Artificial Intelligence Contracts in the UK excluding London

Artificial Intelligence (AI)
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the UK excluding London requiring Artificial Intelligence skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Artificial Intelligence over the 6 months leading up to 13 August 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Aug 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 78 180 229
Rank change year-on-year +102 +49 +133
Contract jobs citing Artificial Intelligence 481 202 214
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 3.14% 1.10% 0.96%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.52% 1.33% 1.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 296 116 145
10th Percentile £364 £361 £388
25th Percentile £449 £423 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% - -2.78%
75th Percentile £650 £636 £631
90th Percentile £738 £707 £763
UK median daily rate £550 £593 £575
% change year-on-year -7.17% +3.04% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 12 21
10th Percentile £30.29 £15.62 £35.00
25th Percentile £48.50 £24.99 -
Median hourly rate £65.00 £46.18 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +40.75% - +20.73%
75th Percentile £81.01 £75.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £88.00 - £73.75
UK median hourly rate £63.25 £42.03 £46.18
% change year-on-year +50.49% -8.99% +9.95%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK excluding London

Artificial Intelligence 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 UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 13,682 15,214 19,610
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 89.30% 83.07% 88.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,212 9,119 13,131
10th Percentile £240 £250 £263
25th Percentile £369 £388 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £575 £600 £600
90th Percentile £650 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -4.76% -3.67% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,350 1,552 1,202
10th Percentile £13.81 £13.76 £14.25
25th Percentile £16.95 £16.84 £17.50
Median hourly rate £22.63 £42.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -46.75% +13.33% +70.57%
75th Percentile £43.75 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £76.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £41.50 £42.00
% change year-on-year -39.40% -1.19% +58.49%

Artificial Intelligence
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings citing Artificial Intelligence as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for Artificial Intelligence in the UK excluding London

Artificial Intelligence
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

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

Daily rate trend for Artificial Intelligence in the UK excluding London

Artificial Intelligence
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Artificial Intelligence in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 13 August 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Artificial Intelligence in the UK excluding London

Artificial Intelligence
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Artificial Intelligence in the UK excluding London.

Hourly rate trend for Artificial Intelligence in the UK excluding London

Artificial Intelligence
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Artificial Intelligence in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 13 August 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Artificial Intelligence in the UK excluding London

Artificial Intelligence
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 within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 13 August 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
North of England +38 127 £489 -6.01% 443
South East +65 95 £600 +14.29% 516
North West +40 86 £480 -4.00% 274
South West +62 66 £583 -2.92% 145
Midlands +25 66 £520 -9.57% 209
Scotland +29 61 £464 +6.67% 106
East of England +49 55 £600 +23.08% 159
West Midlands +10 46 £600 +4.35% 139
Yorkshire +2 32 £500 -23.08% 134
East Midlands +8 18 £425 -5.56% 68
North East 0 10 £200 - 41
Northern Ireland -8 8 £440 - 17
Wales +9 5 £400 +40.35% 48
Channel Islands - 2 £600 -
Artificial Intelligence
UK

