Artificial Intelligence Engineer Contracts

AI Engineer
UK

The median AI Engineer daily rate in the UK is £575, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 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
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 458 562 713
Rank change year-on-year +104 +151 +136
Contract jobs requiring an Artificial Intelligence Engineer 62 20 5
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.21% 0.046% 0.008%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.23% 0.049% 0.009%
Number of daily rates quoted 41 16 4
10th Percentile £425 £369 £480
25th Percentile £513 £481 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £825 £669 £713
90th Percentile £875 £850 £870
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £300 -
% change year-on-year +91.67% - -

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 27,084 40,415 56,464
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.52% 92.78% 94.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,692 26,309 39,470
10th Percentile £300 £275 £313
25th Percentile £406 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% +2.86%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £492 £500
% change year-on-year -3.46% -1.60% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,035 2,664 1,570
10th Percentile £14.07 £12.86 £14.29
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.30 £19.50
Median hourly rate £29.00 £36.42 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.37% -19.07% +91.49%
75th Percentile £62.50 £60.75 £65.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £39.55 £42.50
% change year-on-year -29.20% -6.94% +117.95%

Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Artificial Intelligence Engineer in the UK

Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Artificial Intelligence Engineer.

Daily rate trend for Artificial Intelligence Engineer in the UK

Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Artificial Intelligence Engineer over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Artificial Intelligence Engineer in the UK

Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Artificial Intelligence Engineer.

Hourly rate trend for Artificial Intelligence Engineer in the UK

Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Top 10 Contract Locations

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 over the 6 months to 1 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
England +83 43 £575 +12.75% 136
London +56 30 £750 +41.51% 109
UK excluding London +83 24 £575 +91.67% 51
Work from Home +54 22 £600 +4.35% 85
Scotland - 10 £506 - 3
North of England +25 7 £575 - 7
South East +51 6 £575 - 27
North West - 6 £600 - 5
North East 0 1 £575 - 2
Wales - 1 £575 - 1

Artificial Intelligence Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 1 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 featuring Artificial Intelligence Engineer in the job title.

1 62 (100.00%) Artificial Intelligence
2 51 (82.26%) Machine Learning
3 47 (75.81%) Python
4 34 (54.84%) Generative AI
5 31 (50.00%) LLM
6 24 (38.71%) Finance
7 23 (37.10%) Azure
7 23 (37.10%) CI/CD
8 22 (35.48%) Problem-Solving
8 22 (35.48%) Kubernetes
9 20 (32.26%) Data Science
10 18 (29.03%) Natural Language Processing
11 17 (27.42%) SDLC
12 16 (25.81%) AWS
13 15 (24.19%) Social Skills
13 15 (24.19%) Distributed Systems
14 13 (20.97%) Docker
15 12 (19.35%) Decision-Making
16 11 (17.74%) TypeScript
16 11 (17.74%) JavaScript
17 10 (16.13%) Management Information System
17 10 (16.13%) Software Engineering
17 10 (16.13%) Banking
17 10 (16.13%) Cloud Computing
17 10 (16.13%) GCP
17 10 (16.13%) Azure AI
18 9 (14.52%) Containerisation
18 9 (14.52%) TensorFlow
18 9 (14.52%) Analytical Skills
18 9 (14.52%) Algorithms

