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 18 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 36 53
Rank change year-on-year +32 +17 +64
Permanent jobs citing AI 10,056 2,635 3,606
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 13.44% 6.16% 4.24%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 17.27% 6.59% 4.87%
Number of salaries quoted 2,618 1,408 1,850
10th Percentile £33,750 £35,000 £41,250
25th Percentile £50,063 £56,250 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £72,500 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.45% +3.57% -
75th Percentile £93,750 £99,063 £92,500
90th Percentile £110,000 £117,500 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £58,497 £66,206 £60,000
% change year-on-year -11.64% +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 58,218 39,990 74,105
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 77.81% 93.48% 87.20%
Number of salaries quoted 35,252 22,229 56,158
10th Percentile £29,750 £31,750 £29,035
25th Percentile £40,000 £44,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -11.29%
75th Percentile £77,424 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,410 £93,750
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 18 March 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 18 March 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 +31 9,216 £70,000 -6.67% 2,928
UK excluding London +28 7,171 £58,497 -11.64% 1,916
North of England +39 2,652 £61,250 -4.11% 457
Work from Home +32 2,404 £67,500 +1.93% 1,319
London +30 2,393 £81,500 -11.89% 1,510
North West +32 1,974 £61,418 -13.80% 222
Midlands +76 1,576 £52,500 -19.23% 219
South East +34 1,420 £50,000 -33.33% 672
West Midlands +67 1,276 £55,000 -8.33% 115
East of England +18 734 £55,000 -16.95% 216
Yorkshire +36 565 £62,500 +38.89% 174
South West +11 381 £60,000 - 202
East Midlands +57 311 £50,000 -23.08% 104
Scotland +22 277 £70,000 +55.56% 105
Wales +34 121 £47,500 -24.00% 63
North East +42 113 £55,000 -24.14% 63
Northern Ireland 0 62 £90,000 -5.26% 23
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 96 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
2 93 (0.92%) SharePoint
3 91 (0.90%) Apache Spark
4 65 (0.65%) Jupyter
5 53 (0.53%) Confluence
6 52 (0.52%) CMS
7 40 (0.40%) Apache
8 30 (0.30%) ArcGIS
9 28 (0.28%) Palantir Foundry
10 22 (0.22%) WordPress
11 19 (0.19%) Microsoft Exchange
12 17 (0.17%) Appian
13 13 (0.13%) JBoss
13 13 (0.13%) WebSphere
14 11 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 8 (0.080%) SAS
16 5 (0.050%) Apache Pulsar
16 5 (0.050%) Apache Solr
16 5 (0.050%) IIS
16 5 (0.050%) Umbraco
Applications
1 900 (8.95%) Microsoft Excel
2 832 (8.27%) Chatbot
3 87 (0.87%) Microsoft Office
4 52 (0.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 22 (0.22%) MS Visio
5 22 (0.22%) UserZoom
6 20 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.11%) Maya
8 7 (0.070%) Adobe Premiere
9 6 (0.060%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.060%) Microsoft Project
9 6 (0.060%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.050%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.050%) 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 39 (0.39%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.18%) NetSuite
