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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 4 2 9
Rank change year-on-year -2 +7 -1
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 6,440 8,313 4,876
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 18.71% 15.00% 14.16%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 21.59% 19.09% 14.99%
Number of salaries quoted 3,544 3,457 3,478
10th Percentile £25,684 £25,750 £26,000
25th Percentile £29,000 £32,750 £33,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £40,000 £47,500 £47,500
Median % change year-on-year -15.79% - -
75th Percentile £57,500 £63,750 £65,000
90th Percentile £70,000 £80,000 £77,500
UK median annual salary £46,000 £52,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year -12.38% -4.55% -

All Process and 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 29,832 43,545 32,537
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 86.68% 78.57% 94.49%
Number of salaries quoted 16,142 23,631 23,348
10th Percentile £26,750 £30,000 £29,013
25th Percentile £32,500 £40,000 £39,790
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £52,500 £54,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% -2.78% +2.86%
75th Percentile £65,000 £67,500 £68,750
90th Percentile £80,000 £80,000 £81,250
UK median annual salary £55,000 £57,500 £60,000
% change year-on-year -4.35% -4.17% -

Problem-Solving
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings citing Problem-Solving as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for Problem-Solving 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 September 2025.

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 September 2025. 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 -1 1,755 £42,500 -5.56% 1,008
South East +2 1,739 £42,500 -15.00% 1,674
Midlands +1 1,232 £38,000 -15.56% 733
North West -2 1,007 £48,720 +8.27% 562
West Midlands +1 652 £44,543 -10.91% 409
Yorkshire -2 618 £33,250 -27.72% 316
East of England +1 596 £33,800 -32.40% 469
East Midlands +2 580 £35,000 -12.50% 310
South West -1 564 £36,000 -31.97% 531
Scotland 0 340 £47,000 -1.05% 291
Wales +9 194 £48,122 +9.90% 123
North East -3 130 £35,000 +7.69% 140
Northern Ireland -4 36 £59,000 +42.17% 79
Channel Islands +2 6 £80,000 +33.33%
Isle of Man 0 1 - -
Problem-Solving
UK

Problem-Solving
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 260 (4.04%) Microsoft Exchange
2 235 (3.65%) SharePoint
3 49 (0.76%) IIS
4 43 (0.67%) Confluence
5 34 (0.53%) Apache Spark
6 28 (0.43%) Apache
7 27 (0.42%) CMS
8 15 (0.23%) Tomcat
9 12 (0.19%) Camunda
10 11 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
11 10 (0.16%) WordPress
12 9 (0.14%) nginx
13 8 (0.12%) Apache Airflow
14 7 (0.11%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.11%) HCL Notes
14 7 (0.11%) OpenEdge
14 7 (0.11%) SAS
15 5 (0.078%) Apache Solr
15 5 (0.078%) Umbraco
16 4 (0.062%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 459 (7.13%) Microsoft Excel
2 416 (6.46%) Microsoft Office
3 66 (1.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 29 (0.45%) Simulink
5 27 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 23 (0.36%) Microsoft Project
7 20 (0.31%) Mathcad
8 17 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
9 15 (0.23%) AutoCAD
10 13 (0.20%) Trello
