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 16 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 46 70
Rank change year-on-year +42 +24 +53
Permanent jobs citing AI 9,732 2,635 2,892
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 14.47% 5.34% 3.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 18.22% 5.78% 4.37%
Number of salaries quoted 2,402 1,344 1,701
10th Percentile £35,000 £45,000 £42,500
25th Percentile £50,468 £60,500 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £75,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% +7.14% -
75th Percentile £95,000 £97,500 £92,500
90th Percentile £117,375 £117,500 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £59,450 £66,254 £62,500
% change year-on-year -10.27% +6.01% -

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 53,402 45,552 66,177
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 79.39% 92.32% 88.33%
Number of salaries quoted 31,913 22,134 51,281
10th Percentile £29,000 £34,934 £29,490
25th Percentile £38,000 £46,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,350 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.86% +9.73% -12.00%
75th Percentile £76,000 £81,250 £75,000
90th Percentile £96,250 £102,500 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.90%

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 16 February 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 16 February 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 +39 8,881 £70,000 -6.67% 2,317
UK excluding London +42 7,003 £59,450 -10.27% 1,555
North of England +48 2,578 £60,000 -10.14% 332
Work from Home +39 2,562 £67,500 +1.82% 1,274
London +34 2,280 £80,000 -12.09% 969
North West +42 1,983 £60,000 -13.67% 183
Midlands +93 1,516 £55,000 -15.38% 184
South East +36 1,458 £50,000 -35.06% 613
West Midlands +84 1,245 £59,527 +1.32% 109
East of England +28 663 £55,000 -16.96% 168
Yorkshire +37 493 £67,500 +12.50% 113
South West +19 357 £62,500 -3.85% 162
Scotland +37 327 £70,000 +21.74% 80
East Midlands +69 282 £47,500 -26.92% 74
Wales +38 119 £51,585 +3.17% 36
North East +49 102 £55,000 -24.14% 37
Northern Ireland -6 52 £90,000 -5.26% 12
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 94 (0.97%) SharePoint
2 60 (0.62%) Apache Airflow
3 51 (0.52%) Apache Spark
4 48 (0.49%) Confluence
5 42 (0.43%) CMS
6 41 (0.42%) Jupyter
7 24 (0.25%) Microsoft Exchange
8 21 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
9 19 (0.20%) WordPress
10 18 (0.18%) ArcGIS
10 18 (0.18%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 17 (0.17%) Appian
12 14 (0.14%) Apache
13 13 (0.13%) JBoss
13 13 (0.13%) WebSphere
14 9 (0.092%) Apache Solr
15 7 (0.072%) SAS
16 5 (0.051%) Apache Pulsar
16 5 (0.051%) IIS
16 5 (0.051%) Umbraco
Applications
1 1,014 (10.42%) Chatbot
2 644 (6.62%) Microsoft Excel
3 91 (0.94%) Microsoft Office
4 41 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 18 (0.18%) Maya
6 15 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
7 9 (0.092%) MS Visio
8 6 (0.062%) Microsoft Project
9 5 (0.051%) Adobe Premiere
9 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
10 4 (0.041%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 4 (0.041%) Sketch
10 4 (0.041%) UserZoom
10 4 (0.041%) Weka
