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

6 months to
14 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 416 326 368
Rank change year-on-year -90 +42 +54
Contract jobs citing R 171 205 229
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.46% 0.65% 0.54%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.50% 1.98% 1.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 106 112 163
10th Percentile £279 £310 £317
25th Percentile £400 £373 £397
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £491 £514 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.43% -2.14% -4.55%
75th Percentile £595 £641 £638
90th Percentile £688 £800 £760
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £471 £450
% change year-on-year +6.10% +4.72% +2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 9 14
10th Percentile £21.67 £21.02 £25.42
25th Percentile £23.43 £21.25 £28.43
Median hourly rate £26.46 £28.50 £40.32
Median % change year-on-year -7.17% -29.31% +55.06%
75th Percentile £29.69 £53.75 £48.44
90th Percentile £31.88 £55.15 £49.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.42 £22.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year +12.96% -52.63% +122.85%

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 11,389 10,373 12,866
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.81% 32.82% 30.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,560 6,597 9,141
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £507 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.43% -4.55% -3.08%
75th Percentile £619 £640 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £489 £500
% change year-on-year -1.43% -2.20% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 393 239 415
10th Percentile £36.05 £21.25 £35.00
25th Percentile £52.00 £36.25 £47.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% - -0.79%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.38 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.00 £85.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +3.17% -3.08% -

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 14 January 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
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 14 January 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 -81 152 £496 -5.52% 204
London -48 80 £500 -9.09% 62
UK excluding London -69 68 £500 +6.10% 187
Work from Home +4 57 £518 +0.98% 30
Midlands -37 20 £435 +17.01% 19
South East -21 17 £600 +17.07% 61
North of England -51 14 £479 +34.41% 45
East Midlands -19 13 £385 +13.24% 12
North West -20 12 £492 +38.20% 24
East of England -16 8 £641 -1.38% 22
West Midlands -35 7 £475 - 7
Wales -3 5 £366 - 9
Scotland -11 2 £569 +21.66% 12
South West -29 2 - - 19
Yorkshire -45 2 £450 +20.00% 12

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 21 (12.28%) Apache Spark
2 17 (9.94%) SAS
3 8 (4.68%) SharePoint
4 5 (2.92%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (2.34%) Apache
6 3 (1.75%) Confluence
7 1 (0.58%) Jupyter
Applications
1 24 (14.04%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (5.26%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (5.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.58%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.58%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 1 (0.58%) Distributed Ledger
