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 14 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 465 354 375
Rank change year-on-year -111 +21 +41
Contract jobs citing R 161 171 231
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.37% 0.58% 0.52%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.27% 1.69% 1.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 103 109 162
10th Percentile £323 £346 £313
25th Percentile £422 £400 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £577 £675 £638
90th Percentile £670 £779 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £484 £455 £390
% change year-on-year +6.26% +16.67% -9.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 7 13
10th Percentile £23.32 £22.00 £25.36
25th Percentile £27.60 £22.75 £25.50
Median hourly rate £32.50 £26.32 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +23.48% -38.07% +6.25%
75th Percentile £54.88 £56.25 £47.50
90th Percentile £60.33 £59.55 £51.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £23.00 £23.55
% change year-on-year +30.43% -2.31% +6.25%

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 12,639 10,089 12,959
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 29.28% 34.19% 29.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,396 6,659 9,150
10th Percentile £355 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £420 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -5.41%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £716 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £487
% change year-on-year -2.56% +0.21% -3.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 495 242 496
10th Percentile £41.73 £21.33 £30.63
25th Percentile £54.55 £35.00 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -4.76%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £67.38
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £74.10
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.75 £61.60
% change year-on-year +1.97% +3.48% -5.23%

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 14 March 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 14 March 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 14 March 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 -102 140 £525 +2.44% 291
London -58 83 £525 -4.55% 82
Work from Home -5 62 £536 +15.89% 54
UK excluding London -93 55 £484 +6.26% 271
South East -51 16 £600 +41.18% 70
Midlands -53 15 £395 +1.94% 41
North of England -59 14 £500 +9.89% 63
North West -27 11 £513 +12.77% 25
East Midlands -22 10 £385 +33.22% 29
West Midlands -68 5 £438 +12.90% 12
South West -30 4 £450 +2.86% 31
Wales -9 3 £425 - 11
East of England -36 3 £413 -36.54% 35
Yorkshire - 2 - - 26
North East -14 1 £475 - 14

