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

6 months to
18 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 4 7
Rank change year-on-year -4 +3 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,493 8,820 7,770
As % of all permanent jobs in England 12.09% 18.39% 14.75%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.96% 20.21% 16.50%
Number of salaries quoted 4,444 3,907 5,438
10th Percentile £26,500 £31,000 £27,000
25th Percentile £30,750 £40,000 £35,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,000 £55,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -18.18% +4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £65,473 £75,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £85,000 £88,750 £90,000
UK median annual salary £45,000 £55,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year -18.18% +4.76% -8.70%

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 43,416 43,635 47,084
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 80.86% 90.97% 89.37%
Number of salaries quoted 26,088 21,348 36,647
10th Percentile £28,748 £35,000 £31,250
25th Percentile £37,500 £46,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%
75th Percentile £76,250 £81,250 £78,750
90th Percentile £97,500 £100,000 £97,500
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £58,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +3.45% -7.20%

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 January 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 January 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 -1 1,942 £65,000 - 808
South East -3 1,336 £41,000 -21.90% 1,268
North of England -15 1,251 £45,000 -5.26% 781
Midlands -15 872 £38,000 -24.00% 573
North West -14 687 £47,500 -4.97% 363
South West 0 582 £40,000 -26.36% 501
West Midlands -18 510 £42,500 -22.73% 276
Yorkshire -4 441 £35,750 -17.82% 303
East of England -7 415 £35,000 -31.33% 500
East Midlands +1 361 £35,000 - 288
North East -3 123 £33,500 -33.00% 127
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
1 313 (4.82%) Microsoft Exchange
2 274 (4.22%) SharePoint
3 77 (1.19%) Confluence
4 52 (0.80%) IIS
5 51 (0.79%) Apache
6 43 (0.66%) Apache Spark
7 37 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
8 31 (0.48%) CMS
9 25 (0.39%) WordPress
10 13 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 10 (0.15%) nginx
11 10 (0.15%) SAS
12 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
12 7 (0.11%) Apache Solr
13 6 (0.092%) HCL Notes
14 5 (0.077%) Camunda
14 5 (0.077%) Drupal
14 5 (0.077%) Exchange Server 2013
14 5 (0.077%) Umbraco
15 3 (0.046%) Liferay
Applications
1 473 (7.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 470 (7.24%) Microsoft Office
3 93 (1.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 41 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
5 35 (0.54%) Maya
6 28 (0.43%) MS Visio
7 27 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
8 20 (0.31%) AutoCAD
9 16 (0.25%) Photoshop
10 14 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 11 (0.17%) Adobe Illustrator
11 11 (0.17%) SOLIDWORKS
12 9 (0.14%) Adobe Premiere
13 5 (0.077%) Adobe After Effects
13 5 (0.077%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.077%) Chatbot
13 5 (0.077%) Trello
