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 22 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 53 63
Rank change year-on-year +49 +10 +56
Permanent jobs citing AI 9,553 2,543 2,601
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 15.42% 4.79% 4.15%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 19.16% 5.26% 4.65%
Number of salaries quoted 2,234 1,245 1,527
10th Percentile £35,000 £45,000 £42,500
25th Percentile £51,250 £58,750 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £71,000 £77,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year -7.79% +10.00% -
75th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £92,500
90th Percentile £118,750 £118,750 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £59,450 £70,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year -15.07% +12.00% +0.67%

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 49,863 48,378 55,939
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 80.51% 91.05% 89.23%
Number of salaries quoted 29,434 23,452 42,996
10th Percentile £28,500 £35,000 £30,500
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,000 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +4.35% -8.00%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £96,250
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 22 January 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 22 January 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 +46 8,713 £72,500 -6.45% 4,265
UK excluding London +54 6,886 £59,450 -15.07% 3,741
Work from Home +62 2,729 £67,500 -10.00% 2,060
North of England +56 2,559 £62,500 -8.42% 626
London +35 2,243 £80,000 -11.11% 1,181
North West +46 1,991 £61,418 -11.63% 277
Midlands +100 1,512 £60,000 -7.69% 412
South East +32 1,418 £50,000 -35.06% 1,394
West Midlands +91 1,249 £62,500 +8.70% 164
East of England +78 634 £52,500 -30.92% 543
Yorkshire +53 463 £72,500 +12.71% 257
South West +34 337 £62,500 - 466
Scotland +42 334 £67,500 +13.45% 147
East Midlands +84 273 £42,500 -43.14% 237
Wales +40 121 £55,000 -2.22% 173
North East +53 105 £55,000 -27.63% 95
Northern Ireland -5 46 £90,000 +1.41% 75
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 (1.00%) SharePoint
2 57 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
3 50 (0.52%) Confluence
4 49 (0.51%) Apache Spark
5 40 (0.42%) CMS
6 21 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
7 20 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 16 (0.17%) Apache
8 16 (0.17%) WordPress
9 15 (0.16%) Appian
10 12 (0.13%) JBoss
10 12 (0.13%) Jupyter
10 12 (0.13%) WebSphere
11 9 (0.094%) Apache Solr
12 8 (0.084%) ArcGIS
13 5 (0.052%) Apache Pulsar
13 5 (0.052%) IIS
13 5 (0.052%) nginx
13 5 (0.052%) SAS
13 5 (0.052%) Umbraco
Applications
1 1,206 (12.62%) Chatbot
2 480 (5.02%) Microsoft Excel
3 97 (1.02%) Microsoft Office
4 44 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 21 (0.22%) Maya
6 12 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
7 10 (0.10%) MS Visio
8 7 (0.073%) Adobe Premiere
8 7 (0.073%) Microsoft Project
8 7 (0.073%) Notion
9 6 (0.063%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.063%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.052%) Sketch
11 4 (0.042%) InDesign
11 4 (0.042%) Weka
