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

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 4 3
Rank change year-on-year -3 -1 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 7,721 6,335 8,061
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 9.03% 18.58% 15.07%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.84% 21.44% 19.16%
Number of salaries quoted 5,333 3,478 3,262
10th Percentile £27,000 £25,684 £25,750
25th Percentile £31,250 £29,000 £33,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,750 £40,000 £47,842
Median % change year-on-year +6.88% -16.39% +0.72%
75th Percentile £58,750 £57,500 £63,750
90th Percentile £73,750 £70,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £46,901 £46,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +1.96% -12.38% -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 60,135 29,546 42,069
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.33% 86.64% 78.67%
Number of salaries quoted 42,401 15,981 22,391
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 23 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 23 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 1,936 £45,000 +4.65% 1,700
South East -4 1,818 £41,991 -1.20% 1,855
Midlands -7 1,393 £42,500 +10.39% 1,310
North West -4 1,002 £45,000 -7.64% 907
South West -2 962 £45,000 +25.00% 910
West Midlands -7 781 £42,500 -5.56% 799
East of England -2 772 £44,000 +32.11% 825
East Midlands -8 610 £41,750 +19.29% 509
Yorkshire -7 598 £42,500 +26.87% 563
Scotland +7 346 £33,500 -28.72% 582
North East +1 339 £50,000 +42.86% 246
Northern Ireland +4 284 £70,000 +18.64% 331
Wales -16 225 £42,500 -11.68% 193
Isle of Man +1 3 £35,000 - 9
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
1 459 (5.94%) SharePoint
2 356 (4.61%) Microsoft Exchange
3 66 (0.85%) Confluence
4 59 (0.76%) CMS
5 55 (0.71%) IIS
6 33 (0.43%) Apache
7 31 (0.40%) WordPress
8 27 (0.35%) Apache Airflow
8 27 (0.35%) Sitecore CMS
9 17 (0.22%) Apache Spark
10 14 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
11 10 (0.13%) nginx
11 10 (0.13%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.12%) Jupyter
12 9 (0.12%) SAS
12 9 (0.12%) WebLogic
13 7 (0.091%) OpenEdge
14 5 (0.065%) CICS
15 4 (0.052%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 4 (0.052%) Tomcat
Applications
1 568 (7.36%) Microsoft Office
2 512 (6.63%) Microsoft Excel
3 78 (1.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 66 (0.85%) Spreadsheet
5 45 (0.58%) AutoCAD
5 45 (0.58%) MS Visio
6 39 (0.51%) Microsoft Project
7 34 (0.44%) Simulink
8 26 (0.34%) Revit
9 16 (0.21%) EPLAN
10 14 (0.18%) SOLIDWORKS
11 10 (0.13%) Navisworks
12 8 (0.10%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 8 (0.10%) Chatbot
12 8 (0.10%) Fusion 360
13 7 (0.091%) Siemens NX
14 6 (0.078%) Adobe Illustrator
14 6 (0.078%) Lightworks
14 6 (0.078%) OrCAD
15 5 (0.065%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 76 (0.98%) Dynamics CRM
2 64 (0.83%) NetSuite
3 51 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
4 32 (0.41%) Shopify
5 23 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
6 21 (0.27%) Dynamics NAV
7 19 (0.25%) Workday HCM
8 17 (0.22%) Oracle Payables
