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

6 months to
30 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 4 5
Rank change year-on-year -6 +1 +5
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,965 6,453 8,910
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 8.04% 18.89% 14.25%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.39% 21.51% 18.06%
Number of salaries quoted 4,385 3,557 4,939
10th Percentile £26,500 £25,750 £25,500
25th Percentile £31,000 £29,750 £32,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £41,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.66% -8.89% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £60,000 £60,250
90th Percentile £73,750 £75,000 £73,750
UK median annual salary £47,241 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -0.55% -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 52,373 29,997 49,327
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.58% 87.81% 78.87%
Number of salaries quoted 36,789 16,278 32,403
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,500 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,750 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £50,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% - -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% - -8.33%

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 30 July 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 30 July 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 -10 1,547 £45,000 +5.88% 722
South East -3 1,466 £45,000 +5.88% 876
Midlands -8 1,113 £42,000 +5.00% 515
North West -6 811 £45,000 -2.17% 353
South West -6 748 £44,000 +17.33% 364
West Midlands -9 622 £42,500 -5.56% 304
East of England -6 587 £42,500 +21.43% 311
Yorkshire -10 527 £42,500 +21.43% 258
East Midlands -10 487 £37,500 +5.63% 211
Scotland -8 239 £33,000 -25.00% 114
North East -15 209 £50,000 +33.33% 121
Wales -20 155 £45,000 -6.49% 72
Northern Ireland -12 128 £38,500 -30.00% 42
Isle of Man 0 3 £35,000 +1.45% 4
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
1 366 (6.14%) Microsoft Exchange
2 350 (5.87%) SharePoint
3 63 (1.06%) Confluence
4 47 (0.79%) CMS
5 39 (0.65%) IIS
6 30 (0.50%) Apache
7 29 (0.49%) WordPress
8 23 (0.39%) Apache Airflow
9 14 (0.23%) Apache Spark
10 13 (0.22%) SAS
11 11 (0.18%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.15%) WebLogic
13 8 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
13 8 (0.13%) nginx
14 7 (0.12%) OpenEdge
15 6 (0.10%) Exchange Server 2007
15 6 (0.10%) Exchange Server 2010
15 6 (0.10%) Jupyter
16 5 (0.084%) Skype for Business
17 4 (0.067%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 383 (6.42%) Microsoft Excel
2 382 (6.40%) Microsoft Office
3 53 (0.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 45 (0.75%) Spreadsheet
5 37 (0.62%) MS Visio
6 22 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
7 14 (0.23%) Simulink
8 9 (0.15%) AutoCAD
9 8 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.13%) Adobe Illustrator
9 8 (0.13%) Chatbot
10 5 (0.084%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.084%) Fusion 360
10 5 (0.084%) Lightworks
10 5 (0.084%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.084%) Sketch
10 5 (0.084%) Trello
