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

6 months to
12 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 311 236 206
Rank change year-on-year -75 -30 +159
Contract jobs citing Pharmaceutical 309 336 515
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.78% 1.08% 1.16%
As % of the General category 1.32% 1.75% 1.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 192 198 346
10th Percentile £350 £348 £288
25th Percentile £411 £441 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £546 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.89% +4.05% +5.00%
75th Percentile £641 £638 £575
90th Percentile £750 £738 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £525 £510
% change year-on-year +4.76% +2.94% +13.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 23 38
10th Percentile £16.17 £19.00 £17.55
25th Percentile £18.87 £24.18 £20.00
Median hourly rate £72.50 £32.50 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year +123.08% +20.37% +80.00%
75th Percentile £97.50 £35.00 £48.75
90th Percentile - £89.05 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.87 £32.50 £21.50
% change year-on-year -41.94% +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 23,425 19,190 25,973
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 58.82% 61.95% 58.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,675 11,532 16,769
10th Percentile £290 £281 £265
25th Percentile £402 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £648 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £500
% change year-on-year -1.04% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,429 610 1,620
10th Percentile £13.69 £15.62 £13.00
25th Percentile £16.35 £20.12 £15.00
Median hourly rate £22.81 £29.00 £25.25
Median % change year-on-year -21.34% +14.85% -2.88%
75th Percentile £50.00 £57.50 £53.75
90th Percentile £71.60 £75.00 £67.59
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.80 £27.13 £24.00
% change year-on-year -19.63% +13.02% -1.03%

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 12 February 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 12 February 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 12 February 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 -112 231 £525 -4.55% 151
Work from Home +4 126 £519 -5.68% 70
London +6 109 £575 -9.80% 57
UK excluding London -119 94 £550 +4.76% 115
East of England -48 33 £488 -7.14% 14
South East -16 26 £578 +172.00% 36
North of England -111 26 £575 +9.52% 34
North West -68 22 £588 +9.81% 23
South West - 6 £700 - 11
Scotland +8 3 £550 +54.93% 4
North East -17 2 - - 3
Yorkshire -60 2 £325 -5.25% 8
Wales 0 1 £183 - 2

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 7 (2.27%) Confluence
2 6 (1.94%) Apache Airflow
3 5 (1.62%) Apache Spark
4 4 (1.29%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.97%) CMS
6 1 (0.32%) Headless CMS
6 1 (0.32%) Mendix
6 1 (0.32%) Oracle Workflow
6 1 (0.32%) WinCC
Applications
1 18 (5.83%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (2.27%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.65%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.65%) Weka
5 1 (0.32%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 74 (23.95%) SAP S/4HANA
2 8 (2.59%) SAP MM
3 7 (2.27%) SAP PM
3 7 (2.27%) SAP QM
4 6 (1.94%) SAP EWM
4 6 (1.94%) SAP PP
5 5 (1.62%) SAP MDG
5 5 (1.62%) SAP WM
6 4 (1.29%) Dynamics CRM
6 4 (1.29%) SAP CO
7 3 (0.97%) SAP FI
7 3 (0.97%) SAP FI/CO
7 3 (0.97%) SAP SD
8 2 (0.65%) Sage X3
8 2 (0.65%) SAP ERP
