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

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 4 3
Rank change year-on-year -3 -1 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 7,766 6,354 8,252
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 9.06% 18.53% 15.20%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.88% 21.37% 19.26%
Number of salaries quoted 5,353 3,518 3,285
10th Percentile £27,000 £25,684 £25,750
25th Percentile £31,250 £29,000 £33,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £40,000 £48,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -16.67% +1.05%
75th Percentile £58,750 £57,500 £63,750
90th Percentile £73,750 £70,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £46,500 £46,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +1.09% -12.38% -4.55%

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 60,318 29,730 42,839
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.36% 86.71% 78.91%
Number of salaries quoted 42,477 16,113 22,475
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,750 £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% -2.78%
75th Percentile £70,000 £65,000 £67,500
90th Percentile £89,200 £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 24 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 24 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 1,944 £45,000 - 1,674
South East -4 1,824 £41,982 -1.22% 1,836
Midlands -7 1,401 £42,500 +11.84% 1,293
North West -4 1,007 £45,000 -7.64% 893
South West -2 969 £45,000 +25.00% 906
West Midlands -7 785 £42,500 -4.59% 790
East of England -2 781 £44,000 +32.88% 814
East Midlands -8 614 £41,500 +25.76% 501
Yorkshire -7 599 £42,500 +26.87% 558
Scotland +7 348 £33,500 -27.17% 575
North East +1 341 £50,000 +42.86% 239
Northern Ireland +5 289 £70,000 +18.64% 329
Wales -16 226 £42,500 -11.68% 188
Isle of Man +1 3 £35,000 - 9
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
1 460 (5.92%) SharePoint
2 358 (4.61%) Microsoft Exchange
3 66 (0.85%) Confluence
4 60 (0.77%) CMS
5 55 (0.71%) IIS
6 33 (0.42%) Apache
7 31 (0.40%) WordPress
8 27 (0.35%) Apache Airflow
8 27 (0.35%) Sitecore CMS
9 18 (0.23%) Apache Spark
10 14 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
11 10 (0.13%) nginx
11 10 (0.13%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.12%) Jupyter
12 9 (0.12%) WebLogic
13 8 (0.10%) SAS
14 7 (0.090%) OpenEdge
15 5 (0.064%) CICS
16 4 (0.052%) Headless CMS
16 4 (0.052%) Tomcat
Applications
1 572 (7.37%) Microsoft Office
2 515 (6.63%) Microsoft Excel
3 78 (1.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 66 (0.85%) Spreadsheet
5 45 (0.58%) AutoCAD
5 45 (0.58%) MS Visio
6 39 (0.50%) Microsoft Project
7 34 (0.44%) Simulink
8 26 (0.33%) Revit
9 16 (0.21%) EPLAN
10 14 (0.18%) SOLIDWORKS
11 10 (0.13%) Navisworks
12 8 (0.10%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 8 (0.10%) Chatbot
12 8 (0.10%) Fusion 360
13 7 (0.090%) Siemens NX
14 6 (0.077%) Adobe Illustrator
14 6 (0.077%) Lightworks
14 6 (0.077%) OrCAD
15 5 (0.064%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 75 (0.97%) Dynamics CRM
2 64 (0.82%) NetSuite
3 51 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
4 34 (0.44%) Shopify
