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

6 months to
2 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -9 +3 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,711 5,226 10,511
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 7.21% 19.21% 15.44%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.04% 21.05% 18.40%
Number of salaries quoted 3,435 3,169 6,892
10th Percentile £26,256 £26,250 £25,500
25th Percentile £29,750 £31,250 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £47,500 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year -10.53% +5.56% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £63,750 £60,000
90th Percentile £75,000 £78,750 £72,500
UK median annual salary £47,500 £52,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.52% +5.00% -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 46,931 24,830 57,120
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 71.85% 91.28% 83.93%
Number of salaries quoted 28,906 13,894 40,971
10th Percentile £29,000 £28,000 £27,000
25th Percentile £36,750 £37,000 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £68,438 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £82,500 £77,500
UK median annual salary £58,396 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -2.67% +9.09% -10.57%

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 2 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 2 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 -19 1,254 £42,500 -7.61% 638
South East -8 1,141 £45,000 -10.00% 745
Midlands -21 876 £39,250 -12.78% 445
North West -15 653 £42,500 -12.37% 354
South West -8 529 £43,500 -2.89% 280
West Midlands -23 518 £42,500 -15.00% 278
Yorkshire -12 480 £40,000 -1.67% 212
East of England -10 463 £40,000 -16.23% 256
East Midlands -6 355 £35,000 -12.50% 168
Scotland -6 292 £36,000 -28.00% 112
North East -16 121 £48,500 +7.78% 81
Wales -12 114 £42,500 -15.33% 57
Northern Ireland -11 70 £37,000 -32.73% 28
Isle of Man -1 1 £62,500 +64.47% 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
1 271 (5.75%) Microsoft Exchange
2 253 (5.37%) SharePoint
3 43 (0.91%) CMS
4 36 (0.76%) Confluence
5 24 (0.51%) WordPress
6 23 (0.49%) IIS
7 18 (0.38%) Apache
8 14 (0.30%) Apache Airflow
8 14 (0.30%) Apache Spark
9 11 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2013
9 11 (0.23%) SAS
10 9 (0.19%) Exchange Server 2007
10 9 (0.19%) Exchange Server 2010
11 8 (0.17%) nginx
12 7 (0.15%) Drupal
13 5 (0.11%) OpenStack
13 5 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 5 (0.11%) Skype for Business
14 4 (0.085%) Moodle
14 4 (0.085%) Totara
Applications
1 304 (6.45%) Microsoft Office
2 270 (5.73%) Microsoft Excel
3 43 (0.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 36 (0.76%) MS Visio
5 34 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
6 15 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
7 10 (0.21%) Adobe Illustrator
8 9 (0.19%) Fusion 360
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 7 (0.15%) Photoshop
11 4 (0.085%) AutoCAD
11 4 (0.085%) Simulink
12 3 (0.064%) Trello
13 2 (0.042%) Elementor
13 2 (0.042%) Sketch
13 2 (0.042%) Weka
14 1 (0.021%) Autodesk Inventor
