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

6 months to
28 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 33 50
Rank change year-on-year +28 +17 +70
Permanent jobs citing AI 10,037 2,645 4,066
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 12.85% 6.48% 4.59%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.67% 6.95% 5.29%
Number of salaries quoted 2,781 1,424 1,891
10th Percentile £33,750 £32,650 £41,066
25th Percentile £51,250 £55,000 £49,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £72,500 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.45% +3.57% -
75th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £92,500
90th Percentile £115,000 £118,750 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £59,450 £66,206 £60,000
% change year-on-year -10.20% +10.34% -7.69%

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 60,207 38,067 76,796
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 77.10% 93.27% 86.65%
Number of salaries quoted 36,835 22,259 57,410
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £29,035
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% -11.29%
75th Percentile £77,500 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,410 £93,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.41%

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 March 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 March 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 +29 9,248 £70,000 -6.67% 2,826
UK excluding London +27 7,091 £59,450 -10.20% 1,756
North of England +36 2,566 £61,250 -4.95% 455
London +28 2,488 £85,000 -10.53% 1,477
Work from Home +29 2,052 £67,500 +1.93% 1,250
North West +33 1,930 £61,418 -15.29% 229
Midlands +68 1,562 £52,500 -19.23% 214
South East +30 1,437 £55,000 -22.81% 594
West Midlands +65 1,254 £52,500 -12.50% 110
East of England +17 748 £55,000 -16.95% 145
Yorkshire +32 538 £65,000 +44.44% 165
South West +5 369 £60,000 - 199
East Midlands +52 319 £50,000 -23.08% 103
Scotland +14 261 £70,000 +55.56% 95
Wales +30 119 £47,500 -25.05% 68
North East +34 98 £55,000 -24.14% 63
Northern Ireland -2 65 £90,000 -5.26% 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
1 115 (1.15%) Apache Airflow
2 111 (1.11%) Apache Spark
3 92 (0.92%) SharePoint
4 65 (0.65%) Jupyter
5 60 (0.60%) Confluence
6 58 (0.58%) CMS
7 42 (0.42%) Apache
8 30 (0.30%) ArcGIS
9 26 (0.26%) Palantir Foundry
10 23 (0.23%) WordPress
11 18 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
12 17 (0.17%) Appian
13 13 (0.13%) JBoss
13 13 (0.13%) WebSphere
14 9 (0.090%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 9 (0.090%) SAS
15 5 (0.050%) Apache Pulsar
15 5 (0.050%) Apache Solr
15 5 (0.050%) IIS
15 5 (0.050%) Umbraco
Applications
1 1,006 (10.02%) Microsoft Excel
2 420 (4.18%) Chatbot
3 83 (0.83%) Microsoft Office
4 53 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 23 (0.23%) UserZoom
6 22 (0.22%) MS Visio
6 22 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
7 10 (0.100%) Maya
8 7 (0.070%) Adobe Premiere
9 6 (0.060%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.060%) Microsoft Project
9 6 (0.060%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.050%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.050%) Camtasia
11 4 (0.040%) Adobe After Effects
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 36 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
2 19 (0.19%) NetSuite
3 18 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
4 13 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
5 12 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
6 10 (0.100%) Workday HCM
7 8 (0.080%) Distributed Ledger
7 8 (0.080%) Shopify
8 7 (0.070%) Oracle EBS
8 7 (0.070%) Salesforce CRM
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%) Oracle Receivables
9 4 (0.040%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 3 (0.030%) Oracle General Ledger
11 2 (0.020%) Oracle Cash Management
11 2 (0.020%) SAP FI
11 2 (0.020%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 4,161 (41.46%) Cloud Computing
2 2,075 (20.67%) Azure
3 1,303 (12.98%) Power Platform
4 1,087 (10.83%) Azure AI
5 840 (8.37%) AWS
6 475 (4.73%) SaaS
7 364 (3.63%) GCP
8 214 (2.13%) GitHub
9 196 (1.95%) Microsoft 365
9 196 (1.95%) Snowflake
