Generative AI Job Trends in the South West

Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI)
England > South West

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the South West requiring Generative AI skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 12 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 170 179 216
Rank change year-on-year +9 +37 -
Permanent jobs citing Generative AI 9 13 3
As % of all permanent jobs in the South West 0.18% 0.31% 0.063%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.25% 0.37% 0.070%
Number of salaries quoted 7 7 3
10th Percentile £46,500 £65,000 £77,803
25th Percentile £47,500 £67,548 £82,008
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £68,525 £71,991 £92,778
Median % change year-on-year -4.81% -22.40% -
75th Percentile £76,649 £75,000 £96,539
90th Percentile £77,989 £87,000 -
England median annual salary £81,250 £82,500 £92,500
% change year-on-year -1.52% -10.81% -

All Process & Methodology Skills
South 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 South West.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 3,588 3,552 4,279
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the South West 71.52% 85.38% 89.52%
Number of salaries quoted 2,460 1,788 3,242
10th Percentile £27,750 £30,000 £30,250
25th Percentile £34,000 £40,000 £40,063
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £54,439 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -8.15% +3.69% +3.35%
75th Percentile £67,425 £68,750 £67,500
90th Percentile £80,000 £81,250 £80,738
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 South West

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

Generative AI job vacancy trend in the South West

Generative AI
Salary Trend in the South West

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

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

Generative AI
Salary Histogram in the South West

Salary distribution for jobs citing Generative AI in the South West over the 6 months to 12 January 2026.

Salary histogram for Generative AI in the South West

Generative AI
Job Locations in the South 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 South West region over the 6 months to 12 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
Wiltshire +11 3 £74,683 - 10
Bristol +7 3 £50,000 -30.55% 14
Gloucestershire +18 2 - - 9
Dorset - 1 £80,000 - 11
Generative AI
England

Generative AI
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South 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 1 (11.11%) Apache
1 1 (11.11%) Apache Airflow
1 1 (11.11%) Apache Spark
1 1 (11.11%) Apache Superset
Cloud Services
1 3 (33.33%) SaaS
2 2 (22.22%) AWS
2 2 (22.22%) Azure
3 1 (11.11%) Anthropic Claude
3 1 (11.11%) AWS CloudFormation
3 1 (11.11%) GCP
3 1 (11.11%) PaaS
3 1 (11.11%) Power Platform
3 1 (11.11%) Serverless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (22.22%) SQL Server
2 1 (11.11%) Big Data
2 1 (11.11%) Hadoop
2 1 (11.11%) Metadata
2 1 (11.11%) MongoDB
2 1 (11.11%) Neo4j
2 1 (11.11%) NoSQL
2 1 (11.11%) Power BI
2 1 (11.11%) Spark SQL
2 1 (11.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
2 1 (11.11%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 1 (11.11%) Git
General
1 3 (33.33%) Retail
1 3 (33.33%) Social Skills
2 2 (22.22%) Analytical Skills
3 1 (11.11%) Law
3 1 (11.11%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 3 (33.33%) Data Engineer
1 3 (33.33%) Head of Design
2 2 (22.22%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
3 1 (11.11%) Cloud Engineer
3 1 (11.11%) DevOps Engineer
3 1 (11.11%) Gen AI Engineer
3 1 (11.11%) Senior
3 1 (11.11%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (33.33%) Oracle Fusion
2 1 (11.11%) Kafka
2 1 (11.11%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 1 (11.11%) Cloud Native
1 1 (11.11%) Data Fabric
1 1 (11.11%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 1 (11.11%) Windows
1 1 (11.11%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 9 (100.00%) AI
2 5 (55.56%) Machine Learning
3 4 (44.44%) Community of Practice
3 4 (44.44%) Problem-Solving
3 4 (44.44%) Roadmaps
4 3 (33.33%) Agile
4 3 (33.33%) Budget Management
4 3 (33.33%) Business Case
4 3 (33.33%) Culture Change
4 3 (33.33%) LLM
4 3 (33.33%) Project Delivery
4 3 (33.33%) Service Design
4 3 (33.33%) Strategic Roadmap
4 3 (33.33%) Strategic Thinking
4 3 (33.33%) Task Automation
4 3 (33.33%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
5 2 (22.22%) Cost Optimisation
5 2 (22.22%) Data Engineering
5 2 (22.22%) Data Pipeline
5 2 (22.22%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 3 (33.33%) Python
2 2 (22.22%) SQL
3 1 (11.11%) Bash
3 1 (11.11%) Bicep
3 1 (11.11%) PowerShell
3 1 (11.11%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 3 (33.33%) Security Cleared
2 2 (22.22%) SC Cleared
3 1 (11.11%) AWS Certification
3 1 (11.11%) Azure Certification
3 1 (11.11%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (33.33%) Accessibility
2 1 (11.11%) Data Quality
2 1 (11.11%) SLA
System Software
1 2 (22.22%) Docker
Systems Management
1 1 (11.11%) Kubernetes
1 1 (11.11%) Terraform
Vendors
1 5 (55.56%) Oracle
2 1 (11.11%) Databricks
2 1 (11.11%) Microsoft