AI Job Trends in Manchester

AI
North West > Manchester

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in Manchester requiring AI skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 31 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 48 62
Rank change year-on-year +46 +14 +70
Permanent jobs citing AI 749 131 120
As % of all permanent jobs in Manchester 23.59% 5.09% 3.61%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 30.35% 5.38% 4.04%
Number of salaries quoted 149 48 91
10th Percentile £20,000 £42,500 £35,000
25th Percentile £32,000 £47,500 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £72,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -17.24% +45.00% -16.67%
75th Percentile £82,500 £85,625 £84,528
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,750 £100,064
North West median annual salary £61,418 £67,500 £47,500
% change year-on-year -9.01% +42.11% -13.64%

All Process & Methodology Skills
Manchester

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 in Manchester.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 2,468 2,435 2,972
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in Manchester 77.73% 94.53% 89.52%
Number of salaries quoted 1,518 1,160 2,460
10th Percentile £28,250 £33,750 £30,590
25th Percentile £37,500 £41,000 £42,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.35%
75th Percentile £72,500 £73,750 £70,000
90th Percentile £87,500 £87,500 £82,500
North West median annual salary £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -8.90%

AI
Job Vacancy Trend in Manchester

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing AI relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in Manchester.

AI job vacancy trend in Manchester

AI
Salary Trend in Manchester

Salary distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing AI.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing AI

AI
Salary Histogram in Manchester

Salary distribution for jobs citing AI in Manchester over the 6 months to 31 January 2026.

Salary histogram for AI in Manchester

AI
Job Locations in Manchester

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing AI within the Manchester region over the 6 months to 31 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
Stockport +9 38 - - 4
Salford +18 34 £70,000 +3.70% 5
Bolton +27 16 £52,500 - 4
Altrincham - 15 £25,000 - 1
Cheadle - 14 - -
Wigan - 14 - - 2
Oldham +6 13 £65,000 -
Stalybridge - 13 - -
Dukinfield - 13 - -
Ashton-under-Lyne - 13 - - 2
Bury - 13 - -
Rochdale +6 12 - -
Heywood - 12 - -
Littleborough - 12 - -
Sale - 11 - -
AI
North West

