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

6 months to
27 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 6,378 6,923 11,667
As % of all permanent jobs in England 9.28% 19.07% 15.06%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.01% 20.37% 17.40%
Number of salaries quoted 4,431 4,308 8,220
10th Percentile £27,000 £29,000 £26,250
25th Percentile £31,250 £37,500 £33,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -14.55% +10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £67,500 £75,000 £68,750
90th Percentile £86,253 £90,000 £87,500
UK median annual salary £45,500 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -17.27% +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 53,090 33,986 67,038
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 77.23% 93.60% 86.51%
Number of salaries quoted 33,080 20,170 51,900
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,500 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £44,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -12.00%
75th Percentile £77,500 £81,250 £73,750
90th Percentile £98,750 £102,500 £95,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -11.29%

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 27 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 27 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 -3 1,969 £67,500 +3.85% 986
North of England -17 1,288 £41,000 -10.87% 662
South East -7 1,190 £45,000 -10.86% 802
Midlands -20 854 £37,500 -21.88% 478
North West -17 648 £41,500 -14.43% 365
South West -5 539 £43,500 -8.42% 308
Yorkshire -6 510 £35,000 -17.65% 222
West Midlands -25 506 £42,500 -20.84% 278
East of England -8 435 £40,000 -20.00% 288
East Midlands -2 345 £35,000 -6.67% 199
North East -9 130 £45,000 - 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
1 333 (5.22%) Microsoft Exchange
2 285 (4.47%) SharePoint
3 78 (1.22%) Confluence
4 58 (0.91%) CMS
5 52 (0.82%) Apache
6 45 (0.71%) Apache Airflow
7 37 (0.58%) Apache Spark
8 36 (0.56%) IIS
9 28 (0.44%) WordPress
10 17 (0.27%) SAS
11 14 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
12 12 (0.19%) nginx
13 10 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2013
14 9 (0.14%) Anypoint
14 9 (0.14%) Drupal
14 9 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2007
14 9 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2010
15 7 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 4 (0.063%) OpenStack
16 4 (0.063%) Totara
Applications
1 449 (7.04%) Microsoft Office
2 341 (5.35%) Microsoft Excel
3 72 (1.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 36 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
5 33 (0.52%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
7 15 (0.24%) Maya
8 14 (0.22%) AutoCAD
9 12 (0.19%) Photoshop
10 10 (0.16%) Adobe Illustrator
10 10 (0.16%) Chatbot
11 8 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 7 (0.11%) SOLIDWORKS
13 6 (0.094%) Adobe XD
14 5 (0.078%) Fusion 360
15 4 (0.063%) Trello
16 3 (0.047%) Elementor
16 3 (0.047%) InDesign
16 3 (0.047%) Simulink
17 2 (0.031%) Acrobat
Business Applications
1 61 (0.96%) Dynamics CRM
2 42 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
3 31 (0.49%) NetSuite
