AI Contract Job Trends in Central London

AI
London > Central London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in Central London requiring AI skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 17 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 55 68
Rank change year-on-year +45 +13 +85
Contract jobs citing AI 326 89 66
As % of all contract jobs in Central London 12.77% 4.32% 2.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.47% 4.60% 3.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 226 61 50
10th Percentile £413 £413 £443
25th Percentile £463 £513 £467
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £625 £593
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% +5.49% -15.36%
75th Percentile £642 £700 £725
90th Percentile £739 £763 £826
London median daily rate £575 £563 £600
% change year-on-year +2.22% -6.25% -4.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 1 0
10th Percentile £22.78 - -
25th Percentile £28.09 £50.72 -
Median hourly rate £34.78 £51.44 -
Median % change year-on-year -32.38% - -
75th Percentile £44.06 £52.16 -
90th Percentile £49.12 - -
London median hourly rate £41.46 £40.25 £42.03
% change year-on-year +3.01% -4.24% -

All Process & Methodology Skills
Central London

AI falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in Central London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 2,253 1,935 2,107
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Central London 88.25% 93.84% 91.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,547 1,280 1,433
10th Percentile £364 £325 £375
25th Percentile £456 £423 £470
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £788
London median daily rate £550 £540 £550
% change year-on-year +1.85% -1.82% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 34 20
10th Percentile £17.60 £19.14 £15.80
25th Percentile £18.75 £23.98 £20.43
Median hourly rate £24.65 £29.07 £26.78
Median % change year-on-year -15.22% +8.55% -23.49%
75th Percentile £45.37 £49.22 £65.63
90th Percentile £64.88 £63.75 £137.50
London median hourly rate £35.50 £29.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +20.34% -15.71% -12.50%

AI
Job Vacancy Trend in Central London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing AI relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in Central London.

AI job vacancy trend in Central London

AI
Daily Rate Trend in Central London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Central London citing AI.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Central London citing AI

AI
Daily Rate Histogram in Central London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing AI in Central London over the 6 months to 17 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for AI in Central London

AI
Hourly Rate Trend in Central London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Central London citing AI.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Central London citing AI

AI
Hourly Rate Histogram in Central London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing AI in Central London over the 6 months to 17 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for AI in Central London

AI
Contract Job Locations in Central London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing AI within the Central London region over the 6 months to 17 August 2026. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
City of London +41 293 £550 -11.11% 364
City of Westminster -4 5 £500 - 16
West End of London -5 4 £620 - 19
Camden - 1 - - 1
AI
London

