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

6 months to
22 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 4 6
Rank change year-on-year -8 +2 +7
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,805 5,940 10,568
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 7.19% 20.83% 15.23%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.15% 22.63% 18.36%
Number of salaries quoted 3,544 2,998 6,862
10th Percentile £26,250 £26,250 £25,500
25th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £45,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year -5.56% - -10.00%
75th Percentile £59,500 £61,250 £60,000
90th Percentile £75,000 £77,500 £72,500
UK median annual salary £47,500 £50,967 £49,244
% change year-on-year -6.80% +3.50% -10.47%

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 47,358 26,244 57,568
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.87% 92.03% 82.95%
Number of salaries quoted 30,601 12,957 41,109
10th Percentile £30,000 £27,250 £27,007
25th Percentile £37,750 £35,000 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £52,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% +4.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £67,500 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £82,500 £77,500
UK median annual salary £60,000 £59,648 £55,000
% change year-on-year +0.59% +8.45% -9.84%

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 22 May 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 22 May 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 -11 1,319 £42,500 -5.56% 668
South East -7 1,145 £46,000 -1.08% 779
Midlands -22 874 £42,000 -6.67% 414
North West -17 678 £45,000 -5.26% 367
South West -8 553 £43,500 +8.75% 302
West Midlands -25 513 £42,500 -11.46% 261
Yorkshire -12 503 £41,500 +7.79% 229
East of England -7 479 £42,175 +0.42% 286
East Midlands -11 357 £35,000 -9.09% 153
Scotland -4 280 £35,000 -30.00% 133
North East -16 138 £48,445 +7.65% 83
Wales -12 108 £42,500 -15.00% 54
Northern Ireland -7 68 £38,750 -29.55% 102
Isle of Man +2 3 £35,000 +1.45% 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
1 282 (5.87%) Microsoft Exchange
2 279 (5.81%) SharePoint
3 48 (1.00%) CMS
4 36 (0.75%) Confluence
5 27 (0.56%) IIS
6 24 (0.50%) WordPress
7 21 (0.44%) Apache
8 15 (0.31%) Apache Airflow
8 15 (0.31%) Apache Spark
9 12 (0.25%) SAS
10 11 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2013
11 9 (0.19%) Exchange Server 2007
11 9 (0.19%) Exchange Server 2010
12 6 (0.12%) OpenEdge
13 5 (0.10%) Drupal
13 5 (0.10%) nginx
13 5 (0.10%) OpenStack
13 5 (0.10%) Skype for Business
14 4 (0.083%) Moodle
14 4 (0.083%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 296 (6.16%) Microsoft Office
2 281 (5.85%) Microsoft Excel
3 38 (0.79%) Spreadsheet
4 37 (0.77%) MS Visio
5 35 (0.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 10 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
7 9 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 9 (0.19%) Adobe Illustrator
7 9 (0.19%) Fusion 360
8 6 (0.12%) Photoshop
9 5 (0.10%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.10%) Simulink
10 3 (0.062%) Autodesk Inventor
10 3 (0.062%) Trello
11 2 (0.042%) Acrobat
