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

6 months to
9 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 84 114 143
Rank change year-on-year +30 +29 +84
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,468 718 724
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.96% 2.45% 1.67%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.49% 2.70% 1.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 896 437 514
10th Percentile £413 £391 £413
25th Percentile £492 £456 £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 £775 £850 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £575 £525
% change year-on-year -4.35% +9.52% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 19 19
10th Percentile £40.54 £29.85 £41.25
25th Percentile £51.21 £45.00 £46.22
Median hourly rate £66.67 £75.00 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.10% +42.86% +50.00%
75th Percentile £84.69 £81.01 £66.25
90th Percentile £89.38 £88.00 £75.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £78.10 £56.25
% change year-on-year -16.77% +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 42,104 26,621 36,920
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.75% 90.94% 85.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,283 16,896 23,594
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £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 2,537 1,167 2,565
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.50 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.85% -24.66% +1.67%
75th Percentile £67.89 £56.00 £61.25
90th Percentile £81.24 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +8.91%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 +19 1,220 £575 - 1,020
London +35 822 £575 +2.00% 534
UK excluding London +13 454 £550 -4.35% 647
Work from Home +25 427 £581 +5.68% 768
North of England +1 125 £554 +0.68% 164
Scotland +50 100 £518 +10.81% 25
South East -28 89 £630 +9.57% 211
North West -3 66 £588 +6.82% 102
Midlands -25 60 £550 +12.82% 58
Yorkshire -22 45 £550 - 41
West Midlands -31 43 £550 +10.00% 30
South West -22 42 £500 -20.63% 93
East of England -24 41 £550 -13.73% 79
North East -12 17 £550 +46.67% 22
Wales -11 15 £579 +0.70% 18
East Midlands -20 15 £650 +52.94% 27
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 (7.43%) Apache Spark
2 68 (4.63%) Apache Airflow
3 53 (3.61%) Apache
4 36 (2.45%) Jupyter
5 19 (1.29%) Confluence
6 9 (0.61%) Appian
7 8 (0.54%) SharePoint
8 5 (0.34%) CMS
8 5 (0.34%) Headless CMS
9 4 (0.27%) Palantir Foundry
9 4 (0.27%) SAS
10 2 (0.14%) Luigi
10 2 (0.14%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.068%) Apache Pulsar
11 1 (0.068%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.068%) Apache Synapse
11 1 (0.068%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.068%) NetWeaver
11 1 (0.068%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 27 (1.84%) Chatbot
2 12 (0.82%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 9 (0.61%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (0.48%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (0.20%) LaTeX
6 2 (0.14%) CPLEX
6 2 (0.14%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 11 (0.75%) SAP IBP
2 6 (0.41%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
3 2 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.068%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.068%) OpenText VIM for SAP
4 1 (0.068%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.068%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.068%) SAP APO
4 1 (0.068%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 534 (36.38%) Azure
2 510 (34.74%) AWS
3 253 (17.23%) GCP
4 125 (8.51%) Power Platform
5 102 (6.95%) Serverless
6 91 (6.20%) GitHub
7 88 (5.99%) Amazon S3
8 85 (5.79%) Azure AI
9 79 (5.38%) Amazon SageMaker
10 73 (4.97%) AWS Lambda
11 71 (4.84%) Azure Machine Learning
12 67 (4.56%) Snowflake
13 64 (4.36%) Azure DevOps