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 35 (21.74%) Apache Spark
2 9 (5.59%) Apache
2 9 (5.59%) SAS
3 5 (3.11%) SharePoint
4 4 (2.48%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (1.24%) Apache Superset
6 1 (0.62%) Confluence
6 1 (0.62%) Jupyter
Applications
1 14 (8.70%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (2.48%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (1.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.62%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.62%) Salesforce CRM
1 1 (0.62%) SAP IBP
1 1 (0.62%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 60 (37.27%) Power Platform
2 50 (31.06%) AWS
3 46 (28.57%) Azure
4 23 (14.29%) GCP
5 9 (5.59%) Snowflake
6 8 (4.97%) Power Automate
6 8 (4.97%) PowerApps
7 5 (3.11%) Azure Data Factory
7 5 (3.11%) dbt
7 5 (3.11%) Microsoft Purview
8 4 (2.48%) Azure DevOps
9 3 (1.86%) Amazon Bedrock
9 3 (1.86%) Azure Machine Learning
9 3 (1.86%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 3 (1.86%) Copilot Studio
9 3 (1.86%) OpenShift
10 2 (1.24%) Amazon EMR
10 2 (1.24%) Amazon Kinesis
10 2 (1.24%) Cloud Computing
10 2 (1.24%) Google Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.24%) 2G
1 2 (1.24%) 5G
1 2 (1.24%) LTE
1 2 (1.24%) Mobile Backhaul
1 2 (1.24%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 60 (37.27%) Power BI
2 46 (28.57%) Tableau
3 31 (19.25%) Big Data
4 24 (14.91%) Hadoop
5 20 (12.42%) Data Warehouse
6 13 (8.07%) Looker
7 7 (4.35%) Data Lake
7 7 (4.35%) Delta Lake
7 7 (4.35%) Metadata
7 7 (4.35%) Mixpanel
7 7 (4.35%) Power Query
8 6 (3.73%) Data Mining
8 6 (3.73%) NoSQL
8 6 (3.73%) Spark SQL
9 5 (3.11%) Amazon Redshift
9 5 (3.11%) Relational Database
10 3 (1.86%) BigQuery
10 3 (1.86%) SQL Server
11 2 (1.24%) Azure SQL Database
11 2 (1.24%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 12 (7.45%) Git
2 6 (3.73%) Jenkins
3 2 (1.24%) GoCD
3 2 (1.24%) MLflow
3 2 (1.24%) RStudio
3 2 (1.24%) SonarQube
3 2 (1.24%) Sonatype Nexus
3 2 (1.24%) TeamCity
4 1 (0.62%) Bitbucket
4 1 (0.62%) JIRA
4 1 (0.62%) Maven
General
1 50 (31.06%) Social Skills
2 46 (28.57%) Analytical Skills
3 37 (22.98%) Finance
4 29 (18.01%) Public Sector
5 12 (7.45%) Marketing
6 11 (6.83%) Pharmaceutical
7 10 (6.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 6 (3.73%) Banking
9 3 (1.86%) Telecoms
10 2 (1.24%) Financial Institution
10 2 (1.24%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (1.24%) Manufacturing
10 2 (1.24%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (1.24%) Retail
10 2 (1.24%) Social Science
11 1 (0.62%) Documentation Skills
11 1 (0.62%) Local Government
11 1 (0.62%) Private Banking
11 1 (0.62%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 52 (32.30%) Data Scientist
2 29 (18.01%) Analyst
3 25 (15.53%) Senior
4 24 (14.91%) Data Analyst
5 17 (10.56%) Data Engineer
5 17 (10.56%) Senior Data Scientist
6 16 (9.94%) Developer
7 13 (8.07%) Architect
8 11 (6.83%) Lead
9 6 (3.73%) Business Intelligence Developer
9 6 (3.73%) Lead Data Scientist
10 5 (3.11%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 5 (3.11%) Azure Engineer
10 5 (3.11%) Consultant
10 5 (3.11%) Power BI Developer
11 4 (2.48%) Business Analyst
11 4 (2.48%) Data Analytics Engineer
11 4 (2.48%) Java Developer
11 4 (2.48%) Software Engineer
12 3 (1.86%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (9.32%) TensorFlow
2 12 (7.45%) PyTorch
3 11 (6.83%) scikit-learn
4 10 (6.21%) Pandas
5 8 (4.97%) PySpark
6 7 (4.35%) JSON
7 6 (3.73%) Keras
8 5 (3.11%) Kafka
8 5 (3.11%) YAML
9 4 (2.48%) LangChain
9 4 (2.48%) Matplotlib
9 4 (2.48%) Seaborn
9 4 (2.48%) Shiny
10 3 (1.86%) FastAPI
10 3 (1.86%) Hugging Face
10 3 (1.86%) NumPy
10 3 (1.86%) Plotly
11 2 (1.24%) Node.js
11 2 (1.24%) REST
11 2 (1.24%) SciPy
Miscellaneous
1 17 (10.56%) Algorithms
2 8 (4.97%) Cloud Native
3 7 (4.35%) Credit Risk
3 7 (4.35%) Data Structures
4 6 (3.73%) Product Ownership
5 5 (3.11%) Self-Motivation
6 4 (2.48%) CRISPR
7 3 (1.86%) AI Agents
7 3 (1.86%) Hybrid Cloud
7 3 (1.86%) Management Information System
7 3 (1.86%) Multi-touch
8 2 (1.24%) Distributed Computing
8 2 (1.24%) IoT
8 2 (1.24%) Mobile App
8 2 (1.24%) Onboarding
9 1 (0.62%) Data Fabric
9 1 (0.62%) Distributed Systems
9 1 (0.62%) Greenfield Project
9 1 (0.62%) Legacy Systems
9 1 (0.62%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 2 (1.24%) Linux
2 1 (0.62%) Unix
2 1 (0.62%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 92 (57.14%) Analytics
1 92 (57.14%) Data Science
2 73 (45.34%) Machine Learning
3 68 (42.24%) Visualisation
4 57 (35.40%) Business Intelligence
5 45 (27.95%) Decision-Making
6 40 (24.84%) Data Analysis
7 37 (22.98%) Statistical Modelling
8 36 (22.36%) Data Visualisation
9 35 (21.74%) Data Modelling
10 34 (21.12%) Actionable Insight
10 34 (21.12%) Data Pipeline
10 34 (21.12%) Problem-Solving
11 31 (19.25%) Agile
11 31 (19.25%) Data Governance
12 30 (18.63%) AI
13 26 (16.15%) Data Analytics
14 25 (15.53%) Dashboard Development
15 23 (14.29%) Statistics
15 23 (14.29%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 153 (95.03%) Python
2 117 (72.67%) SQL
3 12 (7.45%) Java
4 9 (5.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 7 (4.35%) Scala
6 6 (3.73%) JavaScript
7 5 (3.11%) C++
8 3 (1.86%) C#
8 3 (1.86%) TypeScript
9 2 (1.24%) Ada
9 2 (1.24%) Go
9 2 (1.24%) Rust
9 2 (1.24%) VBA
10 1 (0.62%) Bash
10 1 (0.62%) LookML
10 1 (0.62%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 40 (24.84%) Security Cleared
2 33 (20.50%) SC Cleared
3 31 (19.25%) Degree
4 8 (4.97%) Master's Degree
5 7 (4.35%) Computer Science Degree
6 5 (3.11%) Microsoft Certification
6 5 (3.11%) PhD
7 3 (1.86%) Azure Certification
7 3 (1.86%) BPSS Clearance
8 1 (0.62%) CIMA
8 1 (0.62%) CTC Cleared
8 1 (0.62%) DBS Check
8 1 (0.62%) GIAC
8 1 (0.62%) Numerate Degree
8 1 (0.62%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (15.53%) Data Quality
2 11 (6.83%) Actionable Recommendations
3 7 (4.35%) GDPR
4 6 (3.73%) QA
5 2 (1.24%) Accessibility
5 2 (1.24%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.62%) MiFID
6 1 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (0.62%) WCAG
System Software
1 8 (4.97%) Docker
2 2 (1.24%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 12 (7.45%) Kubernetes
2 3 (1.86%) Terraform
3 2 (1.24%) rkt
4 1 (0.62%) Ansible
4 1 (0.62%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 22 (13.66%) Databricks
2 17 (10.56%) Microsoft
3 7 (4.35%) Amplitude
3 7 (4.35%) Pega
4 5 (3.11%) OpenAI
5 4 (2.48%) ServiceNow
6 3 (1.86%) Google
6 3 (1.86%) Informatica
6 3 (1.86%) Oracle
6 3 (1.86%) Red Hat
6 3 (1.86%) SAP
6 3 (1.86%) Splunk
7 2 (1.24%) Dynatrace
7 2 (1.24%) TIBCO
8 1 (0.62%) Adobe
8 1 (0.62%) Alteryx
8 1 (0.62%) Arqiva
8 1 (0.62%) Cognos
8 1 (0.62%) Facebook
8 1 (0.62%) Salesforce