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

6 months to
26 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 4,784 5,064 9,606
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 8.61% 19.53% 15.54%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.56% 21.25% 18.25%
Number of salaries quoted 3,409 2,974 6,483
10th Percentile £26,250 £26,929 £25,750
25th Percentile £29,250 £32,500 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £41,000 £50,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year -18.00% +11.11% -10.00%
75th Percentile £57,500 £65,000 £61,250
90th Percentile £73,750 £80,000 £72,500
UK median annual salary £45,497 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -17.28% +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 41,386 23,826 52,633
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 74.48% 91.89% 85.13%
Number of salaries quoted 24,810 13,495 38,783
10th Percentile £28,250 £29,000 £27,500
25th Percentile £35,000 £38,945 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.42%
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 26 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 26 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 -11.35% 662
South East -7 1,187 £45,000 -10.86% 802
Midlands -19 849 £37,750 -21.35% 478
North West -17 651 £41,500 -14.43% 365
South West -5 539 £43,500 -8.42% 308
Yorkshire -6 509 £35,000 -17.65% 222
West Midlands -25 502 £42,500 -20.83% 278
East of England -10 428 £40,000 -20.00% 288
East Midlands -2 344 £35,000 -10.83% 199
Scotland -6 317 £33,500 -31.14% 127
North East -9 128 £45,000 - 92
Wales -4 110 £40,000 -33.02% 81
Northern Ireland -4 90 £35,000 -41.39% 19
Isle of Man 0 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
1 285 (5.96%) Microsoft Exchange
2 241 (5.04%) SharePoint
3 46 (0.96%) Confluence
4 45 (0.94%) CMS
5 30 (0.63%) IIS
6 24 (0.50%) WordPress
7 18 (0.38%) Apache
8 17 (0.36%) Apache Spark
9 12 (0.25%) Apache Airflow
9 12 (0.25%) Exchange Server 2013
9 12 (0.25%) SAS
10 11 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2007
10 11 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2010
11 8 (0.17%) nginx
12 7 (0.15%) Drupal
13 6 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 5 (0.10%) Anypoint
15 4 (0.084%) Headless CMS
15 4 (0.084%) Moodle
15 4 (0.084%) OpenStack
Applications
1 346 (7.23%) Microsoft Office
2 298 (6.23%) Microsoft Excel
3 58 (1.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 30 (0.63%) MS Visio
5 21 (0.44%) 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 4 (0.084%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.084%) Fusion 360
10 4 (0.084%) Simulink
10 4 (0.084%) SOLIDWORKS
10 4 (0.084%) Trello
11 3 (0.063%) Elementor
11 3 (0.063%) InDesign
12 2 (0.042%) Adobe Captivate
12 2 (0.042%) Adobe Premiere
12 2 (0.042%) Revit
Business Applications
1 41 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
2 28 (0.59%) 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 (0.084%) Dynamics GP
9 4 (0.084%) IBM Planning Analytics
9 4 (0.084%) Oracle EBS
9 4 (0.084%) SAP FI
9 4 (0.084%) SAP FI/CO
9 4 (0.084%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 1,005 (21.01%) Azure
2 846 (17.68%) Microsoft 365
3 454 (9.49%) AWS
4 305 (6.38%) Power Platform
5 233 (4.87%) Entra ID
6 230 (4.81%) SaaS
7 138 (2.88%) GCP
8 128 (2.68%) Azure DevOps
9 102 (2.13%) GitHub
9 102 (2.13%) Serverless
10 73 (1.53%) Power Automate
11 70 (1.46%) Dynamics 365
12 67 (1.40%) Azure Data Factory
13 59 (1.23%) Google Workspace
14 56 (1.17%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 55 (1.15%) Amazon S3
15 55 (1.15%) AWS Lambda
16 51 (1.07%) GitHub Actions
16 51 (1.07%) PaaS
17 46 (0.96%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 350 (7.32%) DNS
2 293 (6.12%) DHCP
3 281 (5.87%) Firewall
4 154 (3.22%) VPN
