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 30 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -8 +3 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,835 5,106 9,811
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 8.58% 19.58% 15.56%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.59% 21.42% 18.31%
Number of salaries quoted 3,453 3,025 6,579
10th Percentile £26,250 £26,929 £25,750
25th Percentile £29,250 £32,500 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £41,500 £50,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year -17.00% +11.11% -10.00%
75th Percentile £57,500 £65,000 £61,186
90th Percentile £73,750 £80,000 £72,500
UK median annual salary £45,497 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -17.28% +10.00% -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 41,701 23,832 53,586
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 74.01% 91.38% 84.96%
Number of salaries quoted 25,383 13,673 39,250
10th Percentile £28,250 £29,000 £27,500
25th Percentile £35,000 £38,750 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.26%
75th Percentile £67,500 £69,750 £65,000
90th Percentile £83,750 £83,750 £77,500
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -10.57%

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 30 March 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 30 March 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 1,298 £41,000 -10.87% 662
South East -6 1,201 £45,000 -11.71% 802
Midlands -20 860 £37,750 -21.35% 478
North West -17 654 £41,500 -17.00% 365
South West -6 543 £43,500 -8.42% 308
Yorkshire -5 514 £35,000 -16.67% 222
West Midlands -25 507 £42,500 -20.83% 278
East of England -8 440 £40,000 -20.00% 288
East Midlands -2 350 £35,000 -10.26% 199
Scotland -7 318 £35,000 -29.15% 127
North East -7 130 £45,000 - 92
Wales -4 109 £40,500 -26.36% 81
Northern Ireland -3 90 £35,000 -38.83% 19
Isle of Man -1 1 £62,500 +64.47% 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
1 287 (5.94%) Microsoft Exchange
2 241 (4.98%) SharePoint
3 48 (0.99%) Confluence
4 46 (0.95%) CMS
5 30 (0.62%) IIS
6 23 (0.48%) WordPress
7 17 (0.35%) Apache
7 17 (0.35%) Apache Spark
8 13 (0.27%) Apache Airflow
8 13 (0.27%) Exchange Server 2013
9 12 (0.25%) SAS
10 11 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2007
10 11 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2010
11 8 (0.17%) nginx
12 7 (0.14%) Drupal
13 6 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 5 (0.10%) Anypoint
15 4 (0.083%) Headless CMS
15 4 (0.083%) Moodle
15 4 (0.083%) OpenStack
Applications
1 348 (7.20%) Microsoft Office
2 300 (6.20%) Microsoft Excel
3 58 (1.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 31 (0.64%) MS Visio
5 23 (0.48%) Spreadsheet
6 15 (0.31%) Microsoft Project
7 11 (0.23%) Adobe Illustrator
7 11 (0.23%) Photoshop
8 10 (0.21%) AutoCAD
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 5 (0.10%) Fusion 360
11 4 (0.083%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.083%) Simulink
11 4 (0.083%) Trello
12 3 (0.062%) Elementor
12 3 (0.062%) InDesign
12 3 (0.062%) SOLIDWORKS
13 2 (0.041%) Adobe Premiere
13 2 (0.041%) Revit
