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

6 months to
29 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 357 253 283
Rank change year-on-year -104 +30 +27
Contract jobs citing Pharmaceutical 360 356 299
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.67% 1.08% 0.78%
As % of the General category 1.21% 1.70% 1.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 193 236 172
10th Percentile £284 £377 £400
25th Percentile £389 £485 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -17.39% +4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £688 £619
90th Percentile £675 £760 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £580 £525
% change year-on-year -22.41% +10.48% +3.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 14 15
10th Percentile £16.75 £16.55 £21.25
25th Percentile £26.25 £19.15 £33.88
Median hourly rate £42.50 £51.80 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.95% +3.59% +121.93%
75th Percentile £97.50 £97.50 £60.00
90th Percentile - - £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.72 £18.87 £45.00
% change year-on-year +105.19% -58.07% +153.95%

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 29,707 20,917 22,155
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.12% 63.48% 57.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,543 13,012 13,683
10th Percentile £313 £275 £290
25th Percentile £416 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £740 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £496
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.30% -0.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,298 1,175 1,220
10th Percentile £13.79 £13.50 £14.27
25th Percentile £17.00 £16.17 £17.06
Median hourly rate £31.13 £25.15 £37.04
Median % change year-on-year +23.77% -32.10% +34.69%
75th Percentile £55.00 £50.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.75 £70.26
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.50 £22.05 £37.28
% change year-on-year +42.86% -40.85% +48.38%

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 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 29 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Pharmaceutical in the UK

Pharmaceutical
Top 16 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 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 -111 277 £490 -10.91% 702
Work from Home -3 165 £506 -2.41% 273
London -23 149 £525 -4.55% 340
UK excluding London -129 106 £450 -22.41% 408
East of England -45 36 £450 -22.41% 61
South East -53 25 £475 -10.38% 105
North of England -103 24 £425 -33.33% 110
North West -97 16 £463 -28.85% 64
South West -32 12 £334 -55.50% 35
North East -34 5 £200 - 24
Wales -17 4 £175 -42.71% 14
Midlands -47 4 £450 -14.29% 65
Yorkshire -42 3 £463 +42.31% 23
East Midlands -15 1 £450 -14.29% 27
Scotland -21 1 £425 -2.86% 20
West Midlands -39 1 - - 38

