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

6 months to
9 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 52 64
Rank change year-on-year +48 +12 +54
Permanent jobs citing AI 9,440 2,591 2,271
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 15.80% 4.82% 4.17%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 19.47% 5.33% 4.63%
Number of salaries quoted 2,120 1,276 1,284
10th Percentile £34,250 £45,000 £42,500
25th Percentile £50,625 £57,500 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,500 £77,000 £75,000
Median % change year-on-year -5.84% +2.67% +7.14%
75th Percentile £95,000 £97,500 £93,750
90th Percentile £118,875 £118,750 £120,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £70,000 £67,500
% change year-on-year -14.29% +3.70% +10.20%

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 48,482 48,584 49,041
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 81.16% 90.44% 89.96%
Number of salaries quoted 28,500 23,705 37,321
10th Percentile £28,500 £35,000 £31,250
25th Percentile £37,000 £45,000 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £78,750
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year -9.09% +4.76% -4.55%

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 9 January 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 9 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
England +46 8,572 £72,500 -6.45% 4,867
UK excluding London +54 6,883 £60,000 -14.29% 4,282
Work from Home +62 2,729 £67,500 -10.00% 2,015
North of England +55 2,556 £62,500 -8.42% 776
London +31 2,147 £80,000 -10.11% 1,129
North West +39 1,982 £62,500 -10.07% 323
Midlands +108 1,517 £62,500 -3.85% 515
South East +28 1,400 £50,000 -33.33% 1,403
West Midlands +96 1,256 £65,000 +13.04% 183
East of England +88 626 £47,500 -38.31% 677
Yorkshire +55 466 £72,500 +12.71% 330
Scotland +51 380 £70,000 +17.65% 152
South West +30 324 £62,500 - 546
East Midlands +84 271 £42,500 -44.81% 315
Wales +37 118 £55,000 -12.00% 224
North East +57 108 £55,000 -27.63% 125
Northern Ireland -7 39 £86,250 -2.82% 101
Channel Islands - 8 - - 1

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 91 (0.96%) SharePoint
2 53 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
3 52 (0.55%) Confluence
4 49 (0.52%) Apache Spark
5 39 (0.41%) CMS
6 21 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
7 20 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 16 (0.17%) Apache
9 15 (0.16%) WordPress
10 13 (0.14%) Appian
11 10 (0.11%) JBoss
11 10 (0.11%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.095%) Apache Solr
13 7 (0.074%) Jupyter
14 5 (0.053%) Apache Pulsar
14 5 (0.053%) ArcGIS
14 5 (0.053%) IIS
14 5 (0.053%) nginx
14 5 (0.053%) Umbraco
15 4 (0.042%) Luigi
Applications
1 1,256 (13.31%) Chatbot
2 428 (4.53%) Microsoft Excel
3 99 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
4 43 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 21 (0.22%) Maya
6 10 (0.11%) Sketch
6 10 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.074%) Adobe Premiere
7 7 (0.074%) MS Visio
7 7 (0.074%) Notion
8 6 (0.064%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 6 (0.064%) Adobe XD
8 6 (0.064%) Photoshop
9 5 (0.053%) Microsoft Project
10 4 (0.042%) InDesign
