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 24 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 423 324 375
Rank change year-on-year -99 +51 +30
Contract jobs citing R 163 201 231
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.43% 0.64% 0.52%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.40% 1.91% 1.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 102 111 163
10th Percentile £300 £310 £313
25th Percentile £406 £383 £383
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £625
90th Percentile £688 £800 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £455 £438
% change year-on-year +9.89% +4.00% +2.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 7 15
10th Percentile £22.38 £20.80 £25.43
25th Percentile £25.21 £21.25 £30.62
Median hourly rate £27.50 £24.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +14.58% -43.53% +71.44%
75th Percentile £30.00 £53.75 £48.13
90th Percentile £32.25 £56.55 £49.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.71 £21.37 £47.50
% change year-on-year +29.67% -55.02% +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 11,650 10,521 13,200
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.66% 33.28% 29.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,728 6,673 9,337
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.14% -2.78% -4.42%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -1.02% -2.00% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 431 248 483
10th Percentile £39.53 £21.25 £35.50
25th Percentile £52.50 £35.56 £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 £68.00 £69.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £85.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +3.17% +0.80% -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 24 January 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 24 January 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 -85 145 £505 -3.81% 228
London -34 76 £519 -5.68% 65
UK excluding London -78 63 £500 +9.89% 219
Work from Home -17 56 £536 +4.59% 51
South East -21 20 £600 +17.07% 63
Midlands -44 18 £435 +22.19% 31
North of England -59 12 £496 +39.33% 55
East Midlands -23 11 £385 +20.88% 19
North West -28 9 £513 +44.14% 27
East of England -17 7 £641 -1.38% 27
West Midlands -49 7 £475 +10.08% 12
Wales -6 4 £366 - 13
South West -25 2 - - 18
Yorkshire - 2 £450 - 20
North East -15 1 £475 - 10

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 (15.34%) Apache Spark
2 15 (9.20%) SAS
3 8 (4.91%) SharePoint
4 5 (3.07%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (2.45%) Apache
6 3 (1.84%) Confluence
7 1 (0.61%) Jupyter
Applications
1 19 (11.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (4.29%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (4.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.61%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 1 (0.61%) Distributed Ledger
1 1 (0.61%) Salesforce CRM
1 1 (0.61%) SAP ERP
1 1 (0.61%) SAP IBP
1 1 (0.61%) SAP S/4HANA
1 1 (0.61%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 60 (36.81%) Power Platform
2 51 (31.29%) Azure
3 38 (23.31%) AWS
4 23 (14.11%) GCP
5 8 (4.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 8 (4.91%) Power Automate
5 8 (4.91%) PowerApps
6 7 (4.29%) Azure Data Factory
6 7 (4.29%) Azure Machine Learning
6 7 (4.29%) Snowflake
7 5 (3.07%) Azure DevOps
7 5 (3.07%) Microsoft Purview
8 4 (2.45%) Azure AKS
9 3 (1.84%) Amazon Bedrock
9 3 (1.84%) Copilot Studio
9 3 (1.84%) dbt
9 3 (1.84%) Google Analytics
10 2 (1.23%) Adobe Analytics
10 2 (1.23%) Amazon Kinesis
10 2 (1.23%) Cloud Computing
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 60 (36.81%) Power BI
2 43 (26.38%) Tableau
3 24 (14.72%) Big Data
4 21 (12.88%) Data Warehouse
5 15 (9.20%) Hadoop
6 12 (7.36%) Data Lake
7 8 (4.91%) Data Mining
7 8 (4.91%) Looker
7 8 (4.91%) Power Query
8 7 (4.29%) Delta Lake
8 7 (4.29%) Metadata
8 7 (4.29%) NoSQL
9 6 (3.68%) Relational Database
9 6 (3.68%) Spark SQL
10 5 (3.07%) Amazon Redshift
10 5 (3.07%) SQL Server
11 3 (1.84%) BigQuery
11 3 (1.84%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
12 2 (1.23%) Azure SQL Database
12 2 (1.23%) Mixpanel
Development Applications
1 13 (7.98%) Git
2 6 (3.68%) Jenkins
3 4 (2.45%) JIRA
3 4 (2.45%) MLflow
4 2 (1.23%) GoCD
4 2 (1.23%) SonarQube
4 2 (1.23%) Sonatype Nexus
4 2 (1.23%) TeamCity
5 1 (0.61%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.61%) Maven
5 1 (0.61%) RStudio
General
1 57 (34.97%) Social Skills
2 51 (31.29%) Analytical Skills
3 42 (25.77%) Finance
4 20 (12.27%) Public Sector
5 17 (10.43%) Marketing
6 12 (7.36%) Pharmaceutical
