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

6 months to
20 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 452 360 362
Rank change year-on-year -92 +2 +72
Contract jobs citing R 163 163 230
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.37% 0.56% 0.52%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.29% 1.63% 1.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 108 108 162
10th Percentile £313 £329 £313
25th Percentile £411 £398 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £536
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -2.10% -2.50%
75th Percentile £575 £675 £638
90th Percentile £650 £782 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £461 £400
% change year-on-year +2.98% +15.31% -5.88%
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 12,617 9,972 12,901
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 29.01% 34.08% 29.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,405 6,625 9,134
10th Percentile £352 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £419 £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 £484 £485
% change year-on-year -1.76% -0.31% -3.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 492 245 486
10th Percentile £41.94 £22.00 £30.94
25th Percentile £54.55 £31.64 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £67.29
90th Percentile £77.00 £85.00 £74.10
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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -96 141 £511 -2.62% 187
London -47 82 £525 -4.55% 62
Work from Home -4 64 £525 +6.33% 40
UK excluding London -94 57 £475 +2.98% 152
South East -56 16 £594 +39.71% 42
Midlands -60 15 £395 +1.94% 20
North of England -65 14 £500 +9.89% 32
North West -27 11 £513 +12.77% 11
East Midlands -28 10 £385 +33.22% 13
South West -28 6 £450 +2.86% 21
West Midlands -68 5 £438 +12.90% 7
Wales -8 3 £425 - 6
East of England -30 3 £413 -36.54% 24
Yorkshire -58 2 - - 14
North East -14 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 34 (20.86%) Apache Spark
2 9 (5.52%) Apache
2 9 (5.52%) SAS
3 5 (3.07%) SharePoint
4 3 (1.84%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (1.84%) Apache Superset
5 1 (0.61%) Confluence
5 1 (0.61%) Jupyter
Applications
1 15 (9.20%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (2.45%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (1.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.61%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.61%) Salesforce CRM
1 1 (0.61%) SAP IBP
1 1 (0.61%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 61 (37.42%) Power Platform
2 50 (30.67%) AWS
3 47 (28.83%) Azure
4 22 (13.50%) GCP
5 9 (5.52%) Snowflake
6 8 (4.91%) Power Automate
6 8 (4.91%) PowerApps
7 6 (3.68%) Azure Data Factory
8 5 (3.07%) Azure DevOps
8 5 (3.07%) Microsoft Purview
9 4 (2.45%) dbt
10 3 (1.84%) Amazon Bedrock
10 3 (1.84%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 3 (1.84%) Copilot Studio
10 3 (1.84%) OpenShift
11 2 (1.23%) Amazon EMR
11 2 (1.23%) Amazon Kinesis
11 2 (1.23%) Amazon SageMaker
11 2 (1.23%) Cloud Computing
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 (37.42%) Power BI
2 49 (30.06%) Tableau
3 33 (20.25%) Big Data
4 26 (15.95%) Hadoop
5 21 (12.88%) Data Warehouse
6 12 (7.36%) Looker
7 8 (4.91%) Power Query
8 7 (4.29%) Delta Lake
8 7 (4.29%) Mixpanel
8 7 (4.29%) Spark SQL
9 6 (3.68%) Data Lake
9 6 (3.68%) Metadata
9 6 (3.68%) NoSQL
9 6 (3.68%) Relational Database
10 5 (3.07%) Amazon Redshift
10 5 (3.07%) Data Mining
11 4 (2.45%) SQL Server
12 2 (1.23%) Snowflake Schema
12 2 (1.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 2 (1.23%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 11 (6.75%) Git
2 6 (3.68%) 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 (0.61%) Bitbucket
4 1 (0.61%) JIRA
4 1 (0.61%) Maven
General
1 50 (30.67%) Social Skills
2 48 (29.45%) Analytical Skills
3 36 (22.09%) Finance
4 30 (18.40%) Public Sector
5 12 (7.36%) Marketing
6 11 (6.75%) Pharmaceutical
7 10 (6.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 5 (3.07%) Banking
9 3 (1.84%) 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 (0.61%) Documentation Skills
11 1 (0.61%) Local Government
