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

6 months to
8 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 4 5
Rank change year-on-year -4 +1 +5
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,349 6,530 8,608
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 8.31% 18.95% 14.50%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.77% 21.65% 18.45%
Number of salaries quoted 4,601 3,625 4,454
10th Percentile £26,750 £25,750 £25,750
25th Percentile £31,000 £29,750 £32,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £40,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -11.11% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £58,750 £61,500
90th Percentile £73,750 £73,750 £75,000
UK median annual salary £47,166 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -0.70% -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 53,964 30,160 46,664
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.67% 87.54% 78.59%
Number of salaries quoted 37,901 16,477 29,630
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,500 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £38,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £48,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +13.40% -3.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £65,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% - -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 8 August 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 8 August 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 1,645 £45,000 +5.88% 900
South East -3 1,541 £45,000 +5.88% 1,123
Midlands -9 1,175 £42,500 +6.68% 657
North West -5 864 £45,000 -2.17% 460
South West -5 779 £45,000 +20.00% 478
West Midlands -10 647 £42,500 -5.56% 382
East of England -4 638 £42,500 +21.43% 411
Yorkshire -7 549 £42,500 +21.43% 322
East Midlands -8 525 £40,000 +14.29% 275
Scotland -4 265 £33,212 -24.94% 210
North East -13 232 £50,000 +33.33% 129
Wales -20 162 £45,000 -6.49% 114
Northern Ireland -6 160 £38,500 -33.04% 120
Isle of Man 0 3 £35,000 +1.45% 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
1 355 (5.59%) SharePoint
2 353 (5.56%) Microsoft Exchange
3 68 (1.07%) Confluence
4 45 (0.71%) CMS
5 43 (0.68%) IIS
6 34 (0.54%) WordPress
7 31 (0.49%) Apache
8 24 (0.38%) Apache Airflow
9 16 (0.25%) Apache Spark
10 15 (0.24%) SAS
11 11 (0.17%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.14%) nginx
12 9 (0.14%) WebLogic
13 7 (0.11%) OpenEdge
14 6 (0.095%) Exchange Server 2013
14 6 (0.095%) Jupyter
15 5 (0.079%) Skype for Business
16 4 (0.063%) Exchange Server 2010
16 4 (0.063%) OpenStack
16 4 (0.063%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 405 (6.38%) Microsoft Office
2 393 (6.19%) Microsoft Excel
3 53 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 51 (0.80%) Spreadsheet
5 41 (0.65%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
7 19 (0.30%) AutoCAD
8 18 (0.28%) Simulink
9 10 (0.16%) Revit
10 8 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 8 (0.13%) Adobe Illustrator
10 8 (0.13%) Chatbot
11 6 (0.095%) Adobe XD
11 6 (0.095%) EPLAN
11 6 (0.095%) Fusion 360
11 6 (0.095%) Sketch
12 5 (0.079%) Navisworks
12 5 (0.079%) Photoshop
12 5 (0.079%) SOLIDWORKS
