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

6 months to
17 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 36 54
Rank change year-on-year +32 +18 +63
Permanent jobs citing AI 10,075 2,627 3,548
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 13.47% 6.11% 4.18%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 17.30% 6.54% 4.80%
Number of salaries quoted 2,618 1,405 1,849
10th Percentile £33,750 £35,000 £41,250
25th Percentile £50,305 £56,250 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £72,500 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.45% +3.57% -
75th Percentile £93,750 £98,750 £92,500
90th Percentile £110,000 £117,500 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £58,497 £66,206 £60,000
% change year-on-year -11.64% +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 58,222 40,192 73,990
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 77.86% 93.47% 87.20%
Number of salaries quoted 35,232 22,295 56,140
10th Percentile £29,750 £31,750 £29,035
25th Percentile £40,000 £44,188 £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 £77,424 £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% -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 17 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 17 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 9,229 £70,000 -6.67% 2,968
UK excluding London +30 7,187 £58,497 -11.64% 1,942
North of England +42 2,658 £60,625 -6.73% 445
Work from Home +32 2,428 £67,500 +1.92% 1,401
London +31 2,395 £81,500 -11.89% 1,540
North West +36 1,975 £61,418 -15.29% 223
Midlands +78 1,583 £52,500 -19.23% 214
South East +33 1,420 £50,000 -33.33% 700
West Midlands +73 1,280 £55,000 -8.33% 106
East of England +17 732 £55,000 -16.95% 221
Yorkshire +36 570 £62,500 +38.89% 166
South West +11 381 £60,000 -2.04% 211
East Midlands +57 314 £50,000 -23.08% 108
Scotland +20 283 £70,000 +55.56% 109
Wales +36 121 £47,500 -24.00% 63
North East +41 113 £55,000 -24.14% 58
Northern Ireland -2 61 £90,000 -5.26% 23
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 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
2 94 (0.93%) SharePoint
3 92 (0.91%) Apache Spark
4 65 (0.65%) Jupyter
5 54 (0.54%) Confluence
6 52 (0.52%) CMS
7 40 (0.40%) Apache
8 30 (0.30%) ArcGIS
9 28 (0.28%) Palantir Foundry
10 22 (0.22%) WordPress
11 20 (0.20%) Microsoft Exchange
12 17 (0.17%) Appian
13 13 (0.13%) JBoss
13 13 (0.13%) WebSphere
14 12 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 8 (0.079%) SAS
16 5 (0.050%) Apache Pulsar
16 5 (0.050%) Apache Solr
16 5 (0.050%) IIS
16 5 (0.050%) Umbraco
Applications
1 900 (8.93%) Microsoft Excel
2 848 (8.42%) Chatbot
3 86 (0.85%) Microsoft Office
4 52 (0.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 22 (0.22%) MS Visio
5 22 (0.22%) UserZoom
6 20 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.11%) Maya
8 7 (0.069%) 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
11 4 (0.040%) Adobe After Effects
11 4 (0.040%) Camtasia
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%) Blender
Business Applications
1 39 (0.39%) 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 (0.099%) Workday HCM
7 8 (0.079%) Distributed Ledger
7 8 (0.079%) Shopify
8 7 (0.069%) Endur
8 7 (0.069%) Oracle EBS
8 7 (0.069%) 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%) Dynamics GP
11 2 (0.020%) Oracle Cash Management
11 2 (0.020%) Oracle General Ledger
11 2 (0.020%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 4,151 (41.20%) Cloud Computing
2 1,851 (18.37%) Azure
3 1,179 (11.70%) Power Platform
4 885 (8.78%) Azure AI
5 799 (7.93%) AWS
6 461 (4.58%) SaaS
7 331 (3.29%) GCP
8 216 (2.14%) GitHub
9 200 (1.99%) Microsoft 365
10 180 (1.79%) Azure DevOps
11 136 (1.35%) Snowflake
12 126 (1.25%) Adobe Analytics
13 121 (1.20%) Microsoft Copilot
14 115 (1.14%) Azure Data Factory
15 111 (1.10%) GitHub Copilot
16 108 (1.07%) Serverless
17 103 (1.02%) Entra ID
17 103 (1.02%) Power Automate
18 82 (0.81%) Figma
19 76 (0.75%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 4,052 (40.22%) Internet
