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

6 months to
19 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 4 5
Rank change year-on-year -4 +1 +5
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,567 6,575 8,666
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 8.40% 18.94% 14.52%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.93% 21.71% 18.52%
Number of salaries quoted 4,682 3,666 4,347
10th Percentile £26,888 £25,750 £25,750
25th Percentile £31,250 £29,656 £32,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £40,000 £46,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -13.04% -8.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £58,750 £62,500
90th Percentile £73,750 £72,500 £76,250
UK median annual salary £47,500 £46,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +3.26% -8.00% -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 55,053 30,288 46,797
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.38% 87.26% 78.41%
Number of salaries quoted 38,734 16,503 29,123
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,500 £29,750
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £38,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £47,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +15.79% -5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £65,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £86,250 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.71%

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 19 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 19 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 1,676 £45,000 +5.88% 1,167
South East -3 1,561 £42,500 - 1,293
Midlands -8 1,198 £42,500 +10.39% 817
North West -5 878 £45,000 - 620
South West -4 808 £45,000 +25.00% 661
West Midlands -9 667 £42,500 -4.00% 512
East of England -3 662 £42,500 +21.43% 612
Yorkshire -8 551 £42,500 +21.43% 385
East Midlands -9 528 £41,000 +17.14% 306
Scotland -1 293 £33,500 -24.29% 435
North East -7 247 £48,500 +21.25% 182
Northern Ireland -2 214 £45,500 -22.88% 267
Wales -22 170 £45,000 -6.49% 149
Isle of Man 0 3 £35,000 +1.45% 1
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
1 392 (5.97%) SharePoint
2 344 (5.24%) Microsoft Exchange
3 67 (1.02%) CMS
4 64 (0.97%) Confluence
5 49 (0.75%) IIS
6 33 (0.50%) WordPress
7 30 (0.46%) Apache
8 27 (0.41%) Sitecore CMS
9 24 (0.37%) Apache Airflow
10 16 (0.24%) Apache Spark
11 15 (0.23%) SAS
12 10 (0.15%) WebSphere
13 9 (0.14%) nginx
13 9 (0.14%) WebLogic
14 7 (0.11%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.11%) OpenEdge
15 5 (0.076%) Exchange Server 2013
15 5 (0.076%) Skype for Business
16 4 (0.061%) OpenStack
16 4 (0.061%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 422 (6.43%) Microsoft Office
2 412 (6.27%) Microsoft Excel
3 51 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 50 (0.76%) Spreadsheet
5 40 (0.61%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.46%) Microsoft Project
7 23 (0.35%) AutoCAD
7 23 (0.35%) Simulink
8 14 (0.21%) Revit
9 8 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.12%) Adobe Illustrator
9 8 (0.12%) Chatbot
10 7 (0.11%) EPLAN
11 6 (0.091%) Adobe XD
11 6 (0.091%) Fusion 360
11 6 (0.091%) Navisworks
