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

6 months to
3 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 8,000 6,308 8,088
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 9.24% 18.23% 15.35%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.11% 20.90% 19.35%
Number of salaries quoted 5,451 3,496 3,137
10th Percentile £27,000 £25,684 £25,750
25th Percentile £31,250 £29,000 £33,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £43,000 £39,785 £48,900
Median % change year-on-year +8.08% -18.64% +2.95%
75th Percentile £58,750 £56,250 £63,750
90th Percentile £72,500 £68,750 £80,000
UK median annual salary £46,500 £45,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +3.33% -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 61,040 30,188 41,798
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.52% 87.26% 79.31%
Number of salaries quoted 42,966 16,015 21,474
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,733 £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 £64,362 £67,500
90th Percentile £88,000 £80,000 £80,674
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £58,700
% change year-on-year +9.09% -6.30% -2.17%

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 3 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 3 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 2,025 £45,000 - 1,961
South East -1 1,884 £41,585 +1.43% 2,073
Midlands -6 1,443 £42,500 +13.33% 1,353
North West -3 1,050 £45,250 -7.61% 987
South West -1 974 £45,000 +22.45% 1,019
West Midlands -7 814 £42,500 - 817
East of England -1 812 £42,500 +30.77% 967
East Midlands -7 627 £42,000 +29.23% 536
Yorkshire -7 611 £42,500 +26.87% 671
North East +6 373 £50,000 +49.25% 329
Scotland +4 327 £37,500 +7.14% 976
Northern Ireland +5 316 £70,000 +18.64% 490
Wales -14 235 £42,500 -10.53% 360
Isle of Man 0 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
1 471 (5.89%) SharePoint
2 360 (4.50%) Microsoft Exchange
3 65 (0.81%) Confluence
4 63 (0.79%) CMS
5 56 (0.70%) IIS
6 37 (0.46%) Apache
7 33 (0.41%) WordPress
8 32 (0.40%) Apache Airflow
9 28 (0.35%) Sitecore CMS
10 23 (0.29%) Apache Spark
11 14 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
12 13 (0.16%) Jupyter
13 12 (0.15%) nginx
14 10 (0.13%) WebSphere
15 9 (0.11%) WebLogic
16 8 (0.10%) SAS
17 7 (0.088%) CICS
17 7 (0.088%) OpenEdge
18 4 (0.050%) Oracle SOA Suite
18 4 (0.050%) Tomcat
Applications
1 592 (7.40%) Microsoft Office
2 541 (6.76%) Microsoft Excel
3 86 (1.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 66 (0.83%) 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 (0.33%) Revit
9 18 (0.23%) EPLAN
10 16 (0.20%) SOLIDWORKS
11 10 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 10 (0.13%) Navisworks
12 9 (0.11%) OrCAD
13 8 (0.10%) Chatbot
14 7 (0.088%) Siemens NX
15 6 (0.075%) Adobe Illustrator
15 6 (0.075%) Fusion 360
15 6 (0.075%) Lightworks
16 5 (0.063%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 75 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
2 64 (0.80%) NetSuite
3 53 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
4 34 (0.43%) Shopify
5 23 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
6 20 (0.25%) Dynamics NAV
6 20 (0.25%) Workday HCM
7 16 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
7 16 (0.20%) SAP Business One
8 13 (0.16%) IBM Planning Analytics
8 13 (0.16%) Magento
8 13 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
8 13 (0.16%) SAP ERP
9 12 (0.15%) Oracle Cash Management
9 12 (0.15%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 11 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
10 11 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
11 10 (0.13%) JDE EnterpriseOne
11 10 (0.13%) Sage X3
12 9 (0.11%) Sage 50
Cloud Services
1 1,403 (17.54%) Azure
2 1,274 (15.93%) Microsoft 365
3 704 (8.80%) AWS
4 619 (7.74%) Power Platform
5 440 (5.50%) Entra ID
6 297 (3.71%) SaaS
7 236 (2.95%) GCP
8 176 (2.20%) Azure DevOps
9 155 (1.94%) PowerApps
10 154 (1.93%) GitHub
11 150 (1.88%) Dynamics 365
12 145 (1.81%) Power Automate
13 125 (1.56%) OneDrive
14 116 (1.45%) Serverless
15 96 (1.20%) Microsoft Copilot
16 78 (0.98%) Google Workspace
17 71 (0.89%) Amazon S3
