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

6 months to
5 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 79 103
Rank change year-on-year +30 +24 +28
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 78 37 25
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 4.13% 1.99% 1.05%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.64% 2.17% 1.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 53 21 19
10th Percentile £402 £513 £445
25th Percentile £513 £538 £505
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £650 £675 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.70% +22.73% -13.73%
75th Percentile £750 £788 £731
90th Percentile £925 £800 £805
Central London median daily rate £625 £638 £550
% change year-on-year -1.96% +15.91% -13.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £46.75
Median hourly rate - - £48.50
75th Percentile - - £50.25
90th Percentile - - -
Central London median hourly rate - - £48.50

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 1,680 1,707 2,127
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 88.94% 91.72% 89.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,165 1,027 1,519
10th Percentile £350 £363 £350
25th Percentile £425 £463 £459
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £575 £569
Median % change year-on-year -6.96% +1.05% -4.37%
75th Percentile £675 £677 £688
90th Percentile £775 £783 £800
Central London median daily rate £540 £575 £563
% change year-on-year -6.09% +2.22% -3.02%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 8 14
10th Percentile £20.02 £22.00 £17.00
25th Percentile £20.82 £28.94 £19.18
Median hourly rate £28.00 £40.50 £31.50
Median % change year-on-year -30.86% +28.57% -6.67%
75th Percentile £42.65 £64.56 £45.06
90th Percentile £49.36 £112.00 £66.70
Central London median hourly rate £26.11 £35.00 £27.81
% change year-on-year -25.40% +25.85% -14.43%