4 21 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
5 17 (0.27%) Endur
5 17 (0.27%) SAP CO
5 17 (0.27%) Shopify
6 14 (0.22%) Dynamics NAV
7 11 (0.17%) Maximo
8 10 (0.16%) iTrent
8 10 (0.16%) Workday HCM
9 9 (0.14%) SAP ERP
10 8 (0.13%) SAP FI
10 8 (0.13%) SAP FI/CO
11 7 (0.11%) IBM Planning Analytics
11 7 (0.11%) Magento
11 7 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
11 7 (0.11%) Q-Pulse
11 7 (0.11%) Sage 200
12 6 (0.094%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 1,384 (21.70%) Azure
2 981 (15.38%) Microsoft 365
3 788 (12.35%) AWS
4 454 (7.12%) Power Platform
5 374 (5.86%) SaaS
6 287 (4.50%) GCP
7 270 (4.23%) Entra ID
8 170 (2.67%) GitHub
9 167 (2.62%) Azure DevOps
9 167 (2.62%) Serverless
10 122 (1.91%) Power Automate
11 102 (1.60%) Dynamics 365
12 89 (1.40%) Google Workspace
13 88 (1.38%) Amazon S3
14 81 (1.27%) AWS Lambda
14 81 (1.27%) GitHub Actions
15 80 (1.25%) AWS CloudFormation
16 77 (1.21%) Azure Data Factory
16 77 (1.21%) PowerApps
17 75 (1.18%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 411 (6.44%) DNS
2 380 (5.96%) Firewall
3 348 (5.46%) DHCP
4 247 (3.87%) VPN
5 213 (3.34%) WAN
6 210 (3.29%) TCP/IP
7 207 (3.25%) Wi-Fi
8 178 (2.79%) Broadband
8 178 (2.79%) LAN
9 128 (2.01%) VLAN
10 98 (1.54%) Wireless
11 82 (1.29%) VoIP
12 69 (1.08%) SD-WAN
13 54 (0.85%) Network Security
14 44 (0.69%) SAN
15 40 (0.63%) Remote Desktop
16 38 (0.60%) Internet
17 32 (0.50%) Structured Cabling
18 29 (0.45%) BGP
19 28 (0.44%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 377 (5.91%) Power BI
2 280 (4.39%) SQL Server
3 134 (2.10%) Data Warehouse
4 131 (2.05%) Tableau
5 121 (1.90%) NoSQL
6 112 (1.76%) Relational Database
7 110 (1.72%) PostgreSQL
8 94 (1.47%) Amazon RDS
9 93 (1.46%) MySQL
10 64 (1.00%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 55 (0.86%) MongoDB
12 48 (0.75%) Power Query
12 48 (0.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 47 (0.74%) DynamoDB
14 46 (0.72%) Amazon Redshift
14 46 (0.72%) Azure SQL Database
15 43 (0.67%) Data Lake
15 43 (0.67%) Metadata
16 41 (0.64%) Big Data
17 26 (0.41%) Redis
Development Applications
1 287 (4.50%) Git
2 232 (3.64%) JIRA
3 111 (1.74%) Jenkins
4 96 (1.51%) GitLab
5 54 (0.85%) Selenium
6 30 (0.47%) Visual Studio
7 24 (0.38%) Cypress.io
8 20 (0.31%) Maven
9 19 (0.30%) Burp Suite
9 19 (0.30%) Metasploit
10 18 (0.28%) Chocolatey
10 18 (0.28%) LabVIEW
10 18 (0.28%) Robot Framework
11 17 (0.27%) CircleCI
11 17 (0.27%) Rational DOORS
11 17 (0.27%) TeamCity
12 16 (0.25%) Cucumber
13 15 (0.24%) Bitbucket
13 15 (0.24%) JUnit
13 15 (0.24%) SonarQube
General
1 3,146 (49.33%) Social Skills
2 1,947 (30.53%) Analytical Skills
3 1,404 (22.01%) Finance
4 444 (6.96%) Organisational Skills
5 366 (5.74%) Marketing
6 349 (5.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 311 (4.88%) Law
8 309 (4.84%) Retail
9 300 (4.70%) Banking
10 298 (4.67%) Legal
11 287 (4.50%) Public Sector
12 274 (4.30%) Manufacturing
13 163 (2.56%) Presentation Skills
14 152 (2.38%) Telecoms
15 141 (2.21%) Electronics
16 102 (1.60%) Documentation Skills
17 98 (1.54%) Games
18 84 (1.32%) Financial Institution
19 81 (1.27%) Influencing Skills
20 71 (1.11%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 935 (14.66%) Analyst
