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

6 months to
9 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 47 70
Rank change year-on-year +43 +23 +52
Permanent jobs citing AI 9,844 2,549 2,845
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 15.05% 5.06% 3.83%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 18.86% 5.50% 4.33%
Number of salaries quoted 2,345 1,305 1,696
10th Percentile £35,000 £45,000 £42,500
25th Percentile £51,250 £61,250 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £75,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% +7.14% -
75th Percentile £95,000 £97,500 £92,500
90th Percentile £118,750 £117,500 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £59,450 £66,274 £62,500
% change year-on-year -10.30% +6.04% -

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 52,190 46,328 65,674
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 79.79% 92.00% 88.33%
Number of salaries quoted 30,933 22,336 50,972
10th Percentile £28,750 £35,000 £29,500
25th Percentile £38,000 £46,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -12.00%
75th Percentile £76,250 £80,100 £75,000
90th Percentile £96,375 £101,250 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.90%

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 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 9 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 +42 8,960 £72,500 -3.33% 2,285
UK excluding London +49 7,096 £59,450 -10.30% 1,573
Work from Home +49 2,772 £67,500 - 1,300
North of England +55 2,631 £60,709 -10.06% 327
London +34 2,298 £80,000 -11.11% 1,221
North West +46 2,016 £60,000 -11.11% 186
Midlands +95 1,536 £59,527 -8.42% 167
South East +37 1,465 £50,000 -35.06% 636
West Midlands +89 1,259 £60,000 - 103
East of England +33 655 £55,000 -16.96% 153
Yorkshire +51 507 £67,500 +4.93% 109
South West +34 366 £62,500 -3.85% 176
Scotland +40 347 £67,500 +12.50% 89
East Midlands +73 287 £47,500 -26.92% 63
Wales +39 125 £53,171 +6.34% 38
North East +54 108 £55,000 -26.42% 35
Northern Ireland -4 51 £90,000 -2.70% 13
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 95 (0.97%) SharePoint
2 61 (0.62%) Apache Airflow
3 54 (0.55%) Apache Spark
4 48 (0.49%) Confluence
5 42 (0.43%) CMS
6 30 (0.30%) Jupyter
7 23 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
8 22 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
9 20 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 18 (0.18%) WordPress
11 17 (0.17%) Appian
12 13 (0.13%) Apache
12 13 (0.13%) JBoss
12 13 (0.13%) WebSphere
13 9 (0.091%) Apache Solr
13 9 (0.091%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.071%) SAS
15 5 (0.051%) Apache Pulsar
15 5 (0.051%) IIS
15 5 (0.051%) Umbraco
Applications
1 1,220 (12.39%) Chatbot
2 593 (6.02%) Microsoft Excel
3 95 (0.97%) Microsoft Office
4 43 (0.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 19 (0.19%) Maya
6 14 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
7 10 (0.10%) MS Visio
8 6 (0.061%) Adobe Premiere
8 6 (0.061%) Microsoft Project
9 5 (0.051%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 5 (0.051%) Photoshop
10 4 (0.041%) Notion
10 4 (0.041%) Sketch
