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

6 months to
15 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 26 41
Rank change year-on-year +19 +15 +129
Permanent jobs citing AI 6,484 2,218 3,416
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 9.86% 7.72% 4.98%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.90% 8.39% 5.97%
Number of salaries quoted 1,698 769 1,254
10th Percentile £33,750 £25,000 £35,092
25th Percentile £45,188 £42,500 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £65,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% +8.33% -11.11%
75th Percentile £82,500 £76,250 £81,250
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £95,000
UK median annual salary £70,000 £70,000 £70,000
% change year-on-year - - -5.72%

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 46,644 26,450 57,231
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 70.94% 92.04% 83.41%
Number of salaries quoted 29,912 13,669 40,959
10th Percentile £30,000 £27,500 £27,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £36,250 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year - +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £67,500 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £82,500 £77,500
UK median annual salary £60,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year - +9.09% -10.10%

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 15 May 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 15 May 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 +34 2,192 £67,500 +17.39% 643
Midlands +10 1,680 £52,500 -8.70% 324
North West +62 1,462 £70,000 - 343
West Midlands +17 1,351 £52,500 -8.70% 184
South East +13 1,177 £60,000 -7.69% 687
East of England +34 607 £59,725 -9.81% 203
Yorkshire +11 592 £65,000 +62.50% 196
South West +6 443 £60,000 +4.35% 227
East Midlands +4 340 £52,500 -8.70% 140
Scotland +9 224 £70,000 +55.56% 145
North East +15 138 £60,000 +4.35% 106
Wales +29 134 £53,171 -20.64% 74
Northern Ireland +14 65 £90,000 - 45
Channel Islands 0 2 - -
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 57 (0.88%) SharePoint
2 50 (0.77%) Jupyter
3 36 (0.56%) CMS
4 31 (0.48%) Apache Spark
5 30 (0.46%) Apache Airflow
6 26 (0.40%) Confluence
7 20 (0.31%) WordPress
8 16 (0.25%) Apache
9 8 (0.12%) Microsoft Exchange
10 7 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 5 (0.077%) IIS
12 3 (0.046%) ArcGIS
12 3 (0.046%) Sitecore CMS
12 3 (0.046%) Umbraco
13 2 (0.031%) Apache Qpid
13 2 (0.031%) JBoss
13 2 (0.031%) SAS
13 2 (0.031%) WebSphere
14 1 (0.015%) Kinematics
14 1 (0.015%) WildFly
Applications
1 1,204 (18.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 69 (1.06%) Chatbot
3 56 (0.86%) Microsoft Office
4 35 (0.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 16 (0.25%) UserZoom
6 10 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.093%) MS Visio
8 5 (0.077%) Photoshop
8 5 (0.077%) Simulink
9 4 (0.062%) Adobe Illustrator
10 3 (0.046%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 3 (0.046%) Camtasia
11 2 (0.031%) Weka
12 1 (0.015%) Adobe Premiere
12 1 (0.015%) AutoCAD
12 1 (0.015%) Notion
12 1 (0.015%) Sketch
12 1 (0.015%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 24 (0.37%) Cloudability
2 13 (0.20%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (0.12%) NetSuite
3 8 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
4 7 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
5 4 (0.062%) Dynamics AX
5 4 (0.062%) Sage 50
5 4 (0.062%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 2 (0.031%) Dynamics GP
6 2 (0.031%) Oracle Assets
6 2 (0.031%) Oracle Payables
6 2 (0.031%) Salesforce CRM
7 1 (0.015%) Maximo
7 1 (0.015%) Oracle Cash Management
7 1 (0.015%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.015%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.015%) Primavera
7 1 (0.015%) Sage 200
7 1 (0.015%) SAP Business One
7 1 (0.015%) SAP EHS
Cloud Services
1 2,379 (36.69%) Cloud Computing
2 2,018 (31.12%) Azure
3 1,558 (24.03%) Azure AI
4 1,329 (20.50%) Power Platform
5 459 (7.08%) AWS
