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 31 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 49 67
Rank change year-on-year +45 +18 +53
Permanent jobs citing AI 9,707 2,570 2,817
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 15.22% 4.95% 4.03%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 18.98% 5.40% 4.54%
Number of salaries quoted 2,276 1,293 1,658
10th Percentile £35,000 £45,000 £42,500
25th Percentile £51,250 £60,000 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,500 £77,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.44% +10.00% -
75th Percentile £95,000 £98,750 £92,500
90th Percentile £118,750 £117,500 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £59,450 £66,340 £62,500
% change year-on-year -10.39% +6.14% +0.67%

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 51,135 47,583 62,099
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 80.17% 91.57% 88.82%
Number of salaries quoted 30,200 22,958 48,143
10th Percentile £28,697 £35,000 £30,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,531 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £56,500
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +6.19% -9.60%
75th Percentile £75,900 £80,000 £75,772
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -9.09%

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 31 January 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 31 January 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 +43 8,844 £72,500 -5.84% 2,001
UK excluding London +51 6,998 £59,450 -10.39% 1,453
Work from Home +54 2,763 £67,500 -3.57% 1,066
North of England +50 2,590 £61,418 -9.01% 279
London +34 2,270 £80,000 -11.11% 1,038
North West +44 1,999 £61,418 -9.01% 160
Midlands +94 1,525 £60,000 -7.69% 144
South East +33 1,446 £50,000 -35.06% 627
West Midlands +84 1,255 £61,250 +6.52% 91
East of England +44 651 £55,000 -16.96% 154
Yorkshire +60 483 £70,000 +7.69% 90
South West +35 351 £62,500 - 158
Scotland +44 339 £61,250 +2.51% 70
East Midlands +81 280 £42,500 -41.38% 53
Wales +40 124 £54,085 -3.85% 35
North East +54 108 £55,000 -28.57% 32
Northern Ireland -5 49 £90,000 +1.41% 11
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 98 (1.01%) SharePoint
2 58 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
3 53 (0.55%) Apache Spark
4 47 (0.48%) Confluence
5 41 (0.42%) CMS
6 22 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
6 22 (0.23%) Palantir Foundry
7 20 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 19 (0.20%) Jupyter
9 17 (0.18%) Appian
10 16 (0.16%) WordPress
11 15 (0.15%) Apache
12 13 (0.13%) JBoss
12 13 (0.13%) WebSphere
13 9 (0.093%) Apache Solr
14 8 (0.082%) ArcGIS
15 6 (0.062%) SAS
16 5 (0.052%) Apache Pulsar
16 5 (0.052%) IIS
16 5 (0.052%) Umbraco
Applications
1 1,210 (12.47%) Chatbot
2 533 (5.49%) Microsoft Excel
3 96 (0.99%) Microsoft Office
4 43 (0.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 21 (0.22%) Maya
6 12 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
7 10 (0.10%) MS Visio
8 7 (0.072%) Adobe Premiere
8 7 (0.072%) Microsoft Project
8 7 (0.072%) Notion
9 6 (0.062%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.062%) Photoshop
10 4 (0.041%) InDesign
