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

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 4 3
Rank change year-on-year -3 -1 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 7,242 6,537 8,296
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 8.71% 18.90% 14.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.40% 21.83% 18.97%
Number of salaries quoted 5,125 3,578 3,540
10th Percentile £27,000 £25,684 £25,750
25th Percentile £31,250 £29,000 £32,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £40,000 £47,500
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -15.79% -1.04%
75th Percentile £58,750 £57,500 £63,750
90th Percentile £73,750 £70,000 £79,492
UK median annual salary £47,000 £45,000 £51,750
% change year-on-year +4.44% -13.04% -5.91%

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 58,402 29,941 43,728
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.23% 86.56% 78.23%
Number of salaries quoted 41,475 16,234 24,317
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,500 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,500 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £47,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year +15.79% -9.52% -3.67%
75th Percentile £70,000 £65,000 £67,500
90th Percentile £88,750 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% -4.17%

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 11 September 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 11 September 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 -9 1,807 £45,000 +7.14% 1,084
South East -4 1,732 £42,500 - 1,327
Midlands -7 1,308 £42,500 +11.84% 899
North West -4 942 £45,000 -5.26% 535
South West -4 912 £45,000 +28.57% 641
East of England -2 729 £42,500 +21.43% 543
West Midlands -8 719 £42,500 -3.41% 538
East Midlands -8 587 £41,000 +17.14% 363
Yorkshire -8 569 £42,500 +26.87% 393
Scotland +2 318 £33,500 -21.18% 379
North East -1 296 £48,000 +28.00% 176
Northern Ireland +2 244 £70,000 +18.64% 178
Wales -18 207 £42,500 -11.68% 134
Isle of Man +1 3 £35,000 - 8
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
1 439 (6.06%) SharePoint
2 351 (4.85%) Microsoft Exchange
3 64 (0.88%) Confluence
4 60 (0.83%) CMS
5 54 (0.75%) IIS
6 31 (0.43%) Apache
7 30 (0.41%) WordPress
8 27 (0.37%) Sitecore CMS
9 26 (0.36%) Apache Airflow
10 16 (0.22%) Apache Spark
11 12 (0.17%) SAS
12 10 (0.14%) WebSphere
13 9 (0.12%) nginx
13 9 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
13 9 (0.12%) WebLogic
14 8 (0.11%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.097%) OpenEdge
16 5 (0.069%) CICS
16 5 (0.069%) Skype for Business
17 4 (0.055%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 507 (7.00%) Microsoft Office
2 465 (6.42%) Microsoft Excel
3 71 (0.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 59 (0.81%) Spreadsheet
5 40 (0.55%) MS Visio
6 37 (0.51%) Microsoft Project
7 36 (0.50%) AutoCAD
8 30 (0.41%) Simulink
9 23 (0.32%) Revit
10 13 (0.18%) EPLAN
11 11 (0.15%) SOLIDWORKS
12 9 (0.12%) Navisworks
13 8 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 8 (0.11%) Chatbot
13 8 (0.11%) Fusion 360
14 6 (0.083%) Adobe Illustrator
14 6 (0.083%) Adobe XD
14 6 (0.083%) Siemens NX
14 6 (0.083%) Sketch
15 5 (0.069%) Lightworks