10 4 (0.041%) UserZoom
10 4 (0.041%) Weka
11 3 (0.030%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.030%) InDesign
11 3 (0.030%) Simulink
12 1 (0.010%) Blender
12 1 (0.010%) GNU Octave
Business Applications
1 50 (0.51%) Dynamics CRM
2 20 (0.20%) Oracle ERP
3 18 (0.18%) 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 (0.081%) Distributed Ledger
7 8 (0.081%) Endur
8 7 (0.071%) Oracle EBS
8 7 (0.071%) Salesforce CRM
9 4 (0.041%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 4 (0.041%) Oracle Receivables
10 3 (0.030%) Dynamics GP
10 3 (0.030%) Elite 3E
10 3 (0.030%) Oracle Assets
11 2 (0.020%) SAP Business One
11 2 (0.020%) SAP CO
11 2 (0.020%) SAP SCM
11 2 (0.020%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 4,118 (41.83%) Cloud Computing
2 1,526 (15.50%) Azure
3 872 (8.86%) Power Platform
4 705 (7.16%) AWS
5 551 (5.60%) Azure AI
6 452 (4.59%) SaaS
7 327 (3.32%) GCP
8 230 (2.34%) GitHub
9 203 (2.06%) Azure DevOps
10 194 (1.97%) Microsoft 365
11 121 (1.23%) Snowflake
12 114 (1.16%) GitHub Copilot
13 109 (1.11%) Azure Data Factory
14 103 (1.05%) Microsoft Copilot
15 102 (1.04%) Entra ID
15 102 (1.04%) Serverless
16 95 (0.97%) Power Automate
17 69 (0.70%) Vertex AI
18 65 (0.66%) dbt
19 62 (0.63%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 4,061 (41.25%) Internet
2 56 (0.57%) Broadband
3 48 (0.49%) Firewall
4 33 (0.34%) Unified Communications
5 32 (0.33%) Network Security
6 27 (0.27%) VoIP
7 22 (0.22%) VPN
8 19 (0.19%) HTTP
9 16 (0.16%) DNS
9 16 (0.16%) TCP/IP
10 14 (0.14%) Telepresence
10 14 (0.14%) VLAN
10 14 (0.14%) WAN
10 14 (0.14%) WebEx
11 13 (0.13%) Wi-Fi
12 12 (0.12%) DHCP
13 8 (0.081%) Wireshark
14 7 (0.071%) DMZ
14 7 (0.071%) Intranet
14 7 (0.071%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 717 (7.28%) Power BI
2 576 (5.85%) Tableau
3 158 (1.61%) Data Warehouse
4 107 (1.09%) NoSQL
5 106 (1.08%) SQL Server
6 101 (1.03%) Data Lake
7 85 (0.86%) Metadata
8 76 (0.77%) PostgreSQL
9 75 (0.76%) MongoDB
10 73 (0.74%) Big Data
11 43 (0.44%) BigQuery
12 40 (0.41%) MySQL
12 40 (0.41%) Pinecone
13 36 (0.37%) Hadoop
14 35 (0.36%) Relational Database
15 34 (0.35%) Elasticsearch
16 29 (0.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 28 (0.28%) Looker
18 26 (0.26%) Data Mining
19 25 (0.25%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 134 (1.36%) Git
2 117 (1.19%) JIRA
3 52 (0.53%) MLflow
4 47 (0.48%) Jenkins
5 29 (0.29%) GitLab
6 19 (0.19%) Visual Studio Code
7 18 (0.18%) Cypress.io
7 18 (0.18%) Octopus Deploy
7 18 (0.18%) Oracle Forms
7 18 (0.18%) TeamCity
8 16 (0.16%) Selenium
9 14 (0.14%) Visual Studio
10 10 (0.10%) Postman
11 9 (0.091%) Bitbucket
12 8 (0.081%) Claude Code
12 8 (0.081%) Subversion
12 8 (0.081%) Vite
12 8 (0.081%) WebDriver
13 7 (0.071%) Burp Suite
13 7 (0.071%) Storybook
General
1 5,686 (57.76%) Social Skills
2 4,488 (45.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 4,225 (42.92%) Banking
4 1,174 (11.93%) Finance
5 1,087 (11.04%) Analytical Skills
6 408 (4.14%) Marketing
7 295 (3.00%) Public Sector
8 277 (2.81%) Law
9 267 (2.71%) Legal
10 220 (2.23%) Retail
11 141 (1.43%) Games
12 129 (1.31%) Manufacturing
13 105 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
