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

6 months to
10 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 481 366 402
Rank change year-on-year -115 +36 +15
Contract jobs citing R 165 161 191
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.33% 0.55% 0.44%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.24% 1.61% 1.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 117 107 121
10th Percentile £292 £328 £313
25th Percentile £406 £406 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -12.59%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £625
90th Percentile £650 £730 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £438 £475 £406
% change year-on-year -7.89% +17.00% -22.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 4 16
10th Percentile £27.93 £24.00 £20.12
25th Percentile £33.44 £25.49 £20.97
Median hourly rate £50.75 £31.91 £21.80
Median % change year-on-year +59.04% +46.41% -68.86%
75th Percentile £60.30 £43.75 £47.81
90th Percentile £60.40 £52.75 £66.08
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.00 £23.00 £20.24
% change year-on-year +86.96% +13.66% -70.02%

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 13,257 10,013 13,127
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.79% 34.09% 30.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,653 6,790 9,257
10th Percentile £358 £355 £350
25th Percentile £416 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.46% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
90th Percentile £715 £752 £764
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +2.63% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 539 234 531
10th Percentile £36.25 £26.52 £31.25
25th Percentile £53.64 £34.05 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -12.00% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.60 £85.00 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +4.00% - -

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 10 June 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 10 June 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 10 June 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 -113 147 £467 -11.10% 166
London -58 92 £525 -4.55% 64
Work from Home -28 66 £550 +22.22% 39
UK excluding London -107 50 £438 -7.89% 139
North of England -68 12 £425 -9.81% 32
South East -68 12 £550 +35.38% 39
South West -24 10 £450 -34.66% 18
East of England -32 10 £413 -36.54% 20
Yorkshire -48 9 £425 +1.49% 11
Midlands -71 4 £416 -7.19% 17
East Midlands -26 3 £395 -11.63% 10
North West -40 2 - - 17
Northern Ireland +3 1 - - 3
Wales -14 1 £490 +10.11% 6
West Midlands -60 1 £438 +4.48% 7
North East - 1 £475 - 4

