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

6 months to
23 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 79 110 135
Rank change year-on-year +31 +25 +88
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,548 743 742
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.05% 2.48% 1.70%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.59% 2.72% 2.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 942 451 524
10th Percentile £413 £393 £413
25th Percentile £488 £462 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £550 £580
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% -5.17% -1.28%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £738
90th Percentile £775 £850 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £550 £550
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 21 20
10th Percentile £40.15 £31.00 £41.25
25th Percentile £50.00 £45.00 £46.18
Median hourly rate £69.22 £75.00 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -7.71% +42.86% +50.00%
75th Percentile £84.06 £81.01 £66.25
90th Percentile £89.13 £88.00 £75.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £78.10 £52.50
% change year-on-year -18.05% +48.76% +50.00%

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 43,108 27,270 37,060
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.89% 91.01% 84.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,889 17,271 23,587
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £502 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.09% -4.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £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 2,584 1,289 2,614
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.70
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.87 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +7.14%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £72.50 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +76.94% -34.02% +17.29%

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 23 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 23 June 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 23 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 +28 1,283 £575 - 1,042
London +36 858 £575 +0.88% 603
UK excluding London +9 488 £550 - 623
Work from Home +30 448 £588 +6.82% 402
North of England +2 138 £575 +9.52% 135
Scotland +44 108 £505 +8.09% 30
South East -29 96 £600 +4.35% 222
North West -1 77 £590 +7.36% 87
Midlands -14 63 £550 +10.00% 66
South West -25 47 £500 -19.35% 83
West Midlands -26 47 £550 +10.00% 30
Yorkshire -19 46 £550 -5.38% 34
East of England -24 36 £550 -10.20% 75
Wales -11 18 £565 -1.83% 14
North East -25 18 £550 +37.50% 16
East Midlands -11 14 £675 +58.82% 36
Northern Ireland - 1 £334 - 14

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
1 107 (6.91%) Apache Spark
2 71 (4.59%) Apache Airflow
3 50 (3.23%) Apache
4 38 (2.45%) Jupyter
5 23 (1.49%) Confluence
6 9 (0.58%) Appian
7 8 (0.52%) SharePoint
8 6 (0.39%) Palantir Foundry
9 5 (0.32%) CMS
9 5 (0.32%) Headless CMS
9 5 (0.32%) SAS
10 3 (0.19%) Microsoft Exchange
11 2 (0.13%) Luigi
12 1 (0.065%) Apache Pulsar
12 1 (0.065%) Apache Superset
12 1 (0.065%) Apache Synapse
12 1 (0.065%) ArcGIS
12 1 (0.065%) NetWeaver
12 1 (0.065%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 31 (2.00%) Chatbot
2 13 (0.84%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.52%) Microsoft Project
5 7 (0.45%) Microsoft Office
6 3 (0.19%) CPLEX
6 3 (0.19%) LaTeX
7 2 (0.13%) Simulink
8 1 (0.065%) Notion
Business Applications
1 11 (0.71%) SAP IBP
2 7 (0.45%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
3 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.065%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.065%) OpenText VIM for SAP
4 1 (0.065%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.065%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.065%) SAP APO
4 1 (0.065%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.065%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 569 (36.76%) Azure
2 550 (35.53%) AWS
3 274 (17.70%) GCP
4 140 (9.04%) Power Platform
5 114 (7.36%) Serverless
6 100 (6.46%) Amazon S3
