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 28 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -9 +3 +7
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 4,820 5,204 10,437
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 7.41% 19.17% 15.40%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.28% 21.01% 18.35%
Number of salaries quoted 3,489 3,151 6,864
10th Percentile £26,250 £26,250 £25,500
25th Percentile £29,750 £32,000 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £47,500 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year -10.53% +5.56% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £63,750 £60,000
90th Percentile £75,000 £79,000 £72,500
UK median annual salary £47,500 £52,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.52% +5.00% -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 46,868 24,770 56,888
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 72.07% 91.25% 83.94%
Number of salaries quoted 28,736 13,852 40,821
10th Percentile £29,000 £28,000 £27,000
25th Percentile £36,475 £37,500 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £68,568 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £82,500 £77,500
UK median annual salary £57,500 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -4.17% +9.09% -10.93%

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 28 April 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 28 April 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 -19 1,288 £42,500 -7.61% 607
South East -8 1,158 £45,000 -10.00% 849
Midlands -22 887 £40,000 -11.11% 432
North West -15 669 £42,500 -14.14% 356
South West -8 548 £43,500 -3.33% 263
West Midlands -24 526 £42,500 -15.00% 261
Yorkshire -12 488 £40,000 -4.76% 170
East of England -9 464 £40,678 -18.65% 230
East Midlands -6 358 £35,000 -9.09% 170
Scotland -6 299 £36,000 -28.00% 113
North East -14 131 £48,500 +7.78% 90
Wales -12 118 £42,500 -15.66% 76
Northern Ireland -6 85 £35,000 -36.36% 66
Isle of Man -1 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
1 283 (5.87%) Microsoft Exchange
2 254 (5.27%) SharePoint
3 39 (0.81%) CMS
4 37 (0.77%) Confluence
5 23 (0.48%) IIS
5 23 (0.48%) WordPress
6 18 (0.37%) Apache
7 16 (0.33%) Apache Spark
8 14 (0.29%) Apache Airflow
9 11 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2013
9 11 (0.23%) SAS
10 9 (0.19%) Exchange Server 2007
10 9 (0.19%) Exchange Server 2010
11 8 (0.17%) nginx
12 7 (0.15%) Drupal
13 5 (0.10%) OpenStack
13 5 (0.10%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 5 (0.10%) Skype for Business
14 4 (0.083%) Moodle
14 4 (0.083%) Totara
Applications
1 315 (6.54%) Microsoft Office
2 306 (6.35%) Microsoft Excel
3 46 (0.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 36 (0.75%) MS Visio
5 33 (0.68%) Spreadsheet
6 15 (0.31%) Microsoft Project
7 10 (0.21%) Adobe Illustrator
8 9 (0.19%) Fusion 360
9 8 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 7 (0.15%) Photoshop
11 5 (0.10%) AutoCAD
12 4 (0.083%) Simulink
13 3 (0.062%) Trello
14 2 (0.041%) Elementor
14 2 (0.041%) Sketch
14 2 (0.041%) Weka
15 1 (0.021%) Adobe XD
15 1 (0.021%) Autodesk Inventor