10 4 (0.042%) Weka
11 3 (0.032%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.032%) Simulink
12 2 (0.021%) S-PLUS
13 1 (0.011%) Adobe Illustrator
Business Applications
1 51 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
2 20 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
3 18 (0.19%) NetSuite
4 12 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
5 11 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
5 11 (0.12%) Shopify
6 8 (0.085%) Endur
6 8 (0.085%) Workday HCM
7 7 (0.074%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.064%) Distributed Ledger
9 5 (0.053%) Elite 3E
9 5 (0.053%) Salesforce CRM
10 4 (0.042%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 4 (0.042%) Oracle Receivables
11 3 (0.032%) Oracle Assets
11 3 (0.032%) SAP Business One
12 2 (0.021%) Dynamics GP
12 2 (0.021%) SAP CO
12 2 (0.021%) SAP ERP
12 2 (0.021%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 4,096 (43.39%) Cloud Computing
2 1,322 (14.00%) Azure
3 693 (7.34%) AWS
4 687 (7.28%) Power Platform
5 411 (4.35%) SaaS
6 391 (4.14%) Azure AI
7 329 (3.49%) GCP
8 220 (2.33%) GitHub
9 209 (2.21%) Azure DevOps
10 169 (1.79%) Microsoft 365
11 117 (1.24%) Snowflake
12 116 (1.23%) GitHub Copilot
13 98 (1.04%) Microsoft Copilot
14 97 (1.03%) Serverless
15 96 (1.02%) Azure Data Factory
16 86 (0.91%) Entra ID
17 84 (0.89%) Power Automate
18 75 (0.79%) Vertex AI
19 64 (0.68%) Azure Synapse Analytics
20 61 (0.65%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 4,061 (43.02%) Internet
2 31 (0.33%) Firewall
3 24 (0.25%) Network Security
3 24 (0.25%) VoIP
4 22 (0.23%) Unified Communications
5 21 (0.22%) Broadband
6 18 (0.19%) VPN
7 16 (0.17%) WAN
8 15 (0.16%) Wi-Fi
9 14 (0.15%) DNS
9 14 (0.15%) HTTP
9 14 (0.15%) Telepresence
9 14 (0.15%) WebEx
10 12 (0.13%) TCP/IP
11 11 (0.12%) Wireless
12 10 (0.11%) VLAN
13 9 (0.095%) LAN
14 8 (0.085%) InfiniBand
15 7 (0.074%) Intranet
15 7 (0.074%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 541 (5.73%) Power BI
2 408 (4.32%) Tableau
3 167 (1.77%) Data Warehouse
4 108 (1.14%) NoSQL
5 106 (1.12%) SQL Server
6 100 (1.06%) Data Lake
7 79 (0.84%) PostgreSQL
8 77 (0.82%) MongoDB
9 70 (0.74%) Big Data
10 69 (0.73%) Metadata
11 50 (0.53%) MySQL
12 39 (0.41%) BigQuery
13 35 (0.37%) Relational Database
14 34 (0.36%) Hadoop
15 30 (0.32%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 29 (0.31%) Looker
16 29 (0.31%) Pinecone
17 28 (0.30%) Elasticsearch
18 27 (0.29%) Azure SQL Database
19 22 (0.23%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 127 (1.35%) JIRA
2 126 (1.33%) Git
3 50 (0.53%) Jenkins
4 42 (0.44%) MLflow
5 24 (0.25%) GitLab
6 22 (0.23%) Octopus Deploy
6 22 (0.23%) TeamCity
7 18 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
8 15 (0.16%) Cypress.io
9 12 (0.13%) Visual Studio
10 11 (0.12%) Selenium
11 10 (0.11%) Bitbucket
12 8 (0.085%) Subversion
13 7 (0.074%) Burp Suite
13 7 (0.074%) Storybook
13 7 (0.074%) Vite
13 7 (0.074%) WebDriver
14 6 (0.064%) ERwin
14 6 (0.064%) JMeter
14 6 (0.064%) Postman
General
1 5,542 (58.71%) Social Skills
2 4,485 (47.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 4,211 (44.61%) Banking
4 1,145 (12.13%) Analytical Skills
5 1,085 (11.49%) Finance
6 402 (4.26%) Marketing
7 291 (3.08%) Law
