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 June 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jun 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 58 105 291
Rank change year-on-year +47 +186 +23
Contract jobs citing Artificial Intelligence 1,200 903 502
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.91% 2.09% 0.90%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.31% 2.45% 1.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 731 525 352
10th Percentile £363 £400 £405
25th Percentile £425 £475 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £588 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.38% +2.17% -
75th Percentile £663 £738 £725
90th Percentile £788 £788 £874
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +10.00% -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 20 16
10th Percentile £25.25 £16.60 £35.00
25th Percentile £29.50 £35.00 £37.06
Median hourly rate £45.00 £54.34 £61.25
Median % change year-on-year -17.19% -11.28% +45.83%
75th Percentile £79.06 £73.13 £73.75
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.38 £85.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £61.50 £62.50 £61.25
% change year-on-year -1.60% +2.04% +45.83%

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 27,864 36,803 49,880
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.90% 85.25% 89.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,568 23,445 34,342
10th Percentile £300 £300 £325
25th Percentile £405 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £504 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -4.55% +1.85%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - +0.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,367 2,552 1,711
10th Percentile £14.20 £12.74 £11.87
25th Percentile £17.40 £16.06 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £37.50 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.93% +4.17% +38.46%
75th Percentile £53.91 £61.30 £64.56
90th Percentile £70.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.66 £38.12 £35.00
% change year-on-year -35.31% +8.91% +66.67%

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 June 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 June 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 June 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 +44 998 £550 -8.33% 23,557
London +28 615 £550 -8.33% 14,364
UK excluding London +76 418 £550 +10.00% 10,374
Work from Home +23 392 £525 -4.55% 11,771
North of England -4 92 £480 -4.00% 2,633
South East +93 88 £575 -4.17% 2,754
North West +21 58 £475 -1.56% 1,643
Scotland +19 58 £450 - 836
South West +59 56 £600 +4.35% 1,126
East of England +61 52 £550 +46.67% 1,305
Midlands +10 48 £445 -19.09% 1,343
West Midlands +9 34 £501 -9.00% 847
Yorkshire -14 24 £500 -16.67% 787
Wales - 18 £525 - 251
East Midlands -2 12 £410 -28.07% 494
North East -11 10 £200 - 204
Northern Ireland -3 7 £410 - 203

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 66 (5.50%) Apache Spark
2 22 (1.83%) Confluence
3 21 (1.75%) Apache Airflow
4 19 (1.58%) SharePoint
5 16 (1.33%) Microsoft Exchange
6 14 (1.17%) Jupyter
7 12 (1.00%) Apache
8 8 (0.67%) CMS
9 3 (0.25%) Camunda
9 3 (0.25%) IBM Domino
9 3 (0.25%) SAS
10 2 (0.17%) Drupal
