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

6 months to
13 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 4 5
Rank change year-on-year -6 +1 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,634 6,356 10,628
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 7.89% 18.81% 14.50%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.18% 21.27% 18.11%
Number of salaries quoted 4,218 3,473 6,496
10th Percentile £26,500 £25,750 £25,250
25th Percentile £30,500 £30,000 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £42,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year +1.19% -6.67% -8.16%
75th Percentile £58,750 £60,000 £60,000
90th Percentile £73,750 £76,250 £72,500
UK median annual salary £47,500 £49,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -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 50,410 29,881 58,701
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.59% 88.43% 80.10%
Number of salaries quoted 35,462 16,018 40,435
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,750 £27,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,851 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £50,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% - -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £66,250 £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% -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 13 July 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 July 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 1,497 £45,000 +5.88% 744
South East -3 1,395 £45,000 +5.88% 856
Midlands -8 1,039 £42,000 -0.76% 449
North West -7 791 £45,000 -2.17% 393
South West -6 679 £44,000 +17.33% 521
West Midlands -9 585 £42,500 -5.56% 263
East of England -4 573 £44,000 +25.71% 273
Yorkshire -12 515 £42,500 +21.43% 239
East Midlands -10 451 £35,000 -4.11% 185
Scotland -8 235 £33,000 -27.69% 128
North East -16 191 £51,250 +29.58% 123
Wales -23 136 £40,000 -17.53% 52
Northern Ireland -14 100 £38,500 -30.00% 161
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
1 352 (6.25%) Microsoft Exchange
2 342 (6.07%) SharePoint
3 53 (0.94%) Confluence
4 52 (0.92%) CMS
5 35 (0.62%) IIS
6 29 (0.51%) WordPress
7 28 (0.50%) Apache
8 18 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
9 14 (0.25%) Apache Spark
10 12 (0.21%) SAS
11 11 (0.20%) Exchange Server 2013
11 11 (0.20%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2007
12 9 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2010
13 8 (0.14%) WebLogic
14 7 (0.12%) OpenEdge
15 6 (0.11%) nginx
16 5 (0.089%) OpenStack
16 5 (0.089%) Skype for Business
17 4 (0.071%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 361 (6.41%) Microsoft Office
2 347 (6.16%) Microsoft Excel
3 52 (0.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 44 (0.78%) Spreadsheet
5 30 (0.53%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.28%) Microsoft Project
7 10 (0.18%) Simulink
8 8 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 8 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
9 6 (0.11%) AutoCAD
9 6 (0.11%) Chatbot
10 5 (0.089%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.089%) Fusion 360
10 5 (0.089%) Lightworks
10 5 (0.089%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.089%) Sketch
