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

6 months to
30 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -4 +3 +3
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,026 6,549 7,254
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 11.20% 18.85% 15.91%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.44% 20.93% 18.20%
Number of salaries quoted 3,486 2,672 5,027
10th Percentile £26,000 £28,500 £25,750
25th Percentile £29,000 £36,250 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £40,000 £50,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +11.11% -10.00%
75th Percentile £56,750 £67,500 £62,500
90th Percentile £71,250 £83,750 £73,750
UK median annual salary £45,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -18.18% +10.00% -13.04%

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 34,813 31,284 39,851
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 77.56% 90.05% 87.42%
Number of salaries quoted 20,218 13,926 30,438
10th Percentile £28,000 £31,250 £27,250
25th Percentile £34,000 £41,250 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £65,000 £70,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £80,000 £83,750 £78,750
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £56,500
% change year-on-year -8.33% +6.19% -9.60%

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 30 January 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 30 January 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
South East -3 1,339 £41,250 -19.07% 1,082
North of England -17 1,285 £42,750 -10.00% 677
Midlands -15 867 £37,500 -25.00% 536
North West -13 706 £47,500 -5.00% 351
South West -3 577 £40,000 -27.27% 425
West Midlands -17 502 £42,500 -22.73% 299
Yorkshire -5 448 £34,000 -21.84% 245
East of England -5 424 £35,000 -31.33% 392
East Midlands +2 364 £34,000 -2.86% 235
Scotland -3 354 £33,500 -34.95% 137
Wales +4 133 £45,000 -13.88% 100
North East -4 131 £40,662 -18.68% 92
Northern Ireland -1 69 £40,500 -44.14% 46
Isle of Man +1 1 £62,500 +150.00% 1
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
1 278 (5.53%) Microsoft Exchange
2 219 (4.36%) SharePoint
3 46 (0.92%) IIS
4 45 (0.90%) Confluence
5 27 (0.54%) CMS
6 24 (0.48%) WordPress
7 22 (0.44%) Apache
8 19 (0.38%) Apache Spark
9 15 (0.30%) Apache Airflow
10 10 (0.20%) nginx
11 7 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2013
11 7 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 6 (0.12%) Drupal
13 5 (0.099%) Exchange Server 2007
13 5 (0.099%) Exchange Server 2010
13 5 (0.099%) HCL Notes
13 5 (0.099%) SAS
14 4 (0.080%) Apache Solr
14 4 (0.080%) ArcGIS
14 4 (0.080%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 387 (7.70%) Microsoft Office
2 385 (7.66%) Microsoft Excel
3 69 (1.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 30 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
5 27 (0.54%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.38%) AutoCAD
7 15 (0.30%) Microsoft Project
8 13 (0.26%) Photoshop
9 11 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 10 (0.20%) SOLIDWORKS
11 9 (0.18%) Adobe Illustrator
11 9 (0.18%) Adobe Premiere
12 5 (0.099%) Adobe After Effects
12 5 (0.099%) Simulink
13 4 (0.080%) CATIA
13 4 (0.080%) Fusion 360
13 4 (0.080%) Oracle Smart View
