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

6 months to
20 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 80 109 127
Rank change year-on-year +29 +18 +87
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,635 811 771
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.10% 2.47% 1.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.64% 2.74% 2.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,022 504 542
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 £676 £750
90th Percentile £775 £823 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £550 £525
% change year-on-year - +4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 49 22 19
10th Percentile £36.00 £45.00 £13.06
25th Percentile £50.00 £55.00 £41.25
Median hourly rate £72.50 £75.00 £48.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% +54.64% +5.02%
75th Percentile £83.75 £81.01 £60.00
90th Percentile £89.00 £88.00 £75.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.72 £78.10 £52.50
% change year-on-year -10.73% +48.76% +21.14%

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 44,857 29,633 35,662
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.99% 90.35% 85.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,817 18,625 22,863
10th Percentile £325 £300 £306
25th Percentile £419 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.02%
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 2,658 1,571 2,253
10th Percentile £14.84 £14.20 £13.00
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.44 £16.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -10.31%
75th Percentile £68.50 £51.05 £62.00
90th Percentile £82.41 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £24.00 £38.12
% change year-on-year +87.50% -37.04% -6.09%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 +21 1,375 £575 - 1,224
London +37 912 £582 -0.51% 775
UK excluding London -5 526 £550 - 614
Work from Home +7 446 £600 +9.09% 392
North of England +2 150 £575 +12.97% 133
South East -26 126 £600 +6.67% 217
Scotland +33 99 £440 -8.05% 36
North West -8 82 £600 +9.09% 74
Midlands -4 70 £550 +10.00% 61
Yorkshire -11 56 £550 +12.19% 40
West Midlands -26 55 £550 -6.38% 31
South West -31 47 £534 -7.17% 76
East of England -15 35 £513 -18.00% 78
Wales -10 16 £540 -11.84% 20
North East -27 16 £469 +10.29% 22
East Midlands -8 13 £575 +35.29% 30
Northern Ireland - 1 £334 - 10

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 98 (5.99%) Apache Spark
2 76 (4.65%) Apache Airflow
3 51 (3.12%) Apache
4 34 (2.08%) Jupyter
5 22 (1.35%) Confluence
6 10 (0.61%) SAS
7 6 (0.37%) ArcGIS
7 6 (0.37%) SharePoint
8 5 (0.31%) Appian
8 5 (0.31%) CMS
8 5 (0.31%) Headless CMS
8 5 (0.31%) Palantir Foundry
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 14 (0.86%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.43%) Microsoft Office
5 6 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.18%) CPLEX
7 1 (0.061%) Notion
7 1 (0.061%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 11 (0.67%) SAP IBP
2 9 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
3 2 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.061%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.061%) OpenText VIM for SAP
4 1 (0.061%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.061%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.061%) SAP APO
4 1 (0.061%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.061%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 581 (35.54%) AWS
1 581 (35.54%) Azure
2 298 (18.23%) GCP
3 144 (8.81%) Power Platform
4 124 (7.58%) Serverless
