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

6 months to
2 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 3 4
Rank change year-on-year -4 +1 +7
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 1,618 1,749 2,058
As % of all permanent jobs in the South East 9.16% 19.33% 15.21%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.85% 22.07% 18.84%
Number of salaries quoted 1,180 879 1,081
10th Percentile £27,000 £27,000 £27,762
25th Percentile £31,000 £31,250 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £42,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year - -15.00% -2.91%
75th Percentile £57,536 £60,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £71,250 £78,750 £82,500
England median annual salary £47,500 £45,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +5.56% -10.00% -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 12,595 7,925 10,923
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the South East 71.32% 87.57% 80.73%
Number of salaries quoted 9,067 4,272 6,634
10th Percentile £30,000 £27,000 £31,125
25th Percentile £40,000 £33,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £50,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £70,000 £67,313 £67,500
90th Percentile £87,500 £81,250 £82,500
England median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% -8.00%

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 September 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 September 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 -5 600 £43,500 +2.35% 451
Hampshire -3 423 £41,000 -8.89% 265
Berkshire -3 270 £45,000 +5.88% 207
Surrey -1 253 £41,585 +1.74% 170
Buckinghamshire -6 178 £42,500 +13.33% 137
Kent -5 160 £37,500 +11.94% 84
Oxfordshire +3 152 £45,000 +3.45% 110
East Sussex -4 93 £50,000 - 66
West Sussex -8 69 £50,000 -0.99% 75
Middlesex 0 10 £36,750 -2.00% 38
Sussex -10 3 £65,000 +52.94% 22
Isle of Wight -14 2 £42,500 -3.41% 20
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 68 (4.20%) SharePoint
2 51 (3.15%) Microsoft Exchange
3 18 (1.11%) Confluence
4 15 (0.93%) CMS
4 15 (0.93%) IIS
5 7 (0.43%) OpenEdge
6 6 (0.37%) Apache
6 6 (0.37%) WordPress
7 5 (0.31%) nginx
8 3 (0.19%) Anypoint
8 3 (0.19%) OpenStack
8 3 (0.19%) SAS
9 2 (0.12%) Gentran
9 2 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
9 2 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 103 (6.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 99 (6.12%) Microsoft Office
3 14 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 12 (0.74%) AutoCAD
4 12 (0.74%) Spreadsheet
5 8 (0.49%) Revit
6 6 (0.37%) MS Visio
7 5 (0.31%) Lightworks
7 5 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
8 4 (0.25%) Simulink
9 3 (0.19%) EPLAN
10 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
10 2 (0.12%) Photoshop
11 1 (0.062%) Adobe Illustrator
11 1 (0.062%) Mathcad
11 1 (0.062%) OrCAD
11 1 (0.062%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 20 (1.24%) NetSuite
2 16 (0.99%) Shopify
3 13 (0.80%) Dynamics CRM
