Machine Learning Job Trends

Machine Learning (ML)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring Machine Learning skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 1 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 82 79
Rank change year-on-year +67 -3 +10
Permanent jobs citing Machine Learning 5,308 1,843 1,892
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 8.97% 3.34% 3.69%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.95% 3.71% 4.03%
Number of salaries quoted 691 1,010 1,116
10th Percentile £43,750 £45,000 £43,742
25th Percentile £57,500 £57,500 £55,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £77,000 £75,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.90% +2.67% +7.14%
75th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £96,313
90th Percentile £130,000 £112,500 £120,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £70,000 £69,447
% change year-on-year -7.14% +0.80% +11.12%

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 permanent job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 48,455 49,716 46,950
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 81.91% 90.02% 91.47%
Number of salaries quoted 28,359 24,660 35,854
10th Percentile £28,500 £35,000 £31,552
25th Percentile £36,500 £45,000 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £80,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £49,000 £55,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year -10.91% +4.76% -4.50%

Machine Learning
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Machine Learning relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Machine Learning job vacancy trend in the UK

Machine Learning
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Machine Learning.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Machine Learning

Machine Learning
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Machine Learning over the 6 months to 1 January 2026.

Salary histogram for Machine Learning in the UK

Machine Learning
Top 18 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Machine Learning within the UK over the 6 months to 1 January 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England +71 5,149 £80,000 +3.90% 1,080
UK excluding London +79 4,201 £65,000 -7.14% 648
North of England +105 1,714 £67,500 -3.57% 131
North West +80 1,539 £67,500 -8.16% 74
Midlands +119 1,106 £65,000 - 58
London +33 1,000 £90,000 +5.88% 548
West Midlands +106 960 £67,500 +17.39% 37
South East +39 748 £72,500 -3.33% 261
East of England +105 424 £65,000 -14.47% 73
Work from Home -42 353 £76,750 +9.64% 530
Yorkshire +66 168 £79,000 +2.60% 45
East Midlands +64 156 £62,500 -18.83% 20
South West +3 119 £60,000 -7.69% 82
Wales +29 45 £68,500 +39.80% 11
Scotland -33 39 £76,250 +19.61% 40
Northern Ireland -12 10 £82,500 -10.81% 4
Channel Islands +8 8 - -
North East -4 7 £62,500 -0.60% 13

