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

6 months to
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 319 231 266
Rank change year-on-year -88 +35 +57
Contract jobs citing Pharmaceutical 359 350 375
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.71% 1.18% 0.86%
As % of the General category 1.32% 1.86% 1.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 207 237 220
10th Percentile £315 £372 £363
25th Percentile £388 £485 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% +4.76% +4.48%
75th Percentile £600 £700 £600
90th Percentile £668 £820 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £550 £500
% change year-on-year -11.36% +10.00% +4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 12 38
10th Percentile £21.74 £15.91 £19.49
25th Percentile £50.00 £19.75 £20.75
Median hourly rate £70.00 £51.80 £33.83
Median % change year-on-year +35.15% +53.10% +12.77%
75th Percentile £97.50 £97.50 £54.69
90th Percentile - - £62.34
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £18.02 £40.00
% change year-on-year +205.17% -54.94% +79.65%

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 27,204 18,850 24,852
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.06% 63.51% 57.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,432 11,891 15,566
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £504 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.98% -4.00% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £768
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £473 £488
% change year-on-year +5.82% -3.08% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,828 900 2,007
10th Percentile £13.99 £13.46 £12.78
25th Percentile £18.24 £16.67 £15.50
Median hourly rate £32.00 £27.85 £31.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.90% -10.16% +1.51%
75th Percentile £60.71 £53.96 £52.78
90th Percentile £80.07 £75.00 £67.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.48 £24.34 £29.75
% change year-on-year +29.33% -18.18% +12.26%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 -122 265 £503 -8.64% 319
Work from Home -5 157 £475 -11.63% 286
London -7 147 £525 -27.59% 73
UK excluding London -155 90 £488 -11.36% 325
East of England -52 35 £510 -7.27% 50
North of England -98 24 £475 -13.64% 68
South East -41 21 £507 -24.96% 82
North West -67 19 £475 -13.64% 37
South West -27 4 £750 - 21
Wales -15 3 £175 -42.71% 20
North East -36 3 £290 - 8
Midlands -61 3 - - 43
Yorkshire -55 2 £463 - 23
West Midlands -56 1 - - 20

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 (1.39%) IIS
2 4 (1.11%) SAS
3 3 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (0.84%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.56%) WinCC
5 1 (0.28%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.28%) Anypoint
5 1 (0.28%) Apache
5 1 (0.28%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.28%) CMS
5 1 (0.28%) Confluence
5 1 (0.28%) Mendix
5 1 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 25 (6.96%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (3.34%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (1.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (1.95%) 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 58 (16.16%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (2.79%) SAP SD
3 7 (1.95%) SAP EWM
4 5 (1.39%) SAP MM