11 6 (0.091%) Sketch
12 5 (0.076%) Lightworks
12 5 (0.076%) SOLIDWORKS
12 5 (0.076%) Trello
Business Applications
1 70 (1.07%) Dynamics CRM
2 53 (0.81%) SAP S/4HANA
3 41 (0.62%) NetSuite
4 28 (0.43%) Shopify
5 17 (0.26%) Magento
5 17 (0.26%) SAP Business One
5 17 (0.26%) SAP ERP
6 15 (0.23%) Dynamics NAV
6 15 (0.23%) IBM Planning Analytics
7 13 (0.20%) Workday HCM
8 12 (0.18%) Dynamics AX
8 12 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
9 11 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
10 10 (0.15%) JDE EnterpriseOne
10 10 (0.15%) Sage X3
11 9 (0.14%) Sage 50
12 8 (0.12%) Primavera
13 7 (0.11%) NEC Housing
13 7 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
14 6 (0.091%) Raiser’s Edge
Cloud Services
1 1,328 (20.22%) Azure
2 1,125 (17.13%) Microsoft 365
3 669 (10.19%) AWS
4 546 (8.31%) Power Platform
5 339 (5.16%) Entra ID
6 227 (3.46%) GCP
6 227 (3.46%) SaaS
7 162 (2.47%) Azure DevOps
8 140 (2.13%) PowerApps
9 137 (2.09%) Dynamics 365
10 130 (1.98%) GitHub
11 126 (1.92%) Serverless
12 122 (1.86%) Power Automate
13 81 (1.23%) OneDrive
14 79 (1.20%) Microsoft Copilot
15 59 (0.90%) Amazon S3
16 58 (0.88%) GitHub Actions
17 54 (0.82%) AWS Lambda
18 53 (0.81%) AWS CloudFormation
19 51 (0.78%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 421 (6.41%) Firewall
2 398 (6.06%) DNS
3 341 (5.19%) DHCP
4 238 (3.62%) VPN
5 224 (3.41%) TCP/IP
6 187 (2.85%) WAN
7 173 (2.63%) LAN
8 160 (2.44%) Wi-Fi
9 153 (2.33%) Wireless
10 127 (1.93%) VLAN
11 113 (1.72%) Network Security
12 105 (1.60%) VoIP
13 91 (1.39%) Broadband
14 42 (0.64%) Internet
15 31 (0.47%) SAN
16 30 (0.46%) SSL
17 28 (0.43%) HTTP
18 27 (0.41%) SD-WAN
19 23 (0.35%) MQTT
20 22 (0.34%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 431 (6.56%) Power BI
2 323 (4.92%) SQL Server
3 135 (2.06%) MySQL
4 125 (1.90%) Amazon RDS
5 106 (1.61%) Relational Database
6 100 (1.52%) Data Warehouse
7 93 (1.42%) PostgreSQL
8 82 (1.25%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 78 (1.19%) NoSQL
10 71 (1.08%) Tableau
11 62 (0.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 47 (0.72%) Electronic Patient Records
13 46 (0.70%) MongoDB
14 44 (0.67%) Big Data
15 42 (0.64%) Azure SQL Database
16 41 (0.62%) Power Query
17 39 (0.59%) Data Lake
18 30 (0.46%) DynamoDB
19 25 (0.38%) Elasticsearch
20 23 (0.35%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 286 (4.36%) Git
2 222 (3.38%) JIRA
3 80 (1.22%) GitLab
4 70 (1.07%) Jenkins
5 32 (0.49%) Eclipse
6 31 (0.47%) Subversion
7 25 (0.38%) Cucumber
7 25 (0.38%) JUnit
7 25 (0.38%) Selenium
8 24 (0.37%) Rational DOORS
9 21 (0.32%) Claude Code
10 20 (0.30%) Postman
11 19 (0.29%) Oracle Forms
12 16 (0.24%) Bitbucket
12 16 (0.24%) Cypress.io
13 15 (0.23%) SonarQube
14 13 (0.20%) Burp Suite
15 12 (0.18%) Visual Studio
16 11 (0.17%) Metasploit
17 10 (0.15%) Maven
General
1 3,158 (48.09%) Social Skills
2 1,837 (27.97%) Analytical Skills
3 1,045 (15.91%) Finance
4 607 (9.24%) Manufacturing
5 401 (6.11%) Organisational Skills
6 370 (5.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 303 (4.61%) Law
8 293 (4.46%) Public Sector
9 283 (4.31%) Legal
10 279 (4.25%) Retail
11 241 (3.67%) Marketing
12 227 (3.46%) Electronics
13 211 (3.21%) Aerospace
14 158 (2.41%) Telecoms
