Artificial Intelligence Contracts

Artificial Intelligence (AI)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies 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 30 April 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 62 103 288
Rank change year-on-year +41 +185 +20
Contract jobs citing Artificial Intelligence 1,059 951 550
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.62% 2.18% 0.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.99% 2.53% 1.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 694 491 358
10th Percentile £386 £406 £406
25th Percentile £463 £494 £457
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year - - -3.36%
75th Percentile £713 £725 £688
90th Percentile £850 £788 £841
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £500 £508
% change year-on-year +10.00% -1.57% -7.21%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 19 19
10th Percentile £22.65 £18.50 £20.00
25th Percentile £25.25 £27.19 £27.50
Median hourly rate £38.50 £46.18 £50.50
Median % change year-on-year -16.63% -8.55% +27.04%
75th Percentile £75.00 £69.63 £69.38
90th Percentile £81.01 £75.75 £75.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £62.50 £48.75
% change year-on-year -28.00% +28.21% +16.07%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 26,551 37,621 53,662
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.82% 86.30% 89.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,137 24,254 37,244
10th Percentile £308 £300 £325
25th Percentile £413 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £521 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.86% -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £744 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.80% - +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,071 2,437 1,746
10th Percentile £14.70 £12.75 £11.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £29.00 £35.50 £37.30
Median % change year-on-year -18.31% -4.83% +49.20%
75th Percentile £62.00 £59.95 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.94 £36.50 £36.00
% change year-on-year -23.45% +1.39% +80.00%

Artificial Intelligence
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Artificial Intelligence as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Artificial Intelligence in the UK

Artificial Intelligence
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Artificial Intelligence in the UK

Artificial Intelligence
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Artificial Intelligence over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Artificial Intelligence in the UK

Artificial Intelligence
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Artificial Intelligence in the UK

Artificial Intelligence
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Artificial Intelligence over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Artificial Intelligence in the UK

Artificial Intelligence
Top 17 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 within the UK over the 6 months to 30 April 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 +39 902 £600 - 4,599
London +33 573 £600 - 2,430
Work from Home -4 349 £550 -2.22% 2,864
UK excluding London +18 321 £550 +10.00% 2,310
South East +89 86 £575 -11.54% 613
North of England -49 61 £525 +5.00% 658
East of England +54 57 £600 +29.03% 185
South West +45 43 £620 +5.53% 176
North West -21 43 £535 +7.00% 358
Scotland -16 35 £467 +0.97% 130
Midlands -30 22 £450 -18.18% 539
Wales - 15 £575 - 22
West Midlands -20 13 £475 -13.64% 264
Yorkshire -23 13 £525 -19.23% 239
East Midlands -8 9 £425 -43.33% 274
Northern Ireland - 6 £410 - 21
North East -25 5 £200 - 64

