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

6 months to
20 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -9 +3 +7
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,897 5,251 10,301
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 7.74% 19.74% 15.35%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.68% 21.63% 18.24%
Number of salaries quoted 3,524 3,151 6,855
10th Percentile £26,250 £26,500 £25,500
25th Percentile £29,750 £32,500 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £48,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year -11.46% +6.67% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £63,750 £60,000
90th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £72,500
UK median annual salary £47,500 £52,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.52% +5.00% -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 45,849 24,281 56,486
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 72.47% 91.29% 84.17%
Number of salaries quoted 28,046 13,796 40,785
10th Percentile £28,750 £28,500 £27,000
25th Percentile £36,250 £37,500 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,600 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.94% +5.20% -8.90%
75th Percentile £70,000 £68,750 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £82,500 £77,500
UK median annual salary £57,500 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -4.17% +9.09% -10.57%

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 April 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 April 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 -18 1,300 £42,500 -7.61% 644
South East -8 1,188 £45,000 -10.00% 766
Midlands -21 903 £40,000 -14.89% 491
North West -15 672 £42,500 -10.87% 345
South West -8 558 £43,500 -3.33% 301
West Midlands -24 541 £42,500 -16.87% 279
Yorkshire -9 498 £37,500 -10.71% 215
East of England -8 455 £40,000 -20.00% 296
East Midlands -6 359 £35,000 -9.09% 212
Scotland -4 317 £35,000 -30.00% 148
North East -13 130 £48,445 +7.65% 96
Wales -13 117 £42,500 -15.00% 80
Northern Ireland -7 86 £24,500 -55.45% 25
Isle of Man -1 1 £62,500 +64.47% 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
1 286 (5.84%) Microsoft Exchange
2 247 (5.04%) SharePoint
3 41 (0.84%) CMS
4 40 (0.82%) Confluence
5 24 (0.49%) IIS
5 24 (0.49%) WordPress
6 18 (0.37%) Apache
7 17 (0.35%) Apache Spark
8 14 (0.29%) Apache Airflow
9 12 (0.25%) SAS
10 11 (0.22%) Exchange Server 2013
11 9 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2007
11 9 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2010
12 8 (0.16%) nginx
13 7 (0.14%) Drupal
14 5 (0.10%) OpenStack
14 5 (0.10%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 5 (0.10%) Skype for Business
15 4 (0.082%) Moodle
15 4 (0.082%) Totara
Applications
1 326 (6.66%) Microsoft Office
2 306 (6.25%) Microsoft Excel
3 49 (1.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 36 (0.74%) MS Visio
5 31 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
6 16 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
7 11 (0.22%) Adobe Illustrator
8 9 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 9 (0.18%) Fusion 360
8 9 (0.18%) Photoshop
9 5 (0.10%) AutoCAD
10 4 (0.082%) Simulink
