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

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 4 3
Rank change year-on-year -2 -1 +5
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 8,406 6,198 7,697
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 9.67% 18.02% 15.35%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.63% 20.69% 19.29%
Number of salaries quoted 5,624 3,495 2,857
10th Percentile £27,000 £25,684 £26,750
25th Percentile £31,250 £29,000 £35,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £43,087 £38,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +11.91% -23.00% +5.14%
75th Percentile £58,750 £55,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £72,500 £68,750 £81,250
UK median annual salary £46,000 £45,000 £53,000
% change year-on-year +2.22% -15.09% -3.64%

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 61,652 29,955 39,907
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.90% 87.09% 79.60%
Number of salaries quoted 43,336 16,192 20,022
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,750 £31,250
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £47,500 £52,600
Median % change year-on-year +15.79% -9.70% -2.59%
75th Percentile £70,000 £64,000 £68,484
90th Percentile £87,500 £80,000 £81,250
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -

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 October 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 October 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 -5 2,109 £45,000 - 999
South East -1 1,972 £41,500 +3.75% 1,033
Midlands -6 1,511 £42,500 +13.33% 606
North West -3 1,092 £46,587 -4.38% 506
South West -2 1,021 £45,000 +20.00% 502
East of England -1 885 £43,500 +33.85% 441
West Midlands -5 848 £42,500 - 366
East Midlands -7 661 £42,250 +30.00% 240
Yorkshire -6 630 £42,500 +28.79% 329
North East +5 396 £50,000 +53.85% 172
Northern Ireland +8 342 £70,000 +16.67% 183
Scotland +5 335 £37,750 +12.69% 300
Wales -13 248 £42,500 -11.68% 112
Isle of Man 0 3 £35,000 - 7
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
1 481 (5.72%) SharePoint
2 371 (4.41%) Microsoft Exchange
3 68 (0.81%) Confluence
4 59 (0.70%) CMS
5 55 (0.65%) IIS
6 40 (0.48%) Apache
7 32 (0.38%) Apache Airflow
7 32 (0.38%) WordPress
8 28 (0.33%) Sitecore CMS
9 26 (0.31%) Apache Spark
10 14 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
11 13 (0.15%) Jupyter
12 12 (0.14%) nginx
13 10 (0.12%) WebSphere
14 9 (0.11%) WebLogic
15 8 (0.095%) CICS
15 8 (0.095%) SAS
16 7 (0.083%) OpenEdge
17 4 (0.048%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 4 (0.048%) Tomcat
Applications
1 637 (7.58%) Microsoft Office
2 578 (6.88%) Microsoft Excel
3 92 (1.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 60 (0.71%) Spreadsheet
5 56 (0.67%) AutoCAD
6 47 (0.56%) MS Visio
7 43 (0.51%) Microsoft Project
8 41 (0.49%) Simulink
9 33 (0.39%) Revit
10 25 (0.30%) EPLAN
11 17 (0.20%) Navisworks
11 17 (0.20%) SOLIDWORKS
12 13 (0.15%) OrCAD
13 9 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 9 (0.11%) Chatbot
14 7 (0.083%) Lightworks
14 7 (0.083%) Siemens NX
15 6 (0.071%) Adobe Illustrator
16 5 (0.059%) Adobe XD
16 5 (0.059%) Mathematica
Business Applications
1 74 (0.88%) Dynamics CRM
2 65 (0.77%) NetSuite
