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

6 months to
13 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 4 5
Rank change year-on-year -6 +1 +5
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,402 6,572 8,726
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 8.30% 18.92% 14.59%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.78% 21.63% 18.55%
Number of salaries quoted 4,599 3,641 4,443
10th Percentile £26,750 £25,750 £25,750
25th Percentile £31,250 £29,750 £32,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £40,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -11.11% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £58,750 £62,296
90th Percentile £73,750 £73,750 £75,000
UK median annual salary £47,500 £46,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +2.15% -7.00% -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 54,349 30,379 47,045
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.43% 87.44% 78.64%
Number of salaries quoted 38,185 16,502 29,548
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,500 £29,071
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £38,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £47,773 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +15.13% -4.45% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £65,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.84%

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 August 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 August 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 1,634 £45,000 +5.88% 917
South East -3 1,544 £45,000 +5.88% 1,127
Midlands -8 1,191 £42,500 +10.39% 665
North West -5 862 £45,000 - 470
South West -5 784 £45,000 +25.00% 521
West Midlands -9 654 £42,500 -4.59% 402
East of England -4 643 £42,500 +21.43% 410
Yorkshire -7 540 £42,500 +21.43% 318
East Midlands -9 534 £40,000 +14.29% 264
Scotland 0 279 £33,500 -22.54% 232
North East -10 232 £48,500 +25.97% 144
Northern Ireland -5 179 £45,000 -23.73% 129
Wales -22 164 £45,000 -6.49% 99
Isle of Man 0 3 £35,000 +1.45% 3
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
1 354 (5.53%) SharePoint
2 348 (5.44%) Microsoft Exchange
3 66 (1.03%) Confluence
4 46 (0.72%) IIS
5 43 (0.67%) CMS
6 34 (0.53%) WordPress
7 29 (0.45%) Apache
8 23 (0.36%) Apache Airflow
9 15 (0.23%) Apache Spark
9 15 (0.23%) SAS
10 10 (0.16%) WebSphere
11 9 (0.14%) nginx
11 9 (0.14%) WebLogic
12 7 (0.11%) OpenEdge
13 6 (0.094%) Jupyter
14 5 (0.078%) Skype for Business
15 4 (0.062%) Anypoint
15 4 (0.062%) Exchange Server 2013
15 4 (0.062%) OpenStack
15 4 (0.062%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 406 (6.34%) Microsoft Office
2 384 (6.00%) Microsoft Excel
3 52 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 50 (0.78%) Spreadsheet
5 40 (0.62%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
7 21 (0.33%) AutoCAD
8 20 (0.31%) Simulink
9 12 (0.19%) Revit
10 8 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 8 (0.12%) Adobe Illustrator
10 8 (0.12%) Chatbot
11 6 (0.094%) Adobe XD
11 6 (0.094%) EPLAN
11 6 (0.094%) Fusion 360
11 6 (0.094%) Navisworks
11 6 (0.094%) Sketch
12 5 (0.078%) Photoshop
12 5 (0.078%) SOLIDWORKS
12 5 (0.078%) Trello
