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 22 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -9 +3 +7
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,875 5,274 10,288
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 7.65% 19.73% 15.33%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.57% 21.64% 18.22%
Number of salaries quoted 3,524 3,172 6,838
10th Percentile £26,250 £26,250 £25,500
25th Percentile £29,750 £32,500 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £47,500 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year -10.53% +5.56% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £63,750 £60,000
90th Percentile £75,000 £79,512 £72,500
UK median annual salary £47,500 £52,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.52% +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 46,121 24,374 56,453
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 72.41% 91.20% 84.12%
Number of salaries quoted 28,125 13,880 40,703
10th Percentile £29,000 £28,250 £27,000
25th Percentile £36,250 £37,500 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -8.90%
75th Percentile £70,000 £68,750 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £82,500 £77,500
UK median annual salary £57,500 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -4.17% +9.09% -10.57%

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 22 April 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 22 April 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 -17 1,300 £42,500 -7.61% 639
South East -8 1,177 £45,000 -10.00% 767
Midlands -23 905 £40,000 -11.11% 499
North West -15 670 £42,500 -11.16% 342
South West -7 548 £43,500 -3.33% 312
West Midlands -24 542 £42,500 -15.00% 289
Yorkshire -10 500 £38,750 -7.74% 208
East of England -8 460 £40,339 -19.32% 287
East Midlands -6 360 £35,000 -9.09% 210
Scotland -4 311 £35,000 -30.00% 141
North East -12 130 £48,472 +7.72% 97
Wales -10 116 £42,500 -15.00% 63
Northern Ireland -4 85 £29,750 -45.91% 72
Isle of Man -1 1 £62,500 +64.47% 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
1 278 (5.70%) Microsoft Exchange
2 250 (5.13%) SharePoint
3 41 (0.84%) CMS
4 40 (0.82%) Confluence
5 25 (0.51%) IIS
5 25 (0.51%) WordPress
6 18 (0.37%) Apache
7 16 (0.33%) Apache Spark
8 14 (0.29%) Apache Airflow
9 11 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2013
9 11 (0.23%) SAS
10 9 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2007
10 9 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2010
11 8 (0.16%) nginx
12 7 (0.14%) Drupal
13 5 (0.10%) OpenStack
13 5 (0.10%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 5 (0.10%) Skype for Business
14 4 (0.082%) Anypoint
14 4 (0.082%) Moodle
Applications
1 324 (6.65%) Microsoft Office
2 303 (6.22%) Microsoft Excel
3 48 (0.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 36 (0.74%) MS Visio
5 32 (0.66%) Spreadsheet
6 16 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
7 11 (0.23%) Adobe Illustrator
8 9 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 9 (0.18%) Fusion 360
8 9 (0.18%) Photoshop
9 4 (0.082%) AutoCAD
9 4 (0.082%) Simulink
10 3 (0.062%) Elementor
10 3 (0.062%) Trello
11 2 (0.041%) Adobe After Effects
11 2 (0.041%) Adobe Captivate
