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

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 85 115 139
Rank change year-on-year +30 +24 +84
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,422 688 724
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.91% 2.39% 1.69%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.44% 2.63% 1.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 861 426 525
10th Percentile £413 £393 £413
25th Percentile £493 £457 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £575 £580
Median % change year-on-year - -0.86% -1.28%
75th Percentile £675 £689 £738
90th Percentile £775 £850 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -4.35% +4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 17 19
10th Percentile £40.54 £39.40 £41.25
25th Percentile £50.38 £45.00 £46.22
Median hourly rate £65.00 £75.00 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -13.33% +42.86% +50.00%
75th Percentile £83.75 £81.01 £66.25
90th Percentile £88.88 £88.00 £75.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.50 £78.10 £56.25
% change year-on-year -17.41% +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 41,377 26,173 36,711
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.59% 91.02% 85.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,864 16,755 23,656
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £512 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.10% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £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 2,474 1,096 2,500
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.87 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.30 £27.59 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +53.34% -24.42% +1.04%
75th Percentile £67.65 £57.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.76 £74.38 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -33.82% +8.57%

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 29 May 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 29 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Machine Learning in the UK

Machine Learning
Top 16 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 29 May 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 +25 1,186 £575 - 1,312
London +36 798 £575 - 739
UK excluding London +14 435 £550 -4.35% 715
Work from Home +28 407 £588 +6.82% 572
North of England +4 121 £550 - 205
Scotland +55 94 £518 +10.81% 38
South East -26 84 £650 +13.04% 198
North West -3 62 £575 - 123
Midlands -21 61 £550 +10.00% 71
Yorkshire -14 46 £538 - 46
East of England -18 45 £525 -17.65% 91
West Midlands -33 43 £550 +10.00% 33
South West -29 36 £500 -21.88% 89
North East -14 16 £550 +57.14% 37
East Midlands -16 16 £650 +46.48% 37
Wales -14 13 £750 +30.43% 21

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
1 113 (7.95%) Apache Spark
2 67 (4.71%) Apache Airflow
3 54 (3.80%) Apache
4 33 (2.32%) Jupyter
5 16 (1.13%) Confluence
6 9 (0.63%) Appian
7 8 (0.56%) SharePoint
8 5 (0.35%) CMS
8 5 (0.35%) Headless CMS
9 4 (0.28%) Palantir Foundry
9 4 (0.28%) SAS
10 2 (0.14%) Luigi
11 1 (0.070%) Apache Pulsar
11 1 (0.070%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.070%) Apache Synapse
11 1 (0.070%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.070%) NetWeaver
11 1 (0.070%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 27 (1.90%) Chatbot
2 12 (0.84%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 9 (0.63%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (0.49%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (0.21%) LaTeX
6 2 (0.14%) CPLEX
6 2 (0.14%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 11 (0.77%) SAP IBP
2 6 (0.42%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
3 2 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.070%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.070%) OpenText VIM for SAP
4 1 (0.070%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.070%) SAP APO
4 1 (0.070%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 528 (37.13%) Azure
2 480 (33.76%) AWS
