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 7 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 400 317 378
Rank change year-on-year -83 +61 +24
Contract jobs citing R 184 241 241
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.51% 0.67% 0.53%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.62% 2.09% 1.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 112 136 172
10th Percentile £304 £305 £319
25th Percentile £413 £356 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -8.70%
75th Percentile £602 £612 £628
90th Percentile £688 £731 £761
UK excluding London median daily rate £509 £500 £513
% change year-on-year +1.75% -2.44% +4.59%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 12 16
10th Percentile £21.90 - £25.06
25th Percentile £24.02 £20.12 £25.47
Median hourly rate £27.50 £23.25 £35.32
Median % change year-on-year +18.28% -34.16% +35.83%
75th Percentile £31.88 £53.75 £48.75
90th Percentile £45.75 - £51.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.42 £20.24 £37.00
% change year-on-year +25.60% -45.31% +80.75%

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 11,393 11,557 14,015
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.40% 32.36% 30.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,515 7,415 9,980
10th Percentile £349 £350 £363
25th Percentile £413 £425 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% -4.55% -3.08%
75th Percentile £619 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £476 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -3.94% -1.00% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 343 282 433
10th Percentile £31.02 £22.00 £31.30
25th Percentile £48.75 £40.19 £47.50
Median hourly rate £64.50 £62.50 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.20% +3.31% -3.20%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.00 £78.00
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 7 December 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 7 December 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 7 December 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 -67 162 £500 - 528
London -37 85 £510 +2.00% 164
UK excluding London -54 77 £509 +1.75% 469
Work from Home -4 63 £550 +7.32% 430
South East -13 22 £588 +14.63% 130
Midlands -34 16 £475 +22.58% 79
North of England -37 15 £465 +30.62% 104
North West -8 14 £479 +34.41% 59
East of England -8 12 £608 -6.46% 65
East Midlands -17 9 £375 +10.29% 36
West Midlands -28 7 £475 -12.60% 42
Wales 0 6 £366 - 24
Scotland -6 3 £550 -6.38% 20
South West -23 3 £513 -29.31% 47
Yorkshire -40 1 £450 +20.00% 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 24 (13.04%) Apache Spark
2 21 (11.41%) SAS
3 8 (4.35%) SharePoint
4 5 (2.72%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (2.17%) Apache
5 4 (2.17%) Confluence
6 2 (1.09%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.54%) Luigi
Applications
1 26 (14.13%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (5.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 10 (5.43%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.54%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.54%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 2 (1.09%) Distributed Ledger
2 1 (0.54%) NEC Housing
2 1 (0.54%) Salesforce CRM
2 1 (0.54%) SAP ERP
2 1 (0.54%) SAP IBP