2 755 (11.84%) IT Support
3 751 (11.77%) Senior
4 640 (10.03%) Support Engineer
5 593 (9.30%) Developer
6 381 (5.97%) Lead
7 380 (5.96%) IT Engineer
8 320 (5.02%) IT Support Engineer
9 304 (4.77%) Support Analyst
10 246 (3.86%) Consultant
11 217 (3.40%) Architect
12 216 (3.39%) Support Technician
13 214 (3.36%) Business Analyst
14 195 (3.06%) Technical Support
15 192 (3.01%) 2nd Line Support
16 179 (2.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 170 (2.67%) Software Engineer
18 165 (2.59%) IT Technician
19 159 (2.49%) Systems Engineer
20 150 (2.35%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 250 (3.92%) React
2 247 (3.87%) .NET
3 219 (3.43%) HTML
4 178 (2.79%) CSS
5 162 (2.54%) Node.js
6 117 (1.83%) REST
7 115 (1.80%) RESTful
8 70 (1.10%) Vue
9 69 (1.08%) Spring
10 68 (1.07%) AngularJS
11 66 (1.03%) Kafka
12 64 (1.00%) Middleware
13 63 (0.99%) Django
14 57 (0.89%) SOAP
15 56 (0.88%) XML
16 55 (0.86%) JSON
17 54 (0.85%) Flask
18 48 (0.75%) Spring Boot
19 47 (0.74%) FastAPI
20 44 (0.69%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 448 (7.02%) Driving Licence
2 436 (6.84%) Onboarding
3 382 (5.99%) Self-Motivation
4 202 (3.17%) Management Information System
5 178 (2.79%) Cloud Native
6 152 (2.38%) Analytical Mindset
7 141 (2.21%) Legacy Systems
8 140 (2.20%) Product Ownership
9 134 (2.10%) Data Centre
10 133 (2.09%) Distributed Systems
11 105 (1.65%) Enterprise Software
12 95 (1.49%) Mobile App
13 93 (1.46%) Social Media
14 84 (1.32%) Data Structures
15 72 (1.13%) Low-Code
16 61 (0.96%) Security Posture
17 57 (0.89%) Virtual Team
18 56 (0.88%) Algorithms
19 50 (0.78%) EPoS
20 49 (0.77%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 1,116 (17.50%) Windows
2 424 (6.65%) Windows Server
3 417 (6.54%) Linux
4 172 (2.70%) Windows 10
5 123 (1.93%) Windows Server 2016
6 111 (1.74%) Android
7 90 (1.41%) Mac OS
8 87 (1.36%) Apple iOS
9 61 (0.96%) Unix
10 58 (0.91%) Windows Server 2019
11 39 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 37 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
13 29 (0.45%) CentOS
14 23 (0.36%) Ubuntu
15 22 (0.34%) Windows 7
16 17 (0.27%) VMS
17 13 (0.20%) Mac OS X
18 11 (0.17%) Windows 8
19 9 (0.14%) Debian
20 8 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,168 (18.31%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,044 (16.37%) Agile
3 953 (14.94%) Customer Service
4 688 (10.79%) Mentoring
5 687 (10.77%) AI
6 653 (10.24%) CI/CD
7 649 (10.18%) Decision-Making
8 634 (9.94%) Analytics
9 614 (9.63%) DevOps
10 605 (9.49%) ITIL
11 552 (8.65%) Project Management
12 526 (8.25%) Business Intelligence
13 506 (7.93%) Computer Science
14 483 (7.57%) Stakeholder Management
15 427 (6.69%) Software Engineering
16 425 (6.66%) Cybersecurity
17 392 (6.15%) Roadmaps
18 385 (6.04%) Coaching
19 368 (5.77%) Process Improvement
20 362 (5.68%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 982 (15.40%) Python
2 893 (14.00%) SQL
3 434 (6.80%) JavaScript
4 320 (5.02%) PowerShell
5 317 (4.97%) Java
6 268 (4.20%) C#
7 181 (2.84%) TypeScript
8 155 (2.43%) Bash
9 88 (1.38%) PHP
10 83 (1.30%) C++
11 78 (1.22%) Go
12 71 (1.11%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 59 (0.93%) Scala