3 243 (17.09%) GCP
4 124 (8.72%) Power Platform
5 91 (6.40%) GitHub
6 84 (5.91%) Azure AI
6 84 (5.91%) Serverless
7 75 (5.27%) Amazon SageMaker
7 75 (5.27%) Azure Machine Learning
8 69 (4.85%) Amazon S3
8 69 (4.85%) Snowflake
9 65 (4.57%) Azure DevOps
10 55 (3.87%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 53 (3.73%) Vertex AI
12 51 (3.59%) AWS Lambda
13 50 (3.52%) GitHub Actions
14 49 (3.45%) Azure Data Factory
15 37 (2.60%) Amazon Bedrock
16 33 (2.32%) AWS CloudFormation
17 30 (2.11%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 13 (0.91%) Network Security
2 10 (0.70%) Firewall
3 9 (0.63%) HTTP
4 8 (0.56%) DNS
5 5 (0.35%) FTP
5 5 (0.35%) SMTP
5 5 (0.35%) SSL
6 4 (0.28%) Internet
6 4 (0.28%) NAS
6 4 (0.28%) SAN
7 3 (0.21%) InfiniBand
8 2 (0.14%) 4G
8 2 (0.14%) 5G
8 2 (0.14%) DHCP
8 2 (0.14%) Ethernet
8 2 (0.14%) PCoIP
8 2 (0.14%) Radio Access Network
8 2 (0.14%) Remote Desktop
9 1 (0.070%) SMS
9 1 (0.070%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 96 (6.75%) Power BI
2 95 (6.68%) Data Lake
3 75 (5.27%) Big Data
4 65 (4.57%) BigQuery
4 65 (4.57%) Metadata
5 51 (3.59%) Data Warehouse
6 49 (3.45%) NoSQL
7 41 (2.88%) Tableau
8 35 (2.46%) Hadoop
9 30 (2.11%) Delta Lake
9 30 (2.11%) PostgreSQL
9 30 (2.11%) SQL Server
10 28 (1.97%) Pinecone
11 27 (1.90%) Relational Database
12 24 (1.69%) Amazon Athena
12 24 (1.69%) Mixpanel
13 21 (1.48%) MongoDB
13 21 (1.48%) Weaviate
14 17 (1.20%) Amazon Redshift
15 15 (1.05%) Redis
Development Applications
1 88 (6.19%) Git
2 82 (5.77%) MLflow
3 36 (2.53%) JIRA
4 25 (1.76%) GitLab
5 21 (1.48%) Jenkins
6 9 (0.63%) Visual Studio
7 7 (0.49%) Selenium
8 5 (0.35%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.28%) Claude Code
9 4 (0.28%) Cypress.io
9 4 (0.28%) ERwin
9 4 (0.28%) JMeter
9 4 (0.28%) Maven
9 4 (0.28%) PyCharm
10 3 (0.21%) Gradle
10 3 (0.21%) JUnit
10 3 (0.21%) REST Assured
10 3 (0.21%) Spinnaker
10 3 (0.21%) Vite
11 2 (0.14%) ER Studio
General
1 305 (21.45%) Social Skills
2 281 (19.76%) Finance
3 175 (12.31%) Analytical Skills
4 134 (9.42%) Public Sector
5 86 (6.05%) Banking
6 31 (2.18%) Marketing
7 30 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 28 (1.97%) Pharmaceutical
9 25 (1.76%) Documentation Skills
10 24 (1.69%) Legal
11 22 (1.55%) Aviation
11 22 (1.55%) Influencing Skills
11 22 (1.55%) Retail
12 21 (1.48%) Front Office
12 21 (1.48%) Investment Banking
13 18 (1.27%) Telecoms
14 13 (0.91%) Manufacturing
15 12 (0.84%) Aerospace
15 12 (0.84%) Financial Institution
15 12 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 209 (14.70%) Data Scientist
2 196 (13.78%) Senior
3 186 (13.08%) Architect
4 149 (10.48%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 128 (9.00%) Data Engineer
6 120 (8.44%) Lead
7 95 (6.68%) Developer
8 76 (5.34%) Analyst
9 68 (4.78%) Python Engineer
10 63 (4.43%) Machine Learning Engineer
11 62 (4.36%) Software Engineer
12 59 (4.15%) Solutions Architect
13 56 (3.94%) Data Architect
14 51 (3.59%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
15 42 (2.95%) Senior Data Scientist
16 38 (2.67%) Consultant
17 33 (2.32%) Python Developer
18 31 (2.18%) Platform Engineer
19 30 (2.11%) Business Analyst
20 29 (2.04%) Artificial Intelligence Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 183 (12.87%) PyTorch
2 133 (9.35%) TensorFlow
3 112 (7.88%) scikit-learn
4 98 (6.89%) Pandas
5 82 (5.77%) Kafka
6 71 (4.99%) LangChain
7 70 (4.92%) NumPy
8 67 (4.71%) React
9 62 (4.36%) PySpark
10 56 (3.94%) REST
11 52 (3.66%) .NET
12 46 (3.23%) Hugging Face
13 36 (2.53%) LangGraph
14 32 (2.25%) AngularJS
14 32 (2.25%) Model Context Protocol
14 32 (2.25%) Node.js
15 28 (1.97%) FastAPI
15 28 (1.97%) RESTful
16 20 (1.41%) Faiss
16 20 (1.41%) LlamaIndex
Miscellaneous
1 167 (11.74%) Cloud Native
2 140 (9.85%) AI Agents
3 120 (8.44%) Algorithms
4 51 (3.59%) Product Ownership
5 40 (2.81%) Distributed Systems
6 39 (2.74%) Onboarding
7 24 (1.69%) Data Protection Act
8 19 (1.34%) Life Science
9 18 (1.27%) Data Structures
9 18 (1.27%) Fixed Income
10 17 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
10 17 (1.20%) Legacy Systems
