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

6 months to
1 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 315 218 200
Rank change year-on-year -97 -18 +141
Contract jobs citing Pharmaceutical 317 354 521
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.76% 1.16% 1.17%
As % of the General category 1.31% 1.87% 1.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 200 220 343
10th Percentile £350 £339 £342
25th Percentile £400 £437 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +4.76% +5.00%
75th Percentile £606 £650 £588
90th Percentile £725 £775 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £552 £525 £510
% change year-on-year +5.19% +2.94% +13.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 22 40
10th Percentile £16.17 £19.00 £17.66
25th Percentile £41.66 £24.64 £20.00
Median hourly rate £72.50 £32.50 £28.50
Median % change year-on-year +123.08% +14.04% +78.13%
75th Percentile £97.50 £35.00 £48.75
90th Percentile - £93.28 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £49.50 £32.50 £21.50
% change year-on-year +52.31% +51.16% +65.38%

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 24,154 18,972 26,271
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 58.18% 62.33% 58.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,112 11,678 16,859
10th Percentile £300 £287 £265
25th Percentile £405 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £478 £495
% change year-on-year -0.68% -3.38% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,471 631 1,762
10th Percentile £13.57 £15.62 £13.00
25th Percentile £16.66 £20.23 £15.34
Median hourly rate £23.83 £29.80 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.05% +14.62% -13.33%
75th Percentile £55.00 £58.75 £51.25
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £65.68
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.27 £27.35 £25.00
% change year-on-year -18.59% +9.40% -3.85%

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 March 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 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Pharmaceutical in the UK

Pharmaceutical
Top 13 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 March 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 -118 237 £525 -4.55% 259
Work from Home -4 132 £513 -2.38% 161
London -1 114 £540 -22.86% 79
UK excluding London -141 99 £552 +5.19% 199
East of England -47 38 £500 -6.98% 29
South East -18 28 £575 +170.59% 64
North of England -105 24 £575 +7.48% 41
North West -78 20 £575 +5.50% 28
South West - 6 £700 - 31
Scotland +12 3 £550 +54.93% 7
North East -14 3 - - 9
Wales -7 1 £183 - 8
Yorkshire -66 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 6 (1.89%) Apache Airflow
2 5 (1.58%) Apache Spark
2 5 (1.58%) Confluence
2 5 (1.58%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.63%) Mendix
3 2 (0.63%) WinCC
4 1 (0.32%) Anypoint
4 1 (0.32%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 23 (7.26%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (2.52%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.63%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.63%) Weka
5 1 (0.32%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 79 (24.92%) SAP S/4HANA
2 9 (2.84%) SAP EWM
3 8 (2.52%) SAP MM
4 7 (2.21%) SAP PM
5 6 (1.89%) SAP PP
5 6 (1.89%) SAP QM
5 6 (1.89%) SAP WM
6 4 (1.26%) SAP CO
6 4 (1.26%) SAP MDG
7 3 (0.95%) SAP FI
7 3 (0.95%) SAP FI/CO
8 2 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
8 2 (0.63%) Sage X3
8 2 (0.63%) SAP ERP
8 2 (0.63%) SAP SCM
8 2 (0.63%) TrackWise
9 1 (0.32%) Cerner Millennium
9 1 (0.32%) SAP LE
9 1 (0.32%) SAP PP-PI
