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

6 months to
20 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 316 223 268
Rank change year-on-year -93 +45 +61
Contract jobs citing Pharmaceutical 362 355 375
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.71% 1.19% 0.85%
As % of the General category 1.32% 1.87% 1.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 206 245 219
10th Percentile £333 £378 £363
25th Percentile £388 £485 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% +4.76% +4.48%
75th Percentile £600 £700 £600
90th Percentile £669 £812 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £550 £500
% change year-on-year -11.36% +10.00% +4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 11 38
10th Percentile £21.74 £15.56 £19.49
25th Percentile £50.00 £19.50 £20.75
Median hourly rate £70.00 £51.80 £33.83
Median % change year-on-year +35.15% +53.10% +12.77%
75th Percentile £97.50 £97.50 £54.69
90th Percentile - - £62.34
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £18.02 £40.00
% change year-on-year +205.17% -54.94% +79.65%

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 27,482 18,963 25,015
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 54.26% 63.51% 57.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 16,589 11,965 15,633
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £769
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £490
% change year-on-year +6.38% -4.08% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,840 910 2,030
10th Percentile £13.99 £13.50 £12.78
25th Percentile £18.27 £16.57 £15.50
Median hourly rate £32.36 £28.00 £30.50
Median % change year-on-year +15.58% -8.20% -0.13%
75th Percentile £61.18 £54.00 £52.78
90th Percentile £81.05 £75.00 £67.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.00 £24.34 £29.50
% change year-on-year +31.47% -17.49% +13.46%

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 20 June 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 20 June 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 20 June 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 -113 268 £506 -12.04% 139
Work from Home +4 161 £475 -13.64% 44
London -16 149 £525 -26.57% 49
UK excluding London -166 91 £488 -11.36% 119
East of England -61 35 £510 -7.27% 16
North of England -106 25 £475 -13.64% 28
South East -47 21 £507 -22.08% 39
North West -75 19 £475 -13.64% 19
South West -28 4 £750 - 10
Wales -17 3 £175 -42.71% 5
North East -37 3 £290 - 1
Yorkshire -57 3 £463 - 8
Midlands -62 3 - - 15
West Midlands -61 1 - - 7

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 (1.38%) IIS
2 4 (1.10%) SAS
3 3 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (0.83%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.55%) WinCC
5 1 (0.28%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.28%) Anypoint
5 1 (0.28%) Apache
5 1 (0.28%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.28%) CMS
5 1 (0.28%) Confluence
5 1 (0.28%) Mendix
5 1 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 25 (6.91%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (3.31%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (1.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (1.93%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.55%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 2 (0.55%) Adobe Illustrator
4 2 (0.55%) InDesign
4 2 (0.55%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.55%) Photoshop
5 1 (0.28%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 60 (16.57%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (2.76%) SAP SD
3 7 (1.93%) SAP EWM
4 5 (1.38%) SAP MM
5 4 (1.10%) Dynamics CRM
5 4 (1.10%) SAP PM
