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 28 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 4 6
Rank change year-on-year -5 +2 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,379 6,109 11,240
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 7.82% 19.51% 14.65%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.13% 21.66% 18.26%
Number of salaries quoted 4,038 3,288 6,904
10th Percentile £26,500 £25,750 £25,000
25th Percentile £30,250 £30,000 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £42,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year +1.19% -6.67% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £60,000 £60,000
90th Percentile £73,750 £77,500 £72,500
UK median annual salary £47,500 £49,000 £49,274
% change year-on-year -3.06% -0.56% -10.41%

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 48,319 28,199 61,542
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.23% 90.04% 80.19%
Number of salaries quoted 33,963 14,597 42,834
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,500 £27,500
25th Percentile £39,000 £32,851 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £53,000 £50,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.00% - -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £67,500 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £80,000 £78,675
UK median annual salary £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -9.12%

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 28 June 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 28 June 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 1,448 £44,000 +3.53% 567
South East -4 1,328 £45,000 +5.88% 749
Midlands -8 992 £42,000 -1.18% 418
North West -7 758 £45,000 -2.17% 311
South West -6 636 £44,000 +17.33% 280
West Midlands -9 565 £42,500 -5.56% 231
East of England -3 551 £45,000 +28.57% 236
Yorkshire -11 507 £42,410 +21.17% 192
East Midlands -10 424 £35,000 -4.11% 187
Scotland -4 249 £32,750 -28.23% 102
North East -11 183 £50,500 +26.25% 83
Wales -20 123 £45,000 - 44
Northern Ireland -9 72 £38,500 -30.00% 79
Isle of Man +2 3 £35,000 +1.45% 3
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
1 336 (6.25%) Microsoft Exchange
2 328 (6.10%) SharePoint
3 53 (0.99%) Confluence
4 52 (0.97%) CMS
5 32 (0.59%) IIS
6 27 (0.50%) WordPress
7 25 (0.46%) Apache
8 20 (0.37%) Apache Airflow
9 15 (0.28%) Apache Spark
10 12 (0.22%) SAS
11 11 (0.20%) Exchange Server 2013
11 11 (0.20%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2007
12 9 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2010
13 8 (0.15%) WebLogic
14 7 (0.13%) OpenEdge
15 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 5 (0.093%) Skype for Business
17 4 (0.074%) OpenStack
17 4 (0.074%) Totara
Applications
1 346 (6.43%) Microsoft Office
2 324 (6.02%) Microsoft Excel
3 45 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 37 (0.69%) Spreadsheet
5 30 (0.56%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.30%) Microsoft Project
7 9 (0.17%) Simulink
8 8 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 8 (0.15%) Adobe Illustrator
9 6 (0.11%) AutoCAD
10 5 (0.093%) Fusion 360
10 5 (0.093%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.093%) Trello
11 4 (0.074%) Chatbot