18 70 (0.88%) AWS CloudFormation
19 68 (0.85%) GitHub Actions
20 57 (0.71%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 450 (5.63%) DNS
2 449 (5.61%) Firewall
3 372 (4.65%) DHCP
4 293 (3.66%) VPN
5 234 (2.93%) TCP/IP
6 213 (2.66%) Wi-Fi
7 200 (2.50%) WAN
8 195 (2.44%) LAN
9 175 (2.19%) Wireless
10 151 (1.89%) VLAN
11 127 (1.59%) Network Security
12 116 (1.45%) VoIP
13 62 (0.78%) Broadband
14 59 (0.74%) Internet
15 31 (0.39%) SSL
16 30 (0.38%) SAN
17 29 (0.36%) Remote Desktop
18 26 (0.33%) Ethernet
18 26 (0.33%) SD-WAN
19 25 (0.31%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 492 (6.15%) Power BI
2 333 (4.16%) SQL Server
3 139 (1.74%) MySQL
4 124 (1.55%) Relational Database
5 120 (1.50%) Amazon RDS
6 105 (1.31%) Data Warehouse
7 99 (1.24%) PostgreSQL
8 86 (1.08%) NoSQL
9 72 (0.90%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 68 (0.85%) Tableau
11 57 (0.71%) MongoDB
12 53 (0.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 50 (0.63%) Data Lake
13 50 (0.63%) Power Query
14 49 (0.61%) Big Data
15 47 (0.59%) Electronic Patient Records
16 45 (0.56%) Azure SQL Database
17 34 (0.43%) Oracle Reports
18 33 (0.41%) Metadata
19 28 (0.35%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 318 (3.98%) Git
2 247 (3.09%) JIRA
3 100 (1.25%) GitLab
4 90 (1.13%) Jenkins
5 40 (0.50%) Eclipse
6 35 (0.44%) Selenium
6 35 (0.44%) Subversion
7 32 (0.40%) Cucumber
8 30 (0.38%) Claude Code
9 26 (0.33%) JUnit
10 25 (0.31%) Oracle Forms
11 23 (0.29%) Bitbucket
11 23 (0.29%) Postman
12 22 (0.28%) Cypress.io
13 21 (0.26%) Rational DOORS
14 19 (0.24%) LabVIEW
15 15 (0.19%) Burp Suite
16 14 (0.18%) Team Foundation Server
17 13 (0.16%) Visual Studio
18 12 (0.15%) Metasploit
General
1 3,944 (49.30%) Social Skills
2 2,210 (27.63%) Analytical Skills
3 1,291 (16.14%) Finance
4 944 (11.80%) Manufacturing
5 654 (8.18%) Organisational Skills
6 434 (5.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 429 (5.36%) Retail
8 383 (4.79%) Public Sector
9 350 (4.38%) Electronics
10 334 (4.18%) Law
11 331 (4.14%) Legal
12 323 (4.04%) Aerospace
13 301 (3.76%) Marketing
14 204 (2.55%) Telecoms
15 154 (1.93%) Influencing Skills
16 144 (1.80%) Automotive
17 136 (1.70%) Documentation Skills
18 118 (1.48%) Presentation Skills
19 115 (1.44%) Banking
20 109 (1.36%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,069 (13.36%) Analyst
2 836 (10.45%) Senior
3 762 (9.53%) IT Support
4 717 (8.96%) Developer
5 599 (7.49%) Support Engineer
6 416 (5.20%) Lead
7 406 (5.08%) Support Analyst
8 399 (4.99%) IT Engineer
9 359 (4.49%) Consultant
10 304 (3.80%) IT Support Engineer
11 288 (3.60%) Technical Support
12 270 (3.38%) Support Technician
13 246 (3.08%) Technical Engineer
14 239 (2.99%) IT Technician
15 232 (2.90%) Architect
16 227 (2.84%) Systems Engineer
17 225 (2.81%) Software Engineer
18 223 (2.79%) Technical Support Engineer
19 209 (2.61%) Senior Developer
20 194 (2.43%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 375 (4.69%) .NET
2 287 (3.59%) Terraform
3 223 (2.79%) React
4 202 (2.53%) REST
5 191 (2.39%) HTML
6 141 (1.76%) CSS
7 139 (1.74%) RESTful
8 98 (1.23%) Node.js
9 96 (1.20%) SOAP
10 93 (1.16%) Web Services
11 85 (1.06%) ASP.NET
12 80 (1.00%) Spring
12 80 (1.00%) XML
13 77 (0.96%) Middleware
13 77 (0.96%) Vue
14 73 (0.91%) Spring Boot
15 72 (0.90%) AngularJS
15 72 (0.90%) JSON
16 67 (0.84%) Kafka
17 50 (0.63%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 719 (8.99%) Driving Licence
2 566 (7.08%) Onboarding
3 424 (5.30%) Self-Motivation
4 368 (4.60%) Management Information System
5 214 (2.68%) Cloud Native
6 177 (2.21%) Product Ownership
7 167 (2.09%) Enterprise Software
8 149 (1.86%) Legacy Systems
9 137 (1.71%) Robotics
10 129 (1.61%) Data Centre
11 96 (1.20%) Analytical Mindset
12 95 (1.19%) NHS
13 87 (1.09%) Distributed Systems
14 84 (1.05%) Security Posture
15 83 (1.04%) Cyber Threat
16 80 (1.00%) IoT
17 77 (0.96%) CCTV
18 74 (0.93%) Social Media
18 74 (0.93%) Virtual Team
19 72 (0.90%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 1,220 (15.25%) Windows
2 539 (6.74%) Windows Server
3 448 (5.60%) Linux
4 127 (1.59%) Windows 10
5 101 (1.26%) Windows Server 2016
6 89 (1.11%) Apple iOS
7 86 (1.08%) Android
