Artificial Intelligence Consultant Contract Job Trends

AI Consultant
UK

The median AI Consultant daily rate in the UK is £575, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 16 September 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 575 542 563
Rank change year-on-year -33 +21 +66
Contract jobs requiring an Artificial Intelligence Consultant 96 17 10
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.18% 0.052% 0.026%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.19% 0.057% 0.028%
Number of daily rates quoted 68 13 6
10th Percentile £463 £400 £495
25th Percentile £509 £425 £606
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £538 £725
Median % change year-on-year +6.98% -25.86% +76.83%
75th Percentile £678 £606 £878
90th Percentile £734 £725 £944
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £440 -
% change year-on-year +30.68% - -

All Contract IT Job Roles
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. 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 with a recognized job title 50,111 30,002 35,564
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.33% 91.08% 92.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,702 18,956 21,934
10th Percentile £325 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £625 £621 £638
90th Percentile £727 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,778 1,570 1,684
10th Percentile £14.59 £13.75 £14.73
25th Percentile £20.27 £17.30 £20.30
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -2.01%
75th Percentile £67.84 £52.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +5.88%

Artificial Intelligence Consultant
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Artificial Intelligence Consultant' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Artificial Intelligence Consultant job vacancy trend in the UK

Artificial Intelligence Consultant
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Artificial Intelligence Consultant job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Artificial Intelligence Consultant job vacancies in the UK

Artificial Intelligence Consultant
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Artificial Intelligence Consultant over the 6 months to 16 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Artificial Intelligence Consultant in the UK

Artificial Intelligence Consultant
Top 12 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Artificial Intelligence Consultant within the UK over the 6 months to 16 September 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
England -82 72 £575 +4.55% 200
London -53 45 £575 +6.98% 141
UK excluding London -75 32 £575 +30.68% 66
North of England -61 16 £575 +19.79% 22
Work from Home -49 11 £550 +15.79% 89
Yorkshire - 10 £575 - 3
Scotland -18 6 - - 8
West Midlands - 6 £501 - 4
Midlands - 6 £501 - 5
North West -40 5 £723 +50.52% 18
South East -66 3 £525 -4.55% 11
South West - 1 £425 - 5

Artificial Intelligence Consultant Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 16 September 2026, Artificial Intelligence Consultant contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Artificial Intelligence Consultant in the job title.

1 68 (70.83%) AI
2 30 (31.25%) Microsoft
3 23 (23.96%) Microsoft Copilot
4 21 (21.88%) Azure
5 20 (20.83%) Use Case
6 18 (18.75%) Generative AI
7 17 (17.71%) LLM
8 13 (13.54%) Azure AI
9 12 (12.50%) Intelligent Automation
9 12 (12.50%) Roadmaps
9 12 (12.50%) Security Cleared
10 11 (11.46%) Prompt Engineering
11 10 (10.42%) Machine Learning
11 10 (10.42%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
12 9 (9.38%) AI Transformation
12 9 (9.38%) SC Cleared
12 9 (9.38%) Stakeholder Management
12 9 (9.38%) Workflow
13 8 (8.33%) Cybersecurity
13 8 (8.33%) Foundry
13 8 (8.33%) OpenAI
13 8 (8.33%) Workshop Facilitation
14 7 (7.29%) Business Analysis
14 7 (7.29%) Data Protection
14 7 (7.29%) MLOps
14 7 (7.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 7 (7.29%) Technical Leadership
14 7 (7.29%) Validation
15 6 (6.25%) Anthropic Claude
15 6 (6.25%) Microsoft 365