12 3 (0.056%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.056%) Autodesk Inventor
12 3 (0.056%) Lightworks
12 3 (0.056%) Sketch
12 3 (0.056%) Windchill
13 2 (0.037%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 52 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
2 31 (0.58%) Dynamics CRM
3 29 (0.54%) NetSuite
4 22 (0.41%) Dynamics NAV
5 19 (0.35%) Shopify
6 16 (0.30%) Magento
7 15 (0.28%) SAP ERP
8 12 (0.22%) Dynamics AX
8 12 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
9 10 (0.19%) IBM Planning Analytics
9 10 (0.19%) iTrent
10 9 (0.17%) SAP Business One
11 8 (0.15%) Sage 50
12 7 (0.13%) Workday HCM
13 6 (0.11%) JDE EnterpriseOne
13 6 (0.11%) SAP CO
14 5 (0.093%) Q-Pulse
14 5 (0.093%) Raiser’s Edge
15 4 (0.074%) Dynamics GP
15 4 (0.074%) Line 50
Cloud Services
1 1,136 (21.12%) Azure
2 984 (18.29%) Microsoft 365
3 570 (10.60%) AWS
4 414 (7.70%) Power Platform
5 261 (4.85%) Entra ID
6 183 (3.40%) SaaS
7 177 (3.29%) GCP
8 128 (2.38%) Azure DevOps
9 114 (2.12%) Dynamics 365
9 114 (2.12%) Serverless
10 93 (1.73%) GitHub
11 91 (1.69%) Power Automate
12 83 (1.54%) PowerApps
13 70 (1.30%) OneDrive
14 56 (1.04%) Amazon S3
15 48 (0.89%) Microsoft Copilot
16 47 (0.87%) AWS Lambda
16 47 (0.87%) Google Workspace
17 46 (0.86%) IaaS
18 45 (0.84%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 398 (7.40%) Firewall
2 352 (6.54%) DNS
3 302 (5.61%) DHCP
4 212 (3.94%) VPN
5 193 (3.59%) WAN
6 164 (3.05%) LAN
7 161 (2.99%) TCP/IP
8 153 (2.84%) Wi-Fi
9 120 (2.23%) Wireless
10 114 (2.12%) VLAN
11 109 (2.03%) Broadband
12 91 (1.69%) Network Security
13 87 (1.62%) VoIP
14 43 (0.80%) Internet
15 39 (0.73%) SD-WAN
16 29 (0.54%) SAN
17 24 (0.45%) HTTP
18 21 (0.39%) SSL
18 21 (0.39%) Structured Cabling
19 19 (0.35%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 336 (6.25%) Power BI
2 242 (4.50%) SQL Server
3 98 (1.82%) Amazon RDS
4 89 (1.65%) MySQL
5 83 (1.54%) Data Warehouse
6 75 (1.39%) PostgreSQL
7 74 (1.38%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 67 (1.25%) NoSQL
9 65 (1.21%) Relational Database
10 62 (1.15%) Tableau
11 58 (1.08%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 47 (0.87%) Power Query
13 39 (0.73%) MongoDB
14 36 (0.67%) Azure SQL Database
15 35 (0.65%) Big Data
16 32 (0.59%) Data Lake
17 28 (0.52%) DynamoDB
18 27 (0.50%) Elasticsearch
19 25 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
20 18 (0.33%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 209 (3.89%) Git
2 151 (2.81%) JIRA
3 72 (1.34%) GitLab
4 45 (0.84%) Jenkins
5 29 (0.54%) Rational DOORS
6 20 (0.37%) Cucumber
7 19 (0.35%) Subversion
8 17 (0.32%) Eclipse
9 16 (0.30%) JUnit
10 15 (0.28%) Selenium
11 14 (0.26%) SonarQube
12 13 (0.24%) Cypress.io
13 12 (0.22%) Maven
14 11 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
15 10 (0.19%) Bitbucket
15 10 (0.19%) Postman
16 8 (0.15%) Burp Suite
16 8 (0.15%) Claude Code
16 8 (0.15%) MLflow
16 8 (0.15%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 2,567 (47.72%) Social Skills
2 1,467 (27.27%) Analytical Skills
3 850 (15.80%) Finance
4 410 (7.62%) Manufacturing
5 353 (6.56%) Organisational Skills
6 251 (4.67%) Public Sector
7 235 (4.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 216 (4.02%) Retail
9 209 (3.89%) Law
10 205 (3.81%) Legal
11 177 (3.29%) Marketing
12 135 (2.51%) Electronics
