Machine Learning Contract Job Trends

Machine Learning (ML)
UK

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

6 months to
11 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 85 105 116
Rank change year-on-year +20 +11 +83
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,593 839 784
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.98% 2.55% 2.01%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.52% 2.82% 2.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,027 530 560
10th Percentile £413 £400 £412
25th Percentile £493 £463 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £556 £600
Median % change year-on-year +3.42% -7.33% +2.56%
75th Percentile £700 £675 £738
90th Percentile £788 £800 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £550 £500
% change year-on-year - +10.00% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 23 21
10th Percentile £28.50 £33.80 £13.06
25th Percentile £40.54 £52.86 £27.75
Median hourly rate £77.00 £75.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +2.67% +62.41% -
75th Percentile £84.06 £83.01 £53.75
90th Percentile £88.75 £88.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £77.00 £77.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year -0.65% +67.82% -

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Machine Learning 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 45,312 29,789 33,296
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.84% 90.47% 85.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,886 18,626 21,285
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £421 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £727 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,829 1,693 1,837
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.30 £18.35
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -38.57% -1.35%
75th Percentile £68.00 £48.13 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.74 £42.50
% change year-on-year +93.36% -46.51% +17.24%

Machine Learning
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Machine Learning relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Machine Learning job vacancy trend in the UK

Machine Learning
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Machine Learning.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Machine Learning

Machine Learning
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Machine Learning over the 6 months to 11 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Machine Learning in the UK

Machine Learning
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Machine Learning.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Machine Learning

Machine Learning
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Machine Learning over the 6 months to 11 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Machine Learning in the UK

Machine Learning
Top 17 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Machine Learning within the UK over the 6 months to 11 August 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 +11 1,368 £580 +2.65% 2,981
London +31 924 £590 +2.61% 2,009
UK excluding London +2 490 £550 - 1,232
Work from Home +6 412 £600 +9.09% 1,117
North of England -11 136 £558 +13.78% 258
South East -23 128 £618 +9.87% 329
Scotland +30 85 £440 -12.00% 155
North West -17 66 £608 +15.71% 157
Midlands -29 59 £550 +7.32% 119
Yorkshire -5 57 £550 +12.19% 67
West Midlands -30 48 £550 -6.38% 74
South West -31 44 £528 -4.09% 155
East of England -27 30 £500 -16.67% 166
North East -36 13 £463 +8.82% 35
Wales -4 11 £540 -20.00% 38
East Midlands -10 9 £450 +5.88% 45
Northern Ireland - 1 £334 - 29

Machine Learning
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:

