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

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 4 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 +1 +4
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 1,905 1,690 1,924
As % of all permanent jobs in the South East 10.09% 18.80% 15.52%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.95% 21.30% 19.03%
Number of salaries quoted 1,334 884 853
10th Percentile £27,000 £26,913 £27,100
25th Percentile £31,000 £30,725 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £41,500 £41,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +1.22% -18.00% -
75th Percentile £55,000 £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 13,654 7,934 10,109
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the South East 72.34% 88.24% 81.56%
Number of salaries quoted 9,743 4,226 5,338
10th Percentile £30,000 £27,000 £32,500
25th Percentile £39,783 £32,500 £41,322
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £47,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +15.79% -13.64% -
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 8 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 8 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 -1 720 £42,500 +6.25% 682
Hampshire -1 482 £40,000 -2.44% 384
Berkshire -2 328 £42,500 +3.66% 343
Surrey +1 288 £40,000 -2.14% 204
Kent -1 212 £37,500 +11.94% 108
Buckinghamshire -5 205 £42,500 +13.33% 155
Oxfordshire +5 187 £43,000 +1.18% 193
East Sussex 0 93 £50,000 +18.34% 76
West Sussex -7 86 £45,000 -10.89% 118
Middlesex +4 13 £35,000 -6.67% 11
Sussex -10 7 £65,000 +52.94% 16
Isle of Wight -9 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 96 (5.04%) SharePoint
2 69 (3.62%) Microsoft Exchange
3 17 (0.89%) IIS
4 15 (0.79%) Confluence
5 9 (0.47%) CMS
6 7 (0.37%) OpenEdge
7 6 (0.31%) Apache
8 5 (0.26%) nginx
8 5 (0.26%) WordPress
9 3 (0.16%) SAS
10 2 (0.10%) Oracle Workflow
10 2 (0.10%) Tomcat
11 1 (0.052%) Apache Spark
11 1 (0.052%) ArchestrA
11 1 (0.052%) Gentran
Applications
1 145 (7.61%) Microsoft Office
2 118 (6.19%) Microsoft Excel
3 20 (1.05%) AutoCAD
4 17 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
5 16 (0.84%) Spreadsheet
6 15 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 9 (0.47%) MS Visio
7 9 (0.47%) Revit
8 7 (0.37%) Simulink
9 6 (0.31%) Lightworks
9 6 (0.31%) SOLIDWORKS
10 4 (0.21%) EPLAN
10 4 (0.21%) Mathematica
11 2 (0.10%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.10%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.10%) PTC Creo
11 2 (0.10%) Siemens NX
11 2 (0.10%) Solid Edge
12 1 (0.052%) Mathcad
12 1 (0.052%) OrCAD
Business Applications
1 26 (1.36%) NetSuite
2 19 (1.00%) Shopify
3 15 (0.79%) Dynamics CRM
4 7 (0.37%) Primavera
5 6 (0.31%) Raiser’s Edge
6 4 (0.21%) Magento
7 3 (0.16%) FastStats
7 3 (0.16%) FastStats PeopleStage
7 3 (0.16%) Payment Gateway
7 3 (0.16%) Sage X3
8 2 (0.10%) Academy Housing
8 2 (0.10%) Eloqua
8 2 (0.10%) Oracle Applications
