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 1 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 83 113 142
Rank change year-on-year +30 +29 +88
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,422 704 715
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.91% 2.42% 1.66%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.43% 2.66% 1.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 861 433 516
10th Percentile £413 £393 £413
25th Percentile £492 £456 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £563 £580
Median % change year-on-year +2.22% -3.02% -1.28%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £738
90th Percentile £775 £850 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £575 £525
% change year-on-year -4.35% +9.52% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 49 18 19
10th Percentile £40.54 £29.28 £41.25
25th Percentile £50.77 £45.00 £46.22
Median hourly rate £65.00 £75.00 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -13.33% +42.86% +50.00%
75th Percentile £83.75 £80.76 £66.25
90th Percentile £89.00 £88.00 £75.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £77.50 £56.25
% change year-on-year -16.13% +37.78% +60.71%

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 41,434 26,510 36,773
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.66% 90.99% 85.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,895 16,942 23,625
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £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 2,481 1,120 2,526
10th Percentile £14.64 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.85 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £27.97 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.98% -23.38% -0.11%
75th Percentile £67.84 £57.50 £60.71
90th Percentile £81.05 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +8.91%

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 1 June 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 1 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Machine Learning in the UK

Machine Learning
Top 16 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 1 June 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 +20 1,185 £575 - 1,999
London +35 799 £575 - 1,208
UK excluding London +13 434 £550 -4.35% 987
Work from Home +24 408 £581 +5.68% 1,034
North of England -1 121 £554 +0.68% 256
Scotland +54 93 £518 +10.81% 48
South East -36 84 £650 +13.04% 297
North West -15 62 £588 +6.82% 166
Midlands -16 61 £550 +10.00% 80
Yorkshire -20 45 £550 - 56
East of England -21 44 £550 -13.73% 145
West Midlands -28 43 £550 +10.00% 37
South West -27 36 £500 -21.88% 132
North East -13 17 £550 +46.67% 35
East Midlands -17 16 £650 +46.48% 42
Wales -12 14 £650 +13.04% 18

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
1 113 (7.95%) Apache Spark
2 68 (4.78%) Apache Airflow
3 54 (3.80%) Apache
4 34 (2.39%) Jupyter
5 16 (1.13%) Confluence
6 9 (0.63%) Appian
7 8 (0.56%) SharePoint
8 5 (0.35%) CMS
8 5 (0.35%) Headless CMS
9 4 (0.28%) Palantir Foundry
9 4 (0.28%) SAS
10 2 (0.14%) Luigi
11 1 (0.070%) Apache Pulsar
11 1 (0.070%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.070%) Apache Synapse
11 1 (0.070%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.070%) NetWeaver
11 1 (0.070%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 27 (1.90%) Chatbot
2 12 (0.84%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 9 (0.63%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (0.49%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (0.21%) LaTeX
6 2 (0.14%) CPLEX
6 2 (0.14%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 11 (0.77%) SAP IBP
2 6 (0.42%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
3 2 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.070%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.070%) OpenText VIM for SAP
4 1 (0.070%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.070%) SAP APO
4 1 (0.070%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 525 (36.92%) Azure
2 481 (33.83%) AWS
