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 2 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 4 3
Rank change year-on-year -2 -1 +5
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 8,007 6,303 8,126
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 9.26% 18.21% 15.32%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.12% 20.87% 19.33%
Number of salaries quoted 5,466 3,495 3,180
10th Percentile £27,000 £25,684 £25,750
25th Percentile £31,250 £29,000 £33,094
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £43,087 £40,000 £48,846
Median % change year-on-year +7.72% -18.11% +2.83%
75th Percentile £58,750 £56,313 £63,750
90th Percentile £73,750 £68,750 £80,000
UK median annual salary £46,584 £45,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +3.52% -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 61,006 30,204 42,028
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.54% 87.28% 79.23%
Number of salaries quoted 42,966 16,026 21,678
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,750 £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% -2.78%
75th Percentile £70,000 £64,750 £67,500
90th Percentile £87,500 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £58,465
% change year-on-year +9.09% -5.93% -2.56%

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 2 October 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 2 October 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 -7 2,023 £45,000 - 1,838
South East -2 1,885 £41,585 +1.43% 1,999
Midlands -6 1,440 £42,500 +12.58% 1,283
North West -3 1,048 £45,250 -7.61% 945
South West -2 978 £45,000 +23.29% 979
East of England -1 816 £43,750 +34.62% 906
West Midlands -7 812 £42,500 - 780
East Midlands -7 626 £42,000 +29.23% 503
Yorkshire -7 612 £42,500 +26.87% 631
North East +6 372 £50,000 +49.25% 279
Scotland +4 328 £37,500 - 650
Northern Ireland +7 317 £70,000 +18.64% 379
Wales -14 236 £41,250 -13.16% 198
Isle of Man +1 3 £35,000 - 9
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
1 470 (5.87%) SharePoint
2 361 (4.51%) Microsoft Exchange
3 66 (0.82%) Confluence
4 63 (0.79%) CMS
5 55 (0.69%) IIS
6 37 (0.46%) Apache
7 33 (0.41%) WordPress
8 31 (0.39%) Apache Airflow
9 28 (0.35%) Sitecore CMS
10 22 (0.27%) Apache Spark
11 14 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
12 13 (0.16%) Jupyter
13 12 (0.15%) nginx
14 10 (0.12%) WebSphere
15 9 (0.11%) WebLogic
16 8 (0.100%) SAS
17 7 (0.087%) CICS
17 7 (0.087%) OpenEdge
18 4 (0.050%) Oracle SOA Suite
18 4 (0.050%) Tomcat
Applications
1 593 (7.41%) Microsoft Office
2 539 (6.73%) Microsoft Excel
3 86 (1.07%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 66 (0.82%) Spreadsheet
5 45 (0.56%) AutoCAD
5 45 (0.56%) MS Visio
6 40 (0.50%) Microsoft Project
7 36 (0.45%) Simulink
8 26 (0.32%) Revit
9 18 (0.22%) EPLAN
10 16 (0.20%) SOLIDWORKS
11 10 (0.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 10 (0.12%) Navisworks
12 9 (0.11%) OrCAD
13 8 (0.100%) Chatbot
14 7 (0.087%) Siemens NX
15 6 (0.075%) Adobe Illustrator
15 6 (0.075%) Fusion 360
15 6 (0.075%) Lightworks
16 5 (0.062%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 75 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
2 64 (0.80%) NetSuite
3 52 (0.65%) SAP S/4HANA