8 2 (0.10%) SAP MDG
8 2 (0.10%) SAP MDG-M
8 2 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
8 2 (0.10%) Workday HCM
9 1 (0.052%) Adobe Campaign
9 1 (0.052%) HFM
9 1 (0.052%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 372 (19.53%) Azure
2 265 (13.91%) Microsoft 365
3 173 (9.08%) AWS
4 104 (5.46%) Power Platform
5 91 (4.78%) Entra ID
6 74 (3.88%) SaaS
7 49 (2.57%) GCP
8 40 (2.10%) Azure DevOps
9 35 (1.84%) GitHub
9 35 (1.84%) Google Workspace
10 31 (1.63%) Serverless
11 26 (1.36%) OneDrive
12 18 (0.94%) Anthropic Claude
13 15 (0.79%) Dynamics 365
14 14 (0.73%) Amazon ECS
14 14 (0.73%) AWS CloudFormation
14 14 (0.73%) Google Analytics
15 13 (0.68%) GitHub Actions
15 13 (0.68%) IaaS
15 13 (0.68%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 166 (8.71%) Firewall
2 94 (4.93%) DNS
3 77 (4.04%) VPN
4 70 (3.67%) DHCP
5 65 (3.41%) VLAN
6 60 (3.15%) TCP/IP
7 57 (2.99%) Wi-Fi
8 55 (2.89%) LAN
8 55 (2.89%) WAN
9 52 (2.73%) Wireless
10 38 (1.99%) Network Security
11 37 (1.94%) VoIP
12 18 (0.94%) SSL
13 13 (0.68%) Internet
14 11 (0.58%) MQTT
15 9 (0.47%) 5G
15 9 (0.47%) Ethernet
15 9 (0.47%) LTE
16 8 (0.42%) Broadband
16 8 (0.42%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 122 (6.40%) SQL Server
2 85 (4.46%) Power BI
3 35 (1.84%) Relational Database
4 32 (1.68%) MySQL
5 30 (1.57%) PostgreSQL
6 25 (1.31%) NoSQL
7 15 (0.79%) Data Warehouse
8 12 (0.63%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 11 (0.58%) Amazon RDS
9 11 (0.58%) GIS
9 11 (0.58%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 10 (0.52%) Tableau
11 9 (0.47%) MongoDB
12 8 (0.42%) Metadata
13 7 (0.37%) Azure SQL Database
13 7 (0.37%) DynamoDB
14 6 (0.31%) OLTP
14 6 (0.31%) Power Query
15 5 (0.26%) Electronic Patient Records
15 5 (0.26%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 63 (3.31%) Git
2 58 (3.04%) JIRA
3 17 (0.89%) Rational DOORS
4 16 (0.84%) Claude Code
5 15 (0.79%) GitLab
6 13 (0.68%) Oracle Forms
6 13 (0.68%) Team Foundation Server
7 6 (0.31%) Selenium
8 5 (0.26%) Eclipse
8 5 (0.26%) Eclipse RCP
8 5 (0.26%) Jenkins
8 5 (0.26%) Visual Studio
9 4 (0.21%) LabVIEW
9 4 (0.21%) PetaLinux
9 4 (0.21%) Postman
9 4 (0.21%) Terragrunt
10 3 (0.16%) Mocha
10 3 (0.16%) PHPUnit
10 3 (0.16%) SpecFlow
11 2 (0.10%) Subversion
General
1 993 (52.13%) Social Skills
2 499 (26.19%) Analytical Skills
3 299 (15.70%) Finance
4 217 (11.39%) Manufacturing
5 200 (10.50%) Organisational Skills
6 149 (7.82%) Aerospace
7 131 (6.88%) Electronics
8 109 (5.72%) Retail
9 66 (3.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 62 (3.25%) Marketing
11 56 (2.94%) Influencing Skills
11 56 (2.94%) Legal
12 49 (2.57%) Public Sector
13 45 (2.36%) Military
14 43 (2.26%) Telecoms
15 36 (1.89%) Law
16 28 (1.47%) Aviation
16 28 (1.47%) Documentation Skills
17 27 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
18 25 (1.31%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 261 (13.70%) Analyst
2 190 (9.97%) Senior
3 175 (9.19%) IT Support