11 3 (0.061%) Elementor
11 3 (0.061%) Trello
12 2 (0.041%) Adobe After Effects
12 2 (0.041%) Adobe Captivate
12 2 (0.041%) Adobe Premiere
12 2 (0.041%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.041%) Sketch
12 2 (0.041%) Weka
Business Applications
1 40 (0.82%) Dynamics CRM
2 39 (0.80%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.53%) NetSuite
4 17 (0.35%) Dynamics NAV
5 15 (0.31%) Sage X3
5 15 (0.31%) Shopify
6 13 (0.27%) Magento
6 13 (0.27%) SAP CO
6 13 (0.27%) SAP ERP
7 12 (0.25%) iTrent
8 8 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
8 8 (0.16%) SAP Business One
9 7 (0.14%) Q-Pulse
9 7 (0.14%) Workday HCM
10 5 (0.10%) IBM Planning Analytics
10 5 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
11 4 (0.082%) Dynamics GP
11 4 (0.082%) Oracle Payables
11 4 (0.082%) SAP FI
11 4 (0.082%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 995 (20.32%) Azure
2 837 (17.09%) Microsoft 365
3 469 (9.58%) AWS
4 343 (7.00%) Power Platform
5 221 (4.51%) Entra ID
6 206 (4.21%) SaaS
7 140 (2.86%) GCP
8 130 (2.65%) Azure DevOps
9 116 (2.37%) Serverless
10 113 (2.31%) GitHub
11 81 (1.65%) Dynamics 365
12 75 (1.53%) Power Automate
13 74 (1.51%) Azure Data Factory
14 63 (1.29%) Amazon S3
15 62 (1.27%) AWS Lambda
16 58 (1.18%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 57 (1.16%) Google Workspace
18 56 (1.14%) GitHub Actions
19 52 (1.06%) PaaS
20 47 (0.96%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 326 (6.66%) DNS
2 288 (5.88%) Firewall
3 276 (5.64%) DHCP
4 165 (3.37%) WAN
5 159 (3.25%) VPN
6 131 (2.68%) Wi-Fi
7 130 (2.65%) LAN
8 125 (2.55%) TCP/IP
9 105 (2.14%) Broadband
10 88 (1.80%) Wireless
11 83 (1.69%) VLAN
12 67 (1.37%) VoIP
13 63 (1.29%) Network Security
14 43 (0.88%) SD-WAN
15 35 (0.71%) Internet
16 32 (0.65%) SAN
17 26 (0.53%) Remote Desktop
18 25 (0.51%) Unified Communications
19 22 (0.45%) Wireshark
20 21 (0.43%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 290 (5.92%) Power BI
2 206 (4.21%) SQL Server
3 80 (1.63%) Amazon RDS
4 79 (1.61%) PostgreSQL
5 74 (1.51%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 69 (1.41%) NoSQL
7 66 (1.35%) Relational Database
8 63 (1.29%) MySQL
9 59 (1.20%) Data Warehouse
10 47 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 44 (0.90%) Power Query
12 43 (0.88%) Azure SQL Database
13 42 (0.86%) Tableau
14 40 (0.82%) DynamoDB
15 34 (0.69%) MongoDB
16 25 (0.51%) Amazon Redshift
17 23 (0.47%) Data Lake
17 23 (0.47%) Metadata
18 22 (0.45%) Big Data
19 21 (0.43%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 193 (3.94%) Git
2 151 (3.08%) JIRA
3 70 (1.43%) GitLab
4 53 (1.08%) Jenkins
5 24 (0.49%) Selenium
6 20 (0.41%) Rational DOORS
7 17 (0.35%) Cucumber
8 16 (0.33%) Maven
8 16 (0.33%) SonarQube
9 13 (0.27%) Bitbucket
9 13 (0.27%) Cypress.io
9 13 (0.27%) LabVIEW
10 12 (0.25%) Visual Studio
11 9 (0.18%) Burp Suite
11 9 (0.18%) JUnit
11 9 (0.18%) Metasploit
12 8 (0.16%) Robot Framework
13 7 (0.14%) CircleCI
14 6 (0.12%) Snyk
14 6 (0.12%) Subversion
General
1 2,401 (49.03%) Social Skills
2 1,381 (28.20%) Analytical Skills
3 907 (18.52%) Finance
4 339 (6.92%) Organisational Skills
5 302 (6.17%) Manufacturing
6 236 (4.82%) Public Sector
7 211 (4.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 205 (4.19%) Retail