2 1 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.54%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 69 (37.50%) Power Platform
2 58 (31.52%) Azure
3 35 (19.02%) AWS
4 27 (14.67%) GCP
5 9 (4.89%) Power Automate
5 9 (4.89%) PowerApps
6 8 (4.35%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 8 (4.35%) Snowflake
7 7 (3.80%) Azure Machine Learning
8 6 (3.26%) Azure Data Factory
9 4 (2.17%) Azure AKS
9 4 (2.17%) Azure DevOps
9 4 (2.17%) Microsoft Purview
10 3 (1.63%) Adobe Analytics
10 3 (1.63%) Copilot Studio
10 3 (1.63%) Google Analytics
11 2 (1.09%) AWS Lambda
11 2 (1.09%) Cloud Computing
11 2 (1.09%) dbt
11 2 (1.09%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.09%) 2G
1 2 (1.09%) 5G
1 2 (1.09%) LTE
1 2 (1.09%) Mobile Backhaul
1 2 (1.09%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 69 (37.50%) Power BI
2 47 (25.54%) Tableau
3 22 (11.96%) Big Data
4 19 (10.33%) Data Warehouse
5 17 (9.24%) Hadoop
6 12 (6.52%) Data Lake
7 9 (4.89%) Data Mining
7 9 (4.89%) NoSQL
8 8 (4.35%) Looker
8 8 (4.35%) Power Query
9 6 (3.26%) Metadata
10 5 (2.72%) Delta Lake
10 5 (2.72%) Relational Database
11 4 (2.17%) Amazon Redshift
11 4 (2.17%) Mixpanel
11 4 (2.17%) Spark SQL
11 4 (2.17%) Spotfire
11 4 (2.17%) SQL Server
12 3 (1.63%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
12 3 (1.63%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 16 (8.70%) Git
2 5 (2.72%) Jenkins
2 5 (2.72%) JIRA
3 4 (2.17%) MLflow
4 2 (1.09%) GoCD
4 2 (1.09%) SonarQube
4 2 (1.09%) Sonatype Nexus
4 2 (1.09%) TeamCity
5 1 (0.54%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.54%) Eclipse
5 1 (0.54%) Maven
5 1 (0.54%) RStudio
General
1 69 (37.50%) Social Skills
2 61 (33.15%) Analytical Skills
3 50 (27.17%) Finance
4 23 (12.50%) Marketing
5 14 (7.61%) Pharmaceutical
6 13 (7.07%) Banking
6 13 (7.07%) Public Sector
7 6 (3.26%) Manufacturing
7 6 (3.26%) Organisational Skills
8 5 (2.72%) Legal
9 4 (2.17%) Local Government
10 3 (1.63%) Documentation Skills
10 3 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (1.63%) Telecoms
11 2 (1.09%) Digital Health
11 2 (1.09%) Influencing Skills
11 2 (1.09%) Presentation Skills
11 2 (1.09%) Retail
12 1 (0.54%) Investment Banking
12 1 (0.54%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 48 (26.09%) Data Scientist
2 36 (19.57%) Analyst
3 25 (13.59%) Data Analyst
4 22 (11.96%) Senior
5 20 (10.87%) Developer
6 19 (10.33%) Architect
7 18 (9.78%) Data Engineer
8 12 (6.52%) Senior Data Scientist
9 8 (4.35%) Lead
10 7 (3.80%) Power BI Developer
11 6 (3.26%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
11 6 (3.26%) Azure Engineer
11 6 (3.26%) Business Analyst
11 6 (3.26%) Business Intelligence Developer
11 6 (3.26%) Software Engineer
12 5 (2.72%) Security Architect
12 5 (2.72%) Senior Analyst
13 4 (2.17%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
13 4 (2.17%) Consultant
13 4 (2.17%) Data Analytics Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (9.78%) TensorFlow
2 16 (8.70%) PyTorch
2 16 (8.70%) scikit-learn
3 12 (6.52%) Pandas
4 6 (3.26%) Kafka
5 5 (2.72%) PySpark
6 4 (2.17%) Google JAX
6 4 (2.17%) JAX
6 4 (2.17%) Matplotlib
6 4 (2.17%) Seaborn
6 4 (2.17%) YAML
7 3 (1.63%) FastAPI
7 3 (1.63%) FHIR
7 3 (1.63%) JSON
7 3 (1.63%) NumPy
8 2 (1.09%) ATL
8 2 (1.09%) Hugging Face
8 2 (1.09%) REST
8 2 (1.09%) Shiny
8 2 (1.09%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 20 (10.87%) Algorithms
