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

6 months to
28 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 78 101 182
Rank change year-on-year +23 +81 +23
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,170 826 611
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.17% 2.46% 1.40%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.60% 2.79% 1.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 770 559 442
10th Percentile £402 £375 £400
25th Percentile £463 £466 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £559 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.88% +4.35% -8.00%
75th Percentile £688 £731 £700
90th Percentile £776 £825 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £508 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.98% -2.38% -12.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 19 28
10th Percentile £31.47 £13.06 £42.50
25th Percentile £42.79 £19.38 -
Median hourly rate £55.00 £26.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +107.55% -42.62% +8.66%
75th Percentile £79.00 £49.97 £46.51
90th Percentile £97.90 £56.00 £57.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £37.34 £46.18
% change year-on-year +74.08% -19.14% -7.64%

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 32,524 29,621 38,311
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.04% 88.28% 88.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,487 18,059 25,534
10th Percentile £300 £308 £306
25th Percentile £406 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £528
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.57% -4.00%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,055 961 1,540
10th Percentile £14.69 £15.62 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.30 £18.93
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £43.42
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -25.14% +24.04%
75th Percentile £51.65 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.75 £74.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.58 £30.78 £45.00
% change year-on-year -23.41% -31.60% +50.00%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 +13 984 £575 -4.96% 4,123
London +16 647 £625 -3.85% 1,226
UK excluding London +45 370 £508 -0.98% 3,186
Work from Home +28 358 £550 +4.76% 1,983
North of England -16 84 £475 -2.56% 708
South East +22 79 £513 -3.39% 896
East of England +14 71 £520 -13.33% 444
Scotland +50 61 £503 +25.63% 146
North West -7 49 £475 -0.31% 375
Midlands -15 42 £514 +20.94% 531
Yorkshire -24 34 £514 -6.55% 295
West Midlands -4 31 £514 +14.22% 291
South West -9 29 £550 -17.60% 386
East Midlands -18 11 £426 +19.66% 208
Wales +1 9 £700 +201.08% 73
North East -19 2 £575 +32.95% 39
Northern Ireland - 2 £675 - 39

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 89 (7.61%) Apache Spark
2 64 (5.47%) Apache Airflow
3 37 (3.16%) Apache
4 23 (1.97%) Jupyter
5 9 (0.77%) Confluence
6 8 (0.68%) Apache Pig
7 7 (0.60%) Appian
7 7 (0.60%) SAS
8 6 (0.51%) GeoServer
8 6 (0.51%) Smallworld
9 4 (0.34%) IIS
10 3 (0.26%) CMS
11 2 (0.17%) SharePoint
12 1 (0.085%) Apache Superset
12 1 (0.085%) Microsoft Exchange
12 1 (0.085%) nginx
12 1 (0.085%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 43 (3.68%) Chatbot
2 15 (1.28%) Microsoft Excel
3 10 (0.85%) Microsoft Office
4 9 (0.77%) Microsoft Project
5 7 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 5 (0.43%) Simulink
7 1 (0.085%) Adobe XD
7 1 (0.085%) GNU Octave
7 1 (0.085%) LaTeX
7 1 (0.085%) Sketch
7 1 (0.085%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.085%) Trello
Business Applications
1 9 (0.77%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.17%) Distributed Ledger
3 2 (0.17%) SAP ERP
3 2 (0.17%) Teamcenter
4 1 (0.085%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.085%) SAP GRC
4 1 (0.085%) Shopify
4 1 (0.085%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 496 (42.39%) Azure
2 397 (33.93%) AWS
3 218 (18.63%) GCP
4 109 (9.32%) Power Platform
5 106 (9.06%) GitHub
6 102 (8.72%) Serverless
7 93 (7.95%) Azure Machine Learning
8 73 (6.24%) Azure DevOps
