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

6 months to
13 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 56 75
Rank change year-on-year +53 +19 +85
Permanent jobs citing AI 6,805 1,527 1,308
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 16.13% 4.26% 3.78%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 20.54% 4.79% 4.26%
Number of salaries quoted 915 697 737
10th Percentile £24,570 £42,500 £37,300
25th Percentile £38,750 £52,500 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £70,000 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% +7.69% +4.69%
75th Percentile £83,000 £85,000 £84,056
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £96,539
UK median annual salary £72,500 £77,000 £75,000
% change year-on-year -5.84% +2.67% +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 33,128 31,909 30,715
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 78.51% 88.95% 88.65%
Number of salaries quoted 19,079 14,313 22,914
10th Percentile £27,750 £31,250 £28,000
25th Percentile £33,500 £41,250 £38,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £55,000 £52,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +5.77% -5.45%
75th Percentile £65,000 £70,000 £66,250
90th Percentile £80,000 £83,750 £80,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%

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 13 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 13 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 +58 2,543 £62,500 -10.71% 596
North West +42 1,981 £60,709 -13.27% 261
Midlands +102 1,502 £60,000 -7.69% 384
South East +27 1,391 £50,000 -33.33% 1,297
West Midlands +94 1,246 £65,000 +13.04% 150
East of England +84 617 £48,750 -36.69% 551
Yorkshire +57 457 £72,500 +11.54% 241
Scotland +44 346 £67,500 +13.45% 125
South West +38 322 £62,500 - 449
East Midlands +83 266 £41,250 -46.43% 225
Wales +35 118 £55,000 -12.00% 186
North East +56 105 £55,000 -27.63% 96
Northern Ireland -6 41 £86,250 -2.82% 80
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 (0.34%) Confluence
3 20 (0.29%) CMS
4 17 (0.25%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 14 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
6 12 (0.18%) WordPress
7 10 (0.15%) Apache Spark
8 8 (0.12%) Apache
8 8 (0.12%) Apache Airflow
9 6 (0.088%) Apache Solr
10 5 (0.073%) IIS
10 5 (0.073%) Umbraco
11 3 (0.044%) Drupal
11 3 (0.044%) Joomla!
12 2 (0.029%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
12 2 (0.029%) CICS
12 2 (0.029%) JBoss
12 2 (0.029%) Kinematics
12 2 (0.029%) Mendix
12 2 (0.029%) WebSphere
Applications
1 1,012 (14.87%) Chatbot
2 369 (5.42%) Microsoft Excel
3 67 (0.98%) Microsoft Office
4 26 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.088%) Photoshop
6 5 (0.073%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.059%) Adobe Premiere
7 4 (0.059%) InDesign
7 4 (0.059%) Weka
8 3 (0.044%) Notion
8 3 (0.044%) Simulink
9 2 (0.029%) S-PLUS
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
10 1 (0.015%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 26 (0.38%) 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 (53.71%) Cloud Computing
2 718 (10.55%) Azure
3 483 (7.10%) Power Platform
4 297 (4.36%) Azure AI
5 239 (3.51%) AWS
6 164 (2.41%) SaaS
7 136 (2.00%) Azure DevOps
8 102 (1.50%) GitHub
9 98 (1.44%) Microsoft 365
10 87 (1.28%) GitHub Copilot
11 83 (1.22%) GCP
12 59 (0.87%) Snowflake
13 49 (0.72%) Entra ID
14 43 (0.63%) Azure Data Factory
15 42 (0.62%) Power Automate
16 39 (0.57%) Microsoft Copilot
17 34 (0.50%) dbt
18 28 (0.41%) Serverless
19 26 (0.38%) PowerApps
20 25 (0.37%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 3,656 (53.73%) Internet
2 22 (0.32%) Unified Communications
3 21 (0.31%) VoIP
4 16 (0.24%) Firewall
5 14 (0.21%) Telepresence
5 14 (0.21%) WebEx