12 3 (0.031%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.031%) Simulink
12 3 (0.031%) UserZoom
13 2 (0.021%) S-PLUS
14 1 (0.010%) Adobe Illustrator
Business Applications
1 55 (0.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 20 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
3 18 (0.19%) NetSuite
4 12 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
5 11 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
5 11 (0.12%) Shopify
6 8 (0.084%) Endur
6 8 (0.084%) Workday HCM
7 7 (0.073%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.073%) Salesforce CRM
8 6 (0.063%) Distributed Ledger
9 5 (0.052%) Elite 3E
10 4 (0.042%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 4 (0.042%) Oracle Receivables
11 3 (0.031%) Dynamics GP
11 3 (0.031%) Oracle Assets
11 3 (0.031%) SAP Business One
12 2 (0.021%) Oracle General Ledger
12 2 (0.021%) SAP ERP
12 2 (0.021%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 4,097 (42.89%) Cloud Computing
2 1,388 (14.53%) Azure
3 753 (7.88%) Power Platform
4 697 (7.30%) AWS
5 440 (4.61%) Azure AI
6 429 (4.49%) SaaS
7 321 (3.36%) GCP
8 223 (2.33%) GitHub
9 211 (2.21%) Azure DevOps
10 178 (1.86%) Microsoft 365
11 119 (1.25%) Snowflake
12 115 (1.20%) GitHub Copilot
13 107 (1.12%) Microsoft Copilot
14 105 (1.10%) Azure Data Factory
15 102 (1.07%) Serverless
16 95 (0.99%) Entra ID
17 88 (0.92%) Power Automate
18 73 (0.76%) Vertex AI
19 66 (0.69%) Azure Synapse Analytics
20 64 (0.67%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 4,060 (42.50%) Internet
2 38 (0.40%) Firewall
3 31 (0.32%) Network Security
4 27 (0.28%) Unified Communications
5 25 (0.26%) VoIP
6 24 (0.25%) Broadband
7 19 (0.20%) VPN
8 15 (0.16%) HTTP
8 15 (0.16%) WAN
9 14 (0.15%) DNS
9 14 (0.15%) TCP/IP
9 14 (0.15%) Telepresence
9 14 (0.15%) WebEx
9 14 (0.15%) Wi-Fi
10 12 (0.13%) VLAN
11 9 (0.094%) DHCP
11 9 (0.094%) Wireless
12 8 (0.084%) InfiniBand
12 8 (0.084%) LAN
13 7 (0.073%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 605 (6.33%) Power BI
2 465 (4.87%) Tableau
3 155 (1.62%) Data Warehouse
4 114 (1.19%) NoSQL
5 109 (1.14%) SQL Server
6 104 (1.09%) Data Lake
7 77 (0.81%) Metadata
7 77 (0.81%) MongoDB
8 76 (0.80%) PostgreSQL
9 69 (0.72%) Big Data
10 42 (0.44%) BigQuery
10 42 (0.44%) MySQL
11 35 (0.37%) Pinecone
12 34 (0.36%) Hadoop
12 34 (0.36%) Relational Database
13 31 (0.32%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 30 (0.31%) Looker
15 29 (0.30%) Elasticsearch
16 28 (0.29%) Azure SQL Database
17 24 (0.25%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 136 (1.42%) Git
2 128 (1.34%) JIRA
3 48 (0.50%) Jenkins
3 48 (0.50%) MLflow
4 28 (0.29%) GitLab
5 21 (0.22%) Octopus Deploy
5 21 (0.22%) TeamCity
6 19 (0.20%) Cypress.io
7 18 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
8 13 (0.14%) Visual Studio
9 12 (0.13%) Selenium
10 9 (0.094%) Bitbucket
10 9 (0.094%) Vite
11 8 (0.084%) Postman
11 8 (0.084%) Subversion
12 7 (0.073%) Burp Suite
12 7 (0.073%) Storybook
12 7 (0.073%) WebDriver
13 6 (0.063%) JMeter
13 6 (0.063%) JUnit
General
1 5,571 (58.32%) Social Skills
2 4,498 (47.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 4,215 (44.12%) Banking
4 1,120 (11.72%) Finance
5 1,090 (11.41%) Analytical Skills
6 387 (4.05%) Marketing
7 290 (3.04%) Public Sector
8 280 (2.93%) Law
