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

6 months to
25 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 82 95 155
Rank change year-on-year +13 +60 +62
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,399 791 684
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.00% 2.68% 1.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.54% 2.95% 1.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 868 521 502
10th Percentile £413 £385 £413
25th Percentile £492 £463 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.17%
75th Percentile £688 £725 £725
90th Percentile £788 £875 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £575 £525
% change year-on-year -4.35% +9.52% -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 21 21
10th Percentile £50.00 £25.25 £41.25
25th Percentile £50.88 £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 £66.25
90th Percentile £90.00 £81.01 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £76.25 £61.25
% change year-on-year -14.75% +24.49% +75.00%

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 39,506 26,799 37,659
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.73% 90.79% 86.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,946 17,322 24,335
10th Percentile £319 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.72% -0.05% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £487 £500
% change year-on-year -0.36% -2.65% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,360 1,068 2,432
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £29.07 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.60% -16.94% -6.67%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.24 £58.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.33
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.86 £28.00 £35.58
% change year-on-year +49.48% -21.29% -4.62%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 1,186 £575 -4.17% 991
London +24 788 £585 -2.58% 345
UK excluding London +16 430 £550 -4.35% 787
Work from Home +17 403 £600 +9.09% 749
North of England -7 112 £550 +11.11% 347
South East -31 90 £615 +6.96% 194
Scotland +52 75 £520 +11.35% 28
Midlands -11 64 £550 +15.79% 77
North West -10 59 £550 +0.46% 244
East of England -18 58 £520 -16.80% 68
West Midlands -24 44 £550 +10.00% 26
Yorkshire -24 42 £550 +10.00% 67
South West -43 38 £538 -14.68% 62
East Midlands -21 18 £625 +38.89% 51
North East -11 14 £575 +60.61% 36
Wales -10 13 £750 +30.43% 11
Northern Ireland - 1 £650 - 14

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
1 118 (8.43%) Apache Spark
2 76 (5.43%) Apache Airflow
3 60 (4.29%) Apache
4 26 (1.86%) Jupyter
5 11 (0.79%) Confluence
6 9 (0.64%) Appian
6 9 (0.64%) SAS
7 6 (0.43%) CMS
8 5 (0.36%) SharePoint
9 4 (0.29%) Palantir Foundry
10 3 (0.21%) Headless CMS
11 2 (0.14%) Luigi
12 1 (0.071%) Apache Superset
12 1 (0.071%) Apache Synapse
12 1 (0.071%) ArcGIS
12 1 (0.071%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 30 (2.14%) Chatbot
2 12 (0.86%) Microsoft Project
3 11 (0.79%) Microsoft Excel
4 10 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 8 (0.57%) Microsoft Office
6 4 (0.29%) Simulink
7 3 (0.21%) LaTeX
8 2 (0.14%) CPLEX
Business Applications
1 9 (0.64%) SAP IBP
2 6 (0.43%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.14%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.071%) OpenText VIM for SAP
4 1 (0.071%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.071%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.071%) SAP APO
4 1 (0.071%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 560 (40.03%) Azure
2 482 (34.45%) AWS
3 249 (17.80%) GCP
4 138 (9.86%) Power Platform
5 110 (7.86%) GitHub
6 99 (7.08%) Azure AI
6 99 (7.08%) Azure Machine Learning
7 93 (6.65%) Serverless
8 76 (5.43%) Azure DevOps
9 72 (5.15%) Amazon S3
9 72 (5.15%) Amazon SageMaker
10 70 (5.00%) Snowflake
11 62 (4.43%) GitHub Actions
11 62 (4.43%) Vertex AI
