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

6 months to
28 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 40 65
Rank change year-on-year +36 +25 +54
Permanent jobs citing AI 9,877 2,622 3,115
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 14.11% 5.55% 4.11%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 17.89% 5.96% 4.65%
Number of salaries quoted 2,491 1,340 1,704
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 £98,750 £92,500
90th Percentile £115,000 £117,500 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £58,932 £66,254 £62,500
% change year-on-year -11.05% +6.01% -3.85%

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 55,198 43,957 67,041
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 78.83% 93.01% 88.40%
Number of salaries quoted 33,132 22,050 51,588
10th Percentile £29,000 £33,125 £29,490
25th Percentile £38,750 £45,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £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 28 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 28 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 +38 9,049 £70,000 -6.67% 1,974
UK excluding London +40 7,082 £58,932 -11.05% 1,457
North of England +50 2,616 £60,000 -11.11% 338
Work from Home +33 2,513 £65,000 -1.92% 918
London +32 2,327 £80,939 -12.50% 959
North West +42 1,981 £61,418 -10.66% 175
Midlands +87 1,538 £55,000 -13.73% 175
South East +37 1,475 £50,000 -33.33% 560
West Midlands +80 1,256 £55,000 -4.35% 102
East of England +25 682 £55,000 -16.96% 140
Yorkshire +43 530 £58,750 -7.70% 114
South West +16 370 £62,500 -3.85% 147
East Midlands +65 293 £50,000 -23.08% 70
Scotland +32 282 £70,000 +21.74% 76
Wales +40 122 £47,500 -15.56% 39
North East +47 105 £55,000 -26.42% 52
Northern Ireland -4 56 £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 88 (0.89%) SharePoint
2 82 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
3 78 (0.79%) Apache Spark
4 60 (0.61%) Jupyter
5 50 (0.51%) Confluence
6 47 (0.48%) CMS
7 38 (0.38%) Apache
8 30 (0.30%) ArcGIS
9 23 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
10 22 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
11 18 (0.18%) WordPress
12 17 (0.17%) Appian
13 16 (0.16%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 13 (0.13%) JBoss
14 13 (0.13%) WebSphere
15 7 (0.071%) SAS
16 6 (0.061%) Apache Solr
17 5 (0.051%) Apache Pulsar
17 5 (0.051%) IIS
17 5 (0.051%) Umbraco
Applications
1 942 (9.54%) Chatbot
2 752 (7.61%) Microsoft Excel
3 87 (0.88%) Microsoft Office
4 44 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 21 (0.21%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.16%) Maya
6 16 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.13%) UserZoom
8 6 (0.061%) Microsoft Project
9 5 (0.051%) Adobe Premiere
10 4 (0.040%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 4 (0.040%) Photoshop
10 4 (0.040%) Weka
11 3 (0.030%) Adobe Illustrator
11 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.030%) Simulink
11 3 (0.030%) Sketch
12 2 (0.020%) Adobe After Effects
12 2 (0.020%) CapCut
