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

6 months to
20 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 35 53
Rank change year-on-year +31 +18 +67
Permanent jobs citing AI 10,111 2,640 3,712
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 13.41% 6.24% 4.34%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 17.27% 6.67% 4.98%
Number of salaries quoted 2,650 1,414 1,860
10th Percentile £33,750 £35,000 £41,250
25th Percentile £50,000 £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 £95,000 £100,000 £92,500
90th Percentile £110,125 £118,375 £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 58,555 39,559 74,495
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 77.69% 93.50% 87.13%
Number of salaries quoted 35,503 22,222 56,291
10th Percentile £29,750 £31,750 £29,035
25th Percentile £40,000 £43,910 £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 £77,500 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,410 £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 20 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 20 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 +31 9,269 £70,000 -6.67% 2,923
UK excluding London +28 7,191 £57,500 -13.15% 1,828
North of England +39 2,658 £60,000 -6.07% 457
London +29 2,425 £82,500 -10.81% 1,529
Work from Home +31 2,410 £65,000 -1.85% 1,322
North West +35 1,975 £61,418 -13.80% 219
Midlands +73 1,580 £52,500 -19.23% 209
South East +31 1,426 £50,000 -33.33% 650
West Midlands +70 1,279 £52,500 -12.50% 108
East of England +19 739 £55,000 -16.95% 174
Yorkshire +33 568 £62,500 +38.89% 182
South West +8 383 £60,000 - 193
East Midlands +48 312 £50,000 -23.08% 100
Scotland +19 275 £70,000 +55.56% 95
Wales +32 121 £47,500 -25.05% 65
North East +38 115 £55,000 -24.14% 58
Northern Ireland -1 61 £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
1 104 (1.03%) Apache Airflow
2 96 (0.95%) Apache Spark
3 91 (0.90%) SharePoint
4 65 (0.64%) Jupyter
5 53 (0.52%) CMS
5 53 (0.52%) Confluence
6 41 (0.41%) Apache
7 30 (0.30%) ArcGIS
8 28 (0.28%) Palantir Foundry
9 23 (0.23%) 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 8 (0.079%) SAS
15 5 (0.049%) Apache Pulsar
15 5 (0.049%) Apache Solr
15 5 (0.049%) IIS
15 5 (0.049%) Umbraco
Applications
1 899 (8.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 833 (8.24%) Chatbot
3 87 (0.86%) Microsoft Office
4 52 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 22 (0.22%) MS Visio
5 22 (0.22%) UserZoom
6 21 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.11%) Maya
8 7 (0.069%) Adobe Premiere
9 6 (0.059%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.059%) Microsoft Project
9 6 (0.059%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.049%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.049%) Camtasia
11 4 (0.040%) Adobe After Effects
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%) Notion
Business Applications
1 38 (0.38%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.18%) NetSuite
3 17 (0.17%) SAP S/4HANA
4 13 (0.13%) 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%) 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 4,155 (41.09%) Cloud Computing
2 1,860 (18.40%) Azure
3 1,181 (11.68%) Power Platform
4 900 (8.90%) Azure AI
5 803 (7.94%) AWS
6 463 (4.58%) SaaS
7 338 (3.34%) GCP
8 213 (2.11%) GitHub
9 195 (1.93%) Microsoft 365
10 174 (1.72%) Azure DevOps
11 158 (1.56%) Snowflake
12 126 (1.25%) Adobe Analytics
13 118 (1.17%) Microsoft Copilot
14 115 (1.14%) Azure Data Factory
15 109 (1.08%) GitHub Copilot
16 108 (1.07%) Serverless
17 101 (1.00%) Entra ID
18 99 (0.98%) Power Automate
19 91 (0.90%) Azure Synapse Analytics
20 82 (0.81%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 4,052 (40.08%) Internet
2 208 (2.06%) Broadband
3 51 (0.50%) Firewall
4 32 (0.32%) Unified Communications
5 28 (0.28%) Network Security
6 26 (0.26%) VPN
7 20 (0.20%) VoIP
