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 20 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 4 4
Rank change year-on-year -5 0 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,572 6,538 8,653
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 8.39% 18.85% 14.53%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.93% 21.62% 18.55%
Number of salaries quoted 4,690 3,645 4,325
10th Percentile £27,000 £25,750 £25,750
25th Percentile £31,250 £29,750 £32,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £40,000 £46,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -13.04% -8.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £58,750 £62,500
90th Percentile £73,750 £72,500 £76,250
UK median annual salary £47,500 £46,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +3.26% -8.00% -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 55,106 30,247 46,643
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.35% 87.21% 78.33%
Number of salaries quoted 38,768 16,468 28,994
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,500 £29,750
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £38,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £47,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +15.79% -5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £65,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £86,250 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.71%

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 20 August 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 20 August 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 1,672 £45,000 +5.88% 879
South East -3 1,565 £43,000 +1.18% 1,122
Midlands -8 1,201 £42,500 +10.39% 675
North West -6 878 £45,250 +0.56% 434
South West -4 811 £45,000 +25.00% 521
West Midlands -8 669 £42,500 -5.07% 420
East of England -3 662 £42,500 +21.43% 452
Yorkshire -8 548 £42,500 +21.43% 319
East Midlands -9 529 £40,500 +15.71% 256
Scotland 0 297 £33,500 -24.29% 247
North East -6 246 £48,500 +21.25% 140
Northern Ireland 0 209 £50,500 -14.41% 122
Wales -22 171 £45,000 -6.49% 111
Isle of Man 0 3 £35,000 +1.45% 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
1 390 (5.93%) SharePoint
2 342 (5.20%) Microsoft Exchange
3 67 (1.02%) CMS
4 65 (0.99%) Confluence
5 49 (0.75%) IIS
6 33 (0.50%) WordPress
7 30 (0.46%) Apache
8 27 (0.41%) Sitecore CMS
9 25 (0.38%) Apache Airflow
10 16 (0.24%) Apache Spark
11 15 (0.23%) SAS
12 10 (0.15%) WebSphere
13 9 (0.14%) nginx
13 9 (0.14%) WebLogic
14 7 (0.11%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.11%) OpenEdge
15 5 (0.076%) Exchange Server 2013
15 5 (0.076%) Skype for Business
16 4 (0.061%) OpenStack
16 4 (0.061%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 421 (6.41%) Microsoft Office
2 413 (6.28%) Microsoft Excel
3 51 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 50 (0.76%) Spreadsheet
5 40 (0.61%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.46%) Microsoft Project
7 23 (0.35%) AutoCAD
7 23 (0.35%) Simulink
8 14 (0.21%) Revit
9 8 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.12%) Adobe Illustrator
9 8 (0.12%) Chatbot
10 7 (0.11%) EPLAN
11 6 (0.091%) Adobe XD
11 6 (0.091%) Fusion 360
11 6 (0.091%) Navisworks
11 6 (0.091%) Sketch
