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

6 months to
26 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 42 65
Rank change year-on-year +39 +23 +96
Permanent jobs citing AI 7,110 1,588 1,995
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 14.31% 5.13% 3.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 18.77% 5.60% 4.53%
Number of salaries quoted 1,112 790 1,005
10th Percentile £27,050 £38,675 £36,250
25th Percentile £38,750 £52,500 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £59,450 £66,254 £62,500
Median % change year-on-year -10.27% +6.01% -3.85%
75th Percentile £81,250 £82,500 £82,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £97,290
UK median annual salary £70,000 £75,000 £70,000
% change year-on-year -6.67% +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 37,876 28,338 44,040
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 76.26% 91.50% 86.95%
Number of salaries quoted 22,366 13,157 33,417
10th Percentile £28,000 £31,250 £27,000
25th Percentile £35,000 £41,250 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -9.07%
75th Percentile £65,640 £70,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £81,250 £83,750 £78,600
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,001 £55,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -12.00%

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 26 February 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 26 February 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 +49 2,619 £60,709 -10.06% 248
North West +40 1,985 £61,418 -9.01% 138
Midlands +85 1,540 £55,000 -15.38% 139
South East +37 1,480 £50,000 -33.33% 349
West Midlands +83 1,257 £55,000 -4.35% 80
East of England +26 681 £55,000 -16.96% 105
Yorkshire +39 530 £61,250 -3.77% 76
South West +18 369 £62,500 -3.85% 113
Scotland +36 305 £70,000 +21.74% 58
East Midlands +66 294 £50,000 -23.08% 57
Wales +38 122 £47,500 -15.56% 27
North East +49 104 £55,000 -26.42% 36
Northern Ireland -6 56 £90,000 -5.26% 9
Channel Islands - 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 50 (0.70%) SharePoint
2 43 (0.60%) Jupyter
3 25 (0.35%) CMS
4 21 (0.30%) Confluence
5 18 (0.25%) Apache Airflow
5 18 (0.25%) Apache Spark
6 16 (0.23%) Apache
7 15 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 11 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
9 10 (0.14%) WordPress
10 5 (0.070%) IIS
10 5 (0.070%) Umbraco
11 4 (0.056%) Apache Solr
12 3 (0.042%) ArcGIS
12 3 (0.042%) Drupal
12 3 (0.042%) Joomla!
13 2 (0.028%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
13 2 (0.028%) CICS
13 2 (0.028%) JBoss
13 2 (0.028%) WebSphere
Applications
1 799 (11.24%) Chatbot
2 690 (9.70%) Microsoft Excel
3 58 (0.82%) Microsoft Office
4 26 (0.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.084%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.084%) Spreadsheet
6 5 (0.070%) Photoshop
7 4 (0.056%) Weka
8 3 (0.042%) Adobe Illustrator
8 3 (0.042%) Simulink
9 2 (0.028%) UserZoom
10 1 (0.014%) Acrobat
10 1 (0.014%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 1 (0.014%) Adobe Premiere
