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 2 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 4 4
Rank change year-on-year -5 0 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,807 6,537 8,509
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 8.46% 18.80% 14.62%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.04% 21.72% 18.67%
Number of salaries quoted 4,839 3,612 3,979
10th Percentile £27,000 £25,750 £25,750
25th Percentile £31,250 £29,250 £32,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £40,000 £47,500
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -15.79% -2.76%
75th Percentile £58,750 £58,750 £62,500
90th Percentile £73,750 £72,500 £77,500
UK median annual salary £47,500 £45,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +5.56% -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 56,554 30,097 45,577
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.27% 86.58% 78.29%
Number of salaries quoted 40,111 16,505 26,975
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,500 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £38,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £47,500 £51,000
Median % change year-on-year +15.79% -6.86% -6.58%
75th Percentile £70,000 £65,000 £65,250
90th Percentile £87,500 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £56,075
% change year-on-year +9.09% -1.92% -6.54%

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 2 September 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 2 September 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 -8 1,713 £45,000 +7.14% 1,454
South East -4 1,618 £42,500 - 1,484
Midlands -7 1,237 £42,500 +11.11% 1,015
North West -5 888 £45,625 +0.27% 824
South West -4 843 £45,000 +25.00% 890
West Midlands -9 693 £42,500 -0.28% 637
East of England -4 690 £42,500 +21.43% 708
Yorkshire -8 557 £42,500 +21.43% 449
East Midlands -9 542 £41,000 +17.14% 380
Scotland +2 307 £33,500 -32.18% 566
North East -4 268 £48,250 +25.32% 206
Northern Ireland 0 223 £65,000 +10.17% 441
Wales -19 189 £43,000 -10.64% 164
Isle of Man -1 3 £35,000 +1.45% 7
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
1 411 (6.04%) SharePoint
2 346 (5.08%) Microsoft Exchange
3 63 (0.93%) Confluence
4 61 (0.90%) CMS
5 53 (0.78%) IIS
6 31 (0.46%) WordPress
7 30 (0.44%) Apache
8 27 (0.40%) Sitecore CMS
9 26 (0.38%) Apache Airflow
10 16 (0.24%) Apache Spark
11 15 (0.22%) SAS
12 10 (0.15%) WebSphere
13 9 (0.13%) nginx
13 9 (0.13%) WebLogic
14 8 (0.12%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.10%) OpenEdge
15 7 (0.10%) Oracle Workflow
16 5 (0.073%) CICS
16 5 (0.073%) Skype for Business
17 4 (0.059%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 445 (6.54%) Microsoft Office
2 428 (6.29%) Microsoft Excel
3 58 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 51 (0.75%) Spreadsheet
5 37 (0.54%) MS Visio
6 33 (0.48%) Microsoft Project
7 27 (0.40%) Simulink
8 25 (0.37%) AutoCAD
9 17 (0.25%) Revit
10 8 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 8 (0.12%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.12%) EPLAN
11 7 (0.10%) Adobe Illustrator
11 7 (0.10%) Fusion 360
12 6 (0.088%) Adobe XD
12 6 (0.088%) Navisworks
12 6 (0.088%) Sketch
