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 29 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 5 3 6
Rank change year-on-year -2 +3 +3
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,356 7,790 4,827
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 14.27% 16.84% 16.36%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 17.42% 20.30% 17.44%
Number of salaries quoted 3,647 3,014 3,340
10th Percentile £25,750 £27,378 £26,250
25th Percentile £29,000 £35,750 £33,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £40,000 £50,000 £47,500
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £56,750 £67,500 £65,000
90th Percentile £70,000 £81,250 £76,325
UK median annual salary £45,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -18.18% - -

All Process and 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 30,748 38,378 27,679
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 81.93% 82.96% 93.82%
Number of salaries quoted 18,754 18,657 20,615
10th Percentile £27,000 £31,250 £28,500
25th Percentile £32,500 £40,000 £38,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £54,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -12.84% +3.81% -0.94%
75th Percentile £65,000 £69,920 £67,500
90th Percentile £80,000 £82,500 £81,250
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -

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 29 November 2025.

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 29 November 2025. 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
South East -2 1,414 £40,000 -20.00% 1,303
North of England -3 1,328 £45,000 - 670
Midlands +2 971 £37,500 -25.00% 528
North West -3 718 £48,000 -4.00% 377
South West -1 593 £39,398 -28.37% 377
West Midlands +1 579 £42,500 -20.26% 339
Yorkshire -4 481 £34,250 -23.89% 212
East of England -2 470 £33,500 -36.19% 312
East Midlands +3 392 £32,500 -7.14% 183
Scotland -2 356 £33,500 -34.95% 157
Wales +5 183 £47,811 -4.38% 89
North East 0 129 £33,500 +2.29% 84
Northern Ireland +2 63 £55,000 -7.45% 41
Isle of Man +4 2 £62,500 +150.00%
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
1 274 (5.12%) Microsoft Exchange
2 215 (4.01%) SharePoint
3 52 (0.97%) Confluence
4 43 (0.80%) IIS
5 30 (0.56%) Apache Spark
6 27 (0.50%) CMS
7 26 (0.49%) Apache
7 26 (0.49%) WordPress
8 10 (0.19%) Camunda
9 9 (0.17%) Apache Airflow
9 9 (0.17%) nginx
10 7 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
11 6 (0.11%) Drupal
11 6 (0.11%) HCL Notes
11 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 5 (0.093%) Apache Solr
13 4 (0.075%) ArcGIS
13 4 (0.075%) Exchange Server 2013
13 4 (0.075%) Umbraco
14 3 (0.056%) HCL Domino
Applications
1 466 (8.70%) Microsoft Excel
1 466 (8.70%) Microsoft Office
2 72 (1.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 22 (0.41%) AutoCAD
4 21 (0.39%) Microsoft Project
5 20 (0.37%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.26%) Photoshop
7 14 (0.26%) SOLIDWORKS
8 13 (0.24%) Simulink
9 12 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 11 (0.21%) Adobe Illustrator
11 9 (0.17%) Adobe Premiere
12 6 (0.11%) Mathcad
13 5 (0.093%) Adobe After Effects
13 5 (0.093%) Trello
14 4 (0.075%) Autodesk Inventor
14 4 (0.075%) CATIA
