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

6 months to
8 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 418 334 375
Rank change year-on-year -84 +41 +24
Contract jobs citing R 174 204 231
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.47% 0.63% 0.55%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.53% 1.93% 1.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 107 112 166
10th Percentile £281 £310 £328
25th Percentile £396 £373 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £513 £536
Median % change year-on-year -4.39% -4.43% -1.61%
75th Percentile £577 £619 £638
90th Percentile £688 £774 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £450
% change year-on-year +5.26% +5.56% -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 9 13
10th Percentile £21.67 £21.02 £25.40
25th Percentile £23.43 £21.25 £26.24
Median hourly rate £26.46 £28.50 £35.63
Median % change year-on-year -7.17% -20.01% +37.04%
75th Percentile £29.69 £53.75 £48.75
90th Percentile £31.88 £55.15 £49.75
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 11,348 10,546 12,784
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.75% 32.68% 30.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,523 6,723 9,098
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £504 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -4.55% -2.65%
75th Percentile £619 £640 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -1.54% -2.50% -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 392 241 411
10th Percentile £35.03 £21.25 £35.00
25th Percentile £51.21 £38.25 £46.95
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% - -0.79%
75th Percentile £69.30 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.25 £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 8 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 8 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 -70 155 £492 -4.47% 207
London -26 81 £500 -9.09% 72
UK excluding London -79 70 £500 +5.26% 176
Work from Home +3 59 £510 -0.49% 32
Midlands -36 20 £435 +12.26% 17
South East -22 17 £600 +17.07% 54
North of England -45 16 £465 +30.62% 37
North West -13 14 £479 +34.41% 19
East Midlands -22 13 £385 +13.24% 10
East of England -19 8 £641 -1.38% 34
West Midlands -40 7 £475 -12.60% 7
Wales -1 5 £366 - 7
Scotland -7 2 £569 +21.66% 9
South West -19 2 - - 18
Yorkshire -44 2 £450 +20.00% 10

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 (12.07%) Apache Spark
2 17 (9.77%) SAS
3 8 (4.60%) SharePoint
4 5 (2.87%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (2.30%) Apache
6 3 (1.72%) Confluence
7 1 (0.57%) Jupyter
Applications
1 24 (13.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (5.17%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (5.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.57%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.57%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 1 (0.57%) Distributed Ledger
1 1 (0.57%) NEC Housing
1 1 (0.57%) Salesforce CRM
1 1 (0.57%) SAP ERP
1 1 (0.57%) SAP IBP
1 1 (0.57%) SAP S/4HANA
1 1 (0.57%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 70 (40.23%) Power Platform
2 52 (29.89%) Azure
3 38 (21.84%) AWS
4 26 (14.94%) GCP
