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

6 months to
3 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 4 6
Rank change year-on-year -7 +2 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,982 6,027 10,896
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 7.38% 20.72% 14.74%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.40% 22.55% 18.15%
Number of salaries quoted 3,692 3,098 6,975
10th Percentile £26,308 £26,250 £25,000
25th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £43,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year -1.16% -4.44% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £60,188 £60,000
90th Percentile £74,000 £77,500 £72,500
UK median annual salary £47,500 £50,000 £48,900
% change year-on-year -5.00% +2.25% -11.09%

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 47,902 26,728 60,038
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.97% 91.91% 81.23%
Number of salaries quoted 31,346 13,231 42,531
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,929 £27,250
25th Percentile £38,250 £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 3 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 3 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 -11 1,357 £42,500 -4.92% 729
South East -6 1,187 £45,000 - 795
Midlands -21 923 £40,000 -11.11% 430
North West -15 690 £45,000 -3.74% 404
South West -7 581 £43,500 +8.75% 324
West Midlands -25 528 £42,500 -10.53% 266
Yorkshire -11 513 £41,000 +17.14% 245
East of England -7 499 £45,000 +12.50% 313
East Midlands -9 392 £35,000 -9.09% 164
Scotland -4 272 £35,000 -28.28% 154
North East -15 154 £48,445 +7.65% 90
Wales -13 110 £42,500 -15.00% 64
Northern Ireland -8 71 £38,500 -30.00% 120
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
1 307 (6.16%) Microsoft Exchange
2 301 (6.04%) SharePoint
3 48 (0.96%) CMS
4 41 (0.82%) Confluence
5 30 (0.60%) 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
1 301 (6.04%) Microsoft Office
2 291 (5.84%) 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%) iTrent
10 10 (0.20%) IBM Planning Analytics
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 1,008 (20.23%) Azure
2 890 (17.86%) Microsoft 365
3 498 (10.00%) AWS
4 372 (7.47%) Power Platform
5 230 (4.62%) Entra ID
6 173 (3.47%) SaaS
7 140 (2.81%) GCP
8 122 (2.45%) Azure DevOps
9 107 (2.15%) Serverless
10 106 (2.13%) Dynamics 365
11 82 (1.65%) GitHub
12 77 (1.55%) Power Automate
13 68 (1.36%) PowerApps
14 59 (1.18%) OneDrive
15 58 (1.16%) Amazon S3
16 53 (1.06%) Google Workspace
17 50 (1.00%) AWS Lambda
18 47 (0.94%) IaaS
19 45 (0.90%) PaaS
20 44 (0.88%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 324 (6.50%) Firewall
2 312 (6.26%) DNS
3 263 (5.28%) DHCP
4 174 (3.49%) WAN
5 169 (3.39%) VPN
6 135 (2.71%) LAN
7 124 (2.49%) Wi-Fi
8 123 (2.47%) TCP/IP
9 108 (2.17%) Broadband
10 101 (2.03%) Wireless
11 97 (1.95%) VLAN
12 79 (1.59%) VoIP
13 77 (1.55%) Network Security
14 43 (0.86%) SD-WAN
15 35 (0.70%) Internet
16 34 (0.68%) SAN
17 19 (0.38%) HTTP
17 19 (0.38%) Unified Communications
18 18 (0.36%) Remote Desktop
19 15 (0.30%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 292 (5.86%) Power BI
2 208 (4.18%) SQL Server
3 83 (1.67%) Amazon RDS
4 71 (1.43%) Data Warehouse
5 70 (1.41%) MySQL
6 68 (1.36%) PostgreSQL
7 67 (1.34%) NoSQL
7 67 (1.34%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 60 (1.20%) Tableau
