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 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 7 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -4 +3 +3
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,165 7,110 4,718
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 12.49% 17.89% 16.53%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.36% 20.65% 17.62%
Number of salaries quoted 3,553 2,944 3,215
10th Percentile £26,000 £28,000 £26,250
25th Percentile £29,000 £36,250 £32,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £40,000 £50,000 £47,500
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £57,500 £67,500 £63,750
90th Percentile £71,250 £82,500 £75,000
UK median annual salary £45,497 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -17.28% - -

All Process and 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 33,630 34,424 26,769
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 81.31% 86.61% 93.79%
Number of salaries quoted 19,131 16,410 19,920
10th Percentile £27,500 £31,250 £28,500
25th Percentile £32,500 £41,000 £38,617
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £48,500 £54,793 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -11.49% +4.37% -2.51%
75th Percentile £65,000 £70,000 £67,500
90th Percentile £80,000 £82,500 £81,250
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -1.64%

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 December 2025.

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 December 2025. 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
South East -3 1,386 £41,000 -19.56% 2,151
North of England -14 1,299 £45,000 -5.26% 1,779
Midlands -13 922 £38,000 -24.00% 1,309
North West -11 716 £47,683 -1.36% 904
South West -1 574 £40,000 -27.27% 866
West Midlands -16 547 £42,500 -22.73% 665
Yorkshire -4 473 £38,000 -15.56% 709
East of England -3 441 £35,000 -31.33% 1,123
East Midlands +2 374 £32,500 -7.14% 583
Scotland -4 331 £33,500 -33.00% 351
Wales +5 176 £47,500 -5.00% 179
North East +2 110 £33,500 -33.00% 184
Northern Ireland +2 61 £55,000 +37.50% 126
Isle of Man +2 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
1 277 (5.36%) Microsoft Exchange
2 217 (4.20%) SharePoint
3 48 (0.93%) Confluence
4 44 (0.85%) IIS
5 25 (0.48%) WordPress
6 24 (0.46%) CMS
7 22 (0.43%) Apache
8 21 (0.41%) Apache Spark
9 11 (0.21%) Apache Airflow
10 7 (0.14%) nginx
11 6 (0.12%) Drupal
11 6 (0.12%) HCL Notes
12 5 (0.097%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 4 (0.077%) Apache Solr
13 4 (0.077%) ArcGIS
13 4 (0.077%) Camunda
13 4 (0.077%) Exchange Server 2013
13 4 (0.077%) SAS
14 3 (0.058%) Anypoint
14 3 (0.058%) HCL Domino
Applications
1 452 (8.75%) Microsoft Office
2 443 (8.58%) Microsoft Excel
3 63 (1.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 23 (0.45%) MS Visio
4 23 (0.45%) Spreadsheet
5 19 (0.37%) AutoCAD
6 15 (0.29%) Photoshop
7 13 (0.25%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 13 (0.25%) Microsoft Project
8 12 (0.23%) Adobe Illustrator
8 12 (0.23%) Simulink
8 12 (0.23%) SOLIDWORKS
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe Premiere
10 5 (0.097%) Adobe After Effects
10 5 (0.097%) Trello
11 4 (0.077%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.077%) Autodesk Inventor
