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 20 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 4 5
Rank change year-on-year -6 +1 +6
Permanent jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,716 6,412 10,062
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 7.90% 18.86% 14.48%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.21% 21.37% 18.13%
Number of salaries quoted 4,269 3,510 6,018
10th Percentile £26,500 £25,750 £25,500
25th Percentile £30,500 £30,000 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £41,500 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year +2.41% -7.78% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58,750 £60,000 £60,000
90th Percentile £73,750 £75,000 £73,000
UK median annual salary £47,203 £48,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -1.66% -4.00% -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 50,992 30,002 55,487
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.47% 88.25% 79.83%
Number of salaries quoted 35,944 16,170 37,724
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,750 £27,750
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,851 £36,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £50,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% - -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £66,230 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £80,000 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £56,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +6.19% +2.73% -8.79%

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 20 July 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 20 July 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 -10 1,502 £45,000 +5.88% 574
South East -3 1,405 £45,000 +5.88% 689
Midlands -8 1,061 £42,000 +3.70% 348
North West -7 794 £45,000 -2.17% 294
South West -6 706 £44,000 +17.33% 268
West Midlands -9 592 £42,500 -5.56% 195
East of England -5 575 £42,500 +21.43% 232
Yorkshire -10 513 £42,500 +21.43% 197
East Midlands -10 465 £35,000 -4.11% 153
Scotland -9 229 £33,000 -25.42% 86
North East -15 195 £52,130 +33.32% 92
Wales -20 145 £40,000 -14.44% 50
Northern Ireland -14 113 £38,500 -30.00% 18
Isle of Man +2 3 £35,000 +1.45% 6
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
1 361 (6.32%) Microsoft Exchange
2 345 (6.04%) SharePoint
3 53 (0.93%) Confluence
4 51 (0.89%) CMS
5 36 (0.63%) IIS
6 29 (0.51%) WordPress
7 27 (0.47%) Apache
8 20 (0.35%) Apache Airflow
9 13 (0.23%) Apache Spark
9 13 (0.23%) SAS
10 11 (0.19%) WebSphere
11 10 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2013
12 8 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2007
12 8 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2010
12 8 (0.14%) WebLogic
13 7 (0.12%) nginx
13 7 (0.12%) OpenEdge
14 6 (0.10%) Jupyter
15 5 (0.087%) Skype for Business
16 4 (0.070%) Moodle
Applications
1 370 (6.47%) Microsoft Office
2 361 (6.32%) Microsoft Excel
3 53 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 41 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
5 29 (0.51%) MS Visio
6 17 (0.30%) Microsoft Project
7 11 (0.19%) Simulink
8 8 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 8 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
9 7 (0.12%) Chatbot
