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

6 months to
21 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 4 5
Rank change year-on-year -6 +1 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,735 6,395 9,693
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 7.91% 18.85% 14.35%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.22% 21.36% 18.03%
Number of salaries quoted 4,274 3,494 5,704
10th Percentile £26,500 £25,750 £25,500
25th Percentile £30,750 £30,000 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £41,355 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year +2.77% -8.10% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £60,000 £60,000
90th Percentile £73,750 £75,000 £73,250
UK median annual salary £47,500 £48,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -1.04% -4.00% -9.09%

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 51,105 29,940 53,757
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.47% 88.23% 79.59%
Number of salaries quoted 35,978 16,122 36,226
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,735 £27,817
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,851 £37,101
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £50,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% - -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £66,230 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £56,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +7.14% +1.82% -8.84%

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 21 July 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 21 July 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 1,503 £45,000 +5.88% 639
South East -3 1,415 £45,000 +5.88% 737
Midlands -8 1,062 £42,000 +5.00% 392
North West -7 799 £45,500 - 350
South West -6 714 £44,000 +17.33% 308
West Midlands -9 593 £42,500 -5.56% 219
East of England -6 569 £42,500 +21.43% 260
Yorkshire -10 511 £42,500 +21.43% 202
East Midlands -10 465 £35,220 -0.79% 173
Scotland -9 228 £33,000 -25.00% 101
North East -15 193 £52,315 +34.83% 95
Wales -20 148 £42,500 -9.09% 59
Northern Ireland -16 116 £38,500 -30.00% 27
Isle of Man +2 3 £35,000 +1.45% 6
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
1 369 (6.43%) Microsoft Exchange
2 347 (6.05%) SharePoint
3 53 (0.92%) Confluence
4 51 (0.89%) CMS
5 36 (0.63%) IIS
6 28 (0.49%) Apache
6 28 (0.49%) WordPress
7 20 (0.35%) Apache Airflow
8 13 (0.23%) Apache Spark
8 13 (0.23%) SAS
9 11 (0.19%) WebSphere
10 10 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2013
11 8 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2007
11 8 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2010
11 8 (0.14%) nginx
11 8 (0.14%) WebLogic
12 7 (0.12%) OpenEdge
13 6 (0.10%) Jupyter
14 5 (0.087%) Skype for Business
15 4 (0.070%) Moodle
Applications
1 371 (6.47%) Microsoft Office
2 363 (6.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 53 (0.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 41 (0.71%) Spreadsheet
5 30 (0.52%) MS Visio
6 17 (0.30%) Microsoft Project
7 11 (0.19%) Simulink
8 8 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 8 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
9 7 (0.12%) AutoCAD
9 7 (0.12%) Chatbot
10 5 (0.087%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.087%) Fusion 360
