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

6 months to
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 92 95 113
Rank change year-on-year +3 +18 +79
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,591 913 810
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.91% 2.77% 2.12%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.44% 3.06% 2.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,011 584 549
10th Percentile £413 £405 £400
25th Percentile £490 £475 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% -8.33% +2.13%
75th Percentile £688 £676 £731
90th Percentile £788 £775 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £538 £500
% change year-on-year +2.33% +7.50% -9.09%
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 46,183 29,816 32,769
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.50% 90.52% 85.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,080 18,531 20,147
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
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 3,092 1,799 1,460
10th Percentile £13.85 £14.25 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.42 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.50 £44.68 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £67.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.71 £22.63 £43.00
% change year-on-year +84.31% -47.37% +5.81%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 -2 1,368 £575 +0.70% 7,027
London +21 913 £588 -2.08% 4,798
UK excluding London -24 511 £550 +2.33% 2,751
Work from Home -2 423 £600 +9.09% 2,665
South East -11 140 £600 +6.67% 630
North of England -37 139 £550 +13.40% 543
Scotland +13 96 £450 -14.29% 372
Yorkshire -10 64 £550 +9.24% 134
North West -38 59 £600 +26.32% 347
South West -26 50 £513 -10.87% 377
Midlands -44 46 £550 +7.00% 251
West Midlands -47 38 £563 +9.44% 141
East of England -28 36 £463 -19.57% 406
North East -31 17 £488 +14.71% 66
Wales -9 8 £540 -20.00% 70
East Midlands -8 6 £425 -8.11% 110
Northern Ireland +3 1 £334 -52.29% 125

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 89 (5.59%) Apache Spark
2 79 (4.97%) Apache Airflow
3 54 (3.39%) Apache
4 35 (2.20%) Jupyter
5 23 (1.45%) Confluence
6 11 (0.69%) SAS
7 7 (0.44%) IIS
8 6 (0.38%) ArcGIS
9 5 (0.31%) 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 (0.063%) Apache Pulsar
13 1 (0.063%) Luigi
13 1 (0.063%) nginx
Applications
1 28 (1.76%) Chatbot
2 8 (0.50%) 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 (0.063%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.063%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.063%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.063%) Simulink
5 1 (0.063%) Sketch
5 1 (0.063%) Trello
Business Applications
1 10 (0.63%) SAP IBP
2 8 (0.50%) 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 (0.063%) Actimize
5 1 (0.063%) Endur
5 1 (0.063%) NetSuite
5 1 (0.063%) OpenLink RightAngle
5 1 (0.063%) Oracle Cash Management
5 1 (0.063%) Oracle ERP
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
1 534 (33.56%) Azure
2 518 (32.56%) AWS
3 308 (19.36%) GCP
4 114 (7.17%) Power Platform
5 110 (6.91%) GitHub
6 102 (6.41%) Serverless
7 91 (5.72%) Snowflake
8 90 (5.66%) Amazon S3
9 82 (5.15%) AWS Lambda
10 73 (4.59%) Amazon SageMaker
11 62 (3.90%) dbt
12 61 (3.83%) Amazon Bedrock
12 61 (3.83%) Azure Machine Learning
13 50 (3.14%) Azure AI
14 49 (3.08%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 47 (2.95%) Azure DevOps
15 47 (2.95%) Vertex AI
16 46 (2.89%) Azure Data Factory
17 43 (2.70%) SaaS
