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

6 months to
28 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 6,422 6,968 11,685
As % of all permanent jobs in England 9.28% 19.08% 15.08%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.02% 20.43% 17.44%
Number of salaries quoted 4,460 4,341 8,226
10th Percentile £27,000 £29,000 £26,250
25th Percentile £31,250 £37,500 £33,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,042 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -14.47% +10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £67,500 £75,000 £68,750
90th Percentile £86,500 £90,000 £87,500
UK median annual salary £45,900 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -16.55% +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 53,421 34,107 67,015
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 77.17% 93.42% 86.49%
Number of salaries quoted 33,389 20,285 51,851
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,500 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £44,590 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,040 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.27% +9.09% -12.00%
75th Percentile £77,500 £81,000 £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 28 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 28 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 1,985 £67,500 +3.85% 986
North of England -17 1,292 £41,000 -10.87% 662
South East -7 1,196 £45,000 -11.71% 802
Midlands -19 862 £38,250 -20.31% 478
North West -17 651 £42,000 -14.29% 365
South West -7 546 £43,500 -8.42% 308
Yorkshire -6 511 £35,000 -17.65% 222
West Midlands -24 510 £42,500 -20.84% 278
East of England -8 437 £40,000 -20.00% 288
East Midlands -2 349 £35,000 -9.68% 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
1 334 (5.20%) Microsoft Exchange
2 284 (4.42%) SharePoint
3 79 (1.23%) Confluence
4 58 (0.90%) CMS
5 52 (0.81%) Apache
6 45 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
7 37 (0.58%) Apache Spark
8 36 (0.56%) IIS
9 28 (0.44%) WordPress
10 17 (0.26%) 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 (0.062%) Apache Solr
16 4 (0.062%) OpenStack
Applications
1 451 (7.02%) Microsoft Office
2 344 (5.36%) Microsoft Excel
3 72 (1.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 36 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
5 34 (0.53%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
7 15 (0.23%) Maya
8 14 (0.22%) AutoCAD
9 12 (0.19%) Photoshop
10 10 (0.16%) Adobe Illustrator
10 10 (0.16%) Chatbot
11 8 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 6 (0.093%) Adobe XD
12 6 (0.093%) SOLIDWORKS
13 5 (0.078%) Fusion 360
14 4 (0.062%) Trello
15 3 (0.047%) Elementor
15 3 (0.047%) InDesign
15 3 (0.047%) Simulink
16 2 (0.031%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 62 (0.97%) Dynamics CRM
2 42 (0.65%) SAP S/4HANA
3 31 (0.48%) NetSuite
4 21 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
5 17 (0.26%) Endur
5 17 (0.26%) SAP CO
5 17 (0.26%) Shopify
6 14 (0.22%) Dynamics NAV
7 12 (0.19%) Maximo
8 10 (0.16%) iTrent
8 10 (0.16%) Workday HCM
9 9 (0.14%) SAP ERP
10 8 (0.12%) SAP FI
10 8 (0.12%) 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 (0.093%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 1,389 (21.63%) Azure
2 988 (15.38%) Microsoft 365
3 798 (12.43%) AWS
4 458 (7.13%) Power Platform
5 374 (5.82%) SaaS
6 296 (4.61%) GCP
7 271 (4.22%) Entra ID
8 171 (2.66%) GitHub
9 168 (2.62%) Azure DevOps
10 166 (2.58%) Serverless
11 122 (1.90%) Power Automate
12 105 (1.64%) Dynamics 365
13 89 (1.39%) Google Workspace
14 88 (1.37%) Amazon S3
15 81 (1.26%) GitHub Actions
16 80 (1.25%) AWS CloudFormation
16 80 (1.25%) AWS Lambda
17 77 (1.20%) Azure Data Factory
17 77 (1.20%) PowerApps
18 76 (1.18%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 414 (6.45%) DNS
2 381 (5.93%) Firewall
3 351 (5.47%) DHCP
4 249 (3.88%) VPN
5 214 (3.33%) WAN
6 210 (3.27%) TCP/IP