12 60 (4.29%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 57 (4.07%) Azure Data Factory
14 53 (3.79%) AWS Lambda
15 43 (3.07%) AWS CloudFormation
16 40 (2.86%) Amazon Bedrock
17 31 (2.22%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 17 (1.22%) Network Security
2 10 (0.71%) Firewall
3 9 (0.64%) HTTP
4 7 (0.50%) DNS
5 5 (0.36%) FTP
5 5 (0.36%) Internet
5 5 (0.36%) SMTP
5 5 (0.36%) SSL
6 4 (0.29%) Ethernet
6 4 (0.29%) InfiniBand
7 3 (0.21%) 5G
7 3 (0.21%) Cisco IPT
8 2 (0.14%) 4G
8 2 (0.14%) Bluetooth
8 2 (0.14%) Hyperconnected
8 2 (0.14%) LTE
8 2 (0.14%) Modbus
8 2 (0.14%) VPN
9 1 (0.071%) 3GPP
9 1 (0.071%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 108 (7.72%) Power BI
2 91 (6.50%) Data Lake
3 74 (5.29%) Big Data
4 64 (4.57%) BigQuery
5 63 (4.50%) Data Warehouse
6 62 (4.43%) Metadata
7 53 (3.79%) NoSQL
8 40 (2.86%) Tableau
9 36 (2.57%) Pinecone
10 34 (2.43%) Hadoop
11 33 (2.36%) Delta Lake
12 31 (2.22%) PostgreSQL
13 30 (2.14%) SQL Server
14 28 (2.00%) Amazon Athena
14 28 (2.00%) Weaviate
15 26 (1.86%) Relational Database
16 24 (1.72%) Mixpanel
17 22 (1.57%) Amazon Redshift
18 19 (1.36%) MongoDB
19 17 (1.22%) Redis
Development Applications
1 93 (6.65%) Git
2 91 (6.50%) MLflow
3 31 (2.22%) JIRA
4 30 (2.14%) Jenkins
5 27 (1.93%) GitLab
6 8 (0.57%) Visual Studio
7 7 (0.50%) Gradle
7 7 (0.50%) SonarQube
8 6 (0.43%) PyCharm
8 6 (0.43%) Selenium
9 4 (0.29%) Android Studio
9 4 (0.29%) Claude Code
9 4 (0.29%) JMeter
9 4 (0.29%) Maven
10 3 (0.21%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.21%) Cypress.io
10 3 (0.21%) JUnit
10 3 (0.21%) REST Assured
10 3 (0.21%) Spinnaker
10 3 (0.21%) Vite
General
1 331 (23.66%) Social Skills
2 277 (19.80%) Finance
3 177 (12.65%) Analytical Skills
4 140 (10.01%) Public Sector
5 89 (6.36%) Banking
6 36 (2.57%) Marketing
7 29 (2.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 29 (2.07%) Pharmaceutical
8 26 (1.86%) Documentation Skills
8 26 (1.86%) Legal
9 23 (1.64%) Front Office
9 23 (1.64%) Influencing Skills
9 23 (1.64%) Investment Banking
9 23 (1.64%) Retail
10 20 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
11 18 (1.29%) Telecoms
12 17 (1.22%) Aviation
13 13 (0.93%) Manufacturing
14 12 (0.86%) Aerospace
15 10 (0.71%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 206 (14.72%) Data Scientist
2 195 (13.94%) Architect
3 185 (13.22%) Senior
4 183 (13.08%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 134 (9.58%) Data Engineer
6 120 (8.58%) Lead
7 114 (8.15%) Developer
8 68 (4.86%) Analyst
9 59 (4.22%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
9 59 (4.22%) Machine Learning Engineer
9 59 (4.22%) Python Engineer
9 59 (4.22%) Software Engineer
10 54 (3.86%) Data Architect
11 50 (3.57%) Solutions Architect
12 41 (2.93%) Senior Data Scientist
13 37 (2.64%) Consultant
14 35 (2.50%) Gen AI Engineer
15 33 (2.36%) Azure Engineer
16 31 (2.22%) Python Developer
17 26 (1.86%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 211 (15.08%) PyTorch
2 161 (11.51%) TensorFlow
3 131 (9.36%) scikit-learn
4 112 (8.01%) Pandas
5 80 (5.72%) LangChain
5 80 (5.72%) NumPy
6 74 (5.29%) Kafka
6 74 (5.29%) React
7 58 (4.15%) PySpark
8 56 (4.00%) .NET
9 54 (3.86%) REST
10 52 (3.72%) Hugging Face
10 52 (3.72%) Node.js
11 47 (3.36%) Model Context Protocol
12 45 (3.22%) LangGraph
13 39 (2.79%) AngularJS
14 36 (2.57%) FastAPI
15 29 (2.07%) Faiss
16 27 (1.93%) RESTful
17 24 (1.72%) LlamaIndex
Miscellaneous
1 177 (12.65%) Cloud Native
2 143 (10.22%) AI Agents
3 140 (10.01%) Algorithms
4 46 (3.29%) Product Ownership
5 44 (3.15%) Onboarding
6 32 (2.29%) Distributed Systems
7 29 (2.07%) Data Protection Act
8 20 (1.43%) Legacy Systems
9 19 (1.36%) Enterprise Software
9 19 (1.36%) Hybrid Cloud
10 18 (1.29%) Fixed Income
11 17 (1.22%) Management Information System
12 16 (1.14%) Analytical Mindset
13 15 (1.07%) Data Structures
14 14 (1.00%) Distributed Computing
14 14 (1.00%) Life Science
14 14 (1.00%) Public Cloud
