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 23 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 5 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -2 +3 +2
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,422 7,742 4,919
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 14.71% 16.02% 16.37%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 17.82% 19.65% 17.43%
Number of salaries quoted 3,679 3,025 3,416
10th Percentile £25,750 £27,000 £26,250
25th Percentile £29,000 £35,250 £33,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £40,000 £50,000 £47,500
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £56,250 £67,500 £65,000
90th Percentile £69,600 £81,250 £77,500
UK median annual salary £45,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -18.18% - -

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 30,432 39,397 28,215
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 82.59% 81.51% 93.90%
Number of salaries quoted 18,514 19,421 20,934
10th Percentile £27,000 £31,250 £28,500
25th Percentile £32,500 £40,000 £38,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £54,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -12.04% +2.86% -
75th Percentile £65,000 £69,750 £67,500
90th Percentile £80,000 £82,500 £81,250
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -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 23 November 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 23 November 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 -1 1,428 £40,000 -20.00% 1,138
North of England -2 1,348 £45,000 - 637
Midlands +2 975 £37,500 -25.00% 497
North West -3 723 £48,000 -4.00% 372
South West +2 601 £37,500 -31.82% 365
West Midlands +1 580 £42,500 -19.81% 326
Yorkshire -3 491 £32,500 -27.78% 188
East of England -2 488 £33,500 -36.19% 286
East Midlands +3 395 £32,500 -7.14% 161
Scotland -2 350 £33,500 -34.95% 157
Wales +5 188 £47,500 -5.00% 93
North East 0 134 £33,500 +2.29% 80
Northern Ireland +4 64 £59,000 +15.43% 48
Isle of Man +2 2 £62,500 +150.00% 1
Channel Islands -3 1 £45,000 +5.88%
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
1 273 (5.04%) Microsoft Exchange
2 217 (4.00%) SharePoint
3 53 (0.98%) Confluence
4 42 (0.77%) IIS
5 28 (0.52%) Apache Spark
6 26 (0.48%) CMS
7 24 (0.44%) Apache
7 24 (0.44%) WordPress
8 10 (0.18%) Camunda
9 9 (0.17%) Apache Airflow
10 7 (0.13%) nginx
10 7 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
11 6 (0.11%) HCL Notes
11 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 5 (0.092%) Apache Solr
12 5 (0.092%) ArcGIS
13 4 (0.074%) Drupal
13 4 (0.074%) Exchange Server 2013
13 4 (0.074%) SAS
13 4 (0.074%) Umbraco
Applications
1 481 (8.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 470 (8.67%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (1.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 23 (0.42%) AutoCAD
5 21 (0.39%) Microsoft Project
6 19 (0.35%) Simulink
6 19 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
7 18 (0.33%) MS Visio
8 14 (0.26%) Photoshop
8 14 (0.26%) SOLIDWORKS
9 12 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 11 (0.20%) Adobe Illustrator
10 11 (0.20%) Mathcad
11 9 (0.17%) Adobe Premiere
12 5 (0.092%) Adobe After Effects
