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

6 months to
29 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 325 222 215
Rank change year-on-year -103 -7 +119
Contract jobs citing Pharmaceutical 337 345 482
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.76% 1.18% 1.09%
As % of the General category 1.34% 1.88% 1.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 221 223 304
10th Percentile £350 £352 £400
25th Percentile £389 £450 £466
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -8.18% +4.76% +5.00%
75th Percentile £600 £675 £600
90th Percentile £700 £820 £734
UK excluding London median daily rate £503 £523 £510
% change year-on-year -3.68% +2.45% +13.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 21 38
10th Percentile £16.47 £15.00 £17.72
25th Percentile £50.00 £20.00 £20.75
Median hourly rate £70.00 £32.50 £30.16
Median % change year-on-year +115.38% +7.76% +0.53%
75th Percentile £97.50 £55.25 £58.75
90th Percentile - £97.50 £62.34
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £28.34 £28.50
% change year-on-year +94.07% -0.56% +137.50%

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 25,116 18,395 25,775
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.38% 62.82% 58.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,636 11,802 16,411
10th Percentile £303 £300 £266
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £645 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,560 717 1,838
10th Percentile £13.71 £15.00 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.11 £19.20 £15.31
Median hourly rate £25.20 £29.07 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.33% +11.81% -25.71%
75th Percentile £58.79 £58.75 £50.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.10 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £27.70 £25.00
% change year-on-year -13.99% +10.80% -20.97%

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 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 29 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Pharmaceutical in the UK

Pharmaceutical
Top 11 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 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 -138 243 £516 -6.14% 232
Work from Home +4 142 £500 -9.09% 104
London -24 115 £533 -23.93% 88
UK excluding London -144 99 £503 -3.68% 169
East of England -40 45 £500 -9.09% 16
South East -26 27 £491 +130.94% 57
North of England -113 19 £558 +1.36% 55
North West -83 17 £558 +1.36% 39
South West - 6 £700 - 11
Scotland +3 2 - - 4
North East -16 2 - - 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 5 (1.48%) Confluence
1 5 (1.48%) SharePoint
2 4 (1.19%) Apache Airflow
2 4 (1.19%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.59%) Mendix
3 2 (0.59%) WinCC
4 1 (0.30%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 1 (0.30%) Anypoint
4 1 (0.30%) CMS
4 1 (0.30%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 27 (8.01%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (3.86%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (2.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (1.78%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.59%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.59%) Adobe Illustrator
5 2 (0.59%) InDesign
5 2 (0.59%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.59%) Photoshop
5 2 (0.59%) Weka
Business Applications
1 71 (21.07%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (2.97%) SAP EWM
3 7 (2.08%) SAP MM
3 7 (2.08%) SAP PM
4 6 (1.78%) SAP PP
4 6 (1.78%) SAP QM
4 6 (1.78%) SAP WM
5 5 (1.48%) SAP SD
6 4 (1.19%) SAP MDG
7 3 (0.89%) Dynamics CRM
8 2 (0.59%) Oracle EBS
8 2 (0.59%) Sage X3
8 2 (0.59%) SAP ERP