Artificial Intelligence
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 67 (6.33%) Apache Spark
2 15 (1.42%) Confluence
3 14 (1.32%) Microsoft Exchange
4 13 (1.23%) Apache
4 13 (1.23%) SharePoint
5 9 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
6 7 (0.66%) Jupyter
7 6 (0.57%) CMS
8 3 (0.28%) Cloud Foundry
8 3 (0.28%) IBM Domino
8 3 (0.28%) SAS
9 2 (0.19%) Camunda
9 2 (0.19%) Drupal
9 2 (0.19%) GemFire
10 1 (0.094%) Apache Pulsar
10 1 (0.094%) CICS
10 1 (0.094%) Facebook Platform
10 1 (0.094%) IIS
10 1 (0.094%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 37 (3.49%) Chatbot
2 8 (0.76%) Microsoft Project
3 7 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
4 6 (0.57%) Camtasia
5 5 (0.47%) Microsoft Excel
6 4 (0.38%) Simulink
6 4 (0.38%) Trello
7 3 (0.28%) Adobe XD
7 3 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 3 (0.28%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.28%) Sketch
8 2 (0.19%) Photoshop
8 2 (0.19%) Revit
8 2 (0.19%) Weka
9 1 (0.094%) AutoCAD
9 1 (0.094%) Final Cut Pro
9 1 (0.094%) Siemens NX
9 1 (0.094%) SOLIDWORKS
9 1 (0.094%) Spreadsheet
9 1 (0.094%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 16 (1.51%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.47%) Shopify
3 4 (0.38%) SAP BPC
4 3 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
4 3 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 3 (0.28%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.19%) assyst
5 2 (0.19%) Distributed Ledger
5 2 (0.19%) Remedy ITSM
5 2 (0.19%) SAP Hybris
6 1 (0.094%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.094%) Primavera
6 1 (0.094%) SAP QM
6 1 (0.094%) SAP SRM
6 1 (0.094%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.094%) TrackWise
6 1 (0.094%) UltiPro
Cloud Services
1 259 (24.46%) Azure
2 230 (21.72%) AWS
3 112 (10.58%) GCP
4 77 (7.27%) Power Platform
5 46 (4.34%) GitHub
6 45 (4.25%) Azure DevOps
7 41 (3.87%) Serverless
8 32 (3.02%) Amazon SageMaker
9 31 (2.93%) AWS Lambda
9 31 (2.93%) Azure Machine Learning
9 31 (2.93%) Microsoft 365
10 28 (2.64%) Microsoft Copilot
11 27 (2.55%) Amazon S3
11 27 (2.55%) Snowflake
12 26 (2.46%) Azure Data Factory
12 26 (2.46%) Cloud Computing
13 23 (2.17%) GitHub Actions
13 23 (2.17%) SaaS
14 20 (1.89%) Azure AI
14 20 (1.89%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 19 (1.79%) DNS
1 19 (1.79%) Firewall
2 17 (1.61%) SMTP
3 15 (1.42%) Network Security
4 14 (1.32%) HTTP
5 12 (1.13%) VPN
6 9 (0.85%) DHCP
7 7 (0.66%) Ethernet
7 7 (0.66%) FTP
7 7 (0.66%) SSL
8 6 (0.57%) InfiniBand
9 3 (0.28%) 5G
9 3 (0.28%) Internet
9 3 (0.28%) Intrusion Detection
9 3 (0.28%) LTE
9 3 (0.28%) NAS
9 3 (0.28%) SNMP
9 3 (0.28%) TCP/IP
9 3 (0.28%) Wireless
10 2 (0.19%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 73 (6.89%) Big Data
2 60 (5.67%) Power BI
3 42 (3.97%) Tableau
4 37 (3.49%) PostgreSQL
5 36 (3.40%) Data Warehouse
6 31 (2.93%) Hadoop
7 26 (2.46%) Metadata
8 21 (1.98%) BigQuery
8 21 (1.98%) NoSQL
9 18 (1.70%) Data Lake
10 17 (1.61%) MongoDB
11 16 (1.51%) MySQL
12 14 (1.32%) Amazon RDS
13 13 (1.23%) Data Mining
14 12 (1.13%) Delta Lake
14 12 (1.13%) Oracle Database
15 11 (1.04%) Elasticsearch
16 10 (0.94%) Relational Database
17 8 (0.76%) Apache Hive
17 8 (0.76%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 60 (5.67%) Git
2 49 (4.63%) Jenkins
3 33 (3.12%) JIRA
4 18 (1.70%) GitLab
