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 3 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 32 51
Rank change year-on-year +27 +19 +69
Permanent jobs citing AI 9,937 2,668 4,195
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 12.41% 6.52% 4.65%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.22% 7.01% 5.38%
Number of salaries quoted 2,837 1,443 1,922
10th Percentile £33,750 £32,500 £40,000
25th Percentile £51,250 £53,750 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £71,000 £72,500 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year -2.07% +3.57% -
75th Percentile £96,250 £100,000 £92,500
90th Percentile £115,000 £118,990 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £66,206 £60,000
% change year-on-year -9.37% +10.34% -8.19%

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 61,258 38,052 77,913
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 76.49% 93.03% 86.40%
Number of salaries quoted 37,754 22,305 57,991
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £29,079
25th Percentile £40,000 £43,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -10.57%
75th Percentile £77,500 £80,000 £73,410
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.26%

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 3 April 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 3 April 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 +27 9,207 £71,514 -4.65% 2,826
UK excluding London +26 7,004 £60,000 -9.37% 1,756
North of England +35 2,531 £61,418 -5.51% 455
London +28 2,500 £85,000 -10.53% 1,477
North West +32 1,915 £61,418 -15.29% 229
Work from Home +26 1,792 £67,500 +1.93% 1,250
Midlands +62 1,531 £52,250 -16.40% 214
South East +29 1,433 £55,000 -21.43% 594
West Midlands +59 1,230 £52,500 -12.50% 110
East of England +14 754 £55,000 -16.95% 145
Yorkshire +32 526 £65,000 +44.44% 165
South West +7 368 £60,000 - 199
East Midlands +50 312 £50,000 -23.08% 103
Scotland +8 233 £70,000 +55.56% 95
Wales +25 118 £50,335 -19.46% 68
North East +31 90 £55,000 -21.17% 63
Northern Ireland -2 64 £90,000 -7.69% 26
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
1 116 (1.17%) Apache Airflow
2 105 (1.06%) Apache Spark
3 91 (0.92%) SharePoint
4 65 (0.65%) Jupyter
5 58 (0.58%) Confluence
6 56 (0.56%) CMS
7 41 (0.41%) Apache
8 30 (0.30%) ArcGIS
9 26 (0.26%) Palantir Foundry
10 22 (0.22%) WordPress
11 18 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
12 17 (0.17%) Appian
13 13 (0.13%) JBoss
13 13 (0.13%) WebSphere
14 9 (0.091%) SAS
15 8 (0.081%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 5 (0.050%) Apache Pulsar
16 5 (0.050%) IIS
17 4 (0.040%) Umbraco
18 3 (0.030%) Camunda
Applications
1 1,056 (10.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 138 (1.39%) Chatbot
3 81 (0.82%) Microsoft Office
4 51 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 30 (0.30%) UserZoom
6 22 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
7 20 (0.20%) MS Visio
8 7 (0.070%) Adobe Premiere
8 7 (0.070%) Maya
9 6 (0.060%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.060%) Microsoft Project
10 5 (0.050%) Camtasia
10 5 (0.050%) Photoshop
11 4 (0.040%) Adobe After Effects
11 4 (0.040%) Adobe Illustrator
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 34 (0.34%) Dynamics CRM
