AI Job Trends

AI
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring AI skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 3 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 49 69
Rank change year-on-year +45 +20 +52
Permanent jobs citing AI 9,725 2,550 2,864
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 15.15% 4.96% 3.90%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 18.93% 5.41% 4.40%
Number of salaries quoted 2,291 1,274 1,702
10th Percentile £35,000 £45,000 £42,500
25th Percentile £51,250 £60,500 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £75,750 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year -7.59% +8.21% -
75th Percentile £95,000 £98,750 £92,500
90th Percentile £118,750 £117,500 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £59,450 £66,340 £62,500
% change year-on-year -10.39% +6.14% +0.67%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

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.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 51,366 47,163 65,121
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 80.02% 91.74% 88.57%
Number of salaries quoted 30,378 22,532 50,663
10th Percentile £28,750 £35,000 £29,500
25th Percentile £38,000 £45,628 £40,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -12.00%
75th Percentile £75,900 £80,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -9.09%

AI
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing AI relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

AI job vacancy trend in the UK

AI
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing AI.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing AI

AI
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing AI over the 6 months to 3 February 2026.

Salary histogram for AI in the UK

AI
Top 18 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing AI within the UK over the 6 months to 3 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
England +44 8,861 £72,426 -5.94% 2,521
UK excluding London +51 7,012 £59,450 -10.39% 1,596
Work from Home +52 2,766 £67,500 -3.57% 1,381
North of England +49 2,601 £61,418 -9.01% 354
London +35 2,272 £80,000 -11.11% 1,374
North West +45 2,009 £60,709 -10.06% 208
Midlands +93 1,525 £59,527 -8.42% 163
South East +34 1,448 £50,000 -35.06% 646
West Midlands +87 1,255 £60,000 +4.35% 105
East of England +44 650 £55,000 -16.96% 138
Yorkshire +54 485 £67,500 +3.85% 112
South West +38 354 £62,500 - 172
Scotland +41 339 £66,250 +10.42% 91
East Midlands +81 280 £42,500 -41.38% 57
Wales +37 123 £53,171 -5.47% 41
North East +52 107 £55,000 -26.42% 37
Northern Ireland -4 49 £90,000 - 14
Channel Islands - 8 - -

