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

6 months to
13 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 82 113 132
Rank change year-on-year +31 +19 +94
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,501 726 740
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.00% 2.46% 1.69%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.54% 2.70% 1.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 914 442 524
10th Percentile £413 £394 £413
25th Percentile £486 £463 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% -4.35% -2.13%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £738
90th Percentile £771 £850 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £563 £525
% change year-on-year -2.22% +7.14% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 43 20 19
10th Percentile £40.54 £30.43 £41.25
25th Percentile £50.61 £45.00 £46.22
Median hourly rate £69.00 £75.00 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -8.00% +42.86% +50.00%
75th Percentile £86.88 £81.01 £66.25
90th Percentile £89.75 £88.00 £75.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £78.10 £56.25
% change year-on-year -18.05% +38.84% +60.71%

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 42,415 26,864 37,189
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.78% 91.03% 85.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,461 17,061 23,740
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.99% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,543 1,206 2,581
10th Percentile £14.71 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.13 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +62.06% -25.68% +1.67%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.00 £61.25
90th Percentile £81.25 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% +9.23%

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 13 June 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 13 June 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 13 June 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 +22 1,243 £575 +0.88% 866
London +35 839 £575 +2.00% 459
UK excluding London +10 462 £550 -2.22% 577
Work from Home +18 433 £575 +4.55% 374
North of England +12 129 £558 +3.72% 144
Scotland +44 104 £515 +10.28% 23
South East -34 89 £630 +9.57% 198
North West +2 69 £588 +6.82% 85
Midlands -23 59 £550 +10.00% 54
South West -15 45 £500 -19.35% 90
Yorkshire -16 45 £550 - 41
West Midlands -26 43 £550 +10.00% 30
East of England -22 38 £525 -14.29% 57
North East -22 18 £550 +37.50% 18
Wales -12 16 £565 -1.83% 16
East Midlands -12 14 £675 +58.82% 23
Northern Ireland - 1 £334 - 12

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
1 109 (7.26%) Apache Spark
2 66 (4.40%) Apache Airflow
3 51 (3.40%) Apache
4 36 (2.40%) Jupyter
5 22 (1.47%) Confluence
6 10 (0.67%) Appian
7 7 (0.47%) SharePoint
8 5 (0.33%) CMS
8 5 (0.33%) Headless CMS
9 4 (0.27%) Palantir Foundry
9 4 (0.27%) SAS
10 2 (0.13%) Luigi
10 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.067%) Apache Pulsar
11 1 (0.067%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.067%) Apache Synapse
11 1 (0.067%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.067%) NetWeaver
11 1 (0.067%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 30 (2.00%) Chatbot
2 12 (0.80%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
5 7 (0.47%) Microsoft Office
6 3 (0.20%) LaTeX
7 2 (0.13%) CPLEX
7 2 (0.13%) Simulink
8 1 (0.067%) Notion
Business Applications
1 11 (0.73%) SAP IBP
2 6 (0.40%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
3 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.067%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.067%) OpenText VIM for SAP
4 1 (0.067%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.067%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.067%) SAP APO
4 1 (0.067%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 549 (36.58%) Azure
2 524 (34.91%) AWS
3 259 (17.26%) GCP
4 132 (8.79%) Power Platform
5 111 (7.40%) Serverless
6 99 (6.60%) Amazon S3
7 95 (6.33%) GitHub
8 88 (5.86%) Azure AI
9 83 (5.53%) AWS Lambda
