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 25 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 4 6
Rank change year-on-year -4 +2 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,340 6,066 11,347
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 7.81% 19.91% 14.58%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.13% 21.95% 18.21%
Number of salaries quoted 4,000 3,241 6,963
10th Percentile £26,500 £25,750 £25,000
25th Percentile £30,250 £30,000 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £42,500 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year - -5.56% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £60,000 £60,000
90th Percentile £73,750 £77,500 £72,500
UK median annual salary £47,500 £50,000 £49,000
% change year-on-year -5.00% +2.04% -10.91%

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 47,964 27,634 62,322
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.12% 90.71% 80.10%
Number of salaries quoted 33,682 14,144 43,500
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,500 £27,500
25th Percentile £39,000 £32,851 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,679 £50,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +5.36% - -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £67,500 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £81,000 £77,750
UK median annual salary £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -9.54%

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 25 June 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 25 June 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 -8 1,433 £42,500 -2.30% 550
South East -4 1,312 £45,000 +5.88% 721
Midlands -8 980 £42,000 -1.18% 415
North West -7 749 £45,000 -2.70% 298
South West -6 628 £44,000 +17.33% 256
West Midlands -9 563 £42,500 -5.56% 226
East of England -3 550 £45,000 +28.57% 231
Yorkshire -12 506 £41,500 +18.57% 183
East Midlands -10 414 £35,000 -6.67% 189
Scotland -4 262 £35,000 -30.00% 91
North East -11 178 £48,500 +21.25% 87
Wales -16 123 £45,000 - 38
Northern Ireland -10 72 £38,500 -30.00% 23
Isle of Man +2 3 £35,000 +1.45% 4
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
1 332 (6.22%) Microsoft Exchange
2 325 (6.09%) SharePoint
3 53 (0.99%) Confluence
4 50 (0.94%) CMS
5 32 (0.60%) IIS
6 27 (0.51%) WordPress
7 25 (0.47%) Apache
8 20 (0.37%) Apache Airflow
9 14 (0.26%) Apache Spark
10 12 (0.22%) SAS
11 11 (0.21%) Exchange Server 2013
12 9 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2007
12 9 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2010
12 9 (0.17%) WebSphere
13 7 (0.13%) OpenEdge
13 7 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 6 (0.11%) WebLogic
15 5 (0.094%) Skype for Business
16 4 (0.075%) Moodle
16 4 (0.075%) OpenStack
Applications
1 338 (6.33%) Microsoft Office
2 315 (5.90%) Microsoft Excel
3 42 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 38 (0.71%) Spreadsheet
5 30 (0.56%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.30%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 8 (0.15%) Adobe Illustrator
7 8 (0.15%) Simulink
8 6 (0.11%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.094%) Fusion 360
9 5 (0.094%) Photoshop
9 5 (0.094%) Trello