14 53 (3.61%) Vertex AI
15 52 (3.54%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 51 (3.47%) Amazon Bedrock
16 51 (3.47%) GitHub Actions
17 47 (3.20%) Azure Data Factory
18 35 (2.38%) AWS CloudFormation
19 33 (2.25%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 12 (0.82%) Firewall
2 9 (0.61%) Network Security
3 7 (0.48%) DNS
4 6 (0.41%) HTTP
4 6 (0.41%) Internet
5 4 (0.27%) DHCP
5 4 (0.27%) NAS
5 4 (0.27%) SAN
5 4 (0.27%) SMTP
6 3 (0.20%) VPN
7 2 (0.14%) 4G
7 2 (0.14%) 5G
7 2 (0.14%) Ethernet
7 2 (0.14%) FTP
7 2 (0.14%) InfiniBand
7 2 (0.14%) MQTT
7 2 (0.14%) PCoIP
7 2 (0.14%) Radio Access Network
7 2 (0.14%) Remote Desktop
7 2 (0.14%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 100 (6.81%) Data Lake
2 98 (6.68%) Power BI
3 77 (5.25%) Big Data
4 68 (4.63%) Metadata
5 64 (4.36%) BigQuery
6 58 (3.95%) Data Warehouse
7 48 (3.27%) NoSQL
8 40 (2.72%) Tableau
9 38 (2.59%) Amazon Athena
10 35 (2.38%) Hadoop
10 35 (2.38%) PostgreSQL
11 32 (2.18%) SQL Server
12 31 (2.11%) Amazon Redshift
12 31 (2.11%) Delta Lake
13 29 (1.98%) Pinecone
13 29 (1.98%) Relational Database
14 21 (1.43%) MongoDB
14 21 (1.43%) Weaviate
15 20 (1.36%) Mixpanel
16 16 (1.09%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 89 (6.06%) Git
2 80 (5.45%) MLflow
3 41 (2.79%) JIRA
4 32 (2.18%) GitLab
5 22 (1.50%) Jenkins
6 9 (0.61%) Visual Studio
7 7 (0.48%) Selenium
8 5 (0.34%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.27%) Claude Code
9 4 (0.27%) Cypress.io
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%) Spinnaker
10 3 (0.20%) Vite
11 2 (0.14%) ER Studio
General
1 312 (21.25%) Social Skills
2 284 (19.35%) Finance
3 181 (12.33%) Analytical Skills
4 153 (10.42%) Public Sector
5 90 (6.13%) Banking
6 35 (2.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 35 (2.38%) Marketing
7 27 (1.84%) Legal
7 27 (1.84%) Pharmaceutical
8 25 (1.70%) Documentation Skills
9 23 (1.57%) Retail
10 22 (1.50%) Aviation
10 22 (1.50%) Front Office
11 21 (1.43%) Influencing Skills
12 19 (1.29%) Investment Banking
13 18 (1.23%) Telecoms
14 14 (0.95%) Law
15 13 (0.89%) Manufacturing
16 12 (0.82%) Aerospace
16 12 (0.82%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 216 (14.71%) Data Scientist
2 204 (13.90%) Senior
3 185 (12.60%) Architect
4 149 (10.15%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 139 (9.47%) Data Engineer
6 127 (8.65%) Lead
7 97 (6.61%) Developer
8 75 (5.11%) Analyst
9 71 (4.84%) Python Engineer
10 65 (4.43%) Software Engineer
11 63 (4.29%) Machine Learning Engineer
12 57 (3.88%) Solutions Architect
13 56 (3.81%) Data Architect
14 50 (3.41%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
15 40 (2.72%) Senior Data Scientist
16 39 (2.66%) Consultant
17 34 (2.32%) Python Developer
18 32 (2.18%) Platform Engineer
19 31 (2.11%) Senior Data Engineer
20 30 (2.04%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 177 (12.06%) PyTorch
2 127 (8.65%) TensorFlow
3 107 (7.29%) scikit-learn
4 93 (6.34%) Pandas
5 83 (5.65%) Kafka
6 73 (4.97%) LangChain
7 68 (4.63%) React
8 67 (4.56%) NumPy
8 67 (4.56%) PySpark
9 56 (3.81%) REST
10 54 (3.68%) .NET
11 44 (3.00%) Hugging Face
12 34 (2.32%) LangGraph
13 33 (2.25%) Model Context Protocol
14 32 (2.18%) AngularJS
14 32 (2.18%) Node.js
15 30 (2.04%) FastAPI
16 28 (1.91%) RESTful
17 20 (1.36%) Faiss
17 20 (1.36%) LlamaIndex
Miscellaneous
1 175 (11.92%) Cloud Native
2 142 (9.67%) AI Agents
3 115 (7.83%) Algorithms
4 55 (3.75%) Product Ownership
5 41 (2.79%) Distributed Systems
5 41 (2.79%) Onboarding
6 27 (1.84%) Data Protection Act
7 20 (1.36%) Fixed Income
8 19 (1.29%) Data Structures
8 19 (1.29%) Legacy Systems
9 18 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
10 17 (1.16%) Life Science
11 14 (0.95%) Management Information System
12 13 (0.89%) Hybrid Cloud
12 13 (0.89%) Low-Code
13 12 (0.82%) Distributed Computing
13 12 (0.82%) Public Cloud
14 11 (0.75%) Analytical Mindset
14 11 (0.75%) Security Posture
