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

6 months to
11 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 84 98 142
Rank change year-on-year +14 +44 +79
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,394 767 709
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.93% 2.61% 1.65%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.47% 2.87% 1.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 863 494 519
10th Percentile £413 £370 £413
25th Percentile £491 £455 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.17%
75th Percentile £688 £725 £738
90th Percentile £775 £875 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -4.35% +4.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 21 19
10th Percentile £50.00 £25.25 £41.25
25th Percentile £50.99 £45.00 £46.47
Median hourly rate £65.00 £61.50 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +5.69% +17.14% +50.00%
75th Percentile £83.75 £78.70 £66.25
90th Percentile £89.25 £81.01 £75.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £76.25 £56.25
% change year-on-year -14.75% +35.56% +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 40,197 26,741 37,098
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.41% 90.94% 86.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,242 17,210 23,886
10th Percentile £320 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +2.30% -4.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,406 1,094 2,440
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.44 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.87 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.13 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +46.52% -21.23% +0.69%
75th Percentile £67.25 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £27.00 £38.00
% change year-on-year +66.67% -28.95% +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 11 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 11 May 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 11 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 +10 1,168 £575 - 1,196
London +25 775 £575 -4.17% 666
UK excluding London +4 430 £550 -4.35% 706
Work from Home +8 397 £596 +8.27% 646
North of England -9 107 £558 +13.78% 186
South East -26 89 £600 +4.35% 234
Scotland +52 85 £518 +10.81% 40
Midlands -25 65 £550 +15.79% 70
North West -17 55 £575 +4.55% 104
East of England -18 49 £500 -20.00% 93
West Midlands -30 47 £550 +10.00% 33
South West -31 42 £500 -19.35% 87
Yorkshire -17 41 £550 - 46
East Midlands -24 16 £675 +45.95% 36
North East -11 14 £575 +60.61% 36
Wales -15 12 £759 +31.96% 6
Northern Ireland - 1 £650 - 4

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
1 117 (8.39%) Apache Spark
2 71 (5.09%) Apache Airflow
3 57 (4.09%) Apache
4 28 (2.01%) Jupyter
5 12 (0.86%) Confluence
6 9 (0.65%) Appian
7 6 (0.43%) CMS
7 6 (0.43%) SAS
8 5 (0.36%) Headless CMS
8 5 (0.36%) SharePoint
9 3 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
10 2 (0.14%) Luigi
11 1 (0.072%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.072%) Apache Synapse
11 1 (0.072%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.072%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 27 (1.94%) Chatbot
2 12 (0.86%) Microsoft Project
3 9 (0.65%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.50%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (0.22%) LaTeX
5 3 (0.22%) Simulink
6 2 (0.14%) CPLEX
Business Applications
1 11 (0.79%) SAP IBP
2 5 (0.36%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
3 2 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.072%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.072%) OpenText VIM for SAP
4 1 (0.072%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.072%) SAP APO
4 1 (0.072%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 547 (39.24%) Azure
2 480 (34.43%) AWS
3 241 (17.29%) GCP
4 132 (9.47%) Power Platform
5 98 (7.03%) GitHub
6 93 (6.67%) Azure Machine Learning
