AI Job Trends in the North West

AI
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the North West requiring AI skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 9 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 42 69
Rank change year-on-year +39 +27 +63
Permanent jobs citing AI 1,982 233 145
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 31.43% 4.61% 3.36%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 38.52% 5.08% 3.85%
Number of salaries quoted 160 74 104
10th Percentile £20,000 £40,375 £35,000
25th Percentile £38,938 £48,438 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £69,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -10.07% +26.36% -
75th Percentile £90,000 £87,500 £84,056
90th Percentile £104,375 £101,750 £100,064
England median annual salary £72,500 £77,500 £75,000
% change year-on-year -6.45% +3.33% +7.14%

All Process & Methodology Skills
North West

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 in the North West.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 5,146 4,587 3,769
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 81.60% 90.83% 87.35%
Number of salaries quoted 2,510 2,240 2,923
10th Percentile £28,000 £32,114 £31,000
25th Percentile £35,000 £40,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £52,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £65,000 £66,389 £68,750
90th Percentile £81,250 £80,000 £82,500
England median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%

AI
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing AI relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the North West.

AI job vacancy trend in the North West

AI
Salary Trend in the North West

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing AI.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing AI

AI
Salary Histogram in the North West

Salary distribution for jobs citing AI in the North West over the 6 months to 9 January 2026.

Salary histogram for AI in the North West

AI
Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing AI within the North West region over the 6 months to 9 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
Manchester +41 743 £60,000 -17.24% 124
Lancashire +23 596 £43,237 -37.79% 53
Cheshire +41 535 £75,000 -15.25% 53
Merseyside +33 104 £120,000 +118.18% 33
Cumbria - 13 £70,000 - 1
AI
England