10 4 (0.075%) Chatbot
11 3 (0.056%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.056%) Autodesk Inventor
11 3 (0.056%) Lightworks
11 3 (0.056%) Sketch
11 3 (0.056%) Windchill
12 2 (0.037%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 51 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
2 31 (0.58%) Dynamics CRM
3 28 (0.52%) NetSuite
4 22 (0.41%) Dynamics NAV
5 19 (0.36%) Shopify
6 16 (0.30%) Magento
7 14 (0.26%) SAP ERP
8 12 (0.22%) Dynamics AX
8 12 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
9 11 (0.21%) iTrent
10 9 (0.17%) IBM Planning Analytics
10 9 (0.17%) SAP Business One
11 8 (0.15%) Sage 50
12 7 (0.13%) SAP CO
12 7 (0.13%) Workday HCM
13 5 (0.094%) Q-Pulse
14 4 (0.075%) Dynamics GP
14 4 (0.075%) JDE EnterpriseOne
14 4 (0.075%) Line 50
14 4 (0.075%) SAP PP
Cloud Services
1 1,119 (20.96%) Azure
2 971 (18.18%) Microsoft 365
3 560 (10.49%) AWS
4 405 (7.58%) Power Platform
5 256 (4.79%) Entra ID
6 180 (3.37%) SaaS
7 171 (3.20%) GCP
8 125 (2.34%) Azure DevOps
9 115 (2.15%) Serverless
10 114 (2.13%) Dynamics 365
11 90 (1.69%) GitHub
12 89 (1.67%) Power Automate
13 81 (1.52%) PowerApps
14 71 (1.33%) OneDrive
15 57 (1.07%) Amazon S3
16 49 (0.92%) Google Workspace
17 48 (0.90%) AWS Lambda
18 46 (0.86%) IaaS
18 46 (0.86%) Microsoft Copilot
19 45 (0.84%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 387 (7.25%) Firewall
2 348 (6.52%) DNS
3 299 (5.60%) DHCP
4 207 (3.88%) VPN
5 187 (3.50%) WAN
6 159 (2.98%) TCP/IP
7 157 (2.94%) LAN
8 149 (2.79%) Wi-Fi
9 113 (2.12%) Wireless
10 112 (2.10%) VLAN
11 108 (2.02%) Broadband
12 91 (1.70%) Network Security
13 85 (1.59%) VoIP
14 43 (0.81%) Internet
15 39 (0.73%) SD-WAN
16 30 (0.56%) SAN
17 24 (0.45%) HTTP
18 21 (0.39%) SSL
18 21 (0.39%) Structured Cabling
19 19 (0.36%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 327 (6.12%) Power BI
2 233 (4.36%) SQL Server
3 98 (1.84%) Amazon RDS
4 86 (1.61%) MySQL
5 81 (1.52%) Data Warehouse
6 76 (1.42%) PostgreSQL
7 72 (1.35%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 66 (1.24%) NoSQL
9 63 (1.18%) Relational Database
10 59 (1.10%) Tableau
11 56 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 46 (0.86%) Power Query
13 39 (0.73%) MongoDB
14 35 (0.66%) Azure SQL Database
14 35 (0.66%) Big Data
15 32 (0.60%) Data Lake
16 28 (0.52%) DynamoDB
16 28 (0.52%) Elasticsearch
17 25 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
18 18 (0.34%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 209 (3.91%) Git
2 151 (2.83%) JIRA
3 71 (1.33%) GitLab
4 43 (0.81%) Jenkins
5 29 (0.54%) Rational DOORS
6 20 (0.37%) Cucumber
7 19 (0.36%) Subversion
8 17 (0.32%) JUnit
9 16 (0.30%) Eclipse
10 15 (0.28%) Selenium
11 14 (0.26%) SonarQube
12 13 (0.24%) Cypress.io
12 13 (0.24%) Maven
13 11 (0.21%) Oracle Forms
14 10 (0.19%) Bitbucket
14 10 (0.19%) Postman
15 8 (0.15%) Burp Suite
15 8 (0.15%) Claude Code
15 8 (0.15%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
16 7 (0.13%) Metasploit
General
1 2,557 (47.88%) Social Skills
2 1,450 (27.15%) Analytical Skills
3 849 (15.90%) Finance
4 398 (7.45%) Manufacturing
5 340 (6.37%) Organisational Skills
6 246 (4.61%) Public Sector
7 235 (4.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 208 (3.90%) Retail
9 204 (3.82%) Legal
