Information Retrieval Contracts

Information Retrieval
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring Information Retrieval skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Information Retrieval over the 6 months leading up to 8 August 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Aug 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 554 563 658
Rank change year-on-year +9 +95 +196
Contract jobs citing Information Retrieval 2 7 5
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.006% 0.018% 0.009%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.007% 0.021% 0.011%
Number of daily rates quoted 1 5 1
10th Percentile - £338 -
25th Percentile £556 £625 -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £563 £650 £650
Median % change year-on-year -13.46% - +5.05%
75th Percentile £569 £850 -
90th Percentile - £1,000 -
UK excluding London median daily rate - £650 -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 3
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £22.50 - -
Median hourly rate £25.00 - £13.91
75th Percentile £27.50 - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 - £13.91

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Information Retrieval 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 29,796 33,316 47,173
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.45% 85.54% 89.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,622 21,342 32,327
10th Percentile £300 £310 £320
25th Percentile £404 £413 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £548
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.11% -0.45%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £726 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,663 1,858 1,529
10th Percentile £14.14 £14.00 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.30 £18.20 £18.70
Median hourly rate £25.15 £40.41 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -37.77% -4.91% +61.35%
75th Percentile £49.88 £64.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £74.46 £77.09
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £41.25 £38.35
% change year-on-year -44.24% +7.56% +78.37%

Information Retrieval
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Information Retrieval as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Information Retrieval in the UK

Information Retrieval
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Information Retrieval.

Daily rate trend for Information Retrieval in the UK

Information Retrieval
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Information Retrieval.

Hourly rate trend for Information Retrieval in the UK

Information Retrieval
Top 6 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Information Retrieval within the UK over the 6 months to 8 August 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 2 £563 -13.46% 20
Work from Home +30 1 - - 4
London +16 1 £563 -31.82% 18
UK excluding London +9 1 - - 3
North of England -10 1 - - 1
North West -10 1 - - 1

Information Retrieval
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (50.00%) Elasticsearch
1 1 (50.00%) Metadata
1 1 (50.00%) Tableau
General
1 1 (50.00%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 1 (50.00%) Elasticsearch Engineer
1 1 (50.00%) Search Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (50.00%) Elastic Stack
1 1 (50.00%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 1 (50.00%) Algorithms
1 1 (50.00%) Management Information System
Processes & Methodologies
1 2 (100.00%) Artificial Intelligence
1 2 (100.00%) Problem-Solving
2 1 (50.00%) Business Intelligence
2 1 (50.00%) Computer Vision
2 1 (50.00%) Data Engineering
2 1 (50.00%) Data Management
2 1 (50.00%) Data-Driven Decision Making
2 1 (50.00%) DevOps
2 1 (50.00%) Machine Learning
2 1 (50.00%) Mathematics
2 1 (50.00%) Migration
2 1 (50.00%) Natural Language Processing
2 1 (50.00%) Pattern Recognition
2 1 (50.00%) Personalization
2 1 (50.00%) Semantic Search
2 1 (50.00%) Software Engineering
2 1 (50.00%) Statistical Modelling
2 1 (50.00%) Statistics
2 1 (50.00%) User Experience
2 1 (50.00%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 1 (50.00%) Python
Qualifications
1 1 (50.00%) Degree