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 24 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 76 101 158
Rank change year-on-year +25 +57 +74
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,379 761 668
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.15% 2.61% 1.51%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.66% 2.89% 1.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 848 501 489
10th Percentile £402 £375 £413
25th Percentile £484 £454 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £577 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year +0.35% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £700 £738 £719
90th Percentile £788 £874 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £525 £525
% change year-on-year +4.76% - -12.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 20 23
10th Percentile £41.85 £24.85 £41.13
25th Percentile £50.00 £40.38 £42.50
Median hourly rate £57.77 £61.25 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -5.69% +32.63% +31.94%
75th Percentile £79.60 £78.71 £66.25
90th Percentile £95.00 £81.71 £70.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £77.50 £53.09
% change year-on-year -17.42% +45.98% +51.69%

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 37,633 26,370 38,295
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.88% 90.52% 86.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,862 17,096 24,871
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -1.28% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,214 936 2,338
10th Percentile £14.96 £15.20 £12.85
25th Percentile £18.50 £20.75 £16.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.47%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.50 £57.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.35 £71.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.61 £31.76 £31.25
% change year-on-year -6.77% +1.63% -13.19%

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 24 March 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 24 March 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 24 March 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 +8 1,159 £575 -4.17% 1,145
London +22 773 £600 -3.61% 592
Work from Home +23 434 £600 +9.59% 456
UK excluding London +27 426 £550 +4.76% 745
North of England -22 100 £534 +6.80% 170
South East -9 91 £600 +9.09% 268
Scotland +49 70 £450 +2.86% 39
East of England +2 66 £550 -8.33% 63
North West -2 63 £534 +5.22% 93
Midlands -16 63 £550 +29.41% 88
West Midlands -26 42 £550 +29.41% 37
South West -23 36 £550 -17.60% 93
Yorkshire -44 28 £516 -1.67% 51
Wales -3 20 £738 +31.11% 25
East Midlands -18 19 £600 +33.33% 51
North East -13 12 £575 +60.61% 27
Northern Ireland - 1 £650 - 12

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
1 125 (9.06%) Apache Spark
2 79 (5.73%) Apache Airflow
3 58 (4.21%) Apache
4 27 (1.96%) Jupyter
5 13 (0.94%) Confluence
6 10 (0.73%) SAS
7 9 (0.65%) Appian
8 7 (0.51%) Palantir Foundry
9 6 (0.44%) CMS
9 6 (0.44%) GeoServer
9 6 (0.44%) Smallworld
10 5 (0.36%) SharePoint
11 3 (0.22%) Headless CMS
12 2 (0.15%) Luigi
13 1 (0.073%) Apache Superset
13 1 (0.073%) Apache Synapse
13 1 (0.073%) ArcGIS
13 1 (0.073%) Microsoft Exchange
13 1 (0.073%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 33 (2.39%) Chatbot
2 16 (1.16%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (1.02%) Microsoft Office
4 12 (0.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 12 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.29%) Simulink
6 3 (0.22%) LaTeX
7 1 (0.073%) CPLEX
7 1 (0.073%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 5 (0.36%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.15%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.073%) OpenText VIM for SAP
3 1 (0.073%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.073%) SAP IBP
3 1 (0.073%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 612 (44.38%) Azure
2 490 (35.53%) AWS
3 260 (18.85%) GCP
4 145 (10.51%) Power Platform
5 118 (8.56%) GitHub
6 107 (7.76%) Azure Machine Learning
