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

6 months to
26 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 439 363 386
Rank change year-on-year -76 +23 +35
Contract jobs citing R 185 170 204
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.40% 0.58% 0.47%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.44% 1.70% 1.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 128 117 141
10th Percentile £313 £358 £353
25th Percentile £406 £409 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% - -
75th Percentile £575 £675 £638
90th Percentile £650 £785 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £425
% change year-on-year -5.26% +11.76% -10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 7 12
10th Percentile £22.38 £22.00 £25.37
25th Percentile £25.21 £22.75 £26.06
Median hourly rate £43.00 £26.32 £43.75
Median % change year-on-year +63.37% -39.84% -35.66%
75th Percentile £60.25 £56.25 £53.04
90th Percentile £60.37 £59.55 £75.22
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.42 £23.00 £25.36
% change year-on-year +10.50% -9.31% -55.90%

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 12,864 9,995 12,830
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 27.53% 34.04% 29.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,524 6,772 9,114
10th Percentile £352 £359 £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 £713 £767 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £478 £487
% change year-on-year -0.70% -1.82% -2.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 556 247 487
10th Percentile £41.94 £22.49 £31.25
25th Percentile £54.55 £33.91 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £79.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.56% +2.40% -

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 26 April 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 26 April 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 26 April 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 -80 164 £475 -13.64% 213
London -58 94 £525 -4.55% 61
Work from Home -1 69 £525 +7.97% 61
UK excluding London -85 66 £450 -5.26% 202
North of England -54 20 £444 -2.53% 49
Midlands -56 14 £395 -10.07% 20
South East -58 14 £588 +59.86% 56
Yorkshire -51 10 £425 +21.43% 20
East Midlands -30 9 £385 -13.87% 13
South West -31 9 £450 -32.84% 24
North West -31 9 £530 +16.51% 20
East of England -43 8 £413 -36.54% 34
West Midlands -63 5 £438 +1.39% 7
Wales -9 1 £425 -4.49% 7
North East - 1 £475 - 9

