Operations Research Contracts

Operations Research (or Operational Research)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring Operations Research skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Operations Research over the 6 months leading up to 5 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 544 559 649
Rank change year-on-year +15 +90 +207
Contract jobs citing Operations Research 6 15 30
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.019% 0.035% 0.053%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.021% 0.041% 0.059%
Number of daily rates quoted 5 6 22
10th Percentile £358 £463 £313
25th Percentile - £506 £322
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £545 £375
Median % change year-on-year -8.26% +45.33% -42.31%
75th Percentile £538 £725 £400
90th Percentile £590 £806 £525
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 - £400
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 0
Median hourly rate - £21.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - -

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Operations Research 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 28,850 36,964 50,614
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.71% 85.28% 89.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,170 23,592 34,850
10th Percentile £300 £300 £325
25th Percentile £405 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -4.55% +0.92%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,420 2,515 1,729
10th Percentile £14.20 £12.75 £12.00
25th Percentile £17.42 £16.18 £16.61
Median hourly rate £25.15 £38.00 £37.34
Median % change year-on-year -33.82% +1.77% +43.62%
75th Percentile £53.75 £61.30 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £72.50 £75.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.66 £38.12 £35.00
% change year-on-year -35.31% +8.91% +66.67%

Operations Research
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Operations Research as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Operations Research in the UK

Operations Research
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Operations Research.

Daily rate trend for Operations Research in the UK

Operations Research
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Operations Research over the 6 months to 5 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Operations Research in the UK

Operations Research
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Operations Research.

Hourly rate trend for Operations Research in the UK

Operations Research
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 Operations Research within the UK over the 6 months to 5 July 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 +45 5 £500 -8.26% 134
UK excluding London - 4 £500 - 42
South East - 3 £500 - 13
London +35 2 £400 -26.61% 100
Work from Home +28 2 £513 -5.09% 53
Wales - 1 - - 3

Operations Research
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:

Applications
1 1 (16.67%) CPLEX
1 1 (16.67%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (16.67%) Microsoft Office
1 1 (16.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Cloud Services
1 1 (16.67%) Amazon SageMaker
1 1 (16.67%) AWS
1 1 (16.67%) Azure
1 1 (16.67%) Power Platform
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (16.67%) Power BI
1 1 (16.67%) Spotfire
1 1 (16.67%) Tableau
General
1 2 (33.33%) Analytical Skills
1 2 (33.33%) Social Skills
2 1 (16.67%) Finance
2 1 (16.67%) Legal
2 1 (16.67%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 2 (33.33%) Analyst
2 1 (16.67%) Architect
2 1 (16.67%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
2 1 (16.67%) Consultant
2 1 (16.67%) Data Analyst
2 1 (16.67%) Data Scientist
2 1 (16.67%) Operations Analyst
2 1 (16.67%) Research Analyst
2 1 (16.67%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (16.67%) NumPy
1 1 (16.67%) Pandas
1 1 (16.67%) SciPy
Miscellaneous
1 3 (50.00%) Algorithms
2 2 (33.33%) Cloud Native
3 1 (16.67%) Analytical Mindset
3 1 (16.67%) IoT
Processes & Methodologies
1 4 (66.67%) Mathematics
2 3 (50.00%) Data Analysis
2 3 (50.00%) Data Science
3 2 (33.33%) Actionable Insight
3 2 (33.33%) Agile
3 2 (33.33%) Analytics
3 2 (33.33%) Artificial Intelligence
3 2 (33.33%) Data Visualisation
3 2 (33.33%) Machine Learning
3 2 (33.33%) Physics
3 2 (33.33%) Statistics
3 2 (33.33%) Visualisation
4 1 (16.67%) Gradient Boosting
4 1 (16.67%) Kalman Filter
4 1 (16.67%) Prescriptive Analytics
4 1 (16.67%) Random Forest
4 1 (16.67%) Reinforcement Learning
4 1 (16.67%) Sentiment Analysis
4 1 (16.67%) Supply Chain Planning
4 1 (16.67%) Time Series Analysis
Programming Languages
1 5 (83.33%) Python
2 2 (33.33%) R
2 2 (33.33%) SQL
Qualifications
1 4 (66.67%) Degree
1 4 (66.67%) Master's Degree
2 2 (33.33%) PhD
3 1 (16.67%) SC Cleared
3 1 (16.67%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (16.67%) QA
Vendors
1 1 (16.67%) Microsoft
1 1 (16.67%) OpenAI
1 1 (16.67%) Salesforce
1 1 (16.67%) TIBCO