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

6 months to
27 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -8 +3 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,796 5,029 9,693
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 8.60% 19.64% 15.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.57% 21.35% 18.28%
Number of salaries quoted 3,419 2,962 6,539
10th Percentile £26,250 £26,929 £25,750
25th Percentile £29,250 £32,500 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £41,500 £50,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year -17.00% +11.11% -10.00%
75th Percentile £57,500 £65,000 £61,123
90th Percentile £73,750 £80,000 £72,500
UK median annual salary £45,500 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -17.27% +10.00% -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 41,461 23,554 53,036
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 74.38% 91.97% 85.07%
Number of salaries quoted 24,926 13,433 39,039
10th Percentile £28,250 £29,000 £27,500
25th Percentile £35,000 £38,754 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.41%
75th Percentile £67,500 £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% -11.29%

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 27 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 27 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 -17 1,288 £41,000 -10.87% 662
South East -7 1,190 £45,000 -10.86% 802
Midlands -20 854 £37,500 -21.88% 478
North West -17 648 £41,500 -14.43% 365
South West -5 539 £43,500 -8.42% 308
Yorkshire -6 510 £35,000 -17.65% 222
West Midlands -25 506 £42,500 -20.84% 278
East of England -8 435 £40,000 -20.00% 288
East Midlands -2 345 £35,000 -6.67% 199
Scotland -7 314 £34,250 -29.81% 127
North East -9 130 £45,000 - 92
Wales -5 110 £40,000 -32.69% 81
Northern Ireland -3 90 £35,000 -41.11% 19
Isle of Man -2 1 £62,500 +64.47% 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
1 284 (5.92%) Microsoft Exchange
2 240 (5.00%) SharePoint
3 47 (0.98%) Confluence
4 46 (0.96%) CMS
5 31 (0.65%) IIS
6 23 (0.48%) WordPress
7 18 (0.38%) Apache
8 17 (0.35%) Apache Spark
9 13 (0.27%) Apache Airflow
9 13 (0.27%) Exchange Server 2013
10 12 (0.25%) SAS
11 11 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2007
11 11 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2010
12 8 (0.17%) nginx
13 7 (0.15%) Drupal
14 6 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 5 (0.10%) Anypoint
16 4 (0.083%) Headless CMS
16 4 (0.083%) OpenStack
16 4 (0.083%) Totara
Applications
1 347 (7.24%) Microsoft Office
2 298 (6.21%) Microsoft Excel
3 58 (1.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 30 (0.63%) MS Visio
5 22 (0.46%) Spreadsheet
6 15 (0.31%) Microsoft Project
7 11 (0.23%) Photoshop
8 10 (0.21%) Adobe Illustrator
8 10 (0.21%) AutoCAD
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 5 (0.10%) Fusion 360
11 4 (0.083%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.083%) Simulink
11 4 (0.083%) SOLIDWORKS
11 4 (0.083%) Trello
12 3 (0.063%) Elementor
12 3 (0.063%) InDesign
13 2 (0.042%) Revit
13 2 (0.042%) Sketch
13 2 (0.042%) Weka
Business Applications
