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

6 months to
8 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 8,088 6,263 7,953
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 9.38% 18.04% 15.35%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.29% 20.69% 19.32%
Number of salaries quoted 5,489 3,474 3,055
10th Percentile £27,000 £25,684 £25,750
25th Percentile £31,250 £29,000 £33,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £43,000 £39,000 £49,000
Median % change year-on-year +10.26% -20.41% +3.16%
75th Percentile £58,750 £55,232 £63,750
90th Percentile £72,500 £68,750 £80,000
UK median annual salary £46,000 £45,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +2.22% -14.29% -4.55%

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 60,862 30,266 41,160
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.60% 87.16% 79.42%
Number of salaries quoted 42,828 16,093 20,937
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,750 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,225 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £47,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year +15.79% -9.52% -2.78%
75th Percentile £70,000 £63,750 £67,500
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 8 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 8 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 -7 2,039 £45,000 - 1,675
South East -1 1,905 £41,500 +1.22% 1,715
Midlands -6 1,455 £42,500 +11.84% 1,107
North West -2 1,053 £46,000 -8.00% 832
South West -1 981 £45,000 +22.45% 824
East of England -1 824 £43,500 +33.85% 825
West Midlands -5 816 £42,500 - 671
East Midlands -6 637 £42,000 +29.23% 436
Yorkshire -7 610 £42,500 +28.79% 589
North East +6 385 £50,000 +51.52% 270
Northern Ireland +10 335 £70,000 +17.65% 312
Scotland +7 331 £37,625 +12.31% 563
Wales -14 234 £41,250 -14.28% 208
Isle of Man 0 3 £35,000 - 13
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
1 471 (5.82%) SharePoint
2 364 (4.50%) Microsoft Exchange
3 65 (0.80%) Confluence
4 61 (0.75%) CMS
5 56 (0.69%) IIS
6 37 (0.46%) Apache
7 31 (0.38%) Apache Airflow
8 30 (0.37%) WordPress
9 28 (0.35%) Sitecore CMS
10 24 (0.30%) Apache Spark
11 14 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
12 13 (0.16%) Jupyter
13 12 (0.15%) nginx
14 10 (0.12%) WebSphere
15 9 (0.11%) WebLogic
16 8 (0.099%) SAS
17 7 (0.087%) CICS
17 7 (0.087%) OpenEdge
18 4 (0.049%) Oracle SOA Suite
18 4 (0.049%) Tomcat
Applications
1 606 (7.49%) Microsoft Office
2 548 (6.78%) Microsoft Excel
3 87 (1.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 66 (0.82%) Spreadsheet
5 47 (0.58%) AutoCAD
6 43 (0.53%) MS Visio
7 40 (0.49%) Microsoft Project
8 37 (0.46%) Simulink
9 27 (0.33%) Revit
10 22 (0.27%) EPLAN
11 16 (0.20%) SOLIDWORKS
12 12 (0.15%) OrCAD
13 11 (0.14%) Navisworks
14 9 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
15 7 (0.087%) Chatbot
15 7 (0.087%) Siemens NX
16 6 (0.074%) Lightworks
17 5 (0.062%) Adobe Illustrator
17 5 (0.062%) Adobe XD
17 5 (0.062%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 75 (0.93%) Dynamics CRM
2 63 (0.78%) NetSuite
3 51 (0.63%) SAP S/4HANA
4 33 (0.41%) Shopify
5 22 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
