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 10 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -8 +3 +5
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,755 5,393 9,167
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 9.12% 19.12% 15.82%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.10% 20.71% 18.38%
Number of salaries quoted 3,391 2,871 6,292
10th Percentile £26,250 £27,000 £25,750
25th Percentile £29,250 £33,225 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £40,500 £50,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year -19.00% +11.11% -10.00%
75th Percentile £57,500 £67,250 £61,250
90th Percentile £73,000 £82,500 £72,500
UK median annual salary £45,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -18.18% +10.00% -9.74%

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 39,289 26,041 49,864
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 75.34% 92.34% 86.07%
Number of salaries quoted 23,250 13,397 37,493
10th Percentile £28,250 £30,000 £27,000
25th Percentile £35,000 £40,000 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £66,250 £70,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £82,500 £83,750 £77,500
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -11.41%

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 10 March 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 10 March 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 -18 1,299 £42,500 -10.05% 596
South East -5 1,170 £43,000 -15.63% 860
Midlands -18 837 £37,500 -25.00% 431
North West -17 677 £45,000 -10.00% 316
South West -3 551 £42,750 -14.50% 327
West Midlands -21 501 £42,500 -22.73% 251
Yorkshire -6 490 £35,000 -17.65% 209
East of England -11 405 £40,000 -20.00% 321
East Midlands -3 333 £35,000 -6.67% 180
Scotland -7 310 £35,000 -30.00% 150
North East -6 132 £45,000 - 83
Wales -5 113 £42,500 -29.17% 88
Northern Ireland +3 93 £35,000 -41.39% 16
Isle of Man -2 1 £62,500 +81.16% 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
1 283 (5.95%) Microsoft Exchange
2 236 (4.96%) SharePoint
3 49 (1.03%) Confluence
4 43 (0.90%) CMS
5 40 (0.84%) IIS
6 25 (0.53%) WordPress
7 24 (0.50%) Apache
8 19 (0.40%) Apache Spark
9 14 (0.29%) Apache Airflow
10 13 (0.27%) Exchange Server 2013
11 11 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2007
11 11 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2010
12 8 (0.17%) nginx
13 7 (0.15%) Drupal
13 7 (0.15%) SAS
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 4 (0.084%) Moodle
15 4 (0.084%) Totara
15 4 (0.084%) WebSphere
15 4 (0.084%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 354 (7.44%) Microsoft Office
2 290 (6.10%) Microsoft Excel
3 57 (1.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 28 (0.59%) MS Visio
5 25 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
6 14 (0.29%) AutoCAD
6 14 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
7 13 (0.27%) Photoshop
8 10 (0.21%) Adobe Illustrator
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.17%) SOLIDWORKS
10 4 (0.084%) Fusion 360
10 4 (0.084%) Simulink
10 4 (0.084%) Trello
11 3 (0.063%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.063%) CATIA
11 3 (0.063%) Elementor
