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

6 months to
20 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 58 73
Rank change year-on-year +55 +15 +93
Permanent jobs citing AI 6,871 1,513 1,472
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 15.88% 4.27% 3.83%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 20.36% 4.78% 4.35%
Number of salaries quoted 945 689 823
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 £62,500
Median % change year-on-year -15.07% +12.00% +0.67%
75th Percentile £82,500 £85,000 £84,056
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £96,539
UK median annual salary £72,000 £77,000 £70,576
% change year-on-year -6.49% +9.10% +0.82%

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 33,750 31,666 33,822
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 78.01% 89.31% 87.98%
Number of salaries quoted 19,471 14,162 25,426
10th Percentile £27,800 £31,250 £27,500
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 £65,000
90th Percentile £80,000 £83,750 £80,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year -8.33% +4.35% -8.00%

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 20 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 20 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 +53 2,554 £61,959 -9.22% 670
North West +44 1,987 £61,418 -11.63% 293
Midlands +107 1,511 £60,000 -7.69% 431
South East +29 1,417 £50,000 -35.06% 1,436
West Midlands +90 1,248 £62,500 +8.70% 164
East of England +83 629 £52,500 -30.92% 599
Yorkshire +59 462 £70,000 +8.82% 270
Scotland +39 334 £67,500 +13.45% 147
South West +32 334 £62,500 - 499
East Midlands +79 273 £42,500 -43.14% 252
Wales +42 121 £55,000 -2.22% 199
North East +55 105 £55,000 -27.63% 111
Northern Ireland -3 46 £90,000 +1.41% 85
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 (0.74%) SharePoint
2 22 (0.32%) 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%) Apache Qpid
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%) WebSphere
Applications
1 1,002 (14.58%) Chatbot
2 422 (6.14%) Microsoft Excel
3 67 (0.98%) 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 29 (0.42%) 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%) Dynamics GP
6 3 (0.044%) Oracle Assets
6 3 (0.044%) Oracle Receivables
6 3 (0.044%) SAP Business One
7 2 (0.029%) Oracle General Ledger
8 1 (0.015%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.015%) FIS Private Capital Suite
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 3,656 (53.21%) Cloud Computing
2 773 (11.25%) Azure
3 537 (7.82%) Power Platform
4 350 (5.09%) Azure AI
5 240 (3.49%) AWS
6 164 (2.39%) SaaS
7 135 (1.96%) Azure DevOps
8 105 (1.53%) GitHub
9 101 (1.47%) Microsoft 365
10 88 (1.28%) GitHub Copilot
11 77 (1.12%) GCP
12 59 (0.86%) Snowflake
13 52 (0.76%) Entra ID
14 45 (0.65%) Azure Data Factory
15 42 (0.61%) Power Automate
16 41 (0.60%) Microsoft Copilot
17 34 (0.49%) dbt
18 30 (0.44%) Serverless
19 27 (0.39%) PowerApps
20 26 (0.38%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 3,656 (53.21%) Internet
2 26 (0.38%) Unified Communications
3 22 (0.32%) VoIP
4 20 (0.29%) Firewall
5 18 (0.26%) Network Security
6 14 (0.20%) Telepresence
6 14 (0.20%) WebEx
7 12 (0.17%) Broadband
8 10 (0.15%) VPN
9 7 (0.10%) DMZ
9 7 (0.10%) DNS
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 63 (0.92%) SQL Server
4 62 (0.90%) Data Warehouse
5 38 (0.55%) Metadata
6 35 (0.51%) NoSQL
7 34 (0.49%) MongoDB
8 33 (0.48%) Data Lake
9 25 (0.36%) Big Data
10 21 (0.31%) Azure SQL Database
11 20 (0.29%) MySQL
12 18 (0.26%) Snowflake Schema
13 17 (0.25%) Data Mining
13 17 (0.25%) Hadoop
14 16 (0.23%) PostgreSQL
15 14 (0.20%) SQL Server Reporting Services
16 12 (0.17%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 10 (0.15%) Looker
18 9 (0.13%) Elasticsearch
18 9 (0.13%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 72 (1.05%) JIRA
2 58 (0.84%) 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%) GitLab
9 4 (0.058%) Metasploit
9 4 (0.058%) MLflow
10 3 (0.044%) Cypress.io
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 4,565 (66.44%) Social Skills
2 3,924 (57.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 3,682 (53.59%) Banking
4 732 (10.65%) Analytical Skills
5 516 (7.51%) Finance
6 226 (3.29%) Marketing
7 131 (1.91%) Public Sector
8 101 (1.47%) Retail
9 88 (1.28%) Law
9 88 (1.28%) Legal
10 51 (0.74%) Pharmaceutical
11 45 (0.65%) Manufacturing
12 42 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
13 41 (0.60%) Aviation
14 34 (0.49%) Aeronautics
14 34 (0.49%) Electronics
15 33 (0.48%) Aerospace
