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

6 months to
30 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 49 67
Rank change year-on-year +45 +18 +52
Permanent jobs citing AI 9,643 2,570 2,805
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 15.20% 4.92% 4.04%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 18.94% 5.38% 4.54%
Number of salaries quoted 2,274 1,297 1,647
10th Percentile £35,000 £45,000 £42,500
25th Percentile £51,250 £60,000 £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 £98,750 £92,500
90th Percentile £118,750 £118,000 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £59,450 £66,340 £62,500
% change year-on-year -10.39% +6.14% +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 50,903 47,795 61,750
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 80.21% 91.56% 88.84%
Number of salaries quoted 30,118 23,045 47,857
10th Percentile £28,697 £35,000 £30,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,326 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £56,500
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +6.19% -9.60%
75th Percentile £75,900 £80,000 £75,772
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £95,000
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 30 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 30 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 +45 8,790 £72,500 -5.84% 3,252
UK excluding London +50 6,937 £59,450 -10.39% 2,700
Work from Home +54 2,761 £67,500 -3.57% 1,703
North of England +56 2,572 £62,500 -7.41% 471
London +35 2,268 £80,000 -11.11% 1,177
North West +45 1,994 £61,418 -9.01% 225
Midlands +98 1,513 £59,764 -8.06% 285
South East +33 1,434 £50,000 -35.06% 1,037
West Midlands +85 1,249 £60,000 +4.35% 132
East of England +45 647 £55,000 -16.96% 373
Yorkshire +54 472 £72,500 +11.54% 179
South West +36 343 £62,500 - 316
Scotland +39 335 £61,250 +2.51% 119
East Midlands +84 274 £42,500 -41.38% 147
Wales +42 121 £54,085 -3.85% 116
North East +52 106 £55,000 -27.63% 71
Northern Ireland -5 48 £90,000 +1.41% 48
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 98 (1.02%) SharePoint
2 58 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
3 53 (0.55%) Apache Spark
4 47 (0.49%) Confluence
5 41 (0.43%) CMS
6 22 (0.23%) Palantir Foundry
7 21 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
8 20 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 17 (0.18%) Jupyter
10 16 (0.17%) Appian
11 15 (0.16%) Apache
11 15 (0.16%) WordPress
12 13 (0.13%) JBoss
12 13 (0.13%) WebSphere
13 9 (0.093%) Apache Solr
14 8 (0.083%) ArcGIS
15 6 (0.062%) SAS
16 5 (0.052%) Apache Pulsar
16 5 (0.052%) IIS
16 5 (0.052%) Umbraco
Applications
1 1,208 (12.53%) Chatbot
2 478 (4.96%) Microsoft Excel
3 96 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
4 43 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 21 (0.22%) Maya
6 12 (0.12%) 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 (0.062%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.062%) Photoshop
10 4 (0.041%) InDesign
10 4 (0.041%) Sketch
10 4 (0.041%) Weka
11 3 (0.031%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.031%) Simulink
11 3 (0.031%) UserZoom
12 1 (0.010%) Adobe Illustrator