Business Applications
1 74 (1.02%) Dynamics CRM
2 61 (0.84%) NetSuite
3 48 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
4 30 (0.41%) Shopify
5 20 (0.28%) Dynamics NAV
6 18 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
6 18 (0.25%) Workday HCM
7 17 (0.23%) SAP Business One
8 16 (0.22%) Magento
9 14 (0.19%) Dynamics AX
9 14 (0.19%) IBM Planning Analytics
9 14 (0.19%) SAP ERP
10 12 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
11 11 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
12 10 (0.14%) JDE EnterpriseOne
12 10 (0.14%) Sage X3
13 9 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
13 9 (0.12%) Sage 50
14 8 (0.11%) Primavera
15 7 (0.097%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,367 (18.88%) Azure
2 1,210 (16.71%) Microsoft 365
3 694 (9.58%) AWS
4 588 (8.12%) Power Platform
5 367 (5.07%) Entra ID
6 261 (3.60%) SaaS
7 233 (3.22%) GCP
8 173 (2.39%) Azure DevOps
9 152 (2.10%) Dynamics 365
10 151 (2.09%) PowerApps
11 137 (1.89%) GitHub
12 135 (1.86%) Power Automate
13 125 (1.73%) Serverless
14 99 (1.37%) OneDrive
15 86 (1.19%) Microsoft Copilot
16 63 (0.87%) Amazon S3
17 62 (0.86%) Google Workspace
18 59 (0.81%) GitHub Actions
19 58 (0.80%) AWS CloudFormation
19 58 (0.80%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 440 (6.08%) Firewall
2 419 (5.79%) DNS
3 357 (4.93%) DHCP
4 276 (3.81%) VPN
5 233 (3.22%) TCP/IP
6 198 (2.73%) WAN
7 191 (2.64%) Wi-Fi
8 188 (2.60%) LAN
9 170 (2.35%) Wireless
10 145 (2.00%) VLAN
11 120 (1.66%) Network Security
12 114 (1.57%) VoIP
13 66 (0.91%) Broadband
14 48 (0.66%) Internet
15 31 (0.43%) SSL
16 28 (0.39%) SAN
16 28 (0.39%) SD-WAN
17 26 (0.36%) HTTP
18 25 (0.35%) Remote Desktop
19 23 (0.32%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 473 (6.53%) Power BI
2 331 (4.57%) SQL Server
3 136 (1.88%) MySQL
4 119 (1.64%) Amazon RDS
5 116 (1.60%) Relational Database
6 104 (1.44%) Data Warehouse
7 92 (1.27%) PostgreSQL
8 82 (1.13%) NoSQL
9 80 (1.10%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 71 (0.98%) Tableau
11 60 (0.83%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 51 (0.70%) MongoDB
13 48 (0.66%) Power Query
14 47 (0.65%) Big Data
14 47 (0.65%) Data Lake
14 47 (0.65%) Electronic Patient Records
15 44 (0.61%) Azure SQL Database
16 29 (0.40%) DynamoDB
16 29 (0.40%) Metadata
17 28 (0.39%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 297 (4.10%) Git
2 234 (3.23%) JIRA
3 76 (1.05%) GitLab
3 76 (1.05%) Jenkins
4 38 (0.52%) Eclipse
5 33 (0.46%) Subversion
6 30 (0.41%) Cucumber
6 30 (0.41%) Selenium
7 26 (0.36%) JUnit
8 25 (0.35%) Claude Code
9 23 (0.32%) Rational DOORS
10 22 (0.30%) Oracle Forms
11 21 (0.29%) Bitbucket
12 20 (0.28%) Postman
13 19 (0.26%) Cypress.io
14 15 (0.21%) SonarQube
15 13 (0.18%) Burp Suite
15 13 (0.18%) LabVIEW
16 12 (0.17%) Visual Studio
17 11 (0.15%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 3,541 (48.90%) Social Skills
2 1,995 (27.55%) Analytical Skills
3 1,140 (15.74%) Finance
4 733 (10.12%) Manufacturing
5 516 (7.13%) Organisational Skills
6 406 (5.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 348 (4.81%) Retail
8 338 (4.67%) Law
9 321 (4.43%) Public Sector
10 306 (4.23%) Legal
11 276 (3.81%) Electronics
12 275 (3.80%) Marketing
13 266 (3.67%) Aerospace
