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

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 4 6
Rank change year-on-year -6 +2 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,425 6,114 11,211
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 7.82% 19.42% 14.63%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.13% 21.60% 18.26%
Number of salaries quoted 4,072 3,290 6,877
10th Percentile £26,500 £25,750 £25,000
25th Percentile £30,250 £30,000 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £42,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year +1.19% -6.67% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £60,000 £60,000
90th Percentile £73,750 £77,500 £72,500
UK median annual salary £47,500 £49,000 £49,000
% change year-on-year -3.06% - -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 48,748 28,312 61,402
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.23% 89.93% 80.12%
Number of salaries quoted 34,304 14,687 42,723
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,500 £27,500
25th Percentile £39,000 £32,851 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £53,171 £50,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.34% - -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £67,500 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £80,000 £78,750
UK median annual salary £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -9.09%

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 30 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 30 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 1,458 £44,000 +3.53% 552
South East -4 1,342 £45,000 +5.88% 743
Midlands -8 999 £42,000 -1.18% 403
North West -7 761 £45,000 -2.17% 304
South West -6 644 £44,000 +17.33% 264
West Midlands -9 570 £42,500 -5.56% 230
East of England -3 557 £44,500 +27.14% 236
Yorkshire -10 513 £42,500 +21.43% 177
East Midlands -10 426 £35,000 -4.11% 174
Scotland -4 251 £33,000 -27.69% 90
North East -11 184 £50,000 +25.00% 92
Wales -24 122 £45,000 - 46
Northern Ireland -7 72 £38,500 -30.00% 80
Isle of Man +2 3 £35,000 +1.45% 5
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
1 340 (6.27%) Microsoft Exchange
2 334 (6.16%) SharePoint
3 53 (0.98%) Confluence
4 52 (0.96%) CMS
5 32 (0.59%) IIS
6 28 (0.52%) WordPress
7 25 (0.46%) Apache
8 20 (0.37%) Apache Airflow
9 15 (0.28%) Apache Spark
10 12 (0.22%) SAS
11 11 (0.20%) Exchange Server 2013
11 11 (0.20%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2007
12 9 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2010
13 8 (0.15%) WebLogic
14 7 (0.13%) OpenEdge
15 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 5 (0.092%) Skype for Business
17 4 (0.074%) nginx
17 4 (0.074%) OpenStack
Applications
1 350 (6.45%) Microsoft Office
2 329 (6.06%) Microsoft Excel
3 46 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 37 (0.68%) Spreadsheet
5 30 (0.55%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
7 10 (0.18%) Simulink
8 8 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 8 (0.15%) Adobe Illustrator
9 6 (0.11%) AutoCAD
10 5 (0.092%) Fusion 360
10 5 (0.092%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.092%) Trello
11 4 (0.074%) Chatbot
11 4 (0.074%) Lightworks
