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

6 months to
9 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -5 +3 +4
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,026 6,184 7,928
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 10.82% 18.57% 15.96%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.02% 20.52% 18.37%
Number of salaries quoted 3,472 2,618 5,516
10th Percentile £26,000 £28,250 £25,500
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 £56,750 £67,500 £61,250
90th Percentile £71,250 £83,750 £72,500
UK median annual salary £45,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -18.18% +10.00% -13.04%

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 35,852 30,140 43,152
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 77.16% 90.50% 86.88%
Number of salaries quoted 20,835 13,431 33,094
10th Percentile £28,000 £31,250 £27,000
25th Percentile £35,000 £41,250 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.90%
75th Percentile £65,000 £70,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £80,000 £83,750 £78,750
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -12.00%

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 9 February 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 9 February 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 1,330 £42,500 -19.05% 852
North of England -17 1,307 £42,500 -10.53% 612
Midlands -15 858 £37,500 -26.83% 451
North West -15 718 £46,000 -8.00% 350
South West -2 581 £40,000 -24.81% 339
West Midlands -18 499 £42,500 -22.73% 290
Yorkshire -6 456 £35,000 -19.49% 204
East of England -3 428 £36,500 -28.39% 283
East Midlands 0 357 £33,000 -5.71% 161
Scotland -4 352 £33,500 -34.95% 118
North East -4 133 £40,662 -15.29% 68
Wales +2 125 £42,500 -18.66% 58
Northern Ireland -3 69 £45,000 -24.64% 28
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
1 298 (5.93%) Microsoft Exchange
2 225 (4.48%) SharePoint
3 47 (0.94%) Confluence
4 45 (0.90%) IIS
5 32 (0.64%) CMS
6 24 (0.48%) WordPress
7 22 (0.44%) Apache
8 19 (0.38%) Apache Spark
9 15 (0.30%) Apache Airflow
10 10 (0.20%) Exchange Server 2013
10 10 (0.20%) nginx
11 8 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2007
11 8 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2010
12 6 (0.12%) Drupal
12 6 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 4 (0.080%) Apache Solr
13 4 (0.080%) Headless CMS
13 4 (0.080%) SAS
14 3 (0.060%) Anypoint
14 3 (0.060%) govService
Applications
1 382 (7.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 381 (7.58%) Microsoft Office
3 67 (1.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 28 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
5 25 (0.50%) MS Visio
6 18 (0.36%) AutoCAD
7 14 (0.28%) Microsoft Project
8 12 (0.24%) Photoshop
9 11 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 9 (0.18%) Adobe Illustrator
11 8 (0.16%) Adobe Premiere
11 8 (0.16%) SOLIDWORKS
12 5 (0.099%) Adobe After Effects
13 4 (0.080%) CATIA
13 4 (0.080%) Fusion 360
13 4 (0.080%) Oracle Smart View
14 3 (0.060%) Adobe XD
14 3 (0.060%) Elementor
14 3 (0.060%) Revit
14 3 (0.060%) Trello
Business Applications
1 81 (1.61%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (0.90%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.44%) NetSuite