6 21 (0.26%) Workday HCM
7 19 (0.23%) Dynamics NAV
8 15 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
9 14 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
9 14 (0.17%) SAP Business One
10 13 (0.16%) SAP ERP
11 12 (0.15%) IBM Planning Analytics
11 12 (0.15%) Oracle Cash Management
11 12 (0.15%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 11 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
12 11 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
13 10 (0.12%) JDE EnterpriseOne
13 10 (0.12%) Magento
13 10 (0.12%) Sage X3
14 9 (0.11%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 1,403 (17.35%) Azure
2 1,291 (15.96%) Microsoft 365
3 693 (8.57%) AWS
4 613 (7.58%) Power Platform
5 464 (5.74%) Entra ID
6 293 (3.62%) SaaS
7 234 (2.89%) GCP
8 172 (2.13%) Azure DevOps
9 155 (1.92%) PowerApps
10 149 (1.84%) GitHub
11 146 (1.81%) Dynamics 365
12 144 (1.78%) Power Automate
13 128 (1.58%) OneDrive
14 112 (1.38%) Serverless
15 96 (1.19%) Microsoft Copilot
16 80 (0.99%) Google Workspace
17 71 (0.88%) Amazon S3
18 69 (0.85%) AWS CloudFormation
19 66 (0.82%) GitHub Actions
20 57 (0.70%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 459 (5.68%) DNS
2 453 (5.60%) Firewall
3 377 (4.66%) DHCP
4 294 (3.64%) VPN
5 237 (2.93%) TCP/IP
6 213 (2.63%) Wi-Fi
7 199 (2.46%) WAN
8 195 (2.41%) LAN
9 177 (2.19%) Wireless
10 154 (1.90%) VLAN
11 129 (1.59%) Network Security
12 111 (1.37%) VoIP
13 66 (0.82%) Internet
14 65 (0.80%) Broadband
15 31 (0.38%) Remote Desktop
15 31 (0.38%) SSL
16 30 (0.37%) SAN
17 27 (0.33%) Ethernet
17 27 (0.33%) SD-WAN
18 26 (0.32%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 484 (5.98%) Power BI
2 333 (4.12%) SQL Server
3 137 (1.69%) MySQL
4 122 (1.51%) Relational Database
5 121 (1.50%) Amazon RDS
6 105 (1.30%) Data Warehouse
7 99 (1.22%) PostgreSQL
8 87 (1.08%) NoSQL
9 67 (0.83%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 67 (0.83%) Tableau
10 57 (0.70%) MongoDB
11 50 (0.62%) Big Data
11 50 (0.62%) Data Lake
11 50 (0.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 48 (0.59%) Power Query
13 47 (0.58%) Electronic Patient Records
14 46 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
15 35 (0.43%) Metadata
16 34 (0.42%) Oracle Reports
17 27 (0.33%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 313 (3.87%) Git
2 247 (3.05%) JIRA
3 101 (1.25%) GitLab
4 90 (1.11%) Jenkins
5 40 (0.49%) Eclipse
6 37 (0.46%) Selenium
7 34 (0.42%) Subversion
8 31 (0.38%) Cucumber
9 30 (0.37%) Claude Code
10 26 (0.32%) JUnit
11 25 (0.31%) Oracle Forms
12 24 (0.30%) Cypress.io
13 23 (0.28%) Postman
14 22 (0.27%) Bitbucket
15 21 (0.26%) LabVIEW
16 20 (0.25%) Rational DOORS
17 16 (0.20%) Burp Suite
18 14 (0.17%) Team Foundation Server
19 13 (0.16%) Metasploit
19 13 (0.16%) Visual Studio
General
1 3,986 (49.28%) Social Skills
2 2,226 (27.52%) Analytical Skills
3 1,296 (16.02%) Finance
4 986 (12.19%) Manufacturing
5 663 (8.20%) Organisational Skills
6 442 (5.46%) Retail
7 433 (5.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 384 (4.75%) Public Sector
9 371 (4.59%) Electronics
10 334 (4.13%) Law
10 334 (4.13%) Legal
11 330 (4.08%) Aerospace
12 298 (3.68%) Marketing
13 203 (2.51%) Telecoms
14 155 (1.92%) Influencing Skills
15 153 (1.89%) Automotive
