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

6 months to
24 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 4 6
Rank change year-on-year -4 +2 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,330 6,058 11,358
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 7.78% 19.93% 14.48%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.12% 21.96% 18.15%
Number of salaries quoted 3,994 3,234 6,951
10th Percentile £26,500 £25,750 £25,000
25th Percentile £30,250 £30,000 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £42,500 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year - -5.56% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £60,000 £60,000
90th Percentile £73,750 £77,500 £72,500
UK median annual salary £47,500 £50,000 £49,000
% change year-on-year -5.00% +2.04% -10.91%

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 47,953 27,584 62,595
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.00% 90.75% 79.80%
Number of salaries quoted 33,671 14,103 43,662
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,500 £27,500
25th Percentile £38,984 £32,851 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £50,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% - -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £67,500 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £81,250 £77,500
UK median annual salary £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -9.54%

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 June 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 June 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 -8 1,433 £42,500 -1.16% 591
South East -5 1,306 £45,000 +5.88% 738
Midlands -8 980 £42,000 -1.18% 421
North West -7 747 £45,000 -2.17% 329
South West -6 628 £44,000 +17.33% 268
West Midlands -9 563 £42,500 -5.56% 233
East of England -3 544 £45,000 +28.57% 240
Yorkshire -12 508 £40,500 +15.71% 193
East Midlands -9 414 £35,000 -4.11% 188
Scotland -3 264 £35,000 -30.00% 99
North East -11 178 £48,500 +21.25% 86
Wales -18 123 £45,000 - 41
Northern Ireland -10 72 £38,500 -30.00% 80
Isle of Man +2 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
1 334 (6.27%) Microsoft Exchange
2 324 (6.08%) SharePoint
3 53 (0.99%) Confluence
4 50 (0.94%) CMS
5 31 (0.58%) IIS
6 26 (0.49%) WordPress
7 25 (0.47%) Apache
8 20 (0.38%) Apache Airflow
9 14 (0.26%) Apache Spark
10 12 (0.23%) SAS
11 11 (0.21%) Exchange Server 2013
12 9 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2007
12 9 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2010
12 9 (0.17%) WebSphere
13 7 (0.13%) OpenEdge
13 7 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 6 (0.11%) WebLogic
15 5 (0.094%) Skype for Business
16 4 (0.075%) Moodle
16 4 (0.075%) nginx
Applications
1 337 (6.32%) Microsoft Office
2 314 (5.89%) Microsoft Excel
3 42 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 39 (0.73%) Spreadsheet
5 30 (0.56%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.30%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 8 (0.15%) Adobe Illustrator
7 8 (0.15%) Simulink
8 6 (0.11%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.094%) Fusion 360
9 5 (0.094%) Photoshop
9 5 (0.094%) Trello
10 4 (0.075%) Chatbot
