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

6 months to
12 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 36 59
Rank change year-on-year +32 +23 +60
Permanent jobs citing AI 10,077 2,619 3,434
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 13.70% 5.99% 4.10%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 17.54% 6.40% 4.69%
Number of salaries quoted 2,587 1,388 1,850
10th Percentile £33,750 £37,500 £41,250
25th Percentile £50,125 £57,500 £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 £110,250 £117,500 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £58,497 £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 57,440 40,902 73,209
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 78.10% 93.61% 87.44%
Number of salaries quoted 34,676 22,163 55,834
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% -11.31%
75th Percentile £76,299 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £95,000
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 12 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 12 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 9,235 £70,000 -6.67% 2,969
UK excluding London +30 7,218 £58,497 -11.66% 1,860
North of England +42 2,675 £60,000 -7.69% 438
Work from Home +32 2,510 £67,500 +1.88% 1,488
London +31 2,375 £81,500 -11.89% 1,574
North West +37 1,989 £61,418 -15.29% 232
Midlands +77 1,581 £55,000 -15.38% 195
South East +33 1,443 £50,000 -33.33% 674
West Midlands +75 1,282 £55,000 -10.20% 105
East of England +21 724 £55,000 -16.95% 218
Yorkshire +38 572 £61,250 +33.88% 158
South West +16 389 £60,000 -4.00% 196
East Midlands +57 310 £50,000 -23.08% 89
Scotland +18 281 £70,000 +55.56% 104
Wales +39 123 £47,500 -24.00% 51
North East +48 114 £55,000 -24.14% 51
Northern Ireland +3 60 £90,000 -10.00% 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 91 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
1 91 (0.90%) SharePoint
2 90 (0.89%) Apache Spark
3 65 (0.65%) Jupyter
4 53 (0.53%) Confluence
5 52 (0.52%) CMS
6 37 (0.37%) Apache
7 30 (0.30%) ArcGIS
8 27 (0.27%) Palantir Foundry
9 22 (0.22%) WordPress
10 21 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
11 17 (0.17%) Appian
12 13 (0.13%) JBoss
12 13 (0.13%) WebSphere
13 12 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 8 (0.079%) SAS
15 5 (0.050%) Apache Pulsar
15 5 (0.050%) Apache Solr
15 5 (0.050%) IIS
15 5 (0.050%) Umbraco
Applications
1 949 (9.42%) Chatbot
2 844 (8.38%) Microsoft Excel
3 85 (0.84%) Microsoft Office
4 48 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 22 (0.22%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.15%) UserZoom
8 11 (0.11%) Maya
9 7 (0.069%) Adobe Premiere
10 6 (0.060%) Microsoft Project
10 6 (0.060%) Photoshop
11 5 (0.050%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 5 (0.050%) Adobe Illustrator
12 4 (0.040%) Adobe After Effects
12 4 (0.040%) CapCut
12 4 (0.040%) Weka
13 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.030%) Sketch
14 2 (0.020%) Camtasia
14 2 (0.020%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 39 (0.39%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.18%) NetSuite
3 16 (0.16%) 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%) Endur
7 8 (0.079%) Shopify
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%) SAP Business One
11 2 (0.020%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 4,149 (41.17%) Cloud Computing
2 1,776 (17.62%) Azure
3 1,129 (11.20%) Power Platform
4 823 (8.17%) Azure AI
5 778 (7.72%) AWS
6 454 (4.51%) SaaS
7 321 (3.19%) GCP
8 213 (2.11%) GitHub
9 195 (1.94%) Microsoft 365
10 178 (1.77%) Azure DevOps
11 136 (1.35%) Snowflake
12 114 (1.13%) Azure Data Factory
12 114 (1.13%) Microsoft Copilot
13 111 (1.10%) Adobe Analytics
14 109 (1.08%) GitHub Copilot
15 106 (1.05%) Serverless
16 102 (1.01%) Power Automate
17 99 (0.98%) Entra ID
18 82 (0.81%) Figma
