AI Job Trends

AI
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring AI skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 1 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 33 51
Rank change year-on-year +28 +18 +70
Permanent jobs citing AI 9,886 2,657 4,143
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 12.45% 6.50% 4.63%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.25% 6.99% 5.35%
Number of salaries quoted 2,799 1,432 1,908
10th Percentile £33,750 £32,500 £40,000
25th Percentile £51,000 £53,750 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,752 £72,500 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year -2.41% +3.57% -
75th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £92,500
90th Percentile £115,000 £119,455 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £66,206 £60,000
% change year-on-year -9.37% +10.34% -7.69%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

AI 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.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 60,831 38,033 77,482
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 76.64% 93.07% 86.50%
Number of salaries quoted 37,418 22,319 57,741
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £29,250
25th Percentile £40,000 £43,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -10.57%
75th Percentile £77,500 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.26%

AI
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing AI relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

AI job vacancy trend in the UK

AI
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing AI.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing AI

AI
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing AI over the 6 months to 1 April 2026.

Salary histogram for AI in the UK

AI
Top 18 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing AI within the UK over the 6 months to 1 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
England +27 9,159 £70,752 -5.66% 2,826
UK excluding London +26 6,980 £60,000 -9.37% 1,756
North of England +34 2,516 £61,418 -3.85% 455
London +28 2,480 £85,000 -10.53% 1,477
North West +31 1,905 £61,418 -15.29% 229
Work from Home +24 1,778 £67,500 +1.93% 1,250
Midlands +63 1,526 £52,500 -16.00% 214
South East +30 1,431 £55,000 -21.43% 594
West Midlands +61 1,229 £52,500 -12.50% 110
East of England +16 754 £55,000 -16.95% 145
Yorkshire +32 521 £65,000 +44.44% 165
South West +4 365 £60,000 - 199
East Midlands +49 308 £50,000 -23.08% 103
Scotland +10 234 £70,000 +55.56% 95
Wales +26 116 £47,500 -24.00% 68
North East +29 90 £55,000 -21.17% 63
Northern Ireland +2 66 £90,000 -7.69% 26
Channel Islands - 8 - -