10 2 (0.17%) GemFire
11 1 (0.083%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 1 (0.083%) Apache Pulsar
11 1 (0.083%) CICS
11 1 (0.083%) Facebook Platform
11 1 (0.083%) Headless CMS
11 1 (0.083%) IIS
11 1 (0.083%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 60 (5.00%) Chatbot
2 15 (1.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (1.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 9 (0.75%) Microsoft Office
4 6 (0.50%) Microsoft Project
4 6 (0.50%) Simulink
5 5 (0.42%) Sketch
6 4 (0.33%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.25%) Trello
8 2 (0.17%) Adobe XD
8 2 (0.17%) MadCap Flare
8 2 (0.17%) Photoshop
8 2 (0.17%) Revit
9 1 (0.083%) AutoCAD
9 1 (0.083%) Camtasia
9 1 (0.083%) Final Cut Pro
9 1 (0.083%) GNU Octave
9 1 (0.083%) Siemens NX
9 1 (0.083%) SOLIDWORKS
9 1 (0.083%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 11 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.50%) SAP PM
2 6 (0.50%) Shopify
3 4 (0.33%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.33%) Workday HCM
4 3 (0.25%) Endur
4 3 (0.25%) SAP BPC
5 2 (0.17%) assyst
5 2 (0.17%) Primavera
5 2 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.083%) Distributed Ledger
6 1 (0.083%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.083%) IBM Planning Analytics
6 1 (0.083%) ResourceLink
6 1 (0.083%) SAP Hybris
6 1 (0.083%) SAP QM
6 1 (0.083%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 1 (0.083%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.083%) TrackWise
6 1 (0.083%) UltiPro
Cloud Services
1 317 (26.42%) Azure
2 311 (25.92%) AWS
3 147 (12.25%) GCP
4 98 (8.17%) Power Platform
5 67 (5.58%) GitHub
6 55 (4.58%) Serverless
7 46 (3.83%) Azure DevOps
7 46 (3.83%) Snowflake
8 36 (3.00%) AWS Lambda
9 35 (2.92%) Microsoft Copilot
10 34 (2.83%) GitHub Actions
11 33 (2.75%) Azure Data Factory
12 31 (2.58%) Azure AI
13 30 (2.50%) Microsoft 365
14 29 (2.42%) SaaS
15 28 (2.33%) Cloud Computing
16 26 (2.17%) Amazon SageMaker
17 25 (2.08%) Azure Machine Learning
18 24 (2.00%) Amazon S3
19 23 (1.92%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 26 (2.17%) Firewall
2 19 (1.58%) DNS
3 18 (1.50%) Network Security
4 14 (1.17%) VPN
5 13 (1.08%) SMTP
6 11 (0.92%) HTTP
7 10 (0.83%) Ethernet
8 9 (0.75%) DHCP
9 7 (0.58%) 5G
10 5 (0.42%) Internet
10 5 (0.42%) LTE
10 5 (0.42%) MPLS
10 5 (0.42%) SSL
10 5 (0.42%) TCP/IP
11 4 (0.33%) 4G
11 4 (0.33%) InfiniBand
11 4 (0.33%) SNMP
12 3 (0.25%) FTP
12 3 (0.25%) HTTPS
12 3 (0.25%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 80 (6.67%) Power BI
2 77 (6.42%) Big Data
3 43 (3.58%) Tableau
4 42 (3.50%) Data Warehouse
5 39 (3.25%) PostgreSQL
6 38 (3.17%) NoSQL
7 29 (2.42%) Hadoop
7 29 (2.42%) MongoDB
8 27 (2.25%) Metadata
9 25 (2.08%) BigQuery
10 24 (2.00%) Data Lake
11 20 (1.67%) Amazon RDS
12 19 (1.58%) MySQL
13 18 (1.50%) Delta Lake
14 15 (1.25%) DynamoDB
15 12 (1.00%) Azure SQL Database
15 12 (1.00%) GIS
16 11 (0.92%) Elasticsearch
16 11 (0.92%) Redis
17 10 (0.83%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 68 (5.67%) Git
2 54 (4.50%) Jenkins
3 45 (3.75%) JIRA
4 24 (2.00%) GitLab
5 23 (1.92%) MLflow
6 21 (1.75%) JUnit
7 10 (0.83%) Bitbucket
8 9 (0.75%) Cypress.io
9 8 (0.67%) Postman
9 8 (0.67%) Selenium
10 7 (0.58%) ERwin
10 7 (0.58%) Gradle
