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 26 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 86 98
Rank change year-on-year +39 +12 +32
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 91 34 28
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.59% 1.84% 1.20%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.16% 2.01% 1.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 58 17 21
10th Percentile £407 £408 £463
25th Percentile £513 £513 £505
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £625 £550
Median % change year-on-year - +13.64% -15.38%
75th Percentile £738 £790 £750
90th Percentile £897 £800 £800
Central London median daily rate £625 £613 £550
% change year-on-year +2.04% +11.36% -15.38%
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 1,765 1,689 2,086
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 89.01% 91.64% 89.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,219 1,038 1,488
10th Percentile £356 £363 £350
25th Percentile £429 £463 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £575 £570
Median % change year-on-year -6.09% +0.88% -5.00%
75th Percentile £673 £688 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £800
Central London median daily rate £550 £575 £551
% change year-on-year -4.35% +4.45% -6.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 10 13
10th Percentile £18.75 £22.00 £17.00
25th Percentile £20.18 £26.25 £18.93
Median hourly rate £28.00 £35.50 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.13% +42.00% -28.57%
75th Percentile £45.08 £47.50 £41.84
90th Percentile £54.94 £112.00 £49.55
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 26 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 (10.99%) Apache Spark
2 7 (7.69%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (2.20%) Apache
4 1 (1.10%) Confluence
4 1 (1.10%) Jupyter
Business Applications
1 1 (1.10%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 41 (45.05%) AWS
1 41 (45.05%) Azure
2 24 (26.37%) GCP
3 22 (24.18%) Power Platform
4 10 (10.99%) Amazon SageMaker
5 9 (9.89%) GitHub
6 8 (8.79%) Azure Machine Learning
6 8 (8.79%) Snowflake
7 5 (5.49%) dbt
7 5 (5.49%) SaaS
8 4 (4.40%) Azure AI
8 4 (4.40%) Cloud Computing
8 4 (4.40%) Copilot Studio
8 4 (4.40%) GitHub Copilot
8 4 (4.40%) Microsoft Copilot
8 4 (4.40%) Vertex AI
9 3 (3.30%) Azure Data Factory
9 3 (3.30%) Cloud Run
9 3 (3.30%) Google Gemini
9 3 (3.30%) IBM Watson
Communications & Networking
1 2 (2.20%) Network Security
2 1 (1.10%) 3G
2 1 (1.10%) 3GPP
2 1 (1.10%) 4G
2 1 (1.10%) 5G
2 1 (1.10%) Hyperconnected
2 1 (1.10%) LTE
2 1 (1.10%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (18.68%) Power BI
2 10 (10.99%) Tableau
3 8 (8.79%) NoSQL
4 6 (6.59%) Data Warehouse
5 5 (5.49%) Big Data
6 4 (4.40%) Data Lake
6 4 (4.40%) PostgreSQL
7 3 (3.30%) BigQuery
7 3 (3.30%) DB2
7 3 (3.30%) Looker
7 3 (3.30%) Metadata
7 3 (3.30%) Mixpanel
7 3 (3.30%) MongoDB
8 2 (2.20%) Data Vault
8 2 (2.20%) Pinecone
8 2 (2.20%) Redis
8 2 (2.20%) Weaviate
9 1 (1.10%) Data Hub
9 1 (1.10%) Delta Lake
9 1 (1.10%) Spatial Data
Development Applications
1 13 (14.29%) Git
2 4 (4.40%) Jenkins
3 3 (3.30%) MLflow
4 1 (1.10%) Cypress.io
4 1 (1.10%) GitLab
4 1 (1.10%) JIRA
4 1 (1.10%) SonarQube
General
1 33 (36.26%) Finance
2 26 (28.57%) Social Skills
3 16 (17.58%) Banking
4 15 (16.48%) Analytical Skills
5 12 (13.19%) Public Sector
6 7 (7.69%) Influencing Skills
7 6 (6.59%) Pharmaceutical
8 5 (5.49%) Retail
9 4 (4.40%) Legal
10 3 (3.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (3.30%) Investment Banking
10 3 (3.30%) Marketing
10 3 (3.30%) Presentation Skills
11 2 (2.20%) Law
12 1 (1.10%) Advertising
12 1 (1.10%) Corporate Banking
12 1 (1.10%) Financial Institution
12 1 (1.10%) Front Office
12 1 (1.10%) Retail Banking
12 1 (1.10%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 17 (18.68%) Architect