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 5 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 (12.82%) Apache Spark
2 7 (8.97%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (2.56%) Apache
4 1 (1.28%) Confluence
4 1 (1.28%) Jupyter
Business Applications
1 1 (1.28%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 38 (48.72%) Azure
2 34 (43.59%) AWS
3 20 (25.64%) GCP
3 20 (25.64%) Power Platform
4 10 (12.82%) Azure Machine Learning
5 9 (11.54%) Amazon SageMaker
6 8 (10.26%) GitHub
6 8 (10.26%) Snowflake
7 6 (7.69%) Azure AI
8 5 (6.41%) Copilot Studio
8 5 (6.41%) dbt
8 5 (6.41%) Microsoft Copilot
8 5 (6.41%) SaaS
9 4 (5.13%) Cloud Computing
9 4 (5.13%) Cloud Run
9 4 (5.13%) Google Gemini
9 4 (5.13%) Power Automate
9 4 (5.13%) PowerApps
9 4 (5.13%) Vertex AI
10 3 (3.85%) IBM Watson
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.28%) Firewall
1 1 (1.28%) Hyperconnected
1 1 (1.28%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (19.23%) Power BI
2 7 (8.97%) Tableau
3 6 (7.69%) Data Warehouse
4 5 (6.41%) NoSQL
5 4 (5.13%) Big Data
5 4 (5.13%) Data Lake
6 3 (3.85%) Metadata
7 2 (2.56%) BigQuery
7 2 (2.56%) Data Vault
7 2 (2.56%) Pinecone
7 2 (2.56%) Redis
8 1 (1.28%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (1.28%) Azure SQL Database
8 1 (1.28%) Delta Lake
8 1 (1.28%) Elasticsearch
8 1 (1.28%) Geospatial Data
8 1 (1.28%) Hadoop
8 1 (1.28%) PostgreSQL
8 1 (1.28%) Spatial Data
8 1 (1.28%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 13 (16.67%) Git
2 4 (5.13%) Jenkins
3 3 (3.85%) MLflow
4 2 (2.56%) SonarQube
5 1 (1.28%) Cypress.io
5 1 (1.28%) GitLab
5 1 (1.28%) JIRA
General
1 30 (38.46%) Finance
2 20 (25.64%) Social Skills
3 14 (17.95%) Banking
4 12 (15.38%) Analytical Skills
5 10 (12.82%) Public Sector
6 6 (7.69%) Influencing Skills
6 6 (7.69%) Pharmaceutical
7 5 (6.41%) Legal
8 4 (5.13%) Retail
9 3 (3.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 2 (2.56%) Investment Banking
10 2 (2.56%) Law
10 2 (2.56%) Marketing
10 2 (2.56%) Presentation Skills
11 1 (1.28%) Documentation Skills
11 1 (1.28%) Front Office
11 1 (1.28%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 16 (20.51%) Architect
2 15 (19.23%) Senior
3 11 (14.10%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
4 10 (12.82%) Data Scientist
4 10 (12.82%) Lead
5 8 (10.26%) Developer
6 6 (7.69%) Enterprise Architect
6 6 (7.69%) Machine Learning Engineer
7 5 (6.41%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
7 5 (6.41%) Data Engineer
8 4 (5.13%) Data Architect
8 4 (5.13%) Gen AI Engineer
8 4 (5.13%) Python Developer
9 3 (3.85%) Lead Data Engineer
9 3 (3.85%) Security Architect
9 3 (3.85%) Senior Data Scientist
9 3 (3.85%) Senior Developer
9 3 (3.85%) Senior Python Developer
9 3 (3.85%) Solutions Architect
9 3 (3.85%) Technical Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (20.51%) PyTorch
1 16 (20.51%) scikit-learn
2 15 (19.23%) TensorFlow
3 10 (12.82%) NumPy
4 9 (11.54%) Pandas
5 6 (7.69%) LangChain
5 6 (7.69%) LangGraph
6 5 (6.41%) FastAPI
7 4 (5.13%) Google JAX
7 4 (5.13%) JAX
7 4 (5.13%) Kafka
7 4 (5.13%) Matplotlib
7 4 (5.13%) Model Context Protocol
7 4 (5.13%) Seaborn
8 3 (3.85%) Dask
8 3 (3.85%) LightGBM
8 3 (3.85%) PySpark
8 3 (3.85%) XGBoost
9 2 (2.56%) Faiss
9 2 (2.56%) Hugging Face
Miscellaneous
1 18 (23.08%) Cloud Native
2 12 (15.38%) Algorithms
3 11 (14.10%) AI Agents
4 6 (7.69%) Product Ownership
5 5 (6.41%) Onboarding
6 4 (5.13%) Derivative
6 4 (5.13%) Distributed Systems
6 4 (5.13%) Life Science
6 4 (5.13%) Security Posture
7 3 (3.85%) Analytical Mindset
7 3 (3.85%) Greenfield Project
7 3 (3.85%) Hybrid Cloud
7 3 (3.85%) Legacy Systems
7 3 (3.85%) Taxonomies
8 2 (2.56%) Distributed Computing
8 2 (2.56%) Equities
8 2 (2.56%) Fixed Income
8 2 (2.56%) Synthetic Data
9 1 (1.28%) Clustering
9 1 (1.28%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 1 (1.28%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 63 (80.77%) AI
2 33 (42.31%) Generative AI
3 31 (39.74%) Data Science
4 27 (34.62%) Analytics
5 23 (29.49%) LLM
6 21 (26.92%) CI/CD
7 20 (25.64%) Data Engineering
8 18 (23.08%) Data Pipeline
9 17 (21.79%) Data Governance
10 16 (20.51%) Roadmaps
11 15 (19.23%) Business Intelligence
11 15 (19.23%) MLOps
11 15 (19.23%) Visualisation
12 14 (17.95%) Agile
13 13 (16.67%) Natural Language Processing
13 13 (16.67%) Observability
14 12 (15.38%) Business Strategy
14 12 (15.38%) Data Modelling
15 11 (14.10%) Data Visualisation
15 11 (14.10%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 49 (62.82%) Python
2 23 (29.49%) SQL
3 5 (6.41%) C++
4 4 (5.13%) C#
4 4 (5.13%) Java
5 3 (3.85%) JavaScript
5 3 (3.85%) TypeScript
6 2 (2.56%) R
6 2 (2.56%) Scala
7 1 (1.28%) PowerShell
7 1 (1.28%) Rust
Qualifications
1 10 (12.82%) Degree
2 9 (11.54%) Security Cleared
3 5 (6.41%) Master's Degree
4 4 (5.13%) SC Cleared
5 3 (3.85%) PhD
6 2 (2.56%) Computer Science Degree
6 2 (2.56%) TOGAF Certification
7 1 (1.28%) DBS Check
7 1 (1.28%) MBA
7 1 (1.28%) Microsoft Certification
7 1 (1.28%) MPhil
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (8.97%) Data Quality
2 5 (6.41%) GDPR
3 4 (5.13%) EU AI Act
4 3 (3.85%) NIST
5 2 (2.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (2.56%) ISO/IEC 42001
6 1 (1.28%) EMIR
6 1 (1.28%) GRC
6 1 (1.28%) MiFID
6 1 (1.28%) NCSC
6 1 (1.28%) SOC 2
System Software
1 9 (11.54%) Docker
Systems Management
1 6 (7.69%) Terraform
2 5 (6.41%) Kubernetes
3 3 (3.85%) Prometheus
4 2 (2.56%) Istio
5 1 (1.28%) Grafana
5 1 (1.28%) ITRS Geneos
5 1 (1.28%) Kibana
5 1 (1.28%) logstash
5 1 (1.28%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 21 (26.92%) Microsoft
2 14 (17.95%) Databricks
3 10 (12.82%) Google
4 5 (6.41%) OpenAI
5 4 (5.13%) Foundry
6 3 (3.85%) Cognos
6 3 (3.85%) IBM
6 3 (3.85%) Sage
6 3 (3.85%) Salesforce
7 2 (2.56%) Dynatrace
7 2 (2.56%) Guidewire
7 2 (2.56%) MicroStrategy
7 2 (2.56%) MuleSoft
7 2 (2.56%) SAP
7 2 (2.56%) SimCorp
7 2 (2.56%) Sitecore
7 2 (2.56%) Vermilion
8 1 (1.28%) Blue Prism
8 1 (1.28%) Solace
8 1 (1.28%) TIBCO