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 5 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 4 3
Rank change year-on-year -2 -1 +5
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 8,007 6,311 8,035
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 9.25% 18.17% 15.30%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.12% 20.82% 19.29%
Number of salaries quoted 5,452 3,509 3,118
10th Percentile £27,000 £25,684 £25,750
25th Percentile £31,250 £29,000 £33,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £43,000 £39,398 £49,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.14% -19.60% +3.16%
75th Percentile £58,750 £56,250 £63,750
90th Percentile £72,500 £68,750 £80,000
UK median annual salary £46,000 £45,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +2.22% -14.29% -4.55%

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 61,030 30,315 41,658
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.53% 87.27% 79.35%
Number of salaries quoted 42,871 16,100 21,305
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,750 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £47,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year +15.79% -9.52% -2.78%
75th Percentile £70,000 £63,750 £67,500
90th Percentile £87,500 £80,000 £81,250
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £59,430
% change year-on-year +9.09% -7.45% -0.95%

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 5 October 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 5 October 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 -7 2,028 £45,000 - 1,823
South East -2 1,884 £41,585 +1.43% 1,950
Midlands -6 1,444 £42,500 +11.84% 1,270
North West -3 1,048 £45,000 -8.12% 891
South West -2 972 £45,000 +23.29% 888
East of England -1 814 £42,750 +31.54% 875
West Midlands -6 814 £42,500 - 751
East Midlands -7 628 £41,500 +27.69% 518
Yorkshire -7 609 £42,500 +26.87% 644
North East +6 380 £50,000 +49.25% 306
Scotland +1 327 £37,250 +10.21% 794
Northern Ireland +9 318 £70,000 +17.65% 411
Wales -14 236 £42,500 -11.68% 304
Isle of Man 0 3 £35,000 - 11
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
1 474 (5.92%) SharePoint
2 360 (4.50%) Microsoft Exchange
3 65 (0.81%) Confluence
4 62 (0.77%) CMS
5 56 (0.70%) IIS
6 37 (0.46%) Apache
7 32 (0.40%) WordPress
8 31 (0.39%) Apache Airflow
9 28 (0.35%) Sitecore CMS
10 23 (0.29%) Apache Spark
11 14 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
12 13 (0.16%) Jupyter
13 12 (0.15%) nginx
14 10 (0.12%) WebSphere
15 9 (0.11%) WebLogic
16 8 (0.100%) SAS
17 7 (0.087%) CICS
17 7 (0.087%) OpenEdge
18 4 (0.050%) Oracle SOA Suite
18 4 (0.050%) Tomcat
Applications
1 596 (7.44%) Microsoft Office
2 540 (6.74%) Microsoft Excel
3 86 (1.07%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 66 (0.82%) Spreadsheet
5 46 (0.57%) AutoCAD
6 44 (0.55%) MS Visio
7 40 (0.50%) Microsoft Project
8 36 (0.45%) Simulink
9 26 (0.32%) Revit
10 19 (0.24%) EPLAN
11 16 (0.20%) SOLIDWORKS
12 10 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 10 (0.12%) Navisworks
12 10 (0.12%) OrCAD
13 8 (0.100%) Chatbot
14 7 (0.087%) Siemens NX
15 6 (0.075%) Adobe Illustrator
15 6 (0.075%) Lightworks
16 5 (0.062%) Adobe XD
16 5 (0.062%) Fusion 360
Business Applications
1 75 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