13 4 (0.080%) Trello
14 3 (0.060%) Adobe XD
14 3 (0.060%) Elementor
Business Applications
1 87 (1.73%) SAP S/4HANA
2 53 (1.05%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.44%) NetSuite
4 19 (0.38%) SAP CO
5 18 (0.36%) Oracle Payables
6 16 (0.32%) Oracle Assets
6 16 (0.32%) Oracle Receivables
7 13 (0.26%) Sage X3
8 12 (0.24%) SAP FI
9 11 (0.22%) Dynamics NAV
9 11 (0.22%) iTrent
9 11 (0.22%) SAP FI/CO
10 10 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
11 9 (0.18%) SAP Business One
12 8 (0.16%) JDE EnterpriseOne
12 8 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
12 8 (0.16%) Oracle Financials
13 7 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
13 7 (0.14%) Shopify
13 7 (0.14%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,099 (21.87%) Azure
2 823 (16.37%) Microsoft 365
3 422 (8.40%) AWS
4 354 (7.04%) Power Platform
5 265 (5.27%) SaaS
6 225 (4.48%) Entra ID
7 143 (2.85%) Azure DevOps
8 121 (2.41%) GCP
9 102 (2.03%) GitHub
10 82 (1.63%) Serverless
11 73 (1.45%) Power Automate
12 55 (1.09%) Azure Data Factory
13 52 (1.03%) Dynamics 365
14 51 (1.01%) AWS Lambda
15 50 (0.99%) Amazon S3
16 46 (0.92%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 44 (0.88%) Google Workspace
17 44 (0.88%) OneDrive
18 43 (0.86%) AWS CloudFormation
18 43 (0.86%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 377 (7.50%) DNS
2 326 (6.49%) DHCP
3 262 (5.21%) Firewall
4 154 (3.06%) TCP/IP
5 148 (2.94%) VPN
5 148 (2.94%) Wi-Fi
6 128 (2.55%) WAN
7 116 (2.31%) LAN
8 94 (1.87%) Broadband
8 94 (1.87%) VLAN
9 85 (1.69%) VoIP
10 70 (1.39%) Wireless
11 54 (1.07%) Remote Desktop
12 48 (0.96%) Network Security
13 40 (0.80%) Internet
14 34 (0.68%) SAN
14 34 (0.68%) SD-WAN
15 30 (0.60%) Unified Communications
16 24 (0.48%) Ethernet
16 24 (0.48%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 301 (5.99%) Power BI
2 218 (4.34%) SQL Server
3 117 (2.33%) Amazon RDS
4 94 (1.87%) Relational Database
5 82 (1.63%) PostgreSQL
6 81 (1.61%) Data Lake
7 79 (1.57%) MySQL
8 66 (1.31%) NoSQL
9 64 (1.27%) SAP BW
10 63 (1.25%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 62 (1.23%) Data Warehouse
12 42 (0.84%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 39 (0.78%) Tableau
14 36 (0.72%) Azure SQL Database
15 31 (0.62%) DynamoDB
16 30 (0.60%) Amazon Redshift
17 29 (0.58%) MongoDB
18 27 (0.54%) Metadata
19 26 (0.52%) Elasticsearch
20 24 (0.48%) GIS
Development Applications
1 182 (3.62%) Git
2 160 (3.18%) JIRA
3 50 (0.99%) GitLab
4 41 (0.82%) Jenkins
5 31 (0.62%) Selenium
6 18 (0.36%) Visual Studio
7 15 (0.30%) LabVIEW
7 15 (0.30%) Robot Framework
8 14 (0.28%) Maven
8 14 (0.28%) Snyk
9 12 (0.24%) JUnit
10 11 (0.22%) Bitbucket
10 11 (0.22%) Cucumber
10 11 (0.22%) SonarQube
10 11 (0.22%) TeamCity
11 10 (0.20%) Burp Suite
11 10 (0.20%) Cypress.io
11 10 (0.20%) Metasploit
11 10 (0.20%) Octopus Deploy
12 8 (0.16%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,678 (53.28%) Social Skills
2 1,394 (27.74%) Analytical Skills
3 1,051 (20.91%) Finance
4 311 (6.19%) Manufacturing
5 288 (5.73%) Retail
6 285 (5.67%) Organisational Skills
7 251 (4.99%) Marketing
8 205 (4.08%) Public Sector
9 180 (3.58%) Legal
10 163 (3.24%) Law
11 154 (3.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 145 (2.88%) Telecoms