9 66 (5.64%) Amazon S3
9 66 (5.64%) Snowflake
10 62 (5.30%) Amazon SageMaker
11 58 (4.96%) Azure AI
11 58 (4.96%) Vertex AI
12 53 (4.53%) AWS Lambda
12 53 (4.53%) GitHub Actions
13 51 (4.36%) Azure AKS
14 50 (4.27%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 45 (3.85%) Azure Data Factory
16 39 (3.33%) Amazon Bedrock
17 34 (2.91%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 20 (1.71%) Network Security
2 19 (1.62%) HTTP
3 18 (1.54%) DNS
4 14 (1.20%) SSL
5 13 (1.11%) FTP
5 13 (1.11%) SMTP
6 6 (0.51%) Ethernet
6 6 (0.51%) Firewall
6 6 (0.51%) Internet
7 4 (0.34%) InfiniBand
7 4 (0.34%) VPN
8 2 (0.17%) 2G
8 2 (0.17%) 5G
8 2 (0.17%) Cisco Nexus
8 2 (0.17%) Ethernet VPN
8 2 (0.17%) Hyperconnected
8 2 (0.17%) LTE
8 2 (0.17%) Mobile Backhaul
8 2 (0.17%) Modbus
8 2 (0.17%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 96 (8.21%) Power BI
2 75 (6.41%) Data Warehouse
3 74 (6.32%) Data Lake
4 62 (5.30%) Big Data
5 52 (4.44%) PostgreSQL
6 50 (4.27%) NoSQL
7 47 (4.02%) BigQuery
8 34 (2.91%) Tableau
9 33 (2.82%) Metadata
10 27 (2.31%) Hadoop
10 27 (2.31%) Pinecone
11 22 (1.88%) Amazon Athena
12 19 (1.62%) Delta Lake
12 19 (1.62%) Elasticsearch
13 18 (1.54%) Amazon Redshift
13 18 (1.54%) Data Mining
13 18 (1.54%) MongoDB
13 18 (1.54%) Relational Database
14 15 (1.28%) Weaviate
15 13 (1.11%) Redis
Development Applications
1 92 (7.86%) Git
2 73 (6.24%) MLflow
3 52 (4.44%) Jenkins
4 35 (2.99%) GitLab
5 27 (2.31%) JIRA
6 18 (1.54%) JMeter
6 18 (1.54%) Selenium
7 15 (1.28%) SonarQube
8 10 (0.85%) Visual Studio
9 8 (0.68%) Cypress.io
10 6 (0.51%) JUnit
10 6 (0.51%) Postman
10 6 (0.51%) PyCharm
11 5 (0.43%) Gradle
11 5 (0.43%) Mockito
11 5 (0.43%) MSTest
11 5 (0.43%) Snyk
12 4 (0.34%) Android Studio
12 4 (0.34%) Cucumber
12 4 (0.34%) Oracle APEX
General
1 336 (28.72%) Social Skills
2 233 (19.91%) Finance
3 137 (11.71%) Analytical Skills
4 110 (9.40%) Public Sector
5 76 (6.50%) Banking
6 43 (3.68%) Pharmaceutical
7 42 (3.59%) Marketing
8 36 (3.08%) Retail
9 29 (2.48%) Investment Banking
10 28 (2.39%) Legal
11 27 (2.31%) Manufacturing
12 23 (1.97%) Front Office
12 23 (1.97%) Telecoms
13 19 (1.62%) Documentation Skills
14 18 (1.54%) Influencing Skills
15 17 (1.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 15 (1.28%) Presentation Skills
17 14 (1.20%) Electronics
18 11 (0.94%) Aerospace
19 10 (0.85%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 188 (16.07%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
2 168 (14.36%) Data Scientist
3 147 (12.56%) Architect
4 125 (10.68%) Senior
5 124 (10.60%) Data Engineer
6 106 (9.06%) Developer
7 83 (7.09%) Lead
8 62 (5.30%) Machine Learning Engineer
9 58 (4.96%) Python Engineer
10 56 (4.79%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
11 53 (4.53%) Analyst
12 48 (4.10%) Software Engineer
13 38 (3.25%) Gen AI Engineer
14 36 (3.08%) Data Architect
15 31 (2.65%) Solutions Architect
16 28 (2.39%) Azure Engineer
17 26 (2.22%) Consultant
17 26 (2.22%) Product Manager
18 25 (2.14%) Senior Data Scientist
19 23 (1.97%) Full-Stack Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 203 (17.35%) PyTorch
2 178 (15.21%) TensorFlow
3 122 (10.43%) scikit-learn
4 108 (9.23%) Pandas
5 90 (7.69%) LangChain
6 82 (7.01%) FastAPI
7 74 (6.32%) NumPy
8 64 (5.47%) Hugging Face
9 63 (5.38%) React
10 58 (4.96%) Kafka
11 56 (4.79%) LangGraph
12 53 (4.53%) PySpark
13 50 (4.27%) REST
13 50 (4.27%) RESTful
14 42 (3.59%) Node.js
15 41 (3.50%) .NET
16 33 (2.82%) pytest
17 31 (2.65%) Flask
18 25 (2.14%) Faiss
19 24 (2.05%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 173 (14.79%) Algorithms
2 152 (12.99%) Cloud Native
3 98 (8.38%) AI Agents
4 41 (3.50%) Product Ownership
5 39 (3.33%) Onboarding
6 38 (3.25%) Distributed Systems
7 33 (2.82%) Data Protection Act
8 30 (2.56%) Analytical Mindset
9 28 (2.39%) Legacy Systems
10 26 (2.22%) Distributed Computing
11 25 (2.14%) Genomics
12 23 (1.97%) Life Science
13 22 (1.88%) Data Structures
14 21 (1.79%) Hybrid Cloud
14 21 (1.79%) Management Information System
15 17 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
