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 25 October 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 255 275 285
Rank change year-on-year +20 +10 +80
Contract jobs citing Pharmaceutical 354 314 423
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.05% 0.85% 0.88%
As % of the General category 1.67% 1.45% 1.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 232 167 291
10th Percentile £400 £395 £265
25th Percentile £500 £451 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £550 £513
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% +7.32% -2.38%
75th Percentile £688 £610 £600
90th Percentile £774 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £581 £525 £505
% change year-on-year +10.74% +3.96% -1.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 19 29
10th Percentile - £21.25 £17.14
25th Percentile £18.87 £25.09 £17.72
Median hourly rate £51.80 £32.50 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.37% +62.50% -35.48%
75th Percentile £97.50 £40.00 £53.15
90th Percentile - £56.00 £63.15
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.87 £32.50 £20.00
% change year-on-year -41.94% +62.50% -25.93%

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 common skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for common skills 21,211 21,720 28,362
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 63.07% 58.75% 59.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,204 12,780 19,066
10th Percentile £275 £282 £300
25th Percentile £400 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £644 £664
90th Percentile £738 £756 £756
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £477 £500
% change year-on-year -0.47% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,300 849 1,094
10th Percentile £13.60 £15.00 £14.18
25th Percentile £16.17 £17.00 £16.51
Median hourly rate £24.34 £30.83 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.04% +10.09% +12.00%
75th Percentile £43.75 £58.00 £57.33
90th Percentile £67.25 £70.25 £71.07
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.18 £29.00 £26.00
% change year-on-year -26.98% +11.54% +21.81%

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 25 October 2025.

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 25 October 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Pharmaceutical in the UK

Pharmaceutical
Top 15 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 25 October 2025. 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 +16 287 £575 +4.55% 332
UK excluding London -43 131 £581 +10.74% 252
London +52 113 £588 +6.82% 137
Work from Home +16 110 £525 -4.55% 138
East of England -18 53 £580 +10.48% 25
North of England -60 43 £675 +22.73% 57
North West -39 40 £675 +22.73% 37
South East +22 27 £578 +36.00% 116
South West - 5 £750 - 19
Wales +1 2 £224 - 2
East Midlands -9 2 £525 -12.50% 12
Midlands -34 2 £525 -12.50% 18
Yorkshire -35 2 £325 -40.91% 14
Scotland -6 1 £550 +60.58% 18
North East - 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 9 (2.54%) Confluence
2 4 (1.13%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (0.85%) Apache Spark
3 3 (0.85%) CMS
4 2 (0.56%) Oracle Workflow
4 2 (0.56%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.28%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.28%) Headless CMS
5 1 (0.28%) SAS
5 1 (0.28%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 6 (1.69%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (1.41%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.85%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.56%) Adobe After Effects
4 2 (0.56%) Adobe Illustrator
4 2 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.56%) Photoshop
4 2 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.56%) Weka
5 1 (0.28%) Adobe Premiere
