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

6 months to
11 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 4,892 5,234 10,188
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 8.12% 20.20% 15.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.10% 22.14% 18.41%
Number of salaries quoted 3,511 3,087 6,803
10th Percentile £26,250 £26,750 £25,500
25th Percentile £29,750 £32,500 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £49,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year -13.27% +8.89% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £65,000 £60,000
90th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £72,500
UK median annual salary £47,500 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -13.64% +10.00% -9.77%

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 44,063 23,640 55,332
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 73.10% 91.25% 84.46%
Number of salaries quoted 27,009 13,694 40,329
10th Percentile £28,500 £28,822 £27,000
25th Percentile £35,500 £38,250 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £53,688 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -6.87% +7.38% -8.26%
75th Percentile £69,576 £68,750 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £83,000 £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 11 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 11 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 -18 1,300 £41,500 -9.78% 662
South East -8 1,192 £45,000 -11.71% 802
Midlands -19 903 £39,500 -16.84% 478
North West -18 670 £42,500 -12.37% 365
South West -8 554 £43,500 -5.95% 308
West Midlands -24 538 £42,500 -19.05% 278
Yorkshire -8 501 £37,500 -10.71% 222
East of England -9 450 £40,000 -20.00% 288
East Midlands -4 362 £35,000 -11.95% 199
Scotland -5 320 £35,000 -30.00% 127
North East -12 129 £48,445 +7.65% 92
Wales -8 112 £40,500 -19.32% 81
Northern Ireland -6 87 £35,000 -36.36% 19
Isle of Man -1 1 £62,500 +64.47% 2
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
1 286 (5.85%) Microsoft Exchange
2 239 (4.89%) SharePoint
3 43 (0.88%) CMS
4 41 (0.84%) Confluence
5 29 (0.59%) IIS
6 23 (0.47%) WordPress
7 17 (0.35%) Apache
7 17 (0.35%) Apache Spark
8 14 (0.29%) Apache Airflow
9 12 (0.25%) Exchange Server 2013
9 12 (0.25%) SAS
10 10 (0.20%) Exchange Server 2007
10 10 (0.20%) Exchange Server 2010
11 8 (0.16%) nginx
12 7 (0.14%) Drupal
13 5 (0.10%) Anypoint
13 5 (0.10%) OpenStack
13 5 (0.10%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 4 (0.082%) Moodle
14 4 (0.082%) Totara
Applications
1 329 (6.73%) Microsoft Office
2 311 (6.36%) Microsoft Excel
3 50 (1.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 35 (0.72%) MS Visio
5 26 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
6 17 (0.35%) Microsoft Project
7 11 (0.22%) Adobe Illustrator
8 10 (0.20%) Photoshop
9 8 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.16%) Fusion 360
10 7 (0.14%) AutoCAD
11 4 (0.082%) Simulink
11 4 (0.082%) Trello
12 3 (0.061%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.061%) Elementor
13 2 (0.041%) Adobe Premiere
13 2 (0.041%) InDesign
13 2 (0.041%) Revit
13 2 (0.041%) Sketch
13 2 (0.041%) Weka
