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 18 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -9 +3 +7
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,748 6,135 10,595
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 7.16% 20.90% 15.31%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.11% 22.71% 18.43%
Number of salaries quoted 3,509 3,181 6,886
10th Percentile £26,265 £26,250 £25,500
25th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £45,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year -5.56% - -10.00%
75th Percentile £59,375 £61,250 £60,000
90th Percentile £75,000 £77,500 £72,500
UK median annual salary £47,500 £50,500 £49,500
% change year-on-year -5.94% +2.02% -10.00%

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 46,967 27,016 57,495
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.80% 92.03% 83.08%
Number of salaries quoted 30,286 13,842 41,117
10th Percentile £30,000 £27,500 £27,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £36,000 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £52,475 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +0.05% +4.95% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £67,500 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £82,500 £77,500
UK median annual salary £60,000 £59,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +1.69% +7.27% -9.84%

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 18 May 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 18 May 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 -12 1,300 £42,500 -5.56% 671
South East -8 1,132 £46,000 -2.13% 801
Midlands -22 871 £40,000 -11.11% 432
North West -18 673 £45,000 -5.26% 364
South West -8 537 £43,500 +2.69% 317
West Midlands -25 513 £42,500 -11.46% 265
Yorkshire -13 496 £41,000 +2.50% 224
East of England -7 470 £41,000 -3.53% 288
East Midlands -11 355 £35,000 -10.83% 167
Scotland -3 286 £35,000 -30.00% 112
North East -16 131 £48,445 +7.65% 90
Wales -14 108 £42,500 -15.00% 66
Northern Ireland -10 66 £40,000 -27.27% 35
Isle of Man +3 2 £35,000 -3.45%
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
1 272 (5.73%) Microsoft Exchange
1 272 (5.73%) SharePoint
2 47 (0.99%) CMS
3 35 (0.74%) Confluence
4 25 (0.53%) IIS
5 24 (0.51%) WordPress
6 20 (0.42%) Apache
7 15 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
8 14 (0.29%) Apache Spark
9 11 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2013
10 10 (0.21%) SAS
11 9 (0.19%) Exchange Server 2007
11 9 (0.19%) Exchange Server 2010
12 6 (0.13%) Drupal
13 5 (0.11%) nginx
13 5 (0.11%) OpenEdge
13 5 (0.11%) OpenStack
13 5 (0.11%) Skype for Business
14 4 (0.084%) Moodle
14 4 (0.084%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 298 (6.28%) Microsoft Office
2 276 (5.81%) Microsoft Excel
3 38 (0.80%) Spreadsheet
4 35 (0.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 35 (0.74%) MS Visio
5 10 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
6 9 (0.19%) Adobe Illustrator
6 9 (0.19%) Fusion 360
7 8 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 6 (0.13%) Photoshop
9 5 (0.11%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.11%) Simulink
10 3 (0.063%) Autodesk Inventor
10 3 (0.063%) Trello
11 2 (0.042%) Acrobat
