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

6 months to
2 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 403 329 373
Rank change year-on-year -74 +44 +30
Contract jobs citing R 181 243 241
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.50% 0.68% 0.53%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.59% 2.11% 1.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 110 138 172
10th Percentile £302 £307 £314
25th Percentile £413 £356 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.50% -4.76% -8.70%
75th Percentile £605 £612 £625
90th Percentile £688 £729 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £513
% change year-on-year +2.50% -2.44% +4.59%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 12 16
10th Percentile £22.14 - £25.06
25th Percentile £24.62 £20.12 £25.47
Median hourly rate £28.75 £23.25 £40.32
Median % change year-on-year +23.66% -42.33% +43.98%
75th Percentile £35.00 £53.75 £49.06
90th Percentile £46.25 - £58.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.42 £20.24 £47.50
% change year-on-year +25.60% -57.40% +133.36%

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 11,354 11,523 14,058
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.56% 32.29% 30.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,482 7,369 9,999
10th Percentile £345 £350 £363
25th Percentile £413 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -4.55% -3.08%
75th Percentile £619 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -4.04% -1.00% -3.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 340 285 431
10th Percentile £30.89 £22.00 £31.50
25th Percentile £49.13 £40.06 £47.50
Median hourly rate £64.82 £63.00 £60.21
Median % change year-on-year +2.88% +4.63% -3.66%
75th Percentile £68.00 £69.69 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £76.50 £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 2 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 2 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 2 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 -76 159 £503 +0.50% 465
London -22 85 £510 +2.00% 170
UK excluding London -66 74 £513 +2.50% 422
Work from Home +5 65 £550 +7.32% 61
South East -2 22 £588 +14.63% 128
North of England -46 15 £465 +30.62% 95
North West -17 14 £479 +34.41% 57
Midlands -34 13 £475 +22.58% 68
East of England -8 12 £608 -6.46% 56
East Midlands -17 7 £375 +10.29% 29
Wales -3 6 £366 - 22
West Midlands -32 6 £475 -12.60% 38
Scotland -6 3 £550 -6.38% 20
South West -12 3 £513 -29.31% 34
Yorkshire -34 1 £450 +20.00% 28

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 25 (13.81%) Apache Spark
2 22 (12.15%) SAS
3 8 (4.42%) SharePoint
4 5 (2.76%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (2.21%) Apache
5 4 (2.21%) Confluence
6 2 (1.10%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.55%) Luigi
Applications
1 25 (13.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (6.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 10 (5.52%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.55%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.55%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 2 (1.10%) Distributed Ledger
2 1 (0.55%) NEC Housing
2 1 (0.55%) Salesforce CRM
2 1 (0.55%) SAP ERP
2 1 (0.55%) SAP IBP