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 76 (1.43%) Apache Spark
2 40 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
3 23 (0.43%) SharePoint
4 14 (0.26%) Confluence
5 11 (0.21%) Appian
6 9 (0.17%) Apache
7 8 (0.15%) Apache Solr
7 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
7 8 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
8 7 (0.13%) CMS
9 5 (0.094%) Apache Pulsar
9 5 (0.094%) IIS
9 5 (0.094%) SAS
10 2 (0.038%) CICS
10 2 (0.038%) Luigi
11 1 (0.019%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.019%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.019%) Kinematics
11 1 (0.019%) nginx
11 1 (0.019%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 40 (0.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (0.30%) Chatbot
3 15 (0.28%) Microsoft Office
4 6 (0.11%) Trello
5 5 (0.094%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 4 (0.075%) Fusion 360
6 4 (0.075%) Weka
7 3 (0.057%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.038%) Adobe XD
8 2 (0.038%) Microsoft Project
8 2 (0.038%) Sketch
8 2 (0.038%) S-PLUS
9 1 (0.019%) 3ds Max
9 1 (0.019%) Blender
Business Applications
1 14 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (0.21%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.11%) Shopify
4 5 (0.094%) NetSuite
5 4 (0.075%) Distributed Ledger
5 4 (0.075%) Elite 3E
6 2 (0.038%) Adaptiv
6 2 (0.038%) SAP SCM
7 1 (0.019%) Fidessa
7 1 (0.019%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 1 (0.019%) Odoo
7 1 (0.019%) SAP PLM
7 1 (0.019%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 4,056 (76.41%) Cloud Computing
2 470 (8.85%) Azure
3 414 (7.80%) AWS
4 203 (3.82%) GCP
5 148 (2.79%) Power Platform
6 67 (1.26%) SaaS
7 64 (1.21%) Vertex AI
8 59 (1.11%) Serverless
9 58 (1.09%) Azure AI
10 50 (0.94%) Azure Machine Learning
11 45 (0.85%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 45 (0.85%) GitHub
11 45 (0.85%) Snowflake
12 43 (0.81%) Amazon Bedrock
12 43 (0.81%) Amazon SageMaker
13 42 (0.79%) Azure Data Factory
13 42 (0.79%) Microsoft 365
14 37 (0.70%) Azure DevOps
15 33 (0.62%) Entra ID
16 31 (0.58%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 4,048 (76.26%) Internet
2 12 (0.23%) Network Security
3 6 (0.11%) Broadband
3 6 (0.11%) Firewall
4 5 (0.094%) Bluetooth
4 5 (0.094%) Modbus
4 5 (0.094%) VLAN
5 4 (0.075%) InfiniBand
5 4 (0.075%) Intrusion Detection
5 4 (0.075%) Kerberos
5 4 (0.075%) TCP/IP
5 4 (0.075%) Wireless
5 4 (0.075%) Wireshark
5 4 (0.075%) ZigBee
6 3 (0.057%) 802.11
6 3 (0.057%) LAN
6 3 (0.057%) VoIP
6 3 (0.057%) WAN
6 3 (0.057%) Wi-Fi
6 3 (0.057%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 130 (2.45%) Power BI
2 100 (1.88%) Data Warehouse
3 74 (1.39%) NoSQL
4 67 (1.26%) Data Lake
5 58 (1.09%) Tableau
6 57 (1.07%) Metadata
7 54 (1.02%) Big Data
8 51 (0.96%) SQL Server
9 39 (0.73%) Amazon Redshift
10 38 (0.72%) Hadoop
11 31 (0.58%) PostgreSQL
12 25 (0.47%) Data Mining
13 24 (0.45%) MySQL
14 23 (0.43%) BigQuery
15 21 (0.40%) MongoDB
16 19 (0.36%) Elasticsearch
17 17 (0.32%) Pinecone
18 16 (0.30%) Looker
19 15 (0.28%) Power Query
20 13 (0.24%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 51 (0.96%) Git
2 45 (0.85%) MLflow
3 23 (0.43%) JIRA
4 18 (0.34%) Jenkins
