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

6 months to
6 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 4 6
Rank change year-on-year -6 +2 +4
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,521 6,252 10,972
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 7.85% 19.10% 14.54%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.14% 21.42% 18.16%
Number of salaries quoted 4,143 3,403 6,757
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% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £60,000 £60,000
90th Percentile £73,750 £76,250 £72,500
UK median annual salary £47,500 £50,000 £49,500
% change year-on-year -5.00% +1.01% -10.00%

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 49,543 29,182 60,433
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.45% 89.17% 80.08%
Number of salaries quoted 34,885 15,476 41,986
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,733 £27,500
25th Percentile £39,750 £32,851 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £54,000 £50,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +8.00% - -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £66,340 £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 6 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 6 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 -9 1,467 £44,447 +4.58% 695
South East -4 1,375 £45,000 +5.88% 834
Midlands -7 1,012 £42,000 - 454
North West -7 770 £45,000 -2.17% 383
South West -6 655 £44,000 +17.33% 338
West Midlands -9 570 £42,500 -5.56% 247
East of England -4 567 £44,000 +25.71% 289
Yorkshire -12 513 £42,500 +21.43% 219
East Midlands -10 439 £35,000 -4.11% 208
Scotland -6 253 £32,500 -28.78% 132
North East -16 184 £50,500 +26.25% 110
Wales -22 128 £45,000 -5.26% 54
Northern Ireland -12 84 £38,500 -30.00% 79
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
1 342 (6.19%) Microsoft Exchange
2 341 (6.18%) SharePoint
3 54 (0.98%) Confluence
4 52 (0.94%) CMS
5 35 (0.63%) IIS
6 28 (0.51%) WordPress
7 26 (0.47%) Apache
8 19 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
9 15 (0.27%) Apache Spark
10 12 (0.22%) 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 (0.13%) OpenEdge
15 5 (0.091%) nginx
15 5 (0.091%) OpenStack
15 5 (0.091%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 5 (0.091%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 356 (6.45%) Microsoft Office
2 336 (6.09%) Microsoft Excel
3 49 (0.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 38 (0.69%) Spreadsheet
5 30 (0.54%) MS Visio
6 15 (0.27%) 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
10 5 (0.091%) Chatbot
10 5 (0.091%) Fusion 360
10 5 (0.091%) Lightworks
10 5 (0.091%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.091%) Trello
11 4 (0.072%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.072%) Sketch
12 3 (0.054%) Autodesk Inventor
12 3 (0.054%) Windchill
13 2 (0.036%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 53 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
2 30 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
2 30 (0.54%) NetSuite
3 21 (0.38%) Dynamics NAV
4 19 (0.34%) Shopify
5 16 (0.29%) Magento
6 15 (0.27%) SAP ERP
7 13 (0.24%) Dynamics AX
8 12 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
9 11 (0.20%) IBM Planning Analytics
10 9 (0.16%) iTrent
10 9 (0.16%) SAP Business One
11 8 (0.14%) JDE EnterpriseOne
11 8 (0.14%) Sage 50
12 7 (0.13%) Workday HCM
13 6 (0.11%) Raiser’s Edge
14 5 (0.091%) Q-Pulse
14 5 (0.091%) SAP CO
15 4 (0.072%) Dynamics GP
15 4 (0.072%) Line 50
Cloud Services
1 1,167 (21.14%) Azure
2 1,026 (18.58%) Microsoft 365
3 580 (10.51%) AWS
4 429 (7.77%) Power Platform
5 281 (5.09%) Entra ID
6 191 (3.46%) SaaS
7 187 (3.39%) GCP
8 131 (2.37%) Azure DevOps
9 115 (2.08%) Dynamics 365
10 112 (2.03%) Serverless
11 94 (1.70%) GitHub
11 94 (1.70%) Power Automate
12 88 (1.59%) PowerApps
13 74 (1.34%) OneDrive
14 53 (0.96%) Amazon S3
15 52 (0.94%) Microsoft Copilot
16 46 (0.83%) IaaS
16 46 (0.83%) PaaS
17 45 (0.82%) Google Workspace
18 44 (0.80%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 414 (7.50%) Firewall
2 366 (6.63%) DNS
3 311 (5.63%) DHCP
4 223 (4.04%) VPN
5 196 (3.55%) WAN
