January 2026

London

IT, Tech and AI Salary & Contractor Rates

• AI & Data Surge: London remains the European capital for AI. Roles in NLP, MLOps, and Data Engineering are seeing the highest year-on-year growth (up to +6.2%).

• The “Office Premium”: Financial services and law firms in the City/Canary Wharf are offering higher base salaries for 4-5 day on-site roles to attract talent back to the office.

• Contractor Day Rates: Outside IR35 rates for specialised architects and AI engineers have pushed past £1,000 as standard in the private sector.

  Category	Job Title	Yearly Low (£)	Yearly Median (£)	Yearly High (£)	Contractor Day Rate (Med £)
  Leadership	Chief Transformation Officer (CTRO)	£131,000	£168,800	£206,000	£1,450
  	Chief Technology Officer (CTO)	£125,000	£164,700	£205,000	£1,450
  	Chief Information Officer (CIO)	£118,000	£158,200	£205,000	£1,350
  	Chief Info Security Officer (CISO)	£108,000	£145,000	£185,000	£1,250
  	IT Director	£86,000	£105,000	£135,000	£1,050
  	Digital Transformation Director	£125,000	£155,000	£195,000	£1,300
  	Head of Data / AI	£105,000	£130,000	£165,000	£1,150
  	Head of IT	£78,000	£88,000	£110,000	£850
  	Head of Infrastructure	£95,000	£115,000	£145,000	£950
  	Head of Cyber Security	£110,000	£135,000	£170,000	£1,150
  	Head of Architecture	£115,000	£145,000	£185,000	£1,200
  Operations	3rd Line Support (SysAdmin)	£55,000	£68,000	£88,000	£525
  	2nd Line Support	£42,000	£52,000	£65,000	£375
  	1st Line Support	£32,000	£42,000	£52,000	£275
  	IT Support Manager	£65,000	£80,000	£105,000	£650
  	Service Delivery Manager	£75,000	£95,000	£130,000	£750
  	Service Desk Team Lead	£52,000	£62,000	£82,000	£450
  	IT Field Engineer	£42,000	£52,000	£68,000	£400
  Architecture	Enterprise Architect	£105,000	£125,000	£165,000	£1,100
  	Solution Architect	£95,000	£115,000	£145,000	£950
  	Cloud Architect (AWS/Azure)	£105,000	£128,000	£165,000	£1,050
  	Infrastructure Architect	£85,000	£105,000	£135,000	£850
  	Data Architect	£98,000	£120,000	£155,000	£1,050
  	Security Architect	£110,000	£135,000	£175,000	£1,250
  	Technical Architect	£95,000	£118,000	£150,000	£950
  	Service Architect	£88,000	£108,000	£135,000	£850
  	CRM Architect (SFDC/MS Dyn)	£92,000	£112,000	£145,000	£900
  Engineering	AI / Machine Learning Engineer	£90,000	£115,000	£155,000	£1,050
  	MLOps Engineer	£95,000	£120,000	£165,000	£1,100
  	NLP / LLM Engineer	£92,000	£118,000	£160,000	£1,050
  	Prompt Engineer	£75,000	£92,000	£125,000	£800
  	Cloud Engineer	£78,000	£95,000	£130,000	£850
  	DevOps / SRE Engineer	£82,000	£102,000	£145,000	£900
  	Infrastructure Engineer	£68,000	£82,000	£110,000	£650
  	Cyber Security Engineer	£75,000	£95,000	£135,000	£850
  	Data Engineer	£72,000	£92,000	£130,000	£850
  	Data Warehouse Developer	£68,000	£85,000	£115,000	£750
  	Database Administrator (DBA)	£65,000	£80,000	£110,000	£650
  	Software Developer (Senior)	£85,000	£105,000	£145,000	£850
  	Back-End Developer	£75,000	£95,000	£135,000	£750
  	Front-End Developer	£70,000	£90,000	£130,000	£700
  	Full-Stack Developer	£80,000	£100,000	£140,000	£800
  	Network Engineer	£65,000	£82,000	£115,000	£650
  	Systems Engineer	£62,000	£78,000	£105,000	£600
  	Automation Engineer	£68,000	£85,000	£120,000	£750
  	Firmware / Hardware Engineer	£70,000	£90,000	£130,000	£800
  Data & PM	Data Scientist (Senior)	£85,000	£105,000	£150,000	£950
  	Data Analyst	£55,000	£68,000	£90,000	£600
  	AI Product Manager	£95,000	£120,000	£165,000	£1,050
  	Product Owner	£85,000	£105,000	£140,000	£900
  	Scrum Master	£78,000	£95,000	£130,000	£850
  	IT Programme Manager	£105,000	£130,000	£175,000	£1,150
  	IT Project Manager	£82,000	£98,000	£135,000	£850
  	Business Analyst (Technical)	£72,000	£88,000	£115,000	£700
  	QA Automation Lead	£75,000	£95,000	£130,000	£800
  	Technical Author	£58,000	£72,000	£95,000	£550
  	Risk & Compliance Analyst	£68,000	£85,000	£115,000	£750
  	Governance Manager	£85,000	£110,000	£145,000	£900

If your company is thinking of hiring, do it now. As demand rises, so too with the rates of pay and the difficulty levels of attracting and securing the right talent.

If, however, your company is slowing down – beware! If your IT staff start to feel insecure, talent competitors and recruiters will find it very easy to persuade your staff to interview elsewhere. Despite the stress and negativity that may exist, take the time to focus on reassuring your team and, where appropriate, reward their loyalty. It’s a false economy to avoid salary increases for your best people. Doing so risks leave yourself vulnerable to losing key staff and the larger costs in both time and money of replacing them.

Should you be considering recruitment or simply would like some advice on anything recruitment related, please do not hesitate to give us a call and see how we can really help you to Recruit Someone Worth Recruiting.

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