10 5 (0.089%) Trello
11 3 (0.053%) Autodesk Inventor
11 3 (0.053%) Windchill
12 2 (0.035%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 53 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.57%) NetSuite
3 31 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
4 19 (0.34%) Shopify
5 18 (0.32%) Dynamics NAV
6 17 (0.30%) Magento
7 15 (0.27%) SAP ERP
8 14 (0.25%) Dynamics AX
9 12 (0.21%) IBM Planning Analytics
10 11 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
11 10 (0.18%) SAP Business One
12 9 (0.16%) JDE EnterpriseOne
13 8 (0.14%) iTrent
13 8 (0.14%) Sage 50
14 7 (0.12%) Raiser’s Edge
14 7 (0.12%) Workday HCM
15 5 (0.089%) Dynamics GP
15 5 (0.089%) Q-Pulse
15 5 (0.089%) Sage X3
15 5 (0.089%) SAP CO
Cloud Services
1 1,191 (21.14%) Azure
2 1,047 (18.58%) Microsoft 365
3 590 (10.47%) AWS
4 442 (7.85%) Power Platform
5 287 (5.09%) Entra ID
6 195 (3.46%) SaaS
7 193 (3.43%) GCP
8 132 (2.34%) Azure DevOps
9 117 (2.08%) Dynamics 365
10 111 (1.97%) Serverless
11 98 (1.74%) GitHub
12 96 (1.70%) Power Automate
13 94 (1.67%) PowerApps
14 75 (1.33%) OneDrive
15 57 (1.01%) Microsoft Copilot
16 51 (0.91%) Amazon S3
17 48 (0.85%) Microsoft Purview
18 45 (0.80%) Google Workspace
18 45 (0.80%) PaaS
19 44 (0.78%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 424 (7.53%) Firewall
2 372 (6.60%) DNS
3 316 (5.61%) DHCP
4 221 (3.92%) VPN
5 199 (3.53%) WAN
6 188 (3.34%) TCP/IP
7 174 (3.09%) LAN
8 162 (2.88%) Wi-Fi
9 135 (2.40%) Wireless
10 118 (2.09%) VLAN
11 108 (1.92%) Broadband
12 94 (1.67%) Network Security
13 91 (1.62%) VoIP
14 43 (0.76%) Internet
15 35 (0.62%) SD-WAN
16 26 (0.46%) SAN
17 25 (0.44%) HTTP
18 23 (0.41%) SSL
19 21 (0.37%) Remote Desktop
20 20 (0.35%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 354 (6.28%) Power BI
2 257 (4.56%) SQL Server
3 106 (1.88%) Amazon RDS
4 99 (1.76%) MySQL
5 85 (1.51%) Data Warehouse
6 80 (1.42%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 77 (1.37%) PostgreSQL
8 75 (1.33%) Relational Database
9 66 (1.17%) NoSQL
10 64 (1.14%) Tableau
11 60 (1.06%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 46 (0.82%) Power Query
13 44 (0.78%) MongoDB
14 37 (0.66%) Big Data
15 35 (0.62%) Azure SQL Database
16 33 (0.59%) Data Lake
17 28 (0.50%) Elasticsearch
18 27 (0.48%) DynamoDB
19 19 (0.34%) Amazon Redshift
20 18 (0.32%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 215 (3.82%) Git
2 165 (2.93%) JIRA
3 77 (1.37%) GitLab
4 47 (0.83%) Jenkins
5 28 (0.50%) Rational DOORS
6 24 (0.43%) Cucumber
7 21 (0.37%) Subversion
8 19 (0.34%) Eclipse
8 19 (0.34%) Selenium
9 16 (0.28%) Cypress.io
9 16 (0.28%) JUnit
9 16 (0.28%) SonarQube
10 12 (0.21%) Oracle Forms
10 12 (0.21%) Postman
11 11 (0.20%) Claude Code
12 10 (0.18%) Bitbucket
12 10 (0.18%) Maven
13 8 (0.14%) MLflow
13 8 (0.14%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
14 7 (0.12%) Burp Suite
General
1 2,688 (47.71%) Social Skills
2 1,510 (26.80%) Analytical Skills
3 863 (15.32%) Finance
4 440 (7.81%) Manufacturing
5 374 (6.64%) Organisational Skills
6 257 (4.56%) Public Sector
7 243 (4.31%) Law
8 241 (4.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 236 (4.19%) Legal
10 230 (4.08%) Retail
11 183 (3.25%) Marketing
12 150 (2.66%) Electronics
13 144 (2.56%) Telecoms
14 111 (1.97%) Banking
