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

6 months to
30 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 4 7
Rank change year-on-year -3 +3 +4
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 8,389 8,411 10,533
As % of all permanent jobs in England 8.63% 19.18% 14.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.76% 21.60% 18.24%
Number of salaries quoted 5,844 4,760 5,116
10th Percentile £27,750 £26,250 £27,000
25th Percentile £33,250 £31,250 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £45,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% -10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £66,063 £67,500 £70,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £87,000 £85,000
UK median annual salary £47,166 £45,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +4.81% -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 71,357 38,940 57,758
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.40% 88.80% 81.14%
Number of salaries quoted 50,719 22,637 35,999
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £42,000 £37,500 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £57,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -3.51% -8.80%
75th Percentile £80,000 £76,250 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £95,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,465
% change year-on-year +9.09% -0.84% -7.56%

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 30 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 30 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 2,270 £65,000 - 1,379
North of England -7 1,690 £45,000 +6.51% 865
South East -4 1,610 £42,500 - 1,064
Midlands -7 1,225 £42,500 +10.39% 685
North West -5 883 £45,000 -2.17% 425
South West -4 833 £45,000 +25.00% 607
East of England -3 689 £42,500 +21.43% 400
West Midlands -9 685 £42,500 -0.28% 408
Yorkshire -9 548 £42,500 +21.43% 308
East Midlands -8 538 £41,000 +17.14% 278
North East -6 259 £48,250 +25.32% 151
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
1 482 (5.75%) SharePoint
2 403 (4.80%) Microsoft Exchange
3 103 (1.23%) Confluence
4 58 (0.69%) IIS
5 49 (0.58%) CMS
6 46 (0.55%) Apache
7 37 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
7 37 (0.44%) Apache Spark
8 33 (0.39%) WordPress
9 21 (0.25%) SAS
10 13 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
11 11 (0.13%) nginx
11 11 (0.13%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.13%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.11%) Jupyter
12 9 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 8 (0.095%) Exchange Server 2013
13 8 (0.095%) Tomcat
14 7 (0.083%) OpenEdge
15 5 (0.060%) CICS
Applications
1 535 (6.38%) Microsoft Office
2 481 (5.73%) Microsoft Excel
3 88 (1.05%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 48 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
5 47 (0.56%) MS Visio
6 42 (0.50%) Microsoft Project
7 34 (0.41%) AutoCAD
8 23 (0.27%) Simulink
9 17 (0.20%) Revit
10 15 (0.18%) Chatbot
11 11 (0.13%) SOLIDWORKS
12 8 (0.095%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 8 (0.095%) Trello
13 7 (0.083%) Autodesk Flame
13 7 (0.083%) Baselight
13 7 (0.083%) Fusion 360
14 6 (0.072%) Adobe Illustrator