8 17 (0.22%) SAP Business One
9 13 (0.17%) Dynamics AX
9 13 (0.17%) IBM Planning Analytics
9 13 (0.17%) Magento
9 13 (0.17%) SAP ERP
10 12 (0.16%) Oracle Cash Management
10 12 (0.16%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 12 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
11 11 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
12 10 (0.13%) JDE EnterpriseOne
12 10 (0.13%) Sage X3
13 9 (0.12%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 1,390 (18.00%) Azure
2 1,252 (16.22%) Microsoft 365
3 707 (9.16%) AWS
4 618 (8.00%) Power Platform
5 408 (5.28%) Entra ID
6 285 (3.69%) SaaS
7 237 (3.07%) GCP
8 174 (2.25%) Azure DevOps
9 156 (2.02%) Dynamics 365
9 156 (2.02%) PowerApps
10 147 (1.90%) GitHub
10 147 (1.90%) Power Automate
11 122 (1.58%) Serverless
12 113 (1.46%) OneDrive
13 92 (1.19%) Microsoft Copilot
14 70 (0.91%) Google Workspace
15 69 (0.89%) Amazon S3
16 64 (0.83%) AWS CloudFormation
17 63 (0.82%) GitHub Actions
18 59 (0.76%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 442 (5.72%) Firewall
2 434 (5.62%) DNS
3 364 (4.71%) DHCP
4 285 (3.69%) VPN
5 233 (3.02%) TCP/IP
6 204 (2.64%) Wi-Fi
7 201 (2.60%) WAN
8 193 (2.50%) LAN
9 173 (2.24%) Wireless
10 145 (1.88%) VLAN
11 124 (1.61%) Network Security
12 117 (1.52%) VoIP
13 64 (0.83%) Broadband
14 57 (0.74%) Internet
15 31 (0.40%) SSL
16 30 (0.39%) SAN
17 28 (0.36%) Remote Desktop
17 28 (0.36%) SD-WAN
18 25 (0.32%) HTTP
19 24 (0.31%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 497 (6.44%) Power BI
2 335 (4.34%) SQL Server
3 138 (1.79%) MySQL
4 119 (1.54%) Amazon RDS
4 119 (1.54%) Relational Database
5 109 (1.41%) Data Warehouse
6 95 (1.23%) PostgreSQL
7 82 (1.06%) NoSQL
8 79 (1.02%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 73 (0.95%) Tableau
10 60 (0.78%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 54 (0.70%) MongoDB
12 51 (0.66%) Power Query
13 49 (0.63%) Data Lake
14 47 (0.61%) Big Data
14 47 (0.61%) Electronic Patient Records
15 46 (0.60%) Azure SQL Database
16 33 (0.43%) Metadata
16 33 (0.43%) Oracle Reports
17 29 (0.38%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 306 (3.96%) Git
2 250 (3.24%) JIRA
3 86 (1.11%) GitLab
4 83 (1.07%) Jenkins
5 40 (0.52%) Eclipse
6 36 (0.47%) Selenium
7 35 (0.45%) Subversion
8 32 (0.41%) Cucumber
9 27 (0.35%) Claude Code
10 26 (0.34%) JUnit
11 23 (0.30%) Bitbucket
11 23 (0.30%) Cypress.io
11 23 (0.30%) Oracle Forms
12 22 (0.28%) Postman
12 22 (0.28%) Rational DOORS
13 17 (0.22%) LabVIEW
14 15 (0.19%) SonarQube
15 14 (0.18%) Burp Suite
16 12 (0.16%) Team Foundation Server
16 12 (0.16%) Visual Studio
General
1 3,811 (49.36%) Social Skills
2 2,121 (27.47%) Analytical Skills
3 1,222 (15.83%) Finance
4 850 (11.01%) Manufacturing
5 595 (7.71%) Organisational Skills
6 425 (5.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 385 (4.99%) Retail
8 360 (4.66%) Public Sector
9 336 (4.35%) Law
10 318 (4.12%) Legal
11 314 (4.07%) Electronics
12 303 (3.92%) Aerospace
13 285 (3.69%) Marketing
14 197 (2.55%) Telecoms
15 152 (1.97%) Influencing Skills
16 146 (1.89%) Banking
17 128 (1.66%) Automotive
18 125 (1.62%) Documentation Skills
19 100 (1.30%) Military
