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 2 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 80 101 176
Rank change year-on-year +21 +75 +29
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,139 857 646
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.17% 2.40% 1.42%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.55% 2.75% 1.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 759 571 472
10th Percentile £402 £378 £400
25th Percentile £475 £475 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £581
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +3.23% -7.00%
75th Percentile £688 £731 £705
90th Percentile £775 £800 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -12.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 20 29
10th Percentile £31.00 £13.06 £42.50
25th Percentile £42.79 £20.31 -
Median hourly rate £51.44 £27.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +87.05% -40.45% -7.64%
75th Percentile £84.50 £48.07 £47.50
90th Percentile £114.60 £54.88 £65.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £46.18 £46.18
% change year-on-year +40.75% - -9.89%

All Process and 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 32,041 31,135 40,262
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.06% 87.25% 88.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,133 18,828 26,941
10th Percentile £300 £310 £310
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £744 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,077 1,103 1,555
10th Percentile £14.58 £15.22 £14.38
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.22 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £33.00 £43.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.79% -24.14% +24.29%
75th Percentile £45.46 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.85 £32.50 £43.83
% change year-on-year -29.69% -25.84% +37.15%

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 2 December 2025.

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 2 December 2025.

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 2 December 2025. 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 +12 957 £575 -4.17% 1,531
London +16 621 £625 -0.40% 466
UK excluding London +44 377 £510 +2.00% 1,387
Work from Home +29 355 £563 +8.28% 1,795
North of England -23 94 £475 -2.86% 351
South East +37 85 £525 - 492
East of England +22 66 £523 -5.00% 139
Scotland +47 63 £503 +25.63% 38
North West -10 48 £465 -3.53% 150
Yorkshire -9 41 £514 -2.10% 180
Midlands -6 39 £511 +20.18% 230
West Midlands -7 29 £514 +11.14% 109
South West -17 25 £550 -15.38% 122
Wales +1 10 £700 +201.08% 17
East Midlands -14 10 £410 +15.17% 117
North East -17 6 £450 +4.05% 22
Northern Ireland -3 2 £675 - 7

