Machine Learning Engineer Contracts

Machine Learning Engineer
UK

The median Machine Learning Engineer daily rate in the UK is £600, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 471 525 664
Rank change year-on-year +54 +139 +99
Contract jobs requiring a Machine Learning Engineer 49 57 54
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.17% 0.13% 0.090%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.18% 0.14% 0.096%
Number of daily rates quoted 27 41 35
10th Percentile £383 £450 £495
25th Percentile £519 £494 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £568 £575
Median % change year-on-year +5.73% -1.30% -4.17%
75th Percentile £794 £638 £609
90th Percentile £860 £775 £703
UK excluding London median daily rate £825 £600 £575
% change year-on-year +37.50% +4.35% -3.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 9 0
Median hourly rate - £62.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £62.50 -

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 27,084 40,415 56,464
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.52% 92.78% 94.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,692 26,309 39,470
10th Percentile £300 £275 £313
25th Percentile £406 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% +2.86%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £492 £500
% change year-on-year -3.46% -1.60% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,035 2,664 1,570
10th Percentile £14.07 £12.86 £14.29
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.30 £19.50
Median hourly rate £29.00 £36.42 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.37% -19.07% +91.49%
75th Percentile £62.50 £60.75 £65.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £39.55 £42.50
% change year-on-year -29.20% -6.94% +117.95%

Machine Learning Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Machine Learning Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Machine Learning Engineer in the UK

Machine Learning Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Machine Learning Engineer.

Daily rate trend for Machine Learning Engineer in the UK

Machine Learning Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Machine Learning Engineer over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Machine Learning Engineer in the UK

Machine Learning Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Machine Learning Engineer.

Hourly rate trend for Machine Learning Engineer in the UK

Machine Learning Engineer
Top 5 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Machine Learning Engineer 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 +48 44 £588 +5.15% 179
London +43 42 £575 +6.98% 130
Work from Home +44 19 £750 +17.65% 117
UK excluding London +49 2 £825 +37.50% 77
South West - 2 £825 - 7

Machine Learning Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 1 May 2025, Machine Learning Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Machine Learning Engineer in the job title.

1 49 (100.00%) Machine Learning
2 40 (81.63%) Python
3 21 (42.86%) Artificial Intelligence
3 21 (42.86%) Deep Learning
3 21 (42.86%) Data Science
4 18 (36.73%) AWS
5 17 (34.69%) Java
5 17 (34.69%) Apache Spark
6 15 (30.61%) C++
6 15 (30.61%) Distributed Computing
7 14 (28.57%) Degree
7 14 (28.57%) Computer Science
8 13 (26.53%) C
8 13 (26.53%) Shell Script
8 13 (26.53%) Master's Degree
9 12 (24.49%) LLM
9 12 (24.49%) CI/CD
9 12 (24.49%) PhD
10 11 (22.45%) Analytics
10 11 (22.45%) Big Data
10 11 (22.45%) MLOps
11 10 (20.41%) Containerisation
11 10 (20.41%) Azure
11 10 (20.41%) Parallel Computing
12 9 (18.37%) Kubernetes
12 9 (18.37%) Low Latency
12 9 (18.37%) Docker
13 8 (16.33%) Finance
13 8 (16.33%) PyTorch
14 7 (14.29%) Technical Leadership

