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

6 months to
16 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 4 6
Rank change year-on-year -8 +2 +7
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,301 7,970 12,667
As % of all permanent jobs in England 7.75% 20.35% 15.06%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.50% 21.79% 17.69%
Number of salaries quoted 4,443 4,548 8,479
10th Percentile £27,500 £27,500 £26,133
25th Percentile £31,250 £35,000 £32,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £50,967 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -6.80% +1.93% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £72,500 £68,000
90th Percentile £87,500 £88,750 £85,000
UK median annual salary £47,500 £50,967 £49,500
% change year-on-year -6.80% +2.96% -10.00%

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 60,033 36,575 71,612
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 73.81% 93.39% 85.14%
Number of salaries quoted 39,422 20,210 53,694
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,000 £29,000
25th Percentile £41,250 £41,250 £39,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year - +9.09% -12.00%
75th Percentile £80,000 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £102,500 £93,750
UK median annual salary £60,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year - +9.09% -9.97%

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 16 May 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 16 May 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 1,907 £70,000 +7.69% 968
North of England -11 1,293 £42,500 -5.56% 679
South East -9 1,136 £47,125 -5.75% 771
Midlands -21 868 £40,000 -11.11% 422
North West -18 669 £45,000 -5.26% 359
South West -8 536 £43,500 +2.35% 303
West Midlands -24 512 £42,500 -11.46% 251
Yorkshire -12 493 £41,500 +3.75% 231
East of England -8 472 £40,678 -4.29% 281
East Midlands -10 353 £35,000 -12.50% 171
North East -17 131 £48,445 +7.65% 96
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
1 322 (5.11%) Microsoft Exchange
2 311 (4.94%) SharePoint
3 68 (1.08%) Confluence
4 61 (0.97%) CMS
5 55 (0.87%) Apache
6 40 (0.63%) Apache Airflow
7 32 (0.51%) Apache Spark
8 29 (0.46%) WordPress
9 28 (0.44%) IIS
10 15 (0.24%) SAS
11 14 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
12 10 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2013
13 9 (0.14%) Drupal
13 9 (0.14%) nginx
14 8 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2007
14 8 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2010
15 5 (0.079%) OpenStack
15 5 (0.079%) Skype for Business
16 4 (0.063%) Moodle
16 4 (0.063%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 414 (6.57%) Microsoft Office
2 332 (5.27%) Microsoft Excel
3 53 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 48 (0.76%) Spreadsheet
5 37 (0.59%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.40%) Microsoft Project
7 14 (0.22%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
8 9 (0.14%) Fusion 360
8 9 (0.14%) Maya
9 8 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.13%) AutoCAD
10 6 (0.095%) Photoshop
10 6 (0.095%) SOLIDWORKS
11 4 (0.063%) Simulink
11 4 (0.063%) Trello
12 3 (0.048%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.048%) Autodesk Inventor