8 2 (0.65%) SAP IBP
8 2 (0.65%) SAP SCM
8 2 (0.65%) TrackWise
9 1 (0.32%) SAP MDG-M
9 1 (0.32%) SAP PP-PI
Cloud Services
1 39 (12.62%) AWS
2 33 (10.68%) Azure
3 23 (7.44%) GCP
4 17 (5.50%) Power Platform
5 15 (4.85%) Microsoft 365
6 14 (4.53%) GitHub
7 11 (3.56%) Cloud Run
7 11 (3.56%) Snowflake
8 6 (1.94%) Figma
8 6 (1.94%) SaaS
8 6 (1.94%) Veeva
9 5 (1.62%) dbt
10 4 (1.29%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 3 (0.97%) Amazon EKS
11 3 (0.97%) Amazon SageMaker
11 3 (0.97%) Azure AKS
12 2 (0.65%) Collibra
12 2 (0.65%) GitHub Actions
12 2 (0.65%) Serverless
12 2 (0.65%) WhatsApp
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.94%) Network Security
2 4 (1.29%) Firewall
2 4 (1.29%) Wireless
3 3 (0.97%) Ethernet
3 3 (0.97%) Modbus
3 3 (0.97%) RS-485
4 2 (0.65%) BGP
4 2 (0.65%) OSPF
5 1 (0.32%) Cisco ICM
5 1 (0.32%) DHCP
5 1 (0.32%) DNS
5 1 (0.32%) RFID
5 1 (0.32%) SD-WAN
5 1 (0.32%) SMS
5 1 (0.32%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.32%) Telepresence
5 1 (0.32%) VPN
5 1 (0.32%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (5.50%) Power BI
2 12 (3.88%) Data Lake
3 6 (1.94%) BigQuery
3 6 (1.94%) Data Warehouse
4 5 (1.62%) Electronic Patient Records
5 4 (1.29%) Metadata
5 4 (1.29%) SAP HANA
6 3 (0.97%) Tableau
7 2 (0.65%) Neo4j
7 2 (0.65%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.65%) SAP Data Services
7 2 (0.65%) SQL Server
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
8 1 (0.32%) Spotfire
8 1 (0.32%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 20 (6.47%) Git
2 16 (5.18%) JIRA
3 3 (0.97%) Cypress.io
3 3 (0.97%) Jenkins
3 3 (0.97%) MLflow
4 2 (0.65%) GitLab
4 2 (0.65%) LSMW
4 2 (0.65%) Selenium
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%) SoapUI
5 1 (0.32%) Zephyr
General
1 77 (24.92%) Social Skills
2 64 (20.71%) Manufacturing
3 56 (18.12%) Finance
4 25 (8.09%) Analytical Skills
5 12 (3.88%) Aerospace
5 12 (3.88%) Documentation Skills
5 12 (3.88%) Marketing
6 11 (3.56%) Influencing Skills
7 9 (2.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 7 (2.27%) Retail
9 6 (1.94%) Public Sector
10 5 (1.62%) Organisational Skills
11 4 (1.29%) Wearables
12 3 (0.97%) Digital Health
12 3 (0.97%) Health Technology
12 3 (0.97%) Legal
13 2 (0.65%) Banking
13 2 (0.65%) Digital Healthcare
13 2 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
14 1 (0.32%) Public Speaking
Job Titles
1 39 (12.62%) Lead
2 30 (9.71%) Consultant
3 21 (6.80%) SAP Consultant
3 21 (6.80%) Senior
4 18 (5.83%) Analyst
4 18 (5.83%) Project Manager
5 17 (5.50%) Developer
6 14 (4.53%) Architect
7 12 (3.88%) Python Developer
8 11 (3.56%) Data Engineer
8 11 (3.56%) Designer
9 10 (3.24%) Data Scientist
10 9 (2.91%) Software Engineer
11 8 (2.59%) IT Manager
11 8 (2.59%) IT Support
11 8 (2.59%) Quality Manager
12 7 (2.27%) Data Analytics Specialist
12 7 (2.27%) IT Technician
12 7 (2.27%) SAP Financial Specialist
12 7 (2.27%) Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (5.50%) pytest
2 16 (5.18%) FastAPI
3 13 (4.21%) SAP Fiori
4 10 (3.24%) React
5 9 (2.91%) LangGraph
6 7 (2.27%) Playwright
7 3 (0.97%) MACH
7 3 (0.97%) Ray
7 3 (0.97%) RESTful
8 2 (0.65%) CSS
8 2 (0.65%) EDI
8 2 (0.65%) IDoc
8 2 (0.65%) Jest
8 2 (0.65%) Kafka
8 2 (0.65%) Next.js
8 2 (0.65%) PyTorch
8 2 (0.65%) REST
8 2 (0.65%) SailPoint
8 2 (0.65%) SAP PI
8 2 (0.65%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 57 (18.45%) Life Science
2 16 (5.18%) FMCG
2 16 (5.18%) Genomics
3 14 (4.53%) Cloud Native
4 11 (3.56%) Onboarding
5 9 (2.91%) Product Ownership
