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

6 months to
28 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 4 3
Rank change year-on-year -2 -1 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 7,852 6,311 8,215
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 9.12% 18.34% 15.28%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.96% 21.08% 19.31%
Number of salaries quoted 5,381 3,502 3,219
10th Percentile £27,000 £25,684 £25,750
25th Percentile £31,250 £29,000 £33,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,750 £40,000 £48,500
Median % change year-on-year +6.88% -17.53% +2.11%
75th Percentile £58,750 £57,500 £63,750
90th Percentile £73,750 £68,750 £80,000
UK median annual salary £46,000 £45,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +2.22% -14.29% -4.55%

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 60,588 29,935 42,550
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.39% 87.00% 79.15%
Number of salaries quoted 42,683 16,031 22,030
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,750 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £47,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year +15.79% -9.52% -2.78%
75th Percentile £70,000 £65,000 £67,500
90th Percentile £88,148 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £58,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% -5.17% -3.33%

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 September 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 September 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 1,981 £45,000 - 1,532
South East -3 1,845 £41,585 +0.81% 1,538
Midlands -7 1,416 £42,500 +11.84% 1,094
North West -3 1,028 £45,000 -7.64% 795
South West -2 969 £45,000 +25.00% 780
West Midlands -7 791 £42,500 -0.28% 658
East of England -2 790 £43,250 +33.08% 707
East Midlands -7 623 £42,000 +27.27% 435
Yorkshire -7 602 £42,500 +27.82% 519
North East +5 357 £50,000 +45.99% 232
Scotland +5 334 £36,250 -5.13% 520
Northern Ireland +5 302 £70,000 +18.64% 349
Wales -14 233 £42,500 -11.68% 176
Isle of Man +1 3 £35,000 - 9
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
1 469 (5.97%) SharePoint
2 360 (4.58%) Microsoft Exchange
3 65 (0.83%) Confluence
4 61 (0.78%) CMS
5 55 (0.70%) IIS
6 35 (0.45%) Apache
7 32 (0.41%) WordPress
8 29 (0.37%) Apache Airflow
9 28 (0.36%) Sitecore CMS
10 19 (0.24%) Apache Spark
11 14 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
12 11 (0.14%) Jupyter
12 11 (0.14%) nginx
13 10 (0.13%) WebSphere
14 9 (0.11%) WebLogic
15 8 (0.10%) SAS
16 7 (0.089%) OpenEdge
17 6 (0.076%) CICS
18 4 (0.051%) Oracle SOA Suite
18 4 (0.051%) Tomcat
Applications
1 582 (7.41%) Microsoft Office
2 529 (6.74%) Microsoft Excel
3 83 (1.06%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 66 (0.84%) Spreadsheet
5 45 (0.57%) AutoCAD
5 45 (0.57%) MS Visio
6 41 (0.52%) Microsoft Project
7 34 (0.43%) Simulink
8 26 (0.33%) Revit
9 18 (0.23%) EPLAN
10 14 (0.18%) SOLIDWORKS
11 10 (0.13%) Navisworks
12 9 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 8 (0.10%) Chatbot
13 8 (0.10%) OrCAD
14 7 (0.089%) Fusion 360
14 7 (0.089%) Siemens NX
15 6 (0.076%) Adobe Illustrator
15 6 (0.076%) Lightworks
16 5 (0.064%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 75 (0.96%) Dynamics CRM