Business Applications
1 41 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
2 34 (0.70%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.53%) NetSuite
4 16 (0.33%) Dynamics NAV
5 15 (0.31%) Shopify
6 14 (0.29%) Sage X3
7 13 (0.27%) Magento
7 13 (0.27%) SAP CO
8 11 (0.22%) iTrent
9 10 (0.20%) SAP ERP
10 7 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
10 7 (0.14%) Q-Pulse
10 7 (0.14%) Workday HCM
11 6 (0.12%) SAP Business One
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%) SAP FI
13 4 (0.082%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 1,005 (20.54%) Azure
2 846 (17.29%) Microsoft 365
3 466 (9.53%) AWS
4 344 (7.03%) Power Platform
5 226 (4.62%) Entra ID
6 210 (4.29%) SaaS
7 141 (2.88%) GCP
8 133 (2.72%) Azure DevOps
9 111 (2.27%) GitHub
10 110 (2.25%) Serverless
11 78 (1.59%) Dynamics 365
12 76 (1.55%) Power Automate
13 72 (1.47%) Azure Data Factory
14 62 (1.27%) Amazon S3
15 61 (1.25%) AWS Lambda
16 56 (1.14%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 55 (1.12%) GitHub Actions
17 55 (1.12%) Google Workspace
18 51 (1.04%) PaaS
19 46 (0.94%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 337 (6.89%) DNS
2 287 (5.87%) DHCP
3 284 (5.81%) Firewall
4 160 (3.27%) WAN
5 156 (3.19%) VPN
6 130 (2.66%) TCP/IP
6 130 (2.66%) Wi-Fi
7 125 (2.56%) LAN
8 107 (2.19%) Broadband
9 84 (1.72%) VLAN
10 81 (1.66%) Wireless
11 67 (1.37%) VoIP
12 59 (1.21%) Network Security
13 43 (0.88%) SD-WAN
14 36 (0.74%) Internet
15 32 (0.65%) SAN
16 30 (0.61%) Remote Desktop
17 25 (0.51%) Unified Communications
18 22 (0.45%) Wireshark
19 20 (0.41%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 292 (5.97%) Power BI
2 204 (4.17%) SQL Server
3 88 (1.80%) Amazon RDS
4 77 (1.57%) PostgreSQL
5 76 (1.55%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 71 (1.45%) Relational Database
7 69 (1.41%) NoSQL
8 67 (1.37%) MySQL
9 59 (1.21%) Data Warehouse
10 47 (0.96%) Power Query
11 46 (0.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 45 (0.92%) Tableau
13 42 (0.86%) Azure SQL Database
14 39 (0.80%) DynamoDB
15 34 (0.70%) MongoDB
16 26 (0.53%) Amazon Redshift
17 23 (0.47%) Metadata
18 22 (0.45%) Data Lake
19 20 (0.41%) Big Data
20 19 (0.39%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 191 (3.90%) Git
2 151 (3.09%) JIRA
3 67 (1.37%) GitLab
4 51 (1.04%) Jenkins
5 27 (0.55%) Selenium
6 19 (0.39%) Rational DOORS
7 16 (0.33%) Maven
8 15 (0.31%) Cucumber
9 14 (0.29%) Cypress.io
9 14 (0.29%) LabVIEW
9 14 (0.29%) SonarQube
9 14 (0.29%) Visual Studio
10 12 (0.25%) Bitbucket
11 10 (0.20%) Burp Suite
11 10 (0.20%) Metasploit
11 10 (0.20%) Robot Framework
12 9 (0.18%) JUnit
12 9 (0.18%) Snyk
13 7 (0.14%) CircleCI
14 6 (0.12%) Subversion
General
1 2,444 (49.96%) Social Skills
2 1,388 (28.37%) Analytical Skills
3 909 (18.58%) Finance
4 341 (6.97%) Organisational Skills
5 297 (6.07%) Manufacturing
6 241 (4.93%) Public Sector
7 213 (4.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 212 (4.33%) Retail
9 209 (4.27%) Marketing
10 192 (3.92%) Legal
11 162 (3.31%) Law
12 140 (2.86%) Banking
13 129 (2.64%) Electronics
14 124 (2.53%) Telecoms
15 95 (1.94%) Presentation Skills
16 86 (1.76%) Documentation Skills