10 4 (0.041%) Sketch
10 4 (0.041%) Weka
11 3 (0.031%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.031%) Simulink
11 3 (0.031%) UserZoom
12 1 (0.010%) Adobe Illustrator
12 1 (0.010%) S-PLUS
Business Applications
1 50 (0.52%) Dynamics CRM
2 20 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
3 18 (0.19%) NetSuite
4 12 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
5 11 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
5 11 (0.11%) Shopify
6 10 (0.10%) Workday HCM
7 8 (0.082%) Endur
8 7 (0.072%) Oracle EBS
8 7 (0.072%) Salesforce CRM
9 6 (0.062%) Distributed Ledger
10 5 (0.052%) Elite 3E
11 4 (0.041%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 4 (0.041%) Oracle Receivables
12 3 (0.031%) Dynamics GP
12 3 (0.031%) Oracle Assets
12 3 (0.031%) SAP Business One
13 2 (0.021%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 2 (0.021%) SAP SCM
13 2 (0.021%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 4,103 (42.27%) Cloud Computing
2 1,461 (15.05%) Azure
3 808 (8.32%) Power Platform
4 698 (7.19%) AWS
5 499 (5.14%) Azure AI
6 430 (4.43%) SaaS
7 325 (3.35%) GCP
8 224 (2.31%) GitHub
9 205 (2.11%) Azure DevOps
10 188 (1.94%) Microsoft 365
11 116 (1.20%) Snowflake
12 113 (1.16%) GitHub Copilot
13 108 (1.11%) Azure Data Factory
13 108 (1.11%) Microsoft Copilot
14 104 (1.07%) Serverless
15 98 (1.01%) Entra ID
16 92 (0.95%) Power Automate
17 74 (0.76%) Vertex AI
18 62 (0.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 61 (0.63%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 4,060 (41.83%) Internet
2 52 (0.54%) Broadband
3 43 (0.44%) Firewall
4 30 (0.31%) Network Security
4 30 (0.31%) Unified Communications
5 26 (0.27%) VoIP
6 21 (0.22%) VPN
7 17 (0.18%) HTTP
8 15 (0.15%) DNS
8 15 (0.15%) TCP/IP
9 14 (0.14%) Telepresence
9 14 (0.14%) WAN
9 14 (0.14%) WebEx
9 14 (0.14%) Wi-Fi
10 13 (0.13%) VLAN
11 11 (0.11%) DHCP
12 8 (0.082%) InfiniBand
12 8 (0.082%) Intranet
12 8 (0.082%) Wireless
13 7 (0.072%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 655 (6.75%) Power BI
2 517 (5.33%) Tableau
3 153 (1.58%) Data Warehouse
4 110 (1.13%) NoSQL
5 105 (1.08%) SQL Server
6 103 (1.06%) Data Lake
7 84 (0.87%) Metadata
8 76 (0.78%) PostgreSQL
9 74 (0.76%) MongoDB
10 69 (0.71%) Big Data
11 42 (0.43%) BigQuery
12 39 (0.40%) MySQL
12 39 (0.40%) Pinecone
13 35 (0.36%) Hadoop
14 34 (0.35%) Relational Database
15 33 (0.34%) Elasticsearch
16 31 (0.32%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 27 (0.28%) Looker
18 25 (0.26%) Azure SQL Database
19 24 (0.25%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 136 (1.40%) Git
2 118 (1.22%) JIRA
3 51 (0.53%) MLflow
4 47 (0.48%) Jenkins
5 28 (0.29%) GitLab
6 20 (0.21%) Octopus Deploy
6 20 (0.21%) TeamCity
7 18 (0.19%) Cypress.io
7 18 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
8 14 (0.14%) Selenium
8 14 (0.14%) Visual Studio
9 9 (0.093%) Bitbucket
9 9 (0.093%) Postman
9 9 (0.093%) Visual Studio Code
10 8 (0.082%) Subversion
10 8 (0.082%) Vite
11 7 (0.072%) Burp Suite
11 7 (0.072%) Storybook
11 7 (0.072%) WebDriver
12 6 (0.062%) Claude Code
General
1 5,634 (58.04%) Social Skills
2 4,492 (46.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 4,222 (43.49%) Banking
4 1,144 (11.79%) Finance
