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 19 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 88 99 115
Rank change year-on-year +11 +16 +77
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,580 850 808
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.95% 2.59% 2.08%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.48% 2.86% 2.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,023 541 576
10th Percentile £413 £400 £413
25th Percentile £493 £463 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £555 £600
Median % change year-on-year +3.60% -7.50% +4.35%
75th Percentile £700 £675 £738
90th Percentile £788 £788 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £550 £500
% change year-on-year - +10.00% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 23 19
10th Percentile £28.50 £33.80 £13.06
25th Percentile £37.00 £52.86 £34.50
Median hourly rate £77.00 £75.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +2.67% +62.41% -
75th Percentile £84.69 £83.01 £53.75
90th Percentile £88.75 £88.00 £58.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £77.00 £77.50 £49.34
% change year-on-year -0.65% +57.07% +6.84%

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 45,377 29,691 33,202
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.71% 90.48% 85.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,881 18,495 21,183
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.58%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £727 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,839 1,731 1,775
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.38 £17.30 £18.15
Median hourly rate £41.56 £25.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +65.23% -38.57% +0.61%
75th Percentile £68.00 £49.63 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.30 £42.50
% change year-on-year +88.67% -45.18% +18.88%

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 19 August 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 19 August 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 19 August 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 +13 1,362 £575 +3.23% 2,632
London +31 911 £588 +2.17% 1,704
UK excluding London -6 490 £550 - 1,274
Work from Home +3 411 £600 +9.09% 1,105
South East -20 137 £600 +6.67% 338
North of England -25 133 £561 +12.25% 271
Scotland +25 80 £440 -12.00% 164
North West -35 66 £600 +14.29% 159
Midlands -18 59 £550 +4.76% 102
Yorkshire -6 56 £550 +12.19% 79
West Midlands -33 49 £550 -4.35% 62
South West -37 45 £525 -4.55% 150
East of England -34 30 £500 -11.11% 190
North East -33 12 £463 +8.82% 35
Wales -10 9 £540 -20.00% 32
East Midlands -14 9 £450 +7.78% 40
Northern Ireland +7 1 £334 -52.29% 44

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 84 (5.32%) Apache Spark
2 79 (5.00%) Apache Airflow
3 48 (3.04%) Apache
4 32 (2.03%) Jupyter
5 19 (1.20%) Confluence
6 9 (0.57%) SAS
7 6 (0.38%) ArcGIS
8 5 (0.32%) Palantir Foundry
9 4 (0.25%) CMS
9 4 (0.25%) Headless CMS
9 4 (0.25%) SharePoint
10 3 (0.19%) Microsoft Exchange
10 3 (0.19%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.13%) Appian
11 2 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.063%) Apache Pulsar
12 1 (0.063%) Apache Superset
12 1 (0.063%) Luigi
12 1 (0.063%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 30 (1.90%) Chatbot
2 10 (0.63%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.32%) CPLEX
4 4 (0.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.19%) Microsoft Office
6 2 (0.13%) DaVinci Resolve
6 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.13%) Notion
6 2 (0.13%) NUKE
7 1 (0.063%) Adobe XD
7 1 (0.063%) Simulink
7 1 (0.063%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 11 (0.70%) SAP IBP
2 8 (0.51%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 3 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.13%) Cloudability
5 2 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.13%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.063%) Actimize
6 1 (0.063%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.063%) OpenText VIM for SAP
6 1 (0.063%) Oracle Cash Management
6 1 (0.063%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.063%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.063%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.063%) SAP APO