13 2 (0.032%) Acrobat
13 2 (0.032%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 59 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
1 59 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.51%) NetSuite
3 23 (0.37%) Salesforce CRM
4 19 (0.30%) Shopify
5 16 (0.25%) Magento
6 15 (0.24%) Dynamics NAV
7 14 (0.22%) SAP CO
7 14 (0.22%) SAP ERP
8 13 (0.21%) iTrent
9 11 (0.17%) Maximo
9 11 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
10 10 (0.16%) Endur
11 9 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
11 9 (0.14%) Workday HCM
12 7 (0.11%) Elite 3E
12 7 (0.11%) IBM Planning Analytics
12 7 (0.11%) Q-Pulse
12 7 (0.11%) SAP Business One
13 6 (0.095%) Sage 50
Cloud Services
1 1,313 (20.84%) Azure
2 950 (15.08%) Microsoft 365
3 793 (12.59%) AWS
4 474 (7.52%) Power Platform
5 316 (5.02%) SaaS
6 284 (4.51%) GCP
7 262 (4.16%) Entra ID
8 170 (2.70%) Serverless
9 163 (2.59%) Azure DevOps
10 149 (2.36%) GitHub
11 120 (1.90%) Dynamics 365
12 115 (1.83%) Power Automate
13 92 (1.46%) Amazon S3
14 88 (1.40%) PowerApps
15 86 (1.36%) Google Workspace
16 77 (1.22%) AWS Lambda
16 77 (1.22%) GitHub Actions
17 76 (1.21%) PaaS
18 73 (1.16%) IaaS
19 69 (1.10%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 374 (5.94%) Firewall
2 350 (5.55%) DNS
3 282 (4.48%) DHCP
4 246 (3.90%) VPN
5 213 (3.38%) WAN
6 188 (2.98%) Wi-Fi
7 185 (2.94%) LAN
8 179 (2.84%) TCP/IP
9 171 (2.71%) Broadband
10 119 (1.89%) Wireless
11 111 (1.76%) VLAN
12 94 (1.49%) VoIP
13 66 (1.05%) Network Security
14 65 (1.03%) SD-WAN
15 54 (0.86%) SAN
16 41 (0.65%) Internet
17 39 (0.62%) BGP
18 38 (0.60%) OSPF
19 34 (0.54%) HTTP
20 31 (0.49%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 382 (6.06%) Power BI
2 276 (4.38%) SQL Server
3 118 (1.87%) Data Warehouse
4 105 (1.67%) Tableau
5 102 (1.62%) NoSQL
6 89 (1.41%) PostgreSQL
7 82 (1.30%) MySQL
8 77 (1.22%) Relational Database
9 71 (1.13%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 63 (1.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 58 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
12 57 (0.90%) Power Query
13 49 (0.78%) MongoDB
14 47 (0.75%) Amazon Redshift
15 45 (0.71%) Big Data
16 43 (0.68%) DynamoDB
17 37 (0.59%) Data Lake
18 35 (0.56%) Metadata
19 33 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
20 26 (0.41%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 279 (4.43%) Git
2 201 (3.19%) JIRA
3 106 (1.68%) GitLab
3 106 (1.68%) Jenkins
4 33 (0.52%) Selenium
5 26 (0.41%) Rational DOORS
6 22 (0.35%) Maven
7 21 (0.33%) Chocolatey
7 21 (0.33%) Cypress.io
7 21 (0.33%) Visual Studio
8 19 (0.30%) Cucumber
9 18 (0.29%) SonarQube
10 17 (0.27%) CircleCI
11 15 (0.24%) Bitbucket
11 15 (0.24%) Burp Suite
11 15 (0.24%) Metasploit
11 15 (0.24%) TeamCity
12 13 (0.21%) LabVIEW
12 13 (0.21%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 12 (0.19%) JUnit
General
1 2,869 (45.53%) Social Skills
2 1,858 (29.49%) Analytical Skills
3 1,324 (21.01%) Finance
4 408 (6.48%) Organisational Skills
5 368 (5.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 329 (5.22%) Marketing
7 323 (5.13%) Manufacturing
8 319 (5.06%) Law
9 271 (4.30%) Banking
10 265 (4.21%) Retail
11 264 (4.19%) Public Sector
12 256 (4.06%) Legal
13 156 (2.48%) Telecoms
14 137 (2.17%) Electronics