2 64 (0.80%) NetSuite
3 51 (0.64%) SAP S/4HANA
4 33 (0.41%) Shopify
5 22 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
6 21 (0.26%) Workday HCM
7 20 (0.25%) Dynamics NAV
8 16 (0.20%) SAP Business One
9 15 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
10 14 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
11 13 (0.16%) SAP ERP
12 12 (0.15%) IBM Planning Analytics
12 12 (0.15%) Magento
12 12 (0.15%) Oracle Cash Management
12 12 (0.15%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 11 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
13 11 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
14 10 (0.12%) JDE EnterpriseOne
14 10 (0.12%) Sage X3
15 9 (0.11%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 1,402 (17.51%) Azure
2 1,286 (16.06%) Microsoft 365
3 696 (8.69%) AWS
4 616 (7.69%) Power Platform
5 444 (5.55%) Entra ID
6 294 (3.67%) SaaS
7 234 (2.92%) GCP
8 173 (2.16%) Azure DevOps
9 157 (1.96%) PowerApps
10 152 (1.90%) GitHub
11 148 (1.85%) Dynamics 365
12 146 (1.82%) Power Automate
13 126 (1.57%) OneDrive
14 113 (1.41%) Serverless
15 97 (1.21%) Microsoft Copilot
16 80 (1.00%) Google Workspace
17 70 (0.87%) Amazon S3
17 70 (0.87%) AWS CloudFormation
18 67 (0.84%) GitHub Actions
19 56 (0.70%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 453 (5.66%) DNS
2 452 (5.65%) Firewall
3 374 (4.67%) DHCP
4 297 (3.71%) VPN
5 237 (2.96%) TCP/IP
6 215 (2.69%) Wi-Fi
7 201 (2.51%) WAN
8 196 (2.45%) LAN
9 178 (2.22%) Wireless
10 152 (1.90%) VLAN
11 129 (1.61%) Network Security
12 116 (1.45%) VoIP
13 64 (0.80%) Broadband
14 60 (0.75%) Internet
15 31 (0.39%) SSL
16 30 (0.37%) Remote Desktop
17 29 (0.36%) SAN
18 27 (0.34%) SD-WAN
19 26 (0.32%) Ethernet
20 25 (0.31%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 487 (6.08%) Power BI
2 337 (4.21%) SQL Server
3 137 (1.71%) MySQL
4 122 (1.52%) Relational Database
5 120 (1.50%) Amazon RDS
6 104 (1.30%) Data Warehouse
7 99 (1.24%) PostgreSQL
8 85 (1.06%) NoSQL
9 70 (0.87%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 67 (0.84%) Tableau
11 57 (0.71%) MongoDB
12 51 (0.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 50 (0.62%) Data Lake
14 49 (0.61%) Big Data
15 48 (0.60%) Power Query
16 47 (0.59%) Electronic Patient Records
17 46 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
18 34 (0.42%) Oracle Reports
19 33 (0.41%) Metadata
20 27 (0.34%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 315 (3.93%) Git
2 247 (3.08%) JIRA
3 100 (1.25%) GitLab
4 90 (1.12%) Jenkins
5 40 (0.50%) Eclipse
6 35 (0.44%) Selenium
7 34 (0.42%) Subversion
8 32 (0.40%) Cucumber
9 30 (0.37%) Claude Code
10 26 (0.32%) JUnit
11 25 (0.31%) Oracle Forms
12 23 (0.29%) Bitbucket
12 23 (0.29%) Postman
13 22 (0.27%) Cypress.io
14 19 (0.24%) LabVIEW
14 19 (0.24%) Rational DOORS
15 15 (0.19%) Burp Suite
16 14 (0.17%) Team Foundation Server
17 13 (0.16%) Visual Studio
18 12 (0.15%) Metasploit
General
1 3,941 (49.22%) Social Skills
2 2,198 (27.45%) Analytical Skills
3 1,287 (16.07%) Finance
4 951 (11.88%) Manufacturing
5 658 (8.22%) Organisational Skills
6 429 (5.36%) Retail
7 428 (5.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 385 (4.81%) Public Sector
9 352 (4.40%) Electronics
10 333 (4.16%) Law
11 331 (4.13%) Legal
12 323 (4.03%) Aerospace
13 297 (3.71%) Marketing
14 206 (2.57%) Telecoms