10 6 (0.10%) AutoCAD
11 5 (0.087%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.087%) Fusion 360
11 5 (0.087%) Lightworks
11 5 (0.087%) Photoshop
11 5 (0.087%) Sketch
11 5 (0.087%) Trello
12 3 (0.052%) Autodesk Inventor
12 3 (0.052%) LaTeX
12 3 (0.052%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 56 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
2 32 (0.56%) NetSuite
3 19 (0.33%) Shopify
4 17 (0.30%) Magento
5 16 (0.28%) SAP ERP
6 15 (0.26%) Dynamics NAV
7 14 (0.24%) Dynamics AX
8 13 (0.23%) IBM Planning Analytics
9 11 (0.19%) SAP Business One
10 10 (0.17%) JDE EnterpriseOne
10 10 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
11 8 (0.14%) Sage 50
12 7 (0.12%) iTrent
12 7 (0.12%) Raiser’s Edge
12 7 (0.12%) Workday HCM
13 6 (0.10%) Sage X3
14 5 (0.087%) Dynamics GP
14 5 (0.087%) Q-Pulse
14 5 (0.087%) SAP CO
Cloud Services
1 1,195 (20.91%) Azure
2 1,071 (18.74%) Microsoft 365
3 587 (10.27%) AWS
4 451 (7.89%) Power Platform
5 296 (5.18%) Entra ID
6 197 (3.45%) SaaS
7 195 (3.41%) GCP
8 133 (2.33%) Azure DevOps
9 119 (2.08%) Dynamics 365
10 110 (1.92%) Serverless
11 100 (1.75%) Power Automate
11 100 (1.75%) PowerApps
12 98 (1.71%) GitHub
13 76 (1.33%) OneDrive
14 61 (1.07%) Microsoft Copilot
15 51 (0.89%) Amazon S3
16 49 (0.86%) Microsoft Purview
17 45 (0.79%) GitHub Actions
17 45 (0.79%) IaaS
18 44 (0.77%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 421 (7.37%) Firewall
2 376 (6.58%) DNS
3 322 (5.63%) DHCP
4 213 (3.73%) VPN
5 199 (3.48%) WAN
6 195 (3.41%) TCP/IP
7 176 (3.08%) LAN
8 157 (2.75%) Wi-Fi
9 141 (2.47%) Wireless
10 119 (2.08%) VLAN
11 110 (1.92%) Broadband
12 97 (1.70%) Network Security
13 92 (1.61%) VoIP
14 39 (0.68%) Internet
15 32 (0.56%) SD-WAN
16 27 (0.47%) SAN
17 26 (0.45%) HTTP
18 23 (0.40%) SSL
19 22 (0.38%) WLAN
20 21 (0.37%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 359 (6.28%) Power BI
2 266 (4.65%) SQL Server
3 118 (2.06%) Amazon RDS
4 104 (1.82%) MySQL
5 90 (1.57%) Data Warehouse
6 83 (1.45%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 81 (1.42%) PostgreSQL
8 79 (1.38%) Relational Database
9 66 (1.15%) Tableau
10 65 (1.14%) NoSQL
11 63 (1.10%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 46 (0.80%) Power Query
13 44 (0.77%) MongoDB
14 37 (0.65%) Big Data
15 34 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
16 33 (0.58%) Data Lake
17 27 (0.47%) DynamoDB
18 25 (0.44%) Elasticsearch
19 19 (0.33%) Star Schema
20 18 (0.31%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 219 (3.83%) Git
2 172 (3.01%) JIRA
3 77 (1.35%) GitLab
4 48 (0.84%) Jenkins
5 27 (0.47%) Rational DOORS
6 24 (0.42%) Cucumber
7 22 (0.38%) Eclipse
7 22 (0.38%) Selenium
7 22 (0.38%) Subversion
8 17 (0.30%) Cypress.io
8 17 (0.30%) JUnit
9 15 (0.26%) Postman
10 14 (0.24%) SonarQube
11 13 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
12 12 (0.21%) Claude Code
13 10 (0.17%) Bitbucket
14 9 (0.16%) Visual Studio
15 8 (0.14%) JMeter
15 8 (0.14%) Maven
15 8 (0.14%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 2,749 (48.09%) Social Skills
2 1,546 (27.05%) Analytical Skills
3 877 (15.34%) Finance
4 455 (7.96%) Manufacturing
5 376 (6.58%) Organisational Skills
6 251 (4.39%) Legal
7 247 (4.32%) Law
7 247 (4.32%) Public Sector
