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 20 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 428 328 410
Rank change year-on-year -100 +82 -23
Contract jobs citing R 175 245 216
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.49% 0.67% 0.47%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.52% 2.09% 1.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 104 137 146
10th Percentile £305 £295 £308
25th Percentile £413 £341 £392
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £477 £519
Median % change year-on-year +4.82% -8.05% -12.82%
75th Percentile £600 £612 £638
90th Percentile £688 £698 £756
UK excluding London median daily rate £509 £500 £513
% change year-on-year +1.75% -2.44% +3.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 15 16
10th Percentile £24.55 £20.05 £25.06
25th Percentile £27.19 £20.12 £25.47
Median hourly rate £31.25 £21.50 £40.32
Median % change year-on-year +45.35% -46.67% +43.98%
75th Percentile £37.50 £26.50 £49.06
90th Percentile £51.25 £53.75 £58.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £20.24 £47.50
% change year-on-year +48.26% -57.40% +110.97%

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 11,514 11,703 14,259
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.17% 32.07% 31.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,586 7,524 10,151
10th Percentile £350 £350 £360
25th Percentile £413 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £507 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.38% -4.55% -2.65%
75th Percentile £623 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £751 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £489 £500
% change year-on-year -2.86% -2.20% -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 341 283 440
10th Percentile £29.33 £22.00 £31.95
25th Percentile £46.25 £37.90 £47.50
Median hourly rate £62.50 £62.50 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year - +3.31% +0.83%
75th Percentile £67.50 £70.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £78.08
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 20 November 2025.

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 20 November 2025.

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 20 November 2025. 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 -72 155 £500 +5.04% 586
London -52 81 £500 +4.82% 231
UK excluding London -48 73 £509 +1.75% 449
Work from Home -3 62 £550 +10.00% 163
South East 0 27 £513 - 119
North of England -45 14 £465 +24.00% 109
North West -16 13 £479 +34.41% 61
East of England -15 12 £608 -2.72% 58
Midlands -33 9 £525 +34.44% 77
Wales -1 6 £366 - 23
East Midlands -21 5 £375 +10.29% 32
West Midlands -36 4 £575 -6.05% 44
Scotland -3 3 £550 -12.00% 28
South West -14 2 £513 -29.31% 33
Yorkshire -38 1 £450 -2.70% 35

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 22 (12.57%) Apache Spark
1 22 (12.57%) SAS
2 5 (2.86%) Apache Airflow
3 4 (2.29%) Apache
3 4 (2.29%) Confluence
3 4 (2.29%) SharePoint
4 2 (1.14%) Jupyter
5 1 (0.57%) Luigi
Applications
1 23 (13.14%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (6.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 8 (4.57%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.57%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.57%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 2 (1.14%) Distributed Ledger
