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

6 months to
3 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 5,017 6,333 7,764
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 11.02% 18.54% 15.90%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.24% 20.54% 18.24%
Number of salaries quoted 3,481 2,608 5,443
10th Percentile £26,000 £28,500 £25,750
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 35,233 30,839 42,559
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 77.38% 90.26% 87.17%
Number of salaries quoted 20,460 13,590 32,702
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% -9.09%
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 3 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 3 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 £41,000 -21.90% 885
North of England -17 1,289 £42,500 -10.53% 636
Midlands -15 868 £37,500 -28.57% 479
North West -14 710 £47,500 -5.00% 363
South West -2 582 £40,000 -27.27% 361
West Midlands -17 507 £42,500 -22.73% 309
Yorkshire -5 448 £34,000 -20.88% 209
East of England -5 423 £35,000 -31.33% 273
East Midlands +1 360 £33,000 -5.71% 170
Scotland -3 350 £33,500 -34.95% 126
North East -4 131 £40,662 -18.68% 72
Wales +3 129 £45,000 -13.88% 55
Northern Ireland 0 70 £45,250 -24.58% 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
1 290 (5.78%) Microsoft Exchange
2 223 (4.44%) SharePoint
3 46 (0.92%) Confluence
4 45 (0.90%) IIS
5 29 (0.58%) 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%) nginx
11 8 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2013
12 6 (0.12%) Drupal
12 6 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2007
12 6 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2010
12 6 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 5 (0.100%) SAS
14 4 (0.080%) Apache Solr
14 4 (0.080%) ArcGIS
14 4 (0.080%) HCL Notes
14 4 (0.080%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 386 (7.69%) Microsoft Excel
2 381 (7.59%) Microsoft Office
3 67 (1.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 28 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
5 26 (0.52%) MS Visio
6 18 (0.36%) AutoCAD
7 14 (0.28%) Microsoft Project
8 13 (0.26%) Photoshop
9 11 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 9 (0.18%) Adobe Illustrator
10 9 (0.18%) Adobe Premiere
10 9 (0.18%) SOLIDWORKS
11 5 (0.100%) Adobe After Effects
11 5 (0.100%) Simulink
12 4 (0.080%) CATIA
12 4 (0.080%) Fusion 360
12 4 (0.080%) Oracle Smart View
12 4 (0.080%) Trello
13 3 (0.060%) Adobe XD
13 3 (0.060%) Elementor
Business Applications
1 81 (1.61%) SAP S/4HANA
2 49 (0.98%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.44%) NetSuite
4 20 (0.40%) SAP CO
5 18 (0.36%) Oracle Payables
6 16 (0.32%) Oracle Assets
6 16 (0.32%) Oracle Receivables
7 13 (0.26%) Sage X3
8 12 (0.24%) iTrent
8 12 (0.24%) SAP FI
8 12 (0.24%) SAP FI/CO
9 11 (0.22%) Dynamics NAV
10 10 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
11 8 (0.16%) JDE EnterpriseOne
11 8 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
11 8 (0.16%) Oracle Financials
11 8 (0.16%) SAP Business One
11 8 (0.16%) Shopify
12 7 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
12 7 (0.14%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,107 (22.06%) Azure
2 841 (16.76%) Microsoft 365
3 423 (8.43%) AWS
4 362 (7.22%) Power Platform
5 260 (5.18%) SaaS
6 225 (4.48%) Entra ID
7 145 (2.89%) Azure DevOps
8 121 (2.41%) GCP
9 102 (2.03%) GitHub
10 82 (1.63%) Serverless
11 77 (1.53%) Power Automate
12 57 (1.14%) Azure Data Factory
13 54 (1.08%) Dynamics 365
14 52 (1.04%) AWS Lambda
15 51 (1.02%) Amazon S3
16 50 (1.00%) Google Workspace
17 46 (0.92%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 44 (0.88%) GitHub Actions
18 44 (0.88%) OneDrive
19 43 (0.86%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 387 (7.71%) DNS
2 335 (6.68%) DHCP
3 268 (5.34%) Firewall
4 155 (3.09%) TCP/IP