3 246 (17.30%) GCP
4 125 (8.79%) Power Platform
5 89 (6.26%) GitHub
6 84 (5.91%) Azure AI
7 83 (5.84%) Serverless
8 75 (5.27%) Amazon SageMaker
9 73 (5.13%) Azure Machine Learning
10 71 (4.99%) Amazon S3
11 67 (4.71%) Snowflake
12 64 (4.50%) Azure DevOps
13 53 (3.73%) AWS Lambda
13 53 (3.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 53 (3.73%) Vertex AI
14 49 (3.45%) GitHub Actions
15 48 (3.38%) Azure Data Factory
16 37 (2.60%) Amazon Bedrock
17 33 (2.32%) AWS CloudFormation
18 31 (2.18%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 13 (0.91%) Network Security
2 10 (0.70%) Firewall
3 9 (0.63%) HTTP
4 8 (0.56%) DNS
5 5 (0.35%) FTP
5 5 (0.35%) SMTP
5 5 (0.35%) SSL
6 4 (0.28%) Internet
6 4 (0.28%) NAS
6 4 (0.28%) SAN
7 3 (0.21%) InfiniBand
8 2 (0.14%) 4G
8 2 (0.14%) 5G
8 2 (0.14%) DHCP
8 2 (0.14%) Ethernet
8 2 (0.14%) PCoIP
8 2 (0.14%) Radio Access Network
8 2 (0.14%) Remote Desktop
9 1 (0.070%) 3GPP
9 1 (0.070%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 97 (6.82%) Power BI
2 94 (6.61%) Data Lake
3 75 (5.27%) Big Data
4 66 (4.64%) Metadata
5 64 (4.50%) BigQuery
6 51 (3.59%) Data Warehouse
7 48 (3.38%) NoSQL
8 42 (2.95%) Tableau
9 35 (2.46%) Hadoop
10 31 (2.18%) Delta Lake
11 30 (2.11%) SQL Server
12 28 (1.97%) PostgreSQL
13 27 (1.90%) Pinecone
13 27 (1.90%) Relational Database
14 24 (1.69%) Amazon Athena
15 23 (1.62%) Mixpanel
16 21 (1.48%) MongoDB
17 20 (1.41%) Weaviate
18 17 (1.20%) Amazon Redshift
19 14 (0.98%) Redis
Development Applications
1 87 (6.12%) Git
2 81 (5.70%) MLflow
3 37 (2.60%) JIRA
4 28 (1.97%) GitLab
5 22 (1.55%) Jenkins
6 9 (0.63%) Visual Studio
7 7 (0.49%) Selenium
8 5 (0.35%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.28%) Claude Code
9 4 (0.28%) Cypress.io
9 4 (0.28%) ERwin
9 4 (0.28%) JMeter
9 4 (0.28%) Maven
9 4 (0.28%) PyCharm
10 3 (0.21%) Gradle
10 3 (0.21%) JUnit
10 3 (0.21%) REST Assured
10 3 (0.21%) Spinnaker
10 3 (0.21%) Vite
11 2 (0.14%) ER Studio
General
1 307 (21.59%) Social Skills
2 282 (19.83%) Finance
3 176 (12.38%) Analytical Skills
4 135 (9.49%) Public Sector
5 88 (6.19%) Banking
6 33 (2.32%) Marketing
7 31 (2.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 28 (1.97%) Pharmaceutical
9 25 (1.76%) Documentation Skills
10 24 (1.69%) Legal
11 22 (1.55%) Aviation
11 22 (1.55%) Influencing Skills
11 22 (1.55%) Retail
12 21 (1.48%) Front Office
12 21 (1.48%) Investment Banking
13 18 (1.27%) Telecoms
14 12 (0.84%) Aerospace
14 12 (0.84%) Financial Institution
14 12 (0.84%) Law
14 12 (0.84%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 210 (14.77%) Data Scientist
2 199 (13.99%) Senior
3 185 (13.01%) Architect
4 147 (10.34%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 131 (9.21%) Data Engineer
6 120 (8.44%) Lead
7 95 (6.68%) Developer
8 76 (5.34%) Analyst
9 70 (4.92%) Python Engineer
10 62 (4.36%) Machine Learning Engineer
10 62 (4.36%) Software Engineer
11 59 (4.15%) Solutions Architect
12 56 (3.94%) Data Architect
13 51 (3.59%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
14 41 (2.88%) Senior Data Scientist
15 39 (2.74%) Consultant
16 33 (2.32%) Python Developer
17 30 (2.11%) Business Analyst
18 29 (2.04%) Artificial Intelligence Specialist
18 29 (2.04%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 181 (12.73%) PyTorch
2 132 (9.28%) TensorFlow
3 111 (7.81%) scikit-learn
4 97 (6.82%) Pandas
5 81 (5.70%) Kafka
6 71 (4.99%) LangChain
7 70 (4.92%) NumPy
8 67 (4.71%) React
9 63 (4.43%) PySpark
10 55 (3.87%) REST
11 53 (3.73%) .NET
12 46 (3.23%) Hugging Face
13 35 (2.46%) LangGraph
14 32 (2.25%) AngularJS
14 32 (2.25%) Model Context Protocol
14 32 (2.25%) Node.js
15 28 (1.97%) FastAPI
15 28 (1.97%) RESTful
16 19 (1.34%) Faiss
16 19 (1.34%) LlamaIndex
Miscellaneous
1 166 (11.67%) Cloud Native
2 141 (9.92%) AI Agents
3 118 (8.30%) Algorithms
4 51 (3.59%) Product Ownership
5 40 (2.81%) Onboarding
6 38 (2.67%) Distributed Systems
7 23 (1.62%) Data Protection Act
8 19 (1.34%) Data Structures
8 19 (1.34%) Fixed Income
8 19 (1.34%) Life Science
9 18 (1.27%) Enterprise Software
10 17 (1.20%) Legacy Systems