6 100 (6.46%) GitHub
7 91 (5.88%) Azure AI
8 86 (5.56%) AWS Lambda
9 83 (5.36%) Amazon SageMaker
10 75 (4.84%) Azure Machine Learning
10 75 (4.84%) Snowflake
11 70 (4.52%) Azure DevOps
12 56 (3.62%) Vertex AI
13 54 (3.49%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 53 (3.42%) Amazon Bedrock
15 52 (3.36%) GitHub Actions
16 47 (3.04%) Azure Data Factory
17 38 (2.45%) AWS CloudFormation
17 38 (2.45%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 16 (1.03%) Firewall
2 9 (0.58%) Internet
2 9 (0.58%) Network Security
3 6 (0.39%) DNS
4 5 (0.32%) DHCP
5 4 (0.26%) HTTP
5 4 (0.26%) NAS
5 4 (0.26%) SAN
5 4 (0.26%) VPN
6 3 (0.19%) SMTP
7 2 (0.13%) 4G
7 2 (0.13%) 5G
7 2 (0.13%) Ethernet
7 2 (0.13%) MQTT
7 2 (0.13%) PCoIP
7 2 (0.13%) Radio Access Network
7 2 (0.13%) Remote Desktop
8 1 (0.065%) InfiniBand
8 1 (0.065%) LTE
8 1 (0.065%) Modbus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 113 (7.30%) Power BI
2 104 (6.72%) Data Lake
3 78 (5.04%) Big Data
4 75 (4.84%) Metadata
5 67 (4.33%) Data Warehouse
6 64 (4.13%) BigQuery
7 50 (3.23%) NoSQL
8 46 (2.97%) Tableau
9 41 (2.65%) Amazon Athena
10 39 (2.52%) PostgreSQL
11 38 (2.45%) Amazon Redshift
12 35 (2.26%) Hadoop
13 34 (2.20%) Relational Database
14 31 (2.00%) Delta Lake
14 31 (2.00%) SQL Server
15 27 (1.74%) Pinecone
16 23 (1.49%) MongoDB
17 19 (1.23%) Weaviate
18 18 (1.16%) MySQL
19 17 (1.10%) Mixpanel
Development Applications
1 94 (6.07%) Git
2 79 (5.10%) MLflow
3 52 (3.36%) JIRA
4 47 (3.04%) GitLab
5 27 (1.74%) Jenkins
6 9 (0.58%) Visual Studio
7 7 (0.45%) Claude Code
7 7 (0.45%) Selenium
7 7 (0.45%) Vite
8 4 (0.26%) Cypress.io
8 4 (0.26%) ER Studio
8 4 (0.26%) ERwin
8 4 (0.26%) JMeter
8 4 (0.26%) Maven
8 4 (0.26%) PyCharm
9 3 (0.19%) Gradle
9 3 (0.19%) JUnit
9 3 (0.19%) REST Assured
9 3 (0.19%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.19%) Spinnaker
General
1 323 (20.87%) Social Skills
2 305 (19.70%) Finance
3 196 (12.66%) Analytical Skills
4 154 (9.95%) Public Sector
5 102 (6.59%) Banking
6 39 (2.52%) Marketing
7 37 (2.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 30 (1.94%) Pharmaceutical
9 27 (1.74%) Legal
9 27 (1.74%) Retail
10 25 (1.61%) Documentation Skills
11 22 (1.42%) Front Office
12 20 (1.29%) Aviation
12 20 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
13 18 (1.16%) Telecoms
14 17 (1.10%) Law
15 15 (0.97%) Financial Institution
15 15 (0.97%) Investment Banking
16 12 (0.78%) Manufacturing
16 12 (0.78%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 220 (14.21%) Data Scientist
2 219 (14.15%) Senior
3 216 (13.95%) Architect
4 151 (9.75%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 142 (9.17%) Data Engineer
6 135 (8.72%) Lead
7 103 (6.65%) Developer
8 77 (4.97%) Analyst
9 74 (4.78%) Python Engineer
10 68 (4.39%) Software Engineer
11 66 (4.26%) Data Architect
12 64 (4.13%) Solutions Architect
13 63 (4.07%) Machine Learning Engineer
14 60 (3.88%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
15 46 (2.97%) Consultant
16 42 (2.71%) Senior Data Scientist
17 35 (2.26%) Platform Engineer
17 35 (2.26%) Python Developer
18 34 (2.20%) Full-Stack Engineer
19 32 (2.07%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 177 (11.43%) PyTorch
2 123 (7.95%) TensorFlow
3 110 (7.11%) scikit-learn
4 90 (5.81%) Pandas
5 87 (5.62%) Kafka
6 79 (5.10%) LangChain
7 75 (4.84%) React
8 69 (4.46%) PySpark
9 68 (4.39%) NumPy
10 62 (4.01%) REST
11 54 (3.49%) .NET
12 44 (2.84%) Hugging Face
13 34 (2.20%) AngularJS
13 34 (2.20%) LangGraph
14 33 (2.13%) FastAPI
15 30 (1.94%) Model Context Protocol
15 30 (1.94%) RESTful
16 27 (1.74%) Node.js
17 22 (1.42%) pytest
18 20 (1.29%) LlamaIndex
Miscellaneous
1 187 (12.08%) Cloud Native
2 147 (9.50%) AI Agents
3 114 (7.36%) Algorithms
4 57 (3.68%) Product Ownership
5 49 (3.17%) Distributed Systems
6 45 (2.91%) Onboarding
7 27 (1.74%) Data Protection Act
8 23 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
9 22 (1.42%) Data Structures
10 21 (1.36%) Life Science
11 19 (1.23%) Fixed Income
12 17 (1.10%) Legacy Systems
13 16 (1.03%) Management Information System
14 15 (0.97%) Security Posture
15 14 (0.90%) Hybrid Cloud
16 13 (0.84%) Distributed Computing
16 13 (0.84%) Low-Code
