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 6 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 449 359 402
Rank change year-on-year -90 +43 +33
Contract jobs citing R 189 169 199
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.40% 0.58% 0.46%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.47% 1.69% 1.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 132 116 136
10th Percentile £316 £354 £339
25th Percentile £406 £406 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £533 £546
Median % change year-on-year -10.80% -2.43% -0.77%
75th Percentile £575 £675 £638
90th Percentile £650 £774 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £380
% change year-on-year -5.26% +25.00% -20.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 6 11
10th Percentile £22.38 £21.88 £25.36
25th Percentile £25.21 £22.63 £25.87
Median hourly rate £43.00 £25.16 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +70.91% -40.80% -39.29%
75th Percentile £60.25 £46.89 £53.58
90th Percentile £60.37 £56.25 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.42 £23.00 £25.36
% change year-on-year +10.50% -9.31% -55.90%

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 12,892 10,011 12,769
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 27.07% 34.15% 29.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,507 6,800 9,080
10th Percentile £355 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £418 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £713 £775 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £488
% change year-on-year - -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 563 252 487
10th Percentile £41.94 £22.55 £31.70
25th Percentile £54.55 £33.91 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +1.46% +2.67%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £79.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.56% +2.40% +3.09%

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 6 May 2026.

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 6 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for R in the UK

R
Top 14 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 6 May 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 -81 168 £475 -13.64% 216
London -35 96 £525 -4.55% 84
Work from Home -13 70 £525 +8.81% 52
UK excluding London -105 66 £450 -5.26% 169
North of England -49 17 £425 -6.59% 40
South East -42 15 £569 +55.29% 53
Midlands -69 14 £395 -10.07% 21
South West -33 11 £450 -32.84% 16
Yorkshire -48 10 £425 +21.43% 12
East Midlands -22 9 £385 -13.87% 11
East of England -43 9 £413 -36.54% 23
North West -41 6 £526 +15.66% 21
West Midlands -62 5 £438 +1.39% 10
North East - 1 £475 - 7

