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

6 months to
4 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 4,979 6,038 10,940
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 7.44% 20.69% 14.76%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.55% 22.54% 18.20%
Number of salaries quoted 3,688 3,090 6,958
10th Percentile £26,353 £26,250 £25,000
25th Percentile £30,000 £30,850 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £42,799 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year -0.70% -4.89% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £60,000 £60,000
90th Percentile £74,300 £77,500 £72,500
UK median annual salary £47,500 £50,000 £48,620
% change year-on-year -5.00% +2.84% -11.60%

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 47,183 26,791 60,121
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.52% 91.82% 81.14%
Number of salaries quoted 31,404 13,266 42,519
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,929 £27,250
25th Percentile £38,500 £34,000 £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 4 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 4 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 1,355 £42,500 -4.49% 717
South East -6 1,188 £45,000 - 797
Midlands -12 923 £40,000 -11.11% 441
North West -11 690 £45,000 -3.23% 401
South West -7 581 £43,500 +8.75% 337
West Midlands -23 529 £42,500 -10.53% 269
Yorkshire -11 510 £41,000 +17.14% 234
East of England -6 499 £45,000 +12.50% 304
East Midlands -9 391 £35,000 -9.09% 171
Scotland -6 271 £35,000 -28.28% 153
North East -13 155 £48,445 +7.65% 93
Wales -13 109 £42,500 -15.00% 63
Northern Ireland -7 71 £38,500 -30.00% 116
Isle of Man +3 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
1 306 (6.15%) Microsoft Exchange
2 299 (6.01%) SharePoint
3 48 (0.96%) CMS
4 43 (0.86%) 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 (6.07%) Microsoft Office
2 293 (5.88%) Microsoft Excel
3 42 (0.84%) 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
7 9 (0.18%) Adobe Illustrator
8 8 (0.16%) Fusion 360
9 6 (0.12%) AutoCAD
9 6 (0.12%) 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%) Acrobat
13 2 (0.040%) Sketch
13 2 (0.040%) SOLIDWORKS
13 2 (0.040%) Windchill
14 1 (0.020%) Weka
Business Applications
1 47 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
3 23 (0.46%) 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 1,005 (20.18%) Azure
2 885 (17.77%) Microsoft 365
3 504 (10.12%) AWS
4 369 (7.41%) Power Platform
5 230 (4.62%) Entra ID
6 172 (3.45%) SaaS
7 140 (2.81%) GCP
8 120 (2.41%) Azure DevOps
9 111 (2.23%) Serverless
10 106 (2.13%) Dynamics 365
11 83 (1.67%) GitHub
12 77 (1.55%) Power Automate
13 68 (1.37%) PowerApps
14 60 (1.21%) Amazon S3
15 59 (1.18%) OneDrive
16 53 (1.06%) Google Workspace
17 52 (1.04%) AWS Lambda
18 47 (0.94%) IaaS
19 45 (0.90%) PaaS
20 43 (0.86%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 324 (6.51%) Firewall
2 310 (6.23%) DNS
3 261 (5.24%) DHCP
4 171 (3.43%) WAN
5 168 (3.37%) VPN
6 132 (2.65%) LAN
7 124 (2.49%) TCP/IP
7 124 (2.49%) Wi-Fi
8 108 (2.17%) Broadband
9 99 (1.99%) Wireless
10 95 (1.91%) VLAN
11 79 (1.59%) VoIP
12 76 (1.53%) Network Security
13 43 (0.86%) SD-WAN
14 35 (0.70%) Internet
15 34 (0.68%) SAN
16 19 (0.38%) HTTP
17 18 (0.36%) Remote Desktop
17 18 (0.36%) Unified Communications
18 15 (0.30%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 291 (5.84%) Power BI