6 1 (0.063%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 553 (35.00%) Azure
2 540 (34.18%) AWS
3 311 (19.68%) GCP
4 122 (7.72%) Power Platform
5 110 (6.96%) GitHub
6 103 (6.52%) Serverless
7 88 (5.57%) Amazon S3
7 88 (5.57%) Snowflake
8 79 (5.00%) AWS Lambda
9 72 (4.56%) Amazon SageMaker
10 67 (4.24%) Azure Machine Learning
11 59 (3.73%) Amazon Bedrock
12 57 (3.61%) Azure AI
13 56 (3.54%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 54 (3.42%) dbt
15 52 (3.29%) Azure DevOps
16 51 (3.23%) Vertex AI
17 47 (2.97%) GitHub Actions
18 42 (2.66%) Azure Data Factory
19 38 (2.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.33%) Firewall
2 18 (1.14%) Internet
3 17 (1.08%) Network Security
4 14 (0.89%) Broadband
5 11 (0.70%) DNS
6 10 (0.63%) VPN
7 9 (0.57%) DHCP
8 4 (0.25%) NAS
8 4 (0.25%) SAN
8 4 (0.25%) TCP/IP
8 4 (0.25%) VLAN
9 3 (0.19%) HTTP
9 3 (0.19%) MQTT
9 3 (0.19%) SMS
9 3 (0.19%) SMTP
10 2 (0.13%) CTI
10 2 (0.13%) Modbus
10 2 (0.13%) PCoIP
10 2 (0.13%) Remote Desktop
11 1 (0.063%) OpenFlow
Database & Business Intelligence
1 110 (6.96%) Power BI
2 89 (5.63%) Data Lake
3 83 (5.25%) Data Warehouse
4 81 (5.13%) BigQuery
5 76 (4.81%) Metadata
6 65 (4.11%) Big Data
7 50 (3.16%) NoSQL
8 49 (3.10%) Amazon Redshift
9 42 (2.66%) Delta Lake
9 42 (2.66%) Tableau
10 35 (2.22%) Amazon Athena
11 32 (2.03%) Relational Database
12 29 (1.84%) PostgreSQL
13 23 (1.46%) Hadoop
14 22 (1.39%) MongoDB
15 19 (1.20%) Looker
16 18 (1.14%) Data Mining
16 18 (1.14%) Neo4j
17 16 (1.01%) MySQL
18 15 (0.95%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 90 (5.70%) Git
2 51 (3.23%) MLflow
3 47 (2.97%) GitLab
4 44 (2.78%) JIRA
5 22 (1.39%) Jenkins
6 10 (0.63%) Claude Code
6 10 (0.63%) Vite
7 9 (0.57%) Selenium
8 6 (0.38%) Cypress.io
8 6 (0.38%) ERwin
9 4 (0.25%) PyCharm
9 4 (0.25%) Spinnaker
10 3 (0.19%) ER Studio
10 3 (0.19%) REST Assured
11 2 (0.13%) JMeter
11 2 (0.13%) JUnit
11 2 (0.13%) NUnit
11 2 (0.13%) Oracle APEX
11 2 (0.13%) Pylint
11 2 (0.13%) SonarQube
General
1 337 (21.33%) Social Skills
2 293 (18.54%) Finance
3 211 (13.35%) Analytical Skills
4 127 (8.04%) Public Sector
5 111 (7.03%) Banking
6 42 (2.66%) Marketing
7 37 (2.34%) Retail
8 32 (2.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 29 (1.84%) Telecoms
10 28 (1.77%) Pharmaceutical
11 26 (1.65%) Legal
12 23 (1.46%) Documentation Skills
13 22 (1.39%) Front Office
14 19 (1.20%) Aerospace
14 19 (1.20%) Manufacturing
15 18 (1.14%) Financial Institution
16 17 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
17 16 (1.01%) Aviation
18 15 (0.95%) Investment Banking
19 14 (0.89%) Law
Job Titles
1 248 (15.70%) Senior
2 243 (15.38%) Architect
3 207 (13.10%) Data Scientist
4 172 (10.89%) Lead
5 167 (10.57%) Data Engineer
6 142 (8.99%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 93 (5.89%) Developer
7 93 (5.89%) Machine Learning Engineer
8 79 (5.00%) Python Engineer
9 73 (4.62%) Solutions Architect
10 70 (4.43%) Data Architect
11 61 (3.86%) Analyst
12 57 (3.61%) Software Engineer
13 56 (3.54%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
14 54 (3.42%) Platform Engineer
15 49 (3.10%) Security Architect
16 46 (2.91%) Senior Data Engineer
17 43 (2.72%) DevOps Engineer
18 41 (2.59%) Consultant
18 41 (2.59%) Senior Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 137 (8.67%) PyTorch
2 110 (6.96%) Kafka
3 96 (6.08%) TensorFlow
4 88 (5.57%) scikit-learn
5 80 (5.06%) LangChain
5 80 (5.06%) PySpark
6 67 (4.24%) Pandas
6 67 (4.24%) REST
7 66 (4.18%) React
8 51 (3.23%) NumPy
9 40 (2.53%) .NET
10 38 (2.41%) LangGraph
11 31 (1.96%) pytest
12 30 (1.90%) FastAPI
13 28 (1.77%) Hugging Face
14 26 (1.65%) Model Context Protocol
15 25 (1.58%) RESTful
16 23 (1.46%) AngularJS
16 23 (1.46%) Node.js
17 22 (1.39%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 198 (12.53%) Cloud Native
2 169 (10.70%) AI Agents
3 107 (6.77%) Algorithms
4 69 (4.37%) Product Ownership
5 58 (3.67%) Distributed Systems
5 58 (3.67%) Onboarding
6 32 (2.03%) Enterprise Software
7 29 (1.84%) Data Structures
8 25 (1.58%) Life Science
9 23 (1.46%) Data Protection Act
10 22 (1.39%) Hybrid Cloud
11 17 (1.08%) CMDB
12 16 (1.01%) Virtual Team
13 15 (0.95%) Enterprise Cloud