5 151 (3.01%) VPN
6 149 (2.97%) Wi-Fi
7 132 (2.63%) WAN
8 118 (2.35%) LAN
9 94 (1.87%) VLAN
10 93 (1.85%) Broadband
11 85 (1.69%) VoIP
12 72 (1.44%) Wireless
13 54 (1.08%) Remote Desktop
14 48 (0.96%) Network Security
15 40 (0.80%) Internet
16 36 (0.72%) SD-WAN
17 33 (0.66%) SAN
18 30 (0.60%) Unified Communications
19 24 (0.48%) Ethernet
19 24 (0.48%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 308 (6.14%) Power BI
2 217 (4.33%) SQL Server
3 125 (2.49%) Amazon RDS
4 92 (1.83%) Relational Database
5 81 (1.61%) Data Lake
6 79 (1.57%) PostgreSQL
7 77 (1.53%) MySQL
8 65 (1.30%) NoSQL
8 65 (1.30%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 64 (1.28%) Data Warehouse
9 64 (1.28%) SAP BW
10 42 (0.84%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 39 (0.78%) Tableau
12 36 (0.72%) Azure SQL Database
13 31 (0.62%) Amazon Redshift
13 31 (0.62%) DynamoDB
14 28 (0.56%) MongoDB
15 27 (0.54%) Metadata
16 26 (0.52%) Elasticsearch
17 25 (0.50%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 183 (3.65%) Git
2 157 (3.13%) JIRA
3 49 (0.98%) GitLab
4 42 (0.84%) Jenkins
5 31 (0.62%) Selenium
6 18 (0.36%) 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%) Cypress.io
11 10 (0.20%) Metasploit
11 10 (0.20%) TeamCity
12 9 (0.18%) Octopus Deploy
13 8 (0.16%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,669 (53.20%) Social Skills
2 1,403 (27.96%) Analytical Skills
3 1,050 (20.93%) Finance
4 301 (6.00%) Manufacturing
5 289 (5.76%) Organisational Skills
6 284 (5.66%) Retail
7 242 (4.82%) Marketing
8 207 (4.13%) Public Sector
9 182 (3.63%) Legal
10 161 (3.21%) Law
11 156 (3.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 147 (2.93%) Telecoms
13 124 (2.47%) Electronics
14 116 (2.31%) Banking
15 109 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
16 80 (1.59%) Games
17 79 (1.57%) Automotive
18 71 (1.42%) Documentation Skills
19 59 (1.18%) Aerospace
19 59 (1.18%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 852 (16.98%) Analyst
2 700 (13.95%) IT Support
3 568 (11.32%) Support Engineer
4 561 (11.18%) Senior
5 381 (7.59%) Developer
6 317 (6.32%) Lead
7 305 (6.08%) IT Engineer
8 291 (5.80%) Support Analyst
9 267 (5.32%) IT Support Engineer
10 249 (4.96%) Technical Support
11 213 (4.25%) Business Analyst
12 173 (3.45%) 2nd Line Support
13 167 (3.33%) Technical Engineer
14 164 (3.27%) Support Technician
15 161 (3.21%) Systems Engineer
16 156 (3.11%) Technical Support Engineer
17 143 (2.85%) IT Analyst
18 139 (2.77%) Architect
19 127 (2.53%) Consultant
20 126 (2.51%) Trainee
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 200 (3.99%) .NET
2 165 (3.29%) HTML
3 154 (3.07%) React
4 132 (2.63%) CSS
5 87 (1.73%) REST
6 67 (1.34%) Node.js
7 61 (1.22%) RESTful
8 50 (1.00%) AngularJS
9 48 (0.96%) SOAP
9 48 (0.96%) Vue
10 47 (0.94%) JSON
11 46 (0.92%) ASP.NET
12 40 (0.80%) XML
13 39 (0.78%) Spring
14 35 (0.70%) .NET Framework
15 34 (0.68%) Django
16 32 (0.64%) EDI
17 28 (0.56%) Laravel
17 28 (0.56%) Spring Boot
18 26 (0.52%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 498 (9.93%) Driving Licence
2 385 (7.67%) Onboarding
3 311 (6.20%) Self-Motivation
4 168 (3.35%) Management Information System
5 161 (3.21%) Analytical Mindset
6 159 (3.17%) Legacy Systems
7 103 (2.05%) Data Centre
8 101 (2.01%) Product Ownership
9 83 (1.65%) Cloud Native
10 62 (1.24%) Enterprise Software
11 50 (1.00%) Social Media
12 47 (0.94%) FMCG
13 46 (0.92%) Virtual Team
14 44 (0.88%) Mobile App
15 42 (0.84%) EPoS
16 38 (0.76%) Distributed Systems
17 36 (0.72%) Data Structures
17 36 (0.72%) Low-Code
18 33 (0.66%) Life Science
18 33 (0.66%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 944 (18.82%) Windows
2 418 (8.33%) Windows Server
3 330 (6.58%) Linux
4 134 (2.67%) Windows Server 2016
5 120 (2.39%) Windows 10
6 75 (1.49%) Android
7 60 (1.20%) Mac OS
8 54 (1.08%) Apple iOS
9 38 (0.76%) Unix
10 34 (0.68%) Windows Server 2019
