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 26 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 332 226 280
Rank change year-on-year -106 +54 +27
Contract jobs citing Pharmaceutical 387 378 342
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.73% 1.15% 0.85%
As % of the General category 1.33% 1.82% 1.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 210 265 198
10th Percentile £316 £364 £380
25th Percentile £388 £475 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% +4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £688 £607
90th Percentile £665 £762 £709
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £550 £500
% change year-on-year -13.64% +10.00% -0.99%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 13 30
10th Percentile £16.75 £16.22 £17.72
25th Percentile £33.70 £20.00 £20.88
Median hourly rate £55.00 £51.80 £38.75
Median % change year-on-year +6.19% +33.66% +71.99%
75th Percentile £97.50 £97.50 £58.75
90th Percentile - - £67.92
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.72 £17.46 £40.00
% change year-on-year +121.80% -56.36% +101.41%

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 29,185 20,730 23,182
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.99% 62.96% 57.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,402 12,974 14,631
10th Percentile £313 £280 £288
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 £633 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £493
% change year-on-year +6.38% -4.67% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,061 1,089 1,553
10th Percentile £14.10 £13.33 £13.69
25th Percentile £18.27 £16.13 £16.30
Median hourly rate £33.00 £25.15 £36.05
Median % change year-on-year +31.21% -30.23% +18.03%
75th Percentile £61.18 £51.25 £57.50
90th Percentile £81.05 £70.38 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.00 £22.14 £36.11
% change year-on-year +49.05% -38.68% +38.87%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 -118 295 £500 -9.09% 211
Work from Home +7 177 £475 -9.09% 97
London -11 158 £525 -12.50% 88
UK excluding London -155 106 £475 -13.64% 138
East of England -44 46 £500 -9.09% 28
South East -62 25 £475 -17.75% 46
North of England -118 20 £463 -18.14% 25
North West -90 14 £475 -15.93% 18
South West -32 8 £463 -38.33% 11
Midlands -51 4 £450 -14.29% 23
Wales -19 3 £175 -42.71% 6
North East -42 3 £290 -
Yorkshire -44 3 £463 - 7
East Midlands -14 1 £450 - 8
West Midlands -55 1 - - 15

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 (1.29%) IIS
2 4 (1.03%) FactoryTalk
2 4 (1.03%) SAS
3 3 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
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 (5.94%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (3.36%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (2.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (2.07%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (1.03%) 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 65 (16.80%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (2.58%) SAP SD
3 7 (1.81%) SAP EWM
4 5 (1.29%) SAP MM
5 4 (1.03%) Dynamics CRM
5 4 (1.03%) SAP FI
5 4 (1.03%) 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 MDG
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 WM
8 1 (0.26%) JDE EnterpriseOne
Cloud Services
1 53 (13.70%) AWS
2 41 (10.59%) Azure
3 19 (4.91%) SaaS
4 16 (4.13%) Power Platform
5 15 (3.88%) GCP
6 10 (2.58%) dbt
6 10 (2.58%) GitHub
6 10 (2.58%) 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 (1.29%) Cloud Run
11 5 (1.29%) GitHub Actions
11 5 (1.29%) Serverless
12 4 (1.03%) AWS CloudFormation
12 4 (1.03%) Google Workspace
13 3 (0.78%) Amazon S3
13 3 (0.78%) AWS Direct Connect
13 3 (0.78%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 9 (2.33%) Firewall
2 8 (2.07%) VLAN
3 6 (1.55%) TCP/IP
4 5 (1.29%) HTTPS
5 4 (1.03%) DNS
6 3 (0.78%) VPN
6 3 (0.78%) WAN
7 2 (0.52%) Network Security
7 2 (0.52%) X.21
8 1 (0.26%) AMQP
8 1 (0.26%) DHCP
8 1 (0.26%) HTTP
8 1 (0.26%) Junos
8 1 (0.26%) NGFW
8 1 (0.26%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (4.13%) Power BI
2 11 (2.84%) Data Warehouse
3 7 (1.81%) Metadata
4 6 (1.55%) Tableau
5 5 (1.29%) NoSQL
5 5 (1.29%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (1.03%) MySQL
6 4 (1.03%) Oracle Database
6 4 (1.03%) SAP BW
6 4 (1.03%) SAP HANA
7 3 (0.78%) BigQuery
7 3 (0.78%) Data Lake
7 3 (0.78%) DynamoDB
7 3 (0.78%) Neo4j
7 3 (0.78%) Relational Database
7 3 (0.78%) SQL Server
7 3 (0.78%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 2 (0.52%) Data Mining
8 2 (0.52%) Snowflake Schema
8 2 (0.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 16 (4.13%) JIRA
2 14 (3.62%) Git
