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

6 months to
23 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 348 248 287
Rank change year-on-year -100 +39 +34
Contract jobs citing Pharmaceutical 371 356 305
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.69% 1.08% 0.79%
As % of the General category 1.25% 1.70% 1.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 198 238 176
10th Percentile £300 £364 £400
25th Percentile £389 £478 £469
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £563 £550
Median % change year-on-year -15.56% +2.27% +4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £688 £625
90th Percentile £675 £753 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £578 £525
% change year-on-year -22.08% +10.00% +3.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 13 15
10th Percentile £16.75 £16.22 £23.85
25th Percentile £26.25 £18.87 £40.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £51.80 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.95% +3.59% +121.93%
75th Percentile £97.50 £97.50 £60.00
90th Percentile - - £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.72 £18.87 £50.00
% change year-on-year +105.19% -62.26% +182.17%

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 29,649 20,931 22,244
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.03% 63.47% 57.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,570 13,025 13,875
10th Percentile £313 £275 £288
25th Percentile £415 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £626 £650
90th Percentile £738 £749 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £498
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.52% -0.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,278 1,168 1,286
10th Percentile £13.90 £13.43 £14.06
25th Percentile £17.12 £16.25 £16.50
Median hourly rate £31.50 £25.15 £35.36
Median % change year-on-year +25.25% -28.87% +28.58%
75th Percentile £56.21 £50.00 £59.36
90th Percentile £78.75 £70.00 £70.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.23 £22.14 £35.00
% change year-on-year +45.55% -36.74% +34.87%

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 23 August 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 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Pharmaceutical in the UK

Pharmaceutical
Top 16 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 August 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 -121 280 £483 -12.27% 294
Work from Home +6 169 £500 -4.76% 85
London -31 150 £525 -4.55% 75
UK excluding London -138 110 £450 -22.08% 253
East of England -38 40 £475 -18.10% 22
South East -55 25 £475 -10.38% 53
North of England -94 23 £425 -32.00% 86
North West -81 15 £463 -27.45% 48
South West -31 13 £334 -55.50% 25
North East -40 5 £200 - 15
Wales -21 4 £175 -42.71% 12
Midlands -47 4 £450 -14.29% 44
Yorkshire -38 3 £463 +42.31% 23
Scotland -13 1 £425 -2.86% 15
East Midlands -17 1 £450 -14.29% 17
West Midlands -52 1 - - 27

