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

6 months to
18 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 21 44
Rank change year-on-year +15 +23 +70
Permanent jobs citing AI 9,353 3,858 4,801
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 10.20% 8.73% 4.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.84% 9.36% 5.82%
Number of salaries quoted 3,384 1,425 2,116
10th Percentile £38,000 £25,313 £40,000
25th Percentile £51,250 £50,000 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £70,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year - - -6.67%
75th Percentile £95,000 £97,500 £92,500
90th Percentile £111,250 £119,320 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,100 £65,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -7.54% +8.33% -11.11%

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 67,556 41,227 82,428
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.64% 93.27% 84.88%
Number of salaries quoted 43,655 22,384 59,687
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,000 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,500 £41,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £59,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +1.69% +7.27% -9.84%
75th Percentile £78,750 £78,750 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £52,475 £50,000
% change year-on-year +0.05% +4.95% -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 18 May 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 18 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
England +14 8,589 £70,000 - 4,104
UK excluding London +12 6,463 £60,100 -7.54% 2,732
London +21 2,418 £85,000 -8.11% 1,936
North of England +27 2,191 £67,500 +17.39% 807
Work from Home +3 1,975 £67,500 +1.95% 2,927
Midlands +7 1,681 £52,500 -8.70% 409
North West +55 1,462 £72,500 +3.57% 413
West Midlands +9 1,354 £52,500 -8.70% 241
South East +7 1,172 £60,000 -7.69% 741
East of England +34 602 £59,725 -9.81% 195
Yorkshire +4 587 £65,000 +62.50% 272
South West +4 440 £60,000 +4.35% 256
East Midlands -8 338 £52,500 -8.70% 168
Scotland +9 220 £70,000 +55.56% 209
North East +9 142 £60,000 +15.38% 124
Wales +28 132 £53,585 -20.02% 83
Northern Ireland +13 62 £87,500 - 63
Channel Islands +1 2 - -

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
1 117 (1.25%) Apache Airflow
2 116 (1.24%) SharePoint
3 105 (1.12%) Apache Spark
4 73 (0.78%) CMS
5 70 (0.75%) Confluence
6 65 (0.69%) Jupyter
7 44 (0.47%) Apache
8 30 (0.32%) ArcGIS
9 29 (0.31%) WordPress
10 28 (0.30%) Palantir Foundry
11 20 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
12 15 (0.16%) SAS
13 14 (0.15%) Appian
14 7 (0.075%) JBoss
14 7 (0.075%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 7 (0.075%) WebSphere
15 5 (0.053%) IIS
15 5 (0.053%) Sitecore CMS
16 4 (0.043%) Umbraco
17 3 (0.032%) Liferay
Applications
1 1,204 (12.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 104 (1.11%) Chatbot
3 88 (0.94%) Microsoft Office
4 59 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 30 (0.32%) UserZoom
6 23 (0.25%) MS Visio
6 23 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.075%) Maya
7 7 (0.075%) Simulink
8 6 (0.064%) Camtasia
8 6 (0.064%) Sketch
