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

6 months to
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 4 3
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 7,219 6,527 8,317
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 8.69% 18.90% 14.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.39% 21.83% 19.00%
Number of salaries quoted 5,092 3,573 3,537
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 £80,000
UK median annual salary £47,000 £45,000 £51,500
% change year-on-year +4.44% -12.62% -6.36%

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 58,272 29,903 43,765
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.13% 86.57% 78.29%
Number of salaries quoted 41,325 16,223 24,261
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% -3.37%
75th Percentile £70,000 £65,000 £67,500
90th Percentile £89,800 £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 12 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 12 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 1,812 £45,000 +7.14% 1,115
South East -4 1,720 £42,500 - 1,346
Midlands -7 1,297 £42,500 +11.84% 892
North West -5 942 £45,000 -5.26% 555
South West -4 911 £45,000 +28.57% 647
East of England -4 721 £42,500 +21.43% 550
West Midlands -8 715 £42,500 -4.59% 530
East Midlands -8 580 £41,250 +17.86% 362
Yorkshire -8 571 £42,500 +26.87% 402
Scotland +2 318 £33,500 -12.33% 386
North East 0 299 £48,000 +26.32% 178
Northern Ireland +3 247 £70,000 +18.64% 177
Wales -18 208 £42,500 -11.11% 138
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
1 435 (6.03%) SharePoint
2 348 (4.82%) Microsoft Exchange
3 64 (0.89%) Confluence
4 59 (0.82%) CMS
5 54 (0.75%) IIS
6 31 (0.43%) Apache
7 30 (0.42%) 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%) Oracle Workflow
12 10 (0.14%) WebSphere
13 9 (0.12%) nginx
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
1 509 (7.05%) Microsoft Office
2 469 (6.50%) Microsoft Excel
3 71 (0.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 59 (0.82%) Spreadsheet
5 40 (0.55%) MS Visio
6 36 (0.50%) AutoCAD
6 36 (0.50%) Microsoft Project
7 30 (0.42%) Simulink
8 23 (0.32%) Revit
9 13 (0.18%) EPLAN
10 11 (0.15%) SOLIDWORKS
11 9 (0.12%) Navisworks
12 8 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 8 (0.11%) Chatbot
12 8 (0.11%) Fusion 360
13 6 (0.083%) Adobe Illustrator
13 6 (0.083%) Adobe XD
13 6 (0.083%) Siemens NX
13 6 (0.083%) Sketch
14 5 (0.069%) Lightworks
Business Applications
1 74 (1.03%) Dynamics CRM
2 61 (0.84%) NetSuite
3 48 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
4 30 (0.42%) Shopify
5 20 (0.28%) Dynamics NAV
6 19 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
7 18 (0.25%) Workday HCM
8 17 (0.24%) SAP Business One
9 16 (0.22%) Magento
10 14 (0.19%) Dynamics AX
10 14 (0.19%) IBM Planning Analytics
11 13 (0.18%) SAP ERP
12 12 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
12 12 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
13 10 (0.14%) JDE EnterpriseOne
13 10 (0.14%) Sage X3
14 9 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
14 9 (0.12%) Sage 50
15 8 (0.11%) Oracle Cash Management
15 8 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,359 (18.83%) Azure
2 1,204 (16.68%) Microsoft 365
3 696 (9.64%) AWS
4 586 (8.12%) Power Platform
5 366 (5.07%) Entra ID
6 257 (3.56%) SaaS
7 233 (3.23%) GCP
8 172 (2.38%) Azure DevOps
9 151 (2.09%) Dynamics 365
10 150 (2.08%) PowerApps
11 137 (1.90%) GitHub
12 134 (1.86%) Power Automate
13 126 (1.75%) Serverless
14 99 (1.37%) OneDrive
15 86 (1.19%) Microsoft Copilot
16 64 (0.89%) Amazon S3
17 63 (0.87%) Google Workspace
18 59 (0.82%) AWS Lambda
18 59 (0.82%) GitHub Actions
19 58 (0.80%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 437 (6.05%) Firewall
2 418 (5.79%) DNS
3 356 (4.93%) DHCP
4 276 (3.82%) VPN
5 232 (3.21%) TCP/IP
6 197 (2.73%) WAN
7 192 (2.66%) Wi-Fi