10 1 (0.014%) Camtasia
10 1 (0.014%) InDesign
10 1 (0.014%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 20 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
3 16 (0.23%) NetSuite
4 11 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
5 4 (0.056%) Shopify
6 3 (0.042%) Dynamics AX
6 3 (0.042%) Oracle Assets
6 3 (0.042%) Oracle Receivables
6 3 (0.042%) SAP Business One
6 3 (0.042%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 2 (0.028%) Dynamics GP
7 2 (0.028%) Integrated Workplace Management System
7 2 (0.028%) Maximo
7 2 (0.028%) Oracle General Ledger
7 2 (0.028%) Salesforce CRM
8 1 (0.014%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.014%) Odoo
8 1 (0.014%) Oracle Cash Management
8 1 (0.014%) Oracle EBS
8 1 (0.014%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 3,702 (52.07%) Cloud Computing
2 1,024 (14.40%) Azure
3 813 (11.43%) Power Platform
4 622 (8.75%) Azure AI
5 288 (4.05%) AWS
6 159 (2.24%) SaaS
7 120 (1.69%) Azure DevOps
8 109 (1.53%) Microsoft 365
9 103 (1.45%) GitHub
10 83 (1.17%) GitHub Copilot
11 69 (0.97%) GCP
12 57 (0.80%) Entra ID
13 54 (0.76%) Snowflake
14 46 (0.65%) Azure Data Factory
14 46 (0.65%) Microsoft Copilot
15 45 (0.63%) Power Automate
16 40 (0.56%) Adobe Analytics
17 34 (0.48%) Figma
18 32 (0.45%) PowerApps
19 30 (0.42%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 3,654 (51.39%) Internet
2 73 (1.03%) Broadband
3 32 (0.45%) Unified Communications
4 30 (0.42%) Firewall
5 23 (0.32%) VoIP
6 17 (0.24%) Network Security
7 15 (0.21%) VPN
8 14 (0.20%) Telepresence
8 14 (0.20%) WebEx
9 11 (0.15%) DNS
10 9 (0.13%) TCP/IP
11 8 (0.11%) VLAN
12 7 (0.098%) DMZ
12 7 (0.098%) HTTP
12 7 (0.098%) Wireshark
13 5 (0.070%) DHCP
13 5 (0.070%) Intranet
13 5 (0.070%) Modbus
14 4 (0.056%) Bluetooth
14 4 (0.056%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 726 (10.21%) Power BI
2 656 (9.23%) Tableau
3 56 (0.79%) SQL Server
4 45 (0.63%) Metadata
5 44 (0.62%) Data Warehouse
6 33 (0.46%) NoSQL
7 30 (0.42%) MongoDB
8 29 (0.41%) Data Lake
9 25 (0.35%) Big Data
10 24 (0.34%) PostgreSQL
11 21 (0.30%) Azure SQL Database
12 16 (0.23%) Data Mining
13 15 (0.21%) Snowflake Schema
14 14 (0.20%) Hadoop
15 13 (0.18%) MySQL
15 13 (0.18%) SQL Server Reporting Services
16 11 (0.15%) Elasticsearch
17 10 (0.14%) Looker
17 10 (0.14%) Relational Database
17 10 (0.14%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 66 (0.93%) Git
2 59 (0.83%) JIRA
3 43 (0.60%) Visual Studio Code
4 21 (0.30%) Jenkins
5 16 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
6 10 (0.14%) Selenium
7 9 (0.13%) IBM UrbanCode
7 9 (0.13%) Visual Studio
8 7 (0.098%) Cypress.io
9 6 (0.084%) JUnit
10 5 (0.070%) Burp Suite
10 5 (0.070%) GitBook
10 5 (0.070%) GitLab
10 5 (0.070%) MLflow
11 4 (0.056%) JMeter
11 4 (0.056%) Metasploit
11 4 (0.056%) Octopus Deploy
11 4 (0.056%) TeamCity
12 3 (0.042%) REST Assured
12 3 (0.042%) Visual Website Optimizer
General
1 4,861 (68.37%) Social Skills
2 3,923 (55.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 3,701 (52.05%) Banking