8 2 (0.59%) SAP SCM
8 2 (0.59%) TrackWise
9 1 (0.30%) Cerner Millennium
9 1 (0.30%) SAP GTS
9 1 (0.30%) SAP LE
9 1 (0.30%) SAP PP-PI
9 1 (0.30%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 41 (12.17%) AWS
2 35 (10.39%) Azure
3 21 (6.23%) GCP
4 16 (4.75%) Power Platform
5 14 (4.15%) Microsoft 365
6 13 (3.86%) SaaS
7 9 (2.67%) GitHub
7 9 (2.67%) Snowflake
8 7 (2.08%) dbt
9 6 (1.78%) Cloud Run
9 6 (1.78%) Figma
10 4 (1.19%) Azure DevOps
10 4 (1.19%) Veeva
11 3 (0.89%) Amazon EKS
11 3 (0.89%) Amazon SageMaker
11 3 (0.89%) Azure AKS
11 3 (0.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 3 (0.89%) Dynamics 365
11 3 (0.89%) Google Workspace
11 3 (0.89%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.48%) Firewall
1 5 (1.48%) Network Security
2 4 (1.19%) Wireless
3 3 (0.89%) Ethernet
3 3 (0.89%) Modbus
3 3 (0.89%) RS-485
4 2 (0.59%) BGP
4 2 (0.59%) OSPF
5 1 (0.30%) AMQP
5 1 (0.30%) Cisco ICM
5 1 (0.30%) HTTP
5 1 (0.30%) Junos
5 1 (0.30%) RFID
5 1 (0.30%) SD-WAN
5 1 (0.30%) SSL
5 1 (0.30%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.30%) Telepresence
5 1 (0.30%) VLAN
5 1 (0.30%) VPN
5 1 (0.30%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (4.75%) Power BI
2 10 (2.97%) Data Lake
3 7 (2.08%) Data Warehouse
4 5 (1.48%) Tableau
5 4 (1.19%) BigQuery
5 4 (1.19%) Metadata
6 3 (0.89%) Electronic Patient Records
7 2 (0.59%) Oracle Database
7 2 (0.59%) SAP Data Services
7 2 (0.59%) SAP HANA
7 2 (0.59%) SQL Server
7 2 (0.59%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 1 (0.30%) Azure SQL Database
8 1 (0.30%) Hadoop
8 1 (0.30%) NoSQL
8 1 (0.30%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.30%) PostgreSQL
8 1 (0.30%) QlikView
8 1 (0.30%) Snowflake Schema
8 1 (0.30%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 17 (5.04%) Git
2 15 (4.45%) JIRA
3 3 (0.89%) Cypress.io
3 3 (0.89%) Jenkins
3 3 (0.89%) MLflow
4 2 (0.59%) GitLab
4 2 (0.59%) LSMW
4 2 (0.59%) Selenium
5 1 (0.30%) ER Studio
5 1 (0.30%) Hudson
5 1 (0.30%) Oracle APEX
5 1 (0.30%) Oracle Forms
General
1 77 (22.85%) Social Skills
2 66 (19.58%) Finance
3 65 (19.29%) Manufacturing
4 37 (10.98%) Analytical Skills
5 13 (3.86%) Marketing
6 10 (2.97%) Influencing Skills
7 9 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
7 9 (2.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 8 (2.37%) Organisational Skills
9 7 (2.08%) Advertising
9 7 (2.08%) Presentation Skills
9 7 (2.08%) Retail
10 6 (1.78%) Public Sector
11 5 (1.48%) Aerospace
11 5 (1.48%) Public Speaking
12 4 (1.19%) Health Technology
12 4 (1.19%) Wearables
13 3 (0.89%) Banking
13 3 (0.89%) Billing
13 3 (0.89%) Legal
Job Titles
1 38 (11.28%) Lead
2 24 (7.12%) Project Manager
2 24 (7.12%) Senior
3 22 (6.53%) Analyst
3 22 (6.53%) Consultant
4 17 (5.04%) Developer
5 14 (4.15%) Data Engineer
5 14 (4.15%) SAP Consultant
6 13 (3.86%) Data Scientist
7 12 (3.56%) Architect
7 12 (3.56%) Designer
8 11 (3.26%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 11 (3.26%) Business Analyst
8 11 (3.26%) Python Developer
9 8 (2.37%) Accountant
9 8 (2.37%) IT Manager
9 8 (2.37%) Product Owner
9 8 (2.37%) Quality Manager
9 8 (2.37%) Systems Accountant
10 7 (2.08%) Risk Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (2.97%) FastAPI
1 10 (2.97%) pytest
2 6 (1.78%) LangGraph
2 6 (1.78%) Playwright
3 5 (1.48%) IDoc
4 4 (1.19%) EDI
4 4 (1.19%) PyTorch
4 4 (1.19%) React
4 4 (1.19%) SAP Fiori
5 3 (0.89%) J2EE
5 3 (0.89%) Ray
5 3 (0.89%) REST
5 3 (0.89%) TensorFlow
6 2 (0.59%) Google JAX
6 2 (0.59%) JAX
6 2 (0.59%) Kafka
6 2 (0.59%) Pandas
6 2 (0.59%) SAP ALE
6 2 (0.59%) SAP Core Interface
6 2 (0.59%) Seaborn
Miscellaneous
1 65 (19.29%) Life Science
2 15 (4.45%) Product Ownership
3 14 (4.15%) FMCG