12 5 (0.092%) Adobe XD
12 5 (0.092%) Revit
12 5 (0.092%) Trello
13 4 (0.074%) Autodesk Inventor
13 4 (0.074%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 91 (1.68%) SAP S/4HANA
2 62 (1.14%) Dynamics CRM
3 31 (0.57%) NetSuite
4 20 (0.37%) Oracle Payables
5 18 (0.33%) Oracle Receivables
6 17 (0.31%) SAP Business One
7 16 (0.30%) Oracle Assets
8 15 (0.28%) SAP FI
9 14 (0.26%) Shopify
10 13 (0.24%) Oracle ERP
10 13 (0.24%) Sage X3
11 12 (0.22%) Unit4 Business World
12 11 (0.20%) SAP CO
12 11 (0.20%) SAP FI/CO
12 11 (0.20%) SAP WM
13 10 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
14 8 (0.15%) JDE EnterpriseOne
14 8 (0.15%) Oracle Financials
15 7 (0.13%) Infor CloudSuite Industrial (formerly SyteLine)
16 6 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,150 (21.21%) Azure
2 810 (14.94%) Microsoft 365
3 429 (7.91%) AWS
4 386 (7.12%) Power Platform
5 275 (5.07%) SaaS
6 227 (4.19%) Entra ID
7 147 (2.71%) GCP
8 128 (2.36%) Azure DevOps
9 82 (1.51%) GitHub
10 69 (1.27%) Power Automate
11 66 (1.22%) Serverless
12 61 (1.13%) Dynamics 365
13 47 (0.87%) Azure Data Factory
14 43 (0.79%) OneDrive
15 41 (0.76%) AWS Lambda
16 40 (0.74%) Amazon S3
16 40 (0.74%) PowerApps
17 39 (0.72%) PaaS
18 37 (0.68%) Cloud Computing
19 32 (0.59%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 331 (6.10%) DNS
2 293 (5.40%) DHCP
3 281 (5.18%) Firewall
4 171 (3.15%) TCP/IP
5 162 (2.99%) VPN
6 147 (2.71%) Wi-Fi
7 144 (2.66%) LAN
8 126 (2.32%) WAN
9 112 (2.07%) Broadband
10 93 (1.72%) VLAN
11 81 (1.49%) VoIP
12 62 (1.14%) Remote Desktop
13 51 (0.94%) Wireless
14 50 (0.92%) Network Security
15 33 (0.61%) Ethernet
16 32 (0.59%) Internet
16 32 (0.59%) SAN
17 21 (0.39%) SD-WAN
18 19 (0.35%) Unified Communications
19 18 (0.33%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 346 (6.38%) Power BI
2 263 (4.85%) SQL Server
3 121 (2.23%) Amazon RDS
4 115 (2.12%) MySQL
5 104 (1.92%) Relational Database
6 99 (1.83%) Data Lake
7 86 (1.59%) PostgreSQL
8 73 (1.35%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 64 (1.18%) SAP BW
10 58 (1.07%) Data Warehouse
11 51 (0.94%) Tableau
12 47 (0.87%) NoSQL
13 42 (0.77%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 38 (0.70%) GIS
15 36 (0.66%) Azure SQL Database
16 29 (0.53%) MongoDB
17 28 (0.52%) Metadata
17 28 (0.52%) Oracle Reports
18 26 (0.48%) Amazon Redshift
18 26 (0.48%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 194 (3.58%) Git
2 178 (3.28%) JIRA
3 43 (0.79%) Jenkins
4 30 (0.55%) GitLab
4 30 (0.55%) Selenium
5 23 (0.42%) Octopus Deploy
6 21 (0.39%) Visual Studio
7 19 (0.35%) JUnit
8 18 (0.33%) TeamCity
9 15 (0.28%) Maven
10 14 (0.26%) Bitbucket
11 13 (0.24%) Robot Framework
12 12 (0.22%) Snyk
13 11 (0.20%) SonarQube
14 9 (0.17%) Oracle Forms
14 9 (0.17%) Rational DOORS
15 8 (0.15%) LabVIEW
16 7 (0.13%) Cucumber
16 7 (0.13%) Cypress.io
16 7 (0.13%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 2,986 (55.07%) Social Skills
2 1,529 (28.20%) Analytical Skills
3 1,202 (22.17%) Finance
4 393 (7.25%) Retail
5 357 (6.58%) Manufacturing
6 327 (6.03%) Marketing
7 266 (4.91%) Organisational Skills
8 257 (4.74%) Law
9 209 (3.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 180 (3.32%) Legal
11 173 (3.19%) Public Sector
12 151 (2.78%) Banking