7 10 (6.13%) Banking
8 6 (3.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 6 (3.68%) Organisational Skills
9 4 (2.45%) Manufacturing
10 3 (1.84%) Documentation Skills
10 3 (1.84%) Legal
10 3 (1.84%) Telecoms
11 2 (1.23%) Influencing Skills
11 2 (1.23%) Local Government
11 2 (1.23%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.61%) Advertising
12 1 (0.61%) Private Banking
12 1 (0.61%) Publishing
12 1 (0.61%) Retail
Job Titles
1 42 (25.77%) Data Scientist
2 30 (18.40%) Analyst
3 22 (13.50%) Senior
4 21 (12.88%) Data Analyst
5 18 (11.04%) Data Engineer
6 17 (10.43%) Developer
7 11 (6.75%) Architect
7 11 (6.75%) Lead
8 10 (6.13%) Senior Data Scientist
9 8 (4.91%) Software Engineer
10 7 (4.29%) Business Intelligence Developer
11 6 (3.68%) Azure Engineer
11 6 (3.68%) Consultant
11 6 (3.68%) Power BI Developer
12 5 (3.07%) Business Analyst
13 4 (2.45%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
13 4 (2.45%) Azure Data Engineer
13 4 (2.45%) Data Analytics Engineer
13 4 (2.45%) Machine Learning Engineer
13 4 (2.45%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (7.98%) TensorFlow
2 11 (6.75%) scikit-learn
3 10 (6.13%) Pandas
3 10 (6.13%) PyTorch
4 9 (5.52%) PySpark
5 6 (3.68%) Kafka
6 5 (3.07%) YAML
7 4 (2.45%) Keras
7 4 (2.45%) LangChain
8 3 (1.84%) FastAPI
8 3 (1.84%) Hugging Face
8 3 (1.84%) JSON
8 3 (1.84%) Shiny
9 2 (1.23%) HTML
9 2 (1.23%) Matplotlib
9 2 (1.23%) Node.js
9 2 (1.23%) NumPy
9 2 (1.23%) REST
9 2 (1.23%) SciPy
9 2 (1.23%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 12 (7.36%) Credit Risk
2 11 (6.75%) Algorithms
3 7 (4.29%) Data Structures
4 6 (3.68%) Cloud Native
5 5 (3.07%) Management Information System
5 5 (3.07%) Product Ownership
5 5 (3.07%) Self-Motivation
6 4 (2.45%) NHS
7 3 (1.84%) Analytical Mindset
7 3 (1.84%) IoT
7 3 (1.84%) Multi-touch
8 2 (1.23%) AI Agents
8 2 (1.23%) Distributed Computing
8 2 (1.23%) Genomics
8 2 (1.23%) Hybrid Cloud
8 2 (1.23%) Mobile App
8 2 (1.23%) Onboarding
9 1 (0.61%) Augmented Reality
9 1 (0.61%) Mainframe
9 1 (0.61%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 4 (2.45%) Linux
2 1 (0.61%) Unix
2 1 (0.61%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 83 (50.92%) Data Science
2 77 (47.24%) Analytics
3 67 (41.10%) Machine Learning
4 61 (37.42%) Business Intelligence
5 59 (36.20%) Visualisation
6 44 (26.99%) Decision-Making
7 41 (25.15%) Data Analysis
7 41 (25.15%) Problem-Solving
8 38 (23.31%) Data Modelling
9 35 (21.47%) Agile
10 33 (20.25%) Statistical Modelling
11 31 (19.02%) Data Governance
11 31 (19.02%) Data Visualisation
12 30 (18.40%) Actionable Insight
13 26 (15.95%) AI
14 25 (15.34%) CI/CD
15 24 (14.72%) Validation
16 22 (13.50%) Data Pipeline
17 18 (11.04%) Computer Science
17 18 (11.04%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 154 (94.48%) Python
2 113 (69.33%) SQL
3 13 (7.98%) Java
4 9 (5.52%) C++
4 9 (5.52%) Data Analysis Expressions
4 9 (5.52%) Scala
5 7 (4.29%) MATLAB
6 6 (3.68%) JavaScript
7 3 (1.84%) C#
7 3 (1.84%) VBA
8 2 (1.23%) Ada
8 2 (1.23%) Go
8 2 (1.23%) PL/SQL
8 2 (1.23%) Rust
8 2 (1.23%) TypeScript
9 1 (0.61%) Bash
9 1 (0.61%) Fortran
9 1 (0.61%) LookML
9 1 (0.61%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 29 (17.79%) Degree
2 28 (17.18%) Security Cleared
3 22 (13.50%) SC Cleared
4 12 (7.36%) Computer Science Degree
5 6 (3.68%) BPSS Clearance
6 5 (3.07%) Master's Degree
7 4 (2.45%) Microsoft Certification
7 4 (2.45%) PhD
8 3 (1.84%) Azure Certification
9 2 (1.23%) MCP
9 2 (1.23%) Tableau Certification
10 1 (0.61%) CIMA
10 1 (0.61%) CTC Cleared
10 1 (0.61%) DBS Check
10 1 (0.61%) GIAC
10 1 (0.61%) Numerate Degree
10 1 (0.61%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (14.11%) Data Quality
2 6 (3.68%) GDPR
2 6 (3.68%) QA
3 5 (3.07%) Actionable Recommendations
4 2 (1.23%) Accessibility
4 2 (1.23%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.61%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.61%) WCAG
System Software
1 11 (6.75%) Docker
2 2 (1.23%) HDFS
3 1 (0.61%) Lustre
3 1 (0.61%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 12 (7.36%) Kubernetes
2 2 (1.23%) Ansible
2 2 (1.23%) rkt
2 2 (1.23%) Terraform
3 1 (0.61%) Packer
3 1 (0.61%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 26 (15.95%) Databricks
2 19 (11.66%) Microsoft
3 7 (4.29%) Pega
4 6 (3.68%) Oracle
5 4 (2.45%) Google
5 4 (2.45%) OpenAI
5 4 (2.45%) SAP
5 4 (2.45%) Splunk
6 3 (1.84%) Cognos
6 3 (1.84%) Informatica
6 3 (1.84%) ServiceNow
7 2 (1.23%) Adobe
7 2 (1.23%) Amplitude
7 2 (1.23%) Dynatrace
7 2 (1.23%) Red Hat
7 2 (1.23%) TIBCO
8 1 (0.61%) Arqiva
8 1 (0.61%) Instagram
8 1 (0.61%) UiPath
8 1 (0.61%) Workday