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

6 months to
21 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 82 106 128
Rank change year-on-year +24 +22 +80
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,626 805 766
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.08% 2.47% 1.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.63% 2.73% 2.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,014 500 538
10th Percentile £413 £400 £413
25th Percentile £492 £463 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £556 £588
Median % change year-on-year +3.42% -5.36% -
75th Percentile £688 £680 £750
90th Percentile £775 £825 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £550 £523
% change year-on-year - +5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 49 23 18
10th Percentile £36.00 £45.00 £13.06
25th Percentile £50.00 £52.86 £41.25
Median hourly rate £72.50 £75.00 £48.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% +56.25% +3.94%
75th Percentile £83.75 £81.01 £53.75
90th Percentile £89.00 £88.00 £76.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.72 £77.50 £52.50
% change year-on-year -10.04% +47.62% +13.69%

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 44,806 29,445 35,310
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.99% 90.36% 85.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,768 18,486 22,647
10th Percentile £325 £300 £306
25th Percentile £419 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.11%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,649 1,571 2,189
10th Percentile £14.85 £14.20 £13.06
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.44 £16.86
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -10.31%
75th Percentile £68.55 £50.88 £62.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £68.75 £73.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £24.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +87.50% -40.00% -1.45%

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 +21 1,368 £575 - 1,541
London +36 905 £585 -0.09% 1,037
UK excluding London +3 526 £550 - 674
Work from Home +3 436 £600 +9.09% 530
North of England +8 149 £575 +12.97% 161
South East -25 128 £600 +6.67% 228
Scotland +34 99 £440 -10.20% 53
North West -9 80 £608 +10.45% 98
Midlands -6 71 £550 +10.00% 59
Yorkshire -11 57 £550 +12.19% 41
West Midlands -17 56 £550 -6.38% 37
South West -34 46 £538 -6.52% 78
East of England -23 35 £513 -18.00% 72
Wales -9 16 £540 -20.00% 25
North East -33 16 £469 +10.29% 24
East Midlands -7 13 £575 +35.29% 22
Northern Ireland - 1 £334 - 12

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 93 (5.72%) Apache Spark
2 75 (4.61%) Apache Airflow
3 48 (2.95%) Apache
4 34 (2.09%) Jupyter
5 22 (1.35%) Confluence
6 10 (0.62%) SAS
7 6 (0.37%) ArcGIS
7 6 (0.37%) SharePoint
8 5 (0.31%) Appian
8 5 (0.31%) CMS
8 5 (0.31%) Headless CMS
8 5 (0.31%) Palantir Foundry
9 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
10 2 (0.12%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
11 1 (0.062%) Apache Pulsar
11 1 (0.062%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.062%) Apache Synapse
11 1 (0.062%) Luigi
11 1 (0.062%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 32 (1.97%) Chatbot
2 14 (0.86%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.43%) Microsoft Office
5 6 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.18%) CPLEX
7 1 (0.062%) Notion
7 1 (0.062%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 11 (0.68%) SAP IBP
2 9 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
3 2 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.062%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.062%) OpenText VIM for SAP
4 1 (0.062%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.062%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.062%) SAP APO
4 1 (0.062%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.062%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 574 (35.30%) Azure
2 573 (35.24%) AWS
3 299 (18.39%) GCP
4 144 (8.86%) Power Platform
5 121 (7.44%) Serverless
6 112 (6.89%) GitHub
7 105 (6.46%) Amazon S3
8 92 (5.66%) AWS Lambda
9 91 (5.60%) Amazon SageMaker
