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

6 months to
18 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 52 61
Rank change year-on-year +48 +9 +57
Permanent jobs citing AI 9,498 2,572 2,490
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 15.57% 4.83% 4.19%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 19.29% 5.31% 4.68%
Number of salaries quoted 2,181 1,254 1,445
10th Percentile £35,000 £45,000 £42,500
25th Percentile £51,250 £57,500 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £71,000 £77,000 £70,875
Median % change year-on-year -7.79% +8.64% +1.25%
75th Percentile £95,000 £99,688 £92,500
90th Percentile £118,750 £118,750 £120,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £59,450 £70,000 £61,970
% change year-on-year -15.07% +12.96% -0.19%

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 49,245 48,425 53,180
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 80.71% 90.86% 89.54%
Number of salaries quoted 28,981 23,503 40,689
10th Percentile £28,500 £35,000 £31,250
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,000 £42,200
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £58,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +3.45% -7.20%
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 £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 18 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 18 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 8,649 £72,500 -6.45% 4,687
UK excluding London +54 6,874 £59,450 -15.07% 4,279
Work from Home +62 2,705 £67,500 -10.00% 2,037
North of England +51 2,550 £61,959 -9.22% 730
London +35 2,206 £80,000 -11.11% 1,027
North West +40 1,983 £60,000 -13.67% 305
Midlands +106 1,512 £60,000 -7.69% 484
South East +31 1,414 £50,000 -33.33% 1,490
West Midlands +91 1,249 £62,500 +8.70% 172
East of England +81 626 £51,250 -32.57% 662
Yorkshire +55 462 £70,000 +8.82% 308
Scotland +46 349 £68,750 +15.55% 151
South West +31 331 £62,500 - 548
East Midlands +80 273 £42,500 -43.14% 297
Wales +42 121 £55,000 -2.22% 230
North East +51 105 £55,000 -27.63% 121
Northern Ireland -2 46 £90,000 +1.41% 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 92 (0.97%) SharePoint
2 57 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
3 52 (0.55%) 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 15 (0.16%) Appian
10 12 (0.13%) JBoss
10 12 (0.13%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.12%) Jupyter
12 9 (0.095%) Apache Solr
13 7 (0.074%) ArcGIS
14 5 (0.053%) Apache Pulsar
14 5 (0.053%) IIS
14 5 (0.053%) nginx
14 5 (0.053%) Umbraco
15 4 (0.042%) SAS
Applications
1 1,206 (12.70%) Chatbot
2 480 (5.05%) Microsoft Excel
3 97 (1.02%) Microsoft Office
4 43 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 21 (0.22%) Maya
6 12 (0.13%) 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 (0.063%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.063%) 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 54 (0.57%) 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 (0.084%) Endur
6 8 (0.084%) Workday HCM
7 7 (0.074%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.063%) Distributed Ledger
8 6 (0.063%) 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%) Dynamics GP
12 2 (0.021%) SAP CO
12 2 (0.021%) SAP ERP
12 2 (0.021%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 4,094 (43.10%) Cloud Computing
2 1,371 (14.43%) Azure
3 745 (7.84%) Power Platform
4 698 (7.35%) AWS
5 440 (4.63%) Azure AI
6 423 (4.45%) SaaS
7 319 (3.36%) GCP
8 222 (2.34%) GitHub
9 206 (2.17%) Azure DevOps
10 169 (1.78%) Microsoft 365
11 120 (1.26%) Snowflake
12 115 (1.21%) GitHub Copilot
13 104 (1.09%) Microsoft Copilot
14 102 (1.07%) Azure Data Factory
15 101 (1.06%) Serverless
16 89 (0.94%) Entra ID
17 88 (0.93%) Power Automate
18 73 (0.77%) Vertex AI
19 66 (0.69%) Azure Synapse Analytics
20 64 (0.67%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 4,060 (42.75%) Internet
