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 22 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 4 5
Rank change year-on-year -6 +1 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,744 6,396 9,697
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 7.91% 18.86% 14.37%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.22% 21.39% 18.06%
Number of salaries quoted 4,275 3,495 5,699
10th Percentile £26,500 £25,750 £25,500
25th Percentile £31,000 £29,848 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £41,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.66% -8.89% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £60,000 £60,000
90th Percentile £73,750 £75,000 £73,260
UK median annual salary £47,500 £48,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -1.04% -4.00% -9.09%

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 51,174 29,903 53,686
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.47% 88.15% 79.55%
Number of salaries quoted 36,037 16,128 36,185
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,733 £27,873
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,851 £37,101
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £50,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% - -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £66,243 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £56,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +7.14% +1.82% -8.73%

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 22 July 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 22 July 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 1,505 £45,000 +5.88% 648
South East -3 1,416 £45,000 +5.88% 751
Midlands -8 1,065 £42,000 +5.00% 395
North West -7 794 £45,500 +1.11% 351
South West -6 719 £44,000 +17.33% 313
West Midlands -9 596 £42,500 -5.56% 224
East of England -6 564 £42,500 +21.43% 266
Yorkshire -10 514 £42,500 +21.43% 210
East Midlands -10 465 £35,440 -0.17% 171
Scotland -9 230 £33,000 -25.00% 100
North East -16 197 £51,250 +34.87% 95
Wales -20 150 £45,000 -7.22% 58
Northern Ireland -16 114 £38,500 -30.00% 28
Isle of Man +2 3 £35,000 +1.45% 6
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
1 365 (6.35%) Microsoft Exchange
2 344 (5.99%) SharePoint
3 55 (0.96%) Confluence
4 50 (0.87%) CMS
5 36 (0.63%) IIS
6 28 (0.49%) Apache
6 28 (0.49%) WordPress
7 20 (0.35%) Apache Airflow
8 13 (0.23%) Apache Spark
8 13 (0.23%) SAS
9 11 (0.19%) WebSphere
10 9 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2013
11 8 (0.14%) nginx
11 8 (0.14%) WebLogic
12 7 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2007
12 7 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2010
12 7 (0.12%) OpenEdge
13 6 (0.10%) Jupyter
14 5 (0.087%) Skype for Business
15 4 (0.070%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 367 (6.39%) Microsoft Office
2 357 (6.22%) Microsoft Excel
3 52 (0.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 41 (0.71%) Spreadsheet
5 32 (0.56%) MS Visio
6 17 (0.30%) Microsoft Project
7 11 (0.19%) Simulink
8 8 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 8 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
9 7 (0.12%) AutoCAD
9 7 (0.12%) Chatbot
10 5 (0.087%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.087%) Fusion 360