11 12 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 10 (0.16%) Adobe Illustrator
12 10 (0.16%) Photoshop
12 10 (0.16%) SOLIDWORKS
13 7 (0.11%) Adobe Premiere
14 5 (0.078%) Adobe After Effects
15 4 (0.062%) Autodesk Inventor
15 4 (0.062%) Oracle Smart View
15 4 (0.062%) Revit
16 3 (0.047%) Notion
Business Applications
1 95 (1.48%) SAP S/4HANA
2 79 (1.23%) NetSuite
3 59 (0.92%) Dynamics CRM
4 20 (0.31%) Sage 200
4 20 (0.31%) Unit4 Business World
5 18 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
6 17 (0.26%) Dynamics NAV
6 17 (0.26%) SAP Business One
6 17 (0.26%) Shopify
7 16 (0.25%) Oracle Receivables
7 16 (0.25%) Sage CRM
8 14 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
8 14 (0.22%) SAP FI
9 13 (0.20%) Oracle ERP
9 13 (0.20%) SAP WM
10 10 (0.16%) Infor CloudSuite
10 10 (0.16%) Infor CloudSuite Industrial (formerly SyteLine)
10 10 (0.16%) SAP CO
11 9 (0.14%) SAP FI/CO
12 8 (0.12%) JDE EnterpriseOne
Cloud Services
1 1,055 (16.38%) Azure
2 744 (11.55%) Microsoft 365
3 399 (6.20%) AWS
3 399 (6.20%) Power Platform
4 222 (3.45%) SaaS
5 180 (2.80%) Entra ID
6 138 (2.14%) GCP
7 90 (1.40%) Azure DevOps
8 74 (1.15%) Power Automate
9 67 (1.04%) Dynamics 365
10 66 (1.02%) Serverless
11 65 (1.01%) OneDrive
12 52 (0.81%) Cloud Computing
13 51 (0.79%) AWS Lambda
14 50 (0.78%) GitHub
15 44 (0.68%) IaaS
16 43 (0.67%) Azure Data Factory
17 42 (0.65%) PaaS
18 41 (0.64%) Snowflake
19 38 (0.59%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 491 (7.62%) VPN
2 331 (5.14%) Firewall
3 285 (4.43%) Cisco IOS
4 252 (3.91%) DNS
5 210 (3.26%) DHCP
6 204 (3.17%) TCP/IP
7 154 (2.39%) Broadband
8 130 (2.02%) WAN
9 125 (1.94%) LAN
10 111 (1.72%) Wi-Fi
11 95 (1.48%) VLAN
12 69 (1.07%) VoIP
13 60 (0.93%) Network Security
14 52 (0.81%) SAN
15 45 (0.70%) Remote Desktop
16 42 (0.65%) Wireless
17 35 (0.54%) IP Telephony
18 29 (0.45%) Internet
19 27 (0.42%) Ethernet
20 25 (0.39%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 370 (5.75%) Power BI
2 297 (4.61%) SQL Server
3 122 (1.89%) Data Lake
4 120 (1.86%) MySQL
5 89 (1.38%) Amazon RDS
6 86 (1.34%) PostgreSQL
7 82 (1.27%) Relational Database
8 77 (1.20%) Data Warehouse
9 66 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 63 (0.98%) SAP BW
10 63 (0.98%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 57 (0.89%) Tableau
12 43 (0.67%) NoSQL
13 38 (0.59%) MongoDB
14 37 (0.57%) GIS
15 36 (0.56%) Big Data
16 34 (0.53%) Metadata
17 31 (0.48%) Data Mining
17 31 (0.48%) Elasticsearch
18 27 (0.42%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 165 (2.56%) Git
2 160 (2.48%) JIRA
3 68 (1.06%) Cucumber
4 62 (0.96%) Robot Framework
5 58 (0.90%) Jenkins
6 38 (0.59%) Visual Studio
7 36 (0.56%) GitLab
8 34 (0.53%) Octopus Deploy
9 27 (0.42%) JUnit
10 25 (0.39%) Maven
11 18 (0.28%) Selenium
11 18 (0.28%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 18 (0.28%) TeamCity
12 16 (0.25%) Bitbucket
13 14 (0.22%) MSBuild
13 14 (0.22%) SonarQube
13 14 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
14 11 (0.17%) Mockito
14 11 (0.17%) Oracle Forms
15 10 (0.16%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 3,078 (47.80%) Social Skills
2 1,835 (28.49%) Analytical Skills
3 1,247 (19.36%) Finance
4 1,159 (18.00%) Manufacturing
5 1,090 (16.93%) Retail
6 556 (8.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 350 (5.43%) Law
8 340 (5.28%) Marketing