4 18 (0.36%) Oracle Payables
5 16 (0.32%) Oracle Assets
5 16 (0.32%) Oracle Receivables
6 15 (0.30%) SAP CO
7 13 (0.26%) Sage X3
8 12 (0.24%) iTrent
9 11 (0.22%) Dynamics NAV
10 10 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
11 9 (0.18%) Shopify
12 8 (0.16%) JDE EnterpriseOne
12 8 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
12 8 (0.16%) Oracle Financials
12 8 (0.16%) SAP Business One
13 7 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
13 7 (0.14%) Workday HCM
14 6 (0.12%) Markit EDM
14 6 (0.12%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 1,105 (21.99%) Azure
2 846 (16.83%) Microsoft 365
3 430 (8.56%) AWS
4 363 (7.22%) Power Platform
5 257 (5.11%) SaaS
6 226 (4.50%) Entra ID
7 146 (2.90%) Azure DevOps
8 123 (2.45%) GCP
9 103 (2.05%) GitHub
10 83 (1.65%) Serverless
11 77 (1.53%) Power Automate
12 60 (1.19%) Dynamics 365
13 58 (1.15%) Azure Data Factory
14 53 (1.05%) AWS Lambda
15 51 (1.01%) Amazon S3
15 51 (1.01%) Google Workspace
16 46 (0.92%) GitHub Actions
17 45 (0.90%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 45 (0.90%) OneDrive
17 45 (0.90%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 395 (7.86%) DNS
2 343 (6.82%) DHCP
3 263 (5.23%) Firewall
4 153 (3.04%) TCP/IP
5 151 (3.00%) VPN
6 150 (2.98%) Wi-Fi
7 134 (2.67%) WAN
8 119 (2.37%) LAN
9 95 (1.89%) Broadband
10 91 (1.81%) VLAN
11 86 (1.71%) VoIP
12 73 (1.45%) Wireless
13 53 (1.05%) Remote Desktop
14 49 (0.97%) Network Security
15 40 (0.80%) Internet
16 37 (0.74%) SD-WAN
17 34 (0.68%) SAN
18 30 (0.60%) Unified Communications
19 24 (0.48%) Wireshark
20 23 (0.46%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 308 (6.13%) Power BI
2 210 (4.18%) SQL Server
3 133 (2.65%) Amazon RDS
4 89 (1.77%) Relational Database
5 81 (1.61%) Data Lake
6 76 (1.51%) PostgreSQL
7 74 (1.47%) MySQL
8 66 (1.31%) NoSQL
8 66 (1.31%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 64 (1.27%) Data Warehouse
9 64 (1.27%) SAP BW
10 40 (0.80%) Tableau
11 39 (0.78%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 36 (0.72%) Azure SQL Database
13 31 (0.62%) Amazon Redshift
13 31 (0.62%) DynamoDB
14 29 (0.58%) MongoDB
15 28 (0.56%) Metadata
15 28 (0.56%) Power Query
16 26 (0.52%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 182 (3.62%) Git
2 158 (3.14%) JIRA
3 48 (0.96%) GitLab
4 42 (0.84%) Jenkins
5 29 (0.58%) Selenium
6 17 (0.34%) Visual Studio
7 15 (0.30%) LabVIEW
7 15 (0.30%) Robot Framework
8 14 (0.28%) Maven
8 14 (0.28%) Snyk
9 12 (0.24%) JUnit
10 11 (0.22%) Bitbucket
10 11 (0.22%) Cucumber
10 11 (0.22%) SonarQube
11 10 (0.20%) Burp Suite
11 10 (0.20%) Metasploit
12 9 (0.18%) Cypress.io
12 9 (0.18%) TeamCity
13 8 (0.16%) Octopus Deploy
13 8 (0.16%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,673 (53.18%) Social Skills
2 1,417 (28.19%) Analytical Skills
3 1,046 (20.81%) Finance
4 306 (6.09%) Organisational Skills
5 299 (5.95%) Manufacturing
6 282 (5.61%) Retail
7 245 (4.87%) Marketing
8 209 (4.16%) Public Sector
9 185 (3.68%) Legal
10 161 (3.20%) Law
11 157 (3.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 154 (3.06%) Telecoms
13 128 (2.55%) Electronics
14 117 (2.33%) Banking
15 110 (2.19%) Presentation Skills
16 82 (1.63%) Games
17 78 (1.55%) Automotive
