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

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 488 365 399
Rank change year-on-year -123 +34 +22
Contract jobs citing R 168 171 198
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.33% 0.56% 0.46%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.21% 1.65% 1.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 118 112 122
10th Percentile £275 £325 £310
25th Percentile £406 £406 £366
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £498 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.27% -0.50% -16.67%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £610
90th Percentile £682 £725 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £431 £481 £538
% change year-on-year -10.44% -10.47% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 5 18
10th Percentile £27.93 £24.33 -
25th Percentile £33.44 £26.32 £20.12
Median hourly rate £50.75 £37.50 £21.62
Median % change year-on-year +35.33% +73.49% -68.21%
75th Percentile £60.30 £58.75 £46.56
90th Percentile £60.40 £61.75 £61.51
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 13,838 10,381 13,183
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.92% 33.75% 30.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,976 7,005 9,251
10th Percentile £358 £350 £350
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £606 £625 £650
90th Percentile £720 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.16% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 548 251 540
10th Percentile £34.09 £26.32 £31.25
25th Percentile £53.53 £34.62 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -12.00% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.65 £80.00 £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 1 July 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 1 July 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 1 July 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 -125 147 £475 -5.00% 225
London -63 90 £525 -2.78% 122
Work from Home -47 60 £550 +13.11% 68
UK excluding London -114 54 £431 -10.44% 159
South East -63 13 £550 +35.38% 48
South West -30 12 £450 -34.66% 11
North of England -69 12 £425 -9.81% 39
East of England -32 10 £413 -28.26% 20
Yorkshire -43 9 £425 +1.49% 12
Midlands -67 3 £300 -33.11% 19
Northern Ireland +3 2 £363 +3.57% 5
East Midlands -12 2 £252 -43.51% 13
North West -41 2 - - 22
Scotland -7 1 - - 7
Wales -15 1 £490 +10.11% 11
West Midlands -60 1 £438 +4.48% 6
North East - 1 £475 - 5

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 30 (17.86%) Apache Spark
2 11 (6.55%) Apache
3 4 (2.38%) Apache Superset
3 4 (2.38%) Confluence
4 2 (1.19%) Jupyter
5 1 (0.60%) R Markdown
5 1 (0.60%) SAS
Applications
1 17 (10.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (1.19%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.60%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.60%) CPLEX
3 1 (0.60%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 1 (0.60%) SAP APO
1 1 (0.60%) SAP IBP
Cloud Services
1 53 (31.55%) Power Platform
2 50 (29.76%) AWS
3 43 (25.60%) Azure
4 14 (8.33%) GCP
4 14 (8.33%) Snowflake
5 6 (3.57%) Azure DevOps
6 4 (2.38%) Azure Data Factory
6 4 (2.38%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 4 (2.38%) SaaS
7 3 (1.79%) Amazon EKS
7 3 (1.79%) Amazon S3
7 3 (1.79%) dbt
7 3 (1.79%) GitHub
7 3 (1.79%) Serverless
8 2 (1.19%) Cloud Functions
8 2 (1.19%) Google Analytics
9 1 (0.60%) GitHub Actions
9 1 (0.60%) Google Data Studio
9 1 (0.60%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 1 (0.60%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.19%) DSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (30.95%) Power BI
2 51 (30.36%) Tableau
3 27 (16.07%) Big Data
4 19 (11.31%) Hadoop
5 15 (8.93%) Data Warehouse
6 10 (5.95%) Relational Database
7 9 (5.36%) Looker
8 7 (4.17%) Mixpanel
9 4 (2.38%) Data Lake
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%) Apache Hive
10 3 (1.79%) BigQuery
10 3 (1.79%) Metadata
10 3 (1.79%) RDBMS
11 2 (1.19%) Amazon Redshift
11 2 (1.19%) Parquet
11 2 (1.19%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 5 (2.98%) Git
2 3 (1.79%) GitLab
2 3 (1.79%) JIRA
