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

6 months to
5 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 86 113 141
Rank change year-on-year +27 +28 +88
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,443 707 712
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.94% 2.44% 1.66%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.47% 2.68% 1.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 882 432 512
10th Percentile £413 £393 £413
25th Percentile £491 £457 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £555 £580
Median % change year-on-year +3.60% -4.31% -1.28%
75th Percentile £675 £696 £738
90th Percentile £775 £850 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £575 £525
% change year-on-year -4.35% +9.52% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 49 19 19
10th Percentile £40.54 £29.85 £41.25
25th Percentile £51.21 £45.00 £46.22
Median hourly rate £66.00 £75.00 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% +42.86% +50.00%
75th Percentile £83.75 £81.01 £66.25
90th Percentile £89.00 £88.00 £75.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £78.10 £56.25
% change year-on-year -16.77% +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 41,594 26,332 36,644
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.70% 91.01% 85.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,970 16,762 23,491
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £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 2,502 1,133 2,525
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.53 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.68% -24.58% +1.39%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.25 £60.75
90th Percentile £81.24 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.29 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +80.09% -34.02% +8.91%

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 5 June 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 5 June 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 5 June 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 +19 1,198 £575 - 1,662
London +34 805 £575 +1.77% 967
UK excluding London +6 448 £550 -4.35% 828
Work from Home +24 419 £575 +4.55% 928
North of England 0 125 £554 +0.68% 226
Scotland +51 99 £518 +10.81% 41
South East -37 88 £630 +9.57% 232
North West -3 66 £588 +6.82% 147
Midlands -16 60 £550 +12.82% 82
Yorkshire -12 45 £550 - 50
East of England -18 44 £550 -13.73% 98
West Midlands -28 43 £550 +10.00% 43
South West -29 36 £500 -21.88% 118
North East -15 17 £550 +46.67% 30
East Midlands -16 15 £650 +52.94% 38
Wales -18 15 £579 +0.70% 23

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
1 111 (7.69%) Apache Spark
2 67 (4.64%) Apache Airflow
3 53 (3.67%) Apache
4 34 (2.36%) Jupyter
5 19 (1.32%) Confluence
6 9 (0.62%) Appian
7 8 (0.55%) 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
10 2 (0.14%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.069%) Apache Pulsar
11 1 (0.069%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.069%) Apache Synapse
11 1 (0.069%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.069%) NetWeaver
11 1 (0.069%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 26 (1.80%) Chatbot
2 12 (0.83%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 9 (0.62%) 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 (0.76%) SAP IBP
2 6 (0.42%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
3 2 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.069%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.069%) OpenText VIM for SAP
4 1 (0.069%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.069%) SAP APO
4 1 (0.069%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 531 (36.80%) Azure
2 491 (34.03%) AWS
3 250 (17.33%) GCP