11 3 (0.056%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.056%) Autodesk Inventor
11 3 (0.056%) Lightworks
11 3 (0.056%) Sketch
11 3 (0.056%) Windchill
12 2 (0.038%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 51 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.60%) Dynamics CRM
3 28 (0.53%) NetSuite
4 22 (0.41%) Dynamics NAV
5 19 (0.36%) Shopify
6 16 (0.30%) Magento
7 14 (0.26%) SAP ERP
8 12 (0.23%) Dynamics AX
8 12 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
9 11 (0.21%) iTrent
10 9 (0.17%) IBM Planning Analytics
10 9 (0.17%) SAP Business One
11 8 (0.15%) Sage 50
12 7 (0.13%) SAP CO
12 7 (0.13%) Workday HCM
13 5 (0.094%) Q-Pulse
14 4 (0.075%) Dynamics GP
14 4 (0.075%) JDE EnterpriseOne
14 4 (0.075%) Line 50
14 4 (0.075%) SAP PP
Cloud Services
1 1,118 (20.98%) Azure
2 969 (18.18%) Microsoft 365
3 557 (10.45%) AWS
4 404 (7.58%) Power Platform
5 256 (4.80%) Entra ID
6 179 (3.36%) SaaS
7 170 (3.19%) GCP
8 125 (2.35%) Azure DevOps
9 115 (2.16%) Dynamics 365
10 114 (2.14%) Serverless
11 88 (1.65%) GitHub
11 88 (1.65%) Power Automate
12 81 (1.52%) PowerApps
13 71 (1.33%) OneDrive
14 55 (1.03%) Amazon S3
15 49 (0.92%) Google Workspace
16 47 (0.88%) AWS Lambda
16 47 (0.88%) IaaS
17 46 (0.86%) Microsoft Copilot
18 45 (0.84%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 384 (7.20%) Firewall
2 345 (6.47%) DNS
3 297 (5.57%) DHCP
4 205 (3.85%) VPN
5 185 (3.47%) WAN
6 157 (2.95%) TCP/IP
7 155 (2.91%) LAN
8 148 (2.78%) Wi-Fi
9 111 (2.08%) VLAN
9 111 (2.08%) Wireless
10 110 (2.06%) Broadband
11 90 (1.69%) Network Security
12 85 (1.59%) VoIP
13 43 (0.81%) Internet
14 39 (0.73%) SD-WAN
15 30 (0.56%) SAN
16 23 (0.43%) HTTP
17 21 (0.39%) SSL
17 21 (0.39%) Structured Cabling
18 19 (0.36%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 326 (6.12%) Power BI
2 231 (4.33%) SQL Server
3 98 (1.84%) Amazon RDS
4 84 (1.58%) MySQL
5 80 (1.50%) Data Warehouse
6 75 (1.41%) PostgreSQL
7 71 (1.33%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 66 (1.24%) NoSQL
9 61 (1.14%) Relational Database
10 59 (1.11%) Tableau
11 56 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 46 (0.86%) Power Query
13 41 (0.77%) MongoDB
14 35 (0.66%) Azure SQL Database
14 35 (0.66%) Big Data
15 32 (0.60%) Data Lake
16 28 (0.53%) Elasticsearch
17 27 (0.51%) DynamoDB
18 25 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
19 18 (0.34%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 208 (3.90%) Git
2 151 (2.83%) JIRA
3 70 (1.31%) GitLab
4 42 (0.79%) Jenkins
5 29 (0.54%) Rational DOORS
6 20 (0.38%) Cucumber
7 18 (0.34%) Subversion
8 16 (0.30%) JUnit
9 15 (0.28%) Eclipse
10 14 (0.26%) Selenium
10 14 (0.26%) SonarQube
11 13 (0.24%) Cypress.io
11 13 (0.24%) Maven
12 11 (0.21%) Oracle Forms
13 10 (0.19%) Bitbucket
13 10 (0.19%) Postman
14 8 (0.15%) Burp Suite
14 8 (0.15%) Claude Code
14 8 (0.15%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
15 7 (0.13%) Metasploit
General
1 2,554 (47.92%) Social Skills
2 1,448 (27.17%) Analytical Skills
3 849 (15.93%) Finance
4 399 (7.49%) Manufacturing
5 341 (6.40%) Organisational Skills
6 247 (4.63%) Public Sector
7 235 (4.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 207 (3.88%) Retail
9 204 (3.83%) Law