11 3 (0.031%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.031%) Notion
11 3 (0.031%) Simulink
12 2 (0.021%) Adobe Illustrator
12 2 (0.021%) InDesign
13 1 (0.010%) S-PLUS
Business Applications
1 47 (0.48%) Dynamics CRM
2 19 (0.20%) NetSuite
2 19 (0.20%) Oracle ERP
3 13 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
4 12 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
5 10 (0.10%) Shopify
5 10 (0.10%) Workday HCM
6 8 (0.082%) Distributed Ledger
6 8 (0.082%) Endur
7 7 (0.072%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.072%) Salesforce CRM
8 4 (0.041%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 4 (0.041%) Oracle Receivables
9 3 (0.031%) Dynamics GP
9 3 (0.031%) Oracle Assets
9 3 (0.031%) SAP Business One
10 2 (0.021%) Oracle General Ledger
10 2 (0.021%) SAP ERP
10 2 (0.021%) SAP FI
10 2 (0.021%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 4,132 (42.46%) Cloud Computing
2 1,583 (16.27%) Azure
3 928 (9.54%) Power Platform
4 716 (7.36%) AWS
5 602 (6.19%) Azure AI
6 448 (4.60%) SaaS
7 323 (3.32%) GCP
8 226 (2.32%) GitHub
9 197 (2.02%) Microsoft 365
10 196 (2.01%) Azure DevOps
11 122 (1.25%) Snowflake
12 111 (1.14%) GitHub Copilot
13 110 (1.13%) Azure Data Factory
14 107 (1.10%) Entra ID
15 104 (1.07%) Microsoft Copilot
16 103 (1.06%) Serverless
17 96 (0.99%) Power Automate
18 67 (0.69%) dbt
18 67 (0.69%) PaaS
19 62 (0.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 4,061 (41.73%) Internet
2 67 (0.69%) Broadband
3 51 (0.52%) Firewall
4 32 (0.33%) Network Security
4 32 (0.33%) Unified Communications
5 27 (0.28%) VoIP
6 25 (0.26%) VPN
7 19 (0.20%) HTTP
8 17 (0.17%) TCP/IP
8 17 (0.17%) WAN
9 16 (0.16%) DNS
10 14 (0.14%) Telepresence
10 14 (0.14%) VLAN
10 14 (0.14%) WebEx
11 13 (0.13%) Wi-Fi
12 12 (0.12%) DHCP
13 8 (0.082%) Intranet
13 8 (0.082%) Wireshark
14 7 (0.072%) DMZ
14 7 (0.072%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 769 (7.90%) Power BI
2 630 (6.47%) Tableau
3 153 (1.57%) Data Warehouse
4 105 (1.08%) SQL Server
5 98 (1.01%) Data Lake
6 97 (1.00%) NoSQL
7 84 (0.86%) Metadata
8 74 (0.76%) Big Data
8 74 (0.76%) MongoDB
9 73 (0.75%) PostgreSQL
10 42 (0.43%) BigQuery
11 39 (0.40%) MySQL
12 38 (0.39%) Pinecone
13 34 (0.35%) Elasticsearch
13 34 (0.35%) Hadoop
14 32 (0.33%) Relational Database
15 31 (0.32%) Looker
16 28 (0.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 27 (0.28%) Data Mining
18 25 (0.26%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 131 (1.35%) Git
2 112 (1.15%) JIRA
3 53 (0.54%) MLflow
4 44 (0.45%) Jenkins
5 31 (0.32%) Visual Studio Code
6 28 (0.29%) GitLab
7 19 (0.20%) Cypress.io
8 17 (0.17%) Octopus Deploy
8 17 (0.17%) Oracle Forms
8 17 (0.17%) Selenium
8 17 (0.17%) TeamCity
9 13 (0.13%) Visual Studio
10 12 (0.12%) Postman
11 10 (0.10%) Claude Code
12 9 (0.092%) Bitbucket
13 8 (0.082%) Subversion
14 7 (0.072%) Burp Suite
14 7 (0.072%) Storybook
14 7 (0.072%) Vite
14 7 (0.072%) WebDriver
General
1 5,738 (58.96%) Social Skills
2 4,481 (46.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 4,230 (43.46%) Banking
4 1,187 (12.20%) Finance
5 1,035 (10.64%) Analytical Skills
6 400 (4.11%) Marketing
7 303 (3.11%) Public Sector
8 278 (2.86%) Law
9 275 (2.83%) Legal
10 228 (2.34%) Retail
11 152 (1.56%) Games
12 139 (1.43%) Manufacturing
