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

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 97 82 110
Rank change year-on-year -15 +28 +85
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,566 1,010 805
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.87% 3.05% 2.12%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.40% 3.37% 2.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 990 655 533
10th Percentile £405 £400 £391
25th Percentile £481 £463 £478
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% -8.33% +2.56%
75th Percentile £688 £688 £731
90th Percentile £788 £775 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £525 £500
% change year-on-year +4.76% +5.00% -7.92%
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 25 19
10th Percentile £28.50 £27.10 £13.06
25th Percentile £39.91 £41.25 £21.43
Median hourly rate £77.00 £51.44 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +49.69% +11.39% -
75th Percentile £86.06 £80.00 £53.75
90th Percentile £88.75 £87.80 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £77.00 £61.23 £46.18
% change year-on-year +25.77% +32.58% -

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 46,102 30,004 32,672
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.59% 90.46% 86.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,718 18,629 19,703
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% -2.78%
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 3,326 1,885 1,303
10th Percentile £13.58 £14.33 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.00 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +49.11% -37.13% -8.31%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.52 £65.00 £73.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £22.27 £41.25
% change year-on-year +68.43% -46.02% -2.94%

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 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 9 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 9 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 -12 1,343 £584 +3.36% 6,219
London +8 893 £600 -1.96% 4,408
UK excluding London -25 512 £550 +4.76% 2,080
Work from Home -24 424 £600 +9.09% 2,263
North of England -11 152 £550 +15.79% 431
South East -19 136 £600 +9.09% 476
Scotland +3 94 £450 -10.45% 272
North West -29 68 £650 +44.44% 273
Yorkshire 0 65 £513 -0.29% 107
South West -5 52 £525 -4.55% 238
Midlands -34 49 £600 +14.29% 198
West Midlands -37 39 £588 +11.90% 119
East of England -46 29 £500 -8.05% 329
North East -27 20 £550 +29.41% 52
Wales -9 7 £530 -21.48% 66
East Midlands -19 6 £425 -8.11% 79
Northern Ireland +7 2 £467 -33.29% 84

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
1 100 (6.39%) Apache Spark
2 80 (5.11%) Apache Airflow
3 69 (4.41%) Apache
4 33 (2.11%) Jupyter
5 25 (1.60%) Confluence
6 10 (0.64%) SAS
7 7 (0.45%) IIS
8 6 (0.38%) ArcGIS
9 5 (0.32%) SharePoint
10 4 (0.26%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.26%) 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 (0.064%) Luigi
Applications
1 29 (1.85%) Chatbot
2 8 (0.51%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.19%) CPLEX
4 2 (0.13%) DaVinci Resolve
4 2 (0.13%) Notion
4 2 (0.13%) NUKE
5 1 (0.064%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.064%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.064%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.064%) Simulink
5 1 (0.064%) Sketch
5 1 (0.064%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.064%) Trello
Business Applications
1 7 (0.45%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.26%) SAP IBP
3 3 (0.19%) Cloudability
3 3 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
4 2 (0.13%) SAP ERP
4 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.064%) Actimize
5 1 (0.064%) Dynamics CRM
5 1 (0.064%) Endur
5 1 (0.064%) NetSuite
5 1 (0.064%) OpenLink RightAngle
5 1 (0.064%) Oracle Cash Management