10 5 (0.087%) Lightworks
10 5 (0.087%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.087%) Sketch
10 5 (0.087%) Trello
11 3 (0.052%) Autodesk Inventor
11 3 (0.052%) LaTeX
11 3 (0.052%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 56 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
2 32 (0.56%) NetSuite
3 18 (0.31%) Shopify
4 17 (0.30%) Magento
5 16 (0.28%) SAP ERP
6 15 (0.26%) Dynamics NAV
7 14 (0.24%) Dynamics AX
8 13 (0.23%) IBM Planning Analytics
9 11 (0.19%) SAP Business One
10 10 (0.17%) JDE EnterpriseOne
10 10 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
11 8 (0.14%) Sage 50
12 7 (0.12%) Raiser’s Edge
12 7 (0.12%) Workday HCM
13 6 (0.10%) iTrent
13 6 (0.10%) Sage X3
14 5 (0.087%) NEC Housing
14 5 (0.087%) Q-Pulse
14 5 (0.087%) SAP CO
Cloud Services
1 1,212 (21.13%) Azure
2 1,082 (18.87%) Microsoft 365
3 591 (10.31%) AWS
4 454 (7.92%) Power Platform
5 299 (5.21%) Entra ID
6 199 (3.47%) SaaS
7 197 (3.44%) GCP
8 134 (2.34%) Azure DevOps
9 118 (2.06%) Dynamics 365
10 110 (1.92%) Serverless
11 101 (1.76%) PowerApps
12 99 (1.73%) GitHub
12 99 (1.73%) Power Automate
13 76 (1.33%) OneDrive
14 62 (1.08%) Microsoft Copilot
15 51 (0.89%) Amazon S3
16 50 (0.87%) Microsoft Purview
17 47 (0.82%) GitHub Actions
18 44 (0.77%) IaaS
19 43 (0.75%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 422 (7.36%) Firewall
2 385 (6.71%) DNS
3 330 (5.75%) DHCP
4 214 (3.73%) VPN
5 198 (3.45%) WAN
6 197 (3.44%) TCP/IP
7 176 (3.07%) LAN
8 158 (2.76%) Wi-Fi
9 142 (2.48%) Wireless
10 120 (2.09%) VLAN
11 109 (1.90%) Broadband
12 97 (1.69%) Network Security
13 93 (1.62%) VoIP
14 39 (0.68%) Internet
15 31 (0.54%) SD-WAN
16 27 (0.47%) SAN
17 25 (0.44%) HTTP
18 24 (0.42%) SSL
19 22 (0.38%) WLAN
20 21 (0.37%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 360 (6.28%) Power BI
2 269 (4.69%) SQL Server
3 126 (2.20%) Amazon RDS
4 106 (1.85%) MySQL
5 90 (1.57%) Data Warehouse
6 83 (1.45%) PostgreSQL
6 83 (1.45%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 82 (1.43%) Relational Database
8 66 (1.15%) NoSQL
8 66 (1.15%) Tableau
9 64 (1.12%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 45 (0.78%) Power Query
11 44 (0.77%) MongoDB
12 37 (0.65%) Big Data
13 34 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
14 33 (0.58%) Data Lake
15 27 (0.47%) DynamoDB
16 25 (0.44%) Elasticsearch
17 19 (0.33%) Star Schema
18 18 (0.31%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 220 (3.84%) Git
2 172 (3.00%) JIRA
3 78 (1.36%) GitLab
4 50 (0.87%) Jenkins
5 27 (0.47%) Rational DOORS
6 24 (0.42%) Cucumber
7 22 (0.38%) Eclipse
7 22 (0.38%) Selenium
7 22 (0.38%) Subversion
8 17 (0.30%) Cypress.io
8 17 (0.30%) JUnit
9 15 (0.26%) Postman
10 14 (0.24%) SonarQube
11 13 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
12 12 (0.21%) Claude Code
13 10 (0.17%) Bitbucket
14 9 (0.16%) Visual Studio
15 8 (0.14%) JMeter
15 8 (0.14%) Maven
15 8 (0.14%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 2,764 (48.20%) Social Skills
2 1,561 (27.22%) Analytical Skills
3 879 (15.33%) Finance
4 455 (7.93%) Manufacturing
5 377 (6.57%) Organisational Skills
6 257 (4.48%) Legal
7 248 (4.32%) Law
8 245 (4.27%) Public Sector
9 239 (4.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 231 (4.03%) Retail