AI
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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
1 115 (1.16%) Apache Airflow
2 106 (1.07%) Apache Spark
3 90 (0.91%) SharePoint
4 65 (0.66%) Jupyter
5 58 (0.59%) CMS
5 58 (0.59%) Confluence
6 41 (0.41%) Apache
7 30 (0.30%) ArcGIS
8 26 (0.26%) Palantir Foundry
9 23 (0.23%) WordPress
10 18 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
11 17 (0.17%) Appian
12 13 (0.13%) JBoss
12 13 (0.13%) WebSphere
13 9 (0.091%) SAS
14 8 (0.081%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 5 (0.051%) Apache Pulsar
15 5 (0.051%) Apache Solr
15 5 (0.051%) IIS
15 5 (0.051%) Umbraco
Applications
1 1,058 (10.70%) Microsoft Excel
2 138 (1.40%) Chatbot
3 82 (0.83%) Microsoft Office
4 52 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 30 (0.30%) UserZoom
6 22 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
7 20 (0.20%) MS Visio
8 7 (0.071%) Adobe Premiere
8 7 (0.071%) Maya
9 6 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.061%) Microsoft Project
9 6 (0.061%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.051%) Camtasia
11 4 (0.040%) Adobe After Effects
11 4 (0.040%) CapCut
11 4 (0.040%) Weka
12 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.030%) Sketch
13 1 (0.010%) Notion
Business Applications
1 34 (0.34%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.18%) NetSuite
2 18 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
4 10 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
4 10 (0.10%) Workday HCM
5 8 (0.081%) Distributed Ledger
5 8 (0.081%) Shopify
6 7 (0.071%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.071%) Salesforce CRM
7 4 (0.040%) Dynamics AX
7 4 (0.040%) Endur
7 4 (0.040%) Oracle Assets
7 4 (0.040%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 4 (0.040%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 3 (0.030%) Oracle General Ledger
8 3 (0.030%) Oracle Receivables
9 2 (0.020%) Dynamics GP
9 2 (0.020%) SAP ERP
9 2 (0.020%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 4,157 (42.05%) Cloud Computing
2 2,178 (22.03%) Azure
3 1,346 (13.62%) Power Platform
4 1,196 (12.10%) Azure AI
5 851 (8.61%) AWS
6 477 (4.83%) SaaS
7 372 (3.76%) GCP
8 212 (2.14%) GitHub
9 194 (1.96%) Snowflake
10 190 (1.92%) Microsoft 365
11 164 (1.66%) Azure DevOps
12 160 (1.62%) Adobe Analytics
13 123 (1.24%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 123 (1.24%) Microsoft Copilot
14 122 (1.23%) Azure Data Factory
15 113 (1.14%) Serverless
16 105 (1.06%) GitHub Copilot
17 99 (1.00%) Entra ID
18 98 (0.99%) Azure Machine Learning
19 96 (0.97%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 4,054 (41.01%) Internet
2 243 (2.46%) Broadband
3 53 (0.54%) Firewall
4 31 (0.31%) Unified Communications
5 28 (0.28%) Network Security
6 25 (0.25%) VPN
7 21 (0.21%) HTTP
8 20 (0.20%) TCP/IP
9 19 (0.19%) VoIP
10 18 (0.18%) DNS
10 18 (0.18%) WAN
11 16 (0.16%) DHCP
12 13 (0.13%) Telepresence
12 13 (0.13%) WebEx
13 8 (0.081%) VLAN
13 8 (0.081%) Wi-Fi
14 7 (0.071%) Intranet
15 6 (0.061%) DMZ
15 6 (0.061%) RTP
15 6 (0.061%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1,216 (12.30%) Power BI
2 1,106 (11.19%) Tableau
3 197 (1.99%) Data Warehouse
4 154 (1.56%) Data Lake
5 135 (1.37%) SQL Server
6 96 (0.97%) PostgreSQL
7 95 (0.96%) Metadata
8 82 (0.83%) MongoDB
9 79 (0.80%) NoSQL
10 69 (0.70%) BigQuery
11 61 (0.62%) Big Data
11 61 (0.62%) Looker
12 58 (0.59%) Elasticsearch
13 46 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
14 42 (0.42%) Pinecone
15 40 (0.40%) MySQL
16 39 (0.39%) Azure SQL Database
17 35 (0.35%) Snowflake Schema
18 31 (0.31%) GIS
18 31 (0.31%) Redis
Development Applications
1 153 (1.55%) Git
2 94 (0.95%) JIRA
3 78 (0.79%) MLflow