9 200 (4.08%) Marketing
10 185 (3.78%) Legal
11 150 (3.06%) Law
12 143 (2.92%) Banking
13 128 (2.61%) Electronics
14 126 (2.57%) Telecoms
15 94 (1.92%) Presentation Skills
16 86 (1.76%) Documentation Skills
17 77 (1.57%) Automotive
18 75 (1.53%) Games
19 53 (1.08%) Aerospace
20 52 (1.06%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 734 (14.99%) Analyst
2 651 (13.29%) IT Support
3 578 (11.80%) Support Engineer
4 536 (10.95%) Senior
5 374 (7.64%) Developer
6 353 (7.21%) IT Engineer
7 285 (5.82%) IT Support Engineer
8 258 (5.27%) Lead
9 227 (4.64%) Support Analyst
10 203 (4.15%) Support Technician
11 172 (3.51%) Technical Support
12 171 (3.49%) Systems Engineer
13 165 (3.37%) Business Analyst
14 162 (3.31%) Architect
14 162 (3.31%) IT Technician
15 155 (3.17%) 2nd Line Support
16 150 (3.06%) Consultant
17 143 (2.92%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 141 (2.88%) IT Support Technician
19 137 (2.80%) Technical Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 169 (3.45%) .NET
2 156 (3.19%) React
3 137 (2.80%) HTML
4 107 (2.19%) CSS
5 96 (1.96%) REST
6 79 (1.61%) Node.js
7 59 (1.20%) RESTful
8 55 (1.12%) SOAP
9 51 (1.04%) Vue
10 49 (1.00%) JSON
11 48 (0.98%) XML
12 47 (0.96%) Middleware
13 44 (0.90%) AngularJS
14 42 (0.86%) Spring
15 39 (0.80%) OAuth
15 39 (0.80%) Spring Boot
16 33 (0.67%) ASP.NET
17 31 (0.63%) GraphQL
18 29 (0.59%) Laravel
19 28 (0.57%) EDI
Miscellaneous
1 385 (7.86%) Driving Licence
2 304 (6.21%) Onboarding
3 270 (5.51%) Self-Motivation
4 166 (3.39%) Management Information System
5 132 (2.70%) Analytical Mindset
6 113 (2.31%) Product Ownership
7 112 (2.29%) Legacy Systems
8 99 (2.02%) Cloud Native
9 87 (1.78%) Data Centre
10 78 (1.59%) Social Media
11 65 (1.33%) Distributed Systems
12 64 (1.31%) Enterprise Software
13 57 (1.16%) Mobile App
14 54 (1.10%) Low-Code
15 43 (0.88%) Data Structures
16 35 (0.71%) Security Posture
16 35 (0.71%) Virtual Team
17 34 (0.69%) Life Science
18 32 (0.65%) EPoS
18 32 (0.65%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 870 (17.77%) Windows
2 387 (7.90%) Windows Server
3 306 (6.25%) Linux
4 134 (2.74%) Windows 10
5 106 (2.16%) Windows Server 2016
6 105 (2.14%) Android
7 68 (1.39%) Apple iOS
8 54 (1.10%) Mac OS
9 38 (0.78%) Windows Server 2019
10 32 (0.65%) Unix
11 26 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 25 (0.51%) CentOS
13 20 (0.41%) Ubuntu
13 20 (0.41%) Windows Server 2012
14 15 (0.31%) Windows 7
15 13 (0.27%) VMS
16 10 (0.20%) Debian
16 10 (0.20%) Windows 8
17 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
18 4 (0.082%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 990 (20.22%) Continuous Improvement
2 877 (17.91%) Customer Service
3 655 (13.38%) Agile
4 500 (10.21%) Decision-Making
5 455 (9.29%) Mentoring
6 438 (8.94%) ITIL
7 408 (8.33%) DevOps
8 406 (8.29%) CI/CD
9 384 (7.84%) Analytics
10 374 (7.64%) Project Management
11 372 (7.60%) Business Intelligence
12 350 (7.15%) AI
13 337 (6.88%) Coaching
14 314 (6.41%) Cybersecurity
15 297 (6.06%) Stakeholder Management
16 287 (5.86%) Computer Science
17 285 (5.82%) Software Engineering
18 284 (5.80%) ERP
19 277 (5.66%) CRM
20 271 (5.53%) Collaborative Working
Programming Languages
1 631 (12.89%) SQL
