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

6 months to
18 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 4 6
Rank change year-on-year -8 +2 +7
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,291 8,083 12,663
As % of all permanent jobs in England 7.70% 20.46% 14.96%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.45% 21.92% 17.63%
Number of salaries quoted 4,441 4,546 8,472
10th Percentile £27,500 £27,500 £26,110
25th Percentile £31,250 £34,250 £32,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £50,967 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -6.80% +1.93% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £71,250 £68,000
90th Percentile £87,500 £88,750 £85,000
UK median annual salary £47,500 £50,500 £49,500
% change year-on-year -5.94% +2.02% -10.00%

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 60,212 36,881 71,815
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.70% 93.36% 84.87%
Number of salaries quoted 39,696 20,356 53,809
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,000 £29,000
25th Percentile £41,250 £41,250 £39,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year - +9.09% -12.00%
75th Percentile £80,000 £80,000 £73,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £102,500 £93,750
UK median annual salary £60,000 £59,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +1.69% +7.27% -9.84%

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 18 May 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 18 May 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 1,892 £70,000 +7.69% 999
North of England -12 1,300 £42,500 -5.56% 666
South East -8 1,132 £46,000 -2.13% 787
Midlands -22 871 £40,000 -11.11% 418
North West -18 673 £45,000 -5.26% 353
South West -8 537 £43,500 +2.69% 308
West Midlands -25 513 £42,500 -11.46% 253
Yorkshire -13 496 £41,000 +2.50% 228
East of England -7 470 £41,000 -3.53% 281
East Midlands -11 355 £35,000 -10.83% 165
North East -16 131 £48,445 +7.65% 92
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
1 319 (5.07%) Microsoft Exchange
2 310 (4.93%) SharePoint
3 68 (1.08%) Confluence
4 61 (0.97%) CMS
5 54 (0.86%) Apache
6 40 (0.64%) Apache Airflow
7 31 (0.49%) Apache Spark
8 28 (0.45%) IIS
8 28 (0.45%) WordPress
9 14 (0.22%) SAS
10 13 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 10 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2013
12 8 (0.13%) Drupal
12 8 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2007
12 8 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2010
12 8 (0.13%) nginx
13 5 (0.079%) OpenEdge
13 5 (0.079%) OpenStack
13 5 (0.079%) Skype for Business
14 4 (0.064%) Tomcat
Applications
1 405 (6.44%) Microsoft Office
2 323 (5.13%) Microsoft Excel
3 51 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 48 (0.76%) Spreadsheet
5 35 (0.56%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.40%) Microsoft Project
7 14 (0.22%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
8 9 (0.14%) Fusion 360
8 9 (0.14%) Maya
9 8 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.13%) AutoCAD
10 7 (0.11%) SOLIDWORKS
11 6 (0.095%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.064%) Simulink
13 3 (0.048%) Acrobat
13 3 (0.048%) Adobe XD
13 3 (0.048%) Autodesk Inventor
