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 23 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 81 108 126
Rank change year-on-year +27 +18 +85
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,632 818 769
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.10% 2.50% 1.87%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.64% 2.77% 2.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,020 511 541
10th Percentile £413 £400 £413
25th Percentile £492 £463 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £555 £588
Median % change year-on-year +3.60% -5.53% -
75th Percentile £688 £678 £750
90th Percentile £775 £819 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £550 £514
% change year-on-year - +7.06% -6.59%
Number of hourly rates quoted 49 23 18
10th Percentile £36.00 £45.00 £13.06
25th Percentile £50.00 £52.86 £31.13
Median hourly rate £72.50 £75.00 £46.84
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% +60.12% +1.43%
75th Percentile £83.75 £81.01 £53.75
90th Percentile £89.00 £88.00 £76.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.72 £77.50 £52.50
% change year-on-year -10.04% +47.62% +13.69%

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 44,826 29,510 35,120
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.01% 90.34% 85.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,774 18,532 22,551
10th Percentile £325 £300 £306
25th Percentile £419 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.11%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,642 1,578 2,152
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £13.25
25th Percentile £20.01 £17.46 £17.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £39.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -36.33% -7.06%
75th Percentile £68.55 £50.94 £62.76
90th Percentile £83.00 £69.13 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £24.34 £40.00
% change year-on-year +84.88% -39.15% -1.45%

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 23 July 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 23 July 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 23 July 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 1,373 £575 - 1,807
London +32 911 £588 +2.17% 1,205
UK excluding London +6 527 £550 - 807
Work from Home +3 435 £600 +9.09% 654
North of England +3 147 £570 +15.97% 181
South East -24 130 £600 +4.35% 254
Scotland +49 101 £440 -12.00% 61
North West -11 78 £608 +13.02% 106
Midlands -17 68 £550 +10.00% 63
Yorkshire -7 56 £525 +7.09% 51
West Midlands -26 54 £550 -6.38% 38
South West -32 46 £538 -6.52% 130
East of England -25 35 £513 -18.00% 86
Wales -9 16 £540 -20.00% 28
North East -30 15 £463 +8.82% 27
East Midlands -8 12 £700 +64.71% 25
Northern Ireland - 1 £334 - 19

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 92 (5.64%) Apache Spark
2 73 (4.47%) Apache Airflow
3 46 (2.82%) Apache
4 34 (2.08%) Jupyter
5 22 (1.35%) Confluence
6 8 (0.49%) SAS
7 6 (0.37%) ArcGIS
8 5 (0.31%) Appian
8 5 (0.31%) CMS
8 5 (0.31%) Headless CMS
8 5 (0.31%) Palantir Foundry
8 5 (0.31%) SharePoint
9 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
10 2 (0.12%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
11 1 (0.061%) Apache Pulsar
11 1 (0.061%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.061%) Apache Synapse
11 1 (0.061%) Luigi
11 1 (0.061%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 32 (1.96%) Chatbot
2 13 (0.80%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.37%) Microsoft Office
4 6 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.31%) CPLEX
6 1 (0.061%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.061%) Notion
6 1 (0.061%) Simulink
6 1 (0.061%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 11 (0.67%) SAP IBP
2 8 (0.49%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
4 2 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.061%) Dynamics CRM
5 1 (0.061%) NetSuite
5 1 (0.061%) OpenText VIM for SAP
5 1 (0.061%) Oracle Cash Management
5 1 (0.061%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.061%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.061%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.061%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.061%) SAP APO
5 1 (0.061%) SAP ERP