14 1 (0.021%) CANalyzer
14 1 (0.021%) Chatbot
14 1 (0.021%) Notion
Business Applications
1 46 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
3 24 (0.51%) NetSuite
4 17 (0.36%) Dynamics NAV
5 16 (0.34%) Shopify
6 14 (0.30%) Magento
7 13 (0.28%) iTrent
7 13 (0.28%) SAP ERP
8 12 (0.25%) SAP CO
9 10 (0.21%) Dynamics AX
10 8 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
11 7 (0.15%) Q-Pulse
11 7 (0.15%) SAP Business One
11 7 (0.15%) Workday HCM
12 5 (0.11%) IBM Planning Analytics
12 5 (0.11%) Sage X3
13 4 (0.085%) Dynamics GP
13 4 (0.085%) Line 50
13 4 (0.085%) Sage 200
13 4 (0.085%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 916 (19.44%) Azure
2 801 (17.00%) Microsoft 365
3 456 (9.68%) AWS
4 323 (6.86%) Power Platform
5 219 (4.65%) Entra ID
6 196 (4.16%) SaaS
7 132 (2.80%) GCP
8 120 (2.55%) Azure DevOps
9 109 (2.31%) Serverless
10 99 (2.10%) GitHub
11 84 (1.78%) Dynamics 365
12 68 (1.44%) Power Automate
13 61 (1.29%) Amazon S3
14 58 (1.23%) AWS Lambda
15 56 (1.19%) Google Workspace
16 51 (1.08%) GitHub Actions
17 49 (1.04%) Azure Data Factory
18 48 (1.02%) IaaS
19 47 (1.00%) PaaS
20 46 (0.98%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 290 (6.16%) DNS
1 290 (6.16%) Firewall
2 239 (5.07%) DHCP
3 157 (3.33%) WAN
4 154 (3.27%) VPN
5 117 (2.48%) LAN
5 117 (2.48%) Wi-Fi
6 108 (2.29%) Broadband
7 106 (2.25%) TCP/IP
8 91 (1.93%) Wireless
9 79 (1.68%) VLAN
10 70 (1.49%) VoIP
11 59 (1.25%) Network Security
12 41 (0.87%) SD-WAN
13 34 (0.72%) Internet
14 32 (0.68%) SAN
15 21 (0.45%) HTTP
15 21 (0.45%) Unified Communications
16 20 (0.42%) Remote Desktop
17 19 (0.40%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 267 (5.67%) Power BI
2 193 (4.10%) SQL Server
3 71 (1.51%) PostgreSQL
4 66 (1.40%) NoSQL
5 64 (1.36%) MySQL
6 60 (1.27%) Amazon RDS
7 58 (1.23%) Data Warehouse
7 58 (1.23%) Relational Database
8 57 (1.21%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 48 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 41 (0.87%) Power Query
10 41 (0.87%) Tableau
11 37 (0.79%) DynamoDB
12 32 (0.68%) MongoDB
13 24 (0.51%) Amazon Redshift
13 24 (0.51%) Data Lake
14 23 (0.49%) Azure SQL Database
14 23 (0.49%) Big Data
14 23 (0.49%) Metadata
15 21 (0.45%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 181 (3.84%) Git
2 146 (3.10%) JIRA
3 72 (1.53%) GitLab
4 53 (1.13%) Jenkins
5 23 (0.49%) Rational DOORS
6 19 (0.40%) Selenium
7 18 (0.38%) Cucumber
8 17 (0.36%) Maven
9 16 (0.34%) SonarQube
10 14 (0.30%) Cypress.io
11 13 (0.28%) Bitbucket
11 13 (0.28%) LabVIEW
12 9 (0.19%) JUnit
13 8 (0.17%) Visual Studio
14 7 (0.15%) Burp Suite
14 7 (0.15%) CircleCI
14 7 (0.15%) Metasploit
15 6 (0.13%) JMeter
15 6 (0.13%) Postman
15 6 (0.13%) Subversion
General
1 2,260 (47.97%) Social Skills
2 1,295 (27.49%) Analytical Skills
3 820 (17.41%) Finance
4 311 (6.60%) Organisational Skills
5 298 (6.33%) Manufacturing
6 213 (4.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 203 (4.31%) Public Sector
8 190 (4.03%) Marketing
9 170 (3.61%) Legal
9 170 (3.61%) Retail
10 153 (3.25%) Law
11 130 (2.76%) Banking
12 129 (2.74%) Telecoms
13 126 (2.67%) Electronics
14 86 (1.83%) Documentation Skills
15 72 (1.53%) Automotive
