Problem-Solving Job Trends in the South East

Problem Solving
England > South East

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

6 months to
5 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 4 5
Rank change year-on-year -2 +1 +4
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 1,884 1,697 1,949
As % of all permanent jobs in the South East 9.94% 18.85% 15.52%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.77% 21.33% 19.04%
Number of salaries quoted 1,321 885 869
10th Percentile £27,000 £26,650 £27,400
25th Percentile £31,000 £30,500 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £41,585 £41,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +1.43% -18.00% -
75th Percentile £56,465 £60,000 £67,500
90th Percentile £67,500 £75,000 £83,750
England median annual salary £46,000 £45,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +2.22% -14.29% -4.55%

All Process & Methodology Skills
South East

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 South East.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 13,683 7,955 10,235
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the South East 72.22% 88.35% 81.51%
Number of salaries quoted 9,740 4,235 5,418
10th Percentile £30,000 £27,000 £32,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £47,520 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +15.74% -13.60% -
75th Percentile £70,000 £66,250 £70,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £82,500 £83,750
England median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -1.64%

Problem-Solving
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

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

Problem-Solving job vacancy trend in the South East

Problem-Solving
Salary Trend in the South East

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Problem-Solving.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Problem-Solving

Problem-Solving
Salary Histogram in the South East

Salary distribution for jobs citing Problem-Solving in the South East over the 6 months to 5 October 2026.

Salary histogram for Problem-Solving in the South East

Problem-Solving
Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Problem-Solving within the South East region over the 6 months to 5 October 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
Thames Valley -2 716 £42,500 +4.94% 707
Hampshire -2 473 £40,000 -2.44% 405
Berkshire -2 327 £42,500 +3.66% 337
Surrey +1 287 £40,000 -4.19% 212
Buckinghamshire -5 205 £42,500 +13.33% 162
Kent -1 202 £35,000 +4.48% 118
Oxfordshire +4 184 £44,000 +3.53% 215
East Sussex 0 93 £50,000 +18.34% 83
West Sussex -6 89 £46,250 -8.42% 125
Middlesex +3 13 £35,000 -6.67% 13
Sussex -13 7 £65,000 +52.94% 24
Isle of Wight -10 2 £42,500 +3.66% 5
Problem-Solving
England

