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

6 months to
14 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 4 4
Rank change year-on-year -2 0 +4
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 8,350 6,194 7,677
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 9.61% 18.00% 15.30%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.56% 20.67% 19.21%
Number of salaries quoted 5,586 3,493 2,843
10th Percentile £27,000 £25,684 £26,750
25th Percentile £31,250 £29,000 £35,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £43,000 £38,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +11.69% -23.00% +5.14%
75th Percentile £58,750 £55,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £72,500 £68,750 £81,250
UK median annual salary £46,000 £45,000 £52,918
% change year-on-year +2.22% -14.96% -3.79%

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 61,563 29,959 39,962
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.83% 87.07% 79.63%
Number of salaries quoted 43,166 16,193 19,950
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,750 £31,250
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £47,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year +15.79% -9.52% -2.78%
75th Percentile £70,000 £64,000 £68,216
90th Percentile £87,500 £80,000 £81,250
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -

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 14 October 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 14 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
North of England -5 2,092 £45,000 +2.27% 996
South East -1 1,960 £41,585 +3.96% 1,013
Midlands -6 1,504 £42,500 +13.33% 599
North West -3 1,082 £46,500 -4.56% 501
South West -2 1,012 £45,000 +20.00% 495
East of England -1 878 £43,750 +34.62% 437
West Midlands -5 841 £42,500 - 366
East Midlands -7 661 £42,250 +30.00% 233
Yorkshire -7 626 £42,500 +28.79% 329
North East +5 393 £50,000 +53.85% 174
Northern Ireland +8 341 £70,000 +16.67% 186
Scotland +5 334 £37,625 +12.31% 310
Wales -12 246 £42,500 -11.68% 114
Isle of Man 0 3 £35,000 - 7
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
1 482 (5.77%) SharePoint
2 370 (4.43%) Microsoft Exchange
3 67 (0.80%) Confluence
4 59 (0.71%) CMS
5 55 (0.66%) IIS
6 40 (0.48%) Apache
7 32 (0.38%) Apache Airflow
7 32 (0.38%) WordPress
8 28 (0.34%) Sitecore CMS
9 26 (0.31%) Apache Spark
10 14 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
11 13 (0.16%) Jupyter
12 12 (0.14%) nginx
13 10 (0.12%) WebSphere
14 9 (0.11%) WebLogic
15 8 (0.096%) CICS
15 8 (0.096%) SAS
16 7 (0.084%) OpenEdge
17 4 (0.048%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 4 (0.048%) Tomcat
Applications
1 630 (7.54%) Microsoft Office
2 570 (6.83%) Microsoft Excel
3 91 (1.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 60 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
5 52 (0.62%) AutoCAD
6 46 (0.55%) MS Visio
7 42 (0.50%) Microsoft Project
8 41 (0.49%) Simulink
9 32 (0.38%) Revit
10 23 (0.28%) EPLAN
11 17 (0.20%) Navisworks
12 16 (0.19%) SOLIDWORKS
13 12 (0.14%) OrCAD
14 9 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 9 (0.11%) Chatbot
15 7 (0.084%) Lightworks
15 7 (0.084%) Siemens NX
16 5 (0.060%) Adobe XD
16 5 (0.060%) Mathematica
