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 28 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 95 89 111
Rank change year-on-year -6 +22 +88
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,553 940 809
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.86% 2.86% 2.12%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.39% 3.16% 2.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 985 608 541
10th Percentile £413 £400 £388
25th Percentile £475 £463 £489
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% -8.33% +2.13%
75th Percentile £682 £675 £731
90th Percentile £783 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £525 £494
% change year-on-year +4.76% +6.28% -10.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 42 21 19
10th Percentile £28.50 £25.17 £13.06
25th Percentile £41.25 £43.84 £25.93
Median hourly rate £77.00 £61.23 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +25.77% +32.58% -
75th Percentile £87.69 £80.00 £53.75
90th Percentile £88.75 £87.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £77.00 £63.25 £46.18
% change year-on-year +21.74% +36.96% -

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 45,850 29,737 32,777
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.30% 90.62% 85.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,722 18,491 19,844
10th Percentile £325 £294 £308
25th Percentile £425 £403 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,198 1,854 1,372
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.25 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.23 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £39.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +55.07% -40.82% -1.16%
75th Percentile £65.60 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.72 £65.00 £74.49
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +79.25% -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 28 September 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 28 September 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 28 September 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 -2 1,333 £575 +1.77% 4,772
London +14 884 £580 -3.33% 3,305
UK excluding London -27 510 £550 +4.76% 1,720
Work from Home -14 409 £575 +4.55% 1,796
North of England -11 147 £550 +15.79% 358
South East -8 137 £600 +9.09% 386
Scotland -1 96 £463 -7.96% 199
Yorkshire -6 65 £525 +2.14% 83
North West -39 64 £600 +26.32% 228
Midlands -37 48 £575 +9.52% 158
South West -23 45 £513 -10.87% 292
West Midlands -39 39 £575 +9.52% 91
East of England -26 35 £475 -15.56% 224
North East -26 19 £531 +25.00% 48
Wales -12 7 £530 -21.48% 41
East Midlands -16 6 £425 -8.11% 67
Northern Ireland +3 1 £334 -52.29% 78

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 91 (5.86%) Apache Spark
2 79 (5.09%) Apache Airflow
3 56 (3.61%) Apache
4 34 (2.19%) Jupyter
5 24 (1.55%) Confluence
6 11 (0.71%) SAS
7 7 (0.45%) IIS
8 6 (0.39%) ArcGIS
9 5 (0.32%) SharePoint
10 4 (0.26%) Palantir Foundry
11 3 (0.19%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.19%) OpenStack
11 3 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.13%) Apache Superset
12 2 (0.13%) Appian
12 2 (0.13%) CMS
12 2 (0.13%) Headless CMS
13 1 (0.064%) Apache Pulsar
13 1 (0.064%) Luigi
13 1 (0.064%) nginx
Applications
1 29 (1.87%) Chatbot
2 7 (0.45%) 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 (0.064%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.064%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.064%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.064%) Simulink
5 1 (0.064%) Sketch
5 1 (0.064%) Trello
Business Applications
1 8 (0.52%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.32%) 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 (0.064%) Actimize
5 1 (0.064%) Endur
5 1 (0.064%) NetSuite
5 1 (0.064%) OpenLink RightAngle
5 1 (0.064%) Oracle Cash Management
5 1 (0.064%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.064%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.064%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.064%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 506 (32.58%) Azure