14 177 (2.44%) Telecoms
15 147 (2.03%) Influencing Skills
16 134 (1.85%) Banking
17 114 (1.57%) Documentation Skills
18 110 (1.52%) Automotive
19 94 (1.30%) Military
20 85 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 933 (12.88%) Analyst
2 763 (10.54%) Senior
3 713 (9.85%) IT Support
4 704 (9.72%) Developer
5 565 (7.80%) Support Engineer
6 391 (5.40%) Lead
7 380 (5.25%) IT Engineer
8 367 (5.07%) Support Analyst
9 333 (4.60%) Consultant
10 284 (3.92%) IT Support Engineer
11 273 (3.77%) Technical Support
12 268 (3.70%) Support Technician
13 239 (3.30%) Architect
14 235 (3.24%) Technical Engineer
15 234 (3.23%) Systems Engineer
16 229 (3.16%) IT Technician
17 224 (3.09%) Software Engineer
18 213 (2.94%) Technical Support Engineer
19 198 (2.73%) Senior Developer
20 182 (2.51%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 356 (4.92%) .NET
2 268 (3.70%) Terraform
3 217 (3.00%) React
4 198 (2.73%) REST
5 193 (2.67%) HTML
6 141 (1.95%) CSS
7 131 (1.81%) RESTful
8 99 (1.37%) SOAP
9 94 (1.30%) Node.js
10 85 (1.17%) Web Services
11 83 (1.15%) ASP.NET
12 82 (1.13%) Vue
13 81 (1.12%) XML
14 79 (1.09%) JSON
14 79 (1.09%) Middleware
15 78 (1.08%) AngularJS
16 75 (1.04%) Spring
17 68 (0.94%) Spring Boot
18 54 (0.75%) Kafka
19 53 (0.73%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 620 (8.56%) Driving Licence
2 489 (6.75%) Onboarding
3 382 (5.27%) Self-Motivation
4 327 (4.52%) Management Information System
5 199 (2.75%) Cloud Native
6 178 (2.46%) Product Ownership
7 149 (2.06%) Legacy Systems
8 127 (1.75%) Enterprise Software
9 126 (1.74%) Data Centre
10 107 (1.48%) Robotics
11 95 (1.31%) Analytical Mindset
12 88 (1.22%) Distributed Systems
12 88 (1.22%) NHS
13 80 (1.10%) Security Posture
14 74 (1.02%) Cyber Threat
15 73 (1.01%) Virtual Team
16 71 (0.98%) CCTV
17 70 (0.97%) IoT
18 68 (0.94%) Mobile App
19 63 (0.87%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 1,151 (15.89%) Windows
2 515 (7.11%) Windows Server
3 455 (6.28%) Linux
4 129 (1.78%) Windows 10
5 102 (1.41%) Windows Server 2016
6 90 (1.24%) Apple iOS
7 85 (1.17%) Android
8 77 (1.06%) Mac OS
9 43 (0.59%) Unix
10 42 (0.58%) Windows Server 2019
11 29 (0.40%) Ubuntu
12 18 (0.25%) VMS
13 17 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 15 (0.21%) Debian
15 13 (0.18%) Embedded Linux
16 11 (0.15%) CentOS
17 9 (0.12%) FreeRTOS
18 7 (0.097%) Windows Server 2012
19 6 (0.083%) Rocky
20 5 (0.069%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,953 (26.97%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,349 (18.63%) Customer Service
3 1,042 (14.39%) Agile
4 800 (11.05%) Decision-Making
5 731 (10.09%) Mentoring
6 710 (9.80%) AI
6 710 (9.80%) Stakeholder Management
7 700 (9.67%) CI/CD
8 611 (8.44%) Project Delivery
9 589 (8.13%) Analytics
10 585 (8.08%) DevOps
11 584 (8.06%) Collaborative Working
12 577 (7.97%) ITIL
13 576 (7.95%) Software Engineering
14 559 (7.72%) ERP
15 547 (7.55%) Cybersecurity
16 506 (6.99%) Business Intelligence
17 496 (6.85%) Project Management
18 465 (6.42%) CRM
19 441 (6.09%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 1,070 (14.77%) SQL
2 736 (10.16%) Python
3 441 (6.09%) C#
4 438 (6.05%) JavaScript
5 315 (4.35%) Java
6 290 (4.00%) PowerShell
7 199 (2.75%) C++
8 195 (2.69%) TypeScript
