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

6 months to
23 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 421 332 361
Rank change year-on-year -89 +29 +42
Contract jobs citing R 164 202 228
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.43% 0.64% 0.52%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.41% 1.92% 1.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 102 111 161
10th Percentile £300 £310 £313
25th Percentile £406 £383 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -3.67%
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 6 8 14
10th Percentile £21.67 £20.91 £25.42
25th Percentile £23.43 £21.25 £28.43
Median hourly rate £26.46 £38.25 £40.32
Median % change year-on-year -30.83% -5.12% +62.63%
75th Percentile £29.69 £53.75 £48.44
90th Percentile £31.88 £55.85 £49.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.42 £21.37 £47.50
% change year-on-year +18.94% -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 11,622 10,538 13,056
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.65% 33.26% 29.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,724 6,696 9,240
10th Percentile £350 £355 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.62% -2.78% -4.42%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £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 431 244 475
10th Percentile £37.77 £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 £68.19 £69.31
90th Percentile £75.00 £85.00 £77.80
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 23 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 23 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 -77 145 £505 -3.81% 244
London -50 76 £519 -5.68% 66
UK excluding London -75 64 £500 +9.89% 236
Work from Home +3 56 £536 +4.59% 66
South East -19 20 £600 +17.07% 68
Midlands -46 18 £435 +22.19% 30
North of England -53 12 £496 +39.33% 58
East Midlands -24 11 £385 +20.88% 18
North West -26 9 £513 +44.14% 28
East of England -23 7 £641 -1.38% 33
West Midlands -47 7 £475 +10.08% 12
Wales -2 5 £366 - 15
South West -17 2 - - 19
Yorkshire - 2 £450 - 21
North East -15 1 £475 - 11

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 (15.24%) Apache Spark
2 15 (9.15%) SAS
3 8 (4.88%) SharePoint
4 5 (3.05%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (2.44%) Apache
6 3 (1.83%) Confluence
7 1 (0.61%) Jupyter
Applications
1 20 (12.20%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (4.88%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (4.88%) 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 61 (37.20%) Power Platform
2 51 (31.10%) Azure
3 38 (23.17%) AWS
4 23 (14.02%) GCP
5 8 (4.88%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 8 (4.88%) Power Automate
5 8 (4.88%) PowerApps
6 7 (4.27%) Azure Data Factory
6 7 (4.27%) Azure Machine Learning
6 7 (4.27%) Snowflake
7 5 (3.05%) Azure DevOps
7 5 (3.05%) Microsoft Purview
8 4 (2.44%) Azure AKS
9 3 (1.83%) Amazon Bedrock
9 3 (1.83%) Copilot Studio
9 3 (1.83%) dbt
9 3 (1.83%) Google Analytics
10 2 (1.22%) Adobe Analytics
10 2 (1.22%) Amazon EMR
10 2 (1.22%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.22%) 2G
1 2 (1.22%) 5G
1 2 (1.22%) LTE
1 2 (1.22%) Mobile Backhaul
1 2 (1.22%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 61 (37.20%) Power BI
2 44 (26.83%) Tableau
3 24 (14.63%) Big Data
4 21 (12.80%) Data Warehouse
5 15 (9.15%) Hadoop
6 12 (7.32%) Data Lake
7 8 (4.88%) Data Mining
7 8 (4.88%) Looker
7 8 (4.88%) Power Query
8 7 (4.27%) Delta Lake
8 7 (4.27%) Metadata
8 7 (4.27%) NoSQL
9 6 (3.66%) Relational Database
9 6 (3.66%) Spark SQL
10 5 (3.05%) Amazon Redshift
10 5 (3.05%) SQL Server
11 3 (1.83%) BigQuery
11 3 (1.83%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
11 3 (1.83%) Spotfire
12 2 (1.22%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 13 (7.93%) Git
2 6 (3.66%) Jenkins
3 4 (2.44%) JIRA
3 4 (2.44%) MLflow
4 2 (1.22%) GoCD
4 2 (1.22%) SonarQube
4 2 (1.22%) Sonatype Nexus
4 2 (1.22%) TeamCity
5 1 (0.61%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.61%) Maven
5 1 (0.61%) RStudio
General
1 58 (35.37%) Social Skills
2 52 (31.71%) Analytical Skills
3 42 (25.61%) Finance
4 20 (12.20%) Public Sector
5 17 (10.37%) Marketing
6 12 (7.32%) Pharmaceutical
7 10 (6.10%) Banking
8 6 (3.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 6 (3.66%) Organisational Skills
9 5 (3.05%) Manufacturing
