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

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 379 253 270
Rank change year-on-year -126 +17 +25
Contract jobs citing Pharmaceutical 342 355 327
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.63% 1.07% 0.86%
As % of the General category 1.11% 1.70% 1.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 162 235 179
10th Percentile £238 £369 £400
25th Percentile £400 £475 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £516 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -10.22% +4.55% +7.32%
75th Percentile £638 £688 £610
90th Percentile £738 £750 £678
UK excluding London median daily rate £438 £581 £535
% change year-on-year -24.70% +8.60% +5.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 12 17
10th Percentile £16.38 £18.87 £21.25
25th Percentile £21.50 £41.66 £26.00
Median hourly rate £40.61 £51.80 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.59% +47.99% +75.00%
75th Percentile £55.25 £97.50 £40.00
90th Percentile £97.50 - £57.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.72 £18.87 £32.50
% change year-on-year +105.19% -41.94% +62.50%

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 30,759 20,913 22,159
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 56.39% 63.27% 58.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,866 13,017 13,104
10th Percentile £313 £275 £281
25th Percentile £420 £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 £740 £738 £767
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £483
% change year-on-year +5.26% -1.66% -3.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,720 1,230 965
10th Percentile £13.48 £13.57 £14.73
25th Percentile £16.01 £16.19 £17.00
Median hourly rate £27.50 £25.08 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.67% -24.02% +20.00%
75th Percentile £53.75 £45.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £21.39 £31.97
% change year-on-year +28.56% -33.09% +21.79%

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 8 October 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 8 October 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 8 October 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 -100 276 £500 -9.83% 1,005
Work from Home -35 146 £530 +3.92% 351
London -50 142 £528 -4.09% 435
UK excluding London -114 125 £438 -24.70% 590
North of England -71 37 £438 -35.19% 150
South East -57 28 £460 -20.83% 147
East of England -62 23 £425 -26.72% 97
North West -66 23 £475 -29.63% 90
South West -30 13 £334 -55.50% 46
Midlands -39 12 £750 +42.86% 86
Yorkshire -29 7 £450 +38.46% 36
North East -33 7 £200 - 24
West Midlands - 7 - - 46
Wales -8 6 £175 -42.71% 21
Scotland -12 6 £515 -6.36% 35
East Midlands -11 3 £750 +42.86% 39

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 8 (2.34%) SharePoint
2 5 (1.46%) IIS
2 5 (1.46%) SAS
3 4 (1.17%) FactoryTalk
4 3 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.58%) Apache
5 2 (0.58%) Confluence
6 1 (0.29%) Documentum
Applications
1 12 (3.51%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (2.34%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (1.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.88%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.58%) Windchill
6 1 (0.29%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 54 (15.79%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (2.05%) SAP QM
3 4 (1.17%) SAP FI
3 4 (1.17%) SAP IBP
3 4 (1.17%) SAP SD
3 4 (1.17%) TrackWise
4 3 (0.88%) SAP CO
4 3 (0.88%) SAP ERP
4 3 (0.88%) SAP FI/CO
4 3 (0.88%) SAP MDG
4 3 (0.88%) SAP PP
5 2 (0.58%) ENOVIA