19 73 (0.72%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 4,056 (40.25%) Internet
2 170 (1.69%) Broadband
3 54 (0.54%) Firewall
4 32 (0.32%) Unified Communications
5 30 (0.30%) Network Security
6 28 (0.28%) VPN
7 21 (0.21%) VoIP
8 20 (0.20%) WAN
9 19 (0.19%) TCP/IP
10 18 (0.18%) HTTP
11 16 (0.16%) DNS
12 14 (0.14%) Telepresence
12 14 (0.14%) WebEx
13 12 (0.12%) DHCP
13 12 (0.12%) VLAN
14 10 (0.099%) Wi-Fi
15 8 (0.079%) SD-WAN
16 7 (0.069%) Wireshark
17 6 (0.060%) DMZ
17 6 (0.060%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 981 (9.74%) Power BI
2 863 (8.56%) Tableau
3 161 (1.60%) Data Warehouse
4 117 (1.16%) Data Lake
5 102 (1.01%) SQL Server
6 91 (0.90%) Metadata
7 84 (0.83%) PostgreSQL
8 78 (0.77%) NoSQL
9 75 (0.74%) MongoDB
10 68 (0.67%) Big Data
11 51 (0.51%) BigQuery
12 40 (0.40%) Looker
13 39 (0.39%) Elasticsearch
14 38 (0.38%) Pinecone
15 37 (0.37%) MySQL
16 32 (0.32%) Apache Hive
16 32 (0.32%) Azure SQL Database
16 32 (0.32%) GIS
16 32 (0.32%) Relational Database
17 30 (0.30%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 163 (1.62%) Git
2 101 (1.00%) JIRA
3 62 (0.62%) MLflow
4 58 (0.58%) Visual Studio Code
5 45 (0.45%) Jenkins
6 34 (0.34%) GitLab
7 25 (0.25%) IBM UrbanCode
8 23 (0.23%) Selenium
9 22 (0.22%) Cypress.io
10 20 (0.20%) Claude Code
11 15 (0.15%) Postman
11 15 (0.15%) TeamCity
12 14 (0.14%) Octopus Deploy
13 12 (0.12%) Oracle Forms
13 12 (0.12%) Visual Studio
14 10 (0.099%) Bitbucket
15 9 (0.089%) SpecFlow
15 9 (0.089%) Storybook
16 8 (0.079%) JMeter
16 8 (0.079%) Vite
General
1 5,912 (58.67%) Social Skills
2 4,479 (44.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 4,253 (42.21%) Banking
4 1,187 (11.78%) Finance
5 973 (9.66%) Analytical Skills
6 401 (3.98%) Marketing
7 311 (3.09%) Public Sector
8 305 (3.03%) Legal
9 263 (2.61%) Retail
10 261 (2.59%) Law
11 235 (2.33%) Games
12 176 (1.75%) Manufacturing
13 114 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
14 106 (1.05%) Telecoms
15 95 (0.94%) Influencing Skills
16 85 (0.84%) Financial Institution
17 84 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
18 83 (0.82%) Pharmaceutical
19 52 (0.52%) Electronics
20 48 (0.48%) German Language
Job Titles
1 3,162 (31.38%) Lecturer
2 938 (9.31%) Analyst
3 863 (8.56%) Trainer
4 787 (7.81%) Data Analyst
5 741 (7.35%) Junior
6 736 (7.30%) Senior
7 717 (7.12%) Junior Analyst
7 717 (7.12%) Junior Data Analyst
8 505 (5.01%) Lead
9 428 (4.25%) Developer
10 305 (3.03%) Architect
11 266 (2.64%) Consultant
12 188 (1.87%) Software Engineer
13 157 (1.56%) Data Engineer
14 138 (1.37%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 134 (1.33%) Solutions Architect
16 102 (1.01%) Content Editor
16 102 (1.01%) Data Scientist
17 92 (0.91%) Senior Manager
18 88 (0.87%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 243 (2.41%) React
2 173 (1.72%) PyTorch
3 169 (1.68%) .NET
4 157 (1.56%) REST
5 137 (1.36%) TensorFlow
6 123 (1.22%) Node.js
7 122 (1.21%) RESTful
8 121 (1.20%) HTML
9 114 (1.13%) scikit-learn
10 103 (1.02%) Pandas
11 96 (0.95%) LangChain
12 94 (0.93%) Hugging Face
13 93 (0.92%) CSS
14 87 (0.86%) Kafka
15 84 (0.83%) FastAPI
16 77 (0.76%) NumPy
17 76 (0.75%) Django
18 67 (0.66%) AngularJS
19 63 (0.63%) Spring
20 61 (0.61%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 4,082 (40.51%) IoT
2 285 (2.83%) Cloud Native
3 201 (1.99%) Onboarding
4 188 (1.87%) Algorithms
5 168 (1.67%) AI Agents
6 165 (1.64%) Product Ownership
7 162 (1.61%) Social Media
8 143 (1.42%) Robotics
9 140 (1.39%) Self-Motivation
10 128 (1.27%) Blog
11 102 (1.01%) Distributed Systems
12 101 (1.00%) Management Information System
13 99 (0.98%) Enterprise Software
14 91 (0.90%) Low-Code
15 89 (0.88%) Molecular Biology
16 87 (0.86%) Life Science
17 82 (0.81%) Mobile App
18 64 (0.64%) Public Cloud
19 61 (0.61%) Greenfield Project
19 61 (0.61%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 89 (0.88%) Android
1 89 (0.88%) Linux
2 87 (0.86%) Windows
