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

6 months to
29 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 4 5
Rank change year-on-year -6 +1 +5
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,901 6,453 8,910
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 8.00% 18.89% 14.25%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.35% 21.51% 18.06%
Number of salaries quoted 4,343 3,557 4,939
10th Percentile £26,500 £25,750 £25,500
25th Percentile £31,000 £29,750 £32,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £41,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.66% -8.89% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £60,000 £60,250
90th Percentile £73,750 £75,000 £73,750
UK median annual salary £47,500 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -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 51,998 29,997 49,327
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.53% 87.81% 78.87%
Number of salaries quoted 36,546 16,278 32,403
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,500 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,750 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £50,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% - -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £65,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.33%

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 29 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 29 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 -10 1,529 £45,000 +5.88% 729
South East -3 1,448 £45,000 +5.88% 888
Midlands -8 1,102 £42,000 +5.00% 497
North West -7 799 £45,625 -0.82% 354
South West -6 743 £44,000 +17.33% 359
West Midlands -9 616 £42,500 -5.56% 290
East of England -6 581 £42,500 +21.43% 301
Yorkshire -10 525 £42,500 +21.43% 260
East Midlands -10 482 £37,500 +5.63% 207
Scotland -6 235 £33,000 -25.00% 116
North East -15 205 £50,000 +33.33% 127
Wales -19 155 £45,000 -6.49% 74
Northern Ireland -14 126 £38,500 -30.00% 45
Isle of Man 0 3 £35,000 +1.45% 4
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
1 365 (6.19%) Microsoft Exchange
2 346 (5.86%) SharePoint
3 63 (1.07%) Confluence
4 47 (0.80%) CMS
5 36 (0.61%) IIS
6 30 (0.51%) Apache
7 29 (0.49%) WordPress
8 23 (0.39%) Apache Airflow
9 14 (0.24%) Apache Spark
10 13 (0.22%) SAS
11 11 (0.19%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.15%) WebLogic
13 8 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2013
13 8 (0.14%) nginx
14 7 (0.12%) OpenEdge
15 6 (0.10%) Exchange Server 2007
15 6 (0.10%) Exchange Server 2010
15 6 (0.10%) Jupyter
16 5 (0.085%) Skype for Business
17 4 (0.068%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 378 (6.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 377 (6.39%) Microsoft Office
3 53 (0.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 45 (0.76%) Spreadsheet
5 37 (0.63%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
7 13 (0.22%) Simulink
8 9 (0.15%) AutoCAD
9 8 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
9 8 (0.14%) Chatbot
10 5 (0.085%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.085%) Fusion 360
10 5 (0.085%) Lightworks
10 5 (0.085%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.085%) Sketch