9 1 (0.32%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 36 (11.36%) AWS
2 29 (9.15%) Azure
3 22 (6.94%) GCP
4 16 (5.05%) Power Platform
5 15 (4.73%) GitHub
6 14 (4.42%) Microsoft 365
7 11 (3.47%) Cloud Run
8 10 (3.15%) Snowflake
9 7 (2.21%) SaaS
10 6 (1.89%) Figma
11 5 (1.58%) dbt
12 4 (1.26%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 3 (0.95%) Amazon EKS
13 3 (0.95%) Amazon SageMaker
13 3 (0.95%) Azure AKS
13 3 (0.95%) Azure DevOps
13 3 (0.95%) Dynamics 365
13 3 (0.95%) Google Workspace
13 3 (0.95%) Veeva
14 2 (0.63%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.58%) Firewall
1 5 (1.58%) Network Security
2 4 (1.26%) Wireless
3 3 (0.95%) Ethernet
3 3 (0.95%) Modbus
3 3 (0.95%) RS-485
4 2 (0.63%) BGP
4 2 (0.63%) OSPF
4 2 (0.63%) TCP/IP
4 2 (0.63%) VPN
5 1 (0.32%) AMQP
5 1 (0.32%) Cisco ICM
5 1 (0.32%) DNS
5 1 (0.32%) HTTP
5 1 (0.32%) Junos
5 1 (0.32%) RFID
5 1 (0.32%) SD-WAN
5 1 (0.32%) SMS
5 1 (0.32%) Telepresence
5 1 (0.32%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (5.05%) Power BI
2 11 (3.47%) Data Lake
3 6 (1.89%) Data Warehouse
4 5 (1.58%) BigQuery
5 4 (1.26%) Electronic Patient Records
5 4 (1.26%) Metadata
5 4 (1.26%) SAP HANA
6 3 (0.95%) Tableau
7 2 (0.63%) Neo4j
7 2 (0.63%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.63%) Oracle Database
7 2 (0.63%) SAP Data Services
7 2 (0.63%) SQL Server
7 2 (0.63%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 1 (0.32%) Azure SQL Database
8 1 (0.32%) Hadoop
8 1 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.32%) PostgreSQL
8 1 (0.32%) QlikView
8 1 (0.32%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 21 (6.62%) Git
2 12 (3.79%) JIRA
3 3 (0.95%) Cypress.io
3 3 (0.95%) MLflow
4 2 (0.63%) GitLab
4 2 (0.63%) Jenkins
4 2 (0.63%) LSMW
5 1 (0.32%) ER Studio
5 1 (0.32%) Hudson
5 1 (0.32%) Oracle APEX
5 1 (0.32%) Oracle Forms
5 1 (0.32%) PHPUnit
5 1 (0.32%) Selenium
General
1 73 (23.03%) Social Skills
2 68 (21.45%) Manufacturing
3 60 (18.93%) Finance
4 27 (8.52%) Analytical Skills
5 13 (4.10%) Aerospace
6 11 (3.47%) Marketing
7 10 (3.15%) Documentation Skills
7 10 (3.15%) Influencing Skills
8 8 (2.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 7 (2.21%) Retail
10 6 (1.89%) Organisational Skills
10 6 (1.89%) Public Sector
10 6 (1.89%) Wearables
11 3 (0.95%) Advertising
11 3 (0.95%) Digital Health
11 3 (0.95%) Health Technology
11 3 (0.95%) Legal
12 2 (0.63%) Banking
12 2 (0.63%) Digital Healthcare
12 2 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 44 (13.88%) Lead
2 28 (8.83%) Consultant
3 24 (7.57%) Senior
4 19 (5.99%) Developer
5 17 (5.36%) SAP Consultant
6 15 (4.73%) Analyst
7 14 (4.42%) Project Manager
8 13 (4.10%) Python Developer
9 12 (3.79%) Data Engineer
10 11 (3.47%) Data Scientist
10 11 (3.47%) Designer
11 10 (3.15%) Architect
11 10 (3.15%) Software Engineer
12 8 (2.52%) IT Support
12 8 (2.52%) Quality Manager
13 7 (2.21%) Accountant
13 7 (2.21%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
13 7 (2.21%) Business Analyst
13 7 (2.21%) IT Technician
13 7 (2.21%) Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (5.36%) pytest
2 16 (5.05%) FastAPI
3 12 (3.79%) SAP Fiori
4 9 (2.84%) LangGraph
4 9 (2.84%) React
5 7 (2.21%) Playwright
6 4 (1.26%) RESTful
7 3 (0.95%) EDI
7 3 (0.95%) IDoc
7 3 (0.95%) Ray
7 3 (0.95%) REST
8 2 (0.63%) BAPI
8 2 (0.63%) CSS
8 2 (0.63%) Jest
8 2 (0.63%) JSON
8 2 (0.63%) Next.js
8 2 (0.63%) PyTorch
8 2 (0.63%) SailPoint
8 2 (0.63%) SAP PI
8 2 (0.63%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 57 (17.98%) Life Science
2 16 (5.05%) FMCG
3 14 (4.42%) Genomics
4 12 (3.79%) Cloud Native
4 12 (3.79%) Product Ownership
5 10 (3.15%) Onboarding
6 8 (2.52%) Operational Technology
7 7 (2.21%) LIMS
