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

6 months to
10 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 349 245 287
Rank change year-on-year -104 +42 +30
Contract jobs citing Pharmaceutical 360 349 311
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.66% 1.06% 0.81%
As % of the General category 1.19% 1.66% 1.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 185 231 172
10th Percentile £288 £375 £365
25th Percentile £389 £481 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -17.39% +4.55% +6.02%
75th Percentile £620 £688 £614
90th Percentile £683 £760 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £580 £525
% change year-on-year -22.41% +10.48% +4.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 11 17
10th Percentile £16.42 £18.87 £21.25
25th Percentile £21.50 £34.25 £35.00
Median hourly rate £38.72 £51.80 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -25.24% +29.49% +77.54%
75th Percentile £89.06 £97.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £97.50 - £82.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.56 £18.87 £41.44
% change year-on-year +77.86% -54.46% +88.36%

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 30,281 20,994 22,109
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.57% 63.64% 57.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,811 12,998 13,405
10th Percentile £313 £275 £288
25th Percentile £419 £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 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,436 1,187 1,144
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.50 £14.66
25th Percentile £16.46 £16.17 £17.44
Median hourly rate £30.00 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +19.28% -32.93% +36.36%
75th Percentile £55.00 £50.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.75 £70.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £21.40 £38.12
% change year-on-year +40.19% -43.86% +46.76%

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 10 September 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 10 September 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 10 September 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 -118 273 £500 -9.09% 458
Work from Home -1 167 £525 +3.96% 165
London -22 148 £525 -4.55% 203
UK excluding London -148 105 £450 -22.41% 304
East of England -53 32 £450 -22.41% 34
North of England -99 25 £450 -33.33% 78
South East -54 23 £521 -1.65% 88
North West -89 16 £475 -29.63% 56
South West -35 12 £334 -55.50% 21
Wales -11 6 £175 -42.71% 8
North East -42 5 £200 - 8
Yorkshire -42 4 £450 +38.46% 15
Midlands -53 4 £450 -14.29% 53
Scotland - 3 £425 - 23
East Midlands -18 1 £450 -14.29% 23
West Midlands -43 1 - - 30