11 180 (3.14%) Marketing
12 155 (2.70%) Electronics
13 150 (2.62%) Telecoms
14 113 (1.97%) Banking
15 105 (1.83%) Documentation Skills
16 103 (1.80%) Influencing Skills
17 88 (1.53%) Aerospace
18 75 (1.31%) Games
19 59 (1.03%) Advertising
20 56 (0.98%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 790 (13.78%) Analyst
2 671 (11.70%) IT Support
3 633 (11.04%) Senior
4 598 (10.43%) Developer
5 580 (10.11%) Support Engineer
6 393 (6.85%) IT Engineer
7 296 (5.16%) IT Support Engineer
7 296 (5.16%) Lead
8 261 (4.55%) Support Technician
9 258 (4.50%) Support Analyst
10 245 (4.27%) Systems Engineer
11 218 (3.80%) Technical Support
12 209 (3.64%) IT Technician
13 193 (3.37%) Software Engineer
13 193 (3.37%) Technical Engineer
14 190 (3.31%) Consultant
15 180 (3.14%) Architect
16 175 (3.05%) Technical Support Engineer
17 174 (3.03%) Senior Developer
18 163 (2.84%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 281 (4.90%) .NET
2 197 (3.44%) React
3 172 (3.00%) HTML
4 161 (2.81%) REST
5 126 (2.20%) CSS
6 100 (1.74%) Node.js
7 98 (1.71%) RESTful
8 84 (1.46%) SOAP
9 76 (1.33%) Vue
10 73 (1.27%) Middleware
11 72 (1.26%) JSON
12 69 (1.20%) AngularJS
13 63 (1.10%) XML
14 53 (0.92%) ASP.NET
15 52 (0.91%) Spring
16 48 (0.84%) Spring Boot
17 47 (0.82%) Web Services
18 44 (0.77%) OAuth
19 39 (0.68%) Kafka
20 36 (0.63%) ASP.NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 452 (7.88%) Driving Licence
2 337 (5.88%) Onboarding
3 268 (4.67%) Self-Motivation
4 219 (3.82%) Management Information System
5 160 (2.79%) Legacy Systems
6 153 (2.67%) Cloud Native
7 143 (2.49%) Product Ownership
8 101 (1.76%) Data Centre
9 95 (1.66%) Analytical Mindset
10 88 (1.53%) Distributed Systems
11 75 (1.31%) Security Posture
12 63 (1.10%) Enterprise Software
12 63 (1.10%) Mobile App
12 63 (1.10%) Social Media
13 57 (0.99%) IoT
13 57 (0.99%) Virtual Team
14 48 (0.84%) Robotics
15 47 (0.82%) Cyber Threat
16 46 (0.80%) Algorithms
17 44 (0.77%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 1,026 (17.89%) Windows
2 492 (8.58%) Windows Server
3 433 (7.55%) Linux
4 145 (2.53%) Windows 10
5 133 (2.32%) Windows Server 2016
6 107 (1.87%) Android
7 73 (1.27%) Apple iOS
7 73 (1.27%) Mac OS
8 43 (0.75%) Windows Server 2019
9 30 (0.52%) Unix
10 28 (0.49%) Ubuntu
11 24 (0.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 21 (0.37%) CentOS
13 16 (0.28%) VMS
14 14 (0.24%) Debian
14 14 (0.24%) Windows 7
15 10 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.16%) FreeRTOS
17 8 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
18 6 (0.10%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,377 (24.01%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,058 (18.45%) Customer Service
3 812 (14.16%) Agile
4 580 (10.11%) CI/CD
5 577 (10.06%) Mentoring
6 570 (9.94%) Decision-Making
7 542 (9.45%) AI
8 510 (8.89%) ITIL
9 487 (8.49%) Analytics
10 483 (8.42%) DevOps
11 468 (8.16%) Cybersecurity
12 455 (7.93%) Software Engineering
13 451 (7.86%) Collaborative Working
14 431 (7.52%) Stakeholder Management
15 419 (7.31%) Business Intelligence
16 407 (7.10%) ERP
17 386 (6.73%) Project Delivery
18 347 (6.05%) Customer Experience
19 344 (6.00%) Service Delivery
20 340 (5.93%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 893 (15.57%) SQL
2 642 (11.19%) Python