15 133 (2.03%) Influencing Skills
16 132 (2.01%) Banking
17 110 (1.68%) Documentation Skills
18 76 (1.16%) Military
19 72 (1.10%) Games
20 68 (1.04%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 861 (13.11%) Analyst
2 715 (10.89%) Senior
3 696 (10.60%) Developer
4 658 (10.02%) IT Support
5 549 (8.36%) Support Engineer
6 363 (5.53%) IT Engineer
7 362 (5.51%) Lead
8 307 (4.67%) Support Analyst
9 293 (4.46%) Consultant
10 268 (4.08%) IT Support Engineer
11 263 (4.00%) Support Technician
12 249 (3.79%) Technical Support
13 234 (3.56%) Systems Engineer
14 228 (3.47%) IT Technician
15 220 (3.35%) Architect
16 215 (3.27%) Software Engineer
17 212 (3.23%) Technical Engineer
18 198 (3.02%) Senior Developer
19 189 (2.88%) Technical Support Engineer
20 176 (2.68%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 344 (5.24%) .NET
2 218 (3.32%) React
3 198 (3.02%) HTML
4 189 (2.88%) REST
5 146 (2.22%) CSS
6 122 (1.86%) RESTful
7 99 (1.51%) Node.js
8 92 (1.40%) SOAP
9 81 (1.23%) Vue
10 78 (1.19%) AngularJS
10 78 (1.19%) ASP.NET
10 78 (1.19%) Middleware
11 73 (1.11%) JSON
12 69 (1.05%) XML
13 67 (1.02%) Web Services
14 64 (0.97%) Spring
15 58 (0.88%) Spring Boot
16 57 (0.87%) OAuth
17 48 (0.73%) Kafka
18 47 (0.72%) ASP.NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 520 (7.92%) Driving Licence
2 399 (6.08%) Onboarding
3 334 (5.09%) Self-Motivation
4 298 (4.54%) Management Information System
5 185 (2.82%) Cloud Native
6 164 (2.50%) Product Ownership
7 153 (2.33%) Legacy Systems
8 111 (1.69%) Data Centre
9 104 (1.58%) Enterprise Software
10 97 (1.48%) Analytical Mindset
11 89 (1.36%) Distributed Systems
12 85 (1.29%) NHS
13 79 (1.20%) Security Posture
14 78 (1.19%) Social Media
15 74 (1.13%) Robotics
16 72 (1.10%) Mobile App
17 65 (0.99%) Cyber Threat
18 64 (0.97%) Virtual Team
19 62 (0.94%) IoT
20 58 (0.88%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 1,077 (16.40%) Windows
2 506 (7.71%) Windows Server
3 454 (6.91%) Linux
4 133 (2.03%) Windows 10
5 111 (1.69%) Windows Server 2016
6 100 (1.52%) Android
7 80 (1.22%) Apple iOS
8 75 (1.14%) Mac OS
9 39 (0.59%) Unix
9 39 (0.59%) Windows Server 2019
10 30 (0.46%) Ubuntu
11 20 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 18 (0.27%) VMS
13 17 (0.26%) CentOS
14 15 (0.23%) Debian
15 9 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
15 9 (0.14%) FreeRTOS
16 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 6 (0.091%) Windows Server 2012
18 5 (0.076%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,748 (26.62%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,166 (17.76%) Customer Service
3 998 (15.20%) Agile
4 747 (11.38%) Decision-Making
5 689 (10.49%) CI/CD
6 674 (10.26%) Mentoring
7 647 (9.85%) AI
8 596 (9.08%) Stakeholder Management
9 571 (8.69%) DevOps
10 562 (8.56%) Analytics
11 559 (8.51%) ITIL
12 530 (8.07%) Cybersecurity
13 527 (8.02%) Software Engineering
14 517 (7.87%) Project Delivery
15 513 (7.81%) Collaborative Working
16 484 (7.37%) ERP
17 462 (7.04%) Business Intelligence
18 429 (6.53%) Project Management
19 401 (6.11%) CRM
20 382 (5.82%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,007 (15.33%) SQL
2 715 (10.89%) Python
3 431 (6.56%) JavaScript
4 428 (6.52%) C#
5 293 (4.46%) Java
