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

6 months to
4 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 335 231 295
Rank change year-on-year -104 +64 +11
Contract jobs citing Pharmaceutical 384 371 306
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.73% 1.13% 0.78%
As % of the General category 1.32% 1.78% 1.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 206 256 175
10th Percentile £308 £356 £393
25th Percentile £388 £475 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% - +4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £688 £623
90th Percentile £678 £750 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £550 £500
% change year-on-year -13.64% +10.00% -1.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 13 20
10th Percentile £16.75 £16.22 £26.20
25th Percentile £32.07 £20.00 £37.54
Median hourly rate £50.25 £51.80 £51.25
Median % change year-on-year -2.98% +1.06% +127.47%
75th Percentile £97.50 £97.50 £60.00
90th Percentile - - £69.74
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.72 £17.46 £57.50
% change year-on-year +121.80% -69.64% +224.49%

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 29,034 20,793 22,469
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.94% 63.19% 57.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,258 12,994 14,143
10th Percentile £313 £278 £290
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,135 1,115 1,399
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.25 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.75 £16.19 £16.96
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -34.02% +27.07%
75th Percentile £60.00 £50.75 £57.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.81 £22.14 £38.12
% change year-on-year +48.17% -41.92% +46.62%

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 4 August 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 4 August 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 4 August 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 -114 294 £500 -9.09% 428
Work from Home +5 176 £475 -7.32% 171
London -4 156 £525 -8.70% 191
UK excluding London -144 111 £475 -13.64% 261
East of England -39 45 £500 -13.04% 35
South East -53 26 £475 -10.38% 66
North of England -95 22 £450 -22.41% 73
North West -90 16 £463 -20.26% 45
South West -36 11 £425 -43.33% 21
Midlands -53 4 £450 -14.29% 39
Wales -17 3 £175 -42.71% 14
North East -39 3 £290 - 13
Yorkshire -40 3 £463 - 15
East Midlands -10 1 £450 -14.29% 15
West Midlands -58 1 - - 24

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 (1.30%) IIS
2 4 (1.04%) FactoryTalk
2 4 (1.04%) SAS
3 3 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.52%) Apache
4 2 (0.52%) Confluence
4 2 (0.52%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.52%) WinCC
5 1 (0.26%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.26%) Anypoint
5 1 (0.26%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.26%) CMS
5 1 (0.26%) Mendix
Applications
1 22 (5.73%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (3.65%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (2.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (1.82%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (1.04%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.52%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.52%) Adobe Illustrator
6 2 (0.52%) InDesign
6 2 (0.52%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.26%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 64 (16.67%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (2.60%) SAP SD
3 7 (1.82%) SAP EWM
4 5 (1.30%) SAP MM
5 4 (1.04%) Dynamics CRM
5 4 (1.04%) SAP FI
5 4 (1.04%) TrackWise
6 3 (0.78%) SAP CO
6 3 (0.78%) SAP ERP
