Problem-Solving Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Problem Solving
UK > UK excluding London

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

6 months to
5 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 4 5
Rank change year-on-year -6 +1 +5
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,176 6,521 8,651
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 8.16% 18.95% 14.41%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.58% 21.63% 18.34%
Number of salaries quoted 4,506 3,605 4,551
10th Percentile £26,601 £25,750 £25,750
25th Percentile £31,000 £29,750 £32,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £40,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -11.11% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £60,000 £61,250
90th Percentile £73,750 £74,900 £75,000
UK median annual salary £47,500 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -9.09%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK excluding London

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 UK excluding London.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 53,329 30,143 47,181
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.50% 87.59% 78.57%
Number of salaries quoted 37,453 16,463 30,137
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,500 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £38,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £49,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +12.24% -2.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £65,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.71%

Problem-Solving
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

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

Problem-Solving job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Problem-Solving
Salary Trend in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Problem-Solving.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Problem-Solving

Problem-Solving
Salary Histogram in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution for jobs citing Problem-Solving in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 5 August 2026.

Salary histogram for Problem-Solving in the UK excluding London

Problem-Solving
Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Problem-Solving within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 5 August 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
North of England -9 1,596 £45,000 +5.88% 932
South East -3 1,513 £45,000 +5.88% 1,140
Midlands -9 1,152 £42,000 +5.00% 682
North West -6 842 £45,000 -2.17% 505
South West -6 761 £44,500 +18.67% 505
West Midlands -10 635 £42,500 -5.56% 397
East of England -5 615 £42,500 +21.43% 431
Yorkshire -8 536 £42,500 +21.43% 307
East Midlands -9 514 £40,000 +12.68% 285
Scotland -5 251 £33,000 -25.00% 199
North East -15 218 £50,000 +34.23% 130
Wales -21 158 £45,000 -6.49% 107
Northern Ireland -12 146 £38,500 -30.00% 235
Isle of Man +1 3 £35,000 +1.45% 2
Problem-Solving
UK

