18 July 2018

Imperial College London is the nation’s most active creator of jobs in artificial intelligence, according to figures released in early June by Indeed.

The company, which claims to be the world’s biggest job site, said that one in every 13 AI vacancies it listed in the UK over the last 12 months was at Imperial.

Indeed said four out of the country’s top six recruiters of AI professionals are universities, and as well as Imperial they include Oxford, Cambridge and University College London. Global tech companies such as Amazon and IBM also appear among the top organisations advertising AI roles in the last 12 months.

The firm added that its data shows AI skills are more in demand in the UK than in any other developed economy, with the appetite among British employers even “outstripping that of their US counterparts”. 

Indeed said its UK site is currently listing three times as many AI vacancies as it did three years ago. Typical roles include machine learning engineers and software developers. The company said that as is common in the AI sector, the level of technical expertise and experience required means workers can expect to be well paid; for example, the average annual salary for a machine learning engineer is £54,739. 

Shawn Bose, general manager at Indeed’s online career platform Prime, believes the UK has emerged as a world leader in the creation of both AI technology and jobs.

He says: “It’s striking how many AI jobs are being created by universities. With AI technology still in its infancy, academic researchers are racing to discover its full potential. Just as the genesis of Silicon Valley came when the worlds ofscientific research and business collided at California’s Stanford University, we could be seeing a similar pattern beginning to emerge with AI in the UK.”