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

6 months to
9 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 37 59
Rank change year-on-year +33 +22 +62
Permanent jobs citing AI 9,950 2,612 3,406
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 13.79% 5.93% 4.08%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 17.66% 6.33% 4.66%
Number of salaries quoted 2,523 1,390 1,839
10th Percentile £33,750 £37,500 £41,250
25th Percentile £50,468 £57,500 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £73,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.11% +4.29% -
75th Percentile £94,366 £98,750 £92,500
90th Percentile £112,250 £117,500 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £58,498 £66,219 £60,000
% change year-on-year -11.66% +10.37% -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 56,331 41,289 73,115
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 78.05% 93.69% 87.56%
Number of salaries quoted 33,961 22,320 55,807
10th Percentile £29,750 £32,500 £29,000
25th Percentile £39,750 £45,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -11.78%
75th Percentile £76,299 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £94,500
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 9 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 9 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 +33 9,113 £70,000 -6.67% 3,520
UK excluding London +35 7,125 £58,498 -11.66% 2,800
North of England +41 2,635 £60,000 -7.69% 549
Work from Home +31 2,499 £65,000 -1.89% 1,924
London +32 2,345 £80,939 -12.50% 1,352
North West +33 1,976 £61,418 -15.29% 277
Midlands +78 1,554 £55,000 -15.38% 313
South East +34 1,437 £50,000 -33.33% 983
West Midlands +72 1,266 £55,000 -8.33% 161
East of England +21 712 £55,000 -16.95% 425
Yorkshire +41 549 £58,750 +28.42% 218
South West +17 383 £62,500 -3.85% 340
East Midlands +66 299 £50,000 -23.08% 144
Scotland +21 282 £70,000 +55.56% 140
Wales +37 121 £47,500 -24.00% 72
North East +42 110 £55,000 -26.42% 58
Northern Ireland -1 58 £90,000 -10.00% 29
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 91 (0.91%) Apache Spark
2 90 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
3 89 (0.89%) SharePoint
4 61 (0.61%) Jupyter
5 48 (0.48%) Confluence
6 45 (0.45%) CMS
7 39 (0.39%) Apache
8 30 (0.30%) ArcGIS
9 23 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
10 22 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
11 20 (0.20%) WordPress
12 17 (0.17%) Appian
13 14 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 13 (0.13%) JBoss
14 13 (0.13%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.080%) SAS
16 5 (0.050%) Apache Pulsar
16 5 (0.050%) Apache Solr
16 5 (0.050%) IIS
16 5 (0.050%) Umbraco
Applications
1 942 (9.47%) Chatbot
2 790 (7.94%) Microsoft Excel
3 86 (0.86%) Microsoft Office
4 46 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 22 (0.22%) MS Visio
6 18 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.14%) UserZoom
8 11 (0.11%) Maya
9 6 (0.060%) Adobe Premiere
9 6 (0.060%) Microsoft Project
10 5 (0.050%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 5 (0.050%) Photoshop
11 4 (0.040%) Adobe Illustrator
11 4 (0.040%) Weka
12 3 (0.030%) Adobe After Effects
12 3 (0.030%) CapCut
12 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.030%) Simulink
12 3 (0.030%) Sketch
13 1 (0.010%) Notion
Business Applications
1 38 (0.38%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.18%) NetSuite
3 16 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
4 15 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
5 12 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
6 10 (0.10%) Workday HCM
7 8 (0.080%) Distributed Ledger
7 8 (0.080%) Endur
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%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 4 (0.040%) Oracle Receivables
9 4 (0.040%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 3 (0.030%) Oracle Assets
11 2 (0.020%) Oracle Cash Management
11 2 (0.020%) Oracle General Ledger
11 2 (0.020%) SAP Business One
11 2 (0.020%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 4,145 (41.66%) Cloud Computing
2 1,711 (17.20%) Azure