3 17 (0.17%) SAP S/4HANA
4 13 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
5 12 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
6 10 (0.099%) Workday HCM
7 8 (0.080%) Distributed Ledger
7 8 (0.080%) Shopify
8 7 (0.070%) Endur
8 7 (0.070%) Oracle EBS
8 7 (0.070%) Salesforce CRM
9 4 (0.040%) Dynamics AX
9 4 (0.040%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 4 (0.040%) Oracle Receivables
9 4 (0.040%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 3 (0.030%) Oracle Assets
11 2 (0.020%) Dynamics GP
11 2 (0.020%) Oracle Cash Management
11 2 (0.020%) Oracle General Ledger
11 2 (0.020%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 4,151 (41.28%) Cloud Computing
2 1,844 (18.34%) Azure
3 1,175 (11.68%) Power Platform
4 886 (8.81%) Azure AI
5 799 (7.95%) AWS
6 460 (4.57%) SaaS
7 332 (3.30%) GCP
8 212 (2.11%) GitHub
9 198 (1.97%) Microsoft 365
10 174 (1.73%) Azure DevOps
11 133 (1.32%) Snowflake
12 126 (1.25%) Adobe Analytics
13 122 (1.21%) Microsoft Copilot
14 116 (1.15%) Azure Data Factory
15 110 (1.09%) Serverless
16 108 (1.07%) GitHub Copilot
17 101 (1.00%) Entra ID
17 101 (1.00%) Power Automate
18 82 (0.82%) Figma
19 73 (0.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 4,052 (40.29%) Internet
2 207 (2.06%) Broadband
3 52 (0.52%) Firewall
4 32 (0.32%) Unified Communications
5 28 (0.28%) Network Security
6 27 (0.27%) VPN
7 20 (0.20%) VoIP
8 19 (0.19%) WAN
9 18 (0.18%) DNS
9 18 (0.18%) HTTP
9 18 (0.18%) TCP/IP
10 14 (0.14%) DHCP
10 14 (0.14%) Telepresence
10 14 (0.14%) WebEx
11 9 (0.089%) VLAN
11 9 (0.089%) Wi-Fi
12 8 (0.080%) SD-WAN
13 6 (0.060%) DMZ
13 6 (0.060%) Intranet
13 6 (0.060%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1,036 (10.30%) Power BI
2 921 (9.16%) Tableau
3 164 (1.63%) Data Warehouse
4 118 (1.17%) Data Lake
5 103 (1.02%) SQL Server
6 89 (0.89%) Metadata
6 89 (0.89%) PostgreSQL
7 80 (0.80%) MongoDB
7 80 (0.80%) NoSQL
8 67 (0.67%) Big Data
9 52 (0.52%) BigQuery
10 42 (0.42%) Elasticsearch
10 42 (0.42%) Looker
11 38 (0.38%) MySQL
12 37 (0.37%) Pinecone
13 32 (0.32%) Amazon Redshift
13 32 (0.32%) Apache Hive
13 32 (0.32%) Azure SQL Database
13 32 (0.32%) GIS
13 32 (0.32%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 158 (1.57%) Git
2 99 (0.98%) JIRA
3 63 (0.63%) MLflow
4 58 (0.58%) Visual Studio Code
5 47 (0.47%) Jenkins
6 33 (0.33%) GitLab
7 25 (0.25%) IBM UrbanCode
8 23 (0.23%) Selenium
9 22 (0.22%) Cypress.io
10 21 (0.21%) Claude Code
11 16 (0.16%) Postman
12 14 (0.14%) TeamCity
13 13 (0.13%) Octopus Deploy
14 12 (0.12%) Visual Studio
15 11 (0.11%) Bitbucket
15 11 (0.11%) Oracle Forms
16 10 (0.099%) SpecFlow
17 9 (0.089%) Storybook
18 8 (0.080%) Gradle
18 8 (0.080%) Vite
General
1 5,960 (59.27%) Social Skills
2 4,475 (44.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 4,257 (42.33%) Banking
4 1,175 (11.68%) Finance
5 880 (8.75%) Analytical Skills
6 403 (4.01%) Marketing
7 316 (3.14%) Public Sector
8 313 (3.11%) Legal
9 273 (2.71%) Law
10 261 (2.60%) Retail
11 254 (2.53%) Games
12 170 (1.69%) Manufacturing
13 114 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
14 103 (1.02%) Telecoms
15 98 (0.97%) Influencing Skills