14 4 (0.062%) CATIA
14 4 (0.062%) Fusion 360
14 4 (0.062%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 113 (1.74%) SAP S/4HANA
2 92 (1.42%) Dynamics CRM
3 36 (0.55%) NetSuite
4 24 (0.37%) SAP CO
5 20 (0.31%) SAP FI
6 17 (0.26%) SAP FI/CO
7 16 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
8 15 (0.23%) Endur
9 14 (0.22%) Oracle Payables
9 14 (0.22%) Shopify
10 12 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
11 11 (0.17%) Dynamics NAV
11 11 (0.17%) Oracle Assets
12 10 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
12 10 (0.15%) Sage 200
12 10 (0.15%) SAP Business One
13 9 (0.14%) iTrent
14 8 (0.12%) JDE EnterpriseOne
15 7 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
16 6 (0.092%) Fidessa
Cloud Services
1 1,433 (22.07%) Azure
2 931 (14.34%) Microsoft 365
3 707 (10.89%) AWS
4 535 (8.24%) Power Platform
5 406 (6.25%) SaaS
6 266 (4.10%) Entra ID
7 208 (3.20%) GCP
8 183 (2.82%) Azure DevOps
9 154 (2.37%) GitHub
10 140 (2.16%) Serverless
11 114 (1.76%) Power Automate
12 94 (1.45%) Dynamics 365
13 75 (1.16%) PowerApps
14 74 (1.14%) Amazon S3
15 72 (1.11%) AWS Lambda
16 68 (1.05%) AWS CloudFormation
17 65 (1.00%) Google Workspace
18 62 (0.95%) Azure Data Factory
18 62 (0.95%) PaaS
19 57 (0.88%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 406 (6.25%) DNS
2 345 (5.31%) DHCP
3 331 (5.10%) Firewall
4 210 (3.23%) VPN
5 187 (2.88%) TCP/IP
6 182 (2.80%) Wi-Fi
7 164 (2.53%) WAN
8 139 (2.14%) LAN
9 118 (1.82%) VLAN
10 90 (1.39%) VoIP
11 84 (1.29%) Wireless
12 76 (1.17%) Broadband
13 58 (0.89%) Network Security
14 54 (0.83%) Remote Desktop
15 48 (0.74%) Internet
16 47 (0.72%) SAN
17 46 (0.71%) SD-WAN
18 29 (0.45%) Unified Communications
19 25 (0.39%) Structured Cabling
20 23 (0.35%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 448 (6.90%) Power BI
2 310 (4.77%) SQL Server
3 156 (2.40%) Relational Database
4 141 (2.17%) Tableau
5 136 (2.09%) Data Warehouse
6 122 (1.88%) PostgreSQL
7 118 (1.82%) Data Lake
8 116 (1.79%) MySQL
9 114 (1.76%) Amazon RDS
9 114 (1.76%) NoSQL
10 66 (1.02%) SAP BW
10 66 (1.02%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 58 (0.89%) Metadata
12 57 (0.88%) MongoDB
13 48 (0.74%) Amazon Redshift
13 48 (0.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 44 (0.68%) DynamoDB
15 43 (0.66%) Big Data
16 42 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
17 28 (0.43%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 255 (3.93%) Git
2 245 (3.77%) JIRA
3 97 (1.49%) Jenkins
4 80 (1.23%) GitLab
5 58 (0.89%) Selenium
6 25 (0.39%) Bitbucket
7 23 (0.35%) Visual Studio
8 22 (0.34%) Cypress.io
9 20 (0.31%) LabVIEW
10 19 (0.29%) Maven
10 19 (0.29%) SonarQube
10 19 (0.29%) TeamCity
11 18 (0.28%) Robot Framework
12 17 (0.26%) Burp Suite
12 17 (0.26%) Metasploit
12 17 (0.26%) Octopus Deploy
13 16 (0.25%) JUnit
14 14 (0.22%) Cucumber
14 14 (0.22%) Snyk
14 14 (0.22%) WebDriver
General
1 3,477 (53.55%) Social Skills
2 1,973 (30.39%) Analytical Skills
3 1,559 (24.01%) Finance
4 391 (6.02%) Marketing
5 350 (5.39%) Law
6 347 (5.34%) Manufacturing
7 342 (5.27%) Retail
8 340 (5.24%) Organisational Skills
9 289 (4.45%) Legal
10 276 (4.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 268 (4.13%) Public Sector
12 253 (3.90%) Banking