12 3 (0.055%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.055%) Autodesk Inventor
12 3 (0.055%) Sketch
12 3 (0.055%) Windchill
13 2 (0.037%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 52 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
2 31 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
3 28 (0.52%) NetSuite
4 22 (0.41%) Dynamics NAV
5 19 (0.35%) Shopify
6 16 (0.29%) Magento
7 15 (0.28%) SAP ERP
8 13 (0.24%) Dynamics AX
9 12 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
10 10 (0.18%) IBM Planning Analytics
10 10 (0.18%) iTrent
11 9 (0.17%) SAP Business One
12 8 (0.15%) Sage 50
13 7 (0.13%) Workday HCM
14 6 (0.11%) JDE EnterpriseOne
14 6 (0.11%) SAP CO
15 5 (0.092%) Q-Pulse
15 5 (0.092%) Raiser’s Edge
16 4 (0.074%) Dynamics GP
16 4 (0.074%) Line 50
Cloud Services
1 1,141 (21.03%) Azure
2 998 (18.40%) Microsoft 365
3 572 (10.54%) AWS
4 417 (7.69%) Power Platform
5 266 (4.90%) Entra ID
6 187 (3.45%) SaaS
7 178 (3.28%) GCP
8 126 (2.32%) Azure DevOps
9 115 (2.12%) Dynamics 365
10 112 (2.06%) Serverless
11 94 (1.73%) Power Automate
12 93 (1.71%) GitHub
13 86 (1.59%) PowerApps
14 72 (1.33%) OneDrive
15 54 (1.00%) Amazon S3
16 49 (0.90%) Microsoft Copilot
17 47 (0.87%) Google Workspace
18 46 (0.85%) IaaS
19 45 (0.83%) AWS Lambda
19 45 (0.83%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 401 (7.39%) Firewall
2 354 (6.53%) DNS
3 303 (5.59%) DHCP
4 213 (3.93%) VPN
5 194 (3.58%) WAN
6 165 (3.04%) LAN
7 163 (3.00%) TCP/IP
8 154 (2.84%) Wi-Fi
9 121 (2.23%) Wireless
10 114 (2.10%) VLAN
11 109 (2.01%) Broadband
12 93 (1.71%) Network Security
13 87 (1.60%) VoIP
14 43 (0.79%) Internet
15 39 (0.72%) SD-WAN
16 29 (0.53%) SAN
17 24 (0.44%) HTTP
18 21 (0.39%) SSL
18 21 (0.39%) Structured Cabling
19 20 (0.37%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 339 (6.25%) Power BI
2 242 (4.46%) SQL Server
3 98 (1.81%) Amazon RDS
4 89 (1.64%) MySQL
5 83 (1.53%) Data Warehouse
6 75 (1.38%) PostgreSQL
7 74 (1.36%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 66 (1.22%) NoSQL
8 66 (1.22%) Relational Database
9 62 (1.14%) Tableau
10 58 (1.07%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 47 (0.87%) Power Query
12 39 (0.72%) MongoDB
13 36 (0.66%) Azure SQL Database
14 35 (0.65%) Big Data
15 32 (0.59%) Data Lake
16 28 (0.52%) Elasticsearch
17 27 (0.50%) DynamoDB
18 23 (0.42%) Amazon Redshift
19 18 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 210 (3.87%) Git
2 155 (2.86%) JIRA
3 73 (1.35%) GitLab
4 46 (0.85%) Jenkins
5 29 (0.53%) Rational DOORS
6 21 (0.39%) Cucumber
7 19 (0.35%) Subversion
8 17 (0.31%) Eclipse
9 16 (0.29%) JUnit
10 15 (0.28%) Selenium
10 15 (0.28%) SonarQube
11 14 (0.26%) Cypress.io
12 12 (0.22%) Maven
13 11 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
14 10 (0.18%) Bitbucket
14 10 (0.18%) Postman
15 8 (0.15%) Burp Suite
15 8 (0.15%) Claude Code
15 8 (0.15%) MLflow
15 8 (0.15%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 2,590 (47.74%) Social Skills
2 1,466 (27.02%) Analytical Skills
3 853 (15.72%) Finance
4 419 (7.72%) Manufacturing
5 359 (6.62%) Organisational Skills
6 250 (4.61%) Public Sector
7 236 (4.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 217 (4.00%) Retail
9 211 (3.89%) Law
10 207 (3.82%) Legal
11 179 (3.30%) Marketing
12 135 (2.49%) Electronics
