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

6 months to
6 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 78 107 169
Rank change year-on-year +29 +62 +64
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,385 764 636
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.25% 2.51% 1.43%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.76% 2.78% 1.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 855 494 467
10th Percentile £400 £363 £413
25th Percentile £475 £454 £474
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £575 £573
Median % change year-on-year - +0.44% -8.27%
75th Percentile £688 £725 £700
90th Percentile £778 £850 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £525 £525
% change year-on-year +2.38% - -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 17 26
10th Percentile £41.85 £23.65 £41.18
25th Percentile £50.00 £25.36 £42.50
Median hourly rate £57.77 £45.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +28.37% -2.56% +31.94%
75th Percentile £79.50 £65.00 £65.94
90th Percentile £95.00 £83.81 £69.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £45.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +42.22% -2.56% +31.94%

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 36,846 27,490 38,514
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.38% 90.18% 86.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,348 17,263 25,101
10th Percentile £313 £306 £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 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £492 £500
% change year-on-year -2.18% -1.60% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,189 895 2,262
10th Percentile £14.79 £15.62 £13.25
25th Percentile £18.32 £21.05 £16.13
Median hourly rate £28.00 £32.50 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.85% -1.52% -5.71%
75th Percentile £63.75 £63.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £73.75 £75.00 £71.89
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.38 £31.76 £33.28
% change year-on-year -20.09% -4.57% -4.91%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 +19 1,160 £575 -4.17% 1,455
London +27 764 £600 -2.44% 716
UK excluding London +32 453 £538 +2.38% 1,023
Work from Home +32 438 £575 +7.48% 748
North of England -8 110 £531 +6.13% 189
South East -1 96 £588 +10.59% 355
Scotland +65 86 £500 +11.11% 64
East of England +4 71 £550 -8.33% 150
North West +18 67 £534 +6.80% 90
Midlands -7 62 £550 +29.41% 124
West Midlands -17 42 £550 +33.33% 55
South West -25 35 £550 -17.60% 125
Yorkshire -39 33 £525 - 66
East Midlands -8 19 £525 +10.53% 67
Wales -3 17 £738 +31.11% 29
North East -10 13 £563 +57.12% 35
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
1 122 (8.81%) Apache Spark
2 85 (6.14%) Apache Airflow
3 57 (4.12%) Apache
4 29 (2.09%) Jupyter
5 14 (1.01%) Confluence
6 11 (0.79%) Appian
7 10 (0.72%) SAS
8 6 (0.43%) CMS
8 6 (0.43%) GeoServer
8 6 (0.43%) Palantir Foundry
8 6 (0.43%) SharePoint
8 6 (0.43%) Smallworld
9 3 (0.22%) Headless CMS
10 2 (0.14%) Apache Pig
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%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.072%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 39 (2.82%) Chatbot
2 16 (1.16%) Microsoft Project
3 14 (1.01%) Microsoft Excel
4 12 (0.87%) Microsoft Office
5 9 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 5 (0.36%) Simulink
7 3 (0.22%) LaTeX
8 1 (0.072%) Adobe XD
8 1 (0.072%) CPLEX
8 1 (0.072%) Sketch
8 1 (0.072%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (0.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.14%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.072%) OpenText VIM for SAP
3 1 (0.072%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.072%) SAP IBP
3 1 (0.072%) Shopify
3 1 (0.072%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 1 (0.072%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 611 (44.12%) Azure
2 509 (36.75%) AWS
3 259 (18.70%) GCP
4 138 (9.96%) Power Platform
5 115 (8.30%) GitHub
6 111 (8.01%) Serverless
7 104 (7.51%) Azure Machine Learning
