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

6 months to
22 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 42 65
Rank change year-on-year +38 +23 +56
Permanent jobs citing AI 9,792 2,637 3,004
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 14.20% 5.45% 3.98%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 17.95% 5.88% 4.51%
Number of salaries quoted 2,461 1,344 1,699
10th Percentile £33,750 £45,000 £42,500
25th Percentile £50,000 £60,000 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £75,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% +7.14% -
75th Percentile £95,000 £97,500 £92,500
90th Percentile £115,000 £117,500 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £59,191 £66,254 £62,500
% change year-on-year -10.66% +6.01% -1.47%

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 54,541 44,858 66,633
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 79.08% 92.63% 88.37%
Number of salaries quoted 32,717 22,158 51,477
10th Percentile £29,000 £34,000 £29,440
25th Percentile £38,000 £45,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -12.00%
75th Percentile £76,000 £81,250 £75,000
90th Percentile £96,250 £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 22 February 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 February 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 +37 8,961 £70,000 -6.67% 2,337
UK excluding London +41 7,037 £59,191 -10.66% 1,626
North of England +48 2,594 £60,000 -10.81% 355
Work from Home +36 2,513 £67,500 +1.85% 1,242
London +34 2,298 £80,470 -11.57% 1,184
North West +40 1,980 £61,418 -10.66% 194
Midlands +85 1,523 £55,000 -13.73% 188
South East +38 1,476 £50,000 -33.33% 613
West Midlands +84 1,249 £55,000 -4.35% 111
East of England +27 671 £55,000 -16.96% 169
Yorkshire +44 512 £61,250 -2.00% 107
South West +18 363 £62,500 -3.85% 178
Scotland +34 300 £70,000 +21.74% 95
East Midlands +68 285 £50,000 -23.08% 75
Wales +40 118 £50,335 +0.67% 46
North East +46 102 £55,000 -24.14% 55
Northern Ireland -8 55 £90,000 -5.26% 13
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 90 (0.92%) SharePoint
2 61 (0.62%) Apache Airflow
3 58 (0.59%) Jupyter
4 54 (0.55%) Apache Spark
5 46 (0.47%) Confluence
6 45 (0.46%) CMS
7 24 (0.25%) ArcGIS
7 24 (0.25%) Microsoft Exchange
8 22 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
9 18 (0.18%) WordPress
10 17 (0.17%) Appian
10 17 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 16 (0.16%) Apache
12 13 (0.13%) JBoss
12 13 (0.13%) WebSphere
13 7 (0.071%) SAS
14 6 (0.061%) Apache Solr
15 5 (0.051%) Apache Pulsar
15 5 (0.051%) IIS
15 5 (0.051%) Umbraco
Applications
1 959 (9.79%) Chatbot
2 702 (7.17%) Microsoft Excel
3 89 (0.91%) Microsoft Office
4 43 (0.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 17 (0.17%) Maya
6 16 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
7 10 (0.10%) MS Visio
8 6 (0.061%) Adobe Premiere
8 6 (0.061%) Microsoft Project
8 6 (0.061%) Photoshop
9 5 (0.051%) UserZoom
10 4 (0.041%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 4 (0.041%) Weka
11 3 (0.031%) Adobe Illustrator
11 3 (0.031%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.031%) Simulink
11 3 (0.031%) Sketch
12 2 (0.020%) Notion