13 3 (0.048%) Trello
14 2 (0.032%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 59 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
1 59 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.51%) NetSuite
3 23 (0.37%) Salesforce CRM
4 19 (0.30%) Shopify
5 16 (0.25%) Magento
6 15 (0.24%) Dynamics NAV
7 14 (0.22%) SAP CO
7 14 (0.22%) SAP ERP
8 13 (0.21%) iTrent
9 11 (0.17%) Maximo
9 11 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
10 10 (0.16%) Endur
11 9 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
11 9 (0.14%) Workday HCM
12 7 (0.11%) Elite 3E
12 7 (0.11%) IBM Planning Analytics
12 7 (0.11%) Q-Pulse
12 7 (0.11%) SAP Business One
13 6 (0.095%) Sage 50
Cloud Services
1 1,314 (20.89%) Azure
2 954 (15.16%) Microsoft 365
3 793 (12.61%) AWS
4 468 (7.44%) Power Platform
5 314 (4.99%) SaaS
6 284 (4.51%) GCP
7 260 (4.13%) Entra ID
8 169 (2.69%) Serverless
9 163 (2.59%) Azure DevOps
10 147 (2.34%) GitHub
11 121 (1.92%) Dynamics 365
12 115 (1.83%) Power Automate
13 91 (1.45%) Amazon S3
14 88 (1.40%) PowerApps
15 86 (1.37%) Google Workspace
16 77 (1.22%) GitHub Actions
17 76 (1.21%) AWS Lambda
17 76 (1.21%) PaaS
18 73 (1.16%) IaaS
19 69 (1.10%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 376 (5.98%) Firewall
2 352 (5.60%) DNS
3 284 (4.51%) DHCP
4 248 (3.94%) VPN
5 214 (3.40%) WAN
6 187 (2.97%) Wi-Fi
7 186 (2.96%) LAN
8 182 (2.89%) TCP/IP
9 171 (2.72%) Broadband
10 120 (1.91%) Wireless
11 112 (1.78%) VLAN
12 93 (1.48%) VoIP
13 67 (1.07%) Network Security
14 65 (1.03%) SD-WAN
15 54 (0.86%) SAN
16 41 (0.65%) Internet
17 39 (0.62%) BGP
18 38 (0.60%) OSPF
19 35 (0.56%) HTTP
20 31 (0.49%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 376 (5.98%) Power BI
2 274 (4.36%) SQL Server
3 117 (1.86%) Data Warehouse
4 104 (1.65%) Tableau
5 102 (1.62%) NoSQL
6 89 (1.41%) PostgreSQL
7 82 (1.30%) MySQL
8 77 (1.22%) Relational Database
9 72 (1.14%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 64 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 59 (0.94%) Amazon RDS
12 53 (0.84%) Power Query
13 47 (0.75%) MongoDB
14 46 (0.73%) Amazon Redshift
15 45 (0.72%) Big Data
16 43 (0.68%) DynamoDB
17 36 (0.57%) Data Lake
18 34 (0.54%) Metadata
19 33 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
20 26 (0.41%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 280 (4.45%) Git
2 199 (3.16%) JIRA
3 106 (1.68%) GitLab
4 105 (1.67%) Jenkins
5 33 (0.52%) Selenium
6 26 (0.41%) Rational DOORS
7 22 (0.35%) Maven
8 21 (0.33%) Chocolatey
8 21 (0.33%) Cypress.io
8 21 (0.33%) Visual Studio
9 19 (0.30%) Cucumber
10 18 (0.29%) SonarQube
11 17 (0.27%) CircleCI
12 15 (0.24%) Bitbucket
12 15 (0.24%) Burp Suite
12 15 (0.24%) Metasploit
12 15 (0.24%) TeamCity
13 13 (0.21%) LabVIEW
13 13 (0.21%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
14 12 (0.19%) JUnit
General
1 2,856 (45.40%) Social Skills
2 1,847 (29.36%) Analytical Skills
3 1,314 (20.89%) Finance
4 401 (6.37%) Organisational Skills
5 359 (5.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 328 (5.21%) Manufacturing
7 327 (5.20%) Marketing
8 322 (5.12%) Law
9 267 (4.24%) Retail
10 266 (4.23%) Banking
11 263 (4.18%) Public Sector
12 260 (4.13%) Legal
13 156 (2.48%) Telecoms
14 135 (2.15%) Electronics