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 9 (2.50%) SharePoint
2 5 (1.39%) IIS
3 4 (1.11%) FactoryTalk
3 4 (1.11%) SAS
4 3 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.56%) Apache
6 1 (0.28%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 1 (0.28%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.28%) CMS
6 1 (0.28%) Confluence
Applications
1 15 (4.17%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (3.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (2.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (1.94%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (1.11%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.56%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.56%) Adobe Illustrator
6 2 (0.56%) InDesign
6 2 (0.56%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.28%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.28%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 52 (14.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 9 (2.50%) SAP SD
3 4 (1.11%) SAP FI
3 4 (1.11%) SAP IBP
3 4 (1.11%) TrackWise
4 3 (0.83%) SAP CO
4 3 (0.83%) SAP ERP
4 3 (0.83%) SAP FI/CO
4 3 (0.83%) SAP MDG
4 3 (0.83%) SAP PP
5 2 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
5 2 (0.56%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.56%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.56%) SAP EWM
5 2 (0.56%) SAP GRC
5 2 (0.56%) SAP GTS
5 2 (0.56%) SAP QM
6 1 (0.28%) ENOVIA
6 1 (0.28%) JDE EnterpriseOne
6 1 (0.28%) SAP MII
Cloud Services
1 44 (12.22%) AWS
2 42 (11.67%) Azure
3 18 (5.00%) GCP
4 17 (4.72%) Power Platform
4 17 (4.72%) SaaS
4 17 (4.72%) Snowflake
5 12 (3.33%) Azure DevOps
6 10 (2.78%) dbt
6 10 (2.78%) GitHub
7 9 (2.50%) Veeva
8 8 (2.22%) Microsoft 365
9 5 (1.39%) Azure AI
9 5 (1.39%) Cloud Run
9 5 (1.39%) Figma
9 5 (1.39%) GitHub Actions
10 4 (1.11%) AWS CloudFormation
10 4 (1.11%) Dynamics 365
10 4 (1.11%) Serverless
11 3 (0.83%) AWS Direct Connect
12 2 (0.56%) Smartsheet
Communications & Networking
1 8 (2.22%) DNS
1 8 (2.22%) Firewall
2 7 (1.94%) VLAN
3 5 (1.39%) DHCP
3 5 (1.39%) HTTPS
3 5 (1.39%) TCP/IP
4 3 (0.83%) Network Security
4 3 (0.83%) WAN
5 2 (0.56%) VPN
5 2 (0.56%) X.21
6 1 (0.28%) NGFW
6 1 (0.28%) SSL
6 1 (0.28%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (4.72%) Power BI
2 12 (3.33%) Data Warehouse
3 8 (2.22%) Metadata
4 7 (1.94%) Neo4j
5 6 (1.67%) Tableau
6 5 (1.39%) MySQL
6 5 (1.39%) PostgreSQL
7 4 (1.11%) NoSQL
7 4 (1.11%) Relational Database
7 4 (1.11%) SAP BW
7 4 (1.11%) SAP HANA
8 3 (0.83%) BigQuery
8 3 (0.83%) Data Lake
8 3 (0.83%) Data Mining
8 3 (0.83%) DynamoDB
8 3 (0.83%) Oracle Database
8 3 (0.83%) Semantic Layer
9 2 (0.56%) Amazon QuickSight
9 2 (0.56%) Pinecone
9 2 (0.56%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 14 (3.89%) Git
2 13 (3.61%) JIRA
3 5 (1.39%) Jenkins
4 3 (0.83%) Cypress.io
5 2 (0.56%) Visual Studio
6 1 (0.28%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.28%) GitLab
6 1 (0.28%) LSMW
6 1 (0.28%) Postman
6 1 (0.28%) ScriptRunner
6 1 (0.28%) Selenium
6 1 (0.28%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.28%) TestRail
6 1 (0.28%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 110 (30.56%) Social Skills
2 75 (20.83%) Manufacturing
3 58 (16.11%) Analytical Skills
4 55 (15.28%) Finance
5 15 (4.17%) Legal
5 15 (4.17%) Marketing
6 11 (3.06%) Organisational Skills
6 11 (3.06%) Presentation Skills
6 11 (3.06%) Retail
7 9 (2.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 8 (2.22%) Banking
9 7 (1.94%) Documentation Skills
10 6 (1.67%) Advertising
10 6 (1.67%) Billing
10 6 (1.67%) Influencing Skills
10 6 (1.67%) Law
10 6 (1.67%) Public Sector
11 5 (1.39%) Automotive
11 5 (1.39%) Health Technology
11 5 (1.39%) Public Speaking
Job Titles
1 44 (12.22%) Analyst
2 38 (10.56%) Project Manager
3 35 (9.72%) Consultant
4 29 (8.06%) Senior
5 25 (6.94%) Business Analyst
5 25 (6.94%) Lead
6 23 (6.39%) Architect
7 22 (6.11%) SAP Consultant
8 16 (4.44%) Data Engineer
9 15 (4.17%) Developer
10 11 (3.06%) Product Owner
11 10 (2.78%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
11 10 (2.78%) Data Analyst
12 8 (2.22%) Solutions Architect
13 7 (1.94%) Data Scientist
13 7 (1.94%) SAP Manager
14 6 (1.67%) AWS Engineer
14 6 (1.67%) Full-Stack Engineer
14 6 (1.67%) Snowflake Data Engineer
