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 4 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 94 87 111
Rank change year-on-year -7 +24 +84
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,582 966 795
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.90% 2.91% 2.09%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.43% 3.21% 2.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,002 624 529
10th Percentile £413 £400 £387
25th Percentile £488 £463 £489
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% -8.33% +4.35%
75th Percentile £688 £676 £731
90th Percentile £788 £775 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £525 £495
% change year-on-year +4.76% +6.06% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 43 24 19
10th Percentile £28.50 £26.62 £13.06
25th Percentile £39.91 £38.84 £25.93
Median hourly rate £77.00 £53.22 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +44.68% +15.24% -
75th Percentile £85.13 £76.25 £53.75
90th Percentile £88.75 £86.75 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.83 £61.23 £46.18
% change year-on-year +22.22% +32.58% -

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 46,144 30,062 32,646
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.46% 90.58% 85.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,776 18,666 19,743
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £634 £625 £638
90th Percentile £736 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,300 1,877 1,341
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.33 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.12 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £38.62 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +53.57% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £65.06 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £65.18 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.00 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +74.77% -48.10% +1.18%

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 4 October 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 4 October 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 4 October 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 1,361 £581 +2.83% 6,796
London +14 902 £600 - 4,304
UK excluding London -17 520 £550 +4.76% 3,488
Work from Home -19 422 £575 +4.55% 3,493
North of England -10 155 £550 +14.58% 637
South East -12 138 £600 +9.09% 685
Scotland 0 94 £450 -10.45% 606
North West -19 69 £650 +36.84% 365
Yorkshire -3 67 £525 +2.14% 168
South West -11 50 £528 -8.26% 434
Midlands -35 50 £575 +9.52% 313
West Midlands -38 40 £538 +2.38% 166
East of England -35 33 £475 -13.64% 437
North East -26 20 £550 +29.41% 112
Wales -12 7 £530 -21.48% 220
East Midlands -10 6 £425 -8.11% 147
Northern Ireland +5 2 £467 -33.29% 188

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
1 101 (6.38%) Apache Spark
2 80 (5.06%) Apache Airflow
3 67 (4.24%) Apache
4 35 (2.21%) Jupyter
5 25 (1.58%) Confluence
6 11 (0.70%) SAS
7 7 (0.44%) IIS
8 6 (0.38%) ArcGIS
9 5 (0.32%) SharePoint
10 4 (0.25%) Palantir Foundry
11 3 (0.19%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.19%) OpenStack
11 3 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.13%) Apache Pulsar
12 2 (0.13%) Apache Superset
12 2 (0.13%) Appian
12 2 (0.13%) CMS
12 2 (0.13%) Headless CMS
12 2 (0.13%) nginx
13 1 (0.063%) Luigi
Applications
1 30 (1.90%) Chatbot
2 7 (0.44%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.19%) CPLEX
4 2 (0.13%) DaVinci Resolve
4 2 (0.13%) Notion
4 2 (0.13%) NUKE
5 1 (0.063%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.063%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.063%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.063%) Simulink
5 1 (0.063%) Sketch
5 1 (0.063%) Trello
Business Applications
1 8 (0.51%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.25%) SAP IBP
3 3 (0.19%) Cloudability
3 3 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
4 2 (0.13%) SAP ERP
4 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.063%) Actimize
5 1 (0.063%) Dynamics CRM
5 1 (0.063%) Endur
5 1 (0.063%) NetSuite
5 1 (0.063%) OpenLink RightAngle
5 1 (0.063%) Oracle Cash Management