Problem-Solving
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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
1 354 (5.73%) SharePoint
2 353 (5.72%) Microsoft Exchange
3 64 (1.04%) Confluence
4 45 (0.73%) CMS
5 42 (0.68%) IIS
6 33 (0.53%) WordPress
7 30 (0.49%) Apache
8 24 (0.39%) Apache Airflow
9 15 (0.24%) Apache Spark
10 14 (0.23%) SAS
11 11 (0.18%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.15%) WebLogic
13 8 (0.13%) nginx
14 7 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
14 7 (0.11%) OpenEdge
15 6 (0.097%) Jupyter
16 5 (0.081%) Exchange Server 2007
16 5 (0.081%) Exchange Server 2010
16 5 (0.081%) Skype for Business
17 4 (0.065%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 397 (6.43%) Microsoft Office
2 385 (6.23%) Microsoft Excel
3 54 (0.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 48 (0.78%) Spreadsheet
5 39 (0.63%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
7 15 (0.24%) AutoCAD
8 14 (0.23%) Simulink
9 8 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.13%) Adobe Illustrator
9 8 (0.13%) Chatbot
10 7 (0.11%) Revit
11 5 (0.081%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.081%) EPLAN
11 5 (0.081%) Fusion 360
11 5 (0.081%) Lightworks
11 5 (0.081%) Photoshop
11 5 (0.081%) Sketch
11 5 (0.081%) Trello
12 3 (0.049%) Autodesk Inventor
Business Applications
1 54 (0.87%) SAP S/4HANA
2 39 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
3 36 (0.58%) NetSuite
4 19 (0.31%) Shopify
5 18 (0.29%) Magento
6 16 (0.26%) Dynamics NAV
6 16 (0.26%) SAP ERP
7 15 (0.24%) SAP Business One
8 14 (0.23%) IBM Planning Analytics
9 13 (0.21%) Dynamics AX
10 12 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
11 10 (0.16%) JDE EnterpriseOne
11 10 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
12 9 (0.15%) Sage 50
12 9 (0.15%) Sage X3
13 7 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
13 7 (0.11%) Raiser’s Edge
13 7 (0.11%) Workday HCM
14 6 (0.097%) NEC Housing
15 5 (0.081%) Infor CloudSuite
Cloud Services
1 1,291 (20.90%) Azure
2 1,104 (17.88%) Microsoft 365
3 653 (10.57%) AWS
4 497 (8.05%) Power Platform
5 323 (5.23%) Entra ID
6 218 (3.53%) GCP
7 215 (3.48%) SaaS
8 153 (2.48%) Azure DevOps
9 135 (2.19%) Dynamics 365
10 118 (1.91%) GitHub
10 118 (1.91%) Serverless
11 108 (1.75%) Power Automate
12 107 (1.73%) PowerApps
13 82 (1.33%) OneDrive
14 76 (1.23%) Microsoft Copilot
15 54 (0.87%) Amazon S3
15 54 (0.87%) GitHub Actions
16 52 (0.84%) Microsoft Purview
17 49 (0.79%) Google Workspace
18 48 (0.78%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 418 (6.77%) Firewall
2 384 (6.22%) DNS
3 328 (5.31%) DHCP
4 231 (3.74%) VPN
5 215 (3.48%) TCP/IP
6 197 (3.19%) WAN
7 178 (2.88%) LAN
8 153 (2.48%) Wi-Fi
9 152 (2.46%) Wireless
10 124 (2.01%) VLAN
11 108 (1.75%) Network Security
12 103 (1.67%) Broadband
13 100 (1.62%) VoIP
14 42 (0.68%) Internet
15 30 (0.49%) SD-WAN
16 29 (0.47%) SAN
16 29 (0.47%) SSL
17 28 (0.45%) HTTP
18 22 (0.36%) WLAN
19 21 (0.34%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 390 (6.31%) Power BI
2 297 (4.81%) SQL Server
3 121 (1.96%) MySQL
4 117 (1.89%) Amazon RDS
5 99 (1.60%) Data Warehouse
6 97 (1.57%) Relational Database
7 90 (1.46%) PostgreSQL
8 84 (1.36%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 75 (1.21%) NoSQL
10 72 (1.17%) Tableau
11 64 (1.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 49 (0.79%) Power Query
13 44 (0.71%) MongoDB
14 40 (0.65%) Big Data
15 36 (0.58%) Azure SQL Database
16 35 (0.57%) Data Lake
17 32 (0.52%) Electronic Patient Records
18 30 (0.49%) DynamoDB
19 25 (0.40%) Elasticsearch
20 22 (0.36%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 264 (4.27%) Git
