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

6 months to
26 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 84 114 140
Rank change year-on-year +30 +26 +93
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,414 704 716
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.91% 2.46% 1.68%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.45% 2.70% 1.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 861 435 519
10th Percentile £413 £379 £413
25th Percentile £493 £456 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £557 £580
Median % change year-on-year +3.23% -3.97% -1.28%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £738
90th Percentile £775 £850 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -4.35% +4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 49 21 19
10th Percentile £48.11 £25.25 £41.25
25th Percentile £50.77 £45.00 £46.22
Median hourly rate £65.00 £61.50 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +5.69% +17.14% +50.00%
75th Percentile £83.75 £80.00 £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 40,998 26,034 36,602
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.45% 91.02% 85.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,676 16,714 23,582
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £498 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.74% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,430 1,064 2,485
10th Percentile £14.80 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.12 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.28 £27.45 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year +54.01% -23.75% -3.49%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.01 £74.63 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.35 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +76.32% -32.93% +7.14%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 +17 1,177 £574 -0.11% 1,551
London +31 790 £575 - 847
UK excluding London +7 433 £550 -4.35% 875
Work from Home +24 401 £596 +8.27% 628
North of England -1 119 £550 - 250
Scotland +53 93 £518 +10.81% 51
South East -34 84 £600 +4.35% 227
Midlands -23 62 £575 +17.95% 103
North West -8 60 £575 - 152
West Midlands -30 46 £550 +10.00% 49
Yorkshire -17 45 £519 - 59
East of England -25 45 £525 -17.65% 100
South West -28 37 £500 -21.88% 112
North East -8 17 £563 +60.71% 41
East Midlands -21 14 £675 +52.11% 53
Wales -15 12 £759 +31.96% 27
Northern Ireland - 1 £650 - 16

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
1 115 (8.13%) Apache Spark
2 68 (4.81%) Apache Airflow
3 55 (3.89%) Apache
4 33 (2.33%) Jupyter
5 16 (1.13%) Confluence
6 9 (0.64%) Appian
7 7 (0.50%) SharePoint
8 5 (0.35%) CMS
8 5 (0.35%) Headless CMS
9 4 (0.28%) SAS
10 3 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 2 (0.14%) Luigi
12 1 (0.071%) Apache Pulsar
12 1 (0.071%) Apache Superset
12 1 (0.071%) Apache Synapse
12 1 (0.071%) ArcGIS
12 1 (0.071%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 26 (1.84%) Chatbot
2 11 (0.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (0.78%) Microsoft Project
3 9 (0.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.50%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (0.21%) LaTeX
6 2 (0.14%) CPLEX
6 2 (0.14%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 11 (0.78%) SAP IBP
2 5 (0.35%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
3 2 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.071%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.071%) OpenText VIM for SAP
4 1 (0.071%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.071%) SAP APO
4 1 (0.071%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 534 (37.77%) Azure
2 481 (34.02%) AWS
3 241 (17.04%) GCP
4 128 (9.05%) Power Platform
5 94 (6.65%) GitHub
6 91 (6.44%) Serverless
7 88 (6.22%) Azure AI
8 84 (5.94%) Azure Machine Learning
9 74 (5.23%) Amazon SageMaker
10 71 (5.02%) Amazon S3
