LLM Contracts

Large Language Model (LLM)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring LLM skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited LLM over the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 298 497 717
Rank change year-on-year +199 +220 -
Contract jobs citing LLM 241 85 1
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.82% 0.20% 0.002%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.91% 0.23% 0.002%
Number of daily rates quoted 185 52 1
10th Percentile £400 £400 -
25th Percentile £500 £463 £663
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £600 £675
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -11.11% -
75th Percentile £825 £638 £688
90th Percentile £881 £836 -
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £650 -
% change year-on-year -7.69% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 0 0
10th Percentile £22.85 - -
25th Percentile £25.25 - -
Median hourly rate £75.00 - -
75th Percentile £77.50 - -
90th Percentile £78.25 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £75.00 - -

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

LLM 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 26,594 37,597 53,655
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.84% 86.31% 89.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,149 24,227 37,238
10th Percentile £308 £300 £325
25th Percentile £413 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £743 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.50% - +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,071 2,443 1,746
10th Percentile £14.41 £12.75 £11.00
25th Percentile £18.21 £16.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £29.00 £35.65 £37.30
Median % change year-on-year -18.65% -4.42% +49.20%
75th Percentile £60.38 £59.98 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £37.34 £36.00
% change year-on-year -26.35% +3.72% +80.00%

LLM
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for LLM in the UK

LLM
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for LLM in the UK

LLM
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing LLM over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for LLM in the UK

LLM
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for LLM in the UK

LLM
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing LLM over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for LLM in the UK

LLM
Top 14 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing LLM 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 +181 200 £650 +13.04% 1,462
London +113 128 £750 +30.43% 561
Work from Home +97 91 £779 +29.79% 902
UK excluding London +123 66 £600 -7.69% 1,017
East of England - 20 £650 - 36
South East +61 16 £569 -12.50% 349
North of England +31 16 £464 - 289
North West - 13 £550 - 116
South West +50 5 £550 - 12
Scotland - 5 £525 - 28
Yorkshire +8 3 £354 - 140
Midlands - 2 £413 - 318
Wales - 2 £575 - 2
West Midlands - 2 £413 - 131