Application Platforms
1 83 (5.21%) Apache Spark
2 78 (4.90%) Apache Airflow
3 45 (2.82%) Apache
4 33 (2.07%) Jupyter
5 21 (1.32%) Confluence
6 8 (0.50%) SAS
7 6 (0.38%) ArcGIS
8 5 (0.31%) CMS
8 5 (0.31%) Headless CMS
8 5 (0.31%) Palantir Foundry
8 5 (0.31%) SharePoint
9 3 (0.19%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.19%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.13%) Appian
10 2 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
11 1 (0.063%) Apache Pulsar
11 1 (0.063%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.063%) Luigi
11 1 (0.063%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 30 (1.88%) Chatbot
2 12 (0.75%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.31%) CPLEX
4 5 (0.31%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.13%) Notion
6 1 (0.063%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.063%) DaVinci Resolve
6 1 (0.063%) NUKE
6 1 (0.063%) Simulink
6 1 (0.063%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 11 (0.69%) SAP IBP
2 8 (0.50%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
4 2 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
4 2 (0.13%) SAP ERP
4 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.063%) Actimize
5 1 (0.063%) NetSuite
5 1 (0.063%) OpenText VIM for SAP
5 1 (0.063%) Oracle Cash Management
5 1 (0.063%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.063%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.063%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.063%) SAP APO
5 1 (0.063%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 547 (34.34%) Azure
2 542 (34.02%) AWS
3 311 (19.52%) GCP
4 128 (8.04%) Power Platform
5 111 (6.97%) GitHub
6 105 (6.59%) Serverless
7 90 (5.65%) Amazon S3
8 86 (5.40%) Snowflake
9 80 (5.02%) AWS Lambda
10 75 (4.71%) Amazon SageMaker
11 67 (4.21%) Azure Machine Learning
12 61 (3.83%) Amazon Bedrock
13 60 (3.77%) Azure AI
14 58 (3.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 54 (3.39%) dbt
16 50 (3.14%) Azure DevOps
16 50 (3.14%) Vertex AI
17 47 (2.95%) GitHub Actions
18 43 (2.70%) Azure Data Factory
19 37 (2.32%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.32%) Firewall
2 17 (1.07%) Internet
3 16 (1.00%) Network Security
4 12 (0.75%) Broadband
5 11 (0.69%) DNS
6 10 (0.63%) VPN
7 9 (0.56%) DHCP
8 4 (0.25%) NAS
8 4 (0.25%) SAN
8 4 (0.25%) TCP/IP
8 4 (0.25%) VLAN
9 3 (0.19%) HTTP
9 3 (0.19%) MQTT
9 3 (0.19%) SMTP
10 2 (0.13%) 4G
10 2 (0.13%) 5G
10 2 (0.13%) CTI
10 2 (0.13%) PCoIP
10 2 (0.13%) Remote Desktop
10 2 (0.13%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 114 (7.16%) Power BI
2 85 (5.34%) Data Lake
3 79 (4.96%) BigQuery
4 77 (4.83%) Data Warehouse
5 71 (4.46%) Metadata
6 70 (4.39%) Big Data
7 48 (3.01%) Amazon Redshift
7 48 (3.01%) NoSQL
8 44 (2.76%) Tableau
9 43 (2.70%) Delta Lake
10 36 (2.26%) Amazon Athena
11 33 (2.07%) Relational Database
12 28 (1.76%) PostgreSQL
13 26 (1.63%) Hadoop
14 21 (1.32%) MongoDB
14 21 (1.32%) Neo4j
15 20 (1.26%) Looker
16 19 (1.19%) Data Mining
17 17 (1.07%) Elasticsearch
18 15 (0.94%) Redis
Development Applications
1 98 (6.15%) Git
2 57 (3.58%) MLflow
3 50 (3.14%) GitLab
4 46 (2.89%) JIRA
5 25 (1.57%) Jenkins
6 10 (0.63%) Claude Code
6 10 (0.63%) Vite
7 8 (0.50%) Selenium
8 5 (0.31%) Cypress.io
9 4 (0.25%) ER Studio
9 4 (0.25%) ERwin
9 4 (0.25%) PyCharm
9 4 (0.25%) REST Assured
9 4 (0.25%) Spinnaker
10 3 (0.19%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.13%) JUnit
11 2 (0.13%) NUnit
11 2 (0.13%) Oracle APEX
11 2 (0.13%) Pylint
11 2 (0.13%) Visual Studio
General
1 337 (21.16%) Social Skills
2 294 (18.46%) Finance
3 217 (13.62%) Analytical Skills
4 137 (8.60%) Public Sector
5 111 (6.97%) Banking
6 41 (2.57%) Marketing
7 38 (2.39%) Retail
8 33 (2.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 32 (2.01%) Telecoms
10 29 (1.82%) Pharmaceutical
11 26 (1.63%) Legal
12 22 (1.38%) Front Office
13 21 (1.32%) Documentation Skills
14 20 (1.26%) Manufacturing
15 19 (1.19%) Aerospace
15 19 (1.19%) Financial Institution
16 17 (1.07%) Aviation
17 16 (1.00%) Investment Banking
17 16 (1.00%) Presentation Skills
18 15 (0.94%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 245 (15.38%) Architect
2 240 (15.07%) Senior
3 215 (13.50%) Data Scientist
4 170 (10.67%) Lead
5 162 (10.17%) Data Engineer
6 139 (8.73%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 97 (6.09%) Developer
8 86 (5.40%) Machine Learning Engineer
9 78 (4.90%) Python Engineer
10 76 (4.77%) Solutions Architect
11 70 (4.39%) Data Architect
12 67 (4.21%) Analyst
13 60 (3.77%) Software Engineer
14 59 (3.70%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
15 57 (3.58%) Platform Engineer
16 48 (3.01%) Security Architect
17 46 (2.89%) DevOps Engineer
18 41 (2.57%) Senior Data Scientist
19 40 (2.51%) Python Developer
19 40 (2.51%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 139 (8.73%) PyTorch
2 107 (6.72%) Kafka
3 99 (6.21%) TensorFlow
4 93 (5.84%) scikit-learn
5 79 (4.96%) LangChain
5 79 (4.96%) PySpark
6 73 (4.58%) Pandas
6 73 (4.58%) React
7 64 (4.02%) REST
8 55 (3.45%) NumPy
9 40 (2.51%) .NET