16 14 (1.20%) Cyber Threat
17 13 (1.11%) CSOC
17 13 (1.11%) Cyberattack
17 13 (1.11%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 28 (2.39%) Linux
2 11 (0.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 10 (0.85%) VMS
4 9 (0.77%) Ubuntu
5 8 (0.68%) Unix
5 8 (0.68%) Windows
6 6 (0.51%) Android
6 6 (0.51%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.17%) Robot Operating System
8 1 (0.085%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 872 (74.53%) AI
2 466 (39.83%) Data Science
3 336 (28.72%) LLM
4 314 (26.84%) CI/CD
5 304 (25.98%) Analytics
6 283 (24.19%) Agile
7 278 (23.76%) DevOps
8 231 (19.74%) Data Pipeline
9 229 (19.57%) Generative AI
10 210 (17.95%) MLOps
11 203 (17.35%) Problem-Solving
12 201 (17.18%) Data Engineering
13 173 (14.79%) Natural Language Processing
14 168 (14.36%) Software Engineering
15 159 (13.59%) Containerisation
16 146 (12.48%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
17 136 (11.62%) Use Case
18 134 (11.45%) Data Modelling
19 126 (10.77%) Infrastructure as Code
19 126 (10.77%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 753 (64.36%) Python
2 284 (24.27%) SQL
3 72 (6.15%) R
4 70 (5.98%) Java
5 57 (4.87%) JavaScript
6 54 (4.62%) TypeScript
7 53 (4.53%) C#
8 40 (3.42%) PowerShell
9 37 (3.16%) C++
10 28 (2.39%) Scala
11 20 (1.71%) Bash
11 20 (1.71%) Bicep
12 14 (1.20%) MATLAB
13 12 (1.03%) Go
14 9 (0.77%) C
15 5 (0.43%) SystemVerilog
15 5 (0.43%) Tcl
16 3 (0.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 3 (0.26%) PL/SQL
16 3 (0.26%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 166 (14.19%) Degree
1 166 (14.19%) Security Cleared
2 124 (10.60%) SC Cleared
3 65 (5.56%) Master's Degree
4 56 (4.79%) MCP
5 46 (3.93%) Computer Science Degree
6 36 (3.08%) PhD
7 34 (2.91%) DV Cleared
8 22 (1.88%) Azure Certification
9 12 (1.03%) BPSS Clearance
10 11 (0.94%) AWS Certification
11 8 (0.68%) CISSP
12 6 (0.51%) ISTQB
13 5 (0.43%) HNC
13 5 (0.43%) HND
13 5 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
13 5 (0.43%) TOGAF Certification
14 4 (0.34%) Cisco Certification
14 4 (0.34%) CISM
14 4 (0.34%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 78 (6.67%) Data Quality
2 60 (5.13%) GDPR
3 45 (3.85%) QA
4 41 (3.50%) NIST
5 33 (2.82%) EU AI Act
6 24 (2.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 18 (1.54%) Accessibility
8 7 (0.60%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 5 (0.43%) DO-254
9 5 (0.43%) HIPAA
9 5 (0.43%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 5 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 5 (0.43%) SOC 2
10 4 (0.34%) Disclosure Scotland
10 4 (0.34%) NCSC
10 4 (0.34%) PCI DSS
11 3 (0.26%) GRC
12 2 (0.17%) GxP
12 2 (0.17%) JSP 440
12 2 (0.17%) NIST 800
System Software
1 200 (17.09%) Docker
2 12 (1.03%) Active Directory
3 10 (0.85%) Virtual Machines
4 7 (0.60%) Firmware
5 4 (0.34%) Lustre
6 3 (0.26%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 2 (0.17%) Ceph
7 2 (0.17%) GPFS
7 2 (0.17%) HDFS
7 2 (0.17%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.17%) KVM
7 2 (0.17%) VMware Infrastructure
7 2 (0.17%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 193 (16.50%) Kubernetes
2 130 (11.11%) Terraform
3 30 (2.56%) Grafana
4 29 (2.48%) Ansible
5 17 (1.45%) Prometheus
6 16 (1.37%) Kubeflow
7 12 (1.03%) Kibana
8 11 (0.94%) SCOM
9 9 (0.77%) logstash
10 8 (0.68%) Argo
11 7 (0.60%) ITRS Geneos
12 4 (0.34%) Cilium
12 4 (0.34%) Progress Chef
12 4 (0.34%) Rsyslog
13 3 (0.26%) Kustomize
13 3 (0.26%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
14 2 (0.17%) Knative
14 2 (0.17%) Podman
14 2 (0.17%) Single Sign-On
15 1 (0.085%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 171 (14.62%) Databricks
2 166 (14.19%) Microsoft
3 111 (9.49%) Google
4 80 (6.84%) OpenAI
5 46 (3.93%) Foundry
6 40 (3.42%) SAP
7 17 (1.45%) Splunk
8 16 (1.37%) ServiceNow
9 15 (1.28%) NVIDIA
9 15 (1.28%) Salesforce
10 11 (0.94%) Oracle
11 9 (0.77%) Greenplum
12 8 (0.68%) TIBCO
13 7 (0.60%) Cisco
13 7 (0.60%) Pega
13 7 (0.60%) Solace
14 6 (0.51%) ESRI
14 6 (0.51%) Intel
14 6 (0.51%) Intergraph
14 6 (0.51%) UiPath