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

6 months to
1 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 4 7
Rank change year-on-year -4 +3 +5
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 7,781 8,345 10,898
As % of all permanent jobs in England 8.50% 19.16% 14.56%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.51% 21.38% 17.88%
Number of salaries quoted 5,528 4,778 5,972
10th Percentile £27,750 £26,250 £26,250
25th Percentile £33,000 £31,812 £35,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £47,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £67,500 £67,500 £68,750
90th Percentile £85,250 £88,000 £85,000
UK median annual salary £47,500 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -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 67,626 39,031 60,942
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.87% 89.63% 81.40%
Number of salaries quoted 47,761 22,628 41,205
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,750 £30,000
25th Percentile £41,250 £37,750 £40,478
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -11.41%
75th Percentile £80,000 £77,500 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £95,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.41%

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 1 August 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 1 August 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 -5 2,151 £67,500 +3.85% 1,941
North of England -9 1,574 £45,000 +5.88% 855
South East -3 1,493 £45,000 +5.88% 1,027
Midlands -9 1,125 £42,000 +5.00% 589
North West -6 823 £45,000 -2.17% 446
South West -6 755 £44,000 +17.33% 461
West Midlands -10 630 £42,500 -5.56% 350
East of England -5 598 £42,500 +21.43% 376
Yorkshire -9 534 £42,500 +21.43% 296
East Midlands -10 491 £37,500 +5.63% 237
North East -16 217 £50,000 +33.33% 124
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
1 430 (5.53%) SharePoint
2 413 (5.31%) Microsoft Exchange
3 90 (1.16%) Confluence
4 62 (0.80%) CMS
5 51 (0.66%) Apache
6 42 (0.54%) IIS
7 41 (0.53%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.50%) Apache Spark
9 36 (0.46%) WordPress
10 19 (0.24%) SAS
11 13 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
12 11 (0.14%) WebLogic
12 11 (0.14%) WebSphere
13 10 (0.13%) nginx
14 9 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2013
14 9 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 7 (0.090%) Exchange Server 2007
15 7 (0.090%) Exchange Server 2010
15 7 (0.090%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.090%) OpenEdge
Applications
1 494 (6.35%) Microsoft Office
2 470 (6.04%) Microsoft Excel
3 86 (1.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 47 (0.60%) MS Visio
5 46 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
6 35 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
7 22 (0.28%) AutoCAD
8 16 (0.21%) Chatbot
9 10 (0.13%) Simulink
9 10 (0.13%) SOLIDWORKS
10 9 (0.12%) Trello
11 8 (0.10%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 8 (0.10%) Adobe Illustrator
12 7 (0.090%) Revit
13 5 (0.064%) Fusion 360
13 5 (0.064%) Lightworks
13 5 (0.064%) Photoshop
14 3 (0.039%) Autodesk Inventor
14 3 (0.039%) Civil 3D
