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 8 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 28 41
Rank change year-on-year +23 +13 +128
Permanent jobs citing AI 7,446 2,123 3,424
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 11.36% 7.48% 5.01%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.86% 8.12% 5.99%
Number of salaries quoted 1,603 850 1,243
10th Percentile £32,550 £25,000 £35,092
25th Percentile £45,000 £45,000 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £66,200 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.37% +10.33% -11.11%
75th Percentile £82,500 £79,750 £80,001
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £95,000
UK median annual salary £70,000 £70,000 £70,000
% change year-on-year - - -3.45%

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 46,954 26,140 57,181
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 71.63% 92.05% 83.65%
Number of salaries quoted 29,249 13,851 40,988
10th Percentile £29,750 £27,750 £27,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £36,250 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year - +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £67,875 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £82,500 £77,500
UK median annual salary £60,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year - +9.09% -10.10%

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 8 May 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 8 May 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 +32 2,520 £66,374 +3.91% 472
North West +52 1,770 £70,000 -3.45% 275
Midlands +19 1,688 £52,500 -12.86% 221
South East +21 1,545 £60,000 -14.29% 554
West Midlands +22 1,329 £52,500 -8.70% 131
East of England +35 828 £59,450 -10.23% 149
Yorkshire +15 618 £65,000 +44.44% 120
South West +7 453 £60,000 +4.40% 177
East Midlands +19 370 £55,000 -12.00% 89
Scotland +8 232 £70,000 +55.56% 80
Wales +28 149 £53,171 -17.24% 39
North East +16 132 £59,000 +2.61% 78
Northern Ireland +10 69 £90,000 -10.00% 21
Channel Islands +2 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 55 (0.74%) SharePoint
2 50 (0.67%) Jupyter
3 35 (0.47%) CMS
4 31 (0.42%) Apache Spark
5 29 (0.39%) Apache Airflow
6 26 (0.35%) Confluence
7 18 (0.24%) WordPress
8 16 (0.21%) Apache
9 7 (0.094%) Microsoft Exchange
9 7 (0.094%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 5 (0.067%) IIS
11 3 (0.040%) ArcGIS
11 3 (0.040%) Umbraco
12 2 (0.027%) Apache Qpid
12 2 (0.027%) JBoss
12 2 (0.027%) SAS
12 2 (0.027%) Sitecore CMS
12 2 (0.027%) WebSphere
13 1 (0.013%) Kinematics
13 1 (0.013%) Moodle
Applications
1 1,201 (16.13%) Microsoft Excel
2 84 (1.13%) Chatbot
3 53 (0.71%) Microsoft Office
4 32 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 16 (0.21%) UserZoom
6 9 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.081%) MS Visio
8 5 (0.067%) Photoshop
9 4 (0.054%) Adobe Illustrator
9 4 (0.054%) Simulink
10 3 (0.040%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 3 (0.040%) Camtasia
11 2 (0.027%) Weka
12 1 (0.013%) Adobe Premiere