12 135 (2.49%) Telecoms
13 125 (2.30%) Banking
14 111 (2.05%) Documentation Skills
15 102 (1.88%) Influencing Skills
16 80 (1.47%) Aerospace
17 75 (1.38%) Games
18 62 (1.14%) Presentation Skills
19 55 (1.01%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 757 (13.95%) Analyst
2 663 (12.22%) IT Support
3 576 (10.62%) Support Engineer
4 561 (10.34%) Senior
5 497 (9.16%) Developer
6 393 (7.24%) IT Engineer
7 298 (5.49%) IT Support Engineer
8 288 (5.31%) Lead
9 249 (4.59%) Support Technician
10 227 (4.18%) Support Analyst
11 217 (4.00%) Systems Engineer
12 204 (3.76%) IT Technician
13 197 (3.63%) Technical Support
14 179 (3.30%) Consultant
14 179 (3.30%) Software Engineer
15 173 (3.19%) Architect
16 164 (3.02%) Technical Engineer
17 160 (2.95%) IT Support Technician
18 156 (2.88%) Technical Support Engineer
19 134 (2.47%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 207 (3.82%) .NET
2 191 (3.52%) React
3 161 (2.97%) HTML
4 144 (2.65%) REST
5 120 (2.21%) CSS
6 98 (1.81%) Node.js
7 83 (1.53%) RESTful
8 78 (1.44%) SOAP
9 73 (1.35%) Middleware
10 71 (1.31%) JSON
11 69 (1.27%) Vue
12 66 (1.22%) AngularJS
13 61 (1.12%) XML
14 45 (0.83%) Spring
15 43 (0.79%) Web Services
16 42 (0.77%) ASP.NET
16 42 (0.77%) Spring Boot
17 39 (0.72%) EDI
17 39 (0.72%) OAuth
18 29 (0.53%) ASP.NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 420 (7.74%) Driving Licence
2 312 (5.75%) Onboarding
3 249 (4.59%) Self-Motivation
4 198 (3.65%) Management Information System
5 150 (2.76%) Cloud Native
6 134 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
7 128 (2.36%) Product Ownership
8 100 (1.84%) Data Centre
9 98 (1.81%) Analytical Mindset
10 77 (1.42%) Distributed Systems
11 68 (1.25%) Social Media
12 67 (1.24%) Mobile App
13 66 (1.22%) Security Posture
14 52 (0.96%) Enterprise Software
15 50 (0.92%) Virtual Team
16 49 (0.90%) Low-Code
17 45 (0.83%) IoT
18 44 (0.81%) Algorithms
18 44 (0.81%) Data Structures
19 43 (0.79%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 947 (17.46%) Windows
2 456 (8.41%) Windows Server
3 379 (6.99%) Linux
4 149 (2.75%) Windows 10
5 118 (2.18%) Windows Server 2016
6 107 (1.97%) Android
7 68 (1.25%) Apple iOS
8 67 (1.24%) Mac OS
9 52 (0.96%) Windows Server 2019
10 32 (0.59%) Unix
11 28 (0.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 26 (0.48%) CentOS
12 26 (0.48%) Ubuntu
13 17 (0.31%) VMS
14 15 (0.28%) Windows 7
14 15 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
15 14 (0.26%) Debian
16 7 (0.13%) FreeRTOS
16 7 (0.13%) Windows 8
17 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,248 (23.00%) Continuous Improvement
2 975 (17.97%) Customer Service
3 719 (13.25%) Agile
4 560 (10.32%) Mentoring
5 550 (10.14%) Decision-Making
6 484 (8.92%) AI
7 474 (8.74%) CI/CD
8 463 (8.53%) Analytics
9 455 (8.39%) ITIL
10 438 (8.07%) DevOps
11 427 (7.87%) Cybersecurity
12 418 (7.71%) Collaborative Working
13 393 (7.24%) Business Intelligence
14 386 (7.12%) ERP
14 386 (7.12%) Software Engineering
15 369 (6.80%) Stakeholder Management
16 328 (6.05%) Computer Science
17 321 (5.92%) Project Delivery
18 312 (5.75%) Coaching
19 311 (5.73%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 846 (15.59%) SQL
2 627 (11.56%) Python
3 343 (6.32%) JavaScript
4 285 (5.25%) C#
5 237 (4.37%) Java