15 155 (1.94%) Influencing Skills
16 145 (1.81%) Automotive
17 138 (1.72%) Documentation Skills
18 119 (1.49%) Presentation Skills
19 114 (1.42%) Banking
20 109 (1.36%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,067 (13.33%) Analyst
2 838 (10.47%) Senior
3 769 (9.60%) IT Support
4 716 (8.94%) Developer
5 601 (7.51%) Support Engineer
6 415 (5.18%) Lead
7 409 (5.11%) Support Analyst
8 396 (4.95%) IT Engineer
9 361 (4.51%) Consultant
10 304 (3.80%) IT Support Engineer
11 291 (3.63%) Technical Support
12 275 (3.43%) Support Technician
13 248 (3.10%) Technical Engineer
14 242 (3.02%) IT Technician
15 228 (2.85%) Architect
16 225 (2.81%) Systems Engineer
16 225 (2.81%) Technical Support Engineer
17 222 (2.77%) Software Engineer
18 211 (2.64%) Senior Developer
19 194 (2.42%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 373 (4.66%) .NET
2 283 (3.53%) Terraform
3 220 (2.75%) React
4 198 (2.47%) REST
5 190 (2.37%) HTML
6 139 (1.74%) CSS
7 138 (1.72%) RESTful
8 97 (1.21%) Node.js
9 93 (1.16%) SOAP
10 92 (1.15%) Web Services
11 86 (1.07%) ASP.NET
12 80 (1.00%) Spring
13 77 (0.96%) Vue
13 77 (0.96%) XML
14 73 (0.91%) Middleware
14 73 (0.91%) Spring Boot
15 72 (0.90%) AngularJS
16 69 (0.86%) JSON
17 67 (0.84%) Kafka
18 52 (0.65%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 727 (9.08%) Driving Licence
2 570 (7.12%) Onboarding
3 423 (5.28%) Self-Motivation
4 371 (4.63%) Management Information System
5 211 (2.64%) Cloud Native
6 176 (2.20%) Product Ownership
7 168 (2.10%) Enterprise Software
8 149 (1.86%) Legacy Systems
9 139 (1.74%) Robotics
10 131 (1.64%) Data Centre
11 95 (1.19%) Analytical Mindset
11 95 (1.19%) NHS
12 86 (1.07%) Distributed Systems
13 84 (1.05%) Security Posture
14 83 (1.04%) Cyber Threat
15 81 (1.01%) IoT
16 78 (0.97%) CCTV
17 74 (0.92%) Social Media
17 74 (0.92%) Virtual Team
18 72 (0.90%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 1,227 (15.32%) Windows
2 539 (6.73%) Windows Server
3 447 (5.58%) Linux
4 128 (1.60%) Windows 10
5 101 (1.26%) Windows Server 2016
6 89 (1.11%) Apple iOS
7 87 (1.09%) Android
8 86 (1.07%) Mac OS
9 41 (0.51%) Unix
10 40 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
11 24 (0.30%) Ubuntu
12 15 (0.19%) Embedded Linux
12 15 (0.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 15 (0.19%) VMS
13 13 (0.16%) Debian
14 10 (0.12%) FreeRTOS
15 7 (0.087%) Rocky
16 6 (0.075%) CentOS
16 6 (0.075%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.062%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,186 (27.30%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,505 (18.80%) Customer Service
3 1,116 (13.94%) Agile
4 849 (10.60%) Decision-Making
5 843 (10.53%) Stakeholder Management
6 801 (10.00%) Mentoring
7 796 (9.94%) AI
8 741 (9.25%) CI/CD
9 690 (8.62%) Project Delivery
10 656 (8.19%) Collaborative Working
11 613 (7.66%) Analytics
12 611 (7.63%) Cybersecurity
13 601 (7.51%) ERP
14 599 (7.48%) DevOps
15 595 (7.43%) Software Engineering
16 573 (7.16%) ITIL
17 554 (6.92%) Project Management
18 531 (6.63%) Business Intelligence
19 504 (6.29%) CRM
20 501 (6.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 1,103 (13.78%) SQL
2 777 (9.70%) Python
3 451 (5.63%) C#
4 437 (5.46%) JavaScript
5 318 (3.97%) Java
6 302 (3.77%) PowerShell
7 207 (2.59%) C++
8 200 (2.50%) TypeScript
9 123 (1.54%) Bash