AI
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 98 (1.01%) SharePoint
2 58 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
3 54 (0.56%) Apache Spark
4 48 (0.49%) Confluence
5 41 (0.42%) CMS
6 23 (0.24%) Palantir Foundry
7 21 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
8 20 (0.21%) Jupyter
8 20 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 17 (0.17%) Appian
10 16 (0.16%) WordPress
11 15 (0.15%) Apache
12 13 (0.13%) JBoss
12 13 (0.13%) WebSphere
13 9 (0.093%) Apache Solr
14 8 (0.082%) ArcGIS
15 6 (0.062%) SAS
16 5 (0.051%) Apache Pulsar
16 5 (0.051%) IIS
16 5 (0.051%) Umbraco
Applications
1 1,210 (12.44%) Chatbot
2 533 (5.48%) Microsoft Excel
3 95 (0.98%) Microsoft Office
4 41 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 21 (0.22%) Maya
6 12 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
7 10 (0.10%) MS Visio
8 7 (0.072%) Adobe Premiere
8 7 (0.072%) Microsoft Project
9 6 (0.062%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.062%) Notion
9 6 (0.062%) Photoshop
10 4 (0.041%) Sketch
10 4 (0.041%) UserZoom
10 4 (0.041%) Weka
11 3 (0.031%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.031%) InDesign
11 3 (0.031%) Simulink
12 1 (0.010%) Blender
12 1 (0.010%) GNU Octave
Business Applications
1 51 (0.52%) Dynamics CRM
2 20 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
3 18 (0.19%) NetSuite
4 12 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
4 12 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
5 11 (0.11%) Shopify
6 10 (0.10%) Workday HCM
7 8 (0.082%) Endur
8 7 (0.072%) Distributed Ledger
8 7 (0.072%) Oracle EBS
8 7 (0.072%) Salesforce CRM
9 5 (0.051%) Elite 3E
10 4 (0.041%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 4 (0.041%) Oracle Receivables
11 3 (0.031%) Dynamics GP
11 3 (0.031%) Oracle Assets
11 3 (0.031%) SAP Business One
12 2 (0.021%) SAP ERP
12 2 (0.021%) SAP FI
12 2 (0.021%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 4,105 (42.21%) Cloud Computing
2 1,463 (15.04%) Azure
3 814 (8.37%) Power Platform
4 694 (7.14%) AWS
5 497 (5.11%) Azure AI
6 439 (4.51%) SaaS
7 326 (3.35%) GCP
8 226 (2.32%) GitHub
9 205 (2.11%) Azure DevOps
10 193 (1.98%) Microsoft 365
11 117 (1.20%) Snowflake
12 113 (1.16%) GitHub Copilot
13 110 (1.13%) Azure Data Factory
14 108 (1.11%) Microsoft Copilot
15 104 (1.07%) Serverless
16 100 (1.03%) Entra ID
17 95 (0.98%) Power Automate
18 72 (0.74%) Vertex AI
19 61 (0.63%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 61 (0.63%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 4,061 (41.76%) Internet
2 53 (0.54%) Broadband
3 44 (0.45%) Firewall
4 31 (0.32%) Unified Communications
5 30 (0.31%) Network Security
6 27 (0.28%) VoIP
7 22 (0.23%) VPN
8 18 (0.19%) HTTP
9 15 (0.15%) DNS
9 15 (0.15%) TCP/IP
10 14 (0.14%) Telepresence
10 14 (0.14%) WAN
10 14 (0.14%) WebEx
10 14 (0.14%) Wi-Fi
11 13 (0.13%) VLAN
12 11 (0.11%) DHCP
13 8 (0.082%) InfiniBand
13 8 (0.082%) Intranet
13 8 (0.082%) Wireless
13 8 (0.082%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 658 (6.77%) Power BI
2 518 (5.33%) Tableau
3 154 (1.58%) Data Warehouse
4 109 (1.12%) NoSQL
5 107 (1.10%) SQL Server
6 102 (1.05%) Data Lake
7 87 (0.89%) Metadata
8 76 (0.78%) PostgreSQL
9 75 (0.77%) MongoDB
10 71 (0.73%) Big Data
11 42 (0.43%) BigQuery
12 41 (0.42%) MySQL
13 39 (0.40%) Pinecone
14 36 (0.37%) Hadoop
15 35 (0.36%) Relational Database
16 33 (0.34%) Elasticsearch
17 31 (0.32%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 27 (0.28%) Looker
19 25 (0.26%) Azure SQL Database
19 25 (0.26%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 136 (1.40%) Git