12 1 (0.013%) AutoCAD
12 1 (0.013%) Notion
12 1 (0.013%) Sketch
12 1 (0.013%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 20 (0.27%) Cloudability
2 13 (0.17%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.12%) NetSuite
4 8 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
4 8 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
5 4 (0.054%) Dynamics AX
5 4 (0.054%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 2 (0.027%) Dynamics GP
6 2 (0.027%) Oracle Assets
6 2 (0.027%) Oracle Payables
6 2 (0.027%) Sage 50
6 2 (0.027%) Salesforce CRM
7 1 (0.013%) Maximo
7 1 (0.013%) Oracle Cash Management
7 1 (0.013%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.013%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.013%) Primavera
7 1 (0.013%) Sage 200
7 1 (0.013%) SAP Business One
7 1 (0.013%) SAP EHS
Cloud Services
1 3,425 (46.00%) Cloud Computing
2 1,952 (26.22%) Azure
3 1,531 (20.56%) Azure AI
4 1,318 (17.70%) Power Platform
5 419 (5.63%) AWS
6 182 (2.44%) SaaS
7 122 (1.64%) GCP
8 111 (1.49%) Adobe Analytics
9 109 (1.46%) Azure DevOps
10 108 (1.45%) Microsoft 365
11 100 (1.34%) GitHub
12 77 (1.03%) Snowflake
13 75 (1.01%) Microsoft Copilot
14 66 (0.89%) Figma
15 61 (0.82%) GitHub Copilot
16 60 (0.81%) Serverless
17 45 (0.60%) Entra ID
18 44 (0.59%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 43 (0.58%) Power Automate
20 36 (0.48%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 3,365 (45.19%) Internet
2 175 (2.35%) Broadband
3 36 (0.48%) Firewall
4 24 (0.32%) Unified Communications
5 20 (0.27%) DNS
6 19 (0.26%) Network Security
7 18 (0.24%) VPN
8 11 (0.15%) DHCP
9 10 (0.13%) TCP/IP
10 9 (0.12%) VoIP
11 8 (0.11%) MQTT
12 7 (0.094%) HTTP
12 7 (0.094%) Intranet
12 7 (0.094%) VLAN
12 7 (0.094%) Wireless
13 6 (0.081%) DMZ
13 6 (0.081%) Telepresence
13 6 (0.081%) WebEx
14 3 (0.040%) RTP
14 3 (0.040%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1,244 (16.71%) Power BI
2 1,188 (15.95%) Tableau
3 84 (1.13%) SQL Server
4 59 (0.79%) Data Warehouse
5 54 (0.73%) MongoDB
6 49 (0.66%) Data Lake
6 49 (0.66%) Metadata
7 43 (0.58%) Azure SQL Database
8 40 (0.54%) PostgreSQL
9 26 (0.35%) NoSQL
10 25 (0.34%) Looker
11 23 (0.31%) Elasticsearch
12 20 (0.27%) Big Data
13 17 (0.23%) Redis
14 15 (0.20%) MySQL
15 14 (0.19%) Amazon Redshift
16 13 (0.17%) BigQuery
16 13 (0.17%) Snowflake Schema
17 11 (0.15%) Relational Database
17 11 (0.15%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 68 (0.91%) Git
2 50 (0.67%) Visual Studio Code
3 45 (0.60%) JIRA
4 23 (0.31%) Jenkins
5 17 (0.23%) GitLab
5 17 (0.23%) MLflow
5 17 (0.23%) Snyk
6 16 (0.21%) Selenium
7 13 (0.17%) Claude Code
8 11 (0.15%) Postman
9 10 (0.13%) Cypress.io
10 9 (0.12%) IBM UrbanCode
10 9 (0.12%) Visual Studio
11 8 (0.11%) JUnit
11 8 (0.11%) Oracle Forms
11 8 (0.11%) SpecFlow
12 5 (0.067%) Appium
12 5 (0.067%) JMeter
12 5 (0.067%) Maven
12 5 (0.067%) REST Assured
General
1 5,363 (72.03%) Social Skills
2 3,650 (49.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 3,431 (46.08%) Banking
4 508 (6.82%) Finance
5 354 (4.75%) Analytical Skills
