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

6 months to
18 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 310 483 699
Rank change year-on-year +173 +216 -
Contract jobs citing LLM 228 96 2
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.77% 0.23% 0.004%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.85% 0.26% 0.004%
Number of daily rates quoted 168 60 2
10th Percentile £400 £400 £706
25th Percentile £496 £463 £772
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £575 £888
Median % change year-on-year +8.70% -35.21% -
75th Percentile £825 £626 £997
90th Percentile £881 £826 £1,059
UK excluding London median daily rate £588 £563 -
% change year-on-year +4.44% - -
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 26,783 36,704 51,058
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.97% 86.15% 89.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,188 23,629 35,390
10th Percentile £305 £300 £325
25th Percentile £410 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -4.55% +3.77%
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% - +4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,099 2,440 1,690
10th Percentile £14.20 £12.75 £10.63
25th Percentile £18.13 £15.99 £15.99
Median hourly rate £28.00 £36.05 £35.65
Median % change year-on-year -22.32% +1.11% +38.82%
75th Percentile £60.00 £60.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £37.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -32.93% +7.14% +75.00%

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 18 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 18 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for LLM in the UK

LLM
Top 15 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 18 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 +161 188 £650 +13.04% 982
London +104 120 £750 +30.43% 756
Work from Home +89 91 £688 +14.58% 617
UK excluding London +102 65 £588 +4.44% 384
North of England +36 19 £520 +9.47% 69
East of England - 19 £650 - 59
North West +26 15 £550 +15.79% 41
South East +53 13 £550 -15.38% 178
South West +42 5 £550 - 23
Scotland - 4 £525 - 36
Yorkshire +17 3 £354 - 14
Midlands - 3 £400 - 18
West Midlands - 3 £400 - 6
Wales - 2 £575 - 4
North East -5 1 - - 14