15 134 (2.13%) Presentation Skills
16 102 (1.62%) Documentation Skills
17 86 (1.37%) Games
17 86 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
18 79 (1.26%) Advertising
19 71 (1.13%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 841 (13.37%) Analyst
2 785 (12.48%) Senior
3 648 (10.30%) IT Support
4 586 (9.31%) Developer
5 562 (8.93%) Support Engineer
6 405 (6.44%) Lead
7 383 (6.09%) IT Engineer
8 297 (4.72%) IT Support Engineer
9 265 (4.21%) Consultant
10 242 (3.85%) Support Analyst
11 220 (3.50%) Architect
12 219 (3.48%) Support Technician
13 206 (3.27%) Software Engineer
14 193 (3.07%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 181 (2.88%) Systems Engineer
16 168 (2.67%) Technical Support
17 165 (2.62%) Business Analyst
18 164 (2.61%) IT Technician
19 159 (2.53%) 2nd Line Support
20 149 (2.37%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 244 (3.88%) .NET
2 237 (3.77%) React
3 211 (3.35%) HTML
4 179 (2.85%) CSS
5 155 (2.46%) REST
6 128 (2.03%) Node.js
7 117 (1.86%) RESTful
8 90 (1.43%) SOAP
9 85 (1.35%) Middleware
10 75 (1.19%) Spring
11 71 (1.13%) JSON
12 67 (1.07%) XML
13 62 (0.99%) Vue
14 59 (0.94%) AngularJS
14 59 (0.94%) Kafka
15 55 (0.87%) gRPC
15 55 (0.87%) OAuth
16 54 (0.86%) Spring Boot
17 49 (0.78%) EDI
18 46 (0.73%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 382 (6.07%) Driving Licence
2 378 (6.01%) Onboarding
3 300 (4.77%) Self-Motivation
4 206 (3.27%) Management Information System
5 201 (3.20%) Cloud Native
6 172 (2.73%) Product Ownership
7 159 (2.53%) Data Centre
8 149 (2.37%) Distributed Systems
9 136 (2.16%) Analytical Mindset
10 105 (1.67%) Legacy Systems
11 92 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
12 90 (1.43%) Mobile App
12 90 (1.43%) Social Media
13 78 (1.24%) Data Structures
14 69 (1.10%) Low-Code
15 66 (1.05%) Algorithms
16 64 (1.02%) Virtual Team
17 63 (1.00%) Security Posture
18 58 (0.92%) Video\Live Streaming
19 51 (0.81%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 963 (15.31%) Windows
2 382 (6.07%) Linux
3 374 (5.95%) Windows Server
4 160 (2.54%) Windows 10
5 105 (1.67%) Android
6 92 (1.46%) Windows Server 2016
7 84 (1.34%) Apple iOS
8 79 (1.26%) Mac OS
9 57 (0.91%) Windows Server 2019
10 45 (0.72%) Unix
11 41 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 32 (0.51%) CentOS
12 32 (0.51%) Windows Server 2012
13 27 (0.43%) Ubuntu
14 24 (0.38%) VMS
15 16 (0.25%) Windows 7
16 14 (0.22%) Mac OS X
17 10 (0.16%) Debian
18 7 (0.11%) Windows 8
18 7 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,173 (18.65%) Continuous Improvement
2 996 (15.83%) Agile
3 884 (14.05%) Customer Service
4 690 (10.97%) AI
5 688 (10.94%) CI/CD
6 683 (10.86%) Mentoring
7 654 (10.40%) Decision-Making
8 607 (9.65%) DevOps
9 604 (9.60%) Analytics
10 531 (8.44%) ITIL
11 509 (8.09%) Stakeholder Management
12 497 (7.90%) Software Engineering
13 481 (7.65%) Computer Science
14 475 (7.55%) Project Management
15 470 (7.47%) Roadmaps
16 458 (7.28%) Business Intelligence
17 428 (6.80%) Coaching
17 428 (6.80%) Cybersecurity
18 368 (5.85%) Collaborative Working
19 354 (5.63%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 956 (15.20%) Python
2 861 (13.69%) SQL
3 420 (6.68%) JavaScript
4 323 (5.13%) Java
5 289 (4.59%) C#
6 283 (4.50%) PowerShell