Artificial Intelligence Consultant Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 4 (4.17%) SharePoint
Applications
1 2 (2.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (1.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Cloud Services
1 23 (23.96%) Microsoft Copilot
2 21 (21.88%) Azure
3 13 (13.54%) Azure AI
4 6 (6.25%) Anthropic Claude
4 6 (6.25%) Microsoft 365
4 6 (6.25%) Power Platform
5 5 (5.21%) AWS
6 4 (4.17%) ChatGPT
6 4 (4.17%) Copilot Studio
6 4 (4.17%) GCP
7 3 (3.13%) Power Automate
8 2 (2.08%) Microsoft Purview
8 2 (2.08%) Snowflake
9 1 (1.04%) Amazon Bedrock
9 1 (1.04%) Azure Monitor
9 1 (1.04%) Dropbox
9 1 (1.04%) GitHub Actions
9 1 (1.04%) Google Gemini
9 1 (1.04%) n8n
9 1 (1.04%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 4 (4.17%) BGP
1 4 (4.17%) Ethernet
1 4 (4.17%) Ethernet VPN
1 4 (4.17%) InfiniBand
1 4 (4.17%) Structured Cabling
1 4 (4.17%) VXLAN
2 1 (1.04%) Cisco IPT
2 1 (1.04%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (2.08%) Power BI
2 1 (1.04%) Azure SQL Database
2 1 (1.04%) BigQuery
2 1 (1.04%) Metabase
2 1 (1.04%) Metadata
2 1 (1.04%) Milvus
2 1 (1.04%) Neo4j
2 1 (1.04%) Pinecone
2 1 (1.04%) Semantic Layer
2 1 (1.04%) SQLite
2 1 (1.04%) Tableau
2 1 (1.04%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 1 (1.04%) MLflow
General
1 26 (27.08%) Public Sector
2 15 (15.63%) Social Skills
3 12 (12.50%) Finance
4 3 (3.13%) Analytical Skills
4 3 (3.13%) Legal
4 3 (3.13%) Marketing
5 2 (2.08%) Banking
5 2 (2.08%) Presentation Skills
6 1 (1.04%) Advertising
6 1 (1.04%) Electronics
6 1 (1.04%) Front Office
6 1 (1.04%) Influencing Skills
6 1 (1.04%) Law
6 1 (1.04%) Manufacturing
6 1 (1.04%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (2.08%) LangChain
1 2 (2.08%) LlamaIndex
1 2 (2.08%) Spine.js
2 1 (1.04%) CrewAI
2 1 (1.04%) LangGraph
2 1 (1.04%) Microsoft Graph
2 1 (1.04%) Oracle Fusion
2 1 (1.04%) pgvector
2 1 (1.04%) Semantic Kernel
2 1 (1.04%) Terraform
2 1 (1.04%) Unity (Game Engine)
Miscellaneous
1 16 (16.67%) AI Agents
2 4 (4.17%) Data Centre
2 4 (4.17%) Enterprise Software
3 3 (3.13%) Cloud Native
4 1 (1.04%) Algorithms
4 1 (1.04%) Analytical Mindset
4 1 (1.04%) Augmented Reality
4 1 (1.04%) Enterprise Cloud
4 1 (1.04%) Greenfield Project
4 1 (1.04%) Hackathon
4 1 (1.04%) IoT
4 1 (1.04%) Product Ownership
4 1 (1.04%) Security Posture
4 1 (1.04%) Synthetic Data
4 1 (1.04%) Taxonomies
4 1 (1.04%) Virtual Reality
Processes & Methodologies
1 68 (70.83%) AI
2 20 (20.83%) Use Case
3 18 (18.75%) Generative AI
4 17 (17.71%) LLM
5 12 (12.50%) Intelligent Automation
5 12 (12.50%) Roadmaps
6 11 (11.46%) Prompt Engineering
7 10 (10.42%) Machine Learning
7 10 (10.42%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
8 9 (9.38%) AI Transformation
8 9 (9.38%) Stakeholder Management
8 9 (9.38%) Workflow
9 8 (8.33%) Cybersecurity
9 8 (8.33%) Workshop Facilitation
10 7 (7.29%) Business Analysis
10 7 (7.29%) Data Protection
10 7 (7.29%) MLOps
10 7 (7.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 7 (7.29%) Technical Leadership
10 7 (7.29%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 3 (3.13%) Python
2 2 (2.08%) Kusto Query Language
2 2 (2.08%) SQL
3 1 (1.04%) Bicep
3 1 (1.04%) Java
3 1 (1.04%) JavaScript
Qualifications
1 12 (12.50%) Security Cleared
2 9 (9.38%) SC Cleared
3 4 (4.17%) Cisco Certification
4 3 (3.13%) CCIE
4 3 (3.13%) CCNP
4 3 (3.13%) CISSP
5 1 (1.04%) (ISC)2 CCSP
5 1 (1.04%) Azure Certification
5 1 (1.04%) CCSP
5 1 (1.04%) CISM
5 1 (1.04%) CRISC
5 1 (1.04%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (5.21%) NIST
2 4 (4.17%) ISO/IEC 42001
3 3 (3.13%) EU AI Act
4 2 (2.08%) GDPR
4 2 (2.08%) GRC
4 2 (2.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (1.04%) Actionable Recommendations
5 1 (1.04%) Data Quality
5 1 (1.04%) PERC
System Software
1 1 (1.04%) Docker
Systems Management
1 2 (2.08%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 30 (31.25%) Microsoft
2 8 (8.33%) Foundry
2 8 (8.33%) OpenAI
3 4 (4.17%) Databricks
3 4 (4.17%) NVIDIA
4 3 (3.13%) Arista
4 3 (3.13%) Aruba
4 3 (3.13%) Cisco
4 3 (3.13%) Juniper
5 1 (1.04%) Google
5 1 (1.04%) HubSpot
5 1 (1.04%) Oracle
5 1 (1.04%) Salesforce
5 1 (1.04%) Wrike