2 1 (0.57%) NEC Housing
2 1 (0.57%) Oracle BPM
2 1 (0.57%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 1 (0.57%) Salesforce CRM
2 1 (0.57%) SAP ERP
2 1 (0.57%) SAP IBP
2 1 (0.57%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 58 (33.14%) Azure
2 57 (32.57%) Power Platform
3 33 (18.86%) AWS
4 25 (14.29%) GCP
5 12 (6.86%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 8 (4.57%) Azure Data Factory
6 8 (4.57%) Azure Machine Learning
6 8 (4.57%) Snowflake
7 5 (2.86%) Azure AKS
8 3 (1.71%) Azure DevOps
8 3 (1.71%) GitHub
8 3 (1.71%) Google Analytics
8 3 (1.71%) Power Automate
9 2 (1.14%) Adobe Analytics
9 2 (1.14%) Amazon EC2
9 2 (1.14%) Amazon S3
9 2 (1.14%) AWS Lambda
9 2 (1.14%) dbt
9 2 (1.14%) PowerApps
9 2 (1.14%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.14%) 2G
1 2 (1.14%) 5G
1 2 (1.14%) LTE
1 2 (1.14%) Mobile Backhaul
1 2 (1.14%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 57 (32.57%) Power BI
2 40 (22.86%) Tableau
3 19 (10.86%) Data Warehouse
4 18 (10.29%) Big Data
5 15 (8.57%) Data Lake
5 15 (8.57%) Hadoop
6 10 (5.71%) Data Mining
7 9 (5.14%) NoSQL
8 7 (4.00%) Metadata
9 5 (2.86%) Looker
10 4 (2.29%) Amazon Redshift
10 4 (2.29%) Spotfire
10 4 (2.29%) SQL Server
11 3 (1.71%) Amazon QuickSight
11 3 (1.71%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
11 3 (1.71%) Impala
11 3 (1.71%) Relational Database
12 2 (1.14%) Mixpanel
12 2 (1.14%) Tableau Desktop
12 2 (1.14%) Tableau Server
Development Applications
1 10 (5.71%) Git
2 5 (2.86%) JIRA
3 4 (2.29%) Jenkins
3 4 (2.29%) MLflow
4 2 (1.14%) GoCD
4 2 (1.14%) SonarQube
4 2 (1.14%) Sonatype Nexus
4 2 (1.14%) TeamCity
5 1 (0.57%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.57%) Eclipse
5 1 (0.57%) Maven
5 1 (0.57%) RStudio
General
1 62 (35.43%) Social Skills
2 59 (33.71%) Analytical Skills
3 46 (26.29%) Finance
4 26 (14.86%) Marketing
5 17 (9.71%) Pharmaceutical
6 13 (7.43%) Banking
7 11 (6.29%) Public Sector
8 6 (3.43%) Documentation Skills
8 6 (3.43%) Manufacturing
8 6 (3.43%) Organisational Skills
9 5 (2.86%) Legal
10 4 (2.29%) Local Government
11 3 (1.71%) Telecoms
12 2 (1.14%) Digital Health
12 2 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
12 2 (1.14%) Retail
13 1 (0.57%) Agriculture
13 1 (0.57%) Agrochemical
13 1 (0.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 1 (0.57%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 45 (25.71%) Data Scientist
2 37 (21.14%) Analyst
3 27 (15.43%) Data Analyst
4 17 (9.71%) Architect
4 17 (9.71%) Developer
5 15 (8.57%) Data Engineer
6 14 (8.00%) Senior
7 7 (4.00%) Lead
7 7 (4.00%) Senior Data Scientist
8 6 (3.43%) Business Analyst
8 6 (3.43%) Software Engineer
9 5 (2.86%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
9 5 (2.86%) Consultant
9 5 (2.86%) Security Architect
10 4 (2.29%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
10 4 (2.29%) Data Analytics Engineer
10 4 (2.29%) Machine Learning Engineer
10 4 (2.29%) Power BI Developer
10 4 (2.29%) Python Engineer
10 4 (2.29%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (9.71%) TensorFlow
2 16 (9.14%) PyTorch
3 15 (8.57%) scikit-learn
4 14 (8.00%) Pandas
5 5 (2.86%) Kafka
6 4 (2.29%) Google JAX
6 4 (2.29%) JAX
6 4 (2.29%) Matplotlib
6 4 (2.29%) Seaborn
7 3 (1.71%) FastAPI
7 3 (1.71%) FHIR
7 3 (1.71%) NumPy
8 2 (1.14%) ATL
8 2 (1.14%) Hugging Face
8 2 (1.14%) JSON
