Before Ryan Ramshaw was building AI automation systems for clients on Upwork, he was stocking shelves at Holland & Barrett. According to his LinkedIn, the move from retail work to freelancing was gradual rather than a single decision.
He joined Upwork in August 2018. What followed from that start is what the platform’s data now reflects.
The category Ramshaw chose did not yet look the way it does today. AI automation as a client service, the building of n8n workflows, Make integrations, and AI agent systems for businesses that needed them, was a niche discipline in 2018. Several of the tools now central to his practice had not yet been publicly released. Freelancers who built real delivery records in that space before the demand curve shifted spent those early years on work that was harder to find and harder to price, but they arrived at the current market with a different foundation than those who entered after the demand was already obvious.
Upwork has since granted Ramshaw its Top Rated Plus designation, which the platform reserves for freelancers with strong performance records across large contracts. His job success score across 68 completed contracts holds at 100 percent, with a 4.99 average rating across 45 reviewed jobs.
The fuller picture of where he now sits comes from UpworkMRR, an independent third-party tracker that monitors earnings data across more than 363,000 Upwork freelancers globally. The tracker’s most recent snapshot places Ramshaw first in the United Kingdom by monthly recurring revenue, out of 9,431 tracked UK-based freelancers. Globally, it ranks him 66th on the same metric. The tracker attributes a current MRR of $30,522 to him, with lifetime platform earnings of $311,937 and an average contract value of $4,587. UpworkMRR sources its data through Lancer.app and is not affiliated with Upwork.
The skill rankings UpworkMRR derives from its data give some texture to how that position was built. In Make.com and Prompt Engineering, the tracker places Ramshaw first globally among all freelancers it monitors. In n8n and Zapier, second. Across the United Kingdom, he sits first in more than a dozen listed skill categories, including AI Agent Development, Automation, and API Integration.
His Upwork work spans n8n workflow automation, Make and Zapier integrations, voice agent systems built on platforms like Vapi and Retell AI, AI chatbot and agent development, API connections, and business process automation for clients across sectors including legal, healthcare, SaaS, and e-commerce.
The other business Ramshaw runs is separate from the client work. Upwork Whales is a one-on-one mentorship program for freelancers trying to reach the contracts and clients they want. He structures it around four areas where he says most freelancers fall behind: profile, pipeline, sales, and delivery. Enrollment is by application. His site states that not every applicant is accepted.
On the question of what participation delivers, the Upwork Whales terms page is direct. Results shown on the site, it states, are real but not typical and are not a promise of income. A freelancer’s results depend on their skills, their market, their effort, and factors outside the program’s control.
Holland & Barrett and the top of the UK’s Upwork leaderboard by MRR sit some distance apart. Between them, by Ramshaw’s own account, was a gradual transition and years of accumulated platform work. The UpworkMRR data is the record of where that work has landed.
