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

6 months to
4 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 329 232 222
Rank change year-on-year -97 -10 +117
Contract jobs citing Pharmaceutical 336 345 470
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.74% 1.18% 1.07%
As % of the General category 1.33% 1.87% 1.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 219 219 293
10th Percentile £350 £378 £400
25th Percentile £388 £480 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +4.76% +5.00%
75th Percentile £600 £675 £600
90th Percentile £712 £820 £748
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £510
% change year-on-year -4.76% +2.94% +13.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 19 38
10th Percentile £16.77 £15.00 £17.72
25th Percentile £50.00 £19.50 £20.75
Median hourly rate £72.50 £32.50 £30.16
Median % change year-on-year +123.08% +7.76% +0.53%
75th Percentile £97.50 £76.38 £58.75
90th Percentile - £97.50 £62.34
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £28.34 £28.50
% change year-on-year +94.07% -0.56% +137.50%

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 25,320 18,411 25,671
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.07% 62.99% 58.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,770 11,794 16,301
10th Percentile £303 £300 £270
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £643 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,559 729 1,862
10th Percentile £13.72 £14.74 £12.78
25th Percentile £17.23 £18.51 £15.39
Median hourly rate £25.77 £29.00 £26.37
Median % change year-on-year -11.14% +9.97% -24.66%
75th Percentile £59.25 £57.62 £50.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.55 £27.35 £25.22
% change year-on-year -10.24% +8.47% -21.57%

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 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 4 April 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Pharmaceutical in the UK

Pharmaceutical
Top 11 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 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 -139 242 £513 -6.82% 232
Work from Home -8 144 £500 -9.09% 104
London -26 114 £540 -24.21% 88
UK excluding London -144 100 £500 -4.76% 169
East of England -45 45 £475 -13.64% 16
South East -29 28 £475 +123.53% 57
North of England -119 19 £558 +1.36% 55
North West -82 17 £558 +1.36% 39
South West - 6 £700 - 11
Scotland +5 2 - - 4
North East -18 2 - - 5

