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

6 months to
14 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -6 +3 +4
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,051 5,972 7,955
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 10.60% 18.31% 15.93%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.78% 20.17% 18.34%
Number of salaries quoted 3,526 2,610 5,537
10th Percentile £26,016 £28,500 £25,500
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 £57,500 £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 36,645 29,607 43,385
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 76.89% 90.75% 86.87%
Number of salaries quoted 21,556 13,378 33,225
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% -9.09%
75th Percentile £65,000 £70,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £81,250 £83,750 £78,750
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,001 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -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 14 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 14 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 1,342 £42,500 -11.46% 592
South East -3 1,310 £42,500 -19.05% 862
Midlands -16 863 £37,500 -28.42% 456
North West -15 729 £46,000 -8.00% 348
South West -4 584 £40,000 -24.53% 319
West Midlands -18 505 £42,500 -22.73% 284
Yorkshire -6 475 £35,000 -19.54% 187
East of England -3 441 £37,500 -26.42% 279
East Midlands 0 356 £35,000 - 172
Scotland -7 346 £33,500 -35.38% 103
North East -5 138 £43,250 -9.90% 68
Wales +1 120 £42,500 -18.66% 63
Northern Ireland -4 70 £42,750 -28.41% 30
Isle of Man 0 1 £62,500 +150.00% 1
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
1 304 (6.02%) Microsoft Exchange
2 228 (4.51%) SharePoint
3 47 (0.93%) Confluence
4 44 (0.87%) IIS
5 34 (0.67%) CMS
6 25 (0.49%) WordPress
7 24 (0.48%) Apache
8 20 (0.40%) Apache Spark
9 16 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
10 11 (0.22%) Exchange Server 2013
11 10 (0.20%) nginx
12 9 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2007
12 9 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2010
13 6 (0.12%) 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
1 373 (7.38%) Microsoft Office
2 353 (6.99%) Microsoft Excel
3 63 (1.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 28 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
5 27 (0.53%) MS Visio
6 15 (0.30%) AutoCAD
7 14 (0.28%) Microsoft Project
8 13 (0.26%) Photoshop
9 10 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 9 (0.18%) Adobe Illustrator
11 8 (0.16%) SOLIDWORKS
12 7 (0.14%) Adobe Premiere
13 4 (0.079%) Adobe After Effects
13 4 (0.079%) CATIA
13 4 (0.079%) Fusion 360
14 3 (0.059%) Adobe XD
14 3 (0.059%) Elementor
14 3 (0.059%) InDesign
14 3 (0.059%) Revit
14 3 (0.059%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 75 (1.48%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (0.91%) Dynamics CRM
3 26 (0.51%) 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 9 (0.18%) 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 1,096 (21.70%) Azure
2 868 (17.18%) Microsoft 365
3 446 (8.83%) AWS
4 348 (6.89%) Power Platform
5 254 (5.03%) SaaS
6 240 (4.75%) Entra ID
7 147 (2.91%) Azure DevOps
8 132 (2.61%) GCP
9 99 (1.96%) GitHub
10 87 (1.72%) Serverless
11 80 (1.58%) Power Automate
12 63 (1.25%) Dynamics 365
13 57 (1.13%) Azure Data Factory
13 57 (1.13%) Google Workspace
14 55 (1.09%) AWS Lambda
15 53 (1.05%) Amazon S3
16 47 (0.93%) OneDrive
17 46 (0.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 46 (0.91%) GitHub Actions
18 45 (0.89%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 398 (7.88%) DNS
2 345 (6.83%) DHCP
3 273 (5.40%) Firewall
4 158 (3.13%) VPN
5 157 (3.11%) TCP/IP
6 153 (3.03%) Wi-Fi
7 138 (2.73%) WAN
8 122 (2.42%) LAN
9 102 (2.02%) Broadband
10 95 (1.88%) VLAN
11 86 (1.70%) VoIP
12 74 (1.47%) Wireless
13 54 (1.07%) Remote Desktop
14 50 (0.99%) Network Security
