UK
UK market · November 2026
The market steadied.
The scarce roles didn’t.
Britain advertised 126,861 tech vacancies in the second quarter of 2026, only 4.3% more than a year earlier. Inside that quiet total, AI postings jumped 41.8%. People who can show the skill are being paid about a third more.
01 — TREND
Quiet total.
Loud specialties.
April to June 2026 was a steady quarter for UK technology hiring, not a boom. Permanent ads did the growing. Contract ads slipped. The movement was in what the ads asked for.
How the quarter was built
Permanent ads · 111,27088%
Hired direct by employers · 88,02869%
Ads that actually show a salary34%
Unique job ads, CV-Library’s reading of Lightcast. Permanent hiring rose 4.9% on the year. Contract and temporary ads, 15,591 of them, were flat on the year and down 6.1% on the quarter. Direct employers posted 19.8% more than a year earlier. Agencies posted 19.4% less.
02 — SALARY
What a UK seat pays.
Two different numbers get mixed up in salary threads. The first is the payslip: median gross pay for full-time employees in April 2025. The second, further down, is what job ads offered in spring 2026. Ads sit higher, and two-thirds of them still hide the figure.
Payslips, April 2025
Median full-time gross annual pay. Bars are scaled to £60,288, the highest median in this set. The UK full-time median was £39,039.
IT analysts, architects, designers168,000 jobs
£60,288
IT project managers31,000 jobs
£58,373
Programmers and developers360,000 jobs
£56,914
IT managers213,000 jobs
£56,438
Cyber security professionals27,000 jobs
£54,647
IT network professionals38,000 jobs
£48,907
IT quality and testing20,000 jobs
£47,118
All UK full-time employeesThe national midpoint
£39,039
Data analysts68,000 jobs
£38,572
Database and web content39,000 jobs
£37,995
IT operations technicians69,000 jobs
£35,259
IT user support152,000 jobs
£35,128
A data analyst’s median sits just under the pay of a typical full-time employee because the occupation includes a wide junior band. A data scientist job ad is a different object: those averaged £75,300. Developer pay rose 33.6% from 2021 to 2025, then only 4.2% in the latest year, in line with the 4.3% rise for all full-time employees.
Who got a real rise, 2024 to 2025
Change in the occupation’s median, not the rise any one person received. Scaled to the fastest bar, quality and testing at +13.0%.
IT quality and testing+13.0%
Cyber security+12.5%
Data analysts+10.5%
Analysts, architects, designers+9.6%
All UK full-time employees+4.3%
Programmers and developers+4.2%
IT managers+2.6%
What the ads offered, Q2 2026
Average advertised pay, and only where a salary was published. Contract ads average more than permanent ones. Bars are scaled to the contract average.
Contract and temporaryAverage across contract ads
£82,629
AI engineerHighest title average · +9.9%
£78,821
Systems engineer / architect+4.7% on the year
£77,165
Data engineer+3.9% on the year
£76,462
Data scientist+22.2% on the year
£75,300
All technology adsDown 2.8% on the quarter
£71,261
Web developer+18.2% on the year
£69,048
Software QA / tester+13.8% on the year
£63,622
Permanent adsThe typical stated salary
£59,893
Senior machine-learning engineers in London are being quoted at £110,000–£160,000, with generative-AI specialists up to 25% above ordinary software rates. That band is a market quote, not an ONS median. A trainee AI engineer averages £35,698, about 24% above the £28,731 typical UK graduate start.
03 — HIRING
Where the seats are,
and where the ads landed.
About 1.25 million people work in the IT occupations with a published full-time median. The ads are a thinner layer on top: 126,861 of them in one quarter, and a quarter of those were in London.
1.25M
IT jobs
Programmers and developers360k · 29%
IT managers and project managers244k · 20%
Analysts, architects, designers168k · 13%
Support and operations221k · 18%
Cyber, data, network, QA, other254k · 20%
360,000 developers
The largest single IT occupation. Their median, £56,914, is no longer the top of the payslip table.
27,000 in cyber
A small occupation with the sharpest mainstream pay rise: +12.5% to £54,647.
AI titles, by how many ads
Unique vacancies, Q2 2026. Data scientist is still the biggest AI title. AI engineer is the one that exploded.
Data scientist · +29% year on year1,660
AI engineer · +213%1,435
Machine learning engineer · +85%719
AI architect · +247%, from a small base170
Where the ads were
Selected regions from the quarterly table. Bar length is vacancies next to London. Ten of twelve UK regions grew on the year.
London · +6.0% year on year, −5.2% on the quarter33,312
South East · +7.8%15,529
East of England · +16.1%9,119
Scotland · −10.8%6,705
Northern Ireland · +103.9%2,718
Wales rose 17.1%, the North East 10.5%, and Yorkshire and the Humber 10%, on vacancy counts the summary did not print. About 60% of UK AI-expert vacancies are still in London and the South East. London alone was 33,312 of 126,861 tech ads, roughly a quarter.
04 — SKILLS
The premium is for
a scarce skill.
AI skills still show up in a thin slice of British job ads, which is why the pay has not been competed away. Cybersecurity, AI and machine learning, and cloud are the three areas employers keep hiring for when the rest of the market is cautious.
How thin the AI layer still is
Scarcity is the price. The share of all UK jobs asking for AI skills was 2.2% in 2025.
AI-focused share of tech vacancies4.6%
AI skills across all UK jobs, 20252.2%
AI expert ads in London and the South East60%
Bar length matches the share. The AI slice is genuinely that small, which is why a 34% pay premium has held. Manchester, Bristol, Cambridge, Oxford and Reading are taking a growing share of the ads outside London and the South East.
Where demand is sticking
Growth in permanent and specialist ads, year on year, Q2 2026.
AI engineer +213%
AI architect +247%
Machine learning +85%
Data engineer +37%
Data scientist +29%
Cyber engineer / analyst +22%
Cloud
AI skills premium +34%
Entry-level generalist hiring is the cautious part of the market. Entry-level specialist hiring, in AI, cybersecurity and cloud, is the part still outrunning it. Financial services pay rose 10.3% in the three months to January 2026, more than three times the private-sector average, with AI work in trading, credit risk and reporting part of the push.
05 — MOVE
Three ways to be the person they post for.
The quarter was calm. The shortlist was not. A longer tools list will not close a UK gap that is mostly about proof.
01
Leave the generalist lane
Developer medians rose 4.2%, the same pace as all full-time pay. AI, data engineering, cyber and cloud are where the ads and the rises still are.
02
Look past the M25
London still has the most ads, 33,312, and it dipped on the quarter. Northern Ireland more than doubled. The East, Wales, the North East and Yorkshire all grew faster than the capital.
03
Ask what the ad hid
Only 34% of tech vacancies printed a salary. Permanent ads that did averaged £59,893. Contract ads averaged £82,629. Treat either as an offer, not a median payslip.