15 109 (1.93%) Documentation Skills
16 103 (1.83%) Influencing Skills
17 85 (1.51%) Aerospace
18 75 (1.33%) Games
19 61 (1.08%) Advertising
20 56 (0.99%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 774 (13.74%) Analyst
2 677 (12.02%) IT Support
3 609 (10.81%) Senior
4 587 (10.42%) Support Engineer
5 551 (9.78%) Developer
6 402 (7.14%) IT Engineer
7 305 (5.41%) IT Support Engineer
8 302 (5.36%) Lead
9 257 (4.56%) Support Technician
10 253 (4.49%) Support Analyst
11 231 (4.10%) Systems Engineer
12 211 (3.75%) Technical Support
13 206 (3.66%) IT Technician
14 194 (3.44%) Software Engineer
15 183 (3.25%) Consultant
15 183 (3.25%) Technical Engineer
16 178 (3.16%) Architect
17 168 (2.98%) Technical Support Engineer
18 161 (2.86%) IT Support Technician
19 146 (2.59%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 246 (4.37%) .NET
2 191 (3.39%) React
3 168 (2.98%) HTML
4 152 (2.70%) REST
5 126 (2.24%) CSS
6 99 (1.76%) Node.js
7 92 (1.63%) RESTful
8 80 (1.42%) SOAP
9 75 (1.33%) Middleware
10 72 (1.28%) JSON
10 72 (1.28%) Vue
11 67 (1.19%) AngularJS
12 62 (1.10%) XML
13 53 (0.94%) Spring
14 49 (0.87%) Spring Boot
15 46 (0.82%) ASP.NET
15 46 (0.82%) Web Services
16 43 (0.76%) OAuth
17 39 (0.69%) EDI
18 33 (0.59%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 445 (7.90%) Driving Licence
2 333 (5.91%) Onboarding
3 258 (4.58%) Self-Motivation
4 209 (3.71%) Management Information System
5 156 (2.77%) Cloud Native
6 142 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
7 137 (2.43%) Product Ownership
8 107 (1.90%) Data Centre
9 95 (1.69%) Analytical Mindset
10 87 (1.54%) Distributed Systems
11 71 (1.26%) Security Posture
12 68 (1.21%) Social Media
13 65 (1.15%) Mobile App
14 60 (1.06%) Enterprise Software
15 55 (0.98%) IoT
16 52 (0.92%) Virtual Team
17 47 (0.83%) Algorithms
18 46 (0.82%) Robotics
19 45 (0.80%) Low-Code
20 44 (0.78%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 1,000 (17.75%) Windows
2 479 (8.50%) Windows Server
3 410 (7.28%) Linux
4 149 (2.64%) Windows 10
5 123 (2.18%) Windows Server 2016
6 107 (1.90%) Android
7 72 (1.28%) Apple iOS
7 72 (1.28%) Mac OS
8 47 (0.83%) Windows Server 2019
9 30 (0.53%) Unix
10 28 (0.50%) Ubuntu
11 27 (0.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 24 (0.43%) CentOS
13 15 (0.27%) Debian
13 15 (0.27%) VMS
13 15 (0.27%) Windows 7
14 11 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.16%) FreeRTOS
16 7 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
16 7 (0.12%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,323 (23.48%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,026 (18.21%) Customer Service
3 772 (13.70%) Agile
4 579 (10.28%) Mentoring
5 568 (10.08%) Decision-Making
6 537 (9.53%) CI/CD
7 526 (9.34%) AI
8 490 (8.70%) Analytics
9 488 (8.66%) ITIL
10 473 (8.40%) DevOps
11 457 (8.11%) Cybersecurity
12 448 (7.95%) Software Engineering
13 447 (7.93%) Collaborative Working
14 409 (7.26%) Business Intelligence
15 403 (7.15%) Stakeholder Management
16 399 (7.08%) ERP
17 359 (6.37%) Project Delivery
18 340 (6.03%) Computer Science
19 336 (5.96%) Service Delivery
20 325 (5.77%) Customer Experience
Programming Languages
1 874 (15.51%) SQL
2 652 (11.57%) Python
3 356 (6.32%) JavaScript
4 326 (5.79%) C#
5 251 (4.46%) Java