8 84 (1.05%) Mac OS
9 42 (0.53%) Unix
10 40 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
11 24 (0.30%) 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 (0.13%) FreeRTOS
16 7 (0.088%) Rocky
16 7 (0.088%) Windows Server 2012
17 6 (0.075%) CentOS
18 5 (0.063%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,186 (27.33%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,502 (18.78%) Customer Service
3 1,119 (13.99%) Agile
4 851 (10.64%) Decision-Making
5 839 (10.49%) Stakeholder Management
6 806 (10.08%) Mentoring
7 799 (9.99%) AI
8 746 (9.33%) CI/CD
9 690 (8.63%) Project Delivery
10 654 (8.18%) Collaborative Working
11 621 (7.76%) Analytics
12 609 (7.61%) Cybersecurity
13 606 (7.58%) DevOps
14 603 (7.54%) Software Engineering
15 601 (7.51%) ERP
16 576 (7.20%) ITIL
17 553 (6.91%) Project Management
18 535 (6.69%) Business Intelligence
19 504 (6.30%) CRM
20 501 (6.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 1,109 (13.86%) SQL
2 786 (9.83%) Python
3 452 (5.65%) C#
4 441 (5.51%) JavaScript
5 321 (4.01%) Java
6 302 (3.78%) PowerShell
7 209 (2.61%) C++
8 203 (2.54%) TypeScript
9 125 (1.56%) Bash
10 85 (1.06%) C
11 65 (0.81%) PHP
12 62 (0.78%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 56 (0.70%) T-SQL
14 52 (0.65%) Ruby
15 50 (0.63%) MATLAB
16 46 (0.58%) Shell Script
17 45 (0.56%) PL/SQL
18 41 (0.51%) Rust
19 40 (0.50%) Perl
20 35 (0.44%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,301 (16.26%) Degree
2 749 (9.36%) Security Cleared
3 524 (6.55%) SC Cleared
4 260 (3.25%) HNC
5 231 (2.89%) 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
11 139 (1.74%) Azure Certification
12 101 (1.26%) Chartered Engineer
13 90 (1.13%) Cisco Certification
14 78 (0.98%) Master's Degree
15 77 (0.96%) NVQ Level 3
16 75 (0.94%) A+ Certification
17 73 (0.91%) PMI Certification
18 60 (0.75%) CISSP
19 56 (0.70%) ACCA
19 56 (0.70%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 495 (6.19%) QA
2 304 (3.80%) Data Quality
3 236 (2.95%) GDPR
4 207 (2.59%) Accessibility
5 187 (2.34%) SLA
6 170 (2.13%) Cyber Essentials
7 135 (1.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 106 (1.33%) PCI DSS
9 77 (0.96%) NIST
10 49 (0.61%) ISO 9001
11 42 (0.53%) PMO
12 35 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 22 (0.28%) DO-254
14 20 (0.25%) GMP
14 20 (0.25%) Good Clinical Practice
15 19 (0.24%) NCSC
16 16 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
16 16 (0.20%) GRC
17 13 (0.16%) GxP
17 13 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 871 (10.89%) Active Directory
2 293 (3.66%) Hyper-V
3 272 (3.40%) Docker
4 210 (2.63%) VMware Infrastructure
5 83 (1.04%) Firmware
6 72 (0.90%) Terminal Server
7 44 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
8 35 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
9 31 (0.39%) Embedded Firmware
10 25 (0.31%) vSphere
11 14 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
12 12 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.063%) ClearTrust
13 5 (0.063%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 5 (0.063%) Squid
14 4 (0.050%) KVM
15 3 (0.038%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.038%) VMware Server
16 2 (0.025%) Samba
16 2 (0.025%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 274 (3.43%) Microsoft Intune
2 232 (2.90%) Kubernetes
3 107 (1.34%) Ansible
4 67 (0.84%) Grafana
5 52 (0.65%) SCCM
6 51 (0.64%) Prometheus
7 50 (0.63%) BMC PATROL
8 46 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
9 24 (0.30%) Jamf Pro
10 19 (0.24%) FortiGate
11 18 (0.23%) Functional Safety
12 15 (0.19%) Puppet
13 14 (0.18%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
14 12 (0.15%) Kibana
14 12 (0.15%) Nagios
14 12 (0.15%) Nmap
15 10 (0.13%) logstash
15 10 (0.13%) Proxmox
16 9 (0.11%) Argo
16 9 (0.11%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,422 (30.28%) Microsoft
2 341 (4.26%) VMware
3 231 (2.89%) Google
4 230 (2.88%) SAP
5 204 (2.55%) Workday
6 180 (2.25%) Oracle
7 144 (1.80%) Veeam
8 140 (1.75%) Cisco
9 129 (1.61%) ServiceNow
10 123 (1.54%) Splunk
11 109 (1.36%) Salesforce
12 102 (1.28%) 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 66 (0.83%) Apple
18 66 (0.83%) Siemens