Problem-Solving Job Trends in the North West

Problem Solving
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the North West requiring Problem-Solving skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 5 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 6 8
Rank change year-on-year -11 +2 +14
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 695 848 565
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 11.18% 16.60% 13.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.58% 18.32% 15.52%
Number of salaries quoted 516 400 376
10th Percentile £26,750 £31,200 £26,000
25th Percentile £31,250 £36,250 £34,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,592 £48,342 £47,500
Median % change year-on-year -1.55% +1.77% -2.81%
75th Percentile £53,000 £61,028 £63,813
90th Percentile £65,000 £77,500 £75,000
England median annual salary £45,497 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -17.28% - -

All Process & Methodology Skills
North West

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 the North West.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 5,119 4,629 3,640
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 82.33% 90.64% 88.93%
Number of salaries quoted 2,478 2,256 2,801
10th Percentile £28,000 £32,114 £31,000
25th Percentile £35,000 £40,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,000 £53,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -1.89% -3.64%
75th Percentile £65,000 £66,389 £70,000
90th Percentile £81,250 £80,000 £82,548
England median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%

Problem-Solving
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Problem-Solving relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Problem-Solving job vacancy trend in the North West

Problem-Solving
Salary Trend in the North West

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Problem-Solving.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Problem-Solving

Problem-Solving
Salary Histogram in the North West

Salary distribution for jobs citing Problem-Solving in the North West over the 6 months to 5 January 2026.

Salary histogram for Problem-Solving in the North West

Problem-Solving
Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Problem-Solving within the North West region over the 6 months to 5 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
Manchester -17 267 £45,000 -10.00% 155
Cheshire -10 141 £53,000 +32.50% 106
Merseyside +5 136 £48,720 +49.91% 46
Lancashire -6 102 £45,000 -14.29% 96
Cumbria +6 47 £45,000 +9.76% 7
Problem-Solving
England

