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

6 months to
23 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 35 52
Rank change year-on-year +31 +17 +66
Permanent jobs citing AI 10,243 2,679 3,884
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 13.36% 6.31% 4.45%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 17.21% 6.75% 5.12%
Number of salaries quoted 2,678 1,432 1,878
10th Percentile £33,750 £35,000 £41,250
25th Percentile £50,000 £56,250 £48,750
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 £111,250 £118,750 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £57,500 £66,206 £60,000
% change year-on-year -13.15% +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 59,502 39,701 75,893
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 77.59% 93.45% 86.91%
Number of salaries quoted 36,057 22,405 57,038
10th Percentile £29,750 £31,452 £29,031
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 £77,424 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £93,750
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 23 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 23 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 +32 9,395 £70,000 -6.67% 3,081
UK excluding London +28 7,280 £57,500 -13.15% 1,905
North of England +38 2,682 £60,000 -6.07% 467
London +28 2,469 £82,500 -12.00% 1,614
Work from Home +30 2,431 £65,000 -1.86% 1,436
North West +36 1,982 £61,250 -12.50% 231
Midlands +69 1,596 £52,500 -19.23% 209
South East +29 1,440 £50,000 -31.03% 676
West Midlands +68 1,288 £52,500 -12.50% 106
East of England +18 755 £55,000 -16.95% 205
Yorkshire +34 581 £60,000 +33.33% 182
South West +12 396 £60,000 -4.00% 207
East Midlands +52 319 £50,000 -23.08% 102
Scotland +21 279 £70,000 +55.56% 94
Wales +31 123 £47,500 -25.05% 65
North East +40 119 £55,000 -24.14% 56
Northern Ireland -4 62 £90,000 -5.26% 21
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 (1.12%) Apache Airflow
2 107 (1.04%) Apache Spark
3 91 (0.89%) SharePoint
4 65 (0.63%) Jupyter
5 54 (0.53%) CMS
5 54 (0.53%) Confluence
6 41 (0.40%) Apache
7 30 (0.29%) ArcGIS
8 27 (0.26%) Palantir Foundry
9 23 (0.22%) WordPress
10 19 (0.19%) Microsoft Exchange
11 17 (0.17%) Appian
12 13 (0.13%) JBoss
12 13 (0.13%) WebSphere
13 11 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 9 (0.088%) SAS
15 5 (0.049%) Apache Pulsar
15 5 (0.049%) Apache Solr
15 5 (0.049%) IIS
15 5 (0.049%) Umbraco
Applications
1 952 (9.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 834 (8.14%) Chatbot
3 87 (0.85%) Microsoft Office
4 52 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 22 (0.21%) MS Visio
5 22 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
5 22 (0.21%) UserZoom
6 11 (0.11%) Maya
7 7 (0.068%) Adobe Premiere
8 6 (0.059%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 6 (0.059%) Microsoft Project
8 6 (0.059%) Photoshop
9 5 (0.049%) Adobe Illustrator
9 5 (0.049%) Camtasia
10 4 (0.039%) Adobe After Effects
10 4 (0.039%) CapCut
10 4 (0.039%) Weka
11 3 (0.029%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.029%) Sketch
12 1 (0.010%) Notion
Business Applications
1 38 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.18%) NetSuite
