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

6 months to
15 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 82 95 151
Rank change year-on-year +13 +56 +72
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,384 786 682
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.02% 2.68% 1.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.55% 2.96% 1.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 859 512 502
10th Percentile £413 £376 £413
25th Percentile £498 £463 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.17%
75th Percentile £700 £725 £725
90th Percentile £788 £874 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £550 £525
% change year-on-year - +4.76% -10.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 49 21 20
10th Percentile £42.79 £25.25 £41.24
25th Percentile £50.25 £45.00 £42.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £61.50 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +5.69% +17.14% +50.00%
75th Percentile £83.75 £78.70 £66.38
90th Percentile £91.00 £81.01 £75.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £76.25 £62.50
% change year-on-year -14.75% +22.00% +78.57%

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 39,015 26,568 37,622
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.08% 90.69% 86.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,668 17,198 24,355
10th Percentile £316 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £635 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £488 £500
% change year-on-year - -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,323 1,023 2,389
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.92 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.45 £18.51 £15.85
Median hourly rate £37.00 £30.78 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year +20.21% -6.91% -8.79%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £57.50
90th Percentile £78.25 £75.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.20 £29.00 £33.00
% change year-on-year +28.28% -12.12% -8.65%

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 April 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 15 April 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 15 April 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 +10 1,179 £575 -4.17% 961
London +20 784 £600 -3.23% 433
UK excluding London +14 422 £550 - 705
Work from Home +18 413 £600 +9.09% 353
North of England -12 108 £550 +11.11% 187
South East -17 90 £600 +4.35% 215
Scotland +43 65 £546 +16.97% 34
Midlands -15 63 £550 +15.79% 83
North West -13 59 £550 +0.46% 103
East of England -12 58 £550 -8.33% 83
West Midlands -29 42 £550 +10.00% 45
South West -28 40 £550 -14.06% 85
Yorkshire -21 39 £550 +10.00% 56
East Midlands -16 19 £600 +33.33% 38
Wales -6 18 £738 +31.11% 18
North East -13 13 £563 +57.12% 28
Northern Ireland - 1 £650 - 9

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
1 120 (8.67%) Apache Spark
2 75 (5.42%) Apache Airflow
3 58 (4.19%) Apache
4 29 (2.10%) Jupyter
5 11 (0.79%) Confluence
6 9 (0.65%) Appian
6 9 (0.65%) SAS
7 6 (0.43%) CMS
8 5 (0.36%) SharePoint
9 4 (0.29%) Palantir Foundry
10 3 (0.22%) Headless CMS
11 2 (0.14%) Luigi
12 1 (0.072%) Apache Superset
12 1 (0.072%) Apache Synapse
12 1 (0.072%) ArcGIS
12 1 (0.072%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 31 (2.24%) Chatbot
2 12 (0.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
3 10 (0.72%) Microsoft Office
4 9 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.29%) Simulink
6 3 (0.22%) LaTeX
7 2 (0.14%) CPLEX
Business Applications
1 8 (0.58%) SAP IBP
2 6 (0.43%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.14%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.072%) OpenText VIM for SAP
4 1 (0.072%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.072%) SAP APO
4 1 (0.072%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 571 (41.26%) Azure
2 480 (34.68%) AWS
3 254 (18.35%) GCP
4 145 (10.48%) Power Platform
5 115 (8.31%) GitHub
6 99 (7.15%) Azure AI