14 6 (1.67%) Snowflake Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (4.72%) REST
2 13 (3.61%) Terraform
3 9 (2.50%) React
4 7 (1.94%) PyTorch
5 6 (1.67%) FastAPI
6 5 (1.39%) .NET
7 4 (1.11%) EDI
7 4 (1.11%) Google JAX
7 4 (1.11%) Hibernate
7 4 (1.11%) IDoc
7 4 (1.11%) JAX
7 4 (1.11%) RESTful
7 4 (1.11%) SOAP
7 4 (1.11%) SQLAlchemy
7 4 (1.11%) TensorFlow
7 4 (1.11%) XML
8 3 (0.83%) Middleware
8 3 (0.83%) Pandas
8 3 (0.83%) SAP Fiori
8 3 (0.83%) SAPUI5
Miscellaneous
1 128 (35.56%) Life Science
2 23 (6.39%) Product Ownership
3 15 (4.17%) Data Structures
3 15 (4.17%) FMCG
3 15 (4.17%) LIMS
4 12 (3.33%) Cloud Native
5 11 (3.06%) CRISPR
5 11 (3.06%) Operational Technology
6 9 (2.50%) Data Protection Act
7 8 (2.22%) Analytical Mindset
7 8 (2.22%) Biopharmaceutical
7 8 (2.22%) Management Information System
8 7 (1.94%) NHS
9 6 (1.67%) Genomics
9 6 (1.67%) SCADA
9 6 (1.67%) Self-Motivation
10 5 (1.39%) AI Agents
10 5 (1.39%) Manufacturing Execution System
10 5 (1.39%) Onboarding
11 4 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 22 (6.11%) Windows
2 11 (3.06%) Windows Server
3 2 (0.56%) Linux
4 1 (0.28%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.28%) VMS
4 1 (0.28%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 71 (19.72%) Stakeholder Management
2 67 (18.61%) AI
3 63 (17.50%) Agile
4 60 (16.67%) Validation
5 52 (14.44%) Problem-Solving
6 41 (11.39%) Biotechnology
6 41 (11.39%) Continuous Improvement
7 38 (10.56%) Migration
7 38 (10.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 33 (9.17%) Analytics
9 32 (8.89%) Roadmaps
10 31 (8.61%) Project Management
11 30 (8.33%) Data Governance
11 30 (8.33%) ERP
12 29 (8.06%) CI/CD
12 29 (8.06%) Data Pipeline
12 29 (8.06%) Machine Learning
13 28 (7.78%) Data Modelling
13 28 (7.78%) DevOps
14 25 (6.94%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 60 (16.67%) Python
2 30 (8.33%) SQL
3 11 (3.06%) R
4 8 (2.22%) Java
5 5 (1.39%) ABAP
5 5 (1.39%) JavaScript
6 4 (1.11%) PowerShell
6 4 (1.11%) TypeScript
7 3 (0.83%) C#
8 2 (0.56%) Cypher
8 2 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 1 (0.28%) Apex Code
9 1 (0.28%) Bicep
9 1 (0.28%) Gremlin
9 1 (0.28%) Korn
9 1 (0.28%) MATLAB
9 1 (0.28%) SPARQL
9 1 (0.28%) T-SQL
9 1 (0.28%) XPath
9 1 (0.28%) XQuery
Qualifications
1 49 (13.61%) Degree
2 12 (3.33%) PMI Certification
2 12 (3.33%) PMP
3 9 (2.50%) Security Cleared
4 6 (1.67%) Master's Degree
4 6 (1.67%) SC Cleared
5 5 (1.39%) CSPO
6 4 (1.11%) BPSS Clearance
6 4 (1.11%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 3 (0.83%) CISM
7 3 (0.83%) CISSP
7 3 (0.83%) DBS Check
7 3 (0.83%) Microsoft Certification
7 3 (0.83%) Postgraduate
7 3 (0.83%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
8 2 (0.56%) Cisco Certification
8 2 (0.56%) Computer Science Degree
8 2 (0.56%) PhD
9 1 (0.28%) ACCA
9 1 (0.28%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 57 (15.83%) GxP
2 21 (5.83%) Data Quality
3 20 (5.56%) QA
4 15 (4.17%) GMP
5 14 (3.89%) 21 CFR Part 11
5 14 (3.89%) GDPR
6 11 (3.06%) GRC
6 11 (3.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 8 (2.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 6 (1.67%) HIPAA
9 5 (1.39%) PCI DSS
9 5 (1.39%) PMO
10 3 (0.83%) EU AI Act
11 2 (0.56%) Accessibility
11 2 (0.56%) GAMP
11 2 (0.56%) NIST
12 1 (0.28%) CDISC
12 1 (0.28%) NIST 800
12 1 (0.28%) SLA
12 1 (0.28%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 17 (4.72%) Docker
2 9 (2.50%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (1.94%) Active Directory
4 4 (1.11%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.28%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 1 (0.28%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 11 (3.06%) Kubernetes
2 4 (1.11%) SCCM
3 1 (0.28%) Apache Ranger
3 1 (0.28%) Grafana
3 1 (0.28%) Prometheus
3 1 (0.28%) Single Sign-On
3 1 (0.28%) Tivoli Storage Manager
3 1 (0.28%) WSUS
Vendors
1 70 (19.44%) SAP
2 27 (7.50%) Microsoft
3 11 (3.06%) VMware
4 8 (2.22%) Google
4 8 (2.22%) Oracle
4 8 (2.22%) ServiceNow
5 7 (1.94%) Ariba
5 7 (1.94%) Palo Alto
5 7 (1.94%) Zscaler
6 6 (1.67%) Databricks
6 6 (1.67%) Foundry
6 6 (1.67%) Rockwell
6 6 (1.67%) Salesforce
7 5 (1.39%) Citrix
8 4 (1.11%) LabVantage
9 3 (0.83%) Adobe
9 3 (0.83%) Conga
9 3 (0.83%) Palantir
10 2 (0.56%) Cisco
10 2 (0.56%) SYSPRO