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

6 months to
5 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 328 227 262
Rank change year-on-year -101 +35 +51
Contract jobs citing Pharmaceutical 368 373 380
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.71% 1.17% 0.88%
As % of the General category 1.30% 1.86% 1.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 205 259 228
10th Percentile £350 £360 £363
25th Percentile £388 £475 £444
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% +4.76% +2.44%
75th Percentile £600 £688 £600
90th Percentile £671 £782 £709
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £550 £500
% change year-on-year -13.64% +10.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 13 36
10th Percentile £18.80 £16.22 £18.99
25th Percentile £48.81 £19.00 £20.75
Median hourly rate £70.00 £51.80 £30.16
Median % change year-on-year +35.15% +71.73% +14.83%
75th Percentile £97.50 £97.50 £55.00
90th Percentile - - £63.91
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £18.87 £34.25
% change year-on-year +191.47% -44.91% +55.68%

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 28,231 20,034 24,744
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.56% 63.10% 57.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,912 12,594 15,485
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £401 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £488
% change year-on-year +6.38% -3.74% -2.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,952 993 1,941
10th Percentile £13.99 £13.50 £12.82
25th Percentile £18.00 £16.36 £15.62
Median hourly rate £32.00 £27.21 £31.97
Median % change year-on-year +17.60% -14.89% +4.68%
75th Percentile £60.06 £52.00 £53.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.13 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.95 £23.00 £31.50
% change year-on-year +38.91% -26.98% +21.39%

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 5 July 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 5 July 2026.

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 5 July 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 -132 275 £500 -9.09% 227
Work from Home +1 163 £475 -9.52% 90
London -24 149 £525 -23.69% 88
UK excluding London -173 97 £475 -13.64% 154
East of England -52 38 £500 -9.09% 28
North of England -108 25 £475 -13.64% 40
South East -45 22 £507 -12.29% 46
North West -79 19 £475 -13.64% 26
South West -22 5 £588 -21.67% 9
Midlands -61 4 £450 -10.00% 19
Wales -21 3 £175 -42.71% 6
North East -36 3 £290 - 3
Yorkshire -52 3 £463 - 11
East Midlands -18 1 £450 -10.00% 9
West Midlands -64 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 5 (1.36%) IIS
2 4 (1.09%) SAS
3 3 (0.82%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (0.82%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.54%) Confluence
4 2 (0.54%) WinCC
5 1 (0.27%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.27%) Anypoint
5 1 (0.27%) Apache
5 1 (0.27%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.27%) CMS
5 1 (0.27%) Mendix
5 1 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 23 (6.25%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (3.26%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (1.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (1.90%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.82%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.54%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.54%) Adobe Illustrator
5 2 (0.54%) InDesign
5 2 (0.54%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.27%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 64 (17.39%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (2.72%) SAP SD
3 7 (1.90%) SAP EWM
