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

6 months to
3 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 77 103 134
Rank change year-on-year +26 +31 +82
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,573 775 761
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.05% 2.48% 1.75%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.59% 2.73% 2.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 966 472 538
10th Percentile £413 £393 £409
25th Percentile £490 £462 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £550 £580
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% -5.17% +0.87%
75th Percentile £675 £679 £738
90th Percentile £775 £849 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £550 £525
% change year-on-year - +4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 21 19
10th Percentile £40.15 £31.00 £41.25
25th Percentile £50.00 £45.00 £46.18
Median hourly rate £73.40 £75.00 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.13% +42.86% +39.07%
75th Percentile £84.06 £81.01 £66.25
90th Percentile £89.13 £88.00 £75.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.00 £78.10 £52.50
% change year-on-year -11.65% +48.76% +50.00%

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 43,799 28,390 37,058
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.01% 90.78% 85.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,227 17,909 23,638
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £415 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.98% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £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 2,638 1,396 2,532
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.21 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +3.45%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £24.66 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.26% -35.31% +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 3 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 3 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 3 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 +25 1,314 £575 +3.60% 1,634
London +34 873 £575 +1.77% 1,032
UK excluding London +6 500 £550 - 759
Work from Home +15 447 £588 +6.82% 720
North of England 0 144 £575 +13.30% 158
South East -24 108 £600 +4.35% 261
Scotland +49 100 £463 -0.96% 43
North West +2 80 £599 +8.89% 100
Midlands -23 66 £550 +10.00% 68
Yorkshire -16 50 £550 +7.32% 39
West Midlands -31 49 £538 - 34
South West -22 45 £530 -11.67% 120
East of England -15 37 £525 -8.70% 89
Wales -16 18 £565 -1.83% 20
North East -28 17 £513 +28.13% 21
East Midlands -7 15 £650 +52.94% 34
Northern Ireland - 1 £334 - 15

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
1 102 (6.48%) Apache Spark
2 74 (4.70%) Apache Airflow
3 52 (3.31%) Apache
4 35 (2.23%) Jupyter
5 22 (1.40%) Confluence
6 8 (0.51%) SAS
7 7 (0.45%) Appian
7 7 (0.45%) SharePoint
8 6 (0.38%) Palantir Foundry
9 5 (0.32%) CMS
9 5 (0.32%) Headless CMS
10 3 (0.19%) ArcGIS
10 3 (0.19%) Microsoft Exchange
11 2 (0.13%) Luigi
11 2 (0.13%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.064%) Apache Pulsar
12 1 (0.064%) Apache Superset
12 1 (0.064%) Apache Synapse
12 1 (0.064%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 32 (2.03%) Chatbot
2 13 (0.83%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (0.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.45%) Microsoft Office
4 7 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.19%) CPLEX
6 2 (0.13%) Simulink
7 1 (0.064%) LaTeX
7 1 (0.064%) Notion
Business Applications
1 11 (0.70%) SAP IBP
2 7 (0.45%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
3 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.064%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.064%) OpenText VIM for SAP
4 1 (0.064%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.064%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.064%) SAP APO
4 1 (0.064%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.064%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 572 (36.36%) Azure
2 566 (35.98%) AWS
3 284 (18.05%) GCP
4 144 (9.15%) Power Platform
5 115 (7.31%) Serverless
