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

6 months to
24 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 51 66
Rank change year-on-year +47 +15 +53
Permanent jobs citing AI 9,575 2,564 2,663
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 15.31% 4.83% 4.07%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 19.05% 5.30% 4.56%
Number of salaries quoted 2,238 1,266 1,564
10th Percentile £35,000 £45,000 £42,500
25th Percentile £51,250 £60,000 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £71,750 £77,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year -6.82% +10.00% -
75th Percentile £95,000 £98,750 £92,500
90th Percentile £118,750 £118,750 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £59,450 £70,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year -15.07% +12.00% +0.67%

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 50,274 48,415 58,346
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 80.40% 91.16% 89.08%
Number of salaries quoted 29,681 23,366 44,999
10th Percentile £28,571 £35,000 £30,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,000 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +4.35% -8.00%
75th Percentile £75,246 £80,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £96,250
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 24 January 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 January 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 +46 8,726 £72,500 -6.45% 5,006
UK excluding London +54 6,891 £59,450 -15.07% 4,579
Work from Home +62 2,735 £67,500 -10.00% 2,371
North of England +55 2,556 £62,500 -8.42% 780
London +36 2,253 £80,000 -11.11% 1,190
North West +44 1,988 £61,418 -10.99% 337
Midlands +96 1,514 £59,764 -8.06% 521
South East +33 1,419 £50,000 -35.06% 1,604
West Midlands +95 1,252 £61,250 +6.52% 196
East of England +64 638 £53,750 -18.87% 713
Yorkshire +58 463 £72,500 +11.54% 322
South West +37 336 £62,500 - 575
Scotland +38 335 £66,250 +13.25% 176
East Midlands +83 272 £41,250 -43.10% 314
Wales +41 121 £54,085 -3.85% 230
North East +54 105 £55,000 -27.63% 125
Northern Ireland -6 47 £90,000 +1.41% 101
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 96 (1.00%) SharePoint
2 59 (0.62%) Apache Airflow
3 51 (0.53%) Apache Spark
4 49 (0.51%) Confluence
5 40 (0.42%) CMS
6 21 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
7 20 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 16 (0.17%) Apache
8 16 (0.17%) Appian
8 16 (0.17%) WordPress
9 13 (0.14%) JBoss
9 13 (0.14%) Jupyter
9 13 (0.14%) WebSphere
10 9 (0.094%) Apache Solr
10 9 (0.094%) ArcGIS
11 6 (0.063%) SAS
12 5 (0.052%) Apache Pulsar
12 5 (0.052%) IIS
12 5 (0.052%) nginx
12 5 (0.052%) Umbraco
Applications
1 1,206 (12.60%) Chatbot
2 480 (5.01%) Microsoft Excel
3 98 (1.02%) Microsoft Office
4 44 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 21 (0.22%) Maya
6 12 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
7 10 (0.10%) MS Visio
8 7 (0.073%) Adobe Premiere
8 7 (0.073%) Microsoft Project
8 7 (0.073%) Notion
9 6 (0.063%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.063%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.052%) Sketch
11 4 (0.042%) InDesign
11 4 (0.042%) Weka
