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 10 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 505 372 351
Rank change year-on-year -133 -21 +71
Contract jobs citing R 168 180 218
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.31% 0.55% 0.57%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.18% 1.66% 1.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 115 103 132
10th Percentile £259 £315 £310
25th Percentile £403 £406 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -7.00% - -9.09%
75th Percentile £563 £575 £603
90th Percentile £650 £686 £663
UK excluding London median daily rate £437 £513 £531
% change year-on-year -14.73% -3.53% +1.19%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 4 19
10th Percentile - £23.86 £20.09
25th Percentile - £25.40 £20.12
Median hourly rate £24.25 £32.50 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year -25.38% +51.16% -64.90%
75th Percentile - £45.00 £39.00
90th Percentile - £56.25 £58.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £22.84 £20.24
% change year-on-year - +12.87% -67.62%

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 14,179 10,823 12,148
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.02% 32.81% 31.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,205 7,174 8,294
10th Percentile £363 £344 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.90% -4.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 537 297 340
10th Percentile £27.75 £29.00 £27.00
25th Percentile £47.50 £37.77 £46.18
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +4.00%
75th Percentile £70.50 £67.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £80.00 £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +3.17% -3.08% -

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 10 September 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 10 September 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 -124 152 £465 -7.00% 301
London -61 98 £525 +5.00% 160
UK excluding London -135 56 £437 -14.73% 184
Work from Home -90 47 £531 +6.20% 104
South East -69 13 £513 +5.13% 45
South West -37 12 £450 -47.98% 23
Yorkshire -38 9 £425 -5.56% 18
North of England -71 9 £425 +21.43% 42
East of England -43 8 £413 -26.67% 27
Midlands -58 7 £450 -18.18% 27
West Midlands -44 5 £451 -18.09% 15
Scotland -39 4 £194 -64.66% 10
Northern Ireland +5 2 £363 +3.57% 4
East Midlands -19 2 £252 -43.51% 12
Wales -14 1 £490 +30.23% 8

