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

6 months to
4 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 8 58
Rank change year-on-year -8 +50 +60
Permanent jobs citing AI 5,560 4,323 1,792
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 6.42% 12.44% 3.42%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 9.10% 14.25% 4.31%
Number of salaries quoted 3,105 735 856
10th Percentile £36,000 £28,400 £40,000
25th Percentile £47,930 £38,750 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £60,000 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% -7.69% -0.10%
75th Percentile £85,000 £82,500 £85,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £108,250 £95,000
UK median annual salary £72,500 £70,000 £75,000
% change year-on-year +3.57% -6.67% -

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 61,078 30,335 41,574
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.52% 87.28% 79.30%
Number of salaries quoted 42,944 16,144 21,371
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,750 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £32,249 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £47,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year +15.79% -9.52% -2.78%
75th Percentile £70,000 £63,750 £67,500
90th Percentile £87,500 £80,000 £81,250
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £59,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% -6.78% -1.67%

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 4 October 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 4 October 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 -7 1,640 £66,000 +10.00% 2,686
South East -8 1,251 £62,500 +19.05% 2,474
North West +10 981 £67,500 +8.00% 1,529
Midlands -13 833 £62,500 +4.17% 1,347
South West -1 639 £69,514 +15.86% 1,268
West Midlands -8 561 £62,500 +4.17% 786
East of England +16 523 £60,100 +6.84% 1,185
Yorkshire -10 409 £65,000 -11.86% 822
Scotland -8 303 £85,000 +28.30% 1,431
East Midlands -22 272 £52,500 -19.23% 561
North East -11 250 £66,000 +155.47% 353
Wales -1 236 £65,500 +19.09% 429
Northern Ireland +2 152 £74,830 -6.46% 433
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
1 182 (3.27%) SharePoint
2 65 (1.17%) CMS
3 64 (1.15%) Microsoft Exchange
4 50 (0.90%) Confluence
5 45 (0.81%) Apache
6 39 (0.70%) WordPress
7 26 (0.47%) Apache Airflow
7 26 (0.47%) Apache Spark
8 14 (0.25%) Jupyter
9 12 (0.22%) IIS
10 10 (0.18%) nginx
11 7 (0.13%) OpenStack
11 7 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 7 (0.13%) SAS
12 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
13 4 (0.072%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 4 (0.072%) Headless CMS
14 2 (0.036%) Apache Solr
14 2 (0.036%) Palantir Foundry
14 2 (0.036%) R Markdown
Applications
1 457 (8.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 90 (1.62%) Microsoft Office
3 47 (0.85%) Chatbot
4 45 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 25 (0.45%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.43%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 20 (0.36%) Spreadsheet
8 16 (0.29%) Adobe Illustrator
8 16 (0.29%) Simulink
9 15 (0.27%) Adobe After Effects
