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

6 months to
21 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 453 358 366
Rank change year-on-year -95 +8 +65
Contract jobs citing R 166 162 227
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.38% 0.55% 0.51%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.31% 1.62% 1.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 111 108 159
10th Percentile £313 £329 £313
25th Percentile £406 £398 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £575 £675 £638
90th Percentile £650 £782 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £461 £400
% change year-on-year +2.98% +15.31% -5.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 7 12
10th Percentile £23.32 £22.00 £25.36
25th Percentile £27.60 £22.75 £25.47
Median hourly rate £32.50 £26.32 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +23.48% -38.07% -15.00%
75th Percentile £54.88 £56.25 £47.50
90th Percentile £60.33 £59.55 £52.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £23.00 £23.55
% change year-on-year +30.43% -2.31% +6.25%

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 12,710 9,986 12,883
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 28.99% 34.05% 29.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,460 6,640 9,108
10th Percentile £352 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £715 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £483 £480
% change year-on-year -1.66% +0.63% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 493 245 487
10th Percentile £41.66 £22.09 £31.00
25th Percentile £54.55 £31.76 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £67.38
90th Percentile £77.00 £85.00 £74.66
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.75 £61.60
% change year-on-year +1.97% +3.48% -4.86%

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 21 March 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 21 March 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 21 March 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 -104 144 £510 -2.86% 182
London -49 83 £525 -4.55% 61
Work from Home -1 64 £525 +6.33% 36
UK excluding London -93 59 £475 +2.98% 149
South East -49 16 £594 +39.71% 41
Midlands -59 15 £395 +1.94% 20
North of England -61 14 £500 +9.89% 31
North West -22 11 £513 +12.77% 12
East Midlands -25 10 £385 +33.22% 13
South West -27 6 £450 +2.86% 20
East of England -29 5 £413 -36.54% 24
West Midlands -67 5 £438 +12.90% 7
Wales -5 3 £425 - 6
Yorkshire -54 2 - - 13
North East -15 1 £475 - 6