Problem-Solving
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 94 (4.99%) SharePoint
2 67 (3.56%) Microsoft Exchange
3 18 (0.96%) IIS
4 16 (0.85%) Confluence
5 9 (0.48%) CMS
6 7 (0.37%) OpenEdge
7 6 (0.32%) Apache
8 5 (0.27%) nginx
8 5 (0.27%) WordPress
9 3 (0.16%) SAS
10 2 (0.11%) Gentran
10 2 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
10 2 (0.11%) Tomcat
11 1 (0.053%) Apache Spark
11 1 (0.053%) ArchestrA
11 1 (0.053%) OpenStack
Applications
1 144 (7.64%) Microsoft Office
2 118 (6.26%) Microsoft Excel
3 19 (1.01%) AutoCAD
4 17 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
5 16 (0.85%) Spreadsheet
6 14 (0.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 9 (0.48%) MS Visio
7 9 (0.48%) Revit
8 7 (0.37%) Simulink
9 6 (0.32%) Lightworks
9 6 (0.32%) SOLIDWORKS
10 4 (0.21%) Mathematica
11 3 (0.16%) EPLAN
12 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.11%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.11%) PTC Creo
12 2 (0.11%) Siemens NX
12 2 (0.11%) Solid Edge
13 1 (0.053%) Mathcad
13 1 (0.053%) OrCAD
Business Applications
1 26 (1.38%) NetSuite
2 19 (1.01%) Shopify
3 15 (0.80%) Dynamics CRM
4 7 (0.37%) Primavera
5 6 (0.32%) Raiser’s Edge
6 4 (0.21%) Magento
7 3 (0.16%) Payment Gateway
7 3 (0.16%) Sage X3
8 2 (0.11%) Academy Housing
8 2 (0.11%) Eloqua
8 2 (0.11%) FastStats
8 2 (0.11%) FastStats PeopleStage
8 2 (0.11%) Infor SunSystems
8 2 (0.11%) Oracle Applications
8 2 (0.11%) SAP MDG
8 2 (0.11%) SAP MDG-M
8 2 (0.11%) Siebel CRM
8 2 (0.11%) Workday HCM
9 1 (0.053%) HFM
9 1 (0.053%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 375 (19.90%) Azure
2 262 (13.91%) Microsoft 365
3 176 (9.34%) AWS
4 103 (5.47%) Power Platform
5 91 (4.83%) Entra ID
6 75 (3.98%) SaaS
7 49 (2.60%) GCP
8 39 (2.07%) Azure DevOps
9 35 (1.86%) GitHub
9 35 (1.86%) Google Workspace
10 31 (1.65%) Serverless
11 25 (1.33%) OneDrive
12 18 (0.96%) Anthropic Claude
13 15 (0.80%) Amazon ECS
13 15 (0.80%) AWS CloudFormation
13 15 (0.80%) Dynamics 365
13 15 (0.80%) IaaS
13 15 (0.80%) PaaS
14 14 (0.74%) Google Analytics
15 13 (0.69%) Google Tag Manager
Communications & Networking
1 166 (8.81%) Firewall
2 93 (4.94%) DNS
3 78 (4.14%) VPN
4 69 (3.66%) DHCP
5 64 (3.40%) VLAN
6 60 (3.18%) TCP/IP
7 57 (3.03%) Wi-Fi
8 55 (2.92%) LAN
8 55 (2.92%) WAN
9 53 (2.81%) Wireless
10 38 (2.02%) Network Security
10 38 (2.02%) VoIP
11 18 (0.96%) SSL
12 13 (0.69%) Internet
13 11 (0.58%) MQTT
14 9 (0.48%) 5G
14 9 (0.48%) Ethernet
14 9 (0.48%) LTE
15 8 (0.42%) Broadband
15 8 (0.42%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 124 (6.58%) SQL Server
2 84 (4.46%) Power BI
3 35 (1.86%) Relational Database
4 32 (1.70%) MySQL
5 30 (1.59%) PostgreSQL
6 25 (1.33%) NoSQL
7 14 (0.74%) Data Warehouse
8 13 (0.69%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 12 (0.64%) GIS
9 12 (0.64%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 11 (0.58%) Amazon RDS
11 10 (0.53%) Tableau
12 9 (0.48%) MongoDB
13 7 (0.37%) DynamoDB
13 7 (0.37%) Metadata
14 6 (0.32%) Azure SQL Database
14 6 (0.32%) OLTP
15 5 (0.27%) Electronic Patient Records
15 5 (0.27%) Power Query
16 4 (0.21%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 62 (3.29%) Git
2 59 (3.13%) JIRA
3 16 (0.85%) Claude Code
3 16 (0.85%) Rational DOORS
4 15 (0.80%) GitLab
5 13 (0.69%) Oracle Forms
5 13 (0.69%) Team Foundation Server
6 6 (0.32%) Selenium
7 5 (0.27%) Eclipse
7 5 (0.27%) Eclipse RCP
7 5 (0.27%) Jenkins