10 203 (3.80%) Law
11 177 (3.31%) Marketing
12 139 (2.60%) Banking
13 132 (2.47%) Electronics
14 131 (2.45%) Telecoms
15 110 (2.06%) Documentation Skills
16 100 (1.87%) Influencing Skills
17 79 (1.48%) Aerospace
18 73 (1.37%) Games
19 59 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
20 55 (1.03%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 767 (14.36%) Analyst
2 647 (12.12%) IT Support
3 566 (10.60%) Support Engineer
4 554 (10.37%) Senior
5 487 (9.12%) Developer
6 383 (7.17%) IT Engineer
7 293 (5.49%) IT Support Engineer
8 283 (5.30%) Lead
9 244 (4.57%) Support Technician
10 219 (4.10%) Support Analyst
11 212 (3.97%) Systems Engineer
12 196 (3.67%) IT Technician
13 188 (3.52%) Technical Support
14 178 (3.33%) Software Engineer
15 175 (3.28%) Consultant
16 171 (3.20%) Architect
17 158 (2.96%) Technical Engineer
18 155 (2.90%) IT Support Technician
19 150 (2.81%) Technical Support Engineer
20 136 (2.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 205 (3.84%) .NET
2 193 (3.61%) React
3 157 (2.94%) HTML
4 143 (2.68%) REST
5 118 (2.21%) CSS
6 98 (1.84%) Node.js
7 83 (1.55%) RESTful
8 80 (1.50%) SOAP
9 73 (1.37%) Middleware
10 71 (1.33%) JSON
11 68 (1.27%) Vue
12 64 (1.20%) AngularJS
13 63 (1.18%) XML
14 46 (0.86%) Spring
15 43 (0.81%) Spring Boot
15 43 (0.81%) Web Services
16 42 (0.79%) ASP.NET
17 38 (0.71%) EDI
17 38 (0.71%) OAuth
18 29 (0.54%) Laravel
Miscellaneous
1 407 (7.62%) Driving Licence
2 296 (5.54%) Onboarding
3 243 (4.55%) Self-Motivation
4 195 (3.65%) Management Information System
5 145 (2.72%) Cloud Native
6 133 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
7 129 (2.42%) Product Ownership
8 98 (1.84%) Data Centre
9 97 (1.82%) Analytical Mindset
10 76 (1.42%) Distributed Systems
11 68 (1.27%) Mobile App
11 68 (1.27%) Social Media
12 65 (1.22%) Security Posture
13 51 (0.96%) Low-Code
14 50 (0.94%) Enterprise Software
14 50 (0.94%) Virtual Team
15 44 (0.82%) Data Structures
16 43 (0.81%) Algorithms
17 42 (0.79%) IoT
18 40 (0.75%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 926 (17.34%) Windows
2 450 (8.43%) Windows Server
3 369 (6.91%) Linux
4 146 (2.73%) Windows 10
5 118 (2.21%) Windows Server 2016
6 106 (1.99%) Android
7 69 (1.29%) Apple iOS
8 65 (1.22%) Mac OS
9 52 (0.97%) Windows Server 2019
10 31 (0.58%) Unix
11 27 (0.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 26 (0.49%) CentOS
12 26 (0.49%) Ubuntu
13 18 (0.34%) VMS
14 17 (0.32%) Windows Server 2012
15 14 (0.26%) Windows 7
16 12 (0.22%) Debian
17 7 (0.13%) Windows 8
18 6 (0.11%) FreeRTOS
18 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,232 (23.07%) Continuous Improvement
2 957 (17.92%) Customer Service
3 709 (13.28%) Agile
4 546 (10.22%) Mentoring
5 542 (10.15%) Decision-Making
6 473 (8.86%) AI
7 464 (8.69%) CI/CD
8 452 (8.46%) Analytics
9 437 (8.18%) ITIL
10 425 (7.96%) DevOps
11 409 (7.66%) Cybersecurity
12 405 (7.58%) Collaborative Working
13 380 (7.12%) Business Intelligence
14 379 (7.10%) ERP
15 378 (7.08%) Software Engineering
16 358 (6.70%) Stakeholder Management
17 330 (6.18%) Computer Science
18 320 (5.99%) Coaching
19 311 (5.82%) Project Management
20 310 (5.81%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 822 (15.39%) SQL
2 613 (11.48%) Python
