OpenAI Contract Job Trends

OpenAI
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring knowledge or experience of OpenAI products and/or services. It includes a benchmarking guide to contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited OpenAI over the 6 months leading up to 10 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

The figures below represent the IT contractor job market in general and are not representative of contractor rates within OpenAI.

6 months to
10 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 426 460 536
Rank change year-on-year +34 +76 +200
Contract jobs citing OpenAI 209 49 41
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.46% 0.17% 0.093%
As % of the Vendors category 1.06% 0.35% 0.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 117 35 20
10th Percentile £450 £400 £338
25th Percentile £500 £488 £509
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -4.17% - -7.69%
75th Percentile £650 £625 -
90th Percentile £712 £700 £603
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £600 £300
% change year-on-year -4.17% +100.00% -53.85%

All Vendors
UK

OpenAI falls under the Vendor Products and Services category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring knowledge or experience of all vendor products and services.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services 19,740 13,819 18,755
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 43.03% 47.30% 42.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,650 8,733 11,718
10th Percentile £313 £293 £258
25th Percentile £413 £406 £402
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £515
Median % change year-on-year -2.53% -0.39% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £615 £626
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.56% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 982 513 1,061
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.22 £12.13
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.51 £14.41
Median hourly rate £27.94 £28.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -0.21% +24.44% -46.17%
75th Percentile £59.75 £60.00 £57.33
90th Percentile £78.70 £80.08 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.38 £25.00 £21.50
% change year-on-year +1.52% +16.28% -43.42%

OpenAI
Job Vacancy Trend

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

OpenAI job vacancy trend in the UK

OpenAI
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

OpenAI
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing OpenAI over the 6 months to 10 April 2026.

Daily rate histogram for OpenAI in the UK

OpenAI
Top 12 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing OpenAI within the UK over the 6 months to 10 April 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 +42 184 £580 -3.33% 80
London +55 141 £585 +14.15% 55
UK excluding London -75 54 £575 -4.17% 33
Work from Home +2 44 £550 -8.33% 35
North of England -58 20 £501 -33.27% 14
South East -48 15 £569 -5.21% 11
East of England -23 13 £625 -3.85% 3
Yorkshire - 13 £449 - 6
Scotland +17 11 £650 +13.04%
North West -25 7 £550 -26.67% 8
Wales - 2 £300 -
Midlands - 1 £650 - 3

