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 6 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 511 366 370
Rank change year-on-year -145 +4 +48
Contract jobs citing R 162 191 199
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.30% 0.58% 0.51%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.15% 1.76% 1.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 116 118 122
10th Percentile £290 £322 £310
25th Percentile £406 £406 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £489 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.81% -2.25% -16.67%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £612
90th Percentile £663 £688 £686
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £481 £550
% change year-on-year -6.49% -12.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 7 20
10th Percentile - £22.94 £20.11
25th Percentile - £24.63 £20.12
Median hourly rate £24.25 £27.50 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.82% +27.91% -67.42%
75th Percentile - £48.75 £32.88
90th Percentile - £60.75 £56.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £22.92 £20.24
% change year-on-year - +13.27% -71.09%

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 14,117 10,862 12,229
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.48% 33.00% 31.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,165 7,304 8,594
10th Percentile £363 £340 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £501 £530
Median % change year-on-year +2.35% -5.52% -3.64%
75th Percentile £615 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £475 £497
% change year-on-year +4.21% -4.50% -0.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 532 260 409
10th Percentile £30.05 £27.99 £27.00
25th Percentile £50.00 £35.75 £46.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.13 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.79% -12.12% +4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £79.45 £83.11 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +1.56% -1.54% +4.00%

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 6 August 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
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 6 August 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 -111 147 £465 -6.06% 298
London -61 91 £525 +5.00% 150
UK excluding London -135 54 £450 -6.49% 198
Work from Home -74 53 £550 +13.11% 86
South East -60 13 £538 +16.85% 51
South West -44 12 £450 -34.66% 26
East of England -29 9 £413 -23.26% 20
Yorkshire -41 9 £425 -5.56% 22
North of England -71 9 £425 +13.33% 51
Midlands -58 7 £450 - 36
West Midlands -58 5 £451 +0.11% 21
Northern Ireland +5 2 £363 +3.57% 3
East Midlands -9 2 £252 -43.51% 15
Scotland -7 1 - - 8
Wales -13 1 £490 +10.11% 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 20 (12.35%) Apache Spark
2 11 (6.79%) Apache
3 4 (2.47%) Apache Superset
4 3 (1.85%) Confluence
5 2 (1.23%) Jupyter
5 2 (1.23%) SAS
6 1 (0.62%) nginx
6 1 (0.62%) R Markdown
Applications
1 21 (12.96%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (1.23%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.62%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.62%) CPLEX
3 1 (0.62%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 1 (0.62%) SAP APO
1 1 (0.62%) SAP IBP
Cloud Services
1 52 (32.10%) Power Platform
2 49 (30.25%) AWS
3 39 (24.07%) Azure
4 18 (11.11%) GCP
5 14 (8.64%) Snowflake
6 6 (3.70%) Azure DevOps
7 4 (2.47%) Amazon S3
7 4 (2.47%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 4 (2.47%) dbt
7 4 (2.47%) GitHub
7 4 (2.47%) SaaS
8 3 (1.85%) Amazon EKS
8 3 (1.85%) AWS CloudFormation
8 3 (1.85%) Azure Data Factory
8 3 (1.85%) Serverless
9 2 (1.23%) Cloud Functions
9 2 (1.23%) GitHub Actions
10 1 (0.62%) Azure AI
10 1 (0.62%) Dagster
10 1 (0.62%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.23%) DSL
2 1 (0.62%) DNS
2 1 (0.62%) HTTPS
2 1 (0.62%) Reverse Proxy
2 1 (0.62%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (31.48%) Power BI
2 47 (29.01%) Tableau
3 19 (11.73%) Big Data
4 16 (9.88%) Data Warehouse
5 11 (6.79%) Relational Database
6 10 (6.17%) Hadoop
7 7 (4.32%) Looker
8 6 (3.70%) BigQuery
8 6 (3.70%) Mixpanel
9 5 (3.09%) Data Lake
10 4 (2.47%) Power Query
11 3 (1.85%) Amazon Athena
11 3 (1.85%) Apache Hive
11 3 (1.85%) Metadata
11 3 (1.85%) NoSQL
11 3 (1.85%) RDBMS
11 3 (1.85%) SQL Server
11 3 (1.85%) SQLPlus
12 2 (1.23%) PostgreSQL
12 2 (1.23%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 7 (4.32%) Git
2 6 (3.70%) GitLab
3 3 (1.85%) Jenkins
3 3 (1.85%) JIRA
4 2 (1.23%) Cucumber
4 2 (1.23%) Gatling
4 2 (1.23%) JUnit
4 2 (1.23%) MLflow