5 2 (0.58%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.58%) SAP GRC
5 2 (0.58%) SAP GTS
5 2 (0.58%) SAP PM
5 2 (0.58%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.29%) OpenText VIM for SAP
6 1 (0.29%) SAP EWM
6 1 (0.29%) SAP MII
Cloud Services
1 41 (11.99%) Azure
2 37 (10.82%) AWS
3 20 (5.85%) Power Platform
4 18 (5.26%) GCP
4 18 (5.26%) Snowflake
5 16 (4.68%) Azure DevOps
5 16 (4.68%) GitHub
6 13 (3.80%) SaaS
7 11 (3.22%) GitHub Actions
7 11 (3.22%) Veeva
8 9 (2.63%) Microsoft 365
9 8 (2.34%) dbt
10 6 (1.75%) Serverless
11 5 (1.46%) Cloud Run
12 4 (1.17%) Amazon S3
12 4 (1.17%) AWS CloudFormation
12 4 (1.17%) AWS Lambda
12 4 (1.17%) Azure AI
12 4 (1.17%) Smartsheet
13 3 (0.88%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 9 (2.63%) Firewall
2 8 (2.34%) DNS
3 7 (2.05%) VLAN
4 6 (1.75%) Network Security
5 5 (1.46%) DHCP
5 5 (1.46%) HTTPS
5 5 (1.46%) TCP/IP
6 3 (0.88%) WAN
7 2 (0.58%) VPN
7 2 (0.58%) X.21
8 1 (0.29%) CTI
8 1 (0.29%) DMZ
8 1 (0.29%) NGFW
8 1 (0.29%) PBX
8 1 (0.29%) Unified Communications
8 1 (0.29%) VoIP
8 1 (0.29%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (5.85%) Power BI
2 10 (2.92%) Data Warehouse
3 9 (2.63%) SAP BW
3 9 (2.63%) SAP HANA
4 8 (2.34%) Metadata
4 8 (2.34%) Neo4j
5 6 (1.75%) Relational Database
5 6 (1.75%) Tableau
6 5 (1.46%) MySQL
6 5 (1.46%) PostgreSQL
7 4 (1.17%) Data Lake
7 4 (1.17%) Data Mining
7 4 (1.17%) NoSQL
7 4 (1.17%) Oracle Database
8 3 (0.88%) Amazon Athena
8 3 (0.88%) BigQuery
8 3 (0.88%) DynamoDB
8 3 (0.88%) Semantic Layer
9 2 (0.58%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.58%) SAP Data Services
Development Applications
1 14 (4.09%) Git
2 11 (3.22%) JIRA
3 8 (2.34%) Jenkins
4 3 (0.88%) GitLab
5 2 (0.58%) Bitbucket
5 2 (0.58%) Cypress.io
5 2 (0.58%) Visual Studio
6 1 (0.29%) LSMW
6 1 (0.29%) Postman
6 1 (0.29%) ScriptRunner
6 1 (0.29%) TestRail
6 1 (0.29%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 114 (33.33%) Social Skills
2 84 (24.56%) Manufacturing
3 56 (16.37%) Finance
4 52 (15.20%) Analytical Skills
5 18 (5.26%) Legal
6 15 (4.39%) Retail
7 12 (3.51%) Marketing
7 12 (3.51%) Organisational Skills
8 10 (2.92%) Banking
9 8 (2.34%) Presentation Skills
10 7 (2.05%) Documentation Skills
10 7 (2.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 7 (2.05%) Public Sector
11 5 (1.46%) Influencing Skills
12 4 (1.17%) Automotive
12 4 (1.17%) Law
13 3 (0.88%) Aerospace
13 3 (0.88%) Billing
13 3 (0.88%) General Ledger
13 3 (0.88%) Health Technology
Job Titles
1 44 (12.87%) Analyst
2 38 (11.11%) Senior
3 37 (10.82%) Consultant
4 35 (10.23%) Architect
5 31 (9.06%) Lead
6 27 (7.89%) Project Manager
7 24 (7.02%) Business Analyst
8 19 (5.56%) SAP Consultant
9 17 (4.97%) Data Engineer
10 13 (3.80%) Developer
11 11 (3.22%) SAP Architect
12 9 (2.63%) Data Analyst
12 9 (2.63%) Solutions Architect
13 8 (2.34%) Network Engineer
13 8 (2.34%) Product Owner
13 8 (2.34%) SAP Manager
14 7 (2.05%) Data Business Analyst
14 7 (2.05%) SAP Analyst
14 7 (2.05%) Support Technician
15 6 (1.75%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (6.43%) REST
2 11 (3.22%) Terraform
3 9 (2.63%) SOAP
4 8 (2.34%) React
4 8 (2.34%) SAP Fiori
4 8 (2.34%) SAPUI5
5 6 (1.75%) Kafka
5 6 (1.75%) SAP Basis
5 6 (1.75%) SAP PI
6 5 (1.46%) .NET
6 5 (1.46%) FastAPI
6 5 (1.46%) Middleware
7 4 (1.17%) Hibernate
7 4 (1.17%) PyTorch
7 4 (1.17%) RESTful
7 4 (1.17%) SQLAlchemy
7 4 (1.17%) XML
8 3 (0.88%) EDI
8 3 (0.88%) LangChain
8 3 (0.88%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 134 (39.18%) Life Science
2 23 (6.73%) FMCG
3 20 (5.85%) Product Ownership
4 19 (5.56%) Cloud Native
5 12 (3.51%) Management Information System
