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

6 months to
10 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 37 60
Rank change year-on-year +33 +23 +61
Permanent jobs citing AI 10,012 2,601 3,407
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 13.75% 5.92% 4.08%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 17.61% 6.32% 4.66%
Number of salaries quoted 2,530 1,378 1,839
10th Percentile £33,750 £37,500 £41,250
25th Percentile £51,250 £57,500 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £72,966 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.06% +4.24% -
75th Percentile £95,000 £98,750 £92,500
90th Percentile £111,250 £117,500 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £58,932 £66,219 £60,000
% change year-on-year -11.01% +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 56,840 41,126 73,167
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 78.06% 93.65% 87.53%
Number of salaries quoted 34,202 22,190 55,823
10th Percentile £29,750 £32,500 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £45,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -11.41%
75th Percentile £77,219 £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 10 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 10 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 9,166 £70,000 -6.67% 3,498
UK excluding London +34 7,183 £58,932 -11.01% 2,397
North of England +43 2,651 £60,000 -7.69% 523
Work from Home +32 2,496 £67,500 +1.88% 1,837
London +32 2,349 £80,939 -12.50% 1,060
North West +33 1,979 £61,418 -15.29% 259
Midlands +80 1,567 £55,000 -15.38% 279
South East +34 1,443 £50,000 -33.33% 835
West Midlands +74 1,273 £55,000 -12.00% 145
East of England +21 718 £55,000 -16.95% 328
Yorkshire +37 560 £58,750 +28.42% 208
South West +13 391 £62,500 -3.85% 273
East Midlands +62 305 £50,000 -23.08% 128
Scotland +19 287 £70,000 +55.56% 118
Wales +37 124 £47,500 -24.00% 62
North East +41 112 £55,000 -26.42% 60
Northern Ireland +2 60 £90,000 -10.00% 25
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 46 (0.46%) CMS
7 39 (0.39%) Apache
8 30 (0.30%) ArcGIS
9 23 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
9 23 (0.23%) Palantir Foundry
10 21 (0.21%) WordPress
11 17 (0.17%) Appian
12 14 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 13 (0.13%) JBoss
13 13 (0.13%) WebSphere
14 8 (0.080%) SAS
15 5 (0.050%) Apache Pulsar
15 5 (0.050%) Apache Solr
15 5 (0.050%) IIS
15 5 (0.050%) Umbraco
Applications
1 942 (9.41%) Chatbot
2 844 (8.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 86 (0.86%) Microsoft Office
4 47 (0.47%) 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
9 6 (0.060%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.050%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 5 (0.050%) 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
3 16 (0.16%) SAP S/4HANA
4 12 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
5 10 (0.100%) Workday HCM
6 8 (0.080%) Distributed Ledger
6 8 (0.080%) Endur
6 8 (0.080%) Shopify
7 7 (0.070%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.070%) Salesforce CRM
8 4 (0.040%) Dynamics AX
8 4 (0.040%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 4 (0.040%) Oracle Receivables
8 4 (0.040%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 3 (0.030%) Oracle Assets
