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

6 months to
5 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 4 5
Rank change year-on-year -6 +1 +7
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,970 6,062 11,015
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 7.43% 20.70% 14.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.56% 22.56% 18.25%
Number of salaries quoted 3,687 3,107 6,946
10th Percentile £26,286 £26,250 £25,000
25th Percentile £30,000 £30,750 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £42,500 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year - -5.56% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £60,000 £60,000
90th Percentile £75,000 £77,500 £72,500
UK median annual salary £47,500 £50,000 £48,734
% change year-on-year -5.00% +2.60% -11.39%

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 47,086 26,868 60,362
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.39% 91.75% 81.08%
Number of salaries quoted 31,492 13,351 42,577
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,929 £27,250
25th Percentile £38,539 £33,750 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £50,967 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.01% +1.93% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £67,500 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £81,250 £77,500
UK median annual salary £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -9.69%

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 5 June 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 5 June 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 1,353 £42,500 -4.49% 735
South East -6 1,186 £45,000 - 777
Midlands -12 919 £40,000 -11.11% 428
North West -9 690 £45,000 -2.17% 415
South West -6 586 £43,500 +8.75% 332
West Midlands -23 527 £42,500 -10.53% 265
Yorkshire -11 507 £41,500 +18.57% 241
East of England -7 497 £45,000 +12.50% 308
East Midlands -9 389 £35,000 -9.09% 165
Scotland -4 268 £35,000 -28.28% 148
North East -15 156 £48,445 +7.65% 91
Wales -15 108 £42,500 -15.00% 60
Northern Ireland -8 71 £38,500 -30.00% 112
Isle of Man +2 3 £35,000 +1.45% 2
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
1 305 (6.14%) Microsoft Exchange
2 296 (5.96%) SharePoint
3 48 (0.97%) CMS
4 43 (0.87%) Confluence
5 31 (0.62%) IIS
6 23 (0.46%) Apache
7 21 (0.42%) WordPress
8 19 (0.38%) Apache Airflow
9 14 (0.28%) Apache Spark
10 13 (0.26%) SAS
11 11 (0.22%) Exchange Server 2013
12 9 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2007
12 9 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2010
13 7 (0.14%) OpenEdge
13 7 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 5 (0.10%) Skype for Business
15 4 (0.080%) Moodle
15 4 (0.080%) nginx
15 4 (0.080%) OpenStack
15 4 (0.080%) Totara
Applications
1 302 (6.08%) Microsoft Office
2 293 (5.90%) Microsoft Excel
3 42 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 39 (0.78%) Spreadsheet
5 35 (0.70%) MS Visio
6 11 (0.22%) Microsoft Project
7 9 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 8 (0.16%) Adobe Illustrator
8 8 (0.16%) Fusion 360
9 6 (0.12%) AutoCAD
10 5 (0.10%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.10%) Simulink
10 5 (0.10%) Trello
11 4 (0.080%) Chatbot
