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

6 months to
5 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 77 105 169
Rank change year-on-year +28 +64 +64
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,386 758 628
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.26% 2.50% 1.43%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.77% 2.78% 1.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 857 488 462
10th Percentile £400 £363 £413
25th Percentile £473 £456 £473
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £575 £574
Median % change year-on-year - +0.22% -7.93%
75th Percentile £688 £725 £700
90th Percentile £777 £854 £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 25
10th Percentile £41.85 £23.65 £41.16
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 £66.25
90th Percentile £95.00 £83.81 £69.45
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 36,798 27,287 38,212
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.45% 90.16% 86.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,332 17,120 24,896
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 £482 £492 £500
% change year-on-year -2.03% -1.60% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,175 894 2,252
10th Percentile £14.64 £15.62 £13.25
25th Percentile £18.25 £21.05 £16.11
Median hourly rate £28.00 £32.50 £32.85
Median % change year-on-year -13.85% -1.05% -6.16%
75th Percentile £63.75 £63.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £73.63 £75.00 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.76 £33.28
% change year-on-year -20.81% -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 5 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 5 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 5 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 +22 1,160 £575 -4.17% 1,428
London +29 763 £600 -3.61% 721
UK excluding London +35 454 £538 +2.38% 956
Work from Home +30 438 £575 +7.48% 691
North of England -2 111 £527 +5.45% 199
South East -3 96 £588 +11.90% 317
Scotland +65 87 £501 +11.39% 46
East of England +6 71 £550 -8.33% 125
North West +9 68 £534 +6.80% 99
Midlands -12 61 £550 +29.41% 130
West Midlands -22 41 £550 +33.33% 58
South West -27 35 £550 -17.60% 118
Yorkshire -46 33 £525 - 68
East Midlands -14 19 £525 +10.53% 70
Wales -6 17 £738 +31.11% 30
North East -7 13 £563 +57.12% 34
Northern Ireland - 1 £650 - 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
1 123 (8.87%) Apache Spark
2 86 (6.20%) Apache Airflow
3 57 (4.11%) Apache
4 29 (2.09%) Jupyter
5 13 (0.94%) 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 (2.81%) Chatbot
2 16 (1.15%) 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%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 611 (44.08%) Azure
2 508 (36.65%) AWS
3 259 (18.69%) GCP
4 138 (9.96%) Power Platform
5 114 (8.23%) GitHub
6 110 (7.94%) Serverless
7 105 (7.58%) Azure Machine Learning
8 97 (7.00%) Azure AI
9 81 (5.84%) Azure DevOps
10 77 (5.56%) Amazon SageMaker
11 75 (5.41%) Snowflake
12 68 (4.91%) Amazon S3
13 63 (4.55%) Vertex AI
14 55 (3.97%) Azure Data Factory
15 54 (3.90%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 53 (3.82%) GitHub Actions
17 52 (3.75%) AWS Lambda
18 46 (3.32%) AWS CloudFormation
19 44 (3.17%) Azure AKS
20 40 (2.89%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 16 (1.15%) 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 64 (4.62%) Big Data
5 58 (4.18%) NoSQL
6 55 (3.97%) Metadata
7 52 (3.75%) BigQuery
8 46 (3.32%) PostgreSQL
9 40 (2.89%) Tableau
10 36 (2.60%) Pinecone
11 35 (2.53%) Hadoop
12 28 (2.02%) Delta Lake
12 28 (2.02%) SQL Server
13 26 (1.88%) Relational Database
13 26 (1.88%) Weaviate
14 23 (1.66%) Mixpanel
15 22 (1.59%) Amazon Athena
15 22 (1.59%) Elasticsearch
16 18 (1.30%) Amazon Redshift
17 17 (1.23%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 117 (8.44%) Git
2 95 (6.85%) MLflow
3 39 (2.81%) Jenkins
4 27 (1.95%) GitLab
4 27 (1.95%) JIRA
5 15 (1.08%) Selenium
6 12 (0.87%) JMeter
6 12 (0.87%) Visual Studio
7 8 (0.58%) PyCharm
8 7 (0.51%) Gradle
8 7 (0.51%) SonarQube
9 5 (0.36%) Cypress.io
9 5 (0.36%) Maven
9 5 (0.36%) MSTest
10 4 (0.29%) Android Studio
10 4 (0.29%) Bitbucket
10 4 (0.29%) Oracle APEX
10 4 (0.29%) RStudio
11 3 (0.22%) Postman
12 2 (0.14%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 354 (25.54%) Social Skills
2 294 (21.21%) Finance
3 156 (11.26%) Analytical Skills
4 142 (10.25%) Public Sector
5 96 (6.93%) Banking
6 43 (3.10%) Pharmaceutical
7 41 (2.96%) Marketing
8 34 (2.45%) Retail
9 32 (2.31%) Investment Banking
10 29 (2.09%) Influencing Skills