AI
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West 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 10 (0.50%) SharePoint
2 3 (0.15%) Apache Solr
2 3 (0.15%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.10%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
3 2 (0.10%) CMS
4 1 (0.050%) Apache
4 1 (0.050%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.050%) Confluence
4 1 (0.050%) Jupyter
Applications
1 188 (9.49%) Chatbot
2 39 (1.97%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.050%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 5 (0.25%) NetSuite
2 2 (0.10%) Oracle Assets
2 2 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
2 2 (0.10%) Oracle Payables
2 2 (0.10%) Oracle Receivables
3 1 (0.050%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 1,477 (74.52%) Cloud Computing
2 80 (4.04%) Azure
3 54 (2.72%) Power Platform
4 47 (2.37%) AWS
5 23 (1.16%) Azure AI
6 19 (0.96%) SaaS
7 18 (0.91%) Microsoft 365
8 13 (0.66%) GCP
9 11 (0.55%) Azure Monitor
10 9 (0.45%) Entra ID
11 8 (0.40%) Microsoft Purview
11 8 (0.40%) OneDrive
12 7 (0.35%) Amazon Bedrock
13 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Copilot
13 5 (0.25%) Power Automate
14 4 (0.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 4 (0.20%) AWS CloudFormation
14 4 (0.20%) Azure DevOps
14 4 (0.20%) Serverless
15 3 (0.15%) Copilot Studio
Communications & Networking
1 1,477 (74.52%) Internet
2 18 (0.91%) VoIP
3 14 (0.71%) Telepresence
3 14 (0.71%) Unified Communications
3 14 (0.71%) WebEx
4 4 (0.20%) HTTP
5 1 (0.050%) Cisco IPT
5 1 (0.050%) Network Security
5 1 (0.050%) TCAP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (1.87%) Power BI
2 25 (1.26%) Tableau
3 14 (0.71%) MongoDB
4 12 (0.61%) NoSQL
5 11 (0.55%) MySQL
6 9 (0.45%) Data Warehouse
7 7 (0.35%) SQL Server
8 6 (0.30%) PostgreSQL
9 5 (0.25%) Data Lake
9 5 (0.25%) Hadoop
10 4 (0.20%) Big Data
11 3 (0.15%) Elasticsearch
11 3 (0.15%) Metadata
11 3 (0.15%) Neo4j
11 3 (0.15%) Relational Database
12 2 (0.10%) Azure SQL Database
12 2 (0.10%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 1 (0.050%) Data Mining
13 1 (0.050%) Snowflake Schema
13 1 (0.050%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 7 (0.35%) Git
2 5 (0.25%) JIRA
3 4 (0.20%) JUnit
4 3 (0.15%) Jenkins
General
1 1,587 (80.07%) Social Skills
2 1,583 (79.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 1,497 (75.53%) Banking
4 123 (6.21%) Analytical Skills
5 69 (3.48%) Finance
6 23 (1.16%) Marketing
6 23 (1.16%) Public Sector
7 15 (0.76%) Telecoms
8 13 (0.66%) Law
9 12 (0.61%) Legal
9 12 (0.61%) Retail
10 9 (0.45%) Presentation Skills
11 7 (0.35%) Organisational Skills
12 6 (0.30%) Billing
12 6 (0.30%) Games
13 5 (0.25%) Manufacturing
13 5 (0.25%) Pharmaceutical
14 4 (0.20%) Advertising
14 4 (0.20%) Financial Institution
15 3 (0.15%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,129 (56.96%) Lecturer
2 180 (9.08%) Trainer
3 33 (1.66%) Analyst
4 30 (1.51%) Developer
5 24 (1.21%) Architect
5 24 (1.21%) Microsoft Specialist
6 23 (1.16%) Senior
7 21 (1.06%) Data Analyst
7 21 (1.06%) Lead
8 20 (1.01%) Junior
8 20 (1.01%) Junior Analyst
8 20 (1.01%) Junior Data Analyst
9 19 (0.96%) Customer Support Specialist
9 19 (0.96%) Support Specialist
10 15 (0.76%) Consultant
11 14 (0.71%) Software Engineer
11 14 (0.71%) Support Engineer
11 14 (0.71%) Voice Engineer
11 14 (0.71%) Voice Support Engineer
12 13 (0.66%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (1.06%) .NET
2 19 (0.96%) React
3 13 (0.66%) CSS
3 13 (0.66%) RESTful
4 11 (0.55%) HTML
5 9 (0.45%) REST
6 7 (0.35%) Kafka
6 7 (0.35%) PyTorch
6 7 (0.35%) TensorFlow
7 6 (0.30%) AngularJS
8 5 (0.25%) ASP.NET
8 5 (0.25%) Node.js
8 5 (0.25%) Spring
8 5 (0.25%) Spring Boot
9 4 (0.20%) ASP.NET Core
9 4 (0.20%) CSS3
9 4 (0.20%) Django
9 4 (0.20%) gRPC
9 4 (0.20%) HTML5
9 4 (0.20%) Spring Batch
Miscellaneous
1 1,477 (74.52%) IoT
2 26 (1.31%) AI Agents
3 24 (1.21%) Blog
4 22 (1.11%) Cloud Native
5 14 (0.71%) Onboarding
6 11 (0.55%) Product Ownership
7 10 (0.50%) Data Centre
7 10 (0.50%) Molecular Biology
7 10 (0.50%) Public Cloud
8 9 (0.45%) Analytical Mindset
8 9 (0.45%) Enterprise Software
9 7 (0.35%) Distributed Systems
9 7 (0.35%) Low-Code
9 7 (0.35%) Self-Motivation
10 6 (0.30%) Taxonomies
11 5 (0.25%) Greenfield Project
12 4 (0.20%) Life Science
12 4 (0.20%) Virtual Team
13 3 (0.15%) Data Protection Act
13 3 (0.15%) Semantic Web
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.15%) Windows
2 2 (0.10%) Linux
2 2 (0.10%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,522 (76.79%) Machine Learning
2 1,506 (75.98%) Cybersecurity
3 1,504 (75.88%) User Experience
4 1,477 (74.52%) Web Development
5 188 (9.49%) Conversational UI
6 69 (3.48%) Chemistry
7 56 (2.83%) Problem-Solving
8 47 (2.37%) Agile
9 45 (2.27%) Analytics
10 43 (2.17%) Customer Service
11 40 (2.02%) DevOps
12 39 (1.97%) Business Intelligence
13 38 (1.92%) CRM
14 36 (1.82%) CI/CD
15 28 (1.41%) Continuous Improvement
15 28 (1.41%) Project Management
16 27 (1.36%) Software Engineering
17 26 (1.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 24 (1.21%) Mentoring
19 23 (1.16%) Time Management
Programming Languages
1 61 (3.08%) Python
2 49 (2.47%) SQL
3 19 (0.96%) TypeScript
4 18 (0.91%) Java
5 15 (0.76%) JavaScript
6 14 (0.71%) C#
7 4 (0.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 4 (0.20%) R
8 3 (0.15%) Go
8 3 (0.15%) PowerShell
9 2 (0.10%) PHP
9 2 (0.10%) Scala
10 1 (0.050%) Bash
10 1 (0.050%) C++
10 1 (0.050%) Kusto Query Language
10 1 (0.050%) MATLAB
10 1 (0.050%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 1,739 (87.74%) Degree
2 1,568 (79.11%) Master's Degree
3 1,565 (78.96%) PhD
4 1,477 (74.52%) Postgraduate
5 20 (1.01%) Azure Certification
6 9 (0.45%) AWS Certification
7 7 (0.35%) Computer Science Degree
7 7 (0.35%) PMP
8 6 (0.30%) DBS Check
8 6 (0.30%) SC Cleared
8 6 (0.30%) Security Cleared
9 2 (0.10%) CCIE
9 2 (0.10%) CCNA
9 2 (0.10%) CCNP
9 2 (0.10%) Cisco Certification
9 2 (0.10%) MBA
9 2 (0.10%) Six Sigma Green Belt
10 1 (0.050%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (0.45%) Data Quality
2 8 (0.40%) QA
3 5 (0.25%) Accessibility
4 3 (0.15%) ISO 20022
4 3 (0.15%) SEPA
4 3 (0.15%) TARGET2
5 2 (0.10%) Actionable Recommendations
5 2 (0.10%) GDPR
6 1 (0.050%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (0.050%) Disclosure Scotland
6 1 (0.050%) FINRA
6 1 (0.050%) IASME
6 1 (0.050%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.050%) NCSC
6 1 (0.050%) NIST
6 1 (0.050%) PERC
System Software
1 16 (0.81%) Docker
2 10 (0.50%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.15%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 14 (0.71%) Cisco CUCM
2 12 (0.61%) Terraform
3 10 (0.50%) Kubernetes
4 9 (0.45%) Microsoft Intune
4 9 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
5 3 (0.15%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.10%) Ansible
Vendors
1 180 (9.08%) PayPal
2 110 (5.55%) Microsoft
3 22 (1.11%) Cisco
4 19 (0.96%) Adobe
4 19 (0.96%) Oracle
5 18 (0.91%) Apple
6 9 (0.45%) Splunk
7 8 (0.40%) New Relic
8 7 (0.35%) Palo Alto
8 7 (0.35%) ServiceNow
9 5 (0.25%) Dell
9 5 (0.25%) Foundry
10 4 (0.20%) HubSpot
11 3 (0.15%) Genesys
11 3 (0.15%) Workday
12 2 (0.10%) Salesforce
12 2 (0.10%) UiPath
13 1 (0.050%) Databricks
13 1 (0.050%) Hotjar
13 1 (0.050%) Moogsoft