3 2 (1.19%) Jenkins
3 2 (1.19%) MLflow
4 1 (0.60%) RStudio
General
1 56 (33.33%) Analytical Skills
2 36 (21.43%) Social Skills
3 32 (19.05%) Public Sector
4 30 (17.86%) Finance
5 14 (8.33%) Pharmaceutical
6 11 (6.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 9 (5.36%) Marketing
8 6 (3.57%) Telecoms
9 5 (2.98%) Banking
9 5 (2.98%) Retail
10 4 (2.38%) Front Office
11 3 (1.79%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (1.79%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (1.19%) Manufacturing
12 2 (1.19%) Military
12 2 (1.19%) Police
12 2 (1.19%) Publishing
12 2 (1.19%) Social Science
13 1 (0.60%) Billing
13 1 (0.60%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 49 (29.17%) Data Scientist
2 41 (24.40%) Analyst
3 34 (20.24%) Data Analyst
4 19 (11.31%) Senior
5 15 (8.93%) Data Engineer
6 14 (8.33%) Senior Data Scientist
7 13 (7.74%) Developer
8 10 (5.95%) Lead
9 9 (5.36%) Architect
9 9 (5.36%) Technical Analyst
10 8 (4.76%) SQL Analyst
11 7 (4.17%) Consultant
11 7 (4.17%) Lead Data Scientist
11 7 (4.17%) SQL Data Analyst
12 6 (3.57%) Data Consultant
12 6 (3.57%) Software Engineer
13 5 (2.98%) Data Architect
13 5 (2.98%) Java Developer
13 5 (2.98%) Senior Analyst
13 5 (2.98%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (7.14%) PyTorch
1 12 (7.14%) TensorFlow
2 6 (3.57%) Pandas
3 5 (2.98%) JSON
3 5 (2.98%) Keras
4 3 (1.79%) NumPy
4 3 (1.79%) scikit-learn
4 3 (1.79%) Shiny
4 3 (1.79%) XML
4 3 (1.79%) YAML
5 2 (1.19%) Faiss
5 2 (1.19%) FastAPI
5 2 (1.19%) Hugging Face
5 2 (1.19%) JWT
5 2 (1.19%) LangChain
5 2 (1.19%) Model Context Protocol
5 2 (1.19%) OpenTelemetry
5 2 (1.19%) Prophet
5 2 (1.19%) pytest
5 2 (1.19%) React
Miscellaneous
1 17 (10.12%) Algorithms
2 11 (6.55%) CRISPR
3 6 (3.57%) Onboarding
4 5 (2.98%) Cloud Native
4 5 (2.98%) Data Protection Act
4 5 (2.98%) Product Ownership
5 4 (2.38%) AI Agents
5 4 (2.38%) Analytical Mindset
5 4 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
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%) Fixed Income
7 2 (1.19%) Taxonomies
8 1 (0.60%) Data Fabric
8 1 (0.60%) Greenfield Project
8 1 (0.60%) Renewable Energy
8 1 (0.60%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 4 (2.38%) Linux
2 3 (1.79%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 83 (49.40%) Data Science
2 81 (48.21%) Analytics
3 77 (45.83%) Visualisation
4 63 (37.50%) Machine Learning
5 57 (33.93%) Data Pipeline
6 51 (30.36%) Business Intelligence
7 45 (26.79%) Decision-Making
8 44 (26.19%) Actionable Insight
9 42 (25.00%) Data Visualisation
10 40 (23.81%) AI
11 38 (22.62%) Problem-Solving
12 36 (21.43%) Statistical Modelling
13 33 (19.64%) Statistical Analysis
14 29 (17.26%) Agile
14 29 (17.26%) Mathematics
14 29 (17.26%) Statistics
15 28 (16.67%) Data Analytics
16 22 (13.10%) Data Analysis
16 22 (13.10%) Data Engineering
16 22 (13.10%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 160 (95.24%) Python
2 112 (66.67%) SQL
3 16 (9.52%) Java
4 8 (4.76%) C++
5 7 (4.17%) C#
6 5 (2.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 3 (1.79%) Scala
7 3 (1.79%) TypeScript
8 2 (1.19%) Cypher
8 2 (1.19%) JavaScript
8 2 (1.19%) SHACL
9 1 (0.60%) T-SQL
9 1 (0.60%) VB
Qualifications
1 43 (25.60%) Security Cleared
2 36 (21.43%) SC Cleared
3 29 (17.26%) 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%) Microsoft Certified Professional
6 2 (1.19%) Tableau Certification
7 1 (0.60%) Azure Certification
7 1 (0.60%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (7.14%) Data Quality
2 8 (4.76%) Actionable Recommendations
2 8 (4.76%) QA
3 4 (2.38%) GDPR
4 2 (1.19%) Accessibility
4 2 (1.19%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 1 (0.60%) MiFID
5 1 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.60%) WCAG
System Software
1 2 (1.19%) Docker
Systems Management
1 9 (5.36%) Terraform
2 6 (3.57%) Kubernetes
3 2 (1.19%) Argo
3 2 (1.19%) Grafana
4 1 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 15 (8.93%) Databricks
2 13 (7.74%) Microsoft
3 7 (4.17%) Amplitude
4 6 (3.57%) Google
5 5 (2.98%) OpenAI
6 2 (1.19%) FactSet
6 2 (1.19%) Splunk
7 1 (0.60%) Alteryx
7 1 (0.60%) Pega
7 1 (0.60%) Red Hat
7 1 (0.60%) SAP
7 1 (0.60%) ServiceNow
7 1 (0.60%) Sonatype