2 64 (0.82%) NetSuite
3 52 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
4 34 (0.43%) Shopify
5 23 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
6 21 (0.27%) Dynamics NAV
7 20 (0.25%) Workday HCM
8 16 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
8 16 (0.20%) SAP Business One
9 14 (0.18%) Magento
10 13 (0.17%) IBM Planning Analytics
10 13 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
10 13 (0.17%) SAP ERP
11 12 (0.15%) Dynamics AX
11 12 (0.15%) Oracle Cash Management
11 12 (0.15%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 11 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
13 10 (0.13%) JDE EnterpriseOne
13 10 (0.13%) Sage X3
14 9 (0.11%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 1,391 (17.72%) Azure
2 1,259 (16.03%) Microsoft 365
3 696 (8.86%) AWS
4 623 (7.93%) Power Platform
5 429 (5.46%) Entra ID
6 282 (3.59%) SaaS
7 232 (2.95%) GCP
8 175 (2.23%) Azure DevOps
9 156 (1.99%) PowerApps
10 152 (1.94%) Dynamics 365
11 151 (1.92%) GitHub
12 146 (1.86%) Power Automate
13 117 (1.49%) OneDrive
13 117 (1.49%) Serverless
14 94 (1.20%) Microsoft Copilot
15 73 (0.93%) Google Workspace
16 69 (0.88%) Amazon S3
17 66 (0.84%) AWS CloudFormation
18 65 (0.83%) GitHub Actions
19 58 (0.74%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 446 (5.68%) Firewall
2 440 (5.60%) DNS
3 367 (4.67%) DHCP
4 286 (3.64%) VPN
5 235 (2.99%) TCP/IP
6 210 (2.67%) Wi-Fi
7 197 (2.51%) WAN
8 191 (2.43%) LAN
9 174 (2.22%) Wireless
10 145 (1.85%) VLAN
11 126 (1.60%) Network Security
12 117 (1.49%) VoIP
13 62 (0.79%) Broadband
14 60 (0.76%) Internet
15 31 (0.39%) SSL
16 29 (0.37%) SAN
17 28 (0.36%) Remote Desktop
18 26 (0.33%) SD-WAN
19 25 (0.32%) Ethernet
19 25 (0.32%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 499 (6.36%) Power BI
2 334 (4.25%) SQL Server
3 138 (1.76%) MySQL
4 120 (1.53%) Relational Database
5 119 (1.52%) Amazon RDS
6 108 (1.38%) Data Warehouse
7 96 (1.22%) PostgreSQL
8 83 (1.06%) NoSQL
9 78 (0.99%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 70 (0.89%) Tableau
11 60 (0.76%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 56 (0.71%) MongoDB
13 51 (0.65%) Power Query
14 49 (0.62%) Data Lake
15 47 (0.60%) Electronic Patient Records
16 46 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
16 46 (0.59%) Big Data
17 34 (0.43%) Oracle Reports
18 32 (0.41%) Metadata
19 28 (0.36%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 310 (3.95%) Git
2 252 (3.21%) JIRA
3 94 (1.20%) GitLab
4 87 (1.11%) Jenkins
5 40 (0.51%) Eclipse
6 36 (0.46%) Selenium
7 35 (0.45%) Subversion
8 33 (0.42%) Cucumber
9 29 (0.37%) Claude Code
10 26 (0.33%) JUnit
11 24 (0.31%) Oracle Forms
12 23 (0.29%) Bitbucket
12 23 (0.29%) Postman
13 22 (0.28%) Cypress.io
14 21 (0.27%) Rational DOORS
15 17 (0.22%) LabVIEW
16 14 (0.18%) Burp Suite
16 14 (0.18%) SonarQube
17 13 (0.17%) Team Foundation Server
18 12 (0.15%) Visual Studio
General
1 3,871 (49.30%) Social Skills
2 2,159 (27.50%) Analytical Skills
3 1,260 (16.05%) Finance
4 896 (11.41%) Manufacturing
5 624 (7.95%) Organisational Skills
6 420 (5.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 405 (5.16%) Retail
8 376 (4.79%) Public Sector
9 338 (4.30%) Law
10 329 (4.19%) Electronics
11 320 (4.08%) Legal
12 314 (4.00%) Aerospace
13 291 (3.71%) Marketing