11 2 (0.042%) Sketch
11 2 (0.042%) Weka
12 1 (0.021%) Abaqus
12 1 (0.021%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.021%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 45 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (0.74%) Dynamics CRM
3 24 (0.51%) NetSuite
4 20 (0.42%) Dynamics NAV
5 19 (0.40%) Shopify
6 16 (0.34%) Magento
7 14 (0.29%) SAP ERP
8 13 (0.27%) iTrent
9 12 (0.25%) Dynamics AX
10 11 (0.23%) SAP CO
11 8 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
12 7 (0.15%) IBM Planning Analytics
12 7 (0.15%) Q-Pulse
12 7 (0.15%) SAP Business One
12 7 (0.15%) Workday HCM
13 6 (0.13%) Sage 50
14 5 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
15 4 (0.084%) Line 50
15 4 (0.084%) Markit EDM
15 4 (0.084%) Sage 200
Cloud Services
1 934 (19.67%) Azure
2 817 (17.21%) Microsoft 365
3 465 (9.79%) AWS
4 348 (7.33%) Power Platform
5 214 (4.51%) Entra ID
6 170 (3.58%) SaaS
7 133 (2.80%) GCP
8 118 (2.49%) Azure DevOps
9 105 (2.21%) Serverless
10 95 (2.00%) Dynamics 365
11 89 (1.87%) GitHub
12 72 (1.52%) Power Automate
13 59 (1.24%) Amazon S3
14 57 (1.20%) PowerApps
15 55 (1.16%) AWS Lambda
15 55 (1.16%) Google Workspace
16 49 (1.03%) OneDrive
17 48 (1.01%) Azure Data Factory
18 47 (0.99%) IaaS
19 46 (0.97%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 293 (6.17%) Firewall
2 283 (5.96%) DNS
3 226 (4.76%) DHCP
4 161 (3.39%) WAN
5 159 (3.35%) VPN
6 122 (2.57%) LAN
7 113 (2.38%) TCP/IP
7 113 (2.38%) Wi-Fi
8 101 (2.13%) Broadband
9 100 (2.11%) Wireless
10 82 (1.73%) VLAN
11 67 (1.41%) VoIP
12 64 (1.35%) Network Security
13 41 (0.86%) SD-WAN
14 36 (0.76%) SAN
15 34 (0.72%) Internet
16 21 (0.44%) HTTP
17 20 (0.42%) Unified Communications
18 17 (0.36%) Wireshark
19 15 (0.32%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 280 (5.90%) Power BI
2 193 (4.06%) SQL Server
3 69 (1.45%) MySQL
4 67 (1.41%) PostgreSQL
5 65 (1.37%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 63 (1.33%) NoSQL
7 60 (1.26%) Data Warehouse
8 53 (1.12%) Relational Database
8 53 (1.12%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 52 (1.10%) Amazon RDS
10 51 (1.07%) Tableau
11 44 (0.93%) Power Query
12 36 (0.76%) DynamoDB
13 30 (0.63%) MongoDB
14 25 (0.53%) Big Data
15 24 (0.51%) Amazon Redshift
16 23 (0.48%) Data Lake
17 20 (0.42%) Azure SQL Database
17 20 (0.42%) Elasticsearch
17 20 (0.42%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 189 (3.98%) Git
2 133 (2.80%) JIRA
3 72 (1.52%) GitLab
4 46 (0.97%) Jenkins
5 26 (0.55%) Rational DOORS
6 18 (0.38%) Maven
7 16 (0.34%) Selenium
7 16 (0.34%) SonarQube
8 14 (0.29%) Cucumber
8 14 (0.29%) Cypress.io
9 13 (0.27%) LabVIEW
10 11 (0.23%) Bitbucket
11 8 (0.17%) Visual Studio
12 7 (0.15%) CircleCI
12 7 (0.15%) JUnit
13 6 (0.13%) Burp Suite
13 6 (0.13%) JMeter
13 6 (0.13%) Mockito
13 6 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
13 6 (0.13%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 2,214 (46.63%) Social Skills
2 1,305 (27.49%) Analytical Skills
3 820 (17.27%) Finance
4 313 (6.59%) Manufacturing
5 300 (6.32%) Organisational Skills
6 218 (4.59%) Public Sector
7 209 (4.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 183 (3.85%) Marketing
9 173 (3.64%) Law
10 171 (3.60%) Legal
11 160 (3.37%) Retail
