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

6 months to
25 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 7,818 6,351 8,308
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 9.10% 18.45% 15.23%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.95% 21.27% 19.29%
Number of salaries quoted 5,385 3,521 3,306
10th Percentile £27,000 £25,684 £25,750
25th Percentile £31,250 £29,000 £33,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £43,000 £40,000 £48,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.50% -16.67% +1.05%
75th Percentile £58,750 £57,500 £63,750
90th Percentile £73,750 £70,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £46,500 £45,602 £52,500
% change year-on-year +1.97% -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 60,382 29,855 43,065
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.31% 86.73% 78.97%
Number of salaries quoted 42,606 16,113 22,568
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 £88,750 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £57,560
% change year-on-year +9.09% -4.45% -4.07%

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 25 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 25 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 1,970 £45,000 - 1,597
South East -3 1,825 £41,585 -0.40% 1,745
Midlands -7 1,406 £42,500 +11.84% 1,233
North West -2 1,020 £45,000 -7.64% 845
South West -2 974 £45,000 +25.00% 869
West Midlands -7 790 £42,500 -3.41% 743
East of England -2 788 £44,000 +32.88% 755
East Midlands -8 614 £41,750 +26.52% 488
Yorkshire -7 605 £42,500 +26.87% 537
North East +3 351 £50,000 +42.86% 232
Scotland +8 348 £33,500 -27.17% 545
Northern Ireland +5 294 £70,000 +18.64% 367
Wales -15 229 £42,500 -11.68% 179
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
1 462 (5.91%) SharePoint
2 360 (4.60%) Microsoft Exchange
3 66 (0.84%) Confluence
4 61 (0.78%) CMS
5 55 (0.70%) IIS
6 34 (0.43%) Apache
7 32 (0.41%) WordPress
8 28 (0.36%) Apache Airflow
9 27 (0.35%) Sitecore CMS
10 19 (0.24%) Apache Spark
11 14 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
12 11 (0.14%) nginx
13 10 (0.13%) Jupyter
13 10 (0.13%) WebSphere
14 9 (0.12%) WebLogic
15 8 (0.10%) SAS
16 7 (0.090%) OpenEdge
17 6 (0.077%) CICS
18 4 (0.051%) Headless CMS
18 4 (0.051%) Tomcat
Applications
1 576 (7.37%) Microsoft Office
2 524 (6.70%) Microsoft Excel
3 80 (1.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 66 (0.84%) Spreadsheet
5 45 (0.58%) AutoCAD
5 45 (0.58%) MS Visio
6 40 (0.51%) Microsoft Project
7 34 (0.43%) Simulink
8 26 (0.33%) Revit
9 17 (0.22%) EPLAN
10 14 (0.18%) SOLIDWORKS
11 10 (0.13%) Navisworks
12 9 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 8 (0.10%) Chatbot
13 8 (0.10%) Fusion 360
14 7 (0.090%) Siemens NX
15 6 (0.077%) Adobe Illustrator
15 6 (0.077%) Lightworks
15 6 (0.077%) OrCAD
16 5 (0.064%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 76 (0.97%) Dynamics CRM
2 64 (0.82%) NetSuite
3 51 (0.65%) SAP S/4HANA
4 34 (0.43%) Shopify
5 23 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
6 22 (0.28%) Dynamics NAV
7 20 (0.26%) Workday HCM
8 17 (0.22%) Oracle Payables
8 17 (0.22%) SAP Business One