7 5 (0.27%) Visual Studio
8 4 (0.21%) PetaLinux
8 4 (0.21%) Postman
8 4 (0.21%) Terragrunt
9 3 (0.16%) LabVIEW
9 3 (0.16%) Mocha
9 3 (0.16%) PHPUnit
9 3 (0.16%) SpecFlow
10 2 (0.11%) Subversion
General
1 982 (52.12%) Social Skills
2 496 (26.33%) Analytical Skills
3 302 (16.03%) Finance
4 208 (11.04%) Manufacturing
5 197 (10.46%) Organisational Skills
6 147 (7.80%) Aerospace
7 125 (6.63%) Electronics
8 108 (5.73%) Retail
9 67 (3.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 61 (3.24%) Marketing
11 55 (2.92%) Influencing Skills
12 54 (2.87%) Legal
13 48 (2.55%) Public Sector
14 45 (2.39%) Military
14 45 (2.39%) Telecoms
15 36 (1.91%) Law
16 28 (1.49%) Aviation
16 28 (1.49%) Documentation Skills
17 27 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
18 25 (1.33%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 259 (13.75%) Analyst
2 190 (10.08%) Senior
3 173 (9.18%) IT Support
4 154 (8.17%) Developer
5 141 (7.48%) Support Analyst
6 132 (7.01%) Support Engineer
7 93 (4.94%) IT Engineer
8 92 (4.88%) Lead
9 84 (4.46%) Technical Support
10 77 (4.09%) Support Technician
11 71 (3.77%) Systems Engineer
12 68 (3.61%) Software Engineer
13 66 (3.50%) IT Support Engineer
14 61 (3.24%) Technical Engineer
15 59 (3.13%) Technical Support Engineer
16 58 (3.08%) 2nd Line Support
16 58 (3.08%) IT Analyst
17 54 (2.87%) IT Technician
18 52 (2.76%) Consultant
19 49 (2.60%) 1st Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 121 (6.42%) .NET
2 77 (4.09%) Terraform
3 72 (3.82%) HTML
4 59 (3.13%) REST
5 56 (2.97%) ASP.NET
6 54 (2.87%) CSS
7 53 (2.81%) React
8 46 (2.44%) SOAP
9 36 (1.91%) ASP.NET Core
10 31 (1.65%) AngularJS
10 31 (1.65%) RESTful
11 28 (1.49%) Vue
12 27 (1.43%) JSON
12 27 (1.43%) ModSecurity
12 27 (1.43%) OAuth
12 27 (1.43%) XML
13 25 (1.33%) ASP.NET Web Forms
14 24 (1.27%) ASP.NET Web API
15 22 (1.17%) jQuery
16 21 (1.11%) LESS
Miscellaneous
1 157 (8.33%) Driving Licence
2 132 (7.01%) Onboarding
3 111 (5.89%) Management Information System
4 95 (5.04%) Self-Motivation
5 67 (3.56%) Cloud Native
6 50 (2.65%) Product Ownership
7 40 (2.12%) Data Centre
8 35 (1.86%) Robotics
9 33 (1.75%) Enterprise Software
10 30 (1.59%) Social Media
11 28 (1.49%) Analogue Electronics
12 26 (1.38%) CCTV
13 25 (1.33%) Analytical Mindset
13 25 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
14 21 (1.11%) Distributed Systems
15 19 (1.01%) Mobile App
16 18 (0.96%) Renewable Energy
17 16 (0.85%) Cyber Threat
17 16 (0.85%) EPoS
17 16 (0.85%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 301 (15.98%) Windows
2 115 (6.10%) Windows Server
3 104 (5.52%) Linux
4 28 (1.49%) Android
5 25 (1.33%) Windows 10
6 22 (1.17%) Mac OS
7 19 (1.01%) Apple iOS
7 19 (1.01%) Windows Server 2019
8 10 (0.53%) Ubuntu
9 8 (0.42%) Windows Server 2016
10 7 (0.37%) Debian
10 7 (0.37%) Rocky
11 6 (0.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 6 (0.32%) Windows Server 2012
12 5 (0.27%) CentOS
13 4 (0.21%) FreeRTOS
14 3 (0.16%) Gentoo
14 3 (0.16%) Unix
14 3 (0.16%) Windows 7
15 2 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 435 (23.09%) Continuous Improvement
2 379 (20.12%) Customer Service
3 228 (12.10%) Agile
4 219 (11.62%) Decision-Making
4 219 (11.62%) Stakeholder Management
5 200 (10.62%) Project Management
6 191 (10.14%) AI
7 190 (10.08%) Project Delivery
8 175 (9.29%) Collaborative Working
9 162 (8.60%) Software Engineering
10 158 (8.39%) ITIL
11 154 (8.17%) CI/CD
12 150 (7.96%) Cybersecurity