6 93 (6.67%) Serverless
7 88 (6.31%) Azure AI
8 72 (5.16%) Amazon S3
8 72 (5.16%) Amazon SageMaker
9 69 (4.95%) Snowflake
10 68 (4.88%) Azure DevOps
11 58 (4.16%) GitHub Actions
12 56 (4.02%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 56 (4.02%) Vertex AI
13 55 (3.95%) AWS Lambda
14 52 (3.73%) Azure Data Factory
15 41 (2.94%) AWS CloudFormation
16 35 (2.51%) Amazon Bedrock
17 28 (2.01%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 13 (0.93%) Network Security
2 10 (0.72%) Firewall
3 9 (0.65%) HTTP
4 8 (0.57%) DNS
5 5 (0.36%) FTP
5 5 (0.36%) SMTP
5 5 (0.36%) SSL
6 4 (0.29%) InfiniBand
7 3 (0.22%) Ethernet
8 2 (0.14%) 4G
8 2 (0.14%) 5G
8 2 (0.14%) DHCP
8 2 (0.14%) Hyperconnected
8 2 (0.14%) Internet
8 2 (0.14%) Modbus
8 2 (0.14%) PCoIP
8 2 (0.14%) Remote Desktop
9 1 (0.072%) Cisco IPT
9 1 (0.072%) MQTT
9 1 (0.072%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 103 (7.39%) Power BI
2 91 (6.53%) Data Lake
3 76 (5.45%) Big Data
4 62 (4.45%) Metadata
5 60 (4.30%) BigQuery
6 59 (4.23%) Data Warehouse
7 47 (3.37%) NoSQL
8 39 (2.80%) Tableau
9 36 (2.58%) Pinecone
10 35 (2.51%) Delta Lake
10 35 (2.51%) Hadoop
11 30 (2.15%) SQL Server
12 29 (2.08%) Weaviate
13 28 (2.01%) PostgreSQL
14 27 (1.94%) Amazon Athena
15 25 (1.79%) Relational Database
16 23 (1.65%) Mixpanel
17 19 (1.36%) MongoDB
18 18 (1.29%) Amazon Redshift
19 17 (1.22%) Redis
Development Applications
1 93 (6.67%) MLflow
2 90 (6.46%) Git
3 31 (2.22%) JIRA
4 28 (2.01%) GitLab
4 28 (2.01%) Jenkins
5 8 (0.57%) Visual Studio
6 7 (0.50%) Selenium
7 6 (0.43%) SonarQube
8 4 (0.29%) Claude Code
8 4 (0.29%) Cypress.io
8 4 (0.29%) Gradle
8 4 (0.29%) JMeter
8 4 (0.29%) Maven
8 4 (0.29%) PyCharm
9 3 (0.22%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.22%) ERwin
9 3 (0.22%) JUnit
9 3 (0.22%) REST Assured
9 3 (0.22%) Spinnaker
9 3 (0.22%) Vite
General
1 309 (22.17%) Social Skills
2 269 (19.30%) Finance
3 166 (11.91%) Analytical Skills
4 137 (9.83%) Public Sector
5 85 (6.10%) Banking
6 30 (2.15%) Marketing
7 29 (2.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 27 (1.94%) Documentation Skills
9 26 (1.87%) Legal
10 25 (1.79%) Influencing Skills
11 24 (1.72%) Pharmaceutical
12 21 (1.51%) Aviation
12 21 (1.51%) Retail
13 20 (1.43%) Investment Banking
14 19 (1.36%) Front Office
14 19 (1.36%) Presentation Skills
15 18 (1.29%) Telecoms
16 12 (0.86%) Aerospace
17 11 (0.79%) Law
18 10 (0.72%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 207 (14.85%) Data Scientist
2 191 (13.70%) Architect
3 186 (13.34%) Senior
4 169 (12.12%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 136 (9.76%) Data Engineer
6 116 (8.32%) Lead
7 98 (7.03%) Developer
8 74 (5.31%) Analyst
9 64 (4.59%) Python Engineer
10 57 (4.09%) Software Engineer
11 55 (3.95%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
11 55 (3.95%) Machine Learning Engineer
11 55 (3.95%) Solutions Architect
12 54 (3.87%) Data Architect
13 38 (2.73%) Senior Data Scientist
14 37 (2.65%) Consultant
15 32 (2.30%) Gen AI Engineer
16 31 (2.22%) Azure Engineer
16 31 (2.22%) Business Analyst
16 31 (2.22%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 200 (14.35%) PyTorch
2 146 (10.47%) TensorFlow
3 119 (8.54%) scikit-learn
4 101 (7.25%) Pandas
5 75 (5.38%) Kafka
6 73 (5.24%) LangChain
6 73 (5.24%) NumPy
7 67 (4.81%) React
8 63 (4.52%) PySpark
9 53 (3.80%) .NET
10 51 (3.66%) REST
11 50 (3.59%) Hugging Face
12 42 (3.01%) Node.js
13 38 (2.73%) LangGraph
14 37 (2.65%) Model Context Protocol
15 34 (2.44%) AngularJS
15 34 (2.44%) FastAPI
16 29 (2.08%) Faiss
17 25 (1.79%) RESTful
18 20 (1.43%) LlamaIndex
Miscellaneous
1 170 (12.20%) Cloud Native
2 135 (9.68%) Algorithms
3 134 (9.61%) AI Agents
4 44 (3.16%) Onboarding
4 44 (3.16%) Product Ownership
5 34 (2.44%) Distributed Systems
6 28 (2.01%) Data Protection Act
7 19 (1.36%) Legacy Systems
8 18 (1.29%) Hybrid Cloud
9 17 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
9 17 (1.22%) Fixed Income
9 17 (1.22%) Management Information System