14 201 (2.56%) Telecoms
15 154 (1.96%) Influencing Skills
16 141 (1.80%) Automotive
17 131 (1.67%) Banking
18 130 (1.66%) Documentation Skills
19 107 (1.36%) Presentation Skills
20 106 (1.35%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,048 (13.35%) Analyst
2 818 (10.42%) Senior
3 754 (9.60%) IT Support
4 710 (9.04%) Developer
5 596 (7.59%) Support Engineer
6 409 (5.21%) Lead
7 397 (5.06%) IT Engineer
7 397 (5.06%) Support Analyst
8 356 (4.53%) Consultant
9 303 (3.86%) IT Support Engineer
10 286 (3.64%) Technical Support
11 273 (3.48%) Support Technician
12 245 (3.12%) Technical Engineer
13 237 (3.02%) IT Technician
14 233 (2.97%) Systems Engineer
15 230 (2.93%) Architect
16 228 (2.90%) Software Engineer
17 222 (2.83%) Technical Support Engineer
18 208 (2.65%) Senior Developer
19 194 (2.47%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 367 (4.67%) .NET
2 280 (3.57%) Terraform
3 226 (2.88%) React
4 209 (2.66%) REST
5 188 (2.39%) HTML
6 139 (1.77%) CSS
7 137 (1.74%) RESTful
8 98 (1.25%) SOAP
9 95 (1.21%) Node.js
10 91 (1.16%) Web Services
11 83 (1.06%) XML
12 82 (1.04%) ASP.NET
13 80 (1.02%) Middleware
14 79 (1.01%) Spring
15 78 (0.99%) Vue
16 77 (0.98%) JSON
17 76 (0.97%) AngularJS
18 72 (0.92%) Spring Boot
19 64 (0.82%) Kafka
20 52 (0.66%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 697 (8.88%) Driving Licence
2 547 (6.97%) Onboarding
3 418 (5.32%) Self-Motivation
4 365 (4.65%) Management Information System
5 211 (2.69%) Cloud Native
6 181 (2.31%) Product Ownership
7 155 (1.97%) Enterprise Software
8 146 (1.86%) Legacy Systems
9 133 (1.69%) Robotics
10 125 (1.59%) Data Centre
11 96 (1.22%) Analytical Mindset
12 94 (1.20%) NHS
13 87 (1.11%) Distributed Systems
14 81 (1.03%) IoT
15 80 (1.02%) Cyber Threat
16 79 (1.01%) Security Posture
17 76 (0.97%) CCTV
18 74 (0.94%) Social Media
19 73 (0.93%) Virtual Team
20 71 (0.90%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 1,199 (15.27%) Windows
2 529 (6.74%) Windows Server
3 448 (5.71%) Linux
4 126 (1.60%) Windows 10
5 98 (1.25%) Windows Server 2016
6 88 (1.12%) Apple iOS
7 86 (1.10%) Android
8 84 (1.07%) Mac OS
9 43 (0.55%) Unix
10 38 (0.48%) Windows Server 2019
11 25 (0.32%) Ubuntu
12 16 (0.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 16 (0.20%) VMS
13 15 (0.19%) Embedded Linux
14 13 (0.17%) Debian
15 10 (0.13%) FreeRTOS
16 7 (0.089%) CentOS
16 7 (0.089%) Windows Server 2012
17 6 (0.076%) Rocky
18 5 (0.064%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,147 (27.34%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,477 (18.81%) Customer Service
3 1,109 (14.12%) Agile
4 840 (10.70%) Decision-Making
5 818 (10.42%) Stakeholder Management
6 796 (10.14%) Mentoring
7 769 (9.79%) AI
8 726 (9.25%) CI/CD
9 670 (8.53%) Project Delivery
10 648 (8.25%) Collaborative Working
11 619 (7.88%) Analytics
12 597 (7.60%) Software Engineering
13 596 (7.59%) DevOps
13 596 (7.59%) ERP
14 592 (7.54%) Cybersecurity
15 570 (7.26%) ITIL
16 546 (6.95%) Project Management
17 539 (6.86%) Business Intelligence
18 490 (6.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 488 (6.21%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 1,110 (14.14%) SQL
2 769 (9.79%) Python
3 446 (5.68%) C#
4 436 (5.55%) JavaScript
5 324 (4.13%) Java
6 300 (3.82%) PowerShell
