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 16 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 457 355 385
Rank change year-on-year -102 +30 +40
Contract jobs citing R 184 168 191
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.38% 0.58% 0.45%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.42% 1.70% 1.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 130 112 136
10th Percentile £300 £332 £355
25th Percentile £406 £406 £397
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £533 £550
Median % change year-on-year -10.80% -3.18% -
75th Percentile £575 £675 £638
90th Percentile £650 £771 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £438 £519 £400
% change year-on-year -15.66% +29.69% -20.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 6 11
10th Percentile £22.38 £21.88 £21.25
25th Percentile £25.21 £22.63 £23.99
Median hourly rate £43.00 £25.16 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +70.91% -40.80% -39.29%
75th Percentile £60.25 £46.89 £51.71
90th Percentile £60.37 £56.25 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.42 £23.00 £21.73
% change year-on-year +10.50% +5.84% -65.23%

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 12,915 9,911 12,689
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.89% 34.02% 29.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,493 6,740 9,016
10th Percentile £355 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £533
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -2.44% -3.09%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £712 £763 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £475 £489
% change year-on-year +1.16% -2.86% -2.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 557 238 491
10th Percentile £41.25 £24.16 £32.25
25th Percentile £54.55 £34.81 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.25 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.42% -0.40% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.69 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.70 £85.00 £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.97% +1.99% -

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 16 May 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 16 May 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 16 May 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 -101 163 £475 -13.64% 217
London -47 96 £525 -4.55% 75
Work from Home +6 75 £550 +13.99% 38
UK excluding London -110 62 £438 -15.66% 189
North of England -57 15 £425 -6.59% 45
South East -62 13 £550 +49.66% 48
Midlands -65 13 £416 -0.24% 28
South West -38 11 £450 -47.98% 20
Yorkshire -48 10 £425 +1.49% 16
East of England -41 9 £413 -36.54% 29
East Midlands -19 8 £395 -11.63% 18
West Midlands -66 5 £438 +12.90% 10
North West -35 4 £375 -17.58% 23
Northern Ireland +2 1 - - 2
North East - 1 £475 - 6

