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 15 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 80 105 189
Rank change year-on-year +25 +84 +18
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,111 820 622
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.13% 2.24% 1.33%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.48% 2.60% 1.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 733 537 456
10th Percentile £402 £391 £381
25th Percentile £473 £475 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +4.35% -7.63%
75th Percentile £688 £725 £713
90th Percentile £775 £800 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £517 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.40% -4.76% -10.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 14 30
10th Percentile £30.00 £13.06 £42.50
25th Percentile £42.52 £14.17 -
Median hourly rate £55.00 £27.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +100.00% -40.45% -11.19%
75th Percentile £84.75 £46.18 £47.17
90th Percentile £113.50 £51.48 £65.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £46.18 £46.18
% change year-on-year +40.75% - -12.04%

All Process and 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 31,921 31,585 41,489
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.90% 86.22% 88.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,990 19,012 27,981
10th Percentile £295 £310 £308
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.41% -3.18%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,098 1,120 1,596
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.10 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.12 £18.95
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £43.42
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -19.38% +24.04%
75th Percentile £44.07 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.00 £73.58 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.63 £33.27 £43.54
% change year-on-year -31.98% -23.59% +47.59%

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 15 November 2025.

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 15 November 2025.

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 15 November 2025. 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 +20 939 £575 -4.17% 2,123
London +15 610 £625 -3.10% 1,345
UK excluding London +46 371 £517 +3.40% 847
Work from Home +33 363 £550 +6.64% 1,121
North of England -9 92 £480 -2.44% 243
South East +39 87 £525 - 273
Scotland +33 63 £503 +11.67% 47
East of England +18 61 £550 +10.00% 60
North West -6 49 £458 -3.99% 162
Yorkshire -9 38 £525 - 64
Midlands -7 37 £511 +20.18% 112
West Midlands -6 28 £520 +15.44% 74
South West -17 26 £550 -15.38% 75
Wales +5 10 £700 +185.71% 19
East Midlands -12 8 £410 +15.17% 36
North East -17 6 £450 -9.09% 19
Northern Ireland -3 1 £700 - 19