12 6 (0.088%) SOLIDWORKS
13 5 (0.073%) Lightworks
14 4 (0.059%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 73 (1.07%) Dynamics CRM
2 54 (0.79%) NetSuite
3 50 (0.73%) SAP S/4HANA
4 30 (0.44%) Shopify
5 18 (0.26%) Dynamics NAV
6 17 (0.25%) Magento
6 17 (0.25%) SAP Business One
7 16 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
8 15 (0.22%) IBM Planning Analytics
8 15 (0.22%) SAP ERP
8 15 (0.22%) Workday HCM
9 12 (0.18%) Dynamics AX
9 12 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
10 10 (0.15%) JDE EnterpriseOne
10 10 (0.15%) Sage X3
11 9 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
11 9 (0.13%) Sage 50
12 8 (0.12%) Primavera
13 7 (0.10%) NEC Housing
13 7 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,353 (19.88%) Azure
2 1,163 (17.09%) Microsoft 365
3 681 (10.00%) AWS
4 562 (8.26%) Power Platform
5 352 (5.17%) Entra ID
6 242 (3.56%) SaaS
7 229 (3.36%) GCP
8 170 (2.50%) Azure DevOps
9 148 (2.17%) PowerApps
10 144 (2.12%) Dynamics 365
11 134 (1.97%) GitHub
12 130 (1.91%) Power Automate
13 123 (1.81%) Serverless
14 87 (1.28%) OneDrive
15 84 (1.23%) Microsoft Copilot
16 59 (0.87%) Amazon S3
16 59 (0.87%) GitHub Actions
17 56 (0.82%) AWS CloudFormation
17 56 (0.82%) Google Workspace
18 54 (0.79%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 432 (6.35%) Firewall
2 415 (6.10%) DNS
3 355 (5.22%) DHCP
4 261 (3.83%) VPN
5 232 (3.41%) TCP/IP
6 191 (2.81%) WAN
7 180 (2.64%) LAN
8 177 (2.60%) Wi-Fi
9 164 (2.41%) Wireless
10 140 (2.06%) VLAN
11 118 (1.73%) Network Security
12 110 (1.62%) VoIP
13 79 (1.16%) Broadband
14 47 (0.69%) Internet
15 31 (0.46%) SSL
16 27 (0.40%) HTTP
17 26 (0.38%) SAN
17 26 (0.38%) SD-WAN
18 23 (0.34%) MQTT
19 21 (0.31%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 448 (6.58%) Power BI
2 325 (4.77%) SQL Server
3 133 (1.95%) MySQL
4 127 (1.87%) Amazon RDS
5 113 (1.66%) Relational Database
6 102 (1.50%) Data Warehouse
7 90 (1.32%) PostgreSQL
8 80 (1.18%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 79 (1.16%) NoSQL
10 69 (1.01%) Tableau
11 60 (0.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 49 (0.72%) MongoDB
13 47 (0.69%) Electronic Patient Records
14 46 (0.68%) Big Data
15 44 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
15 44 (0.65%) Power Query
16 43 (0.63%) Data Lake
17 29 (0.43%) DynamoDB
18 28 (0.41%) Metadata
19 26 (0.38%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 291 (4.28%) Git
2 227 (3.33%) JIRA
3 77 (1.13%) GitLab
4 73 (1.07%) Jenkins
5 36 (0.53%) Eclipse
6 33 (0.48%) Subversion
7 29 (0.43%) Selenium
8 28 (0.41%) Cucumber
9 26 (0.38%) JUnit
10 24 (0.35%) Claude Code
10 24 (0.35%) Rational DOORS
11 21 (0.31%) Oracle Forms
11 21 (0.31%) Postman
12 20 (0.29%) Bitbucket
13 18 (0.26%) Cypress.io
14 14 (0.21%) SonarQube
15 13 (0.19%) Burp Suite
16 12 (0.18%) LabVIEW
16 12 (0.18%) Visual Studio
17 11 (0.16%) Metasploit
General
1 3,299 (48.46%) Social Skills
2 1,897 (27.87%) Analytical Skills
3 1,079 (15.85%) Finance
4 643 (9.45%) Manufacturing
5 441 (6.48%) Organisational Skills
6 381 (5.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 321 (4.72%) Law
8 304 (4.47%) Public Sector
9 297 (4.36%) Retail
10 289 (4.25%) Legal
11 253 (3.72%) Marketing
12 239 (3.51%) Electronics
