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

6 months to
5 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 92 98 108
Rank change year-on-year +6 +10 +79
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,572 849 817
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.91% 2.61% 2.15%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.44% 2.89% 2.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,007 535 564
10th Percentile £413 £400 £400
25th Percentile £493 £475 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £565 £600
Median % change year-on-year +1.77% -5.83% +2.13%
75th Percentile £688 £684 £738
90th Percentile £788 £783 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £550 £500
% change year-on-year - +10.00% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 43 23 17
10th Percentile £28.50 £26.34 £13.06
25th Percentile £42.25 £44.42 £27.75
Median hourly rate £77.00 £62.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +23.20% +35.34% -
75th Percentile £88.63 £78.73 £53.75
90th Percentile £89.75 £87.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £77.00 £75.00 £49.34
% change year-on-year +2.67% +52.01% +6.84%

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 45,646 29,409 32,455
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.59% 90.41% 85.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,910 18,256 20,327
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £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 £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,932 1,750 1,541
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.20 £14.41
25th Percentile £17.72 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £42.88
Median % change year-on-year +63.02% -41.35% +3.33%
75th Percentile £67.85 £45.79 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.03 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £22.63 £43.00
% change year-on-year +87.80% -47.37% +12.13%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 +6 1,351 £575 - 3,806
London +30 908 £589 -1.79% 2,702
UK excluding London 0 487 £550 - 1,539
Work from Home 0 419 £600 +9.09% 1,344
South East -14 134 £600 +4.35% 349
North of England -26 133 £550 +15.79% 289
Scotland +7 85 £450 -14.29% 232
North West -49 61 £600 +26.32% 172
Yorkshire -7 59 £550 +13.11% 87
Midlands -38 50 £500 -9.09% 124
South West -26 46 £525 -6.67% 236
West Midlands -31 42 £525 -8.70% 66
East of England -21 34 £488 -13.33% 241
North East -32 14 £463 +8.82% 32
Wales -11 9 £540 -20.00% 41
East Midlands -17 7 £438 -5.41% 58
Northern Ireland +4 1 £334 -52.29% 47

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 87 (5.53%) Apache Spark
2 77 (4.90%) Apache Airflow
3 52 (3.31%) Apache
4 32 (2.04%) Jupyter
5 21 (1.34%) Confluence
6 11 (0.70%) SAS
7 6 (0.38%) ArcGIS
8 5 (0.32%) IIS
8 5 (0.32%) Palantir Foundry
9 4 (0.25%) SharePoint
10 3 (0.19%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.19%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.13%) Apache Superset
11 2 (0.13%) Appian
11 2 (0.13%) CMS
11 2 (0.13%) Headless CMS
11 2 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.064%) Apache Pulsar
12 1 (0.064%) Luigi
Applications
1 29 (1.84%) Chatbot
2 10 (0.64%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.25%) CPLEX
3 4 (0.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.19%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.13%) DaVinci Resolve
5 2 (0.13%) Notion
5 2 (0.13%) NUKE
6 1 (0.064%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.064%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.064%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.064%) Simulink
6 1 (0.064%) Sketch
6 1 (0.064%) Trello
Business Applications
1 10 (0.64%) SAP IBP
2 7 (0.45%) 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
1 541 (34.41%) Azure
2 514 (32.70%) AWS
3 303 (19.27%) GCP
4 120 (7.63%) Power Platform
5 115 (7.32%) GitHub
6 106 (6.74%) Serverless
7 90 (5.73%) Amazon S3
8 89 (5.66%) Snowflake