20 98 (1.27%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,029 (13.33%) Analyst
2 809 (10.48%) Senior
3 745 (9.65%) IT Support
4 709 (9.18%) Developer
5 591 (7.65%) Support Engineer
6 403 (5.22%) Lead
7 396 (5.13%) IT Engineer
8 394 (5.10%) Support Analyst
9 346 (4.48%) Consultant
10 299 (3.87%) IT Support Engineer
11 283 (3.67%) Technical Support
12 270 (3.50%) Support Technician
13 243 (3.15%) Technical Engineer
14 237 (3.07%) IT Technician
15 236 (3.06%) Architect
16 235 (3.04%) Systems Engineer
17 232 (3.00%) Software Engineer
18 220 (2.85%) Technical Support Engineer
19 204 (2.64%) Senior Developer
20 188 (2.43%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 360 (4.66%) .NET
2 285 (3.69%) Terraform
3 223 (2.89%) React
4 207 (2.68%) REST
5 192 (2.49%) HTML
6 142 (1.84%) CSS
7 135 (1.75%) RESTful
8 98 (1.27%) SOAP
9 94 (1.22%) Node.js
10 91 (1.18%) Web Services
11 86 (1.11%) XML
12 82 (1.06%) ASP.NET
12 82 (1.06%) Vue
13 80 (1.04%) Middleware
14 78 (1.01%) AngularJS
14 78 (1.01%) JSON
15 77 (1.00%) Spring
16 70 (0.91%) Spring Boot
17 60 (0.78%) Kafka
18 52 (0.67%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 665 (8.61%) Driving Licence
2 536 (6.94%) Onboarding
3 406 (5.26%) Self-Motivation
4 354 (4.58%) Management Information System
5 210 (2.72%) Cloud Native
6 182 (2.36%) Product Ownership
7 147 (1.90%) Enterprise Software
8 146 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
9 126 (1.63%) Data Centre
10 125 (1.62%) Robotics
11 97 (1.26%) Analytical Mindset
12 93 (1.20%) NHS
13 89 (1.15%) Distributed Systems
14 80 (1.04%) Cyber Threat
14 80 (1.04%) IoT
14 80 (1.04%) Security Posture
15 76 (0.98%) CCTV
16 74 (0.96%) Virtual Team
17 70 (0.91%) Mobile App
17 70 (0.91%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 1,195 (15.48%) Windows
2 525 (6.80%) Windows Server
3 456 (5.91%) Linux
4 131 (1.70%) Windows 10
5 100 (1.30%) Windows Server 2016
6 91 (1.18%) Apple iOS
7 86 (1.11%) Android
8 84 (1.09%) Mac OS
9 45 (0.58%) Unix
10 39 (0.51%) Windows Server 2019
11 27 (0.35%) Ubuntu
12 18 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 17 (0.22%) VMS
14 15 (0.19%) Embedded Linux
15 14 (0.18%) Debian
16 10 (0.13%) FreeRTOS
17 9 (0.12%) CentOS
18 8 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
19 6 (0.078%) Rocky
20 5 (0.065%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,101 (27.21%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,449 (18.77%) Customer Service
3 1,105 (14.31%) Agile
4 825 (10.69%) Decision-Making
5 784 (10.15%) Stakeholder Management
6 783 (10.14%) Mentoring
7 760 (9.84%) AI
8 726 (9.40%) CI/CD
9 663 (8.59%) Project Delivery
10 638 (8.26%) Collaborative Working
11 613 (7.94%) Analytics
12 602 (7.80%) Software Engineering
13 595 (7.71%) DevOps
14 589 (7.63%) ERP
15 584 (7.56%) Cybersecurity
15 584 (7.56%) ITIL
16 537 (6.96%) Business Intelligence
17 536 (6.94%) Project Management
18 478 (6.19%) Validation
19 477 (6.18%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 1,109 (14.36%) SQL
2 771 (9.99%) Python
3 445 (5.76%) C#
4 444 (5.75%) JavaScript
5 320 (4.14%) Java
6 300 (3.89%) PowerShell
7 208 (2.69%) C++
8 204 (2.64%) TypeScript
9 125 (1.62%) Bash
10 82 (1.06%) C
