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

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 4 2
Rank change year-on-year -3 -2 +7
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 7,548 6,438 8,330
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 8.93% 18.72% 15.02%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.70% 21.59% 19.10%
Number of salaries quoted 5,255 3,548 3,447
10th Percentile £27,000 £25,684 £25,750
25th Percentile £31,250 £29,000 £32,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,750 £40,000 £47,500
Median % change year-on-year +6.88% -15.79% -
75th Percentile £58,750 £57,500 £63,750
90th Percentile £73,750 £70,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £47,000 £45,602 £52,500
% change year-on-year +3.07% -13.14% -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 59,433 29,819 43,620
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.34% 86.69% 78.64%
Number of salaries quoted 41,991 16,159 23,565
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,750 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £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 £65,000 £67,500
90th Percentile £90,000 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% -4.17%

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 18 September 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 18 September 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 -9 1,909 £45,000 +5.88% 1,440
South East -4 1,781 £42,500 - 1,602
Midlands -7 1,362 £42,500 +11.11% 1,111
North West -5 986 £45,000 -7.64% 778
South West -4 940 £45,000 +25.00% 762
West Midlands -8 755 £42,500 -4.59% 669
East of England -2 754 £43,500 +29.85% 709
East Midlands -8 605 £41,250 +17.86% 442
Yorkshire -7 598 £42,500 +28.79% 461
Scotland +7 339 £33,500 -23.86% 499
North East +1 328 £48,500 +38.57% 219
Northern Ireland +3 258 £70,000 +18.64% 297
Wales -16 220 £42,500 -11.11% 153
Isle of Man +1 3 £35,000 - 11
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
1 452 (5.99%) SharePoint
2 354 (4.69%) Microsoft Exchange
3 64 (0.85%) Confluence
4 58 (0.77%) CMS
5 55 (0.73%) IIS
6 33 (0.44%) Apache
7 31 (0.41%) WordPress
8 27 (0.36%) Apache Airflow
8 27 (0.36%) Sitecore CMS
9 17 (0.23%) Apache Spark
10 14 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
11 10 (0.13%) nginx
11 10 (0.13%) SAS
11 10 (0.13%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.12%) Jupyter
12 9 (0.12%) WebLogic
13 7 (0.093%) OpenEdge
14 5 (0.066%) CICS
14 5 (0.066%) Skype for Business
15 4 (0.053%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 549 (7.27%) Microsoft Office
2 503 (6.66%) Microsoft Excel
3 75 (0.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 65 (0.86%) Spreadsheet
5 44 (0.58%) MS Visio
6 41 (0.54%) AutoCAD
7 39 (0.52%) Microsoft Project
8 33 (0.44%) Simulink
9 26 (0.34%) Revit
10 15 (0.20%) EPLAN
11 12 (0.16%) SOLIDWORKS
12 10 (0.13%) Navisworks
13 8 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 8 (0.11%) Chatbot
13 8 (0.11%) Fusion 360
14 7 (0.093%) Siemens NX
15 6 (0.079%) Adobe Illustrator
15 6 (0.079%) Lightworks
16 5 (0.066%) Adobe XD
16 5 (0.066%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 77 (1.02%) Dynamics CRM
2 63 (0.83%) NetSuite