5 9 (5.17%) Power Automate
5 9 (5.17%) PowerApps
5 9 (5.17%) Snowflake
6 8 (4.60%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 7 (4.02%) Azure Machine Learning
8 6 (3.45%) Azure Data Factory
9 4 (2.30%) Azure AKS
9 4 (2.30%) Azure DevOps
9 4 (2.30%) Microsoft Purview
10 3 (1.72%) Adobe Analytics
10 3 (1.72%) Amazon Bedrock
10 3 (1.72%) Copilot Studio
10 3 (1.72%) dbt
10 3 (1.72%) Google Analytics
11 2 (1.15%) Cloud Computing
11 2 (1.15%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.15%) 2G
1 2 (1.15%) 5G
1 2 (1.15%) LTE
1 2 (1.15%) Mobile Backhaul
1 2 (1.15%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 70 (40.23%) Power BI
2 47 (27.01%) Tableau
3 23 (13.22%) Big Data
4 20 (11.49%) Data Warehouse
5 17 (9.77%) Hadoop
6 12 (6.90%) Data Lake
7 9 (5.17%) Data Mining
8 8 (4.60%) Looker
8 8 (4.60%) Power Query
9 7 (4.02%) NoSQL
10 6 (3.45%) Amazon Redshift
10 6 (3.45%) Delta Lake
10 6 (3.45%) Metadata
11 5 (2.87%) Relational Database
11 5 (2.87%) Spark SQL
12 4 (2.30%) SQL Server
13 3 (1.72%) BigQuery
13 3 (1.72%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
13 3 (1.72%) Impala
13 3 (1.72%) Spotfire
Development Applications
1 12 (6.90%) Git
2 5 (2.87%) Jenkins
3 4 (2.30%) JIRA
3 4 (2.30%) MLflow
4 2 (1.15%) GoCD
4 2 (1.15%) SonarQube
4 2 (1.15%) Sonatype Nexus
4 2 (1.15%) TeamCity
5 1 (0.57%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.57%) Eclipse
5 1 (0.57%) Maven
5 1 (0.57%) RStudio
General
1 60 (34.48%) Social Skills
2 54 (31.03%) Analytical Skills
3 45 (25.86%) Finance
4 18 (10.34%) Public Sector
5 17 (9.77%) Marketing
6 13 (7.47%) Banking
6 13 (7.47%) Pharmaceutical
7 6 (3.45%) Organisational Skills
8 5 (2.87%) Manufacturing
9 3 (1.72%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (1.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 3 (1.72%) Legal
9 3 (1.72%) Local Government
10 2 (1.15%) Digital Health
10 2 (1.15%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (1.15%) Retail
10 2 (1.15%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.57%) Advertising
11 1 (0.57%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 43 (24.71%) Data Scientist
2 36 (20.69%) Analyst
3 27 (15.52%) Data Analyst
4 20 (11.49%) Senior
5 18 (10.34%) Data Engineer
6 17 (9.77%) Developer
7 11 (6.32%) Architect
8 9 (5.17%) Lead
9 8 (4.60%) Senior Data Scientist
9 8 (4.60%) Software Engineer
10 7 (4.02%) Business Intelligence Developer
11 6 (3.45%) Azure Engineer
11 6 (3.45%) Consultant
11 6 (3.45%) Power BI Developer
12 5 (2.87%) Business Analyst
13 4 (2.30%) Machine Learning Engineer
13 4 (2.30%) Python Engineer
13 4 (2.30%) Senior Analyst
13 4 (2.30%) SQL Analyst
13 4 (2.30%) SQL Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (6.90%) scikit-learn
1 12 (6.90%) TensorFlow
2 10 (5.75%) Pandas
3 9 (5.17%) PyTorch
4 8 (4.60%) PySpark
5 5 (2.87%) Kafka
6 4 (2.30%) YAML
7 3 (1.72%) FastAPI
7 3 (1.72%) FHIR
7 3 (1.72%) JSON
7 3 (1.72%) Matplotlib
7 3 (1.72%) NumPy
7 3 (1.72%) Seaborn
7 3 (1.72%) Shiny
8 2 (1.15%) CrewAI
8 2 (1.15%) LangChain
8 2 (1.15%) LangGraph
8 2 (1.15%) NLTK
8 2 (1.15%) Plotly
8 2 (1.15%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 13 (7.47%) Algorithms
2 12 (6.90%) Credit Risk
3 9 (5.17%) Self-Motivation
4 8 (4.60%) Data Structures
