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

6 months to
14 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 4 5
Rank change year-on-year -6 +1 +5
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,427 6,576 8,704
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 8.32% 18.93% 14.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.81% 21.66% 18.54%
Number of salaries quoted 4,609 3,644 4,432
10th Percentile £26,750 £25,750 £25,750
25th Percentile £31,250 £29,750 £32,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £40,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -11.11% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £58,750 £62,500
90th Percentile £73,750 £73,750 £75,000
UK median annual salary £47,500 £46,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +2.15% -7.00% -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 54,441 30,367 46,953
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.44% 87.40% 78.59%
Number of salaries quoted 38,235 16,502 29,487
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,500 £29,250
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £38,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £47,683 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +15.35% -4.63% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £65,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £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 14 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 14 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 1,646 £45,000 +5.88% 1,012
South East -3 1,545 £45,000 +5.88% 1,280
Midlands -8 1,190 £42,500 +10.39% 715
North West -4 865 £45,000 - 522
South West -5 788 £45,000 +25.00% 563
West Midlands -9 653 £42,500 -5.07% 454
East of England -4 644 £42,500 +21.43% 523
Yorkshire -7 544 £42,500 +21.43% 347
East Midlands -9 534 £40,000 +14.29% 262
Scotland 0 284 £33,500 -21.18% 321
North East -8 237 £48,500 +25.00% 156
Northern Ireland -4 180 £45,000 -23.73% 155
Wales -23 166 £45,000 -6.49% 125
Isle of Man 0 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
1 356 (5.54%) SharePoint
2 348 (5.41%) Microsoft Exchange
3 67 (1.04%) Confluence
4 46 (0.72%) IIS
5 43 (0.67%) CMS
6 33 (0.51%) WordPress
7 30 (0.47%) Apache
8 24 (0.37%) Apache Airflow
9 16 (0.25%) Apache Spark
10 15 (0.23%) SAS
11 10 (0.16%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.14%) nginx
12 9 (0.14%) WebLogic
13 7 (0.11%) Jupyter
13 7 (0.11%) OpenEdge
14 5 (0.078%) Skype for Business
15 4 (0.062%) Anypoint
15 4 (0.062%) Exchange Server 2013
15 4 (0.062%) OpenStack
15 4 (0.062%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 408 (6.35%) Microsoft Office
2 386 (6.01%) Microsoft Excel
3 52 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 50 (0.78%) Spreadsheet
5 40 (0.62%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
7 21 (0.33%) AutoCAD
8 20 (0.31%) Simulink
9 12 (0.19%) Revit
10 8 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 8 (0.12%) Chatbot
11 7 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
12 6 (0.093%) Adobe XD
12 6 (0.093%) EPLAN
12 6 (0.093%) Fusion 360
12 6 (0.093%) Navisworks
12 6 (0.093%) Sketch
13 5 (0.078%) Lightworks
13 5 (0.078%) SOLIDWORKS
