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 5 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 80 100 178
Rank change year-on-year +20 +78 +27
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,148 867 636
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.15% 2.40% 1.41%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.53% 2.75% 1.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 764 578 464
10th Percentile £402 £381 £400
25th Percentile £472 £475 £468
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £581
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +3.23% -7.00%
75th Percentile £688 £731 £701
90th Percentile £775 £800 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £508 £500 £528
% change year-on-year +1.50% -5.21% -12.08%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 20 29
10th Percentile £31.00 £13.06 £42.50
25th Percentile £42.79 £20.31 -
Median hourly rate £51.44 £27.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +87.05% -40.45% -9.45%
75th Percentile £80.00 £48.07 £47.50
90th Percentile £114.60 £54.88 £65.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.11 £46.18 £46.18
% change year-on-year +36.67% - -9.89%

All Process and 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 32,500 31,582 39,830
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.05% 87.42% 88.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,460 19,152 26,649
10th Percentile £300 £310 £312
25th Percentile £405 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £743 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,092 1,104 1,551
10th Percentile £14.54 £15.25 £14.36
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.23 £18.95
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.75 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.21% -22.94% +21.43%
75th Percentile £45.53 £63.51 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £73.93 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.85 £32.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -29.71% -23.53% +30.77%

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 5 December 2025.

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 5 December 2025.

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 5 December 2025. 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 +13 965 £575 -4.17% 1,465
London +11 630 £625 -0.79% 278
UK excluding London +48 375 £508 +1.50% 1,347
Work from Home +28 357 £550 +5.26% 5,728
North of England -16 94 £475 -2.86% 354
South East +28 84 £520 -1.05% 382
East of England +20 65 £523 -5.00% 256
Scotland +47 63 £503 +25.63% 36
North West -6 48 £465 -3.53% 138
Yorkshire -5 41 £514 -2.10% 163
Midlands -6 39 £511 +20.18% 215
West Midlands -5 29 £514 +11.14% 115
South West -23 25 £550 -15.38% 110
Wales -2 10 £700 +201.08% 11
East Midlands -12 10 £410 +15.17% 98
North East -16 6 £450 +4.05% 55
Northern Ireland -2 2 £675 - 3

