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

6 months to
13 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 4 3
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 7,224 6,504 8,230
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 8.68% 18.83% 14.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.39% 21.74% 18.89%
Number of salaries quoted 5,095 3,554 3,520
10th Percentile £27,000 £25,684 £25,750
25th Percentile £31,250 £29,000 £32,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £40,000 £47,500
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -15.79% -1.04%
75th Percentile £58,750 £57,500 £63,750
90th Percentile £73,750 £70,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £47,000 £45,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +4.44% -14.29% -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 58,297 29,918 43,563
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.06% 86.62% 78.29%
Number of salaries quoted 41,329 16,199 24,135
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,500 £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% -3.23%
75th Percentile £70,000 £65,000 £67,500
90th Percentile £90,000 £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 13 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 13 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 -8 1,812 £45,000 +7.14% 1,099
South East -4 1,719 £42,500 - 1,316
Midlands -7 1,303 £42,500 +11.84% 883
North West -5 940 £45,000 -5.26% 558
South West -4 908 £45,000 +28.57% 645
East of England -4 725 £42,500 +21.43% 558
West Midlands -8 721 £42,500 -4.00% 531
East Midlands -8 580 £41,250 +17.86% 350
Yorkshire -8 574 £42,500 +28.79% 382
Scotland +1 317 £33,500 -28.72% 365
North East 0 298 £48,000 +26.32% 179
Northern Ireland +3 248 £70,000 +18.64% 177
Wales -18 207 £42,500 -11.68% 136
Isle of Man +1 3 £35,000 - 7
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
1 436 (6.04%) SharePoint
2 350 (4.84%) Microsoft Exchange
3 64 (0.89%) Confluence
4 59 (0.82%) CMS
5 54 (0.75%) IIS
6 31 (0.43%) Apache
7 30 (0.42%) WordPress
8 27 (0.37%) Sitecore CMS
9 26 (0.36%) Apache Airflow
10 16 (0.22%) Apache Spark
11 12 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
12 11 (0.15%) SAS
13 10 (0.14%) WebSphere
14 9 (0.12%) nginx
14 9 (0.12%) WebLogic
15 8 (0.11%) Jupyter
16 7 (0.097%) OpenEdge
17 5 (0.069%) CICS
17 5 (0.069%) Skype for Business
18 4 (0.055%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 509 (7.05%) Microsoft Office
2 469 (6.49%) Microsoft Excel
3 71 (0.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 59 (0.82%) Spreadsheet
5 40 (0.55%) MS Visio
6 36 (0.50%) AutoCAD
6 36 (0.50%) Microsoft Project
7 30 (0.42%) Simulink
8 23 (0.32%) Revit
9 13 (0.18%) EPLAN
10 11 (0.15%) SOLIDWORKS
11 9 (0.12%) Navisworks
12 8 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 8 (0.11%) Chatbot
12 8 (0.11%) Fusion 360
13 6 (0.083%) Adobe Illustrator
13 6 (0.083%) Adobe XD
13 6 (0.083%) Siemens NX
13 6 (0.083%) Sketch
14 5 (0.069%) Lightworks
Business Applications
1 74 (1.02%) Dynamics CRM
2 62 (0.86%) NetSuite
3 48 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
4 31 (0.43%) Shopify