17 12 (0.78%) Autonomous Agent
17 12 (0.78%) Public Cloud
17 12 (0.78%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 37 (2.39%) Linux
2 17 (1.10%) Windows
3 11 (0.71%) Unix
4 6 (0.39%) Apple iOS
4 6 (0.39%) VMS
5 5 (0.32%) Android
6 4 (0.26%) Windows Server
7 2 (0.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.065%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,245 (80.43%) AI
2 581 (37.53%) Data Science
3 493 (31.85%) CI/CD
4 445 (28.75%) LLM
5 437 (28.23%) Analytics
6 362 (23.39%) Data Pipeline
7 355 (22.93%) Generative AI
8 325 (20.99%) DevOps
9 308 (19.90%) MLOps
10 300 (19.38%) Agile
11 287 (18.54%) Data Engineering
12 253 (16.34%) Use Case
13 211 (13.63%) Problem-Solving
14 207 (13.37%) Software Engineering
15 206 (13.31%) Decision-Making
16 188 (12.14%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
17 185 (11.95%) Data Governance
18 182 (11.76%) ETL
19 170 (10.98%) Infrastructure as Code
20 169 (10.92%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 870 (56.20%) Python
2 393 (25.39%) SQL
3 108 (6.98%) Java
4 67 (4.33%) C#
5 63 (4.07%) R
6 57 (3.68%) TypeScript
7 55 (3.55%) JavaScript
8 26 (1.68%) Bash
9 25 (1.61%) C++
10 15 (0.97%) PowerShell
11 14 (0.90%) Bicep
12 13 (0.84%) Scala
13 12 (0.78%) Go
14 10 (0.65%) Kotlin
15 9 (0.58%) SPARQL
16 7 (0.45%) MATLAB
16 7 (0.45%) PL/SQL
16 7 (0.45%) Rust
17 5 (0.32%) Perl
18 3 (0.19%) Korn
Qualifications
1 271 (17.51%) Security Cleared
2 189 (12.21%) SC Cleared
3 121 (7.82%) Degree
4 48 (3.10%) Master's Degree
5 47 (3.04%) BPSS Clearance
6 43 (2.78%) DV Cleared
7 42 (2.71%) AWS Certification
8 40 (2.58%) Computer Science Degree
9 31 (2.00%) PhD
10 22 (1.42%) Azure Certification
11 21 (1.36%) CISSP
12 20 (1.29%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 15 (0.97%) CISM
14 7 (0.45%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 7 (0.45%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 7 (0.45%) ISTQB
15 5 (0.32%) CEH
15 5 (0.32%) CompTIA Security+
15 5 (0.32%) GIAC
15 5 (0.32%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 186 (12.02%) Data Quality
2 63 (4.07%) GDPR
3 52 (3.36%) QA
4 31 (2.00%) NIST
5 18 (1.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 16 (1.03%) Accessibility
7 14 (0.90%) EU AI Act
8 11 (0.71%) HIPAA
8 11 (0.71%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 10 (0.65%) Actionable Recommendations
10 8 (0.52%) GRC
11 7 (0.45%) GxP
11 7 (0.45%) NCSC
12 5 (0.32%) WCAG
13 4 (0.26%) COBIT
13 4 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
13 4 (0.26%) Solvency II
14 3 (0.19%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 3 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 42001
14 3 (0.19%) SLA
System Software
1 209 (13.50%) Docker
2 12 (0.78%) Active Directory
3 11 (0.71%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 5 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
4 5 (0.32%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.19%) BitLocker
5 3 (0.19%) Firmware
5 3 (0.19%) Hyper-V
5 3 (0.19%) Terminal Services
5 3 (0.19%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.13%) Apache ZooKeeper
6 2 (0.13%) IAG
6 2 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.13%) VMware Workstation
7 1 (0.065%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 257 (16.60%) Kubernetes
2 167 (10.79%) Terraform
3 23 (1.49%) Kubeflow
4 22 (1.42%) Grafana
5 17 (1.10%) Ansible
6 14 (0.90%) Prometheus
7 9 (0.58%) Podman
8 7 (0.45%) Istio
9 3 (0.19%) Nagios
9 3 (0.19%) NetBackup
9 3 (0.19%) Puppet
9 3 (0.19%) Rancher
9 3 (0.19%) vCenter Server
9 3 (0.19%) vMotion
10 2 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 2 (0.13%) Argo
10 2 (0.13%) Docker Swarm
10 2 (0.13%) Kibana
10 2 (0.13%) Packer
10 2 (0.13%) SCCM
Vendors
1 189 (12.21%) Databricks
2 171 (11.05%) Microsoft
3 105 (6.78%) OpenAI
4 93 (6.01%) Google
5 57 (3.68%) Foundry
6 40 (2.58%) SAP
7 34 (2.20%) Oracle
8 26 (1.68%) ServiceNow
9 21 (1.36%) Informatica
10 17 (1.10%) IBM
11 15 (0.97%) UiPath
12 12 (0.78%) Dynatrace
13 10 (0.65%) Automation Anywhere
14 8 (0.52%) Salesforce
15 7 (0.45%) Amplitude
15 7 (0.45%) Sybase
15 7 (0.45%) Talend
16 6 (0.39%) Palantir
16 6 (0.39%) Pega
16 6 (0.39%) Workday