7 100 (7.25%) Azure AI
8 98 (7.11%) Serverless
9 84 (6.09%) Azure DevOps
10 76 (5.51%) Snowflake
11 72 (5.22%) Amazon SageMaker
12 64 (4.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 61 (4.42%) Azure Data Factory
14 60 (4.35%) Amazon S3
14 60 (4.35%) GitHub Actions
14 60 (4.35%) Vertex AI
15 46 (3.34%) AWS CloudFormation
16 44 (3.19%) AWS Lambda
17 36 (2.61%) Amazon Bedrock
18 34 (2.47%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 16 (1.16%) Network Security
2 11 (0.80%) Firewall
3 7 (0.51%) DNS
3 7 (0.51%) HTTP
4 6 (0.44%) Internet
5 5 (0.36%) FTP
5 5 (0.36%) SMTP
5 5 (0.36%) SSL
6 4 (0.29%) 5G
6 4 (0.29%) Ethernet
6 4 (0.29%) InfiniBand
7 3 (0.22%) Cisco IPT
7 3 (0.22%) LTE
7 3 (0.22%) VPN
8 2 (0.15%) 2G
8 2 (0.15%) 4G
8 2 (0.15%) Bluetooth
8 2 (0.15%) Hyperconnected
8 2 (0.15%) Modbus
8 2 (0.15%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 111 (8.05%) Power BI
2 93 (6.74%) Data Lake
3 79 (5.73%) Data Warehouse
4 68 (4.93%) Big Data
5 59 (4.28%) NoSQL
6 52 (3.77%) Metadata
7 49 (3.55%) BigQuery
8 39 (2.83%) Tableau
9 38 (2.76%) PostgreSQL
10 36 (2.61%) Pinecone
11 35 (2.54%) Hadoop
12 33 (2.39%) Delta Lake
13 29 (2.10%) Relational Database
13 29 (2.10%) SQL Server
13 29 (2.10%) Weaviate
14 25 (1.81%) Mixpanel
15 24 (1.74%) Amazon Athena
16 19 (1.38%) MySQL
17 18 (1.31%) Amazon Redshift
17 18 (1.31%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 111 (8.05%) Git
2 99 (7.18%) MLflow
3 39 (2.83%) Jenkins
4 33 (2.39%) JIRA
5 27 (1.96%) GitLab
6 13 (0.94%) Visual Studio
7 10 (0.73%) PyCharm
8 9 (0.65%) JMeter
8 9 (0.65%) Selenium
9 7 (0.51%) Gradle
10 6 (0.44%) MSTest
10 6 (0.44%) SonarQube
11 5 (0.36%) Maven
12 4 (0.29%) Android Studio
12 4 (0.29%) Bitbucket
12 4 (0.29%) Cypress.io
12 4 (0.29%) Oracle APEX
12 4 (0.29%) RStudio
13 3 (0.22%) Spinnaker
13 3 (0.22%) Vite
General
1 353 (25.60%) Social Skills
2 284 (20.59%) Finance
3 168 (12.18%) Analytical Skills
4 148 (10.73%) Public Sector
5 90 (6.53%) Banking
6 36 (2.61%) Marketing
7 34 (2.47%) Pharmaceutical
8 32 (2.32%) Legal
9 27 (1.96%) Influencing Skills
9 27 (1.96%) Retail
10 26 (1.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 26 (1.89%) Investment Banking
11 24 (1.74%) Front Office
12 20 (1.45%) Presentation Skills
13 19 (1.38%) Documentation Skills
13 19 (1.38%) Manufacturing
14 16 (1.16%) Telecoms
15 13 (0.94%) Electronics
16 12 (0.87%) Financial Institution
16 12 (0.87%) Law
Job Titles
1 198 (14.36%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
2 191 (13.85%) Architect
2 191 (13.85%) Data Scientist
3 176 (12.76%) Senior
4 134 (9.72%) Data Engineer
5 122 (8.85%) Developer
6 116 (8.41%) Lead
7 66 (4.79%) Analyst
8 64 (4.64%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
9 63 (4.57%) Machine Learning Engineer
10 55 (3.99%) Python Engineer
11 54 (3.92%) Data Architect
12 50 (3.63%) Software Engineer
13 42 (3.05%) Senior Data Scientist
13 42 (3.05%) Solutions Architect
14 40 (2.90%) Gen AI Engineer
15 37 (2.68%) Azure Engineer
16 35 (2.54%) Consultant
17 32 (2.32%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
18 25 (1.81%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 227 (16.46%) PyTorch
2 192 (13.92%) TensorFlow
3 144 (10.44%) scikit-learn
4 108 (7.83%) Pandas
5 83 (6.02%) LangChain
6 80 (5.80%) React
7 79 (5.73%) NumPy
8 67 (4.86%) Kafka
9 59 (4.28%) PySpark
10 57 (4.13%) .NET
11 54 (3.92%) LangGraph
11 54 (3.92%) Model Context Protocol
12 53 (3.84%) Node.js
13 52 (3.77%) REST
14 50 (3.63%) FastAPI
15 48 (3.48%) Hugging Face
16 45 (3.26%) AngularJS
17 39 (2.83%) RESTful
18 30 (2.18%) Faiss
19 27 (1.96%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 191 (13.85%) Cloud Native
2 168 (12.18%) Algorithms
3 129 (9.35%) AI Agents
4 46 (3.34%) Product Ownership
5 44 (3.19%) Onboarding
6 39 (2.83%) Distributed Systems
7 29 (2.10%) Legacy Systems
8 28 (2.03%) Data Protection Act
9 24 (1.74%) Hybrid Cloud
10 22 (1.60%) Distributed Computing
11 20 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
12 19 (1.38%) Fixed Income
13 18 (1.31%) Analytical Mindset
14 17 (1.23%) Life Science