10 5 (0.087%) Lightworks
10 5 (0.087%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.087%) Sketch
10 5 (0.087%) Trello
11 3 (0.052%) Autodesk Inventor
11 3 (0.052%) LaTeX
11 3 (0.052%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 56 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.56%) NetSuite
3 31 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
4 18 (0.31%) Shopify
5 17 (0.30%) Magento
6 16 (0.28%) SAP ERP
7 15 (0.26%) Dynamics NAV
8 14 (0.24%) Dynamics AX
9 13 (0.23%) IBM Planning Analytics
10 11 (0.19%) SAP Business One
11 10 (0.17%) JDE EnterpriseOne
11 10 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
12 8 (0.14%) Sage 50
13 7 (0.12%) Raiser’s Edge
14 6 (0.10%) iTrent
14 6 (0.10%) Sage X3
15 5 (0.087%) Dynamics GP
15 5 (0.087%) NEC Housing
15 5 (0.087%) Q-Pulse
15 5 (0.087%) SAP CO
Cloud Services
1 1,215 (21.15%) Azure
2 1,077 (18.75%) Microsoft 365
3 593 (10.32%) AWS
4 459 (7.99%) Power Platform
5 300 (5.22%) Entra ID
6 202 (3.52%) SaaS
7 197 (3.43%) GCP
8 134 (2.33%) Azure DevOps
9 121 (2.11%) Dynamics 365
10 111 (1.93%) Serverless
11 101 (1.76%) PowerApps
12 100 (1.74%) GitHub
13 99 (1.72%) Power Automate
14 76 (1.32%) OneDrive
15 62 (1.08%) Microsoft Copilot
16 52 (0.91%) Amazon S3
16 52 (0.91%) Microsoft Purview
17 48 (0.84%) GitHub Actions
18 44 (0.77%) IaaS
19 43 (0.75%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 419 (7.29%) Firewall
2 383 (6.67%) DNS
3 328 (5.71%) DHCP
4 214 (3.73%) VPN
5 197 (3.43%) WAN
6 196 (3.41%) TCP/IP
7 177 (3.08%) LAN
8 156 (2.72%) Wi-Fi
9 139 (2.42%) Wireless
10 119 (2.07%) VLAN
11 111 (1.93%) Broadband
12 98 (1.71%) Network Security
13 93 (1.62%) VoIP
14 39 (0.68%) Internet
15 30 (0.52%) SD-WAN
16 27 (0.47%) SAN
17 25 (0.44%) HTTP
18 24 (0.42%) SSL
19 22 (0.38%) WLAN
20 20 (0.35%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 365 (6.35%) Power BI
2 268 (4.67%) SQL Server
3 127 (2.21%) Amazon RDS
4 105 (1.83%) MySQL
5 91 (1.58%) Data Warehouse
6 84 (1.46%) PostgreSQL
6 84 (1.46%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 82 (1.43%) Relational Database
8 68 (1.18%) Tableau
9 67 (1.17%) NoSQL
10 65 (1.13%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 46 (0.80%) Power Query
12 44 (0.77%) MongoDB
13 37 (0.64%) Big Data
14 34 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
15 33 (0.57%) Data Lake
16 27 (0.47%) DynamoDB
17 25 (0.44%) Elasticsearch
18 19 (0.33%) Star Schema
19 18 (0.31%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 222 (3.86%) Git
2 176 (3.06%) JIRA
3 80 (1.39%) GitLab
4 52 (0.91%) Jenkins
5 27 (0.47%) Rational DOORS
6 24 (0.42%) Cucumber
6 24 (0.42%) Subversion
7 23 (0.40%) Eclipse
8 22 (0.38%) Selenium
9 18 (0.31%) JUnit
10 17 (0.30%) Cypress.io
11 15 (0.26%) Postman
12 14 (0.24%) SonarQube
13 13 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
14 12 (0.21%) Claude Code
15 10 (0.17%) Bitbucket
16 9 (0.16%) Visual Studio
17 8 (0.14%) JMeter
17 8 (0.14%) Maven
17 8 (0.14%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 2,760 (48.05%) Social Skills
2 1,572 (27.37%) Analytical Skills
3 888 (15.46%) Finance
4 459 (7.99%) Manufacturing
5 370 (6.44%) Organisational Skills
6 260 (4.53%) Legal
7 254 (4.42%) Law
8 249 (4.33%) Public Sector
9 237 (4.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 230 (4.00%) Retail