12 135 (2.51%) Telecoms
13 125 (2.32%) Banking
14 109 (2.03%) Documentation Skills
15 101 (1.88%) Influencing Skills
16 80 (1.49%) Aerospace
17 75 (1.39%) Games
18 61 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
19 55 (1.02%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 751 (13.96%) Analyst
2 655 (12.18%) IT Support
3 568 (10.56%) Support Engineer
4 561 (10.43%) Senior
5 496 (9.22%) Developer
6 387 (7.19%) IT Engineer
7 294 (5.47%) IT Support Engineer
8 287 (5.34%) Lead
9 247 (4.59%) Support Technician
10 224 (4.16%) Support Analyst
11 214 (3.98%) Systems Engineer
12 201 (3.74%) IT Technician
13 191 (3.55%) Technical Support
14 178 (3.31%) Consultant
14 178 (3.31%) Software Engineer
15 174 (3.23%) Architect
16 159 (2.96%) Technical Engineer
17 158 (2.94%) IT Support Technician
18 151 (2.81%) Technical Support Engineer
19 132 (2.45%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 208 (3.87%) .NET
2 192 (3.57%) React
3 161 (2.99%) HTML
4 144 (2.68%) REST
5 122 (2.27%) CSS
6 99 (1.84%) Node.js
7 83 (1.54%) RESTful
8 79 (1.47%) SOAP
9 74 (1.38%) Middleware
10 70 (1.30%) JSON
11 68 (1.26%) Vue
12 65 (1.21%) AngularJS
13 61 (1.13%) XML
14 45 (0.84%) Spring
15 43 (0.80%) Web Services
16 42 (0.78%) ASP.NET
16 42 (0.78%) Spring Boot
17 39 (0.73%) OAuth
18 38 (0.71%) EDI
19 29 (0.54%) ASP.NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 417 (7.75%) Driving Licence
2 307 (5.71%) Onboarding
3 245 (4.55%) Self-Motivation
4 198 (3.68%) Management Information System
5 149 (2.77%) Cloud Native
6 134 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
7 128 (2.38%) Product Ownership
8 99 (1.84%) Data Centre
9 98 (1.82%) Analytical Mindset
10 77 (1.43%) Distributed Systems
11 68 (1.26%) Social Media
12 67 (1.25%) Mobile App
13 66 (1.23%) Security Posture
14 50 (0.93%) Enterprise Software
14 50 (0.93%) Low-Code
14 50 (0.93%) Virtual Team
15 45 (0.84%) Data Structures
16 44 (0.82%) Algorithms
16 44 (0.82%) IoT
17 42 (0.78%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 937 (17.42%) Windows
2 455 (8.46%) Windows Server
3 376 (6.99%) Linux
4 147 (2.73%) Windows 10
5 119 (2.21%) Windows Server 2016
6 106 (1.97%) Android
7 67 (1.25%) Apple iOS
8 66 (1.23%) Mac OS
9 52 (0.97%) Windows Server 2019
10 32 (0.59%) Unix
11 28 (0.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 26 (0.48%) CentOS
12 26 (0.48%) Ubuntu
13 17 (0.32%) VMS
14 16 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
15 14 (0.26%) Debian
15 14 (0.26%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.13%) Windows 8
17 6 (0.11%) FreeRTOS
17 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,234 (22.94%) Continuous Improvement
2 966 (17.96%) Customer Service
3 717 (13.33%) Agile
4 553 (10.28%) Mentoring
5 545 (10.13%) Decision-Making
6 484 (9.00%) AI
7 474 (8.81%) CI/CD
8 463 (8.61%) Analytics
9 443 (8.24%) ITIL
10 437 (8.12%) DevOps
11 421 (7.83%) Cybersecurity
12 417 (7.75%) Collaborative Working
13 388 (7.21%) Business Intelligence
14 385 (7.16%) Software Engineering
15 383 (7.12%) ERP
16 365 (6.79%) Stakeholder Management
17 330 (6.13%) Computer Science
18 316 (5.87%) Project Delivery
19 311 (5.78%) Coaching
20 308 (5.73%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 841 (15.63%) SQL
2 626 (11.64%) Python
3 342 (6.36%) JavaScript