15 1 (0.021%) CANalyzer
15 1 (0.021%) Notion
Business Applications
1 45 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (0.73%) Dynamics CRM
3 25 (0.52%) NetSuite
4 17 (0.35%) Dynamics NAV
5 15 (0.31%) Sage X3
5 15 (0.31%) SAP ERP
5 15 (0.31%) Shopify
6 14 (0.29%) Magento
7 13 (0.27%) iTrent
7 13 (0.27%) SAP CO
8 9 (0.19%) Dynamics AX
9 7 (0.15%) Q-Pulse
9 7 (0.15%) SAP Business One
9 7 (0.15%) Workday HCM
10 5 (0.10%) IBM Planning Analytics
10 5 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
11 4 (0.083%) Dynamics GP
11 4 (0.083%) SAP FI
11 4 (0.083%) SAP FI/CO
11 4 (0.083%) SAP PP
Cloud Services
1 966 (20.04%) Azure
2 825 (17.12%) Microsoft 365
3 461 (9.56%) AWS
4 345 (7.16%) Power Platform
5 221 (4.59%) Entra ID
6 204 (4.23%) SaaS
7 135 (2.80%) GCP
8 122 (2.53%) Azure DevOps
9 110 (2.28%) Serverless
10 106 (2.20%) GitHub
11 81 (1.68%) Dynamics 365
12 74 (1.54%) Azure Data Factory
13 71 (1.47%) Power Automate
14 63 (1.31%) Amazon S3
15 59 (1.22%) AWS Lambda
15 59 (1.22%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 57 (1.18%) Google Workspace
17 53 (1.10%) GitHub Actions
18 48 (1.00%) IaaS
19 47 (0.98%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 312 (6.47%) DNS
2 293 (6.08%) Firewall
3 260 (5.39%) DHCP
4 166 (3.44%) WAN
5 158 (3.28%) VPN
6 127 (2.63%) LAN
7 126 (2.61%) Wi-Fi
8 116 (2.41%) TCP/IP
9 107 (2.22%) Broadband
10 91 (1.89%) Wireless
11 83 (1.72%) VLAN
12 69 (1.43%) VoIP
13 59 (1.22%) Network Security
14 44 (0.91%) SD-WAN
15 34 (0.71%) Internet
16 31 (0.64%) SAN
17 23 (0.48%) Remote Desktop
17 23 (0.48%) Unified Communications
18 22 (0.46%) HTTP
19 19 (0.39%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 290 (6.02%) Power BI
2 208 (4.32%) SQL Server
3 78 (1.62%) SQL Server Reporting Services
4 71 (1.47%) PostgreSQL
5 69 (1.43%) Amazon RDS
6 68 (1.41%) NoSQL
7 65 (1.35%) MySQL
8 59 (1.22%) Relational Database
9 58 (1.20%) Data Warehouse
10 49 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 44 (0.91%) Azure SQL Database
12 43 (0.89%) Power Query
13 40 (0.83%) Tableau
14 38 (0.79%) DynamoDB
15 35 (0.73%) MongoDB
16 24 (0.50%) Amazon Redshift
16 24 (0.50%) Big Data
16 24 (0.50%) Data Lake
17 23 (0.48%) Metadata
18 19 (0.39%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 184 (3.82%) Git
2 145 (3.01%) JIRA
3 73 (1.51%) GitLab
4 53 (1.10%) Jenkins
5 23 (0.48%) Rational DOORS
6 20 (0.41%) Selenium
7 18 (0.37%) Cucumber
8 17 (0.35%) Maven
9 16 (0.33%) SonarQube
10 14 (0.29%) Bitbucket
10 14 (0.29%) Cypress.io
11 13 (0.27%) LabVIEW
12 9 (0.19%) JUnit
13 8 (0.17%) Burp Suite
13 8 (0.17%) Metasploit
13 8 (0.17%) Visual Studio
14 7 (0.15%) CircleCI
15 6 (0.12%) JMeter
15 6 (0.12%) Postman
15 6 (0.12%) Subversion
General
1 2,350 (48.76%) Social Skills
2 1,359 (28.20%) Analytical Skills
3 860 (17.84%) Finance
4 320 (6.64%) Organisational Skills
5 299 (6.20%) Manufacturing
6 222 (4.61%) Public Sector
7 207 (4.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 193 (4.00%) Marketing
9 176 (3.65%) Retail
10 170 (3.53%) Legal
11 152 (3.15%) Law
12 129 (2.68%) Banking
13 127 (2.63%) Telecoms
14 125 (2.59%) Electronics
15 90 (1.87%) Presentation Skills