2 119 (1.22%) JIRA
3 51 (0.52%) MLflow
4 47 (0.48%) Jenkins
5 28 (0.29%) GitLab
6 19 (0.20%) Octopus Deploy
6 19 (0.20%) TeamCity
7 18 (0.19%) Cypress.io
7 18 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
8 14 (0.14%) Selenium
8 14 (0.14%) Visual Studio
9 10 (0.10%) Visual Studio Code
10 9 (0.093%) Bitbucket
10 9 (0.093%) Postman
11 8 (0.082%) Subversion
11 8 (0.082%) Vite
12 7 (0.072%) Burp Suite
12 7 (0.072%) Storybook
12 7 (0.072%) WebDriver
13 6 (0.062%) Claude Code
General
1 5,633 (57.92%) Social Skills
2 4,490 (46.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 4,224 (43.43%) Banking
4 1,154 (11.87%) Finance
5 1,094 (11.25%) Analytical Skills
6 394 (4.05%) Marketing
7 298 (3.06%) Public Sector
8 276 (2.84%) Law
9 265 (2.72%) Legal
10 208 (2.14%) Retail
11 138 (1.42%) Games
12 122 (1.25%) Manufacturing
13 102 (1.05%) Telecoms
14 99 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
15 94 (0.97%) Pharmaceutical
16 77 (0.79%) Financial Institution
16 77 (0.79%) Influencing Skills
17 72 (0.74%) Organisational Skills
18 64 (0.66%) Electronics
19 60 (0.62%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 3,164 (32.53%) Lecturer
2 1,165 (11.98%) Trainer
3 698 (7.18%) Senior
4 600 (6.17%) Analyst
5 462 (4.75%) Data Analyst
6 418 (4.30%) Lead
7 407 (4.19%) Developer
7 407 (4.19%) Junior
8 386 (3.97%) Junior Analyst
8 386 (3.97%) Junior Data Analyst
9 275 (2.83%) Architect
10 215 (2.21%) Consultant
11 177 (1.82%) Software Engineer
12 157 (1.61%) Data Engineer
13 155 (1.59%) Content Editor
14 135 (1.39%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 117 (1.20%) Solutions Architect
16 106 (1.09%) Support Specialist
17 98 (1.01%) Customer Support Specialist
18 96 (0.99%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 237 (2.44%) React
2 184 (1.89%) .NET
3 177 (1.82%) REST
4 147 (1.51%) PyTorch
5 127 (1.31%) TensorFlow
6 116 (1.19%) Node.js
7 115 (1.18%) RESTful
8 107 (1.10%) LangChain
9 103 (1.06%) HTML
10 82 (0.84%) FastAPI
11 75 (0.77%) CSS
12 72 (0.74%) AngularJS
12 72 (0.74%) Django
13 69 (0.71%) Kafka
14 61 (0.63%) scikit-learn
15 58 (0.60%) Vue
16 57 (0.59%) OAuth
17 56 (0.58%) Flask
18 55 (0.57%) Next.js
19 54 (0.56%) Hugging Face
Miscellaneous
1 4,077 (41.92%) IoT
2 276 (2.84%) Cloud Native
3 181 (1.86%) Onboarding
3 181 (1.86%) Product Ownership
4 160 (1.65%) Robotics
5 153 (1.57%) AI Agents
6 139 (1.43%) Algorithms
7 128 (1.32%) Self-Motivation
8 115 (1.18%) Enterprise Software
9 114 (1.17%) Blog
10 98 (1.01%) Management Information System
11 97 (1.00%) Life Science
11 97 (1.00%) Molecular Biology
12 95 (0.98%) Low-Code
13 90 (0.93%) Distributed Systems
14 80 (0.82%) Legacy Systems
15 71 (0.73%) Greenfield Project
16 70 (0.72%) Analytical Mindset
17 63 (0.65%) Social Media
18 62 (0.64%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 83 (0.85%) Windows
2 78 (0.80%) Linux
3 61 (0.63%) Android
4 56 (0.58%) Unix
5 38 (0.39%) Apple iOS
6 30 (0.31%) Windows Server
7 15 (0.15%) Ubuntu
8 9 (0.093%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.051%) Kali Linux
10 4 (0.041%) Robot Operating System
10 4 (0.041%) VMS
11 3 (0.031%) OpenWrt
11 3 (0.031%) Windows Server 2016
12 2 (0.021%) Mac OS X
12 2 (0.021%) zOS
13 1 (0.010%) Debian
13 1 (0.010%) FreeRTOS
13 1 (0.010%) Solaris
13 1 (0.010%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 5,065 (52.08%) Machine Learning
2 4,330 (44.52%) Cybersecurity
3 4,319 (44.41%) User Experience
4 4,072 (41.87%) Web Development
5 1,254 (12.89%) Conversational UI
6 1,044 (10.74%) Analytics
7 927 (9.53%) Agile
8 796 (8.19%) Business Intelligence
