AI skills shortage more than doubles for UK tech leaders

The number of UK tech leaders reporting a dearth in AI skills has more than doubled in the last year, according to research.

A survey by tech recruitment specialist Harvey Nash found that around half UK tech leaders (52 percent) say they are suffering an AI skills gap in the past year, compared with 20 percent who said the same the year before.

The survey took in responses from 2,015 technology/digital leaders globally - including 924 in the UK - which took place between December 2024 and March 2025.

Harvey Nash and its owner, Nash Squared, found the perceived AI skills shortage was the steepest, biggest jump in any technology skills shortfall recorded in more than a decade.

The recruiter said that in "the previous 16 years that Nash Squared/Harvey Nash has tracked technology skills shortages, the next biggest reported jump in the UK was a shortage in Big Data skills, with a jump of just 55 percent. Even with cyber skills, for which demand continues to grow, the increase in scarcity has been gradual - rising from 12 percent [of respondents saying they were short of that skill] in 2009 to 30 percent this year."

At the same time, the top echelons of IT management might be in for a pay boost if they have managed to get AI on the business agenda. Harvey Nash found more than half of UK tech leaders had a salary rise in the last year, but four in ten did not get one.

It also found tech leaders achieving a pay rise of 10 percent or more were more likely to have a large-scale implementation of AI and more likely to be increasing tech headcount compared to the rest of the pack. They were also more likely to have a CEO that is significantly more focused on technology-making versus saving money for the organization (77 percent compared to the 63 percent UK average.)

Additionally, UK companies saw an increase in AI investment, coinciding with the skills definiency in the field. Nearly nine out of 10 tech leaders said they were either piloting AI or investing in small or large-scale developments, up from 46 percent recorded last year, the survey found.

Bev White, CEO of Nash Squared said: "As AI is so new, there is no 'playbook' here - it's about a mix of approaches including formal training where available, reskilling IT staff and staff outside of the traditional IT function to widen the pool, on-the-job experimentation, and knowledge sharing and transfer. This needs to coincide with the development of a new operating model where AI is stitched in. Quite simply, those organizations that rise most effectively to the AI challenge will be in the driving seat to succeed."

Although organizations may be investing in AI, and looking for skills to support those investments, it is unclear what the outcome may be. In January this year, Gartner found that AI was driving IT investment, but that "moonshot projects" had seen a high failure rate.

A recent survey of 2,000 CEOs by IBM found many enterprises are struggling to get real value from generative AI projects, and 85 percent estimate it'll take two years or more to achieve a return on investment.

Big Blue's research also revealed that more than half the respondents said they're hiring for brand AI-based new roles that didn't exist twelve months ago, and over a third anticipate the wider workforce will need to be retrained or reskilled inside the next three years. ®