12 5 (0.079%) Trello
Business Applications
1 54 (0.85%) SAP S/4HANA
2 40 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
3 36 (0.57%) NetSuite
4 22 (0.35%) Shopify
5 18 (0.28%) Magento
6 17 (0.27%) SAP ERP
7 16 (0.25%) Dynamics NAV
8 15 (0.24%) SAP Business One
9 14 (0.22%) IBM Planning Analytics
10 13 (0.20%) Dynamics AX
11 12 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
12 11 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
12 11 (0.17%) Workday HCM
13 10 (0.16%) JDE EnterpriseOne
14 9 (0.14%) Sage 50
14 9 (0.14%) Sage X3
15 7 (0.11%) NEC Housing
15 7 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
15 7 (0.11%) Raiser’s Edge
16 5 (0.079%) Infor CloudSuite
Cloud Services
1 1,302 (20.51%) Azure
2 1,115 (17.56%) Microsoft 365
3 666 (10.49%) AWS
4 507 (7.99%) Power Platform
5 329 (5.18%) Entra ID
6 224 (3.53%) GCP
7 222 (3.50%) SaaS
8 155 (2.44%) Azure DevOps
9 137 (2.16%) Dynamics 365
10 123 (1.94%) Serverless
11 117 (1.84%) GitHub
12 113 (1.78%) Power Automate
13 110 (1.73%) PowerApps
14 82 (1.29%) OneDrive
15 78 (1.23%) Microsoft Copilot
16 57 (0.90%) Amazon S3
17 52 (0.82%) AWS Lambda
17 52 (0.82%) GitHub Actions
17 52 (0.82%) Microsoft Purview
18 50 (0.79%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 415 (6.54%) Firewall
2 383 (6.03%) DNS
3 327 (5.15%) DHCP
4 231 (3.64%) VPN
5 215 (3.39%) TCP/IP
6 193 (3.04%) WAN
7 175 (2.76%) LAN
8 156 (2.46%) Wi-Fi
9 151 (2.38%) Wireless
10 125 (1.97%) VLAN
11 108 (1.70%) Network Security
12 103 (1.62%) Broadband
13 100 (1.58%) VoIP
14 43 (0.68%) Internet
15 29 (0.46%) HTTP
15 29 (0.46%) SAN
15 29 (0.46%) SD-WAN
15 29 (0.46%) SSL
16 22 (0.35%) WLAN
17 21 (0.33%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 398 (6.27%) Power BI
2 305 (4.80%) SQL Server
3 125 (1.97%) MySQL
4 120 (1.89%) Amazon RDS
5 101 (1.59%) Data Warehouse
6 97 (1.53%) Relational Database
7 92 (1.45%) PostgreSQL
8 85 (1.34%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 77 (1.21%) NoSQL
10 73 (1.15%) Tableau
11 64 (1.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 48 (0.76%) Power Query
13 45 (0.71%) MongoDB
14 41 (0.65%) Big Data
15 38 (0.60%) Azure SQL Database
16 37 (0.58%) Electronic Patient Records
17 35 (0.55%) Data Lake
18 30 (0.47%) DynamoDB
19 25 (0.39%) Elasticsearch
20 22 (0.35%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 274 (4.32%) Git
2 219 (3.45%) JIRA
3 84 (1.32%) GitLab
4 64 (1.01%) Jenkins
5 28 (0.44%) Eclipse
5 28 (0.44%) Subversion
6 27 (0.43%) Rational DOORS
7 26 (0.41%) Cucumber
7 26 (0.41%) Selenium
8 23 (0.36%) JUnit
9 22 (0.35%) Postman
10 19 (0.30%) Claude Code
11 18 (0.28%) Cypress.io
12 17 (0.27%) Oracle Forms
13 15 (0.24%) Bitbucket
14 14 (0.22%) SonarQube
15 11 (0.17%) Burp Suite
15 11 (0.17%) Maven
16 10 (0.16%) JMeter
16 10 (0.16%) Visual Studio
General
1 3,034 (47.79%) Social Skills
2 1,771 (27.89%) Analytical Skills
3 990 (15.59%) Finance
4 573 (9.03%) Manufacturing
5 396 (6.24%) Organisational Skills
6 350 (5.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 293 (4.61%) Law
8 284 (4.47%) Public Sector
9 270 (4.25%) Legal
10 259 (4.08%) Retail
11 202 (3.18%) Electronics
12 200 (3.15%) Marketing
13 172 (2.71%) Aerospace
14 159 (2.50%) Telecoms
