R Contract Job Trends

R
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring R skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 399 328 403
Rank change year-on-year -71 +75 -21
Contract jobs citing R 172 242 222
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.49% 0.67% 0.48%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.51% 2.09% 1.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 100 135 152
10th Percentile £308 £295 £308
25th Percentile £413 £341 £393
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £519
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -8.43% -12.82%
75th Percentile £600 £610 £641
90th Percentile £688 £683 £761
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £513
% change year-on-year +2.50% -2.44% +3.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 15 16
10th Percentile £24.55 £20.05 £25.06
25th Percentile £27.19 £20.12 £25.47
Median hourly rate £31.25 £21.50 £40.32
Median % change year-on-year +45.35% -46.67% +55.06%
75th Percentile £37.50 £26.50 £49.06
90th Percentile £51.25 £53.75 £58.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £20.24 £47.50
% change year-on-year +48.26% -57.40% +110.97%

All Programming Languages
UK

R falls under the Programming Languages category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring coding skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 11,385 11,556 14,527
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.16% 32.05% 31.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,515 7,421 10,352
10th Percentile £350 £350 £363
25th Percentile £413 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% -4.55% -2.65%
75th Percentile £623 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.71% -2.35% -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 339 280 444
10th Percentile £29.26 £22.00 £32.10
25th Percentile £46.13 £39.63 £47.50
Median hourly rate £62.50 £62.50 £60.36
Median % change year-on-year - +3.55% +0.59%
75th Percentile £67.50 £70.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

R
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing R relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

R job vacancy trend in the UK

R
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing R.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing R

R
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing R over the 6 months to 18 November 2025.

Daily rate histogram for R in the UK

R
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing R.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing R

R
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing R over the 6 months to 18 November 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for R in the UK

R
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 R within the UK over the 6 months to 18 November 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 -81 152 £500 +5.26% 574
London -34 77 £500 +5.04% 229
UK excluding London -41 73 £513 +2.50% 449
Work from Home +3 62 £550 +12.82% 105
South East +3 27 £513 - 122
East of England -10 13 £608 -2.72% 58
North of England -35 13 £479 +27.60% 107
North West -14 12 £492 +38.20% 59
Midlands -42 9 £525 +34.44% 78
Wales -1 6 £366 - 23
East Midlands -20 5 £375 +10.29% 32
West Midlands -33 4 £575 -6.05% 45
Scotland -1 3 £550 -12.00% 28
South West -12 2 £513 -29.31% 29
Yorkshire -38 1 £450 -2.70% 35