8 275 (2.91%) Public Sector
9 250 (2.65%) Legal
10 199 (2.11%) Retail
11 118 (1.25%) Games
12 110 (1.17%) Telecoms
13 105 (1.11%) Manufacturing
14 97 (1.03%) Presentation Skills
15 94 (1.00%) Pharmaceutical
16 73 (0.77%) Influencing Skills
16 73 (0.77%) Organisational Skills
17 71 (0.75%) Financial Institution
18 67 (0.71%) Aviation
19 65 (0.69%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 3,161 (33.49%) Lecturer
2 1,216 (12.88%) Trainer
3 660 (6.99%) Senior
4 484 (5.13%) Analyst
5 387 (4.10%) Developer
6 357 (3.78%) Lead
7 349 (3.70%) Data Analyst
8 301 (3.19%) Junior
9 285 (3.02%) Architect
10 276 (2.92%) Junior Analyst
10 276 (2.92%) Junior Data Analyst
11 211 (2.24%) Consultant
12 170 (1.80%) Software Engineer
13 155 (1.64%) Content Editor
14 139 (1.47%) Data Engineer
15 124 (1.31%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 106 (1.12%) Support Specialist
17 103 (1.09%) Solutions Architect
18 98 (1.04%) Customer Support Specialist
19 97 (1.03%) Innovation Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 223 (2.36%) React
2 173 (1.83%) .NET
3 165 (1.75%) REST
4 122 (1.29%) PyTorch
5 117 (1.24%) Node.js
6 113 (1.20%) TensorFlow
7 108 (1.14%) RESTful
8 105 (1.11%) LangChain
9 94 (1.00%) HTML
10 79 (0.84%) FastAPI
11 67 (0.71%) AngularJS
11 67 (0.71%) CSS
12 66 (0.70%) Kafka
13 65 (0.69%) Django
14 55 (0.58%) Vue
15 54 (0.57%) scikit-learn
16 52 (0.55%) Flask
17 47 (0.50%) JSON
17 47 (0.50%) OAuth
17 47 (0.50%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 4,075 (43.17%) IoT
2 257 (2.72%) Cloud Native
3 181 (1.92%) Product Ownership
4 177 (1.88%) Onboarding
5 152 (1.61%) Robotics
6 146 (1.55%) AI Agents
7 129 (1.37%) Algorithms
8 123 (1.30%) Enterprise Software
8 123 (1.30%) Self-Motivation
9 109 (1.15%) Blog
10 97 (1.03%) Molecular Biology
11 91 (0.96%) Life Science
11 91 (0.96%) Management Information System
12 89 (0.94%) Legacy Systems
13 87 (0.92%) Low-Code
14 82 (0.87%) Distributed Systems
15 72 (0.76%) Analytical Mindset
15 72 (0.76%) Greenfield Project
16 66 (0.70%) Virtual Team
17 53 (0.56%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 74 (0.78%) Windows
2 68 (0.72%) Linux
3 62 (0.66%) Android
4 51 (0.54%) Unix
5 42 (0.44%) Apple iOS
6 29 (0.31%) Windows Server
7 11 (0.12%) Mac OS
7 11 (0.12%) Ubuntu
8 5 (0.053%) Kali Linux
9 3 (0.032%) OpenWrt
10 2 (0.021%) Mac OS X
10 2 (0.021%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.021%) zOS
11 1 (0.011%) Debian
11 1 (0.011%) OpenVMS
11 1 (0.011%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 1 (0.011%) Robot Operating System
11 1 (0.011%) Solaris
11 1 (0.011%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 5,029 (53.27%) Machine Learning
2 4,326 (45.83%) Cybersecurity
3 4,302 (45.57%) User Experience
4 4,068 (43.09%) Web Development
5 1,307 (13.85%) Conversational UI
6 1,000 (10.59%) Analytics
7 876 (9.28%) Agile
8 734 (7.78%) Problem-Solving
9 672 (7.12%) Business Intelligence
10 598 (6.33%) Roadmaps
11 592 (6.27%) Continuous Improvement
12 578 (6.12%) Decision-Making
13 561 (5.94%) DevOps
14 540 (5.72%) Software Engineering
15 534 (5.66%) CI/CD
16 460 (4.87%) Data Science
17 450 (4.77%) Generative AI
18 431 (4.57%) Computer Science
19 428 (4.53%) LLM
20 416 (4.41%) Chemistry
