AI Job Trends in the UK excluding London

AI
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the UK excluding London requiring AI skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 17 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 35 61
Rank change year-on-year +30 +26 +103
Permanent jobs citing AI 7,187 1,599 2,424
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 13.43% 5.80% 4.10%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 17.88% 6.30% 4.78%
Number of salaries quoted 1,199 831 1,123
10th Percentile £27,500 £25,313 £35,850
25th Percentile £38,750 £47,231 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £58,497 £66,206 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -11.64% +10.34% -7.69%
75th Percentile £80,000 £80,000 £81,250
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £97,500
UK median annual salary £70,000 £72,500 £70,000
% change year-on-year -3.45% +3.57% -

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK excluding London

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 UK excluding London.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 40,195 25,394 50,694
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 75.10% 92.08% 85.67%
Number of salaries quoted 23,951 13,564 37,864
10th Percentile £28,250 £29,750 £27,300
25th Percentile £35,000 £40,000 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £66,250 £70,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £82,500 £83,750 £77,500
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -11.41%

AI
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing AI relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

AI job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

AI
Salary Trend in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing AI.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing AI

AI
Salary Histogram in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution for jobs citing AI in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 17 March 2026.

Salary histogram for AI in the UK excluding London

AI
Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing AI within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 17 March 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
North of England +42 2,658 £60,625 -6.73% 450
North West +36 1,975 £61,418 -15.29% 227
Midlands +78 1,583 £52,500 -19.23% 216
South East +33 1,420 £50,000 -33.33% 703
West Midlands +73 1,280 £55,000 -8.33% 108
East of England +17 732 £55,000 -16.95% 219
Yorkshire +36 570 £62,500 +38.89% 167
South West +11 381 £60,000 -2.04% 211
East Midlands +57 314 £50,000 -23.08% 108
Scotland +20 283 £70,000 +55.56% 111
Wales +36 121 £47,500 -24.00% 64
North East +41 113 £55,000 -24.14% 58
Northern Ireland -2 61 £90,000 -5.26% 23
Channel Islands - 8 - -
AI
UK