13 1 (0.010%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 39 (0.39%) Dynamics CRM
2 19 (0.19%) NetSuite
3 17 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
4 14 (0.14%) SAP S/4HANA
5 12 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
6 10 (0.10%) Workday HCM
7 8 (0.081%) Distributed Ledger
7 8 (0.081%) Endur
7 8 (0.081%) Shopify
8 7 (0.071%) Oracle EBS
8 7 (0.071%) Salesforce CRM
9 4 (0.040%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 4 (0.040%) Oracle Receivables
10 3 (0.030%) Dynamics AX
10 3 (0.030%) Oracle Assets
10 3 (0.030%) SAP Business One
10 3 (0.030%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 2 (0.020%) Dynamics GP
11 2 (0.020%) SAP CO
11 2 (0.020%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 4,150 (42.02%) Cloud Computing
2 1,676 (16.97%) Azure
3 1,038 (10.51%) Power Platform
4 766 (7.76%) AWS
5 709 (7.18%) Azure AI
6 438 (4.43%) SaaS
7 321 (3.25%) GCP
8 218 (2.21%) GitHub
9 193 (1.95%) Microsoft 365
10 187 (1.89%) Azure DevOps
11 127 (1.29%) Snowflake
12 112 (1.13%) Azure Data Factory
13 108 (1.09%) GitHub Copilot
13 108 (1.09%) Microsoft Copilot
14 105 (1.06%) Serverless
15 100 (1.01%) Entra ID
15 100 (1.01%) Power Automate
16 80 (0.81%) Adobe Analytics
17 68 (0.69%) PaaS
18 66 (0.67%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 4,059 (41.10%) Internet
2 127 (1.29%) Broadband
3 53 (0.54%) Firewall
4 33 (0.33%) Network Security
5 32 (0.32%) Unified Communications
6 26 (0.26%) VPN
7 25 (0.25%) VoIP
8 20 (0.20%) WAN
9 19 (0.19%) HTTP
10 17 (0.17%) TCP/IP
11 15 (0.15%) DNS
12 14 (0.14%) Telepresence
12 14 (0.14%) VLAN
12 14 (0.14%) WebEx
13 13 (0.13%) Wi-Fi
14 11 (0.11%) DHCP
15 8 (0.081%) Wireshark
16 7 (0.071%) DMZ
16 7 (0.071%) SD-WAN
16 7 (0.071%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 878 (8.89%) Power BI
2 752 (7.61%) Tableau
3 152 (1.54%) Data Warehouse
4 104 (1.05%) SQL Server
5 98 (0.99%) Data Lake
6 94 (0.95%) NoSQL
7 92 (0.93%) Metadata
8 82 (0.83%) PostgreSQL
9 78 (0.79%) MongoDB
10 73 (0.74%) Big Data
11 41 (0.42%) BigQuery
12 38 (0.38%) MySQL
13 37 (0.37%) Pinecone
14 34 (0.34%) Relational Database
15 32 (0.32%) GIS
16 31 (0.31%) Hadoop
16 31 (0.31%) Looker
17 30 (0.30%) Apache Hive
17 30 (0.30%) Elasticsearch
18 28 (0.28%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 156 (1.58%) Git
2 106 (1.07%) JIRA
3 54 (0.55%) MLflow
4 53 (0.54%) Visual Studio Code
5 47 (0.48%) Jenkins
6 34 (0.34%) GitLab
7 23 (0.23%) IBM UrbanCode
8 20 (0.20%) Cypress.io
9 18 (0.18%) Selenium
10 16 (0.16%) Octopus Deploy
10 16 (0.16%) TeamCity
11 15 (0.15%) Oracle Forms
12 12 (0.12%) Claude Code
12 12 (0.12%) Postman
12 12 (0.12%) Visual Studio
13 10 (0.10%) Bitbucket
14 9 (0.091%) Storybook
15 8 (0.081%) SpecFlow
15 8 (0.081%) Subversion
15 8 (0.081%) Vite
General
1 5,832 (59.05%) Social Skills
2 4,492 (45.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 4,251 (43.04%) Banking
4 1,224 (12.39%) Finance
5 998 (10.10%) Analytical Skills
6 400 (4.05%) Marketing
7 307 (3.11%) Public Sector
8 293 (2.97%) Legal
9 269 (2.72%) Law
10 255 (2.58%) Retail
