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 13 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 506 370 372
Rank change year-on-year -136 +2 +50
Contract jobs citing R 155 189 200
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.29% 0.57% 0.51%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.10% 1.75% 1.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 112 117 125
10th Percentile £282 £315 £310
25th Percentile £406 £405 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £472 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.72% -2.00% -16.67%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £610
90th Percentile £650 £688 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £494 £550
% change year-on-year -8.86% -10.23% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 6 21
10th Percentile - £22.92 -
25th Percentile - £23.81 £20.12
Median hourly rate £24.25 £26.91 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year -9.88% +25.16% -68.38%
75th Percentile - £36.25 £43.75
90th Percentile - £51.25 £53.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £22.92 £20.24
% change year-on-year - +13.27% -71.60%

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 14,085 10,786 12,183
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.40% 32.75% 31.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,162 7,227 8,532
10th Percentile £363 £340 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £503 £530
Median % change year-on-year +2.49% -5.19% -3.64%
75th Percentile £618 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.21% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 526 272 408
10th Percentile £30.25 £28.19 £27.00
25th Percentile £50.88 £35.75 £45.80
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +17.12% -14.62% +8.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.88 £84.35 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +3.17% -3.08% +8.33%

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 13 August 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 13 August 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 -124 140 £463 -7.04% 569
London -88 85 £525 +5.00% 359
UK excluding London -128 53 £450 -8.86% 281
Work from Home -73 49 £550 +11.68% 172
South East -65 13 £538 +16.85% 95
South West -36 11 £450 -47.98% 30
East of England -30 9 £413 -23.26% 29
Yorkshire -34 9 £425 -5.56% 24
North of England -64 9 £425 +13.33% 63
Midlands -58 7 £450 -7.69% 37
West Midlands -45 5 £451 -7.59% 22
Northern Ireland +8 2 £363 +3.57% 7
East Midlands -18 2 £252 -43.51% 15
Scotland -12 1 - - 15
Wales -15 1 £490 +10.11% 7