9 747 (7.68%) Problem-Solving
10 618 (6.35%) Roadmaps
11 590 (6.07%) CI/CD
12 585 (6.02%) Decision-Making
13 583 (5.99%) DevOps
14 581 (5.97%) Software Engineering
15 563 (5.79%) Continuous Improvement
16 486 (5.00%) Generative AI
17 474 (4.87%) Data Science
18 466 (4.79%) Computer Science
19 461 (4.74%) LLM
20 400 (4.11%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 1,461 (15.02%) Python
2 982 (10.10%) SQL
3 259 (2.66%) JavaScript
4 249 (2.56%) TypeScript
5 206 (2.12%) Java
6 154 (1.58%) C#
7 87 (0.89%) PowerShell
8 83 (0.85%) C++
9 70 (0.72%) Bash
10 65 (0.67%) Go
11 57 (0.59%) R
12 38 (0.39%) PHP
13 35 (0.36%) Rust
14 31 (0.32%) Scala
15 28 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 26 (0.27%) Kotlin
17 24 (0.25%) C
18 23 (0.24%) Apex Code
19 21 (0.22%) PL/SQL
20 20 (0.21%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 6,098 (62.70%) Degree
2 4,797 (49.33%) Master's Degree
3 4,731 (48.65%) PhD
4 4,049 (41.63%) Postgraduate
5 431 (4.43%) Azure Certification
6 325 (3.34%) Security Cleared
7 261 (2.68%) SC Cleared
8 214 (2.20%) Computer Science Degree
9 79 (0.81%) DV Cleared
10 70 (0.72%) AWS Certification
11 62 (0.64%) DBS Check
12 48 (0.49%) CISSP
12 48 (0.49%) PMP
13 46 (0.47%) BPSS Clearance
14 37 (0.38%) Microsoft Certification
15 35 (0.36%) ACCA
16 33 (0.34%) PMI Certification
17 30 (0.31%) CISA
17 30 (0.31%) Numerate Degree
18 28 (0.29%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 224 (2.30%) Data Quality
2 163 (1.68%) Accessibility
3 136 (1.40%) QA
4 118 (1.21%) GDPR
5 76 (0.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 43 (0.44%) GxP
7 38 (0.39%) EU AI Act
8 33 (0.34%) NIST
9 30 (0.31%) IFRS
10 26 (0.27%) SLA
11 25 (0.26%) HIPAA
12 24 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
12 24 (0.25%) GRC
13 22 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials
13 22 (0.23%) PMO
13 22 (0.23%) Solvency II
13 22 (0.23%) WCAG
14 21 (0.22%) PSD2
15 18 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 42001
16 16 (0.16%) GAAP
System Software
1 237 (2.44%) Docker
2 73 (0.75%) Active Directory
3 22 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
3 22 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
4 17 (0.17%) VMware Infrastructure
5 16 (0.16%) Firmware
6 13 (0.13%) vSphere
7 7 (0.072%) Lustre
8 5 (0.051%) GPFS
8 5 (0.051%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 4 (0.041%) Hyper-V
9 4 (0.041%) VMware ESXi
10 3 (0.031%) Kamailio
11 2 (0.021%) Ceph
11 2 (0.021%) NFS
11 2 (0.021%) RACF
12 1 (0.010%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 235 (2.42%) Terraform
2 221 (2.27%) Kubernetes
3 52 (0.53%) Ansible
4 48 (0.49%) Microsoft Intune
5 45 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
6 32 (0.33%) Prometheus
7 25 (0.26%) Grafana
8 14 (0.14%) Cisco CUCM
9 10 (0.10%) Argo
9 10 (0.10%) Kubeflow
10 8 (0.082%) SCCM
11 6 (0.062%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 6 (0.062%) vCenter Server
12 4 (0.041%) Nessus
12 4 (0.041%) Nmap
12 4 (0.041%) Proxmox
13 3 (0.031%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
13 3 (0.031%) RSA Archer
13 3 (0.031%) SolarWinds Orion
14 2 (0.021%) Puppet
Vendors
1 1,193 (12.27%) Microsoft
2 1,163 (11.96%) PayPal
3 189 (1.94%) Google
4 170 (1.75%) Databricks
5 118 (1.21%) OpenAI
6 102 (1.05%) Oracle
7 99 (1.02%) Salesforce
8 97 (1.00%) Adobe
9 95 (0.98%) Cisco
10 84 (0.86%) Dell
11 72 (0.74%) SAP
12 47 (0.48%) Blue Prism
13 46 (0.47%) Foundry
14 45 (0.46%) Alteryx
15 43 (0.44%) Palantir
16 38 (0.39%) HubSpot
17 37 (0.38%) Fortinet
18 35 (0.36%) Apple
19 34 (0.35%) Bloomberg
20 29 (0.30%) VMware