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 30 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 79 102 185
Rank change year-on-year +23 +83 +22
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,178 821 609
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.18% 2.47% 1.41%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.61% 2.79% 1.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 773 554 442
10th Percentile £401 £375 £400
25th Percentile £463 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £563 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.25% +4.35% -8.00%
75th Percentile £688 £731 £700
90th Percentile £785 £821 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £508 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.98% -2.38% -13.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 19 28
10th Percentile £31.47 £13.06 £42.50
25th Percentile £42.79 £19.38 -
Median hourly rate £55.00 £26.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +107.55% -42.62% +31.94%
75th Percentile £79.00 £49.97 £46.51
90th Percentile £97.90 £56.00 £57.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £37.34 £46.18
% change year-on-year +74.08% -19.14% -7.64%

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 32,589 29,397 38,047
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.09% 88.30% 88.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,542 17,920 25,365
10th Percentile £300 £308 £306
25th Percentile £406 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £724 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,036 949 1,516
10th Percentile £14.61 £15.62 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.30 £19.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £43.95
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -26.05% +25.57%
75th Percentile £52.52 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.00 £74.77 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.58 £30.62 £45.00
% change year-on-year -23.00% -31.97% +42.45%

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 30 December 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 30 December 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 30 December 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 +10 988 £575 -4.76% 4,850
London +13 650 £625 -3.85% 1,061
UK excluding London +44 373 £508 -0.98% 4,206
Work from Home +32 361 £550 +4.76% 2,368
North of England -27 84 £475 -2.26% 915
South East +24 79 £513 -3.39% 1,134
East of England +17 71 £520 -13.33% 625
Scotland +51 63 £503 +25.63% 217
North West -8 49 £475 - 465
Midlands -17 42 £514 +20.94% 714
Yorkshire -22 34 £514 -4.37% 392
West Midlands -5 31 £514 +14.22% 369
South West -8 30 £550 -17.60% 476
East Midlands -16 11 £426 +19.66% 299
Wales +1 9 £700 +201.08% 117
North East -19 2 £575 +32.95% 59
Northern Ireland - 2 £675 - 64

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 90 (7.64%) Apache Spark
2 65 (5.52%) Apache Airflow
3 37 (3.14%) Apache
4 24 (2.04%) Jupyter
5 9 (0.76%) Confluence
6 8 (0.68%) Apache Pig
7 7 (0.59%) Appian
7 7 (0.59%) SAS
8 6 (0.51%) GeoServer
8 6 (0.51%) Smallworld
9 4 (0.34%) IIS
10 3 (0.25%) CMS
11 2 (0.17%) SharePoint
12 1 (0.085%) Apache Superset
12 1 (0.085%) Luigi
12 1 (0.085%) Microsoft Exchange
12 1 (0.085%) nginx
12 1 (0.085%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 43 (3.65%) Chatbot
2 15 (1.27%) Microsoft Excel
3 10 (0.85%) Microsoft Office
4 9 (0.76%) Microsoft Project
5 7 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 5 (0.42%) Simulink
7 1 (0.085%) Adobe XD
7 1 (0.085%) GNU Octave
7 1 (0.085%) LaTeX
7 1 (0.085%) Sketch
7 1 (0.085%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.085%) Trello
Business Applications
1 9 (0.76%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.17%) Distributed Ledger
3 2 (0.17%) SAP ERP
3 2 (0.17%) Teamcenter
4 1 (0.085%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.085%) SAP GRC
4 1 (0.085%) Shopify
4 1 (0.085%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 499 (42.36%) Azure
2 399 (33.87%) AWS
3 218 (18.51%) GCP
4 109 (9.25%) Power Platform