5 23 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
6 21 (0.27%) Dynamics NAV
7 19 (0.24%) Workday HCM
8 17 (0.22%) Oracle Payables
8 17 (0.22%) SAP Business One
9 13 (0.17%) Dynamics AX
9 13 (0.17%) IBM Planning Analytics
9 13 (0.17%) Magento
9 13 (0.17%) SAP ERP
10 12 (0.15%) Oracle Cash Management
10 12 (0.15%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 12 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
11 11 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
12 10 (0.13%) JDE EnterpriseOne
12 10 (0.13%) Sage X3
13 9 (0.12%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 1,390 (17.90%) Azure
2 1,257 (16.19%) Microsoft 365
3 702 (9.04%) AWS
4 617 (7.94%) Power Platform
5 415 (5.34%) Entra ID
6 284 (3.66%) SaaS
7 236 (3.04%) GCP
8 176 (2.27%) Azure DevOps
9 157 (2.02%) PowerApps
10 154 (1.98%) Dynamics 365
11 147 (1.89%) Power Automate
12 145 (1.87%) GitHub
13 119 (1.53%) Serverless
14 114 (1.47%) OneDrive
15 92 (1.18%) Microsoft Copilot
16 70 (0.90%) Google Workspace
17 69 (0.89%) Amazon S3
18 64 (0.82%) AWS CloudFormation
19 63 (0.81%) GitHub Actions
20 59 (0.76%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 442 (5.69%) Firewall
2 435 (5.60%) DNS
3 365 (4.70%) DHCP
4 287 (3.70%) VPN
5 234 (3.01%) TCP/IP
6 205 (2.64%) Wi-Fi
7 200 (2.58%) WAN
8 192 (2.47%) LAN
9 173 (2.23%) Wireless
10 145 (1.87%) VLAN
11 124 (1.60%) Network Security
12 117 (1.51%) VoIP
13 64 (0.82%) Broadband
14 60 (0.77%) Internet
15 31 (0.40%) SSL
16 30 (0.39%) SAN
17 28 (0.36%) Remote Desktop
17 28 (0.36%) SD-WAN
18 25 (0.32%) HTTP
19 24 (0.31%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 495 (6.37%) Power BI
2 336 (4.33%) SQL Server
3 138 (1.78%) MySQL
4 120 (1.55%) Relational Database
5 119 (1.53%) Amazon RDS
6 109 (1.40%) Data Warehouse
7 96 (1.24%) PostgreSQL
8 83 (1.07%) NoSQL
9 78 (1.00%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 71 (0.91%) Tableau
11 61 (0.79%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 54 (0.70%) MongoDB
13 50 (0.64%) Power Query
14 48 (0.62%) Data Lake
15 47 (0.61%) Electronic Patient Records
16 46 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
16 46 (0.59%) Big Data
17 33 (0.42%) Metadata
17 33 (0.42%) Oracle Reports
18 29 (0.37%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 307 (3.95%) Git
2 249 (3.21%) JIRA
3 87 (1.12%) GitLab
4 84 (1.08%) Jenkins
5 40 (0.52%) Eclipse
6 37 (0.48%) Selenium
7 35 (0.45%) Subversion
8 32 (0.41%) Cucumber
9 27 (0.35%) Claude Code
10 26 (0.33%) JUnit
11 23 (0.30%) Bitbucket
11 23 (0.30%) Cypress.io
11 23 (0.30%) Oracle Forms
11 23 (0.30%) Postman
12 22 (0.28%) Rational DOORS
13 17 (0.22%) LabVIEW
14 15 (0.19%) SonarQube
15 14 (0.18%) Burp Suite
16 12 (0.15%) Team Foundation Server
16 12 (0.15%) Visual Studio
General
1 3,845 (49.51%) Social Skills
2 2,136 (27.50%) Analytical Skills
3 1,231 (15.85%) Finance
4 864 (11.13%) Manufacturing
5 602 (7.75%) Organisational Skills
6 426 (5.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 390 (5.02%) Retail
8 362 (4.66%) Public Sector
9 340 (4.38%) Law
10 324 (4.17%) Legal
11 318 (4.09%) Electronics
12 305 (3.93%) Aerospace
13 292 (3.76%) Marketing
14 200 (2.58%) Telecoms
15 153 (1.97%) Influencing Skills
16 146 (1.88%) Banking
17 133 (1.71%) Automotive
