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

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 97 84 110
Rank change year-on-year -13 +26 +88
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,574 987 799
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.89% 2.99% 2.11%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.41% 3.30% 2.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 990 635 530
10th Percentile £405 £400 £391
25th Percentile £477 £466 £481
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% -8.33% +2.56%
75th Percentile £688 £688 £731
90th Percentile £776 £775 £789
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £525 £500
% change year-on-year +4.76% +5.00% -7.92%
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 25 19
10th Percentile £28.50 £27.10 £13.06
25th Percentile £39.91 £41.25 £25.93
Median hourly rate £77.00 £55.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +40.00% +19.10% -
75th Percentile £86.06 £80.00 £53.75
90th Percentile £88.75 £87.80 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £77.00 £61.36 £46.18
% change year-on-year +25.48% +32.88% -

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 46,126 29,916 32,545
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.57% 90.50% 85.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,740 18,573 19,640
10th Percentile £325 £295 £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 £638 £623 £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 3,322 1,863 1,307
10th Percentile £13.63 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.00 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.33
Median % change year-on-year +49.11% -37.63% -7.56%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.21 £65.00
90th Percentile £77.95 £65.23 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £22.32 £42.50
% change year-on-year +68.05% -47.49% -

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 -5 1,351 £582 +2.37% 5,961
London +10 898 £600 -2.28% 4,205
UK excluding London -18 514 £550 +4.76% 2,005
Work from Home -22 425 £600 +9.00% 2,216
North of England -4 154 £550 +14.58% 414
South East -15 136 £600 +9.09% 465
Scotland +6 94 £450 -10.45% 251
North West -21 68 £650 +36.84% 261
Yorkshire 0 66 £507 -1.31% 101
South West -12 52 £525 -4.55% 229
Midlands -41 49 £600 +14.29% 192
West Midlands -37 39 £588 +11.90% 114
East of England -51 29 £500 -9.09% 319
North East -25 21 £550 +29.41% 53
Wales -6 7 £530 -21.48% 66
East Midlands -13 6 £425 -8.11% 78
Northern Ireland +10 2 £467 -33.29% 83

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 (6.42%) Apache Spark
2 80 (5.08%) Apache Airflow
3 69 (4.38%) Apache
4 34 (2.16%) Jupyter
5 25 (1.59%) Confluence
6 10 (0.64%) SAS
7 7 (0.44%) IIS
8 6 (0.38%) ArcGIS
9 5 (0.32%) SharePoint
10 4 (0.25%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.25%) Palantir Foundry
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 (0.064%) Luigi
Applications
1 30 (1.91%) Chatbot
2 8 (0.51%) 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%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.064%) 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 (0.064%) Actimize
5 1 (0.064%) Dynamics CRM
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
1 523 (33.23%) Azure
2 511 (32.47%) AWS
3 304 (19.31%) GCP
4 111 (7.05%) Power Platform
5 103 (6.54%) Serverless
6 101 (6.42%) GitHub
7 93 (5.91%) Amazon S3
8 90 (5.72%) Snowflake
9 81 (5.15%) AWS Lambda
10 66 (4.19%) Amazon SageMaker
11 64 (4.07%) Amazon Bedrock
12 63 (4.00%) dbt
13 62 (3.94%) Azure Machine Learning
14 51 (3.24%) Azure AI
15 50 (3.18%) Azure DevOps