16 5 (0.060%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 74 (0.89%) Dynamics CRM
2 65 (0.78%) NetSuite
3 45 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
4 33 (0.40%) Shopify
5 23 (0.28%) Oracle EBS
6 21 (0.25%) Workday HCM
7 17 (0.20%) Dynamics NAV
8 15 (0.18%) Dynamics AX
8 15 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
9 14 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
10 13 (0.16%) SAP Business One
11 12 (0.14%) IBM Planning Analytics
11 12 (0.14%) Oracle Cash Management
11 12 (0.14%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 12 (0.14%) SAP ERP
12 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
13 10 (0.12%) JDE EnterpriseOne
13 10 (0.12%) Primavera
14 9 (0.11%) Magento
14 9 (0.11%) Sage X3
Cloud Services
1 1,464 (17.53%) Azure
2 1,337 (16.01%) Microsoft 365
3 700 (8.38%) AWS
4 631 (7.56%) Power Platform
5 486 (5.82%) Entra ID
6 299 (3.58%) SaaS
7 238 (2.85%) GCP
8 183 (2.19%) Azure DevOps
9 160 (1.92%) PowerApps
10 155 (1.86%) GitHub
11 154 (1.84%) Dynamics 365
12 150 (1.80%) Power Automate
13 136 (1.63%) OneDrive
14 115 (1.38%) Serverless
15 107 (1.28%) Microsoft Copilot
16 86 (1.03%) Google Workspace
17 71 (0.85%) Amazon S3
18 68 (0.81%) AWS CloudFormation
19 67 (0.80%) GitHub Actions
20 57 (0.68%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 472 (5.65%) DNS
2 462 (5.53%) Firewall
3 390 (4.67%) DHCP
4 299 (3.58%) VPN
5 250 (2.99%) TCP/IP
6 221 (2.65%) Wi-Fi
7 205 (2.46%) WAN
8 202 (2.42%) LAN
9 185 (2.22%) Wireless
10 161 (1.93%) VLAN
11 131 (1.57%) Network Security
12 112 (1.34%) VoIP
13 68 (0.81%) Broadband
13 68 (0.81%) Internet
14 33 (0.40%) Remote Desktop
15 32 (0.38%) SAN
15 32 (0.38%) SSL
16 30 (0.36%) 5G
17 29 (0.35%) Ethernet
18 27 (0.32%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 493 (5.90%) Power BI
2 334 (4.00%) SQL Server
3 139 (1.66%) MySQL
4 134 (1.60%) Relational Database
5 123 (1.47%) Amazon RDS
6 112 (1.34%) Data Warehouse
7 98 (1.17%) PostgreSQL
8 86 (1.03%) NoSQL
9 66 (0.79%) Tableau
10 65 (0.78%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 57 (0.68%) MongoDB
12 54 (0.65%) Data Lake
13 53 (0.63%) Power Query
14 51 (0.61%) Azure SQL Database
14 51 (0.61%) Big Data
15 50 (0.60%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 47 (0.56%) Electronic Patient Records
17 35 (0.42%) Metadata
18 33 (0.40%) Oracle Reports
19 27 (0.32%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 329 (3.94%) Git
2 247 (2.96%) JIRA
3 104 (1.25%) GitLab
4 94 (1.13%) Jenkins
5 40 (0.48%) Eclipse
5 40 (0.48%) Selenium
6 34 (0.41%) Cucumber
6 34 (0.41%) Subversion
7 31 (0.37%) Claude Code
8 27 (0.32%) Cypress.io
9 26 (0.31%) JUnit
10 25 (0.30%) Oracle Forms
11 23 (0.28%) Postman
12 22 (0.26%) LabVIEW
12 22 (0.26%) Rational DOORS
13 20 (0.24%) Bitbucket
14 16 (0.19%) Burp Suite
15 14 (0.17%) REST Assured
15 14 (0.17%) SonarQube
15 14 (0.17%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 4,103 (49.14%) Social Skills
2 2,305 (27.60%) Analytical Skills
3 1,343 (16.08%) Finance
4 1,041 (12.47%) Manufacturing
5 703 (8.42%) Organisational Skills
6 461 (5.52%) Retail
7 460 (5.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 396 (4.74%) Electronics
9 391 (4.68%) Public Sector
10 350 (4.19%) Aerospace
11 339 (4.06%) Legal
12 336 (4.02%) Law
