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 16 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -8 +3 +5
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,786 5,327 9,332
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 8.95% 19.28% 15.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.91% 20.92% 18.44%
Number of salaries quoted 3,417 2,970 6,346
10th Percentile £26,250 £26,929 £25,750
25th Percentile £29,250 £32,750 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £40,000 £50,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +11.11% -10.00%
75th Percentile £57,500 £66,250 £61,250
90th Percentile £73,750 £82,500 £72,500
UK median annual salary £45,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -18.18% +10.00% -10.22%

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 40,184 25,459 50,615
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 75.18% 92.14% 85.72%
Number of salaries quoted 23,968 13,634 37,852
10th Percentile £28,250 £29,750 £27,250
25th Percentile £35,000 £40,000 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £66,250 £70,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £82,500 £83,750 £77,500
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -11.78%

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 16 March 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 16 March 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 -18 1,297 £41,500 -11.70% 621
South East -5 1,188 £43,500 -14.65% 825
Midlands -16 849 £37,500 -23.47% 429
North West -17 660 £42,500 -15.00% 340
South West -4 543 £43,500 -13.00% 304
Yorkshire -6 505 £35,000 -18.60% 209
West Midlands -22 503 £42,500 -21.79% 264
East of England -9 419 £40,000 -20.00% 257
East Midlands -2 343 £35,000 -10.83% 165
Scotland -7 310 £35,000 -23.30% 133
North East -8 132 £45,000 - 86
Wales -6 112 £40,500 -32.18% 73
Northern Ireland +4 92 £35,000 -41.39% 16
Isle of Man -1 1 £62,500 +72.41% 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
1 287 (6.00%) Microsoft Exchange
2 241 (5.04%) SharePoint
3 50 (1.04%) Confluence
4 46 (0.96%) CMS
5 37 (0.77%) IIS
6 24 (0.50%) WordPress
7 21 (0.44%) Apache
8 18 (0.38%) Apache Spark
9 13 (0.27%) Apache Airflow
9 13 (0.27%) Exchange Server 2013
10 11 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2007
10 11 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2010
11 9 (0.19%) SAS
12 8 (0.17%) nginx
13 7 (0.15%) Drupal
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 4 (0.084%) Headless CMS
15 4 (0.084%) Moodle
15 4 (0.084%) Totara
15 4 (0.084%) WebSphere
Applications
1 354 (7.40%) Microsoft Office
2 293 (6.12%) Microsoft Excel
3 58 (1.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 30 (0.63%) MS Visio
5 24 (0.50%) Spreadsheet
6 15 (0.31%) Microsoft Project
7 14 (0.29%) AutoCAD
8 12 (0.25%) Photoshop
9 10 (0.21%) Adobe Illustrator
10 8 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 7 (0.15%) SOLIDWORKS
12 4 (0.084%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.084%) Fusion 360
12 4 (0.084%) Simulink
12 4 (0.084%) Trello
13 3 (0.063%) CATIA
13 3 (0.063%) Elementor
13 3 (0.063%) InDesign
14 2 (0.042%) Adobe After Effects