9 15 (0.27%) Photoshop
10 14 (0.25%) InDesign
11 9 (0.16%) Microsoft Project
12 8 (0.14%) LaTeX
13 5 (0.090%) Stateflow
14 4 (0.072%) Mathematica
15 3 (0.054%) Elementor
15 3 (0.054%) SOLIDWORKS
15 3 (0.054%) Trello
16 2 (0.036%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 85 (1.53%) Dynamics CRM
2 28 (0.50%) Dynamics GP
3 22 (0.40%) Cloudability
3 22 (0.40%) SAP S/4HANA
4 12 (0.22%) Payment Gateway
5 11 (0.20%) NetSuite
6 10 (0.18%) Shopify
7 8 (0.14%) Sage 50
8 6 (0.11%) Sage 200
9 5 (0.090%) SAP PSCD
10 3 (0.054%) Dynamics NAV
10 3 (0.054%) Magento
10 3 (0.054%) Oracle Payables
10 3 (0.054%) Q-Pulse
10 3 (0.054%) Salesforce CRM
11 2 (0.036%) Eloqua
11 2 (0.036%) FastStats
11 2 (0.036%) FastStats PeopleStage
11 2 (0.036%) SAP Business One
11 2 (0.036%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,553 (27.93%) Azure
2 729 (13.11%) AWS
3 648 (11.65%) Azure AI
4 643 (11.56%) Power Platform
5 447 (8.04%) SaaS
6 316 (5.68%) Microsoft 365
7 286 (5.14%) GitHub
8 284 (5.11%) GCP
9 237 (4.26%) Azure DevOps
10 229 (4.12%) Microsoft Copilot
11 155 (2.79%) Entra ID
11 155 (2.79%) Power Automate
12 146 (2.63%) Serverless
13 124 (2.23%) GitHub Copilot
14 121 (2.18%) Anthropic Claude
15 108 (1.94%) Google Ads
16 92 (1.65%) PowerApps
17 85 (1.53%) Snowflake
18 76 (1.37%) GitHub Actions
19 69 (1.24%) Meta Ads
Communications & Networking
1 79 (1.42%) Firewall
2 58 (1.04%) Internet
3 55 (0.99%) VPN
4 54 (0.97%) DNS
5 50 (0.90%) Broadband
6 44 (0.79%) Network Security
7 20 (0.36%) DHCP
7 20 (0.36%) WAN
8 18 (0.32%) TCP/IP
8 18 (0.32%) VLAN
9 16 (0.29%) LAN
9 16 (0.29%) MQTT
9 16 (0.29%) Wireless
10 15 (0.27%) 5G
11 13 (0.23%) VoIP
11 13 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
12 10 (0.18%) HTTP
13 9 (0.16%) BGP
13 9 (0.16%) CTI
14 8 (0.14%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 496 (8.92%) Power BI
2 283 (5.09%) Tableau
3 200 (3.60%) MongoDB
4 172 (3.09%) Azure SQL Database
5 161 (2.90%) SQL Server
6 97 (1.74%) PostgreSQL
7 77 (1.38%) Metadata
8 74 (1.33%) Relational Database
9 69 (1.24%) Big Data
9 69 (1.24%) Data Warehouse
10 65 (1.17%) Data Lake
11 64 (1.15%) NoSQL
12 44 (0.79%) MySQL
13 42 (0.76%) Redis
14 37 (0.67%) DynamoDB
15 34 (0.61%) Amazon RDS
16 31 (0.56%) BigQuery
17 27 (0.49%) Pinecone
18 26 (0.47%) Power Query
19 22 (0.40%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 206 (3.71%) Git
2 103 (1.85%) JIRA
3 77 (1.38%) GitLab
4 62 (1.12%) Jenkins
5 48 (0.86%) Claude Code
6 25 (0.45%) JUnit
7 24 (0.43%) Maven
8 20 (0.36%) Snyk
9 15 (0.27%) Postman
10 14 (0.25%) MLflow
11 13 (0.23%) Spock
12 12 (0.22%) Selenium
13 10 (0.18%) Mockito
13 10 (0.18%) Visual Studio Code
14 8 (0.14%) IntelliJ
15 7 (0.13%) Cucumber
15 7 (0.13%) Cypress.io
15 7 (0.13%) Vite
16 6 (0.11%) Eclipse
16 6 (0.11%) Storybook
General
1 1,799 (32.36%) Social Skills
2 1,112 (20.00%) Finance
3 714 (12.84%) Analytical Skills
4 617 (11.10%) Marketing
5 528 (9.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 341 (6.13%) Legal
7 340 (6.12%) Public Sector
8 198 (3.56%) Retail
9 193 (3.47%) Law
10 188 (3.38%) Influencing Skills
11 184 (3.31%) Organisational Skills
12 177 (3.18%) Manufacturing
13 121 (2.18%) Banking
