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

6 months to
2 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 3 4
Rank change year-on-year -6 +1 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 1,184 1,465 2,857
As % of all permanent jobs in the South East 8.22% 18.70% 16.41%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.40% 20.60% 19.84%
Number of salaries quoted 884 696 1,780
10th Percentile £26,560 £28,125 £25,750
25th Percentile £31,250 £32,438 £32,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,000 £45,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year - - -14.29%
75th Percentile £61,250 £62,500 £61,250
90th Percentile £76,750 £83,125 £72,500
England median annual salary £47,500 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -9.09%

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 10,384 7,111 14,400
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the South East 72.07% 90.75% 82.70%
Number of salaries quoted 7,142 3,321 10,096
10th Percentile £30,000 £27,336 £27,750
25th Percentile £39,280 £36,000 £36,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £67,500 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £82,500 £78,750
England median annual salary £60,000 £58,100 £55,000
% change year-on-year +3.27% +5.64% -12.00%

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 2 June 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 2 June 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 -10 429 £46,575 -6.85% 222
Hampshire -3 274 £40,000 -5.88% 152
Surrey -4 203 £42,500 +4.30% 92
Berkshire -7 203 £45,000 -10.00% 93
Buckinghamshire -10 137 £47,500 -5.00% 70
Kent -4 124 £30,000 -3.23% 60
East Sussex -4 92 £57,500 +15.00% 14
Oxfordshire -4 89 £37,500 -31.82% 61
West Sussex -7 52 £54,483 +17.17% 25
Isle of Wight -11 3 £41,500 -24.55%
Middlesex +2 2 £35,000 -44.00% 27
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 34 (2.87%) SharePoint
2 29 (2.45%) Microsoft Exchange
3 16 (1.35%) CMS
4 11 (0.93%) Confluence
5 10 (0.84%) IIS
6 7 (0.59%) OpenEdge
7 5 (0.42%) WordPress
8 4 (0.34%) SAS
9 3 (0.25%) Anypoint
9 3 (0.25%) Apache
9 3 (0.25%) govService
9 3 (0.25%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.17%) Apache Airflow
10 2 (0.17%) Gentran
11 1 (0.084%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.084%) nginx
11 1 (0.084%) Tomcat
Applications
1 89 (7.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 66 (5.57%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 9 (0.76%) Spreadsheet
5 8 (0.68%) MS Visio
6 6 (0.51%) Photoshop
7 5 (0.42%) Adobe Illustrator
8 3 (0.25%) Microsoft Project
9 2 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 2 (0.17%) Chatbot
10 1 (0.084%) Acrobat
10 1 (0.084%) AutoCAD
10 1 (0.084%) Lightworks
Business Applications
1 10 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
1 10 (0.84%) NetSuite
2 9 (0.76%) SAP CO
3 4 (0.34%) Dynamics NAV
3 4 (0.34%) Magento
3 4 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.17%) Dynamics AX
4 2 (0.17%) IBM Planning Analytics
4 2 (0.17%) Infor SunSystems
4 2 (0.17%) Q-Pulse
4 2 (0.17%) Sage 200
4 2 (0.17%) Shopify
5 1 (0.084%) Elite 3E
5 1 (0.084%) HFM
5 1 (0.084%) PeopleSoft HRMS
5 1 (0.084%) Raiser’s Edge
5 1 (0.084%) SAP GRC
5 1 (0.084%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 272 (22.97%) Azure
2 125 (10.56%) Microsoft 365
3 109 (9.21%) AWS
4 78 (6.59%) Power Platform
5 54 (4.56%) SaaS
6 53 (4.48%) Azure DevOps
7 36 (3.04%) GCP
8 30 (2.53%) IaaS
8 30 (2.53%) PaaS
9 27 (2.28%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 24 (2.03%) Entra ID
11 19 (1.60%) Google Workspace
11 19 (1.60%) Serverless
12 18 (1.52%) Dynamics 365
13 16 (1.35%) Azure Logic Apps
13 16 (1.35%) GitHub
14 15 (1.27%) Azure Data Factory
14 15 (1.27%) Datadog
14 15 (1.27%) Mimecast
14 15 (1.27%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 78 (6.59%) Firewall
2 61 (5.15%) DNS
3 36 (3.04%) DHCP
4 35 (2.96%) TCP/IP
5 29 (2.45%) VPN
6 25 (2.11%) WAN
