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 23 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -4 +3 +3
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,024 6,668 6,532
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 11.41% 18.75% 15.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.66% 20.94% 18.07%
Number of salaries quoted 3,482 2,704 4,397
10th Percentile £26,000 £28,500 £25,970
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 £57,208 £67,500 £62,500
90th Percentile £71,250 £82,500 £73,750
UK median annual salary £45,000 £55,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year -18.18% +4.76% -8.70%

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 34,259 31,841 36,147
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 77.78% 89.53% 87.75%
Number of salaries quoted 19,837 14,228 27,331
10th Percentile £28,000 £31,250 £27,500
25th Percentile £34,000 £41,250 £37,000
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 £80,000 £83,750 £80,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year -8.33% +4.35% -8.00%

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 23 January 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 23 January 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
South East -3 1,337 £41,000 -19.56% 1,542
North of England -16 1,268 £45,000 -5.26% 952
Midlands -15 879 £38,000 -24.00% 724
North West -13 702 £47,500 -5.00% 422
South West -1 577 £40,000 -27.27% 682
West Midlands -17 515 £42,500 -22.73% 326
Yorkshire -4 439 £35,750 -17.82% 384
East of England -5 423 £35,000 -31.33% 695
East Midlands +1 363 £34,000 -6.85% 387
Scotland -3 354 £33,500 -34.95% 177
Wales +5 141 £45,000 -11.76% 203
North East -4 127 £37,081 -25.84% 157
Northern Ireland -1 67 £45,250 -37.59% 93
Isle of Man +1 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
1 277 (5.51%) Microsoft Exchange
2 215 (4.28%) SharePoint
3 48 (0.96%) IIS
4 46 (0.92%) Confluence
5 23 (0.46%) Apache
5 23 (0.46%) CMS
5 23 (0.46%) WordPress
6 21 (0.42%) Apache Spark
7 15 (0.30%) Apache Airflow
8 8 (0.16%) nginx
8 8 (0.16%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 6 (0.12%) Drupal
9 6 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2013
9 6 (0.12%) HCL Notes
10 5 (0.100%) SAS
11 4 (0.080%) Apache Solr
11 4 (0.080%) ArcGIS
11 4 (0.080%) Exchange Server 2007
11 4 (0.080%) Exchange Server 2010
12 3 (0.060%) WebSphere
Applications
1 402 (8.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 397 (7.90%) Microsoft Office
3 68 (1.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 31 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
5 27 (0.54%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.38%) AutoCAD
7 15 (0.30%) Microsoft Project
8 14 (0.28%) Photoshop
9 12 (0.24%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 11 (0.22%) SOLIDWORKS
11 10 (0.20%) Adobe Illustrator
12 9 (0.18%) Adobe Premiere
13 5 (0.100%) Adobe After Effects
13 5 (0.100%) Simulink
14 4 (0.080%) CATIA
14 4 (0.080%) Fusion 360
14 4 (0.080%) Oracle Smart View
14 4 (0.080%) Trello
15 3 (0.060%) Adobe XD
15 3 (0.060%) Autodesk Inventor
Business Applications
1 91 (1.81%) SAP S/4HANA
2 56 (1.11%) Dynamics CRM
