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 18 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 79 100 182
Rank change year-on-year +21 +82 +25
Contract jobs citing Machine Learning 1,158 838 625
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.16% 2.45% 1.42%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.58% 2.78% 1.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 769 564 451
10th Percentile £400 £375 £400
25th Percentile £463 £463 £471
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £563 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.25% +4.35% -8.00%
75th Percentile £688 £731 £700
90th Percentile £788 £821 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £506 £501 £530
% change year-on-year +0.96% -5.44% -11.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 19 29
10th Percentile £31.36 £13.06 £42.50
25th Percentile £42.79 £19.38 -
Median hourly rate £58.36 £26.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +120.24% -42.62% -7.64%
75th Percentile £79.75 £49.97 £47.50
90th Percentile £105.70 £56.00 £65.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £37.34 £46.18
% change year-on-year +74.08% -19.14% -9.89%

All Process and 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 32,337 30,122 39,072
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.38% 88.11% 88.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,351 18,405 26,081
10th Percentile £300 £306 £308
25th Percentile £406 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £723 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £477 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,080 985 1,517
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £14.36
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.50 £18.93
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £43.33
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -24.99% +23.80%
75th Percentile £49.75 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.50 £32.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -27.69% -26.97% +39.06%

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 18 December 2025.

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 18 December 2025.

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 18 December 2025. 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 +12 976 £575 -4.17% 3,154
London +11 643 £625 -3.85% 670
UK excluding London +50 366 £506 +0.96% 2,790
Work from Home +24 352 £550 +4.76% 11,201
North of England -20 88 £480 -1.54% 579
South East +16 80 £513 -3.53% 733
East of England +19 73 £513 -14.58% 453
Scotland +43 56 £503 +25.63% 143
North West -2 49 £475 -0.31% 291
Midlands -18 39 £511 +27.69% 503
Yorkshire -14 38 £511 -7.14% 235
West Midlands -13 28 £514 +14.22% 260
South West -15 25 £550 -13.21% 328
East Midlands -14 11 £426 +19.66% 207
Wales +9 10 £700 +201.08% 75
North East -19 2 £575 +32.95% 54
Northern Ireland - 2 £675 - 29

