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

6 months to
26 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 453 360 373
Rank change year-on-year -93 +13 +64
Contract jobs citing R 169 161 219
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.38% 0.55% 0.49%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.34% 1.62% 1.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 113 110 155
10th Percentile £320 £348 £314
25th Percentile £406 £406 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £519 £540
Median % change year-on-year -1.69% -3.94% -1.82%
75th Percentile £575 £675 £638
90th Percentile £650 £777 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £461 £425
% change year-on-year +2.98% +8.53% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 7 11
10th Percentile £23.32 £22.00 £25.36
25th Percentile £27.60 £22.75 £25.44
Median hourly rate £32.50 £26.32 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +23.48% -38.07% -19.05%
75th Percentile £54.88 £56.25 £47.50
90th Percentile £60.33 £59.55 £52.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £23.00 £23.55
% change year-on-year +30.43% -2.31% -9.72%

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 12,638 9,914 12,919
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 28.74% 34.11% 29.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,394 6,649 9,142
10th Percentile £353 £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 £483 £488
% change year-on-year -1.66% -0.92% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 509 243 485
10th Percentile £41.25 £22.04 £30.88
25th Percentile £53.75 £32.51 £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 £68.25 £67.50
90th Percentile £77.00 £85.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £61.60
% change year-on-year +1.56% +3.90% -4.31%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 -98 146 £510 -1.69% 187
London -38 83 £525 -4.55% 62
Work from Home -13 65 £525 +6.33% 40
UK excluding London -103 62 £475 +2.98% 154
South East -49 17 £588 +38.24% 39
North of England -55 15 £496 +9.01% 34
Midlands -58 15 £395 +1.94% 23
North West -32 11 £513 +12.77% 14
East Midlands -25 10 £385 +33.22% 15
South West -29 6 £450 +2.86% 22
East of England -36 6 £413 -36.54% 21
West Midlands -66 5 £438 +6.84% 8
Wales -9 3 £425 - 7
Yorkshire -51 3 £450 +28.57% 13
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 33 (19.53%) Apache Spark
2 9 (5.33%) Apache
2 9 (5.33%) SAS
3 5 (2.96%) SharePoint
4 3 (1.78%) Apache Superset
5 2 (1.18%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.59%) Confluence
6 1 (0.59%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.59%) R Markdown
Applications
1 17 (10.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (2.37%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (1.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.59%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 1 (0.59%) Salesforce CRM
1 1 (0.59%) SAP IBP
1 1 (0.59%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 62 (36.69%) Power Platform
2 50 (29.59%) AWS
3 46 (27.22%) Azure
4 20 (11.83%) GCP
5 8 (4.73%) Power Automate
5 8 (4.73%) PowerApps
6 7 (4.14%) Snowflake
7 6 (3.55%) Azure Data Factory
8 5 (2.96%) Azure DevOps
8 5 (2.96%) Microsoft Purview
9 3 (1.78%) Amazon Bedrock
9 3 (1.78%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 3 (1.78%) Copilot Studio
9 3 (1.78%) dbt
9 3 (1.78%) OpenShift
10 2 (1.18%) Amazon EMR
10 2 (1.18%) Amazon Kinesis
10 2 (1.18%) Amazon SageMaker
10 2 (1.18%) Azure Machine Learning
10 2 (1.18%) Google Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.18%) 2G
1 2 (1.18%) 5G
1 2 (1.18%) LTE
1 2 (1.18%) Mobile Backhaul
1 2 (1.18%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 62 (36.69%) Power BI
2 50 (29.59%) Tableau
3 32 (18.93%) Big Data
4 25 (14.79%) Hadoop
5 21 (12.43%) Data Warehouse
6 11 (6.51%) Looker
7 8 (4.73%) Power Query
8 7 (4.14%) Delta Lake
8 7 (4.14%) Metadata
8 7 (4.14%) Mixpanel
8 7 (4.14%) Spark SQL
9 6 (3.55%) Data Lake
9 6 (3.55%) NoSQL
9 6 (3.55%) Relational Database
10 5 (2.96%) Amazon Redshift
10 5 (2.96%) Data Mining
10 5 (2.96%) SQL Server
11 2 (1.18%) Snowflake Schema
11 2 (1.18%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 2 (1.18%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 11 (6.51%) Git
2 6 (3.55%) Jenkins
3 2 (1.18%) GoCD
3 2 (1.18%) MLflow
3 2 (1.18%) RStudio
3 2 (1.18%) SonarQube
3 2 (1.18%) Sonatype Nexus
3 2 (1.18%) TeamCity
4 1 (0.59%) Bitbucket
4 1 (0.59%) JIRA
4 1 (0.59%) Maven
General
1 51 (30.18%) Analytical Skills
2 50 (29.59%) Social Skills
3 38 (22.49%) Finance
4 32 (18.93%) Public Sector