LLM
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 28 (11.62%) Apache Spark
2 5 (2.07%) Confluence
3 4 (1.66%) Apache
4 3 (1.24%) Cloud Foundry
5 2 (0.83%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.41%) IBM Domino
6 1 (0.41%) nginx
6 1 (0.41%) SAS
6 1 (0.41%) SharePoint
Applications
1 9 (3.73%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.41%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 1 (0.41%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 76 (31.54%) Azure
2 69 (28.63%) AWS
3 28 (11.62%) GCP
4 19 (7.88%) Azure DevOps
5 18 (7.47%) Azure Machine Learning
6 12 (4.98%) Azure AI
6 12 (4.98%) GitHub
7 10 (4.15%) Power Automate
8 9 (3.73%) GitHub Actions
9 7 (2.90%) Amazon Bedrock
9 7 (2.90%) Amazon SageMaker
10 6 (2.49%) SaaS
10 6 (2.49%) Vertex AI
11 5 (2.07%) Anthropic Claude
11 5 (2.07%) Azure Cognitive Services
11 5 (2.07%) OpenShift
11 5 (2.07%) PaaS
11 5 (2.07%) Power Platform
12 4 (1.66%) ChatGPT
12 4 (1.66%) Google Gemini
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.41%) DNS
1 1 (0.41%) MQTT
1 1 (0.41%) NAS
1 1 (0.41%) SSL
1 1 (0.41%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (9.54%) Hadoop
2 21 (8.71%) Big Data
3 18 (7.47%) Tableau
4 10 (4.15%) MySQL
5 8 (3.32%) MongoDB
5 8 (3.32%) PostgreSQL
6 6 (2.49%) Apache Hive
6 6 (2.49%) Redis
7 4 (1.66%) Neo4j
7 4 (1.66%) NoSQL
7 4 (1.66%) Power BI
8 2 (0.83%) Relational Database
9 1 (0.41%) Data Mining
9 1 (0.41%) DynamoDB
9 1 (0.41%) KDB
9 1 (0.41%) Pinecone
9 1 (0.41%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 27 (11.20%) Jenkins
2 21 (8.71%) Git
3 5 (2.07%) JIRA
3 5 (2.07%) MLflow
4 4 (1.66%) Cypress.io
5 3 (1.24%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.41%) GitLab
6 1 (0.41%) SonarQube
General
1 70 (29.05%) Analytical Skills
2 50 (20.75%) Finance
3 45 (18.67%) Banking
4 41 (17.01%) Social Skills
5 30 (12.45%) Investment Banking
6 19 (7.88%) Organisational Skills
7 13 (5.39%) Public Sector
8 12 (4.98%) Front Office
9 10 (4.15%) Financial Institution
9 10 (4.15%) Legal
10 9 (3.73%) Pharmaceutical
11 6 (2.49%) Law
11 6 (2.49%) Manufacturing
12 4 (1.66%) Marketing
12 4 (1.66%) Publishing
12 4 (1.66%) Retail
12 4 (1.66%) Telecoms
13 3 (1.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 2 (0.83%) Billing
14 2 (0.83%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 98 (40.66%) Developer
2 44 (18.26%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
3 38 (15.77%) Python Developer
4 32 (13.28%) Senior
5 31 (12.86%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 31 (12.86%) Gen AI Developer
6 22 (9.13%) Data Scientist
7 19 (7.88%) Lead
8 15 (6.22%) Data Science Developer
8 15 (6.22%) Full-Stack Developer
9 13 (5.39%) Python Engineer
10 12 (4.98%) Gen AI Engineer
10 12 (4.98%) Machine Learning Engineer
10 12 (4.98%) Senior Developer
11 10 (4.15%) Data Engineer
12 9 (3.73%) Software Developer
13 8 (3.32%) Artificial Intelligence Specialist
14 7 (2.90%) Consultant
15 6 (2.49%) Architect
15 6 (2.49%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (18.67%) React
2 39 (16.18%) TensorFlow
3 38 (15.77%) FastAPI
4 37 (15.35%) .NET
5 35 (14.52%) PyTorch
6 29 (12.03%) Django
7 24 (9.96%) Pandas
7 24 (9.96%) scikit-learn
8 21 (8.71%) LangChain
9 20 (8.30%) CSS
9 20 (8.30%) HTML
9 20 (8.30%) NumPy
10 18 (7.47%) Matplotlib
11 16 (6.64%) Seaborn
12 14 (5.81%) Hugging Face
13 13 (5.39%) PySpark
14 9 (3.73%) AngularJS
14 9 (3.73%) REST
15 8 (3.32%) Kafka
15 8 (3.32%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 53 (21.99%) Algorithms
2 11 (4.56%) Distributed Systems
3 10 (4.15%) Public Cloud
4 9 (3.73%) Greenfield Project
5 7 (2.90%) Data Structures
5 7 (2.90%) Educational Technology
6 6 (2.49%) Credit Risk
6 6 (2.49%) Cyberattack
7 5 (2.07%) Cloud Native
8 4 (1.66%) Distributed Computing
8 4 (1.66%) Product Ownership
9 3 (1.24%) AI Agents
9 3 (1.24%) FMCG
9 3 (1.24%) Life Science
9 3 (1.24%) Virtual Team
10 2 (0.83%) Enterprise Software
10 2 (0.83%) Low-Code
11 1 (0.41%) Data Protection Act
11 1 (0.41%) Onboarding
11 1 (0.41%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.41%) Linux
1 1 (0.41%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 218 (90.46%) Artificial Intelligence
2 162 (67.22%) Machine Learning
3 131 (54.36%) Generative AI
4 78 (32.37%) Data Science
5 72 (29.88%) Agile
6 67 (27.80%) CI/CD
7 60 (24.90%) DevOps
8 56 (23.24%) SDLC
9 40 (16.60%) Analytics
10 37 (15.35%) Problem-Solving
11 35 (14.52%) Computer Science
11 35 (14.52%) Use Case
12 31 (12.86%) Natural Language Processing
13 29 (12.03%) Decision-Making
14 26 (10.79%) Visualisation
15 25 (10.37%) Continuous Improvement
15 25 (10.37%) Technical Analysis
16 24 (9.96%) Data Analysis
16 24 (9.96%) Data Engineering
17 23 (9.54%) MLOps
Programming Languages
1 179 (74.27%) Python
2 67 (27.80%) SQL
3 44 (18.26%) TypeScript
4 36 (14.94%) Java
5 34 (14.11%) C#
6 31 (12.86%) JavaScript
7 20 (8.30%) R
8 19 (7.88%) Scala
9 9 (3.73%) Rust
10 8 (3.32%) Clojure
11 7 (2.90%) Elixir
12 6 (2.49%) PHP
12 6 (2.49%) Ruby
13 4 (1.66%) Kotlin
14 3 (1.24%) C++
14 3 (1.24%) Go
15 2 (0.83%) Bash
15 2 (0.83%) Haskell
16 1 (0.41%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 44 (18.26%) Degree
2 26 (10.79%) Security Cleared
3 25 (10.37%) Master's Degree
4 19 (7.88%) PhD
4 19 (7.88%) SC Cleared
5 13 (5.39%) Computer Science Degree
6 6 (2.49%) Azure Certification
7 5 (2.07%) AWS Certification
8 2 (0.83%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (0.83%) DV Cleared
9 1 (0.41%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (8.71%) Data Quality
2 6 (2.49%) QA
3 2 (0.83%) GDPR
4 1 (0.41%) California Consumer Privacy Act
4 1 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.41%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.41%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 45 (18.67%) Docker
2 2 (0.83%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 52 (21.58%) Kubernetes
2 25 (10.37%) Ansible
3 16 (6.64%) Terraform
4 3 (1.24%) Grafana
5 2 (0.83%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.41%) Argo
6 1 (0.41%) Istio
6 1 (0.41%) Kubeflow
6 1 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 30 (12.45%) OpenAI
2 17 (7.05%) Databricks
3 16 (6.64%) Microsoft
4 13 (5.39%) Google
5 6 (2.49%) Foundry
5 6 (2.49%) Palantir
6 5 (2.07%) Oracle
7 3 (1.24%) Red Hat
8 2 (0.83%) NVIDIA
8 2 (0.83%) SAP
8 2 (0.83%) Screaming Frog
9 1 (0.41%) Adobe
9 1 (0.41%) Alteryx
9 1 (0.41%) Ariba
9 1 (0.41%) Dataiku
9 1 (0.41%) DataRobot
9 1 (0.41%) Okta
9 1 (0.41%) Workday