12 5 (0.076%) Lightworks
12 5 (0.076%) Photoshop
12 5 (0.076%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 71 (1.08%) Dynamics CRM
2 53 (0.81%) SAP S/4HANA
3 41 (0.62%) NetSuite
4 27 (0.41%) Shopify
5 17 (0.26%) Magento
5 17 (0.26%) SAP Business One
5 17 (0.26%) SAP ERP
6 15 (0.23%) Dynamics NAV
6 15 (0.23%) IBM Planning Analytics
7 13 (0.20%) Workday HCM
8 12 (0.18%) Dynamics AX
8 12 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
9 11 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
10 10 (0.15%) JDE EnterpriseOne
10 10 (0.15%) Sage X3
11 9 (0.14%) Sage 50
12 8 (0.12%) Primavera
13 7 (0.11%) NEC Housing
13 7 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
14 6 (0.091%) Raiser’s Edge
Cloud Services
1 1,329 (20.22%) Azure
2 1,120 (17.04%) Microsoft 365
3 669 (10.18%) AWS
4 546 (8.31%) Power Platform
5 339 (5.16%) Entra ID
6 228 (3.47%) GCP
6 228 (3.47%) SaaS
7 164 (2.50%) Azure DevOps
8 141 (2.15%) PowerApps
9 138 (2.10%) Dynamics 365
10 131 (1.99%) GitHub
11 125 (1.90%) Serverless
12 122 (1.86%) Power Automate
13 81 (1.23%) OneDrive
14 79 (1.20%) Microsoft Copilot
15 58 (0.88%) Amazon S3
15 58 (0.88%) GitHub Actions
16 53 (0.81%) AWS CloudFormation
16 53 (0.81%) AWS Lambda
17 51 (0.78%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 418 (6.36%) Firewall
2 397 (6.04%) DNS
3 340 (5.17%) DHCP
4 239 (3.64%) VPN
5 224 (3.41%) TCP/IP
6 188 (2.86%) WAN
7 174 (2.65%) LAN
8 159 (2.42%) Wi-Fi
9 153 (2.33%) Wireless
10 126 (1.92%) VLAN
11 113 (1.72%) Network Security
12 105 (1.60%) VoIP
13 91 (1.38%) Broadband
14 43 (0.65%) Internet
15 31 (0.47%) SAN
16 30 (0.46%) SSL
17 28 (0.43%) HTTP
18 27 (0.41%) SD-WAN
19 23 (0.35%) MQTT
20 22 (0.33%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 432 (6.57%) Power BI
2 323 (4.91%) SQL Server
3 135 (2.05%) MySQL
4 125 (1.90%) Amazon RDS
5 108 (1.64%) Relational Database
6 102 (1.55%) Data Warehouse
7 91 (1.38%) PostgreSQL
8 83 (1.26%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 78 (1.19%) NoSQL
10 70 (1.07%) Tableau
11 62 (0.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 47 (0.72%) Electronic Patient Records
13 46 (0.70%) MongoDB
14 44 (0.67%) Big Data
15 43 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
16 42 (0.64%) Power Query
17 40 (0.61%) Data Lake
18 30 (0.46%) DynamoDB
19 25 (0.38%) Elasticsearch
20 24 (0.37%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 290 (4.41%) Git
2 223 (3.39%) JIRA
3 80 (1.22%) GitLab
4 71 (1.08%) Jenkins
5 34 (0.52%) Eclipse
6 33 (0.50%) Subversion
7 26 (0.40%) Cucumber
7 26 (0.40%) JUnit
7 26 (0.40%) Selenium
8 24 (0.37%) Rational DOORS
9 21 (0.32%) Claude Code
9 21 (0.32%) Postman
10 19 (0.29%) Oracle Forms
11 16 (0.24%) Bitbucket
11 16 (0.24%) Cypress.io
12 15 (0.23%) SonarQube
13 13 (0.20%) Burp Suite
14 12 (0.18%) Visual Studio
15 11 (0.17%) Metasploit
16 10 (0.15%) JMeter
General
1 3,159 (48.07%) Social Skills
2 1,845 (28.07%) Analytical Skills
3 1,047 (15.93%) Finance
4 602 (9.16%) Manufacturing
5 401 (6.10%) Organisational Skills
6 374 (5.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 304 (4.63%) Law
8 295 (4.49%) Public Sector
9 282 (4.29%) Legal
10 277 (4.21%) Retail
11 242 (3.68%) Marketing
12 227 (3.45%) Electronics
13 211 (3.21%) Aerospace