3 45 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
4 33 (0.39%) Shopify
5 23 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
6 21 (0.25%) Workday HCM
7 17 (0.20%) Dynamics NAV
8 15 (0.18%) Dynamics AX
8 15 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
9 14 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
10 13 (0.15%) SAP Business One
11 12 (0.14%) IBM Planning Analytics
11 12 (0.14%) Oracle Cash Management
11 12 (0.14%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 12 (0.14%) SAP ERP
12 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
13 10 (0.12%) JDE EnterpriseOne
13 10 (0.12%) Primavera
14 9 (0.11%) Sage 50
14 9 (0.11%) Sage X3
Cloud Services
1 1,468 (17.46%) Azure
2 1,339 (15.93%) Microsoft 365
3 701 (8.34%) AWS
4 634 (7.54%) Power Platform
5 487 (5.79%) Entra ID
6 301 (3.58%) SaaS
7 238 (2.83%) GCP
8 184 (2.19%) Azure DevOps
9 160 (1.90%) PowerApps
10 155 (1.84%) Dynamics 365
10 155 (1.84%) GitHub
11 151 (1.80%) Power Automate
12 136 (1.62%) OneDrive
13 115 (1.37%) Serverless
14 108 (1.28%) Microsoft Copilot
15 85 (1.01%) Google Workspace
16 71 (0.84%) Amazon S3
17 68 (0.81%) AWS CloudFormation
18 67 (0.80%) GitHub Actions
19 58 (0.69%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 473 (5.63%) DNS
2 459 (5.46%) Firewall
3 390 (4.64%) DHCP
4 297 (3.53%) VPN
5 249 (2.96%) TCP/IP
6 221 (2.63%) Wi-Fi
7 202 (2.40%) WAN
8 199 (2.37%) LAN
9 185 (2.20%) Wireless
10 160 (1.90%) VLAN
11 130 (1.55%) Network Security
12 110 (1.31%) VoIP
13 69 (0.82%) Internet
14 68 (0.81%) Broadband
15 33 (0.39%) Remote Desktop
16 32 (0.38%) SAN
16 32 (0.38%) SSL
17 30 (0.36%) 5G
18 29 (0.34%) Ethernet
19 27 (0.32%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 494 (5.88%) Power BI
2 333 (3.96%) SQL Server
3 139 (1.65%) MySQL
4 134 (1.59%) Relational Database
5 123 (1.46%) Amazon RDS
6 113 (1.34%) Data Warehouse
7 97 (1.15%) PostgreSQL
8 87 (1.03%) NoSQL
9 66 (0.79%) Tableau
10 65 (0.77%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 57 (0.68%) MongoDB
12 54 (0.64%) Data Lake
13 53 (0.63%) Power Query
14 51 (0.61%) Azure SQL Database
14 51 (0.61%) Big Data
15 50 (0.59%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 47 (0.56%) Electronic Patient Records
17 35 (0.42%) Metadata
18 33 (0.39%) Oracle Reports
19 27 (0.32%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 329 (3.91%) Git
2 249 (2.96%) JIRA
3 105 (1.25%) GitLab
4 95 (1.13%) Jenkins
5 40 (0.48%) Eclipse
5 40 (0.48%) Selenium
6 34 (0.40%) Cucumber
6 34 (0.40%) Subversion
7 31 (0.37%) Claude Code
8 27 (0.32%) Cypress.io
9 26 (0.31%) JUnit
10 25 (0.30%) Oracle Forms
11 24 (0.29%) Rational DOORS
12 23 (0.27%) Postman
13 22 (0.26%) LabVIEW
14 20 (0.24%) Bitbucket
15 18 (0.21%) Burp Suite
16 15 (0.18%) Metasploit
17 14 (0.17%) SonarQube
17 14 (0.17%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 4,131 (49.14%) Social Skills
2 2,321 (27.61%) Analytical Skills
3 1,350 (16.06%) Finance
4 1,059 (12.60%) Manufacturing
5 712 (8.47%) Organisational Skills
6 463 (5.51%) Retail
7 462 (5.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 402 (4.78%) Electronics
9 394 (4.69%) Public Sector
10 353 (4.20%) Aerospace
11 342 (4.07%) Legal
12 337 (4.01%) Law
13 305 (3.63%) Marketing
14 212 (2.52%) Telecoms
15 164 (1.95%) Influencing Skills