9 82 (5.22%) AWS Lambda
10 71 (4.52%) Amazon SageMaker
11 63 (4.01%) Azure Machine Learning
12 58 (3.69%) dbt
13 57 (3.63%) Amazon Bedrock
14 56 (3.56%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 53 (3.37%) Azure DevOps
16 49 (3.12%) Azure AI
17 48 (3.05%) GitHub Actions
18 46 (2.93%) Azure Data Factory
19 45 (2.86%) Vertex AI
20 43 (2.74%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 18 (1.15%) Broadband
1 18 (1.15%) Internet
1 18 (1.15%) Network Security
2 14 (0.89%) Firewall
3 11 (0.70%) DNS
4 9 (0.57%) DHCP
4 9 (0.57%) VPN
5 8 (0.51%) HTTP
6 4 (0.25%) NAS
6 4 (0.25%) SAN
6 4 (0.25%) SMS
6 4 (0.25%) TCP/IP
6 4 (0.25%) VLAN
7 3 (0.19%) MQTT
7 3 (0.19%) SMTP
8 2 (0.13%) CTI
8 2 (0.13%) Modbus
8 2 (0.13%) PCoIP
8 2 (0.13%) Remote Desktop
9 1 (0.064%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 112 (7.12%) Power BI
2 91 (5.79%) Data Warehouse
3 90 (5.73%) Data Lake
4 80 (5.09%) Metadata
5 78 (4.96%) BigQuery
6 66 (4.20%) Big Data
7 52 (3.31%) Amazon Redshift
8 49 (3.12%) NoSQL
9 48 (3.05%) Delta Lake
10 43 (2.74%) Tableau
11 35 (2.23%) Amazon Athena
12 31 (1.97%) PostgreSQL
13 29 (1.84%) Relational Database
14 24 (1.53%) MongoDB
15 23 (1.46%) Hadoop
16 21 (1.34%) Neo4j
17 19 (1.21%) Data Mining
18 18 (1.15%) Looker
19 16 (1.02%) Semantic Layer
20 15 (0.95%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 91 (5.79%) Git
2 52 (3.31%) GitLab
3 50 (3.18%) MLflow
4 46 (2.93%) JIRA
5 19 (1.21%) Jenkins
6 11 (0.70%) Claude Code
7 8 (0.51%) Selenium
7 8 (0.51%) Vite
8 6 (0.38%) ERwin
9 5 (0.32%) Cypress.io
9 5 (0.32%) JMeter
9 5 (0.32%) RStudio
10 3 (0.19%) ER Studio
10 3 (0.19%) Pylint
10 3 (0.19%) REST Assured
10 3 (0.19%) Spinnaker
11 2 (0.13%) Locust
11 2 (0.13%) PyCharm
11 2 (0.13%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.13%) Terragrunt
General
1 335 (21.31%) Social Skills
2 288 (18.32%) Finance
3 226 (14.38%) Analytical Skills
4 132 (8.40%) Public Sector
5 110 (7.00%) Banking
6 43 (2.74%) Marketing
7 38 (2.42%) Retail
8 31 (1.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 28 (1.78%) Pharmaceutical
9 28 (1.78%) Telecoms
10 25 (1.59%) Documentation Skills
11 24 (1.53%) Legal
12 21 (1.34%) Aerospace
12 21 (1.34%) Front Office
13 20 (1.27%) Influencing Skills
13 20 (1.27%) Manufacturing
14 19 (1.21%) Financial Institution
15 16 (1.02%) Investment Banking
15 16 (1.02%) Law
16 14 (0.89%) Billing
Job Titles
1 258 (16.41%) Architect
1 258 (16.41%) Senior
2 202 (12.85%) Data Scientist
3 170 (10.81%) Data Engineer
4 167 (10.62%) Lead
5 139 (8.84%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
6 98 (6.23%) Machine Learning Engineer
7 81 (5.15%) Developer
8 74 (4.71%) Data Architect
8 74 (4.71%) Solutions Architect
9 72 (4.58%) Python Engineer
10 63 (4.01%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
11 60 (3.82%) Analyst
12 56 (3.56%) Software Engineer
13 52 (3.31%) Platform Engineer
14 49 (3.12%) Security Architect
15 47 (2.99%) Senior Data Engineer
16 44 (2.80%) Consultant
16 44 (2.80%) DevOps Engineer
17 43 (2.74%) Senior Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 189 (12.02%) Terraform
2 119 (7.57%) PyTorch
3 110 (7.00%) Kafka
4 89 (5.66%) PySpark
5 86 (5.47%) TensorFlow
6 72 (4.58%) scikit-learn
7 71 (4.52%) REST
8 66 (4.20%) LangChain
9 65 (4.13%) Pandas
10 61 (3.88%) React
11 50 (3.18%) NumPy
12 41 (2.61%) pytest
13 37 (2.35%) .NET
14 33 (2.10%) LangGraph
15 32 (2.04%) FastAPI
16 27 (1.72%) JSON
17 26 (1.65%) Hugging Face
18 25 (1.59%) RESTful
19 23 (1.46%) Model Context Protocol
20 20 (1.27%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 195 (12.40%) Cloud Native
2 163 (10.37%) AI Agents
3 100 (6.36%) Algorithms
4 68 (4.33%) Product Ownership
5 67 (4.26%) Onboarding
6 63 (4.01%) Distributed Systems
7 35 (2.23%) Enterprise Software
8 33 (2.10%) Data Structures
9 25 (1.59%) Life Science
10 23 (1.46%) Hybrid Cloud
11 21 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
12 19 (1.21%) CMDB
13 17 (1.08%) Management Information System