5 153 (3.20%) WAN
6 144 (3.01%) TCP/IP
7 136 (2.84%) Wi-Fi
8 124 (2.59%) LAN
9 106 (2.22%) Broadband
10 94 (1.96%) VLAN
11 75 (1.57%) Wireless
12 69 (1.44%) VoIP
13 53 (1.11%) Network Security
14 45 (0.94%) SD-WAN
15 42 (0.88%) Remote Desktop
16 33 (0.69%) Internet
17 29 (0.61%) SAN
17 29 (0.61%) Unified Communications
18 22 (0.46%) Wireshark
19 20 (0.42%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 251 (5.25%) Power BI
2 193 (4.03%) SQL Server
3 93 (1.94%) Amazon RDS
4 81 (1.69%) PostgreSQL
5 71 (1.48%) Relational Database
6 68 (1.42%) NoSQL
7 67 (1.40%) MySQL
8 65 (1.36%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 57 (1.19%) Data Warehouse
10 41 (0.86%) Tableau
11 40 (0.84%) Power Query
12 38 (0.79%) Azure SQL Database
13 35 (0.73%) DynamoDB
13 35 (0.73%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 30 (0.63%) MongoDB
15 25 (0.52%) Amazon Redshift
15 25 (0.52%) Elasticsearch
16 24 (0.50%) Metadata
17 22 (0.46%) Data Lake
18 20 (0.42%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 192 (4.01%) Git
2 160 (3.34%) JIRA
3 62 (1.30%) GitLab
4 45 (0.94%) Jenkins
5 32 (0.67%) Selenium
6 17 (0.36%) LabVIEW
7 16 (0.33%) Maven
8 15 (0.31%) Rational DOORS
8 15 (0.31%) Robot Framework
8 15 (0.31%) Visual Studio
9 14 (0.29%) Cypress.io
9 14 (0.29%) Snyk
10 13 (0.27%) Cucumber
11 12 (0.25%) SonarQube
12 11 (0.23%) JUnit
13 10 (0.21%) Burp Suite
13 10 (0.21%) Metasploit
14 9 (0.19%) Bitbucket
15 7 (0.15%) CircleCI
15 7 (0.15%) Postman
General
1 2,433 (50.86%) Social Skills
2 1,340 (28.01%) Analytical Skills
3 897 (18.75%) Finance
4 341 (7.13%) Organisational Skills
5 251 (5.25%) Manufacturing
6 224 (4.68%) Public Sector
7 218 (4.56%) Retail
8 213 (4.45%) Marketing
9 193 (4.03%) Legal
10 186 (3.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 161 (3.37%) Law
12 126 (2.63%) Telecoms
13 123 (2.57%) Banking
14 119 (2.49%) Electronics
15 97 (2.03%) Presentation Skills
16 82 (1.71%) Documentation Skills
17 79 (1.65%) Games
18 64 (1.34%) Automotive
19 56 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
20 47 (0.98%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 726 (15.18%) Analyst
2 697 (14.57%) IT Support
3 594 (12.42%) Support Engineer
4 492 (10.28%) Senior
5 385 (8.05%) Developer
6 343 (7.17%) IT Engineer
7 293 (6.12%) IT Support Engineer
8 242 (5.06%) Support Analyst
9 236 (4.93%) Lead
10 198 (4.14%) Support Technician
11 180 (3.76%) Technical Support
12 178 (3.72%) Business Analyst
13 165 (3.45%) 2nd Line Support
14 153 (3.20%) IT Technician
15 150 (3.14%) Systems Engineer
16 148 (3.09%) Architect
17 145 (3.03%) Consultant
18 138 (2.88%) IT Support Technician
19 136 (2.84%) Technical Engineer
20 130 (2.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 161 (3.37%) .NET
2 153 (3.20%) React
3 145 (3.03%) HTML
4 111 (2.32%) CSS
5 83 (1.73%) Node.js
6 70 (1.46%) REST
7 57 (1.19%) RESTful
8 53 (1.11%) Vue
9 41 (0.86%) AngularJS
10 39 (0.82%) SOAP
11 37 (0.77%) ASP.NET
11 37 (0.77%) Spring
12 36 (0.75%) XML
13 35 (0.73%) JSON
13 35 (0.73%) OAuth
14 34 (0.71%) Django
14 34 (0.71%) Spring Boot
15 31 (0.65%) GraphQL
15 31 (0.65%) Laravel
16 27 (0.56%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 414 (8.65%) Driving Licence
2 312 (6.52%) Onboarding
3 288 (6.02%) Self-Motivation
4 161 (3.37%) Management Information System
5 127 (2.65%) Legacy Systems
6 114 (2.38%) Analytical Mindset
7 102 (2.13%) Product Ownership
8 86 (1.80%) Cloud Native
9 85 (1.78%) Data Centre
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 48 (1.00%) Low-Code
15 41 (0.86%) Data Structures
16 38 (0.79%) EPoS
17 37 (0.77%) NHS
18 34 (0.71%) IoT
18 34 (0.71%) Virtual Team
19 32 (0.67%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 917 (19.17%) Windows
2 392 (8.19%) Windows Server
3 313 (6.54%) Linux
4 129 (2.70%) Windows 10