14 47 (0.74%) C
15 46 (0.72%) T-SQL
16 40 (0.63%) Kotlin
17 34 (0.53%) R
18 33 (0.52%) Apex Code
19 27 (0.42%) Bicep
19 27 (0.42%) Rust
Qualifications
1 1,309 (20.52%) Degree
2 486 (7.62%) Security Cleared
3 303 (4.75%) SC Cleared
4 250 (3.92%) Computer Science Degree
5 188 (2.95%) DBS Check
6 184 (2.88%) Microsoft Certification
7 133 (2.09%) Master's Degree
8 118 (1.85%) DV Cleared
9 106 (1.66%) CISSP
10 91 (1.43%) Cisco Certification
11 86 (1.35%) BPSS Clearance
12 85 (1.33%) ACCA
13 81 (1.27%) A+ Certification
14 75 (1.18%) CIMA
15 70 (1.10%) PMI Certification
16 66 (1.03%) CCNA
17 59 (0.93%) Network+ Certification
18 56 (0.88%) AWS Certification
18 56 (0.88%) PMP
19 51 (0.80%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 306 (4.80%) QA
2 274 (4.30%) Data Quality
3 241 (3.78%) GDPR
4 162 (2.54%) Cyber Essentials
5 160 (2.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 147 (2.30%) SLA
7 124 (1.94%) PCI DSS
8 117 (1.83%) Accessibility
8 117 (1.83%) NIST
9 51 (0.80%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 32 (0.50%) SOC 2
11 31 (0.49%) ISO 9001
12 29 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
13 26 (0.41%) PMO
14 20 (0.31%) COBIT
14 20 (0.31%) GRC
15 14 (0.22%) GMP
16 12 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
17 10 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 10 (0.16%) ITGC
System Software
1 754 (11.82%) Active Directory
2 299 (4.69%) Docker
3 224 (3.51%) Hyper-V
4 172 (2.70%) VMware Infrastructure
5 63 (0.99%) Terminal Server
6 35 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
7 33 (0.52%) Firmware
8 31 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
9 14 (0.22%) KVM
9 14 (0.22%) vSphere
10 10 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
10 10 (0.16%) VMware Workstation
11 7 (0.11%) IAG
11 7 (0.11%) XenApp
12 6 (0.094%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.063%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 4 (0.063%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 2 (0.031%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.031%) VMware NSX
15 1 (0.016%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 290 (4.55%) Terraform
2 266 (4.17%) Microsoft Intune
3 224 (3.51%) Kubernetes
4 158 (2.48%) Ansible
5 93 (1.46%) Grafana
6 87 (1.36%) SCCM
7 58 (0.91%) Prometheus
8 30 (0.47%) Nagios
9 26 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
10 24 (0.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 22 (0.34%) BMC PATROL
12 20 (0.31%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.25%) Argo
14 15 (0.24%) vCenter Server
15 14 (0.22%) Autotask
15 14 (0.22%) Cisco CUCM
16 13 (0.20%) FortiGate
16 13 (0.20%) Puppet
16 13 (0.20%) ZABBIX
17 12 (0.19%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,673 (26.23%) Microsoft
2 277 (4.34%) VMware
3 201 (3.15%) Oracle
4 171 (2.68%) SAP
5 160 (2.51%) Google
6 145 (2.27%) Cisco
7 142 (2.23%) Salesforce
8 141 (2.21%) ServiceNow
9 125 (1.96%) Veeam
10 124 (1.94%) SolarWinds
11 119 (1.87%) Splunk
12 115 (1.80%) Databricks
13 83 (1.30%) Adobe
13 83 (1.30%) Apple
14 72 (1.13%) Dell
15 64 (1.00%) Tanium
16 63 (0.99%) Brocade
16 63 (0.99%) Nimble Storage
17 54 (0.85%) Red Hat
18 52 (0.82%) Sage