9 204 (3.83%) Legal
10 178 (3.34%) Marketing
11 140 (2.63%) Banking
12 132 (2.48%) Electronics
12 132 (2.48%) Telecoms
13 109 (2.05%) Documentation Skills
14 99 (1.86%) Influencing Skills
15 78 (1.46%) Aerospace
16 75 (1.41%) Games
17 60 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
18 55 (1.03%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 762 (14.30%) Analyst
2 648 (12.16%) IT Support
3 562 (10.54%) Support Engineer
4 549 (10.30%) Senior
5 486 (9.12%) Developer
6 382 (7.17%) IT Engineer
7 292 (5.48%) IT Support Engineer
8 283 (5.31%) Lead
9 245 (4.60%) Support Technician
10 218 (4.09%) Support Analyst
11 212 (3.98%) Systems Engineer
12 197 (3.70%) IT Technician
13 188 (3.53%) Technical Support
14 177 (3.32%) Consultant
15 175 (3.28%) Software Engineer
16 171 (3.21%) Architect
17 157 (2.95%) Technical Engineer
18 156 (2.93%) IT Support Technician
19 149 (2.80%) Technical Support Engineer
20 137 (2.57%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 205 (3.85%) .NET
2 190 (3.56%) React
3 158 (2.96%) HTML
4 142 (2.66%) REST
5 120 (2.25%) CSS
6 97 (1.82%) Node.js
7 83 (1.56%) RESTful
8 79 (1.48%) SOAP
9 71 (1.33%) JSON
9 71 (1.33%) Middleware
10 68 (1.28%) Vue
11 64 (1.20%) AngularJS
12 63 (1.18%) XML
13 45 (0.84%) Spring
14 42 (0.79%) ASP.NET
14 42 (0.79%) Spring Boot
14 42 (0.79%) Web Services
15 38 (0.71%) OAuth
16 37 (0.69%) EDI
17 29 (0.54%) Laravel
Miscellaneous
1 406 (7.62%) Driving Licence
2 294 (5.52%) Onboarding
3 243 (4.56%) Self-Motivation
4 197 (3.70%) Management Information System
5 142 (2.66%) Cloud Native
6 132 (2.48%) Legacy Systems
7 128 (2.40%) Product Ownership
8 98 (1.84%) Data Centre
9 97 (1.82%) Analytical Mindset
10 76 (1.43%) Distributed Systems
11 69 (1.29%) Social Media
12 68 (1.28%) Mobile App
13 62 (1.16%) Security Posture
14 52 (0.98%) Low-Code
15 50 (0.94%) Enterprise Software
16 49 (0.92%) Virtual Team
17 44 (0.83%) Data Structures
18 42 (0.79%) Algorithms
19 41 (0.77%) IoT
20 40 (0.75%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 925 (17.35%) Windows
2 448 (8.41%) Windows Server
3 368 (6.90%) Linux
4 146 (2.74%) Windows 10
5 118 (2.21%) Windows Server 2016
6 106 (1.99%) Android
7 68 (1.28%) Apple iOS
8 64 (1.20%) Mac OS
9 52 (0.98%) Windows Server 2019
10 31 (0.58%) Unix
11 27 (0.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 26 (0.49%) CentOS
12 26 (0.49%) Ubuntu
13 18 (0.34%) VMS
13 18 (0.34%) Windows Server 2012
14 14 (0.26%) Windows 7
15 12 (0.23%) Debian
16 7 (0.13%) Windows 8
17 6 (0.11%) FreeRTOS
17 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,228 (23.04%) Continuous Improvement
2 956 (17.94%) Customer Service
3 710 (13.32%) Agile
4 541 (10.15%) Mentoring
5 540 (10.13%) Decision-Making
6 466 (8.74%) AI
7 460 (8.63%) CI/CD
8 449 (8.42%) Analytics
9 437 (8.20%) ITIL
10 423 (7.94%) DevOps
11 404 (7.58%) Cybersecurity
12 402 (7.54%) Collaborative Working
13 380 (7.13%) Business Intelligence
14 379 (7.11%) ERP
15 373 (7.00%) Software Engineering
16 357 (6.70%) Stakeholder Management
17 327 (6.14%) Computer Science
18 319 (5.98%) Coaching
19 312 (5.85%) Project Management
20 309 (5.80%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 817 (15.33%) SQL
2 611 (11.46%) Python
3 337 (6.32%) JavaScript