10 7 (0.58%) SonarQube
10 7 (0.58%) Subversion
11 6 (0.50%) IntelliJ
11 6 (0.50%) Maven
11 6 (0.50%) Visual Studio Code
12 5 (0.42%) Cucumber
12 5 (0.42%) Terragrunt
13 4 (0.33%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 352 (29.33%) Social Skills
2 275 (22.92%) Finance
3 186 (15.50%) Analytical Skills
4 96 (8.00%) Banking
5 93 (7.75%) Public Sector
6 69 (5.75%) Legal
7 54 (4.50%) Marketing
8 50 (4.17%) Investment Banking
9 41 (3.42%) Retail
10 36 (3.00%) Telecoms
11 30 (2.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 26 (2.17%) Financial Institution
13 24 (2.00%) Organisational Skills
13 24 (2.00%) Presentation Skills
14 23 (1.92%) Manufacturing
15 21 (1.75%) Pharmaceutical
16 20 (1.67%) Law
17 19 (1.58%) Games
18 17 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
19 16 (1.33%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 230 (19.17%) Developer
2 140 (11.67%) Architect
3 139 (11.58%) Senior
4 104 (8.67%) Analyst
5 78 (6.50%) Lead
6 75 (6.25%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 66 (5.50%) Consultant
8 64 (5.33%) Python Developer
9 63 (5.25%) Business Analyst
10 60 (5.00%) Data Engineer
11 57 (4.75%) Solutions Architect
12 43 (3.58%) Data Scientist
13 41 (3.42%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
14 40 (3.33%) Python Engineer
15 39 (3.25%) Full-Stack Developer
16 29 (2.42%) Project Manager
17 28 (2.33%) Java Developer
17 28 (2.33%) Senior Developer
17 28 (2.33%) Software Engineer
18 26 (2.17%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 89 (7.42%) React
2 81 (6.75%) TensorFlow
3 75 (6.25%) PyTorch
4 69 (5.75%) FastAPI
5 52 (4.33%) Kafka
6 45 (3.75%) Node.js
7 44 (3.67%) Pandas
8 42 (3.50%) CSS
8 42 (3.50%) HTML
8 42 (3.50%) LangChain
8 42 (3.50%) scikit-learn
9 38 (3.17%) RESTful
10 34 (2.83%) Spring
11 33 (2.75%) .NET
11 33 (2.75%) Django
12 32 (2.67%) NumPy
13 31 (2.58%) PySpark
13 31 (2.58%) REST
14 28 (2.33%) AngularJS
15 25 (2.08%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 110 (9.17%) Algorithms
2 54 (4.50%) Cloud Native
3 49 (4.08%) Distributed Systems
4 41 (3.42%) AI Agents
4 41 (3.42%) Management Information System
5 33 (2.75%) Data Protection Act
6 32 (2.67%) Product Ownership
7 24 (2.00%) Data Centre
8 23 (1.92%) Onboarding
9 21 (1.75%) Data Structures
10 19 (1.58%) Legacy Systems
11 18 (1.50%) Greenfield Project
12 17 (1.42%) IoT
13 15 (1.25%) Analytical Mindset
13 15 (1.25%) Enterprise Software
13 15 (1.25%) Virtual Team
14 12 (1.00%) Distributed Computing
14 12 (1.00%) Life Science
14 12 (1.00%) Mobile App
14 12 (1.00%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 36 (3.00%) Linux
2 30 (2.50%) Windows
3 12 (1.00%) Windows Server
4 8 (0.67%) Android
5 4 (0.33%) Apple iOS
5 4 (0.33%) Windows Server 2003
6 3 (0.25%) Unix
7 2 (0.17%) VMS
8 1 (0.083%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 530 (44.17%) Machine Learning
2 273 (22.75%) Problem-Solving
3 264 (22.00%) Agile
4 261 (21.75%) Generative AI
5 236 (19.67%) LLM
6 233 (19.42%) Analytics
7 217 (18.08%) CI/CD
8 216 (18.00%) Data Science
9 201 (16.75%) DevOps
10 128 (10.67%) Decision-Making
11 107 (8.92%) Stakeholder Management
12 106 (8.83%) Business Intelligence
13 96 (8.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 93 (7.75%) Microservices