14 3 (0.039%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 83 (1.07%) SAP S/4HANA
2 71 (0.91%) Dynamics CRM
3 51 (0.66%) NetSuite
4 20 (0.26%) Shopify
5 19 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
6 18 (0.23%) Magento
7 14 (0.18%) Elite 3E
7 14 (0.18%) IBM Planning Analytics
7 14 (0.18%) SAP ERP
8 13 (0.17%) SAP Business One
9 11 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
10 10 (0.13%) JDE EnterpriseOne
10 10 (0.13%) Salesforce CRM
11 9 (0.12%) iTrent
11 9 (0.12%) Oracle Applications
11 9 (0.12%) Sage 50
11 9 (0.12%) Sage X3
12 8 (0.10%) Maximo
13 7 (0.090%) Raiser’s Edge
14 6 (0.077%) NEC Housing
Cloud Services
1 1,637 (21.04%) Azure
2 1,244 (15.99%) Microsoft 365
3 994 (12.77%) AWS
4 647 (8.32%) Power Platform
5 369 (4.74%) Entra ID
6 356 (4.58%) SaaS
7 344 (4.42%) GCP
8 186 (2.39%) Serverless
9 178 (2.29%) GitHub
10 177 (2.27%) Azure DevOps
11 168 (2.16%) Dynamics 365
12 159 (2.04%) Power Automate
13 141 (1.81%) PowerApps
14 105 (1.35%) OneDrive
15 99 (1.27%) Microsoft Copilot
16 98 (1.26%) Amazon S3
17 89 (1.14%) GitHub Actions
18 87 (1.12%) AWS Lambda
19 79 (1.02%) AWS CloudFormation
20 71 (0.91%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 490 (6.30%) Firewall
2 440 (5.65%) DNS
3 372 (4.78%) DHCP
4 299 (3.84%) VPN
5 268 (3.44%) TCP/IP
6 226 (2.90%) WAN
7 215 (2.76%) LAN
8 203 (2.61%) Wi-Fi
9 168 (2.16%) Wireless
10 150 (1.93%) Broadband
11 149 (1.91%) VLAN
12 136 (1.75%) Network Security
13 105 (1.35%) VoIP
14 47 (0.60%) SD-WAN
15 46 (0.59%) Internet
16 45 (0.58%) HTTP
17 41 (0.53%) OSPF
18 40 (0.51%) BGP
18 40 (0.51%) SAN
19 32 (0.41%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 503 (6.46%) Power BI
2 376 (4.83%) SQL Server
3 148 (1.90%) Data Warehouse
4 137 (1.76%) Amazon RDS
5 128 (1.65%) MySQL
6 118 (1.52%) Tableau
7 117 (1.50%) Relational Database
8 113 (1.45%) PostgreSQL
9 108 (1.39%) NoSQL
10 97 (1.25%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 88 (1.13%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 64 (0.82%) MongoDB
13 58 (0.75%) Big Data
13 58 (0.75%) Power Query
14 52 (0.67%) Data Lake
15 49 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
16 40 (0.51%) DynamoDB
17 39 (0.50%) Metadata
18 34 (0.44%) Amazon Redshift
19 29 (0.37%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 340 (4.37%) Git
2 266 (3.42%) JIRA
3 122 (1.57%) Jenkins
4 115 (1.48%) GitLab
5 37 (0.48%) Selenium
6 29 (0.37%) Eclipse
7 28 (0.36%) Cucumber
7 28 (0.36%) JUnit
7 28 (0.36%) Subversion
8 27 (0.35%) Claude Code
8 27 (0.35%) Rational DOORS
9 24 (0.31%) Cypress.io
10 23 (0.30%) Postman
11 21 (0.27%) Visual Studio
12 17 (0.22%) Bitbucket
13 16 (0.21%) Chocolatey
13 16 (0.21%) SonarQube
14 15 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
15 13 (0.17%) Maven
15 13 (0.17%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 3,754 (48.25%) Social Skills
2 2,322 (29.84%) Analytical Skills
3 1,530 (19.66%) Finance
4 527 (6.77%) Manufacturing
5 491 (6.31%) Organisational Skills
6 437 (5.62%) Law
7 435 (5.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 370 (4.76%) Retail
9 330 (4.24%) Marketing
10 301 (3.87%) Public Sector
11 299 (3.84%) Legal
12 297 (3.82%) Banking
