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

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 318 230 253
Rank change year-on-year -88 +23 +85
Contract jobs citing Pharmaceutical 355 330 403
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.73% 1.15% 0.94%
As % of the General category 1.35% 1.81% 1.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 215 218 248
10th Percentile £314 £378 £363
25th Percentile £384 £478 £463
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 £671 £820 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £550 £500
% change year-on-year -13.64% +10.00% +8.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 12 40
10th Percentile £19.28 £15.91 £17.72
25th Percentile £50.00 £19.75 £20.75
Median hourly rate £72.50 £51.80 £33.83
Median % change year-on-year +39.97% +53.10% +12.77%
75th Percentile £97.50 £97.50 £56.25
90th Percentile - - £60.78
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 26,317 18,236 24,705
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 53.80% 63.42% 57.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,939 11,561 15,577
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 £760 £769
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,743 807 1,967
10th Percentile £13.76 £13.50 £12.77
25th Percentile £17.69 £16.79 £15.50
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -7.41%
75th Percentile £60.00 £55.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £66.84
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.00 £24.28 £28.13
% change year-on-year +19.46% -13.69% +2.27%

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 29 May 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 29 May 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 29 May 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 -134 251 £507 -7.91% 196
Work from Home +21 156 £475 -9.52% 95
London -29 131 £525 -30.00% 101
UK excluding London -150 88 £475 -13.64% 112
East of England -46 39 £475 -13.64% 16
North of England -107 22 £475 -13.64% 35
South East -36 19 £553 -23.69% 35
North West -63 18 £500 -9.09% 23
South West -29 3 - - 8
North East -31 3 £290 - 1
Midlands -62 3 - - 17
Wales -16 2 £175 -42.71% 2
Yorkshire -54 1 £425 - 11
West Midlands -62 1 - - 10

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 29 (8.17%) 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 59 (16.62%) 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%) Oracle ERP
8 1 (0.28%) SAP CS
8 1 (0.28%) SAP MDG-M
8 1 (0.28%) SAP MDM
8 1 (0.28%) SAP MII
8 1 (0.28%) SAP PP
Cloud Services
1 44 (12.39%) AWS
2 29 (8.17%) Azure
3 15 (4.23%) SaaS
4 12 (3.38%) 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
9 5 (1.41%) Azure DevOps
9 5 (1.41%) Snowflake
9 5 (1.41%) Veeva
10 4 (1.13%) Cloud Run
11 3 (0.85%) Amazon EKS
11 3 (0.85%) Amazon S3
11 3 (0.85%) Amazon SageMaker
11 3 (0.85%) AWS CloudFormation
11 3 (0.85%) Azure AKS
11 3 (0.85%) Google Workspace
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 12 (3.38%) 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%) Selenium
4 1 (0.28%) SonarQube
General
1 82 (23.10%) Social Skills
2 77 (21.69%) Manufacturing
3 75 (21.13%) 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%) Public Sector
11 3 (0.85%) Wearables
12 2 (0.56%) Health Technology
Job Titles
1 38 (10.70%) 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%) Quality Manager
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%) Kafka
5 2 (0.56%) Middleware
5 2 (0.56%) OAuth
5 2 (0.56%) Web Services
5 2 (0.56%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 85 (23.94%) 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%) Self-Motivation
5 8 (2.25%) Cloud Native
6 7 (1.97%) Data Protection Act
6 7 (1.97%) Enterprise Software
6 7 (1.97%) Operational Technology
7 6 (1.69%) NHS
7 6 (1.69%) Onboarding
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%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 15 (4.23%) 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 53 (14.93%) AI
2 52 (14.65%) Validation
3 48 (13.52%) ERP
4 46 (12.96%) Agile
5 42 (11.83%) Stakeholder Management
6 39 (10.99%) Migration
7 37 (10.42%) Biotechnology
8 35 (9.86%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 29 (8.17%) Problem-Solving
10 28 (7.89%) Machine Learning
11 27 (7.61%) Project Management
11 27 (7.61%) Workshop Facilitation
12 25 (7.04%) Continuous Improvement
12 25 (7.04%) DevOps
13 24 (6.76%) Data Migration
13 24 (6.76%) Decision-Making
14 23 (6.48%) Roadmaps
15 22 (6.20%) CI/CD
15 22 (6.20%) Data Pipeline
15 22 (6.20%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 60 (16.90%) Python
2 30 (8.45%) 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%) AWS Certification
8 1 (0.28%) CRISC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 44 (12.39%) GxP
2 20 (5.63%) GMP
3 15 (4.23%) QA
4 12 (3.38%) 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%) 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 85 (23.94%) SAP
2 33 (9.30%) Microsoft
3 11 (3.10%) Oracle
4 10 (2.82%) Google
5 7 (1.97%) Databricks
6 5 (1.41%) LabWare
6 5 (1.41%) SOTI
7 4 (1.13%) Ariba
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%) Conga
8 3 (0.85%) MuleSoft
9 2 (0.56%) IFS
9 2 (0.56%) Palantir
9 2 (0.56%) Rockwell