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 18 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -7 +3 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,032 5,959 8,055
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 10.42% 18.44% 16.06%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.58% 20.28% 18.48%
Number of salaries quoted 3,542 2,598 5,572
10th Percentile £26,000 £28,000 £25,513
25th Percentile £29,000 £36,250 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £40,000 £50,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +11.11% -10.00%
75th Percentile £57,438 £67,500 £61,250
90th Percentile £71,250 £83,750 £72,500
UK median annual salary £45,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -18.18% +10.00% -13.04%

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 37,053 29,378 43,585
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 76.72% 90.93% 86.88%
Number of salaries quoted 21,805 13,220 33,294
10th Percentile £28,000 £31,250 £27,000
25th Percentile £35,000 £41,250 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.90%
75th Percentile £65,000 £70,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £81,250 £83,750 £78,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -12.00%

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 18 February 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 18 February 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 -17 1,355 £42,500 -10.53% 631
South East -3 1,278 £42,500 -19.05% 892
Midlands -15 868 £37,500 -28.49% 451
North West -14 734 £46,000 -8.00% 367
South West -3 587 £41,250 -25.00% 321
West Midlands -19 504 £42,500 -22.73% 279
Yorkshire -7 482 £35,750 -17.82% 196
East of England -4 434 £37,500 -26.42% 299
East Midlands 0 362 £35,000 - 171
Scotland -6 347 £33,500 -33.00% 108
North East -5 139 £45,000 -1.10% 79
Wales 0 118 £42,500 -22.73% 63
Northern Ireland -3 71 £40,500 -32.18% 28
Isle of Man 0 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
1 308 (6.12%) Microsoft Exchange
2 231 (4.59%) SharePoint
3 50 (0.99%) Confluence
4 44 (0.87%) IIS
5 36 (0.72%) CMS
6 25 (0.50%) WordPress
7 24 (0.48%) Apache
8 20 (0.40%) Apache Spark
9 16 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
10 12 (0.24%) Exchange Server 2013
11 10 (0.20%) Exchange Server 2007
11 10 (0.20%) Exchange Server 2010
11 10 (0.20%) nginx
12 7 (0.14%) Drupal
13 6 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 4 (0.079%) Apache Solr
14 4 (0.079%) Headless CMS
14 4 (0.079%) SAS
14 4 (0.079%) WebSphere
14 4 (0.079%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 367 (7.29%) Microsoft Office
2 326 (6.48%) Microsoft Excel
3 63 (1.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 28 (0.56%) MS Visio
4 28 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
5 14 (0.28%) AutoCAD
5 14 (0.28%) Microsoft Project
6 12 (0.24%) Photoshop
7 10 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 9 (0.18%) Adobe Illustrator
9 8 (0.16%) SOLIDWORKS
10 6 (0.12%) Adobe Premiere
11 4 (0.079%) Adobe After Effects
11 4 (0.079%) CATIA
11 4 (0.079%) Fusion 360
12 3 (0.060%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.060%) Elementor
12 3 (0.060%) InDesign
12 3 (0.060%) Revit