13 187 (2.40%) Telecoms
14 172 (2.21%) Electronics
15 150 (1.93%) Influencing Skills
16 144 (1.85%) Presentation Skills
17 140 (1.80%) Aerospace
18 117 (1.50%) Documentation Skills
19 95 (1.22%) Advertising
20 91 (1.17%) Games
Job Titles
1 1,020 (13.11%) Analyst
2 907 (11.66%) Senior
3 775 (9.96%) Developer
4 710 (9.12%) IT Support
5 575 (7.39%) Support Engineer
6 472 (6.07%) Lead
7 408 (5.24%) IT Engineer
8 376 (4.83%) Consultant
9 311 (4.00%) IT Support Engineer
10 308 (3.96%) Support Analyst
11 291 (3.74%) Software Engineer
12 262 (3.37%) Architect
13 259 (3.33%) Systems Engineer
14 253 (3.25%) Support Technician
15 235 (3.02%) Technical Support
16 210 (2.70%) IT Technician
17 196 (2.52%) Data Engineer
18 194 (2.49%) Technical Engineer
19 174 (2.24%) Technical Support Engineer
20 171 (2.20%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 333 (4.28%) .NET
2 300 (3.86%) React
3 246 (3.16%) REST
4 242 (3.11%) HTML
5 193 (2.48%) CSS
6 168 (2.16%) RESTful
7 151 (1.94%) Node.js
8 115 (1.48%) SOAP
9 100 (1.29%) Spring
10 96 (1.23%) AngularJS
10 96 (1.23%) JSON
11 93 (1.20%) Middleware
12 91 (1.17%) Vue
13 86 (1.11%) Kafka
14 75 (0.96%) ASP.NET
14 75 (0.96%) Web Services
15 74 (0.95%) XML
16 72 (0.93%) OAuth
17 63 (0.81%) Spring Boot
18 50 (0.64%) LangChain
Miscellaneous
1 480 (6.17%) Driving Licence
2 471 (6.05%) Onboarding
3 395 (5.08%) Self-Motivation
4 311 (4.00%) Management Information System
5 295 (3.79%) Cloud Native
6 210 (2.70%) Product Ownership
7 183 (2.35%) Data Centre
8 180 (2.31%) Legacy Systems
9 172 (2.21%) Distributed Systems
10 125 (1.61%) Analytical Mindset
11 121 (1.56%) Enterprise Software
12 109 (1.40%) Security Posture
13 104 (1.34%) Data Structures
14 96 (1.23%) Algorithms
15 85 (1.09%) Social Media
16 81 (1.04%) NHS
17 79 (1.02%) IoT
18 78 (1.00%) Virtual Team
19 77 (0.99%) Cyber Threat
20 75 (0.96%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 1,219 (15.67%) Windows
2 555 (7.13%) Linux
3 526 (6.76%) Windows Server
4 166 (2.13%) Windows 10
5 122 (1.57%) Windows Server 2016
6 114 (1.47%) Android
7 102 (1.31%) Mac OS
8 96 (1.23%) Apple iOS
9 49 (0.63%) Unix
10 48 (0.62%) Windows Server 2019
11 39 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 34 (0.44%) Ubuntu
13 27 (0.35%) VMS
14 25 (0.32%) CentOS
15 14 (0.18%) Mac OS X
15 14 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
16 13 (0.17%) Debian
16 13 (0.17%) Windows 7
17 9 (0.12%) FreeRTOS
18 8 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,816 (23.34%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,262 (16.22%) Agile
3 1,151 (14.79%) Customer Service
4 978 (12.57%) AI
5 883 (11.35%) CI/CD
6 872 (11.21%) Decision-Making
7 837 (10.76%) Mentoring
8 785 (10.09%) Stakeholder Management
9 733 (9.42%) DevOps
10 723 (9.29%) Analytics
11 716 (9.20%) Software Engineering
12 667 (8.57%) ITIL
13 631 (8.11%) Cybersecurity
14 604 (7.76%) Roadmaps
15 585 (7.52%) Business Intelligence
16 564 (7.25%) Computer Science
17 544 (6.99%) Project Management
18 532 (6.84%) Project Delivery
19 508 (6.53%) Collaborative Working
20 498 (6.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 1,237 (15.90%) SQL
2 1,160 (14.91%) Python
3 542 (6.97%) JavaScript
4 438 (5.63%) C#
