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

6 months to
21 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 44 66
Rank change year-on-year +40 +22 +55
Permanent jobs citing AI 9,807 2,640 2,981
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 14.25% 5.44% 3.96%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 18.00% 5.88% 4.48%
Number of salaries quoted 2,471 1,349 1,694
10th Percentile £33,750 £45,000 £42,500
25th Percentile £50,000 £60,000 £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 £115,000 £117,500 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £59,450 £66,254 £62,500
% change year-on-year -10.27% +6.01% -2.14%

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 54,494 44,927 66,578
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 79.19% 92.59% 88.37%
Number of salaries quoted 32,685 22,191 51,489
10th Percentile £29,000 £34,000 £29,448
25th Percentile £38,000 £46,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,001 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -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 21 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 21 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 +37 8,975 £70,000 -6.67% 2,322
UK excluding London +41 7,041 £59,450 -10.27% 1,628
North of England +50 2,598 £60,000 -11.11% 356
Work from Home +36 2,521 £67,500 +1.83% 1,235
London +33 2,308 £80,939 -11.06% 1,168
North West +41 1,984 £61,418 -12.26% 197
Midlands +89 1,523 £55,000 -13.73% 185
South East +39 1,476 £50,000 -33.33% 612
West Midlands +78 1,247 £57,264 -0.41% 107
East of England +27 670 £55,000 -16.96% 170
Yorkshire +42 511 £62,500 - 107
South West +19 363 £62,500 -3.85% 180
Scotland +34 299 £70,000 +21.74% 96
East Midlands +68 287 £50,000 -23.08% 76
Wales +42 120 £50,335 +0.67% 47
North East +45 103 £55,000 -24.14% 53
Northern Ireland -10 55 £90,000 -5.26% 13
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 91 (0.93%) SharePoint
2 61 (0.62%) Apache Airflow
3 57 (0.58%) Jupyter
4 54 (0.55%) Apache Spark
5 46 (0.47%) Confluence
6 44 (0.45%) CMS
7 24 (0.24%) Microsoft Exchange
8 23 (0.23%) ArcGIS
9 22 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
10 17 (0.17%) Appian
10 17 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 17 (0.17%) WordPress
11 16 (0.16%) Apache
12 13 (0.13%) JBoss
12 13 (0.13%) WebSphere
13 7 (0.071%) SAS
14 6 (0.061%) Apache Solr
15 5 (0.051%) Apache Pulsar
15 5 (0.051%) IIS
15 5 (0.051%) Umbraco
Applications
1 959 (9.78%) Chatbot
2 701 (7.15%) Microsoft Excel
3 89 (0.91%) Microsoft Office
4 43 (0.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 17 (0.17%) Maya
6 16 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
7 10 (0.10%) MS Visio
8 6 (0.061%) Adobe Premiere
8 6 (0.061%) Microsoft Project
9 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
9 5 (0.051%) UserZoom
10 4 (0.041%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 4 (0.041%) Weka
11 3 (0.031%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.031%) Simulink
11 3 (0.031%) Sketch
12 2 (0.020%) Adobe Illustrator
12 2 (0.020%) Notion
13 1 (0.010%) Adobe After Effects
13 1 (0.010%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 43 (0.44%) Dynamics CRM
2 19 (0.19%) NetSuite
3 18 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
4 13 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
5 12 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
6 10 (0.10%) Workday HCM
7 9 (0.092%) Shopify
8 8 (0.082%) Distributed Ledger
8 8 (0.082%) Endur
9 7 (0.071%) Oracle EBS
9 7 (0.071%) Salesforce CRM
10 4 (0.041%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 4 (0.041%) Oracle Receivables
11 3 (0.031%) Oracle Assets
11 3 (0.031%) SAP Business One
11 3 (0.031%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
12 2 (0.020%) Dynamics GP
12 2 (0.020%) Oracle General Ledger
12 2 (0.020%) SAP ERP
12 2 (0.020%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 4,148 (42.30%) Cloud Computing
2 1,639 (16.71%) Azure
3 984 (10.03%) Power Platform
4 739 (7.54%) AWS
5 657 (6.70%) Azure AI
6 441 (4.50%) SaaS
7 327 (3.33%) GCP
8 223 (2.27%) GitHub