11 202 (2.05%) Games
12 168 (1.70%) Manufacturing
13 110 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
14 105 (1.06%) Telecoms
15 94 (0.95%) Pharmaceutical
16 90 (0.91%) Influencing Skills
17 87 (0.88%) Financial Institution
18 74 (0.75%) Organisational Skills
19 56 (0.57%) Electronics
20 48 (0.49%) German Language
Job Titles
1 3,160 (31.99%) Lecturer
2 862 (8.73%) Trainer
3 844 (8.55%) Analyst
4 707 (7.16%) Senior
5 689 (6.98%) Data Analyst
6 627 (6.35%) Junior
7 607 (6.15%) Junior Analyst
7 607 (6.15%) Junior Data Analyst
8 475 (4.81%) Lead
9 423 (4.28%) Developer
10 290 (2.94%) Architect
11 249 (2.52%) Consultant
12 188 (1.90%) Software Engineer
13 160 (1.62%) Data Engineer
14 133 (1.35%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 125 (1.27%) Solutions Architect
16 102 (1.03%) Content Editor
16 102 (1.03%) Data Scientist
17 93 (0.94%) Full-Stack Engineer
18 92 (0.93%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 239 (2.42%) React
2 177 (1.79%) .NET
3 166 (1.68%) PyTorch
3 166 (1.68%) REST
4 130 (1.32%) TensorFlow
5 121 (1.23%) RESTful
6 112 (1.13%) Node.js
7 108 (1.09%) HTML
8 103 (1.04%) scikit-learn
9 100 (1.01%) Pandas
10 95 (0.96%) Hugging Face
11 87 (0.88%) LangChain
12 82 (0.83%) FastAPI
13 81 (0.82%) CSS
14 78 (0.79%) Kafka
15 77 (0.78%) Django
16 74 (0.75%) NumPy
17 69 (0.70%) AngularJS
18 64 (0.65%) Spring
19 58 (0.59%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 4,084 (41.35%) IoT
2 273 (2.76%) Cloud Native
3 187 (1.89%) Algorithms
4 184 (1.86%) Onboarding
5 166 (1.68%) Product Ownership
6 159 (1.61%) AI Agents
7 150 (1.52%) Robotics
8 135 (1.37%) Self-Motivation
9 124 (1.26%) Blog
10 122 (1.24%) Social Media
11 108 (1.09%) Enterprise Software
12 104 (1.05%) Distributed Systems
13 101 (1.02%) Management Information System
14 94 (0.95%) Life Science
15 89 (0.90%) Molecular Biology
16 88 (0.89%) Low-Code
17 73 (0.74%) Greenfield Project
18 69 (0.70%) Mobile App
19 63 (0.64%) Analytical Mindset
19 63 (0.64%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 86 (0.87%) Windows
2 84 (0.85%) Linux
3 80 (0.81%) Android
4 60 (0.61%) Unix
5 53 (0.54%) Apple iOS
6 28 (0.28%) Windows Server
7 18 (0.18%) Ubuntu
8 9 (0.091%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.051%) VMS
10 4 (0.040%) Kali Linux
10 4 (0.040%) Robot Operating System
10 4 (0.040%) Windows Server 2016
11 3 (0.030%) 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 5,097 (51.60%) Machine Learning
2 4,329 (43.83%) Cybersecurity
3 4,318 (43.72%) User Experience
4 4,071 (41.22%) Web Development
5 1,142 (11.56%) Analytics
6 1,020 (10.33%) Business Intelligence
7 992 (10.04%) Conversational UI
8 954 (9.66%) Agile
9 727 (7.36%) Problem-Solving
10 697 (7.06%) Roadmaps
11 635 (6.43%) CI/CD
12 596 (6.03%) Decision-Making
13 582 (5.89%) Software Engineering
14 563 (5.70%) Continuous Improvement
15 552 (5.59%) DevOps
16 514 (5.20%) LLM
17 512 (5.18%) Data Science
18 492 (4.98%) Generative AI
19 447 (4.53%) Mentoring
20 434 (4.39%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 1,789 (18.11%) Python