2 20 (0.20%) NetSuite
3 18 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
4 11 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
5 10 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
5 10 (0.10%) Workday HCM
6 8 (0.081%) Distributed Ledger
7 7 (0.070%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.070%) Salesforce CRM
8 6 (0.060%) Shopify
9 4 (0.040%) Dynamics AX
9 4 (0.040%) Endur
9 4 (0.040%) Oracle Assets
9 4 (0.040%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 4 (0.040%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 3 (0.030%) Oracle General Ledger
10 3 (0.030%) Oracle Receivables
10 3 (0.030%) SAP FI
11 2 (0.020%) SAP CO
11 2 (0.020%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 4,157 (41.83%) Cloud Computing
2 2,181 (21.95%) Azure
3 1,345 (13.54%) Power Platform
4 1,197 (12.05%) Azure AI
5 854 (8.59%) AWS
6 475 (4.78%) SaaS
7 374 (3.76%) GCP
8 214 (2.15%) GitHub
9 193 (1.94%) Snowflake
10 190 (1.91%) Microsoft 365
11 164 (1.65%) Azure DevOps
12 160 (1.61%) Adobe Analytics
13 126 (1.27%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 124 (1.25%) Microsoft Copilot
15 123 (1.24%) Azure Data Factory
16 116 (1.17%) Serverless
17 107 (1.08%) GitHub Copilot
18 102 (1.03%) Entra ID
19 100 (1.01%) Azure Machine Learning
20 97 (0.98%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 4,054 (40.80%) Internet
2 243 (2.45%) Broadband
3 54 (0.54%) Firewall
4 31 (0.31%) Unified Communications
5 28 (0.28%) Network Security
6 26 (0.26%) VPN
7 21 (0.21%) HTTP
7 21 (0.21%) TCP/IP
8 19 (0.19%) VoIP
9 18 (0.18%) DNS
9 18 (0.18%) WAN
10 16 (0.16%) DHCP
11 13 (0.13%) Telepresence
11 13 (0.13%) WebEx
12 9 (0.091%) VLAN
13 8 (0.081%) Wi-Fi
14 7 (0.070%) Intranet
15 6 (0.060%) RTP
15 6 (0.060%) SD-WAN
15 6 (0.060%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1,213 (12.21%) Power BI
2 1,105 (11.12%) Tableau
3 196 (1.97%) Data Warehouse
4 152 (1.53%) Data Lake
5 138 (1.39%) SQL Server
6 96 (0.97%) Metadata
6 96 (0.97%) PostgreSQL
7 82 (0.83%) MongoDB
8 78 (0.78%) NoSQL
9 70 (0.70%) BigQuery
10 59 (0.59%) Big Data
10 59 (0.59%) Looker
11 55 (0.55%) Elasticsearch
12 47 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
13 42 (0.42%) Pinecone
14 41 (0.41%) Azure SQL Database
15 37 (0.37%) MySQL
16 35 (0.35%) Snowflake Schema
17 33 (0.33%) Relational Database
18 31 (0.31%) Redis
Development Applications
1 150 (1.51%) Git
2 95 (0.96%) JIRA
3 78 (0.78%) MLflow
4 58 (0.58%) Visual Studio Code
5 51 (0.51%) Jenkins
6 36 (0.36%) GitLab
7 33 (0.33%) Claude Code
8 25 (0.25%) Cypress.io
8 25 (0.25%) IBM UrbanCode
8 25 (0.25%) Selenium
9 17 (0.17%) Postman
10 13 (0.13%) SpecFlow
11 11 (0.11%) Bitbucket
11 11 (0.11%) Visual Studio
12 10 (0.10%) Storybook
13 9 (0.091%) Oracle Forms
13 9 (0.091%) TeamCity
14 8 (0.081%) Gradle
14 8 (0.081%) Octopus Deploy
14 8 (0.081%) Subversion
General
1 6,257 (62.97%) Social Skills
2 4,488 (45.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 4,272 (42.99%) Banking
4 1,234 (12.42%) Finance
5 720 (7.25%) Analytical Skills
6 416 (4.19%) Marketing
7 327 (3.29%) Legal
8 314 (3.16%) Public Sector
9 277 (2.79%) Games
9 277 (2.79%) Law
10 244 (2.46%) Retail
11 179 (1.80%) Manufacturing
