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

6 months to
27 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 75 105 168
Rank change year-on-year +30 +63 +68
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,359 772 631
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.27% 2.52% 1.43%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.77% 2.80% 1.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 838 492 464
10th Percentile £400 £360 £413
25th Percentile £469 £450 £464
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £563 £575 £574
Median % change year-on-year -2.17% +0.22% -8.20%
75th Percentile £688 £725 £700
90th Percentile £775 £850 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £534 £513 £528
% change year-on-year +4.20% -2.84% -8.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 16 25
10th Percentile £41.85 £23.25 £41.16
25th Percentile £50.00 £25.33 £42.50
Median hourly rate £57.77 £45.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +28.37% -2.56% +31.94%
75th Percentile £79.50 £60.31 £65.00
90th Percentile £95.00 £73.01 £66.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £45.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +42.22% -2.56% +31.94%

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 36,013 27,550 38,397
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.71% 89.93% 86.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,879 17,122 25,100
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £411 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £721 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -1.58% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,136 871 2,197
10th Percentile £14.64 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £18.03 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year -15.38% -1.71% -5.53%
75th Percentile £63.32 £63.75 £59.50
90th Percentile £72.96 £75.00 £72.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.64 £35.00
% change year-on-year -20.51% -9.60% -

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 27 February 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 27 February 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 27 February 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 +25 1,140 £575 -4.17% 683
London +25 749 £600 -4.00% 355
UK excluding London +35 447 £534 +4.20% 425
Work from Home +32 430 £575 +9.52% 279
North of England -7 114 £526 +15.66% 98
South East +3 90 £550 +5.26% 119
Scotland +65 85 £503 +14.86% 33
East of England +6 72 £550 -8.33% 34
North West +14 71 £526 +15.66% 53
Midlands -8 59 £550 +41.03% 65
West Midlands -15 40 £538 +30.30% 32
South West -21 34 £550 -17.60% 54
Yorkshire -46 33 £525 - 29
East Midlands -14 18 £525 +47.47% 33
Wales -6 17 £738 +31.11% 21
North East -13 13 £563 +57.12% 18
Northern Ireland - 1 £650 - 7

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
1 122 (8.98%) Apache Spark
2 83 (6.11%) Apache Airflow
3 56 (4.12%) Apache
4 29 (2.13%) Jupyter
5 13 (0.96%) Confluence
6 11 (0.81%) Appian
7 10 (0.74%) SAS
8 6 (0.44%) GeoServer
8 6 (0.44%) Palantir Foundry
8 6 (0.44%) SharePoint
8 6 (0.44%) Smallworld
9 5 (0.37%) CMS
10 3 (0.22%) Apache Pig
11 2 (0.15%) Headless CMS
11 2 (0.15%) Luigi
12 1 (0.074%) Apache Superset
12 1 (0.074%) Apache Synapse
12 1 (0.074%) ArcGIS
12 1 (0.074%) Microsoft Exchange
12 1 (0.074%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 40 (2.94%) Chatbot
2 16 (1.18%) Microsoft Project
3 15 (1.10%) Microsoft Excel
4 12 (0.88%) Microsoft Office
5 9 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 5 (0.37%) Simulink
7 3 (0.22%) LaTeX
8 1 (0.074%) Adobe XD
8 1 (0.074%) CPLEX
8 1 (0.074%) Sketch
8 1 (0.074%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 5 (0.37%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.15%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.074%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.074%) SAP IBP
3 1 (0.074%) Shopify
3 1 (0.074%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 600 (44.15%) Azure
2 504 (37.09%) AWS
