AI Contract Job Trends in England

AI
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring AI skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 16 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 22 60 101
Rank change year-on-year +38 +41 +179
Contract jobs citing AI 3,502 942 779
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.17% 3.81% 2.08%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 9.60% 4.18% 2.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,209 610 470
10th Percentile £400 £363 £400
25th Percentile £463 £450 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year - -8.33% +2.13%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £750
90th Percentile £775 £825 £788
UK median daily rate £550 £550 £575
% change year-on-year - -4.35% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 92 24 16
10th Percentile £20.75 £25.55 £16.11
25th Percentile £31.20 £29.50 £31.09
Median hourly rate £37.00 £49.97 £54.34
Median % change year-on-year -25.96% -8.04% -5.50%
75th Percentile £58.99 £80.25 £72.50
90th Percentile £76.00 £88.00 £76.88
UK median hourly rate £41.00 £45.00 £54.34
% change year-on-year -8.89% -17.19% +4.82%

All Process & Methodology Skills
England

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 England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 36,481 22,561 31,958
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.14% 91.35% 85.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,067 14,578 20,676
10th Percentile £325 £302 £300
25th Percentile £415 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.46% -0.98% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £506 £525
% change year-on-year +1.28% -3.62% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,283 1,053 2,381
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.81 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.00 £27.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +70.91% -26.67% +7.05%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £26.32 £37.18
% change year-on-year +67.02% -29.21% +6.23%

AI
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

AI job vacancy trend in England

AI
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing AI.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing AI

AI
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing AI in England over the 6 months to 16 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for AI in England

AI
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing AI.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing AI

AI
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing AI in England over the 6 months to 16 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for AI in England

AI
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing AI within the England region over the 6 months to 16 June 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
London +35 2,282 £553 +0.45% 2,799
North of England +64 402 £525 +6.06% 614
Midlands +52 258 £550 +22.22% 279
South East +27 238 £560 -2.61% 739
West Midlands +42 216 £550 +9.89% 172
North West +47 197 £535 +5.42% 386
Yorkshire +44 178 £531 +6.25% 168
South West +23 132 £550 -8.33% 298
East of England -6 87 £550 -8.33% 226
East Midlands +6 39 £531 +46.35% 105
North East -15 28 £463 +131.25% 62
AI
UK

