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

6 months to
25 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 6,653 6,551 8,744
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 8.38% 18.85% 14.58%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.91% 21.69% 18.64%
Number of salaries quoted 4,751 3,660 4,230
10th Percentile £27,000 £25,738 £25,750
25th Percentile £31,250 £29,500 £32,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £40,000 £46,500
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -13.98% -5.10%
75th Percentile £58,750 £58,750 £62,500
90th Percentile £73,750 £72,500 £77,500
UK median annual salary £47,166 £45,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +4.81% -10.00% -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 55,855 30,207 46,903
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.31% 86.92% 78.21%
Number of salaries quoted 39,473 16,517 28,640
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,500 £29,750
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £38,750
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 £87,200 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.33%

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 25 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 25 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 1,685 £45,000 +5.88% 824
South East -4 1,585 £42,500 - 1,006
Midlands -7 1,213 £42,500 +10.39% 653
North West -6 884 £45,000 - 399
South West -4 825 £45,000 +25.00% 593
West Midlands -9 681 £42,500 -4.00% 392
East of England -3 674 £42,500 +21.43% 379
Yorkshire -8 545 £42,500 +21.43% 302
East Midlands -9 530 £41,000 +17.14% 263
Scotland +1 301 £33,500 -26.59% 178
North East -6 256 £48,250 +20.63% 138
Northern Ireland -2 211 £57,500 -2.54% 95
Wales -21 174 £45,000 -6.49% 94
Isle of Man -1 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
1 401 (6.03%) SharePoint
2 343 (5.16%) Microsoft Exchange
3 66 (0.99%) CMS
4 65 (0.98%) Confluence
5 51 (0.77%) IIS
6 32 (0.48%) WordPress
7 29 (0.44%) Apache
8 27 (0.41%) Sitecore CMS
9 25 (0.38%) Apache Airflow
10 16 (0.24%) Apache Spark
11 14 (0.21%) 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 (0.075%) Skype for Business
16 4 (0.060%) Anypoint
16 4 (0.060%) OpenStack
16 4 (0.060%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 434 (6.52%) Microsoft Office
2 417 (6.27%) Microsoft Excel
3 54 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 50 (0.75%) Spreadsheet
5 39 (0.59%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
7 24 (0.36%) Simulink
8 23 (0.35%) AutoCAD
9 14 (0.21%) Revit
10 8 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 8 (0.12%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.12%) EPLAN
11 7 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
11 7 (0.11%) Fusion 360
12 6 (0.090%) Adobe XD
12 6 (0.090%) Navisworks
12 6 (0.090%) Sketch
13 5 (0.075%) Lightworks
13 5 (0.075%) SOLIDWORKS
14 4 (0.060%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 72 (1.08%) Dynamics CRM
2 52 (0.78%) SAP S/4HANA
3 47 (0.71%) NetSuite
4 29 (0.44%) Shopify
5 17 (0.26%) Dynamics NAV
5 17 (0.26%) Magento
5 17 (0.26%) SAP Business One
5 17 (0.26%) SAP ERP
6 15 (0.23%) IBM Planning Analytics
7 14 (0.21%) 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 (0.090%) Raiser’s Edge
Cloud Services
1 1,328 (19.96%) Azure
2 1,142 (17.17%) Microsoft 365
3 668 (10.04%) AWS
4 555 (8.34%) Power Platform
5 343 (5.16%) Entra ID
6 231 (3.47%) SaaS
7 228 (3.43%) GCP
8 165 (2.48%) Azure DevOps
9 146 (2.19%) PowerApps
10 141 (2.12%) Dynamics 365
11 129 (1.94%) GitHub
12 126 (1.89%) Power Automate
13 123 (1.85%) Serverless
14 81 (1.22%) Microsoft Copilot
14 81 (1.22%) OneDrive
15 57 (0.86%) Amazon S3
16 56 (0.84%) GitHub Actions
17 52 (0.78%) AWS CloudFormation
17 52 (0.78%) AWS Lambda
17 52 (0.78%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 418 (6.28%) Firewall
2 403 (6.06%) DNS
3 345 (5.19%) DHCP
4 247 (3.71%) VPN
5 228 (3.43%) TCP/IP
6 187 (2.81%) WAN
7 177 (2.66%) LAN
8 166 (2.50%) Wi-Fi
9 159 (2.39%) Wireless
10 132 (1.98%) VLAN
11 114 (1.71%) Network Security