14 102 (1.04%) Telecoms
15 95 (0.97%) Pharmaceutical
16 80 (0.81%) Financial Institution
17 77 (0.78%) Influencing Skills
18 67 (0.68%) Organisational Skills
19 63 (0.64%) Electronics
20 58 (0.59%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 3,164 (32.14%) Lecturer
2 1,166 (11.84%) Trainer
3 706 (7.17%) Senior
4 657 (6.67%) Analyst
5 520 (5.28%) Data Analyst
6 463 (4.70%) Junior
7 442 (4.49%) Junior Analyst
7 442 (4.49%) Junior Data Analyst
8 429 (4.36%) Lead
9 419 (4.26%) Developer
10 280 (2.84%) Architect
11 217 (2.20%) Consultant
12 179 (1.82%) Software Engineer
13 157 (1.59%) Data Engineer
14 155 (1.57%) Content Editor
15 135 (1.37%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 122 (1.24%) Solutions Architect
17 106 (1.08%) Support Specialist
18 98 (1.00%) Customer Support Specialist
18 98 (1.00%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 240 (2.44%) React
2 185 (1.88%) .NET
3 179 (1.82%) REST
4 145 (1.47%) PyTorch
5 124 (1.26%) TensorFlow
6 119 (1.21%) Node.js
7 118 (1.20%) RESTful
8 106 (1.08%) HTML
9 103 (1.05%) LangChain
10 83 (0.84%) FastAPI
11 77 (0.78%) CSS
12 71 (0.72%) AngularJS
12 71 (0.72%) Django
12 71 (0.72%) Kafka
13 69 (0.70%) scikit-learn
14 64 (0.65%) Hugging Face
15 58 (0.59%) OAuth
16 57 (0.58%) Flask
17 56 (0.57%) Pandas
17 56 (0.57%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 4,077 (41.42%) IoT
2 277 (2.81%) Cloud Native
3 183 (1.86%) Onboarding
4 180 (1.83%) Product Ownership
5 159 (1.62%) Robotics
6 156 (1.58%) AI Agents
7 145 (1.47%) Algorithms
8 131 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
9 117 (1.19%) Blog
10 114 (1.16%) Enterprise Software
11 99 (1.01%) Management Information System
12 98 (1.00%) Life Science
13 97 (0.99%) Molecular Biology
14 94 (0.95%) Low-Code
15 93 (0.94%) Distributed Systems
16 72 (0.73%) Greenfield Project
17 71 (0.72%) Legacy Systems
18 68 (0.69%) Analytical Mindset
19 66 (0.67%) Social Media
20 61 (0.62%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 85 (0.86%) Windows
2 81 (0.82%) Linux
3 62 (0.63%) Android
4 56 (0.57%) Unix
5 40 (0.41%) Apple iOS
6 30 (0.30%) Windows Server
7 16 (0.16%) Ubuntu
8 9 (0.091%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.051%) Kali Linux
9 5 (0.051%) VMS
10 4 (0.041%) Robot Operating System
10 4 (0.041%) Windows Server 2016
11 3 (0.030%) OpenWrt
12 2 (0.020%) Mac OS X
12 2 (0.020%) 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 5,066 (51.46%) Machine Learning
2 4,338 (44.07%) Cybersecurity
3 4,316 (43.84%) User Experience
4 4,071 (41.36%) Web Development
5 1,264 (12.84%) Conversational UI
6 1,061 (10.78%) Analytics
7 917 (9.32%) Agile
8 857 (8.71%) Business Intelligence
9 745 (7.57%) Problem-Solving
10 622 (6.32%) Roadmaps
11 597 (6.06%) Decision-Making
12 596 (6.05%) CI/CD
13 590 (5.99%) Software Engineering
14 582 (5.91%) DevOps
15 573 (5.82%) Continuous Improvement
16 488 (4.96%) Generative AI
17 470 (4.77%) Data Science
18 464 (4.71%) LLM
19 455 (4.62%) Computer Science
20 407 (4.13%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 1,544 (15.68%) Python
2 1,039 (10.55%) SQL
3 263 (2.67%) JavaScript
4 256 (2.60%) TypeScript
