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 21 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 94 94 110
Rank change year-on-year 0 +16 +83
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,570 916 809
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.89% 2.80% 2.11%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.43% 3.10% 2.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,002 588 547
10th Percentile £413 £400 £398
25th Percentile £490 £475 £493
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% -8.33% +2.56%
75th Percentile £687 £675 £731
90th Percentile £788 £775 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £539 £495
% change year-on-year +2.09% +8.95% -10.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 23 19
10th Percentile £28.50 £26.34 £13.06
25th Percentile £42.58 £44.42 £25.93
Median hourly rate £77.00 £62.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +23.20% +35.34% -
75th Percentile £88.62 £79.38 £53.75
90th Percentile £89.25 £87.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £77.00 £75.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +2.67% +62.41% -

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 45,811 29,562 32,919
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.30% 90.52% 85.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,773 18,345 20,161
10th Percentile £325 £300 £309
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,152 1,818 1,440
10th Percentile £13.81 £14.23 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +0.58%
75th Percentile £67.47 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £66.15 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.06 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +84.00% -48.10% +1.18%

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 21 September 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 21 September 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 21 September 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 +1 1,350 £575 +1.77% 6,800
London +22 898 £584 -2.67% 4,711
UK excluding London -19 509 £550 +2.09% 2,605
Work from Home -4 416 £600 +9.00% 2,549
North of England -19 140 £550 +15.79% 517
South East -5 138 £600 +4.35% 583
Scotland +6 96 £450 -14.29% 356
Yorkshire -5 63 £550 +7.00% 118
North West -40 60 £600 +26.32% 335
South West -21 50 £513 -10.87% 364
Midlands -43 46 £575 +10.68% 239
West Midlands -42 38 £588 +13.09% 136
East of England -29 36 £463 -19.57% 385
North East -29 18 £513 +20.59% 67
Wales -9 7 £530 -21.48% 62
East Midlands -15 6 £425 -8.11% 103
Northern Ireland +5 1 £334 -52.29% 116

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 90 (5.73%) Apache Spark
2 79 (5.03%) Apache Airflow
3 54 (3.44%) Apache
4 35 (2.23%) Jupyter
5 23 (1.46%) Confluence
6 11 (0.70%) SAS
7 7 (0.45%) IIS
8 6 (0.38%) ArcGIS
9 5 (0.32%) SharePoint
10 4 (0.25%) Palantir Foundry
11 3 (0.19%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.19%) OpenStack
11 3 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.13%) Apache Superset
12 2 (0.13%) Appian
12 2 (0.13%) CMS
12 2 (0.13%) Headless CMS
13 1 (0.064%) Apache Pulsar
13 1 (0.064%) Luigi
13 1 (0.064%) nginx
Applications
1 28 (1.78%) Chatbot
2 8 (0.51%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.25%) CPLEX
4 2 (0.13%) DaVinci Resolve
4 2 (0.13%) Notion
4 2 (0.13%) NUKE
5 1 (0.064%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.064%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.064%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.064%) Simulink
5 1 (0.064%) Sketch
5 1 (0.064%) Trello
Business Applications
1 10 (0.64%) SAP IBP
2 8 (0.51%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.19%) Cloudability
3 3 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
3 3 (0.19%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 2 (0.13%) SAP ERP
5 1 (0.064%) Actimize
5 1 (0.064%) Endur
5 1 (0.064%) NetSuite
5 1 (0.064%) OpenLink RightAngle
5 1 (0.064%) Oracle Cash Management
5 1 (0.064%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.064%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.064%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.064%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.064%) SAP APO