4 58 (0.59%) Visual Studio Code
5 50 (0.51%) Jenkins
6 35 (0.35%) GitLab
7 28 (0.28%) Claude Code
8 25 (0.25%) Cypress.io
8 25 (0.25%) IBM UrbanCode
8 25 (0.25%) Selenium
9 16 (0.16%) Postman
10 12 (0.12%) SpecFlow
11 11 (0.11%) Bitbucket
11 11 (0.11%) Visual Studio
12 10 (0.10%) Storybook
12 10 (0.10%) TeamCity
13 9 (0.091%) Octopus Deploy
13 9 (0.091%) Oracle Forms
14 8 (0.081%) Gradle
14 8 (0.081%) Subversion
General
1 6,252 (63.24%) Social Skills
2 4,483 (45.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 4,271 (43.20%) Banking
4 1,221 (12.35%) Finance
5 717 (7.25%) Analytical Skills
6 417 (4.22%) Marketing
7 325 (3.29%) Legal
8 311 (3.15%) Public Sector
9 279 (2.82%) Games
10 273 (2.76%) Law
11 239 (2.42%) Retail
12 179 (1.81%) Manufacturing
13 116 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
14 115 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
15 100 (1.01%) Telecoms
16 89 (0.90%) Organisational Skills
17 81 (0.82%) Financial Institution
18 79 (0.80%) Pharmaceutical
19 54 (0.55%) Advertising
20 48 (0.49%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 3,157 (31.93%) Lecturer
2 1,152 (11.65%) Analyst
3 1,007 (10.19%) Data Analyst
4 962 (9.73%) Junior
5 937 (9.48%) Junior Analyst
5 937 (9.48%) Junior Data Analyst
6 780 (7.89%) Senior
7 590 (5.97%) Lead
8 430 (4.35%) Developer
9 355 (3.59%) Architect
10 270 (2.73%) Consultant
11 259 (2.62%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 207 (2.09%) Software Engineer
13 185 (1.87%) Data Engineer
14 158 (1.60%) Solutions Architect
15 107 (1.08%) Data Scientist
16 96 (0.97%) Python Engineer
17 92 (0.93%) Full-Stack Engineer
18 88 (0.89%) Full-Stack Developer
19 86 (0.87%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 265 (2.68%) React
2 198 (2.00%) PyTorch
3 162 (1.64%) .NET
4 161 (1.63%) REST
5 156 (1.58%) TensorFlow
6 138 (1.40%) HTML
7 133 (1.35%) scikit-learn
8 132 (1.34%) Node.js
9 128 (1.29%) RESTful
10 120 (1.21%) LangChain
11 110 (1.11%) CSS
12 108 (1.09%) Kafka
13 104 (1.05%) Pandas
14 93 (0.94%) FastAPI
14 93 (0.94%) Hugging Face
15 84 (0.85%) Django
16 78 (0.79%) NumPy
17 72 (0.73%) PySpark
18 64 (0.65%) AngularJS
19 63 (0.64%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 4,078 (41.25%) IoT
2 315 (3.19%) Cloud Native
3 217 (2.20%) Onboarding
4 212 (2.14%) Social Media
5 174 (1.76%) Algorithms
6 173 (1.75%) AI Agents
7 166 (1.68%) Product Ownership
8 151 (1.53%) Robotics
9 130 (1.31%) Blog
9 130 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
10 111 (1.12%) Distributed Systems
11 99 (1.00%) Management Information System
12 98 (0.99%) Low-Code
13 91 (0.92%) Enterprise Software
14 86 (0.87%) Life Science
15 84 (0.85%) Public Cloud
16 83 (0.84%) Mobile App
17 65 (0.66%) Virtual Team
18 59 (0.60%) Data Centre
19 57 (0.58%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 93 (0.94%) Linux
1 93 (0.94%) Windows
2 84 (0.85%) Android
3 57 (0.58%) Apple iOS
3 57 (0.58%) Unix
4 31 (0.31%) Windows Server
5 15 (0.15%) Ubuntu
6 9 (0.091%) Mac OS
7 5 (0.051%) VMS
7 5 (0.051%) Windows Server 2016
8 4 (0.040%) Robot Operating System
9 3 (0.030%) OpenWrt
10 2 (0.020%) Kali Linux
10 2 (0.020%) zOS
11 1 (0.010%) FreeRTOS
11 1 (0.010%) Mac OS X
11 1 (0.010%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 1 (0.010%) Solaris
11 1 (0.010%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 5,220 (52.80%) Machine Learning
2 4,334 (43.84%) User Experience
3 4,307 (43.57%) Cybersecurity
4 4,075 (41.22%) Web Development
5 1,374 (13.90%) Business Intelligence
6 1,299 (13.14%) Analytics
7 1,002 (10.14%) Agile
8 810 (8.19%) Roadmaps
9 771 (7.80%) Problem-Solving
10 674 (6.82%) CI/CD
11 669 (6.77%) Decision-Making
12 618 (6.25%) Continuous Improvement