Programming Languages
1 1,252 (13.26%) Python
2 859 (9.10%) SQL
3 237 (2.51%) TypeScript
4 234 (2.48%) JavaScript
5 187 (1.98%) Java
6 141 (1.49%) C#
7 84 (0.89%) PowerShell
8 71 (0.75%) C++
9 60 (0.64%) R
10 58 (0.61%) Bash
11 50 (0.53%) Go
12 32 (0.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 32 (0.34%) PHP
13 29 (0.31%) Scala
14 28 (0.30%) Kotlin
14 28 (0.30%) Rust
15 23 (0.24%) Apex Code
16 21 (0.22%) C
17 20 (0.21%) PL/SQL
17 20 (0.21%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 6,136 (65.00%) Degree
2 4,853 (51.41%) Master's Degree
3 4,771 (50.54%) PhD
4 4,049 (42.89%) Postgraduate
5 314 (3.33%) Azure Certification
6 293 (3.10%) Security Cleared
7 244 (2.58%) SC Cleared
8 207 (2.19%) Computer Science Degree
9 70 (0.74%) DV Cleared
10 55 (0.58%) AWS Certification
11 49 (0.52%) DBS Check
12 47 (0.50%) BPSS Clearance
13 45 (0.48%) PMP
14 38 (0.40%) CISSP
15 36 (0.38%) Microsoft Certification
16 35 (0.37%) ACCA
17 31 (0.33%) Numerate Degree
18 29 (0.31%) PMI Certification
19 28 (0.30%) CISA
20 27 (0.29%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 222 (2.35%) Data Quality
2 124 (1.31%) QA
3 123 (1.30%) Accessibility
4 104 (1.10%) GDPR
5 67 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 40 (0.42%) GxP
7 39 (0.41%) EU AI Act
8 31 (0.33%) SLA
9 29 (0.31%) NIST
10 28 (0.30%) IFRS
11 25 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
12 24 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
13 23 (0.24%) HIPAA
14 22 (0.23%) Solvency II
15 21 (0.22%) PSD2
16 20 (0.21%) GAAP
17 18 (0.19%) PMO
18 17 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 42001
18 17 (0.18%) WCAG
19 15 (0.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 230 (2.44%) Docker
2 57 (0.60%) Active Directory
3 22 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
4 18 (0.19%) Virtual Machines
5 17 (0.18%) VMware Infrastructure
6 15 (0.16%) Firmware
7 11 (0.12%) vSphere
8 8 (0.085%) Hyper-V
9 7 (0.074%) Lustre
10 5 (0.053%) GPFS
10 5 (0.053%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 4 (0.042%) VMware ESXi
12 2 (0.021%) Ceph
12 2 (0.021%) NFS
12 2 (0.021%) RACF
13 1 (0.011%) Oracle RAC
13 1 (0.011%) Terminal Server
Systems Management
1 219 (2.32%) Terraform
2 200 (2.12%) Kubernetes
3 50 (0.53%) Microsoft Intune
4 48 (0.51%) Ansible
5 41 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
6 24 (0.25%) Prometheus
7 15 (0.16%) Grafana
8 14 (0.15%) Cisco CUCM
9 9 (0.095%) Kubeflow
10 8 (0.085%) SCCM
11 7 (0.074%) Argo
12 4 (0.042%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 4 (0.042%) Nessus
12 4 (0.042%) Nmap
13 3 (0.032%) vCenter Server
14 2 (0.021%) Control-M
14 2 (0.021%) Functional Safety
14 2 (0.021%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
14 2 (0.021%) Progress Chef
14 2 (0.021%) Puppet
Vendors
1 1,214 (12.86%) PayPal
2 1,064 (11.27%) Microsoft
3 186 (1.97%) Google
4 162 (1.72%) Databricks
5 105 (1.11%) OpenAI
6 101 (1.07%) Oracle
7 100 (1.06%) Cisco
8 93 (0.99%) Adobe
8 93 (0.99%) Salesforce
9 84 (0.89%) Dell
10 73 (0.77%) SAP
11 48 (0.51%) Alteryx
11 48 (0.51%) Foundry
12 47 (0.50%) Apple
12 47 (0.50%) Blue Prism
13 46 (0.49%) Palo Alto
14 43 (0.46%) HubSpot
15 39 (0.41%) Fortinet
16 34 (0.36%) Bloomberg
16 34 (0.36%) Palantir