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

6 months to
4 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 4 5
Rank change year-on-year -6 +1 +5
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,126 6,521 8,651
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 8.15% 18.95% 14.41%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.56% 21.63% 18.34%
Number of salaries quoted 4,478 3,605 4,551
10th Percentile £26,500 £25,750 £25,750
25th Percentile £31,000 £29,750 £32,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £40,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -11.11% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £60,000 £61,250
90th Percentile £73,750 £74,900 £75,000
UK median annual salary £47,500 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -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 52,983 30,143 47,181
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.52% 87.59% 78.57%
Number of salaries quoted 37,203 16,463 30,137
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,500 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £38,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £49,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +12.24% -2.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £65,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.71%

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 4 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 4 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 -9 1,584 £45,000 +5.88% 854
South East -3 1,501 £45,000 +5.88% 1,106
Midlands -9 1,138 £42,000 +5.00% 635
North West -6 837 £45,000 -2.17% 449
South West -6 759 £44,500 +18.67% 467
West Midlands -10 630 £42,500 -5.56% 370
East of England -5 609 £42,500 +21.43% 383
Yorkshire -9 531 £42,500 +21.43% 295
East Midlands -10 505 £40,000 +12.68% 265
Scotland -5 247 £33,000 -25.00% 199
North East -15 216 £50,000 +34.23% 119
Wales -19 158 £45,000 -6.49% 90
Northern Ireland -12 146 £38,500 -30.00% 162
Isle of Man +1 3 £35,000 +1.45% 5
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
1 354 (5.78%) SharePoint
2 352 (5.75%) Microsoft Exchange
3 64 (1.04%) Confluence
4 45 (0.73%) CMS
5 41 (0.67%) IIS
6 33 (0.54%) WordPress
7 30 (0.49%) Apache
8 24 (0.39%) Apache Airflow
9 15 (0.24%) Apache Spark
10 13 (0.21%) SAS
11 11 (0.18%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.15%) WebLogic
13 8 (0.13%) nginx
14 7 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
14 7 (0.11%) OpenEdge
15 6 (0.098%) Jupyter
16 5 (0.082%) Exchange Server 2007
16 5 (0.082%) Exchange Server 2010
16 5 (0.082%) Skype for Business
17 4 (0.065%) OpenStack
Applications
1 388 (6.33%) Microsoft Office
2 384 (6.27%) Microsoft Excel
3 54 (0.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 48 (0.78%) Spreadsheet
5 39 (0.64%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
7 15 (0.24%) AutoCAD
8 14 (0.23%) Simulink
9 8 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.13%) Adobe Illustrator
9 8 (0.13%) Chatbot
10 7 (0.11%) Revit
11 5 (0.082%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.082%) EPLAN
11 5 (0.082%) Fusion 360
11 5 (0.082%) Lightworks
11 5 (0.082%) Photoshop
11 5 (0.082%) Sketch
