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 22 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 496 366 381
Rank change year-on-year -130 +15 +49
Contract jobs citing R 170 181 199
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.32% 0.55% 0.48%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.21% 1.68% 1.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 117 112 123
10th Percentile £292 £315 £310
25th Percentile £406 £406 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £493 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.55% -1.50% -16.67%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £610
90th Percentile £660 £688 £685
UK excluding London median daily rate £437 £488 £550
% change year-on-year -10.36% -11.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 5 18
10th Percentile £27.93 £24.33 £20.08
25th Percentile £33.44 £26.32 £20.12
Median hourly rate £50.75 £37.50 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year +35.33% +74.42% -69.29%
75th Percentile £60.30 £58.75 £43.75
90th Percentile £60.40 £61.75 £61.51
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.00 £23.00 £20.24
% change year-on-year +86.96% +13.66% -71.09%

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 14,098 10,796 12,725
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.73% 33.09% 30.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,151 7,254 8,989
10th Percentile £360 £344 £350
25th Percentile £423 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.49% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +3.16% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 520 260 461
10th Percentile £33.74 £28.16 £30.63
25th Percentile £51.25 £36.25 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.38 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +15.30% -9.80% +3.09%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £80.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year +1.96% -1.92% +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 22 July 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 22 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for R in the UK

R
Top 17 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 22 July 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 -115 150 £465 -6.53% 160
London -62 92 £525 +5.00% 87
Work from Home -60 57 £550 +13.11% 50
UK excluding London -134 55 £437 -10.36% 108
South West -36 12 £450 -34.66% 10
North of England -72 12 £425 +21.43% 30
South East -66 11 £550 +24.29% 37
East of England -30 10 £413 -26.67% 8
Yorkshire -41 9 £425 +1.49% 13
Midlands -60 6 £444 -1.06% 18
West Midlands -58 4 £450 +7.52% 10
Northern Ireland +5 2 £363 +3.57% 1
East Midlands -14 2 £252 -43.51% 8
North West -53 2 - - 14
Wales -18 1 £490 +10.11% 3
Scotland -20 1 - - 3
North East - 1 £475 - 3