16 88 (0.88%) Organisational Skills
17 84 (0.84%) Financial Institution
18 83 (0.83%) Pharmaceutical
19 48 (0.48%) German Language
20 47 (0.47%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 3,160 (31.42%) Lecturer
2 992 (9.86%) Analyst
3 843 (8.38%) Data Analyst
4 797 (7.93%) Junior
5 772 (7.68%) Junior Analyst
5 772 (7.68%) Junior Data Analyst
6 753 (7.49%) Senior
7 750 (7.46%) Trainer
8 523 (5.20%) Lead
9 427 (4.25%) Developer
10 313 (3.11%) Architect
11 274 (2.72%) Consultant
12 191 (1.90%) Software Engineer
13 166 (1.65%) Data Engineer
14 140 (1.39%) Solutions Architect
15 139 (1.38%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 104 (1.03%) Data Scientist
17 102 (1.01%) Content Editor
18 89 (0.89%) Senior Developer
18 89 (0.89%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 250 (2.49%) React
2 177 (1.76%) PyTorch
3 165 (1.64%) .NET
4 162 (1.61%) REST
5 136 (1.35%) TensorFlow
6 126 (1.25%) Node.js
7 125 (1.24%) HTML
8 123 (1.22%) RESTful
9 118 (1.17%) scikit-learn
10 104 (1.03%) Pandas
11 97 (0.96%) CSS
12 96 (0.95%) LangChain
13 91 (0.90%) Hugging Face
14 88 (0.88%) Kafka
15 86 (0.86%) FastAPI
16 80 (0.80%) Django
17 78 (0.78%) NumPy
18 67 (0.67%) AngularJS
19 64 (0.64%) PySpark
20 63 (0.63%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 4,077 (40.54%) IoT
2 294 (2.92%) Cloud Native
3 207 (2.06%) Onboarding
4 182 (1.81%) Algorithms
5 177 (1.76%) Social Media
6 170 (1.69%) AI Agents
6 170 (1.69%) Product Ownership
7 136 (1.35%) Robotics
7 136 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
8 128 (1.27%) Blog
9 107 (1.06%) Distributed Systems
10 98 (0.97%) Management Information System
11 97 (0.96%) Enterprise Software
12 95 (0.94%) Low-Code
13 86 (0.86%) Life Science
14 82 (0.82%) Mobile App
15 73 (0.73%) Molecular Biology
16 65 (0.65%) Public Cloud
17 64 (0.64%) Virtual Team
18 62 (0.62%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 90 (0.89%) Linux
2 89 (0.89%) Windows
3 87 (0.87%) Android
4 61 (0.61%) Apple iOS
5 60 (0.60%) Unix
6 31 (0.31%) Windows Server
7 15 (0.15%) Ubuntu
8 9 (0.089%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.050%) VMS
9 5 (0.050%) Windows Server 2016
10 4 (0.040%) Robot Operating System
11 3 (0.030%) OpenWrt
12 2 (0.020%) Kali Linux
12 2 (0.020%) Mac OS X
12 2 (0.020%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.020%) zOS
13 1 (0.010%) FreeRTOS
13 1 (0.010%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 5,137 (51.08%) Machine Learning
2 4,324 (43.00%) User Experience
3 4,319 (42.95%) Cybersecurity
4 4,072 (40.49%) Web Development
5 1,204 (11.97%) Analytics
6 1,184 (11.77%) Business Intelligence
7 960 (9.55%) Agile
8 893 (8.88%) Conversational UI
9 743 (7.39%) Problem-Solving
10 718 (7.14%) Roadmaps
11 657 (6.53%) CI/CD
12 617 (6.14%) Decision-Making
13 603 (6.00%) Continuous Improvement
14 571 (5.68%) Software Engineering
15 549 (5.46%) DevOps
16 536 (5.33%) Generative AI
17 530 (5.27%) LLM
18 527 (5.24%) Data Science
19 487 (4.84%) Mentoring
20 398 (3.96%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 1,999 (19.88%) Python
2 1,376 (13.68%) SQL
3 245 (2.44%) Java
4 244 (2.43%) JavaScript
5 225 (2.24%) TypeScript
6 175 (1.74%) C#
7 80 (0.80%) C++
