How senior are the open roles in the UK?

Just over half of UK postings with a stated level ask for senior or above

Across 4,719 live UK postings that state a level, 54.6% ask for senior, lead, director or VP. That is the headline for the market as a whole, but the picture changes a lot by role group.

Product sits at the top, with 317 of 473 postings (67%) at senior level or above. Design follows at 66.1% (109 of 165), then AI / ML at 65.8% (156 of 237) and software engineering at 62.9% (912 of 1,450).

The middle of the range includes security at 56.4% and data at 53.6%. Marketing (49.7%) and finance (49.3%) sit just under half. At the other end, customer success is at 41.5% and sales at 40.2%, which makes sales the group most open to earlier-career hires in this snapshot, with 59.8% of its postings below senior level.

Technical and product roles in the UK lean toward experienced hires

If you are early in your career and targeting product, design, AI / ML or software engineering in the UK, expect most of the postings you see to ask for senior experience. In each of these groups, more than six in ten postings with a stated level are senior or above.

That does not mean there are no openings for you. Software engineering has 1,450 postings in this cut, so even with 62.9% at senior level there are still earlier-career roles to find. The practical point is that you will need to filter carefully and read each posting's stated level rather than scrolling through everything.

If you are already senior, these same groups are where demand for your level is most concentrated. Product, with 317 senior postings, and software engineering, with 912, are worth watching closely.

For earlier-career candidates who are flexible about function, sales stands out. It has 1,343 postings and the lowest senior share in the chart, at 40.2%. Customer success, at 41.5%, is the other group where senior roles are a smaller share.

What to do with these numbers if you are applying now

Start by being honest about your level and searching for it directly. A junior candidate applying mainly to senior product or design postings will spend a lot of effort on roles that are not aimed at them.

If you want to move toward a senior-heavy field such as AI / ML or product, one route is to enter through an adjacent group with more earlier-career openings, such as data (53.6% senior), marketing (49.7%) or customer success (41.5%), and build relevant experience there.

If you are senior, apply where your level is in demand, but note that smaller groups like security (78 postings) and finance (71 postings) have fewer live roles overall in this cut. In those areas, checking for new postings regularly matters more than in larger groups.

Whatever your level, read the stated level on each posting. Titles alone can be misleading, and some employers label roles differently from others.

Limits of this data: a one-day snapshot of postings, not hires

These figures describe job postings live in the UK on 2026-10-06. They do not show who was hired, how many people applied, or how long roles stayed open. A posting asking for senior experience may still be filled by someone with less, and the reverse also happens.

Only postings with a stated level are included, which gives 4,719 UK postings. Roles that do not state a level are not counted, so the real mix across the whole UK market may differ.

Role group and seniority are classified automatically from each posting, and "senior or above" covers senior, lead, director and VP. Market is taken from the posting's location.

Some role groups have small samples. Security has 78 postings and finance has 71, so their shares are less stable than those for software engineering or sales. Because this is a single snapshot, it does not show whether any group is becoming more or less senior over time.