5 15 (1.42%) MLflow
6 9 (0.85%) Cypress.io
7 8 (0.76%) Bitbucket
7 8 (0.76%) JUnit
8 7 (0.66%) Gradle
9 6 (0.57%) ERwin
9 6 (0.57%) IntelliJ
9 6 (0.57%) Maven
9 6 (0.57%) Selenium
9 6 (0.57%) SonarQube
10 5 (0.47%) Postman
10 5 (0.47%) Terragrunt
11 4 (0.38%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 4 (0.38%) Bitbucket Server
11 4 (0.38%) Subversion
11 4 (0.38%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 291 (27.48%) Social Skills
2 265 (25.02%) Finance
3 194 (18.32%) Analytical Skills
4 99 (9.35%) Banking
5 89 (8.40%) Public Sector
6 58 (5.48%) Investment Banking
7 54 (5.10%) Legal
8 45 (4.25%) Front Office
9 44 (4.15%) Marketing
10 37 (3.49%) Retail
11 30 (2.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 29 (2.74%) Financial Institution
13 26 (2.46%) Organisational Skills
14 24 (2.27%) Telecoms
15 23 (2.17%) Law
16 21 (1.98%) Pharmaceutical
16 21 (1.98%) Presentation Skills
17 20 (1.89%) Manufacturing
18 16 (1.51%) Influencing Skills
19 14 (1.32%) Games
Job Titles
1 216 (20.40%) Developer
2 140 (13.22%) Senior
3 93 (8.78%) Architect
4 84 (7.93%) Analyst
5 68 (6.42%) Python Developer
6 64 (6.04%) Lead
7 62 (5.85%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 62 (5.85%) Data Scientist
8 57 (5.38%) Business Analyst
9 56 (5.29%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
9 56 (5.29%) Data Engineer
10 51 (4.82%) Consultant
11 44 (4.15%) Python Engineer
12 37 (3.49%) Product Manager
13 36 (3.40%) Solutions Architect
14 35 (3.31%) Full-Stack Developer
15 34 (3.21%) Gen AI Developer
16 32 (3.02%) Project Manager
17 29 (2.74%) Software Engineer
18 25 (2.36%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 82 (7.74%) TensorFlow
2 79 (7.46%) React
3 74 (6.99%) PyTorch
4 71 (6.70%) FastAPI
5 54 (5.10%) Pandas
6 53 (5.00%) scikit-learn
7 50 (4.72%) .NET
8 47 (4.44%) HTML
9 45 (4.25%) CSS
10 44 (4.15%) NumPy
11 40 (3.78%) Django
12 33 (3.12%) LangChain
12 33 (3.12%) Node.js
13 30 (2.83%) Kafka
14 25 (2.36%) PySpark
14 25 (2.36%) RESTful
15 23 (2.17%) Spring
16 22 (2.08%) AngularJS
17 20 (1.89%) REST
18 17 (1.61%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 114 (10.76%) Algorithms
2 45 (4.25%) Management Information System
3 44 (4.15%) Distributed Systems
3 44 (4.15%) Product Ownership
4 27 (2.55%) Data Centre
5 23 (2.17%) Cloud Native
6 22 (2.08%) Data Structures
7 21 (1.98%) Equities
7 21 (1.98%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 20 (1.89%) Hedge funds
8 20 (1.89%) Onboarding
9 19 (1.79%) Derivative
9 19 (1.79%) Fixed Income
10 18 (1.70%) Data Protection Act
11 17 (1.61%) AI Agents
12 16 (1.51%) Analytical Mindset
12 16 (1.51%) IoT
13 15 (1.42%) Cyberattack
13 15 (1.42%) Educational Technology
14 14 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 34 (3.21%) Linux
2 31 (2.93%) Windows
3 24 (2.27%) Apple iOS
4 12 (1.13%) Windows Server
5 8 (0.76%) Android
6 4 (0.38%) Windows Server 2003
7 3 (0.28%) Unix
8 1 (0.094%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.094%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 520 (49.10%) Machine Learning
2 239 (22.57%) Agile
3 238 (22.47%) Problem-Solving
4 230 (21.72%) Data Science
4 230 (21.72%) Generative AI
5 223 (21.06%) LLM
6 212 (20.02%) Analytics
7 181 (17.09%) CI/CD
8 177 (16.71%) DevOps
9 124 (11.71%) Decision-Making
10 101 (9.54%) Software Engineering
11 89 (8.40%) Stakeholder Management