4 7 (0.43%) Magento
5 6 (0.37%) Primavera
5 6 (0.37%) Raiser’s Edge
6 3 (0.19%) Infor SunSystems
6 3 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
6 3 (0.19%) Sage X3
6 3 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
7 2 (0.12%) Academy Housing
7 2 (0.12%) Oracle Applications
7 2 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
7 2 (0.12%) Workday HCM
8 1 (0.062%) Elite 3E
8 1 (0.062%) HFM
Cloud Services
1 378 (23.36%) Azure
2 205 (12.67%) Microsoft 365
3 173 (10.69%) AWS
4 90 (5.56%) Power Platform
5 74 (4.57%) Entra ID
6 66 (4.08%) SaaS
7 49 (3.03%) GCP
8 43 (2.66%) Azure DevOps
9 35 (2.16%) GitHub
10 31 (1.92%) Serverless
11 27 (1.67%) Google Workspace
12 18 (1.11%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 18 (1.11%) IaaS
12 18 (1.11%) PaaS
13 17 (1.05%) Google Tag Manager
14 16 (0.99%) Anthropic Claude
14 16 (0.99%) Azure Data Factory
15 15 (0.93%) Dynamics 365
16 14 (0.87%) Amazon ECS
17 13 (0.80%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 147 (9.09%) Firewall
2 79 (4.88%) DNS
3 65 (4.02%) VPN
4 62 (3.83%) TCP/IP
5 57 (3.52%) DHCP
6 50 (3.09%) VLAN
6 50 (3.09%) WAN
7 48 (2.97%) LAN
7 48 (2.97%) Wi-Fi
8 47 (2.90%) Wireless
9 35 (2.16%) Network Security
10 34 (2.10%) VoIP
11 18 (1.11%) SSL
12 14 (0.87%) Internet
13 10 (0.62%) MQTT
14 9 (0.56%) Broadband
14 9 (0.56%) HTTP
14 9 (0.56%) LTE
15 6 (0.37%) WLAN
16 5 (0.31%) VSAT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 123 (7.60%) SQL Server
2 76 (4.70%) Power BI
3 36 (2.22%) Relational Database
4 30 (1.85%) MySQL
5 29 (1.79%) PostgreSQL
6 24 (1.48%) NoSQL
7 18 (1.11%) Data Warehouse
8 14 (0.87%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 12 (0.74%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 11 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
11 10 (0.62%) Tableau
12 9 (0.56%) Data Lake
12 9 (0.56%) MongoDB
13 8 (0.49%) OLTP
14 7 (0.43%) Azure SQL Database
14 7 (0.43%) DynamoDB
14 7 (0.43%) GIS
14 7 (0.43%) Looker
15 6 (0.37%) Metadata
15 6 (0.37%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 71 (4.39%) Git
2 60 (3.71%) JIRA
3 22 (1.36%) GitLab
4 18 (1.11%) Rational DOORS
5 13 (0.80%) Claude Code
6 10 (0.62%) Oracle Forms
6 10 (0.62%) Team Foundation Server
7 5 (0.31%) Eclipse
7 5 (0.31%) Eclipse RCP
7 5 (0.31%) Jenkins
7 5 (0.31%) Selenium
7 5 (0.31%) Visual Studio
8 4 (0.25%) PHPUnit
8 4 (0.25%) Postman
8 4 (0.25%) Terragrunt
9 3 (0.19%) PetaLinux
9 3 (0.19%) SpecFlow
10 2 (0.12%) Android Studio
10 2 (0.12%) Cucumber
10 2 (0.12%) Mocha
General
1 804 (49.69%) Social Skills
2 460 (28.43%) Analytical Skills
3 248 (15.33%) Finance
4 130 (8.03%) Manufacturing
4 130 (8.03%) Organisational Skills
5 98 (6.06%) Aerospace
6 90 (5.56%) Electronics
7 75 (4.64%) Retail
8 61 (3.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 48 (2.97%) Marketing
10 47 (2.90%) Telecoms
11 45 (2.78%) Influencing Skills
12 44 (2.72%) Legal
13 40 (2.47%) Military
14 39 (2.41%) Law
15 36 (2.22%) Public Sector
16 26 (1.61%) Documentation Skills
17 24 (1.48%) Aviation