6 25 (2.11%) Wireless
7 22 (1.86%) LAN
8 20 (1.69%) Broadband
9 15 (1.27%) Wi-Fi
10 14 (1.18%) VLAN
10 14 (1.18%) VoIP
11 12 (1.01%) Network Security
12 11 (0.93%) HTTP
13 8 (0.68%) SSL
14 7 (0.59%) Remote Desktop
15 6 (0.51%) PuTTY
15 6 (0.51%) SAN
15 6 (0.51%) SSH
16 5 (0.42%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 78 (6.59%) SQL Server
2 59 (4.98%) Power BI
3 24 (2.03%) Data Warehouse
4 21 (1.77%) PostgreSQL
5 19 (1.60%) Relational Database
6 17 (1.44%) OLTP
7 15 (1.27%) NoSQL
8 12 (1.01%) MySQL
8 12 (1.01%) Tableau
9 11 (0.93%) Power Query
9 11 (0.93%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 7 (0.59%) Data Lake
10 7 (0.59%) Looker
10 7 (0.59%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 6 (0.51%) GIS
12 5 (0.42%) Amazon RDS
12 5 (0.42%) Big Data
12 5 (0.42%) Data Mining
12 5 (0.42%) Hadoop
13 3 (0.25%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 55 (4.65%) Git
2 41 (3.46%) JIRA
3 28 (2.36%) GitLab
4 24 (2.03%) Rational DOORS
5 6 (0.51%) Selenium
6 5 (0.42%) Visual Studio
7 3 (0.25%) Android Studio
7 3 (0.25%) Cypress.io
7 3 (0.25%) Postman
8 2 (0.17%) Appium
8 2 (0.17%) Jenkins
8 2 (0.17%) JMeter
8 2 (0.17%) JUnit
8 2 (0.17%) LabVIEW
8 2 (0.17%) REST Assured
8 2 (0.17%) Terragrunt
9 1 (0.084%) Artifactory
9 1 (0.084%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.084%) CMake
9 1 (0.084%) Zephyr
General
1 577 (48.73%) Social Skills
2 341 (28.80%) Analytical Skills
3 182 (15.37%) Finance
4 80 (6.76%) Organisational Skills
5 61 (5.15%) Marketing
6 56 (4.73%) Manufacturing
7 50 (4.22%) Telecoms
8 48 (4.05%) Electronics
9 47 (3.97%) Retail
10 42 (3.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 32 (2.70%) Aerospace
12 30 (2.53%) Public Sector
13 29 (2.45%) Law
14 22 (1.86%) Documentation Skills
15 20 (1.69%) Local Government
16 18 (1.52%) Legal
17 15 (1.27%) Influencing Skills
18 14 (1.18%) Military
18 14 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
19 13 (1.10%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 153 (12.92%) Analyst
2 133 (11.23%) IT Support
3 125 (10.56%) Developer
4 124 (10.47%) Senior
5 116 (9.80%) Support Engineer
6 72 (6.08%) IT Engineer
7 64 (5.41%) Support Analyst
8 63 (5.32%) Systems Engineer
9 50 (4.22%) Support Technician
9 50 (4.22%) Technical Support
10 49 (4.14%) IT Support Engineer
11 47 (3.97%) Software Engineer
12 45 (3.80%) 2nd Line Support
12 45 (3.80%) Lead
13 44 (3.72%) Architect
14 38 (3.21%) IT Technician
15 37 (3.13%) Technical Engineer
15 37 (3.13%) Technical Support Engineer
16 36 (3.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 33 (2.79%) 1st Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 73 (6.17%) .NET
2 55 (4.65%) HTML
3 48 (4.05%) SOAP
4 39 (3.29%) REST
5 33 (2.79%) CSS
5 33 (2.79%) JSON
5 33 (2.79%) XML
6 26 (2.20%) React
7 21 (1.77%) Middleware
8 18 (1.52%) OAuth
9 16 (1.35%) ASP.NET
9 16 (1.35%) Laravel
10 15 (1.27%) CSS3
10 15 (1.27%) HTML5
10 15 (1.27%) RabbitMQ
11 14 (1.18%) jQuery
11 14 (1.18%) RESTful
12 13 (1.10%) Ajax
12 13 (1.10%) Sass
13 12 (1.01%) LESS
Miscellaneous
1 72 (6.08%) Driving Licence
2 60 (5.07%) Self-Motivation
3 57 (4.81%) Management Information System
3 57 (4.81%) Onboarding
4 37 (3.13%) Cloud Native
4 37 (3.13%) Product Ownership
5 32 (2.70%) Distributed Systems
6 25 (2.11%) Analytical Mindset
7 22 (1.86%) Low-Code
8 17 (1.44%) Social Media
9 16 (1.35%) NHS
10 14 (1.18%) Legacy Systems
10 14 (1.18%) Robotics
11 11 (0.93%) Enterprise Software
11 11 (0.93%) Video Editing
12 10 (0.84%) Algorithms
12 10 (0.84%) Client/Server
13 9 (0.76%) EPoS
13 9 (0.76%) Hybrid Cloud
13 9 (0.76%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 177 (14.95%) Windows
2 99 (8.36%) Linux
3 63 (5.32%) Windows Server
4 21 (1.77%) Android
5 19 (1.60%) CentOS
6 18 (1.52%) Mac OS
7 17 (1.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (1.18%) Windows Server 2019
9 12 (1.01%) Ubuntu
10 9 (0.76%) VMS
10 9 (0.76%) Windows Server 2016
11 7 (0.59%) Apple iOS