12 134 (2.82%) Telecoms
13 126 (2.65%) Electronics
14 125 (2.63%) Banking
15 89 (1.87%) Documentation Skills
16 71 (1.50%) Games
17 61 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
18 58 (1.22%) Aerospace
19 56 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
20 50 (1.05%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 694 (14.62%) Analyst
2 593 (12.49%) IT Support
3 527 (11.10%) Support Engineer
4 517 (10.89%) Senior
5 394 (8.30%) Developer
6 341 (7.18%) IT Engineer
7 263 (5.54%) IT Support Engineer
8 258 (5.43%) Lead
9 211 (4.44%) Support Technician
10 201 (4.23%) Support Analyst
11 167 (3.52%) Architect
12 166 (3.50%) IT Technician
13 165 (3.48%) Systems Engineer
14 156 (3.29%) Technical Support
15 150 (3.16%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 147 (3.10%) Consultant
17 140 (2.95%) Software Engineer
18 136 (2.86%) IT Support Technician
19 133 (2.80%) Business Analyst
20 126 (2.65%) Technical Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 158 (3.33%) .NET
2 156 (3.29%) React
3 141 (2.97%) HTML
4 111 (2.34%) CSS
5 110 (2.32%) REST
6 77 (1.62%) Node.js
7 70 (1.47%) SOAP
8 59 (1.24%) RESTful
9 56 (1.18%) Middleware
10 55 (1.16%) JSON
10 55 (1.16%) XML
11 48 (1.01%) Vue
12 46 (0.97%) AngularJS
13 43 (0.91%) Spring
14 40 (0.84%) Spring Boot
15 38 (0.80%) OAuth
16 33 (0.70%) EDI
17 30 (0.63%) Laravel
18 28 (0.59%) ASP.NET
19 27 (0.57%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 360 (7.58%) Driving Licence
2 264 (5.56%) Onboarding
3 215 (4.53%) Self-Motivation
4 170 (3.58%) Management Information System
5 118 (2.49%) Product Ownership
6 109 (2.30%) Analytical Mindset
7 108 (2.27%) Cloud Native
8 95 (2.00%) Data Centre
9 87 (1.83%) Legacy Systems
10 75 (1.58%) Social Media
11 70 (1.47%) Distributed Systems
12 55 (1.16%) Low-Code
12 55 (1.16%) Mobile App
13 53 (1.12%) Enterprise Software
14 43 (0.91%) Virtual Team
15 38 (0.80%) Data Structures
16 34 (0.72%) NHS
17 33 (0.70%) Algorithms
17 33 (0.70%) CCTV
17 33 (0.70%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 788 (16.60%) Windows
2 352 (7.41%) Windows Server
3 287 (6.04%) Linux
4 124 (2.61%) Windows 10
5 103 (2.17%) Android
6 82 (1.73%) Windows Server 2016
7 62 (1.31%) Apple iOS
8 52 (1.10%) Mac OS
9 42 (0.88%) Windows Server 2019
10 31 (0.65%) Unix
11 25 (0.53%) CentOS
11 25 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 22 (0.46%) Ubuntu
13 20 (0.42%) Windows Server 2012
14 14 (0.29%) VMS
15 12 (0.25%) Windows 7
16 9 (0.19%) Debian
17 7 (0.15%) Windows 8
17 7 (0.15%) Windows Server 2008
18 4 (0.084%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 978 (20.60%) Continuous Improvement
2 826 (17.40%) Customer Service
3 637 (13.42%) Agile
4 455 (9.58%) Mentoring
5 448 (9.44%) Decision-Making
6 404 (8.51%) CI/CD
7 394 (8.30%) ITIL
8 393 (8.28%) DevOps
9 383 (8.07%) Analytics
10 373 (7.86%) AI
11 335 (7.06%) Business Intelligence
12 325 (6.84%) Project Management
13 317 (6.68%) Coaching
14 306 (6.44%) ERP
15 299 (6.30%) Software Engineering
16 295 (6.21%) Cybersecurity
17 294 (6.19%) Collaborative Working
18 292 (6.15%) Stakeholder Management
19 283 (5.96%) Computer Science
20 267 (5.62%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 625 (13.16%) SQL
2 520 (10.95%) Python