Business Applications
1 54 (0.84%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.64%) Dynamics CRM
3 33 (0.52%) NetSuite
4 25 (0.39%) Shopify
5 18 (0.28%) Magento
6 17 (0.27%) SAP ERP
7 16 (0.25%) SAP Business One
8 15 (0.23%) Dynamics NAV
8 15 (0.23%) IBM Planning Analytics
9 13 (0.20%) Dynamics AX
10 12 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
10 12 (0.19%) Workday HCM
11 11 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
12 10 (0.16%) JDE EnterpriseOne
12 10 (0.16%) Sage X3
13 9 (0.14%) Sage 50
14 8 (0.12%) Primavera
15 7 (0.11%) NEC Housing
15 7 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
16 6 (0.094%) Raiser’s Edge
Cloud Services
1 1,311 (20.48%) Azure
2 1,109 (17.32%) Microsoft 365
3 654 (10.22%) AWS
4 508 (7.94%) Power Platform
5 328 (5.12%) Entra ID
6 220 (3.44%) GCP
7 219 (3.42%) SaaS
8 160 (2.50%) Azure DevOps
9 135 (2.11%) Dynamics 365
10 121 (1.89%) GitHub
11 120 (1.87%) Serverless
12 112 (1.75%) Power Automate
13 109 (1.70%) PowerApps
14 82 (1.28%) OneDrive
15 79 (1.23%) Microsoft Copilot
16 55 (0.86%) Amazon S3
17 54 (0.84%) GitHub Actions
18 52 (0.81%) Microsoft Purview
19 50 (0.78%) AWS Lambda
20 49 (0.77%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 415 (6.48%) Firewall
2 389 (6.08%) DNS
3 332 (5.19%) DHCP
4 235 (3.67%) VPN
5 219 (3.42%) TCP/IP
6 191 (2.98%) WAN
7 175 (2.73%) LAN
8 156 (2.44%) Wi-Fi
9 152 (2.37%) Wireless
10 124 (1.94%) VLAN
11 108 (1.69%) Network Security
12 100 (1.56%) VoIP
13 95 (1.48%) Broadband
14 43 (0.67%) Internet
15 31 (0.48%) SAN
16 29 (0.45%) HTTP
16 29 (0.45%) SSL
17 28 (0.44%) SD-WAN
18 22 (0.34%) MQTT
18 22 (0.34%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 394 (6.15%) Power BI
2 311 (4.86%) SQL Server
3 127 (1.98%) MySQL
4 121 (1.89%) Amazon RDS
5 103 (1.61%) Relational Database
6 100 (1.56%) Data Warehouse
7 92 (1.44%) PostgreSQL
8 85 (1.33%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 78 (1.22%) NoSQL
10 71 (1.11%) Tableau
11 64 (1.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 45 (0.70%) Electronic Patient Records
12 45 (0.70%) MongoDB
13 43 (0.67%) Power Query
14 42 (0.66%) Big Data
15 39 (0.61%) Azure SQL Database
16 35 (0.55%) Data Lake
17 31 (0.48%) DynamoDB
18 25 (0.39%) Elasticsearch
19 22 (0.34%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 277 (4.33%) Git
2 220 (3.44%) JIRA
3 80 (1.25%) GitLab
4 67 (1.05%) Jenkins
5 31 (0.48%) Eclipse
5 31 (0.48%) Subversion
6 26 (0.41%) Cucumber
6 26 (0.41%) Rational DOORS
7 25 (0.39%) JUnit
7 25 (0.39%) Selenium
8 20 (0.31%) Claude Code
8 20 (0.31%) Postman
9 18 (0.28%) Oracle Forms
10 17 (0.27%) Cypress.io
11 15 (0.23%) Bitbucket
12 14 (0.22%) SonarQube
13 13 (0.20%) Burp Suite
14 11 (0.17%) Maven
14 11 (0.17%) Metasploit
14 11 (0.17%) Visual Studio
General
1 3,049 (47.63%) Social Skills
2 1,789 (27.94%) Analytical Skills
3 991 (15.48%) Finance
4 586 (9.15%) Manufacturing
5 394 (6.15%) Organisational Skills
6 371 (5.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 296 (4.62%) Law
8 290 (4.53%) Public Sector
9 271 (4.23%) Legal
10 265 (4.14%) Retail
11 213 (3.33%) Electronics
12 208 (3.25%) Marketing
13 197 (3.08%) Aerospace
14 157 (2.45%) Telecoms
15 127 (1.98%) Influencing Skills