5 12 (3.51%) Operational Technology
6 11 (3.22%) Data Structures
6 11 (3.22%) Onboarding
7 10 (2.92%) LIMS
8 8 (2.34%) Analytical Mindset
8 8 (2.34%) Biopharmaceutical
8 8 (2.34%) Data Protection Act
8 8 (2.34%) SCADA
9 7 (2.05%) CRISPR
9 7 (2.05%) Genomics
10 6 (1.75%) AI Agents
10 6 (1.75%) Enterprise Software
10 6 (1.75%) Greenfield Project
10 6 (1.75%) NHS
11 5 (1.46%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 24 (7.02%) Windows
2 9 (2.63%) Windows Server
3 5 (1.46%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.29%) Android
4 1 (0.29%) Linux
4 1 (0.29%) VMS
4 1 (0.29%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 90 (26.32%) Stakeholder Management
2 72 (21.05%) AI
3 60 (17.54%) Problem-Solving
4 53 (15.50%) Validation
5 50 (14.62%) Agile
6 48 (14.04%) Analytics
6 48 (14.04%) Continuous Improvement
7 43 (12.57%) Biotechnology
8 41 (11.99%) Roadmaps
9 34 (9.94%) Migration
10 32 (9.36%) CI/CD
11 31 (9.06%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 30 (8.77%) DevOps
13 29 (8.48%) Data Governance
14 28 (8.19%) Decision-Making
15 27 (7.89%) ERP
15 27 (7.89%) Machine Learning
15 27 (7.89%) Project Management
16 26 (7.60%) Data Pipeline
16 26 (7.60%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 50 (14.62%) Python
2 31 (9.06%) SQL
3 6 (1.75%) ABAP
3 6 (1.75%) Java
3 6 (1.75%) R
4 5 (1.46%) JavaScript
5 4 (1.17%) PowerShell
6 3 (0.88%) C#
6 3 (0.88%) TypeScript
7 2 (0.58%) Cypher
7 2 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 2 (0.58%) Korn
8 1 (0.29%) Apex Code
8 1 (0.29%) Gremlin
8 1 (0.29%) Groovy
8 1 (0.29%) MATLAB
8 1 (0.29%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 59 (17.25%) Degree
2 12 (3.51%) DBS Check
2 12 (3.51%) PMI Certification
2 12 (3.51%) Security Cleared
3 11 (3.22%) PMP
4 7 (2.05%) SC Cleared
5 6 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
5 6 (1.75%) Master's Degree
6 5 (1.46%) CSPO
6 5 (1.46%) Microsoft Certification
6 5 (1.46%) PhD
7 4 (1.17%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 4 (1.17%) MCITP
8 3 (0.88%) CAPM
8 3 (0.88%) Chartered Engineer
8 3 (0.88%) CISM
8 3 (0.88%) CISSP
8 3 (0.88%) Computer Science Degree
8 3 (0.88%) Postgraduate
9 2 (0.58%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 51 (14.91%) GxP
2 29 (8.48%) Data Quality
3 19 (5.56%) QA
4 14 (4.09%) GMP
5 13 (3.80%) 21 CFR Part 11
6 10 (2.92%) GDPR
6 10 (2.92%) GRC
7 9 (2.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 7 (2.05%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 6 (1.75%) HIPAA
10 5 (1.46%) PCI DSS
11 4 (1.17%) NIST
11 4 (1.17%) PMO
12 3 (0.88%) GAMP
13 2 (0.58%) CDISC
13 2 (0.58%) EU AI Act
13 2 (0.58%) IEC 61508
14 1 (0.29%) Accessibility
14 1 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials
14 1 (0.29%) NIST 800
System Software
1 16 (4.68%) Docker
2 8 (2.34%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (2.05%) Active Directory
4 4 (1.17%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 10 (2.92%) Kubernetes
2 4 (1.17%) SCCM
3 2 (0.58%) Functional Safety
4 1 (0.29%) Apache Ranger
4 1 (0.29%) Grafana
4 1 (0.29%) Prometheus
4 1 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
4 1 (0.29%) Tivoli Storage Manager
4 1 (0.29%) WSUS
Vendors
1 75 (21.93%) SAP
2 35 (10.23%) Microsoft
3 10 (2.92%) Ariba
4 9 (2.63%) Databricks
4 9 (2.63%) Palo Alto
4 9 (2.63%) VMware
4 9 (2.63%) Zscaler
5 8 (2.34%) Google
5 8 (2.34%) Oracle
5 8 (2.34%) ServiceNow
6 7 (2.05%) Salesforce
7 6 (1.75%) Rockwell
8 5 (1.46%) Cisco
8 5 (1.46%) Citrix
9 4 (1.17%) Foundry
9 4 (1.17%) JD Edwards
10 3 (0.88%) Conga
11 2 (0.58%) Informatica
11 2 (0.58%) OpenText
11 2 (0.58%) SYSPRO