1 39 (0.81%) Dynamics CRM
2 28 (0.58%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.50%) NetSuite
4 13 (0.27%) Dynamics NAV
4 13 (0.27%) Sage X3
4 13 (0.27%) SAP CO
4 13 (0.27%) Shopify
5 10 (0.21%) iTrent
5 10 (0.21%) SAP ERP
6 7 (0.15%) Magento
6 7 (0.15%) Q-Pulse
6 7 (0.15%) Workday HCM
7 6 (0.13%) Markit EDM
8 5 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
9 4 (0.083%) Dynamics GP
9 4 (0.083%) IBM Planning Analytics
9 4 (0.083%) Oracle EBS
9 4 (0.083%) SAP Business One
9 4 (0.083%) SAP FI
9 4 (0.083%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 1,006 (20.98%) Azure
2 845 (17.62%) Microsoft 365
3 456 (9.51%) AWS
4 304 (6.34%) Power Platform
5 232 (4.84%) Entra ID
6 231 (4.82%) SaaS
7 138 (2.88%) GCP
8 129 (2.69%) Azure DevOps
9 103 (2.15%) Serverless
10 101 (2.11%) GitHub
11 70 (1.46%) Power Automate
12 68 (1.42%) Azure Data Factory
13 67 (1.40%) Dynamics 365
14 59 (1.23%) Google Workspace
15 56 (1.17%) Amazon S3
15 56 (1.17%) AWS Lambda
15 56 (1.17%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 51 (1.06%) GitHub Actions
16 51 (1.06%) PaaS
17 45 (0.94%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 349 (7.28%) DNS
2 292 (6.09%) DHCP
3 281 (5.86%) Firewall
4 154 (3.21%) WAN
5 153 (3.19%) VPN
6 144 (3.00%) TCP/IP
7 136 (2.84%) Wi-Fi
8 125 (2.61%) LAN
9 106 (2.21%) Broadband
10 93 (1.94%) VLAN
11 75 (1.56%) Wireless
12 67 (1.40%) VoIP
13 54 (1.13%) Network Security
14 45 (0.94%) SD-WAN
15 42 (0.88%) Remote Desktop
16 34 (0.71%) Internet
17 29 (0.60%) SAN
18 28 (0.58%) Unified Communications
19 22 (0.46%) Wireshark
20 20 (0.42%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 250 (5.21%) Power BI
2 195 (4.07%) SQL Server
3 94 (1.96%) Amazon RDS
4 81 (1.69%) PostgreSQL
5 72 (1.50%) Relational Database
6 68 (1.42%) MySQL
7 67 (1.40%) NoSQL
8 65 (1.36%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 60 (1.25%) Data Warehouse
10 42 (0.88%) Tableau
11 40 (0.83%) Power Query
12 39 (0.81%) Azure SQL Database
13 36 (0.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 35 (0.73%) DynamoDB
15 30 (0.63%) MongoDB
16 25 (0.52%) Amazon Redshift
16 25 (0.52%) Elasticsearch
17 24 (0.50%) Metadata
18 22 (0.46%) Data Lake
19 20 (0.42%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 192 (4.00%) Git
2 161 (3.36%) JIRA
3 62 (1.29%) GitLab
4 46 (0.96%) Jenkins
5 32 (0.67%) Selenium
6 16 (0.33%) LabVIEW
6 16 (0.33%) Maven
6 16 (0.33%) Rational DOORS
7 15 (0.31%) Robot Framework
7 15 (0.31%) Visual Studio
8 14 (0.29%) Cypress.io
8 14 (0.29%) Snyk
9 13 (0.27%) Cucumber
10 12 (0.25%) SonarQube
11 11 (0.23%) JUnit
12 10 (0.21%) Burp Suite
12 10 (0.21%) Metasploit
13 9 (0.19%) Bitbucket
14 7 (0.15%) CircleCI
14 7 (0.15%) Postman
General
1 2,433 (50.73%) Social Skills
2 1,347 (28.09%) Analytical Skills
3 897 (18.70%) Finance
4 341 (7.11%) Organisational Skills
5 259 (5.40%) Manufacturing
6 225 (4.69%) Public Sector
7 221 (4.61%) Retail
8 213 (4.44%) Marketing
9 194 (4.05%) Legal
10 191 (3.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 161 (3.36%) Law
12 124 (2.59%) Telecoms
13 122 (2.54%) Banking
13 122 (2.54%) Electronics