6 262 (3.99%) PowerShell
7 192 (2.92%) TypeScript
8 183 (2.79%) C++
9 124 (1.89%) Bash
10 75 (1.14%) PHP
11 72 (1.10%) C
12 59 (0.90%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 53 (0.81%) T-SQL
14 46 (0.70%) Shell Script
15 41 (0.62%) Perl
16 38 (0.58%) Ruby
17 37 (0.56%) Go
18 34 (0.52%) Rust
19 33 (0.50%) PL/SQL
20 30 (0.46%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 1,026 (15.62%) Degree
2 612 (9.32%) Security Cleared
3 438 (6.67%) SC Cleared
4 196 (2.98%) DBS Check
5 193 (2.94%) Computer Science Degree
6 177 (2.70%) Microsoft Certification
7 165 (2.51%) DV Cleared
8 151 (2.30%) BPSS Clearance
9 121 (1.84%) HNC
10 116 (1.77%) Azure Certification
11 97 (1.48%) HND
12 95 (1.45%) Cisco Certification
13 78 (1.19%) PMI Certification
14 74 (1.13%) CISSP
15 65 (0.99%) CCNA
16 63 (0.96%) Master's Degree
17 58 (0.88%) Chartered Engineer
18 56 (0.85%) A+ Certification
18 56 (0.85%) PMP
19 49 (0.75%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 432 (6.58%) QA
2 261 (3.97%) Data Quality
3 190 (2.89%) GDPR
4 174 (2.65%) Cyber Essentials
5 167 (2.54%) SLA
6 164 (2.50%) Accessibility
7 125 (1.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 114 (1.74%) PCI DSS
9 94 (1.43%) NIST
10 33 (0.50%) ISO 9001
11 30 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 30 (0.46%) PMO
12 24 (0.37%) GMP
13 18 (0.27%) Good Clinical Practice
14 16 (0.24%) GRC
15 14 (0.21%) DO-254
16 13 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
17 12 (0.18%) NCSC
17 12 (0.18%) SOC 2
17 12 (0.18%) TickIT
System Software
1 750 (11.42%) Active Directory
2 286 (4.36%) Hyper-V
3 255 (3.88%) Docker
4 204 (3.11%) VMware Infrastructure
5 80 (1.22%) Terminal Server
6 66 (1.01%) Firmware
7 34 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
8 29 (0.44%) vSphere
9 27 (0.41%) Virtual Machines
10 20 (0.30%) Embedded Firmware
11 15 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
12 8 (0.12%) KVM
13 6 (0.091%) XenApp
14 5 (0.076%) ClearTrust
14 5 (0.076%) Squid
14 5 (0.076%) Virtual Servers
15 4 (0.061%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 3 (0.046%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 3 (0.046%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.046%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 266 (4.05%) Terraform
2 230 (3.50%) Microsoft Intune
3 220 (3.35%) Kubernetes
4 110 (1.68%) Ansible
5 59 (0.90%) SCCM
6 57 (0.87%) Grafana
7 41 (0.62%) Prometheus
8 32 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
9 21 (0.32%) FortiGate
10 19 (0.29%) Puppet
11 16 (0.24%) Jamf Pro
12 14 (0.21%) Nagios
13 12 (0.18%) Functional Safety
14 11 (0.17%) Kibana
14 11 (0.17%) Nmap
15 10 (0.15%) logstash
15 10 (0.15%) Podman
15 10 (0.15%) Proxmox
16 9 (0.14%) QRadar
16 9 (0.14%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,965 (29.92%) Microsoft
2 328 (4.99%) VMware
3 170 (2.59%) SAP
4 163 (2.48%) Google
5 154 (2.35%) Oracle
6 140 (2.13%) Veeam
7 132 (2.01%) Cisco
8 124 (1.89%) Splunk
9 112 (1.71%) ServiceNow
10 104 (1.58%) SolarWinds
11 89 (1.36%) Workday
12 88 (1.34%) Tanium
13 87 (1.32%) Salesforce
14 81 (1.23%) Nimble Storage
15 80 (1.22%) Brocade
16 77 (1.17%) Databricks
17 68 (1.04%) Sage
18 60 (0.91%) Fortinet
19 59 (0.90%) Apple
20 50 (0.76%) SonicWALL