6 235 (4.33%) PowerShell
7 154 (2.84%) TypeScript
8 136 (2.51%) C++
9 107 (1.97%) Bash
10 75 (1.38%) PHP
11 56 (1.03%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 54 (1.00%) C
13 46 (0.85%) T-SQL
14 39 (0.72%) PL/SQL
15 31 (0.57%) Perl
16 30 (0.55%) Go
16 30 (0.55%) Kotlin
16 30 (0.55%) Shell Script
17 27 (0.50%) R
18 26 (0.48%) Rust
Qualifications
1 776 (14.30%) Degree
2 441 (8.13%) Security Cleared
3 308 (5.68%) SC Cleared
4 207 (3.82%) DBS Check
5 163 (3.00%) Microsoft Certification
6 153 (2.82%) Computer Science Degree
7 86 (1.59%) BPSS Clearance
8 81 (1.49%) Cisco Certification
9 75 (1.38%) DV Cleared
10 66 (1.22%) A+ Certification
11 63 (1.16%) Azure Certification
11 63 (1.16%) CCNA
12 62 (1.14%) ACCA
13 58 (1.07%) CIMA
14 57 (1.05%) HNC
15 54 (1.00%) PMI Certification
16 49 (0.90%) CISSP
17 45 (0.83%) CompTIA Security+
17 45 (0.83%) Network+ Certification
17 45 (0.83%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 305 (5.62%) QA
2 244 (4.50%) Data Quality
3 163 (3.00%) Cyber Essentials
4 157 (2.89%) GDPR
5 137 (2.53%) SLA
6 133 (2.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 110 (2.03%) PCI DSS
8 98 (1.81%) Accessibility
9 83 (1.53%) NIST
10 41 (0.76%) ISO 9001
11 26 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 23 (0.42%) PMO
13 19 (0.35%) GMP
14 15 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
14 15 (0.28%) GRC
15 14 (0.26%) Good Clinical Practice
16 13 (0.24%) ISO 14001
17 12 (0.22%) SOC 2
17 12 (0.22%) TickIT
18 8 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 682 (12.57%) Active Directory
2 253 (4.66%) Hyper-V
3 188 (3.47%) Docker
4 179 (3.30%) VMware Infrastructure
5 72 (1.33%) Terminal Server
6 33 (0.61%) Firmware
7 32 (0.59%) Virtual Desktop
8 26 (0.48%) vSphere
9 20 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.20%) Embedded Firmware
10 11 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.18%) KVM
12 7 (0.13%) VMware Workstation
13 6 (0.11%) XenApp
14 5 (0.092%) ClearTrust
15 4 (0.074%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 4 (0.074%) Virtual Servers
16 3 (0.055%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 3 (0.055%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.055%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 205 (3.78%) Terraform
2 201 (3.71%) Microsoft Intune
3 186 (3.43%) Kubernetes
4 103 (1.90%) Ansible
5 57 (1.05%) SCCM
6 56 (1.03%) Grafana
7 37 (0.68%) Prometheus
8 21 (0.39%) Nagios
9 18 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 12 (0.22%) Kibana
11 11 (0.20%) logstash
11 11 (0.20%) Puppet
11 11 (0.20%) vCenter Server
12 10 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
12 10 (0.18%) Podman
13 9 (0.17%) Autotask
13 9 (0.17%) Failover Clustering
13 9 (0.17%) Functional Safety
13 9 (0.17%) QRadar
13 9 (0.17%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,630 (30.05%) Microsoft
2 287 (5.29%) VMware
3 128 (2.36%) Veeam
4 124 (2.29%) Oracle
5 122 (2.25%) Google
6 119 (2.19%) SAP
7 107 (1.97%) Cisco
7 107 (1.97%) Splunk
8 100 (1.84%) SolarWinds
9 80 (1.47%) Salesforce
10 76 (1.40%) Tanium
11 75 (1.38%) ServiceNow
12 73 (1.35%) Nimble Storage
13 72 (1.33%) Brocade
14 69 (1.27%) Databricks
15 60 (1.11%) Apple
16 52 (0.96%) Adobe
16 52 (0.96%) Sage
17 47 (0.87%) Dell
18 40 (0.74%) Fortinet