Machine Learning Engineer Skill Set
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 17 (34.69%) Apache Spark
2 3 (6.12%) Jupyter
3 2 (4.08%) Apache
4 1 (2.04%) Apache Airflow
Cloud Services
1 18 (36.73%) AWS
2 10 (20.41%) Azure
3 5 (10.20%) Azure Stack
4 3 (6.12%) GCP
5 2 (4.08%) Amazon SageMaker
5 2 (4.08%) GitHub
5 2 (4.08%) Vertex AI
6 1 (2.04%) Amazon Kinesis
6 1 (2.04%) Amazon S3
6 1 (2.04%) AWS Lambda
6 1 (2.04%) AWS Step Functions
6 1 (2.04%) Azure Machine Learning
6 1 (2.04%) GitHub Actions
6 1 (2.04%) IaaS
6 1 (2.04%) PaaS
6 1 (2.04%) Power Platform
6 1 (2.04%) SaaS
6 1 (2.04%) Serverless
6 1 (2.04%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 1 (2.04%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (22.45%) Big Data
2 7 (14.29%) Data Mining
3 2 (4.08%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (4.08%) Tableau
4 1 (2.04%) Amazon Redshift
4 1 (2.04%) Hadoop
4 1 (2.04%) MongoDB
4 1 (2.04%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 5 (10.20%) MLflow
2 2 (4.08%) Git
2 2 (4.08%) GitLab
3 1 (2.04%) Jenkins
General
1 8 (16.33%) Finance
2 7 (14.29%) Social Skills
3 3 (6.12%) Retail
4 2 (4.08%) Analytical Skills
4 2 (4.08%) Banking
5 1 (2.04%) Aviation
5 1 (2.04%) Dutch Language
5 1 (2.04%) French Language
5 1 (2.04%) Investment Banking
5 1 (2.04%) Public Sector
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (16.33%) PyTorch
2 7 (14.29%) Ray
2 7 (14.29%) TensorFlow
3 6 (12.24%) scikit-learn
4 3 (6.12%) AWS CDK
4 3 (6.12%) Matplotlib
4 3 (6.12%) Metaflow
4 3 (6.12%) PySpark
4 3 (6.12%) XGBoost
5 2 (4.08%) Kafka
5 2 (4.08%) Pandas
5 2 (4.08%) Plotly
6 1 (2.04%) Bokeh
6 1 (2.04%) Keras
6 1 (2.04%) Loki
6 1 (2.04%) NumPy
6 1 (2.04%) OpenCV
6 1 (2.04%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 15 (30.61%) Distributed Computing
2 7 (14.29%) Algorithms
3 4 (8.16%) Distributed Systems
3 4 (8.16%) Product Ownership
3 4 (8.16%) Tandem
4 2 (4.08%) Data Protection Act
4 2 (4.08%) Data Structures
5 1 (2.04%) Cloud Native
5 1 (2.04%) Mainframe
5 1 (2.04%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 1 (2.04%) Linux
1 1 (2.04%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 49 (100.00%) Machine Learning
2 21 (42.86%) Artificial Intelligence
2 21 (42.86%) Data Science
2 21 (42.86%) Deep Learning
3 14 (28.57%) Computer Science
4 12 (24.49%) CI/CD
4 12 (24.49%) LLM
5 11 (22.45%) Analytics
5 11 (22.45%) MLOps
6 10 (20.41%) Containerisation
6 10 (20.41%) Parallel Computing
7 9 (18.37%) Low Latency
8 7 (14.29%) Agile
8 7 (14.29%) Natural Language Processing
8 7 (14.29%) Roadmaps
8 7 (14.29%) Technical Debt
8 7 (14.29%) Technical Leadership
9 6 (12.24%) Data Pipeline
9 6 (12.24%) Software Engineering
10 5 (10.20%) Software Architecture
Programming Languages
1 40 (81.63%) Python
2 17 (34.69%) Java
3 15 (30.61%) C++
4 13 (26.53%) C
4 13 (26.53%) Shell Script
5 6 (12.24%) SQL
6 5 (10.20%) Scala
7 2 (4.08%) Rust
8 1 (2.04%) Bash
8 1 (2.04%) C#
8 1 (2.04%) Clojure
8 1 (2.04%) Haskell
8 1 (2.04%) JavaScript
8 1 (2.04%) Perl
8 1 (2.04%) PowerShell
8 1 (2.04%) R
8 1 (2.04%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 14 (28.57%) Degree
2 13 (26.53%) Master's Degree
3 12 (24.49%) PhD
4 6 (12.24%) SC Cleared
4 6 (12.24%) Security Cleared
5 3 (6.12%) Computer Science Degree
6 1 (2.04%) DV Cleared
6 1 (2.04%) MCITP
6 1 (2.04%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (2.04%) Data Quality
System Software
1 9 (18.37%) Docker
2 1 (2.04%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 9 (18.37%) Kubernetes
2 6 (12.24%) Terraform
3 2 (4.08%) Argo
4 1 (2.04%) Grafana
4 1 (2.04%) Kubeflow
4 1 (2.04%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 3 (6.12%) Databricks
2 2 (4.08%) OpenAI
3 1 (2.04%) Google