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

6 months to
24 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 41 66
Rank change year-on-year +37 +25 +55
Permanent jobs citing AI 9,850 2,605 3,043
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 14.23% 5.50% 4.03%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 17.99% 5.93% 4.56%
Number of salaries quoted 2,462 1,326 1,703
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 £97,500 £92,500
90th Percentile £115,000 £117,500 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £59,450 £66,254 £62,500
% change year-on-year -10.27% +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 54,747 43,918 66,767
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 79.09% 92.80% 88.41%
Number of salaries quoted 32,789 21,812 51,500
10th Percentile £29,000 £33,750 £29,500
25th Percentile £38,000 £45,750 £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% -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 24 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 24 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 +37 9,008 £70,000 -6.67% 2,263
UK excluding London +40 7,090 £59,450 -10.27% 1,524
North of England +49 2,614 £60,000 -11.11% 350
Work from Home +36 2,514 £67,500 +1.85% 1,095
London +34 2,300 £80,470 -13.01% 1,175
North West +41 1,982 £61,418 -10.66% 187
Midlands +88 1,534 £55,000 -13.73% 177
South East +35 1,481 £50,000 -33.33% 580
West Midlands +78 1,254 £55,000 -4.35% 101
East of England +25 673 £55,000 -16.96% 150
Yorkshire +42 528 £61,250 -3.77% 110
South West +16 370 £62,500 -3.85% 163
Scotland +34 303 £70,000 +21.74% 81
East Midlands +66 291 £50,000 -23.08% 73
Wales +38 121 £50,335 +0.67% 38
North East +50 104 £55,000 -26.42% 54
Northern Ireland -8 56 £90,000 -5.26% 10
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 89 (0.90%) SharePoint
2 64 (0.65%) Apache Airflow
3 59 (0.60%) Jupyter
4 57 (0.58%) Apache Spark
5 51 (0.52%) Confluence
6 49 (0.50%) CMS
7 26 (0.26%) ArcGIS
8 24 (0.24%) Microsoft Exchange
9 22 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
10 19 (0.19%) Apache
11 18 (0.18%) WordPress
12 17 (0.17%) Appian
12 17 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 13 (0.13%) JBoss
13 13 (0.13%) WebSphere
14 7 (0.071%) SAS
15 6 (0.061%) Apache Solr
16 5 (0.051%) Apache Pulsar
16 5 (0.051%) IIS
16 5 (0.051%) Umbraco
Applications
1 960 (9.75%) Chatbot
2 755 (7.66%) Microsoft Excel
3 86 (0.87%) Microsoft Office
4 43 (0.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 16 (0.16%) Maya
5 16 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
6 12 (0.12%) MS Visio
7 6 (0.061%) Microsoft Project
8 5 (0.051%) Adobe Premiere
8 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
8 5 (0.051%) UserZoom
9 4 (0.041%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 4 (0.041%) Weka
10 3 (0.030%) Adobe Illustrator
10 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
10 3 (0.030%) Simulink
10 3 (0.030%) Sketch
11 1 (0.010%) Camtasia
11 1 (0.010%) CapCut
11 1 (0.010%) Notion
Business Applications
1 41 (0.42%) Dynamics CRM
2 19 (0.19%) NetSuite
3 18 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
4 13 (0.13%) 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 (0.041%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 4 (0.041%) Oracle Receivables
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 AX
11 2 (0.020%) Dynamics GP
11 2 (0.020%) Integrated Workplace Management System
11 2 (0.020%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 4,148 (42.11%) Cloud Computing
2 1,689 (17.15%) Azure
3 1,037 (10.53%) Power Platform
4 744 (7.55%) AWS
5 711 (7.22%) Azure AI
6 438 (4.45%) SaaS
7 328 (3.33%) GCP
8 224 (2.27%) GitHub
9 194 (1.97%) Microsoft 365
10 191 (1.94%) Azure DevOps
11 125 (1.27%) Snowflake
12 111 (1.13%) Azure Data Factory
13 110 (1.12%) GitHub Copilot
14 107 (1.09%) Microsoft Copilot
15 104 (1.06%) Entra ID
15 104 (1.06%) Serverless
16 97 (0.98%) Power Automate
17 69 (0.70%) PaaS
18 66 (0.67%) dbt