5 1 (0.063%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.063%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.063%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.063%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 519 (32.81%) Azure
2 511 (32.30%) AWS
3 301 (19.03%) GCP
4 109 (6.89%) Power Platform
5 105 (6.64%) Serverless
6 104 (6.57%) GitHub
7 96 (6.07%) Amazon S3
8 90 (5.69%) Snowflake
9 83 (5.25%) AWS Lambda
10 71 (4.49%) Amazon SageMaker
11 65 (4.11%) Amazon Bedrock
12 63 (3.98%) dbt
13 59 (3.73%) Azure Machine Learning
14 50 (3.16%) Azure DevOps
15 48 (3.03%) Azure AI
15 48 (3.03%) Vertex AI
16 47 (2.97%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 45 (2.84%) SaaS
18 44 (2.78%) Azure Data Factory
19 40 (2.53%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.39%) Network Security
2 19 (1.20%) Broadband
2 19 (1.20%) Internet
3 14 (0.88%) DNS
4 13 (0.82%) Firewall
5 11 (0.70%) HTTP
6 9 (0.57%) DHCP
6 9 (0.57%) VPN
7 5 (0.32%) SMTP
7 5 (0.32%) TCP/IP
8 4 (0.25%) NAS
8 4 (0.25%) SAN
8 4 (0.25%) SMS
8 4 (0.25%) VLAN
9 3 (0.19%) CTI
9 3 (0.19%) MQTT
10 2 (0.13%) FTP
10 2 (0.13%) PCoIP
10 2 (0.13%) Remote Desktop
10 2 (0.13%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 100 (6.32%) Power BI
2 99 (6.26%) Data Warehouse
3 94 (5.94%) Data Lake
4 88 (5.56%) Metadata
5 76 (4.80%) BigQuery
6 64 (4.05%) Big Data
7 53 (3.35%) Amazon Redshift
8 51 (3.22%) Delta Lake
9 46 (2.91%) NoSQL
10 39 (2.47%) Tableau
11 38 (2.40%) PostgreSQL
12 35 (2.21%) Amazon Athena
13 28 (1.77%) Relational Database
14 25 (1.58%) Hadoop
15 24 (1.52%) Neo4j
16 20 (1.26%) Elasticsearch
16 20 (1.26%) MongoDB
17 18 (1.14%) Amazon RDS
18 17 (1.07%) DynamoDB
18 17 (1.07%) Looker
Development Applications
1 105 (6.64%) Git
2 56 (3.54%) GitLab
3 47 (2.97%) JIRA
4 39 (2.47%) MLflow
5 13 (0.82%) Claude Code
5 13 (0.82%) Jenkins
6 7 (0.44%) Vite
7 6 (0.38%) JMeter
8 5 (0.32%) Cypress.io
8 5 (0.32%) ERwin
8 5 (0.32%) Postman
8 5 (0.32%) RStudio
9 4 (0.25%) REST Assured
9 4 (0.25%) Selenium
10 3 (0.19%) ER Studio
10 3 (0.19%) Newman
10 3 (0.19%) Pylint
11 2 (0.13%) Applitools
11 2 (0.13%) Locust
11 2 (0.13%) Terragrunt
General
1 362 (22.88%) Social Skills
2 318 (20.10%) Finance
3 235 (14.85%) Analytical Skills
4 145 (9.17%) Public Sector
5 123 (7.77%) Banking
6 39 (2.47%) Marketing
7 37 (2.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 30 (1.90%) Retail
9 29 (1.83%) Pharmaceutical
10 28 (1.77%) Telecoms
11 24 (1.52%) Manufacturing
12 23 (1.45%) Aerospace
13 22 (1.39%) Influencing Skills
13 22 (1.39%) Legal
14 20 (1.26%) Financial Institution
14 20 (1.26%) Front Office
15 17 (1.07%) Documentation Skills
15 17 (1.07%) Investment Banking
16 16 (1.01%) Billing
17 15 (0.95%) Law
Job Titles
1 288 (18.20%) Senior
2 255 (16.12%) Architect
3 193 (12.20%) Data Scientist
4 191 (12.07%) Data Engineer
5 174 (11.00%) Lead
6 146 (9.23%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 106 (6.70%) Machine Learning Engineer
8 72 (4.55%) Solutions Architect
9 71 (4.49%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
10 69 (4.36%) Developer
11 67 (4.24%) Python Engineer
12 65 (4.11%) Data Architect
13 61 (3.86%) Analyst
14 58 (3.67%) Platform Engineer
14 58 (3.67%) Senior Data Engineer
15 52 (3.29%) Senior Data Scientist
16 49 (3.10%) Software Engineer
17 47 (2.97%) Security Architect
18 41 (2.59%) DevOps Engineer
19 37 (2.34%) Full-Stack Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 206 (13.02%) Terraform
2 108 (6.83%) PyTorch
3 107 (6.76%) Kafka
4 94 (5.94%) PySpark
5 81 (5.12%) TensorFlow
6 73 (4.61%) LangChain
7 72 (4.55%) REST
8 65 (4.11%) scikit-learn
9 59 (3.73%) React
10 55 (3.48%) Pandas
11 51 (3.22%) pytest
12 42 (2.65%) NumPy
13 39 (2.47%) LangGraph
14 36 (2.28%) FastAPI
15 32 (2.02%) .NET
16 28 (1.77%) JSON
17 27 (1.71%) Hugging Face
17 27 (1.71%) Model Context Protocol
18 21 (1.33%) RESTful
19 20 (1.26%) vLLM
Miscellaneous
1 207 (13.08%) Cloud Native
2 177 (11.19%) AI Agents
3 105 (6.64%) Algorithms
4 74 (4.68%) Onboarding
5 68 (4.30%) Distributed Systems
6 65 (4.11%) Product Ownership
7 38 (2.40%) Data Structures
8 37 (2.34%) Enterprise Software
9 30 (1.90%) Life Science
10 28 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
11 22 (1.39%) Management Information System
12 21 (1.33%) Hybrid Cloud
13 18 (1.14%) CMDB
13 18 (1.14%) Social Media
14 17 (1.07%) Taxonomies
15 16 (1.01%) Clustering
15 16 (1.01%) Credit Risk