6 3 (0.78%) SAP FI/CO
6 3 (0.78%) SAP IBP
6 3 (0.78%) SAP MDG
6 3 (0.78%) SAP PP
6 3 (0.78%) SAP QM
7 2 (0.52%) NetSuite
7 2 (0.52%) Oracle EBS
7 2 (0.52%) SAP GRC
7 2 (0.52%) SAP GTS
7 2 (0.52%) SAP WM
8 1 (0.26%) JDE EnterpriseOne
Cloud Services
1 47 (12.24%) AWS
2 38 (9.90%) Azure
3 18 (4.69%) SaaS
4 16 (4.17%) Power Platform
5 15 (3.91%) GCP
6 11 (2.86%) Snowflake
7 10 (2.60%) dbt
7 10 (2.60%) GitHub
8 9 (2.34%) Veeva
9 8 (2.08%) Azure DevOps
10 7 (1.82%) Figma
11 6 (1.56%) Dynamics 365
12 5 (1.30%) GitHub Actions
13 4 (1.04%) AWS CloudFormation
13 4 (1.04%) Cloud Run
13 4 (1.04%) Google Workspace
13 4 (1.04%) Serverless
14 3 (0.78%) AWS Direct Connect
14 3 (0.78%) Collibra
15 2 (0.52%) Azure Pipelines
Communications & Networking
1 9 (2.34%) Firewall
2 8 (2.08%) VLAN
3 6 (1.56%) TCP/IP
4 5 (1.30%) HTTPS
5 4 (1.04%) DNS
6 3 (0.78%) VPN
6 3 (0.78%) WAN
7 2 (0.52%) Network Security
7 2 (0.52%) X.21
8 1 (0.26%) AMQP
8 1 (0.26%) DHCP
8 1 (0.26%) HTTP
8 1 (0.26%) Junos
8 1 (0.26%) NGFW
8 1 (0.26%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (4.17%) Power BI
2 11 (2.86%) Data Warehouse
3 8 (2.08%) Metadata
4 6 (1.56%) Tableau
5 5 (1.30%) MySQL
5 5 (1.30%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (1.04%) NoSQL
6 4 (1.04%) Oracle Database
6 4 (1.04%) Relational Database
6 4 (1.04%) SAP BW
6 4 (1.04%) SAP HANA
7 3 (0.78%) Data Lake
7 3 (0.78%) Data Mining
7 3 (0.78%) DynamoDB
7 3 (0.78%) Neo4j
7 3 (0.78%) Semantic Layer
7 3 (0.78%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 2 (0.52%) BigQuery
8 2 (0.52%) Snowflake Schema
8 2 (0.52%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 16 (4.17%) JIRA
2 13 (3.39%) Git
3 5 (1.30%) Jenkins
4 3 (0.78%) Cypress.io
5 2 (0.52%) MLflow
5 2 (0.52%) Visual Studio
6 1 (0.26%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.26%) ER Studio
6 1 (0.26%) GitLab
6 1 (0.26%) LSMW
6 1 (0.26%) Postman
6 1 (0.26%) ScriptRunner
6 1 (0.26%) Selenium
6 1 (0.26%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.26%) TestRail
6 1 (0.26%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 108 (28.13%) Social Skills
2 86 (22.40%) Manufacturing
3 68 (17.71%) Finance
4 54 (14.06%) Analytical Skills
5 14 (3.65%) Marketing
5 14 (3.65%) Organisational Skills
5 14 (3.65%) Retail
6 10 (2.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 10 (2.60%) Presentation Skills
7 9 (2.34%) Advertising
8 8 (2.08%) Legal
9 7 (1.82%) Billing
10 6 (1.56%) Banking
11 5 (1.30%) Aerospace
11 5 (1.30%) Automotive
11 5 (1.30%) Documentation Skills
11 5 (1.30%) Health Technology
11 5 (1.30%) Law
11 5 (1.30%) Public Sector
11 5 (1.30%) Public Speaking
Job Titles
1 41 (10.68%) Consultant
2 39 (10.16%) Analyst
3 35 (9.11%) Lead
4 34 (8.85%) Project Manager
5 33 (8.59%) Senior
6 25 (6.51%) SAP Consultant
7 24 (6.25%) Business Analyst
8 22 (5.73%) Architect
9 16 (4.17%) Data Engineer
10 15 (3.91%) Product Owner
11 14 (3.65%) Developer
12 13 (3.39%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
13 8 (2.08%) Data Analyst
13 8 (2.08%) Data Scientist
14 7 (1.82%) AWS Engineer
14 7 (1.82%) Designer
14 7 (1.82%) SAP Manager
14 7 (1.82%) Solutions Architect
15 6 (1.56%) Full-Stack Engineer
15 6 (1.56%) Snowflake Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (3.39%) REST
2 7 (1.82%) React
3 6 (1.56%) IDoc
4 5 (1.30%) EDI
4 5 (1.30%) PyTorch
4 5 (1.30%) RESTful
4 5 (1.30%) SOAP
4 5 (1.30%) XML
5 4 (1.04%) FastAPI
5 4 (1.04%) Hibernate
5 4 (1.04%) Pandas
5 4 (1.04%) SAP Fiori
5 4 (1.04%) SQLAlchemy
6 3 (0.78%) .NET
6 3 (0.78%) Google JAX
6 3 (0.78%) Jakarta EE
6 3 (0.78%) JAX
6 3 (0.78%) SAPUI5
6 3 (0.78%) TensorFlow
7 2 (0.52%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 120 (31.25%) Life Science
2 23 (5.99%) Product Ownership