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 9 (2.43%) SharePoint
2 5 (1.35%) IIS
3 4 (1.08%) FactoryTalk
3 4 (1.08%) SAS
4 3 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.54%) Apache
5 2 (0.54%) Confluence
6 1 (0.27%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 1 (0.27%) Anypoint
6 1 (0.27%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.27%) CMS
6 1 (0.27%) Mendix
Applications
1 17 (4.58%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (3.23%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (2.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (1.89%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (1.08%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.54%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.54%) Adobe Illustrator
6 2 (0.54%) InDesign
6 2 (0.54%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.27%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 57 (15.36%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (2.70%) SAP SD
3 6 (1.62%) SAP EWM
4 4 (1.08%) SAP FI
4 4 (1.08%) SAP IBP
4 4 (1.08%) TrackWise
5 3 (0.81%) SAP CO
5 3 (0.81%) SAP ERP
5 3 (0.81%) SAP FI/CO
5 3 (0.81%) SAP GTS
5 3 (0.81%) SAP MDG
5 3 (0.81%) SAP MM
5 3 (0.81%) SAP PP
5 3 (0.81%) SAP QM
6 2 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
6 2 (0.54%) NetSuite
6 2 (0.54%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.54%) SAP GRC
7 1 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.27%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 42 (11.32%) AWS
1 42 (11.32%) Azure
2 19 (5.12%) SaaS
3 17 (4.58%) GCP
3 17 (4.58%) Power Platform
4 16 (4.31%) Snowflake
5 13 (3.50%) Azure DevOps
6 10 (2.70%) dbt
6 10 (2.70%) GitHub
7 9 (2.43%) Veeva
8 8 (2.16%) Microsoft 365
9 5 (1.35%) Azure AI
9 5 (1.35%) Cloud Run
9 5 (1.35%) Dynamics 365
9 5 (1.35%) Figma
9 5 (1.35%) GitHub Actions
10 4 (1.08%) AWS CloudFormation
10 4 (1.08%) Serverless
11 3 (0.81%) AWS Direct Connect
12 2 (0.54%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 8 (2.16%) DNS
1 8 (2.16%) Firewall
2 7 (1.89%) VLAN
3 5 (1.35%) DHCP
3 5 (1.35%) HTTPS
3 5 (1.35%) TCP/IP
4 3 (0.81%) WAN
5 2 (0.54%) Network Security
5 2 (0.54%) VPN
5 2 (0.54%) X.21
6 1 (0.27%) AMQP
6 1 (0.27%) HTTP
6 1 (0.27%) NGFW
6 1 (0.27%) SSL
6 1 (0.27%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (4.58%) Power BI
2 12 (3.23%) Data Warehouse
3 7 (1.89%) Metadata
3 7 (1.89%) Neo4j
4 6 (1.62%) Tableau
5 5 (1.35%) MySQL
5 5 (1.35%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (1.08%) NoSQL
6 4 (1.08%) Relational Database
6 4 (1.08%) SAP BW
6 4 (1.08%) SAP HANA
7 3 (0.81%) BigQuery
7 3 (0.81%) Data Lake
7 3 (0.81%) Data Mining
7 3 (0.81%) DynamoDB
7 3 (0.81%) Oracle Database
7 3 (0.81%) Semantic Layer
8 2 (0.54%) Amazon QuickSight
8 2 (0.54%) Pinecone
8 2 (0.54%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 16 (4.31%) JIRA
2 15 (4.04%) Git
3 5 (1.35%) Jenkins
4 3 (0.81%) Cypress.io
5 2 (0.54%) Visual Studio
6 1 (0.27%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.27%) GitLab
6 1 (0.27%) LSMW
6 1 (0.27%) Postman
6 1 (0.27%) ScriptRunner
6 1 (0.27%) Selenium
6 1 (0.27%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.27%) TestRail
6 1 (0.27%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 109 (29.38%) Social Skills
2 81 (21.83%) Manufacturing
3 59 (15.90%) Analytical Skills
4 57 (15.36%) Finance
5 15 (4.04%) Marketing
6 14 (3.77%) Legal
7 12 (3.23%) Organisational Skills
8 11 (2.96%) Presentation Skills
8 11 (2.96%) Retail
9 9 (2.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 8 (2.16%) Documentation Skills
11 7 (1.89%) Advertising
11 7 (1.89%) Banking
11 7 (1.89%) Billing
12 6 (1.62%) Public Sector
13 5 (1.35%) Automotive
13 5 (1.35%) Health Technology
13 5 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
13 5 (1.35%) Law
13 5 (1.35%) Public Speaking
Job Titles
1 42 (11.32%) Analyst
2 38 (10.24%) Consultant
2 38 (10.24%) Project Manager
3 30 (8.09%) Lead
3 30 (8.09%) Senior
4 25 (6.74%) Business Analyst
5 24 (6.47%) SAP Consultant
6 23 (6.20%) Architect
7 15 (4.04%) Data Engineer
7 15 (4.04%) Developer
8 13 (3.50%) Product Owner
9 9 (2.43%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
9 9 (2.43%) Data Analyst
10 8 (2.16%) Solutions Architect
11 7 (1.89%) Data Scientist
11 7 (1.89%) SAP Manager
12 6 (1.62%) AWS Engineer
12 6 (1.62%) Full-Stack Engineer
