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 23 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 80 103 192
Rank change year-on-year +23 +89 +11
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,117 853 633
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.13% 2.31% 1.36%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.49% 2.67% 1.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 742 565 463
10th Percentile £401 £383 £382
25th Percentile £470 £475 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £561
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +6.95% -10.24%
75th Percentile £688 £731 £708
90th Percentile £775 £800 £798
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -12.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 16 30
10th Percentile £29.52 £13.06 £42.50
25th Percentile £42.39 £16.39 -
Median hourly rate £53.22 £37.34 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +42.53% -19.14% -11.19%
75th Percentile £84.88 £48.07 £47.17
90th Percentile £114.05 £59.38 £65.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £46.18 £46.18
% change year-on-year +40.75% - -12.04%

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 31,979 31,998 41,164
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.50% 86.61% 88.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,013 19,257 27,677
10th Percentile £300 £310 £308
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £532
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.22% -3.36%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £743 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,115 1,171 1,588
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.10 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.12 £19.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £34.00 £43.85
Median % change year-on-year -26.03% -22.46% +25.29%
75th Percentile £45.46 £64.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.85 £32.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -29.69% -26.97% +48.33%

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 23 November 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 23 November 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 23 November 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 +16 942 £575 -4.17% 2,027
London +15 616 £625 -2.34% 1,295
UK excluding London +53 368 £513 +2.50% 861
Work from Home +42 358 £550 +7.32% 1,006
North of England -13 92 £480 -1.69% 208
South East +38 83 £550 +5.26% 309
East of England +23 65 £531 +3.66% 57
Scotland +37 63 £503 +26.02% 59
North West -8 48 £458 -4.29% 137
Yorkshire -7 39 £525 - 54
Midlands -13 35 £508 +12.78% 115
West Midlands -1 27 £520 +15.44% 70
South West -19 25 £550 -12.00% 82
Wales +2 10 £700 +185.71% 19
East Midlands -11 8 £410 +15.17% 43
North East -17 6 £450 +4.05% 19
Northern Ireland -5 1 £700 - 15

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 87 (7.79%) Apache Spark
2 68 (6.09%) Apache Airflow
3 31 (2.78%) Apache
4 24 (2.15%) Jupyter
5 10 (0.90%) Confluence
6 9 (0.81%) SAS
7 8 (0.72%) Apache Pig
8 6 (0.54%) GeoServer
8 6 (0.54%) Smallworld
9 4 (0.36%) Appian
9 4 (0.36%) IIS
9 4 (0.36%) SharePoint
10 3 (0.27%) CMS
11 1 (0.090%) Apache Solr
11 1 (0.090%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.090%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.090%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.090%) nginx
11 1 (0.090%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 42 (3.76%) Chatbot
2 17 (1.52%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (1.07%) Microsoft Office
4 8 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.63%) Simulink
6 6 (0.54%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.090%) Adobe XD
7 1 (0.090%) GNU Octave
7 1 (0.090%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.090%) Sketch
7 1 (0.090%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.090%) Trello
Business Applications
1 10 (0.90%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.18%) Distributed Ledger
3 2 (0.18%) SAP ERP
3 2 (0.18%) Teamcenter
4 1 (0.090%) IBM Planning Analytics
