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

6 months to
26 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 4 4
Rank change year-on-year -5 0 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,662 6,615 8,739
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 8.37% 19.00% 14.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.90% 21.87% 18.64%
Number of salaries quoted 4,754 3,687 4,227
10th Percentile £27,000 £25,625 £25,750
25th Percentile £31,250 £29,250 £32,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £40,000 £47,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -14.89% -4.08%
75th Percentile £58,750 £58,750 £62,500
90th Percentile £73,750 £72,500 £77,500
UK median annual salary £47,371 £45,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +5.27% -10.00% -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 55,965 30,247 46,875
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.32% 86.87% 78.17%
Number of salaries quoted 39,546 16,569 28,629
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,500 £29,971
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £38,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £47,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +15.79% -5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £65,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £87,500 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
% 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 26 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 26 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 -8 1,680 £45,000 +7.14% 702
South East -4 1,592 £42,500 - 700
Midlands -7 1,215 £42,500 +10.39% 596
North West -6 881 £45,000 - 337
South West -4 824 £45,000 +28.57% 547
West Midlands -9 681 £42,500 -2.42% 353
East of England -3 676 £42,500 +21.43% 354
Yorkshire -8 543 £42,500 +21.43% 263
East Midlands -9 532 £41,000 +17.14% 245
Scotland +1 301 £33,500 -26.59% 180
North East -6 256 £48,250 +20.63% 118
Northern Ireland -3 212 £57,500 -2.54% 104
Wales -19 177 £45,000 -6.49% 70
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
1 401 (6.02%) SharePoint
2 343 (5.15%) Microsoft Exchange
3 66 (0.99%) CMS
4 65 (0.98%) Confluence
5 52 (0.78%) IIS
6 31 (0.47%) WordPress
7 29 (0.44%) Apache
8 27 (0.41%) Sitecore CMS
9 26 (0.39%) Apache Airflow
10 16 (0.24%) Apache Spark
11 14 (0.21%) SAS
12 10 (0.15%) WebSphere
13 9 (0.14%) nginx
13 9 (0.14%) WebLogic
14 8 (0.12%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.11%) OpenEdge
16 5 (0.075%) Skype for Business
17 4 (0.060%) Exchange Server 2013
17 4 (0.060%) OpenStack
17 4 (0.060%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 434 (6.51%) Microsoft Office
2 416 (6.24%) Microsoft Excel
3 54 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 50 (0.75%) Spreadsheet
5 39 (0.59%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
7 25 (0.38%) Simulink
8 24 (0.36%) AutoCAD
9 15 (0.23%) Revit
10 8 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 8 (0.12%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.12%) EPLAN
11 7 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
11 7 (0.11%) Fusion 360
12 6 (0.090%) Adobe XD
12 6 (0.090%) Navisworks
12 6 (0.090%) Sketch
