The AI jobs UK employers are hiring for right now that don’t need a coding background
Key Points
- UK job postings for specialist AI roles rose 61% in 2025, from around 112,000 to 180,000, according to PwC's 2026 AI Jobs Barometer.
- The UK wage premium for AI skills tripled in a year, reaching 34.2% against 11% in 2024.
- AI ethics and governance leads earn between £95,000 and £225,000, with senior governance roles passing £250,000.
- 77% of UK organisations expect AI proficiency to become a baseline requirement for most non-technical positions within 12 months.
- Imperial Business School opens applications in August 2026 for a master's degree built around the ICO, CMA, FCA and Ofcom.
UK employers advertised close to 180,000 specialist AI roles in 2025, and the fastest-growing of them sit in governance, law and policy rather than engineering.
PwC’s 2026 AI Jobs Barometer, which analysed more than one billion job adverts across 27 countries, put UK postings for specialist AI roles at 180,000 in 2025, up 61% from 112,000 the previous year and back at levels last seen in 2022.
The wage premium for workers with AI skills tripled over the same period, reaching 34.2% across sectors and peaking at 64% in consumer markets. The global premium reached 62%, ranging from 118% in consumer markets to 16% in government and public sector work.
What employers are asking for
PwC found that jobs requiring specific AI skills grew 69% against 9% for the total jobs market, with employers placing greater emphasis on judgement, creativity and leadership.
Roles that AI “professionalises” – where the technology automates routine tasks and leaves human expertise in place – are growing twice as fast as roles it makes easier for non-experts to perform, with 42% faster wage growth since 2021.
Companies most exposed to AI grew headcount 52% against a 2018 baseline, compared with 36% at the least exposed.
Governance roles in demand
Analysis by Lorien puts shows AI ethics and governance leads at between £95,000 and £225,000, covering governance frameworks, bias mitigation, accountability and oversight.
Separate UK hiring analysis places the machine learning engineer median near £67,000, with senior and governance roles reaching £250,000-plus, and London leading hiring ahead of Cambridge, Manchester, Edinburgh and Bristol.
Financial services, healthcare, government, retail, insurance, telecommunications and manufacturing all recruit for the roles.
Workplace platform HiBob found that 77% of UK organisations expect AI proficiency to become a baseline requirement for most non-technical positions within the next 12 months.
A Q2 2026 report from APSCo, CV-Library and Lightcast recorded AI-related vacancies up 41.8% year-on-year, accounting for 4.6% of all UK tech roles advertised, while Indeed’s Hiring Lab data puts AI in 5.6% of all UK listings, ahead of the US, Germany and Australia.
More training on the way
Imperial Business School launched its MSc AI, Economics and Policy on Wednesday (29 July), combining technical AI training with economics, law and governance in one curriculum.
Imperial Business School and Imperial College London’s Department of Computing will run the programme jointly, opening applications in August 2026 for a first cohort in September 2027.
Imperial’s links with the Information Commissioner’s Office, the Competition and Markets Authority, the Financial Conduct Authority, Ofcom and the European Commission inform the syllabus, and the school lists AI governance analyst, regulation specialist and responsible AI specialist among target roles.
Tommaso Valletti, academic director of the programme, said AI does not operate in isolation, shaping markets, challenging existing regulation and raising policy questions, and that Imperial’s computing, economics and public policy strengths equip students to understand how AI systems work and how they should be governed.
Students still cover AI systems and data-driven technologies alongside competition, digital markets and legal approaches to AI governance.