15 12 (0.86%) Credit Risk
16 10 (0.71%) Augmented Reality
16 10 (0.71%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 31 (2.22%) Linux
2 11 (0.79%) VMS
3 10 (0.71%) Windows
4 9 (0.64%) Android
5 6 (0.43%) Apple iOS
6 5 (0.36%) Unix
7 3 (0.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.071%) Robot Operating System
8 1 (0.071%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,095 (78.27%) AI
2 515 (36.81%) Data Science
3 427 (30.52%) CI/CD
4 416 (29.74%) Analytics
5 392 (28.02%) LLM
6 310 (22.16%) Generative AI
7 307 (21.94%) Data Pipeline
8 280 (20.01%) DevOps
9 267 (19.09%) Data Engineering
10 266 (19.01%) MLOps
11 261 (18.66%) Agile
12 201 (14.37%) Problem-Solving
13 194 (13.87%) Use Case
14 181 (12.94%) Data Governance
15 170 (12.15%) Software Engineering
16 168 (12.01%) Natural Language Processing
17 167 (11.94%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
18 165 (11.79%) Containerisation
19 163 (11.65%) Decision-Making
20 159 (11.37%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 817 (58.40%) Python
2 351 (25.09%) SQL
3 107 (7.65%) Java
4 85 (6.08%) C#
5 70 (5.00%) R
6 53 (3.79%) JavaScript
7 49 (3.50%) TypeScript
8 26 (1.86%) C++
9 22 (1.57%) PowerShell
10 20 (1.43%) Bicep
11 16 (1.14%) Bash
11 16 (1.14%) Scala
12 10 (0.71%) Go
13 9 (0.64%) Kotlin
13 9 (0.64%) MATLAB
14 7 (0.50%) Rust
15 5 (0.36%) SPARQL
16 4 (0.29%) SystemVerilog
16 4 (0.29%) Tcl
16 4 (0.29%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 245 (17.51%) Security Cleared
2 168 (12.01%) SC Cleared
3 138 (9.86%) Degree
4 69 (4.93%) Master's Degree
5 42 (3.00%) PhD
6 41 (2.93%) DV Cleared
7 40 (2.86%) BPSS Clearance
8 37 (2.64%) Computer Science Degree
9 23 (1.64%) AWS Certification
10 20 (1.43%) Azure Certification
11 17 (1.22%) CISSP
12 13 (0.93%) CISM
13 12 (0.86%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 11 (0.79%) Microsoft Certified Professional
15 6 (0.43%) ISTQB
16 5 (0.36%) Microsoft Certification
16 5 (0.36%) PMI Certification
16 5 (0.36%) PMP
17 4 (0.29%) HNC
17 4 (0.29%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 141 (10.08%) Data Quality
2 62 (4.43%) GDPR
3 50 (3.57%) QA
4 28 (2.00%) NIST
5 19 (1.36%) Accessibility
6 13 (0.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 12 (0.86%) EU AI Act
8 10 (0.71%) Actionable Recommendations
8 10 (0.71%) HIPAA
9 9 (0.64%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 6 (0.43%) NCSC
11 5 (0.36%) GRC
12 4 (0.29%) DO-254
12 4 (0.29%) WCAG
13 3 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
13 3 (0.21%) GxP
14 2 (0.14%) Def Stans
14 2 (0.14%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 2 (0.14%) NIST 800
14 2 (0.14%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 198 (14.15%) Docker
2 13 (0.93%) Active Directory
3 12 (0.86%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 7 (0.50%) Firmware
5 3 (0.21%) Lustre
5 3 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.14%) Ceph
6 2 (0.14%) HDFS
7 1 (0.071%) Embedded Firmware
7 1 (0.071%) GPFS
Systems Management
1 214 (15.30%) Kubernetes
2 140 (10.01%) Terraform
3 21 (1.50%) Grafana
4 20 (1.43%) Kubeflow
5 14 (1.00%) Prometheus
6 13 (0.93%) Ansible
7 9 (0.64%) Podman
8 4 (0.29%) Istio
9 3 (0.21%) Rancher
10 2 (0.14%) Argo
10 2 (0.14%) Docker Swarm
10 2 (0.14%) Kibana
10 2 (0.14%) Knative
11 1 (0.071%) HP Fortify
11 1 (0.071%) logstash
11 1 (0.071%) Opsgenie
11 1 (0.071%) SCOM
11 1 (0.071%) SELinux
11 1 (0.071%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
Vendors
1 212 (15.15%) Databricks
2 179 (12.79%) Microsoft
3 108 (7.72%) Google
3 108 (7.72%) OpenAI
4 65 (4.65%) Foundry
5 43 (3.07%) SAP
6 29 (2.07%) Oracle
7 22 (1.57%) ServiceNow
8 16 (1.14%) Informatica
9 15 (1.07%) IBM
9 15 (1.07%) UiPath
10 11 (0.79%) Automation Anywhere
10 11 (0.79%) Dynatrace
11 9 (0.64%) Salesforce
12 7 (0.50%) Amplitude
12 7 (0.50%) NVIDIA
12 7 (0.50%) Pega
12 7 (0.50%) Workday
13 6 (0.43%) Splunk
13 6 (0.43%) Talend