7 192 (3.05%) TypeScript
8 156 (2.48%) Bash
9 116 (1.84%) C++
10 92 (1.46%) PHP
11 85 (1.35%) Go
12 61 (0.97%) Scala
13 57 (0.91%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 55 (0.87%) C
15 41 (0.65%) T-SQL
16 40 (0.64%) Rust
17 39 (0.62%) R
18 37 (0.59%) PL/SQL
19 35 (0.56%) Apex Code
19 35 (0.56%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,122 (17.84%) Degree
2 448 (7.12%) Security Cleared
3 287 (4.56%) SC Cleared
4 250 (3.97%) Computer Science Degree
5 216 (3.43%) DBS Check
6 184 (2.92%) Microsoft Certification
7 114 (1.81%) Master's Degree
8 110 (1.75%) CISSP
9 109 (1.73%) DV Cleared
10 103 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
11 88 (1.40%) A+ Certification
12 86 (1.37%) PMI Certification
13 84 (1.34%) BPSS Clearance
14 75 (1.19%) Azure Certification
15 72 (1.14%) ACCA
16 71 (1.13%) PMP
17 65 (1.03%) CCNA
17 65 (1.03%) CIMA
18 57 (0.91%) Network+ Certification
19 48 (0.76%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 322 (5.12%) QA
2 288 (4.58%) Data Quality
3 252 (4.01%) GDPR
4 193 (3.07%) SLA
5 148 (2.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 137 (2.18%) NIST
7 134 (2.13%) Cyber Essentials
8 125 (1.99%) Accessibility
9 104 (1.65%) PCI DSS
10 43 (0.68%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 34 (0.54%) ISO 9001
12 31 (0.49%) PMO
12 31 (0.49%) SOC 2
13 27 (0.43%) GRC
14 25 (0.40%) COBIT
15 19 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
16 14 (0.22%) GMP
17 12 (0.19%) IFRS
17 12 (0.19%) TickIT
18 11 (0.17%) PERC
System Software
1 650 (10.33%) Active Directory
2 279 (4.43%) Docker
3 173 (2.75%) VMware Infrastructure
4 172 (2.73%) Hyper-V
5 42 (0.67%) Virtual Desktop
6 35 (0.56%) Terminal Server
7 34 (0.54%) Firmware
8 22 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
9 20 (0.32%) vSphere
10 15 (0.24%) KVM
11 13 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
12 10 (0.16%) IAG
13 7 (0.11%) VMware Workstation
14 6 (0.095%) XenApp
15 4 (0.064%) Embedded Firmware
15 4 (0.064%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 4 (0.064%) VMware NSX
16 3 (0.048%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 3 (0.048%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.048%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 295 (4.69%) Terraform
2 236 (3.75%) Microsoft Intune
3 231 (3.67%) Kubernetes
4 147 (2.34%) Ansible
5 89 (1.41%) Grafana
6 82 (1.30%) SCCM
7 53 (0.84%) Prometheus
8 37 (0.59%) Nagios
9 33 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (0.35%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 18 (0.29%) Kibana
12 14 (0.22%) Autotask
13 13 (0.21%) Puppet
14 12 (0.19%) Argo
14 12 (0.19%) vCenter Server
15 11 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
15 11 (0.17%) Nessus
16 10 (0.16%) WSUS
16 10 (0.16%) ZABBIX
17 9 (0.14%) logstash
Vendors
1 1,646 (26.16%) Microsoft
2 249 (3.96%) VMware
3 177 (2.81%) Oracle
4 164 (2.61%) Google
5 153 (2.43%) SAP
6 140 (2.23%) Cisco
7 136 (2.16%) Salesforce
8 128 (2.03%) ServiceNow
9 106 (1.68%) Databricks
10 104 (1.65%) SolarWinds
11 90 (1.43%) Veeam
12 84 (1.34%) Splunk
13 79 (1.26%) Apple
14 71 (1.13%) Adobe
15 63 (1.00%) Dell
16 56 (0.89%) Red Hat
17 50 (0.79%) Dynatrace
18 48 (0.76%) Meraki
19 45 (0.72%) Typelevel
20 44 (0.70%) Fortinet