9 55 (1.10%) Relational Database
10 52 (1.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 44 (0.88%) Power Query
12 38 (0.76%) Big Data
13 32 (0.64%) DynamoDB
14 31 (0.62%) MongoDB
15 29 (0.58%) Data Lake
16 25 (0.50%) Amazon Redshift
17 24 (0.48%) Oracle Reports
18 23 (0.46%) Azure SQL Database
19 22 (0.44%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 188 (3.77%) Git
2 142 (2.85%) JIRA
3 66 (1.32%) GitLab
4 41 (0.82%) Jenkins
5 30 (0.60%) Rational DOORS
6 15 (0.30%) JUnit
6 15 (0.30%) Maven
7 14 (0.28%) Cucumber
7 14 (0.28%) Selenium
8 13 (0.26%) Subversion
9 12 (0.24%) LabVIEW
9 12 (0.24%) SonarQube
10 11 (0.22%) Cypress.io
11 10 (0.20%) Bitbucket
11 10 (0.20%) Oracle Forms
12 8 (0.16%) Visual Studio
13 7 (0.14%) Eclipse
13 7 (0.14%) Metasploit
13 7 (0.14%) Mockito
13 7 (0.14%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 2,371 (47.59%) Social Skills
2 1,402 (28.14%) Analytical Skills
3 822 (16.50%) Finance
4 341 (6.84%) Manufacturing
5 318 (6.38%) Organisational Skills
6 223 (4.48%) Public Sector
7 213 (4.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 192 (3.85%) Law
9 183 (3.67%) Marketing
10 181 (3.63%) Legal
11 175 (3.51%) Retail
12 143 (2.87%) Telecoms
13 135 (2.71%) Electronics
14 130 (2.61%) Banking
15 98 (1.97%) Documentation Skills
16 84 (1.69%) Influencing Skills
17 70 (1.41%) Aerospace
18 69 (1.38%) Games
19 55 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
20 51 (1.02%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 716 (14.37%) Analyst
2 628 (12.61%) IT Support
3 546 (10.96%) Support Engineer
4 542 (10.88%) Senior
5 427 (8.57%) Developer
6 367 (7.37%) IT Engineer
7 285 (5.72%) IT Support Engineer
8 259 (5.20%) Lead
9 238 (4.78%) Support Technician
10 207 (4.15%) Support Analyst
11 197 (3.95%) Systems Engineer
12 187 (3.75%) IT Technician
13 171 (3.43%) Architect
14 170 (3.41%) Consultant
15 161 (3.23%) Technical Support
16 155 (3.11%) Software Engineer
17 151 (3.03%) IT Support Technician
18 147 (2.95%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 130 (2.61%) Technical Engineer
20 124 (2.49%) Technical Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 184 (3.69%) .NET
2 167 (3.35%) React
3 146 (2.93%) HTML
4 122 (2.45%) REST
5 113 (2.27%) CSS
6 79 (1.59%) Node.js
7 71 (1.43%) SOAP
8 64 (1.28%) JSON
8 64 (1.28%) RESTful
9 56 (1.12%) Middleware
9 56 (1.12%) XML
10 53 (1.06%) Vue
11 52 (1.04%) AngularJS
12 39 (0.78%) Spring
13 38 (0.76%) OAuth
14 35 (0.70%) ASP.NET
14 35 (0.70%) EDI
14 35 (0.70%) Spring Boot
15 31 (0.62%) Web Services
16 29 (0.58%) Laravel
Miscellaneous
1 381 (7.65%) Driving Licence
2 264 (5.30%) Onboarding
3 223 (4.48%) Self-Motivation
4 193 (3.87%) Management Information System
5 123 (2.47%) Product Ownership
6 118 (2.37%) 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 (1.26%) Mobile App
13 57 (1.14%) Low-Code
14 50 (1.00%) Enterprise Software
15 45 (0.90%) Virtual Team
16 41 (0.82%) Data Structures
17 39 (0.78%) Security Posture
18 36 (0.72%) Algorithms
18 36 (0.72%) Hybrid Cloud
18 36 (0.72%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 849 (17.04%) Windows
2 407 (8.17%) Windows Server
3 331 (6.64%) Linux
4 132 (2.65%) Windows 10
5 110 (2.21%) Windows Server 2016
6 102 (2.05%) Android
7 61 (1.22%) Apple iOS
8 52 (1.04%) Mac OS
8 52 (1.04%) Windows Server 2019
9 31 (0.62%) Unix
