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 21 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 83 93 151
Rank change year-on-year +10 +58 +68
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,380 786 682
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.98% 2.67% 1.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.52% 2.94% 1.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 855 517 503
10th Percentile £413 £380 £413
25th Percentile £493 £463 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.17%
75th Percentile £700 £725 £725
90th Percentile £788 £874 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £550 £525
% change year-on-year - +4.76% -10.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 21 21
10th Percentile £47.84 £25.25 £41.25
25th Percentile £50.64 £45.00 £42.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £61.50 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +5.69% +17.14% +50.00%
75th Percentile £83.75 £78.70 £66.25
90th Percentile £90.00 £81.01 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £76.25 £61.25
% change year-on-year -14.75% +24.49% +75.00%

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 39,258 26,720 37,503
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.83% 90.74% 86.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,768 17,301 24,236
10th Percentile £318 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £521 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.03% -0.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £484 £500
% change year-on-year +0.31% -3.30% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,351 1,041 2,413
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.80 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -14.29% -6.67%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.50 £58.69
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.00 £71.89
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £29.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +37.93% -17.14% -6.67%

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 21 April 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 21 April 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 21 April 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 +8 1,171 £575 -4.17% 1,988
London +21 780 £600 -2.44% 881
UK excluding London +9 418 £550 - 1,312
Work from Home +19 403 £600 +9.09% 543
North of England -3 109 £550 +11.11% 437
South East -22 90 £600 +4.35% 387
Scotland +42 69 £546 +17.54% 49
Midlands -20 62 £550 +15.79% 109
North West -18 59 £550 +0.46% 339
East of England -10 57 £520 -16.80% 205
West Midlands -30 42 £550 +10.00% 40
Yorkshire -31 40 £550 +10.00% 74
South West -32 38 £544 -15.04% 112
East Midlands -21 18 £625 +38.89% 69
North East -8 13 £563 +57.12% 24
Wales -10 13 £750 +30.43% 15
Northern Ireland - 1 £650 - 16

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
1 119 (8.62%) Apache Spark
2 74 (5.36%) Apache Airflow
3 60 (4.35%) Apache
4 26 (1.88%) Jupyter
5 11 (0.80%) Confluence
6 9 (0.65%) Appian
6 9 (0.65%) SAS
7 6 (0.43%) CMS
8 5 (0.36%) SharePoint
9 4 (0.29%) Palantir Foundry
10 3 (0.22%) Headless CMS
11 2 (0.14%) Luigi
12 1 (0.072%) Apache Superset
12 1 (0.072%) Apache Synapse
12 1 (0.072%) ArcGIS
12 1 (0.072%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 30 (2.17%) Chatbot
2 12 (0.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
3 10 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 9 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
5 4 (0.29%) Simulink
6 3 (0.22%) LaTeX
7 2 (0.14%) CPLEX
Business Applications
1 9 (0.65%) SAP IBP
2 6 (0.43%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.14%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.072%) OpenText VIM for SAP
4 1 (0.072%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.072%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.072%) SAP APO
4 1 (0.072%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 560 (40.58%) Azure
2 477 (34.57%) AWS
3 250 (18.12%) GCP