2 36 (0.38%) Firewall
3 31 (0.33%) Network Security
4 25 (0.26%) Unified Communications
4 25 (0.26%) VoIP
5 23 (0.24%) Broadband
6 20 (0.21%) VPN
7 16 (0.17%) WAN
8 15 (0.16%) HTTP
8 15 (0.16%) Wi-Fi
9 14 (0.15%) DNS
9 14 (0.15%) Telepresence
9 14 (0.15%) WebEx
10 13 (0.14%) TCP/IP
11 11 (0.12%) VLAN
12 10 (0.11%) Wireless
13 9 (0.095%) LAN
14 8 (0.084%) DHCP
14 8 (0.084%) InfiniBand
15 7 (0.074%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 599 (6.31%) Power BI
2 466 (4.91%) Tableau
3 159 (1.67%) Data Warehouse
4 114 (1.20%) NoSQL
5 106 (1.12%) SQL Server
6 100 (1.05%) Data Lake
7 78 (0.82%) MongoDB
8 76 (0.80%) PostgreSQL
9 72 (0.76%) Metadata
10 68 (0.72%) Big Data
11 43 (0.45%) MySQL
12 42 (0.44%) BigQuery
13 35 (0.37%) Pinecone
14 34 (0.36%) Hadoop
14 34 (0.36%) Relational Database
15 31 (0.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 30 (0.32%) Elasticsearch
16 30 (0.32%) Looker
17 27 (0.28%) Azure SQL Database
18 24 (0.25%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 133 (1.40%) Git
2 128 (1.35%) JIRA
3 51 (0.54%) Jenkins
4 48 (0.51%) MLflow
5 27 (0.28%) GitLab
6 21 (0.22%) Octopus Deploy
6 21 (0.22%) TeamCity
7 18 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
8 17 (0.18%) Cypress.io
9 13 (0.14%) Visual Studio
10 11 (0.12%) Selenium
11 9 (0.095%) Bitbucket
11 9 (0.095%) Vite
12 8 (0.084%) Subversion
13 7 (0.074%) Burp Suite
13 7 (0.074%) Storybook
13 7 (0.074%) WebDriver
14 6 (0.063%) ERwin
14 6 (0.063%) JMeter
14 6 (0.063%) Postman
General
1 5,569 (58.63%) Social Skills
2 4,494 (47.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 4,216 (44.39%) Banking
4 1,111 (11.70%) Finance
5 1,098 (11.56%) Analytical Skills
6 389 (4.10%) Marketing
7 282 (2.97%) Public Sector
8 281 (2.96%) Law
9 261 (2.75%) Legal
10 200 (2.11%) Retail
11 121 (1.27%) Games
12 105 (1.11%) Manufacturing
12 105 (1.11%) Telecoms
13 96 (1.01%) Pharmaceutical
14 93 (0.98%) Presentation Skills
15 76 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
16 74 (0.78%) Financial Institution
16 74 (0.78%) Influencing Skills
17 66 (0.69%) Aviation
18 64 (0.67%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 3,161 (33.28%) Lecturer
2 1,163 (12.24%) Trainer
3 669 (7.04%) Senior
4 542 (5.71%) Analyst
5 402 (4.23%) Data Analyst
6 392 (4.13%) Developer
7 377 (3.97%) Lead
8 354 (3.73%) Junior
9 331 (3.48%) Junior Analyst
9 331 (3.48%) Junior Data Analyst
10 261 (2.75%) Architect
11 216 (2.27%) Consultant
12 174 (1.83%) Software Engineer
13 155 (1.63%) Content Editor
14 150 (1.58%) Data Engineer
15 132 (1.39%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 106 (1.12%) Support Specialist
17 101 (1.06%) Solutions Architect
18 98 (1.03%) Customer Support Specialist
19 90 (0.95%) Research Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 229 (2.41%) React
2 175 (1.84%) .NET
2 175 (1.84%) REST
3 134 (1.41%) PyTorch
4 118 (1.24%) TensorFlow
5 117 (1.23%) Node.js
6 112 (1.18%) LangChain
7 107 (1.13%) RESTful
8 92 (0.97%) HTML
9 85 (0.89%) FastAPI
10 70 (0.74%) AngularJS
10 70 (0.74%) Kafka
11 68 (0.72%) Django
12 66 (0.69%) CSS
13 58 (0.61%) Vue
14 57 (0.60%) scikit-learn
15 53 (0.56%) Flask
16 51 (0.54%) Next.js
16 51 (0.54%) OAuth
17 49 (0.52%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 4,076 (42.91%) IoT
2 263 (2.77%) Cloud Native
3 188 (1.98%) Product Ownership
4 173 (1.82%) Onboarding
5 152 (1.60%) AI Agents
6 151 (1.59%) Robotics
7 128 (1.35%) Algorithms
8 125 (1.32%) Self-Motivation
9 121 (1.27%) Enterprise Software
10 111 (1.17%) Blog
11 97 (1.02%) Molecular Biology
12 93 (0.98%) Life Science
12 93 (0.98%) Management Information System
13 91 (0.96%) Low-Code
14 88 (0.93%) Legacy Systems
15 82 (0.86%) Distributed Systems
16 70 (0.74%) Analytical Mindset
16 70 (0.74%) Greenfield Project
17 63 (0.66%) Virtual Team
18 51 (0.54%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 74 (0.78%) Windows