AI
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 53 (0.74%) SharePoint
2 50 (0.70%) Jupyter
3 27 (0.38%) CMS
4 23 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
4 23 (0.32%) Apache Spark
5 19 (0.26%) Confluence
6 15 (0.21%) Apache
7 14 (0.19%) WordPress
8 11 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 6 (0.083%) Microsoft Exchange
10 5 (0.070%) IIS
10 5 (0.070%) Umbraco
11 3 (0.042%) Apache Solr
11 3 (0.042%) ArcGIS
11 3 (0.042%) Drupal
11 3 (0.042%) Joomla!
12 2 (0.028%) Apache Qpid
12 2 (0.028%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
12 2 (0.028%) CICS
12 2 (0.028%) WebSphere
Applications
1 836 (11.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 700 (9.74%) Chatbot
3 54 (0.75%) Microsoft Office
4 30 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 10 (0.14%) UserZoom
6 8 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.083%) MS Visio
7 6 (0.083%) Photoshop
8 5 (0.070%) Adobe Illustrator
9 4 (0.056%) Weka
10 1 (0.014%) Acrobat
10 1 (0.014%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 1 (0.014%) Camtasia
10 1 (0.014%) InDesign
10 1 (0.014%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 20 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
2 15 (0.21%) NetSuite
3 14 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
4 11 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
5 4 (0.056%) Dynamics AX
5 4 (0.056%) Shopify
5 4 (0.056%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 3 (0.042%) Oracle Assets
6 3 (0.042%) Oracle Receivables
6 3 (0.042%) SAP S/4HANA
7 2 (0.028%) Dynamics GP
7 2 (0.028%) Maximo
7 2 (0.028%) Oracle General Ledger
7 2 (0.028%) Salesforce CRM
7 2 (0.028%) SAP Business One
8 1 (0.014%) FIS Private Capital Suite
8 1 (0.014%) Integrated Workplace Management System
8 1 (0.014%) Odoo
8 1 (0.014%) Oracle Cash Management
8 1 (0.014%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 3,711 (51.63%) Cloud Computing
2 1,188 (16.53%) Azure
3 945 (13.15%) Power Platform
4 792 (11.02%) Azure AI
5 319 (4.44%) AWS
6 170 (2.37%) SaaS
7 105 (1.46%) Azure DevOps
7 105 (1.46%) Microsoft 365
8 101 (1.41%) GitHub
9 79 (1.10%) Adobe Analytics
9 79 (1.10%) GitHub Copilot
10 70 (0.97%) GCP
11 54 (0.75%) Microsoft Copilot
12 52 (0.72%) Snowflake
13 47 (0.65%) Azure Data Factory
14 46 (0.64%) Entra ID
14 46 (0.64%) Power Automate
15 40 (0.56%) Figma
16 33 (0.46%) dbt
17 32 (0.45%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 3,649 (50.77%) Internet
2 135 (1.88%) Broadband
3 32 (0.45%) Unified Communications
4 29 (0.40%) Firewall
5 19 (0.26%) VoIP
6 17 (0.24%) VPN
7 14 (0.19%) DNS
7 14 (0.19%) Telepresence
7 14 (0.19%) WebEx
8 12 (0.17%) Network Security
9 9 (0.13%) TCP/IP
10 8 (0.11%) DHCP
11 6 (0.083%) DMZ
11 6 (0.083%) HTTP
12 5 (0.070%) VLAN
13 4 (0.056%) Intranet
13 4 (0.056%) RTP
13 4 (0.056%) Wireshark
14 3 (0.042%) Modbus
15 2 (0.028%) InfiniBand
Database & Business Intelligence
1 869 (12.09%) Power BI
2 808 (11.24%) Tableau
3 54 (0.75%) SQL Server
4 46 (0.64%) Data Warehouse
5 42 (0.58%) Metadata
6 36 (0.50%) Data Lake
6 36 (0.50%) MongoDB
7 30 (0.42%) PostgreSQL
8 28 (0.39%) Azure SQL Database
9 26 (0.36%) NoSQL
10 18 (0.25%) Big Data
11 17 (0.24%) Elasticsearch
12 16 (0.22%) Looker
13 15 (0.21%) Data Mining
14 14 (0.19%) MySQL
14 14 (0.19%) Snowflake Schema
15 13 (0.18%) SQL Server Reporting Services
16 10 (0.14%) Hadoop
16 10 (0.14%) Redis
16 10 (0.14%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 61 (0.85%) Git