13 2 (0.041%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 41 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
2 28 (0.58%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.50%) NetSuite
4 13 (0.27%) Dynamics NAV
4 13 (0.27%) Sage X3
4 13 (0.27%) SAP CO
4 13 (0.27%) Shopify
5 10 (0.21%) iTrent
5 10 (0.21%) SAP ERP
6 8 (0.17%) Magento
7 7 (0.14%) Q-Pulse
7 7 (0.14%) Workday HCM
8 6 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.12%) Markit EDM
9 4 (0.083%) Dynamics GP
9 4 (0.083%) IBM Planning Analytics
9 4 (0.083%) Oracle EBS
9 4 (0.083%) SAP Business One
9 4 (0.083%) SAP FI
9 4 (0.083%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 1,008 (20.85%) Azure
2 852 (17.62%) Microsoft 365
3 462 (9.56%) AWS
4 304 (6.29%) Power Platform
5 232 (4.80%) Entra ID
6 231 (4.78%) SaaS
7 141 (2.92%) GCP
8 130 (2.69%) Azure DevOps
9 103 (2.13%) Serverless
10 101 (2.09%) GitHub
11 69 (1.43%) Dynamics 365
11 69 (1.43%) Power Automate
12 68 (1.41%) Azure Data Factory
13 59 (1.22%) Google Workspace
14 56 (1.16%) Amazon S3
14 56 (1.16%) AWS Lambda
14 56 (1.16%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 53 (1.10%) PaaS
16 51 (1.05%) GitHub Actions
17 45 (0.93%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 352 (7.28%) DNS
2 295 (6.10%) DHCP
3 283 (5.85%) Firewall
4 158 (3.27%) WAN
5 156 (3.23%) VPN
6 145 (3.00%) TCP/IP
7 136 (2.81%) Wi-Fi
8 129 (2.67%) LAN
9 110 (2.28%) Broadband
10 93 (1.92%) VLAN
11 77 (1.59%) Wireless
12 69 (1.43%) VoIP
13 54 (1.12%) Network Security
14 44 (0.91%) SD-WAN
15 42 (0.87%) Remote Desktop
16 35 (0.72%) Internet
17 29 (0.60%) SAN
18 27 (0.56%) Unified Communications
19 22 (0.46%) Wireshark
20 20 (0.41%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 251 (5.19%) Power BI
2 198 (4.10%) SQL Server
3 94 (1.94%) Amazon RDS
4 82 (1.70%) PostgreSQL
5 72 (1.49%) Relational Database
6 67 (1.39%) MySQL
6 67 (1.39%) NoSQL
7 65 (1.34%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 59 (1.22%) Data Warehouse
9 42 (0.87%) Tableau
10 41 (0.85%) Power Query
11 39 (0.81%) Azure SQL Database
12 36 (0.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 35 (0.72%) DynamoDB
14 30 (0.62%) MongoDB
15 25 (0.52%) Amazon Redshift
15 25 (0.52%) Elasticsearch
16 24 (0.50%) Metadata
17 22 (0.46%) Data Lake
18 20 (0.41%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 193 (3.99%) Git
2 163 (3.37%) JIRA
3 62 (1.28%) GitLab
4 46 (0.95%) Jenkins
5 31 (0.64%) Selenium
6 17 (0.35%) Rational DOORS
7 16 (0.33%) LabVIEW
7 16 (0.33%) Maven
8 15 (0.31%) Robot Framework
8 15 (0.31%) Visual Studio
9 14 (0.29%) Cypress.io
9 14 (0.29%) Snyk
10 13 (0.27%) Cucumber
11 12 (0.25%) SonarQube
12 11 (0.23%) JUnit
13 10 (0.21%) Burp Suite
13 10 (0.21%) Metasploit
14 9 (0.19%) Bitbucket
15 7 (0.14%) CircleCI
16 6 (0.12%) Mockito
General
1 2,455 (50.78%) Social Skills
2 1,354 (28.00%) Analytical Skills
3 899 (18.59%) Finance
4 341 (7.05%) Organisational Skills
5 265 (5.48%) Manufacturing
6 229 (4.74%) Public Sector
7 220 (4.55%) Retail
8 216 (4.47%) Marketing
9 195 (4.03%) Legal
10 194 (4.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 164 (3.39%) Law
12 126 (2.61%) Electronics
12 126 (2.61%) Telecoms
13 123 (2.54%) Banking