7 98 (7.08%) Azure Machine Learning
8 87 (6.29%) Serverless
9 82 (5.92%) Azure DevOps
10 74 (5.35%) Amazon SageMaker
11 70 (5.06%) Snowflake
12 67 (4.84%) Amazon S3
13 65 (4.70%) Vertex AI
14 61 (4.41%) GitHub Actions
15 60 (4.34%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 58 (4.19%) Azure Data Factory
17 47 (3.40%) AWS Lambda
18 43 (3.11%) AWS CloudFormation
19 41 (2.96%) Amazon Bedrock
20 32 (2.31%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 16 (1.16%) Network Security
2 10 (0.72%) Firewall
3 8 (0.58%) HTTP
4 7 (0.51%) DNS
5 5 (0.36%) FTP
5 5 (0.36%) SMTP
5 5 (0.36%) SSL
6 4 (0.29%) 5G
6 4 (0.29%) Ethernet
6 4 (0.29%) InfiniBand
6 4 (0.29%) Internet
7 3 (0.22%) Cisco IPT
7 3 (0.22%) LTE
8 2 (0.14%) 2G
8 2 (0.14%) 4G
8 2 (0.14%) Hyperconnected
8 2 (0.14%) Mobile Backhaul
8 2 (0.14%) Modbus
8 2 (0.14%) VoIP
8 2 (0.14%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 113 (8.16%) Power BI
2 92 (6.65%) Data Lake
3 70 (5.06%) Big Data
4 69 (4.99%) Data Warehouse
5 61 (4.41%) BigQuery
6 55 (3.97%) Metadata
7 53 (3.83%) NoSQL
8 41 (2.96%) Tableau
9 36 (2.60%) Pinecone
10 33 (2.38%) Delta Lake
10 33 (2.38%) Hadoop
11 32 (2.31%) PostgreSQL
12 31 (2.24%) SQL Server
13 29 (2.10%) Amazon Athena
14 28 (2.02%) Weaviate
15 26 (1.88%) Relational Database
16 25 (1.81%) Mixpanel
17 22 (1.59%) Amazon Redshift
18 17 (1.23%) MongoDB
18 17 (1.23%) OLAP
Development Applications
1 95 (6.86%) Git
2 91 (6.58%) MLflow
3 32 (2.31%) Jenkins
4 30 (2.17%) JIRA
5 25 (1.81%) GitLab
6 13 (0.94%) Visual Studio
7 11 (0.79%) Selenium
8 9 (0.65%) JMeter
9 7 (0.51%) Gradle
9 7 (0.51%) PyCharm
9 7 (0.51%) SonarQube
10 6 (0.43%) MSTest
11 4 (0.29%) Android Studio
11 4 (0.29%) Claude Code
11 4 (0.29%) Maven
11 4 (0.29%) Oracle APEX
12 3 (0.22%) Cypress.io
12 3 (0.22%) JUnit
12 3 (0.22%) REST Assured
12 3 (0.22%) Vite
General
1 332 (23.99%) Social Skills
2 277 (20.01%) Finance
3 171 (12.36%) Analytical Skills
4 144 (10.40%) Public Sector
5 86 (6.21%) Banking
6 36 (2.60%) Marketing
7 33 (2.38%) Pharmaceutical
8 29 (2.10%) Legal
8 29 (2.10%) Retail
9 27 (1.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 25 (1.81%) Documentation Skills
10 25 (1.81%) Influencing Skills
11 23 (1.66%) Front Office
11 23 (1.66%) Investment Banking
12 19 (1.37%) Telecoms
13 17 (1.23%) Presentation Skills
14 15 (1.08%) Manufacturing
15 14 (1.01%) Aviation
16 12 (0.87%) Electronics
17 11 (0.79%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 197 (14.23%) Data Scientist
2 191 (13.80%) Senior
3 189 (13.66%) Architect
4 180 (13.01%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 137 (9.90%) Data Engineer
6 118 (8.53%) Lead
7 111 (8.02%) Developer
8 67 (4.84%) Analyst
9 59 (4.26%) Machine Learning Engineer
9 59 (4.26%) Software Engineer
10 58 (4.19%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
10 58 (4.19%) Python Engineer
11 57 (4.12%) Data Architect
12 45 (3.25%) Solutions Architect
13 40 (2.89%) Senior Data Scientist
14 35 (2.53%) Consultant
14 35 (2.53%) Gen AI Engineer
15 34 (2.46%) Azure Engineer
16 27 (1.95%) Python Developer
17 26 (1.88%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 209 (15.10%) PyTorch
2 164 (11.85%) TensorFlow
3 138 (9.97%) scikit-learn
4 112 (8.09%) Pandas
5 80 (5.78%) NumPy
6 77 (5.56%) LangChain
7 74 (5.35%) React
8 71 (5.13%) Kafka
9 61 (4.41%) PySpark
10 55 (3.97%) .NET
11 53 (3.83%) Node.js
12 50 (3.61%) REST
13 48 (3.47%) Hugging Face
13 48 (3.47%) Model Context Protocol
14 47 (3.40%) LangGraph
15 42 (3.03%) AngularJS
16 37 (2.67%) FastAPI
17 29 (2.10%) Faiss
18 28 (2.02%) RESTful
19 24 (1.73%) LlamaIndex
Miscellaneous
1 182 (13.15%) Cloud Native
2 149 (10.77%) Algorithms
3 138 (9.97%) AI Agents
4 48 (3.47%) Product Ownership
5 44 (3.18%) Onboarding
6 32 (2.31%) Distributed Systems
7 27 (1.95%) Data Protection Act
8 20 (1.45%) Legacy Systems
9 19 (1.37%) Hybrid Cloud
10 18 (1.30%) Enterprise Software
10 18 (1.30%) Fixed Income
11 17 (1.23%) Management Information System
12 16 (1.16%) Analytical Mindset
12 16 (1.16%) Data Structures