12 3 (0.060%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 69 (1.37%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (0.87%) Dynamics CRM
3 26 (0.52%) NetSuite
4 15 (0.30%) SAP CO
5 14 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
6 13 (0.26%) Sage X3
7 12 (0.24%) Dynamics NAV
7 12 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
7 12 (0.24%) Oracle Receivables
8 11 (0.22%) iTrent
9 10 (0.20%) Shopify
10 8 (0.16%) Oracle General Ledger
10 8 (0.16%) SAP Business One
11 7 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
11 7 (0.14%) Workday HCM
12 6 (0.12%) Markit EDM
12 6 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
12 6 (0.12%) Oracle Financials
12 6 (0.12%) SAP FI
12 6 (0.12%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 1,072 (21.30%) Azure
2 869 (17.27%) Microsoft 365
3 449 (8.92%) AWS
4 328 (6.52%) Power Platform
5 250 (4.97%) SaaS
6 239 (4.75%) Entra ID
7 147 (2.92%) Azure DevOps
8 132 (2.62%) GCP
9 100 (1.99%) GitHub
10 87 (1.73%) Serverless
11 82 (1.63%) Power Automate
12 67 (1.33%) Dynamics 365
13 59 (1.17%) Google Workspace
14 58 (1.15%) Azure Data Factory
15 55 (1.09%) AWS Lambda
16 53 (1.05%) Amazon S3
17 48 (0.95%) OneDrive
18 47 (0.93%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 47 (0.93%) GitHub Actions
19 46 (0.91%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 397 (7.89%) DNS
2 343 (6.82%) DHCP
3 272 (5.41%) Firewall
4 160 (3.18%) VPN
5 153 (3.04%) TCP/IP
6 152 (3.02%) Wi-Fi
7 143 (2.84%) WAN
8 126 (2.50%) LAN
9 105 (2.09%) Broadband
10 93 (1.85%) VLAN
11 84 (1.67%) VoIP
12 74 (1.47%) Wireless
13 54 (1.07%) Remote Desktop
14 49 (0.97%) Network Security
15 45 (0.89%) Internet
16 40 (0.79%) SD-WAN
17 29 (0.58%) SAN
17 29 (0.58%) Unified Communications
18 24 (0.48%) Wireshark
19 23 (0.46%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 269 (5.35%) Power BI
2 201 (3.99%) SQL Server
3 133 (2.64%) Amazon RDS
4 81 (1.61%) Relational Database
5 76 (1.51%) PostgreSQL
6 67 (1.33%) NoSQL
6 67 (1.33%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 66 (1.31%) MySQL
8 65 (1.29%) Data Warehouse
9 44 (0.87%) Tableau
10 38 (0.76%) Data Lake
10 38 (0.76%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 35 (0.70%) Azure SQL Database
12 33 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
12 33 (0.66%) Power Query
13 32 (0.64%) DynamoDB
14 31 (0.62%) MongoDB
15 28 (0.56%) Metadata
16 26 (0.52%) Elasticsearch
17 19 (0.38%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 187 (3.72%) Git
2 162 (3.22%) JIRA
3 55 (1.09%) GitLab
4 44 (0.87%) Jenkins
5 31 (0.62%) Selenium
6 16 (0.32%) LabVIEW
6 16 (0.32%) Visual Studio
7 15 (0.30%) Maven
7 15 (0.30%) Robot Framework
8 14 (0.28%) Snyk
9 12 (0.24%) Cucumber
9 12 (0.24%) JUnit
9 12 (0.24%) SonarQube
10 11 (0.22%) Cypress.io
10 11 (0.22%) Rational DOORS
11 10 (0.20%) Bitbucket
11 10 (0.20%) Burp Suite
11 10 (0.20%) Metasploit
12 8 (0.16%) TeamCity
13 7 (0.14%) Mockito
General
1 2,661 (52.88%) Social Skills
2 1,416 (28.14%) Analytical Skills
3 1,031 (20.49%) Finance
4 328 (6.52%) Organisational Skills
5 283 (5.62%) Manufacturing
6 276 (5.48%) Retail
7 228 (4.53%) Marketing
8 215 (4.27%) Public Sector
9 184 (3.66%) Legal
10 170 (3.38%) Law
11 160 (3.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 160 (3.18%) Telecoms