8 71 (0.71%) Go
9 70 (0.70%) PowerShell
10 64 (0.64%) Bash
11 54 (0.54%) R
12 41 (0.41%) Kotlin
13 37 (0.37%) PHP
14 31 (0.31%) Rust
15 26 (0.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 25 (0.25%) Scala
17 21 (0.21%) Apex Code
18 18 (0.18%) Swift
19 17 (0.17%) Bicep
20 16 (0.16%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 5,597 (55.66%) Degree
2 4,575 (45.50%) Master's Degree
3 4,525 (45.00%) PhD
4 4,051 (40.28%) Postgraduate
5 830 (8.25%) Azure Certification
6 295 (2.93%) Security Cleared
7 196 (1.95%) SC Cleared
8 185 (1.84%) Computer Science Degree
9 118 (1.17%) AWS Certification
10 93 (0.92%) DV Cleared
11 71 (0.71%) DBS Check
12 56 (0.56%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 51 (0.51%) PMP
14 48 (0.48%) CISSP
15 46 (0.46%) ACCA
16 42 (0.42%) Microsoft Certification
17 36 (0.36%) PMI Certification
18 32 (0.32%) Cisco Certification
19 31 (0.31%) Numerate Degree
20 23 (0.23%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 305 (3.03%) Accessibility
2 255 (2.54%) Data Quality
3 158 (1.57%) QA
4 146 (1.45%) GDPR
5 69 (0.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 55 (0.55%) WCAG
7 48 (0.48%) EU AI Act
8 37 (0.37%) GRC
8 37 (0.37%) HIPAA
8 37 (0.37%) NIST
9 36 (0.36%) IFRS
10 29 (0.29%) GxP
11 25 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
11 25 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 25 (0.25%) PMO
12 24 (0.24%) Solvency II
13 21 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials
13 21 (0.21%) PSD2
14 20 (0.20%) SLA
15 17 (0.17%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 266 (2.65%) Docker
2 82 (0.82%) Active Directory
3 18 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
4 15 (0.15%) VMware Infrastructure
5 13 (0.13%) Firmware
6 10 (0.099%) vSphere
7 9 (0.089%) Virtual Desktop
8 4 (0.040%) Lustre
8 4 (0.040%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 3 (0.030%) Kamailio
9 3 (0.030%) VMware ESXi
10 2 (0.020%) Ceph
10 2 (0.020%) GPFS
10 2 (0.020%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.020%) RACF
11 1 (0.010%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 249 (2.48%) Kubernetes
2 218 (2.17%) Terraform
3 59 (0.59%) Ansible
4 41 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
5 40 (0.40%) Prometheus
6 37 (0.37%) Grafana
7 35 (0.35%) Microsoft Intune
8 14 (0.14%) Cisco CUCM
9 7 (0.070%) Argo
9 7 (0.070%) Proxmox
9 7 (0.070%) vCenter Server
10 6 (0.060%) Kubeflow
11 4 (0.040%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 4 (0.040%) Control-M
11 4 (0.040%) RSA Archer
11 4 (0.040%) SolarWinds Orion
12 3 (0.030%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
12 3 (0.030%) HP Fortify
13 2 (0.020%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
13 2 (0.020%) SELinux
Vendors
1 1,582 (15.73%) Microsoft
2 740 (7.36%) PayPal
3 208 (2.07%) Databricks
4 194 (1.93%) Google
5 181 (1.80%) Adobe
6 113 (1.12%) OpenAI
7 112 (1.11%) Dell
8 108 (1.07%) Oracle
9 94 (0.93%) Salesforce
10 79 (0.79%) Cisco
11 71 (0.71%) SAP
12 59 (0.59%) Foundry
13 54 (0.54%) Palantir
14 47 (0.47%) Alteryx
15 41 (0.41%) ServiceNow
16 33 (0.33%) Bloomberg
17 30 (0.30%) Apple
17 30 (0.30%) Fortinet
17 30 (0.30%) Informatica
17 30 (0.30%) Red Hat