11 4 (0.077%) CATIA
11 4 (0.077%) Oracle Smart View
11 4 (0.077%) Revit
Business Applications
1 89 (1.72%) SAP S/4HANA
2 58 (1.12%) Dynamics CRM
3 32 (0.62%) NetSuite
4 20 (0.39%) Oracle Payables
5 18 (0.35%) Oracle Receivables
6 16 (0.31%) Oracle Assets
7 15 (0.29%) SAP FI
8 14 (0.27%) SAP Business One
9 13 (0.25%) Sage X3
9 13 (0.25%) SAP CO
10 11 (0.21%) SAP FI/CO
10 11 (0.21%) Shopify
11 10 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
11 10 (0.19%) Oracle General Ledger
12 8 (0.15%) JDE EnterpriseOne
12 8 (0.15%) Oracle Financials
13 7 (0.14%) Infor CloudSuite Industrial (formerly SyteLine)
14 6 (0.12%) Sage 200
14 6 (0.12%) SAP WM
14 6 (0.12%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 1,094 (21.18%) Azure
2 804 (15.57%) Microsoft 365
3 391 (7.57%) AWS
4 363 (7.03%) Power Platform
5 281 (5.44%) SaaS
6 233 (4.51%) Entra ID
7 143 (2.77%) Azure DevOps
8 133 (2.58%) GCP
9 90 (1.74%) GitHub
10 71 (1.37%) Power Automate
11 65 (1.26%) Serverless
12 54 (1.05%) Azure Data Factory
13 53 (1.03%) Dynamics 365
14 42 (0.81%) PowerApps
15 41 (0.79%) OneDrive
16 40 (0.77%) PaaS
17 39 (0.76%) AWS CloudFormation
17 39 (0.76%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 38 (0.74%) Amazon S3
18 38 (0.74%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 343 (6.64%) DNS
2 297 (5.75%) DHCP
3 258 (5.00%) Firewall
4 159 (3.08%) TCP/IP
5 151 (2.92%) VPN
6 145 (2.81%) Wi-Fi
7 130 (2.52%) LAN
8 124 (2.40%) WAN
9 94 (1.82%) VLAN
10 85 (1.65%) Broadband
11 80 (1.55%) VoIP
12 60 (1.16%) Remote Desktop
12 60 (1.16%) Wireless
13 44 (0.85%) Network Security
14 37 (0.72%) SAN
15 32 (0.62%) Internet
16 31 (0.60%) Ethernet
17 26 (0.50%) Unified Communications
18 25 (0.48%) SD-WAN
19 16 (0.31%) LTE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 320 (6.20%) Power BI
2 238 (4.61%) SQL Server
3 112 (2.17%) Amazon RDS
4 102 (1.97%) Relational Database
5 99 (1.92%) MySQL
6 85 (1.65%) Data Lake
7 82 (1.59%) PostgreSQL
8 70 (1.36%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 64 (1.24%) SAP BW
10 59 (1.14%) Data Warehouse
11 45 (0.87%) Tableau
12 43 (0.83%) NoSQL
13 41 (0.79%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 37 (0.72%) Azure SQL Database
15 36 (0.70%) GIS
16 32 (0.62%) Oracle Reports
17 30 (0.58%) MongoDB
18 24 (0.46%) DynamoDB
18 24 (0.46%) Elasticsearch
18 24 (0.46%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 194 (3.76%) Git
2 172 (3.33%) JIRA
3 51 (0.99%) GitLab
4 41 (0.79%) Jenkins
5 29 (0.56%) Selenium
6 22 (0.43%) Visual Studio
7 19 (0.37%) Octopus Deploy
8 17 (0.33%) TeamCity
9 16 (0.31%) Bitbucket
10 15 (0.29%) Robot Framework
10 15 (0.29%) SonarQube
11 14 (0.27%) Snyk
12 11 (0.21%) Cypress.io
12 11 (0.21%) LabVIEW
13 9 (0.17%) Cucumber
13 9 (0.17%) Rational DOORS
14 8 (0.15%) JUnit
14 8 (0.15%) Maven
14 8 (0.15%) Oracle Forms
15 7 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 2,823 (54.66%) Social Skills
2 1,435 (27.78%) Analytical Skills
3 1,100 (21.30%) Finance
4 365 (7.07%) Retail
5 319 (6.18%) Manufacturing
6 299 (5.79%) Marketing
7 253 (4.90%) Organisational Skills
8 187 (3.62%) Law
9 186 (3.60%) Public Sector
10 168 (3.25%) Legal
11 148 (2.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 146 (2.83%) Telecoms
