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 19 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 7 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -4 +3 +3
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,156 7,034 4,686
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 12.30% 18.29% 16.64%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.24% 20.88% 17.77%
Number of salaries quoted 3,547 2,895 3,176
10th Percentile £26,000 £28,500 £26,250
25th Percentile £29,000 £36,250 £32,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £40,000 £50,000 £47,500
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £57,500 £67,500 £63,750
90th Percentile £71,250 £82,500 £75,000
UK median annual salary £45,497 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -17.28% - -

All Process and 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 33,827 33,684 26,372
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 80.72% 87.57% 93.66%
Number of salaries quoted 19,359 15,784 19,726
10th Percentile £27,500 £31,250 £28,500
25th Percentile £32,656 £41,250 £38,591
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £48,720 £55,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -11.42% +4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £65,000 £70,000 £67,500
90th Percentile £80,000 £83,000 £81,250
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -2.60%

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 19 December 2025.

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 19 December 2025. 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
South East -3 1,378 £41,000 -19.56% 1,681
North of England -14 1,286 £45,000 -5.26% 1,514
Midlands -13 923 £38,000 -24.00% 1,046
North West -11 715 £47,592 -0.19% 752
South West -2 589 £40,000 -27.27% 662
West Midlands -14 549 £42,500 -22.73% 558
Yorkshire -4 459 £35,000 -20.90% 591
East of England -4 434 £35,000 -31.33% 941
East Midlands +2 373 £32,500 -10.96% 454
Scotland -4 336 £33,500 -33.00% 244
Wales +5 175 £47,500 -5.00% 121
North East +5 112 £33,500 -33.00% 187
Northern Ireland +1 60 £55,000 -7.45% 62
Isle of Man +2 1 £62,500 +150.00% 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
1 276 (5.35%) Microsoft Exchange
2 219 (4.25%) SharePoint
3 49 (0.95%) Confluence
4 48 (0.93%) IIS
5 24 (0.47%) WordPress
6 23 (0.45%) CMS
7 20 (0.39%) Apache
7 20 (0.39%) Apache Spark
8 11 (0.21%) Apache Airflow
9 7 (0.14%) nginx
10 6 (0.12%) Drupal
10 6 (0.12%) HCL Notes
11 5 (0.097%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 5 (0.097%) SAS
12 4 (0.078%) Apache Solr
12 4 (0.078%) ArcGIS
12 4 (0.078%) Camunda
12 4 (0.078%) Exchange Server 2013
13 3 (0.058%) Anypoint
13 3 (0.058%) HCL Domino
Applications
1 451 (8.75%) Microsoft Office
2 448 (8.69%) Microsoft Excel
3 68 (1.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 26 (0.50%) Spreadsheet
5 23 (0.45%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.37%) AutoCAD
7 15 (0.29%) Photoshop
8 13 (0.25%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 12 (0.23%) Adobe Illustrator
9 12 (0.23%) Microsoft Project
9 12 (0.23%) Simulink
9 12 (0.23%) SOLIDWORKS
10 9 (0.17%) Adobe Premiere
11 5 (0.097%) Adobe After Effects
12 4 (0.078%) Autodesk Inventor