12 1 (0.010%) S-PLUS
Business Applications
1 52 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
2 20 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
3 18 (0.19%) NetSuite
4 12 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
5 11 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
5 11 (0.11%) Shopify
6 10 (0.10%) Workday HCM
7 8 (0.083%) Endur
8 7 (0.073%) Oracle EBS
8 7 (0.073%) Salesforce CRM
9 6 (0.062%) Distributed Ledger
10 5 (0.052%) Elite 3E
11 4 (0.041%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 4 (0.041%) Oracle Receivables
12 3 (0.031%) Dynamics GP
12 3 (0.031%) Oracle Assets
12 3 (0.031%) SAP Business One
13 2 (0.021%) SAP CO
13 2 (0.021%) SAP ERP
13 2 (0.021%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 4,102 (42.54%) Cloud Computing
2 1,401 (14.53%) Azure
3 753 (7.81%) Power Platform
4 698 (7.24%) AWS
5 443 (4.59%) Azure AI
6 427 (4.43%) SaaS
7 324 (3.36%) GCP
8 223 (2.31%) GitHub
9 204 (2.12%) Azure DevOps
10 188 (1.95%) Microsoft 365
11 116 (1.20%) Snowflake
12 113 (1.17%) GitHub Copilot
13 111 (1.15%) Microsoft Copilot
14 107 (1.11%) Azure Data Factory
15 104 (1.08%) Serverless
16 98 (1.02%) Entra ID
17 92 (0.95%) Power Automate
18 74 (0.77%) Vertex AI
19 63 (0.65%) Azure Synapse Analytics
20 61 (0.63%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 4,060 (42.10%) Internet
2 52 (0.54%) Broadband
3 42 (0.44%) Firewall
4 30 (0.31%) Network Security
4 30 (0.31%) Unified Communications
5 26 (0.27%) VoIP
6 19 (0.20%) VPN
7 17 (0.18%) HTTP
8 15 (0.16%) DNS
8 15 (0.16%) TCP/IP
9 14 (0.15%) Telepresence
9 14 (0.15%) WAN
9 14 (0.15%) WebEx
9 14 (0.15%) Wi-Fi
10 13 (0.13%) VLAN
11 11 (0.11%) DHCP
12 8 (0.083%) InfiniBand
12 8 (0.083%) Intranet
12 8 (0.083%) Wireless
13 7 (0.073%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 600 (6.22%) Power BI
2 462 (4.79%) Tableau
3 154 (1.60%) Data Warehouse
4 110 (1.14%) NoSQL
5 104 (1.08%) Data Lake
6 102 (1.06%) SQL Server
7 83 (0.86%) Metadata
8 75 (0.78%) PostgreSQL
9 73 (0.76%) MongoDB
10 70 (0.73%) Big Data
11 42 (0.44%) BigQuery
12 40 (0.41%) MySQL
13 38 (0.39%) Pinecone
14 35 (0.36%) Hadoop
15 33 (0.34%) Relational Database
16 32 (0.33%) Elasticsearch
17 31 (0.32%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 27 (0.28%) Looker
19 26 (0.27%) Azure SQL Database
20 24 (0.25%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 137 (1.42%) Git
2 120 (1.24%) JIRA
3 50 (0.52%) MLflow
4 47 (0.49%) Jenkins
5 28 (0.29%) GitLab
6 20 (0.21%) Octopus Deploy
6 20 (0.21%) TeamCity
7 18 (0.19%) Cypress.io
7 18 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
8 14 (0.15%) Visual Studio
9 13 (0.13%) Selenium
10 9 (0.093%) Bitbucket
10 9 (0.093%) Postman
11 8 (0.083%) Subversion
11 8 (0.083%) Vite
12 7 (0.073%) Burp Suite
12 7 (0.073%) Storybook
12 7 (0.073%) Visual Studio Code
13 6 (0.062%) ERwin
13 6 (0.062%) Maven
General
1 5,580 (57.87%) Social Skills
2 4,495 (46.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 4,217 (43.73%) Banking
4 1,139 (11.81%) Finance
5 1,094 (11.35%) Analytical Skills
6 394 (4.09%) Marketing
7 299 (3.10%) Public Sector
8 283 (2.93%) Law
9 265 (2.75%) Legal
10 200 (2.07%) Retail
11 141 (1.46%) Games
12 118 (1.22%) Manufacturing