5 1 (0.064%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.064%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.064%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.064%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 519 (33.14%) Azure
2 506 (32.31%) AWS
3 300 (19.16%) GCP
4 112 (7.15%) Power Platform
5 103 (6.58%) Serverless
6 99 (6.32%) GitHub
7 93 (5.94%) Amazon S3
8 90 (5.75%) Snowflake
9 81 (5.17%) AWS Lambda
10 64 (4.09%) Amazon SageMaker
11 63 (4.02%) Amazon Bedrock
11 63 (4.02%) dbt
12 60 (3.83%) Azure Machine Learning
13 51 (3.26%) Azure AI
14 49 (3.13%) Azure DevOps
15 47 (3.00%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 46 (2.94%) SaaS
17 45 (2.87%) Vertex AI
18 44 (2.81%) Azure Data Factory
19 39 (2.49%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.40%) Network Security
2 20 (1.28%) Broadband
3 19 (1.21%) Internet
4 14 (0.89%) DNS
5 13 (0.83%) Firewall
6 11 (0.70%) HTTP
7 9 (0.57%) DHCP
7 9 (0.57%) VPN
8 5 (0.32%) SMTP
8 5 (0.32%) TCP/IP
9 4 (0.26%) NAS
9 4 (0.26%) SAN
9 4 (0.26%) SMS
9 4 (0.26%) 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
1 102 (6.51%) Data Warehouse
1 102 (6.51%) Power BI
2 92 (5.87%) Metadata
3 91 (5.81%) Data Lake
4 71 (4.53%) BigQuery
5 61 (3.90%) Big Data
6 54 (3.45%) Delta Lake
7 52 (3.32%) Amazon Redshift
8 49 (3.13%) NoSQL
9 41 (2.62%) Tableau
10 37 (2.36%) PostgreSQL
11 32 (2.04%) Amazon Athena
12 28 (1.79%) Relational Database
13 26 (1.66%) Neo4j
14 25 (1.60%) Hadoop
15 22 (1.40%) Elasticsearch
16 21 (1.34%) MongoDB
17 19 (1.21%) Amazon RDS
18 17 (1.09%) Apache Iceberg
18 17 (1.09%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 107 (6.83%) Git
2 56 (3.58%) GitLab
3 47 (3.00%) JIRA
4 42 (2.68%) MLflow
5 13 (0.83%) Jenkins
6 11 (0.70%) Claude Code
7 7 (0.45%) Vite
8 6 (0.38%) JMeter
9 5 (0.32%) Cypress.io
9 5 (0.32%) Postman
9 5 (0.32%) RStudio
10 4 (0.26%) ERwin
10 4 (0.26%) Pylint
10 4 (0.26%) REST Assured
10 4 (0.26%) Selenium
11 3 (0.19%) Newman
12 2 (0.13%) Applitools
12 2 (0.13%) ER Studio
12 2 (0.13%) Spinnaker
12 2 (0.13%) Terragrunt
General
1 364 (23.24%) Social Skills
2 316 (20.18%) Finance
3 240 (15.33%) Analytical Skills
4 148 (9.45%) Public Sector
5 124 (7.92%) Banking
6 39 (2.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 38 (2.43%) Marketing
8 29 (1.85%) Retail
9 27 (1.72%) Pharmaceutical
9 27 (1.72%) Telecoms
10 24 (1.53%) Manufacturing
11 23 (1.47%) Aerospace
12 22 (1.40%) Legal
13 21 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
14 20 (1.28%) Financial Institution
15 19 (1.21%) Front Office
16 17 (1.09%) Investment Banking
17 16 (1.02%) Billing
18 15 (0.96%) Documentation Skills
18 15 (0.96%) Law
Job Titles
1 284 (18.14%) Senior
2 252 (16.09%) Architect
3 190 (12.13%) Data Engineer
4 189 (12.07%) Data Scientist
5 176 (11.24%) Lead
6 146 (9.32%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 107 (6.83%) Machine Learning Engineer
8 72 (4.60%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
9 70 (4.47%) Python Engineer
10 69 (4.41%) Solutions Architect
11 67 (4.28%) Developer
12 65 (4.15%) Data Architect
13 58 (3.70%) Analyst
13 58 (3.70%) Platform Engineer
13 58 (3.70%) Senior Data Engineer
14 53 (3.38%) Senior Data Scientist
15 47 (3.00%) Security Architect
16 46 (2.94%) Software Engineer
17 40 (2.55%) DevOps Engineer
18 37 (2.36%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 204 (13.03%) Terraform
2 106 (6.77%) Kafka
3 105 (6.70%) PyTorch
4 95 (6.07%) PySpark
5 80 (5.11%) TensorFlow
6 76 (4.85%) REST
7 73 (4.66%) LangChain
8 62 (3.96%) scikit-learn
9 59 (3.77%) React
10 53 (3.38%) pytest
11 51 (3.26%) Pandas
12 41 (2.62%) LangGraph
12 41 (2.62%) NumPy
13 36 (2.30%) FastAPI
14 29 (1.85%) .NET
15 27 (1.72%) Hugging Face
15 27 (1.72%) JSON
15 27 (1.72%) Model Context Protocol
16 21 (1.34%) LlamaIndex
16 21 (1.34%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 200 (12.77%) Cloud Native
2 170 (10.86%) AI Agents
3 106 (6.77%) Algorithms
4 77 (4.92%) Onboarding
5 69 (4.41%) Distributed Systems
6 64 (4.09%) Product Ownership
7 40 (2.55%) Data Structures
7 40 (2.55%) Enterprise Software
8 29 (1.85%) Data Protection Act
8 29 (1.85%) Life Science