OpenAI
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 15 (7.18%) SharePoint
2 8 (3.83%) Appian
3 3 (1.44%) Apache Spark
3 3 (1.44%) Confluence
4 1 (0.48%) Jupyter
Applications
1 4 (1.91%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.96%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.48%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 183 (87.56%) Azure
2 88 (42.11%) Azure AI
3 78 (37.32%) AWS
4 45 (21.53%) Power Platform
5 44 (21.05%) GitHub
5 44 (21.05%) Serverless
6 42 (20.10%) Azure DevOps
6 42 (20.10%) Microsoft Copilot
7 39 (18.66%) GCP
8 34 (16.27%) Copilot Studio
8 34 (16.27%) Microsoft 365
9 33 (15.79%) Azure Functions
10 32 (15.31%) Azure Cognitive Services
11 31 (14.83%) Azure Logic Apps
12 30 (14.35%) Azure Data Factory
12 30 (14.35%) Entra ID
13 29 (13.88%) Azure Cosmos DB
14 28 (13.40%) Power Automate
15 25 (11.96%) Azure Key Vault
15 25 (11.96%) Azure Machine Learning
Communications & Networking
1 11 (5.26%) Network Security
2 9 (4.31%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (9.57%) Pinecone
2 19 (9.09%) Data Lake
3 14 (6.70%) Power BI
4 13 (6.22%) NoSQL
5 11 (5.26%) Weaviate
6 10 (4.78%) SQL Server
7 9 (4.31%) Redis
8 6 (2.87%) Metadata
8 6 (2.87%) PostgreSQL
9 5 (2.39%) Big Data
10 4 (1.91%) Azure SQL Database
11 3 (1.44%) Amazon Redshift
11 3 (1.44%) Data Mining
11 3 (1.44%) Delta Lake
11 3 (1.44%) Hadoop
12 2 (0.96%) Data Vault
12 2 (0.96%) MongoDB
13 1 (0.48%) Amazon Athena
13 1 (0.48%) Apache Cassandra
13 1 (0.48%) Neo4j
Development Applications
1 14 (6.70%) MLflow
2 6 (2.87%) Git
2 6 (2.87%) JIRA
3 5 (2.39%) Jenkins
4 3 (1.44%) Spinnaker
4 3 (1.44%) Vite
5 2 (0.96%) Claude Code
6 1 (0.48%) Ant
6 1 (0.48%) Balsamiq
6 1 (0.48%) Gemini Tracker
6 1 (0.48%) GitLab
6 1 (0.48%) JUnit
6 1 (0.48%) Maven
6 1 (0.48%) REST Assured
6 1 (0.48%) SoapUI
6 1 (0.48%) SonarQube
General
1 54 (25.84%) Finance
2 50 (23.92%) Social Skills
3 28 (13.40%) Public Sector
4 15 (7.18%) Analytical Skills
5 12 (5.74%) Banking
5 12 (5.74%) Legal
6 9 (4.31%) Documentation Skills
7 6 (2.87%) Influencing Skills
8 5 (2.39%) Presentation Skills
9 4 (1.91%) Front Office
9 4 (1.91%) Investment Banking
10 2 (0.96%) Marketing
11 1 (0.48%) Advertising
11 1 (0.48%) Corporate Banking
11 1 (0.48%) Electronics
11 1 (0.48%) Financial Institution
11 1 (0.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.48%) International Banking
11 1 (0.48%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 66 (31.58%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
2 43 (20.57%) Architect
3 38 (18.18%) Developer
4 29 (13.88%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
5 23 (11.00%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
6 22 (10.53%) Senior
7 18 (8.61%) Azure Engineer
8 12 (5.74%) Senior Architect
9 10 (4.78%) Full-Stack Engineer
10 9 (4.31%) Azure Developer
10 9 (4.31%) Consultant
10 9 (4.31%) Cybersecurity Specialist
11 8 (3.83%) Automation Engineer
12 7 (3.35%) Artificial Intelligence Consultant
12 7 (3.35%) Azure Architect
12 7 (3.35%) Data Engineer
12 7 (3.35%) Platform Engineer
12 7 (3.35%) Solutions Architect
13 6 (2.87%) Artificial Intelligence Specialist
13 6 (2.87%) Gen AI Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 41 (19.62%) LangChain
2 39 (18.66%) PyTorch
3 37 (17.70%) TensorFlow
4 36 (17.22%) React
5 33 (15.79%) .NET
6 31 (14.83%) REST
7 26 (12.44%) LangGraph
7 26 (12.44%) Node.js
8 24 (11.48%) AngularJS