13 102 (1.06%) Telecoms
14 95 (0.99%) Presentation Skills
15 94 (0.97%) Pharmaceutical
16 77 (0.80%) Financial Institution
16 77 (0.80%) Influencing Skills
17 69 (0.72%) Organisational Skills
18 65 (0.67%) Electronics
19 61 (0.63%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 3,163 (32.80%) Lecturer
2 1,164 (12.07%) Trainer
3 698 (7.24%) Senior
4 542 (5.62%) Analyst
5 415 (4.30%) Lead
6 406 (4.21%) Data Analyst
7 403 (4.18%) Developer
8 353 (3.66%) Junior
9 331 (3.43%) Junior Analyst
9 331 (3.43%) Junior Data Analyst
10 270 (2.80%) Architect
11 215 (2.23%) Consultant
12 176 (1.83%) Software Engineer
13 156 (1.62%) Data Engineer
14 155 (1.61%) Content Editor
15 137 (1.42%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 115 (1.19%) Solutions Architect
17 106 (1.10%) Support Specialist
18 98 (1.02%) Customer Support Specialist
19 96 (1.00%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 236 (2.45%) React
2 181 (1.88%) .NET
3 175 (1.81%) REST
4 148 (1.53%) PyTorch
5 126 (1.31%) TensorFlow
6 117 (1.21%) Node.js
7 113 (1.17%) RESTful
8 108 (1.12%) LangChain
9 101 (1.05%) HTML
10 83 (0.86%) FastAPI
11 73 (0.76%) CSS
12 71 (0.74%) AngularJS
13 70 (0.73%) Django
14 69 (0.72%) Kafka
15 59 (0.61%) Vue
16 57 (0.59%) scikit-learn
17 55 (0.57%) Next.js
17 55 (0.57%) OAuth
18 54 (0.56%) Flask
19 52 (0.54%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 4,077 (42.28%) IoT
2 274 (2.84%) Cloud Native
3 189 (1.96%) Product Ownership
4 182 (1.89%) Onboarding
5 156 (1.62%) Robotics
6 153 (1.59%) AI Agents
7 136 (1.41%) Algorithms
8 130 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
9 116 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
10 113 (1.17%) Blog
11 99 (1.03%) Management Information System
12 97 (1.01%) Life Science
12 97 (1.01%) Molecular Biology
13 92 (0.95%) Low-Code
14 85 (0.88%) Distributed Systems
15 82 (0.85%) Legacy Systems
16 71 (0.74%) Greenfield Project
17 70 (0.73%) Analytical Mindset
18 63 (0.65%) Virtual Team
19 62 (0.64%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 80 (0.83%) Windows
2 76 (0.79%) Linux
3 63 (0.65%) Android
4 55 (0.57%) Unix
5 40 (0.41%) Apple iOS
6 30 (0.31%) Windows Server
7 14 (0.15%) Ubuntu
8 9 (0.093%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.052%) Kali Linux
10 4 (0.041%) Robot Operating System
10 4 (0.041%) VMS
11 3 (0.031%) OpenWrt
11 3 (0.031%) Windows Server 2016
12 2 (0.021%) Mac OS X
12 2 (0.021%) zOS
13 1 (0.010%) Debian
13 1 (0.010%) FreeRTOS
13 1 (0.010%) Solaris
13 1 (0.010%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 5,064 (52.51%) Machine Learning
2 4,330 (44.90%) Cybersecurity
3 4,317 (44.77%) User Experience
4 4,072 (42.23%) Web Development
5 1,251 (12.97%) Conversational UI
6 1,039 (10.77%) Analytics
7 930 (9.64%) Agile
8 755 (7.83%) Problem-Solving
9 736 (7.63%) Business Intelligence
10 622 (6.45%) Roadmaps
11 592 (6.14%) CI/CD
12 585 (6.07%) DevOps
13 580 (6.01%) Decision-Making
14 578 (5.99%) Software Engineering
15 556 (5.77%) Continuous Improvement
16 488 (5.06%) Generative AI
17 477 (4.95%) Data Science
18 473 (4.91%) Computer Science
19 458 (4.75%) LLM
20 406 (4.21%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 1,389 (14.40%) Python
2 924 (9.58%) SQL
