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 13 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 445 348 393
Rank change year-on-year -97 +45 +19
Contract jobs citing R 182 170 192
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.39% 0.59% 0.45%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.44% 1.72% 1.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 129 116 134
10th Percentile £300 £340 £355
25th Percentile £406 £406 £391
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £546
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% -3.80% -0.77%
75th Percentile £575 £675 £638
90th Percentile £650 £760 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £444 £488 £390
% change year-on-year -8.97% +25.00% -20.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 6 9
10th Percentile £22.38 £21.88 £25.34
25th Percentile £25.21 £22.63 £41.25
Median hourly rate £43.00 £25.16 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +70.91% -44.09% -33.82%
75th Percentile £60.25 £46.89 £54.66
90th Percentile £60.37 £56.25 £77.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.42 £23.00 £48.37
% change year-on-year +10.50% -52.44% -22.62%

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 12,679 9,864 12,664
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.86% 34.04% 29.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,340 6,705 9,004
10th Percentile £352 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £414 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £530
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -1.89% -3.64%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £711 £763 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +0.53% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 559 238 486
10th Percentile £41.25 £25.07 £33.63
25th Percentile £54.55 £35.00 £46.48
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% - +1.07%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.38 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £78.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +0.78% +3.20% -

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 13 May 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 13 May 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 13 May 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 -103 161 £475 -12.04% 229
London -53 93 £525 -4.55% 82
Work from Home -16 72 £538 +15.28% 48
UK excluding London -99 63 £444 -8.97% 199
North of England -65 16 £425 -6.59% 45
South East -47 13 £550 +49.66% 56
Midlands -53 13 £416 -3.53% 27
South West -31 11 £450 -47.98% 20
Yorkshire -44 10 £425 +1.49% 17
East of England -38 9 £413 -36.54% 31
East Midlands -22 8 £395 -11.63% 17
North West -35 5 £455 -0.11% 20
West Midlands -62 5 £438 +6.84% 10
Northern Ireland +3 1 - - 2
North East - 1 £475 - 8

