Machine Learning Contract Job Trends in the City of London

Machine Learning (ML)
Central London > City of London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the City of London requiring Machine Learning skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 84 103
Rank change year-on-year +41 +19 +28
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 92 31 25
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.71% 1.70% 1.06%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.30% 1.86% 1.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 59 15 19
10th Percentile £408 £460 £463
25th Percentile £513 £531 £515
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £690 £625
Median % change year-on-year -9.42% +10.40% -3.85%
75th Percentile £738 £792 £769
90th Percentile £925 £800 £805
Central London median daily rate £625 £638 £625
% change year-on-year -1.96% +2.00% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £55.81 - £46.75
Median hourly rate £57.77 - £48.50
75th Percentile £59.72 - £50.25
90th Percentile - - -
Central London median hourly rate £57.77 - £48.50
% change year-on-year - - +38.57%

All Process & Methodology Skills
City of London

Machine Learning 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 the City of London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,737 1,669 2,108
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 88.99% 91.55% 89.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,203 1,016 1,499
10th Percentile £356 £363 £350
25th Percentile £430 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.52% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £668 £682 £688
90th Percentile £775 £778 £800
Central London median daily rate £550 £575 £563
% change year-on-year -4.35% +2.22% -4.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 8 14
10th Percentile £18.75 £22.00 £17.00
25th Percentile £20.50 £28.94 £19.18
Median hourly rate £34.00 £40.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -16.05% +24.62% -7.14%
75th Percentile £45.08 £64.56 £45.52
90th Percentile £54.94 £112.00 £66.70
Central London median hourly rate £26.11 £35.00 £27.81
% change year-on-year -25.40% +25.85% -20.54%

Machine Learning
Job Vacancy Trend in the City of London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Machine Learning relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London.

Machine Learning job vacancy trend in the City of London

Machine Learning
Daily Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Machine Learning.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Machine Learning

Machine Learning
Daily Rate Histogram in the City of London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Machine Learning in the City of London over the 6 months to 19 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Machine Learning in the City of London

Machine Learning
Hourly Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Machine Learning.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Machine Learning