4 1 (0.090%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.090%) SAP GRC
4 1 (0.090%) Shopify
4 1 (0.090%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 470 (42.08%) Azure
2 389 (34.83%) AWS
3 221 (19.79%) GCP
4 106 (9.49%) Power Platform
5 92 (8.24%) GitHub
5 92 (8.24%) Serverless
6 85 (7.61%) Azure Machine Learning
7 69 (6.18%) Azure DevOps
8 64 (5.73%) Snowflake
9 61 (5.46%) Amazon SageMaker
10 59 (5.28%) Amazon S3
11 56 (5.01%) Vertex AI
12 51 (4.57%) Azure AI
13 49 (4.39%) AWS Lambda
13 49 (4.39%) Azure AKS
14 47 (4.21%) Azure Data Factory
15 45 (4.03%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 41 (3.67%) GitHub Actions
17 36 (3.22%) Amazon Bedrock
17 36 (3.22%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 14 (1.25%) HTTP
1 14 (1.25%) Network Security
2 13 (1.16%) DNS
3 9 (0.81%) SSL
4 8 (0.72%) Ethernet
4 8 (0.72%) FTP
4 8 (0.72%) SMTP
5 6 (0.54%) Firewall
5 6 (0.54%) Internet
6 4 (0.36%) VPN
7 2 (0.18%) 2G
7 2 (0.18%) BGP
7 2 (0.18%) Bluetooth
7 2 (0.18%) Cisco IPT
7 2 (0.18%) Cisco Nexus
7 2 (0.18%) LTE
7 2 (0.18%) Modbus
7 2 (0.18%) OSPF
7 2 (0.18%) VoIP
7 2 (0.18%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 95 (8.50%) Power BI
2 79 (7.07%) Data Warehouse
3 65 (5.82%) Big Data
4 60 (5.37%) Data Lake
5 54 (4.83%) PostgreSQL
6 52 (4.66%) NoSQL
7 45 (4.03%) BigQuery
8 39 (3.49%) Tableau
9 35 (3.13%) Metadata
10 28 (2.51%) Hadoop
11 24 (2.15%) MongoDB
12 22 (1.97%) Pinecone
13 21 (1.88%) Elasticsearch
14 19 (1.70%) Data Mining
15 18 (1.61%) Amazon Athena
16 16 (1.43%) Amazon Redshift
16 16 (1.43%) Relational Database
17 15 (1.34%) Delta Lake
18 13 (1.16%) DynamoDB
18 13 (1.16%) Geospatial Data
Development Applications
1 94 (8.42%) Git
2 62 (5.55%) MLflow
3 57 (5.10%) Jenkins
4 36 (3.22%) GitLab
5 25 (2.24%) JIRA
6 18 (1.61%) Selenium
7 16 (1.43%) JMeter
8 13 (1.16%) SonarQube
9 10 (0.90%) JUnit
10 8 (0.72%) Cypress.io
11 7 (0.63%) Visual Studio
12 6 (0.54%) Mockito
12 6 (0.54%) Postman
12 6 (0.54%) PyCharm
13 5 (0.45%) Artifactory
13 5 (0.45%) Cucumber
13 5 (0.45%) Gradle
13 5 (0.45%) MSTest
14 4 (0.36%) Android Studio
14 4 (0.36%) Bitbucket
General
1 330 (29.54%) Social Skills
2 208 (18.62%) Finance
3 126 (11.28%) Analytical Skills
4 96 (8.59%) Public Sector
5 74 (6.62%) Banking
6 50 (4.48%) Marketing
7 43 (3.85%) Pharmaceutical
8 39 (3.49%) Retail
9 28 (2.51%) Legal
10 27 (2.42%) Telecoms
11 26 (2.33%) Investment Banking
12 24 (2.15%) Manufacturing
13 21 (1.88%) Front Office
14 20 (1.79%) Documentation Skills
15 17 (1.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 16 (1.43%) Influencing Skills
17 13 (1.16%) Electronics
18 12 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
19 11 (0.98%) Financial Institution
20 10 (0.90%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 164 (14.68%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
2 153 (13.70%) Data Scientist
3 148 (13.25%) Architect
4 119 (10.65%) Developer
5 116 (10.38%) Data Engineer
6 113 (10.12%) Senior
7 69 (6.18%) Lead
8 53 (4.74%) Machine Learning Engineer
9 52 (4.66%) Python Engineer
10 51 (4.57%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
11 50 (4.48%) Analyst
12 42 (3.76%) Software Engineer
13 36 (3.22%) Data Architect
14 34 (3.04%) Gen AI Engineer
15 32 (2.86%) Solutions Architect
16 31 (2.78%) Azure Engineer
17 29 (2.60%) Consultant
18 27 (2.42%) Python Developer
19 24 (2.15%) Full-Stack Engineer
20 23 (2.06%) Product Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 183 (16.38%) PyTorch
2 162 (14.50%) TensorFlow
3 107 (9.58%) scikit-learn
4 103 (9.22%) Pandas
5 84 (7.52%) LangChain
6 82 (7.34%) FastAPI
7 69 (6.18%) NumPy
8 64 (5.73%) Kafka
9 63 (5.64%) React
10 60 (5.37%) Hugging Face
11 57 (5.10%) RESTful
12 49 (4.39%) LangGraph
13 47 (4.21%) PySpark
14 45 (4.03%) REST
15 35 (3.13%) Node.js
16 34 (3.04%) .NET
16 34 (3.04%) Flask
17 31 (2.78%) pytest
18 22 (1.97%) AngularJS
19 20 (1.79%) OpenCV
Miscellaneous
1 178 (15.94%) Algorithms
2 142 (12.71%) Cloud Native
3 92 (8.24%) AI Agents
4 45 (4.03%) Product Ownership
5 38 (3.40%) Distributed Systems
6 36 (3.22%) Data Protection Act
7 34 (3.04%) Onboarding
8 31 (2.78%) Distributed Computing
9 29 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