3 1,078 (10.83%) Power Platform
4 766 (7.70%) AWS
5 762 (7.66%) Azure AI
6 442 (4.44%) SaaS
7 316 (3.18%) GCP
8 213 (2.14%) GitHub
9 192 (1.93%) Microsoft 365
10 180 (1.81%) Azure DevOps
11 136 (1.37%) Snowflake
12 113 (1.14%) Microsoft Copilot
13 112 (1.13%) Azure Data Factory
14 109 (1.10%) Serverless
15 106 (1.07%) GitHub Copilot
16 105 (1.06%) Adobe Analytics
17 101 (1.02%) Entra ID
17 101 (1.02%) Power Automate
18 75 (0.75%) Figma
19 73 (0.73%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 4,058 (40.78%) Internet
2 158 (1.59%) Broadband
3 54 (0.54%) Firewall
4 32 (0.32%) Network Security
4 32 (0.32%) Unified Communications
5 28 (0.28%) VPN
6 23 (0.23%) VoIP
7 21 (0.21%) WAN
8 19 (0.19%) TCP/IP
9 18 (0.18%) HTTP
10 15 (0.15%) DNS
11 14 (0.14%) Telepresence
11 14 (0.14%) WebEx
12 13 (0.13%) VLAN
13 11 (0.11%) DHCP
13 11 (0.11%) Wi-Fi
14 8 (0.080%) SD-WAN
14 8 (0.080%) Wireshark
15 7 (0.070%) Modbus
16 6 (0.060%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 928 (9.33%) Power BI
2 810 (8.14%) Tableau
3 161 (1.62%) Data Warehouse
4 115 (1.16%) Data Lake
5 101 (1.02%) SQL Server
6 90 (0.90%) Metadata
7 85 (0.85%) PostgreSQL
8 83 (0.83%) NoSQL
9 72 (0.72%) MongoDB
10 70 (0.70%) Big Data
11 49 (0.49%) BigQuery
12 40 (0.40%) Elasticsearch
13 39 (0.39%) Looker
14 37 (0.37%) MySQL
14 37 (0.37%) Pinecone
15 32 (0.32%) Apache Hive
15 32 (0.32%) GIS
15 32 (0.32%) Relational Database
16 30 (0.30%) Amazon Redshift
16 30 (0.30%) Redis
Development Applications
1 163 (1.64%) Git
2 103 (1.04%) JIRA
3 61 (0.61%) MLflow
4 54 (0.54%) Visual Studio Code
5 47 (0.47%) Jenkins
6 34 (0.34%) GitLab
7 25 (0.25%) IBM UrbanCode
8 19 (0.19%) Cypress.io
9 18 (0.18%) Selenium
10 16 (0.16%) Claude Code
11 15 (0.15%) TeamCity
12 14 (0.14%) Octopus Deploy
12 14 (0.14%) Oracle Forms
13 13 (0.13%) Postman
14 12 (0.12%) Visual Studio
15 10 (0.10%) Bitbucket
15 10 (0.10%) Storybook
16 9 (0.090%) SpecFlow
17 8 (0.080%) Subversion
17 8 (0.080%) Vite
General
1 5,852 (58.81%) Social Skills
2 4,471 (44.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 4,251 (42.72%) Banking
4 1,177 (11.83%) Finance
5 969 (9.74%) Analytical Skills
6 386 (3.88%) Marketing
7 305 (3.07%) Public Sector
8 293 (2.94%) Legal
9 257 (2.58%) Retail
10 254 (2.55%) Law
11 223 (2.24%) Games
12 172 (1.73%) Manufacturing
13 113 (1.14%) Presentation Skills
14 106 (1.07%) Telecoms
15 93 (0.93%) Influencing Skills
16 85 (0.85%) Pharmaceutical
17 83 (0.83%) Financial Institution
18 77 (0.77%) Organisational Skills
19 52 (0.52%) Electronics
20 48 (0.48%) German Language
Job Titles
1 3,161 (31.77%) Lecturer
2 884 (8.88%) Analyst
3 862 (8.66%) Trainer
4 732 (7.36%) Data Analyst
5 725 (7.29%) Senior
6 683 (6.86%) Junior
7 662 (6.65%) Junior Analyst
7 662 (6.65%) Junior Data Analyst
8 494 (4.96%) Lead
9 409 (4.11%) Developer
10 298 (2.99%) Architect
11 256 (2.57%) Consultant
12 187 (1.88%) Software Engineer
13 157 (1.58%) Data Engineer
14 134 (1.35%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 133 (1.34%) Solutions Architect
16 102 (1.03%) Content Editor
16 102 (1.03%) Data Scientist
17 92 (0.92%) Senior Manager
18 91 (0.91%) Full-Stack Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 238 (2.39%) React
2 173 (1.74%) PyTorch
3 164 (1.65%) .NET
4 158 (1.59%) REST
5 138 (1.39%) TensorFlow
6 119 (1.20%) RESTful
7 117 (1.18%) Node.js
8 111 (1.12%) HTML
9 110 (1.11%) scikit-learn
10 100 (1.01%) Pandas
11 94 (0.94%) Hugging Face
11 94 (0.94%) LangChain
12 85 (0.85%) CSS
12 85 (0.85%) Kafka
13 84 (0.84%) FastAPI
14 76 (0.76%) Django
15 73 (0.73%) NumPy
16 67 (0.67%) AngularJS
17 63 (0.63%) Spring
18 59 (0.59%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 4,084 (41.05%) IoT
2 283 (2.84%) Cloud Native
3 194 (1.95%) Onboarding
4 187 (1.88%) Algorithms
5 166 (1.67%) Product Ownership
6 164 (1.65%) AI Agents
7 152 (1.53%) Social Media
8 141 (1.42%) Robotics
9 134 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
10 127 (1.28%) Blog
11 103 (1.04%) Enterprise Software
12 100 (1.01%) Management Information System
13 99 (0.99%) Distributed Systems
14 90 (0.90%) Low-Code
15 89 (0.89%) Molecular Biology
16 88 (0.88%) Life Science