10 3 (1.83%) Documentation Skills
10 3 (1.83%) Legal
10 3 (1.83%) Telecoms
11 2 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
11 2 (1.22%) Local Government
11 2 (1.22%) 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 (25.61%) Data Scientist
2 31 (18.90%) Analyst
3 22 (13.41%) Data Analyst
3 22 (13.41%) Senior
4 18 (10.98%) Data Engineer
5 17 (10.37%) Developer
6 11 (6.71%) Architect
6 11 (6.71%) Lead
7 10 (6.10%) Senior Data Scientist
8 8 (4.88%) Software Engineer
9 7 (4.27%) Business Intelligence Developer
10 6 (3.66%) Azure Engineer
10 6 (3.66%) Consultant
10 6 (3.66%) Power BI Developer
11 5 (3.05%) Business Analyst
12 4 (2.44%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 4 (2.44%) Data Analytics Engineer
12 4 (2.44%) Lead Data Scientist
12 4 (2.44%) Machine Learning Engineer
12 4 (2.44%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (7.93%) TensorFlow
2 11 (6.71%) scikit-learn
3 10 (6.10%) Pandas
3 10 (6.10%) PyTorch
4 9 (5.49%) PySpark
5 6 (3.66%) Kafka
6 5 (3.05%) YAML
7 4 (2.44%) Keras
7 4 (2.44%) LangChain
8 3 (1.83%) FastAPI
8 3 (1.83%) Hugging Face
8 3 (1.83%) JSON
8 3 (1.83%) Shiny
9 2 (1.22%) HTML
9 2 (1.22%) Matplotlib
9 2 (1.22%) Node.js
9 2 (1.22%) NumPy
9 2 (1.22%) REST
9 2 (1.22%) SciPy
9 2 (1.22%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 12 (7.32%) Algorithms
1 12 (7.32%) Credit Risk
2 7 (4.27%) Data Structures
3 6 (3.66%) Cloud Native
4 5 (3.05%) Management Information System
4 5 (3.05%) Product Ownership
4 5 (3.05%) Self-Motivation
5 4 (2.44%) NHS
6 3 (1.83%) Analytical Mindset
6 3 (1.83%) IoT
6 3 (1.83%) Multi-touch
7 2 (1.22%) AI Agents
7 2 (1.22%) Distributed Computing
7 2 (1.22%) Genomics
7 2 (1.22%) Hybrid Cloud
7 2 (1.22%) Mobile App
7 2 (1.22%) Onboarding
8 1 (0.61%) Augmented Reality
8 1 (0.61%) Social Media
8 1 (0.61%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 4 (2.44%) Linux
2 1 (0.61%) Unix
2 1 (0.61%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 84 (51.22%) Data Science
2 78 (47.56%) Analytics
3 68 (41.46%) Machine Learning
4 61 (37.20%) Business Intelligence
5 60 (36.59%) Visualisation
6 44 (26.83%) Decision-Making
7 42 (25.61%) Data Analysis
7 42 (25.61%) Problem-Solving
8 38 (23.17%) Data Modelling
9 35 (21.34%) Agile
10 34 (20.73%) Statistical Modelling
11 32 (19.51%) Data Visualisation
12 31 (18.90%) Actionable Insight
12 31 (18.90%) Data Governance
13 26 (15.85%) AI
14 25 (15.24%) CI/CD
15 24 (14.63%) Validation
16 22 (13.41%) Data Pipeline
17 18 (10.98%) Stakeholder Management
17 18 (10.98%) Statistics
Programming Languages
1 155 (94.51%) Python
2 114 (69.51%) SQL
3 13 (7.93%) Java
4 9 (5.49%) C++
4 9 (5.49%) Data Analysis Expressions
4 9 (5.49%) Scala
5 7 (4.27%) MATLAB
6 6 (3.66%) JavaScript
7 3 (1.83%) C#
7 3 (1.83%) VBA
8 2 (1.22%) Ada
8 2 (1.22%) Go
8 2 (1.22%) PL/SQL
8 2 (1.22%) Rust
8 2 (1.22%) TypeScript
9 1 (0.61%) Bash
9 1 (0.61%) Fortran
9 1 (0.61%) LookML
9 1 (0.61%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 30 (18.29%) Degree
2 28 (17.07%) Security Cleared
3 22 (13.41%) SC Cleared
4 12 (7.32%) Computer Science Degree
5 6 (3.66%) BPSS Clearance
5 6 (3.66%) Master's Degree
6 4 (2.44%) Microsoft Certification
6 4 (2.44%) PhD
7 3 (1.83%) Azure Certification
8 2 (1.22%) MCP
8 2 (1.22%) Tableau Certification
9 1 (0.61%) CIMA
9 1 (0.61%) CTC Cleared
9 1 (0.61%) DBS Check
9 1 (0.61%) GIAC
9 1 (0.61%) Numerate Degree
9 1 (0.61%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (14.02%) Data Quality
2 6 (3.66%) GDPR
2 6 (3.66%) QA
3 5 (3.05%) Actionable Recommendations
4 2 (1.22%) Accessibility
4 2 (1.22%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.61%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.61%) WCAG
System Software
1 11 (6.71%) Docker
2 2 (1.22%) HDFS
3 1 (0.61%) Lustre
3 1 (0.61%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 12 (7.32%) Kubernetes
2 2 (1.22%) Ansible
2 2 (1.22%) rkt
2 2 (1.22%) Terraform
3 1 (0.61%) Packer
3 1 (0.61%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 26 (15.85%) Databricks
2 20 (12.20%) Microsoft
3 7 (4.27%) Pega
4 6 (3.66%) Oracle
5 4 (2.44%) Google
5 4 (2.44%) OpenAI
5 4 (2.44%) SAP
5 4 (2.44%) Splunk
6 3 (1.83%) Cognos
6 3 (1.83%) Informatica
6 3 (1.83%) ServiceNow
6 3 (1.83%) TIBCO
7 2 (1.22%) Adobe
7 2 (1.22%) Amplitude
7 2 (1.22%) Dynatrace
7 2 (1.22%) Red Hat
8 1 (0.61%) Arqiva
8 1 (0.61%) Instagram
8 1 (0.61%) UiPath
8 1 (0.61%) Workday