3 17 (0.17%) SAP S/4HANA
4 14 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
5 12 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
6 10 (0.098%) Workday HCM
7 8 (0.078%) Distributed Ledger
7 8 (0.078%) Shopify
8 7 (0.068%) Oracle EBS
8 7 (0.068%) Salesforce CRM
9 6 (0.059%) Endur
10 4 (0.039%) Dynamics AX
10 4 (0.039%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 4 (0.039%) Oracle Receivables
10 4 (0.039%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 3 (0.029%) Oracle Assets
11 3 (0.029%) Oracle General Ledger
12 2 (0.020%) Oracle Cash Management
12 2 (0.020%) SAP Business One
12 2 (0.020%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 4,163 (40.64%) Cloud Computing
2 1,933 (18.87%) Azure
3 1,248 (12.18%) Power Platform
4 957 (9.34%) Azure AI
5 820 (8.01%) AWS
6 465 (4.54%) SaaS
7 354 (3.46%) GCP
8 212 (2.07%) GitHub
9 196 (1.91%) Microsoft 365
10 177 (1.73%) Snowflake
11 175 (1.71%) Azure DevOps
12 146 (1.43%) Adobe Analytics
13 121 (1.18%) Microsoft Copilot
14 116 (1.13%) Azure Data Factory
15 109 (1.06%) Serverless
16 108 (1.05%) GitHub Copilot
17 101 (0.99%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 101 (0.99%) Entra ID
18 99 (0.97%) Power Automate
19 90 (0.88%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 4,053 (39.57%) Internet
2 228 (2.23%) Broadband
3 52 (0.51%) Firewall
4 32 (0.31%) Unified Communications
5 28 (0.27%) Network Security
6 26 (0.25%) VPN
7 20 (0.20%) VoIP
8 19 (0.19%) TCP/IP
9 18 (0.18%) DNS
9 18 (0.18%) HTTP
9 18 (0.18%) WAN
10 15 (0.15%) DHCP
11 14 (0.14%) Telepresence
11 14 (0.14%) WebEx
12 8 (0.078%) VLAN
12 8 (0.078%) Wi-Fi
13 7 (0.068%) SD-WAN
14 6 (0.059%) DMZ
14 6 (0.059%) Intranet
14 6 (0.059%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1,107 (10.81%) Power BI
2 993 (9.69%) Tableau
3 196 (1.91%) Data Warehouse
4 147 (1.44%) Data Lake
5 118 (1.15%) SQL Server
6 91 (0.89%) Metadata
6 91 (0.89%) PostgreSQL
7 82 (0.80%) MongoDB
8 81 (0.79%) NoSQL
9 67 (0.65%) Big Data
9 67 (0.65%) BigQuery
10 58 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
10 58 (0.57%) Looker
11 46 (0.45%) Amazon Redshift
12 39 (0.38%) MySQL
13 38 (0.37%) Pinecone
14 36 (0.35%) Snowflake Schema
15 34 (0.33%) Relational Database
16 33 (0.32%) Azure SQL Database
17 32 (0.31%) Apache Hive
Development Applications
1 156 (1.52%) Git
2 100 (0.98%) JIRA
3 78 (0.76%) MLflow
4 58 (0.57%) Visual Studio Code
5 47 (0.46%) Jenkins
6 34 (0.33%) GitLab
7 25 (0.24%) Claude Code
7 25 (0.24%) IBM UrbanCode
7 25 (0.24%) Selenium
8 24 (0.23%) Cypress.io
9 16 (0.16%) Postman
10 13 (0.13%) TeamCity
11 12 (0.12%) Octopus Deploy
11 12 (0.12%) SpecFlow
11 12 (0.12%) Visual Studio
12 11 (0.11%) Bitbucket
12 11 (0.11%) Oracle Forms
13 9 (0.088%) Storybook
14 8 (0.078%) Gradle
14 8 (0.078%) Vite
General
1 6,029 (58.86%) Social Skills
2 4,475 (43.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 4,259 (41.58%) Banking
4 1,212 (11.83%) Finance
5 906 (8.85%) Analytical Skills
6 410 (4.00%) Marketing
7 320 (3.12%) Legal
8 311 (3.04%) Public Sector
9 278 (2.71%) Law
10 277 (2.70%) Games
11 270 (2.64%) Retail
12 173 (1.69%) Manufacturing
13 118 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
14 103 (1.01%) Telecoms