11 66 (4.67%) Snowflake
12 65 (4.60%) Azure DevOps
13 55 (3.89%) AWS Lambda
13 55 (3.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 53 (3.75%) GitHub Actions
15 52 (3.68%) Vertex AI
16 50 (3.54%) Azure Data Factory
17 37 (2.62%) AWS CloudFormation
18 35 (2.48%) Amazon Bedrock
19 30 (2.12%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 14 (0.99%) Network Security
2 10 (0.71%) Firewall
3 9 (0.64%) HTTP
4 8 (0.57%) DNS
5 5 (0.35%) FTP
5 5 (0.35%) SMTP
5 5 (0.35%) SSL
6 4 (0.28%) NAS
6 4 (0.28%) SAN
7 3 (0.21%) InfiniBand
8 2 (0.14%) 4G
8 2 (0.14%) 5G
8 2 (0.14%) DHCP
8 2 (0.14%) Ethernet
8 2 (0.14%) Internet
8 2 (0.14%) PCoIP
8 2 (0.14%) Radio Access Network
8 2 (0.14%) Remote Desktop
9 1 (0.071%) 3G
9 1 (0.071%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 98 (6.93%) Power BI
2 94 (6.65%) Data Lake
3 75 (5.30%) Big Data
4 63 (4.46%) BigQuery
4 63 (4.46%) Metadata
5 51 (3.61%) Data Warehouse
6 47 (3.32%) NoSQL
7 38 (2.69%) Tableau
8 36 (2.55%) Hadoop
9 33 (2.33%) Delta Lake
10 30 (2.12%) SQL Server
11 29 (2.05%) Pinecone
11 29 (2.05%) PostgreSQL
12 27 (1.91%) Relational Database
13 26 (1.84%) Amazon Athena
14 25 (1.77%) Mixpanel
15 22 (1.56%) Weaviate
16 21 (1.49%) MongoDB
17 17 (1.20%) Amazon Redshift
18 15 (1.06%) Redis
Development Applications
1 87 (6.15%) Git
2 86 (6.08%) MLflow
3 35 (2.48%) JIRA
4 25 (1.77%) GitLab
5 24 (1.70%) Jenkins
6 8 (0.57%) Visual Studio
7 7 (0.50%) Selenium
8 5 (0.35%) SonarQube
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%) Claude Code
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
1 303 (21.43%) Social Skills
2 275 (19.45%) Finance
3 169 (11.95%) Analytical Skills
4 140 (9.90%) Public Sector
5 83 (5.87%) Banking
6 31 (2.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 29 (2.05%) Marketing
8 26 (1.84%) Pharmaceutical
9 25 (1.77%) Documentation Skills
9 25 (1.77%) Legal
10 23 (1.63%) Influencing Skills
11 22 (1.56%) Aviation
11 22 (1.56%) Investment Banking
11 22 (1.56%) Retail
12 21 (1.49%) Front Office
13 18 (1.27%) Telecoms
14 13 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
15 12 (0.85%) Aerospace
15 12 (0.85%) Manufacturing
16 10 (0.71%) Law
Job Titles
1 210 (14.85%) Data Scientist
2 197 (13.93%) Senior
3 187 (13.22%) Architect
4 157 (11.10%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 131 (9.26%) Data Engineer
6 120 (8.49%) Lead
7 95 (6.72%) Developer
8 75 (5.30%) Analyst
9 69 (4.88%) Python Engineer
10 61 (4.31%) Machine Learning Engineer
10 61 (4.31%) Software Engineer
11 57 (4.03%) Solutions Architect
12 54 (3.82%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
12 54 (3.82%) Data Architect
13 42 (2.97%) Senior Data Scientist
14 38 (2.69%) Consultant
15 33 (2.33%) Python Developer
16 31 (2.19%) Business Analyst
16 31 (2.19%) Platform Engineer
17 28 (1.98%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 188 (13.30%) PyTorch
2 135 (9.55%) TensorFlow
3 113 (7.99%) scikit-learn
4 96 (6.79%) Pandas
5 82 (5.80%) Kafka
6 70 (4.95%) LangChain
7 68 (4.81%) NumPy
7 68 (4.81%) React
8 65 (4.60%) PySpark
9 55 (3.89%) REST
10 52 (3.68%) .NET
11 48 (3.39%) Hugging Face
12 35 (2.48%) Node.js
13 34 (2.40%) LangGraph
14 33 (2.33%) AngularJS
14 33 (2.33%) Model Context Protocol
15 28 (1.98%) FastAPI
16 26 (1.84%) RESTful
17 21 (1.49%) Faiss
18 20 (1.41%) Great Expectations
Miscellaneous
1 167 (11.81%) Cloud Native
2 137 (9.69%) AI Agents
3 123 (8.70%) Algorithms
4 49 (3.47%) Product Ownership
5 43 (3.04%) Onboarding
6 39 (2.76%) Distributed Systems
7 25 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
8 19 (1.34%) Data Structures
9 18 (1.27%) Fixed Income
10 17 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
10 17 (1.20%) Legacy Systems
10 17 (1.20%) Life Science
11 16 (1.13%) Management Information System
12 14 (0.99%) Hybrid Cloud
13 13 (0.92%) Analytical Mindset
14 12 (0.85%) Low-Code
14 12 (0.85%) Public Cloud
15 11 (0.78%) Augmented Reality
15 11 (0.78%) Distributed Computing