3 51 (0.68%) SAP S/4HANA
4 31 (0.41%) Shopify
5 23 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
6 21 (0.28%) Dynamics NAV
7 19 (0.25%) Workday HCM
8 17 (0.23%) SAP Business One
9 16 (0.21%) Oracle Payables
10 15 (0.20%) Magento
11 14 (0.19%) Dynamics AX
12 13 (0.17%) IBM Planning Analytics
12 13 (0.17%) SAP ERP
13 12 (0.16%) Oracle Cash Management
13 12 (0.16%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 12 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
14 11 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
15 10 (0.13%) JDE EnterpriseOne
15 10 (0.13%) Sage X3
16 9 (0.12%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 1,380 (18.28%) Azure
2 1,234 (16.35%) Microsoft 365
3 700 (9.27%) AWS
4 614 (8.13%) Power Platform
5 382 (5.06%) Entra ID
6 278 (3.68%) SaaS
7 234 (3.10%) GCP
8 174 (2.31%) Azure DevOps
9 156 (2.07%) Dynamics 365
10 155 (2.05%) PowerApps
11 144 (1.91%) GitHub
12 143 (1.89%) Power Automate
13 124 (1.64%) Serverless
14 104 (1.38%) OneDrive
15 90 (1.19%) Microsoft Copilot
16 68 (0.90%) Amazon S3
17 66 (0.87%) Google Workspace
18 64 (0.85%) AWS CloudFormation
19 61 (0.81%) GitHub Actions
20 59 (0.78%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 439 (5.82%) Firewall
2 427 (5.66%) DNS
3 360 (4.77%) DHCP
4 281 (3.72%) VPN
5 231 (3.06%) TCP/IP
6 200 (2.65%) WAN
7 197 (2.61%) Wi-Fi
8 190 (2.52%) LAN
9 171 (2.27%) Wireless
10 143 (1.89%) VLAN
11 122 (1.62%) Network Security
12 117 (1.55%) VoIP
13 64 (0.85%) Broadband
14 55 (0.73%) Internet
15 31 (0.41%) SSL
16 29 (0.38%) SAN
17 28 (0.37%) Remote Desktop
17 28 (0.37%) SD-WAN
18 25 (0.33%) HTTP
19 24 (0.32%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 495 (6.56%) Power BI
2 333 (4.41%) SQL Server
3 140 (1.85%) MySQL
4 119 (1.58%) Amazon RDS
5 118 (1.56%) Relational Database
6 107 (1.42%) Data Warehouse
7 96 (1.27%) PostgreSQL
8 83 (1.10%) NoSQL
9 79 (1.05%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 73 (0.97%) Tableau
11 60 (0.79%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 54 (0.72%) MongoDB
13 50 (0.66%) Power Query
14 49 (0.65%) Data Lake
15 47 (0.62%) Electronic Patient Records
16 46 (0.61%) Azure SQL Database
16 46 (0.61%) Big Data
17 33 (0.44%) Oracle Reports
18 32 (0.42%) Metadata
19 29 (0.38%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 304 (4.03%) Git
2 246 (3.26%) JIRA
3 83 (1.10%) GitLab
4 82 (1.09%) Jenkins
5 39 (0.52%) Eclipse
6 35 (0.46%) Subversion
7 33 (0.44%) Selenium
8 32 (0.42%) Cucumber
9 27 (0.36%) Claude Code
10 26 (0.34%) JUnit
11 23 (0.30%) Bitbucket
11 23 (0.30%) Oracle Forms
11 23 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
12 22 (0.29%) Postman
13 20 (0.26%) Cypress.io
14 15 (0.20%) LabVIEW
14 15 (0.20%) SonarQube
15 14 (0.19%) Burp Suite
16 12 (0.16%) Team Foundation Server
16 12 (0.16%) Visual Studio
General
1 3,729 (49.40%) Social Skills
2 2,074 (27.48%) Analytical Skills
3 1,214 (16.08%) Finance
4 796 (10.55%) Manufacturing
5 578 (7.66%) Organisational Skills
6 421 (5.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 372 (4.93%) Retail
8 352 (4.66%) Public Sector
9 346 (4.58%) Law
10 315 (4.17%) Legal
11 295 (3.91%) Electronics
12 290 (3.84%) Aerospace
13 280 (3.71%) Marketing
14 194 (2.57%) Telecoms
