MLOps Contract Job Trends

MLOps
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring MLOps skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 14 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 368 464 547
Rank change year-on-year +96 +83 +152
Contract jobs citing MLOps 218 100 65
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.60% 0.29% 0.15%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.68% 0.33% 0.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 134 70 41
10th Percentile £413 £460 £450
25th Percentile £463 £475 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £548 £565
Median % change year-on-year +0.46% -3.10% -17.82%
75th Percentile £688 £659 £688
90th Percentile £775 £803 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £501 £500
% change year-on-year +2.38% +0.12% -14.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 1
10th Percentile £44.42 - -
25th Percentile £51.76 - £22.75
Median hourly rate £67.35 - £23.50
75th Percentile £79.11 - £24.25
90th Percentile £84.14 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.02 - £23.50

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

MLOps 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 32,261 30,399 39,447
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.54% 87.91% 88.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,301 18,546 26,335
10th Percentile £300 £306 £310
25th Percentile £406 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £531
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.13% -3.45%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £744 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,097 1,021 1,510
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.53 £14.36
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.30 £18.95
Median hourly rate £25.15 £33.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.79% -22.35% +21.43%
75th Percentile £48.75 £63.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £32.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -29.23% -26.97% +37.98%

MLOps
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing MLOps relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

MLOps job vacancy trend in the UK

MLOps
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing MLOps.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing MLOps

MLOps
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing MLOps over the 6 months to 14 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for MLOps in the UK

MLOps
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing MLOps.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing MLOps

MLOps
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing MLOps over the 6 months to 14 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for MLOps in the UK

MLOps
Top 14 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing MLOps within the UK over the 6 months to 14 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 +53 191 £550 +0.46% 213
London +60 132 £620 +12.77% 59
Work from Home +47 65 £543 +2.94% 121
UK excluding London -9 60 £513 +2.38% 198
North of England -33 22 £440 -10.02% 40
South East +19 19 £513 -6.82% 60
North West -14 17 £440 -9.88% 20
Scotland - 8 £533 - 17
East of England - 8 £625 - 25
Yorkshire -44 3 £538 - 17
North East -12 2 £475 -4.04% 3
Midlands -37 2 £550 -21.43% 28
West Midlands - 2 £550 - 14
South West -10 1 - - 22