9 14 (0.18%) Magento
10 13 (0.17%) Dynamics AX
10 13 (0.17%) IBM Planning Analytics
10 13 (0.17%) SAP ERP
11 12 (0.15%) Oracle Cash Management
11 12 (0.15%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 12 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
12 11 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
13 10 (0.13%) JDE EnterpriseOne
13 10 (0.13%) Sage X3
14 9 (0.12%) Sage 50
Cloud Services
1 1,394 (17.83%) Azure
2 1,263 (16.16%) Microsoft 365
3 704 (9.00%) AWS
4 623 (7.97%) Power Platform
5 424 (5.42%) Entra ID
6 282 (3.61%) SaaS
7 236 (3.02%) GCP
8 179 (2.29%) Azure DevOps
9 158 (2.02%) PowerApps
10 155 (1.98%) Dynamics 365
11 149 (1.91%) GitHub
12 148 (1.89%) Power Automate
13 118 (1.51%) Serverless
14 114 (1.46%) OneDrive
15 93 (1.19%) Microsoft Copilot
16 71 (0.91%) Amazon S3
16 71 (0.91%) Google Workspace
17 66 (0.84%) GitHub Actions
18 65 (0.83%) AWS CloudFormation
19 59 (0.75%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 443 (5.67%) Firewall
2 438 (5.60%) DNS
3 368 (4.71%) DHCP
4 286 (3.66%) VPN
5 234 (2.99%) TCP/IP
6 207 (2.65%) Wi-Fi
7 201 (2.57%) WAN
8 194 (2.48%) LAN
9 173 (2.21%) Wireless
10 144 (1.84%) VLAN
11 126 (1.61%) Network Security
12 117 (1.50%) VoIP
13 65 (0.83%) Broadband
14 60 (0.77%) Internet
15 31 (0.40%) SSL
16 30 (0.38%) SAN
17 28 (0.36%) Remote Desktop
18 27 (0.35%) SD-WAN
19 25 (0.32%) Ethernet
19 25 (0.32%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 501 (6.41%) Power BI
2 337 (4.31%) SQL Server
3 137 (1.75%) MySQL
4 121 (1.55%) Relational Database
5 119 (1.52%) Amazon RDS
6 109 (1.39%) Data Warehouse
7 95 (1.22%) PostgreSQL
8 82 (1.05%) NoSQL
9 79 (1.01%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 71 (0.91%) Tableau
11 62 (0.79%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 55 (0.70%) MongoDB
13 51 (0.65%) Power Query
14 49 (0.63%) Data Lake
15 47 (0.60%) Electronic Patient Records
16 46 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
16 46 (0.59%) Big Data
17 33 (0.42%) Oracle Reports
18 32 (0.41%) Metadata
19 29 (0.37%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 308 (3.94%) Git
2 249 (3.18%) JIRA
3 91 (1.16%) GitLab
4 87 (1.11%) Jenkins
5 40 (0.51%) Eclipse
6 37 (0.47%) Selenium
7 35 (0.45%) Subversion
8 34 (0.43%) Cucumber
9 28 (0.36%) Claude Code
10 26 (0.33%) JUnit
11 23 (0.29%) Bitbucket
11 23 (0.29%) Cypress.io
11 23 (0.29%) Oracle Forms
11 23 (0.29%) 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 (0.15%) Team Foundation Server
16 12 (0.15%) Visual Studio
General
1 3,873 (49.54%) Social Skills
2 2,159 (27.62%) Analytical Skills
3 1,249 (15.98%) Finance
4 869 (11.12%) Manufacturing
5 608 (7.78%) Organisational Skills
6 429 (5.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 404 (5.17%) Retail
8 371 (4.75%) Public Sector
9 341 (4.36%) Law
10 323 (4.13%) Legal
11 318 (4.07%) Electronics
12 308 (3.94%) Aerospace
13 292 (3.73%) Marketing
14 201 (2.57%) Telecoms
15 153 (1.96%) Influencing Skills
16 146 (1.87%) Banking
17 137 (1.75%) Automotive
18 127 (1.62%) Documentation Skills
19 105 (1.34%) Presentation Skills
20 104 (1.33%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,045 (13.37%) Analyst
