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 17 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 477 369 399
Rank change year-on-year -108 +30 +10
Contract jobs citing R 168 164 198
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.33% 0.55% 0.45%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.24% 1.63% 1.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 118 110 125
10th Percentile £275 £331 £313
25th Percentile £406 £406 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -7.89%
75th Percentile £575 £619 £625
90th Percentile £659 £726 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £438 £475 £419
% change year-on-year -7.89% +13.50% -19.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 5 17
10th Percentile £27.93 £24.33 -
25th Percentile £33.44 £26.32 £20.12
Median hourly rate £50.75 £37.50 £21.73
Median % change year-on-year +35.33% +72.57% -68.04%
75th Percentile £60.30 £58.75 £47.50
90th Percentile £60.40 £61.75 £63.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.00 £23.00 £20.24
% change year-on-year +86.96% +13.66% -68.87%

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 13,503 10,066 13,166
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.83% 33.91% 30.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,798 6,822 9,246
10th Percentile £358 £350 £350
25th Percentile £417 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.46% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
90th Percentile £715 £756 £765
UK excluding London median daily rate £489 £475 £489
% change year-on-year +2.91% -2.86% -2.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 554 235 542
10th Percentile £35.25 £25.98 £31.35
25th Percentile £53.53 £33.91 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -12.00% +2.97%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.63 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.85 £84.80 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +4.84% -4.62% +4.00%

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 17 June 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 17 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for R in the UK

R
Top 17 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 17 June 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 -117 148 £467 -7.80% 258
London -49 92 £525 -3.67% 64
Work from Home -38 65 £550 +13.99% 138
UK excluding London -112 52 £438 -7.89% 270
South East -56 13 £550 +35.38% 66
North of England -61 12 £425 -9.81% 51
South West -28 11 £450 -34.66% 44
East of England -35 10 £413 -36.54% 33
Yorkshire -49 9 £425 +1.49% 15
Midlands -66 3 £438 -2.45% 31
East Midlands -20 2 - - 20
North West -40 2 - - 27
Northern Ireland +3 1 - - 14
Scotland -12 1 - - 18
Wales -12 1 £490 +10.11% 16
West Midlands -62 1 £438 +4.48% 11
North East - 1 £475 - 9

