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 7 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 433 330 390
Rank change year-on-year -103 +60 +28
Contract jobs citing R 162 203 228
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.42% 0.65% 0.50%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.37% 1.94% 1.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 96 114 162
10th Percentile £300 £294 £313
25th Percentile £406 £382 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £514 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.70% -2.14% -4.55%
75th Percentile £604 £647 £634
90th Percentile £688 £800 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £461 £400
% change year-on-year +8.40% +15.31% -8.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 6 14
10th Percentile £23.32 £21.88 £25.42
25th Percentile £27.60 £29.69 £28.43
Median hourly rate £32.50 £52.50 £43.75
Median % change year-on-year -38.10% +20.00% +59.70%
75th Percentile £54.88 £57.50 £48.44
90th Percentile £60.33 £59.75 £51.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 - £47.50
% change year-on-year - - +114.35%

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 11,800 10,449 13,364
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.23% 33.60% 29.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,831 6,624 9,470
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £536
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.05% -4.71%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £715 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -1.79% -2.00% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 457 235 516
10th Percentile £40.75 £21.55 £35.94
25th Percentile £52.50 £36.25 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -7.69%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.38 £69.62
90th Percentile £77.00 £85.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.97% +1.99% -3.85%

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 7 February 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 7 February 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 7 February 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 -105 140 £510 -2.86% 263
London -50 71 £525 -4.55% 97
UK excluding London -91 63 £500 +8.40% 224
Work from Home -6 55 £510 -0.97% 69
South East -24 19 £600 +18.52% 63
Midlands -43 18 £416 +16.92% 29
North of England -59 13 £500 +40.45% 57
East Midlands -22 11 £385 +20.88% 20
North West -25 11 £513 +44.14% 28
East of England -27 7 £641 -1.38% 28
West Midlands -42 7 £456 +17.74% 9
Wales +1 4 £366 - 8
South West -27 2 - - 23
North East -17 1 £475 - 9
Yorkshire - 1 - - 22