15 102 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
16 90 (0.88%) Organisational Skills
17 84 (0.82%) Financial Institution
18 79 (0.77%) Pharmaceutical
19 50 (0.49%) Advertising
20 47 (0.46%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 3,160 (30.85%) Lecturer
2 1,050 (10.25%) Analyst
3 897 (8.76%) Data Analyst
4 852 (8.32%) Junior
5 827 (8.07%) Junior Analyst
5 827 (8.07%) Junior Data Analyst
6 772 (7.54%) Senior
7 751 (7.33%) Trainer
8 547 (5.34%) Lead
9 427 (4.17%) Developer
10 333 (3.25%) Architect
11 269 (2.63%) Consultant
12 196 (1.91%) Software Engineer
13 173 (1.69%) Data Engineer
14 152 (1.48%) Solutions Architect
15 146 (1.43%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 107 (1.04%) Data Scientist
17 102 (1.00%) Content Editor
18 90 (0.88%) Python Engineer
19 89 (0.87%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 255 (2.49%) React
2 193 (1.88%) PyTorch
3 162 (1.58%) .NET
3 162 (1.58%) REST
4 151 (1.47%) TensorFlow
5 133 (1.30%) HTML
6 131 (1.28%) scikit-learn
7 129 (1.26%) Node.js
8 126 (1.23%) RESTful
9 115 (1.12%) LangChain
10 108 (1.05%) Kafka
11 104 (1.02%) Pandas
12 103 (1.01%) CSS
13 91 (0.89%) Hugging Face
14 85 (0.83%) FastAPI
15 78 (0.76%) Django
15 78 (0.76%) NumPy
16 66 (0.64%) AngularJS
17 64 (0.62%) PySpark
18 63 (0.62%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 4,077 (39.80%) IoT
2 312 (3.05%) Cloud Native
3 211 (2.06%) Onboarding
4 201 (1.96%) Social Media
5 181 (1.77%) Algorithms
6 176 (1.72%) Product Ownership
7 166 (1.62%) AI Agents
8 142 (1.39%) Robotics
9 138 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
10 130 (1.27%) Blog
11 105 (1.03%) Distributed Systems
12 101 (0.99%) Management Information System
13 96 (0.94%) Enterprise Software
14 95 (0.93%) Low-Code
15 87 (0.85%) Life Science
16 82 (0.80%) Mobile App
17 79 (0.77%) Public Cloud
18 73 (0.71%) Molecular Biology
19 64 (0.62%) Virtual Team
20 61 (0.60%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 95 (0.93%) Linux
1 95 (0.93%) Windows
2 85 (0.83%) Android
3 60 (0.59%) Unix
4 59 (0.58%) Apple iOS
5 31 (0.30%) Windows Server
6 15 (0.15%) Ubuntu
7 9 (0.088%) Mac OS
8 5 (0.049%) VMS
8 5 (0.049%) Windows Server 2016
9 4 (0.039%) Robot Operating System
10 3 (0.029%) OpenWrt
11 2 (0.020%) Kali Linux
11 2 (0.020%) Mac OS X
11 2 (0.020%) zOS
12 1 (0.010%) FreeRTOS
12 1 (0.010%) Solaris
12 1 (0.010%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 5,179 (50.56%) Machine Learning
2 4,325 (42.22%) User Experience
3 4,321 (42.18%) Cybersecurity
4 4,073 (39.76%) Web Development
5 1,271 (12.41%) Analytics
6 1,266 (12.36%) Business Intelligence
7 1,007 (9.83%) Agile
8 906 (8.85%) Conversational UI
9 771 (7.53%) Roadmaps
10 768 (7.50%) Problem-Solving
11 663 (6.47%) CI/CD
12 637 (6.22%) Decision-Making
13 612 (5.97%) Continuous Improvement
14 590 (5.76%) Software Engineering
15 562 (5.49%) Data Science
16 559 (5.46%) Generative AI
17 554 (5.41%) DevOps
18 537 (5.24%) LLM
19 487 (4.75%) Mentoring
20 405 (3.95%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 2,082 (20.33%) Python
2 1,463 (14.28%) SQL
3 250 (2.44%) Java
4 249 (2.43%) JavaScript
5 222 (2.17%) TypeScript
6 177 (1.73%) C#
7 83 (0.81%) C++
8 72 (0.70%) Go