12 108 (1.62%) VoIP
13 82 (1.23%) Broadband
14 43 (0.65%) Internet
15 30 (0.45%) SSL
16 28 (0.42%) HTTP
16 28 (0.42%) SAN
17 25 (0.38%) SD-WAN
18 23 (0.35%) MQTT
19 22 (0.33%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 441 (6.63%) Power BI
2 327 (4.92%) SQL Server
3 134 (2.01%) MySQL
4 125 (1.88%) Amazon RDS
5 110 (1.65%) Relational Database
6 103 (1.55%) Data Warehouse
7 91 (1.37%) PostgreSQL
8 83 (1.25%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 78 (1.17%) NoSQL
10 69 (1.04%) Tableau
11 62 (0.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 47 (0.71%) Electronic Patient Records
13 46 (0.69%) MongoDB
14 44 (0.66%) Big Data
14 44 (0.66%) Power Query
15 43 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
16 41 (0.62%) Data Lake
17 29 (0.44%) DynamoDB
18 27 (0.41%) Metadata
19 25 (0.38%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 288 (4.33%) Git
2 226 (3.40%) JIRA
3 76 (1.14%) GitLab
4 70 (1.05%) Jenkins
5 35 (0.53%) Eclipse
6 33 (0.50%) Subversion
7 29 (0.44%) Selenium
8 26 (0.39%) JUnit
9 25 (0.38%) Cucumber
10 24 (0.36%) Rational DOORS
11 23 (0.35%) Claude Code
12 21 (0.32%) Postman
13 20 (0.30%) Oracle Forms
14 19 (0.29%) Cypress.io
15 18 (0.27%) Bitbucket
16 14 (0.21%) SonarQube
17 13 (0.20%) Burp Suite
18 12 (0.18%) Visual Studio
19 11 (0.17%) Metasploit
20 10 (0.15%) JMeter
General
1 3,207 (48.20%) Social Skills
2 1,866 (28.05%) Analytical Skills
3 1,059 (15.92%) Finance
4 618 (9.29%) Manufacturing
5 416 (6.25%) Organisational Skills
6 371 (5.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 310 (4.66%) Law
8 293 (4.40%) Retail
9 292 (4.39%) Public Sector
10 287 (4.31%) Legal
11 247 (3.71%) Marketing
12 233 (3.50%) Electronics
13 218 (3.28%) Aerospace
14 157 (2.36%) Telecoms
15 138 (2.07%) Influencing Skills
16 131 (1.97%) Banking
17 106 (1.59%) Documentation Skills
18 77 (1.16%) Military
19 73 (1.10%) Automotive
20 70 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 877 (13.18%) Analyst
2 712 (10.70%) Senior
3 694 (10.43%) Developer
4 666 (10.01%) IT Support
5 546 (8.21%) Support Engineer
6 367 (5.52%) Lead
7 359 (5.40%) IT Engineer
8 319 (4.79%) Support Analyst
9 300 (4.51%) Consultant
10 267 (4.01%) IT Support Engineer
11 262 (3.94%) Support Technician
12 258 (3.88%) Technical Support
13 233 (3.50%) Systems Engineer
14 228 (3.43%) IT Technician
15 223 (3.35%) Architect
16 219 (3.29%) Technical Engineer
17 215 (3.23%) Software Engineer
18 196 (2.95%) Technical Support Engineer
19 194 (2.92%) Senior Developer
20 177 (2.66%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 350 (5.26%) .NET
2 261 (3.92%) Terraform
3 217 (3.26%) React
4 196 (2.95%) HTML
5 193 (2.90%) REST
6 145 (2.18%) CSS
7 126 (1.89%) RESTful
8 96 (1.44%) Node.js
9 94 (1.41%) SOAP
10 82 (1.23%) Vue
11 81 (1.22%) ASP.NET
12 79 (1.19%) Middleware
13 78 (1.17%) AngularJS
14 73 (1.10%) JSON
14 73 (1.10%) Web Services
15 70 (1.05%) XML
16 65 (0.98%) Spring
17 58 (0.87%) Spring Boot
18 55 (0.83%) OAuth
19 49 (0.74%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 531 (7.98%) Driving Licence
2 421 (6.33%) Onboarding
3 334 (5.02%) Self-Motivation
4 300 (4.51%) Management Information System
5 187 (2.81%) Cloud Native
6 170 (2.56%) Product Ownership
7 154 (2.31%) Legacy Systems
8 112 (1.68%) Data Centre
9 106 (1.59%) Enterprise Software
10 94 (1.41%) Analytical Mindset
11 88 (1.32%) Distributed Systems
12 84 (1.26%) NHS
13 79 (1.19%) Security Posture
14 76 (1.14%) Robotics
15 67 (1.01%) Mobile App
15 67 (1.01%) Social Media
16 66 (0.99%) Cyber Threat
16 66 (0.99%) Virtual Team
17 63 (0.95%) IoT
18 59 (0.89%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 1,090 (16.38%) Windows
2 504 (7.58%) Windows Server
3 454 (6.82%) Linux
4 133 (2.00%) Windows 10
5 111 (1.67%) Windows Server 2016
6 89 (1.34%) Android
7 81 (1.22%) Apple iOS
8 75 (1.13%) Mac OS
9 41 (0.62%) Unix
10 39 (0.59%) Windows Server 2019
11 28 (0.42%) Ubuntu
12 19 (0.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 18 (0.27%) VMS
14 14 (0.21%) CentOS
14 14 (0.21%) Debian
15 9 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