8 240 (4.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 230 (4.02%) Retail
10 182 (3.18%) Marketing
11 153 (2.68%) Electronics
12 149 (2.61%) Telecoms
13 113 (1.98%) Banking
14 105 (1.84%) Documentation Skills
15 103 (1.80%) Influencing Skills
16 86 (1.50%) Aerospace
17 75 (1.31%) Games
18 59 (1.03%) Advertising
19 57 (1.00%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 787 (13.77%) Analyst
2 674 (11.79%) IT Support
3 623 (10.90%) Senior
4 590 (10.32%) Developer
5 584 (10.22%) Support Engineer
6 394 (6.89%) IT Engineer
7 297 (5.20%) IT Support Engineer
8 296 (5.18%) Lead
9 260 (4.55%) Support Technician
10 259 (4.53%) Support Analyst
11 236 (4.13%) Systems Engineer
12 218 (3.81%) Technical Support
13 208 (3.64%) IT Technician
14 193 (3.38%) Technical Engineer
15 192 (3.36%) Software Engineer
16 190 (3.32%) Consultant
17 179 (3.13%) Architect
18 175 (3.06%) Technical Support Engineer
19 168 (2.94%) Senior Developer
20 163 (2.85%) IT Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 274 (4.79%) .NET
2 195 (3.41%) React
3 172 (3.01%) HTML
4 161 (2.82%) REST
5 127 (2.22%) CSS
6 100 (1.75%) Node.js
7 95 (1.66%) RESTful
8 84 (1.47%) SOAP
9 74 (1.29%) Middleware
9 74 (1.29%) Vue
10 72 (1.26%) JSON
11 69 (1.21%) AngularJS
12 63 (1.10%) XML
13 52 (0.91%) ASP.NET
14 51 (0.89%) Spring
15 47 (0.82%) Spring Boot
16 46 (0.80%) Web Services
17 44 (0.77%) OAuth
18 38 (0.66%) Kafka
19 35 (0.61%) EDI
Miscellaneous
1 448 (7.84%) Driving Licence
2 337 (5.90%) Onboarding
3 269 (4.71%) Self-Motivation
4 218 (3.81%) Management Information System
5 153 (2.68%) Cloud Native
6 152 (2.66%) Legacy Systems
7 140 (2.45%) Product Ownership
8 100 (1.75%) Data Centre
9 95 (1.66%) Analytical Mindset
10 86 (1.50%) Distributed Systems
11 74 (1.29%) Security Posture
12 63 (1.10%) Mobile App
12 63 (1.10%) Social Media
13 62 (1.08%) Enterprise Software
14 57 (1.00%) IoT
15 56 (0.98%) Virtual Team
16 47 (0.82%) Algorithms
17 46 (0.80%) Cyber Threat
17 46 (0.80%) Robotics
18 44 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 1,016 (17.77%) Windows
2 483 (8.45%) Windows Server
3 420 (7.35%) Linux
4 145 (2.54%) Windows 10
5 125 (2.19%) Windows Server 2016
6 107 (1.87%) Android
7 73 (1.28%) Apple iOS
8 72 (1.26%) Mac OS
9 42 (0.73%) Windows Server 2019
10 31 (0.54%) Unix
11 28 (0.49%) Ubuntu
12 25 (0.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 22 (0.38%) CentOS
14 16 (0.28%) VMS
15 14 (0.24%) Debian
15 14 (0.24%) Windows 7
16 10 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
17 9 (0.16%) FreeRTOS
18 7 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
19 6 (0.10%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,370 (23.97%) Continuous Improvement
2 1,050 (18.37%) Customer Service
3 805 (14.08%) Agile
4 575 (10.06%) Mentoring
5 570 (9.97%) CI/CD
6 569 (9.95%) Decision-Making
7 540 (9.45%) AI
8 505 (8.83%) ITIL
9 488 (8.54%) Analytics
10 482 (8.43%) DevOps
11 463 (8.10%) Cybersecurity
12 452 (7.91%) Software Engineering
13 448 (7.84%) Collaborative Working
14 423 (7.40%) Stakeholder Management
15 418 (7.31%) Business Intelligence
16 407 (7.12%) ERP
17 380 (6.65%) Project Delivery
18 344 (6.02%) Service Delivery
19 341 (5.97%) Computer Science
20 339 (5.93%) Customer Experience
Programming Languages
1 890 (15.57%) SQL
2 643 (11.25%) Python