5 113 (2.36%) Windows Server 2016
6 111 (2.32%) Android
7 64 (1.34%) Apple iOS
8 57 (1.19%) Mac OS
9 38 (0.79%) Windows Server 2019
10 36 (0.75%) Unix
11 24 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 22 (0.46%) Windows Server 2012
13 21 (0.44%) CentOS
14 17 (0.36%) Windows 7
15 15 (0.31%) Ubuntu
16 11 (0.23%) Windows 8
17 10 (0.21%) VMS
18 8 (0.17%) Debian
18 8 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
19 3 (0.063%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 950 (19.86%) Continuous Improvement
2 876 (18.31%) Customer Service
3 647 (13.52%) Agile
4 467 (9.76%) Decision-Making
5 458 (9.57%) Mentoring
6 430 (8.99%) ITIL
7 400 (8.36%) Project Management
8 382 (7.98%) DevOps
9 375 (7.84%) CI/CD
10 345 (7.21%) Analytics
11 343 (7.17%) Business Intelligence
12 334 (6.98%) AI
13 305 (6.38%) Cybersecurity
14 303 (6.33%) Coaching
15 286 (5.98%) Computer Science
16 280 (5.85%) Process Improvement
16 280 (5.85%) Stakeholder Management
17 270 (5.64%) Service Delivery
18 268 (5.60%) CRM
19 266 (5.56%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 600 (12.54%) SQL
2 490 (10.24%) Python
3 287 (6.00%) JavaScript
4 232 (4.85%) PowerShell
5 183 (3.83%) C#
6 162 (3.39%) Java
7 90 (1.88%) TypeScript
8 76 (1.59%) Bash
9 67 (1.40%) PHP
10 66 (1.38%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 59 (1.23%) C++
12 45 (0.94%) C
13 41 (0.86%) T-SQL
14 27 (0.56%) PL/SQL
15 26 (0.54%) Kotlin
16 25 (0.52%) R
17 19 (0.40%) Bicep
17 19 (0.40%) Go
18 18 (0.38%) VBA
19 17 (0.36%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 906 (18.94%) Degree
2 354 (7.40%) Security Cleared
3 235 (4.91%) SC Cleared
4 175 (3.66%) DBS Check
5 150 (3.14%) Microsoft Certification
6 123 (2.57%) Computer Science Degree
7 92 (1.92%) BPSS Clearance
8 77 (1.61%) ACCA
9 67 (1.40%) A+ Certification
9 67 (1.40%) CIMA
9 67 (1.40%) Cisco Certification
10 65 (1.36%) DV Cleared
11 57 (1.19%) CCNA
12 52 (1.09%) Master's Degree
13 50 (1.05%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 49 (1.02%) HNC
15 44 (0.92%) CISSP
16 43 (0.90%) AWS Certification
17 41 (0.86%) Network+ Certification
18 40 (0.84%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 244 (5.10%) QA
2 181 (3.78%) Data Quality
3 143 (2.99%) GDPR
4 141 (2.95%) Cyber Essentials
5 113 (2.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 103 (2.15%) PCI DSS
7 84 (1.76%) SLA
8 65 (1.36%) NIST
9 64 (1.34%) Accessibility
10 36 (0.75%) ISO 9001
11 29 (0.61%) 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%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 6 (0.13%) GRC
17 5 (0.10%) COBIT
17 5 (0.10%) HIPAA
System Software
1 634 (13.25%) Active Directory
2 209 (4.37%) Hyper-V
3 182 (3.80%) Docker
4 130 (2.72%) VMware Infrastructure
5 72 (1.51%) Terminal Server
6 28 (0.59%) Firmware
7 21 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
9 13 (0.27%) vSphere
10 11 (0.23%) 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 (0.084%) 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%) iptables
16 1 (0.021%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 204 (4.26%) Terraform
2 183 (3.83%) Microsoft Intune
3 130 (2.72%) Kubernetes
4 86 (1.80%) Ansible
5 60 (1.25%) SCCM
6 51 (1.07%) 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%) Cisco CUCM
10 14 (0.29%) Jamf Pro
11 13 (0.27%) vCenter Server
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 1,329 (27.78%) Microsoft
2 230 (4.81%) VMware
3 145 (3.03%) Oracle
4 132 (2.76%) Veeam
5 116 (2.42%) SAP
6 112 (2.34%) Cisco
7 111 (2.32%) Google
8 102 (2.13%) Splunk
9 101 (2.11%) SolarWinds
10 78 (1.63%) ServiceNow
11 73 (1.53%) Tanium
12 72 (1.51%) Brocade
12 72 (1.51%) Nimble Storage
13 71 (1.48%) Databricks
14 66 (1.38%) Adobe
14 66 (1.38%) Apple
15 62 (1.30%) Salesforce
16 58 (1.21%) Sage
17 45 (0.94%) Dell
18 41 (0.86%) HubSpot