13 302 (3.62%) Marketing
14 212 (2.54%) Telecoms
15 164 (1.96%) Influencing Skills
16 158 (1.89%) Automotive
17 146 (1.75%) Documentation Skills
18 128 (1.53%) Presentation Skills
19 117 (1.40%) Banking
20 110 (1.32%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,091 (13.07%) Analyst
2 861 (10.31%) Senior
3 778 (9.32%) IT Support
4 743 (8.90%) Developer
5 607 (7.27%) Support Engineer
6 426 (5.10%) Lead
7 417 (4.99%) Support Analyst
8 398 (4.77%) IT Engineer
9 360 (4.31%) Consultant
10 307 (3.68%) IT Support Engineer
11 296 (3.54%) Technical Support
12 272 (3.26%) Support Technician
13 249 (2.98%) Technical Engineer
14 247 (2.96%) IT Technician
15 234 (2.80%) Architect
16 228 (2.73%) Software Engineer
17 225 (2.69%) Systems Engineer
18 224 (2.68%) Technical Support Engineer
19 215 (2.57%) Senior Developer
20 202 (2.42%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 383 (4.59%) .NET
2 289 (3.46%) Terraform
3 220 (2.63%) React
4 203 (2.43%) REST
5 191 (2.29%) HTML
6 142 (1.70%) CSS
7 138 (1.65%) RESTful
8 99 (1.19%) Node.js
9 97 (1.16%) Web Services
10 88 (1.05%) ASP.NET
11 87 (1.04%) SOAP
12 83 (0.99%) Spring
13 77 (0.92%) Vue
14 76 (0.91%) Spring Boot
15 75 (0.90%) XML
16 74 (0.89%) Kafka
17 73 (0.87%) Middleware
18 72 (0.86%) AngularJS
19 65 (0.78%) JSON
20 56 (0.67%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 807 (9.66%) Driving Licence
2 592 (7.09%) Onboarding
3 461 (5.52%) Self-Motivation
4 393 (4.71%) Management Information System
5 211 (2.53%) Cloud Native
6 183 (2.19%) Product Ownership
7 179 (2.14%) Enterprise Software
8 156 (1.87%) Legacy Systems
9 154 (1.84%) Robotics
10 136 (1.63%) Data Centre
11 97 (1.16%) NHS
12 90 (1.08%) Cyber Threat
12 90 (1.08%) IoT
13 89 (1.07%) CCTV
14 88 (1.05%) Distributed Systems
15 87 (1.04%) Analytical Mindset
16 82 (0.98%) SCADA
16 82 (0.98%) Security Posture
17 81 (0.97%) Social Media
18 76 (0.91%) FMCG
Operating Systems
1 1,260 (15.09%) Windows
2 547 (6.55%) Windows Server
3 451 (5.40%) Linux
4 125 (1.50%) Windows 10
5 104 (1.25%) Windows Server 2016
6 90 (1.08%) Apple iOS
6 90 (1.08%) macOS
7 87 (1.04%) Android
8 41 (0.49%) Windows Server 2019
9 37 (0.44%) Unix
10 27 (0.32%) Ubuntu
11 15 (0.18%) Embedded Linux
12 14 (0.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 14 (0.17%) VMS
13 12 (0.14%) Debian
14 9 (0.11%) Rocky
15 8 (0.096%) FreeRTOS
16 7 (0.084%) Windows Server 2012
17 6 (0.072%) CentOS
18 5 (0.060%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,301 (27.56%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,553 (18.60%) Customer Service
3 1,144 (13.70%) Agile
4 911 (10.91%) Stakeholder Management
5 883 (10.57%) Decision-Making
6 842 (10.08%) AI
7 807 (9.66%) Mentoring
8 766 (9.17%) CI/CD
9 730 (8.74%) Project Delivery
10 682 (8.17%) Collaborative Working
11 642 (7.69%) Cybersecurity
12 617 (7.39%) DevOps
13 616 (7.38%) Analytics
14 605 (7.25%) Software Engineering
15 590 (7.07%) ERP
16 582 (6.97%) ITIL
17 569 (6.81%) Project Management
18 542 (6.49%) Business Intelligence
19 531 (6.36%) Validation
20 516 (6.18%) CRM
Programming Languages
1 1,118 (13.39%) SQL
2 797 (9.54%) Python
3 456 (5.46%) C#
4 442 (5.29%) JavaScript
5 321 (3.84%) Java
6 312 (3.74%) PowerShell
7 217 (2.60%) C++
8 202 (2.42%) TypeScript
9 127 (1.52%) Bash