11 24 (0.48%) Windows Server 2012
12 17 (0.34%) Windows 7
13 14 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 10 (0.20%) VMS
15 9 (0.18%) CentOS
16 7 (0.14%) Windows 8
16 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
17 4 (0.080%) Debian
18 3 (0.060%) Ubuntu
19 2 (0.040%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 931 (18.56%) Customer Service
2 905 (18.04%) Continuous Improvement
3 654 (13.04%) Agile
4 480 (9.57%) Project Management
5 453 (9.03%) Mentoring
6 448 (8.93%) Decision-Making
7 436 (8.69%) Analytics
8 419 (8.35%) Business Intelligence
9 379 (7.55%) ITIL
10 370 (7.37%) ERP
11 368 (7.34%) DevOps
12 339 (6.76%) Change Management
13 326 (6.50%) CI/CD
14 306 (6.10%) Computer Science
15 304 (6.06%) AI
15 304 (6.06%) Stakeholder Management
16 299 (5.96%) CRM
16 299 (5.96%) Cybersecurity
17 292 (5.82%) Process Improvement
18 277 (5.52%) Customer Experience
Programming Languages
1 717 (14.29%) SQL
2 488 (9.73%) Python
3 279 (5.56%) JavaScript
4 261 (5.20%) PowerShell
5 244 (4.86%) C#
6 167 (3.33%) Java
7 84 (1.67%) PHP
8 72 (1.44%) TypeScript
9 61 (1.22%) Bash
10 60 (1.20%) C++
11 55 (1.10%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 44 (0.88%) T-SQL
13 41 (0.82%) C
14 23 (0.46%) R
15 22 (0.44%) MATLAB
15 22 (0.44%) PL/SQL
16 18 (0.36%) Perl
17 17 (0.34%) Bicep
17 17 (0.34%) Go
18 16 (0.32%) VBA
Qualifications
1 1,136 (22.64%) Degree
2 411 (8.19%) Security Cleared
3 282 (5.62%) SC Cleared
4 170 (3.39%) DBS Check
5 144 (2.87%) Microsoft Certification
6 135 (2.69%) Computer Science Degree
7 98 (1.95%) BPSS Clearance
8 73 (1.46%) Master's Degree
9 67 (1.34%) Cisco Certification
10 65 (1.30%) A+ Certification
10 65 (1.30%) DV Cleared
11 60 (1.20%) ACCA
12 59 (1.18%) HND
13 52 (1.04%) CIMA
14 50 (1.00%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 47 (0.94%) CCNA
15 47 (0.94%) Network+ Certification
16 46 (0.92%) HNC
17 41 (0.82%) AWS Certification
18 33 (0.66%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 262 (5.22%) QA
2 229 (4.56%) Data Quality
3 170 (3.39%) Cyber Essentials
4 134 (2.67%) GDPR
5 126 (2.51%) PCI DSS
6 107 (2.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 82 (1.63%) Accessibility
8 67 (1.34%) SLA
9 42 (0.84%) NIST
10 33 (0.66%) ISO 9001
11 26 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 25 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
13 15 (0.30%) PMO
14 9 (0.18%) ISO 13485
15 7 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 7 (0.14%) SOC 2
16 6 (0.12%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 6 (0.12%) WCAG
17 5 (0.100%) GLBA
18 4 (0.080%) GRC
System Software
1 666 (13.27%) Active Directory
2 236 (4.70%) Hyper-V
3 164 (3.27%) Docker
4 108 (2.15%) VMware Infrastructure
5 104 (2.07%) Terminal Server
6 30 (0.60%) Firmware
7 24 (0.48%) 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 (0.100%) Embedded Firmware
14 4 (0.080%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 2 (0.040%) RHEV
15 2 (0.040%) Xen
16 1 (0.020%) HDFS
16 1 (0.020%) iptables
16 1 (0.020%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 195 (3.89%) Terraform
2 191 (3.81%) Microsoft Intune
3 116 (2.31%) Kubernetes
4 77 (1.53%) Ansible
5 50 (1.00%) SCCM
6 43 (0.86%) Grafana
7 42 (0.84%) BMC PATROL
8 27 (0.54%) Prometheus
9 19 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
10 16 (0.32%) 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
15 7 (0.14%) FortiGate
15 7 (0.14%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,366 (27.23%) Microsoft
2 306 (6.10%) SAP
3 245 (4.88%) VMware
4 179 (3.57%) Oracle
5 163 (3.25%) Veeam
6 136 (2.71%) Cisco
7 129 (2.57%) SolarWinds
8 128 (2.55%) Splunk
9 105 (2.09%) Google
9 105 (2.09%) Tanium
10 104 (2.07%) Brocade
10 104 (2.07%) Nimble Storage
11 82 (1.63%) Salesforce
12 72 (1.44%) ServiceNow
13 67 (1.34%) Adobe
14 64 (1.28%) Databricks
15 60 (1.20%) Sage
16 56 (1.12%) Apple
16 56 (1.12%) BT
17 48 (0.96%) HubSpot