14 6 (0.072%) EPLAN
14 6 (0.072%) Navisworks
15 5 (0.060%) Lightworks
Business Applications
1 88 (1.05%) Dynamics CRM
2 84 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
3 69 (0.82%) NetSuite
4 32 (0.38%) Shopify
5 22 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
6 17 (0.20%) Magento
7 15 (0.18%) IBM Planning Analytics
8 14 (0.17%) Elite 3E
8 14 (0.17%) SAP Business One
8 14 (0.17%) SAP ERP
9 13 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
10 12 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
11 11 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
12 10 (0.12%) JDE EnterpriseOne
12 10 (0.12%) Oracle Applications
12 10 (0.12%) Sage X3
13 9 (0.11%) iTrent
13 9 (0.11%) Primavera
13 9 (0.11%) Sage 50
13 9 (0.11%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,724 (20.55%) Azure
2 1,312 (15.64%) Microsoft 365
3 1,025 (12.22%) AWS
4 701 (8.36%) Power Platform
5 410 (4.89%) Entra ID
6 367 (4.37%) SaaS
7 345 (4.11%) GCP
8 210 (2.50%) Azure DevOps
9 207 (2.47%) GitHub
10 187 (2.23%) Serverless
11 183 (2.18%) Dynamics 365
12 181 (2.16%) Power Automate
13 154 (1.84%) PowerApps
14 122 (1.45%) Microsoft Copilot
15 121 (1.44%) OneDrive
16 101 (1.20%) Amazon S3
17 94 (1.12%) GitHub Actions
18 87 (1.04%) AWS Lambda
19 83 (0.99%) AWS CloudFormation
20 78 (0.93%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 509 (6.07%) Firewall
2 470 (5.60%) DNS
3 398 (4.74%) DHCP
4 323 (3.85%) VPN
5 286 (3.41%) TCP/IP
6 211 (2.52%) Wi-Fi
7 201 (2.40%) WAN
8 198 (2.36%) LAN
9 180 (2.15%) Wireless
10 170 (2.03%) VLAN
11 152 (1.81%) Network Security
12 109 (1.30%) VoIP
13 108 (1.29%) Broadband
14 51 (0.61%) Internet
15 41 (0.49%) HTTP
16 40 (0.48%) SAN
17 35 (0.42%) OSPF
17 35 (0.42%) SD-WAN
18 34 (0.41%) BGP
18 34 (0.41%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 546 (6.51%) Power BI
2 417 (4.97%) SQL Server
3 144 (1.72%) MySQL
4 143 (1.70%) Data Warehouse
5 138 (1.65%) Amazon RDS
5 138 (1.65%) Relational Database
6 122 (1.45%) Tableau
7 116 (1.38%) PostgreSQL
8 105 (1.25%) NoSQL
9 95 (1.13%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 84 (1.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 63 (0.75%) Big Data
12 62 (0.74%) MongoDB
13 58 (0.69%) Azure SQL Database
14 57 (0.68%) Data Lake
15 52 (0.62%) Power Query
16 48 (0.57%) Metadata
17 43 (0.51%) DynamoDB
18 41 (0.49%) Electronic Patient Records
19 37 (0.44%) Looker
Development Applications
1 376 (4.48%) Git
2 297 (3.54%) JIRA
3 133 (1.59%) Jenkins
4 106 (1.26%) GitLab
5 40 (0.48%) Selenium
6 38 (0.45%) Eclipse
7 36 (0.43%) Claude Code
8 34 (0.41%) JUnit
9 33 (0.39%) Subversion
10 29 (0.35%) Cucumber
11 25 (0.30%) Postman
12 24 (0.29%) Rational DOORS
13 22 (0.26%) Cypress.io
14 21 (0.25%) Bitbucket
14 21 (0.25%) Oracle Forms
15 18 (0.21%) SonarQube
16 17 (0.20%) Visual Studio
17 16 (0.19%) Chocolatey
18 15 (0.18%) MLflow
19 14 (0.17%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 4,120 (49.11%) Social Skills
2 2,554 (30.44%) Analytical Skills
3 1,668 (19.88%) Finance
4 660 (7.87%) Manufacturing
5 547 (6.52%) Organisational Skills
6 503 (6.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 498 (5.94%) Law
8 416 (4.96%) Retail
9 360 (4.29%) Marketing
10 323 (3.85%) Public Sector
11 318 (3.79%) Legal
