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

6 months to
29 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 84 106 120
Rank change year-on-year +22 +14 +84
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,608 822 775
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.06% 2.50% 1.95%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.60% 2.77% 2.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,016 514 551
10th Percentile £413 £400 £410
25th Percentile £492 £463 £498
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £553 £593
Median % change year-on-year +4.07% -6.75% +0.85%
75th Percentile £700 £675 £750
90th Percentile £788 £800 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £550 £501
% change year-on-year - +9.87% -8.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 45 23 19
10th Percentile £36.00 £33.80 £13.06
25th Percentile £50.00 £52.86 £24.74
Median hourly rate £72.50 £75.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% +62.41% -
75th Percentile £83.75 £81.01 £53.75
90th Percentile £88.75 £88.00 £75.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.72 £77.50 £49.34
% change year-on-year -10.04% +57.07% +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 44,620 29,684 34,056
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.91% 90.46% 85.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,627 18,648 21,888
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.11%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £734 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,682 1,621 1,980
10th Percentile £14.64 £14.20 £13.69
25th Percentile £19.73 £17.33 £17.74
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £82.35 £68.75 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.57 £40.33
% change year-on-year +86.55% -41.56% -

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 +18 1,364 £575 +1.77% 1,841
London +35 911 £590 +2.61% 1,229
UK excluding London -5 505 £550 - 815
Work from Home +4 431 £600 +9.09% 691
North of England -12 138 £561 +15.13% 182
South East -20 130 £600 +6.67% 259
Scotland +30 88 £430 -14.00% 68
North West -25 71 £599 +22.23% 108
Midlands -26 64 £550 +10.00% 72
Yorkshire -6 54 £550 +12.19% 45
West Midlands -29 51 £550 -6.38% 41
South West -33 45 £528 -6.22% 100
East of England -25 30 £500 -20.00% 100
Wales -4 16 £540 -20.00% 29
North East -38 15 £463 +8.82% 31
East Midlands -9 11 £700 +64.71% 31
Northern Ireland - 1 £334 - 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 86 (5.35%) Apache Spark
2 71 (4.42%) Apache Airflow
3 43 (2.67%) Apache
4 32 (1.99%) Jupyter
5 21 (1.31%) Confluence
6 8 (0.50%) SAS
7 7 (0.44%) ArcGIS
8 5 (0.31%) CMS
8 5 (0.31%) Headless CMS
8 5 (0.31%) Palantir Foundry
8 5 (0.31%) SharePoint
9 4 (0.25%) Appian
10 3 (0.19%) Microsoft Exchange
11 2 (0.12%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.062%) Apache Pulsar
12 1 (0.062%) Apache Superset
12 1 (0.062%) Luigi
12 1 (0.062%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 28 (1.74%) Chatbot
2 12 (0.75%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (0.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
4 5 (0.31%) CPLEX
4 5 (0.31%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.12%) Notion
6 1 (0.062%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.062%) Simulink
6 1 (0.062%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 11 (0.68%) SAP IBP
2 8 (0.50%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
4 2 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.062%) NetSuite
5 1 (0.062%) OpenText VIM for SAP
5 1 (0.062%) Oracle Cash Management
5 1 (0.062%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.062%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.062%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.062%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.062%) SAP APO
5 1 (0.062%) SAP ERP
5 1 (0.062%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 565 (35.14%) AWS
1 565 (35.14%) Azure
2 304 (18.91%) GCP
3 136 (8.46%) Power Platform
4 114 (7.09%) GitHub
5 112 (6.97%) Serverless