11 2 (0.041%) Adobe Premiere
11 2 (0.041%) Adobe XD
11 2 (0.041%) Sketch
11 2 (0.041%) Weka
Business Applications
1 39 (0.80%) Dynamics CRM
2 38 (0.78%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.53%) NetSuite
4 17 (0.35%) Dynamics NAV
5 16 (0.33%) Shopify
6 15 (0.31%) Sage X3
7 14 (0.29%) Magento
8 13 (0.27%) SAP CO
8 13 (0.27%) SAP ERP
9 12 (0.25%) iTrent
10 8 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
10 8 (0.16%) SAP Business One
11 7 (0.14%) Q-Pulse
11 7 (0.14%) Workday HCM
12 5 (0.10%) IBM Planning Analytics
12 5 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
13 4 (0.082%) Dynamics GP
13 4 (0.082%) Oracle Payables
13 4 (0.082%) Salesforce CRM
13 4 (0.082%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 981 (20.12%) Azure
2 828 (16.98%) Microsoft 365
3 470 (9.64%) AWS
4 347 (7.12%) Power Platform
5 222 (4.55%) Entra ID
6 208 (4.27%) SaaS
7 139 (2.85%) GCP
8 126 (2.58%) Azure DevOps
9 116 (2.38%) Serverless
10 111 (2.28%) GitHub
11 83 (1.70%) Dynamics 365
12 75 (1.54%) Power Automate
13 73 (1.50%) Azure Data Factory
14 64 (1.31%) Amazon S3
15 62 (1.27%) AWS Lambda
16 59 (1.21%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 55 (1.13%) GitHub Actions
17 55 (1.13%) Google Workspace
18 51 (1.05%) PaaS
19 47 (0.96%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 314 (6.44%) DNS
2 291 (5.97%) Firewall
3 266 (5.46%) DHCP
4 163 (3.34%) WAN
5 159 (3.26%) VPN
6 129 (2.65%) Wi-Fi
7 128 (2.63%) LAN
8 122 (2.50%) TCP/IP
9 106 (2.17%) Broadband
10 90 (1.85%) Wireless
11 84 (1.72%) VLAN
12 68 (1.39%) VoIP
13 62 (1.27%) Network Security
14 43 (0.88%) SD-WAN
15 35 (0.72%) Internet
16 32 (0.66%) SAN
17 26 (0.53%) Remote Desktop
18 25 (0.51%) Unified Communications
19 22 (0.45%) Wireshark
20 20 (0.41%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 291 (5.97%) Power BI
2 211 (4.33%) SQL Server
3 79 (1.62%) PostgreSQL
4 76 (1.56%) SQL Server Reporting Services
5 72 (1.48%) Amazon RDS
6 69 (1.42%) NoSQL
7 66 (1.35%) MySQL
7 66 (1.35%) Relational Database
8 60 (1.23%) Data Warehouse
9 47 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 45 (0.92%) Azure SQL Database
11 44 (0.90%) Power Query
12 41 (0.84%) Tableau
13 40 (0.82%) DynamoDB
14 36 (0.74%) MongoDB
15 25 (0.51%) Amazon Redshift
16 24 (0.49%) Data Lake
17 23 (0.47%) Metadata
18 22 (0.45%) Big Data
18 22 (0.45%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 191 (3.92%) Git
2 149 (3.06%) JIRA
3 69 (1.42%) GitLab
4 53 (1.09%) Jenkins
5 22 (0.45%) Selenium
6 20 (0.41%) Rational DOORS
7 18 (0.37%) Cucumber
8 17 (0.35%) Maven
9 16 (0.33%) SonarQube
10 14 (0.29%) Cypress.io
11 13 (0.27%) Bitbucket
11 13 (0.27%) LabVIEW
12 11 (0.23%) Visual Studio
13 9 (0.18%) Burp Suite
13 9 (0.18%) JUnit
13 9 (0.18%) Metasploit
14 7 (0.14%) CircleCI
15 6 (0.12%) JMeter
15 6 (0.12%) Postman
15 6 (0.12%) Subversion
General
1 2,388 (48.98%) Social Skills
2 1,375 (28.21%) Analytical Skills
3 897 (18.40%) Finance
4 334 (6.85%) Organisational Skills
5 298 (6.11%) Manufacturing
6 232 (4.76%) Public Sector
7 211 (4.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 203 (4.16%) Marketing
8 203 (4.16%) Retail
9 181 (3.71%) Legal
10 151 (3.10%) Law
11 139 (2.85%) Banking
