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

6 months to
13 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 4 4
Rank change year-on-year -2 0 +4
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 8,324 6,181 7,627
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 9.61% 18.00% 15.15%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.57% 20.67% 19.03%
Number of salaries quoted 5,568 3,491 2,858
10th Percentile £27,000 £25,684 £26,750
25th Percentile £31,250 £29,000 £35,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £43,000 £38,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +11.69% -23.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £58,750 £55,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £72,500 £68,750 £81,250
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 61,341 29,897 40,080
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.81% 87.07% 79.61%
Number of salaries quoted 43,024 16,149 20,012
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,733 £31,125
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £47,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year +17.02% -10.48% -2.78%
75th Percentile £70,000 £63,750 £68,025
90th Percentile £87,500 £80,000 £81,250
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -

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 13 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 13 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 -5 2,084 £45,000 - 955
South East -1 1,953 £41,543 +3.86% 959
Midlands -6 1,500 £42,500 +13.33% 575
North West -3 1,078 £46,544 -4.47% 481
South West -2 1,011 £45,000 +20.00% 478
East of England -1 874 £44,000 +35.38% 411
West Midlands -5 838 £42,500 - 352
East Midlands -7 660 £42,500 +30.77% 223
Yorkshire -7 623 £42,500 +28.79% 319
North East +4 392 £50,000 +53.85% 163
Northern Ireland +8 341 £70,000 +16.67% 184
Scotland +5 333 £37,625 +12.31% 290
Wales -13 245 £42,500 -11.68% 113
Isle of Man 0 3 £35,000 - 7
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
1 479 (5.75%) SharePoint
2 370 (4.44%) Microsoft Exchange
3 67 (0.80%) Confluence
4 59 (0.71%) CMS
5 55 (0.66%) IIS
6 40 (0.48%) Apache
7 32 (0.38%) Apache Airflow
8 31 (0.37%) WordPress
9 28 (0.34%) Sitecore CMS
10 26 (0.31%) Apache Spark
11 14 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
12 13 (0.16%) Jupyter
13 12 (0.14%) nginx
14 10 (0.12%) WebSphere
15 9 (0.11%) WebLogic
16 8 (0.096%) CICS
16 8 (0.096%) SAS
17 7 (0.084%) OpenEdge
18 4 (0.048%) Oracle SOA Suite
18 4 (0.048%) Tomcat
Applications
1 625 (7.51%) Microsoft Office
2 567 (6.81%) Microsoft Excel
3 90 (1.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 61 (0.73%) Spreadsheet
5 52 (0.62%) AutoCAD
6 46 (0.55%) MS Visio
7 42 (0.50%) Microsoft Project
8 41 (0.49%) Simulink
9 32 (0.38%) Revit
10 23 (0.28%) EPLAN
11 17 (0.20%) Navisworks
12 16 (0.19%) SOLIDWORKS
13 12 (0.14%) OrCAD
14 9 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
15 8 (0.096%) Chatbot
16 7 (0.084%) Lightworks
16 7 (0.084%) Siemens NX
17 5 (0.060%) Adobe Illustrator
17 5 (0.060%) Adobe XD
17 5 (0.060%) Mathematica
Business Applications
1 74 (0.89%) Dynamics CRM
2 65 (0.78%) NetSuite
3 45 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