11 66 (0.85%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 65 (0.84%) PHP
13 61 (0.79%) T-SQL
14 50 (0.65%) Ruby
15 47 (0.61%) MATLAB
15 47 (0.61%) PL/SQL
16 46 (0.60%) Shell Script
17 41 (0.53%) Perl
17 41 (0.53%) Rust
18 38 (0.49%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,236 (16.01%) Degree
2 726 (9.40%) Security Cleared
3 504 (6.53%) SC Cleared
4 229 (2.97%) HNC
5 224 (2.90%) DBS Check
6 206 (2.67%) Computer Science Degree
7 198 (2.56%) HND
8 188 (2.43%) Microsoft Certification
9 184 (2.38%) DV Cleared
10 160 (2.07%) BPSS Clearance
11 136 (1.76%) Azure Certification
12 97 (1.26%) Chartered Engineer
13 91 (1.18%) Cisco Certification
14 78 (1.01%) A+ Certification
15 77 (1.00%) PMI Certification
16 70 (0.91%) Master's Degree
17 65 (0.84%) CISSP
18 58 (0.75%) CCNA
18 58 (0.75%) Network+ Certification
18 58 (0.75%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 493 (6.39%) QA
2 303 (3.92%) Data Quality
3 227 (2.94%) GDPR
4 206 (2.67%) Accessibility
5 183 (2.37%) SLA
6 168 (2.18%) Cyber Essentials
7 135 (1.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 105 (1.36%) PCI DSS
9 83 (1.07%) NIST
10 45 (0.58%) ISO 9001
11 37 (0.48%) PMO
12 33 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 21 (0.27%) DO-254
14 19 (0.25%) GMP
14 19 (0.25%) Good Clinical Practice
15 18 (0.23%) NCSC
16 16 (0.21%) GRC
17 14 (0.18%) Actionable Recommendations
18 13 (0.17%) GxP
18 13 (0.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 839 (10.87%) Active Directory
2 290 (3.76%) Hyper-V
3 264 (3.42%) Docker
4 214 (2.77%) VMware Infrastructure
5 78 (1.01%) Firmware
6 72 (0.93%) Terminal Server
7 42 (0.54%) Virtual Desktop
8 34 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
9 30 (0.39%) Embedded Firmware
10 28 (0.36%) vSphere
11 15 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
12 9 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.065%) ClearTrust
13 5 (0.065%) Squid
14 4 (0.052%) KVM
14 4 (0.052%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 3 (0.039%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.039%) VMware Server
16 2 (0.026%) Samba
16 2 (0.026%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 262 (3.39%) Microsoft Intune
2 225 (2.91%) Kubernetes
3 112 (1.45%) Ansible
4 63 (0.82%) Grafana
5 53 (0.69%) SCCM
6 46 (0.60%) Prometheus
7 44 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
8 26 (0.34%) BMC PATROL
9 20 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
10 18 (0.23%) FortiGate
10 18 (0.23%) Functional Safety
11 17 (0.22%) Puppet
12 13 (0.17%) Kibana
13 11 (0.14%) logstash
13 11 (0.14%) Nmap
13 11 (0.14%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
14 10 (0.13%) Nagios
14 10 (0.13%) Podman
14 10 (0.13%) Proxmox
15 9 (0.12%) Argo
Vendors
1 2,331 (30.19%) Microsoft
2 343 (4.44%) VMware
3 221 (2.86%) SAP
4 212 (2.75%) Google
5 176 (2.28%) Workday
6 174 (2.25%) Oracle
7 138 (1.79%) Veeam
8 137 (1.77%) Cisco
9 126 (1.63%) ServiceNow
10 122 (1.58%) Splunk
11 104 (1.35%) Salesforce
12 102 (1.32%) Sage
13 92 (1.19%) SolarWinds
14 80 (1.04%) Tanium
15 78 (1.01%) Databricks
16 76 (0.98%) Fortinet
17 73 (0.95%) Brocade
17 73 (0.95%) Nimble Storage
18 67 (0.87%) Apple
19 57 (0.74%) SonicWALL