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

6 months to
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 366 260 282
Rank change year-on-year -106 +22 +20
Contract jobs citing Pharmaceutical 351 352 315
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.64% 1.07% 0.82%
As % of the General category 1.14% 1.68% 1.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 172 231 173
10th Percentile £263 £365 £400
25th Percentile £400 £475 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -13.04% +4.55% +6.02%
75th Percentile £638 £688 £600
90th Percentile £738 £750 £685
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £581 £525
% change year-on-year -22.55% +10.67% +3.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 36 11 16
10th Percentile £16.38 £18.87 £21.25
25th Percentile £20.31 £34.25 £27.31
Median hourly rate £38.72 £51.80 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -25.24% +29.49% +81.82%
75th Percentile £72.75 £97.50 £54.06
90th Percentile £97.50 - £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.72 £18.87 £40.00
% change year-on-year +105.19% -52.83% +100.00%

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 30,662 20,930 22,344
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 55.88% 63.43% 58.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,938 13,003 13,276
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 £738 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,585 1,216 1,061
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.50 £14.73
25th Percentile £16.25 £16.17 £17.25
Median hourly rate £29.50 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +17.30% -28.14% +27.27%
75th Percentile £54.50 £47.22 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £67.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.96 £21.39 £35.00
% change year-on-year +40.07% -38.89% +29.63%

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 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 25 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 25 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 -127 270 £500 -9.83% 955
Work from Home -10 159 £525 +3.96% 346
London -49 146 £525 -4.55% 404
UK excluding London -139 108 £450 -22.55% 591
North of England -80 29 £450 -33.33% 153
South East -66 26 £514 -11.57% 154
East of England -66 24 £425 -26.72% 87
North West -81 19 £475 -29.63% 96
South West -29 13 £334 -55.50% 38
Midlands -40 7 £750 +42.86% 89
Wales -14 6 £175 -42.71% 14
Yorkshire -33 5 £450 +38.46% 37
North East -39 5 £200 - 20
East Midlands -10 3 £750 +42.86% 38
Scotland -25 3 £425 -22.73% 39
West Midlands - 2 - - 51

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 (2.28%) SharePoint
2 5 (1.42%) IIS
3 4 (1.14%) FactoryTalk
3 4 (1.14%) SAS
4 3 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.57%) Apache
5 2 (0.57%) Confluence
6 1 (0.28%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.28%) CMS
Applications
1 12 (3.42%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (2.28%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (1.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (1.14%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.57%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.57%) Windchill
6 1 (0.28%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 52 (14.81%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (1.99%) SAP QM
3 5 (1.42%) SAP SD
4 4 (1.14%) SAP FI
4 4 (1.14%) SAP IBP
4 4 (1.14%) TrackWise
5 3 (0.85%) SAP CO
5 3 (0.85%) SAP ERP
5 3 (0.85%) SAP FI/CO
5 3 (0.85%) SAP MDG
5 3 (0.85%) SAP PP
6 2 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