18 73 (1.45%) Documentation Skills
19 59 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
20 57 (1.13%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 854 (16.99%) Analyst
2 698 (13.89%) IT Support
3 567 (11.28%) Support Engineer
4 561 (11.16%) Senior
5 380 (7.56%) Developer
6 306 (6.09%) IT Engineer
7 301 (5.99%) Lead
8 285 (5.67%) Support Analyst
9 268 (5.33%) IT Support Engineer
10 243 (4.83%) Technical Support
11 211 (4.20%) Business Analyst
12 175 (3.48%) 2nd Line Support
13 164 (3.26%) Support Technician
13 164 (3.26%) Systems Engineer
14 162 (3.22%) Technical Engineer
15 154 (3.06%) Technical Support Engineer
16 141 (2.81%) Architect
17 140 (2.79%) IT Analyst
18 130 (2.59%) Consultant
19 128 (2.55%) Trainee
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 195 (3.88%) .NET
2 161 (3.20%) HTML
3 154 (3.06%) React
4 126 (2.51%) CSS
5 87 (1.73%) REST
6 69 (1.37%) Node.js
7 61 (1.21%) RESTful
8 50 (0.99%) AngularJS
9 49 (0.97%) SOAP
9 49 (0.97%) Vue
10 47 (0.94%) JSON
11 45 (0.90%) ASP.NET
12 40 (0.80%) XML
13 38 (0.76%) Spring
14 34 (0.68%) .NET Framework
15 33 (0.66%) Django
16 31 (0.62%) EDI
17 29 (0.58%) Laravel
18 28 (0.56%) Spring Boot
19 26 (0.52%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 498 (9.91%) Driving Licence
2 379 (7.54%) Onboarding
3 311 (6.19%) Self-Motivation
4 167 (3.32%) Legacy Systems
5 166 (3.30%) Management Information System
6 158 (3.14%) Analytical Mindset
7 109 (2.17%) Data Centre
8 100 (1.99%) Product Ownership
9 85 (1.69%) Cloud Native
10 66 (1.31%) Enterprise Software
11 52 (1.03%) Social Media
12 47 (0.94%) FMCG
12 47 (0.94%) Mobile App
13 46 (0.92%) EPoS
14 43 (0.86%) Virtual Team
15 39 (0.78%) Distributed Systems
15 39 (0.78%) Low-Code
16 37 (0.74%) Data Structures
17 33 (0.66%) Life Science
17 33 (0.66%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 945 (18.80%) Windows
2 427 (8.50%) Windows Server
3 337 (6.71%) Linux
4 144 (2.87%) Windows Server 2016
5 118 (2.35%) Windows 10
6 78 (1.55%) Android
7 60 (1.19%) Mac OS
8 55 (1.09%) Apple iOS
9 37 (0.74%) Unix
10 35 (0.70%) Windows Server 2019
11 25 (0.50%) Windows Server 2012
12 17 (0.34%) Windows 7
13 14 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 9 (0.18%) VMS
15 8 (0.16%) CentOS
15 8 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
16 7 (0.14%) Windows 8
17 5 (0.099%) Debian
18 3 (0.060%) Ubuntu
19 2 (0.040%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 936 (18.62%) Customer Service
2 907 (18.05%) Continuous Improvement
3 648 (12.89%) Agile
4 477 (9.49%) Project Management
5 450 (8.95%) Mentoring
6 445 (8.85%) Decision-Making
7 433 (8.62%) Analytics
8 423 (8.42%) Business Intelligence
9 379 (7.54%) ITIL
10 369 (7.34%) DevOps
11 361 (7.18%) ERP
12 339 (6.74%) Change Management
13 328 (6.53%) CI/CD
14 306 (6.09%) AI
15 305 (6.07%) Computer Science
16 303 (6.03%) Stakeholder Management
17 301 (5.99%) CRM
18 299 (5.95%) Cybersecurity
19 297 (5.91%) Process Improvement
20 287 (5.71%) Customer Experience
Programming Languages
1 705 (14.03%) SQL
2 487 (9.69%) Python
3 279 (5.55%) JavaScript
4 257 (5.11%) PowerShell
5 234 (4.66%) C#
6 166 (3.30%) Java
7 81 (1.61%) PHP
8 76 (1.51%) TypeScript
9 61 (1.21%) Bash
10 60 (1.19%) C++
