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

6 months to
19 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 75 108 168
Rank change year-on-year +33 +60 +61
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,328 758 634
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.26% 2.46% 1.44%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.75% 2.74% 1.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 815 478 470
10th Percentile £400 £360 £413
25th Percentile £466 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £563 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -2.17% - -8.00%
75th Percentile £688 £725 £700
90th Percentile £778 £850 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £525 £540
% change year-on-year - -2.82% -9.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 14 26
10th Percentile £40.54 £22.45 £41.18
25th Percentile £50.00 £25.28 £43.42
Median hourly rate £54.50 £35.75 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +52.45% -22.59% +31.94%
75th Percentile £75.00 £51.56 £62.19
90th Percentile £95.00 £63.13 £66.50
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 35,377 27,631 38,379
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.89% 89.70% 87.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,416 17,028 25,083
10th Percentile £311 £306 £300
25th Percentile £410 £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 £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -2.04% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,136 844 2,147
10th Percentile £14.58 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.87 £21.05 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.50 £32.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.54% -7.14% -
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.75 £60.32
90th Percentile £70.36 £75.00 £73.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £30.62 £35.00
% change year-on-year -17.85% -12.53% +5.26%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 1,112 £575 -4.17% 1,707
London +26 736 £600 -4.00% 1,040
UK excluding London +45 431 £525 - 896
Work from Home +22 420 £575 +9.52% 624
North of England -24 103 £525 +16.02% 240
South East +12 89 £550 +4.76% 272
Scotland +61 87 £503 +20.00% 68
East of England +12 70 £550 -8.33% 81
North West +6 60 £500 +11.11% 144
Midlands -23 55 £514 +31.79% 99
West Midlands -29 36 £514 +28.50% 42
South West -17 33 £560 -16.10% 112
Yorkshire -38 32 £520 -1.05% 61
East Midlands -13 18 £513 +43.96% 56
Wales -7 17 £738 +31.11% 26
North East -11 13 £563 +57.12% 35
Northern Ireland - 1 £650 - 10

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 (9.19%) Apache Spark
2 76 (5.72%) Apache Airflow
3 59 (4.44%) Apache
4 31 (2.33%) Jupyter
5 12 (0.90%) Appian
5 12 (0.90%) Confluence
6 9 (0.68%) SAS
7 6 (0.45%) Apache Pig
7 6 (0.45%) GeoServer
7 6 (0.45%) Palantir Foundry
7 6 (0.45%) SharePoint
7 6 (0.45%) Smallworld
8 4 (0.30%) CMS
9 2 (0.15%) IIS
9 2 (0.15%) Luigi
10 1 (0.075%) Apache Synapse
10 1 (0.075%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.075%) Headless CMS
10 1 (0.075%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.075%) nginx
Applications
1 40 (3.01%) Chatbot
2 15 (1.13%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (1.13%) Microsoft Project
3 12 (0.90%) Microsoft Office
4 9 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.38%) Simulink
6 3 (0.23%) LaTeX
7 1 (0.075%) Adobe XD
7 1 (0.075%) Sketch
7 1 (0.075%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 5 (0.38%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.15%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.075%) Shopify
3 1 (0.075%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 582 (43.83%) Azure
2 478 (35.99%) AWS
3 245 (18.45%) GCP
4 140 (10.54%) Power Platform
5 111 (8.36%) GitHub
5 111 (8.36%) Serverless
6 101 (7.61%) Azure Machine Learning
7 89 (6.70%) Azure AI
8 79 (5.95%) Azure DevOps
9 76 (5.72%) Amazon SageMaker
10 71 (5.35%) Snowflake
11 69 (5.20%) Amazon S3
12 61 (4.59%) Vertex AI
13 55 (4.14%) AWS Lambda