8 2 (1.14%) PySpark
8 2 (1.14%) REST
8 2 (1.14%) XML
9 1 (0.57%) CSS
9 1 (0.57%) ODBC
Miscellaneous
1 19 (10.86%) Algorithms
2 12 (6.86%) Credit Risk
3 8 (4.57%) Multi-touch
4 6 (3.43%) Data Structures
4 6 (3.43%) Self-Motivation
5 5 (2.86%) Cloud Native
5 5 (2.86%) Product Ownership
6 4 (2.29%) NHS
7 3 (1.71%) Analytical Mindset
7 3 (1.71%) IoT
7 3 (1.71%) Management Information System
7 3 (1.71%) Smart Meter
8 2 (1.14%) Distributed Computing
8 2 (1.14%) Genomics
8 2 (1.14%) Greenfield Project
8 2 (1.14%) Legacy Systems
8 2 (1.14%) Life Science
8 2 (1.14%) Mobile App
8 2 (1.14%) Social Media
8 2 (1.14%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 5 (2.86%) Linux
2 2 (1.14%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 86 (49.14%) Data Science
2 79 (45.14%) Machine Learning
3 72 (41.14%) Analytics
4 66 (37.71%) Business Intelligence
5 55 (31.43%) Data Analysis
6 51 (29.14%) Visualisation
7 46 (26.29%) Data Modelling
8 42 (24.00%) Statistical Modelling
9 40 (22.86%) Problem-Solving
10 37 (21.14%) Decision-Making
11 31 (17.71%) AI
12 30 (17.14%) Validation
13 29 (16.57%) Actionable Insight
14 28 (16.00%) Data Visualisation
15 27 (15.43%) Data Governance
16 26 (14.86%) Statistics
17 25 (14.29%) Computer Science
18 24 (13.71%) Agile
18 24 (13.71%) Mathematics
19 20 (11.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 163 (93.14%) Python
2 113 (64.57%) SQL
3 16 (9.14%) Java
4 13 (7.43%) C++
5 11 (6.29%) MATLAB
6 6 (3.43%) Scala
7 5 (2.86%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 4 (2.29%) C
8 4 (2.29%) PL/SQL
9 3 (1.71%) Go
10 2 (1.14%) Bash
10 2 (1.14%) JavaScript
10 2 (1.14%) Rust
10 2 (1.14%) VBA
11 1 (0.57%) Fortran
11 1 (0.57%) Korn
11 1 (0.57%) PowerShell
11 1 (0.57%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 40 (22.86%) Degree
2 16 (9.14%) Security Cleared
3 13 (7.43%) SC Cleared
4 12 (6.86%) Master's Degree
4 12 (6.86%) PhD
5 9 (5.14%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (4.00%) BPSS Clearance
7 2 (1.14%) Tableau Certification
8 1 (0.57%) ACCA
8 1 (0.57%) Azure Certification
8 1 (0.57%) CFA
8 1 (0.57%) CIMA
8 1 (0.57%) CTC Cleared
8 1 (0.57%) GIAC
8 1 (0.57%) Numerate Degree
8 1 (0.57%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (17.71%) Data Quality
2 9 (5.14%) QA
3 8 (4.57%) GDPR
4 5 (2.86%) Accessibility
5 4 (2.29%) EU AI Act
5 4 (2.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (1.14%) Actionable Recommendations
6 2 (1.14%) DICOM
6 2 (1.14%) NIST
7 1 (0.57%) HL7
7 1 (0.57%) IFRS
7 1 (0.57%) IFRS 9
7 1 (0.57%) LOINC
7 1 (0.57%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (0.57%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 10 (5.71%) Docker
2 3 (1.71%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 1 (0.57%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 13 (7.43%) Kubernetes
2 2 (1.14%) Ansible
2 2 (1.14%) rkt
2 2 (1.14%) Terraform
3 1 (0.57%) Packer
3 1 (0.57%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 19 (10.86%) Microsoft
2 15 (8.57%) Databricks
3 10 (5.71%) Oracle
4 7 (4.00%) Google
4 7 (4.00%) Pega
5 5 (2.86%) SAP
6 4 (2.29%) ServiceNow
6 4 (2.29%) TIBCO
7 3 (1.71%) Splunk
8 2 (1.14%) Adobe
8 2 (1.14%) Amplitude
8 2 (1.14%) Bloomberg
8 2 (1.14%) Cognos
8 2 (1.14%) Dynatrace
8 2 (1.14%) Refinitiv
9 1 (0.57%) Arqiva
9 1 (0.57%) Cribl.io
9 1 (0.57%) OpenAI
9 1 (0.57%) TikTok
9 1 (0.57%) Workday