11 3 (0.050%) LaTeX
11 3 (0.050%) Revit
11 3 (0.050%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 54 (0.91%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
2 35 (0.59%) NetSuite
3 18 (0.30%) Magento
3 18 (0.30%) Shopify
4 16 (0.27%) SAP ERP
5 14 (0.23%) Dynamics AX
5 14 (0.23%) Dynamics NAV
5 14 (0.23%) IBM Planning Analytics
6 13 (0.22%) SAP Business One
7 10 (0.17%) JDE EnterpriseOne
8 9 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
8 9 (0.15%) Sage 50
9 8 (0.13%) Sage X3
10 7 (0.12%) Raiser’s Edge
11 6 (0.10%) NEC Housing
12 5 (0.084%) Dynamics GP
12 5 (0.084%) iTrent
12 5 (0.084%) Salesforce CRM
13 4 (0.067%) Q-Pulse
Cloud Services
1 1,266 (21.22%) Azure
2 1,101 (18.46%) Microsoft 365
3 631 (10.58%) AWS
4 488 (8.18%) Power Platform
5 312 (5.23%) Entra ID
6 209 (3.50%) GCP
7 208 (3.49%) SaaS
8 146 (2.45%) Azure DevOps
9 133 (2.23%) Dynamics 365
10 116 (1.94%) Serverless
11 110 (1.84%) GitHub
12 106 (1.78%) PowerApps
13 105 (1.76%) Power Automate
14 78 (1.31%) OneDrive
15 68 (1.14%) Microsoft Copilot
16 56 (0.94%) Amazon S3
17 53 (0.89%) Microsoft Purview
18 51 (0.85%) GitHub Actions
19 49 (0.82%) AWS Lambda
20 48 (0.80%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 410 (6.87%) Firewall
2 387 (6.49%) DNS
3 330 (5.53%) DHCP
4 222 (3.72%) VPN
5 208 (3.49%) TCP/IP
6 197 (3.30%) WAN
7 175 (2.93%) LAN
8 149 (2.50%) Wi-Fi
9 146 (2.45%) Wireless
10 117 (1.96%) VLAN
11 104 (1.74%) Network Security
12 102 (1.71%) Broadband
13 96 (1.61%) VoIP
14 40 (0.67%) Internet
15 31 (0.52%) SD-WAN
16 29 (0.49%) SAN
17 28 (0.47%) HTTP
18 27 (0.45%) SSL
19 22 (0.37%) WLAN
20 20 (0.34%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 385 (6.45%) Power BI
2 287 (4.81%) SQL Server
3 134 (2.25%) Amazon RDS
4 117 (1.96%) MySQL
5 96 (1.61%) Data Warehouse
6 88 (1.48%) Relational Database
7 87 (1.46%) PostgreSQL
8 85 (1.42%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 74 (1.24%) NoSQL
10 69 (1.16%) Tableau
11 65 (1.09%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 48 (0.80%) Power Query
13 45 (0.75%) MongoDB
14 39 (0.65%) Big Data
15 34 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
16 33 (0.55%) Data Lake
17 29 (0.49%) DynamoDB
18 25 (0.42%) Elasticsearch
19 21 (0.35%) Amazon Redshift
19 21 (0.35%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 248 (4.16%) Git
2 200 (3.35%) JIRA
3 81 (1.36%) GitLab
4 62 (1.04%) Jenkins
5 27 (0.45%) Rational DOORS
6 26 (0.44%) Cucumber
6 26 (0.44%) Eclipse
6 26 (0.44%) Selenium
6 26 (0.44%) Subversion
7 21 (0.35%) JUnit
7 21 (0.35%) Postman
8 18 (0.30%) Cypress.io
9 16 (0.27%) Claude Code
10 15 (0.25%) Oracle Forms
11 14 (0.23%) Bitbucket
11 14 (0.23%) SonarQube
12 10 (0.17%) JMeter
12 10 (0.17%) Maven
13 9 (0.15%) Burp Suite
13 9 (0.15%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,870 (48.11%) Social Skills
2 1,651 (27.68%) Analytical Skills
3 938 (15.73%) Finance
4 494 (8.28%) Manufacturing
5 378 (6.34%) Organisational Skills
6 281 (4.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 274 (4.59%) Law
8 262 (4.39%) Legal
8 262 (4.39%) Public Sector
9 245 (4.11%) Retail
10 180 (3.02%) Marketing
11 162 (2.72%) Electronics
12 150 (2.51%) Telecoms
13 123 (2.06%) Banking
14 119 (1.99%) Aerospace