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 (20.48%) Apache Spark
2 9 (5.42%) Apache
2 9 (5.42%) SAS
3 5 (3.01%) SharePoint
4 3 (1.81%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (1.81%) Apache Superset
5 1 (0.60%) Confluence
5 1 (0.60%) Jupyter
Applications
1 15 (9.04%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (2.41%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (1.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.60%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.60%) Salesforce CRM
1 1 (0.60%) SAP IBP
1 1 (0.60%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 61 (36.75%) Power Platform
2 51 (30.72%) AWS
3 47 (28.31%) Azure
4 22 (13.25%) GCP
5 9 (5.42%) Snowflake
6 8 (4.82%) Power Automate
6 8 (4.82%) PowerApps
7 6 (3.61%) Azure Data Factory
8 5 (3.01%) Azure DevOps
8 5 (3.01%) Microsoft Purview
9 4 (2.41%) dbt
10 3 (1.81%) Amazon Bedrock
10 3 (1.81%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 3 (1.81%) Copilot Studio
10 3 (1.81%) OpenShift
11 2 (1.20%) Amazon EMR
11 2 (1.20%) Amazon Kinesis
11 2 (1.20%) Amazon SageMaker
11 2 (1.20%) Cloud Computing
11 2 (1.20%) Google Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.20%) 2G
1 2 (1.20%) 5G
1 2 (1.20%) LTE
1 2 (1.20%) Mobile Backhaul
1 2 (1.20%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 61 (36.75%) Power BI
2 49 (29.52%) Tableau
3 33 (19.88%) Big Data
4 26 (15.66%) Hadoop
5 21 (12.65%) Data Warehouse
6 12 (7.23%) Looker
7 8 (4.82%) Power Query
8 7 (4.22%) Delta Lake
8 7 (4.22%) Mixpanel
8 7 (4.22%) Spark SQL
9 6 (3.61%) Data Lake
9 6 (3.61%) Metadata
9 6 (3.61%) NoSQL
9 6 (3.61%) Relational Database
10 5 (3.01%) Amazon Redshift
10 5 (3.01%) Data Mining
11 4 (2.41%) SQL Server
12 2 (1.20%) Snowflake Schema
12 2 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 2 (1.20%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 11 (6.63%) Git
2 6 (3.61%) Jenkins
3 2 (1.20%) GoCD
3 2 (1.20%) MLflow
3 2 (1.20%) RStudio
3 2 (1.20%) SonarQube
3 2 (1.20%) Sonatype Nexus
3 2 (1.20%) TeamCity
4 1 (0.60%) Bitbucket
4 1 (0.60%) JIRA
4 1 (0.60%) Maven
General
1 50 (30.12%) Social Skills
2 49 (29.52%) Analytical Skills
3 37 (22.29%) Finance
4 30 (18.07%) Public Sector
5 13 (7.83%) Pharmaceutical
6 12 (7.23%) Marketing
7 10 (6.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 5 (3.01%) Banking
9 3 (1.81%) Telecoms
10 2 (1.20%) Financial Institution
10 2 (1.20%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (1.20%) Manufacturing
10 2 (1.20%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (1.20%) Retail
10 2 (1.20%) Social Science
11 1 (0.60%) Documentation Skills
11 1 (0.60%) Local Government
11 1 (0.60%) Private Banking
11 1 (0.60%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 54 (32.53%) Data Scientist
2 30 (18.07%) Analyst
3 26 (15.66%) Data Analyst
4 24 (14.46%) Senior
5 17 (10.24%) Senior Data Scientist
6 16 (9.64%) Data Engineer
6 16 (9.64%) Developer
7 12 (7.23%) Architect
8 11 (6.63%) Lead
9 6 (3.61%) Business Intelligence Developer
9 6 (3.61%) Lead Data Scientist
10 5 (3.01%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 5 (3.01%) Azure Engineer
10 5 (3.01%) Consultant
10 5 (3.01%) Power BI Developer
11 4 (2.41%) Java Developer
11 4 (2.41%) Software Engineer
12 3 (1.81%) Senior Analyst
12 3 (1.81%) Senior Software Engineer
12 3 (1.81%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (7.83%) TensorFlow
2 10 (6.02%) PyTorch
3 9 (5.42%) Pandas
3 9 (5.42%) PySpark
3 9 (5.42%) scikit-learn
4 7 (4.22%) JSON
5 6 (3.61%) Keras
6 5 (3.01%) Kafka
6 5 (3.01%) YAML
7 4 (2.41%) LangChain
7 4 (2.41%) Matplotlib
7 4 (2.41%) Seaborn
7 4 (2.41%) Shiny
8 3 (1.81%) FastAPI
8 3 (1.81%) Hugging Face
8 3 (1.81%) NumPy
8 3 (1.81%) Plotly
9 2 (1.20%) Node.js
9 2 (1.20%) SciPy
9 2 (1.20%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 18 (10.84%) Algorithms
2 9 (5.42%) Cloud Native
3 7 (4.22%) Credit Risk
4 6 (3.61%) CRISPR
4 6 (3.61%) Data Structures
4 6 (3.61%) Product Ownership
5 5 (3.01%) Self-Motivation
6 3 (1.81%) AI Agents
6 3 (1.81%) Hybrid Cloud
6 3 (1.81%) Management Information System
6 3 (1.81%) Multi-touch
7 2 (1.20%) Distributed Computing
7 2 (1.20%) IoT
7 2 (1.20%) Mobile App
7 2 (1.20%) Onboarding
8 1 (0.60%) Data Fabric
8 1 (0.60%) Distributed Systems
8 1 (0.60%) Greenfield Project
8 1 (0.60%) Legacy Systems
8 1 (0.60%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 2 (1.20%) Linux
2 1 (0.60%) Unix
2 1 (0.60%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 95 (57.23%) Data Science
2 91 (54.82%) Analytics
3 72 (43.37%) Machine Learning
3 72 (43.37%) Visualisation
4 59 (35.54%) Business Intelligence
5 47 (28.31%) Decision-Making
6 42 (25.30%) Data Analysis
7 40 (24.10%) Data Visualisation
8 38 (22.89%) Statistical Modelling
9 36 (21.69%) Actionable Insight
9 36 (21.69%) Data Modelling
10 35 (21.08%) Data Pipeline
11 34 (20.48%) Problem-Solving
12 31 (18.67%) Agile
12 31 (18.67%) AI
13 30 (18.07%) Data Governance
14 27 (16.27%) Data Analytics
15 25 (15.06%) Statistics
16 24 (14.46%) Dashboard Development
17 23 (13.86%) Mathematics
Programming Languages
1 158 (95.18%) Python
2 121 (72.89%) SQL
3 12 (7.23%) Java
4 10 (6.02%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 7 (4.22%) Scala
6 6 (3.61%) JavaScript
7 5 (3.01%) C++
8 4 (2.41%) C#
9 3 (1.81%) TypeScript
10 2 (1.20%) Ada
10 2 (1.20%) Go
10 2 (1.20%) Rust
10 2 (1.20%) VBA
11 1 (0.60%) LookML
11 1 (0.60%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 43 (25.90%) Security Cleared
2 36 (21.69%) SC Cleared
3 32 (19.28%) Degree
4 8 (4.82%) Computer Science Degree
4 8 (4.82%) Master's Degree
5 6 (3.61%) Microsoft Certification
6 5 (3.01%) PhD
7 3 (1.81%) Azure Certification
7 3 (1.81%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (1.20%) Tableau Certification
9 1 (0.60%) CIMA
9 1 (0.60%) CTC Cleared
9 1 (0.60%) DBS Check
9 1 (0.60%) DV Cleared
9 1 (0.60%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (13.25%) Data Quality
2 11 (6.63%) Actionable Recommendations
3 7 (4.22%) QA
4 6 (3.61%) GDPR
5 2 (1.20%) Accessibility
5 2 (1.20%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.60%) MiFID
6 1 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (0.60%) WCAG
System Software
1 7 (4.22%) Docker
2 2 (1.20%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 11 (6.63%) Kubernetes
2 4 (2.41%) Terraform
3 2 (1.20%) rkt
4 1 (0.60%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 22 (13.25%) Databricks
2 18 (10.84%) Microsoft
3 7 (4.22%) Amplitude
3 7 (4.22%) Pega
4 5 (3.01%) OpenAI
5 4 (2.41%) ServiceNow
6 3 (1.81%) Google
6 3 (1.81%) Informatica
6 3 (1.81%) Oracle
6 3 (1.81%) Red Hat
7 2 (1.20%) Dynatrace
7 2 (1.20%) SAP
7 2 (1.20%) Splunk
7 2 (1.20%) TIBCO
8 1 (0.60%) Adobe
8 1 (0.60%) Alteryx
8 1 (0.60%) Arqiva
8 1 (0.60%) Cognos
8 1 (0.60%) Salesforce
8 1 (0.60%) UiPath