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 1 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 308 230 244
Rank change year-on-year -78 +14 +95
Contract jobs citing Pharmaceutical 355 333 397
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.73% 1.14% 0.92%
As % of the General category 1.35% 1.81% 1.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 215 222 242
10th Percentile £314 £378 £363
25th Percentile £388 £475 £453
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% +4.76% +5.00%
75th Percentile £600 £697 £600
90th Percentile £658 £820 £723
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £538 £500
% change year-on-year -11.63% +7.50% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 12 39
10th Percentile £19.28 £15.91 £19.74
25th Percentile £50.00 £19.75 £20.75
Median hourly rate £72.50 £51.80 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +39.97% +38.12% +25.00%
75th Percentile £97.50 £97.50 £57.50
90th Percentile - - £61.56
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £18.02 £40.00
% change year-on-year +205.17% -54.94% +77.54%

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 26,337 18,442 24,728
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.81% 63.30% 57.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,946 11,681 15,547
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £756 £764
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,748 823 1,981
10th Percentile £13.72 £13.50 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.69 £16.95 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.94 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.37% -6.87% -7.12%
75th Percentile £60.00 £55.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £67.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.07 £24.34 £28.34
% change year-on-year +19.43% -14.10% +3.04%

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 1 June 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 1 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Pharmaceutical in the UK

Pharmaceutical
Top 14 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 1 June 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 -126 252 £503 -8.64% 274
Work from Home +7 157 £475 -9.52% 140
London -24 131 £525 -29.67% 131
UK excluding London -137 89 £475 -11.63% 155
East of England -49 39 £475 -13.64% 21
North of England -106 23 £475 -13.64% 52
South East -46 19 £553 -23.69% 41
North West -73 19 £475 -13.64% 37
South West -26 3 - - 13
North East -30 3 £290 - 1
Midlands -57 3 - - 24
Wales -15 2 £175 -42.71% 2
West Midlands -57 1 - - 12
Yorkshire -59 1 £425 - 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 3 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
1 3 (0.85%) IIS
1 3 (0.85%) SAS
1 3 (0.85%) SharePoint
2 2 (0.56%) WinCC
3 1 (0.28%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 1 (0.28%) Anypoint
3 1 (0.28%) Apache
3 1 (0.28%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.28%) CMS
3 1 (0.28%) Confluence
3 1 (0.28%) Mendix
3 1 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 28 (7.89%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (3.38%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (1.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (1.97%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.56%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 2 (0.56%) Adobe Illustrator
4 2 (0.56%) InDesign
4 2 (0.56%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.56%) Photoshop
5 1 (0.28%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 57 (16.06%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (2.82%) SAP SD
3 6 (1.69%) SAP EWM
4 5 (1.41%) SAP MM