16 125 (1.95%) Banking
17 110 (1.72%) Documentation Skills
18 74 (1.16%) Games
19 71 (1.11%) Military
20 68 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 846 (13.21%) Analyst
2 682 (10.65%) Senior
3 678 (10.59%) Developer
4 654 (10.22%) IT Support
5 549 (8.58%) Support Engineer
6 366 (5.72%) IT Engineer
7 357 (5.58%) Lead
8 292 (4.56%) Support Analyst
9 281 (4.39%) Consultant
10 269 (4.20%) IT Support Engineer
11 260 (4.06%) Support Technician
12 242 (3.78%) Technical Support
13 236 (3.69%) Systems Engineer
14 225 (3.51%) IT Technician
15 216 (3.37%) Architect
16 213 (3.33%) Software Engineer
17 207 (3.23%) Technical Engineer
18 195 (3.05%) Senior Developer
19 186 (2.91%) Technical Support Engineer
20 172 (2.69%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 331 (5.17%) .NET
2 219 (3.42%) React
3 192 (3.00%) HTML
4 186 (2.91%) REST
5 141 (2.20%) CSS
6 120 (1.87%) RESTful
7 95 (1.48%) Node.js
8 92 (1.44%) SOAP
9 81 (1.27%) Vue
10 79 (1.23%) Middleware
11 77 (1.20%) AngularJS
12 73 (1.14%) ASP.NET
13 72 (1.12%) JSON
14 68 (1.06%) XML
15 65 (1.02%) Web Services
16 59 (0.92%) Spring
17 57 (0.89%) OAuth
18 54 (0.84%) Spring Boot
19 46 (0.72%) ASP.NET Core
19 46 (0.72%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 511 (7.98%) Driving Licence
2 383 (5.98%) Onboarding
3 300 (4.69%) Self-Motivation
4 265 (4.14%) Management Information System
5 182 (2.84%) Cloud Native
6 166 (2.59%) Product Ownership
7 153 (2.39%) Legacy Systems
8 106 (1.66%) Data Centre
9 96 (1.50%) Analytical Mindset
10 95 (1.48%) Enterprise Software
11 86 (1.34%) NHS
12 85 (1.33%) Distributed Systems
13 80 (1.25%) Security Posture
13 80 (1.25%) Social Media
14 71 (1.11%) Robotics
15 68 (1.06%) Mobile App
16 62 (0.97%) IoT
16 62 (0.97%) Virtual Team
17 59 (0.92%) Cyber Threat
18 56 (0.87%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 1,065 (16.64%) Windows
2 494 (7.72%) Windows Server
3 451 (7.04%) Linux
4 135 (2.11%) Windows 10
5 108 (1.69%) Windows Server 2016
6 102 (1.59%) Android
7 80 (1.25%) Apple iOS
8 76 (1.19%) Mac OS
9 39 (0.61%) Windows Server 2019
10 37 (0.58%) Unix
11 30 (0.47%) Ubuntu
12 23 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 20 (0.31%) CentOS
14 17 (0.27%) VMS
15 14 (0.22%) Debian
16 9 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
16 9 (0.14%) FreeRTOS
16 9 (0.14%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.078%) OpenVMS
18 4 (0.062%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,693 (26.44%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,134 (17.71%) Customer Service
3 982 (15.34%) Agile
4 720 (11.25%) Decision-Making
5 666 (10.40%) CI/CD
6 665 (10.39%) Mentoring
7 632 (9.87%) AI
8 571 (8.92%) Stakeholder Management
9 553 (8.64%) DevOps
10 552 (8.62%) ITIL
11 522 (8.15%) Analytics
12 520 (8.12%) Cybersecurity
12 520 (8.12%) Software Engineering
13 503 (7.86%) Collaborative Working
14 478 (7.47%) Project Delivery
15 470 (7.34%) ERP
16 454 (7.09%) Business Intelligence
17 387 (6.04%) Project Management
18 379 (5.92%) Service Delivery
19 376 (5.87%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 985 (15.39%) SQL
2 701 (10.95%) Python
3 417 (6.51%) C#
3 417 (6.51%) JavaScript
4 286 (4.47%) Java
5 249 (3.89%) PowerShell