6 96 (5.97%) Amazon S3
7 86 (5.35%) AWS Lambda
8 85 (5.29%) Amazon SageMaker
9 81 (5.04%) Snowflake
10 79 (4.91%) Azure Machine Learning
11 69 (4.29%) Azure AI
12 58 (3.61%) Amazon Bedrock
12 58 (3.61%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 54 (3.36%) Vertex AI
14 52 (3.23%) Azure DevOps
15 49 (3.05%) GitHub Actions
16 46 (2.86%) dbt
17 43 (2.67%) Azure Data Factory
18 41 (2.55%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 20 (1.24%) Firewall
2 15 (0.93%) Internet
2 15 (0.93%) Network Security
3 10 (0.62%) DNS
4 9 (0.56%) VPN
5 8 (0.50%) DHCP
6 7 (0.44%) Broadband
7 4 (0.25%) NAS
7 4 (0.25%) SAN
8 3 (0.19%) HTTP
8 3 (0.19%) MQTT
8 3 (0.19%) SMTP
8 3 (0.19%) TCP/IP
8 3 (0.19%) VLAN
9 2 (0.12%) 4G
9 2 (0.12%) 5G
9 2 (0.12%) CTI
9 2 (0.12%) PCoIP
9 2 (0.12%) Radio Access Network
9 2 (0.12%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 117 (7.28%) Power BI
2 89 (5.53%) Data Lake
3 74 (4.60%) Big Data
3 74 (4.60%) Data Warehouse
4 72 (4.48%) BigQuery
4 72 (4.48%) Metadata
5 53 (3.30%) NoSQL
6 47 (2.92%) Tableau
7 45 (2.80%) Amazon Redshift
8 38 (2.36%) Amazon Athena
8 38 (2.36%) Delta Lake
9 37 (2.30%) PostgreSQL
10 35 (2.18%) Relational Database
11 29 (1.80%) Hadoop
12 25 (1.55%) MongoDB
13 21 (1.31%) Looker
13 21 (1.31%) Neo4j
14 20 (1.24%) SQL Server
15 18 (1.12%) Elasticsearch
15 18 (1.12%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 98 (6.09%) Git
2 69 (4.29%) MLflow
3 51 (3.17%) GitLab
4 46 (2.86%) JIRA
5 27 (1.68%) Jenkins
6 10 (0.62%) Vite
7 9 (0.56%) Claude Code
8 8 (0.50%) Selenium
9 5 (0.31%) Cypress.io
10 4 (0.25%) ER Studio
10 4 (0.25%) ERwin
10 4 (0.25%) PyCharm
10 4 (0.25%) REST Assured
11 3 (0.19%) JUnit
11 3 (0.19%) SonarQube
11 3 (0.19%) Spinnaker
12 2 (0.12%) NUnit
12 2 (0.12%) Oracle APEX
12 2 (0.12%) Visual Studio
13 1 (0.062%) PowerDesigner
General
1 337 (20.96%) Social Skills
2 301 (18.72%) Finance
3 211 (13.12%) Analytical Skills
4 142 (8.83%) Public Sector
5 113 (7.03%) Banking
6 42 (2.61%) Marketing
7 35 (2.18%) Retail
8 33 (2.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 32 (1.99%) Pharmaceutical
10 30 (1.87%) Telecoms
11 25 (1.55%) Legal
12 22 (1.37%) Documentation Skills
12 22 (1.37%) Front Office
13 19 (1.18%) Aviation
14 18 (1.12%) Financial Institution
15 17 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
15 17 (1.06%) Manufacturing
15 17 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
16 16 (1.00%) Aerospace
16 16 (1.00%) Law
Job Titles
1 242 (15.05%) Architect
2 240 (14.93%) Senior
3 226 (14.05%) Data Scientist
4 161 (10.01%) Lead
5 153 (9.51%) Data Engineer
6 147 (9.14%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 103 (6.41%) Developer
8 79 (4.91%) Machine Learning Engineer
9 77 (4.79%) Solutions Architect
10 73 (4.54%) Python Engineer
11 69 (4.29%) Data Architect
12 66 (4.10%) Analyst
13 65 (4.04%) Software Engineer
14 58 (3.61%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
15 54 (3.36%) Platform Engineer
16 46 (2.86%) DevOps Engineer
16 46 (2.86%) Senior Data Scientist
17 44 (2.74%) Security Architect
18 39 (2.43%) Consultant
18 39 (2.43%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 154 (9.58%) PyTorch
2 110 (6.84%) TensorFlow
3 109 (6.78%) Kafka
4 98 (6.09%) scikit-learn
5 83 (5.16%) LangChain
6 78 (4.85%) Pandas
7 77 (4.79%) PySpark
8 73 (4.54%) React
9 64 (3.98%) REST
10 60 (3.73%) NumPy
11 42 (2.61%) .NET
12 37 (2.30%) LangGraph
13 36 (2.24%) Hugging Face
14 30 (1.87%) AngularJS
15 29 (1.80%) FastAPI
16 27 (1.68%) Node.js
17 26 (1.62%) Model Context Protocol
18 25 (1.55%) RESTful
19 24 (1.49%) pytest
20 21 (1.31%) LlamaIndex
Miscellaneous
1 190 (11.82%) Cloud Native
2 168 (10.45%) AI Agents
3 119 (7.40%) Algorithms
4 60 (3.73%) Distributed Systems
4 60 (3.73%) Product Ownership
5 59 (3.67%) Onboarding
6 28 (1.74%) Enterprise Software
7 27 (1.68%) Data Structures
8 25 (1.55%) Data Protection Act
8 25 (1.55%) Life Science
9 21 (1.31%) Hybrid Cloud
10 15 (0.93%) Fixed Income
10 15 (0.93%) Legacy Systems
10 15 (0.93%) Security Posture
11 14 (0.87%) Public Cloud
11 14 (0.87%) Taxonomies
12 13 (0.81%) Enterprise Cloud