10 5 (0.085%) Trello
11 3 (0.051%) LaTeX
11 3 (0.051%) Revit
11 3 (0.051%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 54 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
2 35 (0.59%) NetSuite
3 18 (0.31%) Magento
3 18 (0.31%) Shopify
4 16 (0.27%) SAP ERP
5 14 (0.24%) Dynamics AX
5 14 (0.24%) Dynamics NAV
5 14 (0.24%) IBM Planning Analytics
6 13 (0.22%) SAP Business One
7 10 (0.17%) JDE EnterpriseOne
8 9 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
8 9 (0.15%) Sage 50
9 8 (0.14%) Sage X3
10 7 (0.12%) Raiser’s Edge
11 6 (0.10%) NEC Housing
12 5 (0.085%) Dynamics GP
12 5 (0.085%) iTrent
13 4 (0.068%) Academy Housing
13 4 (0.068%) Line 50
Cloud Services
1 1,254 (21.25%) Azure
2 1,092 (18.51%) Microsoft 365
3 620 (10.51%) AWS
4 481 (8.15%) Power Platform
5 309 (5.24%) Entra ID
6 207 (3.51%) SaaS
7 204 (3.46%) GCP
8 146 (2.47%) Azure DevOps
9 129 (2.19%) Dynamics 365
10 114 (1.93%) Serverless
11 109 (1.85%) GitHub
12 106 (1.80%) PowerApps
13 103 (1.75%) Power Automate
14 78 (1.32%) OneDrive
15 68 (1.15%) Microsoft Copilot
16 55 (0.93%) Amazon S3
17 52 (0.88%) Microsoft Purview
18 51 (0.86%) GitHub Actions
19 48 (0.81%) AWS Lambda
19 48 (0.81%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 408 (6.91%) Firewall
2 387 (6.56%) DNS
3 330 (5.59%) DHCP
4 220 (3.73%) VPN
5 208 (3.52%) TCP/IP
6 195 (3.30%) WAN
7 174 (2.95%) LAN
8 149 (2.52%) Wi-Fi
9 145 (2.46%) Wireless
10 117 (1.98%) VLAN
11 102 (1.73%) Network Security
12 101 (1.71%) Broadband
13 96 (1.63%) VoIP
14 40 (0.68%) Internet
15 30 (0.51%) SD-WAN
16 28 (0.47%) HTTP
16 28 (0.47%) SAN
17 27 (0.46%) SSL
18 22 (0.37%) WLAN
19 20 (0.34%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 380 (6.44%) Power BI
2 286 (4.85%) SQL Server
3 133 (2.25%) Amazon RDS
4 116 (1.97%) MySQL
5 96 (1.63%) Data Warehouse
6 87 (1.47%) PostgreSQL
7 85 (1.44%) Relational Database
7 85 (1.44%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 74 (1.25%) NoSQL
9 69 (1.17%) Tableau
10 65 (1.10%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 48 (0.81%) Power Query
12 44 (0.75%) MongoDB
13 39 (0.66%) Big Data
14 34 (0.58%) Azure SQL Database
15 33 (0.56%) Data Lake
16 29 (0.49%) DynamoDB
17 25 (0.42%) Elasticsearch
18 21 (0.36%) Amazon Redshift
18 21 (0.36%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 245 (4.15%) Git
2 197 (3.34%) JIRA
3 80 (1.36%) GitLab
4 62 (1.05%) Jenkins
5 27 (0.46%) Rational DOORS
6 26 (0.44%) Cucumber
7 25 (0.42%) Selenium
8 24 (0.41%) Subversion
9 23 (0.39%) Eclipse
10 21 (0.36%) Postman
11 19 (0.32%) JUnit
12 18 (0.31%) Cypress.io
13 14 (0.24%) Bitbucket
13 14 (0.24%) Claude Code
13 14 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
13 14 (0.24%) SonarQube
14 10 (0.17%) JMeter
14 10 (0.17%) Maven
15 9 (0.15%) Burp Suite
15 9 (0.15%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,839 (48.11%) Social Skills
2 1,631 (27.64%) Analytical Skills
3 927 (15.71%) Finance
4 479 (8.12%) Manufacturing
5 372 (6.30%) Organisational Skills
6 276 (4.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 271 (4.59%) Law
8 261 (4.42%) Legal
9 259 (4.39%) Public Sector
10 244 (4.13%) Retail
11 180 (3.05%) Marketing
12 159 (2.69%) Electronics
13 150 (2.54%) Telecoms
14 123 (2.08%) Banking
15 113 (1.91%) Influencing Skills