16 160 (1.90%) Automotive
17 146 (1.74%) Documentation Skills
18 130 (1.55%) Presentation Skills
19 117 (1.39%) Banking
20 111 (1.32%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,096 (13.04%) Analyst
2 867 (10.31%) Senior
3 779 (9.27%) IT Support
4 744 (8.85%) Developer
5 605 (7.20%) Support Engineer
6 429 (5.10%) Lead
7 421 (5.01%) Support Analyst
8 397 (4.72%) IT Engineer
9 362 (4.31%) Consultant
10 306 (3.64%) IT Support Engineer
11 295 (3.51%) Technical Support
12 270 (3.21%) Support Technician
13 248 (2.95%) Technical Engineer
14 245 (2.91%) IT Technician
15 235 (2.80%) Architect
16 230 (2.74%) Software Engineer
17 228 (2.71%) Systems Engineer
18 223 (2.65%) Technical Support Engineer
19 216 (2.57%) Senior Developer
20 206 (2.45%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 384 (4.57%) .NET
2 289 (3.44%) Terraform
3 220 (2.62%) React
4 203 (2.41%) REST
5 192 (2.28%) HTML
6 143 (1.70%) CSS
7 138 (1.64%) RESTful
8 99 (1.18%) Node.js
9 97 (1.15%) Web Services
10 88 (1.05%) ASP.NET
11 87 (1.03%) SOAP
12 83 (0.99%) Spring
13 77 (0.92%) Vue
14 76 (0.90%) Spring Boot
15 75 (0.89%) XML
16 74 (0.88%) Kafka
17 72 (0.86%) AngularJS
17 72 (0.86%) Middleware
18 65 (0.77%) JSON
19 56 (0.67%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 806 (9.59%) Driving Licence
2 595 (7.08%) Onboarding
3 469 (5.58%) Self-Motivation
4 396 (4.71%) Management Information System
5 211 (2.51%) Cloud Native
6 184 (2.19%) Product Ownership
7 179 (2.13%) Enterprise Software
8 156 (1.86%) Legacy Systems
9 155 (1.84%) Robotics
10 136 (1.62%) Data Centre
11 97 (1.15%) NHS
12 91 (1.08%) IoT
13 90 (1.07%) Cyber Threat
14 89 (1.06%) CCTV
14 89 (1.06%) Distributed Systems
15 87 (1.03%) Analytical Mindset
16 84 (1.00%) Security Posture
17 83 (0.99%) Social Media
18 82 (0.98%) SCADA
19 77 (0.92%) FMCG
Operating Systems
1 1,265 (15.05%) Windows
2 549 (6.53%) Windows Server
3 453 (5.39%) Linux
4 125 (1.49%) Windows 10
5 104 (1.24%) Windows Server 2016
6 90 (1.07%) Apple iOS
6 90 (1.07%) macOS
7 87 (1.03%) Android
8 42 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
9 37 (0.44%) Unix
10 27 (0.32%) Ubuntu
11 15 (0.18%) Embedded Linux
12 14 (0.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 14 (0.17%) VMS
13 12 (0.14%) Debian
14 9 (0.11%) Rocky
15 8 (0.095%) FreeRTOS
16 7 (0.083%) Windows Server 2012
17 6 (0.071%) CentOS
18 5 (0.059%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,319 (27.59%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,564 (18.61%) Customer Service
3 1,149 (13.67%) Agile
4 924 (10.99%) Stakeholder Management
5 893 (10.62%) Decision-Making
6 847 (10.08%) AI
7 818 (9.73%) Mentoring
8 768 (9.14%) CI/CD
9 735 (8.74%) Project Delivery
10 688 (8.18%) Collaborative Working
11 647 (7.70%) Cybersecurity
12 620 (7.38%) Analytics
13 619 (7.36%) DevOps
14 612 (7.28%) Software Engineering
15 593 (7.05%) ERP
16 584 (6.95%) ITIL
17 572 (6.80%) Project Management
18 544 (6.47%) Business Intelligence
19 538 (6.40%) Validation
20 522 (6.21%) CRM
Programming Languages
1 1,121 (13.34%) SQL
2 798 (9.49%) Python
3 457 (5.44%) C#
4 443 (5.27%) JavaScript
5 322 (3.83%) Java
6 313 (3.72%) PowerShell
7 219 (2.61%) C++
8 202 (2.40%) TypeScript
9 127 (1.51%) Bash
10 93 (1.11%) C
11 66 (0.79%) PHP