5 21 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
6 20 (0.28%) Dynamics NAV
7 18 (0.25%) Workday HCM
8 17 (0.24%) SAP Business One
9 16 (0.22%) Magento
10 14 (0.19%) Dynamics AX
10 14 (0.19%) IBM Planning Analytics
10 14 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
11 13 (0.18%) SAP ERP
12 12 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
13 10 (0.14%) JDE EnterpriseOne
13 10 (0.14%) Oracle Cash Management
13 10 (0.14%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 10 (0.14%) Sage X3
14 9 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
14 9 (0.12%) Sage 50
Cloud Services
1 1,357 (18.78%) Azure
2 1,207 (16.71%) Microsoft 365
3 693 (9.59%) AWS
4 586 (8.11%) Power Platform
5 368 (5.09%) Entra ID
6 259 (3.59%) SaaS
7 232 (3.21%) GCP
8 172 (2.38%) Azure DevOps
9 151 (2.09%) Dynamics 365
10 150 (2.08%) PowerApps
11 137 (1.90%) GitHub
12 134 (1.85%) Power Automate
13 125 (1.73%) Serverless
14 98 (1.36%) OneDrive
15 86 (1.19%) Microsoft Copilot
16 64 (0.89%) Amazon S3
17 63 (0.87%) Google Workspace
18 59 (0.82%) AWS Lambda
18 59 (0.82%) GitHub Actions
19 58 (0.80%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 436 (6.04%) Firewall
2 417 (5.77%) DNS
3 355 (4.91%) DHCP
4 276 (3.82%) VPN
5 232 (3.21%) TCP/IP
6 197 (2.73%) WAN
7 193 (2.67%) Wi-Fi
8 189 (2.62%) LAN
9 170 (2.35%) Wireless
10 144 (1.99%) VLAN
11 120 (1.66%) Network Security
12 115 (1.59%) VoIP
13 66 (0.91%) Broadband
14 48 (0.66%) Internet
15 30 (0.42%) SSL
16 27 (0.37%) Remote Desktop
16 27 (0.37%) SAN
16 27 (0.37%) SD-WAN
17 26 (0.36%) HTTP
18 24 (0.33%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 472 (6.53%) Power BI
2 328 (4.54%) SQL Server
3 137 (1.90%) MySQL
4 118 (1.63%) Amazon RDS
5 116 (1.61%) Relational Database
6 104 (1.44%) Data Warehouse
7 92 (1.27%) PostgreSQL
8 81 (1.12%) NoSQL
9 79 (1.09%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 71 (0.98%) Tableau
11 59 (0.82%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 50 (0.69%) MongoDB
13 47 (0.65%) Data Lake
13 47 (0.65%) Electronic Patient Records
14 46 (0.64%) Big Data
14 46 (0.64%) Power Query
15 42 (0.58%) Azure SQL Database
16 30 (0.42%) Oracle Reports
17 29 (0.40%) DynamoDB
17 29 (0.40%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 297 (4.11%) Git
2 233 (3.23%) JIRA
3 76 (1.05%) Jenkins
4 74 (1.02%) GitLab
5 38 (0.53%) Eclipse
6 33 (0.46%) Subversion
7 30 (0.42%) Cucumber
7 30 (0.42%) Selenium
8 26 (0.36%) JUnit
9 25 (0.35%) Claude Code
10 23 (0.32%) Rational DOORS
11 22 (0.30%) Bitbucket
11 22 (0.30%) Oracle Forms
12 20 (0.28%) Postman
13 19 (0.26%) Cypress.io
14 15 (0.21%) SonarQube
15 13 (0.18%) Burp Suite
15 13 (0.18%) LabVIEW
16 12 (0.17%) Visual Studio
17 11 (0.15%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 3,530 (48.86%) Social Skills
2 1,993 (27.59%) Analytical Skills
3 1,141 (15.79%) Finance
4 732 (10.13%) Manufacturing
5 514 (7.12%) Organisational Skills
6 408 (5.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 350 (4.84%) Retail
8 336 (4.65%) Law
9 324 (4.49%) Public Sector
10 302 (4.18%) Legal
11 275 (3.81%) Electronics
12 269 (3.72%) Marketing
13 267 (3.70%) Aerospace
14 174 (2.41%) Telecoms
15 146 (2.02%) Influencing Skills
16 133 (1.84%) Banking
