Generative AI Job Trends in the North West

Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI)
England > North West

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

6 months to
6 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 163 184 185
Rank change year-on-year +21 +1 -
Permanent jobs citing Generative AI 19 21 12
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 0.30% 0.41% 0.29%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.37% 0.45% 0.33%
Number of salaries quoted 13 12 8
10th Percentile £45,728 - £95,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £77,000 £104,375
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £96,250 £110,000
Median % change year-on-year -22.08% -12.50% -
75th Percentile £110,000 £100,000 £113,125
90th Percentile - - £123,250
England median annual salary £80,000 £82,500 £92,500
% change year-on-year -3.03% -10.81% -

All Process & Methodology Skills
North West

Generative 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 5,129 4,625 3,644
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 82.21% 90.69% 88.73%
Number of salaries quoted 2,489 2,259 2,806
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 £52,750
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -1.42% -4.09%
75th Percentile £65,000 £66,389 £70,000
90th Percentile £81,250 £80,000 £82,548
England median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%

Generative AI
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

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

Generative AI job vacancy trend in the North West

Generative AI
Salary Trend in the North West

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

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

Generative AI
Salary Histogram in the North West

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

Salary histogram for Generative AI in the North West

Generative 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 Generative AI within the North West region over the 6 months to 6 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 +30 14 £85,000 +0.29% 13
Lancashire +14 2 £45,497 -54.50% 3
Cheshire -13 2 £75,000 -15.25% 13
Generative AI
England

Generative 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 2 (10.53%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 1 (5.26%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 7 (36.84%) Azure
2 3 (15.79%) AWS
2 3 (15.79%) GCP
2 3 (15.79%) Power Platform
3 2 (10.53%) Microsoft 365
4 1 (5.26%) Azure Cosmos DB
4 1 (5.26%) GitHub
4 1 (5.26%) GitHub Copilot
4 1 (5.26%) OCI
4 1 (5.26%) SaaS
4 1 (5.26%) Serverless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (21.05%) Big Data
1 4 (21.05%) Hadoop
1 4 (21.05%) MySQL
2 3 (15.79%) MongoDB
3 2 (10.53%) Neo4j
3 2 (10.53%) NoSQL
3 2 (10.53%) SQL Server
4 1 (5.26%) Apache Cassandra
4 1 (5.26%) Power BI
4 1 (5.26%) Relational Database
General
1 5 (26.32%) Finance
1 5 (26.32%) Public Sector
2 4 (21.05%) Law
2 4 (21.05%) Social Skills
3 3 (15.79%) Analytical Skills
4 2 (10.53%) Legal
4 2 (10.53%) Local Government
5 1 (5.26%) Electronics
5 1 (5.26%) Financial Institution
5 1 (5.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 1 (5.26%) Manufacturing
5 1 (5.26%) Marketing
5 1 (5.26%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 7 (36.84%) Software Engineer
2 4 (21.05%) Senior
2 4 (21.05%) Senior Software Engineer
3 2 (10.53%) Analyst
3 2 (10.53%) Architect
3 2 (10.53%) Business Analyst
3 2 (10.53%) Data Engineer
3 2 (10.53%) Developer
3 2 (10.53%) Full-Stack Developer
3 2 (10.53%) Lead
3 2 (10.53%) Lead Developer
3 2 (10.53%) Lead Full-Stack Developer
4 1 (5.26%) Business Architect
4 1 (5.26%) Cloud Architect
4 1 (5.26%) Consultant
4 1 (5.26%) Data Consultant
4 1 (5.26%) Data Science Consultant
4 1 (5.26%) Data Scientist
4 1 (5.26%) Machine Learning Consultant
4 1 (5.26%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (26.32%) React
2 3 (15.79%) .NET
3 2 (10.53%) .NET Core
4 1 (5.26%) .NET Framework
4 1 (5.26%) AngularJS
4 1 (5.26%) ASP.NET
4 1 (5.26%) ASP.NET MVC
4 1 (5.26%) Blazor
4 1 (5.26%) Entity Framework
4 1 (5.26%) Oracle Fusion
4 1 (5.26%) PyTorch
4 1 (5.26%) REST
4 1 (5.26%) scikit-learn
4 1 (5.26%) TensorFlow
4 1 (5.26%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 7 (36.84%) AI Agents
2 4 (21.05%) Greenfield Project
3 3 (15.79%) Product Ownership
4 2 (10.53%) Analytical Mindset
5 1 (5.26%) Cloud Native
5 1 (5.26%) Distributed Architecture
5 1 (5.26%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 1 (5.26%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 16 (84.21%) AI
2 7 (36.84%) Agile
2 7 (36.84%) LLM
2 7 (36.84%) Software Engineering
3 6 (31.58%) Mentoring
4 4 (21.05%) Data Engineering
4 4 (21.05%) Data Pipeline
4 4 (21.05%) Machine Learning
4 4 (21.05%) Multi-Agent System
4 4 (21.05%) Natural Language Processing
4 4 (21.05%) Scrum
5 3 (15.79%) Analytics
5 3 (15.79%) Data Science
5 3 (15.79%) Decision-Making
5 3 (15.79%) Problem-Solving
5 3 (15.79%) Waterfall
6 2 (10.53%) Coaching
6 2 (10.53%) DevOps
6 2 (10.53%) Line Management
6 2 (10.53%) Software Deployment
Programming Languages
1 7 (36.84%) Java
1 7 (36.84%) Python
2 5 (26.32%) SQL
3 4 (21.05%) TypeScript
4 3 (15.79%) C#
5 2 (10.53%) Scala
Qualifications
1 3 (15.79%) Degree
1 3 (15.79%) SC Cleared
1 3 (15.79%) Security Cleared
2 2 (10.53%) Computer Science Degree
3 1 (5.26%) DBS Check
3 1 (5.26%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (10.53%) Accessibility
1 2 (10.53%) QA
System Software
1 3 (15.79%) Docker
Systems Management
1 1 (5.26%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 4 (21.05%) Microsoft
2 3 (15.79%) Oracle
3 2 (10.53%) Foundry
4 1 (5.26%) Cognos
4 1 (5.26%) SAP
4 1 (5.26%) ServiceNow