5 4 (1.11%) Dynamics CRM
5 4 (1.11%) SAP PM
6 3 (0.84%) NetSuite
6 3 (0.84%) SAP ERP
6 3 (0.84%) SAP PP
6 3 (0.84%) SAP QM
7 2 (0.56%) Oracle EBS
7 2 (0.56%) Sage X3
7 2 (0.56%) SAP GTS
7 2 (0.56%) SAP MDG
7 2 (0.56%) SAP WM
7 2 (0.56%) TrackWise
8 1 (0.28%) SAP IBP
8 1 (0.28%) SAP LE
8 1 (0.28%) SAP MDG-M
8 1 (0.28%) SAP MII
Cloud Services
1 49 (13.65%) AWS
2 33 (9.19%) Azure
3 18 (5.01%) SaaS
4 12 (3.34%) GCP
4 12 (3.34%) Power Platform
5 9 (2.51%) dbt
6 8 (2.23%) Snowflake
6 8 (2.23%) Veeva
7 7 (1.95%) GitHub
8 6 (1.67%) Dynamics 365
8 6 (1.67%) Figma
9 5 (1.39%) Azure DevOps
9 5 (1.39%) Microsoft 365
10 4 (1.11%) AWS CloudFormation
10 4 (1.11%) Cloud Run
10 4 (1.11%) Google Workspace
11 3 (0.84%) AWS Direct Connect
11 3 (0.84%) Azure AKS
11 3 (0.84%) Collibra
11 3 (0.84%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.39%) Firewall
1 5 (1.39%) HTTPS
2 4 (1.11%) DNS
2 4 (1.11%) VLAN
3 3 (0.84%) VPN
3 3 (0.84%) WAN
4 2 (0.56%) TCP/IP
4 2 (0.56%) X.21
5 1 (0.28%) AMQP
5 1 (0.28%) DHCP
5 1 (0.28%) Ethernet
5 1 (0.28%) HTTP
5 1 (0.28%) Junos
5 1 (0.28%) Modbus
5 1 (0.28%) Network Security
5 1 (0.28%) NGFW
5 1 (0.28%) RS-485
5 1 (0.28%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (3.34%) Power BI
2 8 (2.23%) Data Warehouse
3 4 (1.11%) Tableau
4 3 (0.84%) DynamoDB
4 3 (0.84%) Metadata
4 3 (0.84%) NoSQL
4 3 (0.84%) Oracle Database
4 3 (0.84%) SQL Server Reporting Services
5 2 (0.56%) Amazon QuickSight
5 2 (0.56%) Big Data
5 2 (0.56%) BigQuery
5 2 (0.56%) Data Lake
5 2 (0.56%) Data Mining
5 2 (0.56%) Snowflake Schema
5 2 (0.56%) SQL Server
5 2 (0.56%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 1 (0.28%) MySQL
6 1 (0.28%) Oracle Database 12c
6 1 (0.28%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (0.28%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 13 (3.62%) JIRA
2 11 (3.06%) Git
3 3 (0.84%) Cypress.io
3 3 (0.84%) 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 (22.84%) Social Skills
2 74 (20.61%) Finance
3 73 (20.33%) Manufacturing
4 34 (9.47%) Analytical Skills
5 13 (3.62%) Marketing
6 10 (2.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 10 (2.79%) Retail
7 9 (2.51%) Advertising
7 9 (2.51%) Legal
7 9 (2.51%) Organisational Skills
8 8 (2.23%) Presentation Skills
9 7 (1.95%) Billing
10 6 (1.67%) Public Speaking
11 5 (1.39%) Automotive
11 5 (1.39%) Documentation Skills
11 5 (1.39%) Law
12 4 (1.11%) Digital Health
12 4 (1.11%) Public Sector
13 3 (0.84%) Health Technology
13 3 (0.84%) Wearables
Job Titles
1 39 (10.86%) Lead
2 34 (9.47%) Project Manager
3 33 (9.19%) Consultant
3 33 (9.19%) Senior
4 31 (8.64%) Analyst
5 19 (5.29%) Business Analyst
6 18 (5.01%) Data Engineer
6 18 (5.01%) SAP Consultant
7 13 (3.62%) Architect
7 13 (3.62%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 10 (2.79%) Developer
9 9 (2.51%) Data Scientist
9 9 (2.51%) Product Owner
10 8 (2.23%) Accountant
10 8 (2.23%) AWS Engineer
10 8 (2.23%) Systems Accountant
11 7 (1.95%) Compliance Manager
11 7 (1.95%) IT Manager
11 7 (1.95%) Risk Manager
11 7 (1.95%) SAP Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (1.95%) REST
2 6 (1.67%) IDoc
3 5 (1.39%) EDI
3 5 (1.39%) PyTorch
4 4 (1.11%) FastAPI
4 4 (1.11%) Pandas
4 4 (1.11%) React
5 3 (0.84%) Google JAX
5 3 (0.84%) J2EE
5 3 (0.84%) JAX
5 3 (0.84%) Playwright
5 3 (0.84%) Ray
5 3 (0.84%) TensorFlow
5 3 (0.84%) XML
6 2 (0.56%) JSON
6 2 (0.56%) Middleware
