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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 15 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 95 108 198
Rank change year-on-year +13 +90 +7
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 886 813 681
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 2.73% 2.13% 1.36%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.02% 2.49% 1.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 567 552 497
10th Percentile £400 £400 £413
25th Percentile £475 £499 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +4.35% -5.93%
75th Percentile £680 £731 £738
90th Percentile £775 £788 £875
UK excluding London median daily rate £545 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +9.00% -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 19 22
10th Percentile £25.75 £13.06 -
25th Percentile £44.13 £25.93 -
Median hourly rate £62.00 £46.18 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +34.26% - +14.73%
75th Percentile £78.44 £53.75 -
90th Percentile £87.25 - £84.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £46.18 £46.18
% change year-on-year +51.58% - +4.95%

All Process and 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 29,370 32,658 44,778
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.49% 85.62% 89.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,234 20,154 30,464
10th Percentile £300 £310 £313
25th Percentile £403 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,777 1,475 1,557
10th Percentile £14.23 £14.84 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.00 £18.78
Median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -41.51% +1.18% +47.06%
75th Percentile £43.75 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £66.70 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £43.00 £40.50
% change year-on-year -47.67% +6.17% +76.09%

Machine Learning
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Machine Learning as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Machine Learning 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 15 September 2025.

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 15 September 2025.

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 15 September 2025. 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 +17 749 £575 -4.17% 1,544
London -1 474 £600 -5.14% 965
UK excluding London +67 313 £545 +9.00% 956
Work from Home +36 296 £550 - 729
North of England +10 87 £475 -4.04% 183
South East +48 70 £575 +10.79% 472
North West +18 56 £475 -0.63% 118
Scotland +20 51 £525 +10.53% 73
East of England +24 34 £575 +9.52% 74
Midlands +4 34 £550 +54.49% 59
South West +27 33 £575 -4.17% 62
West Midlands +6 26 £575 +27.78% 36
Yorkshire -9 25 £490 -12.46% 52
North East -10 7 £425 -14.14% 17
East Midlands -5 6 £463 +29.92% 21
Wales +2 4 £675 +175.51% 22
Northern Ireland -6 1 £700 - 20