R
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 22 (12.79%) Apache Spark
2 21 (12.21%) SAS
3 4 (2.33%) Apache Airflow
3 4 (2.33%) Confluence
4 3 (1.74%) Apache
4 3 (1.74%) SharePoint
5 2 (1.16%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.58%) Luigi
Applications
1 20 (11.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (6.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 8 (4.65%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.58%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.58%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 2 (1.16%) Distributed Ledger
2 1 (0.58%) NEC Housing
2 1 (0.58%) Oracle BPM
2 1 (0.58%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 1 (0.58%) SAP ERP
2 1 (0.58%) SAP IBP
2 1 (0.58%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 58 (33.72%) Azure
2 54 (31.40%) Power Platform
3 32 (18.60%) AWS
4 25 (14.53%) GCP
5 12 (6.98%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 8 (4.65%) Azure Data Factory
6 8 (4.65%) Azure Machine Learning
6 8 (4.65%) Snowflake
7 5 (2.91%) Azure AKS
8 4 (2.33%) GitHub
9 3 (1.74%) Azure DevOps
9 3 (1.74%) Google Analytics
9 3 (1.74%) Power Automate
10 2 (1.16%) Adobe Analytics
10 2 (1.16%) Amazon EC2
10 2 (1.16%) Amazon S3
10 2 (1.16%) AWS Lambda
10 2 (1.16%) dbt
10 2 (1.16%) PowerApps
10 2 (1.16%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.16%) 2G
1 2 (1.16%) 5G
1 2 (1.16%) LTE
1 2 (1.16%) Mobile Backhaul
1 2 (1.16%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (31.40%) Power BI
2 40 (23.26%) Tableau
3 18 (10.47%) Big Data
3 18 (10.47%) Data Warehouse
4 15 (8.72%) Data Lake
4 15 (8.72%) Hadoop
5 10 (5.81%) Data Mining
6 9 (5.23%) NoSQL
7 7 (4.07%) Metadata
8 5 (2.91%) Looker
9 4 (2.33%) Amazon Redshift
9 4 (2.33%) Spotfire
10 3 (1.74%) Amazon QuickSight
10 3 (1.74%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
10 3 (1.74%) Impala
10 3 (1.74%) Relational Database
10 3 (1.74%) SQL Server
11 2 (1.16%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
11 2 (1.16%) Mixpanel
11 2 (1.16%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 9 (5.23%) Git
2 5 (2.91%) Jenkins
2 5 (2.91%) JIRA
3 4 (2.33%) MLflow
4 2 (1.16%) GoCD
4 2 (1.16%) SonarQube
4 2 (1.16%) Sonatype Nexus
4 2 (1.16%) TeamCity
5 1 (0.58%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.58%) Eclipse
5 1 (0.58%) Maven
5 1 (0.58%) RStudio
General
1 58 (33.72%) Social Skills
2 55 (31.98%) Analytical Skills
3 43 (25.00%) Finance
4 26 (15.12%) Marketing
5 18 (10.47%) Pharmaceutical
6 13 (7.56%) Banking
7 9 (5.23%) Public Sector
8 6 (3.49%) Manufacturing
8 6 (3.49%) Organisational Skills
9 5 (2.91%) Documentation Skills
9 5 (2.91%) Legal
10 4 (2.33%) Local Government
11 3 (1.74%) Telecoms
12 2 (1.16%) Digital Health
12 2 (1.16%) Retail
13 1 (0.58%) Agriculture
13 1 (0.58%) Agrochemical
13 1 (0.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 1 (0.58%) Influencing Skills
13 1 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 45 (26.16%) Data Scientist
2 35 (20.35%) Analyst
3 25 (14.53%) Data Analyst
4 17 (9.88%) Architect
5 16 (9.30%) Developer
6 14 (8.14%) Data Engineer
6 14 (8.14%) Senior
7 7 (4.07%) Lead
7 7 (4.07%) Senior Data Scientist
8 6 (3.49%) Business Analyst
8 6 (3.49%) Software Engineer
9 5 (2.91%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
9 5 (2.91%) Security Architect
10 4 (2.33%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
10 4 (2.33%) Consultant
10 4 (2.33%) Data Analytics Engineer
10 4 (2.33%) Data Science Developer
10 4 (2.33%) Machine Learning Engineer
10 4 (2.33%) Power BI Developer
10 4 (2.33%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (9.88%) TensorFlow
