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 26 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 7 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -4 +3 +3
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,114 6,953 4,903
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 11.98% 18.39% 16.04%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.05% 20.90% 17.59%
Number of salaries quoted 3,494 2,843 3,267
10th Percentile £26,000 £28,250 £26,250
25th Percentile £29,000 £36,250 £32,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £40,000 £50,000 £47,500
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £57,500 £67,500 £63,000
90th Percentile £71,250 £82,500 £75,000
UK median annual salary £46,500 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -15.45% - -

All Process and 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 33,986 33,271 27,867
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 79.64% 88.01% 91.17%
Number of salaries quoted 19,528 15,414 20,727
10th Percentile £27,707 £31,250 £28,500
25th Percentile £33,125 £41,250 £38,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £55,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £65,000 £70,000 £67,500
90th Percentile £80,000 £83,000 £80,399
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%

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 26 December 2025.

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 26 December 2025. 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
South East -3 1,358 £41,000 -19.56% 2,182
North of England -14 1,270 £45,000 -5.26% 1,748
Midlands -12 922 £38,500 -23.00% 1,337
North West -10 713 £48,000 +0.66% 878
South West -1 588 £40,000 -27.27% 901
West Midlands -16 549 £44,543 -19.01% 705
Yorkshire -4 445 £37,500 -13.79% 723
East of England -4 427 £35,000 -31.33% 1,131
East Midlands +2 372 £33,000 -9.59% 562
Scotland -4 344 £33,500 -33.00% 323
Wales +5 170 £48,122 -3.76% 226
North East -1 112 £33,500 -33.00% 160
Northern Ireland -1 59 £53,750 -9.99% 107
Isle of Man +2 1 £62,500 +150.00% 2
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
1 281 (5.49%) Microsoft Exchange
2 216 (4.22%) SharePoint
3 49 (0.96%) IIS
4 47 (0.92%) Confluence
5 23 (0.45%) WordPress
6 21 (0.41%) Apache
6 21 (0.41%) Apache Spark
6 21 (0.41%) CMS
7 12 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
8 8 (0.16%) nginx
9 6 (0.12%) Drupal
9 6 (0.12%) HCL Notes
9 6 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 5 (0.098%) SAS
11 4 (0.078%) Apache Solr
11 4 (0.078%) ArcGIS
11 4 (0.078%) Camunda
11 4 (0.078%) Exchange Server 2013
12 3 (0.059%) Anypoint
12 3 (0.059%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 446 (8.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 440 (8.60%) Microsoft Office
3 71 (1.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 29 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
5 24 (0.47%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.37%) AutoCAD
7 16 (0.31%) Photoshop
8 15 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
9 14 (0.27%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 12 (0.23%) Adobe Illustrator
10 12 (0.23%) SOLIDWORKS
11 10 (0.20%) Simulink
12 9 (0.18%) Adobe Premiere