3 254 (18.69%) GCP
4 136 (10.01%) Power Platform
5 113 (8.31%) GitHub
6 111 (8.17%) Serverless
7 105 (7.73%) Azure Machine Learning
8 92 (6.77%) Azure AI
9 80 (5.89%) Azure DevOps
10 78 (5.74%) Amazon SageMaker
11 76 (5.59%) Snowflake
12 68 (5.00%) Amazon S3
13 61 (4.49%) Vertex AI
14 54 (3.97%) Azure Data Factory
15 53 (3.90%) AWS Lambda
15 53 (3.90%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 52 (3.83%) GitHub Actions
17 44 (3.24%) AWS CloudFormation
18 42 (3.09%) Amazon ECS
18 42 (3.09%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 17 (1.25%) Network Security
2 9 (0.66%) Firewall
2 9 (0.66%) HTTP
3 6 (0.44%) DNS
3 6 (0.44%) Ethernet
4 5 (0.37%) FTP
4 5 (0.37%) Internet
4 5 (0.37%) SMTP
4 5 (0.37%) SSL
5 4 (0.29%) 5G
5 4 (0.29%) InfiniBand
6 3 (0.22%) Cisco IPT
6 3 (0.22%) LTE
6 3 (0.22%) VPN
7 2 (0.15%) 2G
7 2 (0.15%) 4G
7 2 (0.15%) Bluetooth
7 2 (0.15%) Modbus
7 2 (0.15%) Radio Access Network
7 2 (0.15%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 105 (7.73%) Power BI
2 93 (6.84%) Data Lake
3 83 (6.11%) Data Warehouse
4 64 (4.71%) Big Data
5 59 (4.34%) NoSQL
6 55 (4.05%) Metadata
7 51 (3.75%) BigQuery
8 45 (3.31%) PostgreSQL
9 40 (2.94%) Tableau
10 36 (2.65%) Hadoop
10 36 (2.65%) Pinecone
11 28 (2.06%) SQL Server
12 26 (1.91%) Delta Lake
12 26 (1.91%) Relational Database
12 26 (1.91%) Weaviate
13 22 (1.62%) Elasticsearch
13 22 (1.62%) Mixpanel
14 21 (1.55%) Amazon Athena
15 18 (1.32%) Amazon Redshift
16 17 (1.25%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 114 (8.39%) Git
2 96 (7.06%) MLflow
3 40 (2.94%) Jenkins
4 28 (2.06%) GitLab
5 27 (1.99%) JIRA
6 15 (1.10%) Selenium
7 12 (0.88%) JMeter
7 12 (0.88%) Visual Studio
8 7 (0.52%) Gradle
8 7 (0.52%) SonarQube
9 6 (0.44%) PyCharm
10 5 (0.37%) Cypress.io
10 5 (0.37%) Maven
10 5 (0.37%) MSTest
11 4 (0.29%) Android Studio
11 4 (0.29%) Bitbucket
11 4 (0.29%) Oracle APEX
11 4 (0.29%) RStudio
12 3 (0.22%) Postman
13 2 (0.15%) REST Assured
General
1 345 (25.39%) Social Skills
2 290 (21.34%) Finance
3 154 (11.33%) Analytical Skills
4 140 (10.30%) Public Sector
5 96 (7.06%) Banking
6 42 (3.09%) Pharmaceutical
7 41 (3.02%) Marketing
8 34 (2.50%) Retail
9 32 (2.35%) Investment Banking
10 28 (2.06%) Legal
11 27 (1.99%) Influencing Skills
12 25 (1.84%) Front Office
13 24 (1.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 23 (1.69%) Manufacturing
15 19 (1.40%) Presentation Skills
16 17 (1.25%) Documentation Skills
16 17 (1.25%) Telecoms
17 14 (1.03%) Financial Institution
18 13 (0.96%) Electronics
19 12 (0.88%) Law
Job Titles
1 199 (14.64%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
2 192 (14.13%) Data Scientist
3 179 (13.17%) Architect
4 172 (12.66%) Senior
5 138 (10.15%) Data Engineer
6 123 (9.05%) Developer
7 114 (8.39%) Lead
8 64 (4.71%) Analyst
8 64 (4.71%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
9 59 (4.34%) Python Engineer
10 58 (4.27%) Software Engineer
11 57 (4.19%) Machine Learning Engineer
12 50 (3.68%) Data Architect
13 40 (2.94%) Gen AI Engineer
13 40 (2.94%) Solutions Architect
14 39 (2.87%) Senior Data Scientist
15 35 (2.58%) Azure Engineer
16 33 (2.43%) Consultant
17 29 (2.13%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
18 23 (1.69%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 237 (17.44%) PyTorch
2 194 (14.28%) TensorFlow
3 139 (10.23%) scikit-learn
4 117 (8.61%) Pandas
5 90 (6.62%) LangChain
6 85 (6.25%) NumPy
7 82 (6.03%) React
8 71 (5.22%) FastAPI
9 62 (4.56%) PySpark
10 61 (4.49%) .NET
10 61 (4.49%) Hugging Face
11 58 (4.27%) Model Context Protocol
11 58 (4.27%) REST
12 57 (4.19%) Kafka
13 54 (3.97%) LangGraph
14 49 (3.61%) Node.js
15 46 (3.38%) RESTful
16 37 (2.72%) AngularJS
17 33 (2.43%) Faiss
18 32 (2.35%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 189 (13.91%) Cloud Native
2 182 (13.39%) Algorithms
3 108 (7.95%) AI Agents
4 50 (3.68%) Product Ownership
5 48 (3.53%) Onboarding
6 37 (2.72%) Data Protection Act
6 37 (2.72%) Distributed Systems
7 30 (2.21%) Legacy Systems
8 26 (1.91%) Distributed Computing
9 23 (1.69%) Data Structures
9 23 (1.69%) Hybrid Cloud