13 108 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
14 105 (1.08%) Telecoms
15 94 (0.97%) Pharmaceutical
16 82 (0.84%) Financial Institution
17 81 (0.83%) Influencing Skills
18 66 (0.68%) Organisational Skills
19 60 (0.62%) Electronics
20 49 (0.50%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 3,161 (32.48%) Lecturer
2 951 (9.77%) Trainer
3 714 (7.34%) Analyst
4 694 (7.13%) Senior
5 577 (5.93%) Data Analyst
6 517 (5.31%) Junior
7 497 (5.11%) Junior Analyst
7 497 (5.11%) Junior Data Analyst
8 433 (4.45%) Lead
9 423 (4.35%) Developer
10 289 (2.97%) Architect
11 228 (2.34%) Consultant
12 186 (1.91%) Software Engineer
13 158 (1.62%) Data Engineer
14 130 (1.34%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 122 (1.25%) Content Editor
15 122 (1.25%) Solutions Architect
16 97 (1.00%) Senior Manager
17 88 (0.90%) Data Scientist
17 88 (0.90%) Research Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 233 (2.39%) React
2 185 (1.90%) .NET
3 172 (1.77%) REST
4 148 (1.52%) PyTorch
5 121 (1.24%) TensorFlow
6 116 (1.19%) RESTful
7 112 (1.15%) Node.js
8 108 (1.11%) HTML
9 88 (0.90%) LangChain
10 81 (0.83%) scikit-learn
11 80 (0.82%) CSS
11 80 (0.82%) FastAPI
12 75 (0.77%) Hugging Face
13 73 (0.75%) Django
14 72 (0.74%) Kafka
15 70 (0.72%) AngularJS
16 67 (0.69%) Pandas
17 59 (0.61%) Spring
18 57 (0.59%) Flask
18 57 (0.59%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 4,082 (41.94%) IoT
2 275 (2.83%) Cloud Native
3 184 (1.89%) Onboarding
4 174 (1.79%) Product Ownership
5 160 (1.64%) Algorithms
6 159 (1.63%) Robotics
7 157 (1.61%) AI Agents
8 131 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
9 120 (1.23%) Blog
10 112 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
11 101 (1.04%) Management Information System
12 96 (0.99%) Distributed Systems
12 96 (0.99%) Life Science
13 91 (0.94%) Low-Code
13 91 (0.94%) Molecular Biology
14 77 (0.79%) Social Media
15 72 (0.74%) Greenfield Project
16 65 (0.67%) Analytical Mindset
17 64 (0.66%) Legacy Systems
18 62 (0.64%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 88 (0.90%) Windows
2 83 (0.85%) Linux
3 63 (0.65%) Android
4 57 (0.59%) Unix
5 41 (0.42%) Apple iOS
6 33 (0.34%) Windows Server
7 17 (0.17%) Ubuntu
8 9 (0.092%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.051%) Kali Linux
9 5 (0.051%) VMS
10 4 (0.041%) Robot Operating System
10 4 (0.041%) Windows Server 2016
11 3 (0.031%) OpenWrt
12 2 (0.021%) Mac OS X
12 2 (0.021%) zOS
13 1 (0.010%) Debian
13 1 (0.010%) FreeRTOS
13 1 (0.010%) Solaris
13 1 (0.010%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 5,073 (52.13%) Machine Learning
2 4,335 (44.54%) Cybersecurity
3 4,311 (44.30%) User Experience
4 4,070 (41.82%) Web Development
5 1,083 (11.13%) Analytics
6 1,057 (10.86%) Conversational UI
7 910 (9.35%) Business Intelligence
8 909 (9.34%) Agile
9 735 (7.55%) Problem-Solving
10 643 (6.61%) Roadmaps
11 607 (6.24%) Decision-Making
12 591 (6.07%) Software Engineering
13 589 (6.05%) CI/CD
14 575 (5.91%) Continuous Improvement
15 570 (5.86%) DevOps
16 483 (4.96%) Data Science
17 481 (4.94%) Generative AI
18 472 (4.85%) LLM
19 432 (4.44%) Computer Science
20 412 (4.23%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 1,608 (16.52%) Python
2 1,085 (11.15%) SQL