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 25 (14.71%) Apache Spark
2 11 (6.47%) Apache
3 4 (2.35%) Apache Superset
3 4 (2.35%) Confluence
4 2 (1.18%) Jupyter
5 1 (0.59%) R Markdown
5 1 (0.59%) SAS
Applications
1 19 (11.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (1.18%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.59%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.59%) CPLEX
3 1 (0.59%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 1 (0.59%) SAP APO
1 1 (0.59%) SAP IBP
Cloud Services
1 53 (31.18%) Power Platform
2 51 (30.00%) AWS
3 42 (24.71%) Azure
4 15 (8.82%) GCP
4 15 (8.82%) Snowflake
5 5 (2.94%) Azure DevOps
6 4 (2.35%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 4 (2.35%) dbt
6 4 (2.35%) SaaS
7 3 (1.76%) Amazon EKS
7 3 (1.76%) Amazon S3
7 3 (1.76%) Azure Data Factory
7 3 (1.76%) GitHub
7 3 (1.76%) Serverless
8 2 (1.18%) AWS CloudFormation
8 2 (1.18%) Cloud Functions
8 2 (1.18%) Google Analytics
9 1 (0.59%) Cloud Computing
9 1 (0.59%) Datadog
9 1 (0.59%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.18%) DSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (30.59%) Power BI
1 52 (30.59%) Tableau
2 23 (13.53%) Big Data
3 15 (8.82%) Hadoop
4 14 (8.24%) Data Warehouse
5 9 (5.29%) Looker
5 9 (5.29%) Relational Database
6 7 (4.12%) Mixpanel
7 4 (2.35%) BigQuery
7 4 (2.35%) Data Lake
7 4 (2.35%) Power Query
8 3 (1.76%) Amazon Athena
8 3 (1.76%) Apache Hive
8 3 (1.76%) NoSQL
8 3 (1.76%) RDBMS
8 3 (1.76%) SQL Server
9 2 (1.18%) Neo4j
9 2 (1.18%) PowerPivot
9 2 (1.18%) Snowflake Schema
9 2 (1.18%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 5 (2.94%) Git
2 4 (2.35%) GitLab
3 3 (1.76%) JIRA
4 2 (1.18%) MLflow
5 1 (0.59%) Cucumber
5 1 (0.59%) Gatling
5 1 (0.59%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.59%) JUnit
5 1 (0.59%) RStudio
5 1 (0.59%) Selenium
General
1 57 (33.53%) Analytical Skills
2 35 (20.59%) Social Skills
3 31 (18.24%) Public Sector
4 27 (15.88%) Finance
5 13 (7.65%) Pharmaceutical
6 9 (5.29%) Marketing
7 8 (4.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 7 (4.12%) Telecoms
9 6 (3.53%) Retail
10 4 (2.35%) Banking
10 4 (2.35%) Front Office
11 3 (1.76%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (1.76%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (1.18%) Manufacturing
12 2 (1.18%) Military
12 2 (1.18%) Police
12 2 (1.18%) Publishing
12 2 (1.18%) Social Science
13 1 (0.59%) Billing
13 1 (0.59%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 44 (25.88%) Analyst
2 43 (25.29%) Data Scientist
3 34 (20.00%) Data Analyst
4 20 (11.76%) Senior
5 14 (8.24%) Data Engineer
6 13 (7.65%) Developer
7 12 (7.06%) Senior Data Scientist
8 10 (5.88%) Lead
9 9 (5.29%) Architect
9 9 (5.29%) SQL Analyst
9 9 (5.29%) Technical Analyst
10 8 (4.71%) Software Engineer
11 7 (4.12%) Consultant
11 7 (4.12%) SQL Data Analyst
12 6 (3.53%) Data Consultant
12 6 (3.53%) Senior Analyst
13 5 (2.94%) Data Architect
13 5 (2.94%) Java Developer
13 5 (2.94%) Senior Data Analyst
13 5 (2.94%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (5.88%) PyTorch
1 10 (5.88%) TensorFlow
2 6 (3.53%) JSON
2 6 (3.53%) XML
3 5 (2.94%) Pandas
4 3 (1.76%) Keras
4 3 (1.76%) NumPy
4 3 (1.76%) React
4 3 (1.76%) scikit-learn
4 3 (1.76%) Shiny
5 2 (1.18%) AngularJS
5 2 (1.18%) Apache Avro
5 2 (1.18%) FastAPI
5 2 (1.18%) JWT
5 2 (1.18%) Matplotlib
5 2 (1.18%) Model Context Protocol
5 2 (1.18%) OpenTelemetry
5 2 (1.18%) Prophet
5 2 (1.18%) WebSockets
5 2 (1.18%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 16 (9.41%) Algorithms
2 11 (6.47%) CRISPR
3 6 (3.53%) Cloud Native
3 6 (3.53%) Onboarding
4 5 (2.94%) Data Protection Act
4 5 (2.94%) Product Ownership
5 4 (2.35%) AI Agents
5 4 (2.35%) Analytical Mindset
5 4 (2.35%) Legacy Systems
6 3 (1.76%) Mainframe
7 2 (1.18%) BYOD
7 2 (1.18%) Credit Risk
7 2 (1.18%) Data Fabric
7 2 (1.18%) Distributed Computing
7 2 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
7 2 (1.18%) Fixed Income
7 2 (1.18%) Multi-touch
7 2 (1.18%) Taxonomies
8 1 (0.59%) Greenfield Project
8 1 (0.59%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 4 (2.35%) Linux
2 3 (1.76%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 80 (47.06%) Analytics
2 78 (45.88%) Data Science
3 73 (42.94%) Visualisation
4 56 (32.94%) Machine Learning
5 54 (31.76%) Data Pipeline
6 51 (30.00%) Business Intelligence
7 47 (27.65%) Actionable Insight
8 44 (25.88%) Decision-Making
9 40 (23.53%) Data Visualisation
10 38 (22.35%) AI
11 35 (20.59%) Statistical Analysis
12 34 (20.00%) Problem-Solving
13 32 (18.82%) Agile
14 31 (18.24%) Statistical Modelling
15 30 (17.65%) Mathematics
16 28 (16.47%) Data Analytics
17 27 (15.88%) Statistics
18 23 (13.53%) Validation
19 22 (12.94%) Data Engineering
20 21 (12.35%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 160 (94.12%) Python
2 111 (65.29%) SQL
3 16 (9.41%) Java
4 11 (6.47%) C++
5 7 (4.12%) C#
6 5 (2.94%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 3 (1.76%) JavaScript
7 3 (1.76%) Scala
7 3 (1.76%) TypeScript
8 2 (1.18%) Cypher
8 2 (1.18%) SHACL
9 1 (0.59%) T-SQL
9 1 (0.59%) VB
Qualifications
1 38 (22.35%) Security Cleared
2 32 (18.82%) SC Cleared
3 30 (17.65%) Degree
4 4 (2.35%) BPSS Clearance
4 4 (2.35%) Computer Science Degree
4 4 (2.35%) Master's Degree
4 4 (2.35%) PhD
5 2 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
5 2 (1.18%) Microsoft Certified Professional
5 2 (1.18%) Tableau Certification
6 1 (0.59%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (8.24%) Data Quality
2 10 (5.88%) QA
3 8 (4.71%) Actionable Recommendations
4 4 (2.35%) Accessibility
4 4 (2.35%) GDPR
5 2 (1.18%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 2 (1.18%) WCAG
6 1 (0.59%) MiFID
6 1 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 2 (1.18%) Docker
Systems Management
1 10 (5.88%) Terraform
2 6 (3.53%) Kubernetes
3 2 (1.18%) Argo
3 2 (1.18%) Grafana
4 1 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 16 (9.41%) Microsoft
2 15 (8.82%) Databricks
3 7 (4.12%) Amplitude
4 6 (3.53%) Google
5 3 (1.76%) OpenAI
6 2 (1.18%) FactSet
6 2 (1.18%) Splunk
7 1 (0.59%) Alteryx
7 1 (0.59%) Oracle
7 1 (0.59%) Pega
7 1 (0.59%) Red Hat
7 1 (0.59%) SAP
7 1 (0.59%) ServiceNow
7 1 (0.59%) Sonatype