4 34 (0.42%) Shopify
5 23 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
6 21 (0.26%) Dynamics NAV
7 20 (0.25%) Workday HCM
8 16 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
8 16 (0.20%) SAP Business One
9 13 (0.16%) IBM Planning Analytics
9 13 (0.16%) Magento
9 13 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
9 13 (0.16%) SAP ERP
10 12 (0.15%) Oracle Cash Management
10 12 (0.15%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 11 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
11 11 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
12 10 (0.12%) JDE EnterpriseOne
12 10 (0.12%) Sage X3
13 9 (0.11%) Sage 50
Cloud Services
1 1,412 (17.63%) Azure
2 1,273 (15.90%) Microsoft 365
3 707 (8.83%) AWS
4 624 (7.79%) Power Platform
5 440 (5.50%) Entra ID
6 296 (3.70%) SaaS
7 236 (2.95%) GCP
8 180 (2.25%) Azure DevOps
9 155 (1.94%) PowerApps
10 154 (1.92%) GitHub
11 153 (1.91%) Dynamics 365
12 145 (1.81%) Power Automate
13 123 (1.54%) OneDrive
14 116 (1.45%) Serverless
15 94 (1.17%) Microsoft Copilot
16 77 (0.96%) Google Workspace
17 70 (0.87%) Amazon S3
18 69 (0.86%) AWS CloudFormation
19 68 (0.85%) GitHub Actions
20 57 (0.71%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 448 (5.60%) DNS
1 448 (5.60%) Firewall
2 371 (4.63%) DHCP
3 292 (3.65%) VPN
4 233 (2.91%) TCP/IP
5 212 (2.65%) Wi-Fi
6 200 (2.50%) WAN
7 194 (2.42%) LAN
8 175 (2.19%) Wireless
9 150 (1.87%) VLAN
10 128 (1.60%) Network Security
11 118 (1.47%) VoIP
12 63 (0.79%) Broadband
13 59 (0.74%) Internet
14 31 (0.39%) SSL
15 30 (0.37%) SAN
16 29 (0.36%) Remote Desktop
17 27 (0.34%) SD-WAN
18 26 (0.32%) Ethernet
19 25 (0.31%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 499 (6.23%) Power BI
2 331 (4.13%) SQL Server
3 137 (1.71%) MySQL
4 122 (1.52%) Relational Database
5 119 (1.49%) Amazon RDS
6 107 (1.34%) Data Warehouse
7 98 (1.22%) PostgreSQL
8 84 (1.05%) NoSQL
9 75 (0.94%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 70 (0.87%) Tableau
11 55 (0.69%) MongoDB
11 55 (0.69%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 50 (0.62%) Data Lake
13 49 (0.61%) Big Data
13 49 (0.61%) Power Query
14 47 (0.59%) Electronic Patient Records
15 45 (0.56%) Azure SQL Database
16 33 (0.41%) Metadata
16 33 (0.41%) Oracle Reports
17 28 (0.35%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 317 (3.96%) Git
2 253 (3.16%) JIRA
3 100 (1.25%) GitLab
4 91 (1.14%) Jenkins
5 40 (0.50%) Eclipse
6 36 (0.45%) Selenium
7 35 (0.44%) Subversion
8 32 (0.40%) Cucumber
9 29 (0.36%) Claude Code
10 26 (0.32%) JUnit
11 24 (0.30%) Oracle Forms
12 23 (0.29%) Bitbucket
12 23 (0.29%) Postman
13 22 (0.27%) Cypress.io
14 21 (0.26%) Rational DOORS
15 19 (0.24%) LabVIEW
16 15 (0.19%) Burp Suite
17 13 (0.16%) SonarQube
17 13 (0.16%) Team Foundation Server
18 12 (0.15%) Metasploit
General
1 3,951 (49.34%) Social Skills
2 2,211 (27.61%) Analytical Skills
3 1,295 (16.17%) Finance
4 938 (11.71%) Manufacturing
5 650 (8.12%) Organisational Skills
6 430 (5.37%) Retail
7 429 (5.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 380 (4.75%) Public Sector
9 349 (4.36%) Electronics
10 336 (4.20%) Law
11 331 (4.13%) Legal
12 323 (4.03%) Aerospace
13 303 (3.78%) Marketing
14 207 (2.59%) Telecoms
15 155 (1.94%) Influencing Skills
16 145 (1.81%) Automotive