13 136 (2.63%) Electronics
14 105 (2.03%) Presentation Skills
15 93 (1.80%) Banking
16 88 (1.70%) Games
17 87 (1.68%) Automotive
18 64 (1.24%) Aerospace
19 63 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
20 62 (1.20%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 834 (16.15%) Analyst
2 659 (12.76%) IT Support
3 593 (11.48%) Senior
4 522 (10.11%) Support Engineer
5 377 (7.30%) Developer
6 353 (6.83%) Lead
7 326 (6.31%) Support Analyst
8 289 (5.60%) Technical Support
9 223 (4.32%) IT Engineer
10 205 (3.97%) 2nd Line Support
11 202 (3.91%) Technical Engineer
12 196 (3.79%) IT Support Engineer
13 187 (3.62%) Technical Support Engineer
14 185 (3.58%) Systems Engineer
15 184 (3.56%) Business Analyst
16 180 (3.48%) Support Technician
17 149 (2.88%) Applications Support
18 143 (2.77%) Consultant
19 135 (2.61%) Architect
19 135 (2.61%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 214 (4.14%) .NET
2 175 (3.39%) HTML
3 147 (2.85%) React
4 146 (2.83%) CSS
5 87 (1.68%) REST
6 76 (1.47%) RESTful
7 60 (1.16%) Node.js
8 58 (1.12%) JSON
9 56 (1.08%) ASP.NET
10 54 (1.05%) XML
11 45 (0.87%) AngularJS
12 42 (0.81%) SOAP
13 39 (0.76%) Django
14 36 (0.70%) .NET Framework
15 34 (0.66%) Spring
15 34 (0.66%) Vue
16 32 (0.62%) EDI
17 29 (0.56%) Oracle Fusion
18 26 (0.50%) .NET Core
19 25 (0.48%) Entity Framework
Miscellaneous
1 497 (9.62%) Driving Licence
2 414 (8.02%) Onboarding
3 307 (5.94%) Self-Motivation
4 177 (3.43%) Management Information System
5 164 (3.18%) Analytical Mindset
6 141 (2.73%) Legacy Systems
7 94 (1.82%) Product Ownership
8 89 (1.72%) Data Centre
9 82 (1.59%) FMCG
10 68 (1.32%) Virtual Team
11 64 (1.24%) Cloud Native
12 49 (0.95%) Enterprise Software
13 47 (0.91%) Operational Technology
14 46 (0.89%) e-Learning
15 38 (0.74%) EPoS
16 37 (0.72%) SCADA
16 37 (0.72%) Video Conferencing
17 36 (0.70%) Renewable Energy
18 35 (0.68%) IoT
18 35 (0.68%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 952 (18.43%) Windows
2 386 (7.47%) Windows Server
3 294 (5.69%) Linux
4 144 (2.79%) Windows 10
5 103 (1.99%) Windows Server 2016
6 67 (1.30%) Android
7 62 (1.20%) Mac OS
8 51 (0.99%) Apple iOS
9 31 (0.60%) Unix
10 29 (0.56%) Windows Server 2019
11 18 (0.35%) Windows 7
12 14 (0.27%) Windows Server 2012
13 11 (0.21%) VMS
14 9 (0.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
15 5 (0.097%) CentOS
15 5 (0.097%) Mac OS X
16 4 (0.077%) Ubuntu
16 4 (0.077%) Windows 8
16 4 (0.077%) Windows Server 2008
17 2 (0.039%) OpenWrt
Processes & Methodologies
1 974 (18.86%) Customer Service
2 937 (18.14%) Continuous Improvement
3 690 (13.36%) Agile
4 473 (9.16%) Analytics
4 473 (9.16%) Mentoring
5 471 (9.12%) Project Management
6 422 (8.17%) Decision-Making
7 421 (8.15%) Business Intelligence
8 413 (8.00%) ITIL
9 399 (7.73%) ERP
10 382 (7.40%) DevOps
11 352 (6.82%) Cybersecurity
12 325 (6.29%) Change Management
13 321 (6.21%) CI/CD
14 309 (5.98%) CRM
15 301 (5.83%) Process Improvement
16 300 (5.81%) Stakeholder Management
17 281 (5.44%) Data Analysis
18 277 (5.36%) AI
19 271 (5.25%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 782 (15.14%) SQL
2 428 (8.29%) Python
3 271 (5.25%) JavaScript
4 269 (5.21%) C#
5 263 (5.09%) PowerShell