16 84 (1.74%) Documentation Skills
17 73 (1.51%) Automotive
18 72 (1.49%) Games
19 59 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
20 55 (1.14%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 734 (15.23%) Analyst
2 622 (12.90%) IT Support
3 564 (11.70%) Support Engineer
4 520 (10.79%) Senior
5 365 (7.57%) Developer
6 347 (7.20%) IT Engineer
7 277 (5.75%) IT Support Engineer
8 252 (5.23%) Lead
9 221 (4.59%) Support Analyst
10 200 (4.15%) Support Technician
11 168 (3.49%) Systems Engineer
12 165 (3.42%) Architect
12 165 (3.42%) Technical Support
13 158 (3.28%) IT Technician
14 157 (3.26%) Business Analyst
15 149 (3.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 146 (3.03%) 2nd Line Support
17 140 (2.90%) Consultant
18 136 (2.82%) IT Support Technician
19 134 (2.78%) Technical Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 155 (3.22%) .NET
2 148 (3.07%) React
3 131 (2.72%) HTML
4 104 (2.16%) REST
5 102 (2.12%) CSS
6 80 (1.66%) Node.js
7 62 (1.29%) SOAP
8 54 (1.12%) RESTful
9 53 (1.10%) Middleware
10 50 (1.04%) XML
11 49 (1.02%) JSON
12 46 (0.95%) Vue
13 44 (0.91%) AngularJS
14 42 (0.87%) Spring
15 40 (0.83%) Spring Boot
16 39 (0.81%) OAuth
17 31 (0.64%) EDI
18 30 (0.62%) GraphQL
19 29 (0.60%) ASP.NET
20 27 (0.56%) Laravel
Miscellaneous
1 381 (7.90%) Driving Licence
2 298 (6.18%) Onboarding
3 260 (5.39%) Self-Motivation
4 165 (3.42%) Management Information System
5 135 (2.80%) Analytical Mindset
6 114 (2.37%) Product Ownership
7 103 (2.14%) Legacy Systems
8 97 (2.01%) Cloud Native
9 85 (1.76%) Data Centre
10 78 (1.62%) Social Media
11 65 (1.35%) Distributed Systems
12 62 (1.29%) Enterprise Software
13 54 (1.12%) Mobile App
14 52 (1.08%) Low-Code
15 38 (0.79%) Data Structures
16 36 (0.75%) Virtual Team
17 33 (0.68%) Life Science
18 32 (0.66%) CCTV
19 31 (0.64%) FMCG
19 31 (0.64%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 835 (17.32%) Windows
2 371 (7.70%) Windows Server
3 293 (6.08%) Linux
4 128 (2.66%) Windows 10
5 104 (2.16%) Android
6 97 (2.01%) Windows Server 2016
7 67 (1.39%) Apple iOS
8 53 (1.10%) Mac OS
9 37 (0.77%) Windows Server 2019
10 31 (0.64%) Unix
11 25 (0.52%) CentOS
11 25 (0.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 20 (0.41%) Ubuntu
12 20 (0.41%) Windows Server 2012
13 14 (0.29%) VMS
13 14 (0.29%) Windows 7
14 10 (0.21%) Debian
15 9 (0.19%) Windows 8
16 7 (0.15%) Windows Server 2008
17 4 (0.083%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 997 (20.68%) Continuous Improvement
2 863 (17.90%) Customer Service
3 629 (13.05%) Agile
4 493 (10.23%) Decision-Making
5 430 (8.92%) Mentoring
6 415 (8.61%) ITIL
7 397 (8.24%) DevOps
8 396 (8.22%) CI/CD
9 394 (8.17%) Analytics
10 365 (7.57%) Business Intelligence
11 354 (7.34%) Project Management
12 348 (7.22%) AI
13 319 (6.62%) Coaching
14 306 (6.35%) Cybersecurity
15 295 (6.12%) Stakeholder Management
16 291 (6.04%) ERP
17 281 (5.83%) Computer Science
18 277 (5.75%) Software Engineering
19 274 (5.68%) Collaborative Working
19 274 (5.68%) CRM
Programming Languages
1 633 (13.13%) SQL
2 512 (10.62%) Python
3 272 (5.64%) JavaScript
4 209 (4.34%) PowerShell
5 188 (3.90%) Java
6 172 (3.57%) C#
