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 19 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 445 348 389
Rank change year-on-year -97 +41 +34
Contract jobs citing R 180 174 201
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.39% 0.59% 0.46%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.40% 1.74% 1.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 123 120 139
10th Percentile £350 £348 £325
25th Percentile £406 £406 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £545 £542
Median % change year-on-year -8.26% +0.65% -1.55%
75th Percentile £575 £675 £644
90th Percentile £650 £777 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £412
% change year-on-year -5.26% +15.29% -4.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 7 12
10th Percentile £22.38 £22.00 £25.37
25th Percentile £25.21 £22.75 £26.06
Median hourly rate £43.00 £26.32 £43.75
Median % change year-on-year +63.37% -39.84% -33.71%
75th Percentile £60.25 £56.25 £53.04
90th Percentile £60.37 £59.55 £75.22
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.42 £23.00 £25.36
% change year-on-year +10.50% -9.31% -49.28%

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 12,852 10,026 12,787
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 27.83% 34.07% 29.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,547 6,795 9,088
10th Percentile £354 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £415 £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 £713 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £487
% change year-on-year - -2.46% -2.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 548 240 478
10th Percentile £42.33 £22.45 £31.25
25th Percentile £55.00 £34.73 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -1.03%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.13 £68.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £78.23
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.97% +1.99% -

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 19 April 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 19 April 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 19 April 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 -95 159 £500 -9.09% 227
London -40 90 £525 -4.55% 79
Work from Home -14 68 £525 +7.97% 65
UK excluding London -110 65 £450 -5.26% 194
North of England -63 18 £458 +0.55% 45
South East -42 14 £588 +59.86% 57
Midlands -68 14 £395 -3.54% 22
South West -26 10 £450 -32.84% 23
East Midlands -26 9 £385 +31.40% 16
North West -39 9 £530 +16.51% 15
East of England -41 8 £413 -36.54% 30
Yorkshire -49 8 £425 +21.43% 19
West Midlands -67 5 £438 +1.39% 6
Wales -8 1 £425 - 9
North East - 1 £475 - 11