4 691 (9.72%) Analytical Skills
5 560 (7.88%) Finance
6 233 (3.28%) Marketing
7 147 (2.07%) Retail
8 127 (1.79%) Public Sector
9 110 (1.55%) Legal
10 96 (1.35%) Manufacturing
11 92 (1.29%) Games
12 87 (1.22%) Law
13 49 (0.69%) Pharmaceutical
14 48 (0.68%) Presentation Skills
15 37 (0.52%) Telecoms
16 35 (0.49%) Aeronautics
16 35 (0.49%) Aerospace
17 34 (0.48%) Aviation
17 34 (0.48%) Electronics
18 31 (0.44%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 2,833 (39.85%) Lecturer
2 746 (10.49%) Trainer
3 691 (9.72%) Analyst
4 613 (8.62%) Data Analyst
5 602 (8.47%) Junior
6 595 (8.37%) Junior Analyst
6 595 (8.37%) Junior Data Analyst
7 234 (3.29%) Senior
8 218 (3.07%) Lead
9 187 (2.63%) Developer
10 94 (1.32%) Content Editor
11 92 (1.29%) Architect
12 80 (1.13%) Software Engineer
13 77 (1.08%) Research Scientist
14 70 (0.98%) Business Manager
15 68 (0.96%) Customer Support Specialist
15 68 (0.96%) Data Engineer
15 68 (0.96%) Support Specialist
16 64 (0.90%) Solutions Architect
17 59 (0.83%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 99 (1.39%) .NET
2 78 (1.10%) React
3 64 (0.90%) HTML
4 60 (0.84%) REST
5 59 (0.83%) scikit-learn
6 54 (0.76%) Pandas
7 51 (0.72%) NumPy
8 48 (0.68%) Hugging Face
9 47 (0.66%) RESTful
10 46 (0.65%) Matplotlib
11 42 (0.59%) Streamlit
12 40 (0.56%) CSS
13 39 (0.55%) TensorFlow
14 36 (0.51%) PyTorch
15 35 (0.49%) AngularJS
16 29 (0.41%) SOAP
17 28 (0.39%) Node.js
18 27 (0.38%) XML
19 26 (0.37%) JSON
19 26 (0.37%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 3,675 (51.69%) IoT
2 130 (1.83%) Cloud Native
3 126 (1.77%) Robotics
4 114 (1.60%) Onboarding
5 103 (1.45%) Algorithms
6 101 (1.42%) Product Ownership
7 92 (1.29%) Blog
8 81 (1.14%) Molecular Biology
9 75 (1.05%) Social Media
10 66 (0.93%) Life Science
11 59 (0.83%) Self-Motivation
12 47 (0.66%) Enterprise Software
13 46 (0.65%) AI Agents
14 44 (0.62%) Analytical Mindset
15 41 (0.58%) Low-Code
16 34 (0.48%) Greenfield Project
17 33 (0.46%) Mobile App
18 30 (0.42%) Management Information System
19 29 (0.41%) Virtual Team
20 28 (0.39%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 52 (0.73%) Windows
2 39 (0.55%) Linux
3 38 (0.53%) Android
4 32 (0.45%) Apple iOS
5 24 (0.34%) Unix
6 18 (0.25%) Windows Server
7 7 (0.098%) Ubuntu
8 5 (0.070%) VMS
9 4 (0.056%) Kali Linux
9 4 (0.056%) Windows Server 2016
10 3 (0.042%) Robot Operating System
11 2 (0.028%) Mac OS X
11 2 (0.028%) zOS
12 1 (0.014%) OpenWrt
Processes & Methodologies
1 4,134 (58.14%) Machine Learning
2 3,795 (53.38%) Cybersecurity
3 3,777 (53.12%) User Experience
4 3,656 (51.42%) Web Development
5 802 (11.28%) Conversational UI
6 759 (10.68%) Business Intelligence
7 516 (7.26%) Agile
8 507 (7.13%) Analytics
9 342 (4.81%) Continuous Improvement
10 321 (4.51%) Problem-Solving
11 301 (4.23%) Roadmaps
12 300 (4.22%) Chemistry
13 298 (4.19%) Software Engineering
14 291 (4.09%) Decision-Making
15 273 (3.84%) CI/CD
15 273 (3.84%) DevOps
16 243 (3.42%) Customer Experience
17 215 (3.02%) LLM
18 210 (2.95%) Data Science