13 5 (0.078%) Trello
Business Applications
1 54 (0.84%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.65%) Dynamics CRM
3 34 (0.53%) NetSuite
4 25 (0.39%) Shopify
5 18 (0.28%) Magento
5 18 (0.28%) SAP ERP
6 16 (0.25%) SAP Business One
7 15 (0.23%) Dynamics NAV
7 15 (0.23%) IBM Planning Analytics
8 13 (0.20%) Dynamics AX
9 12 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
9 12 (0.19%) Workday HCM
10 11 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
11 10 (0.16%) JDE EnterpriseOne
11 10 (0.16%) Sage X3
12 9 (0.14%) Sage 50
13 8 (0.12%) Primavera
14 7 (0.11%) NEC Housing
14 7 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
15 6 (0.093%) Raiser’s Edge
Cloud Services
1 1,306 (20.32%) Azure
2 1,107 (17.22%) Microsoft 365
3 656 (10.21%) AWS
4 510 (7.94%) Power Platform
5 326 (5.07%) Entra ID
6 219 (3.41%) GCP
6 219 (3.41%) SaaS
7 158 (2.46%) Azure DevOps
8 136 (2.12%) Dynamics 365
9 122 (1.90%) Serverless
10 121 (1.88%) GitHub
11 116 (1.80%) Power Automate
12 111 (1.73%) PowerApps
13 82 (1.28%) OneDrive
14 80 (1.24%) Microsoft Copilot
15 58 (0.90%) Amazon S3
16 54 (0.84%) GitHub Actions
17 52 (0.81%) AWS Lambda
17 52 (0.81%) Microsoft Purview
18 49 (0.76%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 411 (6.39%) Firewall
2 390 (6.07%) DNS
3 334 (5.20%) DHCP
4 236 (3.67%) VPN
5 219 (3.41%) TCP/IP
6 190 (2.96%) WAN
7 174 (2.71%) LAN
8 157 (2.44%) Wi-Fi
9 152 (2.37%) Wireless
10 125 (1.94%) VLAN
11 107 (1.66%) Network Security
12 101 (1.57%) VoIP
13 95 (1.48%) Broadband
14 41 (0.64%) Internet
15 31 (0.48%) SAN
16 30 (0.47%) SSL
17 29 (0.45%) HTTP
18 28 (0.44%) SD-WAN
19 22 (0.34%) MQTT
19 22 (0.34%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 396 (6.16%) Power BI
2 316 (4.92%) SQL Server
3 130 (2.02%) MySQL
4 123 (1.91%) Amazon RDS
5 104 (1.62%) Relational Database
6 101 (1.57%) Data Warehouse
7 92 (1.43%) PostgreSQL
8 85 (1.32%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 78 (1.21%) NoSQL
10 71 (1.10%) Tableau
11 64 (1.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 47 (0.73%) Electronic Patient Records
13 45 (0.70%) MongoDB
14 44 (0.68%) Power Query
15 43 (0.67%) Big Data
16 39 (0.61%) Azure SQL Database
17 38 (0.59%) Data Lake
18 32 (0.50%) DynamoDB
19 25 (0.39%) Elasticsearch
20 23 (0.36%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 280 (4.36%) Git
2 222 (3.45%) JIRA
3 81 (1.26%) GitLab
4 67 (1.04%) Jenkins
5 31 (0.48%) Eclipse
5 31 (0.48%) Subversion
6 26 (0.40%) Cucumber
6 26 (0.40%) Rational DOORS
7 25 (0.39%) JUnit
7 25 (0.39%) Selenium
8 20 (0.31%) Claude Code
8 20 (0.31%) Postman
9 18 (0.28%) Oracle Forms
10 17 (0.26%) Cypress.io
11 15 (0.23%) Bitbucket
12 14 (0.22%) SonarQube
13 13 (0.20%) Burp Suite
14 11 (0.17%) Maven
14 11 (0.17%) Metasploit
14 11 (0.17%) Visual Studio
General
1 3,063 (47.66%) Social Skills
2 1,807 (28.12%) Analytical Skills
3 997 (15.51%) Finance
4 588 (9.15%) Manufacturing
5 396 (6.16%) Organisational Skills
6 371 (5.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 300 (4.67%) Law
8 291 (4.53%) Public Sector
9 272 (4.23%) Legal
10 266 (4.14%) Retail
11 215 (3.35%) Electronics
12 209 (3.25%) Marketing
13 199 (3.10%) Aerospace
14 153 (2.38%) Telecoms
15 129 (2.01%) Influencing Skills
