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

6 months to
15 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -9 +3 +7
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,875 5,201 10,217
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 7.88% 20.00% 15.43%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.84% 21.92% 18.28%
Number of salaries quoted 3,515 3,105 6,825
10th Percentile £26,250 £26,750 £25,500
25th Percentile £29,688 £32,500 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £48,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year -11.46% +6.67% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £65,000 £60,000
90th Percentile £75,000 £79,828 £72,500
UK median annual salary £47,000 £54,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -12.96% +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 44,972 23,726 55,883
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 72.73% 91.23% 84.41%
Number of salaries quoted 27,377 13,696 40,514
10th Percentile £28,500 £28,500 £27,000
25th Percentile £35,750 £37,505 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £53,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -5.66% +6.00% -8.26%
75th Percentile £70,000 £68,750 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £82,751 £77,500
UK median annual salary £57,500 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -4.17% +9.09% -10.54%

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 15 April 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 15 April 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 -18 1,290 £41,500 -9.78% 636
South East -7 1,187 £45,000 -11.71% 772
Midlands -21 907 £39,000 -17.89% 470
North West -18 667 £42,500 -15.00% 330
South West -8 546 £43,500 -5.43% 287
West Midlands -25 538 £42,500 -18.87% 273
Yorkshire -9 494 £37,500 -10.71% 211
East of England -9 453 £40,000 -20.00% 289
East Midlands -5 366 £35,000 -11.95% 198
Scotland -5 319 £35,000 -30.00% 136
North East -12 129 £48,445 +7.65% 107
Wales -12 113 £40,000 -20.31% 74
Northern Ireland -7 86 £24,500 -55.45% 29
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
1 280 (5.74%) Microsoft Exchange
2 242 (4.96%) SharePoint
3 42 (0.86%) CMS
4 41 (0.84%) Confluence
5 26 (0.53%) IIS
6 23 (0.47%) WordPress
7 16 (0.33%) Apache Spark
8 15 (0.31%) Apache
9 14 (0.29%) Apache Airflow
10 12 (0.25%) Exchange Server 2013
10 12 (0.25%) SAS
11 10 (0.21%) Exchange Server 2007
11 10 (0.21%) Exchange Server 2010
12 8 (0.16%) nginx
13 7 (0.14%) Drupal
14 5 (0.10%) OpenStack
14 5 (0.10%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 5 (0.10%) Skype for Business
15 4 (0.082%) Moodle
15 4 (0.082%) Totara
Applications
1 317 (6.50%) Microsoft Office
2 306 (6.28%) Microsoft Excel
3 48 (0.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 35 (0.72%) MS Visio
5 28 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
6 16 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
7 11 (0.23%) Adobe Illustrator
8 10 (0.21%) Photoshop
9 8 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.16%) Fusion 360
10 7 (0.14%) AutoCAD
11 4 (0.082%) Simulink
11 4 (0.082%) Trello
12 3 (0.062%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.062%) Elementor