14 97 (1.74%) Advertising
15 84 (1.51%) Aerospace
15 84 (1.51%) Games
16 76 (1.37%) Presentation Skills
17 67 (1.21%) Aviation
18 55 (0.99%) Telecoms
19 41 (0.74%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 1,014 (18.24%) Senior
2 674 (12.12%) Developer
3 518 (9.32%) Lead
4 487 (8.76%) Analyst
5 452 (8.13%) Architect
6 439 (7.90%) Software Engineer
7 424 (7.63%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 256 (4.60%) Data Analyst
9 255 (4.59%) Junior
10 232 (4.17%) Data Engineer
11 219 (3.94%) Junior Analyst
12 216 (3.88%) Junior Data Analyst
13 190 (3.42%) Senior Manager
14 188 (3.38%) Solutions Architect
15 183 (3.29%) .NET Developer
16 165 (2.97%) Consultant
17 154 (2.77%) Senior Developer
18 123 (2.21%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
19 107 (1.92%) Marketing Manager
20 106 (1.91%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 355 (6.38%) .NET
2 309 (5.56%) React
3 237 (4.26%) Terraform
4 196 (3.53%) CSS
5 172 (3.09%) HTML
6 171 (3.08%) ASP.NET
7 167 (3.00%) ASP.NET Core
8 155 (2.79%) .NET Core
8 155 (2.79%) REST
9 149 (2.68%) Node.js
10 145 (2.61%) ML.NET
11 121 (2.18%) RESTful
12 111 (2.00%) Blazor
13 80 (1.44%) Vue
14 67 (1.21%) Spring
15 63 (1.13%) Kafka
15 63 (1.13%) LangChain
16 60 (1.08%) AngularJS
17 56 (1.01%) FastAPI
18 53 (0.95%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 280 (5.04%) Onboarding
2 267 (4.80%) Cloud Native
3 260 (4.68%) AI Agents
4 184 (3.31%) Management Information System
5 168 (3.02%) Self-Motivation
6 157 (2.82%) Product Ownership
7 137 (2.46%) Marketing Technology
8 125 (2.25%) Social Media
9 124 (2.23%) Distributed Systems
10 121 (2.18%) Cyber Threat
11 109 (1.96%) Robotics
12 104 (1.87%) Algorithms
13 88 (1.58%) Blog
14 77 (1.38%) Enterprise Software
15 75 (1.35%) Data Centre
16 67 (1.21%) Greenfield Project
16 67 (1.21%) Low-Code
17 53 (0.95%) Driving Licence
18 52 (0.94%) Security Posture
19 51 (0.92%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 181 (3.26%) Linux
2 178 (3.20%) Windows
3 58 (1.04%) Windows Server
4 30 (0.54%) Android
5 22 (0.40%) VMS
6 21 (0.38%) Ubuntu
7 19 (0.34%) Mac OS
8 15 (0.27%) Apple iOS
9 12 (0.22%) Unix
10 11 (0.20%) Debian
11 9 (0.16%) Embedded Linux
12 8 (0.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 5 (0.090%) CentOS
13 5 (0.090%) Solaris
14 4 (0.072%) Robot Operating System
14 4 (0.072%) Windows Server 2019
15 3 (0.054%) AIX
15 3 (0.054%) Gentoo
16 2 (0.036%) Kali Linux
17 1 (0.018%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 930 (16.73%) Agile
2 905 (16.28%) Machine Learning
3 897 (16.13%) Analytics
4 896 (16.12%) Continuous Improvement
5 863 (15.52%) Software Engineering
6 800 (14.39%) Problem-Solving
7 729 (13.11%) CI/CD
8 666 (11.98%) Decision-Making
9 637 (11.46%) Business Intelligence
10 595 (10.70%) DevOps
11 590 (10.61%) Stakeholder Management
12 576 (10.36%) Mentoring
13 566 (10.18%) Roadmaps
14 529 (9.51%) Cybersecurity
15 449 (8.08%) LLM
16 417 (7.50%) Full-Stack Development
17 387 (6.96%) Coaching
18 382 (6.87%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 340 (6.12%) Data Science
19 340 (6.12%) Generative AI
Programming Languages
1 1,338 (24.06%) Python