2 503 (32.39%) AWS
3 289 (18.61%) GCP
4 107 (6.89%) Power Platform
5 102 (6.57%) GitHub
5 102 (6.57%) Serverless
6 91 (5.86%) Amazon S3
7 88 (5.67%) Snowflake
8 83 (5.34%) AWS Lambda
9 71 (4.57%) Amazon SageMaker
10 61 (3.93%) dbt
11 60 (3.86%) Amazon Bedrock
12 58 (3.73%) Azure Machine Learning
13 48 (3.09%) Azure DevOps
14 46 (2.96%) Azure AI
14 46 (2.96%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 45 (2.90%) Vertex AI
16 44 (2.83%) SaaS
17 43 (2.77%) Azure Data Factory
18 40 (2.58%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.35%) Network Security
2 19 (1.22%) Broadband
2 19 (1.22%) Internet
3 13 (0.84%) DNS
4 12 (0.77%) Firewall
4 12 (0.77%) HTTP
5 9 (0.58%) DHCP
5 9 (0.58%) VPN
6 5 (0.32%) SMTP
6 5 (0.32%) TCP/IP
7 4 (0.26%) NAS
7 4 (0.26%) SAN
7 4 (0.26%) SMS
7 4 (0.26%) VLAN
8 3 (0.19%) CTI
8 3 (0.19%) MQTT
9 2 (0.13%) FTP
9 2 (0.13%) PCoIP
9 2 (0.13%) Remote Desktop
9 2 (0.13%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 99 (6.37%) Power BI
2 98 (6.31%) Data Warehouse
3 94 (6.05%) Data Lake
4 87 (5.60%) Metadata
5 77 (4.96%) BigQuery
6 58 (3.73%) Big Data
7 53 (3.41%) Amazon Redshift
8 49 (3.16%) Delta Lake
9 45 (2.90%) NoSQL
10 42 (2.70%) Tableau
11 36 (2.32%) PostgreSQL
12 35 (2.25%) Amazon Athena
13 29 (1.87%) Relational Database
14 24 (1.55%) Neo4j
15 20 (1.29%) MongoDB
16 19 (1.22%) Hadoop
17 18 (1.16%) Elasticsearch
18 17 (1.09%) Data Mining
18 17 (1.09%) Looker
19 16 (1.03%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 103 (6.63%) Git
2 51 (3.28%) GitLab
3 45 (2.90%) JIRA
4 40 (2.58%) MLflow
5 13 (0.84%) Claude Code
5 13 (0.84%) Jenkins
6 7 (0.45%) Vite
7 5 (0.32%) Cypress.io
7 5 (0.32%) ERwin
7 5 (0.32%) JMeter
7 5 (0.32%) RStudio
8 4 (0.26%) Postman
8 4 (0.26%) Selenium
9 3 (0.19%) ER Studio
9 3 (0.19%) Pylint
9 3 (0.19%) REST Assured
10 2 (0.13%) Newman
10 2 (0.13%) Oracle APEX
10 2 (0.13%) Spinnaker
10 2 (0.13%) Terragrunt
General
1 352 (22.67%) Social Skills
2 301 (19.38%) Finance
3 233 (15.00%) Analytical Skills
4 144 (9.27%) Public Sector
5 120 (7.73%) Banking
6 39 (2.51%) Marketing
7 35 (2.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 32 (2.06%) Retail
9 29 (1.87%) Pharmaceutical
10 25 (1.61%) Telecoms
11 23 (1.48%) Legal
11 23 (1.48%) Manufacturing
12 22 (1.42%) Front Office
12 22 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
13 21 (1.35%) Aerospace
14 18 (1.16%) Documentation Skills
14 18 (1.16%) Financial Institution
15 17 (1.09%) Investment Banking
16 16 (1.03%) Law
17 15 (0.97%) Billing
Job Titles
1 276 (17.77%) Senior
2 250 (16.10%) Architect
3 192 (12.36%) Data Scientist
4 180 (11.59%) Data Engineer
5 179 (11.53%) Lead
6 142 (9.14%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 94 (6.05%) Machine Learning Engineer
8 72 (4.64%) Developer
9 70 (4.51%) Solutions Architect
10 69 (4.44%) Python Engineer
11 67 (4.31%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
12 66 (4.25%) Data Architect
13 62 (3.99%) Analyst
14 56 (3.61%) Platform Engineer
15 52 (3.35%) Software Engineer
16 51 (3.28%) Senior Data Engineer
17 48 (3.09%) Senior Data Scientist
18 47 (3.03%) Security Architect
19 40 (2.58%) DevOps Engineer
20 37 (2.38%) Full-Stack Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 200 (12.88%) Terraform
2 106 (6.83%) PyTorch
3 104 (6.70%) Kafka
4 90 (5.80%) PySpark
5 77 (4.96%) TensorFlow
6 70 (4.51%) REST
7 69 (4.44%) LangChain
8 62 (3.99%) scikit-learn
9 58 (3.73%) Pandas
9 58 (3.73%) React
10 47 (3.03%) pytest
11 45 (2.90%) NumPy
12 37 (2.38%) FastAPI
12 37 (2.38%) LangGraph
13 33 (2.12%) .NET
14 27 (1.74%) Hugging Face
14 27 (1.74%) JSON
15 26 (1.67%) Model Context Protocol
16 22 (1.42%) RESTful
17 20 (1.29%) vLLM
Miscellaneous
1 199 (12.81%) Cloud Native
2 171 (11.01%) AI Agents
3 88 (5.67%) Algorithms
4 73 (4.70%) Onboarding
5 66 (4.25%) Distributed Systems
6 65 (4.19%) Product Ownership
7 38 (2.45%) Data Structures
8 36 (2.32%) Enterprise Software
9 28 (1.80%) Life Science
10 26 (1.67%) Data Protection Act
11 21 (1.35%) Hybrid Cloud
11 21 (1.35%) Management Information System
12 18 (1.16%) CMDB
12 18 (1.16%) Social Media
13 17 (1.09%) Taxonomies
14 16 (1.03%) Clustering
14 16 (1.03%) Credit Risk
