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 3 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 4 5
Rank change year-on-year -6 +1 +5
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,116 6,526 8,569
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 8.14% 18.95% 14.38%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.53% 21.63% 18.31%
Number of salaries quoted 4,461 3,612 4,554
10th Percentile £26,500 £25,750 £25,750
25th Percentile £31,000 £29,750 £32,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £40,101 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year +5.98% -10.89% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £60,000 £61,250
90th Percentile £73,750 £75,000 £75,000
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 53,026 30,167 46,794
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.56% 87.61% 78.54%
Number of salaries quoted 37,265 16,507 30,128
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,500 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £38,000
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 3 August 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 3 August 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 1,589 £45,000 +5.88% 818
South East -3 1,498 £45,000 +5.88% 1,020
Midlands -9 1,132 £42,000 +5.00% 587
North West -6 835 £45,000 -2.17% 422
South West -6 757 £45,000 +20.00% 443
West Midlands -10 630 £42,500 -5.56% 351
East of England -5 603 £42,500 +21.43% 363
Yorkshire -9 535 £42,500 +21.43% 285
East Midlands -10 498 £38,500 +8.45% 236
Scotland -4 248 £33,000 -25.00% 175
North East -15 219 £50,000 +34.23% 122
Wales -19 158 £45,000 -6.49% 84
Northern Ireland -11 146 £38,500 -30.00% 227
Isle of Man 0 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
1 360 (5.89%) Microsoft Exchange
2 354 (5.79%) SharePoint
3 64 (1.05%) Confluence
4 47 (0.77%) CMS
5 41 (0.67%) IIS
6 33 (0.54%) WordPress
7 30 (0.49%) Apache
8 23 (0.38%) Apache Airflow
9 14 (0.23%) Apache Spark
10 13 (0.21%) SAS
11 11 (0.18%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.15%) WebLogic
13 8 (0.13%) nginx
14 7 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
14 7 (0.11%) OpenEdge
15 6 (0.098%) Jupyter
16 5 (0.082%) Exchange Server 2007
16 5 (0.082%) Exchange Server 2010
16 5 (0.082%) Skype for Business
17 4 (0.065%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 387 (6.33%) Microsoft Office
2 386 (6.31%) Microsoft Excel
3 55 (0.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 47 (0.77%) Spreadsheet
5 39 (0.64%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.41%) Microsoft Project
7 14 (0.23%) AutoCAD
7 14 (0.23%) Simulink
8 8 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 8 (0.13%) Adobe Illustrator
8 8 (0.13%) Chatbot
9 6 (0.098%) Revit
10 5 (0.082%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.082%) EPLAN
10 5 (0.082%) Fusion 360
10 5 (0.082%) Lightworks
10 5 (0.082%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.082%) Sketch
10 5 (0.082%) Trello
11 3 (0.049%) Navisworks
Business Applications
1 54 (0.88%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.60%) Dynamics CRM
3 36 (0.59%) NetSuite