12 6 (1.62%) Snowflake Data Engineer
12 6 (1.62%) Snowflake Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (4.85%) REST
2 13 (3.50%) Terraform
3 9 (2.43%) React
4 6 (1.62%) IDoc
4 6 (1.62%) PyTorch
5 5 (1.35%) .NET
5 5 (1.35%) EDI
5 5 (1.35%) FastAPI
5 5 (1.35%) RESTful
5 5 (1.35%) SOAP
5 5 (1.35%) XML
6 4 (1.08%) Hibernate
6 4 (1.08%) Pandas
6 4 (1.08%) SAP Fiori
6 4 (1.08%) SQLAlchemy
7 3 (0.81%) Google JAX
7 3 (0.81%) JAX
7 3 (0.81%) Middleware
7 3 (0.81%) SAP Core Interface
7 3 (0.81%) SAPUI5
Miscellaneous
1 126 (33.96%) Life Science
2 26 (7.01%) Product Ownership
3 15 (4.04%) FMCG
3 15 (4.04%) LIMS
4 14 (3.77%) Data Structures
5 12 (3.23%) CRISPR
6 11 (2.96%) Cloud Native
6 11 (2.96%) Operational Technology
7 9 (2.43%) Data Protection Act
8 8 (2.16%) Analytical Mindset
8 8 (2.16%) Biopharmaceutical
8 8 (2.16%) Management Information System
9 7 (1.89%) Self-Motivation
10 6 (1.62%) Genomics
10 6 (1.62%) Manufacturing Execution System
10 6 (1.62%) NHS
10 6 (1.62%) SCADA
11 5 (1.35%) Onboarding
12 4 (1.08%) Enterprise Software
12 4 (1.08%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 22 (5.93%) Windows
2 11 (2.96%) Windows Server
3 2 (0.54%) Linux
4 1 (0.27%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.27%) VMS
4 1 (0.27%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 70 (18.87%) Stakeholder Management
2 66 (17.79%) Agile
2 66 (17.79%) AI
3 59 (15.90%) Validation
4 53 (14.29%) Problem-Solving
5 43 (11.59%) Continuous Improvement
6 41 (11.05%) Biotechnology
7 40 (10.78%) Migration
7 40 (10.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 35 (9.43%) Analytics
9 34 (9.16%) Roadmaps
10 32 (8.63%) ERP
11 31 (8.36%) Project Management
12 30 (8.09%) CI/CD
12 30 (8.09%) Data Pipeline
12 30 (8.09%) DevOps
13 28 (7.55%) Data Modelling
13 28 (7.55%) Workshop Facilitation
14 27 (7.28%) Data Governance
14 27 (7.28%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 58 (15.63%) Python
2 30 (8.09%) SQL
3 12 (3.23%) R
4 8 (2.16%) Java
5 6 (1.62%) ABAP
6 5 (1.35%) JavaScript
7 4 (1.08%) PowerShell
7 4 (1.08%) TypeScript
8 3 (0.81%) C#
9 2 (0.54%) Cypher
9 2 (0.54%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 1 (0.27%) Apex Code
10 1 (0.27%) Bicep
10 1 (0.27%) DataWeave
10 1 (0.27%) Gremlin
10 1 (0.27%) Korn
10 1 (0.27%) MATLAB
10 1 (0.27%) SPARQL
10 1 (0.27%) T-SQL
10 1 (0.27%) XQuery
Qualifications
1 49 (13.21%) Degree
2 12 (3.23%) PMI Certification
2 12 (3.23%) PMP
3 9 (2.43%) Security Cleared
4 6 (1.62%) SC Cleared
5 5 (1.35%) CSPO
5 5 (1.35%) Master's Degree
6 4 (1.08%) BPSS Clearance
6 4 (1.08%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 3 (0.81%) CISM
7 3 (0.81%) CISSP
7 3 (0.81%) DBS Check
7 3 (0.81%) Microsoft Certification
7 3 (0.81%) Postgraduate
7 3 (0.81%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
8 2 (0.54%) ACCA
8 2 (0.54%) CIMA
8 2 (0.54%) Cisco Certification
8 2 (0.54%) Computer Science Degree
9 1 (0.27%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 58 (15.63%) GxP
2 20 (5.39%) Data Quality
2 20 (5.39%) QA
3 16 (4.31%) GMP
4 14 (3.77%) 21 CFR Part 11
4 14 (3.77%) GDPR
5 11 (2.96%) GRC
5 11 (2.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 9 (2.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 6 (1.62%) HIPAA
8 5 (1.35%) PCI DSS
8 5 (1.35%) PMO
9 3 (0.81%) EU AI Act
10 2 (0.54%) GAMP
10 2 (0.54%) NIST
11 1 (0.27%) CDISC
11 1 (0.27%) NEBOSH
11 1 (0.27%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.27%) SLA
11 1 (0.27%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 16 (4.31%) Docker
2 9 (2.43%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (1.89%) Active Directory
4 4 (1.08%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.27%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 1 (0.27%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 10 (2.70%) Kubernetes
2 4 (1.08%) SCCM
3 1 (0.27%) Apache Ranger
3 1 (0.27%) Grafana
3 1 (0.27%) Prometheus
3 1 (0.27%) Tivoli Storage Manager
3 1 (0.27%) WSUS
Vendors
1 77 (20.75%) SAP
2 29 (7.82%) Microsoft
3 11 (2.96%) VMware
4 9 (2.43%) Google
4 9 (2.43%) ServiceNow
5 8 (2.16%) Oracle
6 7 (1.89%) Palo Alto
6 7 (1.89%) Zscaler
7 6 (1.62%) Ariba
7 6 (1.62%) Foundry
7 6 (1.62%) Rockwell
7 6 (1.62%) Salesforce
8 5 (1.35%) Citrix
8 5 (1.35%) Databricks
9 4 (1.08%) LabVantage
10 3 (0.81%) Adobe
10 3 (0.81%) Conga
10 3 (0.81%) Palantir
11 2 (0.54%) Cisco
11 2 (0.54%) SYSPRO