6 175 (3.17%) TCP/IP
7 170 (3.08%) LAN
8 158 (2.86%) Wi-Fi
9 127 (2.30%) Wireless
10 115 (2.08%) VLAN
11 105 (1.90%) Broadband
12 92 (1.67%) Network Security
13 90 (1.63%) VoIP
14 44 (0.80%) Internet
15 36 (0.65%) SD-WAN
16 28 (0.51%) SAN
17 26 (0.47%) HTTP
18 22 (0.40%) SSL
19 21 (0.38%) Remote Desktop
19 21 (0.38%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 348 (6.30%) Power BI
2 248 (4.49%) SQL Server
3 97 (1.76%) Amazon RDS
4 92 (1.67%) MySQL
5 84 (1.52%) Data Warehouse
6 78 (1.41%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 75 (1.36%) PostgreSQL
8 69 (1.25%) Relational Database
9 64 (1.16%) NoSQL
9 64 (1.16%) Tableau
10 59 (1.07%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 47 (0.85%) Power Query
12 42 (0.76%) MongoDB
13 36 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
14 35 (0.63%) Big Data
15 32 (0.58%) Data Lake
16 28 (0.51%) Elasticsearch
17 24 (0.43%) DynamoDB
18 22 (0.40%) Amazon Redshift
19 17 (0.31%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 210 (3.80%) Git
2 160 (2.90%) JIRA
3 74 (1.34%) GitLab
4 46 (0.83%) Jenkins
5 28 (0.51%) Rational DOORS
6 22 (0.40%) Cucumber
7 20 (0.36%) Subversion
8 18 (0.33%) Eclipse
9 16 (0.29%) JUnit
10 15 (0.27%) Cypress.io
10 15 (0.27%) Selenium
10 15 (0.27%) SonarQube
11 11 (0.20%) Maven
11 11 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
12 10 (0.18%) Bitbucket
12 10 (0.18%) Postman
13 9 (0.16%) Claude Code
14 8 (0.14%) Burp Suite
14 8 (0.14%) MLflow
14 8 (0.14%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 2,644 (47.89%) Social Skills
2 1,486 (26.92%) Analytical Skills
3 859 (15.56%) Finance
4 433 (7.84%) Manufacturing
5 363 (6.57%) Organisational Skills
6 253 (4.58%) Public Sector
7 239 (4.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 225 (4.08%) Retail
9 222 (4.02%) Law
10 219 (3.97%) Legal
11 182 (3.30%) Marketing
12 144 (2.61%) Electronics
13 139 (2.52%) Telecoms
14 126 (2.28%) Banking
15 111 (2.01%) Documentation Skills
16 102 (1.85%) Influencing Skills
17 83 (1.50%) Aerospace
18 72 (1.30%) Games
19 58 (1.05%) Advertising
19 58 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 772 (13.98%) Analyst
2 675 (12.23%) IT Support
3 590 (10.69%) Support Engineer
4 574 (10.40%) Senior
5 519 (9.40%) Developer
6 402 (7.28%) IT Engineer
7 304 (5.51%) IT Support Engineer
8 289 (5.23%) Lead
9 251 (4.55%) Support Technician
10 244 (4.42%) Support Analyst
11 221 (4.00%) Systems Engineer
12 208 (3.77%) Technical Support
13 204 (3.69%) IT Technician
14 186 (3.37%) Software Engineer
15 179 (3.24%) Consultant
16 176 (3.19%) Technical Engineer
17 172 (3.12%) Architect
18 165 (2.99%) Technical Support Engineer
19 160 (2.90%) IT Support Technician
20 141 (2.55%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 222 (4.02%) .NET
2 194 (3.51%) React
3 162 (2.93%) HTML
4 148 (2.68%) REST
5 122 (2.21%) CSS
6 100 (1.81%) Node.js
7 89 (1.61%) RESTful
8 78 (1.41%) SOAP
9 74 (1.34%) Middleware
10 71 (1.29%) JSON
11 70 (1.27%) Vue
12 68 (1.23%) AngularJS
13 61 (1.10%) XML
14 51 (0.92%) Spring
15 46 (0.83%) Spring Boot
16 45 (0.82%) Web Services
17 42 (0.76%) ASP.NET
18 40 (0.72%) EDI
18 40 (0.72%) OAuth
19 30 (0.54%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 432 (7.82%) Driving Licence
2 325 (5.89%) Onboarding
3 256 (4.64%) Self-Motivation
4 199 (3.60%) Management Information System
5 157 (2.84%) Cloud Native
6 134 (2.43%) Legacy Systems
7 132 (2.39%) Product Ownership
8 101 (1.83%) Data Centre
9 98 (1.78%) Analytical Mindset
10 84 (1.52%) Distributed Systems
11 68 (1.23%) Security Posture
11 68 (1.23%) Social Media
12 65 (1.18%) Mobile App
13 54 (0.98%) Enterprise Software
14 51 (0.92%) IoT
14 51 (0.92%) Virtual Team
15 49 (0.89%) Low-Code
16 46 (0.83%) Algorithms
17 44 (0.80%) Robotics
18 43 (0.78%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 973 (17.62%) Windows
2 467 (8.46%) Windows Server
3 391 (7.08%) Linux
4 153 (2.77%) Windows 10
5 118 (2.14%) Windows Server 2016
6 109 (1.97%) Android
7 71 (1.29%) Apple iOS
8 69 (1.25%) Mac OS
9 51 (0.92%) Windows Server 2019
10 30 (0.54%) Unix
11 29 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 26 (0.47%) CentOS
12 26 (0.47%) Ubuntu
13 16 (0.29%) VMS