11 5 (0.082%) Trello
12 3 (0.049%) Navisworks
Business Applications
1 54 (0.88%) SAP S/4HANA
2 38 (0.62%) Dynamics CRM
3 36 (0.59%) NetSuite
4 19 (0.31%) Shopify
5 18 (0.29%) Magento
6 16 (0.26%) Dynamics NAV
6 16 (0.26%) SAP ERP
7 14 (0.23%) IBM Planning Analytics
7 14 (0.23%) SAP Business One
8 13 (0.21%) Dynamics AX
9 10 (0.16%) JDE EnterpriseOne
9 10 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
10 9 (0.15%) Sage 50
10 9 (0.15%) Sage X3
11 7 (0.11%) Raiser’s Edge
11 7 (0.11%) Workday HCM
12 6 (0.098%) NEC Housing
13 5 (0.082%) Dynamics GP
13 5 (0.082%) Infor CloudSuite
13 5 (0.082%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,282 (20.93%) Azure
2 1,094 (17.86%) Microsoft 365
3 651 (10.63%) AWS
4 494 (8.06%) Power Platform
5 318 (5.19%) Entra ID
6 217 (3.54%) GCP
7 214 (3.49%) SaaS
8 151 (2.46%) Azure DevOps
9 134 (2.19%) Dynamics 365
10 118 (1.93%) Serverless
11 116 (1.89%) GitHub
12 108 (1.76%) Power Automate
13 107 (1.75%) PowerApps
14 82 (1.34%) OneDrive
15 74 (1.21%) Microsoft Copilot
16 54 (0.88%) Amazon S3
17 53 (0.87%) GitHub Actions
18 52 (0.85%) Microsoft Purview
19 48 (0.78%) AWS Lambda
20 46 (0.75%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 417 (6.81%) Firewall
2 381 (6.22%) DNS
3 325 (5.31%) DHCP
4 228 (3.72%) VPN
5 213 (3.48%) TCP/IP
6 197 (3.22%) WAN
7 178 (2.91%) LAN
8 152 (2.48%) Wi-Fi
9 151 (2.46%) Wireless
10 122 (1.99%) VLAN
11 107 (1.75%) Network Security
12 103 (1.68%) Broadband
13 100 (1.63%) VoIP
14 42 (0.69%) Internet
15 30 (0.49%) SD-WAN
16 29 (0.47%) SAN
16 29 (0.47%) SSL
17 28 (0.46%) HTTP
18 22 (0.36%) WLAN
19 21 (0.34%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 387 (6.32%) Power BI
2 293 (4.78%) SQL Server
3 120 (1.96%) MySQL
4 117 (1.91%) Amazon RDS
5 98 (1.60%) Data Warehouse
6 96 (1.57%) Relational Database
7 89 (1.45%) PostgreSQL
8 84 (1.37%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 75 (1.22%) NoSQL
10 72 (1.18%) Tableau
11 64 (1.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 48 (0.78%) Power Query
13 44 (0.72%) MongoDB
14 40 (0.65%) Big Data
15 36 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
16 34 (0.56%) Data Lake
17 30 (0.49%) DynamoDB
18 28 (0.46%) Electronic Patient Records
19 25 (0.41%) Elasticsearch
20 21 (0.34%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 262 (4.28%) Git
2 211 (3.44%) JIRA
3 84 (1.37%) GitLab
4 63 (1.03%) Jenkins
5 27 (0.44%) Eclipse
5 27 (0.44%) Rational DOORS
5 27 (0.44%) Subversion
6 26 (0.42%) Cucumber
6 26 (0.42%) Selenium
7 22 (0.36%) JUnit
8 20 (0.33%) Postman
9 18 (0.29%) Claude Code
9 18 (0.29%) Cypress.io
10 17 (0.28%) Oracle Forms
11 14 (0.23%) Bitbucket
11 14 (0.23%) SonarQube
12 11 (0.18%) Burp Suite
13 10 (0.16%) JMeter
13 10 (0.16%) Maven
13 10 (0.16%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,922 (47.70%) Social Skills
2 1,703 (27.80%) Analytical Skills
3 956 (15.61%) Finance
4 528 (8.62%) Manufacturing
5 385 (6.28%) Organisational Skills
6 311 (5.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 284 (4.64%) Law
8 272 (4.44%) Public Sector
9 266 (4.34%) Legal
10 253 (4.13%) Retail
11 183 (2.99%) Marketing
12 182 (2.97%) Electronics
13 156 (2.55%) Telecoms
14 149 (2.43%) Aerospace
15 124 (2.02%) Banking