5 9 (0.17%) GitLab
6 6 (0.11%) Visual Studio
7 5 (0.094%) Selenium
7 5 (0.094%) WebDriver
8 4 (0.075%) Burp Suite
8 4 (0.075%) Metasploit
9 3 (0.057%) Browser DevTools
9 3 (0.057%) Charles Proxy
9 3 (0.057%) Fiddler
9 3 (0.057%) Maven
9 3 (0.057%) Postman
9 3 (0.057%) TestNG
9 3 (0.057%) Zephyr
10 2 (0.038%) Balsamiq
10 2 (0.038%) ERwin
10 2 (0.038%) Xcode
General
1 4,441 (83.67%) Social Skills
2 4,104 (77.32%) Banking
3 4,086 (76.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 382 (7.20%) Finance
5 209 (3.94%) Analytical Skills
6 151 (2.84%) Marketing
7 88 (1.66%) Manufacturing
8 82 (1.54%) Law
9 81 (1.53%) Public Sector
10 68 (1.28%) Pharmaceutical
11 65 (1.22%) Retail
12 58 (1.09%) Legal
13 49 (0.92%) Telecoms
14 37 (0.70%) Electronics
15 31 (0.58%) Games
16 30 (0.57%) Presentation Skills
17 24 (0.45%) Financial Institution
18 23 (0.43%) Organisational Skills
19 22 (0.41%) German Language
20 15 (0.28%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 3,143 (59.21%) Lecturer
2 250 (4.71%) Senior
3 187 (3.52%) Lead
4 125 (2.35%) Architect
5 106 (2.00%) Data Engineer
6 100 (1.88%) Developer
7 98 (1.85%) Data Scientist
8 79 (1.49%) Software Engineer
9 76 (1.43%) Consultant
10 56 (1.06%) Analyst
11 55 (1.04%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 53 (1.00%) Data Architect
13 36 (0.68%) Solutions Architect
14 35 (0.66%) Senior Consultant
15 34 (0.64%) Senior Data Scientist
16 30 (0.57%) Machine Learning Engineer
17 27 (0.51%) Data Analyst
18 26 (0.49%) Gen AI Consultant
19 25 (0.47%) Azure Engineer
19 25 (0.47%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 131 (2.47%) PyTorch
2 116 (2.19%) TensorFlow
3 71 (1.34%) React
4 67 (1.26%) LangChain
4 67 (1.26%) scikit-learn
5 64 (1.21%) Kafka
6 59 (1.11%) REST
7 56 (1.06%) Pandas
8 51 (0.96%) Node.js
9 41 (0.77%) FastAPI
10 40 (0.75%) Hugging Face
11 39 (0.73%) PySpark
12 36 (0.68%) NumPy
13 35 (0.66%) RESTful
14 30 (0.57%) Django
15 29 (0.55%) .NET
15 29 (0.55%) AngularJS
16 25 (0.47%) Vue
17 21 (0.40%) gRPC
18 20 (0.38%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 4,066 (76.60%) IoT
2 118 (2.22%) Algorithms
3 111 (2.09%) Cloud Native
4 96 (1.81%) Product Ownership
5 80 (1.51%) Life Science
6 73 (1.38%) AI Agents
7 68 (1.28%) Distributed Systems
8 47 (0.89%) Management Information System
9 45 (0.85%) Legacy Systems
10 36 (0.68%) Onboarding
11 33 (0.62%) Low-Code
12 29 (0.55%) Data Structures
12 29 (0.55%) FMCG
13 21 (0.40%) Enterprise Software
13 21 (0.40%) Pharmacovigilance
14 20 (0.38%) Self-Motivation
15 18 (0.34%) Greenfield Project
16 17 (0.32%) Analytical Mindset
17 14 (0.26%) Data Centre
18 13 (0.24%) CUDA
Operating Systems
1 43 (0.81%) Linux
2 32 (0.60%) Windows
3 27 (0.51%) Android
4 15 (0.28%) Apple iOS
5 12 (0.23%) Unix
6 10 (0.19%) Ubuntu
6 10 (0.19%) Windows Server
7 5 (0.094%) Kali Linux
8 2 (0.038%) Mac OS
8 2 (0.038%) zOS
9 1 (0.019%) Robot Operating System
9 1 (0.019%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 5,026 (94.69%) AI
2 4,125 (77.71%) Cybersecurity
3 4,124 (77.69%) User Experience
4 4,057 (76.43%) Web Development
5 462 (8.70%) Data Science
6 459 (8.65%) Analytics
7 296 (5.58%) Computer Science
8 284 (5.35%) Agile
9 235 (4.43%) LLM
10 233 (4.39%) DevOps
