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 16 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 80 104 192
Rank change year-on-year +24 +88 +15
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,105 814 628
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.13% 2.23% 1.33%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.48% 2.58% 1.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 728 532 460
10th Percentile £402 £391 £381
25th Percentile £474 £475 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £570
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +5.26% -8.80%
75th Percentile £688 £731 £713
90th Percentile £775 £800 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £523 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.50% -4.76% -12.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 14 30
10th Percentile £30.00 £13.06 £42.50
25th Percentile £42.52 £14.17 -
Median hourly rate £55.00 £27.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +100.00% -40.45% -11.19%
75th Percentile £84.75 £46.18 £47.17
90th Percentile £113.50 £51.48 £65.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £46.18 £46.18
% change year-on-year +40.75% - -12.04%

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 31,719 31,545 41,752
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.82% 86.25% 88.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,853 18,987 28,148
10th Percentile £295 £310 £308
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.41% -3.18%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,095 1,115 1,613
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.10 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.12 £19.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £43.33
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -19.22% +23.80%
75th Percentile £44.75 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.00 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.63 £33.93 £43.83
% change year-on-year -33.30% -22.58% +48.56%

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 16 November 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 16 November 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 16 November 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 +21 933 £575 -4.17% 2,136
London +19 606 £625 -3.85% 1,350
UK excluding London +55 369 £523 +4.50% 864
Work from Home +45 361 £550 +4.76% 1,179
North of England -5 92 £480 -3.03% 274
South East +38 85 £538 +2.38% 268
Scotland +39 63 £503 +26.02% 45
East of England +22 61 £550 +10.00% 58
North West -8 49 £458 -4.29% 173
Yorkshire -17 38 £525 - 85
Midlands -12 37 £511 +13.50% 107
West Midlands -2 28 £520 +15.44% 71
South West -9 26 £550 -15.38% 74
Wales +9 10 £700 +185.71% 20
East Midlands -10 8 £410 +15.17% 35
North East -17 6 £450 -9.09% 18
Northern Ireland -7 1 £700 - 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 (8.33%) Apache Spark
2 66 (5.97%) Apache Airflow
3 29 (2.62%) Apache
4 25 (2.26%) Jupyter
5 10 (0.90%) Confluence
6 9 (0.81%) SAS
7 8 (0.72%) Apache Pig
8 6 (0.54%) GeoServer
8 6 (0.54%) Smallworld
9 4 (0.36%) Appian
9 4 (0.36%) IIS
9 4 (0.36%) SharePoint
10 3 (0.27%) CMS
11 1 (0.090%) Apache Solr
11 1 (0.090%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.090%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.090%) Camunda
11 1 (0.090%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.090%) nginx
11 1 (0.090%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 43 (3.89%) Chatbot
2 17 (1.54%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (1.09%) Microsoft Office
4 8 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.63%) Simulink
6 6 (0.54%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.090%) Adobe XD
7 1 (0.090%) GNU Octave
7 1 (0.090%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.090%) Sketch
7 1 (0.090%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.090%) Trello
Business Applications
1 11 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.18%) Distributed Ledger
3 2 (0.18%) SAP ERP
3 2 (0.18%) Teamcenter
4 1 (0.090%) IBM Planning Analytics
4 1 (0.090%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.090%) SAP GRC
