Head of AI Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Head of Artificial Intelligence
UK > UK excluding London

The median Head of Artificial Intelligence salary in the UK excluding London is £100,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 21 July 2026.

The table below compares current salary benchmarking and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 578 514 709
Rank change year-on-year -64 +195 -
Permanent jobs requiring a Head of AI 37 27 7
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.051% 0.080% 0.010%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.054% 0.089% 0.011%
Number of salaries quoted 37 8 7
10th Percentile £77,000 - £89,500
25th Percentile £85,000 £85,000 £96,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £100,000 £90,000 £105,000
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -14.29% -
75th Percentile £118,750 £96,250 £118,875
90th Percentile £147,500 £100,000 £130,150
UK median annual salary £100,000 £120,000 £105,000
% change year-on-year -16.67% +14.29% -23.16%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
UK excluding London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies in the UK excluding London. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of permanent jobs in our overall sample.

Permanent vacancies in the UK excluding London with a recognized job title 68,706 30,337 64,063
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.74% 89.40% 94.84%
Number of salaries quoted 47,586 17,385 44,623
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,929 £27,500
25th Percentile £37,500 £33,500 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £50,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% - -5.66%
75th Percentile £70,000 £65,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £80,000 £77,500
UK median annual salary £55,000 £55,000 £54,000
% change year-on-year - +1.85% -10.00%

Head of AI
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'Head of AI' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Head of AI job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Head of AI
Salary Trend in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution trend for Head of AI job vacancies in the UK excluding London.

Salary distribution trend for Head of AI job vacancies in the UK excluding London

Head of AI
Salary Histogram in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution for jobs citing Head of AI in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 21 July 2026.

Salary histogram for Head of AI in the UK excluding London

Head of AI
Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Head of AI within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 21 July 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
North of England -14 20 £100,000 +11.11% 13
North West -3 9 £100,000 +11.11% 10
Midlands -26 8 £90,000 - 3
Yorkshire -30 8 £100,000 - 2
South East -44 6 £132,500 - 7
East Midlands - 6 £90,000 -
North East - 3 £55,000 - 1
West Midlands -19 2 £120,000 - 3
South West - 2 £95,000 - 1
East of England - 1 £100,000 - 4
Head of AI
UK

Head of AI Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 21 July 2026, Head of AI job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all permanent job ads across the UK excluding London region featuring Head of AI in the job title.

1 30 (81.08%) AI
2 12 (32.43%) Roadmaps
3 10 (27.03%) Machine Learning
4 9 (24.32%) Azure
5 7 (18.92%) AWS
5 7 (18.92%) LLM
6 5 (13.51%) Agile
6 5 (13.51%) Azure Machine Learning
6 5 (13.51%) Data Governance
6 5 (13.51%) Databricks
6 5 (13.51%) Product Roadmap
6 5 (13.51%) Python
6 5 (13.51%) SQL
7 4 (10.81%) AI Transformation
7 4 (10.81%) Analytics
7 4 (10.81%) Asset Management
7 4 (10.81%) Azure AI
7 4 (10.81%) Azure SQL Database
7 4 (10.81%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 4 (10.81%) Business Strategy
7 4 (10.81%) Data Architecture
7 4 (10.81%) Data Development
7 4 (10.81%) Data Engineering
7 4 (10.81%) Decision-Making
7 4 (10.81%) Line Management
7 4 (10.81%) Microsoft
7 4 (10.81%) Migration
7 4 (10.81%) Problem-Solving
7 4 (10.81%) Regulatory Compliance
7 4 (10.81%) Snowflake

Head of AI Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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:

Applications
1 1 (2.70%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (2.70%) Magento
1 1 (2.70%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 9 (24.32%) Azure
2 7 (18.92%) AWS
3 5 (13.51%) Azure Machine Learning
4 4 (10.81%) Azure AI
4 4 (10.81%) Azure Synapse Analytics
4 4 (10.81%) Snowflake
5 2 (5.41%) BrowserStack
5 2 (5.41%) Sauce Labs
6 1 (2.70%) Anthropic Claude
6 1 (2.70%) GCP
6 1 (2.70%) SaaS
6 1 (2.70%) Zapier
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (10.81%) Azure SQL Database
1 4 (10.81%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 2 (5.41%) Appium
1 2 (5.41%) Cypress.io
1 2 (5.41%) JMeter
1 2 (5.41%) Postman
1 2 (5.41%) REST Assured
1 2 (5.41%) Selenium
2 1 (2.70%) Yeoman
General
1 8 (21.62%) Finance
2 5 (13.51%) Banking
3 4 (10.81%) Social Skills
4 3 (8.11%) Retail
5 1 (2.70%) Advertising
5 1 (2.70%) Analytical Skills
5 1 (2.70%) Influencing Skills
5 1 (2.70%) Law
5 1 (2.70%) Manufacturing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (5.41%) .NET
1 2 (5.41%) Playwright
2 1 (2.70%) CSS
2 1 (2.70%) HTML
2 1 (2.70%) NumPy
2 1 (2.70%) PyTorch
2 1 (2.70%) scikit-learn
2 1 (2.70%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 3 (8.11%) Credit Risk
1 3 (8.11%) Virtual Team
2 2 (5.41%) AI Agents
3 1 (2.70%) Analytical Mindset
3 1 (2.70%) Life Science
Processes & Methodologies
1 30 (81.08%) AI
2 12 (32.43%) Roadmaps
3 10 (27.03%) Machine Learning
4 7 (18.92%) LLM
5 5 (13.51%) Agile
5 5 (13.51%) Data Governance
5 5 (13.51%) Product Roadmap
6 4 (10.81%) AI Transformation
6 4 (10.81%) Analytics
6 4 (10.81%) Asset Management
6 4 (10.81%) Business Strategy
6 4 (10.81%) Data Architecture
6 4 (10.81%) Data Engineering
6 4 (10.81%) Decision-Making
6 4 (10.81%) Line Management
6 4 (10.81%) Migration
6 4 (10.81%) Problem-Solving
6 4 (10.81%) Regulatory Compliance
6 4 (10.81%) Software Engineering
6 4 (10.81%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 5 (13.51%) Python
1 5 (13.51%) SQL
2 2 (5.41%) Java
3 1 (2.70%) JavaScript
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (8.11%) Accessibility
2 2 (5.41%) QA
System Software
1 4 (10.81%) Virtual Machines
Vendors
1 5 (13.51%) Databricks
2 4 (10.81%) Microsoft
3 1 (2.70%) OpenAI