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

6 months to
30 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 4 3
Rank change year-on-year -2 -1 +5
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 7,926 6,261 8,081
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 9.17% 18.19% 15.29%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.02% 20.84% 19.33%
Number of salaries quoted 5,422 3,464 3,139
10th Percentile £27,000 £25,684 £25,750
25th Percentile £31,250 £29,000 £33,125
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,875 £40,000 £48,793
Median % change year-on-year +7.19% -18.02% +2.72%
75th Percentile £58,750 £57,500 £63,750
90th Percentile £73,750 £68,750 £80,000
UK median annual salary £46,500 £45,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +3.33% -14.29% -4.55%

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 60,888 30,038 41,814
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.47% 87.27% 79.14%
Number of salaries quoted 42,851 15,926 21,525
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,750 £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% -2.78%
75th Percentile £70,000 £65,000 £67,500
90th Percentile £88,000 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £58,033
% change year-on-year +9.09% -5.23% -3.28%

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 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 30 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 -8 2,004 £45,000 - 1,599
South East -3 1,856 £41,585 +1.43% 1,601
Midlands -7 1,433 £42,500 +11.84% 1,158
North West -3 1,041 £45,000 -7.64% 821
South West -2 972 £45,000 +25.00% 831
West Midlands -7 805 £42,500 - 710
East of England -2 798 £42,500 +30.77% 728
East Midlands -7 626 £42,000 +27.27% 448
Yorkshire -7 608 £42,500 +26.87% 554
North East +6 361 £50,000 +49.25% 241
Scotland +7 338 £36,000 -5.07% 530
Northern Ireland +7 308 £70,000 +18.64% 368
Wales -15 235 £42,500 -11.68% 187
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
1 473 (5.97%) SharePoint
2 361 (4.55%) Microsoft Exchange
3 66 (0.83%) Confluence
4 62 (0.78%) CMS
5 55 (0.69%) IIS
6 36 (0.45%) Apache
7 32 (0.40%) WordPress
8 30 (0.38%) Apache Airflow
9 28 (0.35%) Sitecore CMS
10 21 (0.26%) Apache Spark
11 14 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
12 12 (0.15%) Jupyter
13 11 (0.14%) nginx
14 10 (0.13%) WebSphere
15 9 (0.11%) WebLogic
16 8 (0.10%) SAS
17 7 (0.088%) OpenEdge
18 6 (0.076%) CICS
19 4 (0.050%) Oracle SOA Suite
19 4 (0.050%) Tomcat
Applications
1 588 (7.42%) Microsoft Office
2 539 (6.80%) Microsoft Excel
3 85 (1.07%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 66 (0.83%) Spreadsheet
5 46 (0.58%) MS Visio
6 45 (0.57%) AutoCAD
7 41 (0.52%) Microsoft Project
8 34 (0.43%) Simulink
9 26 (0.33%) Revit
10 18 (0.23%) EPLAN
11 15 (0.19%) SOLIDWORKS
12 10 (0.13%) Navisworks
13 9 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 8 (0.10%) Chatbot
14 8 (0.10%) OrCAD
15 7 (0.088%) Fusion 360
15 7 (0.088%) Siemens NX
16 6 (0.076%) Adobe Illustrator
16 6 (0.076%) Lightworks
17 5 (0.063%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 74 (0.93%) Dynamics CRM
2 64 (0.81%) NetSuite
3 52 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