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 17 (10.12%) Apache Spark
2 11 (6.55%) Apache
3 3 (1.79%) Apache Superset
3 3 (1.79%) Confluence
3 3 (1.79%) Jupyter
4 2 (1.19%) SAS
5 1 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.60%) nginx
5 1 (0.60%) R Markdown
Applications
1 26 (15.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (1.19%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.60%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.60%) CPLEX
3 1 (0.60%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 1 (0.60%) SAP APO
1 1 (0.60%) SAP IBP
Cloud Services
1 53 (31.55%) Power Platform
2 44 (26.19%) AWS
3 41 (24.40%) Azure
4 19 (11.31%) GCP
5 12 (7.14%) Snowflake
6 9 (5.36%) SaaS
7 8 (4.76%) Serverless
8 6 (3.57%) Azure DevOps
9 5 (2.98%) Amazon S3
9 5 (2.98%) Azure Databricks
10 4 (2.38%) dbt
10 4 (2.38%) GitHub
11 3 (1.79%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 3 (1.79%) Google Analytics
12 2 (1.19%) Amazon EKS
12 2 (1.19%) AWS CloudFormation
12 2 (1.19%) Azure Data Factory
12 2 (1.19%) Cloud Functions
12 2 (1.19%) GitHub Actions
13 1 (0.60%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.19%) DSL
2 1 (0.60%) DNS
2 1 (0.60%) HTTPS
2 1 (0.60%) Reverse Proxy
2 1 (0.60%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (30.95%) Power BI
2 46 (27.38%) Tableau
3 16 (9.52%) Big Data
3 16 (9.52%) Data Warehouse
4 11 (6.55%) Relational Database
5 8 (4.76%) BigQuery
6 7 (4.17%) Hadoop
7 6 (3.57%) Power Query
8 5 (2.98%) Data Lake
8 5 (2.98%) Delta Lake
8 5 (2.98%) Looker
9 3 (1.79%) Amazon Athena
9 3 (1.79%) Apache Hive
9 3 (1.79%) Metadata
9 3 (1.79%) NoSQL
9 3 (1.79%) PostgreSQL
9 3 (1.79%) RDBMS
9 3 (1.79%) SQL Server
9 3 (1.79%) SQLPlus
10 2 (1.19%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 7 (4.17%) Git
2 6 (3.57%) GitLab
2 6 (3.57%) RStudio
3 3 (1.79%) Jenkins
3 3 (1.79%) JIRA
4 2 (1.19%) Cucumber
4 2 (1.19%) Gatling
4 2 (1.19%) JUnit
4 2 (1.19%) Selenium
5 1 (0.60%) Maven
5 1 (0.60%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 67 (39.88%) Analytical Skills
2 37 (22.02%) Social Skills
3 30 (17.86%) Public Sector
4 25 (14.88%) Finance
5 13 (7.74%) Marketing
6 10 (5.95%) Retail
7 9 (5.36%) Pharmaceutical
8 8 (4.76%) Banking
9 7 (4.17%) Telecoms
10 6 (3.57%) Billing
11 5 (2.98%) Military
11 5 (2.98%) Presentation Skills
12 4 (2.38%) Front Office
12 4 (2.38%) Influencing Skills
13 3 (1.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 3 (1.79%) Organisational Skills
13 3 (1.79%) Publishing
14 2 (1.19%) Manufacturing
14 2 (1.19%) Police
15 1 (0.60%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 54 (32.14%) Analyst
2 41 (24.40%) Data Analyst
3 25 (14.88%) Data Scientist
4 17 (10.12%) Senior
5 13 (7.74%) Data Engineer
6 12 (7.14%) Developer
7 11 (6.55%) Architect
8 10 (5.95%) Lead
9 9 (5.36%) Consultant
9 9 (5.36%) SQL Analyst
9 9 (5.36%) Technical Analyst
10 7 (4.17%) Senior Analyst
11 6 (3.57%) Data Consultant
11 6 (3.57%) Senior Data Analyst
11 6 (3.57%) Software Engineer
11 6 (3.57%) SQL Data Analyst
12 5 (2.98%) Data Architect
12 5 (2.98%) Java Developer
13 4 (2.38%) Platform Architect
13 4 (2.38%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (5.95%) Terraform
2 8 (4.76%) JSON
2 8 (4.76%) PySpark
3 7 (4.17%) PyTorch
3 7 (4.17%) TensorFlow
4 6 (3.57%) XML
5 5 (2.98%) REST
6 4 (2.38%) .NET
6 4 (2.38%) Pandas
6 4 (2.38%) React
7 3 (1.79%) NumPy
7 3 (1.79%) YAML
8 2 (1.19%) AngularJS
8 2 (1.19%) Apache Avro
8 2 (1.19%) Bootstrap
8 2 (1.19%) OLE
8 2 (1.19%) pytest
8 2 (1.19%) RabbitMQ
8 2 (1.19%) Shiny
8 2 (1.19%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 13 (7.74%) Algorithms
2 12 (7.14%) Onboarding
3 8 (4.76%) CRISPR
4 6 (3.57%) Data Structures
4 6 (3.57%) Legacy Systems
5 5 (2.98%) Cloud Native
5 5 (2.98%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (2.38%) AI Agents
6 4 (2.38%) Analytical Mindset
7 3 (1.79%) Product Ownership
8 2 (1.19%) BYOD
8 2 (1.19%) Credit Risk
8 2 (1.19%) Distributed Computing
8 2 (1.19%) Distributed Systems
8 2 (1.19%) Fixed Income
8 2 (1.19%) Legacy Applications
8 2 (1.19%) Mainframe
8 2 (1.19%) Reinsurance
8 2 (1.19%) Social Media
8 2 (1.19%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 5 (2.98%) Linux
2 2 (1.19%) Unix
3 1 (0.60%) Amazon Linux
3 1 (0.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (0.60%) Ubuntu
3 1 (0.60%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 71 (42.26%) Analytics
2 60 (35.71%) Data Science
3 58 (34.52%) Visualisation
4 57 (33.93%) Business Intelligence
5 49 (29.17%) Data Pipeline
6 43 (25.60%) Actionable Insight
6 43 (25.60%) Machine Learning
7 42 (25.00%) Decision-Making
8 38 (22.62%) AI
9 34 (20.24%) Data Visualisation
10 32 (19.05%) Agile
10 32 (19.05%) Statistical Analysis
11 31 (18.45%) Problem-Solving
12 29 (17.26%) Validation
13 27 (16.07%) Mathematics
14 26 (15.48%) Data Engineering
15 25 (14.88%) Stakeholder Management
16 23 (13.69%) Data Analysis
16 23 (13.69%) Statistical Modelling
17 22 (13.10%) Data Analytics
Programming Languages
1 153 (91.07%) Python
2 99 (58.93%) SQL
3 17 (10.12%) Java
4 10 (5.95%) C++
5 7 (4.17%) C#
6 6 (3.57%) JavaScript
7 5 (2.98%) Scala
8 4 (2.38%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 2 (1.19%) Bash
9 2 (1.19%) Cypher
9 2 (1.19%) PowerShell
9 2 (1.19%) SHACL
9 2 (1.19%) TypeScript
10 1 (0.60%) MATLAB
10 1 (0.60%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.60%) T-SQL
10 1 (0.60%) VB
Qualifications
1 32 (19.05%) Security Cleared
2 26 (15.48%) SC Cleared
3 24 (14.29%) Degree
4 5 (2.98%) BPSS Clearance
5 3 (1.79%) Computer Science Degree
5 3 (1.79%) Master's Degree
5 3 (1.79%) PhD
6 2 (1.19%) Microsoft Certified Professional
7 1 (0.60%) DV Cleared
7 1 (0.60%) Microsoft Certification
7 1 (0.60%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (15.48%) Data Quality
2 15 (8.93%) QA
3 5 (2.98%) Accessibility
3 5 (2.98%) SLA
4 4 (2.38%) Actionable Recommendations
5 3 (1.79%) GDPR
5 3 (1.79%) WCAG
6 2 (1.19%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 2 (1.19%) IFRS
6 2 (1.19%) IFRS 17
6 2 (1.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (0.60%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 5 (2.98%) Docker
2 1 (0.60%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 8 (4.76%) Kubernetes
2 3 (1.79%) Grafana
3 2 (1.19%) Ansible
3 2 (1.19%) Argo
4 1 (0.60%) Prometheus
4 1 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
4 1 (0.60%) systemd
Vendors
1 20 (11.90%) Databricks
2 19 (11.31%) Microsoft
3 7 (4.17%) Google
4 4 (2.38%) Oracle
5 3 (1.79%) OpenAI
6 2 (1.19%) Amplitude
6 2 (1.19%) FactSet
6 2 (1.19%) IBM
6 2 (1.19%) Sonatype
7 1 (0.60%) Alteryx
7 1 (0.60%) Pega
7 1 (0.60%) Red Hat
7 1 (0.60%) SAP