9 5 (0.053%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 5 (0.053%) Adobe Premiere
9 5 (0.053%) Microsoft Project
9 5 (0.053%) Photoshop
10 4 (0.043%) Adobe After Effects
10 4 (0.043%) Adobe Illustrator
10 4 (0.043%) CapCut
11 3 (0.032%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.032%) Productboard
Business Applications
1 38 (0.41%) Dynamics CRM
2 24 (0.26%) Cloudability
3 20 (0.21%) SAP S/4HANA
4 14 (0.15%) NetSuite
5 9 (0.096%) Oracle ERP
6 8 (0.086%) Distributed Ledger
6 8 (0.086%) Salesforce CRM
6 8 (0.086%) Workday HCM
7 6 (0.064%) Oracle EBS
7 6 (0.064%) Sage 50
8 4 (0.043%) Dynamics AX
8 4 (0.043%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 3 (0.032%) Dynamics GP
9 3 (0.032%) Shopify
9 3 (0.032%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 2 (0.021%) Dynamics NAV
10 2 (0.021%) Oracle Assets
10 2 (0.021%) Oracle Payables
10 2 (0.021%) SAP MDG
10 2 (0.021%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,697 (28.84%) Azure
2 2,554 (27.31%) Cloud Computing
3 1,630 (17.43%) Azure AI
4 1,526 (16.32%) Power Platform
5 977 (10.45%) AWS
6 492 (5.26%) SaaS
7 408 (4.36%) GCP
8 255 (2.73%) Microsoft 365
9 227 (2.43%) GitHub
10 205 (2.19%) Azure DevOps
10 205 (2.19%) Snowflake
11 183 (1.96%) Adobe Analytics
12 168 (1.80%) Microsoft Copilot
13 149 (1.59%) Serverless
14 130 (1.39%) Figma
15 125 (1.34%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 116 (1.24%) Entra ID
17 114 (1.22%) Azure Machine Learning
18 110 (1.18%) GitHub Copilot
19 105 (1.12%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 2,465 (26.36%) Internet
2 301 (3.22%) Broadband
3 72 (0.77%) Firewall
4 48 (0.51%) Network Security
5 34 (0.36%) VPN
6 27 (0.29%) DNS
7 25 (0.27%) HTTP
8 24 (0.26%) TCP/IP
9 23 (0.25%) Unified Communications
10 18 (0.19%) WAN
11 16 (0.17%) DHCP
11 16 (0.17%) VLAN
12 12 (0.13%) BGP
12 12 (0.13%) MQTT
12 12 (0.13%) OSPF
13 10 (0.11%) Wireless
14 9 (0.096%) Intranet
14 9 (0.096%) VoIP
15 8 (0.086%) 5G
15 8 (0.086%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1,373 (14.68%) Power BI
2 1,248 (13.34%) Tableau
3 174 (1.86%) SQL Server
4 171 (1.83%) Data Warehouse
5 142 (1.52%) MongoDB
6 141 (1.51%) Data Lake
7 113 (1.21%) PostgreSQL
8 91 (0.97%) Metadata
9 76 (0.81%) NoSQL
10 75 (0.80%) Azure SQL Database
11 73 (0.78%) BigQuery
12 67 (0.72%) Elasticsearch
13 65 (0.69%) Big Data
14 61 (0.65%) Looker
15 46 (0.49%) Amazon Redshift
16 44 (0.47%) Pinecone
17 41 (0.44%) MySQL
17 41 (0.44%) Relational Database
18 36 (0.38%) Redis
19 31 (0.33%) GIS
Development Applications
1 178 (1.90%) Git
2 91 (0.97%) JIRA
3 81 (0.87%) MLflow
4 67 (0.72%) Jenkins
5 58 (0.62%) Visual Studio Code
6 56 (0.60%) Claude Code
7 55 (0.59%) GitLab
8 27 (0.29%) Selenium
9 25 (0.27%) IBM UrbanCode
10 24 (0.26%) Snyk
11 20 (0.21%) Cypress.io
12 19 (0.20%) Postman
13 14 (0.15%) SpecFlow
14 12 (0.13%) JUnit
14 12 (0.13%) Visual Studio
15 11 (0.12%) Maven
15 11 (0.12%) Vite
16 10 (0.11%) Storybook
17 9 (0.096%) Gradle
18 7 (0.075%) TeamCity
General
1 5,034 (53.82%) Social Skills
2 2,929 (31.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 2,638 (28.20%) Banking
4 1,205 (12.88%) Finance
5 633 (6.77%) Analytical Skills
6 431 (4.61%) Marketing
7 343 (3.67%) Games
8 309 (3.30%) Legal
9 292 (3.12%) Public Sector