11 56 (1.11%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 43 (0.86%) C
12 43 (0.86%) T-SQL
13 25 (0.50%) PL/SQL
14 24 (0.48%) R
15 20 (0.40%) MATLAB
16 18 (0.36%) Bicep
16 18 (0.36%) Go
17 17 (0.34%) Perl
18 15 (0.30%) VBA
Qualifications
1 1,127 (22.42%) Degree
2 416 (8.28%) Security Cleared
3 289 (5.75%) SC Cleared
4 159 (3.16%) DBS Check
5 149 (2.96%) Microsoft Certification
6 132 (2.63%) Computer Science Degree
7 95 (1.89%) BPSS Clearance
8 75 (1.49%) Master's Degree
9 68 (1.35%) A+ Certification
10 64 (1.27%) Cisco Certification
11 63 (1.25%) DV Cleared
12 62 (1.23%) ACCA
13 57 (1.13%) HND
14 54 (1.07%) CIMA
15 49 (0.97%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 48 (0.96%) Network+ Certification
17 46 (0.92%) CCNA
18 45 (0.90%) HNC
19 40 (0.80%) AWS Certification
20 32 (0.64%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 261 (5.19%) QA
2 217 (4.32%) Data Quality
3 179 (3.56%) Cyber Essentials
4 135 (2.69%) GDPR
4 135 (2.69%) PCI DSS
5 112 (2.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 81 (1.61%) Accessibility
7 69 (1.37%) SLA
8 43 (0.86%) NIST
9 35 (0.70%) ISO 9001
10 26 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
10 26 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 14 (0.28%) PMO
12 9 (0.18%) ISO 13485
13 7 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 7 (0.14%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.12%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 6 (0.12%) WCAG
15 5 (0.099%) GLBA
16 4 (0.080%) GRC
System Software
1 668 (13.29%) Active Directory
2 244 (4.85%) Hyper-V
3 168 (3.34%) Docker
4 112 (2.23%) Terminal Server
5 111 (2.21%) VMware Infrastructure
6 27 (0.54%) Firmware
7 26 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.34%) vSphere
9 16 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
10 15 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
11 8 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
12 6 (0.12%) KVM
12 6 (0.12%) VMware Workstation
13 5 (0.099%) Embedded Firmware
14 4 (0.080%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 2 (0.040%) RHEV
15 2 (0.040%) Xen
16 1 (0.020%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 1 (0.020%) XenApp
16 1 (0.020%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 196 (3.90%) Terraform
2 192 (3.82%) Microsoft Intune
3 119 (2.37%) Kubernetes
4 78 (1.55%) Ansible
5 50 (0.99%) SCCM
6 44 (0.88%) Grafana
7 42 (0.84%) BMC PATROL
8 27 (0.54%) Prometheus
9 20 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
10 15 (0.30%) Nagios
11 14 (0.28%) Cisco CUCM
11 14 (0.28%) vCenter Server
12 12 (0.24%) Jamf Pro
13 10 (0.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 10 (0.20%) AWS Copilot
13 10 (0.20%) Nmap
14 8 (0.16%) Autotask
14 8 (0.16%) Control-M
14 8 (0.16%) ZABBIX
15 7 (0.14%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 1,366 (27.18%) Microsoft
2 298 (5.93%) SAP
3 255 (5.07%) VMware
4 180 (3.58%) Oracle
5 172 (3.42%) Veeam
6 139 (2.77%) SolarWinds
7 136 (2.71%) Splunk
8 130 (2.59%) Cisco
9 113 (2.25%) Tanium
10 112 (2.23%) Brocade
10 112 (2.23%) Nimble Storage
11 105 (2.09%) Google
12 83 (1.65%) Salesforce
13 71 (1.41%) ServiceNow
14 66 (1.31%) Adobe
15 60 (1.19%) Databricks
16 58 (1.15%) Sage
17 55 (1.09%) BT
18 54 (1.07%) Apple
19 47 (0.94%) HubSpot