11 3 (0.063%) InDesign
12 2 (0.042%) Revit
12 2 (0.042%) Weka
Business Applications
1 38 (0.80%) Dynamics CRM
2 31 (0.65%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.53%) NetSuite
4 14 (0.29%) SAP CO
5 13 (0.27%) Sage X3
5 13 (0.27%) Shopify
6 12 (0.25%) Dynamics NAV
7 10 (0.21%) iTrent
7 10 (0.21%) SAP ERP
8 7 (0.15%) Q-Pulse
8 7 (0.15%) Workday HCM
9 6 (0.13%) Markit EDM
10 5 (0.11%) SAP Business One
10 5 (0.11%) SAP FI
10 5 (0.11%) SAP FI/CO
10 5 (0.11%) SAP Hybris
11 4 (0.084%) Dynamics AX
11 4 (0.084%) Dynamics GP
11 4 (0.084%) Oracle EBS
12 3 (0.063%) IBM Planning Analytics
Cloud Services
1 988 (20.78%) Azure
2 835 (17.56%) Microsoft 365
3 434 (9.13%) AWS
4 299 (6.29%) Power Platform
5 244 (5.13%) SaaS
6 240 (5.05%) Entra ID
7 131 (2.75%) Azure DevOps
8 129 (2.71%) GCP
9 100 (2.10%) GitHub
10 92 (1.93%) Serverless
11 72 (1.51%) Power Automate
12 65 (1.37%) Dynamics 365
13 64 (1.35%) Google Workspace
14 61 (1.28%) Azure Data Factory
15 56 (1.18%) AWS Lambda
16 55 (1.16%) Amazon S3
17 51 (1.07%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 49 (1.03%) GitHub Actions
19 47 (0.99%) PaaS
19 47 (0.99%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 350 (7.36%) DNS
2 293 (6.16%) DHCP
3 274 (5.76%) Firewall
4 150 (3.15%) VPN
5 148 (3.11%) TCP/IP
6 147 (3.09%) WAN
7 141 (2.97%) Wi-Fi
8 124 (2.61%) LAN
9 99 (2.08%) Broadband
10 95 (2.00%) VLAN
11 76 (1.60%) VoIP
12 69 (1.45%) Wireless
13 51 (1.07%) Remote Desktop
14 49 (1.03%) Network Security
15 43 (0.90%) SD-WAN
16 40 (0.84%) Internet
17 30 (0.63%) SAN
18 29 (0.61%) Unified Communications
19 22 (0.46%) Wireshark
20 19 (0.40%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 243 (5.11%) Power BI
2 195 (4.10%) SQL Server
3 92 (1.93%) Amazon RDS
4 79 (1.66%) PostgreSQL
5 73 (1.54%) Relational Database
6 68 (1.43%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 66 (1.39%) Data Warehouse
7 66 (1.39%) NoSQL
8 64 (1.35%) MySQL
9 43 (0.90%) Tableau
10 36 (0.76%) Power Query
10 36 (0.76%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 35 (0.74%) Azure SQL Database
12 33 (0.69%) DynamoDB
13 31 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
14 29 (0.61%) MongoDB
15 27 (0.57%) Metadata
16 24 (0.50%) Elasticsearch
17 21 (0.44%) Data Lake
18 19 (0.40%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 191 (4.02%) Git
2 160 (3.36%) JIRA
3 63 (1.32%) GitLab
4 44 (0.93%) Jenkins
5 31 (0.65%) Selenium
6 17 (0.36%) LabVIEW
7 15 (0.32%) Maven
7 15 (0.32%) Robot Framework
7 15 (0.32%) Visual Studio
8 14 (0.29%) Snyk
9 12 (0.25%) Cucumber
9 12 (0.25%) Cypress.io
9 12 (0.25%) Rational DOORS
9 12 (0.25%) SonarQube
10 11 (0.23%) JUnit
11 10 (0.21%) Burp Suite
11 10 (0.21%) Metasploit
12 9 (0.19%) Bitbucket
13 7 (0.15%) CircleCI
14 6 (0.13%) Postman
General
1 2,447 (51.46%) Social Skills
2 1,323 (27.82%) Analytical Skills
3 905 (19.03%) Finance
4 336 (7.07%) Organisational Skills
5 248 (5.22%) Manufacturing
6 234 (4.92%) Retail
7 218 (4.58%) Public Sector
8 203 (4.27%) Marketing
9 192 (4.04%) Legal
10 166 (3.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 147 (3.09%) Law
12 133 (2.80%) Telecoms
13 115 (2.42%) Banking
13 115 (2.42%) Electronics
14 106 (2.23%) Presentation Skills
