UK AI Exposure · Professional occupations
IT project managers
IT project managers manage, coordinate and technically supervise specific IT projects of a discrete duration and/or budget.
- Employees (UK)
- 31k
- Median annual pay
- £58,016
- Exposure score ?
- 1.2/10 Minimal 9.4/10 Very high strict reading · with tools is 9.4/10 with-tools reading · strict is 1.2/10
- Wage exposure
- £216m £1.69bn
Higher exposure than 61% of the 379 UK occupations we scored.
What this score means
Most of this role's work is still genuinely hard for AI to do. Physical presence, bodily skill, high-context judgment, direct human care - the things that don't translate to text.
If you're in this role, here's what to do now
You're not in the firing line today. But the frontier moves. Build enough AI fluency now that you can direct it for the parts of your work that could benefit. People in unexposed roles who understand AI become unusually valuable inside their organisations.
Almost every routine task in this role is within reach of today's language models. Roles at this level are getting rebuilt - often not by disappearing, but by one person using AI to do three or five people's output.
If you're in this role, here's what to do now
You don't need to be afraid. You need to be the person doing the rebuilding. The operators who learn to direct AI at scale in this kind of work become hugely valuable. The ones who wait to be told what to do get told what to do - and that thing is often 'we don't need as many of you anymore.'
Where a project with Alex usually starts for this role
This role's strict reading is low because its top tasks are judgment, not drafting. The three highest-stakes tasks below are still usually where we start — flip the toggle to 'With tools' to see what AI plus the right context can compress.
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Manage backup, security and user help systems.
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Direct daily operations of department, analyzing workflow, establishing priorities, developing standards and setting deadlines.
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Meet with department heads, managers, supervisors, vendors, and others, to solicit cooperation and resolve problems.
These are the highest-importance tasks AI can already handle when paired with the right tools and context. In a typical engagement the first wins come from building workflows around these — usually the difference between an LLM that can technically do the job and one that actually does it inside your business.
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Manage backup, security and user help systems.
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Direct daily operations of department, analyzing workflow, establishing priorities, developing standards and setting deadlines.
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Review project plans to plan and coordinate project activity.
Every role has three or four wedges like these. Finding them takes an hour. Turning them into a workflow your team actually uses takes a few days. Talk to Alex about a project →
The full task breakdown
Every O*NET task for this occupation, split by what AI can already do unaided versus what still needs a human. Importance is O*NET's 1–5 rating of how central each task is to the role.
Tasks via O*NET "Computer and Information Systems Managers" (11-3021.00).
What AI can already do
2 of 17 tasks · unaided
Assign and review the work of systems analysts, programmers, and other computer-related workers.
Review and approve all systems charts and programs prior to their implementation.
Where humans still hold the line
15 of 17 tasks
Manage backup, security and user help systems.
Direct daily operations of department, analyzing workflow, establishing priorities, developing standards and setting deadlines.
Meet with department heads, managers, supervisors, vendors, and others, to solicit cooperation and resolve problems.
Review project plans to plan and coordinate project activity.
Provide users with technical support for computer problems.
Develop computer information resources, providing for data security and control, strategic computing, and disaster recovery.
Recruit, hire, train and supervise staff, or participate in staffing decisions.
Stay abreast of advances in technology.
Consult with users, management, vendors, and technicians to assess computing needs and system requirements.
Develop and interpret organizational goals, policies, and procedures.
Evaluate the organization's technology use and needs and recommend improvements, such as hardware and software upgrades.
Prepare and review operational reports or project progress reports.
Evaluate data processing proposals to assess project feasibility and requirements.
Control operational budget and expenditures.
Purchase necessary equipment.
Tasks via O*NET "Computer and Information Systems Managers" (11-3021.00).
What AI can already do
16 of 17 tasks · with tools
Manage backup, security and user help systems.
Direct daily operations of department, analyzing workflow, establishing priorities, developing standards and setting deadlines.
Review project plans to plan and coordinate project activity.
Assign and review the work of systems analysts, programmers, and other computer-related workers.
Provide users with technical support for computer problems.
Develop computer information resources, providing for data security and control, strategic computing, and disaster recovery.
Recruit, hire, train and supervise staff, or participate in staffing decisions.
Stay abreast of advances in technology.
Consult with users, management, vendors, and technicians to assess computing needs and system requirements.
Develop and interpret organizational goals, policies, and procedures.
Evaluate the organization's technology use and needs and recommend improvements, such as hardware and software upgrades.
Review and approve all systems charts and programs prior to their implementation.
Prepare and review operational reports or project progress reports.
Evaluate data processing proposals to assess project feasibility and requirements.
Control operational budget and expenditures.
Purchase necessary equipment.
Where humans still hold the line
1 of 17 tasks
Meet with department heads, managers, supervisors, vendors, and others, to solicit cooperation and resolve problems.
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Methodology
This role's exposure score comes from Eloundou et al's 2023 GPT task labels, aggregated by O*NET importance within each O*NET-SOC code, then bridged to UK SOC 2020 via ISCO-08 (ONS Vol 2 coding index) and US SOC 2010 (BLS crosswalk). Employment and median pay come from ONS ASHE Table 14.7a, 2025 provisional. ASHE covers employees only, so self-employed workers are not counted.
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