18 42 (2.64%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 20 (1.26%) Network Security
2 19 (1.19%) Broadband
3 18 (1.13%) Internet
4 12 (0.75%) DNS
4 12 (0.75%) HTTP
5 11 (0.69%) Firewall
6 9 (0.57%) DHCP
6 9 (0.57%) VPN
7 5 (0.31%) 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
1 106 (6.66%) Power BI
2 95 (5.97%) Data Warehouse
3 91 (5.72%) Data Lake
4 84 (5.28%) Metadata
5 80 (5.03%) BigQuery
6 63 (3.96%) Big Data
7 52 (3.27%) Amazon Redshift
8 48 (3.02%) Delta Lake
9 45 (2.83%) NoSQL
10 43 (2.70%) Tableau
11 35 (2.20%) Amazon Athena
11 35 (2.20%) PostgreSQL
12 29 (1.82%) Relational Database
13 23 (1.45%) Neo4j
14 22 (1.38%) MongoDB
15 19 (1.19%) Data Mining
15 19 (1.19%) Hadoop
16 18 (1.13%) Looker
17 17 (1.07%) Elasticsearch
18 16 (1.01%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 103 (6.47%) Git
2 54 (3.39%) GitLab
3 47 (2.95%) JIRA
4 44 (2.77%) MLflow
5 17 (1.07%) Jenkins
6 12 (0.75%) Claude Code
7 7 (0.44%) Selenium
7 7 (0.44%) Vite
8 6 (0.38%) ERwin
9 5 (0.31%) Cypress.io
9 5 (0.31%) RStudio
10 4 (0.25%) JMeter
11 3 (0.19%) ER Studio
11 3 (0.19%) Pylint
12 2 (0.13%) Locust
12 2 (0.13%) NUnit
12 2 (0.13%) Postman
12 2 (0.13%) REST Assured
12 2 (0.13%) Spinnaker
12 2 (0.13%) Terragrunt
General
1 348 (21.87%) Social Skills
2 305 (19.17%) Finance
3 234 (14.71%) Analytical Skills
4 142 (8.93%) Public Sector
5 117 (7.35%) Banking
6 40 (2.51%) Marketing
7 36 (2.26%) Retail
8 30 (1.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 29 (1.82%) Pharmaceutical
10 27 (1.70%) Telecoms
11 24 (1.51%) Legal
12 23 (1.45%) Documentation Skills
12 23 (1.45%) Front Office
12 23 (1.45%) Manufacturing
13 22 (1.38%) Aerospace
14 20 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
15 18 (1.13%) Financial Institution
15 18 (1.13%) Investment Banking
16 17 (1.07%) Law
17 14 (0.88%) Billing
Job Titles
1 278 (17.47%) Senior
2 259 (16.28%) Architect
3 197 (12.38%) Data Scientist
4 178 (11.19%) Data Engineer
5 172 (10.81%) Lead
6 148 (9.30%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 97 (6.10%) Machine Learning Engineer
8 75 (4.71%) Developer
8 75 (4.71%) Python Engineer
9 73 (4.59%) Solutions Architect
10 72 (4.53%) Data Architect
11 65 (4.09%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
12 62 (3.90%) Analyst
13 58 (3.65%) Software Engineer
14 54 (3.39%) Platform Engineer
15 50 (3.14%) Security Architect
15 50 (3.14%) Senior Data Engineer
16 49 (3.08%) Senior Data Scientist
17 45 (2.83%) DevOps Engineer
18 41 (2.58%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 195 (12.26%) Terraform
2 110 (6.91%) PyTorch
3 106 (6.66%) Kafka
4 92 (5.78%) PySpark
5 79 (4.97%) TensorFlow
6 72 (4.53%) REST
7 68 (4.27%) LangChain
8 66 (4.15%) scikit-learn
9 63 (3.96%) Pandas
10 58 (3.65%) React
11 47 (2.95%) NumPy
12 46 (2.89%) pytest
13 39 (2.45%) .NET
14 37 (2.33%) LangGraph
15 35 (2.20%) FastAPI
16 29 (1.82%) JSON
17 26 (1.63%) Hugging Face
18 24 (1.51%) Model Context Protocol
18 24 (1.51%) RESTful
19 20 (1.26%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 193 (12.13%) Cloud Native
2 170 (10.69%) AI Agents
3 97 (6.10%) Algorithms
4 68 (4.27%) Onboarding
4 68 (4.27%) Product Ownership
5 64 (4.02%) Distributed Systems
6 38 (2.39%) Enterprise Software
7 37 (2.33%) Data Structures
8 27 (1.70%) Life Science
9 25 (1.57%) Data Protection Act
10 23 (1.45%) Hybrid Cloud
11 21 (1.32%) Management Information System
12 18 (1.13%) CMDB
13 17 (1.07%) Social Media
13 17 (1.07%) Taxonomies
14 16 (1.01%) Virtual Team
15 15 (0.94%) Analytical Mindset
16 14 (0.88%) Clustering
16 14 (0.88%) Cyber Threat