Problem-Solving
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West 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 41 (5.90%) SharePoint
2 18 (2.59%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (1.01%) WordPress
4 5 (0.72%) Confluence
5 4 (0.58%) Camunda
6 3 (0.43%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.29%) Apache Solr
7 2 (0.29%) FactoryTalk
7 2 (0.29%) nginx
7 2 (0.29%) WinCC
8 1 (0.14%) Anypoint
8 1 (0.14%) Apache
8 1 (0.14%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.14%) CMS
Applications
1 36 (5.18%) Microsoft Office
2 34 (4.89%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (0.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.43%) Simulink
5 2 (0.29%) AutoCAD
5 2 (0.29%) Revit
6 1 (0.14%) Siemens NX
6 1 (0.14%) Trello
Business Applications
1 8 (1.15%) SAP Business One
2 2 (0.29%) NetSuite
2 2 (0.29%) Oracle Assets
2 2 (0.29%) Oracle General Ledger
2 2 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
2 2 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
2 2 (0.29%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.29%) Unit4 Business World
3 1 (0.14%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.14%) Primavera
3 1 (0.14%) SAP WM
3 1 (0.14%) Shopify
3 1 (0.14%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 113 (16.26%) Azure
2 78 (11.22%) Microsoft 365
3 67 (9.64%) AWS
4 52 (7.48%) Entra ID
5 46 (6.62%) Power Platform
6 36 (5.18%) GCP
7 33 (4.75%) SaaS
8 15 (2.16%) OneDrive
9 13 (1.87%) Microsoft Purview
10 12 (1.73%) Power Automate
10 12 (1.73%) Serverless
11 10 (1.44%) Azure Monitor
12 8 (1.15%) PaaS
13 7 (1.01%) Dynamics 365
13 7 (1.01%) IaaS
13 7 (1.01%) Microsoft Copilot
14 6 (0.86%) Adobe Analytics
14 6 (0.86%) Cloud Computing
14 6 (0.86%) Figma
14 6 (0.86%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 28 (4.03%) Firewall
2 20 (2.88%) DNS
3 18 (2.59%) DHCP
4 16 (2.30%) Unified Communications
4 16 (2.30%) VoIP
5 14 (2.01%) Telepresence
5 14 (2.01%) WebEx
6 12 (1.73%) TCP/IP
7 11 (1.58%) VPN
7 11 (1.58%) Wireless
8 10 (1.44%) VLAN
9 9 (1.29%) WAN
10 7 (1.01%) Ethernet
10 7 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
11 6 (0.86%) Broadband
11 6 (0.86%) LAN
12 5 (0.72%) Structured Cabling
13 4 (0.58%) SD-WAN
14 3 (0.43%) ATM
14 3 (0.43%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (5.18%) Power BI
2 21 (3.02%) SQL Server
3 14 (2.01%) NoSQL
4 13 (1.87%) Tableau
5 10 (1.44%) MongoDB
5 10 (1.44%) MySQL
6 9 (1.29%) PostgreSQL
7 8 (1.15%) Crystal Reports
8 7 (1.01%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 6 (0.86%) Amazon Redshift
10 5 (0.72%) Azure SQL Database
10 5 (0.72%) Big Data
10 5 (0.72%) Data Warehouse
10 5 (0.72%) Elasticsearch
10 5 (0.72%) Oracle Reports
10 5 (0.72%) Relational Database
11 4 (0.58%) BigQuery
11 4 (0.58%) Looker
12 3 (0.43%) DynamoDB
12 3 (0.43%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 19 (2.73%) Git
2 12 (1.73%) GitLab
3 7 (1.01%) Bitbucket
3 7 (1.01%) Jenkins
3 7 (1.01%) JIRA
4 5 (0.72%) SonarQube
4 5 (0.72%) Sonatype Nexus
5 4 (0.58%) LabVIEW
6 1 (0.14%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 1 (0.14%) TeamCity
General
1 302 (43.45%) Social Skills
2 167 (24.03%) Analytical Skills
3 147 (21.15%) Finance
4 48 (6.91%) Automotive
5 40 (5.76%) Legal
6 30 (4.32%) Organisational Skills
7 23 (3.31%) Public Sector
7 23 (3.31%) Retail
7 23 (3.31%) Telecoms
8 20 (2.88%) Manufacturing
9 19 (2.73%) Electronics
9 19 (2.73%) Law
9 19 (2.73%) Presentation Skills
10 16 (2.30%) Banking
10 16 (2.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 15 (2.16%) Marketing
12 14 (2.01%) Advertising
13 13 (1.87%) Pharmaceutical
14 10 (1.44%) French Language
14 10 (1.44%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 87 (12.52%) Analyst
2 68 (9.78%) IT Support
3 60 (8.63%) Support Engineer
4 56 (8.06%) Senior
5 46 (6.62%) Lead
6 43 (6.19%) Developer
7 32 (4.60%) Business Analyst
8 30 (4.32%) Trainee
9 26 (3.74%) Trainee Analyst
9 26 (3.74%) Trainee Business Analyst
10 25 (3.60%) Systems Engineer
11 24 (3.45%) Architect
12 22 (3.17%) Support Technician
13 21 (3.02%) Consultant
13 21 (3.02%) IT Engineer
13 21 (3.02%) IT Support Engineer
13 21 (3.02%) Team Leader
14 20 (2.88%) Solutions Architect
15 18 (2.59%) Administrator
16 17 (2.45%) Support Team Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (2.88%) React
2 15 (2.16%) HTML
3 12 (1.73%) .NET
4 11 (1.58%) RESTful
5 10 (1.44%) CSS
5 10 (1.44%) REST
5 10 (1.44%) Spring
6 9 (1.29%) Node.js
6 9 (1.29%) Spring Boot
7 7 (1.01%) Hibernate
7 7 (1.01%) Oracle Fusion
7 7 (1.01%) Vue
8 6 (0.86%) AngularJS
8 6 (0.86%) Laravel
9 5 (0.72%) Django
10 4 (0.58%) ASP.NET