5 398 (5.12%) Java
6 337 (4.33%) PowerShell
7 246 (3.16%) TypeScript
8 213 (2.74%) C++
9 172 (2.21%) Bash
10 95 (1.22%) PHP
11 88 (1.13%) Go
12 82 (1.05%) C
13 68 (0.87%) T-SQL
14 67 (0.86%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 49 (0.63%) Scala
16 45 (0.58%) Rust
17 43 (0.55%) R
17 43 (0.55%) Shell Script
18 41 (0.53%) Perl
18 41 (0.53%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 1,289 (16.57%) Degree
2 685 (8.80%) Security Cleared
3 476 (6.12%) SC Cleared
4 295 (3.79%) Computer Science Degree
5 216 (2.78%) DBS Check
6 201 (2.58%) Microsoft Certification
7 150 (1.93%) DV Cleared
8 147 (1.89%) Cisco Certification
9 135 (1.73%) Azure Certification
10 134 (1.72%) CISSP
11 112 (1.44%) Master's Degree
12 111 (1.43%) BPSS Clearance
13 94 (1.21%) PMI Certification
14 82 (1.05%) PMP
15 80 (1.03%) CCNA
16 79 (1.02%) HNC
17 77 (0.99%) CCNP
18 71 (0.91%) ACCA
18 71 (0.91%) CISM
19 66 (0.85%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 439 (5.64%) QA
2 389 (5.00%) Data Quality
3 316 (4.06%) GDPR
4 224 (2.88%) SLA
5 217 (2.79%) Cyber Essentials
6 205 (2.63%) Accessibility
7 196 (2.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 161 (2.07%) PCI DSS
9 156 (2.00%) NIST
10 64 (0.82%) PMO
11 57 (0.73%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 38 (0.49%) GRC
13 35 (0.45%) ISO 9001
14 30 (0.39%) SOC 2
15 25 (0.32%) COBIT
16 24 (0.31%) GMP
17 22 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
18 20 (0.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
19 19 (0.24%) WCAG
20 18 (0.23%) Good Clinical Practice
System Software
1 809 (10.40%) Active Directory
2 369 (4.74%) Docker
3 273 (3.51%) Hyper-V
4 247 (3.17%) VMware Infrastructure
5 77 (0.99%) Terminal Server
6 46 (0.59%) Virtual Desktop
7 45 (0.58%) Firmware
8 35 (0.45%) vSphere
9 33 (0.42%) Virtual Machines
10 17 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
11 15 (0.19%) KVM
12 14 (0.18%) Embedded Firmware
13 10 (0.13%) IAG
14 7 (0.090%) VMware NSX
14 7 (0.090%) XenApp
15 5 (0.064%) ClearTrust
15 5 (0.064%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 5 (0.064%) Squid
15 5 (0.064%) VMware Workstation
16 3 (0.039%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 357 (4.59%) Terraform
2 322 (4.14%) Kubernetes
3 290 (3.73%) Microsoft Intune
4 156 (2.00%) Ansible
5 103 (1.32%) Grafana
6 82 (1.05%) SCCM
7 63 (0.81%) Prometheus
8 39 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
9 31 (0.40%) Nagios
10 24 (0.31%) FortiGate
11 22 (0.28%) Jamf Pro
12 20 (0.26%) Puppet
13 16 (0.21%) Argo
14 15 (0.19%) Autotask
15 13 (0.17%) Kibana
15 13 (0.17%) Proxmox
16 11 (0.14%) Docker Swarm
16 11 (0.14%) logstash
16 11 (0.14%) vCenter Server
16 11 (0.14%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 2,243 (28.83%) Microsoft
2 364 (4.68%) VMware
3 209 (2.69%) Oracle
4 202 (2.60%) Google
4 202 (2.60%) SAP
5 173 (2.22%) Cisco
6 162 (2.08%) ServiceNow
7 149 (1.91%) Salesforce
8 135 (1.73%) Veeam
9 133 (1.71%) SolarWinds
10 129 (1.66%) Splunk
11 120 (1.54%) Databricks
12 85 (1.09%) Tanium
13 84 (1.08%) Apple
14 78 (1.00%) Nimble Storage
15 77 (0.99%) Brocade
16 67 (0.86%) Sage
17 63 (0.81%) Dell
18 57 (0.73%) Fortinet
19 55 (0.71%) Palo Alto