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

6 months to
17 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 46 68
Rank change year-on-year +42 +22 +55
Permanent jobs citing AI 9,771 2,624 2,891
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 14.48% 5.35% 3.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 18.24% 5.80% 4.37%
Number of salaries quoted 2,420 1,333 1,692
10th Percentile £35,000 £45,000 £42,500
25th Percentile £51,250 £61,250 £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 £117,500 £117,500 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £66,254 £62,500
% change year-on-year -9.44% +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 53,577 45,271 66,195
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 79.42% 92.38% 88.33%
Number of salaries quoted 32,051 21,953 51,270
10th Percentile £29,000 £35,000 £29,500
25th Percentile £38,250 £46,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,504 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.10% +10.01% -12.00%
75th Percentile £76,250 £81,250 £75,000
90th Percentile £97,500 £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 17 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 17 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 +40 8,916 £70,000 -6.67% 2,271
UK excluding London +42 7,022 £60,000 -9.44% 1,537
North of England +46 2,584 £60,000 -10.14% 351
Work from Home +39 2,582 £67,500 +1.82% 1,131
London +34 2,295 £80,000 -12.09% 1,179
North West +42 1,984 £60,000 -15.79% 202
Midlands +91 1,517 £55,000 -15.38% 188
South East +38 1,465 £50,000 -35.06% 565
West Midlands +84 1,245 £59,527 +1.32% 107
East of England +28 665 £55,000 -16.96% 152
Yorkshire +36 499 £67,500 +12.50% 110
South West +24 360 £62,500 -3.85% 164
Scotland +44 326 £70,000 +21.74% 89
East Midlands +72 283 £47,500 -26.92% 81
Wales +37 119 £51,585 +3.17% 42
North East +48 101 £55,000 -24.14% 40
Northern Ireland -7 53 £90,000 -5.26% 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 94 (0.96%) SharePoint
2 60 (0.61%) 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 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
9 19 (0.19%) ArcGIS
9 19 (0.19%) WordPress
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 (10.38%) Chatbot
2 644 (6.59%) Microsoft Excel
3 88 (0.90%) 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 (0.061%) Microsoft Project
9 5 (0.051%) Adobe Premiere
9 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
9 5 (0.051%) UserZoom
10 4 (0.041%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 4 (0.041%) Sketch
10 4 (0.041%) Weka
11 3 (0.031%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.031%) Simulink
12 2 (0.020%) Adobe Illustrator
12 2 (0.020%) InDesign
12 2 (0.020%) Notion
13 1 (0.010%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 47 (0.48%) Dynamics CRM
2 19 (0.19%) NetSuite
2 19 (0.19%) 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%) Oracle Assets
9 3 (0.031%) SAP Business One
10 2 (0.020%) Dynamics GP
10 2 (0.020%) Maximo
10 2 (0.020%) SAP ERP
10 2 (0.020%) SAP FI/CO
10 2 (0.020%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 4,132 (42.29%) Cloud Computing
2 1,590 (16.27%) Azure
3 931 (9.53%) Power Platform
4 720 (7.37%) AWS
5 602 (6.16%) Azure AI
6 448 (4.58%) SaaS
7 326 (3.34%) GCP
8 226 (2.31%) GitHub
9 199 (2.04%) Azure DevOps
9 199 (2.04%) Microsoft 365
10 123 (1.26%) Snowflake
11 111 (1.14%) GitHub Copilot
12 110 (1.13%) Azure Data Factory
13 108 (1.11%) Entra ID
14 105 (1.07%) Microsoft Copilot
15 104 (1.06%) Serverless