2 1,223 (12.38%) SQL
3 251 (2.54%) JavaScript
4 239 (2.42%) Java
4 239 (2.42%) TypeScript
5 166 (1.68%) C#
6 86 (0.87%) C++
7 78 (0.79%) PowerShell
8 67 (0.68%) Bash
9 64 (0.65%) Go
10 55 (0.56%) R
11 39 (0.39%) PHP
12 36 (0.36%) Kotlin
13 35 (0.35%) Rust
14 27 (0.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 25 (0.25%) Scala
16 23 (0.23%) Apex Code
17 22 (0.22%) C
18 19 (0.19%) PL/SQL
19 17 (0.17%) Swift
Qualifications
1 5,761 (58.33%) Degree
2 4,700 (47.59%) Master's Degree
3 4,639 (46.97%) PhD
4 4,051 (41.01%) Postgraduate
5 657 (6.65%) Azure Certification
6 340 (3.44%) Security Cleared
7 251 (2.54%) SC Cleared
8 192 (1.94%) Computer Science Degree
9 113 (1.14%) AWS Certification
10 87 (0.88%) DV Cleared
11 68 (0.69%) DBS Check
12 51 (0.52%) CISSP
13 50 (0.51%) PMP
14 49 (0.50%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
15 48 (0.49%) BPSS Clearance
16 43 (0.44%) ACCA
17 35 (0.35%) PMI Certification
18 34 (0.34%) Microsoft Certification
19 32 (0.32%) Cisco Certification
20 31 (0.31%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 245 (2.48%) Data Quality
2 242 (2.45%) Accessibility
3 148 (1.50%) QA
4 138 (1.40%) GDPR
5 77 (0.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 43 (0.44%) EU AI Act
7 40 (0.40%) GxP
8 38 (0.38%) NIST
9 36 (0.36%) HIPAA
9 36 (0.36%) IFRS
10 35 (0.35%) WCAG
11 30 (0.30%) GRC
12 24 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
12 24 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials
13 22 (0.22%) PMO
13 22 (0.22%) Solvency II
14 21 (0.21%) PSD2
15 19 (0.19%) SLA
16 18 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 42001
17 17 (0.17%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 257 (2.60%) Docker
2 77 (0.78%) Active Directory
3 19 (0.19%) Virtual Machines
4 16 (0.16%) Firmware
5 15 (0.15%) Virtual Desktop
6 14 (0.14%) VMware Infrastructure
7 10 (0.10%) vSphere
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%) NFS
10 2 (0.020%) RACF
11 1 (0.010%) Hyper-V
11 1 (0.010%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 250 (2.53%) Kubernetes
2 231 (2.34%) Terraform
3 54 (0.55%) Ansible
4 44 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
5 40 (0.40%) Microsoft Intune
5 40 (0.40%) Prometheus
6 36 (0.36%) Grafana
7 14 (0.14%) Cisco CUCM
8 10 (0.10%) Argo
9 7 (0.071%) vCenter Server
10 6 (0.061%) Proxmox
11 5 (0.051%) Kubeflow
11 5 (0.051%) SCCM
12 4 (0.040%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 4 (0.040%) Nessus
12 4 (0.040%) Nmap
12 4 (0.040%) RSA Archer
12 4 (0.040%) SolarWinds Orion
13 3 (0.030%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
13 3 (0.030%) Control-M
Vendors
1 1,445 (14.63%) Microsoft
2 856 (8.67%) PayPal
3 187 (1.89%) Google
4 182 (1.84%) Databricks
5 135 (1.37%) Adobe
6 118 (1.19%) Oracle
7 116 (1.17%) OpenAI
8 102 (1.03%) Dell
9 99 (1.00%) Salesforce
10 92 (0.93%) Cisco
11 73 (0.74%) SAP
12 47 (0.48%) Alteryx
12 47 (0.48%) Blue Prism
12 47 (0.48%) Foundry
12 47 (0.48%) Palantir
13 38 (0.38%) ServiceNow
14 36 (0.36%) HubSpot
15 34 (0.34%) Bloomberg
16 33 (0.33%) Fortinet
17 32 (0.32%) Apple