5 1,096 (11.29%) Analytical Skills
6 396 (4.08%) Marketing
7 299 (3.08%) Public Sector
8 285 (2.94%) Law
9 266 (2.74%) Legal
10 205 (2.11%) Retail
11 141 (1.45%) Games
12 120 (1.24%) Manufacturing
13 103 (1.06%) Telecoms
14 95 (0.98%) Presentation Skills
15 94 (0.97%) Pharmaceutical
16 77 (0.79%) Financial Institution
17 76 (0.78%) Influencing Skills
18 71 (0.73%) Organisational Skills
19 65 (0.67%) Electronics
20 61 (0.63%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 3,163 (32.58%) Lecturer
2 1,165 (12.00%) Trainer
3 701 (7.22%) Senior
4 596 (6.14%) Analyst
5 461 (4.75%) Data Analyst
6 415 (4.28%) Lead
7 408 (4.20%) Junior
8 405 (4.17%) Developer
9 386 (3.98%) Junior Analyst
9 386 (3.98%) Junior Data Analyst
10 272 (2.80%) Architect
11 215 (2.21%) Consultant
12 178 (1.83%) Software Engineer
13 155 (1.60%) Content Editor
13 155 (1.60%) Data Engineer
14 136 (1.40%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 116 (1.20%) Solutions Architect
16 106 (1.09%) Support Specialist
17 98 (1.01%) Customer Support Specialist
18 96 (0.99%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 235 (2.42%) React
2 184 (1.90%) .NET
3 177 (1.82%) REST
4 147 (1.51%) PyTorch
5 126 (1.30%) TensorFlow
6 117 (1.21%) Node.js
7 115 (1.18%) RESTful
8 108 (1.11%) LangChain
9 103 (1.06%) HTML
10 84 (0.87%) FastAPI
11 75 (0.77%) CSS
12 72 (0.74%) AngularJS
13 71 (0.73%) Django
14 69 (0.71%) Kafka
15 60 (0.62%) scikit-learn
16 59 (0.61%) Vue
17 56 (0.58%) OAuth
18 55 (0.57%) Flask
18 55 (0.57%) Next.js
19 53 (0.55%) Hugging Face
Miscellaneous
1 4,077 (42.00%) IoT
2 278 (2.86%) Cloud Native
3 188 (1.94%) Product Ownership
4 181 (1.86%) Onboarding
5 157 (1.62%) Robotics
6 152 (1.57%) AI Agents
7 138 (1.42%) Algorithms
8 130 (1.34%) Self-Motivation
9 116 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
10 113 (1.16%) Blog
11 99 (1.02%) Management Information System
12 97 (1.00%) Life Science
12 97 (1.00%) Molecular Biology
13 93 (0.96%) Low-Code
14 86 (0.89%) Distributed Systems
15 83 (0.86%) Legacy Systems
16 70 (0.72%) Analytical Mindset
16 70 (0.72%) Greenfield Project
17 63 (0.65%) Virtual Team
18 62 (0.64%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 81 (0.83%) Windows
2 77 (0.79%) Linux
3 62 (0.64%) Android
4 55 (0.57%) Unix
5 39 (0.40%) Apple iOS
6 30 (0.31%) Windows Server
7 14 (0.14%) Ubuntu
8 9 (0.093%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.052%) Kali Linux
10 4 (0.041%) Robot Operating System
10 4 (0.041%) VMS
11 3 (0.031%) OpenWrt
11 3 (0.031%) Windows Server 2016
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 5,065 (52.18%) Machine Learning
2 4,330 (44.61%) Cybersecurity
3 4,317 (44.47%) User Experience
4 4,072 (41.95%) Web Development
5 1,253 (12.91%) Conversational UI
6 1,043 (10.74%) Analytics
7 932 (9.60%) Agile
8 791 (8.15%) Business Intelligence
9 754 (7.77%) Problem-Solving
10 621 (6.40%) Roadmaps
11 594 (6.12%) CI/CD
12 585 (6.03%) DevOps
13 581 (5.99%) Decision-Making
13 581 (5.99%) Software Engineering
14 557 (5.74%) Continuous Improvement
15 489 (5.04%) Generative AI
16 477 (4.91%) Data Science
17 472 (4.86%) Computer Science
18 461 (4.75%) LLM
19 404 (4.16%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 1,453 (14.97%) Python