1 17 (18.68%) Senior
2 16 (17.58%) Data Scientist
3 11 (12.09%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
3 11 (12.09%) Lead
4 8 (8.79%) Developer
5 6 (6.59%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
5 6 (6.59%) Data Engineer
5 6 (6.59%) Enterprise Architect
5 6 (6.59%) Machine Learning Engineer
6 4 (4.40%) Data Architect
6 4 (4.40%) Gen AI Engineer
6 4 (4.40%) Python Developer
6 4 (4.40%) Security Architect
6 4 (4.40%) Senior Data Scientist
6 4 (4.40%) Technical Leader
7 3 (3.30%) Analyst
7 3 (3.30%) Senior Developer
7 3 (3.30%) Senior Python Developer
7 3 (3.30%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (23.08%) PyTorch
2 20 (21.98%) TensorFlow
3 19 (20.88%) scikit-learn
4 11 (12.09%) NumPy
4 11 (12.09%) Pandas
5 8 (8.79%) LangGraph
6 7 (7.69%) LangChain
7 6 (6.59%) AngularJS
8 5 (5.49%) Hugging Face
8 5 (5.49%) Kafka
8 5 (5.49%) React
9 4 (4.40%) FastAPI
9 4 (4.40%) Google JAX
9 4 (4.40%) JAX
9 4 (4.40%) Matplotlib
9 4 (4.40%) PySpark
9 4 (4.40%) Seaborn
10 3 (3.30%) Backbone.js
10 3 (3.30%) Bootstrap
10 3 (3.30%) Ember.js
Miscellaneous
1 19 (20.88%) Cloud Native
2 13 (14.29%) Algorithms
3 9 (9.89%) AI Agents
4 7 (7.69%) Product Ownership
5 6 (6.59%) Distributed Systems
6 5 (5.49%) Security Posture
7 4 (4.40%) Derivative
7 4 (4.40%) Hybrid Cloud
7 4 (4.40%) Life Science
8 3 (3.30%) Analytical Mindset
8 3 (3.30%) Greenfield Project
8 3 (3.30%) Legacy Systems
8 3 (3.30%) Onboarding
8 3 (3.30%) Taxonomies
9 2 (2.20%) Distributed Computing
9 2 (2.20%) Enterprise Software
9 2 (2.20%) Equities
9 2 (2.20%) Fixed Income
9 2 (2.20%) Synthetic Data
10 1 (1.10%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 4 (4.40%) Linux
2 3 (3.30%) Android
2 3 (3.30%) Apple iOS
2 3 (3.30%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 72 (79.12%) AI
2 40 (43.96%) Data Science
3 35 (38.46%) Analytics
4 34 (37.36%) Generative AI
5 28 (30.77%) LLM
6 22 (24.18%) Data Engineering
7 21 (23.08%) CI/CD
8 19 (20.88%) Data Pipeline
9 18 (19.78%) Natural Language Processing
9 18 (19.78%) Roadmaps
9 18 (19.78%) Visualisation
10 17 (18.68%) Business Intelligence
11 16 (17.58%) MLOps
12 15 (16.48%) Agile
12 15 (16.48%) Data Governance
12 15 (16.48%) Data Modelling
13 14 (15.38%) Data Visualisation
14 13 (14.29%) Business Strategy
14 13 (14.29%) Observability
15 12 (13.19%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 60 (65.93%) Python
2 33 (36.26%) SQL
3 5 (5.49%) C++
3 5 (5.49%) Java
3 5 (5.49%) R
4 4 (4.40%) C#
4 4 (4.40%) TypeScript
5 3 (3.30%) JavaScript
6 2 (2.20%) Scala
7 1 (1.10%) PowerShell
7 1 (1.10%) Rust
Qualifications
1 13 (14.29%) Degree
2 10 (10.99%) Security Cleared
3 6 (6.59%) PhD
3 6 (6.59%) SC Cleared
4 5 (5.49%) Master's Degree
5 2 (2.20%) BPSS Clearance
5 2 (2.20%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (2.20%) TOGAF Certification
6 1 (1.10%) DBS Check
6 1 (1.10%) MBA
6 1 (1.10%) MPhil
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (8.79%) Data Quality
2 3 (3.30%) GDPR
3 2 (2.20%) EU AI Act
3 2 (2.20%) NIST
4 1 (1.10%) EMIR
4 1 (1.10%) GRC
4 1 (1.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (1.10%) ISO/IEC 42001
4 1 (1.10%) MiFID
4 1 (1.10%) NCSC
System Software
1 9 (9.89%) Docker
Systems Management
1 7 (7.69%) Kubernetes
2 5 (5.49%) Terraform
3 2 (2.20%) Istio
3 2 (2.20%) Prometheus
4 1 (1.10%) ITRS Geneos
4 1 (1.10%) Kibana
4 1 (1.10%) logstash
4 1 (1.10%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 20 (21.98%) Microsoft
2 14 (15.38%) Databricks
3 9 (9.89%) Google
4 4 (4.40%) Foundry
4 4 (4.40%) IBM
4 4 (4.40%) OpenAI
5 3 (3.30%) Amplitude
5 3 (3.30%) Cognos
5 3 (3.30%) Sage
5 3 (3.30%) Salesforce
6 2 (2.20%) Dynatrace
6 2 (2.20%) Guidewire
6 2 (2.20%) MicroStrategy
6 2 (2.20%) MuleSoft
6 2 (2.20%) SAP
6 2 (2.20%) SimCorp
6 2 (2.20%) Sitecore
6 2 (2.20%) Vermilion
7 1 (1.10%) Solace
7 1 (1.10%) Workday