10 14 (1.00%) Analytical Mindset
10 14 (1.00%) Data Structures
11 13 (0.93%) Distributed Computing
11 13 (0.93%) Life Science
12 12 (0.86%) Public Cloud
13 11 (0.79%) Augmented Reality
13 11 (0.79%) Virtual Reality
14 10 (0.72%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 30 (2.15%) Linux
2 12 (0.86%) Windows
3 11 (0.79%) VMS
4 7 (0.50%) Android
4 7 (0.50%) Apple iOS
5 6 (0.43%) Unix
6 2 (0.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,100 (78.91%) AI
2 515 (36.94%) Data Science
3 426 (30.56%) CI/CD
4 396 (28.41%) Analytics
5 391 (28.05%) LLM
6 308 (22.09%) Data Pipeline
7 306 (21.95%) Generative AI
8 269 (19.30%) MLOps
9 266 (19.08%) DevOps
10 265 (19.01%) Data Engineering
11 256 (18.36%) Agile
12 199 (14.28%) Use Case
13 194 (13.92%) Problem-Solving
14 176 (12.63%) Data Governance
15 169 (12.12%) ETL
16 167 (11.98%) Software Engineering
17 165 (11.84%) Decision-Making
18 164 (11.76%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
19 160 (11.48%) Containerisation
20 148 (10.62%) Natural Language Processing
Programming Languages
1 808 (57.96%) Python
2 350 (25.11%) SQL
3 108 (7.75%) Java
4 79 (5.67%) C#
5 65 (4.66%) R
6 50 (3.59%) TypeScript
7 49 (3.52%) JavaScript
8 26 (1.87%) C++
9 20 (1.43%) Bash
9 20 (1.43%) PowerShell
10 16 (1.15%) Bicep
11 15 (1.08%) Scala
12 10 (0.72%) Go
12 10 (0.72%) Kotlin
13 8 (0.57%) MATLAB
14 7 (0.50%) Rust
15 5 (0.36%) PL/SQL
15 5 (0.36%) SPARQL
16 4 (0.29%) T-SQL
17 3 (0.22%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 240 (17.22%) Security Cleared
2 164 (11.76%) SC Cleared
3 119 (8.54%) Degree
4 61 (4.38%) Master's Degree
5 39 (2.80%) DV Cleared
6 38 (2.73%) BPSS Clearance
7 36 (2.58%) PhD
8 34 (2.44%) Computer Science Degree
9 24 (1.72%) AWS Certification
10 19 (1.36%) Azure Certification
11 17 (1.22%) CISSP
12 14 (1.00%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 13 (0.93%) CISM
14 9 (0.65%) Microsoft Certified Professional
15 6 (0.43%) ISTQB
15 6 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
16 5 (0.36%) PMI Certification
16 5 (0.36%) PMP
17 3 (0.22%) HNC
17 3 (0.22%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 143 (10.26%) Data Quality
2 57 (4.09%) GDPR
3 53 (3.80%) QA
4 28 (2.01%) NIST
5 18 (1.29%) Accessibility
6 13 (0.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 12 (0.86%) EU AI Act
8 10 (0.72%) Actionable Recommendations
8 10 (0.72%) HIPAA
9 9 (0.65%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 6 (0.43%) NCSC
11 5 (0.36%) GRC
11 5 (0.36%) WCAG
12 3 (0.22%) Disclosure Scotland
12 3 (0.22%) DO-254
12 3 (0.22%) GxP
13 2 (0.14%) COBIT
13 2 (0.14%) Def Stans
13 2 (0.14%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 2 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 185 (13.27%) Docker
2 12 (0.86%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 11 (0.79%) Active Directory
4 6 (0.43%) Firmware
5 3 (0.22%) Lustre
5 3 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.14%) Ceph
6 2 (0.14%) HDFS
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 (0.072%) Embedded Firmware
7 1 (0.072%) GPFS
Systems Management
1 211 (15.14%) Kubernetes
2 139 (9.97%) Terraform
3 22 (1.58%) Grafana
4 20 (1.43%) Kubeflow
5 15 (1.08%) Ansible
6 14 (1.00%) Prometheus
7 9 (0.65%) Podman
8 4 (0.29%) Istio
9 3 (0.22%) Rancher
10 2 (0.14%) Argo
10 2 (0.14%) Docker Swarm
10 2 (0.14%) Kibana
10 2 (0.14%) Knative
10 2 (0.14%) Packer
10 2 (0.14%) SCCM
11 1 (0.072%) HP Fortify
11 1 (0.072%) logstash
11 1 (0.072%) Opsgenie
11 1 (0.072%) SELinux
Vendors
1 212 (15.21%) Databricks
2 168 (12.05%) Microsoft
3 101 (7.25%) OpenAI
4 96 (6.89%) Google
5 59 (4.23%) Foundry
6 43 (3.08%) SAP
7 31 (2.22%) Oracle
8 21 (1.51%) ServiceNow
9 16 (1.15%) Informatica
10 15 (1.08%) UiPath
11 14 (1.00%) IBM
12 13 (0.93%) Dynatrace
13 11 (0.79%) Automation Anywhere
14 9 (0.65%) NVIDIA
14 9 (0.65%) Salesforce
15 7 (0.50%) Amplitude
15 7 (0.50%) Workday
16 6 (0.43%) Siemens
16 6 (0.43%) Splunk
16 6 (0.43%) Talend