10 270 (2.89%) Law
11 241 (2.58%) Retail
12 162 (1.73%) Manufacturing
13 132 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
14 112 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
15 77 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
15 77 (0.82%) Telecoms
16 66 (0.71%) Financial Institution
17 65 (0.69%) Automotive
18 62 (0.66%) Advertising
19 47 (0.50%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 1,866 (19.95%) Lecturer
2 1,379 (14.74%) Analyst
3 1,150 (12.30%) Data Analyst
4 1,127 (12.05%) Junior
5 1,105 (11.81%) Junior Analyst
6 1,102 (11.78%) Junior Data Analyst
7 945 (10.10%) Senior
8 683 (7.30%) Lead
9 555 (5.93%) Developer
10 550 (5.88%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
11 477 (5.10%) Architect
12 282 (3.02%) Software Engineer
13 266 (2.84%) Consultant
14 231 (2.47%) Data Engineer
15 191 (2.04%) Solutions Architect
16 147 (1.57%) Python Engineer
17 145 (1.55%) Data Scientist
18 115 (1.23%) Full-Stack Developer
19 114 (1.22%) Full-Stack Engineer
20 101 (1.08%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 323 (3.45%) React
2 266 (2.84%) .NET
3 175 (1.87%) PyTorch
4 164 (1.75%) REST
5 154 (1.65%) HTML
6 150 (1.60%) RESTful
7 149 (1.59%) Node.js
8 148 (1.58%) CSS
9 144 (1.54%) LangChain
10 130 (1.39%) TensorFlow
11 125 (1.34%) scikit-learn
12 120 (1.28%) Kafka
13 106 (1.13%) Pandas
14 103 (1.10%) FastAPI
15 85 (0.91%) Hugging Face
16 84 (0.90%) AngularJS
16 84 (0.90%) Django
17 80 (0.86%) NumPy
17 80 (0.86%) PySpark
18 74 (0.79%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 2,486 (26.58%) IoT
2 369 (3.95%) Cloud Native
3 241 (2.58%) Social Media
4 223 (2.38%) AI Agents
5 196 (2.10%) Product Ownership
6 189 (2.02%) Onboarding
7 171 (1.83%) Algorithms
8 162 (1.73%) Distributed Systems
9 140 (1.50%) Robotics
10 109 (1.17%) Low-Code
11 104 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
12 98 (1.05%) Enterprise Software
13 97 (1.04%) Management Information System
14 94 (1.01%) Data Centre
15 91 (0.97%) Mobile App
16 84 (0.90%) Public Cloud
17 73 (0.78%) Blog
18 71 (0.76%) Legacy Systems
19 70 (0.75%) Virtual Team
20 59 (0.63%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 103 (1.10%) Windows
2 95 (1.02%) Linux
3 70 (0.75%) Android
4 50 (0.53%) Apple iOS
5 36 (0.38%) Unix
6 35 (0.37%) Windows Server
7 15 (0.16%) Ubuntu
8 13 (0.14%) VMS
9 8 (0.086%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.053%) Windows Server 2016
11 4 (0.043%) Robot Operating System
12 1 (0.011%) FreeRTOS
12 1 (0.011%) Kali Linux
12 1 (0.011%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 1 (0.011%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,756 (40.16%) Machine Learning
2 2,778 (29.70%) Cybersecurity
3 2,771 (29.63%) User Experience
4 2,485 (26.57%) Web Development
5 1,498 (16.02%) Business Intelligence
6 1,299 (13.89%) Analytics
7 1,099 (11.75%) Agile
8 910 (9.73%) Roadmaps
9 815 (8.71%) CI/CD
10 773 (8.26%) Problem-Solving
11 752 (8.04%) Software Engineering
12 688 (7.36%) Decision-Making
13 654 (6.99%) Continuous Improvement
14 649 (6.94%) DevOps
15 637 (6.81%) LLM
16 579 (6.19%) Generative AI
17 574 (6.14%) Mentoring
18 540 (5.77%) Data Science
19 459 (4.91%) Artificial Intelligence Engineering