6 183 (2.82%) SaaS
7 138 (2.13%) GCP
8 127 (1.96%) Azure DevOps
9 121 (1.87%) Microsoft 365
10 113 (1.74%) GitHub
11 110 (1.70%) Adobe Analytics
12 86 (1.33%) Microsoft Copilot
13 78 (1.20%) Snowflake
14 72 (1.11%) Serverless
15 66 (1.02%) Figma
15 66 (1.02%) GitHub Copilot
16 49 (0.76%) Entra ID
17 46 (0.71%) Power Automate
18 42 (0.65%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 37 (0.57%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 2,326 (35.87%) Internet
2 174 (2.68%) Broadband
3 41 (0.63%) Firewall
4 23 (0.35%) DNS
4 23 (0.35%) Network Security
4 23 (0.35%) Unified Communications
5 20 (0.31%) VPN
6 16 (0.25%) TCP/IP
7 12 (0.19%) DHCP
7 12 (0.19%) MQTT
8 11 (0.17%) VLAN
9 9 (0.14%) VoIP
10 7 (0.11%) DMZ
10 7 (0.11%) HTTP
10 7 (0.11%) Intranet
10 7 (0.11%) Wireless
11 6 (0.093%) Telepresence
11 6 (0.093%) WebEx
12 5 (0.077%) BGP
12 5 (0.077%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1,249 (19.26%) Power BI
2 1,191 (18.37%) Tableau
3 93 (1.43%) SQL Server
4 81 (1.25%) MongoDB
5 65 (1.00%) Azure SQL Database
6 55 (0.85%) Data Warehouse
7 47 (0.72%) Data Lake
8 45 (0.69%) Metadata
9 42 (0.65%) PostgreSQL
10 28 (0.43%) NoSQL
11 26 (0.40%) Looker
12 25 (0.39%) Elasticsearch
13 22 (0.34%) Big Data
14 20 (0.31%) Redis
15 16 (0.25%) BigQuery
16 15 (0.23%) MySQL
16 15 (0.23%) Relational Database
17 14 (0.22%) Amazon Redshift
18 12 (0.19%) Snowflake Schema
19 11 (0.17%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 79 (1.22%) Git
2 51 (0.79%) Visual Studio Code
3 43 (0.66%) JIRA
4 24 (0.37%) GitLab
4 24 (0.37%) Jenkins
5 22 (0.34%) Snyk
6 18 (0.28%) MLflow
7 16 (0.25%) Selenium
8 14 (0.22%) Claude Code
9 12 (0.19%) JUnit
9 12 (0.19%) Postman
10 11 (0.17%) Cypress.io
11 10 (0.15%) Visual Studio
12 9 (0.14%) IBM UrbanCode
13 8 (0.12%) Maven
13 8 (0.12%) SpecFlow
14 7 (0.11%) Oracle Forms
15 5 (0.077%) Appium
15 5 (0.077%) JMeter
15 5 (0.077%) SonarQube
General
1 4,319 (66.61%) Social Skills
2 2,612 (40.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 2,387 (36.81%) Banking
4 506 (7.80%) Finance
5 321 (4.95%) Analytical Skills
6 264 (4.07%) Marketing
7 203 (3.13%) Games
8 153 (2.36%) Retail
9 118 (1.82%) Public Sector
10 112 (1.73%) Legal
11 108 (1.67%) Manufacturing
12 80 (1.23%) Law
13 53 (0.82%) Organisational Skills
14 52 (0.80%) Influencing Skills
15 45 (0.69%) Automotive
16 34 (0.52%) Electronics
17 27 (0.42%) Pharmaceutical
18 26 (0.40%) Telecoms
19 22 (0.34%) Aerospace
20 21 (0.32%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,752 (27.02%) Lecturer
2 1,264 (19.49%) Analyst
3 1,150 (17.74%) Junior
4 1,145 (17.66%) Data Analyst
5 1,136 (17.52%) Junior Analyst
6 1,135 (17.50%) Junior Data Analyst
7 397 (6.12%) Senior
8 389 (6.00%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
9 352 (5.43%) Lead
10 297 (4.58%) Developer
11 182 (2.81%) Architect
12 145 (2.24%) Software Engineer
13 115 (1.77%) Data Engineer
14 74 (1.14%) Solutions Architect
15 67 (1.03%) .NET Developer
16 64 (0.99%) Consultant
17 63 (0.97%) Designer
18 60 (0.93%) Python Engineer
19 53 (0.82%) Data Scientist
19 53 (0.82%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 180 (2.78%) .NET
2 125 (1.93%) React
3 99 (1.53%) HTML
4 87 (1.34%) CSS
5 74 (1.14%) REST
6 66 (1.02%) scikit-learn
7 64 (0.99%) Node.js
7 64 (0.99%) RESTful
8 63 (0.97%) ASP.NET
9 61 (0.94%) .NET Core
10 59 (0.91%) Pandas
11 58 (0.89%) ASP.NET Core
11 58 (0.89%) NumPy
12 53 (0.82%) Hugging Face
13 52 (0.80%) Matplotlib
14 50 (0.77%) Streamlit
15 49 (0.76%) AngularJS
15 49 (0.76%) ML.NET
16 41 (0.63%) Blazor
17 39 (0.60%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 2,337 (36.04%) IoT
2 158 (2.44%) Social Media
3 135 (2.08%) Cloud Native
4 113 (1.74%) Onboarding
5 112 (1.73%) Robotics
6 103 (1.59%) Product Ownership
7 99 (1.53%) Algorithms
8 63 (0.97%) Distributed Systems
8 63 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
9 60 (0.93%) Blog
10 59 (0.91%) Mobile App
11 56 (0.86%) Low-Code
12 55 (0.85%) AI Agents
13 54 (0.83%) Enterprise Software
14 51 (0.79%) Data Centre
15 49 (0.76%) Life Science
16 45 (0.69%) Management Information System