14 158 (2.40%) Telecoms
15 135 (2.05%) Influencing Skills
16 132 (2.01%) Banking
17 109 (1.66%) Documentation Skills
18 76 (1.16%) Military
19 72 (1.10%) Games
20 68 (1.03%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 865 (13.16%) Analyst
2 714 (10.86%) Senior
3 699 (10.64%) Developer
4 653 (9.94%) IT Support
5 540 (8.22%) Support Engineer
6 364 (5.54%) Lead
7 360 (5.48%) IT Engineer
8 307 (4.67%) Support Analyst
9 292 (4.44%) Consultant
10 265 (4.03%) IT Support Engineer
11 258 (3.93%) Support Technician
12 252 (3.83%) Technical Support
13 234 (3.56%) Systems Engineer
14 226 (3.44%) IT Technician
15 223 (3.39%) Architect
16 214 (3.26%) Software Engineer
16 214 (3.26%) Technical Engineer
17 196 (2.98%) Senior Developer
18 191 (2.91%) Technical Support Engineer
19 174 (2.65%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 346 (5.26%) .NET
2 267 (4.06%) Terraform
3 217 (3.30%) React
4 198 (3.01%) HTML
5 189 (2.88%) REST
6 146 (2.22%) CSS
7 125 (1.90%) RESTful
8 98 (1.49%) Node.js
9 93 (1.42%) SOAP
10 82 (1.25%) Vue
11 79 (1.20%) AngularJS
11 79 (1.20%) ASP.NET
12 78 (1.19%) Middleware
13 73 (1.11%) JSON
14 71 (1.08%) Web Services
14 71 (1.08%) XML
15 64 (0.97%) Spring
16 58 (0.88%) Spring Boot
17 57 (0.87%) OAuth
18 48 (0.73%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 519 (7.90%) Driving Licence
2 402 (6.12%) Onboarding
3 334 (5.08%) Self-Motivation
4 300 (4.56%) Management Information System
5 185 (2.81%) Cloud Native
6 165 (2.51%) Product Ownership
7 153 (2.33%) Legacy Systems
8 111 (1.69%) Data Centre
9 106 (1.61%) Enterprise Software
10 97 (1.48%) Analytical Mindset
11 88 (1.34%) Distributed Systems
12 85 (1.29%) NHS
13 79 (1.20%) Security Posture
14 78 (1.19%) Social Media
15 73 (1.11%) Robotics
16 72 (1.10%) Mobile App
17 67 (1.02%) Cyber Threat
18 65 (0.99%) Virtual Team
19 62 (0.94%) IoT
20 58 (0.88%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 1,071 (16.30%) Windows
2 503 (7.65%) Windows Server
3 454 (6.91%) Linux
4 132 (2.01%) Windows 10
5 111 (1.69%) Windows Server 2016
6 99 (1.51%) Android
7 80 (1.22%) Apple iOS
8 73 (1.11%) Mac OS
9 40 (0.61%) Unix
10 39 (0.59%) Windows Server 2019
11 30 (0.46%) Ubuntu
12 20 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 18 (0.27%) VMS
14 17 (0.26%) CentOS
15 15 (0.23%) Debian
16 9 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
16 9 (0.14%) FreeRTOS
17 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 6 (0.091%) Windows Server 2012
19 5 (0.076%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,753 (26.67%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,167 (17.76%) Customer Service
3 1,004 (15.28%) Agile
4 748 (11.38%) Decision-Making
5 688 (10.47%) CI/CD
6 679 (10.33%) Mentoring
7 650 (9.89%) AI
8 603 (9.18%) Stakeholder Management
9 573 (8.72%) DevOps
10 561 (8.54%) Analytics
11 557 (8.48%) ITIL
12 531 (8.08%) Cybersecurity
12 531 (8.08%) Software Engineering
13 512 (7.79%) Collaborative Working
14 511 (7.78%) Project Delivery
15 481 (7.32%) ERP
16 462 (7.03%) Business Intelligence
17 429 (6.53%) Project Management
18 402 (6.12%) CRM
19 384 (5.84%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 1,010 (15.37%) SQL
2 716 (10.89%) Python
3 434 (6.60%) JavaScript
4 429 (6.53%) C#
5 297 (4.52%) Java