12 3 (0.031%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.031%) Simulink
12 3 (0.031%) UserZoom
13 1 (0.010%) Adobe Illustrator
13 1 (0.010%) S-PLUS
Business Applications
1 56 (0.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 20 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
3 18 (0.19%) NetSuite
4 12 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
5 11 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
5 11 (0.11%) Shopify
6 8 (0.084%) Endur
6 8 (0.084%) Workday HCM
7 7 (0.073%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.073%) Salesforce CRM
8 6 (0.063%) Distributed Ledger
9 5 (0.052%) Elite 3E
10 4 (0.042%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 4 (0.042%) Oracle Receivables
11 3 (0.031%) Dynamics GP
11 3 (0.031%) Oracle Assets
11 3 (0.031%) SAP Business One
12 2 (0.021%) SAP CO
12 2 (0.021%) SAP ERP
12 2 (0.021%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 4,097 (42.79%) Cloud Computing
2 1,395 (14.57%) Azure
3 758 (7.92%) Power Platform
4 701 (7.32%) AWS
5 441 (4.61%) Azure AI
6 432 (4.51%) SaaS
7 323 (3.37%) GCP
8 227 (2.37%) GitHub
9 210 (2.19%) Azure DevOps
10 181 (1.89%) Microsoft 365
11 121 (1.26%) Snowflake
12 116 (1.21%) GitHub Copilot
13 107 (1.12%) Microsoft Copilot
14 106 (1.11%) Serverless
15 105 (1.10%) Azure Data Factory
16 97 (1.01%) Entra ID
17 92 (0.96%) Power Automate
18 75 (0.78%) Vertex AI
19 65 (0.68%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 65 (0.68%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 4,060 (42.40%) Internet
2 39 (0.41%) Firewall
3 31 (0.32%) Network Security
4 27 (0.28%) Unified Communications
5 25 (0.26%) VoIP
6 24 (0.25%) Broadband
7 20 (0.21%) VPN
8 15 (0.16%) HTTP
8 15 (0.16%) WAN
9 14 (0.15%) DNS
9 14 (0.15%) TCP/IP
9 14 (0.15%) Telepresence
9 14 (0.15%) WebEx
9 14 (0.15%) Wi-Fi
10 12 (0.13%) VLAN
11 9 (0.094%) DHCP
11 9 (0.094%) Wireless
12 8 (0.084%) InfiniBand
12 8 (0.084%) LAN
13 7 (0.073%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 606 (6.33%) Power BI
2 465 (4.86%) Tableau
3 157 (1.64%) Data Warehouse
4 110 (1.15%) NoSQL
5 107 (1.12%) SQL Server
6 104 (1.09%) Data Lake
7 78 (0.81%) Metadata
8 76 (0.79%) MongoDB
8 76 (0.79%) PostgreSQL
9 68 (0.71%) Big Data
10 45 (0.47%) BigQuery
11 41 (0.43%) MySQL
12 37 (0.39%) Pinecone
13 35 (0.37%) Hadoop
13 35 (0.37%) Relational Database
14 31 (0.32%) Elasticsearch
15 30 (0.31%) Looker
15 30 (0.31%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 27 (0.28%) Azure SQL Database
17 24 (0.25%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 137 (1.43%) Git
2 125 (1.31%) JIRA
3 48 (0.50%) Jenkins
3 48 (0.50%) MLflow
4 29 (0.30%) GitLab
5 20 (0.21%) Octopus Deploy
5 20 (0.21%) TeamCity
6 19 (0.20%) Cypress.io
7 18 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
8 14 (0.15%) Visual Studio
9 12 (0.13%) Selenium
10 9 (0.094%) Bitbucket
10 9 (0.094%) Vite
11 8 (0.084%) Postman
11 8 (0.084%) Subversion
12 7 (0.073%) Burp Suite
12 7 (0.073%) Storybook
12 7 (0.073%) WebDriver
13 6 (0.063%) ERwin
13 6 (0.063%) Maven
General
1 5,579 (58.27%) Social Skills
2 4,496 (46.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 4,215 (44.02%) Banking
4 1,131 (11.81%) Finance
5 1,091 (11.39%) Analytical Skills
6 393 (4.10%) Marketing
7 292 (3.05%) Public Sector
