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MarketForge.ai

Live Intelligence

UK AI Job Market Overview

Real-time aggregate view of the UK AI/ML hiring landscape. Data refreshed twice weekly from Adzuna, Reed, and specialist boards.

Live data
Week of 2026-09-07· 3 data sources · automated pipeline

Total AI Jobs

71

vs last week

Median Salary

£70k

50th percentile

Sponsorship Rate

0%

of AI roles

Salary Range

£55k – £85k

P25 – P75

01 · The Pipeline

How many people are actually entering this market

England produced 30,300 Computing graduates in 202324. Here's roughly what happens to graduates once they leave. Only about 68% of graduates land in high-skilled employment — the rest are in lower-skilled work, further study, or not working.

30,300

Computing-subject qualifiers, England, academic year 202324

32 in every 100 of all UK graduates are NOT in high-skilled employment 15 months on

employment_rate/unemployment_rate/inactivity_rate are the unweighted average of the Male and Female breakdown rows — the source dataset publishes no unsegmented 'all graduates' row. England only, not UK-wide. qualifiers_count is the number of Computing-subject HE qualifiers (all levels combined) for that academic year.

02 · Entry-Level Reality

What actually gets you hired at entry level

Skill demand ranked across the whole market doesn't match what actually gets a junior candidate hired. Computer Vision ranks #23 overall but #4 among entry-level postings — it matters far more at the door than the aggregate numbers suggest.
Overall rankEntry-level rank
Computer Vision#23NLP#20AWS#15Python#1SQL#2

overall_rank is a skill's position by posting frequency across all roles in the last 90 days; junior_rank is its position among experience_level='junior' postings only. Positive rank_delta means the skill matters more at entry level than the overall market ranking suggests.

03 · The Skill Floor

The handful of skills nobody escapes

Regardless of which AI/ML specialisation a role sits in, a small set of skills shows up almost everywhere — the real floor every candidate needs, independent of career track.
AI Eng
ai product manager
CV
Data Eng
Data Sci
ML Eng
MLOps
NLP
other
Research
Python
SQL
Multi-agent systems
AWS
Docker
Azure

Darker = appears more often for that role category.

Top skills ranked by how many distinct role categories they appear in (last 90 days, roles with >=5 postings mentioning the skill), not just raw frequency — these are the skills that show up regardless of specialisation, the closest thing to a market-wide floor.

04 · Who Opens The Door

Who's actually doing the entry-level hiring

Big-name enterprise employers dominate headlines, but the entry-level door is often opened by a different kind of company entirely.

95% Scale-up (50–500)

Scale-up (50–500) · 95%
Startup (<50) · 5%

Source: MarketForge scraped postings, experience_level=junior (n=20).

05 · The Pay Reality

What it actually pays versus what's expected

Broad graduate salary surveys set an expectation. The real entry point in this specific market — and the closest official occupation benchmark — often tell a different story.
£30,000Prospects median (surv…£36,335ISE survey median (sur…£55,587ONS ASHE — Programmers…

Sources: MarketForge sample (experience_level=junior), ONS ASHE, Prospects/ISE graduate salary surveys (hand-cited, not live-fetched).

Full breakdown

Market Over Time

Weekly posting volume & median salary — last 23 weeks

PostingsMedian salary

Top Skills This Week

Full skills breakdown

01

Python

15 postings

02

SQL

10 postings

03

AWS

3 postings

04

GCP

2 postings

05

RAG

2 postings

1 rising·12 cooling· see /skills for the full rising & cooling lists

Top UK Hiring Cities

Live data this week
London26 rolesManchesterBristolNottinghamBirminghamLondon26 AI roles · top hubRegional hubs1 – 6 roles eachCity connectionsLive · updated weeklyNSWE
01🏙️
London
26jobs100%
02🌃
Manchester
6jobs23%
03🌉
Bristol
4jobs15%
04📍
EC2A1AF
2jobs8%
05🏹
Nottingham
2jobs8%
06📍
SW1E5LB
2jobs8%
07📍
EC1A1BB
2jobs8%
08📍
USA
1jobs4%
09🏢
Birmingham
1jobs4%
10📍
OX11HS
1jobs4%

London dominates UK AI hiring. Strong hubs in Cambridge (biotech AI), Edinburgh (NLP/fintech), Bristol (robotics).

Hiring Velocity by Role

Week-over-week change

Ai Product Manager

WoW change

+100%

ML Engineer

WoW change

-50%

Data Engineer

WoW change

-40%

Data Scientist

WoW change

-16.7%

Computer Vision Engineer

WoW change

AI / LLM Engineer

WoW change

Salary at a Glance

All UK AI/ML roles · Gross annual · GBP

By role, experience & region

£55k

Lower quartile

25th percentile

£70k

Median

50th percentile

£85k

Upper quartile

75th percentile