10 91 (1.09%) C
11 66 (0.79%) PHP
12 62 (0.74%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 61 (0.73%) T-SQL
14 57 (0.68%) MATLAB
15 56 (0.67%) Ruby
16 46 (0.55%) Shell Script
17 45 (0.54%) PL/SQL
17 45 (0.54%) Rust
18 41 (0.49%) Perl
19 37 (0.44%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,378 (16.50%) Degree
2 792 (9.49%) Security Cleared
3 549 (6.57%) SC Cleared
4 293 (3.51%) HNC
5 243 (2.91%) DBS Check
6 240 (2.87%) HND
7 208 (2.49%) Computer Science Degree
8 202 (2.42%) Microsoft Certification
9 195 (2.34%) DV Cleared
10 174 (2.08%) BPSS Clearance
11 158 (1.89%) Azure Certification
12 111 (1.33%) Chartered Engineer
13 93 (1.11%) NVQ Level 3
14 92 (1.10%) Cisco Certification
14 92 (1.10%) Master's Degree
15 73 (0.87%) A+ Certification
16 71 (0.85%) PMI Certification
17 65 (0.78%) City & Guilds
18 59 (0.71%) ACCA
18 59 (0.71%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 511 (6.12%) QA
2 314 (3.76%) Data Quality
3 234 (2.80%) GDPR
4 231 (2.77%) Accessibility
5 181 (2.17%) SLA
6 174 (2.08%) Cyber Essentials
7 137 (1.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 104 (1.25%) PCI DSS
9 69 (0.83%) NIST
10 58 (0.69%) ISO 9001
11 49 (0.59%) PMO
12 36 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 24 (0.29%) DO-254
14 23 (0.28%) GMP
15 20 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
15 20 (0.24%) Good Clinical Practice
15 20 (0.24%) NCSC
16 15 (0.18%) GRC
17 14 (0.17%) GxP
17 14 (0.17%) ISO 19650
System Software
1 916 (10.97%) Active Directory
2 300 (3.59%) Hyper-V
3 275 (3.29%) Docker
4 216 (2.59%) VMware Infrastructure
5 92 (1.10%) Firmware
6 72 (0.86%) Terminal Server
7 46 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
8 36 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
9 31 (0.37%) Embedded Firmware
10 25 (0.30%) vSphere
11 15 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
12 13 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.072%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 5 (0.060%) ClearTrust
14 5 (0.060%) Squid
15 4 (0.048%) KVM
16 3 (0.036%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.036%) VMware Server
17 2 (0.024%) Samba
17 2 (0.024%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 291 (3.49%) Microsoft Intune
2 237 (2.84%) Kubernetes
3 106 (1.27%) Ansible
4 70 (0.84%) BMC PATROL
5 68 (0.81%) Grafana
6 56 (0.67%) SCCM
7 51 (0.61%) Prometheus
8 48 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
9 27 (0.32%) Jamf Pro
10 23 (0.28%) FortiGate
11 20 (0.24%) Functional Safety
12 17 (0.20%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
13 15 (0.18%) Puppet
14 13 (0.16%) Kibana
14 13 (0.16%) Nmap
15 12 (0.14%) Nagios
16 11 (0.13%) logstash
17 10 (0.12%) Failover Clustering
17 10 (0.12%) Progress Chef
17 10 (0.12%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 2,561 (30.67%) Microsoft
2 345 (4.13%) VMware
3 252 (3.02%) Google
4 233 (2.79%) SAP
5 220 (2.63%) Workday
6 182 (2.18%) Oracle
7 157 (1.88%) Cisco
8 148 (1.77%) Veeam
9 135 (1.62%) ServiceNow
10 126 (1.51%) Splunk
11 118 (1.41%) Salesforce
12 101 (1.21%) Sage
13 95 (1.14%) SolarWinds
14 82 (0.98%) Fortinet
15 80 (0.96%) Siemens
15 80 (0.96%) Tanium
16 75 (0.90%) Databricks
17 73 (0.87%) Brocade
17 73 (0.87%) Nimble Storage
18 71 (0.85%) Apple