5 7 (4.02%) Cloud Native
6 5 (2.87%) Management Information System
6 5 (2.87%) Product Ownership
7 4 (2.30%) Analytical Mindset
7 4 (2.30%) NHS
8 3 (1.72%) IoT
9 2 (1.15%) AI Agents
9 2 (1.15%) Distributed Computing
9 2 (1.15%) Genomics
9 2 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
9 2 (1.15%) Legacy Systems
9 2 (1.15%) Mobile App
9 2 (1.15%) Multi-touch
9 2 (1.15%) Onboarding
10 1 (0.57%) CRISPR
10 1 (0.57%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 3 (1.72%) Linux
2 2 (1.15%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 83 (47.70%) Data Science
2 82 (47.13%) Analytics
3 73 (41.95%) Business Intelligence
4 66 (37.93%) Machine Learning
5 62 (35.63%) Visualisation
6 47 (27.01%) Decision-Making
7 46 (26.44%) Data Analysis
8 44 (25.29%) Data Modelling
9 39 (22.41%) Problem-Solving
10 34 (19.54%) Actionable Insight
10 34 (19.54%) Agile
11 33 (18.97%) Data Visualisation
11 33 (18.97%) Statistical Modelling
12 31 (17.82%) Data Governance
13 27 (15.52%) Validation
14 26 (14.94%) AI
15 24 (13.79%) CI/CD
16 22 (12.64%) Data Analytics
17 21 (12.07%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 19 (10.92%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 165 (94.83%) Python
2 121 (69.54%) SQL
3 12 (6.90%) Java
4 11 (6.32%) C++
5 9 (5.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 8 (4.60%) MATLAB
6 8 (4.60%) Scala
7 5 (2.87%) JavaScript
8 4 (2.30%) PL/SQL
8 4 (2.30%) VBA
9 3 (1.72%) Go
10 2 (1.15%) Ada
10 2 (1.15%) C#
10 2 (1.15%) Rust
10 2 (1.15%) TypeScript
11 1 (0.57%) Bash
11 1 (0.57%) C
11 1 (0.57%) Fortran
11 1 (0.57%) Korn
11 1 (0.57%) LookML
Qualifications
1 31 (17.82%) Degree
2 24 (13.79%) Security Cleared
3 19 (10.92%) SC Cleared
4 12 (6.90%) Computer Science Degree
5 8 (4.60%) Master's Degree
6 7 (4.02%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (2.30%) Microsoft Certification
7 4 (2.30%) PhD
8 2 (1.15%) Azure Certification
8 2 (1.15%) MCP
8 2 (1.15%) Tableau Certification
9 1 (0.57%) ACCA
9 1 (0.57%) CFA
9 1 (0.57%) CIMA
9 1 (0.57%) CTC Cleared
9 1 (0.57%) DBS Check
9 1 (0.57%) GIAC
9 1 (0.57%) Numerate Degree
9 1 (0.57%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (16.09%) Data Quality
2 7 (4.02%) GDPR
3 6 (3.45%) QA
4 4 (2.30%) Actionable Recommendations
5 2 (1.15%) Accessibility
5 2 (1.15%) DICOM
5 2 (1.15%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.57%) HL7
6 1 (0.57%) IFRS
6 1 (0.57%) IFRS 9
6 1 (0.57%) LOINC
6 1 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (0.57%) SNOMED CT
6 1 (0.57%) WCAG
System Software
1 10 (5.75%) Docker
2 2 (1.15%) HDFS
3 1 (0.57%) Lustre
3 1 (0.57%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 11 (6.32%) Kubernetes
2 2 (1.15%) Ansible
2 2 (1.15%) rkt
2 2 (1.15%) Terraform
3 1 (0.57%) Packer
3 1 (0.57%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 24 (13.79%) Databricks
2 21 (12.07%) Microsoft
3 9 (5.17%) Oracle
4 7 (4.02%) Pega
5 6 (3.45%) Google
6 4 (2.30%) SAP
6 4 (2.30%) ServiceNow
7 3 (1.72%) Adobe
7 3 (1.72%) Cognos
7 3 (1.72%) Informatica
7 3 (1.72%) Splunk
7 3 (1.72%) TIBCO
8 2 (1.15%) Alteryx
8 2 (1.15%) Amplitude
8 2 (1.15%) Dynatrace
8 2 (1.15%) OpenAI
8 2 (1.15%) Red Hat
9 1 (0.57%) Arqiva
9 1 (0.57%) Cribl.io
9 1 (0.57%) TikTok