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 27 (11.84%) Apache Spark
2 6 (2.63%) Jupyter
3 5 (2.19%) Confluence
4 4 (1.75%) Apache
5 1 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.44%) IBM Domino
5 1 (0.44%) SAS
5 1 (0.44%) SharePoint
Applications
1 11 (4.82%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.44%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.44%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 1 (0.44%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 75 (32.89%) AWS
2 73 (32.02%) Azure
3 29 (12.72%) GCP
4 15 (6.58%) Azure Machine Learning
5 14 (6.14%) GitHub
6 13 (5.70%) Azure AI
6 13 (5.70%) Azure DevOps
7 10 (4.39%) Amazon SageMaker
7 10 (4.39%) GitHub Actions
8 7 (3.07%) Amazon Bedrock
8 7 (3.07%) Vertex AI
9 6 (2.63%) Anthropic Claude
10 5 (2.19%) Google Gemini
10 5 (2.19%) SaaS
11 4 (1.75%) Azure Cognitive Services
11 4 (1.75%) IaaS
11 4 (1.75%) PaaS
11 4 (1.75%) Power Automate
11 4 (1.75%) Power Platform
12 3 (1.32%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.88%) MQTT
2 1 (0.44%) NAS
2 1 (0.44%) SMS
2 1 (0.44%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (10.09%) Big Data
1 23 (10.09%) Hadoop
2 18 (7.89%) Tableau
3 10 (4.39%) MySQL
4 8 (3.51%) MongoDB
5 6 (2.63%) Apache Hive
5 6 (2.63%) PostgreSQL
5 6 (2.63%) Redis
6 4 (1.75%) Data Lake
6 4 (1.75%) Neo4j
6 4 (1.75%) NoSQL
7 3 (1.32%) Power BI
8 2 (0.88%) Pinecone
8 2 (0.88%) Relational Database
8 2 (0.88%) Weaviate
9 1 (0.44%) Data Mining
9 1 (0.44%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 24 (10.53%) Jenkins
2 14 (6.14%) Git
3 7 (3.07%) MLflow
4 5 (2.19%) Cypress.io
4 5 (2.19%) JIRA
5 3 (1.32%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.44%) GitLab
General
1 64 (28.07%) Analytical Skills
2 45 (19.74%) Finance
3 40 (17.54%) Social Skills
4 35 (15.35%) Banking
5 25 (10.96%) Investment Banking
6 19 (8.33%) Organisational Skills
7 13 (5.70%) Legal
8 12 (5.26%) Public Sector
9 9 (3.95%) Financial Institution
9 9 (3.95%) Front Office
9 9 (3.95%) Pharmaceutical
10 7 (3.07%) Law
10 7 (3.07%) Publishing
11 5 (2.19%) Manufacturing
12 4 (1.75%) Marketing
12 4 (1.75%) Telecoms
13 3 (1.32%) Retail
14 2 (0.88%) French Language
14 2 (0.88%) Games
14 2 (0.88%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 88 (38.60%) Developer
2 41 (17.98%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
3 32 (14.04%) Python Developer
4 29 (12.72%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 26 (11.40%) Gen AI Developer
5 26 (11.40%) Senior
6 21 (9.21%) Data Scientist
7 17 (7.46%) Lead
8 16 (7.02%) Full-Stack Developer
9 15 (6.58%) Data Science Developer
10 11 (4.82%) Machine Learning Engineer
10 11 (4.82%) Senior Developer
11 10 (4.39%) Architect
11 10 (4.39%) Data Engineer
11 10 (4.39%) Python Engineer
12 9 (3.95%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
12 9 (3.95%) Gen AI Engineer
13 8 (3.51%) Artificial Intelligence Specialist
14 6 (2.63%) Project Manager
14 6 (2.63%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (18.86%) TensorFlow
2 42 (18.42%) React
3 39 (17.11%) PyTorch
4 35 (15.35%) FastAPI
5 29 (12.72%) .NET
6 25 (10.96%) Django
7 24 (10.53%) scikit-learn
8 22 (9.65%) Pandas
9 21 (9.21%) LangChain
10 18 (7.89%) Matplotlib
10 18 (7.89%) NumPy
11 16 (7.02%) Hugging Face
11 16 (7.02%) Seaborn
12 14 (6.14%) CSS
12 14 (6.14%) HTML
13 13 (5.70%) PySpark
14 9 (3.95%) AngularJS
14 9 (3.95%) Next.js
14 9 (3.95%) Node.js
14 9 (3.95%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 50 (21.93%) Algorithms
2 11 (4.82%) Distributed Systems
3 9 (3.95%) Greenfield Project
4 8 (3.51%) Public Cloud
5 7 (3.07%) Data Structures
5 7 (3.07%) Educational Technology
6 6 (2.63%) AI Agents
6 6 (2.63%) Credit Risk
6 6 (2.63%) Virtual Team
7 4 (1.75%) Distributed Computing
7 4 (1.75%) Product Ownership
8 3 (1.32%) FMCG
8 3 (1.32%) Life Science
8 3 (1.32%) Self-Motivation
9 2 (0.88%) Autonomous Agent
9 2 (0.88%) Cloud Native
9 2 (0.88%) Cyberattack
9 2 (0.88%) Enterprise Software
10 1 (0.44%) Data Fabric
10 1 (0.44%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.44%) Linux
1 1 (0.44%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 209 (91.67%) Artificial Intelligence
2 157 (68.86%) Machine Learning
3 125 (54.82%) Generative AI
4 76 (33.33%) Data Science
5 63 (27.63%) Agile
6 60 (26.32%) CI/CD
7 53 (23.25%) DevOps
8 48 (21.05%) SDLC
9 38 (16.67%) Analytics
10 37 (16.23%) Natural Language Processing
11 34 (14.91%) Problem-Solving
12 31 (13.60%) Computer Science
13 29 (12.72%) Decision-Making
14 28 (12.28%) Use Case
15 26 (11.40%) MLOps
16 25 (10.96%) Visualisation
17 24 (10.53%) Data Analysis
17 24 (10.53%) Full-Stack Development
18 23 (10.09%) Reinforcement Learning
19 22 (9.65%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 162 (71.05%) Python
2 54 (23.68%) SQL
3 42 (18.42%) TypeScript
4 29 (12.72%) Java
5 24 (10.53%) C#
5 24 (10.53%) JavaScript
6 22 (9.65%) R
7 16 (7.02%) Scala
8 8 (3.51%) Rust
9 7 (3.07%) Clojure
9 7 (3.07%) Elixir
10 6 (2.63%) PHP
10 6 (2.63%) Ruby
11 4 (1.75%) Kotlin
12 3 (1.32%) Go
13 1 (0.44%) Bash
13 1 (0.44%) Bicep
13 1 (0.44%) C++
13 1 (0.44%) Haskell
Qualifications
1 43 (18.86%) Degree
2 27 (11.84%) Security Cleared
3 26 (11.40%) Master's Degree
4 19 (8.33%) PhD
4 19 (8.33%) SC Cleared
5 14 (6.14%) Computer Science Degree
6 5 (2.19%) AWS Certification
6 5 (2.19%) Azure Certification
7 3 (1.32%) DV Cleared
8 2 (0.88%) BPSS Clearance
9 1 (0.44%) CISSP
9 1 (0.44%) MCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (9.21%) Data Quality
2 9 (3.95%) QA
3 3 (1.32%) GDPR
4 1 (0.44%) California Consumer Privacy Act
4 1 (0.44%) HIPAA
4 1 (0.44%) HL7
4 1 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.44%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.44%) SLA
4 1 (0.44%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 39 (17.11%) Docker
Systems Management
1 47 (20.61%) Kubernetes
2 21 (9.21%) Ansible
3 16 (7.02%) Terraform
4 3 (1.32%) Grafana
4 3 (1.32%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.88%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 25 (10.96%) OpenAI
2 20 (8.77%) Databricks
3 16 (7.02%) Google
3 16 (7.02%) Microsoft
4 6 (2.63%) Foundry
4 6 (2.63%) Palantir
5 5 (2.19%) Oracle
6 2 (0.88%) Dataiku
6 2 (0.88%) DataRobot
6 2 (0.88%) Genesys
6 2 (0.88%) NVIDIA
6 2 (0.88%) SAP
7 1 (0.44%) Adobe
7 1 (0.44%) Ariba
7 1 (0.44%) Automation Anywhere
7 1 (0.44%) Blue Prism
7 1 (0.44%) Citrix
7 1 (0.44%) IBM
7 1 (0.44%) UiPath
7 1 (0.44%) Workday