3 24 (0.48%) NetSuite
4 19 (0.38%) SAP CO
5 18 (0.36%) Oracle Payables
6 16 (0.32%) Oracle Assets
6 16 (0.32%) Oracle Receivables
7 13 (0.26%) Sage X3
7 13 (0.26%) SAP FI
8 11 (0.22%) SAP FI/CO
9 10 (0.20%) Dynamics NAV
9 10 (0.20%) iTrent
9 10 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
10 9 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
10 9 (0.18%) SAP Business One
11 8 (0.16%) JDE EnterpriseOne
11 8 (0.16%) Oracle Financials
12 7 (0.14%) Shopify
13 6 (0.12%) Markit EDM
13 6 (0.12%) Sage 200
Cloud Services
1 1,095 (21.80%) Azure
2 810 (16.12%) Microsoft 365
3 418 (8.32%) AWS
4 355 (7.07%) Power Platform
5 273 (5.43%) SaaS
6 224 (4.46%) Entra ID
7 144 (2.87%) Azure DevOps
8 116 (2.31%) GCP
9 103 (2.05%) GitHub
10 82 (1.63%) Serverless
11 71 (1.41%) Power Automate
12 53 (1.05%) Azure Data Factory
13 52 (1.04%) Amazon S3
13 52 (1.04%) AWS Lambda
13 52 (1.04%) Dynamics 365
14 45 (0.90%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 44 (0.88%) AWS CloudFormation
16 43 (0.86%) GitHub Actions
17 41 (0.82%) OneDrive
17 41 (0.82%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 374 (7.44%) DNS
2 324 (6.45%) DHCP
3 252 (5.02%) Firewall
4 154 (3.07%) TCP/IP
5 149 (2.97%) VPN
6 145 (2.89%) Wi-Fi
7 124 (2.47%) WAN
8 113 (2.25%) LAN
9 94 (1.87%) VLAN
10 85 (1.69%) VoIP
11 83 (1.65%) Broadband
12 69 (1.37%) Wireless
13 57 (1.13%) Remote Desktop
14 48 (0.96%) Network Security
15 39 (0.78%) Internet
16 34 (0.68%) SAN
17 32 (0.64%) SD-WAN
18 31 (0.62%) Unified Communications
19 24 (0.48%) Ethernet
20 21 (0.42%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 304 (6.05%) Power BI
2 218 (4.34%) SQL Server
3 119 (2.37%) Amazon RDS
4 93 (1.85%) Relational Database
5 84 (1.67%) PostgreSQL
6 82 (1.63%) MySQL
7 81 (1.61%) Data Lake
8 64 (1.27%) SAP BW
9 63 (1.25%) NoSQL
9 63 (1.25%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 61 (1.21%) Data Warehouse
11 41 (0.82%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 39 (0.78%) Tableau
13 36 (0.72%) Azure SQL Database
14 31 (0.62%) Amazon Redshift
14 31 (0.62%) DynamoDB
15 30 (0.60%) Metadata
16 29 (0.58%) GIS
16 29 (0.58%) MongoDB
17 26 (0.52%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 181 (3.60%) Git
2 162 (3.22%) JIRA
3 52 (1.04%) GitLab
4 44 (0.88%) Jenkins
5 31 (0.62%) Selenium
6 18 (0.36%) Visual Studio
7 16 (0.32%) LabVIEW
8 15 (0.30%) Robot Framework
9 14 (0.28%) Bitbucket
9 14 (0.28%) Maven
9 14 (0.28%) Snyk
9 14 (0.28%) SonarQube
10 12 (0.24%) JUnit
11 11 (0.22%) Cucumber
11 11 (0.22%) TeamCity
12 10 (0.20%) Burp Suite
12 10 (0.20%) Cypress.io
12 10 (0.20%) Metasploit
12 10 (0.20%) Octopus Deploy
13 9 (0.18%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,689 (53.52%) Social Skills
2 1,392 (27.71%) Analytical Skills
3 1,056 (21.02%) Finance
4 322 (6.41%) Manufacturing
5 297 (5.91%) Retail
6 268 (5.33%) Organisational Skills
7 249 (4.96%) Marketing
8 205 (4.08%) Public Sector
9 179 (3.56%) Legal
10 163 (3.24%) Law
11 151 (3.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 137 (2.73%) Telecoms
13 125 (2.49%) Electronics
14 114 (2.27%) Banking
15 110 (2.19%) Presentation Skills
16 81 (1.61%) Automotive
17 76 (1.51%) Games