14 2 (0.042%) Adobe Premiere
Business Applications
1 40 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
2 30 (0.63%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.52%) NetSuite
4 14 (0.29%) SAP CO
5 13 (0.27%) Sage X3
5 13 (0.27%) Shopify
6 12 (0.25%) Dynamics NAV
7 11 (0.23%) SAP ERP
8 10 (0.21%) iTrent
9 7 (0.15%) Q-Pulse
9 7 (0.15%) Workday HCM
10 6 (0.13%) Markit EDM
11 5 (0.10%) Magento
11 5 (0.10%) SAP FI
11 5 (0.10%) SAP FI/CO
11 5 (0.10%) SAP Hybris
12 4 (0.084%) Dynamics AX
12 4 (0.084%) Dynamics GP
12 4 (0.084%) IBM Planning Analytics
12 4 (0.084%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 999 (20.87%) Azure
2 842 (17.59%) Microsoft 365
3 440 (9.19%) AWS
4 300 (6.27%) Power Platform
5 242 (5.06%) SaaS
6 238 (4.97%) Entra ID
7 133 (2.78%) GCP
8 131 (2.74%) Azure DevOps
9 99 (2.07%) GitHub
10 93 (1.94%) Serverless
11 72 (1.50%) Power Automate
12 64 (1.34%) Azure Data Factory
12 64 (1.34%) Dynamics 365
13 61 (1.27%) Google Workspace
14 55 (1.15%) AWS Lambda
15 54 (1.13%) Amazon S3
16 53 (1.11%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 49 (1.02%) GitHub Actions
18 48 (1.00%) PaaS
19 47 (0.98%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 353 (7.38%) DNS
2 296 (6.18%) DHCP
3 285 (5.95%) Firewall
4 152 (3.18%) VPN
5 150 (3.13%) TCP/IP
6 149 (3.11%) WAN
7 143 (2.99%) Wi-Fi
8 124 (2.59%) LAN
9 109 (2.28%) Broadband
10 96 (2.01%) VLAN
11 76 (1.59%) VoIP
12 73 (1.53%) Wireless
13 51 (1.07%) Network Security
14 50 (1.04%) Remote Desktop
15 44 (0.92%) SD-WAN
16 35 (0.73%) Internet
17 31 (0.65%) SAN
18 28 (0.59%) Unified Communications
19 22 (0.46%) Wireshark
20 19 (0.40%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 244 (5.10%) Power BI
2 193 (4.03%) SQL Server
3 93 (1.94%) Amazon RDS
4 81 (1.69%) PostgreSQL
5 70 (1.46%) Relational Database
6 69 (1.44%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 65 (1.36%) NoSQL
8 63 (1.32%) MySQL
9 62 (1.30%) Data Warehouse
10 42 (0.88%) Tableau
11 38 (0.79%) Power Query
12 37 (0.77%) Azure SQL Database
13 36 (0.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 33 (0.69%) DynamoDB
15 30 (0.63%) MongoDB
16 29 (0.61%) Amazon Redshift
17 27 (0.56%) Metadata
18 25 (0.52%) Elasticsearch
19 21 (0.44%) Data Lake
20 17 (0.36%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 191 (3.99%) Git
2 162 (3.38%) JIRA
3 62 (1.30%) GitLab
4 44 (0.92%) Jenkins
5 31 (0.65%) Selenium
6 17 (0.36%) LabVIEW
7 16 (0.33%) Visual Studio
8 15 (0.31%) Maven
8 15 (0.31%) Robot Framework
9 14 (0.29%) Snyk
10 13 (0.27%) Cypress.io
10 13 (0.27%) Rational DOORS
11 12 (0.25%) Cucumber
11 12 (0.25%) SonarQube
12 11 (0.23%) JUnit
13 10 (0.21%) Bitbucket
13 10 (0.21%) Burp Suite
13 10 (0.21%) Metasploit
14 7 (0.15%) CircleCI
14 7 (0.15%) Postman
General
1 2,450 (51.19%) Social Skills
2 1,334 (27.87%) Analytical Skills
3 906 (18.93%) Finance
4 340 (7.10%) Organisational Skills
5 249 (5.20%) Manufacturing
6 231 (4.83%) Retail
7 221 (4.62%) Public Sector
8 211 (4.41%) Marketing
9 192 (4.01%) Legal
10 177 (3.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 147 (3.07%) Law
12 135 (2.82%) Telecoms
13 115 (2.40%) Electronics
14 114 (2.38%) Banking