4 34 (0.43%) Shopify
5 23 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
6 21 (0.26%) Dynamics NAV
7 20 (0.25%) Workday HCM
8 16 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
8 16 (0.20%) SAP Business One
9 13 (0.16%) IBM Planning Analytics
9 13 (0.16%) Magento
9 13 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
9 13 (0.16%) SAP ERP
10 12 (0.15%) Dynamics AX
10 12 (0.15%) Oracle Cash Management
10 12 (0.15%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 11 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
12 10 (0.13%) JDE EnterpriseOne
12 10 (0.13%) Sage X3
13 9 (0.11%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 1,405 (17.73%) Azure
2 1,270 (16.02%) Microsoft 365
3 703 (8.87%) AWS
4 627 (7.91%) Power Platform
5 435 (5.49%) Entra ID
6 284 (3.58%) SaaS
7 235 (2.96%) GCP
8 178 (2.25%) Azure DevOps
9 157 (1.98%) PowerApps
10 153 (1.93%) Dynamics 365
10 153 (1.93%) GitHub
11 148 (1.87%) Power Automate
12 122 (1.54%) OneDrive
13 118 (1.49%) Serverless
14 95 (1.20%) Microsoft Copilot
15 76 (0.96%) Google Workspace
16 70 (0.88%) Amazon S3
17 66 (0.83%) AWS CloudFormation
17 66 (0.83%) GitHub Actions
18 58 (0.73%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 450 (5.68%) Firewall
2 445 (5.61%) DNS
3 370 (4.67%) DHCP
4 290 (3.66%) VPN
5 234 (2.95%) TCP/IP
6 213 (2.69%) Wi-Fi
7 199 (2.51%) WAN
8 193 (2.44%) LAN
9 174 (2.20%) Wireless
10 149 (1.88%) VLAN
11 128 (1.61%) Network Security
12 118 (1.49%) VoIP
13 63 (0.79%) Broadband
14 59 (0.74%) Internet
15 31 (0.39%) SSL
16 29 (0.37%) Remote Desktop
16 29 (0.37%) SAN
17 26 (0.33%) SD-WAN
18 25 (0.32%) Ethernet
18 25 (0.32%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 502 (6.33%) Power BI
2 335 (4.23%) SQL Server
3 138 (1.74%) MySQL
4 122 (1.54%) Relational Database
5 119 (1.50%) Amazon RDS
6 108 (1.36%) Data Warehouse
7 99 (1.25%) PostgreSQL
8 84 (1.06%) NoSQL
9 78 (0.98%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 70 (0.88%) Tableau
11 60 (0.76%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 56 (0.71%) MongoDB
13 51 (0.64%) Power Query
14 49 (0.62%) Data Lake
15 47 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
15 47 (0.59%) Big Data
15 47 (0.59%) Electronic Patient Records
16 34 (0.43%) Oracle Reports
17 33 (0.42%) Metadata
18 28 (0.35%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 315 (3.97%) Git
2 255 (3.22%) JIRA
3 97 (1.22%) GitLab
4 89 (1.12%) Jenkins
5 40 (0.50%) Eclipse
6 36 (0.45%) Selenium
7 35 (0.44%) Subversion
8 33 (0.42%) Cucumber
9 29 (0.37%) Claude Code
10 26 (0.33%) JUnit
11 24 (0.30%) Oracle Forms
12 23 (0.29%) Bitbucket
12 23 (0.29%) Postman
13 22 (0.28%) Cypress.io
14 21 (0.26%) Rational DOORS
15 18 (0.23%) LabVIEW
16 14 (0.18%) Burp Suite
16 14 (0.18%) SonarQube
17 13 (0.16%) Team Foundation Server
18 12 (0.15%) Visual Studio
General
1 3,910 (49.33%) Social Skills
2 2,179 (27.49%) Analytical Skills
3 1,267 (15.99%) Finance
4 906 (11.43%) Manufacturing
5 636 (8.02%) Organisational Skills
6 421 (5.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 410 (5.17%) Retail
8 377 (4.76%) Public Sector
9 341 (4.30%) Law
10 330 (4.16%) Electronics
11 321 (4.05%) Legal
12 318 (4.01%) Aerospace
13 291 (3.67%) Marketing
14 206 (2.60%) Telecoms