5 113 (6.91%) GitHub
6 107 (6.54%) Amazon S3
7 93 (5.69%) AWS Lambda
8 91 (5.57%) Amazon SageMaker
9 83 (5.08%) Azure Machine Learning
10 82 (5.02%) Azure AI
11 80 (4.89%) Snowflake
12 62 (3.79%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 59 (3.61%) Amazon Bedrock
13 59 (3.61%) Azure DevOps
14 55 (3.36%) Vertex AI
15 51 (3.12%) GitHub Actions
16 48 (2.94%) Azure Data Factory
17 45 (2.75%) dbt
18 43 (2.63%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 19 (1.16%) Firewall
2 13 (0.80%) Internet
2 13 (0.80%) Network Security
3 9 (0.55%) DNS
4 8 (0.49%) VPN
5 7 (0.43%) DHCP
6 5 (0.31%) HTTP
7 4 (0.24%) Broadband
7 4 (0.24%) NAS
7 4 (0.24%) SAN
8 3 (0.18%) MQTT
8 3 (0.18%) SMTP
9 2 (0.12%) 4G
9 2 (0.12%) 5G
9 2 (0.12%) CTI
9 2 (0.12%) Modbus
9 2 (0.12%) PCoIP
9 2 (0.12%) Radio Access Network
9 2 (0.12%) Remote Desktop
9 2 (0.12%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 118 (7.22%) Power BI
2 99 (6.06%) Data Lake
3 84 (5.14%) Big Data
4 77 (4.71%) Data Warehouse
4 77 (4.71%) Metadata
5 70 (4.28%) BigQuery
6 53 (3.24%) NoSQL
7 48 (2.94%) Tableau
8 43 (2.63%) Amazon Redshift
9 41 (2.51%) PostgreSQL
10 40 (2.45%) Amazon Athena
11 38 (2.32%) Hadoop
12 35 (2.14%) Delta Lake
13 34 (2.08%) Relational Database
14 27 (1.65%) SQL Server
15 24 (1.47%) MongoDB
16 21 (1.28%) Neo4j
16 21 (1.28%) Pinecone
17 20 (1.22%) MySQL
18 19 (1.16%) Looker
Development Applications
1 105 (6.42%) Git
2 74 (4.53%) MLflow
3 51 (3.12%) GitLab
4 49 (3.00%) 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 (0.24%) ER Studio
10 4 (0.24%) ERwin
10 4 (0.24%) Maven
10 4 (0.24%) 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%) Oracle APEX
12 2 (0.12%) Visual Studio
General
1 339 (20.73%) Social Skills
2 302 (18.47%) Finance
3 214 (13.09%) Analytical Skills
4 150 (9.17%) Public Sector
5 115 (7.03%) Banking
6 46 (2.81%) Marketing
7 37 (2.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 33 (2.02%) Retail
9 31 (1.90%) Pharmaceutical
10 25 (1.53%) Legal
10 25 (1.53%) Telecoms
11 24 (1.47%) Documentation Skills
12 23 (1.41%) Front Office
13 20 (1.22%) Aviation
14 19 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
15 17 (1.04%) Law
15 17 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
16 16 (0.98%) Financial Institution
17 15 (0.92%) Investment Banking
18 13 (0.80%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 249 (15.23%) Architect
2 239 (14.62%) Senior
3 231 (14.13%) Data Scientist
4 158 (9.66%) Lead
5 148 (9.05%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
6 147 (8.99%) Data Engineer
7 107 (6.54%) Developer
8 79 (4.83%) Solutions Architect
9 74 (4.53%) Python Engineer
10 73 (4.46%) Data Architect
10 73 (4.46%) Machine Learning Engineer
11 70 (4.28%) Software Engineer
12 66 (4.04%) Analyst
13 55 (3.36%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
14 51 (3.12%) Platform Engineer
15 48 (2.94%) Senior Data Scientist
16 44 (2.69%) DevOps Engineer
17 41 (2.51%) Consultant
18 39 (2.39%) Python Developer
19 38 (2.32%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 159 (9.72%) PyTorch
2 109 (6.67%) Kafka
2 109 (6.67%) TensorFlow
3 99 (6.06%) scikit-learn
4 85 (5.20%) Pandas
5 81 (4.95%) LangChain
6 75 (4.59%) React
7 71 (4.34%) PySpark
8 69 (4.22%) REST
9 66 (4.04%) NumPy
10 44 (2.69%) .NET
11 39 (2.39%) Hugging Face
12 33 (2.02%) LangGraph
13 31 (1.90%) FastAPI
14 30 (1.83%) Node.js
15 29 (1.77%) Model Context Protocol
16 27 (1.65%) AngularJS
17 26 (1.59%) RESTful
18 22 (1.35%) LlamaIndex
18 22 (1.35%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 198 (12.11%) Cloud Native
2 161 (9.85%) AI Agents
3 120 (7.34%) Algorithms