17 75 (1.53%) Games
18 74 (1.51%) Automotive
19 52 (1.06%) Aerospace
19 52 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 728 (14.88%) Analyst
2 672 (13.74%) IT Support
3 585 (11.96%) Support Engineer
4 525 (10.73%) Senior
5 379 (7.75%) Developer
6 356 (7.28%) IT Engineer
7 292 (5.97%) IT Support Engineer
8 255 (5.21%) Lead
9 224 (4.58%) Support Analyst
10 202 (4.13%) Support Technician
11 177 (3.62%) Systems Engineer
12 172 (3.52%) Technical Support
13 163 (3.33%) Business Analyst
14 160 (3.27%) Architect
15 159 (3.25%) IT Technician
16 156 (3.19%) 2nd Line Support
17 145 (2.96%) Consultant
18 141 (2.88%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 140 (2.86%) IT Support Technician
20 134 (2.74%) Technical Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 168 (3.43%) .NET
2 157 (3.21%) React
3 138 (2.82%) HTML
4 108 (2.21%) CSS
5 89 (1.82%) REST
6 83 (1.70%) Node.js
7 62 (1.27%) RESTful
8 52 (1.06%) Vue
9 49 (1.00%) SOAP
10 47 (0.96%) JSON
11 45 (0.92%) XML
12 43 (0.88%) AngularJS
13 41 (0.84%) Spring
14 40 (0.82%) Middleware
15 38 (0.78%) OAuth
15 38 (0.78%) Spring Boot
16 36 (0.74%) ASP.NET
17 31 (0.63%) Laravel
18 30 (0.61%) GraphQL
19 27 (0.55%) Django
Miscellaneous
1 391 (7.99%) Driving Licence
2 303 (6.19%) Onboarding
3 273 (5.58%) Self-Motivation
4 171 (3.50%) Management Information System
5 125 (2.56%) Analytical Mindset
6 121 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
7 112 (2.29%) Product Ownership
8 93 (1.90%) Cloud Native
9 90 (1.84%) Data Centre
10 79 (1.61%) Social Media
11 65 (1.33%) Distributed Systems
11 65 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
12 58 (1.19%) Mobile App
13 53 (1.08%) Low-Code
14 43 (0.88%) Data Structures
15 36 (0.74%) EPoS
16 35 (0.72%) Life Science
16 35 (0.72%) Security Posture
17 34 (0.70%) Virtual Team
18 33 (0.67%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 895 (18.30%) Windows
2 394 (8.05%) Windows Server
3 320 (6.54%) Linux
4 132 (2.70%) Windows 10
5 114 (2.33%) Windows Server 2016
6 104 (2.13%) Android
7 69 (1.41%) Apple iOS
8 54 (1.10%) Mac OS
9 37 (0.76%) Windows Server 2019
10 34 (0.70%) Unix
11 26 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 24 (0.49%) CentOS
13 21 (0.43%) Windows Server 2012
14 19 (0.39%) Ubuntu
15 15 (0.31%) Windows 7
16 12 (0.25%) VMS
17 10 (0.20%) Windows 8
18 9 (0.18%) Debian
19 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
20 4 (0.082%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 977 (19.97%) Continuous Improvement
2 877 (17.93%) Customer Service
3 660 (13.49%) Agile
4 501 (10.24%) Decision-Making
5 460 (9.40%) Mentoring
6 433 (8.85%) ITIL
7 404 (8.26%) DevOps
8 393 (8.03%) CI/CD
9 388 (7.93%) Analytics
10 377 (7.71%) Business Intelligence
11 376 (7.69%) Project Management
12 352 (7.20%) AI
13 334 (6.83%) Coaching
14 314 (6.42%) Cybersecurity
15 293 (5.99%) Stakeholder Management
16 289 (5.91%) Computer Science
17 279 (5.70%) ERP
17 279 (5.70%) Software Engineering
18 275 (5.62%) Process Improvement
19 274 (5.60%) CRM
Programming Languages
1 628 (12.84%) SQL
2 516 (10.55%) Python
3 276 (5.64%) JavaScript
4 217 (4.44%) PowerShell
5 184 (3.76%) C#
6 181 (3.70%) Java