AI
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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
1 112 (3.20%) SharePoint
2 94 (2.68%) Apache Spark
3 82 (2.34%) Confluence
4 54 (1.54%) Apache Airflow
5 52 (1.48%) Apache
6 36 (1.03%) Jupyter
7 30 (0.86%) Microsoft Exchange
8 20 (0.57%) CMS
9 18 (0.51%) Palantir Foundry
10 15 (0.43%) Appian
11 8 (0.23%) SAS
11 8 (0.23%) WordPress
12 7 (0.20%) IIS
13 5 (0.14%) Headless CMS
14 4 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 4 (0.11%) CICS
14 4 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
15 3 (0.086%) Camunda
15 3 (0.086%) WebSphere
16 2 (0.057%) Mendix
Applications
1 87 (2.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 83 (2.37%) Chatbot
3 60 (1.71%) Microsoft Office
4 30 (0.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 28 (0.80%) Microsoft Project
6 17 (0.49%) MS Visio
7 7 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
8 5 (0.14%) Photoshop
9 4 (0.11%) Navisworks
9 4 (0.11%) Notion
9 4 (0.11%) Revit
10 3 (0.086%) Adobe After Effects
10 3 (0.086%) Adobe Illustrator
10 3 (0.086%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.086%) InDesign
10 3 (0.086%) LaTeX
10 3 (0.086%) Sketch
11 2 (0.057%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 2 (0.057%) Simulink
11 2 (0.057%) Trello
Business Applications
1 19 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
2 15 (0.43%) SAP S/4HANA
3 9 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
4 6 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
5 5 (0.14%) Actimize
6 4 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
6 4 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
6 4 (0.11%) Primavera
6 4 (0.11%) Shopify
6 4 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 3 (0.086%) OpenText MBPM
7 3 (0.086%) Oracle BPM
7 3 (0.086%) Oracle FAH
7 3 (0.086%) Oracle Payables
8 2 (0.057%) Dynamics GP
8 2 (0.057%) Maximo
8 2 (0.057%) NetSuite
8 2 (0.057%) Oracle ERP
8 2 (0.057%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 2 (0.057%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,004 (28.67%) Azure
2 814 (23.24%) AWS
3 412 (11.76%) Power Platform
4 372 (10.62%) GCP
5 211 (6.03%) GitHub
6 181 (5.17%) Serverless
7 174 (4.97%) Azure AI
7 174 (4.97%) Microsoft Copilot
8 162 (4.63%) Microsoft 365
9 141 (4.03%) Azure DevOps
10 126 (3.60%) Snowflake
11 108 (3.08%) SaaS
12 105 (3.00%) Amazon S3
13 103 (2.94%) Amazon Bedrock
14 99 (2.83%) Power Automate
15 98 (2.80%) AWS Lambda
16 90 (2.57%) GitHub Actions
17 87 (2.48%) Azure Data Factory
18 86 (2.46%) Entra ID
19 84 (2.40%) Anthropic Claude
Communications & Networking
1 43 (1.23%) Firewall
2 34 (0.97%) DNS
2 34 (0.97%) Network Security
3 32 (0.91%) VPN
4 18 (0.51%) WAN
5 17 (0.49%) DHCP
6 16 (0.46%) TCP/IP
7 13 (0.37%) Wireless
8 12 (0.34%) MPLS
9 11 (0.31%) Ethernet VPN
10 9 (0.26%) BGP
10 9 (0.26%) Internet
10 9 (0.26%) OSPF
11 8 (0.23%) 3GPP
11 8 (0.23%) Ethernet
12 7 (0.20%) Intranet
12 7 (0.20%) SD-WAN
12 7 (0.20%) VXLAN
13 6 (0.17%) InfiniBand
13 6 (0.17%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 280 (8.00%) Power BI
2 151 (4.31%) Data Lake
3 131 (3.74%) Metadata
4 130 (3.71%) Data Warehouse
5 104 (2.97%) SQL Server
6 82 (2.34%) Tableau
7 77 (2.20%) Relational Database
8 74 (2.11%) PostgreSQL
9 69 (1.97%) BigQuery
10 66 (1.88%) NoSQL
11 61 (1.74%) Big Data
12 51 (1.46%) Pinecone
13 45 (1.28%) Amazon Athena
14 39 (1.11%) Delta Lake
15 35 (1.00%) Amazon Redshift
16 32 (0.91%) Weaviate
17 30 (0.86%) Oracle Database
17 30 (0.86%) Snowflake Schema
18 28 (0.80%) Azure SQL Database
19 26 (0.74%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 177 (5.05%) Git