8 281 (2.93%) Law
9 267 (2.79%) Legal
10 200 (2.09%) Retail
11 119 (1.24%) Games
12 111 (1.16%) Manufacturing
13 104 (1.09%) Telecoms
14 95 (0.99%) Pharmaceutical
15 93 (0.97%) Presentation Skills
16 76 (0.79%) Influencing Skills
17 75 (0.78%) Financial Institution
17 75 (0.78%) Organisational Skills
18 66 (0.69%) Electronics
19 63 (0.66%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 3,162 (33.02%) Lecturer
2 1,163 (12.15%) Trainer
3 684 (7.14%) Senior
4 548 (5.72%) Analyst
5 406 (4.24%) Data Analyst
6 400 (4.18%) Developer
7 392 (4.09%) Lead
8 354 (3.70%) Junior
9 331 (3.46%) Junior Analyst
9 331 (3.46%) Junior Data Analyst
10 265 (2.77%) Architect
11 221 (2.31%) Consultant
12 175 (1.83%) Software Engineer
13 155 (1.62%) Content Editor
14 154 (1.61%) Data Engineer
15 137 (1.43%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 110 (1.15%) Solutions Architect
17 106 (1.11%) Support Specialist
18 98 (1.02%) Customer Support Specialist
19 92 (0.96%) Research Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 236 (2.46%) React
2 181 (1.89%) .NET
3 178 (1.86%) REST
4 142 (1.48%) PyTorch
5 122 (1.27%) TensorFlow
6 117 (1.22%) Node.js
7 111 (1.16%) LangChain
7 111 (1.16%) RESTful
8 98 (1.02%) HTML
9 83 (0.87%) FastAPI
10 73 (0.76%) AngularJS
11 72 (0.75%) CSS
12 69 (0.72%) Kafka
13 68 (0.71%) Django
14 61 (0.64%) Vue
15 58 (0.61%) scikit-learn
16 54 (0.56%) Next.js
17 53 (0.55%) OAuth
18 52 (0.54%) Flask
18 52 (0.54%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 4,077 (42.58%) IoT
2 272 (2.84%) Cloud Native
3 190 (1.98%) Product Ownership
4 174 (1.82%) Onboarding
5 153 (1.60%) AI Agents
5 153 (1.60%) Robotics
6 130 (1.36%) Self-Motivation
7 128 (1.34%) Algorithms
8 119 (1.24%) Enterprise Software
9 112 (1.17%) Blog
10 98 (1.02%) Management Information System
11 97 (1.01%) Molecular Biology
12 95 (0.99%) Life Science
13 91 (0.95%) Low-Code
14 87 (0.91%) Legacy Systems
15 82 (0.86%) Distributed Systems
16 72 (0.75%) Analytical Mindset
17 70 (0.73%) Greenfield Project
18 63 (0.66%) Virtual Team
19 55 (0.57%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 79 (0.83%) Windows
2 75 (0.78%) Linux
3 59 (0.62%) Android
4 54 (0.56%) Unix
5 37 (0.39%) Apple iOS
6 30 (0.31%) Windows Server
7 12 (0.13%) Ubuntu
8 10 (0.10%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.052%) Kali Linux
10 3 (0.031%) OpenWrt
10 3 (0.031%) VMS
11 2 (0.021%) Mac OS X
11 2 (0.021%) Robot Operating System
11 2 (0.021%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.021%) zOS
12 1 (0.010%) Debian
12 1 (0.010%) Solaris
12 1 (0.010%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 5,062 (52.87%) Machine Learning
2 4,333 (45.25%) Cybersecurity
3 4,315 (45.07%) User Experience
4 4,071 (42.52%) Web Development
5 1,251 (13.07%) Conversational UI
6 1,014 (10.59%) Analytics
7 912 (9.52%) Agile
8 753 (7.86%) Problem-Solving
9 740 (7.73%) Business Intelligence
10 599 (6.26%) Roadmaps
11 586 (6.12%) DevOps
12 570 (5.95%) CI/CD
13 569 (5.94%) Software Engineering
14 565 (5.90%) Decision-Making
15 540 (5.64%) Continuous Improvement
16 478 (4.99%) Generative AI
17 473 (4.94%) Data Science
18 469 (4.90%) Computer Science
19 452 (4.72%) LLM
20 395 (4.13%) Chemistry
Programming Languages
1 1,372 (14.33%) Python