12 4 (0.078%) CATIA
12 4 (0.078%) Fusion 360
12 4 (0.078%) Oracle Smart View
12 4 (0.078%) Revit
12 4 (0.078%) Trello
Business Applications
1 89 (1.73%) SAP S/4HANA
2 57 (1.11%) Dynamics CRM
3 33 (0.64%) NetSuite
4 20 (0.39%) Oracle Payables
5 18 (0.35%) Oracle Receivables
6 16 (0.31%) Oracle Assets
7 15 (0.29%) SAP FI
8 14 (0.27%) SAP CO
9 13 (0.25%) Sage X3
9 13 (0.25%) SAP Business One
10 11 (0.21%) SAP FI/CO
10 11 (0.21%) Shopify
11 10 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
11 10 (0.19%) Oracle General Ledger
12 8 (0.16%) JDE EnterpriseOne
12 8 (0.16%) Oracle Financials
13 6 (0.12%) Infor CloudSuite Industrial (formerly SyteLine)
13 6 (0.12%) Sage 200
13 6 (0.12%) SAP WM
13 6 (0.12%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 1,092 (21.18%) Azure
2 799 (15.50%) Microsoft 365
3 392 (7.60%) AWS
4 363 (7.04%) Power Platform
5 277 (5.37%) SaaS
6 230 (4.46%) Entra ID
7 145 (2.81%) Azure DevOps
8 129 (2.50%) GCP
9 94 (1.82%) GitHub
10 70 (1.36%) Power Automate
11 67 (1.30%) Serverless
12 54 (1.05%) Azure Data Factory
13 52 (1.01%) Dynamics 365
14 43 (0.83%) OneDrive
15 41 (0.80%) AWS CloudFormation
15 41 (0.80%) PowerApps
16 40 (0.78%) Amazon S3
16 40 (0.78%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 39 (0.76%) AWS Lambda
17 39 (0.76%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 343 (6.65%) DNS
2 298 (5.78%) DHCP
3 254 (4.93%) Firewall
4 160 (3.10%) TCP/IP
5 152 (2.95%) VPN
6 146 (2.83%) Wi-Fi
7 128 (2.48%) LAN
7 128 (2.48%) WAN
8 97 (1.88%) VLAN
9 84 (1.63%) VoIP
10 83 (1.61%) Broadband
11 62 (1.20%) Wireless
12 60 (1.16%) Remote Desktop
13 47 (0.91%) Network Security
14 38 (0.74%) SAN
15 36 (0.70%) Internet
16 29 (0.56%) Unified Communications
17 28 (0.54%) Ethernet
17 28 (0.54%) SD-WAN
18 17 (0.33%) LTE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 318 (6.17%) Power BI
2 238 (4.62%) SQL Server
3 112 (2.17%) Amazon RDS
4 101 (1.96%) Relational Database
5 99 (1.92%) MySQL
6 83 (1.61%) PostgreSQL
7 82 (1.59%) Data Lake
8 69 (1.34%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 64 (1.24%) SAP BW
10 59 (1.14%) Data Warehouse
11 49 (0.95%) NoSQL
12 47 (0.91%) Tableau
13 42 (0.81%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 37 (0.72%) Azure SQL Database
15 35 (0.68%) GIS
16 33 (0.64%) Oracle Reports
17 30 (0.58%) MongoDB
18 24 (0.47%) DynamoDB
18 24 (0.47%) Elasticsearch
18 24 (0.47%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 197 (3.82%) Git
2 170 (3.30%) JIRA
3 51 (0.99%) GitLab
4 43 (0.83%) Jenkins
5 30 (0.58%) Selenium
6 21 (0.41%) Visual Studio
7 18 (0.35%) Octopus Deploy
8 17 (0.33%) TeamCity
9 16 (0.31%) Bitbucket
10 15 (0.29%) Robot Framework
10 15 (0.29%) SonarQube
11 14 (0.27%) Snyk
12 13 (0.25%) LabVIEW
13 12 (0.23%) Cypress.io
14 10 (0.19%) Rational DOORS
15 9 (0.17%) Cucumber
16 8 (0.16%) JUnit
16 8 (0.16%) Maven
16 8 (0.16%) Oracle Forms
17 7 (0.14%) Subversion
General
1 2,807 (54.44%) Social Skills
2 1,442 (27.97%) Analytical Skills
3 1,110 (21.53%) Finance
4 354 (6.87%) Retail
5 316 (6.13%) Manufacturing
6 299 (5.80%) Marketing
7 252 (4.89%) Organisational Skills
8 185 (3.59%) Public Sector
9 180 (3.49%) Law
10 172 (3.34%) Legal
11 151 (2.93%) Telecoms