4 285 (5.30%) C#
5 236 (4.39%) Java
6 231 (4.29%) PowerShell
7 152 (2.83%) TypeScript
8 134 (2.49%) C++
9 105 (1.95%) Bash
10 75 (1.39%) PHP
11 56 (1.04%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 53 (0.99%) C
13 46 (0.86%) T-SQL
14 39 (0.73%) PL/SQL
15 31 (0.58%) Perl
16 30 (0.56%) Go
16 30 (0.56%) Kotlin
17 29 (0.54%) Shell Script
18 27 (0.50%) R
19 26 (0.48%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 776 (14.43%) Degree
2 437 (8.12%) Security Cleared
3 307 (5.71%) SC Cleared
4 207 (3.85%) DBS Check
5 161 (2.99%) Microsoft Certification
6 155 (2.88%) Computer Science Degree
7 87 (1.62%) BPSS Clearance
8 81 (1.51%) Cisco Certification
9 74 (1.38%) DV Cleared
10 66 (1.23%) A+ Certification
11 63 (1.17%) CCNA
12 62 (1.15%) ACCA
13 60 (1.12%) Azure Certification
14 58 (1.08%) CIMA
15 55 (1.02%) HNC
16 53 (0.99%) PMI Certification
17 48 (0.89%) CISSP
18 45 (0.84%) CompTIA Security+
18 45 (0.84%) Network+ Certification
19 44 (0.82%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 304 (5.65%) QA
2 245 (4.55%) Data Quality
3 161 (2.99%) Cyber Essentials
4 157 (2.92%) GDPR
5 137 (2.55%) SLA
6 130 (2.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 110 (2.04%) PCI DSS
8 97 (1.80%) Accessibility
9 82 (1.52%) NIST
10 41 (0.76%) ISO 9001
11 25 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 23 (0.43%) PMO
13 19 (0.35%) GMP
14 15 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
14 15 (0.28%) GRC
15 14 (0.26%) Good Clinical Practice
16 13 (0.24%) ISO 14001
17 12 (0.22%) SOC 2
17 12 (0.22%) TickIT
18 8 (0.15%) Def Stans
System Software
1 673 (12.51%) Active Directory
2 251 (4.67%) Hyper-V
3 186 (3.46%) Docker
4 178 (3.31%) VMware Infrastructure
5 72 (1.34%) Terminal Server
6 33 (0.61%) Firmware
7 32 (0.59%) Virtual Desktop
8 26 (0.48%) vSphere
9 20 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.20%) Embedded Firmware
10 11 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.19%) KVM
12 7 (0.13%) VMware Workstation
13 6 (0.11%) XenApp
14 5 (0.093%) ClearTrust
15 4 (0.074%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 4 (0.074%) Virtual Servers
16 3 (0.056%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 3 (0.056%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.056%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 203 (3.77%) Terraform
2 199 (3.70%) Microsoft Intune
3 183 (3.40%) Kubernetes
4 101 (1.88%) Ansible
5 56 (1.04%) Grafana
6 55 (1.02%) SCCM
7 37 (0.69%) Prometheus
8 21 (0.39%) Nagios
9 18 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 12 (0.22%) Kibana
11 11 (0.20%) logstash
11 11 (0.20%) vCenter Server
12 10 (0.19%) Jamf Pro
12 10 (0.19%) Podman
12 10 (0.19%) Puppet
13 9 (0.17%) Autotask
13 9 (0.17%) Failover Clustering
13 9 (0.17%) Functional Safety
13 9 (0.17%) QRadar
13 9 (0.17%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,611 (29.95%) Microsoft
2 285 (5.30%) VMware
3 128 (2.38%) Veeam
4 122 (2.27%) Google
4 122 (2.27%) Oracle
5 119 (2.21%) SAP
6 107 (1.99%) Cisco
6 107 (1.99%) Splunk
7 100 (1.86%) SolarWinds
8 80 (1.49%) Salesforce
9 76 (1.41%) Tanium
10 73 (1.36%) Nimble Storage
11 72 (1.34%) Brocade
11 72 (1.34%) ServiceNow
12 69 (1.28%) Databricks
13 60 (1.12%) Apple
14 52 (0.97%) Adobe
14 52 (0.97%) Sage
15 45 (0.84%) Dell
16 40 (0.74%) Meraki