17 135 (1.69%) Documentation Skills
18 119 (1.49%) Presentation Skills
19 113 (1.41%) Banking
20 110 (1.37%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,072 (13.39%) Analyst
2 839 (10.48%) Senior
3 761 (9.50%) IT Support
4 716 (8.94%) Developer
5 601 (7.51%) Support Engineer
6 423 (5.28%) Lead
7 407 (5.08%) Support Analyst
8 398 (4.97%) IT Engineer
9 360 (4.50%) Consultant
10 303 (3.78%) IT Support Engineer
11 290 (3.62%) Technical Support
12 270 (3.37%) Support Technician
13 248 (3.10%) Technical Engineer
14 237 (2.96%) IT Technician
15 234 (2.92%) Architect
16 228 (2.85%) Software Engineer
16 228 (2.85%) Systems Engineer
17 225 (2.81%) Technical Support Engineer
18 210 (2.62%) Senior Developer
19 193 (2.41%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 374 (4.67%) .NET
2 289 (3.61%) Terraform
3 225 (2.81%) React
4 205 (2.56%) REST
5 189 (2.36%) HTML
6 140 (1.75%) CSS
7 138 (1.72%) RESTful
8 97 (1.21%) Node.js
8 97 (1.21%) SOAP
9 94 (1.17%) Web Services
10 84 (1.05%) ASP.NET
11 83 (1.04%) XML
12 79 (0.99%) Middleware
13 78 (0.97%) Spring
13 78 (0.97%) Vue
14 76 (0.95%) JSON
15 72 (0.90%) AngularJS
16 71 (0.89%) Spring Boot
17 64 (0.80%) Kafka
18 51 (0.64%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 717 (8.95%) Driving Licence
2 566 (7.07%) Onboarding
3 422 (5.27%) Self-Motivation
4 370 (4.62%) Management Information System
5 214 (2.67%) Cloud Native
6 180 (2.25%) Product Ownership
7 165 (2.06%) Enterprise Software
8 148 (1.85%) Legacy Systems
9 136 (1.70%) Robotics
10 129 (1.61%) Data Centre
11 96 (1.20%) Analytical Mindset
12 95 (1.19%) NHS
13 88 (1.10%) Distributed Systems
14 84 (1.05%) Cyber Threat
15 83 (1.04%) Security Posture
16 80 (1.00%) IoT
17 77 (0.96%) CCTV
18 74 (0.92%) Social Media
19 73 (0.91%) Virtual Team
20 72 (0.90%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 1,215 (15.17%) Windows
2 537 (6.71%) Windows Server
3 450 (5.62%) Linux
4 127 (1.59%) Windows 10
5 101 (1.26%) Windows Server 2016
6 88 (1.10%) Apple iOS
7 86 (1.07%) Android
8 84 (1.05%) Mac OS
9 43 (0.54%) Unix
10 40 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
11 25 (0.31%) Ubuntu
12 16 (0.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 15 (0.19%) Embedded Linux
13 15 (0.19%) VMS
14 13 (0.16%) Debian
15 10 (0.12%) FreeRTOS
16 7 (0.087%) CentOS
16 7 (0.087%) Rocky
16 7 (0.087%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.062%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,184 (27.28%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,504 (18.78%) Customer Service
3 1,117 (13.95%) Agile
4 851 (10.63%) Decision-Making
5 840 (10.49%) Stakeholder Management
6 806 (10.07%) Mentoring
7 796 (9.94%) AI
8 745 (9.30%) CI/CD
9 685 (8.56%) Project Delivery
10 657 (8.21%) Collaborative Working
11 626 (7.82%) Analytics
12 610 (7.62%) Cybersecurity
13 608 (7.59%) DevOps
14 607 (7.58%) Software Engineering
15 601 (7.51%) ERP
16 579 (7.23%) ITIL
17 552 (6.89%) Project Management
18 540 (6.74%) Business Intelligence
19 504 (6.29%) CRM
20 497 (6.21%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 1,112 (13.89%) SQL
2 793 (9.90%) Python
3 451 (5.63%) C#
4 439 (5.48%) JavaScript
5 323 (4.03%) Java
6 302 (3.77%) PowerShell
7 210 (2.62%) C++
8 205 (2.56%) TypeScript
