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

6 months to
29 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 314 223 243
Rank change year-on-year -91 +20 +99
Contract jobs citing Pharmaceutical 338 344 430
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.72% 1.18% 0.99%
As % of the General category 1.32% 1.87% 1.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 217 226 261
10th Percentile £350 £370 £363
25th Percentile £388 £485 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% +4.76% +5.00%
75th Percentile £600 £688 £619
90th Percentile £688 £820 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £525 £501
% change year-on-year -9.52% +4.79% +11.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 17 36
10th Percentile £22.69 £15.00 £17.72
25th Percentile £50.00 £19.00 £20.75
Median hourly rate £75.00 £32.50 £30.16
Median % change year-on-year +130.77% +7.76% -16.22%
75th Percentile £97.50 £97.50 £60.00
90th Percentile - - £63.91
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £26.25 £28.50
% change year-on-year +109.52% -7.89% +119.23%

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 25,650 18,445 25,224
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.48% 63.22% 58.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,833 11,783 15,923
10th Percentile £305 £300 £270
25th Percentile £406 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £640 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £496
% change year-on-year - -4.23% -0.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,652 796 1,931
10th Percentile £13.72 £14.20 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.50 £18.13 £15.50
Median hourly rate £29.00 £28.08 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.29% -6.42% -14.29%
75th Percentile £60.00 £56.00 £51.83
90th Percentile £79.90 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £25.29 £27.84
% change year-on-year +1.90% -9.14% -8.86%

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 April 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 April 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Pharmaceutical in the UK

Pharmaceutical
Top 14 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 April 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 -127 232 £513 -8.89% 131
Work from Home +2 147 £475 -11.63% 56
London -43 109 £525 -27.59% 53
UK excluding London -150 93 £475 -9.52% 86
East of England -54 39 £475 -13.64% 10
South East -43 23 £475 +105.41% 24
North of England -119 21 £520 -5.45% 25
North West -72 19 £520 -5.45% 18
South West - 6 £700 - 7
Scotland +2 2 - - 1
North East -20 2 - - 2
Wales -18 1 - - 1
West Midlands -61 1 - - 11
Midlands -70 1 - - 18