14 96 (2.00%) Presentation Skills
15 83 (1.73%) Documentation Skills
16 78 (1.63%) Games
17 65 (1.36%) Automotive
18 55 (1.15%) Influencing Skills
19 50 (1.04%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 731 (15.24%) Analyst
2 696 (14.51%) IT Support
3 592 (12.34%) Support Engineer
4 493 (10.28%) Senior
5 387 (8.07%) Developer
6 346 (7.21%) IT Engineer
7 294 (6.13%) IT Support Engineer
8 242 (5.05%) Support Analyst
9 236 (4.92%) Lead
10 197 (4.11%) Support Technician
11 179 (3.73%) Business Analyst
12 178 (3.71%) Technical Support
13 164 (3.42%) 2nd Line Support
14 155 (3.23%) IT Technician
15 154 (3.21%) Systems Engineer
16 149 (3.11%) Architect
17 143 (2.98%) Consultant
18 138 (2.88%) IT Support Technician
19 135 (2.81%) Technical Engineer
20 131 (2.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 160 (3.34%) .NET
2 151 (3.15%) React
3 144 (3.00%) HTML
4 110 (2.29%) CSS
5 83 (1.73%) Node.js
6 70 (1.46%) REST
7 57 (1.19%) RESTful
8 52 (1.08%) Vue
9 40 (0.83%) AngularJS
10 39 (0.81%) SOAP
11 38 (0.79%) Spring
12 37 (0.77%) ASP.NET
13 36 (0.75%) XML
14 35 (0.73%) JSON
14 35 (0.73%) OAuth
15 34 (0.71%) Django
15 34 (0.71%) Spring Boot
16 31 (0.65%) GraphQL
16 31 (0.65%) Laravel
17 28 (0.58%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 411 (8.57%) Driving Licence
2 313 (6.53%) Onboarding
3 285 (5.94%) Self-Motivation
4 161 (3.36%) Management Information System
5 126 (2.63%) Legacy Systems
6 115 (2.40%) Analytical Mindset
7 102 (2.13%) Product Ownership
8 86 (1.79%) Data Centre
9 85 (1.77%) Cloud Native
10 83 (1.73%) Social Media
11 67 (1.40%) Enterprise Software
12 59 (1.23%) Mobile App
13 54 (1.13%) Distributed Systems
14 49 (1.02%) Low-Code
15 41 (0.85%) Data Structures
16 38 (0.79%) EPoS
17 37 (0.77%) NHS
18 35 (0.73%) IoT
19 34 (0.71%) Virtual Team
20 33 (0.69%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 919 (19.16%) Windows
2 392 (8.17%) Windows Server
3 316 (6.59%) Linux
4 131 (2.73%) Windows 10
5 115 (2.40%) Windows Server 2016
6 109 (2.27%) Android
7 66 (1.38%) Apple iOS
8 57 (1.19%) Mac OS
9 39 (0.81%) Windows Server 2019
10 35 (0.73%) Unix
11 24 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 23 (0.48%) Windows Server 2012
13 22 (0.46%) CentOS
14 17 (0.35%) Windows 7
15 16 (0.33%) Ubuntu
16 11 (0.23%) Windows 8
17 10 (0.21%) VMS
18 9 (0.19%) Windows Server 2008
19 8 (0.17%) Debian
20 3 (0.063%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 956 (19.93%) Continuous Improvement
2 879 (18.33%) Customer Service
3 648 (13.51%) Agile
4 467 (9.74%) Decision-Making
5 459 (9.57%) Mentoring
6 435 (9.07%) ITIL
7 400 (8.34%) Project Management
8 385 (8.03%) DevOps
9 378 (7.88%) CI/CD
10 347 (7.24%) Analytics
11 342 (7.13%) Business Intelligence
12 338 (7.05%) AI
13 306 (6.38%) Cybersecurity
14 303 (6.32%) Coaching
15 285 (5.94%) Computer Science
16 280 (5.84%) Stakeholder Management
17 279 (5.82%) Process Improvement
18 271 (5.65%) Service Delivery
19 268 (5.59%) Change Management
20 266 (5.55%) CRM
Programming Languages
1 602 (12.55%) SQL
2 491 (10.24%) Python
3 285 (5.94%) JavaScript
4 233 (4.86%) PowerShell
5 183 (3.82%) C#
6 163 (3.40%) Java
7 88 (1.83%) TypeScript