18 126 (1.62%) Documentation Skills
19 104 (1.34%) Presentation Skills
20 103 (1.33%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,036 (13.34%) Analyst
2 813 (10.47%) Senior
3 749 (9.64%) IT Support
4 710 (9.14%) Developer
5 594 (7.65%) Support Engineer
6 403 (5.19%) Lead
7 395 (5.09%) IT Engineer
8 393 (5.06%) Support Analyst
9 346 (4.46%) Consultant
10 299 (3.85%) IT Support Engineer
11 286 (3.68%) Technical Support
12 270 (3.48%) Support Technician
13 246 (3.17%) Technical Engineer
14 237 (3.05%) IT Technician
14 237 (3.05%) Systems Engineer
15 234 (3.01%) Architect
16 231 (2.97%) Software Engineer
17 223 (2.87%) Technical Support Engineer
18 206 (2.65%) Senior Developer
19 189 (2.43%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 364 (4.69%) .NET
2 281 (3.62%) Terraform
3 225 (2.90%) React
4 208 (2.68%) REST
5 190 (2.45%) HTML
6 140 (1.80%) CSS
7 137 (1.76%) RESTful
8 98 (1.26%) SOAP
9 94 (1.21%) Node.js
10 90 (1.16%) Web Services
11 85 (1.09%) XML
12 81 (1.04%) ASP.NET
13 80 (1.03%) Middleware
13 80 (1.03%) Vue
14 78 (1.00%) AngularJS
14 78 (1.00%) JSON
15 77 (0.99%) Spring
16 70 (0.90%) Spring Boot
17 60 (0.77%) Kafka
18 51 (0.66%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 670 (8.63%) Driving Licence
2 544 (7.00%) Onboarding
3 409 (5.27%) Self-Motivation
4 363 (4.67%) Management Information System
5 210 (2.70%) Cloud Native
6 181 (2.33%) Product Ownership
7 148 (1.91%) Enterprise Software
8 145 (1.87%) Legacy Systems
9 126 (1.62%) Data Centre
9 126 (1.62%) Robotics
10 97 (1.25%) Analytical Mindset
11 93 (1.20%) NHS
12 89 (1.15%) Distributed Systems
13 81 (1.04%) IoT
14 80 (1.03%) Cyber Threat
14 80 (1.03%) Security Posture
15 76 (0.98%) CCTV
16 74 (0.95%) Virtual Team
17 73 (0.94%) Social Media
18 71 (0.91%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 1,199 (15.44%) Windows
2 526 (6.77%) Windows Server
3 458 (5.90%) Linux
4 131 (1.69%) Windows 10
5 100 (1.29%) Windows Server 2016
6 90 (1.16%) Apple iOS
7 85 (1.09%) Android
8 84 (1.08%) Mac OS
9 45 (0.58%) Unix
10 39 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
11 27 (0.35%) Ubuntu
12 18 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 17 (0.22%) VMS
14 16 (0.21%) Embedded Linux
15 14 (0.18%) Debian
16 10 (0.13%) FreeRTOS
17 9 (0.12%) CentOS
18 8 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
19 6 (0.077%) Rocky
20 5 (0.064%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,113 (27.21%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,459 (18.79%) Customer Service
3 1,101 (14.18%) Agile
4 830 (10.69%) Decision-Making
5 795 (10.24%) Stakeholder Management
6 788 (10.15%) Mentoring
7 769 (9.90%) AI
8 722 (9.30%) CI/CD
9 665 (8.56%) Project Delivery
10 640 (8.24%) Collaborative Working
11 621 (8.00%) Analytics
12 604 (7.78%) Software Engineering
13 594 (7.65%) DevOps
14 590 (7.60%) Cybersecurity
15 589 (7.58%) ERP
16 582 (7.49%) ITIL
17 540 (6.95%) Project Management
18 535 (6.89%) Business Intelligence
19 481 (6.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 480 (6.18%) CRM
Programming Languages
1 1,107 (14.25%) SQL
2 771 (9.93%) Python
3 446 (5.74%) C#
4 443 (5.70%) JavaScript
5 321 (4.13%) Java
6 302 (3.89%) PowerShell
7 209 (2.69%) C++
8 203 (2.61%) TypeScript