12 13 (0.81%) Management Information System
12 13 (0.81%) Virtual Team
13 12 (0.75%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 53 (3.30%) Linux
2 15 (0.93%) Windows
3 12 (0.75%) Unix
4 6 (0.37%) Apple iOS
5 5 (0.31%) Android
5 5 (0.31%) VMS
6 4 (0.25%) Windows Server
7 3 (0.19%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.062%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,289 (80.16%) AI
2 602 (37.44%) Data Science
3 511 (31.78%) CI/CD
4 464 (28.86%) Analytics
5 442 (27.49%) LLM
6 375 (23.32%) Generative AI
7 361 (22.45%) Data Pipeline
8 332 (20.65%) DevOps
9 327 (20.34%) Agile
10 309 (19.22%) MLOps
11 286 (17.79%) Data Engineering
12 256 (15.92%) Use Case
13 246 (15.30%) Software Engineering
14 229 (14.24%) Decision-Making
15 206 (12.81%) Problem-Solving
16 204 (12.69%) Roadmaps
17 190 (11.82%) Infrastructure as Code
18 189 (11.75%) Data Governance
19 182 (11.32%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
20 180 (11.19%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 894 (55.60%) Python
2 395 (24.56%) SQL
3 118 (7.34%) Java
4 73 (4.54%) JavaScript
5 65 (4.04%) TypeScript
6 51 (3.17%) R
7 49 (3.05%) C#
8 39 (2.43%) Bash
9 20 (1.24%) PowerShell
10 18 (1.12%) C++
11 17 (1.06%) Bicep
11 17 (1.06%) Go
12 12 (0.75%) Kotlin
13 11 (0.68%) Scala
14 9 (0.56%) PL/SQL
14 9 (0.56%) Rust
14 9 (0.56%) SPARQL
15 8 (0.50%) Cypher
16 7 (0.44%) Gremlin
17 5 (0.31%) Perl
Qualifications
1 288 (17.91%) Security Cleared
2 202 (12.56%) SC Cleared
3 132 (8.21%) Degree
4 57 (3.54%) DV Cleared
5 56 (3.48%) Computer Science Degree
6 53 (3.30%) Master's Degree
7 48 (2.99%) AWS Certification
8 41 (2.55%) BPSS Clearance
9 35 (2.18%) PhD
10 31 (1.93%) CISSP
11 24 (1.49%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 22 (1.37%) Azure Certification
13 14 (0.87%) CISM
14 13 (0.81%) TOGAF Certification
15 7 (0.44%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
15 7 (0.44%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
15 7 (0.44%) Microsoft Certified Professional
16 6 (0.37%) Cisco Certification
17 5 (0.31%) AWS Certified Developer
17 5 (0.31%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 192 (11.94%) Data Quality
2 63 (3.92%) GDPR
3 53 (3.30%) QA
4 31 (1.93%) NIST
5 19 (1.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 16 (1.00%) Accessibility
7 14 (0.87%) EU AI Act
8 12 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 9 (0.56%) GxP
10 8 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
10 8 (0.50%) HIPAA
11 7 (0.44%) GRC
12 6 (0.37%) SLA
12 6 (0.37%) WCAG
13 5 (0.31%) Solvency II
14 4 (0.25%) COBIT
14 4 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
14 4 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 42001
14 4 (0.25%) NCSC
15 3 (0.19%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 219 (13.62%) Docker
2 12 (0.75%) Active Directory
3 7 (0.44%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 6 (0.37%) IAG
5 5 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
5 5 (0.31%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.19%) BitLocker
6 3 (0.19%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.19%) Terminal Services
6 3 (0.19%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.19%) 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
1 272 (16.92%) Kubernetes
2 181 (11.26%) Terraform
3 29 (1.80%) Ansible
4 25 (1.55%) Kubeflow
5 24 (1.49%) Grafana
6 18 (1.12%) Prometheus
7 9 (0.56%) Podman
8 6 (0.37%) Istio
9 3 (0.19%) Kibana
9 3 (0.19%) Nagios
9 3 (0.19%) NetBackup
9 3 (0.19%) Puppet
9 3 (0.19%) Rancher
9 3 (0.19%) systemd
9 3 (0.19%) vCenter Server
9 3 (0.19%) 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
Vendors
1 203 (12.62%) Databricks
2 170 (10.57%) Microsoft
3 102 (6.34%) Google
4 85 (5.29%) OpenAI
5 50 (3.11%) SAP
6 41 (2.55%) Foundry
7 34 (2.11%) ServiceNow
8 26 (1.62%) Oracle
9 22 (1.37%) Informatica
10 16 (1.00%) Dynatrace
10 16 (1.00%) IBM
11 13 (0.81%) UiPath
12 10 (0.62%) Splunk
13 7 (0.44%) Amplitude
13 7 (0.44%) Sybase
14 6 (0.37%) Nexthink
14 6 (0.37%) Pega
14 6 (0.37%) Salesforce
14 6 (0.37%) Workday
15 5 (0.31%) Palantir