12 3 (0.060%) Autodesk Inventor
13 2 (0.040%) Sketch
13 2 (0.040%) SOLIDWORKS
13 2 (0.040%) Windchill
14 1 (0.020%) Acrobat
14 1 (0.020%) Weka
Business Applications
1 47 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
3 24 (0.48%) NetSuite
4 21 (0.42%) Dynamics NAV
5 19 (0.38%) Shopify
6 16 (0.32%) Magento
7 14 (0.28%) SAP ERP
8 12 (0.24%) Dynamics AX
8 12 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
9 11 (0.22%) IBM Planning Analytics
9 11 (0.22%) iTrent
10 10 (0.20%) SAP CO
11 8 (0.16%) Sage 50
12 7 (0.14%) Q-Pulse
12 7 (0.14%) SAP Business One
12 7 (0.14%) Workday HCM
13 5 (0.10%) Salesforce CRM
14 4 (0.080%) Line 50
14 4 (0.080%) Sage 200
14 4 (0.080%) Sage X3
Cloud Services
1 999 (20.10%) Azure
2 881 (17.73%) Microsoft 365
3 505 (10.16%) AWS
4 370 (7.44%) Power Platform
5 228 (4.59%) Entra ID
6 171 (3.44%) SaaS
7 141 (2.84%) GCP
8 116 (2.33%) Azure DevOps
9 110 (2.21%) Serverless
10 106 (2.13%) Dynamics 365
11 81 (1.63%) GitHub
12 76 (1.53%) Power Automate
13 67 (1.35%) PowerApps
14 59 (1.19%) Amazon S3
14 59 (1.19%) OneDrive
15 53 (1.07%) Google Workspace
16 51 (1.03%) AWS Lambda
17 46 (0.93%) IaaS
18 44 (0.89%) PaaS
19 42 (0.85%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 323 (6.50%) Firewall
2 310 (6.24%) DNS
3 261 (5.25%) DHCP
4 170 (3.42%) WAN
5 169 (3.40%) VPN
6 131 (2.64%) LAN
7 124 (2.49%) TCP/IP
7 124 (2.49%) Wi-Fi
8 108 (2.17%) Broadband
9 98 (1.97%) Wireless
10 94 (1.89%) VLAN
11 79 (1.59%) VoIP
12 76 (1.53%) Network Security
13 43 (0.87%) SD-WAN
14 35 (0.70%) Internet
15 34 (0.68%) SAN
16 19 (0.38%) HTTP
17 18 (0.36%) Remote Desktop
18 17 (0.34%) Unified Communications
19 15 (0.30%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 291 (5.86%) Power BI
2 208 (4.19%) SQL Server
3 83 (1.67%) Amazon RDS
4 72 (1.45%) MySQL
5 71 (1.43%) Data Warehouse
6 69 (1.39%) NoSQL
6 69 (1.39%) PostgreSQL
7 67 (1.35%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 60 (1.21%) Tableau
9 55 (1.11%) Relational Database
10 53 (1.07%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 43 (0.87%) Power Query
12 38 (0.76%) Big Data
13 34 (0.68%) MongoDB
14 32 (0.64%) DynamoDB
15 29 (0.58%) Data Lake
16 25 (0.50%) Amazon Redshift
17 22 (0.44%) Azure SQL Database
17 22 (0.44%) Metadata
17 22 (0.44%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 188 (3.78%) Git
2 141 (2.84%) JIRA
3 69 (1.39%) GitLab
4 42 (0.85%) Jenkins
5 30 (0.60%) Rational DOORS
6 16 (0.32%) Selenium
7 15 (0.30%) Cucumber
7 15 (0.30%) JUnit
7 15 (0.30%) Maven
8 13 (0.26%) Subversion
9 12 (0.24%) Cypress.io
9 12 (0.24%) LabVIEW
9 12 (0.24%) SonarQube
10 10 (0.20%) Bitbucket
10 10 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
11 8 (0.16%) Eclipse
12 7 (0.14%) Metasploit
12 7 (0.14%) Mockito
12 7 (0.14%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 7 (0.14%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,367 (47.63%) Social Skills
2 1,399 (28.15%) Analytical Skills
3 818 (16.46%) Finance
4 338 (6.80%) Manufacturing
5 317 (6.38%) Organisational Skills
6 222 (4.47%) Public Sector
7 214 (4.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 189 (3.80%) Law
9 183 (3.68%) Legal
10 182 (3.66%) Marketing
11 174 (3.50%) Retail
12 141 (2.84%) Telecoms
13 135 (2.72%) Electronics
14 130 (2.62%) Banking