9 125 (1.61%) Bash
10 83 (1.07%) C
11 65 (0.84%) PHP
12 64 (0.82%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 61 (0.79%) T-SQL
14 50 (0.64%) Ruby
15 47 (0.61%) MATLAB
15 47 (0.61%) PL/SQL
16 46 (0.59%) Shell Script
17 41 (0.53%) Perl
17 41 (0.53%) Rust
18 38 (0.49%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,247 (16.06%) Degree
2 728 (9.37%) Security Cleared
3 507 (6.53%) SC Cleared
4 229 (2.95%) HNC
5 224 (2.88%) DBS Check
6 210 (2.70%) Computer Science Degree
7 198 (2.55%) HND
8 188 (2.42%) Microsoft Certification
9 184 (2.37%) DV Cleared
10 160 (2.06%) BPSS Clearance
11 136 (1.75%) Azure Certification
12 98 (1.26%) Chartered Engineer
13 91 (1.17%) Cisco Certification
14 78 (1.00%) A+ Certification
15 77 (0.99%) PMI Certification
16 69 (0.89%) Master's Degree
17 65 (0.84%) CISSP
18 58 (0.75%) ACCA
18 58 (0.75%) CCNA
19 57 (0.73%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 490 (6.31%) QA
2 302 (3.89%) Data Quality
3 227 (2.92%) GDPR
4 206 (2.65%) Accessibility
5 182 (2.34%) SLA
6 169 (2.18%) Cyber Essentials
7 135 (1.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 106 (1.36%) PCI DSS
9 82 (1.06%) NIST
10 45 (0.58%) ISO 9001
11 38 (0.49%) PMO
12 34 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 21 (0.27%) DO-254
14 19 (0.24%) GMP
14 19 (0.24%) Good Clinical Practice
15 18 (0.23%) NCSC
16 16 (0.21%) GRC
17 14 (0.18%) Actionable Recommendations
18 13 (0.17%) GxP
18 13 (0.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 844 (10.87%) Active Directory
2 290 (3.73%) Hyper-V
3 263 (3.39%) Docker
4 214 (2.76%) VMware Infrastructure
5 78 (1.00%) Firmware
6 72 (0.93%) Terminal Server
7 42 (0.54%) Virtual Desktop
8 34 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
9 30 (0.39%) Embedded Firmware
10 28 (0.36%) vSphere
11 15 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
12 9 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.064%) ClearTrust
13 5 (0.064%) Squid
14 4 (0.052%) KVM
14 4 (0.052%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 3 (0.039%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.039%) VMware Server
16 2 (0.026%) Samba
16 2 (0.026%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 264 (3.40%) Microsoft Intune
2 224 (2.88%) Kubernetes
3 111 (1.43%) Ansible
4 64 (0.82%) Grafana
5 53 (0.68%) SCCM
6 47 (0.61%) Prometheus
7 44 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
8 28 (0.36%) BMC PATROL
9 20 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
10 18 (0.23%) FortiGate
10 18 (0.23%) Functional Safety
11 16 (0.21%) Puppet
12 13 (0.17%) Kibana
13 11 (0.14%) logstash
13 11 (0.14%) Nagios
13 11 (0.14%) Nmap
13 11 (0.14%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
14 10 (0.13%) Podman
14 10 (0.13%) Proxmox
15 9 (0.12%) Argo
Vendors
1 2,345 (30.20%) Microsoft
2 343 (4.42%) VMware
3 222 (2.86%) SAP
4 218 (2.81%) Google
5 177 (2.28%) Workday
6 173 (2.23%) Oracle
7 138 (1.78%) Veeam
8 136 (1.75%) Cisco
9 127 (1.64%) ServiceNow
10 122 (1.57%) Splunk
11 106 (1.36%) Salesforce
12 102 (1.31%) Sage
13 92 (1.18%) SolarWinds
14 80 (1.03%) Tanium
15 76 (0.98%) Databricks
15 76 (0.98%) Fortinet
16 73 (0.94%) Brocade
16 73 (0.94%) Nimble Storage
17 67 (0.86%) Apple
18 57 (0.73%) SonicWALL