4 1 (0.090%) Shopify
4 1 (0.090%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 461 (41.72%) Azure
2 376 (34.03%) AWS
3 218 (19.73%) GCP
4 106 (9.59%) Power Platform
5 88 (7.96%) GitHub
5 88 (7.96%) Serverless
6 84 (7.60%) Azure Machine Learning
7 68 (6.15%) Azure DevOps
8 59 (5.34%) Amazon SageMaker
9 58 (5.25%) Snowflake
10 56 (5.07%) Amazon S3
11 54 (4.89%) Vertex AI
12 49 (4.43%) Azure AI
12 49 (4.43%) Azure AKS
13 48 (4.34%) Azure Data Factory
14 46 (4.16%) AWS Lambda
14 46 (4.16%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 38 (3.44%) GitHub Actions
16 35 (3.17%) Amazon Bedrock
16 35 (3.17%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 14 (1.27%) HTTP
1 14 (1.27%) Network Security
2 13 (1.18%) DNS
3 9 (0.81%) SSL
4 8 (0.72%) Ethernet
4 8 (0.72%) FTP
4 8 (0.72%) SMTP
5 7 (0.63%) Internet
6 6 (0.54%) Firewall
7 4 (0.36%) VPN
8 3 (0.27%) 5G
8 3 (0.27%) LTE
8 3 (0.27%) VoIP
9 2 (0.18%) Bluetooth
9 2 (0.18%) Ethernet VPN
9 2 (0.18%) Hyperconnected
9 2 (0.18%) Mobile Backhaul
9 2 (0.18%) Radio Access Network
9 2 (0.18%) VXLAN
9 2 (0.18%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 95 (8.60%) Power BI
2 78 (7.06%) Data Warehouse
3 67 (6.06%) Big Data
4 59 (5.34%) Data Lake
5 55 (4.98%) PostgreSQL
6 54 (4.89%) NoSQL
7 44 (3.98%) BigQuery
8 40 (3.62%) Tableau
9 35 (3.17%) Metadata
10 30 (2.71%) Hadoop
11 25 (2.26%) MongoDB
12 21 (1.90%) Data Mining
12 21 (1.90%) Elasticsearch
13 20 (1.81%) Pinecone
14 17 (1.54%) Relational Database
15 16 (1.45%) Amazon Athena
16 15 (1.36%) Amazon Redshift
17 13 (1.18%) Azure SQL Database
17 13 (1.18%) Delta Lake
17 13 (1.18%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 93 (8.42%) Git
2 61 (5.52%) MLflow
3 54 (4.89%) Jenkins
4 34 (3.08%) GitLab
5 24 (2.17%) JIRA
6 18 (1.63%) Selenium
7 16 (1.45%) JMeter
8 12 (1.09%) SonarQube
9 10 (0.90%) JUnit
10 8 (0.72%) Cypress.io
11 7 (0.63%) Visual Studio
12 6 (0.54%) Mockito
12 6 (0.54%) Postman
12 6 (0.54%) PyCharm
13 5 (0.45%) Artifactory
13 5 (0.45%) Cucumber
13 5 (0.45%) Gradle
13 5 (0.45%) MSTest
14 4 (0.36%) Android Studio
14 4 (0.36%) RStudio
General
1 323 (29.23%) Social Skills
2 207 (18.73%) Finance
3 127 (11.49%) Analytical Skills
4 95 (8.60%) Public Sector
5 73 (6.61%) Banking
6 51 (4.62%) Marketing
7 44 (3.98%) Pharmaceutical
8 39 (3.53%) Retail
9 30 (2.71%) Legal
10 28 (2.53%) Telecoms
11 27 (2.44%) Investment Banking
12 24 (2.17%) Manufacturing
13 21 (1.90%) Front Office
14 19 (1.72%) Documentation Skills
15 17 (1.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 16 (1.45%) Influencing Skills
17 13 (1.18%) Electronics
18 11 (1.00%) Financial Institution
19 10 (0.90%) Aerospace
19 10 (0.90%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 160 (14.48%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
2 151 (13.67%) Data Scientist
3 146 (13.21%) Architect
4 116 (10.50%) Developer
5 113 (10.23%) Senior
6 112 (10.14%) Data Engineer
7 67 (6.06%) Lead
8 55 (4.98%) Machine Learning Engineer
9 52 (4.71%) Analyst
10 51 (4.62%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
10 51 (4.62%) Python Engineer
11 42 (3.80%) Software Engineer
12 36 (3.26%) Data Architect
13 33 (2.99%) Gen AI Engineer
14 32 (2.90%) Azure Engineer
15 31 (2.81%) Solutions Architect
16 29 (2.62%) Consultant
17 26 (2.35%) Python Developer
18 24 (2.17%) Data Analyst
18 24 (2.17%) Product Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 179 (16.20%) PyTorch
2 158 (14.30%) TensorFlow
3 106 (9.59%) scikit-learn
4 100 (9.05%) Pandas
5 81 (7.33%) FastAPI
5 81 (7.33%) LangChain
6 66 (5.97%) Kafka
7 64 (5.79%) NumPy
7 64 (5.79%) React
8 57 (5.16%) Hugging Face
8 57 (5.16%) RESTful
9 48 (4.34%) LangGraph
10 45 (4.07%) REST
11 44 (3.98%) PySpark
12 34 (3.08%) .NET
12 34 (3.08%) Flask
13 33 (2.99%) Node.js
14 30 (2.71%) pytest
15 21 (1.90%) AngularJS
16 20 (1.81%) OpenCV
Miscellaneous
1 173 (15.66%) Algorithms
2 138 (12.49%) Cloud Native
3 88 (7.96%) AI Agents
4 45 (4.07%) Product Ownership
5 39 (3.53%) Distributed Systems
6 36 (3.26%) Data Protection Act
7 34 (3.08%) Distributed Computing
7 34 (3.08%) Onboarding
8 26 (2.35%) Genomics
8 26 (2.35%) Legacy Systems
9 24 (2.17%) Data Structures
10 23 (2.08%) Life Science
