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

6 months to
18 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 4 5
Rank change year-on-year -6 +1 +7
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,710 6,379 10,235
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 7.94% 18.88% 14.47%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.26% 21.39% 18.10%
Number of salaries quoted 4,261 3,479 6,173
10th Percentile £26,500 £25,750 £25,500
25th Percentile £30,500 £30,000 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £41,500 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year +2.41% -7.78% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £60,000 £60,000
90th Percentile £73,750 £75,000 £73,000
UK median annual salary £47,500 £48,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -2.06% -3.00% -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 50,714 29,818 56,537
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.54% 88.25% 79.92%
Number of salaries quoted 35,727 16,034 38,597
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,750 £27,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,851 £36,565
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £50,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% - -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £66,250 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £56,888 £55,000
% change year-on-year +5.47% +3.43% -8.71%

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 18 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 18 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 1,506 £45,000 +5.88% 576
South East -3 1,400 £45,000 +5.88% 694
Midlands -8 1,059 £42,000 +3.70% 346
North West -6 797 £45,500 -1.09% 298
South West -6 700 £44,000 +17.33% 278
West Midlands -9 596 £42,500 -5.56% 191
East of England -4 573 £42,500 +21.43% 226
Yorkshire -10 512 £42,500 +21.43% 195
East Midlands -8 459 £35,000 -2.78% 155
Scotland -8 234 £33,000 -25.42% 89
North East -15 197 £52,130 +31.81% 92
Wales -20 145 £42,500 -5.56% 51
Northern Ireland -16 113 £38,500 -30.00% 16
Isle of Man +2 3 £35,000 +1.45% 6
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
1 362 (6.34%) Microsoft Exchange
2 346 (6.06%) SharePoint
3 55 (0.96%) Confluence
4 51 (0.89%) CMS
5 35 (0.61%) IIS
6 29 (0.51%) WordPress
7 27 (0.47%) Apache
8 20 (0.35%) Apache Airflow
9 13 (0.23%) Apache Spark
9 13 (0.23%) SAS
10 11 (0.19%) WebSphere
11 10 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2013
12 8 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2007
12 8 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2010
12 8 (0.14%) WebLogic
13 7 (0.12%) nginx
13 7 (0.12%) OpenEdge
14 6 (0.11%) Jupyter
15 5 (0.088%) Skype for Business
16 4 (0.070%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 369 (6.46%) Microsoft Office
2 358 (6.27%) Microsoft Excel
3 53 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 41 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
5 31 (0.54%) MS Visio
6 17 (0.30%) Microsoft Project
7 11 (0.19%) Simulink
8 8 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 8 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
9 7 (0.12%) Chatbot
10 6 (0.11%) AutoCAD