13 17 (1.08%) Social Media
14 16 (1.02%) IoT
15 15 (0.95%) Taxonomies
15 15 (0.95%) Virtual Team
16 14 (0.89%) Public Cloud
17 13 (0.83%) Augmented Reality
17 13 (0.83%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 46 (2.93%) Linux
2 17 (1.08%) Windows
3 14 (0.89%) 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 1,282 (81.55%) AI
2 575 (36.58%) Data Science
3 498 (31.68%) CI/CD
4 466 (29.64%) Analytics
5 421 (26.78%) LLM
6 376 (23.92%) Generative AI
7 347 (22.07%) Data Pipeline
8 331 (21.06%) Agile
9 325 (20.67%) DevOps
10 281 (17.88%) MLOps
11 275 (17.49%) Data Engineering
12 249 (15.84%) Software Engineering
13 236 (15.01%) Decision-Making
14 232 (14.76%) Use Case
15 220 (13.99%) Stakeholder Management
16 218 (13.87%) Roadmaps
17 205 (13.04%) Infrastructure as Code
18 204 (12.98%) Problem-Solving
19 198 (12.60%) Data Modelling
20 190 (12.09%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 856 (54.45%) Python
2 394 (25.06%) SQL
3 110 (7.00%) Java
4 74 (4.71%) JavaScript
5 54 (3.44%) TypeScript
6 44 (2.80%) R
7 42 (2.67%) C#
8 41 (2.61%) Bash
9 28 (1.78%) PowerShell
10 21 (1.34%) C++
11 20 (1.27%) Scala
12 18 (1.15%) Bicep
13 15 (0.95%) Go
14 11 (0.70%) PL/SQL
15 9 (0.57%) Cypher
15 9 (0.57%) Shell Script
16 6 (0.38%) Gremlin
16 6 (0.38%) Kotlin
16 6 (0.38%) SPARQL
17 5 (0.32%) Perl
Qualifications
1 297 (18.89%) Security Cleared
2 221 (14.06%) SC Cleared
3 119 (7.57%) Degree
4 57 (3.63%) DV Cleared
5 54 (3.44%) Computer Science Degree
6 43 (2.74%) AWS Certification
7 42 (2.67%) Master's Degree
8 35 (2.23%) CISSP
9 34 (2.16%) BPSS Clearance
10 27 (1.72%) PhD
11 23 (1.46%) Azure Certification
12 17 (1.08%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 16 (1.02%) CISM
14 15 (0.95%) TOGAF Certification
15 11 (0.70%) Cisco Certification
16 10 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
17 9 (0.57%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
18 7 (0.45%) PMP
19 6 (0.38%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 5 (0.32%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 215 (13.68%) Data Quality
2 64 (4.07%) GDPR
3 58 (3.69%) QA
4 31 (1.97%) NIST
5 21 (1.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 16 (1.02%) Accessibility
7 15 (0.95%) EU AI Act
8 10 (0.64%) SLA
9 9 (0.57%) GRC
9 9 (0.57%) GxP
9 9 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 9 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 8 (0.51%) HIPAA
11 6 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.38%) WCAG
12 5 (0.32%) NCSC
12 5 (0.32%) Solvency II
13 4 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 4 (0.25%) COBIT
13 4 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 211 (13.42%) Docker
2 15 (0.95%) Active Directory
3 11 (0.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.64%) IAG
5 8 (0.51%) Hyper-V
6 7 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
7 5 (0.32%) NFS
8 3 (0.19%) BitLocker
8 3 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 3 (0.19%) Terminal Services
8 3 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.13%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 2 (0.13%) Firmware
9 2 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.13%) VMware Workstation
10 1 (0.064%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 276 (17.56%) Kubernetes
2 38 (2.42%) Ansible
3 26 (1.65%) Grafana
3 26 (1.65%) Kubeflow
4 18 (1.15%) Prometheus
5 6 (0.38%) Istio
6 5 (0.32%) Podman
7 4 (0.25%) 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%) Docker Swarm
9 2 (0.13%) Packer
9 2 (0.13%) SCCM
10 1 (0.064%) logstash
Vendors
1 210 (13.36%) Databricks
2 163 (10.37%) Microsoft
3 102 (6.49%) Google
4 64 (4.07%) OpenAI
5 46 (2.93%) SAP
6 36 (2.29%) ServiceNow
7 32 (2.04%) Foundry
8 31 (1.97%) Oracle
9 24 (1.53%) Informatica
10 17 (1.08%) Dynatrace
11 13 (0.83%) Splunk
12 12 (0.76%) VMware
13 11 (0.70%) IBM
14 10 (0.64%) Nexthink
14 10 (0.64%) UiPath
15 9 (0.57%) Salesforce
16 7 (0.45%) Cisco
16 7 (0.45%) Sybase
17 6 (0.38%) Pega
18 5 (0.32%) Palantir