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

6 months to
14 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 45 70
Rank change year-on-year +41 +25 +52
Permanent jobs citing AI 9,767 2,594 2,846
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 14.56% 5.22% 3.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 18.30% 5.66% 4.32%
Number of salaries quoted 2,419 1,351 1,680
10th Percentile £34,250 £45,000 £42,500
25th Percentile £50,125 £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 £59,450 £66,254 £62,500
% change year-on-year -10.27% +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 53,358 45,796 65,934
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 79.56% 92.23% 88.32%
Number of salaries quoted 31,921 22,329 51,135
10th Percentile £29,000 £35,000 £29,500
25th Percentile £38,000 £46,250 £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 £76,250 £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% -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 14 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 14 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 8,918 £70,000 -6.67% 2,091
UK excluding London +46 7,021 £59,450 -10.27% 1,390
Work from Home +45 2,586 £67,500 +1.82% 1,079
North of England +48 2,583 £60,000 -11.11% 313
London +34 2,298 £80,000 -11.11% 836
North West +41 1,988 £60,000 -13.04% 177
Midlands +90 1,518 £55,000 -15.38% 173
South East +37 1,469 £50,000 -35.06% 543
West Midlands +84 1,246 £60,000 - 108
East of England +28 664 £55,000 -16.96% 120
Yorkshire +41 493 £67,500 +6.05% 101
South West +32 356 £62,500 -3.85% 136
Scotland +43 326 £70,000 +21.74% 79
East Midlands +73 283 £47,500 -26.92% 64
Wales +41 120 £53,171 +6.34% 36
North East +45 102 £55,000 -24.14% 36
Northern Ireland -6 52 £90,000 -5.26% 12
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 52 (0.53%) Apache Spark
4 48 (0.49%) Confluence
5 43 (0.44%) CMS
6 41 (0.42%) Jupyter
7 24 (0.25%) Microsoft Exchange
8 21 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
9 19 (0.19%) WordPress
10 18 (0.18%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 17 (0.17%) Appian
12 15 (0.15%) ArcGIS
13 14 (0.14%) Apache
14 13 (0.13%) JBoss
14 13 (0.13%) WebSphere
15 9 (0.092%) Apache Solr
16 7 (0.072%) SAS
17 5 (0.051%) Apache Pulsar
17 5 (0.051%) IIS
17 5 (0.051%) Umbraco
Applications
1 1,016 (10.40%) Chatbot
2 645 (6.60%) Microsoft Excel
3 92 (0.94%) Microsoft Office
4 42 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 18 (0.18%) Maya
6 15 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
7 10 (0.10%) MS Visio
8 7 (0.072%) Microsoft Project
9 6 (0.061%) Adobe Premiere
9 6 (0.061%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 4 (0.041%) Notion
11 4 (0.041%) Sketch
11 4 (0.041%) UserZoom
11 4 (0.041%) Weka
12 3 (0.031%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.031%) Simulink
13 2 (0.020%) Adobe Illustrator
13 2 (0.020%) InDesign
14 1 (0.010%) S-PLUS
Business Applications
1 49 (0.50%) 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
8 6 (0.061%) Salesforce CRM
9 4 (0.041%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 4 (0.041%) Oracle Receivables
10 3 (0.031%) Dynamics GP
10 3 (0.031%) Oracle Assets
10 3 (0.031%) SAP Business One
11 2 (0.020%) SAP CO
11 2 (0.020%) SAP ERP
11 2 (0.020%) SAP FI/CO
11 2 (0.020%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 4,132 (42.31%) Cloud Computing
2 1,587 (16.25%) Azure
3 928 (9.50%) Power Platform
4 725 (7.42%) AWS
5 602 (6.16%) Azure AI
6 456 (4.67%) SaaS
7 328 (3.36%) GCP
8 228 (2.33%) GitHub
9 199 (2.04%) Microsoft 365
10 197 (2.02%) Azure DevOps
11 122 (1.25%) Snowflake
12 112 (1.15%) GitHub Copilot
13 110 (1.13%) Azure Data Factory
14 107 (1.10%) Entra ID
15 105 (1.08%) Microsoft Copilot
15 105 (1.08%) Serverless
16 96 (0.98%) Power Automate