18 20 (1.24%) Local Government
19 16 (0.99%) Banking
Job Titles
1 228 (14.09%) Analyst
2 167 (10.32%) Senior
3 157 (9.70%) Developer
4 156 (9.64%) IT Support
5 115 (7.11%) Support Analyst
5 115 (7.11%) Support Engineer
6 89 (5.50%) IT Engineer
7 73 (4.51%) Lead
7 73 (4.51%) Systems Engineer
8 71 (4.39%) Software Engineer
8 71 (4.39%) Support Technician
9 70 (4.33%) Technical Support
10 59 (3.65%) IT Support Engineer
11 51 (3.15%) 2nd Line Support
11 51 (3.15%) Architect
12 50 (3.09%) IT Technician
12 50 (3.09%) Technical Engineer
13 48 (2.97%) Consultant
13 48 (2.97%) Technical Support Engineer
14 43 (2.66%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 115 (7.11%) .NET
2 81 (5.01%) Terraform
3 73 (4.51%) HTML
4 63 (3.89%) REST
5 54 (3.34%) CSS
6 52 (3.21%) ASP.NET
6 52 (3.21%) React
7 50 (3.09%) SOAP
8 35 (2.16%) ASP.NET Core
9 33 (2.04%) OAuth
10 30 (1.85%) AngularJS
11 29 (1.79%) JSON
11 29 (1.79%) RESTful
12 28 (1.73%) Vue
13 27 (1.67%) XML
14 26 (1.61%) ModSecurity
15 21 (1.30%) ASP.NET Web API
15 21 (1.30%) jQuery
16 20 (1.24%) LESS
17 18 (1.11%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 118 (7.29%) Driving Licence
2 107 (6.61%) Onboarding
3 82 (5.07%) Management Information System
4 79 (4.88%) Self-Motivation
5 64 (3.96%) Cloud Native
6 48 (2.97%) Product Ownership
7 39 (2.41%) Data Centre
8 30 (1.85%) Enterprise Software
8 30 (1.85%) Social Media
9 28 (1.73%) Distributed Systems
10 27 (1.67%) Legacy Systems
10 27 (1.67%) Robotics
11 26 (1.61%) Analytical Mindset
12 20 (1.24%) CCTV
13 19 (1.17%) Analogue Electronics
14 18 (1.11%) EPoS
14 18 (1.11%) Mobile App
15 15 (0.93%) Cyber Threat
15 15 (0.93%) NHS
15 15 (0.93%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 264 (16.32%) Windows
2 112 (6.92%) Linux
3 94 (5.81%) Windows Server
4 24 (1.48%) Android
5 19 (1.17%) Windows Server 2019
6 17 (1.05%) Mac OS
7 16 (0.99%) Apple iOS
7 16 (0.99%) Windows 10
8 13 (0.80%) Ubuntu
9 11 (0.68%) CentOS
10 10 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 10 (0.62%) Windows Server 2016
11 9 (0.56%) Debian
12 6 (0.37%) Rocky
13 5 (0.31%) Windows Server 2012
14 3 (0.19%) FreeRTOS
14 3 (0.19%) Gentoo
14 3 (0.19%) Unix
14 3 (0.19%) VMS
14 3 (0.19%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 349 (21.57%) Continuous Improvement
2 296 (18.29%) Customer Service
3 225 (13.91%) Agile
4 202 (12.48%) Decision-Making
5 169 (10.44%) Project Management
6 168 (10.38%) Software Engineering
7 166 (10.26%) AI
7 166 (10.26%) CI/CD
7 166 (10.26%) Project Delivery
8 162 (10.01%) Stakeholder Management
9 151 (9.33%) ITIL
10 150 (9.27%) DevOps
11 135 (8.34%) Collaborative Working
11 135 (8.34%) Cybersecurity
11 135 (8.34%) Mentoring
11 135 (8.34%) Validation
12 118 (7.29%) Analytics
12 118 (7.29%) Computer Science
12 118 (7.29%) CRM
13 111 (6.86%) Logistics
Programming Languages
1 223 (13.78%) SQL
2 206 (12.73%) Python
3 130 (8.03%) C#
4 109 (6.74%) JavaScript
5 96 (5.93%) PowerShell
6 62 (3.83%) TypeScript
7 60 (3.71%) C++
8 57 (3.52%) Java
9 30 (1.85%) C