16 109 (1.85%) Aerospace
16 109 (1.85%) Documentation Skills
17 73 (1.24%) Games
18 62 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
19 59 (1.00%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 819 (13.88%) Analyst
2 661 (11.20%) IT Support
3 649 (11.00%) Senior
4 624 (10.57%) Developer
5 554 (9.39%) Support Engineer
6 378 (6.41%) IT Engineer
7 314 (5.32%) Lead
8 282 (4.78%) IT Support Engineer
9 269 (4.56%) Support Analyst
10 260 (4.41%) Support Technician
11 247 (4.19%) Systems Engineer
12 224 (3.80%) Technical Support
13 221 (3.75%) Consultant
14 211 (3.58%) IT Technician
15 199 (3.37%) Software Engineer
16 195 (3.30%) Technical Engineer
17 192 (3.25%) Architect
18 184 (3.12%) Senior Developer
19 176 (2.98%) Technical Support Engineer
20 164 (2.78%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 301 (5.10%) .NET
2 204 (3.46%) React
3 178 (3.02%) HTML
4 172 (2.91%) REST
5 130 (2.20%) CSS
6 105 (1.78%) RESTful
7 95 (1.61%) Node.js
8 89 (1.51%) SOAP
9 76 (1.29%) Vue
10 74 (1.25%) JSON
10 74 (1.25%) Middleware
11 73 (1.24%) AngularJS
12 68 (1.15%) XML
13 60 (1.02%) ASP.NET
14 57 (0.97%) Spring
15 52 (0.88%) Spring Boot
15 52 (0.88%) Web Services
16 51 (0.86%) OAuth
17 41 (0.69%) Kafka
18 40 (0.68%) ASP.NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 459 (7.78%) Driving Licence
2 341 (5.78%) Onboarding
3 277 (4.69%) Self-Motivation
4 240 (4.07%) Management Information System
5 168 (2.85%) Cloud Native
5 168 (2.85%) Legacy Systems
6 149 (2.52%) Product Ownership
7 98 (1.66%) Data Centre
8 95 (1.61%) Analytical Mindset
9 88 (1.49%) Distributed Systems
10 75 (1.27%) Enterprise Software
11 74 (1.25%) Security Posture
12 68 (1.15%) Mobile App
13 66 (1.12%) Social Media
14 59 (1.00%) Virtual Team
15 58 (0.98%) IoT
16 57 (0.97%) NHS
17 51 (0.86%) Cyber Threat
18 48 (0.81%) Replication
18 48 (0.81%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 1,045 (17.71%) Windows
2 495 (8.39%) Windows Server
3 446 (7.56%) Linux
4 141 (2.39%) Windows 10
5 126 (2.14%) Windows Server 2016
6 107 (1.81%) Android
7 77 (1.30%) Apple iOS
8 74 (1.25%) Mac OS
9 40 (0.68%) Windows Server 2019
10 33 (0.56%) Unix
11 28 (0.47%) Ubuntu
12 23 (0.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 21 (0.36%) CentOS
14 17 (0.29%) VMS
15 13 (0.22%) Debian
15 13 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 9 (0.15%) FreeRTOS
17 8 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
18 6 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
19 5 (0.085%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,490 (25.25%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,071 (18.15%) Customer Service
3 878 (14.88%) Agile
4 628 (10.64%) CI/CD
5 619 (10.49%) Decision-Making
6 601 (10.18%) Mentoring
7 579 (9.81%) AI
8 527 (8.93%) ITIL
9 521 (8.83%) DevOps
10 496 (8.41%) Analytics
11 484 (8.20%) Stakeholder Management
12 478 (8.10%) Cybersecurity
13 471 (7.98%) Software Engineering
14 455 (7.71%) Collaborative Working
15 442 (7.49%) Business Intelligence
16 425 (7.20%) ERP
17 415 (7.03%) Project Delivery
18 353 (5.98%) Customer Experience
19 349 (5.91%) Computer Science
20 346 (5.86%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 949 (16.08%) SQL
2 663 (11.24%) Python
3 385 (6.52%) C#