9 195 (1.99%) Microsoft 365
10 192 (1.96%) Azure DevOps
11 123 (1.25%) Snowflake
12 114 (1.16%) Azure Data Factory
13 110 (1.12%) GitHub Copilot
14 107 (1.09%) Microsoft Copilot
15 104 (1.06%) Entra ID
16 103 (1.05%) Serverless
17 97 (0.99%) Power Automate
18 69 (0.70%) PaaS
19 66 (0.67%) dbt
20 64 (0.65%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 4,059 (41.39%) Internet
2 93 (0.95%) Broadband
3 52 (0.53%) Firewall
4 32 (0.33%) Network Security
4 32 (0.33%) Unified Communications
5 26 (0.27%) VoIP
6 25 (0.25%) VPN
7 19 (0.19%) HTTP
8 18 (0.18%) WAN
9 17 (0.17%) TCP/IP
10 16 (0.16%) DNS
11 14 (0.14%) Telepresence
11 14 (0.14%) VLAN
11 14 (0.14%) WebEx
12 13 (0.13%) Wi-Fi
13 12 (0.12%) DHCP
14 8 (0.082%) Wireshark
15 7 (0.071%) DMZ
15 7 (0.071%) Intranet
15 7 (0.071%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 824 (8.40%) Power BI
2 682 (6.95%) Tableau
3 153 (1.56%) Data Warehouse
4 105 (1.07%) SQL Server
5 98 (1.00%) NoSQL
6 97 (0.99%) Data Lake
7 94 (0.96%) Metadata
8 78 (0.80%) PostgreSQL
9 76 (0.77%) MongoDB
10 75 (0.76%) Big Data
11 42 (0.43%) BigQuery
12 37 (0.38%) MySQL
12 37 (0.38%) Pinecone
13 34 (0.35%) Relational Database
14 33 (0.34%) Hadoop
15 31 (0.32%) Looker
16 30 (0.31%) Elasticsearch
17 29 (0.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 27 (0.28%) Data Mining
18 27 (0.28%) GIS
Development Applications
1 129 (1.32%) Git
2 108 (1.10%) JIRA
3 55 (0.56%) MLflow
4 49 (0.50%) Visual Studio Code
5 44 (0.45%) Jenkins
6 31 (0.32%) GitLab
7 19 (0.19%) Cypress.io
8 18 (0.18%) Selenium
9 17 (0.17%) Octopus Deploy
9 17 (0.17%) TeamCity
10 16 (0.16%) Oracle Forms
11 12 (0.12%) Postman
11 12 (0.12%) Visual Studio
12 10 (0.10%) Claude Code
13 9 (0.092%) Bitbucket
13 9 (0.092%) Storybook
14 8 (0.082%) Subversion
15 7 (0.071%) Burp Suite
15 7 (0.071%) SpecFlow
15 7 (0.071%) WebDriver
General
1 5,792 (59.06%) Social Skills
2 4,494 (45.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 4,232 (43.15%) Banking
4 1,220 (12.44%) Finance
5 1,030 (10.50%) Analytical Skills
6 400 (4.08%) Marketing
7 306 (3.12%) Public Sector
8 286 (2.92%) Legal
9 280 (2.86%) Law
10 248 (2.53%) Retail
11 169 (1.72%) Games
12 161 (1.64%) Manufacturing
13 111 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
14 105 (1.07%) Telecoms
15 95 (0.97%) Pharmaceutical
16 86 (0.88%) Influencing Skills
17 85 (0.87%) Financial Institution
18 73 (0.74%) Organisational Skills
19 61 (0.62%) Electronics
20 48 (0.49%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 3,161 (32.23%) Lecturer
2 880 (8.97%) Trainer
3 772 (7.87%) Analyst
4 709 (7.23%) Senior
5 635 (6.47%) Data Analyst
6 572 (5.83%) Junior
7 552 (5.63%) Junior Analyst
7 552 (5.63%) Junior Data Analyst
8 460 (4.69%) Lead
9 421 (4.29%) Developer
10 293 (2.99%) Architect
11 242 (2.47%) Consultant
12 186 (1.90%) Software Engineer
13 163 (1.66%) Data Engineer
14 132 (1.35%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 125 (1.27%) Solutions Architect
16 102 (1.04%) Content Editor
17 99 (1.01%) Data Scientist
18 98 (1.00%) Senior Manager
19 88 (0.90%) Research Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 235 (2.40%) React
2 179 (1.83%) .NET
3 170 (1.73%) REST
4 160 (1.63%) PyTorch
5 129 (1.32%) TensorFlow
6 118 (1.20%) RESTful
7 108 (1.10%) HTML
7 108 (1.10%) Node.js
8 100 (1.02%) scikit-learn
9 93 (0.95%) Hugging Face
10 87 (0.89%) LangChain
11 84 (0.86%) Pandas
12 80 (0.82%) CSS
13 79 (0.81%) FastAPI
14 77 (0.79%) Kafka
15 74 (0.75%) Django
16 70 (0.71%) NumPy
17 69 (0.70%) AngularJS
18 61 (0.62%) Spring
19 57 (0.58%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 4,083 (41.63%) IoT
2 276 (2.81%) Cloud Native
3 184 (1.88%) Onboarding
4 183 (1.87%) Algorithms
5 172 (1.75%) Product Ownership
6 158 (1.61%) AI Agents
6 158 (1.61%) Robotics
7 132 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
8 121 (1.23%) Blog
9 111 (1.13%) Enterprise Software
10 103 (1.05%) Management Information System
11 99 (1.01%) Distributed Systems
12 97 (0.99%) Life Science
13 96 (0.98%) Social Media
14 90 (0.92%) Low-Code
15 89 (0.91%) Molecular Biology
16 72 (0.73%) Greenfield Project
17 64 (0.65%) Analytical Mindset
17 64 (0.65%) Virtual Team