11 7 (0.59%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.25%) Debian
13 2 (0.17%) Unix
13 2 (0.17%) Windows 10
14 1 (0.084%) Embedded Linux
14 1 (0.084%) FreeBSD
14 1 (0.084%) OpenBSD
14 1 (0.084%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 229 (19.34%) Continuous Improvement
2 205 (17.31%) Customer Service
3 170 (14.36%) Agile
4 140 (11.82%) DevOps
5 138 (11.66%) CI/CD
6 123 (10.39%) Decision-Making
7 117 (9.88%) Software Engineering
8 107 (9.04%) Computer Science
9 106 (8.95%) AI
10 105 (8.87%) Analytics
11 101 (8.53%) Project Management
12 89 (7.52%) Business Intelligence
12 89 (7.52%) Mentoring
13 88 (7.43%) Project Delivery
14 85 (7.18%) Cybersecurity
15 82 (6.93%) CRM
16 80 (6.76%) Data Modelling
17 76 (6.42%) Collaborative Working
17 76 (6.42%) ITIL
18 73 (6.17%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 205 (17.31%) Python
2 187 (15.79%) SQL
3 96 (8.11%) C#
4 84 (7.09%) JavaScript
5 65 (5.49%) PowerShell
6 53 (4.48%) Java
7 36 (3.04%) C++
8 30 (2.53%) PHP
9 27 (2.28%) C
9 27 (2.28%) TypeScript
10 25 (2.11%) Bash
11 20 (1.69%) PL/SQL
12 14 (1.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 11 (0.93%) Perl
13 11 (0.93%) Rust
14 9 (0.76%) Ruby
15 8 (0.68%) Apex Code
16 7 (0.59%) Bicep
16 7 (0.59%) R
16 7 (0.59%) Scala
Qualifications
1 236 (19.93%) Degree
2 82 (6.93%) Security Cleared
3 62 (5.24%) DBS Check
4 53 (4.48%) SC Cleared
5 48 (4.05%) Computer Science Degree
6 37 (3.13%) Microsoft Certification
7 34 (2.87%) BPSS Clearance
8 32 (2.70%) ACCA
9 31 (2.62%) CIMA
10 29 (2.45%) HNC
11 26 (2.20%) Chartered Engineer
12 22 (1.86%) A+ Certification
13 17 (1.44%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 16 (1.35%) Master's Degree
15 15 (1.27%) PMI Certification
16 13 (1.10%) Azure Certification
16 13 (1.10%) DV Cleared
17 12 (1.01%) PMP
18 10 (0.84%) HND
18 10 (0.84%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 91 (7.69%) QA
2 59 (4.98%) Data Quality
3 45 (3.80%) GDPR
4 39 (3.29%) SLA
5 22 (1.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 18 (1.52%) Accessibility
7 15 (1.27%) PCI DSS
8 11 (0.93%) NIST
9 9 (0.76%) PMO
10 8 (0.68%) SOC 2
11 7 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials
12 6 (0.51%) ISO 9001
13 5 (0.42%) Actionable Recommendations
13 5 (0.42%) Good Clinical Practice
14 4 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 4 (0.34%) Def Stans
14 4 (0.34%) ISO 26262
14 4 (0.34%) ITGC
15 2 (0.17%) GRC
15 2 (0.17%) IFRS
System Software
1 101 (8.53%) Active Directory
2 50 (4.22%) Docker
3 45 (3.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (2.96%) Hyper-V
5 10 (0.84%) KVM
6 7 (0.59%) VMware ESXi
7 5 (0.42%) Firmware
7 5 (0.42%) XenApp
8 4 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
8 4 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
9 3 (0.25%) ClearTrust
9 3 (0.25%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 2 (0.17%) VMware NSX
10 2 (0.17%) vSphere
11 1 (0.084%) Embedded Firmware
11 1 (0.084%) Microsoft Virtual Server
11 1 (0.084%) Oracle RAC
11 1 (0.084%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 62 (5.24%) Terraform
2 61 (5.15%) Kubernetes
3 30 (2.53%) Ansible
4 28 (2.36%) Microsoft Intune
5 17 (1.44%) SCCM
6 15 (1.27%) Grafana
7 12 (1.01%) Prometheus
8 11 (0.93%) Nagios
9 7 (0.59%) vCenter Server
9 7 (0.59%) ZABBIX
10 4 (0.34%) Docker Swarm
10 4 (0.34%) Functional Safety
10 4 (0.34%) Graylog
10 4 (0.34%) Podman
11 3 (0.25%) Failover Clustering
11 3 (0.25%) Jamf Pro
11 3 (0.25%) Puppet
12 2 (0.17%) Nessus
13 1 (0.084%) Netcool
13 1 (0.084%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 319 (26.94%) Microsoft
2 50 (4.22%) VMware
3 43 (3.63%) Oracle
4 38 (3.21%) Databricks
4 38 (3.21%) Google
5 27 (2.28%) Salesforce
6 25 (2.11%) Veeam
7 19 (1.60%) SAP
8 18 (1.52%) Adobe
8 18 (1.52%) Cisco
8 18 (1.52%) Instagram
9 15 (1.27%) Red Hat
10 13 (1.10%) Fortinet
10 13 (1.10%) Splunk
11 12 (1.01%) Sage
11 12 (1.01%) SolarWinds
11 12 (1.01%) SonicWALL
12 11 (0.93%) Dynatrace
12 11 (0.93%) Hootsuite
12 11 (0.93%) Wrike