6 104 (6.61%) Amazon S3
7 103 (6.55%) GitHub
8 91 (5.79%) Amazon SageMaker
9 87 (5.53%) AWS Lambda
10 85 (5.40%) Azure AI
11 82 (5.21%) Azure Machine Learning
12 80 (5.09%) Snowflake
13 62 (3.94%) Azure DevOps
14 58 (3.69%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 58 (3.69%) Vertex AI
15 55 (3.50%) Amazon Bedrock
16 51 (3.24%) GitHub Actions
17 46 (2.92%) Azure Data Factory
18 43 (2.73%) dbt
19 40 (2.54%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 17 (1.08%) Firewall
2 12 (0.76%) Network Security
3 11 (0.70%) Internet
4 7 (0.45%) DNS
5 6 (0.38%) VPN
6 5 (0.32%) DHCP
7 4 (0.25%) HTTP
7 4 (0.25%) NAS
7 4 (0.25%) SAN
8 3 (0.19%) MQTT
8 3 (0.19%) SMTP
9 2 (0.13%) 4G
9 2 (0.13%) 5G
9 2 (0.13%) Cisco IPT
9 2 (0.13%) Ethernet
9 2 (0.13%) Modbus
9 2 (0.13%) PCoIP
9 2 (0.13%) Radio Access Network
9 2 (0.13%) Remote Desktop
10 1 (0.064%) InfiniBand
Database & Business Intelligence
1 117 (7.44%) Power BI
2 102 (6.48%) Data Lake
3 80 (5.09%) Big Data
4 72 (4.58%) Data Warehouse
4 72 (4.58%) Metadata
5 68 (4.32%) BigQuery
6 49 (3.12%) Tableau
7 47 (2.99%) NoSQL
8 42 (2.67%) Amazon Athena
8 42 (2.67%) Amazon Redshift
9 41 (2.61%) PostgreSQL
10 36 (2.29%) Hadoop
11 34 (2.16%) Delta Lake
12 33 (2.10%) Relational Database
13 29 (1.84%) SQL Server
14 25 (1.59%) MongoDB
14 25 (1.59%) Pinecone
15 20 (1.27%) MySQL
16 18 (1.14%) Neo4j
16 18 (1.14%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 99 (6.29%) Git
2 79 (5.02%) MLflow
3 50 (3.18%) JIRA
4 49 (3.12%) GitLab
5 27 (1.72%) Jenkins
6 9 (0.57%) Claude Code
7 8 (0.51%) Vite
8 7 (0.45%) Selenium
9 5 (0.32%) Cypress.io
10 4 (0.25%) ER Studio
10 4 (0.25%) ERwin
10 4 (0.25%) Maven
10 4 (0.25%) PyCharm
11 3 (0.19%) Gradle
11 3 (0.19%) JUnit
11 3 (0.19%) REST Assured
11 3 (0.19%) SonarQube
11 3 (0.19%) Spinnaker
11 3 (0.19%) Visual Studio
12 2 (0.13%) Oracle APEX
General
1 325 (20.66%) Social Skills
2 303 (19.26%) Finance
3 202 (12.84%) Analytical Skills
4 148 (9.41%) Public Sector
5 108 (6.87%) Banking
6 43 (2.73%) Marketing
7 38 (2.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 32 (2.03%) Pharmaceutical
8 32 (2.03%) Retail
9 24 (1.53%) Documentation Skills
9 24 (1.53%) Legal
10 22 (1.40%) Front Office
11 21 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
12 20 (1.27%) Aviation
13 19 (1.21%) Telecoms
14 17 (1.08%) Financial Institution
14 17 (1.08%) Law
15 16 (1.02%) Investment Banking
16 14 (0.89%) Presentation Skills
17 13 (0.83%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 227 (14.43%) Data Scientist
2 226 (14.37%) Architect
3 217 (13.80%) Senior
4 151 (9.60%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 144 (9.15%) Data Engineer
6 138 (8.77%) Lead
7 104 (6.61%) Developer
8 75 (4.77%) Data Architect
9 74 (4.70%) Solutions Architect
10 73 (4.64%) Python Engineer
11 68 (4.32%) Analyst
12 66 (4.20%) Software Engineer
13 64 (4.07%) Machine Learning Engineer
14 56 (3.56%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
15 44 (2.80%) Consultant
16 43 (2.73%) Senior Data Scientist
17 42 (2.67%) Platform Engineer
18 36 (2.29%) Full-Stack Engineer
18 36 (2.29%) Python Developer
19 31 (1.97%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 168 (10.68%) PyTorch
2 116 (7.37%) TensorFlow
3 106 (6.74%) scikit-learn
4 99 (6.29%) Kafka
5 91 (5.79%) Pandas
6 84 (5.34%) LangChain
7 71 (4.51%) PySpark
7 71 (4.51%) React
8 70 (4.45%) NumPy
9 63 (4.01%) REST
10 46 (2.92%) .NET
11 45 (2.86%) Hugging Face
12 32 (2.03%) FastAPI
12 32 (2.03%) LangGraph
13 27 (1.72%) AngularJS
13 27 (1.72%) Node.js
14 26 (1.65%) Model Context Protocol
14 26 (1.65%) RESTful
15 22 (1.40%) pytest
16 21 (1.34%) LlamaIndex
Miscellaneous
1 191 (12.14%) Cloud Native
2 149 (9.47%) AI Agents
3 116 (7.37%) Algorithms
4 59 (3.75%) Product Ownership
5 51 (3.24%) Onboarding
6 50 (3.18%) Distributed Systems
7 28 (1.78%) Data Protection Act
8 25 (1.59%) Enterprise Software
9 23 (1.46%) Data Structures
9 23 (1.46%) Life Science
10 19 (1.21%) Fixed Income
11 18 (1.14%) Legacy Systems
12 17 (1.08%) Management Information System
13 16 (1.02%) Hybrid Cloud
13 16 (1.02%) Security Posture
14 13 (0.83%) Distributed Computing
14 13 (0.83%) Taxonomies
15 12 (0.76%) Enterprise Cloud