13 55 (4.14%) Azure Data Factory
14 53 (3.99%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 51 (3.84%) GitHub Actions
16 44 (3.31%) AWS CloudFormation
16 44 (3.31%) Azure AKS
17 40 (3.01%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 17 (1.28%) Network Security
2 9 (0.68%) HTTP
3 6 (0.45%) DNS
3 6 (0.45%) Ethernet
4 5 (0.38%) FTP
4 5 (0.38%) Internet
4 5 (0.38%) SMTP
4 5 (0.38%) SSL
5 4 (0.30%) 5G
5 4 (0.30%) Firewall
5 4 (0.30%) InfiniBand
6 3 (0.23%) Cisco IPT
6 3 (0.23%) LTE
6 3 (0.23%) VPN
7 2 (0.15%) 4G
7 2 (0.15%) Bluetooth
7 2 (0.15%) Cisco Nexus
7 2 (0.15%) Modbus
7 2 (0.15%) Radio Access Network
7 2 (0.15%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 110 (8.28%) Power BI
2 92 (6.93%) Data Lake
3 81 (6.10%) Data Warehouse
4 64 (4.82%) Big Data
5 57 (4.29%) NoSQL
6 52 (3.92%) Metadata
7 50 (3.77%) PostgreSQL
8 48 (3.61%) BigQuery
9 39 (2.94%) Tableau
10 37 (2.79%) Hadoop
11 35 (2.64%) Pinecone
12 28 (2.11%) SQL Server
13 26 (1.96%) Weaviate
14 25 (1.88%) Relational Database
15 24 (1.81%) Delta Lake
16 22 (1.66%) Elasticsearch
17 21 (1.58%) Mixpanel
18 20 (1.51%) Amazon Athena
19 17 (1.28%) Amazon Redshift
20 16 (1.20%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 107 (8.06%) Git
2 95 (7.15%) MLflow
3 39 (2.94%) Jenkins
4 28 (2.11%) GitLab
5 25 (1.88%) JIRA
6 15 (1.13%) Selenium
7 13 (0.98%) JMeter
8 12 (0.90%) Visual Studio
9 9 (0.68%) SonarQube
10 7 (0.53%) Gradle
11 6 (0.45%) PyCharm
12 5 (0.38%) Maven
12 5 (0.38%) MSTest
13 4 (0.30%) Android Studio
13 4 (0.30%) Bitbucket
13 4 (0.30%) Cypress.io
13 4 (0.30%) Oracle APEX
13 4 (0.30%) RStudio
14 3 (0.23%) Postman
14 3 (0.23%) Robot Framework
General
1 339 (25.53%) Social Skills
2 285 (21.46%) Finance
3 152 (11.45%) Analytical Skills
4 140 (10.54%) Public Sector
5 91 (6.85%) Banking
6 43 (3.24%) Pharmaceutical
7 40 (3.01%) Marketing
8 33 (2.48%) Retail
9 30 (2.26%) Investment Banking
9 30 (2.26%) Legal
10 27 (2.03%) Influencing Skills
11 25 (1.88%) Front Office
12 24 (1.81%) Manufacturing
13 23 (1.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 19 (1.43%) Documentation Skills
14 19 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
14 19 (1.43%) Telecoms
15 14 (1.05%) Electronics
15 14 (1.05%) Financial Institution
16 12 (0.90%) Law
Job Titles
1 192 (14.46%) Data Scientist
2 188 (14.16%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
3 180 (13.55%) Architect
4 164 (12.35%) Senior
5 137 (10.32%) Data Engineer
6 118 (8.89%) Developer
7 110 (8.28%) Lead
8 69 (5.20%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
9 61 (4.59%) Analyst
10 59 (4.44%) Machine Learning Engineer
10 59 (4.44%) Software Engineer
11 57 (4.29%) Python Engineer
12 49 (3.69%) Data Architect
13 42 (3.16%) Solutions Architect
14 38 (2.86%) Gen AI Engineer
15 36 (2.71%) Senior Data Scientist
16 35 (2.64%) Azure Engineer
17 33 (2.48%) Consultant
18 27 (2.03%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
19 25 (1.88%) Full-Stack Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 227 (17.09%) PyTorch
2 188 (14.16%) TensorFlow
3 127 (9.56%) scikit-learn
4 116 (8.73%) Pandas
5 84 (6.33%) NumPy
6 83 (6.25%) LangChain
7 82 (6.17%) React
8 72 (5.42%) FastAPI
9 61 (4.59%) Hugging Face
9 61 (4.59%) Model Context Protocol
10 60 (4.52%) PySpark
11 58 (4.37%) .NET
12 56 (4.22%) Kafka
12 56 (4.22%) REST
13 52 (3.92%) LangGraph
14 49 (3.69%) Node.js
15 45 (3.39%) RESTful
16 36 (2.71%) AngularJS
17 32 (2.41%) Faiss
17 32 (2.41%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 180 (13.55%) Algorithms
2 174 (13.10%) Cloud Native
3 106 (7.98%) AI Agents
4 48 (3.61%) Onboarding
5 47 (3.54%) Product Ownership
6 39 (2.94%) Distributed Systems
7 35 (2.64%) Data Protection Act
8 31 (2.33%) Legacy Systems
9 27 (2.03%) Distributed Computing
10 23 (1.73%) Data Structures
10 23 (1.73%) Life Science
11 22 (1.66%) Hybrid Cloud
12 20 (1.51%) Genomics
13 19 (1.43%) Enterprise Software
14 18 (1.36%) Analytical Mindset
15 16 (1.20%) Fixed Income
15 16 (1.20%) Management Information System
16 13 (0.98%) Taxonomies
