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 29 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 496 361 379
Rank change year-on-year -135 +18 +32
Contract jobs citing R 167 187 199
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.32% 0.57% 0.50%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.20% 1.73% 1.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 116 115 120
10th Percentile £290 £325 £310
25th Percentile £406 £406 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -16.67%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £611
90th Percentile £663 £688 £676
UK excluding London median daily rate £431 £481 £550
% change year-on-year -10.44% -12.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 7 19
10th Percentile £27.93 £22.94 £20.09
25th Percentile £33.44 £24.63 £20.12
Median hourly rate £50.75 £27.50 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year +84.55% +27.91% -68.38%
75th Percentile £60.30 £48.75 £36.50
90th Percentile £60.40 £60.75 £58.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.00 £22.92 £20.24
% change year-on-year +87.61% +13.27% -71.09%

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 13,969 10,796 12,393
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.58% 32.90% 31.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,075 7,277 8,754
10th Percentile £363 £340 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.58% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 520 254 421
10th Percentile £33.70 £27.96 £27.75
25th Percentile £51.25 £36.06 £46.18
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.13 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.79% -12.12% +8.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £82.07 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +1.56% -1.54% +7.08%

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 29 July 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 29 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for R in the UK

R
Top 16 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 29 July 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 -131 150 £465 -6.53% 160
London -58 92 £525 +5.00% 87
UK excluding London -127 55 £431 -10.44% 105
Work from Home -76 54 £550 +14.88% 51
South West -38 12 £450 -34.66% 13
South East -70 12 £550 +24.29% 31
North of England -73 11 £425 +13.33% 28
East of England -29 10 £413 -25.00% 7
Yorkshire -38 9 £425 -5.56% 9
Midlands -65 6 £450 +0.39% 19
West Midlands -62 4 £451 +7.58% 13
Northern Ireland +1 2 £363 +3.57% 1
East Midlands -14 2 £252 -43.51% 6
North West -55 2 - - 15
Wales -17 1 £490 +10.11% 5
Scotland -20 1 - - 3