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 34 (20.61%) Apache Spark
2 11 (6.67%) Apache
3 4 (2.42%) Apache Superset
4 3 (1.82%) Confluence
5 2 (1.21%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.61%) R Markdown
Applications
1 16 (9.70%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (1.21%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.61%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.61%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 1 (0.61%) SAP APO
1 1 (0.61%) SAP IBP
Cloud Services
1 52 (31.52%) Power Platform
2 47 (28.48%) AWS
3 37 (22.42%) Azure
4 13 (7.88%) Snowflake
5 10 (6.06%) GCP
6 6 (3.64%) Azure DevOps
7 4 (2.42%) dbt
8 3 (1.82%) Amazon S3
8 3 (1.82%) Azure Data Factory
8 3 (1.82%) OpenShift
8 3 (1.82%) Serverless
9 2 (1.21%) Amazon Bedrock
9 2 (1.21%) Amazon EKS
9 2 (1.21%) Amazon EMR
9 2 (1.21%) Amazon Kinesis
9 2 (1.21%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 2 (1.21%) Cloud Functions
9 2 (1.21%) GitHub
9 2 (1.21%) Google Analytics
9 2 (1.21%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.61%) DSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 53 (32.12%) Tableau
2 51 (30.91%) Power BI
3 31 (18.79%) Big Data
4 22 (13.33%) Hadoop
5 16 (9.70%) Data Warehouse
6 10 (6.06%) Looker
7 8 (4.85%) Relational Database
8 7 (4.24%) Mixpanel
9 5 (3.03%) Data Lake
10 4 (2.42%) Amazon Athena
10 4 (2.42%) NoSQL
10 4 (2.42%) Power Query
10 4 (2.42%) SQL Server
11 3 (1.82%) Amazon Redshift
11 3 (1.82%) RDBMS
11 3 (1.82%) Snowflake Schema
11 3 (1.82%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 2 (1.21%) BigQuery
12 2 (1.21%) Parquet
12 2 (1.21%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 3 (1.82%) Git
2 2 (1.21%) JIRA
2 2 (1.21%) MLflow
3 1 (0.61%) GitLab
3 1 (0.61%) Jenkins
3 1 (0.61%) RStudio
General
1 53 (32.12%) Analytical Skills
2 31 (18.79%) Public Sector
2 31 (18.79%) Social Skills
3 29 (17.58%) Finance
4 14 (8.48%) Pharmaceutical
5 11 (6.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 8 (4.85%) Marketing
7 6 (3.64%) Telecoms
8 3 (1.82%) Banking
8 3 (1.82%) Front Office
8 3 (1.82%) Retail
9 2 (1.21%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (1.21%) Manufacturing
9 2 (1.21%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (1.21%) Social Science
10 1 (0.61%) Billing
10 1 (0.61%) Documentation Skills
10 1 (0.61%) Organisational Skills
10 1 (0.61%) Private Banking
10 1 (0.61%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 49 (29.70%) Data Scientist
2 43 (26.06%) Analyst
3 37 (22.42%) Data Analyst
4 22 (13.33%) Senior
5 14 (8.48%) Data Engineer
5 14 (8.48%) Senior Data Scientist
6 13 (7.88%) Developer
7 9 (5.45%) Lead
7 9 (5.45%) Technical Analyst
8 8 (4.85%) SQL Analyst
8 8 (4.85%) SQL Data Analyst
9 7 (4.24%) Consultant
9 7 (4.24%) Lead Data Scientist
10 6 (3.64%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 6 (3.64%) Data Consultant
10 6 (3.64%) Software Engineer
11 5 (3.03%) Architect
11 5 (3.03%) Senior Analyst
11 5 (3.03%) Senior Developer
11 5 (3.03%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (7.27%) TensorFlow
2 11 (6.67%) PyTorch
3 9 (5.45%) Pandas
4 6 (3.64%) Keras
4 6 (3.64%) scikit-learn
5 5 (3.03%) JSON
5 5 (3.03%) NumPy
6 4 (2.42%) LangChain
6 4 (2.42%) Matplotlib
6 4 (2.42%) PySpark
6 4 (2.42%) Seaborn
7 3 (1.82%) Model Context Protocol
7 3 (1.82%) Plotly
7 3 (1.82%) Shiny
8 2 (1.21%) Apache Avro
8 2 (1.21%) CrewAI
8 2 (1.21%) Hugging Face
8 2 (1.21%) LangGraph
8 2 (1.21%) NLTK
8 2 (1.21%) Prophet
Miscellaneous
1 15 (9.09%) Algorithms
2 11 (6.67%) CRISPR
3 7 (4.24%) Cloud Native
4 5 (3.03%) AI Agents
4 5 (3.03%) Data Protection Act
4 5 (3.03%) Product Ownership
5 4 (2.42%) Analytical Mindset
5 4 (2.42%) Onboarding
6 3 (1.82%) Hybrid Cloud
6 3 (1.82%) Legacy Systems
6 3 (1.82%) Mainframe
6 3 (1.82%) Multi-touch
7 2 (1.21%) Credit Risk
7 2 (1.21%) Distributed Computing
7 2 (1.21%) Distributed Systems
7 2 (1.21%) Management Information System
7 2 (1.21%) Self-Motivation
8 1 (0.61%) Data Centre
8 1 (0.61%) Data Fabric
8 1 (0.61%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 4 (2.42%) Linux
2 3 (1.82%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 84 (50.91%) Data Science
2 82 (49.70%) Analytics
3 75 (45.45%) Visualisation
4 62 (37.58%) Machine Learning
5 51 (30.91%) Data Pipeline
6 50 (30.30%) Business Intelligence
7 45 (27.27%) Actionable Insight
8 44 (26.67%) Decision-Making
9 40 (24.24%) AI
10 38 (23.03%) Data Visualisation
10 38 (23.03%) Problem-Solving
11 35 (21.21%) Statistical Modelling
12 33 (20.00%) Data Analytics
13 29 (17.58%) Agile
13 29 (17.58%) Statistical Analysis
14 28 (16.97%) Statistics
15 27 (16.36%) Mathematics
16 25 (15.15%) Data Analysis
17 23 (13.94%) Dashboard Development
17 23 (13.94%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 158 (95.76%) Python
2 115 (69.70%) SQL
3 15 (9.09%) Java
4 9 (5.45%) C#
5 8 (4.85%) C++
6 4 (2.42%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 4 (2.42%) TypeScript
7 3 (1.82%) Scala
8 2 (1.21%) Ada
8 2 (1.21%) JavaScript
9 1 (0.61%) Cypher
9 1 (0.61%) SHACL
9 1 (0.61%) T-SQL
9 1 (0.61%) VB
Qualifications
1 41 (24.85%) Security Cleared
2 36 (21.82%) SC Cleared
3 27 (16.36%) Degree
4 5 (3.03%) PhD
5 4 (2.42%) Computer Science Degree
5 4 (2.42%) Master's Degree
6 2 (1.21%) BPSS Clearance
6 2 (1.21%) Microsoft Certification
6 2 (1.21%) Tableau Certification
7 1 (0.61%) Azure Certification
7 1 (0.61%) DV Cleared
7 1 (0.61%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (8.48%) Data Quality
2 10 (6.06%) Actionable Recommendations
3 8 (4.85%) QA
4 4 (2.42%) GDPR
5 2 (1.21%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.61%) MiFID
6 1 (0.61%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (0.61%) WCAG
System Software
1 2 (1.21%) Docker
1 2 (1.21%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 8 (4.85%) Kubernetes
1 8 (4.85%) Terraform
2 1 (0.61%) Argo
2 1 (0.61%) Grafana
2 1 (0.61%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 18 (10.91%) Databricks
2 10 (6.06%) Microsoft
3 7 (4.24%) Amplitude
4 6 (3.64%) OpenAI
5 5 (3.03%) Google
6 3 (1.82%) Red Hat
7 2 (1.21%) Informatica
7 2 (1.21%) Splunk
8 1 (0.61%) Alteryx
8 1 (0.61%) FactSet
8 1 (0.61%) Pega
8 1 (0.61%) SAP
8 1 (0.61%) ServiceNow