16 125 (1.94%) Banking
17 111 (1.73%) Documentation Skills
18 74 (1.15%) Games
19 71 (1.10%) Military
20 68 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 846 (13.16%) Analyst
2 686 (10.67%) Senior
3 681 (10.60%) Developer
4 652 (10.14%) IT Support
5 550 (8.56%) Support Engineer
6 367 (5.71%) IT Engineer
7 358 (5.57%) Lead
8 292 (4.54%) Support Analyst
9 281 (4.37%) Consultant
10 270 (4.20%) IT Support Engineer
11 259 (4.03%) Support Technician
12 244 (3.80%) Technical Support
13 236 (3.67%) Systems Engineer
14 223 (3.47%) IT Technician
15 215 (3.35%) Architect
16 212 (3.30%) Software Engineer
17 208 (3.24%) Technical Engineer
18 198 (3.08%) Senior Developer
19 187 (2.91%) Technical Support Engineer
20 171 (2.66%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 334 (5.20%) .NET
2 219 (3.41%) React
3 195 (3.03%) HTML
4 188 (2.93%) REST
5 144 (2.24%) CSS
6 120 (1.87%) RESTful
7 96 (1.49%) Node.js
8 93 (1.45%) SOAP
9 81 (1.26%) Vue
10 79 (1.23%) Middleware
11 77 (1.20%) AngularJS
12 74 (1.15%) ASP.NET
13 72 (1.12%) JSON
14 68 (1.06%) XML
15 65 (1.01%) Web Services
16 59 (0.92%) Spring
17 57 (0.89%) OAuth
18 54 (0.84%) Spring Boot
19 46 (0.72%) ASP.NET Core
19 46 (0.72%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 510 (7.94%) Driving Licence
2 382 (5.94%) Onboarding
3 299 (4.65%) Self-Motivation
4 265 (4.12%) Management Information System
5 183 (2.85%) Cloud Native
6 167 (2.60%) Product Ownership
7 153 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
8 107 (1.66%) Data Centre
9 96 (1.49%) Analytical Mindset
10 95 (1.48%) Enterprise Software
11 87 (1.35%) NHS
12 85 (1.32%) Distributed Systems
13 80 (1.24%) Security Posture
14 76 (1.18%) Social Media
15 71 (1.10%) Robotics
16 70 (1.09%) Mobile App
17 62 (0.96%) Virtual Team
18 61 (0.95%) IoT
19 59 (0.92%) Cyber Threat
20 57 (0.89%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 1,061 (16.51%) Windows
2 493 (7.67%) Windows Server
3 454 (7.06%) Linux
4 135 (2.10%) Windows 10
5 107 (1.66%) Windows Server 2016
6 99 (1.54%) Android
7 78 (1.21%) Apple iOS
8 76 (1.18%) Mac OS
9 39 (0.61%) Unix
9 39 (0.61%) Windows Server 2019
10 31 (0.48%) Ubuntu
11 23 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 20 (0.31%) CentOS
13 17 (0.26%) VMS
14 14 (0.22%) Debian
15 9 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
15 9 (0.14%) FreeRTOS
15 9 (0.14%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.078%) OpenVMS
17 4 (0.062%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,711 (26.62%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,139 (17.72%) Customer Service
3 988 (15.37%) Agile
4 730 (11.36%) Decision-Making
5 673 (10.47%) CI/CD
6 664 (10.33%) Mentoring
7 637 (9.91%) AI
8 578 (8.99%) Stakeholder Management
9 557 (8.67%) DevOps
10 550 (8.56%) ITIL
11 527 (8.20%) Analytics
12 521 (8.11%) Software Engineering
13 518 (8.06%) Cybersecurity
14 507 (7.89%) Collaborative Working
15 486 (7.56%) Project Delivery
16 475 (7.39%) ERP
17 457 (7.11%) Business Intelligence
18 390 (6.07%) Project Management
19 380 (5.91%) Service Delivery
20 375 (5.83%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 996 (15.50%) SQL
2 705 (10.97%) Python
3 419 (6.52%) JavaScript
4 417 (6.49%) C#
5 287 (4.47%) Java
6 252 (3.92%) PowerShell