13 5 (0.075%) Lightworks
13 5 (0.075%) SOLIDWORKS
14 4 (0.060%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 72 (1.08%) Dynamics CRM
2 51 (0.77%) SAP S/4HANA
3 48 (0.72%) NetSuite
4 29 (0.44%) Shopify
5 17 (0.26%) Dynamics NAV
5 17 (0.26%) Magento
5 17 (0.26%) SAP Business One
6 16 (0.24%) SAP ERP
7 15 (0.23%) IBM Planning Analytics
8 14 (0.21%) Workday HCM
9 12 (0.18%) Dynamics AX
9 12 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
10 11 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
11 10 (0.15%) JDE EnterpriseOne
11 10 (0.15%) Sage X3
12 9 (0.14%) Sage 50
13 8 (0.12%) Primavera
14 7 (0.11%) NEC Housing
14 7 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
15 6 (0.090%) Raiser’s Edge
Cloud Services
1 1,333 (20.01%) Azure
2 1,142 (17.14%) Microsoft 365
3 667 (10.01%) AWS
4 552 (8.29%) Power Platform
5 344 (5.16%) Entra ID
6 231 (3.47%) SaaS
7 229 (3.44%) GCP
8 166 (2.49%) Azure DevOps
9 145 (2.18%) PowerApps
10 141 (2.12%) Dynamics 365
11 130 (1.95%) GitHub
12 124 (1.86%) Power Automate
13 122 (1.83%) Serverless
14 81 (1.22%) Microsoft Copilot
14 81 (1.22%) OneDrive
15 57 (0.86%) Amazon S3
15 57 (0.86%) GitHub Actions
16 54 (0.81%) AWS CloudFormation
17 52 (0.78%) AWS Lambda
17 52 (0.78%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 419 (6.29%) Firewall
2 405 (6.08%) DNS
3 347 (5.21%) DHCP
4 248 (3.72%) VPN
5 227 (3.41%) TCP/IP
6 187 (2.81%) WAN
7 177 (2.66%) LAN
8 165 (2.48%) Wi-Fi
9 159 (2.39%) Wireless
10 132 (1.98%) VLAN
11 114 (1.71%) Network Security
12 107 (1.61%) VoIP
13 80 (1.20%) Broadband
14 44 (0.66%) Internet
15 30 (0.45%) SSL
16 28 (0.42%) HTTP
17 27 (0.41%) SAN
18 25 (0.38%) SD-WAN
19 23 (0.35%) MQTT
20 22 (0.33%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 438 (6.57%) Power BI
2 327 (4.91%) SQL Server
3 136 (2.04%) MySQL
4 125 (1.88%) Amazon RDS
5 110 (1.65%) Relational Database
6 103 (1.55%) Data Warehouse
7 92 (1.38%) PostgreSQL
8 81 (1.22%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 80 (1.20%) NoSQL
10 68 (1.02%) Tableau
11 61 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 48 (0.72%) MongoDB
13 47 (0.71%) Electronic Patient Records
14 44 (0.66%) Big Data
15 43 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
15 43 (0.65%) Power Query
16 40 (0.60%) Data Lake
17 29 (0.44%) DynamoDB
18 27 (0.41%) Metadata
19 25 (0.38%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 291 (4.37%) Git
2 227 (3.41%) JIRA
3 77 (1.16%) GitLab
4 71 (1.07%) Jenkins
5 35 (0.53%) Eclipse
6 33 (0.50%) Subversion
7 29 (0.44%) Selenium
8 27 (0.41%) Cucumber
9 26 (0.39%) JUnit
10 24 (0.36%) Rational DOORS
11 23 (0.35%) Claude Code
12 21 (0.32%) Postman
13 20 (0.30%) Oracle Forms
14 19 (0.29%) Bitbucket
14 19 (0.29%) Cypress.io
15 14 (0.21%) SonarQube
16 13 (0.20%) Burp Suite
17 12 (0.18%) Visual Studio
18 11 (0.17%) Metasploit
19 10 (0.15%) LabVIEW
General
1 3,212 (48.21%) Social Skills
2 1,868 (28.04%) Analytical Skills
3 1,063 (15.96%) Finance
4 618 (9.28%) Manufacturing
5 418 (6.27%) Organisational Skills
6 375 (5.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 311 (4.67%) Law
8 293 (4.40%) Retail
9 292 (4.38%) Public Sector
10 286 (4.29%) Legal
11 247 (3.71%) Marketing
12 233 (3.50%) Electronics
13 218 (3.27%) Aerospace
