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 20 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 447 360 392
Rank change year-on-year -87 +32 +23
Contract jobs citing R 179 169 192
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.37% 0.58% 0.45%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.39% 1.70% 1.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 125 113 137
10th Percentile £305 £330 £354
25th Percentile £406 £406 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £575 £675 £638
90th Percentile £650 £744 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £438 £488 £400
% change year-on-year -10.26% +21.88% -20.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 6 11
10th Percentile £22.38 £21.88 £21.25
25th Percentile £25.21 £22.63 £23.99
Median hourly rate £43.00 £25.16 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +70.91% -40.80% -35.61%
75th Percentile £60.25 £46.89 £51.71
90th Percentile £60.37 £56.25 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.42 £23.00 £21.73
% change year-on-year +10.50% +5.84% -65.23%

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 12,886 9,917 12,722
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.76% 34.00% 29.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,472 6,737 9,047
10th Percentile £356 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £530
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -1.89% -3.64%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £710 £763 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £475 £489
% change year-on-year +1.39% -2.86% -2.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 561 239 494
10th Percentile £39.25 £25.25 £32.25
25th Percentile £54.55 £35.00 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.43
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +0.12% +2.85%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.56% +2.40% -

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 20 May 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 20 May 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 20 May 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 -105 158 £475 -12.84% 210
London -44 92 £525 -4.55% 80
Work from Home -16 73 £550 +22.22% 40
UK excluding London -97 60 £438 -10.26% 184
North of England -57 14 £425 -6.59% 42
Midlands -64 13 £416 -6.88% 27
South East -58 12 £550 +50.17% 47
South West -37 11 £450 -47.98% 19
Yorkshire -49 10 £425 +1.49% 15
East of England -41 9 £413 -36.54% 27
East Midlands -23 8 £395 -11.63% 17
West Midlands -56 5 £438 +12.90% 10
North West -42 3 - - 22
Northern Ireland -2 1 - - 4
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 38 (21.23%) Apache Spark
2 11 (6.15%) Apache
3 4 (2.23%) Apache Superset
3 4 (2.23%) SharePoint
4 2 (1.12%) Jupyter
5 1 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.56%) Confluence
5 1 (0.56%) R Markdown
Applications
1 18 (10.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (1.12%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.56%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.56%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 1 (0.56%) SAP APO
1 1 (0.56%) SAP IBP
1 1 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 66 (36.87%) Power Platform
2 46 (25.70%) AWS
3 41 (22.91%) Azure
4 11 (6.15%) GCP
5 10 (5.59%) Snowflake
6 7 (3.91%) Azure DevOps
6 7 (3.91%) PowerApps
7 6 (3.35%) Power Automate
8 4 (2.23%) Azure Data Factory
8 4 (2.23%) Microsoft Purview
9 3 (1.68%) Amazon S3
9 3 (1.68%) Copilot Studio
9 3 (1.68%) dbt
9 3 (1.68%) OpenShift
9 3 (1.68%) Serverless
10 2 (1.12%) Amazon EMR
10 2 (1.12%) Amazon Kinesis
10 2 (1.12%) Cloud Functions
10 2 (1.12%) GitHub
10 2 (1.12%) Google Analytics
Database & Business Intelligence
1 65 (36.31%) Power BI
2 60 (33.52%) Tableau
3 33 (18.44%) Big Data
4 24 (13.41%) Hadoop
5 16 (8.94%) Data Warehouse
6 14 (7.82%) Looker
7 10 (5.59%) Power Query
8 9 (5.03%) Mixpanel
8 9 (5.03%) Relational Database
9 6 (3.35%) Delta Lake
9 6 (3.35%) Spark SQL
10 5 (2.79%) Data Lake
10 5 (2.79%) NoSQL
11 4 (2.23%) Amazon Athena
11 4 (2.23%) Amazon Redshift
11 4 (2.23%) BigQuery
11 4 (2.23%) Metadata
11 4 (2.23%) SQL Server
12 3 (1.68%) Parquet
12 3 (1.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 7 (3.91%) Git
2 2 (1.12%) Jenkins