4 33 (0.40%) Shopify
5 23 (0.28%) Oracle EBS
6 21 (0.25%) Workday HCM
7 17 (0.20%) Dynamics NAV
8 15 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
9 14 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
9 14 (0.17%) SAP Business One
10 13 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
11 12 (0.14%) IBM Planning Analytics
11 12 (0.14%) Oracle Cash Management
11 12 (0.14%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 12 (0.14%) SAP ERP
12 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
13 10 (0.12%) JDE EnterpriseOne
13 10 (0.12%) Primavera
14 9 (0.11%) Magento
14 9 (0.11%) Sage X3
Cloud Services
1 1,454 (17.47%) Azure
2 1,328 (15.95%) Microsoft 365
3 700 (8.41%) AWS
4 625 (7.51%) Power Platform
5 480 (5.77%) Entra ID
6 299 (3.59%) SaaS
7 238 (2.86%) GCP
8 181 (2.17%) Azure DevOps
9 157 (1.89%) PowerApps
10 155 (1.86%) GitHub
11 151 (1.81%) Dynamics 365
12 147 (1.77%) Power Automate
13 135 (1.62%) OneDrive
14 114 (1.37%) Serverless
15 102 (1.23%) Microsoft Copilot
16 84 (1.01%) Google Workspace
17 71 (0.85%) Amazon S3
18 68 (0.82%) AWS CloudFormation
19 67 (0.80%) GitHub Actions
20 57 (0.68%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 470 (5.65%) DNS
2 462 (5.55%) Firewall
3 388 (4.66%) DHCP
4 298 (3.58%) VPN
5 248 (2.98%) TCP/IP
6 220 (2.64%) Wi-Fi
7 204 (2.45%) WAN
8 201 (2.41%) LAN
9 184 (2.21%) Wireless
10 160 (1.92%) VLAN
11 131 (1.57%) Network Security
12 113 (1.36%) VoIP
13 68 (0.82%) Internet
14 67 (0.80%) Broadband
15 33 (0.40%) Remote Desktop
16 32 (0.38%) SAN
16 32 (0.38%) SSL
17 30 (0.36%) 5G
18 29 (0.35%) Ethernet
19 27 (0.32%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 492 (5.91%) Power BI
2 334 (4.01%) SQL Server
3 138 (1.66%) MySQL
4 132 (1.59%) Relational Database
5 123 (1.48%) Amazon RDS
6 112 (1.35%) Data Warehouse
7 98 (1.18%) PostgreSQL
8 86 (1.03%) NoSQL
9 66 (0.79%) Tableau
10 65 (0.78%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 57 (0.68%) MongoDB
12 54 (0.65%) Data Lake
13 53 (0.64%) Power Query
14 51 (0.61%) Azure SQL Database
14 51 (0.61%) Big Data
15 50 (0.60%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 47 (0.56%) Electronic Patient Records
17 35 (0.42%) Metadata
18 33 (0.40%) Oracle Reports
19 27 (0.32%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 327 (3.93%) Git
2 246 (2.96%) JIRA
3 104 (1.25%) GitLab
4 94 (1.13%) Jenkins
5 40 (0.48%) Eclipse
5 40 (0.48%) Selenium
6 34 (0.41%) Cucumber
6 34 (0.41%) Subversion
7 31 (0.37%) Claude Code
8 27 (0.32%) Cypress.io
9 26 (0.31%) JUnit
10 25 (0.30%) Oracle Forms
11 23 (0.28%) Postman
12 22 (0.26%) LabVIEW
12 22 (0.26%) Rational DOORS
13 20 (0.24%) Bitbucket
14 16 (0.19%) Burp Suite
15 14 (0.17%) REST Assured
15 14 (0.17%) SonarQube
15 14 (0.17%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 4,092 (49.16%) Social Skills
2 2,301 (27.64%) Analytical Skills
3 1,335 (16.04%) Finance
4 1,035 (12.43%) Manufacturing
5 699 (8.40%) Organisational Skills
6 460 (5.53%) Retail
7 459 (5.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 394 (4.73%) Electronics
9 391 (4.70%) Public Sector
10 349 (4.19%) Aerospace
11 339 (4.07%) Legal
12 336 (4.04%) Law
13 300 (3.60%) Marketing
14 212 (2.55%) Telecoms
15 164 (1.97%) Influencing Skills