13 1 (0.010%) Camtasia
13 1 (0.010%) CapCut
Business Applications
1 42 (0.43%) Dynamics CRM
2 19 (0.19%) NetSuite
3 18 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
4 13 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
5 12 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
6 10 (0.10%) Workday HCM
7 8 (0.082%) Distributed Ledger
7 8 (0.082%) Endur
7 8 (0.082%) Shopify
8 7 (0.071%) Oracle EBS
8 7 (0.071%) Salesforce CRM
9 4 (0.041%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 4 (0.041%) Oracle Receivables
10 3 (0.031%) Oracle Assets
10 3 (0.031%) SAP Business One
10 3 (0.031%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 2 (0.020%) Dynamics AX
11 2 (0.020%) Integrated Workplace Management System
11 2 (0.020%) Maximo
11 2 (0.020%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 4,149 (42.37%) Cloud Computing
2 1,632 (16.67%) Azure
3 983 (10.04%) Power Platform
4 739 (7.55%) AWS
5 656 (6.70%) Azure AI
6 441 (4.50%) SaaS
7 326 (3.33%) GCP
8 223 (2.28%) GitHub
9 194 (1.98%) Microsoft 365
10 191 (1.95%) Azure DevOps
11 125 (1.28%) Snowflake
12 111 (1.13%) Azure Data Factory
13 110 (1.12%) GitHub Copilot
14 107 (1.09%) Microsoft Copilot
15 104 (1.06%) Entra ID
15 104 (1.06%) Serverless
16 98 (1.00%) Power Automate
17 68 (0.69%) PaaS
18 66 (0.67%) dbt
19 64 (0.65%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 4,059 (41.45%) Internet
2 94 (0.96%) Broadband
3 52 (0.53%) Firewall
4 32 (0.33%) Network Security
4 32 (0.33%) Unified Communications
5 26 (0.27%) VoIP
6 25 (0.26%) VPN
7 19 (0.19%) HTTP
8 18 (0.18%) WAN
9 17 (0.17%) TCP/IP
10 16 (0.16%) DNS
11 14 (0.14%) Telepresence
11 14 (0.14%) VLAN
11 14 (0.14%) WebEx
12 13 (0.13%) Wi-Fi
13 12 (0.12%) DHCP
14 8 (0.082%) Wireshark
15 7 (0.071%) DMZ
15 7 (0.071%) Intranet
15 7 (0.071%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 824 (8.42%) Power BI
2 682 (6.96%) Tableau
3 151 (1.54%) Data Warehouse
4 102 (1.04%) SQL Server
5 96 (0.98%) NoSQL
6 94 (0.96%) Data Lake
7 93 (0.95%) Metadata
8 79 (0.81%) PostgreSQL
9 74 (0.76%) MongoDB
10 73 (0.75%) Big Data
11 42 (0.43%) BigQuery
12 37 (0.38%) MySQL
12 37 (0.38%) Pinecone
13 34 (0.35%) Relational Database
14 31 (0.32%) Hadoop
14 31 (0.32%) Looker
15 30 (0.31%) Elasticsearch
16 28 (0.29%) GIS
16 28 (0.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 27 (0.28%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 129 (1.32%) Git
2 109 (1.11%) JIRA
3 55 (0.56%) MLflow
4 50 (0.51%) Visual Studio Code
5 45 (0.46%) Jenkins
6 31 (0.32%) GitLab
7 19 (0.19%) Cypress.io
8 18 (0.18%) Selenium
9 16 (0.16%) Octopus Deploy
9 16 (0.16%) Oracle Forms
9 16 (0.16%) TeamCity
10 12 (0.12%) Postman
10 12 (0.12%) Visual Studio
11 10 (0.10%) Claude Code
12 9 (0.092%) Bitbucket
12 9 (0.092%) Storybook
13 8 (0.082%) Subversion
14 7 (0.071%) Burp Suite
14 7 (0.071%) SpecFlow
14 7 (0.071%) WebDriver
General
1 5,792 (59.15%) Social Skills
2 4,487 (45.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 4,232 (43.22%) Banking
4 1,214 (12.40%) Finance
5 1,032 (10.54%) Analytical Skills
6 401 (4.10%) Marketing
7 305 (3.11%) Public Sector
8 284 (2.90%) Legal
9 276 (2.82%) Law
10 249 (2.54%) Retail
11 171 (1.75%) Games
12 163 (1.66%) Manufacturing