8 75 (1.56%) Bash
9 67 (1.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 67 (1.40%) PHP
10 60 (1.25%) C++
11 45 (0.94%) C
12 42 (0.88%) T-SQL
13 28 (0.58%) PL/SQL
14 26 (0.54%) Kotlin
15 25 (0.52%) R
16 19 (0.40%) Bicep
16 19 (0.40%) Go
17 18 (0.38%) VBA
18 17 (0.35%) Scala
Qualifications
1 909 (18.95%) Degree
2 359 (7.49%) Security Cleared
3 239 (4.98%) SC Cleared
4 176 (3.67%) DBS Check
5 147 (3.07%) Microsoft Certification
6 123 (2.56%) Computer Science Degree
7 92 (1.92%) BPSS Clearance
8 77 (1.61%) ACCA
9 67 (1.40%) CIMA
9 67 (1.40%) Cisco Certification
10 66 (1.38%) A+ Certification
10 66 (1.38%) DV Cleared
11 58 (1.21%) CCNA
12 53 (1.11%) Master's Degree
13 50 (1.04%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 49 (1.02%) HNC
15 45 (0.94%) CISSP
16 43 (0.90%) AWS Certification
17 40 (0.83%) ITIL Certification
17 40 (0.83%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 244 (5.09%) QA
2 183 (3.82%) Data Quality
3 143 (2.98%) GDPR
4 141 (2.94%) Cyber Essentials
5 113 (2.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 103 (2.15%) PCI DSS
7 85 (1.77%) SLA
8 65 (1.36%) NIST
9 63 (1.31%) Accessibility
10 35 (0.73%) ISO 9001
11 29 (0.60%) Actionable Recommendations
12 24 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 14 (0.29%) GMP
13 14 (0.29%) SOC 2
14 9 (0.19%) PMO
15 8 (0.17%) ISO/IEC 20000
16 6 (0.13%) GRC
17 5 (0.10%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 5 (0.10%) COSHH
17 5 (0.10%) HIPAA
System Software
1 634 (13.22%) Active Directory
2 209 (4.36%) Hyper-V
3 182 (3.79%) Docker
4 132 (2.75%) VMware Infrastructure
5 72 (1.50%) Terminal Server
6 28 (0.58%) Firmware
7 21 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
9 14 (0.29%) vSphere
10 12 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.21%) KVM
11 10 (0.21%) VMware Workstation
12 6 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
12 6 (0.13%) XenApp
13 4 (0.083%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 3 (0.063%) Embedded Firmware
14 3 (0.063%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 2 (0.042%) VMware NSX
16 1 (0.021%) BitLocker
16 1 (0.021%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 205 (4.27%) Terraform
2 182 (3.79%) Microsoft Intune
3 131 (2.73%) Kubernetes
4 87 (1.81%) Ansible
5 63 (1.31%) SCCM
6 51 (1.06%) Grafana
7 33 (0.69%) Prometheus
8 22 (0.46%) BMC PATROL
9 19 (0.40%) Nagios
9 19 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
10 14 (0.29%) Autotask
10 14 (0.29%) Jamf Pro
10 14 (0.29%) vCenter Server
11 13 (0.27%) Cisco CUCM
12 11 (0.23%) ZABBIX
13 10 (0.21%) AWS Copilot
13 10 (0.21%) Nmap
14 9 (0.19%) FortiGate
15 8 (0.17%) HP Fortify
15 8 (0.17%) Puppet
Vendors
1 1,327 (27.67%) Microsoft
2 232 (4.84%) VMware
3 144 (3.00%) Oracle
4 132 (2.75%) Veeam
5 116 (2.42%) SAP
6 112 (2.34%) Google
7 110 (2.29%) Cisco
8 102 (2.13%) Splunk
9 101 (2.11%) SolarWinds
10 79 (1.65%) ServiceNow
11 73 (1.52%) Databricks
11 73 (1.52%) Tanium
12 72 (1.50%) Brocade
12 72 (1.50%) Nimble Storage
13 67 (1.40%) Apple
14 65 (1.36%) Adobe
15 61 (1.27%) Salesforce
16 58 (1.21%) Sage
17 47 (0.98%) Dell
18 40 (0.83%) HubSpot