2 814 (10.41%) Senior
3 755 (9.66%) IT Support
4 714 (9.13%) Developer
5 596 (7.62%) Support Engineer
6 408 (5.22%) Lead
7 398 (5.09%) IT Engineer
8 395 (5.05%) Support Analyst
9 351 (4.49%) Consultant
10 302 (3.86%) IT Support Engineer
11 285 (3.65%) Technical Support
12 271 (3.47%) Support Technician
13 245 (3.13%) Technical Engineer
14 239 (3.06%) IT Technician
15 238 (3.04%) Systems Engineer
16 234 (2.99%) Architect
17 231 (2.95%) Software Engineer
18 222 (2.84%) Technical Support Engineer
19 206 (2.63%) Senior Developer
20 190 (2.43%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 365 (4.67%) .NET
2 283 (3.62%) Terraform
3 225 (2.88%) React
4 209 (2.67%) REST
5 190 (2.43%) HTML
6 140 (1.79%) CSS
7 136 (1.74%) RESTful
8 98 (1.25%) SOAP
9 96 (1.23%) Node.js
10 91 (1.16%) Web Services
11 85 (1.09%) XML
12 81 (1.04%) ASP.NET
12 81 (1.04%) Middleware
13 79 (1.01%) Spring
13 79 (1.01%) Vue
14 78 (1.00%) JSON
15 77 (0.98%) AngularJS
16 72 (0.92%) Spring Boot
17 62 (0.79%) Kafka
18 51 (0.65%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 685 (8.76%) Driving Licence
2 545 (6.97%) Onboarding
3 409 (5.23%) Self-Motivation
4 365 (4.67%) Management Information System
5 210 (2.69%) Cloud Native
6 180 (2.30%) Product Ownership
7 152 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
8 146 (1.87%) Legacy Systems
9 128 (1.64%) Robotics
10 126 (1.61%) Data Centre
11 98 (1.25%) Analytical Mindset
12 93 (1.19%) NHS
13 87 (1.11%) Distributed Systems
14 81 (1.04%) IoT
15 80 (1.02%) Cyber Threat
15 80 (1.02%) Security Posture
16 78 (1.00%) CCTV
17 73 (0.93%) Social Media
18 72 (0.92%) Virtual Team
19 71 (0.91%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 1,205 (15.41%) Windows
2 532 (6.80%) Windows Server
3 457 (5.85%) Linux
4 132 (1.69%) Windows 10
5 100 (1.28%) Windows Server 2016
6 90 (1.15%) Apple iOS
7 86 (1.10%) Android
8 83 (1.06%) Mac OS
9 45 (0.58%) Unix
10 39 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
11 27 (0.35%) Ubuntu
12 18 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 17 (0.22%) VMS
14 16 (0.20%) 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 (0.077%) Rocky
20 5 (0.064%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,133 (27.28%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,463 (18.71%) Customer Service
3 1,110 (14.20%) Agile
4 834 (10.67%) Decision-Making
5 808 (10.34%) Stakeholder Management
6 792 (10.13%) Mentoring
7 767 (9.81%) AI
8 728 (9.31%) CI/CD
9 669 (8.56%) Project Delivery
10 645 (8.25%) Collaborative Working
11 624 (7.98%) Analytics
12 604 (7.73%) Software Engineering
13 598 (7.65%) DevOps
14 596 (7.62%) ERP
15 591 (7.56%) Cybersecurity
16 579 (7.41%) ITIL
17 544 (6.96%) Project Management
18 543 (6.95%) Business Intelligence
19 488 (6.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 483 (6.18%) CRM
Programming Languages
1 1,106 (14.15%) SQL
2 773 (9.89%) Python
3 446 (5.70%) C#
4 442 (5.65%) JavaScript
5 323 (4.13%) Java
6 300 (3.84%) PowerShell
7 209 (2.67%) C++
8 204 (2.61%) TypeScript
9 125 (1.60%) Bash
10 83 (1.06%) C
11 65 (0.83%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 65 (0.83%) PHP
12 61 (0.78%) T-SQL