15 82 (1.72%) Automotive
16 80 (1.68%) Documentation Skills
17 78 (1.64%) Games
18 54 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
19 49 (1.03%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 752 (15.81%) Analyst
2 692 (14.55%) IT Support
3 601 (12.64%) Support Engineer
4 489 (10.28%) Senior
5 374 (7.87%) Developer
6 334 (7.02%) IT Engineer
7 288 (6.06%) IT Support Engineer
8 257 (5.40%) Support Analyst
9 222 (4.67%) Lead
10 202 (4.25%) Technical Support
11 186 (3.91%) Business Analyst
12 182 (3.83%) Support Technician
13 177 (3.72%) 2nd Line Support
14 146 (3.07%) Technical Engineer
15 143 (3.01%) Consultant
16 141 (2.97%) Architect
17 137 (2.88%) Technical Support Engineer
18 136 (2.86%) Systems Engineer
19 134 (2.82%) IT Technician
20 126 (2.65%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 167 (3.51%) .NET
2 156 (3.28%) React
3 139 (2.92%) HTML
4 107 (2.25%) CSS
5 77 (1.62%) Node.js
6 72 (1.51%) REST
7 57 (1.20%) RESTful
8 48 (1.01%) Vue
9 46 (0.97%) AngularJS
10 39 (0.82%) SOAP
11 36 (0.76%) ASP.NET
11 36 (0.76%) JSON
12 35 (0.74%) Spring
12 35 (0.74%) XML
13 34 (0.72%) Django
14 31 (0.65%) .NET Framework
14 31 (0.65%) Spring Boot
15 30 (0.63%) Laravel
16 27 (0.57%) Middleware
17 26 (0.55%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 458 (9.63%) Driving Licence
2 335 (7.05%) Onboarding
3 294 (6.18%) Self-Motivation
4 159 (3.34%) Management Information System
5 125 (2.63%) Legacy Systems
6 108 (2.27%) Analytical Mindset
7 91 (1.91%) Product Ownership
8 84 (1.77%) Cloud Native
9 80 (1.68%) Data Centre
10 79 (1.66%) Social Media
11 64 (1.35%) Enterprise Software
12 56 (1.18%) Mobile App
13 48 (1.01%) Distributed Systems
14 47 (0.99%) Low-Code
15 37 (0.78%) EPoS
15 37 (0.78%) IoT
15 37 (0.78%) NHS
16 36 (0.76%) Data Structures
17 34 (0.72%) Life Science
17 34 (0.72%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 925 (19.45%) Windows
2 394 (8.29%) Windows Server
3 302 (6.35%) Linux
4 130 (2.73%) Windows 10
5 111 (2.33%) Windows Server 2016
6 107 (2.25%) Android
7 62 (1.30%) Mac OS
8 61 (1.28%) Apple iOS
9 36 (0.76%) Windows Server 2019
10 35 (0.74%) Unix
11 24 (0.50%) Windows Server 2012
12 20 (0.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 19 (0.40%) Windows 7
14 18 (0.38%) CentOS
15 12 (0.25%) Ubuntu
16 11 (0.23%) Windows 8
17 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2008
18 8 (0.17%) VMS
19 6 (0.13%) Debian
20 3 (0.063%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 913 (19.20%) Continuous Improvement
2 868 (18.25%) Customer Service
3 629 (13.23%) Agile
4 456 (9.59%) Mentoring
5 445 (9.36%) Decision-Making
6 425 (8.94%) Project Management
7 401 (8.43%) ITIL
8 368 (7.74%) DevOps
9 349 (7.34%) CI/CD
10 340 (7.15%) Analytics
11 338 (7.11%) Business Intelligence
12 320 (6.73%) AI
13 309 (6.50%) Cybersecurity
14 288 (6.06%) Computer Science
15 281 (5.91%) Process Improvement
16 280 (5.89%) Coaching
17 274 (5.76%) Change Management
18 271 (5.70%) Service Delivery
19 269 (5.66%) Stakeholder Management
20 268 (5.64%) CRM
Programming Languages
1 626 (13.17%) SQL
2 490 (10.30%) Python
3 281 (5.91%) JavaScript
4 244 (5.13%) PowerShell
5 197 (4.14%) C#
6 159 (3.34%) Java
7 87 (1.83%) TypeScript
