Pharmaceutical Contract Job Trends

Pharmaceutical (Pharma)
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Pharmaceutical in contract job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Pharmaceutical over the 6 months leading up to 23 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 320 242 273
Rank change year-on-year -78 +31 +42
Contract jobs citing Pharmaceutical 386 373 353
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.73% 1.14% 0.86%
As % of the General category 1.34% 1.82% 1.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 211 263 206
10th Percentile £316 £363 £363
25th Percentile £388 £456 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% +4.76% +2.94%
75th Percentile £600 £688 £607
90th Percentile £664 £750 £724
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £550 £500
% change year-on-year -13.64% +10.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 13 32
10th Percentile £16.75 £16.22 £17.97
25th Percentile £33.70 £20.00 £20.75
Median hourly rate £55.00 £51.80 £33.83
Median % change year-on-year +6.19% +53.10% +50.16%
75th Percentile £97.50 £97.50 £56.25
90th Percentile - - £67.03
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.72 £17.46 £34.25
% change year-on-year +121.80% -49.03% +72.46%

All General Skills
UK

Pharmaceutical falls under the General Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring general skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for general skills 28,911 20,540 23,548
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.83% 62.88% 57.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,215 12,857 14,814
10th Percentile £313 £280 £282
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £634 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £490
% change year-on-year +6.38% -4.08% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,025 1,069 1,632
10th Percentile £14.04 £13.33 £13.50
25th Percentile £18.32 £16.30 £16.25
Median hourly rate £32.81 £26.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +26.17% -25.71% +14.68%
75th Percentile £61.50 £51.90 £56.31
90th Percentile £81.05 £71.30 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.00 £22.63 £35.00
% change year-on-year +45.82% -35.34% +34.62%

Pharmaceutical
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Pharmaceutical job vacancy trend in the UK

Pharmaceutical
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

Pharmaceutical
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Pharmaceutical over the 6 months to 23 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Pharmaceutical in the UK

Pharmaceutical
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Pharmaceutical.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Pharmaceutical

Pharmaceutical
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Pharmaceutical over the 6 months to 23 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Pharmaceutical in the UK

Pharmaceutical
Top 15 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Pharmaceutical within the UK over the 6 months to 23 July 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 -118 294 £500 -9.09% 188
Work from Home -1 176 £475 -8.21% 87
London -7 156 £525 -12.50% 76
UK excluding London -141 107 £475 -13.64% 131
East of England -43 45 £500 -9.09% 24
South East -55 24 £475 -17.75% 45
North of England -107 23 £475 -15.93% 21
North West -83 17 £475 -15.93% 16
South West -33 8 £463 -38.33% 10
Midlands -56 4 £450 -14.29% 22
Wales -20 3 £175 -42.71% 8
North East -37 3 £290 -
Yorkshire -47 3 £463 - 5
East Midlands -13 1 £450 - 8
West Midlands -62 1 - - 14