16 157 (1.89%) Automotive
17 146 (1.75%) Documentation Skills
18 128 (1.54%) Presentation Skills
19 117 (1.41%) Banking
20 110 (1.32%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,088 (13.07%) Analyst
2 859 (10.32%) Senior
3 777 (9.33%) IT Support
4 737 (8.85%) Developer
5 604 (7.26%) Support Engineer
6 426 (5.12%) Lead
7 416 (5.00%) Support Analyst
8 396 (4.76%) IT Engineer
9 360 (4.32%) Consultant
10 306 (3.68%) IT Support Engineer
11 295 (3.54%) Technical Support
12 272 (3.27%) Support Technician
13 248 (2.98%) Technical Engineer
14 247 (2.97%) IT Technician
15 232 (2.79%) Architect
16 228 (2.74%) Software Engineer
17 224 (2.69%) Systems Engineer
18 223 (2.68%) Technical Support Engineer
19 215 (2.58%) Senior Developer
20 200 (2.40%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 382 (4.59%) .NET
2 289 (3.47%) Terraform
3 220 (2.64%) React
4 201 (2.41%) REST
5 189 (2.27%) HTML
6 141 (1.69%) CSS
7 138 (1.66%) RESTful
8 99 (1.19%) Node.js
9 97 (1.17%) Web Services
10 88 (1.06%) ASP.NET
11 87 (1.05%) SOAP
12 83 (1.00%) Spring
13 77 (0.93%) Vue
14 76 (0.91%) Spring Boot
15 75 (0.90%) XML
16 73 (0.88%) Kafka
16 73 (0.88%) Middleware
17 72 (0.86%) AngularJS
18 65 (0.78%) JSON
19 56 (0.67%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 805 (9.67%) Driving Licence
2 590 (7.09%) Onboarding
3 460 (5.53%) Self-Motivation
4 392 (4.71%) Management Information System
5 211 (2.53%) Cloud Native
6 182 (2.19%) Product Ownership
7 179 (2.15%) Enterprise Software
8 156 (1.87%) Legacy Systems
9 154 (1.85%) Robotics
10 136 (1.63%) Data Centre
11 97 (1.17%) NHS
12 90 (1.08%) IoT
13 89 (1.07%) Cyber Threat
14 88 (1.06%) CCTV
15 87 (1.05%) Analytical Mindset
15 87 (1.05%) Distributed Systems
16 82 (0.99%) SCADA
16 82 (0.99%) Security Posture
17 81 (0.97%) Social Media
18 76 (0.91%) FMCG
Operating Systems
1 1,256 (15.09%) Windows
2 546 (6.56%) Windows Server
3 450 (5.41%) Linux
4 125 (1.50%) Windows 10
5 104 (1.25%) Windows Server 2016
6 90 (1.08%) Apple iOS
6 90 (1.08%) macOS
7 87 (1.05%) Android
8 41 (0.49%) Windows Server 2019
9 37 (0.44%) Unix
10 26 (0.31%) Ubuntu
11 15 (0.18%) Embedded Linux
12 14 (0.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 14 (0.17%) VMS
13 12 (0.14%) Debian
14 8 (0.096%) FreeRTOS
14 8 (0.096%) Rocky
15 7 (0.084%) Windows Server 2012
16 6 (0.072%) CentOS
17 5 (0.060%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,293 (27.55%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,546 (18.57%) Customer Service
3 1,140 (13.70%) Agile
4 905 (10.87%) Stakeholder Management
5 880 (10.57%) Decision-Making
6 838 (10.07%) AI
7 806 (9.68%) Mentoring
8 762 (9.15%) CI/CD
9 728 (8.75%) Project Delivery
10 676 (8.12%) Collaborative Working
11 641 (7.70%) Cybersecurity
12 614 (7.38%) Analytics
12 614 (7.38%) DevOps
13 604 (7.26%) Software Engineering
14 588 (7.06%) ERP
15 581 (6.98%) ITIL
16 568 (6.82%) Project Management
17 540 (6.49%) Business Intelligence
18 529 (6.36%) Validation
19 514 (6.17%) CRM
Programming Languages
1 1,117 (13.42%) SQL
2 796 (9.56%) Python
3 455 (5.47%) C#
4 439 (5.27%) JavaScript
5 320 (3.84%) Java
6 311 (3.74%) PowerShell
7 217 (2.61%) C++
8 202 (2.43%) TypeScript
9 127 (1.53%) Bash
10 91 (1.09%) C
11 65 (0.78%) PHP