15 134 (2.13%) Presentation Skills
16 102 (1.62%) Documentation Skills
17 86 (1.36%) Games
17 86 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
18 79 (1.25%) Advertising
19 69 (1.10%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 848 (13.46%) Analyst
2 788 (12.51%) Senior
3 648 (10.28%) IT Support
4 581 (9.22%) Developer
5 563 (8.94%) Support Engineer
6 406 (6.44%) Lead
7 384 (6.09%) IT Engineer
8 299 (4.75%) IT Support Engineer
9 264 (4.19%) Consultant
10 241 (3.82%) Support Analyst
11 220 (3.49%) Architect
12 216 (3.43%) Support Technician
13 203 (3.22%) Software Engineer
14 191 (3.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 177 (2.81%) Systems Engineer
16 167 (2.65%) Business Analyst
17 164 (2.60%) Technical Support
18 161 (2.56%) IT Technician
19 159 (2.52%) 2nd Line Support
20 149 (2.36%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 245 (3.89%) .NET
2 235 (3.73%) React
3 209 (3.32%) HTML
4 177 (2.81%) CSS
5 153 (2.43%) REST
6 131 (2.08%) Node.js
7 116 (1.84%) RESTful
8 89 (1.41%) SOAP
9 84 (1.33%) Middleware
10 75 (1.19%) Spring
11 71 (1.13%) JSON
12 67 (1.06%) XML
13 61 (0.97%) Vue
14 59 (0.94%) Kafka
15 58 (0.92%) AngularJS
16 55 (0.87%) gRPC
16 55 (0.87%) OAuth
17 54 (0.86%) Spring Boot
18 48 (0.76%) EDI
19 46 (0.73%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 383 (6.08%) Onboarding
2 380 (6.03%) Driving Licence
3 305 (4.84%) Self-Motivation
4 207 (3.29%) Management Information System
5 201 (3.19%) Cloud Native
6 177 (2.81%) Product Ownership
7 159 (2.52%) Data Centre
8 149 (2.36%) Distributed Systems
9 137 (2.17%) Analytical Mindset
10 104 (1.65%) Legacy Systems
11 92 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
12 91 (1.44%) Mobile App
13 90 (1.43%) Social Media
14 78 (1.24%) Data Structures
15 69 (1.10%) Low-Code
16 66 (1.05%) Algorithms
17 64 (1.02%) Virtual Team
18 63 (1.00%) Security Posture
19 58 (0.92%) Video\Live Streaming
20 52 (0.83%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 963 (15.28%) Windows
2 383 (6.08%) Linux
3 373 (5.92%) Windows Server
4 160 (2.54%) Windows 10
5 106 (1.68%) Android
6 92 (1.46%) Windows Server 2016
7 84 (1.33%) Apple iOS
8 79 (1.25%) Mac OS
9 57 (0.90%) Windows Server 2019
10 45 (0.71%) Unix
11 41 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 32 (0.51%) CentOS
12 32 (0.51%) Windows Server 2012
13 27 (0.43%) Ubuntu
14 24 (0.38%) VMS
15 16 (0.25%) Windows 7
16 14 (0.22%) Mac OS X
17 10 (0.16%) Debian
18 7 (0.11%) Windows 8
18 7 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,173 (18.62%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,001 (15.89%) Agile
3 882 (14.00%) Customer Service
4 695 (11.03%) AI
5 689 (10.93%) CI/CD
6 682 (10.82%) Mentoring
7 653 (10.36%) Decision-Making
8 611 (9.70%) Analytics
9 607 (9.63%) DevOps
10 530 (8.41%) ITIL
11 510 (8.09%) Stakeholder Management
12 497 (7.89%) Software Engineering
13 486 (7.71%) Computer Science
14 483 (7.67%) Project Management
15 474 (7.52%) Roadmaps
16 467 (7.41%) Business Intelligence
17 430 (6.82%) Cybersecurity
18 427 (6.78%) Coaching
19 369 (5.86%) Collaborative Working
20 354 (5.62%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 962 (15.27%) Python
2 866 (13.74%) SQL
3 419 (6.65%) JavaScript
4 325 (5.16%) Java