2 1 (0.55%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 63 (34.81%) Power Platform
2 58 (32.04%) Azure
3 35 (19.34%) AWS
4 25 (13.81%) GCP
5 8 (4.42%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 8 (4.42%) Power Automate
5 8 (4.42%) PowerApps
5 8 (4.42%) Snowflake
6 7 (3.87%) Azure Machine Learning
7 6 (3.31%) Azure Data Factory
8 4 (2.21%) Azure AKS
8 4 (2.21%) Azure DevOps
8 4 (2.21%) Microsoft Purview
9 3 (1.66%) Adobe Analytics
9 3 (1.66%) Google Analytics
10 2 (1.10%) Amazon EC2
10 2 (1.10%) Amazon S3
10 2 (1.10%) AWS Lambda
10 2 (1.10%) Cloud Computing
10 2 (1.10%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.10%) 2G
1 2 (1.10%) 5G
1 2 (1.10%) LTE
1 2 (1.10%) Mobile Backhaul
1 2 (1.10%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 63 (34.81%) Power BI
2 44 (24.31%) Tableau
3 21 (11.60%) Big Data
4 20 (11.05%) Data Warehouse
5 17 (9.39%) Hadoop
6 11 (6.08%) Data Lake
7 10 (5.52%) Data Mining
7 10 (5.52%) NoSQL
8 7 (3.87%) Metadata
8 7 (3.87%) Power Query
9 5 (2.76%) Delta Lake
9 5 (2.76%) Looker
9 5 (2.76%) Relational Database
10 4 (2.21%) Amazon Redshift
10 4 (2.21%) Spark SQL
10 4 (2.21%) Spotfire
10 4 (2.21%) SQL Server
11 3 (1.66%) Amazon QuickSight
11 3 (1.66%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
11 3 (1.66%) Impala
Development Applications
1 15 (8.29%) Git
2 5 (2.76%) Jenkins
2 5 (2.76%) JIRA
3 4 (2.21%) MLflow
4 2 (1.10%) GoCD
4 2 (1.10%) SonarQube
4 2 (1.10%) Sonatype Nexus
4 2 (1.10%) TeamCity
5 1 (0.55%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.55%) Eclipse
5 1 (0.55%) Maven
5 1 (0.55%) RStudio
General
1 67 (37.02%) Social Skills
2 62 (34.25%) Analytical Skills
3 47 (25.97%) Finance
4 25 (13.81%) Marketing
5 15 (8.29%) Pharmaceutical
6 13 (7.18%) Banking
6 13 (7.18%) Public Sector
7 6 (3.31%) Manufacturing
7 6 (3.31%) Organisational Skills
8 5 (2.76%) Legal
9 4 (2.21%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (2.21%) Local Government
10 3 (1.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (1.66%) Telecoms
11 2 (1.10%) Digital Health
11 2 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
11 2 (1.10%) Retail
12 1 (0.55%) Corporate Banking
12 1 (0.55%) Investment Banking
12 1 (0.55%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 47 (25.97%) Data Scientist
2 35 (19.34%) Analyst
3 24 (13.26%) Data Analyst
4 20 (11.05%) Senior
5 19 (10.50%) Architect
5 19 (10.50%) Developer
6 18 (9.94%) Data Engineer
7 10 (5.52%) Senior Data Scientist
8 8 (4.42%) Lead
9 6 (3.31%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
9 6 (3.31%) Azure Engineer
9 6 (3.31%) Business Analyst
9 6 (3.31%) Power BI Developer
9 6 (3.31%) Software Engineer
10 5 (2.76%) Business Intelligence Developer
10 5 (2.76%) Security Architect
10 5 (2.76%) Senior Analyst
11 4 (2.21%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
11 4 (2.21%) Consultant
11 4 (2.21%) Machine Learning Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (9.39%) TensorFlow
2 16 (8.84%) PyTorch
3 15 (8.29%) scikit-learn
4 13 (7.18%) Pandas
5 6 (3.31%) Kafka
6 5 (2.76%) PySpark
7 4 (2.21%) Google JAX
7 4 (2.21%) JAX
7 4 (2.21%) Matplotlib
7 4 (2.21%) Seaborn
7 4 (2.21%) YAML
8 3 (1.66%) FastAPI
8 3 (1.66%) FHIR
8 3 (1.66%) JSON
8 3 (1.66%) NumPy
9 2 (1.10%) ATL
9 2 (1.10%) Hugging Face
9 2 (1.10%) REST
9 2 (1.10%) Shiny
