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

6 months to
26 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 5,334 6,089 11,283
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 7.80% 19.92% 14.64%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.11% 21.97% 18.28%
Number of salaries quoted 4,005 3,258 6,915
10th Percentile £26,500 £25,750 £25,000
25th Percentile £30,250 £30,000 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £42,224 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year +0.65% -6.17% -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 47,994 27,715 61,724
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.17% 90.69% 80.08%
Number of salaries quoted 33,712 14,205 43,019
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,500 £27,500
25th Percentile £38,999 £32,851 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,681 £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 £80,250 £78,500
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 26 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 26 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 1,434 £42,500 -1.16% 575
South East -4 1,316 £45,000 +5.88% 736
Midlands -8 982 £42,000 -1.18% 418
North West -7 752 £45,000 -2.17% 320
South West -6 630 £44,000 +17.33% 291
West Midlands -9 563 £42,500 -5.56% 230
East of England -3 546 £45,000 +28.57% 239
Yorkshire -12 505 £41,500 +18.57% 187
East Midlands -10 416 £35,000 -4.11% 188
Scotland -4 251 £33,000 -32.37% 108
North East -12 177 £49,250 +23.13% 85
Wales -21 123 £45,000 +8.31% 43
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
1 333 (6.24%) Microsoft Exchange
2 326 (6.11%) SharePoint
3 53 (0.99%) Confluence
4 51 (0.96%) CMS
5 32 (0.60%) IIS
6 27 (0.51%) WordPress
7 25 (0.47%) Apache
8 21 (0.39%) Apache Airflow
9 14 (0.26%) Apache Spark
10 12 (0.22%) SAS
11 11 (0.21%) Exchange Server 2013
12 10 (0.19%) WebSphere
13 9 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2007
13 9 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2010
14 7 (0.13%) OpenEdge
14 7 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 7 (0.13%) WebLogic
15 5 (0.094%) Skype for Business
16 4 (0.075%) Moodle
16 4 (0.075%) nginx
Applications
1 340 (6.37%) Microsoft Office
2 318 (5.96%) Microsoft Excel
3 44 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 37 (0.69%) Spreadsheet
5 30 (0.56%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.30%) Microsoft Project
7 9 (0.17%) Simulink
8 8 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 8 (0.15%) Adobe Illustrator
9 6 (0.11%) AutoCAD
10 5 (0.094%) Fusion 360
10 5 (0.094%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.094%) Trello
11 4 (0.075%) Chatbot
12 3 (0.056%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.056%) Autodesk Inventor
12 3 (0.056%) Lightworks
12 3 (0.056%) Sketch
12 3 (0.056%) Windchill
13 2 (0.037%) Siemens NX
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%) Workday HCM
13 6 (0.11%) SAP CO
14 5 (0.094%) JDE EnterpriseOne
14 5 (0.094%) Q-Pulse
15 4 (0.075%) Raiser’s Edge
15 4 (0.075%) Sage X3
15 4 (0.075%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,123 (21.05%) Azure
2 975 (18.28%) Microsoft 365
3 556 (10.42%) AWS
4 406 (7.61%) Power Platform
5 257 (4.82%) Entra ID
6 180 (3.37%) SaaS
7 171 (3.21%) GCP
8 125 (2.34%) Azure DevOps
9 114 (2.14%) Dynamics 365
9 114 (2.14%) Serverless
10 91 (1.71%) GitHub
11 90 (1.69%) Power Automate
12 82 (1.54%) PowerApps
13 69 (1.29%) OneDrive
14 57 (1.07%) Amazon S3
15 48 (0.90%) AWS Lambda
15 48 (0.90%) Google Workspace
15 48 (0.90%) Microsoft Copilot
16 45 (0.84%) IaaS
17 44 (0.82%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 390 (7.31%) Firewall
2 350 (6.56%) DNS
3 301 (5.64%) DHCP
4 209 (3.92%) VPN
5 188 (3.52%) WAN
6 160 (3.00%) TCP/IP
7 159 (2.98%) LAN
8 151 (2.83%) Wi-Fi
9 117 (2.19%) Wireless
10 112 (2.10%) VLAN
11 108 (2.02%) Broadband