15 43 (0.85%) Internet
16 38 (0.75%) SD-WAN
17 30 (0.59%) SAN
18 29 (0.57%) Unified Communications
19 24 (0.48%) Wireshark
20 23 (0.46%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 291 (5.76%) Power BI
2 202 (4.00%) SQL Server
3 133 (2.63%) Amazon RDS
4 81 (1.60%) Relational Database
5 74 (1.47%) PostgreSQL
6 67 (1.33%) MySQL
7 65 (1.29%) Data Lake
7 65 (1.29%) NoSQL
7 65 (1.29%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 63 (1.25%) Data Warehouse
9 46 (0.91%) SAP BW
10 42 (0.83%) Tableau
11 38 (0.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 35 (0.69%) Azure SQL Database
13 33 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
14 31 (0.61%) DynamoDB
15 30 (0.59%) Power Query
16 29 (0.57%) MongoDB
17 28 (0.55%) Metadata
18 26 (0.51%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 184 (3.64%) Git
2 158 (3.13%) JIRA
3 52 (1.03%) GitLab
4 42 (0.83%) Jenkins
5 30 (0.59%) Selenium
6 17 (0.34%) Visual Studio
7 16 (0.32%) LabVIEW
8 15 (0.30%) Robot Framework
9 14 (0.28%) Maven
9 14 (0.28%) Snyk
10 12 (0.24%) JUnit
11 11 (0.22%) Bitbucket
11 11 (0.22%) Cucumber
11 11 (0.22%) SonarQube
12 10 (0.20%) Burp Suite
12 10 (0.20%) Cypress.io
12 10 (0.20%) Metasploit
13 9 (0.18%) Rational DOORS
13 9 (0.18%) TeamCity
14 8 (0.16%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 2,679 (53.04%) Social Skills
2 1,412 (27.95%) Analytical Skills
3 1,045 (20.69%) Finance
4 315 (6.24%) Organisational Skills
5 290 (5.74%) Manufacturing
6 282 (5.58%) Retail
7 237 (4.69%) Marketing
8 213 (4.22%) Public Sector
9 183 (3.62%) Legal
10 169 (3.35%) Law
11 162 (3.21%) Telecoms
12 160 (3.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 130 (2.57%) Electronics
14 121 (2.40%) Banking
15 108 (2.14%) Presentation Skills
16 82 (1.62%) Games
17 80 (1.58%) Documentation Skills
18 79 (1.56%) Automotive
19 57 (1.13%) Aerospace
20 49 (0.97%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 844 (16.71%) Analyst
2 718 (14.22%) IT Support
3 577 (11.42%) Support Engineer
4 563 (11.15%) Senior
5 378 (7.48%) Developer
6 315 (6.24%) IT Engineer
7 289 (5.72%) Lead
8 287 (5.68%) Support Analyst
9 277 (5.48%) IT Support Engineer
10 237 (4.69%) Technical Support
11 211 (4.18%) Business Analyst
12 179 (3.54%) 2nd Line Support
13 172 (3.41%) Support Technician
14 166 (3.29%) Systems Engineer
15 158 (3.13%) Technical Engineer
16 151 (2.99%) Technical Support Engineer
17 145 (2.87%) IT Analyst
18 143 (2.83%) Architect
19 137 (2.71%) Consultant
20 128 (2.53%) Trainee
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 191 (3.78%) .NET
2 161 (3.19%) HTML
3 157 (3.11%) React
4 124 (2.45%) CSS
5 84 (1.66%) REST
6 72 (1.43%) Node.js
7 58 (1.15%) RESTful
8 52 (1.03%) AngularJS
9 48 (0.95%) Vue
10 47 (0.93%) SOAP
11 44 (0.87%) JSON
12 41 (0.81%) ASP.NET
13 38 (0.75%) Spring
14 36 (0.71%) XML
15 34 (0.67%) .NET Framework
16 33 (0.65%) Django
17 30 (0.59%) Laravel
17 30 (0.59%) Spring Boot
18 28 (0.55%) EDI
19 26 (0.51%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 508 (10.06%) Driving Licence
2 379 (7.50%) Onboarding
3 313 (6.20%) Self-Motivation
4 170 (3.37%) Legacy Systems
5 167 (3.31%) Management Information System
6 153 (3.03%) Analytical Mindset
7 108 (2.14%) Data Centre
8 98 (1.94%) Product Ownership
9 86 (1.70%) Cloud Native
10 66 (1.31%) Enterprise Software
11 57 (1.13%) Social Media
12 49 (0.97%) Mobile App
13 47 (0.93%) EPoS
14 45 (0.89%) FMCG
15 43 (0.85%) Low-Code
16 42 (0.83%) Distributed Systems
17 40 (0.79%) Virtual Team
18 38 (0.75%) Data Structures
19 36 (0.71%) Life Science
20 34 (0.67%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 968 (19.16%) Windows
2 438 (8.67%) Windows Server
3 344 (6.81%) Linux
4 146 (2.89%) Windows Server 2016
5 121 (2.40%) Windows 10
6 88 (1.74%) Android
7 65 (1.29%) Mac OS
8 58 (1.15%) Apple iOS
9 36 (0.71%) Unix
9 36 (0.71%) Windows Server 2019
10 25 (0.49%) Windows Server 2012
11 18 (0.36%) Windows 7