20 458 (4.90%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 2,874 (30.73%) Python
2 1,795 (19.19%) SQL
3 328 (3.51%) JavaScript
4 284 (3.04%) Java
5 271 (2.90%) C#
6 257 (2.75%) TypeScript
7 97 (1.04%) C++
8 82 (0.88%) PowerShell
9 79 (0.84%) Go
10 75 (0.80%) Bash
11 59 (0.63%) R
12 40 (0.43%) C
13 39 (0.42%) PHP
14 35 (0.37%) Bicep
15 32 (0.34%) Scala
16 30 (0.32%) Rust
17 29 (0.31%) Kotlin
18 19 (0.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 15 (0.16%) T-SQL
20 14 (0.15%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 3,163 (33.82%) Degree
2 2,586 (27.65%) Master's Degree
3 2,547 (27.23%) PhD
4 2,457 (26.27%) Postgraduate
5 1,494 (15.97%) Azure Certification
6 360 (3.85%) Security Cleared
7 208 (2.22%) SC Cleared
8 141 (1.51%) Computer Science Degree
9 129 (1.38%) AWS Certification
10 116 (1.24%) DV Cleared
11 82 (0.88%) DBS Check
12 79 (0.84%) ACCA
13 58 (0.62%) CIMA
14 56 (0.60%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
15 48 (0.51%) CISSP
16 43 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
17 30 (0.32%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 30 (0.32%) Cisco Certification
18 27 (0.29%) PMI Certification
19 25 (0.27%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 371 (3.97%) Accessibility
2 274 (2.93%) Data Quality
3 185 (1.98%) QA
4 173 (1.85%) GDPR
5 84 (0.90%) GRC
6 80 (0.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 77 (0.82%) WCAG
8 49 (0.52%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 49 (0.52%) NIST
9 40 (0.43%) IFRS
10 38 (0.41%) SLA
11 26 (0.28%) PMO
12 22 (0.24%) PCI DSS
13 21 (0.22%) EU AI Act
13 21 (0.22%) HIPAA
14 20 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials
15 18 (0.19%) SOC 2
16 17 (0.18%) GxP
17 15 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 42001
18 13 (0.14%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 322 (3.44%) Docker
2 93 (0.99%) Virtual Machines
3 87 (0.93%) Active Directory
4 26 (0.28%) Firmware
5 10 (0.11%) VMware Infrastructure
6 7 (0.075%) vSphere
7 6 (0.064%) Embedded Firmware
8 5 (0.053%) IAG
9 3 (0.032%) Kamailio
9 3 (0.032%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.021%) Hyper-V
11 1 (0.011%) Apache Flume
11 1 (0.011%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 328 (3.51%) Kubernetes
2 252 (2.69%) Terraform
3 63 (0.67%) Ansible
4 52 (0.56%) Grafana
5 49 (0.52%) Prometheus
6 41 (0.44%) Microsoft Intune
7 33 (0.35%) Single Sign-On
8 11 (0.12%) Argo
9 10 (0.11%) Kubeflow
10 8 (0.086%) Proxmox
11 7 (0.075%) Nagios
11 7 (0.075%) Podman
11 7 (0.075%) Puppet
12 6 (0.064%) Cisco CUCM
13 5 (0.053%) Autotask
13 5 (0.053%) Functional Safety
14 4 (0.043%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 4 (0.043%) SolarWinds Orion
14 4 (0.043%) vCenter Server
15 3 (0.032%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 2,067 (22.10%) Microsoft
2 302 (3.23%) Databricks
3 261 (2.79%) Adobe
4 205 (2.19%) Google
5 160 (1.71%) OpenAI
6 133 (1.42%) Dell
7 121 (1.29%) Salesforce
8 85 (0.91%) Oracle
9 78 (0.83%) ServiceNow
10 74 (0.79%) Cisco
11 62 (0.66%) Apple
12 61 (0.65%) Foundry
12 61 (0.65%) SAP
13 49 (0.52%) HubSpot
14 48 (0.51%) Palantir
15 40 (0.43%) CrowdStrike
16 39 (0.42%) Informatica
17 35 (0.37%) Palo Alto
18 30 (0.32%) Tenable
19 26 (0.28%) Red Hat