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

6 months to
24 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -7 +3 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,023 5,727 8,180
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 10.16% 18.57% 16.07%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.30% 20.33% 18.47%
Number of salaries quoted 3,515 2,619 5,673
10th Percentile £26,050 £27,750 £25,750
25th Percentile £29,000 £35,000 £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 £57,500 £67,500 £61,250
90th Percentile £72,500 £83,750 £72,500
UK median annual salary £45,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -18.18% +10.00% -11.89%

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 37,761 28,168 44,277
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 76.41% 91.34% 86.98%
Number of salaries quoted 22,245 13,020 33,660
10th Percentile £28,000 £31,250 £27,000
25th Percentile £35,000 £41,250 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.90%
75th Percentile £65,000 £70,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £81,250 £83,750 £78,750
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -12.00%

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 24 February 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 24 February 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 -17 1,365 £42,500 -10.53% 581
South East -3 1,278 £42,500 -19.05% 828
Midlands -15 864 £37,500 -28.57% 415
North West -16 726 £45,497 -9.01% 327
South West -4 584 £40,000 -23.81% 257
West Midlands -20 503 £42,500 -22.73% 255
Yorkshire -6 500 £36,500 -16.09% 188
East of England -6 425 £40,000 -21.52% 271
East Midlands -1 359 £35,000 -2.10% 159
Scotland -7 335 £33,500 -33.00% 91
North East -5 139 £45,000 - 76
Wales -1 120 £42,500 -22.73% 59
Northern Ireland -3 78 £35,000 -41.39% 23
Isle of Man 0 1 £62,500 +150.00% 4
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
1 317 (6.31%) Microsoft Exchange
2 234 (4.66%) SharePoint
3 50 (1.00%) Confluence
4 44 (0.88%) IIS
5 38 (0.76%) CMS
6 25 (0.50%) WordPress
7 24 (0.48%) Apache
8 19 (0.38%) Apache Spark
9 15 (0.30%) Apache Airflow
10 12 (0.24%) Exchange Server 2013
11 10 (0.20%) Exchange Server 2007
11 10 (0.20%) Exchange Server 2010
11 10 (0.20%) nginx
12 7 (0.14%) Drupal
13 6 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 5 (0.100%) SAS
15 4 (0.080%) Moodle
15 4 (0.080%) Totara
15 4 (0.080%) WebSphere
15 4 (0.080%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 365 (7.27%) Microsoft Office
2 320 (6.37%) Microsoft Excel
3 61 (1.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 28 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
5 26 (0.52%) MS Visio
6 14 (0.28%) AutoCAD
6 14 (0.28%) Microsoft Project
7 12 (0.24%) Photoshop
8 9 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 9 (0.18%) Adobe Illustrator
9 8 (0.16%) SOLIDWORKS
10 4 (0.080%) Adobe Premiere
10 4 (0.080%) CATIA
10 4 (0.080%) Fusion 360
10 4 (0.080%) Simulink
10 4 (0.080%) Trello
11 3 (0.060%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.060%) Elementor
11 3 (0.060%) InDesign
11 3 (0.060%) Revit
Business Applications