12 62 (0.74%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 61 (0.73%) T-SQL
14 58 (0.69%) MATLAB
15 56 (0.67%) Ruby
16 46 (0.55%) Shell Script
17 45 (0.54%) PL/SQL
17 45 (0.54%) Rust
18 41 (0.49%) Perl
19 38 (0.45%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,392 (16.56%) Degree
2 795 (9.46%) Security Cleared
3 550 (6.54%) SC Cleared
4 300 (3.57%) HNC
5 247 (2.94%) DBS Check
6 246 (2.93%) HND
7 208 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
8 201 (2.39%) Microsoft Certification
9 196 (2.33%) DV Cleared
10 175 (2.08%) BPSS Clearance
11 156 (1.86%) Azure Certification
12 112 (1.33%) Chartered Engineer
13 96 (1.14%) NVQ Level 3
14 92 (1.09%) Master's Degree
15 91 (1.08%) Cisco Certification
16 75 (0.89%) A+ Certification
17 71 (0.84%) PMI Certification
18 66 (0.79%) City & Guilds
19 60 (0.71%) ACCA
20 58 (0.69%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 517 (6.15%) QA
2 315 (3.75%) Data Quality
3 234 (2.78%) GDPR
4 233 (2.77%) Accessibility
5 181 (2.15%) SLA
6 174 (2.07%) Cyber Essentials
7 137 (1.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 104 (1.24%) PCI DSS
9 69 (0.82%) NIST
10 59 (0.70%) ISO 9001
11 49 (0.58%) PMO
12 36 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 24 (0.29%) DO-254
14 23 (0.27%) GMP
15 21 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
16 20 (0.24%) Good Clinical Practice
16 20 (0.24%) NCSC
17 15 (0.18%) GRC
18 14 (0.17%) GxP
18 14 (0.17%) ISO 19650
System Software
1 918 (10.92%) Active Directory
2 300 (3.57%) Hyper-V
3 277 (3.30%) Docker
4 217 (2.58%) VMware Infrastructure
5 92 (1.09%) Firmware
6 72 (0.86%) Terminal Server
7 46 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
8 37 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
9 31 (0.37%) Embedded Firmware
10 25 (0.30%) vSphere
11 15 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
12 13 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.071%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 5 (0.059%) ClearTrust
14 5 (0.059%) Squid
15 4 (0.048%) KVM
16 3 (0.036%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.036%) VMware Server
17 2 (0.024%) Samba
17 2 (0.024%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 295 (3.51%) Microsoft Intune
2 238 (2.83%) Kubernetes
3 106 (1.26%) Ansible
4 70 (0.83%) BMC PATROL
5 68 (0.81%) Grafana
6 56 (0.67%) SCCM
7 51 (0.61%) Prometheus
8 48 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
9 28 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
10 23 (0.27%) FortiGate
11 20 (0.24%) Functional Safety
12 17 (0.20%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
13 15 (0.18%) Nmap
13 15 (0.18%) Puppet
14 13 (0.15%) Kibana
15 12 (0.14%) Nagios
16 11 (0.13%) Failover Clustering
16 11 (0.13%) logstash
17 10 (0.12%) Progress Chef
17 10 (0.12%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 2,576 (30.64%) Microsoft
2 345 (4.10%) VMware
3 251 (2.99%) Google
4 234 (2.78%) SAP
5 221 (2.63%) Workday
6 181 (2.15%) Oracle
7 158 (1.88%) Cisco
8 148 (1.76%) Veeam
9 137 (1.63%) ServiceNow
10 126 (1.50%) Splunk
11 118 (1.40%) Salesforce
12 101 (1.20%) Sage
13 95 (1.13%) SolarWinds
14 82 (0.98%) Fortinet
14 82 (0.98%) Siemens
15 80 (0.95%) Tanium
16 76 (0.90%) Databricks
17 73 (0.87%) Brocade
17 73 (0.87%) Nimble Storage
18 72 (0.86%) Apple