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 4 (1.18%) SharePoint
2 3 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
2 3 (0.89%) Apache Spark
2 3 (0.89%) SAS
3 2 (0.59%) Confluence
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 29 (8.58%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (4.14%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (2.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (2.07%) 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
Business Applications
1 65 (19.23%) SAP S/4HANA
2 9 (2.66%) SAP EWM
2 9 (2.66%) SAP SD
3 7 (2.07%) SAP PM
4 6 (1.78%) SAP PP
4 6 (1.78%) SAP QM
5 5 (1.48%) SAP MM
5 5 (1.48%) SAP WM
6 4 (1.18%) Dynamics CRM
6 4 (1.18%) SAP MDG
7 3 (0.89%) NetSuite
8 2 (0.59%) Oracle EBS
8 2 (0.59%) Sage X3
8 2 (0.59%) SAP ERP
8 2 (0.59%) SAP GTS
8 2 (0.59%) TrackWise
9 1 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
9 1 (0.30%) SAP CS
9 1 (0.30%) SAP MDM
9 1 (0.30%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 36 (10.65%) AWS
2 29 (8.58%) Azure
3 16 (4.73%) SaaS
4 14 (4.14%) GCP
5 13 (3.85%) Microsoft 365
5 13 (3.85%) Power Platform
6 6 (1.78%) dbt
6 6 (1.78%) Figma
6 6 (1.78%) Snowflake
7 5 (1.48%) Azure DevOps
7 5 (1.48%) GitHub
8 4 (1.18%) Dynamics 365
8 4 (1.18%) Microsoft Purview
8 4 (1.18%) Veeva
9 3 (0.89%) Amazon EKS
9 3 (0.89%) Amazon SageMaker
9 3 (0.89%) Azure AKS
9 3 (0.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 3 (0.89%) Cloud Run
9 3 (0.89%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.48%) Firewall
2 3 (0.89%) Ethernet
2 3 (0.89%) Modbus
2 3 (0.89%) Network Security
2 3 (0.89%) RS-485
2 3 (0.89%) VLAN
3 2 (0.59%) BGP
3 2 (0.59%) OSPF
3 2 (0.59%) Wireless
4 1 (0.30%) AMQP
4 1 (0.30%) HTTP
4 1 (0.30%) Junos
4 1 (0.30%) SSL
4 1 (0.30%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.30%) Telepresence
4 1 (0.30%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (3.85%) Power BI
2 8 (2.37%) Data Warehouse
3 7 (2.07%) Data Lake
4 5 (1.48%) Tableau
5 4 (1.18%) Metadata
6 3 (0.89%) BigQuery
6 3 (0.89%) SAP Data Services
6 3 (0.89%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 2 (0.59%) Electronic Patient Records
7 2 (0.59%) Oracle Database
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%) Neo4j
8 1 (0.30%) NoSQL
8 1 (0.30%) Pinecone
8 1 (0.30%) SAP HANA
8 1 (0.30%) Spark SQL
8 1 (0.30%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 12 (3.55%) Git
1 12 (3.55%) JIRA
2 3 (0.89%) Cypress.io
2 3 (0.89%) LSMW
2 3 (0.89%) MLflow
3 2 (0.59%) Jenkins
4 1 (0.30%) Bitbucket
4 1 (0.30%) ER Studio
4 1 (0.30%) GitLab
4 1 (0.30%) Hudson
4 1 (0.30%) Oracle APEX
4 1 (0.30%) Oracle Forms
4 1 (0.30%) Selenium
4 1 (0.30%) SonarQube
General
1 72 (21.30%) Social Skills
2 71 (21.01%) Manufacturing
3 70 (20.71%) Finance
4 35 (10.36%) Analytical Skills
5 10 (2.96%) Marketing
5 10 (2.96%) Retail
6 9 (2.66%) Presentation Skills
7 8 (2.37%) Advertising
7 8 (2.37%) Documentation Skills
7 8 (2.37%) Organisational Skills
8 7 (2.07%) Billing
8 7 (2.07%) Influencing Skills
9 6 (1.78%) Public Speaking
10 5 (1.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 5 (1.48%) Legal
10 5 (1.48%) Public Sector
11 4 (1.18%) Wearables
12 3 (0.89%) Banking
13 2 (0.59%) Digital Health
13 2 (0.59%) Health Technology
Job Titles
1 36 (10.65%) Lead
2 28 (8.28%) Senior
3 27 (7.99%) Project Manager
4 23 (6.80%) Analyst
5 21 (6.21%) Consultant
6 15 (4.44%) Developer
7 14 (4.14%) Designer
8 13 (3.85%) Architect
8 13 (3.85%) Data Engineer
8 13 (3.85%) Data Scientist
9 12 (3.55%) Business Analyst
9 12 (3.55%) SAP Consultant
10 11 (3.25%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
11 9 (2.66%) Python Developer
12 8 (2.37%) Accountant
12 8 (2.37%) Product Designer
12 8 (2.37%) Quality Manager
12 8 (2.37%) Systems Accountant
13 7 (2.07%) IT Support
13 7 (2.07%) Product Owner
