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 3 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 514 376 346
Rank change year-on-year -138 -30 +84
Contract jobs citing R 165 181 212
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.31% 0.56% 0.55%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.18% 1.70% 1.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 115 106 132
10th Percentile £259 £315 £310
25th Percentile £403 £406 £356
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -7.00% - -9.09%
75th Percentile £563 £594 £610
90th Percentile £650 £688 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £437 £513 £550
% change year-on-year -14.73% -6.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 5 19
10th Percentile - £24.20 £20.09
25th Percentile - £26.25 £20.12
Median hourly rate £24.25 £27.50 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.82% +27.91% -65.60%
75th Percentile - £38.75 £39.00
90th Percentile - £53.75 £58.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £22.84 £20.24
% change year-on-year - +12.87% -67.62%

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 14,008 10,674 12,103
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.12% 32.84% 31.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,115 7,100 8,347
10th Percentile £363 £342 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £503 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.48% -4.29% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £745 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 520 301 355
10th Percentile £27.98 £29.00 £30.00
25th Percentile £46.79 £36.69 £46.18
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £80.00 £78.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% +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 3 September 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 3 September 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 -136 148 £465 -7.00% 617
London -61 95 £525 -2.33% 405
UK excluding London -118 55 £437 -14.73% 274
Work from Home -72 48 £537 +7.40% 212
South East -67 13 £513 +5.13% 94
South West -34 12 £450 -47.98% 32
Yorkshire -34 9 £425 -5.56% 16
North of England -59 9 £425 +21.43% 50
East of England -36 7 £413 -26.67% 38
Midlands -53 7 £450 -18.18% 35
West Midlands -50 5 £451 -18.09% 18
Scotland -22 4 £194 -64.66% 14
Northern Ireland +4 2 £363 +3.57% 7
East Midlands -21 2 £252 -43.51% 16
Wales -18 1 £490 +30.23% 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 18 (10.91%) Apache Spark
2 11 (6.67%) Apache
3 3 (1.82%) Apache Superset
3 3 (1.82%) Confluence
3 3 (1.82%) Jupyter
4 2 (1.21%) SAS
5 1 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.61%) nginx
5 1 (0.61%) R Markdown
Applications
1 26 (15.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (1.21%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.61%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.61%) CPLEX
3 1 (0.61%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 1 (0.61%) SAP APO
1 1 (0.61%) SAP IBP
Cloud Services
1 51 (30.91%) Power Platform
2 44 (26.67%) AWS
3 41 (24.85%) Azure
4 19 (11.52%) GCP
5 12 (7.27%) Snowflake
6 9 (5.45%) SaaS
7 8 (4.85%) Serverless
8 6 (3.64%) Azure DevOps
9 5 (3.03%) Amazon S3
9 5 (3.03%) Azure Databricks
10 4 (2.42%) GitHub
11 3 (1.82%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 3 (1.82%) dbt
11 3 (1.82%) Google Analytics
12 2 (1.21%) Amazon EKS
12 2 (1.21%) AWS CloudFormation
12 2 (1.21%) Azure Data Factory
12 2 (1.21%) Cloud Functions
12 2 (1.21%) GitHub Actions
13 1 (0.61%) WhatsApp
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.21%) DSL
2 1 (0.61%) DNS
2 1 (0.61%) HTTPS
2 1 (0.61%) Reverse Proxy
2 1 (0.61%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 50 (30.30%) Power BI
2 45 (27.27%) Tableau
3 17 (10.30%) Big Data
4 15 (9.09%) Data Warehouse
5 11 (6.67%) Relational Database
6 8 (4.85%) BigQuery
6 8 (4.85%) Hadoop
7 6 (3.64%) Power Query
8 5 (3.03%) Data Lake
8 5 (3.03%) Delta Lake
9 4 (2.42%) Looker
10 3 (1.82%) Amazon Athena
10 3 (1.82%) Apache Hive
10 3 (1.82%) Metadata
10 3 (1.82%) NoSQL
10 3 (1.82%) PostgreSQL
10 3 (1.82%) RDBMS
10 3 (1.82%) SQL Server
10 3 (1.82%) SQLPlus
11 2 (1.21%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 7 (4.24%) Git
2 6 (3.64%) GitLab
2 6 (3.64%) RStudio
3 3 (1.82%) Jenkins
3 3 (1.82%) JIRA
4 2 (1.21%) Cucumber
4 2 (1.21%) Gatling
4 2 (1.21%) JUnit
4 2 (1.21%) Selenium
5 1 (0.61%) Maven
5 1 (0.61%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 65 (39.39%) Analytical Skills