5 1 (0.061%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 576 (35.29%) AWS
2 574 (35.17%) Azure
3 302 (18.50%) GCP
4 141 (8.64%) Power Platform
5 121 (7.41%) Serverless
6 112 (6.86%) GitHub
7 105 (6.43%) Amazon S3
8 92 (5.64%) AWS Lambda
9 90 (5.51%) Amazon SageMaker
10 80 (4.90%) Azure Machine Learning
10 80 (4.90%) Snowflake
11 79 (4.84%) Azure AI
12 60 (3.68%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 58 (3.55%) Amazon Bedrock
14 54 (3.31%) Azure DevOps
15 53 (3.25%) Vertex AI
16 49 (3.00%) GitHub Actions
17 46 (2.82%) dbt
18 45 (2.76%) Azure Data Factory
19 43 (2.63%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 20 (1.23%) Firewall
2 16 (0.98%) Network Security
3 14 (0.86%) Internet
4 10 (0.61%) DNS
5 9 (0.55%) VPN
6 8 (0.49%) DHCP
7 6 (0.37%) Broadband
8 5 (0.31%) HTTP
9 4 (0.25%) NAS
9 4 (0.25%) SAN
10 3 (0.18%) MQTT
10 3 (0.18%) SMTP
10 3 (0.18%) TCP/IP
10 3 (0.18%) VLAN
11 2 (0.12%) 4G
11 2 (0.12%) 5G
11 2 (0.12%) CTI
11 2 (0.12%) PCoIP
11 2 (0.12%) Radio Access Network
11 2 (0.12%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 117 (7.17%) Power BI
2 95 (5.82%) Data Lake
3 80 (4.90%) Big Data
4 76 (4.66%) Metadata
5 74 (4.53%) Data Warehouse
6 71 (4.35%) BigQuery
7 53 (3.25%) NoSQL
8 47 (2.88%) Tableau
9 43 (2.63%) Amazon Redshift
10 41 (2.51%) PostgreSQL
11 40 (2.45%) Amazon Athena
12 35 (2.14%) Delta Lake
13 34 (2.08%) Hadoop
13 34 (2.08%) Relational Database
14 25 (1.53%) SQL Server
15 24 (1.47%) MongoDB
16 21 (1.29%) Neo4j
17 20 (1.23%) Looker
17 20 (1.23%) MySQL
18 19 (1.16%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 102 (6.25%) Git
2 73 (4.47%) MLflow
3 51 (3.13%) GitLab
4 48 (2.94%) JIRA
5 27 (1.65%) Jenkins
6 10 (0.61%) Vite
7 9 (0.55%) Claude Code
8 8 (0.49%) Selenium
9 5 (0.31%) Cypress.io
10 4 (0.25%) ER Studio
10 4 (0.25%) ERwin
10 4 (0.25%) Maven
10 4 (0.25%) PyCharm
11 3 (0.18%) Gradle
11 3 (0.18%) JUnit
11 3 (0.18%) REST Assured
11 3 (0.18%) SonarQube
11 3 (0.18%) Spinnaker
12 2 (0.12%) NUnit
12 2 (0.12%) Oracle APEX
General
1 341 (20.89%) Social Skills
2 300 (18.38%) Finance
3 211 (12.93%) Analytical Skills
4 149 (9.13%) Public Sector
5 112 (6.86%) Banking
6 43 (2.63%) Marketing
7 34 (2.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 34 (2.08%) Retail
8 31 (1.90%) Pharmaceutical
9 29 (1.78%) Telecoms
10 25 (1.53%) Legal
11 24 (1.47%) Documentation Skills
12 22 (1.35%) Front Office
13 20 (1.23%) Aviation
13 20 (1.23%) Influencing Skills
14 17 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
15 16 (0.98%) Financial Institution
15 16 (0.98%) Law
15 16 (0.98%) Manufacturing
16 15 (0.92%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 250 (15.32%) Architect
2 244 (14.95%) Senior
3 229 (14.03%) Data Scientist
4 158 (9.68%) Lead
5 149 (9.13%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
6 148 (9.07%) Data Engineer
7 103 (6.31%) Developer
8 81 (4.96%) Solutions Architect
9 76 (4.66%) Python Engineer
10 74 (4.53%) Machine Learning Engineer
11 72 (4.41%) Data Architect
12 68 (4.17%) Software Engineer
13 64 (3.92%) Analyst
14 58 (3.55%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
15 54 (3.31%) Platform Engineer
16 48 (2.94%) Senior Data Scientist
17 45 (2.76%) DevOps Engineer
18 41 (2.51%) Consultant
18 41 (2.51%) Security Architect
19 40 (2.45%) Full-Stack Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 156 (9.56%) PyTorch
2 110 (6.74%) Kafka
3 109 (6.68%) TensorFlow
4 98 (6.00%) scikit-learn
5 84 (5.15%) Pandas
6 82 (5.02%) LangChain
7 76 (4.66%) React
8 73 (4.47%) PySpark
9 70 (4.29%) REST
10 65 (3.98%) NumPy
11 43 (2.63%) .NET
12 40 (2.45%) Hugging Face
13 36 (2.21%) LangGraph
14 32 (1.96%) FastAPI
15 30 (1.84%) Model Context Protocol
16 29 (1.78%) AngularJS
16 29 (1.78%) Node.js
17 26 (1.59%) RESTful
18 23 (1.41%) pytest
19 21 (1.29%) LlamaIndex
Miscellaneous
1 198 (12.13%) Cloud Native
2 163 (9.99%) AI Agents
3 125 (7.66%) Algorithms
4 63 (3.86%) Onboarding
5 60 (3.68%) Product Ownership
6 59 (3.62%) Distributed Systems
7 29 (1.78%) Enterprise Software
8 28 (1.72%) Data Structures
9 26 (1.59%) Data Protection Act
10 24 (1.47%) Life Science
11 21 (1.29%) Hybrid Cloud
12 17 (1.04%) Legacy Systems
13 15 (0.92%) Fixed Income
13 15 (0.92%) Management Information System
13 15 (0.92%) Public Cloud
13 15 (0.92%) Security Posture
