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

6 months to
4 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 436 334 382
Rank change year-on-year -102 +48 +32
Contract jobs citing R 162 198 230
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.41% 0.64% 0.51%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.37% 1.90% 1.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 97 110 164
10th Percentile £300 £292 £313
25th Percentile £413 £382 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £647 £625
90th Percentile £688 £800 £759
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £461 £400
% change year-on-year +8.40% +15.31% -11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 6 14
10th Percentile £22.38 £21.25 £25.42
25th Percentile £25.21 £21.56 £28.43
Median hourly rate £30.00 £38.25 £43.75
Median % change year-on-year -21.57% -12.57% +59.70%
75th Percentile £33.75 £53.75 £48.44
90th Percentile £43.20 £57.25 £51.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £22.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year +33.33% -52.63% +114.35%

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 11,859 10,410 13,199
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.36% 33.65% 29.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,851 6,593 9,361
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -4.44%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £715 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £491 £500
% change year-on-year -1.89% -1.90% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 458 239 514
10th Percentile £39.58 £21.25 £35.55
25th Percentile £52.50 £36.25 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -7.69%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £69.47
90th Percentile £77.00 £85.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +3.17% +0.80% -3.85%

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 4 February 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 4 February 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 4 February 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 -106 141 £511 -2.62% 260
London -57 74 £525 -4.55% 101
UK excluding London -72 62 £500 +8.40% 218
Work from Home -8 59 £531 +3.26% 70
South East -23 19 £600 +17.07% 64
Midlands -47 18 £416 +16.92% 30
North of England -56 13 £500 +40.45% 54
East Midlands -23 11 £385 +20.88% 21
North West -23 11 £513 +44.14% 27
West Midlands -41 7 £456 +11.42% 9
East of England -30 6 £662 +1.77% 27
Wales +3 4 £366 - 8
South West -25 2 - - 20
North East -16 1 £475 - 8
Yorkshire - 1 - - 21

