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

6 months to
13 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 4 5
Rank change year-on-year -4 +1 +7
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,097 5,950 11,453
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 7.65% 20.09% 14.70%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.98% 22.04% 18.32%
Number of salaries quoted 3,793 3,140 7,004
10th Percentile £26,500 £26,000 £25,000
25th Percentile £30,000 £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 46,411 27,001 62,516
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 69.63% 91.19% 80.25%
Number of salaries quoted 32,394 13,652 43,629
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,500 £27,500
25th Percentile £38,819 £32,988 £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% -9.69%

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 13 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 13 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 1,379 £42,500 -3.41% 635
South East -5 1,228 £45,000 +5.88% 758
Midlands -8 946 £41,000 -4.65% 431
North West -7 708 £45,000 -3.23% 357
South West -6 601 £43,500 +8.75% 334
West Midlands -9 538 £42,500 -8.11% 254
East of England -3 513 £45,000 +28.57% 273
Yorkshire -11 508 £40,500 +15.71% 198
East Midlands -8 405 £35,000 -6.67% 179
Scotland -3 262 £35,000 -28.28% 121
North East -12 163 £48,445 +21.11% 91
Wales -15 117 £45,000 -10.00% 40
Northern Ireland -6 71 £38,500 -30.00% 60
Isle of Man +2 3 £35,000 +1.45% 1
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
1 314 (6.16%) Microsoft Exchange
2 303 (5.94%) SharePoint
3 49 (0.96%) CMS
4 47 (0.92%) Confluence
5 29 (0.57%) IIS
6 24 (0.47%) WordPress
7 23 (0.45%) Apache
8 19 (0.37%) Apache Airflow
9 14 (0.27%) Apache Spark
10 13 (0.26%) SAS
11 11 (0.22%) Exchange Server 2013
12 9 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2007
12 9 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2010
13 7 (0.14%) OpenEdge
13 7 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 6 (0.12%) WebSphere
15 5 (0.098%) nginx
15 5 (0.098%) Skype for Business
16 4 (0.078%) Moodle
16 4 (0.078%) OpenStack
Applications
1 309 (6.06%) Microsoft Office
2 304 (5.96%) Microsoft Excel
3 45 (0.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 39 (0.77%) Spreadsheet
5 33 (0.65%) MS Visio
6 14 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
7 9 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 8 (0.16%) Adobe Illustrator
9 7 (0.14%) Fusion 360
10 6 (0.12%) AutoCAD
10 6 (0.12%) Simulink
11 5 (0.098%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.078%) Chatbot
12 4 (0.078%) Trello
13 3 (0.059%) Autodesk Inventor
14 2 (0.039%) Adobe XD
14 2 (0.039%) Lightworks
14 2 (0.039%) Sketch
14 2 (0.039%) SOLIDWORKS
14 2 (0.039%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 48 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (0.65%) Dynamics CRM
3 24 (0.47%) NetSuite
4 21 (0.41%) Dynamics NAV
5 19 (0.37%) Shopify
6 16 (0.31%) Magento
7 14 (0.27%) SAP ERP
8 12 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