6 2 (0.57%) ENOVIA
6 2 (0.57%) NetSuite
6 2 (0.57%) SAP GRC
6 2 (0.57%) SAP GTS
6 2 (0.57%) Teamcenter
7 1 (0.28%) OpenText VIM for SAP
7 1 (0.28%) SAP EWM
7 1 (0.28%) SAP MII
Cloud Services
1 44 (12.54%) Azure
2 40 (11.40%) AWS
3 19 (5.41%) Power Platform
4 18 (5.13%) GCP
5 17 (4.84%) Snowflake
6 16 (4.56%) Azure DevOps
7 15 (4.27%) GitHub
7 15 (4.27%) SaaS
8 10 (2.85%) GitHub Actions
8 10 (2.85%) Microsoft 365
9 9 (2.56%) Veeva
10 8 (2.28%) dbt
11 6 (1.71%) Serverless
12 5 (1.42%) Cloud Run
13 4 (1.14%) Amazon S3
13 4 (1.14%) AWS CloudFormation
13 4 (1.14%) AWS Lambda
13 4 (1.14%) Azure AI
13 4 (1.14%) Dynamics 365
14 3 (0.85%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 9 (2.56%) Firewall
2 8 (2.28%) DNS
3 7 (1.99%) VLAN
4 5 (1.42%) DHCP
4 5 (1.42%) HTTPS
4 5 (1.42%) Network Security
4 5 (1.42%) TCP/IP
5 3 (0.85%) WAN
6 2 (0.57%) VPN
6 2 (0.57%) X.21
7 1 (0.28%) DMZ
7 1 (0.28%) NGFW
7 1 (0.28%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (5.41%) Power BI
2 9 (2.56%) Data Warehouse
3 8 (2.28%) Metadata
3 8 (2.28%) Neo4j
3 8 (2.28%) SAP BW
3 8 (2.28%) SAP HANA
4 5 (1.42%) MySQL
4 5 (1.42%) PostgreSQL
4 5 (1.42%) Relational Database
4 5 (1.42%) Tableau
5 4 (1.14%) Data Lake
5 4 (1.14%) Data Mining
5 4 (1.14%) NoSQL
5 4 (1.14%) Oracle Database
6 3 (0.85%) Amazon Athena
6 3 (0.85%) BigQuery
6 3 (0.85%) DynamoDB
6 3 (0.85%) Semantic Layer
7 2 (0.57%) Amazon QuickSight
7 2 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 14 (3.99%) Git
2 12 (3.42%) JIRA
3 7 (1.99%) Jenkins
4 3 (0.85%) Bitbucket
4 3 (0.85%) GitLab
5 2 (0.57%) Cypress.io
5 2 (0.57%) Visual Studio
6 1 (0.28%) LSMW
6 1 (0.28%) Postman
6 1 (0.28%) ScriptRunner
6 1 (0.28%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.28%) TestRail
6 1 (0.28%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 117 (33.33%) Social Skills
2 79 (22.51%) Manufacturing
3 57 (16.24%) Finance
4 54 (15.38%) Analytical Skills
5 16 (4.56%) Retail
6 14 (3.99%) Legal
7 13 (3.70%) Organisational Skills
8 11 (3.13%) Marketing
8 11 (3.13%) Presentation Skills
9 8 (2.28%) Banking
9 8 (2.28%) Documentation Skills
10 7 (1.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 6 (1.71%) Public Sector
12 5 (1.42%) Automotive
12 5 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
12 5 (1.42%) Law
13 4 (1.14%) Billing
14 3 (0.85%) Advertising
14 3 (0.85%) Aerospace
14 3 (0.85%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 44 (12.54%) Analyst
2 39 (11.11%) Senior
3 38 (10.83%) Consultant
4 32 (9.12%) Lead
5 31 (8.83%) Architect
6 29 (8.26%) Project Manager
7 25 (7.12%) Business Analyst
8 19 (5.41%) SAP Consultant
9 17 (4.84%) Data Engineer
10 13 (3.70%) Developer
11 9 (2.56%) Data Analyst
11 9 (2.56%) SAP Architect
11 9 (2.56%) SAP Manager
12 8 (2.28%) Network Engineer
12 8 (2.28%) Product Owner
12 8 (2.28%) Solutions Architect
13 7 (1.99%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
13 7 (1.99%) AWS Engineer
13 7 (1.99%) Data Business Analyst
13 7 (1.99%) Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (5.98%) REST
2 13 (3.70%) Terraform
3 9 (2.56%) React
4 8 (2.28%) SOAP
5 7 (1.99%) SAP Fiori
5 7 (1.99%) SAPUI5
6 6 (1.71%) FastAPI
6 6 (1.71%) Kafka
7 5 (1.42%) .NET
7 5 (1.42%) Middleware
7 5 (1.42%) PyTorch
7 5 (1.42%) SAP Basis
7 5 (1.42%) SAP PI
8 4 (1.14%) Hibernate
8 4 (1.14%) RESTful
8 4 (1.14%) SQLAlchemy
8 4 (1.14%) XML
9 3 (0.85%) EDI
9 3 (0.85%) Jakarta EE
9 3 (0.85%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 135 (38.46%) Life Science
2 22 (6.27%) FMCG
3 19 (5.41%) Cloud Native
3 19 (5.41%) Product Ownership
4 14 (3.99%) LIMS
5 12 (3.42%) Operational Technology