11 5 (0.088%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.088%) Fusion 360
11 5 (0.088%) Lightworks
11 5 (0.088%) Photoshop
11 5 (0.088%) Sketch
11 5 (0.088%) Trello
12 3 (0.053%) Autodesk Inventor
12 3 (0.053%) LaTeX
12 3 (0.053%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 56 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
2 32 (0.56%) NetSuite
3 18 (0.32%) Shopify
4 16 (0.28%) Magento
4 16 (0.28%) SAP ERP
5 15 (0.26%) Dynamics NAV
6 14 (0.25%) Dynamics AX
7 13 (0.23%) IBM Planning Analytics
8 11 (0.19%) SAP Business One
9 10 (0.18%) JDE EnterpriseOne
9 10 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
10 8 (0.14%) Sage 50
11 7 (0.12%) iTrent
11 7 (0.12%) Raiser’s Edge
11 7 (0.12%) Workday HCM
12 5 (0.088%) Dynamics GP
12 5 (0.088%) NEC Housing
12 5 (0.088%) Q-Pulse
12 5 (0.088%) Sage X3
Cloud Services
1 1,205 (21.10%) Azure
2 1,063 (18.62%) Microsoft 365
3 588 (10.30%) AWS
4 450 (7.88%) Power Platform
5 295 (5.17%) Entra ID
6 198 (3.47%) GCP
6 198 (3.47%) SaaS
7 133 (2.33%) Azure DevOps
8 119 (2.08%) Dynamics 365
9 109 (1.91%) Serverless
10 100 (1.75%) Power Automate
10 100 (1.75%) PowerApps
11 97 (1.70%) GitHub
12 76 (1.33%) OneDrive
13 61 (1.07%) Microsoft Copilot
14 50 (0.88%) Amazon S3
15 48 (0.84%) Microsoft Purview
16 45 (0.79%) IaaS
17 44 (0.77%) GitHub Actions
17 44 (0.77%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 413 (7.23%) Firewall
2 378 (6.62%) DNS
3 324 (5.67%) DHCP
4 212 (3.71%) VPN
5 200 (3.50%) WAN
6 192 (3.36%) TCP/IP
7 177 (3.10%) LAN
8 157 (2.75%) Wi-Fi
9 140 (2.45%) Wireless
10 118 (2.07%) VLAN
11 111 (1.94%) Broadband
12 96 (1.68%) Network Security
13 91 (1.59%) VoIP
14 39 (0.68%) Internet
15 32 (0.56%) SD-WAN
16 27 (0.47%) SAN
17 26 (0.46%) HTTP
18 23 (0.40%) SSL
19 21 (0.37%) Remote Desktop
19 21 (0.37%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 359 (6.29%) Power BI
2 265 (4.64%) SQL Server
3 117 (2.05%) Amazon RDS
4 100 (1.75%) MySQL
5 89 (1.56%) Data Warehouse
6 82 (1.44%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 81 (1.42%) PostgreSQL
8 78 (1.37%) Relational Database
9 67 (1.17%) Tableau
10 64 (1.12%) NoSQL
10 64 (1.12%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 46 (0.81%) Power Query
12 44 (0.77%) MongoDB
13 37 (0.65%) Big Data
14 35 (0.61%) Azure SQL Database
15 33 (0.58%) Data Lake
16 26 (0.46%) DynamoDB
17 25 (0.44%) Elasticsearch
18 19 (0.33%) Star Schema
19 17 (0.30%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 219 (3.84%) Git
2 174 (3.05%) JIRA
3 78 (1.37%) GitLab
4 46 (0.81%) Jenkins
5 27 (0.47%) Rational DOORS
6 24 (0.42%) Cucumber
7 22 (0.39%) Eclipse
7 22 (0.39%) Selenium
7 22 (0.39%) Subversion
8 17 (0.30%) Cypress.io
8 17 (0.30%) JUnit
9 15 (0.26%) Postman
10 14 (0.25%) SonarQube
11 12 (0.21%) Oracle Forms
12 11 (0.19%) Claude Code
13 9 (0.16%) Bitbucket
13 9 (0.16%) Visual Studio
14 8 (0.14%) Burp Suite
14 8 (0.14%) JMeter
14 8 (0.14%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 2,739 (47.97%) Social Skills
2 1,546 (27.08%) Analytical Skills
3 873 (15.29%) Finance
4 455 (7.97%) Manufacturing
5 380 (6.65%) Organisational Skills
6 253 (4.43%) Legal
7 247 (4.33%) Law
7 247 (4.33%) Public Sector
8 242 (4.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 227 (3.98%) Retail