5 1 (0.064%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 526 (33.50%) Azure
2 514 (32.74%) AWS
3 300 (19.11%) GCP
4 110 (7.01%) Power Platform
5 109 (6.94%) GitHub
6 103 (6.56%) Serverless
7 90 (5.73%) Amazon S3
8 89 (5.67%) Snowflake
9 83 (5.29%) AWS Lambda
10 73 (4.65%) Amazon SageMaker
11 62 (3.95%) dbt
12 61 (3.89%) Amazon Bedrock
13 58 (3.69%) Azure Machine Learning
14 49 (3.12%) Azure AI
14 49 (3.12%) Azure DevOps
14 49 (3.12%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 48 (3.06%) Azure Data Factory
16 47 (2.99%) Vertex AI
17 43 (2.74%) SaaS
18 42 (2.68%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 20 (1.27%) Network Security
2 19 (1.21%) Broadband
3 18 (1.15%) Internet
4 12 (0.76%) DNS
4 12 (0.76%) HTTP
5 11 (0.70%) Firewall
6 9 (0.57%) DHCP
6 9 (0.57%) VPN
7 5 (0.32%) SMTP
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%) CTI
9 3 (0.19%) MQTT
9 3 (0.19%) SMS
10 2 (0.13%) FTP
10 2 (0.13%) PCoIP
10 2 (0.13%) Remote Desktop
10 2 (0.13%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 103 (6.56%) Power BI
2 94 (5.99%) Data Warehouse
3 91 (5.80%) Data Lake
4 85 (5.41%) Metadata
5 80 (5.10%) BigQuery
6 65 (4.14%) Big Data
7 52 (3.31%) Amazon Redshift
8 48 (3.06%) Delta Lake
9 45 (2.87%) NoSQL
10 42 (2.68%) Tableau
11 35 (2.23%) Amazon Athena
11 35 (2.23%) PostgreSQL
12 27 (1.72%) Relational Database
13 23 (1.46%) Neo4j
14 21 (1.34%) MongoDB
15 20 (1.27%) Hadoop
16 19 (1.21%) Data Mining
17 18 (1.15%) Elasticsearch
18 17 (1.08%) Looker
19 16 (1.02%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 102 (6.50%) Git
2 54 (3.44%) GitLab
3 44 (2.80%) JIRA
4 42 (2.68%) MLflow
5 17 (1.08%) Jenkins
6 13 (0.83%) Claude Code
7 7 (0.45%) Selenium
7 7 (0.45%) Vite
8 5 (0.32%) Cypress.io
8 5 (0.32%) ERwin
8 5 (0.32%) JMeter
8 5 (0.32%) RStudio
9 3 (0.19%) ER Studio
9 3 (0.19%) Postman
9 3 (0.19%) Pylint
9 3 (0.19%) REST Assured
10 2 (0.13%) Locust
10 2 (0.13%) Newman
10 2 (0.13%) Spinnaker
10 2 (0.13%) Terragrunt
General
1 348 (22.17%) Social Skills
2 301 (19.17%) Finance
3 231 (14.71%) Analytical Skills
4 141 (8.98%) Public Sector
5 116 (7.39%) Banking
6 40 (2.55%) Marketing
7 36 (2.29%) Retail
8 33 (2.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 29 (1.85%) Pharmaceutical
10 27 (1.72%) Telecoms
11 23 (1.46%) Aerospace
11 23 (1.46%) Documentation Skills
11 23 (1.46%) Legal
11 23 (1.46%) Manufacturing
12 21 (1.34%) Front Office
12 21 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
13 18 (1.15%) Financial Institution
14 17 (1.08%) Investment Banking
15 16 (1.02%) Law
16 14 (0.89%) Billing
Job Titles
1 283 (18.03%) Senior
2 258 (16.43%) Architect
3 192 (12.23%) Data Scientist
4 179 (11.40%) Data Engineer
5 176 (11.21%) Lead
6 147 (9.36%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 98 (6.24%) Machine Learning Engineer
8 73 (4.65%) Python Engineer
9 71 (4.52%) Solutions Architect
10 70 (4.46%) Data Architect
10 70 (4.46%) Developer
11 67 (4.27%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
12 61 (3.89%) Analyst
13 57 (3.63%) Software Engineer
14 54 (3.44%) Platform Engineer
15 51 (3.25%) Senior Data Engineer
16 50 (3.18%) Security Architect
17 48 (3.06%) Senior Data Scientist
18 44 (2.80%) DevOps Engineer
19 40 (2.55%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 195 (12.42%) Terraform
2 111 (7.07%) PyTorch
3 107 (6.82%) Kafka
4 89 (5.67%) PySpark
5 80 (5.10%) TensorFlow
6 69 (4.39%) LangChain
6 69 (4.39%) REST
7 65 (4.14%) scikit-learn
8 63 (4.01%) Pandas
9 56 (3.57%) React
10 47 (2.99%) NumPy
10 47 (2.99%) pytest
11 40 (2.55%) .NET
12 38 (2.42%) LangGraph
13 35 (2.23%) FastAPI
14 28 (1.78%) Hugging Face
14 28 (1.78%) JSON
15 26 (1.66%) Model Context Protocol
16 23 (1.46%) RESTful
17 19 (1.21%) LlamaIndex
Miscellaneous
1 195 (12.42%) Cloud Native
2 172 (10.96%) AI Agents
3 95 (6.05%) Algorithms
4 68 (4.33%) Product Ownership
5 66 (4.20%) Onboarding
6 63 (4.01%) Distributed Systems
7 37 (2.36%) Data Structures
8 36 (2.29%) Enterprise Software
9 27 (1.72%) Life Science
10 24 (1.53%) Data Protection Act
11 21 (1.34%) Hybrid Cloud
12 20 (1.27%) Management Information System
13 18 (1.15%) CMDB
14 17 (1.08%) Social Media
14 17 (1.08%) Taxonomies
15 15 (0.96%) Analytical Mindset
16 14 (0.89%) Credit Risk
16 14 (0.89%) Cyber Threat
16 14 (0.89%) Public Cloud