16 14 (0.88%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 46 (2.89%) Linux
2 19 (1.19%) Windows
3 17 (1.07%) 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 (0.063%) Robot Operating System
7 1 (0.063%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,313 (82.53%) AI
2 580 (36.46%) Data Science
3 496 (31.18%) CI/CD
4 484 (30.42%) Analytics
5 435 (27.34%) LLM
6 395 (24.83%) Generative AI
7 354 (22.25%) Data Pipeline
8 332 (20.87%) Agile
9 322 (20.24%) DevOps
10 288 (18.10%) MLOps
11 279 (17.54%) Data Engineering
12 262 (16.47%) Software Engineering
13 251 (15.78%) Decision-Making
14 237 (14.90%) Use Case
15 235 (14.77%) Stakeholder Management
16 228 (14.33%) Roadmaps
17 212 (13.32%) Infrastructure as Code
18 207 (13.01%) Problem-Solving
19 201 (12.63%) Data Modelling
20 193 (12.13%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Programming Languages
1 856 (53.80%) Python
2 393 (24.70%) SQL
3 114 (7.17%) Java
4 77 (4.84%) JavaScript
5 57 (3.58%) TypeScript
6 40 (2.51%) Bash
7 39 (2.45%) C#
7 39 (2.45%) R
8 30 (1.89%) PowerShell
9 23 (1.45%) Scala
10 21 (1.32%) C++
11 18 (1.13%) Go
12 14 (0.88%) Bicep
13 12 (0.75%) Shell Script
14 11 (0.69%) Cypher
14 11 (0.69%) PL/SQL
15 7 (0.44%) Gremlin
15 7 (0.44%) SPARQL
16 6 (0.38%) Kotlin
17 5 (0.31%) Perl
Qualifications
1 316 (19.86%) Security Cleared
2 242 (15.21%) SC Cleared
3 122 (7.67%) Degree
4 58 (3.65%) DV Cleared
5 54 (3.39%) Computer Science Degree
6 45 (2.83%) AWS Certification
7 38 (2.39%) Master's Degree
8 37 (2.33%) BPSS Clearance
9 35 (2.20%) CISSP
10 28 (1.76%) PhD
11 25 (1.57%) Azure Certification
12 18 (1.13%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 16 (1.01%) CISM
14 15 (0.94%) TOGAF Certification
15 11 (0.69%) Cisco Certification
16 10 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
17 9 (0.57%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
18 7 (0.44%) Microsoft Certified Professional
18 7 (0.44%) PMP
19 6 (0.38%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 222 (13.95%) Data Quality
2 61 (3.83%) GDPR
3 60 (3.77%) QA
4 32 (2.01%) NIST
5 19 (1.19%) Accessibility
6 18 (1.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 16 (1.01%) EU AI Act
8 10 (0.63%) SLA
9 9 (0.57%) GRC
9 9 (0.57%) GxP
9 9 (0.57%) HIPAA
9 9 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 9 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 6 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
11 5 (0.31%) NCSC
11 5 (0.31%) Solvency II
11 5 (0.31%) WCAG
12 4 (0.25%) Basel III
12 4 (0.25%) COBIT
12 4 (0.25%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 213 (13.39%) Docker
2 15 (0.94%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.63%) Hyper-V
4 10 (0.63%) IAG
5 8 (0.50%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.44%) NFS
7 5 (0.31%) 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 (0.063%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 281 (17.66%) Kubernetes
2 40 (2.51%) Ansible
3 28 (1.76%) Kubeflow
4 26 (1.63%) Grafana
5 19 (1.19%) Prometheus
6 6 (0.38%) Istio
7 5 (0.31%) Podman
7 5 (0.31%) 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 (0.063%) Docker Swarm
10 1 (0.063%) QRadar
Vendors
1 206 (12.95%) Databricks
2 161 (10.12%) Microsoft
3 103 (6.47%) Google
4 62 (3.90%) OpenAI
5 44 (2.77%) SAP
6 34 (2.14%) ServiceNow
7 30 (1.89%) Foundry
8 29 (1.82%) Oracle
9 22 (1.38%) Informatica
10 17 (1.07%) Dynatrace
11 14 (0.88%) VMware
12 13 (0.82%) Splunk
13 11 (0.69%) IBM
13 11 (0.69%) Salesforce
14 10 (0.63%) Nexthink
14 10 (0.63%) UiPath
15 7 (0.44%) Cisco
15 7 (0.44%) Sybase
16 6 (0.38%) Pega
17 5 (0.31%) New Relic