12 89 (1.67%) Network Security
13 86 (1.61%) VoIP
14 43 (0.81%) Internet
15 38 (0.71%) SD-WAN
16 30 (0.56%) SAN
17 24 (0.45%) HTTP
18 21 (0.39%) SSL
18 21 (0.39%) Structured Cabling
19 18 (0.34%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 328 (6.15%) Power BI
2 238 (4.46%) SQL Server
3 99 (1.86%) Amazon RDS
4 89 (1.67%) MySQL
5 81 (1.52%) Data Warehouse
6 76 (1.42%) PostgreSQL
7 73 (1.37%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 66 (1.24%) NoSQL
9 64 (1.20%) Relational Database
10 59 (1.11%) Tableau
11 57 (1.07%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 46 (0.86%) Power Query
13 39 (0.73%) MongoDB
14 36 (0.67%) Azure SQL Database
15 34 (0.64%) Big Data
16 32 (0.60%) Data Lake
17 28 (0.52%) DynamoDB
17 28 (0.52%) Elasticsearch
18 25 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
19 18 (0.34%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 209 (3.92%) 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%) Eclipse
8 17 (0.32%) JUnit
9 15 (0.28%) Selenium
10 14 (0.26%) SonarQube
11 13 (0.24%) Cypress.io
11 13 (0.24%) Maven
12 11 (0.21%) Oracle Forms
13 10 (0.19%) Bitbucket
13 10 (0.19%) Postman
14 8 (0.15%) Burp Suite
14 8 (0.15%) Claude Code
14 8 (0.15%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
15 7 (0.13%) MLflow
General
1 2,540 (47.62%) Social Skills
2 1,451 (27.20%) Analytical Skills
3 851 (15.95%) Finance
4 402 (7.54%) Manufacturing
5 342 (6.41%) Organisational Skills
6 246 (4.61%) Public Sector
7 234 (4.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 211 (3.96%) Retail
9 206 (3.86%) Law
10 203 (3.81%) Legal
11 177 (3.32%) Marketing
12 133 (2.49%) Electronics
12 133 (2.49%) Telecoms
13 123 (2.31%) Banking
14 110 (2.06%) Documentation Skills
15 100 (1.87%) Influencing Skills
16 80 (1.50%) Aerospace
17 73 (1.37%) Games
18 60 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
19 55 (1.03%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 750 (14.06%) Analyst
2 651 (12.20%) IT Support
3 567 (10.63%) Support Engineer
4 556 (10.42%) Senior
5 489 (9.17%) Developer
6 385 (7.22%) IT Engineer
7 294 (5.51%) IT Support Engineer
8 282 (5.29%) Lead
9 244 (4.57%) Support Technician
10 220 (4.12%) Support Analyst
11 213 (3.99%) Systems Engineer
12 197 (3.69%) IT Technician
13 191 (3.58%) Technical Support
14 177 (3.32%) Software Engineer
15 176 (3.30%) Consultant
16 171 (3.21%) Architect
17 158 (2.96%) Technical Engineer
18 156 (2.92%) IT Support Technician
19 150 (2.81%) Technical Support Engineer
20 133 (2.49%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 205 (3.84%) .NET
2 192 (3.60%) React
3 159 (2.98%) HTML
4 143 (2.68%) REST
5 119 (2.23%) CSS
6 98 (1.84%) Node.js
7 83 (1.56%) RESTful
8 80 (1.50%) SOAP
9 74 (1.39%) Middleware
10 71 (1.33%) JSON
11 68 (1.27%) Vue
12 64 (1.20%) AngularJS
13 63 (1.18%) XML
14 45 (0.84%) Spring
15 43 (0.81%) Web Services
16 42 (0.79%) ASP.NET
16 42 (0.79%) Spring Boot
17 38 (0.71%) EDI
18 37 (0.69%) OAuth
19 29 (0.54%) Laravel
Miscellaneous
1 412 (7.72%) Driving Licence
2 302 (5.66%) Onboarding
3 246 (4.61%) Self-Motivation
4 196 (3.67%) Management Information System
5 145 (2.72%) Cloud Native
6 134 (2.51%) Legacy Systems
7 128 (2.40%) Product Ownership
8 98 (1.84%) Data Centre
9 97 (1.82%) Analytical Mindset
10 76 (1.42%) Distributed Systems
11 68 (1.27%) Social Media
12 67 (1.26%) Mobile App
13 66 (1.24%) Security Posture
14 51 (0.96%) Low-Code
15 50 (0.94%) Virtual Team
16 49 (0.92%) Enterprise Software
17 44 (0.82%) Data Structures
18 43 (0.81%) Algorithms
19 42 (0.79%) IoT
20 41 (0.77%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 930 (17.44%) Windows
2 453 (8.49%) Windows Server
3 371 (6.96%) Linux
4 146 (2.74%) Windows 10
5 119 (2.23%) Windows Server 2016
6 106 (1.99%) Android
7 69 (1.29%) Apple iOS
8 66 (1.24%) Mac OS
9 53 (0.99%) Windows Server 2019
10 31 (0.58%) Unix
11 28 (0.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 26 (0.49%) CentOS
