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

6 months to
11 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 56 75
Rank change year-on-year +53 +19 +82
Permanent jobs citing AI 6,807 1,532 1,275
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 16.22% 4.24% 3.69%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 20.63% 4.77% 4.16%
Number of salaries quoted 909 706 705
10th Percentile £24,570 £42,500 £36,250
25th Percentile £38,750 £52,125 £46,306
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £70,000 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% +7.69% +5.69%
75th Percentile £83,500 £85,000 £84,056
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £97,290
UK median annual salary £72,500 £77,000 £75,000
% change year-on-year -5.84% +2.67% +7.14%

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 33,001 32,118 30,629
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 78.62% 88.87% 88.62%
Number of salaries quoted 18,958 14,487 22,822
10th Percentile £27,750 £31,250 £28,000
25th Percentile £33,250 £41,250 £38,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £55,000 £52,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +5.77% -5.45%
75th Percentile £65,000 £70,000 £66,250
90th Percentile £80,000 £83,750 £80,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%

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 11 January 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 11 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
North of England +56 2,546 £62,500 -10.71% 741
North West +44 1,981 £61,418 -12.26% 304
Midlands +104 1,505 £61,250 -5.77% 508
South East +29 1,388 £50,000 -33.33% 1,446
West Midlands +97 1,249 £66,250 +15.22% 175
East of England +83 618 £50,000 -35.06% 671
Yorkshire +53 460 £72,500 +11.54% 321
Scotland +44 347 £68,750 +15.55% 141
South West +34 320 £62,500 - 564
East Midlands +85 266 £41,250 -46.43% 321
Wales +32 118 £55,000 -12.00% 225
North East +55 105 £55,000 -27.63% 118
Northern Ireland -5 41 £86,250 -2.82% 104
Channel Islands - 8 - - 1
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 51 (0.75%) SharePoint
2 24 (0.35%) Confluence
3 20 (0.29%) CMS
4 17 (0.25%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 15 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
6 12 (0.18%) WordPress
7 10 (0.15%) Apache Spark
8 8 (0.12%) Apache
8 8 (0.12%) Apache Airflow
9 6 (0.088%) Apache Solr
10 5 (0.073%) IIS
10 5 (0.073%) Umbraco
11 3 (0.044%) Drupal
11 3 (0.044%) Joomla!
11 3 (0.044%) Kinematics
12 2 (0.029%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
12 2 (0.029%) CICS
12 2 (0.029%) JBoss
12 2 (0.029%) Mendix
12 2 (0.029%) WebSphere
Applications
1 1,015 (14.91%) Chatbot
2 370 (5.44%) Microsoft Excel
3 68 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
4 26 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.088%) Photoshop
6 5 (0.073%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.059%) Adobe Premiere
7 4 (0.059%) InDesign
7 4 (0.059%) Weka
8 3 (0.044%) Notion
8 3 (0.044%) Simulink
9 2 (0.029%) S-PLUS
10 1 (0.015%) Acrobat