15 154 (1.94%) Influencing Skills
16 142 (1.79%) Automotive
17 132 (1.67%) Banking
17 132 (1.67%) Documentation Skills
18 110 (1.39%) Military
19 108 (1.36%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,061 (13.39%) Analyst
2 824 (10.40%) Senior
3 758 (9.56%) IT Support
4 714 (9.01%) Developer
5 602 (7.60%) Support Engineer
6 416 (5.25%) Lead
7 404 (5.10%) Support Analyst
8 401 (5.06%) IT Engineer
9 357 (4.50%) Consultant
10 305 (3.85%) IT Support Engineer
11 291 (3.67%) Technical Support
12 271 (3.42%) Support Technician
13 249 (3.14%) Technical Engineer
14 237 (2.99%) IT Technician
15 232 (2.93%) Architect
16 230 (2.90%) Software Engineer
17 229 (2.89%) Systems Engineer
18 226 (2.85%) Technical Support Engineer
19 209 (2.64%) Senior Developer
20 194 (2.45%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 371 (4.68%) .NET
2 285 (3.60%) Terraform
3 228 (2.88%) React
4 212 (2.67%) REST
5 189 (2.38%) HTML
6 140 (1.77%) CSS
7 138 (1.74%) RESTful
8 98 (1.24%) SOAP
9 96 (1.21%) Node.js
10 94 (1.19%) Web Services
11 84 (1.06%) ASP.NET
11 84 (1.06%) XML
12 80 (1.01%) Middleware
12 80 (1.01%) Spring
13 79 (1.00%) Vue
14 78 (0.98%) JSON
15 77 (0.97%) AngularJS
16 73 (0.92%) Spring Boot
17 64 (0.81%) Kafka
18 52 (0.66%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 698 (8.81%) Driving Licence
2 554 (6.99%) Onboarding
3 418 (5.27%) Self-Motivation
4 368 (4.64%) Management Information System
5 212 (2.67%) Cloud Native
6 182 (2.30%) Product Ownership
7 160 (2.02%) Enterprise Software
8 148 (1.87%) Legacy Systems
9 134 (1.69%) Robotics
10 126 (1.59%) Data Centre
11 97 (1.22%) Analytical Mindset
12 94 (1.19%) NHS
13 88 (1.11%) Distributed Systems
14 82 (1.03%) Cyber Threat
15 81 (1.02%) IoT
15 81 (1.02%) Security Posture
16 76 (0.96%) CCTV
17 74 (0.93%) Social Media
18 73 (0.92%) Virtual Team
19 72 (0.91%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 1,210 (15.27%) Windows
2 534 (6.74%) Windows Server
3 451 (5.69%) Linux
4 126 (1.59%) Windows 10
5 99 (1.25%) Windows Server 2016
6 90 (1.14%) Apple iOS
7 86 (1.09%) Android
8 84 (1.06%) Mac OS
9 43 (0.54%) Unix
10 38 (0.48%) Windows Server 2019
11 26 (0.33%) Ubuntu
12 16 (0.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 16 (0.20%) VMS
13 15 (0.19%) Embedded Linux
14 13 (0.16%) Debian
15 10 (0.13%) FreeRTOS
16 7 (0.088%) CentOS
16 7 (0.088%) Rocky
16 7 (0.088%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.063%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,167 (27.34%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,496 (18.87%) Customer Service
3 1,117 (14.09%) Agile
4 846 (10.67%) Decision-Making
5 830 (10.47%) Stakeholder Management
6 799 (10.08%) Mentoring
7 781 (9.85%) AI
8 738 (9.31%) CI/CD
9 679 (8.57%) Project Delivery
10 655 (8.26%) Collaborative Working
11 625 (7.89%) Analytics
12 605 (7.63%) DevOps
13 603 (7.61%) Software Engineering
14 599 (7.56%) Cybersecurity
15 598 (7.54%) ERP
16 575 (7.25%) ITIL
17 548 (6.91%) Project Management
18 541 (6.83%) Business Intelligence
19 494 (6.23%) Validation
20 493 (6.22%) CRM
Programming Languages
1 1,118 (14.11%) SQL
2 782 (9.87%) Python
3 449 (5.66%) C#
4 439 (5.54%) JavaScript
5 326 (4.11%) Java
6 301 (3.80%) PowerShell
7 206 (2.60%) C++