2 2 (1.12%) MLflow
3 1 (0.56%) RStudio
General
1 55 (30.73%) Analytical Skills
2 40 (22.35%) Social Skills
3 33 (18.44%) Public Sector
4 30 (16.76%) Finance
5 13 (7.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 13 (7.26%) Pharmaceutical
6 8 (4.47%) Marketing
7 6 (3.35%) Telecoms
8 4 (2.23%) Presentation Skills
9 3 (1.68%) Front Office
9 3 (1.68%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (1.12%) Banking
10 2 (1.12%) Manufacturing
10 2 (1.12%) Publishing
10 2 (1.12%) Retail
10 2 (1.12%) Social Science
11 1 (0.56%) Billing
11 1 (0.56%) Documentation Skills
11 1 (0.56%) Local Government
11 1 (0.56%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 57 (31.84%) Data Scientist
2 42 (23.46%) Analyst
3 35 (19.55%) Data Analyst
4 29 (16.20%) Senior
5 18 (10.06%) Developer
5 18 (10.06%) Senior Data Scientist
6 17 (9.50%) Data Engineer
7 11 (6.15%) Lead
8 9 (5.03%) Technical Analyst
9 8 (4.47%) Consultant
9 8 (4.47%) Lead Data Scientist
10 7 (3.91%) SQL Analyst
10 7 (3.91%) SQL Data Analyst
11 6 (3.35%) Architect
11 6 (3.35%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
11 6 (3.35%) Business Intelligence Developer
11 6 (3.35%) Data Consultant
11 6 (3.35%) Senior Analyst
11 6 (3.35%) Software Engineer
12 5 (2.79%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (7.82%) TensorFlow
2 12 (6.70%) PyTorch
3 10 (5.59%) Pandas
4 8 (4.47%) PySpark
4 8 (4.47%) scikit-learn
5 6 (3.35%) JSON
5 6 (3.35%) Keras
6 5 (2.79%) NumPy
6 5 (2.79%) Shiny
7 4 (2.23%) LangChain
7 4 (2.23%) Matplotlib
7 4 (2.23%) Seaborn
7 4 (2.23%) YAML
8 3 (1.68%) Plotly
9 2 (1.12%) Apache Avro
9 2 (1.12%) Apache Beam
9 2 (1.12%) Hugging Face
9 2 (1.12%) Kafka
9 2 (1.12%) NLTK
9 2 (1.12%) Prophet
Miscellaneous
1 15 (8.38%) Algorithms
2 10 (5.59%) CRISPR
3 7 (3.91%) Cloud Native
4 6 (3.35%) Product Ownership
5 5 (2.79%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (2.23%) Analytical Mindset
7 3 (1.68%) AI Agents
7 3 (1.68%) Data Structures
7 3 (1.68%) Hybrid Cloud
7 3 (1.68%) Legacy Systems
7 3 (1.68%) Mainframe
7 3 (1.68%) Multi-touch
7 3 (1.68%) Onboarding
7 3 (1.68%) Self-Motivation
8 2 (1.12%) Distributed Systems
8 2 (1.12%) Management Information System
9 1 (0.56%) Credit Risk
9 1 (0.56%) Derivative
9 1 (0.56%) Fixed Income
9 1 (0.56%) FMCG
Operating Systems
1 4 (2.23%) Linux
2 3 (1.68%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 95 (53.07%) Analytics
1 95 (53.07%) Data Science
2 84 (46.93%) Visualisation
3 64 (35.75%) Machine Learning
4 63 (35.20%) Business Intelligence
5 54 (30.17%) Decision-Making
6 52 (29.05%) Data Pipeline
7 48 (26.82%) Actionable Insight
8 46 (25.70%) Data Visualisation
9 43 (24.02%) Problem-Solving
10 37 (20.67%) Agile
11 36 (20.11%) Statistical Modelling
12 35 (19.55%) AI
12 35 (19.55%) Data Analytics
13 34 (18.99%) Statistical Analysis
14 29 (16.20%) Statistics
15 28 (15.64%) Data Modelling
15 28 (15.64%) Mathematics
16 26 (14.53%) Dashboard Development
16 26 (14.53%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 170 (94.97%) Python
2 133 (74.30%) SQL
3 16 (8.94%) Java
4 11 (6.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 9 (5.03%) C#
6 8 (4.47%) C++
7 7 (3.91%) Scala
8 5 (2.79%) JavaScript
9 3 (1.68%) TypeScript
10 2 (1.12%) Ada
10 2 (1.12%) VBA
11 1 (0.56%) LookML
11 1 (0.56%) T-SQL
11 1 (0.56%) VB
Qualifications
1 47 (26.26%) Security Cleared
2 40 (22.35%) SC Cleared
3 29 (16.20%) Degree
4 6 (3.35%) Computer Science Degree
4 6 (3.35%) Microsoft Certification
5 5 (2.79%) PhD
6 4 (2.23%) BPSS Clearance
6 4 (2.23%) Master's Degree
7 2 (1.12%) Azure Certification
7 2 (1.12%) Tableau Certification
8 1 (0.56%) DBS Check
8 1 (0.56%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (10.06%) Data Quality
2 10 (5.59%) Actionable Recommendations
3 7 (3.91%) QA
4 5 (2.79%) GDPR
5 3 (1.68%) Accessibility
6 2 (1.12%) WCAG
7 1 (0.56%) MiFID
7 1 (0.56%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 3 (1.68%) Docker
2 2 (1.12%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 8 (4.47%) Kubernetes
1 8 (4.47%) Terraform
Vendors
1 21 (11.73%) Databricks
2 18 (10.06%) Microsoft
3 9 (5.03%) Amplitude
4 5 (2.79%) Google
4 5 (2.79%) OpenAI
5 3 (1.68%) Informatica
5 3 (1.68%) Red Hat
6 2 (1.12%) SAP
6 2 (1.12%) Splunk
7 1 (0.56%) Adobe
7 1 (0.56%) Alteryx
7 1 (0.56%) Cognos
7 1 (0.56%) Oracle
7 1 (0.56%) ServiceNow