5 4 (1.13%) Dynamics CRM
5 4 (1.13%) SAP PM
6 3 (0.85%) NetSuite
6 3 (0.85%) SAP QM
7 2 (0.56%) Oracle EBS
7 2 (0.56%) Sage X3
7 2 (0.56%) SAP ERP
7 2 (0.56%) SAP GTS
7 2 (0.56%) SAP MDG
7 2 (0.56%) SAP WM
8 1 (0.28%) JDE EnterpriseOne
8 1 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
8 1 (0.28%) SAP CS
8 1 (0.28%) SAP EHS
8 1 (0.28%) SAP MDG-M
8 1 (0.28%) SAP MDM
Cloud Services
1 45 (12.68%) AWS
2 30 (8.45%) Azure
3 17 (4.79%) SaaS
4 13 (3.66%) GCP
5 10 (2.82%) Microsoft 365
6 9 (2.54%) dbt
7 8 (2.25%) Power Platform
8 6 (1.69%) Dynamics 365
8 6 (1.69%) Figma
8 6 (1.69%) GitHub
8 6 (1.69%) Snowflake
8 6 (1.69%) Veeva
9 5 (1.41%) Azure DevOps
10 4 (1.13%) Cloud Run
11 3 (0.85%) Amazon EKS
11 3 (0.85%) Amazon SageMaker
11 3 (0.85%) AWS CloudFormation
11 3 (0.85%) Azure AKS
11 3 (0.85%) Google Workspace
11 3 (0.85%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.41%) Firewall
2 4 (1.13%) VLAN
3 3 (0.85%) DNS
3 3 (0.85%) Ethernet
3 3 (0.85%) HTTPS
3 3 (0.85%) Modbus
3 3 (0.85%) RS-485
4 2 (0.56%) TCP/IP
4 2 (0.56%) VPN
4 2 (0.56%) WAN
4 2 (0.56%) X.21
5 1 (0.28%) AMQP
5 1 (0.28%) DHCP
5 1 (0.28%) HTTP
5 1 (0.28%) Junos
5 1 (0.28%) Network Security
5 1 (0.28%) NGFW
5 1 (0.28%) SSL
5 1 (0.28%) Telepresence
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (2.25%) Data Warehouse
1 8 (2.25%) Power BI
2 4 (1.13%) Tableau
3 3 (0.85%) Metadata
3 3 (0.85%) NoSQL
3 3 (0.85%) SQL Server Reporting Services
4 2 (0.56%) Amazon QuickSight
4 2 (0.56%) BigQuery
4 2 (0.56%) Data Lake
4 2 (0.56%) DynamoDB
4 2 (0.56%) Oracle Database
4 2 (0.56%) Snowflake Schema
4 2 (0.56%) SQL Server
4 2 (0.56%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 1 (0.28%) Big Data
5 1 (0.28%) Neo4j
5 1 (0.28%) Oracle Database 12c
5 1 (0.28%) Oracle Reports
5 1 (0.28%) SAP Data Services
5 1 (0.28%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 13 (3.66%) JIRA
2 11 (3.10%) Git
3 3 (0.85%) Cypress.io
3 3 (0.85%) MLflow
4 1 (0.28%) Bitbucket
4 1 (0.28%) ER Studio
4 1 (0.28%) GitLab
4 1 (0.28%) Hudson
4 1 (0.28%) Jenkins
4 1 (0.28%) LSMW
4 1 (0.28%) Oracle APEX
4 1 (0.28%) Oracle Forms
4 1 (0.28%) Postman
4 1 (0.28%) Selenium
4 1 (0.28%) SonarQube
4 1 (0.28%) TestRail
General
1 82 (23.10%) Social Skills
2 75 (21.13%) Manufacturing
3 74 (20.85%) Finance
4 35 (9.86%) Analytical Skills
5 10 (2.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 10 (2.82%) Presentation Skills
6 9 (2.54%) Advertising
6 9 (2.54%) Legal
6 9 (2.54%) Organisational Skills
6 9 (2.54%) Retail
7 8 (2.25%) Marketing
8 7 (1.97%) Billing
9 6 (1.69%) Public Speaking
10 5 (1.41%) Automotive
10 5 (1.41%) Documentation Skills
10 5 (1.41%) Law
11 3 (0.85%) Banking
11 3 (0.85%) Digital Health
11 3 (0.85%) Public Sector
11 3 (0.85%) Wearables
Job Titles
1 37 (10.42%) Lead
2 33 (9.30%) Senior
3 32 (9.01%) Project Manager
4 28 (7.89%) Consultant
5 27 (7.61%) Analyst
6 17 (4.79%) Data Engineer
7 15 (4.23%) SAP Consultant
8 14 (3.94%) Business Analyst
9 13 (3.66%) Architect
9 13 (3.66%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 12 (3.38%) Designer
11 11 (3.10%) Developer
12 9 (2.54%) Data Scientist
12 9 (2.54%) Product Owner
13 8 (2.25%) Accountant
13 8 (2.25%) AWS Engineer
13 8 (2.25%) Systems Accountant
14 7 (1.97%) Compliance Manager
14 7 (1.97%) Python Developer
14 7 (1.97%) Risk Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (1.69%) IDoc
2 5 (1.41%) EDI
2 5 (1.41%) FastAPI
2 5 (1.41%) PyTorch
2 5 (1.41%) REST
3 4 (1.13%) Pandas
3 4 (1.13%) React
4 3 (0.85%) Google JAX
4 3 (0.85%) J2EE
4 3 (0.85%) JAX
4 3 (0.85%) Playwright
4 3 (0.85%) Ray
4 3 (0.85%) TensorFlow
4 3 (0.85%) XML
5 2 (0.56%) JSON
5 2 (0.56%) LangGraph
5 2 (0.56%) OAuth
5 2 (0.56%) RESTful
5 2 (0.56%) Web Services