16 141 (1.74%) Documentation Skills
17 126 (1.56%) Presentation Skills
18 114 (1.41%) Banking
19 110 (1.36%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,075 (13.29%) Analyst
2 841 (10.40%) Senior
3 767 (9.48%) IT Support
4 716 (8.85%) Developer
5 604 (7.47%) Support Engineer
6 417 (5.16%) Lead
7 412 (5.09%) Support Analyst
8 393 (4.86%) IT Engineer
9 364 (4.50%) Consultant
10 303 (3.75%) IT Support Engineer
11 294 (3.64%) Technical Support
12 271 (3.35%) Support Technician
13 249 (3.08%) Technical Engineer
14 243 (3.00%) IT Technician
15 226 (2.79%) Architect
15 226 (2.79%) Technical Support Engineer
16 222 (2.74%) Software Engineer
17 220 (2.72%) Systems Engineer
18 211 (2.61%) Senior Developer
19 196 (2.42%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 375 (4.64%) .NET
2 281 (3.47%) Terraform
3 219 (2.71%) React
4 198 (2.45%) REST
5 188 (2.32%) HTML
6 139 (1.72%) CSS
7 136 (1.68%) RESTful
8 97 (1.20%) Node.js
9 95 (1.17%) Web Services
10 91 (1.13%) SOAP
11 87 (1.08%) ASP.NET
12 79 (0.98%) Spring
13 77 (0.95%) Vue
14 75 (0.93%) XML
15 72 (0.89%) Spring Boot
16 71 (0.88%) AngularJS
16 71 (0.88%) Middleware
17 67 (0.83%) JSON
18 66 (0.82%) Kafka
19 55 (0.68%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 756 (9.35%) Driving Licence
2 576 (7.12%) Onboarding
3 429 (5.30%) Self-Motivation
4 372 (4.60%) Management Information System
5 210 (2.60%) Cloud Native
6 176 (2.18%) Product Ownership
7 168 (2.08%) Enterprise Software
8 151 (1.87%) Legacy Systems
9 149 (1.84%) Robotics
10 131 (1.62%) Data Centre
11 95 (1.17%) NHS
12 92 (1.14%) Analytical Mindset
13 86 (1.06%) Distributed Systems
14 84 (1.04%) Cyber Threat
14 84 (1.04%) Security Posture
15 82 (1.01%) CCTV
15 82 (1.01%) IoT
16 79 (0.98%) Social Media
17 74 (0.91%) SCADA
18 72 (0.89%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 1,232 (15.23%) Windows
2 541 (6.69%) Windows Server
3 444 (5.49%) Linux
4 125 (1.55%) Windows 10
5 103 (1.27%) Windows Server 2016
6 88 (1.09%) Apple iOS
7 86 (1.06%) Android
7 86 (1.06%) Mac OS
8 41 (0.51%) Windows Server 2019
9 38 (0.47%) Unix
10 24 (0.30%) Ubuntu
11 15 (0.19%) Embedded Linux
12 14 (0.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 14 (0.17%) VMS
13 12 (0.15%) Debian
14 9 (0.11%) FreeRTOS
15 7 (0.087%) Rocky
15 7 (0.087%) Windows Server 2012
16 5 (0.062%) CentOS
16 5 (0.062%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,212 (27.35%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,514 (18.72%) Customer Service
3 1,110 (13.72%) Agile
4 858 (10.61%) Decision-Making
5 854 (10.56%) Stakeholder Management
6 801 (9.90%) AI
7 798 (9.87%) Mentoring
8 743 (9.19%) CI/CD
9 701 (8.67%) Project Delivery
10 657 (8.12%) Collaborative Working
11 622 (7.69%) Cybersecurity
12 602 (7.44%) Analytics
13 594 (7.34%) Software Engineering
14 593 (7.33%) DevOps
15 585 (7.23%) ERP
16 571 (7.06%) ITIL
17 558 (6.90%) Project Management
18 528 (6.53%) Business Intelligence
19 511 (6.32%) CRM
20 504 (6.23%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 1,093 (13.51%) SQL
2 780 (9.64%) Python
3 450 (5.56%) C#
4 434 (5.37%) JavaScript
5 316 (3.91%) Java
6 302 (3.73%) PowerShell
7 210 (2.60%) C++
8 200 (2.47%) TypeScript
9 123 (1.52%) Bash
10 87 (1.08%) C