4 279 (5.23%) C#
5 233 (4.37%) Java
6 222 (4.17%) PowerShell
7 147 (2.76%) TypeScript
8 127 (2.38%) C++
9 105 (1.97%) Bash
10 73 (1.37%) PHP
11 55 (1.03%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 51 (0.96%) C
13 45 (0.84%) T-SQL
14 41 (0.77%) PL/SQL
15 31 (0.58%) Kotlin
16 30 (0.56%) Perl
17 27 (0.51%) Go
17 27 (0.51%) R
17 27 (0.51%) Shell Script
18 25 (0.47%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 769 (14.43%) Degree
2 425 (7.97%) Security Cleared
3 300 (5.63%) SC Cleared
4 209 (3.92%) DBS Check
5 161 (3.02%) Microsoft Certification
6 154 (2.89%) Computer Science Degree
7 87 (1.63%) BPSS Clearance
8 78 (1.46%) Cisco Certification
9 72 (1.35%) DV Cleared
10 66 (1.24%) A+ Certification
11 64 (1.20%) ACCA
12 61 (1.14%) CCNA
13 60 (1.13%) Azure Certification
13 60 (1.13%) CIMA
14 55 (1.03%) HNC
15 53 (0.99%) PMI Certification
16 46 (0.86%) CISSP
16 46 (0.86%) Network+ Certification
17 44 (0.83%) CompTIA Security+
17 44 (0.83%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 312 (5.85%) QA
2 242 (4.54%) Data Quality
3 164 (3.08%) Cyber Essentials
4 154 (2.89%) GDPR
5 135 (2.53%) SLA
6 129 (2.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 106 (1.99%) PCI DSS
8 94 (1.76%) Accessibility
9 82 (1.54%) NIST
10 41 (0.77%) ISO 9001
11 24 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 23 (0.43%) PMO
13 18 (0.34%) GMP
14 15 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
14 15 (0.28%) GRC
15 13 (0.24%) ISO 14001
16 12 (0.23%) Good Clinical Practice
16 12 (0.23%) SOC 2
16 12 (0.23%) TickIT
17 8 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 668 (12.53%) Active Directory
2 248 (4.65%) Hyper-V
3 185 (3.47%) Docker
4 178 (3.34%) VMware Infrastructure
5 72 (1.35%) Terminal Server
6 33 (0.62%) Virtual Desktop
7 32 (0.60%) Firmware
8 24 (0.45%) vSphere
9 20 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
10 13 (0.24%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.19%) Embedded Firmware
11 10 (0.19%) KVM
12 7 (0.13%) VMware Workstation
13 6 (0.11%) XenApp
14 5 (0.094%) ClearTrust
15 4 (0.075%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 4 (0.075%) Virtual Servers
16 3 (0.056%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 3 (0.056%) Terminal Services
17 2 (0.038%) Samba
Systems Management
1 199 (3.73%) Microsoft Intune
2 196 (3.68%) Terraform
3 177 (3.32%) Kubernetes
4 98 (1.84%) Ansible
5 57 (1.07%) SCCM
6 56 (1.05%) Grafana
7 37 (0.69%) Prometheus
8 21 (0.39%) Nagios
9 18 (0.34%) FortiGate
10 12 (0.23%) Kibana
10 12 (0.23%) vCenter Server
11 11 (0.21%) logstash
12 10 (0.19%) Jamf Pro
13 9 (0.17%) Autotask
13 9 (0.17%) Podman
13 9 (0.17%) Proxmox
13 9 (0.17%) Puppet
13 9 (0.17%) QRadar
13 9 (0.17%) Single Sign-On
13 9 (0.17%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,580 (29.64%) Microsoft
2 286 (5.37%) VMware
3 129 (2.42%) Veeam
4 125 (2.35%) Oracle
5 118 (2.21%) Google
6 117 (2.20%) SAP
7 109 (2.05%) Splunk
8 103 (1.93%) Cisco
9 102 (1.91%) SolarWinds
10 78 (1.46%) Salesforce
11 75 (1.41%) Tanium
12 73 (1.37%) Nimble Storage
13 72 (1.35%) Brocade
14 66 (1.24%) Databricks
14 66 (1.24%) ServiceNow
15 60 (1.13%) Apple
16 52 (0.98%) Adobe
17 51 (0.96%) Sage
18 45 (0.84%) Dell
19 37 (0.69%) Meraki