6 13 (0.19%) Network Security
7 9 (0.13%) Broadband
8 8 (0.12%) VPN
9 6 (0.088%) DMZ
9 6 (0.088%) DNS
9 6 (0.088%) Intranet
9 6 (0.088%) SAN
10 5 (0.073%) Bluetooth
10 5 (0.073%) Modbus
10 5 (0.073%) TCP/IP
11 4 (0.059%) HTTP
11 4 (0.059%) WAN
11 4 (0.059%) Wireshark
11 4 (0.059%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 403 (5.92%) Power BI
2 336 (4.94%) Tableau
3 68 (1.00%) Data Warehouse
4 63 (0.93%) SQL Server
5 37 (0.54%) MongoDB
6 36 (0.53%) Metadata
7 32 (0.47%) Data Lake
8 31 (0.46%) NoSQL
9 25 (0.37%) Big Data
9 25 (0.37%) MySQL
10 20 (0.29%) Azure SQL Database
10 20 (0.29%) PostgreSQL
11 18 (0.26%) Snowflake Schema
12 17 (0.25%) Data Mining
12 17 (0.25%) Hadoop
13 14 (0.21%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 12 (0.18%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 10 (0.15%) Looker
16 9 (0.13%) Elasticsearch
16 9 (0.13%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 74 (1.09%) JIRA
2 54 (0.79%) Git
3 24 (0.35%) Jenkins
4 18 (0.26%) Oracle Forms
5 10 (0.15%) Octopus Deploy
5 10 (0.15%) TeamCity
6 7 (0.10%) Visual Studio
7 6 (0.088%) JUnit
7 6 (0.088%) Selenium
8 5 (0.073%) Burp Suite
8 5 (0.073%) GitBook
9 4 (0.059%) Metasploit
9 4 (0.059%) MLflow
10 3 (0.044%) Cypress.io
10 3 (0.044%) GitLab
10 3 (0.044%) Visual Website Optimizer
11 2 (0.029%) LoadRunner
11 2 (0.029%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.029%) SpecFlow
11 2 (0.029%) WebDriver
General
1 4,519 (66.41%) Social Skills
2 3,927 (57.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 3,682 (54.11%) Banking
4 756 (11.11%) Analytical Skills
5 515 (7.57%) Finance
6 238 (3.50%) Marketing
7 128 (1.88%) Public Sector
8 99 (1.45%) Retail
9 91 (1.34%) Law
10 81 (1.19%) Legal
11 51 (0.75%) Pharmaceutical
12 43 (0.63%) Aviation
13 41 (0.60%) Manufacturing
13 41 (0.60%) Presentation Skills
14 35 (0.51%) Electronics
15 34 (0.50%) Aeronautics
16 33 (0.48%) Aerospace
17 31 (0.46%) Games
18 30 (0.44%) German Language
18 30 (0.44%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 2,833 (41.63%) Lecturer
2 996 (14.64%) Trainer
3 356 (5.23%) Analyst
4 288 (4.23%) Data Analyst
5 277 (4.07%) Junior
6 270 (3.97%) Junior Analyst
6 270 (3.97%) Junior Data Analyst
7 203 (2.98%) Senior
8 172 (2.53%) Developer
9 154 (2.26%) Lead
10 142 (2.09%) Content Editor
11 108 (1.59%) Architect
12 90 (1.32%) Customer Support Specialist
12 90 (1.32%) Support Specialist
13 79 (1.16%) Research Scientist
14 73 (1.07%) Software Engineer
15 68 (1.00%) Business Manager
16 65 (0.96%) Innovation Manager
17 57 (0.84%) Data Engineer
17 57 (0.84%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 100 (1.47%) .NET
2 74 (1.09%) React
3 57 (0.84%) REST
4 52 (0.76%) HTML
4 52 (0.76%) RESTful
5 34 (0.50%) Node.js
6 32 (0.47%) AngularJS
7 30 (0.44%) CSS
8 29 (0.43%) TensorFlow
9 28 (0.41%) SOAP
10 27 (0.40%) XML
11 26 (0.38%) JSON
11 26 (0.38%) PyTorch
11 26 (0.38%) Vue
12 23 (0.34%) Blazor
13 22 (0.32%) Lightning Web Components
13 22 (0.32%) Regular Expression
14 21 (0.31%) Spring
15 19 (0.28%) OAuth
15 19 (0.28%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 3,670 (53.93%) IoT
2 127 (1.87%) Cloud Native
3 112 (1.65%) Robotics
4 105 (1.54%) Product Ownership
5 98 (1.44%) Onboarding
6 89 (1.31%) Molecular Biology
7 85 (1.25%) Blog
8 66 (0.97%) Life Science
9 51 (0.75%) Enterprise Software
10 50 (0.73%) AI Agents
11 49 (0.72%) Algorithms
11 49 (0.72%) Analytical Mindset
12 45 (0.66%) Self-Motivation
13 37 (0.54%) Greenfield Project
13 37 (0.54%) Low-Code
14 33 (0.48%) Data Centre
14 33 (0.48%) Virtual Team
15 25 (0.37%) Linux Command Line
16 22 (0.32%) Management Information System
16 22 (0.32%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 45 (0.66%) Windows
2 31 (0.46%) Linux
3 23 (0.34%) Unix
4 16 (0.24%) Windows Server
5 13 (0.19%) Android