17 114 (1.58%) Documentation Skills
18 109 (1.51%) Automotive
19 95 (1.32%) Military
20 84 (1.16%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 934 (12.93%) Analyst
2 763 (10.56%) Senior
3 712 (9.86%) IT Support
4 700 (9.69%) Developer
5 571 (7.90%) Support Engineer
6 391 (5.41%) Lead
7 381 (5.27%) IT Engineer
8 366 (5.07%) Support Analyst
9 330 (4.57%) Consultant
10 285 (3.95%) IT Support Engineer
11 276 (3.82%) Technical Support
12 271 (3.75%) Support Technician
13 238 (3.29%) Technical Engineer
14 237 (3.28%) Architect
15 235 (3.25%) Systems Engineer
16 231 (3.20%) IT Technician
17 224 (3.10%) Software Engineer
18 216 (2.99%) Technical Support Engineer
19 198 (2.74%) Senior Developer
20 184 (2.55%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 352 (4.87%) .NET
2 268 (3.71%) Terraform
3 217 (3.00%) React
4 196 (2.71%) REST
5 193 (2.67%) HTML
6 141 (1.95%) CSS
7 131 (1.81%) RESTful
8 98 (1.36%) SOAP
9 92 (1.27%) Node.js
10 88 (1.22%) Web Services
11 84 (1.16%) XML
12 82 (1.14%) ASP.NET
12 82 (1.14%) Vue
13 79 (1.09%) Middleware
14 78 (1.08%) AngularJS
14 78 (1.08%) JSON
15 74 (1.02%) Spring
16 67 (0.93%) Spring Boot
17 54 (0.75%) Kafka
18 51 (0.71%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 616 (8.53%) Driving Licence
2 493 (6.82%) Onboarding
3 379 (5.25%) Self-Motivation
4 327 (4.53%) Management Information System
5 201 (2.78%) Cloud Native
6 176 (2.44%) Product Ownership
7 148 (2.05%) Legacy Systems
8 129 (1.79%) Enterprise Software
9 124 (1.72%) Data Centre
10 110 (1.52%) Robotics
11 92 (1.27%) Analytical Mindset
12 88 (1.22%) NHS
13 87 (1.20%) Distributed Systems
14 80 (1.11%) Security Posture
15 75 (1.04%) Cyber Threat
16 73 (1.01%) Virtual Team
17 70 (0.97%) CCTV
17 70 (0.97%) IoT
18 67 (0.93%) Mobile App
19 63 (0.87%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 1,153 (15.96%) Windows
2 515 (7.13%) Windows Server
3 456 (6.31%) Linux
4 127 (1.76%) Windows 10
5 101 (1.40%) Windows Server 2016
6 90 (1.25%) Apple iOS
7 85 (1.18%) Android
8 82 (1.14%) Mac OS
9 43 (0.60%) Unix
10 41 (0.57%) Windows Server 2019
11 29 (0.40%) Ubuntu
12 18 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 18 (0.25%) VMS
13 15 (0.21%) Debian
14 13 (0.18%) Embedded Linux
15 11 (0.15%) CentOS
16 9 (0.12%) FreeRTOS
17 7 (0.097%) Windows Server 2012
18 6 (0.083%) Rocky
19 5 (0.069%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,956 (27.08%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,350 (18.69%) Customer Service
3 1,045 (14.47%) Agile
4 786 (10.88%) Decision-Making
5 736 (10.19%) Mentoring
6 710 (9.83%) AI
7 708 (9.80%) Stakeholder Management
8 696 (9.63%) CI/CD
9 609 (8.43%) Project Delivery
10 583 (8.07%) Analytics
11 582 (8.06%) Collaborative Working
11 582 (8.06%) DevOps
12 574 (7.95%) Software Engineering
13 570 (7.89%) ITIL
14 558 (7.72%) ERP
15 545 (7.54%) Cybersecurity
16 507 (7.02%) Business Intelligence
17 492 (6.81%) Project Management
18 455 (6.30%) CRM
19 440 (6.09%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 1,069 (14.80%) SQL
2 737 (10.20%) Python
3 437 (6.05%) C#
4 436 (6.04%) JavaScript
5 315 (4.36%) Java
6 289 (4.00%) PowerShell
7 199 (2.75%) C++
8 194 (2.69%) TypeScript
9 121 (1.67%) Bash