4 135 (9.78%) Power Platform
5 110 (7.97%) GitHub
6 99 (7.17%) Azure AI
7 98 (7.10%) Azure Machine Learning
8 90 (6.52%) Serverless
9 75 (5.43%) Azure DevOps
10 73 (5.29%) Amazon SageMaker
11 70 (5.07%) Amazon S3
12 69 (5.00%) Snowflake
13 62 (4.49%) Vertex AI
14 61 (4.42%) GitHub Actions
15 59 (4.28%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 57 (4.13%) Azure Data Factory
17 50 (3.62%) AWS Lambda
18 44 (3.19%) AWS CloudFormation
19 40 (2.90%) Amazon Bedrock
20 32 (2.32%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 16 (1.16%) Network Security
2 10 (0.72%) Firewall
3 8 (0.58%) HTTP
4 7 (0.51%) DNS
5 5 (0.36%) FTP
5 5 (0.36%) Internet
5 5 (0.36%) SMTP
5 5 (0.36%) SSL
6 4 (0.29%) Ethernet
6 4 (0.29%) InfiniBand
7 3 (0.22%) 5G
7 3 (0.22%) Cisco IPT
8 2 (0.14%) 4G
8 2 (0.14%) Bluetooth
8 2 (0.14%) Hyperconnected
8 2 (0.14%) LTE
8 2 (0.14%) Modbus
8 2 (0.14%) VPN
9 1 (0.072%) 3GPP
9 1 (0.072%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 107 (7.75%) Power BI
2 93 (6.74%) Data Lake
3 71 (5.14%) Big Data
4 64 (4.64%) BigQuery
4 64 (4.64%) Data Warehouse
5 59 (4.28%) Metadata
6 52 (3.77%) NoSQL
7 40 (2.90%) Tableau
8 36 (2.61%) Pinecone
9 34 (2.46%) Delta Lake
10 33 (2.39%) Hadoop
11 31 (2.25%) PostgreSQL
11 31 (2.25%) SQL Server
12 29 (2.10%) Amazon Athena
13 28 (2.03%) Weaviate
14 26 (1.88%) Relational Database
15 25 (1.81%) Mixpanel
16 22 (1.59%) Amazon Redshift
17 19 (1.38%) MongoDB
18 17 (1.23%) OLTP
Development Applications
1 93 (6.74%) Git
2 90 (6.52%) MLflow
3 31 (2.25%) JIRA
4 30 (2.17%) Jenkins
5 25 (1.81%) GitLab
6 8 (0.58%) Visual Studio
7 7 (0.51%) Gradle
7 7 (0.51%) SonarQube
8 6 (0.43%) PyCharm
8 6 (0.43%) Selenium
9 4 (0.29%) Android Studio
9 4 (0.29%) Claude Code
9 4 (0.29%) JMeter
9 4 (0.29%) Maven
10 3 (0.22%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.22%) Cypress.io
10 3 (0.22%) JUnit
10 3 (0.22%) Oracle APEX
10 3 (0.22%) Spinnaker
10 3 (0.22%) Vite
General
1 329 (23.84%) Social Skills
2 277 (20.07%) Finance
3 173 (12.54%) Analytical Skills
4 137 (9.93%) Public Sector
5 87 (6.30%) Banking
6 36 (2.61%) Marketing
7 31 (2.25%) Pharmaceutical
8 28 (2.03%) Legal
9 27 (1.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 26 (1.88%) Documentation Skills
11 25 (1.81%) Front Office
12 23 (1.67%) Influencing Skills
12 23 (1.67%) Investment Banking
12 23 (1.67%) Retail
13 19 (1.38%) Presentation Skills
14 18 (1.30%) Telecoms
15 15 (1.09%) Aviation
16 13 (0.94%) Manufacturing
17 11 (0.80%) Aerospace
18 10 (0.72%) Law
Job Titles
1 202 (14.64%) Data Scientist
2 192 (13.91%) Architect
3 187 (13.55%) Senior
4 181 (13.12%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 134 (9.71%) Data Engineer
6 120 (8.70%) Lead
7 115 (8.33%) Developer
8 68 (4.93%) Analyst
9 60 (4.35%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
9 60 (4.35%) Software Engineer
10 58 (4.20%) Python Engineer
11 57 (4.13%) Machine Learning Engineer
12 54 (3.91%) Data Architect
13 46 (3.33%) Solutions Architect
14 39 (2.83%) Senior Data Scientist
15 36 (2.61%) Gen AI Engineer
16 35 (2.54%) Consultant
17 33 (2.39%) Azure Engineer
18 31 (2.25%) Python Developer
19 26 (1.88%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 211 (15.29%) PyTorch
2 164 (11.88%) TensorFlow
3 132 (9.57%) scikit-learn
4 109 (7.90%) Pandas
5 80 (5.80%) LangChain
6 78 (5.65%) NumPy
7 76 (5.51%) React
8 74 (5.36%) Kafka
9 58 (4.20%) PySpark
10 56 (4.06%) .NET
11 53 (3.84%) Node.js
11 53 (3.84%) REST
12 50 (3.62%) Hugging Face
13 48 (3.48%) LangGraph
13 48 (3.48%) Model Context Protocol
14 41 (2.97%) AngularJS
15 35 (2.54%) FastAPI
16 29 (2.10%) Faiss
17 28 (2.03%) RESTful
18 24 (1.74%) LlamaIndex
Miscellaneous
1 181 (13.12%) Cloud Native
2 143 (10.36%) Algorithms
3 140 (10.14%) AI Agents
4 44 (3.19%) Onboarding
4 44 (3.19%) Product Ownership
5 31 (2.25%) Distributed Systems
6 27 (1.96%) Data Protection Act
7 20 (1.45%) Legacy Systems
8 19 (1.38%) Enterprise Software
8 19 (1.38%) Fixed Income
8 19 (1.38%) Hybrid Cloud
8 19 (1.38%) Management Information System
9 16 (1.16%) Analytical Mindset