12 62 (0.74%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 61 (0.73%) T-SQL
14 57 (0.68%) MATLAB
15 56 (0.67%) Ruby
16 46 (0.55%) Shell Script
17 45 (0.54%) PL/SQL
17 45 (0.54%) Rust
18 41 (0.49%) Perl
19 37 (0.44%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,375 (16.52%) Degree
2 792 (9.51%) Security Cleared
3 549 (6.60%) SC Cleared
4 291 (3.50%) HNC
5 243 (2.92%) DBS Check
6 238 (2.86%) HND
7 206 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
8 200 (2.40%) Microsoft Certification
9 195 (2.34%) DV Cleared
10 174 (2.09%) BPSS Clearance
11 155 (1.86%) Azure Certification
12 111 (1.33%) Chartered Engineer
13 93 (1.12%) NVQ Level 3
14 92 (1.11%) Cisco Certification
15 90 (1.08%) Master's Degree
16 72 (0.86%) A+ Certification
17 71 (0.85%) PMI Certification
18 65 (0.78%) City & Guilds
19 59 (0.71%) AWS Certification
19 59 (0.71%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 509 (6.11%) QA
2 314 (3.77%) Data Quality
3 233 (2.80%) GDPR
4 228 (2.74%) Accessibility
5 181 (2.17%) SLA
6 173 (2.08%) Cyber Essentials
7 135 (1.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 104 (1.25%) PCI DSS
9 68 (0.82%) NIST
10 57 (0.68%) ISO 9001
11 49 (0.59%) PMO
12 35 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 24 (0.29%) DO-254
14 23 (0.28%) GMP
15 20 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
15 20 (0.24%) Good Clinical Practice
15 20 (0.24%) NCSC
16 15 (0.18%) GRC
17 14 (0.17%) GxP
17 14 (0.17%) ISO 19650
System Software
1 912 (10.96%) Active Directory
2 300 (3.60%) Hyper-V
3 274 (3.29%) Docker
4 216 (2.59%) VMware Infrastructure
5 92 (1.11%) Firmware
6 72 (0.86%) Terminal Server
7 46 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
8 36 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
9 31 (0.37%) Embedded Firmware
10 25 (0.30%) vSphere
11 15 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
12 13 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.072%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 5 (0.060%) ClearTrust
14 5 (0.060%) Squid
15 4 (0.048%) KVM
16 3 (0.036%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.036%) VMware Server
17 2 (0.024%) Samba
17 2 (0.024%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 288 (3.46%) Microsoft Intune
2 236 (2.84%) Kubernetes
3 106 (1.27%) Ansible
4 70 (0.84%) BMC PATROL
5 68 (0.82%) Grafana
6 56 (0.67%) SCCM
7 51 (0.61%) Prometheus
8 48 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
9 26 (0.31%) Jamf Pro
10 23 (0.28%) FortiGate
11 20 (0.24%) Functional Safety
12 17 (0.20%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
13 15 (0.18%) Puppet
14 13 (0.16%) Kibana
14 13 (0.16%) Nmap
15 12 (0.14%) Nagios
16 11 (0.13%) logstash
17 10 (0.12%) Failover Clustering
17 10 (0.12%) Progress Chef
17 10 (0.12%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 2,545 (30.57%) Microsoft
2 344 (4.13%) VMware
3 248 (2.98%) Google
4 233 (2.80%) SAP
5 220 (2.64%) Workday
6 182 (2.19%) Oracle
7 155 (1.86%) Cisco
8 147 (1.77%) Veeam
9 135 (1.62%) ServiceNow
10 126 (1.51%) Splunk
11 117 (1.41%) Salesforce
12 101 (1.21%) Sage
13 95 (1.14%) SolarWinds
14 82 (0.99%) Fortinet
15 80 (0.96%) Siemens
15 80 (0.96%) Tanium
16 75 (0.90%) Databricks
17 73 (0.88%) Brocade
17 73 (0.88%) Nimble Storage
18 71 (0.85%) Apple