15 12 (0.76%) Public Cloud
15 12 (0.76%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 49 (3.12%) Linux
2 17 (1.08%) Windows
3 11 (0.70%) Unix
4 6 (0.38%) Apple iOS
4 6 (0.38%) VMS
5 5 (0.32%) Android
6 4 (0.25%) Windows Server
7 2 (0.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.064%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,267 (80.55%) AI
2 584 (37.13%) Data Science
3 497 (31.60%) CI/CD
4 458 (29.12%) Analytics
5 443 (28.16%) LLM
6 367 (23.33%) Data Pipeline
7 363 (23.08%) Generative AI
8 320 (20.34%) DevOps
9 308 (19.58%) MLOps
10 300 (19.07%) Agile
11 289 (18.37%) Data Engineering
12 262 (16.66%) Use Case
13 220 (13.99%) Decision-Making
14 214 (13.60%) Software Engineering
15 209 (13.29%) Problem-Solving
16 195 (12.40%) Data Governance
17 188 (11.95%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
18 179 (11.38%) Roadmaps
19 177 (11.25%) Data Modelling
20 176 (11.19%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 877 (55.75%) Python
2 396 (25.17%) SQL
3 114 (7.25%) Java
4 64 (4.07%) R
5 60 (3.81%) TypeScript
6 59 (3.75%) C#
7 56 (3.56%) JavaScript
8 34 (2.16%) Bash
9 19 (1.21%) C++
10 17 (1.08%) PowerShell
11 16 (1.02%) Bicep
12 15 (0.95%) Scala
13 14 (0.89%) Go
14 11 (0.70%) Kotlin
15 9 (0.57%) PL/SQL
15 9 (0.57%) SPARQL
16 7 (0.45%) Cypher
16 7 (0.45%) Rust
17 6 (0.38%) Gremlin
18 5 (0.32%) Perl
Qualifications
1 278 (17.67%) Security Cleared
2 192 (12.21%) SC Cleared
3 129 (8.20%) Degree
4 51 (3.24%) Master's Degree
5 46 (2.92%) BPSS Clearance
5 46 (2.92%) DV Cleared
6 45 (2.86%) AWS Certification
7 44 (2.80%) Computer Science Degree
8 31 (1.97%) PhD
9 24 (1.53%) Azure Certification
10 21 (1.34%) CISSP
11 20 (1.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 15 (0.95%) CISM
13 7 (0.45%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 7 (0.45%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 5 (0.32%) CEH
14 5 (0.32%) CompTIA Security+
14 5 (0.32%) DBS Check
14 5 (0.32%) GIAC
14 5 (0.32%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 187 (11.89%) Data Quality
2 67 (4.26%) GDPR
3 54 (3.43%) QA
4 29 (1.84%) NIST
5 18 (1.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 17 (1.08%) Accessibility
7 13 (0.83%) EU AI Act
8 11 (0.70%) HIPAA
8 11 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 9 (0.57%) Actionable Recommendations
9 9 (0.57%) GRC
9 9 (0.57%) GxP
10 7 (0.45%) NCSC
11 5 (0.32%) Disclosure Scotland
11 5 (0.32%) WCAG
12 4 (0.25%) COBIT
12 4 (0.25%) SLA
12 4 (0.25%) Solvency II
13 3 (0.19%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 3 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 215 (13.67%) Docker
2 12 (0.76%) Active Directory
3 11 (0.70%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 5 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
4 5 (0.32%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (0.25%) IAG
5 4 (0.25%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.19%) BitLocker
6 3 (0.19%) Firmware
6 3 (0.19%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.19%) Terminal Services
6 3 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.13%) Apache ZooKeeper
7 2 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.13%) VMware Workstation
8 1 (0.064%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 267 (16.97%) Kubernetes
2 172 (10.93%) Terraform
3 23 (1.46%) Grafana
3 23 (1.46%) Kubeflow
4 21 (1.34%) Ansible
5 13 (0.83%) Podman
5 13 (0.83%) Prometheus
6 6 (0.38%) Istio
7 3 (0.19%) Nagios
7 3 (0.19%) NetBackup
7 3 (0.19%) Puppet
7 3 (0.19%) Rancher
7 3 (0.19%) vCenter Server
7 3 (0.19%) vMotion
8 2 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 2 (0.13%) Argo
8 2 (0.13%) Docker Swarm
8 2 (0.13%) Kibana
8 2 (0.13%) Packer
8 2 (0.13%) SCCM
Vendors
1 204 (12.97%) Databricks
2 169 (10.74%) Microsoft
3 97 (6.17%) Google
4 96 (6.10%) OpenAI
5 54 (3.43%) Foundry
6 45 (2.86%) SAP
7 36 (2.29%) Oracle
8 30 (1.91%) ServiceNow
9 24 (1.53%) Informatica
10 17 (1.08%) IBM
11 14 (0.89%) UiPath
12 13 (0.83%) Dynatrace
13 8 (0.51%) Automation Anywhere
13 8 (0.51%) Salesforce
14 7 (0.45%) Amplitude
14 7 (0.45%) Sybase
14 7 (0.45%) Talend
15 6 (0.38%) Palantir
15 6 (0.38%) Pega
15 6 (0.38%) Workday