11 181 (3.15%) Marketing
12 156 (2.72%) Electronics
13 152 (2.65%) Telecoms
14 114 (1.98%) Banking
15 106 (1.85%) Documentation Skills
16 103 (1.79%) Influencing Skills
17 91 (1.58%) Aerospace
18 76 (1.32%) Games
19 59 (1.03%) Advertising
20 57 (0.99%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 788 (13.72%) Analyst
2 667 (11.61%) IT Support
3 637 (11.09%) Senior
4 601 (10.46%) Developer
5 566 (9.85%) Support Engineer
6 390 (6.79%) IT Engineer
7 298 (5.19%) Lead
8 292 (5.08%) IT Support Engineer
9 258 (4.49%) Support Technician
10 256 (4.46%) Support Analyst
11 245 (4.27%) Systems Engineer
12 217 (3.78%) Technical Support
13 209 (3.64%) IT Technician
14 201 (3.50%) Consultant
15 193 (3.36%) Software Engineer
16 192 (3.34%) Technical Engineer
17 182 (3.17%) Architect
18 177 (3.08%) Senior Developer
19 173 (3.01%) Technical Support Engineer
20 162 (2.82%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 284 (4.94%) .NET
2 197 (3.43%) React
3 171 (2.98%) HTML
4 163 (2.84%) REST
5 124 (2.16%) CSS
6 99 (1.72%) Node.js
7 98 (1.71%) RESTful
8 85 (1.48%) SOAP
9 74 (1.29%) Vue
10 73 (1.27%) Middleware
11 72 (1.25%) JSON
12 69 (1.20%) AngularJS
13 63 (1.10%) XML
14 53 (0.92%) ASP.NET
14 53 (0.92%) Spring
15 49 (0.85%) Spring Boot
16 48 (0.84%) Web Services
17 46 (0.80%) OAuth
18 39 (0.68%) Kafka
19 36 (0.63%) ASP.NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 449 (7.82%) Driving Licence
2 339 (5.90%) Onboarding
3 269 (4.68%) Self-Motivation
4 223 (3.88%) Management Information System
5 161 (2.80%) Legacy Systems
6 157 (2.73%) Cloud Native
7 143 (2.49%) Product Ownership
8 100 (1.74%) Data Centre
9 95 (1.65%) Analytical Mindset
10 88 (1.53%) Distributed Systems
11 75 (1.31%) Security Posture
12 65 (1.13%) Enterprise Software
12 65 (1.13%) Mobile App
13 64 (1.11%) Social Media
14 57 (0.99%) Virtual Team
15 56 (0.97%) IoT
16 48 (0.84%) Cyber Threat
16 48 (0.84%) Robotics
17 45 (0.78%) Data Structures
17 45 (0.78%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 1,026 (17.86%) Windows
2 490 (8.53%) Windows Server
3 434 (7.56%) Linux
4 145 (2.52%) Windows 10
5 131 (2.28%) Windows Server 2016
6 107 (1.86%) Android
7 75 (1.31%) Mac OS
8 73 (1.27%) Apple iOS
9 43 (0.75%) Windows Server 2019
10 30 (0.52%) Unix
11 28 (0.49%) Ubuntu
12 24 (0.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 21 (0.37%) CentOS
14 16 (0.28%) VMS
15 14 (0.24%) Windows 7
16 13 (0.23%) Debian
17 9 (0.16%) FreeRTOS
17 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
18 8 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
19 6 (0.10%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,400 (24.37%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,055 (18.37%) Customer Service
3 820 (14.28%) Agile
4 590 (10.27%) CI/CD
5 581 (10.11%) Mentoring
6 576 (10.03%) Decision-Making
7 545 (9.49%) AI
8 511 (8.90%) ITIL
9 489 (8.51%) Analytics
10 488 (8.50%) DevOps
11 470 (8.18%) Cybersecurity
12 454 (7.90%) Software Engineering
13 450 (7.83%) Collaborative Working
14 440 (7.66%) Stakeholder Management
15 423 (7.36%) Business Intelligence
16 408 (7.10%) ERP
17 382 (6.65%) Project Delivery
18 349 (6.08%) Customer Experience
19 343 (5.97%) Service Delivery
20 342 (5.95%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 897 (15.62%) SQL