4 19 (0.31%) Shopify
5 18 (0.29%) Magento
6 16 (0.26%) SAP ERP
7 14 (0.23%) Dynamics AX
7 14 (0.23%) Dynamics NAV
7 14 (0.23%) IBM Planning Analytics
7 14 (0.23%) SAP Business One
8 10 (0.16%) JDE EnterpriseOne
9 9 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
9 9 (0.15%) Sage 50
9 9 (0.15%) Sage X3
10 7 (0.11%) Raiser’s Edge
10 7 (0.11%) Workday HCM
11 6 (0.098%) NEC Housing
12 5 (0.082%) Dynamics GP
12 5 (0.082%) Infor CloudSuite
12 5 (0.082%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,272 (20.80%) Azure
2 1,098 (17.95%) Microsoft 365
3 649 (10.61%) AWS
4 490 (8.01%) Power Platform
5 317 (5.18%) Entra ID
6 214 (3.50%) SaaS
7 213 (3.48%) GCP
8 145 (2.37%) Azure DevOps
9 132 (2.16%) Dynamics 365
10 116 (1.90%) Serverless
11 112 (1.83%) GitHub
12 106 (1.73%) Power Automate
12 106 (1.73%) PowerApps
13 80 (1.31%) OneDrive
14 71 (1.16%) Microsoft Copilot
15 55 (0.90%) Amazon S3
16 53 (0.87%) Microsoft Purview
17 52 (0.85%) GitHub Actions
18 48 (0.78%) AWS Lambda
19 46 (0.75%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 414 (6.77%) Firewall
2 386 (6.31%) DNS
3 329 (5.38%) DHCP
4 225 (3.68%) VPN
5 210 (3.43%) TCP/IP
6 196 (3.20%) WAN
7 176 (2.88%) LAN
8 152 (2.49%) Wi-Fi
9 150 (2.45%) Wireless
10 122 (1.99%) VLAN
11 107 (1.75%) Network Security
12 104 (1.70%) Broadband
13 100 (1.64%) VoIP
14 42 (0.69%) Internet
15 30 (0.49%) SAN
15 30 (0.49%) SD-WAN
16 29 (0.47%) SSL
17 28 (0.46%) HTTP
18 22 (0.36%) WLAN
19 21 (0.34%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 386 (6.31%) Power BI
2 290 (4.74%) SQL Server
3 126 (2.06%) Amazon RDS
4 121 (1.98%) MySQL
5 96 (1.57%) Data Warehouse
6 94 (1.54%) Relational Database
7 89 (1.46%) PostgreSQL
8 84 (1.37%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 75 (1.23%) NoSQL
10 72 (1.18%) Tableau
11 64 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 48 (0.78%) Power Query
13 45 (0.74%) MongoDB
14 40 (0.65%) Big Data
15 34 (0.56%) Azure SQL Database
15 34 (0.56%) Data Lake
16 29 (0.47%) DynamoDB
17 27 (0.44%) Electronic Patient Records
18 25 (0.41%) Elasticsearch
19 21 (0.34%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 259 (4.23%) Git
2 211 (3.45%) JIRA
3 83 (1.36%) GitLab
4 62 (1.01%) Jenkins
5 27 (0.44%) Eclipse
5 27 (0.44%) Rational DOORS
5 27 (0.44%) Subversion
6 26 (0.43%) Cucumber
6 26 (0.43%) Selenium
7 22 (0.36%) JUnit
8 20 (0.33%) Postman
9 18 (0.29%) Claude Code
9 18 (0.29%) Cypress.io
10 17 (0.28%) Oracle Forms
11 14 (0.23%) Bitbucket
11 14 (0.23%) SonarQube
12 11 (0.18%) Burp Suite
13 10 (0.16%) JMeter
13 10 (0.16%) Maven
13 10 (0.16%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,930 (47.91%) Social Skills
2 1,709 (27.94%) Analytical Skills
3 960 (15.70%) Finance
4 520 (8.50%) Manufacturing
5 391 (6.39%) Organisational Skills
6 306 (5.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 285 (4.66%) Law
8 270 (4.41%) Public Sector
9 268 (4.38%) Legal
10 251 (4.10%) Retail
11 188 (3.07%) Marketing
12 175 (2.86%) Electronics
13 158 (2.58%) Telecoms
14 142 (2.32%) Aerospace
15 126 (2.06%) Banking
16 117 (1.91%) Influencing Skills
17 111 (1.81%) Documentation Skills
18 74 (1.21%) Games
19 66 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