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 38 (20.65%) Apache Spark
2 12 (6.52%) Apache
3 5 (2.72%) SharePoint
4 4 (2.17%) Apache Superset
5 2 (1.09%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (1.09%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.54%) Confluence
6 1 (0.54%) R Markdown
6 1 (0.54%) SAS
Applications
1 21 (11.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (1.09%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.54%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.54%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.54%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 1 (0.54%) Salesforce CRM
1 1 (0.54%) SAP APO
1 1 (0.54%) SAP IBP
1 1 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 70 (38.04%) Power Platform
2 48 (26.09%) AWS
3 41 (22.28%) Azure
4 11 (5.98%) GCP
5 10 (5.43%) Snowflake
6 7 (3.80%) Azure DevOps
6 7 (3.80%) PowerApps
7 6 (3.26%) Power Automate
8 4 (2.17%) Azure Data Factory
8 4 (2.17%) Microsoft Purview
9 3 (1.63%) Amazon S3
9 3 (1.63%) Copilot Studio
9 3 (1.63%) dbt
9 3 (1.63%) OpenShift
9 3 (1.63%) Serverless
10 2 (1.09%) Amazon Bedrock
10 2 (1.09%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 2 (1.09%) Cloud Functions
10 2 (1.09%) GitHub
10 2 (1.09%) Google Analytics
Database & Business Intelligence
1 69 (37.50%) Power BI
2 60 (32.61%) Tableau
3 34 (18.48%) Big Data
4 25 (13.59%) Hadoop
5 17 (9.24%) Data Warehouse
6 14 (7.61%) Looker
7 10 (5.43%) Power Query
8 9 (4.89%) Mixpanel
8 9 (4.89%) Relational Database
9 6 (3.26%) Delta Lake
9 6 (3.26%) Spark SQL
10 5 (2.72%) Data Lake
10 5 (2.72%) NoSQL
10 5 (2.72%) SQL Server
11 4 (2.17%) Amazon Athena
11 4 (2.17%) Amazon Redshift
11 4 (2.17%) BigQuery
11 4 (2.17%) Metadata
12 3 (1.63%) Parquet
12 3 (1.63%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 8 (4.35%) Git
2 2 (1.09%) Jenkins
2 2 (1.09%) MLflow
3 1 (0.54%) RStudio
General
1 60 (32.61%) Analytical Skills
2 45 (24.46%) Social Skills
3 35 (19.02%) Public Sector
4 34 (18.48%) Finance
5 13 (7.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 12 (6.52%) Pharmaceutical
7 8 (4.35%) Marketing
8 6 (3.26%) Telecoms
9 4 (2.17%) Influencing Skills
9 4 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.63%) Banking
10 3 (1.63%) Front Office
11 2 (1.09%) Documentation Skills
11 2 (1.09%) Financial Institution
11 2 (1.09%) Manufacturing
11 2 (1.09%) Publishing
11 2 (1.09%) Retail
11 2 (1.09%) Social Science
12 1 (0.54%) Billing
12 1 (0.54%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 57 (30.98%) Data Scientist
2 44 (23.91%) Analyst
3 37 (20.11%) Data Analyst
4 29 (15.76%) Senior
5 19 (10.33%) Data Engineer
5 19 (10.33%) Developer
6 18 (9.78%) Senior Data Scientist
7 11 (5.98%) Lead
8 9 (4.89%) Consultant
8 9 (4.89%) Technical Analyst
9 8 (4.35%) Lead Data Scientist
10 7 (3.80%) SQL Analyst
10 7 (3.80%) SQL Data Analyst
11 6 (3.26%) Architect
11 6 (3.26%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
11 6 (3.26%) Business Intelligence Developer
11 6 (3.26%) Data Consultant
11 6 (3.26%) Senior Analyst
11 6 (3.26%) Software Engineer
12 5 (2.72%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (7.61%) TensorFlow
2 12 (6.52%) PyTorch
3 10 (5.43%) Pandas
4 8 (4.35%) PySpark
4 8 (4.35%) scikit-learn
5 6 (3.26%) JSON
5 6 (3.26%) Keras
6 5 (2.72%) NumPy
6 5 (2.72%) Shiny
7 4 (2.17%) LangChain
7 4 (2.17%) Matplotlib
7 4 (2.17%) Seaborn
7 4 (2.17%) YAML
8 3 (1.63%) Plotly
9 2 (1.09%) Apache Beam
9 2 (1.09%) Faiss
9 2 (1.09%) Hugging Face
9 2 (1.09%) LangGraph
9 2 (1.09%) Model Context Protocol
9 2 (1.09%) XGBoost
Miscellaneous
1 15 (8.15%) Algorithms
2 9 (4.89%) CRISPR
3 8 (4.35%) Cloud Native
4 6 (3.26%) Product Ownership
5 5 (2.72%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (2.17%) Analytical Mindset
6 4 (2.17%) Self-Motivation
7 3 (1.63%) AI Agents
7 3 (1.63%) Data Structures
7 3 (1.63%) Hybrid Cloud
7 3 (1.63%) Legacy Systems
7 3 (1.63%) Mainframe
7 3 (1.63%) Management Information System
7 3 (1.63%) Multi-touch
7 3 (1.63%) Onboarding
8 2 (1.09%) Derivative
8 2 (1.09%) Distributed Systems
9 1 (0.54%) Credit Risk
9 1 (0.54%) Fixed Income
9 1 (0.54%) FMCG
Operating Systems
1 4 (2.17%) Linux
2 3 (1.63%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 97 (52.72%) Analytics
2 96 (52.17%) Data Science
3 86 (46.74%) Visualisation
4 67 (36.41%) Business Intelligence
5 64 (34.78%) Machine Learning
6 56 (30.43%) Decision-Making
7 52 (28.26%) Data Pipeline
8 49 (26.63%) Actionable Insight
9 46 (25.00%) Data Visualisation
10 44 (23.91%) Problem-Solving
11 38 (20.65%) Agile
12 36 (19.57%) Data Analytics
12 36 (19.57%) Statistical Modelling
13 35 (19.02%) AI
14 34 (18.48%) Statistical Analysis
15 31 (16.85%) Statistics
16 30 (16.30%) Data Modelling
16 30 (16.30%) Mathematics
17 27 (14.67%) Dashboard Development
17 27 (14.67%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 175 (95.11%) Python
2 137 (74.46%) SQL
3 16 (8.70%) Java
4 11 (5.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 9 (4.89%) C#
5 9 (4.89%) C++
6 7 (3.80%) Scala
7 5 (2.72%) JavaScript
8 3 (1.63%) TypeScript
9 2 (1.09%) Ada
9 2 (1.09%) VBA
10 1 (0.54%) LookML
10 1 (0.54%) SAS Macro
10 1 (0.54%) T-SQL
10 1 (0.54%) VB
Qualifications
1 50 (27.17%) Security Cleared
2 43 (23.37%) SC Cleared
3 31 (16.85%) Degree
4 7 (3.80%) Computer Science Degree
5 6 (3.26%) Microsoft Certification
6 5 (2.72%) BPSS Clearance
6 5 (2.72%) Master's Degree
6 5 (2.72%) PhD
7 2 (1.09%) Azure Certification
7 2 (1.09%) Tableau Certification
8 1 (0.54%) CTC Cleared
8 1 (0.54%) DBS Check
8 1 (0.54%) DV Cleared
8 1 (0.54%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (10.87%) Data Quality
2 11 (5.98%) Actionable Recommendations
3 8 (4.35%) QA
4 5 (2.72%) GDPR
5 3 (1.63%) Accessibility
6 2 (1.09%) WCAG
7 1 (0.54%) MiFID
7 1 (0.54%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 3 (1.63%) Docker
2 2 (1.09%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 8 (4.35%) Kubernetes
1 8 (4.35%) Terraform
Vendors
1 21 (11.41%) Databricks
2 18 (9.78%) Microsoft
3 9 (4.89%) Amplitude
4 5 (2.72%) Google
4 5 (2.72%) OpenAI
5 3 (1.63%) Informatica
5 3 (1.63%) Red Hat
5 3 (1.63%) ServiceNow
6 2 (1.09%) Oracle
6 2 (1.09%) SAP
6 2 (1.09%) Splunk
7 1 (0.54%) Adobe
7 1 (0.54%) Alteryx
7 1 (0.54%) Cognos
7 1 (0.54%) Salesforce