Natural Language Processing Job Trends

Natural Language Processing (NLP)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring Natural Language Processing skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 8 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 534 480 545
Rank change year-on-year -54 +65 +174
Permanent jobs citing Natural Language Processing 113 237 165
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.19% 0.44% 0.31%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.23% 0.48% 0.34%
Number of salaries quoted 70 82 131
10th Percentile £44,875 £50,000 £45,750
25th Percentile £53,750 £54,000 £56,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £67,500 £70,576
Median % change year-on-year +3.70% -4.36% -0.60%
75th Percentile £95,000 £91,813 £92,500
90th Percentile £100,250 £104,750 £116,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £62,690 £68,750
% change year-on-year -12.27% -8.82% +14.58%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Natural Language Processing 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 48,544 49,000 48,555
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 81.18% 90.28% 90.00%
Number of salaries quoted 28,525 24,011 36,948
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 £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%

Natural Language Processing
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Natural Language Processing relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Natural Language Processing job vacancy trend in the UK

Natural Language Processing
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Natural Language Processing.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Natural Language Processing

Natural Language Processing
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Natural Language Processing over the 6 months to 8 January 2026.

Salary histogram for Natural Language Processing in the UK

Natural Language Processing
Top 13 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Natural Language Processing within the UK over the 6 months to 8 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 -44 109 £70,000 +3.70% 245
London +32 70 £82,500 +9.27% 53
Work from Home -47 42 £65,000 +3.37% 109
UK excluding London -39 37 £55,000 -12.27% 220
South West +21 13 £57,500 - 35
East of England +28 8 £58,750 +1.29% 33
South East -40 6 £46,250 -24.49% 65
Midlands +7 5 £55,000 -9.00% 28
West Midlands +18 4 £61,250 -2.59% 10
North West +8 4 £53,750 -36.76% 15
North of England -15 4 £53,750 -19.82% 40
East Midlands -1 1 £37,500 -35.34% 17
Northern Ireland - 1 £40,000 - 6