12 88 (8.31%) Roadmaps
13 87 (8.22%) Computer Science
14 85 (8.03%) Business Intelligence
14 85 (8.03%) SDLC
15 83 (7.84%) Continuous Improvement
15 83 (7.84%) Data Engineering
16 82 (7.74%) Visualisation
17 81 (7.65%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 461 (43.53%) Python
2 195 (18.41%) SQL
3 107 (10.10%) Java
4 101 (9.54%) JavaScript
5 84 (7.93%) TypeScript
6 57 (5.38%) C#
7 41 (3.87%) R
8 27 (2.55%) Scala
9 24 (2.27%) PowerShell
10 23 (2.17%) C++
11 18 (1.70%) Bash
11 18 (1.70%) Rust
12 16 (1.51%) C
13 11 (1.04%) T-SQL
14 10 (0.94%) Shell Script
15 8 (0.76%) Clojure
15 8 (0.76%) Ruby
16 7 (0.66%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 7 (0.66%) Elixir
16 7 (0.66%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 174 (16.43%) Degree
2 119 (11.24%) Security Cleared
3 94 (8.88%) SC Cleared
4 48 (4.53%) Master's Degree
5 33 (3.12%) Computer Science Degree
6 31 (2.93%) PhD
7 21 (1.98%) Azure Certification
7 21 (1.98%) DV Cleared
8 18 (1.70%) AWS Certification
9 12 (1.13%) CISSP
10 8 (0.76%) PMI Certification
10 8 (0.76%) PMP
11 7 (0.66%) BPSS Clearance
11 7 (0.66%) CISM
11 7 (0.66%) Microsoft Certification
12 6 (0.57%) CCA
13 5 (0.47%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 5 (0.47%) ISEB
14 4 (0.38%) Postgraduate
15 3 (0.28%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 71 (6.70%) Data Quality
2 36 (3.40%) QA
3 33 (3.12%) GDPR
4 24 (2.27%) Accessibility
5 15 (1.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 10 (0.94%) NIST
7 9 (0.85%) EU AI Act
8 8 (0.76%) PMO
9 6 (0.57%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 4 (0.38%) HIPAA
11 3 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.28%) DO-254
11 3 (0.28%) GRC
11 3 (0.28%) ISO 20022
11 3 (0.28%) NCSC
12 2 (0.19%) PCI DSS
12 2 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 2 (0.19%) WCAG
13 1 (0.094%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 1 (0.094%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 122 (11.52%) Docker
2 21 (1.98%) Active Directory
3 11 (1.04%) VMware ESXi
3 11 (1.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (0.85%) BitLocker
4 9 (0.85%) Hyper-V
4 9 (0.85%) Microsoft App-V
4 9 (0.85%) Terminal Services
5 8 (0.76%) Firmware
6 3 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 2 (0.19%) vSphere
8 1 (0.094%) Apache Flume
8 1 (0.094%) OpenAM
8 1 (0.094%) OpenDJ
8 1 (0.094%) OpenIDM
8 1 (0.094%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 136 (12.84%) Kubernetes
2 64 (6.04%) Terraform
3 46 (4.34%) Ansible
4 15 (1.42%) Grafana
5 12 (1.13%) Prometheus
6 10 (0.94%) Nagios
6 10 (0.94%) Puppet
7 9 (0.85%) vCenter Server
7 9 (0.85%) vMotion
8 5 (0.47%) Kubeflow
9 4 (0.38%) Microsoft Intune
10 2 (0.19%) BMC PATROL
10 2 (0.19%) Dell DRAC
10 2 (0.19%) FortiGate
10 2 (0.19%) Proxmox
10 2 (0.19%) QRadar
11 1 (0.094%) Argo
11 1 (0.094%) Istio
11 1 (0.094%) linkerd
11 1 (0.094%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 122 (11.52%) Microsoft
2 68 (6.42%) Google
3 62 (5.85%) Databricks
4 44 (4.15%) OpenAI
5 42 (3.97%) SAP
6 36 (3.40%) Oracle
7 26 (2.46%) ServiceNow
8 21 (1.98%) Salesforce
9 16 (1.51%) Splunk
10 14 (1.32%) VMware
11 11 (1.04%) Adobe
11 11 (1.04%) Foundry
12 10 (0.94%) Citrix
12 10 (0.94%) Palantir
13 9 (0.85%) Dataiku
13 9 (0.85%) HP
13 9 (0.85%) Symantec
14 8 (0.76%) Dynatrace
14 8 (0.76%) NVIDIA
14 8 (0.76%) Workday