11 28 (2.02%) Legal
12 25 (1.80%) 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%) Law
Job Titles
1 203 (14.65%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
2 193 (13.92%) Data Scientist
3 177 (12.77%) Architect
4 176 (12.70%) Senior
5 137 (9.88%) Data Engineer
6 126 (9.09%) Developer
7 117 (8.44%) Lead
8 65 (4.69%) Python Engineer
9 64 (4.62%) Analyst
9 64 (4.62%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
10 60 (4.33%) Machine Learning Engineer
11 56 (4.04%) Software Engineer
12 49 (3.54%) Data Architect
13 41 (2.96%) Gen AI Engineer
14 39 (2.81%) Senior Data Scientist
14 39 (2.81%) Solutions Architect
15 36 (2.60%) Azure Engineer
16 34 (2.45%) Consultant
17 30 (2.16%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
18 25 (1.80%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 243 (17.53%) PyTorch
2 198 (14.29%) TensorFlow
3 143 (10.32%) scikit-learn
4 119 (8.59%) Pandas
5 89 (6.42%) LangChain
6 86 (6.20%) NumPy
7 83 (5.99%) React
8 71 (5.12%) FastAPI
9 61 (4.40%) .NET
10 60 (4.33%) Hugging Face
10 60 (4.33%) Model Context Protocol
10 60 (4.33%) PySpark
11 59 (4.26%) REST
12 57 (4.11%) Kafka
13 54 (3.90%) LangGraph
14 49 (3.54%) Node.js
15 45 (3.25%) RESTful
16 39 (2.81%) AngularJS
17 33 (2.38%) Faiss
18 31 (2.24%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 192 (13.85%) Cloud Native
2 185 (13.35%) Algorithms
3 118 (8.51%) AI Agents
4 50 (3.61%) Product Ownership
5 49 (3.54%) Onboarding
6 38 (2.74%) Distributed Systems
7 37 (2.67%) Data Protection Act
8 30 (2.16%) Legacy Systems
9 25 (1.80%) Distributed Computing
10 24 (1.73%) Hybrid Cloud
11 23 (1.66%) Data Structures
12 22 (1.59%) Life Science
13 19 (1.37%) Genomics
14 18 (1.30%) Analytical Mindset
15 17 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
15 17 (1.23%) Fixed Income
16 15 (1.08%) Management Information System
17 13 (0.94%) Credit Risk
17 13 (0.94%) Taxonomies
18 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 1,083 (78.14%) AI
2 534 (38.53%) Data Science
3 399 (28.79%) CI/CD
4 389 (28.07%) LLM
5 378 (27.27%) Analytics
6 308 (22.22%) DevOps
7 299 (21.57%) Data Pipeline
8 293 (21.14%) Agile
9 283 (20.42%) Generative AI
10 267 (19.26%) MLOps
11 261 (18.83%) Data Engineering
12 234 (16.88%) Problem-Solving
13 200 (14.43%) Natural Language Processing
14 189 (13.64%) Software Engineering
15 186 (13.42%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
16 183 (13.20%) Use Case
17 172 (12.41%) Containerisation
18 163 (11.76%) Prompt Engineering
19 158 (11.40%) Data Modelling
20 155 (11.18%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 861 (62.12%) Python
2 342 (24.68%) SQL
3 90 (6.49%) Java
4 79 (5.70%) C#
5 74 (5.34%) R
6 61 (4.40%) JavaScript
7 56 (4.04%) 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
1 227 (16.38%) Security Cleared
2 183 (13.20%) Degree
3 162 (11.69%) SC Cleared
4 80 (5.77%) Master's Degree
5 47 (3.39%) PhD
6 42 (3.03%) Computer Science Degree
7 37 (2.67%) DV Cleared
8 30 (2.16%) BPSS Clearance
9 23 (1.66%) AWS Certification
9 23 (1.66%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 19 (1.37%) Azure Certification
11 9 (0.65%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 8 (0.58%) CISSP
13 7 (0.51%) ISTQB
14 6 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
15 5 (0.36%) HNC
15 5 (0.36%) HND
15 5 (0.36%) TOGAF Certification
16 4 (0.29%) CISM
16 4 (0.29%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 124 (8.95%) Data Quality
2 53 (3.82%) GDPR
2 53 (3.82%) QA
3 37 (2.67%) NIST
4 26 (1.88%) EU AI Act
5 20 (1.44%) Accessibility
6 14 (1.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 7 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
7 7 (0.51%) GRC
8 6 (0.43%) NCSC
9 5 (0.36%) DO-254
9 5 (0.36%) HIPAA
9 5 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 4 (0.29%) Disclosure Scotland
10 4 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 4 (0.29%) PCI DSS
10 4 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 3 (0.22%) SOC 2
12 2 (0.14%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 2 (0.14%) NIST 800
System Software
1 216 (15.58%) 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
1 215 (15.51%) Kubernetes
2 144 (10.39%) 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%) Cilium
12 1 (0.072%) HP Fortify
12 1 (0.072%) Opsgenie
12 1 (0.072%) SELinux
Vendors
1 201 (14.50%) Databricks
2 189 (13.64%) Microsoft
3 116 (8.37%) Google
4 102 (7.36%) OpenAI
5 76 (5.48%) 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
11 11 (0.79%) Salesforce
12 10 (0.72%) NVIDIA
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