9 263 (2.75%) Legal
10 200 (2.09%) Retail
11 121 (1.27%) Games
12 109 (1.14%) Manufacturing
13 103 (1.08%) Telecoms
14 96 (1.00%) Pharmaceutical
15 93 (0.97%) Presentation Skills
16 75 (0.79%) Influencing Skills
16 75 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
17 74 (0.77%) Financial Institution
18 64 (0.67%) Aviation
18 64 (0.67%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 3,162 (33.10%) Lecturer
2 1,163 (12.17%) Trainer
3 675 (7.07%) Senior
4 548 (5.74%) Analyst
5 405 (4.24%) Data Analyst
6 394 (4.12%) Developer
7 389 (4.07%) Lead
8 355 (3.72%) Junior
9 331 (3.46%) Junior Analyst
9 331 (3.46%) Junior Data Analyst
10 260 (2.72%) Architect
11 219 (2.29%) Consultant
12 176 (1.84%) Software Engineer
13 155 (1.62%) Content Editor
14 153 (1.60%) Data Engineer
15 135 (1.41%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 106 (1.11%) Solutions Architect
16 106 (1.11%) Support Specialist
17 98 (1.03%) Customer Support Specialist
18 92 (0.96%) Research Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 233 (2.44%) React
2 180 (1.88%) .NET
3 177 (1.85%) REST
4 140 (1.47%) PyTorch
5 121 (1.27%) TensorFlow
6 117 (1.22%) Node.js
7 111 (1.16%) LangChain
8 108 (1.13%) RESTful
9 95 (0.99%) HTML
10 84 (0.88%) FastAPI
11 73 (0.76%) AngularJS
12 69 (0.72%) CSS
12 69 (0.72%) Kafka
13 68 (0.71%) Django
14 62 (0.65%) Vue
15 57 (0.60%) scikit-learn
16 53 (0.55%) Flask
16 53 (0.55%) Next.js
17 52 (0.54%) OAuth
18 50 (0.52%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 4,076 (42.67%) IoT
2 270 (2.83%) Cloud Native
3 189 (1.98%) Product Ownership
4 175 (1.83%) Onboarding
5 155 (1.62%) AI Agents
6 149 (1.56%) Robotics
7 130 (1.36%) Algorithms
8 127 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
9 122 (1.28%) Enterprise Software
10 112 (1.17%) Blog
11 98 (1.03%) Management Information System
12 97 (1.02%) Molecular Biology
13 94 (0.98%) Life Science
14 90 (0.94%) Low-Code
15 87 (0.91%) Legacy Systems
16 83 (0.87%) Distributed Systems
17 70 (0.73%) Analytical Mindset
18 69 (0.72%) Greenfield Project
19 64 (0.67%) Virtual Team
20 55 (0.58%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 77 (0.81%) Windows
2 73 (0.76%) Linux
3 58 (0.61%) Android
4 54 (0.57%) Unix
5 36 (0.38%) Apple iOS
6 29 (0.30%) Windows Server
7 12 (0.13%) Ubuntu
8 10 (0.10%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.052%) Kali Linux
10 3 (0.031%) OpenWrt
10 3 (0.031%) VMS
11 2 (0.021%) Mac OS X
11 2 (0.021%) Robot Operating System
11 2 (0.021%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.021%) zOS
12 1 (0.010%) Debian
12 1 (0.010%) Solaris
12 1 (0.010%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 5,056 (52.93%) Machine Learning
2 4,335 (45.38%) Cybersecurity
3 4,314 (45.16%) User Experience
4 4,070 (42.60%) Web Development
5 1,251 (13.10%) Conversational UI
6 1,005 (10.52%) Analytics
7 908 (9.50%) Agile
8 750 (7.85%) Problem-Solving
9 740 (7.75%) Business Intelligence
10 590 (6.18%) Roadmaps
11 582 (6.09%) DevOps
12 568 (5.95%) CI/CD
13 565 (5.91%) Software Engineering
14 559 (5.85%) Decision-Making
15 539 (5.64%) Continuous Improvement
16 475 (4.97%) Generative AI
17 470 (4.92%) Data Science
18 461 (4.83%) Computer Science
19 448 (4.69%) LLM
20 395 (4.13%) Chemistry
Programming Languages
1 1,360 (14.24%) Python