5 1 (0.28%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 92 (25.99%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (2.82%) SAP MM
3 7 (1.98%) SAP CO
3 7 (1.98%) SAP MDG
4 6 (1.69%) SAP FI
4 6 (1.69%) SAP FI/CO
5 5 (1.41%) SAP PLM
5 5 (1.41%) SAP SD
6 4 (1.13%) SAP ERP
6 4 (1.13%) SAP IBP
6 4 (1.13%) SAP VC
7 3 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
7 3 (0.85%) SAP EWM
7 3 (0.85%) SAP PP
7 3 (0.85%) SAP QM
7 3 (0.85%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 2 (0.56%) PRMS
8 2 (0.56%) SAP SCM
8 2 (0.56%) SAP WM
9 1 (0.28%) SAP Travel Management
Cloud Services
1 47 (13.28%) AWS
2 26 (7.34%) Azure
3 22 (6.21%) Power Platform
4 20 (5.65%) GCP
5 19 (5.37%) GitHub
6 12 (3.39%) Cloud Run
7 8 (2.26%) Snowflake
7 8 (2.26%) Veeva
8 6 (1.69%) GitHub Actions
8 6 (1.69%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 5 (1.41%) Microsoft 365
10 4 (1.13%) Amazon S3
10 4 (1.13%) Figma
10 4 (1.13%) IaaS
10 4 (1.13%) SuccessFactors
11 3 (0.85%) Amazon EC2
11 3 (0.85%) AWS CloudTrail
11 3 (0.85%) Azure Data Factory
11 3 (0.85%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 3 (0.85%) Lucidchart
Communications & Networking
1 8 (2.26%) Network Security
2 3 (0.85%) Firewall
3 2 (0.56%) Wireless
4 1 (0.28%) Cisco ICM
4 1 (0.28%) DHCP
4 1 (0.28%) DNS
4 1 (0.28%) RFID
4 1 (0.28%) SD-WAN
4 1 (0.28%) Skype
4 1 (0.28%) SMS
4 1 (0.28%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.28%) VLAN
4 1 (0.28%) VPN
4 1 (0.28%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (6.21%) Power BI
2 13 (3.67%) SAP HANA
3 12 (3.39%) Data Lake
4 9 (2.54%) Data Warehouse
5 8 (2.26%) Metadata
6 7 (1.98%) Electronic Patient Records
7 3 (0.85%) BigQuery
7 3 (0.85%) NoSQL
8 2 (0.56%) Ataccama
8 2 (0.56%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (0.56%) MongoDB
8 2 (0.56%) Neo4j
8 2 (0.56%) Tableau
9 1 (0.28%) EDMS
9 1 (0.28%) Hadoop
9 1 (0.28%) QlikView
9 1 (0.28%) SAP BW
9 1 (0.28%) Spotfire
9 1 (0.28%) SQL Server
9 1 (0.28%) Text Mining
Development Applications
1 16 (4.52%) Git
1 16 (4.52%) JIRA
2 4 (1.13%) Jenkins
3 3 (0.85%) Cypress.io
4 2 (0.56%) CircleCI
4 2 (0.56%) Selenium
5 1 (0.28%) ERwin
5 1 (0.28%) GitLab
5 1 (0.28%) PHPUnit
5 1 (0.28%) SoapUI
5 1 (0.28%) Zephyr
General
1 105 (29.66%) Social Skills
2 75 (21.19%) Finance
3 68 (19.21%) Manufacturing
4 29 (8.19%) Analytical Skills
5 14 (3.95%) Marketing
6 11 (3.11%) Aerospace
7 10 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
8 9 (2.54%) Influencing Skills
9 8 (2.26%) Legal
10 4 (1.13%) German Language
10 4 (1.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 4 (1.13%) Public Sector
11 3 (0.85%) Health Technology
11 3 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.56%) Banking
12 2 (0.56%) Digital Health
12 2 (0.56%) Digital Healthcare
12 2 (0.56%) Italian Language
12 2 (0.56%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (0.56%) Wearables
Job Titles
1 47 (13.28%) Consultant
2 41 (11.58%) Lead
3 39 (11.02%) SAP Consultant
4 27 (7.63%) Developer
5 26 (7.34%) Project Manager
6 25 (7.06%) Analyst
7 22 (6.21%) Architect
8 18 (5.08%) Accountant
8 18 (5.08%) Systems Accountant
9 17 (4.80%) Python Developer
10 15 (4.24%) SAP Manager
11 14 (3.95%) Senior
12 13 (3.67%) Data Scientist
13 12 (3.39%) Business Analyst
13 12 (3.39%) Full-Stack Developer
14 11 (3.11%) Full-Stack Python Developer
14 11 (3.11%) IT Manager
14 11 (3.11%) SAP S/4HANA Consultant
15 10 (2.82%) Software Engineer
16 9 (2.54%) React Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (4.24%) FastAPI
1 15 (4.24%) pytest
1 15 (4.24%) React
1 15 (4.24%) SAP Fiori
2 11 (3.11%) LangGraph
3 5 (1.41%) Playwright
4 4 (1.13%) EDI
4 4 (1.13%) FHIR
5 3 (0.85%) IDoc
5 3 (0.85%) Kafka
5 3 (0.85%) MACH
5 3 (0.85%) pydantic
5 3 (0.85%) SailPoint
5 3 (0.85%) SAP PI
6 2 (0.56%) AWS Amplify
6 2 (0.56%) Jest
6 2 (0.56%) Next.js
6 2 (0.56%) Oracle Fusion
6 2 (0.56%) RESTful
6 2 (0.56%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 63 (17.80%) Life Science