16 97 (0.99%) Power Automate
17 68 (0.70%) PaaS
18 67 (0.69%) dbt
19 63 (0.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 4,061 (41.56%) Internet
2 84 (0.86%) Broadband
3 51 (0.52%) Firewall
4 32 (0.33%) Network Security
4 32 (0.33%) Unified Communications
5 27 (0.28%) VoIP
6 24 (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%) Intranet
14 8 (0.082%) Wireshark
15 7 (0.072%) DMZ
15 7 (0.072%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 771 (7.89%) Power BI
2 630 (6.45%) Tableau
3 153 (1.57%) Data Warehouse
4 105 (1.07%) SQL Server
5 99 (1.01%) NoSQL
6 96 (0.98%) Data Lake
7 89 (0.91%) Metadata
8 75 (0.77%) MongoDB
8 75 (0.77%) PostgreSQL
9 74 (0.76%) Big Data
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
1 132 (1.35%) Git
2 114 (1.17%) JIRA
3 53 (0.54%) MLflow
4 45 (0.46%) Jenkins
5 32 (0.33%) Visual Studio Code
6 29 (0.30%) GitLab
7 19 (0.19%) Cypress.io
8 18 (0.18%) Selenium
9 17 (0.17%) Octopus Deploy
9 17 (0.17%) Oracle Forms
9 17 (0.17%) TeamCity
10 13 (0.13%) Visual Studio
11 12 (0.12%) Postman
12 10 (0.10%) Claude Code
13 9 (0.092%) Bitbucket
14 8 (0.082%) Storybook
14 8 (0.082%) Subversion
15 7 (0.072%) Burp Suite
15 7 (0.072%) Vite
15 7 (0.072%) WebDriver
General
1 5,749 (58.84%) Social Skills
2 4,485 (45.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 4,230 (43.29%) Banking
4 1,191 (12.19%) Finance
5 1,039 (10.63%) Analytical Skills
6 403 (4.12%) Marketing
7 305 (3.12%) Public Sector
8 282 (2.89%) Law
9 278 (2.85%) Legal
10 229 (2.34%) Retail
11 168 (1.72%) Games
12 140 (1.43%) Manufacturing
13 108 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
14 105 (1.07%) Telecoms
15 94 (0.96%) Pharmaceutical
16 83 (0.85%) Financial Institution
16 83 (0.85%) Influencing Skills
17 67 (0.69%) Organisational Skills
18 61 (0.62%) Electronics
19 48 (0.49%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 3,161 (32.35%) Lecturer
2 951 (9.73%) Trainer
3 714 (7.31%) Analyst
4 697 (7.13%) Senior
5 577 (5.91%) Data Analyst
6 517 (5.29%) Junior
7 497 (5.09%) Junior Analyst
7 497 (5.09%) Junior Data Analyst
8 447 (4.57%) Lead
9 426 (4.36%) Developer
10 290 (2.97%) Architect
11 230 (2.35%) Consultant
12 187 (1.91%) Software Engineer
13 160 (1.64%) Data Engineer
14 131 (1.34%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 123 (1.26%) Solutions Architect
16 122 (1.25%) Content Editor
17 99 (1.01%) Senior Manager
18 92 (0.94%) Data Scientist
19 88 (0.90%) Research Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 236 (2.42%) React
2 185 (1.89%) .NET
3 172 (1.76%) REST
4 154 (1.58%) PyTorch
5 126 (1.29%) TensorFlow
6 117 (1.20%) RESTful
7 113 (1.16%) Node.js
8 108 (1.11%) HTML
9 88 (0.90%) LangChain
10 82 (0.84%) scikit-learn
11 81 (0.83%) CSS
11 81 (0.83%) FastAPI
12 76 (0.78%) Hugging Face
13 74 (0.76%) Django
14 73 (0.75%) Kafka
15 70 (0.72%) AngularJS
16 67 (0.69%) Pandas
17 60 (0.61%) Spring
18 58 (0.59%) Flask
19 57 (0.58%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 4,083 (41.79%) IoT
2 277 (2.83%) Cloud Native
3 189 (1.93%) Onboarding
4 177 (1.81%) Product Ownership
5 162 (1.66%) Algorithms
6 159 (1.63%) Robotics
7 158 (1.62%) AI Agents
8 132 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
9 120 (1.23%) Blog
10 112 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
11 101 (1.03%) Management Information System
12 98 (1.00%) Distributed Systems
13 95 (0.97%) Life Science
14 92 (0.94%) Low-Code
15 91 (0.93%) Molecular Biology
16 85 (0.87%) Social Media
17 72 (0.74%) Greenfield Project
18 64 (0.65%) Analytical Mindset