15 15 (0.97%) Analytical Mindset
15 15 (0.97%) Virtual Team
16 13 (0.84%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 47 (3.03%) Linux
2 19 (1.22%) Windows
3 17 (1.09%) Unix
4 4 (0.26%) Android
4 4 (0.26%) Ubuntu
4 4 (0.26%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.19%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.064%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.064%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.064%) Robot Operating System
6 1 (0.064%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,289 (83.00%) AI
2 567 (36.51%) Data Science
3 493 (31.75%) CI/CD
4 469 (30.20%) Analytics
5 429 (27.62%) LLM
6 383 (24.66%) Generative AI
7 340 (21.89%) Data Pipeline
8 322 (20.73%) Agile
9 316 (20.35%) DevOps
10 290 (18.67%) MLOps
11 271 (17.45%) Data Engineering
12 258 (16.61%) Software Engineering
13 245 (15.78%) Decision-Making
14 244 (15.71%) Stakeholder Management
15 234 (15.07%) Roadmaps
16 233 (15.00%) Use Case
17 216 (13.91%) Infrastructure as Code
18 202 (13.01%) Data Modelling
19 199 (12.81%) Problem-Solving
20 196 (12.62%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Programming Languages
1 828 (53.32%) Python
2 389 (25.05%) SQL
3 108 (6.95%) Java
4 75 (4.83%) JavaScript
5 59 (3.80%) TypeScript
6 40 (2.58%) Bash
7 35 (2.25%) R
8 32 (2.06%) C#
9 28 (1.80%) PowerShell
10 25 (1.61%) Scala
11 20 (1.29%) C++
12 19 (1.22%) Go
13 17 (1.09%) Bicep
14 14 (0.90%) Shell Script
15 11 (0.71%) Cypher
15 11 (0.71%) PL/SQL
16 7 (0.45%) Gremlin
16 7 (0.45%) SPARQL
17 6 (0.39%) Kotlin
18 5 (0.32%) Perl
Qualifications
1 310 (19.96%) Security Cleared
2 244 (15.71%) SC Cleared
3 122 (7.86%) Degree
4 56 (3.61%) DV Cleared
5 54 (3.48%) Computer Science Degree
6 47 (3.03%) AWS Certification
7 39 (2.51%) Master's Degree
8 35 (2.25%) BPSS Clearance
9 30 (1.93%) CISSP
10 27 (1.74%) Azure Certification
11 26 (1.67%) PhD
12 18 (1.16%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 15 (0.97%) TOGAF Certification
14 13 (0.84%) CISM
15 10 (0.64%) Cisco Certification
15 10 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
16 9 (0.58%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
17 8 (0.52%) Microsoft Certified Professional
18 7 (0.45%) DBS Check
19 6 (0.39%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 223 (14.36%) Data Quality
2 56 (3.61%) QA
3 55 (3.54%) GDPR
4 29 (1.87%) NIST
5 18 (1.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 16 (1.03%) Accessibility
7 15 (0.97%) EU AI Act
8 10 (0.64%) SLA
9 9 (0.58%) GRC
9 9 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 8 (0.52%) GxP
11 7 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 6 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
12 6 (0.39%) HIPAA
13 5 (0.32%) Basel III
13 5 (0.32%) NCSC
13 5 (0.32%) PCI DSS
13 5 (0.32%) Solvency II
14 4 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
14 4 (0.26%) SOC 2
System Software
1 207 (13.33%) Docker
2 15 (0.97%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.84%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.64%) Hyper-V
4 10 (0.64%) IAG
5 8 (0.52%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (0.45%) 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 (0.064%) Firmware
10 1 (0.064%) zsh
Systems Management
1 275 (17.71%) Kubernetes
2 41 (2.64%) Ansible
3 26 (1.67%) Grafana
3 26 (1.67%) Kubeflow
4 20 (1.29%) Prometheus
5 6 (0.39%) Istio
5 6 (0.39%) systemd
6 5 (0.32%) Podman
7 3 (0.19%) Argo
7 3 (0.19%) Kibana
7 3 (0.19%) Nagios
7 3 (0.19%) NetBackup
7 3 (0.19%) Puppet
7 3 (0.19%) vCenter Server
7 3 (0.19%) vMotion
8 2 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 2 (0.13%) Packer
8 2 (0.13%) SCCM
8 2 (0.13%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.064%) Kustomize
Vendors
1 198 (12.75%) Databricks
2 148 (9.53%) Microsoft
3 100 (6.44%) Google
4 59 (3.80%) OpenAI
5 36 (2.32%) SAP
6 33 (2.12%) ServiceNow
7 29 (1.87%) Oracle
8 25 (1.61%) Foundry
9 22 (1.42%) Informatica
10 17 (1.09%) Dynatrace
11 14 (0.90%) VMware
12 10 (0.64%) IBM
12 10 (0.64%) Nexthink
12 10 (0.64%) Salesforce
12 10 (0.64%) Splunk
12 10 (0.64%) UiPath
13 7 (0.45%) Cisco
14 6 (0.39%) Pega
14 6 (0.39%) Sybase
15 5 (0.32%) New Relic