15 33 (0.48%) Games
16 31 (0.45%) Telecoms
17 30 (0.44%) German Language
Job Titles
1 2,833 (41.23%) Lecturer
2 986 (14.35%) Trainer
3 410 (5.97%) Analyst
4 342 (4.98%) Data Analyst
5 332 (4.83%) Junior
6 324 (4.72%) Junior Analyst
6 324 (4.72%) Junior Data Analyst
7 203 (2.95%) Senior
8 171 (2.49%) Developer
9 161 (2.34%) Lead
10 142 (2.07%) Content Editor
11 95 (1.38%) 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 64 (0.93%) Data Engineer
17 58 (0.84%) Solutions Architect
18 55 (0.80%) Systems Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 104 (1.51%) .NET
2 77 (1.12%) React
3 61 (0.89%) REST
4 53 (0.77%) HTML
5 50 (0.73%) RESTful
6 35 (0.51%) AngularJS
6 35 (0.51%) Node.js
7 31 (0.45%) CSS
7 31 (0.45%) TensorFlow
8 29 (0.42%) SOAP
8 29 (0.42%) Vue
9 28 (0.41%) PyTorch
10 27 (0.39%) XML
11 26 (0.38%) JSON
12 24 (0.35%) Blazor
12 24 (0.35%) Lightning Web Components
12 24 (0.35%) Spring
13 22 (0.32%) Regular Expression
13 22 (0.32%) Spring Boot
14 21 (0.31%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 3,670 (53.41%) IoT
2 130 (1.89%) Cloud Native
3 113 (1.64%) Robotics
4 108 (1.57%) Product Ownership
5 98 (1.43%) Onboarding
6 89 (1.30%) Molecular Biology
7 86 (1.25%) Blog
8 67 (0.98%) Life Science
9 52 (0.76%) AI Agents
10 50 (0.73%) Enterprise Software
11 49 (0.71%) Algorithms
12 48 (0.70%) Analytical Mindset
12 48 (0.70%) Self-Motivation
13 37 (0.54%) Low-Code
14 36 (0.52%) Greenfield Project
15 32 (0.47%) Data Centre
15 32 (0.47%) Virtual Team
16 25 (0.36%) Linux Command Line
16 25 (0.36%) Social Media
17 24 (0.35%) Management Information System
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 X
9 2 (0.029%) Robot Operating System
9 2 (0.029%) VMS
9 2 (0.029%) zOS
10 1 (0.015%) Debian
10 1 (0.015%) Mac OS
10 1 (0.015%) OpenWrt
10 1 (0.015%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 4,097 (59.63%) Machine Learning
2 3,790 (55.16%) Cybersecurity
3 3,770 (54.87%) User Experience
4 3,656 (53.21%) Web Development
5 1,005 (14.63%) Conversational UI
6 485 (7.06%) Business Intelligence
7 457 (6.65%) Agile
8 442 (6.43%) Analytics
9 343 (4.99%) Chemistry
10 327 (4.76%) Continuous Improvement
11 296 (4.31%) Problem-Solving
12 280 (4.08%) DevOps
13 274 (3.99%) Software Engineering
14 272 (3.96%) Decision-Making
15 251 (3.65%) Roadmaps
16 234 (3.41%) CI/CD
17 215 (3.13%) Customer Experience
18 197 (2.87%) Content Writing
19 191 (2.78%) Data Science
20 187 (2.72%) Coaching
Programming Languages
1 715 (10.41%) Python
2 578 (8.41%) SQL
3 112 (1.63%) JavaScript
4 97 (1.41%) Java
5 75 (1.09%) TypeScript
6 63 (0.92%) C#
7 49 (0.71%) PowerShell
8 35 (0.51%) C++
8 35 (0.51%) R
9 26 (0.38%) Bash
10 23 (0.33%) Apex Code
11 19 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 17 (0.25%) C
12 17 (0.25%) PL/SQL
12 17 (0.25%) Shell Script
13 16 (0.23%) T-SQL
14 13 (0.19%) Rust
15 10 (0.15%) Bicep
15 10 (0.15%) MATLAB
16 9 (0.13%) Go
Qualifications
1 5,049 (73.48%) Degree
2 4,209 (61.26%) Master's Degree
3 4,191 (61.00%) PhD
4 3,650 (53.12%) Postgraduate
5 335 (4.88%) Azure Certification
6 170 (2.47%) Security Cleared
7 142 (2.07%) SC Cleared
8 56 (0.82%) Computer Science Degree
9 40 (0.58%) BPSS Clearance
10 33 (0.48%) AWS Certification
11 25 (0.36%) DBS Check
12 24 (0.35%) DV Cleared
13 22 (0.32%) PMP
14 17 (0.25%) Six Sigma Green Belt
15 12 (0.17%) HNC
16 11 (0.16%) ACCA
16 11 (0.16%) HND
16 11 (0.16%) Microsoft Certification
17 7 (0.10%) MBA
18 6 (0.087%) Six Sigma Black Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 75 (1.09%) Data Quality
2 65 (0.95%) Accessibility
3 47 (0.68%) QA
4 42 (0.61%) GxP
5 31 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 28 (0.41%) GDPR
7 18 (0.26%) NIST
8 17 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
9 15 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 14 (0.20%) PMO
10 14 (0.20%) WCAG
11 10 (0.15%) CDISC
11 10 (0.15%) HL7
11 10 (0.15%) PCI DSS
11 10 (0.15%) SLA
12 9 (0.13%) Cyber Essentials
12 9 (0.13%) EU AI Act
12 9 (0.13%) NCSC
13 7 (0.10%) GRC
13 7 (0.10%) JSP 440
System Software
1 66 (0.96%) 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 94 (1.37%) Terraform
2 62 (0.90%) 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
2 784 (11.41%) Microsoft
3 80 (1.16%) Cisco
4 68 (0.99%) Oracle
5 60 (0.87%) Dell
6 56 (0.82%) Adobe
7 54 (0.79%) Databricks
8 48 (0.70%) Salesforce
9 38 (0.55%) Google
10 34 (0.49%) Apple
11 32 (0.47%) Blue Prism
12 24 (0.35%) HubSpot
13 22 (0.32%) OpenAI
14 19 (0.28%) VMware
15 18 (0.26%) SAP
16 16 (0.23%) Palo Alto
17 14 (0.20%) Splunk
18 11 (0.16%) Fortinet
19 9 (0.13%) BT
19 9 (0.13%) ServiceNow