1 70 (1.39%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
3 25 (0.50%) NetSuite
4 15 (0.30%) SAP CO
5 13 (0.26%) Sage X3
6 12 (0.24%) Dynamics NAV
6 12 (0.24%) Shopify
7 11 (0.22%) Oracle Payables
8 10 (0.20%) iTrent
9 9 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
9 9 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
10 7 (0.14%) Q-Pulse
10 7 (0.14%) SAP Business One
10 7 (0.14%) Workday HCM
11 6 (0.12%) Markit EDM
11 6 (0.12%) Oracle General Ledger
11 6 (0.12%) SAP ERP
11 6 (0.12%) SAP FI
11 6 (0.12%) SAP FI/CO
12 5 (0.100%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 1,062 (21.14%) Azure
2 876 (17.44%) Microsoft 365
3 446 (8.88%) AWS
4 324 (6.45%) Power Platform
5 244 (4.86%) SaaS
6 240 (4.78%) Entra ID
7 144 (2.87%) Azure DevOps
8 135 (2.69%) GCP
9 100 (1.99%) GitHub
10 90 (1.79%) Serverless
11 80 (1.59%) Power Automate
12 67 (1.33%) Dynamics 365
13 63 (1.25%) Google Workspace
14 58 (1.15%) Azure Data Factory
15 56 (1.11%) AWS Lambda
16 55 (1.09%) Amazon S3
17 48 (0.96%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 48 (0.96%) GitHub Actions
18 47 (0.94%) AWS CloudFormation
18 47 (0.94%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 398 (7.92%) DNS
2 343 (6.83%) DHCP
3 276 (5.49%) Firewall
4 161 (3.21%) VPN
5 151 (3.01%) Wi-Fi
6 150 (2.99%) TCP/IP
7 146 (2.91%) WAN
8 127 (2.53%) LAN
9 111 (2.21%) Broadband
10 93 (1.85%) VLAN
11 84 (1.67%) VoIP
12 72 (1.43%) Wireless
13 54 (1.08%) Remote Desktop
14 50 (1.00%) Network Security
15 45 (0.90%) Internet
16 41 (0.82%) SD-WAN
17 29 (0.58%) SAN
17 29 (0.58%) Unified Communications
18 23 (0.46%) Ethernet
18 23 (0.46%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 263 (5.24%) Power BI
2 194 (3.86%) SQL Server
3 133 (2.65%) Amazon RDS
4 78 (1.55%) Relational Database
5 76 (1.51%) PostgreSQL
6 68 (1.35%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 66 (1.31%) NoSQL
8 65 (1.29%) Data Warehouse
9 61 (1.21%) MySQL
10 45 (0.90%) Tableau
11 38 (0.76%) Data Lake
12 37 (0.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 35 (0.70%) Azure SQL Database
14 34 (0.68%) Amazon Redshift
14 34 (0.68%) Power Query
15 33 (0.66%) DynamoDB
16 31 (0.62%) MongoDB
17 28 (0.56%) Metadata
18 24 (0.48%) Elasticsearch
19 19 (0.38%) SAP BW
Development Applications
1 187 (3.72%) Git
2 161 (3.21%) JIRA
3 60 (1.19%) GitLab
4 45 (0.90%) Jenkins
5 32 (0.64%) Selenium
6 16 (0.32%) LabVIEW
6 16 (0.32%) Maven
7 15 (0.30%) Robot Framework
7 15 (0.30%) Visual Studio
8 14 (0.28%) Snyk
9 13 (0.26%) Cucumber
9 13 (0.26%) SonarQube
10 12 (0.24%) Cypress.io
11 11 (0.22%) JUnit
11 11 (0.22%) Rational DOORS
12 10 (0.20%) Bitbucket
12 10 (0.20%) Burp Suite
12 10 (0.20%) Metasploit
13 7 (0.14%) CircleCI
13 7 (0.14%) TeamCity
General
1 2,641 (52.58%) Social Skills
2 1,418 (28.23%) Analytical Skills
3 1,008 (20.07%) Finance
4 335 (6.67%) Organisational Skills
5 284 (5.65%) Manufacturing
6 268 (5.34%) Retail
7 229 (4.56%) Marketing
8 217 (4.32%) Public Sector
9 184 (3.66%) Legal
10 169 (3.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 163 (3.25%) Law
11 163 (3.25%) Telecoms
12 130 (2.59%) Electronics
13 119 (2.37%) Banking
14 109 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