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 86 (7.49%) Apache Spark
2 64 (5.57%) Apache Airflow
3 33 (2.87%) Apache
4 24 (2.09%) Jupyter
5 9 (0.78%) Confluence
6 8 (0.70%) Apache Pig
6 8 (0.70%) SAS
7 6 (0.52%) GeoServer
7 6 (0.52%) Smallworld
8 4 (0.35%) Appian
8 4 (0.35%) IIS
9 3 (0.26%) CMS
9 3 (0.26%) SharePoint
10 1 (0.087%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.087%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.087%) nginx
10 1 (0.087%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 43 (3.75%) Chatbot
2 16 (1.39%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
4 8 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.70%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.44%) Simulink
6 1 (0.087%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.087%) GNU Octave
6 1 (0.087%) Sketch
6 1 (0.087%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.087%) Trello
Business Applications
1 9 (0.78%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.17%) Distributed Ledger
3 2 (0.17%) SAP ERP
3 2 (0.17%) Teamcenter
4 1 (0.087%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.087%) SAP GRC
4 1 (0.087%) Shopify
4 1 (0.087%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 488 (42.51%) Azure
2 396 (34.49%) AWS
3 217 (18.90%) GCP
4 111 (9.67%) Power Platform
5 101 (8.80%) GitHub
6 100 (8.71%) Serverless
7 99 (8.62%) Azure Machine Learning
8 70 (6.10%) Azure DevOps
9 67 (5.84%) Snowflake
10 65 (5.66%) Amazon S3
11 64 (5.57%) Amazon SageMaker
12 56 (4.88%) Vertex AI
13 55 (4.79%) Azure AI
14 52 (4.53%) AWS Lambda
15 50 (4.36%) Azure AKS
15 50 (4.36%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 49 (4.27%) Azure Data Factory
17 48 (4.18%) GitHub Actions
18 37 (3.22%) Amazon Bedrock
18 37 (3.22%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 15 (1.31%) Network Security
2 14 (1.22%) HTTP
3 13 (1.13%) DNS
4 9 (0.78%) SSL
5 8 (0.70%) FTP
5 8 (0.70%) SMTP
6 6 (0.52%) Ethernet
6 6 (0.52%) Firewall
6 6 (0.52%) Internet
7 4 (0.35%) VPN
8 3 (0.26%) InfiniBand
9 2 (0.17%) 2G
9 2 (0.17%) 5G
9 2 (0.17%) Cisco IPT
9 2 (0.17%) Cisco Nexus
9 2 (0.17%) Hyperconnected
9 2 (0.17%) LTE
9 2 (0.17%) Modbus
9 2 (0.17%) OSPF
9 2 (0.17%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 98 (8.54%) Power BI
2 78 (6.79%) Data Warehouse
3 67 (5.84%) Big Data
4 64 (5.57%) Data Lake
5 56 (4.88%) PostgreSQL
6 54 (4.70%) NoSQL
7 42 (3.66%) Tableau
8 41 (3.57%) BigQuery
9 34 (2.96%) Metadata
10 28 (2.44%) Hadoop
11 25 (2.18%) Pinecone
12 24 (2.09%) MongoDB
13 21 (1.83%) Amazon Athena
14 20 (1.74%) Delta Lake
15 19 (1.66%) Elasticsearch
16 18 (1.57%) Data Mining
17 16 (1.39%) Relational Database
18 15 (1.31%) Amazon Redshift
19 13 (1.13%) Azure SQL Database
19 13 (1.13%) Redis
Development Applications
1 95 (8.28%) Git
2 69 (6.01%) MLflow
3 60 (5.23%) Jenkins
4 38 (3.31%) GitLab
5 24 (2.09%) JIRA
6 18 (1.57%) Selenium
7 16 (1.39%) JMeter
8 13 (1.13%) SonarQube
9 10 (0.87%) JUnit
10 8 (0.70%) Cypress.io
11 7 (0.61%) Visual Studio
12 6 (0.52%) Mockito
12 6 (0.52%) Postman
12 6 (0.52%) PyCharm
13 5 (0.44%) Artifactory
13 5 (0.44%) Cucumber
13 5 (0.44%) Gradle
13 5 (0.44%) MSTest
14 4 (0.35%) Robot Framework
14 4 (0.35%) RStudio
General
1 324 (28.22%) Social Skills
2 219 (19.08%) Finance
3 133 (11.59%) Analytical Skills
4 101 (8.80%) Public Sector
5 74 (6.45%) Banking
6 47 (4.09%) Marketing
7 43 (3.75%) Pharmaceutical
8 38 (3.31%) Retail
9 27 (2.35%) Legal
9 27 (2.35%) Manufacturing
9 27 (2.35%) Telecoms
10 26 (2.26%) Investment Banking
11 21 (1.83%) Front Office
12 19 (1.66%) Documentation Skills
12 19 (1.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 18 (1.57%) Influencing Skills
14 14 (1.22%) Presentation Skills
15 12 (1.05%) Electronics
16 11 (0.96%) Financial Institution
17 10 (0.87%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 180 (15.68%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
2 169 (14.72%) Data Scientist
3 153 (13.33%) Architect
4 122 (10.63%) Senior
5 120 (10.45%) Data Engineer
6 114 (9.93%) Developer
7 73 (6.36%) Lead
8 58 (5.05%) Python Engineer
9 55 (4.79%) Machine Learning Engineer
10 52 (4.53%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
11 49 (4.27%) Analyst
12 42 (3.66%) Software Engineer
13 38 (3.31%) Data Architect
14 34 (2.96%) Gen AI Engineer
15 32 (2.79%) Azure Engineer
15 32 (2.79%) Solutions Architect
16 28 (2.44%) Senior Data Scientist
17 26 (2.26%) Consultant
17 26 (2.26%) Python Developer
18 25 (2.18%) Full-Stack Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 198 (17.25%) PyTorch
2 173 (15.07%) TensorFlow
3 116 (10.10%) scikit-learn
4 108 (9.41%) Pandas
5 91 (7.93%) LangChain
6 85 (7.40%) FastAPI
7 74 (6.45%) NumPy
8 65 (5.66%) Hugging Face
9 63 (5.49%) React
10 62 (5.40%) Kafka