20 60 (0.98%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 834 (13.64%) Analyst
2 670 (10.95%) Senior
3 658 (10.76%) IT Support
4 649 (10.61%) Developer
5 549 (8.98%) Support Engineer
6 369 (6.03%) IT Engineer
7 332 (5.43%) Lead
8 281 (4.59%) Support Analyst
9 274 (4.48%) IT Support Engineer
10 263 (4.30%) Support Technician
11 242 (3.96%) Systems Engineer
12 241 (3.94%) Consultant
13 231 (3.78%) Technical Support
14 218 (3.56%) IT Technician
15 207 (3.38%) Software Engineer
16 202 (3.30%) Architect
17 198 (3.24%) Technical Engineer
18 191 (3.12%) Senior Developer
19 179 (2.93%) Technical Support Engineer
20 168 (2.75%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 311 (5.09%) .NET
2 213 (3.48%) React
3 186 (3.04%) HTML
4 179 (2.93%) REST
5 137 (2.24%) CSS
6 111 (1.81%) RESTful
7 97 (1.59%) Node.js
8 90 (1.47%) SOAP
9 77 (1.26%) Middleware
9 77 (1.26%) Vue
10 75 (1.23%) AngularJS
11 74 (1.21%) JSON
12 68 (1.11%) XML
13 66 (1.08%) ASP.NET
14 57 (0.93%) Spring
14 57 (0.93%) Web Services
15 53 (0.87%) OAuth
16 52 (0.85%) Spring Boot
17 43 (0.70%) Kafka
18 41 (0.67%) ASP.NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 475 (7.77%) Driving Licence
2 361 (5.90%) Onboarding
3 291 (4.76%) Self-Motivation
4 249 (4.07%) Management Information System
5 170 (2.78%) Cloud Native
6 163 (2.67%) Legacy Systems
7 154 (2.52%) Product Ownership
8 103 (1.68%) Data Centre
9 93 (1.52%) Analytical Mindset
10 87 (1.42%) Distributed Systems
11 80 (1.31%) Enterprise Software
12 77 (1.26%) Security Posture
13 73 (1.19%) Social Media
14 69 (1.13%) NHS
15 68 (1.11%) Mobile App
16 60 (0.98%) IoT
16 60 (0.98%) Virtual Team
17 58 (0.95%) Robotics
18 56 (0.92%) Cyber Threat
19 54 (0.88%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 1,050 (17.17%) Windows
2 494 (8.08%) Windows Server
3 450 (7.36%) Linux
4 140 (2.29%) Windows 10
5 119 (1.95%) Windows Server 2016
6 108 (1.77%) Android
7 79 (1.29%) Apple iOS
8 77 (1.26%) Mac OS
9 41 (0.67%) Windows Server 2019
10 34 (0.56%) Unix
11 28 (0.46%) Ubuntu
12 23 (0.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 21 (0.34%) CentOS
14 17 (0.28%) VMS
15 13 (0.21%) Debian
16 11 (0.18%) Windows 7
17 9 (0.15%) FreeRTOS
18 8 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
19 6 (0.098%) Windows Server 2012
20 5 (0.082%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,576 (25.77%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,091 (17.84%) Customer Service
3 921 (15.06%) Agile
4 653 (10.68%) Decision-Making
5 651 (10.64%) CI/CD
6 630 (10.30%) Mentoring
7 604 (9.88%) AI
8 543 (8.88%) ITIL
9 535 (8.75%) DevOps
10 516 (8.44%) Stakeholder Management
11 508 (8.31%) Analytics
12 501 (8.19%) Cybersecurity
13 497 (8.13%) Software Engineering
14 482 (7.88%) Collaborative Working
15 447 (7.31%) Business Intelligence
15 447 (7.31%) Project Delivery
16 444 (7.26%) ERP
17 364 (5.95%) Project Management
18 362 (5.92%) Computer Science
19 359 (5.87%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 961 (15.71%) SQL
2 685 (11.20%) Python
3 405 (6.62%) JavaScript
4 394 (6.44%) C#
5 270 (4.41%) Java
6 241 (3.94%) PowerShell
7 184 (3.01%) TypeScript
8 177 (2.89%) C++
