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

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 97 81 115
Rank change year-on-year -16 +34 +82
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,592 1,017 778
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.88% 3.06% 2.07%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.40% 3.38% 2.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,003 664 512
10th Percentile £405 £400 £386
25th Percentile £475 £463 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% -8.33% +4.35%
75th Percentile £688 £688 £731
90th Percentile £788 £775 £799
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £508 £500
% change year-on-year +8.37% +1.50% -5.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 42 26 17
10th Percentile £28.50 £27.59 £13.06
25th Percentile £39.91 £41.50 £17.50
Median hourly rate £77.00 £53.22 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +44.68% +15.24% -
75th Percentile £85.19 £80.00 £48.75
90th Percentile £88.75 £87.75 £53.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.83 £63.11 £46.18
% change year-on-year +18.57% +36.67% -

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 46,870 30,047 32,387
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.76% 90.49% 86.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,156 18,700 19,515
10th Percentile £325 £294 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.42%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,444 1,888 1,247
10th Percentile £13.53 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £16.94 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +49.11% -37.13% -10.11%
75th Percentile £65.00 £42.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.18 £65.25 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £22.27 £40.33
% change year-on-year +68.43% -44.79% -8.14%

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 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 15 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 15 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 -13 1,359 £584 +4.85% 1,128
London +4 903 £600 -2.28% 744
UK excluding London -21 521 £550 +8.37% 528
Work from Home -18 438 £593 +7.86% 596
North of England -13 159 £550 +14.58% 120
South East -23 136 £590 +9.77% 130
Scotland +4 96 £450 -10.22% 54
North West -24 73 £600 +33.33% 58
Yorkshire -7 67 £519 +0.92% 43
South West -7 52 £528 -4.09% 85
Midlands -38 50 £588 +11.90% 56
West Midlands -35 40 £575 +9.52% 37
East of England -48 28 £475 -9.52% 67
North East -23 20 £550 +29.41% 20
Wales -11 7 £530 -21.48% 13
East Midlands -12 6 £425 -8.11% 19
Northern Ireland +4 2 £467 -33.29% 11

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
1 105 (6.60%) Apache Spark
2 81 (5.09%) Apache Airflow
3 71 (4.46%) Apache
4 35 (2.20%) 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 28 (1.76%) Chatbot
2 8 (0.50%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.19%) CPLEX
4 2 (0.13%) DaVinci Resolve
4 2 (0.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.13%) Notion
4 2 (0.13%) NUKE
5 1 (0.063%) Adobe XD
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 7 (0.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (0.19%) Cloudability
2 3 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
2 3 (0.19%) SAP IBP
3 2 (0.13%) SAP ERP
3 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.063%) Actimize
4 1 (0.063%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.063%) Endur
4 1 (0.063%) NetSuite
4 1 (0.063%) OpenLink RightAngle
4 1 (0.063%) Oracle Cash Management
4 1 (0.063%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.063%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.063%) Oracle Receivables
4 1 (0.063%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 540 (33.92%) Azure