12 128 (2.63%) Electronics
13 127 (2.61%) Telecoms
14 93 (1.91%) Presentation Skills
15 85 (1.74%) Documentation Skills
16 75 (1.54%) Automotive
17 73 (1.50%) Games
18 53 (1.09%) Advertising
19 51 (1.05%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 733 (15.04%) Analyst
2 644 (13.21%) IT Support
3 580 (11.90%) Support Engineer
4 532 (10.91%) Senior
5 373 (7.65%) Developer
6 352 (7.22%) IT Engineer
7 283 (5.81%) IT Support Engineer
8 257 (5.27%) Lead
9 226 (4.64%) Support Analyst
10 205 (4.21%) Support Technician
11 171 (3.51%) Technical Support
12 166 (3.41%) Architect
12 166 (3.41%) Business Analyst
13 162 (3.32%) IT Technician
13 162 (3.32%) Systems Engineer
14 153 (3.14%) 2nd Line Support
15 147 (3.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 145 (2.97%) Consultant
17 141 (2.89%) IT Support Technician
18 138 (2.83%) Technical Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 165 (3.38%) .NET
2 156 (3.20%) React
3 136 (2.79%) HTML
4 107 (2.19%) CSS
5 96 (1.97%) REST
6 80 (1.64%) Node.js
7 60 (1.23%) RESTful
8 56 (1.15%) SOAP
9 52 (1.07%) JSON
10 51 (1.05%) Vue
11 50 (1.03%) XML
12 49 (1.01%) Middleware
13 43 (0.88%) AngularJS
14 42 (0.86%) Spring
15 39 (0.80%) Spring Boot
16 38 (0.78%) OAuth
17 33 (0.68%) ASP.NET
18 30 (0.62%) EDI
18 30 (0.62%) GraphQL
19 29 (0.59%) Laravel
Miscellaneous
1 382 (7.84%) Driving Licence
2 302 (6.19%) Onboarding
3 268 (5.50%) Self-Motivation
4 169 (3.47%) Management Information System
5 135 (2.77%) Analytical Mindset
6 112 (2.30%) Product Ownership
7 103 (2.11%) Legacy Systems
8 98 (2.01%) Cloud Native
9 86 (1.76%) Data Centre
10 78 (1.60%) Social Media
11 66 (1.35%) Distributed Systems
12 65 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
13 57 (1.17%) Mobile App
14 52 (1.07%) Low-Code
15 41 (0.84%) Data Structures
16 36 (0.74%) Virtual Team
17 35 (0.72%) Security Posture
18 34 (0.70%) Life Science
19 33 (0.68%) IoT
20 32 (0.66%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 855 (17.54%) Windows
2 376 (7.71%) Windows Server
3 300 (6.15%) Linux
4 132 (2.71%) Windows 10
5 104 (2.13%) Android
6 97 (1.99%) Windows Server 2016
7 67 (1.37%) Apple iOS
8 53 (1.09%) Mac OS
9 37 (0.76%) Windows Server 2019
10 34 (0.70%) Unix
11 26 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 25 (0.51%) CentOS
13 20 (0.41%) Ubuntu
13 20 (0.41%) Windows Server 2012
14 14 (0.29%) VMS
14 14 (0.29%) Windows 7
15 10 (0.21%) Debian
16 9 (0.18%) Windows 8
17 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
18 4 (0.082%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 994 (20.39%) Continuous Improvement
2 868 (17.81%) Customer Service
3 641 (13.15%) Agile
4 494 (10.13%) Decision-Making
5 445 (9.13%) Mentoring
6 428 (8.78%) ITIL
7 401 (8.23%) DevOps
8 400 (8.21%) CI/CD
9 381 (7.82%) Analytics
10 375 (7.69%) Project Management
11 371 (7.61%) Business Intelligence
12 347 (7.12%) AI
13 325 (6.67%) Coaching
14 314 (6.44%) Cybersecurity
15 296 (6.07%) Stakeholder Management
16 289 (5.93%) ERP
17 283 (5.81%) Software Engineering
18 281 (5.76%) Computer Science
19 279 (5.72%) CRM
20 271 (5.56%) Collaborative Working
Programming Languages
1 638 (13.09%) SQL
2 512 (10.50%) Python
3 274 (5.62%) JavaScript
4 214 (4.39%) PowerShell