12 26 (0.49%) Ubuntu
13 17 (0.32%) VMS
13 17 (0.32%) Windows Server 2012
14 14 (0.26%) Windows 7
15 13 (0.24%) Debian
16 7 (0.13%) Windows 8
17 6 (0.11%) FreeRTOS
17 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,219 (22.85%) Continuous Improvement
2 960 (18.00%) Customer Service
3 707 (13.25%) Agile
4 547 (10.25%) Mentoring
5 542 (10.16%) Decision-Making
6 475 (8.91%) AI
7 464 (8.70%) CI/CD
8 454 (8.51%) Analytics
9 436 (8.17%) ITIL
10 424 (7.95%) DevOps
11 415 (7.78%) Cybersecurity
12 405 (7.59%) Collaborative Working
13 381 (7.14%) Business Intelligence
13 381 (7.14%) ERP
14 378 (7.09%) Software Engineering
15 360 (6.75%) Stakeholder Management
16 331 (6.21%) Computer Science
17 314 (5.89%) Project Delivery
18 313 (5.87%) Project Management
19 307 (5.76%) Coaching
Programming Languages
1 827 (15.50%) SQL
2 614 (11.51%) Python
3 338 (6.34%) JavaScript
4 281 (5.27%) C#
5 235 (4.41%) Java
6 225 (4.22%) PowerShell
7 148 (2.77%) TypeScript
8 132 (2.47%) C++
9 106 (1.99%) Bash
10 75 (1.41%) PHP
11 55 (1.03%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 53 (0.99%) C
13 44 (0.82%) T-SQL
14 41 (0.77%) PL/SQL
15 31 (0.58%) Perl
16 30 (0.56%) Kotlin
16 30 (0.56%) Shell Script
17 28 (0.52%) R
18 27 (0.51%) Go
19 26 (0.49%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 780 (14.62%) Degree
2 428 (8.02%) Security Cleared
3 302 (5.66%) SC Cleared
4 206 (3.86%) DBS Check
5 160 (3.00%) Microsoft Certification
6 155 (2.91%) Computer Science Degree
7 87 (1.63%) BPSS Clearance
8 79 (1.48%) Cisco Certification
9 71 (1.33%) DV Cleared
10 66 (1.24%) A+ Certification
11 64 (1.20%) ACCA
12 61 (1.14%) CCNA
13 60 (1.12%) CIMA
14 59 (1.11%) Azure Certification
15 55 (1.03%) HNC
16 53 (0.99%) PMI Certification
17 47 (0.88%) CISSP
18 46 (0.86%) Network+ Certification
19 45 (0.84%) CompTIA Security+
20 44 (0.82%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 298 (5.59%) QA
2 243 (4.56%) Data Quality
3 162 (3.04%) Cyber Essentials
4 155 (2.91%) GDPR
5 135 (2.53%) SLA
6 129 (2.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 107 (2.01%) PCI DSS
8 94 (1.76%) Accessibility
9 81 (1.52%) NIST
10 40 (0.75%) ISO 9001
11 25 (0.47%) 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%) Def Stans
System Software
1 668 (12.52%) Active Directory
2 248 (4.65%) Hyper-V
3 186 (3.49%) Docker
4 176 (3.30%) VMware Infrastructure
5 72 (1.35%) Terminal Server
6 33 (0.62%) Firmware
7 32 (0.60%) Virtual Desktop
8 24 (0.45%) vSphere
9 20 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
10 12 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
11 11 (0.21%) Embedded Firmware
12 10 (0.19%) KVM
13 7 (0.13%) VMware Workstation
14 6 (0.11%) XenApp
15 5 (0.094%) ClearTrust
16 4 (0.075%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 4 (0.075%) Virtual Servers
17 3 (0.056%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 3 (0.056%) Terminal Services
18 2 (0.037%) Samba
Systems Management
1 199 (3.73%) Microsoft Intune
2 197 (3.69%) Terraform
3 177 (3.32%) Kubernetes
4 100 (1.87%) Ansible
5 56 (1.05%) Grafana
5 56 (1.05%) SCCM
6 37 (0.69%) Prometheus
7 21 (0.39%) Nagios
8 18 (0.34%) FortiGate
9 12 (0.22%) Kibana
9 12 (0.22%) vCenter Server
10 11 (0.21%) logstash
11 10 (0.19%) Jamf Pro
11 10 (0.19%) Podman
12 9 (0.17%) Autotask
12 9 (0.17%) Failover Clustering
12 9 (0.17%) Functional Safety
12 9 (0.17%) Puppet
12 9 (0.17%) QRadar
12 9 (0.17%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,593 (29.87%) Microsoft
2 284 (5.32%) VMware
3 129 (2.42%) Veeam
4 122 (2.29%) Oracle
5 119 (2.23%) Google
6 116 (2.17%) SAP
7 107 (2.01%) Splunk
8 104 (1.95%) Cisco
9 101 (1.89%) SolarWinds
10 79 (1.48%) Salesforce
11 76 (1.42%) Tanium
12 73 (1.37%) Nimble Storage
13 72 (1.35%) Brocade
14 68 (1.27%) ServiceNow
15 67 (1.26%) Databricks
16 61 (1.14%) Apple
17 52 (0.97%) Adobe
17 52 (0.97%) Sage
18 45 (0.84%) Dell
19 39 (0.73%) Meraki