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 86 (7.55%) Apache Spark
2 66 (5.79%) Apache Airflow
3 32 (2.81%) Apache
4 24 (2.11%) Jupyter
5 9 (0.79%) Confluence
6 8 (0.70%) Apache Pig
6 8 (0.70%) SAS
7 6 (0.53%) GeoServer
7 6 (0.53%) Smallworld
8 4 (0.35%) Appian
8 4 (0.35%) IIS
9 3 (0.26%) CMS
9 3 (0.26%) SharePoint
10 1 (0.088%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.088%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.088%) nginx
10 1 (0.088%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 42 (3.69%) Chatbot
2 16 (1.40%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
4 8 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.70%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.53%) Simulink
6 1 (0.088%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.088%) GNU Octave
6 1 (0.088%) Sketch
6 1 (0.088%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.088%) Trello
Business Applications
1 9 (0.79%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.18%) Distributed Ledger
3 2 (0.18%) SAP ERP
3 2 (0.18%) Teamcenter
4 1 (0.088%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.088%) SAP GRC
4 1 (0.088%) Shopify
4 1 (0.088%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 483 (42.41%) Azure
2 392 (34.42%) AWS
3 219 (19.23%) GCP
4 106 (9.31%) Power Platform
5 100 (8.78%) GitHub
6 99 (8.69%) Serverless
7 97 (8.52%) Azure Machine Learning
8 69 (6.06%) Azure DevOps
9 67 (5.88%) Snowflake
10 64 (5.62%) Amazon S3
11 63 (5.53%) Amazon SageMaker
12 59 (5.18%) Vertex AI
13 54 (4.74%) Azure AI
14 52 (4.57%) AWS Lambda
15 49 (4.30%) Azure AKS
15 49 (4.30%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 48 (4.21%) Azure Data Factory
17 47 (4.13%) GitHub Actions
18 37 (3.25%) Amazon Bedrock
18 37 (3.25%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 14 (1.23%) HTTP
1 14 (1.23%) Network Security
2 13 (1.14%) DNS
3 9 (0.79%) SSL
4 8 (0.70%) FTP
4 8 (0.70%) SMTP
5 7 (0.61%) Ethernet
6 6 (0.53%) Firewall
6 6 (0.53%) Internet
7 4 (0.35%) VPN
8 2 (0.18%) 2G
8 2 (0.18%) 5G
8 2 (0.18%) BGP
8 2 (0.18%) Cisco IPT
8 2 (0.18%) Cisco Nexus
8 2 (0.18%) InfiniBand
8 2 (0.18%) LTE
8 2 (0.18%) Modbus
8 2 (0.18%) OSPF
8 2 (0.18%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 93 (8.17%) Power BI
2 80 (7.02%) Data Warehouse
3 67 (5.88%) Big Data
4 63 (5.53%) Data Lake
5 56 (4.92%) PostgreSQL
6 54 (4.74%) NoSQL
7 44 (3.86%) BigQuery
8 39 (3.42%) Tableau
9 33 (2.90%) Metadata
10 28 (2.46%) Hadoop
11 25 (2.19%) Pinecone
12 24 (2.11%) MongoDB
13 20 (1.76%) Amazon Athena
13 20 (1.76%) Delta Lake
14 19 (1.67%) Data Mining
14 19 (1.67%) Elasticsearch
15 16 (1.40%) Relational Database
16 15 (1.32%) Amazon Redshift
17 13 (1.14%) Azure SQL Database
17 13 (1.14%) Geospatial Data
Development Applications
1 95 (8.34%) Git
2 72 (6.32%) MLflow
3 59 (5.18%) Jenkins
4 38 (3.34%) GitLab
5 24 (2.11%) JIRA
6 18 (1.58%) Selenium
7 16 (1.40%) JMeter
8 13 (1.14%) SonarQube
9 10 (0.88%) JUnit
10 8 (0.70%) Cypress.io
11 7 (0.61%) Visual Studio
12 6 (0.53%) Mockito
12 6 (0.53%) Postman
12 6 (0.53%) PyCharm
13 5 (0.44%) Artifactory
13 5 (0.44%) Cucumber
13 5 (0.44%) Gradle
13 5 (0.44%) MSTest
14 4 (0.35%) Gatling
14 4 (0.35%) Snyk
General
1 327 (28.71%) Social Skills
2 215 (18.88%) Finance
3 131 (11.50%) Analytical Skills
4 101 (8.87%) Public Sector
5 72 (6.32%) Banking
6 50 (4.39%) Marketing
7 43 (3.78%) Pharmaceutical
8 38 (3.34%) Retail
9 27 (2.37%) Legal
9 27 (2.37%) Manufacturing
9 27 (2.37%) Telecoms
10 25 (2.19%) Investment Banking
11 21 (1.84%) Front Office
12 19 (1.67%) Documentation Skills
12 19 (1.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 17 (1.49%) Influencing Skills
14 13 (1.14%) Electronics
14 13 (1.14%) Presentation Skills
15 11 (0.97%) Financial Institution
16 10 (0.88%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 177 (15.54%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
2 163 (14.31%) Data Scientist
3 151 (13.26%) Architect
4 118 (10.36%) Data Engineer
4 118 (10.36%) Senior
5 113 (9.92%) Developer
6 71 (6.23%) Lead
7 55 (4.83%) Machine Learning Engineer
7 55 (4.83%) Python Engineer
8 52 (4.57%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
9 48 (4.21%) Analyst
10 42 (3.69%) Software Engineer
11 38 (3.34%) Data Architect
12 34 (2.99%) Gen AI Engineer
13 31 (2.72%) Azure Engineer
13 31 (2.72%) Solutions Architect
14 27 (2.37%) Consultant
15 26 (2.28%) Senior Data Scientist
16 25 (2.19%) Full-Stack Engineer
16 25 (2.19%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 195 (17.12%) PyTorch
2 170 (14.93%) TensorFlow
3 113 (9.92%) scikit-learn
4 105 (9.22%) Pandas
5 89 (7.81%) LangChain
6 85 (7.46%) FastAPI
7 71 (6.23%) NumPy
8 63 (5.53%) Hugging Face
9 61 (5.36%) Kafka
10 60 (5.27%) React
11 53 (4.65%) RESTful
12 51 (4.48%) LangGraph