6 2 (0.56%) OAuth
6 2 (0.56%) RESTful
6 2 (0.56%) SciPy
6 2 (0.56%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 88 (24.51%) Life Science
2 17 (4.74%) FMCG
3 16 (4.46%) Product Ownership
4 15 (4.18%) LIMS
5 13 (3.62%) CRISPR
5 13 (3.62%) Data Structures
6 9 (2.51%) Self-Motivation
7 8 (2.23%) Data Protection Act
8 7 (1.95%) Cloud Native
9 6 (1.67%) Management Information System
9 6 (1.67%) Operational Technology
10 5 (1.39%) Enterprise Software
10 5 (1.39%) Genomics
10 5 (1.39%) NHS
11 4 (1.11%) Biopharmaceutical
11 4 (1.11%) Onboarding
11 4 (1.11%) Pharmacovigilance
11 4 (1.11%) Robotics
12 3 (0.84%) Omics
12 3 (0.84%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 13 (3.62%) Windows
2 3 (0.84%) Windows Server
3 2 (0.56%) Linux
4 1 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.28%) Unix
4 1 (0.28%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 58 (16.16%) AI
2 51 (14.21%) Validation
3 47 (13.09%) ERP
4 46 (12.81%) Agile
5 45 (12.53%) Stakeholder Management
6 37 (10.31%) Biotechnology
6 37 (10.31%) Migration
7 33 (9.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 29 (8.08%) Continuous Improvement
8 29 (8.08%) Project Management
9 28 (7.80%) Machine Learning
10 27 (7.52%) DevOps
10 27 (7.52%) Problem-Solving
11 25 (6.96%) Data Pipeline
11 25 (6.96%) Roadmaps
12 24 (6.69%) Analytics
12 24 (6.69%) Decision-Making
12 24 (6.69%) Workshop Facilitation
13 22 (6.13%) CI/CD
13 22 (6.13%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 61 (16.99%) Python
2 29 (8.08%) SQL
3 14 (3.90%) R
4 5 (1.39%) JavaScript
5 4 (1.11%) TypeScript
6 3 (0.84%) ABAP
6 3 (0.84%) 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%) MATLAB
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 38 (10.58%) Degree
2 10 (2.79%) PMI Certification
2 10 (2.79%) PMP
3 9 (2.51%) ACCA
3 9 (2.51%) CIMA
4 4 (1.11%) Master's Degree
4 4 (1.11%) Security Cleared
5 3 (0.84%) CISM
5 3 (0.84%) CISSP
5 3 (0.84%) Microsoft Certification
5 3 (0.84%) SC Cleared
6 2 (0.56%) A+ Certification
6 2 (0.56%) BPSS Clearance
6 2 (0.56%) CSPO
6 2 (0.56%) HNC
6 2 (0.56%) HND
6 2 (0.56%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
7 1 (0.28%) CCSP
7 1 (0.28%) CRISC
7 1 (0.28%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 45 (12.53%) GxP
2 17 (4.74%) GMP
3 16 (4.46%) QA
4 12 (3.34%) Data Quality
5 11 (3.06%) GDPR
5 11 (3.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 10 (2.79%) GRC
7 9 (2.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 7 (1.95%) PMO
9 6 (1.67%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 5 (1.39%) HIPAA
10 5 (1.39%) PCI DSS
11 3 (0.84%) Accessibility
11 3 (0.84%) NIST
12 2 (0.56%) GAMP
12 2 (0.56%) NIST 800
13 1 (0.28%) CDISC
13 1 (0.28%) EU AI Act
13 1 (0.28%) ISO 13485
13 1 (0.28%) ITGC
System Software
1 6 (1.67%) Docker
2 5 (1.39%) 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 12 (3.34%) Terraform
2 7 (1.95%) 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 86 (23.96%) SAP
2 28 (7.80%) Microsoft
3 12 (3.34%) Oracle
4 10 (2.79%) Google
5 7 (1.95%) Databricks
6 5 (1.39%) LabWare
6 5 (1.39%) Palo Alto
6 5 (1.39%) ServiceNow
6 5 (1.39%) Zscaler
7 4 (1.11%) Ariba
7 4 (1.11%) LabVantage
7 4 (1.11%) Salesforce
7 4 (1.11%) VMware
8 3 (0.84%) Adobe
8 3 (0.84%) Conga
8 3 (0.84%) MuleSoft
8 3 (0.84%) Palantir
9 2 (0.56%) IFS
9 2 (0.56%) Rockwell
9 2 (0.56%) SOTI