13 2 (0.041%) Adobe Premiere
13 2 (0.041%) InDesign
13 2 (0.041%) Revit
13 2 (0.041%) Sketch
13 2 (0.041%) Weka
Business Applications
1 41 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
2 33 (0.68%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.53%) NetSuite
4 17 (0.35%) Dynamics NAV
5 14 (0.29%) Sage X3
5 14 (0.29%) Shopify
6 13 (0.27%) Magento
6 13 (0.27%) SAP CO
7 11 (0.23%) iTrent
8 10 (0.21%) SAP ERP
9 8 (0.16%) SAP Business One
10 7 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
10 7 (0.14%) Q-Pulse
10 7 (0.14%) Workday HCM
11 5 (0.10%) IBM Planning Analytics
11 5 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
12 4 (0.082%) Dynamics GP
12 4 (0.082%) Oracle Payables
12 4 (0.082%) SAP FI
12 4 (0.082%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 990 (20.31%) Azure
2 842 (17.27%) Microsoft 365
3 462 (9.48%) AWS
4 338 (6.93%) Power Platform
5 228 (4.68%) Entra ID
6 209 (4.29%) SaaS
7 138 (2.83%) GCP
8 130 (2.67%) Azure DevOps
9 111 (2.28%) GitHub
10 110 (2.26%) Serverless
11 78 (1.60%) Dynamics 365
12 74 (1.52%) Power Automate
13 72 (1.48%) Azure Data Factory
14 61 (1.25%) Amazon S3
15 60 (1.23%) AWS Lambda
16 57 (1.17%) Google Workspace
17 56 (1.15%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 56 (1.15%) GitHub Actions
18 52 (1.07%) PaaS
19 47 (0.96%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 328 (6.73%) DNS
2 286 (5.87%) Firewall
3 279 (5.72%) DHCP
4 164 (3.36%) WAN
5 161 (3.30%) VPN
6 131 (2.69%) Wi-Fi
7 129 (2.65%) LAN
7 129 (2.65%) TCP/IP
8 107 (2.19%) Broadband
9 85 (1.74%) VLAN
10 82 (1.68%) Wireless
11 71 (1.46%) VoIP
12 59 (1.21%) Network Security
13 43 (0.88%) SD-WAN
14 36 (0.74%) Internet
15 31 (0.64%) SAN
16 30 (0.62%) Remote Desktop
17 25 (0.51%) Unified Communications
18 22 (0.45%) Wireshark
19 20 (0.41%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 288 (5.91%) Power BI
2 205 (4.21%) SQL Server
3 80 (1.64%) Amazon RDS
4 77 (1.58%) PostgreSQL
5 73 (1.50%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 70 (1.44%) Relational Database
7 68 (1.39%) NoSQL
8 64 (1.31%) MySQL
9 58 (1.19%) Data Warehouse
10 46 (0.94%) Power Query
10 46 (0.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 45 (0.92%) Tableau
12 42 (0.86%) Azure SQL Database
13 39 (0.80%) DynamoDB
14 33 (0.68%) MongoDB
15 25 (0.51%) Amazon Redshift
16 23 (0.47%) Metadata
17 21 (0.43%) Data Lake
18 20 (0.41%) Big Data
19 19 (0.39%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 191 (3.92%) Git
2 152 (3.12%) JIRA
3 67 (1.37%) GitLab
4 51 (1.05%) Jenkins
5 26 (0.53%) Selenium
6 19 (0.39%) Rational DOORS
7 16 (0.33%) Maven
8 15 (0.31%) Cucumber
9 14 (0.29%) Cypress.io
9 14 (0.29%) LabVIEW
9 14 (0.29%) SonarQube
10 12 (0.25%) Bitbucket
10 12 (0.25%) Visual Studio
11 10 (0.21%) Burp Suite
11 10 (0.21%) Metasploit
12 9 (0.18%) JUnit
12 9 (0.18%) Robot Framework
13 8 (0.16%) Snyk
14 7 (0.14%) CircleCI
15 6 (0.12%) Subversion
General
1 2,416 (49.56%) Social Skills
2 1,375 (28.21%) Analytical Skills
3 907 (18.61%) Finance
4 338 (6.93%) Organisational Skills
5 298 (6.11%) Manufacturing
6 239 (4.90%) Public Sector
7 213 (4.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 211 (4.33%) Retail
9 202 (4.14%) Marketing
10 187 (3.84%) Legal