2 212 (3.43%) JIRA
3 84 (1.36%) GitLab
4 65 (1.05%) Jenkins
5 27 (0.44%) Eclipse
5 27 (0.44%) Rational DOORS
5 27 (0.44%) Subversion
6 26 (0.42%) Cucumber
6 26 (0.42%) Selenium
7 22 (0.36%) JUnit
8 20 (0.32%) Postman
9 18 (0.29%) Claude Code
9 18 (0.29%) Cypress.io
10 17 (0.28%) Oracle Forms
11 14 (0.23%) Bitbucket
11 14 (0.23%) SonarQube
12 11 (0.18%) Burp Suite
12 11 (0.18%) Maven
13 10 (0.16%) JMeter
13 10 (0.16%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,949 (47.75%) Social Skills
2 1,724 (27.91%) Analytical Skills
3 963 (15.59%) Finance
4 534 (8.65%) Manufacturing
5 388 (6.28%) Organisational Skills
6 317 (5.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 284 (4.60%) Law
8 274 (4.44%) Public Sector
9 266 (4.31%) Legal
10 253 (4.10%) Retail
11 191 (3.09%) Marketing
12 182 (2.95%) Electronics
13 157 (2.54%) Telecoms
14 153 (2.48%) Aerospace
15 124 (2.01%) Banking
16 120 (1.94%) Influencing Skills
17 112 (1.81%) Documentation Skills
18 73 (1.18%) Games
19 65 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
20 59 (0.96%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 840 (13.60%) Analyst
2 675 (10.93%) Senior
3 665 (10.77%) IT Support
4 656 (10.62%) Developer
5 560 (9.07%) Support Engineer
6 373 (6.04%) IT Engineer
7 337 (5.46%) Lead
8 286 (4.63%) Support Analyst
9 278 (4.50%) IT Support Engineer
10 264 (4.27%) Support Technician
11 251 (4.06%) Consultant
12 237 (3.84%) Technical Support
13 236 (3.82%) Systems Engineer
14 221 (3.58%) IT Technician
15 209 (3.38%) Software Engineer
16 205 (3.32%) Technical Engineer
17 203 (3.29%) Architect
18 192 (3.11%) Senior Developer
19 184 (2.98%) Technical Support Engineer
20 171 (2.77%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 320 (5.18%) .NET
2 216 (3.50%) React
3 188 (3.04%) HTML
4 181 (2.93%) REST
5 138 (2.23%) CSS
6 113 (1.83%) RESTful
7 97 (1.57%) Node.js
8 90 (1.46%) SOAP
9 79 (1.28%) Vue
10 77 (1.25%) AngularJS
10 77 (1.25%) Middleware
11 73 (1.18%) JSON
12 70 (1.13%) ASP.NET
13 67 (1.08%) XML
14 59 (0.96%) Spring
15 58 (0.94%) Web Services
16 54 (0.87%) OAuth
16 54 (0.87%) Spring Boot
17 43 (0.70%) ASP.NET Core
17 43 (0.70%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 489 (7.92%) Driving Licence
2 368 (5.96%) Onboarding
3 294 (4.76%) Self-Motivation
4 250 (4.05%) Management Information System
5 173 (2.80%) Cloud Native
6 155 (2.51%) Legacy Systems
7 154 (2.49%) Product Ownership
8 103 (1.67%) Data Centre
9 93 (1.51%) Analytical Mindset
10 87 (1.41%) Distributed Systems
11 82 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
12 77 (1.25%) Security Posture
13 74 (1.20%) NHS
13 74 (1.20%) Social Media
14 68 (1.10%) Mobile App
15 60 (0.97%) IoT
15 60 (0.97%) Robotics
15 60 (0.97%) Virtual Team
16 57 (0.92%) Cyber Threat
17 55 (0.89%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 1,055 (17.08%) Windows
2 495 (8.01%) Windows Server
3 446 (7.22%) Linux
4 141 (2.28%) Windows 10
5 110 (1.78%) Windows Server 2016
6 108 (1.75%) Android
7 80 (1.30%) Apple iOS
8 77 (1.25%) Mac OS
9 40 (0.65%) Windows Server 2019
10 35 (0.57%) Unix
11 30 (0.49%) Ubuntu
12 24 (0.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 21 (0.34%) CentOS
14 17 (0.28%) VMS
15 14 (0.23%) Debian
16 11 (0.18%) Windows 7
17 9 (0.15%) FreeRTOS
18 8 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
19 6 (0.097%) Windows Server 2012
20 5 (0.081%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,610 (26.07%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,100 (17.81%) Customer Service
3 938 (15.19%) Agile
4 665 (10.77%) Decision-Making
5 658 (10.65%) CI/CD
6 642 (10.40%) Mentoring
7 610 (9.88%) AI
8 545 (8.82%) DevOps
8 545 (8.82%) ITIL