13 124 (2.47%) Electronics
14 117 (2.33%) Banking
15 111 (2.21%) Presentation Skills
16 81 (1.61%) Games
17 80 (1.59%) Automotive
18 69 (1.37%) Documentation Skills
19 61 (1.21%) Aerospace
20 60 (1.19%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 858 (17.07%) Analyst
2 690 (13.73%) IT Support
3 568 (11.30%) Senior
4 561 (11.16%) Support Engineer
5 379 (7.54%) Developer
6 322 (6.41%) Lead
7 299 (5.95%) Support Analyst
8 290 (5.77%) IT Engineer
9 254 (5.05%) IT Support Engineer
9 254 (5.05%) Technical Support
10 213 (4.24%) Business Analyst
11 173 (3.44%) 2nd Line Support
12 170 (3.38%) Technical Engineer
13 164 (3.26%) Support Technician
14 158 (3.14%) Systems Engineer
14 158 (3.14%) Technical Support Engineer
15 143 (2.85%) IT Analyst
16 138 (2.75%) Architect
17 128 (2.55%) Applications Support
17 128 (2.55%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 201 (4.00%) .NET
2 165 (3.28%) HTML
3 153 (3.04%) React
4 132 (2.63%) CSS
5 90 (1.79%) REST
6 65 (1.29%) Node.js
7 61 (1.21%) RESTful
8 50 (0.99%) AngularJS
8 50 (0.99%) JSON
8 50 (0.99%) SOAP
9 48 (0.96%) ASP.NET
9 48 (0.96%) Vue
10 43 (0.86%) XML
11 38 (0.76%) Spring
12 36 (0.72%) Django
13 35 (0.70%) .NET Framework
14 32 (0.64%) EDI
15 28 (0.56%) Laravel
16 27 (0.54%) Spring Boot
17 26 (0.52%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 499 (9.93%) Driving Licence
2 392 (7.80%) Onboarding
3 312 (6.21%) Self-Motivation
4 170 (3.38%) Management Information System
5 159 (3.16%) Analytical Mindset
6 151 (3.00%) Legacy Systems
7 104 (2.07%) Data Centre
8 103 (2.05%) Product Ownership
9 80 (1.59%) Cloud Native
10 61 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
11 51 (1.01%) Social Media
12 48 (0.96%) FMCG
13 47 (0.94%) Virtual Team
14 43 (0.86%) Mobile App
15 41 (0.82%) EPoS
16 37 (0.74%) Distributed Systems
17 36 (0.72%) Data Structures
18 35 (0.70%) e-Learning
19 34 (0.68%) Low-Code
19 34 (0.68%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 935 (18.60%) Windows
2 407 (8.10%) Windows Server
3 326 (6.49%) Linux
4 126 (2.51%) Windows Server 2016
5 120 (2.39%) Windows 10
6 74 (1.47%) Android
7 59 (1.17%) Mac OS
8 54 (1.07%) Apple iOS
9 38 (0.76%) Unix
10 34 (0.68%) Windows Server 2019
11 24 (0.48%) Windows Server 2012
12 15 (0.30%) Windows 7
13 14 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 11 (0.22%) VMS
15 9 (0.18%) CentOS
16 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
17 6 (0.12%) Windows 8
18 3 (0.060%) Debian
18 3 (0.060%) Ubuntu
19 2 (0.040%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 925 (18.40%) Customer Service
2 905 (18.01%) Continuous Improvement
3 660 (13.13%) Agile
4 480 (9.55%) Project Management
5 453 (9.01%) Mentoring
6 444 (8.83%) Decision-Making
7 435 (8.65%) Analytics
8 410 (8.16%) Business Intelligence
9 381 (7.58%) ITIL
10 370 (7.36%) ERP
11 365 (7.26%) DevOps
12 339 (6.74%) Change Management
13 326 (6.49%) CI/CD
14 312 (6.21%) Computer Science
15 306 (6.09%) CRM
16 304 (6.05%) AI
16 304 (6.05%) Cybersecurity
17 301 (5.99%) Stakeholder Management
18 287 (5.71%) Process Improvement
19 272 (5.41%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 722 (14.37%) SQL
2 483 (9.61%) Python
3 276 (5.49%) JavaScript
4 262 (5.21%) PowerShell
5 244 (4.85%) C#
6 166 (3.30%) Java
7 84 (1.67%) PHP