Pharmaceutical
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 5 (1.30%) IIS
2 4 (1.04%) SAS
3 3 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (0.78%) FactoryTalk
3 3 (0.78%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.52%) Apache
4 2 (0.52%) Confluence
4 2 (0.52%) WinCC
5 1 (0.26%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.26%) Anypoint
5 1 (0.26%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.26%) CMS
5 1 (0.26%) Mendix
Applications
1 23 (5.96%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (3.63%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (2.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (2.07%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (1.04%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.52%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.52%) Adobe Illustrator
6 2 (0.52%) InDesign
6 2 (0.52%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.26%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 67 (17.36%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (2.59%) SAP SD
3 7 (1.81%) SAP EWM
4 5 (1.30%) SAP MM
5 4 (1.04%) Dynamics CRM
5 4 (1.04%) SAP FI
5 4 (1.04%) SAP PM
5 4 (1.04%) TrackWise
6 3 (0.78%) SAP CO
6 3 (0.78%) SAP ERP
6 3 (0.78%) SAP FI/CO
6 3 (0.78%) SAP PP
6 3 (0.78%) SAP QM
7 2 (0.52%) NetSuite
7 2 (0.52%) Oracle EBS
7 2 (0.52%) SAP GRC
7 2 (0.52%) SAP GTS
7 2 (0.52%) SAP IBP
7 2 (0.52%) SAP MDG
7 2 (0.52%) SAP WM
Cloud Services
1 53 (13.73%) AWS
2 39 (10.10%) Azure
3 19 (4.92%) SaaS
4 15 (3.89%) Power Platform
5 14 (3.63%) GCP
6 10 (2.59%) dbt
6 10 (2.59%) GitHub
6 10 (2.59%) Snowflake
7 9 (2.33%) Veeva
8 8 (2.07%) Azure DevOps
9 7 (1.81%) Figma
10 6 (1.55%) Dynamics 365
11 5 (1.30%) GitHub Actions
11 5 (1.30%) Serverless
12 4 (1.04%) AWS CloudFormation
12 4 (1.04%) Cloud Run
12 4 (1.04%) Google Workspace
13 3 (0.78%) Amazon S3
13 3 (0.78%) AWS Direct Connect
13 3 (0.78%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 8 (2.07%) Firewall
2 7 (1.81%) VLAN
3 5 (1.30%) HTTPS
3 5 (1.30%) TCP/IP
4 4 (1.04%) DNS
5 3 (0.78%) VPN
5 3 (0.78%) WAN
6 2 (0.52%) Network Security
6 2 (0.52%) X.21
7 1 (0.26%) AMQP
7 1 (0.26%) DHCP
7 1 (0.26%) HTTP
7 1 (0.26%) Junos
7 1 (0.26%) NGFW
7 1 (0.26%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (3.89%) Power BI
2 11 (2.85%) Data Warehouse
3 6 (1.55%) Metadata
3 6 (1.55%) Tableau
4 5 (1.30%) NoSQL
4 5 (1.30%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (1.04%) MySQL
5 4 (1.04%) Oracle Database
5 4 (1.04%) SAP HANA
6 3 (0.78%) DynamoDB
6 3 (0.78%) Neo4j
6 3 (0.78%) Relational Database
6 3 (0.78%) SAP BW
6 3 (0.78%) SQL Server
6 3 (0.78%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 2 (0.52%) Amazon QuickSight
7 2 (0.52%) BigQuery
7 2 (0.52%) Data Mining
7 2 (0.52%) Snowflake Schema
7 2 (0.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 16 (4.15%) JIRA
2 14 (3.63%) Git
3 5 (1.30%) Jenkins
4 3 (0.78%) Cypress.io
4 3 (0.78%) MLflow
5 2 (0.52%) Visual Studio
6 1 (0.26%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.26%) ER Studio
6 1 (0.26%) GitLab
6 1 (0.26%) LSMW
6 1 (0.26%) Oracle APEX
6 1 (0.26%) Oracle Forms
6 1 (0.26%) Postman
6 1 (0.26%) ScriptRunner
6 1 (0.26%) Selenium
6 1 (0.26%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.26%) TestRail
6 1 (0.26%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 103 (26.68%) Social Skills
2 86 (22.28%) Manufacturing
3 71 (18.39%) Finance
4 49 (12.69%) Analytical Skills
5 15 (3.89%) Retail
6 14 (3.63%) Organisational Skills
7 13 (3.37%) Marketing
8 10 (2.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 10 (2.59%) Presentation Skills
9 9 (2.33%) Advertising
9 9 (2.33%) Legal
10 7 (1.81%) Billing
11 6 (1.55%) Banking
11 6 (1.55%) Documentation Skills
11 6 (1.55%) Public Speaking
12 5 (1.30%) Aerospace
12 5 (1.30%) Automotive
12 5 (1.30%) Health Technology
12 5 (1.30%) Law
12 5 (1.30%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 40 (10.36%) Lead
2 38 (9.84%) Analyst
2 38 (9.84%) Consultant
3 37 (9.59%) Project Manager
4 35 (9.07%) Senior
5 22 (5.70%) Business Analyst
5 22 (5.70%) SAP Consultant
6 19 (4.92%) Architect
7 17 (4.40%) Data Engineer
8 15 (3.89%) Developer
8 15 (3.89%) Product Owner
9 14 (3.63%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 9 (2.33%) AWS Engineer
11 8 (2.07%) Data Analyst
11 8 (2.07%) Data Scientist