15 96 (1.93%) Documentation Skills
16 86 (1.73%) Influencing Skills
17 70 (1.41%) Aerospace
18 69 (1.39%) Games
19 55 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
20 53 (1.07%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 715 (14.39%) Analyst
2 618 (12.43%) IT Support
3 541 (10.89%) Support Engineer
4 539 (10.85%) Senior
5 424 (8.53%) Developer
6 363 (7.30%) IT Engineer
7 281 (5.65%) IT Support Engineer
8 260 (5.23%) Lead
9 232 (4.67%) Support Technician
10 205 (4.12%) Support Analyst
11 196 (3.94%) Systems Engineer
12 181 (3.64%) IT Technician
13 173 (3.48%) Consultant
14 172 (3.46%) Architect
15 161 (3.24%) Technical Support
16 154 (3.10%) Software Engineer
17 146 (2.94%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 145 (2.92%) IT Support Technician
19 130 (2.62%) Technical Engineer
20 124 (2.49%) Technical Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 182 (3.66%) .NET
2 169 (3.40%) React
3 147 (2.96%) HTML
4 123 (2.47%) REST
5 115 (2.31%) CSS
6 83 (1.67%) Node.js
7 72 (1.45%) SOAP
8 65 (1.31%) RESTful
9 64 (1.29%) JSON
10 56 (1.13%) XML
11 55 (1.11%) AngularJS
11 55 (1.11%) Middleware
11 55 (1.11%) Vue
12 39 (0.78%) Spring
13 37 (0.74%) OAuth
14 35 (0.70%) EDI
14 35 (0.70%) Spring Boot
15 34 (0.68%) ASP.NET
16 33 (0.66%) Web Services
17 28 (0.56%) Laravel
Miscellaneous
1 378 (7.61%) Driving Licence
2 264 (5.31%) Onboarding
3 221 (4.45%) Self-Motivation
4 195 (3.92%) Management Information System
5 123 (2.47%) Product Ownership
6 119 (2.39%) Cloud Native
7 115 (2.31%) Legacy Systems
8 106 (2.13%) Analytical Mindset
9 97 (1.95%) Data Centre
10 76 (1.53%) Social Media
11 71 (1.43%) Distributed Systems
12 63 (1.27%) Mobile App
13 54 (1.09%) Low-Code
14 47 (0.95%) Enterprise Software
15 45 (0.91%) Virtual Team
16 41 (0.82%) Data Structures
17 40 (0.80%) Security Posture
18 37 (0.74%) Algorithms
19 36 (0.72%) Hybrid Cloud
19 36 (0.72%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 839 (16.88%) Windows
2 401 (8.07%) Windows Server
3 333 (6.70%) Linux
4 132 (2.66%) Windows 10
5 109 (2.19%) Windows Server 2016
6 102 (2.05%) Android
7 60 (1.21%) Apple iOS
8 51 (1.03%) Mac OS
9 50 (1.01%) Windows Server 2019
10 32 (0.64%) Unix
11 27 (0.54%) CentOS
12 26 (0.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 25 (0.50%) Ubuntu
14 20 (0.40%) Windows Server 2012
15 16 (0.32%) VMS
16 12 (0.24%) Windows 7
17 9 (0.18%) Debian
18 7 (0.14%) Windows 8
18 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
19 4 (0.080%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,058 (21.29%) Continuous Improvement
2 887 (17.85%) Customer Service
3 661 (13.30%) Agile
4 498 (10.02%) Decision-Making
5 489 (9.84%) Mentoring
6 421 (8.47%) Analytics
7 420 (8.45%) AI
8 419 (8.43%) CI/CD
9 403 (8.11%) ITIL
10 394 (7.93%) DevOps
11 350 (7.04%) Collaborative Working
12 341 (6.86%) Business Intelligence
13 334 (6.72%) ERP
14 327 (6.58%) Software Engineering
15 324 (6.52%) Cybersecurity
16 319 (6.42%) Coaching
17 318 (6.40%) Project Management
18 314 (6.32%) Stakeholder Management
19 310 (6.24%) Computer Science
20 292 (5.88%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 718 (14.45%) SQL
2 581 (11.69%) Python
3 310 (6.24%) JavaScript
4 236 (4.75%) C#
5 213 (4.29%) Java