6 265 (3.56%) Marketing
7 204 (2.74%) Games
8 151 (2.03%) Retail
9 125 (1.68%) Public Sector
10 106 (1.42%) Manufacturing
11 103 (1.38%) Legal
12 68 (0.91%) Law
13 50 (0.67%) Influencing Skills
13 50 (0.67%) Organisational Skills
14 44 (0.59%) Automotive
15 31 (0.42%) Electronics
15 31 (0.42%) Presentation Skills
16 30 (0.40%) Pharmaceutical
17 22 (0.30%) German Language
17 22 (0.30%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 2,563 (34.42%) Lecturer
2 1,255 (16.85%) Analyst
3 1,146 (15.39%) Junior
4 1,145 (15.38%) Data Analyst
5 1,135 (15.24%) Junior Analyst
5 1,135 (15.24%) Junior Data Analyst
6 382 (5.13%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 377 (5.06%) Senior
8 342 (4.59%) Lead
9 248 (3.33%) Developer
10 171 (2.30%) Architect
11 133 (1.79%) Software Engineer
12 107 (1.44%) Data Engineer
13 80 (1.07%) Solutions Architect
14 64 (0.86%) Consultant
14 64 (0.86%) Designer
15 59 (0.79%) Python Engineer
16 55 (0.74%) Data Scientist
17 50 (0.67%) Trainee
18 49 (0.66%) Sales Executive
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 142 (1.91%) .NET
2 100 (1.34%) React
3 85 (1.14%) HTML
4 68 (0.91%) CSS
5 67 (0.90%) scikit-learn
6 65 (0.87%) REST
7 59 (0.79%) Pandas
8 58 (0.78%) NumPy
9 56 (0.75%) Node.js
10 55 (0.74%) Hugging Face
11 52 (0.70%) Matplotlib
12 50 (0.67%) RESTful
12 50 (0.67%) Streamlit
13 44 (0.59%) AngularJS
14 41 (0.55%) TensorFlow
15 40 (0.54%) PyTorch
16 38 (0.51%) .NET Core
17 34 (0.46%) ASP.NET
17 34 (0.46%) Vue
18 32 (0.43%) LangChain
Miscellaneous
1 3,379 (45.38%) IoT
2 156 (2.10%) Social Media
3 130 (1.75%) Cloud Native
4 118 (1.58%) Onboarding
5 114 (1.53%) Robotics
6 98 (1.32%) Product Ownership
7 96 (1.29%) Algorithms
8 73 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
9 71 (0.95%) Blog
10 57 (0.77%) Low-Code
11 55 (0.74%) Distributed Systems
12 54 (0.73%) Mobile App
13 53 (0.71%) AI Agents
13 53 (0.71%) Life Science
14 51 (0.68%) Enterprise Software
15 48 (0.64%) Data Centre
16 44 (0.59%) Virtual Team
17 41 (0.55%) Management Information System
18 31 (0.42%) Public Cloud
19 23 (0.31%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 59 (0.79%) Windows
2 48 (0.64%) Linux
3 43 (0.58%) Android
4 36 (0.48%) Apple iOS
5 24 (0.32%) Windows Server
6 18 (0.24%) Unix
7 10 (0.13%) VMS
8 5 (0.067%) Ubuntu
8 5 (0.067%) Windows Server 2016
9 3 (0.040%) Mac OS
9 3 (0.040%) Robot Operating System
10 1 (0.013%) Kali Linux
10 1 (0.013%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,917 (52.61%) Machine Learning
2 3,550 (47.68%) Cybersecurity
3 3,515 (47.21%) User Experience
4 3,383 (45.43%) Web Development
5 1,288 (17.30%) Business Intelligence
6 578 (7.76%) Analytics
7 565 (7.59%) Agile
8 391 (5.25%) Roadmaps
9 390 (5.24%) Artificial Intelligence Engineering
10 362 (4.86%) Problem-Solving
11 357 (4.79%) CI/CD
12 341 (4.58%) Software Engineering
13 316 (4.24%) Continuous Improvement
14 305 (4.10%) DevOps
15 283 (3.80%) Decision-Making
16 280 (3.76%) Customer Experience
17 254 (3.41%) LLM
18 229 (3.08%) Mentoring
19 217 (2.91%) Data Science
20 194 (2.61%) Generative AI