12 116 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
12 116 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
13 100 (1.01%) Telecoms
14 90 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
15 79 (0.80%) Financial Institution
16 76 (0.76%) Pharmaceutical
17 55 (0.55%) Advertising
18 49 (0.49%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 3,158 (31.78%) Lecturer
2 1,157 (11.64%) Analyst
3 1,005 (10.11%) Data Analyst
4 962 (9.68%) Junior
5 937 (9.43%) Junior Analyst
5 937 (9.43%) Junior Data Analyst
6 791 (7.96%) Senior
7 602 (6.06%) Lead
8 433 (4.36%) Developer
9 362 (3.64%) Architect
10 269 (2.71%) Consultant
11 261 (2.63%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 210 (2.11%) Software Engineer
13 190 (1.91%) Data Engineer
14 160 (1.61%) Solutions Architect
15 109 (1.10%) Data Scientist
16 99 (1.00%) Python Engineer
17 96 (0.97%) Full-Stack Engineer
18 91 (0.92%) Full-Stack Developer
19 87 (0.88%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 271 (2.73%) React
2 199 (2.00%) PyTorch
3 165 (1.66%) REST
4 162 (1.63%) .NET
5 156 (1.57%) TensorFlow
6 140 (1.41%) HTML
7 134 (1.35%) scikit-learn
8 131 (1.32%) RESTful
9 129 (1.30%) Node.js
10 124 (1.25%) LangChain
11 113 (1.14%) CSS
12 107 (1.08%) Kafka
13 104 (1.05%) Pandas
14 95 (0.96%) FastAPI
15 93 (0.94%) Hugging Face
16 87 (0.88%) Django
17 78 (0.78%) NumPy
18 74 (0.74%) PySpark
19 65 (0.65%) AngularJS
20 63 (0.63%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 4,078 (41.04%) IoT
2 320 (3.22%) Cloud Native
3 217 (2.18%) Onboarding
4 211 (2.12%) Social Media
5 181 (1.82%) AI Agents
6 172 (1.73%) Algorithms
7 165 (1.66%) Product Ownership
8 150 (1.51%) Robotics
9 129 (1.30%) Blog
10 128 (1.29%) Self-Motivation
11 116 (1.17%) Distributed Systems
12 101 (1.02%) Low-Code
13 100 (1.01%) Management Information System
14 90 (0.91%) Enterprise Software
15 85 (0.86%) Life Science
15 85 (0.86%) Mobile App
16 84 (0.85%) Public Cloud
17 66 (0.66%) Virtual Team
18 65 (0.65%) Data Centre
19 54 (0.54%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 91 (0.92%) Linux
2 90 (0.91%) Windows
3 82 (0.83%) Android
4 57 (0.57%) Apple iOS
5 56 (0.56%) Unix
6 29 (0.29%) Windows Server
7 15 (0.15%) Ubuntu
8 9 (0.091%) 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%) zOS
13 1 (0.010%) FreeRTOS
13 1 (0.010%) Mac OS X
13 1 (0.010%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 1 (0.010%) Solaris
13 1 (0.010%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 5,216 (52.49%) Machine Learning
2 4,332 (43.59%) User Experience
3 4,310 (43.37%) Cybersecurity
4 4,075 (41.01%) Web Development
5 1,372 (13.81%) Business Intelligence
6 1,305 (13.13%) Analytics
7 1,008 (10.14%) Agile
8 816 (8.21%) Roadmaps
9 767 (7.72%) Problem-Solving
10 680 (6.84%) Decision-Making
11 675 (6.79%) CI/CD
12 627 (6.31%) Continuous Improvement
13 615 (6.19%) Software Engineering
14 582 (5.86%) Generative AI
15 567 (5.71%) LLM
16 566 (5.70%) Data Science
17 556 (5.60%) DevOps
18 494 (4.97%) Mentoring
19 423 (4.26%) Data Engineering
20 419 (4.22%) Customer Experience
Programming Languages
1 2,339 (23.54%) Python
2 1,587 (15.97%) SQL
3 261 (2.63%) JavaScript
4 252 (2.54%) Java
5 224 (2.25%) TypeScript
6 170 (1.71%) C#
7 81 (0.82%) C++
8 76 (0.76%) Go
9 65 (0.65%) Bash