9 260 (4.04%) Organisational Skills
10 201 (3.12%) Telecoms
11 192 (2.98%) Dutch Language
11 192 (2.98%) Finnish Language
11 192 (2.98%) Norwegian Language
12 188 (2.92%) Banking
13 186 (2.89%) Legal
14 169 (2.62%) Games
15 139 (2.16%) Electronics
16 123 (1.91%) Public Sector
17 90 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
18 89 (1.38%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 869 (13.49%) Analyst
2 721 (11.20%) Trainer
3 639 (9.92%) Senior
4 524 (8.14%) IT Support
5 472 (7.33%) Lead
6 410 (6.37%) Developer
7 402 (6.24%) Support Engineer
8 369 (5.73%) Support Analyst
9 332 (5.16%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 309 (4.80%) Technical Support
11 225 (3.49%) 2nd Line Support
12 193 (3.00%) Systems Engineer
13 190 (2.95%) Technical Engineer
14 177 (2.75%) Applications Support
15 174 (2.70%) Technical Support Engineer
16 164 (2.55%) 1st Line Support
17 154 (2.39%) Support Technician
18 150 (2.33%) Consultant
18 150 (2.33%) IT Analyst
19 120 (1.86%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 278 (4.32%) Elastic Stack
2 217 (3.37%) .NET
3 182 (2.83%) HTML
4 172 (2.67%) CSS
5 129 (2.00%) React
6 128 (1.99%) REST
7 83 (1.29%) RESTful
8 79 (1.23%) ASP.NET
9 71 (1.10%) XML
10 70 (1.09%) JSON
11 64 (0.99%) Spring
12 54 (0.84%) AngularJS
12 54 (0.84%) Node.js
12 54 (0.84%) SOAP
13 47 (0.73%) Spring Boot
14 42 (0.65%) jQuery
15 41 (0.64%) Kafka
15 41 (0.64%) Web Services
16 37 (0.57%) .NET Framework
17 35 (0.54%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 748 (11.61%) Robotics
2 372 (5.78%) Driving Licence
3 310 (4.81%) Onboarding
4 309 (4.80%) Cyberattack
5 291 (4.52%) Self-Motivation
6 290 (4.50%) Management Information System
7 197 (3.06%) Analytical Mindset
8 144 (2.24%) FMCG
9 108 (1.68%) Operational Technology
10 103 (1.60%) Data Centre
11 87 (1.35%) Legacy Systems
12 80 (1.24%) Algorithms
12 80 (1.24%) Product Ownership
13 75 (1.16%) Manufacturing Execution System
14 70 (1.09%) Linux Command Line
15 61 (0.95%) SCADA
16 55 (0.85%) Renewable Energy
17 53 (0.82%) e-Learning
18 52 (0.81%) Virtual Team
19 46 (0.71%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 1,211 (18.80%) Windows
2 546 (8.48%) Linux
3 340 (5.28%) Windows Server
4 327 (5.08%) Android
5 168 (2.61%) Windows 10
6 99 (1.54%) Mac OS
7 62 (0.96%) Windows Server 2016
8 42 (0.65%) Apple iOS
9 39 (0.61%) Unix
10 25 (0.39%) Windows 7
11 19 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
12 9 (0.14%) VMS
12 9 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
13 7 (0.11%) Mac OS X
14 5 (0.078%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
15 4 (0.062%) CentOS
16 3 (0.047%) Ubuntu
16 3 (0.047%) Windows Server 2008
17 2 (0.031%) Windows Server 2003
18 1 (0.016%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,075 (16.69%) Customer Service
2 1,004 (15.59%) Artificial Intelligence
3 945 (14.67%) Continuous Improvement
4 903 (14.02%) Machine Learning
5 807 (12.53%) Agile
6 773 (12.00%) Generative AI
7 768 (11.93%) LLM
8 720 (11.18%) Red Team
9 653 (10.14%) DevOps
10 636 (9.88%) Data Privacy
11 536 (8.32%) Analytics
12 512 (7.95%) Project Management
13 502 (7.80%) Mentoring
14 483 (7.50%) ERP
15 468 (7.27%) Business Intelligence
16 452 (7.02%) Mathematics
17 428 (6.65%) Decision-Making
18 403 (6.26%) Cybersecurity
19 389 (6.04%) Risk Management