12 15 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 9 (0.18%) CentOS
13 9 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
14 8 (0.16%) VMS
14 8 (0.16%) Windows 8
15 5 (0.099%) Debian
16 4 (0.079%) Ubuntu
17 2 (0.040%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 949 (18.79%) Customer Service
2 920 (18.21%) Continuous Improvement
3 644 (12.75%) Agile
4 480 (9.50%) Project Management
5 461 (9.13%) Mentoring
6 444 (8.79%) Decision-Making
7 419 (8.30%) Analytics
8 404 (8.00%) Business Intelligence
9 386 (7.64%) ITIL
10 375 (7.42%) DevOps
11 351 (6.95%) ERP
12 339 (6.71%) Change Management
13 335 (6.63%) CI/CD
14 314 (6.22%) AI
15 309 (6.12%) Cybersecurity
16 305 (6.04%) Computer Science
17 304 (6.02%) CRM
18 299 (5.92%) Process Improvement
18 299 (5.92%) Stakeholder Management
19 294 (5.82%) Customer Experience
Programming Languages
1 692 (13.70%) SQL
2 497 (9.84%) Python
3 283 (5.60%) JavaScript
4 256 (5.07%) PowerShell
5 229 (4.53%) C#
6 167 (3.31%) Java
7 80 (1.58%) PHP
8 77 (1.52%) TypeScript
9 64 (1.27%) Bash
10 58 (1.15%) C++
10 58 (1.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 45 (0.89%) C
12 43 (0.85%) T-SQL
13 25 (0.49%) PL/SQL
14 24 (0.48%) R
15 20 (0.40%) MATLAB
16 19 (0.38%) Go
17 18 (0.36%) Bicep
18 17 (0.34%) Perl
19 16 (0.32%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,086 (21.50%) Degree
2 424 (8.39%) Security Cleared
3 293 (5.80%) SC Cleared
4 161 (3.19%) DBS Check
5 147 (2.91%) Microsoft Certification
6 128 (2.53%) Computer Science Degree
7 98 (1.94%) BPSS Clearance
8 73 (1.45%) Master's Degree
9 67 (1.33%) A+ Certification
10 65 (1.29%) DV Cleared
11 64 (1.27%) ACCA
12 63 (1.25%) Cisco Certification
13 56 (1.11%) CIMA
14 55 (1.09%) HND
15 49 (0.97%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 46 (0.91%) Network+ Certification
17 45 (0.89%) CCNA
17 45 (0.89%) HNC
18 40 (0.79%) AWS Certification
19 35 (0.69%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 264 (5.23%) QA
2 200 (3.96%) Data Quality
3 179 (3.54%) Cyber Essentials
4 145 (2.87%) GDPR
5 140 (2.77%) PCI DSS
6 114 (2.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 80 (1.58%) Accessibility
8 66 (1.31%) SLA
9 46 (0.91%) NIST
10 35 (0.69%) ISO 9001
11 26 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
11 26 (0.51%) 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
1 676 (13.38%) Active Directory
2 250 (4.95%) Hyper-V
3 172 (3.41%) Docker
4 116 (2.30%) VMware Infrastructure
5 112 (2.22%) Terminal Server
6 27 (0.53%) Firmware
7 24 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
8 16 (0.32%) vSphere
9 15 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
10 8 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
11 7 (0.14%) KVM
11 7 (0.14%) VMware Workstation
12 5 (0.099%) Embedded Firmware
13 4 (0.079%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 2 (0.040%) RHEV
14 2 (0.040%) Xen
15 1 (0.020%) HDFS
15 1 (0.020%) XenApp
15 1 (0.020%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 199 (3.94%) Microsoft Intune
1 199 (3.94%) Terraform
2 123 (2.44%) Kubernetes
3 80 (1.58%) Ansible
4 50 (0.99%) SCCM
5 48 (0.95%) Grafana
6 42 (0.83%) BMC PATROL
7 30 (0.59%) Prometheus
8 18 (0.36%) Single Sign-On
9 16 (0.32%) Nagios
10 14 (0.28%) Cisco CUCM
11 13 (0.26%) vCenter Server
12 12 (0.24%) Jamf Pro
13 10 (0.20%) AWS Copilot
13 10 (0.20%) Nmap
14 9 (0.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 9 (0.18%) Autotask
14 9 (0.18%) ZABBIX
15 8 (0.16%) Control-M
16 7 (0.14%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 1,382 (27.36%) Microsoft
2 268 (5.31%) SAP
3 262 (5.19%) VMware
4 174 (3.44%) Oracle
5 172 (3.41%) Veeam
6 140 (2.77%) SolarWinds
7 138 (2.73%) Splunk
8 130 (2.57%) Cisco
9 113 (2.24%) Tanium
10 112 (2.22%) Brocade
10 112 (2.22%) Google
10 112 (2.22%) Nimble Storage
11 80 (1.58%) Salesforce
12 71 (1.41%) ServiceNow
13 66 (1.31%) Adobe
14 60 (1.19%) Databricks
14 60 (1.19%) Sage
15 59 (1.17%) BT
16 58 (1.15%) Apple
17 48 (0.95%) HubSpot