Programming Languages
1 2,033 (27.30%) Python
2 1,401 (18.82%) SQL
3 135 (1.81%) JavaScript
4 132 (1.77%) C#
5 126 (1.69%) Java
6 68 (0.91%) TypeScript
7 52 (0.70%) C++
8 33 (0.44%) PowerShell
9 32 (0.43%) R
10 28 (0.38%) Bash
11 22 (0.30%) C
12 21 (0.28%) Go
13 15 (0.20%) Apex Code
13 15 (0.20%) Kotlin
13 15 (0.20%) T-SQL
14 12 (0.16%) Scala
15 11 (0.15%) Rust
16 10 (0.13%) Bicep
16 10 (0.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 9 (0.12%) PHP
Qualifications
1 3,708 (49.80%) Degree
2 3,448 (46.31%) Master's Degree
3 3,416 (45.88%) PhD
4 3,364 (45.18%) Postgraduate
5 1,476 (19.82%) Azure Certification
6 135 (1.81%) Security Cleared
7 104 (1.40%) AWS Certification
8 81 (1.09%) SC Cleared
9 52 (0.70%) Computer Science Degree
10 49 (0.66%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 49 (0.66%) DV Cleared
11 48 (0.64%) ACCA
12 47 (0.63%) DBS Check
13 44 (0.59%) CIMA
14 22 (0.30%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 14 (0.19%) CISSP
16 13 (0.17%) PMP
17 10 (0.13%) Microsoft Certification
18 9 (0.12%) BPSS Clearance
18 9 (0.12%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 195 (2.62%) Accessibility
2 120 (1.61%) Data Quality
3 78 (1.05%) GDPR
4 77 (1.03%) QA
5 47 (0.63%) WCAG
6 43 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 33 (0.44%) GRC
8 25 (0.34%) NIST
9 17 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 17 (0.23%) GxP
9 17 (0.23%) PCI DSS
10 16 (0.21%) SLA
11 13 (0.17%) IFRS
12 12 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 11 (0.15%) GAAP
14 10 (0.13%) SOC 2
15 9 (0.12%) Actionable Recommendations
15 9 (0.12%) Cyber Essentials
15 9 (0.12%) NCSC
15 9 (0.12%) PMO
System Software
1 96 (1.29%) Docker
2 46 (0.62%) Virtual Machines
3 41 (0.55%) Active Directory
4 8 (0.11%) Firmware
4 8 (0.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (0.11%) vSphere
5 3 (0.040%) Embedded Firmware
5 3 (0.040%) Kamailio
6 2 (0.027%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.013%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.013%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 104 (1.40%) Kubernetes
2 77 (1.03%) Terraform
3 21 (0.28%) Ansible
3 21 (0.28%) Microsoft Intune
4 19 (0.26%) Grafana
5 16 (0.21%) Single Sign-On
6 13 (0.17%) Prometheus
7 8 (0.11%) Proxmox
8 6 (0.081%) Cisco CUCM
8 6 (0.081%) vCenter Server
9 5 (0.067%) Functional Safety
9 5 (0.067%) Kubeflow
10 4 (0.054%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 4 (0.054%) Podman
10 4 (0.054%) SolarWinds Orion
11 3 (0.040%) Argo
12 2 (0.027%) Puppet
13 1 (0.013%) HP Fortify
13 1 (0.013%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,630 (21.89%) Microsoft
2 172 (2.31%) Adobe
3 105 (1.41%) Databricks
4 80 (1.07%) Google
5 71 (0.95%) Dell
6 57 (0.77%) Cisco
7 56 (0.75%) Salesforce
8 47 (0.63%) Apple
9 42 (0.56%) Oracle
10 38 (0.51%) OpenAI
10 38 (0.51%) ServiceNow
11 23 (0.31%) SAP
12 21 (0.28%) CrowdStrike
13 20 (0.27%) HubSpot
13 20 (0.27%) VMware
14 18 (0.24%) Tenable
15 17 (0.23%) Palo Alto
15 17 (0.23%) PayPal
16 13 (0.17%) Splunk
17 11 (0.15%) Red Hat