14 11 (0.75%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 30 (2.04%) Linux
2 16 (1.09%) Windows
3 11 (0.75%) Unix
4 6 (0.41%) Apple iOS
4 6 (0.41%) VMS
5 5 (0.34%) Android
6 3 (0.20%) Windows Server
7 2 (0.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.068%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,175 (80.04%) AI
2 557 (37.94%) Data Science
3 463 (31.54%) CI/CD
4 429 (29.22%) LLM
5 408 (27.79%) Analytics
6 338 (23.02%) Data Pipeline
7 331 (22.55%) Generative AI
8 305 (20.78%) DevOps
9 295 (20.10%) MLOps
10 278 (18.94%) Data Engineering
11 265 (18.05%) Agile
12 223 (15.19%) Use Case
13 200 (13.62%) Problem-Solving
14 196 (13.35%) Software Engineering
15 190 (12.94%) Decision-Making
16 180 (12.26%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
17 179 (12.19%) ETL
18 178 (12.13%) Data Governance
19 158 (10.76%) Infrastructure as Code
20 153 (10.42%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 839 (57.15%) Python
2 381 (25.95%) SQL
3 109 (7.43%) Java
4 71 (4.84%) C#
5 62 (4.22%) R
6 50 (3.41%) TypeScript
7 46 (3.13%) JavaScript
8 26 (1.77%) C++
9 19 (1.29%) Bash
10 14 (0.95%) PowerShell
11 13 (0.89%) Bicep
12 11 (0.75%) Scala
13 10 (0.68%) Kotlin
14 8 (0.54%) Go
15 7 (0.48%) PL/SQL
15 7 (0.48%) Rust
15 7 (0.48%) SPARQL
16 6 (0.41%) MATLAB
17 5 (0.34%) Perl
18 3 (0.20%) Korn
Qualifications
1 251 (17.10%) Security Cleared
2 174 (11.85%) SC Cleared
3 117 (7.97%) Degree
4 49 (3.34%) Master's Degree
5 44 (3.00%) BPSS Clearance
6 39 (2.66%) Computer Science Degree
6 39 (2.66%) DV Cleared
7 32 (2.18%) AWS Certification
7 32 (2.18%) PhD
8 19 (1.29%) Azure Certification
8 19 (1.29%) CISSP
9 16 (1.09%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 15 (1.02%) CISM
11 6 (0.41%) ISTQB
12 5 (0.34%) CEH
12 5 (0.34%) CompTIA Security+
12 5 (0.34%) DBS Check
12 5 (0.34%) GIAC
12 5 (0.34%) Microsoft Certification
12 5 (0.34%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 173 (11.78%) Data Quality
2 57 (3.88%) GDPR
3 52 (3.54%) QA
4 32 (2.18%) NIST
5 18 (1.23%) Accessibility
6 17 (1.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 13 (0.89%) EU AI Act
8 11 (0.75%) Actionable Recommendations
8 11 (0.75%) HIPAA
9 8 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 7 (0.48%) GRC
10 7 (0.48%) GxP
10 7 (0.48%) NCSC
11 5 (0.34%) WCAG
12 4 (0.27%) COBIT
12 4 (0.27%) Disclosure Scotland
13 3 (0.20%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 3 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 3 (0.20%) SLA
14 2 (0.14%) DO-254
System Software
1 195 (13.28%) Docker
2 12 (0.82%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 11 (0.75%) Active Directory
4 4 (0.27%) Firmware
4 4 (0.27%) Microsoft App-V
4 4 (0.27%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.14%) BitLocker
6 2 (0.14%) HDFS
6 2 (0.14%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.14%) Terminal Services
6 2 (0.14%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.14%) VMware Workstation
7 1 (0.068%) Ceph
7 1 (0.068%) Embedded Firmware
7 1 (0.068%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 233 (15.87%) Kubernetes
2 156 (10.63%) Terraform
3 23 (1.57%) Kubeflow
4 20 (1.36%) Grafana
5 15 (1.02%) Ansible
5 15 (1.02%) Prometheus
6 9 (0.61%) Podman
7 6 (0.41%) Istio
8 3 (0.20%) NetBackup
8 3 (0.20%) Rancher
9 2 (0.14%) Argo
9 2 (0.14%) Docker Swarm
9 2 (0.14%) Kibana
9 2 (0.14%) Nagios
9 2 (0.14%) Packer
9 2 (0.14%) Puppet
9 2 (0.14%) SCCM
9 2 (0.14%) vCenter Server
9 2 (0.14%) vMotion
10 1 (0.068%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 191 (13.01%) Databricks
2 164 (11.17%) Microsoft
3 99 (6.74%) OpenAI
4 86 (5.86%) Google
5 56 (3.81%) Foundry
6 38 (2.59%) SAP
7 34 (2.32%) Oracle
8 21 (1.43%) ServiceNow
9 16 (1.09%) Informatica
10 15 (1.02%) IBM
10 15 (1.02%) UiPath
11 12 (0.82%) Dynatrace
12 11 (0.75%) Automation Anywhere
13 7 (0.48%) Amplitude
13 7 (0.48%) Sybase
14 6 (0.41%) NVIDIA
14 6 (0.41%) Salesforce
14 6 (0.41%) Talend
14 6 (0.41%) Workday
15 5 (0.34%) Splunk