17 67 (0.69%) dbt
17 67 (0.69%) PaaS
18 62 (0.63%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 4,061 (41.58%) Internet
2 67 (0.69%) Broadband
3 51 (0.52%) Firewall
4 32 (0.33%) Network Security
4 32 (0.33%) Unified Communications
5 27 (0.28%) VoIP
6 25 (0.26%) VPN
7 19 (0.19%) HTTP
8 17 (0.17%) TCP/IP
8 17 (0.17%) WAN
9 16 (0.16%) DNS
10 14 (0.14%) Telepresence
10 14 (0.14%) VLAN
10 14 (0.14%) WebEx
11 13 (0.13%) Wi-Fi
12 12 (0.12%) DHCP
13 8 (0.082%) Intranet
13 8 (0.082%) Wireshark
14 7 (0.072%) DMZ
14 7 (0.072%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 770 (7.88%) Power BI
2 630 (6.45%) Tableau
3 154 (1.58%) Data Warehouse
4 107 (1.10%) SQL Server
5 99 (1.01%) NoSQL
6 98 (1.00%) Data Lake
7 85 (0.87%) Metadata
8 75 (0.77%) MongoDB
8 75 (0.77%) PostgreSQL
9 74 (0.76%) Big Data
10 42 (0.43%) BigQuery
11 40 (0.41%) MySQL
12 38 (0.39%) Pinecone
13 35 (0.36%) Elasticsearch
14 34 (0.35%) Hadoop
15 32 (0.33%) Relational Database
16 31 (0.32%) Looker
17 29 (0.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 27 (0.28%) Data Mining
19 25 (0.26%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 132 (1.35%) Git
2 115 (1.18%) JIRA
3 53 (0.54%) MLflow
4 44 (0.45%) Jenkins
5 31 (0.32%) Visual Studio Code
6 29 (0.30%) GitLab
7 20 (0.20%) Cypress.io
8 18 (0.18%) Octopus Deploy
8 18 (0.18%) Selenium
8 18 (0.18%) TeamCity
9 17 (0.17%) Oracle Forms
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%) Subversion
14 8 (0.082%) WebDriver
15 7 (0.072%) JMeter
15 7 (0.072%) SpecFlow
15 7 (0.072%) Vite
General
1 5,756 (58.93%) Social Skills
2 4,495 (46.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 4,230 (43.31%) Banking
4 1,191 (12.19%) Finance
5 1,037 (10.62%) Analytical Skills
6 403 (4.13%) Marketing
7 303 (3.10%) Public Sector
8 277 (2.84%) Law
8 277 (2.84%) Legal
9 229 (2.34%) Retail
10 152 (1.56%) Games
11 138 (1.41%) Manufacturing
12 108 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
13 104 (1.06%) Telecoms
14 94 (0.96%) Pharmaceutical
15 82 (0.84%) Financial Institution
16 81 (0.83%) Influencing Skills
17 68 (0.70%) Organisational Skills
18 60 (0.61%) Electronics
19 51 (0.52%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 3,161 (32.36%) Lecturer
2 951 (9.74%) Trainer
3 715 (7.32%) Analyst
4 703 (7.20%) 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
8 438 (4.48%) Lead
9 424 (4.34%) Developer
10 289 (2.96%) Architect
11 228 (2.33%) Consultant
12 184 (1.88%) Software Engineer
13 159 (1.63%) Data Engineer
14 132 (1.35%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 122 (1.25%) Content Editor
15 122 (1.25%) Solutions Architect
16 99 (1.01%) Senior Manager
17 89 (0.91%) Data Scientist
18 88 (0.90%) Research Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 238 (2.44%) React
2 188 (1.92%) .NET
3 174 (1.78%) REST
4 147 (1.51%) PyTorch
5 122 (1.25%) TensorFlow
6 117 (1.20%) RESTful
7 113 (1.16%) Node.js
8 109 (1.12%) HTML
9 91 (0.93%) LangChain
10 81 (0.83%) FastAPI
10 81 (0.83%) scikit-learn
11 80 (0.82%) CSS
12 76 (0.78%) Hugging Face
13 74 (0.76%) Django
14 72 (0.74%) Kafka
15 71 (0.73%) AngularJS
16 67 (0.69%) Pandas
17 59 (0.60%) Flask
17 59 (0.60%) Spring
18 57 (0.58%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 4,082 (41.79%) IoT
2 276 (2.83%) Cloud Native
3 186 (1.90%) Onboarding
4 174 (1.78%) Product Ownership
5 161 (1.65%) Robotics
6 159 (1.63%) AI Agents
7 158 (1.62%) Algorithms
8 131 (1.34%) Self-Motivation
9 120 (1.23%) Blog
10 113 (1.16%) Enterprise Software
11 100 (1.02%) Management Information System
12 96 (0.98%) Distributed Systems
12 96 (0.98%) Life Science
13 91 (0.93%) Low-Code
13 91 (0.93%) Molecular Biology
14 78 (0.80%) Social Media
15 72 (0.74%) Greenfield Project
16 68 (0.70%) Legacy Systems
17 65 (0.67%) Analytical Mindset
18 63 (0.65%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 88 (0.90%) Windows
