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

6 months to
24 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 317 224 204
Rank change year-on-year -93 -20 +141
Contract jobs citing Pharmaceutical 311 349 513
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.76% 1.16% 1.15%
As % of the General category 1.30% 1.86% 1.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 197 214 340
10th Percentile £350 £345 £338
25th Percentile £406 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +4.76% +5.00%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £588
90th Percentile £726 £768 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £555 £525 £510
% change year-on-year +5.62% +2.94% +13.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 23 40
10th Percentile £16.47 £19.00 £17.66
25th Percentile £49.25 £24.18 £20.00
Median hourly rate £75.00 £32.50 £28.50
Median % change year-on-year +130.77% +14.04% +78.13%
75th Percentile £97.50 £35.00 £50.31
90th Percentile - £89.05 £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 23,960 18,763 26,157
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 58.48% 62.10% 58.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,990 11,449 16,828
10th Percentile £300 £290 £265
25th Percentile £404 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £621 £649 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £478 £500
% change year-on-year -0.52% -4.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,462 613 1,710
10th Percentile £13.69 £15.62 £13.00
25th Percentile £16.48 £20.45 £15.29
Median hourly rate £23.00 £30.00 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.33% +15.38% -8.77%
75th Percentile £51.53 £58.27 £51.25
90th Percentile £73.72 £75.00 £65.98
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.50 £25.00
% change year-on-year -20.00% +10.00% -2.59%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 -113 236 £525 -4.55% 146
Work from Home 0 130 £513 -6.82% 59
London -6 111 £558 -18.17% 54
UK excluding London -128 97 £555 +5.62% 110
East of England -45 35 £500 -9.09% 11
South East -15 28 £575 +170.59% 37
North of England -110 25 £588 +9.81% 26
North West -74 21 £588 +7.80% 20
South West - 6 £700 - 16
Scotland +11 3 £550 +54.93% 3
North East -16 3 - - 5
Wales -3 1 £183 - 1
Yorkshire -57 1 - - 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 6 (1.93%) Apache Airflow
2 5 (1.61%) Apache Spark
2 5 (1.61%) Confluence
2 5 (1.61%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.64%) Mendix
3 2 (0.64%) WinCC
4 1 (0.32%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 21 (6.75%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (2.57%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.64%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.64%) Weka
5 1 (0.32%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 77 (24.76%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (2.25%) SAP MM
2 7 (2.25%) SAP PM
2 7 (2.25%) SAP QM
3 6 (1.93%) SAP EWM
3 6 (1.93%) SAP PP
4 5 (1.61%) SAP WM
5 4 (1.29%) SAP CO
5 4 (1.29%) SAP MDG
6 3 (0.96%) SAP FI
6 3 (0.96%) SAP FI/CO
7 2 (0.64%) Dynamics CRM
7 2 (0.64%) Sage X3
7 2 (0.64%) SAP ERP
7 2 (0.64%) SAP IBP
7 2 (0.64%) SAP SCM
7 2 (0.64%) TrackWise
8 1 (0.32%) NetSuite
8 1 (0.32%) SAP EHS
8 1 (0.32%) SAP PLM
Cloud Services
1 36 (11.58%) AWS
2 28 (9.00%) Azure