15 89 (1.77%) Games
16 84 (1.67%) Documentation Skills
17 82 (1.63%) Automotive
18 53 (1.06%) Aerospace
19 50 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 811 (16.15%) Analyst
2 715 (14.23%) IT Support
3 591 (11.77%) Support Engineer
4 559 (11.13%) Senior
5 373 (7.43%) Developer
6 326 (6.49%) IT Engineer
7 284 (5.65%) IT Support Engineer
8 278 (5.53%) Support Analyst
9 266 (5.30%) Lead
10 225 (4.48%) Technical Support
11 201 (4.00%) Business Analyst
12 179 (3.56%) 2nd Line Support
13 178 (3.54%) Support Technician
14 171 (3.40%) Systems Engineer
15 158 (3.15%) Technical Engineer
16 150 (2.99%) Technical Support Engineer
17 144 (2.87%) Architect
17 144 (2.87%) Consultant
18 138 (2.75%) IT Analyst
19 127 (2.53%) Trainee
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 179 (3.56%) .NET
2 157 (3.13%) React
3 155 (3.09%) HTML
4 119 (2.37%) CSS
5 81 (1.61%) REST
6 74 (1.47%) Node.js
7 56 (1.11%) RESTful
8 49 (0.98%) AngularJS
9 48 (0.96%) Vue
10 44 (0.88%) SOAP
11 42 (0.84%) JSON
12 37 (0.74%) XML
13 36 (0.72%) Spring
14 35 (0.70%) ASP.NET
15 34 (0.68%) Django
16 32 (0.64%) .NET Framework
17 31 (0.62%) Laravel
17 31 (0.62%) Spring Boot
18 27 (0.54%) Middleware
19 26 (0.52%) EDI
Miscellaneous
1 520 (10.35%) Driving Licence
2 360 (7.17%) Onboarding
3 313 (6.23%) Self-Motivation
4 168 (3.34%) Management Information System
5 167 (3.32%) Legacy Systems
6 148 (2.95%) Analytical Mindset
7 106 (2.11%) Data Centre
8 100 (1.99%) Product Ownership
9 86 (1.71%) Cloud Native
10 72 (1.43%) Social Media
11 65 (1.29%) Enterprise Software
12 55 (1.09%) Mobile App
13 48 (0.96%) Low-Code
14 45 (0.90%) EPoS
15 43 (0.86%) FMCG
16 42 (0.84%) Distributed Systems
17 38 (0.76%) IoT
18 37 (0.74%) Data Structures
18 37 (0.74%) NHS
18 37 (0.74%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 976 (19.43%) Windows
2 437 (8.70%) Windows Server
3 348 (6.93%) Linux
4 147 (2.93%) Windows Server 2016
5 122 (2.43%) Windows 10
6 100 (1.99%) Android
7 66 (1.31%) Mac OS
8 58 (1.15%) Apple iOS
9 37 (0.74%) Windows Server 2019
10 36 (0.72%) Unix
11 25 (0.50%) Windows Server 2012
12 20 (0.40%) Windows 7
13 19 (0.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 15 (0.30%) CentOS
15 10 (0.20%) Windows 8
16 9 (0.18%) Ubuntu
16 9 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
17 8 (0.16%) VMS
18 6 (0.12%) Debian
19 2 (0.040%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 942 (18.75%) Continuous Improvement
2 935 (18.61%) Customer Service
3 648 (12.90%) Agile
4 474 (9.44%) Project Management
5 464 (9.24%) Mentoring
6 450 (8.96%) Decision-Making
7 395 (7.86%) ITIL
8 393 (7.82%) Analytics
9 378 (7.53%) DevOps
10 376 (7.49%) Business Intelligence
11 344 (6.85%) CI/CD
12 337 (6.71%) Change Management
13 327 (6.51%) ERP
14 318 (6.33%) AI
15 309 (6.15%) Computer Science
16 306 (6.09%) Cybersecurity
17 297 (5.91%) CRM
18 296 (5.89%) Stakeholder Management
19 293 (5.83%) Customer Experience
20 292 (5.81%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 670 (13.34%) SQL
2 502 (9.99%) Python
3 285 (5.67%) JavaScript
4 255 (5.08%) PowerShell
5 216 (4.30%) C#
6 170 (3.38%) Java
7 80 (1.59%) TypeScript
8 73 (1.45%) Bash
