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

6 months to
17 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 467 359 363
Rank change year-on-year -108 +4 +63
Contract jobs citing R 162 169 232
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.38% 0.58% 0.52%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.29% 1.68% 1.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 106 109 163
10th Percentile £313 £346 £313
25th Percentile £413 £400 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £675 £638
90th Percentile £650 £779 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £455 £390
% change year-on-year +4.40% +16.67% -9.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 7 12
10th Percentile £23.32 £22.00 £25.36
25th Percentile £27.60 £22.75 £25.47
Median hourly rate £32.50 £26.32 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +23.48% -38.07% -15.00%
75th Percentile £54.88 £56.25 £47.50
90th Percentile £60.33 £59.55 £52.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £23.00 £23.55
% change year-on-year +30.43% -2.31% +6.25%

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 12,595 10,041 12,940
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 29.17% 34.20% 29.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,366 6,650 9,148
10th Percentile £354 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £420 £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 £715 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £482
% change year-on-year -2.56% +1.25% -3.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 498 243 493
10th Percentile £41.49 £21.40 £30.75
25th Percentile £54.14 £34.13 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -4.76%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £67.38
90th Percentile £77.00 £85.00 £74.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.75 £61.60
% change year-on-year +1.97% +3.48% -5.23%

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 March 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 March 2026.

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 17 March 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 -107 140 £511 -0.24% 289
London -49 83 £525 -4.55% 81
Work from Home -1 64 £531 +14.70% 45
UK excluding London -110 55 £475 +4.40% 268
South East -45 15 £600 +41.18% 69
Midlands -52 15 £395 +1.94% 40
North of England -59 14 £500 +9.89% 60
North West -25 11 £513 +12.77% 24
East Midlands -23 10 £385 +33.22% 26
South West -25 5 £325 -25.71% 35
West Midlands -69 5 £438 +12.90% 14
Wales -9 3 £425 - 11
East of England -38 3 £413 -36.54% 35
Yorkshire - 2 - - 24
North East -12 1 £475 - 14

