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

6 months to
7 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 94 85 111
Rank change year-on-year -9 +26 +89
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,588 974 785
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.89% 2.95% 2.09%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.42% 3.26% 2.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,005 628 519
10th Percentile £405 £400 £390
25th Percentile £481 £463 £489
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% -8.33% +2.35%
75th Percentile £688 £688 £731
90th Percentile £783 £775 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £525 £495
% change year-on-year +4.76% +6.17% -9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 24 19
10th Percentile £28.50 £26.62 £13.06
25th Percentile £39.91 £38.84 £25.93
Median hourly rate £77.00 £53.22 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +44.68% +15.24% -
75th Percentile £86.06 £76.25 £53.75
90th Percentile £88.75 £86.75 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £77.00 £61.23 £46.18
% change year-on-year +25.77% +32.58% -

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 46,438 29,893 32,352
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.57% 90.54% 85.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,948 18,567 19,512
10th Percentile £325 £295 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £736 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,331 1,864 1,314
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.35 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.08 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £37.87 £25.15 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +50.56% -39.40% -2.92%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.20 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.00 £65.00 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.13 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +70.85% -48.10% +1.18%

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 7 October 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 7 October 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 7 October 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 -4 1,363 £581 +2.65% 6,074
London +12 902 £600 -1.64% 4,169
UK excluding London -22 523 £550 +4.76% 2,257
Work from Home -16 429 £575 +4.55% 2,272
North of England -8 155 £550 +14.58% 476
South East -18 139 £600 +9.09% 575
Scotland +3 95 £450 -10.45% 272
North West -15 69 £650 +36.84% 292
Yorkshire 0 66 £507 -1.31% 125
South West -15 52 £525 -4.55% 262
Midlands -35 51 £575 +9.52% 200
West Midlands -39 41 £538 +2.38% 114
East of England -40 31 £488 -11.36% 345
North East -25 21 £550 +29.41% 61
Wales -10 7 £530 -21.48% 61
East Midlands -18 6 £425 -8.11% 86
Northern Ireland +7 2 £467 -33.29% 84

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
1 102 (6.42%) Apache Spark
2 81 (5.10%) Apache Airflow
3 69 (4.35%) Apache
4 34 (2.14%) Jupyter
5 25 (1.57%) Confluence
6 11 (0.69%) SAS
7 7 (0.44%) IIS
8 6 (0.38%) ArcGIS
9 5 (0.31%) SharePoint
10 4 (0.25%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.25%) Palantir Foundry
11 3 (0.19%) OpenStack
11 3 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.13%) Apache Pulsar
12 2 (0.13%) Apache Superset
12 2 (0.13%) Appian
12 2 (0.13%) CMS
12 2 (0.13%) Headless CMS
12 2 (0.13%) nginx
13 1 (0.063%) Luigi
Applications
1 30 (1.89%) Chatbot
2 8 (0.50%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.19%) CPLEX
4 2 (0.13%) DaVinci Resolve
4 2 (0.13%) Notion
4 2 (0.13%) NUKE
5 1 (0.063%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.063%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.063%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.063%) Simulink
5 1 (0.063%) Sketch
5 1 (0.063%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.063%) Trello
Business Applications
1 8 (0.50%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.25%) SAP IBP
3 3 (0.19%) Cloudability
3 3 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
4 2 (0.13%) SAP ERP
4 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.063%) Actimize
5 1 (0.063%) Dynamics CRM
5 1 (0.063%) Endur
5 1 (0.063%) NetSuite
5 1 (0.063%) OpenLink RightAngle
5 1 (0.063%) Oracle Cash Management