9 72 (1.43%) PHP
10 59 (1.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 55 (1.09%) C++
12 46 (0.92%) C
13 41 (0.82%) T-SQL
14 25 (0.50%) PL/SQL
14 25 (0.50%) R
15 21 (0.42%) MATLAB
16 19 (0.38%) Bicep
16 19 (0.38%) Go
17 18 (0.36%) Kotlin
17 18 (0.36%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,035 (20.61%) Degree
2 422 (8.40%) Security Cleared
3 292 (5.81%) SC Cleared
4 153 (3.05%) DBS Check
5 141 (2.81%) Microsoft Certification
6 119 (2.37%) Computer Science Degree
7 101 (2.01%) BPSS Clearance
8 71 (1.41%) Master's Degree
9 67 (1.33%) ACCA
10 66 (1.31%) A+ Certification
11 65 (1.29%) DV Cleared
12 61 (1.21%) Cisco Certification
13 59 (1.17%) CIMA
14 54 (1.08%) HND
15 51 (1.02%) HNC
16 49 (0.98%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 44 (0.88%) CCNA
18 43 (0.86%) Network+ Certification
19 42 (0.84%) AWS Certification
20 36 (0.72%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 256 (5.10%) QA
2 180 (3.58%) Data Quality
3 179 (3.56%) Cyber Essentials
4 142 (2.83%) GDPR
5 140 (2.79%) PCI DSS
6 113 (2.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 76 (1.51%) Accessibility
8 71 (1.41%) SLA
9 45 (0.90%) NIST
10 36 (0.72%) ISO 9001
11 29 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
12 28 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 11 (0.22%) PMO
14 9 (0.18%) GMP
14 9 (0.18%) SOC 2
15 8 (0.16%) ISO 13485
16 7 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 6 (0.12%) WCAG
18 5 (0.100%) California Consumer Privacy Act
18 5 (0.100%) COSHH
System Software
1 679 (13.52%) Active Directory
2 255 (5.08%) Hyper-V
3 179 (3.56%) Docker
4 123 (2.45%) VMware Infrastructure
5 112 (2.23%) Terminal Server
6 26 (0.52%) Firmware
7 22 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
9 15 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
9 15 (0.30%) vSphere
10 9 (0.18%) VMware Workstation
11 8 (0.16%) KVM
11 8 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.100%) Embedded Firmware
13 4 (0.080%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 3 (0.060%) XenApp
15 2 (0.040%) VMware NSX
16 1 (0.020%) Lustre
16 1 (0.020%) RHEV
16 1 (0.020%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 206 (4.10%) Terraform
2 199 (3.96%) Microsoft Intune
3 129 (2.57%) Kubernetes
4 82 (1.63%) Ansible
5 55 (1.09%) SCCM
6 50 (1.00%) Grafana
7 42 (0.84%) BMC PATROL
8 32 (0.64%) Prometheus
9 18 (0.36%) Single Sign-On
10 17 (0.34%) Nagios
11 14 (0.28%) Cisco CUCM
12 13 (0.26%) vCenter Server
13 12 (0.24%) Jamf Pro
14 11 (0.22%) Autotask
15 10 (0.20%) AWS Copilot
15 10 (0.20%) Nmap
15 10 (0.20%) ZABBIX
16 8 (0.16%) Control-M
17 7 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 7 (0.14%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 1,376 (27.39%) Microsoft
2 271 (5.40%) VMware
3 220 (4.38%) SAP
4 176 (3.50%) Veeam
5 165 (3.28%) Oracle
6 141 (2.81%) SolarWinds
7 140 (2.79%) Splunk
8 129 (2.57%) Cisco
9 116 (2.31%) Google
10 113 (2.25%) Tanium
11 112 (2.23%) Brocade
11 112 (2.23%) Nimble Storage
12 75 (1.49%) Salesforce
13 74 (1.47%) ServiceNow
14 66 (1.31%) Adobe
15 62 (1.23%) Databricks
16 61 (1.21%) Apple
17 60 (1.19%) Sage
18 56 (1.11%) BT
19 47 (0.94%) HubSpot