Artificial Intelligence Engineer Contracts in the UK excluding London

AI Engineer
UK > UK excluding London

The median AI Engineer daily rate in the UK excluding London is £575, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 19 May 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 309 381 437
Rank change year-on-year +72 +56 +72
Contract jobs requiring an Artificial Intelligence Engineer 26 4 1
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 0.20% 0.020% 0.004%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.22% 0.021% 0.005%
Number of daily rates quoted 10 1 0
10th Percentile £499 - -
25th Percentile £544 - -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £300 -
Median % change year-on-year +91.67% - -
75th Percentile £609 - -
90th Percentile £655 - -
UK median daily rate £575 £550 £575
% change year-on-year +4.55% -4.35% -4.17%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK excluding London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the UK excluding London. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK excluding London with a recognized job title 11,886 18,771 21,693
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.89% 92.48% 94.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,561 11,462 15,127
10th Percentile £213 £213 £225
25th Percentile £363 £363 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £595 £600
90th Percentile £650 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £513 £525 £544
% change year-on-year -2.38% -3.40% +3.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 850 2,267 1,104
10th Percentile £13.83 £12.50 £13.41
25th Percentile £17.30 £15.73 £18.07
Median hourly rate £27.13 £40.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -32.19% -5.88% +112.50%
75th Percentile £63.75 £61.60 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £73.85 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £28.00 £36.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -23.29% -18.89% +88.21%

Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings that featured Artificial Intelligence Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for Artificial Intelligence Engineer in the UK excluding London

Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Artificial Intelligence Engineer in the UK excluding London.

Daily rate trend for Artificial Intelligence Engineer in the UK excluding London

Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Artificial Intelligence Engineer in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 19 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Artificial Intelligence Engineer in the UK excluding London

Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Artificial Intelligence Engineer within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 19 May 2025. 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
Scotland - 11 £575 - 11
North of England +23 7 £575 - 20
South East +42 6 £575 - 44
North West - 6 £600 - 11
North East -5 1 £575 - 6
South West - 1 - - 5
Wales - 1 £575 - 2
Artificial Intelligence Engineer
UK

Artificial Intelligence Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 19 May 2025, Artificial Intelligence Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the UK excluding London region featuring Artificial Intelligence Engineer in the job title.

1 26 (100.00%) Artificial Intelligence
2 25 (96.15%) Python
3 21 (80.77%) Machine Learning
4 17 (65.38%) Natural Language Processing
5 16 (61.54%) Problem-Solving
6 14 (53.85%) Generative AI
6 14 (53.85%) Decision-Making
6 14 (53.85%) Finance
7 13 (50.00%) JavaScript
7 13 (50.00%) TypeScript
8 12 (46.15%) Data Science
8 12 (46.15%) Social Skills
9 11 (42.31%) CI/CD
9 11 (42.31%) Task Automation
9 11 (42.31%) Management Information System
10 10 (38.46%) Risk Management
10 10 (38.46%) Java
10 10 (38.46%) Data Security
10 10 (38.46%) Investment Banking
10 10 (38.46%) Banking
10 10 (38.46%) Statistical Analysis
10 10 (38.46%) Cloud Computing
10 10 (38.46%) Experimental Design
10 10 (38.46%) Critical Thinking
10 10 (38.46%) Data-Driven Decision Making
10 10 (38.46%) Community of Practice
10 10 (38.46%) Distributed Systems
11 9 (34.62%) LLM
11 9 (34.62%) Azure
12 8 (30.77%) SDLC

Artificial Intelligence Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 3 (11.54%) Apache Spark
Business Applications
1 1 (3.85%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 10 (38.46%) Cloud Computing
2 9 (34.62%) Azure
3 6 (23.08%) AWS
3 6 (23.08%) GCP
4 4 (15.38%) Anthropic Claude
4 4 (15.38%) Azure AI
4 4 (15.38%) Google Gemini
5 1 (3.85%) Azure Machine Learning
5 1 (3.85%) GitHub
5 1 (3.85%) GitHub Actions
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (19.23%) Neo4j
2 1 (3.85%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 4 (15.38%) Git
2 1 (3.85%) Code Climate
2 1 (3.85%) GitLab
2 1 (3.85%) Jenkins
2 1 (3.85%) SonarQube
General
1 14 (53.85%) Finance
2 12 (46.15%) Social Skills
3 10 (38.46%) Banking
3 10 (38.46%) Investment Banking
4 6 (23.08%) Analytical Skills
4 6 (23.08%) Pharmaceutical
5 4 (15.38%) Legal
5 4 (15.38%) Manufacturing
6 3 (11.54%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (23.08%) PyTorch
1 6 (23.08%) TensorFlow
2 3 (11.54%) PySpark
3 1 (3.85%) Hugging Face
3 1 (3.85%) NumPy
3 1 (3.85%) OLE
3 1 (3.85%) Pandas
3 1 (3.85%) RESTful
3 1 (3.85%) scikit-learn
3 1 (3.85%) SciPy
Miscellaneous
1 11 (42.31%) Management Information System
2 10 (38.46%) Distributed Systems
3 7 (26.92%) Algorithms
4 4 (15.38%) Data Structures
Processes & Methodologies
1 26 (100.00%) Artificial Intelligence
2 21 (80.77%) Machine Learning
3 17 (65.38%) Natural Language Processing
4 16 (61.54%) Problem-Solving
5 14 (53.85%) Decision-Making
5 14 (53.85%) Generative AI
6 12 (46.15%) Data Science
7 11 (42.31%) CI/CD
7 11 (42.31%) Task Automation
8 10 (38.46%) Community of Practice
8 10 (38.46%) Critical Thinking
8 10 (38.46%) Data Security
8 10 (38.46%) Data-Driven Decision Making
8 10 (38.46%) Experimental Design
8 10 (38.46%) Risk Management
8 10 (38.46%) Statistical Analysis
9 9 (34.62%) LLM
10 8 (30.77%) SDLC
11 6 (23.08%) Agile
11 6 (23.08%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 25 (96.15%) Python
2 13 (50.00%) JavaScript
2 13 (50.00%) TypeScript
3 10 (38.46%) Java
4 3 (11.54%) Scala
5 1 (3.85%) R
Qualifications
1 1 (3.85%) Computer Science Degree
1 1 (3.85%) Degree
System Software
1 6 (23.08%) Docker
Systems Management
1 6 (23.08%) Kubernetes
2 1 (3.85%) Terraform
Vendors
1 3 (11.54%) Databricks
1 3 (11.54%) Foundry
1 3 (11.54%) Palantir
1 3 (11.54%) Virgin Media
2 2 (7.69%) OpenAI
3 1 (3.85%) Ariba
3 1 (3.85%) Google
3 1 (3.85%) Microsoft
3 1 (3.85%) Sage
3 1 (3.85%) SAP