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 (2.22%) 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%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.28%) CMS
6 1 (0.28%) Confluence
Applications
1 14 (3.89%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (3.06%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (2.22%) 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
6 2 (0.56%) Windchill
7 1 (0.28%) Chatbot
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%) ENOVIA
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
5 2 (0.56%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.28%) Bankmaster
Cloud Services
1 44 (12.22%) AWS
2 42 (11.67%) Azure
3 18 (5.00%) Power Platform
4 17 (4.72%) GCP
4 17 (4.72%) SaaS
5 16 (4.44%) Snowflake
6 14 (3.89%) Azure DevOps
7 12 (3.33%) GitHub
8 9 (2.50%) Microsoft 365
9 8 (2.22%) dbt
9 8 (2.22%) Veeva
10 7 (1.94%) GitHub Actions
11 5 (1.39%) Azure AI
11 5 (1.39%) Cloud Run
11 5 (1.39%) Figma
11 5 (1.39%) Serverless
12 4 (1.11%) AWS CloudFormation
12 4 (1.11%) Dynamics 365
13 3 (0.83%) AWS Direct Connect
13 3 (0.83%) AWS Lambda
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%) DMZ
6 1 (0.28%) NGFW
6 1 (0.28%) SSL
6 1 (0.28%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (5.00%) Power BI
2 10 (2.78%) Data Warehouse
3 8 (2.22%) Metadata
4 7 (1.94%) Neo4j
5 5 (1.39%) MySQL
5 5 (1.39%) PostgreSQL
5 5 (1.39%) Relational Database
5 5 (1.39%) SAP BW
5 5 (1.39%) SAP HANA
5 5 (1.39%) Tableau
6 4 (1.11%) Data Lake
6 4 (1.11%) NoSQL
7 3 (0.83%) BigQuery
7 3 (0.83%) Data Mining
7 3 (0.83%) DynamoDB
7 3 (0.83%) Oracle Database
7 3 (0.83%) Semantic Layer
8 2 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
8 2 (0.56%) Pinecone
8 2 (0.56%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 15 (4.17%) JIRA
2 14 (3.89%) Git
3 6 (1.67%) Jenkins
4 3 (0.83%) Cypress.io
5 2 (0.56%) Bitbucket
5 2 (0.56%) GitLab
5 2 (0.56%) Visual Studio
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
1 117 (32.50%) Social Skills
2 74 (20.56%) Manufacturing
3 57 (15.83%) Finance
4 55 (15.28%) Analytical Skills
5 14 (3.89%) Legal
6 13 (3.61%) Marketing
6 13 (3.61%) Organisational Skills
6 13 (3.61%) Retail
7 12 (3.33%) Presentation Skills
8 8 (2.22%) Banking
8 8 (2.22%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (2.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 6 (1.67%) Advertising
9 6 (1.67%) Billing
9 6 (1.67%) Influencing Skills
9 6 (1.67%) Law
9 6 (1.67%) Public Sector
10 5 (1.39%) Automotive
10 5 (1.39%) Health Technology
10 5 (1.39%) Public Speaking
Job Titles
1 42 (11.67%) Analyst
2 38 (10.56%) Consultant
3 37 (10.28%) Project Manager
4 33 (9.17%) Senior
5 28 (7.78%) Lead
6 25 (6.94%) Architect
7 24 (6.67%) Business Analyst
8 22 (6.11%) SAP Consultant
9 16 (4.44%) Data Engineer
10 15 (4.17%) Developer
11 10 (2.78%) Data Analyst
11 10 (2.78%) Product Owner
12 9 (2.50%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
13 7 (1.94%) AWS Engineer
13 7 (1.94%) SAP Manager
13 7 (1.94%) Solutions Architect
14 6 (1.67%) Data Business Analyst
14 6 (1.67%) Network Engineer
14 6 (1.67%) SAP Architect
14 6 (1.67%) Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (5.00%) REST
2 14 (3.89%) Terraform
3 9 (2.50%) React
4 7 (1.94%) PyTorch
5 6 (1.67%) FastAPI
6 5 (1.39%) .NET
6 5 (1.39%) SOAP
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%) Middleware
7 4 (1.11%) RESTful
7 4 (1.11%) SAP Fiori
7 4 (1.11%) SAPUI5
7 4 (1.11%) SQLAlchemy
7 4 (1.11%) TensorFlow
7 4 (1.11%) XML
8 3 (0.83%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 132 (36.67%) Life Science
2 22 (6.11%) Product Ownership
3 18 (5.00%) FMCG
4 14 (3.89%) Cloud Native
4 14 (3.89%) LIMS
5 13 (3.61%) Data Structures
6 12 (3.33%) Operational Technology
7 10 (2.78%) CRISPR
8 9 (2.50%) Biopharmaceutical
8 9 (2.50%) Data Protection Act
8 9 (2.50%) Management Information System
9 8 (2.22%) Analytical Mindset
9 8 (2.22%) NHS
10 7 (1.94%) Onboarding
10 7 (1.94%) SCADA
11 6 (1.67%) Genomics
11 6 (1.67%) Self-Motivation
12 5 (1.39%) AI Agents
12 5 (1.39%) Enterprise Software
12 5 (1.39%) Manufacturing Execution System
Operating Systems
1 25 (6.94%) Windows
2 11 (3.06%) Windows Server
3 4 (1.11%) Apple iOS
4 2 (0.56%) Linux
5 1 (0.28%) Android
5 1 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.28%) VMS
5 1 (0.28%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 79 (21.94%) Stakeholder Management
2 70 (19.44%) AI
3 61 (16.94%) Agile
4 60 (16.67%) Validation
5 55 (15.28%) Problem-Solving
6 44 (12.22%) Biotechnology
7 43 (11.94%) Continuous Improvement
8 41 (11.39%) Migration
9 40 (11.11%) Analytics
10 35 (9.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 33 (9.17%) CI/CD
11 33 (9.17%) Roadmaps
12 32 (8.89%) Data Governance
12 32 (8.89%) Project Management
13 29 (8.06%) DevOps
13 29 (8.06%) ERP
14 28 (7.78%) Data Pipeline
14 28 (7.78%) Machine Learning
15 26 (7.22%) Data Modelling
15 26 (7.22%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 57 (15.83%) Python
2 28 (7.78%) SQL
3 9 (2.50%) R
4 7 (1.94%) Java
5 6 (1.67%) ABAP
5 6 (1.67%) 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
8 2 (0.56%) Korn
9 1 (0.28%) Apex Code
9 1 (0.28%) Bicep
9 1 (0.28%) Gremlin
9 1 (0.28%) Groovy
9 1 (0.28%) SPARQL
9 1 (0.28%) T-SQL
9 1 (0.28%) XPath
9 1 (0.28%) XQuery
Qualifications
1 53 (14.72%) Degree
2 14 (3.89%) PMI Certification
2 14 (3.89%) PMP
3 10 (2.78%) Security Cleared
4 6 (1.67%) SC Cleared
5 5 (1.39%) BPSS Clearance
5 5 (1.39%) CSPO
5 5 (1.39%) DBS Check
5 5 (1.39%) Master's Degree
5 5 (1.39%) Microsoft Certification
6 4 (1.11%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 3 (0.83%) CAPM
7 3 (0.83%) CISM
7 3 (0.83%) CISSP
7 3 (0.83%) MCITP
7 3 (0.83%) Postgraduate
7 3 (0.83%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
8 2 (0.56%) Chartered Engineer
8 2 (0.56%) Cisco Certification
8 2 (0.56%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 55 (15.28%) GxP
2 26 (7.22%) Data Quality
3 20 (5.56%) QA
4 15 (4.17%) GMP
5 14 (3.89%) 21 CFR Part 11
6 13 (3.61%) GDPR
7 11 (3.06%) GRC
7 11 (3.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 8 (2.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 6 (1.67%) HIPAA
9 6 (1.67%) PMO
10 5 (1.39%) PCI DSS
11 3 (0.83%) EU AI Act
11 3 (0.83%) GAMP
11 3 (0.83%) NIST
12 1 (0.28%) Accessibility
12 1 (0.28%) NCSC
12 1 (0.28%) NEBOSH
12 1 (0.28%) NIST 800
12 1 (0.28%) SLA
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%) Functional Safety
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 72 (20.00%) SAP
2 30 (8.33%) Microsoft
3 11 (3.06%) VMware
4 10 (2.78%) Oracle
5 8 (2.22%) Ariba
5 8 (2.22%) Databricks
5 8 (2.22%) ServiceNow
6 7 (1.94%) Google
6 7 (1.94%) Palo Alto
6 7 (1.94%) Zscaler
7 6 (1.67%) Rockwell
7 6 (1.67%) Salesforce
8 5 (1.39%) Citrix
8 5 (1.39%) Foundry
9 4 (1.11%) JD Edwards
9 4 (1.11%) LabVantage
10 3 (0.83%) Conga
11 2 (0.56%) Informatica
11 2 (0.56%) NetApp
11 2 (0.56%) Palantir