EU AI Act Contract Job Trends

European Union Artificial Intelligence Act (EU AI Act)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring EU AI Act skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 11 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 658 509 565
Rank change year-on-year -149 +56 -
Contract jobs citing EU AI Act 37 44 5
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.068% 0.13% 0.013%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 0.38% 0.76% 0.099%
Number of daily rates quoted 26 26 0
10th Percentile £499 £375 -
25th Percentile £525 £550 -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £588 -
Median % change year-on-year -6.38% - -
75th Percentile £665 £674 -
90th Percentile £719 £700 -
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £570 -
% change year-on-year -15.35% - -

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
UK

EU AI Act falls under the Quality Assurance and Compliance category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring quality assurance or compliance skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 9,696 5,800 5,070
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.77% 17.51% 13.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,065 3,708 2,949
10th Percentile £325 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £400 £399
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.50% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £610 £608 £625
90th Percentile £713 £705 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +1.26% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 688 283 240
10th Percentile £13.70 £13.60 £13.26
25th Percentile £16.56 £16.71 £16.17
Median hourly rate £30.27 £30.00 £27.67
Median % change year-on-year +0.90% +8.42% -22.34%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.00 £62.88
90th Percentile £74.25 £80.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.46 £25.11 £27.75
% change year-on-year +25.28% -9.50% -26.00%

EU AI Act
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing EU AI Act relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

EU AI Act job vacancy trend in the UK

EU AI Act
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing EU AI Act.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing EU AI Act

EU AI Act
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing EU AI Act over the 6 months to 11 October 2026.

Daily rate histogram for EU AI Act in the UK

EU AI Act
Top 6 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing EU AI Act within the UK over the 6 months to 11 October 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 -135 27 £550 -6.38% 133
London -87 24 £550 -15.38% 104
Work from Home -57 11 £654 - 59
North of England -72 3 £483 -16.09% 10
UK excluding London -110 3 £483 -15.35% 31
Yorkshire - 1 £600 - 2

EU AI Act
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:

Cloud Services
1 16 (43.24%) Amazon Bedrock
1 16 (43.24%) AWS
2 7 (18.92%) Anthropic Claude
3 6 (16.22%) Azure
3 6 (16.22%) Google Gemini
3 6 (16.22%) Vertex AI
4 4 (10.81%) Azure AI
4 4 (10.81%) Microsoft Copilot
5 2 (5.41%) Copilot Studio
5 2 (5.41%) GCP
5 2 (5.41%) Microsoft 365
6 1 (2.70%) SaaS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (2.70%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 3 (8.11%) Claude Code
General
1 13 (35.14%) Finance
2 9 (24.32%) Legal
3 4 (10.81%) Public Sector
3 4 (10.81%) Social Skills
4 2 (5.41%) Pharmaceutical
5 1 (2.70%) Banking
5 1 (2.70%) Financial Institution
5 1 (2.70%) Law
5 1 (2.70%) Marketing
5 1 (2.70%) Organisational Skills
5 1 (2.70%) Social Science
5 1 (2.70%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 10 (27.03%) Architect
2 9 (24.32%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
3 6 (16.22%) Lead
3 6 (16.22%) Security Architect
4 5 (13.51%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 4 (10.81%) Cybersecurity Specialist
6 2 (5.41%) Artificial Intelligence Consultant
6 2 (5.41%) Consultant
6 2 (5.41%) Product Owner
6 2 (5.41%) QA Engineer
6 2 (5.41%) QA Leader
7 1 (2.70%) Analyst
7 1 (2.70%) Artificial Intelligence Analyst
7 1 (2.70%) Artificial Intelligence Specialist
7 1 (2.70%) Business Analyst
7 1 (2.70%) Data Consultant
7 1 (2.70%) Data Protection Consultant
7 1 (2.70%) Governance Consultant
7 1 (2.70%) Security Engineer
7 1 (2.70%) Security Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (10.81%) CrewAI
1 4 (10.81%) LangGraph
1 4 (10.81%) Model Context Protocol
2 3 (8.11%) SAML
3 2 (5.41%) FHIR
3 2 (5.41%) OAuth
4 1 (2.70%) SPIFFE
Miscellaneous
1 14 (37.84%) AI Agents
2 6 (16.22%) Cloud Native
3 2 (5.41%) Autonomous Agent
3 2 (5.41%) Life Science
3 2 (5.41%) Machine to Machine
3 2 (5.41%) Product Ownership
3 2 (5.41%) Security Posture
3 2 (5.41%) Taxonomies
4 1 (2.70%) IoT
Processes & Methodologies
1 29 (78.38%) AI
2 15 (40.54%) LLM
3 12 (32.43%) Machine Learning
4 11 (29.73%) Generative AI
4 11 (29.73%) Red Team
4 11 (29.73%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
5 10 (27.03%) CI/CD
5 10 (27.03%) Cybersecurity
5 10 (27.03%) MLOps
6 9 (24.32%) Stakeholder Management
7 8 (21.62%) Data Pipeline
7 8 (21.62%) OWASP
7 8 (21.62%) Security Architecture
8 7 (18.92%) Data Privacy
8 7 (18.92%) Risk Management
8 7 (18.92%) Zero Trust
9 6 (16.22%) Data Governance
9 6 (16.22%) Regulatory Compliance
9 6 (16.22%) Threat Modelling
9 6 (16.22%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 2 (5.41%) Python
Qualifications
1 6 (16.22%) SC Cleared
1 6 (16.22%) Security Cleared
2 4 (10.81%) Azure Certification
2 4 (10.81%) Computer Science Degree
2 4 (10.81%) Degree
2 4 (10.81%) Microsoft Certified Professional
3 3 (8.11%) AWS Certification
3 3 (8.11%) CISM
3 3 (8.11%) CRISC
4 2 (5.41%) CSPO
4 2 (5.41%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
5 1 (2.70%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (45.95%) NIST
2 10 (27.03%) GDPR
3 8 (21.62%) ISO/IEC 42001
4 4 (10.81%) GRC
5 2 (5.41%) Data Quality
5 2 (5.41%) GxP
5 2 (5.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (5.41%) QA
6 1 (2.70%) Accessibility
Vendors
1 6 (16.22%) Google
1 6 (16.22%) OpenAI
2 5 (13.51%) SAP
3 4 (10.81%) Microsoft
4 3 (8.11%) OneTrust
5 2 (5.41%) Zscaler