16 14 (0.89%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 46 (2.93%) Linux
2 19 (1.21%) Windows
3 17 (1.08%) Unix
4 4 (0.25%) Ubuntu
4 4 (0.25%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.19%) Android
6 2 (0.13%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.13%) VMS
7 1 (0.064%) Robot Operating System
7 1 (0.064%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,296 (82.55%) AI
2 572 (36.43%) Data Science
3 494 (31.46%) CI/CD
4 474 (30.19%) Analytics
5 431 (27.45%) LLM
6 393 (25.03%) Generative AI
7 349 (22.23%) Data Pipeline
8 328 (20.89%) Agile
9 320 (20.38%) DevOps
10 289 (18.41%) MLOps
11 278 (17.71%) Data Engineering
12 261 (16.62%) Software Engineering
13 247 (15.73%) Decision-Making
14 238 (15.16%) Use Case
15 237 (15.10%) Stakeholder Management
16 232 (14.78%) Roadmaps
17 215 (13.69%) Infrastructure as Code
18 199 (12.68%) Problem-Solving
19 198 (12.61%) Data Modelling
20 196 (12.48%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Programming Languages
1 844 (53.76%) Python
2 388 (24.71%) SQL
3 111 (7.07%) Java
4 75 (4.78%) JavaScript
5 58 (3.69%) TypeScript
6 40 (2.55%) C#
7 39 (2.48%) Bash
7 39 (2.48%) R
8 28 (1.78%) PowerShell
9 23 (1.46%) Scala
10 20 (1.27%) C++
11 18 (1.15%) Go
12 14 (0.89%) Bicep
13 12 (0.76%) Shell Script
14 11 (0.70%) Cypher
14 11 (0.70%) PL/SQL
15 7 (0.45%) Gremlin
15 7 (0.45%) SPARQL
16 6 (0.38%) Kotlin
17 5 (0.32%) Perl
Qualifications
1 315 (20.06%) Security Cleared
2 243 (15.48%) SC Cleared
3 123 (7.83%) Degree
4 57 (3.63%) DV Cleared
5 55 (3.50%) Computer Science Degree
6 47 (2.99%) AWS Certification
7 39 (2.48%) Master's Degree
8 38 (2.42%) BPSS Clearance
9 32 (2.04%) CISSP
10 28 (1.78%) PhD
11 27 (1.72%) Azure Certification
12 18 (1.15%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 15 (0.96%) TOGAF Certification
14 13 (0.83%) CISM
15 11 (0.70%) Cisco Certification
16 10 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
17 9 (0.57%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
18 8 (0.51%) Microsoft Certified Professional
19 6 (0.38%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 6 (0.38%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 221 (14.08%) Data Quality
2 57 (3.63%) GDPR
3 56 (3.57%) QA
4 31 (1.97%) NIST
5 18 (1.15%) Accessibility
5 18 (1.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 16 (1.02%) EU AI Act
7 10 (0.64%) SLA
8 9 (0.57%) GRC
8 9 (0.57%) GxP
8 9 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 7 (0.45%) HIPAA
9 7 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 6 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
10 6 (0.38%) NCSC
11 5 (0.32%) Solvency II
12 4 (0.25%) Basel III
12 4 (0.25%) COBIT
12 4 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
12 4 (0.25%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 211 (13.44%) Docker
2 15 (0.96%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.64%) Hyper-V
4 10 (0.64%) IAG
5 8 (0.51%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.45%) NFS
7 5 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
8 3 (0.19%) BitLocker
8 3 (0.19%) Terminal Services
8 3 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.13%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 2 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 2 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.13%) VMware Workstation
10 1 (0.064%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 277 (17.64%) Kubernetes
2 40 (2.55%) Ansible
3 28 (1.78%) Kubeflow
4 26 (1.66%) Grafana
5 19 (1.21%) Prometheus
6 6 (0.38%) Istio
7 5 (0.32%) Podman
7 5 (0.32%) systemd
8 3 (0.19%) Argo
8 3 (0.19%) Kibana
8 3 (0.19%) Nagios
8 3 (0.19%) NetBackup
8 3 (0.19%) Puppet
8 3 (0.19%) vCenter Server
8 3 (0.19%) vMotion
9 2 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 2 (0.13%) Packer
9 2 (0.13%) SCCM
10 1 (0.064%) logstash
10 1 (0.064%) QRadar
Vendors
1 205 (13.06%) Databricks
2 156 (9.94%) Microsoft
3 100 (6.37%) Google
4 61 (3.89%) OpenAI
5 42 (2.68%) SAP
6 32 (2.04%) ServiceNow
7 29 (1.85%) Foundry
7 29 (1.85%) Oracle
8 22 (1.40%) Informatica
9 17 (1.08%) Dynatrace
10 14 (0.89%) VMware
11 13 (0.83%) Splunk
12 11 (0.70%) Salesforce
13 10 (0.64%) IBM
13 10 (0.64%) Nexthink
13 10 (0.64%) UiPath
14 7 (0.45%) Cisco
15 6 (0.38%) Pega
15 6 (0.38%) Sybase
16 5 (0.32%) HP