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 23 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 78 97 159
Rank change year-on-year +19 +62 +71
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,378 769 668
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.15% 2.60% 1.51%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.67% 2.88% 1.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 851 505 489
10th Percentile £401 £375 £413
25th Percentile £481 £455 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.56%
75th Percentile £700 £738 £719
90th Percentile £788 £874 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £525 £525
% change year-on-year +4.76% - -12.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 20 23
10th Percentile £41.85 £24.85 £41.13
25th Percentile £50.00 £40.38 £42.50
Median hourly rate £57.77 £61.25 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -5.69% +32.63% +31.94%
75th Percentile £79.60 £78.71 £66.25
90th Percentile £95.00 £81.71 £70.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £77.50 £53.09
% change year-on-year -17.42% +45.98% +51.69%

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 37,591 26,736 38,298
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.89% 90.46% 86.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,832 17,220 24,877
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £610 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -1.54% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,217 938 2,335
10th Percentile £14.99 £15.21 £12.85
25th Percentile £18.50 £20.94 £16.00
Median hourly rate £31.50 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.08% - -7.14%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.51 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.28 £71.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.31 £31.76 £31.13
% change year-on-year -7.73% +2.04% -12.14%

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 23 March 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 23 March 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 23 March 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 +15 1,157 £575 -4.17% 1,288
London +23 770 £600 -3.61% 672
Work from Home +21 435 £600 +9.09% 575
UK excluding London +28 430 £550 +4.76% 835
North of England -23 101 £531 +3.54% 171
South East -14 92 £600 +9.09% 308
Scotland +51 72 £450 +2.86% 36
East of England +3 68 £550 -8.33% 100
North West +2 63 £534 +1.71% 92
Midlands -12 63 £550 +29.41% 94
West Midlands -23 42 £550 +29.41% 36
South West -20 34 £550 -17.60% 108
Yorkshire -47 28 £516 -1.67% 52
Wales -1 20 £738 +31.11% 26
East Midlands -21 19 £600 +33.33% 58
North East -9 13 £563 +57.12% 28
Northern Ireland - 1 £650 - 11

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
1 123 (8.93%) Apache Spark
2 78 (5.66%) Apache Airflow
3 58 (4.21%) Apache
4 28 (2.03%) Jupyter
5 13 (0.94%) Confluence
6 10 (0.73%) Appian
6 10 (0.73%) SAS
7 7 (0.51%) Palantir Foundry
8 6 (0.44%) CMS
8 6 (0.44%) GeoServer
8 6 (0.44%) Smallworld
9 5 (0.36%) SharePoint
10 3 (0.22%) Headless CMS
11 2 (0.15%) Luigi
12 1 (0.073%) Apache Superset
12 1 (0.073%) Apache Synapse
12 1 (0.073%) ArcGIS
12 1 (0.073%) Microsoft Exchange
12 1 (0.073%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 34 (2.47%) Chatbot
2 16 (1.16%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (1.02%) Microsoft Office
4 12 (0.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 12 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.29%) Simulink
6 3 (0.22%) LaTeX
7 1 (0.073%) CPLEX
7 1 (0.073%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 5 (0.36%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.15%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.073%) OpenText VIM for SAP
3 1 (0.073%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.073%) SAP IBP
3 1 (0.073%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 610 (44.27%) Azure
2 493 (35.78%) AWS
3 259 (18.80%) GCP
4 145 (10.52%) Power Platform
5 119 (8.64%) GitHub