8 96 (6.93%) Azure AI
9 83 (5.99%) Azure DevOps
10 77 (5.56%) Amazon SageMaker
11 75 (5.42%) Snowflake
12 68 (4.91%) Amazon S3
13 62 (4.48%) Vertex AI
14 55 (3.97%) Azure Data Factory
15 54 (3.90%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 54 (3.90%) GitHub Actions
16 52 (3.75%) AWS Lambda
17 46 (3.32%) AWS CloudFormation
18 44 (3.18%) Azure AKS
19 39 (2.82%) Amazon Bedrock
Communications & Networking
1 16 (1.16%) Network Security
2 9 (0.65%) Firewall
2 9 (0.65%) HTTP
3 6 (0.43%) DNS
3 6 (0.43%) Ethernet
4 5 (0.36%) FTP
4 5 (0.36%) Internet
4 5 (0.36%) SMTP
4 5 (0.36%) SSL
5 4 (0.29%) 5G
5 4 (0.29%) InfiniBand
6 3 (0.22%) Cisco IPT
6 3 (0.22%) LTE
6 3 (0.22%) VPN
7 2 (0.14%) 2G
7 2 (0.14%) 4G
7 2 (0.14%) Hyperconnected
7 2 (0.14%) Mobile Backhaul
7 2 (0.14%) Modbus
7 2 (0.14%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 106 (7.65%) Power BI
2 93 (6.71%) Data Lake
3 82 (5.92%) Data Warehouse
4 63 (4.55%) Big Data
5 58 (4.19%) NoSQL
6 56 (4.04%) Metadata
7 51 (3.68%) BigQuery
8 47 (3.39%) PostgreSQL
9 40 (2.89%) Tableau
10 37 (2.67%) Pinecone
11 35 (2.53%) Hadoop
12 29 (2.09%) Delta Lake
12 29 (2.09%) SQL Server
13 28 (2.02%) Relational Database
14 26 (1.88%) Weaviate
15 23 (1.66%) Mixpanel
16 22 (1.59%) Amazon Athena
16 22 (1.59%) Elasticsearch
17 18 (1.30%) Amazon Redshift
18 17 (1.23%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 117 (8.45%) Git
2 95 (6.86%) MLflow
3 39 (2.82%) Jenkins
4 28 (2.02%) JIRA
5 27 (1.95%) GitLab
6 15 (1.08%) Selenium
7 12 (0.87%) JMeter
7 12 (0.87%) Visual Studio
8 8 (0.58%) PyCharm
9 7 (0.51%) Gradle
9 7 (0.51%) SonarQube
10 5 (0.36%) Cypress.io
10 5 (0.36%) Maven
10 5 (0.36%) MSTest
11 4 (0.29%) Android Studio
11 4 (0.29%) Bitbucket
11 4 (0.29%) Oracle APEX
11 4 (0.29%) RStudio
12 3 (0.22%) Postman
13 2 (0.14%) REST Assured
General
1 353 (25.49%) Social Skills
2 294 (21.23%) Finance
3 155 (11.19%) Analytical Skills
4 144 (10.40%) Public Sector
5 95 (6.86%) Banking
6 42 (3.03%) Pharmaceutical
7 41 (2.96%) Marketing
8 32 (2.31%) Retail
9 31 (2.24%) Investment Banking
10 29 (2.09%) Influencing Skills
11 28 (2.02%) Legal
12 25 (1.81%) Front Office
13 24 (1.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 22 (1.59%) Manufacturing
15 19 (1.37%) Presentation Skills
16 17 (1.23%) Documentation Skills
16 17 (1.23%) Telecoms
17 14 (1.01%) Financial Institution
18 13 (0.94%) Electronics
19 11 (0.79%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 203 (14.66%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
2 193 (13.94%) Data Scientist
3 179 (12.92%) Architect
4 176 (12.71%) Senior
5 136 (9.82%) Data Engineer
6 125 (9.03%) Developer
7 117 (8.45%) Lead
8 65 (4.69%) Analyst
8 65 (4.69%) Python Engineer
9 64 (4.62%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
10 59 (4.26%) Machine Learning Engineer
11 57 (4.12%) Software Engineer
12 49 (3.54%) Data Architect
13 41 (2.96%) Gen AI Engineer
14 39 (2.82%) Senior Data Scientist
14 39 (2.82%) Solutions Architect
15 36 (2.60%) Azure Engineer
16 33 (2.38%) Consultant
17 30 (2.17%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
18 24 (1.73%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 241 (17.40%) PyTorch
2 197 (14.22%) TensorFlow
3 142 (10.25%) scikit-learn
4 118 (8.52%) Pandas
5 89 (6.43%) LangChain
6 85 (6.14%) NumPy
7 84 (6.06%) React
8 71 (5.13%) FastAPI
9 61 (4.40%) .NET
9 61 (4.40%) Model Context Protocol
10 60 (4.33%) Hugging Face
11 59 (4.26%) PySpark
11 59 (4.26%) REST
12 58 (4.19%) Kafka
13 55 (3.97%) LangGraph
14 50 (3.61%) Node.js
15 44 (3.18%) RESTful
16 40 (2.89%) AngularJS
17 33 (2.38%) Faiss
18 30 (2.17%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 192 (13.86%) Cloud Native
2 185 (13.36%) Algorithms
3 120 (8.66%) AI Agents
4 51 (3.68%) Product Ownership
5 49 (3.54%) Onboarding
6 38 (2.74%) Distributed Systems
7 37 (2.67%) Data Protection Act
8 31 (2.24%) Legacy Systems
9 25 (1.81%) Distributed Computing
9 25 (1.81%) Hybrid Cloud
10 23 (1.66%) Data Structures
11 22 (1.59%) Life Science
12 18 (1.30%) Analytical Mindset