10 182 (3.19%) Marketing
11 152 (2.66%) Electronics
12 147 (2.57%) Telecoms
13 114 (2.00%) Banking
14 105 (1.84%) Documentation Skills
15 104 (1.82%) Influencing Skills
16 86 (1.51%) Aerospace
17 76 (1.33%) Games
18 59 (1.03%) Advertising
19 57 (1.00%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 783 (13.71%) Analyst
2 671 (11.75%) IT Support
3 629 (11.02%) Senior
4 586 (10.26%) Developer
5 578 (10.12%) Support Engineer
6 393 (6.88%) IT Engineer
7 302 (5.29%) Lead
8 294 (5.15%) IT Support Engineer
9 259 (4.54%) Support Technician
10 255 (4.47%) Support Analyst
11 236 (4.13%) Systems Engineer
12 213 (3.73%) Technical Support
13 209 (3.66%) IT Technician
14 194 (3.40%) Software Engineer
15 190 (3.33%) Consultant
15 190 (3.33%) Technical Engineer
16 181 (3.17%) Architect
17 172 (3.01%) Technical Support Engineer
18 168 (2.94%) Senior Developer
19 164 (2.87%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 274 (4.80%) .NET
2 197 (3.45%) React
3 171 (2.99%) HTML
4 160 (2.80%) REST
5 126 (2.21%) CSS
6 100 (1.75%) Node.js
7 95 (1.66%) RESTful
8 84 (1.47%) SOAP
9 75 (1.31%) Middleware
10 74 (1.30%) Vue
11 73 (1.28%) JSON
12 69 (1.21%) AngularJS
13 64 (1.12%) XML
14 51 (0.89%) Spring
15 50 (0.88%) ASP.NET
16 47 (0.82%) Spring Boot
16 47 (0.82%) Web Services
17 43 (0.75%) OAuth
18 37 (0.65%) EDI
18 37 (0.65%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 446 (7.81%) Driving Licence
2 332 (5.81%) Onboarding
3 266 (4.66%) Self-Motivation
4 218 (3.82%) Management Information System
5 153 (2.68%) Cloud Native
5 153 (2.68%) Legacy Systems
6 142 (2.49%) Product Ownership
7 100 (1.75%) Data Centre
8 96 (1.68%) Analytical Mindset
9 88 (1.54%) Distributed Systems
10 73 (1.28%) Security Posture
11 65 (1.14%) Mobile App
11 65 (1.14%) Social Media
12 63 (1.10%) Enterprise Software
13 57 (1.00%) IoT
14 56 (0.98%) Virtual Team
15 48 (0.84%) Algorithms
16 46 (0.81%) Robotics
17 45 (0.79%) Cyber Threat
17 45 (0.79%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 1,010 (17.69%) Windows
2 481 (8.42%) Windows Server
3 418 (7.32%) Linux
4 145 (2.54%) Windows 10
5 128 (2.24%) Windows Server 2016
6 109 (1.91%) Android
7 74 (1.30%) Apple iOS
8 73 (1.28%) Mac OS
9 45 (0.79%) Windows Server 2019
10 31 (0.54%) Unix
11 27 (0.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 27 (0.47%) Ubuntu
12 24 (0.42%) CentOS
13 16 (0.28%) VMS
14 14 (0.25%) Debian
14 14 (0.25%) Windows 7
15 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.16%) FreeRTOS
17 7 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
18 6 (0.11%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,373 (24.05%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,046 (18.32%) Customer Service
3 810 (14.19%) Agile
4 581 (10.18%) Mentoring
5 571 (10.00%) Decision-Making
6 566 (9.91%) CI/CD
7 540 (9.46%) AI
8 502 (8.79%) ITIL
9 488 (8.55%) Analytics
10 483 (8.46%) DevOps
11 464 (8.13%) Cybersecurity
12 458 (8.02%) Software Engineering
13 450 (7.88%) Collaborative Working
14 424 (7.43%) Stakeholder Management
15 417 (7.30%) Business Intelligence
16 406 (7.11%) ERP
17 379 (6.64%) Project Delivery
18 346 (6.06%) Computer Science
19 343 (6.01%) Service Delivery
20 341 (5.97%) Customer Experience
Programming Languages
