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

6 months to
17 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 58 73
Rank change year-on-year +55 +15 +93
Permanent jobs citing AI 6,872 1,527 1,418
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 15.94% 4.27% 3.82%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 20.38% 4.79% 4.33%
Number of salaries quoted 930 698 801
10th Percentile £24,570 £42,500 £36,250
25th Percentile £38,750 £52,500 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £59,450 £70,000 £61,439
Median % change year-on-year -15.07% +13.93% -0.10%
75th Percentile £82,500 £85,000 £84,056
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £96,539
UK median annual salary £71,500 £77,000 £70,875
% change year-on-year -7.14% +8.64% +1.25%

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 33,725 31,892 32,736
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 78.25% 89.15% 88.29%
Number of salaries quoted 19,447 14,332 24,508
10th Percentile £27,750 £31,250 £28,000
25th Percentile £33,750 £41,250 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £65,000 £70,000 £66,000
90th Percentile £80,000 £83,750 £80,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £58,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +3.45% -7.20%

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 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 17 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 +55 2,550 £61,959 -9.22% 580
North West +41 1,983 £60,000 -13.67% 256
Midlands +103 1,511 £60,000 -7.69% 370
South East +30 1,412 £50,000 -33.33% 1,242
West Midlands +92 1,248 £63,750 +10.87% 145
East of England +82 626 £51,250 -32.57% 499
Yorkshire +54 462 £70,000 +8.82% 234
Scotland +46 349 £68,750 +15.55% 121
South West +35 331 £62,500 - 409
East Midlands +82 273 £42,500 -44.81% 213
Wales +41 121 £55,000 -2.22% 173
North East +54 105 £55,000 -27.63% 94
Northern Ireland -1 47 £90,000 +1.41% 74
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 50 (0.73%) SharePoint
2 23 (0.33%) Confluence
3 20 (0.29%) CMS
4 17 (0.25%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 13 (0.19%) Microsoft Exchange
6 11 (0.16%) WordPress
7 10 (0.15%) Apache Spark
8 9 (0.13%) Apache
9 8 (0.12%) Apache Airflow
10 6 (0.087%) Apache Solr
11 5 (0.073%) IIS
11 5 (0.073%) Umbraco
12 3 (0.044%) Drupal
12 3 (0.044%) Joomla!
13 2 (0.029%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
13 2 (0.029%) CICS
13 2 (0.029%) JBoss
13 2 (0.029%) Kinematics
13 2 (0.029%) Mendix
13 2 (0.029%) WebSphere
Applications
1 1,002 (14.58%) Chatbot
2 423 (6.16%) Microsoft Excel
3 67 (0.97%) Microsoft Office
4 25 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.087%) Photoshop
6 5 (0.073%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.058%) Adobe Premiere
7 4 (0.058%) InDesign
7 4 (0.058%) Weka
8 3 (0.044%) Notion
8 3 (0.044%) Simulink
9 2 (0.029%) S-PLUS
9 2 (0.029%) UserZoom
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
Business Applications
1 28 (0.41%) 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 (53.19%) Cloud Computing
2 767 (11.16%) Azure
3 537 (7.81%) Power Platform
4 350 (5.09%) Azure AI
5 234 (3.41%) AWS
6 164 (2.39%) SaaS
7 136 (1.98%) Azure DevOps
8 106 (1.54%) GitHub
9 99 (1.44%) Microsoft 365
10 88 (1.28%) GitHub Copilot
11 73 (1.06%) GCP
12 59 (0.86%) Snowflake
13 52 (0.76%) Entra ID
14 44 (0.64%) Azure Data Factory
15 43 (0.63%) Power Automate
16 40 (0.58%) Microsoft Copilot
17 34 (0.49%) dbt
18 29 (0.42%) Serverless
19 27 (0.39%) PowerApps
20 26 (0.38%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 3,656 (53.20%) Internet
2 25 (0.36%) Unified Communications
3 22 (0.32%) VoIP
4 19 (0.28%) Firewall
5 17 (0.25%) Network Security
6 14 (0.20%) Telepresence
6 14 (0.20%) WebEx
7 11 (0.16%) Broadband
8 10 (0.15%) VPN
9 7 (0.10%) DNS
10 6 (0.087%) DMZ
10 6 (0.087%) Intranet