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (2.07%) FastAPI
2 5 (1.48%) IDoc
2 5 (1.48%) React
3 4 (1.18%) EDI
3 4 (1.18%) Playwright
3 4 (1.18%) pytest
3 4 (1.18%) PyTorch
4 3 (0.89%) Google JAX
4 3 (0.89%) J2EE
4 3 (0.89%) JAX
4 3 (0.89%) Ray
4 3 (0.89%) REST
4 3 (0.89%) TensorFlow
5 2 (0.59%) JSON
5 2 (0.59%) Kafka
5 2 (0.59%) Pandas
5 2 (0.59%) RESTful
5 2 (0.59%) SAP Core Interface
5 2 (0.59%) SciPy
5 2 (0.59%) Seaborn
Miscellaneous
1 72 (21.30%) Life Science
2 16 (4.73%) Data Structures
3 13 (3.85%) Product Ownership
4 12 (3.55%) FMCG
5 11 (3.25%) LIMS
6 9 (2.66%) Self-Motivation
7 8 (2.37%) Cloud Native
7 8 (2.37%) CRISPR
7 8 (2.37%) Data Protection Act
7 8 (2.37%) NHS
7 8 (2.37%) Onboarding
8 7 (2.07%) Enterprise Software
9 6 (1.78%) AI Agents
9 6 (1.78%) Genomics
9 6 (1.78%) Operational Technology
10 4 (1.18%) Biopharmaceutical
10 4 (1.18%) Legacy Systems
10 4 (1.18%) Robotics
10 4 (1.18%) SCADA
10 4 (1.18%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 11 (3.25%) Windows
2 2 (0.59%) Linux
2 2 (0.59%) Mac OS
2 2 (0.59%) Windows 10
2 2 (0.59%) Windows Server
3 1 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (0.30%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 53 (15.68%) AI
2 48 (14.20%) Validation
3 47 (13.91%) ERP
4 42 (12.43%) Agile
4 42 (12.43%) Migration
5 41 (12.13%) Stakeholder Management
6 31 (9.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 29 (8.58%) Biotechnology
8 28 (8.28%) Machine Learning
8 28 (8.28%) Workshop Facilitation
9 27 (7.99%) Project Management
10 26 (7.69%) Problem-Solving
11 25 (7.40%) Analytics
11 25 (7.40%) Data Migration
12 24 (7.10%) Data Science
13 23 (6.80%) DevOps
14 22 (6.51%) Continuous Improvement
15 21 (6.21%) CI/CD
15 21 (6.21%) Data Governance
15 21 (6.21%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 53 (15.68%) Python
2 30 (8.88%) SQL
3 12 (3.55%) R
4 5 (1.48%) JavaScript
4 5 (1.48%) TypeScript
5 4 (1.18%) Java
6 3 (0.89%) ABAP
7 1 (0.30%) Bicep
7 1 (0.30%) C
7 1 (0.30%) C++
7 1 (0.30%) DataWeave
7 1 (0.30%) PL/SQL
7 1 (0.30%) SHACL
7 1 (0.30%) T-SQL
7 1 (0.30%) XPath
7 1 (0.30%) XQuery
Qualifications
1 40 (11.83%) Degree
2 9 (2.66%) A+ Certification
2 9 (2.66%) ACCA
2 9 (2.66%) CIMA
3 7 (2.07%) PMI Certification
3 7 (2.07%) PMP
4 6 (1.78%) Master's Degree
5 3 (0.89%) HND
5 3 (0.89%) Microsoft Certification
6 2 (0.59%) BPSS Clearance
6 2 (0.59%) CISM
6 2 (0.59%) CISSP
6 2 (0.59%) HNC
6 2 (0.59%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
7 1 (0.30%) ECDL
7 1 (0.30%) OCP
7 1 (0.30%) Oracle Certification
7 1 (0.30%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (10.95%) GxP
2 20 (5.92%) GMP
3 13 (3.85%) QA
4 11 (3.25%) Data Quality
5 8 (2.37%) GDPR
5 8 (2.37%) PMO
6 6 (1.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 4 (1.18%) 21 CFR Part 11
7 4 (1.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 3 (0.89%) Accessibility
9 2 (0.59%) GAMP
9 2 (0.59%) GRC
9 2 (0.59%) NIST
10 1 (0.30%) EU AI Act
10 1 (0.30%) ISO 13485
10 1 (0.30%) ITGC
10 1 (0.30%) NIST 800
System Software
1 10 (2.96%) Docker
2 2 (0.59%) Virtual Machines
2 2 (0.59%) VMware Infrastructure
2 2 (0.59%) vSphere
3 1 (0.30%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.30%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 6 (1.78%) Kubernetes
2 5 (1.48%) Terraform
3 1 (0.30%) FortiGate
3 1 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
3 1 (0.30%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 93 (27.51%) SAP
2 38 (11.24%) Microsoft
3 12 (3.55%) Oracle
4 11 (3.25%) Google
5 7 (2.07%) SOTI
6 6 (1.78%) Databricks
6 6 (1.78%) Salesforce
7 5 (1.48%) Ariba
7 5 (1.48%) LabWare
8 4 (1.18%) ServiceNow
9 3 (0.89%) Adobe
9 3 (0.89%) Cisco
9 3 (0.89%) Foundry
9 3 (0.89%) IBM
9 3 (0.89%) LabVantage
9 3 (0.89%) MuleSoft
9 3 (0.89%) Palantir
9 3 (0.89%) VMware
10 2 (0.59%) Dell
10 2 (0.59%) HP