8 189 (2.62%) LAN
9 170 (2.35%) Wireless
10 145 (2.01%) VLAN
11 120 (1.66%) Network Security
12 115 (1.59%) VoIP
13 66 (0.91%) Broadband
14 48 (0.66%) Internet
15 30 (0.42%) SSL
16 27 (0.37%) SAN
16 27 (0.37%) SD-WAN
17 26 (0.36%) HTTP
17 26 (0.36%) Remote Desktop
18 24 (0.33%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 472 (6.54%) Power BI
2 328 (4.54%) SQL Server
3 137 (1.90%) MySQL
4 118 (1.63%) Amazon RDS
5 116 (1.61%) Relational Database
6 104 (1.44%) Data Warehouse
7 92 (1.27%) PostgreSQL
8 81 (1.12%) NoSQL
9 79 (1.09%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 71 (0.98%) Tableau
11 59 (0.82%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 50 (0.69%) MongoDB
13 48 (0.66%) Data Lake
14 47 (0.65%) Big Data
14 47 (0.65%) Electronic Patient Records
15 46 (0.64%) Power Query
16 42 (0.58%) Azure SQL Database
17 29 (0.40%) DynamoDB
17 29 (0.40%) Metadata
18 28 (0.39%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 298 (4.13%) Git
2 233 (3.23%) JIRA
3 76 (1.05%) Jenkins
4 75 (1.04%) GitLab
5 38 (0.53%) Eclipse
6 33 (0.46%) Subversion
7 30 (0.42%) Cucumber
7 30 (0.42%) Selenium
8 26 (0.36%) JUnit
9 25 (0.35%) Claude Code
10 23 (0.32%) Rational DOORS
11 22 (0.30%) Bitbucket
11 22 (0.30%) Oracle Forms
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%) Metasploit
General
1 3,528 (48.87%) Social Skills
2 1,993 (27.61%) Analytical Skills
3 1,140 (15.79%) Finance
4 731 (10.13%) Manufacturing
5 514 (7.12%) Organisational Skills
6 408 (5.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 349 (4.83%) Retail
8 336 (4.65%) Law
9 322 (4.46%) Public Sector
10 302 (4.18%) Legal
11 275 (3.81%) Electronics
12 268 (3.71%) Marketing
13 265 (3.67%) Aerospace
14 176 (2.44%) Telecoms
15 146 (2.02%) Influencing Skills
16 133 (1.84%) Banking
17 114 (1.58%) Documentation Skills
18 109 (1.51%) Automotive
19 95 (1.32%) Military
20 84 (1.16%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 932 (12.91%) Analyst
2 762 (10.56%) Senior
3 709 (9.82%) IT Support
4 701 (9.71%) Developer
5 567 (7.85%) Support Engineer
6 393 (5.44%) Lead
7 379 (5.25%) IT Engineer
8 365 (5.06%) Support Analyst
9 331 (4.59%) Consultant
10 283 (3.92%) IT Support Engineer
11 274 (3.80%) Technical Support
12 268 (3.71%) Support Technician
13 238 (3.30%) Architect
14 236 (3.27%) Technical Engineer
15 234 (3.24%) Systems Engineer
16 230 (3.19%) IT Technician
17 226 (3.13%) Software Engineer
18 214 (2.96%) Technical Support Engineer
19 198 (2.74%) Senior Developer
20 182 (2.52%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 353 (4.89%) .NET
2 267 (3.70%) Terraform
3 217 (3.01%) React
4 196 (2.72%) REST
5 193 (2.67%) HTML
6 141 (1.95%) CSS
7 131 (1.81%) RESTful
8 98 (1.36%) SOAP
9 93 (1.29%) Node.js
10 86 (1.19%) Web Services
11 82 (1.14%) ASP.NET
11 82 (1.14%) Vue
11 82 (1.14%) XML
12 79 (1.09%) JSON
12 79 (1.09%) Middleware
13 78 (1.08%) AngularJS
14 75 (1.04%) Spring
15 68 (0.94%) Spring Boot
16 54 (0.75%) Kafka
17 52 (0.72%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 614 (8.51%) Driving Licence
2 492 (6.82%) Onboarding
3 379 (5.25%) Self-Motivation
4 326 (4.52%) Management Information System
5 201 (2.78%) Cloud Native
6 176 (2.44%) Product Ownership
7 149 (2.06%) Legacy Systems
8 127 (1.76%) Enterprise Software
9 124 (1.72%) Data Centre
10 110 (1.52%) Robotics
11 92 (1.27%) Analytical Mindset
12 88 (1.22%) NHS
13 87 (1.21%) Distributed Systems
14 80 (1.11%) Security Posture
15 75 (1.04%) Cyber Threat
16 73 (1.01%) Virtual Team
17 70 (0.97%) IoT
18 69 (0.96%) CCTV
19 68 (0.94%) Mobile App
20 63 (0.87%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 1,151 (15.94%) Windows
2 515 (7.13%) Windows Server
3 456 (6.32%) Linux
4 127 (1.76%) Windows 10
5 102 (1.41%) Windows Server 2016
6 90 (1.25%) Apple iOS
7 85 (1.18%) Android
8 80 (1.11%) Mac OS
9 42 (0.58%) Unix
9 42 (0.58%) Windows Server 2019