13 5 (0.098%) Adobe After Effects
14 4 (0.078%) Autodesk Inventor
14 4 (0.078%) CATIA
14 4 (0.078%) Fusion 360
14 4 (0.078%) Oracle Smart View
14 4 (0.078%) Revit
14 4 (0.078%) Trello
Business Applications
1 89 (1.74%) SAP S/4HANA
2 61 (1.19%) Dynamics CRM
3 33 (0.65%) NetSuite
4 20 (0.39%) Oracle Payables
5 18 (0.35%) Oracle Receivables
6 16 (0.31%) Oracle Assets
7 15 (0.29%) SAP CO
7 15 (0.29%) SAP FI
8 13 (0.25%) Sage X3
9 12 (0.23%) SAP Business One
10 11 (0.22%) SAP FI/CO
10 11 (0.22%) Shopify
11 10 (0.20%) Oracle ERP
11 10 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
12 8 (0.16%) JDE EnterpriseOne
12 8 (0.16%) Oracle Financials
13 6 (0.12%) Markit EDM
13 6 (0.12%) Sage 200
14 5 (0.098%) Salesforce CRM
14 5 (0.098%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 1,093 (21.37%) Azure
2 794 (15.53%) Microsoft 365
3 399 (7.80%) AWS
4 362 (7.08%) Power Platform
5 280 (5.48%) SaaS
6 223 (4.36%) Entra ID
7 145 (2.84%) Azure DevOps
8 126 (2.46%) GCP
9 96 (1.88%) GitHub
10 70 (1.37%) Serverless
11 69 (1.35%) Power Automate
12 54 (1.06%) Dynamics 365
13 53 (1.04%) Azure Data Factory
14 43 (0.84%) Amazon S3
15 42 (0.82%) AWS Lambda
15 42 (0.82%) OneDrive
15 42 (0.82%) Snowflake
16 41 (0.80%) AWS CloudFormation
16 41 (0.80%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 41 (0.80%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 348 (6.80%) DNS
2 304 (5.94%) DHCP
3 244 (4.77%) Firewall
4 155 (3.03%) TCP/IP
5 145 (2.84%) VPN
6 140 (2.74%) Wi-Fi
7 121 (2.37%) WAN
8 118 (2.31%) LAN
9 95 (1.86%) VLAN
10 83 (1.62%) VoIP
11 82 (1.60%) Broadband
12 63 (1.23%) Wireless
13 60 (1.17%) Remote Desktop
14 47 (0.92%) Network Security
15 37 (0.72%) SAN
16 36 (0.70%) Internet
17 30 (0.59%) Unified Communications
18 28 (0.55%) SD-WAN
19 27 (0.53%) Ethernet
20 16 (0.31%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 314 (6.14%) Power BI
2 234 (4.58%) SQL Server
3 119 (2.33%) Amazon RDS
4 101 (1.97%) Relational Database
5 97 (1.90%) MySQL
6 83 (1.62%) PostgreSQL
7 82 (1.60%) Data Lake
8 67 (1.31%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 64 (1.25%) SAP BW
10 60 (1.17%) Data Warehouse
11 52 (1.02%) NoSQL
12 46 (0.90%) Tableau
13 43 (0.84%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 35 (0.68%) Azure SQL Database
14 35 (0.68%) Oracle Reports
15 34 (0.66%) GIS
16 31 (0.61%) MongoDB
17 27 (0.53%) DynamoDB
17 27 (0.53%) Metadata
18 23 (0.45%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 195 (3.81%) Git
2 162 (3.17%) JIRA
3 50 (0.98%) GitLab
4 43 (0.84%) Jenkins
5 31 (0.61%) Selenium
6 21 (0.41%) Visual Studio
7 16 (0.31%) Octopus Deploy
7 16 (0.31%) TeamCity
8 15 (0.29%) Bitbucket
8 15 (0.29%) Robot Framework
9 14 (0.27%) LabVIEW
9 14 (0.27%) Snyk
9 14 (0.27%) SonarQube
10 12 (0.23%) Cypress.io
11 10 (0.20%) Rational DOORS
12 9 (0.18%) Cucumber
12 9 (0.18%) JUnit
12 9 (0.18%) Maven
13 8 (0.16%) Oracle Forms
14 7 (0.14%) Subversion
General
1 2,783 (54.42%) Social Skills
2 1,426 (27.88%) Analytical Skills
3 1,098 (21.47%) Finance
4 350 (6.84%) Retail
5 313 (6.12%) Manufacturing
6 297 (5.81%) Marketing
7 248 (4.85%) Organisational Skills
8 183 (3.58%) Public Sector
9 180 (3.52%) Law
10 172 (3.36%) Legal
11 150 (2.93%) Telecoms