9 68 (0.66%) PowerShell
10 66 (0.64%) Bash
11 55 (0.54%) R
12 40 (0.39%) Kotlin
13 37 (0.36%) PHP
14 29 (0.28%) Rust
15 26 (0.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 26 (0.25%) Scala
16 21 (0.21%) Apex Code
17 18 (0.18%) Bicep
17 18 (0.18%) C
18 17 (0.17%) Swift
Qualifications
1 5,633 (54.99%) Degree
2 4,592 (44.83%) Master's Degree
3 4,524 (44.17%) PhD
4 4,051 (39.55%) Postgraduate
5 883 (8.62%) Azure Certification
6 293 (2.86%) Security Cleared
7 194 (1.89%) SC Cleared
8 183 (1.79%) Computer Science Degree
9 117 (1.14%) AWS Certification
10 96 (0.94%) DV Cleared
11 70 (0.68%) DBS Check
12 56 (0.55%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 50 (0.49%) PMP
14 47 (0.46%) CISSP
15 45 (0.44%) ACCA
16 42 (0.41%) Microsoft Certification
17 35 (0.34%) PMI Certification
18 31 (0.30%) Numerate Degree
19 30 (0.29%) Cisco Certification
20 22 (0.21%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 322 (3.14%) Accessibility
2 261 (2.55%) Data Quality
3 165 (1.61%) GDPR
4 160 (1.56%) QA
5 71 (0.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 59 (0.58%) WCAG
7 48 (0.47%) EU AI Act
8 40 (0.39%) GRC
8 40 (0.39%) HIPAA
9 39 (0.38%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 38 (0.37%) NIST
11 36 (0.35%) IFRS
12 29 (0.28%) GxP
13 25 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
13 25 (0.24%) PMO
13 25 (0.24%) Solvency II
14 21 (0.21%) PSD2
14 21 (0.21%) SLA
15 20 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials
16 17 (0.17%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 268 (2.62%) Docker
2 83 (0.81%) Active Directory
3 33 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
4 14 (0.14%) VMware Infrastructure
5 13 (0.13%) Firmware
6 9 (0.088%) Virtual Desktop
6 9 (0.088%) vSphere
7 4 (0.039%) Lustre
7 4 (0.039%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 3 (0.029%) Kamailio
8 3 (0.029%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.020%) Ceph
9 2 (0.020%) GPFS
9 2 (0.020%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.020%) RACF
10 1 (0.010%) Apache Flume
10 1 (0.010%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 251 (2.45%) Kubernetes
2 216 (2.11%) Terraform
3 60 (0.59%) Ansible
4 41 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
5 39 (0.38%) Prometheus
6 37 (0.36%) Grafana
7 35 (0.34%) Microsoft Intune
8 14 (0.14%) Cisco CUCM
9 7 (0.068%) Argo
9 7 (0.068%) Kubeflow
9 7 (0.068%) Proxmox
9 7 (0.068%) vCenter Server
10 4 (0.039%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 4 (0.039%) Control-M
10 4 (0.039%) RSA Archer
10 4 (0.039%) SolarWinds Orion
11 3 (0.029%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
11 3 (0.029%) HP Fortify
12 2 (0.020%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
12 2 (0.020%) SCCM
Vendors
1 1,647 (16.08%) Microsoft
2 740 (7.22%) PayPal
3 248 (2.42%) Databricks
4 200 (1.95%) Adobe
5 199 (1.94%) Google
6 150 (1.46%) Dell
7 113 (1.10%) OpenAI
8 108 (1.05%) Oracle
9 95 (0.93%) Salesforce
10 78 (0.76%) Cisco
11 71 (0.69%) SAP
12 58 (0.57%) Foundry
13 53 (0.52%) Palantir
14 47 (0.46%) Alteryx
15 43 (0.42%) ServiceNow
16 42 (0.41%) Informatica
17 34 (0.33%) Bloomberg
18 31 (0.30%) Apple
19 30 (0.29%) Red Hat
20 29 (0.28%) Fortinet