6 3 (0.83%) SAP ERP
6 3 (0.83%) SAP PP
6 3 (0.83%) SAP QM
7 2 (0.55%) NetSuite
7 2 (0.55%) Oracle EBS
7 2 (0.55%) SAP GTS
7 2 (0.55%) SAP MDG
7 2 (0.55%) SAP WM
7 2 (0.55%) TrackWise
8 1 (0.28%) JDE EnterpriseOne
8 1 (0.28%) Sage X3
8 1 (0.28%) SAP EHS
8 1 (0.28%) SAP IBP
8 1 (0.28%) SAP MDG-M
Cloud Services
1 51 (14.09%) AWS
2 34 (9.39%) Azure
3 18 (4.97%) SaaS
4 13 (3.59%) GCP
5 12 (3.31%) Power Platform
6 9 (2.49%) dbt
7 8 (2.21%) GitHub
7 8 (2.21%) Snowflake
7 8 (2.21%) Veeva
8 6 (1.66%) Azure DevOps
8 6 (1.66%) Dynamics 365
8 6 (1.66%) Figma
9 4 (1.10%) AWS CloudFormation
9 4 (1.10%) Cloud Run
9 4 (1.10%) GitHub Actions
9 4 (1.10%) Google Workspace
9 4 (1.10%) Microsoft 365
10 3 (0.83%) Amazon S3
10 3 (0.83%) Azure AKS
10 3 (0.83%) Collibra
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.38%) Firewall
1 5 (1.38%) HTTPS
2 4 (1.10%) DNS
2 4 (1.10%) VLAN
3 3 (0.83%) VPN
3 3 (0.83%) WAN
4 2 (0.55%) TCP/IP
4 2 (0.55%) X.21
5 1 (0.28%) AMQP
5 1 (0.28%) DHCP
5 1 (0.28%) Ethernet
5 1 (0.28%) HTTP
5 1 (0.28%) Junos
5 1 (0.28%) Modbus
5 1 (0.28%) Network Security
5 1 (0.28%) NGFW
5 1 (0.28%) RS-485
5 1 (0.28%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (3.31%) Power BI
2 8 (2.21%) Data Warehouse
3 4 (1.10%) Tableau
4 3 (0.83%) DynamoDB
4 3 (0.83%) Metadata
4 3 (0.83%) NoSQL
4 3 (0.83%) Oracle Database
4 3 (0.83%) SQL Server Reporting Services
5 2 (0.55%) Amazon QuickSight
5 2 (0.55%) Big Data
5 2 (0.55%) BigQuery
5 2 (0.55%) Data Lake
5 2 (0.55%) Data Mining
5 2 (0.55%) Neo4j
5 2 (0.55%) SAP BW
5 2 (0.55%) Snowflake Schema
5 2 (0.55%) SQL Server
5 2 (0.55%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 1 (0.28%) Hadoop
6 1 (0.28%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 13 (3.59%) JIRA
2 11 (3.04%) Git
3 3 (0.83%) Cypress.io
3 3 (0.83%) MLflow
4 2 (0.55%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.28%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.28%) ER Studio
5 1 (0.28%) GitLab
5 1 (0.28%) Hudson
5 1 (0.28%) LSMW
5 1 (0.28%) Oracle APEX
5 1 (0.28%) Oracle Forms
5 1 (0.28%) Postman
5 1 (0.28%) Selenium
5 1 (0.28%) SonarQube
5 1 (0.28%) TestRail
General
1 83 (22.93%) Social Skills
2 75 (20.72%) Finance
3 72 (19.89%) Manufacturing
4 35 (9.67%) Analytical Skills
5 13 (3.59%) Marketing
6 11 (3.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 10 (2.76%) Retail
8 9 (2.49%) Advertising
8 9 (2.49%) Organisational Skills
9 8 (2.21%) Legal
9 8 (2.21%) Presentation Skills
10 7 (1.93%) Billing
11 6 (1.66%) Public Speaking
12 5 (1.38%) Automotive
12 5 (1.38%) Documentation Skills
12 5 (1.38%) Law
13 4 (1.10%) Digital Health
13 4 (1.10%) Public Sector
14 3 (0.83%) Health Technology
14 3 (0.83%) Wearables
Job Titles
1 40 (11.05%) Lead
2 34 (9.39%) Consultant
3 33 (9.12%) Senior
4 32 (8.84%) Analyst
4 32 (8.84%) Project Manager
5 19 (5.25%) Business Analyst
6 18 (4.97%) Data Engineer
6 18 (4.97%) SAP Consultant
7 14 (3.87%) Architect
7 14 (3.87%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 10 (2.76%) Developer
8 10 (2.76%) Product Owner
9 9 (2.49%) AWS Engineer
9 9 (2.49%) Data Scientist
10 8 (2.21%) Accountant
10 8 (2.21%) Systems Accountant
11 7 (1.93%) Compliance Manager
11 7 (1.93%) IT Manager
11 7 (1.93%) Risk Manager
11 7 (1.93%) SAP Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (2.21%) REST
2 6 (1.66%) IDoc
3 5 (1.38%) EDI
3 5 (1.38%) PyTorch
4 4 (1.10%) FastAPI
4 4 (1.10%) Pandas
4 4 (1.10%) React
5 3 (0.83%) Google JAX
5 3 (0.83%) J2EE
5 3 (0.83%) JAX
5 3 (0.83%) Kafka
5 3 (0.83%) Playwright
5 3 (0.83%) Ray
5 3 (0.83%) TensorFlow
5 3 (0.83%) XML
6 2 (0.55%) JSON
6 2 (0.55%) Middleware
6 2 (0.55%) SOAP
6 2 (0.55%) Web Services
6 2 (0.55%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 88 (24.31%) Life Science