2 21 (5.93%) Genomics
3 15 (4.24%) Cloud Native
4 10 (2.82%) FMCG
4 10 (2.82%) Operational Technology
5 8 (2.26%) Data Structures
5 8 (2.26%) Hybrid Cloud
6 7 (1.98%) NHS
6 7 (1.98%) Product Ownership
7 6 (1.69%) Legacy Systems
7 6 (1.69%) LIMS
7 6 (1.69%) Onboarding
8 5 (1.41%) Greenfield Project
8 5 (1.41%) Management Information System
9 4 (1.13%) Biopharmaceutical
9 4 (1.13%) Data Fabric
9 4 (1.13%) Mobile App
10 3 (0.85%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (0.85%) Marketing Technology
10 3 (0.85%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 10 (2.82%) Windows
2 8 (2.26%) Apple iOS
3 6 (1.69%) Linux
4 5 (1.41%) Windows 10
5 3 (0.85%) Android
6 2 (0.56%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 64 (18.08%) Stakeholder Management
2 55 (15.54%) AI
3 52 (14.69%) Problem-Solving
4 51 (14.41%) Agile
5 48 (13.56%) Analytics
5 48 (13.56%) Project Management
6 42 (11.86%) ERP
7 38 (10.73%) Change Management
7 38 (10.73%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 36 (10.17%) Machine Learning
9 35 (9.89%) Validation
10 32 (9.04%) Continuous Improvement
11 28 (7.91%) DevOps
11 28 (7.91%) Roadmaps
12 27 (7.63%) Data Governance
12 27 (7.63%) Migration
12 27 (7.63%) User Acceptance Testing
13 26 (7.34%) Biotechnology
14 25 (7.06%) Data Science
15 24 (6.78%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 68 (19.21%) Python
2 30 (8.47%) SQL
3 16 (4.52%) R
3 16 (4.52%) TypeScript
4 10 (2.82%) Java
5 5 (1.41%) ABAP
5 5 (1.41%) JavaScript
6 2 (0.56%) Bash
6 2 (0.56%) MATLAB
6 2 (0.56%) Ruby
7 1 (0.28%) C#
7 1 (0.28%) Groovy
7 1 (0.28%) Korn
7 1 (0.28%) Ladder Logic
7 1 (0.28%) PHP
7 1 (0.28%) Scala
7 1 (0.28%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 58 (16.38%) Degree
2 20 (5.65%) ACCA
2 20 (5.65%) CIMA
3 16 (4.52%) PMI Certification
3 16 (4.52%) PMP
4 12 (3.39%) Master's Degree
4 12 (3.39%) Security Cleared
5 9 (2.54%) SC Cleared
6 6 (1.69%) Computer Science Degree
7 5 (1.41%) CCNP
7 5 (1.41%) CCSA
7 5 (1.41%) Cisco Certification
8 3 (0.85%) Six Sigma Green Belt
9 2 (0.56%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (0.56%) CISA
9 2 (0.56%) CISM
9 2 (0.56%) CISSP
9 2 (0.56%) CompTIA Security+
9 2 (0.56%) SAP Certification
10 1 (0.28%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (9.89%) GxP
2 15 (4.24%) QA
3 13 (3.67%) Data Quality
4 11 (3.11%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 10 (2.82%) GMP
6 9 (2.54%) GDPR
7 7 (1.98%) APQC
8 6 (1.69%) PMO
9 5 (1.41%) HL7
10 4 (1.13%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 4 (1.13%) SLA
11 3 (0.85%) Accessibility
11 3 (0.85%) HIPAA
11 3 (0.85%) NCSC
12 2 (0.56%) IFRS
13 1 (0.28%) GRC
13 1 (0.28%) IEC 62304
13 1 (0.28%) ISO 13485
13 1 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 1 (0.28%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 23 (6.50%) Docker
2 5 (1.41%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 3 (0.85%) Lustre
4 2 (0.56%) Active Directory
4 2 (0.56%) GPFS
5 1 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 21 (5.93%) Kubernetes
2 9 (2.54%) Terraform
3 5 (1.41%) Ansible
4 4 (1.13%) SCCM
5 3 (0.85%) Packer
6 2 (0.56%) HP ALM
6 2 (0.56%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (0.56%) Puppet
6 2 (0.56%) Salt
7 1 (0.28%) Cisco CUCM
7 1 (0.28%) Cisco UCCE
7 1 (0.28%) Cisco UCCX
7 1 (0.28%) NetBackup
7 1 (0.28%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
7 1 (0.28%) TeamSite
Vendors
1 143 (40.40%) SAP
2 19 (5.37%) Google
3 18 (5.08%) Microsoft
4 17 (4.80%) Ariba
5 10 (2.82%) Oracle
5 10 (2.82%) ServiceNow
6 7 (1.98%) Zscaler
7 6 (1.69%) Palo Alto
8 5 (1.41%) Salesforce
8 5 (1.41%) Siemens
9 4 (1.13%) Workday
10 3 (0.85%) Adobe
10 3 (0.85%) Cisco
10 3 (0.85%) Remedy
10 3 (0.85%) Sparx
11 2 (0.56%) Apple
11 2 (0.56%) CyberArk
11 2 (0.56%) Databricks
11 2 (0.56%) HP
11 2 (0.56%) MEDITECH