17 77 (0.77%) Mobile App
18 66 (0.66%) Public Cloud
19 65 (0.65%) Greenfield Project
20 62 (0.62%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 87 (0.87%) Linux
2 86 (0.86%) Windows
3 82 (0.82%) Android
4 60 (0.60%) Unix
5 57 (0.57%) Apple iOS
6 28 (0.28%) Windows Server
7 18 (0.18%) Ubuntu
8 9 (0.090%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.050%) 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 5,102 (51.28%) Machine Learning
2 4,322 (43.44%) Cybersecurity
3 4,320 (43.42%) User Experience
4 4,071 (40.91%) Web Development
5 1,176 (11.82%) Analytics
6 1,075 (10.80%) Business Intelligence
7 1,000 (10.05%) Conversational UI
8 945 (9.50%) Agile
9 711 (7.15%) Problem-Solving
10 692 (6.95%) Roadmaps
11 638 (6.41%) CI/CD
12 594 (5.97%) Decision-Making
13 574 (5.77%) Continuous Improvement
14 567 (5.70%) Software Engineering
15 551 (5.54%) DevOps
16 524 (5.27%) Data Science
17 510 (5.13%) LLM
18 495 (4.97%) Generative AI
19 449 (4.51%) Mentoring
20 415 (4.17%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 1,870 (18.79%) Python
2 1,267 (12.73%) SQL
3 243 (2.44%) JavaScript
4 240 (2.41%) Java
5 230 (2.31%) TypeScript
6 166 (1.67%) C#
7 87 (0.87%) C++
8 75 (0.75%) PowerShell
9 68 (0.68%) Bash
10 67 (0.67%) Go
11 56 (0.56%) R
12 38 (0.38%) PHP
13 34 (0.34%) Kotlin
13 34 (0.34%) Rust
14 28 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 26 (0.26%) Scala
16 23 (0.23%) Apex Code
17 21 (0.21%) C
18 18 (0.18%) Swift
19 17 (0.17%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 5,730 (57.59%) Degree
2 4,691 (47.15%) Master's Degree
3 4,635 (46.58%) PhD
4 4,052 (40.72%) Postgraduate
5 715 (7.19%) Azure Certification
6 330 (3.32%) Security Cleared
7 235 (2.36%) SC Cleared
8 189 (1.90%) Computer Science Degree
9 113 (1.14%) AWS Certification
10 91 (0.91%) DV Cleared
11 70 (0.70%) DBS Check
12 51 (0.51%) PMP
13 50 (0.50%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 49 (0.49%) BPSS Clearance
14 49 (0.49%) CISSP
15 43 (0.43%) ACCA
16 38 (0.38%) Microsoft Certification
17 36 (0.36%) PMI Certification
18 33 (0.33%) Cisco Certification
19 31 (0.31%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 279 (2.80%) Accessibility
2 244 (2.45%) Data Quality
3 149 (1.50%) QA
4 140 (1.41%) GDPR
5 74 (0.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 44 (0.44%) EU AI Act
7 43 (0.43%) WCAG
8 37 (0.37%) HIPAA
9 36 (0.36%) IFRS
9 36 (0.36%) NIST
10 31 (0.31%) GxP
11 30 (0.30%) GRC
12 24 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
12 24 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials
13 23 (0.23%) PMO
14 22 (0.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 22 (0.22%) Solvency II
15 21 (0.21%) PSD2
16 20 (0.20%) SLA
17 17 (0.17%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 254 (2.55%) Docker
2 80 (0.80%) Active Directory
3 17 (0.17%) Virtual Machines
4 16 (0.16%) Firmware
5 14 (0.14%) VMware Infrastructure
6 13 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
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%) RACF
11 1 (0.010%) Hyper-V
11 1 (0.010%) NFS
11 1 (0.010%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 246 (2.47%) Kubernetes
2 225 (2.26%) Terraform
3 58 (0.58%) Ansible
4 44 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
5 40 (0.40%) Prometheus
6 38 (0.38%) Microsoft Intune
7 36 (0.36%) Grafana
8 14 (0.14%) Cisco CUCM
9 9 (0.090%) Argo
10 7 (0.070%) Proxmox
10 7 (0.070%) vCenter Server
11 5 (0.050%) Kubeflow
12 4 (0.040%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 4 (0.040%) Control-M
12 4 (0.040%) Nessus
12 4 (0.040%) Nmap
12 4 (0.040%) RSA Archer
12 4 (0.040%) SCCM
12 4 (0.040%) SolarWinds Orion
13 3 (0.030%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
Vendors
1 1,470 (14.77%) Microsoft
2 856 (8.60%) PayPal
3 198 (1.99%) Databricks
4 190 (1.91%) Google
5 158 (1.59%) Adobe
6 115 (1.16%) Dell
7 114 (1.15%) OpenAI
8 110 (1.11%) Oracle
9 92 (0.92%) Salesforce
10 86 (0.86%) Cisco
11 69 (0.69%) SAP
12 47 (0.47%) Alteryx
12 47 (0.47%) Foundry
12 47 (0.47%) Palantir
13 41 (0.41%) ServiceNow
14 35 (0.35%) Blue Prism
15 34 (0.34%) Bloomberg
16 33 (0.33%) Red Hat
17 32 (0.32%) Fortinet
18 31 (0.31%) Apple