2 51 (0.71%) JIRA
3 50 (0.70%) Visual Studio Code
4 20 (0.28%) Jenkins
5 15 (0.21%) Selenium
6 12 (0.17%) Oracle Forms
7 11 (0.15%) Cypress.io
8 10 (0.14%) MLflow
9 9 (0.13%) IBM UrbanCode
9 9 (0.13%) Visual Studio
10 8 (0.11%) Postman
11 7 (0.097%) GitLab
11 7 (0.097%) JMeter
12 6 (0.083%) Claude Code
12 6 (0.083%) REST Assured
13 5 (0.070%) Appium
13 5 (0.070%) GitBook
13 5 (0.070%) JUnit
14 4 (0.056%) SpecFlow
15 3 (0.042%) Burp Suite
General
1 4,957 (68.97%) Social Skills
2 3,904 (54.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 3,699 (51.47%) Banking
4 535 (7.44%) Analytical Skills
5 511 (7.11%) Finance
6 226 (3.14%) Marketing
7 158 (2.20%) Retail
8 151 (2.10%) Games
9 123 (1.71%) Public Sector
10 119 (1.66%) Legal
11 100 (1.39%) Manufacturing
12 81 (1.13%) Law
13 47 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
14 39 (0.54%) Influencing Skills
14 39 (0.54%) Pharmaceutical
15 36 (0.50%) Organisational Skills
16 35 (0.49%) Telecoms
17 32 (0.45%) Aeronautics
18 30 (0.42%) German Language
19 22 (0.31%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 2,829 (39.36%) Lecturer
2 831 (11.56%) Analyst
3 768 (10.69%) Junior
4 763 (10.62%) Data Analyst
5 757 (10.53%) Junior Analyst
5 757 (10.53%) Junior Data Analyst
6 640 (8.90%) Trainer
7 254 (3.53%) Senior
8 248 (3.45%) Lead
9 186 (2.59%) Developer
10 99 (1.38%) Architect
11 94 (1.31%) Content Editor
12 82 (1.14%) Software Engineer
13 77 (1.07%) Research Scientist
14 72 (1.00%) Data Engineer
15 68 (0.95%) Customer Support Specialist
15 68 (0.95%) Support Specialist
16 66 (0.92%) Consultant
17 65 (0.90%) Solutions Architect
18 56 (0.78%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 96 (1.34%) .NET
2 81 (1.13%) React
3 74 (1.03%) HTML
4 67 (0.93%) scikit-learn
5 61 (0.85%) REST
6 60 (0.83%) Pandas
7 57 (0.79%) NumPy
8 54 (0.75%) Hugging Face
9 52 (0.72%) Matplotlib
10 49 (0.68%) Streamlit
11 48 (0.67%) CSS
12 45 (0.63%) RESTful
13 42 (0.58%) TensorFlow
14 40 (0.56%) PyTorch
15 39 (0.54%) Node.js
16 36 (0.50%) AngularJS
17 30 (0.42%) PySpark
18 28 (0.39%) SOAP
18 28 (0.39%) XML
19 27 (0.38%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 3,669 (51.05%) IoT
2 124 (1.73%) Cloud Native
3 123 (1.71%) Onboarding
4 122 (1.70%) Social Media
5 107 (1.49%) Robotics
6 100 (1.39%) Algorithms
7 97 (1.35%) Product Ownership
8 96 (1.34%) Blog
9 81 (1.13%) Molecular Biology
10 60 (0.83%) Self-Motivation
11 58 (0.81%) Life Science
12 48 (0.67%) Low-Code
13 47 (0.65%) AI Agents
13 47 (0.65%) Mobile App
14 40 (0.56%) Enterprise Software
15 29 (0.40%) Distributed Systems
16 28 (0.39%) Management Information System
16 28 (0.39%) Virtual Team
17 27 (0.38%) Linux Command Line
18 24 (0.33%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 53 (0.74%) Windows
2 47 (0.65%) Android
3 40 (0.56%) Apple iOS
3 40 (0.56%) Linux
4 24 (0.33%) Unix
5 21 (0.29%) Windows Server
6 5 (0.070%) VMS
6 5 (0.070%) Windows Server 2016
7 4 (0.056%) Ubuntu
8 3 (0.042%) Robot Operating System
9 2 (0.028%) Kali Linux
9 2 (0.028%) Mac OS X
9 2 (0.028%) zOS
10 1 (0.014%) OpenWrt
10 1 (0.014%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 4,140 (57.60%) Machine Learning
2 3,792 (52.76%) Cybersecurity
3 3,775 (52.53%) User Experience
4 3,659 (50.91%) Web Development
5 906 (12.61%) Business Intelligence
6 706 (9.82%) Conversational UI
7 524 (7.29%) Agile
8 511 (7.11%) Analytics
9 331 (4.61%) Continuous Improvement
10 326 (4.54%) Problem-Solving
11 317 (4.41%) Roadmaps