12 303 (3.61%) Banking
13 235 (2.80%) Electronics
14 220 (2.62%) Aerospace
15 187 (2.23%) Telecoms
16 180 (2.15%) Influencing Skills
17 159 (1.90%) Presentation Skills
18 106 (1.26%) Documentation Skills
19 92 (1.10%) Advertising
19 92 (1.10%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 1,091 (13.01%) Analyst
2 918 (10.94%) Senior
3 816 (9.73%) Developer
4 713 (8.50%) IT Support
5 581 (6.93%) Support Engineer
6 515 (6.14%) Lead
7 418 (4.98%) Consultant
8 395 (4.71%) IT Engineer
9 352 (4.20%) Support Analyst
10 311 (3.71%) Software Engineer
11 304 (3.62%) IT Support Engineer
12 280 (3.34%) Architect
13 264 (3.15%) Technical Support
14 257 (3.06%) Systems Engineer
15 246 (2.93%) Support Technician
16 219 (2.61%) IT Technician
17 217 (2.59%) Technical Engineer
18 193 (2.30%) Technical Support Engineer
19 191 (2.28%) Data Engineer
20 180 (2.15%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 382 (4.55%) .NET
2 371 (4.42%) Terraform
3 307 (3.66%) React
4 274 (3.27%) REST
5 260 (3.10%) HTML
6 202 (2.41%) CSS
7 179 (2.13%) RESTful
8 146 (1.74%) Node.js
9 117 (1.39%) SOAP
10 114 (1.36%) Spring
11 104 (1.24%) JSON
12 102 (1.22%) AngularJS
13 95 (1.13%) ASP.NET
14 93 (1.11%) Vue
15 91 (1.08%) Kafka
15 91 (1.08%) Web Services
16 89 (1.06%) Middleware
17 78 (0.93%) XML
18 73 (0.87%) OAuth
18 73 (0.87%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 552 (6.58%) Onboarding
2 551 (6.57%) Driving Licence
3 428 (5.10%) Self-Motivation
4 344 (4.10%) Management Information System
5 308 (3.67%) Cloud Native
6 249 (2.97%) Product Ownership
7 182 (2.17%) Data Centre
8 177 (2.11%) Legacy Systems
9 151 (1.80%) Distributed Systems
10 150 (1.79%) Enterprise Software
11 118 (1.41%) Data Structures
12 114 (1.36%) Analytical Mindset
13 111 (1.32%) Security Posture
14 102 (1.22%) NHS
15 101 (1.20%) Cyber Threat
16 100 (1.19%) AI Agents
17 93 (1.11%) Algorithms
18 92 (1.10%) Robotics
19 86 (1.03%) Virtual Team
20 84 (1.00%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 1,277 (15.22%) Windows
2 559 (6.66%) Linux
3 552 (6.58%) Windows Server
4 158 (1.88%) Windows 10
5 114 (1.36%) Windows Server 2016
6 105 (1.25%) Mac OS
7 98 (1.17%) Apple iOS
8 96 (1.14%) Android
9 55 (0.66%) Unix
10 47 (0.56%) Windows Server 2019
11 31 (0.37%) Ubuntu
11 31 (0.37%) VMS
12 30 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 16 (0.19%) CentOS
14 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 11 (0.13%) Debian
16 9 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
16 9 (0.11%) FreeRTOS
16 9 (0.11%) Mac OS X
17 8 (0.095%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,087 (24.88%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,376 (16.40%) Agile
3 1,285 (15.32%) Customer Service
4 1,073 (12.79%) AI
5 1,016 (12.11%) Decision-Making
6 937 (11.17%) Stakeholder Management
7 905 (10.79%) CI/CD
7 905 (10.79%) Mentoring
8 785 (9.36%) Analytics
9 779 (9.29%) Software Engineering
10 758 (9.04%) DevOps
11 699 (8.33%) Cybersecurity
12 668 (7.96%) Roadmaps
13 665 (7.93%) ITIL
14 640 (7.63%) Project Delivery
15 622 (7.41%) Business Intelligence
16 607 (7.24%) Project Management
17 605 (7.21%) Computer Science
18 561 (6.69%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 552 (6.58%) Collaborative Working