6 107 (7.76%) Azure Machine Learning
7 101 (7.33%) Serverless
8 98 (7.11%) Azure AI
9 85 (6.17%) Azure DevOps
10 77 (5.59%) Snowflake
11 72 (5.22%) Amazon SageMaker
12 61 (4.43%) Amazon S3
12 61 (4.43%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 60 (4.35%) GitHub Actions
14 59 (4.28%) Vertex AI
15 58 (4.21%) Azure Data Factory
16 47 (3.41%) AWS CloudFormation
17 45 (3.27%) AWS Lambda
18 36 (2.61%) Amazon Bedrock
19 35 (2.54%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 16 (1.16%) Network Security
2 11 (0.80%) Firewall
3 7 (0.51%) DNS
3 7 (0.51%) HTTP
4 6 (0.44%) Internet
5 5 (0.36%) FTP
5 5 (0.36%) SMTP
5 5 (0.36%) SSL
6 4 (0.29%) 5G
6 4 (0.29%) Ethernet
6 4 (0.29%) InfiniBand
7 3 (0.22%) Cisco IPT
7 3 (0.22%) LTE
7 3 (0.22%) VPN
8 2 (0.15%) 2G
8 2 (0.15%) 4G
8 2 (0.15%) Hyperconnected
8 2 (0.15%) Mobile Backhaul
8 2 (0.15%) Modbus
8 2 (0.15%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 111 (8.06%) Power BI
2 93 (6.75%) Data Lake
3 80 (5.81%) Data Warehouse
4 66 (4.79%) Big Data
5 59 (4.28%) NoSQL
6 52 (3.77%) Metadata
7 48 (3.48%) BigQuery
8 40 (2.90%) PostgreSQL
9 39 (2.83%) Tableau
10 35 (2.54%) Hadoop
10 35 (2.54%) Pinecone
11 33 (2.39%) Delta Lake
12 29 (2.10%) Relational Database
12 29 (2.10%) SQL Server
13 28 (2.03%) Weaviate
14 25 (1.81%) Mixpanel
15 24 (1.74%) Amazon Athena
16 19 (1.38%) Amazon Redshift
16 19 (1.38%) MySQL
17 18 (1.31%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 111 (8.06%) Git
2 97 (7.04%) MLflow
3 38 (2.76%) Jenkins
4 33 (2.39%) JIRA
5 26 (1.89%) GitLab
6 13 (0.94%) Visual Studio
7 10 (0.73%) JMeter
7 10 (0.73%) PyCharm
7 10 (0.73%) Selenium
8 7 (0.51%) Gradle
8 7 (0.51%) SonarQube
9 6 (0.44%) MSTest
10 5 (0.36%) Maven
11 4 (0.29%) Android Studio
11 4 (0.29%) Bitbucket
11 4 (0.29%) Cypress.io
11 4 (0.29%) Oracle APEX
11 4 (0.29%) RStudio
12 3 (0.22%) Spinnaker
12 3 (0.22%) Vite
General
1 356 (25.83%) Social Skills
2 283 (20.54%) Finance
3 165 (11.97%) Analytical Skills
4 147 (10.67%) Public Sector
5 90 (6.53%) Banking
6 37 (2.69%) Marketing
7 34 (2.47%) Pharmaceutical
8 31 (2.25%) Legal
9 27 (1.96%) Influencing Skills
9 27 (1.96%) Investment Banking
9 27 (1.96%) Retail
10 26 (1.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 24 (1.74%) Front Office
12 20 (1.45%) Presentation Skills
13 19 (1.38%) Documentation Skills
13 19 (1.38%) Manufacturing
14 17 (1.23%) Telecoms
15 13 (0.94%) Electronics
16 12 (0.87%) Financial Institution
16 12 (0.87%) Law
Job Titles
1 197 (14.30%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
2 191 (13.86%) Architect
2 191 (13.86%) Data Scientist
3 178 (12.92%) Senior
4 135 (9.80%) Data Engineer
5 123 (8.93%) Developer
6 116 (8.42%) Lead
7 66 (4.79%) Analyst
8 65 (4.72%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
9 62 (4.50%) Machine Learning Engineer
10 55 (3.99%) Data Architect
10 55 (3.99%) Python Engineer
11 51 (3.70%) Software Engineer
12 43 (3.12%) Senior Data Scientist
13 41 (2.98%) Solutions Architect
14 40 (2.90%) Gen AI Engineer
15 37 (2.69%) Azure Engineer
16 35 (2.54%) Consultant
17 32 (2.32%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
18 26 (1.89%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 227 (16.47%) PyTorch
2 191 (13.86%) TensorFlow
3 144 (10.45%) scikit-learn
4 108 (7.84%) Pandas
5 82 (5.95%) LangChain
6 81 (5.88%) React
7 79 (5.73%) NumPy
8 66 (4.79%) Kafka
9 60 (4.35%) PySpark
10 56 (4.06%) .NET
11 55 (3.99%) Model Context Protocol
12 53 (3.85%) LangGraph
12 53 (3.85%) Node.js
13 52 (3.77%) FastAPI
14 51 (3.70%) REST
15 48 (3.48%) Hugging Face
16 45 (3.27%) AngularJS
17 40 (2.90%) RESTful
18 30 (2.18%) Faiss
19 27 (1.96%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 193 (14.01%) Cloud Native
2 171 (12.41%) Algorithms
3 127 (9.22%) AI Agents
4 44 (3.19%) Onboarding
4 44 (3.19%) Product Ownership
5 40 (2.90%) Distributed Systems
6 29 (2.10%) Legacy Systems
7 28 (2.03%) Data Protection Act
8 25 (1.81%) Hybrid Cloud
9 22 (1.60%) Distributed Computing
10 20 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
11 19 (1.38%) Fixed Income
12 18 (1.31%) Analytical Mindset