10 25 (2.24%) Genomics
11 23 (2.06%) Life Science
12 22 (1.97%) Analytical Mindset
12 22 (1.97%) Data Structures
13 20 (1.79%) Hybrid Cloud
14 17 (1.52%) Enterprise Software
15 16 (1.43%) Management Information System
16 14 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
17 11 (0.98%) IoT
18 10 (0.90%) Cyber Threat
18 10 (0.90%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 29 (2.60%) Linux
2 11 (0.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 9 (0.81%) Ubuntu
3 9 (0.81%) VMS
3 9 (0.81%) Windows
4 8 (0.72%) Unix
5 5 (0.45%) Android
5 5 (0.45%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.18%) Robot Operating System
7 1 (0.090%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 820 (73.41%) AI
2 442 (39.57%) Data Science
3 320 (28.65%) LLM
4 303 (27.13%) CI/CD
5 299 (26.77%) Analytics
6 285 (25.51%) Agile
7 261 (23.37%) DevOps
8 212 (18.98%) Data Pipeline
9 204 (18.26%) Generative AI
10 195 (17.46%) MLOps
11 190 (17.01%) Problem-Solving
12 181 (16.20%) Data Engineering
13 164 (14.68%) Natural Language Processing
14 160 (14.32%) Software Engineering
15 143 (12.80%) Containerisation
16 134 (12.00%) Use Case
17 132 (11.82%) Visualisation
18 131 (11.73%) Data Modelling
19 130 (11.64%) Computer Science
20 125 (11.19%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Programming Languages
1 703 (62.94%) Python
2 267 (23.90%) SQL
3 78 (6.98%) R
4 74 (6.62%) Java
5 57 (5.10%) JavaScript
6 53 (4.74%) TypeScript
7 41 (3.67%) C#
8 35 (3.13%) C++
8 35 (3.13%) PowerShell
9 30 (2.69%) Scala
10 20 (1.79%) Bicep
11 19 (1.70%) Bash
12 15 (1.34%) MATLAB
13 13 (1.16%) C
14 11 (0.98%) Go
15 7 (0.63%) SystemVerilog
15 7 (0.63%) Tcl
16 5 (0.45%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 5 (0.45%) Shell Script
17 3 (0.27%) Rust
Qualifications
1 179 (16.03%) Degree
2 154 (13.79%) Security Cleared
3 111 (9.94%) SC Cleared
4 68 (6.09%) Master's Degree
5 47 (4.21%) MCP
6 46 (4.12%) Computer Science Degree
7 40 (3.58%) PhD
8 28 (2.51%) DV Cleared
9 24 (2.15%) Azure Certification
10 17 (1.52%) AWS Certification
11 13 (1.16%) BPSS Clearance
12 10 (0.90%) CISSP
13 7 (0.63%) HNC
13 7 (0.63%) HND
14 5 (0.45%) TOGAF Certification
15 4 (0.36%) Cisco Certification
15 4 (0.36%) CISM
15 4 (0.36%) ISTQB
15 4 (0.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 4 (0.36%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (6.18%) Data Quality
2 54 (4.83%) GDPR
3 39 (3.49%) NIST
3 39 (3.49%) QA
4 31 (2.78%) EU AI Act
5 23 (2.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 21 (1.88%) Accessibility
7 8 (0.72%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 7 (0.63%) DO-254
9 5 (0.45%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 5 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 4 (0.36%) Disclosure Scotland
10 4 (0.36%) GRC
10 4 (0.36%) HIPAA
10 4 (0.36%) NCSC
10 4 (0.36%) SOC 2
11 3 (0.27%) PCI DSS
12 2 (0.18%) EMIR
12 2 (0.18%) JSP 440
12 2 (0.18%) NIST 800
System Software
1 185 (16.56%) Docker
2 11 (0.98%) Active Directory
2 11 (0.98%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (0.63%) Firmware
4 3 (0.27%) 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 (0.090%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 185 (16.56%) Kubernetes
2 117 (10.47%) Terraform
3 33 (2.95%) Grafana
4 24 (2.15%) Ansible
5 20 (1.79%) Kubeflow
6 16 (1.43%) Prometheus
7 15 (1.34%) Kibana
8 11 (0.98%) SCOM
9 10 (0.90%) logstash
10 9 (0.81%) ITRS Geneos
11 8 (0.72%) Argo
12 5 (0.45%) Kustomize
13 4 (0.36%) Cilium
13 4 (0.36%) Progress Chef
13 4 (0.36%) Rsyslog
14 3 (0.27%) Single Sign-On
14 3 (0.27%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
15 2 (0.18%) Podman
16 1 (0.090%) HP ALM
16 1 (0.090%) Opsgenie
Vendors
1 163 (14.59%) Microsoft
2 143 (12.80%) Databricks
3 100 (8.95%) Google
4 64 (5.73%) OpenAI
5 40 (3.58%) Foundry
6 35 (3.13%) SAP
7 21 (1.88%) Splunk
8 14 (1.25%) Salesforce
9 13 (1.16%) ServiceNow
10 12 (1.07%) NVIDIA
11 10 (0.90%) Oracle
12 9 (0.81%) Solace
12 9 (0.81%) TIBCO
13 8 (0.72%) Intel
13 8 (0.72%) Palantir
14 7 (0.63%) Actel
14 7 (0.63%) Altera
14 7 (0.63%) Cisco
14 7 (0.63%) Informatica
14 7 (0.63%) Pega