4 124 (8.59%) Power Platform
5 90 (6.24%) GitHub
6 87 (6.03%) Serverless
7 85 (5.89%) Azure AI
8 76 (5.27%) Amazon SageMaker
9 73 (5.06%) Amazon S3
10 72 (4.99%) Azure Machine Learning
11 65 (4.50%) Snowflake
12 64 (4.44%) Azure DevOps
13 58 (4.02%) AWS Lambda
14 53 (3.67%) Vertex AI
15 52 (3.60%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 50 (3.47%) GitHub Actions
17 47 (3.26%) Azure Data Factory
18 39 (2.70%) Amazon Bedrock
19 32 (2.22%) Azure AKS
19 32 (2.22%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 12 (0.83%) Firewall
1 12 (0.83%) Network Security
2 10 (0.69%) DNS
3 9 (0.62%) HTTP
4 7 (0.49%) SMTP
5 6 (0.42%) Internet
6 5 (0.35%) FTP
6 5 (0.35%) SSL
7 4 (0.28%) DHCP
7 4 (0.28%) NAS
7 4 (0.28%) SAN
8 3 (0.21%) VPN
9 2 (0.14%) 4G
9 2 (0.14%) 5G
9 2 (0.14%) Ethernet
9 2 (0.14%) InfiniBand
9 2 (0.14%) MQTT
9 2 (0.14%) PCoIP
9 2 (0.14%) Radio Access Network
9 2 (0.14%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 97 (6.72%) Power BI
2 92 (6.38%) Data Lake
3 76 (5.27%) Big Data
4 66 (4.57%) Metadata
5 64 (4.44%) BigQuery
6 51 (3.53%) Data Warehouse
7 49 (3.40%) NoSQL
8 39 (2.70%) Tableau
9 35 (2.43%) Hadoop
10 31 (2.15%) Delta Lake
10 31 (2.15%) PostgreSQL
10 31 (2.15%) SQL Server
11 28 (1.94%) Pinecone
12 27 (1.87%) Relational Database
13 26 (1.80%) Amazon Athena
14 21 (1.46%) MongoDB
15 20 (1.39%) Amazon Redshift
15 20 (1.39%) Mixpanel
15 20 (1.39%) Weaviate
16 14 (0.97%) Redis
Development Applications
1 88 (6.10%) Git
2 80 (5.54%) MLflow
3 41 (2.84%) JIRA
4 32 (2.22%) GitLab
5 21 (1.46%) Jenkins
6 9 (0.62%) 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
1 311 (21.55%) Social Skills
2 285 (19.75%) Finance
3 181 (12.54%) Analytical Skills
4 143 (9.91%) Public Sector
5 89 (6.17%) Banking
6 34 (2.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 34 (2.36%) Marketing
7 28 (1.94%) Pharmaceutical
8 27 (1.87%) Legal
9 25 (1.73%) Documentation Skills
10 23 (1.59%) Front Office
11 22 (1.52%) Aviation
11 22 (1.52%) Retail
12 21 (1.46%) Influencing Skills
13 20 (1.39%) Investment Banking
14 18 (1.25%) Telecoms
15 13 (0.90%) Law
16 12 (0.83%) Aerospace
16 12 (0.83%) Financial Institution
16 12 (0.83%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 210 (14.55%) Data Scientist
2 201 (13.93%) Senior
3 186 (12.89%) Architect
4 145 (10.05%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 133 (9.22%) Data Engineer
6 125 (8.66%) Lead
7 96 (6.65%) Developer
8 79 (5.47%) Analyst
9 69 (4.78%) Python Engineer
10 64 (4.44%) Machine Learning Engineer
11 62 (4.30%) Software Engineer
12 58 (4.02%) Solutions Architect
13 56 (3.88%) Data Architect
14 51 (3.53%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
15 41 (2.84%) Senior Data Scientist
16 39 (2.70%) Consultant
17 34 (2.36%) Python Developer
18 30 (2.08%) Business Analyst
18 30 (2.08%) Senior Data Engineer
19 29 (2.01%) Artificial Intelligence Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 177 (12.27%) PyTorch
2 127 (8.80%) TensorFlow
3 107 (7.42%) scikit-learn
4 93 (6.44%) Pandas
5 82 (5.68%) Kafka
6 71 (4.92%) LangChain
7 67 (4.64%) NumPy
7 67 (4.64%) PySpark
8 64 (4.44%) React
9 55 (3.81%) REST
10 52 (3.60%) .NET
11 44 (3.05%) Hugging Face
12 34 (2.36%) LangGraph
13 33 (2.29%) Model Context Protocol
14 31 (2.15%) AngularJS
14 31 (2.15%) Node.js
15 30 (2.08%) FastAPI
16 28 (1.94%) RESTful
17 19 (1.32%) Faiss
17 19 (1.32%) LlamaIndex
Miscellaneous
1 170 (11.78%) Cloud Native
2 141 (9.77%) AI Agents
3 117 (8.11%) Algorithms
4 55 (3.81%) Product Ownership
5 41 (2.84%) Onboarding
6 39 (2.70%) Distributed Systems
7 28 (1.94%) Data Protection Act
8 20 (1.39%) Fixed Income
9 19 (1.32%) Data Structures
10 18 (1.25%) Enterprise Software
10 18 (1.25%) Life Science
11 17 (1.18%) Management Information System
12 16 (1.11%) Legacy Systems
13 15 (1.04%) Analytical Mindset