7 206 (2.62%) C++
8 203 (2.59%) TypeScript
9 124 (1.58%) Bash
10 82 (1.04%) C
11 65 (0.83%) PHP
12 63 (0.80%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 59 (0.75%) T-SQL
14 52 (0.66%) Ruby
15 47 (0.60%) MATLAB
16 46 (0.59%) Shell Script
17 45 (0.57%) PL/SQL
18 41 (0.52%) Perl
18 41 (0.52%) Rust
19 35 (0.45%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,262 (16.07%) Degree
2 734 (9.35%) Security Cleared
3 508 (6.47%) SC Cleared
4 244 (3.11%) HNC
5 227 (2.89%) DBS Check
6 209 (2.66%) HND
7 208 (2.65%) Computer Science Degree
8 188 (2.39%) Microsoft Certification
9 183 (2.33%) DV Cleared
10 165 (2.10%) BPSS Clearance
11 137 (1.74%) Azure Certification
12 99 (1.26%) Chartered Engineer
13 90 (1.15%) Cisco Certification
14 76 (0.97%) A+ Certification
14 76 (0.97%) PMI Certification
15 67 (0.85%) Master's Degree
15 67 (0.85%) NVQ Level 3
16 62 (0.79%) CISSP
17 59 (0.75%) ACCA
18 56 (0.71%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 494 (6.29%) QA
2 300 (3.82%) Data Quality
3 233 (2.97%) GDPR
4 207 (2.64%) Accessibility
5 181 (2.31%) SLA
6 169 (2.15%) Cyber Essentials
7 134 (1.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 105 (1.34%) PCI DSS
9 78 (0.99%) NIST
10 47 (0.60%) ISO 9001
11 41 (0.52%) PMO
12 34 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 20 (0.25%) DO-254
13 20 (0.25%) GMP
14 19 (0.24%) Good Clinical Practice
14 19 (0.24%) NCSC
15 16 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
15 16 (0.20%) GRC
16 13 (0.17%) GxP
16 13 (0.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 851 (10.84%) Active Directory
2 288 (3.67%) Hyper-V
3 261 (3.32%) Docker
4 208 (2.65%) VMware Infrastructure
5 80 (1.02%) Firmware
6 72 (0.92%) Terminal Server
7 43 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
8 34 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
9 30 (0.38%) Embedded Firmware
10 27 (0.34%) vSphere
11 14 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
12 10 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.064%) ClearTrust
13 5 (0.064%) Squid
14 4 (0.051%) KVM
14 4 (0.051%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 3 (0.038%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.038%) VMware Server
16 2 (0.025%) Samba
16 2 (0.025%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 265 (3.37%) Microsoft Intune
2 226 (2.88%) Kubernetes
3 108 (1.38%) Ansible
4 64 (0.82%) Grafana
5 50 (0.64%) SCCM
6 48 (0.61%) Prometheus
7 44 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
8 39 (0.50%) BMC PATROL
9 21 (0.27%) Jamf Pro
10 19 (0.24%) FortiGate
10 19 (0.24%) Functional Safety
11 15 (0.19%) Puppet
12 14 (0.18%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
13 13 (0.17%) Kibana
14 11 (0.14%) logstash
14 11 (0.14%) Nagios
14 11 (0.14%) Nmap
15 10 (0.13%) Proxmox
16 9 (0.11%) Argo
16 9 (0.11%) Podman
Vendors
1 2,380 (30.31%) Microsoft
2 336 (4.28%) VMware
3 226 (2.88%) SAP
4 220 (2.80%) Google
5 189 (2.41%) Workday
6 177 (2.25%) Oracle
7 138 (1.76%) Cisco
7 138 (1.76%) Veeam
8 127 (1.62%) ServiceNow
9 123 (1.57%) Splunk
10 107 (1.36%) Salesforce
11 104 (1.32%) Sage
12 91 (1.16%) SolarWinds
13 80 (1.02%) Tanium
14 77 (0.98%) Fortinet
15 73 (0.93%) Brocade
15 73 (0.93%) Databricks
15 73 (0.93%) Nimble Storage
16 65 (0.83%) Apple
17 63 (0.80%) Siemens