10 36 (2.26%) LangGraph
11 30 (1.88%) FastAPI
12 28 (1.76%) Hugging Face
12 28 (1.76%) pytest
13 27 (1.69%) AngularJS
14 26 (1.63%) Model Context Protocol
15 25 (1.57%) Node.js
15 25 (1.57%) RESTful
16 18 (1.13%) LlamaIndex
Miscellaneous
1 188 (11.80%) Cloud Native
2 170 (10.67%) AI Agents
3 110 (6.91%) Algorithms
4 65 (4.08%) Product Ownership
5 57 (3.58%) Onboarding
6 56 (3.52%) Distributed Systems
7 30 (1.88%) Data Structures
8 29 (1.82%) Enterprise Software
9 24 (1.51%) Life Science
10 22 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
11 21 (1.32%) Hybrid Cloud
12 16 (1.00%) Taxonomies
13 15 (0.94%) Legacy Systems
14 14 (0.88%) Enterprise Cloud
14 14 (0.88%) Fixed Income
14 14 (0.88%) IoT
14 14 (0.88%) Public Cloud
14 14 (0.88%) Security Posture
15 13 (0.82%) Augmented Reality
15 13 (0.82%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 50 (3.14%) Linux
2 13 (0.82%) Unix
3 12 (0.75%) Windows
4 4 (0.25%) Ubuntu
4 4 (0.25%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.19%) Apple iOS
5 3 (0.19%) VMS
6 2 (0.13%) Android
6 2 (0.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.063%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,281 (80.41%) AI
2 583 (36.60%) Data Science
3 503 (31.58%) CI/CD
4 458 (28.75%) Analytics
5 424 (26.62%) LLM
6 373 (23.41%) Generative AI
7 358 (22.47%) Data Pipeline
8 337 (21.16%) DevOps
9 335 (21.03%) Agile
10 289 (18.14%) MLOps
11 275 (17.26%) Data Engineering
12 250 (15.69%) Software Engineering
13 245 (15.38%) Use Case
14 231 (14.50%) Decision-Making
15 208 (13.06%) Roadmaps
16 206 (12.93%) Problem-Solving
17 198 (12.43%) Infrastructure as Code
18 193 (12.12%) Stakeholder Management
19 186 (11.68%) Data Governance
20 180 (11.30%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Programming Languages
1 872 (54.74%) Python
2 387 (24.29%) SQL
3 117 (7.34%) Java
4 77 (4.83%) JavaScript
5 63 (3.95%) TypeScript
6 47 (2.95%) C#
7 44 (2.76%) R
8 40 (2.51%) Bash
9 25 (1.57%) PowerShell
10 19 (1.19%) Bicep
11 18 (1.13%) C++
12 15 (0.94%) Go
12 15 (0.94%) Scala
13 10 (0.63%) PL/SQL
14 8 (0.50%) Cypher
14 8 (0.50%) SPARQL
15 7 (0.44%) Gremlin
15 7 (0.44%) Kotlin
15 7 (0.44%) Rust
16 6 (0.38%) Perl
Qualifications
1 275 (17.26%) Security Cleared
2 201 (12.62%) SC Cleared
3 122 (7.66%) Degree
4 55 (3.45%) Computer Science Degree
5 51 (3.20%) DV Cleared
6 46 (2.89%) AWS Certification
7 44 (2.76%) Master's Degree
8 33 (2.07%) BPSS Clearance
9 32 (2.01%) CISSP
10 27 (1.69%) PhD
11 22 (1.38%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 19 (1.19%) Azure Certification
13 14 (0.88%) CISM
13 14 (0.88%) TOGAF Certification
14 8 (0.50%) Cisco Certification
15 7 (0.44%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
15 7 (0.44%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 6 (0.38%) Microsoft Certified Professional
16 6 (0.38%) PMP
17 5 (0.31%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 190 (11.93%) Data Quality
2 63 (3.95%) GDPR
3 48 (3.01%) QA
4 32 (2.01%) NIST
5 21 (1.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 15 (0.94%) EU AI Act
7 14 (0.88%) Accessibility
8 11 (0.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 9 (0.56%) GxP
10 8 (0.50%) GRC
10 8 (0.50%) HIPAA
11 7 (0.44%) Actionable Recommendations
12 6 (0.38%) SLA
12 6 (0.38%) WCAG
13 5 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 5 (0.31%) Solvency II
14 4 (0.25%) COBIT
14 4 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
14 4 (0.25%) NCSC
15 3 (0.19%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 219 (13.75%) Docker
2 12 (0.75%) Active Directory
3 7 (0.44%) IAG
4 5 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
4 5 (0.31%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (0.25%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 3 (0.19%) BitLocker
6 3 (0.19%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.19%) Terminal Services
6 3 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.13%) Apache ZooKeeper
7 2 (0.13%) Firmware
7 2 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.13%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (0.13%) VMware Workstation
8 1 (0.063%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 271 (17.01%) Kubernetes
2 189 (11.86%) Terraform
3 35 (2.20%) Ansible
4 27 (1.69%) Kubeflow
5 26 (1.63%) Grafana
6 19 (1.19%) Prometheus
7 6 (0.38%) Istio
7 6 (0.38%) Podman
8 4 (0.25%) systemd
9 3 (0.19%) Kibana
9 3 (0.19%) Nagios
9 3 (0.19%) NetBackup
9 3 (0.19%) Puppet
9 3 (0.19%) vCenter Server
9 3 (0.19%) vMotion
10 2 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 2 (0.13%) Argo
10 2 (0.13%) Docker Swarm
10 2 (0.13%) Rancher
10 2 (0.13%) SCCM
Vendors
1 199 (12.49%) Databricks
2 162 (10.17%) Microsoft
3 103 (6.47%) Google
4 78 (4.90%) OpenAI
5 48 (3.01%) SAP
6 38 (2.39%) Foundry
7 35 (2.20%) ServiceNow
8 25 (1.57%) Oracle
9 20 (1.26%) Informatica
10 17 (1.07%) Dynatrace
11 14 (0.88%) IBM
12 13 (0.82%) Splunk
13 12 (0.75%) UiPath
14 7 (0.44%) Nexthink
14 7 (0.44%) Sybase
15 6 (0.38%) Pega
15 6 (0.38%) Salesforce
15 6 (0.38%) Workday
16 5 (0.31%) Palantir
16 5 (0.31%) VMware