12 148 (2.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 138 (2.68%) Electronics
14 107 (2.08%) Presentation Skills
15 93 (1.80%) Banking
16 87 (1.69%) Automotive
17 85 (1.65%) Games
18 64 (1.24%) Aerospace
18 64 (1.24%) Influencing Skills
19 63 (1.22%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 848 (16.45%) Analyst
2 659 (12.78%) IT Support
3 589 (11.42%) Senior
4 520 (10.09%) Support Engineer
5 381 (7.39%) Developer
6 342 (6.63%) Lead
7 328 (6.36%) Support Analyst
8 280 (5.43%) Technical Support
9 225 (4.36%) IT Engineer
10 203 (3.94%) 2nd Line Support
11 197 (3.82%) Business Analyst
12 196 (3.80%) IT Support Engineer
13 193 (3.74%) Technical Engineer
14 180 (3.49%) Systems Engineer
15 179 (3.47%) Support Technician
16 178 (3.45%) Technical Support Engineer
17 150 (2.91%) Applications Support
18 144 (2.79%) Consultant
19 135 (2.62%) IT Analyst
20 134 (2.60%) Trainee
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 214 (4.15%) .NET
2 174 (3.37%) HTML
3 151 (2.93%) React
4 145 (2.81%) CSS
5 87 (1.69%) REST
6 78 (1.51%) RESTful
7 63 (1.22%) Node.js
8 57 (1.11%) JSON
9 56 (1.09%) ASP.NET
10 53 (1.03%) XML
11 48 (0.93%) AngularJS
12 42 (0.81%) SOAP
13 40 (0.78%) Django
14 38 (0.74%) Vue
15 37 (0.72%) .NET Framework
16 36 (0.70%) Spring
17 32 (0.62%) EDI
18 29 (0.56%) Oracle Fusion
19 28 (0.54%) .NET Core
20 26 (0.50%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 500 (9.70%) Driving Licence
2 414 (8.03%) Onboarding
3 312 (6.05%) Self-Motivation
4 176 (3.41%) Management Information System
5 161 (3.12%) Analytical Mindset
6 142 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
7 94 (1.82%) Product Ownership
8 92 (1.78%) Data Centre
9 78 (1.51%) FMCG
10 65 (1.26%) Virtual Team
11 63 (1.22%) Cloud Native
12 57 (1.11%) Enterprise Software
13 44 (0.85%) e-Learning
14 40 (0.78%) Operational Technology
15 38 (0.74%) EPoS
15 38 (0.74%) Video Conferencing
16 37 (0.72%) SCADA
17 34 (0.66%) IoT
17 34 (0.66%) Mobile App
18 31 (0.60%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 949 (18.41%) Windows
2 387 (7.51%) Windows Server
3 295 (5.72%) Linux
4 141 (2.73%) Windows 10
5 101 (1.96%) Windows Server 2016
6 68 (1.32%) Android
7 61 (1.18%) Mac OS
8 53 (1.03%) Apple iOS
9 31 (0.60%) Unix
10 27 (0.52%) Windows Server 2019
11 18 (0.35%) Windows 7
12 14 (0.27%) Windows Server 2012
13 12 (0.23%) VMS
14 9 (0.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
15 5 (0.097%) CentOS
15 5 (0.097%) Mac OS X
16 4 (0.078%) Ubuntu
16 4 (0.078%) Windows 8
16 4 (0.078%) Windows Server 2008
17 2 (0.039%) OpenWrt
Processes & Methodologies
1 964 (18.70%) Customer Service
2 922 (17.88%) Continuous Improvement
3 685 (13.29%) Agile
4 489 (9.48%) Project Management
5 474 (9.19%) Analytics
6 466 (9.04%) Mentoring
7 438 (8.49%) Decision-Making
8 423 (8.20%) Business Intelligence
9 415 (8.05%) ITIL
10 396 (7.68%) ERP
11 379 (7.35%) DevOps
12 340 (6.59%) Change Management
12 340 (6.59%) Cybersecurity
13 324 (6.28%) CI/CD
14 310 (6.01%) CRM
15 301 (5.84%) Process Improvement
16 300 (5.82%) Stakeholder Management
17 282 (5.47%) AI
18 281 (5.45%) Data Analysis
19 273 (5.29%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 783 (15.19%) SQL
2 432 (8.38%) Python
3 272 (5.28%) JavaScript
4 270 (5.24%) C#
5 264 (5.12%) PowerShell