14 157 (2.36%) Telecoms
15 140 (2.10%) Influencing Skills
16 132 (1.98%) Banking
17 107 (1.61%) Documentation Skills
18 77 (1.16%) Military
19 74 (1.11%) Automotive
20 70 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 874 (13.12%) Analyst
2 717 (10.76%) Senior
3 696 (10.45%) Developer
4 664 (9.97%) IT Support
5 545 (8.18%) Support Engineer
6 367 (5.51%) Lead
7 359 (5.39%) IT Engineer
8 320 (4.80%) Support Analyst
9 304 (4.56%) Consultant
10 267 (4.01%) IT Support Engineer
11 260 (3.90%) Support Technician
12 256 (3.84%) Technical Support
13 235 (3.53%) Systems Engineer
14 226 (3.39%) IT Technician
15 223 (3.35%) Architect
16 217 (3.26%) Software Engineer
16 217 (3.26%) Technical Engineer
17 194 (2.91%) Senior Developer
17 194 (2.91%) Technical Support Engineer
18 175 (2.63%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 351 (5.27%) .NET
2 263 (3.95%) Terraform
3 216 (3.24%) React
4 196 (2.94%) HTML
5 193 (2.90%) REST
6 145 (2.18%) CSS
7 128 (1.92%) RESTful
8 95 (1.43%) Node.js
8 95 (1.43%) SOAP
9 82 (1.23%) Vue
10 81 (1.22%) ASP.NET
11 79 (1.19%) Middleware
12 78 (1.17%) AngularJS
13 74 (1.11%) JSON
13 74 (1.11%) Web Services
14 72 (1.08%) XML
15 68 (1.02%) Spring
16 61 (0.92%) Spring Boot
17 55 (0.83%) OAuth
18 51 (0.77%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 532 (7.99%) Driving Licence
2 422 (6.33%) Onboarding
3 334 (5.01%) Self-Motivation
4 298 (4.47%) Management Information System
5 188 (2.82%) Cloud Native
6 174 (2.61%) Product Ownership
7 154 (2.31%) Legacy Systems
8 113 (1.70%) Data Centre
9 110 (1.65%) Enterprise Software
10 92 (1.38%) Analytical Mindset
11 89 (1.34%) Distributed Systems
12 84 (1.26%) NHS
13 79 (1.19%) Security Posture
14 77 (1.16%) Robotics
15 68 (1.02%) Virtual Team
16 67 (1.01%) Cyber Threat
16 67 (1.01%) Mobile App
16 67 (1.01%) Social Media
17 63 (0.95%) IoT
18 59 (0.89%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 1,091 (16.38%) Windows
2 507 (7.61%) Windows Server
3 456 (6.84%) Linux
4 131 (1.97%) Windows 10
5 111 (1.67%) Windows Server 2016
6 89 (1.34%) Android
7 81 (1.22%) Apple iOS
8 75 (1.13%) Mac OS
9 41 (0.62%) Unix
10 39 (0.59%) Windows Server 2019
11 29 (0.44%) Ubuntu
12 19 (0.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 18 (0.27%) VMS
14 15 (0.23%) Debian
15 14 (0.21%) CentOS
16 9 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
16 9 (0.14%) FreeRTOS
17 8 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
18 5 (0.075%) OpenVMS
18 5 (0.075%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,775 (26.64%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,207 (18.12%) Customer Service
3 1,018 (15.28%) Agile
4 756 (11.35%) Decision-Making
5 690 (10.36%) CI/CD
6 682 (10.24%) Mentoring
7 654 (9.82%) AI
8 619 (9.29%) Stakeholder Management
9 575 (8.63%) DevOps
10 563 (8.45%) Analytics
11 555 (8.33%) ITIL
12 547 (8.21%) Software Engineering
13 532 (7.99%) Cybersecurity
14 529 (7.94%) Project Delivery
15 524 (7.87%) Collaborative Working
16 498 (7.48%) ERP
17 468 (7.02%) Business Intelligence
18 441 (6.62%) Project Management
19 417 (6.26%) CRM
20 390 (5.85%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 1,017 (15.27%) SQL
2 719 (10.79%) Python
3 433 (6.50%) C#