3 362 (6.33%) JavaScript
4 354 (6.19%) C#
5 250 (4.37%) Java
6 242 (4.23%) PowerShell
7 163 (2.85%) TypeScript
8 158 (2.76%) C++
9 107 (1.87%) Bash
10 75 (1.31%) PHP
11 60 (1.05%) C
12 58 (1.01%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 48 (0.84%) T-SQL
14 35 (0.61%) Perl
15 34 (0.59%) PL/SQL
16 33 (0.58%) Ruby
17 32 (0.56%) Go
18 29 (0.51%) Kotlin
18 29 (0.51%) Shell Script
19 27 (0.47%) R
Qualifications
1 828 (14.49%) Degree
2 477 (8.34%) Security Cleared
3 347 (6.07%) SC Cleared
4 192 (3.36%) DBS Check
5 164 (2.87%) Computer Science Degree
5 164 (2.87%) Microsoft Certification
6 88 (1.54%) Cisco Certification
7 86 (1.50%) DV Cleared
8 82 (1.43%) BPSS Clearance
9 74 (1.29%) Azure Certification
10 63 (1.10%) CCNA
11 60 (1.05%) ACCA
11 60 (1.05%) HNC
12 56 (0.98%) A+ Certification
12 56 (0.98%) CIMA
13 54 (0.94%) PMI Certification
14 53 (0.93%) Master's Degree
15 48 (0.84%) CISSP
16 47 (0.82%) PMP
17 43 (0.75%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 341 (5.97%) QA
2 243 (4.25%) Data Quality
3 183 (3.20%) Cyber Essentials
4 155 (2.71%) GDPR
5 147 (2.57%) SLA
6 137 (2.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 131 (2.29%) PCI DSS
8 116 (2.03%) Accessibility
9 91 (1.59%) NIST
10 38 (0.66%) ISO 9001
11 28 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 25 (0.44%) PMO
13 21 (0.37%) GMP
14 17 (0.30%) Good Clinical Practice
15 15 (0.26%) GRC
16 14 (0.24%) SOC 2
17 13 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
18 12 (0.21%) TickIT
19 10 (0.17%) ISO 14001
20 9 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 717 (12.54%) Active Directory
2 278 (4.86%) Hyper-V
3 217 (3.80%) Docker
4 188 (3.29%) VMware Infrastructure
5 88 (1.54%) Terminal Server
6 43 (0.75%) Firmware
7 31 (0.54%) Virtual Desktop
8 27 (0.47%) vSphere
9 22 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
10 16 (0.28%) Embedded Firmware
11 11 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
12 6 (0.10%) KVM
12 6 (0.10%) VMware Workstation
12 6 (0.10%) XenApp
13 5 (0.087%) ClearTrust
13 5 (0.087%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 5 (0.087%) Virtual Servers
14 3 (0.052%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 3 (0.052%) Squid
14 3 (0.052%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 227 (3.97%) Microsoft Intune
2 225 (3.94%) Terraform
3 203 (3.55%) Kubernetes
4 103 (1.80%) Ansible
5 61 (1.07%) Grafana
6 60 (1.05%) SCCM
7 41 (0.72%) Prometheus
8 19 (0.33%) FortiGate
8 19 (0.33%) Nagios
9 13 (0.23%) Puppet
10 11 (0.19%) Kibana
11 10 (0.17%) Autotask
11 10 (0.17%) Functional Safety
11 10 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
11 10 (0.17%) logstash
11 10 (0.17%) Podman
11 10 (0.17%) Proxmox
11 10 (0.17%) QRadar
12 9 (0.16%) Failover Clustering
12 9 (0.16%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,764 (30.86%) Microsoft
2 310 (5.42%) VMware
3 144 (2.52%) Veeam
4 128 (2.24%) Google
4 128 (2.24%) Splunk
5 125 (2.19%) SAP
6 123 (2.15%) Cisco
7 114 (1.99%) Oracle
7 114 (1.99%) SolarWinds
8 96 (1.68%) Tanium
9 91 (1.59%) ServiceNow
10 89 (1.56%) Nimble Storage
11 88 (1.54%) Brocade
12 82 (1.43%) Salesforce
13 69 (1.21%) Databricks
14 58 (1.01%) Apple
15 54 (0.94%) Sage
16 51 (0.89%) Adobe
17 50 (0.87%) Fortinet
18 49 (0.86%) Dell