10 58 (0.58%) PowerShell
11 55 (0.55%) R
12 40 (0.40%) Kotlin
13 34 (0.34%) PHP
14 29 (0.29%) Scala
15 28 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 26 (0.26%) Rust
17 21 (0.21%) Bicep
18 20 (0.20%) C
19 19 (0.19%) Apex Code
20 18 (0.18%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 4,913 (49.44%) Degree
2 4,239 (42.66%) Master's Degree
3 4,176 (42.02%) PhD
4 4,051 (40.77%) Postgraduate
5 1,106 (11.13%) Azure Certification
6 297 (2.99%) Security Cleared
7 193 (1.94%) SC Cleared
8 178 (1.79%) Computer Science Degree
9 119 (1.20%) AWS Certification
10 91 (0.92%) DV Cleared
11 66 (0.66%) DBS Check
12 65 (0.65%) ACCA
13 56 (0.56%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 47 (0.47%) PMP
15 45 (0.45%) CISSP
16 43 (0.43%) CIMA
16 43 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
17 32 (0.32%) PMI Certification
18 28 (0.28%) Cisco Certification
19 27 (0.27%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 330 (3.32%) Accessibility
2 266 (2.68%) Data Quality
3 174 (1.75%) GDPR
4 153 (1.54%) QA
5 70 (0.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 64 (0.64%) WCAG
7 50 (0.50%) EU AI Act
8 46 (0.46%) GRC
9 42 (0.42%) IFRS
10 41 (0.41%) HIPAA
11 39 (0.39%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 38 (0.38%) NIST
13 28 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
14 27 (0.27%) GxP
15 26 (0.26%) Solvency II
16 22 (0.22%) PSD2
17 21 (0.21%) SLA
18 20 (0.20%) PMO
19 18 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials
19 18 (0.18%) GAAP
System Software
1 269 (2.71%) Docker
2 79 (0.80%) Active Directory
3 54 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
4 14 (0.14%) Firmware
5 11 (0.11%) VMware Infrastructure
6 9 (0.091%) vSphere
7 4 (0.040%) Lustre
7 4 (0.040%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 4 (0.040%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.030%) Kamailio
8 3 (0.030%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.020%) Ceph
9 2 (0.020%) GPFS
9 2 (0.020%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.020%) RACF
10 1 (0.010%) Apache Flume
10 1 (0.010%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 257 (2.59%) Kubernetes
2 209 (2.10%) Terraform
3 57 (0.57%) Ansible
4 41 (0.41%) Grafana
5 40 (0.40%) Prometheus
5 40 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
6 30 (0.30%) Microsoft Intune
7 13 (0.13%) Cisco CUCM
8 9 (0.091%) Argo
8 9 (0.091%) Kubeflow
9 8 (0.081%) Proxmox
10 7 (0.070%) vCenter Server
11 4 (0.040%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 4 (0.040%) Functional Safety
11 4 (0.040%) SolarWinds Orion
12 3 (0.030%) Control-M
12 3 (0.030%) RSA Archer
13 2 (0.020%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
13 2 (0.020%) EMC NetWorker
13 2 (0.020%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
Vendors
1 1,763 (17.74%) Microsoft
2 284 (2.86%) Databricks
3 212 (2.13%) Adobe
4 206 (2.07%) Google
5 138 (1.39%) Dell
6 123 (1.24%) OpenAI
7 98 (0.99%) Oracle
8 91 (0.92%) Salesforce
9 75 (0.75%) Cisco
10 70 (0.70%) SAP
11 57 (0.57%) Foundry
12 49 (0.49%) Palantir
13 47 (0.47%) ServiceNow
14 44 (0.44%) Alteryx
15 43 (0.43%) Informatica
16 41 (0.41%) PayPal
17 33 (0.33%) Apple
18 31 (0.31%) Bloomberg
18 31 (0.31%) Red Hat
19 28 (0.28%) Fortinet