3 290 (6.11%) JavaScript
4 204 (4.30%) C#
5 195 (4.11%) Java
6 192 (4.04%) PowerShell
7 119 (2.51%) TypeScript
8 90 (1.90%) Bash
9 86 (1.81%) C++
10 72 (1.52%) PHP
11 49 (1.03%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 46 (0.97%) C
13 37 (0.78%) PL/SQL
14 33 (0.70%) T-SQL
15 27 (0.57%) Kotlin
15 27 (0.57%) R
16 23 (0.48%) Shell Script
17 21 (0.44%) Go
18 19 (0.40%) Rust
18 19 (0.40%) Scala
Qualifications
1 742 (15.63%) Degree
2 329 (6.93%) Security Cleared
3 227 (4.78%) SC Cleared
4 202 (4.25%) DBS Check
5 155 (3.26%) Microsoft Certification
6 138 (2.91%) Computer Science Degree
7 90 (1.90%) BPSS Clearance
8 77 (1.62%) A+ Certification
9 70 (1.47%) Cisco Certification
10 67 (1.41%) ACCA
11 64 (1.35%) DV Cleared
12 61 (1.28%) CIMA
13 55 (1.16%) CCNA
14 49 (1.03%) PMI Certification
15 46 (0.97%) Master's Degree
16 45 (0.95%) HNC
16 45 (0.95%) Network+ Certification
17 43 (0.91%) CISSP
18 37 (0.78%) CompTIA Security+
19 36 (0.76%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 265 (5.58%) QA
2 216 (4.55%) Data Quality
3 146 (3.07%) GDPR
4 122 (2.57%) SLA
5 104 (2.19%) Cyber Essentials
5 104 (2.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 77 (1.62%) NIST
7 74 (1.56%) PCI DSS
8 63 (1.33%) Accessibility
9 38 (0.80%) ISO 9001
10 17 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
11 16 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 15 (0.32%) SOC 2
13 14 (0.29%) GMP
14 12 (0.25%) PMO
14 12 (0.25%) TickIT
15 11 (0.23%) GRC
15 11 (0.23%) ISO 14001
16 8 (0.17%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 6 (0.13%) COBIT
System Software
1 556 (11.71%) Active Directory
2 163 (3.43%) Docker
3 162 (3.41%) Hyper-V
4 134 (2.82%) VMware Infrastructure
5 40 (0.84%) Terminal Server
6 26 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
7 25 (0.53%) Firmware
8 17 (0.36%) vSphere
9 14 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
11 10 (0.21%) KVM
12 7 (0.15%) VMware Workstation
13 6 (0.13%) XenApp
14 4 (0.084%) Embedded Firmware
14 4 (0.084%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 3 (0.063%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 3 (0.063%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.063%) Virtual Servers
16 1 (0.021%) BitLocker
16 1 (0.021%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 195 (4.11%) Terraform
2 170 (3.58%) Microsoft Intune
3 148 (3.12%) Kubernetes
4 87 (1.83%) Ansible
5 56 (1.18%) SCCM
6 49 (1.03%) Grafana
7 32 (0.67%) Prometheus
8 22 (0.46%) Nagios
9 17 (0.36%) Single Sign-On
10 10 (0.21%) Puppet
10 10 (0.21%) vCenter Server
11 9 (0.19%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 9 (0.19%) Autotask
11 9 (0.19%) Kibana
11 9 (0.19%) ZABBIX
12 8 (0.17%) FortiGate
12 8 (0.17%) HP Fortify
12 8 (0.17%) logstash
13 7 (0.15%) Podman
13 7 (0.15%) QRadar
Vendors
1 1,318 (27.76%) Microsoft
2 203 (4.28%) VMware
3 132 (2.78%) Oracle
4 109 (2.30%) SAP
5 99 (2.09%) Cisco
5 99 (2.09%) Google
6 93 (1.96%) Veeam
7 72 (1.52%) SolarWinds
7 72 (1.52%) Splunk
8 67 (1.41%) Databricks
9 65 (1.37%) Apple
10 63 (1.33%) ServiceNow
11 61 (1.28%) Salesforce
12 53 (1.12%) Adobe
13 49 (1.03%) Dell
14 41 (0.86%) Tanium
15 40 (0.84%) Brocade
15 40 (0.84%) Nimble Storage
16 37 (0.78%) Sage
17 35 (0.74%) HubSpot