14 97 (2.01%) Presentation Skills
15 84 (1.74%) Documentation Skills
16 78 (1.61%) Games
17 66 (1.37%) Automotive
18 55 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
19 51 (1.05%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 735 (15.20%) Analyst
2 700 (14.48%) IT Support
3 597 (12.35%) Support Engineer
4 496 (10.26%) Senior
5 386 (7.98%) Developer
6 351 (7.26%) IT Engineer
7 298 (6.16%) IT Support Engineer
8 243 (5.03%) Support Analyst
9 237 (4.90%) Lead
10 198 (4.10%) Support Technician
11 180 (3.72%) Business Analyst
12 179 (3.70%) Technical Support
13 165 (3.41%) 2nd Line Support
14 162 (3.35%) Systems Engineer
15 156 (3.23%) IT Technician
16 152 (3.14%) Architect
17 143 (2.96%) Consultant
18 139 (2.87%) IT Support Technician
19 136 (2.81%) Technical Engineer
20 131 (2.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 161 (3.33%) .NET
2 150 (3.10%) React
3 147 (3.04%) HTML
4 111 (2.30%) CSS
5 83 (1.72%) Node.js
6 69 (1.43%) REST
7 57 (1.18%) RESTful
8 52 (1.08%) Vue
9 39 (0.81%) AngularJS
9 39 (0.81%) SOAP
10 38 (0.79%) Spring
11 37 (0.77%) ASP.NET
12 36 (0.74%) XML
13 35 (0.72%) OAuth
14 34 (0.70%) Django
14 34 (0.70%) JSON
14 34 (0.70%) Spring Boot
15 31 (0.64%) GraphQL
15 31 (0.64%) Laravel
16 28 (0.58%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 415 (8.58%) Driving Licence
2 313 (6.47%) Onboarding
3 286 (5.92%) Self-Motivation
4 164 (3.39%) Management Information System
5 126 (2.61%) Legacy Systems
6 114 (2.36%) Analytical Mindset
7 102 (2.11%) Product Ownership
8 86 (1.78%) Cloud Native
8 86 (1.78%) Data Centre
9 83 (1.72%) Social Media
10 67 (1.39%) Enterprise Software
11 59 (1.22%) Mobile App
12 57 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
13 49 (1.01%) Low-Code
14 41 (0.85%) Data Structures
15 39 (0.81%) EPoS
16 36 (0.74%) NHS
17 35 (0.72%) CCTV
17 35 (0.72%) IoT
18 34 (0.70%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 928 (19.19%) Windows
2 397 (8.21%) Windows Server
3 320 (6.62%) Linux
4 133 (2.75%) Windows 10
5 115 (2.38%) Windows Server 2016
6 108 (2.23%) Android
7 66 (1.37%) Apple iOS
8 57 (1.18%) Mac OS
9 38 (0.79%) Windows Server 2019
10 36 (0.74%) Unix
11 24 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 22 (0.46%) CentOS
12 22 (0.46%) Windows Server 2012
13 17 (0.35%) Ubuntu
13 17 (0.35%) Windows 7
14 11 (0.23%) Windows 8
15 10 (0.21%) VMS
16 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2008
17 8 (0.17%) Debian
18 3 (0.062%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 961 (19.88%) Continuous Improvement
2 889 (18.39%) Customer Service
3 651 (13.46%) Agile
4 471 (9.74%) Decision-Making
5 463 (9.58%) Mentoring
6 439 (9.08%) ITIL
7 402 (8.31%) Project Management
8 387 (8.00%) DevOps
9 382 (7.90%) CI/CD
10 349 (7.22%) Analytics
11 344 (7.11%) Business Intelligence
12 338 (6.99%) AI
13 309 (6.39%) Cybersecurity
14 305 (6.31%) Coaching
15 288 (5.96%) Computer Science
16 280 (5.79%) Stakeholder Management
17 279 (5.77%) Process Improvement
18 270 (5.58%) Service Delivery
19 269 (5.56%) CRM
20 268 (5.54%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 601 (12.43%) SQL
2 495 (10.24%) Python
3 287 (5.94%) JavaScript