9 523 (8.47%) Stakeholder Management
10 510 (8.26%) Analytics
11 505 (8.18%) Software Engineering
12 504 (8.16%) Cybersecurity
13 481 (7.79%) Collaborative Working
14 460 (7.45%) ERP
15 452 (7.32%) Business Intelligence
15 452 (7.32%) Project Delivery
16 367 (5.94%) Project Management
17 363 (5.88%) Computer Science
18 362 (5.86%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 971 (15.72%) SQL
2 690 (11.17%) Python
3 410 (6.64%) JavaScript
4 403 (6.53%) C#
5 275 (4.45%) Java
6 248 (4.02%) PowerShell
7 184 (2.98%) TypeScript
8 179 (2.90%) C++
9 114 (1.85%) Bash
10 76 (1.23%) PHP
11 70 (1.13%) C
12 59 (0.96%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 54 (0.87%) T-SQL
14 41 (0.66%) Shell Script
15 39 (0.63%) Perl
16 35 (0.57%) Go
16 35 (0.57%) Ruby
17 33 (0.53%) PL/SQL
18 31 (0.50%) Rust
19 29 (0.47%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 942 (15.25%) Degree
2 558 (9.03%) Security Cleared
3 407 (6.59%) SC Cleared
4 194 (3.14%) DBS Check
5 183 (2.96%) Computer Science Degree
6 174 (2.82%) Microsoft Certification
7 133 (2.15%) DV Cleared
8 125 (2.02%) BPSS Clearance
9 97 (1.57%) Azure Certification
10 91 (1.47%) Cisco Certification
11 88 (1.42%) HNC
12 70 (1.13%) PMI Certification
13 62 (1.00%) CCNA
14 61 (0.99%) CISSP
15 60 (0.97%) HND
15 60 (0.97%) Master's Degree
16 55 (0.89%) ACCA
17 54 (0.87%) PMP
18 51 (0.83%) A+ Certification
18 51 (0.83%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 405 (6.56%) QA
2 257 (4.16%) Data Quality
3 180 (2.91%) GDPR
4 179 (2.90%) Cyber Essentials
5 160 (2.59%) SLA
6 143 (2.32%) Accessibility
7 131 (2.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 119 (1.93%) PCI DSS
9 91 (1.47%) NIST
10 37 (0.60%) ISO 9001
11 32 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 30 (0.49%) PMO
13 24 (0.39%) GMP
14 18 (0.29%) Good Clinical Practice
15 15 (0.24%) GRC
16 14 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
16 14 (0.23%) SOC 2
17 12 (0.19%) TickIT
17 12 (0.19%) WCAG
18 10 (0.16%) ISO 14001
System Software
1 728 (11.79%) Active Directory
2 282 (4.57%) Hyper-V
3 244 (3.95%) Docker
4 205 (3.32%) VMware Infrastructure
5 80 (1.30%) Terminal Server
6 56 (0.91%) Firmware
7 32 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
8 28 (0.45%) vSphere
9 26 (0.42%) Virtual Machines
10 17 (0.28%) Embedded Firmware
11 15 (0.24%) VMware ESXi
12 10 (0.16%) KVM
13 6 (0.097%) XenApp
14 5 (0.081%) ClearTrust
14 5 (0.081%) Squid
14 5 (0.081%) Virtual Servers
15 4 (0.065%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 4 (0.065%) VMware Workstation
16 3 (0.049%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.049%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 251 (4.06%) Terraform
2 235 (3.81%) Microsoft Intune
3 219 (3.55%) Kubernetes
4 107 (1.73%) Ansible
5 62 (1.00%) Grafana
6 61 (0.99%) SCCM
7 44 (0.71%) Prometheus
8 21 (0.34%) FortiGate
8 21 (0.34%) Single Sign-On
9 18 (0.29%) Puppet
10 16 (0.26%) Nagios
11 14 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
12 11 (0.18%) Functional Safety
12 11 (0.18%) Kibana
12 11 (0.18%) Podman
12 11 (0.18%) Proxmox
13 10 (0.16%) logstash
14 9 (0.15%) Nmap
14 9 (0.15%) vCenter Server
14 9 (0.15%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,886 (30.54%) Microsoft
2 324 (5.25%) VMware
3 147 (2.38%) Google
4 145 (2.35%) SAP
5 142 (2.30%) Oracle
6 139 (2.25%) Veeam
7 133 (2.15%) Cisco
8 122 (1.98%) Splunk
9 107 (1.73%) ServiceNow
10 106 (1.72%) SolarWinds
11 90 (1.46%) Salesforce
12 88 (1.42%) Tanium
13 81 (1.31%) Nimble Storage
14 80 (1.30%) Brocade
15 73 (1.18%) Databricks
16 63 (1.02%) Apple
17 60 (0.97%) Sage
18 56 (0.91%) Fortinet
19 47 (0.76%) Workday
20 46 (0.74%) Meraki