13 226 (3.32%) Aerospace
14 154 (2.26%) Telecoms
15 141 (2.07%) Influencing Skills
16 133 (1.95%) Banking
17 106 (1.56%) Documentation Skills
18 83 (1.22%) Automotive
19 78 (1.15%) Military
20 75 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 897 (13.18%) Analyst
2 725 (10.65%) Senior
3 696 (10.22%) Developer
4 687 (10.09%) IT Support
5 553 (8.12%) Support Engineer
6 377 (5.54%) Lead
7 369 (5.42%) IT Engineer
8 338 (4.97%) Support Analyst
9 315 (4.63%) Consultant
10 277 (4.07%) IT Support Engineer
11 260 (3.82%) Support Technician
11 260 (3.82%) Technical Support
12 240 (3.53%) Systems Engineer
13 226 (3.32%) Architect
14 224 (3.29%) IT Technician
15 222 (3.26%) Software Engineer
15 222 (3.26%) Technical Engineer
16 199 (2.92%) Technical Support Engineer
17 194 (2.85%) Senior Developer
18 177 (2.60%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 350 (5.14%) .NET
2 266 (3.91%) Terraform
3 214 (3.14%) React
4 195 (2.86%) REST
5 192 (2.82%) HTML
6 141 (2.07%) CSS
7 127 (1.87%) RESTful
8 96 (1.41%) SOAP
9 94 (1.38%) Node.js
10 81 (1.19%) ASP.NET
10 81 (1.19%) Vue
11 80 (1.18%) Web Services
12 79 (1.16%) Middleware
13 78 (1.15%) XML
14 77 (1.13%) AngularJS
15 74 (1.09%) JSON
16 71 (1.04%) Spring
17 64 (0.94%) Spring Boot
18 54 (0.79%) OAuth
19 52 (0.76%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 560 (8.23%) Driving Licence
2 445 (6.54%) Onboarding
3 345 (5.07%) Self-Motivation
4 305 (4.48%) Management Information System
5 191 (2.81%) Cloud Native
6 173 (2.54%) Product Ownership
7 155 (2.28%) Legacy Systems
8 121 (1.78%) Enterprise Software
9 117 (1.72%) Data Centre
10 92 (1.35%) Analytical Mindset
11 87 (1.28%) Distributed Systems
12 85 (1.25%) NHS
12 85 (1.25%) Robotics
13 82 (1.20%) Security Posture
14 74 (1.09%) Cyber Threat
15 70 (1.03%) Virtual Team
16 68 (1.00%) Mobile App
17 67 (0.98%) Social Media
18 62 (0.91%) IoT
19 61 (0.90%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 1,113 (16.35%) Windows
2 511 (7.51%) Windows Server
3 462 (6.79%) Linux
4 129 (1.90%) Windows 10
5 109 (1.60%) Windows Server 2016
6 84 (1.23%) Android
6 84 (1.23%) Apple iOS
7 76 (1.12%) Mac OS
8 43 (0.63%) Unix
9 40 (0.59%) Windows Server 2019
10 29 (0.43%) Ubuntu
11 18 (0.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 18 (0.26%) VMS
12 15 (0.22%) Debian
13 12 (0.18%) CentOS
14 10 (0.15%) Embedded Linux
15 9 (0.13%) FreeRTOS
16 7 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
17 6 (0.088%) Rocky
18 5 (0.073%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,831 (26.90%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,247 (18.32%) Customer Service
3 1,027 (15.09%) Agile
4 770 (11.31%) Decision-Making
5 702 (10.31%) Mentoring
6 695 (10.21%) CI/CD
7 672 (9.87%) AI
8 647 (9.50%) Stakeholder Management
9 580 (8.52%) DevOps
10 569 (8.36%) Analytics
11 562 (8.26%) ITIL
11 562 (8.26%) Project Delivery
12 558 (8.20%) Software Engineering
13 539 (7.92%) Cybersecurity
14 538 (7.90%) Collaborative Working
15 513 (7.54%) ERP
16 481 (7.07%) Business Intelligence
17 460 (6.76%) Project Management
18 430 (6.32%) CRM
19 403 (5.92%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 1,038 (15.25%) SQL
2 727 (10.68%) Python
3 435 (6.39%) JavaScript