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 92 (8.28%) Apache Spark
2 66 (5.94%) Apache Airflow
3 29 (2.61%) Apache
4 25 (2.25%) Jupyter
5 10 (0.90%) Confluence
6 9 (0.81%) SAS
7 8 (0.72%) Apache Pig
8 6 (0.54%) GeoServer
8 6 (0.54%) Smallworld
9 4 (0.36%) Appian
9 4 (0.36%) IIS
9 4 (0.36%) SharePoint
10 3 (0.27%) CMS
11 2 (0.18%) Camunda
12 1 (0.090%) Apache Solr
12 1 (0.090%) Apache Superset
12 1 (0.090%) ArcGIS
12 1 (0.090%) Microsoft Exchange
12 1 (0.090%) nginx
12 1 (0.090%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 44 (3.96%) Chatbot
2 17 (1.53%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (1.08%) Microsoft Office
4 8 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.63%) Simulink
6 6 (0.54%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.090%) Adobe XD
7 1 (0.090%) GNU Octave
7 1 (0.090%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.090%) Sketch
7 1 (0.090%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.090%) Trello
Business Applications
1 11 (0.99%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.18%) Distributed Ledger
3 2 (0.18%) SAP ERP
3 2 (0.18%) Teamcenter
4 1 (0.090%) IBM Planning Analytics
4 1 (0.090%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.090%) SAP GRC
4 1 (0.090%) Shopify
4 1 (0.090%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 463 (41.67%) Azure
2 378 (34.02%) AWS
3 219 (19.71%) GCP
4 106 (9.54%) Power Platform
5 89 (8.01%) GitHub
5 89 (8.01%) Serverless
6 84 (7.56%) Azure Machine Learning
7 68 (6.12%) Azure DevOps
8 59 (5.31%) Amazon SageMaker
9 58 (5.22%) Snowflake
10 57 (5.13%) Amazon S3
11 54 (4.86%) Vertex AI
12 49 (4.41%) Azure AI
12 49 (4.41%) Azure AKS
13 48 (4.32%) Azure Data Factory
14 47 (4.23%) AWS Lambda
15 46 (4.14%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 38 (3.42%) GitHub Actions
17 35 (3.15%) Amazon Bedrock
17 35 (3.15%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 14 (1.26%) HTTP
1 14 (1.26%) Network Security
2 13 (1.17%) DNS
3 9 (0.81%) SSL
4 8 (0.72%) Ethernet
4 8 (0.72%) FTP
4 8 (0.72%) SMTP
5 7 (0.63%) Internet
6 6 (0.54%) Firewall
7 5 (0.45%) 5G
7 5 (0.45%) LTE
7 5 (0.45%) VoIP
8 4 (0.36%) Radio Access Network
8 4 (0.36%) VPN
9 3 (0.27%) 4G
9 3 (0.27%) DOCSIS
9 3 (0.27%) GPON
9 3 (0.27%) MPLS
9 3 (0.27%) xDSL
10 2 (0.18%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 95 (8.55%) Power BI
2 78 (7.02%) Data Warehouse
3 67 (6.03%) Big Data
4 59 (5.31%) Data Lake
5 55 (4.95%) NoSQL
5 55 (4.95%) PostgreSQL
6 44 (3.96%) BigQuery
7 40 (3.60%) Tableau
8 35 (3.15%) Metadata
9 30 (2.70%) Hadoop
10 25 (2.25%) MongoDB
11 21 (1.89%) Data Mining
11 21 (1.89%) Elasticsearch
12 20 (1.80%) Pinecone
13 17 (1.53%) Relational Database
14 16 (1.44%) Amazon Athena
15 15 (1.35%) Amazon Redshift
16 14 (1.26%) DynamoDB
17 13 (1.17%) Azure SQL Database
17 13 (1.17%) Geospatial Data
Development Applications
1 93 (8.37%) Git
2 61 (5.49%) MLflow
3 54 (4.86%) Jenkins
4 34 (3.06%) GitLab
5 24 (2.16%) JIRA
6 18 (1.62%) Selenium
7 16 (1.44%) JMeter
8 12 (1.08%) SonarQube
9 10 (0.90%) JUnit
10 8 (0.72%) Cypress.io
11 7 (0.63%) Visual Studio
12 6 (0.54%) Mockito
12 6 (0.54%) Postman
12 6 (0.54%) PyCharm
13 5 (0.45%) Artifactory
13 5 (0.45%) Cucumber
13 5 (0.45%) Gradle
13 5 (0.45%) MSTest
14 4 (0.36%) Android Studio
14 4 (0.36%) RStudio
General
1 323 (29.07%) Social Skills
2 209 (18.81%) Finance
3 128 (11.52%) Analytical Skills
4 95 (8.55%) Public Sector
5 73 (6.57%) Banking
6 51 (4.59%) Marketing
7 44 (3.96%) Pharmaceutical
8 39 (3.51%) Retail
9 31 (2.79%) Legal
10 30 (2.70%) Telecoms
11 27 (2.43%) Investment Banking
12 24 (2.16%) Manufacturing
13 21 (1.89%) Front Office
14 19 (1.71%) Documentation Skills
15 17 (1.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 16 (1.44%) Influencing Skills
17 13 (1.17%) Electronics
18 11 (0.99%) Financial Institution
19 10 (0.90%) Aerospace
19 10 (0.90%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 160 (14.40%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
2 151 (13.59%) Data Scientist
3 149 (13.41%) Architect
4 118 (10.62%) Developer
5 113 (10.17%) Senior
6 112 (10.08%) Data Engineer
7 67 (6.03%) Lead
8 55 (4.95%) Machine Learning Engineer
9 52 (4.68%) Analyst
9 52 (4.68%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
10 51 (4.59%) Python Engineer
11 42 (3.78%) Software Engineer
12 36 (3.24%) Data Architect
13 33 (2.97%) Gen AI Engineer
14 32 (2.88%) Azure Engineer
14 32 (2.88%) Solutions Architect
15 29 (2.61%) Consultant
16 27 (2.43%) Python Developer
17 24 (2.16%) Data Analyst
17 24 (2.16%) Product Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 179 (16.11%) PyTorch
2 158 (14.22%) TensorFlow
3 106 (9.54%) scikit-learn
4 101 (9.09%) Pandas
5 81 (7.29%) FastAPI
5 81 (7.29%) LangChain
6 66 (5.94%) Kafka
7 65 (5.85%) NumPy