16 47 (2.99%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 46 (2.92%) SaaS
17 46 (2.92%) Vertex AI
18 45 (2.86%) Azure Data Factory
19 39 (2.48%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 22 (1.40%) Network Security
2 20 (1.27%) Broadband
3 19 (1.21%) Internet
4 14 (0.89%) DNS
5 13 (0.83%) Firewall
6 11 (0.70%) HTTP
7 9 (0.57%) DHCP
7 9 (0.57%) VPN
8 5 (0.32%) SMTP
8 5 (0.32%) TCP/IP
9 4 (0.25%) NAS
9 4 (0.25%) SAN
9 4 (0.25%) SMS
9 4 (0.25%) VLAN
10 3 (0.19%) CTI
10 3 (0.19%) MQTT
11 2 (0.13%) FTP
11 2 (0.13%) PCoIP
11 2 (0.13%) Remote Desktop
11 2 (0.13%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 101 (6.42%) Data Warehouse
1 101 (6.42%) Power BI
2 92 (5.84%) Data Lake
2 92 (5.84%) Metadata
3 75 (4.76%) BigQuery
4 62 (3.94%) Big Data
5 55 (3.49%) Delta Lake
6 52 (3.30%) Amazon Redshift
7 49 (3.11%) NoSQL
8 40 (2.54%) Tableau
9 37 (2.35%) PostgreSQL
10 32 (2.03%) Amazon Athena
11 28 (1.78%) Relational Database
12 26 (1.65%) Neo4j
13 25 (1.59%) Hadoop
14 22 (1.40%) Elasticsearch
15 21 (1.33%) MongoDB
16 19 (1.21%) Amazon RDS
17 17 (1.08%) DynamoDB
17 17 (1.08%) Looker
Development Applications
1 107 (6.80%) Git
2 56 (3.56%) GitLab
3 47 (2.99%) JIRA
4 41 (2.60%) MLflow
5 13 (0.83%) Jenkins
6 11 (0.70%) Claude Code
7 7 (0.44%) Vite
8 6 (0.38%) JMeter
9 5 (0.32%) Cypress.io
9 5 (0.32%) ERwin
9 5 (0.32%) Postman
9 5 (0.32%) RStudio
10 4 (0.25%) REST Assured
10 4 (0.25%) Selenium
11 3 (0.19%) ER Studio
11 3 (0.19%) Newman
11 3 (0.19%) Pylint
12 2 (0.13%) Applitools
12 2 (0.13%) Locust
12 2 (0.13%) Terragrunt
General
1 363 (23.06%) Social Skills
2 318 (20.20%) Finance
3 241 (15.31%) Analytical Skills
4 149 (9.47%) Public Sector
5 126 (8.01%) Banking
6 40 (2.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 40 (2.54%) Marketing
7 29 (1.84%) Retail
8 27 (1.72%) Pharmaceutical
8 27 (1.72%) Telecoms
9 24 (1.52%) Manufacturing
10 23 (1.46%) Aerospace
10 23 (1.46%) Legal
11 22 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
12 20 (1.27%) Financial Institution
13 19 (1.21%) Front Office
14 17 (1.08%) Investment Banking
15 16 (1.02%) Billing
16 15 (0.95%) Documentation Skills
16 15 (0.95%) Law
Job Titles
1 285 (18.11%) Senior
2 256 (16.26%) Architect
3 192 (12.20%) Data Engineer
4 191 (12.13%) Data Scientist
5 174 (11.05%) Lead
6 148 (9.40%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 106 (6.73%) Machine Learning Engineer
8 72 (4.57%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
8 72 (4.57%) Solutions Architect
9 70 (4.45%) Python Engineer
10 67 (4.26%) Developer
11 66 (4.19%) Data Architect
12 59 (3.75%) Senior Data Engineer
13 58 (3.68%) Platform Engineer
14 57 (3.62%) Analyst
15 53 (3.37%) Senior Data Scientist
16 47 (2.99%) Security Architect
17 46 (2.92%) Software Engineer
18 41 (2.60%) DevOps Engineer
19 37 (2.35%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 206 (13.09%) Terraform
2 106 (6.73%) Kafka
3 105 (6.67%) PyTorch
4 95 (6.04%) PySpark
5 80 (5.08%) TensorFlow
6 76 (4.83%) REST
7 74 (4.70%) LangChain
8 62 (3.94%) scikit-learn
9 59 (3.75%) React
10 53 (3.37%) pytest
11 52 (3.30%) Pandas
12 41 (2.60%) LangGraph
12 41 (2.60%) NumPy
13 36 (2.29%) FastAPI
14 29 (1.84%) .NET
15 28 (1.78%) JSON
16 27 (1.72%) Hugging Face
16 27 (1.72%) Model Context Protocol
17 21 (1.33%) LlamaIndex
17 21 (1.33%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 206 (13.09%) Cloud Native
2 172 (10.93%) AI Agents
3 105 (6.67%) Algorithms
4 77 (4.89%) Onboarding
5 69 (4.38%) Distributed Systems
6 65 (4.13%) Product Ownership
7 40 (2.54%) Data Structures
7 40 (2.54%) Enterprise Software
8 29 (1.84%) Data Protection Act
8 29 (1.84%) Life Science
9 23 (1.46%) Management Information System
10 21 (1.33%) Hybrid Cloud