1 1 (0.58%) Salesforce CRM
1 1 (0.58%) SAP ERP
1 1 (0.58%) SAP IBP
1 1 (0.58%) SAP S/4HANA
1 1 (0.58%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 68 (39.77%) Power Platform
2 52 (30.41%) Azure
3 38 (22.22%) AWS
4 25 (14.62%) GCP
5 9 (5.26%) Power Automate
5 9 (5.26%) PowerApps
5 9 (5.26%) Snowflake
6 8 (4.68%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 7 (4.09%) Azure Machine Learning
8 6 (3.51%) Azure Data Factory
9 4 (2.34%) Azure AKS
9 4 (2.34%) Azure DevOps
9 4 (2.34%) Microsoft Purview
10 3 (1.75%) Amazon Bedrock
10 3 (1.75%) Copilot Studio
10 3 (1.75%) dbt
11 2 (1.17%) Amazon EMR
11 2 (1.17%) Amazon Kinesis
11 2 (1.17%) AWS Lambda
11 2 (1.17%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.17%) 2G
1 2 (1.17%) 5G
1 2 (1.17%) LTE
1 2 (1.17%) Mobile Backhaul
1 2 (1.17%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 68 (39.77%) Power BI
2 46 (26.90%) Tableau
3 23 (13.45%) Big Data
4 20 (11.70%) Data Warehouse
5 17 (9.94%) Hadoop
6 12 (7.02%) Data Lake
7 9 (5.26%) Data Mining
8 8 (4.68%) Looker
8 8 (4.68%) Power Query
9 7 (4.09%) NoSQL
10 6 (3.51%) Amazon Redshift
10 6 (3.51%) Delta Lake
10 6 (3.51%) Metadata
11 5 (2.92%) Relational Database
11 5 (2.92%) Spark SQL
11 5 (2.92%) SQL Server
12 3 (1.75%) BigQuery
12 3 (1.75%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
12 3 (1.75%) Impala
12 3 (1.75%) Spotfire
Development Applications
1 12 (7.02%) Git
2 5 (2.92%) Jenkins
3 4 (2.34%) JIRA
3 4 (2.34%) MLflow
4 2 (1.17%) GoCD
4 2 (1.17%) SonarQube
4 2 (1.17%) Sonatype Nexus
4 2 (1.17%) TeamCity
5 1 (0.58%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.58%) Maven
5 1 (0.58%) RStudio
General
1 61 (35.67%) Social Skills
2 54 (31.58%) Analytical Skills
3 45 (26.32%) Finance
4 17 (9.94%) Public Sector
5 16 (9.36%) Marketing
6 14 (8.19%) Banking
7 13 (7.60%) Pharmaceutical
8 6 (3.51%) Organisational Skills
9 5 (2.92%) Manufacturing
10 3 (1.75%) Documentation Skills
10 3 (1.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (1.75%) Legal
11 2 (1.17%) Digital Health
11 2 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
11 2 (1.17%) Local Government
11 2 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
11 2 (1.17%) Retail
11 2 (1.17%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.58%) Corporate Banking
12 1 (0.58%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 42 (24.56%) Data Scientist
2 34 (19.88%) Analyst
3 25 (14.62%) Data Analyst
4 20 (11.70%) Senior
5 18 (10.53%) Data Engineer
6 17 (9.94%) Developer
7 11 (6.43%) Architect
8 9 (5.26%) Lead
9 8 (4.68%) Senior Data Scientist
9 8 (4.68%) Software Engineer
10 7 (4.09%) Business Intelligence Developer
11 6 (3.51%) Azure Engineer
11 6 (3.51%) Consultant
11 6 (3.51%) Power BI Developer
12 5 (2.92%) Business Analyst
13 4 (2.34%) Machine Learning Engineer
13 4 (2.34%) Python Engineer
13 4 (2.34%) Senior Analyst
13 4 (2.34%) SQL Analyst
13 4 (2.34%) SQL Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (7.02%) scikit-learn
1 12 (7.02%) TensorFlow
2 10 (5.85%) Pandas
3 9 (5.26%) PyTorch
4 8 (4.68%) PySpark
5 5 (2.92%) Kafka
6 4 (2.34%) YAML
7 3 (1.75%) FastAPI
7 3 (1.75%) FHIR
7 3 (1.75%) JSON
7 3 (1.75%) Matplotlib
7 3 (1.75%) NumPy
7 3 (1.75%) Seaborn
7 3 (1.75%) Shiny
8 2 (1.17%) CrewAI
8 2 (1.17%) LangChain
8 2 (1.17%) LangGraph
8 2 (1.17%) NLTK
8 2 (1.17%) Plotly
8 2 (1.17%) XGBoost