9 127 (1.59%) Bash
10 85 (1.06%) C
11 65 (0.81%) PHP
12 62 (0.77%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 56 (0.70%) T-SQL
14 52 (0.65%) Ruby
15 49 (0.61%) MATLAB
16 46 (0.57%) Shell Script
17 45 (0.56%) PL/SQL
18 42 (0.52%) Rust
19 40 (0.50%) Perl
20 36 (0.45%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,304 (16.29%) Degree
2 749 (9.35%) Security Cleared
3 523 (6.53%) SC Cleared
4 260 (3.25%) HNC
5 229 (2.86%) DBS Check
6 219 (2.74%) HND
7 216 (2.70%) Computer Science Degree
8 191 (2.39%) Microsoft Certification
9 185 (2.31%) DV Cleared
10 169 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
11 138 (1.72%) Azure Certification
12 101 (1.26%) Chartered Engineer
13 91 (1.14%) Cisco Certification
14 78 (0.97%) A+ Certification
14 78 (0.97%) Master's Degree
15 74 (0.92%) NVQ Level 3
15 74 (0.92%) PMI Certification
16 62 (0.77%) CISSP
17 57 (0.71%) CCNA
18 56 (0.70%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 495 (6.18%) QA
2 305 (3.81%) Data Quality
3 237 (2.96%) GDPR
4 206 (2.57%) Accessibility
5 188 (2.35%) SLA
6 170 (2.12%) Cyber Essentials
7 135 (1.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 107 (1.34%) PCI DSS
9 79 (0.99%) NIST
10 49 (0.61%) ISO 9001
11 42 (0.52%) PMO
12 35 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 22 (0.27%) DO-254
14 20 (0.25%) GMP
14 20 (0.25%) Good Clinical Practice
15 19 (0.24%) NCSC
16 17 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
17 16 (0.20%) GRC
18 13 (0.16%) GxP
18 13 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 868 (10.84%) Active Directory
2 293 (3.66%) Hyper-V
3 270 (3.37%) Docker
4 211 (2.64%) VMware Infrastructure
5 83 (1.04%) Firmware
6 72 (0.90%) Terminal Server
7 43 (0.54%) Virtual Desktop
8 35 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
9 31 (0.39%) Embedded Firmware
10 26 (0.32%) vSphere
11 14 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
12 12 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.062%) ClearTrust
13 5 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 5 (0.062%) Squid
14 4 (0.050%) KVM
15 3 (0.037%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.037%) VMware Server
16 2 (0.025%) Samba
16 2 (0.025%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 270 (3.37%) Microsoft Intune
2 232 (2.90%) Kubernetes
3 110 (1.37%) Ansible
4 68 (0.85%) Grafana
5 51 (0.64%) Prometheus
6 50 (0.62%) BMC PATROL
6 50 (0.62%) SCCM
7 46 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
8 24 (0.30%) Jamf Pro
9 20 (0.25%) FortiGate
10 19 (0.24%) Functional Safety
11 15 (0.19%) Puppet
12 14 (0.17%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
13 13 (0.16%) Kibana
14 12 (0.15%) Nagios
14 12 (0.15%) Nmap
15 11 (0.14%) logstash
16 10 (0.12%) Proxmox
17 9 (0.11%) Argo
17 9 (0.11%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,420 (30.22%) Microsoft
2 342 (4.27%) VMware
3 230 (2.87%) SAP
4 228 (2.85%) Google
5 201 (2.51%) Workday
6 178 (2.22%) Oracle
7 143 (1.79%) Veeam
8 141 (1.76%) Cisco
9 129 (1.61%) ServiceNow
10 123 (1.54%) Splunk
11 107 (1.34%) Salesforce
12 103 (1.29%) Sage
13 92 (1.15%) SolarWinds
14 80 (1.00%) Tanium
15 79 (0.99%) Fortinet
16 75 (0.94%) Databricks
17 73 (0.91%) Brocade
17 73 (0.91%) Nimble Storage
18 67 (0.84%) Apple
19 66 (0.82%) Siemens