3 338 (6.33%) JavaScript
4 279 (5.22%) C#
5 237 (4.44%) Java
6 224 (4.19%) PowerShell
7 149 (2.79%) TypeScript
8 131 (2.45%) C++
9 105 (1.97%) Bash
10 74 (1.39%) PHP
11 56 (1.05%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 52 (0.97%) C
13 45 (0.84%) T-SQL
14 41 (0.77%) PL/SQL
15 31 (0.58%) Kotlin
15 31 (0.58%) Perl
16 28 (0.52%) R
16 28 (0.52%) Shell Script
17 27 (0.51%) Go
18 25 (0.47%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 777 (14.55%) Degree
2 428 (8.01%) Security Cleared
3 301 (5.64%) SC Cleared
4 209 (3.91%) DBS Check
5 161 (3.01%) Microsoft Certification
6 155 (2.90%) Computer Science Degree
7 87 (1.63%) BPSS Clearance
8 79 (1.48%) Cisco Certification
9 73 (1.37%) DV Cleared
10 66 (1.24%) A+ Certification
11 64 (1.20%) ACCA
12 61 (1.14%) CCNA
13 60 (1.12%) Azure Certification
13 60 (1.12%) CIMA
14 55 (1.03%) HNC
15 54 (1.01%) PMI Certification
16 47 (0.88%) CISSP
17 46 (0.86%) Network+ Certification
18 45 (0.84%) CompTIA Security+
18 45 (0.84%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 314 (5.88%) QA
2 243 (4.55%) Data Quality
3 163 (3.05%) Cyber Essentials
4 154 (2.88%) GDPR
5 136 (2.55%) SLA
6 130 (2.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 106 (1.99%) PCI DSS
8 93 (1.74%) Accessibility
9 83 (1.55%) NIST
10 40 (0.75%) ISO 9001
11 24 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 23 (0.43%) PMO
13 18 (0.34%) GMP
14 15 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
14 15 (0.28%) GRC
15 13 (0.24%) ISO 14001
16 12 (0.22%) Good Clinical Practice
16 12 (0.22%) SOC 2
16 12 (0.22%) TickIT
17 8 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 667 (12.49%) Active Directory
2 249 (4.66%) Hyper-V
3 185 (3.46%) Docker
4 178 (3.33%) VMware Infrastructure
5 72 (1.35%) Terminal Server
6 32 (0.60%) Firmware
6 32 (0.60%) Virtual Desktop
7 23 (0.43%) vSphere
8 20 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
9 12 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
10 10 (0.19%) Embedded Firmware
10 10 (0.19%) KVM
11 7 (0.13%) VMware Workstation
12 6 (0.11%) XenApp
13 5 (0.094%) ClearTrust
14 4 (0.075%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 4 (0.075%) Virtual Servers
15 3 (0.056%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 3 (0.056%) Terminal Services
16 2 (0.037%) Samba
Systems Management
1 199 (3.73%) Microsoft Intune
2 198 (3.71%) Terraform
3 177 (3.31%) Kubernetes
4 99 (1.85%) Ansible
5 57 (1.07%) SCCM
6 56 (1.05%) Grafana
7 37 (0.69%) Prometheus
8 21 (0.39%) Nagios
9 18 (0.34%) FortiGate
10 12 (0.22%) Kibana
10 12 (0.22%) vCenter Server
11 11 (0.21%) logstash
12 10 (0.19%) Jamf Pro
13 9 (0.17%) Autotask
13 9 (0.17%) Podman
13 9 (0.17%) Proxmox
13 9 (0.17%) Puppet
13 9 (0.17%) QRadar
13 9 (0.17%) Single Sign-On
13 9 (0.17%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,584 (29.66%) Microsoft
2 286 (5.36%) VMware
3 129 (2.42%) Veeam
4 122 (2.28%) Oracle
5 119 (2.23%) Google
6 116 (2.17%) SAP
7 110 (2.06%) Splunk
8 105 (1.97%) Cisco
9 102 (1.91%) SolarWinds
10 78 (1.46%) Salesforce
11 76 (1.42%) Tanium
12 73 (1.37%) Nimble Storage
13 72 (1.35%) Brocade
14 67 (1.25%) ServiceNow
15 66 (1.24%) Databricks
16 61 (1.14%) Apple
17 52 (0.97%) Adobe
18 51 (0.96%) Sage
19 45 (0.84%) Dell
20 38 (0.71%) Meraki