13 609 (6.16%) Software Engineering
14 573 (5.80%) Generative AI
15 564 (5.71%) Data Science
16 557 (5.63%) DevOps
17 555 (5.61%) LLM
18 492 (4.98%) Mentoring
19 421 (4.26%) Customer Experience
20 413 (4.18%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 2,334 (23.61%) Python
2 1,588 (16.06%) SQL
3 259 (2.62%) JavaScript
4 253 (2.56%) Java
5 222 (2.25%) TypeScript
6 170 (1.72%) C#
7 81 (0.82%) C++
8 75 (0.76%) Go
9 64 (0.65%) Bash
10 58 (0.59%) PowerShell
11 56 (0.57%) R
12 41 (0.41%) Kotlin
13 37 (0.37%) PHP
14 29 (0.29%) Scala
15 28 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 27 (0.27%) Rust
17 21 (0.21%) Bicep
18 20 (0.20%) C
19 19 (0.19%) Apex Code
20 17 (0.17%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 4,918 (49.75%) Degree
2 4,242 (42.91%) Master's Degree
3 4,176 (42.24%) PhD
4 4,051 (40.98%) Postgraduate
5 1,107 (11.20%) Azure Certification
6 292 (2.95%) Security Cleared
7 192 (1.94%) SC Cleared
8 182 (1.84%) Computer Science Degree
9 118 (1.19%) AWS Certification
10 90 (0.91%) DV Cleared
11 69 (0.70%) DBS Check
12 62 (0.63%) ACCA
13 56 (0.57%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 47 (0.48%) PMP
15 44 (0.45%) CISSP
16 43 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
17 40 (0.40%) CIMA
18 32 (0.32%) PMI Certification
19 29 (0.29%) Numerate Degree
20 28 (0.28%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 331 (3.35%) Accessibility
2 267 (2.70%) Data Quality
3 173 (1.75%) GDPR
4 152 (1.54%) QA
5 68 (0.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 64 (0.65%) WCAG
7 49 (0.50%) EU AI Act
8 42 (0.42%) GRC
9 41 (0.41%) HIPAA
10 40 (0.40%) IFRS
11 39 (0.39%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 37 (0.37%) NIST
13 28 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
13 28 (0.28%) GxP
14 26 (0.26%) Solvency II
15 21 (0.21%) PSD2
16 20 (0.20%) PMO
16 20 (0.20%) SLA
17 17 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials
18 16 (0.16%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 268 (2.71%) Docker
2 78 (0.79%) Active Directory
3 50 (0.51%) Virtual Machines
4 14 (0.14%) Firmware
5 13 (0.13%) VMware Infrastructure
6 9 (0.091%) vSphere
7 4 (0.040%) Lustre
7 4 (0.040%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 4 (0.040%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.030%) Kamailio
8 3 (0.030%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.020%) Ceph
9 2 (0.020%) GPFS
9 2 (0.020%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.020%) RACF
10 1 (0.010%) Apache Flume
10 1 (0.010%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 255 (2.58%) Kubernetes
2 209 (2.11%) Terraform
3 59 (0.60%) Ansible
4 40 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
5 37 (0.37%) Grafana
5 37 (0.37%) Prometheus
6 30 (0.30%) Microsoft Intune
7 13 (0.13%) Cisco CUCM
8 9 (0.091%) Argo
8 9 (0.091%) Kubeflow
9 7 (0.071%) Proxmox
9 7 (0.071%) vCenter Server
10 4 (0.040%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 4 (0.040%) SolarWinds Orion
11 3 (0.030%) Control-M
11 3 (0.030%) Functional Safety
11 3 (0.030%) RSA Archer
12 2 (0.020%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
12 2 (0.020%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
12 2 (0.020%) Thomson Reuters DACS
Vendors
1 1,763 (17.83%) Microsoft
2 283 (2.86%) Databricks
3 211 (2.13%) Adobe
4 209 (2.11%) Google
5 140 (1.42%) Dell
6 120 (1.21%) OpenAI
7 98 (0.99%) Oracle
8 91 (0.92%) Salesforce
9 75 (0.76%) Cisco
10 69 (0.70%) SAP
11 57 (0.58%) Foundry
12 49 (0.50%) Palantir
13 46 (0.47%) Alteryx
14 45 (0.46%) ServiceNow
15 44 (0.45%) Informatica
16 41 (0.41%) PayPal
17 33 (0.33%) Bloomberg
18 31 (0.31%) Apple
18 31 (0.31%) Red Hat
19 28 (0.28%) Fortinet