5 2 (0.56%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 87 (24.51%) Life Science
2 15 (4.23%) Data Structures
2 15 (4.23%) FMCG
2 15 (4.23%) LIMS
2 15 (4.23%) Product Ownership
3 13 (3.66%) CRISPR
4 9 (2.54%) Data Protection Act
4 9 (2.54%) Self-Motivation
5 8 (2.25%) Cloud Native
6 7 (1.97%) Enterprise Software
6 7 (1.97%) Onboarding
6 7 (1.97%) Operational Technology
7 6 (1.69%) NHS
8 5 (1.41%) Genomics
8 5 (1.41%) Management Information System
9 4 (1.13%) Biopharmaceutical
9 4 (1.13%) Pharmacovigilance
9 4 (1.13%) Robotics
9 4 (1.13%) SCADA
10 3 (0.85%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 16 (4.51%) Windows
2 3 (0.85%) Windows 10
2 3 (0.85%) Windows Server
3 2 (0.56%) Linux
3 2 (0.56%) Mac OS
4 1 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.28%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 55 (15.49%) AI
2 53 (14.93%) Validation
3 47 (13.24%) Agile
3 47 (13.24%) ERP
4 42 (11.83%) Stakeholder Management
5 39 (10.99%) Migration
6 37 (10.42%) Biotechnology
7 35 (9.86%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 29 (8.17%) Problem-Solving
9 28 (7.89%) Machine Learning
10 27 (7.61%) Project Management
10 27 (7.61%) Workshop Facilitation
11 25 (7.04%) Continuous Improvement
11 25 (7.04%) DevOps
12 24 (6.76%) Data Migration
12 24 (6.76%) Data Pipeline
12 24 (6.76%) Decision-Making
12 24 (6.76%) Roadmaps
13 22 (6.20%) CI/CD
13 22 (6.20%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 60 (16.90%) Python
2 31 (8.73%) SQL
3 14 (3.94%) R
4 5 (1.41%) JavaScript
5 4 (1.13%) TypeScript
6 3 (0.85%) ABAP
6 3 (0.85%) Java
7 1 (0.28%) Bicep
7 1 (0.28%) C
7 1 (0.28%) C++
7 1 (0.28%) DataWeave
7 1 (0.28%) Groovy
7 1 (0.28%) PL/SQL
7 1 (0.28%) SHACL
7 1 (0.28%) T-SQL
7 1 (0.28%) XPath
7 1 (0.28%) XQuery
Qualifications
1 37 (10.42%) Degree
2 9 (2.54%) ACCA
2 9 (2.54%) CIMA
3 8 (2.25%) PMI Certification
3 8 (2.25%) PMP
4 7 (1.97%) A+ Certification
5 4 (1.13%) Security Cleared
6 3 (0.85%) BPSS Clearance
6 3 (0.85%) CISM
6 3 (0.85%) CISSP
6 3 (0.85%) Master's Degree
6 3 (0.85%) Microsoft Certification
6 3 (0.85%) SC Cleared
7 2 (0.56%) CSPO
7 2 (0.56%) HNC
7 2 (0.56%) HND
7 2 (0.56%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
8 1 (0.28%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 1 (0.28%) Azure Certification
8 1 (0.28%) CRISC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 44 (12.39%) GxP
2 20 (5.63%) GMP
3 16 (4.51%) QA
4 13 (3.66%) Data Quality
5 9 (2.54%) GDPR
5 9 (2.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 8 (2.25%) GRC
7 7 (1.97%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 6 (1.69%) 21 CFR Part 11
8 6 (1.69%) PMO
9 3 (0.85%) Accessibility
9 3 (0.85%) HIPAA
9 3 (0.85%) NIST
9 3 (0.85%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.56%) GAMP
10 2 (0.56%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.28%) CDISC
11 1 (0.28%) EU AI Act
11 1 (0.28%) ISO 13485
11 1 (0.28%) ITGC
System Software
1 7 (1.97%) Docker
2 5 (1.41%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.56%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (0.56%) vSphere
4 1 (0.28%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 10 (2.82%) Terraform
2 7 (1.97%) Kubernetes
3 1 (0.28%) FortiGate
3 1 (0.28%) Oracle RMAN
3 1 (0.28%) RSA Archer
3 1 (0.28%) WSUS
Vendors
1 83 (23.38%) SAP
2 32 (9.01%) Microsoft
3 11 (3.10%) Oracle
4 10 (2.82%) Google
5 8 (2.25%) Databricks
6 5 (1.41%) LabWare
6 5 (1.41%) SOTI
7 4 (1.13%) LabVantage
7 4 (1.13%) Palo Alto
7 4 (1.13%) Salesforce
7 4 (1.13%) ServiceNow
7 4 (1.13%) VMware
7 4 (1.13%) Zscaler
8 3 (0.85%) Adobe
8 3 (0.85%) Ariba
8 3 (0.85%) Conga
8 3 (0.85%) MuleSoft
8 3 (0.85%) Palantir
9 2 (0.56%) Dell
9 2 (0.56%) HP