9 11 (0.22%) iTrent
10 10 (0.20%) Dynamics AX
11 9 (0.18%) IBM Planning Analytics
12 8 (0.16%) Sage 50
12 8 (0.16%) SAP Business One
12 8 (0.16%) SAP CO
13 7 (0.14%) Workday HCM
14 5 (0.098%) Q-Pulse
15 4 (0.078%) Dynamics GP
15 4 (0.078%) Line 50
15 4 (0.078%) Sage X3
15 4 (0.078%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,048 (20.56%) Azure
2 904 (17.74%) Microsoft 365
3 533 (10.46%) AWS
4 377 (7.40%) Power Platform
5 236 (4.63%) Entra ID
6 167 (3.28%) SaaS
7 152 (2.98%) GCP
8 117 (2.30%) Azure DevOps
9 111 (2.18%) Dynamics 365
10 110 (2.16%) Serverless
11 84 (1.65%) GitHub
12 77 (1.51%) Power Automate
13 69 (1.35%) PowerApps
14 64 (1.26%) OneDrive
15 57 (1.12%) Amazon S3
16 51 (1.00%) Google Workspace
17 49 (0.96%) AWS Lambda
18 44 (0.86%) IaaS
19 43 (0.84%) PaaS
20 41 (0.80%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 353 (6.93%) Firewall
2 324 (6.36%) DNS
3 277 (5.43%) DHCP
4 185 (3.63%) VPN
5 174 (3.41%) WAN
6 140 (2.75%) LAN
7 132 (2.59%) TCP/IP
8 131 (2.57%) Wi-Fi
9 107 (2.10%) Broadband
10 105 (2.06%) Wireless
11 102 (2.00%) VLAN
12 82 (1.61%) Network Security
12 82 (1.61%) VoIP
13 42 (0.82%) SD-WAN
14 41 (0.80%) Internet
15 32 (0.63%) SAN
16 20 (0.39%) HTTP
17 19 (0.37%) Remote Desktop
18 17 (0.33%) SSL
19 16 (0.31%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 301 (5.91%) Power BI
2 211 (4.14%) SQL Server
3 96 (1.88%) Amazon RDS
4 75 (1.47%) MySQL
5 73 (1.43%) Data Warehouse
6 71 (1.39%) NoSQL
7 69 (1.35%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 68 (1.33%) PostgreSQL
9 61 (1.20%) Tableau
10 54 (1.06%) Relational Database
11 53 (1.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 45 (0.88%) Power Query
13 38 (0.75%) Big Data
14 37 (0.73%) MongoDB
15 29 (0.57%) Data Lake
15 29 (0.57%) DynamoDB
16 26 (0.51%) Azure SQL Database
17 25 (0.49%) Amazon Redshift
18 22 (0.43%) Elasticsearch
18 22 (0.43%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 190 (3.73%) Git
2 143 (2.81%) JIRA
3 64 (1.26%) GitLab
4 40 (0.78%) Jenkins
5 30 (0.59%) Rational DOORS
6 16 (0.31%) Cucumber
6 16 (0.31%) JUnit
6 16 (0.31%) Selenium
7 15 (0.29%) Subversion
8 14 (0.27%) Maven
9 13 (0.26%) Cypress.io
10 11 (0.22%) Eclipse
10 11 (0.22%) Oracle Forms
10 11 (0.22%) SonarQube
11 10 (0.20%) LabVIEW
12 9 (0.18%) Bitbucket
12 9 (0.18%) Burp Suite
12 9 (0.18%) Postman
13 8 (0.16%) Metasploit
13 8 (0.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 2,426 (47.60%) Social Skills
2 1,430 (28.06%) Analytical Skills
3 825 (16.19%) Finance
4 357 (7.00%) Manufacturing
5 323 (6.34%) Organisational Skills
6 234 (4.59%) Public Sector
7 221 (4.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 195 (3.83%) Law
8 195 (3.83%) Legal
9 186 (3.65%) Retail
10 182 (3.57%) Marketing
11 139 (2.73%) Telecoms
12 134 (2.63%) Electronics
13 133 (2.61%) Banking
14 101 (1.98%) Documentation Skills
15 91 (1.79%) Influencing Skills
16 73 (1.43%) Aerospace
17 69 (1.35%) Games
18 55 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
19 53 (1.04%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 730 (14.32%) Analyst
2 620 (12.16%) IT Support
3 540 (10.59%) Senior