17 12 (0.90%) Derivative
18 11 (0.83%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 36 (2.71%) Linux
2 12 (0.90%) Windows
3 9 (0.68%) Apple iOS
3 9 (0.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 9 (0.68%) VMS
4 8 (0.60%) Android
4 8 (0.60%) Ubuntu
5 4 (0.30%) Unix
6 1 (0.075%) CentOS
6 1 (0.075%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,028 (77.41%) AI
2 520 (39.16%) Data Science
3 367 (27.64%) CI/CD
4 363 (27.33%) LLM
5 361 (27.18%) Analytics
6 297 (22.36%) DevOps
7 284 (21.39%) Agile
7 284 (21.39%) Data Pipeline
8 264 (19.88%) Generative AI
9 253 (19.05%) MLOps
10 247 (18.60%) Data Engineering
11 225 (16.94%) Problem-Solving
12 201 (15.14%) Natural Language Processing
13 183 (13.78%) Software Engineering
14 176 (13.25%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
15 171 (12.88%) Use Case
16 166 (12.50%) Containerisation
17 160 (12.05%) Prompt Engineering
18 159 (11.97%) ETL
19 153 (11.52%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 834 (62.80%) Python
2 338 (25.45%) SQL
3 87 (6.55%) Java
4 74 (5.57%) R
5 73 (5.50%) C#
6 62 (4.67%) JavaScript
7 58 (4.37%) TypeScript
8 29 (2.18%) C++
9 27 (2.03%) Scala
10 25 (1.88%) PowerShell
11 17 (1.28%) Bash
12 15 (1.13%) Bicep
13 12 (0.90%) MATLAB
14 11 (0.83%) Go
15 9 (0.68%) Rust
16 6 (0.45%) Kotlin
17 5 (0.38%) C
17 5 (0.38%) SPARQL
17 5 (0.38%) SystemVerilog
17 5 (0.38%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 216 (16.27%) Security Cleared
2 180 (13.55%) Degree
3 155 (11.67%) SC Cleared
4 77 (5.80%) Master's Degree
5 46 (3.46%) PhD
6 42 (3.16%) Computer Science Degree
7 33 (2.48%) DV Cleared
8 30 (2.26%) BPSS Clearance
9 23 (1.73%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 22 (1.66%) Azure Certification
11 19 (1.43%) AWS Certification
12 7 (0.53%) ISTQB
12 7 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
13 6 (0.45%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 6 (0.45%) CISSP
14 5 (0.38%) HNC
14 5 (0.38%) HND
14 5 (0.38%) TOGAF Certification
15 4 (0.30%) CISM
15 4 (0.30%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 120 (9.04%) Data Quality
2 53 (3.99%) GDPR
2 53 (3.99%) QA
3 36 (2.71%) NIST
4 28 (2.11%) EU AI Act
5 18 (1.36%) Accessibility
6 15 (1.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 7 (0.53%) GRC
8 6 (0.45%) NCSC
9 5 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
9 5 (0.38%) DO-254
9 5 (0.38%) HIPAA
9 5 (0.38%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 5 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 4 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
10 4 (0.30%) PCI DSS
10 4 (0.30%) SOC 2
11 3 (0.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 2 (0.15%) EMIR
12 2 (0.15%) JSP 440
System Software
1 209 (15.74%) Docker
2 11 (0.83%) Active Directory
3 10 (0.75%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 7 (0.53%) Firmware
5 6 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.23%) Lustre
7 2 (0.15%) Ceph
7 2 (0.15%) HDFS
7 2 (0.15%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.15%) KVM
7 2 (0.15%) VMware Infrastructure
7 2 (0.15%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.075%) GPFS
Systems Management
1 210 (15.81%) Kubernetes
2 137 (10.32%) Terraform
3 24 (1.81%) Grafana
4 23 (1.73%) Ansible
5 13 (0.98%) Kubeflow
6 12 (0.90%) Prometheus
7 9 (0.68%) Podman
8 7 (0.53%) Kibana
8 7 (0.53%) SCOM
9 4 (0.30%) Argo
9 4 (0.30%) logstash
10 3 (0.23%) ITRS Geneos
11 2 (0.15%) Istio
11 2 (0.15%) Knative
11 2 (0.15%) Single Sign-On
12 1 (0.075%) Cilium
12 1 (0.075%) HP ALM
12 1 (0.075%) Opsgenie
12 1 (0.075%) Rancher
12 1 (0.075%) SELinux
Vendors
1 197 (14.83%) Databricks
2 186 (14.01%) Microsoft
3 108 (8.13%) Google
4 99 (7.45%) OpenAI
5 70 (5.27%) Foundry
6 35 (2.64%) SAP
7 24 (1.81%) Oracle
8 18 (1.36%) ServiceNow
9 14 (1.05%) Salesforce
10 13 (0.98%) Splunk
11 12 (0.90%) Informatica
12 11 (0.83%) Automation Anywhere
12 11 (0.83%) NVIDIA
12 11 (0.83%) UiPath
13 9 (0.68%) Greenplum
14 7 (0.53%) Amplitude
14 7 (0.53%) Palantir
14 7 (0.53%) Pega
15 6 (0.45%) Dynatrace
15 6 (0.45%) Talend