10 6 (0.087%) SAN
10 6 (0.087%) TCP/IP
11 5 (0.073%) HTTP
11 5 (0.073%) Modbus
11 5 (0.073%) VLAN
11 5 (0.073%) Wireshark
12 4 (0.058%) Intrusion Detection
12 4 (0.058%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 457 (6.65%) Power BI
2 389 (5.66%) Tableau
3 62 (0.90%) Data Warehouse
3 62 (0.90%) SQL Server
4 37 (0.54%) Metadata
5 34 (0.49%) NoSQL
6 33 (0.48%) MongoDB
7 32 (0.47%) Data Lake
8 25 (0.36%) Big Data
9 21 (0.31%) MySQL
10 20 (0.29%) Azure SQL Database
11 18 (0.26%) Snowflake Schema
12 17 (0.25%) Data Mining
12 17 (0.25%) Hadoop
13 14 (0.20%) PostgreSQL
13 14 (0.20%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 12 (0.17%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 10 (0.15%) Looker
16 9 (0.13%) Elasticsearch
16 9 (0.13%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 74 (1.08%) JIRA
2 56 (0.81%) Git
3 23 (0.33%) Jenkins
4 18 (0.26%) Oracle Forms
5 9 (0.13%) Octopus Deploy
5 9 (0.13%) TeamCity
6 8 (0.12%) Visual Studio
7 6 (0.087%) JUnit
7 6 (0.087%) Selenium
8 5 (0.073%) Burp Suite
8 5 (0.073%) GitBook
9 4 (0.058%) Metasploit
9 4 (0.058%) MLflow
10 3 (0.044%) Cypress.io
10 3 (0.044%) GitLab
10 3 (0.044%) Visual Website Optimizer
11 2 (0.029%) Gradle
11 2 (0.029%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.029%) SpecFlow
11 2 (0.029%) WebDriver
General
1 4,577 (66.60%) Social Skills
2 3,925 (57.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 3,682 (53.58%) Banking
4 746 (10.86%) Analytical Skills
5 517 (7.52%) Finance
6 226 (3.29%) Marketing
7 129 (1.88%) Public Sector
8 99 (1.44%) Retail
9 88 (1.28%) Law
9 88 (1.28%) Legal
10 51 (0.74%) Pharmaceutical
11 43 (0.63%) Aviation
12 42 (0.61%) Manufacturing
13 41 (0.60%) Presentation Skills
14 35 (0.51%) Electronics
15 34 (0.49%) Aeronautics
16 33 (0.48%) Aerospace
17 32 (0.47%) Games
18 31 (0.45%) Organisational Skills
18 31 (0.45%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 2,833 (41.23%) Lecturer
2 986 (14.35%) Trainer
3 410 (5.97%) Analyst
4 342 (4.98%) Data Analyst
5 331 (4.82%) Junior
6 324 (4.71%) Junior Analyst
6 324 (4.71%) Junior Data Analyst
7 203 (2.95%) Senior
8 170 (2.47%) Developer
9 156 (2.27%) Lead
10 142 (2.07%) Content Editor
11 98 (1.43%) Architect
12 90 (1.31%) Customer Support Specialist
12 90 (1.31%) Support Specialist
13 79 (1.15%) Research Scientist
14 74 (1.08%) Software Engineer
15 68 (0.99%) Business Manager
16 65 (0.95%) Innovation Manager
17 60 (0.87%) Data Engineer
18 58 (0.84%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 100 (1.46%) .NET
2 74 (1.08%) React
3 60 (0.87%) REST
4 52 (0.76%) HTML
5 49 (0.71%) RESTful
6 34 (0.49%) AngularJS
6 34 (0.49%) Node.js
7 30 (0.44%) CSS
8 29 (0.42%) TensorFlow
9 28 (0.41%) SOAP
10 27 (0.39%) Vue
10 27 (0.39%) XML
11 26 (0.38%) JSON
11 26 (0.38%) PyTorch
12 24 (0.35%) Blazor
12 24 (0.35%) Spring
13 23 (0.33%) Lightning Web Components
14 22 (0.32%) Regular Expression
14 22 (0.32%) Spring Boot
15 20 (0.29%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 3,670 (53.41%) IoT
2 128 (1.86%) Cloud Native
3 114 (1.66%) Robotics
4 107 (1.56%) Product Ownership
5 98 (1.43%) Onboarding
6 89 (1.30%) Molecular Biology
7 85 (1.24%) Blog
8 66 (0.96%) Life Science
9 52 (0.76%) AI Agents
10 50 (0.73%) Enterprise Software
11 48 (0.70%) Analytical Mindset
12 47 (0.68%) Algorithms
12 47 (0.68%) Self-Motivation
13 37 (0.54%) Low-Code
14 36 (0.52%) Greenfield Project
15 32 (0.47%) Data Centre
16 31 (0.45%) Virtual Team
17 25 (0.36%) Linux Command Line
18 23 (0.33%) Management Information System
18 23 (0.33%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 47 (0.68%) Windows
2 35 (0.51%) Linux
3 23 (0.33%) Unix
4 17 (0.25%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.17%) Android
6 7 (0.10%) Apple iOS
7 6 (0.087%) Ubuntu
8 4 (0.058%) Kali Linux
9 2 (0.029%) Mac OS
9 2 (0.029%) Mac OS X
9 2 (0.029%) VMS
9 2 (0.029%) zOS
10 1 (0.015%) Debian