11 156 (3.20%) Law
12 140 (2.87%) Banking
13 130 (2.67%) Electronics
14 124 (2.54%) Telecoms
15 95 (1.95%) Presentation Skills
16 85 (1.74%) Documentation Skills
17 75 (1.54%) Games
18 74 (1.52%) Automotive
19 52 (1.07%) Influencing Skills
20 50 (1.03%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 733 (15.04%) Analyst
2 675 (13.85%) IT Support
3 588 (12.06%) Support Engineer
4 525 (10.77%) Senior
5 375 (7.69%) Developer
6 356 (7.30%) IT Engineer
7 291 (5.97%) IT Support Engineer
8 255 (5.23%) Lead
9 228 (4.68%) Support Analyst
10 208 (4.27%) Support Technician
11 174 (3.57%) Technical Support
12 169 (3.47%) Systems Engineer
13 166 (3.41%) IT Technician
14 163 (3.34%) Business Analyst
15 160 (3.28%) 2nd Line Support
16 159 (3.26%) Architect
17 147 (3.02%) IT Support Technician
18 143 (2.93%) Consultant
19 142 (2.91%) Infrastructure Engineer
20 138 (2.83%) Technical Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 167 (3.43%) .NET
2 154 (3.16%) React
3 137 (2.81%) HTML
4 107 (2.19%) CSS
5 89 (1.83%) REST
6 82 (1.68%) Node.js
7 60 (1.23%) RESTful
8 50 (1.03%) Vue
9 49 (1.01%) SOAP
10 46 (0.94%) JSON
11 45 (0.92%) XML
12 43 (0.88%) AngularJS
13 41 (0.84%) Middleware
13 41 (0.84%) Spring
14 38 (0.78%) OAuth
14 38 (0.78%) Spring Boot
15 35 (0.72%) ASP.NET
16 30 (0.62%) GraphQL
16 30 (0.62%) Laravel
17 26 (0.53%) EDI
Miscellaneous
1 392 (8.04%) Driving Licence
2 302 (6.19%) Onboarding
3 274 (5.62%) Self-Motivation
4 168 (3.45%) Management Information System
5 127 (2.61%) Analytical Mindset
6 113 (2.32%) Legacy Systems
7 110 (2.26%) Product Ownership
8 94 (1.93%) Cloud Native
9 89 (1.83%) Data Centre
10 78 (1.60%) Social Media
11 65 (1.33%) Distributed Systems
11 65 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
12 57 (1.17%) Mobile App
13 53 (1.09%) Low-Code
14 43 (0.88%) Data Structures
15 36 (0.74%) EPoS
15 36 (0.74%) Security Posture
16 35 (0.72%) Life Science
16 35 (0.72%) Virtual Team
17 33 (0.68%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 882 (18.09%) Windows
2 386 (7.92%) Windows Server
3 308 (6.32%) Linux
4 132 (2.71%) Windows 10
5 106 (2.17%) Windows Server 2016
6 102 (2.09%) Android
7 67 (1.37%) Apple iOS
8 54 (1.11%) Mac OS
9 37 (0.76%) Windows Server 2019
10 32 (0.66%) Unix
11 26 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 24 (0.49%) CentOS
13 20 (0.41%) Windows Server 2012
14 19 (0.39%) Ubuntu
15 15 (0.31%) Windows 7
16 12 (0.25%) VMS
17 10 (0.21%) Windows 8
18 9 (0.18%) Debian
19 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
20 4 (0.082%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 977 (20.04%) Continuous Improvement
2 867 (17.78%) Customer Service
3 652 (13.37%) Agile
4 500 (10.26%) Decision-Making
5 452 (9.27%) Mentoring
6 434 (8.90%) ITIL
7 400 (8.21%) DevOps
8 392 (8.04%) CI/CD
9 385 (7.90%) Analytics
10 374 (7.67%) Project Management
11 373 (7.65%) Business Intelligence
12 348 (7.14%) AI
13 333 (6.83%) Coaching
14 313 (6.42%) Cybersecurity
15 290 (5.95%) Computer Science
15 290 (5.95%) Stakeholder Management
16 280 (5.74%) Software Engineering
17 279 (5.72%) ERP
18 274 (5.62%) Process Improvement
19 271 (5.56%) CRM
Programming Languages
1 621 (12.74%) SQL
2 512 (10.50%) Python
3 274 (5.62%) JavaScript
4 217 (4.45%) PowerShell