13 17 (1.23%) Data Structures
13 17 (1.23%) Life Science
13 17 (1.23%) Management Information System
14 12 (0.87%) Credit Risk
14 12 (0.87%) Derivative
14 12 (0.87%) IoT
15 11 (0.80%) Genomics
Operating Systems
1 35 (2.54%) Linux
2 12 (0.87%) Windows
3 10 (0.73%) VMS
4 8 (0.58%) Android
4 8 (0.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 8 (0.58%) Ubuntu
5 7 (0.51%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.15%) Unix
7 1 (0.073%) CentOS
7 1 (0.073%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,074 (77.94%) AI
2 514 (37.30%) Data Science
3 417 (30.26%) CI/CD
4 393 (28.52%) Analytics
5 372 (27.00%) LLM
6 309 (22.42%) DevOps
7 297 (21.55%) Data Pipeline
8 284 (20.61%) Generative AI
9 271 (19.67%) Agile
9 271 (19.67%) MLOps
10 264 (19.16%) Data Engineering
11 227 (16.47%) Problem-Solving
12 199 (14.44%) Natural Language Processing
13 181 (13.13%) Use Case
14 176 (12.77%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
15 173 (12.55%) Software Engineering
16 171 (12.41%) Containerisation
17 163 (11.83%) Data Governance
18 162 (11.76%) Data Modelling
19 155 (11.25%) Prompt Engineering
Programming Languages
1 846 (61.39%) Python
2 357 (25.91%) SQL
3 98 (7.11%) Java
4 80 (5.81%) C#
5 71 (5.15%) R
6 61 (4.43%) JavaScript
7 55 (3.99%) TypeScript
8 28 (2.03%) PowerShell
9 24 (1.74%) C++
10 22 (1.60%) Bash
11 18 (1.31%) Scala
12 17 (1.23%) Bicep
13 11 (0.80%) Go
14 10 (0.73%) MATLAB
14 10 (0.73%) Rust
15 7 (0.51%) Kotlin
15 7 (0.51%) SPARQL
16 4 (0.29%) C
16 4 (0.29%) SystemVerilog
16 4 (0.29%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 227 (16.47%) Security Cleared
2 184 (13.35%) Degree
3 152 (11.03%) SC Cleared
4 84 (6.10%) Master's Degree
5 48 (3.48%) PhD
6 46 (3.34%) Computer Science Degree
7 39 (2.83%) DV Cleared
8 32 (2.32%) BPSS Clearance
9 23 (1.67%) AWS Certification
10 19 (1.38%) Azure Certification
10 19 (1.38%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 12 (0.87%) CISSP
12 11 (0.80%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 9 (0.65%) CISM
14 8 (0.58%) ISTQB
15 6 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
16 5 (0.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 5 (0.36%) TOGAF Certification
17 4 (0.29%) PMI Certification
17 4 (0.29%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 137 (9.94%) Data Quality
2 63 (4.57%) GDPR
3 50 (3.63%) QA
4 31 (2.25%) NIST
5 20 (1.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 19 (1.38%) EU AI Act
7 17 (1.23%) Accessibility
8 8 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
9 7 (0.51%) HIPAA
9 7 (0.51%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 6 (0.44%) GRC
10 6 (0.44%) NCSC
10 6 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 4 (0.29%) DO-254
11 4 (0.29%) PCI DSS
12 3 (0.22%) SOC 2
12 3 (0.22%) WCAG
13 2 (0.15%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 2 (0.15%) Disclosure Scotland
13 2 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 218 (15.82%) 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 (0.15%) Ceph
5 2 (0.15%) HDFS
6 1 (0.073%) Embedded Firmware
6 1 (0.073%) GPFS
Systems Management
1 212 (15.38%) Kubernetes
2 145 (10.52%) Terraform
3 18 (1.31%) Ansible
3 18 (1.31%) Grafana
3 18 (1.31%) Kubeflow
4 12 (0.87%) Prometheus
5 10 (0.73%) Podman
6 7 (0.51%) SCOM
7 4 (0.29%) Argo
8 3 (0.22%) Kibana
8 3 (0.22%) Rancher
9 2 (0.15%) Istio
9 2 (0.15%) Knative
9 2 (0.15%) logstash
9 2 (0.15%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.073%) Docker Swarm
10 1 (0.073%) HP Fortify
10 1 (0.073%) Microsoft Intune
10 1 (0.073%) Progress Chef
10 1 (0.073%) SELinux
Vendors
1 213 (15.46%) Databricks
2 185 (13.43%) Microsoft
3 120 (8.71%) Google
4 108 (7.84%) OpenAI
5 73 (5.30%) Foundry
6 32 (2.32%) SAP
7 28 (2.03%) Oracle
8 19 (1.38%) ServiceNow
9 15 (1.09%) Informatica
10 13 (0.94%) UiPath
11 11 (0.80%) Automation Anywhere
11 11 (0.80%) NVIDIA
12 10 (0.73%) IBM
13 8 (0.58%) Dynatrace
13 8 (0.58%) Greenplum
13 8 (0.58%) Salesforce
14 7 (0.51%) Amplitude
14 7 (0.51%) Palantir
14 7 (0.51%) Pega
15 6 (0.44%) Talend