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 36 (19.46%) Apache Spark
2 11 (5.95%) Apache
3 7 (3.78%) SAS
4 5 (2.70%) SharePoint
5 4 (2.16%) Apache Superset
6 2 (1.08%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (1.08%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.54%) Confluence
7 1 (0.54%) R Markdown
Applications
1 21 (11.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (1.08%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.54%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.54%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.54%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 2 (1.08%) SAP IBP
2 1 (0.54%) Salesforce CRM
2 1 (0.54%) SAP APO
2 1 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 70 (37.84%) Power Platform
2 51 (27.57%) AWS
3 48 (25.95%) Azure
4 18 (9.73%) GCP
5 8 (4.32%) Power Automate
5 8 (4.32%) PowerApps
5 8 (4.32%) Snowflake
6 6 (3.24%) Azure Data Factory
6 6 (3.24%) Azure DevOps
7 5 (2.70%) Microsoft Purview
8 3 (1.62%) Amazon S3
8 3 (1.62%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 3 (1.62%) Copilot Studio
8 3 (1.62%) dbt
8 3 (1.62%) OpenShift
8 3 (1.62%) Serverless
9 2 (1.08%) Amazon EMR
9 2 (1.08%) Amazon Kinesis
9 2 (1.08%) Cloud Computing
9 2 (1.08%) Google Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.54%) 2G
1 1 (0.54%) 5G
1 1 (0.54%) LTE
1 1 (0.54%) Mobile Backhaul
1 1 (0.54%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 69 (37.30%) Power BI
2 56 (30.27%) Tableau
3 32 (17.30%) Big Data
4 23 (12.43%) Hadoop
5 21 (11.35%) Data Warehouse
6 12 (6.49%) Looker
7 9 (4.86%) Power Query
7 9 (4.86%) Relational Database
8 7 (3.78%) Delta Lake
8 7 (3.78%) Metadata
8 7 (3.78%) Mixpanel
8 7 (3.78%) Spark SQL
9 6 (3.24%) Data Lake
10 5 (2.70%) NoSQL
10 5 (2.70%) SQL Server
11 4 (2.16%) Amazon Athena
11 4 (2.16%) Amazon Redshift
12 3 (1.62%) BigQuery
12 3 (1.62%) Data Mining
13 2 (1.08%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 9 (4.86%) Git
2 3 (1.62%) Jenkins
3 2 (1.08%) MLflow
4 1 (0.54%) RStudio
General
1 62 (33.51%) Analytical Skills
2 49 (26.49%) Social Skills
3 37 (20.00%) Finance
4 30 (16.22%) Public Sector
5 12 (6.49%) Pharmaceutical
6 11 (5.95%) Marketing
7 10 (5.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 6 (3.24%) Telecoms
9 4 (2.16%) Influencing Skills
9 4 (2.16%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.62%) Banking
11 2 (1.08%) Documentation Skills
11 2 (1.08%) Financial Institution
11 2 (1.08%) Front Office
11 2 (1.08%) Publishing
11 2 (1.08%) Retail
11 2 (1.08%) Social Science
12 1 (0.54%) Billing
12 1 (0.54%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.54%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 54 (29.19%) Data Scientist
2 40 (21.62%) Analyst
3 34 (18.38%) Data Analyst
4 26 (14.05%) Senior
5 19 (10.27%) Data Engineer
6 16 (8.65%) Developer
7 15 (8.11%) Senior Data Scientist
8 10 (5.41%) Architect
8 10 (5.41%) Lead
9 9 (4.86%) Consultant
9 9 (4.86%) Technical Analyst
10 6 (3.24%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 6 (3.24%) Business Intelligence Developer
10 6 (3.24%) Data Consultant
10 6 (3.24%) Lead Data Scientist
11 5 (2.70%) Azure Engineer
11 5 (2.70%) Java Developer
11 5 (2.70%) Power BI Developer
11 5 (2.70%) SQL Analyst
11 5 (2.70%) SQL Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (7.03%) TensorFlow
2 12 (6.49%) Pandas
3 10 (5.41%) PyTorch
4 9 (4.86%) PySpark
4 9 (4.86%) scikit-learn
5 7 (3.78%) JSON
6 6 (3.24%) Keras
7 5 (2.70%) NumPy
7 5 (2.70%) Shiny
7 5 (2.70%) YAML
8 4 (2.16%) LangChain
8 4 (2.16%) Matplotlib
8 4 (2.16%) Seaborn
9 3 (1.62%) Kafka
9 3 (1.62%) Plotly
10 2 (1.08%) FastAPI
10 2 (1.08%) Hugging Face
10 2 (1.08%) NLTK
10 2 (1.08%) Prophet
10 2 (1.08%) XGBoost
Miscellaneous
1 15 (8.11%) Algorithms
2 7 (3.78%) Cloud Native
2 7 (3.78%) CRISPR
2 7 (3.78%) Product Ownership
3 5 (2.70%) Credit Risk
3 5 (2.70%) Data Protection Act
3 5 (2.70%) Self-Motivation
4 4 (2.16%) Data Structures
4 4 (2.16%) Multi-touch
5 3 (1.62%) AI Agents
5 3 (1.62%) Hybrid Cloud
5 3 (1.62%) Legacy Systems
5 3 (1.62%) Management Information System
5 3 (1.62%) Onboarding
6 2 (1.08%) Analytical Mindset
6 2 (1.08%) Distributed Computing
6 2 (1.08%) Distributed Systems
6 2 (1.08%) Mainframe
7 1 (0.54%) Data Fabric
7 1 (0.54%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 3 (1.62%) Linux
2 2 (1.08%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 98 (52.97%) Data Science
2 96 (51.89%) Analytics
3 80 (43.24%) Visualisation
4 70 (37.84%) Machine Learning
5 69 (37.30%) Business Intelligence
6 58 (31.35%) Decision-Making
7 46 (24.86%) Data Pipeline
7 46 (24.86%) Problem-Solving
8 44 (23.78%) Actionable Insight
9 43 (23.24%) Data Visualisation
10 39 (21.08%) Statistical Modelling
11 35 (18.92%) Agile
12 34 (18.38%) Data Analysis
13 33 (17.84%) Data Modelling
14 32 (17.30%) Data Analytics
15 31 (16.76%) AI
15 31 (16.76%) Mathematics
15 31 (16.76%) Statistics
15 31 (16.76%) Validation
16 29 (15.68%) Statistical Analysis
Programming Languages
1 177 (95.68%) Python
2 134 (72.43%) SQL
3 13 (7.03%) Java
4 11 (5.95%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 7 (3.78%) C#
5 7 (3.78%) Scala
6 6 (3.24%) C++
6 6 (3.24%) JavaScript
7 3 (1.62%) TypeScript
8 2 (1.08%) Ada
8 2 (1.08%) VBA
9 1 (0.54%) LookML
9 1 (0.54%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 48 (25.95%) Security Cleared
2 41 (22.16%) SC Cleared
3 32 (17.30%) Degree
4 7 (3.78%) Computer Science Degree
5 6 (3.24%) Master's Degree
5 6 (3.24%) Microsoft Certification
5 6 (3.24%) PhD
6 5 (2.70%) BPSS Clearance
7 3 (1.62%) Azure Certification
8 2 (1.08%) Tableau Certification
9 1 (0.54%) CIMA
9 1 (0.54%) CTC Cleared
9 1 (0.54%) DBS Check
9 1 (0.54%) DV Cleared
9 1 (0.54%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (11.89%) Data Quality
2 10 (5.41%) Actionable Recommendations
3 7 (3.78%) GDPR
3 7 (3.78%) QA
4 3 (1.62%) Accessibility
5 2 (1.08%) PCI DSS
5 2 (1.08%) WCAG
6 1 (0.54%) MiFID
6 1 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 4 (2.16%) Docker
2 2 (1.08%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 9 (4.86%) Kubernetes
2 7 (3.78%) Terraform
Vendors
1 21 (11.35%) Databricks
2 20 (10.81%) Microsoft
3 7 (3.78%) Amplitude
4 5 (2.70%) OpenAI
4 5 (2.70%) Pega
5 4 (2.16%) Google
6 3 (1.62%) Informatica
6 3 (1.62%) Oracle
6 3 (1.62%) Red Hat
6 3 (1.62%) SAP
6 3 (1.62%) ServiceNow
7 2 (1.08%) Splunk
8 1 (0.54%) Adobe
8 1 (0.54%) Alteryx
8 1 (0.54%) Cognos
8 1 (0.54%) Salesforce
8 1 (0.54%) UiPath