3 264 (2.71%) JavaScript
4 248 (2.55%) TypeScript
5 221 (2.27%) Java
6 159 (1.63%) C#
7 88 (0.90%) PowerShell
8 84 (0.86%) C++
9 71 (0.73%) Bash
10 68 (0.70%) Go
11 58 (0.60%) R
12 41 (0.42%) PHP
13 34 (0.35%) Rust
14 28 (0.29%) Kotlin
15 27 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 26 (0.27%) Scala
17 24 (0.25%) C
18 23 (0.24%) Apex Code
19 21 (0.22%) PL/SQL
20 18 (0.18%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 5,859 (60.20%) Degree
2 4,727 (48.57%) Master's Degree
3 4,664 (47.92%) PhD
4 4,049 (41.61%) Postgraduate
5 548 (5.63%) Azure Certification
6 334 (3.43%) Security Cleared
7 260 (2.67%) SC Cleared
8 194 (1.99%) Computer Science Degree
9 95 (0.98%) AWS Certification
10 82 (0.84%) DV Cleared
11 68 (0.70%) DBS Check
12 49 (0.50%) CISSP
12 49 (0.50%) PMP
13 47 (0.48%) BPSS Clearance
14 39 (0.40%) ACCA
15 37 (0.38%) Microsoft Certification
16 34 (0.35%) PMI Certification
17 31 (0.32%) Numerate Degree
18 29 (0.30%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
18 29 (0.30%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 223 (2.29%) Data Quality
2 186 (1.91%) Accessibility
3 144 (1.48%) QA
4 129 (1.33%) GDPR
5 78 (0.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 42 (0.43%) GxP
7 41 (0.42%) EU AI Act
8 36 (0.37%) NIST
9 34 (0.35%) IFRS
10 26 (0.27%) GRC
11 25 (0.26%) HIPAA
12 24 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
13 23 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials
14 22 (0.23%) PMO
14 22 (0.23%) SLA
14 22 (0.23%) Solvency II
15 21 (0.22%) PSD2
15 21 (0.22%) WCAG
16 18 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 42001
17 17 (0.17%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 248 (2.55%) Docker
2 78 (0.80%) Active Directory
3 23 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
4 20 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
5 17 (0.17%) VMware Infrastructure
6 16 (0.16%) Firmware
7 13 (0.13%) vSphere
8 6 (0.062%) Lustre
9 4 (0.041%) GPFS
9 4 (0.041%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 4 (0.041%) VMware ESXi
10 3 (0.031%) Hyper-V
10 3 (0.031%) Kamailio
11 2 (0.021%) Ceph
11 2 (0.021%) NFS
11 2 (0.021%) RACF
12 1 (0.010%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 241 (2.48%) Kubernetes
2 240 (2.47%) Terraform
3 54 (0.55%) Ansible
4 47 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
5 44 (0.45%) Microsoft Intune
6 39 (0.40%) Prometheus
7 34 (0.35%) Grafana
8 14 (0.14%) Cisco CUCM
9 10 (0.10%) Argo
10 8 (0.082%) Kubeflow
11 7 (0.072%) SCCM
11 7 (0.072%) vCenter Server
12 6 (0.062%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 6 (0.062%) Proxmox
13 4 (0.041%) Nessus
13 4 (0.041%) Nmap
13 4 (0.041%) RSA Archer
13 4 (0.041%) SolarWinds Orion
14 3 (0.031%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
14 3 (0.031%) Control-M
Vendors
1 1,319 (13.55%) Microsoft
2 947 (9.73%) PayPal
3 183 (1.88%) Google
4 175 (1.80%) Databricks
5 115 (1.18%) OpenAI
6 102 (1.05%) Salesforce
7 101 (1.04%) Oracle
8 99 (1.02%) Adobe
9 88 (0.90%) Cisco
9 88 (0.90%) Dell
10 74 (0.76%) SAP
11 48 (0.49%) Blue Prism
12 47 (0.48%) Alteryx
13 45 (0.46%) Palantir
14 43 (0.44%) Foundry
15 40 (0.41%) HubSpot
16 37 (0.38%) Fortinet
17 34 (0.35%) Bloomberg
18 32 (0.33%) Apple
19 29 (0.30%) VMware