15 113 (1.89%) Influencing Skills
16 110 (1.84%) Documentation Skills
17 73 (1.22%) Games
18 63 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
19 59 (0.99%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 826 (13.85%) Analyst
2 664 (11.13%) IT Support
3 653 (10.95%) Senior
4 631 (10.58%) Developer
5 557 (9.34%) Support Engineer
6 379 (6.35%) IT Engineer
7 318 (5.33%) Lead
8 283 (4.74%) IT Support Engineer
9 273 (4.58%) Support Analyst
10 261 (4.38%) Support Technician
11 248 (4.16%) Systems Engineer
12 228 (3.82%) Technical Support
13 226 (3.79%) Consultant
14 214 (3.59%) IT Technician
15 202 (3.39%) Software Engineer
16 197 (3.30%) Architect
17 196 (3.29%) Technical Engineer
18 184 (3.08%) Senior Developer
19 177 (2.97%) Technical Support Engineer
20 165 (2.77%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 302 (5.06%) .NET
2 209 (3.50%) React
3 179 (3.00%) HTML
4 173 (2.90%) REST
5 131 (2.20%) CSS
6 109 (1.83%) RESTful
7 97 (1.63%) Node.js
8 89 (1.49%) SOAP
9 76 (1.27%) Vue
10 75 (1.26%) Middleware
11 74 (1.24%) JSON
12 73 (1.22%) AngularJS
13 68 (1.14%) XML
14 61 (1.02%) ASP.NET
15 57 (0.96%) Spring
16 54 (0.91%) Web Services
17 52 (0.87%) Spring Boot
18 51 (0.85%) OAuth
19 41 (0.69%) Kafka
20 40 (0.67%) ASP.NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 464 (7.78%) Driving Licence
2 346 (5.80%) Onboarding
3 283 (4.74%) Self-Motivation
4 242 (4.06%) Management Information System
5 171 (2.87%) Legacy Systems
6 168 (2.82%) Cloud Native
7 151 (2.53%) Product Ownership
8 100 (1.68%) Data Centre
9 95 (1.59%) Analytical Mindset
10 88 (1.48%) Distributed Systems
11 75 (1.26%) Enterprise Software
12 74 (1.24%) Security Posture
13 69 (1.16%) Social Media
14 68 (1.14%) Mobile App
15 61 (1.02%) NHS
16 60 (1.01%) Virtual Team
17 58 (0.97%) IoT
18 53 (0.89%) Cyber Threat
19 48 (0.80%) Replication
19 48 (0.80%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 1,052 (17.64%) Windows
2 498 (8.35%) Windows Server
3 449 (7.53%) Linux
4 142 (2.38%) Windows 10
5 127 (2.13%) Windows Server 2016
6 107 (1.79%) Android
7 77 (1.29%) Apple iOS
8 76 (1.27%) Mac OS
9 40 (0.67%) Windows Server 2019
10 33 (0.55%) Unix
11 28 (0.47%) Ubuntu
12 23 (0.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 21 (0.35%) CentOS
14 17 (0.28%) VMS
15 13 (0.22%) Debian
15 13 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 9 (0.15%) FreeRTOS
17 8 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
18 6 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
19 5 (0.084%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,512 (25.35%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,080 (18.11%) Customer Service
3 885 (14.84%) Agile
4 631 (10.58%) CI/CD
4 631 (10.58%) Decision-Making
5 613 (10.28%) Mentoring
6 585 (9.81%) AI
7 533 (8.94%) ITIL
8 525 (8.80%) DevOps
9 498 (8.35%) Analytics
10 496 (8.32%) Stakeholder Management
11 481 (8.06%) Cybersecurity
12 479 (8.03%) Software Engineering
13 456 (7.64%) Collaborative Working
14 447 (7.49%) Business Intelligence
15 433 (7.26%) ERP
16 419 (7.02%) Project Delivery
17 354 (5.93%) Computer Science
18 353 (5.92%) Customer Experience
19 349 (5.85%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 952 (15.96%) SQL
2 672 (11.27%) Python