13 15 (0.95%) Legacy Systems
13 15 (0.95%) Public Cloud
14 14 (0.89%) IoT
14 14 (0.89%) Security Posture
14 14 (0.89%) Social Media
15 13 (0.82%) Augmented Reality
Operating Systems
1 47 (2.97%) Linux
2 12 (0.76%) Unix
2 12 (0.76%) Windows
3 4 (0.25%) Ubuntu
3 4 (0.25%) Windows Server
4 3 (0.19%) Android
4 3 (0.19%) Apple iOS
4 3 (0.19%) VMS
5 2 (0.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.063%) Robot Operating System
6 1 (0.063%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,271 (80.44%) AI
2 580 (36.71%) Data Science
3 502 (31.77%) CI/CD
4 450 (28.48%) Analytics
5 430 (27.22%) LLM
6 379 (23.99%) Generative AI
7 353 (22.34%) Data Pipeline
8 334 (21.14%) Agile
9 324 (20.51%) DevOps
10 291 (18.42%) MLOps
11 273 (17.28%) Data Engineering
12 249 (15.76%) Software Engineering
13 241 (15.25%) Use Case
14 221 (13.99%) Decision-Making
15 212 (13.42%) Roadmaps
16 207 (13.10%) Problem-Solving
17 206 (13.04%) Stakeholder Management
18 196 (12.41%) Infrastructure as Code
19 183 (11.58%) Data Governance
19 183 (11.58%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Programming Languages
1 856 (54.18%) Python
2 380 (24.05%) SQL
3 117 (7.41%) Java
4 74 (4.68%) JavaScript
5 58 (3.67%) TypeScript
6 48 (3.04%) C#
7 41 (2.59%) R
8 40 (2.53%) Bash
9 25 (1.58%) PowerShell
10 21 (1.33%) C++
11 20 (1.27%) Bicep
12 17 (1.08%) Scala
13 15 (0.95%) Go
14 11 (0.70%) PL/SQL
15 8 (0.51%) Cypher
16 7 (0.44%) Kotlin
16 7 (0.44%) SPARQL
17 6 (0.38%) Gremlin
17 6 (0.38%) Perl
18 5 (0.32%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 274 (17.34%) Security Cleared
2 198 (12.53%) SC Cleared
3 119 (7.53%) Degree
4 55 (3.48%) Computer Science Degree
4 55 (3.48%) DV Cleared
5 44 (2.78%) AWS Certification
6 43 (2.72%) Master's Degree
7 35 (2.22%) CISSP
8 29 (1.84%) BPSS Clearance
9 28 (1.77%) PhD
10 22 (1.39%) Azure Certification
11 20 (1.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 15 (0.95%) CISM
13 14 (0.89%) TOGAF Certification
14 10 (0.63%) Cisco Certification
15 8 (0.51%) ITIL Certification
16 7 (0.44%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
16 7 (0.44%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 7 (0.44%) PMP
17 6 (0.38%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 190 (12.03%) Data Quality
2 61 (3.86%) GDPR
3 52 (3.29%) QA
4 33 (2.09%) NIST
5 22 (1.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 15 (0.95%) Accessibility
6 15 (0.95%) EU AI Act
7 10 (0.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 9 (0.57%) GxP
9 8 (0.51%) GRC
9 8 (0.51%) HIPAA
10 7 (0.44%) Actionable Recommendations
10 7 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 6 (0.38%) SLA
11 6 (0.38%) WCAG
12 5 (0.32%) NCSC
12 5 (0.32%) Solvency II
13 4 (0.25%) COBIT
13 4 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
14 3 (0.19%) IFRS
System Software
1 219 (13.86%) Docker
2 12 (0.76%) Active Directory
3 9 (0.57%) IAG
4 5 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
4 5 (0.32%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (0.25%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 3 (0.19%) BitLocker
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%) Firmware
7 2 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.13%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (0.13%) VMware Workstation
8 1 (0.063%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 276 (17.47%) Kubernetes
2 184 (11.65%) Terraform
3 35 (2.22%) Ansible
4 29 (1.84%) Kubeflow
5 26 (1.65%) Grafana
6 19 (1.20%) Prometheus
7 6 (0.38%) Istio
7 6 (0.38%) Podman
8 4 (0.25%) systemd
9 3 (0.19%) Kibana
9 3 (0.19%) Nagios
9 3 (0.19%) NetBackup
9 3 (0.19%) Puppet
9 3 (0.19%) vCenter Server
9 3 (0.19%) vMotion
10 2 (0.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 2 (0.13%) Argo
10 2 (0.13%) Docker Swarm
10 2 (0.13%) Rancher
10 2 (0.13%) SCCM
Vendors
1 203 (12.85%) Databricks
2 162 (10.25%) Microsoft
3 108 (6.84%) Google
4 77 (4.87%) OpenAI
5 48 (3.04%) SAP
6 38 (2.41%) ServiceNow
7 37 (2.34%) Foundry
8 29 (1.84%) Oracle
9 22 (1.39%) Informatica
10 18 (1.14%) Dynatrace
11 14 (0.89%) IBM
12 13 (0.82%) Splunk
13 12 (0.76%) UiPath
14 9 (0.57%) Nexthink
15 7 (0.44%) Salesforce
15 7 (0.44%) Sybase
16 6 (0.38%) Cisco
16 6 (0.38%) Pega
16 6 (0.38%) VMware
16 6 (0.38%) Workday