11 2 (0.042%) Sketch
11 2 (0.042%) SOLIDWORKS
11 2 (0.042%) Weka
12 1 (0.021%) Abaqus
12 1 (0.021%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 45 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (0.71%) Dynamics CRM
3 24 (0.50%) NetSuite
4 20 (0.42%) Dynamics NAV
5 19 (0.40%) Shopify
6 16 (0.33%) Magento
7 14 (0.29%) SAP ERP
8 12 (0.25%) Dynamics AX
8 12 (0.25%) iTrent
9 11 (0.23%) SAP CO
10 9 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
11 7 (0.15%) IBM Planning Analytics
11 7 (0.15%) Q-Pulse
11 7 (0.15%) SAP Business One
11 7 (0.15%) Workday HCM
12 6 (0.12%) Sage 50
13 5 (0.10%) Salesforce CRM
14 4 (0.083%) Line 50
14 4 (0.083%) Markit EDM
14 4 (0.083%) Sage 200
Cloud Services
1 956 (19.90%) Azure
2 834 (17.36%) Microsoft 365
3 481 (10.01%) AWS
4 354 (7.37%) Power Platform
5 217 (4.52%) Entra ID
6 167 (3.48%) SaaS
7 135 (2.81%) GCP
8 113 (2.35%) Azure DevOps
9 108 (2.25%) Serverless
10 99 (2.06%) Dynamics 365
11 84 (1.75%) GitHub
12 73 (1.52%) Power Automate
13 61 (1.27%) PowerApps
14 59 (1.23%) Amazon S3
15 55 (1.14%) Google Workspace
16 54 (1.12%) AWS Lambda
17 50 (1.04%) OneDrive
18 47 (0.98%) Azure Data Factory
18 47 (0.98%) IaaS
19 45 (0.94%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 297 (6.18%) Firewall
2 289 (6.01%) DNS
3 233 (4.85%) DHCP
4 161 (3.35%) WAN
5 158 (3.29%) VPN
6 122 (2.54%) LAN
7 115 (2.39%) Wi-Fi
8 113 (2.35%) TCP/IP
9 104 (2.16%) Broadband
10 100 (2.08%) Wireless
11 83 (1.73%) VLAN
12 69 (1.44%) VoIP
13 67 (1.39%) Network Security
14 42 (0.87%) SD-WAN
15 37 (0.77%) SAN
16 35 (0.73%) Internet
17 21 (0.44%) Unified Communications
18 20 (0.42%) HTTP
19 16 (0.33%) Wireshark
20 15 (0.31%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 281 (5.85%) Power BI
2 196 (4.08%) SQL Server
3 68 (1.42%) MySQL
3 68 (1.42%) PostgreSQL
3 68 (1.42%) SQL Server Reporting Services
4 64 (1.33%) NoSQL
5 63 (1.31%) Data Warehouse
6 61 (1.27%) Amazon RDS
7 54 (1.12%) Relational Database
7 54 (1.12%) Tableau
8 53 (1.10%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 43 (0.89%) Power Query
10 35 (0.73%) DynamoDB
11 31 (0.65%) MongoDB
12 27 (0.56%) Big Data
13 25 (0.52%) Amazon Redshift
14 24 (0.50%) Data Lake
15 21 (0.44%) Oracle Reports
16 20 (0.42%) Azure SQL Database
16 20 (0.42%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 188 (3.91%) Git
2 133 (2.77%) JIRA
3 72 (1.50%) GitLab
4 47 (0.98%) Jenkins
5 27 (0.56%) Rational DOORS
6 19 (0.40%) Maven
7 16 (0.33%) Selenium
7 16 (0.33%) SonarQube
8 14 (0.29%) Cucumber
8 14 (0.29%) Cypress.io
9 13 (0.27%) LabVIEW
10 11 (0.23%) Bitbucket
11 9 (0.19%) JUnit
12 8 (0.17%) Visual Studio
13 7 (0.15%) CircleCI
13 7 (0.15%) MLflow
13 7 (0.15%) Mockito
13 7 (0.15%) Oracle Forms
13 7 (0.15%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 7 (0.15%) Subversion
General
1 2,255 (46.93%) Social Skills
2 1,337 (27.83%) Analytical Skills
3 818 (17.02%) Finance
4 321 (6.68%) Manufacturing
5 303 (6.31%) Organisational Skills
6 223 (4.64%) Public Sector
7 214 (4.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 180 (3.75%) Legal
8 180 (3.75%) Marketing
9 177 (3.68%) Law
10 160 (3.33%) Retail
11 139 (2.89%) Telecoms
12 131 (2.73%) Electronics
13 126 (2.62%) Banking