Artificial Intelligence
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 22 (4.57%) Apache Spark
2 8 (1.66%) Microsoft Exchange
3 6 (1.25%) Apache Airflow
3 6 (1.25%) Confluence
4 3 (0.62%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.42%) Apache
5 2 (0.42%) Camunda
5 2 (0.42%) CMS
5 2 (0.42%) GemFire
6 1 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 1 (0.21%) CICS
6 1 (0.21%) Cloud Foundry
6 1 (0.21%) Headless CMS
6 1 (0.21%) Jupyter
Applications
1 25 (5.20%) Chatbot
2 8 (1.66%) Simulink
3 4 (0.83%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.42%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.21%) MadCap Flare
5 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.21%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 15 (3.12%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.25%) SAP PM
3 5 (1.04%) SAP CO
3 5 (1.04%) SAP FI
3 5 (1.04%) SAP FI/CO
4 2 (0.42%) Dynamics CRM
5 1 (0.21%) Distributed Ledger
5 1 (0.21%) Elite 3E
5 1 (0.21%) IBM Planning Analytics
5 1 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.21%) Primavera
5 1 (0.21%) SAP BPC
5 1 (0.21%) SAP GRC
5 1 (0.21%) SAP QM
5 1 (0.21%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 134 (27.86%) Azure
2 109 (22.66%) AWS
3 55 (11.43%) GCP
4 38 (7.90%) Power Platform
5 33 (6.86%) GitHub
6 29 (6.03%) Serverless
7 25 (5.20%) AWS Lambda
8 24 (4.99%) Azure DevOps
9 17 (3.53%) Azure AI
10 16 (3.33%) Amazon S3
10 16 (3.33%) GitHub Actions
10 16 (3.33%) OpenShift
11 15 (3.12%) Microsoft Copilot
11 15 (3.12%) PaaS
12 13 (2.70%) Cloud Computing
12 13 (2.70%) Snowflake
13 12 (2.49%) SaaS
14 10 (2.08%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 10 (2.08%) Azure Data Factory
14 10 (2.08%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 21 (4.37%) DNS
2 19 (3.95%) Network Security
2 19 (3.95%) SMTP
3 16 (3.33%) Firewall
4 13 (2.70%) SSL
5 12 (2.49%) HTTP
6 11 (2.29%) FTP
7 10 (2.08%) VPN
8 8 (1.66%) DHCP
8 8 (1.66%) Ethernet
9 5 (1.04%) LTE
10 4 (0.83%) 5G
11 3 (0.62%) 4G
11 3 (0.62%) DOCSIS
11 3 (0.62%) GPON
11 3 (0.62%) MPLS
11 3 (0.62%) Radio Access Network
11 3 (0.62%) VoIP
11 3 (0.62%) xDSL
12 2 (0.42%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (6.65%) Big Data
1 32 (6.65%) NoSQL
1 32 (6.65%) Power BI
2 24 (4.99%) PostgreSQL
3 21 (4.37%) MongoDB
3 21 (4.37%) Tableau
4 19 (3.95%) Amazon RDS
5 14 (2.91%) Hadoop
6 13 (2.70%) Azure SQL Database
6 13 (2.70%) Metadata
7 12 (2.49%) Relational Database
8 11 (2.29%) Redis
9 10 (2.08%) BigQuery
9 10 (2.08%) DynamoDB
9 10 (2.08%) Elasticsearch
9 10 (2.08%) MySQL
10 9 (1.87%) Apache Cassandra
10 9 (1.87%) Data Warehouse
10 9 (1.87%) Delta Lake
10 9 (1.87%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 40 (8.32%) Git
2 36 (7.48%) Jenkins
3 16 (3.33%) JUnit
4 13 (2.70%) GitLab
4 13 (2.70%) JIRA
5 7 (1.46%) Selenium
5 7 (1.46%) SonarQube
6 5 (1.04%) Cucumber
6 5 (1.04%) Gradle
6 5 (1.04%) Maven
6 5 (1.04%) SonarLint
7 4 (0.83%) Artifactory
8 3 (0.62%) MLflow
8 3 (0.62%) Postman
9 2 (0.42%) Cypress.io
9 2 (0.42%) MSTest