10 2 (0.020%) Dynamics GP
10 2 (0.020%) Integrated Workplace Management System
10 2 (0.020%) Oracle Cash Management
10 2 (0.020%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 4,146 (41.41%) Cloud Computing
2 1,766 (17.64%) Azure
3 1,126 (11.25%) Power Platform
4 818 (8.17%) Azure AI
5 766 (7.65%) AWS
6 446 (4.45%) SaaS
7 316 (3.16%) GCP
8 211 (2.11%) GitHub
9 194 (1.94%) Microsoft 365
10 178 (1.78%) Azure DevOps
11 137 (1.37%) Snowflake
12 113 (1.13%) Microsoft Copilot
13 111 (1.11%) Azure Data Factory
14 109 (1.09%) Serverless
15 106 (1.06%) GitHub Copilot
16 105 (1.05%) Adobe Analytics
17 101 (1.01%) Entra ID
17 101 (1.01%) Power Automate
18 76 (0.76%) Figma
19 73 (0.73%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 4,057 (40.52%) Internet
2 158 (1.58%) Broadband
3 54 (0.54%) Firewall
4 32 (0.32%) Unified Communications
5 31 (0.31%) Network Security
6 28 (0.28%) VPN
7 22 (0.22%) VoIP
8 20 (0.20%) WAN
9 19 (0.19%) TCP/IP
10 18 (0.18%) HTTP
11 15 (0.15%) DNS
12 14 (0.14%) Telepresence
12 14 (0.14%) WebEx
13 13 (0.13%) VLAN
14 11 (0.11%) DHCP
15 10 (0.100%) Wi-Fi
16 8 (0.080%) SD-WAN
16 8 (0.080%) Wireshark
17 7 (0.070%) Modbus
18 6 (0.060%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 983 (9.82%) Power BI
2 865 (8.64%) Tableau
3 161 (1.61%) Data Warehouse
4 115 (1.15%) Data Lake
5 102 (1.02%) SQL Server
6 90 (0.90%) Metadata
7 86 (0.86%) PostgreSQL
8 81 (0.81%) 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
1 162 (1.62%) Git
2 104 (1.04%) JIRA
3 62 (0.62%) 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 (0.100%) Bitbucket
15 10 (0.100%) Storybook
16 9 (0.090%) SpecFlow
17 8 (0.080%) Subversion
17 8 (0.080%) Vite
General
1 5,905 (58.98%) Social Skills
2 4,468 (44.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 4,250 (42.45%) Banking
4 1,174 (11.73%) Finance
5 969 (9.68%) Analytical Skills
6 389 (3.89%) Marketing
7 306 (3.06%) Public Sector
8 293 (2.93%) Legal
9 257 (2.57%) Retail
10 253 (2.53%) Law
11 223 (2.23%) Games
12 171 (1.71%) Manufacturing
13 113 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
14 107 (1.07%) Telecoms
15 92 (0.92%) Influencing Skills
16 85 (0.85%) Financial Institution
16 85 (0.85%) Pharmaceutical
17 79 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
18 52 (0.52%) Electronics
19 48 (0.48%) German Language
Job Titles
1 3,161 (31.57%) Lecturer
2 935 (9.34%) Analyst
3 862 (8.61%) Trainer
4 785 (7.84%) Data Analyst
5 738 (7.37%) Junior
6 727 (7.26%) Senior
7 717 (7.16%) Junior Analyst
7 717 (7.16%) Junior Data Analyst
8 496 (4.95%) Lead
9 407 (4.07%) Developer
10 302 (3.02%) Architect
11 259 (2.59%) Consultant
12 186 (1.86%) Software Engineer
13 156 (1.56%) Data Engineer
14 136 (1.36%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 134 (1.34%) Solutions Architect
16 102 (1.02%) Content Editor
16 102 (1.02%) Data Scientist
17 91 (0.91%) Full-Stack Engineer
17 91 (0.91%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 239 (2.39%) React
2 172 (1.72%) PyTorch
3 160 (1.60%) .NET
4 156 (1.56%) REST
5 137 (1.37%) TensorFlow
6 121 (1.21%) RESTful
7 118 (1.18%) Node.js
8 111 (1.11%) HTML
9 110 (1.10%) scikit-learn
10 100 (1.00%) Pandas
11 94 (0.94%) LangChain
12 92 (0.92%) Hugging Face
13 86 (0.86%) Kafka
14 85 (0.85%) CSS
14 85 (0.85%) FastAPI
15 77 (0.77%) Django
16 73 (0.73%) NumPy
17 67 (0.67%) AngularJS