Miscellaneous
1 13 (7.60%) Algorithms
2 12 (7.02%) Credit Risk
3 9 (5.26%) Self-Motivation
4 7 (4.09%) Cloud Native
4 7 (4.09%) Data Structures
5 5 (2.92%) Management Information System
5 5 (2.92%) Product Ownership
6 4 (2.34%) NHS
7 3 (1.75%) Analytical Mindset
7 3 (1.75%) IoT
8 2 (1.17%) AI Agents
8 2 (1.17%) Distributed Computing
8 2 (1.17%) Genomics
8 2 (1.17%) Hybrid Cloud
8 2 (1.17%) Mobile App
8 2 (1.17%) Multi-touch
8 2 (1.17%) Onboarding
9 1 (0.58%) Pricing Data
9 1 (0.58%) Private Cloud
9 1 (0.58%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 3 (1.75%) Linux
2 1 (0.58%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 82 (47.95%) Analytics
1 82 (47.95%) Data Science
2 71 (41.52%) Business Intelligence
3 65 (38.01%) Machine Learning
4 61 (35.67%) Visualisation
5 46 (26.90%) Data Analysis
6 45 (26.32%) Decision-Making
7 43 (25.15%) Data Modelling
8 39 (22.81%) Problem-Solving
9 34 (19.88%) Actionable Insight
9 34 (19.88%) Agile
10 33 (19.30%) Data Visualisation
10 33 (19.30%) Statistical Modelling
11 29 (16.96%) Data Governance
12 26 (15.20%) AI
12 26 (15.20%) Validation
13 24 (14.04%) CI/CD
14 22 (12.87%) Data Analytics
15 20 (11.70%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 20 (11.70%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 162 (94.74%) Python
2 119 (69.59%) SQL
3 12 (7.02%) Java
4 11 (6.43%) C++
5 9 (5.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 8 (4.68%) MATLAB
6 8 (4.68%) Scala
7 5 (2.92%) JavaScript
8 4 (2.34%) PL/SQL
8 4 (2.34%) VBA
9 3 (1.75%) Go
10 2 (1.17%) Ada
10 2 (1.17%) C#
10 2 (1.17%) Rust
10 2 (1.17%) TypeScript
11 1 (0.58%) Bash
11 1 (0.58%) Fortran
11 1 (0.58%) Korn
11 1 (0.58%) PowerShell
11 1 (0.58%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 30 (17.54%) Degree
2 23 (13.45%) Security Cleared
3 18 (10.53%) SC Cleared
4 12 (7.02%) Computer Science Degree
5 8 (4.68%) Master's Degree
6 7 (4.09%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (2.34%) Microsoft Certification
7 4 (2.34%) PhD
8 2 (1.17%) Azure Certification
8 2 (1.17%) MCP
8 2 (1.17%) Tableau Certification
9 1 (0.58%) ACCA
9 1 (0.58%) CFA
9 1 (0.58%) CIMA
9 1 (0.58%) CTC Cleared
9 1 (0.58%) DBS Check
9 1 (0.58%) GIAC
9 1 (0.58%) Numerate Degree
9 1 (0.58%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (15.20%) Data Quality
2 6 (3.51%) GDPR
2 6 (3.51%) QA
3 4 (2.34%) Actionable Recommendations
4 2 (1.17%) Accessibility
4 2 (1.17%) DICOM
4 2 (1.17%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.58%) HL7
5 1 (0.58%) IFRS
5 1 (0.58%) IFRS 9
5 1 (0.58%) LOINC
5 1 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.58%) SNOMED CT
5 1 (0.58%) WCAG
System Software
1 10 (5.85%) Docker
2 2 (1.17%) HDFS
3 1 (0.58%) Lustre
3 1 (0.58%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 11 (6.43%) Kubernetes
2 2 (1.17%) Ansible
2 2 (1.17%) rkt
2 2 (1.17%) Terraform
3 1 (0.58%) Packer
3 1 (0.58%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 25 (14.62%) Databricks
2 21 (12.28%) Microsoft
3 9 (5.26%) Oracle
4 7 (4.09%) Pega
5 5 (2.92%) Google
6 4 (2.34%) SAP
7 3 (1.75%) Cognos
7 3 (1.75%) Informatica
7 3 (1.75%) ServiceNow
7 3 (1.75%) Splunk
7 3 (1.75%) TIBCO
8 2 (1.17%) Adobe
8 2 (1.17%) Alteryx
8 2 (1.17%) Amplitude
8 2 (1.17%) Dynatrace
8 2 (1.17%) OpenAI
8 2 (1.17%) Red Hat
9 1 (0.58%) Salesforce
9 1 (0.58%) Software AG
9 1 (0.58%) webMethods