9 2 (0.42%) NUnit
9 2 (0.42%) Ranorex
10 1 (0.21%) Mockito
10 1 (0.21%) Subversion
General
1 155 (32.22%) Social Skills
2 91 (18.92%) Finance
3 83 (17.26%) Analytical Skills
4 53 (11.02%) Public Sector
5 37 (7.69%) Banking
6 24 (4.99%) Legal
7 22 (4.57%) Telecoms
8 16 (3.33%) Electronics
9 15 (3.12%) Games
9 15 (3.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 15 (3.12%) Pharmaceutical
10 12 (2.49%) Manufacturing
11 11 (2.29%) Marketing
12 10 (2.08%) Investment Banking
13 9 (1.87%) Influencing Skills
13 9 (1.87%) Law
14 8 (1.66%) Retail
15 7 (1.46%) Military
16 6 (1.25%) Aerospace
17 5 (1.04%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 90 (18.71%) Architect
2 71 (14.76%) Developer
3 51 (10.60%) Analyst
4 40 (8.32%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
4 40 (8.32%) Senior
5 32 (6.65%) Consultant
6 26 (5.41%) Solutions Architect
7 25 (5.20%) Lead
8 22 (4.57%) Business Analyst
9 19 (3.95%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
9 19 (3.95%) Data Architect
10 18 (3.74%) Python Engineer
11 14 (2.91%) Java Developer
11 14 (2.91%) Security Architect
12 13 (2.70%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
12 13 (2.70%) Data Engineer
12 13 (2.70%) Technical Architect
13 11 (2.29%) Data Scientist
13 11 (2.29%) Full-Stack Developer
13 11 (2.29%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (7.90%) PyTorch
2 37 (7.69%) TensorFlow
3 35 (7.28%) Kafka
4 29 (6.03%) RESTful
5 27 (5.61%) React
6 26 (5.41%) FastAPI
7 19 (3.95%) Spring
8 17 (3.53%) scikit-learn
9 14 (2.91%) CSS
9 14 (2.91%) LangChain
9 14 (2.91%) Node.js
9 14 (2.91%) REST
9 14 (2.91%) Spring Boot
10 12 (2.49%) Flask
10 12 (2.49%) Hugging Face
10 12 (2.49%) Pandas
11 11 (2.29%) .NET
11 11 (2.29%) LDAP
11 11 (2.29%) Matplotlib
11 11 (2.29%) Seaborn
Miscellaneous
1 54 (11.23%) Algorithms
2 29 (6.03%) Cloud Native
3 24 (4.99%) Management Information System
4 22 (4.57%) Product Ownership
5 21 (4.37%) Data Protection Act
6 16 (3.33%) Analytical Mindset
7 14 (2.91%) AI Agents
7 14 (2.91%) Data Centre
7 14 (2.91%) Legacy Systems
8 13 (2.70%) Cyber Threat
8 13 (2.70%) FPGA
8 13 (2.70%) Onboarding
8 13 (2.70%) Security Operations Centre
9 12 (2.49%) Hybrid Cloud
10 11 (2.29%) CSOC
10 11 (2.29%) Cyberattack
11 9 (1.87%) Distributed Systems
11 9 (1.87%) IoT
11 9 (1.87%) Verilog
12 8 (1.66%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 26 (5.41%) Windows
2 17 (3.53%) Linux
3 10 (2.08%) Windows Server
4 3 (0.62%) Windows Server 2003
5 2 (0.42%) Android
5 2 (0.42%) VMS
6 1 (0.21%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.21%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 223 (46.36%) Machine Learning
2 108 (22.45%) Generative AI
3 106 (22.04%) Analytics
4 104 (21.62%) Problem-Solving
5 98 (20.37%) Agile
6 95 (19.75%) CI/CD
7 87 (18.09%) DevOps
8 82 (17.05%) LLM
9 77 (16.01%) Data Science
10 64 (13.31%) Stakeholder Management
11 57 (11.85%) Decision-Making
12 53 (11.02%) Microservices
13 43 (8.94%) Computer Science
13 43 (8.94%) Containerisation
14 42 (8.73%) Business Intelligence
