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 28 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 280 273 249
Rank change year-on-year -7 -24 +115
Contract jobs citing Pharmaceutical 356 325 453
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.99% 0.89% 0.99%
As % of the General category 1.58% 1.49% 1.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 239 169 306
10th Percentile £400 £350 £265
25th Percentile £500 £427 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +9.52% - +2.24%
75th Percentile £688 £625 £588
90th Percentile £778 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £581 £525 £525
% change year-on-year +10.67% - +10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 24 24
10th Percentile - £19.68 £17.17
25th Percentile £18.87 £24.18 £17.72
Median hourly rate £75.00 £32.50 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +130.77% +62.50% -25.93%
75th Percentile £97.50 £35.00 £43.81
90th Percentile - £55.18 £61.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.87 £32.50 £20.00
% change year-on-year -41.94% +62.50% -25.93%

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 common skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for common skills 22,571 21,864 27,174
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 62.52% 59.73% 59.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,144 12,907 18,051
10th Percentile £273 £292 £280
25th Percentile £400 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £756 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,449 820 1,115
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.10 £14.25
25th Percentile £16.84 £18.00 £17.00
Median hourly rate £24.09 £28.00 £32.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.96% -12.50% +28.00%
75th Percentile £45.46 £53.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £69.99 £70.25 £71.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.14 £27.00 £30.00
% change year-on-year -18.00% -10.00% +36.36%

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 28 November 2025.

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 28 November 2025.

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 28 November 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 -3 286 £575 +4.55% 192
UK excluding London -62 135 £581 +10.67% 167
Work from Home +24 126 £525 -0.24% 77
London +67 115 £575 +4.55% 49
East of England -22 52 £580 +10.48% 16
North of England -78 40 £675 +28.57% 41
North West -47 37 £675 +28.57% 26
South East +18 32 £555 +139.78% 63
South West - 6 £725 - 20
Scotland -6 3 £550 +54.93% 4
Wales -1 2 £224 - 4
East Midlands -13 2 £525 -12.50% 15
Midlands -27 2 £525 -12.50% 24
Yorkshire -50 2 £325 -5.25% 10
North East - 1 - - 5