Programming Languages
1 1,310 (15.62%) SQL
2 1,182 (14.09%) Python
3 576 (6.87%) JavaScript
4 489 (5.83%) C#
5 425 (5.07%) Java
6 374 (4.46%) PowerShell
7 255 (3.04%) TypeScript
8 226 (2.69%) C++
9 175 (2.09%) Bash
10 94 (1.12%) C
11 88 (1.05%) PHP
12 75 (0.89%) Go
13 71 (0.85%) T-SQL
14 70 (0.83%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 48 (0.57%) Perl
15 48 (0.57%) Shell Script
16 47 (0.56%) Rust
17 42 (0.50%) R
18 40 (0.48%) Ruby
19 38 (0.45%) VBA
Qualifications
1 1,463 (17.44%) Degree
2 783 (9.33%) Security Cleared
3 523 (6.23%) SC Cleared
4 322 (3.84%) Computer Science Degree
5 240 (2.86%) DBS Check
6 209 (2.49%) Microsoft Certification
7 190 (2.26%) DV Cleared
8 171 (2.04%) Azure Certification
9 150 (1.79%) CISSP
10 147 (1.75%) Cisco Certification
11 142 (1.69%) BPSS Clearance
12 133 (1.59%) Master's Degree
13 125 (1.49%) HNC
14 108 (1.29%) HND
15 105 (1.25%) PMI Certification
16 85 (1.01%) CISM
17 82 (0.98%) CCNA
17 82 (0.98%) PMP
18 75 (0.89%) CCNP
19 73 (0.87%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 495 (5.90%) QA
2 417 (4.97%) Data Quality
3 349 (4.16%) GDPR
4 235 (2.80%) Accessibility
5 224 (2.67%) SLA
6 202 (2.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 201 (2.40%) Cyber Essentials
8 165 (1.97%) NIST
9 142 (1.69%) PCI DSS
10 62 (0.74%) PMO
11 54 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 40 (0.48%) GRC
13 36 (0.43%) ISO 9001
14 25 (0.30%) NCSC
14 25 (0.30%) SOC 2
15 23 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
16 22 (0.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
17 21 (0.25%) COBIT
18 20 (0.24%) GMP
19 19 (0.23%) WCAG
System Software
1 855 (10.19%) Active Directory
2 363 (4.33%) Docker
3 284 (3.39%) Hyper-V
4 255 (3.04%) VMware Infrastructure
5 70 (0.83%) Terminal Server
6 59 (0.70%) Firmware
7 52 (0.62%) Virtual Desktop
8 44 (0.52%) Virtual Machines
9 35 (0.42%) vSphere
10 20 (0.24%) Embedded Firmware
11 18 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
12 12 (0.14%) KVM
13 8 (0.095%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.072%) GPFS
14 6 (0.072%) StorNext
14 6 (0.072%) XenApp
15 5 (0.060%) ClearTrust
15 5 (0.060%) IAG
15 5 (0.060%) Squid
15 5 (0.060%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 331 (3.95%) Kubernetes
2 283 (3.37%) Microsoft Intune
3 153 (1.82%) Ansible
4 94 (1.12%) Grafana
5 75 (0.89%) SCCM
6 62 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
7 50 (0.60%) Prometheus
8 28 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
9 26 (0.31%) FortiGate
10 22 (0.26%) Nagios
11 19 (0.23%) Puppet
12 15 (0.18%) Argo
13 13 (0.15%) Functional Safety
13 13 (0.15%) Kibana
14 12 (0.14%) Proxmox
15 11 (0.13%) Autotask
15 11 (0.13%) BMC PATROL
15 11 (0.13%) logstash
15 11 (0.13%) Nmap
16 10 (0.12%) Podman
Vendors
1 2,437 (29.05%) Microsoft
2 374 (4.46%) VMware
3 264 (3.15%) SAP
4 243 (2.90%) Google
5 239 (2.85%) Oracle
6 171 (2.04%) Cisco
6 171 (2.04%) ServiceNow
7 163 (1.94%) Salesforce
8 133 (1.59%) Veeam
9 129 (1.54%) Databricks
10 123 (1.47%) Splunk
11 110 (1.31%) SolarWinds
12 81 (0.97%) Sage
13 78 (0.93%) Tanium
14 76 (0.91%) Apple
15 71 (0.85%) Nimble Storage
16 70 (0.83%) Brocade
17 65 (0.77%) Fortinet
18 58 (0.69%) HubSpot
19 57 (0.68%) Workday