14 89 (1.85%) Documentation Skills
15 70 (1.46%) Games
16 65 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
17 61 (1.27%) Aerospace
18 56 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
19 51 (1.06%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 689 (14.34%) Analyst
2 598 (12.45%) IT Support
3 526 (10.95%) Support Engineer
4 523 (10.88%) Senior
5 394 (8.20%) Developer
6 347 (7.22%) IT Engineer
7 266 (5.54%) IT Support Engineer
8 260 (5.41%) Lead
9 216 (4.50%) Support Technician
10 200 (4.16%) Support Analyst
11 174 (3.62%) Systems Engineer
12 173 (3.60%) Architect
13 171 (3.56%) IT Technician
14 155 (3.23%) Technical Support
15 153 (3.18%) Consultant
15 153 (3.18%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 148 (3.08%) Software Engineer
17 139 (2.89%) IT Support Technician
18 130 (2.71%) Business Analyst
19 125 (2.60%) Technical Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 163 (3.39%) .NET
2 157 (3.27%) React
3 138 (2.87%) HTML
4 114 (2.37%) REST
5 107 (2.23%) CSS
6 76 (1.58%) Node.js
7 70 (1.46%) SOAP
8 59 (1.23%) JSON
8 59 (1.23%) RESTful
9 57 (1.19%) XML
10 54 (1.12%) Middleware
11 49 (1.02%) AngularJS
11 49 (1.02%) Vue
12 45 (0.94%) Spring
13 41 (0.85%) Spring Boot
14 37 (0.77%) OAuth
15 34 (0.71%) EDI
16 29 (0.60%) ASP.NET
17 28 (0.58%) Laravel
18 25 (0.52%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 363 (7.55%) Driving Licence
2 262 (5.45%) Onboarding
3 213 (4.43%) Self-Motivation
4 177 (3.68%) Management Information System
5 125 (2.60%) Product Ownership
6 115 (2.39%) Cloud Native
7 110 (2.29%) Analytical Mindset
8 99 (2.06%) Data Centre
9 95 (1.98%) Legacy Systems
10 76 (1.58%) Social Media
11 71 (1.48%) Distributed Systems
12 60 (1.25%) Mobile App
13 57 (1.19%) Low-Code
14 53 (1.10%) Enterprise Software
15 43 (0.89%) Virtual Team
16 41 (0.85%) Data Structures
17 35 (0.73%) Hybrid Cloud
18 34 (0.71%) Algorithms
19 33 (0.69%) IoT
19 33 (0.69%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 805 (16.75%) Windows
2 371 (7.72%) Windows Server
3 302 (6.29%) Linux
4 125 (2.60%) Windows 10
5 106 (2.21%) Android
6 91 (1.89%) Windows Server 2016
7 63 (1.31%) Apple iOS
8 52 (1.08%) Mac OS
9 44 (0.92%) Windows Server 2019
10 30 (0.62%) Unix
11 25 (0.52%) CentOS
12 24 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 22 (0.46%) Ubuntu
14 20 (0.42%) Windows Server 2012
15 14 (0.29%) VMS
16 12 (0.25%) Windows 7
17 9 (0.19%) Debian
18 7 (0.15%) Windows 8
18 7 (0.15%) Windows Server 2008
19 4 (0.083%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,003 (20.87%) Continuous Improvement
2 843 (17.54%) Customer Service
3 649 (13.51%) Agile
4 467 (9.72%) Mentoring
5 454 (9.45%) Decision-Making
6 412 (8.57%) CI/CD
7 393 (8.18%) DevOps
8 391 (8.14%) ITIL
9 387 (8.05%) Analytics
10 384 (7.99%) AI
11 331 (6.89%) Business Intelligence
12 322 (6.70%) Coaching
13 315 (6.56%) ERP
14 314 (6.53%) Software Engineering
15 313 (6.51%) Project Management
16 304 (6.33%) Collaborative Working
17 303 (6.31%) Cybersecurity
18 298 (6.20%) Stakeholder Management
19 291 (6.06%) Computer Science
20 277 (5.76%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 641 (13.34%) SQL
2 533 (11.09%) Python
3 293 (6.10%) JavaScript
4 213 (4.43%) C#