2 73 (0.77%) Linux
3 59 (0.62%) Android
4 54 (0.57%) Unix
5 37 (0.39%) Apple iOS
6 28 (0.29%) Windows Server
7 12 (0.13%) Ubuntu
8 11 (0.12%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.053%) Kali Linux
10 3 (0.032%) OpenWrt
11 2 (0.021%) Mac OS X
11 2 (0.021%) Robot Operating System
11 2 (0.021%) VMS
11 2 (0.021%) zOS
12 1 (0.011%) Debian
12 1 (0.011%) Solaris
12 1 (0.011%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.011%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 5,042 (53.08%) Machine Learning
2 4,330 (45.59%) Cybersecurity
3 4,312 (45.40%) User Experience
4 4,070 (42.85%) Web Development
5 1,253 (13.19%) Conversational UI
6 994 (10.47%) Analytics
7 899 (9.47%) Agile
8 743 (7.82%) Problem-Solving
9 732 (7.71%) Business Intelligence
10 589 (6.20%) Roadmaps
11 574 (6.04%) DevOps
12 569 (5.99%) Decision-Making
13 556 (5.85%) CI/CD
13 556 (5.85%) Software Engineering
14 553 (5.82%) Continuous Improvement
15 469 (4.94%) Generative AI
16 463 (4.87%) Data Science
17 448 (4.72%) Computer Science
18 437 (4.60%) LLM
19 395 (4.16%) Chemistry
Programming Languages
1 1,336 (14.07%) Python
2 922 (9.71%) SQL
3 247 (2.60%) TypeScript
4 243 (2.56%) JavaScript
5 194 (2.04%) Java
6 144 (1.52%) C#
7 83 (0.87%) PowerShell
8 75 (0.79%) C++
9 63 (0.66%) Bash
10 60 (0.63%) R
11 57 (0.60%) Go
12 35 (0.37%) PHP
13 33 (0.35%) Rust
14 31 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 31 (0.33%) Scala
15 28 (0.29%) Kotlin
16 24 (0.25%) Apex Code
17 21 (0.22%) C
18 20 (0.21%) Bicep
18 20 (0.21%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 6,091 (64.13%) Degree
2 4,801 (50.55%) Master's Degree
3 4,728 (49.78%) PhD
4 4,049 (42.63%) Postgraduate
5 374 (3.94%) Azure Certification
6 311 (3.27%) Security Cleared
7 252 (2.65%) SC Cleared
8 212 (2.23%) Computer Science Degree
9 74 (0.78%) DV Cleared
10 59 (0.62%) AWS Certification
11 53 (0.56%) DBS Check
12 47 (0.49%) BPSS Clearance
12 47 (0.49%) PMP
13 42 (0.44%) CISSP
14 35 (0.37%) ACCA
14 35 (0.37%) Microsoft Certification
15 32 (0.34%) PMI Certification
16 30 (0.32%) CISA
16 30 (0.32%) Numerate Degree
17 28 (0.29%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 220 (2.32%) Data Quality
2 129 (1.36%) Accessibility
3 125 (1.32%) QA
4 107 (1.13%) GDPR
5 72 (0.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 43 (0.45%) GxP
7 40 (0.42%) EU AI Act
8 33 (0.35%) NIST
9 29 (0.31%) SLA
10 28 (0.29%) IFRS
11 25 (0.26%) 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%) ISO/IEC 42001
16 18 (0.19%) GAAP
16 18 (0.19%) GRC
16 18 (0.19%) PMO
16 18 (0.19%) WCAG
System Software
1 235 (2.47%) Docker
2 63 (0.66%) 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 (0.063%) 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%) Kamailio
13 1 (0.011%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 227 (2.39%) Terraform
2 210 (2.21%) Kubernetes
3 51 (0.54%) Ansible
4 50 (0.53%) Microsoft Intune
5 41 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
6 29 (0.31%) Prometheus
7 21 (0.22%) Grafana
8 14 (0.15%) Cisco CUCM
9 9 (0.095%) Kubeflow
10 8 (0.084%) Argo
10 8 (0.084%) SCCM
11 5 (0.053%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 4 (0.042%) Nessus
12 4 (0.042%) Nmap
12 4 (0.042%) vCenter Server
13 3 (0.032%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
13 3 (0.032%) RSA Archer
14 2 (0.021%) HP Fortify
14 2 (0.021%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
14 2 (0.021%) SELinux
Vendors
1 1,162 (12.23%) PayPal
2 1,117 (11.76%) Microsoft
3 184 (1.94%) Google
4 163 (1.72%) Databricks
5 114 (1.20%) OpenAI
6 101 (1.06%) Oracle
7 100 (1.05%) Salesforce
8 99 (1.04%) Cisco
9 88 (0.93%) Adobe
10 83 (0.87%) Dell
11 70 (0.74%) SAP
12 49 (0.52%) Alteryx
13 47 (0.49%) Blue Prism
14 44 (0.46%) Apple
14 44 (0.46%) Foundry
14 44 (0.46%) HubSpot
15 40 (0.42%) Palo Alto
16 39 (0.41%) Fortinet
17 37 (0.39%) Palantir
18 34 (0.36%) Bloomberg