4 157 (8.24%) Developer
5 145 (7.61%) Support Analyst
6 136 (7.14%) Support Engineer
7 94 (4.93%) Lead
8 93 (4.88%) IT Engineer
9 87 (4.57%) Technical Support
10 77 (4.04%) Support Technician
11 70 (3.67%) Systems Engineer
12 68 (3.57%) Software Engineer
13 67 (3.52%) IT Support Engineer
14 63 (3.31%) Technical Engineer
15 61 (3.20%) Technical Support Engineer
16 60 (3.15%) IT Analyst
17 59 (3.10%) 2nd Line Support
18 55 (2.89%) IT Technician
19 53 (2.78%) Consultant
20 51 (2.68%) IT Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 122 (6.40%) .NET
2 73 (3.83%) Terraform
3 72 (3.78%) HTML
4 58 (3.04%) REST
5 57 (2.99%) ASP.NET
6 54 (2.83%) CSS
7 53 (2.78%) React
8 45 (2.36%) SOAP
9 37 (1.94%) ASP.NET Core
10 31 (1.63%) AngularJS
11 30 (1.57%) RESTful
12 28 (1.47%) Vue
13 27 (1.42%) ModSecurity
14 26 (1.36%) JSON
14 26 (1.36%) OAuth
14 26 (1.36%) XML
15 25 (1.31%) ASP.NET Web Forms
16 24 (1.26%) ASP.NET Web API
17 22 (1.15%) jQuery
18 21 (1.10%) LESS
Miscellaneous
1 164 (8.61%) Driving Licence
2 129 (6.77%) Onboarding
3 113 (5.93%) Management Information System
4 95 (4.99%) Self-Motivation
5 65 (3.41%) Cloud Native
6 49 (2.57%) Product Ownership
7 40 (2.10%) Data Centre
8 38 (1.99%) Robotics
9 32 (1.68%) Enterprise Software
10 30 (1.57%) Social Media
11 29 (1.52%) Analogue Electronics
12 27 (1.42%) CCTV
13 25 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
14 23 (1.21%) Analytical Mindset
15 20 (1.05%) Distributed Systems
16 19 (1.00%) Mobile App
16 19 (1.00%) Renewable Energy
17 16 (0.84%) Cyber Threat
17 16 (0.84%) Embedded Systems
17 16 (0.84%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 304 (15.96%) Windows
2 115 (6.04%) Windows Server
3 102 (5.35%) Linux
4 28 (1.47%) Android
5 26 (1.36%) Windows 10
6 22 (1.15%) Mac OS
7 19 (1.00%) Apple iOS
7 19 (1.00%) Windows Server 2019
8 10 (0.52%) Ubuntu
9 9 (0.47%) Windows Server 2016
10 7 (0.37%) Rocky
10 7 (0.37%) Windows Server 2012
11 6 (0.31%) Debian
12 5 (0.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 4 (0.21%) CentOS
13 4 (0.21%) FreeRTOS
13 4 (0.21%) Windows 7
14 3 (0.16%) Gentoo
14 3 (0.16%) Unix
15 2 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 440 (23.10%) Continuous Improvement
2 385 (20.21%) Customer Service
3 225 (11.81%) Agile
4 223 (11.71%) Stakeholder Management
5 220 (11.55%) Decision-Making
6 203 (10.66%) Project Management
7 193 (10.13%) AI
7 193 (10.13%) Project Delivery
8 176 (9.24%) Collaborative Working
9 160 (8.40%) ITIL
10 158 (8.29%) Software Engineering
11 151 (7.93%) CI/CD
11 151 (7.93%) Mentoring
12 149 (7.82%) CRM
12 149 (7.82%) Cybersecurity
13 143 (7.51%) Validation
14 128 (6.72%) DevOps
15 122 (6.40%) Computer Science
15 122 (6.40%) Technical Leadership
16 118 (6.19%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 229 (12.02%) SQL
2 194 (10.18%) Python
3 141 (7.40%) C#
4 112 (5.88%) JavaScript
5 93 (4.88%) PowerShell
6 70 (3.67%) C++
7 67 (3.52%) TypeScript
8 59 (3.10%) Java
9 28 (1.47%) C