5 199 (4.14%) Java
6 192 (4.00%) PowerShell
7 118 (2.46%) TypeScript
8 90 (1.87%) Bash
8 90 (1.87%) C++
9 67 (1.39%) PHP
10 49 (1.02%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 46 (0.96%) C
12 40 (0.83%) PL/SQL
13 35 (0.73%) T-SQL
14 28 (0.58%) R
15 27 (0.56%) Kotlin
16 23 (0.48%) Shell Script
17 21 (0.44%) Go
18 20 (0.42%) Rust
18 20 (0.42%) Scala
Qualifications
1 749 (15.59%) Degree
2 341 (7.10%) Security Cleared
3 239 (4.97%) SC Cleared
4 201 (4.18%) DBS Check
5 158 (3.29%) Microsoft Certification
6 142 (2.96%) Computer Science Degree
7 93 (1.94%) BPSS Clearance
8 79 (1.64%) A+ Certification
9 75 (1.56%) Cisco Certification
10 65 (1.35%) DV Cleared
11 63 (1.31%) ACCA
12 60 (1.25%) CCNA
13 58 (1.21%) CIMA
14 49 (1.02%) Network+ Certification
14 49 (1.02%) PMI Certification
15 48 (1.00%) HNC
16 47 (0.98%) Master's Degree
17 44 (0.92%) CISSP
18 37 (0.77%) Azure Certification
18 37 (0.77%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 269 (5.60%) QA
2 220 (4.58%) Data Quality
3 150 (3.12%) GDPR
4 121 (2.52%) SLA
5 116 (2.41%) Cyber Essentials
6 106 (2.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 82 (1.71%) PCI DSS
8 79 (1.64%) NIST
9 65 (1.35%) Accessibility
10 38 (0.79%) ISO 9001
11 19 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
12 17 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 15 (0.31%) SOC 2
14 14 (0.29%) GMP
15 12 (0.25%) PMO
15 12 (0.25%) TickIT
16 11 (0.23%) GRC
16 11 (0.23%) ISO 14001
17 8 (0.17%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 6 (0.12%) COBIT
System Software
1 566 (11.78%) Active Directory
2 176 (3.66%) Hyper-V
3 163 (3.39%) Docker
4 141 (2.93%) VMware Infrastructure
5 48 (1.00%) Terminal Server
6 26 (0.54%) Virtual Desktop
7 25 (0.52%) Firmware
8 17 (0.35%) vSphere
9 13 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
10 12 (0.25%) Virtual Machines
11 10 (0.21%) KVM
12 7 (0.15%) VMware Workstation
13 6 (0.12%) XenApp
14 4 (0.083%) Embedded Firmware
14 4 (0.083%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 3 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 3 (0.062%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.062%) Virtual Servers
16 1 (0.021%) ClearTrust
16 1 (0.021%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 193 (4.02%) Terraform
2 173 (3.60%) Microsoft Intune
3 152 (3.16%) Kubernetes
4 88 (1.83%) Ansible
5 56 (1.17%) SCCM
6 49 (1.02%) Grafana
7 32 (0.67%) Prometheus
8 22 (0.46%) Nagios
9 15 (0.31%) Single Sign-On
10 10 (0.21%) Puppet
10 10 (0.21%) vCenter Server
11 9 (0.19%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 9 (0.19%) Autotask
11 9 (0.19%) Kibana
11 9 (0.19%) ZABBIX
12 8 (0.17%) FortiGate
12 8 (0.17%) HP Fortify
12 8 (0.17%) logstash
13 7 (0.15%) Jamf Pro
13 7 (0.15%) QRadar
Vendors
1 1,339 (27.87%) Microsoft
2 217 (4.52%) VMware
3 137 (2.85%) Oracle
4 108 (2.25%) SAP
5 104 (2.16%) Veeam
6 103 (2.14%) Cisco
7 101 (2.10%) Google
8 80 (1.66%) SolarWinds
9 79 (1.64%) Splunk
10 66 (1.37%) Databricks
11 65 (1.35%) Apple
12 62 (1.29%) ServiceNow
13 61 (1.27%) Salesforce
14 53 (1.10%) Adobe
15 51 (1.06%) Dell
16 49 (1.02%) Tanium
17 48 (1.00%) Brocade
17 48 (1.00%) Nimble Storage
18 40 (0.83%) Sage
19 35 (0.73%) HubSpot