2 206 (2.04%) Broadband
3 52 (0.52%) Firewall
4 32 (0.32%) Unified Communications
5 28 (0.28%) Network Security
6 27 (0.27%) VPN
7 21 (0.21%) VoIP
8 19 (0.19%) WAN
9 18 (0.18%) DNS
9 18 (0.18%) HTTP
9 18 (0.18%) TCP/IP
10 14 (0.14%) DHCP
10 14 (0.14%) Telepresence
10 14 (0.14%) WebEx
11 9 (0.089%) VLAN
11 9 (0.089%) Wi-Fi
12 8 (0.079%) SD-WAN
13 6 (0.060%) DMZ
13 6 (0.060%) RTP
14 5 (0.050%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1,041 (10.33%) Power BI
2 924 (9.17%) Tableau
3 166 (1.65%) Data Warehouse
4 119 (1.18%) Data Lake
5 103 (1.02%) SQL Server
6 90 (0.89%) PostgreSQL
7 89 (0.88%) Metadata
8 81 (0.80%) MongoDB
8 81 (0.80%) NoSQL
9 68 (0.67%) Big Data
10 52 (0.52%) BigQuery
11 43 (0.43%) Looker
12 42 (0.42%) Elasticsearch
13 38 (0.38%) MySQL
14 37 (0.37%) Pinecone
15 32 (0.32%) Apache Hive
15 32 (0.32%) Azure SQL Database
15 32 (0.32%) GIS
15 32 (0.32%) Relational Database
16 31 (0.31%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 161 (1.60%) Git
2 102 (1.01%) JIRA
3 63 (0.63%) MLflow
4 58 (0.58%) Visual Studio Code
5 48 (0.48%) Jenkins
6 32 (0.32%) GitLab
7 25 (0.25%) IBM UrbanCode
8 23 (0.23%) Selenium
9 22 (0.22%) Cypress.io
10 21 (0.21%) Claude Code
11 16 (0.16%) Postman
12 14 (0.14%) TeamCity
13 13 (0.13%) Octopus Deploy
14 12 (0.12%) Oracle Forms
14 12 (0.12%) Visual Studio
15 11 (0.11%) Bitbucket
16 10 (0.099%) SpecFlow
17 9 (0.089%) Storybook
18 8 (0.079%) Gradle
18 8 (0.079%) Vite
General
1 5,965 (59.21%) Social Skills
2 4,478 (44.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 4,257 (42.25%) Banking
4 1,180 (11.71%) Finance
5 882 (8.75%) Analytical Skills
6 405 (4.02%) Marketing
7 315 (3.13%) Public Sector
8 313 (3.11%) Legal
9 271 (2.69%) Law
10 261 (2.59%) Retail
11 254 (2.52%) Games
12 169 (1.68%) Manufacturing
13 115 (1.14%) Presentation Skills
14 103 (1.02%) Telecoms
15 99 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
16 86 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
17 84 (0.83%) Financial Institution
18 82 (0.81%) Pharmaceutical
19 48 (0.48%) German Language
20 47 (0.47%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 3,159 (31.35%) Lecturer
2 991 (9.84%) Analyst
3 842 (8.36%) Data Analyst
4 797 (7.91%) Junior
5 772 (7.66%) Junior Analyst
5 772 (7.66%) Junior Data Analyst
6 765 (7.59%) Trainer
7 756 (7.50%) Senior
8 522 (5.18%) Lead
9 425 (4.22%) Developer
10 314 (3.12%) Architect
11 272 (2.70%) Consultant
12 191 (1.90%) Software Engineer
13 168 (1.67%) Data Engineer
14 140 (1.39%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
14 140 (1.39%) Solutions Architect
15 104 (1.03%) Data Scientist
16 102 (1.01%) Content Editor
17 91 (0.90%) Senior Manager
18 89 (0.88%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 251 (2.49%) React
2 177 (1.76%) PyTorch
3 165 (1.64%) .NET
4 163 (1.62%) REST
5 136 (1.35%) TensorFlow
6 126 (1.25%) Node.js
7 125 (1.24%) HTML
8 124 (1.23%) RESTful
9 118 (1.17%) scikit-learn
10 104 (1.03%) Pandas
11 97 (0.96%) CSS
11 97 (0.96%) LangChain
12 91 (0.90%) Hugging Face
13 89 (0.88%) Kafka
14 87 (0.86%) FastAPI
15 80 (0.79%) Django
16 78 (0.77%) NumPy
17 67 (0.67%) AngularJS
18 63 (0.63%) PySpark
18 63 (0.63%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 4,077 (40.47%) IoT
2 297 (2.95%) Cloud Native
3 206 (2.04%) Onboarding
4 183 (1.82%) Algorithms
5 177 (1.76%) Social Media
6 173 (1.72%) Product Ownership
7 169 (1.68%) AI Agents
8 137 (1.36%) Self-Motivation
9 135 (1.34%) Robotics
10 128 (1.27%) Blog
11 107 (1.06%) Distributed Systems
12 99 (0.98%) Enterprise Software
12 99 (0.98%) Management Information System
13 95 (0.94%) Low-Code
14 89 (0.88%) Molecular Biology
15 86 (0.85%) Life Science
16 82 (0.81%) Mobile App
17 65 (0.65%) Public Cloud
17 65 (0.65%) Virtual Team
18 61 (0.61%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 90 (0.89%) Linux
1 90 (0.89%) Windows
2 87 (0.86%) Android
3 60 (0.60%) Apple iOS
3 60 (0.60%) Unix
4 31 (0.31%) Windows Server
5 15 (0.15%) Ubuntu
6 9 (0.089%) Mac OS
7 5 (0.050%) VMS
7 5 (0.050%) Windows Server 2016