20 388 (6.02%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 822 (12.76%) SQL
2 734 (11.40%) Python
3 512 (7.95%) PowerShell
4 360 (5.59%) Bash
5 329 (5.11%) JavaScript
6 278 (4.32%) C#
7 241 (3.74%) Java
8 110 (1.71%) C++
9 85 (1.32%) PHP
10 66 (1.02%) T-SQL
11 57 (0.89%) TypeScript
12 40 (0.62%) C
13 39 (0.61%) MATLAB
14 29 (0.45%) VBA
15 20 (0.31%) R
16 17 (0.26%) Perl
17 15 (0.23%) Go
18 14 (0.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 14 (0.22%) PL/SQL
19 12 (0.19%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 1,894 (29.41%) Degree
2 335 (5.20%) Security Cleared
3 221 (3.43%) SC Cleared
4 207 (3.21%) Computer Science Degree
5 187 (2.90%) Microsoft Certification
6 171 (2.66%) DBS Check
7 135 (2.10%) Master's Degree
8 101 (1.57%) HNC
9 99 (1.54%) BPSS Clearance
9 99 (1.54%) DV Cleared
10 83 (1.29%) A+ Certification
10 83 (1.29%) HND
11 77 (1.20%) Cisco Certification
12 61 (0.95%) Network+ Certification
13 54 (0.84%) CCNA
13 54 (0.84%) PMP
14 52 (0.81%) PMI Certification
15 51 (0.79%) Azure Certification
16 41 (0.64%) ACCA
16 41 (0.64%) MCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 282 (4.38%) QA
2 201 (3.12%) Data Quality
3 151 (2.34%) GDPR
4 127 (1.97%) SLA
5 115 (1.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 99 (1.54%) Cyber Essentials
7 58 (0.90%) Accessibility
8 56 (0.87%) PCI DSS
9 38 (0.59%) NIST
10 25 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 25 (0.39%) ISO 9001
11 23 (0.36%) PMO
12 19 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 15288
13 10 (0.16%) HIPAA
13 10 (0.16%) Software Quality Assurance
14 9 (0.14%) SOC 2
15 8 (0.12%) COBIT
16 7 (0.11%) Actionable Recommendations
16 7 (0.11%) GRC
17 6 (0.093%) NCSC
System Software
1 564 (8.76%) Active Directory
2 439 (6.82%) Hyper-V
3 415 (6.44%) Docker
4 277 (4.30%) vSphere
5 260 (4.04%) VMware NSX
6 131 (2.03%) VMware Infrastructure
7 60 (0.93%) Firmware
8 48 (0.75%) Terminal Server
9 27 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
10 25 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
11 17 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
12 15 (0.23%) Embedded Firmware
13 11 (0.17%) Terminal Services
14 7 (0.11%) HDFS
15 5 (0.078%) XenApp
16 4 (0.062%) KVM
17 3 (0.047%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 3 (0.047%) GPFS
17 3 (0.047%) Lustre
17 3 (0.047%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 394 (6.12%) Terraform
2 309 (4.80%) Ansible
3 212 (3.29%) Microsoft Intune
4 156 (2.42%) Kubernetes
5 25 (0.39%) SCCM
6 23 (0.36%) Grafana
6 23 (0.36%) Single Sign-On
7 20 (0.31%) BMC PATROL
8 19 (0.30%) Prometheus
9 14 (0.22%) QRadar
10 12 (0.19%) FortiGate
10 12 (0.19%) PaperCut
11 9 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 9 (0.14%) Proxmox
12 7 (0.11%) vCenter Server
13 6 (0.093%) ArcSight ESM
13 6 (0.093%) Puppet
14 5 (0.078%) Nagios
14 5 (0.078%) Packer
14 5 (0.078%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,398 (21.71%) Microsoft
2 847 (13.15%) Google
3 780 (12.11%) Databricks
4 747 (11.60%) Adobe
5 463 (7.19%) Cisco
6 350 (5.43%) SAP
7 348 (5.40%) Splunk
8 292 (4.53%) Juniper
9 267 (4.15%) 3PAR
10 209 (3.25%) VMware
11 171 (2.66%) Oracle
12 125 (1.94%) BT
13 123 (1.91%) Salesforce
14 97 (1.51%) ServiceNow
15 90 (1.40%) Siemens
16 84 (1.30%) Veeam
17 77 (1.20%) Rockwell
18 62 (0.96%) SolarWinds
19 55 (0.85%) Apple
20 54 (0.84%) Sage