14 17 (1.23%) Management Information System
15 16 (1.16%) Data Structures
16 12 (0.87%) Credit Risk
16 12 (0.87%) Derivative
16 12 (0.87%) IoT
16 12 (0.87%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 35 (2.54%) Linux
2 12 (0.87%) Windows
3 11 (0.80%) VMS
4 8 (0.58%) Android
4 8 (0.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 8 (0.58%) Ubuntu
5 7 (0.51%) Apple iOS
6 3 (0.22%) Unix
7 1 (0.073%) CentOS
7 1 (0.073%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,076 (78.03%) AI
2 515 (37.35%) Data Science
3 415 (30.09%) CI/CD
4 395 (28.64%) Analytics
5 374 (27.12%) LLM
6 309 (22.41%) DevOps
7 301 (21.83%) Data Pipeline
8 291 (21.10%) Generative AI
9 272 (19.72%) MLOps
10 270 (19.58%) Agile
11 266 (19.29%) Data Engineering
12 224 (16.24%) Problem-Solving
13 197 (14.29%) Natural Language Processing
14 186 (13.49%) Use Case
15 175 (12.69%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
16 172 (12.47%) Software Engineering
17 170 (12.33%) Containerisation
18 166 (12.04%) Data Governance
19 163 (11.82%) Data Modelling
20 154 (11.17%) Prompt Engineering
Programming Languages
1 845 (61.28%) Python
2 357 (25.89%) SQL
3 99 (7.18%) Java
4 83 (6.02%) C#
5 71 (5.15%) R
6 60 (4.35%) JavaScript
7 55 (3.99%) TypeScript
8 28 (2.03%) PowerShell
9 24 (1.74%) C++
10 22 (1.60%) Bash
11 18 (1.31%) Scala
12 17 (1.23%) Bicep
13 11 (0.80%) Go
14 10 (0.73%) MATLAB
14 10 (0.73%) Rust
15 7 (0.51%) Kotlin
15 7 (0.51%) SPARQL
16 4 (0.29%) C
16 4 (0.29%) SystemVerilog
16 4 (0.29%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 227 (16.46%) Security Cleared
2 185 (13.42%) Degree
3 152 (11.02%) SC Cleared
4 85 (6.16%) Master's Degree
5 48 (3.48%) PhD
6 47 (3.41%) Computer Science Degree
7 38 (2.76%) DV Cleared
8 32 (2.32%) BPSS Clearance
9 23 (1.67%) AWS Certification
10 19 (1.38%) Azure Certification
11 18 (1.31%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 13 (0.94%) CISSP
13 11 (0.80%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 9 (0.65%) CISM
15 8 (0.58%) ISTQB
16 6 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
17 5 (0.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
17 5 (0.36%) TOGAF Certification
18 4 (0.29%) PMI Certification
18 4 (0.29%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 138 (10.01%) Data Quality
2 64 (4.64%) GDPR
3 50 (3.63%) QA
4 30 (2.18%) NIST
5 20 (1.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 19 (1.38%) EU AI Act
7 17 (1.23%) Accessibility
8 8 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
9 7 (0.51%) HIPAA
9 7 (0.51%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 6 (0.44%) GRC
10 6 (0.44%) NCSC
10 6 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 4 (0.29%) DO-254
11 4 (0.29%) PCI DSS
12 3 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 3 (0.22%) SOC 2
12 3 (0.22%) WCAG
13 2 (0.15%) GxP
13 2 (0.15%) JSP 440
System Software
1 218 (15.81%) Docker
2 12 (0.87%) Active Directory
2 12 (0.87%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 7 (0.51%) Firmware
4 3 (0.22%) Lustre
4 3 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.15%) Ceph
5 2 (0.15%) HDFS
6 1 (0.073%) Embedded Firmware
6 1 (0.073%) GPFS
Systems Management
1 213 (15.45%) Kubernetes
2 141 (10.22%) Terraform
3 19 (1.38%) Grafana
3 19 (1.38%) Kubeflow
4 16 (1.16%) Ansible
5 13 (0.94%) Prometheus
6 10 (0.73%) Podman
7 7 (0.51%) SCOM
8 4 (0.29%) Argo
9 3 (0.22%) Kibana
9 3 (0.22%) Rancher
10 2 (0.15%) Istio
10 2 (0.15%) Knative
10 2 (0.15%) logstash
10 2 (0.15%) Single Sign-On
11 1 (0.073%) Cilium
11 1 (0.073%) Docker Swarm
11 1 (0.073%) HP Fortify
11 1 (0.073%) Opsgenie
11 1 (0.073%) SELinux
Vendors
1 214 (15.52%) Databricks
2 188 (13.63%) Microsoft
3 121 (8.77%) Google
4 109 (7.90%) OpenAI
5 75 (5.44%) Foundry
6 32 (2.32%) SAP
7 28 (2.03%) Oracle
8 19 (1.38%) ServiceNow
9 15 (1.09%) Informatica
10 13 (0.94%) UiPath
11 11 (0.80%) Automation Anywhere
11 11 (0.80%) NVIDIA
12 10 (0.73%) IBM
13 8 (0.58%) Dynatrace
13 8 (0.58%) Salesforce
14 7 (0.51%) Amplitude
14 7 (0.51%) Greenplum
14 7 (0.51%) Palantir
14 7 (0.51%) Pega
15 6 (0.44%) Talend