2 644 (11.21%) Python
3 366 (6.37%) C#
4 364 (6.34%) JavaScript
5 252 (4.39%) Java
6 238 (4.14%) PowerShell
7 163 (2.84%) C++
7 163 (2.84%) TypeScript
8 106 (1.85%) Bash
9 72 (1.25%) PHP
10 62 (1.08%) C
11 59 (1.03%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 48 (0.84%) T-SQL
13 35 (0.61%) Perl
13 35 (0.61%) Ruby
14 34 (0.59%) PL/SQL
15 32 (0.56%) Go
16 31 (0.54%) Shell Script
17 29 (0.50%) Kotlin
18 27 (0.47%) R
Qualifications
1 835 (14.54%) Degree
2 484 (8.43%) Security Cleared
3 354 (6.16%) SC Cleared
4 184 (3.20%) DBS Check
5 167 (2.91%) Computer Science Degree
6 166 (2.89%) Microsoft Certification
7 87 (1.51%) Cisco Certification
7 87 (1.51%) DV Cleared
8 85 (1.48%) BPSS Clearance
9 76 (1.32%) Azure Certification
10 62 (1.08%) CCNA
10 62 (1.08%) HNC
11 59 (1.03%) ACCA
12 57 (0.99%) PMI Certification
13 56 (0.97%) A+ Certification
14 55 (0.96%) CIMA
15 53 (0.92%) Master's Degree
16 49 (0.85%) CISSP
16 49 (0.85%) PMP
17 45 (0.78%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 354 (6.16%) QA
2 245 (4.27%) Data Quality
3 193 (3.36%) Cyber Essentials
4 160 (2.79%) GDPR
5 146 (2.54%) SLA
6 138 (2.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 138 (2.40%) PCI DSS
7 115 (2.00%) Accessibility
8 91 (1.58%) NIST
9 37 (0.64%) ISO 9001
10 29 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 25 (0.44%) PMO
12 21 (0.37%) GMP
13 17 (0.30%) Good Clinical Practice
14 15 (0.26%) GRC
14 15 (0.26%) SOC 2
15 13 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
16 12 (0.21%) TickIT
17 10 (0.17%) ISO 14001
18 9 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 724 (12.60%) Active Directory
2 284 (4.94%) Hyper-V
3 222 (3.86%) Docker
4 190 (3.31%) VMware Infrastructure
5 96 (1.67%) Terminal Server
6 43 (0.75%) Firmware
7 30 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
8 27 (0.47%) vSphere
9 22 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
10 16 (0.28%) Embedded Firmware
11 12 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
12 6 (0.10%) KVM
12 6 (0.10%) VMware Workstation
12 6 (0.10%) XenApp
13 5 (0.087%) ClearTrust
13 5 (0.087%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 5 (0.087%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.070%) Squid
15 3 (0.052%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.052%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 230 (4.00%) Microsoft Intune
2 226 (3.93%) Terraform
3 203 (3.53%) Kubernetes
4 102 (1.78%) Ansible
5 61 (1.06%) Grafana
5 61 (1.06%) SCCM
6 42 (0.73%) Prometheus
7 19 (0.33%) FortiGate
8 18 (0.31%) Nagios
9 13 (0.23%) Puppet
10 12 (0.21%) Single Sign-On
11 11 (0.19%) Jamf Pro
11 11 (0.19%) Kibana
12 10 (0.17%) Autotask
12 10 (0.17%) Functional Safety
12 10 (0.17%) logstash
12 10 (0.17%) Podman
12 10 (0.17%) Proxmox
12 10 (0.17%) QRadar
13 9 (0.16%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,784 (31.06%) Microsoft
2 321 (5.59%) VMware
3 151 (2.63%) Veeam
4 136 (2.37%) Splunk
5 131 (2.28%) Google
6 126 (2.19%) SAP
7 125 (2.18%) Cisco
8 120 (2.09%) SolarWinds
9 117 (2.04%) Oracle
10 104 (1.81%) Tanium
11 97 (1.69%) Nimble Storage
12 96 (1.67%) Brocade
13 91 (1.58%) ServiceNow
14 79 (1.38%) Salesforce
15 69 (1.20%) Databricks
16 59 (1.03%) Apple
17 54 (0.94%) Sage
18 51 (0.89%) Fortinet
19 50 (0.87%) Adobe
20 48 (0.84%) Dell