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

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 4 6
Rank change year-on-year -7 +2 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,983 5,980 10,708
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 7.39% 20.70% 14.82%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.40% 22.50% 18.11%
Number of salaries quoted 3,695 3,067 6,952
10th Percentile £26,500 £26,250 £25,000
25th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £44,500 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.49% -1.11% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £61,250 £60,000
90th Percentile £75,000 £77,500 £72,500
UK median annual salary £47,500 £50,000 £49,000
% change year-on-year -5.00% +2.04% -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 47,892 26,573 59,124
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 71.06% 91.98% 81.83%
Number of salaries quoted 31,314 13,143 42,035
10th Percentile £30,000 £27,000 £27,052
25th Percentile £38,000 £35,000 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £51,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% +2.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £67,500 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £82,500 £77,500
UK median annual salary £60,000 £57,610 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.15% +4.75% -9.69%

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 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 30 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 -9 1,375 £42,500 -5.56% 497
South East -8 1,182 £45,000 - 638
Midlands -21 918 £42,000 -6.67% 315
North West -15 704 £45,000 -4.26% 271
South West -7 572 £43,500 +8.75% 202
West Midlands -25 535 £42,500 -10.53% 192
Yorkshire -10 517 £40,500 +6.58% 159
East of England -7 499 £44,750 +10.49% 216
East Midlands -9 379 £35,000 -9.09% 125
Scotland -4 276 £35,000 -28.28% 74
North East -13 154 £48,222 +7.16% 79
Wales -14 112 £42,500 -15.00% 42
Northern Ireland -9 69 £38,500 -30.00% 13
Isle of Man +3 3 £35,000 +1.45%
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
1 295 (5.92%) SharePoint
2 294 (5.90%) Microsoft Exchange
3 47 (0.94%) CMS
4 41 (0.82%) Confluence
5 29 (0.58%) IIS
6 23 (0.46%) Apache
7 21 (0.42%) WordPress
8 17 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
9 14 (0.28%) Apache Spark
9 14 (0.28%) SAS
10 11 (0.22%) Exchange Server 2013
11 9 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2007
11 9 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2010
12 7 (0.14%) OpenEdge
12 7 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 5 (0.10%) Skype for Business
14 4 (0.080%) Moodle
14 4 (0.080%) nginx
14 4 (0.080%) OpenStack
14 4 (0.080%) Totara
Applications
1 300 (6.02%) Microsoft Office
2 292 (5.86%) Microsoft Excel
3 39 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 38 (0.76%) Spreadsheet
5 35 (0.70%) MS Visio
6 11 (0.22%) Microsoft Project
7 9 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 9 (0.18%) Adobe Illustrator
8 8 (0.16%) Fusion 360
9 7 (0.14%) Simulink
10 6 (0.12%) AutoCAD
10 6 (0.12%) Photoshop
11 5 (0.10%) Trello
12 4 (0.080%) Chatbot
13 3 (0.060%) Autodesk Inventor
14 2 (0.040%) Acrobat
14 2 (0.040%) Sketch