7 206 (3.21%) Wi-Fi
8 188 (2.93%) Broadband
9 178 (2.77%) LAN
10 128 (1.99%) VLAN
11 99 (1.54%) Wireless
12 83 (1.29%) VoIP
13 69 (1.07%) SD-WAN
14 54 (0.84%) Network Security
15 45 (0.70%) SAN
16 40 (0.62%) Remote Desktop
17 38 (0.59%) Internet
18 32 (0.50%) Structured Cabling
19 29 (0.45%) BGP
20 28 (0.44%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 381 (5.93%) Power BI
2 282 (4.39%) SQL Server
3 134 (2.09%) Data Warehouse
4 131 (2.04%) Tableau
5 121 (1.88%) NoSQL
6 112 (1.74%) Relational Database
7 109 (1.70%) PostgreSQL
8 94 (1.46%) Amazon RDS
9 93 (1.45%) MySQL
10 64 (1.00%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 54 (0.84%) MongoDB
12 50 (0.78%) Power Query
13 48 (0.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 47 (0.73%) DynamoDB
15 46 (0.72%) Amazon Redshift
15 46 (0.72%) Azure SQL Database
16 44 (0.69%) Metadata
17 43 (0.67%) Data Lake
18 41 (0.64%) Big Data
19 26 (0.40%) Redis
Development Applications
1 288 (4.48%) Git
2 233 (3.63%) JIRA
3 110 (1.71%) Jenkins
4 95 (1.48%) GitLab
5 54 (0.84%) Selenium
6 30 (0.47%) Visual Studio
7 24 (0.37%) 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 (0.26%) CircleCI
11 17 (0.26%) Rational DOORS
11 17 (0.26%) TeamCity
12 16 (0.25%) Cucumber
13 15 (0.23%) Bitbucket
13 15 (0.23%) JUnit
13 15 (0.23%) SonarQube
General
1 3,167 (49.31%) Social Skills
2 1,954 (30.43%) Analytical Skills
3 1,410 (21.96%) Finance
4 447 (6.96%) Organisational Skills
5 369 (5.75%) Marketing
6 352 (5.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 314 (4.89%) Law
8 310 (4.83%) Retail
9 300 (4.67%) Banking
10 299 (4.66%) Legal
11 291 (4.53%) Public Sector
12 277 (4.31%) Manufacturing
13 164 (2.55%) Presentation Skills
14 153 (2.38%) Telecoms
15 143 (2.23%) Electronics
16 103 (1.60%) Documentation Skills
17 98 (1.53%) Games
18 84 (1.31%) Financial Institution
19 81 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
20 71 (1.11%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 940 (14.64%) Analyst
2 755 (11.76%) IT Support
3 754 (11.74%) Senior
4 642 (10.00%) Support Engineer
5 599 (9.33%) Developer
6 382 (5.95%) IT Engineer
6 382 (5.95%) Lead
7 321 (5.00%) IT Support Engineer
8 305 (4.75%) Support Analyst
9 247 (3.85%) Consultant
10 221 (3.44%) Architect
11 216 (3.36%) Business Analyst
12 214 (3.33%) Support Technician
13 196 (3.05%) Technical Support
14 192 (2.99%) 2nd Line Support
15 180 (2.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 174 (2.71%) Software Engineer
17 164 (2.55%) IT Technician
18 163 (2.54%) Systems Engineer
19 149 (2.32%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 250 (3.89%) React
2 249 (3.88%) .NET
3 222 (3.46%) HTML
4 180 (2.80%) CSS
5 161 (2.51%) Node.js
6 118 (1.84%) REST
7 116 (1.81%) RESTful
8 70 (1.09%) Vue
9 68 (1.06%) AngularJS
9 68 (1.06%) Spring
10 66 (1.03%) Kafka
11 64 (1.00%) Django
11 64 (1.00%) Middleware
12 58 (0.90%) SOAP
13 56 (0.87%) JSON
13 56 (0.87%) XML
14 55 (0.86%) Flask
15 49 (0.76%) gRPC
16 47 (0.73%) FastAPI
16 47 (0.73%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 448 (6.98%) Driving Licence
2 438 (6.82%) Onboarding
3 381 (5.93%) Self-Motivation
4 202 (3.15%) Management Information System
5 177 (2.76%) Cloud Native
6 152 (2.37%) Analytical Mindset
7 142 (2.21%) Distributed Systems
8 141 (2.20%) Legacy Systems
8 141 (2.20%) Product Ownership
9 133 (2.07%) Data Centre
10 105 (1.64%) Enterprise Software
11 95 (1.48%) Mobile App
12 93 (1.45%) Social Media
13 84 (1.31%) Data Structures
14 72 (1.12%) Low-Code
15 61 (0.95%) Security Posture
16 58 (0.90%) Video\Live Streaming
17 57 (0.89%) Virtual Team
18 56 (0.87%) Algorithms
19 50 (0.78%) Over-the-Top Content
Operating Systems
1 1,120 (17.44%) Windows
2 427 (6.65%) Windows Server
3 422 (6.57%) Linux
4 174 (2.71%) Windows 10
5 123 (1.92%) Windows Server 2016
6 109 (1.70%) Android
7 90 (1.40%) Mac OS
8 87 (1.35%) Apple iOS
9 62 (0.97%) Unix
10 58 (0.90%) Windows Server 2019