14 4 (0.075%) Oracle Smart View
14 4 (0.075%) Revit
Business Applications
1 89 (1.66%) SAP S/4HANA
2 62 (1.16%) Dynamics CRM
3 31 (0.58%) NetSuite
4 20 (0.37%) Oracle Payables
5 18 (0.34%) Oracle Receivables
6 16 (0.30%) Oracle Assets
6 16 (0.30%) SAP Business One
7 15 (0.28%) SAP FI
8 13 (0.24%) Sage X3
9 11 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
9 11 (0.21%) SAP CO
9 11 (0.21%) SAP FI/CO
9 11 (0.21%) SAP WM
9 11 (0.21%) Shopify
10 10 (0.19%) Oracle General Ledger
10 10 (0.19%) Unit4 Business World
11 8 (0.15%) JDE EnterpriseOne
11 8 (0.15%) Oracle Financials
12 7 (0.13%) Infor CloudSuite Industrial (formerly SyteLine)
13 5 (0.093%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,149 (21.45%) Azure
2 810 (15.12%) Microsoft 365
3 433 (8.08%) AWS
4 371 (6.93%) Power Platform
5 278 (5.19%) SaaS
6 229 (4.28%) Entra ID
7 147 (2.74%) GCP
8 131 (2.45%) Azure DevOps
9 88 (1.64%) GitHub
10 70 (1.31%) Power Automate
11 66 (1.23%) Serverless
12 59 (1.10%) Dynamics 365
13 50 (0.93%) Azure Data Factory
14 42 (0.78%) Amazon S3
15 41 (0.77%) AWS Lambda
15 41 (0.77%) OneDrive
16 40 (0.75%) PowerApps
17 39 (0.73%) PaaS
18 36 (0.67%) Cloud Computing
18 36 (0.67%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 335 (6.25%) DNS
2 295 (5.51%) DHCP
3 273 (5.10%) Firewall
4 167 (3.12%) TCP/IP
5 157 (2.93%) VPN
6 150 (2.80%) Wi-Fi
7 143 (2.67%) LAN
8 128 (2.39%) WAN
9 105 (1.96%) Broadband
10 93 (1.74%) VLAN
11 80 (1.49%) VoIP
12 61 (1.14%) Remote Desktop
13 52 (0.97%) Wireless
14 48 (0.90%) Network Security
15 38 (0.71%) SAN
16 33 (0.62%) Ethernet
17 30 (0.56%) Internet
18 22 (0.41%) SD-WAN
19 21 (0.39%) Unified Communications
20 17 (0.32%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 332 (6.20%) Power BI
2 254 (4.74%) SQL Server
3 117 (2.18%) Amazon RDS
4 114 (2.13%) MySQL
5 107 (2.00%) Relational Database
6 93 (1.74%) Data Lake
7 89 (1.66%) PostgreSQL
8 73 (1.36%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 64 (1.19%) SAP BW
10 57 (1.06%) Data Warehouse
11 49 (0.91%) NoSQL
12 47 (0.88%) Tableau
13 42 (0.78%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 38 (0.71%) GIS
15 35 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
16 31 (0.58%) MongoDB
17 27 (0.50%) Metadata
17 27 (0.50%) Oracle Reports
18 26 (0.49%) Amazon Redshift
19 25 (0.47%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 195 (3.64%) Git
2 174 (3.25%) JIRA
3 48 (0.90%) Jenkins
4 39 (0.73%) GitLab
5 31 (0.58%) Selenium
6 22 (0.41%) Octopus Deploy
7 21 (0.39%) Visual Studio
8 19 (0.35%) JUnit
8 19 (0.35%) TeamCity
9 16 (0.30%) Maven
10 15 (0.28%) Bitbucket
11 14 (0.26%) SonarQube
12 13 (0.24%) Robot Framework
13 12 (0.22%) Snyk
14 10 (0.19%) Cypress.io
15 9 (0.17%) Oracle Forms
15 9 (0.17%) Rational DOORS
16 8 (0.15%) Cucumber
16 8 (0.15%) LabVIEW
17 7 (0.13%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 2,921 (54.54%) Social Skills
2 1,489 (27.80%) Analytical Skills
3 1,185 (22.12%) Finance
4 381 (7.11%) Retail
5 339 (6.33%) Manufacturing
6 324 (6.05%) Marketing
7 262 (4.89%) Organisational Skills
8 238 (4.44%) Law
9 204 (3.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 183 (3.42%) Public Sector
11 176 (3.29%) Legal
12 144 (2.69%) Telecoms