3 433 (6.50%) JavaScript
4 297 (4.46%) Java
5 270 (4.05%) PowerShell
6 192 (2.88%) TypeScript
7 185 (2.78%) C++
8 119 (1.79%) Bash
9 74 (1.11%) PHP
10 72 (1.08%) C
11 59 (0.89%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 54 (0.81%) T-SQL
13 46 (0.69%) Shell Script
14 44 (0.66%) Perl
15 42 (0.63%) Ruby
16 36 (0.54%) Go
17 34 (0.51%) PL/SQL
18 33 (0.50%) Rust
19 32 (0.48%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 1,051 (15.78%) Degree
2 628 (9.43%) Security Cleared
3 448 (6.72%) SC Cleared
4 201 (3.02%) DBS Check
5 194 (2.91%) Computer Science Degree
6 180 (2.70%) Microsoft Certification
7 169 (2.54%) DV Cleared
8 151 (2.27%) BPSS Clearance
9 125 (1.88%) HNC
10 118 (1.77%) Azure Certification
11 107 (1.61%) HND
12 93 (1.40%) Cisco Certification
13 79 (1.19%) PMI Certification
14 74 (1.11%) CISSP
15 64 (0.96%) Chartered Engineer
16 63 (0.95%) CCNA
17 61 (0.92%) Master's Degree
18 58 (0.87%) PMP
19 56 (0.84%) A+ Certification
20 49 (0.74%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 449 (6.74%) QA
2 263 (3.95%) Data Quality
3 198 (2.97%) GDPR
4 174 (2.61%) Cyber Essentials
5 168 (2.52%) Accessibility
5 168 (2.52%) SLA
6 127 (1.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 114 (1.71%) PCI DSS
8 95 (1.43%) NIST
9 35 (0.53%) ISO 9001
10 32 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 31 (0.47%) PMO
12 20 (0.30%) GMP
13 18 (0.27%) Good Clinical Practice
14 16 (0.24%) GRC
15 14 (0.21%) DO-254
16 13 (0.20%) NCSC
17 12 (0.18%) Actionable Recommendations
17 12 (0.18%) GxP
17 12 (0.18%) SOC 2
System Software
1 759 (11.39%) Active Directory
2 284 (4.26%) Hyper-V
3 251 (3.77%) Docker
4 201 (3.02%) VMware Infrastructure
5 80 (1.20%) Terminal Server
6 67 (1.01%) Firmware
7 35 (0.53%) Virtual Desktop
8 28 (0.42%) Virtual Machines
8 28 (0.42%) vSphere
9 22 (0.33%) Embedded Firmware
10 15 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
11 7 (0.11%) KVM
12 5 (0.075%) ClearTrust
12 5 (0.075%) Squid
12 5 (0.075%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.075%) XenApp
13 4 (0.060%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 3 (0.045%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 3 (0.045%) Terminal Services
14 3 (0.045%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 230 (3.45%) Microsoft Intune
2 219 (3.29%) Kubernetes
3 107 (1.61%) Ansible
4 58 (0.87%) SCCM
5 57 (0.86%) Grafana
6 40 (0.60%) Prometheus
7 36 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
8 21 (0.32%) FortiGate
9 18 (0.27%) Jamf Pro
10 17 (0.26%) Puppet
11 14 (0.21%) Functional Safety
12 12 (0.18%) Nagios
13 11 (0.17%) BMC PATROL
13 11 (0.17%) Kibana
13 11 (0.17%) Nmap
14 10 (0.15%) logstash
14 10 (0.15%) Podman
14 10 (0.15%) Proxmox
15 9 (0.14%) QRadar
15 9 (0.14%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 2,014 (30.23%) Microsoft
2 325 (4.88%) VMware
3 179 (2.69%) SAP
4 175 (2.63%) Google
5 159 (2.39%) Oracle
6 140 (2.10%) Veeam
7 133 (2.00%) Cisco
8 125 (1.88%) Splunk
9 113 (1.70%) ServiceNow
10 102 (1.53%) SolarWinds
11 98 (1.47%) Workday
12 92 (1.38%) Salesforce
13 88 (1.32%) Tanium
14 81 (1.22%) Nimble Storage
15 80 (1.20%) Brocade
16 78 (1.17%) Databricks
17 73 (1.10%) Sage
18 64 (0.96%) Fortinet
19 58 (0.87%) Apple
20 52 (0.78%) SonicWALL