12 147 (2.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 139 (2.72%) Electronics
14 109 (2.13%) Banking
15 108 (2.11%) Presentation Skills
16 86 (1.68%) Automotive
17 84 (1.64%) Games
18 63 (1.23%) Aerospace
19 62 (1.21%) Influencing Skills
20 61 (1.19%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 851 (16.64%) Analyst
2 643 (12.57%) IT Support
3 594 (11.62%) Senior
4 514 (10.05%) Support Engineer
5 383 (7.49%) Developer
6 342 (6.69%) Lead
7 322 (6.30%) Support Analyst
8 270 (5.28%) Technical Support
9 227 (4.44%) IT Engineer
10 197 (3.85%) IT Support Engineer
11 195 (3.81%) Business Analyst
12 190 (3.72%) 2nd Line Support
13 187 (3.66%) Technical Engineer
14 179 (3.50%) Systems Engineer
15 176 (3.44%) Support Technician
16 172 (3.36%) Technical Support Engineer
17 148 (2.89%) Applications Support
18 143 (2.80%) Consultant
19 132 (2.58%) Architect
20 131 (2.56%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 213 (4.17%) .NET
2 172 (3.36%) HTML
3 154 (3.01%) React
4 144 (2.82%) CSS
5 88 (1.72%) REST
6 77 (1.51%) RESTful
7 65 (1.27%) Node.js
8 57 (1.11%) ASP.NET
9 55 (1.08%) JSON
10 49 (0.96%) XML
11 48 (0.94%) AngularJS
12 44 (0.86%) SOAP
13 39 (0.76%) Django
14 37 (0.72%) .NET Framework
14 37 (0.72%) Vue
15 36 (0.70%) Spring
16 32 (0.63%) EDI
17 29 (0.57%) Oracle Fusion
18 26 (0.51%) .NET Core
18 26 (0.51%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 490 (9.58%) Driving Licence
2 410 (8.02%) Onboarding
3 314 (6.14%) Self-Motivation
4 174 (3.40%) Management Information System
5 160 (3.13%) Analytical Mindset
6 151 (2.95%) Legacy Systems
7 95 (1.86%) Product Ownership
8 88 (1.72%) Data Centre
9 73 (1.43%) FMCG
10 64 (1.25%) Cloud Native
10 64 (1.25%) Virtual Team
11 59 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
12 44 (0.86%) e-Learning
13 38 (0.74%) EPoS
13 38 (0.74%) Video Conferencing
14 36 (0.70%) Mobile App
15 35 (0.68%) Social Media
16 34 (0.66%) IoT
17 33 (0.65%) SCADA
18 32 (0.63%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 936 (18.30%) Windows
2 391 (7.65%) Windows Server
3 307 (6.00%) Linux
4 129 (2.52%) Windows 10
5 108 (2.11%) Windows Server 2016
6 67 (1.31%) Android
7 58 (1.13%) Mac OS
8 54 (1.06%) Apple iOS
9 33 (0.65%) Unix
10 27 (0.53%) Windows Server 2019
11 16 (0.31%) Windows 7
11 16 (0.31%) Windows Server 2012
12 12 (0.23%) VMS
13 9 (0.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 5 (0.098%) Mac OS X
15 4 (0.078%) CentOS
15 4 (0.078%) Windows 8
15 4 (0.078%) Windows Server 2008
16 3 (0.059%) Ubuntu
17 2 (0.039%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 941 (18.40%) Customer Service
2 932 (18.22%) Continuous Improvement
3 692 (13.53%) Agile
4 489 (9.56%) Project Management
5 475 (9.29%) Analytics
6 458 (8.96%) Mentoring
7 441 (8.62%) Decision-Making
8 422 (8.25%) Business Intelligence
9 410 (8.02%) ITIL
10 391 (7.65%) ERP
11 380 (7.43%) DevOps
12 341 (6.67%) Change Management
13 323 (6.32%) CI/CD
14 322 (6.30%) Cybersecurity
15 311 (6.08%) CRM
16 305 (5.96%) Process Improvement
16 305 (5.96%) Stakeholder Management
17 287 (5.61%) AI
18 284 (5.55%) Computer Science
19 280 (5.48%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 768 (15.02%) SQL
2 432 (8.45%) Python
3 271 (5.30%) JavaScript
4 263 (5.14%) C#
5 259 (5.06%) PowerShell