AI
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Central London by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 9 (2.76%) SharePoint
2 5 (1.53%) Apache Airflow
3 4 (1.23%) CICS
4 3 (0.92%) Confluence
4 3 (0.92%) Microsoft Exchange
4 3 (0.92%) WordPress
5 2 (0.61%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 2 (0.61%) Apache
5 2 (0.61%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.31%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.31%) Appian
6 1 (0.31%) IIS
6 1 (0.31%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 9 (2.76%) Chatbot
2 3 (0.92%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.61%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.61%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.31%) Actimize
2 1 (0.31%) NetSuite
2 1 (0.31%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 1 (0.31%) Primavera
2 1 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
2 1 (0.31%) SAP Oil and Gas
2 1 (0.31%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 95 (29.14%) Azure
2 67 (20.55%) AWS
3 39 (11.96%) GCP
4 38 (11.66%) Power Platform
5 22 (6.75%) GitHub
6 20 (6.13%) Azure AI
7 18 (5.52%) Snowflake
8 15 (4.60%) Azure DevOps
8 15 (4.60%) Microsoft Copilot
9 14 (4.29%) Serverless
10 12 (3.68%) AWS Lambda
11 11 (3.37%) Azure Data Factory
12 10 (3.07%) Amazon S3
12 10 (3.07%) SaaS
13 9 (2.76%) Amazon Bedrock
13 9 (2.76%) Anthropic Claude
13 9 (2.76%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 9 (2.76%) GitHub Actions
13 9 (2.76%) GitHub Copilot
13 9 (2.76%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 16 (4.91%) Internet
2 5 (1.53%) DNS
2 5 (1.53%) Firewall
3 3 (0.92%) DHCP
3 3 (0.92%) SMTP
3 3 (0.92%) VPN
4 2 (0.61%) Cisco IPT
5 1 (0.31%) Intrusion Detection
5 1 (0.31%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (6.75%) Power BI
2 15 (4.60%) Data Warehouse
3 13 (3.99%) Data Lake
3 13 (3.99%) Metadata
4 9 (2.76%) Relational Database
4 9 (2.76%) Tableau
5 8 (2.45%) Big Data
6 7 (2.15%) Snowflake Schema
6 7 (2.15%) SQL Server
7 6 (1.84%) Amazon Redshift
7 6 (1.84%) Data Mining
7 6 (1.84%) DynamoDB
7 6 (1.84%) MongoDB
8 5 (1.53%) NoSQL
8 5 (1.53%) Pinecone
9 4 (1.23%) Azure SQL Database
9 4 (1.23%) BigQuery
9 4 (1.23%) Delta Lake
9 4 (1.23%) Semantic Layer
9 4 (1.23%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 11 (3.37%) Git
2 8 (2.45%) GitLab
3 7 (2.15%) JIRA
4 6 (1.84%) Jenkins
5 4 (1.23%) Claude Code
5 4 (1.23%) Selenium
6 3 (0.92%) Appium
7 2 (0.61%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.61%) Oracle Forms
7 2 (0.61%) Xcode
8 1 (0.31%) ER Studio
8 1 (0.31%) JUnit
8 1 (0.31%) Katalon Studio
8 1 (0.31%) Postman
8 1 (0.31%) REST Assured
8 1 (0.31%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.31%) Selendroid
8 1 (0.31%) TestNG
8 1 (0.31%) Visual Studio
8 1 (0.31%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 85 (26.07%) Finance
2 81 (24.85%) Social Skills
3 39 (11.96%) Analytical Skills
4 34 (10.43%) Banking
5 25 (7.67%) Public Sector
6 14 (4.29%) Retail
7 13 (3.99%) Influencing Skills
7 13 (3.99%) Marketing
8 12 (3.68%) Legal
9 10 (3.07%) Financial Institution
10 8 (2.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 8 (2.45%) Law
11 6 (1.84%) Corporate Banking
11 6 (1.84%) Investment Banking
12 5 (1.53%) Pharmaceutical
12 5 (1.53%) Retail Banking
13 4 (1.23%) Manufacturing
14 3 (0.92%) Front Office
14 3 (0.92%) Military
14 3 (0.92%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 52 (15.95%) Architect
2 36 (11.04%) Senior
3 35 (10.74%) Lead
4 28 (8.59%) Developer
5 22 (6.75%) Analyst
5 22 (6.75%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
6 21 (6.44%) Machine Learning Engineer
7 17 (5.21%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
8 15 (4.60%) Data Engineer
9 14 (4.29%) Data Architect
10 11 (3.37%) Data Analyst
10 11 (3.37%) Solutions Architect
11 10 (3.07%) Product Manager
12 9 (2.76%) Consultant
12 9 (2.76%) Software Engineer
13 8 (2.45%) Backend Developer
13 8 (2.45%) Data Scientist
13 8 (2.45%) Full-Stack Engineer
14 7 (2.15%) Full-Stack Developer
14 7 (2.15%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (6.13%) pytest
2 11 (3.37%) React
2 11 (3.37%) REST
3 10 (3.07%) PySpark
4 9 (2.76%) RESTful
5 8 (2.45%) .NET
6 7 (2.15%) AngularJS
6 7 (2.15%) JSON
6 7 (2.15%) PyTorch
6 7 (2.15%) SOAP
7 6 (1.84%) FastAPI
7 6 (1.84%) Kafka
7 6 (1.84%) LangChain
8 5 (1.53%) LangGraph