15 9 (0.14%) FreeRTOS
16 8 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.075%) OpenVMS
17 5 (0.075%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,769 (26.59%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,208 (18.16%) Customer Service
3 1,008 (15.15%) Agile
4 754 (11.33%) Decision-Making
5 686 (10.31%) CI/CD
6 676 (10.16%) Mentoring
7 652 (9.80%) AI
8 615 (9.24%) Stakeholder Management
9 571 (8.58%) DevOps
10 566 (8.51%) Analytics
11 554 (8.33%) ITIL
12 541 (8.13%) Software Engineering
13 530 (7.97%) Cybersecurity
14 523 (7.86%) Project Delivery
15 522 (7.85%) Collaborative Working
16 498 (7.49%) ERP
17 471 (7.08%) Business Intelligence
18 440 (6.61%) Project Management
19 418 (6.28%) CRM
20 389 (5.85%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 1,017 (15.29%) SQL
2 721 (10.84%) Python
3 433 (6.51%) JavaScript
4 432 (6.49%) C#
5 294 (4.42%) Java
6 267 (4.01%) PowerShell
7 193 (2.90%) TypeScript
8 185 (2.78%) C++
9 119 (1.79%) Bash
10 74 (1.11%) PHP
11 72 (1.08%) C
12 61 (0.92%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 55 (0.83%) T-SQL
14 46 (0.69%) Shell Script
15 43 (0.65%) Perl
16 40 (0.60%) Ruby
17 37 (0.56%) Go
18 33 (0.50%) PL/SQL
18 33 (0.50%) Rust
19 31 (0.47%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 1,049 (15.77%) Degree
2 627 (9.42%) Security Cleared
3 446 (6.70%) SC Cleared
4 202 (3.04%) DBS Check
5 193 (2.90%) Computer Science Degree
6 182 (2.74%) Microsoft Certification
7 169 (2.54%) DV Cleared
8 153 (2.30%) BPSS Clearance
9 126 (1.89%) HNC
10 118 (1.77%) Azure Certification
11 107 (1.61%) HND
12 93 (1.40%) Cisco Certification
13 79 (1.19%) PMI Certification
14 74 (1.11%) CISSP
15 64 (0.96%) CCNA
16 63 (0.95%) Chartered Engineer
17 62 (0.93%) Master's Degree
18 58 (0.87%) A+ Certification
18 58 (0.87%) PMP
19 50 (0.75%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 444 (6.67%) QA
2 264 (3.97%) Data Quality
3 198 (2.98%) GDPR
4 174 (2.62%) Cyber Essentials
5 167 (2.51%) SLA
6 166 (2.50%) Accessibility
7 127 (1.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 114 (1.71%) PCI DSS
9 95 (1.43%) NIST
10 36 (0.54%) ISO 9001
11 32 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 30 (0.45%) PMO
13 21 (0.32%) GMP
14 18 (0.27%) Good Clinical Practice
15 16 (0.24%) GRC
16 14 (0.21%) DO-254
17 13 (0.20%) NCSC
18 12 (0.18%) Actionable Recommendations
18 12 (0.18%) SOC 2
18 12 (0.18%) WCAG
System Software
1 756 (11.36%) Active Directory
2 282 (4.24%) Hyper-V
3 251 (3.77%) Docker
4 201 (3.02%) VMware Infrastructure
5 80 (1.20%) Terminal Server
6 67 (1.01%) Firmware
7 35 (0.53%) Virtual Desktop
8 28 (0.42%) Virtual Machines
8 28 (0.42%) vSphere
9 22 (0.33%) Embedded Firmware
10 15 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
11 7 (0.11%) KVM
12 5 (0.075%) ClearTrust
12 5 (0.075%) Squid
12 5 (0.075%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.075%) XenApp
13 4 (0.060%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 3 (0.045%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 3 (0.045%) Terminal Services
14 3 (0.045%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 229 (3.44%) Microsoft Intune
2 218 (3.28%) Kubernetes
3 108 (1.62%) Ansible
4 58 (0.87%) SCCM
5 55 (0.83%) Grafana
6 39 (0.59%) Prometheus
7 36 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
8 22 (0.33%) FortiGate
9 18 (0.27%) Jamf Pro
10 17 (0.26%) Puppet
11 13 (0.20%) Functional Safety
11 13 (0.20%) Nagios
12 11 (0.17%) BMC PATROL
12 11 (0.17%) Kibana
12 11 (0.17%) Nmap
13 10 (0.15%) logstash
13 10 (0.15%) Podman
13 10 (0.15%) Proxmox
14 9 (0.14%) QRadar
14 9 (0.14%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 2,017 (30.32%) Microsoft
2 325 (4.89%) VMware
3 179 (2.69%) SAP
4 175 (2.63%) Google
5 158 (2.37%) Oracle
6 139 (2.09%) Veeam
7 132 (1.98%) Cisco
8 123 (1.85%) Splunk
9 113 (1.70%) ServiceNow
10 102 (1.53%) SolarWinds
11 97 (1.46%) Workday
12 92 (1.38%) Salesforce
13 88 (1.32%) Tanium
14 81 (1.22%) Nimble Storage
15 80 (1.20%) Brocade
16 78 (1.17%) Databricks
17 72 (1.08%) Sage
18 63 (0.95%) Fortinet
19 58 (0.87%) Apple
20 52 (0.78%) SonicWALL