4 5 (1.36%) SAP MM
5 4 (1.09%) Dynamics CRM
5 4 (1.09%) SAP PM
5 4 (1.09%) SAP PP
6 3 (0.82%) SAP ERP
6 3 (0.82%) SAP QM
7 2 (0.54%) NetSuite
7 2 (0.54%) Oracle EBS
7 2 (0.54%) SAP GTS
7 2 (0.54%) SAP IBP
7 2 (0.54%) SAP MDG
7 2 (0.54%) SAP WM
7 2 (0.54%) TrackWise
8 1 (0.27%) Maximo
8 1 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
8 1 (0.27%) SAP FI/CO
8 1 (0.27%) SAP MDM
Cloud Services
1 53 (14.40%) AWS
2 37 (10.05%) Azure
3 18 (4.89%) SaaS
4 14 (3.80%) GCP
5 12 (3.26%) Power Platform
6 10 (2.72%) GitHub
7 9 (2.45%) dbt
8 8 (2.17%) Azure DevOps
8 8 (2.17%) Snowflake
8 8 (2.17%) Veeva
9 6 (1.63%) Dynamics 365
9 6 (1.63%) Figma
10 5 (1.36%) GitHub Actions
11 4 (1.09%) AWS CloudFormation
11 4 (1.09%) Cloud Run
11 4 (1.09%) Google Workspace
11 4 (1.09%) Serverless
12 3 (0.82%) Amazon S3
12 3 (0.82%) AWS Direct Connect
12 3 (0.82%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.36%) Firewall
1 5 (1.36%) HTTPS
2 4 (1.09%) DNS
2 4 (1.09%) VLAN
3 3 (0.82%) VPN
3 3 (0.82%) WAN
4 2 (0.54%) TCP/IP
4 2 (0.54%) X.21
5 1 (0.27%) AMQP
5 1 (0.27%) DHCP
5 1 (0.27%) HTTP
5 1 (0.27%) Junos
5 1 (0.27%) Network Security
5 1 (0.27%) NGFW
5 1 (0.27%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (3.26%) Power BI
2 8 (2.17%) Data Warehouse
3 4 (1.09%) NoSQL
3 4 (1.09%) Oracle Database
3 4 (1.09%) Tableau
4 3 (0.82%) DynamoDB
4 3 (0.82%) Metadata
4 3 (0.82%) SAP HANA
4 3 (0.82%) SQL Server Reporting Services
5 2 (0.54%) Amazon QuickSight
5 2 (0.54%) Big Data
5 2 (0.54%) BigQuery
5 2 (0.54%) Data Lake
5 2 (0.54%) Data Mining
5 2 (0.54%) Neo4j
5 2 (0.54%) SAP BW
5 2 (0.54%) Snowflake Schema
5 2 (0.54%) SQL Server
5 2 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 1 (0.27%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 14 (3.80%) JIRA
2 12 (3.26%) Git
3 4 (1.09%) Jenkins
4 3 (0.82%) Cypress.io
4 3 (0.82%) MLflow
5 1 (0.27%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.27%) ER Studio
5 1 (0.27%) GitLab
5 1 (0.27%) Hudson
5 1 (0.27%) LSMW
5 1 (0.27%) Oracle APEX
5 1 (0.27%) Oracle Forms
5 1 (0.27%) Postman
5 1 (0.27%) ScriptRunner
5 1 (0.27%) Selenium
5 1 (0.27%) SonarQube
5 1 (0.27%) TestRail
5 1 (0.27%) Visual Studio
General
1 88 (23.91%) Social Skills
2 81 (22.01%) Manufacturing
3 72 (19.57%) Finance
4 40 (10.87%) Analytical Skills
5 13 (3.53%) Marketing
5 13 (3.53%) Retail
6 11 (2.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 11 (2.99%) Organisational Skills
7 9 (2.45%) Advertising
8 8 (2.17%) Legal
8 8 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
9 7 (1.90%) Billing
10 6 (1.63%) Public Speaking
11 5 (1.36%) Automotive
11 5 (1.36%) Documentation Skills
11 5 (1.36%) Law
12 4 (1.09%) Digital Health
12 4 (1.09%) Health Technology
12 4 (1.09%) Public Sector
13 3 (0.82%) Wearables
Job Titles
1 40 (10.87%) Consultant
2 39 (10.60%) Lead
3 35 (9.51%) Analyst
4 34 (9.24%) Senior
5 33 (8.97%) Project Manager
6 22 (5.98%) SAP Consultant
7 20 (5.43%) Business Analyst
8 18 (4.89%) Data Engineer
9 15 (4.08%) Architect
9 15 (4.08%) Product Owner
10 14 (3.80%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
11 10 (2.72%) Developer
12 9 (2.45%) AWS Engineer
12 9 (2.45%) Data Scientist
13 6 (1.63%) Accountant
13 6 (1.63%) Data Analyst
13 6 (1.63%) Network Engineer
13 6 (1.63%) Snowflake Data Engineer
13 6 (1.63%) Snowflake Engineer
13 6 (1.63%) Systems Accountant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (2.99%) REST
2 6 (1.63%) IDoc
3 5 (1.36%) EDI
3 5 (1.36%) PyTorch
3 5 (1.36%) React
4 4 (1.09%) FastAPI
4 4 (1.09%) Pandas
4 4 (1.09%) SAP Fiori
4 4 (1.09%) SOAP
5 3 (0.82%) Google JAX
5 3 (0.82%) J2EE
5 3 (0.82%) JAX
5 3 (0.82%) Kafka
5 3 (0.82%) Playwright
5 3 (0.82%) Ray
5 3 (0.82%) SAPUI5
5 3 (0.82%) TensorFlow
5 3 (0.82%) XML