3 60 (0.60%) Unix
4 59 (0.59%) Apple iOS
5 29 (0.29%) Windows Server
6 17 (0.17%) Ubuntu
7 9 (0.089%) Mac OS
8 5 (0.050%) VMS
9 4 (0.040%) Kali Linux
9 4 (0.040%) Robot Operating System
9 4 (0.040%) Windows Server 2016
10 3 (0.030%) OpenWrt
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 5,110 (50.71%) Machine Learning
2 4,323 (42.90%) User Experience
3 4,321 (42.88%) Cybersecurity
4 4,072 (40.41%) Web Development
5 1,189 (11.80%) Analytics
6 1,130 (11.21%) Business Intelligence
7 1,007 (9.99%) Conversational UI
8 953 (9.46%) Agile
9 726 (7.20%) Problem-Solving
10 706 (7.01%) Roadmaps
11 650 (6.45%) CI/CD
12 609 (6.04%) Decision-Making
13 593 (5.88%) Continuous Improvement
14 578 (5.74%) Software Engineering
15 550 (5.46%) DevOps
16 524 (5.20%) LLM
17 522 (5.18%) Data Science
18 514 (5.10%) Generative AI
19 464 (4.60%) Mentoring
20 410 (4.07%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 1,928 (19.13%) Python
2 1,323 (13.13%) SQL
3 249 (2.47%) JavaScript
4 243 (2.41%) Java
5 230 (2.28%) TypeScript
6 173 (1.72%) C#
7 85 (0.84%) C++
8 73 (0.72%) PowerShell
9 66 (0.65%) Bash
9 66 (0.65%) Go
10 55 (0.55%) R
11 41 (0.41%) Kotlin
12 37 (0.37%) PHP
13 33 (0.33%) Rust
14 27 (0.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 25 (0.25%) Scala
16 22 (0.22%) Apex Code
17 21 (0.21%) C
18 19 (0.19%) Swift
19 15 (0.15%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 5,727 (56.83%) Degree
2 4,693 (46.57%) Master's Degree
3 4,638 (46.03%) PhD
4 4,052 (40.21%) Postgraduate
5 772 (7.66%) Azure Certification
6 321 (3.19%) Security Cleared
7 227 (2.25%) SC Cleared
8 189 (1.88%) Computer Science Degree
9 117 (1.16%) AWS Certification
10 94 (0.93%) DV Cleared
11 70 (0.69%) DBS Check
12 54 (0.54%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 51 (0.51%) PMP
14 50 (0.50%) CISSP
15 44 (0.44%) ACCA
16 40 (0.40%) Microsoft Certification
17 39 (0.39%) BPSS Clearance
18 36 (0.36%) PMI Certification
19 33 (0.33%) Cisco Certification
20 31 (0.31%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 287 (2.85%) Accessibility
2 250 (2.48%) Data Quality
3 156 (1.55%) QA
4 140 (1.39%) GDPR
5 71 (0.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 48 (0.48%) WCAG
7 45 (0.45%) EU AI Act
8 37 (0.37%) HIPAA
9 36 (0.36%) IFRS
9 36 (0.36%) NIST
10 34 (0.34%) GRC
11 31 (0.31%) GxP
12 25 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
13 24 (0.24%) PMO
14 23 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials
14 23 (0.23%) Solvency II
15 22 (0.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 22 (0.22%) SLA
16 21 (0.21%) PSD2
17 17 (0.17%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 259 (2.57%) Docker
2 80 (0.79%) Active Directory
3 16 (0.16%) Firmware
4 15 (0.15%) Virtual Machines
5 14 (0.14%) VMware Infrastructure
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%) RACF
11 1 (0.010%) Hyper-V
11 1 (0.010%) NFS
11 1 (0.010%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 249 (2.47%) Kubernetes
2 219 (2.17%) Terraform
3 59 (0.59%) Ansible
4 42 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
5 41 (0.41%) Prometheus
6 38 (0.38%) Grafana
7 36 (0.36%) Microsoft Intune
8 14 (0.14%) Cisco CUCM
9 9 (0.089%) Argo
10 7 (0.069%) Proxmox
10 7 (0.069%) 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%) RSA Archer
12 4 (0.040%) SolarWinds Orion
13 3 (0.030%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
13 3 (0.030%) Nessus
13 3 (0.030%) Nmap
13 3 (0.030%) SCCM
Vendors
1 1,533 (15.21%) Microsoft
2 856 (8.49%) PayPal
3 204 (2.02%) Databricks
4 190 (1.89%) Google
5 165 (1.64%) Adobe
6 115 (1.14%) Dell
7 114 (1.13%) OpenAI
8 109 (1.08%) Oracle
9 93 (0.92%) Salesforce
10 86 (0.85%) Cisco
11 71 (0.70%) SAP
12 54 (0.54%) Foundry
13 53 (0.53%) Palantir
14 47 (0.47%) Alteryx
15 43 (0.43%) ServiceNow
16 34 (0.34%) Bloomberg
17 32 (0.32%) Red Hat
18 31 (0.31%) Apple
19 30 (0.30%) Fortinet
19 30 (0.30%) Informatica