2 931 (9.72%) SQL
3 254 (2.65%) JavaScript
4 249 (2.60%) TypeScript
5 200 (2.09%) Java
6 148 (1.55%) C#
7 86 (0.90%) PowerShell
8 75 (0.78%) C++
9 66 (0.69%) Bash
10 60 (0.63%) Go
11 59 (0.62%) R
12 38 (0.40%) PHP
13 34 (0.36%) Rust
14 33 (0.34%) Scala
15 31 (0.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 28 (0.29%) Kotlin
17 24 (0.25%) Apex Code
18 21 (0.22%) C
18 21 (0.22%) PL/SQL
19 19 (0.20%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 6,106 (63.77%) Degree
2 4,804 (50.17%) Master's Degree
3 4,733 (49.43%) PhD
4 4,049 (42.29%) Postgraduate
5 376 (3.93%) Azure Certification
6 323 (3.37%) Security Cleared
7 259 (2.70%) SC Cleared
8 220 (2.30%) Computer Science Degree
9 79 (0.83%) DV Cleared
10 61 (0.64%) AWS Certification
11 60 (0.63%) DBS Check
12 47 (0.49%) BPSS Clearance
12 47 (0.49%) PMP
13 44 (0.46%) CISSP
14 37 (0.39%) Microsoft Certification
15 36 (0.38%) ACCA
16 32 (0.33%) PMI Certification
17 30 (0.31%) CISA
17 30 (0.31%) Numerate Degree
18 28 (0.29%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 224 (2.34%) Data Quality
2 135 (1.41%) Accessibility
3 131 (1.37%) QA
4 113 (1.18%) GDPR
5 75 (0.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 43 (0.45%) GxP
7 40 (0.42%) EU AI Act
8 35 (0.37%) NIST
9 29 (0.30%) IFRS
10 28 (0.29%) SLA
11 25 (0.26%) HIPAA
12 24 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
13 23 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials
14 22 (0.23%) GRC
14 22 (0.23%) Solvency II
15 21 (0.22%) PMO
15 21 (0.22%) PSD2
15 21 (0.22%) WCAG
16 20 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 42001
17 17 (0.18%) GAAP
System Software
1 235 (2.45%) Docker
2 70 (0.73%) Active Directory
3 21 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
3 21 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
4 17 (0.18%) VMware Infrastructure
5 15 (0.16%) Firmware
6 13 (0.14%) vSphere
7 7 (0.073%) Lustre
8 6 (0.063%) Hyper-V
9 5 (0.052%) GPFS
9 5 (0.052%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 4 (0.042%) VMware ESXi
11 2 (0.021%) Ceph
11 2 (0.021%) NFS
11 2 (0.021%) RACF
12 1 (0.010%) Kamailio
12 1 (0.010%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 231 (2.41%) Terraform
2 215 (2.25%) Kubernetes
3 51 (0.53%) Ansible
4 48 (0.50%) Microsoft Intune
5 42 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
6 30 (0.31%) Prometheus
7 22 (0.23%) Grafana
8 14 (0.15%) Cisco CUCM
9 9 (0.094%) Kubeflow
10 8 (0.084%) Argo
10 8 (0.084%) SCCM
11 6 (0.063%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 5 (0.052%) vCenter Server
13 4 (0.042%) Nessus
13 4 (0.042%) Nmap
14 3 (0.031%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
14 3 (0.031%) Proxmox
14 3 (0.031%) RSA Archer
15 2 (0.021%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
15 2 (0.021%) SELinux
Vendors
1 1,163 (12.15%) PayPal
2 1,125 (11.75%) Microsoft
3 187 (1.95%) Google
4 170 (1.78%) Databricks
5 118 (1.23%) OpenAI
6 104 (1.09%) Salesforce
7 102 (1.07%) Oracle
8 99 (1.03%) Cisco
9 87 (0.91%) Dell
10 83 (0.87%) Adobe
11 70 (0.73%) SAP
12 48 (0.50%) Alteryx
13 47 (0.49%) Blue Prism
14 46 (0.48%) Foundry
15 45 (0.47%) HubSpot
16 41 (0.43%) Palantir
17 38 (0.40%) Apple
17 38 (0.40%) Fortinet
18 34 (0.36%) Bloomberg
19 32 (0.33%) Palo Alto