4 538 (10.56%) Support Engineer
5 449 (8.81%) Developer
6 368 (7.22%) IT Engineer
7 281 (5.51%) IT Support Engineer
8 263 (5.16%) Lead
9 233 (4.57%) Support Technician
10 205 (4.02%) Systems Engineer
11 203 (3.98%) Support Analyst
12 183 (3.59%) IT Technician
13 175 (3.43%) Architect
14 172 (3.37%) Consultant
15 167 (3.28%) Technical Support
16 161 (3.16%) Software Engineer
17 147 (2.88%) IT Support Technician
18 140 (2.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 136 (2.67%) Technical Engineer
20 130 (2.55%) Technical Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 188 (3.69%) .NET
2 180 (3.53%) React
3 151 (2.96%) HTML
4 131 (2.57%) REST
5 117 (2.30%) CSS
6 92 (1.80%) Node.js
7 75 (1.47%) SOAP
8 70 (1.37%) RESTful
9 66 (1.29%) JSON
10 60 (1.18%) Middleware
10 60 (1.18%) Vue
11 58 (1.14%) AngularJS
11 58 (1.14%) XML
12 41 (0.80%) Spring
13 40 (0.78%) ASP.NET
14 38 (0.75%) OAuth
14 38 (0.75%) Web Services
15 37 (0.73%) Spring Boot
16 34 (0.67%) EDI
17 28 (0.55%) Laravel
Miscellaneous
1 388 (7.61%) Driving Licence
2 275 (5.40%) Onboarding
3 232 (4.55%) Self-Motivation
4 200 (3.92%) Management Information System
5 127 (2.49%) Cloud Native
6 126 (2.47%) Product Ownership
7 125 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
8 101 (1.98%) Analytical Mindset
9 97 (1.90%) Data Centre
10 76 (1.49%) Distributed Systems
11 74 (1.45%) Social Media
12 64 (1.26%) Mobile App
13 52 (1.02%) Low-Code
13 52 (1.02%) Security Posture
14 51 (1.00%) Enterprise Software
15 45 (0.88%) Virtual Team
16 44 (0.86%) Data Structures
17 39 (0.77%) Algorithms
18 37 (0.73%) Hybrid Cloud
18 37 (0.73%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 861 (16.89%) Windows
2 420 (8.24%) Windows Server
3 346 (6.79%) Linux
4 134 (2.63%) Windows 10
5 117 (2.30%) Windows Server 2016
6 99 (1.94%) Android
7 63 (1.24%) Apple iOS
8 54 (1.06%) Mac OS
9 52 (1.02%) Windows Server 2019
10 31 (0.61%) Unix
11 26 (0.51%) CentOS
12 25 (0.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 25 (0.49%) Ubuntu
13 19 (0.37%) Windows Server 2012
14 15 (0.29%) VMS
15 13 (0.26%) Windows 7
16 10 (0.20%) Debian
17 7 (0.14%) Windows 8
17 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
18 5 (0.098%) FreeRTOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,121 (21.99%) Continuous Improvement
2 906 (17.78%) Customer Service
3 675 (13.24%) Agile
4 523 (10.26%) Decision-Making
5 502 (9.85%) Mentoring
6 438 (8.59%) AI
7 437 (8.57%) Analytics
8 432 (8.48%) CI/CD
9 406 (7.97%) ITIL
10 399 (7.83%) DevOps
11 377 (7.40%) Collaborative Working
12 356 (6.98%) Cybersecurity
13 352 (6.91%) Business Intelligence
14 344 (6.75%) Software Engineering
15 343 (6.73%) ERP
16 326 (6.40%) Stakeholder Management
17 322 (6.32%) Project Management
18 317 (6.22%) Coaching
18 317 (6.22%) Computer Science
19 296 (5.81%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 748 (14.68%) SQL
2 582 (11.42%) Python
3 320 (6.28%) JavaScript
4 251 (4.92%) C#
5 223 (4.38%) Java
6 199 (3.90%) PowerShell
7 135 (2.65%) TypeScript
8 108 (2.12%) C++
9 93 (1.82%) Bash
10 70 (1.37%) PHP