13 143 (2.67%) Banking
14 130 (2.43%) Electronics
15 108 (2.02%) Games
16 101 (1.89%) Presentation Skills
17 96 (1.79%) Automotive
18 72 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
19 67 (1.25%) Aerospace
20 54 (1.01%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 867 (16.19%) Analyst
2 650 (12.14%) IT Support
3 604 (11.28%) Senior
4 511 (9.54%) Support Engineer
5 404 (7.54%) Developer
6 396 (7.39%) Lead
7 356 (6.65%) Support Analyst
8 310 (5.79%) Technical Support
9 218 (4.07%) 2nd Line Support
10 214 (4.00%) Technical Engineer
11 207 (3.86%) IT Engineer
12 199 (3.72%) Technical Support Engineer
13 197 (3.68%) Systems Engineer
14 180 (3.36%) IT Support Engineer
15 176 (3.29%) Support Technician
16 170 (3.17%) Business Analyst
17 149 (2.78%) Applications Support
18 146 (2.73%) IT Analyst
19 139 (2.60%) Architect
20 135 (2.52%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 227 (4.24%) .NET
2 192 (3.58%) HTML
3 168 (3.14%) CSS
4 162 (3.02%) React
5 100 (1.87%) REST
6 85 (1.59%) RESTful
7 68 (1.27%) ASP.NET
8 63 (1.18%) Node.js
9 60 (1.12%) JSON
10 54 (1.01%) XML
11 52 (0.97%) Spring
12 49 (0.91%) AngularJS
13 43 (0.80%) .NET Framework
14 42 (0.78%) Django
15 41 (0.77%) SOAP
16 37 (0.69%) Vue
17 35 (0.65%) Spring Boot
18 33 (0.62%) EDI
19 32 (0.60%) Entity Framework
20 31 (0.58%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 502 (9.37%) Driving Licence
2 419 (7.82%) Onboarding
3 308 (5.75%) Self-Motivation
4 207 (3.86%) Management Information System
5 182 (3.40%) Analytical Mindset
6 140 (2.61%) Legacy Systems
7 97 (1.81%) FMCG
8 95 (1.77%) Data Centre
9 93 (1.74%) Product Ownership
10 69 (1.29%) Virtual Team
11 68 (1.27%) Operational Technology
12 65 (1.21%) Cloud Native
13 50 (0.93%) e-Learning
14 47 (0.88%) Algorithms
15 44 (0.82%) EPoS
16 43 (0.80%) SCADA
17 42 (0.78%) Enterprise Software
18 35 (0.65%) IoT
18 35 (0.65%) Mobile App
18 35 (0.65%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 966 (18.04%) Windows
2 393 (7.34%) Windows Server
3 286 (5.34%) Linux
4 149 (2.78%) Windows 10
5 100 (1.87%) Windows Server 2016
6 70 (1.31%) Mac OS
7 58 (1.08%) Android
8 49 (0.91%) Apple iOS
9 38 (0.71%) Unix
10 26 (0.49%) Windows Server 2019
11 20 (0.37%) Windows 7
12 13 (0.24%) Windows Server 2012
13 9 (0.17%) VMS
14 6 (0.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
15 5 (0.093%) Mac OS X
15 5 (0.093%) Windows Server 2008
16 4 (0.075%) CentOS
16 4 (0.075%) Ubuntu
16 4 (0.075%) Windows 8
17 2 (0.037%) OpenWrt
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,030 (19.23%) Customer Service
2 998 (18.63%) Continuous Improvement
3 752 (14.04%) Agile
4 497 (9.28%) Analytics
5 489 (9.13%) Mentoring
6 480 (8.96%) Project Management
7 450 (8.40%) Decision-Making
8 433 (8.08%) Business Intelligence
9 421 (7.86%) ITIL
10 418 (7.80%) ERP
11 382 (7.13%) DevOps
12 362 (6.76%) Cybersecurity
13 334 (6.24%) CI/CD
14 325 (6.07%) CRM
15 317 (5.92%) Process Improvement
16 311 (5.81%) Stakeholder Management
17 310 (5.79%) Change Management
18 300 (5.60%) AI
19 298 (5.56%) Data Analysis
20 288 (5.38%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 803 (14.99%) SQL
2 430 (8.03%) Python
3 286 (5.34%) C#
4 280 (5.23%) JavaScript