Machine Learning
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 88 (9.93%) Apache Spark
2 42 (4.74%) Apache Airflow
3 21 (2.37%) Apache
3 21 (2.37%) Jupyter
4 14 (1.58%) Confluence
5 9 (1.02%) Microsoft Exchange
6 7 (0.79%) Apache Pig
7 4 (0.45%) IIS
7 4 (0.45%) SharePoint
8 3 (0.34%) Appian
8 3 (0.34%) CMS
8 3 (0.34%) SAS
9 2 (0.23%) Camunda
10 1 (0.11%) Apache Pulsar
10 1 (0.11%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.11%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.11%) Headless CMS
10 1 (0.11%) IBM Domino
10 1 (0.11%) nginx
10 1 (0.11%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 25 (2.82%) Chatbot
2 9 (1.02%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (0.68%) Simulink
4 5 (0.56%) Microsoft Office
5 4 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.11%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.11%) GNU Octave
6 1 (0.11%) MadCap Flare
6 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.11%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.11%) Sketch
6 1 (0.11%) Trello
Business Applications
1 10 (1.13%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.56%) SAP PM
3 3 (0.34%) Distributed Ledger
4 2 (0.23%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.23%) SAP ERP
5 1 (0.11%) IBM Planning Analytics
5 1 (0.11%) Primavera
5 1 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.11%) SAP GRC
5 1 (0.11%) SAP IBP
5 1 (0.11%) Teamcenter
5 1 (0.11%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 326 (36.79%) Azure
2 317 (35.78%) AWS
3 157 (17.72%) GCP
4 67 (7.56%) Power Platform
4 67 (7.56%) Serverless
5 60 (6.77%) Azure Machine Learning
6 51 (5.76%) Amazon S3
6 51 (5.76%) Amazon SageMaker
7 50 (5.64%) AWS Lambda
8 48 (5.42%) Azure DevOps
9 44 (4.97%) Azure AI
9 44 (4.97%) Azure Data Factory
10 43 (4.85%) GitHub
11 35 (3.95%) GitHub Actions
12 34 (3.84%) Vertex AI
13 33 (3.72%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 33 (3.72%) Snowflake
14 27 (3.05%) Azure AKS
14 27 (3.05%) dbt
14 27 (3.05%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 21 (2.37%) DNS
2 17 (1.92%) Firewall
2 17 (1.92%) SMTP
3 14 (1.58%) HTTP
4 12 (1.35%) Network Security
5 11 (1.24%) VPN
6 9 (1.02%) DHCP
6 9 (1.02%) SSL
7 8 (0.90%) FTP
8 7 (0.79%) Ethernet
9 5 (0.56%) LTE
10 4 (0.45%) Radio Access Network
11 3 (0.34%) 4G
11 3 (0.34%) 5G
11 3 (0.34%) GPON
11 3 (0.34%) Internet
11 3 (0.34%) MPLS
11 3 (0.34%) MQTT
11 3 (0.34%) VoIP
11 3 (0.34%) xDSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 87 (9.82%) Big Data
2 65 (7.34%) Power BI
3 52 (5.87%) Data Warehouse
4 47 (5.30%) NoSQL
5 44 (4.97%) PostgreSQL
5 44 (4.97%) Tableau
6 41 (4.63%) Data Lake
7 39 (4.40%) Hadoop
8 34 (3.84%) BigQuery
9 29 (3.27%) MongoDB
10 23 (2.60%) Elasticsearch
11 22 (2.48%) Metadata
12 20 (2.26%) Data Mining
13 17 (1.92%) Amazon Athena
13 17 (1.92%) Amazon RDS
13 17 (1.92%) Delta Lake
13 17 (1.92%) DynamoDB
14 14 (1.58%) Azure SQL Database
15 13 (1.47%) Apache Hive
16 12 (1.35%) GIS
Development Applications
1 60 (6.77%) Git
2 51 (5.76%) MLflow
3 45 (5.08%) Jenkins
4 29 (3.27%) JIRA
5 25 (2.82%) GitLab
6 15 (1.69%) JUnit
7 10 (1.13%) SonarQube
8 8 (0.90%) JMeter
8 8 (0.90%) Selenium
9 6 (0.68%) Mockito
10 5 (0.56%) Artifactory
11 4 (0.45%) Cucumber
11 4 (0.45%) Cypress.io
11 4 (0.45%) Gatling
11 4 (0.45%) Snyk
12 3 (0.34%) CMake
12 3 (0.34%) Locust
12 3 (0.34%) Postman
12 3 (0.34%) Robot Framework
12 3 (0.34%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 266 (30.02%) Social Skills
2 166 (18.74%) Finance
3 111 (12.53%) Analytical Skills
4 82 (9.26%) Public Sector
5 56 (6.32%) Banking
6 42 (4.74%) Marketing
7 34 (3.84%) Legal
8 31 (3.50%) Telecoms
9 26 (2.93%) Investment Banking
9 26 (2.93%) Pharmaceutical
9 26 (2.93%) Retail
10 21 (2.37%) Manufacturing
11 20 (2.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 16 (1.81%) Influencing Skills
13 11 (1.24%) Documentation Skills
14 10 (1.13%) Aerospace
14 10 (1.13%) Electronics
14 10 (1.13%) Games
15 9 (1.02%) Advertising
16 8 (0.90%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 127 (14.33%) Architect
2 123 (13.88%) Data Scientist
3 106 (11.96%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
4 100 (11.29%) Developer
5 80 (9.03%) Data Engineer
6 76 (8.58%) Senior
7 55 (6.21%) Lead
8 48 (5.42%) Analyst
9 42 (4.74%) Python Engineer
10 41 (4.63%) Machine Learning Engineer
11 37 (4.18%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
11 37 (4.18%) Solutions Architect
12 27 (3.05%) Software Engineer
13 26 (2.93%) Python Developer
14 25 (2.82%) Data Architect
15 22 (2.48%) Security Architect
15 22 (2.48%) Senior Data Scientist
16 21 (2.37%) Azure Engineer
16 21 (2.37%) Consultant
16 21 (2.37%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 120 (13.54%) PyTorch
2 109 (12.30%) TensorFlow
3 86 (9.71%) Pandas
4 78 (8.80%) scikit-learn
5 72 (8.13%) Kafka