13 51 (0.65%) Ruby
14 47 (0.60%) MATLAB
14 47 (0.60%) PL/SQL
15 46 (0.59%) Shell Script
16 41 (0.52%) Perl
16 41 (0.52%) Rust
17 38 (0.49%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,250 (15.99%) Degree
2 734 (9.39%) Security Cleared
3 512 (6.55%) SC Cleared
4 233 (2.98%) HNC
5 225 (2.88%) DBS Check
6 209 (2.67%) Computer Science Degree
7 201 (2.57%) HND
8 188 (2.40%) Microsoft Certification
9 184 (2.35%) DV Cleared
10 162 (2.07%) BPSS Clearance
11 137 (1.75%) Azure Certification
12 98 (1.25%) Chartered Engineer
13 92 (1.18%) Cisco Certification
14 78 (1.00%) A+ Certification
15 76 (0.97%) PMI Certification
16 69 (0.88%) Master's Degree
17 65 (0.83%) CISSP
18 59 (0.75%) NVQ Level 3
19 58 (0.74%) CCNA
20 57 (0.73%) ACCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 488 (6.24%) QA
2 301 (3.85%) Data Quality
3 227 (2.90%) GDPR
4 206 (2.63%) Accessibility
5 181 (2.32%) SLA
6 169 (2.16%) Cyber Essentials
7 136 (1.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 105 (1.34%) PCI DSS
9 81 (1.04%) NIST
10 46 (0.59%) ISO 9001
11 41 (0.52%) PMO
12 34 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 21 (0.27%) DO-254
14 19 (0.24%) Good Clinical Practice
14 19 (0.24%) NCSC
15 18 (0.23%) GMP
16 16 (0.20%) GRC
17 15 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
18 13 (0.17%) GxP
18 13 (0.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 854 (10.92%) Active Directory
2 291 (3.72%) Hyper-V
3 264 (3.38%) Docker
4 215 (2.75%) VMware Infrastructure
5 78 (1.00%) Firmware
6 72 (0.92%) Terminal Server
7 42 (0.54%) Virtual Desktop
8 34 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
9 30 (0.38%) Embedded Firmware
10 28 (0.36%) vSphere
11 15 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
12 9 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.064%) ClearTrust
13 5 (0.064%) Squid
14 4 (0.051%) KVM
14 4 (0.051%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 3 (0.038%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.038%) VMware Server
16 2 (0.026%) Samba
16 2 (0.026%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 264 (3.38%) Microsoft Intune
2 224 (2.87%) Kubernetes
3 111 (1.42%) Ansible
4 64 (0.82%) Grafana
5 53 (0.68%) SCCM
6 47 (0.60%) Prometheus
7 44 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
8 39 (0.50%) BMC PATROL
9 20 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
10 19 (0.24%) Functional Safety
11 18 (0.23%) FortiGate
12 16 (0.20%) Puppet
13 13 (0.17%) Kibana
13 13 (0.17%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
14 11 (0.14%) logstash
14 11 (0.14%) Nagios
14 11 (0.14%) Nmap
15 10 (0.13%) Podman
15 10 (0.13%) Proxmox
16 9 (0.12%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,366 (30.26%) Microsoft
2 344 (4.40%) VMware
3 224 (2.87%) SAP
4 219 (2.80%) Google
5 179 (2.29%) Workday
6 174 (2.23%) Oracle
7 139 (1.78%) Veeam
8 137 (1.75%) Cisco
9 127 (1.62%) ServiceNow
10 122 (1.56%) Splunk
11 105 (1.34%) Salesforce
12 102 (1.30%) Sage
13 91 (1.16%) SolarWinds
14 80 (1.02%) Tanium
15 76 (0.97%) Fortinet
16 75 (0.96%) Databricks
17 73 (0.93%) Brocade
17 73 (0.93%) Nimble Storage
18 67 (0.86%) Apple
19 57 (0.73%) SonicWALL