14 15 (0.27%) Debian
14 15 (0.27%) Windows 7
15 13 (0.24%) Windows Server 2012
16 8 (0.14%) FreeRTOS
17 7 (0.13%) Windows 8
18 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,282 (23.22%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,000 (18.11%) Customer Service
3 733 (13.28%) Agile
4 563 (10.20%) Mentoring
5 558 (10.11%) Decision-Making
6 506 (9.17%) AI
7 501 (9.07%) CI/CD
8 475 (8.60%) Analytics
9 465 (8.42%) ITIL
10 457 (8.28%) DevOps
11 442 (8.01%) Cybersecurity
12 433 (7.84%) Collaborative Working
13 411 (7.44%) Software Engineering
14 401 (7.26%) Business Intelligence
15 388 (7.03%) ERP
16 383 (6.94%) Stakeholder Management
17 337 (6.10%) Project Delivery
18 335 (6.07%) Computer Science
19 319 (5.78%) Service Delivery
20 313 (5.67%) Coaching
Programming Languages
1 861 (15.60%) SQL
2 639 (11.57%) Python
3 347 (6.29%) JavaScript
4 300 (5.43%) C#
5 245 (4.44%) PowerShell
6 242 (4.38%) Java
7 157 (2.84%) TypeScript
8 143 (2.59%) C++
9 106 (1.92%) Bash
10 75 (1.36%) PHP
11 60 (1.09%) C
12 57 (1.03%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 47 (0.85%) T-SQL
14 36 (0.65%) PL/SQL
15 32 (0.58%) Perl
16 30 (0.54%) Go
16 30 (0.54%) Shell Script
17 29 (0.53%) Kotlin
18 27 (0.49%) R
18 27 (0.49%) Rust
Qualifications
1 784 (14.20%) Degree
2 446 (8.08%) Security Cleared
3 315 (5.71%) SC Cleared
4 208 (3.77%) DBS Check
5 161 (2.92%) Microsoft Certification
6 158 (2.86%) Computer Science Degree
7 87 (1.58%) BPSS Clearance
8 81 (1.47%) Cisco Certification
9 77 (1.39%) DV Cleared
10 69 (1.25%) Azure Certification
11 64 (1.16%) A+ Certification
12 62 (1.12%) CCNA
13 61 (1.10%) ACCA
14 58 (1.05%) HNC
15 57 (1.03%) CIMA
16 49 (0.89%) CISSP
17 48 (0.87%) Master's Degree
17 48 (0.87%) PMI Certification
18 44 (0.80%) Network+ Certification
18 44 (0.80%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 317 (5.74%) QA
2 243 (4.40%) Data Quality
3 166 (3.01%) Cyber Essentials
4 155 (2.81%) GDPR
5 140 (2.54%) SLA
6 136 (2.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 114 (2.06%) PCI DSS
8 103 (1.87%) Accessibility
9 85 (1.54%) NIST
10 41 (0.74%) ISO 9001
11 27 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 25 (0.45%) PMO
13 19 (0.34%) GMP
14 15 (0.27%) GRC
15 14 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
15 14 (0.25%) Good Clinical Practice
16 13 (0.24%) ISO 14001
16 13 (0.24%) SOC 2
17 12 (0.22%) TickIT
18 8 (0.14%) Def Stans
System Software
1 697 (12.62%) Active Directory
2 261 (4.73%) Hyper-V
3 200 (3.62%) Docker
4 184 (3.33%) VMware Infrastructure
5 72 (1.30%) Terminal Server
6 38 (0.69%) Firmware
7 31 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
8 27 (0.49%) vSphere
9 20 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
10 14 (0.25%) Embedded Firmware
11 10 (0.18%) KVM
11 10 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
12 7 (0.13%) VMware Workstation
13 6 (0.11%) XenApp
14 5 (0.091%) ClearTrust
15 4 (0.072%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 4 (0.072%) Virtual Servers
16 3 (0.054%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 3 (0.054%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.054%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 216 (3.91%) Terraform
2 210 (3.80%) Microsoft Intune
3 197 (3.57%) Kubernetes
4 106 (1.92%) Ansible
5 59 (1.07%) Grafana
6 55 (1.00%) SCCM
7 38 (0.69%) Prometheus
8 21 (0.38%) Nagios
9 18 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 12 (0.22%) Kibana
10 12 (0.22%) Puppet
11 11 (0.20%) logstash
12 10 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
12 10 (0.18%) Podman
12 10 (0.18%) Proxmox
12 10 (0.18%) QRadar
12 10 (0.18%) vCenter Server
13 9 (0.16%) Autotask
13 9 (0.16%) Functional Safety
13 9 (0.16%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 1,677 (30.37%) Microsoft
2 292 (5.29%) VMware
3 129 (2.34%) Veeam
4 124 (2.25%) Google
5 117 (2.12%) SAP
6 112 (2.03%) Oracle
7 110 (1.99%) Splunk
8 108 (1.96%) Cisco
9 98 (1.78%) SolarWinds
10 78 (1.41%) Salesforce
10 78 (1.41%) ServiceNow
11 76 (1.38%) Tanium
12 73 (1.32%) Nimble Storage
13 72 (1.30%) Brocade
14 67 (1.21%) Databricks
15 58 (1.05%) Apple
16 53 (0.96%) Sage
17 51 (0.92%) Adobe
18 47 (0.85%) Dell
19 44 (0.80%) Fortinet