7 98 (2.00%) TypeScript
8 79 (1.61%) Bash
9 76 (1.55%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 65 (1.33%) PHP
11 63 (1.29%) C++
12 48 (0.98%) C
13 43 (0.88%) T-SQL
14 26 (0.53%) Kotlin
15 25 (0.51%) Bicep
15 25 (0.51%) PL/SQL
16 24 (0.49%) Go
17 23 (0.47%) R
18 20 (0.41%) Scala
19 17 (0.35%) VBA
Qualifications
1 866 (17.70%) Degree
2 343 (7.01%) Security Cleared
3 230 (4.70%) SC Cleared
4 181 (3.70%) DBS Check
5 147 (3.00%) Microsoft Certification
6 131 (2.68%) Computer Science Degree
7 92 (1.88%) BPSS Clearance
8 80 (1.64%) ACCA
9 71 (1.45%) A+ Certification
10 70 (1.43%) CIMA
11 68 (1.39%) Cisco Certification
12 62 (1.27%) DV Cleared
13 56 (1.14%) CCNA
14 53 (1.08%) Master's Degree
15 51 (1.04%) CISSP
16 46 (0.94%) HNC
17 45 (0.92%) PMI Certification
18 42 (0.86%) Network+ Certification
19 40 (0.82%) AWS Certification
20 36 (0.74%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 251 (5.13%) QA
2 214 (4.37%) Data Quality
3 150 (3.07%) GDPR
4 137 (2.80%) Cyber Essentials
5 118 (2.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 104 (2.13%) PCI DSS
7 95 (1.94%) SLA
8 79 (1.61%) NIST
9 61 (1.25%) Accessibility
10 36 (0.74%) ISO 9001
11 31 (0.63%) Actionable Recommendations
12 22 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 15 (0.31%) SOC 2
14 14 (0.29%) GMP
15 8 (0.16%) GRC
15 8 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 8 (0.16%) PMO
16 7 (0.14%) TickIT
17 6 (0.12%) COBIT
17 6 (0.12%) ISO 14001
System Software
1 623 (12.74%) Active Directory
2 204 (4.17%) Hyper-V
3 185 (3.78%) Docker
4 134 (2.74%) VMware Infrastructure
5 72 (1.47%) Terminal Server
6 27 (0.55%) Firmware
7 22 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
9 15 (0.31%) vSphere
10 11 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.20%) KVM
11 10 (0.20%) VMware Workstation
12 6 (0.12%) XenApp
13 5 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.082%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 4 (0.082%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 3 (0.061%) Embedded Firmware
16 2 (0.041%) VMware NSX
17 1 (0.020%) Lustre
17 1 (0.020%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 208 (4.25%) Terraform
2 169 (3.45%) Microsoft Intune
3 143 (2.92%) Kubernetes
4 90 (1.84%) Ansible
5 63 (1.29%) SCCM
6 55 (1.12%) Grafana
7 34 (0.70%) Prometheus
8 21 (0.43%) BMC PATROL
9 18 (0.37%) Nagios
9 18 (0.37%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.27%) Jamf Pro
10 13 (0.27%) vCenter Server
11 12 (0.25%) Autotask
11 12 (0.25%) Cisco CUCM
12 10 (0.20%) FortiGate
12 10 (0.20%) Nmap
13 9 (0.18%) Puppet
13 9 (0.18%) ZABBIX
14 8 (0.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 8 (0.16%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 1,346 (27.51%) Microsoft
2 233 (4.76%) VMware
3 144 (2.94%) Oracle
4 125 (2.56%) Veeam
5 115 (2.35%) SAP
6 102 (2.09%) Cisco
6 102 (2.09%) Google
6 102 (2.09%) Splunk
7 100 (2.04%) SolarWinds
8 83 (1.70%) ServiceNow
9 75 (1.53%) Databricks
10 73 (1.49%) Tanium
11 72 (1.47%) Brocade
11 72 (1.47%) Nimble Storage
12 67 (1.37%) Apple
13 66 (1.35%) Adobe
14 62 (1.27%) Salesforce
15 57 (1.17%) Sage
16 48 (0.98%) Dell
17 37 (0.76%) HubSpot