17 33 (0.51%) Virtual Team
18 31 (0.48%) Public Cloud
19 28 (0.43%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 64 (0.99%) Windows
2 54 (0.83%) Linux
3 48 (0.74%) Android
4 38 (0.59%) Apple iOS
5 26 (0.40%) Windows Server
6 15 (0.23%) Unix
7 11 (0.17%) VMS
8 5 (0.077%) Mac OS
8 5 (0.077%) Ubuntu
8 5 (0.077%) Windows Server 2016
9 3 (0.046%) Robot Operating System
10 1 (0.015%) Kali Linux
10 1 (0.015%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,908 (44.85%) Machine Learning
2 2,525 (38.94%) Cybersecurity
3 2,477 (38.20%) User Experience
4 2,343 (36.14%) Web Development
5 1,297 (20.00%) Business Intelligence
6 587 (9.05%) Agile
7 567 (8.74%) Analytics
8 401 (6.18%) CI/CD
9 393 (6.06%) Roadmaps
10 390 (6.01%) Artificial Intelligence Engineering
11 370 (5.71%) Problem-Solving
12 357 (5.51%) Software Engineering
13 336 (5.18%) DevOps
14 318 (4.90%) Continuous Improvement
15 281 (4.33%) Decision-Making
16 270 (4.16%) Customer Experience
17 263 (4.06%) LLM
18 243 (3.75%) Mentoring
19 210 (3.24%) Data Science
20 194 (2.99%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 2,050 (31.62%) Python
2 1,435 (22.13%) SQL
3 175 (2.70%) C#
4 173 (2.67%) JavaScript
5 137 (2.11%) Java
6 83 (1.28%) TypeScript
7 56 (0.86%) C++
8 39 (0.60%) PowerShell
9 34 (0.52%) Bash
9 34 (0.52%) R
10 24 (0.37%) C
11 21 (0.32%) Go
12 16 (0.25%) Kotlin
13 14 (0.22%) T-SQL
14 13 (0.20%) Apex Code
14 13 (0.20%) Rust
15 12 (0.19%) Bicep
15 12 (0.19%) PHP
15 12 (0.19%) Scala
16 11 (0.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 2,642 (40.75%) Degree
2 2,383 (36.75%) Master's Degree
3 2,351 (36.26%) PhD
4 2,320 (35.78%) Postgraduate
5 1,476 (22.76%) Azure Certification
6 144 (2.22%) Security Cleared
7 109 (1.68%) AWS Certification
8 83 (1.28%) SC Cleared
9 58 (0.89%) DV Cleared
10 57 (0.88%) Computer Science Degree
11 49 (0.76%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 47 (0.72%) ACCA
13 45 (0.69%) DBS Check
14 44 (0.68%) CIMA
15 26 (0.40%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 17 (0.26%) CISSP
17 10 (0.15%) PMP
18 9 (0.14%) CISA
18 9 (0.14%) CISM
19 8 (0.12%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 199 (3.07%) Accessibility
2 129 (1.99%) Data Quality
3 84 (1.30%) GDPR
3 84 (1.30%) QA
4 47 (0.72%) WCAG
5 46 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 40 (0.62%) GRC
7 28 (0.43%) NIST
8 22 (0.34%) SLA
9 21 (0.32%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 18 (0.28%) PCI DSS
11 14 (0.22%) GxP
11 14 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 12 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials
12 12 (0.19%) IFRS
13 10 (0.15%) GAAP
13 10 (0.15%) NCSC
13 10 (0.15%) SOC 2
14 9 (0.14%) HIPAA
14 9 (0.14%) PMO
System Software
1 122 (1.88%) Docker
2 50 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
3 40 (0.62%) Active Directory
4 12 (0.19%) Firmware
5 7 (0.11%) VMware Infrastructure
6 6 (0.093%) vSphere
7 5 (0.077%) Embedded Firmware
8 3 (0.046%) Kamailio
9 1 (0.015%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.015%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 125 (1.93%) Kubernetes
2 91 (1.40%) Terraform
3 25 (0.39%) Grafana
4 24 (0.37%) Ansible
4 24 (0.37%) Microsoft Intune
5 19 (0.29%) Prometheus
6 15 (0.23%) Single Sign-On
7 8 (0.12%) Proxmox
8 7 (0.11%) Podman
9 6 (0.093%) Cisco CUCM
10 5 (0.077%) Functional Safety
10 5 (0.077%) Kubeflow
10 5 (0.077%) Nagios
10 5 (0.077%) Puppet
11 4 (0.062%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 4 (0.062%) SolarWinds Orion
11 4 (0.062%) vCenter Server
12 3 (0.046%) Argo
13 2 (0.031%) ZABBIX
14 1 (0.015%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 1,682 (25.94%) Microsoft
2 175 (2.70%) Adobe
3 104 (1.60%) Databricks
4 89 (1.37%) Google
5 72 (1.11%) Dell
6 59 (0.91%) Cisco
7 56 (0.86%) Apple
7 56 (0.86%) Salesforce
8 44 (0.68%) ServiceNow
9 42 (0.65%) Oracle
10 41 (0.63%) OpenAI
11 26 (0.40%) CrowdStrike
12 25 (0.39%) Tenable
13 23 (0.35%) SAP
14 22 (0.34%) Palo Alto
15 21 (0.32%) HubSpot
16 19 (0.29%) VMware
17 14 (0.22%) Splunk
18 11 (0.17%) BT
18 11 (0.17%) Sage