15 154 (2.04%) Influencing Skills
16 145 (1.92%) Banking
17 120 (1.59%) Automotive
18 117 (1.55%) Documentation Skills
19 103 (1.36%) Military
20 98 (1.30%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 984 (13.04%) Analyst
2 796 (10.55%) Senior
3 726 (9.62%) IT Support
4 710 (9.41%) Developer
5 575 (7.62%) Support Engineer
6 397 (5.26%) Lead
7 388 (5.14%) IT Engineer
8 382 (5.06%) Support Analyst
9 340 (4.50%) Consultant
10 290 (3.84%) IT Support Engineer
11 278 (3.68%) Technical Support
12 273 (3.62%) Support Technician
13 239 (3.17%) Systems Engineer
14 238 (3.15%) Technical Engineer
15 236 (3.13%) Architect
15 236 (3.13%) IT Technician
16 227 (3.01%) Software Engineer
17 215 (2.85%) Technical Support Engineer
18 204 (2.70%) Senior Developer
19 187 (2.48%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 358 (4.74%) .NET
2 278 (3.68%) Terraform
3 221 (2.93%) React
4 203 (2.69%) REST
5 196 (2.60%) HTML
6 144 (1.91%) CSS
7 136 (1.80%) RESTful
8 99 (1.31%) SOAP
9 94 (1.25%) Node.js
10 91 (1.21%) Web Services
11 87 (1.15%) XML
12 82 (1.09%) ASP.NET
12 82 (1.09%) Vue
13 80 (1.06%) Middleware
14 78 (1.03%) AngularJS
14 78 (1.03%) JSON
15 76 (1.01%) Spring
16 69 (0.91%) Spring Boot
17 58 (0.77%) Kafka
18 50 (0.66%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 652 (8.64%) Driving Licence
2 526 (6.97%) Onboarding
3 395 (5.23%) Self-Motivation
4 348 (4.61%) Management Information System
5 208 (2.76%) Cloud Native
6 181 (2.40%) Product Ownership
7 144 (1.91%) Legacy Systems
8 141 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
9 128 (1.70%) Data Centre
10 118 (1.56%) Robotics
11 98 (1.30%) Analytical Mindset
12 91 (1.21%) NHS
13 88 (1.17%) Distributed Systems
14 81 (1.07%) Security Posture
15 78 (1.03%) IoT
16 76 (1.01%) CCTV
16 76 (1.01%) Cyber Threat
17 75 (0.99%) Virtual Team
18 69 (0.91%) Mobile App
18 69 (0.91%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 1,175 (15.57%) Windows
2 519 (6.88%) Windows Server
3 460 (6.09%) Linux
4 130 (1.72%) Windows 10
5 99 (1.31%) Windows Server 2016
6 92 (1.22%) Apple iOS
7 87 (1.15%) Android
8 83 (1.10%) Mac OS
9 45 (0.60%) Unix
10 40 (0.53%) Windows Server 2019
11 29 (0.38%) Ubuntu
12 17 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 17 (0.23%) VMS
13 14 (0.19%) Debian
13 14 (0.19%) Embedded Linux
14 10 (0.13%) FreeRTOS
15 9 (0.12%) CentOS
16 8 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
17 6 (0.079%) Rocky
18 5 (0.066%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,045 (27.09%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,427 (18.91%) Customer Service
3 1,089 (14.43%) Agile
4 823 (10.90%) Decision-Making
5 771 (10.21%) Mentoring
6 762 (10.10%) Stakeholder Management
7 743 (9.84%) AI
8 714 (9.46%) CI/CD
9 648 (8.59%) Project Delivery
10 616 (8.16%) Collaborative Working
11 602 (7.98%) Analytics
12 595 (7.88%) DevOps
13 591 (7.83%) Software Engineering
14 587 (7.78%) ERP
15 580 (7.68%) ITIL
16 560 (7.42%) Cybersecurity
17 532 (7.05%) Business Intelligence
18 529 (7.01%) Project Management
19 477 (6.32%) CRM
20 468 (6.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 1,101 (14.59%) SQL
2 763 (10.11%) Python
3 446 (5.91%) JavaScript
4 444 (5.88%) C#
5 315 (4.17%) Java