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 40 (21.16%) Apache Spark
2 12 (6.35%) Apache
3 5 (2.65%) SharePoint
4 4 (2.12%) Apache Superset
4 4 (2.12%) SAS
5 2 (1.06%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (1.06%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.53%) Confluence
6 1 (0.53%) R Markdown
Applications
1 20 (10.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.53%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.53%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 1 (0.53%) Salesforce CRM
1 1 (0.53%) SAP APO
1 1 (0.53%) SAP IBP
1 1 (0.53%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 71 (37.57%) Power Platform
2 52 (27.51%) AWS
3 49 (25.93%) Azure
4 17 (8.99%) GCP
5 8 (4.23%) Snowflake
6 7 (3.70%) Azure DevOps
6 7 (3.70%) Power Automate
6 7 (3.70%) PowerApps
7 6 (3.17%) Azure Data Factory
8 5 (2.65%) Microsoft Purview
9 3 (1.59%) Amazon S3
9 3 (1.59%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 3 (1.59%) Copilot Studio
9 3 (1.59%) dbt
9 3 (1.59%) OpenShift
9 3 (1.59%) Serverless
10 2 (1.06%) Amazon EMR
10 2 (1.06%) Amazon Kinesis
10 2 (1.06%) Azure Machine Learning
10 2 (1.06%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.53%) 2G
1 1 (0.53%) 5G
1 1 (0.53%) LTE
1 1 (0.53%) Mobile Backhaul
1 1 (0.53%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 70 (37.04%) Power BI
2 56 (29.63%) Tableau
3 35 (18.52%) Big Data
4 25 (13.23%) Hadoop
5 19 (10.05%) Data Warehouse
6 12 (6.35%) Looker
7 10 (5.29%) Power Query
7 10 (5.29%) Relational Database
8 7 (3.70%) Delta Lake
8 7 (3.70%) Metadata
8 7 (3.70%) Mixpanel
8 7 (3.70%) Spark SQL
9 6 (3.17%) Data Lake
9 6 (3.17%) NoSQL
10 5 (2.65%) SQL Server
11 4 (2.12%) Amazon Athena
11 4 (2.12%) Amazon Redshift
11 4 (2.12%) BigQuery
12 3 (1.59%) Data Mining
12 3 (1.59%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 9 (4.76%) Git
2 3 (1.59%) Jenkins
3 2 (1.06%) MLflow
4 1 (0.53%) RStudio
General
1 59 (31.22%) Analytical Skills
2 51 (26.98%) Social Skills
3 34 (17.99%) Finance
4 33 (17.46%) Public Sector
5 14 (7.41%) Pharmaceutical
6 12 (6.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 11 (5.82%) Marketing
8 6 (3.17%) Telecoms
9 4 (2.12%) Banking
9 4 (2.12%) Influencing Skills
9 4 (2.12%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.59%) Front Office
11 2 (1.06%) Documentation Skills
11 2 (1.06%) Financial Institution
11 2 (1.06%) Publishing
11 2 (1.06%) Retail
11 2 (1.06%) Social Science
12 1 (0.53%) Billing
12 1 (0.53%) Local Government
12 1 (0.53%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 58 (30.69%) Data Scientist
2 40 (21.16%) Analyst
3 34 (17.99%) Data Analyst
4 27 (14.29%) Senior
5 19 (10.05%) Data Engineer
6 17 (8.99%) Developer
7 16 (8.47%) Senior Data Scientist
8 11 (5.82%) Lead
9 9 (4.76%) Consultant
9 9 (4.76%) Technical Analyst
10 8 (4.23%) Architect
11 7 (3.70%) Lead Data Scientist
12 6 (3.17%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 6 (3.17%) Business Intelligence Developer
12 6 (3.17%) Data Consultant
12 6 (3.17%) Senior Analyst
13 5 (2.65%) Azure Engineer
13 5 (2.65%) Power BI Developer
13 5 (2.65%) SQL Analyst
13 5 (2.65%) SQL Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (7.94%) TensorFlow
2 12 (6.35%) Pandas
2 12 (6.35%) PyTorch
3 9 (4.76%) PySpark
3 9 (4.76%) scikit-learn
4 7 (3.70%) JSON
5 6 (3.17%) Keras
6 5 (2.65%) NumPy
6 5 (2.65%) Shiny
6 5 (2.65%) YAML
7 4 (2.12%) LangChain
7 4 (2.12%) Matplotlib
7 4 (2.12%) Seaborn
8 3 (1.59%) Kafka
8 3 (1.59%) Plotly
9 2 (1.06%) Apache Avro
9 2 (1.06%) NLTK
9 2 (1.06%) Node.js
9 2 (1.06%) SciPy
9 2 (1.06%) XGBoost
Miscellaneous
1 16 (8.47%) Algorithms
2 9 (4.76%) CRISPR
3 8 (4.23%) Cloud Native
4 7 (3.70%) Product Ownership
5 5 (2.65%) Data Protection Act
5 5 (2.65%) Self-Motivation
6 4 (2.12%) Multi-touch
7 3 (1.59%) AI Agents
7 3 (1.59%) Credit Risk
7 3 (1.59%) Data Structures
7 3 (1.59%) Hybrid Cloud
7 3 (1.59%) Legacy Systems
7 3 (1.59%) Management Information System
7 3 (1.59%) Onboarding
8 2 (1.06%) Analytical Mindset
8 2 (1.06%) Derivative
8 2 (1.06%) Distributed Computing
8 2 (1.06%) Distributed Systems
8 2 (1.06%) Mainframe
9 1 (0.53%) Data Fabric
Operating Systems
1 3 (1.59%) Linux
2 2 (1.06%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 100 (52.91%) Data Science
2 98 (51.85%) Analytics
3 84 (44.44%) Visualisation
4 71 (37.57%) Machine Learning
5 69 (36.51%) Business Intelligence
6 58 (30.69%) Decision-Making
7 53 (28.04%) Data Pipeline
8 47 (24.87%) Actionable Insight
8 47 (24.87%) Problem-Solving
9 46 (24.34%) Data Visualisation
10 39 (20.63%) Statistical Modelling
11 38 (20.11%) Agile
12 34 (17.99%) AI
13 33 (17.46%) Data Analytics
13 33 (17.46%) Data Modelling
13 33 (17.46%) Statistics
14 32 (16.93%) Data Analysis
14 32 (16.93%) Mathematics
14 32 (16.93%) Validation
15 31 (16.40%) Statistical Analysis
Programming Languages
1 181 (95.77%) Python
2 137 (72.49%) SQL
3 16 (8.47%) Java
4 11 (5.82%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 9 (4.76%) C++
6 8 (4.23%) Scala
7 7 (3.70%) C#
8 6 (3.17%) JavaScript
9 3 (1.59%) TypeScript
10 2 (1.06%) Ada
10 2 (1.06%) VBA
11 1 (0.53%) LookML
11 1 (0.53%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 50 (26.46%) Security Cleared
2 43 (22.75%) SC Cleared
3 33 (17.46%) Degree
4 7 (3.70%) Computer Science Degree
5 6 (3.17%) Master's Degree
5 6 (3.17%) Microsoft Certification
5 6 (3.17%) PhD
6 5 (2.65%) BPSS Clearance
7 3 (1.59%) Azure Certification
8 2 (1.06%) Tableau Certification
9 1 (0.53%) CTC Cleared
9 1 (0.53%) DBS Check
9 1 (0.53%) DV Cleared
9 1 (0.53%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (11.64%) Data Quality
2 10 (5.29%) Actionable Recommendations
3 7 (3.70%) GDPR
3 7 (3.70%) QA
4 3 (1.59%) Accessibility
5 2 (1.06%) PCI DSS
5 2 (1.06%) WCAG
6 1 (0.53%) MiFID
6 1 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 4 (2.12%) Docker
2 2 (1.06%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 9 (4.76%) Kubernetes
2 8 (4.23%) Terraform
Vendors
1 21 (11.11%) Databricks
2 18 (9.52%) Microsoft
3 7 (3.70%) Amplitude
4 5 (2.65%) Google
4 5 (2.65%) OpenAI
5 3 (1.59%) Informatica
5 3 (1.59%) Oracle
5 3 (1.59%) Red Hat
5 3 (1.59%) ServiceNow
6 2 (1.06%) Pega
6 2 (1.06%) SAP
6 2 (1.06%) Splunk
7 1 (0.53%) Adobe
7 1 (0.53%) Alteryx
7 1 (0.53%) Cognos
7 1 (0.53%) Salesforce
7 1 (0.53%) UiPath