4 60 (3.67%) Product Ownership
5 59 (3.61%) Onboarding
6 56 (3.43%) Distributed Systems
7 29 (1.77%) Enterprise Software
8 26 (1.59%) Data Protection Act
9 25 (1.53%) Data Structures
10 24 (1.47%) Life Science
11 20 (1.22%) Hybrid Cloud
12 17 (1.04%) Legacy Systems
12 17 (1.04%) Management Information System
13 16 (0.98%) Fixed Income
14 15 (0.92%) Security Posture
14 15 (0.92%) Taxonomies
15 14 (0.86%) Public Cloud
15 14 (0.86%) Virtual Team
16 13 (0.80%) Distributed Computing
17 12 (0.73%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 52 (3.18%) Linux
2 17 (1.04%) Windows
3 12 (0.73%) Unix
4 6 (0.37%) Apple iOS
4 6 (0.37%) VMS
5 5 (0.31%) Android
6 4 (0.24%) Windows Server
7 2 (0.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.061%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,305 (79.82%) AI
2 604 (36.94%) Data Science
3 520 (31.80%) CI/CD
4 472 (28.87%) Analytics
5 448 (27.40%) LLM
6 377 (23.06%) Generative AI
7 375 (22.94%) Data Pipeline
8 344 (21.04%) DevOps
9 324 (19.82%) Agile
10 313 (19.14%) MLOps
11 292 (17.86%) Data Engineering
12 265 (16.21%) Use Case
13 238 (14.56%) Software Engineering
14 230 (14.07%) Decision-Making
15 220 (13.46%) Problem-Solving
16 205 (12.54%) Roadmaps
17 195 (11.93%) Data Governance
18 191 (11.68%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
19 190 (11.62%) Infrastructure as Code
20 180 (11.01%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 903 (55.23%) Python
2 406 (24.83%) SQL
3 122 (7.46%) Java
4 67 (4.10%) JavaScript
5 66 (4.04%) TypeScript
6 60 (3.67%) R
7 57 (3.49%) C#
8 37 (2.26%) Bash
9 19 (1.16%) PowerShell
10 18 (1.10%) C++
11 17 (1.04%) Go
12 16 (0.98%) Bicep
12 16 (0.98%) Scala
13 12 (0.73%) Kotlin
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
1 298 (18.23%) Security Cleared
2 206 (12.60%) SC Cleared
3 135 (8.26%) Degree
4 57 (3.49%) DV Cleared
4 57 (3.49%) Master's Degree
5 54 (3.30%) Computer Science Degree
6 48 (2.94%) AWS Certification
6 48 (2.94%) BPSS Clearance
7 31 (1.90%) CISSP
8 30 (1.83%) PhD
9 23 (1.41%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 23 (1.41%) Azure Certification
10 14 (0.86%) CISM
11 13 (0.80%) TOGAF Certification
12 7 (0.43%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 7 (0.43%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 6 (0.37%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 5 (0.31%) CompTIA Security+
14 5 (0.31%) DBS Check
14 5 (0.31%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 188 (11.50%) Data Quality
2 66 (4.04%) GDPR
3 55 (3.36%) QA
4 30 (1.83%) NIST
5 18 (1.10%) Accessibility
5 18 (1.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 14 (0.86%) EU AI Act
7 11 (0.67%) HIPAA
7 11 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 10 (0.61%) GRC
9 9 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
9 9 (0.55%) GxP
10 6 (0.37%) SLA
10 6 (0.37%) WCAG
11 5 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
12 4 (0.24%) COBIT
12 4 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 4 (0.24%) NCSC
12 4 (0.24%) Solvency II
13 3 (0.18%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 223 (13.64%) Docker
2 12 (0.73%) 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
1 281 (17.19%) Kubernetes
2 186 (11.38%) Terraform
3 29 (1.77%) Ansible
4 27 (1.65%) 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%) 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
10 2 (0.12%) systemd
Vendors
1 204 (12.48%) Databricks
2 173 (10.58%) Microsoft
3 100 (6.12%) Google
4 92 (5.63%) OpenAI
5 52 (3.18%) Foundry
6 49 (3.00%) SAP
7 35 (2.14%) 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