5 184 (3.77%) C#
6 182 (3.73%) Java
7 98 (2.01%) TypeScript
8 79 (1.62%) Bash
9 75 (1.54%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 63 (1.29%) C++
11 62 (1.27%) PHP
12 48 (0.98%) C
13 41 (0.84%) T-SQL
14 26 (0.53%) Kotlin
15 25 (0.51%) Bicep
16 24 (0.49%) Go
16 24 (0.49%) PL/SQL
17 23 (0.47%) R
18 20 (0.41%) Scala
19 16 (0.33%) VBA
Qualifications
1 855 (17.54%) Degree
2 332 (6.81%) Security Cleared
3 222 (4.55%) SC Cleared
4 180 (3.69%) DBS Check
5 149 (3.06%) Microsoft Certification
6 130 (2.67%) Computer Science Degree
7 92 (1.89%) BPSS Clearance
8 78 (1.60%) ACCA
9 71 (1.46%) A+ Certification
10 69 (1.42%) CIMA
10 69 (1.42%) Cisco Certification
11 62 (1.27%) DV Cleared
12 57 (1.17%) CCNA
13 52 (1.07%) Master's Degree
14 51 (1.05%) CISSP
15 47 (0.96%) HNC
16 45 (0.92%) PMI Certification
17 42 (0.86%) Network+ Certification
18 41 (0.84%) AWS Certification
19 37 (0.76%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 251 (5.15%) QA
2 215 (4.41%) Data Quality
3 147 (3.02%) GDPR
4 126 (2.58%) Cyber Essentials
5 116 (2.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 97 (1.99%) SLA
7 96 (1.97%) PCI DSS
8 79 (1.62%) NIST
9 60 (1.23%) Accessibility
10 37 (0.76%) ISO 9001
11 31 (0.64%) Actionable Recommendations
12 22 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 15 (0.31%) SOC 2
14 14 (0.29%) GMP
15 8 (0.16%) GRC
15 8 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 8 (0.16%) PMO
16 7 (0.14%) TickIT
17 6 (0.12%) COBIT
17 6 (0.12%) ISO 14001
System Software
1 614 (12.59%) Active Directory
2 197 (4.04%) Hyper-V
3 184 (3.77%) Docker
4 134 (2.75%) VMware Infrastructure
5 64 (1.31%) Terminal Server
6 27 (0.55%) Firmware
7 23 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
9 16 (0.33%) vSphere
10 10 (0.21%) KVM
10 10 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
10 10 (0.21%) VMware Workstation
11 6 (0.12%) XenApp
12 5 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.082%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 4 (0.082%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 3 (0.062%) Embedded Firmware
15 2 (0.041%) VMware NSX
16 1 (0.021%) Lustre
16 1 (0.021%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 207 (4.25%) Terraform
2 167 (3.43%) Microsoft Intune
3 142 (2.91%) Kubernetes
4 89 (1.83%) Ansible
5 62 (1.27%) SCCM
6 55 (1.13%) Grafana
7 34 (0.70%) Prometheus
8 21 (0.43%) BMC PATROL
9 18 (0.37%) Nagios
9 18 (0.37%) Single Sign-On
10 12 (0.25%) Autotask
10 12 (0.25%) Cisco CUCM
10 12 (0.25%) vCenter Server
11 11 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
12 10 (0.21%) FortiGate
12 10 (0.21%) Nmap
13 9 (0.18%) Puppet
13 9 (0.18%) ZABBIX
14 8 (0.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 8 (0.16%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 1,332 (27.32%) Microsoft
2 225 (4.62%) VMware
3 143 (2.93%) Oracle
4 115 (2.36%) Veeam
5 112 (2.30%) SAP
6 102 (2.09%) Google
7 101 (2.07%) Cisco
8 94 (1.93%) Splunk
9 92 (1.89%) SolarWinds
10 82 (1.68%) ServiceNow
11 73 (1.50%) Databricks
12 66 (1.35%) Adobe
12 66 (1.35%) Apple
13 65 (1.33%) Tanium
14 64 (1.31%) Brocade
14 64 (1.31%) Nimble Storage
15 60 (1.23%) Salesforce
16 54 (1.11%) Sage
17 49 (1.01%) Dell
18 36 (0.74%) HubSpot