5 106 (9.00%) GitHub
6 102 (8.66%) Serverless
7 93 (7.89%) Azure Machine Learning
8 73 (6.20%) Azure DevOps
9 67 (5.69%) Snowflake
10 66 (5.60%) Amazon S3
11 62 (5.26%) Amazon SageMaker
12 59 (5.01%) Azure AI
13 58 (4.92%) Vertex AI
14 53 (4.50%) AWS Lambda
14 53 (4.50%) GitHub Actions
15 51 (4.33%) Azure AKS
16 50 (4.24%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 45 (3.82%) Azure Data Factory
18 39 (3.31%) Amazon Bedrock
19 34 (2.89%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 20 (1.70%) Network Security
2 19 (1.61%) HTTP
3 18 (1.53%) DNS
4 14 (1.19%) SSL
5 13 (1.10%) FTP
5 13 (1.10%) SMTP
6 6 (0.51%) Ethernet
6 6 (0.51%) Firewall
6 6 (0.51%) Internet
7 4 (0.34%) InfiniBand
7 4 (0.34%) VPN
8 2 (0.17%) 2G
8 2 (0.17%) 5G
8 2 (0.17%) Cisco Nexus
8 2 (0.17%) Ethernet VPN
8 2 (0.17%) Hyperconnected
8 2 (0.17%) LTE
8 2 (0.17%) Mobile Backhaul
8 2 (0.17%) Modbus
8 2 (0.17%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 96 (8.15%) Power BI
2 75 (6.37%) Data Warehouse
3 74 (6.28%) Data Lake
4 63 (5.35%) Big Data
5 52 (4.41%) PostgreSQL
6 50 (4.24%) NoSQL
7 47 (3.99%) BigQuery
8 35 (2.97%) Tableau
9 33 (2.80%) Metadata
10 27 (2.29%) Hadoop
10 27 (2.29%) Pinecone
11 22 (1.87%) Amazon Athena
12 19 (1.61%) Delta Lake
12 19 (1.61%) Elasticsearch
13 18 (1.53%) Amazon Redshift
13 18 (1.53%) Data Mining
13 18 (1.53%) MongoDB
13 18 (1.53%) Relational Database
14 16 (1.36%) Weaviate
15 13 (1.10%) Redis
Development Applications
1 93 (7.89%) Git
2 74 (6.28%) MLflow
3 52 (4.41%) Jenkins
4 35 (2.97%) GitLab
5 27 (2.29%) JIRA
6 18 (1.53%) JMeter
6 18 (1.53%) Selenium
7 15 (1.27%) SonarQube
8 10 (0.85%) Visual Studio
9 8 (0.68%) Cypress.io
10 6 (0.51%) JUnit
10 6 (0.51%) Postman
10 6 (0.51%) PyCharm
11 5 (0.42%) Gradle
11 5 (0.42%) Mockito
11 5 (0.42%) MSTest
11 5 (0.42%) Snyk
12 4 (0.34%) Android Studio
12 4 (0.34%) Cucumber
12 4 (0.34%) Oracle APEX
General
1 338 (28.69%) Social Skills
2 233 (19.78%) Finance
3 137 (11.63%) Analytical Skills
4 113 (9.59%) Public Sector
5 76 (6.45%) Banking
6 43 (3.65%) Pharmaceutical
7 42 (3.57%) Marketing
8 36 (3.06%) Retail
9 29 (2.46%) Investment Banking
10 28 (2.38%) Legal
11 27 (2.29%) Manufacturing
12 23 (1.95%) Front Office
12 23 (1.95%) Telecoms
13 19 (1.61%) Documentation Skills
14 18 (1.53%) Influencing Skills
15 17 (1.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 15 (1.27%) Presentation Skills
17 14 (1.19%) Electronics
18 11 (0.93%) Aerospace
19 10 (0.85%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 189 (16.04%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
2 168 (14.26%) Data Scientist
3 149 (12.65%) Architect
4 127 (10.78%) Senior
5 125 (10.61%) Data Engineer
6 106 (9.00%) Developer
7 84 (7.13%) Lead
8 62 (5.26%) Machine Learning Engineer
9 59 (5.01%) Python Engineer
10 58 (4.92%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
11 54 (4.58%) Analyst
12 48 (4.07%) Software Engineer
13 38 (3.23%) Gen AI Engineer
14 36 (3.06%) Data Architect
15 31 (2.63%) Solutions Architect
16 28 (2.38%) Azure Engineer
17 26 (2.21%) Consultant
17 26 (2.21%) Product Manager
18 25 (2.12%) Senior Data Scientist
19 23 (1.95%) Full-Stack Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 204 (17.32%) PyTorch
2 179 (15.20%) TensorFlow
3 123 (10.44%) scikit-learn
4 109 (9.25%) Pandas
5 90 (7.64%) LangChain
6 82 (6.96%) FastAPI
7 75 (6.37%) NumPy
8 65 (5.52%) React
9 64 (5.43%) Hugging Face
10 58 (4.92%) Kafka
11 57 (4.84%) LangGraph
12 53 (4.50%) PySpark
13 51 (4.33%) RESTful
14 50 (4.24%) REST
15 42 (3.57%) .NET
15 42 (3.57%) Node.js
16 33 (2.80%) pytest
17 31 (2.63%) Flask
18 26 (2.21%) Faiss
19 25 (2.12%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 173 (14.69%) Algorithms
2 153 (12.99%) Cloud Native
3 100 (8.49%) AI Agents
4 43 (3.65%) Product Ownership
5 39 (3.31%) Onboarding
6 38 (3.23%) Distributed Systems
7 33 (2.80%) Data Protection Act
8 30 (2.55%) Analytical Mindset
9 28 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
10 26 (2.21%) Distributed Computing
11 25 (2.12%) Genomics
12 23 (1.95%) Life Science
13 22 (1.87%) Data Structures
13 22 (1.87%) Hybrid Cloud
14 21 (1.78%) Management Information System