19 64 (0.65%) Adobe Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 4,059 (41.21%) Internet
2 107 (1.09%) Broadband
3 52 (0.53%) Firewall
4 32 (0.32%) Network Security
4 32 (0.32%) Unified Communications
5 26 (0.26%) VoIP
6 25 (0.25%) VPN
7 19 (0.19%) HTTP
7 19 (0.19%) WAN
8 17 (0.17%) TCP/IP
9 15 (0.15%) DNS
10 14 (0.14%) Telepresence
10 14 (0.14%) VLAN
10 14 (0.14%) WebEx
11 13 (0.13%) Wi-Fi
12 11 (0.11%) DHCP
13 8 (0.081%) Wireshark
14 7 (0.071%) DMZ
14 7 (0.071%) Wireless
15 6 (0.061%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 879 (8.92%) Power BI
2 740 (7.51%) Tableau
3 150 (1.52%) Data Warehouse
4 102 (1.04%) SQL Server
5 97 (0.98%) NoSQL
6 93 (0.94%) Data Lake
7 92 (0.93%) Metadata
8 80 (0.81%) PostgreSQL
9 76 (0.77%) MongoDB
10 72 (0.73%) Big Data
11 42 (0.43%) BigQuery
12 38 (0.39%) Pinecone
13 36 (0.37%) MySQL
14 34 (0.35%) Relational Database
15 31 (0.31%) Hadoop
15 31 (0.31%) Looker
16 30 (0.30%) Elasticsearch
16 30 (0.30%) GIS
17 28 (0.28%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 27 (0.27%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 134 (1.36%) Git
2 108 (1.10%) JIRA
3 55 (0.56%) MLflow
4 51 (0.52%) Visual Studio Code
5 46 (0.47%) Jenkins
6 32 (0.32%) GitLab
7 19 (0.19%) Cypress.io
8 17 (0.17%) Selenium
9 16 (0.16%) Octopus Deploy
9 16 (0.16%) Oracle Forms
9 16 (0.16%) TeamCity
10 12 (0.12%) Visual Studio
11 11 (0.11%) Postman
12 10 (0.10%) Claude Code
13 9 (0.091%) Bitbucket
13 9 (0.091%) Storybook
14 8 (0.081%) Subversion
14 8 (0.081%) Vite
15 7 (0.071%) Burp Suite
15 7 (0.071%) SpecFlow
General
1 5,851 (59.40%) Social Skills
2 4,491 (45.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 4,232 (42.96%) Banking
4 1,216 (12.35%) Finance
5 1,028 (10.44%) Analytical Skills
6 399 (4.05%) Marketing
7 307 (3.12%) Public Sector
8 289 (2.93%) Legal
9 273 (2.77%) Law
10 250 (2.54%) Retail
11 180 (1.83%) Games
12 163 (1.65%) Manufacturing
13 111 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
14 106 (1.08%) Telecoms
15 93 (0.94%) Pharmaceutical
16 87 (0.88%) Influencing Skills
17 85 (0.86%) Financial Institution
18 75 (0.76%) Organisational Skills
19 59 (0.60%) Electronics
20 48 (0.49%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 3,161 (32.09%) Lecturer
2 880 (8.93%) Trainer
3 828 (8.41%) Analyst
4 704 (7.15%) Senior
5 689 (6.99%) Data Analyst
6 627 (6.37%) Junior
7 607 (6.16%) Junior Analyst
7 607 (6.16%) Junior Data Analyst
8 459 (4.66%) Lead
9 428 (4.35%) Developer
10 290 (2.94%) Architect
11 246 (2.50%) Consultant
12 187 (1.90%) Software Engineer
13 158 (1.60%) Data Engineer
14 131 (1.33%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 123 (1.25%) Solutions Architect
16 102 (1.04%) Content Editor
17 99 (1.01%) Data Scientist
18 95 (0.96%) Senior Manager
19 91 (0.92%) Full-Stack Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 238 (2.42%) React
2 179 (1.82%) .NET
3 167 (1.70%) REST
4 163 (1.65%) PyTorch
5 129 (1.31%) TensorFlow
6 119 (1.21%) RESTful
7 110 (1.12%) HTML
8 109 (1.11%) Node.js
9 102 (1.04%) scikit-learn
10 95 (0.96%) Hugging Face
11 89 (0.90%) LangChain
12 88 (0.89%) Pandas
13 83 (0.84%) CSS
14 80 (0.81%) FastAPI
15 78 (0.79%) Kafka
16 74 (0.75%) Django
17 72 (0.73%) NumPy
18 68 (0.69%) AngularJS
19 63 (0.64%) Spring
20 57 (0.58%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 4,084 (41.46%) IoT
2 277 (2.81%) Cloud Native
3 186 (1.89%) Algorithms
4 185 (1.88%) Onboarding
5 172 (1.75%) Product Ownership
6 159 (1.61%) AI Agents
7 156 (1.58%) Robotics
8 136 (1.38%) Self-Motivation
9 122 (1.24%) Blog
10 108 (1.10%) Enterprise Software
11 106 (1.08%) Social Media
12 102 (1.04%) Management Information System
13 99 (1.01%) Distributed Systems
14 95 (0.96%) Life Science
15 89 (0.90%) Low-Code
15 89 (0.90%) Molecular Biology
16 71 (0.72%) Greenfield Project
17 66 (0.67%) Analytical Mindset
18 65 (0.66%) Mobile App
19 63 (0.64%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 85 (0.86%) Windows
2 82 (0.83%) Linux
3 76 (0.77%) Android
4 59 (0.60%) Unix
5 47 (0.48%) Apple iOS
6 28 (0.28%) Windows Server
7 17 (0.17%) Ubuntu