2 520 (32.66%) AWS
3 303 (19.03%) GCP
4 117 (7.35%) Power Platform
5 106 (6.66%) Serverless
6 100 (6.28%) GitHub
7 95 (5.97%) Amazon S3
8 92 (5.78%) Snowflake
9 83 (5.21%) AWS Lambda
10 66 (4.15%) Amazon SageMaker
11 65 (4.08%) Amazon Bedrock
11 65 (4.08%) Azure Machine Learning
12 63 (3.96%) dbt
13 52 (3.27%) Azure AI
14 51 (3.20%) Azure DevOps
15 48 (3.02%) SaaS
15 48 (3.02%) Vertex AI
16 47 (2.95%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 46 (2.89%) Azure Data Factory
18 40 (2.51%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.44%) Network Security
2 20 (1.26%) Broadband
3 19 (1.19%) Internet
4 15 (0.94%) Firewall
5 14 (0.88%) DNS
6 11 (0.69%) HTTP
7 9 (0.57%) DHCP
7 9 (0.57%) VPN
8 5 (0.31%) SMS
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%) 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
1 107 (6.72%) Power BI
2 104 (6.53%) Data Warehouse
3 95 (5.97%) Metadata
4 94 (5.90%) Data Lake
5 73 (4.59%) BigQuery
6 60 (3.77%) Big Data
7 56 (3.52%) Delta Lake
8 53 (3.33%) Amazon Redshift
9 47 (2.95%) NoSQL
10 43 (2.70%) Tableau
11 39 (2.45%) PostgreSQL
12 32 (2.01%) Amazon Athena
13 30 (1.88%) Neo4j
14 29 (1.82%) Relational Database
15 25 (1.57%) Hadoop
16 22 (1.38%) Elasticsearch
17 21 (1.32%) MongoDB
18 20 (1.26%) Amazon RDS
19 18 (1.13%) SQL Server
20 17 (1.07%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 105 (6.60%) Git
2 56 (3.52%) GitLab
3 48 (3.02%) JIRA
3 48 (3.02%) MLflow
4 14 (0.88%) Jenkins
5 12 (0.75%) Claude Code
6 7 (0.44%) JMeter
6 7 (0.44%) Vite
7 6 (0.38%) Postman
8 5 (0.31%) REST Assured
8 5 (0.31%) RStudio
9 4 (0.25%) ERwin
9 4 (0.25%) Newman
9 4 (0.25%) Pylint
9 4 (0.25%) Selenium
10 3 (0.19%) Applitools
10 3 (0.19%) Cucumber
10 3 (0.19%) Cypress.io
11 2 (0.13%) Oracle APEX
11 2 (0.13%) TeamCity
General
1 371 (23.30%) Social Skills
2 329 (20.67%) Finance
3 243 (15.26%) Analytical Skills
4 151 (9.48%) Public Sector
5 125 (7.85%) Banking
6 39 (2.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 39 (2.45%) Marketing
7 30 (1.88%) Retail
8 27 (1.70%) Telecoms
9 26 (1.63%) Pharmaceutical
10 25 (1.57%) Manufacturing
11 23 (1.44%) Influencing Skills
12 21 (1.32%) Aerospace
12 21 (1.32%) Financial Institution
12 21 (1.32%) Legal
13 19 (1.19%) Documentation Skills
14 18 (1.13%) Front Office
15 17 (1.07%) Investment Banking
16 16 (1.01%) Billing
17 15 (0.94%) Law
Job Titles
1 289 (18.15%) Senior
2 260 (16.33%) Architect
3 199 (12.50%) Data Engineer
4 191 (12.00%) Data Scientist
5 180 (11.31%) Lead
6 144 (9.05%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 109 (6.85%) Machine Learning Engineer
8 74 (4.65%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
9 71 (4.46%) Python Engineer
9 71 (4.46%) Solutions Architect
10 67 (4.21%) Developer
11 66 (4.15%) Data Architect
12 61 (3.83%) Analyst
13 60 (3.77%) Platform Engineer
14 57 (3.58%) Senior Data Engineer
15 53 (3.33%) Senior Data Scientist
16 48 (3.02%) Security Architect
17 46 (2.89%) Software Engineer
18 41 (2.58%) DevOps Engineer
19 38 (2.39%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 209 (13.13%) Terraform
2 109 (6.85%) Kafka
3 103 (6.47%) PyTorch
4 96 (6.03%) PySpark
5 78 (4.90%) REST
6 77 (4.84%) TensorFlow
7 75 (4.71%) LangChain
8 61 (3.83%) scikit-learn
9 56 (3.52%) pytest
10 55 (3.45%) React
11 51 (3.20%) Pandas
12 42 (2.64%) NumPy
13 38 (2.39%) LangGraph
14 35 (2.20%) FastAPI
15 30 (1.88%) .NET
16 28 (1.76%) JSON
17 26 (1.63%) Hugging Face
18 24 (1.51%) Model Context Protocol
19 23 (1.44%) RESTful
20 22 (1.38%) LlamaIndex
Miscellaneous
1 208 (13.07%) Cloud Native
2 180 (11.31%) AI Agents
3 102 (6.41%) Algorithms
4 79 (4.96%) Onboarding
5 73 (4.59%) Distributed Systems
6 62 (3.89%) Product Ownership
7 43 (2.70%) Enterprise Software
8 41 (2.58%) Data Structures
9 31 (1.95%) Data Protection Act