11 54 (4.70%) RESTful
12 53 (4.62%) LangGraph
13 50 (4.36%) PySpark
14 47 (4.09%) REST
15 37 (3.22%) Node.js
16 35 (3.05%) .NET
16 35 (3.05%) Flask
17 31 (2.70%) pytest
18 24 (2.09%) AngularJS
19 22 (1.92%) Faiss
Miscellaneous
1 181 (15.77%) Algorithms
2 144 (12.54%) Cloud Native
3 100 (8.71%) AI Agents
4 44 (3.83%) Product Ownership
5 39 (3.40%) Distributed Systems
6 38 (3.31%) Onboarding
7 36 (3.14%) Data Protection Act
8 30 (2.61%) Legacy Systems
9 29 (2.53%) Distributed Computing
10 25 (2.18%) Genomics
11 24 (2.09%) Life Science
12 23 (2.00%) Analytical Mindset
12 23 (2.00%) Data Structures
13 21 (1.83%) Hybrid Cloud
14 18 (1.57%) Enterprise Software
15 16 (1.39%) Management Information System
16 13 (1.13%) Greenfield Project
17 11 (0.96%) IoT
18 10 (0.87%) Cyber Threat
18 10 (0.87%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 32 (2.79%) Linux
2 11 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 11 (0.96%) VMS
3 9 (0.78%) Ubuntu
3 9 (0.78%) Windows
4 8 (0.70%) Unix
5 6 (0.52%) Android
5 6 (0.52%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.17%) Robot Operating System
7 1 (0.087%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 844 (73.52%) AI
2 458 (39.90%) Data Science
3 336 (29.27%) LLM
4 312 (27.18%) CI/CD
5 304 (26.48%) Analytics
6 284 (24.74%) Agile
7 266 (23.17%) DevOps
8 220 (19.16%) Generative AI
9 217 (18.90%) Data Pipeline
10 199 (17.33%) MLOps
11 198 (17.25%) Problem-Solving
12 190 (16.55%) Data Engineering
13 167 (14.55%) Natural Language Processing
14 162 (14.11%) Software Engineering
15 151 (13.15%) Containerisation
16 137 (11.93%) Visualisation
17 135 (11.76%) Data Modelling
18 134 (11.67%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
19 133 (11.59%) Use Case
20 131 (11.41%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 738 (64.29%) Python
2 280 (24.39%) SQL
3 82 (7.14%) R
4 72 (6.27%) Java
5 59 (5.14%) JavaScript
6 54 (4.70%) TypeScript
7 42 (3.66%) C#
8 38 (3.31%) PowerShell
9 32 (2.79%) C++
10 29 (2.53%) Scala
11 22 (1.92%) Bash
12 20 (1.74%) Bicep
13 14 (1.22%) MATLAB
14 12 (1.05%) Go
15 10 (0.87%) C
16 5 (0.44%) SystemVerilog
16 5 (0.44%) Tcl
17 3 (0.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 3 (0.26%) PL/SQL
17 3 (0.26%) Rust
Qualifications
1 179 (15.59%) Degree
2 164 (14.29%) Security Cleared
3 120 (10.45%) SC Cleared
4 71 (6.18%) Master's Degree
5 51 (4.44%) MCP
6 47 (4.09%) Computer Science Degree
7 40 (3.48%) PhD
8 29 (2.53%) DV Cleared
9 25 (2.18%) Azure Certification
10 14 (1.22%) AWS Certification
11 12 (1.05%) BPSS Clearance
12 8 (0.70%) CISSP
13 5 (0.44%) HNC
13 5 (0.44%) HND
13 5 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
13 5 (0.44%) TOGAF Certification
14 4 (0.35%) Cisco Certification
14 4 (0.35%) CISM
14 4 (0.35%) ISTQB
14 4 (0.35%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 72 (6.27%) Data Quality
2 57 (4.97%) GDPR
3 41 (3.57%) QA
4 39 (3.40%) NIST
5 32 (2.79%) EU AI Act
6 23 (2.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 18 (1.57%) Accessibility
8 8 (0.70%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 5 (0.44%) DO-254
9 5 (0.44%) HIPAA
9 5 (0.44%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 5 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 5 (0.44%) SOC 2
10 4 (0.35%) Disclosure Scotland
10 4 (0.35%) NCSC
11 3 (0.26%) GRC
11 3 (0.26%) PCI DSS
12 2 (0.17%) EMIR
12 2 (0.17%) JSP 440
12 2 (0.17%) NIST 800
System Software
1 194 (16.90%) Docker
2 12 (1.05%) Active Directory
3 11 (0.96%) Virtual Machines
4 6 (0.52%) Firmware
5 3 (0.26%) Lustre
5 3 (0.26%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.17%) GPFS
6 2 (0.17%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.17%) KVM
6 2 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 2 (0.17%) VMware NSX
7 1 (0.087%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 193 (16.81%) Kubernetes
2 130 (11.32%) Terraform
3 34 (2.96%) Grafana
4 27 (2.35%) Ansible
5 17 (1.48%) Kubeflow
5 17 (1.48%) Prometheus
6 13 (1.13%) Kibana
7 11 (0.96%) SCOM
8 10 (0.87%) logstash
9 9 (0.78%) ITRS Geneos
10 8 (0.70%) Argo
11 5 (0.44%) Kustomize
12 4 (0.35%) Cilium
12 4 (0.35%) Progress Chef
12 4 (0.35%) Rsyslog
13 3 (0.26%) Single Sign-On
13 3 (0.26%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
14 2 (0.17%) Knative
14 2 (0.17%) Podman
15 1 (0.087%) Opsgenie
Vendors
1 166 (14.46%) Microsoft
2 161 (14.02%) Databricks
3 106 (9.23%) Google
4 71 (6.18%) OpenAI
5 44 (3.83%) Foundry
6 38 (3.31%) SAP
7 21 (1.83%) Splunk
8 16 (1.39%) ServiceNow
9 14 (1.22%) Salesforce
10 13 (1.13%) NVIDIA
11 9 (0.78%) Greenplum
11 9 (0.78%) Oracle
11 9 (0.78%) Solace
11 9 (0.78%) TIBCO
12 7 (0.61%) Cisco
12 7 (0.61%) Informatica
12 7 (0.61%) Pega
12 7 (0.61%) Sage
13 6 (0.52%) ESRI
13 6 (0.52%) Intel