11 39 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 37 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
13 29 (0.45%) CentOS
14 24 (0.37%) Ubuntu
15 22 (0.34%) Windows 7
16 17 (0.26%) VMS
17 13 (0.20%) Mac OS X
18 11 (0.17%) Windows 8
19 9 (0.14%) Debian
20 8 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,175 (18.30%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,047 (16.30%) Agile
3 959 (14.93%) Customer Service
4 691 (10.76%) AI
4 691 (10.76%) Mentoring
5 664 (10.34%) CI/CD
6 654 (10.18%) Decision-Making
7 637 (9.92%) Analytics
8 617 (9.61%) DevOps
9 606 (9.44%) ITIL
10 553 (8.61%) Project Management
11 531 (8.27%) Business Intelligence
12 508 (7.91%) Computer Science
13 485 (7.55%) Stakeholder Management
14 441 (6.87%) Software Engineering
15 424 (6.60%) Cybersecurity
16 397 (6.18%) Roadmaps
17 394 (6.14%) Coaching
18 368 (5.73%) Process Improvement
19 361 (5.62%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 995 (15.49%) Python
2 896 (13.95%) SQL
3 437 (6.80%) JavaScript
4 320 (4.98%) PowerShell
5 316 (4.92%) Java
6 272 (4.24%) C#
7 180 (2.80%) TypeScript
8 155 (2.41%) Bash
9 88 (1.37%) PHP
10 87 (1.35%) Go
11 85 (1.32%) C++
12 73 (1.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 68 (1.06%) Scala
14 48 (0.75%) C
15 47 (0.73%) T-SQL
16 40 (0.62%) Kotlin
17 34 (0.53%) R
18 33 (0.51%) Apex Code
19 28 (0.44%) Bicep
20 27 (0.42%) Rust
Qualifications
1 1,311 (20.41%) Degree
2 485 (7.55%) Security Cleared
3 304 (4.73%) SC Cleared
4 253 (3.94%) Computer Science Degree
5 187 (2.91%) DBS Check
6 183 (2.85%) Microsoft Certification
7 133 (2.07%) Master's Degree
8 118 (1.84%) DV Cleared
9 106 (1.65%) CISSP
10 91 (1.42%) Cisco Certification
11 86 (1.34%) ACCA
12 85 (1.32%) BPSS Clearance
13 81 (1.26%) A+ Certification
14 75 (1.17%) CIMA
15 70 (1.09%) PMI Certification
16 66 (1.03%) CCNA
17 59 (0.92%) Network+ Certification
18 56 (0.87%) AWS Certification
18 56 (0.87%) PMP
19 51 (0.79%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 307 (4.78%) QA
2 278 (4.33%) Data Quality
3 241 (3.75%) GDPR
4 161 (2.51%) Cyber Essentials
5 160 (2.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 149 (2.32%) SLA
7 124 (1.93%) PCI DSS
8 117 (1.82%) Accessibility
8 117 (1.82%) NIST
9 51 (0.79%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 32 (0.50%) SOC 2
11 31 (0.48%) ISO 9001
12 29 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
13 26 (0.40%) 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
1 757 (11.79%) Active Directory
2 308 (4.80%) Docker
3 226 (3.52%) Hyper-V
4 173 (2.69%) VMware Infrastructure
5 63 (0.98%) Terminal Server
6 35 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
7 33 (0.51%) Firmware
8 31 (0.48%) 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 (0.093%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 4 (0.062%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 2 (0.031%) BitLocker
14 2 (0.031%) VMware NSX
15 1 (0.016%) OpenDJ
Systems Management
1 291 (4.53%) Terraform
2 266 (4.14%) Microsoft Intune
3 224 (3.49%) Kubernetes
4 159 (2.48%) Ansible
5 93 (1.45%) Grafana
6 87 (1.35%) SCCM
7 58 (0.90%) Prometheus
8 30 (0.47%) Nagios
9 26 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
10 24 (0.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 22 (0.34%) BMC PATROL
12 20 (0.31%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (0.25%) Argo
14 15 (0.23%) 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%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,676 (26.10%) Microsoft
2 279 (4.34%) VMware
3 200 (3.11%) Oracle
4 171 (2.66%) SAP
5 160 (2.49%) Google
6 145 (2.26%) Cisco
7 142 (2.21%) Salesforce
8 141 (2.20%) ServiceNow
9 125 (1.95%) Veeam
10 124 (1.93%) SolarWinds
11 119 (1.85%) Splunk
12 115 (1.79%) Databricks
13 83 (1.29%) Adobe
13 83 (1.29%) Apple
14 73 (1.14%) Dell
15 64 (1.00%) Tanium
16 63 (0.98%) Brocade
16 63 (0.98%) Nimble Storage
17 54 (0.84%) Red Hat
18 52 (0.81%) Sage