12 16 (1.16%) Distributed Computing
13 15 (1.08%) Life Science
14 13 (0.94%) Public Cloud
15 11 (0.79%) Credit Risk
15 11 (0.79%) IoT
16 10 (0.72%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 33 (2.38%) Linux
2 11 (0.79%) VMS
2 11 (0.79%) Windows
3 8 (0.58%) Android
4 6 (0.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (0.36%) Apple iOS
6 4 (0.29%) Ubuntu
6 4 (0.29%) Unix
7 1 (0.072%) CentOS
7 1 (0.072%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,080 (78.03%) AI
2 521 (37.64%) Data Science
3 419 (30.27%) CI/CD
4 417 (30.13%) Analytics
5 373 (26.95%) LLM
6 299 (21.60%) Data Pipeline
7 296 (21.39%) Generative AI
8 287 (20.74%) DevOps
9 266 (19.22%) Agile
10 264 (19.08%) MLOps
11 263 (19.00%) Data Engineering
12 202 (14.60%) Problem-Solving
13 183 (13.22%) Use Case
14 176 (12.72%) Data Governance
15 175 (12.64%) Software Engineering
16 172 (12.43%) Natural Language Processing
17 164 (11.85%) Containerisation
17 164 (11.85%) Decision-Making
17 164 (11.85%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
18 162 (11.71%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 809 (58.45%) Python
2 354 (25.58%) SQL
3 98 (7.08%) Java
4 88 (6.36%) C#
5 69 (4.99%) R
6 57 (4.12%) JavaScript
7 49 (3.54%) TypeScript
8 23 (1.66%) C++
9 21 (1.52%) PowerShell
10 18 (1.30%) Bicep
11 16 (1.16%) Scala
12 15 (1.08%) Bash
13 9 (0.65%) Go
13 9 (0.65%) MATLAB
13 9 (0.65%) Rust
14 8 (0.58%) Kotlin
15 5 (0.36%) SPARQL
16 4 (0.29%) C
16 4 (0.29%) Tcl
16 4 (0.29%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 245 (17.70%) Security Cleared
2 166 (11.99%) SC Cleared
3 152 (10.98%) Degree
4 70 (5.06%) Master's Degree
5 44 (3.18%) PhD
6 42 (3.03%) DV Cleared
7 39 (2.82%) Computer Science Degree
8 38 (2.75%) BPSS Clearance
9 21 (1.52%) AWS Certification
10 18 (1.30%) Azure Certification
11 16 (1.16%) CISSP
12 13 (0.94%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 12 (0.87%) CISM
14 11 (0.79%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 10 (0.72%) ISTQB
16 7 (0.51%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
17 5 (0.36%) Microsoft Certification
17 5 (0.36%) PMI Certification
17 5 (0.36%) PMP
18 4 (0.29%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 144 (10.40%) Data Quality
2 64 (4.62%) GDPR
3 50 (3.61%) QA
4 31 (2.24%) NIST
5 20 (1.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 19 (1.37%) Accessibility
7 14 (1.01%) EU AI Act
8 9 (0.65%) Actionable Recommendations
9 7 (0.51%) HIPAA
9 7 (0.51%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 6 (0.43%) NCSC
10 6 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 5 (0.36%) GRC
12 4 (0.29%) DO-254
12 4 (0.29%) PCI DSS
12 4 (0.29%) WCAG
13 3 (0.22%) GxP
13 3 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 3 (0.22%) SOC 2
14 2 (0.14%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 200 (14.45%) Docker
2 12 (0.87%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 11 (0.79%) Active Directory
4 7 (0.51%) Firmware
5 3 (0.22%) Lustre
5 3 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.14%) Ceph
6 2 (0.14%) HDFS
7 1 (0.072%) Embedded Firmware
7 1 (0.072%) GPFS
Systems Management
1 209 (15.10%) Kubernetes
2 136 (9.83%) Terraform
3 21 (1.52%) Kubeflow
4 17 (1.23%) Grafana
5 13 (0.94%) Ansible
5 13 (0.94%) Prometheus
6 9 (0.65%) Podman
7 4 (0.29%) Istio
8 3 (0.22%) Rancher
8 3 (0.22%) SCOM
9 2 (0.14%) Argo
9 2 (0.14%) Kibana
9 2 (0.14%) Knative
10 1 (0.072%) Docker Swarm
10 1 (0.072%) HP Fortify
10 1 (0.072%) logstash
10 1 (0.072%) Opsgenie
10 1 (0.072%) SELinux
10 1 (0.072%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
Vendors
1 217 (15.68%) Databricks
2 179 (12.93%) Microsoft
3 113 (8.16%) Google
4 109 (7.88%) OpenAI
5 67 (4.84%) Foundry
6 38 (2.75%) SAP
7 29 (2.10%) Oracle
8 18 (1.30%) ServiceNow
9 15 (1.08%) Informatica
10 14 (1.01%) UiPath
11 12 (0.87%) IBM
12 11 (0.79%) Automation Anywhere
12 11 (0.79%) Dynatrace
13 9 (0.65%) NVIDIA
13 9 (0.65%) Salesforce
14 7 (0.51%) Amplitude
15 6 (0.43%) MicroStrategy
15 6 (0.43%) Siemens
15 6 (0.43%) Splunk
15 6 (0.43%) Talend