13 15 (0.92%) Taxonomies
14 13 (0.80%) Virtual Team
15 12 (0.74%) Augmented Reality
15 12 (0.74%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 52 (3.19%) Linux
2 16 (0.98%) Windows
3 12 (0.74%) Unix
4 6 (0.37%) Apple iOS
5 5 (0.31%) Android
5 5 (0.31%) VMS
6 4 (0.25%) Windows Server
7 3 (0.18%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.061%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,306 (80.02%) AI
2 609 (37.32%) Data Science
3 517 (31.68%) CI/CD
4 469 (28.74%) Analytics
5 448 (27.45%) LLM
6 380 (23.28%) Generative AI
7 365 (22.37%) Data Pipeline
8 339 (20.77%) DevOps
9 327 (20.04%) Agile
10 304 (18.63%) MLOps
11 289 (17.71%) Data Engineering
12 263 (16.12%) Use Case
13 244 (14.95%) Software Engineering
14 233 (14.28%) Decision-Making
15 212 (12.99%) Problem-Solving
16 209 (12.81%) Roadmaps
17 197 (12.07%) Data Governance
18 190 (11.64%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
19 189 (11.58%) Infrastructure as Code
20 180 (11.03%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 897 (54.96%) Python
2 400 (24.51%) SQL
3 122 (7.48%) Java
4 68 (4.17%) JavaScript
5 62 (3.80%) TypeScript
6 56 (3.43%) C#
6 56 (3.43%) R
7 38 (2.33%) Bash
8 19 (1.16%) PowerShell
9 18 (1.10%) C++
10 17 (1.04%) Go
11 16 (0.98%) Bicep
12 12 (0.74%) Kotlin
13 10 (0.61%) Scala
14 9 (0.55%) PL/SQL
14 9 (0.55%) SPARQL
15 8 (0.49%) Cypher
15 8 (0.49%) Rust
16 7 (0.43%) Gremlin
17 5 (0.31%) Perl
Qualifications
1 295 (18.08%) Security Cleared
2 205 (12.56%) SC Cleared
3 140 (8.58%) Degree
4 57 (3.49%) DV Cleared
4 57 (3.49%) Master's Degree
5 56 (3.43%) Computer Science Degree
6 46 (2.82%) AWS Certification
7 45 (2.76%) BPSS Clearance
8 37 (2.27%) PhD
9 31 (1.90%) CISSP
10 23 (1.41%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 22 (1.35%) Azure Certification
12 14 (0.86%) CISM
13 13 (0.80%) TOGAF Certification
14 7 (0.43%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 7 (0.43%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 7 (0.43%) Microsoft Certified Professional
15 6 (0.37%) Cisco Certification
16 5 (0.31%) GIAC
16 5 (0.31%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 190 (11.64%) Data Quality
2 66 (4.04%) GDPR
3 55 (3.37%) QA
4 30 (1.84%) NIST
5 18 (1.10%) Accessibility
5 18 (1.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 14 (0.86%) EU AI Act
7 12 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 10 (0.61%) GRC
9 9 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
9 9 (0.55%) GxP
10 8 (0.49%) HIPAA
11 6 (0.37%) SLA
11 6 (0.37%) WCAG
12 5 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
13 4 (0.25%) COBIT
13 4 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 4 (0.25%) NCSC
13 4 (0.25%) Solvency II
14 3 (0.18%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 221 (13.54%) Docker
2 12 (0.74%) Active Directory
3 9 (0.55%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 6 (0.37%) IAG
5 5 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
5 5 (0.31%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.18%) BitLocker
6 3 (0.18%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.18%) Terminal Services
6 3 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.12%) Apache ZooKeeper
7 2 (0.12%) Firmware
7 2 (0.12%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.12%) VMware Workstation
8 1 (0.061%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 278 (17.03%) Kubernetes
2 185 (11.34%) Terraform
3 29 (1.78%) Ansible
4 26 (1.59%) Kubeflow
5 25 (1.53%) Grafana
6 17 (1.04%) Prometheus
7 11 (0.67%) Podman
8 6 (0.37%) Istio
9 3 (0.18%) Kibana
9 3 (0.18%) Nagios
9 3 (0.18%) NetBackup
9 3 (0.18%) Puppet
9 3 (0.18%) Rancher
9 3 (0.18%) systemd
9 3 (0.18%) vCenter Server
9 3 (0.18%) vMotion
10 2 (0.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 2 (0.12%) Docker Swarm
10 2 (0.12%) Packer
10 2 (0.12%) SCCM
Vendors
1 203 (12.44%) Databricks
2 175 (10.72%) Microsoft
3 104 (6.37%) Google
4 95 (5.82%) OpenAI
5 50 (3.06%) SAP
6 49 (3.00%) Foundry
7 34 (2.08%) Oracle
8 32 (1.96%) ServiceNow
9 25 (1.53%) Informatica
10 16 (0.98%) Dynatrace
10 16 (0.98%) IBM
11 14 (0.86%) UiPath
12 9 (0.55%) Splunk
13 8 (0.49%) Salesforce
14 7 (0.43%) Amplitude
14 7 (0.43%) Sybase
14 7 (0.43%) Talend
15 6 (0.37%) Automation Anywhere
15 6 (0.37%) Nexthink
15 6 (0.37%) Pega