9 23 (1.47%) Management Information System
10 21 (1.34%) Hybrid Cloud
11 19 (1.21%) Social Media
12 18 (1.15%) CMDB
13 17 (1.09%) Taxonomies
14 16 (1.02%) Analytical Mindset
14 16 (1.02%) Clustering
14 16 (1.02%) Credit Risk
14 16 (1.02%) Legacy Systems
15 15 (0.96%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 45 (2.87%) Linux
2 21 (1.34%) Windows
3 16 (1.02%) Unix
4 4 (0.26%) Android
4 4 (0.26%) Ubuntu
4 4 (0.26%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.19%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.064%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.064%) Robot Operating System
6 1 (0.064%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,293 (82.57%) AI
2 561 (35.82%) Data Science
3 504 (32.18%) CI/CD
4 474 (30.27%) Analytics
5 428 (27.33%) LLM
6 390 (24.90%) Generative AI
7 361 (23.05%) Data Pipeline
8 333 (21.26%) DevOps
9 326 (20.82%) Agile
10 304 (19.41%) MLOps
11 287 (18.33%) Data Engineering
12 265 (16.92%) Software Engineering
13 248 (15.84%) Stakeholder Management
14 246 (15.71%) Use Case
15 242 (15.45%) Decision-Making
16 238 (15.20%) Roadmaps
17 215 (13.73%) Infrastructure as Code
18 208 (13.28%) Data Modelling
18 208 (13.28%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
19 207 (13.22%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 836 (53.38%) Python
2 410 (26.18%) SQL
3 110 (7.02%) Java
4 76 (4.85%) JavaScript
5 64 (4.09%) TypeScript
6 42 (2.68%) Bash
7 33 (2.11%) R
8 31 (1.98%) C#
9 30 (1.92%) PowerShell
10 26 (1.66%) Scala
11 20 (1.28%) Go
12 19 (1.21%) C++
13 16 (1.02%) Bicep
14 14 (0.89%) Shell Script
15 11 (0.70%) Cypher
15 11 (0.70%) PL/SQL
16 8 (0.51%) Gremlin
17 7 (0.45%) SPARQL
18 5 (0.32%) Kotlin
18 5 (0.32%) Perl
Qualifications
1 307 (19.60%) Security Cleared
2 242 (15.45%) SC Cleared
3 132 (8.43%) Degree
4 58 (3.70%) Computer Science Degree
5 55 (3.51%) DV Cleared
6 52 (3.32%) AWS Certification
7 40 (2.55%) BPSS Clearance
7 40 (2.55%) Master's Degree
8 32 (2.04%) CISSP
9 30 (1.92%) Azure Certification
10 26 (1.66%) PhD
11 19 (1.21%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 15 (0.96%) CISM
12 15 (0.96%) TOGAF Certification
13 10 (0.64%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 10 (0.64%) Cisco Certification
13 10 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
14 9 (0.57%) Microsoft Certified Professional
15 8 (0.51%) DBS Check
16 5 (0.32%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 232 (14.81%) Data Quality
2 55 (3.51%) GDPR
3 53 (3.38%) QA
4 31 (1.98%) NIST
5 21 (1.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 17 (1.09%) Accessibility
7 13 (0.83%) EU AI Act
8 10 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 42001
8 10 (0.64%) NCSC
8 10 (0.64%) SLA
9 9 (0.57%) GRC
9 9 (0.57%) PCI DSS
10 7 (0.45%) GxP
10 7 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 6 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.38%) HIPAA
12 5 (0.32%) Basel III
12 5 (0.32%) Solvency II
13 4 (0.26%) SOC 2
14 3 (0.19%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 214 (13.67%) Docker
2 16 (1.02%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.64%) Hyper-V
4 10 (0.64%) IAG
5 8 (0.51%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.45%) NFS
7 5 (0.32%) 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 (0.064%) Firmware
10 1 (0.064%) zsh
Systems Management
1 285 (18.20%) Kubernetes
2 47 (3.00%) Ansible
3 29 (1.85%) Kubeflow
4 27 (1.72%) Grafana
5 22 (1.40%) Prometheus
6 6 (0.38%) Istio
6 6 (0.38%) systemd
7 5 (0.32%) 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 (0.064%) Cilium
Vendors
1 206 (13.15%) Databricks
2 158 (10.09%) Microsoft
3 108 (6.90%) Google
4 65 (4.15%) OpenAI
5 37 (2.36%) SAP
6 34 (2.17%) Oracle
6 34 (2.17%) ServiceNow
7 27 (1.72%) Foundry
8 21 (1.34%) Informatica
9 19 (1.21%) Dynatrace
10 14 (0.89%) VMware
11 11 (0.70%) IBM
11 11 (0.70%) Salesforce
11 11 (0.70%) Splunk
12 10 (0.64%) Nexthink
12 10 (0.64%) UiPath
13 7 (0.45%) Cisco
14 6 (0.38%) New Relic
14 6 (0.38%) Pega
15 5 (0.32%) Sybase