12 7 (1.81%) Designer
13 6 (1.55%) Full-Stack Engineer
13 6 (1.55%) Network Engineer
13 6 (1.55%) Snowflake Data Engineer
13 6 (1.55%) Snowflake Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (3.63%) REST
2 7 (1.81%) React
3 6 (1.55%) IDoc
4 5 (1.30%) EDI
4 5 (1.30%) PyTorch
4 5 (1.30%) RESTful
4 5 (1.30%) SOAP
4 5 (1.30%) XML
5 4 (1.04%) FastAPI
5 4 (1.04%) Pandas
5 4 (1.04%) SAP Fiori
6 3 (0.78%) Google JAX
6 3 (0.78%) Hibernate
6 3 (0.78%) JAX
6 3 (0.78%) Kafka
6 3 (0.78%) Playwright
6 3 (0.78%) Ray
6 3 (0.78%) SAPUI5
6 3 (0.78%) SQLAlchemy
6 3 (0.78%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 116 (30.05%) Life Science
2 22 (5.70%) Product Ownership
3 17 (4.40%) FMCG
4 16 (4.15%) LIMS
5 15 (3.89%) Data Structures
6 13 (3.37%) CRISPR
7 9 (2.33%) Operational Technology
7 9 (2.33%) Self-Motivation
8 8 (2.07%) Cloud Native
8 8 (2.07%) Data Protection Act
9 7 (1.81%) Analytical Mindset
9 7 (1.81%) Management Information System
10 5 (1.30%) Biopharmaceutical
10 5 (1.30%) Enterprise Software
10 5 (1.30%) Genomics
10 5 (1.30%) NHS
10 5 (1.30%) SCADA
11 4 (1.04%) Pharmacovigilance
11 4 (1.04%) Robotics
11 4 (1.04%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 16 (4.15%) Windows
2 6 (1.55%) Windows Server
3 3 (0.78%) Linux
4 1 (0.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.26%) Unix
4 1 (0.26%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 67 (17.36%) AI
2 63 (16.32%) Agile
2 63 (16.32%) Stakeholder Management
3 61 (15.80%) Validation
4 43 (11.14%) Biotechnology
4 43 (11.14%) Migration
4 43 (11.14%) Problem-Solving
5 41 (10.62%) ERP
6 40 (10.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 37 (9.59%) Continuous Improvement
8 36 (9.33%) Roadmaps
9 31 (8.03%) Analytics
9 31 (8.03%) Machine Learning
10 30 (7.77%) CI/CD
10 30 (7.77%) Project Management
11 29 (7.51%) Data Pipeline
11 29 (7.51%) Workshop Facilitation
12 28 (7.25%) Data Modelling
13 27 (6.99%) Data Governance
13 27 (6.99%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 64 (16.58%) Python
2 35 (9.07%) SQL
3 13 (3.37%) R
4 7 (1.81%) Java
5 6 (1.55%) ABAP
5 6 (1.55%) JavaScript
6 4 (1.04%) TypeScript
7 3 (0.78%) C#
7 3 (0.78%) PowerShell
8 2 (0.52%) Cypher
8 2 (0.52%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 1 (0.26%) Bicep
9 1 (0.26%) C++
9 1 (0.26%) DataWeave
9 1 (0.26%) Gremlin
9 1 (0.26%) Korn
9 1 (0.26%) MATLAB
9 1 (0.26%) PL/SQL
9 1 (0.26%) SHACL
9 1 (0.26%) XQuery
Qualifications
1 43 (11.14%) Degree
2 12 (3.11%) PMI Certification
2 12 (3.11%) PMP
3 7 (1.81%) Security Cleared
4 5 (1.30%) CSPO
4 5 (1.30%) Master's Degree
4 5 (1.30%) SC Cleared
5 4 (1.04%) ACCA
5 4 (1.04%) BPSS Clearance
5 4 (1.04%) CIMA
6 3 (0.78%) CISM
6 3 (0.78%) CISSP
6 3 (0.78%) Microsoft Certification
7 2 (0.52%) HNC
7 2 (0.52%) HND
7 2 (0.52%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
8 1 (0.26%) CAPM
8 1 (0.26%) CCSP
8 1 (0.26%) OCP
8 1 (0.26%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 57 (14.77%) GxP
2 21 (5.44%) QA
3 18 (4.66%) Data Quality
3 18 (4.66%) GMP
4 13 (3.37%) 21 CFR Part 11
5 12 (3.11%) GDPR
6 11 (2.85%) GRC
6 11 (2.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 9 (2.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 6 (1.55%) PMO
9 5 (1.30%) HIPAA
9 5 (1.30%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.78%) Accessibility
10 3 (0.78%) EU AI Act
10 3 (0.78%) NIST
11 2 (0.52%) GAMP
11 2 (0.52%) NIST 800
12 1 (0.26%) ISO 13485
12 1 (0.26%) SLA
12 1 (0.26%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 9 (2.33%) Docker
2 6 (1.55%) Active Directory
3 5 (1.30%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.52%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (0.52%) vSphere
5 1 (0.26%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 12 (3.11%) Terraform
2 7 (1.81%) Kubernetes
3 1 (0.26%) Apache Ranger
3 1 (0.26%) FortiGate
3 1 (0.26%) Oracle RMAN
3 1 (0.26%) Tivoli Storage Manager
3 1 (0.26%) WSUS
Vendors
1 90 (23.32%) SAP
2 25 (6.48%) Microsoft
3 12 (3.11%) Oracle
4 10 (2.59%) Google
5 8 (2.07%) Databricks
5 8 (2.07%) ServiceNow
6 7 (1.81%) Ariba
6 7 (1.81%) VMware
7 6 (1.55%) Palo Alto
7 6 (1.55%) Rockwell
7 6 (1.55%) Salesforce
7 6 (1.55%) Zscaler
8 4 (1.04%) LabVantage
8 4 (1.04%) MuleSoft
9 3 (0.78%) Adobe
9 3 (0.78%) Conga
9 3 (0.78%) LabWare
9 3 (0.78%) Palantir
9 3 (0.78%) Siemens
10 2 (0.52%) Citrix