10 1 (0.015%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 1 (0.015%) Adobe Illustrator
10 1 (0.015%) Microsoft Project
10 1 (0.015%) MS Visio
10 1 (0.015%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 26 (0.38%) Dynamics CRM
2 20 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
3 15 (0.22%) NetSuite
4 11 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
5 7 (0.10%) Shopify
6 3 (0.044%) Oracle Assets
6 3 (0.044%) Oracle Receivables
6 3 (0.044%) SAP Business One
7 2 (0.029%) Dynamics GP
7 2 (0.029%) Oracle General Ledger
8 1 (0.015%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.015%) Integrated Workplace Management System
8 1 (0.015%) Maximo
8 1 (0.015%) Odoo
8 1 (0.015%) Oracle Cash Management
8 1 (0.015%) Oracle EBS
8 1 (0.015%) Payment Gateway
8 1 (0.015%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 3,655 (53.69%) Cloud Computing
2 723 (10.62%) Azure
3 485 (7.13%) Power Platform
4 300 (4.41%) Azure AI
5 238 (3.50%) AWS
6 164 (2.41%) SaaS
7 137 (2.01%) Azure DevOps
8 104 (1.53%) Microsoft 365
9 103 (1.51%) GitHub
10 87 (1.28%) GitHub Copilot
11 84 (1.23%) GCP
12 59 (0.87%) Snowflake
13 49 (0.72%) Entra ID
14 43 (0.63%) Azure Data Factory
15 42 (0.62%) Power Automate
16 40 (0.59%) Microsoft Copilot
17 34 (0.50%) dbt
18 27 (0.40%) Serverless
19 26 (0.38%) PowerApps
20 25 (0.37%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 3,656 (53.71%) Internet
2 21 (0.31%) Unified Communications
2 21 (0.31%) VoIP
3 16 (0.24%) Firewall
4 14 (0.21%) Telepresence
4 14 (0.21%) WebEx
5 13 (0.19%) Network Security
6 9 (0.13%) Broadband
7 8 (0.12%) VPN
8 6 (0.088%) DMZ
8 6 (0.088%) DNS
8 6 (0.088%) Intranet
8 6 (0.088%) SAN
9 5 (0.073%) Bluetooth
9 5 (0.073%) Modbus
9 5 (0.073%) TCP/IP
10 4 (0.059%) HTTP
10 4 (0.059%) WAN
10 4 (0.059%) Wireshark
10 4 (0.059%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 404 (5.94%) Power BI
2 337 (4.95%) Tableau
3 69 (1.01%) Data Warehouse
4 63 (0.93%) SQL Server
5 36 (0.53%) Metadata
5 36 (0.53%) MongoDB
6 32 (0.47%) Data Lake
7 31 (0.46%) NoSQL
8 25 (0.37%) Big Data
8 25 (0.37%) MySQL
9 20 (0.29%) Azure SQL Database
10 19 (0.28%) PostgreSQL
11 18 (0.26%) Snowflake Schema
12 17 (0.25%) Data Mining
12 17 (0.25%) Hadoop
13 14 (0.21%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 12 (0.18%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 10 (0.15%) Looker
16 9 (0.13%) Elasticsearch
16 9 (0.13%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 75 (1.10%) JIRA
2 54 (0.79%) Git
3 24 (0.35%) Jenkins
4 18 (0.26%) Oracle Forms
5 10 (0.15%) Octopus Deploy
5 10 (0.15%) TeamCity
6 7 (0.10%) Visual Studio
7 6 (0.088%) JUnit
7 6 (0.088%) Selenium
8 5 (0.073%) Burp Suite
8 5 (0.073%) GitBook
9 4 (0.059%) Metasploit
9 4 (0.059%) MLflow
10 3 (0.044%) Cypress.io
10 3 (0.044%) GitLab
10 3 (0.044%) Visual Website Optimizer
11 2 (0.029%) LoadRunner
11 2 (0.029%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.029%) SpecFlow
11 2 (0.029%) WebDriver
General
1 4,524 (66.46%) Social Skills
2 3,933 (57.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 3,681 (54.08%) Banking