2 929 (16.71%) SQL
3 446 (8.02%) C#
4 413 (7.43%) JavaScript
5 272 (4.89%) TypeScript
6 218 (3.92%) Java
7 168 (3.02%) C++
8 106 (1.91%) PowerShell
9 74 (1.33%) Bash
10 54 (0.97%) Rust
11 51 (0.92%) C
12 46 (0.83%) Go
13 39 (0.70%) PHP
14 37 (0.67%) Bicep
15 28 (0.50%) R
16 26 (0.47%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 25 (0.45%) MATLAB
18 23 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
18 23 (0.41%) Ruby
19 22 (0.40%) Scala
Qualifications
1 578 (10.40%) Degree
2 498 (8.96%) Azure Certification
3 472 (8.49%) Security Cleared
4 307 (5.52%) SC Cleared
5 165 (2.97%) Computer Science Degree
6 135 (2.43%) DV Cleared
7 110 (1.98%) Master's Degree
8 109 (1.96%) CISSP
9 90 (1.62%) CISM
10 74 (1.33%) ACCA
11 73 (1.31%) AWS Certification
12 71 (1.28%) Microsoft Certification
13 69 (1.24%) CIMA
14 61 (1.10%) A+ Certification
14 61 (1.10%) DBS Check
15 60 (1.08%) Network+ Certification
15 60 (1.08%) PhD
16 49 (0.88%) BPSS Clearance
17 38 (0.68%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 18 (0.32%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 290 (5.22%) Data Quality
2 184 (3.31%) Accessibility
3 179 (3.22%) GDPR
4 156 (2.81%) QA
5 111 (2.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 69 (1.24%) SLA
7 68 (1.22%) GRC
8 64 (1.15%) NIST
9 46 (0.83%) Cyber Essentials
10 37 (0.67%) NCSC
11 29 (0.52%) WCAG
12 28 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 23 (0.41%) PCI DSS
14 19 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 42001
15 18 (0.32%) PMO
16 14 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 12 (0.22%) NIST 800
17 12 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
18 11 (0.20%) ISO 9001
19 9 (0.16%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 304 (5.47%) Docker
2 130 (2.34%) Active Directory
3 56 (1.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.72%) Virtual Machines
5 25 (0.45%) Firmware
5 25 (0.45%) Hyper-V
6 20 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
7 17 (0.31%) vSphere
8 12 (0.22%) Embedded Firmware
9 8 (0.14%) Ceph
10 3 (0.054%) VMware NSX
11 2 (0.036%) Lustre
11 2 (0.036%) NFS
11 2 (0.036%) Snort
11 2 (0.036%) VMware Workstation
12 1 (0.018%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 303 (5.45%) Kubernetes
2 130 (2.34%) Microsoft Intune
3 57 (1.03%) Ansible
4 49 (0.88%) Prometheus
5 48 (0.86%) Grafana
6 20 (0.36%) Puppet
7 18 (0.32%) Podman
8 12 (0.22%) Argo
9 10 (0.18%) Istio
10 7 (0.13%) Check_MK
10 7 (0.13%) Proxmox
10 7 (0.13%) Single Sign-On
11 5 (0.090%) Progress Chef
12 4 (0.072%) Kubeflow
12 4 (0.072%) Nagios
13 3 (0.054%) BMC PATROL
13 3 (0.054%) linkerd
13 3 (0.054%) Nessus
13 3 (0.054%) Plesk
13 3 (0.054%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
Vendors
1 1,350 (24.28%) Microsoft
2 287 (5.16%) Google
3 120 (2.16%) YouTube
4 118 (2.12%) Databricks
5 109 (1.96%) OpenAI
6 107 (1.92%) Adobe
6 107 (1.92%) Salesforce
7 87 (1.56%) Cisco
8 76 (1.37%) Oracle
9 69 (1.24%) ServiceNow
10 67 (1.21%) VMware
11 66 (1.19%) Apple
12 60 (1.08%) CyberArk
13 55 (0.99%) TikTok
14 53 (0.95%) Dell
14 53 (0.95%) HubSpot
15 51 (0.92%) Samsung
16 50 (0.90%) SAP
17 44 (0.79%) Sage
18 42 (0.76%) Facebook