Survey: AI elevates UK tech roles

Survey: AI Elevates UK Tech Roles Instead of Erasing Them Artificial intelligence is changing UK tech work, but the shift looks less like a wave of job destruction and more like a rewrite of what employers are paying for. New research from recruitment firm Hays says the strongest demand is moving toward people who can use artificial intelligence tools well, oversee their output, and handle the parts of technology work that still need human judgment. (businesswire.com) The headline number is striking because it cuts against the simplest version of the automation story. Hays says UK technical roles show “moderate exposure” to artificial intelligence, with the technology augmenting work rather than replacing expertise outright. (businesswire.com) That distinction matters in practice. When recruiters say a role is being augmented, they mean software is taking over narrower, repeatable tasks inside the job, while the person keeps responsibility for design, problem solving, quality control, and final decisions. (businesswire.com) The pattern is not uniform across the sector. Hays found that software-heavy jobs such as software developers, data engineers, and artificial intelligence engineers are likely to see the highest relative exposure to artificial intelligence, because these jobs contain more routine tasks that can be supported by automation. (businesswire.com) Even there, the company’s message is cautious rather than alarmist. Hays says the overall impact remains modest, and the technology is expected to remove specific tasks rather than whole roles. (businesswire.com) Other jobs look more insulated. Roles built around coordination, judgment, and organizational oversight, including project managers and change managers, show lower levels of artificial intelligence impact in the Hays analysis. (businesswire.com) Infrastructure work sits lower still on the disruption scale. Security engineering and network engineering remain essential because companies still need people to keep systems safe, stable, and compliant, including the systems that run artificial intelligence itself. (businesswire.com) That helps explain why pay is not collapsing. Hays ranks the United Kingdom 15th out of 34 countries for average tech salaries and 16th for contractor day rates, which places the country in the top half globally rather than at the very top. (businesswire.com; salary-guides.haysplc.com) The more interesting detail is where the money is concentrated. Hays says UK salaries are being supported by skills scarcity and by the “system critical” nature of roles in cloud computing, cybersecurity, development operations, and platform engineering. (businesswire.com) Some categories stand out globally. In Hays’ comparison, UK security engineers rank fourth worldwide for permanent pay, while Java developers, development operations engineers, solutions architects, and Microsoft.NET developers each rank tenth. (businesswire.com) The contractor market tells a similar story. UK contractor day rates rank third globally for Java developers and fifth for cloud engineers, with security engineers in seventh place, suggesting companies are still willing to pay a premium when they need hard-to-find technical specialists quickly. (businesswire.com) This is the real shift underneath the headline: artificial intelligence is raising the value of workers who can direct it, check it, and fit it into real systems. A coding assistant can draft functions, but employers still need developers who can decide what should be built, data engineers who can trust the pipeline, and security teams who can keep the whole stack from breaking. (businesswire.com) The broader UK labor market data from Hays points in the same direction. In its 2026 UK Salary & Recruiting Trends Guide, Hays says 93 percent of employers faced skills shortages in the last 12 months, 84 percent increased salaries in the last 12 months, and 34 percent of employees use artificial intelligence regularly at work. (hays.co.uk) Put together, those numbers describe a market that is selective rather than shrinking. Employers are not paying more for everyone equally; they are paying up for people whose skills become more useful when artificial intelligence enters the workflow. (businesswire.com; hays.co.uk) There is also a timing point buried in Hays’ earlier research. In a March 26, 2025 release, the company said 2025 marked a transition from isolated artificial intelligence experiments to broader technology deployments, with full implementation still expected to take five to ten years for most businesses. (haysplc.com) That longer rollout helps explain why the current effect looks like job redesign instead of mass replacement. Companies are still in the stage where they are fitting artificial intelligence into existing teams, not rebuilding the entire organization around it overnight. (haysplc.com; businesswire.com) For workers, the message is clear enough. The safest position is not simply “in tech,” but in