10 25 (1.31%) Bash
11 24 (1.26%) Ruby
12 22 (1.15%) T-SQL
13 18 (0.94%) MATLAB
13 18 (0.94%) VB.NET
14 17 (0.89%) PHP
15 12 (0.63%) Rust
16 11 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 9 (0.47%) ABAP
17 9 (0.47%) PL/SQL
18 8 (0.42%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 377 (19.79%) Degree
2 208 (10.92%) Security Cleared
3 141 (7.40%) SC Cleared
4 120 (6.30%) DBS Check
5 68 (3.57%) HNC
6 66 (3.46%) Microsoft Certification
7 64 (3.36%) HND
8 61 (3.20%) Computer Science Degree
8 61 (3.20%) DV Cleared
9 59 (3.10%) BPSS Clearance
10 55 (2.89%) Azure Certification
11 32 (1.68%) CISSP
12 28 (1.47%) A+ Certification
13 27 (1.42%) Chartered Engineer
13 27 (1.42%) Master's Degree
13 27 (1.42%) PMI Certification
14 25 (1.31%) CISM
15 24 (1.26%) AWS Certification
16 22 (1.15%) CompTIA Security+
16 22 (1.15%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 143 (7.51%) QA
2 72 (3.78%) GDPR
3 54 (2.83%) Data Quality
4 50 (2.62%) SLA
5 42 (2.20%) Accessibility
6 40 (2.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 23 (1.21%) NIST
8 22 (1.15%) DO-254
9 20 (1.05%) Cyber Essentials
10 18 (0.94%) Good Clinical Practice
10 18 (0.94%) PMO
11 14 (0.73%) PCI DSS
12 13 (0.68%) ISO 9001
13 12 (0.63%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 9 (0.47%) GMP
15 8 (0.42%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 8 (0.42%) GLP
15 8 (0.42%) GxP
16 7 (0.37%) SOC 2
17 5 (0.26%) Def Stans
System Software
1 175 (9.19%) Active Directory
2 85 (4.46%) VMware Infrastructure
3 68 (3.57%) Hyper-V
4 56 (2.94%) Docker
5 21 (1.10%) Firmware
6 10 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
7 9 (0.47%) VMware ESXi
8 8 (0.42%) Virtual Servers
9 7 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
9 7 (0.37%) vSphere
10 6 (0.31%) Embedded Firmware
11 5 (0.26%) ClearTrust
11 5 (0.26%) Squid
12 3 (0.16%) KVM
13 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 1 (0.052%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 70 (3.67%) Microsoft Intune
2 64 (3.36%) Kubernetes
3 28 (1.47%) Ansible
4 22 (1.15%) SCCM
5 17 (0.89%) Single Sign-On
6 16 (0.84%) Jamf Pro
7 10 (0.52%) Grafana
8 9 (0.47%) Prometheus
9 8 (0.42%) Failover Clustering
9 8 (0.42%) Podman
10 7 (0.37%) Nagios
11 6 (0.31%) Graylog
12 5 (0.26%) BMC PATROL
12 5 (0.26%) Functional Safety
12 5 (0.26%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
13 4 (0.21%) Docker Swarm
13 4 (0.21%) Puppet
14 2 (0.10%) CASB
14 2 (0.10%) Symantec Endpoint Protection
14 2 (0.10%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 585 (30.71%) Microsoft
2 102 (5.35%) VMware
3 83 (4.36%) Google
4 55 (2.89%) Oracle
5 52 (2.73%) SAP
6 44 (2.31%) Veeam
7 42 (2.20%) Fortinet
7 42 (2.20%) SonicWALL
8 40 (2.10%) Cisco
9 37 (1.94%) ServiceNow
10 32 (1.68%) Salesforce
11 22 (1.15%) Apple
11 22 (1.15%) Palo Alto
12 20 (1.05%) Sage
12 20 (1.05%) Thales
13 19 (1.00%) Mentor Graphics
14 17 (0.89%) WatchGuard
15 16 (0.84%) Aruba
16 15 (0.79%) Citrix
16 15 (0.79%) EMC