5 1 (0.063%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.063%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.063%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.063%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 524 (33.00%) Azure
2 512 (32.24%) AWS
3 305 (19.21%) GCP
4 112 (7.05%) Power Platform
5 105 (6.61%) GitHub
6 104 (6.55%) Serverless
7 94 (5.92%) Amazon S3
8 91 (5.73%) Snowflake
9 81 (5.10%) AWS Lambda
10 67 (4.22%) Amazon SageMaker
11 64 (4.03%) Amazon Bedrock
12 63 (3.97%) dbt
13 61 (3.84%) Azure Machine Learning
14 51 (3.21%) Azure DevOps
15 50 (3.15%) Azure AI
16 48 (3.02%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 47 (2.96%) Vertex AI
18 46 (2.90%) SaaS
19 45 (2.83%) Azure Data Factory
20 39 (2.46%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.39%) Network Security
2 20 (1.26%) Broadband
3 19 (1.20%) Internet
4 14 (0.88%) DNS
5 13 (0.82%) Firewall
6 11 (0.69%) HTTP
7 9 (0.57%) DHCP
7 9 (0.57%) VPN
8 5 (0.31%) SMTP
8 5 (0.31%) TCP/IP
9 4 (0.25%) NAS
9 4 (0.25%) SAN
9 4 (0.25%) SMS
9 4 (0.25%) VLAN
10 3 (0.19%) CTI
10 3 (0.19%) MQTT
11 2 (0.13%) FTP
11 2 (0.13%) PCoIP
11 2 (0.13%) Remote Desktop
11 2 (0.13%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 103 (6.49%) Power BI
2 102 (6.42%) Data Warehouse
3 95 (5.98%) Data Lake
4 91 (5.73%) Metadata
5 77 (4.85%) BigQuery
6 63 (3.97%) Big Data
7 53 (3.34%) Amazon Redshift
7 53 (3.34%) Delta Lake
8 48 (3.02%) NoSQL
9 40 (2.52%) Tableau
10 39 (2.46%) PostgreSQL
11 32 (2.02%) Amazon Athena
12 28 (1.76%) Relational Database
13 26 (1.64%) Neo4j
14 25 (1.57%) Hadoop
15 22 (1.39%) Elasticsearch
16 21 (1.32%) MongoDB
17 19 (1.20%) Amazon RDS
18 17 (1.07%) DynamoDB
18 17 (1.07%) Looker
Development Applications
1 108 (6.80%) Git
2 56 (3.53%) GitLab
3 47 (2.96%) JIRA
4 39 (2.46%) MLflow
5 13 (0.82%) Claude Code
5 13 (0.82%) Jenkins
6 7 (0.44%) Vite
7 6 (0.38%) JMeter
8 5 (0.31%) Cypress.io
8 5 (0.31%) ERwin
8 5 (0.31%) Postman
8 5 (0.31%) RStudio
9 4 (0.25%) REST Assured
9 4 (0.25%) Selenium
10 3 (0.19%) ER Studio
10 3 (0.19%) Newman
10 3 (0.19%) Pylint
11 2 (0.13%) Applitools
11 2 (0.13%) Locust
11 2 (0.13%) Terragrunt
General
1 366 (23.05%) Social Skills
2 322 (20.28%) Finance
3 242 (15.24%) Analytical Skills
4 149 (9.38%) Public Sector
5 125 (7.87%) Banking
6 40 (2.52%) Marketing
7 39 (2.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 30 (1.89%) Retail
9 29 (1.83%) Pharmaceutical
10 28 (1.76%) Telecoms
11 24 (1.51%) Manufacturing
12 23 (1.45%) Aerospace
12 23 (1.45%) Legal
13 22 (1.39%) Influencing Skills
14 20 (1.26%) Financial Institution
15 19 (1.20%) Front Office
16 17 (1.07%) Documentation Skills
16 17 (1.07%) Investment Banking
17 16 (1.01%) Billing
18 15 (0.94%) Law
Job Titles
1 289 (18.20%) Senior
2 256 (16.12%) Architect
3 194 (12.22%) Data Engineer
4 192 (12.09%) Data Scientist
5 173 (10.89%) Lead
6 147 (9.26%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 106 (6.68%) Machine Learning Engineer
8 72 (4.53%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
8 72 (4.53%) Solutions Architect
9 70 (4.41%) Developer
10 69 (4.35%) Python Engineer
11 66 (4.16%) Data Architect
12 59 (3.72%) Analyst
12 59 (3.72%) Senior Data Engineer
13 58 (3.65%) Platform Engineer
14 53 (3.34%) Senior Data Scientist
15 50 (3.15%) Software Engineer
16 47 (2.96%) Security Architect
17 41 (2.58%) DevOps Engineer
18 37 (2.33%) Full-Stack Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 207 (13.04%) Terraform
2 107 (6.74%) Kafka
3 105 (6.61%) PyTorch
4 95 (5.98%) PySpark
5 80 (5.04%) TensorFlow
6 76 (4.79%) LangChain
7 75 (4.72%) REST
8 62 (3.90%) scikit-learn
9 59 (3.72%) React
10 52 (3.27%) Pandas
10 52 (3.27%) pytest
11 41 (2.58%) LangGraph
11 41 (2.58%) NumPy
12 36 (2.27%) FastAPI
13 32 (2.02%) .NET
14 28 (1.76%) JSON
15 27 (1.70%) Hugging Face
15 27 (1.70%) Model Context Protocol
16 21 (1.32%) LlamaIndex
16 21 (1.32%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 209 (13.16%) Cloud Native
2 178 (11.21%) AI Agents
3 104 (6.55%) Algorithms
4 76 (4.79%) Onboarding
5 69 (4.35%) Distributed Systems
6 65 (4.09%) Product Ownership
7 41 (2.58%) Data Structures
8 40 (2.52%) Enterprise Software
9 30 (1.89%) Life Science
10 29 (1.83%) Data Protection Act
11 23 (1.45%) Management Information System
12 21 (1.32%) Hybrid Cloud
13 19 (1.20%) Social Media
14 18 (1.13%) CMDB
15 17 (1.07%) Clustering
15 17 (1.07%) Legacy Systems