2 36 (21.82%) Social Skills
3 30 (18.18%) Public Sector
4 24 (14.55%) Finance
5 12 (7.27%) Marketing
6 10 (6.06%) Retail
7 9 (5.45%) Pharmaceutical
8 8 (4.85%) Banking
9 7 (4.24%) Telecoms
10 6 (3.64%) Billing
11 5 (3.03%) Military
11 5 (3.03%) Presentation Skills
12 4 (2.42%) Front Office
12 4 (2.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 4 (2.42%) Influencing Skills
13 3 (1.82%) Organisational Skills
13 3 (1.82%) Publishing
14 2 (1.21%) Manufacturing
14 2 (1.21%) Police
15 1 (0.61%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 53 (32.12%) Analyst
2 40 (24.24%) Data Analyst
3 26 (15.76%) Data Scientist
4 15 (9.09%) Senior
5 12 (7.27%) Data Engineer
5 12 (7.27%) Developer
6 11 (6.67%) Architect
6 11 (6.67%) Lead
7 9 (5.45%) Consultant
7 9 (5.45%) SQL Analyst
7 9 (5.45%) Technical Analyst
8 7 (4.24%) Senior Analyst
9 6 (3.64%) Data Consultant
9 6 (3.64%) Senior Data Analyst
9 6 (3.64%) Software Engineer
9 6 (3.64%) SQL Data Analyst
10 5 (3.03%) Data Architect
10 5 (3.03%) Java Developer
10 5 (3.03%) Senior Data Scientist
11 4 (2.42%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (6.06%) Terraform
2 8 (4.85%) JSON
2 8 (4.85%) PySpark
3 7 (4.24%) PyTorch
3 7 (4.24%) TensorFlow
4 6 (3.64%) XML
5 5 (3.03%) REST
6 4 (2.42%) .NET
6 4 (2.42%) Pandas
6 4 (2.42%) React
7 3 (1.82%) NumPy
7 3 (1.82%) YAML
8 2 (1.21%) AngularJS
8 2 (1.21%) Apache Avro
8 2 (1.21%) Bootstrap
8 2 (1.21%) Playwright
8 2 (1.21%) pytest
8 2 (1.21%) RabbitMQ
8 2 (1.21%) Shiny
8 2 (1.21%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 12 (7.27%) Algorithms
1 12 (7.27%) Onboarding
2 8 (4.85%) CRISPR
3 6 (3.64%) Data Structures
3 6 (3.64%) Legacy Systems
4 5 (3.03%) Cloud Native
4 5 (3.03%) Data Protection Act
5 4 (2.42%) AI Agents
5 4 (2.42%) Analytical Mindset
6 3 (1.82%) Product Ownership
7 2 (1.21%) BYOD
7 2 (1.21%) Credit Risk
7 2 (1.21%) Distributed Computing
7 2 (1.21%) Distributed Systems
7 2 (1.21%) Fixed Income
7 2 (1.21%) Legacy Applications
7 2 (1.21%) Mainframe
7 2 (1.21%) Social Media
7 2 (1.21%) Taxonomies
8 1 (0.61%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 5 (3.03%) Linux
2 2 (1.21%) Unix
3 1 (0.61%) Amazon Linux
3 1 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (0.61%) Ubuntu
3 1 (0.61%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 70 (42.42%) Analytics
2 61 (36.97%) Data Science
3 58 (35.15%) Visualisation
4 56 (33.94%) Business Intelligence
5 50 (30.30%) Data Pipeline
6 44 (26.67%) Machine Learning
7 42 (25.45%) Actionable Insight
8 41 (24.85%) Decision-Making
9 38 (23.03%) AI
10 33 (20.00%) Data Visualisation
11 32 (19.39%) Problem-Solving
11 32 (19.39%) Statistical Analysis
12 31 (18.79%) Agile
13 29 (17.58%) Validation
14 27 (16.36%) Mathematics
15 24 (14.55%) Data Engineering
15 24 (14.55%) Statistical Modelling
16 23 (13.94%) Stakeholder Management
17 21 (12.73%) Data Analysis
17 21 (12.73%) Statistics
Programming Languages
1 150 (90.91%) Python
2 98 (59.39%) SQL
3 17 (10.30%) Java
4 10 (6.06%) C++
5 7 (4.24%) C#
6 6 (3.64%) JavaScript
7 5 (3.03%) Scala
8 4 (2.42%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 2 (1.21%) Bash
9 2 (1.21%) Cypher
9 2 (1.21%) PowerShell
9 2 (1.21%) SHACL
9 2 (1.21%) TypeScript
10 1 (0.61%) MATLAB
10 1 (0.61%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.61%) T-SQL
10 1 (0.61%) VB
Qualifications
1 32 (19.39%) Security Cleared
2 26 (15.76%) SC Cleared
3 23 (13.94%) Degree
4 5 (3.03%) BPSS Clearance
5 3 (1.82%) Computer Science Degree
6 2 (1.21%) Master's Degree
6 2 (1.21%) Microsoft Certified Professional
6 2 (1.21%) PhD
7 1 (0.61%) DV Cleared
7 1 (0.61%) Microsoft Certification
7 1 (0.61%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (14.55%) Data Quality
2 15 (9.09%) QA
3 5 (3.03%) Accessibility
3 5 (3.03%) SLA
4 3 (1.82%) Actionable Recommendations
4 3 (1.82%) GDPR
4 3 (1.82%) WCAG
5 2 (1.21%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 2 (1.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (0.61%) Disclosure Scotland
6 1 (0.61%) IFRS
6 1 (0.61%) IFRS 17
System Software
1 5 (3.03%) Docker
2 1 (0.61%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 7 (4.24%) Kubernetes
2 3 (1.82%) Grafana
3 2 (1.21%) Ansible
3 2 (1.21%) Argo
4 1 (0.61%) Prometheus
4 1 (0.61%) Single Sign-On
4 1 (0.61%) systemd
Vendors
1 20 (12.12%) Databricks
2 19 (11.52%) Microsoft
3 7 (4.24%) Google
4 4 (2.42%) Oracle
5 3 (1.82%) OpenAI
6 2 (1.21%) Amplitude
6 2 (1.21%) FactSet
6 2 (1.21%) IBM
6 2 (1.21%) Sonatype
7 1 (0.61%) Alteryx
7 1 (0.61%) Pega
7 1 (0.61%) Red Hat
7 1 (0.61%) SAP