6 67 (7.56%) LangChain
7 56 (6.32%) Hugging Face
8 54 (6.09%) NumPy
9 48 (5.42%) FastAPI
9 48 (5.42%) React
10 36 (4.06%) RESTful
11 33 (3.72%) PySpark
12 27 (3.05%) REST
13 22 (2.48%) LangGraph
14 20 (2.26%) AWS CDK
14 20 (2.26%) Flask
15 19 (2.14%) OAuth
15 19 (2.14%) OpenCV
15 19 (2.14%) Spring
16 18 (2.03%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 143 (16.14%) Algorithms
2 76 (8.58%) Cloud Native
3 56 (6.32%) AI Agents
4 36 (4.06%) Distributed Systems
5 29 (3.27%) Data Protection Act
6 27 (3.05%) Product Ownership
7 26 (2.93%) Distributed Computing
8 19 (2.14%) Management Information System
9 18 (2.03%) Data Structures
10 17 (1.92%) Analytical Mindset
10 17 (1.92%) Onboarding
11 16 (1.81%) Enterprise Software
11 16 (1.81%) Legacy Systems
12 15 (1.69%) IoT
12 15 (1.69%) Life Science
13 14 (1.58%) Virtual Team
14 13 (1.47%) Data Centre
14 13 (1.47%) Hybrid Cloud
15 12 (1.35%) Cyber Threat
16 11 (1.24%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 28 (3.16%) Linux
2 16 (1.81%) Windows
3 9 (1.02%) Unix
3 9 (1.02%) Windows Server
4 6 (0.68%) VMS
5 4 (0.45%) Android
5 4 (0.45%) Apple iOS
5 4 (0.45%) Windows Server 2003
6 2 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.11%) Robot Operating System
7 1 (0.11%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 627 (70.77%) Artificial Intelligence
2 354 (39.95%) Data Science
3 228 (25.73%) LLM
4 225 (25.40%) Analytics
5 223 (25.17%) CI/CD
6 215 (24.27%) Agile
7 183 (20.65%) DevOps
8 168 (18.96%) Generative AI
9 145 (16.37%) Problem-Solving
10 133 (15.01%) Data Pipeline
10 133 (15.01%) MLOps
11 123 (13.88%) Visualisation
12 118 (13.32%) Data Engineering
13 104 (11.74%) Decision-Making
14 101 (11.40%) Natural Language Processing
15 98 (11.06%) Computer Science
15 98 (11.06%) Data Governance
16 97 (10.95%) Software Engineering
17 95 (10.72%) ETL
18 93 (10.50%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 522 (58.92%) Python
2 215 (24.27%) SQL
3 80 (9.03%) R
4 71 (8.01%) Java
5 56 (6.32%) TypeScript
6 44 (4.97%) JavaScript
7 32 (3.61%) Scala
8 30 (3.39%) C++
9 29 (3.27%) PowerShell
10 20 (2.26%) C#
11 16 (1.81%) Bicep
12 13 (1.47%) C
12 13 (1.47%) MATLAB
13 11 (1.24%) Go
14 8 (0.90%) Bash
15 7 (0.79%) Kusto Query Language
15 7 (0.79%) Shell Script
16 6 (0.68%) SystemVerilog
16 6 (0.68%) Tcl
17 5 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 130 (14.67%) Degree
2 125 (14.11%) Security Cleared
3 90 (10.16%) SC Cleared
4 53 (5.98%) Master's Degree
5 37 (4.18%) PhD
6 31 (3.50%) Computer Science Degree
7 29 (3.27%) DV Cleared
8 26 (2.93%) AWS Certification
9 24 (2.71%) Azure Certification
10 15 (1.69%) MCP
11 11 (1.24%) BPSS Clearance
11 11 (1.24%) CISSP
12 6 (0.68%) CISM
12 6 (0.68%) HNC
12 6 (0.68%) HND
13 5 (0.56%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 4 (0.45%) TOGAF Certification
15 3 (0.34%) Cisco Certification
15 3 (0.34%) Oracle Certification
16 2 (0.23%) SAP Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 62 (7.00%) Data Quality
2 60 (6.77%) GDPR
3 27 (3.05%) NIST
4 25 (2.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 25 (2.82%) QA
5 19 (2.14%) Accessibility
6 18 (2.03%) EU AI Act
7 12 (1.35%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 7 (0.79%) HIPAA
9 6 (0.68%) DO-254
10 4 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
10 4 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 4 (0.45%) SOC 2
11 3 (0.34%) Disclosure Scotland
12 2 (0.23%) GRC
12 2 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 2 (0.23%) NCSC
12 2 (0.23%) NIST 800
12 2 (0.23%) OASIS TOSCA
13 1 (0.11%) PMO
System Software
1 128 (14.45%) Docker
2 14 (1.58%) Active Directory
3 12 (1.35%) Virtual Machines
3 12 (1.35%) VMware Infrastructure
4 11 (1.24%) Hyper-V
5 9 (1.02%) BitLocker
5 9 (1.02%) Microsoft App-V
5 9 (1.02%) Terminal Services
5 9 (1.02%) VMware ESXi
6 6 (0.68%) Firmware
7 2 (0.23%) KVM
7 2 (0.23%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.11%) GPFS
8 1 (0.11%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 160 (18.06%) Kubernetes
2 86 (9.71%) Terraform
3 35 (3.95%) Grafana
4 30 (3.39%) Ansible
5 19 (2.14%) Kubeflow
5 19 (2.14%) Prometheus
6 15 (1.69%) Kibana
7 10 (1.13%) Puppet
8 9 (1.02%) logstash
8 9 (1.02%) Nagios
8 9 (1.02%) vCenter Server
8 9 (1.02%) vMotion
9 8 (0.90%) ITRS Geneos
10 7 (0.79%) Argo
11 5 (0.56%) Kustomize
12 4 (0.45%) Rsyslog
12 4 (0.45%) SCOM
13 3 (0.34%) Cilium
13 3 (0.34%) Progress Chef
14 2 (0.23%) Amdocs OSS
Vendors
1 113 (12.75%) Microsoft
2 107 (12.08%) Databricks
3 72 (8.13%) Google
4 47 (5.30%) OpenAI
5 28 (3.16%) SAP
6 23 (2.60%) Splunk
7 14 (1.58%) Oracle
8 13 (1.47%) Foundry
8 13 (1.47%) VMware
9 10 (1.13%) Dynatrace
9 10 (1.13%) HP
10 9 (1.02%) Citrix
10 9 (1.02%) Salesforce
10 9 (1.02%) Symantec
11 8 (0.90%) Solace
12 7 (0.79%) Informatica
12 7 (0.79%) Sage
13 6 (0.68%) Altera
13 6 (0.68%) Intel
13 6 (0.68%) Xilinx