14 42 (8.73%) Data Governance
14 42 (8.73%) Visualisation
15 41 (8.52%) Cybersecurity
15 41 (8.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 40 (8.32%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 163 (33.89%) Python
2 66 (13.72%) SQL
3 49 (10.19%) Java
4 32 (6.65%) TypeScript
5 28 (5.82%) JavaScript
6 25 (5.20%) R
7 23 (4.78%) PowerShell
8 13 (2.70%) C++
9 10 (2.08%) C
10 9 (1.87%) Bash
10 9 (1.87%) C#
10 9 (1.87%) SystemVerilog
10 9 (1.87%) Tcl
11 8 (1.66%) MATLAB
12 6 (1.25%) Bicep
12 6 (1.25%) Kusto Query Language
12 6 (1.25%) Scala
13 4 (0.83%) PHP
13 4 (0.83%) PL/SQL
14 3 (0.62%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 75 (15.59%) Security Cleared
2 58 (12.06%) Degree
3 50 (10.40%) SC Cleared
4 26 (5.41%) DV Cleared
5 19 (3.95%) Master's Degree
6 13 (2.70%) Computer Science Degree
7 11 (2.29%) AWS Certification
8 9 (1.87%) CISSP
8 9 (1.87%) PhD
9 8 (1.66%) HNC
9 8 (1.66%) HND
10 7 (1.46%) BPSS Clearance
11 6 (1.25%) Microsoft Certification
12 5 (1.04%) ACCA
12 5 (1.04%) CIMA
13 4 (0.83%) MCP
14 3 (0.62%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 3 (0.62%) CISA
14 3 (0.62%) CISM
14 3 (0.62%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (5.82%) Data Quality
2 25 (5.20%) GDPR
3 15 (3.12%) QA
4 12 (2.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 9 (1.87%) NIST
6 8 (1.66%) DO-254
7 6 (1.25%) GRC
8 5 (1.04%) Accessibility
8 5 (1.04%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 5 (1.04%) EU AI Act
9 4 (0.83%) PMO
10 3 (0.62%) Actionable Recommendations
10 3 (0.62%) NIST 800
11 2 (0.42%) COBIT
11 2 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 2 (0.42%) OASIS TOSCA
11 2 (0.42%) SOC 2
11 2 (0.42%) Software Quality Assurance
12 1 (0.21%) HL7
12 1 (0.21%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 53 (11.02%) Docker
2 12 (2.49%) Firmware
3 9 (1.87%) Active Directory
4 8 (1.66%) BitLocker
4 8 (1.66%) Hyper-V
4 8 (1.66%) Microsoft App-V
4 8 (1.66%) Terminal Services
4 8 (1.66%) VMware ESXi
4 8 (1.66%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (0.83%) Virtual Desktop
5 4 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 71 (14.76%) Kubernetes
2 32 (6.65%) Terraform
3 23 (4.78%) Grafana
4 19 (3.95%) Ansible
5 10 (2.08%) Prometheus
5 10 (2.08%) Puppet
6 8 (1.66%) Nagios
6 8 (1.66%) vCenter Server
6 8 (1.66%) vMotion
7 6 (1.25%) Kustomize
8 3 (0.62%) BMC PATROL
9 2 (0.42%) Amdocs OSS
9 2 (0.42%) Argo
9 2 (0.42%) FortiGate
9 2 (0.42%) Kubeflow
9 2 (0.42%) Microsoft Intune
9 2 (0.42%) SCCM
10 1 (0.21%) QRadar
10 1 (0.21%) RSA Archer
10 1 (0.21%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 76 (15.80%) Microsoft
2 32 (6.65%) Google
3 28 (5.82%) Databricks
4 27 (5.61%) SAP
5 22 (4.57%) OpenAI
5 22 (4.57%) Oracle
6 14 (2.91%) Splunk
7 10 (2.08%) Citrix
7 10 (2.08%) Dynatrace
8 9 (1.87%) VMware
9 8 (1.66%) Actel
9 8 (1.66%) Altera
9 8 (1.66%) HP
9 8 (1.66%) Informatica
9 8 (1.66%) Intel
9 8 (1.66%) Microsemi
9 8 (1.66%) ServiceNow
9 8 (1.66%) Symantec
9 8 (1.66%) Virgin Media
9 8 (1.66%) Xilinx