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Stuart Gentle Publisher at Onrec

London, Cambridge and Reading emerge as golden triangle for AI jobs, according to Glassdoor economic research

UK Investment in AI Keeping Pace With United States, As Healthcare Leads Search for AI Skills

Glassdoor, one of the world’s largest job and recruiting sites, released a new economic research study today, revealing the number of artificial intelligence (AI) roles open in the UK. The study, “Artificial Intelligence Jobs in the United Kingdom: Who’s Hiring and Why? identifies which companies are hiring for AI talent, the type of jobs available and what they pay. The study found 120 AI-specific roles open to UK job seekers, predominantly centred around a new “golden triangle” for tech jobs between London, Cambridge and Reading. The study also reveals that British employers are investing in AI at a comparable rate to the United States. Similar results to a previous analysis in the US found 512 open AI roles, representing about 4.3 times more jobs, consistent with a US labour force which is about 4.8 times the size of the UK’s.

The new study, is based on the analysis of millions of open UK jobs on Glassdoor and identifies AI-specific jobs by counting any role containing “artificial intelligence”, “AI”, or “deep learning” in the job title listed by the employer. The study also looks at which employers are hiring for AI jobs, offers insights into which sectors of the British economy may be most impacted, lists open job locations, and highlights the most common AI jobs and their respective salaries.

“AI and deep learning will soon provide the key to unlocking the UK’s productivity gap. However, widespread adoption of AI has a long way to go, with our analysis revealing that AI jobs are in fact a small but growing part of the current workforce,” said Andrew Chamberlain, Glassdoor chief economist. “Machines certainly won’t be taking your job anytime soon. We’re now seeing workers team up with AI, using it as a tool to be more productive by taking away some of the low-value aspects of a role. Workers across all sectors should realise they will more likely collaborate with AI than be replaced by it.”

What UK Areas Are Hiring AI Talent?

The majority of roles are available in what can be called the “golden triangle” catchment of London (49 percent), Cambridge (17 percent) and Reading (4 percent), a geographical area which also includes the UK’s current top location to work in, Slough (6 percent). Nearly half of all AI jobs listed on Glassdoor are located in London, a figure which rises to 75 percent if you combine the other “golden triangle” locations.

Most Common AI Job Titles

The front-line worker roles, specifically those building AI products are the most popular in terms of open jobs. The most common AI job1 open today is AI software engineer, making up 24 percent of UK AI online job openings, with a median base salary of £45,7522. This role is followed by AI data scientist (14 percent) at £47,443, AI research scientist (8 percent) at £35,837, and AI software developer (4 percent) at £36,469. Outside of the 20 most common roles listed were some surprising inclusions such as creative writers whose role it would be to develop the personality for an AI personal assistant bot, as well as clinical fellowships for doctors working with AI in hospitals.

Base pay for AI jobs in the UK ranged from an estimated £84,000 per year for senior leadership roles (AI Product Director) down to £25,000 for student internships, with a median base pay of £44,968 across all job titles, which is 1.6 times higher than the UK median salary of £28,4503 per year.

UK Employers Hiring AI Talent

A common misconception is that only large tech employers need AI talent. The full list of employers currently hiring for AI roles actually consists of healthcare, media, finance and consulting companies. The employer with the most open AI roles today is Babylon Health, with 11 open AI jobs4 or nine percent of the total. The tech-focussed health company is investing heavily in AI technology to personalise health care, improve diagnoses, and apply machine learning and AI to patient care. Second on the list is the BBC (4 percent of open jobs), hiring software engineers for their voice and AI group to build new ways for listeners to interact with online news programming. The top three is completed by healthcare analytics company IQVIA (3 percent of jobs). Healthcare jobs appear likely to face significant disruption, employers in this space are increasingly using AI when scanning radiology images for cancer, using data to identify patients most at risk and improving efficiencies and procedures.

The full report can be found here.