12 18 (1.30%) Genomics
13 17 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
13 17 (1.23%) Fixed Income
14 15 (1.08%) Management Information System
15 13 (0.94%) Credit Risk
15 13 (0.94%) Taxonomies
16 12 (0.87%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 37 (2.67%) Linux
2 12 (0.87%) Windows
3 10 (0.72%) Apple iOS
3 10 (0.72%) VMS
4 9 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (0.58%) Android
5 8 (0.58%) Ubuntu
6 3 (0.22%) Unix
7 1 (0.072%) CentOS
7 1 (0.072%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,082 (78.12%) AI
2 531 (38.34%) Data Science
3 399 (28.81%) CI/CD
4 390 (28.16%) LLM
5 378 (27.29%) Analytics
6 310 (22.38%) DevOps
7 298 (21.52%) Data Pipeline
8 296 (21.37%) Agile
9 282 (20.36%) Generative AI
10 267 (19.28%) MLOps
11 259 (18.70%) Data Engineering
12 232 (16.75%) Problem-Solving
13 199 (14.37%) Natural Language Processing
14 190 (13.72%) Software Engineering
15 187 (13.50%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
16 185 (13.36%) Use Case
17 171 (12.35%) Containerisation
18 164 (11.84%) Prompt Engineering
19 158 (11.41%) Data Modelling
20 156 (11.26%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 857 (61.88%) Python
2 342 (24.69%) SQL
3 90 (6.50%) Java
4 79 (5.70%) C#
5 73 (5.27%) R
6 61 (4.40%) JavaScript
7 57 (4.12%) TypeScript
8 27 (1.95%) C++
8 27 (1.95%) PowerShell
9 21 (1.52%) Scala
10 20 (1.44%) Bash
11 15 (1.08%) Bicep
12 12 (0.87%) Go
13 11 (0.79%) MATLAB
14 10 (0.72%) Rust
15 7 (0.51%) Kotlin
15 7 (0.51%) SPARQL
16 5 (0.36%) C
16 5 (0.36%) SystemVerilog
16 5 (0.36%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 229 (16.53%) Security Cleared
2 183 (13.21%) Degree
3 164 (11.84%) SC Cleared
4 79 (5.70%) Master's Degree
5 47 (3.39%) PhD
6 42 (3.03%) Computer Science Degree
7 37 (2.67%) DV Cleared
8 30 (2.17%) BPSS Clearance
9 24 (1.73%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 23 (1.66%) AWS Certification
11 19 (1.37%) Azure Certification
12 9 (0.65%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 8 (0.58%) CISSP
14 7 (0.51%) ISTQB
15 6 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
16 5 (0.36%) HNC
16 5 (0.36%) HND
16 5 (0.36%) TOGAF Certification
17 4 (0.29%) CISM
17 4 (0.29%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 125 (9.03%) Data Quality
2 54 (3.90%) GDPR
3 53 (3.83%) QA
4 37 (2.67%) NIST
5 26 (1.88%) EU AI Act
6 21 (1.52%) Accessibility
7 14 (1.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 7 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
8 7 (0.51%) GRC
9 6 (0.43%) NCSC
10 5 (0.36%) DO-254
10 5 (0.36%) HIPAA
10 5 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 4 (0.29%) Disclosure Scotland
11 4 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 4 (0.29%) PCI DSS
11 4 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 3 (0.22%) SOC 2
13 2 (0.14%) EMIR
13 2 (0.14%) NIST 800
System Software
1 215 (15.52%) Docker
2 11 (0.79%) Active Directory
2 11 (0.79%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 7 (0.51%) Firmware
4 3 (0.22%) Lustre
5 2 (0.14%) Ceph
5 2 (0.14%) HDFS
5 2 (0.14%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.072%) GPFS
Systems Management
1 214 (15.45%) Kubernetes
2 145 (10.47%) Terraform
3 22 (1.59%) Grafana
4 20 (1.44%) Ansible
5 19 (1.37%) Kubeflow
6 13 (0.94%) Prometheus
7 9 (0.65%) Podman
8 7 (0.51%) Kibana
8 7 (0.51%) SCOM
9 4 (0.29%) Argo
9 4 (0.29%) logstash
10 3 (0.22%) ITRS Geneos
10 3 (0.22%) Rancher
11 2 (0.14%) Istio
11 2 (0.14%) Knative
11 2 (0.14%) Single Sign-On
12 1 (0.072%) HP Fortify
12 1 (0.072%) Microsoft Intune
12 1 (0.072%) Opsgenie
12 1 (0.072%) SELinux
Vendors
1 202 (14.58%) Databricks
2 188 (13.57%) Microsoft
3 116 (8.38%) Google
4 103 (7.44%) OpenAI
5 75 (5.42%) Foundry
6 37 (2.67%) SAP
7 26 (1.88%) Oracle
8 21 (1.52%) ServiceNow
9 13 (0.94%) UiPath
10 12 (0.87%) Informatica
11 11 (0.79%) Automation Anywhere
12 10 (0.72%) NVIDIA
12 10 (0.72%) Salesforce
13 9 (0.65%) Greenplum
13 9 (0.65%) IBM
14 8 (0.58%) Splunk
15 7 (0.51%) Amplitude
15 7 (0.51%) Dynatrace
15 7 (0.51%) Palantir
15 7 (0.51%) Pega