2 176 (5.03%) JIRA
3 87 (2.48%) GitLab
4 65 (1.86%) Jenkins
5 54 (1.54%) MLflow
6 23 (0.66%) Claude Code
7 22 (0.63%) REST Assured
8 19 (0.54%) Selenium
9 15 (0.43%) Cypress.io
9 15 (0.43%) JMeter
10 13 (0.37%) SonarQube
11 10 (0.29%) Postman
11 10 (0.29%) Visual Studio
12 8 (0.23%) Gatling
12 8 (0.23%) JUnit
12 8 (0.23%) Maven
12 8 (0.23%) PyCharm
13 7 (0.20%) Cucumber
13 7 (0.20%) ERwin
14 6 (0.17%) Gradle
General
1 888 (25.36%) Social Skills
2 835 (23.84%) Finance
3 441 (12.59%) Analytical Skills
4 285 (8.14%) Banking
5 251 (7.17%) Public Sector
6 104 (2.97%) Legal
7 94 (2.68%) Marketing
7 94 (2.68%) Retail
8 79 (2.26%) Organisational Skills
9 72 (2.06%) Influencing Skills
10 59 (1.68%) Law
11 58 (1.66%) Documentation Skills
12 56 (1.60%) Financial Institution
13 52 (1.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 46 (1.31%) Front Office
14 46 (1.31%) Investment Banking
15 44 (1.26%) Pharmaceutical
16 40 (1.14%) Presentation Skills
17 37 (1.06%) Aviation
18 35 (1.00%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 474 (13.54%) Architect
2 461 (13.16%) Senior
3 345 (9.85%) Lead
4 325 (9.28%) Developer
5 300 (8.57%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
6 240 (6.85%) Analyst
7 204 (5.83%) Data Engineer
8 156 (4.45%) Solutions Architect
9 131 (3.74%) Data Scientist
10 128 (3.66%) Consultant
11 117 (3.34%) Software Engineer
12 109 (3.11%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
13 108 (3.08%) Business Analyst
14 99 (2.83%) Project Manager
15 87 (2.48%) Data Architect
16 73 (2.08%) Designer
17 70 (2.00%) Full-Stack Engineer
18 69 (1.97%) Python Engineer
19 64 (1.83%) Python Developer
20 63 (1.80%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 175 (5.00%) React
2 159 (4.54%) REST
3 157 (4.48%) .NET
4 138 (3.94%) LangChain
5 124 (3.54%) PyTorch
6 93 (2.66%) PySpark
7 92 (2.63%) TensorFlow
8 88 (2.51%) Kafka
8 88 (2.51%) Model Context Protocol
9 78 (2.23%) scikit-learn
10 74 (2.11%) Node.js
11 73 (2.08%) LangGraph
12 64 (1.83%) AngularJS
12 64 (1.83%) HTML
13 59 (1.68%) Spring
14 56 (1.60%) Pandas
15 54 (1.54%) CSS
16 53 (1.51%) Spring Boot
17 51 (1.46%) RESTful
18 46 (1.31%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 403 (11.51%) AI Agents
2 326 (9.31%) Cloud Native
3 163 (4.65%) Product Ownership
4 157 (4.48%) Onboarding
5 98 (2.80%) Distributed Systems
6 76 (2.17%) Data Protection Act
6 76 (2.17%) Management Information System
7 70 (2.00%) Data Structures
8 67 (1.91%) Algorithms
9 58 (1.66%) Legacy Systems
10 47 (1.34%) Enterprise Software
11 43 (1.23%) Data Centre
12 42 (1.20%) Low-Code
12 42 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
13 39 (1.11%) Operational Technology
14 37 (1.06%) Mobile App
15 34 (0.97%) Analytical Mindset
15 34 (0.97%) Virtual Team
16 32 (0.91%) Security Posture
17 31 (0.89%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 92 (2.63%) Windows
2 90 (2.57%) Linux
3 26 (0.74%) Apple iOS
4 22 (0.63%) Android
5 21 (0.60%) Unix
6 19 (0.54%) Mac OS
7 18 (0.51%) Windows Server
8 14 (0.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 9 (0.26%) Windows 10
10 8 (0.23%) VMS
11 4 (0.11%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.11%) zOS
12 1 (0.029%) OpenVMS
12 1 (0.029%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,025 (29.27%) Machine Learning
2 1,004 (28.67%) Generative AI
3 770 (21.99%) CI/CD
4 759 (21.67%) LLM
5 748 (21.36%) Analytics
6 724 (20.67%) Agile
7 553 (15.79%) DevOps
8 546 (15.59%) Problem-Solving
9 501 (14.31%) Data Science
10 441 (12.59%) Stakeholder Management
11 392 (11.19%) Decision-Making
12 388 (11.08%) Data Pipeline