8 205 (2.59%) TypeScript
9 126 (1.59%) Bash
10 82 (1.03%) C
11 65 (0.82%) PHP
12 64 (0.81%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 59 (0.74%) T-SQL
14 52 (0.66%) Ruby
15 47 (0.59%) MATLAB
16 46 (0.58%) Shell Script
17 45 (0.57%) PL/SQL
18 41 (0.52%) Perl
18 41 (0.52%) Rust
19 36 (0.45%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,270 (16.02%) Degree
2 738 (9.31%) Security Cleared
3 511 (6.45%) SC Cleared
4 247 (3.12%) HNC
5 228 (2.88%) DBS Check
6 212 (2.67%) Computer Science Degree
7 211 (2.66%) HND
8 190 (2.40%) Microsoft Certification
9 184 (2.32%) DV Cleared
10 165 (2.08%) BPSS Clearance
11 137 (1.73%) Azure Certification
12 99 (1.25%) Chartered Engineer
13 90 (1.14%) Cisco Certification
14 77 (0.97%) A+ Certification
15 76 (0.96%) PMI Certification
16 68 (0.86%) Master's Degree
17 67 (0.85%) NVQ Level 3
18 62 (0.78%) CISSP
19 58 (0.73%) ACCA
20 57 (0.72%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 494 (6.23%) QA
2 307 (3.87%) Data Quality
3 236 (2.98%) GDPR
4 208 (2.62%) Accessibility
5 188 (2.37%) SLA
6 170 (2.14%) Cyber Essentials
7 134 (1.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 105 (1.32%) PCI DSS
9 78 (0.98%) NIST
10 49 (0.62%) ISO 9001
11 41 (0.52%) PMO
12 35 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 20 (0.25%) DO-254
13 20 (0.25%) GMP
14 19 (0.24%) Good Clinical Practice
14 19 (0.24%) NCSC
15 16 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
15 16 (0.20%) GRC
16 13 (0.16%) GxP
16 13 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 860 (10.85%) Active Directory
2 292 (3.68%) Hyper-V
3 265 (3.34%) Docker
4 211 (2.66%) VMware Infrastructure
5 80 (1.01%) Firmware
6 72 (0.91%) Terminal Server
7 43 (0.54%) Virtual Desktop
8 34 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
9 30 (0.38%) Embedded Firmware
10 27 (0.34%) vSphere
11 14 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
12 12 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.063%) ClearTrust
13 5 (0.063%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 5 (0.063%) Squid
14 4 (0.050%) KVM
15 3 (0.038%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.038%) VMware Server
16 2 (0.025%) Samba
16 2 (0.025%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 267 (3.37%) Microsoft Intune
2 229 (2.89%) Kubernetes
3 110 (1.39%) Ansible
4 66 (0.83%) Grafana
5 50 (0.63%) SCCM
6 49 (0.62%) Prometheus
7 44 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
8 39 (0.49%) BMC PATROL
9 24 (0.30%) Jamf Pro
10 19 (0.24%) FortiGate
10 19 (0.24%) Functional Safety
11 15 (0.19%) Puppet
12 14 (0.18%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
13 13 (0.16%) Kibana
14 11 (0.14%) logstash
14 11 (0.14%) Nagios
14 11 (0.14%) Nmap
15 10 (0.13%) Proxmox
16 9 (0.11%) Argo
16 9 (0.11%) Podman
Vendors
1 2,408 (30.38%) Microsoft
2 341 (4.30%) VMware
3 229 (2.89%) SAP
4 224 (2.83%) Google
5 195 (2.46%) Workday
6 178 (2.25%) Oracle
7 143 (1.80%) Veeam
8 141 (1.78%) Cisco
9 128 (1.61%) ServiceNow
10 123 (1.55%) Splunk
11 108 (1.36%) Salesforce
12 103 (1.30%) Sage
13 91 (1.15%) SolarWinds
14 80 (1.01%) Tanium
15 78 (0.98%) Fortinet
16 76 (0.96%) Databricks
17 73 (0.92%) Brocade
17 73 (0.92%) Nimble Storage
18 68 (0.86%) Apple
19 63 (0.79%) Siemens