5 248 (4.63%) PowerShell
6 176 (3.29%) Java
7 87 (1.62%) PHP
8 83 (1.55%) C++
9 60 (1.12%) TypeScript
10 54 (1.01%) T-SQL
11 45 (0.84%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 43 (0.80%) Bash
13 37 (0.69%) C
14 28 (0.52%) VBA
15 25 (0.47%) MATLAB
16 18 (0.34%) Go
16 18 (0.34%) R
17 17 (0.32%) Kusto Query Language
18 16 (0.30%) Perl
19 14 (0.26%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 1,194 (22.29%) Degree
2 408 (7.62%) Security Cleared
3 284 (5.30%) SC Cleared
4 155 (2.89%) Microsoft Certification
5 154 (2.88%) Computer Science Degree
6 120 (2.24%) DBS Check
7 104 (1.94%) Master's Degree
8 97 (1.81%) BPSS Clearance
9 88 (1.64%) DV Cleared
10 85 (1.59%) Cisco Certification
11 74 (1.38%) HND
12 72 (1.34%) HNC
13 60 (1.12%) ACCA
13 60 (1.12%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 58 (1.08%) CCNA
15 57 (1.06%) Network+ Certification
16 56 (1.05%) A+ Certification
17 53 (0.99%) CIMA
18 35 (0.65%) CCNP
18 35 (0.65%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 230 (4.29%) QA
2 204 (3.81%) Data Quality
3 144 (2.69%) Cyber Essentials
4 143 (2.67%) GDPR
5 101 (1.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 100 (1.87%) PCI DSS
7 92 (1.72%) SLA
8 82 (1.53%) Accessibility
9 38 (0.71%) NIST
10 29 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 27 (0.50%) ISO 9001
12 21 (0.39%) PMO
13 18 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
14 9 (0.17%) Software Quality Assurance
15 7 (0.13%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 7 (0.13%) ISO 13485
15 7 (0.13%) WCAG
16 6 (0.11%) HIPAA
16 6 (0.11%) ISO/IEC 15288
17 5 (0.093%) ISO 31000
System Software
1 642 (11.99%) Active Directory
2 213 (3.98%) Hyper-V
3 180 (3.36%) Docker
4 114 (2.13%) VMware Infrastructure
5 88 (1.64%) Terminal Server
6 51 (0.95%) Firmware
7 23 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
8 19 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
9 18 (0.34%) vSphere
10 15 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
11 13 (0.24%) Embedded Firmware
12 6 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.075%) HDFS
13 4 (0.075%) KVM
13 4 (0.075%) Terminal Services
14 3 (0.056%) VMware Workstation
15 2 (0.037%) GPFS
15 2 (0.037%) NFS
15 2 (0.037%) RHEV
15 2 (0.037%) Xen
Systems Management
1 218 (4.07%) Microsoft Intune
2 182 (3.40%) Terraform
3 149 (2.78%) Kubernetes
4 58 (1.08%) Ansible
5 42 (0.78%) BMC PATROL
6 38 (0.71%) SCCM
7 37 (0.69%) Grafana
8 25 (0.47%) Prometheus
9 14 (0.26%) Jamf Pro
9 14 (0.26%) Single Sign-On
9 14 (0.26%) vCenter Server
10 12 (0.22%) FortiGate
11 10 (0.19%) AWS Copilot
11 10 (0.19%) Nagios
11 10 (0.19%) ZABBIX
12 8 (0.15%) Cisco CUCM
13 7 (0.13%) PaperCut
13 7 (0.13%) QRadar
14 6 (0.11%) Control-M
15 5 (0.093%) Autotask
Vendors
1 1,424 (26.59%) Microsoft
2 340 (6.35%) SAP
3 235 (4.39%) VMware
4 178 (3.32%) Cisco
5 174 (3.25%) Oracle
6 133 (2.48%) Veeam
7 119 (2.22%) Google
8 116 (2.17%) Splunk
9 107 (2.00%) SolarWinds
10 102 (1.90%) ServiceNow
11 100 (1.87%) Salesforce
12 90 (1.68%) Tanium
13 88 (1.64%) Brocade
13 88 (1.64%) Nimble Storage
14 78 (1.46%) BT
15 71 (1.33%) Sage
16 67 (1.25%) Databricks
17 56 (1.05%) Apple
18 52 (0.97%) Adobe
19 49 (0.91%) Siemens