 (0.77%) ASP.NET
18 48 (0.73%) Flask
19 46 (0.70%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 528 (8.02%) Driving Licence
2 502 (7.62%) Onboarding
3 416 (6.32%) Self-Motivation
4 212 (3.22%) Management Information System
5 196 (2.98%) Analytical Mindset
6 179 (2.72%) Cloud Native
7 170 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
8 151 (2.29%) Product Ownership
9 136 (2.06%) Data Centre
10 118 (1.79%) Enterprise Software
11 88 (1.34%) Mobile App
12 87 (1.32%) Distributed Systems
13 70 (1.06%) Data Structures
14 68 (1.03%) Low-Code
15 66 (1.00%) Algorithms
16 64 (0.97%) Virtual Team
17 57 (0.87%) Social Media
18 56 (0.85%) FMCG
19 55 (0.84%) EPoS
20 52 (0.79%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 1,121 (17.02%) Windows
2 462 (7.01%) Windows Server
3 422 (6.41%) Linux
4 160 (2.43%) Windows 10
5 142 (2.16%) Windows Server 2016
6 96 (1.46%) Mac OS
7 88 (1.34%) Android
8 73 (1.11%) Apple iOS
9 58 (0.88%) Windows Server 2019
10 56 (0.85%) Unix
11 35 (0.53%) Windows Server 2012
12 28 (0.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 26 (0.39%) Windows 7
14 20 (0.30%) VMS
15 14 (0.21%) CentOS
16 10 (0.15%) Ubuntu
17 8 (0.12%) Windows 8
18 7 (0.11%) Debian
18 7 (0.11%) Mac OS X
18 7 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,119 (16.99%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,078 (16.37%) Agile
3 981 (14.90%) Customer Service
4 748 (11.36%) Analytics
5 669 (10.16%) Mentoring
6 649 (9.85%) AI
7 635 (9.64%) Decision-Making
8 619 (9.40%) Business Intelligence
9 601 (9.13%) Project Management
10 595 (9.03%) DevOps
11 576 (8.75%) CI/CD
12 541 (8.21%) ITIL
13 526 (7.99%) Computer Science
14 493 (7.49%) Stakeholder Management
15 476 (7.23%) Cybersecurity
16 436 (6.62%) Change Management
17 433 (6.57%) ERP
18 417 (6.33%) Software Engineering
19 394 (5.98%) CRM
20 377 (5.72%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 964 (14.64%) SQL
2 935 (14.20%) Python
3 422 (6.41%) JavaScript
4 325 (4.93%) PowerShell
5 324 (4.92%) C#
6 322 (4.89%) Java
7 172 (2.61%) TypeScript
8 138 (2.10%) Bash
9 106 (1.61%) PHP
10 83 (1.26%) C++
11 62 (0.94%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 52 (0.79%) Go
13 50 (0.76%) T-SQL
14 46 (0.70%) C
15 41 (0.62%) Scala
16 37 (0.56%) R
17 27 (0.41%) Bicep
18 25 (0.38%) Apex Code
18 25 (0.38%) Kotlin
19 24 (0.36%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 1,527 (23.19%) Degree
2 536 (8.14%) Security Cleared
3 344 (5.22%) SC Cleared
4 250 (3.80%) Computer Science Degree
5 184 (2.79%) Microsoft Certification
6 166 (2.52%) Master's Degree
7 164 (2.49%) DBS Check
8 119 (1.81%) DV Cleared
9 104 (1.58%) CISSP
10 89 (1.35%) BPSS Clearance
11 80 (1.21%) A+ Certification
12 79 (1.20%) ACCA
13 76 (1.15%) Cisco Certification
14 70 (1.06%) Network+ Certification
15 65 (0.99%) CIMA
16 59 (0.90%) CISM
17 57 (0.87%) PMI Certification
18 55 (0.84%) AWS Certification
19 52 (0.79%) CCNA
20 51 (0.77%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 339 (5.15%) QA
2 323 (4.90%) Data Quality
3 222 (3.37%) GDPR
4 190 (2.88%) Cyber Essentials
5 170 (2.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 143 (2.17%) PCI DSS
7 139 (2.11%) Accessibility
8 131 (1.99%) SLA
9 88 (1.34%) NIST
10 47 (0.71%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 33 (0.50%) ISO 9001
12 26 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
13 22 (0.33%) SOC 2
14 20 (0.30%) PMO
15 17 (0.26%) COBIT
16 16 (0.24%) GRC
17 12 (0.18%) WCAG
18 10 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 20000
19 9 (0.14%) ISO 13485
20 8 (0.12%) ISAE 3402
System Software
1 789 (11.98%) Active Directory
2 271 (4.11%) Docker
3 262 (3.98%) Hyper-V
4 152 (2.31%) VMware Infrastructure
5 98 (1.49%) Terminal Server
6 28 (0.43%) Firmware
7 24 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
7 24 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
8 18 (0.27%) vSphere
9 16 (0.24%) VMware ESXi
10 9 (0.14%) KVM
11 7 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
11 7 (0.11%) VMware Workstation
12 4 (0.061%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 3 (0.046%) IAG
13 3 (0.046%) vCloud
14 2 (0.030%) HDFS
14 2 (0.030%) RHEV
14 2 (0.030%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 2 (0.030%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 277 (4.21%) Terraform
2 270 (4.10%) Microsoft Intune
3 215 (3.26%) Kubernetes
4 141 (2.14%) Ansible
5 78 (1.18%) Grafana
6 65 (0.99%) SCCM
7 49 (0.74%) Prometheus
8 42 (0.64%) BMC PATROL
9 30 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
10 21 (0.32%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 21 (0.32%) Nagios
11 17 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
12 15 (0.23%) Argo
12 15 (0.23%) vCenter Server
13 14 (0.21%) Cisco CUCM
14 12 (0.18%) FortiGate
14 12 (0.18%) Kibana
15 11 (0.17%) Nessus
16 10 (0.15%) Autotask
16 10 (0.15%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,708 (25.93%) Microsoft
2 377 (5.72%) SAP
3 300 (4.56%) VMware
4 261 (3.96%) Oracle
5 168 (2.55%) Salesforce
6 160 (2.43%) Veeam
7 151 (2.29%) Google
8 147 (2.23%) Splunk
9 143 (2.17%) Cisco
10 141 (2.14%) SolarWinds
11 120 (1.82%) ServiceNow
12 105 (1.59%) Adobe
13 102 (1.55%) Databricks
14 99 (1.50%) Tanium
15 98 (1.49%) Brocade
15 98 (1.49%) Nimble Storage
16 71 (1.08%) Apple
17 60 (0.91%) Dell
18 56 (0.85%) Sage
19 52 (0.79%) HubSpot