18 68 (1.35%) Documentation Skills
19 62 (1.23%) Aerospace
20 59 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 876 (17.44%) Analyst
2 677 (13.48%) IT Support
3 575 (11.45%) Senior
4 548 (10.91%) Support Engineer
5 382 (7.60%) Developer
6 328 (6.53%) Lead
7 311 (6.19%) Support Analyst
8 275 (5.47%) IT Engineer
9 256 (5.10%) Technical Support
10 239 (4.76%) IT Support Engineer
11 212 (4.22%) Business Analyst
12 174 (3.46%) 2nd Line Support
13 170 (3.38%) Technical Engineer
14 165 (3.28%) Support Technician
15 164 (3.26%) Systems Engineer
16 157 (3.13%) Technical Support Engineer
17 140 (2.79%) IT Analyst
18 137 (2.73%) Architect
19 130 (2.59%) Applications Support
20 126 (2.51%) Trainee
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 201 (4.00%) .NET
2 162 (3.22%) HTML
3 156 (3.11%) React
4 129 (2.57%) CSS
5 94 (1.87%) REST
6 62 (1.23%) RESTful
7 60 (1.19%) Node.js
8 52 (1.04%) SOAP
9 50 (1.00%) AngularJS
10 49 (0.98%) ASP.NET
11 48 (0.96%) JSON
12 45 (0.90%) Vue
13 43 (0.86%) XML
14 38 (0.76%) Spring
15 37 (0.74%) Django
16 36 (0.72%) .NET Framework
17 33 (0.66%) EDI
18 27 (0.54%) Spring Boot
19 25 (0.50%) Laravel
19 25 (0.50%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 495 (9.85%) Driving Licence
2 394 (7.84%) Onboarding
3 316 (6.29%) Self-Motivation
4 171 (3.40%) Management Information System
5 159 (3.16%) Analytical Mindset
6 151 (3.01%) Legacy Systems
7 104 (2.07%) Product Ownership
8 99 (1.97%) Data Centre
9 77 (1.53%) Cloud Native
10 61 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
11 48 (0.96%) FMCG
12 47 (0.94%) Virtual Team
13 45 (0.90%) Social Media
14 43 (0.86%) Mobile App
15 41 (0.82%) EPoS
16 38 (0.76%) e-Learning
17 35 (0.70%) Data Structures
17 35 (0.70%) Distributed Systems
17 35 (0.70%) Video Conferencing
18 34 (0.68%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 941 (18.73%) Windows
2 406 (8.08%) Windows Server
3 325 (6.47%) Linux
4 122 (2.43%) Windows Server 2016
5 120 (2.39%) Windows 10
6 73 (1.45%) Android
7 59 (1.17%) Mac OS
8 56 (1.11%) Apple iOS
9 38 (0.76%) Unix
10 34 (0.68%) Windows Server 2019
11 23 (0.46%) Windows Server 2012
12 15 (0.30%) Windows 7
13 13 (0.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 13 (0.26%) VMS
14 9 (0.18%) CentOS
15 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
16 5 (0.100%) Windows 8
17 4 (0.080%) Ubuntu
18 3 (0.060%) Debian
19 2 (0.040%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 919 (18.29%) Customer Service
2 912 (18.15%) Continuous Improvement
3 666 (13.26%) Agile
4 484 (9.63%) Project Management
5 451 (8.98%) Mentoring
6 438 (8.72%) Decision-Making
7 435 (8.66%) Analytics
8 414 (8.24%) Business Intelligence
9 390 (7.76%) ITIL
10 377 (7.50%) ERP
11 372 (7.40%) DevOps
12 344 (6.85%) Change Management
13 320 (6.37%) CI/CD
14 308 (6.13%) Computer Science
15 305 (6.07%) Cybersecurity
16 303 (6.03%) CRM
16 303 (6.03%) Stakeholder Management
17 301 (5.99%) AI
18 286 (5.69%) Process Improvement
19 262 (5.21%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 739 (14.71%) SQL
2 479 (9.53%) Python
3 274 (5.45%) JavaScript
4 260 (5.18%) PowerShell
5 252 (5.02%) C#
6 167 (3.32%) Java
7 80 (1.59%) PHP
8 70 (1.39%) TypeScript
9 64 (1.27%) C++