3 254 (2.63%) JavaScript
4 249 (2.58%) TypeScript
5 202 (2.09%) Java
6 147 (1.52%) C#
7 87 (0.90%) PowerShell
8 80 (0.83%) C++
9 68 (0.71%) Bash
10 62 (0.64%) Go
11 58 (0.60%) R
12 38 (0.39%) PHP
13 35 (0.36%) Rust
14 33 (0.34%) Scala
15 29 (0.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 27 (0.28%) Kotlin
17 23 (0.24%) Apex Code
17 23 (0.24%) C
18 21 (0.22%) PL/SQL
19 19 (0.20%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 6,106 (63.32%) Degree
2 4,802 (49.80%) Master's Degree
3 4,734 (49.09%) PhD
4 4,049 (41.99%) Postgraduate
5 376 (3.90%) Azure Certification
6 325 (3.37%) Security Cleared
7 261 (2.71%) SC Cleared
8 217 (2.25%) Computer Science Degree
9 79 (0.82%) DV Cleared
10 65 (0.67%) AWS Certification
11 60 (0.62%) DBS Check
12 47 (0.49%) BPSS Clearance
12 47 (0.49%) CISSP
13 46 (0.48%) PMP
14 39 (0.40%) Microsoft Certification
15 35 (0.36%) ACCA
16 31 (0.32%) PMI Certification
17 30 (0.31%) CISA
17 30 (0.31%) Numerate Degree
18 28 (0.29%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 222 (2.30%) Data Quality
2 159 (1.65%) Accessibility
3 132 (1.37%) QA
4 116 (1.20%) GDPR
5 75 (0.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 43 (0.45%) GxP
7 38 (0.39%) EU AI Act
8 33 (0.34%) NIST
9 30 (0.31%) IFRS
10 28 (0.29%) SLA
11 25 (0.26%) HIPAA
12 24 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
12 24 (0.25%) GRC
13 22 (0.23%) Solvency II
13 22 (0.23%) WCAG
14 21 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials
14 21 (0.22%) PMO
14 21 (0.22%) PSD2
15 18 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 42001
16 17 (0.18%) GAAP
System Software
1 235 (2.44%) Docker
2 72 (0.75%) Active Directory
3 22 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
3 22 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
4 18 (0.19%) VMware Infrastructure
5 16 (0.17%) Firmware
6 14 (0.15%) vSphere
7 7 (0.073%) Lustre
8 5 (0.052%) GPFS
8 5 (0.052%) Hyper-V
8 5 (0.052%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 4 (0.041%) VMware ESXi
10 2 (0.021%) Ceph
10 2 (0.021%) Kamailio
10 2 (0.021%) NFS
10 2 (0.021%) RACF
11 1 (0.010%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 233 (2.42%) Terraform
2 217 (2.25%) Kubernetes
3 51 (0.53%) Ansible
4 49 (0.51%) Microsoft Intune
5 43 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
6 30 (0.31%) Prometheus
7 23 (0.24%) Grafana
8 14 (0.15%) Cisco CUCM
9 10 (0.10%) Kubeflow
10 9 (0.093%) Argo
11 8 (0.083%) SCCM
12 7 (0.073%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 6 (0.062%) vCenter Server
14 4 (0.041%) Nessus
14 4 (0.041%) Nmap
15 3 (0.031%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
15 3 (0.031%) Proxmox
15 3 (0.031%) RSA Archer
15 3 (0.031%) SolarWinds Orion
16 2 (0.021%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
Vendors
1 1,163 (12.06%) PayPal
2 1,134 (11.76%) Microsoft
3 184 (1.91%) Google
4 169 (1.75%) Databricks
5 117 (1.21%) OpenAI
6 102 (1.06%) Oracle
7 97 (1.01%) Adobe
7 97 (1.01%) Salesforce
8 96 (1.00%) Cisco
9 86 (0.89%) Dell
10 71 (0.74%) SAP
11 47 (0.49%) Blue Prism
11 47 (0.49%) Foundry
12 45 (0.47%) Alteryx
13 42 (0.44%) Palantir
14 40 (0.41%) HubSpot
15 37 (0.38%) Fortinet
16 35 (0.36%) Apple
17 34 (0.35%) Bloomberg
18 29 (0.30%) VMware