8 70 (1.39%) TypeScript
9 62 (1.23%) C++
10 61 (1.21%) Bash
11 52 (1.03%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 46 (0.92%) T-SQL
13 40 (0.80%) C
14 24 (0.48%) MATLAB
15 22 (0.44%) PL/SQL
16 19 (0.38%) R
17 18 (0.36%) Perl
18 17 (0.34%) Bicep
19 16 (0.32%) Go
19 16 (0.32%) VBA
Qualifications
1 1,148 (22.84%) Degree
2 411 (8.18%) Security Cleared
3 278 (5.53%) SC Cleared
4 171 (3.40%) DBS Check
5 147 (2.92%) Microsoft Certification
6 138 (2.75%) Computer Science Degree
7 102 (2.03%) BPSS Clearance
8 74 (1.47%) Master's Degree
9 67 (1.33%) Cisco Certification
9 67 (1.33%) DV Cleared
10 64 (1.27%) A+ Certification
11 61 (1.21%) HND
12 59 (1.17%) ACCA
13 52 (1.03%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 51 (1.01%) CIMA
15 47 (0.94%) CCNA
15 47 (0.94%) Network+ Certification
16 44 (0.88%) HNC
17 41 (0.82%) AWS Certification
18 35 (0.70%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 263 (5.23%) QA
2 229 (4.56%) Data Quality
3 161 (3.20%) Cyber Essentials
4 133 (2.65%) GDPR
5 118 (2.35%) PCI DSS
6 106 (2.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 82 (1.63%) Accessibility
8 67 (1.33%) SLA
9 42 (0.84%) NIST
10 33 (0.66%) ISO 9001
11 26 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 24 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
13 16 (0.32%) PMO
14 9 (0.18%) ISO 13485
15 7 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 7 (0.14%) SOC 2
16 6 (0.12%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 6 (0.12%) WCAG
17 5 (0.099%) GLBA
18 4 (0.080%) GRC
System Software
1 652 (12.97%) Active Directory
2 227 (4.52%) Hyper-V
3 165 (3.28%) Docker
4 107 (2.13%) VMware Infrastructure
5 96 (1.91%) Terminal Server
6 31 (0.62%) Firmware
7 25 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.34%) vSphere
9 16 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
10 14 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
11 8 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
12 6 (0.12%) KVM
13 5 (0.099%) Embedded Firmware
13 5 (0.099%) VMware Workstation
14 4 (0.080%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 2 (0.040%) RHEV
15 2 (0.040%) Xen
16 1 (0.020%) HDFS
16 1 (0.020%) iptables
16 1 (0.020%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 195 (3.88%) Terraform
2 192 (3.82%) Microsoft Intune
3 117 (2.33%) Kubernetes
4 77 (1.53%) Ansible
5 47 (0.94%) SCCM
6 43 (0.86%) Grafana
7 42 (0.84%) BMC PATROL
8 27 (0.54%) Prometheus
9 20 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
10 16 (0.32%) Nagios
11 14 (0.28%) Cisco CUCM
11 14 (0.28%) vCenter Server
12 12 (0.24%) Jamf Pro
13 11 (0.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 10 (0.20%) AWS Copilot
14 10 (0.20%) Nmap
15 8 (0.16%) Control-M
16 7 (0.14%) Autotask
16 7 (0.14%) FortiGate
16 7 (0.14%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,368 (27.22%) Microsoft
2 314 (6.25%) SAP
3 235 (4.68%) VMware
4 183 (3.64%) Oracle
5 153 (3.04%) Veeam
6 138 (2.75%) Cisco
7 121 (2.41%) SolarWinds
8 120 (2.39%) Splunk
9 98 (1.95%) Google
10 97 (1.93%) Tanium
11 96 (1.91%) Brocade
11 96 (1.91%) Nimble Storage
12 84 (1.67%) Salesforce
13 72 (1.43%) ServiceNow
14 67 (1.33%) Adobe
15 63 (1.25%) Databricks
16 62 (1.23%) Sage
17 57 (1.13%) BT
18 56 (1.11%) Apple
19 48 (0.96%) HubSpot