5 216 (2.19%) Java
6 156 (1.58%) C#
7 89 (0.90%) PowerShell
8 81 (0.82%) C++
9 73 (0.74%) Bash
10 70 (0.71%) Go
11 58 (0.59%) R
12 38 (0.39%) PHP
13 35 (0.36%) Rust
14 31 (0.31%) Scala
15 29 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 28 (0.28%) Kotlin
17 24 (0.24%) C
18 23 (0.23%) Apex Code
19 22 (0.22%) PL/SQL
20 18 (0.18%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 6,087 (61.83%) Degree
2 4,794 (48.70%) Master's Degree
3 4,728 (48.03%) PhD
4 4,049 (41.13%) Postgraduate
5 490 (4.98%) Azure Certification
6 323 (3.28%) Security Cleared
7 261 (2.65%) SC Cleared
8 205 (2.08%) Computer Science Degree
9 82 (0.83%) AWS Certification
10 78 (0.79%) DV Cleared
11 66 (0.67%) DBS Check
12 48 (0.49%) CISSP
12 48 (0.49%) PMP
13 47 (0.48%) BPSS Clearance
14 37 (0.38%) ACCA
14 37 (0.38%) Microsoft Certification
15 33 (0.34%) PMI Certification
16 30 (0.30%) CISA
16 30 (0.30%) Numerate Degree
17 28 (0.28%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 225 (2.29%) Data Quality
2 166 (1.69%) Accessibility
3 138 (1.40%) QA
4 125 (1.27%) GDPR
5 78 (0.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 44 (0.45%) GxP
7 39 (0.40%) EU AI Act
8 34 (0.35%) NIST
9 32 (0.33%) IFRS
10 26 (0.26%) GRC
11 25 (0.25%) HIPAA
12 24 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
12 24 (0.24%) SLA
13 23 (0.23%) PMO
13 23 (0.23%) WCAG
14 22 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials
14 22 (0.22%) Solvency II
15 21 (0.21%) PSD2
16 18 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 42001
17 16 (0.16%) GAAP
System Software
1 242 (2.46%) Docker
2 74 (0.75%) Active Directory
3 23 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
4 22 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
5 18 (0.18%) VMware Infrastructure
6 16 (0.16%) Firmware
7 14 (0.14%) vSphere
8 6 (0.061%) Lustre
9 5 (0.051%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 4 (0.041%) GPFS
10 4 (0.041%) Hyper-V
10 4 (0.041%) VMware ESXi
11 3 (0.030%) Kamailio
12 2 (0.020%) Ceph
12 2 (0.020%) NFS
12 2 (0.020%) RACF
13 1 (0.010%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 239 (2.43%) Terraform
2 232 (2.36%) Kubernetes
3 52 (0.53%) Ansible
4 47 (0.48%) Microsoft Intune
5 46 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
6 36 (0.37%) Prometheus
7 29 (0.29%) Grafana
8 14 (0.14%) Cisco CUCM
9 11 (0.11%) Argo
10 9 (0.091%) Kubeflow
11 8 (0.081%) SCCM
12 7 (0.071%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 7 (0.071%) vCenter Server
13 5 (0.051%) Proxmox
14 4 (0.041%) Nessus
14 4 (0.041%) Nmap
14 4 (0.041%) SolarWinds Orion
15 3 (0.030%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
15 3 (0.030%) RSA Archer
16 2 (0.020%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
Vendors
1 1,263 (12.83%) Microsoft
2 1,163 (11.81%) PayPal
3 186 (1.89%) Google
4 171 (1.74%) Databricks
5 120 (1.22%) OpenAI
6 103 (1.05%) Oracle
7 101 (1.03%) Salesforce
8 93 (0.94%) Adobe
9 90 (0.91%) Cisco
10 87 (0.88%) Dell
11 71 (0.72%) SAP
12 47 (0.48%) Blue Prism
13 46 (0.47%) Alteryx
14 45 (0.46%) Palantir
15 44 (0.45%) Foundry
16 38 (0.39%) Fortinet
17 37 (0.38%) HubSpot
18 34 (0.35%) Bloomberg
19 31 (0.31%) Apple
19 31 (0.31%) VMware