7 102 (2.12%) TypeScript
8 83 (1.72%) Bash
9 71 (1.47%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 64 (1.33%) PHP
11 60 (1.24%) C++
12 46 (0.95%) C
13 34 (0.71%) T-SQL
14 30 (0.62%) PL/SQL
15 27 (0.56%) Kotlin
16 26 (0.54%) Bicep
17 24 (0.50%) Go
18 23 (0.48%) R
19 20 (0.41%) Scala
20 17 (0.35%) Rust
Qualifications
1 785 (16.29%) Degree
2 314 (6.51%) Security Cleared
3 209 (4.34%) SC Cleared
4 197 (4.09%) DBS Check
5 146 (3.03%) Microsoft Certification
6 128 (2.66%) Computer Science Degree
7 88 (1.83%) BPSS Clearance
8 74 (1.54%) A+ Certification
9 72 (1.49%) ACCA
10 66 (1.37%) Cisco Certification
11 64 (1.33%) CIMA
12 56 (1.16%) DV Cleared
13 54 (1.12%) CCNA
14 48 (1.00%) Master's Degree
15 46 (0.95%) CISSP
16 44 (0.91%) Network+ Certification
16 44 (0.91%) PMI Certification
17 43 (0.89%) HNC
18 38 (0.79%) AWS Certification
18 38 (0.79%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 250 (5.19%) QA
2 225 (4.67%) Data Quality
3 144 (2.99%) GDPR
4 119 (2.47%) Cyber Essentials
5 114 (2.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 107 (2.22%) SLA
7 88 (1.83%) PCI DSS
8 80 (1.66%) NIST
9 48 (1.00%) Accessibility
10 38 (0.79%) ISO 9001
11 30 (0.62%) Actionable Recommendations
12 21 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 16 (0.33%) SOC 2
14 14 (0.29%) GMP
15 12 (0.25%) GRC
15 12 (0.25%) TickIT
16 9 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 8 (0.17%) ISO 14001
18 7 (0.15%) PMO
19 6 (0.12%) HIPAA
System Software
1 590 (12.24%) Active Directory
2 184 (3.82%) Hyper-V
3 175 (3.63%) Docker
4 132 (2.74%) VMware Infrastructure
5 56 (1.16%) Terminal Server
6 28 (0.58%) Virtual Desktop
7 25 (0.52%) Firmware
8 17 (0.35%) vSphere
9 14 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
10 10 (0.21%) KVM
10 10 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
11 9 (0.19%) VMware Workstation
12 6 (0.12%) XenApp
13 5 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.083%) Embedded Firmware
14 4 (0.083%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 4 (0.083%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 2 (0.041%) VMware NSX
16 1 (0.021%) Lustre
16 1 (0.021%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 202 (4.19%) Terraform
2 167 (3.46%) Microsoft Intune
3 143 (2.97%) Kubernetes
4 86 (1.78%) Ansible
5 58 (1.20%) SCCM
6 53 (1.10%) Grafana
7 31 (0.64%) Prometheus
8 20 (0.41%) BMC PATROL
9 17 (0.35%) Single Sign-On
10 16 (0.33%) Nagios
11 11 (0.23%) Autotask
12 10 (0.21%) Kibana
12 10 (0.21%) Puppet
12 10 (0.21%) vCenter Server
13 9 (0.19%) FortiGate
13 9 (0.19%) Jamf Pro
14 8 (0.17%) Cisco CUCM
14 8 (0.17%) HP Fortify
14 8 (0.17%) logstash
14 8 (0.17%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,338 (27.76%) Microsoft
2 216 (4.48%) VMware
3 143 (2.97%) Oracle
4 111 (2.30%) SAP
5 107 (2.22%) Veeam
6 98 (2.03%) Google
7 97 (2.01%) Cisco
8 88 (1.83%) SolarWinds
9 86 (1.78%) Splunk
10 77 (1.60%) Databricks
11 73 (1.51%) ServiceNow
12 66 (1.37%) Apple
13 62 (1.29%) Salesforce
14 59 (1.22%) Adobe
15 57 (1.18%) Tanium
16 56 (1.16%) Brocade
16 56 (1.16%) Nimble Storage
17 50 (1.04%) Sage
18 47 (0.98%) Dell
19 36 (0.75%) HubSpot