10 4 (0.58%) Celery
10 4 (0.58%) JSON
10 4 (0.58%) RabbitMQ
10 4 (0.58%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 183 (26.33%) Driving Licence
2 54 (7.77%) Onboarding
3 30 (4.32%) Self-Motivation
4 21 (3.02%) Analytical Mindset
5 20 (2.88%) Enterprise Software
5 20 (2.88%) EPoS
6 13 (1.87%) CCTV
6 13 (1.87%) Cloud Native
7 12 (1.73%) Distributed Systems
7 12 (1.73%) Management Information System
8 10 (1.44%) IoT
9 9 (1.29%) Video Conferencing
10 7 (1.01%) Legacy Systems
10 7 (1.01%) SCADA
10 7 (1.01%) Virtual Team
11 6 (0.86%) Greenfield Project
11 6 (0.86%) Home Automation
11 6 (0.86%) Life Science
11 6 (0.86%) Operational Technology
11 6 (0.86%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 83 (11.94%) Windows
2 29 (4.17%) Windows Server
3 19 (2.73%) Linux
4 10 (1.44%) Windows 10
5 5 (0.72%) Android
6 4 (0.58%) Apple iOS
6 4 (0.58%) Mac OS
6 4 (0.58%) Windows 7
6 4 (0.58%) Windows 8
7 2 (0.29%) Unix
8 1 (0.14%) CentOS
8 1 (0.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.14%) Solaris
8 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 107 (15.40%) Continuous Improvement
2 96 (13.81%) Agile
3 93 (13.38%) Decision-Making
4 76 (10.94%) Customer Service
5 73 (10.50%) Project Management
6 71 (10.22%) Mentoring
7 56 (8.06%) Stakeholder Management
8 55 (7.91%) AI
9 53 (7.63%) DevOps
10 49 (7.05%) Cybersecurity
11 45 (6.47%) CRM
12 43 (6.19%) ITIL
13 42 (6.04%) Change Management
14 41 (5.90%) Coaching
15 40 (5.76%) Business Intelligence
15 40 (5.76%) CI/CD
15 40 (5.76%) Collaborative Culture
16 39 (5.61%) Analytics
17 36 (5.18%) Service Delivery
18 34 (4.89%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 75 (10.79%) SQL
2 38 (5.47%) Python
3 24 (3.45%) Java
4 19 (2.73%) JavaScript
5 13 (1.87%) PowerShell
6 11 (1.58%) C#
7 10 (1.44%) MATLAB
7 10 (1.44%) PHP
8 9 (1.29%) TypeScript
9 7 (1.01%) Go
10 5 (0.72%) Elixir
10 5 (0.72%) Kotlin
10 5 (0.72%) Ruby
11 4 (0.58%) Bash
11 4 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 4 (0.58%) Scala
12 3 (0.43%) Ladder Logic
13 2 (0.29%) Bicep
13 2 (0.29%) R
13 2 (0.29%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 145 (20.86%) Degree
2 31 (4.46%) BPSS Clearance
3 22 (3.17%) DBS Check
4 19 (2.73%) Master's Degree
5 17 (2.45%) Security Cleared
6 13 (1.87%) SC Cleared
7 10 (1.44%) Azure Certification
7 10 (1.44%) Computer Science Degree
8 8 (1.15%) A+ Certification
8 8 (1.15%) HNC
9 7 (1.01%) ACCA
9 7 (1.01%) CIMA
9 7 (1.01%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 7 (1.01%) Microsoft Certification
9 7 (1.01%) NVQ Level 4
10 4 (0.58%) CIPD
10 4 (0.58%) HND
10 4 (0.58%) ITIL Certification
10 4 (0.58%) Network+ Certification
11 3 (0.43%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (3.88%) QA
2 23 (3.31%) GDPR
3 20 (2.88%) Data Quality
4 10 (1.44%) Cyber Essentials
5 9 (1.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 8 (1.15%) Accessibility
7 7 (1.01%) SLA
8 6 (0.86%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 5 (0.72%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 5 (0.72%) GLBA
9 5 (0.72%) PMO
10 2 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
10 2 (0.29%) COBIT
10 2 (0.29%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.29%) ITGC
10 2 (0.29%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.14%) ISO 14001
11 1 (0.14%) ISO 9001
11 1 (0.14%) NIST
System Software
1 66 (9.50%) Active Directory
2 28 (4.03%) Docker
3 17 (2.45%) Hyper-V
4 5 (0.72%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.43%) Firmware
5 3 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
5 3 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (0.43%) VMware Workstation
6 2 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.14%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 42 (6.04%) BMC PATROL
2 33 (4.75%) Microsoft Intune
3 23 (3.31%) Kubernetes
3 23 (3.31%) Terraform
4 14 (2.01%) Cisco CUCM
5 10 (1.44%) Single Sign-On
6 7 (1.01%) Ansible
6 7 (1.01%) SCCM
7 4 (0.58%) Autotask
7 4 (0.58%) Grafana
7 4 (0.58%) Prometheus
8 3 (0.43%) cPanel
8 3 (0.43%) Plesk
9 2 (0.29%) AssetCenter
9 2 (0.29%) Jamf Pro
9 2 (0.29%) Rancher
10 1 (0.14%) Argo
10 1 (0.14%) AWS Copilot
10 1 (0.14%) FortiGate
10 1 (0.14%) Podman
Vendors
1 125 (17.99%) Microsoft
2 28 (4.03%) Oracle
3 25 (3.60%) ServiceNow
4 24 (3.45%) Workday
5 19 (2.73%) Cisco
6 17 (2.45%) SAP
7 11 (1.58%) Google
7 11 (1.58%) Siemens
7 11 (1.58%) VMware
8 8 (1.15%) New Relic
8 8 (1.15%) Splunk
9 7 (1.01%) HubSpot
10 6 (0.86%) Adobe
10 6 (0.86%) BiZZdesign
10 6 (0.86%) iManage
10 6 (0.86%) Qualtrics
11 5 (0.72%) Apple
11 5 (0.72%) Facebook
11 5 (0.72%) SnapLogic
12 4 (0.58%) EXASOL