13 386 (11.02%) Data Engineering
14 378 (10.79%) Roadmaps
15 370 (10.57%) Software Engineering
16 368 (10.51%) Data Modelling
17 366 (10.45%) Continuous Improvement
18 363 (10.37%) Use Case
19 355 (10.14%) Business Intelligence
20 321 (9.17%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 1,130 (32.27%) Python
2 602 (17.19%) SQL
3 232 (6.62%) Java
4 186 (5.31%) TypeScript
5 185 (5.28%) C#
6 129 (3.68%) JavaScript
7 89 (2.54%) PowerShell
8 47 (1.34%) Bicep
9 46 (1.31%) Bash
10 42 (1.20%) R
11 38 (1.09%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 34 (0.97%) PL/SQL
13 26 (0.74%) T-SQL
14 23 (0.66%) Scala
15 22 (0.63%) Shell Script
16 17 (0.49%) C++
17 16 (0.46%) Apex Code
17 16 (0.46%) Kotlin
18 14 (0.40%) Go
19 12 (0.34%) Korn
Qualifications
1 448 (12.79%) Security Cleared
2 348 (9.94%) SC Cleared
3 334 (9.54%) Degree
4 124 (3.54%) Computer Science Degree
5 67 (1.91%) DV Cleared
6 59 (1.68%) BPSS Clearance
7 53 (1.51%) CISSP
7 53 (1.51%) Master's Degree
8 41 (1.17%) Azure Certification
9 35 (1.00%) AWS Certification
10 32 (0.91%) CISM
11 28 (0.80%) Microsoft Certification
12 27 (0.77%) PhD
12 27 (0.77%) PMI Certification
13 25 (0.71%) Cisco Certification
14 20 (0.57%) PMP
15 18 (0.51%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 17 (0.49%) Microsoft Certified Professional
17 11 (0.31%) CISA
17 11 (0.31%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 295 (8.42%) Data Quality
2 155 (4.43%) QA
3 126 (3.60%) GDPR
4 80 (2.28%) Accessibility
5 74 (2.11%) NIST
6 53 (1.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 44 (1.26%) PMO
8 28 (0.80%) WCAG
9 27 (0.77%) GRC
10 25 (0.71%) PCI DSS
11 24 (0.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 22 (0.63%) NCSC
13 21 (0.60%) Actionable Recommendations
14 20 (0.57%) EU AI Act
15 15 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 42001
15 15 (0.43%) SLA
16 12 (0.34%) COBIT
16 12 (0.34%) HIPAA
17 8 (0.23%) ISO 20022
17 8 (0.23%) SOC 2
System Software
1 258 (7.37%) Docker
2 78 (2.23%) Active Directory
3 17 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
4 16 (0.46%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 12 (0.34%) VMware Infrastructure
6 9 (0.26%) Virtual Desktop
7 6 (0.17%) Hyper-V
8 4 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
8 4 (0.11%) Snort
9 3 (0.086%) BitLocker
9 3 (0.086%) Firmware
9 3 (0.086%) HDFS
9 3 (0.086%) IAG
9 3 (0.086%) Terminal Services
9 3 (0.086%) VMware ESXi
10 2 (0.057%) Apache ZooKeeper
10 2 (0.057%) VMware NSX
11 1 (0.029%) iptables
11 1 (0.029%) Oracle RAC
11 1 (0.029%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
Systems Management
1 335 (9.57%) Kubernetes
2 309 (8.82%) Terraform
3 63 (1.80%) Ansible
4 47 (1.34%) Microsoft Intune
5 38 (1.09%) Grafana
6 37 (1.06%) Prometheus
7 19 (0.54%) Kubeflow
7 19 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
8 18 (0.51%) Podman
9 16 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
10 12 (0.34%) Puppet
10 12 (0.34%) SCCM
11 10 (0.29%) Istio
12 9 (0.26%) Argo
13 7 (0.20%) Kibana
14 6 (0.17%) CASB
15 5 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 5 (0.14%) HP ALM
15 5 (0.14%) HP Quality Center
15 5 (0.14%) Salt
Vendors
1 554 (15.82%) Microsoft
2 232 (6.62%) Databricks
3 200 (5.71%) OpenAI
4 177 (5.05%) Google
5 135 (3.85%) ServiceNow
6 116 (3.31%) Foundry
7 104 (2.97%) Oracle
8 90 (2.57%) Salesforce
8 90 (2.57%) SAP
9 36 (1.03%) Splunk
10 30 (0.86%) Informatica
11 27 (0.77%) Cisco
12 26 (0.74%) UiPath
13 23 (0.66%) Adobe
13 23 (0.66%) Citrix
14 22 (0.63%) Dynatrace
14 22 (0.63%) IBM
14 22 (0.63%) Workday
15 19 (0.54%) Palantir
16 16 (0.46%) MuleSoft