6 148 (2.87%) Java
7 79 (1.53%) PHP
8 76 (1.47%) C++
9 57 (1.11%) TypeScript
10 52 (1.01%) T-SQL
11 51 (0.99%) Bash
12 48 (0.93%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 37 (0.72%) C
14 27 (0.52%) MATLAB
15 25 (0.48%) VBA
16 21 (0.41%) R
17 19 (0.37%) Go
18 17 (0.33%) Kusto Query Language
18 17 (0.33%) Perl
19 16 (0.31%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 1,197 (23.22%) Degree
2 401 (7.78%) Security Cleared
3 277 (5.37%) SC Cleared
4 152 (2.95%) Microsoft Certification
5 137 (2.66%) Computer Science Degree
6 122 (2.37%) DBS Check
7 102 (1.98%) BPSS Clearance
8 100 (1.94%) Master's Degree
9 86 (1.67%) Cisco Certification
10 79 (1.53%) DV Cleared
11 64 (1.24%) ACCA
11 64 (1.24%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 63 (1.22%) HND
13 59 (1.14%) CCNA
14 56 (1.09%) CIMA
15 55 (1.07%) A+ Certification
16 49 (0.95%) Network+ Certification
17 44 (0.85%) HNC
18 42 (0.81%) AWS Certification
19 36 (0.70%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 239 (4.64%) QA
2 216 (4.19%) Data Quality
3 152 (2.95%) Cyber Essentials
4 138 (2.68%) GDPR
5 106 (2.06%) PCI DSS
6 104 (2.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 83 (1.61%) Accessibility
8 80 (1.55%) SLA
9 44 (0.85%) NIST
10 30 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 29 (0.56%) ISO 9001
12 22 (0.43%) Actionable Recommendations
13 17 (0.33%) PMO
14 10 (0.19%) ISO 13485
15 7 (0.14%) HIPAA
15 7 (0.14%) Software Quality Assurance
15 7 (0.14%) WCAG
16 6 (0.12%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 6 (0.12%) SOC 2
17 5 (0.097%) GLBA
System Software
1 633 (12.28%) Active Directory
2 211 (4.09%) Hyper-V
3 183 (3.55%) Docker
4 114 (2.21%) VMware Infrastructure
5 88 (1.71%) Terminal Server
6 45 (0.87%) Firmware
7 21 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
8 20 (0.39%) Virtual Machines
9 17 (0.33%) vSphere
10 15 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.19%) Embedded Firmware
12 6 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.078%) KVM
14 3 (0.058%) VMware Workstation
15 2 (0.039%) RHEV
15 2 (0.039%) Xen
15 2 (0.039%) XenApp
16 1 (0.019%) HDFS
16 1 (0.019%) iptables
16 1 (0.019%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 205 (3.98%) Microsoft Intune
2 182 (3.53%) Terraform
3 128 (2.48%) Kubernetes
4 64 (1.24%) Ansible
5 42 (0.81%) BMC PATROL
5 42 (0.81%) SCCM
6 38 (0.74%) Grafana
7 28 (0.54%) Prometheus
8 20 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
9 14 (0.27%) vCenter Server
10 13 (0.25%) Cisco CUCM
10 13 (0.25%) Jamf Pro
11 12 (0.23%) Nagios
12 10 (0.19%) AWS Copilot
12 10 (0.19%) ZABBIX
13 7 (0.14%) FortiGate
13 7 (0.14%) PaperCut
13 7 (0.14%) QRadar
14 6 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 6 (0.12%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,400 (27.15%) Microsoft
2 330 (6.40%) SAP
3 235 (4.56%) VMware
4 171 (3.32%) Cisco
5 169 (3.28%) Oracle
6 136 (2.64%) Veeam
7 108 (2.09%) SolarWinds
7 108 (2.09%) Splunk
8 98 (1.90%) Google
9 97 (1.88%) ServiceNow
10 90 (1.75%) Tanium
11 88 (1.71%) Brocade
11 88 (1.71%) Nimble Storage
12 87 (1.69%) Salesforce
13 70 (1.36%) Sage
14 64 (1.24%) BT
15 63 (1.22%) Apple
16 62 (1.20%) Databricks
17 55 (1.07%) Adobe
18 47 (0.91%) Workday