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

6 months to
16 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 51 61
Rank change year-on-year +47 +10 +57
Permanent jobs citing AI 9,428 2,581 2,385
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 15.54% 4.83% 4.25%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 19.23% 5.32% 4.73%
Number of salaries quoted 2,179 1,263 1,368
10th Percentile £35,000 £45,000 £42,500
25th Percentile £51,000 £57,500 £52,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £71,500 £77,000 £75,000
Median % change year-on-year -7.14% +2.67% +7.14%
75th Percentile £95,000 £98,750 £92,500
90th Percentile £118,750 £118,750 £120,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £59,450 £70,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year -15.07% +7.69% +5.69%

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 49,036 48,491 50,448
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 80.83% 90.77% 89.96%
Number of salaries quoted 28,943 23,557 38,431
10th Percentile £28,500 £35,000 £31,250
25th Percentile £37,500 £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 £77,500
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £51,528
% change year-on-year -9.09% +6.74% -6.31%

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 16 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 16 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 +47 8,595 £72,500 -6.45% 3,960
UK excluding London +54 6,811 £59,450 -15.07% 3,523
Work from Home +63 2,702 £67,500 -10.00% 1,827
North of England +52 2,538 £62,500 -9.42% 607
London +35 2,201 £80,000 -11.11% 980
North West +40 1,980 £60,709 -13.27% 266
Midlands +112 1,501 £60,000 -7.69% 376
South East +31 1,397 £50,000 -33.33% 1,273
West Midlands +94 1,244 £65,000 +13.04% 149
East of England +90 622 £50,000 -35.06% 534
Yorkshire +56 455 £72,500 +12.71% 243
Scotland +43 344 £68,750 +15.55% 133
South West +34 324 £62,500 - 434
East Midlands +87 267 £42,500 -44.81% 216
Wales +42 117 £55,000 -2.22% 177
North East +53 103 £55,000 -27.63% 100
Northern Ireland -8 42 £90,000 +1.41% 81
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 92 (0.98%) SharePoint
2 54 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
3 53 (0.56%) Confluence
4 49 (0.52%) Apache Spark
5 40 (0.42%) CMS
6 20 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 19 (0.20%) Microsoft Exchange
8 16 (0.17%) Apache
8 16 (0.17%) WordPress
9 14 (0.15%) Appian
10 11 (0.12%) JBoss
10 11 (0.12%) Jupyter
10 11 (0.12%) WebSphere
11 9 (0.095%) Apache Solr
12 6 (0.064%) ArcGIS
13 5 (0.053%) Apache Pulsar
13 5 (0.053%) IIS
13 5 (0.053%) nginx
13 5 (0.053%) Umbraco
14 4 (0.042%) SAS
Applications
1 1,205 (12.78%) Chatbot
2 425 (4.51%) Microsoft Excel
3 96 (1.02%) Microsoft Office
4 42 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 21 (0.22%) Maya
6 11 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
7 9 (0.095%) MS Visio
8 7 (0.074%) Adobe Premiere
8 7 (0.074%) Microsoft Project
8 7 (0.074%) Notion
8 7 (0.074%) Sketch
9 6 (0.064%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.064%) Photoshop
10 4 (0.042%) InDesign
10 4 (0.042%) Weka
11 3 (0.032%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.032%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.032%) Simulink
12 2 (0.021%) S-PLUS
12 2 (0.021%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 55 (0.58%) 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
8 6 (0.064%) Salesforce CRM
9 5 (0.053%) Elite 3E
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%) Oracle Cash Management
12 2 (0.021%) Oracle General Ledger
12 2 (0.021%) SAP ERP
12 2 (0.021%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 4,095 (43.43%) Cloud Computing
2 1,316 (13.96%) Azure
3 695 (7.37%) AWS
4 687 (7.29%) Power Platform
5 424 (4.50%) SaaS
6 386 (4.09%) Azure AI
7 322 (3.42%) GCP
8 221 (2.34%) GitHub
9 207 (2.20%) Azure DevOps
10 168 (1.78%) Microsoft 365
11 119 (1.26%) Snowflake
12 116 (1.23%) GitHub Copilot
13 103 (1.09%) Microsoft Copilot
14 101 (1.07%) Serverless