13 147 (2.71%) Telecoms
14 127 (2.34%) Electronics
15 118 (2.18%) Games
16 102 (1.88%) Automotive
17 100 (1.84%) Presentation Skills
18 80 (1.48%) Influencing Skills
19 67 (1.24%) Aerospace
20 53 (0.98%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 915 (16.88%) Analyst
2 646 (11.91%) IT Support
3 610 (11.25%) Senior
4 507 (9.35%) Support Engineer
5 417 (7.69%) Developer
6 395 (7.29%) Lead
7 370 (6.82%) Support Analyst
8 316 (5.83%) Technical Support
9 221 (4.08%) 2nd Line Support
10 218 (4.02%) Technical Engineer
11 206 (3.80%) Systems Engineer
12 203 (3.74%) Technical Support Engineer
13 197 (3.63%) IT Engineer
14 173 (3.19%) IT Support Engineer
14 173 (3.19%) Support Technician
15 168 (3.10%) Business Analyst
16 155 (2.86%) IT Analyst
17 149 (2.75%) Applications Support
18 137 (2.53%) Architect
18 137 (2.53%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 232 (4.28%) .NET
2 198 (3.65%) HTML
3 174 (3.21%) CSS
4 160 (2.95%) React
5 103 (1.90%) REST
6 84 (1.55%) RESTful
7 73 (1.35%) ASP.NET
8 62 (1.14%) JSON
9 61 (1.13%) Node.js
10 55 (1.01%) XML
11 49 (0.90%) Spring
12 47 (0.87%) AngularJS
13 45 (0.83%) .NET Framework
14 41 (0.76%) Django
15 40 (0.74%) SOAP
16 36 (0.66%) Vue
17 35 (0.65%) EDI
18 33 (0.61%) Entity Framework
19 32 (0.59%) HTML5
20 31 (0.57%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 514 (9.48%) Driving Licence
2 414 (7.64%) Onboarding
3 310 (5.72%) Self-Motivation
4 217 (4.00%) Management Information System
5 185 (3.41%) Analytical Mindset
6 139 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
7 102 (1.88%) FMCG
8 94 (1.73%) Data Centre
9 88 (1.62%) Product Ownership
10 75 (1.38%) Operational Technology
11 72 (1.33%) Virtual Team
12 57 (1.05%) Cloud Native
13 54 (1.00%) e-Learning
14 48 (0.89%) Algorithms
15 47 (0.87%) Renewable Energy
16 45 (0.83%) EPoS
16 45 (0.83%) SCADA
17 39 (0.72%) Mobile App
18 37 (0.68%) Enterprise Software
18 37 (0.68%) Manufacturing Execution System
Operating Systems
1 979 (18.06%) Windows
2 392 (7.23%) Windows Server
3 283 (5.22%) Linux
4 154 (2.84%) Windows 10
5 99 (1.83%) Windows Server 2016
6 74 (1.36%) Mac OS
7 62 (1.14%) Android
8 50 (0.92%) Apple iOS
9 40 (0.74%) Unix
10 24 (0.44%) Windows Server 2019
11 22 (0.41%) Windows 7
12 13 (0.24%) Windows Server 2012
13 10 (0.18%) VMS
14 6 (0.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
15 5 (0.092%) Mac OS X
15 5 (0.092%) Windows Server 2008
16 4 (0.074%) CentOS
16 4 (0.074%) Windows 8
17 3 (0.055%) Ubuntu
18 2 (0.037%) OpenWrt
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,049 (19.35%) Customer Service
2 1,004 (18.52%) Continuous Improvement
3 746 (13.76%) Agile
4 514 (9.48%) Analytics
5 485 (8.95%) Project Management
6 483 (8.91%) Mentoring
7 457 (8.43%) Decision-Making
8 447 (8.24%) Business Intelligence
9 432 (7.97%) ERP
10 426 (7.86%) ITIL
11 374 (6.90%) Cybersecurity
12 368 (6.79%) DevOps
13 333 (6.14%) CRM
14 328 (6.05%) Process Improvement
15 321 (5.92%) CI/CD
16 314 (5.79%) Stakeholder Management
17 312 (5.75%) Change Management
18 310 (5.72%) Data Analysis
19 301 (5.55%) AI
20 300 (5.53%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 819 (15.11%) SQL
2 432 (7.97%) Python
3 293 (5.40%) C#
4 287 (5.29%) JavaScript
5 241 (4.44%) PowerShell