9 113 (1.85%) Bash
10 76 (1.24%) PHP
11 67 (1.10%) C
12 59 (0.96%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 52 (0.85%) T-SQL
14 40 (0.65%) Shell Script
15 39 (0.64%) Perl
16 35 (0.57%) Go
16 35 (0.57%) Ruby
17 34 (0.56%) PL/SQL
18 31 (0.51%) Rust
19 29 (0.47%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 923 (15.09%) Degree
2 554 (9.06%) Security Cleared
3 405 (6.62%) SC Cleared
4 193 (3.16%) DBS Check
5 183 (2.99%) Computer Science Degree
6 173 (2.83%) Microsoft Certification
7 127 (2.08%) DV Cleared
8 121 (1.98%) BPSS Clearance
9 91 (1.49%) Azure Certification
10 90 (1.47%) Cisco Certification
11 82 (1.34%) HNC
12 68 (1.11%) PMI Certification
13 62 (1.01%) CCNA
14 61 (1.00%) Master's Degree
15 59 (0.96%) CISSP
16 56 (0.92%) ACCA
17 54 (0.88%) HND
17 54 (0.88%) PMP
18 53 (0.87%) A+ Certification
19 52 (0.85%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 397 (6.49%) QA
2 256 (4.19%) Data Quality
3 185 (3.02%) Cyber Essentials
4 178 (2.91%) GDPR
5 156 (2.55%) SLA
6 139 (2.27%) Accessibility
7 132 (2.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 128 (2.09%) PCI DSS
9 91 (1.49%) NIST
10 35 (0.57%) ISO 9001
11 31 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 30 (0.49%) PMO
13 23 (0.38%) GMP
14 18 (0.29%) Good Clinical Practice
15 15 (0.25%) GRC
16 14 (0.23%) SOC 2
17 13 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
18 12 (0.20%) TickIT
19 11 (0.18%) WCAG
20 10 (0.16%) ISO 14001
System Software
1 726 (11.87%) Active Directory
2 282 (4.61%) Hyper-V
3 242 (3.96%) Docker
4 199 (3.25%) VMware Infrastructure
5 88 (1.44%) Terminal Server
6 51 (0.83%) Firmware
7 29 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
8 27 (0.44%) vSphere
9 23 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
10 16 (0.26%) Embedded Firmware
11 14 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
12 10 (0.16%) KVM
13 6 (0.098%) XenApp
14 5 (0.082%) ClearTrust
14 5 (0.082%) Squid
14 5 (0.082%) Virtual Servers
15 4 (0.065%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 4 (0.065%) VMware Workstation
16 3 (0.049%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.049%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 247 (4.04%) Terraform
2 236 (3.86%) Microsoft Intune
3 219 (3.58%) Kubernetes
4 105 (1.72%) Ansible
5 62 (1.01%) Grafana
6 60 (0.98%) SCCM
7 44 (0.72%) Prometheus
8 21 (0.34%) FortiGate
8 21 (0.34%) Single Sign-On
9 17 (0.28%) Puppet
10 16 (0.26%) Nagios
11 14 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
12 11 (0.18%) Functional Safety
12 11 (0.18%) Kibana
12 11 (0.18%) Podman
12 11 (0.18%) Proxmox
13 10 (0.16%) logstash
13 10 (0.16%) ZABBIX
14 9 (0.15%) Autotask
14 9 (0.15%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,858 (30.38%) Microsoft
2 325 (5.31%) VMware
3 145 (2.37%) Veeam
4 143 (2.34%) SAP
5 141 (2.31%) Google
6 133 (2.17%) Oracle
7 132 (2.16%) Cisco
8 130 (2.13%) Splunk
9 116 (1.90%) SolarWinds
10 105 (1.72%) ServiceNow
11 96 (1.57%) Tanium
12 89 (1.46%) Nimble Storage
13 88 (1.44%) Brocade
14 83 (1.36%) Salesforce
15 72 (1.18%) Databricks
16 64 (1.05%) Apple
17 60 (0.98%) Sage
18 55 (0.90%) Fortinet
19 47 (0.77%) Meraki
20 46 (0.75%) IBM