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 28 (17.28%) Apache Spark
2 15 (9.26%) SAS
3 8 (4.94%) SharePoint
4 5 (3.09%) Apache
4 5 (3.09%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (1.85%) Confluence
6 1 (0.62%) Jupyter
Applications
1 17 (10.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (3.70%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (3.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.62%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 1 (0.62%) Salesforce CRM
1 1 (0.62%) SAP ERP
1 1 (0.62%) SAP IBP
1 1 (0.62%) SAP S/4HANA
1 1 (0.62%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 55 (33.95%) Power Platform
2 48 (29.63%) Azure
3 42 (25.93%) AWS
4 23 (14.20%) GCP
5 8 (4.94%) Power Automate
5 8 (4.94%) PowerApps
5 8 (4.94%) Snowflake
6 6 (3.70%) Azure Machine Learning
6 6 (3.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 5 (3.09%) Azure Data Factory
7 5 (3.09%) Microsoft Purview
8 4 (2.47%) Azure AKS
8 4 (2.47%) Azure DevOps
8 4 (2.47%) dbt
9 3 (1.85%) Amazon Bedrock
9 3 (1.85%) Copilot Studio
10 2 (1.23%) Amazon EMR
10 2 (1.23%) Amazon Kinesis
10 2 (1.23%) Amazon SageMaker
10 2 (1.23%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.23%) 2G
1 2 (1.23%) 5G
1 2 (1.23%) LTE
1 2 (1.23%) Mobile Backhaul
1 2 (1.23%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (33.95%) Power BI
2 43 (26.54%) Tableau
3 27 (16.67%) Big Data
4 20 (12.35%) Data Warehouse
4 20 (12.35%) Hadoop
5 9 (5.56%) Data Lake
5 9 (5.56%) Looker
6 7 (4.32%) Data Mining
6 7 (4.32%) Delta Lake
6 7 (4.32%) Metadata
6 7 (4.32%) NoSQL
6 7 (4.32%) Power Query
7 6 (3.70%) Relational Database
7 6 (3.70%) Spark SQL
8 5 (3.09%) Amazon Redshift
8 5 (3.09%) SQL Server
9 3 (1.85%) BigQuery
9 3 (1.85%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
9 3 (1.85%) Mixpanel
9 3 (1.85%) Tableau Server
Development Applications
1 12 (7.41%) Git
2 6 (3.70%) Jenkins
3 3 (1.85%) JIRA
4 2 (1.23%) GoCD
4 2 (1.23%) MLflow
4 2 (1.23%) RStudio
4 2 (1.23%) SonarQube
4 2 (1.23%) Sonatype Nexus
4 2 (1.23%) TeamCity
5 1 (0.62%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.62%) Maven
General
1 60 (37.04%) Social Skills
2 48 (29.63%) Analytical Skills
3 38 (23.46%) Finance
4 24 (14.81%) Public Sector
5 13 (8.02%) Marketing
6 12 (7.41%) Pharmaceutical
7 9 (5.56%) Banking
7 9 (5.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 6 (3.70%) Organisational Skills
9 4 (2.47%) Manufacturing
10 3 (1.85%) Telecoms
11 2 (1.23%) Documentation Skills
11 2 (1.23%) Influencing Skills
11 2 (1.23%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.62%) Agriculture
12 1 (0.62%) Agrochemical
12 1 (0.62%) Automotive
12 1 (0.62%) Legal
12 1 (0.62%) Local Government
12 1 (0.62%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 48 (29.63%) Data Scientist
2 30 (18.52%) Analyst
3 23 (14.20%) Data Analyst
4 20 (12.35%) Senior
5 17 (10.49%) Developer
6 16 (9.88%) Data Engineer
7 13 (8.02%) Architect
8 12 (7.41%) Senior Data Scientist
9 10 (6.17%) Lead
10 7 (4.32%) Business Intelligence Developer
10 7 (4.32%) Software Engineer
11 6 (3.70%) Consultant
11 6 (3.70%) Power BI Developer
12 5 (3.09%) Azure Engineer
12 5 (3.09%) Business Analyst
12 5 (3.09%) Lead Data Scientist
13 4 (2.47%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
14 3 (1.85%) SQL Analyst
14 3 (1.85%) SQL Data Analyst
14 3 (1.85%) Tableau Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (8.02%) TensorFlow
2 11 (6.79%) scikit-learn
3 10 (6.17%) PyTorch
4 9 (5.56%) Pandas
5 8 (4.94%) PySpark
6 6 (3.70%) Kafka
7 5 (3.09%) YAML
8 4 (2.47%) Keras
8 4 (2.47%) LangChain
9 3 (1.85%) FastAPI
9 3 (1.85%) Hugging Face
9 3 (1.85%) JSON
9 3 (1.85%) Shiny
10 2 (1.23%) NLTK
10 2 (1.23%) NumPy
10 2 (1.23%) Plotly
10 2 (1.23%) SciPy
10 2 (1.23%) Seaborn
10 2 (1.23%) XGBoost
10 2 (1.23%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 12 (7.41%) Algorithms
1 12 (7.41%) Credit Risk
2 7 (4.32%) Data Structures
3 6 (3.70%) Cloud Native
4 5 (3.09%) Management Information System
4 5 (3.09%) Self-Motivation
5 4 (2.47%) Product Ownership
6 3 (1.85%) IoT
6 3 (1.85%) Multi-touch
6 3 (1.85%) NHS
7 2 (1.23%) AI Agents
7 2 (1.23%) CRISPR
7 2 (1.23%) Genomics
7 2 (1.23%) Hybrid Cloud
7 2 (1.23%) Mobile App
7 2 (1.23%) Onboarding
8 1 (0.62%) Data Fabric
8 1 (0.62%) Distributed Computing
8 1 (0.62%) Legacy Systems
8 1 (0.62%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 2 (1.23%) Linux
2 1 (0.62%) Unix
2 1 (0.62%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 88 (54.32%) Data Science
2 83 (51.23%) Analytics
3 70 (43.21%) Machine Learning
4 62 (38.27%) Visualisation
5 54 (33.33%) Business Intelligence
6 47 (29.01%) Decision-Making
7 41 (25.31%) Data Analysis
8 39 (24.07%) Problem-Solving
9 35 (21.60%) Statistical Modelling
10 34 (20.99%) Actionable Insight
10 34 (20.99%) Agile
11 33 (20.37%) Data Modelling
12 32 (19.75%) Data Governance
12 32 (19.75%) Data Visualisation
13 26 (16.05%) AI
13 26 (16.05%) Data Pipeline
14 24 (14.81%) Validation
15 22 (13.58%) CI/CD
16 20 (12.35%) Computer Science
16 20 (12.35%) Data Analytics
Programming Languages
1 153 (94.44%) Python
2 113 (69.75%) SQL
3 14 (8.64%) Java
4 9 (5.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
4 9 (5.56%) Scala
5 8 (4.94%) C++
6 6 (3.70%) JavaScript
7 3 (1.85%) C#
7 3 (1.85%) VBA
8 2 (1.23%) Ada
8 2 (1.23%) Go
8 2 (1.23%) MATLAB
8 2 (1.23%) PL/SQL
8 2 (1.23%) Rust
8 2 (1.23%) TypeScript
9 1 (0.62%) Bash
9 1 (0.62%) LookML
9 1 (0.62%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 34 (20.99%) Security Cleared
2 31 (19.14%) Degree
3 27 (16.67%) SC Cleared
4 11 (6.79%) Computer Science Degree
5 6 (3.70%) BPSS Clearance
5 6 (3.70%) Master's Degree
6 4 (2.47%) Microsoft Certification
6 4 (2.47%) PhD
7 3 (1.85%) Azure Certification
8 2 (1.23%) Tableau Certification
9 1 (0.62%) CIMA
9 1 (0.62%) CTC Cleared
9 1 (0.62%) DBS Check
9 1 (0.62%) GIAC
9 1 (0.62%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (12.35%) Data Quality
2 10 (6.17%) Actionable Recommendations
3 7 (4.32%) GDPR
3 7 (4.32%) QA
4 2 (1.23%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.62%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.62%) WCAG
System Software
1 10 (6.17%) Docker
2 2 (1.23%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 11 (6.79%) Kubernetes
2 2 (1.23%) rkt
3 1 (0.62%) Ansible
3 1 (0.62%) Progress Chef
3 1 (0.62%) Terraform
Vendors
1 21 (12.96%) Databricks
2 18 (11.11%) Microsoft
3 7 (4.32%) Pega
4 6 (3.70%) Oracle
5 4 (2.47%) OpenAI
5 4 (2.47%) SAP
5 4 (2.47%) ServiceNow
5 4 (2.47%) Splunk
6 3 (1.85%) Amplitude
6 3 (1.85%) Cognos
6 3 (1.85%) Informatica
7 2 (1.23%) Dynatrace
7 2 (1.23%) Google
7 2 (1.23%) Red Hat
7 2 (1.23%) TIBCO
8 1 (0.62%) Arqiva
8 1 (0.62%) Instagram
8 1 (0.62%) UiPath
8 1 (0.62%) Workday
8 1 (0.62%) YouTube