16 70 (1.49%) Games
17 66 (1.40%) Presentation Skills
18 60 (1.27%) Influencing Skills
19 53 (1.13%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 704 (14.94%) Analyst
2 606 (12.86%) IT Support
3 552 (11.72%) Support Engineer
4 516 (10.95%) Senior
5 363 (7.71%) Developer
6 345 (7.32%) IT Engineer
7 273 (5.79%) IT Support Engineer
8 255 (5.41%) Lead
9 210 (4.46%) Support Analyst
10 201 (4.27%) Support Technician
11 163 (3.46%) Technical Support
12 160 (3.40%) Systems Engineer
13 157 (3.33%) IT Technician
14 152 (3.23%) Architect
15 151 (3.21%) Business Analyst
16 149 (3.16%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 142 (3.01%) 2nd Line Support
17 142 (3.01%) Consultant
18 135 (2.87%) IT Support Technician
19 133 (2.82%) Technical Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 155 (3.29%) .NET
2 145 (3.08%) React
3 130 (2.76%) HTML
4 105 (2.23%) REST
5 102 (2.17%) CSS
6 80 (1.70%) Node.js
7 62 (1.32%) SOAP
8 53 (1.13%) Middleware
8 53 (1.13%) RESTful
9 51 (1.08%) JSON
10 50 (1.06%) XML
11 44 (0.93%) AngularJS
11 44 (0.93%) Vue
12 42 (0.89%) Spring
13 40 (0.85%) Spring Boot
14 39 (0.83%) OAuth
15 31 (0.66%) EDI
16 29 (0.62%) GraphQL
17 28 (0.59%) ASP.NET
17 28 (0.59%) Laravel
Miscellaneous
1 376 (7.98%) Driving Licence
2 291 (6.18%) Onboarding
3 237 (5.03%) Self-Motivation
4 167 (3.54%) Management Information System
5 113 (2.40%) Product Ownership
6 110 (2.33%) Analytical Mindset
7 99 (2.10%) Cloud Native
8 95 (2.02%) Legacy Systems
9 85 (1.80%) Data Centre
10 78 (1.66%) Social Media
11 66 (1.40%) Distributed Systems
12 61 (1.29%) Enterprise Software
13 54 (1.15%) Mobile App
14 51 (1.08%) Low-Code
15 38 (0.81%) Data Structures
16 33 (0.70%) CCTV
16 33 (0.70%) Life Science
17 32 (0.68%) IoT
18 31 (0.66%) FMCG
18 31 (0.66%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 803 (17.05%) Windows
2 358 (7.60%) Windows Server
3 283 (6.01%) Linux
4 123 (2.61%) Windows 10
5 102 (2.17%) Android
6 89 (1.89%) Windows Server 2016
7 66 (1.40%) Apple iOS
8 51 (1.08%) Mac OS
9 37 (0.79%) Windows Server 2019
10 31 (0.66%) Unix
11 24 (0.51%) CentOS
11 24 (0.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 20 (0.42%) Ubuntu
12 20 (0.42%) Windows Server 2012
13 13 (0.28%) VMS
13 13 (0.28%) Windows 7
14 10 (0.21%) Debian
15 8 (0.17%) Windows 8
16 7 (0.15%) Windows Server 2008
17 4 (0.085%) FreeRTOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 967 (20.53%) Continuous Improvement
2 841 (17.85%) Customer Service
3 623 (13.22%) Agile
4 450 (9.55%) Decision-Making
5 429 (9.11%) Mentoring
6 408 (8.66%) ITIL
7 390 (8.28%) DevOps
8 389 (8.26%) CI/CD
9 356 (7.56%) Analytics
10 335 (7.11%) Business Intelligence
11 332 (7.05%) Project Management
12 328 (6.96%) AI
13 311 (6.60%) Coaching
14 299 (6.35%) Cybersecurity
15 292 (6.20%) Stakeholder Management
16 284 (6.03%) ERP
17 279 (5.92%) Computer Science
18 278 (5.90%) Software Engineering
19 271 (5.75%) Collaborative Working
19 271 (5.75%) CRM
Programming Languages
1 596 (12.65%) SQL
2 502 (10.66%) Python
3 270 (5.73%) JavaScript
4 202 (4.29%) PowerShell
5 189 (4.01%) Java
6 176 (3.74%) C#
7 102 (2.17%) TypeScript
8 83 (1.76%) Bash
9 64 (1.36%) PHP