Machine Learning
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the City of 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 10 (10.87%) Apache Spark
2 7 (7.61%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (2.17%) Apache
4 1 (1.09%) Confluence
4 1 (1.09%) Jupyter
Business Applications
1 1 (1.09%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 42 (45.65%) Azure
2 40 (43.48%) AWS
3 24 (26.09%) GCP
4 23 (25.00%) Power Platform
5 11 (11.96%) GitHub
6 10 (10.87%) Amazon SageMaker
7 9 (9.78%) Azure Machine Learning
8 8 (8.70%) Snowflake
9 5 (5.43%) Azure AI
9 5 (5.43%) Copilot Studio
9 5 (5.43%) dbt
9 5 (5.43%) Microsoft Copilot
9 5 (5.43%) SaaS
9 5 (5.43%) Vertex AI
10 4 (4.35%) Cloud Computing
10 4 (4.35%) Cloud Run
10 4 (4.35%) GitHub Copilot
10 4 (4.35%) Google Gemini
11 3 (3.26%) GitHub Actions
11 3 (3.26%) IBM Watson
Communications & Networking
1 2 (2.17%) Network Security
2 1 (1.09%) 3G
2 1 (1.09%) 3GPP
2 1 (1.09%) 4G
2 1 (1.09%) 5G
2 1 (1.09%) Firewall
2 1 (1.09%) Hyperconnected
2 1 (1.09%) LTE
2 1 (1.09%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (18.48%) Power BI
2 10 (10.87%) Tableau
3 8 (8.70%) NoSQL
4 6 (6.52%) Data Warehouse
5 5 (5.43%) Big Data
6 4 (4.35%) Data Lake
6 4 (4.35%) PostgreSQL
7 3 (3.26%) BigQuery
7 3 (3.26%) DB2
7 3 (3.26%) Looker
7 3 (3.26%) Metadata
7 3 (3.26%) Mixpanel
7 3 (3.26%) MongoDB
7 3 (3.26%) Pinecone
8 2 (2.17%) Data Vault
8 2 (2.17%) Redis
8 2 (2.17%) Weaviate
9 1 (1.09%) Data Hub
9 1 (1.09%) Delta Lake
9 1 (1.09%) Spatial Data
Development Applications
1 13 (14.13%) Git
2 4 (4.35%) Jenkins
3 3 (3.26%) MLflow
4 2 (2.17%) SonarQube
5 1 (1.09%) Cypress.io
5 1 (1.09%) GitLab
5 1 (1.09%) JIRA
General
1 35 (38.04%) Finance
2 26 (28.26%) Social Skills
3 16 (17.39%) Banking
4 15 (16.30%) Analytical Skills
5 12 (13.04%) Public Sector
6 7 (7.61%) Influencing Skills
7 6 (6.52%) Pharmaceutical
8 5 (5.43%) Legal
8 5 (5.43%) Retail
9 3 (3.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 3 (3.26%) Investment Banking
9 3 (3.26%) Marketing
9 3 (3.26%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (2.17%) Law
11 1 (1.09%) Advertising
11 1 (1.09%) Corporate Banking
11 1 (1.09%) Financial Institution
11 1 (1.09%) Front Office
11 1 (1.09%) Retail Banking
11 1 (1.09%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 17 (18.48%) Architect
1 17 (18.48%) Senior
2 16 (17.39%) Data Scientist
3 13 (14.13%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
4 11 (11.96%) Lead
5 8 (8.70%) Developer
6 6 (6.52%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
6 6 (6.52%) Data Engineer
6 6 (6.52%) Enterprise Architect
6 6 (6.52%) Machine Learning Engineer
7 4 (4.35%) Data Architect
7 4 (4.35%) Gen AI Engineer
7 4 (4.35%) Python Developer
7 4 (4.35%) Security Architect
7 4 (4.35%) Senior Data Scientist
7 4 (4.35%) Technical Leader
8 3 (3.26%) Analyst
8 3 (3.26%) Senior Developer
8 3 (3.26%) Senior Python Developer
8 3 (3.26%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (22.83%) PyTorch
2 20 (21.74%) TensorFlow
3 19 (20.65%) scikit-learn
4 11 (11.96%) NumPy
4 11 (11.96%) Pandas
5 8 (8.70%) LangChain
5 8 (8.70%) LangGraph
6 6 (6.52%) AngularJS
7 5 (5.43%) FastAPI
7 5 (5.43%) Hugging Face
7 5 (5.43%) Kafka
7 5 (5.43%) React
8 4 (4.35%) Google JAX
8 4 (4.35%) JAX
8 4 (4.35%) Matplotlib
8 4 (4.35%) Model Context Protocol
8 4 (4.35%) PySpark
8 4 (4.35%) Seaborn
9 3 (3.26%) Backbone.js
9 3 (3.26%) Ember.js
Miscellaneous
1 19 (20.65%) Cloud Native
2 13 (14.13%) Algorithms
3 11 (11.96%) AI Agents
4 6 (6.52%) Distributed Systems
4 6 (6.52%) Product Ownership
5 5 (5.43%) Onboarding
5 5 (5.43%) Security Posture
6 4 (4.35%) Derivative
6 4 (4.35%) Hybrid Cloud
6 4 (4.35%) Life Science
7 3 (3.26%) Analytical Mindset
7 3 (3.26%) Greenfield Project
7 3 (3.26%) Legacy Systems
7 3 (3.26%) Taxonomies
8 2 (2.17%) Distributed Computing
8 2 (2.17%) Enterprise Software
8 2 (2.17%) Equities
8 2 (2.17%) Fixed Income
8 2 (2.17%) Synthetic Data
9 1 (1.09%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 4 (4.35%) Linux
2 3 (3.26%) Android
2 3 (3.26%) Apple iOS
2 3 (3.26%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 73 (79.35%) AI
2 40 (43.48%) Data Science
3 35 (38.04%) Analytics
3 35 (38.04%) Generative AI
4 29 (31.52%) LLM
5 23 (25.00%) CI/CD
6 21 (22.83%) Data Engineering
7 19 (20.65%) Data Pipeline
8 18 (19.57%) MLOps
8 18 (19.57%) Natural Language Processing
8 18 (19.57%) Visualisation
9 17 (18.48%) Business Intelligence
9 17 (18.48%) Data Governance
9 17 (18.48%) Roadmaps
10 15 (16.30%) Data Modelling
11 14 (15.22%) Agile
11 14 (15.22%) Data Visualisation
11 14 (15.22%) Observability
12 13 (14.13%) Business Strategy
13 12 (13.04%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 61 (66.30%) Python
2 33 (35.87%) SQL
3 5 (5.43%) C++
3 5 (5.43%) Java
3 5 (5.43%) R
4 4 (4.35%) C#
4 4 (4.35%) TypeScript
5 3 (3.26%) JavaScript
6 2 (2.17%) Scala
7 1 (1.09%) PowerShell
7 1 (1.09%) Rust
Qualifications
1 13 (14.13%) Degree
2 10 (10.87%) Security Cleared
3 6 (6.52%) PhD
3 6 (6.52%) SC Cleared
4 5 (5.43%) Master's Degree
5 2 (2.17%) BPSS Clearance
5 2 (2.17%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (2.17%) TOGAF Certification
6 1 (1.09%) DBS Check
6 1 (1.09%) MBA
6 1 (1.09%) MPhil
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (8.70%) Data Quality
2 5 (5.43%) GDPR
3 4 (4.35%) EU AI Act
3 4 (4.35%) NIST
4 2 (2.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (2.17%) ISO/IEC 42001
5 1 (1.09%) EMIR
5 1 (1.09%) GRC
5 1 (1.09%) MiFID
5 1 (1.09%) NCSC
5 1 (1.09%) SOC 2
System Software
1 10 (10.87%) Docker
Systems Management
1 8 (8.70%) Kubernetes
2 6 (6.52%) Terraform
3 3 (3.26%) Prometheus
4 2 (2.17%) Istio
5 1 (1.09%) Grafana
5 1 (1.09%) ITRS Geneos
5 1 (1.09%) Kibana
5 1 (1.09%) logstash
5 1 (1.09%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 21 (22.83%) Microsoft
2 14 (15.22%) Databricks
3 10 (10.87%) Google
4 5 (5.43%) OpenAI
5 4 (4.35%) Foundry
5 4 (4.35%) IBM
6 3 (3.26%) Amplitude
6 3 (3.26%) Cognos
6 3 (3.26%) Sage
6 3 (3.26%) Salesforce
7 2 (2.17%) Dynatrace
7 2 (2.17%) Guidewire
7 2 (2.17%) MicroStrategy
7 2 (2.17%) MuleSoft
7 2 (2.17%) SAP
7 2 (2.17%) SimCorp
7 2 (2.17%) Sitecore
7 2 (2.17%) Vermilion
8 1 (1.09%) Informatica
8 1 (1.09%) TIBCO