10 29 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 18 (0.25%) VMS
12 17 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 15 (0.21%) Debian
14 13 (0.18%) Embedded Linux
15 11 (0.15%) CentOS
16 9 (0.12%) FreeRTOS
17 7 (0.097%) Windows Server 2012
18 6 (0.083%) Rocky
19 5 (0.069%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,951 (27.03%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,343 (18.60%) Customer Service
3 1,044 (14.46%) Agile
4 785 (10.87%) Decision-Making
5 734 (10.17%) Mentoring
6 710 (9.84%) AI
7 708 (9.81%) Stakeholder Management
8 699 (9.68%) CI/CD
9 607 (8.41%) Project Delivery
10 586 (8.12%) Analytics
11 584 (8.09%) DevOps
12 583 (8.08%) Collaborative Working
13 576 (7.98%) Software Engineering
14 569 (7.88%) ITIL
15 557 (7.72%) ERP
16 546 (7.56%) Cybersecurity
17 506 (7.01%) Business Intelligence
18 493 (6.83%) Project Management
19 456 (6.32%) CRM
20 439 (6.08%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 1,067 (14.78%) SQL
2 741 (10.26%) Python
3 438 (6.07%) C#
4 436 (6.04%) JavaScript
5 317 (4.39%) Java
6 288 (3.99%) PowerShell
7 200 (2.77%) C++
8 194 (2.69%) TypeScript
9 121 (1.68%) Bash
10 79 (1.09%) C
11 70 (0.97%) PHP
12 63 (0.87%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 58 (0.80%) T-SQL
14 47 (0.65%) Ruby
15 45 (0.62%) Shell Script
16 42 (0.58%) Perl
16 42 (0.58%) PL/SQL
17 41 (0.57%) MATLAB
18 37 (0.51%) Go
19 36 (0.50%) Rust
Qualifications
1 1,166 (16.15%) Degree
2 679 (9.41%) Security Cleared
3 476 (6.59%) SC Cleared
4 211 (2.92%) DBS Check
5 197 (2.73%) Computer Science Degree
6 185 (2.56%) Microsoft Certification
7 182 (2.52%) HNC
8 179 (2.48%) DV Cleared
9 166 (2.30%) HND
10 153 (2.12%) BPSS Clearance
11 129 (1.79%) Azure Certification
12 93 (1.29%) Cisco Certification
13 91 (1.26%) Chartered Engineer
14 77 (1.07%) PMI Certification
15 72 (1.00%) A+ Certification
16 69 (0.96%) Master's Degree
17 68 (0.94%) CISSP
18 60 (0.83%) CCNA
19 56 (0.78%) PMP
20 55 (0.76%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 463 (6.41%) QA
2 290 (4.02%) Data Quality
3 217 (3.01%) GDPR
4 201 (2.78%) Accessibility
5 176 (2.44%) SLA
6 166 (2.30%) Cyber Essentials
7 133 (1.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 104 (1.44%) PCI DSS
9 89 (1.23%) NIST
10 38 (0.53%) ISO 9001
11 33 (0.46%) PMO
12 32 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 18 (0.25%) GMP
13 18 (0.25%) Good Clinical Practice
14 17 (0.24%) DO-254
14 17 (0.24%) NCSC
15 14 (0.19%) GRC
16 13 (0.18%) Actionable Recommendations
16 13 (0.18%) GxP
17 12 (0.17%) TickIT
System Software
1 799 (11.07%) Active Directory
2 286 (3.96%) Hyper-V
3 256 (3.55%) Docker
4 212 (2.94%) VMware Infrastructure
5 72 (1.00%) Terminal Server
6 71 (0.98%) Firmware
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
15 3 (0.042%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 3 (0.042%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.042%) VMware Server
15 3 (0.042%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 248 (3.44%) Microsoft Intune
2 221 (3.06%) Kubernetes
3 107 (1.48%) Ansible
4 60 (0.83%) Grafana
5 53 (0.73%) SCCM
6 43 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
7 41 (0.57%) Prometheus
8 23 (0.32%) BMC PATROL
9 21 (0.29%) Jamf Pro
10 19 (0.26%) FortiGate
11 17 (0.24%) 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%) QRadar
16 9 (0.12%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 2,177 (30.16%) Microsoft
2 339 (4.70%) VMware
3 205 (2.84%) SAP
4 197 (2.73%) Google
5 166 (2.30%) Oracle
6 147 (2.04%) Workday
7 136 (1.88%) Cisco
8 132 (1.83%) Veeam
9 118 (1.63%) Splunk
10 117 (1.62%) ServiceNow
11 101 (1.40%) Salesforce
12 98 (1.36%) Sage
13 92 (1.27%) SolarWinds
14 80 (1.11%) Tanium
15 77 (1.07%) Databricks
16 73 (1.01%) Fortinet
16 73 (1.01%) Nimble Storage
17 72 (1.00%) Brocade
18 63 (0.87%) Apple
19 56 (0.78%) SonicWALL