15 101 (2.11%) Presentation Skills
16 84 (1.76%) Documentation Skills
17 82 (1.71%) Games
18 74 (1.55%) Automotive
19 55 (1.15%) Influencing Skills
20 45 (0.94%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 750 (15.67%) Analyst
2 700 (14.63%) IT Support
3 601 (12.56%) Support Engineer
4 488 (10.20%) Senior
5 379 (7.92%) Developer
6 338 (7.06%) IT Engineer
7 291 (6.08%) IT Support Engineer
8 255 (5.33%) Support Analyst
9 227 (4.74%) Lead
10 198 (4.14%) Technical Support
11 189 (3.95%) Business Analyst
12 185 (3.87%) Support Technician
13 175 (3.66%) 2nd Line Support
14 144 (3.01%) Architect
14 144 (3.01%) Technical Engineer
15 143 (2.99%) Consultant
16 142 (2.97%) Systems Engineer
17 139 (2.90%) IT Technician
18 135 (2.82%) Technical Support Engineer
19 126 (2.63%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 166 (3.47%) .NET
2 151 (3.16%) React
3 134 (2.80%) HTML
4 104 (2.17%) CSS
5 80 (1.67%) Node.js
6 71 (1.48%) REST
7 57 (1.19%) RESTful
8 48 (1.00%) Vue
9 41 (0.86%) AngularJS
10 39 (0.81%) SOAP
11 37 (0.77%) JSON
12 36 (0.75%) ASP.NET
12 36 (0.75%) Spring
13 34 (0.71%) Django
13 34 (0.71%) XML
14 32 (0.67%) Spring Boot
15 31 (0.65%) .NET Framework
15 31 (0.65%) GraphQL
16 30 (0.63%) Laravel
17 28 (0.59%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 443 (9.26%) Driving Licence
2 333 (6.96%) Onboarding
3 297 (6.21%) Self-Motivation
4 161 (3.36%) Management Information System
5 127 (2.65%) Legacy Systems
6 112 (2.34%) Analytical Mindset
7 94 (1.96%) Product Ownership
8 85 (1.78%) Social Media
9 84 (1.76%) Cloud Native
10 82 (1.71%) Data Centre
11 66 (1.38%) Enterprise Software
12 63 (1.32%) Mobile App
13 50 (1.04%) Distributed Systems
14 47 (0.98%) Low-Code
15 39 (0.81%) EPoS
16 38 (0.79%) Data Structures
17 37 (0.77%) NHS
18 35 (0.73%) IoT
19 33 (0.69%) Virtual Team
20 32 (0.67%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 929 (19.41%) Windows
2 397 (8.30%) Windows Server
3 304 (6.35%) Linux
4 128 (2.67%) Windows 10
5 113 (2.36%) Android
5 113 (2.36%) Windows Server 2016
6 62 (1.30%) Apple iOS
7 61 (1.27%) Mac OS
8 37 (0.77%) Windows Server 2019
9 36 (0.75%) Unix
10 24 (0.50%) Windows Server 2012
11 20 (0.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 18 (0.38%) CentOS
12 18 (0.38%) Windows 7
13 13 (0.27%) Ubuntu
14 11 (0.23%) Windows 8
15 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2008
16 8 (0.17%) VMS
17 6 (0.13%) Debian
18 3 (0.063%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 927 (19.37%) Continuous Improvement
2 881 (18.41%) Customer Service
3 640 (13.37%) Agile
4 466 (9.74%) Mentoring
5 463 (9.67%) Decision-Making
6 423 (8.84%) Project Management
7 415 (8.67%) ITIL
8 374 (7.81%) DevOps
9 361 (7.54%) CI/CD
10 343 (7.17%) Analytics
11 339 (7.08%) Business Intelligence
12 325 (6.79%) AI
13 304 (6.35%) Cybersecurity
14 288 (6.02%) Computer Science
15 287 (6.00%) Coaching
16 284 (5.93%) Process Improvement
17 277 (5.79%) Service Delivery
17 277 (5.79%) Stakeholder Management
18 275 (5.75%) CRM
19 272 (5.68%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 609 (12.72%) SQL
2 480 (10.03%) Python
3 275 (5.75%) JavaScript
4 240 (5.01%) PowerShell