2 209 (4.20%) SQL Server
3 83 (1.67%) Amazon RDS
4 72 (1.45%) Data Warehouse
4 72 (1.45%) MySQL
5 70 (1.41%) NoSQL
5 70 (1.41%) PostgreSQL
6 67 (1.35%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 60 (1.21%) Tableau
8 55 (1.10%) Relational Database
9 52 (1.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 44 (0.88%) Power Query
11 38 (0.76%) Big Data
12 34 (0.68%) MongoDB
13 33 (0.66%) DynamoDB
14 29 (0.58%) Data Lake
15 25 (0.50%) Amazon Redshift
16 24 (0.48%) Oracle Reports
17 22 (0.44%) Azure SQL Database
17 22 (0.44%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 189 (3.80%) Git
2 143 (2.87%) JIRA
3 69 (1.39%) GitLab
4 42 (0.84%) Jenkins
5 30 (0.60%) Rational DOORS
6 16 (0.32%) Selenium
7 15 (0.30%) JUnit
7 15 (0.30%) Maven
8 14 (0.28%) Cucumber
9 13 (0.26%) Subversion
10 12 (0.24%) LabVIEW
10 12 (0.24%) SonarQube
11 11 (0.22%) Cypress.io
12 10 (0.20%) Bitbucket
12 10 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
13 7 (0.14%) Eclipse
13 7 (0.14%) Metasploit
13 7 (0.14%) Mockito
13 7 (0.14%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 7 (0.14%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,371 (47.62%) Social Skills
2 1,401 (28.14%) Analytical Skills
3 820 (16.47%) Finance
4 340 (6.83%) Manufacturing
5 318 (6.39%) Organisational Skills
6 224 (4.50%) Public Sector
7 214 (4.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 191 (3.84%) Law
9 182 (3.66%) Legal
9 182 (3.66%) Marketing
10 174 (3.49%) Retail
11 142 (2.85%) Telecoms
12 136 (2.73%) Electronics
13 130 (2.61%) Banking
14 97 (1.95%) Documentation Skills
15 85 (1.71%) Influencing Skills
16 70 (1.41%) Aerospace
17 69 (1.39%) Games
18 55 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
19 52 (1.04%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 715 (14.36%) Analyst
2 623 (12.51%) IT Support
3 543 (10.91%) Senior
4 542 (10.89%) Support Engineer
5 427 (8.58%) Developer
6 364 (7.31%) IT Engineer
7 282 (5.66%) IT Support Engineer
8 260 (5.22%) Lead
9 236 (4.74%) Support Technician
10 207 (4.16%) Support Analyst
11 197 (3.96%) Systems Engineer
12 185 (3.72%) IT Technician
13 172 (3.45%) Consultant
14 171 (3.43%) Architect
15 160 (3.21%) Technical Support
16 155 (3.11%) Software Engineer
17 149 (2.99%) IT Support Technician
18 146 (2.93%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 129 (2.59%) Technical Engineer
20 123 (2.47%) Technical Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 184 (3.70%) .NET
2 169 (3.39%) React
3 148 (2.97%) HTML
4 123 (2.47%) REST
5 115 (2.31%) CSS
6 83 (1.67%) Node.js
7 73 (1.47%) SOAP
8 65 (1.31%) RESTful
9 64 (1.29%) JSON
10 57 (1.14%) XML
11 55 (1.10%) Middleware
12 54 (1.08%) AngularJS
12 54 (1.08%) Vue
13 39 (0.78%) Spring
14 38 (0.76%) OAuth
15 35 (0.70%) ASP.NET
15 35 (0.70%) EDI
15 35 (0.70%) Spring Boot
16 32 (0.64%) Web Services
17 29 (0.58%) Laravel
Miscellaneous
1 379 (7.61%) Driving Licence
2 264 (5.30%) Onboarding
3 222 (4.46%) Self-Motivation
4 194 (3.90%) Management Information System
5 124 (2.49%) Product Ownership
6 121 (2.43%) Cloud Native
7 116 (2.33%) 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 55 (1.10%) Low-Code
14 48 (0.96%) Enterprise Software
15 45 (0.90%) Virtual Team
16 41 (0.82%) Data Structures
17 39 (0.78%) Security Posture
18 37 (0.74%) Algorithms
19 36 (0.72%) Hybrid Cloud
19 36 (0.72%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 844 (16.95%) Windows