13 178 (2.74%) Telecoms
14 165 (2.54%) Presentation Skills
15 159 (2.45%) Electronics
16 120 (1.85%) Games
17 94 (1.45%) Influencing Skills
18 87 (1.34%) Automotive
19 82 (1.26%) Documentation Skills
20 78 (1.20%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,048 (16.14%) Analyst
2 797 (12.27%) Senior
3 691 (10.64%) IT Support
4 624 (9.61%) Support Engineer
5 582 (8.96%) Developer
6 440 (6.78%) Lead
7 353 (5.44%) Support Analyst
8 294 (4.53%) Technical Support
9 283 (4.36%) IT Engineer
10 249 (3.83%) Business Analyst
11 238 (3.67%) IT Support Engineer
12 224 (3.45%) Consultant
13 213 (3.28%) Architect
14 202 (3.11%) Technical Engineer
15 188 (2.90%) Technical Support Engineer
16 184 (2.83%) 2nd Line Support
17 182 (2.80%) Support Technician
18 162 (2.49%) Systems Engineer
19 160 (2.46%) Applications Support
20 158 (2.43%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 273 (4.20%) .NET
2 245 (3.77%) React
3 222 (3.42%) HTML
4 174 (2.68%) CSS
5 151 (2.33%) REST
6 132 (2.03%) Node.js
7 105 (1.62%) RESTful
8 96 (1.48%) AngularJS
9 71 (1.09%) XML
10 70 (1.08%) Spring
11 68 (1.05%) JSON
12 67 (1.03%) Vue
13 60 (0.92%) SOAP
14 59 (0.91%) .NET Framework
15 56 (0.86%) ASP.NET
15 56 (0.86%) Kafka
16 55 (0.85%) Middleware
17 48 (0.74%) Django
18 45 (0.69%) Flask
18 45 (0.69%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 518 (7.98%) Onboarding
2 508 (7.82%) Driving Licence
3 418 (6.44%) Self-Motivation
4 211 (3.25%) Management Information System
5 199 (3.06%) Analytical Mindset
6 160 (2.46%) Cloud Native
7 154 (2.37%) Legacy Systems
8 152 (2.34%) Product Ownership
9 120 (1.85%) Data Centre
10 114 (1.76%) Enterprise Software
11 72 (1.11%) Algorithms
12 70 (1.08%) Data Structures
13 68 (1.05%) Mobile App
14 66 (1.02%) Distributed Systems
15 64 (0.99%) Virtual Team
16 61 (0.94%) Low-Code
17 55 (0.85%) FMCG
18 49 (0.75%) Security Posture
19 48 (0.74%) Social Media
20 46 (0.71%) EPoS
Operating Systems
1 1,097 (16.90%) Windows
2 431 (6.64%) Windows Server
3 406 (6.25%) Linux
4 161 (2.48%) Windows 10
5 114 (1.76%) Windows Server 2016
6 92 (1.42%) Mac OS
7 78 (1.20%) Android
8 67 (1.03%) Apple iOS
9 60 (0.92%) Unix
10 50 (0.77%) Windows Server 2019
11 31 (0.48%) Windows Server 2012
12 24 (0.37%) VMS
13 23 (0.35%) Windows 7
14 21 (0.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
15 10 (0.15%) CentOS
16 9 (0.14%) Ubuntu
17 6 (0.092%) Mac OS X
17 6 (0.092%) Windows Server 2008
18 5 (0.077%) Windows 8
19 4 (0.062%) OpenWrt
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,110 (17.10%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,075 (16.56%) Agile
3 958 (14.75%) Customer Service
4 740 (11.40%) Analytics
5 646 (9.95%) AI
6 635 (9.78%) Mentoring
7 632 (9.73%) Decision-Making
8 621 (9.56%) Business Intelligence
9 615 (9.47%) Project Management
10 576 (8.87%) DevOps
11 553 (8.52%) ITIL
12 525 (8.09%) CI/CD
13 508 (7.82%) Computer Science
14 492 (7.58%) Cybersecurity
15 474 (7.30%) Stakeholder Management
16 447 (6.88%) Change Management
17 443 (6.82%) ERP
18 395 (6.08%) CRM
19 392 (6.04%) Data Analysis
20 388 (5.98%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,009 (15.54%) SQL
2 892 (13.74%) Python
3 382 (5.88%) JavaScript
4 338 (5.21%) C#
5 314 (4.84%) PowerShell
6 309 (4.76%) Java