4 383 (6.49%) JavaScript
5 259 (4.39%) Java
6 240 (4.07%) PowerShell
7 173 (2.93%) TypeScript
8 168 (2.85%) C++
9 109 (1.85%) Bash
10 72 (1.22%) PHP
11 64 (1.08%) C
12 60 (1.02%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 52 (0.88%) T-SQL
14 37 (0.63%) Shell Script
15 36 (0.61%) Perl
16 35 (0.59%) Ruby
17 34 (0.58%) PL/SQL
18 33 (0.56%) Go
19 29 (0.49%) Kotlin
20 27 (0.46%) Rust
Qualifications
1 868 (14.71%) Degree
2 521 (8.83%) Security Cleared
3 380 (6.44%) SC Cleared
4 186 (3.15%) DBS Check
5 173 (2.93%) Computer Science Degree
6 168 (2.85%) Microsoft Certification
7 102 (1.73%) DV Cleared
8 99 (1.68%) BPSS Clearance
9 88 (1.49%) Cisco Certification
10 86 (1.46%) Azure Certification
11 65 (1.10%) HNC
12 62 (1.05%) CCNA
13 61 (1.03%) PMI Certification
14 58 (0.98%) ACCA
15 55 (0.93%) CISSP
15 55 (0.93%) Master's Degree
16 54 (0.92%) A+ Certification
16 54 (0.92%) CIMA
17 51 (0.86%) PMP
18 45 (0.76%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 375 (6.35%) QA
2 253 (4.29%) Data Quality
3 194 (3.29%) Cyber Essentials
4 170 (2.88%) GDPR
5 153 (2.59%) SLA
6 136 (2.30%) PCI DSS
7 133 (2.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 126 (2.14%) Accessibility
9 90 (1.53%) NIST
10 36 (0.61%) ISO 9001
11 30 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 29 (0.49%) PMO
13 21 (0.36%) GMP
14 18 (0.31%) Good Clinical Practice
15 15 (0.25%) GRC
16 14 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
16 14 (0.24%) SOC 2
17 12 (0.20%) TickIT
18 10 (0.17%) ISO 14001
18 10 (0.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 731 (12.39%) Active Directory
2 284 (4.81%) Hyper-V
3 234 (3.97%) Docker
4 196 (3.32%) VMware Infrastructure
5 96 (1.63%) Terminal Server
6 47 (0.80%) Firmware
7 29 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
8 27 (0.46%) vSphere
9 23 (0.39%) Virtual Machines
10 16 (0.27%) Embedded Firmware
11 13 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
12 7 (0.12%) KVM
13 6 (0.10%) XenApp
14 5 (0.085%) ClearTrust
14 5 (0.085%) Squid
14 5 (0.085%) Virtual Servers
14 5 (0.085%) VMware Workstation
15 4 (0.068%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 3 (0.051%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 3 (0.051%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 235 (3.98%) Terraform
2 232 (3.93%) Microsoft Intune
3 211 (3.58%) Kubernetes
4 99 (1.68%) Ansible
5 63 (1.07%) SCCM
6 61 (1.03%) Grafana
7 43 (0.73%) Prometheus
8 20 (0.34%) FortiGate
9 17 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
10 16 (0.27%) Nagios
11 15 (0.25%) Puppet
12 12 (0.20%) Jamf Pro
13 11 (0.19%) Kibana
14 10 (0.17%) Autotask
14 10 (0.17%) Functional Safety
14 10 (0.17%) logstash
14 10 (0.17%) Podman
14 10 (0.17%) Proxmox
15 9 (0.15%) QRadar
15 9 (0.15%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,823 (30.89%) Microsoft
2 327 (5.54%) VMware
3 153 (2.59%) Veeam
4 138 (2.34%) Google
5 136 (2.30%) Splunk
6 129 (2.19%) SAP
7 126 (2.14%) Cisco
8 124 (2.10%) Oracle
9 122 (2.07%) SolarWinds
10 104 (1.76%) Tanium
11 100 (1.69%) ServiceNow
12 97 (1.64%) Nimble Storage
13 96 (1.63%) Brocade
14 80 (1.36%) Salesforce
15 71 (1.20%) Databricks
16 62 (1.05%) Apple
17 58 (0.98%) Sage
18 53 (0.90%) Fortinet
19 47 (0.80%) IBM
20 46 (0.78%) Dell