2 981 (10.11%) SQL
3 257 (2.65%) JavaScript
4 249 (2.57%) TypeScript
5 204 (2.10%) Java
6 150 (1.55%) C#
7 87 (0.90%) PowerShell
8 81 (0.83%) C++
9 69 (0.71%) Bash
10 64 (0.66%) Go
11 58 (0.60%) R
12 38 (0.39%) PHP
13 35 (0.36%) Rust
14 32 (0.33%) Scala
15 28 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 27 (0.28%) Kotlin
17 23 (0.24%) Apex Code
17 23 (0.24%) C
18 21 (0.22%) PL/SQL
19 19 (0.20%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 6,107 (62.91%) Degree
2 4,801 (49.46%) Master's Degree
3 4,733 (48.76%) PhD
4 4,049 (41.71%) Postgraduate
5 430 (4.43%) Azure Certification
6 324 (3.34%) Security Cleared
7 260 (2.68%) SC Cleared
8 216 (2.23%) Computer Science Degree
9 79 (0.81%) DV Cleared
10 68 (0.70%) AWS Certification
11 60 (0.62%) DBS Check
12 47 (0.48%) BPSS Clearance
12 47 (0.48%) CISSP
13 46 (0.47%) PMP
14 38 (0.39%) Microsoft Certification
15 34 (0.35%) ACCA
16 31 (0.32%) PMI Certification
17 30 (0.31%) CISA
17 30 (0.31%) Numerate Degree
18 28 (0.29%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 225 (2.32%) Data Quality
2 159 (1.64%) Accessibility
3 134 (1.38%) QA
4 116 (1.20%) GDPR
5 75 (0.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 43 (0.44%) GxP
7 38 (0.39%) EU AI Act
8 33 (0.34%) NIST
9 29 (0.30%) IFRS
10 26 (0.27%) SLA
11 25 (0.26%) HIPAA
12 24 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
12 24 (0.25%) GRC
13 22 (0.23%) PMO
13 22 (0.23%) Solvency II
13 22 (0.23%) WCAG
14 21 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials
14 21 (0.22%) PSD2
15 18 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 42001
16 16 (0.16%) GAAP
System Software
1 236 (2.43%) Docker
2 72 (0.74%) Active Directory
3 22 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
3 22 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
4 18 (0.19%) VMware Infrastructure
5 16 (0.16%) Firmware
6 14 (0.14%) vSphere
7 7 (0.072%) Lustre
8 5 (0.052%) GPFS
8 5 (0.052%) Hyper-V
8 5 (0.052%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 4 (0.041%) VMware ESXi
10 2 (0.021%) Ceph
10 2 (0.021%) Kamailio
10 2 (0.021%) NFS
10 2 (0.021%) RACF
11 1 (0.010%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 232 (2.39%) Terraform
2 220 (2.27%) Kubernetes
3 52 (0.54%) Ansible
4 47 (0.48%) Microsoft Intune
5 44 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
6 32 (0.33%) Prometheus
7 25 (0.26%) Grafana
8 14 (0.14%) Cisco CUCM
9 10 (0.10%) Kubeflow
10 9 (0.093%) Argo
11 8 (0.082%) SCCM
12 7 (0.072%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 6 (0.062%) vCenter Server
14 4 (0.041%) Nessus
14 4 (0.041%) Nmap
14 4 (0.041%) Proxmox
15 3 (0.031%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
15 3 (0.031%) RSA Archer
15 3 (0.031%) SolarWinds Orion
16 2 (0.021%) Puppet
Vendors
1 1,188 (12.24%) Microsoft
2 1,163 (11.98%) PayPal
3 185 (1.91%) Google
4 168 (1.73%) Databricks
5 118 (1.22%) OpenAI
6 102 (1.05%) Oracle
7 98 (1.01%) Salesforce
8 97 (1.00%) Adobe
9 96 (0.99%) Cisco
10 86 (0.89%) Dell
11 71 (0.73%) SAP
12 47 (0.48%) Blue Prism
12 47 (0.48%) Foundry
13 45 (0.46%) Alteryx
14 42 (0.43%) Palantir
15 40 (0.41%) HubSpot
16 37 (0.38%) Fortinet
17 35 (0.36%) Apple
18 34 (0.35%) Bloomberg
19 30 (0.31%) VMware