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 34 (20.24%) Apache Spark
2 11 (6.55%) Apache
3 4 (2.38%) Apache Superset
4 3 (1.79%) Confluence
5 2 (1.19%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.60%) R Markdown
Applications
1 17 (10.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (1.19%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.60%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.60%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 1 (0.60%) SAP APO
1 1 (0.60%) SAP IBP
Cloud Services
1 54 (32.14%) Power Platform
2 50 (29.76%) AWS
3 42 (25.00%) Azure
4 14 (8.33%) Snowflake
5 11 (6.55%) GCP
6 6 (3.57%) Azure DevOps
7 3 (1.79%) Amazon S3
7 3 (1.79%) Azure Data Factory
7 3 (1.79%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 3 (1.79%) dbt
7 3 (1.79%) OpenShift
7 3 (1.79%) SaaS
7 3 (1.79%) Serverless
8 2 (1.19%) Amazon Bedrock
8 2 (1.19%) Amazon EKS
8 2 (1.19%) Amazon EMR
8 2 (1.19%) Amazon Kinesis
8 2 (1.19%) Cloud Functions
8 2 (1.19%) GitHub
8 2 (1.19%) Google Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.60%) DSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (32.14%) Tableau
2 53 (31.55%) Power BI
3 31 (18.45%) Big Data
4 22 (13.10%) Hadoop
5 17 (10.12%) Data Warehouse
6 9 (5.36%) Looker
6 9 (5.36%) Relational Database
7 7 (4.17%) Mixpanel
8 5 (2.98%) Data Lake
9 4 (2.38%) Amazon Redshift
9 4 (2.38%) NoSQL
9 4 (2.38%) Power Query
9 4 (2.38%) SQL Server
10 3 (1.79%) Amazon Athena
10 3 (1.79%) Metadata
10 3 (1.79%) RDBMS
10 3 (1.79%) Snowflake Schema
10 3 (1.79%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 2 (1.19%) Pinecone
11 2 (1.19%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 4 (2.38%) Git
2 2 (1.19%) JIRA
2 2 (1.19%) MLflow
3 1 (0.60%) GitLab
3 1 (0.60%) Jenkins
3 1 (0.60%) RStudio
General
1 56 (33.33%) Analytical Skills
2 33 (19.64%) Social Skills
3 31 (18.45%) Public Sector
4 29 (17.26%) Finance
5 14 (8.33%) Pharmaceutical
6 11 (6.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 8 (4.76%) Marketing
8 6 (3.57%) Telecoms
9 4 (2.38%) Banking
10 3 (1.79%) Front Office
10 3 (1.79%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (1.79%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.79%) Retail
11 2 (1.19%) Manufacturing
11 2 (1.19%) Publishing
11 2 (1.19%) Social Science
12 1 (0.60%) Billing
12 1 (0.60%) Financial Institution
12 1 (0.60%) Military
12 1 (0.60%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 50 (29.76%) Data Scientist
2 44 (26.19%) Analyst
3 38 (22.62%) Data Analyst
4 21 (12.50%) Senior
5 14 (8.33%) Data Engineer
5 14 (8.33%) Senior Data Scientist
6 13 (7.74%) Developer
7 10 (5.95%) Lead
8 9 (5.36%) SQL Analyst
8 9 (5.36%) SQL Data Analyst
8 9 (5.36%) Technical Analyst
9 7 (4.17%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
9 7 (4.17%) Lead Data Scientist
10 6 (3.57%) Architect
10 6 (3.57%) Consultant
10 6 (3.57%) Software Engineer
10 6 (3.57%) Tableau Analyst
11 5 (2.98%) Java Developer
11 5 (2.98%) Senior Developer
11 5 (2.98%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (7.74%) PyTorch
1 13 (7.74%) TensorFlow
2 8 (4.76%) Pandas
3 7 (4.17%) Keras
4 5 (2.98%) JSON
4 5 (2.98%) NumPy
4 5 (2.98%) scikit-learn
5 4 (2.38%) LangChain
5 4 (2.38%) Matplotlib
5 4 (2.38%) PySpark
5 4 (2.38%) Seaborn
6 3 (1.79%) Model Context Protocol
6 3 (1.79%) Plotly
6 3 (1.79%) Shiny
7 2 (1.19%) Apache Avro
7 2 (1.19%) Apache Beam
7 2 (1.19%) NLTK
7 2 (1.19%) Node.js
7 2 (1.19%) Prophet
7 2 (1.19%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 16 (9.52%) Algorithms
2 11 (6.55%) CRISPR
3 7 (4.17%) Cloud Native
4 5 (2.98%) AI Agents
4 5 (2.98%) Data Protection Act
4 5 (2.98%) Product Ownership
5 4 (2.38%) Analytical Mindset
5 4 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
5 4 (2.38%) Onboarding
6 3 (1.79%) Hybrid Cloud
6 3 (1.79%) Mainframe
6 3 (1.79%) Multi-touch
7 2 (1.19%) Credit Risk
7 2 (1.19%) Distributed Computing
7 2 (1.19%) Distributed Systems
7 2 (1.19%) Management Information System
7 2 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
8 1 (0.60%) Data Fabric
8 1 (0.60%) FMCG
8 1 (0.60%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 4 (2.38%) Linux
2 3 (1.79%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 85 (50.60%) Data Science
2 80 (47.62%) Analytics
3 77 (45.83%) Visualisation
4 65 (38.69%) Machine Learning
5 55 (32.74%) Data Pipeline
6 51 (30.36%) Business Intelligence
7 47 (27.98%) Actionable Insight
8 45 (26.79%) Decision-Making
9 44 (26.19%) AI
10 39 (23.21%) Data Visualisation
10 39 (23.21%) Problem-Solving
11 35 (20.83%) Statistical Modelling
12 32 (19.05%) Agile
12 32 (19.05%) Data Analytics
13 31 (18.45%) Statistical Analysis
14 29 (17.26%) Statistics
15 27 (16.07%) Mathematics
16 26 (15.48%) Data Analysis
17 23 (13.69%) Dashboard Development
17 23 (13.69%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 161 (95.83%) Python
2 116 (69.05%) SQL
3 16 (9.52%) Java
4 9 (5.36%) C#
5 8 (4.76%) C++
6 5 (2.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 4 (2.38%) TypeScript
8 3 (1.79%) Scala
9 2 (1.19%) Ada
9 2 (1.19%) JavaScript
10 1 (0.60%) Cypher
10 1 (0.60%) SHACL
10 1 (0.60%) T-SQL
10 1 (0.60%) VB
Qualifications
1 40 (23.81%) Security Cleared
2 36 (21.43%) SC Cleared
3 27 (16.07%) Degree
4 5 (2.98%) PhD
5 4 (2.38%) Computer Science Degree
5 4 (2.38%) Master's Degree
6 2 (1.19%) BPSS Clearance
6 2 (1.19%) Microsoft Certification
6 2 (1.19%) Tableau Certification
7 1 (0.60%) Azure Certification
7 1 (0.60%) DV Cleared
7 1 (0.60%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (8.33%) Data Quality
2 10 (5.95%) Actionable Recommendations
3 8 (4.76%) QA
4 4 (2.38%) GDPR
5 2 (1.19%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.60%) MiFID
6 1 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (0.60%) WCAG
System Software
1 2 (1.19%) Docker
1 2 (1.19%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 9 (5.36%) Terraform
2 8 (4.76%) Kubernetes
3 1 (0.60%) Argo
3 1 (0.60%) Grafana
3 1 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 18 (10.71%) Databricks
2 11 (6.55%) Microsoft
3 7 (4.17%) Amplitude
4 6 (3.57%) Google
4 6 (3.57%) OpenAI
5 3 (1.79%) Red Hat
6 2 (1.19%) Informatica
6 2 (1.19%) Splunk
7 1 (0.60%) Alteryx
7 1 (0.60%) FactSet
7 1 (0.60%) Pega
7 1 (0.60%) SAP
7 1 (0.60%) ServiceNow