4 432 (6.35%) C#
5 302 (4.44%) Java
6 283 (4.16%) PowerShell
7 191 (2.81%) TypeScript
8 187 (2.75%) C++
9 123 (1.81%) Bash
10 74 (1.09%) C
11 73 (1.07%) PHP
12 60 (0.88%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 55 (0.81%) T-SQL
14 46 (0.68%) Shell Script
15 45 (0.66%) Ruby
16 43 (0.63%) Perl
17 39 (0.57%) PL/SQL
18 38 (0.56%) Rust
19 37 (0.54%) Go
20 34 (0.50%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 1,072 (15.75%) Degree
2 640 (9.40%) Security Cleared
3 452 (6.64%) SC Cleared
4 209 (3.07%) DBS Check
5 197 (2.89%) Computer Science Degree
6 181 (2.66%) Microsoft Certification
7 174 (2.56%) DV Cleared
8 149 (2.19%) BPSS Clearance
9 138 (2.03%) HNC
10 124 (1.82%) Azure Certification
11 120 (1.76%) HND
12 92 (1.35%) Cisco Certification
13 79 (1.16%) PMI Certification
14 75 (1.10%) CISSP
15 70 (1.03%) Chartered Engineer
16 63 (0.93%) Master's Degree
17 61 (0.90%) A+ Certification
17 61 (0.90%) CCNA
18 58 (0.85%) PMP
19 49 (0.72%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 454 (6.67%) QA
2 272 (4.00%) Data Quality
3 208 (3.06%) GDPR
4 174 (2.56%) Cyber Essentials
5 170 (2.50%) Accessibility
6 164 (2.41%) SLA
7 134 (1.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 114 (1.67%) PCI DSS
9 97 (1.43%) NIST
10 36 (0.53%) ISO 9001
11 33 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 32 (0.47%) PMO
13 19 (0.28%) GMP
14 18 (0.26%) Good Clinical Practice
15 15 (0.22%) GRC
15 15 (0.22%) NCSC
16 14 (0.21%) DO-254
17 13 (0.19%) GxP
18 12 (0.18%) TickIT
18 12 (0.18%) WCAG
System Software
1 775 (11.39%) Active Directory
2 292 (4.29%) Hyper-V
3 254 (3.73%) Docker
4 208 (3.06%) VMware Infrastructure
5 80 (1.18%) Terminal Server
6 70 (1.03%) Firmware
7 37 (0.54%) Virtual Desktop
8 30 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
9 28 (0.41%) vSphere
10 24 (0.35%) Embedded Firmware
11 15 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
12 7 (0.10%) KVM
13 6 (0.088%) Virtual Servers
14 5 (0.073%) ClearTrust
14 5 (0.073%) Squid
15 4 (0.059%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 4 (0.059%) XenApp
16 3 (0.044%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 3 (0.044%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.044%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 236 (3.47%) Microsoft Intune
2 221 (3.25%) Kubernetes
3 107 (1.57%) Ansible
4 57 (0.84%) Grafana
5 56 (0.82%) SCCM
6 42 (0.62%) Single Sign-On
7 40 (0.59%) Prometheus
8 22 (0.32%) FortiGate
9 19 (0.28%) Jamf Pro
10 17 (0.25%) Puppet
11 14 (0.21%) BMC PATROL
11 14 (0.21%) Functional Safety
12 11 (0.16%) Kibana
12 11 (0.16%) Nagios
12 11 (0.16%) Nmap
13 10 (0.15%) logstash
13 10 (0.15%) Podman
13 10 (0.15%) Proxmox
14 9 (0.13%) Failover Clustering
14 9 (0.13%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 2,070 (30.41%) Microsoft
2 337 (4.95%) VMware
3 191 (2.81%) SAP
4 180 (2.64%) Google
5 165 (2.42%) Oracle
6 141 (2.07%) Veeam
7 135 (1.98%) Cisco
8 124 (1.82%) Splunk
9 116 (1.70%) ServiceNow
10 111 (1.63%) Workday
11 101 (1.48%) SolarWinds
12 96 (1.41%) Salesforce
13 88 (1.29%) Tanium
14 81 (1.19%) Nimble Storage
15 80 (1.18%) Brocade
16 79 (1.16%) Databricks
17 77 (1.13%) Sage
18 69 (1.01%) Fortinet
19 57 (0.84%) Apple
20 56 (0.82%) SonicWALL