9 121 (1.67%) Bash
10 79 (1.09%) C
11 71 (0.98%) PHP
12 64 (0.88%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 59 (0.81%) T-SQL
14 47 (0.65%) Ruby
15 46 (0.64%) Shell Script
16 42 (0.58%) Perl
17 41 (0.57%) MATLAB
17 41 (0.57%) PL/SQL
18 38 (0.52%) Go
19 36 (0.50%) Rust
Qualifications
1 1,167 (16.11%) Degree
2 679 (9.38%) Security Cleared
3 475 (6.56%) SC Cleared
4 210 (2.90%) DBS Check
5 201 (2.78%) Computer Science Degree
6 188 (2.60%) Microsoft Certification
7 180 (2.49%) DV Cleared
7 180 (2.49%) HNC
8 164 (2.26%) HND
9 153 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
10 127 (1.75%) Azure Certification
11 94 (1.30%) Cisco Certification
12 87 (1.20%) Chartered Engineer
13 79 (1.09%) PMI Certification
14 72 (0.99%) A+ Certification
15 70 (0.97%) CISSP
16 66 (0.91%) Master's Degree
17 62 (0.86%) CCNA
18 58 (0.80%) PMP
19 55 (0.76%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 466 (6.43%) QA
2 291 (4.02%) Data Quality
3 219 (3.02%) GDPR
4 196 (2.71%) Accessibility
5 177 (2.44%) SLA
6 166 (2.29%) Cyber Essentials
7 134 (1.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 105 (1.45%) PCI DSS
9 90 (1.24%) NIST
10 38 (0.52%) ISO 9001
11 34 (0.47%) PMO
12 32 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 18 (0.25%) DO-254
13 18 (0.25%) GMP
13 18 (0.25%) Good Clinical Practice
14 16 (0.22%) NCSC
15 14 (0.19%) GRC
16 13 (0.18%) GxP
17 12 (0.17%) TickIT
17 12 (0.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 802 (11.07%) Active Directory
2 288 (3.98%) Hyper-V
3 257 (3.55%) Docker
4 212 (2.93%) VMware Infrastructure
5 73 (1.01%) Firmware
6 72 (0.99%) Terminal Server
7 40 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
8 32 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
9 28 (0.39%) vSphere
10 26 (0.36%) Embedded Firmware
11 15 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
12 7 (0.097%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.069%) ClearTrust
13 5 (0.069%) KVM
13 5 (0.069%) Squid
14 4 (0.055%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 4 (0.055%) XenApp
15 3 (0.041%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 3 (0.041%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.041%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 248 (3.42%) Microsoft Intune
2 221 (3.05%) Kubernetes
3 107 (1.48%) Ansible
4 60 (0.83%) Grafana
5 53 (0.73%) SCCM
6 43 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
7 41 (0.57%) Prometheus
8 23 (0.32%) BMC PATROL
9 21 (0.29%) FortiGate
10 20 (0.28%) Jamf Pro
11 17 (0.23%) Puppet
12 15 (0.21%) Functional Safety
13 13 (0.18%) Kibana
14 11 (0.15%) logstash
14 11 (0.15%) Nmap
15 10 (0.14%) Nagios
15 10 (0.14%) Podman
15 10 (0.14%) Proxmox
16 9 (0.12%) Failover Clustering
16 9 (0.12%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 2,188 (30.21%) Microsoft
2 338 (4.67%) VMware
3 205 (2.83%) SAP
4 195 (2.69%) Google
5 167 (2.31%) Oracle
6 145 (2.00%) Workday
7 138 (1.91%) Cisco
8 133 (1.84%) Veeam
9 118 (1.63%) Splunk
10 117 (1.62%) ServiceNow
11 102 (1.41%) Salesforce
12 99 (1.37%) Sage
13 93 (1.28%) SolarWinds
14 80 (1.10%) Tanium
15 79 (1.09%) Databricks
16 74 (1.02%) Fortinet
17 73 (1.01%) Nimble Storage
18 72 (0.99%) Brocade
19 62 (0.86%) Apple
20 56 (0.77%) SonicWALL