2 16 (9.30%) PyTorch
3 15 (8.72%) scikit-learn
4 14 (8.14%) Pandas
5 5 (2.91%) Kafka
6 4 (2.33%) Google JAX
6 4 (2.33%) JAX
6 4 (2.33%) Matplotlib
6 4 (2.33%) Seaborn
7 3 (1.74%) FastAPI
7 3 (1.74%) FHIR
7 3 (1.74%) JSON
7 3 (1.74%) NumPy
8 2 (1.16%) ATL
8 2 (1.16%) Hugging Face
8 2 (1.16%) PySpark
8 2 (1.16%) REST
8 2 (1.16%) Shiny
8 2 (1.16%) XML
9 1 (0.58%) Tidyverse
Miscellaneous
1 19 (11.05%) Algorithms
2 12 (6.98%) Credit Risk
3 8 (4.65%) Multi-touch
4 7 (4.07%) Data Structures
5 5 (2.91%) Cloud Native
5 5 (2.91%) Product Ownership
5 5 (2.91%) Self-Motivation
6 4 (2.33%) NHS
7 3 (1.74%) Analytical Mindset
7 3 (1.74%) Genomics
7 3 (1.74%) IoT
7 3 (1.74%) Smart Meter
8 2 (1.16%) Distributed Computing
8 2 (1.16%) Greenfield Project
8 2 (1.16%) Legacy Systems
8 2 (1.16%) Life Science
8 2 (1.16%) Management Information System
8 2 (1.16%) Mobile App
8 2 (1.16%) Security Posture
8 2 (1.16%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 5 (2.91%) Linux
2 2 (1.16%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 85 (49.42%) Data Science
2 80 (46.51%) Machine Learning
3 71 (41.28%) Analytics
4 63 (36.63%) Business Intelligence
5 55 (31.98%) Data Analysis
6 52 (30.23%) Visualisation
7 45 (26.16%) Data Modelling
8 42 (24.42%) Statistical Modelling
9 39 (22.67%) Problem-Solving
10 35 (20.35%) Decision-Making
11 31 (18.02%) AI
12 30 (17.44%) Data Visualisation
12 30 (17.44%) Validation
13 28 (16.28%) Actionable Insight
14 26 (15.12%) Data Governance
15 24 (13.95%) Agile
15 24 (13.95%) Computer Science
15 24 (13.95%) Statistics
16 22 (12.79%) Mathematics
17 20 (11.63%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 159 (92.44%) Python
2 110 (63.95%) SQL
3 16 (9.30%) Java
4 12 (6.98%) C++
5 11 (6.40%) MATLAB
6 6 (3.49%) Scala
7 5 (2.91%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 4 (2.33%) C
8 4 (2.33%) PL/SQL
9 3 (1.74%) Go
10 2 (1.16%) Bash
10 2 (1.16%) JavaScript
10 2 (1.16%) Rust
10 2 (1.16%) VBA
11 1 (0.58%) Fortran
11 1 (0.58%) Korn
11 1 (0.58%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 38 (22.09%) Degree
2 13 (7.56%) Security Cleared
3 12 (6.98%) PhD
4 11 (6.40%) Master's Degree
5 10 (5.81%) SC Cleared
6 8 (4.65%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (3.49%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (1.16%) Tableau Certification
9 1 (0.58%) ACCA
9 1 (0.58%) Azure Certification
9 1 (0.58%) CFA
9 1 (0.58%) CIMA
9 1 (0.58%) GIAC
9 1 (0.58%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (16.86%) Data Quality
2 8 (4.65%) GDPR
2 8 (4.65%) QA
3 5 (2.91%) Accessibility
4 4 (2.33%) EU AI Act
4 4 (2.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (1.16%) DICOM
5 2 (1.16%) NIST
6 1 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.58%) HL7
6 1 (0.58%) IFRS
6 1 (0.58%) IFRS 9
6 1 (0.58%) LOINC
6 1 (0.58%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (0.58%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 10 (5.81%) Docker
2 3 (1.74%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 1 (0.58%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 13 (7.56%) Kubernetes
2 2 (1.16%) Ansible
2 2 (1.16%) rkt
2 2 (1.16%) Terraform
3 1 (0.58%) Packer
3 1 (0.58%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 19 (11.05%) Microsoft
2 15 (8.72%) Databricks
3 9 (5.23%) Oracle
4 7 (4.07%) Google
4 7 (4.07%) Pega
5 5 (2.91%) SAP
6 4 (2.33%) TIBCO
7 3 (1.74%) Splunk
8 2 (1.16%) Adobe
8 2 (1.16%) Amplitude
8 2 (1.16%) Bloomberg
8 2 (1.16%) Cognos
8 2 (1.16%) Dynatrace
8 2 (1.16%) Refinitiv
8 2 (1.16%) ServiceNow
9 1 (0.58%) Autodesk
9 1 (0.58%) Cribl.io
9 1 (0.58%) NEC
9 1 (0.58%) OpenAI
9 1 (0.58%) TikTok