14 2 (0.040%) SOLIDWORKS
14 2 (0.040%) Windchill
15 1 (0.020%) Abaqus
Business Applications
1 48 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
3 25 (0.50%) NetSuite
4 21 (0.42%) Dynamics NAV
5 19 (0.38%) Shopify
6 16 (0.32%) Magento
7 14 (0.28%) SAP ERP
8 12 (0.24%) Dynamics AX
8 12 (0.24%) iTrent
8 12 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
9 10 (0.20%) IBM Planning Analytics
9 10 (0.20%) SAP CO
10 8 (0.16%) Sage 50
11 7 (0.14%) Q-Pulse
11 7 (0.14%) SAP Business One
11 7 (0.14%) Workday HCM
12 5 (0.10%) Salesforce CRM
13 4 (0.080%) Line 50
13 4 (0.080%) Sage 200
13 4 (0.080%) Sage X3
Cloud Services
1 997 (20.01%) Azure
2 871 (17.48%) Microsoft 365
3 502 (10.07%) AWS
4 373 (7.49%) Power Platform
5 225 (4.52%) Entra ID
6 173 (3.47%) SaaS
7 141 (2.83%) GCP
8 122 (2.45%) Azure DevOps
9 109 (2.19%) Serverless
10 103 (2.07%) Dynamics 365
11 85 (1.71%) GitHub
12 74 (1.49%) Power Automate
13 65 (1.30%) PowerApps
14 59 (1.18%) Amazon S3
15 56 (1.12%) OneDrive
16 54 (1.08%) Google Workspace
17 51 (1.02%) AWS Lambda
18 46 (0.92%) IaaS
19 44 (0.88%) Azure Data Factory
19 44 (0.88%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 321 (6.44%) Firewall
2 306 (6.14%) DNS
3 254 (5.10%) DHCP
4 174 (3.49%) WAN
5 168 (3.37%) VPN
6 134 (2.69%) LAN
7 126 (2.53%) TCP/IP
8 122 (2.45%) Wi-Fi
9 108 (2.17%) Broadband
10 104 (2.09%) Wireless
11 95 (1.91%) VLAN
12 78 (1.57%) VoIP
13 77 (1.55%) Network Security
14 44 (0.88%) SD-WAN
15 36 (0.72%) Internet
16 34 (0.68%) SAN
17 21 (0.42%) HTTP
18 19 (0.38%) Unified Communications
19 17 (0.34%) Remote Desktop
20 15 (0.30%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 295 (5.92%) Power BI
2 210 (4.21%) SQL Server
3 75 (1.51%) Amazon RDS
4 74 (1.49%) Data Warehouse
5 70 (1.40%) MySQL
5 70 (1.40%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 69 (1.38%) PostgreSQL
7 68 (1.36%) NoSQL
8 59 (1.18%) Tableau
9 53 (1.06%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 52 (1.04%) Relational Database
11 44 (0.88%) Power Query
12 38 (0.76%) Big Data
13 33 (0.66%) DynamoDB
14 31 (0.62%) MongoDB
15 29 (0.58%) Data Lake
16 25 (0.50%) Amazon Redshift
17 24 (0.48%) Oracle Reports
18 22 (0.44%) Azure SQL Database
18 22 (0.44%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 195 (3.91%) Git
2 143 (2.87%) JIRA
3 68 (1.36%) GitLab
4 44 (0.88%) Jenkins
5 29 (0.58%) Rational DOORS
6 16 (0.32%) Maven
7 15 (0.30%) Selenium
8 14 (0.28%) Cucumber
8 14 (0.28%) JUnit
9 13 (0.26%) LabVIEW
9 13 (0.26%) SonarQube
9 13 (0.26%) Subversion
10 12 (0.24%) Cypress.io
11 10 (0.20%) Bitbucket
11 10 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
12 9 (0.18%) Visual Studio
13 8 (0.16%) MLflow
14 7 (0.14%) CircleCI
14 7 (0.14%) Metasploit
14 7 (0.14%) Mockito
General
1 2,362 (47.40%) Social Skills
2 1,400 (28.10%) Analytical Skills
3 835 (16.76%) Finance
4 342 (6.86%) Manufacturing
5 317 (6.36%) Organisational Skills
6 228 (4.58%) Public Sector
7 211 (4.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 191 (3.83%) Law
9 182 (3.65%) Legal
9 182 (3.65%) Marketing
10 173 (3.47%) Retail
11 144 (2.89%) Telecoms
12 135 (2.71%) Electronics
13 128 (2.57%) Banking
14 97 (1.95%) Documentation Skills
15 75 (1.51%) Influencing Skills
16 71 (1.42%) Games