10 169 (1.68%) Azure DevOps
11 153 (1.52%) Adobe Analytics
12 122 (1.22%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 121 (1.21%) Microsoft Copilot
14 120 (1.20%) Azure Data Factory
15 111 (1.11%) Serverless
16 106 (1.06%) GitHub Copilot
17 101 (1.01%) Entra ID
18 98 (0.98%) Azure Machine Learning
19 95 (0.95%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 4,054 (40.39%) Internet
2 236 (2.35%) Broadband
3 52 (0.52%) Firewall
4 31 (0.31%) Unified Communications
5 28 (0.28%) Network Security
6 24 (0.24%) VPN
7 19 (0.19%) HTTP
7 19 (0.19%) TCP/IP
7 19 (0.19%) VoIP
8 17 (0.17%) DNS
8 17 (0.17%) WAN
9 15 (0.15%) DHCP
10 13 (0.13%) Telepresence
10 13 (0.13%) WebEx
11 8 (0.080%) Intranet
11 8 (0.080%) VLAN
11 8 (0.080%) Wi-Fi
12 6 (0.060%) DMZ
12 6 (0.060%) RTP
12 6 (0.060%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1,168 (11.64%) Power BI
2 1,055 (10.51%) Tableau
3 203 (2.02%) Data Warehouse
4 151 (1.50%) Data Lake
5 137 (1.36%) SQL Server
6 95 (0.95%) PostgreSQL
7 93 (0.93%) Metadata
8 81 (0.81%) MongoDB
8 81 (0.81%) NoSQL
9 68 (0.68%) Big Data
10 67 (0.67%) BigQuery
11 61 (0.61%) Looker
12 58 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
13 46 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
14 39 (0.39%) MySQL
14 39 (0.39%) Pinecone
15 38 (0.38%) Azure SQL Database
16 36 (0.36%) Snowflake Schema
17 34 (0.34%) Relational Database
18 32 (0.32%) Apache Hive
Development Applications
1 155 (1.54%) Git
2 99 (0.99%) JIRA
3 77 (0.77%) MLflow
4 58 (0.58%) Visual Studio Code
5 49 (0.49%) Jenkins
6 34 (0.34%) GitLab
7 26 (0.26%) Claude Code
7 26 (0.26%) Selenium
8 25 (0.25%) Cypress.io
8 25 (0.25%) IBM UrbanCode
9 16 (0.16%) Postman
10 12 (0.12%) SpecFlow
11 11 (0.11%) Bitbucket
11 11 (0.11%) Visual Studio
12 10 (0.100%) Oracle Forms
12 10 (0.100%) Storybook
12 10 (0.100%) TeamCity
13 9 (0.090%) Octopus Deploy
14 8 (0.080%) Gradle
14 8 (0.080%) Subversion
General
1 6,147 (61.24%) Social Skills
2 4,479 (44.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 4,264 (42.48%) Banking
4 1,227 (12.22%) Finance
5 778 (7.75%) Analytical Skills
6 413 (4.11%) Marketing
7 325 (3.24%) Legal
8 316 (3.15%) Public Sector
9 278 (2.77%) Law
10 277 (2.76%) Games
11 257 (2.56%) Retail
12 177 (1.76%) Manufacturing
13 115 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
14 109 (1.09%) Influencing Skills
15 100 (1.00%) Telecoms
16 89 (0.89%) Organisational Skills
17 83 (0.83%) Financial Institution
18 79 (0.79%) Pharmaceutical
19 52 (0.52%) Advertising
20 48 (0.48%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 3,157 (31.45%) Lecturer
2 1,103 (10.99%) Analyst
3 955 (9.51%) Data Analyst
4 907 (9.04%) Junior
5 882 (8.79%) Junior Analyst
5 882 (8.79%) Junior Data Analyst
6 776 (7.73%) Senior
7 574 (5.72%) Lead
8 433 (4.31%) Developer
9 353 (3.52%) Architect
10 334 (3.33%) Trainer
11 275 (2.74%) Consultant
12 208 (2.07%) Software Engineer
13 200 (1.99%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
14 183 (1.82%) Data Engineer
15 159 (1.58%) Solutions Architect
16 109 (1.09%) Data Scientist
17 94 (0.94%) Python Engineer
18 89 (0.89%) Full-Stack Engineer
19 87 (0.87%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 261 (2.60%) React
2 195 (1.94%) PyTorch
3 162 (1.61%) .NET
4 160 (1.59%) REST
5 153 (1.52%) TensorFlow
6 137 (1.36%) HTML
7 132 (1.32%) scikit-learn
8 130 (1.30%) Node.js
9 129 (1.29%) RESTful
10 116 (1.16%) LangChain
11 111 (1.11%) Kafka
12 109 (1.09%) CSS
13 103 (1.03%) Pandas
14 91 (0.91%) Hugging Face
15 89 (0.89%) FastAPI
16 81 (0.81%) Django
17 77 (0.77%) NumPy
18 69 (0.69%) PySpark
19 64 (0.64%) AngularJS
20 63 (0.63%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 4,077 (40.62%) IoT
2 320 (3.19%) Cloud Native
3 214 (2.13%) Onboarding
4 204 (2.03%) Social Media
5 177 (1.76%) Algorithms
6 174 (1.73%) Product Ownership
7 171 (1.70%) AI Agents
8 150 (1.49%) Robotics
9 131 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
10 130 (1.30%) Blog
11 112 (1.12%) Distributed Systems
12 98 (0.98%) Low-Code
12 98 (0.98%) Management Information System
13 93 (0.93%) Enterprise Software
14 86 (0.86%) Life Science
15 83 (0.83%) Mobile App
16 82 (0.82%) Public Cloud
17 62 (0.62%) Virtual Team
18 59 (0.59%) Data Centre