2 12 (6.52%) Credit Risk
3 8 (4.35%) Data Structures
4 7 (3.80%) Self-Motivation
5 5 (2.72%) Cloud Native
5 5 (2.72%) Multi-touch
5 5 (2.72%) Product Ownership
6 4 (2.17%) Analytical Mindset
6 4 (2.17%) NHS
7 3 (1.63%) IoT
7 3 (1.63%) Management Information System
8 2 (1.09%) Distributed Computing
8 2 (1.09%) Genomics
8 2 (1.09%) Greenfield Project
8 2 (1.09%) Legacy Systems
8 2 (1.09%) Life Science
8 2 (1.09%) Mobile App
8 2 (1.09%) Onboarding
8 2 (1.09%) Security Posture
8 2 (1.09%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 5 (2.72%) Linux
2 2 (1.09%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 94 (51.09%) Data Science
2 82 (44.57%) Analytics
3 81 (44.02%) Machine Learning
4 76 (41.30%) Business Intelligence
5 63 (34.24%) Visualisation
6 52 (28.26%) Data Analysis
7 49 (26.63%) Data Modelling
8 47 (25.54%) Decision-Making
9 44 (23.91%) Problem-Solving
10 42 (22.83%) Statistical Modelling
11 37 (20.11%) Data Visualisation
12 33 (17.93%) Actionable Insight
12 33 (17.93%) Data Governance
13 32 (17.39%) Agile
13 32 (17.39%) AI
14 31 (16.85%) Validation
15 26 (14.13%) CI/CD
16 24 (13.04%) Computer Science
16 24 (13.04%) Statistics
17 23 (12.50%) Mathematics
Programming Languages
1 176 (95.65%) Python
2 123 (66.85%) SQL
3 16 (8.70%) Java
4 13 (7.07%) C++
5 10 (5.43%) MATLAB
5 10 (5.43%) Scala
6 9 (4.89%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 5 (2.72%) JavaScript
8 4 (2.17%) C
8 4 (2.17%) PL/SQL
8 4 (2.17%) VBA
9 3 (1.63%) Go
10 2 (1.09%) Bash
10 2 (1.09%) Rust
11 1 (0.54%) Fortran
11 1 (0.54%) Korn
11 1 (0.54%) LookML
11 1 (0.54%) PowerShell
11 1 (0.54%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 39 (21.20%) Degree
2 22 (11.96%) Security Cleared
3 18 (9.78%) SC Cleared
4 12 (6.52%) Master's Degree
5 11 (5.98%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (4.89%) PhD
7 8 (4.35%) BPSS Clearance
8 4 (2.17%) Microsoft Certification
9 2 (1.09%) Azure Certification
9 2 (1.09%) Tableau Certification
10 1 (0.54%) ACCA
10 1 (0.54%) CFA
10 1 (0.54%) CIMA
10 1 (0.54%) CTC Cleared
10 1 (0.54%) GIAC
10 1 (0.54%) Numerate Degree
10 1 (0.54%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (18.48%) Data Quality
2 9 (4.89%) GDPR
3 8 (4.35%) QA
4 4 (2.17%) EU AI Act
4 4 (2.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (1.09%) Accessibility
5 2 (1.09%) Actionable Recommendations
5 2 (1.09%) DICOM
5 2 (1.09%) NIST
5 2 (1.09%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.54%) HL7
6 1 (0.54%) IFRS
6 1 (0.54%) IFRS 9
6 1 (0.54%) LOINC
6 1 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (0.54%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 10 (5.43%) Docker
2 3 (1.63%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 1 (0.54%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 13 (7.07%) Kubernetes
2 2 (1.09%) Ansible
2 2 (1.09%) rkt
2 2 (1.09%) Terraform
3 1 (0.54%) Packer
3 1 (0.54%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 24 (13.04%) Microsoft
2 20 (10.87%) Databricks
3 9 (4.89%) Oracle
4 7 (3.80%) Google
4 7 (3.80%) Pega
5 4 (2.17%) Amplitude
5 4 (2.17%) SAP
5 4 (2.17%) ServiceNow
5 4 (2.17%) TIBCO
6 3 (1.63%) Adobe
6 3 (1.63%) Cognos
6 3 (1.63%) Splunk
7 2 (1.09%) Alteryx
7 2 (1.09%) Bloomberg
7 2 (1.09%) Dynatrace
7 2 (1.09%) Refinitiv
8 1 (0.54%) Arqiva
8 1 (0.54%) Automation Anywhere
8 1 (0.54%) UiPath
8 1 (0.54%) Workday