Highest-Paying UK Tech Roles Right Now (October 2026)
AI roles top the table of advertised UK tech salaries. The median advertised AI product manager salary is £115k, ahead of AI researchers at £92k and machine learning engineers at £91k. Software engineering and DevOps sit at the bottom of the 12 roles we track, around £50k to £52k.
These are medians of salaries published in live UK job ads on 22 October 2026. Most fall inside the typical range shown in the table.
Median advertised salary by role
| Role | Median | Typical range |
|---|---|---|
| AI product manager | £115k | £81k to £176k |
| AI researcher | £92k | £53k to £120k |
| Machine learning engineer | £91k | £80k to £119k |
| Data engineer | £75k | £65k to £85k |
| Data scientist | £75k | £60k to £86k |
| Technology consultant | £70k | £53k to £80k |
| Product manager | £67k | £53k to £89k |
| Data analyst | £58k | £45k to £75k |
| Cyber security engineer | £54k | £42k to £80k |
| UX designer | £52k | £38k to £80k |
| Software engineer | £52k | £42k to £70k |
| DevOps engineer | £50k | £36k to £67k |
"Typical range" is the middle half of ads that publish a salary.
What stands out
- AI pays a premium. The three AI-labelled roles lead the table, and machine learning engineer pay is about £16k above data scientist pay at the median.
- Data roles cluster at £75k. Data engineers and data scientists have the same median, though data scientist ads start lower.
- Software engineering is the biggest market and pays less. It has the most ads by far, which pulls the median down. Specialist roles pay more than the median suggests.
- The top of each role is far above the median. Frontier AI labs in London advertise machine learning and research engineering roles above £300k, which is why the range for machine learning engineers runs far beyond the typical band.
Caveats
Advertised pay is not the same as pay. Many ads, especially at larger employers, publish no salary. Agencies often advertise wide bands. A small number of ads at AI labs are well above everything else and stretch the top of the range, though they hardly move the median.
See the live numbers
Each role has its own page that updates every morning, with pay by seniority, London against the rest of the UK, and the best-paying open jobs. Start with the salary guides for every role, or open the UK tech job market dashboard.