8 5 (1.53%) TensorFlow
8 5 (1.53%) Web Services
9 4 (1.23%) CSS
9 4 (1.23%) HTML
9 4 (1.23%) WSDL
10 3 (0.92%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 39 (11.96%) AI Agents
2 35 (10.74%) Cloud Native
3 17 (5.21%) Product Ownership
4 16 (4.91%) Distributed Systems
5 11 (3.37%) Analytical Mindset
5 11 (3.37%) Onboarding
6 8 (2.45%) Clustering
6 8 (2.45%) Data Centre
7 6 (1.84%) Enterprise Software
8 5 (1.53%) Mobile App
9 4 (1.23%) Data Structures
9 4 (1.23%) DataPower
9 4 (1.23%) Life Science
9 4 (1.23%) Low-Code
9 4 (1.23%) Mainframe
9 4 (1.23%) Online Banking
9 4 (1.23%) Replication
10 3 (0.92%) Hybrid Cloud
10 3 (0.92%) Legacy Systems
10 3 (0.92%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 9 (2.76%) Windows
2 6 (1.84%) Apple iOS
2 6 (1.84%) Linux
2 6 (1.84%) Windows Server
3 4 (1.23%) Android
3 4 (1.23%) zOS
4 1 (0.31%) Mac OS
4 1 (0.31%) Unix
4 1 (0.31%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 111 (34.05%) Machine Learning
2 102 (31.29%) Generative AI
3 94 (28.83%) LLM
4 86 (26.38%) Analytics
5 85 (26.07%) CI/CD
6 65 (19.94%) DevOps
7 64 (19.63%) Agile
8 59 (18.10%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
9 54 (16.56%) Data Science
10 53 (16.26%) Software Engineering
11 51 (15.64%) Problem-Solving
12 48 (14.72%) Decision-Making
13 44 (13.50%) Data Engineering
14 38 (11.66%) MLOps
15 37 (11.35%) Stakeholder Management
15 37 (11.35%) Validation
16 36 (11.04%) Roadmaps
17 34 (10.43%) Data Governance
18 33 (10.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 31 (9.51%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 102 (31.29%) Python
2 66 (20.25%) SQL
3 18 (5.52%) C#
4 17 (5.21%) Java
5 16 (4.91%) TypeScript
6 15 (4.60%) PowerShell
7 12 (3.68%) JavaScript
8 9 (2.76%) Bicep
9 6 (1.84%) R
10 5 (1.53%) Bash
10 5 (1.53%) Go
11 4 (1.23%) JCL
11 4 (1.23%) Shell Script
12 3 (0.92%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 2 (0.61%) Korn
13 2 (0.61%) Swift
13 2 (0.61%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.61%) VBA
14 1 (0.31%) Apex Code
14 1 (0.31%) X++
Qualifications
1 53 (16.26%) Security Cleared
2 38 (11.66%) SC Cleared
3 18 (5.52%) Degree
4 12 (3.68%) DV Cleared
5 7 (2.15%) Computer Science Degree
6 5 (1.53%) CISSP
7 4 (1.23%) Azure Certification
7 4 (1.23%) CISM
8 3 (0.92%) DBS Check
8 3 (0.92%) SnowPro
9 2 (0.61%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (0.61%) CSPO
9 2 (0.61%) Master's Degree
9 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Certification
9 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 2 (0.61%) OSCP
10 1 (0.31%) ACCA
10 1 (0.31%) CISA
10 1 (0.31%) PMI Certification
10 1 (0.31%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (7.06%) Data Quality
2 22 (6.75%) QA
3 13 (3.99%) Accessibility
4 12 (3.68%) GDPR
5 9 (2.76%) NIST
6 4 (1.23%) EU AI Act
6 4 (1.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (1.23%) ISO/IEC 42001
6 4 (1.23%) PERC
6 4 (1.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 3 (0.92%) PMO
8 2 (0.61%) 21 CFR Part 11
8 2 (0.61%) COBIT
8 2 (0.61%) Government Security Classifications
8 2 (0.61%) GxP
8 2 (0.61%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 2 (0.61%) WCAG
9 1 (0.31%) Basel III
9 1 (0.31%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.31%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 45 (13.80%) Docker
2 8 (2.45%) Active Directory
3 4 (1.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (0.92%) BitLocker
4 3 (0.92%) Hyper-V
4 3 (0.92%) Microsoft App-V
4 3 (0.92%) Terminal Services
4 3 (0.92%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 54 (16.56%) Kubernetes
2 27 (8.28%) Terraform
3 5 (1.53%) Ansible
4 3 (0.92%) Nagios
4 3 (0.92%) Puppet
4 3 (0.92%) vCenter Server
4 3 (0.92%) vMotion
5 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Intune
5 2 (0.61%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.31%) Bosun
6 1 (0.31%) Grafana
6 1 (0.31%) Istio
6 1 (0.31%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 49 (15.03%) Microsoft
2 27 (8.28%) Google
3 22 (6.75%) Databricks
4 18 (5.52%) OpenAI
5 12 (3.68%) Foundry
6 8 (2.45%) Oracle
7 7 (2.15%) Salesforce
7 7 (2.15%) ServiceNow
8 6 (1.84%) SAP
9 5 (1.53%) Dynatrace
9 5 (1.53%) Informatica
9 5 (1.53%) VMware
10 3 (0.92%) Adobe
10 3 (0.92%) Citrix
10 3 (0.92%) HP
10 3 (0.92%) Palantir
10 3 (0.92%) Sitecore
10 3 (0.92%) Symantec
11 2 (0.61%) BMC
11 2 (0.61%) HubSpot