5 193 (4.03%) C#
6 163 (3.41%) Java
7 88 (1.84%) TypeScript
8 73 (1.53%) Bash
9 64 (1.34%) PHP
10 62 (1.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 54 (1.13%) C++
12 42 (0.88%) T-SQL
13 40 (0.84%) C
14 27 (0.56%) PL/SQL
15 26 (0.54%) Kotlin
15 26 (0.54%) R
16 19 (0.40%) Bicep
16 19 (0.40%) Go
17 18 (0.38%) MATLAB
17 18 (0.38%) VBA
Qualifications
1 930 (19.43%) Degree
2 349 (7.29%) Security Cleared
3 229 (4.78%) SC Cleared
4 168 (3.51%) DBS Check
5 150 (3.13%) Microsoft Certification
6 123 (2.57%) Computer Science Degree
7 91 (1.90%) BPSS Clearance
8 72 (1.50%) ACCA
9 66 (1.38%) Cisco Certification
10 64 (1.34%) A+ Certification
10 64 (1.34%) CIMA
11 62 (1.30%) DV Cleared
12 55 (1.15%) CCNA
12 55 (1.15%) HNC
13 48 (1.00%) Master's Degree
14 47 (0.98%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 42 (0.88%) AWS Certification
16 41 (0.86%) HND
16 41 (0.86%) ITIL Certification
17 40 (0.84%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 248 (5.18%) QA
2 168 (3.51%) Data Quality
3 143 (2.99%) GDPR
4 139 (2.90%) Cyber Essentials
5 108 (2.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 103 (2.15%) PCI DSS
7 81 (1.69%) SLA
8 66 (1.38%) Accessibility
9 56 (1.17%) NIST
10 37 (0.77%) ISO 9001
11 29 (0.61%) Actionable Recommendations
12 25 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 13 (0.27%) GMP
14 10 (0.21%) SOC 2
15 9 (0.19%) PMO
16 7 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 6 (0.13%) GRC
18 5 (0.10%) COSHH
18 5 (0.10%) ISO 13485
18 5 (0.10%) WCAG
System Software
1 633 (13.23%) Active Directory
2 211 (4.41%) Hyper-V
3 176 (3.68%) Docker
4 123 (2.57%) VMware Infrastructure
5 72 (1.50%) Terminal Server
6 25 (0.52%) Firmware
7 21 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
9 15 (0.31%) vSphere
10 11 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.21%) VMware Workstation
12 9 (0.19%) KVM
13 6 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.13%) XenApp
14 4 (0.084%) Embedded Firmware
14 4 (0.084%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 2 (0.042%) VMware NSX
16 1 (0.021%) iptables
16 1 (0.021%) Lustre
16 1 (0.021%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 198 (4.14%) Terraform
2 193 (4.03%) Microsoft Intune
3 127 (2.65%) Kubernetes
4 82 (1.71%) Ansible
5 59 (1.23%) SCCM
6 48 (1.00%) Grafana
7 32 (0.67%) BMC PATROL
8 31 (0.65%) Prometheus
9 19 (0.40%) Nagios
10 18 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
11 15 (0.31%) Jamf Pro
12 14 (0.29%) Autotask
12 14 (0.29%) Cisco CUCM
13 12 (0.25%) vCenter Server
14 10 (0.21%) AWS Copilot
14 10 (0.21%) Nmap
14 10 (0.21%) ZABBIX
15 8 (0.17%) Control-M
15 8 (0.17%) FortiGate
16 7 (0.15%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 1,336 (27.91%) Microsoft
2 226 (4.72%) VMware
3 149 (3.11%) Oracle
4 136 (2.84%) Veeam
5 127 (2.65%) SAP
6 116 (2.42%) Cisco
7 115 (2.40%) Google
8 102 (2.13%) Splunk
9 101 (2.11%) SolarWinds
10 74 (1.55%) ServiceNow
11 73 (1.53%) Tanium
12 72 (1.50%) Brocade
12 72 (1.50%) Nimble Storage
13 67 (1.40%) Adobe
14 66 (1.38%) Apple
14 66 (1.38%) Databricks
15 63 (1.32%) Sage
15 63 (1.32%) Salesforce
16 44 (0.92%) HubSpot
17 39 (0.81%) Atlassian