8 19 (0.19%) WAN
9 18 (0.18%) HTTP
9 18 (0.18%) TCP/IP
10 17 (0.17%) DNS
11 14 (0.14%) DHCP
11 14 (0.14%) Telepresence
11 14 (0.14%) WebEx
12 9 (0.089%) VLAN
12 9 (0.089%) Wi-Fi
13 8 (0.079%) SD-WAN
14 6 (0.059%) DMZ
14 6 (0.059%) Intranet
14 6 (0.059%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1,041 (10.30%) Power BI
2 927 (9.17%) Tableau
3 176 (1.74%) Data Warehouse
4 126 (1.25%) Data Lake
5 119 (1.18%) SQL Server
6 91 (0.90%) PostgreSQL
7 90 (0.89%) Metadata
8 81 (0.80%) MongoDB
8 81 (0.80%) NoSQL
9 67 (0.66%) Big Data
10 57 (0.56%) BigQuery
11 47 (0.46%) Elasticsearch
11 47 (0.46%) Looker
12 39 (0.39%) MySQL
13 37 (0.37%) Pinecone
14 36 (0.36%) Amazon Redshift
15 33 (0.33%) Relational Database
16 32 (0.32%) Apache Hive
16 32 (0.32%) Azure SQL Database
17 31 (0.31%) GIS
Development Applications
1 158 (1.56%) Git
2 99 (0.98%) JIRA
3 67 (0.66%) MLflow
4 58 (0.57%) Visual Studio Code
5 47 (0.46%) Jenkins
6 33 (0.33%) GitLab
7 25 (0.25%) IBM UrbanCode
8 24 (0.24%) Claude Code
8 24 (0.24%) Cypress.io
9 23 (0.23%) Selenium
10 16 (0.16%) Postman
11 14 (0.14%) TeamCity
12 13 (0.13%) Octopus Deploy
13 12 (0.12%) SpecFlow
13 12 (0.12%) Visual Studio
14 11 (0.11%) Bitbucket
14 11 (0.11%) Oracle Forms
15 9 (0.089%) Storybook
16 8 (0.079%) Gradle
16 8 (0.079%) Vite
General
1 5,964 (58.99%) Social Skills
2 4,479 (44.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 4,257 (42.10%) Banking
4 1,204 (11.91%) Finance
5 889 (8.79%) Analytical Skills
6 407 (4.03%) Marketing
7 317 (3.14%) Legal
8 312 (3.09%) Public Sector
9 276 (2.73%) Law
10 268 (2.65%) Retail
11 255 (2.52%) Games
12 171 (1.69%) Manufacturing
13 116 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
14 104 (1.03%) Telecoms
15 102 (1.01%) Influencing Skills
16 89 (0.88%) Organisational Skills
17 84 (0.83%) Financial Institution
18 79 (0.78%) Pharmaceutical
19 48 (0.47%) Advertising
20 47 (0.46%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 3,160 (31.25%) Lecturer
2 992 (9.81%) Analyst
3 843 (8.34%) Data Analyst
4 797 (7.88%) Junior
5 772 (7.64%) Junior Analyst
5 772 (7.64%) Junior Data Analyst
6 760 (7.52%) Senior
7 750 (7.42%) Trainer
8 527 (5.21%) Lead
9 427 (4.22%) Developer
10 320 (3.16%) Architect
11 272 (2.69%) Consultant
12 197 (1.95%) Software Engineer
13 169 (1.67%) Data Engineer
14 144 (1.42%) Solutions Architect
15 143 (1.41%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 105 (1.04%) Data Scientist
17 102 (1.01%) Content Editor
18 89 (0.88%) Senior Developer
18 89 (0.88%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 253 (2.50%) React
2 181 (1.79%) PyTorch
3 163 (1.61%) .NET
3 163 (1.61%) REST
4 140 (1.38%) TensorFlow
5 129 (1.28%) HTML
6 128 (1.27%) Node.js
7 123 (1.22%) RESTful
8 121 (1.20%) scikit-learn
9 104 (1.03%) Pandas
10 103 (1.02%) LangChain
11 101 (1.00%) CSS
12 96 (0.95%) Kafka
13 93 (0.92%) Hugging Face
14 86 (0.85%) FastAPI
15 80 (0.79%) Django
16 78 (0.77%) NumPy
17 66 (0.65%) AngularJS
18 63 (0.62%) PySpark
18 63 (0.62%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 4,077 (40.32%) IoT
2 299 (2.96%) Cloud Native
3 209 (2.07%) Onboarding
4 182 (1.80%) Algorithms
5 180 (1.78%) Social Media
6 172 (1.70%) Product Ownership
7 165 (1.63%) AI Agents
8 139 (1.37%) Robotics
9 137 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
10 129 (1.28%) Blog
11 107 (1.06%) Distributed Systems
12 99 (0.98%) Management Information System
13 96 (0.95%) Enterprise Software
14 94 (0.93%) Low-Code
15 86 (0.85%) Life Science
16 82 (0.81%) Mobile App
17 73 (0.72%) Molecular Biology
18 69 (0.68%) Public Cloud
19 65 (0.64%) Virtual Team
20 61 (0.60%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 93 (0.92%) Linux
2 92 (0.91%) Windows
3 85 (0.84%) Android
4 60 (0.59%) Unix
5 59 (0.58%) Apple iOS
6 31 (0.31%) Windows Server
7 15 (0.15%) Ubuntu
8 9 (0.089%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.049%) VMS
9 5 (0.049%) Windows Server 2016