4 2 (1.23%) Selenium
5 1 (0.62%) Maven
5 1 (0.62%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 58 (35.80%) Analytical Skills
2 31 (19.14%) Social Skills
3 29 (17.90%) Public Sector
4 26 (16.05%) Finance
5 12 (7.41%) Pharmaceutical
6 11 (6.79%) Marketing
7 8 (4.94%) Retail
8 7 (4.32%) Telecoms
9 5 (3.09%) Banking
9 5 (3.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 4 (2.47%) Front Office
11 3 (1.85%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (1.85%) Military
11 3 (1.85%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (1.85%) Publishing
12 2 (1.23%) Manufacturing
12 2 (1.23%) Police
12 2 (1.23%) Social Science
13 1 (0.62%) Advertising
13 1 (0.62%) Billing
Job Titles
1 44 (27.16%) Analyst
2 34 (20.99%) Data Scientist
3 32 (19.75%) Data Analyst
4 18 (11.11%) Senior
5 15 (9.26%) Data Engineer
6 12 (7.41%) Developer
7 10 (6.17%) Lead
8 9 (5.56%) Senior Data Scientist
8 9 (5.56%) SQL Analyst
8 9 (5.56%) Technical Analyst
9 7 (4.32%) Architect
9 7 (4.32%) Consultant
9 7 (4.32%) Senior Analyst
9 7 (4.32%) Software Engineer
10 6 (3.70%) Data Consultant
10 6 (3.70%) Senior Data Analyst
10 6 (3.70%) SQL Data Analyst
11 5 (3.09%) Data Architect
11 5 (3.09%) Java Developer
12 4 (2.47%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (6.17%) PyTorch
1 10 (6.17%) TensorFlow
2 7 (4.32%) JSON
3 6 (3.70%) XML
4 4 (2.47%) .NET
4 4 (2.47%) Pandas
4 4 (2.47%) React
5 3 (1.85%) Keras
5 3 (1.85%) NumPy
5 3 (1.85%) scikit-learn
5 3 (1.85%) Shiny
5 3 (1.85%) YAML
6 2 (1.23%) Apache Beam
6 2 (1.23%) FastAPI
6 2 (1.23%) JWT
6 2 (1.23%) OpenTelemetry
6 2 (1.23%) Playwright
6 2 (1.23%) Prophet
6 2 (1.23%) PySpark
6 2 (1.23%) Seaborn
Miscellaneous
1 15 (9.26%) Algorithms
2 10 (6.17%) CRISPR
3 6 (3.70%) Cloud Native
3 6 (3.70%) Onboarding
4 5 (3.09%) Data Protection Act
4 5 (3.09%) Product Ownership
5 4 (2.47%) AI Agents
5 4 (2.47%) Analytical Mindset
5 4 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (1.23%) BYOD
6 2 (1.23%) Credit Risk
6 2 (1.23%) Distributed Computing
6 2 (1.23%) Distributed Systems
6 2 (1.23%) Fixed Income
6 2 (1.23%) Mainframe
6 2 (1.23%) Social Media
6 2 (1.23%) Taxonomies
7 1 (0.62%) Derivative
7 1 (0.62%) Equities
7 1 (0.62%) Multi-touch
Operating Systems
1 5 (3.09%) Linux
2 2 (1.23%) Unix
3 1 (0.62%) Amazon Linux
3 1 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (0.62%) Ubuntu
3 1 (0.62%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 72 (44.44%) Analytics
2 67 (41.36%) Data Science
2 67 (41.36%) Visualisation
3 50 (30.86%) Business Intelligence
4 49 (30.25%) Data Pipeline
5 48 (29.63%) Machine Learning
6 42 (25.93%) Actionable Insight
7 40 (24.69%) Decision-Making
8 37 (22.84%) Data Visualisation
9 36 (22.22%) AI
10 34 (20.99%) Statistical Analysis
11 33 (20.37%) Agile
12 31 (19.14%) Problem-Solving
13 29 (17.90%) Mathematics
14 27 (16.67%) Statistical Modelling
15 24 (14.81%) Data Analytics
15 24 (14.81%) Statistics
16 23 (14.20%) Validation
17 21 (12.96%) Data Engineering
17 21 (12.96%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 150 (92.59%) Python
2 99 (61.11%) SQL
3 16 (9.88%) Java
4 10 (6.17%) C++
5 7 (4.32%) C#
6 5 (3.09%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 5 (3.09%) JavaScript
7 4 (2.47%) Scala
8 3 (1.85%) TypeScript
9 2 (1.23%) Bash
9 2 (1.23%) Cypher
9 2 (1.23%) PowerShell
9 2 (1.23%) SHACL
10 1 (0.62%) MATLAB
10 1 (0.62%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.62%) T-SQL
10 1 (0.62%) VB
Qualifications
1 32 (19.75%) Security Cleared
2 27 (16.67%) Degree
2 27 (16.67%) SC Cleared
3 4 (2.47%) BPSS Clearance
3 4 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
3 4 (2.47%) PhD
4 3 (1.85%) Master's Degree
5 2 (1.23%) Microsoft Certification
5 2 (1.23%) Microsoft Certified Professional
5 2 (1.23%) Tableau Certification
6 1 (0.62%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (10.49%) Data Quality
2 10 (6.17%) QA
3 5 (3.09%) Accessibility
4 4 (2.47%) Actionable Recommendations
5 3 (1.85%) GDPR
5 3 (1.85%) WCAG
6 2 (1.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 1 (0.62%) MiFID
7 1 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 5 (3.09%) Docker
2 1 (0.62%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 12 (7.41%) Terraform
2 10 (6.17%) Kubernetes
3 3 (1.85%) Grafana
4 2 (1.23%) Ansible
4 2 (1.23%) Argo
5 1 (0.62%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.62%) Single Sign-On
5 1 (0.62%) systemd
Vendors
1 17 (10.49%) Databricks
2 16 (9.88%) Microsoft
3 6 (3.70%) Amplitude
4 5 (3.09%) Google
5 3 (1.85%) OpenAI
6 2 (1.23%) FactSet
6 2 (1.23%) Oracle
6 2 (1.23%) Red Hat
6 2 (1.23%) Sonatype
7 1 (0.62%) Alteryx
7 1 (0.62%) Pega
7 1 (0.62%) SAP