3 22 (7.07%) GCP
4 16 (5.14%) Power Platform
5 15 (4.82%) GitHub
6 14 (4.50%) Microsoft 365
7 11 (3.54%) Cloud Run
8 10 (3.22%) Snowflake
9 8 (2.57%) SaaS
10 6 (1.93%) Figma
10 6 (1.93%) Veeva
11 5 (1.61%) dbt
12 4 (1.29%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 3 (0.96%) Amazon EKS
13 3 (0.96%) Amazon SageMaker
13 3 (0.96%) Azure AKS
14 2 (0.64%) Collibra
14 2 (0.64%) GitHub Actions
14 2 (0.64%) Serverless
14 2 (0.64%) WhatsApp
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.25%) Network Security
2 5 (1.61%) Firewall
3 4 (1.29%) Wireless
4 3 (0.96%) Ethernet
4 3 (0.96%) Modbus
4 3 (0.96%) RS-485
5 2 (0.64%) BGP
5 2 (0.64%) OSPF
5 2 (0.64%) TCP/IP
5 2 (0.64%) VPN
6 1 (0.32%) Cisco ICM
6 1 (0.32%) DHCP
6 1 (0.32%) DNS
6 1 (0.32%) Junos
6 1 (0.32%) RFID
6 1 (0.32%) SD-WAN
6 1 (0.32%) SMS
6 1 (0.32%) Telepresence
6 1 (0.32%) VLAN
6 1 (0.32%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (5.14%) Power BI
2 11 (3.54%) Data Lake
3 6 (1.93%) Data Warehouse
4 5 (1.61%) BigQuery
5 4 (1.29%) Electronic Patient Records
5 4 (1.29%) Metadata
5 4 (1.29%) SAP HANA
6 3 (0.96%) Tableau
7 2 (0.64%) Neo4j
7 2 (0.64%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.64%) Oracle Database
7 2 (0.64%) SAP Data Services
7 2 (0.64%) SQL Server
7 2 (0.64%) 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 20 (6.43%) Git
2 11 (3.54%) JIRA
3 3 (0.96%) Cypress.io
3 3 (0.96%) MLflow
4 2 (0.64%) GitLab
4 2 (0.64%) Jenkins
4 2 (0.64%) 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 75 (24.12%) Social Skills
2 66 (21.22%) Manufacturing
3 59 (18.97%) Finance
4 26 (8.36%) Analytical Skills
5 12 (3.86%) Aerospace
5 12 (3.86%) Marketing
6 11 (3.54%) Documentation Skills
7 10 (3.22%) Influencing Skills
8 8 (2.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 7 (2.25%) Retail
10 6 (1.93%) Organisational Skills
10 6 (1.93%) Public Sector
11 5 (1.61%) Wearables
12 3 (0.96%) Digital Health
12 3 (0.96%) Health Technology
12 3 (0.96%) Legal
13 2 (0.64%) Advertising
13 2 (0.64%) Banking
13 2 (0.64%) Digital Healthcare
13 2 (0.64%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 41 (13.18%) Lead
2 26 (8.36%) Consultant
3 23 (7.40%) Senior
4 17 (5.47%) Developer
4 17 (5.47%) Project Manager
5 16 (5.14%) SAP Consultant
6 15 (4.82%) Analyst
7 12 (3.86%) Data Engineer
7 12 (3.86%) Python Developer
8 11 (3.54%) Architect
8 11 (3.54%) Data Scientist
8 11 (3.54%) Designer
9 10 (3.22%) Software Engineer
10 8 (2.57%) IT Manager
10 8 (2.57%) IT Support
10 8 (2.57%) Quality Manager
11 7 (2.25%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
11 7 (2.25%) IT Technician
11 7 (2.25%) Process Consultant
11 7 (2.25%) Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (5.47%) pytest
2 16 (5.14%) FastAPI
3 12 (3.86%) SAP Fiori
4 9 (2.89%) LangGraph
4 9 (2.89%) React
5 7 (2.25%) Playwright
6 3 (0.96%) Ray
6 3 (0.96%) RESTful
7 2 (0.64%) CSS
7 2 (0.64%) EDI
7 2 (0.64%) IDoc
7 2 (0.64%) Jest
7 2 (0.64%) Next.js
7 2 (0.64%) PyTorch
7 2 (0.64%) REST
7 2 (0.64%) SailPoint
7 2 (0.64%) SAP PI
8 1 (0.32%) BAPI
8 1 (0.32%) Middleware
8 1 (0.32%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 57 (18.33%) Life Science
2 16 (5.14%) FMCG
2 16 (5.14%) Genomics
3 12 (3.86%) Cloud Native
4 10 (3.22%) Onboarding
4 10 (3.22%) Product Ownership
5 8 (2.57%) Operational Technology
6 7 (2.25%) LIMS