17 70 (1.40%) Aerospace
18 56 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
19 54 (1.08%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 718 (14.41%) Analyst
2 620 (12.44%) IT Support
3 537 (10.78%) Support Engineer
4 536 (10.76%) Senior
5 433 (8.69%) Developer
6 358 (7.18%) IT Engineer
7 277 (5.56%) IT Support Engineer
8 256 (5.14%) Lead
9 233 (4.68%) Support Technician
10 207 (4.15%) Support Analyst
11 192 (3.85%) Systems Engineer
12 184 (3.69%) IT Technician
13 173 (3.47%) Architect
14 167 (3.35%) Consultant
15 159 (3.19%) Technical Support
16 156 (3.13%) Software Engineer
17 151 (3.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 149 (2.99%) IT Support Technician
19 131 (2.63%) Business Analyst
20 127 (2.55%) Technical Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 183 (3.67%) .NET
2 167 (3.35%) React
3 146 (2.93%) HTML
4 124 (2.49%) REST
5 113 (2.27%) CSS
6 82 (1.65%) Node.js
7 72 (1.44%) SOAP
8 64 (1.28%) JSON
8 64 (1.28%) RESTful
9 57 (1.14%) XML
10 56 (1.12%) Middleware
11 54 (1.08%) Vue
12 51 (1.02%) AngularJS
13 40 (0.80%) Spring
14 39 (0.78%) OAuth
15 36 (0.72%) Spring Boot
16 35 (0.70%) EDI
17 34 (0.68%) ASP.NET
18 30 (0.60%) Laravel
18 30 (0.60%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 383 (7.69%) Driving Licence
2 268 (5.38%) Onboarding
3 221 (4.44%) Self-Motivation
4 189 (3.79%) Management Information System
5 126 (2.53%) Product Ownership
6 118 (2.37%) Cloud Native
7 110 (2.21%) Analytical Mindset
8 107 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
9 97 (1.95%) Data Centre
10 76 (1.53%) Social Media
11 73 (1.46%) Distributed Systems
12 63 (1.26%) Mobile App
13 57 (1.14%) Low-Code
14 51 (1.02%) Enterprise Software
15 45 (0.90%) Virtual Team
16 43 (0.86%) Data Structures
17 38 (0.76%) Security Posture
18 36 (0.72%) Algorithms
18 36 (0.72%) Hybrid Cloud
18 36 (0.72%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 834 (16.74%) Windows
2 396 (7.95%) Windows Server
3 323 (6.48%) Linux
4 131 (2.63%) Windows 10
5 106 (2.13%) Android
6 101 (2.03%) Windows Server 2016
7 63 (1.26%) Apple iOS
8 52 (1.04%) Mac OS
9 49 (0.98%) Windows Server 2019
10 32 (0.64%) Unix
11 26 (0.52%) CentOS
12 25 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 24 (0.48%) Ubuntu
14 20 (0.40%) Windows Server 2012
15 15 (0.30%) VMS
16 12 (0.24%) Windows 7
17 9 (0.18%) Debian
18 7 (0.14%) Windows 8
18 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
19 4 (0.080%) FreeRTOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,057 (21.21%) Continuous Improvement
2 877 (17.60%) Customer Service
3 667 (13.39%) Agile
4 492 (9.87%) Mentoring
5 484 (9.71%) Decision-Making
6 424 (8.51%) CI/CD
7 420 (8.43%) AI
8 415 (8.33%) Analytics
9 405 (8.13%) ITIL
10 400 (8.03%) DevOps
11 349 (7.00%) Business Intelligence
12 333 (6.68%) ERP
13 332 (6.66%) Collaborative Working
14 331 (6.64%) Software Engineering
15 326 (6.54%) Cybersecurity
16 322 (6.46%) Coaching
17 321 (6.44%) Project Management
18 312 (6.26%) Stakeholder Management
19 307 (6.16%) Computer Science
20 289 (5.80%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 702 (14.09%) SQL
2 573 (11.50%) Python
3 315 (6.32%) JavaScript
4 238 (4.78%) C#
5 211 (4.23%) Java
6 200 (4.01%) PowerShell
7 124 (2.49%) TypeScript