6 153 (2.99%) Java
7 79 (1.54%) PHP
8 73 (1.43%) C++
9 59 (1.15%) TypeScript
10 50 (0.98%) T-SQL
11 48 (0.94%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 47 (0.92%) Bash
13 37 (0.72%) C
14 27 (0.53%) MATLAB
15 25 (0.49%) VBA
16 23 (0.45%) R
17 19 (0.37%) Go
18 17 (0.33%) Perl
19 15 (0.29%) Bicep
19 15 (0.29%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 1,187 (23.21%) Degree
2 410 (8.02%) Security Cleared
3 287 (5.61%) SC Cleared
4 149 (2.91%) Microsoft Certification
5 138 (2.70%) Computer Science Degree
6 133 (2.60%) DBS Check
7 103 (2.01%) BPSS Clearance
8 94 (1.84%) Master's Degree
9 83 (1.62%) Cisco Certification
10 77 (1.51%) DV Cleared
11 65 (1.27%) ACCA
12 64 (1.25%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 57 (1.11%) CCNA
13 57 (1.11%) CIMA
14 56 (1.10%) HND
15 52 (1.02%) A+ Certification
16 48 (0.94%) Network+ Certification
17 42 (0.82%) AWS Certification
18 39 (0.76%) HNC
19 34 (0.66%) MCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 258 (5.04%) QA
2 221 (4.32%) Data Quality
3 164 (3.21%) Cyber Essentials
4 132 (2.58%) GDPR
5 115 (2.25%) PCI DSS
6 105 (2.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 85 (1.66%) Accessibility
8 77 (1.51%) SLA
9 43 (0.84%) NIST
10 30 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 30 (0.59%) ISO 9001
11 24 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
12 16 (0.31%) PMO
13 10 (0.20%) ISO 13485
14 7 (0.14%) Software Quality Assurance
14 7 (0.14%) WCAG
15 6 (0.12%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 6 (0.12%) SOC 2
16 5 (0.098%) GLBA
16 5 (0.098%) GRC
System Software
1 627 (12.26%) Active Directory
2 217 (4.24%) Hyper-V
3 180 (3.52%) Docker
4 116 (2.27%) VMware Infrastructure
5 96 (1.88%) Terminal Server
6 42 (0.82%) Firmware
7 22 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
8 19 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
9 17 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
9 17 (0.33%) vSphere
10 9 (0.18%) Embedded Firmware
11 6 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
12 4 (0.078%) KVM
13 3 (0.059%) VMware Workstation
14 2 (0.039%) RHEV
14 2 (0.039%) Xen
14 2 (0.039%) XenApp
15 1 (0.020%) HDFS
15 1 (0.020%) iptables
15 1 (0.020%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 201 (3.93%) Microsoft Intune
2 184 (3.60%) Terraform
3 126 (2.46%) Kubernetes
4 60 (1.17%) Ansible
5 44 (0.86%) SCCM
6 42 (0.82%) BMC PATROL
7 37 (0.72%) Grafana
8 27 (0.53%) Prometheus
9 20 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
10 15 (0.29%) vCenter Server
11 14 (0.27%) Cisco CUCM
12 13 (0.25%) Jamf Pro
13 12 (0.23%) Nagios
14 10 (0.20%) AWS Copilot
14 10 (0.20%) ZABBIX
15 7 (0.14%) FortiGate
15 7 (0.14%) Nmap
15 7 (0.14%) PaperCut
16 6 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 5 (0.098%) Autotask
Vendors
1 1,386 (27.10%) Microsoft
2 329 (6.43%) SAP
3 246 (4.81%) VMware
4 180 (3.52%) Oracle
5 165 (3.23%) Cisco
6 145 (2.84%) Veeam
7 118 (2.31%) SolarWinds
8 117 (2.29%) Splunk
9 98 (1.92%) Tanium
10 97 (1.90%) Google
11 96 (1.88%) Brocade
11 96 (1.88%) Nimble Storage
12 95 (1.86%) ServiceNow
13 85 (1.66%) Salesforce
14 68 (1.33%) Sage
15 64 (1.25%) BT
16 63 (1.23%) Apple
17 62 (1.21%) Databricks
18 56 (1.10%) Adobe
19 47 (0.92%) Workday