10 27 (0.54%) CentOS
11 26 (0.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 25 (0.50%) Ubuntu
13 20 (0.40%) Windows Server 2012
14 16 (0.32%) VMS
15 12 (0.24%) Windows 7
16 9 (0.18%) Debian
17 7 (0.14%) Windows 8
17 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
18 4 (0.080%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,061 (21.30%) Continuous Improvement
2 895 (17.96%) Customer Service
3 663 (13.31%) Agile
4 494 (9.92%) Decision-Making
5 492 (9.88%) Mentoring
6 421 (8.45%) Analytics
6 421 (8.45%) CI/CD
7 418 (8.39%) AI
8 407 (8.17%) ITIL
9 398 (7.99%) DevOps
10 346 (6.95%) Collaborative Working
11 343 (6.88%) Business Intelligence
12 333 (6.68%) ERP
13 329 (6.60%) Software Engineering
14 328 (6.58%) Cybersecurity
15 324 (6.50%) Coaching
16 316 (6.34%) Project Management
17 311 (6.24%) Stakeholder Management
18 308 (6.18%) Computer Science
19 293 (5.88%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 716 (14.37%) SQL
2 577 (11.58%) Python
3 313 (6.28%) JavaScript
4 238 (4.78%) C#
5 209 (4.20%) Java
6 201 (4.03%) PowerShell
7 121 (2.43%) 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 42 (0.84%) 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 22 (0.44%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 748 (15.01%) Degree
2 379 (7.61%) Security Cleared
3 274 (5.50%) SC Cleared
4 206 (4.13%) DBS Check
5 157 (3.15%) Microsoft Certification
6 143 (2.87%) Computer Science Degree
7 85 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
8 76 (1.53%) Cisco Certification
9 72 (1.45%) A+ Certification
10 67 (1.34%) DV Cleared
11 60 (1.20%) 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%) Network+ Certification
17 45 (0.90%) Master's Degree
18 43 (0.86%) Azure Certification
18 43 (0.86%) CISSP
19 38 (0.76%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 277 (5.56%) QA
2 237 (4.76%) Data Quality
3 145 (2.91%) GDPR
4 140 (2.81%) Cyber Essentials
5 128 (2.57%) SLA
6 109 (2.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 94 (1.89%) PCI DSS
8 80 (1.61%) NIST
9 68 (1.36%) Accessibility
10 38 (0.76%) ISO 9001
11 20 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
12 19 (0.38%) 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
1 607 (12.18%) Active Directory
2 213 (4.28%) Hyper-V
3 161 (3.23%) Docker
4 158 (3.17%) VMware Infrastructure
5 64 (1.28%) 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
1 185 (3.71%) Microsoft Intune
1 185 (3.71%) Terraform
2 152 (3.05%) Kubernetes
3 86 (1.73%) Ansible
4 56 (1.12%) SCCM
5 47 (0.94%) Grafana
6 31 (0.62%) Prometheus
7 22 (0.44%) Nagios
8 13 (0.26%) Single Sign-On
9 12 (0.24%) FortiGate
9 12 (0.24%) vCenter Server
10 9 (0.18%) Autotask
10 9 (0.18%) Kibana
10 9 (0.18%) Puppet
10 9 (0.18%) QRadar
10 9 (0.18%) ZABBIX
11 8 (0.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 8 (0.16%) Functional Safety
11 8 (0.16%) logstash
11 8 (0.16%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,420 (28.50%) Microsoft
2 252 (5.06%) VMware
3 136 (2.73%) Oracle
4 125 (2.51%) Veeam
5 110 (2.21%) Cisco
5 110 (2.21%) SAP
6 103 (2.07%) Google
7 97 (1.95%) Splunk
8 96 (1.93%) SolarWinds
9 70 (1.41%) Databricks
10 66 (1.32%) Salesforce
11 65 (1.30%) Nimble Storage
12 64 (1.28%) Apple
12 64 (1.28%) Brocade
12 64 (1.28%) ServiceNow
12 64 (1.28%) Tanium
13 51 (1.02%) Adobe
14 47 (0.94%) Dell
15 42 (0.84%) Sage
16 39 (0.78%) Meraki