3 5 (1.29%) 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
1 104 (26.87%) Social Skills
2 86 (22.22%) Manufacturing
3 71 (18.35%) Finance
4 51 (13.18%) Analytical Skills
5 16 (4.13%) Retail
6 14 (3.62%) Marketing
7 13 (3.36%) Organisational Skills
8 10 (2.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 10 (2.58%) 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 Sector
11 6 (1.55%) Public Speaking
12 5 (1.29%) Aerospace
12 5 (1.29%) Automotive
12 5 (1.29%) Health Technology
12 5 (1.29%) Law
Job Titles
1 38 (9.82%) Analyst
1 38 (9.82%) Consultant
2 37 (9.56%) Lead
2 37 (9.56%) Project Manager
3 34 (8.79%) Senior
4 23 (5.94%) Business Analyst
5 22 (5.68%) SAP Consultant
6 20 (5.17%) Architect
7 18 (4.65%) Data Engineer
8 15 (3.88%) Developer
8 15 (3.88%) Product Owner
9 14 (3.62%) 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%) SAP Analyst
13 6 (1.55%) Snowflake Data Engineer
13 6 (1.55%) Snowflake Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (3.62%) REST
2 7 (1.81%) React
3 6 (1.55%) IDoc
3 6 (1.55%) PyTorch
4 5 (1.29%) EDI
4 5 (1.29%) RESTful
4 5 (1.29%) SOAP
4 5 (1.29%) XML
5 4 (1.03%) FastAPI
5 4 (1.03%) Pandas
5 4 (1.03%) 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
1 119 (30.75%) Life Science
2 22 (5.68%) Product Ownership
3 18 (4.65%) FMCG
4 16 (4.13%) Data Structures
4 16 (4.13%) LIMS
5 13 (3.36%) CRISPR
6 10 (2.58%) Operational Technology
7 9 (2.33%) Cloud Native
7 9 (2.33%) Self-Motivation
8 8 (2.07%) Data Protection Act
9 7 (1.81%) Analytical Mindset
9 7 (1.81%) Management Information System
10 6 (1.55%) NHS
10 6 (1.55%) SCADA
11 5 (1.29%) Biopharmaceutical
11 5 (1.29%) Enterprise Software
11 5 (1.29%) Genomics
12 4 (1.03%) Greenfield Project
12 4 (1.03%) Pharmacovigilance
12 4 (1.03%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 17 (4.39%) Windows
2 7 (1.81%) 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 69 (17.83%) AI
2 65 (16.80%) Agile
2 65 (16.80%) Stakeholder Management
3 62 (16.02%) Validation
4 45 (11.63%) Problem-Solving
5 44 (11.37%) Biotechnology
5 44 (11.37%) Migration
6 41 (10.59%) ERP
7 40 (10.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 37 (9.56%) Continuous Improvement
9 35 (9.04%) Roadmaps
10 32 (8.27%) Machine Learning
11 31 (8.01%) Analytics
11 31 (8.01%) CI/CD
11 31 (8.01%) Project Management
12 30 (7.75%) Data Pipeline
13 29 (7.49%) Data Modelling
13 29 (7.49%) Workshop Facilitation
14 27 (6.98%) Data Governance
14 27 (6.98%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 65 (16.80%) Python
2 37 (9.56%) SQL
3 13 (3.36%) R
4 7 (1.81%) Java
5 6 (1.55%) ABAP
5 6 (1.55%) JavaScript
6 4 (1.03%) PowerShell
6 4 (1.03%) TypeScript
7 3 (0.78%) C#
8 2 (0.52%) Cypher
8 2 (0.52%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 1 (0.26%) Apex Code
9 1 (0.26%) Bicep
9 1 (0.26%) C
9 1 (0.26%) C++
9 1 (0.26%) DataWeave
9 1 (0.26%) Gremlin
9 1 (0.26%) PL/SQL
9 1 (0.26%) SHACL
9 1 (0.26%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 43 (11.11%) Degree
2 12 (3.10%) PMI Certification
2 12 (3.10%) PMP
3 7 (1.81%) Security Cleared
4 5 (1.29%) CSPO
4 5 (1.29%) Master's Degree
4 5 (1.29%) SC Cleared
5 4 (1.03%) ACCA
5 4 (1.03%) BPSS Clearance
5 4 (1.03%) 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%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 1 (0.26%) AWS Certification
8 1 (0.26%) CAPM
8 1 (0.26%) CRISC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 58 (14.99%) GxP
2 21 (5.43%) QA
3 19 (4.91%) Data Quality
4 18 (4.65%) GMP
5 14 (3.62%) 21 CFR Part 11
6 12 (3.10%) GDPR
7 11 (2.84%) GRC
7 11 (2.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 9 (2.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 6 (1.55%) PMO
10 5 (1.29%) HIPAA
10 5 (1.29%) PCI DSS
11 3 (0.78%) Accessibility
11 3 (0.78%) EU AI Act
11 3 (0.78%) NIST
12 2 (0.52%) GAMP
12 2 (0.52%) NIST 800
13 1 (0.26%) ISO 13485
13 1 (0.26%) NCSC
13 1 (0.26%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 10 (2.58%) Docker
2 6 (1.55%) Active Directory
2 6 (1.55%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (0.52%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.52%) vSphere
4 1 (0.26%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 13 (3.36%) 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 88 (22.74%) SAP
2 26 (6.72%) Microsoft
3 12 (3.10%) Oracle
4 10 (2.58%) Google
5 9 (2.33%) Databricks
6 8 (2.07%) ServiceNow
6 8 (2.07%) VMware
7 7 (1.81%) Ariba
7 7 (1.81%) Rockwell
8 6 (1.55%) Palo Alto
8 6 (1.55%) Salesforce
8 6 (1.55%) Zscaler
9 4 (1.03%) LabVantage
9 4 (1.03%) MuleSoft
10 3 (0.78%) Adobe
10 3 (0.78%) Conga
10 3 (0.78%) Informatica
10 3 (0.78%) LabWare
10 3 (0.78%) Palantir
10 3 (0.78%) Siemens