4 759 (11.15%) Analytical Skills
5 515 (7.57%) Finance
6 238 (3.50%) Marketing
7 128 (1.88%) Public Sector
8 98 (1.44%) Retail
9 93 (1.37%) Law
10 82 (1.20%) Legal
11 49 (0.72%) Pharmaceutical
12 44 (0.65%) Aviation
13 42 (0.62%) Manufacturing
14 41 (0.60%) Presentation Skills
15 35 (0.51%) Electronics
16 34 (0.50%) Aeronautics
17 33 (0.48%) Aerospace
18 32 (0.47%) Organisational Skills
19 30 (0.44%) Games
19 30 (0.44%) German Language
Job Titles
1 2,833 (41.62%) Lecturer
2 999 (14.68%) Trainer
3 356 (5.23%) Analyst
4 289 (4.25%) Data Analyst
5 277 (4.07%) Junior
6 270 (3.97%) Junior Analyst
6 270 (3.97%) Junior Data Analyst
7 203 (2.98%) Senior
8 172 (2.53%) Developer
9 151 (2.22%) Lead
10 142 (2.09%) Content Editor
11 110 (1.62%) Architect
12 90 (1.32%) Customer Support Specialist
12 90 (1.32%) Support Specialist
13 79 (1.16%) Research Scientist
14 72 (1.06%) Software Engineer
15 68 (1.00%) Business Manager
16 65 (0.95%) Innovation Manager
17 57 (0.84%) Solutions Architect
18 55 (0.81%) Systems Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 100 (1.47%) .NET
2 73 (1.07%) React
3 56 (0.82%) REST
4 53 (0.78%) RESTful
5 52 (0.76%) HTML
6 34 (0.50%) Node.js
7 32 (0.47%) AngularJS
8 30 (0.44%) CSS
9 29 (0.43%) TensorFlow
10 28 (0.41%) SOAP
11 27 (0.40%) XML
12 26 (0.38%) JSON
12 26 (0.38%) PyTorch
13 25 (0.37%) Vue
14 24 (0.35%) Blazor
15 22 (0.32%) Lightning Web Components
15 22 (0.32%) Regular Expression
16 20 (0.29%) Spring
17 19 (0.28%) OAuth
17 19 (0.28%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 3,670 (53.92%) IoT
2 126 (1.85%) Cloud Native
3 114 (1.67%) Robotics
4 105 (1.54%) Product Ownership
5 98 (1.44%) Onboarding
6 89 (1.31%) Molecular Biology
7 85 (1.25%) Blog
8 63 (0.93%) Life Science
9 51 (0.75%) AI Agents
9 51 (0.75%) Enterprise Software
10 49 (0.72%) Algorithms
10 49 (0.72%) Analytical Mindset
11 45 (0.66%) Self-Motivation
12 37 (0.54%) Greenfield Project
13 36 (0.53%) Low-Code
14 33 (0.48%) Data Centre
14 33 (0.48%) Virtual Team
15 25 (0.37%) Linux Command Line
16 22 (0.32%) Management Information System
16 22 (0.32%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 46 (0.68%) Windows
2 31 (0.46%) Linux
3 22 (0.32%) Unix
4 17 (0.25%) Windows Server
5 14 (0.21%) Android
6 9 (0.13%) Apple iOS
7 5 (0.073%) Ubuntu
8 4 (0.059%) Kali Linux
9 3 (0.044%) Mac OS
10 2 (0.029%) Mac OS X
10 2 (0.029%) zOS
11 1 (0.015%) Debian
11 1 (0.015%) OpenWrt
11 1 (0.015%) Robot Operating System
11 1 (0.015%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 4,086 (60.03%) Machine Learning
2 3,792 (55.71%) Cybersecurity
3 3,765 (55.31%) User Experience
4 3,656 (53.71%) Web Development
5 1,018 (14.96%) Conversational UI
6 449 (6.60%) Analytics
7 444 (6.52%) Agile
8 431 (6.33%) Business Intelligence
9 356 (5.23%) Chemistry
10 349 (5.13%) Continuous Improvement
11 286 (4.20%) Problem-Solving
12 282 (4.14%) Decision-Making
13 269 (3.95%) DevOps
14 266 (3.91%) Software Engineering
15 263 (3.86%) Roadmaps
16 226 (3.32%) Customer Experience
17 221 (3.25%) CI/CD
18 197 (2.89%) Content Writing
19 190 (2.79%) Customer Service