6 186 (2.91%) TypeScript
7 183 (2.86%) C++
8 116 (1.81%) Bash
9 76 (1.19%) PHP
10 72 (1.12%) C
11 58 (0.91%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 53 (0.83%) T-SQL
13 44 (0.69%) Shell Script
14 42 (0.66%) Perl
15 36 (0.56%) Go
15 36 (0.56%) Ruby
16 33 (0.52%) PL/SQL
16 33 (0.52%) Rust
17 27 (0.42%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 1,006 (15.71%) Degree
2 594 (9.28%) Security Cleared
3 430 (6.72%) SC Cleared
4 194 (3.03%) Computer Science Degree
5 193 (3.01%) DBS Check
6 177 (2.76%) Microsoft Certification
7 155 (2.42%) DV Cleared
8 148 (2.31%) BPSS Clearance
9 113 (1.77%) HNC
10 106 (1.66%) Azure Certification
11 93 (1.45%) Cisco Certification
12 85 (1.33%) HND
13 78 (1.22%) PMI Certification
14 70 (1.09%) CISSP
15 64 (1.00%) CCNA
16 63 (0.98%) Master's Degree
17 56 (0.87%) PMP
18 55 (0.86%) Chartered Engineer
19 54 (0.84%) A+ Certification
20 51 (0.80%) ACCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 419 (6.54%) QA
2 256 (4.00%) Data Quality
3 186 (2.91%) GDPR
4 177 (2.76%) Cyber Essentials
5 166 (2.59%) SLA
6 161 (2.51%) Accessibility
7 126 (1.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 114 (1.78%) PCI DSS
9 90 (1.41%) NIST
10 36 (0.56%) ISO 9001
11 32 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 30 (0.47%) PMO
13 24 (0.37%) GMP
14 18 (0.28%) Good Clinical Practice
15 16 (0.25%) GRC
16 14 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
17 12 (0.19%) DO-254
17 12 (0.19%) SOC 2
17 12 (0.19%) TickIT
17 12 (0.19%) WCAG
System Software
1 738 (11.53%) Active Directory
2 284 (4.44%) Hyper-V
3 245 (3.83%) Docker
4 205 (3.20%) VMware Infrastructure
5 80 (1.25%) Terminal Server
6 65 (1.02%) Firmware
7 33 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
8 28 (0.44%) vSphere
9 25 (0.39%) Virtual Machines
10 19 (0.30%) Embedded Firmware
11 15 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
12 10 (0.16%) KVM
13 6 (0.094%) XenApp
14 5 (0.078%) ClearTrust
14 5 (0.078%) Squid
14 5 (0.078%) Virtual Servers
15 4 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 3 (0.047%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.047%) VMware Server
16 3 (0.047%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 254 (3.97%) Terraform
2 229 (3.58%) Microsoft Intune
3 215 (3.36%) Kubernetes
4 106 (1.66%) Ansible
5 61 (0.95%) SCCM
6 57 (0.89%) Grafana
7 41 (0.64%) Prometheus
8 28 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
9 21 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 18 (0.28%) Puppet
11 15 (0.23%) Nagios
12 14 (0.22%) Jamf Pro
13 12 (0.19%) Functional Safety
14 11 (0.17%) Kibana
14 11 (0.17%) Nmap
14 11 (0.17%) Proxmox
15 10 (0.16%) logstash
15 10 (0.16%) Podman
16 9 (0.14%) QRadar
16 9 (0.14%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,918 (29.96%) Microsoft
2 324 (5.06%) VMware
3 161 (2.51%) SAP
4 153 (2.39%) Google
5 152 (2.37%) Oracle
6 138 (2.16%) Veeam
7 133 (2.08%) Cisco
8 123 (1.92%) Splunk
9 110 (1.72%) ServiceNow
10 104 (1.62%) SolarWinds
11 88 (1.37%) Tanium
12 87 (1.36%) Salesforce
13 81 (1.27%) Nimble Storage
13 81 (1.27%) Workday
14 80 (1.25%) Brocade
15 77 (1.20%) Databricks
16 61 (0.95%) Sage
17 59 (0.92%) Apple
18 58 (0.91%) Fortinet
19 47 (0.73%) SonicWALL