8 74 (1.56%) Bash
9 66 (1.39%) PHP
10 61 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 57 (1.20%) C++
12 41 (0.86%) T-SQL
13 40 (0.84%) C
14 27 (0.57%) PL/SQL
14 27 (0.57%) R
15 21 (0.44%) MATLAB
16 19 (0.40%) Bicep
16 19 (0.40%) Go
16 19 (0.40%) Kotlin
17 17 (0.36%) VBA
Qualifications
1 933 (19.62%) Degree
2 360 (7.57%) Security Cleared
3 241 (5.07%) SC Cleared
4 164 (3.45%) DBS Check
5 145 (3.05%) Microsoft Certification
6 116 (2.44%) Computer Science Degree
7 104 (2.19%) BPSS Clearance
8 70 (1.47%) ACCA
9 66 (1.39%) A+ Certification
10 63 (1.32%) Cisco Certification
11 62 (1.30%) CIMA
12 59 (1.24%) DV Cleared
13 53 (1.11%) HNC
13 53 (1.11%) Master's Degree
14 51 (1.07%) CCNA
15 48 (1.01%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 42 (0.88%) AWS Certification
16 42 (0.88%) HND
17 41 (0.86%) Network+ Certification
18 40 (0.84%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 242 (5.09%) QA
2 161 (3.39%) Data Quality
3 141 (2.97%) Cyber Essentials
4 137 (2.88%) GDPR
5 110 (2.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 100 (2.10%) PCI DSS
7 77 (1.62%) SLA
8 66 (1.39%) Accessibility
9 55 (1.16%) NIST
10 36 (0.76%) ISO 9001
11 29 (0.61%) Actionable Recommendations
12 27 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 13 (0.27%) GMP
14 10 (0.21%) PMO
15 9 (0.19%) SOC 2
16 7 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 6 (0.13%) GRC
17 6 (0.13%) WCAG
18 5 (0.11%) COSHH
18 5 (0.11%) ISO 13485
System Software
1 630 (13.25%) Active Directory
2 210 (4.42%) Hyper-V
3 177 (3.72%) Docker
4 124 (2.61%) VMware Infrastructure
5 72 (1.51%) Terminal Server
6 21 (0.44%) Firmware
6 21 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
7 16 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
8 14 (0.29%) vSphere
9 11 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
10 10 (0.21%) VMware Workstation
11 8 (0.17%) KVM
12 6 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.084%) Embedded Firmware
13 4 (0.084%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 4 (0.084%) XenApp
14 2 (0.042%) VMware NSX
15 1 (0.021%) iptables
15 1 (0.021%) Lustre
15 1 (0.021%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 201 (4.23%) Terraform
2 194 (4.08%) Microsoft Intune
3 128 (2.69%) Kubernetes
4 82 (1.72%) Ansible
5 58 (1.22%) SCCM
6 49 (1.03%) Grafana
7 42 (0.88%) BMC PATROL
8 32 (0.67%) Prometheus
9 19 (0.40%) Nagios
10 18 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
11 14 (0.29%) Cisco CUCM
11 14 (0.29%) Jamf Pro
12 12 (0.25%) Autotask
13 11 (0.23%) vCenter Server
14 10 (0.21%) AWS Copilot
14 10 (0.21%) Nmap
14 10 (0.21%) ZABBIX
15 8 (0.17%) Control-M
16 7 (0.15%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 7 (0.15%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 1,317 (27.70%) Microsoft
2 227 (4.77%) VMware
3 152 (3.20%) Oracle
4 136 (2.86%) Veeam
5 134 (2.82%) SAP
6 116 (2.44%) Google
7 115 (2.42%) Cisco
8 102 (2.15%) Splunk
9 100 (2.10%) SolarWinds
10 74 (1.56%) ServiceNow
11 73 (1.54%) Tanium
12 72 (1.51%) Brocade
12 72 (1.51%) Nimble Storage
13 66 (1.39%) Adobe
13 66 (1.39%) Apple
14 65 (1.37%) Salesforce
15 62 (1.30%) Databricks
16 61 (1.28%) Sage
17 45 (0.95%) HubSpot
18 40 (0.84%) Dell