3 16 (4.17%) FMCG
4 15 (3.91%) Data Structures
4 15 (3.91%) LIMS
5 12 (3.13%) CRISPR
6 11 (2.86%) Operational Technology
7 9 (2.34%) Cloud Native
7 9 (2.34%) Data Protection Act
8 8 (2.08%) Self-Motivation
9 7 (1.82%) Analytical Mindset
9 7 (1.82%) Biopharmaceutical
9 7 (1.82%) Management Information System
10 6 (1.56%) NHS
10 6 (1.56%) SCADA
11 5 (1.30%) Genomics
11 5 (1.30%) Onboarding
12 4 (1.04%) Greenfield Project
12 4 (1.04%) Robotics
12 4 (1.04%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 17 (4.43%) Windows
2 7 (1.82%) Windows Server
3 3 (0.78%) Linux
4 1 (0.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.26%) Unix
4 1 (0.26%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 69 (17.97%) AI
2 67 (17.45%) Stakeholder Management
3 65 (16.93%) Agile
4 61 (15.89%) Validation
5 48 (12.50%) Problem-Solving
6 43 (11.20%) Migration
7 41 (10.68%) Biotechnology
8 40 (10.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 39 (10.16%) Continuous Improvement
10 37 (9.64%) ERP
11 33 (8.59%) Analytics
11 33 (8.59%) Roadmaps
12 30 (7.81%) Machine Learning
12 30 (7.81%) Workshop Facilitation
13 29 (7.55%) CI/CD
13 29 (7.55%) Data Modelling
13 29 (7.55%) Data Pipeline
13 29 (7.55%) Project Management
14 28 (7.29%) Data Governance
15 26 (6.77%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 59 (15.36%) Python
2 33 (8.59%) SQL
3 12 (3.13%) R
4 8 (2.08%) Java
5 6 (1.56%) ABAP
6 5 (1.30%) JavaScript
7 4 (1.04%) PowerShell
7 4 (1.04%) TypeScript
8 3 (0.78%) C#
9 2 (0.52%) Cypher
9 2 (0.52%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 1 (0.26%) Apex Code
10 1 (0.26%) Bicep
10 1 (0.26%) DataWeave
10 1 (0.26%) Gremlin
10 1 (0.26%) MATLAB
10 1 (0.26%) SHACL
10 1 (0.26%) SPARQL
10 1 (0.26%) T-SQL
10 1 (0.26%) XQuery
Qualifications
1 47 (12.24%) Degree
2 12 (3.13%) PMI Certification
2 12 (3.13%) PMP
3 7 (1.82%) Security Cleared
4 5 (1.30%) CSPO
4 5 (1.30%) Master's Degree
4 5 (1.30%) SC Cleared
5 4 (1.04%) BPSS Clearance
6 3 (0.78%) ACCA
6 3 (0.78%) CIMA
6 3 (0.78%) CISM
6 3 (0.78%) CISSP
6 3 (0.78%) Microsoft Certification
7 2 (0.52%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (0.52%) DBS Check
7 2 (0.52%) HNC
7 2 (0.52%) HND
7 2 (0.52%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
8 1 (0.26%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 1 (0.26%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 58 (15.10%) GxP
2 21 (5.47%) QA
3 19 (4.95%) Data Quality
4 18 (4.69%) GMP
5 13 (3.39%) 21 CFR Part 11
5 13 (3.39%) GDPR
6 11 (2.86%) GRC
6 11 (2.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 10 (2.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 6 (1.56%) HIPAA
9 5 (1.30%) PCI DSS
9 5 (1.30%) PMO
10 3 (0.78%) EU AI Act
10 3 (0.78%) NIST
11 2 (0.52%) Accessibility
11 2 (0.52%) NIST 800
12 1 (0.26%) CDISC
12 1 (0.26%) NCSC
12 1 (0.26%) SLA
12 1 (0.26%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 10 (2.60%) Docker
2 6 (1.56%) Active Directory
2 6 (1.56%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (0.52%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.52%) vSphere
4 1 (0.26%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 13 (3.39%) Terraform
2 6 (1.56%) Kubernetes
3 1 (0.26%) Apache Ranger
3 1 (0.26%) FortiGate
3 1 (0.26%) Oracle RMAN
3 1 (0.26%) Tivoli Storage Manager
3 1 (0.26%) WSUS
Vendors
1 89 (23.18%) SAP
2 26 (6.77%) Microsoft
3 11 (2.86%) Oracle
4 10 (2.60%) Google
5 9 (2.34%) ServiceNow
6 8 (2.08%) Databricks
6 8 (2.08%) VMware
7 7 (1.82%) Palo Alto
7 7 (1.82%) Rockwell
7 7 (1.82%) Zscaler
8 6 (1.56%) Ariba
8 6 (1.56%) Salesforce
9 4 (1.04%) LabVantage
9 4 (1.04%) MuleSoft
10 3 (0.78%) Adobe
10 3 (0.78%) Conga
10 3 (0.78%) Informatica
10 3 (0.78%) Palantir
10 3 (0.78%) Siemens
11 2 (0.52%) Citrix