10 80 (5.33%) Amazon SageMaker
11 72 (4.80%) Azure Machine Learning
11 72 (4.80%) Snowflake
12 69 (4.60%) Azure DevOps
13 54 (3.60%) Amazon Bedrock
13 54 (3.60%) GitHub Actions
14 53 (3.53%) Vertex AI
15 51 (3.40%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 48 (3.20%) Azure Data Factory
17 39 (2.60%) AWS CloudFormation
18 37 (2.47%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 12 (0.80%) Firewall
2 8 (0.53%) Internet
3 7 (0.47%) Network Security
4 5 (0.33%) DNS
5 4 (0.27%) DHCP
5 4 (0.27%) HTTP
5 4 (0.27%) NAS
5 4 (0.27%) SAN
6 3 (0.20%) VPN
7 2 (0.13%) 4G
7 2 (0.13%) 5G
7 2 (0.13%) Ethernet
7 2 (0.13%) MQTT
7 2 (0.13%) PCoIP
7 2 (0.13%) Radio Access Network
7 2 (0.13%) Remote Desktop
7 2 (0.13%) SMTP
8 1 (0.067%) 3GPP
8 1 (0.067%) Modbus
8 1 (0.067%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 105 (7.00%) Data Lake
1 105 (7.00%) Power BI
2 79 (5.26%) Big Data
3 72 (4.80%) Metadata
4 65 (4.33%) BigQuery
5 64 (4.26%) Data Warehouse
6 48 (3.20%) NoSQL
7 43 (2.86%) Tableau
8 42 (2.80%) Amazon Athena
9 37 (2.47%) Amazon Redshift
10 36 (2.40%) PostgreSQL
11 35 (2.33%) Hadoop
12 32 (2.13%) SQL Server
13 31 (2.07%) Relational Database
14 29 (1.93%) Delta Lake
15 28 (1.87%) Pinecone
16 22 (1.47%) MongoDB
17 20 (1.33%) Weaviate
18 19 (1.27%) Mixpanel
19 17 (1.13%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 91 (6.06%) Git
2 78 (5.20%) MLflow
3 47 (3.13%) JIRA
4 40 (2.66%) GitLab
5 28 (1.87%) Jenkins
6 9 (0.60%) Visual Studio
7 7 (0.47%) Selenium
8 5 (0.33%) Claude Code
9 4 (0.27%) Cypress.io
9 4 (0.27%) ER Studio
9 4 (0.27%) ERwin
9 4 (0.27%) JMeter
9 4 (0.27%) Maven
9 4 (0.27%) PyCharm
10 3 (0.20%) Gradle
10 3 (0.20%) JUnit
10 3 (0.20%) REST Assured
10 3 (0.20%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.20%) Spinnaker
10 3 (0.20%) Vite
General
1 315 (20.99%) Social Skills
2 295 (19.65%) Finance
3 186 (12.39%) Analytical Skills
4 155 (10.33%) Public Sector
5 92 (6.13%) Banking
6 37 (2.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 36 (2.40%) Marketing
8 27 (1.80%) Legal
8 27 (1.80%) Pharmaceutical
9 25 (1.67%) Retail
10 24 (1.60%) Documentation Skills
11 22 (1.47%) Aviation
11 22 (1.47%) Front Office
12 21 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
13 18 (1.20%) Telecoms
14 17 (1.13%) Law
15 16 (1.07%) Investment Banking
16 13 (0.87%) Financial Institution
16 13 (0.87%) Manufacturing
17 11 (0.73%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 218 (14.52%) Data Scientist
2 213 (14.19%) Senior
3 196 (13.06%) Architect
4 152 (10.13%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 139 (9.26%) Data Engineer
6 132 (8.79%) Lead
7 101 (6.73%) Developer
8 75 (5.00%) Analyst
9 72 (4.80%) Python Engineer
10 66 (4.40%) Software Engineer
11 65 (4.33%) Machine Learning Engineer
12 63 (4.20%) Data Architect
13 57 (3.80%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
14 55 (3.66%) Solutions Architect
15 41 (2.73%) Consultant
15 41 (2.73%) Senior Data Scientist
16 34 (2.27%) Platform Engineer
16 34 (2.27%) Python Developer
17 32 (2.13%) Senior Data Engineer
18 31 (2.07%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 174 (11.59%) PyTorch
2 124 (8.26%) TensorFlow
3 108 (7.20%) scikit-learn
4 91 (6.06%) Pandas
5 83 (5.53%) Kafka
6 72 (4.80%) LangChain
7 68 (4.53%) React
8 67 (4.46%) NumPy
9 66 (4.40%) PySpark
10 59 (3.93%) REST
11 54 (3.60%) .NET
12 44 (2.93%) Hugging Face
13 34 (2.27%) LangGraph
14 32 (2.13%) AngularJS
14 32 (2.13%) FastAPI
14 32 (2.13%) Model Context Protocol
15 30 (2.00%) Node.js
15 30 (2.00%) RESTful
16 22 (1.47%) pytest
17 19 (1.27%) LlamaIndex
Miscellaneous
1 175 (11.66%) Cloud Native
2 146 (9.73%) AI Agents
3 115 (7.66%) Algorithms
4 55 (3.66%) Product Ownership
5 45 (3.00%) Distributed Systems
5 45 (3.00%) Onboarding
6 27 (1.80%) Data Protection Act
7 22 (1.47%) Data Structures
8 21 (1.40%) Enterprise Software
9 20 (1.33%) Fixed Income
10 18 (1.20%) Legacy Systems
10 18 (1.20%) Life Science
11 14 (0.93%) Low-Code
12 13 (0.87%) Distributed Computing
12 13 (0.87%) Hybrid Cloud
12 13 (0.87%) Management Information System
13 12 (0.80%) Public Cloud
13 12 (0.80%) Taxonomies