7 152 (2.34%) TypeScript
8 129 (1.99%) Bash
9 98 (1.51%) PHP
10 84 (1.29%) C++
11 57 (0.88%) T-SQL
12 54 (0.83%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 41 (0.63%) C
14 39 (0.60%) Go
14 39 (0.60%) R
15 33 (0.51%) Scala
16 26 (0.40%) VBA
17 25 (0.39%) Bicep
17 25 (0.39%) MATLAB
17 25 (0.39%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 1,566 (24.12%) Degree
2 534 (8.22%) Security Cleared
3 334 (5.14%) SC Cleared
4 243 (3.74%) Computer Science Degree
5 176 (2.71%) Microsoft Certification
6 173 (2.66%) Master's Degree
7 159 (2.45%) DBS Check
8 133 (2.05%) DV Cleared
9 107 (1.65%) CISSP
10 101 (1.56%) BPSS Clearance
11 84 (1.29%) Cisco Certification
12 81 (1.25%) ACCA
13 74 (1.14%) A+ Certification
14 67 (1.03%) CIMA
15 65 (1.00%) Network+ Certification
16 61 (0.94%) AWS Certification
17 60 (0.92%) PMI Certification
18 58 (0.89%) CISM
19 56 (0.86%) CCNA
20 55 (0.85%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 356 (5.48%) QA
2 343 (5.28%) Data Quality
3 200 (3.08%) GDPR
4 176 (2.71%) Cyber Essentials
5 164 (2.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 141 (2.17%) Accessibility
7 134 (2.06%) SLA
8 114 (1.76%) PCI DSS
9 79 (1.22%) NIST
10 47 (0.72%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 31 (0.48%) ISO 9001
12 29 (0.45%) PMO
13 25 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
14 16 (0.25%) GRC
15 15 (0.23%) COBIT
16 14 (0.22%) SOC 2
17 12 (0.18%) WCAG
18 11 (0.17%) ISO/IEC 20000
19 9 (0.14%) ISO 13485
20 8 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 19770
System Software
1 762 (11.74%) Active Directory
2 247 (3.80%) Docker
3 234 (3.60%) Hyper-V
4 147 (2.26%) VMware Infrastructure
5 84 (1.29%) Terminal Server
6 27 (0.42%) Firmware
7 26 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
8 20 (0.31%) VMware ESXi
9 18 (0.28%) vSphere
10 16 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
11 9 (0.14%) KVM
12 6 (0.092%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.062%) VMware Workstation
14 3 (0.046%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 3 (0.046%) vCloud
15 2 (0.031%) BitLocker
15 2 (0.031%) HDFS
15 2 (0.031%) Postfix
15 2 (0.031%) RHEV
15 2 (0.031%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 277 (4.27%) Microsoft Intune
2 259 (3.99%) Terraform
3 201 (3.10%) Kubernetes
4 130 (2.00%) Ansible
5 69 (1.06%) Grafana
6 62 (0.95%) SCCM
7 46 (0.71%) Prometheus
8 42 (0.65%) BMC PATROL
9 33 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
10 20 (0.31%) Jamf Pro
10 20 (0.31%) Nagios
11 18 (0.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 16 (0.25%) vCenter Server
13 14 (0.22%) Argo
13 14 (0.22%) Cisco CUCM
14 12 (0.18%) FortiGate
15 11 (0.17%) Kibana
16 10 (0.15%) Nmap
16 10 (0.15%) PaperCut
16 10 (0.15%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,705 (26.26%) Microsoft
2 417 (6.42%) SAP
3 282 (4.34%) Oracle
4 280 (4.31%) VMware
5 156 (2.40%) Salesforce
6 152 (2.34%) Cisco
7 140 (2.16%) Veeam
8 138 (2.13%) Google
9 130 (2.00%) Splunk
10 128 (1.97%) ServiceNow
11 123 (1.89%) SolarWinds
12 111 (1.71%) Databricks
13 87 (1.34%) Adobe
14 85 (1.31%) Tanium
15 84 (1.29%) Brocade
15 84 (1.29%) Nimble Storage
16 73 (1.12%) Apple
17 64 (0.99%) Sage
18 54 (0.83%) Dell
19 53 (0.82%) HubSpot