6 263 (4.00%) PowerShell
7 193 (2.94%) TypeScript
8 183 (2.78%) C++
9 124 (1.89%) Bash
10 74 (1.13%) PHP
11 71 (1.08%) C
12 59 (0.90%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 53 (0.81%) T-SQL
14 46 (0.70%) Shell Script
15 43 (0.65%) Perl
16 38 (0.58%) Ruby
17 37 (0.56%) Go
18 33 (0.50%) PL/SQL
18 33 (0.50%) Rust
19 30 (0.46%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 1,027 (15.63%) Degree
2 615 (9.36%) Security Cleared
3 439 (6.68%) SC Cleared
4 197 (3.00%) DBS Check
5 194 (2.95%) Computer Science Degree
6 177 (2.69%) Microsoft Certification
7 165 (2.51%) DV Cleared
8 151 (2.30%) BPSS Clearance
9 121 (1.84%) HNC
10 116 (1.77%) Azure Certification
11 97 (1.48%) HND
12 95 (1.45%) Cisco Certification
13 78 (1.19%) PMI Certification
14 74 (1.13%) CISSP
15 65 (0.99%) CCNA
16 63 (0.96%) Master's Degree
17 58 (0.88%) Chartered Engineer
18 56 (0.85%) A+ Certification
18 56 (0.85%) PMP
19 49 (0.75%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 432 (6.57%) QA
2 264 (4.02%) Data Quality
3 190 (2.89%) GDPR
4 174 (2.65%) Cyber Essentials
5 167 (2.54%) SLA
6 164 (2.50%) Accessibility
7 125 (1.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 114 (1.73%) PCI DSS
9 94 (1.43%) NIST
10 33 (0.50%) ISO 9001
11 30 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 30 (0.46%) PMO
12 24 (0.37%) GMP
13 18 (0.27%) Good Clinical Practice
14 16 (0.24%) GRC
15 14 (0.21%) DO-254
16 13 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
17 12 (0.18%) NCSC
17 12 (0.18%) SOC 2
17 12 (0.18%) TickIT
System Software
1 751 (11.43%) Active Directory
2 284 (4.32%) Hyper-V
3 255 (3.88%) Docker
4 203 (3.09%) VMware Infrastructure
5 80 (1.22%) Terminal Server
6 66 (1.00%) Firmware
7 34 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
8 28 (0.43%) vSphere
9 27 (0.41%) Virtual Machines
10 20 (0.30%) Embedded Firmware
11 15 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
12 7 (0.11%) KVM
13 6 (0.091%) XenApp
14 5 (0.076%) ClearTrust
14 5 (0.076%) Squid
14 5 (0.076%) Virtual Servers
15 4 (0.061%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 3 (0.046%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 3 (0.046%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.046%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 228 (3.47%) Microsoft Intune
2 221 (3.36%) Kubernetes
3 110 (1.67%) Ansible
4 58 (0.88%) SCCM
5 57 (0.87%) Grafana
6 41 (0.62%) Prometheus
7 35 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
8 21 (0.32%) FortiGate
9 19 (0.29%) Puppet
10 16 (0.24%) Jamf Pro
11 14 (0.21%) Nagios
12 12 (0.18%) Functional Safety
13 11 (0.17%) Kibana
13 11 (0.17%) Nmap
14 10 (0.15%) logstash
14 10 (0.15%) Podman
14 10 (0.15%) Proxmox
15 9 (0.14%) Failover Clustering
15 9 (0.14%) QRadar
15 9 (0.14%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,965 (29.90%) Microsoft
2 325 (4.95%) VMware
3 172 (2.62%) SAP
4 162 (2.47%) Google
5 155 (2.36%) Oracle
6 137 (2.08%) Veeam
7 130 (1.98%) Cisco
8 124 (1.89%) Splunk
9 114 (1.73%) ServiceNow
10 104 (1.58%) SolarWinds
11 91 (1.38%) Workday
12 89 (1.35%) Salesforce
13 88 (1.34%) Tanium
14 81 (1.23%) Nimble Storage
15 80 (1.22%) Brocade
16 78 (1.19%) Databricks
17 67 (1.02%) Sage
18 61 (0.93%) Fortinet
19 58 (0.88%) Apple
20 50 (0.76%) SonicWALL