6 199 (4.00%) PowerShell
7 124 (2.49%) TypeScript
8 100 (2.01%) C++
9 91 (1.83%) Bash
10 69 (1.39%) PHP
11 51 (1.03%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 47 (0.95%) C
13 42 (0.85%) PL/SQL
14 40 (0.80%) T-SQL
15 30 (0.60%) R
16 28 (0.56%) Kotlin
17 27 (0.54%) Perl
18 24 (0.48%) Shell Script
19 23 (0.46%) Go
20 21 (0.42%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 751 (15.11%) Degree
2 384 (7.73%) Security Cleared
3 277 (5.57%) SC Cleared
4 208 (4.19%) DBS Check
5 155 (3.12%) Microsoft Certification
6 145 (2.92%) Computer Science Degree
7 85 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
8 74 (1.49%) Cisco Certification
9 71 (1.43%) A+ Certification
10 67 (1.35%) DV Cleared
11 59 (1.19%) ACCA
11 59 (1.19%) CCNA
12 55 (1.11%) CIMA
13 53 (1.07%) HNC
14 48 (0.97%) PMI Certification
15 47 (0.95%) Master's Degree
16 46 (0.93%) Network+ Certification
17 43 (0.87%) Azure Certification
18 42 (0.85%) CISSP
19 38 (0.76%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 280 (5.63%) QA
2 235 (4.73%) Data Quality
3 145 (2.92%) GDPR
4 140 (2.82%) Cyber Essentials
5 128 (2.58%) SLA
6 111 (2.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 95 (1.91%) PCI DSS
8 80 (1.61%) NIST
9 72 (1.45%) Accessibility
10 38 (0.76%) ISO 9001
11 21 (0.42%) Actionable Recommendations
11 21 (0.42%) PMO
12 18 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 14 (0.28%) GMP
14 13 (0.26%) ISO 14001
15 12 (0.24%) GRC
15 12 (0.24%) SOC 2
15 12 (0.24%) TickIT
16 8 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 7 (0.14%) Def Stans
System Software
1 601 (12.09%) Active Directory
2 213 (4.29%) Hyper-V
3 165 (3.32%) Docker
4 158 (3.18%) VMware Infrastructure
5 64 (1.29%) Terminal Server
6 30 (0.60%) Firmware
7 27 (0.54%) Virtual Desktop
8 18 (0.36%) vSphere
9 15 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
10 13 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.20%) KVM
12 7 (0.14%) VMware Workstation
13 6 (0.12%) Embedded Firmware
13 6 (0.12%) XenApp
14 4 (0.080%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 4 (0.080%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 4 (0.080%) Virtual Servers
15 3 (0.060%) ClearTrust
15 3 (0.060%) Terminal Services
16 2 (0.040%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 186 (3.74%) Terraform
2 180 (3.62%) Microsoft Intune
3 157 (3.16%) Kubernetes
4 87 (1.75%) Ansible
5 54 (1.09%) SCCM
6 46 (0.93%) Grafana
7 30 (0.60%) Prometheus
8 22 (0.44%) Nagios
9 13 (0.26%) Single Sign-On
10 12 (0.24%) FortiGate
10 12 (0.24%) vCenter Server
11 9 (0.18%) Autotask
11 9 (0.18%) Kibana
11 9 (0.18%) Puppet
11 9 (0.18%) QRadar
11 9 (0.18%) ZABBIX
12 8 (0.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 8 (0.16%) Functional Safety
12 8 (0.16%) logstash
12 8 (0.16%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,411 (28.39%) Microsoft
2 252 (5.07%) VMware
3 132 (2.66%) Oracle
4 125 (2.52%) Veeam
5 108 (2.17%) Cisco
5 108 (2.17%) SAP
6 102 (2.05%) Google
7 97 (1.95%) Splunk
8 96 (1.93%) SolarWinds
9 72 (1.45%) Databricks
10 69 (1.39%) Salesforce
11 65 (1.31%) Nimble Storage
11 65 (1.31%) Tanium
12 64 (1.29%) Brocade
12 64 (1.29%) ServiceNow
13 62 (1.25%) Apple
14 49 (0.99%) Adobe
15 47 (0.95%) Dell
16 43 (0.87%) Sage
17 39 (0.78%) Meraki