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 7 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
7 May 2025		 Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 447 557 711
Rank change year-on-year +110 +154 +150
Contract jobs requiring an Artificial Intelligence Engineer 61 21 5
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.21% 0.048% 0.008%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.23% 0.052% 0.009%
Number of daily rates quoted 39 17 4
10th Percentile £424 £348 £480
25th Percentile £506 £425 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £809 £625 £713
90th Percentile £855 £845 £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 27,103 40,251 55,892
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.50% 92.75% 94.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,687 26,220 39,044
10th Percentile £300 £280 £313
25th Percentile £406 £409 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -2.78% +2.86%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,052 2,676 1,569
10th Percentile £14.13 £12.86 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.30 £19.25
Median hourly rate £29.00 £36.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.55% -18.89% +88.21%
75th Percentile £62.50 £61.30 £65.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £76.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £40.00 £42.16
% change year-on-year -30.00% -5.11% +115.96%

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 7 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 11 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 7 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 +93 42 £575 +12.75% 156
London +70 28 £750 +47.06% 121
UK excluding London +74 26 £575 +91.67% 73
Work from Home +52 22 £600 +4.35% 83
Scotland - 11 £506 - 9
North of England +23 7 £575 - 14
South East +38 6 £575 - 35
North West - 6 £600 - 6
North East -3 1 £575 - 7
Wales - 1 £575 - 2
South West - 1 - - 7

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

For the 6 months to 7 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 61 (100.00%) Artificial Intelligence
2 49 (80.33%) Machine Learning
3 48 (78.69%) Python
4 33 (54.10%) Generative AI
5 29 (47.54%) LLM
6 24 (39.34%) CI/CD
6 24 (39.34%) Finance
7 22 (36.07%) Azure
7 22 (36.07%) Problem-Solving
8 20 (32.79%) Data Science
8 20 (32.79%) Natural Language Processing
8 20 (32.79%) Kubernetes
9 17 (27.87%) AWS
10 15 (24.59%) Social Skills
10 15 (24.59%) SDLC
10 15 (24.59%) Distributed Systems
11 13 (21.31%) Decision-Making
12 12 (19.67%) TypeScript
12 12 (19.67%) Docker
12 12 (19.67%) JavaScript
13 11 (18.03%) Management Information System
13 11 (18.03%) GCP
13 11 (18.03%) Cloud Computing
14 10 (16.39%) Banking
14 10 (16.39%) Task Automation
15 9 (14.75%) TensorFlow
15 9 (14.75%) Experimental Design
15 9 (14.75%) Critical Thinking
15 9 (14.75%) Data-Driven Decision Making
15 9 (14.75%) Community of Practice