8 9 (0.091%) 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 (0.030%) 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 5,096 (51.74%) Machine Learning
2 4,331 (43.97%) Cybersecurity
3 4,320 (43.86%) User Experience
4 4,070 (41.32%) Web Development
5 1,118 (11.35%) Analytics
6 1,018 (10.34%) Business Intelligence
7 1,005 (10.20%) Conversational UI
8 930 (9.44%) Agile
9 729 (7.40%) Problem-Solving
10 681 (6.91%) Roadmaps
11 607 (6.16%) CI/CD
12 605 (6.14%) Decision-Making
13 586 (5.95%) Software Engineering
14 576 (5.85%) Continuous Improvement
15 564 (5.73%) DevOps
16 509 (5.17%) LLM
17 507 (5.15%) Data Science
18 492 (4.99%) Generative AI
19 442 (4.49%) Mentoring
20 430 (4.37%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 1,764 (17.91%) Python
2 1,205 (12.23%) SQL
3 257 (2.61%) JavaScript
4 243 (2.47%) TypeScript
5 235 (2.39%) Java
6 162 (1.64%) C#
7 85 (0.86%) C++
8 81 (0.82%) PowerShell
9 69 (0.70%) Bash
10 65 (0.66%) Go
11 58 (0.59%) R
12 38 (0.39%) PHP
13 37 (0.38%) Kotlin
14 34 (0.35%) Rust
15 27 (0.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 24 (0.24%) Scala
17 23 (0.23%) Apex Code
17 23 (0.23%) C
18 20 (0.20%) PL/SQL
19 16 (0.16%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 5,779 (58.67%) Degree
2 4,722 (47.94%) Master's Degree
3 4,658 (47.29%) PhD
4 4,050 (41.12%) Postgraduate
5 657 (6.67%) Azure Certification
6 342 (3.47%) Security Cleared
7 256 (2.60%) SC Cleared
8 190 (1.93%) Computer Science Degree
9 112 (1.14%) AWS Certification
10 87 (0.88%) DV Cleared
11 68 (0.69%) DBS Check
12 52 (0.53%) CISSP
13 49 (0.50%) PMP
14 48 (0.49%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 48 (0.49%) BPSS Clearance
15 41 (0.42%) ACCA
16 34 (0.35%) Microsoft Certification
16 34 (0.35%) PMI Certification
17 31 (0.31%) Cisco Certification
17 31 (0.31%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 226 (2.29%) Data Quality
2 221 (2.24%) Accessibility
3 147 (1.49%) QA
4 131 (1.33%) GDPR
5 79 (0.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 43 (0.44%) EU AI Act
7 40 (0.41%) GxP
8 39 (0.40%) NIST
9 35 (0.36%) IFRS
10 30 (0.30%) GRC
11 27 (0.27%) WCAG
12 26 (0.26%) HIPAA
13 25 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
14 23 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials
15 22 (0.22%) PMO
15 22 (0.22%) Solvency II
16 21 (0.21%) PSD2
17 18 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 42001
17 18 (0.18%) PCI DSS
17 18 (0.18%) SLA
System Software
1 253 (2.57%) Docker
2 76 (0.77%) Active Directory
3 21 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
4 17 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
5 16 (0.16%) Firmware
6 14 (0.14%) VMware Infrastructure
7 10 (0.10%) vSphere
8 5 (0.051%) Lustre
9 4 (0.041%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 3 (0.030%) GPFS
10 3 (0.030%) Kamailio
10 3 (0.030%) VMware ESXi
11 2 (0.020%) Ceph
11 2 (0.020%) NFS
11 2 (0.020%) RACF
12 1 (0.010%) Hyper-V
12 1 (0.010%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 247 (2.51%) Kubernetes
2 236 (2.40%) Terraform
3 51 (0.52%) Ansible
4 46 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
5 42 (0.43%) Microsoft Intune
6 39 (0.40%) Prometheus
7 35 (0.36%) Grafana
8 14 (0.14%) Cisco CUCM
9 10 (0.10%) Argo
10 7 (0.071%) Kubeflow
10 7 (0.071%) vCenter Server
11 6 (0.061%) Proxmox
11 6 (0.061%) SCCM
12 4 (0.041%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 4 (0.041%) Nessus
12 4 (0.041%) Nmap
12 4 (0.041%) RSA Archer
12 4 (0.041%) SolarWinds Orion
13 3 (0.030%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
13 3 (0.030%) Control-M
Vendors
1 1,439 (14.61%) Microsoft
2 874 (8.87%) PayPal
3 190 (1.93%) Google
4 174 (1.77%) Databricks
5 118 (1.20%) Adobe
6 116 (1.18%) OpenAI
7 100 (1.02%) Oracle
8 98 (0.99%) Salesforce
9 93 (0.94%) Dell
10 92 (0.93%) Cisco
11 72 (0.73%) SAP
12 48 (0.49%) Foundry
13 47 (0.48%) Alteryx
13 47 (0.48%) Blue Prism
13 47 (0.48%) Palantir
14 37 (0.38%) HubSpot
15 35 (0.36%) ServiceNow
16 34 (0.35%) Bloomberg
16 34 (0.35%) Fortinet
17 32 (0.32%) Apple