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 88 (7.60%) Apache Spark
2 64 (5.53%) Apache Airflow
3 37 (3.20%) Apache
4 22 (1.90%) Jupyter
5 10 (0.86%) Confluence
6 8 (0.69%) Apache Pig
7 7 (0.60%) SAS
8 6 (0.52%) GeoServer
8 6 (0.52%) Smallworld
9 5 (0.43%) Appian
10 4 (0.35%) IIS
11 3 (0.26%) CMS
11 3 (0.26%) SharePoint
12 1 (0.086%) Apache Superset
12 1 (0.086%) Microsoft Exchange
12 1 (0.086%) nginx
12 1 (0.086%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 44 (3.80%) Chatbot
2 16 (1.38%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (1.04%) Microsoft Office
4 9 (0.78%) Microsoft Project
5 8 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 5 (0.43%) Simulink
7 1 (0.086%) Adobe XD
7 1 (0.086%) GNU Octave
7 1 (0.086%) Sketch
7 1 (0.086%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.086%) Trello
Business Applications
1 9 (0.78%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.17%) Distributed Ledger
3 2 (0.17%) SAP ERP
3 2 (0.17%) Teamcenter
4 1 (0.086%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.086%) SAP GRC
4 1 (0.086%) Shopify
4 1 (0.086%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 487 (42.06%) Azure
2 388 (33.51%) AWS
3 218 (18.83%) GCP
4 109 (9.41%) Power Platform
5 105 (9.07%) GitHub
6 100 (8.64%) Serverless
7 98 (8.46%) Azure Machine Learning
8 68 (5.87%) Azure DevOps
8 68 (5.87%) Snowflake
9 64 (5.53%) Amazon S3
10 62 (5.35%) Amazon SageMaker
11 57 (4.92%) Vertex AI
12 56 (4.84%) Azure AI
13 52 (4.49%) AWS Lambda
13 52 (4.49%) GitHub Actions
14 51 (4.40%) Azure AKS
15 50 (4.32%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 43 (3.71%) Azure Data Factory
17 36 (3.11%) Amazon Bedrock
18 35 (3.02%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 20 (1.73%) Network Security
2 19 (1.64%) HTTP
3 18 (1.55%) DNS
4 14 (1.21%) SSL
5 13 (1.12%) FTP
5 13 (1.12%) SMTP
6 6 (0.52%) Ethernet
6 6 (0.52%) Firewall
6 6 (0.52%) Internet
7 4 (0.35%) InfiniBand
7 4 (0.35%) VPN
8 2 (0.17%) 5G
8 2 (0.17%) BGP
8 2 (0.17%) Cisco Nexus
8 2 (0.17%) Ethernet VPN
8 2 (0.17%) Hyperconnected
8 2 (0.17%) Mobile Backhaul
8 2 (0.17%) Modbus
8 2 (0.17%) OSPF
8 2 (0.17%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 96 (8.29%) Power BI
2 77 (6.65%) Data Warehouse
3 68 (5.87%) Data Lake
4 63 (5.44%) Big Data
5 56 (4.84%) PostgreSQL
6 49 (4.23%) NoSQL
7 44 (3.80%) BigQuery
8 37 (3.20%) Tableau
9 30 (2.59%) Metadata
10 27 (2.33%) Hadoop
11 26 (2.25%) Pinecone
12 21 (1.81%) Amazon Athena
12 21 (1.81%) Elasticsearch
12 21 (1.81%) MongoDB
13 19 (1.64%) Delta Lake
14 16 (1.38%) Amazon Redshift
14 16 (1.38%) Data Mining
14 16 (1.38%) Relational Database
15 15 (1.30%) Weaviate
16 12 (1.04%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 94 (8.12%) Git
2 72 (6.22%) MLflow
3 59 (5.09%) Jenkins
4 36 (3.11%) GitLab
5 26 (2.25%) JIRA
6 18 (1.55%) Selenium
7 16 (1.38%) JMeter
8 15 (1.30%) SonarQube
9 8 (0.69%) Cypress.io
10 7 (0.60%) Visual Studio
11 6 (0.52%) JUnit
11 6 (0.52%) Postman
11 6 (0.52%) PyCharm
12 5 (0.43%) Gradle
12 5 (0.43%) Mockito
12 5 (0.43%) MSTest
12 5 (0.43%) Snyk
13 4 (0.35%) Android Studio
13 4 (0.35%) Robot Framework
13 4 (0.35%) RStudio
General
1 339 (29.27%) Social Skills
2 226 (19.52%) Finance
3 141 (12.18%) Analytical Skills
4 104 (8.98%) Public Sector
5 79 (6.82%) Banking
6 43 (3.71%) Pharmaceutical
7 41 (3.54%) Marketing
8 37 (3.20%) Retail
9 31 (2.68%) Investment Banking
10 28 (2.42%) Manufacturing
11 27 (2.33%) Legal
12 25 (2.16%) Telecoms
13 23 (1.99%) Front Office
14 19 (1.64%) Documentation Skills
15 17 (1.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 17 (1.47%) Influencing Skills
16 15 (1.30%) Presentation Skills
17 13 (1.12%) Electronics
18 11 (0.95%) Financial Institution
19 10 (0.86%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 184 (15.89%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
2 168 (14.51%) Data Scientist
3 150 (12.95%) Architect
4 122 (10.54%) Data Engineer
5 116 (10.02%) Senior
6 109 (9.41%) Developer
7 77 (6.65%) Lead
8 61 (5.27%) Machine Learning Engineer
9 59 (5.09%) Python Engineer
10 51 (4.40%) Analyst
10 51 (4.40%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
11 43 (3.71%) Software Engineer
12 37 (3.20%) Gen AI Engineer
13 36 (3.11%) Data Architect
14 32 (2.76%) Solutions Architect
15 30 (2.59%) Azure Engineer
16 26 (2.25%) Consultant
17 25 (2.16%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
17 25 (2.16%) Product Manager
17 25 (2.16%) Senior Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 203 (17.53%) PyTorch
2 178 (15.37%) TensorFlow
3 120 (10.36%) scikit-learn
4 108 (9.33%) Pandas
5 93 (8.03%) LangChain
6 83 (7.17%) FastAPI
7 72 (6.22%) NumPy
8 64 (5.53%) Hugging Face
9 61 (5.27%) Kafka
10 59 (5.09%) React
11 53 (4.58%) LangGraph
11 53 (4.58%) PySpark
12 50 (4.32%) RESTful