4 12 (3.56%) Data Structures
5 9 (2.67%) LIMS
6 8 (2.37%) Cloud Native
6 8 (2.37%) Onboarding
6 8 (2.37%) Self-Motivation
7 7 (2.08%) Data Protection Act
7 7 (2.08%) Enterprise Software
7 7 (2.08%) Genomics
7 7 (2.08%) NHS
8 6 (1.78%) CRISPR
8 6 (1.78%) Operational Technology
9 5 (1.48%) Legacy Systems
10 4 (1.19%) AI Agents
10 4 (1.19%) Management Information System
10 4 (1.19%) SCADA
11 3 (0.89%) Biopharmaceutical
12 2 (0.59%) Graphic Design
Operating Systems
1 12 (3.56%) Windows
2 3 (0.89%) Windows 10
3 2 (0.59%) Linux
3 2 (0.59%) Mac OS
3 2 (0.59%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.30%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.30%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 54 (16.02%) AI
2 49 (14.54%) Validation
3 48 (14.24%) Agile
4 45 (13.35%) ERP
5 43 (12.76%) Stakeholder Management
6 36 (10.68%) Machine Learning
7 34 (10.09%) Biotechnology
7 34 (10.09%) Migration
8 33 (9.79%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 29 (8.61%) Problem-Solving
10 28 (8.31%) Analytics
11 27 (8.01%) Continuous Improvement
11 27 (8.01%) Data Science
11 27 (8.01%) DevOps
12 25 (7.42%) Project Management
12 25 (7.42%) Workshop Facilitation
13 23 (6.82%) Data Governance
14 21 (6.23%) Data Migration
14 21 (6.23%) Data Pipeline
14 21 (6.23%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 60 (17.80%) Python
2 28 (8.31%) SQL
3 13 (3.86%) R
4 5 (1.48%) JavaScript
5 4 (1.19%) ABAP
5 4 (1.19%) TypeScript
6 3 (0.89%) Java
7 2 (0.59%) Bash
8 1 (0.30%) Bicep
8 1 (0.30%) C
8 1 (0.30%) C++
8 1 (0.30%) DataWeave
8 1 (0.30%) PL/SQL
8 1 (0.30%) SHACL
8 1 (0.30%) T-SQL
8 1 (0.30%) XPath
8 1 (0.30%) XQuery
Qualifications
1 43 (12.76%) Degree
2 9 (2.67%) A+ Certification
2 9 (2.67%) ACCA
2 9 (2.67%) CIMA
3 8 (2.37%) Master's Degree
4 6 (1.78%) PMI Certification
4 6 (1.78%) PMP
5 3 (0.89%) HND
5 3 (0.89%) Microsoft Certification
5 3 (0.89%) Security Cleared
6 2 (0.59%) BPSS Clearance
6 2 (0.59%) CISSP
6 2 (0.59%) CompTIA Security+
6 2 (0.59%) HNC
6 2 (0.59%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
6 2 (0.59%) SC Cleared
7 1 (0.30%) ECDL
7 1 (0.30%) OCP
7 1 (0.30%) Oracle Certification
7 1 (0.30%) SAP Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (8.90%) GxP
2 16 (4.75%) QA
3 15 (4.45%) GMP
4 9 (2.67%) Data Quality
5 8 (2.37%) GDPR
6 7 (2.08%) PMO
7 4 (1.19%) 21 CFR Part 11
7 4 (1.19%) Accessibility
7 4 (1.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 3 (0.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 2 (0.59%) GAMP
9 2 (0.59%) GRC
10 1 (0.30%) HL7
10 1 (0.30%) ISO 13485
10 1 (0.30%) ITGC
10 1 (0.30%) MiFID
10 1 (0.30%) NIST
10 1 (0.30%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.30%) SLA
10 1 (0.30%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 14 (4.15%) Docker
2 3 (0.89%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 2 (0.59%) GPFS
3 2 (0.59%) Lustre
3 2 (0.59%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (0.59%) vSphere
4 1 (0.30%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 7 (2.08%) Kubernetes
2 5 (1.48%) Terraform
3 2 (0.59%) Ansible
3 2 (0.59%) Puppet
3 2 (0.59%) Salt
4 1 (0.30%) Cisco UCCE
4 1 (0.30%) Cisco UCCX
4 1 (0.30%) FortiGate
4 1 (0.30%) HP ALM
4 1 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
4 1 (0.30%) RSA Archer
4 1 (0.30%) SCCM
Vendors
1 97 (28.78%) SAP
2 39 (11.57%) Microsoft
3 15 (4.45%) Google
4 10 (2.97%) Oracle
5 7 (2.08%) Salesforce
5 7 (2.08%) SOTI
6 6 (1.78%) Ariba
7 5 (1.48%) Databricks
7 5 (1.48%) LabWare
7 5 (1.48%) ServiceNow
8 4 (1.19%) Cisco
8 4 (1.19%) VMware
9 3 (0.89%) Adobe
9 3 (0.89%) Cerner
9 3 (0.89%) Foundry
9 3 (0.89%) HP
9 3 (0.89%) IBM
9 3 (0.89%) MuleSoft
9 3 (0.89%) Palantir
10 2 (0.59%) Sage