6 8 (0.12%) Apple iOS
7 5 (0.073%) Ubuntu
8 4 (0.059%) Kali Linux
9 2 (0.029%) Mac OS
9 2 (0.029%) Mac OS X
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%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 4,090 (60.10%) Machine Learning
2 3,792 (55.72%) Cybersecurity
3 3,764 (55.31%) User Experience
4 3,656 (53.73%) Web Development
5 1,015 (14.92%) Conversational UI
6 451 (6.63%) Analytics
7 447 (6.57%) Agile
8 429 (6.30%) Business Intelligence
9 353 (5.19%) Chemistry
10 349 (5.13%) Continuous Improvement
11 285 (4.19%) Problem-Solving
12 282 (4.14%) Decision-Making
13 271 (3.98%) DevOps
14 267 (3.92%) Software Engineering
15 257 (3.78%) Roadmaps
16 226 (3.32%) Customer Experience
17 223 (3.28%) CI/CD
18 197 (2.89%) Content Writing
19 190 (2.79%) Data Science
20 187 (2.75%) Coaching
Programming Languages
1 653 (9.60%) Python
2 520 (7.64%) SQL
3 109 (1.60%) JavaScript
4 94 (1.38%) Java
5 75 (1.10%) TypeScript
6 61 (0.90%) C#
7 49 (0.72%) PowerShell
8 35 (0.51%) C++
8 35 (0.51%) R
9 24 (0.35%) Bash
10 22 (0.32%) 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 (0.24%) T-SQL
14 11 (0.16%) Rust
15 10 (0.15%) Bicep
15 10 (0.15%) MATLAB
16 7 (0.10%) PHP
Qualifications
1 5,054 (74.27%) Degree
2 4,220 (62.01%) Master's Degree
3 4,201 (61.73%) PhD
4 3,650 (53.64%) Postgraduate
5 280 (4.11%) Azure Certification
6 166 (2.44%) Security Cleared
7 143 (2.10%) SC Cleared
8 54 (0.79%) Computer Science Degree
9 40 (0.59%) BPSS Clearance
10 30 (0.44%) AWS Certification
11 22 (0.32%) DV Cleared
11 22 (0.32%) PMP
12 20 (0.29%) DBS Check
13 17 (0.25%) Six Sigma Green Belt
14 13 (0.19%) HNC
15 12 (0.18%) HND
16 11 (0.16%) ACCA
16 11 (0.16%) Microsoft Certification
17 8 (0.12%) MBA
18 6 (0.088%) Six Sigma Black Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (1.12%) Data Quality
2 61 (0.90%) Accessibility
3 44 (0.65%) QA
4 42 (0.62%) GxP
5 29 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 25 (0.37%) GDPR
7 18 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
8 16 (0.24%) NIST
9 14 (0.21%) PMO
10 13 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 12 (0.18%) WCAG
12 11 (0.16%) SLA
13 10 (0.15%) CDISC
13 10 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials
13 10 (0.15%) HL7
14 8 (0.12%) EU AI Act
14 8 (0.12%) NCSC
14 8 (0.12%) PCI DSS
15 7 (0.10%) ISO 9001
16 6 (0.088%) JSP 440
System Software
1 68 (1.00%) Docker
2 27 (0.40%) Active Directory
3 21 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
4 17 (0.25%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (0.16%) VMware Infrastructure
6 8 (0.12%) vSphere
7 5 (0.073%) Hyper-V
8 4 (0.059%) Firmware
9 3 (0.044%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 3 (0.044%) VMware ESXi
10 2 (0.029%) Ceph
10 2 (0.029%) Lustre
10 2 (0.029%) RACF
Systems Management
1 91 (1.34%) Terraform
2 55 (0.81%) Kubernetes
3 37 (0.54%) Microsoft Intune
4 26 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
5 14 (0.21%) Cisco CUCM
6 10 (0.15%) Ansible
7 8 (0.12%) SCCM
8 4 (0.059%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 4 (0.059%) Nessus
8 4 (0.059%) Nmap
9 3 (0.044%) Prometheus
10 2 (0.029%) Argo
10 2 (0.029%) Control-M
10 2 (0.029%) HP Fortify
10 2 (0.029%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
10 2 (0.029%) vCenter Server
11 1 (0.015%) Grafana
11 1 (0.015%) Jamf Pro
11 1 (0.015%) Kubeflow
11 1 (0.015%) Kustomize
Vendors
1 996 (14.64%) PayPal
2 728 (10.70%) Microsoft
3 80 (1.18%) Cisco
4 68 (1.00%) Oracle
5 59 (0.87%) Adobe
5 59 (0.87%) Dell
6 51 (0.75%) Databricks
7 47 (0.69%) Salesforce
8 40 (0.59%) Apple
9 37 (0.54%) Google
10 32 (0.47%) Blue Prism
11 24 (0.35%) HubSpot
12 22 (0.32%) Palo Alto
13 19 (0.28%) OpenAI
13 19 (0.28%) SAP
14 17 (0.25%) VMware
15 14 (0.21%) Splunk
16 10 (0.15%) ServiceNow
17 8 (0.12%) Fortinet
17 8 (0.12%) New Relic