15 100 (1.06%) Azure Data Factory
16 90 (0.95%) Entra ID
17 87 (0.92%) Power Automate
18 73 (0.77%) Vertex AI
19 65 (0.69%) Azure Synapse Analytics
20 60 (0.64%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 4,060 (43.06%) Internet
2 34 (0.36%) Firewall
3 27 (0.29%) Network Security
4 24 (0.25%) Unified Communications
4 24 (0.25%) VoIP
5 23 (0.24%) 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 13 (0.14%) TCP/IP
11 11 (0.12%) VLAN
11 11 (0.12%) Wireless
12 9 (0.095%) LAN
13 8 (0.085%) DHCP
13 8 (0.085%) InfiniBand
14 7 (0.074%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 541 (5.74%) Power BI
2 410 (4.35%) Tableau
3 156 (1.65%) Data Warehouse
4 114 (1.21%) NoSQL
5 106 (1.12%) SQL Server
6 98 (1.04%) Data Lake
7 81 (0.86%) MongoDB
8 79 (0.84%) PostgreSQL
9 71 (0.75%) Metadata
10 69 (0.73%) Big Data
11 47 (0.50%) MySQL
12 42 (0.45%) BigQuery
13 34 (0.36%) Hadoop
13 34 (0.36%) Pinecone
13 34 (0.36%) Relational Database
14 31 (0.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 30 (0.32%) Elasticsearch
15 30 (0.32%) Looker
16 27 (0.29%) Azure SQL Database
17 23 (0.24%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 130 (1.38%) Git
1 130 (1.38%) JIRA
2 51 (0.54%) Jenkins
3 47 (0.50%) MLflow
4 27 (0.29%) GitLab
5 21 (0.22%) Octopus Deploy
5 21 (0.22%) TeamCity
6 18 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
7 17 (0.18%) Cypress.io
8 13 (0.14%) Visual Studio
9 11 (0.12%) Selenium
10 10 (0.11%) Bitbucket
11 9 (0.095%) Vite
12 8 (0.085%) Subversion
13 7 (0.074%) Burp Suite
13 7 (0.074%) Storybook
13 7 (0.074%) WebDriver
14 6 (0.064%) ERwin
14 6 (0.064%) JMeter
14 6 (0.064%) Postman
General
1 5,513 (58.47%) Social Skills
2 4,495 (47.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 4,216 (44.72%) Banking
4 1,106 (11.73%) Finance
5 1,100 (11.67%) Analytical Skills
6 395 (4.19%) Marketing
7 282 (2.99%) Public Sector
8 281 (2.98%) Law
9 255 (2.70%) Legal
10 199 (2.11%) Retail
11 121 (1.28%) Games
12 104 (1.10%) Manufacturing
12 104 (1.10%) Telecoms
13 96 (1.02%) Pharmaceutical
14 92 (0.98%) Presentation Skills
15 75 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
16 74 (0.78%) Financial Institution
16 74 (0.78%) Influencing Skills
17 66 (0.70%) Aviation
18 64 (0.68%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 3,161 (33.53%) Lecturer
2 1,163 (12.34%) Trainer
3 666 (7.06%) Senior
4 489 (5.19%) Analyst
5 395 (4.19%) Developer
6 379 (4.02%) Lead
7 347 (3.68%) Data Analyst
8 299 (3.17%) Junior
9 276 (2.93%) Junior Analyst
9 276 (2.93%) Junior Data Analyst
10 261 (2.77%) Architect
11 216 (2.29%) Consultant
12 177 (1.88%) Software Engineer
13 155 (1.64%) Content Editor
14 146 (1.55%) Data Engineer
15 131 (1.39%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 106 (1.12%) Support Specialist
17 101 (1.07%) Solutions Architect
18 98 (1.04%) Customer Support Specialist
19 90 (0.95%) Research Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 233 (2.47%) React
2 175 (1.86%) .NET
3 172 (1.82%) REST
4 131 (1.39%) PyTorch
5 119 (1.26%) Node.js
6 116 (1.23%) TensorFlow
7 113 (1.20%) LangChain
8 109 (1.16%) RESTful
9 93 (0.99%) HTML
10 84 (0.89%) FastAPI
11 71 (0.75%) Kafka
12 70 (0.74%) AngularJS
13 67 (0.71%) CSS
13 67 (0.71%) Django
14 58 (0.62%) Vue
15 56 (0.59%) scikit-learn
16 51 (0.54%) Flask
16 51 (0.54%) Next.js
17 48 (0.51%) OAuth
17 48 (0.51%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 4,077 (43.24%) IoT
2 263 (2.79%) Cloud Native
3 187 (1.98%) Product Ownership
4 174 (1.85%) Onboarding
5 151 (1.60%) AI Agents
6 149 (1.58%) Robotics
7 127 (1.35%) Algorithms
8 124 (1.32%) Self-Motivation
9 121 (1.28%) Enterprise Software
10 111 (1.18%) Blog
11 97 (1.03%) Molecular Biology
12 93 (0.99%) Life Science
12 93 (0.99%) Management Information System
13 89 (0.94%) Low-Code
14 88 (0.93%) Legacy Systems
15 83 (0.88%) Distributed Systems
16 71 (0.75%) Greenfield Project
17 70 (0.74%) Analytical Mindset
18 63 (0.67%) Virtual Team
19 51 (0.54%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 74 (0.78%) Windows
2 71 (0.75%) Linux