9 23 (1.69%) Life Science
10 19 (1.40%) Genomics
11 18 (1.32%) Analytical Mindset
12 17 (1.25%) Enterprise Software
13 16 (1.18%) Fixed Income
14 15 (1.10%) Management Information System
15 13 (0.96%) Credit Risk
15 13 (0.96%) Taxonomies
16 12 (0.88%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 37 (2.72%) Linux
2 12 (0.88%) Windows
3 10 (0.74%) Apple iOS
3 10 (0.74%) VMS
4 9 (0.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (0.59%) Android
5 8 (0.59%) Ubuntu
6 4 (0.29%) Unix
7 1 (0.074%) CentOS
7 1 (0.074%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,058 (77.85%) AI
2 525 (38.63%) Data Science
3 394 (28.99%) CI/CD
4 382 (28.11%) LLM
5 370 (27.23%) Analytics
6 304 (22.37%) DevOps
7 298 (21.93%) Data Pipeline
8 289 (21.27%) Agile
9 279 (20.53%) Generative AI
10 262 (19.28%) MLOps
11 261 (19.21%) Data Engineering
12 226 (16.63%) Problem-Solving
13 196 (14.42%) Natural Language Processing
14 186 (13.69%) Software Engineering
15 182 (13.39%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
16 179 (13.17%) Use Case
17 170 (12.51%) Containerisation
18 160 (11.77%) Prompt Engineering
19 157 (11.55%) Data Modelling
20 155 (11.41%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 846 (62.25%) Python
2 341 (25.09%) SQL
3 88 (6.48%) Java
4 77 (5.67%) C#
5 73 (5.37%) R
6 62 (4.56%) JavaScript
7 57 (4.19%) TypeScript
8 28 (2.06%) C++
9 25 (1.84%) PowerShell
10 22 (1.62%) Scala
11 18 (1.32%) Bash
12 15 (1.10%) Bicep
13 11 (0.81%) Go
13 11 (0.81%) MATLAB
14 10 (0.74%) Rust
15 6 (0.44%) Kotlin
16 5 (0.37%) C
16 5 (0.37%) SPARQL
16 5 (0.37%) SystemVerilog
16 5 (0.37%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 223 (16.41%) Security Cleared
2 181 (13.32%) Degree
3 160 (11.77%) SC Cleared
4 79 (5.81%) Master's Degree
5 47 (3.46%) PhD
6 41 (3.02%) Computer Science Degree
7 35 (2.58%) DV Cleared
8 30 (2.21%) BPSS Clearance
9 23 (1.69%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 22 (1.62%) AWS Certification
11 19 (1.40%) Azure Certification
12 8 (0.59%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 8 (0.59%) CISSP
13 7 (0.52%) ISTQB
14 6 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
15 5 (0.37%) HNC
15 5 (0.37%) HND
15 5 (0.37%) TOGAF Certification
16 4 (0.29%) CISM
16 4 (0.29%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 122 (8.98%) Data Quality
2 53 (3.90%) QA
3 52 (3.83%) GDPR
4 37 (2.72%) NIST
5 26 (1.91%) EU AI Act
6 19 (1.40%) Accessibility
7 15 (1.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 7 (0.52%) GRC
9 6 (0.44%) Actionable Recommendations
9 6 (0.44%) NCSC
10 5 (0.37%) DO-254
10 5 (0.37%) HIPAA
10 5 (0.37%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 4 (0.29%) Disclosure Scotland
11 4 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 4 (0.29%) PCI DSS
12 3 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 3 (0.22%) SOC 2
13 2 (0.15%) JSP 440
13 2 (0.15%) NIST 800
System Software
1 212 (15.60%) Docker
2 11 (0.81%) Active Directory
2 11 (0.81%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 7 (0.52%) Firmware
4 3 (0.22%) Lustre
4 3 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.15%) Ceph
5 2 (0.15%) HDFS
6 1 (0.074%) GPFS
Systems Management
1 212 (15.60%) Kubernetes
2 142 (10.45%) Terraform
3 22 (1.62%) Grafana
4 20 (1.47%) Ansible
5 15 (1.10%) Kubeflow
6 13 (0.96%) Prometheus
7 9 (0.66%) Podman
8 7 (0.52%) Kibana
8 7 (0.52%) SCOM
9 4 (0.29%) Argo
9 4 (0.29%) logstash
10 3 (0.22%) ITRS Geneos
11 2 (0.15%) Istio
11 2 (0.15%) Knative
11 2 (0.15%) Rancher
11 2 (0.15%) Single Sign-On
12 1 (0.074%) Cilium
12 1 (0.074%) HP Fortify
12 1 (0.074%) Opsgenie
12 1 (0.074%) SELinux
Vendors
1 201 (14.79%) Databricks
2 187 (13.76%) Microsoft
3 111 (8.17%) Google
4 96 (7.06%) OpenAI
5 72 (5.30%) Foundry
6 36 (2.65%) SAP
7 26 (1.91%) Oracle
8 20 (1.47%) ServiceNow
9 12 (0.88%) Informatica
10 11 (0.81%) Automation Anywhere
10 11 (0.81%) Salesforce
10 11 (0.81%) UiPath
11 10 (0.74%) NVIDIA
12 9 (0.66%) Greenplum
12 9 (0.66%) IBM
12 9 (0.66%) Splunk
13 7 (0.52%) Amplitude
13 7 (0.52%) Dynatrace
13 7 (0.52%) Palantir
13 7 (0.52%) Pega