11 52 (1.02%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 49 (0.96%) C
13 44 (0.86%) PL/SQL
14 40 (0.78%) T-SQL
15 30 (0.59%) Kotlin
15 30 (0.59%) R
16 28 (0.55%) Perl
17 24 (0.47%) Go
17 24 (0.47%) Ruby
17 24 (0.47%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 766 (15.03%) Degree
2 401 (7.87%) Security Cleared
3 289 (5.67%) SC Cleared
4 206 (4.04%) DBS Check
5 154 (3.02%) Microsoft Certification
6 148 (2.90%) Computer Science Degree
7 84 (1.65%) BPSS Clearance
8 78 (1.53%) Cisco Certification
9 69 (1.35%) DV Cleared
10 68 (1.33%) A+ Certification
11 62 (1.22%) ACCA
12 61 (1.20%) CCNA
13 58 (1.14%) CIMA
14 54 (1.06%) HNC
15 52 (1.02%) PMI Certification
16 48 (0.94%) Network+ Certification
17 47 (0.92%) Azure Certification
17 47 (0.92%) Master's Degree
18 44 (0.86%) CISSP
19 43 (0.84%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 291 (5.71%) QA
2 235 (4.61%) Data Quality
3 156 (3.06%) Cyber Essentials
4 147 (2.88%) GDPR
5 129 (2.53%) SLA
6 120 (2.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 105 (2.06%) PCI DSS
8 83 (1.63%) Accessibility
9 80 (1.57%) NIST
10 39 (0.77%) ISO 9001
11 23 (0.45%) PMO
12 22 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 21 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
14 16 (0.31%) GMP
15 14 (0.27%) GRC
16 13 (0.26%) ISO 14001
17 12 (0.24%) SOC 2
17 12 (0.24%) TickIT
18 9 (0.18%) Good Clinical Practice
19 8 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 622 (12.20%) Active Directory
2 231 (4.53%) Hyper-V
3 171 (3.35%) Docker
4 163 (3.20%) VMware Infrastructure
5 72 (1.41%) Terminal Server
6 30 (0.59%) Firmware
7 28 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
8 18 (0.35%) vSphere
9 14 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
10 13 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.20%) KVM
12 8 (0.16%) Embedded Firmware
13 7 (0.14%) VMware Workstation
14 6 (0.12%) XenApp
15 4 (0.078%) ClearTrust
15 4 (0.078%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 4 (0.078%) Virtual Servers
16 3 (0.059%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 3 (0.059%) Terminal Services
17 2 (0.039%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 189 (3.71%) Microsoft Intune
2 184 (3.61%) Terraform
3 166 (3.26%) Kubernetes
4 87 (1.71%) Ansible
5 55 (1.08%) SCCM
6 50 (0.98%) Grafana
7 34 (0.67%) Prometheus
8 21 (0.41%) Nagios
9 14 (0.27%) FortiGate
10 12 (0.24%) Single Sign-On
10 12 (0.24%) vCenter Server
11 9 (0.18%) Autotask
11 9 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
11 9 (0.18%) Kibana
11 9 (0.18%) Puppet
11 9 (0.18%) QRadar
11 9 (0.18%) ZABBIX
12 8 (0.16%) logstash
12 8 (0.16%) Nmap
12 8 (0.16%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,456 (28.57%) Microsoft
2 267 (5.24%) VMware
3 133 (2.61%) Oracle
4 129 (2.53%) Veeam
5 110 (2.16%) Google
5 110 (2.16%) SAP
6 107 (2.10%) Cisco
6 107 (2.10%) Splunk
7 102 (2.00%) SolarWinds
8 74 (1.45%) Tanium
9 73 (1.43%) Nimble Storage
10 72 (1.41%) Brocade
11 70 (1.37%) Salesforce
12 66 (1.29%) Databricks
13 64 (1.26%) ServiceNow
14 61 (1.20%) Apple
15 51 (1.00%) Adobe
16 44 (0.86%) Dell
16 44 (0.86%) Sage
17 39 (0.77%) Meraki