16 15 (0.95%) Analytical Mindset
16 15 (0.95%) Virtual Team
17 14 (0.88%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 46 (2.91%) Linux
2 20 (1.26%) Windows
3 16 (1.01%) Unix
4 4 (0.25%) Android
4 4 (0.25%) Ubuntu
4 4 (0.25%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.19%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.063%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.063%) Robot Operating System
6 1 (0.063%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,309 (82.74%) AI
2 580 (36.66%) Data Science
3 507 (32.05%) CI/CD
4 475 (30.03%) Analytics
5 429 (27.12%) LLM
6 391 (24.72%) Generative AI
7 363 (22.95%) Data Pipeline
8 331 (20.92%) DevOps
9 328 (20.73%) Agile
10 306 (19.34%) MLOps
11 287 (18.14%) Data Engineering
12 265 (16.75%) Software Engineering
13 246 (15.55%) Stakeholder Management
14 243 (15.36%) Use Case
15 242 (15.30%) Decision-Making
16 239 (15.11%) Roadmaps
17 218 (13.78%) Infrastructure as Code
18 209 (13.21%) Problem-Solving
19 207 (13.08%) Data Modelling
20 204 (12.90%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Programming Languages
1 840 (53.10%) Python
2 406 (25.66%) SQL
3 109 (6.89%) Java
4 76 (4.80%) JavaScript
5 63 (3.98%) TypeScript
6 43 (2.72%) Bash
7 35 (2.21%) R
8 34 (2.15%) C#
9 30 (1.90%) PowerShell
10 26 (1.64%) Scala
11 20 (1.26%) Go
12 19 (1.20%) C++
13 16 (1.01%) Bicep
14 14 (0.88%) Shell Script
15 11 (0.70%) Cypher
15 11 (0.70%) PL/SQL
16 7 (0.44%) Gremlin
16 7 (0.44%) SPARQL
17 5 (0.32%) Kotlin
17 5 (0.32%) Perl
Qualifications
1 311 (19.66%) Security Cleared
2 242 (15.30%) SC Cleared
3 131 (8.28%) Degree
4 58 (3.67%) Computer Science Degree
5 56 (3.54%) DV Cleared
6 51 (3.22%) AWS Certification
7 40 (2.53%) Master's Degree
8 39 (2.47%) BPSS Clearance
9 30 (1.90%) CISSP
10 29 (1.83%) Azure Certification
11 27 (1.71%) PhD
12 19 (1.20%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 15 (0.95%) TOGAF Certification
14 13 (0.82%) CISM
15 10 (0.63%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
15 10 (0.63%) Cisco Certification
15 10 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
16 9 (0.57%) Microsoft Certified Professional
17 8 (0.51%) DBS Check
18 5 (0.32%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 226 (14.29%) Data Quality
2 55 (3.48%) QA
3 54 (3.41%) GDPR
4 30 (1.90%) NIST
5 19 (1.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 18 (1.14%) Accessibility
7 14 (0.88%) EU AI Act
8 10 (0.63%) ISO/IEC 42001
8 10 (0.63%) SLA
9 9 (0.57%) GRC
9 9 (0.57%) NCSC
10 8 (0.51%) GxP
11 7 (0.44%) PCI DSS
11 7 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 6 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
12 6 (0.38%) HIPAA
13 5 (0.32%) Basel III
13 5 (0.32%) Solvency II
14 4 (0.25%) SOC 2
15 3 (0.19%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 213 (13.46%) Docker
2 16 (1.01%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.63%) Hyper-V
4 10 (0.63%) IAG
5 8 (0.51%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.44%) NFS
7 5 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
8 3 (0.19%) BitLocker
8 3 (0.19%) Terminal Services
8 3 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.13%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 2 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 2 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.13%) VMware Workstation
10 1 (0.063%) Firmware
10 1 (0.063%) zsh
Systems Management
1 287 (18.14%) Kubernetes
2 47 (2.97%) Ansible
3 28 (1.77%) Kubeflow
4 27 (1.71%) Grafana
5 22 (1.39%) Prometheus
6 6 (0.38%) Istio
6 6 (0.38%) systemd
7 5 (0.32%) Podman
8 3 (0.19%) Argo
8 3 (0.19%) Kibana
8 3 (0.19%) Nagios
8 3 (0.19%) NetBackup
8 3 (0.19%) Puppet
8 3 (0.19%) vCenter Server
8 3 (0.19%) vMotion
9 2 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 2 (0.13%) Packer
9 2 (0.13%) SCCM
9 2 (0.13%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.063%) Kustomize
Vendors
1 202 (12.77%) Databricks
2 154 (9.73%) Microsoft
3 106 (6.70%) Google
4 62 (3.92%) OpenAI
5 36 (2.28%) SAP
6 34 (2.15%) ServiceNow
7 31 (1.96%) Oracle
8 26 (1.64%) Foundry
9 22 (1.39%) Informatica
10 17 (1.07%) Dynatrace
11 14 (0.88%) VMware
12 11 (0.70%) Salesforce
13 10 (0.63%) IBM
13 10 (0.63%) Nexthink
13 10 (0.63%) Splunk
14 9 (0.57%) UiPath
15 7 (0.44%) Cisco
16 6 (0.38%) Pega
17 5 (0.32%) New Relic
17 5 (0.32%) Sybase