19 58 (0.58%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 97 (0.97%) Linux
2 94 (0.94%) Windows
3 84 (0.84%) Android
4 60 (0.60%) Unix
5 59 (0.59%) Apple iOS
6 31 (0.31%) Windows Server
7 15 (0.15%) Ubuntu
8 9 (0.090%) 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%) Mac OS X
12 2 (0.020%) zOS
13 1 (0.010%) FreeRTOS
13 1 (0.010%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 1 (0.010%) Solaris
13 1 (0.010%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 5,221 (52.02%) Machine Learning
2 4,330 (43.14%) User Experience
3 4,313 (42.97%) Cybersecurity
4 4,074 (40.59%) Web Development
5 1,328 (13.23%) Business Intelligence
6 1,297 (12.92%) Analytics
7 1,016 (10.12%) Agile
8 808 (8.05%) Roadmaps
9 778 (7.75%) Problem-Solving
10 675 (6.73%) CI/CD
11 665 (6.63%) Decision-Making
12 620 (6.18%) Continuous Improvement
13 608 (6.06%) Software Engineering
14 566 (5.64%) Generative AI
15 564 (5.62%) Data Science
16 562 (5.60%) DevOps
17 555 (5.53%) LLM
18 499 (4.97%) Mentoring
19 493 (4.91%) Conversational UI
20 414 (4.12%) Customer Experience
Programming Languages
1 2,221 (22.13%) Python
2 1,544 (15.38%) SQL
3 259 (2.58%) JavaScript
4 252 (2.51%) Java
5 223 (2.22%) TypeScript
6 179 (1.78%) C#
7 86 (0.86%) C++
8 72 (0.72%) Go
9 67 (0.67%) Bash
10 61 (0.61%) PowerShell
11 56 (0.56%) R
12 40 (0.40%) Kotlin
13 37 (0.37%) PHP
14 29 (0.29%) Scala
15 28 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 27 (0.27%) Rust
17 21 (0.21%) Bicep
18 20 (0.20%) Apex Code
18 20 (0.20%) C
19 17 (0.17%) Swift
Qualifications
1 5,215 (51.96%) Degree
2 4,356 (43.40%) Master's Degree
3 4,289 (42.73%) PhD
4 4,051 (40.36%) Postgraduate
5 996 (9.92%) Azure Certification
6 295 (2.94%) Security Cleared
7 194 (1.93%) SC Cleared
8 187 (1.86%) Computer Science Degree
9 117 (1.17%) AWS Certification
10 94 (0.94%) DV Cleared
11 70 (0.70%) DBS Check
12 56 (0.56%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 55 (0.55%) ACCA
14 47 (0.47%) PMP
15 45 (0.45%) CISSP
16 43 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
17 32 (0.32%) PMI Certification
18 31 (0.31%) CIMA
18 31 (0.31%) Numerate Degree
19 28 (0.28%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 327 (3.26%) Accessibility
2 266 (2.65%) Data Quality
3 168 (1.67%) GDPR
4 156 (1.55%) QA
5 68 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 64 (0.64%) WCAG
7 49 (0.49%) EU AI Act
8 41 (0.41%) GRC
9 40 (0.40%) HIPAA
9 40 (0.40%) IFRS
10 39 (0.39%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 38 (0.38%) NIST
12 28 (0.28%) GxP
13 27 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
14 26 (0.26%) Solvency II
15 22 (0.22%) PMO
16 21 (0.21%) PSD2
17 20 (0.20%) SLA
18 17 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials
19 16 (0.16%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 266 (2.65%) Docker
2 82 (0.82%) Active Directory
3 51 (0.51%) Virtual Machines
4 14 (0.14%) Firmware
5 13 (0.13%) VMware Infrastructure
6 9 (0.090%) vSphere
7 6 (0.060%) Virtual Desktop
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%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.020%) RACF
11 1 (0.010%) Apache Flume
11 1 (0.010%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 253 (2.52%) Kubernetes
2 211 (2.10%) Terraform
3 62 (0.62%) Ansible
4 41 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
5 38 (0.38%) Prometheus
6 37 (0.37%) Grafana
7 32 (0.32%) Microsoft Intune
8 13 (0.13%) Cisco CUCM
9 8 (0.080%) Argo
9 8 (0.080%) Kubeflow
10 7 (0.070%) Proxmox
10 7 (0.070%) vCenter Server
11 4 (0.040%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 4 (0.040%) Control-M
11 4 (0.040%) RSA Archer
11 4 (0.040%) SolarWinds Orion
12 3 (0.030%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
12 3 (0.030%) Functional Safety
12 3 (0.030%) HP Fortify
13 2 (0.020%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
Vendors
1 1,720 (17.14%) Microsoft
2 324 (3.23%) PayPal
3 283 (2.82%) Databricks
4 205 (2.04%) Adobe
5 203 (2.02%) Google
6 145 (1.44%) Dell
7 117 (1.17%) OpenAI
8 104 (1.04%) Oracle
9 94 (0.94%) Salesforce
10 76 (0.76%) Cisco
11 71 (0.71%) SAP
12 57 (0.57%) Foundry
13 51 (0.51%) Palantir
14 48 (0.48%) Alteryx
15 44 (0.44%) Informatica
15 44 (0.44%) ServiceNow
16 35 (0.35%) Bloomberg
17 31 (0.31%) Apple
17 31 (0.31%) Red Hat
18 29 (0.29%) Fortinet