6 2 (0.54%) Web Services
6 2 (0.54%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 97 (26.36%) Life Science
2 22 (5.98%) Product Ownership
3 16 (4.35%) FMCG
4 15 (4.08%) LIMS
5 14 (3.80%) Data Structures
6 13 (3.53%) CRISPR
7 9 (2.45%) Self-Motivation
8 8 (2.17%) Cloud Native
8 8 (2.17%) Data Protection Act
9 7 (1.90%) Analytical Mindset
10 6 (1.63%) Management Information System
11 5 (1.36%) Enterprise Software
11 5 (1.36%) Genomics
11 5 (1.36%) NHS
11 5 (1.36%) Operational Technology
12 4 (1.09%) Biopharmaceutical
12 4 (1.09%) Pharmacovigilance
12 4 (1.09%) Robotics
12 4 (1.09%) Taxonomies
13 3 (0.82%) Omics
Operating Systems
1 11 (2.99%) Windows
2 3 (0.82%) Windows Server
3 2 (0.54%) Linux
4 1 (0.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.27%) Unix
4 1 (0.27%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 64 (17.39%) AI
2 59 (16.03%) Validation
3 56 (15.22%) Agile
4 51 (13.86%) Stakeholder Management
5 43 (11.68%) ERP
6 37 (10.05%) Migration
7 36 (9.78%) Biotechnology
8 34 (9.24%) Continuous Improvement
8 34 (9.24%) Problem-Solving
8 34 (9.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 33 (8.97%) Roadmaps
10 32 (8.70%) Machine Learning
11 30 (8.15%) DevOps
12 28 (7.61%) Project Management
13 27 (7.34%) Analytics
13 27 (7.34%) Workshop Facilitation
14 26 (7.07%) CI/CD
15 25 (6.79%) Data Pipeline
15 25 (6.79%) Data Science
16 24 (6.52%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 61 (16.58%) Python
2 31 (8.42%) SQL
3 14 (3.80%) R
4 6 (1.63%) ABAP
5 5 (1.36%) JavaScript
6 4 (1.09%) TypeScript
7 3 (0.82%) Java
8 1 (0.27%) Bicep
8 1 (0.27%) C
8 1 (0.27%) C#
8 1 (0.27%) C++
8 1 (0.27%) Cypher
8 1 (0.27%) DataWeave
8 1 (0.27%) Groovy
8 1 (0.27%) MATLAB
8 1 (0.27%) PL/SQL
8 1 (0.27%) SHACL
8 1 (0.27%) T-SQL
8 1 (0.27%) XPath
8 1 (0.27%) XQuery
Qualifications
1 38 (10.33%) Degree
2 11 (2.99%) PMI Certification
2 11 (2.99%) PMP
3 7 (1.90%) ACCA
3 7 (1.90%) CIMA
4 5 (1.36%) CSPO
4 5 (1.36%) Master's Degree
4 5 (1.36%) Security Cleared
5 3 (0.82%) CISM
5 3 (0.82%) CISSP
5 3 (0.82%) Microsoft Certification
5 3 (0.82%) SC Cleared
6 2 (0.54%) BPSS Clearance
6 2 (0.54%) HNC
6 2 (0.54%) HND
6 2 (0.54%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
7 1 (0.27%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 1 (0.27%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.27%) Computer Science Degree
7 1 (0.27%) CRISC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 52 (14.13%) GxP
2 21 (5.71%) QA
3 16 (4.35%) GMP
4 15 (4.08%) Data Quality
5 11 (2.99%) GDPR
5 11 (2.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 10 (2.72%) 21 CFR Part 11
6 10 (2.72%) GRC
7 9 (2.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 7 (1.90%) PMO
9 5 (1.36%) HIPAA
9 5 (1.36%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.82%) Accessibility
10 3 (0.82%) EU AI Act
10 3 (0.82%) NIST
11 2 (0.54%) GAMP
11 2 (0.54%) NIST 800
12 1 (0.27%) CDISC
12 1 (0.27%) ISO 13485
12 1 (0.27%) ITGC
System Software
1 6 (1.63%) Docker
2 5 (1.36%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.54%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (0.54%) vSphere
4 1 (0.27%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 12 (3.26%) Terraform
2 7 (1.90%) Kubernetes
3 1 (0.27%) FortiGate
3 1 (0.27%) Oracle RMAN
3 1 (0.27%) RSA Archer
3 1 (0.27%) WSUS
Vendors
1 87 (23.64%) SAP
2 23 (6.25%) Microsoft
3 12 (3.26%) Oracle
4 10 (2.72%) Google
5 7 (1.90%) Databricks
6 5 (1.36%) Ariba
6 5 (1.36%) LabWare
6 5 (1.36%) Palo Alto
6 5 (1.36%) ServiceNow
6 5 (1.36%) Zscaler
7 4 (1.09%) LabVantage
7 4 (1.09%) Salesforce
7 4 (1.09%) VMware
8 3 (0.82%) Adobe
8 3 (0.82%) Conga
8 3 (0.82%) MuleSoft
8 3 (0.82%) Palantir
8 3 (0.82%) Rockwell
8 3 (0.82%) Siemens
9 2 (0.54%) Citrix