2 404 (8.11%) Windows Server
3 332 (6.67%) Linux
4 132 (2.65%) Windows 10
5 110 (2.21%) Windows Server 2016
6 102 (2.05%) Android
7 60 (1.21%) Apple iOS
8 52 (1.04%) Mac OS
9 51 (1.02%) Windows Server 2019
10 31 (0.62%) 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 1,061 (21.31%) Continuous Improvement
2 890 (17.88%) Customer Service
3 665 (13.36%) Agile
4 496 (9.96%) Decision-Making
5 492 (9.88%) Mentoring
6 424 (8.52%) CI/CD
7 421 (8.46%) Analytics
8 418 (8.40%) AI
9 404 (8.11%) ITIL
10 400 (8.03%) DevOps
11 350 (7.03%) Collaborative Working
12 342 (6.87%) Business Intelligence
13 333 (6.69%) ERP
14 329 (6.61%) Software Engineering
15 323 (6.49%) Coaching
15 323 (6.49%) Cybersecurity
16 317 (6.37%) Project Management
17 314 (6.31%) Stakeholder Management
18 309 (6.21%) Computer Science
19 292 (5.86%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 721 (14.48%) SQL
2 578 (11.61%) Python
3 310 (6.23%) JavaScript
4 236 (4.74%) C#
5 211 (4.24%) Java
6 200 (4.02%) PowerShell
7 123 (2.47%) TypeScript
8 99 (1.99%) C++
9 91 (1.83%) Bash
10 70 (1.41%) PHP
11 51 (1.02%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 47 (0.94%) C
13 43 (0.86%) PL/SQL
14 39 (0.78%) T-SQL
15 30 (0.60%) R
16 28 (0.56%) Kotlin
17 26 (0.52%) Perl
18 24 (0.48%) Shell Script
19 23 (0.46%) Go
20 21 (0.42%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 750 (15.06%) Degree
2 383 (7.69%) Security Cleared
3 277 (5.56%) SC Cleared
4 206 (4.14%) DBS Check
5 157 (3.15%) Microsoft Certification
6 144 (2.89%) Computer Science Degree
7 85 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
8 74 (1.49%) Cisco Certification
9 72 (1.45%) A+ Certification
10 67 (1.35%) DV Cleared
11 59 (1.18%) CCNA
12 58 (1.16%) ACCA
13 54 (1.08%) CIMA
14 53 (1.06%) HNC
15 48 (0.96%) PMI Certification
16 47 (0.94%) Master's Degree
17 46 (0.92%) Network+ Certification
18 43 (0.86%) Azure Certification
19 42 (0.84%) CISSP
20 38 (0.76%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 279 (5.60%) QA
2 237 (4.76%) Data Quality
3 145 (2.91%) GDPR
4 139 (2.79%) Cyber Essentials
5 128 (2.57%) SLA
6 109 (2.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 94 (1.89%) PCI DSS
8 79 (1.59%) NIST
9 72 (1.45%) Accessibility
10 38 (0.76%) ISO 9001
11 21 (0.42%) Actionable Recommendations
12 20 (0.40%) PMO
13 18 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 14 (0.28%) GMP
15 13 (0.26%) ISO 14001
16 12 (0.24%) GRC
16 12 (0.24%) SOC 2
16 12 (0.24%) TickIT
17 8 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 7 (0.14%) Def Stans
System Software
1 605 (12.15%) Active Directory
2 213 (4.28%) Hyper-V
3 165 (3.31%) Docker
4 158 (3.17%) VMware Infrastructure
5 64 (1.29%) Terminal Server
6 30 (0.60%) Firmware
7 28 (0.56%) 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
1 189 (3.80%) Terraform
2 183 (3.68%) Microsoft Intune
3 156 (3.13%) Kubernetes
4 87 (1.75%) Ansible
5 55 (1.10%) SCCM
6 47 (0.94%) Grafana
7 31 (0.62%) 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 1,413 (28.38%) Microsoft
2 252 (5.06%) VMware
3 136 (2.73%) Oracle
4 125 (2.51%) Veeam
5 109 (2.19%) SAP
6 108 (2.17%) Cisco
7 102 (2.05%) Google
8 97 (1.95%) Splunk
9 96 (1.93%) SolarWinds
10 71 (1.43%) Databricks
11 68 (1.37%) Salesforce
12 65 (1.31%) Nimble Storage
13 64 (1.29%) Brocade
13 64 (1.29%) ServiceNow
13 64 (1.29%) Tanium
14 63 (1.27%) Apple
15 50 (1.00%) Adobe
16 47 (0.94%) Dell
17 42 (0.84%) Sage
18 39 (0.78%) Meraki