Artificial Intelligence Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities 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 4 (6.45%) Apache Spark
2 2 (3.23%) IBM Domino
3 1 (1.61%) Apache
3 1 (1.61%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (1.61%) Apache Pulsar
Business Applications
1 1 (1.61%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (1.61%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 23 (37.10%) Azure
2 16 (25.81%) AWS
3 10 (16.13%) Azure AI
3 10 (16.13%) Cloud Computing
3 10 (16.13%) GCP
4 5 (8.06%) Azure Machine Learning
5 4 (6.45%) Anthropic Claude
5 4 (6.45%) Google Gemini
6 3 (4.84%) GitHub
6 3 (4.84%) Microsoft Copilot
7 2 (3.23%) Amazon SageMaker
7 2 (3.23%) Azure Cognitive Services
7 2 (3.23%) Azure Data Factory
7 2 (3.23%) ChatGPT
7 2 (3.23%) Entra ID
7 2 (3.23%) Microsoft 365
7 2 (3.23%) Microsoft Purview
7 2 (3.23%) Power Automate
7 2 (3.23%) Snowflake
7 2 (3.23%) Vertex AI
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (9.68%) Neo4j
2 4 (6.45%) Big Data
3 3 (4.84%) NoSQL
4 2 (3.23%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (1.61%) Elasticsearch
5 1 (1.61%) Flink
5 1 (1.61%) Hadoop
5 1 (1.61%) InfluxDB
Development Applications
1 5 (8.06%) Git
2 2 (3.23%) Bitbucket
3 1 (1.61%) Jaeger
3 1 (1.61%) Jenkins
3 1 (1.61%) MLflow
General
1 24 (38.71%) Finance
2 15 (24.19%) Social Skills
3 10 (16.13%) Banking
4 9 (14.52%) Analytical Skills
5 8 (12.90%) Investment Banking
5 8 (12.90%) Pharmaceutical
6 7 (11.29%) Legal
7 4 (6.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 4 (6.45%) Manufacturing
8 3 (4.84%) Financial Institution
8 3 (4.84%) Telecoms
9 2 (3.23%) Billing
10 1 (1.61%) Law
10 1 (1.61%) Marketing
10 1 (1.61%) Public Sector
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (14.52%) TensorFlow
2 8 (12.90%) PyTorch
2 8 (12.90%) REST
3 7 (11.29%) LangChain
4 4 (6.45%) NumPy
4 4 (6.45%) Pandas
5 3 (4.84%) PySpark
5 3 (4.84%) scikit-learn
6 2 (3.23%) FastAPI
6 2 (3.23%) Hugging Face
6 2 (3.23%) Kafka
7 1 (1.61%) Apache NiFi
7 1 (1.61%) Dask
7 1 (1.61%) Elastic Stack
7 1 (1.61%) Loki
7 1 (1.61%) OLE
7 1 (1.61%) OpenTelemetry
7 1 (1.61%) RabbitMQ
7 1 (1.61%) RESTful
7 1 (1.61%) SciPy
Miscellaneous
1 15 (24.19%) Distributed Systems
2 10 (16.13%) Management Information System
3 9 (14.52%) Algorithms
4 7 (11.29%) Public Cloud
5 4 (6.45%) Data Structures
6 3 (4.84%) FMCG
7 2 (3.23%) Low-Code
8 1 (1.61%) Data Centre
8 1 (1.61%) Educational Technology
Processes & Methodologies
1 62 (100.00%) Artificial Intelligence
2 51 (82.26%) Machine Learning
3 34 (54.84%) Generative AI
4 31 (50.00%) LLM
5 23 (37.10%) CI/CD
6 22 (35.48%) Problem-Solving
7 20 (32.26%) Data Science
8 18 (29.03%) Natural Language Processing
9 17 (27.42%) SDLC
10 12 (19.35%) Decision-Making
11 10 (16.13%) Software Engineering
12 9 (14.52%) Containerisation
12 9 (14.52%) Use Case
13 8 (12.90%) Community of Practice
13 8 (12.90%) Critical Thinking
13 8 (12.90%) Data Engineering
13 8 (12.90%) Data-Driven Decision Making
13 8 (12.90%) Experimental Design
13 8 (12.90%) MLOps
13 8 (12.90%) Task Automation
Programming Languages
1 47 (75.81%) Python
2 11 (17.74%) JavaScript
2 11 (17.74%) TypeScript
3 9 (14.52%) Java
3 9 (14.52%) Scala
4 7 (11.29%) Clojure
4 7 (11.29%) Rust
5 6 (9.68%) Elixir
5 6 (9.68%) SQL
6 2 (3.23%) Haskell
7 1 (1.61%) C#
7 1 (1.61%) Go
7 1 (1.61%) R
Qualifications
1 7 (11.29%) Degree
2 6 (9.68%) Computer Science Degree
3 3 (4.84%) Azure Certification
3 3 (4.84%) Master's Degree
4 1 (1.61%) AWS Certification
4 1 (1.61%) DV Cleared
4 1 (1.61%) SC Cleared
4 1 (1.61%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (1.61%) GDPR
1 1 (1.61%) HIPAA
1 1 (1.61%) QA
System Software
1 13 (20.97%) Docker
2 2 (3.23%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 22 (35.48%) Kubernetes
2 7 (11.29%) Terraform
3 1 (1.61%) Grafana
3 1 (1.61%) Istio
3 1 (1.61%) linkerd
3 1 (1.61%) Prometheus
3 1 (1.61%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 8 (12.90%) Microsoft
2 7 (11.29%) OpenAI
3 6 (9.68%) Databricks
4 4 (6.45%) Google
5 3 (4.84%) Foundry
5 3 (4.84%) Palantir
5 3 (4.84%) Virgin Media
6 1 (1.61%) Ariba
6 1 (1.61%) NVIDIA
6 1 (1.61%) Red Hat
6 1 (1.61%) Sage
6 1 (1.61%) SAP
6 1 (1.61%) Splunk