18 63 (0.63%) Spring
19 60 (0.60%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 4,084 (40.79%) IoT
2 284 (2.84%) Cloud Native
3 195 (1.95%) Onboarding
4 188 (1.88%) Algorithms
5 166 (1.66%) Product Ownership
6 165 (1.65%) AI Agents
7 153 (1.53%) Social Media
8 142 (1.42%) Robotics
9 134 (1.34%) Self-Motivation
10 128 (1.28%) Blog
11 103 (1.03%) Enterprise Software
12 101 (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 65 (0.65%) Public Cloud
19 61 (0.61%) Legacy Systems
20 59 (0.59%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 88 (0.88%) Linux
2 87 (0.87%) Windows
3 82 (0.82%) Android
4 60 (0.60%) Unix
5 57 (0.57%) Apple iOS
6 29 (0.29%) 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 5,103 (50.97%) Machine Learning
2 4,323 (43.18%) Cybersecurity
3 4,321 (43.16%) User Experience
4 4,071 (40.66%) Web Development
5 1,177 (11.76%) Analytics
6 1,131 (11.30%) Business Intelligence
7 1,000 (9.99%) Conversational UI
8 935 (9.34%) Agile
9 712 (7.11%) Problem-Solving
10 689 (6.88%) Roadmaps
11 635 (6.34%) CI/CD
12 592 (5.91%) Decision-Making
13 576 (5.75%) Continuous Improvement
14 569 (5.68%) Software Engineering
15 549 (5.48%) DevOps
16 525 (5.24%) Data Science
17 512 (5.11%) LLM
18 504 (5.03%) Generative AI
19 449 (4.48%) Mentoring
20 418 (4.17%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 1,924 (19.22%) Python
2 1,315 (13.13%) SQL
3 243 (2.43%) JavaScript
4 239 (2.39%) Java
5 231 (2.31%) TypeScript
6 165 (1.65%) C#
7 88 (0.88%) C++
8 75 (0.75%) PowerShell
9 68 (0.68%) Bash
10 67 (0.67%) Go
11 56 (0.56%) R
12 37 (0.37%) 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 22 (0.22%) C
18 18 (0.18%) Swift
19 17 (0.17%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 5,730 (57.23%) Degree
2 4,691 (46.85%) Master's Degree
3 4,635 (46.29%) PhD
4 4,052 (40.47%) Postgraduate
5 771 (7.70%) Azure Certification
6 331 (3.31%) Security Cleared
7 236 (2.36%) SC Cleared
8 191 (1.91%) Computer Science Degree
9 113 (1.13%) AWS Certification
10 93 (0.93%) DV Cleared
11 70 (0.70%) DBS Check
12 51 (0.51%) PMP
13 50 (0.50%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 50 (0.50%) CISSP
14 49 (0.49%) BPSS Clearance
15 44 (0.44%) ACCA
16 39 (0.39%) 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 (2.79%) Accessibility
2 245 (2.45%) Data Quality
3 149 (1.49%) QA
4 141 (1.41%) GDPR
5 73 (0.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 45 (0.45%) EU AI Act
7 43 (0.43%) WCAG
8 37 (0.37%) HIPAA
8 37 (0.37%) 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 19 (0.19%) SLA
17 17 (0.17%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 254 (2.54%) Docker
2 81 (0.81%) 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 (0.100%) 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
1 245 (2.45%) Kubernetes
2 223 (2.23%) Terraform
3 59 (0.59%) 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 1,517 (15.15%) Microsoft
2 856 (8.55%) PayPal
3 200 (2.00%) Databricks
4 191 (1.91%) Google
5 158 (1.58%) Adobe
6 116 (1.16%) Dell
7 113 (1.13%) OpenAI
8 111 (1.11%) Oracle
9 92 (0.92%) Salesforce
10 87 (0.87%) Cisco
11 70 (0.70%) SAP
12 48 (0.48%) Foundry
12 48 (0.48%) Palantir
13 47 (0.47%) Alteryx
14 43 (0.43%) ServiceNow
15 34 (0.34%) Bloomberg
16 33 (0.33%) Red Hat
17 32 (0.32%) Fortinet
18 31 (0.31%) Apple
19 30 (0.30%) Informatica