16 119 (1.94%) Influencing Skills
17 111 (1.81%) Documentation Skills
18 73 (1.19%) Games
19 65 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
20 59 (0.96%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 834 (13.61%) Analyst
2 673 (10.99%) Senior
3 658 (10.74%) IT Support
4 653 (10.66%) Developer
5 555 (9.06%) Support Engineer
6 369 (6.02%) IT Engineer
7 337 (5.50%) Lead
8 282 (4.60%) Support Analyst
9 275 (4.49%) IT Support Engineer
10 262 (4.28%) Support Technician
11 246 (4.02%) Consultant
12 235 (3.84%) Technical Support
13 234 (3.82%) Systems Engineer
14 219 (3.57%) IT Technician
15 208 (3.40%) Software Engineer
16 204 (3.33%) Technical Engineer
17 200 (3.26%) Architect
18 192 (3.13%) Senior Developer
19 183 (2.99%) Technical Support Engineer
20 169 (2.76%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 317 (5.17%) .NET
2 215 (3.51%) React
3 188 (3.07%) HTML
4 180 (2.94%) REST
5 138 (2.25%) CSS
6 112 (1.83%) RESTful
7 97 (1.58%) Node.js
8 90 (1.47%) SOAP
9 79 (1.29%) Vue
10 77 (1.26%) AngularJS
11 76 (1.24%) Middleware
12 73 (1.19%) JSON
13 69 (1.13%) ASP.NET
14 67 (1.09%) XML
15 58 (0.95%) Spring
15 58 (0.95%) Web Services
16 53 (0.87%) OAuth
16 53 (0.87%) Spring Boot
17 43 (0.70%) ASP.NET Core
17 43 (0.70%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 479 (7.82%) Driving Licence
2 365 (5.96%) Onboarding
3 290 (4.73%) Self-Motivation
4 249 (4.06%) Management Information System
5 170 (2.78%) Cloud Native
6 155 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
7 153 (2.50%) Product Ownership
8 103 (1.68%) Data Centre
9 93 (1.52%) Analytical Mindset
10 87 (1.42%) Distributed Systems
11 80 (1.31%) Enterprise Software
12 77 (1.26%) Security Posture
13 71 (1.16%) Social Media
14 70 (1.14%) NHS
15 68 (1.11%) Mobile App
16 60 (0.98%) IoT
16 60 (0.98%) Robotics
16 60 (0.98%) Virtual Team
17 57 (0.93%) Cyber Threat
18 55 (0.90%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 1,045 (17.06%) Windows
2 491 (8.02%) Windows Server
3 442 (7.22%) Linux
4 141 (2.30%) Windows 10
5 110 (1.80%) Windows Server 2016
6 108 (1.76%) Android
7 80 (1.31%) Apple iOS
8 77 (1.26%) Mac OS
9 40 (0.65%) Windows Server 2019
10 35 (0.57%) Unix
11 28 (0.46%) Ubuntu
12 23 (0.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 21 (0.34%) CentOS
14 17 (0.28%) VMS
15 13 (0.21%) Debian
16 11 (0.18%) Windows 7
17 9 (0.15%) FreeRTOS
18 8 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
19 6 (0.098%) Windows Server 2012
20 5 (0.082%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,594 (26.02%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,086 (17.73%) Customer Service
3 932 (15.21%) Agile
4 656 (10.71%) Decision-Making
5 654 (10.68%) CI/CD
6 636 (10.38%) Mentoring
7 604 (9.86%) AI
8 544 (8.88%) ITIL
9 541 (8.83%) DevOps
10 518 (8.46%) Stakeholder Management
11 509 (8.31%) Analytics
12 502 (8.19%) Cybersecurity
13 500 (8.16%) Software Engineering
14 480 (7.84%) Collaborative Working
15 450 (7.35%) ERP
15 450 (7.35%) Project Delivery
16 448 (7.31%) Business Intelligence
17 365 (5.96%) Project Management
18 361 (5.89%) Computer Science
19 359 (5.86%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 968 (15.80%) SQL
2 686 (11.20%) Python
3 407 (6.64%) JavaScript
4 400 (6.53%) C#