12 130 (2.58%) Electronics
13 122 (2.42%) Banking
14 109 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
15 84 (1.67%) Games
16 81 (1.61%) Automotive
16 81 (1.61%) Documentation Skills
17 56 (1.11%) Aerospace
18 49 (0.97%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 828 (16.45%) Analyst
2 716 (14.23%) IT Support
3 582 (11.57%) Support Engineer
4 557 (11.07%) Senior
5 378 (7.51%) Developer
6 323 (6.42%) IT Engineer
7 287 (5.70%) Support Analyst
8 282 (5.60%) IT Support Engineer
9 267 (5.31%) Lead
10 232 (4.61%) Technical Support
11 210 (4.17%) Business Analyst
12 179 (3.56%) 2nd Line Support
13 171 (3.40%) Support Technician
14 167 (3.32%) Systems Engineer
15 158 (3.14%) Technical Engineer
16 151 (3.00%) Technical Support Engineer
17 143 (2.84%) Architect
18 141 (2.80%) Consultant
19 140 (2.78%) IT Analyst
20 128 (2.54%) Trainee
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 191 (3.80%) .NET
2 159 (3.16%) HTML
2 159 (3.16%) React
3 123 (2.44%) CSS
4 84 (1.67%) REST
5 74 (1.47%) Node.js
6 58 (1.15%) RESTful
7 52 (1.03%) AngularJS
8 49 (0.97%) Vue
9 47 (0.93%) SOAP
10 42 (0.83%) JSON
11 40 (0.79%) ASP.NET
12 38 (0.76%) Spring
13 36 (0.72%) XML
14 34 (0.68%) Django
15 33 (0.66%) .NET Framework
16 31 (0.62%) Laravel
16 31 (0.62%) Spring Boot
17 28 (0.56%) EDI
18 27 (0.54%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 513 (10.19%) Driving Licence
2 374 (7.43%) Onboarding
3 309 (6.14%) Self-Motivation
4 169 (3.36%) Legacy Systems
5 164 (3.26%) Management Information System
6 151 (3.00%) Analytical Mindset
7 110 (2.19%) Data Centre
8 104 (2.07%) Product Ownership
9 88 (1.75%) Cloud Native
10 65 (1.29%) Enterprise Software
11 60 (1.19%) Social Media
12 49 (0.97%) Mobile App
13 47 (0.93%) EPoS
14 45 (0.89%) Low-Code
15 44 (0.87%) FMCG
16 42 (0.83%) Distributed Systems
17 39 (0.78%) Virtual Team
18 38 (0.76%) Data Structures
19 36 (0.72%) Life Science
19 36 (0.72%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 964 (19.16%) Windows
2 435 (8.64%) Windows Server
3 348 (6.92%) Linux
4 146 (2.90%) Windows Server 2016
5 120 (2.38%) Windows 10
6 88 (1.75%) Android
7 64 (1.27%) Mac OS
8 57 (1.13%) Apple iOS
9 37 (0.74%) Unix
10 36 (0.72%) Windows Server 2019
11 25 (0.50%) Windows Server 2012
12 19 (0.38%) Windows 7
13 17 (0.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 11 (0.22%) CentOS
15 9 (0.18%) Windows 8
15 9 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
16 8 (0.16%) VMS
17 6 (0.12%) Ubuntu
18 5 (0.099%) Debian
19 2 (0.040%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 944 (18.76%) Customer Service
2 939 (18.66%) Continuous Improvement
3 658 (13.08%) Agile
4 477 (9.48%) Project Management
5 462 (9.18%) Mentoring
6 448 (8.90%) Decision-Making
7 396 (7.87%) Analytics
8 386 (7.67%) ITIL
9 385 (7.65%) Business Intelligence
10 381 (7.57%) DevOps
11 341 (6.78%) CI/CD
12 339 (6.74%) Change Management
13 334 (6.64%) ERP
14 313 (6.22%) AI
15 308 (6.12%) Computer Science
16 305 (6.06%) Cybersecurity
17 303 (6.02%) CRM
18 302 (6.00%) Process Improvement
19 300 (5.96%) Stakeholder Management
20 293 (5.82%) Customer Experience
Programming Languages
1 696 (13.83%) SQL
2 505 (10.04%) Python
3 283 (5.62%) JavaScript