2 83 (0.85%) Linux
3 63 (0.65%) Android
4 57 (0.58%) Unix
5 40 (0.41%) Apple iOS
6 33 (0.34%) 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 5,078 (51.99%) Machine Learning
2 4,335 (44.38%) Cybersecurity
3 4,317 (44.20%) User Experience
4 4,071 (41.68%) Web Development
5 1,082 (11.08%) Analytics
6 1,059 (10.84%) Conversational UI
7 918 (9.40%) Agile
8 911 (9.33%) Business Intelligence
9 742 (7.60%) Problem-Solving
10 646 (6.61%) Roadmaps
11 605 (6.19%) Decision-Making
12 596 (6.10%) CI/CD
12 596 (6.10%) Software Engineering
13 583 (5.97%) Continuous Improvement
14 575 (5.89%) DevOps
15 486 (4.98%) Generative AI
16 483 (4.95%) Data Science
17 475 (4.86%) LLM
18 435 (4.45%) Computer Science
19 414 (4.24%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 1,615 (16.54%) Python
2 1,089 (11.15%) SQL
3 267 (2.73%) JavaScript
4 253 (2.59%) TypeScript
5 223 (2.28%) Java
6 161 (1.65%) C#
7 89 (0.91%) PowerShell
8 84 (0.86%) C++
9 72 (0.74%) Bash
10 68 (0.70%) Go
11 58 (0.59%) R
12 41 (0.42%) PHP
13 35 (0.36%) Rust
14 28 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 28 (0.29%) Kotlin
15 27 (0.28%) Scala
16 24 (0.25%) C
17 23 (0.24%) Apex Code
18 21 (0.22%) PL/SQL
19 18 (0.18%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 5,871 (60.11%) Degree
2 4,727 (48.40%) Master's Degree
3 4,664 (47.75%) PhD
4 4,049 (41.46%) Postgraduate
5 548 (5.61%) Azure Certification
6 335 (3.43%) Security Cleared
7 260 (2.66%) SC Cleared
8 197 (2.02%) Computer Science Degree
9 95 (0.97%) AWS Certification
10 82 (0.84%) DV Cleared
11 68 (0.70%) DBS Check
12 50 (0.51%) PMP
13 49 (0.50%) CISSP
14 47 (0.48%) BPSS Clearance
15 39 (0.40%) ACCA
16 37 (0.38%) Microsoft Certification
17 35 (0.36%) PMI Certification
18 31 (0.32%) Numerate Degree
19 29 (0.30%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
19 29 (0.30%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 223 (2.28%) Data Quality
2 183 (1.87%) Accessibility
3 143 (1.46%) QA
4 129 (1.32%) GDPR
5 78 (0.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 42 (0.43%) GxP
7 41 (0.42%) EU AI Act
8 36 (0.37%) NIST
9 34 (0.35%) IFRS
10 26 (0.27%) GRC
11 25 (0.26%) HIPAA
12 24 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
12 24 (0.25%) SLA
13 23 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials
14 22 (0.23%) PMO
14 22 (0.23%) Solvency II
14 22 (0.23%) WCAG
15 21 (0.22%) PSD2
16 18 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 42001
17 17 (0.17%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 250 (2.56%) Docker
2 78 (0.80%) Active Directory
3 23 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
4 20 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
5 17 (0.17%) VMware Infrastructure
6 16 (0.16%) Firmware
7 13 (0.13%) vSphere
8 6 (0.061%) Lustre
9 5 (0.051%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 4 (0.041%) GPFS
10 4 (0.041%) VMware ESXi
11 3 (0.031%) Hyper-V
11 3 (0.031%) Kamailio
12 2 (0.020%) Ceph
12 2 (0.020%) NFS
12 2 (0.020%) RACF
13 1 (0.010%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 242 (2.48%) Terraform
2 241 (2.47%) Kubernetes
3 54 (0.55%) Ansible
4 47 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
5 46 (0.47%) 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%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 6 (0.061%) Proxmox
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 1,336 (13.68%) Microsoft
2 948 (9.71%) PayPal
3 187 (1.91%) Google
4 175 (1.79%) Databricks
5 116 (1.19%) OpenAI
6 102 (1.04%) Salesforce
7 101 (1.03%) Adobe
7 101 (1.03%) Oracle
8 89 (0.91%) Cisco
8 89 (0.91%) Dell
9 74 (0.76%) SAP
10 48 (0.49%) Blue Prism
11 47 (0.48%) Alteryx
12 45 (0.46%) Palantir
13 43 (0.44%) Foundry
14 40 (0.41%) HubSpot
15 37 (0.38%) Fortinet
16 34 (0.35%) Bloomberg
17 32 (0.33%) Apple
18 29 (0.30%) VMware