10 28 (1.76%) Life Science
11 24 (1.51%) Management Information System
12 21 (1.32%) Hybrid Cloud
13 19 (1.19%) Legacy Systems
13 19 (1.19%) Social Media
14 18 (1.13%) CMDB
15 17 (1.07%) Clustering
15 17 (1.07%) Taxonomies
15 17 (1.07%) Virtual Team
16 16 (1.01%) Analytical Mindset
17 15 (0.94%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 45 (2.83%) 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%) macOS
6 1 (0.063%) Robot Operating System
6 1 (0.063%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,314 (82.54%) AI
2 570 (35.80%) Data Science
3 517 (32.47%) CI/CD
4 489 (30.72%) Analytics
5 430 (27.01%) LLM
6 395 (24.81%) Generative AI
7 365 (22.93%) Data Pipeline
8 343 (21.55%) DevOps
9 328 (20.60%) Agile
10 315 (19.79%) MLOps
11 299 (18.78%) Data Engineering
12 273 (17.15%) Software Engineering
13 256 (16.08%) Stakeholder Management
14 254 (15.95%) Use Case
15 242 (15.20%) Decision-Making
16 240 (15.08%) Roadmaps
17 221 (13.88%) Infrastructure as Code
18 215 (13.51%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
19 214 (13.44%) Data Modelling
20 211 (13.25%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 846 (53.14%) Python
2 422 (26.51%) SQL
3 109 (6.85%) Java
4 74 (4.65%) JavaScript
5 65 (4.08%) TypeScript
6 42 (2.64%) Bash
7 34 (2.14%) R
8 33 (2.07%) C#
9 30 (1.88%) PowerShell
10 28 (1.76%) Scala
11 21 (1.32%) Go
12 18 (1.13%) C++
13 17 (1.07%) Bicep
14 14 (0.88%) Shell Script
15 12 (0.75%) PL/SQL
16 11 (0.69%) Cypher
17 10 (0.63%) Gremlin
18 7 (0.44%) SPARQL
19 5 (0.31%) Kotlin
19 5 (0.31%) Perl
Qualifications
1 310 (19.47%) Security Cleared
2 244 (15.33%) SC Cleared
3 131 (8.23%) Degree
4 59 (3.71%) Computer Science Degree
5 58 (3.64%) DV Cleared
6 52 (3.27%) AWS Certification
7 42 (2.64%) BPSS Clearance
8 41 (2.58%) Master's Degree
9 32 (2.01%) CISSP
10 30 (1.88%) Azure Certification
11 26 (1.63%) PhD
12 19 (1.19%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 15 (0.94%) CISM
13 15 (0.94%) TOGAF Certification
14 10 (0.63%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 10 (0.63%) Cisco Certification
14 10 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
15 9 (0.57%) Microsoft Certified Professional
16 8 (0.50%) DBS Check
17 5 (0.31%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 240 (15.08%) Data Quality
2 55 (3.45%) GDPR
3 54 (3.39%) QA
4 31 (1.95%) NIST
5 21 (1.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 18 (1.13%) Accessibility
7 12 (0.75%) EU AI Act
8 11 (0.69%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 10 (0.63%) NCSC
9 10 (0.63%) SLA
10 9 (0.57%) GRC
10 9 (0.57%) PCI DSS
11 7 (0.44%) Actionable Recommendations
11 7 (0.44%) GxP
11 7 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 6 (0.38%) HIPAA
13 5 (0.31%) Basel III
13 5 (0.31%) Solvency II
14 4 (0.25%) SOC 2
15 3 (0.19%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 215 (13.51%) 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
1 292 (18.34%) Kubernetes
2 46 (2.89%) Ansible
3 30 (1.88%) Kubeflow
4 27 (1.70%) Grafana
5 19 (1.19%) Prometheus
6 6 (0.38%) systemd
7 5 (0.31%) Istio
7 5 (0.31%) Podman
8 3 (0.19%) Argo
8 3 (0.19%) Kibana
8 3 (0.19%) Nagios
8 3 (0.19%) NetBackup
8 3 (0.19%) Puppet
8 3 (0.19%) vCenter Server
8 3 (0.19%) vMotion
9 2 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 2 (0.13%) Packer
9 2 (0.13%) SCCM
9 2 (0.13%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.063%) QRadar
Vendors
1 221 (13.88%) Databricks
2 164 (10.30%) Microsoft
3 111 (6.97%) Google
4 70 (4.40%) OpenAI
5 39 (2.45%) ServiceNow
6 36 (2.26%) SAP
7 35 (2.20%) Oracle
8 28 (1.76%) Foundry
9 21 (1.32%) Informatica
10 20 (1.26%) Dynatrace
11 14 (0.88%) VMware
12 11 (0.69%) Salesforce
12 11 (0.69%) Splunk
13 10 (0.63%) IBM
13 10 (0.63%) Nexthink
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%) HP