15 17 (1.44%) Enterprise Software
16 14 (1.19%) Cyber Threat
17 13 (1.10%) Cyberattack
17 13 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
17 13 (1.10%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 28 (2.38%) Linux
2 11 (0.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 10 (0.85%) VMS
4 9 (0.76%) Ubuntu
5 8 (0.68%) Unix
5 8 (0.68%) Windows
6 6 (0.51%) Android
6 6 (0.51%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.17%) Robot Operating System
8 1 (0.085%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 879 (74.62%) AI
2 470 (39.90%) Data Science
3 340 (28.86%) LLM
4 315 (26.74%) CI/CD
5 305 (25.89%) Analytics
6 283 (24.02%) Agile
7 279 (23.68%) DevOps
8 232 (19.69%) Data Pipeline
8 232 (19.69%) Generative AI
9 211 (17.91%) MLOps
10 204 (17.32%) Problem-Solving
11 201 (17.06%) Data Engineering
12 175 (14.86%) Natural Language Processing
13 168 (14.26%) Software Engineering
14 159 (13.50%) Containerisation
15 148 (12.56%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
16 137 (11.63%) Use Case
17 134 (11.38%) Data Modelling
18 128 (10.87%) Visualisation
19 126 (10.70%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 758 (64.35%) Python
2 285 (24.19%) SQL
3 73 (6.20%) R
4 70 (5.94%) Java
5 57 (4.84%) JavaScript
6 54 (4.58%) C#
6 54 (4.58%) TypeScript
7 40 (3.40%) PowerShell
8 37 (3.14%) C++
9 28 (2.38%) Scala
10 20 (1.70%) Bash
10 20 (1.70%) Bicep
11 14 (1.19%) MATLAB
12 12 (1.02%) Go
13 9 (0.76%) C
14 5 (0.42%) SystemVerilog
14 5 (0.42%) Tcl
15 3 (0.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 3 (0.25%) PL/SQL
15 3 (0.25%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 169 (14.35%) Security Cleared
2 166 (14.09%) Degree
3 127 (10.78%) SC Cleared
4 65 (5.52%) Master's Degree
5 56 (4.75%) MCP
6 46 (3.90%) Computer Science Degree
7 36 (3.06%) PhD
8 34 (2.89%) DV Cleared
9 22 (1.87%) Azure Certification
10 12 (1.02%) BPSS Clearance
11 11 (0.93%) AWS Certification
12 8 (0.68%) CISSP
13 6 (0.51%) ISTQB
14 5 (0.42%) HNC
14 5 (0.42%) HND
14 5 (0.42%) Microsoft Certification
14 5 (0.42%) TOGAF Certification
15 4 (0.34%) Cisco Certification
15 4 (0.34%) CISM
15 4 (0.34%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 80 (6.79%) Data Quality
2 60 (5.09%) GDPR
3 47 (3.99%) QA
4 41 (3.48%) NIST
5 33 (2.80%) EU AI Act
6 24 (2.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 18 (1.53%) Accessibility
8 7 (0.59%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 5 (0.42%) DO-254
9 5 (0.42%) HIPAA
9 5 (0.42%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 5 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 5 (0.42%) SOC 2
10 4 (0.34%) Disclosure Scotland
10 4 (0.34%) NCSC
10 4 (0.34%) PCI DSS
11 3 (0.25%) GRC
12 2 (0.17%) GxP
12 2 (0.17%) JSP 440
12 2 (0.17%) NIST 800
System Software
1 200 (16.98%) Docker
2 12 (1.02%) Active Directory
3 10 (0.85%) Virtual Machines
4 7 (0.59%) Firmware
5 4 (0.34%) Lustre
6 3 (0.25%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 2 (0.17%) Ceph
7 2 (0.17%) GPFS
7 2 (0.17%) HDFS
7 2 (0.17%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.17%) KVM
7 2 (0.17%) VMware Infrastructure
7 2 (0.17%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 194 (16.47%) Kubernetes
2 130 (11.04%) Terraform
3 30 (2.55%) Grafana
4 29 (2.46%) Ansible
5 17 (1.44%) Prometheus
6 16 (1.36%) Kubeflow
7 12 (1.02%) Kibana
8 11 (0.93%) SCOM
9 9 (0.76%) logstash
10 8 (0.68%) Argo
11 7 (0.59%) ITRS Geneos
12 4 (0.34%) Cilium
12 4 (0.34%) Progress Chef
12 4 (0.34%) Rsyslog
13 3 (0.25%) Kustomize
13 3 (0.25%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
14 2 (0.17%) Knative
14 2 (0.17%) Podman
14 2 (0.17%) Single Sign-On
15 1 (0.085%) Opsgenie
Vendors
1 172 (14.60%) Databricks
2 166 (14.09%) Microsoft
3 112 (9.51%) Google
4 81 (6.88%) OpenAI
5 46 (3.90%) Foundry
6 40 (3.40%) SAP
7 17 (1.44%) Splunk
8 16 (1.36%) ServiceNow
9 15 (1.27%) NVIDIA
9 15 (1.27%) Salesforce
10 11 (0.93%) Oracle
11 9 (0.76%) Greenplum
12 8 (0.68%) TIBCO
13 7 (0.59%) Cisco
13 7 (0.59%) Pega
13 7 (0.59%) Solace
14 6 (0.51%) ESRI
14 6 (0.51%) Intel
14 6 (0.51%) Intergraph
14 6 (0.51%) UiPath