9 23 (11.00%) Microsoft Graph
10 22 (10.53%) scikit-learn
11 16 (7.66%) CrewAI
11 16 (7.66%) Model Context Protocol
11 16 (7.66%) Pandas
12 15 (7.18%) NumPy
12 15 (7.18%) OAuth
12 15 (7.18%) RESTful
13 14 (6.70%) Faiss
13 14 (6.70%) FastAPI
13 14 (6.70%) Hugging Face
Miscellaneous
1 59 (28.23%) AI Agents
2 27 (12.92%) Cloud Native
3 13 (6.22%) Legacy Systems
4 10 (4.78%) Low-Code
5 8 (3.83%) Product Ownership
6 7 (3.35%) Hybrid Cloud
7 5 (2.39%) Security Posture
8 4 (1.91%) Algorithms
8 4 (1.91%) Distributed Systems
9 3 (1.44%) Data Centre
9 3 (1.44%) Data Protection Act
9 3 (1.44%) Enterprise Software
9 3 (1.44%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 2 (0.96%) Data Structures
10 2 (0.96%) Management Information System
10 2 (0.96%) Onboarding
11 1 (0.48%) Autonomous Agent
11 1 (0.48%) Cyber Security Posture
11 1 (0.48%) Public Cloud
11 1 (0.48%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 3 (1.44%) Linux
1 3 (1.44%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 205 (98.09%) AI
2 124 (59.33%) LLM
3 110 (52.63%) Machine Learning
4 92 (44.02%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
5 91 (43.54%) CI/CD
6 84 (40.19%) DevOps
7 81 (38.76%) Prompt Engineering
8 79 (37.80%) Generative AI
9 61 (29.19%) Use Case
10 53 (25.36%) MLOps
11 48 (22.97%) Analytics
11 48 (22.97%) Microservices
12 38 (18.18%) Data Science
13 36 (17.22%) Natural Language Processing
14 33 (15.79%) Data Pipeline
14 33 (15.79%) Observability
14 33 (15.79%) Problem-Solving
15 25 (11.96%) Containerisation
15 25 (11.96%) Feature Engineering
15 25 (11.96%) Open Source
Programming Languages
1 123 (58.85%) Python
2 45 (21.53%) SQL
3 39 (18.66%) C#
4 19 (9.09%) JavaScript
5 18 (8.61%) TypeScript
6 15 (7.18%) Bicep
7 12 (5.74%) Java
8 10 (4.78%) PowerShell
9 8 (3.83%) Bash
10 5 (2.39%) C++
10 5 (2.39%) R
11 4 (1.91%) Go
12 3 (1.44%) Kusto Query Language
13 2 (0.96%) Ada
13 2 (0.96%) Google Apps Script
14 1 (0.48%) C
14 1 (0.48%) PHP
14 1 (0.48%) Scala
14 1 (0.48%) Shell Script
14 1 (0.48%) VBA
Qualifications
1 20 (9.57%) Security Cleared
2 10 (4.78%) Microsoft Certified Professional
3 9 (4.31%) SC Cleared
4 8 (3.83%) BPSS Clearance
5 7 (3.35%) Degree
6 6 (2.87%) Azure Certification
7 5 (2.39%) Computer Science Degree
7 5 (2.39%) TOGAF Certification
8 2 (0.96%) DV Cleared
8 2 (0.96%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (7.18%) Data Quality
2 7 (3.35%) QA
3 4 (1.91%) GDPR
4 2 (0.96%) Accessibility
4 2 (0.96%) Actionable Recommendations
4 2 (0.96%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.48%) EU AI Act
5 1 (0.48%) GRC
5 1 (0.48%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 42001
5 1 (0.48%) NIST
System Software
1 44 (21.05%) Docker
2 22 (10.53%) Active Directory
3 6 (2.87%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (0.96%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 48 (22.97%) Kubernetes
2 19 (9.09%) Terraform
3 3 (1.44%) Single Sign-On
4 2 (0.96%) Knative
4 2 (0.96%) Rancher
5 1 (0.48%) Ansible
5 1 (0.48%) Grafana
5 1 (0.48%) HP Fortify
5 1 (0.48%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 95 (45.45%) Microsoft
2 43 (20.57%) Foundry
3 30 (14.35%) Databricks
4 25 (11.96%) Google
5 8 (3.83%) Automation Anywhere
5 8 (3.83%) UiPath
6 3 (1.44%) Alibaba
6 3 (1.44%) Guidewire
6 3 (1.44%) ServiceNow
7 2 (0.96%) NVIDIA
7 2 (0.96%) Sage
7 2 (0.96%) Splunk
8 1 (0.48%) Dynatrace
8 1 (0.48%) IBM