20 188 (2.76%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 655 (9.62%) Python
2 523 (7.68%) SQL
3 109 (1.60%) JavaScript
4 94 (1.38%) Java
5 74 (1.09%) TypeScript
6 62 (0.91%) C#
7 50 (0.73%) PowerShell
8 36 (0.53%) R
9 35 (0.51%) C++
10 24 (0.35%) Bash
11 22 (0.32%) Apex Code
12 20 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 17 (0.25%) C
13 17 (0.25%) PL/SQL
13 17 (0.25%) Shell Script
13 17 (0.25%) T-SQL
14 11 (0.16%) Rust
15 10 (0.15%) Bicep
15 10 (0.15%) MATLAB
16 7 (0.10%) Scala
Qualifications
1 5,061 (74.35%) Degree
2 4,220 (62.00%) Master's Degree
3 4,202 (61.73%) PhD
4 3,650 (53.62%) Postgraduate
5 280 (4.11%) Azure Certification
6 165 (2.42%) Security Cleared
7 142 (2.09%) SC Cleared
8 54 (0.79%) Computer Science Degree
9 40 (0.59%) BPSS Clearance
10 30 (0.44%) AWS Certification
11 22 (0.32%) PMP
12 21 (0.31%) DV Cleared
13 20 (0.29%) DBS Check
14 17 (0.25%) Six Sigma Green Belt
15 13 (0.19%) HNC
16 12 (0.18%) HND
17 11 (0.16%) ACCA
17 11 (0.16%) Microsoft Certification
18 8 (0.12%) MBA
19 6 (0.088%) Six Sigma Black Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (1.13%) Data Quality
2 58 (0.85%) Accessibility
3 43 (0.63%) QA
4 40 (0.59%) GxP
5 30 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 25 (0.37%) GDPR
7 18 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
8 16 (0.24%) NIST
9 14 (0.21%) PMO
10 13 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 12 (0.18%) WCAG
12 11 (0.16%) Cyber Essentials
12 11 (0.16%) SLA
13 10 (0.15%) CDISC
13 10 (0.15%) HL7
14 8 (0.12%) EU AI Act
14 8 (0.12%) NCSC
14 8 (0.12%) PCI DSS
15 7 (0.10%) ISO 9001
16 6 (0.088%) JSP 440
System Software
1 68 (1.00%) Docker
2 27 (0.40%) Active Directory
3 21 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
4 17 (0.25%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.18%) VMware Infrastructure
6 8 (0.12%) vSphere
7 6 (0.088%) Hyper-V
8 4 (0.059%) Firmware
9 3 (0.044%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 3 (0.044%) VMware ESXi
10 2 (0.029%) Ceph
10 2 (0.029%) Lustre
10 2 (0.029%) RACF
Systems Management
1 92 (1.35%) Terraform
2 54 (0.79%) Kubernetes
3 37 (0.54%) Microsoft Intune
4 26 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
5 14 (0.21%) Cisco CUCM
6 10 (0.15%) Ansible
7 8 (0.12%) SCCM
8 4 (0.059%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 4 (0.059%) Nessus
8 4 (0.059%) Nmap
9 3 (0.044%) Prometheus
10 2 (0.029%) Argo
10 2 (0.029%) Control-M
10 2 (0.029%) Functional Safety
10 2 (0.029%) HP Fortify
10 2 (0.029%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
10 2 (0.029%) vCenter Server
11 1 (0.015%) Grafana
11 1 (0.015%) Kubeflow
11 1 (0.015%) Kustomize
Vendors
1 999 (14.68%) PayPal
2 736 (10.81%) Microsoft
3 80 (1.18%) Cisco
4 68 (1.00%) Oracle
5 59 (0.87%) Adobe
5 59 (0.87%) Dell
6 52 (0.76%) Databricks
7 47 (0.69%) Salesforce
8 40 (0.59%) Apple
9 38 (0.56%) Google
10 32 (0.47%) Blue Prism
11 23 (0.34%) HubSpot
12 22 (0.32%) Palo Alto
13 19 (0.28%) OpenAI
13 19 (0.28%) SAP
14 18 (0.26%) VMware
15 13 (0.19%) Splunk
16 11 (0.16%) ServiceNow
17 9 (0.13%) Foundry
18 8 (0.12%) Fortinet