4 233 (4.82%) PowerShell
5 184 (3.81%) C#
6 162 (3.35%) Java
7 89 (1.84%) TypeScript
8 75 (1.55%) Bash
9 68 (1.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 66 (1.37%) PHP
11 61 (1.26%) C++
12 46 (0.95%) C
13 42 (0.87%) T-SQL
14 28 (0.58%) PL/SQL
15 26 (0.54%) Kotlin
16 25 (0.52%) R
17 22 (0.46%) Go
18 20 (0.41%) Bicep
18 20 (0.41%) Scala
19 18 (0.37%) VBA
Qualifications
1 914 (18.90%) Degree
2 357 (7.38%) Security Cleared
3 238 (4.92%) SC Cleared
4 177 (3.66%) DBS Check
5 146 (3.02%) Microsoft Certification
6 127 (2.63%) Computer Science Degree
7 91 (1.88%) BPSS Clearance
8 78 (1.61%) ACCA
9 68 (1.41%) CIMA
10 66 (1.37%) A+ Certification
10 66 (1.37%) Cisco Certification
10 66 (1.37%) DV Cleared
11 57 (1.18%) CCNA
12 53 (1.10%) Master's Degree
13 51 (1.05%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 49 (1.01%) HNC
15 46 (0.95%) CISSP
16 43 (0.89%) AWS Certification
17 40 (0.83%) Network+ Certification
17 40 (0.83%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 243 (5.03%) QA
2 186 (3.85%) Data Quality
3 143 (2.96%) GDPR
4 141 (2.92%) Cyber Essentials
5 114 (2.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 103 (2.13%) PCI DSS
7 86 (1.78%) SLA
8 66 (1.37%) NIST
9 63 (1.30%) Accessibility
10 35 (0.72%) ISO 9001
11 29 (0.60%) Actionable Recommendations
12 24 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 14 (0.29%) GMP
13 14 (0.29%) SOC 2
14 9 (0.19%) PMO
15 8 (0.17%) ISO/IEC 20000
16 6 (0.12%) COBIT
16 6 (0.12%) GRC
17 5 (0.10%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 5 (0.10%) HIPAA
System Software
1 639 (13.22%) Active Directory
2 211 (4.36%) Hyper-V
3 185 (3.83%) Docker
4 134 (2.77%) VMware Infrastructure
5 72 (1.49%) Terminal Server
6 28 (0.58%) Firmware
7 21 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
9 14 (0.29%) vSphere
10 11 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.21%) KVM
11 10 (0.21%) VMware Workstation
12 6 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
12 6 (0.12%) XenApp
13 4 (0.083%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 3 (0.062%) Embedded Firmware
14 3 (0.062%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 2 (0.041%) VMware NSX
16 1 (0.021%) iptables
16 1 (0.021%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 206 (4.26%) Terraform
2 183 (3.78%) Microsoft Intune
3 131 (2.71%) Kubernetes
4 88 (1.82%) Ansible
5 63 (1.30%) SCCM
6 51 (1.05%) Grafana
7 33 (0.68%) Prometheus
8 22 (0.46%) BMC PATROL
9 19 (0.39%) Nagios
10 18 (0.37%) Single Sign-On
11 14 (0.29%) Autotask
11 14 (0.29%) Jamf Pro
12 13 (0.27%) Cisco CUCM
12 13 (0.27%) vCenter Server
13 11 (0.23%) ZABBIX
14 10 (0.21%) AWS Copilot
14 10 (0.21%) Nmap
15 9 (0.19%) FortiGate
16 8 (0.17%) HP Fortify
16 8 (0.17%) Puppet
Vendors
1 1,332 (27.55%) Microsoft
2 234 (4.84%) VMware
3 143 (2.96%) Oracle
4 131 (2.71%) Veeam
5 115 (2.38%) SAP
6 113 (2.34%) Google
7 109 (2.25%) Cisco
8 102 (2.11%) Splunk
9 100 (2.07%) SolarWinds
10 80 (1.65%) ServiceNow
11 73 (1.51%) Tanium
12 72 (1.49%) Brocade
12 72 (1.49%) Nimble Storage
13 71 (1.47%) Databricks
14 67 (1.39%) Adobe
14 67 (1.39%) Apple
15 59 (1.22%) Sage
15 59 (1.22%) Salesforce
16 48 (0.99%) Dell
17 41 (0.85%) HubSpot