6 177 (3.26%) Java
7 90 (1.66%) PHP
8 86 (1.59%) C++
9 60 (1.11%) TypeScript
10 58 (1.07%) T-SQL
11 46 (0.85%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 39 (0.72%) Bash
13 38 (0.70%) C
14 31 (0.57%) MATLAB
14 31 (0.57%) VBA
15 20 (0.37%) R
16 18 (0.33%) Go
17 16 (0.30%) Kusto Query Language
18 15 (0.28%) Perl
19 13 (0.24%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 1,210 (22.32%) Degree
2 413 (7.62%) Security Cleared
3 286 (5.27%) SC Cleared
4 155 (2.86%) Computer Science Degree
5 154 (2.84%) Microsoft Certification
6 127 (2.34%) DBS Check
7 106 (1.95%) Master's Degree
8 95 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
9 94 (1.73%) DV Cleared
10 86 (1.59%) HND
11 78 (1.44%) Cisco Certification
11 78 (1.44%) HNC
12 59 (1.09%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 56 (1.03%) ACCA
13 56 (1.03%) Network+ Certification
14 54 (1.00%) A+ Certification
15 51 (0.94%) CCNA
16 50 (0.92%) CIMA
17 34 (0.63%) CCNP
17 34 (0.63%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 223 (4.11%) QA
2 202 (3.73%) Data Quality
3 146 (2.69%) GDPR
4 140 (2.58%) Cyber Essentials
5 97 (1.79%) PCI DSS
5 97 (1.79%) SLA
6 95 (1.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 83 (1.53%) Accessibility
8 37 (0.68%) NIST
9 26 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 25 (0.46%) ISO 9001
11 22 (0.41%) PMO
12 18 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
13 11 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 15288
14 9 (0.17%) Software Quality Assurance
15 7 (0.13%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 7 (0.13%) WCAG
16 6 (0.11%) GRC
16 6 (0.11%) HIPAA
16 6 (0.11%) ISO 13485
System Software
1 641 (11.82%) Active Directory
2 217 (4.00%) Hyper-V
3 170 (3.14%) Docker
4 115 (2.12%) VMware Infrastructure
5 88 (1.62%) Terminal Server
6 53 (0.98%) Firmware
7 23 (0.42%) Virtual Machines
8 19 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
9 18 (0.33%) vSphere
10 16 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
11 13 (0.24%) Embedded Firmware
12 6 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.092%) HDFS
13 5 (0.092%) Terminal Services
14 4 (0.074%) KVM
15 3 (0.055%) VMware Workstation
15 3 (0.055%) XenApp
16 2 (0.037%) NFS
16 2 (0.037%) RHEV
16 2 (0.037%) Xen
Systems Management
1 218 (4.02%) Microsoft Intune
2 167 (3.08%) Terraform
3 144 (2.66%) Kubernetes
4 55 (1.01%) Ansible
5 42 (0.77%) BMC PATROL
6 36 (0.66%) SCCM
7 34 (0.63%) Grafana
8 22 (0.41%) Prometheus
9 14 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
9 14 (0.26%) vCenter Server
10 13 (0.24%) FortiGate
10 13 (0.24%) Single Sign-On
11 10 (0.18%) AWS Copilot
11 10 (0.18%) ZABBIX
12 9 (0.17%) Nagios
13 8 (0.15%) Cisco CUCM
14 7 (0.13%) PaperCut
14 7 (0.13%) QRadar
15 6 (0.11%) Control-M
16 5 (0.092%) Autotask
Vendors
1 1,431 (26.39%) Microsoft
2 347 (6.40%) SAP
3 236 (4.35%) VMware
4 181 (3.34%) Oracle
5 177 (3.26%) Cisco
6 132 (2.43%) Veeam
7 124 (2.29%) Google
8 116 (2.14%) Splunk
9 106 (1.95%) ServiceNow
9 106 (1.95%) SolarWinds
10 105 (1.94%) Salesforce
11 89 (1.64%) Tanium
12 88 (1.62%) Brocade
12 88 (1.62%) Nimble Storage
13 83 (1.53%) BT
14 72 (1.33%) Sage
15 64 (1.18%) Databricks
16 55 (1.01%) Apple
16 55 (1.01%) Siemens
17 50 (0.92%) Adobe