15 11 (0.78%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 30 (2.12%) Linux
2 15 (1.06%) Windows
3 11 (0.78%) Unix
4 8 (0.57%) VMS
5 7 (0.50%) Apple iOS
6 6 (0.42%) Android
7 2 (0.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.071%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,121 (79.28%) AI
2 519 (36.70%) Data Science
3 438 (30.98%) CI/CD
4 411 (29.07%) LLM
5 391 (27.65%) Analytics
6 314 (22.21%) Generative AI
7 313 (22.14%) Data Pipeline
8 292 (20.65%) DevOps
9 275 (19.45%) MLOps
10 262 (18.53%) Data Engineering
11 257 (18.18%) Agile
12 203 (14.36%) Use Case
13 194 (13.72%) Problem-Solving
14 179 (12.66%) Data Governance
15 176 (12.45%) Software Engineering
16 175 (12.38%) Decision-Making
16 175 (12.38%) ETL
17 169 (11.95%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
18 152 (10.75%) Containerisation
19 149 (10.54%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 815 (57.64%) Python
2 359 (25.39%) SQL
3 105 (7.43%) Java
4 75 (5.30%) C#
5 65 (4.60%) R
6 51 (3.61%) TypeScript
7 47 (3.32%) JavaScript
8 26 (1.84%) C++
9 19 (1.34%) Bash
10 17 (1.20%) PowerShell
11 15 (1.06%) Bicep
12 13 (0.92%) Scala
13 11 (0.78%) Kotlin
14 10 (0.71%) Go
15 7 (0.50%) MATLAB
15 7 (0.50%) Rust
15 7 (0.50%) SPARQL
16 5 (0.35%) Perl
16 5 (0.35%) PL/SQL
17 3 (0.21%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 242 (17.11%) Security Cleared
2 166 (11.74%) SC Cleared
3 114 (8.06%) Degree
4 55 (3.89%) Master's Degree
5 39 (2.76%) DV Cleared
6 38 (2.69%) BPSS Clearance
7 36 (2.55%) PhD
8 32 (2.26%) Computer Science Degree
9 25 (1.77%) AWS Certification
10 21 (1.49%) Azure Certification
11 18 (1.27%) CISSP
12 14 (0.99%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 14 (0.99%) CISM
13 7 (0.50%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 6 (0.42%) ISTQB
14 6 (0.42%) Microsoft Certification
15 5 (0.35%) GIAC
15 5 (0.35%) PMI Certification
15 5 (0.35%) PMP
16 4 (0.28%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 154 (10.89%) Data Quality
2 56 (3.96%) GDPR
3 50 (3.54%) QA
4 30 (2.12%) NIST
5 18 (1.27%) Accessibility
6 14 (0.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 13 (0.92%) EU AI Act
8 10 (0.71%) Actionable Recommendations
9 9 (0.64%) HIPAA
10 8 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 7 (0.50%) NCSC
12 6 (0.42%) GRC
13 5 (0.35%) WCAG
14 4 (0.28%) COBIT
14 4 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
14 4 (0.28%) GxP
15 3 (0.21%) SLA
16 2 (0.14%) DO-254
16 2 (0.14%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 2 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 187 (13.22%) Docker
2 11 (0.78%) Active Directory
2 11 (0.78%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 5 (0.35%) Firmware
4 3 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.14%) Ceph
5 2 (0.14%) HDFS
5 2 (0.14%) Lustre
5 2 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
5 2 (0.14%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.14%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.14%) VMware Workstation
6 1 (0.071%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 219 (15.49%) Kubernetes
2 143 (10.11%) Terraform
3 22 (1.56%) Kubeflow
4 21 (1.49%) Grafana
5 14 (0.99%) Ansible
5 14 (0.99%) Prometheus
6 9 (0.64%) Podman
7 4 (0.28%) Istio
8 3 (0.21%) NetBackup
8 3 (0.21%) Rancher
9 2 (0.14%) Docker Swarm
9 2 (0.14%) Kibana
9 2 (0.14%) Packer
9 2 (0.14%) SCCM
10 1 (0.071%) Argo
10 1 (0.071%) HP Fortify
10 1 (0.071%) Knative
10 1 (0.071%) logstash
Vendors
1 199 (14.07%) Databricks
2 164 (11.60%) Microsoft
3 100 (7.07%) OpenAI
4 89 (6.29%) Google
5 57 (4.03%) Foundry
6 40 (2.83%) SAP
7 32 (2.26%) Oracle
8 23 (1.63%) ServiceNow
9 16 (1.13%) IBM
9 16 (1.13%) UiPath
10 13 (0.92%) Informatica
11 12 (0.85%) Dynatrace
12 11 (0.78%) Automation Anywhere
13 9 (0.64%) Amplitude
14 7 (0.50%) NVIDIA
14 7 (0.50%) Sybase
15 6 (0.42%) Ariba
15 6 (0.42%) Siemens
15 6 (0.42%) Talend
15 6 (0.42%) Workday