9 2 (1.10%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 20 (11.05%) Algorithms
2 12 (6.63%) Credit Risk
3 8 (4.42%) Data Structures
4 7 (3.87%) Multi-touch
5 6 (3.31%) Self-Motivation
6 5 (2.76%) Cloud Native
6 5 (2.76%) Product Ownership
7 4 (2.21%) Analytical Mindset
7 4 (2.21%) NHS
8 3 (1.66%) IoT
8 3 (1.66%) Management Information System
9 2 (1.10%) Distributed Computing
9 2 (1.10%) Genomics
9 2 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
9 2 (1.10%) Legacy Systems
9 2 (1.10%) Life Science
9 2 (1.10%) Mobile App
9 2 (1.10%) Security Posture
9 2 (1.10%) Social Media
9 2 (1.10%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 5 (2.76%) Linux
2 2 (1.10%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 93 (51.38%) Data Science
2 80 (44.20%) Machine Learning
3 77 (42.54%) Analytics
4 72 (39.78%) Business Intelligence
5 59 (32.60%) Visualisation
6 52 (28.73%) Data Analysis
7 47 (25.97%) Data Modelling
8 45 (24.86%) Decision-Making
9 44 (24.31%) Problem-Solving
10 43 (23.76%) Statistical Modelling
11 34 (18.78%) Data Visualisation
12 33 (18.23%) Validation
13 32 (17.68%) Actionable Insight
13 32 (17.68%) AI
13 32 (17.68%) Data Governance
14 30 (16.57%) Agile
15 26 (14.36%) Computer Science
15 26 (14.36%) Statistics
16 25 (13.81%) CI/CD
16 25 (13.81%) Mathematics
Programming Languages
1 172 (95.03%) Python
2 119 (65.75%) SQL
3 16 (8.84%) Java
4 13 (7.18%) C++
5 11 (6.08%) MATLAB
6 10 (5.52%) Scala
7 8 (4.42%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 5 (2.76%) JavaScript
9 4 (2.21%) C
9 4 (2.21%) PL/SQL
10 3 (1.66%) Go
10 3 (1.66%) VBA
11 2 (1.10%) Bash
11 2 (1.10%) Rust
12 1 (0.55%) Fortran
12 1 (0.55%) Korn
12 1 (0.55%) PowerShell
12 1 (0.55%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 41 (22.65%) Degree
2 22 (12.15%) Security Cleared
3 18 (9.94%) SC Cleared
4 12 (6.63%) Master's Degree
5 11 (6.08%) Computer Science Degree
5 11 (6.08%) PhD
6 7 (3.87%) BPSS Clearance
7 3 (1.66%) Microsoft Certification
8 2 (1.10%) Azure Certification
8 2 (1.10%) Tableau Certification
9 1 (0.55%) ACCA
9 1 (0.55%) CFA
9 1 (0.55%) CIMA
9 1 (0.55%) CTC Cleared
9 1 (0.55%) GIAC
9 1 (0.55%) Numerate Degree
9 1 (0.55%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (18.23%) Data Quality
2 9 (4.97%) QA
3 8 (4.42%) GDPR
4 4 (2.21%) EU AI Act
4 4 (2.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (1.10%) Accessibility
5 2 (1.10%) Actionable Recommendations
5 2 (1.10%) DICOM
5 2 (1.10%) NIST
6 1 (0.55%) HL7
6 1 (0.55%) IFRS
6 1 (0.55%) IFRS 9
6 1 (0.55%) LOINC
6 1 (0.55%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (0.55%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 10 (5.52%) Docker
2 3 (1.66%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 1 (0.55%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 13 (7.18%) Kubernetes
2 2 (1.10%) Ansible
2 2 (1.10%) rkt
2 2 (1.10%) Terraform
3 1 (0.55%) Packer
3 1 (0.55%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 22 (12.15%) Microsoft
2 19 (10.50%) Databricks
3 9 (4.97%) Oracle
4 7 (3.87%) Google
4 7 (3.87%) Pega
5 4 (2.21%) ServiceNow
5 4 (2.21%) TIBCO
6 3 (1.66%) Adobe
6 3 (1.66%) SAP
6 3 (1.66%) Splunk
7 2 (1.10%) Amplitude
7 2 (1.10%) Bloomberg
7 2 (1.10%) Cognos
7 2 (1.10%) Dynatrace
7 2 (1.10%) Refinitiv
8 1 (0.55%) Arqiva
8 1 (0.55%) Cribl.io
8 1 (0.55%) OpenAI
8 1 (0.55%) TikTok
8 1 (0.55%) Workday