13 111 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
14 106 (1.08%) Telecoms
15 94 (0.96%) Pharmaceutical
16 86 (0.88%) Influencing Skills
17 85 (0.87%) Financial Institution
18 74 (0.76%) Organisational Skills
19 61 (0.62%) Electronics
20 49 (0.50%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 3,161 (32.28%) Lecturer
2 880 (8.99%) Trainer
3 772 (7.88%) Analyst
4 707 (7.22%) Senior
5 635 (6.48%) Data Analyst
6 572 (5.84%) Junior
7 552 (5.64%) Junior Analyst
7 552 (5.64%) Junior Data Analyst
8 459 (4.69%) Lead
9 423 (4.32%) Developer
10 290 (2.96%) Architect
11 243 (2.48%) Consultant
12 186 (1.90%) Software Engineer
13 158 (1.61%) Data Engineer
14 131 (1.34%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 124 (1.27%) Solutions Architect
16 102 (1.04%) Content Editor
17 100 (1.02%) Data Scientist
18 97 (0.99%) Senior Manager
19 88 (0.90%) Research Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 235 (2.40%) React
2 179 (1.83%) .NET
3 169 (1.73%) REST
4 161 (1.64%) PyTorch
5 129 (1.32%) TensorFlow
6 118 (1.21%) RESTful
7 108 (1.10%) HTML
8 107 (1.09%) Node.js
9 101 (1.03%) scikit-learn
10 94 (0.96%) Hugging Face
11 86 (0.88%) LangChain
12 85 (0.87%) Pandas
13 80 (0.82%) CSS
14 79 (0.81%) FastAPI
15 77 (0.79%) Kafka
16 74 (0.76%) Django
17 71 (0.73%) NumPy
18 69 (0.70%) AngularJS
19 61 (0.62%) Spring
20 57 (0.58%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 4,084 (41.71%) IoT
2 275 (2.81%) Cloud Native
3 185 (1.89%) Algorithms
3 185 (1.89%) Onboarding
4 172 (1.76%) Product Ownership
5 159 (1.62%) Robotics
6 157 (1.60%) AI Agents
7 132 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
8 122 (1.25%) Blog
9 110 (1.12%) Enterprise Software
10 104 (1.06%) Management Information System
11 100 (1.02%) Social Media
12 99 (1.01%) Distributed Systems
13 97 (0.99%) Life Science
14 90 (0.92%) Low-Code
15 89 (0.91%) Molecular Biology
16 71 (0.73%) Greenfield Project
17 66 (0.67%) Analytical Mindset
18 63 (0.64%) Virtual Team
19 62 (0.63%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 87 (0.89%) Windows
2 84 (0.86%) Linux
3 69 (0.70%) Android
4 59 (0.60%) Unix
5 46 (0.47%) Apple iOS
6 29 (0.30%) Windows Server
7 17 (0.17%) Ubuntu
8 9 (0.092%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.051%) Kali Linux
9 5 (0.051%) VMS
10 4 (0.041%) Robot Operating System
10 4 (0.041%) Windows Server 2016
11 3 (0.031%) OpenWrt
12 2 (0.020%) Mac OS X
12 2 (0.020%) zOS
13 1 (0.010%) FreeRTOS
13 1 (0.010%) Solaris
13 1 (0.010%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 5,092 (52.00%) Machine Learning
2 4,335 (44.27%) Cybersecurity
3 4,315 (44.07%) User Experience
4 4,070 (41.56%) Web Development
5 1,113 (11.37%) Analytics
6 1,004 (10.25%) Conversational UI
7 963 (9.83%) Business Intelligence
8 917 (9.36%) Agile
9 732 (7.48%) Problem-Solving
10 671 (6.85%) Roadmaps
11 601 (6.14%) Decision-Making
12 598 (6.11%) CI/CD
13 586 (5.98%) Software Engineering
14 570 (5.82%) Continuous Improvement
15 565 (5.77%) DevOps
16 508 (5.19%) Data Science
17 500 (5.11%) LLM
18 490 (5.00%) Generative AI
19 435 (4.44%) Computer Science
19 435 (4.44%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 1,702 (17.38%) Python
2 1,145 (11.69%) SQL
3 255 (2.60%) JavaScript
4 240 (2.45%) TypeScript