10 78 (1.08%) C
11 70 (0.97%) PHP
12 63 (0.87%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 58 (0.80%) T-SQL
14 48 (0.66%) Ruby
15 45 (0.62%) Shell Script
16 44 (0.61%) PL/SQL
17 42 (0.58%) Perl
18 41 (0.57%) MATLAB
19 37 (0.51%) Go
20 36 (0.50%) Rust
Qualifications
1 1,166 (16.14%) Degree
2 679 (9.40%) Security Cleared
3 476 (6.59%) SC Cleared
4 211 (2.92%) DBS Check
5 196 (2.71%) Computer Science Degree
6 185 (2.56%) Microsoft Certification
7 182 (2.52%) HNC
8 177 (2.45%) DV Cleared
9 167 (2.31%) HND
10 153 (2.12%) BPSS Clearance
11 130 (1.80%) Azure Certification
12 93 (1.29%) Cisco Certification
13 92 (1.27%) Chartered Engineer
14 77 (1.07%) PMI Certification
15 72 (1.00%) A+ Certification
16 69 (0.96%) Master's Degree
17 68 (0.94%) CISSP
18 60 (0.83%) CCNA
19 56 (0.78%) PMP
20 55 (0.76%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 464 (6.42%) QA
2 289 (4.00%) Data Quality
3 217 (3.00%) GDPR
4 202 (2.80%) Accessibility
5 175 (2.42%) SLA
6 166 (2.30%) Cyber Essentials
7 133 (1.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 103 (1.43%) PCI DSS
9 88 (1.22%) NIST
10 37 (0.51%) ISO 9001
11 33 (0.46%) PMO
12 32 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 18 (0.25%) GMP
13 18 (0.25%) Good Clinical Practice
14 17 (0.24%) DO-254
14 17 (0.24%) NCSC
15 14 (0.19%) GRC
16 13 (0.18%) Actionable Recommendations
16 13 (0.18%) GxP
17 12 (0.17%) TickIT
System Software
1 798 (11.05%) Active Directory
2 286 (3.96%) Hyper-V
3 256 (3.54%) Docker
4 212 (2.93%) VMware Infrastructure
5 72 (1.00%) Terminal Server
6 71 (0.98%) Firmware
7 40 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
8 32 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
9 29 (0.40%) vSphere
10 26 (0.36%) Embedded Firmware
11 15 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
12 7 (0.097%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.069%) ClearTrust
13 5 (0.069%) KVM
13 5 (0.069%) Squid
14 4 (0.055%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 3 (0.042%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 3 (0.042%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.042%) VMware Server
15 3 (0.042%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 249 (3.45%) Microsoft Intune
2 221 (3.06%) Kubernetes
3 108 (1.50%) Ansible
4 60 (0.83%) Grafana
5 53 (0.73%) SCCM
6 43 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
7 41 (0.57%) Prometheus
8 23 (0.32%) BMC PATROL
9 21 (0.29%) Jamf Pro
10 19 (0.26%) FortiGate
11 17 (0.24%) Puppet
12 15 (0.21%) Functional Safety
13 13 (0.18%) Kibana
14 11 (0.15%) logstash
14 11 (0.15%) Nmap
15 10 (0.14%) Nagios
15 10 (0.14%) Podman
15 10 (0.14%) Proxmox
16 9 (0.12%) Failover Clustering
16 9 (0.12%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 2,179 (30.16%) Microsoft
2 339 (4.69%) VMware
3 205 (2.84%) SAP
4 198 (2.74%) Google
5 168 (2.33%) Oracle
6 150 (2.08%) Workday
7 135 (1.87%) Cisco
8 132 (1.83%) Veeam
9 118 (1.63%) ServiceNow
9 118 (1.63%) Splunk
10 101 (1.40%) Salesforce
11 97 (1.34%) Sage
12 92 (1.27%) SolarWinds
13 80 (1.11%) Tanium
14 77 (1.07%) Databricks
15 73 (1.01%) Fortinet
15 73 (1.01%) Nimble Storage
16 72 (1.00%) Brocade
17 64 (0.89%) Apple
18 57 (0.79%) SonicWALL