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 (6.56%) Apache Spark
2 2 (3.28%) IBM Domino
3 1 (1.64%) Apache
3 1 (1.64%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (1.64%) Apache Pulsar
Business Applications
1 1 (1.64%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (1.64%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 22 (36.07%) Azure
2 17 (27.87%) AWS
3 11 (18.03%) Cloud Computing
3 11 (18.03%) GCP
4 9 (14.75%) Azure AI
5 5 (8.20%) Azure Machine Learning
6 4 (6.56%) Anthropic Claude
6 4 (6.56%) GitHub
6 4 (6.56%) Google Gemini
7 2 (3.28%) Amazon SageMaker
7 2 (3.28%) Azure Cognitive Services
7 2 (3.28%) GitHub Actions
7 2 (3.28%) Microsoft Copilot
7 2 (3.28%) Snowflake
7 2 (3.28%) Vertex AI
8 1 (1.64%) ChatGPT
8 1 (1.64%) Dynamics 365
8 1 (1.64%) Microsoft Purview
8 1 (1.64%) Power Automate
8 1 (1.64%) Power Platform
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (9.84%) Neo4j
2 4 (6.56%) Big Data
3 3 (4.92%) NoSQL
4 2 (3.28%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (1.64%) Elasticsearch
5 1 (1.64%) Flink
5 1 (1.64%) Hadoop
5 1 (1.64%) InfluxDB
Development Applications
1 5 (8.20%) Git
2 2 (3.28%) Bitbucket
2 2 (3.28%) Jenkins
3 1 (1.64%) Code Climate
3 1 (1.64%) GitLab
3 1 (1.64%) Jaeger
3 1 (1.64%) MLflow
3 1 (1.64%) SonarQube
General
1 24 (39.34%) Finance
2 15 (24.59%) Social Skills
3 10 (16.39%) Banking
4 9 (14.75%) Investment Banking
5 8 (13.11%) Analytical Skills
5 8 (13.11%) Pharmaceutical
6 7 (11.48%) Legal
7 4 (6.56%) Manufacturing
8 3 (4.92%) Financial Institution
8 3 (4.92%) Telecoms
9 2 (3.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (1.64%) Billing
10 1 (1.64%) Law
10 1 (1.64%) Marketing
10 1 (1.64%) Public Sector
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (14.75%) TensorFlow
2 8 (13.11%) PyTorch
3 7 (11.48%) LangChain
3 7 (11.48%) REST
4 4 (6.56%) NumPy
4 4 (6.56%) Pandas
5 3 (4.92%) Hugging Face
5 3 (4.92%) PySpark
5 3 (4.92%) scikit-learn
6 2 (3.28%) FastAPI
6 2 (3.28%) RESTful
7 1 (1.64%) Apache NiFi
7 1 (1.64%) Dask
7 1 (1.64%) Elastic Stack
7 1 (1.64%) Kafka
7 1 (1.64%) Loki
7 1 (1.64%) OLE
7 1 (1.64%) OpenTelemetry
7 1 (1.64%) RabbitMQ
7 1 (1.64%) SciPy
Miscellaneous
1 15 (24.59%) Distributed Systems
2 11 (18.03%) Management Information System
3 9 (14.75%) Algorithms
4 6 (9.84%) Public Cloud
5 4 (6.56%) Data Structures
6 3 (4.92%) FMCG
7 1 (1.64%) Data Centre
7 1 (1.64%) Educational Technology
7 1 (1.64%) Low-Code
Processes & Methodologies
1 61 (100.00%) Artificial Intelligence
2 49 (80.33%) Machine Learning
3 33 (54.10%) Generative AI
4 29 (47.54%) LLM
5 24 (39.34%) CI/CD
6 22 (36.07%) Problem-Solving
7 20 (32.79%) Data Science
7 20 (32.79%) Natural Language Processing
8 15 (24.59%) SDLC
9 13 (21.31%) Decision-Making
10 10 (16.39%) Task Automation
11 9 (14.75%) Community of Practice
11 9 (14.75%) Containerisation
11 9 (14.75%) Critical Thinking
11 9 (14.75%) Data Security
11 9 (14.75%) Data-Driven Decision Making
11 9 (14.75%) Experimental Design
11 9 (14.75%) Risk Management
11 9 (14.75%) Software Engineering
11 9 (14.75%) Statistical Analysis
Programming Languages
1 48 (78.69%) Python
2 12 (19.67%) JavaScript
2 12 (19.67%) TypeScript
3 9 (14.75%) Java
3 9 (14.75%) Scala
4 6 (9.84%) Clojure
4 6 (9.84%) Elixir
4 6 (9.84%) Rust
4 6 (9.84%) SQL
5 1 (1.64%) Go
5 1 (1.64%) Haskell
5 1 (1.64%) R
Qualifications
1 7 (11.48%) Degree
2 6 (9.84%) Computer Science Degree
3 3 (4.92%) Master's Degree
4 2 (3.28%) Azure Certification
5 1 (1.64%) AWS Certification
5 1 (1.64%) DV Cleared
5 1 (1.64%) SC Cleared
5 1 (1.64%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (1.64%) GDPR
1 1 (1.64%) HIPAA
1 1 (1.64%) QA
System Software
1 12 (19.67%) Docker
2 1 (1.64%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 20 (32.79%) Kubernetes
2 6 (9.84%) Terraform
3 1 (1.64%) Grafana
3 1 (1.64%) Istio
3 1 (1.64%) linkerd
3 1 (1.64%) Prometheus
3 1 (1.64%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 8 (13.11%) OpenAI
2 7 (11.48%) Microsoft
3 5 (8.20%) Databricks
4 4 (6.56%) Google
5 3 (4.92%) Foundry
5 3 (4.92%) Palantir
5 3 (4.92%) Virgin Media
6 1 (1.64%) Ariba
6 1 (1.64%) NVIDIA
6 1 (1.64%) Red Hat
6 1 (1.64%) Sage
6 1 (1.64%) SAP
6 1 (1.64%) Splunk
188 Artificial Intelligence Engineer jobs Nationwide