5 227 (2.32%) Java
6 161 (1.64%) C#
7 85 (0.87%) C++
8 82 (0.84%) PowerShell
9 70 (0.71%) Bash
10 67 (0.68%) Go
11 58 (0.59%) R
12 38 (0.39%) PHP
13 34 (0.35%) Rust
14 29 (0.30%) Kotlin
15 27 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 24 (0.25%) Scala
17 23 (0.23%) Apex Code
17 23 (0.23%) C
18 20 (0.20%) PL/SQL
19 16 (0.16%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 5,789 (59.12%) Degree
2 4,724 (48.24%) Master's Degree
3 4,660 (47.59%) PhD
4 4,050 (41.36%) Postgraduate
5 602 (6.15%) Azure Certification
6 343 (3.50%) Security Cleared
7 257 (2.62%) SC Cleared
8 191 (1.95%) Computer Science Degree
9 111 (1.13%) AWS Certification
10 88 (0.90%) DV Cleared
11 69 (0.70%) DBS Check
12 52 (0.53%) CISSP
13 49 (0.50%) PMP
14 48 (0.49%) BPSS Clearance
15 47 (0.48%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
16 42 (0.43%) ACCA
17 36 (0.37%) Microsoft Certification
18 34 (0.35%) PMI Certification
19 31 (0.32%) CISA
19 31 (0.32%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 224 (2.29%) Data Quality
2 214 (2.19%) Accessibility
3 148 (1.51%) QA
4 130 (1.33%) GDPR
5 78 (0.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 43 (0.44%) EU AI Act
7 41 (0.42%) GxP
8 38 (0.39%) NIST
9 36 (0.37%) IFRS
10 30 (0.31%) GRC
11 25 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
11 25 (0.26%) HIPAA
12 23 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials
13 22 (0.22%) PMO
13 22 (0.22%) Solvency II
13 22 (0.22%) WCAG
14 21 (0.21%) PSD2
15 19 (0.19%) SLA
16 18 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 42001
16 18 (0.18%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 249 (2.54%) Docker
2 78 (0.80%) Active Directory
3 21 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
4 17 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
5 16 (0.16%) Firmware
5 16 (0.16%) VMware Infrastructure
6 12 (0.12%) vSphere
7 5 (0.051%) Lustre
8 4 (0.041%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 3 (0.031%) GPFS
9 3 (0.031%) Kamailio
9 3 (0.031%) VMware ESXi
10 2 (0.020%) Ceph
10 2 (0.020%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.020%) NFS
10 2 (0.020%) RACF
11 1 (0.010%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 247 (2.52%) Kubernetes
2 235 (2.40%) Terraform
3 51 (0.52%) Ansible
4 46 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
5 42 (0.43%) Microsoft Intune
6 39 (0.40%) Prometheus
7 35 (0.36%) Grafana
8 14 (0.14%) Cisco CUCM
9 11 (0.11%) Argo
10 7 (0.071%) Kubeflow
10 7 (0.071%) vCenter Server
11 6 (0.061%) Proxmox
11 6 (0.061%) SCCM
12 5 (0.051%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 4 (0.041%) Nessus
13 4 (0.041%) Nmap
13 4 (0.041%) RSA Archer
13 4 (0.041%) SolarWinds Orion
14 3 (0.031%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
14 3 (0.031%) Control-M
Vendors
1 1,389 (14.19%) Microsoft
2 874 (8.93%) PayPal
3 191 (1.95%) Google
4 174 (1.78%) Databricks
5 115 (1.17%) OpenAI
6 114 (1.16%) Adobe
7 99 (1.01%) Salesforce
8 98 (1.00%) Oracle
9 96 (0.98%) Dell
10 94 (0.96%) Cisco
11 72 (0.74%) SAP
12 47 (0.48%) Alteryx
12 47 (0.48%) Blue Prism
12 47 (0.48%) Foundry
12 47 (0.48%) Palantir
13 38 (0.39%) HubSpot
14 35 (0.36%) Fortinet
14 35 (0.36%) ServiceNow
15 34 (0.35%) Bloomberg
16 32 (0.33%) Apple