6 141 (2.73%) Java
7 79 (1.53%) PHP
8 78 (1.51%) C++
9 57 (1.10%) TypeScript
10 51 (0.99%) Bash
10 51 (0.99%) T-SQL
11 48 (0.93%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 36 (0.70%) C
13 26 (0.50%) MATLAB
14 25 (0.48%) VBA
15 19 (0.37%) Go
15 19 (0.37%) R
16 17 (0.33%) Kusto Query Language
16 17 (0.33%) Perl
17 16 (0.31%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 1,177 (22.79%) Degree
2 405 (7.84%) Security Cleared
3 280 (5.42%) SC Cleared
4 152 (2.94%) Microsoft Certification
5 135 (2.61%) Computer Science Degree
6 118 (2.28%) DBS Check
7 101 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
8 98 (1.90%) Master's Degree
9 83 (1.61%) Cisco Certification
9 83 (1.61%) DV Cleared
10 73 (1.41%) HND
11 64 (1.24%) ACCA
11 64 (1.24%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 57 (1.10%) CCNA
13 56 (1.08%) CIMA
14 54 (1.05%) A+ Certification
15 52 (1.01%) HNC
16 48 (0.93%) Network+ Certification
17 39 (0.76%) AWS Certification
18 35 (0.68%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 239 (4.63%) QA
2 213 (4.12%) Data Quality
3 152 (2.94%) Cyber Essentials
4 141 (2.73%) GDPR
5 107 (2.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 106 (2.05%) PCI DSS
7 84 (1.63%) SLA
8 80 (1.55%) Accessibility
9 45 (0.87%) NIST
10 31 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 28 (0.54%) ISO 9001
12 18 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
13 17 (0.33%) PMO
14 8 (0.15%) ISO 13485
15 7 (0.14%) HIPAA
15 7 (0.14%) Software Quality Assurance
15 7 (0.14%) WCAG
16 6 (0.12%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 6 (0.12%) SOC 2
17 5 (0.097%) GRC
System Software
1 635 (12.29%) Active Directory
2 211 (4.09%) Hyper-V
3 181 (3.50%) Docker
4 111 (2.15%) VMware Infrastructure
5 88 (1.70%) Terminal Server
6 48 (0.93%) Firmware
7 24 (0.46%) Virtual Machines
8 22 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
9 17 (0.33%) vSphere
10 15 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
11 11 (0.21%) Embedded Firmware
12 6 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.077%) KVM
14 3 (0.058%) VMware Workstation
15 2 (0.039%) RHEV
15 2 (0.039%) Terminal Services
15 2 (0.039%) Xen
15 2 (0.039%) XenApp
16 1 (0.019%) HDFS
16 1 (0.019%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 210 (4.07%) Microsoft Intune
2 179 (3.47%) Terraform
3 126 (2.44%) Kubernetes
4 65 (1.26%) Ansible
5 42 (0.81%) BMC PATROL
6 41 (0.79%) SCCM
7 38 (0.74%) Grafana
8 28 (0.54%) Prometheus
9 17 (0.33%) Single Sign-On
10 14 (0.27%) vCenter Server
11 13 (0.25%) Jamf Pro
12 12 (0.23%) Nagios
13 10 (0.19%) AWS Copilot
13 10 (0.19%) Cisco CUCM
13 10 (0.19%) ZABBIX
14 8 (0.15%) FortiGate
15 7 (0.14%) PaperCut
15 7 (0.14%) QRadar
16 5 (0.097%) Control-M
16 5 (0.097%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 1,411 (27.32%) Microsoft
2 329 (6.37%) SAP
3 231 (4.47%) VMware
4 170 (3.29%) Cisco
5 164 (3.18%) Oracle
6 136 (2.63%) Veeam
7 108 (2.09%) SolarWinds
8 106 (2.05%) Splunk
9 104 (2.01%) Google
10 92 (1.78%) ServiceNow
11 91 (1.76%) Salesforce
12 90 (1.74%) Tanium
13 88 (1.70%) Brocade
13 88 (1.70%) Nimble Storage
14 71 (1.37%) Sage
15 62 (1.20%) Apple
15 62 (1.20%) BT
16 59 (1.14%) Databricks
17 55 (1.06%) Adobe
18 44 (0.85%) HubSpot