1 888 (15.55%) SQL
2 648 (11.35%) Python
3 361 (6.32%) JavaScript
4 354 (6.20%) C#
5 253 (4.43%) Java
6 243 (4.26%) PowerShell
7 162 (2.84%) TypeScript
8 159 (2.78%) C++
9 108 (1.89%) Bash
10 75 (1.31%) PHP
11 62 (1.09%) C
12 58 (1.02%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 48 (0.84%) T-SQL
14 34 (0.60%) Perl
14 34 (0.60%) PL/SQL
15 32 (0.56%) Go
15 32 (0.56%) Ruby
16 29 (0.51%) Kotlin
16 29 (0.51%) Shell Script
17 27 (0.47%) Rust
Qualifications
1 831 (14.55%) Degree
2 476 (8.34%) Security Cleared
3 347 (6.08%) SC Cleared
4 197 (3.45%) DBS Check
5 166 (2.91%) Microsoft Certification
6 165 (2.89%) Computer Science Degree
7 87 (1.52%) Cisco Certification
8 84 (1.47%) DV Cleared
9 83 (1.45%) BPSS Clearance
10 74 (1.30%) Azure Certification
11 62 (1.09%) CCNA
12 60 (1.05%) ACCA
13 59 (1.03%) HNC
14 57 (1.00%) A+ Certification
15 56 (0.98%) CIMA
15 56 (0.98%) PMI Certification
16 54 (0.95%) Master's Degree
17 49 (0.86%) PMP
18 48 (0.84%) CISSP
19 43 (0.75%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 344 (6.02%) QA
2 242 (4.24%) Data Quality
3 184 (3.22%) Cyber Essentials
4 157 (2.75%) GDPR
5 147 (2.57%) SLA
6 137 (2.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 130 (2.28%) PCI DSS
8 115 (2.01%) Accessibility
9 89 (1.56%) NIST
10 39 (0.68%) ISO 9001
11 29 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 24 (0.42%) PMO
13 21 (0.37%) GMP
14 17 (0.30%) Good Clinical Practice
15 15 (0.26%) GRC
16 14 (0.25%) SOC 2
17 13 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
18 12 (0.21%) TickIT
19 11 (0.19%) ISO 14001
20 9 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 714 (12.50%) Active Directory
2 277 (4.85%) Hyper-V
3 214 (3.75%) Docker
4 186 (3.26%) VMware Infrastructure
5 88 (1.54%) Terminal Server
6 43 (0.75%) Firmware
7 31 (0.54%) Virtual Desktop
8 27 (0.47%) vSphere
9 22 (0.39%) Virtual Machines
10 16 (0.28%) Embedded Firmware
11 11 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
12 7 (0.12%) KVM
13 6 (0.11%) VMware Workstation
13 6 (0.11%) XenApp
14 5 (0.088%) ClearTrust
15 4 (0.070%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 4 (0.070%) Virtual Servers
16 3 (0.053%) Squid
16 3 (0.053%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.053%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 225 (3.94%) Microsoft Intune
2 223 (3.91%) Terraform
3 202 (3.54%) Kubernetes
4 102 (1.79%) Ansible
5 61 (1.07%) Grafana
6 57 (1.00%) SCCM
7 41 (0.72%) Prometheus
8 19 (0.33%) FortiGate
8 19 (0.33%) Nagios
9 13 (0.23%) Puppet
10 11 (0.19%) Kibana
11 10 (0.18%) Autotask
11 10 (0.18%) Functional Safety
11 10 (0.18%) Jamf Pro
11 10 (0.18%) logstash
11 10 (0.18%) Podman
11 10 (0.18%) Proxmox
11 10 (0.18%) QRadar
12 9 (0.16%) Failover Clustering
12 9 (0.16%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,757 (30.77%) Microsoft
2 308 (5.39%) VMware
3 144 (2.52%) Veeam
4 128 (2.24%) Splunk
5 126 (2.21%) Google
6 125 (2.19%) SAP
7 121 (2.12%) Cisco
8 114 (2.00%) SolarWinds
9 113 (1.98%) Oracle
10 95 (1.66%) Tanium
11 90 (1.58%) ServiceNow
12 89 (1.56%) Nimble Storage
13 88 (1.54%) Brocade
14 82 (1.44%) Salesforce
15 69 (1.21%) Databricks
16 59 (1.03%) Apple
17 53 (0.93%) Adobe
17 53 (0.93%) Sage
18 49 (0.86%) Dell
19 48 (0.84%) Fortinet