14 13 (0.90%) Hybrid Cloud
14 13 (0.90%) Low-Code
15 12 (0.83%) Public Cloud
16 11 (0.76%) Augmented Reality
16 11 (0.76%) Cyber Threat
16 11 (0.76%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 30 (2.08%) Linux
2 16 (1.11%) Windows
3 11 (0.76%) Unix
4 6 (0.42%) Apple iOS
4 6 (0.42%) VMS
5 5 (0.35%) Android
6 3 (0.21%) Windows Server
7 2 (0.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.069%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,151 (79.76%) AI
2 538 (37.28%) Data Science
3 447 (30.98%) CI/CD
4 423 (29.31%) LLM
5 397 (27.51%) Analytics
6 324 (22.45%) Data Pipeline
7 320 (22.18%) Generative AI
8 299 (20.72%) DevOps
9 290 (20.10%) MLOps
10 265 (18.36%) Data Engineering
11 263 (18.23%) Agile
12 214 (14.83%) Use Case
13 192 (13.31%) Problem-Solving
14 189 (13.10%) Software Engineering
15 184 (12.75%) Decision-Making
16 178 (12.34%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
17 176 (12.20%) Data Governance
17 176 (12.20%) ETL
18 152 (10.53%) Containerisation
19 150 (10.40%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 824 (57.10%) Python
2 369 (25.57%) SQL
3 105 (7.28%) Java
4 71 (4.92%) C#
5 61 (4.23%) R
6 47 (3.26%) TypeScript
7 43 (2.98%) JavaScript
8 26 (1.80%) C++
9 18 (1.25%) Bash
10 17 (1.18%) PowerShell
11 13 (0.90%) Bicep
12 11 (0.76%) Scala
13 10 (0.69%) Kotlin
14 8 (0.55%) 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
1 246 (17.05%) Security Cleared
2 170 (11.78%) SC Cleared
3 113 (7.83%) Degree
4 49 (3.40%) Master's Degree
5 42 (2.91%) DV Cleared
6 41 (2.84%) BPSS Clearance
7 37 (2.56%) Computer Science Degree
8 33 (2.29%) PhD
9 30 (2.08%) AWS Certification
10 19 (1.32%) Azure Certification
10 19 (1.32%) CISSP
11 15 (1.04%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 15 (1.04%) CISM
12 6 (0.42%) DBS Check
12 6 (0.42%) ISTQB
13 5 (0.35%) CEH
13 5 (0.35%) CompTIA Security+
13 5 (0.35%) GIAC
13 5 (0.35%) Microsoft Certification
13 5 (0.35%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 162 (11.23%) Data Quality
2 56 (3.88%) GDPR
3 51 (3.53%) QA
4 31 (2.15%) NIST
5 18 (1.25%) Accessibility
6 17 (1.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 13 (0.90%) EU AI Act
8 11 (0.76%) Actionable Recommendations
9 10 (0.69%) HIPAA
10 8 (0.55%) 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%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 192 (13.31%) Docker
2 12 (0.83%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 11 (0.76%) Active Directory
4 4 (0.28%) Firmware
4 4 (0.28%) Microsoft App-V
4 4 (0.28%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.14%) BitLocker
6 2 (0.14%) HDFS
6 2 (0.14%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.14%) Terminal Services
6 2 (0.14%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.14%) VMware Workstation
7 1 (0.069%) Ceph
7 1 (0.069%) Embedded Firmware
7 1 (0.069%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 229 (15.87%) Kubernetes
2 138 (9.56%) Terraform
3 21 (1.46%) Kubeflow
4 20 (1.39%) Grafana
5 14 (0.97%) Ansible
5 14 (0.97%) Prometheus
6 9 (0.62%) Podman
7 6 (0.42%) Istio
8 3 (0.21%) NetBackup
8 3 (0.21%) Rancher
9 2 (0.14%) Argo
9 2 (0.14%) Docker Swarm
9 2 (0.14%) Kibana
9 2 (0.14%) Nagios
9 2 (0.14%) Packer
9 2 (0.14%) Puppet
9 2 (0.14%) SCCM
9 2 (0.14%) vCenter Server
9 2 (0.14%) vMotion
10 1 (0.069%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 191 (13.24%) Databricks
2 163 (11.30%) Microsoft
3 97 (6.72%) OpenAI
4 86 (5.96%) Google
5 56 (3.88%) Foundry
6 38 (2.63%) SAP
7 33 (2.29%) Oracle
8 21 (1.46%) ServiceNow
9 16 (1.11%) Informatica
10 15 (1.04%) IBM
10 15 (1.04%) UiPath
11 12 (0.83%) Dynatrace
12 11 (0.76%) Automation Anywhere
13 7 (0.49%) Amplitude
13 7 (0.49%) Sybase
14 6 (0.42%) NVIDIA
14 6 (0.42%) Talend
14 6 (0.42%) Workday
15 5 (0.35%) Ariba
15 5 (0.35%) Splunk