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 20 (12.90%) Apache Spark
2 10 (6.45%) Apache
3 3 (1.94%) Apache Superset
3 3 (1.94%) Confluence
4 2 (1.29%) Jupyter
4 2 (1.29%) SAS
5 1 (0.65%) nginx
5 1 (0.65%) R Markdown
Applications
1 19 (12.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (1.29%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.65%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.65%) CPLEX
3 1 (0.65%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 1 (0.65%) SAP APO
1 1 (0.65%) SAP IBP
Cloud Services
1 49 (31.61%) AWS
2 46 (29.68%) Power Platform
3 39 (25.16%) Azure
4 18 (11.61%) GCP
5 14 (9.03%) Snowflake
6 6 (3.87%) Azure DevOps
7 4 (2.58%) Amazon S3
7 4 (2.58%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 4 (2.58%) dbt
7 4 (2.58%) GitHub
7 4 (2.58%) SaaS
8 3 (1.94%) Amazon EKS
8 3 (1.94%) AWS CloudFormation
8 3 (1.94%) Azure Data Factory
8 3 (1.94%) Serverless
9 2 (1.29%) Cloud Functions
9 2 (1.29%) GitHub Actions
10 1 (0.65%) Azure AI
10 1 (0.65%) Dagster
10 1 (0.65%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.29%) DSL
2 1 (0.65%) DNS
2 1 (0.65%) HTTPS
2 1 (0.65%) Reverse Proxy
2 1 (0.65%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 45 (29.03%) Power BI
2 43 (27.74%) Tableau
3 19 (12.26%) Big Data
4 16 (10.32%) Data Warehouse
5 11 (7.10%) Relational Database
6 10 (6.45%) Hadoop
7 6 (3.87%) BigQuery
8 5 (3.23%) Data Lake
9 4 (2.58%) Looker
9 4 (2.58%) Power Query
10 3 (1.94%) Amazon Athena
10 3 (1.94%) Apache Hive
10 3 (1.94%) Metadata
10 3 (1.94%) Mixpanel
10 3 (1.94%) NoSQL
10 3 (1.94%) RDBMS
10 3 (1.94%) SQL Server
10 3 (1.94%) SQLPlus
11 2 (1.29%) PostgreSQL
11 2 (1.29%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 7 (4.52%) Git
2 6 (3.87%) GitLab
3 3 (1.94%) Jenkins
3 3 (1.94%) JIRA
4 2 (1.29%) Cucumber
4 2 (1.29%) Gatling
4 2 (1.29%) JUnit
4 2 (1.29%) MLflow
4 2 (1.29%) Selenium
5 1 (0.65%) Maven
5 1 (0.65%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 56 (36.13%) Analytical Skills
2 30 (19.35%) Social Skills
3 29 (18.71%) Public Sector
4 21 (13.55%) Finance
5 12 (7.74%) Pharmaceutical
6 10 (6.45%) Marketing
7 7 (4.52%) Retail
7 7 (4.52%) Telecoms
8 5 (3.23%) Banking
8 5 (3.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (2.58%) Front Office
10 3 (1.94%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (1.94%) Military
10 3 (1.94%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.94%) Publishing
11 2 (1.29%) Manufacturing
11 2 (1.29%) Police
11 2 (1.29%) Social Science
12 1 (0.65%) Advertising
12 1 (0.65%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 42 (27.10%) Analyst
2 31 (20.00%) Data Scientist
3 30 (19.35%) Data Analyst
4 15 (9.68%) Senior
5 13 (8.39%) Data Engineer
6 12 (7.74%) Developer
7 10 (6.45%) Lead
8 9 (5.81%) SQL Analyst
8 9 (5.81%) Technical Analyst
9 8 (5.16%) Consultant
10 7 (4.52%) Architect
10 7 (4.52%) Senior Analyst
10 7 (4.52%) Software Engineer
11 6 (3.87%) Data Consultant
11 6 (3.87%) Senior Data Analyst
11 6 (3.87%) Senior Data Scientist
11 6 (3.87%) SQL Data Analyst
12 5 (3.23%) Data Architect
12 5 (3.23%) Java Developer
13 4 (2.58%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (5.81%) PyTorch
1 9 (5.81%) TensorFlow
2 7 (4.52%) JSON
3 6 (3.87%) XML
4 4 (2.58%) .NET
4 4 (2.58%) Pandas
4 4 (2.58%) React
5 3 (1.94%) NumPy
5 3 (1.94%) Shiny
5 3 (1.94%) YAML
6 2 (1.29%) AngularJS
6 2 (1.29%) FastAPI
6 2 (1.29%) JWT
6 2 (1.29%) Matplotlib
6 2 (1.29%) Model Context Protocol
6 2 (1.29%) OLE
6 2 (1.29%) OpenTelemetry
6 2 (1.29%) Playwright
6 2 (1.29%) RabbitMQ
6 2 (1.29%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 14 (9.03%) Algorithms
2 10 (6.45%) CRISPR
3 6 (3.87%) Onboarding
4 5 (3.23%) Cloud Native
4 5 (3.23%) Data Protection Act
4 5 (3.23%) Legacy Systems
5 4 (2.58%) AI Agents
5 4 (2.58%) Analytical Mindset
5 4 (2.58%) Product Ownership
6 2 (1.29%) BYOD
6 2 (1.29%) Credit Risk
6 2 (1.29%) Distributed Computing
6 2 (1.29%) Distributed Systems
6 2 (1.29%) Fixed Income
6 2 (1.29%) Mainframe
6 2 (1.29%) Social Media
6 2 (1.29%) Taxonomies
7 1 (0.65%) Derivative
7 1 (0.65%) Equities
7 1 (0.65%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 5 (3.23%) Linux
2 2 (1.29%) Unix
3 1 (0.65%) Amazon Linux
3 1 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (0.65%) Ubuntu
3 1 (0.65%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 65 (41.94%) Analytics
2 61 (39.35%) Data Science
2 61 (39.35%) Visualisation
3 49 (31.61%) Data Pipeline
4 44 (28.39%) Business Intelligence
4 44 (28.39%) Machine Learning
5 41 (26.45%) Actionable Insight
6 39 (25.16%) Decision-Making
7 35 (22.58%) AI
8 33 (21.29%) Agile
8 33 (21.29%) Data Visualisation
9 31 (20.00%) Problem-Solving
9 31 (20.00%) Statistical Analysis
10 28 (18.06%) Mathematics
11 26 (16.77%) Statistical Modelling
12 23 (14.84%) Statistics
12 23 (14.84%) Validation
13 20 (12.90%) Data Analytics
13 20 (12.90%) Data Engineering
13 20 (12.90%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 142 (91.61%) Python
2 91 (58.71%) SQL
3 16 (10.32%) Java
4 10 (6.45%) C++
5 7 (4.52%) C#
6 5 (3.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 5 (3.23%) JavaScript
7 4 (2.58%) Scala
8 3 (1.94%) TypeScript
9 2 (1.29%) Bash
9 2 (1.29%) Cypher
9 2 (1.29%) PowerShell
9 2 (1.29%) SHACL
10 1 (0.65%) MATLAB
10 1 (0.65%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.65%) T-SQL
10 1 (0.65%) VB
Qualifications
1 31 (20.00%) Security Cleared
2 26 (16.77%) Degree
2 26 (16.77%) SC Cleared
3 4 (2.58%) BPSS Clearance
3 4 (2.58%) Computer Science Degree
4 3 (1.94%) Master's Degree
4 3 (1.94%) PhD
5 2 (1.29%) Microsoft Certification
5 2 (1.29%) Microsoft Certified Professional
5 2 (1.29%) Tableau Certification
6 1 (0.65%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (9.68%) Data Quality
2 10 (6.45%) QA
3 5 (3.23%) Accessibility
4 4 (2.58%) Actionable Recommendations
5 3 (1.94%) GDPR
5 3 (1.94%) WCAG
6 2 (1.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 1 (0.65%) MiFID
7 1 (0.65%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 5 (3.23%) Docker
2 1 (0.65%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 12 (7.74%) Terraform
2 10 (6.45%) Kubernetes
3 3 (1.94%) Grafana
4 2 (1.29%) Ansible
4 2 (1.29%) Argo
5 1 (0.65%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.65%) Single Sign-On
5 1 (0.65%) systemd
Vendors
1 16 (10.32%) Databricks
1 16 (10.32%) Microsoft
2 5 (3.23%) Google
3 3 (1.94%) Amplitude
3 3 (1.94%) OpenAI
3 3 (1.94%) Oracle
4 2 (1.29%) FactSet
4 2 (1.29%) Red Hat
4 2 (1.29%) Sonatype
5 1 (0.65%) Alteryx
5 1 (0.65%) IBM
5 1 (0.65%) Pega
5 1 (0.65%) SAP