11 1 (0.61%) Private Banking
11 1 (0.61%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 54 (33.13%) Data Scientist
2 30 (18.40%) Analyst
3 26 (15.95%) Data Analyst
4 24 (14.72%) Senior
5 17 (10.43%) Senior Data Scientist
6 16 (9.82%) Data Engineer
6 16 (9.82%) Developer
7 12 (7.36%) Architect
8 11 (6.75%) Lead
9 6 (3.68%) Business Intelligence Developer
9 6 (3.68%) Lead Data Scientist
10 5 (3.07%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 5 (3.07%) Azure Engineer
10 5 (3.07%) Consultant
10 5 (3.07%) Power BI Developer
11 4 (2.45%) Java Developer
11 4 (2.45%) Software Engineer
12 3 (1.84%) Senior Analyst
12 3 (1.84%) Senior Software Engineer
12 3 (1.84%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (7.98%) TensorFlow
2 10 (6.13%) PyTorch
3 9 (5.52%) Pandas
3 9 (5.52%) PySpark
3 9 (5.52%) scikit-learn
4 7 (4.29%) JSON
5 6 (3.68%) Keras
6 5 (3.07%) Kafka
6 5 (3.07%) YAML
7 4 (2.45%) LangChain
7 4 (2.45%) Matplotlib
7 4 (2.45%) Seaborn
7 4 (2.45%) Shiny
8 3 (1.84%) FastAPI
8 3 (1.84%) Hugging Face
8 3 (1.84%) NumPy
8 3 (1.84%) Plotly
9 2 (1.23%) Node.js
9 2 (1.23%) SciPy
9 2 (1.23%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 18 (11.04%) Algorithms
2 9 (5.52%) Cloud Native
3 7 (4.29%) Credit Risk
4 6 (3.68%) Data Structures
4 6 (3.68%) Product Ownership
5 5 (3.07%) Self-Motivation
6 4 (2.45%) CRISPR
7 3 (1.84%) AI Agents
7 3 (1.84%) Hybrid Cloud
7 3 (1.84%) Management Information System
7 3 (1.84%) Multi-touch
8 2 (1.23%) Distributed Computing
8 2 (1.23%) IoT
8 2 (1.23%) Mobile App
9 1 (0.61%) Analytical Mindset
9 1 (0.61%) Data Fabric
9 1 (0.61%) Distributed Systems
9 1 (0.61%) Greenfield Project
9 1 (0.61%) Legacy Systems
9 1 (0.61%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 2 (1.23%) Linux
2 1 (0.61%) Unix
2 1 (0.61%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 95 (58.28%) Data Science
2 91 (55.83%) Analytics
3 72 (44.17%) Machine Learning
3 72 (44.17%) Visualisation
4 59 (36.20%) Business Intelligence
5 46 (28.22%) Decision-Making
6 42 (25.77%) Data Analysis
7 40 (24.54%) Data Visualisation
8 38 (23.31%) Statistical Modelling
9 36 (22.09%) Actionable Insight
9 36 (22.09%) Data Modelling
10 33 (20.25%) Data Pipeline
10 33 (20.25%) Problem-Solving
11 31 (19.02%) Agile
12 30 (18.40%) AI
12 30 (18.40%) Data Governance
13 27 (16.56%) Data Analytics
14 25 (15.34%) Statistics
15 24 (14.72%) Dashboard Development
16 23 (14.11%) Mathematics
Programming Languages
1 155 (95.09%) Python
2 120 (73.62%) SQL
3 12 (7.36%) Java
4 10 (6.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 7 (4.29%) Scala
6 6 (3.68%) JavaScript
7 5 (3.07%) C++
8 3 (1.84%) C#
8 3 (1.84%) TypeScript
9 2 (1.23%) Ada
9 2 (1.23%) Go
9 2 (1.23%) Rust
9 2 (1.23%) VBA
10 1 (0.61%) LookML
10 1 (0.61%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 43 (26.38%) Security Cleared
2 36 (22.09%) SC Cleared
3 32 (19.63%) Degree
4 8 (4.91%) Computer Science Degree
4 8 (4.91%) Master's Degree
5 6 (3.68%) Microsoft Certification
6 5 (3.07%) PhD
7 3 (1.84%) Azure Certification
7 3 (1.84%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (1.23%) Tableau Certification
9 1 (0.61%) CIMA
9 1 (0.61%) CTC Cleared
9 1 (0.61%) DBS Check
9 1 (0.61%) DV Cleared
9 1 (0.61%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (13.50%) Data Quality
2 11 (6.75%) Actionable Recommendations
3 7 (4.29%) QA
4 6 (3.68%) GDPR
5 2 (1.23%) Accessibility
5 2 (1.23%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.61%) MiFID
6 1 (0.61%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (0.61%) WCAG
System Software
1 7 (4.29%) Docker
2 2 (1.23%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 11 (6.75%) Kubernetes
2 3 (1.84%) Terraform
3 2 (1.23%) rkt
4 1 (0.61%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 22 (13.50%) Databricks
2 18 (11.04%) Microsoft
3 7 (4.29%) Amplitude
3 7 (4.29%) Pega
4 5 (3.07%) OpenAI
5 4 (2.45%) ServiceNow
6 3 (1.84%) Google
6 3 (1.84%) Informatica
6 3 (1.84%) Oracle
6 3 (1.84%) Red Hat
7 2 (1.23%) Dynatrace
7 2 (1.23%) SAP
7 2 (1.23%) Splunk
7 2 (1.23%) TIBCO
8 1 (0.61%) Adobe
8 1 (0.61%) Alteryx
8 1 (0.61%) Arqiva
8 1 (0.61%) Cognos
8 1 (0.61%) Salesforce
8 1 (0.61%) UiPath