11 19 (1.21%) Social Media
12 18 (1.14%) CMDB
13 17 (1.08%) Clustering
13 17 (1.08%) Legacy Systems
13 17 (1.08%) Taxonomies
14 16 (1.02%) Analytical Mindset
14 16 (1.02%) Credit Risk
15 15 (0.95%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 46 (2.92%) Linux
2 21 (1.33%) Windows
3 16 (1.02%) 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 (0.064%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.064%) Robot Operating System
6 1 (0.064%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,301 (82.66%) AI
2 568 (36.09%) Data Science
3 507 (32.21%) CI/CD
4 480 (30.50%) Analytics
5 431 (27.38%) LLM
6 392 (24.90%) Generative AI
7 363 (23.06%) Data Pipeline
8 334 (21.22%) DevOps
9 326 (20.71%) Agile
10 304 (19.31%) MLOps
11 289 (18.36%) Data Engineering
12 266 (16.90%) Software Engineering
13 247 (15.69%) Stakeholder Management
14 245 (15.57%) Use Case
15 242 (15.37%) Decision-Making
16 239 (15.18%) Roadmaps
17 218 (13.85%) Infrastructure as Code
18 211 (13.41%) Data Modelling
18 211 (13.41%) Problem-Solving
19 209 (13.28%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Programming Languages
1 839 (53.30%) Python
2 415 (26.37%) SQL
3 110 (6.99%) Java
4 76 (4.83%) JavaScript
5 64 (4.07%) TypeScript
6 43 (2.73%) Bash
7 34 (2.16%) R
8 31 (1.97%) C#
9 30 (1.91%) PowerShell
10 26 (1.65%) Scala
11 20 (1.27%) Go
12 19 (1.21%) C++
13 16 (1.02%) Bicep
14 14 (0.89%) Shell Script
15 11 (0.70%) Cypher
15 11 (0.70%) PL/SQL
16 8 (0.51%) Gremlin
17 7 (0.44%) SPARQL
18 5 (0.32%) Kotlin
18 5 (0.32%) Perl
Qualifications
1 309 (19.63%) Security Cleared
2 242 (15.37%) SC Cleared
3 133 (8.45%) Degree
4 58 (3.68%) Computer Science Degree
5 56 (3.56%) DV Cleared
6 52 (3.30%) AWS Certification
7 40 (2.54%) BPSS Clearance
7 40 (2.54%) Master's Degree
8 30 (1.91%) Azure Certification
8 30 (1.91%) CISSP
9 27 (1.72%) PhD
10 19 (1.21%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 15 (0.95%) TOGAF Certification
12 13 (0.83%) CISM
13 10 (0.64%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 10 (0.64%) Cisco Certification
13 10 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
14 9 (0.57%) Microsoft Certified Professional
15 8 (0.51%) DBS Check
16 5 (0.32%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 233 (14.80%) Data Quality
2 54 (3.43%) GDPR
3 53 (3.37%) QA
4 29 (1.84%) NIST
5 19 (1.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 18 (1.14%) Accessibility
7 13 (0.83%) EU AI Act
8 10 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 42001
8 10 (0.64%) NCSC
8 10 (0.64%) SLA
9 9 (0.57%) GRC
10 7 (0.44%) GxP
10 7 (0.44%) PCI DSS
10 7 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 6 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
11 6 (0.38%) HIPAA
12 5 (0.32%) Basel III
12 5 (0.32%) Solvency II
13 4 (0.25%) SOC 2
14 3 (0.19%) IFRS
System Software
1 215 (13.66%) Docker
2 16 (1.02%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.64%) Hyper-V
4 10 (0.64%) 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 (0.064%) Firmware
10 1 (0.064%) zsh
Systems Management
1 286 (18.17%) Kubernetes
2 47 (2.99%) Ansible
3 28 (1.78%) Kubeflow
4 27 (1.72%) Grafana
5 22 (1.40%) 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 (0.064%) Cilium
Vendors
1 207 (13.15%) Databricks
2 159 (10.10%) Microsoft
3 107 (6.80%) Google
4 66 (4.19%) OpenAI
5 37 (2.35%) SAP
6 34 (2.16%) Oracle
6 34 (2.16%) ServiceNow
7 27 (1.72%) Foundry
8 21 (1.33%) Informatica
9 19 (1.21%) Dynatrace
10 14 (0.89%) VMware
11 12 (0.76%) Salesforce
12 11 (0.70%) IBM
12 11 (0.70%) Splunk
13 10 (0.64%) Nexthink
13 10 (0.64%) UiPath
14 7 (0.44%) Cisco
15 6 (0.38%) New Relic
15 6 (0.38%) Pega
16 5 (0.32%) Sybase