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 21 (12.57%) Apache Spark
2 10 (5.99%) Apache
3 4 (2.40%) Apache Superset
4 3 (1.80%) Confluence
5 2 (1.20%) Jupyter
5 2 (1.20%) SAS
6 1 (0.60%) R Markdown
Applications
1 20 (11.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (1.20%) 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 (31.74%) Power Platform
2 48 (28.74%) AWS
3 40 (23.95%) Azure
4 17 (10.18%) GCP
5 14 (8.38%) Snowflake
6 5 (2.99%) Azure DevOps
7 4 (2.40%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 4 (2.40%) SaaS
8 3 (1.80%) Amazon EKS
8 3 (1.80%) Amazon S3
8 3 (1.80%) Azure Data Factory
8 3 (1.80%) dbt
8 3 (1.80%) GitHub
8 3 (1.80%) Serverless
9 2 (1.20%) AWS CloudFormation
9 2 (1.20%) Cloud Functions
10 1 (0.60%) Azure Machine Learning
10 1 (0.60%) Cloud Computing
10 1 (0.60%) Google Analytics
10 1 (0.60%) WhatsApp
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.20%) DSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (31.14%) Power BI
2 50 (29.94%) Tableau
3 20 (11.98%) Big Data
4 15 (8.98%) Data Warehouse
5 13 (7.78%) Hadoop
6 10 (5.99%) Relational Database
7 9 (5.39%) Looker
8 7 (4.19%) Mixpanel
9 5 (2.99%) BigQuery
9 5 (2.99%) Data Lake
10 4 (2.40%) Power Query
11 3 (1.80%) Amazon Athena
11 3 (1.80%) Apache Hive
11 3 (1.80%) Metadata
11 3 (1.80%) NoSQL
11 3 (1.80%) RDBMS
11 3 (1.80%) SQL Server
12 2 (1.20%) Snowflake Schema
12 2 (1.20%) SQLPlus
12 2 (1.20%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 5 (2.99%) Git
2 4 (2.40%) GitLab
3 3 (1.80%) JIRA
4 2 (1.20%) Jenkins
4 2 (1.20%) MLflow
5 1 (0.60%) Cucumber
5 1 (0.60%) Gatling
5 1 (0.60%) JUnit
5 1 (0.60%) Selenium
General
1 58 (34.73%) Analytical Skills
2 35 (20.96%) Social Skills
3 29 (17.37%) Public Sector
4 27 (16.17%) Finance
5 13 (7.78%) Pharmaceutical
6 10 (5.99%) Marketing
7 7 (4.19%) Retail
7 7 (4.19%) Telecoms
8 6 (3.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 5 (2.99%) Banking
10 4 (2.40%) Front Office
11 3 (1.80%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (1.80%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (1.20%) Manufacturing
12 2 (1.20%) Military
12 2 (1.20%) Police
12 2 (1.20%) Publishing
12 2 (1.20%) Social Science
13 1 (0.60%) Advertising
13 1 (0.60%) Billing
Job Titles
1 44 (26.35%) Analyst
2 40 (23.95%) Data Scientist
3 33 (19.76%) Data Analyst
4 20 (11.98%) Senior
5 14 (8.38%) Data Engineer
6 13 (7.78%) Developer
7 11 (6.59%) Senior Data Scientist
8 10 (5.99%) Lead
9 9 (5.39%) SQL Analyst
9 9 (5.39%) Technical Analyst
10 8 (4.79%) Architect
11 7 (4.19%) Consultant
11 7 (4.19%) Senior Analyst
11 7 (4.19%) Software Engineer
11 7 (4.19%) SQL Data Analyst
12 6 (3.59%) Data Consultant
12 6 (3.59%) Senior Data Analyst
13 5 (2.99%) Data Architect
13 5 (2.99%) Java Developer
14 4 (2.40%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (5.99%) PyTorch
1 10 (5.99%) TensorFlow
2 6 (3.59%) JSON
2 6 (3.59%) XML
3 4 (2.40%) Pandas
4 3 (1.80%) .NET
4 3 (1.80%) Keras
4 3 (1.80%) NumPy
4 3 (1.80%) React
4 3 (1.80%) scikit-learn
4 3 (1.80%) Shiny
5 2 (1.20%) Apache Beam
5 2 (1.20%) FastAPI
5 2 (1.20%) JWT
5 2 (1.20%) Model Context Protocol
5 2 (1.20%) OpenTelemetry
5 2 (1.20%) Prophet
5 2 (1.20%) PySpark
5 2 (1.20%) Seaborn
5 2 (1.20%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 15 (8.98%) Algorithms
2 11 (6.59%) CRISPR
3 6 (3.59%) Cloud Native
3 6 (3.59%) Onboarding
4 5 (2.99%) Data Protection Act
4 5 (2.99%) Product Ownership
5 4 (2.40%) AI Agents
5 4 (2.40%) Analytical Mindset
5 4 (2.40%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (1.20%) BYOD
6 2 (1.20%) Credit Risk
6 2 (1.20%) Distributed Computing
6 2 (1.20%) Distributed Systems
6 2 (1.20%) Fixed Income
6 2 (1.20%) Mainframe
6 2 (1.20%) Social Media
6 2 (1.20%) Taxonomies
7 1 (0.60%) Derivative
7 1 (0.60%) Equities
7 1 (0.60%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 4 (2.40%) Linux
2 2 (1.20%) Unix
3 1 (0.60%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 78 (46.71%) Analytics
2 74 (44.31%) Data Science
3 71 (42.51%) Visualisation
4 51 (30.54%) Business Intelligence
4 51 (30.54%) Data Pipeline
4 51 (30.54%) Machine Learning
5 48 (28.74%) Actionable Insight
6 43 (25.75%) Decision-Making
7 39 (23.35%) Data Visualisation
8 36 (21.56%) AI
8 36 (21.56%) Statistical Analysis
9 32 (19.16%) Agile
10 31 (18.56%) Problem-Solving
11 29 (17.37%) Mathematics
12 28 (16.77%) Data Analytics
12 28 (16.77%) Statistical Modelling
13 25 (14.97%) Statistics
14 23 (13.77%) Validation
15 21 (12.57%) Data Modelling
15 21 (12.57%) Predictive Modelling
Programming Languages
1 157 (94.01%) Python
2 105 (62.87%) SQL
3 15 (8.98%) Java
4 10 (5.99%) C++
5 7 (4.19%) C#
6 5 (2.99%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 4 (2.40%) JavaScript
8 3 (1.80%) Scala
8 3 (1.80%) TypeScript
9 2 (1.20%) Cypher
9 2 (1.20%) SHACL
10 1 (0.60%) Bash
10 1 (0.60%) MATLAB
10 1 (0.60%) PowerShell
10 1 (0.60%) T-SQL
10 1 (0.60%) VB
Qualifications
1 34 (20.36%) Security Cleared
2 28 (16.77%) Degree
2 28 (16.77%) SC Cleared
3 4 (2.40%) BPSS Clearance
3 4 (2.40%) Computer Science Degree
3 4 (2.40%) Master's Degree
3 4 (2.40%) PhD
4 2 (1.20%) Microsoft Certification
4 2 (1.20%) Microsoft Certified Professional
4 2 (1.20%) Tableau Certification
5 1 (0.60%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (8.98%) Data Quality
2 9 (5.39%) QA
3 8 (4.79%) Actionable Recommendations
4 4 (2.40%) Accessibility
5 3 (1.80%) GDPR
6 2 (1.20%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 2 (1.20%) WCAG
7 1 (0.60%) MiFID
7 1 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 3 (1.80%) Docker
Systems Management
1 11 (6.59%) Terraform
2 7 (4.19%) Kubernetes
3 2 (1.20%) Argo
3 2 (1.20%) Grafana
4 1 (0.60%) Ansible
4 1 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 16 (9.58%) Databricks
1 16 (9.58%) Microsoft
2 7 (4.19%) Amplitude
3 5 (2.99%) Google
4 3 (1.80%) OpenAI
5 2 (1.20%) FactSet
6 1 (0.60%) Alteryx
6 1 (0.60%) Oracle
6 1 (0.60%) Pega
6 1 (0.60%) Red Hat
6 1 (0.60%) SAP
6 1 (0.60%) Sonatype