10 85 (1.06%) C
11 63 (0.79%) PHP
12 61 (0.76%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 57 (0.71%) T-SQL
14 54 (0.67%) Ruby
15 50 (0.62%) MATLAB
16 46 (0.57%) Shell Script
17 45 (0.56%) PL/SQL
18 40 (0.50%) Perl
18 40 (0.50%) Rust
19 34 (0.42%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,301 (16.25%) Degree
2 750 (9.37%) Security Cleared
3 523 (6.53%) SC Cleared
4 264 (3.30%) HNC
5 233 (2.91%) DBS Check
6 223 (2.79%) HND
7 214 (2.67%) Computer Science Degree
8 192 (2.40%) Microsoft Certification
9 185 (2.31%) DV Cleared
10 169 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
11 139 (1.74%) Azure Certification
12 103 (1.29%) Chartered Engineer
13 91 (1.14%) Cisco Certification
14 80 (1.00%) NVQ Level 3
15 77 (0.96%) Master's Degree
16 74 (0.92%) A+ Certification
17 72 (0.90%) PMI Certification
18 60 (0.75%) CISSP
19 57 (0.71%) ACCA
19 57 (0.71%) City & Guilds
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 494 (6.17%) QA
2 299 (3.73%) Data Quality
3 235 (2.93%) GDPR
4 208 (2.60%) Accessibility
5 185 (2.31%) SLA
6 171 (2.14%) Cyber Essentials
7 136 (1.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 105 (1.31%) PCI DSS
9 74 (0.92%) NIST
10 51 (0.64%) ISO 9001
11 42 (0.52%) PMO
12 35 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 22 (0.27%) DO-254
14 20 (0.25%) GMP
14 20 (0.25%) Good Clinical Practice
15 19 (0.24%) NCSC
16 16 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
16 16 (0.20%) GRC
17 13 (0.16%) GxP
17 13 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 876 (10.94%) Active Directory
2 295 (3.68%) Hyper-V
3 268 (3.35%) Docker
4 212 (2.65%) VMware Infrastructure
5 84 (1.05%) Firmware
6 72 (0.90%) Terminal Server
7 45 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
8 36 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
9 31 (0.39%) Embedded Firmware
10 25 (0.31%) vSphere
11 14 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
12 12 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.062%) ClearTrust
13 5 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 5 (0.062%) Squid
14 4 (0.050%) KVM
15 3 (0.037%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.037%) VMware Server
16 2 (0.025%) Samba
16 2 (0.025%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 277 (3.46%) Microsoft Intune
2 230 (2.87%) Kubernetes
3 106 (1.32%) Ansible
4 66 (0.82%) Grafana
5 51 (0.64%) SCCM
6 50 (0.62%) BMC PATROL
6 50 (0.62%) Prometheus
7 46 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
8 24 (0.30%) Jamf Pro
9 21 (0.26%) FortiGate
10 18 (0.22%) Functional Safety
11 15 (0.19%) Puppet
11 15 (0.19%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
12 12 (0.15%) Kibana
12 12 (0.15%) Nagios
12 12 (0.15%) Nmap
13 10 (0.12%) Failover Clustering
13 10 (0.12%) logstash
13 10 (0.12%) Proxmox
14 9 (0.11%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,439 (30.46%) Microsoft
2 342 (4.27%) VMware
3 232 (2.90%) SAP
4 231 (2.88%) Google
5 207 (2.59%) Workday
6 179 (2.24%) Oracle
7 145 (1.81%) Veeam
8 143 (1.79%) Cisco
9 130 (1.62%) ServiceNow
10 123 (1.54%) Splunk
11 111 (1.39%) Salesforce
12 102 (1.27%) Sage
13 92 (1.15%) SolarWinds
14 80 (1.00%) Fortinet
14 80 (1.00%) Tanium
15 73 (0.91%) Brocade
15 73 (0.91%) Databricks
15 73 (0.91%) Nimble Storage
16 67 (0.84%) Siemens
17 65 (0.81%) Apple