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 36 (20.00%) Apache Spark
2 11 (6.11%) Apache
3 7 (3.89%) SAS
4 5 (2.78%) SharePoint
5 4 (2.22%) Apache Superset
6 2 (1.11%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (1.11%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.56%) Confluence
7 1 (0.56%) R Markdown
Applications
1 19 (10.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (1.11%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.56%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (1.11%) SAP IBP
2 1 (0.56%) Salesforce CRM
2 1 (0.56%) SAP APO
2 1 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 66 (36.67%) Power Platform
2 50 (27.78%) AWS
3 47 (26.11%) Azure
4 18 (10.00%) GCP
5 8 (4.44%) Power Automate
5 8 (4.44%) PowerApps
6 7 (3.89%) Snowflake
7 6 (3.33%) Azure Data Factory
8 5 (2.78%) Azure DevOps
8 5 (2.78%) Microsoft Purview
9 3 (1.67%) Amazon S3
9 3 (1.67%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 3 (1.67%) Copilot Studio
9 3 (1.67%) dbt
9 3 (1.67%) OpenShift
9 3 (1.67%) Serverless
10 2 (1.11%) Amazon EMR
10 2 (1.11%) Amazon Kinesis
10 2 (1.11%) Cloud Computing
10 2 (1.11%) Google Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.56%) 2G
1 1 (0.56%) 5G
1 1 (0.56%) LTE
1 1 (0.56%) Mobile Backhaul
1 1 (0.56%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 66 (36.67%) Power BI
2 52 (28.89%) Tableau
3 32 (17.78%) Big Data
4 23 (12.78%) Hadoop
5 21 (11.67%) Data Warehouse
6 11 (6.11%) Looker
7 9 (5.00%) Power Query
8 8 (4.44%) Relational Database
9 7 (3.89%) Delta Lake
9 7 (3.89%) Metadata
9 7 (3.89%) Mixpanel
9 7 (3.89%) Spark SQL
10 6 (3.33%) Data Lake
11 5 (2.78%) NoSQL
11 5 (2.78%) SQL Server
12 4 (2.22%) Amazon Athena
12 4 (2.22%) Amazon Redshift
13 3 (1.67%) BigQuery
13 3 (1.67%) Data Mining
14 2 (1.11%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 10 (5.56%) Git
2 3 (1.67%) Jenkins
3 2 (1.11%) MLflow
4 1 (0.56%) Bitbucket
4 1 (0.56%) JIRA
4 1 (0.56%) RStudio
General
1 59 (32.78%) Analytical Skills
2 49 (27.22%) Social Skills
3 36 (20.00%) Finance
4 32 (17.78%) Public Sector
5 12 (6.67%) Pharmaceutical
6 11 (6.11%) Marketing
7 10 (5.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 6 (3.33%) Telecoms
9 4 (2.22%) Influencing Skills
9 4 (2.22%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.67%) Banking
11 2 (1.11%) Documentation Skills
11 2 (1.11%) Financial Institution
11 2 (1.11%) Front Office
11 2 (1.11%) Retail
11 2 (1.11%) Social Science
12 1 (0.56%) Billing
12 1 (0.56%) Local Government
12 1 (0.56%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.56%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 54 (30.00%) Data Scientist
2 35 (19.44%) Analyst
3 30 (16.67%) Data Analyst
4 26 (14.44%) Senior
5 19 (10.56%) Data Engineer
6 17 (9.44%) Developer
7 15 (8.33%) Senior Data Scientist
8 10 (5.56%) Architect
8 10 (5.56%) Lead
9 9 (5.00%) Consultant
10 6 (3.33%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 6 (3.33%) Business Intelligence Developer
10 6 (3.33%) Data Consultant
10 6 (3.33%) Lead Data Scientist
10 6 (3.33%) Technical Analyst
11 5 (2.78%) Azure Engineer
11 5 (2.78%) Java Developer
11 5 (2.78%) Power BI Developer
11 5 (2.78%) Senior Analyst
11 5 (2.78%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (7.22%) TensorFlow
2 12 (6.67%) Pandas
3 10 (5.56%) PyTorch
4 9 (5.00%) PySpark
4 9 (5.00%) scikit-learn
5 8 (4.44%) JSON
6 6 (3.33%) Keras
6 6 (3.33%) Shiny
7 5 (2.78%) NumPy
7 5 (2.78%) YAML
8 4 (2.22%) LangChain
8 4 (2.22%) Matplotlib
8 4 (2.22%) Seaborn
9 3 (1.67%) Kafka
9 3 (1.67%) Plotly
10 2 (1.11%) FastAPI
10 2 (1.11%) Hugging Face
10 2 (1.11%) NLTK
10 2 (1.11%) Prophet
10 2 (1.11%) XGBoost
Miscellaneous
1 15 (8.33%) Algorithms
2 7 (3.89%) Cloud Native
2 7 (3.89%) CRISPR
2 7 (3.89%) Product Ownership
3 5 (2.78%) Credit Risk
3 5 (2.78%) Data Protection Act
3 5 (2.78%) Self-Motivation
4 4 (2.22%) Data Structures
4 4 (2.22%) Multi-touch
5 3 (1.67%) AI Agents
5 3 (1.67%) Hybrid Cloud
5 3 (1.67%) Management Information System
5 3 (1.67%) Onboarding
6 2 (1.11%) Analytical Mindset
6 2 (1.11%) Distributed Computing
6 2 (1.11%) Distributed Systems
6 2 (1.11%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (1.11%) Mainframe
7 1 (0.56%) Data Fabric
7 1 (0.56%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 3 (1.67%) Linux
2 2 (1.11%) Unix
3 1 (0.56%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 96 (53.33%) Data Science
2 95 (52.78%) Analytics
3 78 (43.33%) Visualisation
4 69 (38.33%) Machine Learning
5 66 (36.67%) Business Intelligence
6 55 (30.56%) Decision-Making
7 45 (25.00%) Data Pipeline
8 43 (23.89%) Problem-Solving
9 42 (23.33%) Actionable Insight
9 42 (23.33%) Data Visualisation
10 36 (20.00%) Statistical Modelling
11 35 (19.44%) Data Analysis
12 34 (18.89%) Agile
12 34 (18.89%) Data Modelling
13 32 (17.78%) Data Analytics
14 31 (17.22%) AI
15 30 (16.67%) Validation
16 29 (16.11%) Mathematics
16 29 (16.11%) Statistics
17 28 (15.56%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 171 (95.00%) Python
2 131 (72.78%) SQL
3 13 (7.22%) Java
4 11 (6.11%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 7 (3.89%) JavaScript
5 7 (3.89%) Scala
6 6 (3.33%) C#
6 6 (3.33%) C++
7 3 (1.67%) TypeScript
8 2 (1.11%) Ada
8 2 (1.11%) VBA
9 1 (0.56%) LookML
9 1 (0.56%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 50 (27.78%) Security Cleared
2 42 (23.33%) SC Cleared
3 32 (17.78%) Degree
4 7 (3.89%) Computer Science Degree
5 6 (3.33%) Master's Degree
5 6 (3.33%) Microsoft Certification
5 6 (3.33%) PhD
6 4 (2.22%) BPSS Clearance
7 3 (1.67%) Azure Certification
8 2 (1.11%) Tableau Certification
9 1 (0.56%) CIMA
9 1 (0.56%) CTC Cleared
9 1 (0.56%) DBS Check
9 1 (0.56%) DV Cleared
9 1 (0.56%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (12.22%) Data Quality
2 11 (6.11%) Actionable Recommendations
3 8 (4.44%) QA
4 7 (3.89%) GDPR
5 3 (1.67%) Accessibility
6 2 (1.11%) PCI DSS
6 2 (1.11%) WCAG
7 1 (0.56%) MiFID
7 1 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 4 (2.22%) Docker
2 2 (1.11%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 9 (5.00%) Kubernetes
2 6 (3.33%) Terraform
Vendors
1 21 (11.67%) Databricks
2 18 (10.00%) Microsoft
3 7 (3.89%) Amplitude
4 5 (2.78%) OpenAI
4 5 (2.78%) Pega
5 4 (2.22%) Google
5 4 (2.22%) ServiceNow
6 3 (1.67%) Informatica
6 3 (1.67%) Oracle
6 3 (1.67%) Red Hat
6 3 (1.67%) SAP
7 2 (1.11%) Splunk
8 1 (0.56%) Adobe
8 1 (0.56%) Alteryx
8 1 (0.56%) Cognos
8 1 (0.56%) Salesforce
8 1 (0.56%) UiPath