MLOps
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 20 (9.17%) Apache Airflow
2 14 (6.42%) Apache Spark
3 8 (3.67%) Jupyter
4 5 (2.29%) Apache
5 3 (1.38%) Ethereum
5 3 (1.38%) Hyperledger
6 1 (0.46%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 7 (3.21%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.46%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 115 (52.75%) AWS
2 108 (49.54%) Azure
3 58 (26.61%) GCP
4 30 (13.76%) Azure Machine Learning
5 27 (12.39%) Amazon SageMaker
6 25 (11.47%) GitHub
7 24 (11.01%) Serverless
8 23 (10.55%) GitHub Actions
9 18 (8.26%) Power Platform
9 18 (8.26%) Vertex AI
10 17 (7.80%) Azure AI
11 16 (7.34%) Snowflake
12 15 (6.88%) Amazon ECS
13 14 (6.42%) Amazon S3
13 14 (6.42%) AWS Lambda
13 14 (6.42%) Azure DevOps
13 14 (6.42%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 11 (5.05%) dbt
15 10 (4.59%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 10 (4.59%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.38%) DNS
2 2 (0.92%) SSL
3 1 (0.46%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (8.26%) Big Data
2 17 (7.80%) Data Lake
3 16 (7.34%) Power BI
4 13 (5.96%) BigQuery
4 13 (5.96%) Data Warehouse
5 12 (5.50%) NoSQL
6 8 (3.67%) Amazon RDS
7 7 (3.21%) Amazon Redshift
7 7 (3.21%) Redis
7 7 (3.21%) Tableau
8 6 (2.75%) PostgreSQL
9 5 (2.29%) Amazon Athena
9 5 (2.29%) Delta Lake
9 5 (2.29%) DynamoDB
9 5 (2.29%) Pinecone
10 4 (1.83%) Amazon Aurora
10 4 (1.83%) Metadata
11 3 (1.38%) Relational Database
12 2 (0.92%) Flink
12 2 (0.92%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 46 (21.10%) MLflow
2 30 (13.76%) Jenkins
3 22 (10.09%) Git
4 16 (7.34%) GitLab
5 4 (1.83%) RStudio
6 3 (1.38%) Artifactory
7 2 (0.92%) Maven
8 1 (0.46%) git-flow
8 1 (0.46%) SonarQube
General
1 83 (38.07%) Social Skills
2 38 (17.43%) Finance
3 29 (13.30%) Analytical Skills
4 18 (8.26%) Public Sector
5 13 (5.96%) Banking
5 13 (5.96%) Documentation Skills
6 12 (5.50%) Marketing
7 9 (4.13%) Retail
8 4 (1.83%) Advertising
8 4 (1.83%) Legal
9 3 (1.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 3 (1.38%) Telecoms
10 2 (0.92%) Aerospace
10 2 (0.92%) Billing
10 2 (0.92%) Electronics
10 2 (0.92%) Health Technology
10 2 (0.92%) Manufacturing
10 2 (0.92%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (0.92%) Tech for Good
Job Titles
1 46 (21.10%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
2 36 (16.51%) Data Scientist
3 28 (12.84%) Data Engineer
4 26 (11.93%) Machine Learning Engineer
5 21 (9.63%) Architect
6 20 (9.17%) Senior
7 16 (7.34%) Python Engineer
8 15 (6.88%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
9 12 (5.50%) DevOps Engineer
10 11 (5.05%) AWS Engineer
10 11 (5.05%) Azure Engineer
11 9 (4.13%) Lead
11 9 (4.13%) Operations Engineer
12 6 (2.75%) Artificial Intelligence Consultant
12 6 (2.75%) Consultant
12 6 (2.75%) Data Science Engineer
12 6 (2.75%) Developer
12 6 (2.75%) GCP Engineer
12 6 (2.75%) Product Manager
12 6 (2.75%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 72 (33.03%) PyTorch
2 63 (28.90%) TensorFlow
3 44 (20.18%) scikit-learn
4 26 (11.93%) LangChain
5 21 (9.63%) Hugging Face
6 19 (8.72%) Pandas
7 18 (8.26%) REST
8 16 (7.34%) FastAPI
8 16 (7.34%) NumPy
8 16 (7.34%) PySpark
9 15 (6.88%) LangGraph
10 11 (5.05%) Flask
10 11 (5.05%) Kafka
10 11 (5.05%) RESTful
11 8 (3.67%) React
12 7 (3.21%) OAuth
12 7 (3.21%) OAuth2
13 6 (2.75%) CrewAI
13 6 (2.75%) Faiss
13 6 (2.75%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 27 (12.39%) Cloud Native
2 21 (9.63%) Algorithms
3 16 (7.34%) AI Agents
4 9 (4.13%) Distributed Computing
4 9 (4.13%) Enterprise Software
5 7 (3.21%) Product Ownership
6 6 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
6 6 (2.75%) Onboarding
7 5 (2.29%) Data Protection Act
7 5 (2.29%) Distributed Systems
7 5 (2.29%) Management Information System
7 5 (2.29%) Marketing Technology
8 4 (1.83%) Digital Media
9 3 (1.38%) Blockchain
9 3 (1.38%) Clustering
9 3 (1.38%) Hybrid Cloud
9 3 (1.38%) Linux Command Line
10 2 (0.92%) Data Structures
10 2 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
10 2 (0.92%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.46%) Linux
1 1 (0.46%) VMS
1 1 (0.46%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 196 (89.91%) Machine Learning
2 170 (77.98%) AI
3 124 (56.88%) CI/CD
4 111 (50.92%) Data Science
5 81 (37.16%) LLM
6 69 (31.65%) DevOps
7 61 (27.98%) Data Pipeline
7 61 (27.98%) Generative AI
8 58 (26.61%) Data Engineering
9 56 (25.69%) Analytics
10 49 (22.48%) Containerisation
11 44 (20.18%) Agile
12 43 (19.72%) Natural Language Processing
13 42 (19.27%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
14 41 (18.81%) Problem-Solving
15 39 (17.89%) Use Case
16 35 (16.06%) Prompt Engineering
17 34 (15.60%) Infrastructure as Code
18 32 (14.68%) Computer Science
19 30 (13.76%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 159 (72.94%) Python
2 51 (23.39%) SQL
3 14 (6.42%) Java
4 11 (5.05%) R
5 10 (4.59%) Bash
6 6 (2.75%) C#
7 5 (2.29%) MATLAB
8 4 (1.83%) Go
8 4 (1.83%) JavaScript
8 4 (1.83%) PowerShell
9 3 (1.38%) C++
9 3 (1.38%) PHP
9 3 (1.38%) SPARQL
9 3 (1.38%) TypeScript
10 2 (0.92%) C
10 2 (0.92%) Scala
11 1 (0.46%) Bicep
11 1 (0.46%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 37 (16.97%) Degree
2 24 (11.01%) Security Cleared
3 23 (10.55%) Computer Science Degree
4 20 (9.17%) SC Cleared
5 19 (8.72%) Master's Degree
6 10 (4.59%) MCP
7 8 (3.67%) DV Cleared
8 7 (3.21%) PhD
9 6 (2.75%) Azure Certification
10 3 (1.38%) AWS Certification
11 2 (0.92%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (0.92%) CISSP
11 2 (0.92%) Postgraduate
12 1 (0.46%) BPSS Clearance
12 1 (0.46%) CSPO
12 1 (0.46%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (6.42%) Data Quality
2 12 (5.50%) NIST
3 9 (4.13%) GDPR
4 7 (3.21%) EU AI Act
5 5 (2.29%) QA
6 4 (1.83%) Accessibility
7 3 (1.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 2 (0.92%) GRC
8 2 (0.92%) HIPAA
8 2 (0.92%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 1 (0.46%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.46%) NCSC
9 1 (0.46%) SOC 2
System Software
1 68 (31.19%) Docker
2 3 (1.38%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 70 (32.11%) Kubernetes
2 38 (17.43%) Terraform
3 20 (9.17%) Grafana
4 13 (5.96%) Prometheus
5 11 (5.05%) Kubeflow
6 6 (2.75%) Ansible
7 4 (1.83%) Argo
7 4 (1.83%) Progress Chef
8 3 (1.38%) Kustomize
9 2 (0.92%) Puppet
9 2 (0.92%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.46%) Microsoft Intune
10 1 (0.46%) Opsgenie
10 1 (0.46%) Podman
10 1 (0.46%) SCCM
Vendors
1 46 (21.10%) Databricks
2 40 (18.35%) Microsoft
3 29 (13.30%) OpenAI
4 23 (10.55%) Google
5 8 (3.67%) Foundry
6 3 (1.38%) SAP
7 2 (0.92%) New Relic
8 1 (0.46%) AppDynamics
8 1 (0.46%) Black Duck
8 1 (0.46%) Dataiku
8 1 (0.46%) DataRobot
8 1 (0.46%) Intel
8 1 (0.46%) PagerDuty
8 1 (0.46%) Qualys
8 1 (0.46%) Splunk
8 1 (0.46%) Tenable
8 1 (0.46%) Veracode