5 13 (7.69%) Pharmaceutical
6 12 (7.10%) Marketing
7 10 (5.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 5 (2.96%) Banking
9 3 (1.78%) Telecoms
10 2 (1.18%) Financial Institution
10 2 (1.18%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (1.18%) Manufacturing
10 2 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (1.18%) Retail
10 2 (1.18%) Social Science
11 1 (0.59%) Documentation Skills
11 1 (0.59%) Local Government
11 1 (0.59%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.59%) Private Banking
11 1 (0.59%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 53 (31.36%) Data Scientist
2 32 (18.93%) Analyst
3 28 (16.57%) Data Analyst
4 25 (14.79%) Senior
5 17 (10.06%) Data Engineer
5 17 (10.06%) Senior Data Scientist
6 16 (9.47%) Developer
7 12 (7.10%) Architect
8 11 (6.51%) Lead
9 6 (3.55%) Business Intelligence Developer
9 6 (3.55%) Lead Data Scientist
10 5 (2.96%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 5 (2.96%) Azure Engineer
10 5 (2.96%) Consultant
10 5 (2.96%) Power BI Developer
11 4 (2.37%) Java Developer
11 4 (2.37%) Senior Analyst
11 4 (2.37%) Software Engineer
12 3 (1.78%) Data Business Analyst
12 3 (1.78%) SQL Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (7.69%) TensorFlow
2 10 (5.92%) PyTorch
3 9 (5.33%) Pandas
3 9 (5.33%) PySpark
3 9 (5.33%) scikit-learn
4 7 (4.14%) JSON
5 6 (3.55%) Keras
5 6 (3.55%) Shiny
6 5 (2.96%) Kafka
6 5 (2.96%) YAML
7 4 (2.37%) LangChain
7 4 (2.37%) Matplotlib
7 4 (2.37%) Seaborn
8 3 (1.78%) FastAPI
8 3 (1.78%) Hugging Face
8 3 (1.78%) NumPy
8 3 (1.78%) Plotly
9 2 (1.18%) HTML
9 2 (1.18%) Node.js
9 2 (1.18%) SciPy
Miscellaneous
1 18 (10.65%) Algorithms
2 9 (5.33%) Cloud Native
3 7 (4.14%) Credit Risk
4 6 (3.55%) CRISPR
4 6 (3.55%) Data Structures
4 6 (3.55%) Product Ownership
5 5 (2.96%) Self-Motivation
6 3 (1.78%) AI Agents
6 3 (1.78%) Hybrid Cloud
6 3 (1.78%) Management Information System
6 3 (1.78%) Multi-touch
6 3 (1.78%) Onboarding
7 2 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
7 2 (1.18%) Distributed Computing
7 2 (1.18%) IoT
7 2 (1.18%) Mobile App
8 1 (0.59%) Data Fabric
8 1 (0.59%) Distributed Systems
8 1 (0.59%) Greenfield Project
8 1 (0.59%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 2 (1.18%) Linux
2 1 (0.59%) Unix
2 1 (0.59%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 93 (55.03%) Data Science
2 90 (53.25%) Analytics
3 74 (43.79%) Visualisation
4 71 (42.01%) Machine Learning
5 59 (34.91%) Business Intelligence
6 49 (28.99%) Decision-Making
7 41 (24.26%) Data Analysis
7 41 (24.26%) Data Visualisation
8 39 (23.08%) Actionable Insight
8 39 (23.08%) Statistical Modelling
9 35 (20.71%) Data Modelling
9 35 (20.71%) Problem-Solving
10 34 (20.12%) Data Pipeline
11 32 (18.93%) Agile
12 30 (17.75%) AI
13 29 (17.16%) Data Governance
14 28 (16.57%) Data Analytics
15 27 (15.98%) Statistics
16 25 (14.79%) Dashboard Development
17 24 (14.20%) Mathematics
Programming Languages
1 159 (94.08%) Python
2 123 (72.78%) SQL
3 11 (6.51%) Java
4 10 (5.92%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 7 (4.14%) JavaScript
6 6 (3.55%) Scala
7 5 (2.96%) C++
8 4 (2.37%) C#
9 3 (1.78%) TypeScript
10 2 (1.18%) Ada
10 2 (1.18%) Go
10 2 (1.18%) Rust
10 2 (1.18%) VBA
11 1 (0.59%) LookML
11 1 (0.59%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 43 (25.44%) Security Cleared
2 36 (21.30%) SC Cleared
3 33 (19.53%) Degree
4 8 (4.73%) Computer Science Degree
4 8 (4.73%) Master's Degree
5 6 (3.55%) Microsoft Certification
6 5 (2.96%) PhD
7 3 (1.78%) Azure Certification
7 3 (1.78%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (1.18%) Tableau Certification
9 1 (0.59%) CIMA
9 1 (0.59%) CTC Cleared
9 1 (0.59%) DBS Check
9 1 (0.59%) DV Cleared
9 1 (0.59%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (12.43%) Data Quality
2 11 (6.51%) Actionable Recommendations
3 8 (4.73%) QA
4 7 (4.14%) GDPR
5 3 (1.78%) Accessibility
6 2 (1.18%) PCI DSS
6 2 (1.18%) WCAG
7 1 (0.59%) MiFID
7 1 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 7 (4.14%) Docker
2 2 (1.18%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 11 (6.51%) Kubernetes
2 4 (2.37%) Terraform
3 2 (1.18%) rkt
4 1 (0.59%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 22 (13.02%) Databricks
2 19 (11.24%) Microsoft
3 7 (4.14%) Amplitude
3 7 (4.14%) Pega
4 5 (2.96%) OpenAI
5 4 (2.37%) ServiceNow
6 3 (1.78%) Google
6 3 (1.78%) Informatica
6 3 (1.78%) Oracle
6 3 (1.78%) Red Hat
7 2 (1.18%) Dynatrace
7 2 (1.18%) SAP
7 2 (1.18%) Splunk
7 2 (1.18%) TIBCO
8 1 (0.59%) Adobe
8 1 (0.59%) Alteryx
8 1 (0.59%) Arqiva
8 1 (0.59%) Cognos
8 1 (0.59%) Salesforce
8 1 (0.59%) UiPath