12 150 (7.96%) Mentoring
13 148 (7.86%) CRM
14 143 (7.59%) Validation
15 133 (7.06%) DevOps
16 124 (6.58%) Computer Science
17 121 (6.42%) ERP
18 119 (6.32%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 229 (12.15%) SQL
2 196 (10.40%) Python
3 141 (7.48%) C#
4 112 (5.94%) JavaScript
5 94 (4.99%) PowerShell
6 69 (3.66%) C++
7 67 (3.56%) TypeScript
8 61 (3.24%) Java
9 27 (1.43%) C
10 25 (1.33%) Bash
11 24 (1.27%) Ruby
12 21 (1.11%) T-SQL
13 18 (0.96%) MATLAB
13 18 (0.96%) VB.NET
14 17 (0.90%) PHP
15 12 (0.64%) Rust
16 10 (0.53%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 9 (0.48%) Bicep
17 9 (0.48%) PL/SQL
18 8 (0.42%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 373 (19.80%) Degree
2 205 (10.88%) Security Cleared
3 139 (7.38%) SC Cleared
4 119 (6.32%) DBS Check
5 68 (3.61%) HNC
6 64 (3.40%) Computer Science Degree
6 64 (3.40%) HND
6 64 (3.40%) Microsoft Certification
7 60 (3.18%) BPSS Clearance
8 59 (3.13%) DV Cleared
9 55 (2.92%) Azure Certification
10 32 (1.70%) CISSP
11 28 (1.49%) Master's Degree
12 27 (1.43%) A+ Certification
12 27 (1.43%) Chartered Engineer
12 27 (1.43%) PMI Certification
13 25 (1.33%) CISM
14 24 (1.27%) AWS Certification
15 22 (1.17%) CompTIA Security+
15 22 (1.17%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 144 (7.64%) QA
2 72 (3.82%) GDPR
3 53 (2.81%) Data Quality
4 50 (2.65%) SLA
5 42 (2.23%) Accessibility
5 42 (2.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 24 (1.27%) NIST
7 21 (1.11%) DO-254
8 20 (1.06%) Cyber Essentials
9 18 (0.96%) Good Clinical Practice
9 18 (0.96%) PMO
10 16 (0.85%) PCI DSS
11 14 (0.74%) ISO 9001
12 12 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 9 (0.48%) GMP
14 8 (0.42%) 21 CFR Part 11
14 8 (0.42%) GLP
14 8 (0.42%) GxP
15 7 (0.37%) SOC 2
16 5 (0.27%) Def Stans
System Software
1 173 (9.18%) Active Directory
2 84 (4.46%) VMware Infrastructure
3 68 (3.61%) Hyper-V
4 60 (3.18%) Docker
5 18 (0.96%) Firmware
6 10 (0.53%) Virtual Desktop
7 9 (0.48%) VMware ESXi
8 8 (0.42%) Virtual Servers
9 7 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
9 7 (0.37%) vSphere
10 6 (0.32%) Embedded Firmware
11 5 (0.27%) ClearTrust
11 5 (0.27%) Squid
12 3 (0.16%) KVM
13 2 (0.11%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 1 (0.053%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 1 (0.053%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 70 (3.72%) Microsoft Intune
2 67 (3.56%) Kubernetes
3 30 (1.59%) Ansible
4 21 (1.11%) SCCM
5 17 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
6 16 (0.85%) Jamf Pro
7 11 (0.58%) Grafana
8 9 (0.48%) Prometheus
9 8 (0.42%) Failover Clustering
9 8 (0.42%) Nagios
9 8 (0.42%) Podman
10 6 (0.32%) Graylog
11 5 (0.27%) BMC PATROL
11 5 (0.27%) Functional Safety
11 5 (0.27%) Puppet
11 5 (0.27%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
12 4 (0.21%) Docker Swarm
13 2 (0.11%) CASB
13 2 (0.11%) Symantec Endpoint Protection
13 2 (0.11%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 585 (31.05%) Microsoft
2 101 (5.36%) VMware
3 83 (4.41%) Google
4 54 (2.87%) Oracle
5 51 (2.71%) SAP
6 42 (2.23%) Veeam
7 41 (2.18%) Fortinet
7 41 (2.18%) SonicWALL
8 39 (2.07%) Cisco
9 38 (2.02%) ServiceNow
10 33 (1.75%) Salesforce
11 22 (1.17%) Apple
11 22 (1.17%) Palo Alto
12 21 (1.11%) Sage
13 20 (1.06%) Thales
14 19 (1.01%) Mentor Graphics
15 17 (0.90%) WatchGuard
16 16 (0.85%) Aruba
17 15 (0.80%) CA Agile Central
17 15 (0.80%) EMC