11 21 (1.90%) Analytical Mindset
12 17 (1.54%) Enterprise Software
12 17 (1.54%) Hybrid Cloud
12 17 (1.54%) Management Information System
13 16 (1.45%) Greenfield Project
14 12 (1.09%) IoT
15 10 (0.90%) Cyber Threat
15 10 (0.90%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 29 (2.62%) Linux
2 11 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 9 (0.81%) Ubuntu
3 9 (0.81%) VMS
4 8 (0.72%) Unix
4 8 (0.72%) Windows
5 5 (0.45%) Android
5 5 (0.45%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.18%) Robot Operating System
7 1 (0.090%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 810 (73.30%) AI
2 438 (39.64%) Data Science
3 313 (28.33%) LLM
4 296 (26.79%) CI/CD
5 293 (26.52%) Analytics
6 280 (25.34%) Agile
7 259 (23.44%) DevOps
8 204 (18.46%) Data Pipeline
9 201 (18.19%) Generative AI
10 190 (17.19%) Problem-Solving
11 188 (17.01%) MLOps
12 178 (16.11%) Data Engineering
13 167 (15.11%) Natural Language Processing
14 158 (14.30%) Software Engineering
15 140 (12.67%) Containerisation
16 134 (12.13%) Visualisation
17 132 (11.95%) Computer Science
17 132 (11.95%) Use Case
18 129 (11.67%) Data Modelling
19 120 (10.86%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 697 (63.08%) Python
2 266 (24.07%) SQL
3 81 (7.33%) R
4 76 (6.88%) Java
5 56 (5.07%) JavaScript
6 53 (4.80%) TypeScript
7 40 (3.62%) C#
8 37 (3.35%) C++
9 35 (3.17%) PowerShell
10 31 (2.81%) Scala
11 19 (1.72%) Bash
11 19 (1.72%) Bicep
12 16 (1.45%) C
13 15 (1.36%) MATLAB
14 10 (0.90%) Go
15 7 (0.63%) Shell Script
15 7 (0.63%) SystemVerilog
15 7 (0.63%) Tcl
16 5 (0.45%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 3 (0.27%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 181 (16.38%) Degree
2 152 (13.76%) Security Cleared
3 110 (9.95%) SC Cleared
4 71 (6.43%) Master's Degree
5 45 (4.07%) Computer Science Degree
5 45 (4.07%) PhD
6 44 (3.98%) MCP
7 27 (2.44%) DV Cleared
8 24 (2.17%) Azure Certification
9 17 (1.54%) AWS Certification
10 13 (1.18%) BPSS Clearance
11 10 (0.90%) CISSP
12 7 (0.63%) HNC
12 7 (0.63%) HND
13 4 (0.36%) Cisco Certification
13 4 (0.36%) CISM
13 4 (0.36%) ISTQB
13 4 (0.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 4 (0.36%) Microsoft Certification
14 3 (0.27%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 68 (6.15%) Data Quality
2 55 (4.98%) GDPR
3 39 (3.53%) NIST
4 38 (3.44%) QA
5 31 (2.81%) EU AI Act
6 23 (2.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 21 (1.90%) Accessibility
8 8 (0.72%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 7 (0.63%) DO-254
10 5 (0.45%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 5 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 4 (0.36%) Disclosure Scotland
11 4 (0.36%) GRC
11 4 (0.36%) HIPAA
11 4 (0.36%) NCSC
11 4 (0.36%) SOC 2
12 3 (0.27%) PCI DSS
13 2 (0.18%) EMIR
13 2 (0.18%) JSP 440
13 2 (0.18%) NIST 800
System Software
1 184 (16.65%) Docker
2 11 (1.00%) Active Directory
2 11 (1.00%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (0.63%) Firmware
4 3 (0.27%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.18%) GPFS
5 2 (0.18%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.18%) KVM
5 2 (0.18%) Lustre
5 2 (0.18%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.090%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 182 (16.47%) Kubernetes
2 113 (10.23%) Terraform
3 33 (2.99%) Grafana
4 25 (2.26%) Ansible
5 22 (1.99%) Kubeflow
6 16 (1.45%) Prometheus
7 15 (1.36%) Kibana
8 11 (1.00%) SCOM
9 10 (0.90%) logstash
10 9 (0.81%) ITRS Geneos
11 8 (0.72%) Argo
12 5 (0.45%) Kustomize
13 4 (0.36%) Cilium
13 4 (0.36%) Progress Chef
13 4 (0.36%) Rsyslog
14 3 (0.27%) Single Sign-On
14 3 (0.27%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
15 2 (0.18%) Podman
16 1 (0.090%) HP ALM
16 1 (0.090%) Opsgenie
Vendors
1 158 (14.30%) Microsoft
2 132 (11.95%) Databricks
3 96 (8.69%) Google
4 58 (5.25%) OpenAI
5 37 (3.35%) Foundry
6 35 (3.17%) SAP
7 21 (1.90%) Splunk
8 14 (1.27%) Salesforce
9 12 (1.09%) ServiceNow
10 11 (1.00%) NVIDIA
10 11 (1.00%) Oracle
11 9 (0.81%) Solace
11 9 (0.81%) TIBCO
12 8 (0.72%) Intel
12 8 (0.72%) Palantir
13 7 (0.63%) Altera
13 7 (0.63%) Cisco
13 7 (0.63%) Informatica
13 7 (0.63%) Pega
13 7 (0.63%) Xilinx