11 16 (1.13%) Management Information System
12 15 (1.05%) Analytical Mindset
13 13 (0.91%) Hybrid Cloud
13 13 (0.91%) Low-Code
14 12 (0.84%) Public Cloud
15 11 (0.77%) Augmented Reality
15 11 (0.77%) Cyber Threat
15 11 (0.77%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 30 (2.11%) Linux
2 15 (1.05%) Windows
3 11 (0.77%) Unix
4 7 (0.49%) Apple iOS
5 6 (0.42%) Android
5 6 (0.42%) VMS
6 2 (0.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.070%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,134 (79.75%) AI
2 528 (37.13%) Data Science
3 441 (31.01%) CI/CD
4 420 (29.54%) LLM
5 394 (27.71%) Analytics
6 317 (22.29%) Generative AI
7 316 (22.22%) Data Pipeline
8 292 (20.53%) DevOps
9 282 (19.83%) MLOps
10 266 (18.71%) Data Engineering
11 262 (18.42%) Agile
12 207 (14.56%) Use Case
13 195 (13.71%) Problem-Solving
14 180 (12.66%) Software Engineering
15 179 (12.59%) Data Governance
16 175 (12.31%) ETL
17 174 (12.24%) Decision-Making
17 174 (12.24%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
18 152 (10.69%) Containerisation
19 146 (10.27%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 820 (57.67%) Python
2 365 (25.67%) SQL
3 104 (7.31%) Java
4 74 (5.20%) C#
5 64 (4.50%) R
6 49 (3.45%) TypeScript
7 45 (3.16%) JavaScript
8 26 (1.83%) C++
9 19 (1.34%) Bash
10 17 (1.20%) PowerShell
11 14 (0.98%) Bicep
12 11 (0.77%) Scala
13 10 (0.70%) Kotlin
14 8 (0.56%) Go
15 7 (0.49%) Rust
15 7 (0.49%) SPARQL
16 6 (0.42%) MATLAB
16 6 (0.42%) PL/SQL
17 5 (0.35%) Perl
18 3 (0.21%) Korn
Qualifications
1 234 (16.46%) Security Cleared
2 160 (11.25%) SC Cleared
3 115 (8.09%) Degree
4 52 (3.66%) Master's Degree
5 38 (2.67%) BPSS Clearance
5 38 (2.67%) DV Cleared
6 35 (2.46%) PhD
7 34 (2.39%) Computer Science Degree
8 25 (1.76%) AWS Certification
9 20 (1.41%) Azure Certification
10 18 (1.27%) CISSP
11 14 (0.98%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 14 (0.98%) CISM
12 6 (0.42%) ISTQB
12 6 (0.42%) Microsoft Certification
12 6 (0.42%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 5 (0.35%) GIAC
13 5 (0.35%) PMI Certification
13 5 (0.35%) PMP
14 4 (0.28%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 154 (10.83%) Data Quality
2 57 (4.01%) GDPR
3 49 (3.45%) QA
4 30 (2.11%) NIST
5 18 (1.27%) Accessibility
6 15 (1.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 13 (0.91%) EU AI Act
8 11 (0.77%) Actionable Recommendations
9 10 (0.70%) HIPAA
10 8 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 7 (0.49%) GRC
11 7 (0.49%) GxP
11 7 (0.49%) NCSC
12 5 (0.35%) WCAG
13 4 (0.28%) COBIT
13 4 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
14 3 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 42001
14 3 (0.21%) SLA
15 2 (0.14%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 2 (0.14%) DO-254
System Software
1 191 (13.43%) Docker
2 13 (0.91%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 10 (0.70%) Active Directory
4 5 (0.35%) Firmware
5 3 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.14%) Ceph
6 2 (0.14%) HDFS
6 2 (0.14%) Lustre
6 2 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
6 2 (0.14%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.14%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.14%) VMware Workstation
7 1 (0.070%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 225 (15.82%) Kubernetes
2 139 (9.77%) Terraform
3 22 (1.55%) Kubeflow
4 19 (1.34%) Grafana
5 13 (0.91%) Ansible
6 12 (0.84%) Prometheus
7 9 (0.63%) Podman
8 5 (0.35%) Istio
9 3 (0.21%) NetBackup
9 3 (0.21%) Rancher
10 2 (0.14%) Docker Swarm
10 2 (0.14%) Kibana
10 2 (0.14%) Packer
10 2 (0.14%) SCCM
11 1 (0.070%) Argo
11 1 (0.070%) HP Fortify
11 1 (0.070%) Knative
11 1 (0.070%) logstash
Vendors
1 197 (13.85%) Databricks
2 162 (11.39%) Microsoft
3 98 (6.89%) OpenAI
4 88 (6.19%) Google
5 56 (3.94%) Foundry
6 38 (2.67%) SAP
7 34 (2.39%) Oracle
8 21 (1.48%) ServiceNow
9 16 (1.13%) IBM
10 15 (1.05%) UiPath
11 13 (0.91%) Informatica
12 12 (0.84%) Dynatrace
13 11 (0.77%) Automation Anywhere
14 9 (0.63%) Amplitude
15 7 (0.49%) NVIDIA
15 7 (0.49%) Sybase
16 6 (0.42%) Talend
16 6 (0.42%) Workday
17 5 (0.35%) Ariba
17 5 (0.35%) Splunk