2 934 (9.78%) SQL
3 247 (2.59%) TypeScript
4 246 (2.58%) JavaScript
5 197 (2.06%) Java
6 145 (1.52%) C#
7 86 (0.90%) PowerShell
8 75 (0.79%) C++
9 63 (0.66%) Bash
10 59 (0.62%) R
11 58 (0.61%) Go
12 36 (0.38%) PHP
13 34 (0.36%) Rust
14 31 (0.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 31 (0.32%) Scala
15 28 (0.29%) Kotlin
16 24 (0.25%) Apex Code
17 21 (0.22%) C
17 21 (0.22%) PL/SQL
18 19 (0.20%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 6,098 (63.83%) Degree
2 4,803 (50.28%) Master's Degree
3 4,731 (49.52%) PhD
4 4,049 (42.38%) Postgraduate
5 374 (3.92%) Azure Certification
6 323 (3.38%) Security Cleared
7 259 (2.71%) SC Cleared
8 216 (2.26%) Computer Science Degree
9 80 (0.84%) DV Cleared
10 58 (0.61%) AWS Certification
10 58 (0.61%) DBS Check
11 47 (0.49%) BPSS Clearance
11 47 (0.49%) PMP
12 44 (0.46%) CISSP
13 37 (0.39%) ACCA
14 35 (0.37%) Microsoft Certification
15 32 (0.33%) PMI Certification
16 30 (0.31%) CISA
16 30 (0.31%) Numerate Degree
17 28 (0.29%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 220 (2.30%) Data Quality
2 133 (1.39%) Accessibility
3 129 (1.35%) QA
4 111 (1.16%) GDPR
5 72 (0.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 43 (0.45%) GxP
7 40 (0.42%) EU AI Act
8 35 (0.37%) NIST
9 30 (0.31%) IFRS
9 30 (0.31%) SLA
10 24 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
10 24 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
10 24 (0.25%) HIPAA
11 22 (0.23%) GRC
11 22 (0.23%) Solvency II
12 21 (0.22%) PSD2
13 20 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 20 (0.21%) PMO
13 20 (0.21%) WCAG
14 18 (0.19%) GAAP
System Software
1 235 (2.46%) Docker
2 68 (0.71%) Active Directory
3 22 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
4 21 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
5 17 (0.18%) VMware Infrastructure
6 15 (0.16%) Firmware
7 13 (0.14%) vSphere
8 7 (0.073%) Lustre
9 6 (0.063%) Hyper-V
10 5 (0.052%) GPFS
10 5 (0.052%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 4 (0.042%) VMware ESXi
12 2 (0.021%) Ceph
12 2 (0.021%) NFS
12 2 (0.021%) RACF
13 1 (0.010%) Kamailio
13 1 (0.010%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 229 (2.40%) Terraform
2 214 (2.24%) Kubernetes
3 50 (0.52%) Ansible
3 50 (0.52%) Microsoft Intune
4 42 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
5 29 (0.30%) Prometheus
6 21 (0.22%) Grafana
7 14 (0.15%) Cisco CUCM
8 10 (0.10%) Kubeflow
9 8 (0.084%) Argo
9 8 (0.084%) SCCM
10 6 (0.063%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 5 (0.052%) vCenter Server
12 4 (0.042%) Nessus
12 4 (0.042%) Nmap
13 3 (0.031%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
13 3 (0.031%) RSA Archer
14 2 (0.021%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
14 2 (0.021%) Progress Chef
14 2 (0.021%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 1,162 (12.16%) PayPal
2 1,128 (11.81%) Microsoft
3 184 (1.93%) Google
4 170 (1.78%) Databricks
5 116 (1.21%) OpenAI
6 103 (1.08%) Oracle
7 101 (1.06%) Salesforce
8 100 (1.05%) Cisco
9 88 (0.92%) Dell
10 86 (0.90%) Adobe
11 70 (0.73%) SAP
12 49 (0.51%) Alteryx
13 47 (0.49%) Blue Prism
13 47 (0.49%) Foundry
14 45 (0.47%) HubSpot
15 42 (0.44%) Apple
16 40 (0.42%) Fortinet
16 40 (0.42%) Palantir
17 38 (0.40%) Palo Alto
18 34 (0.36%) Bloomberg