12 289 (4.02%) CI/CD
13 280 (3.90%) Decision-Making
14 271 (3.77%) Software Engineering
15 270 (3.76%) Customer Experience
16 261 (3.63%) DevOps
17 229 (3.19%) LLM
18 217 (3.02%) Data Science
19 200 (2.78%) Mentoring
20 194 (2.70%) Chemistry
Programming Languages
1 1,243 (17.30%) Python
2 993 (13.82%) SQL
3 113 (1.57%) Java
4 112 (1.56%) JavaScript
5 87 (1.21%) C#
6 65 (0.90%) TypeScript
7 33 (0.46%) PowerShell
7 33 (0.46%) R
8 31 (0.43%) C++
9 22 (0.31%) Apex Code
10 21 (0.29%) Bash
11 19 (0.26%) Go
12 18 (0.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 16 (0.22%) T-SQL
14 14 (0.19%) Kotlin
15 12 (0.17%) Shell Script
16 11 (0.15%) PL/SQL
16 11 (0.15%) Rust
17 10 (0.14%) Scala
18 9 (0.13%) Swift
Qualifications
1 4,643 (64.60%) Degree
2 4,037 (56.17%) Master's Degree
3 4,020 (55.93%) PhD
4 3,652 (50.81%) Postgraduate
5 776 (10.80%) Azure Certification
6 117 (1.63%) Security Cleared
7 90 (1.25%) AWS Certification
8 74 (1.03%) SC Cleared
9 49 (0.68%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 39 (0.54%) Computer Science Degree
11 36 (0.50%) DBS Check
12 35 (0.49%) DV Cleared
13 25 (0.35%) PMP
14 14 (0.19%) ACCA
15 13 (0.18%) Microsoft Certification
16 11 (0.15%) Six Sigma Green Belt
17 9 (0.13%) BPSS Clearance
17 9 (0.13%) CIMA
18 7 (0.097%) CISM
18 7 (0.097%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 163 (2.27%) Accessibility
2 95 (1.32%) Data Quality
3 68 (0.95%) QA
4 47 (0.65%) GDPR
5 43 (0.60%) WCAG
6 33 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 28 (0.39%) GxP
8 20 (0.28%) NIST
9 17 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
10 15 (0.21%) PMO
11 14 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 12 (0.17%) PCI DSS
13 11 (0.15%) GRC
14 10 (0.14%) Cyber Essentials
15 9 (0.13%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 9 (0.13%) EU AI Act
16 8 (0.11%) HIPAA
17 6 (0.083%) JSP 440
17 6 (0.083%) NCSC
17 6 (0.083%) SLA
System Software
1 72 (1.00%) Docker
2 35 (0.49%) Active Directory
3 12 (0.17%) Virtual Machines
4 11 (0.15%) VMware Infrastructure
5 9 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
6 8 (0.11%) vSphere
7 3 (0.042%) Kamailio
8 2 (0.028%) Ceph
8 2 (0.028%) Lustre
8 2 (0.028%) RACF
8 2 (0.028%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 2 (0.028%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.014%) Firmware
9 1 (0.014%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 77 (1.07%) Kubernetes
2 75 (1.04%) Terraform
3 27 (0.38%) Microsoft Intune
4 21 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
5 20 (0.28%) Ansible
6 14 (0.19%) Cisco CUCM
7 12 (0.17%) Grafana
8 8 (0.11%) Prometheus
9 7 (0.097%) Proxmox
10 6 (0.083%) vCenter Server
11 4 (0.056%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 4 (0.056%) Argo
11 4 (0.056%) SolarWinds Orion
12 3 (0.042%) HP Fortify
12 3 (0.042%) Kubeflow
12 3 (0.042%) SCCM
13 2 (0.028%) Control-M
13 2 (0.028%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
14 1 (0.014%) Nessus
14 1 (0.014%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,219 (16.96%) Microsoft
2 637 (8.86%) PayPal
3 117 (1.63%) Adobe
4 71 (0.99%) Databricks
5 66 (0.92%) Cisco
6 65 (0.90%) Dell
7 62 (0.86%) Oracle
8 57 (0.79%) Google
9 40 (0.56%) Salesforce
10 24 (0.33%) Apple
11 22 (0.31%) VMware
12 20 (0.28%) OpenAI
13 19 (0.26%) SAP
14 15 (0.21%) ServiceNow
15 13 (0.18%) HubSpot
16 12 (0.17%) Blue Prism
16 12 (0.17%) BT
16 12 (0.17%) Red Hat
16 12 (0.17%) Splunk
17 11 (0.15%) Hootsuite