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 8 (2.25%) Confluence
2 7 (1.97%) Apache Airflow
3 5 (1.40%) Apache Spark
4 3 (0.84%) CMS
4 3 (0.84%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.28%) Headless CMS
5 1 (0.28%) Mendix
5 1 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
5 1 (0.28%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 5 (1.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.12%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (0.84%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.56%) Adobe After Effects
4 2 (0.56%) Adobe Illustrator
4 2 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.56%) Photoshop
4 2 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.56%) Weka
5 1 (0.28%) Adobe Premiere
5 1 (0.28%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 97 (27.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 9 (2.53%) SAP MM
3 8 (2.25%) SAP MDG
3 8 (2.25%) SAP QM
4 7 (1.97%) SAP CO
5 6 (1.69%) SAP EWM
5 6 (1.69%) SAP FI
5 6 (1.69%) SAP FI/CO
5 6 (1.69%) SAP PP
6 5 (1.40%) SAP ERP
6 5 (1.40%) SAP SD
6 5 (1.40%) SAP WM
7 4 (1.12%) SAP IBP
7 4 (1.12%) SAP PLM
8 3 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
8 3 (0.84%) SAP PM
8 3 (0.84%) SAP VC
9 2 (0.56%) PRMS
9 2 (0.56%) SAP SCM
9 2 (0.56%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 51 (14.33%) AWS
2 38 (10.67%) Azure
3 28 (7.87%) Power Platform
4 27 (7.58%) GCP
5 21 (5.90%) GitHub
6 14 (3.93%) Snowflake
7 12 (3.37%) Cloud Run
8 8 (2.25%) Microsoft 365
9 6 (1.69%) GitHub Actions
9 6 (1.69%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 6 (1.69%) Veeva
10 4 (1.12%) Amazon S3
10 4 (1.12%) Azure Data Factory
10 4 (1.12%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 4 (1.12%) dbt
10 4 (1.12%) Figma
10 4 (1.12%) IaaS
10 4 (1.12%) SaaS
11 3 (0.84%) Lucidchart
11 3 (0.84%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 10 (2.81%) Network Security
2 5 (1.40%) Firewall
3 4 (1.12%) Wireless
4 2 (0.56%) BGP
4 2 (0.56%) OSPF
5 1 (0.28%) Cisco ICM
5 1 (0.28%) DHCP
5 1 (0.28%) DNS
5 1 (0.28%) RFID
5 1 (0.28%) SD-WAN
5 1 (0.28%) Skype
5 1 (0.28%) SMS
5 1 (0.28%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.28%) VLAN
5 1 (0.28%) VPN
5 1 (0.28%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (7.87%) Power BI
2 16 (4.49%) Data Lake
3 13 (3.65%) SAP HANA
4 11 (3.09%) Data Warehouse
5 8 (2.25%) Electronic Patient Records
6 7 (1.97%) Metadata
7 5 (1.40%) BigQuery
8 4 (1.12%) Tableau
9 3 (0.84%) Azure SQL Database
9 3 (0.84%) NoSQL
10 2 (0.56%) Ataccama
10 2 (0.56%) MongoDB
10 2 (0.56%) Neo4j
10 2 (0.56%) SAP Data Services
11 1 (0.28%) Amazon RDS
11 1 (0.28%) Amazon Redshift
11 1 (0.28%) KNIME
11 1 (0.28%) Power Query
11 1 (0.28%) Qlik Sense
11 1 (0.28%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 19 (5.34%) Git
2 17 (4.78%) JIRA
3 5 (1.40%) Jenkins
4 3 (0.84%) Cypress.io
5 2 (0.56%) CircleCI
5 2 (0.56%) GitLab
5 2 (0.56%) LSMW
5 2 (0.56%) Selenium
6 1 (0.28%) ERwin
6 1 (0.28%) PHPUnit
6 1 (0.28%) SoapUI
6 1 (0.28%) Zephyr
General
1 102 (28.65%) Social Skills
2 71 (19.94%) Finance
3 67 (18.82%) Manufacturing
4 32 (8.99%) Analytical Skills
5 15 (4.21%) Influencing Skills
5 15 (4.21%) Marketing
6 14 (3.93%) Documentation Skills
7 11 (3.09%) Aerospace
8 7 (1.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 6 (1.69%) Public Sector
10 5 (1.40%) Legal
11 4 (1.12%) German Language
11 4 (1.12%) Health Technology
11 4 (1.12%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (0.84%) Digital Health
12 3 (0.84%) Wearables
13 2 (0.56%) Billing
13 2 (0.56%) Digital Healthcare
14 1 (0.28%) Dutch Language
14 1 (0.28%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 45 (12.64%) Consultant
2 38 (10.67%) SAP Consultant
3 37 (10.39%) Lead
4 25 (7.02%) Analyst
5 24 (6.74%) Project Manager
6 23 (6.46%) Developer
7 21 (5.90%) Architect
8 18 (5.06%) Accountant
8 18 (5.06%) Systems Accountant
9 17 (4.78%) Data Scientist
9 17 (4.78%) Python Developer
10 13 (3.65%) Data Engineer
10 13 (3.65%) SAP Manager
10 13 (3.65%) Senior
11 12 (3.37%) Full-Stack Developer
12 11 (3.09%) Full-Stack Python Developer
12 11 (3.09%) SAP S/4HANA Consultant
13 10 (2.81%) Business Analyst
13 10 (2.81%) IT Manager
13 10 (2.81%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (5.06%) pytest