11 232 (4.37%) Roadmaps
12 230 (4.33%) Decision-Making
13 228 (4.30%) CI/CD
14 227 (4.28%) Generative AI
14 227 (4.28%) Problem-Solving
15 197 (3.71%) Data Pipeline
16 192 (3.62%) Data Engineering
17 179 (3.37%) Business Intelligence
18 170 (3.20%) Data Governance
19 166 (3.13%) MLOps
Programming Languages
1 584 (11.00%) Python
2 293 (5.52%) SQL
3 105 (1.98%) Java
4 71 (1.34%) R
5 66 (1.24%) JavaScript
6 63 (1.19%) Bash
7 56 (1.06%) C++
8 55 (1.04%) TypeScript
9 50 (0.94%) C#
10 46 (0.87%) Scala
11 35 (0.66%) Go
11 35 (0.66%) PowerShell
12 26 (0.49%) PHP
13 23 (0.43%) Kotlin
14 18 (0.34%) Rust
15 14 (0.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 13 (0.24%) Bicep
17 12 (0.23%) T-SQL
18 10 (0.19%) C
19 7 (0.13%) ANSI SQL
Qualifications
1 4,476 (84.33%) Degree
2 4,224 (79.58%) Master's Degree
3 4,156 (78.30%) PhD
4 4,052 (76.34%) Postgraduate
5 140 (2.64%) Computer Science Degree
6 108 (2.03%) Security Cleared
7 82 (1.54%) SC Cleared
8 34 (0.64%) DV Cleared
9 19 (0.36%) AWS Certification
9 19 (0.36%) TOGAF Certification
10 18 (0.34%) BPSS Clearance
11 13 (0.24%) Azure Certification
12 12 (0.23%) CISSP
13 11 (0.21%) MCP
14 10 (0.19%) CISM
15 9 (0.17%) Numerate Degree
16 8 (0.15%) Microsoft Certification
17 7 (0.13%) CISA
17 7 (0.13%) CRISC
17 7 (0.13%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 132 (2.49%) Data Quality
2 68 (1.28%) GDPR
3 38 (0.72%) GxP
4 34 (0.64%) QA
5 27 (0.51%) Accessibility
5 27 (0.51%) EU AI Act
6 22 (0.41%) HIPAA
6 22 (0.41%) Solvency II
7 21 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 21 (0.40%) PSD2
8 15 (0.28%) SLA
9 11 (0.21%) CDISC
9 11 (0.21%) HL7
10 10 (0.19%) ISO 13485
11 8 (0.15%) Actionable Recommendations
12 7 (0.13%) Cyber Essentials
12 7 (0.13%) ISO 9001
13 5 (0.094%) NIST
14 4 (0.075%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 3 (0.057%) SOC 2
System Software
1 144 (2.71%) Docker
2 18 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
3 15 (0.28%) Active Directory
4 12 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (0.075%) Lustre
5 4 (0.075%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 2 (0.038%) Ceph
6 2 (0.038%) GPFS
6 2 (0.038%) RACF
6 2 (0.038%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.038%) vSphere
7 1 (0.019%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 132 (2.49%) Kubernetes
2 85 (1.60%) Terraform
3 28 (0.53%) Ansible
4 19 (0.36%) Microsoft Intune
5 15 (0.28%) Kubeflow
6 9 (0.17%) Prometheus
7 8 (0.15%) SCCM
8 5 (0.094%) Argo
9 4 (0.075%) Grafana
9 4 (0.075%) Nessus
9 4 (0.075%) Nmap
10 2 (0.038%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
10 2 (0.038%) Progress Chef
10 2 (0.038%) Puppet
10 2 (0.038%) SELinux
11 1 (0.019%) Istio
11 1 (0.019%) Kustomize
11 1 (0.019%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 165 (3.11%) Microsoft
2 129 (2.43%) Databricks
3 111 (2.09%) Google
4 63 (1.19%) OpenAI
5 46 (0.87%) SAP
6 22 (0.41%) Palantir
6 22 (0.41%) Salesforce
7 21 (0.40%) Oracle
8 20 (0.38%) Dell
8 20 (0.38%) NVIDIA
9 14 (0.26%) Foundry
9 14 (0.26%) Palo Alto
10 13 (0.24%) CrowdStrike
10 13 (0.24%) Fortinet
11 9 (0.17%) Adobe
11 9 (0.17%) UiPath
12 8 (0.15%) Cisco
12 8 (0.15%) ServiceNow
13 7 (0.13%) Alteryx
13 7 (0.13%) Automation Anywhere