15 17 (1.07%) Taxonomies
16 16 (1.01%) Analytical Mindset
16 16 (1.01%) Credit Risk
17 15 (0.94%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 46 (2.90%) Linux
2 21 (1.32%) Windows
3 16 (1.01%) Unix
4 4 (0.25%) Android
4 4 (0.25%) Ubuntu
4 4 (0.25%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.19%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.063%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.063%) Robot Operating System
6 1 (0.063%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,318 (83.00%) AI
2 576 (36.27%) Data Science
3 511 (32.18%) CI/CD
4 479 (30.16%) Analytics
5 431 (27.14%) LLM
6 394 (24.81%) Generative AI
7 363 (22.86%) Data Pipeline
8 335 (21.10%) DevOps
9 331 (20.84%) Agile
10 308 (19.40%) MLOps
11 291 (18.32%) Data Engineering
12 270 (17.00%) Software Engineering
13 248 (15.62%) Stakeholder Management
14 244 (15.37%) Decision-Making
14 244 (15.37%) Use Case
15 243 (15.30%) Roadmaps
16 218 (13.73%) Infrastructure as Code
17 213 (13.41%) Data Modelling
18 212 (13.35%) Problem-Solving
19 210 (13.22%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Programming Languages
1 840 (52.90%) Python
2 417 (26.26%) SQL
3 109 (6.86%) Java
4 75 (4.72%) JavaScript
5 63 (3.97%) TypeScript
6 43 (2.71%) Bash
7 34 (2.14%) C#
7 34 (2.14%) R
8 30 (1.89%) PowerShell
9 26 (1.64%) Scala
10 20 (1.26%) Go
11 19 (1.20%) C++
12 17 (1.07%) Bicep
13 14 (0.88%) Shell Script
14 11 (0.69%) Cypher
14 11 (0.69%) PL/SQL
15 8 (0.50%) Gremlin
16 7 (0.44%) SPARQL
17 5 (0.31%) Kotlin
17 5 (0.31%) Perl
Qualifications
1 312 (19.65%) Security Cleared
2 243 (15.30%) SC Cleared
3 132 (8.31%) Degree
4 58 (3.65%) Computer Science Degree
5 56 (3.53%) DV Cleared
6 52 (3.27%) AWS Certification
7 40 (2.52%) BPSS Clearance
7 40 (2.52%) Master's Degree
8 30 (1.89%) Azure Certification
8 30 (1.89%) CISSP
9 27 (1.70%) PhD
10 19 (1.20%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 15 (0.94%) TOGAF Certification
12 13 (0.82%) CISM
13 10 (0.63%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 10 (0.63%) Cisco Certification
13 10 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
14 9 (0.57%) Microsoft Certified Professional
15 8 (0.50%) DBS Check
16 5 (0.31%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 231 (14.55%) Data Quality
2 55 (3.46%) GDPR
2 55 (3.46%) QA
3 30 (1.89%) NIST
4 19 (1.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 18 (1.13%) Accessibility
6 14 (0.88%) EU AI Act
7 10 (0.63%) ISO/IEC 42001
7 10 (0.63%) NCSC
7 10 (0.63%) SLA
8 9 (0.57%) GRC
9 8 (0.50%) GxP
10 7 (0.44%) PCI DSS
10 7 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 6 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.38%) HIPAA
12 5 (0.31%) Basel III
12 5 (0.31%) Solvency II
13 4 (0.25%) SOC 2
14 3 (0.19%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 215 (13.54%) Docker
2 16 (1.01%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.63%) Hyper-V
4 10 (0.63%) IAG
5 8 (0.50%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.44%) NFS
7 5 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
8 3 (0.19%) BitLocker
8 3 (0.19%) Terminal Services
8 3 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.13%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 2 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 2 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.13%) VMware Workstation
10 1 (0.063%) Firmware
10 1 (0.063%) zsh
Systems Management
1 286 (18.01%) Kubernetes
2 47 (2.96%) Ansible
3 28 (1.76%) Grafana
3 28 (1.76%) Kubeflow
4 22 (1.39%) Prometheus
5 6 (0.38%) Istio
5 6 (0.38%) systemd
6 5 (0.31%) Podman
7 3 (0.19%) Argo
7 3 (0.19%) Kibana
7 3 (0.19%) Nagios
7 3 (0.19%) NetBackup
7 3 (0.19%) Puppet
7 3 (0.19%) vCenter Server
7 3 (0.19%) vMotion
8 2 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 2 (0.13%) Packer
8 2 (0.13%) SCCM
8 2 (0.13%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.063%) Kustomize
Vendors
1 205 (12.91%) Databricks
2 159 (10.01%) Microsoft
3 108 (6.80%) Google
4 65 (4.09%) OpenAI
5 37 (2.33%) SAP
6 34 (2.14%) ServiceNow
7 33 (2.08%) Oracle
8 28 (1.76%) Foundry
9 22 (1.39%) Informatica
10 19 (1.20%) Dynatrace
11 14 (0.88%) VMware
12 11 (0.69%) IBM
12 11 (0.69%) Salesforce
13 10 (0.63%) Nexthink
13 10 (0.63%) Splunk
13 10 (0.63%) UiPath
14 7 (0.44%) Cisco
15 6 (0.38%) New Relic
15 6 (0.38%) Pega
16 5 (0.31%) Sybase