2 17 (4.78%) FastAPI
3 16 (4.49%) React
4 15 (4.21%) SAP Fiori
5 11 (3.09%) LangGraph
6 6 (1.69%) Playwright
7 4 (1.12%) EDI
7 4 (1.12%) FHIR
8 3 (0.84%) IDoc
8 3 (0.84%) MACH
8 3 (0.84%) pydantic
8 3 (0.84%) SOAP
9 2 (0.56%) Jest
9 2 (0.56%) Kafka
9 2 (0.56%) Next.js
9 2 (0.56%) REST
9 2 (0.56%) RESTful
9 2 (0.56%) SailPoint
9 2 (0.56%) SAP PI
9 2 (0.56%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 61 (17.13%) Life Science
2 21 (5.90%) Genomics
3 17 (4.78%) Cloud Native
4 10 (2.81%) FMCG
5 8 (2.25%) Operational Technology
5 8 (2.25%) Product Ownership
6 7 (1.97%) NHS
7 6 (1.69%) Hybrid Cloud
7 6 (1.69%) Legacy Systems
7 6 (1.69%) Onboarding
8 5 (1.40%) AI Agents
8 5 (1.40%) Greenfield Project
8 5 (1.40%) LIMS
8 5 (1.40%) Management Information System
9 4 (1.12%) Biopharmaceutical
9 4 (1.12%) Data Structures
9 4 (1.12%) Mobile App
9 4 (1.12%) Virtual Team
10 3 (0.84%) Analytical Mindset
10 3 (0.84%) Marketing Technology
Operating Systems
1 9 (2.53%) Windows
2 6 (1.69%) Apple iOS
3 4 (1.12%) Linux
4 3 (0.84%) Android
4 3 (0.84%) Windows 10
5 2 (0.56%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 68 (19.10%) Stakeholder Management
2 65 (18.26%) AI
3 54 (15.17%) Agile
4 51 (14.33%) Analytics
4 51 (14.33%) Problem-Solving
5 45 (12.64%) Project Management
6 43 (12.08%) Machine Learning
7 41 (11.52%) ERP
8 38 (10.67%) Continuous Improvement
9 37 (10.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 36 (10.11%) Change Management
11 35 (9.83%) Validation
12 31 (8.71%) Data Science
12 31 (8.71%) DevOps
13 28 (7.87%) Biotechnology
13 28 (7.87%) Matrix Organization
13 28 (7.87%) Roadmaps
14 27 (7.58%) Migration
15 26 (7.30%) Data Governance
16 24 (6.74%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 69 (19.38%) Python
2 28 (7.87%) SQL
3 17 (4.78%) R
3 17 (4.78%) TypeScript
4 11 (3.09%) Java
5 7 (1.97%) JavaScript
6 5 (1.40%) ABAP
7 2 (0.56%) Bash
7 2 (0.56%) Ruby
8 1 (0.28%) Korn
8 1 (0.28%) Ladder Logic
8 1 (0.28%) MATLAB
8 1 (0.28%) PHP
8 1 (0.28%) Scala
8 1 (0.28%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 60 (16.85%) Degree
2 20 (5.62%) ACCA
2 20 (5.62%) CIMA
3 16 (4.49%) Master's Degree
3 16 (4.49%) PMI Certification
3 16 (4.49%) PMP
4 11 (3.09%) Security Cleared
5 8 (2.25%) SC Cleared
6 6 (1.69%) Computer Science Degree
7 5 (1.40%) CCNP
7 5 (1.40%) CCSA
7 5 (1.40%) Cisco Certification
8 3 (0.84%) Six Sigma Green Belt
9 2 (0.56%) A+ Certification
9 2 (0.56%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (0.56%) CISA
9 2 (0.56%) CISM
9 2 (0.56%) CISSP
9 2 (0.56%) CompTIA Security+
9 2 (0.56%) SAP Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (9.83%) GxP
2 19 (5.34%) QA
3 15 (4.21%) Data Quality
4 12 (3.37%) GDPR
5 11 (3.09%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 9 (2.53%) GMP
7 7 (1.97%) APQC
7 7 (1.97%) PMO
8 5 (1.40%) HL7
9 4 (1.12%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 4 (1.12%) Accessibility
9 4 (1.12%) SLA
10 2 (0.56%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.56%) IFRS
10 2 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 2 (0.56%) NCSC
11 1 (0.28%) GRC
11 1 (0.28%) IEC 62304
11 1 (0.28%) ISO 13485
11 1 (0.28%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 27 (7.58%) Docker
2 5 (1.40%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 3 (0.84%) Lustre
4 2 (0.56%) GPFS
5 1 (0.28%) Active Directory
5 1 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 22 (6.18%) Kubernetes
2 9 (2.53%) Terraform
3 5 (1.40%) Ansible
4 4 (1.12%) SCCM
5 3 (0.84%) Packer
6 2 (0.56%) HP ALM
6 2 (0.56%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (0.56%) Puppet
6 2 (0.56%) Salt
7 1 (0.28%) Cisco CUCM
7 1 (0.28%) Cisco UCCE
7 1 (0.28%) Cisco UCCX
7 1 (0.28%) NetBackup
7 1 (0.28%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
7 1 (0.28%) TeamSite
Vendors
1 143 (40.17%) SAP
2 22 (6.18%) Google
2 22 (6.18%) Microsoft
3 17 (4.78%) Ariba
4 10 (2.81%) ServiceNow
5 8 (2.25%) Palo Alto
6 7 (1.97%) Zscaler
7 6 (1.69%) Oracle
7 6 (1.69%) Salesforce
8 5 (1.40%) Cisco
9 3 (0.84%) Cerner
9 3 (0.84%) IBM
9 3 (0.84%) MEDITECH
9 3 (0.84%) Workday
10 2 (0.56%) CyberArk
10 2 (0.56%) Databricks
10 2 (0.56%) Meraki
10 2 (0.56%) Rockwell
10 2 (0.56%) SOTI
10 2 (0.56%) Sparx