14 11 (0.73%) Augmented Reality
14 11 (0.73%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 29 (1.93%) Linux
2 16 (1.07%) Windows
3 11 (0.73%) Unix
4 6 (0.40%) Apple iOS
4 6 (0.40%) VMS
5 5 (0.33%) Android
6 3 (0.20%) Windows Server
7 2 (0.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.067%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,212 (80.75%) AI
2 562 (37.44%) Data Science
3 476 (31.71%) CI/CD
4 437 (29.11%) LLM
5 418 (27.85%) Analytics
6 343 (22.85%) Data Pipeline
7 342 (22.78%) Generative AI
8 314 (20.92%) DevOps
9 296 (19.72%) MLOps
10 280 (18.65%) Agile
11 279 (18.59%) Data Engineering
12 237 (15.79%) Use Case
13 206 (13.72%) Problem-Solving
14 202 (13.46%) Software Engineering
15 194 (12.92%) Decision-Making
16 181 (12.06%) Data Governance
16 181 (12.06%) ETL
17 179 (11.93%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
18 165 (10.99%) Infrastructure as Code
19 161 (10.73%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 848 (56.50%) Python
2 385 (25.65%) SQL
3 109 (7.26%) Java
4 68 (4.53%) C#
5 66 (4.40%) R
6 50 (3.33%) TypeScript
7 48 (3.20%) JavaScript
8 24 (1.60%) C++
9 20 (1.33%) Bash
10 14 (0.93%) Bicep
11 13 (0.87%) Scala
12 12 (0.80%) PowerShell
13 10 (0.67%) Kotlin
14 7 (0.47%) Go
14 7 (0.47%) PL/SQL
14 7 (0.47%) Rust
14 7 (0.47%) SPARQL
15 6 (0.40%) MATLAB
16 5 (0.33%) Perl
17 3 (0.20%) Korn
Qualifications
1 257 (17.12%) Security Cleared
2 177 (11.79%) SC Cleared
3 115 (7.66%) Degree
4 48 (3.20%) Master's Degree
5 47 (3.13%) BPSS Clearance
6 40 (2.66%) DV Cleared
7 38 (2.53%) Computer Science Degree
8 37 (2.47%) AWS Certification
9 32 (2.13%) PhD
10 20 (1.33%) Azure Certification
11 19 (1.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 19 (1.27%) CISSP
12 15 (1.00%) CISM
13 7 (0.47%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 7 (0.47%) ISTQB
14 6 (0.40%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
15 5 (0.33%) CEH
15 5 (0.33%) CompTIA Security+
15 5 (0.33%) DBS Check
15 5 (0.33%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 182 (12.13%) Data Quality
2 63 (4.20%) GDPR
3 51 (3.40%) QA
4 31 (2.07%) NIST
5 18 (1.20%) Accessibility
6 17 (1.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 13 (0.87%) EU AI Act
8 11 (0.73%) Actionable Recommendations
8 11 (0.73%) HIPAA
8 11 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 7 (0.47%) GRC
9 7 (0.47%) GxP
9 7 (0.47%) NCSC
10 5 (0.33%) WCAG
11 4 (0.27%) COBIT
11 4 (0.27%) Disclosure Scotland
12 3 (0.20%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 3 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 3 (0.20%) SLA
12 3 (0.20%) Solvency II
System Software
1 199 (13.26%) Docker
2 11 (0.73%) Active Directory
2 11 (0.73%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 4 (0.27%) Microsoft App-V
3 4 (0.27%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (0.20%) Firmware
4 3 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.13%) Apache ZooKeeper
5 2 (0.13%) BitLocker
5 2 (0.13%) HDFS
5 2 (0.13%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.13%) Terminal Services
5 2 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (0.13%) VMware Workstation
6 1 (0.067%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 238 (15.86%) Kubernetes
2 163 (10.86%) Terraform
3 23 (1.53%) Kubeflow
4 20 (1.33%) Grafana
5 14 (0.93%) Prometheus
6 13 (0.87%) Ansible
7 9 (0.60%) Podman
8 6 (0.40%) Istio
9 3 (0.20%) NetBackup
9 3 (0.20%) Rancher
10 2 (0.13%) Argo
10 2 (0.13%) Docker Swarm
10 2 (0.13%) Kibana
10 2 (0.13%) Nagios
10 2 (0.13%) Packer
10 2 (0.13%) Puppet
10 2 (0.13%) SCCM
10 2 (0.13%) vCenter Server
10 2 (0.13%) vMotion
11 1 (0.067%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 190 (12.66%) Databricks
2 168 (11.19%) Microsoft
3 102 (6.80%) OpenAI
4 88 (5.86%) Google
5 57 (3.80%) Foundry
6 39 (2.60%) SAP
7 35 (2.33%) Oracle
8 22 (1.47%) ServiceNow
9 19 (1.27%) Informatica
10 15 (1.00%) IBM
10 15 (1.00%) UiPath
11 11 (0.73%) Automation Anywhere
11 11 (0.73%) Dynatrace
12 7 (0.47%) Amplitude
12 7 (0.47%) Salesforce
12 7 (0.47%) Sybase
13 6 (0.40%) Pega
13 6 (0.40%) Talend
13 6 (0.40%) Workday
14 5 (0.33%) Splunk