8 102 (2.05%) C++
9 93 (1.87%) Bash
10 70 (1.40%) PHP
11 52 (1.04%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 48 (0.96%) C
13 43 (0.86%) PL/SQL
14 40 (0.80%) T-SQL
15 29 (0.58%) R
16 27 (0.54%) Kotlin
17 26 (0.52%) Perl
18 23 (0.46%) Go
18 23 (0.46%) Shell Script
19 22 (0.44%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 763 (15.31%) Degree
2 375 (7.53%) Security Cleared
3 268 (5.38%) SC Cleared
4 205 (4.11%) DBS Check
5 157 (3.15%) Microsoft Certification
6 145 (2.91%) Computer Science Degree
7 87 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
8 75 (1.51%) Cisco Certification
9 73 (1.46%) A+ Certification
10 69 (1.38%) DV Cleared
11 61 (1.22%) ACCA
12 59 (1.18%) CCNA
13 57 (1.14%) CIMA
14 51 (1.02%) HNC
15 48 (0.96%) PMI Certification
16 47 (0.94%) Master's Degree
17 46 (0.92%) Network+ Certification
18 45 (0.90%) CISSP
19 40 (0.80%) Azure Certification
20 38 (0.76%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 280 (5.62%) QA
2 237 (4.76%) Data Quality
3 151 (3.03%) GDPR
4 132 (2.65%) Cyber Essentials
5 127 (2.55%) SLA
6 111 (2.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 88 (1.77%) PCI DSS
8 81 (1.63%) NIST
9 69 (1.38%) Accessibility
10 38 (0.76%) ISO 9001
11 20 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
12 17 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 15 (0.30%) PMO
14 14 (0.28%) GMP
14 14 (0.28%) SOC 2
15 13 (0.26%) GRC
15 13 (0.26%) ISO 14001
16 12 (0.24%) TickIT
17 8 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 6 (0.12%) COBIT
System Software
1 594 (11.92%) Active Directory
2 201 (4.03%) Hyper-V
3 166 (3.33%) Docker
4 158 (3.17%) VMware Infrastructure
5 56 (1.12%) Terminal Server
6 30 (0.60%) Firmware
7 27 (0.54%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.34%) vSphere
9 15 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
10 14 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.20%) KVM
12 7 (0.14%) VMware Workstation
13 6 (0.12%) XenApp
14 5 (0.10%) Embedded Firmware
15 4 (0.080%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 4 (0.080%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 4 (0.080%) Virtual Servers
16 3 (0.060%) Terminal Services
17 2 (0.040%) ClearTrust
17 2 (0.040%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 189 (3.79%) Terraform
2 180 (3.61%) Microsoft Intune
3 156 (3.13%) Kubernetes
4 88 (1.77%) Ansible
5 55 (1.10%) SCCM
6 49 (0.98%) Grafana
7 32 (0.64%) Prometheus
8 22 (0.44%) Nagios
9 15 (0.30%) Single Sign-On
10 12 (0.24%) vCenter Server
11 11 (0.22%) FortiGate
12 9 (0.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 9 (0.18%) Autotask
12 9 (0.18%) Kibana
12 9 (0.18%) Puppet
12 9 (0.18%) ZABBIX
13 8 (0.16%) Functional Safety
13 8 (0.16%) logstash
13 8 (0.16%) QRadar
14 7 (0.14%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,402 (28.14%) Microsoft
2 244 (4.90%) VMware
3 139 (2.79%) Oracle
4 115 (2.31%) Veeam
5 113 (2.27%) SAP
6 108 (2.17%) Cisco
7 103 (2.07%) Google
8 88 (1.77%) SolarWinds
8 88 (1.77%) Splunk
9 69 (1.38%) Databricks
10 66 (1.32%) Salesforce
11 64 (1.28%) ServiceNow
12 63 (1.26%) Apple
13 57 (1.14%) Nimble Storage
14 56 (1.12%) Brocade
14 56 (1.12%) Tanium
15 50 (1.00%) Adobe
16 47 (0.94%) Dell
17 44 (0.88%) Sage
18 38 (0.76%) Meraki