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 (1.49%) Confluence
2 4 (1.19%) Apache Airflow
2 4 (1.19%) Apache Spark
2 4 (1.19%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.60%) Mendix
3 2 (0.60%) 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 27 (8.04%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (3.57%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (2.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (2.08%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.60%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.60%) Adobe Illustrator
5 2 (0.60%) InDesign
5 2 (0.60%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.60%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.30%) Weka
Business Applications
1 68 (20.24%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (2.98%) SAP EWM
3 7 (2.08%) SAP MM
3 7 (2.08%) SAP PM
4 6 (1.79%) SAP PP
4 6 (1.79%) SAP QM
4 6 (1.79%) SAP SD
4 6 (1.79%) SAP WM
5 3 (0.89%) Dynamics CRM
5 3 (0.89%) SAP MDG
6 2 (0.60%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.60%) Sage X3
6 2 (0.60%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.60%) TrackWise
7 1 (0.30%) Cerner Millennium
7 1 (0.30%) SAP CS
7 1 (0.30%) SAP GTS
7 1 (0.30%) SAP LE
7 1 (0.30%) SAP MDM
7 1 (0.30%) SAP PP-PI
Cloud Services
1 40 (11.90%) AWS
2 36 (10.71%) Azure
3 21 (6.25%) GCP
4 15 (4.46%) Power Platform
5 14 (4.17%) Microsoft 365
6 13 (3.87%) SaaS
7 9 (2.68%) GitHub
7 9 (2.68%) Snowflake
8 7 (2.08%) dbt
9 6 (1.79%) Cloud Run
9 6 (1.79%) Figma
10 5 (1.49%) Azure DevOps
11 4 (1.19%) Microsoft Purview
11 4 (1.19%) Veeva
12 3 (0.89%) Amazon EKS
12 3 (0.89%) Amazon SageMaker
12 3 (0.89%) Azure AKS
12 3 (0.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 3 (0.89%) Dynamics 365
12 3 (0.89%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.89%) Ethernet
1 3 (0.89%) Firewall
1 3 (0.89%) Modbus
1 3 (0.89%) Network Security
1 3 (0.89%) RS-485
2 2 (0.60%) BGP
2 2 (0.60%) OSPF
2 2 (0.60%) Wireless
3 1 (0.30%) AMQP
3 1 (0.30%) Cisco ICM
3 1 (0.30%) HTTP
3 1 (0.30%) Junos
3 1 (0.30%) RFID
3 1 (0.30%) SSL
3 1 (0.30%) TCP/IP
3 1 (0.30%) Telepresence
3 1 (0.30%) VLAN
3 1 (0.30%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (4.46%) Power BI
2 10 (2.98%) Data Lake
3 7 (2.08%) Data Warehouse
4 5 (1.49%) Tableau
5 4 (1.19%) BigQuery
6 3 (0.89%) Electronic Patient Records
6 3 (0.89%) Metadata
7 2 (0.60%) Oracle Database
7 2 (0.60%) SAP Data Services
7 2 (0.60%) SAP HANA
7 2 (0.60%) SQL Server
7 2 (0.60%) 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%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.30%) PostgreSQL
8 1 (0.30%) Snowflake Schema
8 1 (0.30%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 17 (5.06%) Git
1 17 (5.06%) JIRA
2 3 (0.89%) Cypress.io
2 3 (0.89%) Jenkins
2 3 (0.89%) MLflow
3 2 (0.60%) GitLab
3 2 (0.60%) LSMW
3 2 (0.60%) Selenium
4 1 (0.30%) ER Studio
4 1 (0.30%) Hudson
4 1 (0.30%) Oracle APEX
4 1 (0.30%) Oracle Forms
General
1 76 (22.62%) Social Skills
2 68 (20.24%) Finance
3 66 (19.64%) Manufacturing
4 36 (10.71%) Analytical Skills
5 13 (3.87%) Marketing
6 10 (2.98%) Influencing Skills
6 10 (2.98%) Retail
7 9 (2.68%) Documentation Skills
7 9 (2.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 8 (2.38%) Organisational Skills
9 7 (2.08%) Advertising
9 7 (2.08%) Presentation Skills
10 6 (1.79%) Public Sector
11 5 (1.49%) Aerospace
11 5 (1.49%) Public Speaking
12 4 (1.19%) Billing
12 4 (1.19%) Health Technology
12 4 (1.19%) Wearables
13 3 (0.89%) Banking
13 3 (0.89%) Legal
Job Titles
1 39 (11.61%) Lead
2 26 (7.74%) Project Manager
2 26 (7.74%) Senior
3 22 (6.55%) Analyst
4 21 (6.25%) Consultant
5 16 (4.76%) Developer
6 15 (4.46%) Data Scientist
7 14 (4.17%) Data Engineer
8 13 (3.87%) SAP Consultant
9 12 (3.57%) Architect
9 12 (3.57%) Designer
10 11 (3.27%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 11 (3.27%) Python Developer
11 10 (2.98%) Business Analyst
12 8 (2.38%) Accountant
12 8 (2.38%) IT Manager
12 8 (2.38%) Product Owner
12 8 (2.38%) Quality Manager
12 8 (2.38%) Systems Accountant