18 63 (0.64%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 86 (0.88%) Windows
2 83 (0.85%) Linux
3 69 (0.70%) Android
4 59 (0.60%) Unix
5 47 (0.48%) Apple iOS
6 28 (0.29%) 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 (0.020%) Mac OS X
12 2 (0.020%) zOS
13 1 (0.010%) FreeRTOS
13 1 (0.010%) Solaris
13 1 (0.010%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 5,101 (52.01%) Machine Learning
2 4,336 (44.21%) Cybersecurity
3 4,317 (44.02%) User Experience
4 4,070 (41.50%) Web Development
5 1,112 (11.34%) Analytics
6 1,004 (10.24%) Conversational UI
7 966 (9.85%) Business Intelligence
8 920 (9.38%) Agile
9 731 (7.45%) Problem-Solving
10 672 (6.85%) Roadmaps
11 604 (6.16%) Decision-Making
12 600 (6.12%) CI/CD
13 584 (5.95%) Software Engineering
14 569 (5.80%) DevOps
15 567 (5.78%) Continuous Improvement
16 507 (5.17%) Data Science
17 499 (5.09%) LLM
18 495 (5.05%) Generative AI
19 435 (4.44%) Computer Science
19 435 (4.44%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 1,703 (17.37%) Python
2 1,148 (11.71%) SQL
3 254 (2.59%) JavaScript
4 241 (2.46%) TypeScript
5 226 (2.30%) Java
6 160 (1.63%) C#
7 85 (0.87%) C++
8 83 (0.85%) PowerShell
9 70 (0.71%) Bash
10 67 (0.68%) Go
11 59 (0.60%) R
12 38 (0.39%) PHP
13 34 (0.35%) Rust
14 29 (0.30%) Kotlin
15 28 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 26 (0.27%) Scala
17 23 (0.23%) Apex Code
17 23 (0.23%) C
18 20 (0.20%) PL/SQL
19 16 (0.16%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 5,794 (59.08%) Degree
2 4,724 (48.17%) Master's Degree
3 4,660 (47.52%) PhD
4 4,050 (41.30%) Postgraduate
5 602 (6.14%) Azure Certification
6 345 (3.52%) Security Cleared
7 259 (2.64%) SC Cleared
8 191 (1.95%) Computer Science Degree
9 110 (1.12%) AWS Certification
10 87 (0.89%) DV Cleared
11 70 (0.71%) DBS Check
12 52 (0.53%) CISSP
13 49 (0.50%) PMP
14 47 (0.48%) BPSS Clearance
15 46 (0.47%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
16 42 (0.43%) ACCA
17 36 (0.37%) Microsoft Certification
18 34 (0.35%) PMI Certification
19 31 (0.32%) CISA
19 31 (0.32%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 226 (2.30%) Data Quality
2 211 (2.15%) Accessibility
3 147 (1.50%) QA
4 135 (1.38%) GDPR
5 79 (0.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 43 (0.44%) EU AI Act
7 41 (0.42%) GxP
8 38 (0.39%) NIST
9 36 (0.37%) IFRS
10 29 (0.30%) GRC
11 25 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
11 25 (0.25%) HIPAA
12 24 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials
13 22 (0.22%) PMO
13 22 (0.22%) Solvency II
13 22 (0.22%) WCAG
14 21 (0.21%) PSD2
15 19 (0.19%) PCI DSS
15 19 (0.19%) SLA
16 18 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 250 (2.55%) Docker
2 77 (0.79%) Active Directory
3 21 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
4 17 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
5 16 (0.16%) Firmware
5 16 (0.16%) VMware Infrastructure
6 12 (0.12%) vSphere
7 5 (0.051%) Lustre
8 4 (0.041%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 3 (0.031%) GPFS
9 3 (0.031%) Kamailio
9 3 (0.031%) VMware ESXi
10 2 (0.020%) Ceph
10 2 (0.020%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.020%) NFS
10 2 (0.020%) RACF
11 1 (0.010%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 247 (2.52%) Kubernetes
2 236 (2.41%) Terraform
3 50 (0.51%) Ansible
4 46 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
5 42 (0.43%) Microsoft Intune
6 39 (0.40%) Prometheus
7 35 (0.36%) Grafana
8 14 (0.14%) Cisco CUCM
9 11 (0.11%) Argo
10 7 (0.071%) Kubeflow
10 7 (0.071%) vCenter Server
11 6 (0.061%) Proxmox
11 6 (0.061%) SCCM
12 5 (0.051%) Active Directory Federation Services
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 1,398 (14.26%) Microsoft
2 875 (8.92%) PayPal
3 190 (1.94%) Google
4 179 (1.83%) Databricks
5 116 (1.18%) OpenAI
6 113 (1.15%) Adobe
7 100 (1.02%) Oracle
7 100 (1.02%) Salesforce
8 96 (0.98%) Dell
9 94 (0.96%) Cisco
10 73 (0.74%) SAP
11 47 (0.48%) Alteryx
11 47 (0.48%) Blue Prism
11 47 (0.48%) Foundry
11 47 (0.48%) Palantir
12 39 (0.40%) HubSpot
13 35 (0.36%) Fortinet
14 34 (0.35%) Bloomberg
15 33 (0.34%) ServiceNow
16 32 (0.33%) Apple