3 363 (6.33%) JavaScript
4 361 (6.29%) C#
5 251 (4.38%) Java
6 241 (4.20%) PowerShell
7 163 (2.84%) TypeScript
8 161 (2.81%) C++
9 107 (1.87%) Bash
10 74 (1.29%) PHP
11 61 (1.06%) C
12 58 (1.01%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 48 (0.84%) T-SQL
14 35 (0.61%) Ruby
15 34 (0.59%) Perl
15 34 (0.59%) PL/SQL
16 32 (0.56%) Go
17 29 (0.51%) Kotlin
17 29 (0.51%) Shell Script
18 27 (0.47%) R
Qualifications
1 831 (14.49%) Degree
2 484 (8.44%) Security Cleared
3 354 (6.17%) SC Cleared
4 194 (3.38%) DBS Check
5 166 (2.89%) Microsoft Certification
6 164 (2.86%) Computer Science Degree
7 88 (1.53%) Cisco Certification
8 86 (1.50%) DV Cleared
9 83 (1.45%) BPSS Clearance
10 75 (1.31%) Azure Certification
11 63 (1.10%) CCNA
12 62 (1.08%) HNC
13 59 (1.03%) ACCA
14 56 (0.98%) A+ Certification
15 55 (0.96%) CIMA
16 54 (0.94%) PMI Certification
17 53 (0.92%) Master's Degree
18 48 (0.84%) CISSP
19 47 (0.82%) PMP
20 44 (0.77%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 348 (6.07%) QA
2 244 (4.25%) Data Quality
3 193 (3.37%) Cyber Essentials
4 157 (2.74%) GDPR
5 147 (2.56%) SLA
6 138 (2.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 138 (2.41%) PCI DSS
7 115 (2.01%) Accessibility
8 91 (1.59%) NIST
9 37 (0.65%) ISO 9001
10 29 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 25 (0.44%) PMO
12 21 (0.37%) GMP
13 17 (0.30%) Good Clinical Practice
14 15 (0.26%) GRC
14 15 (0.26%) SOC 2
15 13 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
16 12 (0.21%) TickIT
17 10 (0.17%) ISO 14001
18 9 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 724 (12.62%) Active Directory
2 286 (4.99%) Hyper-V
3 220 (3.84%) Docker
4 190 (3.31%) VMware Infrastructure
5 96 (1.67%) Terminal Server
6 43 (0.75%) Firmware
7 30 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
8 27 (0.47%) vSphere
9 22 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
10 16 (0.28%) Embedded Firmware
11 12 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
12 6 (0.10%) KVM
12 6 (0.10%) VMware Workstation
12 6 (0.10%) XenApp
13 5 (0.087%) ClearTrust
13 5 (0.087%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 5 (0.087%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.070%) Squid
15 3 (0.052%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 3 (0.052%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 229 (3.99%) Microsoft Intune
2 225 (3.92%) Terraform
3 204 (3.56%) Kubernetes
4 103 (1.80%) Ansible
5 61 (1.06%) Grafana
5 61 (1.06%) SCCM
6 41 (0.71%) Prometheus
7 19 (0.33%) FortiGate
7 19 (0.33%) Nagios
8 13 (0.23%) Puppet
9 11 (0.19%) Jamf Pro
9 11 (0.19%) Kibana
10 10 (0.17%) Autotask
10 10 (0.17%) Functional Safety
10 10 (0.17%) logstash
10 10 (0.17%) Podman
10 10 (0.17%) Proxmox
10 10 (0.17%) QRadar
11 9 (0.16%) vCenter Server
11 9 (0.16%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,778 (31.00%) Microsoft
2 320 (5.58%) VMware
3 154 (2.69%) Veeam
4 136 (2.37%) Splunk
5 131 (2.28%) Google
6 126 (2.20%) SAP
7 124 (2.16%) Cisco
8 122 (2.13%) SolarWinds
9 114 (1.99%) Oracle
10 104 (1.81%) Tanium
11 97 (1.69%) Nimble Storage
12 96 (1.67%) Brocade
13 90 (1.57%) ServiceNow
14 81 (1.41%) Salesforce
15 69 (1.20%) Databricks
16 59 (1.03%) Apple
17 54 (0.94%) Sage
18 51 (0.89%) Fortinet
19 50 (0.87%) Adobe
20 49 (0.85%) Dell