6 245 (4.35%) PowerShell
7 162 (2.88%) TypeScript
8 153 (2.72%) C++
9 111 (1.97%) Bash
10 73 (1.30%) PHP
11 59 (1.05%) C
12 58 (1.03%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 47 (0.83%) T-SQL
14 35 (0.62%) PL/SQL
15 33 (0.59%) Go
15 33 (0.59%) Perl
16 30 (0.53%) Rust
17 29 (0.51%) Kotlin
17 29 (0.51%) Ruby
17 29 (0.51%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 813 (14.43%) Degree
2 461 (8.18%) Security Cleared
3 329 (5.84%) SC Cleared
4 207 (3.67%) DBS Check
5 162 (2.88%) Microsoft Certification
6 160 (2.84%) Computer Science Degree
7 84 (1.49%) BPSS Clearance
8 82 (1.46%) Cisco Certification
9 80 (1.42%) DV Cleared
10 70 (1.24%) Azure Certification
11 61 (1.08%) ACCA
12 60 (1.06%) CCNA
12 60 (1.06%) HNC
13 58 (1.03%) A+ Certification
14 57 (1.01%) CIMA
15 52 (0.92%) PMI Certification
16 49 (0.87%) Master's Degree
17 47 (0.83%) CISSP
18 46 (0.82%) PMP
19 44 (0.78%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 319 (5.66%) QA
2 245 (4.35%) Data Quality
3 175 (3.11%) Cyber Essentials
4 156 (2.77%) GDPR
5 142 (2.52%) SLA
6 138 (2.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 123 (2.18%) PCI DSS
8 109 (1.93%) Accessibility
9 87 (1.54%) NIST
10 39 (0.69%) ISO 9001
11 28 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 25 (0.44%) PMO
13 20 (0.35%) GMP
14 16 (0.28%) Good Clinical Practice
15 15 (0.27%) GRC
16 14 (0.25%) SOC 2
17 13 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
18 12 (0.21%) TickIT
19 11 (0.20%) ISO 14001
20 8 (0.14%) WCAG
System Software
1 707 (12.55%) Active Directory
2 271 (4.81%) Hyper-V
3 207 (3.67%) Docker
4 186 (3.30%) VMware Infrastructure
5 80 (1.42%) Terminal Server
6 40 (0.71%) Firmware
7 31 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
8 27 (0.48%) vSphere
9 20 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
10 15 (0.27%) Embedded Firmware
11 10 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
12 9 (0.16%) KVM
13 7 (0.12%) VMware Workstation
14 6 (0.11%) XenApp
15 5 (0.089%) ClearTrust
15 5 (0.089%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 5 (0.089%) Virtual Servers
16 3 (0.053%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 3 (0.053%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.053%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 226 (4.01%) Terraform
2 216 (3.83%) Microsoft Intune
3 203 (3.60%) Kubernetes
4 111 (1.97%) Ansible
5 61 (1.08%) Grafana
6 58 (1.03%) SCCM
7 39 (0.69%) Prometheus
8 21 (0.37%) Nagios
9 18 (0.32%) FortiGate
10 13 (0.23%) Kibana
10 13 (0.23%) Puppet
11 12 (0.21%) logstash
12 10 (0.18%) Autotask
12 10 (0.18%) Functional Safety
12 10 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
12 10 (0.18%) Podman
12 10 (0.18%) Proxmox
12 10 (0.18%) QRadar
13 9 (0.16%) Failover Clustering
13 9 (0.16%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 1,726 (30.64%) Microsoft
2 300 (5.32%) VMware
3 135 (2.40%) Veeam
4 128 (2.27%) Google
5 118 (2.09%) SAP
5 118 (2.09%) Splunk
6 117 (2.08%) Cisco
7 112 (1.99%) Oracle
8 106 (1.88%) SolarWinds
9 87 (1.54%) Tanium
10 84 (1.49%) ServiceNow
11 81 (1.44%) Nimble Storage
12 80 (1.42%) Brocade
13 79 (1.40%) Salesforce
14 69 (1.22%) Databricks
15 57 (1.01%) Apple
16 53 (0.94%) Sage
17 52 (0.92%) Adobe
18 48 (0.85%) Fortinet
19 47 (0.83%) Dell