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 (20.99%) Apache Spark
2 9 (5.56%) Apache
2 9 (5.56%) SAS
3 5 (3.09%) SharePoint
4 4 (2.47%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (1.23%) Apache Superset
6 1 (0.62%) Confluence
6 1 (0.62%) Jupyter
Applications
1 15 (9.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (2.47%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (1.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.62%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.62%) Salesforce CRM
1 1 (0.62%) SAP IBP
1 1 (0.62%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 61 (37.65%) Power Platform
2 49 (30.25%) AWS
3 46 (28.40%) Azure
4 23 (14.20%) GCP
5 9 (5.56%) Snowflake
6 8 (4.94%) Power Automate
6 8 (4.94%) PowerApps
7 6 (3.70%) Azure Data Factory
8 5 (3.09%) dbt
8 5 (3.09%) Microsoft Purview
9 4 (2.47%) Azure DevOps
10 3 (1.85%) Amazon Bedrock
10 3 (1.85%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 3 (1.85%) Copilot Studio
10 3 (1.85%) OpenShift
11 2 (1.23%) Amazon EMR
11 2 (1.23%) Amazon Kinesis
11 2 (1.23%) Amazon SageMaker
11 2 (1.23%) Azure Machine Learning
11 2 (1.23%) Google Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.23%) 2G
1 2 (1.23%) 5G
1 2 (1.23%) LTE
1 2 (1.23%) Mobile Backhaul
1 2 (1.23%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 61 (37.65%) Power BI
2 49 (30.25%) Tableau
3 33 (20.37%) Big Data
4 26 (16.05%) Hadoop
5 21 (12.96%) Data Warehouse
6 13 (8.02%) Looker
7 8 (4.94%) Power Query
8 7 (4.32%) Delta Lake
8 7 (4.32%) Metadata
8 7 (4.32%) Mixpanel
9 6 (3.70%) Data Lake
9 6 (3.70%) NoSQL
9 6 (3.70%) Relational Database
9 6 (3.70%) Spark SQL
10 5 (3.09%) Amazon Redshift
10 5 (3.09%) Data Mining
11 4 (2.47%) SQL Server
12 3 (1.85%) BigQuery
13 2 (1.23%) Amazon Athena
13 2 (1.23%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 12 (7.41%) Git
2 6 (3.70%) Jenkins
3 2 (1.23%) GoCD
3 2 (1.23%) MLflow
3 2 (1.23%) RStudio
3 2 (1.23%) SonarQube
3 2 (1.23%) Sonatype Nexus
3 2 (1.23%) TeamCity
4 1 (0.62%) Bitbucket
4 1 (0.62%) JIRA
4 1 (0.62%) Maven
General
1 50 (30.86%) Social Skills
2 49 (30.25%) Analytical Skills
3 37 (22.84%) Finance
4 29 (17.90%) Public Sector
5 12 (7.41%) Marketing
6 11 (6.79%) Pharmaceutical
7 10 (6.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 6 (3.70%) Banking
9 3 (1.85%) Telecoms
10 2 (1.23%) Financial Institution
10 2 (1.23%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (1.23%) Manufacturing
10 2 (1.23%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (1.23%) Retail
10 2 (1.23%) Social Science
11 1 (0.62%) Documentation Skills
11 1 (0.62%) Local Government
11 1 (0.62%) Private Banking
11 1 (0.62%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 53 (32.72%) Data Scientist
2 30 (18.52%) Analyst
3 25 (15.43%) Data Analyst
4 24 (14.81%) Senior
5 17 (10.49%) Data Engineer
5 17 (10.49%) Senior Data Scientist
6 16 (9.88%) Developer
7 12 (7.41%) Architect
8 11 (6.79%) Lead
9 6 (3.70%) Business Intelligence Developer
9 6 (3.70%) Lead Data Scientist
10 5 (3.09%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 5 (3.09%) Azure Engineer
10 5 (3.09%) Power BI Developer
11 4 (2.47%) Business Analyst
11 4 (2.47%) Consultant
11 4 (2.47%) Data Analytics Engineer
11 4 (2.47%) Java Developer
11 4 (2.47%) Software Engineer
12 3 (1.85%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (8.02%) TensorFlow
2 10 (6.17%) PyTorch
3 9 (5.56%) Pandas
3 9 (5.56%) scikit-learn
4 8 (4.94%) PySpark
5 7 (4.32%) JSON
6 6 (3.70%) Keras
7 5 (3.09%) Kafka
7 5 (3.09%) YAML
8 4 (2.47%) LangChain
8 4 (2.47%) Matplotlib
8 4 (2.47%) Seaborn
8 4 (2.47%) Shiny
9 3 (1.85%) FastAPI
9 3 (1.85%) Hugging Face
9 3 (1.85%) NumPy
9 3 (1.85%) Plotly
10 2 (1.23%) Node.js
10 2 (1.23%) SciPy
10 2 (1.23%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 18 (11.11%) Algorithms
2 8 (4.94%) Cloud Native
3 7 (4.32%) Credit Risk
3 7 (4.32%) Data Structures
4 6 (3.70%) Product Ownership
5 5 (3.09%) Self-Motivation
6 4 (2.47%) CRISPR
7 3 (1.85%) AI Agents
7 3 (1.85%) Hybrid Cloud
7 3 (1.85%) Management Information System
7 3 (1.85%) Multi-touch
8 2 (1.23%) Distributed Computing
8 2 (1.23%) IoT
8 2 (1.23%) Mobile App
9 1 (0.62%) Data Fabric
9 1 (0.62%) Derivative
9 1 (0.62%) Distributed Systems
9 1 (0.62%) Legacy Systems
9 1 (0.62%) Onboarding
9 1 (0.62%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 2 (1.23%) Linux
2 1 (0.62%) Unix
2 1 (0.62%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 93 (57.41%) Data Science
2 92 (56.79%) Analytics
3 72 (44.44%) Machine Learning
4 70 (43.21%) Visualisation
5 60 (37.04%) Business Intelligence
6 46 (28.40%) Decision-Making
7 42 (25.93%) Data Analysis
8 38 (23.46%) Data Modelling
8 38 (23.46%) Data Visualisation
9 37 (22.84%) Statistical Modelling
10 36 (22.22%) Actionable Insight
11 34 (20.99%) Problem-Solving
12 33 (20.37%) Data Pipeline
13 31 (19.14%) Agile
13 31 (19.14%) Data Governance
14 30 (18.52%) AI
15 27 (16.67%) Data Analytics
16 25 (15.43%) Dashboard Development
17 24 (14.81%) Statistics
18 23 (14.20%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 154 (95.06%) Python
2 119 (73.46%) SQL
3 12 (7.41%) Java
4 10 (6.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 7 (4.32%) Scala
6 6 (3.70%) JavaScript
7 5 (3.09%) C++
8 3 (1.85%) C#
8 3 (1.85%) TypeScript
9 2 (1.23%) Ada
9 2 (1.23%) Go
9 2 (1.23%) Rust
9 2 (1.23%) VBA
10 1 (0.62%) LookML
10 1 (0.62%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 41 (25.31%) Security Cleared
2 34 (20.99%) SC Cleared
3 32 (19.75%) Degree
4 8 (4.94%) Computer Science Degree
4 8 (4.94%) Master's Degree
5 6 (3.70%) Microsoft Certification
6 5 (3.09%) PhD
7 3 (1.85%) Azure Certification
7 3 (1.85%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (1.23%) Tableau Certification
9 1 (0.62%) CIMA
9 1 (0.62%) CTC Cleared
9 1 (0.62%) DBS Check
9 1 (0.62%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (14.81%) Data Quality
2 11 (6.79%) Actionable Recommendations
3 7 (4.32%) GDPR
4 6 (3.70%) QA
5 2 (1.23%) Accessibility
5 2 (1.23%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.62%) MiFID
6 1 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (0.62%) WCAG
System Software
1 7 (4.32%) Docker
2 2 (1.23%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 11 (6.79%) Kubernetes
2 3 (1.85%) Terraform
3 2 (1.23%) rkt
4 1 (0.62%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 22 (13.58%) Databricks
2 18 (11.11%) Microsoft
3 7 (4.32%) Amplitude
3 7 (4.32%) Pega
4 5 (3.09%) OpenAI
5 4 (2.47%) ServiceNow
6 3 (1.85%) Google
6 3 (1.85%) Informatica
6 3 (1.85%) Oracle
6 3 (1.85%) Red Hat
7 2 (1.23%) Dynatrace
7 2 (1.23%) SAP
7 2 (1.23%) Splunk
7 2 (1.23%) TIBCO
8 1 (0.62%) Adobe
8 1 (0.62%) Alteryx
8 1 (0.62%) Arqiva
8 1 (0.62%) Cognos
8 1 (0.62%) Facebook
8 1 (0.62%) Salesforce