AI
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Manchester 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 9 (1.20%) SharePoint
2 3 (0.40%) Apache Solr
2 3 (0.40%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.27%) CMS
4 1 (0.13%) Confluence
4 1 (0.13%) Jupyter
4 1 (0.13%) WordPress
Applications
1 78 (10.41%) Chatbot
2 22 (2.94%) Microsoft Excel
3 11 (1.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.13%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 5 (0.67%) NetSuite
2 2 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
2 2 (0.27%) Oracle General Ledger
2 2 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
2 2 (0.27%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 405 (54.07%) Cloud Computing
2 58 (7.74%) Azure
3 42 (5.61%) AWS
4 24 (3.20%) Power Platform
5 15 (2.00%) SaaS
6 12 (1.60%) GCP
7 10 (1.34%) Azure AI
7 10 (1.34%) Azure Monitor
8 8 (1.07%) Entra ID
8 8 (1.07%) Microsoft 365
8 8 (1.07%) Microsoft Purview
8 8 (1.07%) OneDrive
9 7 (0.93%) Amazon Bedrock
10 4 (0.53%) Microsoft Copilot
11 3 (0.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 3 (0.40%) AWS CloudFormation
11 3 (0.40%) Azure DevOps
11 3 (0.40%) OCI
11 3 (0.40%) Serverless
12 2 (0.27%) Salesforce Einstein
Communications & Networking
1 402 (53.67%) Internet
2 14 (1.87%) Telepresence
2 14 (1.87%) Unified Communications
2 14 (1.87%) VoIP
2 14 (1.87%) WebEx
3 4 (0.53%) HTTP
4 1 (0.13%) Cisco IPT
4 1 (0.13%) Network Security
4 1 (0.13%) TCAP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (1.74%) Power BI
2 11 (1.47%) MongoDB
3 9 (1.20%) NoSQL
4 7 (0.93%) Tableau
5 5 (0.67%) Data Lake
5 5 (0.67%) Data Warehouse
5 5 (0.67%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (0.53%) Hadoop
6 4 (0.53%) Relational Database
7 3 (0.40%) Big Data
7 3 (0.40%) Elasticsearch
7 3 (0.40%) Metadata
8 2 (0.27%) MySQL
8 2 (0.27%) Neo4j
8 2 (0.27%) SQL Server
9 1 (0.13%) Azure SQL Database
9 1 (0.13%) Data Mining
9 1 (0.13%) DocumentDB
9 1 (0.13%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 12 (1.60%) Git
2 5 (0.67%) JIRA
3 4 (0.53%) JUnit
4 1 (0.13%) Jenkins
General
1 502 (67.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
2 481 (64.22%) Social Skills
3 423 (56.48%) Banking
4 81 (10.81%) Analytical Skills
5 67 (8.95%) Finance
6 21 (2.80%) Public Sector
7 15 (2.00%) Telecoms
8 14 (1.87%) Marketing
9 12 (1.60%) Law
9 12 (1.60%) Legal
10 7 (0.93%) Retail
11 6 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
11 6 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
12 4 (0.53%) Manufacturing
13 3 (0.40%) Advertising
13 3 (0.40%) Billing
13 3 (0.40%) French Language
13 3 (0.40%) Games
13 3 (0.40%) Italian Language
13 3 (0.40%) Portuguese Language
Job Titles
1 314 (41.92%) Lecturer
2 75 (10.01%) Trainer
3 22 (2.94%) Microsoft Specialist
3 22 (2.94%) Senior
4 19 (2.54%) Analyst
5 17 (2.27%) Developer
6 14 (1.87%) Support Engineer
6 14 (1.87%) Voice Engineer
6 14 (1.87%) Voice Support Engineer
7 13 (1.74%) Consultant
8 12 (1.60%) Architect
8 12 (1.60%) Software Engineer
9 10 (1.34%) Python Engineer
9 10 (1.34%) Solutions Architect
10 9 (1.20%) Alliance Manager
10 9 (1.20%) Platform Engineer
11 8 (1.07%) Project Manager
12 7 (0.93%) Data Analyst
12 7 (0.93%) Junior
12 7 (0.93%) Junior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (2.14%) CSS
2 14 (1.87%) HTML
2 14 (1.87%) React
3 13 (1.74%) RESTful
4 11 (1.47%) .NET
5 10 (1.34%) REST
6 7 (0.93%) AngularJS
7 6 (0.80%) A2A Protocol
7 6 (0.80%) Django
7 6 (0.80%) Kafka
7 6 (0.80%) Spring
7 6 (0.80%) Spring Boot
8 5 (0.67%) CSS3
8 5 (0.67%) EDI
8 5 (0.67%) FastAPI
8 5 (0.67%) HTML5
8 5 (0.67%) Node.js
9 4 (0.53%) ASP.NET Core
9 4 (0.53%) gRPC
9 4 (0.53%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 402 (53.67%) IoT
2 24 (3.20%) Blog
2 24 (3.20%) Cloud Native
3 17 (2.27%) Onboarding
4 16 (2.14%) AI Agents
5 13 (1.74%) Product Ownership
6 9 (1.20%) Public Cloud
7 8 (1.07%) Enterprise Software
8 6 (0.80%) Data Centre
8 6 (0.80%) Taxonomies
9 5 (0.67%) Analytical Mindset
9 5 (0.67%) Distributed Systems
9 5 (0.67%) Low-Code
10 4 (0.53%) Self-Motivation
11 3 (0.40%) Algorithms
11 3 (0.40%) Molecular Biology
11 3 (0.40%) Renewable Energy
11 3 (0.40%) Semantic Web
11 3 (0.40%) Social Media
12 2 (0.27%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 5 (0.67%) Windows
2 3 (0.40%) Android
2 3 (0.40%) Apple iOS
3 2 (0.27%) Linux
3 2 (0.27%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 444 (59.28%) Machine Learning
2 428 (57.14%) User Experience
3 425 (56.74%) Cybersecurity
4 402 (53.67%) Web Development
5 78 (10.41%) Conversational UI
6 51 (6.81%) Problem-Solving
7 42 (5.61%) Agile
8 36 (4.81%) Chemistry
9 35 (4.67%) DevOps
10 33 (4.41%) CI/CD
10 33 (4.41%) CRM
11 32 (4.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 31 (4.14%) Analytics
13 25 (3.34%) Customer Service
14 23 (3.07%) Software Engineering
15 22 (2.94%) Project Management
15 22 (2.94%) Visualisation
16 21 (2.80%) Data Visualisation
17 20 (2.67%) Continuous Improvement
18 18 (2.40%) Generative AI
Programming Languages
1 47 (6.28%) Python
2 24 (3.20%) SQL
3 16 (2.14%) JavaScript
4 15 (2.00%) TypeScript
5 13 (1.74%) Java
6 5 (0.67%) C#
7 3 (0.40%) Go
8 2 (0.27%) PHP
8 2 (0.27%) PowerShell
8 2 (0.27%) R
8 2 (0.27%) Scala
9 1 (0.13%) Bash
9 1 (0.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 1 (0.13%) Kusto Query Language
9 1 (0.13%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 547 (73.03%) Degree
2 450 (60.08%) Master's Degree
3 447 (59.68%) PhD
4 402 (53.67%) Postgraduate
5 9 (1.20%) AWS Certification
6 8 (1.07%) Computer Science Degree
7 7 (0.93%) Azure Certification
7 7 (0.93%) PMP
8 6 (0.80%) DBS Check
9 5 (0.67%) Security Cleared
10 4 (0.53%) SC Cleared
11 2 (0.27%) CCIE
11 2 (0.27%) CCNA
11 2 (0.27%) CCNP
11 2 (0.27%) Cisco Certification
11 2 (0.27%) DV Cleared
11 2 (0.27%) MBA
12 1 (0.13%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (0.93%) Data Quality
2 4 (0.53%) QA
3 3 (0.40%) GDPR
4 2 (0.27%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
5 1 (0.13%) FINRA
5 1 (0.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (0.13%) NCSC
5 1 (0.13%) NIST
5 1 (0.13%) PERC
5 1 (0.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 11 (1.47%) Docker
2 8 (1.07%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.27%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 14 (1.87%) Cisco CUCM
2 11 (1.47%) Terraform
3 8 (1.07%) Kubernetes
3 8 (1.07%) Microsoft Intune
3 8 (1.07%) Single Sign-On
4 2 (0.27%) Ansible
4 2 (0.27%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 78 (10.41%) Microsoft
2 75 (10.01%) PayPal
3 21 (2.80%) Cisco
4 18 (2.40%) Oracle
5 12 (1.60%) Adobe
6 11 (1.47%) Apple
7 9 (1.20%) Splunk
8 8 (1.07%) New Relic
9 4 (0.53%) Dell
9 4 (0.53%) ServiceNow
10 3 (0.40%) OpenAI
10 3 (0.40%) Salesforce
11 2 (0.27%) Foundry
11 2 (0.27%) Genesys
11 2 (0.27%) OneLogin
11 2 (0.27%) UiPath
12 1 (0.13%) Cognos
12 1 (0.13%) Google
12 1 (0.13%) IBM
12 1 (0.13%) SAP