2 17 (4.70%) FMCG
2 17 (4.70%) Product Ownership
3 15 (4.14%) LIMS
4 14 (3.87%) Data Structures
5 13 (3.59%) CRISPR
6 9 (2.49%) Self-Motivation
7 8 (2.21%) Cloud Native
7 8 (2.21%) Data Protection Act
8 6 (1.66%) Management Information System
8 6 (1.66%) Operational Technology
9 5 (1.38%) Enterprise Software
9 5 (1.38%) Genomics
9 5 (1.38%) NHS
10 4 (1.10%) Biopharmaceutical
10 4 (1.10%) Pharmacovigilance
10 4 (1.10%) Robotics
11 3 (0.83%) AI Agents
11 3 (0.83%) Omics
11 3 (0.83%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 12 (3.31%) Windows
2 3 (0.83%) Windows Server
3 2 (0.55%) Linux
4 1 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.28%) Unix
4 1 (0.28%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 60 (16.57%) AI
2 53 (14.64%) Validation
3 48 (13.26%) Agile
4 46 (12.71%) ERP
5 44 (12.15%) Stakeholder Management
6 38 (10.50%) Biotechnology
7 37 (10.22%) Migration
8 33 (9.12%) Continuous Improvement
8 33 (9.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 30 (8.29%) Machine Learning
10 29 (8.01%) Problem-Solving
11 28 (7.73%) DevOps
11 28 (7.73%) Project Management
12 27 (7.46%) Roadmaps
13 25 (6.91%) Analytics
13 25 (6.91%) Data Pipeline
13 25 (6.91%) Decision-Making
13 25 (6.91%) Workshop Facilitation
14 24 (6.63%) Data Science
15 23 (6.35%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 61 (16.85%) Python
2 30 (8.29%) SQL
3 14 (3.87%) R
4 5 (1.38%) JavaScript
5 4 (1.10%) ABAP
5 4 (1.10%) TypeScript
6 3 (0.83%) Java
7 1 (0.28%) Bicep
7 1 (0.28%) C
7 1 (0.28%) C++
7 1 (0.28%) Cypher
7 1 (0.28%) DataWeave
7 1 (0.28%) Groovy
7 1 (0.28%) MATLAB
7 1 (0.28%) PL/SQL
7 1 (0.28%) SHACL
7 1 (0.28%) T-SQL
7 1 (0.28%) XPath
7 1 (0.28%) XQuery
Qualifications
1 38 (10.50%) Degree
2 10 (2.76%) PMI Certification
2 10 (2.76%) PMP
3 9 (2.49%) ACCA
3 9 (2.49%) CIMA
4 4 (1.10%) Master's Degree
4 4 (1.10%) Security Cleared
5 3 (0.83%) CISM
5 3 (0.83%) CISSP
5 3 (0.83%) CSPO
5 3 (0.83%) Microsoft Certification
5 3 (0.83%) SC Cleared
6 2 (0.55%) BPSS Clearance
6 2 (0.55%) HNC
6 2 (0.55%) HND
6 2 (0.55%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
7 1 (0.28%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 1 (0.28%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.28%) Azure Certification
7 1 (0.28%) CRISC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 47 (12.98%) GxP
2 17 (4.70%) GMP
2 17 (4.70%) QA
3 13 (3.59%) Data Quality
4 11 (3.04%) GDPR
4 11 (3.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 10 (2.76%) GRC
6 9 (2.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 7 (1.93%) PMO
8 6 (1.66%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 5 (1.38%) HIPAA
9 5 (1.38%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.83%) Accessibility
10 3 (0.83%) NIST
11 2 (0.55%) EU AI Act
11 2 (0.55%) GAMP
11 2 (0.55%) NIST 800
12 1 (0.28%) CDISC
12 1 (0.28%) ISO 13485
12 1 (0.28%) ITGC
System Software
1 6 (1.66%) Docker
2 5 (1.38%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.55%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (0.55%) vSphere
4 1 (0.28%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 12 (3.31%) Terraform
2 7 (1.93%) Kubernetes
3 1 (0.28%) FortiGate
3 1 (0.28%) Oracle RMAN
3 1 (0.28%) RSA Archer
3 1 (0.28%) WSUS
Vendors
1 88 (24.31%) SAP
2 26 (7.18%) Microsoft
3 11 (3.04%) Oracle
4 10 (2.76%) Google
5 7 (1.93%) Databricks
6 5 (1.38%) Ariba
6 5 (1.38%) LabWare
6 5 (1.38%) Palo Alto
6 5 (1.38%) Zscaler
7 4 (1.10%) LabVantage
7 4 (1.10%) Salesforce
7 4 (1.10%) ServiceNow
7 4 (1.10%) VMware
8 3 (0.83%) Adobe
8 3 (0.83%) Conga
8 3 (0.83%) MuleSoft
8 3 (0.83%) Palantir
9 2 (0.55%) Citrix
9 2 (0.55%) JD Edwards
9 2 (0.55%) NetApp