Natural Language Processing
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 12 (10.62%) Apache Spark
2 8 (7.08%) Appian
3 4 (3.54%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (1.77%) Confluence
4 2 (1.77%) SharePoint
Applications
1 7 (6.19%) Chatbot
2 2 (1.77%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 4 (3.54%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 45 (39.82%) Azure
2 37 (32.74%) AWS
3 31 (27.43%) GCP
4 18 (15.93%) SaaS
5 13 (11.50%) Azure Machine Learning
6 12 (10.62%) Power Platform
7 10 (8.85%) Power Automate
8 8 (7.08%) Anthropic Claude
8 8 (7.08%) Azure AI
8 8 (7.08%) Azure Data Factory
8 8 (7.08%) GitHub
9 7 (6.19%) Amazon SageMaker
10 6 (5.31%) Azure DevOps
10 6 (5.31%) dbt
10 6 (5.31%) GitHub Actions
10 6 (5.31%) Snowflake
11 4 (3.54%) Dynamics 365
11 4 (3.54%) Fivetran
11 4 (3.54%) Google Data Studio
12 3 (2.65%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.65%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (16.81%) SQL Server
2 13 (11.50%) NoSQL
3 12 (10.62%) Big Data
4 11 (9.73%) Amazon Redshift
5 10 (8.85%) Power BI
6 9 (7.96%) Pinecone
7 8 (7.08%) Tableau
8 7 (6.19%) Hadoop
9 6 (5.31%) Data Warehouse
9 6 (5.31%) MongoDB
9 6 (5.31%) Neo4j
10 5 (4.42%) BigQuery
11 4 (3.54%) Looker
12 3 (2.65%) Data Lake
13 1 (0.88%) Apache Hive
13 1 (0.88%) Data Mining
13 1 (0.88%) Mixpanel
13 1 (0.88%) Parquet
13 1 (0.88%) QGIS
13 1 (0.88%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 13 (11.50%) MLflow
2 12 (10.62%) Git
3 2 (1.77%) Balsamiq
3 2 (1.77%) JIRA
General
1 47 (41.59%) Social Skills
2 46 (40.71%) Finance
3 22 (19.47%) Analytical Skills
4 14 (12.39%) Marketing
5 10 (8.85%) Banking
6 8 (7.08%) Financial Institution
6 8 (7.08%) Law
7 7 (6.19%) Legal
7 7 (6.19%) Public Sector
8 6 (5.31%) Retail
9 5 (4.42%) Games
10 4 (3.54%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (2.65%) Organisational Skills
11 3 (2.65%) Pharmaceutical
12 2 (1.77%) Humanities
12 2 (1.77%) Manufacturing
12 2 (1.77%) Social Science
12 2 (1.77%) Telecoms
13 1 (0.88%) Investment Banking
13 1 (0.88%) Police
Job Titles
1 24 (21.24%) Data Scientist
2 20 (17.70%) Senior
3 15 (13.27%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
4 12 (10.62%) Senior Data Scientist
5 9 (7.96%) Lead
6 8 (7.08%) Analyst
6 8 (7.08%) Automation Engineer
6 8 (7.08%) Data Engineer
7 7 (6.19%) Lecturer
8 6 (5.31%) Gen AI Engineer
8 6 (5.31%) Product Owner
9 5 (4.42%) Chief Technology Officer
9 5 (4.42%) Research Scientist
10 4 (3.54%) Business Intelligence Analyst
11 3 (2.65%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
11 3 (2.65%) Business Analyst
11 3 (2.65%) Developer
11 3 (2.65%) Machine Learning Engineer
11 3 (2.65%) Principal Data Scientist
11 3 (2.65%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (24.78%) TensorFlow
2 27 (23.89%) PyTorch
3 24 (21.24%) scikit-learn
4 23 (20.35%) Hugging Face
5 16 (14.16%) Pandas
6 15 (13.27%) NumPy
7 14 (12.39%) REST
8 11 (9.73%) pytest
9 10 (8.85%) FastAPI
9 10 (8.85%) RESTful
10 9 (7.96%) Faiss
10 9 (7.96%) React
10 9 (7.96%) SpaCy
11 8 (7.08%) Django
11 8 (7.08%) Flask
11 8 (7.08%) JWT
11 8 (7.08%) OAuth
11 8 (7.08%) OpenAPI
11 8 (7.08%) Swagger
11 8 (7.08%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 16 (14.16%) Algorithms
2 8 (7.08%) Legacy Systems
2 8 (7.08%) Low-Code
3 7 (6.19%) AI Agents
3 7 (6.19%) e-Learning
3 7 (6.19%) Product Ownership
4 6 (5.31%) Reinsurance
5 5 (4.42%) Cloud Native
5 5 (4.42%) Educational Technology
5 5 (4.42%) Mobile Games
6 4 (3.54%) Data Structures
6 4 (3.54%) Genomics
7 2 (1.77%) Management Information System
7 2 (1.77%) NHS
7 2 (1.77%) Public Cloud
8 1 (0.88%) Acoustics
8 1 (0.88%) Enterprise Software
8 1 (0.88%) Life Science
8 1 (0.88%) Robotics
8 1 (0.88%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 5 (4.42%) Android
1 5 (4.42%) Apple iOS
2 1 (0.88%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 107 (94.69%) Machine Learning
2 102 (90.27%) AI
3 53 (46.90%) Data Science
4 41 (36.28%) Generative AI
5 34 (30.09%) LLM
6 32 (28.32%) Analytics
7 31 (27.43%) MLOps
8 29 (25.66%) Computer Science
9 27 (23.89%) Data Engineering
10 26 (23.01%) Data Pipeline
11 23 (20.35%) CI/CD
11 23 (20.35%) ETL
12 22 (19.47%) Agile
13 21 (18.58%) Problem-Solving
14 20 (17.70%) Containerisation
14 20 (17.70%) Mentoring
15 19 (16.81%) DevOps
16 17 (15.04%) Feature Engineering
17 16 (14.16%) Deep Learning
17 16 (14.16%) Reinforcement Learning
Programming Languages
1 72 (63.72%) Python
2 46 (40.71%) SQL
3 9 (7.96%) R
4 7 (6.19%) Java
5 5 (4.42%) Kotlin
5 5 (4.42%) PHP
6 4 (3.54%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 2 (1.77%) C#
7 2 (1.77%) C++
7 2 (1.77%) JavaScript
7 2 (1.77%) Scala
8 1 (0.88%) C
8 1 (0.88%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 33 (29.20%) Degree
2 21 (18.58%) Master's Degree
3 17 (15.04%) PhD
4 5 (4.42%) SC Cleared
4 5 (4.42%) Security Cleared
5 3 (2.65%) Computer Science Degree
6 2 (1.77%) MCP
7 1 (0.88%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.88%) BPSS Clearance
7 1 (0.88%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (7.96%) Data Quality
2 3 (2.65%) GDPR
3 1 (0.88%) Actionable Recommendations
3 1 (0.88%) ISO 13485
3 1 (0.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.88%) SOC 2
System Software
1 21 (18.58%) Docker
Systems Management
1 13 (11.50%) Kubernetes
2 3 (2.65%) Kubeflow
2 3 (2.65%) Terraform
3 1 (0.88%) Argo
Vendors
1 17 (15.04%) Google
2 13 (11.50%) OpenAI
3 8 (7.08%) Automation Anywhere
3 8 (7.08%) Microsoft
3 8 (7.08%) UiPath
4 6 (5.31%) Oracle
5 4 (3.54%) Alteryx
5 4 (3.54%) HubSpot
5 4 (3.54%) Salesforce
5 4 (3.54%) Talend
5 4 (3.54%) Zoho
6 1 (0.88%) Amplitude
6 1 (0.88%) Cognos
6 1 (0.88%) Databricks
6 1 (0.88%) Mapbox
6 1 (0.88%) OutSystems
6 1 (0.88%) Red Hat
6 1 (0.88%) Samsung
6 1 (0.88%) SAP