10 15 (1.09%) Distributed Computing
10 15 (1.09%) Life Science
11 14 (1.01%) Public Cloud
12 12 (0.87%) Data Structures
13 11 (0.80%) Credit Risk
14 10 (0.72%) Derivative
14 10 (0.72%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 32 (2.32%) Linux
2 11 (0.80%) VMS
3 10 (0.72%) Windows
4 8 (0.58%) Android
5 5 (0.36%) Apple iOS
5 5 (0.36%) Unix
6 4 (0.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 2 (0.14%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.072%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,078 (78.12%) AI
2 514 (37.25%) Data Science
3 422 (30.58%) CI/CD
4 411 (29.78%) Analytics
5 383 (27.75%) LLM
6 302 (21.88%) Generative AI
7 298 (21.59%) Data Pipeline
8 277 (20.07%) DevOps
9 266 (19.28%) Data Engineering
10 259 (18.77%) Agile
10 259 (18.77%) MLOps
11 200 (14.49%) Problem-Solving
12 190 (13.77%) Use Case
13 180 (13.04%) Data Governance
14 176 (12.75%) Software Engineering
15 168 (12.17%) Natural Language Processing
16 167 (12.10%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
17 165 (11.96%) Containerisation
18 163 (11.81%) Decision-Making
19 156 (11.30%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 810 (58.70%) Python
2 345 (25.00%) SQL
3 104 (7.54%) Java
4 85 (6.16%) C#
5 69 (5.00%) R
6 54 (3.91%) JavaScript
7 49 (3.55%) TypeScript
8 24 (1.74%) C++
9 23 (1.67%) PowerShell
10 19 (1.38%) Bicep
11 17 (1.23%) Bash
12 16 (1.16%) Scala
13 9 (0.65%) Go
13 9 (0.65%) Kotlin
13 9 (0.65%) MATLAB
13 9 (0.65%) Rust
14 5 (0.36%) SPARQL
15 4 (0.29%) PL/SQL
15 4 (0.29%) SystemVerilog
15 4 (0.29%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 236 (17.10%) Security Cleared
2 158 (11.45%) SC Cleared
3 145 (10.51%) Degree
4 70 (5.07%) Master's Degree
5 43 (3.12%) PhD
6 42 (3.04%) DV Cleared
7 39 (2.83%) BPSS Clearance
7 39 (2.83%) Computer Science Degree
8 24 (1.74%) AWS Certification
9 20 (1.45%) Azure Certification
10 18 (1.30%) CISSP
11 14 (1.01%) CISM
12 12 (0.87%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 12 (0.87%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 6 (0.43%) ISTQB
14 5 (0.36%) Microsoft Certification
14 5 (0.36%) PMI Certification
14 5 (0.36%) PMP
15 4 (0.29%) CEH
15 4 (0.29%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 139 (10.07%) Data Quality
2 63 (4.57%) GDPR
3 50 (3.62%) QA
4 31 (2.25%) NIST
5 19 (1.38%) Accessibility
6 15 (1.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 13 (0.94%) EU AI Act
8 9 (0.65%) Actionable Recommendations
8 9 (0.65%) HIPAA
9 8 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 6 (0.43%) NCSC
11 5 (0.36%) GRC
12 4 (0.29%) DO-254
12 4 (0.29%) PCI DSS
12 4 (0.29%) WCAG
13 3 (0.22%) GxP
13 3 (0.22%) SOC 2
14 2 (0.14%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 2 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 42001
14 2 (0.14%) NIST 800
System Software
1 198 (14.35%) Docker
2 12 (0.87%) Active Directory
2 12 (0.87%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 7 (0.51%) Firmware
4 3 (0.22%) Lustre
4 3 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.14%) Ceph
5 2 (0.14%) HDFS
6 1 (0.072%) Embedded Firmware
6 1 (0.072%) GPFS
Systems Management
1 211 (15.29%) Kubernetes
2 138 (10.00%) Terraform
3 20 (1.45%) Kubeflow
4 16 (1.16%) Grafana
5 12 (0.87%) Ansible
5 12 (0.87%) Prometheus
6 9 (0.65%) Podman
7 4 (0.29%) Istio
8 3 (0.22%) Rancher
9 2 (0.14%) Argo
9 2 (0.14%) Docker Swarm
9 2 (0.14%) Knative
9 2 (0.14%) SCOM
10 1 (0.072%) HP Fortify
10 1 (0.072%) Kibana
10 1 (0.072%) logstash
10 1 (0.072%) Opsgenie
10 1 (0.072%) SELinux
10 1 (0.072%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
Vendors
1 215 (15.58%) Databricks
2 179 (12.97%) Microsoft
3 112 (8.12%) Google
4 110 (7.97%) OpenAI
5 66 (4.78%) Foundry
6 40 (2.90%) SAP
7 30 (2.17%) Oracle
8 21 (1.52%) ServiceNow
9 15 (1.09%) Informatica
9 15 (1.09%) UiPath
10 13 (0.94%) IBM
11 11 (0.80%) Automation Anywhere
11 11 (0.80%) Dynatrace
12 9 (0.65%) Salesforce
13 7 (0.51%) Amplitude
13 7 (0.51%) NVIDIA
13 7 (0.51%) Pega
14 6 (0.43%) Siemens
14 6 (0.43%) Talend
14 6 (0.43%) Workday