5 187 (3.84%) Java
6 182 (3.73%) C#
7 101 (2.07%) TypeScript
8 81 (1.66%) Bash
9 74 (1.52%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 63 (1.29%) PHP
11 61 (1.25%) C++
12 47 (0.96%) C
13 35 (0.72%) T-SQL
14 26 (0.53%) Kotlin
14 26 (0.53%) PL/SQL
15 25 (0.51%) Bicep
16 24 (0.49%) Go
17 23 (0.47%) R
18 20 (0.41%) Scala
19 17 (0.35%) Rust
Qualifications
1 822 (16.86%) Degree
2 317 (6.50%) Security Cleared
3 210 (4.31%) SC Cleared
4 191 (3.92%) DBS Check
5 147 (3.02%) Microsoft Certification
6 125 (2.56%) Computer Science Degree
7 90 (1.85%) BPSS Clearance
8 74 (1.52%) A+ Certification
9 73 (1.50%) ACCA
10 69 (1.42%) Cisco Certification
11 65 (1.33%) CIMA
12 57 (1.17%) DV Cleared
13 56 (1.15%) CCNA
14 50 (1.03%) CISSP
14 50 (1.03%) Master's Degree
15 46 (0.94%) HNC
16 45 (0.92%) Network+ Certification
16 45 (0.92%) PMI Certification
17 41 (0.84%) AWS Certification
18 36 (0.74%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 253 (5.19%) QA
2 223 (4.57%) Data Quality
3 147 (3.02%) GDPR
4 119 (2.44%) Cyber Essentials
5 118 (2.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 104 (2.13%) SLA
7 88 (1.81%) PCI DSS
8 82 (1.68%) NIST
9 52 (1.07%) Accessibility
10 37 (0.76%) ISO 9001
11 31 (0.64%) Actionable Recommendations
12 21 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 16 (0.33%) SOC 2
14 14 (0.29%) GMP
15 11 (0.23%) GRC
15 11 (0.23%) TickIT
16 9 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 8 (0.16%) PMO
18 7 (0.14%) ISO 14001
19 6 (0.12%) COBIT
System Software
1 596 (12.23%) Active Directory
2 185 (3.79%) Hyper-V
3 183 (3.75%) Docker
4 133 (2.73%) VMware Infrastructure
5 56 (1.15%) Terminal Server
6 26 (0.53%) Firmware
7 24 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
8 17 (0.35%) vSphere
9 10 (0.21%) KVM
9 10 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
10 9 (0.18%) VMware Workstation
11 6 (0.12%) XenApp
12 5 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.082%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 4 (0.082%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 3 (0.062%) Embedded Firmware
15 2 (0.041%) VMware NSX
16 1 (0.021%) BitLocker
16 1 (0.021%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 209 (4.29%) Terraform
2 167 (3.43%) Microsoft Intune
3 140 (2.87%) Kubernetes
4 88 (1.81%) Ansible
5 59 (1.21%) SCCM
6 54 (1.11%) Grafana
7 31 (0.64%) Prometheus
8 20 (0.41%) BMC PATROL
9 18 (0.37%) Nagios
10 17 (0.35%) Single Sign-On
11 11 (0.23%) Autotask
11 11 (0.23%) vCenter Server
12 10 (0.21%) Cisco CUCM
12 10 (0.21%) Puppet
13 9 (0.18%) FortiGate
13 9 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
13 9 (0.18%) Kibana
13 9 (0.18%) Nmap
14 8 (0.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 8 (0.16%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 1,340 (27.49%) Microsoft
2 216 (4.43%) VMware
3 143 (2.93%) Oracle
4 110 (2.26%) SAP
5 108 (2.22%) Veeam
6 101 (2.07%) Cisco
7 99 (2.03%) Google
8 88 (1.81%) Splunk
9 87 (1.78%) SolarWinds
10 81 (1.66%) ServiceNow
11 77 (1.58%) Databricks
12 65 (1.33%) Apple
13 63 (1.29%) Adobe
14 62 (1.27%) Salesforce
15 57 (1.17%) Tanium
16 56 (1.15%) Brocade
16 56 (1.15%) Nimble Storage
17 51 (1.05%) Sage
18 49 (1.01%) Dell
19 37 (0.76%) HubSpot