13 7 (2.08%) IT Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (2.98%) FastAPI
2 8 (2.38%) pytest
3 6 (1.79%) LangGraph
4 5 (1.49%) IDoc
4 5 (1.49%) PyTorch
5 4 (1.19%) Playwright
5 4 (1.19%) React
5 4 (1.19%) SAP Fiori
5 4 (1.19%) TensorFlow
6 3 (0.89%) Google JAX
6 3 (0.89%) J2EE
6 3 (0.89%) JAX
6 3 (0.89%) Ray
6 3 (0.89%) REST
7 2 (0.60%) CSS
7 2 (0.60%) EDI
7 2 (0.60%) SAP Core Interface
7 2 (0.60%) Seaborn
7 2 (0.60%) SOAP
7 2 (0.60%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 65 (19.35%) Life Science
2 15 (4.46%) Product Ownership
3 14 (4.17%) FMCG
4 12 (3.57%) Data Structures
5 9 (2.68%) LIMS
6 8 (2.38%) Cloud Native
6 8 (2.38%) Onboarding
6 8 (2.38%) Self-Motivation
7 7 (2.08%) CRISPR
7 7 (2.08%) Data Protection Act
7 7 (2.08%) Enterprise Software
7 7 (2.08%) Genomics
7 7 (2.08%) NHS
8 5 (1.49%) Legacy Systems
9 4 (1.19%) AI Agents
9 4 (1.19%) Operational Technology
9 4 (1.19%) SCADA
10 3 (0.89%) Biopharmaceutical
10 3 (0.89%) Management Information System
11 2 (0.60%) Graphic Design
Operating Systems
1 12 (3.57%) Windows
2 3 (0.89%) Windows 10
3 2 (0.60%) Linux
3 2 (0.60%) Mac OS
3 2 (0.60%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.30%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.30%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 53 (15.77%) AI
2 50 (14.88%) Agile
3 46 (13.69%) ERP
3 46 (13.69%) Validation
4 40 (11.90%) Stakeholder Management
5 37 (11.01%) Machine Learning
6 34 (10.12%) Migration
7 33 (9.82%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 32 (9.52%) Biotechnology
9 29 (8.63%) Data Science
10 28 (8.33%) Problem-Solving
11 27 (8.04%) Analytics
11 27 (8.04%) Continuous Improvement
11 27 (8.04%) DevOps
11 27 (8.04%) Project Management
12 25 (7.44%) Workshop Facilitation
13 22 (6.55%) Data Pipeline
14 21 (6.25%) Data Governance
14 21 (6.25%) Data Migration
14 21 (6.25%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 60 (17.86%) Python
2 28 (8.33%) SQL
3 14 (4.17%) R
4 5 (1.49%) JavaScript
5 4 (1.19%) ABAP
5 4 (1.19%) TypeScript
6 3 (0.89%) Java
7 1 (0.30%) Bash
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 44 (13.10%) Degree
2 9 (2.68%) A+ Certification
2 9 (2.68%) ACCA
2 9 (2.68%) CIMA
3 8 (2.38%) Master's Degree
4 7 (2.08%) PMI Certification
4 7 (2.08%) PMP
5 3 (0.89%) HND
5 3 (0.89%) Microsoft Certification
5 3 (0.89%) Security Cleared
6 2 (0.60%) BPSS Clearance
6 2 (0.60%) HNC
6 2 (0.60%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
6 2 (0.60%) SC Cleared
7 1 (0.30%) CCA
7 1 (0.30%) Computer Science Degree
7 1 (0.30%) ECDL
7 1 (0.30%) ISTQB
7 1 (0.30%) OCP
7 1 (0.30%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (8.93%) GxP
2 16 (4.76%) QA
3 15 (4.46%) GMP
4 9 (2.68%) Data Quality
4 9 (2.68%) GDPR
5 7 (2.08%) PMO
6 5 (1.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 4 (1.19%) 21 CFR Part 11
7 4 (1.19%) Accessibility
7 4 (1.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 2 (0.60%) GAMP
8 2 (0.60%) GRC
8 2 (0.60%) NIST
9 1 (0.30%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.30%) HL7
9 1 (0.30%) ITGC
9 1 (0.30%) MiFID
9 1 (0.30%) NIST 800
9 1 (0.30%) SLA
9 1 (0.30%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 14 (4.17%) Docker
2 2 (0.60%) Slurm Workload Manager
2 2 (0.60%) VMware Infrastructure
2 2 (0.60%) vSphere
3 1 (0.30%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.30%) GPFS
3 1 (0.30%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 7 (2.08%) Kubernetes
2 6 (1.79%) Terraform
3 1 (0.30%) Ansible
3 1 (0.30%) Cisco UCCE
3 1 (0.30%) Cisco UCCX
3 1 (0.30%) FortiGate
3 1 (0.30%) HP ALM
3 1 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
3 1 (0.30%) Puppet
3 1 (0.30%) RSA Archer
3 1 (0.30%) Salt
3 1 (0.30%) SCCM
Vendors
1 94 (27.98%) SAP
2 39 (11.61%) Microsoft
3 15 (4.46%) Google
4 11 (3.27%) Oracle
5 7 (2.08%) Salesforce
5 7 (2.08%) SOTI
6 6 (1.79%) Databricks
7 5 (1.49%) Ariba
7 5 (1.49%) LabWare
7 5 (1.49%) ServiceNow
8 4 (1.19%) Cisco
9 3 (0.89%) Adobe
9 3 (0.89%) Cerner
9 3 (0.89%) Foundry
9 3 (0.89%) HP
9 3 (0.89%) IBM
9 3 (0.89%) MuleSoft
9 3 (0.89%) Palantir
9 3 (0.89%) VMware
10 2 (0.60%) Palo Alto