7 6 (1.93%) Data Structures
7 6 (1.93%) Legacy Systems
7 6 (1.93%) NHS
8 5 (1.61%) Enterprise Software
8 5 (1.61%) Greenfield Project
8 5 (1.61%) SCADA
9 4 (1.29%) AI Agents
9 4 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
9 4 (1.29%) Management Information System
9 4 (1.29%) Self-Motivation
10 3 (0.96%) Biopharmaceutical
10 3 (0.96%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 12 (3.86%) Windows
2 3 (0.96%) Mac OS
2 3 (0.96%) Windows 10
3 2 (0.64%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.32%) Linux
4 1 (0.32%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 57 (18.33%) AI
2 51 (16.40%) Stakeholder Management
3 45 (14.47%) Agile
4 43 (13.83%) ERP
4 43 (13.83%) Machine Learning
5 37 (11.90%) Validation
6 33 (10.61%) Analytics
6 33 (10.61%) Biotechnology
7 32 (10.29%) Continuous Improvement
7 32 (10.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 31 (9.97%) DevOps
8 31 (9.97%) Migration
9 27 (8.68%) Problem-Solving
10 26 (8.36%) Data Science
10 26 (8.36%) Roadmaps
11 21 (6.75%) Decision-Making
11 21 (6.75%) Test Automation
12 20 (6.43%) User Experience
13 19 (6.11%) Data Analysis
13 19 (6.11%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 61 (19.61%) Python
2 26 (8.36%) SQL
3 12 (3.86%) R
4 8 (2.57%) TypeScript
5 6 (1.93%) JavaScript
6 3 (0.96%) ABAP
6 3 (0.96%) Java
7 2 (0.64%) 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 (15.43%) Degree
2 11 (3.54%) Master's Degree
3 9 (2.89%) A+ Certification
4 8 (2.57%) ACCA
4 8 (2.57%) CIMA
4 8 (2.57%) PMI Certification
4 8 (2.57%) PMP
5 7 (2.25%) Security Cleared
6 6 (1.93%) SC Cleared
7 4 (1.29%) BPSS Clearance
8 3 (0.96%) HND
9 2 (0.64%) CISSP
9 2 (0.64%) CompTIA Security+
9 2 (0.64%) HNC
9 2 (0.64%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.32%) Computer Science Degree
10 1 (0.32%) DBS Check
10 1 (0.32%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 1 (0.32%) OCP
10 1 (0.32%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (7.72%) GxP
2 16 (5.14%) GMP
3 12 (3.86%) QA
4 9 (2.89%) Data Quality
5 7 (2.25%) GDPR
6 5 (1.61%) Accessibility
7 4 (1.29%) PMO
7 4 (1.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 3 (0.96%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 2 (0.64%) GAMP
9 2 (0.64%) ISO 13485
9 2 (0.64%) SLA
10 1 (0.32%) GRC
10 1 (0.32%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.32%) HL7
10 1 (0.32%) IEC 62304
10 1 (0.32%) ITGC
10 1 (0.32%) NIST
10 1 (0.32%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.32%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 19 (6.11%) Docker
2 2 (0.64%) GPFS
2 2 (0.64%) Lustre
2 2 (0.64%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 1 (0.32%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (0.32%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 11 (3.54%) Kubernetes
2 6 (1.93%) Terraform
3 2 (0.64%) Ansible
3 2 (0.64%) Puppet
3 2 (0.64%) Salt
3 2 (0.64%) 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
1 101 (32.48%) SAP
2 38 (12.22%) Microsoft
3 19 (6.11%) Google
4 8 (2.57%) Oracle
5 7 (2.25%) SOTI
6 6 (1.93%) Ariba
6 6 (1.93%) Salesforce
7 5 (1.61%) Databricks
7 5 (1.61%) LabWare
8 4 (1.29%) Cisco
8 4 (1.29%) Palo Alto
8 4 (1.29%) ServiceNow
8 4 (1.29%) Siemens
9 3 (0.96%) Cerner
9 3 (0.96%) HP
9 3 (0.96%) IBM
9 3 (0.96%) Zscaler
10 2 (0.64%) IFS
10 2 (0.64%) Rockwell
10 2 (0.64%) VMware