6 8 (2.59%) NHS
7 7 (2.27%) Operational Technology
8 6 (1.94%) LIMS
9 5 (1.62%) Data Structures
9 5 (1.62%) Enterprise Software
9 5 (1.62%) Greenfield Project
9 5 (1.62%) Hybrid Cloud
9 5 (1.62%) Management Information System
10 4 (1.29%) AI Agents
10 4 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
10 4 (1.29%) Legacy Systems
10 4 (1.29%) Mobile App
10 4 (1.29%) SCADA
10 4 (1.29%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 14 (4.53%) Windows
2 6 (1.94%) Apple iOS
3 4 (1.29%) Mac OS
3 4 (1.29%) Windows 10
4 3 (0.97%) Android
5 1 (0.32%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 54 (17.48%) AI
2 51 (16.50%) Stakeholder Management
3 50 (16.18%) Agile
4 42 (13.59%) Machine Learning
5 41 (13.27%) ERP
6 36 (11.65%) Validation
7 34 (11.00%) Analytics
7 34 (11.00%) Continuous Improvement
7 34 (11.00%) Problem-Solving
7 34 (11.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 32 (10.36%) Biotechnology
8 32 (10.36%) Migration
9 30 (9.71%) DevOps
10 26 (8.41%) Data Science
11 24 (7.77%) Roadmaps
12 23 (7.44%) Test Automation
13 22 (7.12%) Decision-Making
13 22 (7.12%) User Experience
14 20 (6.47%) Change Management
14 20 (6.47%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 60 (19.42%) Python
2 25 (8.09%) SQL
3 12 (3.88%) R
4 9 (2.91%) TypeScript
5 6 (1.94%) JavaScript
6 5 (1.62%) Java
7 2 (0.65%) ABAP
7 2 (0.65%) Bash
8 1 (0.32%) C
8 1 (0.32%) C++
8 1 (0.32%) Ladder Logic
8 1 (0.32%) PHP
8 1 (0.32%) PL/SQL
8 1 (0.32%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 48 (15.53%) Degree
2 12 (3.88%) Master's Degree
3 9 (2.91%) A+ Certification
4 8 (2.59%) ACCA
4 8 (2.59%) CIMA
4 8 (2.59%) PMI Certification
4 8 (2.59%) PMP
5 7 (2.27%) Security Cleared
6 6 (1.94%) SC Cleared
7 4 (1.29%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (0.65%) CISSP
8 2 (0.65%) CompTIA Security+
8 2 (0.65%) HND
9 1 (0.32%) CCA
9 1 (0.32%) CCNP
9 1 (0.32%) Cisco Certification
9 1 (0.32%) ECDL
9 1 (0.32%) HNC
9 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Certification
9 1 (0.32%) SAP Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (8.41%) GxP
2 16 (5.18%) GMP
3 14 (4.53%) QA
4 11 (3.56%) Data Quality
5 7 (2.27%) GDPR
6 6 (1.94%) Accessibility
7 5 (1.62%) PMO
8 4 (1.29%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 3 (0.97%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 2 (0.65%) GAMP
10 2 (0.65%) ISO 13485
10 2 (0.65%) SLA
11 1 (0.32%) GRC
11 1 (0.32%) HIPAA
11 1 (0.32%) HL7
11 1 (0.32%) IEC 62304
11 1 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 1 (0.32%) ITGC
11 1 (0.32%) MiFID
11 1 (0.32%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 20 (6.47%) Docker
2 3 (0.97%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 2 (0.65%) GPFS
3 2 (0.65%) Lustre
4 1 (0.32%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 13 (4.21%) Kubernetes
2 6 (1.94%) Terraform
3 3 (0.97%) Ansible
3 3 (0.97%) SCCM
4 2 (0.65%) HP ALM
4 2 (0.65%) Microsoft Intune
4 2 (0.65%) Puppet
4 2 (0.65%) Salt
5 1 (0.32%) Cisco UCCE
5 1 (0.32%) Cisco UCCX
5 1 (0.32%) Packer
5 1 (0.32%) RSA Archer
5 1 (0.32%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
Vendors
1 100 (32.36%) SAP
2 37 (11.97%) Microsoft
3 19 (6.15%) Google
4 7 (2.27%) Ariba
4 7 (2.27%) Oracle
4 7 (2.27%) SOTI
5 6 (1.94%) Salesforce
5 6 (1.94%) ServiceNow
6 4 (1.29%) Cisco
6 4 (1.29%) Databricks
6 4 (1.29%) HP
6 4 (1.29%) LabWare
6 4 (1.29%) Palo Alto
7 3 (0.97%) Cerner
7 3 (0.97%) IBM
7 3 (0.97%) MEDITECH
7 3 (0.97%) Siemens
7 3 (0.97%) Zscaler
8 2 (0.65%) IFS
8 2 (0.65%) Meraki