5 285 (4.52%) C#
6 282 (4.48%) PowerShell
7 192 (3.05%) TypeScript
8 155 (2.46%) Bash
9 112 (1.78%) C++
10 90 (1.43%) PHP
11 85 (1.35%) Go
12 62 (0.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 61 (0.97%) Scala
14 54 (0.86%) C
15 41 (0.65%) T-SQL
16 40 (0.63%) Rust
17 38 (0.60%) R
18 37 (0.59%) PL/SQL
19 35 (0.56%) Kotlin
20 34 (0.54%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,132 (17.97%) Degree
2 444 (7.05%) Security Cleared
3 283 (4.49%) SC Cleared
4 251 (3.98%) Computer Science Degree
5 214 (3.40%) DBS Check
6 184 (2.92%) Microsoft Certification
7 116 (1.84%) Master's Degree
8 110 (1.75%) CISSP
9 109 (1.73%) DV Cleared
10 103 (1.63%) Cisco Certification
11 88 (1.40%) A+ Certification
12 86 (1.36%) PMI Certification
13 84 (1.33%) BPSS Clearance
14 74 (1.17%) Azure Certification
15 72 (1.14%) ACCA
16 71 (1.13%) PMP
17 65 (1.03%) CCNA
17 65 (1.03%) CIMA
18 57 (0.90%) Network+ Certification
19 48 (0.76%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 323 (5.13%) QA
2 295 (4.68%) Data Quality
3 251 (3.98%) GDPR
4 192 (3.05%) SLA
5 150 (2.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 137 (2.17%) NIST
7 136 (2.16%) Cyber Essentials
8 123 (1.95%) Accessibility
9 105 (1.67%) PCI DSS
10 45 (0.71%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 35 (0.56%) ISO 9001
12 32 (0.51%) PMO
13 31 (0.49%) SOC 2
14 27 (0.43%) GRC
15 25 (0.40%) COBIT
16 19 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
17 14 (0.22%) GMP
18 12 (0.19%) IFRS
18 12 (0.19%) TickIT
19 11 (0.17%) PERC
System Software
1 652 (10.35%) Active Directory
2 281 (4.46%) Docker
3 171 (2.71%) Hyper-V
4 170 (2.70%) VMware Infrastructure
5 42 (0.67%) Virtual Desktop
6 35 (0.56%) Terminal Server
7 34 (0.54%) Firmware
8 22 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
9 20 (0.32%) vSphere
10 15 (0.24%) KVM
11 12 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
12 10 (0.16%) IAG
13 7 (0.11%) VMware Workstation
14 6 (0.095%) XenApp
15 4 (0.063%) Embedded Firmware
15 4 (0.063%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 4 (0.063%) VMware NSX
16 3 (0.048%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 3 (0.048%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.048%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 294 (4.67%) Terraform
2 238 (3.78%) Microsoft Intune
3 231 (3.67%) Kubernetes
4 147 (2.33%) Ansible
5 89 (1.41%) Grafana
6 82 (1.30%) SCCM
7 53 (0.84%) Prometheus
8 37 (0.59%) Nagios
9 33 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (0.35%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 18 (0.29%) Kibana
12 14 (0.22%) Autotask
13 13 (0.21%) Puppet
14 12 (0.19%) Argo
14 12 (0.19%) vCenter Server
15 11 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
15 11 (0.17%) Nessus
16 10 (0.16%) WSUS
16 10 (0.16%) ZABBIX
17 9 (0.14%) logstash
Vendors
1 1,645 (26.11%) Microsoft
2 246 (3.90%) VMware
3 178 (2.82%) Oracle
4 165 (2.62%) Google
5 151 (2.40%) SAP
6 138 (2.19%) Cisco
7 135 (2.14%) Salesforce
8 128 (2.03%) ServiceNow
9 107 (1.70%) Databricks
10 104 (1.65%) SolarWinds
11 90 (1.43%) Veeam
12 83 (1.32%) Splunk
13 80 (1.27%) Apple
14 71 (1.13%) Adobe
15 63 (1.00%) Dell
16 56 (0.89%) Red Hat
17 50 (0.79%) Dynatrace
18 48 (0.76%) Meraki
19 45 (0.71%) Typelevel
20 44 (0.70%) Fortinet