3 391 (6.55%) JavaScript
4 388 (6.50%) C#
5 265 (4.44%) Java
6 240 (4.02%) PowerShell
7 177 (2.97%) TypeScript
8 171 (2.87%) C++
9 110 (1.84%) Bash
10 73 (1.22%) PHP
11 64 (1.07%) C
12 60 (1.01%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 52 (0.87%) T-SQL
14 38 (0.64%) Perl
15 37 (0.62%) Shell Script
16 35 (0.59%) Ruby
17 34 (0.57%) PL/SQL
18 33 (0.55%) Go
19 29 (0.49%) Kotlin
20 27 (0.45%) Rust
Qualifications
1 881 (14.77%) Degree
2 529 (8.87%) Security Cleared
3 387 (6.49%) SC Cleared
4 186 (3.12%) DBS Check
5 177 (2.97%) Computer Science Degree
6 169 (2.83%) Microsoft Certification
7 109 (1.83%) DV Cleared
8 108 (1.81%) BPSS Clearance
9 89 (1.49%) Cisco Certification
10 88 (1.48%) Azure Certification
11 67 (1.12%) HNC
12 63 (1.06%) PMI Certification
13 62 (1.04%) CCNA
14 58 (0.97%) ACCA
15 57 (0.96%) Master's Degree
16 56 (0.94%) CISSP
17 54 (0.91%) A+ Certification
17 54 (0.91%) CIMA
18 51 (0.85%) PMP
19 46 (0.77%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 380 (6.37%) QA
2 255 (4.27%) Data Quality
3 194 (3.25%) Cyber Essentials
4 172 (2.88%) GDPR
5 153 (2.56%) SLA
6 136 (2.28%) PCI DSS
7 133 (2.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 129 (2.16%) Accessibility
9 90 (1.51%) NIST
10 36 (0.60%) ISO 9001
11 30 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 29 (0.49%) PMO
13 22 (0.37%) GMP
14 18 (0.30%) Good Clinical Practice
15 15 (0.25%) GRC
16 14 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
16 14 (0.23%) SOC 2
17 12 (0.20%) TickIT
18 10 (0.17%) ISO 14001
18 10 (0.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 736 (12.34%) Active Directory
2 285 (4.78%) Hyper-V
3 237 (3.97%) Docker
4 197 (3.30%) VMware Infrastructure
5 96 (1.61%) Terminal Server
6 49 (0.82%) Firmware
7 29 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
8 28 (0.47%) vSphere
9 23 (0.39%) Virtual Machines
10 16 (0.27%) Embedded Firmware
11 13 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
12 8 (0.13%) KVM
13 7 (0.12%) XenApp
14 5 (0.084%) ClearTrust
14 5 (0.084%) Squid
14 5 (0.084%) Virtual Servers
14 5 (0.084%) VMware Workstation
15 4 (0.067%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 3 (0.050%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.050%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 238 (3.99%) Terraform
2 235 (3.94%) Microsoft Intune
3 213 (3.57%) Kubernetes
4 99 (1.66%) Ansible
5 63 (1.06%) SCCM
6 61 (1.02%) Grafana
7 43 (0.72%) Prometheus
8 20 (0.34%) FortiGate
9 18 (0.30%) Single Sign-On
10 16 (0.27%) Nagios
11 15 (0.25%) Puppet
12 12 (0.20%) Jamf Pro
13 11 (0.18%) Kibana
14 10 (0.17%) Autotask
14 10 (0.17%) Functional Safety
14 10 (0.17%) logstash
14 10 (0.17%) Podman
14 10 (0.17%) Proxmox
15 9 (0.15%) Failover Clustering
15 9 (0.15%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,840 (30.85%) Microsoft
2 329 (5.52%) VMware
3 153 (2.56%) Veeam
4 140 (2.35%) Google
5 136 (2.28%) Splunk
6 134 (2.25%) SAP
7 127 (2.13%) Oracle
8 126 (2.11%) Cisco
9 122 (2.05%) SolarWinds
10 104 (1.74%) Tanium
11 103 (1.73%) ServiceNow
12 97 (1.63%) Nimble Storage
13 96 (1.61%) Brocade
14 81 (1.36%) Salesforce
15 71 (1.19%) Databricks
16 62 (1.04%) Apple
17 58 (0.97%) Sage
18 53 (0.89%) Fortinet
19 47 (0.79%) Dell
19 47 (0.79%) IBM