13 50 (4.39%) PySpark
14 46 (4.04%) REST
15 36 (3.16%) Node.js
16 34 (2.99%) .NET
16 34 (2.99%) Flask
17 31 (2.72%) pytest
18 23 (2.02%) AngularJS
19 22 (1.93%) Faiss
Miscellaneous
1 182 (15.98%) Algorithms
2 146 (12.82%) Cloud Native
3 97 (8.52%) AI Agents
4 44 (3.86%) Product Ownership
5 40 (3.51%) Distributed Systems
6 38 (3.34%) Data Protection Act
6 38 (3.34%) Onboarding
7 30 (2.63%) Distributed Computing
8 29 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
9 25 (2.19%) Genomics
10 23 (2.02%) Data Structures
10 23 (2.02%) Life Science
11 22 (1.93%) Analytical Mindset
12 21 (1.84%) Hybrid Cloud
13 18 (1.58%) Enterprise Software
14 16 (1.40%) Management Information System
15 13 (1.14%) Greenfield Project
16 11 (0.97%) IoT
16 11 (0.97%) Robotics
17 10 (0.88%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 31 (2.72%) Linux
2 11 (0.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 11 (0.97%) VMS
3 9 (0.79%) Ubuntu
4 8 (0.70%) Unix
4 8 (0.70%) Windows
5 5 (0.44%) Android
5 5 (0.44%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.18%) Robot Operating System
7 1 (0.088%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 839 (73.66%) AI
2 453 (39.77%) Data Science
3 331 (29.06%) LLM
4 311 (27.30%) CI/CD
5 302 (26.51%) Analytics
6 283 (24.85%) Agile
7 261 (22.91%) DevOps
8 215 (18.88%) Generative AI
9 213 (18.70%) Data Pipeline
10 200 (17.56%) MLOps
11 193 (16.94%) Problem-Solving
12 186 (16.33%) Data Engineering
13 168 (14.75%) Natural Language Processing
14 161 (14.14%) Software Engineering
15 150 (13.17%) Containerisation
16 135 (11.85%) Visualisation
17 134 (11.76%) Use Case
18 131 (11.50%) Computer Science
18 131 (11.50%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
19 130 (11.41%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 727 (63.83%) Python
2 274 (24.06%) SQL
3 80 (7.02%) R
4 73 (6.41%) Java
5 57 (5.00%) JavaScript
6 52 (4.57%) TypeScript
7 42 (3.69%) C#
8 38 (3.34%) PowerShell
9 33 (2.90%) C++
10 29 (2.55%) Scala
11 22 (1.93%) Bash
12 19 (1.67%) Bicep
13 15 (1.32%) MATLAB
14 12 (1.05%) Go
15 11 (0.97%) C
16 6 (0.53%) SystemVerilog
16 6 (0.53%) Tcl
17 4 (0.35%) Shell Script
18 3 (0.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 3 (0.26%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 176 (15.45%) Degree
2 165 (14.49%) Security Cleared
3 121 (10.62%) SC Cleared
4 70 (6.15%) Master's Degree
5 48 (4.21%) MCP
6 47 (4.13%) Computer Science Degree
7 40 (3.51%) PhD
8 29 (2.55%) DV Cleared
9 24 (2.11%) Azure Certification
10 14 (1.23%) AWS Certification
11 13 (1.14%) BPSS Clearance
12 8 (0.70%) CISSP
13 6 (0.53%) HNC
13 6 (0.53%) HND
14 5 (0.44%) TOGAF Certification
15 4 (0.35%) Cisco Certification
15 4 (0.35%) CISM
15 4 (0.35%) ISTQB
15 4 (0.35%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 4 (0.35%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 71 (6.23%) Data Quality
2 56 (4.92%) GDPR
3 41 (3.60%) QA
4 39 (3.42%) NIST
5 32 (2.81%) EU AI Act
6 23 (2.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 18 (1.58%) Accessibility
8 8 (0.70%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 6 (0.53%) DO-254
10 5 (0.44%) HIPAA
10 5 (0.44%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 5 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 5 (0.44%) SOC 2
11 4 (0.35%) Disclosure Scotland
11 4 (0.35%) NCSC
12 3 (0.26%) PCI DSS
13 2 (0.18%) EMIR
13 2 (0.18%) GRC
13 2 (0.18%) JSP 440
13 2 (0.18%) NIST 800
System Software
1 191 (16.77%) Docker
2 11 (0.97%) Active Directory
2 11 (0.97%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (0.53%) Firmware
4 3 (0.26%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.18%) GPFS
5 2 (0.18%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.18%) KVM
5 2 (0.18%) Lustre
5 2 (0.18%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.088%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 189 (16.59%) Kubernetes
2 127 (11.15%) Terraform
3 34 (2.99%) Grafana
4 27 (2.37%) Ansible
5 21 (1.84%) Kubeflow
6 17 (1.49%) Prometheus
7 13 (1.14%) Kibana
8 11 (0.97%) SCOM
9 10 (0.88%) logstash
10 9 (0.79%) ITRS Geneos
11 8 (0.70%) Argo
12 5 (0.44%) Kustomize
13 4 (0.35%) Cilium
13 4 (0.35%) Progress Chef
13 4 (0.35%) Rsyslog
14 3 (0.26%) Single Sign-On
14 3 (0.26%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
15 2 (0.18%) Knative
15 2 (0.18%) Podman
16 1 (0.088%) Opsgenie
Vendors
1 165 (14.49%) Microsoft
2 155 (13.61%) Databricks
3 102 (8.96%) Google
4 70 (6.15%) OpenAI
5 43 (3.78%) Foundry
6 38 (3.34%) SAP
7 21 (1.84%) Splunk
8 15 (1.32%) ServiceNow
9 14 (1.23%) Salesforce
10 12 (1.05%) NVIDIA
11 9 (0.79%) Greenplum
11 9 (0.79%) Oracle
11 9 (0.79%) Solace
11 9 (0.79%) TIBCO
12 7 (0.61%) Cisco
12 7 (0.61%) Informatica
12 7 (0.61%) Intel
12 7 (0.61%) Pega
13 6 (0.53%) Actel
13 6 (0.53%) Altera