10 17 (1.20%) Management Information System
11 15 (1.05%) Analytical Mindset
12 13 (0.91%) Hybrid Cloud
12 13 (0.91%) Low-Code
13 12 (0.84%) Public Cloud
14 11 (0.77%) Augmented Reality
14 11 (0.77%) Cyber Threat
14 11 (0.77%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 29 (2.04%) Linux
2 15 (1.05%) Windows
3 11 (0.77%) Unix
4 7 (0.49%) Apple iOS
5 6 (0.42%) Android
5 6 (0.42%) VMS
6 2 (0.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.070%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,134 (79.75%) AI
2 530 (37.27%) Data Science
3 441 (31.01%) CI/CD
4 420 (29.54%) LLM
5 397 (27.92%) Analytics
6 320 (22.50%) Data Pipeline
7 316 (22.22%) Generative AI
8 293 (20.60%) DevOps
9 282 (19.83%) MLOps
10 263 (18.50%) Data Engineering
11 262 (18.42%) Agile
12 210 (14.77%) Use Case
13 194 (13.64%) Problem-Solving
14 183 (12.87%) Software Engineering
15 177 (12.45%) Data Governance
16 175 (12.31%) Decision-Making
17 174 (12.24%) ETL
18 173 (12.17%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
19 154 (10.83%) Containerisation
20 147 (10.34%) Natural Language Processing
Programming Languages
1 820 (57.67%) Python
2 366 (25.74%) SQL
3 104 (7.31%) Java
4 73 (5.13%) C#
5 64 (4.50%) R
6 49 (3.45%) TypeScript
7 45 (3.16%) JavaScript
8 26 (1.83%) C++
9 18 (1.27%) Bash
10 15 (1.05%) PowerShell
11 14 (0.98%) Bicep
12 11 (0.77%) Scala
13 10 (0.70%) Kotlin
14 8 (0.56%) Go
15 7 (0.49%) Rust
15 7 (0.49%) SPARQL
16 6 (0.42%) MATLAB
16 6 (0.42%) PL/SQL
17 5 (0.35%) Perl
18 3 (0.21%) Korn
Qualifications
1 235 (16.53%) Security Cleared
2 161 (11.32%) SC Cleared
3 115 (8.09%) Degree
4 51 (3.59%) Master's Degree
5 38 (2.67%) DV Cleared
6 37 (2.60%) BPSS Clearance
7 35 (2.46%) Computer Science Degree
8 34 (2.39%) PhD
9 26 (1.83%) AWS Certification
10 20 (1.41%) Azure Certification
11 18 (1.27%) CISSP
12 15 (1.05%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 14 (0.98%) CISM
14 6 (0.42%) ISTQB
14 6 (0.42%) Microsoft Certification
14 6 (0.42%) Microsoft Certified Professional
15 5 (0.35%) GIAC
15 5 (0.35%) PMI Certification
15 5 (0.35%) PMP
16 4 (0.28%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 155 (10.90%) Data Quality
2 56 (3.94%) GDPR
3 50 (3.52%) QA
4 30 (2.11%) NIST
5 18 (1.27%) Accessibility
6 15 (1.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 13 (0.91%) EU AI Act
8 11 (0.77%) Actionable Recommendations
9 10 (0.70%) HIPAA
10 8 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 7 (0.49%) GRC
11 7 (0.49%) GxP
11 7 (0.49%) NCSC
12 5 (0.35%) WCAG
13 4 (0.28%) COBIT
13 4 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
14 3 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 42001
14 3 (0.21%) SLA
15 2 (0.14%) DO-254
15 2 (0.14%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 191 (13.43%) Docker
2 13 (0.91%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 10 (0.70%) Active Directory
4 5 (0.35%) Firmware
5 3 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.14%) Ceph
6 2 (0.14%) HDFS
6 2 (0.14%) Lustre
6 2 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
6 2 (0.14%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.14%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.14%) VMware Workstation
7 1 (0.070%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 226 (15.89%) Kubernetes
2 136 (9.56%) Terraform
3 21 (1.48%) Kubeflow
4 19 (1.34%) Grafana
5 13 (0.91%) Prometheus
6 12 (0.84%) Ansible
7 9 (0.63%) Podman
8 5 (0.35%) Istio
9 3 (0.21%) NetBackup
9 3 (0.21%) Rancher
10 2 (0.14%) Docker Swarm
10 2 (0.14%) Kibana
10 2 (0.14%) Packer
10 2 (0.14%) SCCM
11 1 (0.070%) Argo
11 1 (0.070%) HP Fortify
11 1 (0.070%) logstash
Vendors
1 196 (13.78%) Databricks
2 160 (11.25%) Microsoft
3 97 (6.82%) OpenAI
4 87 (6.12%) Google
5 56 (3.94%) Foundry
6 38 (2.67%) SAP
7 34 (2.39%) Oracle
8 21 (1.48%) ServiceNow
9 16 (1.13%) IBM
10 15 (1.05%) UiPath
11 13 (0.91%) Informatica
12 12 (0.84%) Dynatrace
13 11 (0.77%) Automation Anywhere
14 9 (0.63%) Amplitude
15 7 (0.49%) NVIDIA
15 7 (0.49%) Sybase
16 6 (0.42%) Talend
16 6 (0.42%) Workday
17 5 (0.35%) Ariba
17 5 (0.35%) Splunk