10 4 (0.040%) Robot Operating System
11 3 (0.030%) OpenWrt
12 2 (0.020%) Kali Linux
12 2 (0.020%) Mac OS X
12 2 (0.020%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.020%) zOS
13 1 (0.010%) FreeRTOS
13 1 (0.010%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 5,158 (51.01%) Machine Learning
2 4,322 (42.75%) User Experience
3 4,318 (42.71%) Cybersecurity
4 4,073 (40.28%) Web Development
5 1,223 (12.10%) Analytics
6 1,194 (11.81%) Business Intelligence
7 982 (9.71%) Agile
8 899 (8.89%) Conversational UI
9 755 (7.47%) Problem-Solving
10 741 (7.33%) Roadmaps
11 666 (6.59%) CI/CD
12 626 (6.19%) Decision-Making
13 612 (6.05%) Continuous Improvement
14 586 (5.80%) Software Engineering
15 552 (5.46%) DevOps
16 545 (5.39%) Generative AI
17 542 (5.36%) Data Science
18 534 (5.28%) LLM
19 485 (4.80%) Mentoring
20 401 (3.97%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 2,012 (19.90%) Python
2 1,399 (13.84%) SQL
3 248 (2.45%) Java
3 248 (2.45%) JavaScript
4 221 (2.19%) TypeScript
5 176 (1.74%) C#
6 83 (0.82%) C++
7 72 (0.71%) Go
8 70 (0.69%) PowerShell
9 66 (0.65%) Bash
10 54 (0.53%) R
11 40 (0.40%) Kotlin
12 37 (0.37%) PHP
13 29 (0.29%) Rust
14 26 (0.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 25 (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 5,615 (55.53%) Degree
2 4,583 (45.33%) Master's Degree
3 4,525 (44.75%) PhD
4 4,051 (40.07%) Postgraduate
5 829 (8.20%) Azure Certification
6 295 (2.92%) Security Cleared
7 196 (1.94%) SC Cleared
8 183 (1.81%) Computer Science Degree
9 118 (1.17%) AWS Certification
10 97 (0.96%) DV Cleared
11 71 (0.70%) DBS Check
12 56 (0.55%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 51 (0.50%) PMP
14 47 (0.46%) CISSP
15 46 (0.45%) ACCA
16 42 (0.42%) Microsoft Certification
17 36 (0.36%) PMI Certification
18 31 (0.31%) Cisco Certification
18 31 (0.31%) Numerate Degree
19 22 (0.22%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 305 (3.02%) Accessibility
2 258 (2.55%) Data Quality
3 162 (1.60%) QA
4 152 (1.50%) GDPR
5 70 (0.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 55 (0.54%) WCAG
7 48 (0.47%) EU AI Act
8 39 (0.39%) HIPAA
9 38 (0.38%) GRC
10 37 (0.37%) NIST
11 36 (0.36%) IFRS
12 29 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 29 (0.29%) GxP
13 25 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
14 24 (0.24%) PMO
14 24 (0.24%) Solvency II
15 21 (0.21%) PSD2
15 21 (0.21%) SLA
16 20 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials
17 17 (0.17%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 268 (2.65%) Docker
2 82 (0.81%) Active Directory
3 33 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
4 14 (0.14%) VMware Infrastructure
5 13 (0.13%) Firmware
6 10 (0.099%) vSphere
7 9 (0.089%) Virtual Desktop
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 (2.49%) Kubernetes
2 219 (2.17%) Terraform
3 61 (0.60%) Ansible
4 41 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
5 39 (0.39%) Prometheus
6 37 (0.37%) Grafana
7 34 (0.34%) Microsoft Intune
8 14 (0.14%) Cisco CUCM
9 7 (0.069%) Argo
9 7 (0.069%) Proxmox
9 7 (0.069%) vCenter Server
10 6 (0.059%) Kubeflow
11 4 (0.040%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 4 (0.040%) Control-M
11 4 (0.040%) RSA Archer
11 4 (0.040%) SolarWinds Orion
12 3 (0.030%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
12 3 (0.030%) HP Fortify
13 2 (0.020%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
13 2 (0.020%) SELinux
Vendors
1 1,593 (15.76%) Microsoft
2 740 (7.32%) PayPal
3 230 (2.27%) Databricks
4 197 (1.95%) Google
5 181 (1.79%) Adobe
6 124 (1.23%) Dell
7 114 (1.13%) OpenAI
8 107 (1.06%) Oracle
9 96 (0.95%) Salesforce
10 79 (0.78%) Cisco
11 71 (0.70%) SAP
12 59 (0.58%) Foundry
13 54 (0.53%) Palantir
14 47 (0.46%) Alteryx
15 43 (0.43%) ServiceNow
16 34 (0.34%) Informatica
17 33 (0.33%) Bloomberg
18 30 (0.30%) Apple
18 30 (0.30%) HubSpot
18 30 (0.30%) Red Hat