7 186 (2.89%) TypeScript
8 181 (2.82%) C++
9 120 (1.87%) Bash
10 76 (1.18%) PHP
11 71 (1.10%) C
12 59 (0.92%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 53 (0.82%) T-SQL
14 47 (0.73%) Shell Script
15 42 (0.65%) Perl
16 36 (0.56%) Go
16 36 (0.56%) Ruby
17 33 (0.51%) PL/SQL
18 32 (0.50%) Rust
19 27 (0.42%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,006 (15.65%) Degree
2 596 (9.27%) Security Cleared
3 431 (6.71%) SC Cleared
4 192 (2.99%) Computer Science Degree
5 191 (2.97%) DBS Check
6 177 (2.75%) Microsoft Certification
7 156 (2.43%) DV Cleared
8 149 (2.32%) BPSS Clearance
9 115 (1.79%) HNC
10 106 (1.65%) Azure Certification
11 93 (1.45%) Cisco Certification
12 86 (1.34%) HND
13 76 (1.18%) PMI Certification
14 69 (1.07%) CISSP
15 64 (1.00%) CCNA
16 63 (0.98%) Master's Degree
17 55 (0.86%) Chartered Engineer
18 54 (0.84%) A+ Certification
18 54 (0.84%) PMP
19 51 (0.79%) ACCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 423 (6.58%) QA
2 261 (4.06%) Data Quality
3 185 (2.88%) GDPR
4 178 (2.77%) Cyber Essentials
5 168 (2.61%) SLA
6 164 (2.55%) Accessibility
7 127 (1.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 114 (1.77%) PCI DSS
9 90 (1.40%) NIST
10 36 (0.56%) ISO 9001
11 33 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 30 (0.47%) PMO
13 24 (0.37%) GMP
14 18 (0.28%) Good Clinical Practice
15 16 (0.25%) GRC
16 15 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
17 12 (0.19%) DO-254
17 12 (0.19%) SOC 2
17 12 (0.19%) TickIT
17 12 (0.19%) WCAG
System Software
1 738 (11.48%) Active Directory
2 281 (4.37%) Hyper-V
3 248 (3.86%) Docker
4 202 (3.14%) VMware Infrastructure
5 80 (1.24%) Terminal Server
6 65 (1.01%) Firmware
7 32 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
8 28 (0.44%) vSphere
9 25 (0.39%) Virtual Machines
10 19 (0.30%) Embedded Firmware
11 15 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
12 9 (0.14%) KVM
13 6 (0.093%) XenApp
14 5 (0.078%) ClearTrust
14 5 (0.078%) Squid
14 5 (0.078%) Virtual Servers
15 4 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 3 (0.047%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.047%) VMware Server
16 3 (0.047%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 258 (4.01%) Terraform
2 226 (3.52%) Microsoft Intune
3 215 (3.35%) Kubernetes
4 107 (1.66%) Ansible
5 61 (0.95%) SCCM
6 57 (0.89%) Grafana
7 41 (0.64%) Prometheus
8 29 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
9 21 (0.33%) FortiGate
10 18 (0.28%) Puppet
11 15 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
11 15 (0.23%) Nagios
12 12 (0.19%) Functional Safety
13 11 (0.17%) Kibana
13 11 (0.17%) Nmap
13 11 (0.17%) Proxmox
14 10 (0.16%) logstash
14 10 (0.16%) Podman
15 9 (0.14%) QRadar
15 9 (0.14%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,920 (29.87%) Microsoft
2 322 (5.01%) VMware
3 163 (2.54%) SAP
4 156 (2.43%) Google
5 153 (2.38%) Oracle
6 140 (2.18%) Veeam
7 133 (2.07%) Cisco
8 124 (1.93%) Splunk
9 110 (1.71%) ServiceNow
10 104 (1.62%) SolarWinds
11 89 (1.38%) Salesforce
12 88 (1.37%) Tanium
13 82 (1.28%) Workday
14 81 (1.26%) Nimble Storage
15 80 (1.24%) Brocade
16 78 (1.21%) Databricks
17 63 (0.98%) Sage
18 58 (0.90%) Apple
18 58 (0.90%) Fortinet
19 48 (0.75%) SonicWALL