11 63 (0.78%) PHP
12 61 (0.75%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 57 (0.70%) T-SQL
14 54 (0.67%) Ruby
15 52 (0.64%) MATLAB
16 46 (0.57%) Shell Script
17 45 (0.56%) PL/SQL
18 42 (0.52%) Rust
19 40 (0.49%) Perl
20 34 (0.42%) Embedded C
Qualifications
1 1,328 (16.42%) Degree
2 762 (9.42%) Security Cleared
3 532 (6.58%) SC Cleared
4 279 (3.45%) HNC
5 234 (2.89%) DBS Check
6 233 (2.88%) HND
7 210 (2.60%) Computer Science Degree
8 193 (2.39%) Microsoft Certification
9 190 (2.35%) DV Cleared
10 170 (2.10%) BPSS Clearance
11 141 (1.74%) Azure Certification
12 106 (1.31%) Chartered Engineer
13 89 (1.10%) Cisco Certification
14 87 (1.08%) NVQ Level 3
15 85 (1.05%) Master's Degree
16 75 (0.93%) A+ Certification
17 71 (0.88%) PMI Certification
18 61 (0.75%) City & Guilds
19 59 (0.73%) CISSP
20 56 (0.69%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 497 (6.14%) QA
2 304 (3.76%) Data Quality
3 235 (2.91%) GDPR
4 209 (2.58%) Accessibility
5 184 (2.27%) SLA
6 173 (2.14%) Cyber Essentials
7 135 (1.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 103 (1.27%) PCI DSS
9 72 (0.89%) NIST
10 52 (0.64%) ISO 9001
11 42 (0.52%) PMO
12 35 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 23 (0.28%) DO-254
14 20 (0.25%) GMP
14 20 (0.25%) Good Clinical Practice
15 19 (0.23%) NCSC
16 17 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
17 16 (0.20%) GRC
18 13 (0.16%) GxP
18 13 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 892 (11.03%) Active Directory
2 299 (3.70%) Hyper-V
3 266 (3.29%) Docker
4 215 (2.66%) VMware Infrastructure
5 89 (1.10%) Firmware
6 72 (0.89%) Terminal Server
7 45 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
8 36 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
9 32 (0.40%) Embedded Firmware
10 25 (0.31%) vSphere
11 14 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
12 12 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.062%) ClearTrust
13 5 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 5 (0.062%) Squid
14 4 (0.049%) KVM
15 3 (0.037%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.037%) VMware Server
16 2 (0.025%) Samba
16 2 (0.025%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 279 (3.45%) Microsoft Intune
2 228 (2.82%) Kubernetes
3 105 (1.30%) Ansible
4 65 (0.80%) Grafana
5 60 (0.74%) BMC PATROL
6 54 (0.67%) SCCM
7 50 (0.62%) Prometheus
8 47 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
9 24 (0.30%) Jamf Pro
10 22 (0.27%) FortiGate
11 19 (0.23%) Functional Safety
12 15 (0.19%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
13 14 (0.17%) Puppet
14 13 (0.16%) Nmap
15 11 (0.14%) Kibana
15 11 (0.14%) Nagios
16 10 (0.12%) Failover Clustering
16 10 (0.12%) Proxmox
17 9 (0.11%) Argo
17 9 (0.11%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,461 (30.43%) Microsoft
2 344 (4.25%) VMware
3 235 (2.91%) Google
4 232 (2.87%) SAP
5 212 (2.62%) Workday
6 180 (2.23%) Oracle
7 147 (1.82%) Veeam
8 146 (1.81%) Cisco
9 128 (1.58%) ServiceNow
10 123 (1.52%) Splunk
11 117 (1.45%) Salesforce
12 101 (1.25%) Sage
13 94 (1.16%) SolarWinds
14 81 (1.00%) Fortinet
15 80 (0.99%) Tanium
16 73 (0.90%) Brocade
16 73 (0.90%) Databricks
16 73 (0.90%) Nimble Storage
16 73 (0.90%) Siemens
17 68 (0.84%) Apple