8 6 (1.89%) Data Structures
8 6 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
8 6 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
8 6 (1.89%) NHS
9 5 (1.58%) Greenfield Project
9 5 (1.58%) SCADA
9 5 (1.58%) Self-Motivation
10 4 (1.26%) AI Agents
10 4 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
11 3 (0.95%) Biopharmaceutical
11 3 (0.95%) CRISPR
11 3 (0.95%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 12 (3.79%) Windows
2 3 (0.95%) Mac OS
2 3 (0.95%) Windows 10
3 2 (0.63%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.32%) Linux
4 1 (0.32%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 61 (19.24%) AI
2 50 (15.77%) Stakeholder Management
3 45 (14.20%) Agile
3 45 (14.20%) ERP
4 42 (13.25%) Machine Learning
5 36 (11.36%) Validation
6 33 (10.41%) Analytics
6 33 (10.41%) Biotechnology
6 33 (10.41%) DevOps
6 33 (10.41%) Migration
7 32 (10.09%) Continuous Improvement
8 30 (9.46%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 27 (8.52%) Data Science
10 26 (8.20%) Problem-Solving
10 26 (8.20%) Roadmaps
11 22 (6.94%) Test Automation
12 21 (6.62%) Decision-Making
12 21 (6.62%) Workshop Facilitation
13 20 (6.31%) User Experience
14 19 (5.99%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 61 (19.24%) Python
2 26 (8.20%) SQL
3 12 (3.79%) R
4 8 (2.52%) TypeScript
5 6 (1.89%) JavaScript
6 3 (0.95%) ABAP
6 3 (0.95%) Java
7 2 (0.63%) Bash
8 1 (0.32%) C
8 1 (0.32%) C++
8 1 (0.32%) DataWeave
8 1 (0.32%) Ladder Logic
8 1 (0.32%) PHP
8 1 (0.32%) PL/SQL
8 1 (0.32%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 45 (14.20%) Degree
2 9 (2.84%) A+ Certification
2 9 (2.84%) ACCA
2 9 (2.84%) CIMA
2 9 (2.84%) Master's Degree
3 7 (2.21%) Security Cleared
4 6 (1.89%) PMI Certification
4 6 (1.89%) PMP
4 6 (1.89%) SC Cleared
5 4 (1.26%) BPSS Clearance
6 3 (0.95%) HND
7 2 (0.63%) CISSP
7 2 (0.63%) CompTIA Security+
7 2 (0.63%) HNC
7 2 (0.63%) Microsoft Certification
8 1 (0.32%) Computer Science Degree
8 1 (0.32%) ECDL
8 1 (0.32%) OCP
8 1 (0.32%) Oracle Certification
8 1 (0.32%) SAP Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (7.26%) GxP
2 15 (4.73%) GMP
3 11 (3.47%) QA
4 10 (3.15%) Data Quality
5 7 (2.21%) GDPR
6 5 (1.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 4 (1.26%) Accessibility
7 4 (1.26%) PMO
8 2 (0.63%) ISO 13485
8 2 (0.63%) SLA
9 1 (0.32%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 1 (0.32%) GAMP
9 1 (0.32%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.32%) HL7
9 1 (0.32%) IEC 62304
9 1 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 1 (0.32%) ITGC
9 1 (0.32%) MiFID
9 1 (0.32%) NIST 800
9 1 (0.32%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 19 (5.99%) Docker
2 2 (0.63%) GPFS
2 2 (0.63%) Lustre
2 2 (0.63%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 1 (0.32%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (0.32%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 11 (3.47%) Kubernetes
2 6 (1.89%) Terraform
3 2 (0.63%) Ansible
3 2 (0.63%) Puppet
3 2 (0.63%) Salt
3 2 (0.63%) SCCM
4 1 (0.32%) Cisco UCCE
4 1 (0.32%) Cisco UCCX
4 1 (0.32%) FortiGate
4 1 (0.32%) HP ALM
4 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Intune
4 1 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
4 1 (0.32%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 105 (33.12%) SAP
2 40 (12.62%) Microsoft
3 20 (6.31%) Google
4 8 (2.52%) Oracle
5 7 (2.21%) SOTI
6 6 (1.89%) Ariba
7 5 (1.58%) Databricks
7 5 (1.58%) LabWare
7 5 (1.58%) Salesforce
7 5 (1.58%) ServiceNow
8 4 (1.26%) Cisco
9 3 (0.95%) Cerner
9 3 (0.95%) HP
9 3 (0.95%) IBM
9 3 (0.95%) MuleSoft
9 3 (0.95%) Siemens
10 2 (0.63%) IFS
10 2 (0.63%) Palo Alto
10 2 (0.63%) Rockwell
10 2 (0.63%) Zscaler