10 81 (4.98%) Azure Machine Learning
11 80 (4.92%) Snowflake
12 79 (4.86%) Azure AI
13 61 (3.75%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 58 (3.57%) Amazon Bedrock
15 57 (3.51%) Azure DevOps
16 54 (3.32%) Vertex AI
17 50 (3.08%) GitHub Actions
18 47 (2.89%) Azure Data Factory
19 45 (2.77%) dbt
20 43 (2.64%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 19 (1.17%) Firewall
2 14 (0.86%) Network Security
3 13 (0.80%) Internet
4 9 (0.55%) DNS
5 8 (0.49%) VPN
6 7 (0.43%) DHCP
7 5 (0.31%) HTTP
8 4 (0.25%) Broadband
8 4 (0.25%) NAS
8 4 (0.25%) SAN
9 3 (0.18%) MQTT
9 3 (0.18%) SMTP
10 2 (0.12%) 4G
10 2 (0.12%) 5G
10 2 (0.12%) CTI
10 2 (0.12%) Modbus
10 2 (0.12%) PCoIP
10 2 (0.12%) Radio Access Network
10 2 (0.12%) Remote Desktop
10 2 (0.12%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 119 (7.32%) Power BI
2 96 (5.90%) Data Lake
3 81 (4.98%) Big Data
4 77 (4.74%) Metadata
5 76 (4.67%) Data Warehouse
6 70 (4.31%) BigQuery
7 53 (3.26%) NoSQL
8 48 (2.95%) Tableau
9 42 (2.58%) Amazon Redshift
10 41 (2.52%) PostgreSQL
11 40 (2.46%) Amazon Athena
12 35 (2.15%) Delta Lake
12 35 (2.15%) Hadoop
13 34 (2.09%) Relational Database
14 27 (1.66%) SQL Server
15 24 (1.48%) MongoDB
16 21 (1.29%) Neo4j
17 20 (1.23%) MySQL
17 20 (1.23%) Pinecone
18 19 (1.17%) Looker
Development Applications
1 100 (6.15%) Git
2 73 (4.49%) MLflow
3 51 (3.14%) GitLab
4 49 (3.01%) JIRA
5 27 (1.66%) Jenkins
6 10 (0.62%) Vite
7 9 (0.55%) Claude Code
8 8 (0.49%) Selenium
9 5 (0.31%) Cypress.io
10 4 (0.25%) ER Studio
10 4 (0.25%) ERwin
10 4 (0.25%) Maven
10 4 (0.25%) PyCharm
11 3 (0.18%) Gradle
11 3 (0.18%) JUnit
11 3 (0.18%) REST Assured
11 3 (0.18%) SonarQube
11 3 (0.18%) Spinnaker
12 2 (0.12%) Oracle APEX
12 2 (0.12%) Visual Studio
General
1 337 (20.73%) Social Skills
2 297 (18.27%) Finance
3 211 (12.98%) Analytical Skills
4 146 (8.98%) Public Sector
5 114 (7.01%) Banking
6 46 (2.83%) Marketing
7 34 (2.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 33 (2.03%) Retail
9 31 (1.91%) Pharmaceutical
10 26 (1.60%) Telecoms
11 25 (1.54%) Legal
12 24 (1.48%) Documentation Skills
13 23 (1.41%) Front Office
14 20 (1.23%) Aviation
14 20 (1.23%) Influencing Skills
15 17 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
16 16 (0.98%) Financial Institution
16 16 (0.98%) Law
17 15 (0.92%) Investment Banking
18 13 (0.80%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 248 (15.25%) Architect
2 241 (14.82%) Senior
3 227 (13.96%) Data Scientist
4 156 (9.59%) Lead
5 146 (8.98%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 146 (8.98%) Data Engineer
6 106 (6.52%) Developer
7 79 (4.86%) Solutions Architect
8 76 (4.67%) Python Engineer
9 73 (4.49%) Data Architect
9 73 (4.49%) Machine Learning Engineer
10 69 (4.24%) Software Engineer
11 66 (4.06%) Analyst
12 55 (3.38%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
13 51 (3.14%) Platform Engineer
14 46 (2.83%) Senior Data Scientist
15 44 (2.71%) DevOps Engineer
16 41 (2.52%) Consultant
17 39 (2.40%) Python Developer
17 39 (2.40%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 158 (9.72%) PyTorch
2 109 (6.70%) Kafka
2 109 (6.70%) TensorFlow
3 99 (6.09%) scikit-learn
4 85 (5.23%) Pandas
5 82 (5.04%) LangChain
6 73 (4.49%) React
7 72 (4.43%) PySpark
8 70 (4.31%) REST
9 66 (4.06%) NumPy
10 44 (2.71%) .NET
11 39 (2.40%) Hugging Face
12 35 (2.15%) LangGraph
13 30 (1.85%) FastAPI
14 29 (1.78%) Model Context Protocol
14 29 (1.78%) Node.js
15 26 (1.60%) AngularJS
15 26 (1.60%) RESTful
16 22 (1.35%) LlamaIndex
16 22 (1.35%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 197 (12.12%) Cloud Native
2 161 (9.90%) AI Agents
3 122 (7.50%) Algorithms
4 60 (3.69%) Product Ownership
5 59 (3.63%) Onboarding
6 57 (3.51%) Distributed Systems
7 28 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
8 26 (1.60%) Data Protection Act
9 25 (1.54%) Data Structures
10 24 (1.48%) Life Science
11 20 (1.23%) Hybrid Cloud
12 17 (1.05%) Legacy Systems
12 17 (1.05%) Management Information System
13 16 (0.98%) Fixed Income
14 15 (0.92%) Security Posture
14 15 (0.92%) Taxonomies
15 14 (0.86%) Public Cloud
15 14 (0.86%) Virtual Team
16 12 (0.74%) Distributed Computing