6 295 (3.91%) PowerShell
7 204 (2.70%) C++
8 198 (2.62%) TypeScript
9 124 (1.64%) Bash
10 80 (1.06%) C
11 68 (0.90%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 67 (0.89%) PHP
13 61 (0.81%) T-SQL
14 48 (0.64%) PL/SQL
14 48 (0.64%) Ruby
15 46 (0.61%) Shell Script
16 44 (0.58%) MATLAB
17 41 (0.54%) Perl
18 38 (0.50%) Go
18 38 (0.50%) Rust
Qualifications
1 1,214 (16.08%) Degree
2 707 (9.37%) Security Cleared
3 495 (6.56%) SC Cleared
4 223 (2.95%) DBS Check
5 210 (2.78%) HNC
6 205 (2.72%) Computer Science Degree
7 190 (2.52%) Microsoft Certification
8 185 (2.45%) HND
9 182 (2.41%) DV Cleared
10 161 (2.13%) BPSS Clearance
11 136 (1.80%) Azure Certification
12 97 (1.29%) Chartered Engineer
13 91 (1.21%) Cisco Certification
14 77 (1.02%) PMI Certification
15 76 (1.01%) A+ Certification
16 72 (0.95%) Master's Degree
17 67 (0.89%) CISSP
18 58 (0.77%) CCNA
19 57 (0.76%) ACCA
19 57 (0.76%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 484 (6.41%) QA
2 301 (3.99%) Data Quality
3 222 (2.94%) GDPR
4 203 (2.69%) Accessibility
5 179 (2.37%) SLA
6 167 (2.21%) Cyber Essentials
7 136 (1.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 105 (1.39%) PCI DSS
9 86 (1.14%) NIST
10 42 (0.56%) ISO 9001
11 37 (0.49%) PMO
12 32 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 20 (0.26%) DO-254
14 19 (0.25%) GMP
14 19 (0.25%) Good Clinical Practice
15 18 (0.24%) NCSC
16 16 (0.21%) GRC
17 13 (0.17%) Actionable Recommendations
17 13 (0.17%) GxP
18 12 (0.16%) TickIT
System Software
1 820 (10.86%) Active Directory
2 285 (3.78%) Hyper-V
3 262 (3.47%) Docker
4 215 (2.85%) VMware Infrastructure
5 75 (0.99%) Firmware
6 72 (0.95%) Terminal Server
7 41 (0.54%) Virtual Desktop
8 33 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
9 29 (0.38%) vSphere
10 28 (0.37%) Embedded Firmware
11 16 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
12 7 (0.093%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.066%) ClearTrust
13 5 (0.066%) Squid
14 4 (0.053%) KVM
14 4 (0.053%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 3 (0.040%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.040%) VMware Server
16 2 (0.026%) Samba
16 2 (0.026%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 254 (3.37%) Microsoft Intune
2 222 (2.94%) Kubernetes
3 110 (1.46%) Ansible
4 62 (0.82%) Grafana
5 52 (0.69%) SCCM
6 45 (0.60%) Prometheus
7 44 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
8 26 (0.34%) BMC PATROL
9 20 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
10 19 (0.25%) FortiGate
11 17 (0.23%) Functional Safety
12 16 (0.21%) Puppet
13 13 (0.17%) Kibana
14 11 (0.15%) logstash
14 11 (0.15%) Nmap
15 10 (0.13%) Nagios
15 10 (0.13%) Podman
15 10 (0.13%) Proxmox
15 10 (0.13%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
16 9 (0.12%) Argo
Vendors
1 2,273 (30.11%) Microsoft
2 343 (4.54%) VMware
3 218 (2.89%) SAP
4 204 (2.70%) Google
5 173 (2.29%) Oracle
6 160 (2.12%) Workday
7 136 (1.80%) Cisco
8 135 (1.79%) Veeam
9 125 (1.66%) ServiceNow
10 122 (1.62%) Splunk
11 105 (1.39%) Sage
12 104 (1.38%) Salesforce
13 92 (1.22%) SolarWinds
14 80 (1.06%) Tanium
15 78 (1.03%) Databricks
16 75 (0.99%) Fortinet
17 73 (0.97%) Nimble Storage
18 72 (0.95%) Brocade
19 66 (0.87%) Apple
20 57 (0.76%) SonicWALL