19 209 (2.94%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 1,068 (15.02%) Python
2 844 (11.87%) SQL
3 116 (1.63%) JavaScript
4 112 (1.58%) Java
5 74 (1.04%) TypeScript
6 72 (1.01%) C#
7 44 (0.62%) PowerShell
8 40 (0.56%) C++
9 35 (0.49%) R
10 25 (0.35%) Bash
11 23 (0.32%) Apex Code
12 18 (0.25%) C
13 17 (0.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 16 (0.23%) Shell Script
15 15 (0.21%) PL/SQL
15 15 (0.21%) T-SQL
16 14 (0.20%) Rust
17 13 (0.18%) Go
18 10 (0.14%) MATLAB
18 10 (0.14%) Swift
Qualifications
1 4,812 (67.68%) Degree
2 4,153 (58.41%) Master's Degree
3 4,136 (58.17%) PhD
4 3,651 (51.35%) Postgraduate
5 613 (8.62%) Azure Certification
6 176 (2.48%) Security Cleared
7 139 (1.95%) SC Cleared
8 82 (1.15%) AWS Certification
9 49 (0.69%) Computer Science Degree
10 42 (0.59%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 41 (0.58%) BPSS Clearance
12 35 (0.49%) DBS Check
13 32 (0.45%) DV Cleared
14 23 (0.32%) PMP
15 15 (0.21%) Six Sigma Green Belt
16 11 (0.15%) ACCA
16 11 (0.15%) Microsoft Certification
17 7 (0.098%) HNC
17 7 (0.098%) HND
17 7 (0.098%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 118 (1.66%) Accessibility
2 88 (1.24%) Data Quality
3 61 (0.86%) QA
4 44 (0.62%) GDPR
5 39 (0.55%) GxP
6 37 (0.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 22 (0.31%) WCAG
8 21 (0.30%) NIST
9 18 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
10 15 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 14 (0.20%) PCI DSS
12 13 (0.18%) PMO
13 10 (0.14%) Cyber Essentials
13 10 (0.14%) GRC
14 9 (0.13%) EU AI Act
15 8 (0.11%) HIPAA
15 8 (0.11%) NCSC
16 7 (0.098%) CDISC
16 7 (0.098%) HL7
16 7 (0.098%) JSP 440
System Software
1 61 (0.86%) Docker
2 33 (0.46%) Active Directory
3 18 (0.25%) Virtual Machines
4 15 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
5 10 (0.14%) VMware Infrastructure
6 8 (0.11%) vSphere
7 4 (0.056%) Firmware
8 3 (0.042%) Kamailio
9 2 (0.028%) Ceph
9 2 (0.028%) Lustre
9 2 (0.028%) RACF
9 2 (0.028%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 2 (0.028%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 90 (1.27%) Terraform
2 71 (1.00%) Kubernetes
3 32 (0.45%) Microsoft Intune
4 25 (0.35%) Single Sign-On
5 16 (0.23%) Ansible
6 14 (0.20%) Cisco CUCM
7 9 (0.13%) Grafana
8 7 (0.098%) Prometheus
9 6 (0.084%) Proxmox
9 6 (0.084%) SCCM
9 6 (0.084%) vCenter Server
10 4 (0.056%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 4 (0.056%) Argo
10 4 (0.056%) Nessus
10 4 (0.056%) Nmap
10 4 (0.056%) SolarWinds Orion
11 2 (0.028%) Control-M
11 2 (0.028%) HP Fortify
11 2 (0.028%) Kubeflow
11 2 (0.028%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
Vendors
1 1,083 (15.23%) Microsoft
2 743 (10.45%) PayPal
3 78 (1.10%) Adobe
4 77 (1.08%) Cisco
5 69 (0.97%) Oracle
6 64 (0.90%) Dell
7 58 (0.82%) Databricks
8 53 (0.75%) Google
9 42 (0.59%) Salesforce
10 31 (0.44%) Blue Prism
11 24 (0.34%) Apple
12 21 (0.30%) SAP
13 20 (0.28%) OpenAI
13 20 (0.28%) VMware
14 19 (0.27%) HubSpot
15 15 (0.21%) Red Hat
16 14 (0.20%) Splunk
17 12 (0.17%) BT
17 12 (0.17%) ServiceNow
18 11 (0.15%) Instagram