6 10 (2.85%) Data Structures
6 10 (2.85%) Management Information System
6 10 (2.85%) Onboarding
7 9 (2.56%) Data Protection Act
8 8 (2.28%) Biopharmaceutical
8 8 (2.28%) CRISPR
9 7 (1.99%) Analytical Mindset
9 7 (1.99%) NHS
9 7 (1.99%) SCADA
10 6 (1.71%) AI Agents
10 6 (1.71%) Genomics
10 6 (1.71%) Greenfield Project
11 5 (1.42%) Enterprise Software
11 5 (1.42%) Manufacturing Execution System
Operating Systems
1 25 (7.12%) Windows
2 10 (2.85%) Windows Server
3 5 (1.42%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.28%) Android
4 1 (0.28%) Linux
4 1 (0.28%) VMS
4 1 (0.28%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 86 (24.50%) Stakeholder Management
2 71 (20.23%) AI
3 55 (15.67%) Problem-Solving
4 53 (15.10%) Agile
5 52 (14.81%) Validation
6 47 (13.39%) Analytics
7 46 (13.11%) Continuous Improvement
8 43 (12.25%) Biotechnology
9 39 (11.11%) Roadmaps
10 37 (10.54%) Migration
11 35 (9.97%) CI/CD
12 32 (9.12%) DevOps
12 32 (9.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 29 (8.26%) Data Governance
14 28 (7.98%) Data Pipeline
14 28 (7.98%) Machine Learning
15 27 (7.69%) Data Modelling
15 27 (7.69%) Decision-Making
15 27 (7.69%) ERP
16 26 (7.41%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 51 (14.53%) Python
2 29 (8.26%) SQL
3 7 (1.99%) Java
4 6 (1.71%) ABAP
4 6 (1.71%) JavaScript
4 6 (1.71%) R
5 4 (1.14%) PowerShell
5 4 (1.14%) TypeScript
6 3 (0.85%) C#
7 2 (0.57%) Cypher
7 2 (0.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 2 (0.57%) Korn
8 1 (0.28%) Apex Code
8 1 (0.28%) Bicep
8 1 (0.28%) Gremlin
8 1 (0.28%) Groovy
8 1 (0.28%) MATLAB
8 1 (0.28%) SPARQL
8 1 (0.28%) XPath
8 1 (0.28%) XQuery
Qualifications
1 54 (15.38%) Degree
2 12 (3.42%) PMI Certification
2 12 (3.42%) PMP
2 12 (3.42%) Security Cleared
3 8 (2.28%) DBS Check
4 7 (1.99%) SC Cleared
5 6 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
5 6 (1.71%) Microsoft Certification
6 5 (1.42%) CSPO
6 5 (1.42%) Master's Degree
7 4 (1.14%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 4 (1.14%) MCITP
8 3 (0.85%) CAPM
8 3 (0.85%) Chartered Engineer
8 3 (0.85%) CISM
8 3 (0.85%) CISSP
8 3 (0.85%) PhD
8 3 (0.85%) Postgraduate
9 2 (0.57%) Cisco Certification
9 2 (0.57%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 55 (15.67%) GxP
2 27 (7.69%) Data Quality
3 16 (4.56%) QA
4 15 (4.27%) GMP
5 13 (3.70%) GDPR
6 12 (3.42%) 21 CFR Part 11
7 11 (3.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 10 (2.85%) GRC
9 8 (2.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 6 (1.71%) HIPAA
10 6 (1.71%) PMO
11 5 (1.42%) PCI DSS
12 4 (1.14%) NIST
13 2 (0.57%) EU AI Act
13 2 (0.57%) GAMP
13 2 (0.57%) IEC 61508
14 1 (0.28%) Accessibility
14 1 (0.28%) ISO 14001
14 1 (0.28%) ISO 9001
14 1 (0.28%) SLA
System Software
1 16 (4.56%) Docker
2 8 (2.28%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (1.71%) Active Directory
4 4 (1.14%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.57%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 10 (2.85%) Kubernetes
2 4 (1.14%) SCCM
3 2 (0.57%) Functional Safety
4 1 (0.28%) Apache Ranger
4 1 (0.28%) Grafana
4 1 (0.28%) Prometheus
4 1 (0.28%) Single Sign-On
4 1 (0.28%) Tivoli Storage Manager
4 1 (0.28%) WSUS
Vendors
1 70 (19.94%) SAP
2 33 (9.40%) Microsoft
3 10 (2.85%) Ariba
3 10 (2.85%) VMware
4 9 (2.56%) Databricks
4 9 (2.56%) Oracle
4 9 (2.56%) Palo Alto
4 9 (2.56%) Zscaler
5 8 (2.28%) Google
6 7 (1.99%) ServiceNow
7 6 (1.71%) Rockwell
7 6 (1.71%) Salesforce
8 5 (1.42%) Citrix
9 4 (1.14%) Cisco
9 4 (1.14%) Foundry
9 4 (1.14%) JD Edwards
9 4 (1.14%) LabVantage
10 3 (0.85%) Conga
11 2 (0.57%) LabWare
11 2 (0.57%) SYSPRO