8 64 (5.76%) React
9 57 (5.13%) Hugging Face
9 57 (5.13%) RESTful
10 48 (4.32%) LangGraph
11 45 (4.05%) REST
12 44 (3.96%) PySpark
13 35 (3.15%) Flask
14 34 (3.06%) .NET
14 34 (3.06%) Node.js
15 30 (2.70%) pytest
16 21 (1.89%) AngularJS
17 20 (1.80%) OpenCV
Miscellaneous
1 173 (15.57%) Algorithms
2 140 (12.60%) Cloud Native
3 89 (8.01%) AI Agents
4 45 (4.05%) Product Ownership
5 39 (3.51%) Distributed Systems
6 36 (3.24%) Data Protection Act
7 34 (3.06%) Distributed Computing
7 34 (3.06%) Onboarding
8 26 (2.34%) Genomics
8 26 (2.34%) Legacy Systems
9 24 (2.16%) Data Structures
10 23 (2.07%) Life Science
11 21 (1.89%) Analytical Mindset
12 17 (1.53%) Enterprise Software
12 17 (1.53%) Hybrid Cloud
12 17 (1.53%) Management Information System
13 16 (1.44%) Greenfield Project
14 12 (1.08%) IoT
15 10 (0.90%) Cyber Threat
15 10 (0.90%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 29 (2.61%) Linux
2 11 (0.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 9 (0.81%) Ubuntu
3 9 (0.81%) VMS
4 8 (0.72%) Unix
4 8 (0.72%) Windows
5 5 (0.45%) Android
5 5 (0.45%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.18%) Robot Operating System
7 1 (0.090%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 816 (73.45%) AI
2 438 (39.42%) Data Science
3 315 (28.35%) LLM
4 296 (26.64%) CI/CD
5 294 (26.46%) Analytics
6 283 (25.47%) Agile
7 262 (23.58%) DevOps
8 206 (18.54%) Data Pipeline
9 202 (18.18%) Generative AI
10 191 (17.19%) Problem-Solving
11 188 (16.92%) MLOps
12 178 (16.02%) Data Engineering
13 169 (15.21%) Natural Language Processing
14 158 (14.22%) Software Engineering
15 140 (12.60%) Containerisation
16 134 (12.06%) Computer Science
16 134 (12.06%) Visualisation
17 132 (11.88%) Use Case
18 129 (11.61%) Data Modelling
19 120 (10.80%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 698 (62.83%) Python
2 267 (24.03%) SQL
3 81 (7.29%) R
4 76 (6.84%) Java
5 56 (5.04%) JavaScript
6 53 (4.77%) TypeScript
7 40 (3.60%) C#
8 37 (3.33%) C++
9 35 (3.15%) PowerShell
10 31 (2.79%) Scala
11 19 (1.71%) Bash
11 19 (1.71%) Bicep
12 16 (1.44%) C
13 15 (1.35%) MATLAB
14 10 (0.90%) Go
15 7 (0.63%) Shell Script
15 7 (0.63%) SystemVerilog
15 7 (0.63%) Tcl
16 5 (0.45%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 3 (0.27%) Rust
Qualifications
1 183 (16.47%) Degree
2 152 (13.68%) Security Cleared
3 110 (9.90%) SC Cleared
4 73 (6.57%) Master's Degree
5 45 (4.05%) Computer Science Degree
5 45 (4.05%) PhD
6 44 (3.96%) MCP
7 27 (2.43%) DV Cleared
8 24 (2.16%) Azure Certification
9 17 (1.53%) AWS Certification
10 13 (1.17%) BPSS Clearance
11 10 (0.90%) CISSP
12 7 (0.63%) HNC
12 7 (0.63%) HND
13 4 (0.36%) Cisco Certification
13 4 (0.36%) CISM
13 4 (0.36%) ISTQB
13 4 (0.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 4 (0.36%) Microsoft Certification
13 4 (0.36%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 68 (6.12%) Data Quality
2 56 (5.04%) GDPR
3 39 (3.51%) NIST
4 38 (3.42%) QA
5 31 (2.79%) EU AI Act
6 23 (2.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 21 (1.89%) Accessibility
8 8 (0.72%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 7 (0.63%) DO-254
10 5 (0.45%) HIPAA
10 5 (0.45%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 5 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 4 (0.36%) Disclosure Scotland
11 4 (0.36%) GRC
11 4 (0.36%) NCSC
11 4 (0.36%) SOC 2
12 3 (0.27%) PCI DSS
13 2 (0.18%) EMIR
13 2 (0.18%) JSP 440
13 2 (0.18%) NIST 800
System Software
1 184 (16.56%) Docker
2 11 (0.99%) Active Directory
2 11 (0.99%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (0.63%) Firmware
4 3 (0.27%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.18%) GPFS
5 2 (0.18%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.18%) KVM
5 2 (0.18%) Lustre
5 2 (0.18%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.090%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 184 (16.56%) Kubernetes
2 113 (10.17%) Terraform
3 33 (2.97%) Grafana
4 26 (2.34%) Ansible
5 22 (1.98%) Kubeflow
6 16 (1.44%) Prometheus
7 15 (1.35%) Kibana
8 11 (0.99%) SCOM
9 10 (0.90%) logstash
10 9 (0.81%) ITRS Geneos
11 8 (0.72%) Argo
12 5 (0.45%) Kustomize
13 4 (0.36%) Cilium
13 4 (0.36%) Progress Chef
13 4 (0.36%) Rsyslog
14 3 (0.27%) Single Sign-On
14 3 (0.27%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
15 2 (0.18%) Amdocs OSS
15 2 (0.18%) Podman
16 1 (0.090%) Opsgenie
Vendors
1 158 (14.22%) Microsoft
2 132 (11.88%) Databricks
3 97 (8.73%) Google
4 58 (5.22%) OpenAI
5 37 (3.33%) Foundry
6 35 (3.15%) SAP
7 21 (1.89%) Splunk
8 14 (1.26%) Salesforce
9 12 (1.08%) ServiceNow
10 11 (0.99%) NVIDIA
10 11 (0.99%) Oracle
11 9 (0.81%) Solace
11 9 (0.81%) TIBCO
12 8 (0.72%) Intel
12 8 (0.72%) Palantir
13 7 (0.63%) Cisco
13 7 (0.63%) Informatica
13 7 (0.63%) Microsemi
13 7 (0.63%) Pega
13 7 (0.63%) Xilinx