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 28 (17.28%) Apache Spark
2 15 (9.26%) SAS
3 8 (4.94%) SharePoint
4 5 (3.09%) Apache
4 5 (3.09%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (1.85%) Confluence
6 1 (0.62%) Jupyter
Applications
1 18 (11.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (4.32%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (4.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.62%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 1 (0.62%) Distributed Ledger
1 1 (0.62%) Salesforce CRM
1 1 (0.62%) SAP ERP
1 1 (0.62%) SAP IBP
1 1 (0.62%) SAP S/4HANA
1 1 (0.62%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 54 (33.33%) Power Platform
2 49 (30.25%) Azure
3 41 (25.31%) AWS
4 23 (14.20%) GCP
5 8 (4.94%) Power Automate
5 8 (4.94%) PowerApps
5 8 (4.94%) Snowflake
6 7 (4.32%) Azure Machine Learning
6 7 (4.32%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 5 (3.09%) Azure Data Factory
7 5 (3.09%) Microsoft Purview
8 4 (2.47%) Azure AKS
8 4 (2.47%) Azure DevOps
8 4 (2.47%) dbt
9 3 (1.85%) Amazon Bedrock
9 3 (1.85%) Copilot Studio
10 2 (1.23%) Amazon EMR
10 2 (1.23%) Amazon Kinesis
10 2 (1.23%) Amazon SageMaker
10 2 (1.23%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.23%) 2G
1 2 (1.23%) 5G
1 2 (1.23%) LTE
1 2 (1.23%) Mobile Backhaul
1 2 (1.23%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (33.33%) Power BI
2 42 (25.93%) Tableau
3 27 (16.67%) Big Data
4 20 (12.35%) Data Warehouse
5 19 (11.73%) Hadoop
6 10 (6.17%) Data Lake
7 8 (4.94%) NoSQL
8 7 (4.32%) Data Mining
8 7 (4.32%) Delta Lake
8 7 (4.32%) Looker
8 7 (4.32%) Metadata
8 7 (4.32%) Power Query
9 6 (3.70%) Relational Database
9 6 (3.70%) Spark SQL
10 5 (3.09%) Amazon Redshift
10 5 (3.09%) SQL Server
11 3 (1.85%) BigQuery
11 3 (1.85%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
12 2 (1.23%) Azure SQL Database
12 2 (1.23%) Mixpanel
Development Applications
1 12 (7.41%) Git
2 6 (3.70%) Jenkins
3 4 (2.47%) MLflow
4 3 (1.85%) JIRA
5 2 (1.23%) GoCD
5 2 (1.23%) RStudio
5 2 (1.23%) SonarQube
5 2 (1.23%) Sonatype Nexus
5 2 (1.23%) TeamCity
6 1 (0.62%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.62%) Maven
General
1 57 (35.19%) Social Skills
2 50 (30.86%) Analytical Skills
3 39 (24.07%) Finance
4 23 (14.20%) Public Sector
5 13 (8.02%) Marketing
6 11 (6.79%) Pharmaceutical
7 10 (6.17%) Banking
8 8 (4.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 6 (3.70%) Organisational Skills
10 4 (2.47%) Manufacturing
11 3 (1.85%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (1.85%) Telecoms
12 2 (1.23%) Influencing Skills
12 2 (1.23%) Legal
12 2 (1.23%) Presentation Skills
13 1 (0.62%) Automotive
13 1 (0.62%) Financial Institution
13 1 (0.62%) Local Government
13 1 (0.62%) Private Banking
13 1 (0.62%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 45 (27.78%) Data Scientist
2 30 (18.52%) Analyst
3 23 (14.20%) Data Analyst
4 19 (11.73%) Senior
5 16 (9.88%) Data Engineer
5 16 (9.88%) Developer
6 14 (8.64%) Architect
7 12 (7.41%) Lead
8 11 (6.79%) Senior Data Scientist
9 7 (4.32%) Business Intelligence Developer
9 7 (4.32%) Software Engineer
10 6 (3.70%) Consultant
10 6 (3.70%) Power BI Developer
11 5 (3.09%) Azure Engineer
11 5 (3.09%) Business Analyst
11 5 (3.09%) Lead Data Scientist
12 4 (2.47%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 4 (2.47%) Machine Learning Engineer
13 3 (1.85%) Senior Data Engineer
13 3 (1.85%) SQL Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (8.02%) TensorFlow
2 11 (6.79%) scikit-learn
3 10 (6.17%) PyTorch
4 9 (5.56%) Pandas
5 8 (4.94%) PySpark
6 6 (3.70%) Kafka
7 5 (3.09%) YAML
8 4 (2.47%) Keras
8 4 (2.47%) LangChain
9 3 (1.85%) FastAPI
9 3 (1.85%) Hugging Face
9 3 (1.85%) JSON
9 3 (1.85%) Shiny
10 2 (1.23%) Matplotlib
10 2 (1.23%) Node.js
10 2 (1.23%) NumPy
10 2 (1.23%) REST
10 2 (1.23%) SciPy
10 2 (1.23%) XGBoost
10 2 (1.23%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 12 (7.41%) Credit Risk
2 11 (6.79%) Algorithms
3 7 (4.32%) Data Structures
4 6 (3.70%) Cloud Native
5 5 (3.09%) Management Information System
5 5 (3.09%) Product Ownership
5 5 (3.09%) Self-Motivation
6 3 (1.85%) IoT
6 3 (1.85%) Multi-touch
6 3 (1.85%) NHS
7 2 (1.23%) AI Agents
7 2 (1.23%) Analytical Mindset
7 2 (1.23%) Genomics
7 2 (1.23%) Hybrid Cloud
7 2 (1.23%) Mobile App
7 2 (1.23%) Onboarding
8 1 (0.62%) CRISPR
8 1 (0.62%) Data Fabric
8 1 (0.62%) Legacy Systems
8 1 (0.62%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 2 (1.23%) Linux
2 1 (0.62%) Unix
2 1 (0.62%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 88 (54.32%) Data Science
2 78 (48.15%) Analytics
3 72 (44.44%) Machine Learning
4 60 (37.04%) Visualisation
5 53 (32.72%) Business Intelligence
6 46 (28.40%) Decision-Making
7 41 (25.31%) Data Analysis
7 41 (25.31%) Problem-Solving
8 34 (20.99%) Agile
8 34 (20.99%) Data Modelling
8 34 (20.99%) Statistical Modelling
9 32 (19.75%) Data Governance
10 30 (18.52%) Actionable Insight
10 30 (18.52%) Data Visualisation
11 28 (17.28%) AI
12 24 (14.81%) Data Pipeline
12 24 (14.81%) Validation
13 23 (14.20%) CI/CD
14 20 (12.35%) Computer Science
15 18 (11.11%) Statistics
Programming Languages
1 153 (94.44%) Python
2 111 (68.52%) SQL
3 14 (8.64%) Java
4 9 (5.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
4 9 (5.56%) Scala
5 8 (4.94%) C++
6 6 (3.70%) JavaScript
7 4 (2.47%) MATLAB
8 3 (1.85%) C#
8 3 (1.85%) VBA
9 2 (1.23%) Ada
9 2 (1.23%) Go
9 2 (1.23%) PL/SQL
9 2 (1.23%) Rust
9 2 (1.23%) TypeScript
10 1 (0.62%) Bash
10 1 (0.62%) LookML
10 1 (0.62%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 33 (20.37%) Security Cleared
2 32 (19.75%) Degree
3 26 (16.05%) SC Cleared
4 12 (7.41%) Computer Science Degree
5 6 (3.70%) BPSS Clearance
5 6 (3.70%) Master's Degree
6 4 (2.47%) Microsoft Certification
6 4 (2.47%) PhD
7 3 (1.85%) Azure Certification
8 2 (1.23%) Tableau Certification
9 1 (0.62%) CIMA
9 1 (0.62%) CTC Cleared
9 1 (0.62%) DBS Check
9 1 (0.62%) GIAC
9 1 (0.62%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (12.35%) Data Quality
2 7 (4.32%) GDPR
2 7 (4.32%) QA
3 6 (3.70%) Actionable Recommendations
4 2 (1.23%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.62%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.62%) WCAG
System Software
1 10 (6.17%) Docker
2 2 (1.23%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 11 (6.79%) Kubernetes
2 2 (1.23%) rkt
3 1 (0.62%) Ansible
3 1 (0.62%) Progress Chef
3 1 (0.62%) Terraform
Vendors
1 24 (14.81%) Databricks
2 18 (11.11%) Microsoft
3 7 (4.32%) Pega
4 6 (3.70%) Oracle
5 4 (2.47%) OpenAI
5 4 (2.47%) SAP
5 4 (2.47%) ServiceNow
5 4 (2.47%) Splunk
6 3 (1.85%) Cognos
6 3 (1.85%) Informatica
7 2 (1.23%) Amplitude
7 2 (1.23%) Dynatrace
7 2 (1.23%) Google
7 2 (1.23%) Red Hat
7 2 (1.23%) TIBCO
8 1 (0.62%) Arqiva
8 1 (0.62%) Instagram
8 1 (0.62%) UiPath
8 1 (0.62%) Workday
8 1 (0.62%) YouTube