15 128 (2.02%) Banking
16 127 (2.00%) Influencing Skills
17 117 (1.84%) Documentation Skills
18 72 (1.13%) Games
19 67 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
20 65 (1.02%) Military
Job Titles
1 851 (13.40%) Analyst
2 686 (10.80%) Senior
3 672 (10.58%) IT Support
4 666 (10.49%) Developer
5 557 (8.77%) Support Engineer
6 372 (5.86%) IT Engineer
7 351 (5.53%) Lead
8 290 (4.57%) Support Analyst
9 277 (4.36%) IT Support Engineer
10 267 (4.21%) Support Technician
11 262 (4.13%) Consultant
12 240 (3.78%) Technical Support
13 236 (3.72%) Systems Engineer
14 225 (3.54%) IT Technician
15 210 (3.31%) Software Engineer
16 208 (3.28%) Architect
17 205 (3.23%) Technical Engineer
18 192 (3.02%) Senior Developer
19 184 (2.90%) Technical Support Engineer
20 173 (2.72%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 325 (5.12%) .NET
2 217 (3.42%) React
3 191 (3.01%) HTML
4 185 (2.91%) REST
5 141 (2.22%) CSS
6 118 (1.86%) RESTful
7 97 (1.53%) Node.js
8 91 (1.43%) SOAP
9 80 (1.26%) Vue
10 78 (1.23%) AngularJS
11 77 (1.21%) Middleware
12 71 (1.12%) ASP.NET
12 71 (1.12%) JSON
13 66 (1.04%) XML
14 62 (0.98%) Web Services
15 60 (0.95%) Spring
16 55 (0.87%) OAuth
16 55 (0.87%) Spring Boot
17 46 (0.72%) Kafka
18 45 (0.71%) ASP.NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 511 (8.05%) Driving Licence
2 376 (5.92%) Onboarding
3 302 (4.76%) Self-Motivation
4 264 (4.16%) Management Information System
5 178 (2.80%) Cloud Native
6 163 (2.57%) Product Ownership
7 156 (2.46%) Legacy Systems
8 101 (1.59%) Data Centre
9 95 (1.50%) Analytical Mindset
10 87 (1.37%) Distributed Systems
11 86 (1.35%) Enterprise Software
12 78 (1.23%) NHS
13 77 (1.21%) Security Posture
14 76 (1.20%) Social Media
15 68 (1.07%) Mobile App
16 67 (1.06%) Robotics
17 62 (0.98%) IoT
18 61 (0.96%) Virtual Team
19 58 (0.91%) Cyber Threat
20 56 (0.88%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 1,073 (16.90%) Windows
2 496 (7.81%) Windows Server
3 455 (7.17%) Linux
4 141 (2.22%) Windows 10
5 109 (1.72%) Windows Server 2016
6 106 (1.67%) Android
7 80 (1.26%) Apple iOS
8 79 (1.24%) Mac OS
9 40 (0.63%) Windows Server 2019
10 36 (0.57%) Unix
11 30 (0.47%) Ubuntu
12 24 (0.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 21 (0.33%) CentOS
14 17 (0.27%) VMS
15 13 (0.20%) Debian
16 11 (0.17%) Windows 7
17 9 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
17 9 (0.14%) FreeRTOS
18 5 (0.079%) OpenVMS
18 5 (0.079%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,671 (26.32%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,131 (17.81%) Customer Service
3 970 (15.28%) Agile
4 693 (10.92%) Decision-Making
5 667 (10.51%) CI/CD
6 656 (10.33%) Mentoring
7 627 (9.88%) AI
8 555 (8.74%) DevOps
8 555 (8.74%) Stakeholder Management
9 554 (8.73%) ITIL
10 522 (8.22%) Analytics
11 515 (8.11%) Software Engineering
12 514 (8.10%) Cybersecurity
13 496 (7.81%) Collaborative Working
14 472 (7.43%) ERP
15 470 (7.40%) Project Delivery
16 460 (7.25%) Business Intelligence
17 378 (5.95%) Project Management
18 372 (5.86%) Computer Science
18 372 (5.86%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 982 (15.47%) SQL
2 696 (10.96%) Python
3 411 (6.47%) JavaScript
4 405 (6.38%) C#