10 57 (1.13%) Bash
11 50 (1.00%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 47 (0.94%) T-SQL
13 40 (0.80%) C
14 26 (0.52%) MATLAB
15 21 (0.42%) PL/SQL
16 19 (0.38%) Go
16 19 (0.38%) Perl
17 18 (0.36%) Bicep
18 16 (0.32%) R
18 16 (0.32%) VBA
Qualifications
1 1,154 (22.97%) Degree
2 423 (8.42%) Security Cleared
3 286 (5.69%) SC Cleared
4 174 (3.46%) DBS Check
5 148 (2.95%) Microsoft Certification
6 138 (2.75%) Computer Science Degree
7 107 (2.13%) BPSS Clearance
8 75 (1.49%) DV Cleared
9 74 (1.47%) Master's Degree
10 68 (1.35%) Cisco Certification
11 62 (1.23%) A+ Certification
12 59 (1.17%) HND
13 56 (1.11%) ACCA
14 55 (1.09%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 48 (0.96%) CCNA
15 48 (0.96%) CIMA
15 48 (0.96%) Network+ Certification
16 43 (0.86%) AWS Certification
17 41 (0.82%) HNC
18 36 (0.72%) MCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 266 (5.29%) QA
2 235 (4.68%) Data Quality
3 163 (3.24%) Cyber Essentials
4 130 (2.59%) GDPR
5 117 (2.33%) PCI DSS
6 102 (2.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 83 (1.65%) Accessibility
8 72 (1.43%) SLA
9 41 (0.82%) NIST
10 32 (0.64%) ISO 9001
11 27 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 24 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
13 17 (0.34%) PMO
14 9 (0.18%) ISO 13485
15 7 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 20000
16 6 (0.12%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 6 (0.12%) SOC 2
16 6 (0.12%) WCAG
17 5 (0.100%) GLBA
18 4 (0.080%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 647 (12.88%) Active Directory
2 226 (4.50%) Hyper-V
3 163 (3.24%) Docker
4 109 (2.17%) VMware Infrastructure
5 96 (1.91%) Terminal Server
6 30 (0.60%) Firmware
7 25 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
8 17 (0.34%) vSphere
9 14 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
10 7 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
11 6 (0.12%) KVM
12 5 (0.100%) Embedded Firmware
13 4 (0.080%) VMware Workstation
14 3 (0.060%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 2 (0.040%) RHEV
15 2 (0.040%) Xen
16 1 (0.020%) HDFS
16 1 (0.020%) iptables
16 1 (0.020%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 196 (3.90%) Microsoft Intune
2 192 (3.82%) Terraform
3 118 (2.35%) Kubernetes
4 72 (1.43%) Ansible
5 47 (0.94%) SCCM
6 42 (0.84%) BMC PATROL
7 41 (0.82%) Grafana
8 28 (0.56%) Prometheus
9 21 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
10 16 (0.32%) Nagios
11 15 (0.30%) vCenter Server
12 14 (0.28%) Cisco CUCM
13 12 (0.24%) Jamf Pro
14 11 (0.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 10 (0.20%) AWS Copilot
15 10 (0.20%) Nmap
16 8 (0.16%) Control-M
16 8 (0.16%) ZABBIX
17 7 (0.14%) FortiGate
18 6 (0.12%) Autotask
Vendors
1 1,375 (27.37%) Microsoft
2 322 (6.41%) SAP
3 238 (4.74%) VMware
4 186 (3.70%) Oracle
5 153 (3.05%) Veeam
6 142 (2.83%) Cisco
7 122 (2.43%) SolarWinds
8 119 (2.37%) Splunk
9 97 (1.93%) Tanium
10 96 (1.91%) Brocade
10 96 (1.91%) Nimble Storage
11 95 (1.89%) Google
12 83 (1.65%) Salesforce
13 78 (1.55%) ServiceNow
14 65 (1.29%) Sage
15 63 (1.25%) Databricks
16 60 (1.19%) Adobe
17 58 (1.15%) Apple
18 55 (1.09%) BT
19 47 (0.94%) HubSpot