16 12 (0.74%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 52 (3.20%) Linux
2 17 (1.05%) Windows
3 12 (0.74%) Unix
4 6 (0.37%) Apple iOS
5 5 (0.31%) Android
5 5 (0.31%) VMS
6 4 (0.25%) Windows Server
7 2 (0.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.062%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,301 (80.01%) AI
2 600 (36.90%) Data Science
3 517 (31.80%) CI/CD
4 468 (28.78%) Analytics
5 447 (27.49%) LLM
6 377 (23.19%) Generative AI
7 370 (22.76%) Data Pipeline
8 338 (20.79%) DevOps
9 323 (19.86%) Agile
10 305 (18.76%) MLOps
11 289 (17.77%) Data Engineering
12 266 (16.36%) Use Case
13 240 (14.76%) Software Engineering
14 226 (13.90%) Decision-Making
15 212 (13.04%) Problem-Solving
16 206 (12.67%) Roadmaps
17 195 (11.99%) Data Governance
18 189 (11.62%) Infrastructure as Code
18 189 (11.62%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
19 179 (11.01%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 895 (55.04%) Python
2 400 (24.60%) SQL
3 120 (7.38%) Java
4 64 (3.94%) JavaScript
5 62 (3.81%) TypeScript
6 57 (3.51%) R
7 56 (3.44%) C#
8 37 (2.28%) Bash
9 19 (1.17%) PowerShell
10 18 (1.11%) C++
11 17 (1.05%) Go
12 16 (0.98%) Bicep
13 12 (0.74%) Kotlin
13 12 (0.74%) Scala
14 9 (0.55%) PL/SQL
14 9 (0.55%) SPARQL
15 8 (0.49%) Cypher
15 8 (0.49%) Rust
16 7 (0.43%) Gremlin
17 5 (0.31%) Perl
Qualifications
1 294 (18.08%) Security Cleared
2 203 (12.48%) SC Cleared
3 136 (8.36%) Degree
4 57 (3.51%) DV Cleared
5 56 (3.44%) Master's Degree
6 55 (3.38%) Computer Science Degree
7 48 (2.95%) AWS Certification
8 46 (2.83%) BPSS Clearance
9 32 (1.97%) PhD
10 31 (1.91%) CISSP
11 23 (1.41%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 23 (1.41%) Azure Certification
12 14 (0.86%) CISM
13 13 (0.80%) TOGAF Certification
14 7 (0.43%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 7 (0.43%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
15 6 (0.37%) Microsoft Certified Professional
16 5 (0.31%) Cisco Certification
16 5 (0.31%) DBS Check
16 5 (0.31%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 188 (11.56%) Data Quality
2 65 (4.00%) GDPR
3 55 (3.38%) QA
4 30 (1.85%) NIST
5 18 (1.11%) Accessibility
5 18 (1.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 14 (0.86%) EU AI Act
7 11 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 10 (0.62%) GRC
9 9 (0.55%) GxP
9 9 (0.55%) HIPAA
10 8 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.37%) SLA
11 6 (0.37%) WCAG
12 5 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
13 4 (0.25%) COBIT
13 4 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 4 (0.25%) NCSC
13 4 (0.25%) Solvency II
14 3 (0.18%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 225 (13.84%) Docker
2 12 (0.74%) Active Directory
3 9 (0.55%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 6 (0.37%) IAG
5 5 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
5 5 (0.31%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.18%) BitLocker
6 3 (0.18%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.18%) Terminal Services
6 3 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.12%) Apache ZooKeeper
7 2 (0.12%) Firmware
7 2 (0.12%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.12%) VMware Workstation
8 1 (0.062%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 281 (17.28%) Kubernetes
2 186 (11.44%) Terraform
3 29 (1.78%) Ansible
4 27 (1.66%) Kubeflow
5 25 (1.54%) Grafana
6 17 (1.05%) Prometheus
7 11 (0.68%) Podman
8 6 (0.37%) Istio
9 3 (0.18%) Kibana
9 3 (0.18%) Nagios
9 3 (0.18%) NetBackup
9 3 (0.18%) Puppet
9 3 (0.18%) Rancher
9 3 (0.18%) vCenter Server
9 3 (0.18%) vMotion
10 2 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 2 (0.12%) Docker Swarm
10 2 (0.12%) Packer
10 2 (0.12%) SCCM
10 2 (0.12%) systemd
Vendors
1 203 (12.48%) Databricks
2 174 (10.70%) Microsoft
3 102 (6.27%) Google
4 94 (5.78%) OpenAI
5 50 (3.08%) Foundry
6 49 (3.01%) SAP
7 35 (2.15%) Oracle
8 32 (1.97%) ServiceNow
9 25 (1.54%) Informatica
10 16 (0.98%) Dynatrace
10 16 (0.98%) IBM
11 14 (0.86%) UiPath
12 9 (0.55%) Splunk
13 8 (0.49%) Salesforce
14 7 (0.43%) Amplitude
14 7 (0.43%) Sybase
14 7 (0.43%) Talend
15 6 (0.37%) Automation Anywhere
15 6 (0.37%) Nexthink
15 6 (0.37%) Pega