15 92 (7.67%) Continuous Improvement
16 91 (7.58%) Computer Science
16 91 (7.58%) Natural Language Processing
17 89 (7.42%) Software Engineering
18 88 (7.33%) User Experience
19 86 (7.17%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 496 (41.33%) Python
2 196 (16.33%) SQL
3 130 (10.83%) Java
4 118 (9.83%) JavaScript
5 84 (7.00%) TypeScript
6 44 (3.67%) R
7 41 (3.42%) C#
8 30 (2.50%) Scala
9 29 (2.42%) C++
10 24 (2.00%) PowerShell
11 22 (1.83%) Bash
12 18 (1.50%) Go
13 16 (1.33%) C
13 16 (1.33%) Rust
14 11 (0.92%) Shell Script
15 10 (0.83%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 9 (0.75%) BeanShell
16 9 (0.75%) PHP
16 9 (0.75%) SystemVerilog
16 9 (0.75%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 172 (14.33%) Degree
2 114 (9.50%) Security Cleared
3 84 (7.00%) SC Cleared
4 61 (5.08%) Master's Degree
5 34 (2.83%) Computer Science Degree
5 34 (2.83%) PhD
6 32 (2.67%) AWS Certification
7 22 (1.83%) DV Cleared
8 20 (1.67%) CISSP
9 19 (1.58%) Azure Certification
10 13 (1.08%) CISM
11 11 (0.92%) BPSS Clearance
12 9 (0.75%) Microsoft Certification
13 8 (0.67%) CISA
14 7 (0.58%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 7 (0.58%) Cisco Certification
14 7 (0.58%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
15 6 (0.50%) CCNA
15 6 (0.50%) HNC
15 6 (0.50%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 65 (5.42%) Data Quality
2 52 (4.33%) QA
3 50 (4.17%) GDPR
4 26 (2.17%) Accessibility
5 25 (2.08%) NIST
6 24 (2.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 11 (0.92%) PMO
8 10 (0.83%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 8 (0.67%) Actionable Recommendations
9 8 (0.67%) EU AI Act
9 8 (0.67%) GRC
9 8 (0.67%) NIST 800
10 7 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 6 (0.50%) COBIT
11 6 (0.50%) DO-254
12 5 (0.42%) HIPAA
13 4 (0.33%) SOC 2
14 3 (0.25%) NCSC
15 2 (0.17%) OASIS TOSCA
15 2 (0.17%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 118 (9.83%) Docker
2 21 (1.75%) Active Directory
3 13 (1.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (1.00%) VMware ESXi
5 9 (0.75%) BitLocker
5 9 (0.75%) Hyper-V
5 9 (0.75%) Microsoft App-V
5 9 (0.75%) Terminal Services
6 8 (0.67%) Firmware
7 3 (0.25%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (0.17%) OpenAM
8 2 (0.17%) OpenDJ
8 2 (0.17%) OpenIDM
8 2 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.083%) Xen
Systems Management
1 146 (12.17%) Kubernetes
2 91 (7.58%) Terraform
3 45 (3.75%) Ansible
4 27 (2.25%) Grafana
5 19 (1.58%) Prometheus
6 15 (1.25%) Puppet
7 12 (1.00%) vCenter Server
8 10 (0.83%) Nagios
9 9 (0.75%) Kubeflow
9 9 (0.75%) vMotion
10 4 (0.33%) Kustomize
10 4 (0.33%) Microsoft Intune
10 4 (0.33%) RSA Archer
11 3 (0.25%) BMC PATROL
11 3 (0.25%) Kibana
11 3 (0.25%) Single Sign-On
12 2 (0.17%) Amdocs OSS
12 2 (0.17%) Argo
12 2 (0.17%) FortiGate
12 2 (0.17%) Istio
Vendors
1 160 (13.33%) Microsoft
2 85 (7.08%) Databricks
3 82 (6.83%) Google
4 46 (3.83%) SAP
5 45 (3.75%) OpenAI
6 37 (3.08%) Oracle
7 31 (2.58%) ServiceNow
8 23 (1.92%) Salesforce
8 23 (1.92%) Splunk
9 18 (1.50%) Foundry
10 15 (1.25%) Dynatrace
11 14 (1.17%) Palantir
11 14 (1.17%) VMware
12 13 (1.08%) Adobe
13 12 (1.00%) Citrix
14 10 (0.83%) IBM
15 9 (0.75%) HP
15 9 (0.75%) Informatica
15 9 (0.75%) Intel
15 9 (0.75%) Symantec