4 256 (5.09%) PowerShell
5 227 (4.51%) C#
6 171 (3.40%) Java
7 80 (1.59%) PHP
8 79 (1.57%) TypeScript
9 68 (1.35%) Bash
10 59 (1.17%) C++
10 59 (1.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 45 (0.89%) C
12 43 (0.85%) T-SQL
13 25 (0.50%) PL/SQL
13 25 (0.50%) R
14 20 (0.40%) MATLAB
15 19 (0.38%) Go
16 18 (0.36%) Bicep
17 17 (0.34%) Perl
18 16 (0.32%) VBA
Qualifications
1 1,041 (20.69%) Degree
2 428 (8.51%) Security Cleared
3 297 (5.90%) SC Cleared
4 159 (3.16%) DBS Check
5 146 (2.90%) Microsoft Certification
6 127 (2.52%) Computer Science Degree
7 101 (2.01%) BPSS Clearance
8 73 (1.45%) Master's Degree
9 66 (1.31%) A+ Certification
9 66 (1.31%) DV Cleared
10 64 (1.27%) ACCA
11 62 (1.23%) Cisco Certification
12 56 (1.11%) CIMA
13 55 (1.09%) HND
14 49 (0.97%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 48 (0.95%) HNC
16 45 (0.89%) Network+ Certification
17 44 (0.87%) CCNA
18 41 (0.81%) AWS Certification
19 35 (0.70%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 263 (5.23%) QA
2 179 (3.56%) Cyber Essentials
3 175 (3.48%) Data Quality
4 147 (2.92%) GDPR
5 140 (2.78%) PCI DSS
6 115 (2.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 79 (1.57%) Accessibility
8 66 (1.31%) SLA
9 45 (0.89%) NIST
10 35 (0.70%) ISO 9001
11 28 (0.56%) Actionable Recommendations
11 28 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 12 (0.24%) PMO
13 9 (0.18%) ISO 13485
13 9 (0.18%) SOC 2
14 7 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 6 (0.12%) WCAG
16 5 (0.099%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 4 (0.079%) GLBA
17 4 (0.079%) GRC
System Software
1 673 (13.37%) Active Directory
2 251 (4.99%) Hyper-V
3 177 (3.52%) Docker
4 119 (2.36%) VMware Infrastructure
5 112 (2.23%) Terminal Server
6 28 (0.56%) Firmware
7 24 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
9 15 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
9 15 (0.30%) vSphere
10 8 (0.16%) KVM
10 8 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
10 8 (0.16%) VMware Workstation
11 5 (0.099%) Embedded Firmware
12 4 (0.079%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 2 (0.040%) RHEV
13 2 (0.040%) VMware NSX
13 2 (0.040%) Xen
13 2 (0.040%) XenApp
14 1 (0.020%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 202 (4.01%) Terraform
2 198 (3.93%) Microsoft Intune
3 127 (2.52%) Kubernetes
4 82 (1.63%) Ansible
5 52 (1.03%) SCCM
6 49 (0.97%) Grafana
7 42 (0.83%) BMC PATROL
8 31 (0.62%) Prometheus
9 18 (0.36%) Single Sign-On
10 17 (0.34%) Nagios
11 14 (0.28%) Cisco CUCM
12 13 (0.26%) vCenter Server
13 12 (0.24%) Jamf Pro
14 10 (0.20%) Autotask
14 10 (0.20%) AWS Copilot
14 10 (0.20%) Nmap
15 9 (0.18%) ZABBIX
16 8 (0.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 8 (0.16%) Control-M
17 7 (0.14%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 1,377 (27.36%) Microsoft
2 265 (5.27%) VMware
3 226 (4.49%) SAP
4 175 (3.48%) Oracle
5 173 (3.44%) Veeam
6 140 (2.78%) SolarWinds
7 139 (2.76%) Splunk
8 131 (2.60%) Cisco
9 113 (2.25%) Google
9 113 (2.25%) Tanium
10 112 (2.23%) Brocade
10 112 (2.23%) Nimble Storage
11 80 (1.59%) Salesforce
12 70 (1.39%) ServiceNow
13 66 (1.31%) Adobe
14 61 (1.21%) Databricks
15 60 (1.19%) BT
16 59 (1.17%) Apple
16 59 (1.17%) Sage
17 48 (0.95%) HubSpot