13 47 (4.06%) REST
14 40 (3.45%) Node.js
15 37 (3.20%) .NET
16 32 (2.76%) Flask
17 31 (2.68%) pytest
18 24 (2.07%) Faiss
19 21 (1.81%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 180 (15.54%) Algorithms
2 149 (12.87%) Cloud Native
3 95 (8.20%) AI Agents
4 46 (3.97%) Product Ownership
5 40 (3.45%) Distributed Systems
5 40 (3.45%) Onboarding
6 35 (3.02%) Data Protection Act
7 30 (2.59%) Analytical Mindset
8 28 (2.42%) Distributed Computing
8 28 (2.42%) Legacy Systems
9 25 (2.16%) Genomics
10 23 (1.99%) Life Science
11 22 (1.90%) Data Structures
12 21 (1.81%) Hybrid Cloud
12 21 (1.81%) Management Information System
13 17 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
14 14 (1.21%) Cyber Threat
15 13 (1.12%) Cyberattack
15 13 (1.12%) Greenfield Project
15 13 (1.12%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 31 (2.68%) Linux
2 11 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 11 (0.95%) VMS
3 9 (0.78%) Ubuntu
4 8 (0.69%) Unix
4 8 (0.69%) Windows
5 6 (0.52%) Android
5 6 (0.52%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.17%) Robot Operating System
7 1 (0.086%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 858 (74.09%) AI
2 464 (40.07%) Data Science
3 335 (28.93%) LLM
4 306 (26.42%) CI/CD
5 304 (26.25%) Analytics
6 277 (23.92%) Agile
7 268 (23.14%) DevOps
8 231 (19.95%) Generative AI
9 225 (19.43%) Data Pipeline
10 206 (17.79%) Problem-Solving
11 202 (17.44%) MLOps
12 196 (16.93%) Data Engineering
13 169 (14.59%) Natural Language Processing
14 163 (14.08%) Software Engineering
15 153 (13.21%) Containerisation
16 141 (12.18%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
17 135 (11.66%) Use Case
18 131 (11.31%) Visualisation
19 130 (11.23%) Data Modelling
20 128 (11.05%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 743 (64.16%) Python
2 273 (23.58%) SQL
3 73 (6.30%) R
4 69 (5.96%) Java
5 55 (4.75%) JavaScript
6 52 (4.49%) TypeScript
7 46 (3.97%) C#
8 42 (3.63%) PowerShell
9 34 (2.94%) C++
10 29 (2.50%) Scala
11 20 (1.73%) Bash
11 20 (1.73%) Bicep
12 13 (1.12%) MATLAB
13 12 (1.04%) Go
14 10 (0.86%) C
15 5 (0.43%) SystemVerilog
15 5 (0.43%) Tcl
16 3 (0.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 3 (0.26%) PL/SQL
16 3 (0.26%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 173 (14.94%) Degree
2 168 (14.51%) Security Cleared
3 125 (10.79%) SC Cleared
4 71 (6.13%) Master's Degree
5 53 (4.58%) MCP
6 48 (4.15%) Computer Science Degree
7 39 (3.37%) PhD
8 34 (2.94%) DV Cleared
9 23 (1.99%) Azure Certification
10 12 (1.04%) AWS Certification
11 11 (0.95%) BPSS Clearance
12 8 (0.69%) CISSP
13 5 (0.43%) HNC
13 5 (0.43%) HND
13 5 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
13 5 (0.43%) TOGAF Certification
14 4 (0.35%) Cisco Certification
14 4 (0.35%) CISM
14 4 (0.35%) ISTQB
14 4 (0.35%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 75 (6.48%) Data Quality
2 59 (5.09%) GDPR
3 43 (3.71%) QA
4 39 (3.37%) NIST
5 32 (2.76%) EU AI Act
6 23 (1.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 16 (1.38%) Accessibility
8 7 (0.60%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 5 (0.43%) DO-254
9 5 (0.43%) HIPAA
9 5 (0.43%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 5 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 5 (0.43%) SOC 2
10 4 (0.35%) Disclosure Scotland
10 4 (0.35%) NCSC
10 4 (0.35%) PCI DSS
11 3 (0.26%) GRC
12 2 (0.17%) EMIR
12 2 (0.17%) JSP 440
12 2 (0.17%) NIST 800
System Software
1 201 (17.36%) Docker
2 12 (1.04%) Active Directory
3 11 (0.95%) Virtual Machines
4 7 (0.60%) Firmware
5 4 (0.35%) Lustre
6 3 (0.26%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 3 (0.26%) VMware Infrastructure
7 2 (0.17%) Ceph
7 2 (0.17%) GPFS
7 2 (0.17%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.17%) KVM
7 2 (0.17%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 193 (16.67%) Kubernetes
2 129 (11.14%) Terraform
3 30 (2.59%) Grafana
4 29 (2.50%) Ansible
5 16 (1.38%) Kubeflow
5 16 (1.38%) Prometheus
6 14 (1.21%) Kibana
7 11 (0.95%) logstash
7 11 (0.95%) SCOM
8 9 (0.78%) ITRS Geneos
9 8 (0.69%) Argo
10 4 (0.35%) Cilium
10 4 (0.35%) Progress Chef
10 4 (0.35%) Rsyslog
11 3 (0.26%) Kustomize
11 3 (0.26%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
12 2 (0.17%) Knative
12 2 (0.17%) Podman
12 2 (0.17%) Single Sign-On
13 1 (0.086%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 169 (14.59%) Databricks
2 165 (14.25%) Microsoft
3 106 (9.15%) Google
4 71 (6.13%) OpenAI
5 46 (3.97%) Foundry
6 39 (3.37%) SAP
7 18 (1.55%) Splunk
8 16 (1.38%) ServiceNow
9 15 (1.30%) Salesforce
10 14 (1.21%) NVIDIA
11 12 (1.04%) Oracle
12 9 (0.78%) Greenplum
12 9 (0.78%) Solace
12 9 (0.78%) TIBCO
13 7 (0.60%) Cisco
13 7 (0.60%) Pega
14 6 (0.52%) ESRI
14 6 (0.52%) Intel
14 6 (0.52%) Intergraph
15 5 (0.43%) Informatica