3 58 (0.62%) Android
4 54 (0.57%) Unix
5 36 (0.38%) Apple iOS
6 28 (0.30%) 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%) VMS
10 2 (0.021%) zOS
11 1 (0.011%) Debian
11 1 (0.011%) Robot Operating System
11 1 (0.011%) Solaris
11 1 (0.011%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.011%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 5,037 (53.43%) Machine Learning
2 4,330 (45.93%) Cybersecurity
3 4,310 (45.71%) User Experience
4 4,069 (43.16%) Web Development
5 1,252 (13.28%) Conversational UI
6 992 (10.52%) Analytics
7 896 (9.50%) Agile
8 742 (7.87%) Problem-Solving
9 674 (7.15%) Business Intelligence
10 586 (6.22%) Roadmaps
11 574 (6.09%) DevOps
12 561 (5.95%) Decision-Making
13 557 (5.91%) Software Engineering
14 552 (5.85%) Continuous Improvement
15 547 (5.80%) CI/CD
16 464 (4.92%) Generative AI
17 458 (4.86%) Data Science
18 447 (4.74%) Computer Science
19 436 (4.62%) LLM
20 395 (4.19%) Chemistry
Programming Languages
1 1,276 (13.53%) Python
2 861 (9.13%) SQL
3 251 (2.66%) TypeScript
4 244 (2.59%) JavaScript
5 195 (2.07%) Java
6 144 (1.53%) C#
7 83 (0.88%) PowerShell
8 74 (0.78%) C++
9 61 (0.65%) Bash
10 60 (0.64%) R
11 54 (0.57%) Go
12 34 (0.36%) PHP
13 32 (0.34%) Rust
14 31 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 31 (0.33%) Scala
15 28 (0.30%) Kotlin
16 23 (0.24%) Apex Code
17 20 (0.21%) Bicep
17 20 (0.21%) C
17 20 (0.21%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 6,082 (64.51%) Degree
2 4,797 (50.88%) Master's Degree
3 4,727 (50.14%) PhD
4 4,049 (42.95%) Postgraduate
5 319 (3.38%) Azure Certification
6 313 (3.32%) Security Cleared
7 254 (2.69%) SC Cleared
8 212 (2.25%) Computer Science Degree
9 75 (0.80%) DV Cleared
10 57 (0.60%) AWS Certification
11 52 (0.55%) DBS Check
12 48 (0.51%) BPSS Clearance
13 46 (0.49%) PMP
14 42 (0.45%) CISSP
15 36 (0.38%) ACCA
16 35 (0.37%) Microsoft Certification
17 31 (0.33%) PMI Certification
18 30 (0.32%) CISA
18 30 (0.32%) Numerate Degree
19 28 (0.30%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 217 (2.30%) Data Quality
2 129 (1.37%) Accessibility
3 123 (1.30%) QA
4 107 (1.13%) GDPR
5 70 (0.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 43 (0.46%) GxP
7 39 (0.41%) EU AI Act
8 32 (0.34%) NIST
9 30 (0.32%) SLA
10 29 (0.31%) IFRS
11 25 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
12 24 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
12 24 (0.25%) HIPAA
13 22 (0.23%) Solvency II
14 21 (0.22%) PSD2
15 19 (0.20%) GAAP
16 18 (0.19%) GRC
16 18 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 42001
16 18 (0.19%) PMO
16 18 (0.19%) WCAG
System Software
1 236 (2.50%) Docker
2 63 (0.67%) Active Directory
3 22 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
4 19 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
5 16 (0.17%) VMware Infrastructure
6 15 (0.16%) Firmware
7 12 (0.13%) vSphere
8 7 (0.074%) Lustre
9 6 (0.064%) Hyper-V
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
Systems Management
1 225 (2.39%) Terraform
2 208 (2.21%) Kubernetes
3 50 (0.53%) Microsoft Intune
4 49 (0.52%) Ansible
5 41 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
6 27 (0.29%) Prometheus
7 19 (0.20%) Grafana
8 14 (0.15%) Cisco CUCM
9 9 (0.095%) Kubeflow
10 8 (0.085%) SCCM
11 7 (0.074%) Argo
12 5 (0.053%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 4 (0.042%) Nessus
13 4 (0.042%) Nmap
13 4 (0.042%) vCenter Server
14 3 (0.032%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
14 3 (0.032%) RSA Archer
15 2 (0.021%) HP Fortify
15 2 (0.021%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
15 2 (0.021%) Puppet
Vendors
1 1,162 (12.32%) PayPal
2 1,060 (11.24%) Microsoft
3 184 (1.95%) Google
4 162 (1.72%) Databricks
5 113 (1.20%) OpenAI
6 101 (1.07%) Cisco
6 101 (1.07%) Oracle
7 98 (1.04%) Salesforce
8 88 (0.93%) Adobe
9 85 (0.90%) Dell
10 70 (0.74%) SAP
11 48 (0.51%) Alteryx
12 47 (0.50%) Blue Prism
13 45 (0.48%) HubSpot
14 44 (0.47%) Apple
14 44 (0.47%) Foundry
15 40 (0.42%) Palo Alto
16 37 (0.39%) Fortinet
17 36 (0.38%) Palantir
18 34 (0.36%) Bloomberg