2 520 (10.62%) Python
3 277 (5.66%) JavaScript
4 215 (4.39%) PowerShell
5 186 (3.80%) C#
5 186 (3.80%) Java
6 101 (2.06%) TypeScript
7 83 (1.69%) Bash
8 74 (1.51%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 64 (1.31%) C++
10 63 (1.29%) PHP
11 49 (1.00%) C
12 36 (0.74%) T-SQL
13 27 (0.55%) Bicep
14 26 (0.53%) Kotlin
15 25 (0.51%) Go
15 25 (0.51%) PL/SQL
16 23 (0.47%) R
17 20 (0.41%) Scala
18 17 (0.35%) Rust
Qualifications
1 834 (17.03%) Degree
2 330 (6.74%) Security Cleared
3 219 (4.47%) SC Cleared
4 187 (3.82%) DBS Check
5 149 (3.04%) Microsoft Certification
6 127 (2.59%) Computer Science Degree
7 91 (1.86%) BPSS Clearance
8 75 (1.53%) ACCA
9 74 (1.51%) A+ Certification
10 70 (1.43%) Cisco Certification
11 66 (1.35%) CIMA
12 62 (1.27%) DV Cleared
13 56 (1.14%) CCNA
14 51 (1.04%) Master's Degree
15 50 (1.02%) CISSP
16 46 (0.94%) HNC
17 45 (0.92%) PMI Certification
18 44 (0.90%) Network+ Certification
19 40 (0.82%) AWS Certification
20 36 (0.74%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 252 (5.15%) QA
2 224 (4.57%) Data Quality
3 145 (2.96%) GDPR
4 126 (2.57%) Cyber Essentials
5 115 (2.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 104 (2.12%) SLA
7 96 (1.96%) PCI DSS
8 81 (1.65%) NIST
9 52 (1.06%) Accessibility
10 37 (0.76%) ISO 9001
11 30 (0.61%) Actionable Recommendations
12 21 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 15 (0.31%) SOC 2
14 14 (0.29%) GMP
15 9 (0.18%) GRC
15 9 (0.18%) TickIT
16 8 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 20000
16 8 (0.16%) PMO
17 7 (0.14%) ISO 14001
18 6 (0.12%) COBIT
System Software
1 606 (12.37%) Active Directory
2 195 (3.98%) Hyper-V
3 184 (3.76%) Docker
4 134 (2.74%) VMware Infrastructure
5 64 (1.31%) Terminal Server
6 26 (0.53%) Firmware
7 25 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
8 17 (0.35%) vSphere
9 10 (0.20%) KVM
9 10 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
9 10 (0.20%) VMware Workstation
10 6 (0.12%) XenApp
11 5 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
12 4 (0.082%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 4 (0.082%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 3 (0.061%) Embedded Firmware
14 2 (0.041%) VMware NSX
15 1 (0.020%) Lustre
15 1 (0.020%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 215 (4.39%) Terraform
2 167 (3.41%) Microsoft Intune
3 143 (2.92%) Kubernetes
4 90 (1.84%) Ansible
5 61 (1.25%) SCCM
6 56 (1.14%) Grafana
7 33 (0.67%) Prometheus
8 20 (0.41%) BMC PATROL
9 17 (0.35%) Nagios
9 17 (0.35%) Single Sign-On
10 12 (0.25%) Autotask
11 11 (0.22%) Jamf Pro
11 11 (0.22%) vCenter Server
12 10 (0.20%) Cisco CUCM
12 10 (0.20%) Puppet
13 9 (0.18%) FortiGate
13 9 (0.18%) Nmap
14 8 (0.16%) HP Fortify
14 8 (0.16%) Kibana
14 8 (0.16%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,349 (27.55%) Microsoft
2 225 (4.59%) VMware
3 142 (2.90%) Oracle
4 115 (2.35%) Veeam
5 113 (2.31%) SAP
6 102 (2.08%) Google
7 101 (2.06%) Cisco
8 95 (1.94%) Splunk
9 94 (1.92%) SolarWinds
10 82 (1.67%) ServiceNow
11 76 (1.55%) Databricks
12 66 (1.35%) Apple
13 65 (1.33%) Tanium
14 64 (1.31%) Brocade
14 64 (1.31%) Nimble Storage
15 63 (1.29%) Adobe
15 63 (1.29%) Salesforce
16 52 (1.06%) Sage
17 49 (1.00%) Dell
18 37 (0.76%) HubSpot