5 270 (4.41%) Java
6 245 (4.00%) PowerShell
7 183 (2.99%) TypeScript
8 178 (2.91%) C++
9 113 (1.84%) Bash
10 75 (1.22%) PHP
11 70 (1.14%) C
12 58 (0.95%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 54 (0.88%) T-SQL
14 40 (0.65%) Shell Script
15 39 (0.64%) Perl
16 35 (0.57%) Go
16 35 (0.57%) Ruby
17 33 (0.54%) PL/SQL
18 31 (0.51%) Rust
19 29 (0.47%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 929 (15.16%) Degree
2 550 (8.98%) Security Cleared
3 401 (6.55%) SC Cleared
4 194 (3.17%) DBS Check
5 183 (2.99%) Computer Science Degree
6 172 (2.81%) Microsoft Certification
7 128 (2.09%) DV Cleared
8 122 (1.99%) BPSS Clearance
9 94 (1.53%) Azure Certification
10 90 (1.47%) Cisco Certification
11 88 (1.44%) HNC
12 70 (1.14%) PMI Certification
13 61 (1.00%) CCNA
14 60 (0.98%) HND
14 60 (0.98%) Master's Degree
15 59 (0.96%) CISSP
16 55 (0.90%) ACCA
17 54 (0.88%) PMP
18 51 (0.83%) A+ Certification
18 51 (0.83%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 403 (6.58%) QA
2 256 (4.18%) Data Quality
3 179 (2.92%) Cyber Essentials
3 179 (2.92%) GDPR
4 159 (2.60%) SLA
5 141 (2.30%) Accessibility
6 130 (2.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 119 (1.94%) PCI DSS
8 90 (1.47%) NIST
9 37 (0.60%) ISO 9001
10 32 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 30 (0.49%) PMO
12 24 (0.39%) GMP
13 18 (0.29%) Good Clinical Practice
14 15 (0.24%) GRC
15 14 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
15 14 (0.23%) SOC 2
16 12 (0.20%) TickIT
16 12 (0.20%) WCAG
17 10 (0.16%) ISO 14001
System Software
1 722 (11.79%) Active Directory
2 280 (4.57%) Hyper-V
3 242 (3.95%) Docker
4 203 (3.31%) VMware Infrastructure
5 80 (1.31%) Terminal Server
6 54 (0.88%) Firmware
7 31 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
8 27 (0.44%) vSphere
9 25 (0.41%) Virtual Machines
10 17 (0.28%) Embedded Firmware
11 14 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
12 10 (0.16%) KVM
13 6 (0.098%) XenApp
14 5 (0.082%) ClearTrust
14 5 (0.082%) Squid
14 5 (0.082%) Virtual Servers
15 4 (0.065%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 4 (0.065%) VMware Workstation
16 3 (0.049%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.049%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 250 (4.08%) Terraform
2 234 (3.82%) Microsoft Intune
3 218 (3.56%) Kubernetes
4 105 (1.71%) Ansible
5 62 (1.01%) Grafana
6 60 (0.98%) SCCM
7 44 (0.72%) Prometheus
8 21 (0.34%) FortiGate
9 20 (0.33%) Single Sign-On
10 17 (0.28%) Puppet
11 16 (0.26%) Nagios
12 14 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
13 11 (0.18%) Functional Safety
13 11 (0.18%) Kibana
13 11 (0.18%) Podman
13 11 (0.18%) Proxmox
14 10 (0.16%) logstash
15 9 (0.15%) Nmap
15 9 (0.15%) QRadar
15 9 (0.15%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,865 (30.44%) Microsoft
2 321 (5.24%) VMware
3 143 (2.33%) Google
3 143 (2.33%) SAP
4 138 (2.25%) Veeam
5 135 (2.20%) Oracle
6 132 (2.15%) Cisco
7 122 (1.99%) Splunk
8 106 (1.73%) ServiceNow
8 106 (1.73%) SolarWinds
9 88 (1.44%) Tanium
10 83 (1.35%) Salesforce
11 81 (1.32%) Nimble Storage
12 80 (1.31%) Brocade
13 73 (1.19%) Databricks
14 63 (1.03%) Apple
15 60 (0.98%) Sage
16 55 (0.90%) Fortinet
17 47 (0.77%) Workday
18 46 (0.75%) IBM