10 1 (0.015%) OpenWrt
10 1 (0.015%) Robot Operating System
10 1 (0.015%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 4,091 (59.53%) Machine Learning
2 3,790 (55.15%) Cybersecurity
3 3,769 (54.85%) User Experience
4 3,656 (53.20%) Web Development
5 1,005 (14.62%) Conversational UI
6 485 (7.06%) Business Intelligence
7 453 (6.59%) Analytics
8 451 (6.56%) Agile
9 343 (4.99%) Chemistry
9 343 (4.99%) Continuous Improvement
10 291 (4.23%) Problem-Solving
11 286 (4.16%) Decision-Making
12 279 (4.06%) DevOps
13 270 (3.93%) Software Engineering
14 249 (3.62%) Roadmaps
15 230 (3.35%) Customer Experience
16 227 (3.30%) CI/CD
17 197 (2.87%) Content Writing
18 187 (2.72%) Coaching
19 186 (2.71%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 707 (10.29%) Python
2 573 (8.34%) SQL
3 109 (1.59%) JavaScript
4 96 (1.40%) Java
5 76 (1.11%) TypeScript
6 61 (0.89%) C#
7 49 (0.71%) PowerShell
8 35 (0.51%) R
9 34 (0.49%) C++
10 26 (0.38%) Bash
11 22 (0.32%) Apex Code
12 19 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 17 (0.25%) C
13 17 (0.25%) PL/SQL
13 17 (0.25%) Shell Script
14 16 (0.23%) T-SQL
15 12 (0.17%) Rust
16 10 (0.15%) Bicep
16 10 (0.15%) MATLAB
17 9 (0.13%) Go
Qualifications
1 5,045 (73.41%) Degree
2 4,207 (61.22%) Master's Degree
3 4,190 (60.97%) PhD
4 3,650 (53.11%) Postgraduate
5 336 (4.89%) Azure Certification
6 169 (2.46%) Security Cleared
7 142 (2.07%) SC Cleared
8 53 (0.77%) Computer Science Degree
9 40 (0.58%) BPSS Clearance
10 33 (0.48%) AWS Certification
11 23 (0.33%) DV Cleared
12 22 (0.32%) DBS Check
12 22 (0.32%) PMP
13 17 (0.25%) Six Sigma Green Belt
14 13 (0.19%) HNC
15 12 (0.17%) HND
15 12 (0.17%) Microsoft Certification
16 11 (0.16%) ACCA
17 7 (0.10%) MBA
18 6 (0.087%) Six Sigma Black Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 74 (1.08%) Data Quality
2 64 (0.93%) Accessibility
3 44 (0.64%) QA
4 42 (0.61%) GxP
5 31 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 26 (0.38%) GDPR
7 18 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
8 17 (0.25%) NIST
9 14 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 14 (0.20%) PMO
10 13 (0.19%) WCAG
11 11 (0.16%) SLA
12 10 (0.15%) CDISC
12 10 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials
12 10 (0.15%) HL7
13 9 (0.13%) EU AI Act
13 9 (0.13%) PCI DSS
14 8 (0.12%) NCSC
15 7 (0.10%) ISO 9001
16 6 (0.087%) JSP 440
System Software
1 64 (0.93%) Docker
2 29 (0.42%) Active Directory
3 21 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
4 18 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (0.16%) VMware Infrastructure
6 9 (0.13%) vSphere
7 4 (0.058%) Firmware
7 4 (0.058%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.044%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 3 (0.044%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.029%) Ceph
9 2 (0.029%) Lustre
9 2 (0.029%) RACF
10 1 (0.015%) Kamailio
Systems Management
1 93 (1.35%) Terraform
2 58 (0.84%) Kubernetes
3 37 (0.54%) Microsoft Intune
4 26 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
5 14 (0.20%) Cisco CUCM
6 12 (0.17%) Ansible
7 8 (0.12%) SCCM
8 5 (0.073%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 5 (0.073%) Prometheus
9 4 (0.058%) Nessus
9 4 (0.058%) Nmap
10 3 (0.044%) Argo
10 3 (0.044%) Grafana
10 3 (0.044%) vCenter Server
11 2 (0.029%) Control-M
11 2 (0.029%) HP Fortify
11 2 (0.029%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
11 2 (0.029%) Proxmox
12 1 (0.015%) Jamf Pro
12 1 (0.015%) SolarWinds Orion
Vendors
1 986 (14.35%) PayPal
2 785 (11.42%) Microsoft
3 81 (1.18%) Cisco
4 67 (0.97%) Oracle
5 60 (0.87%) Dell
6 57 (0.83%) Adobe
7 53 (0.77%) Databricks
8 47 (0.68%) Salesforce
9 37 (0.54%) Google
10 36 (0.52%) Apple
11 32 (0.47%) Blue Prism
12 23 (0.33%) HubSpot
13 21 (0.31%) OpenAI
14 19 (0.28%) VMware
15 18 (0.26%) Palo Alto
15 18 (0.26%) SAP
16 14 (0.20%) Splunk
17 10 (0.15%) Fortinet
17 10 (0.15%) ServiceNow
18 8 (0.12%) BT