10 29 (1.79%) Bash
11 21 (1.30%) Ruby
12 20 (1.24%) PHP
13 19 (1.17%) T-SQL
14 15 (0.93%) VB.NET
15 11 (0.68%) Rust
16 10 (0.62%) PL/SQL
17 9 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 9 (0.56%) Perl
18 8 (0.49%) MATLAB
19 7 (0.43%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 318 (19.65%) Degree
2 172 (10.63%) Security Cleared
3 122 (7.54%) SC Cleared
4 109 (6.74%) DBS Check
5 64 (3.96%) Computer Science Degree
6 59 (3.65%) DV Cleared
7 57 (3.52%) Microsoft Certification
8 54 (3.34%) BPSS Clearance
9 50 (3.09%) Azure Certification
10 46 (2.84%) HNC
11 38 (2.35%) HND
12 32 (1.98%) CISSP
12 32 (1.98%) PMI Certification
13 27 (1.67%) CISM
14 26 (1.61%) Chartered Engineer
14 26 (1.61%) PMP
15 25 (1.55%) A+ Certification
16 24 (1.48%) Master's Degree
17 22 (1.36%) CompTIA Security+
18 20 (1.24%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 141 (8.71%) QA
2 65 (4.02%) GDPR
3 56 (3.46%) Data Quality
4 42 (2.60%) SLA
5 36 (2.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 35 (2.16%) Accessibility
7 23 (1.42%) NIST
8 19 (1.17%) Cyber Essentials
9 18 (1.11%) Good Clinical Practice
9 18 (1.11%) PCI DSS
10 15 (0.93%) PMO
11 12 (0.74%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 12 (0.74%) DO-254
12 9 (0.56%) GMP
12 9 (0.56%) SOC 2
13 8 (0.49%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 8 (0.49%) GLP
13 8 (0.49%) GxP
14 6 (0.37%) ISO 9001
15 4 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 141 (8.71%) Active Directory
2 81 (5.01%) VMware Infrastructure
3 66 (4.08%) Docker
4 62 (3.83%) Hyper-V
5 12 (0.74%) Firmware
6 9 (0.56%) VMware ESXi
6 9 (0.56%) vSphere
7 6 (0.37%) KVM
7 6 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
8 5 (0.31%) ClearTrust
8 5 (0.31%) Squid
8 5 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
9 4 (0.25%) Embedded Firmware
10 3 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 2 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
11 2 (0.12%) XenApp
12 1 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 1 (0.062%) Oracle RAC
12 1 (0.062%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 75 (4.64%) Kubernetes
2 52 (3.21%) Microsoft Intune
3 34 (2.10%) Ansible
4 24 (1.48%) SCCM
5 17 (1.05%) Single Sign-On
6 13 (0.80%) Jamf Pro
7 11 (0.68%) Grafana
8 8 (0.49%) Podman
8 8 (0.49%) Prometheus
9 7 (0.43%) Failover Clustering
9 7 (0.43%) Nagios
9 7 (0.43%) Puppet
10 6 (0.37%) Graylog
11 4 (0.25%) Docker Swarm
11 4 (0.25%) Functional Safety
11 4 (0.25%) vCenter Server
12 3 (0.19%) BMC PATROL
12 3 (0.19%) ZABBIX
13 2 (0.12%) CASB
13 2 (0.12%) Nessus
Vendors
1 496 (30.66%) Microsoft
2 95 (5.87%) VMware
3 73 (4.51%) Google
4 54 (3.34%) Oracle
5 39 (2.41%) Cisco
5 39 (2.41%) SonicWALL
6 38 (2.35%) Fortinet
6 38 (2.35%) SAP
7 36 (2.22%) Veeam
8 31 (1.92%) ServiceNow
9 27 (1.67%) Salesforce
10 21 (1.30%) Sage
11 18 (1.11%) Palo Alto
12 16 (0.99%) Aruba
12 16 (0.99%) Databricks
13 15 (0.93%) Apple
14 12 (0.74%) CA Agile Central
14 12 (0.74%) ForgeRock
14 12 (0.74%) Mentor Graphics
14 12 (0.74%) Okta