18 64 (0.65%) Legacy Systems
19 63 (0.64%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 87 (0.89%) Windows
2 83 (0.85%) Linux
3 68 (0.70%) Android
4 58 (0.59%) Unix
5 46 (0.47%) Apple iOS
6 32 (0.33%) 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%) Debian
13 1 (0.010%) FreeRTOS
13 1 (0.010%) Solaris
13 1 (0.010%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 5,082 (52.01%) Machine Learning
2 4,334 (44.36%) Cybersecurity
3 4,316 (44.17%) User Experience
4 4,070 (41.65%) Web Development
5 1,102 (11.28%) Analytics
6 1,058 (10.83%) Conversational UI
7 929 (9.51%) Agile
8 913 (9.34%) Business Intelligence
9 736 (7.53%) Problem-Solving
10 667 (6.83%) Roadmaps
11 613 (6.27%) Decision-Making
12 603 (6.17%) CI/CD
13 595 (6.09%) Software Engineering
14 582 (5.96%) Continuous Improvement
15 577 (5.91%) DevOps
16 493 (5.05%) Data Science
17 488 (4.99%) Generative AI
18 472 (4.83%) LLM
19 432 (4.42%) Computer Science
20 427 (4.37%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 1,620 (16.58%) Python
2 1,089 (11.15%) SQL
3 264 (2.70%) JavaScript
4 249 (2.55%) TypeScript
5 222 (2.27%) Java
6 159 (1.63%) C#
7 88 (0.90%) PowerShell
8 85 (0.87%) C++
9 71 (0.73%) Bash
10 68 (0.70%) Go
11 58 (0.59%) 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 (0.21%) PL/SQL
20 17 (0.17%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 5,862 (59.99%) Degree
2 4,727 (48.38%) Master's Degree
3 4,664 (47.73%) PhD
4 4,049 (41.44%) Postgraduate
5 548 (5.61%) Azure Certification
6 343 (3.51%) Security Cleared
7 262 (2.68%) SC Cleared
8 194 (1.99%) Computer Science Degree
9 95 (0.97%) AWS Certification
10 85 (0.87%) DV Cleared
11 69 (0.71%) DBS Check
12 49 (0.50%) CISSP
12 49 (0.50%) PMP
13 47 (0.48%) BPSS Clearance
14 39 (0.40%) ACCA
15 36 (0.37%) 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
1 224 (2.29%) Data Quality
2 200 (2.05%) Accessibility
3 146 (1.49%) QA
4 131 (1.34%) GDPR
5 78 (0.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 41 (0.42%) EU AI Act
6 41 (0.42%) GxP
7 36 (0.37%) NIST
8 34 (0.35%) IFRS
9 26 (0.27%) GRC
10 25 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
10 25 (0.26%) HIPAA
11 23 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials
12 22 (0.23%) PMO
12 22 (0.23%) SLA
12 22 (0.23%) Solvency II
12 22 (0.23%) WCAG
13 21 (0.21%) PSD2
14 18 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 42001
15 17 (0.17%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 252 (2.58%) Docker
2 77 (0.79%) Active Directory
3 23 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
4 20 (0.20%) 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
8 4 (0.041%) VMware ESXi
9 3 (0.031%) GPFS
9 3 (0.031%) Kamailio
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
1 245 (2.51%) Kubernetes
2 241 (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 (0.061%) Proxmox
13 5 (0.051%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 4 (0.041%) Nessus
14 4 (0.041%) Nmap
14 4 (0.041%) RSA Archer
14 4 (0.041%) SolarWinds Orion
15 3 (0.031%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
15 3 (0.031%) Control-M
Vendors
1 1,322 (13.53%) Microsoft
2 947 (9.69%) PayPal
3 184 (1.88%) Google
4 176 (1.80%) Databricks
5 115 (1.18%) OpenAI
6 108 (1.11%) Adobe
7 103 (1.05%) Salesforce
8 101 (1.03%) Oracle
9 90 (0.92%) Dell
10 88 (0.90%) Cisco
11 74 (0.76%) SAP
12 48 (0.49%) Blue Prism
13 47 (0.48%) Alteryx
14 46 (0.47%) Palantir
15 44 (0.45%) Foundry
16 40 (0.41%) HubSpot
17 36 (0.37%) Fortinet
18 34 (0.35%) Bloomberg
19 32 (0.33%) Apple
20 28 (0.29%) VMware