5 280 (4.41%) Java
6 250 (3.94%) PowerShell
7 186 (2.93%) TypeScript
8 179 (2.82%) C++
9 117 (1.84%) Bash
10 78 (1.23%) PHP
11 70 (1.10%) C
12 59 (0.93%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 55 (0.87%) T-SQL
14 44 (0.69%) Shell Script
15 40 (0.63%) Perl
16 37 (0.58%) Ruby
17 36 (0.57%) Go
18 32 (0.50%) PL/SQL
18 32 (0.50%) Rust
19 28 (0.44%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 979 (15.42%) Degree
2 578 (9.10%) Security Cleared
3 418 (6.58%) SC Cleared
4 194 (3.06%) DBS Check
5 188 (2.96%) Computer Science Degree
6 171 (2.69%) Microsoft Certification
7 144 (2.27%) DV Cleared
8 137 (2.16%) BPSS Clearance
9 101 (1.59%) Azure Certification
9 101 (1.59%) HNC
10 90 (1.42%) Cisco Certification
11 73 (1.15%) HND
11 73 (1.15%) PMI Certification
12 65 (1.02%) CISSP
13 61 (0.96%) CCNA
13 61 (0.96%) Master's Degree
14 56 (0.88%) ACCA
15 54 (0.85%) PMP
16 52 (0.82%) A+ Certification
17 51 (0.80%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 417 (6.57%) QA
2 261 (4.11%) Data Quality
3 190 (2.99%) GDPR
4 178 (2.80%) Cyber Essentials
5 162 (2.55%) SLA
6 152 (2.39%) Accessibility
7 131 (2.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 119 (1.87%) PCI DSS
9 93 (1.46%) NIST
10 38 (0.60%) ISO 9001
11 31 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 30 (0.47%) PMO
13 25 (0.39%) GMP
14 18 (0.28%) Good Clinical Practice
15 16 (0.25%) GRC
16 15 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
17 14 (0.22%) SOC 2
18 12 (0.19%) TickIT
18 12 (0.19%) WCAG
19 10 (0.16%) ISO 14001
System Software
1 737 (11.61%) Active Directory
2 280 (4.41%) Hyper-V
3 252 (3.97%) Docker
4 203 (3.20%) VMware Infrastructure
5 80 (1.26%) Terminal Server
6 61 (0.96%) Firmware
7 32 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
8 28 (0.44%) vSphere
9 26 (0.41%) Virtual Machines
10 18 (0.28%) Embedded Firmware
11 15 (0.24%) VMware ESXi
12 10 (0.16%) KVM
13 6 (0.095%) XenApp
14 5 (0.079%) ClearTrust
14 5 (0.079%) Squid
14 5 (0.079%) Virtual Servers
15 4 (0.063%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 4 (0.063%) VMware Workstation
16 3 (0.047%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.047%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 254 (4.00%) Terraform
2 235 (3.70%) Microsoft Intune
3 220 (3.47%) Kubernetes
4 107 (1.69%) Ansible
5 63 (0.99%) SCCM
6 62 (0.98%) Grafana
7 45 (0.71%) Prometheus
8 24 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
9 21 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 19 (0.30%) Puppet
11 16 (0.25%) Nagios
12 14 (0.22%) Jamf Pro
13 11 (0.17%) Functional Safety
13 11 (0.17%) Kibana
13 11 (0.17%) Podman
13 11 (0.17%) Proxmox
14 10 (0.16%) logstash
15 9 (0.14%) Nmap
15 9 (0.14%) QRadar
15 9 (0.14%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,918 (30.21%) Microsoft
2 323 (5.09%) VMware
3 154 (2.43%) Google
4 153 (2.41%) SAP
5 146 (2.30%) Oracle
6 139 (2.19%) Veeam
7 133 (2.09%) Cisco
8 123 (1.94%) Splunk
9 107 (1.69%) ServiceNow
10 106 (1.67%) SolarWinds
11 89 (1.40%) Salesforce
12 88 (1.39%) Tanium
13 81 (1.28%) Nimble Storage
14 80 (1.26%) Brocade
15 74 (1.17%) Databricks
16 65 (1.02%) Apple
17 63 (0.99%) Workday
18 62 (0.98%) Sage
19 56 (0.88%) Fortinet
20 46 (0.72%) IBM