10 62 (1.32%) C++
11 48 (1.02%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 46 (0.98%) C
13 32 (0.68%) PL/SQL
14 30 (0.64%) T-SQL
15 26 (0.55%) Kotlin
16 25 (0.53%) Bicep
17 24 (0.51%) R
18 23 (0.49%) Go
19 20 (0.42%) Scala
20 17 (0.36%) Rust
Qualifications
1 754 (16.01%) Degree
2 305 (6.47%) Security Cleared
3 202 (4.29%) SC Cleared
4 199 (4.22%) DBS Check
5 147 (3.12%) Microsoft Certification
6 128 (2.72%) Computer Science Degree
7 85 (1.80%) BPSS Clearance
8 72 (1.53%) A+ Certification
8 72 (1.53%) ACCA
9 64 (1.36%) CIMA
10 63 (1.34%) Cisco Certification
11 57 (1.21%) DV Cleared
12 52 (1.10%) CCNA
13 47 (1.00%) Master's Degree
14 44 (0.93%) PMI Certification
15 43 (0.91%) CISSP
15 43 (0.91%) HNC
15 43 (0.91%) Network+ Certification
16 38 (0.81%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 37 (0.79%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 253 (5.37%) QA
2 212 (4.50%) Data Quality
3 146 (3.10%) GDPR
4 114 (2.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 112 (2.38%) Cyber Essentials
6 110 (2.33%) SLA
7 81 (1.72%) PCI DSS
8 79 (1.68%) NIST
9 51 (1.08%) Accessibility
10 38 (0.81%) ISO 9001
11 21 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 18 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
13 17 (0.36%) SOC 2
14 14 (0.30%) GMP
15 12 (0.25%) GRC
15 12 (0.25%) TickIT
16 9 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 8 (0.17%) ISO 14001
17 8 (0.17%) PMO
18 6 (0.13%) HIPAA
System Software
1 565 (11.99%) Active Directory
2 171 (3.63%) Docker
3 170 (3.61%) Hyper-V
4 126 (2.67%) VMware Infrastructure
5 48 (1.02%) Terminal Server
6 27 (0.57%) Virtual Desktop
7 25 (0.53%) Firmware
8 16 (0.34%) vSphere
9 11 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
10 10 (0.21%) KVM
10 10 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
11 8 (0.17%) VMware Workstation
12 6 (0.13%) XenApp
13 4 (0.085%) Embedded Firmware
13 4 (0.085%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 3 (0.064%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 3 (0.064%) Virtual Servers
15 2 (0.042%) VMware NSX
16 1 (0.021%) BitLocker
16 1 (0.021%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 198 (4.20%) Terraform
2 164 (3.48%) Microsoft Intune
3 141 (2.99%) Kubernetes
4 83 (1.76%) Ansible
5 58 (1.23%) SCCM
6 53 (1.13%) Grafana
7 31 (0.66%) Prometheus
8 20 (0.42%) BMC PATROL
9 18 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
10 16 (0.34%) Nagios
11 10 (0.21%) Autotask
11 10 (0.21%) Kibana
11 10 (0.21%) Puppet
11 10 (0.21%) vCenter Server
12 9 (0.19%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 8 (0.17%) Cisco CUCM
13 8 (0.17%) FortiGate
13 8 (0.17%) HP Fortify
13 8 (0.17%) logstash
14 7 (0.15%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,299 (27.57%) Microsoft
2 202 (4.29%) VMware
3 142 (3.01%) Oracle
4 111 (2.36%) SAP
5 97 (2.06%) Google
5 97 (2.06%) Veeam
6 95 (2.02%) Cisco
7 80 (1.70%) SolarWinds
8 78 (1.66%) Splunk
9 74 (1.57%) Databricks
10 71 (1.51%) ServiceNow
11 64 (1.36%) Apple
12 60 (1.27%) Salesforce
13 59 (1.25%) Adobe
14 49 (1.04%) Tanium
15 48 (1.02%) Brocade
15 48 (1.02%) Dell
15 48 (1.02%) Nimble Storage
16 39 (0.83%) Sage
17 35 (0.74%) HubSpot