8 4 (0.040%) Robot Operating System
9 3 (0.030%) OpenWrt
10 2 (0.020%) Kali Linux
10 2 (0.020%) Mac OS X
10 2 (0.020%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.020%) zOS
11 1 (0.010%) FreeRTOS
11 1 (0.010%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 5,137 (50.99%) Machine Learning
2 4,325 (42.93%) User Experience
3 4,321 (42.89%) Cybersecurity
4 4,072 (40.42%) Web Development
5 1,212 (12.03%) Analytics
6 1,189 (11.80%) Business Intelligence
7 965 (9.58%) Agile
8 909 (9.02%) Conversational UI
9 743 (7.37%) Problem-Solving
10 720 (7.15%) Roadmaps
11 663 (6.58%) CI/CD
12 617 (6.12%) Decision-Making
13 607 (6.02%) Continuous Improvement
14 573 (5.69%) Software Engineering
15 555 (5.51%) DevOps
16 534 (5.30%) LLM
17 532 (5.28%) Generative AI
18 525 (5.21%) Data Science
19 487 (4.83%) Mentoring
20 397 (3.94%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 2,001 (19.86%) Python
2 1,378 (13.68%) SQL
3 247 (2.45%) Java
4 244 (2.42%) JavaScript
5 226 (2.24%) TypeScript
6 174 (1.73%) C#
7 78 (0.77%) C++
8 73 (0.72%) PowerShell
9 71 (0.70%) Go
10 66 (0.66%) Bash
11 54 (0.54%) R
12 41 (0.41%) Kotlin
13 37 (0.37%) PHP
14 31 (0.31%) Rust
15 26 (0.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 25 (0.25%) Scala
17 22 (0.22%) Apex Code
18 18 (0.18%) Swift
19 17 (0.17%) Bicep
20 16 (0.16%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 5,613 (55.71%) Degree
2 4,590 (45.56%) Master's Degree
3 4,539 (45.05%) PhD
4 4,051 (40.21%) Postgraduate
5 829 (8.23%) Azure Certification
6 295 (2.93%) Security Cleared
7 196 (1.95%) SC Cleared
8 185 (1.84%) Computer Science Degree
9 118 (1.17%) AWS Certification
10 93 (0.92%) DV Cleared
11 71 (0.70%) DBS Check
12 56 (0.56%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 51 (0.51%) PMP
14 49 (0.49%) CISSP
15 46 (0.46%) ACCA
16 41 (0.41%) Microsoft Certification
17 36 (0.36%) PMI Certification
18 32 (0.32%) Cisco Certification
19 31 (0.31%) Numerate Degree
20 24 (0.24%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 307 (3.05%) Accessibility
2 258 (2.56%) Data Quality
3 157 (1.56%) QA
4 146 (1.45%) GDPR
5 70 (0.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 56 (0.56%) WCAG
7 48 (0.48%) EU AI Act
8 37 (0.37%) GRC
8 37 (0.37%) HIPAA
8 37 (0.37%) NIST
9 36 (0.36%) IFRS
10 29 (0.29%) GxP
11 25 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
11 25 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 25 (0.25%) PMO
12 24 (0.24%) Solvency II
13 22 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials
14 21 (0.21%) PSD2
14 21 (0.21%) SLA
15 17 (0.17%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 266 (2.64%) Docker
2 83 (0.82%) Active Directory
3 19 (0.19%) Virtual Machines
4 15 (0.15%) VMware Infrastructure
5 13 (0.13%) Firmware
6 11 (0.11%) Virtual Desktop
7 10 (0.099%) 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%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.020%) RACF
11 1 (0.010%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 252 (2.50%) Kubernetes
2 222 (2.20%) Terraform
3 59 (0.59%) Ansible
4 42 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
5 40 (0.40%) Prometheus
6 38 (0.38%) Grafana
7 37 (0.37%) Microsoft Intune
8 14 (0.14%) Cisco CUCM
9 8 (0.079%) Argo
10 7 (0.069%) Proxmox
10 7 (0.069%) vCenter Server
11 6 (0.060%) Kubeflow
12 4 (0.040%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 4 (0.040%) Control-M
12 4 (0.040%) RSA Archer
12 4 (0.040%) SolarWinds Orion
13 3 (0.030%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
13 3 (0.030%) HP Fortify
13 3 (0.030%) SCCM
14 2 (0.020%) SELinux
Vendors
1 1,585 (15.73%) Microsoft
2 756 (7.50%) PayPal
3 208 (2.06%) Databricks
4 195 (1.94%) Google
5 181 (1.80%) Adobe
6 113 (1.12%) OpenAI
7 112 (1.11%) Dell
8 109 (1.08%) Oracle
9 96 (0.95%) Salesforce
10 79 (0.78%) Cisco
11 71 (0.70%) SAP
12 58 (0.58%) Foundry
13 54 (0.54%) Palantir
14 47 (0.47%) Alteryx
15 42 (0.42%) ServiceNow
16 33 (0.33%) Bloomberg
17 31 (0.31%) HubSpot
18 30 (0.30%) Apple
18 30 (0.30%) Informatica
18 30 (0.30%) Red Hat