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 38 (20.88%) Apache Spark
2 12 (6.59%) Apache
3 5 (2.75%) SharePoint
4 4 (2.20%) Apache Superset
5 2 (1.10%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (1.10%) Jupyter
5 2 (1.10%) SAS
6 1 (0.55%) Confluence
6 1 (0.55%) R Markdown
Applications
1 21 (11.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (1.10%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.55%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.55%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 1 (0.55%) Salesforce CRM
1 1 (0.55%) SAP APO
1 1 (0.55%) SAP IBP
1 1 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 68 (37.36%) Power Platform
2 49 (26.92%) AWS
3 42 (23.08%) Azure
4 12 (6.59%) GCP
5 10 (5.49%) Snowflake
6 7 (3.85%) Azure DevOps
6 7 (3.85%) PowerApps
7 6 (3.30%) Power Automate
8 4 (2.20%) Azure Data Factory
8 4 (2.20%) Microsoft Purview
9 3 (1.65%) Amazon S3
9 3 (1.65%) Copilot Studio
9 3 (1.65%) dbt
9 3 (1.65%) OpenShift
9 3 (1.65%) Serverless
10 2 (1.10%) Amazon EMR
10 2 (1.10%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 2 (1.10%) Cloud Functions
10 2 (1.10%) GitHub
10 2 (1.10%) Google Analytics
Database & Business Intelligence
1 67 (36.81%) Power BI
2 58 (31.87%) Tableau
3 34 (18.68%) Big Data
4 25 (13.74%) Hadoop
5 18 (9.89%) Data Warehouse
6 12 (6.59%) Looker
7 10 (5.49%) Power Query
8 9 (4.95%) Relational Database
9 7 (3.85%) Mixpanel
10 6 (3.30%) Delta Lake
10 6 (3.30%) Spark SQL
11 5 (2.75%) Data Lake
11 5 (2.75%) NoSQL
11 5 (2.75%) SQL Server
12 4 (2.20%) Amazon Athena
12 4 (2.20%) Amazon Redshift
12 4 (2.20%) BigQuery
12 4 (2.20%) Metadata
13 3 (1.65%) Parquet
13 3 (1.65%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 8 (4.40%) Git
2 2 (1.10%) Jenkins
2 2 (1.10%) MLflow
3 1 (0.55%) RStudio
General
1 61 (33.52%) Analytical Skills
2 45 (24.73%) Social Skills
3 35 (19.23%) Public Sector
4 33 (18.13%) Finance
5 13 (7.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 12 (6.59%) Pharmaceutical
7 8 (4.40%) Marketing
8 6 (3.30%) Telecoms
9 4 (2.20%) Influencing Skills
9 4 (2.20%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.65%) Banking
10 3 (1.65%) Front Office
11 2 (1.10%) Documentation Skills
11 2 (1.10%) Financial Institution
11 2 (1.10%) Manufacturing
11 2 (1.10%) Publishing
11 2 (1.10%) Retail
11 2 (1.10%) Social Science
12 1 (0.55%) Billing
12 1 (0.55%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 55 (30.22%) Data Scientist
2 44 (24.18%) Analyst
3 37 (20.33%) Data Analyst
4 28 (15.38%) Senior
5 19 (10.44%) Developer
6 18 (9.89%) Data Engineer
7 17 (9.34%) Senior Data Scientist
8 11 (6.04%) Lead
9 9 (4.95%) Consultant
9 9 (4.95%) Technical Analyst
10 8 (4.40%) Lead Data Scientist
11 7 (3.85%) Architect
11 7 (3.85%) SQL Analyst
11 7 (3.85%) SQL Data Analyst
12 6 (3.30%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 6 (3.30%) Business Intelligence Developer
12 6 (3.30%) Data Consultant
12 6 (3.30%) Senior Analyst
12 6 (3.30%) Software Engineer
13 5 (2.75%) Power BI Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (7.69%) TensorFlow
2 12 (6.59%) PyTorch
3 10 (5.49%) Pandas
4 8 (4.40%) PySpark
4 8 (4.40%) scikit-learn
5 6 (3.30%) JSON
5 6 (3.30%) Keras
6 5 (2.75%) NumPy
6 5 (2.75%) Shiny
7 4 (2.20%) LangChain
7 4 (2.20%) Matplotlib
7 4 (2.20%) Seaborn
7 4 (2.20%) YAML
8 3 (1.65%) Plotly
9 2 (1.10%) Apache Avro
9 2 (1.10%) Apache Beam
9 2 (1.10%) Hugging Face
9 2 (1.10%) Kafka
9 2 (1.10%) SciPy
9 2 (1.10%) XGBoost
Miscellaneous
1 15 (8.24%) Algorithms
2 9 (4.95%) CRISPR
3 8 (4.40%) Cloud Native
4 6 (3.30%) Product Ownership
5 5 (2.75%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (2.20%) Analytical Mindset
6 4 (2.20%) Self-Motivation
7 3 (1.65%) AI Agents
7 3 (1.65%) Data Structures
7 3 (1.65%) Hybrid Cloud
7 3 (1.65%) Legacy Systems
7 3 (1.65%) Mainframe
7 3 (1.65%) Management Information System
7 3 (1.65%) Multi-touch
7 3 (1.65%) Onboarding
8 2 (1.10%) Credit Risk
8 2 (1.10%) Derivative
8 2 (1.10%) Distributed Systems
9 1 (0.55%) Augmented Reality
9 1 (0.55%) FMCG
Operating Systems
1 4 (2.20%) Linux
2 3 (1.65%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 95 (52.20%) Analytics
2 94 (51.65%) Data Science
3 83 (45.60%) Visualisation
4 65 (35.71%) Business Intelligence
5 62 (34.07%) Machine Learning
6 57 (31.32%) Decision-Making
7 52 (28.57%) Data Pipeline
8 49 (26.92%) Actionable Insight
9 44 (24.18%) Problem-Solving
10 43 (23.63%) Data Visualisation
11 38 (20.88%) Agile
12 37 (20.33%) Statistical Modelling
13 34 (18.68%) AI
13 34 (18.68%) Data Analytics
14 32 (17.58%) Statistical Analysis
15 30 (16.48%) Statistics
16 29 (15.93%) Data Modelling
16 29 (15.93%) Mathematics
17 27 (14.84%) Data Analysis
17 27 (14.84%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 173 (95.05%) Python
2 135 (74.18%) SQL
3 16 (8.79%) Java
4 11 (6.04%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 9 (4.95%) C#
5 9 (4.95%) C++
6 7 (3.85%) Scala
7 5 (2.75%) JavaScript
8 3 (1.65%) TypeScript
9 2 (1.10%) Ada
9 2 (1.10%) VBA
10 1 (0.55%) LookML
10 1 (0.55%) SAS Macro
10 1 (0.55%) T-SQL
10 1 (0.55%) VB
Qualifications
1 50 (27.47%) Security Cleared
2 43 (23.63%) SC Cleared
3 30 (16.48%) Degree
4 7 (3.85%) Computer Science Degree
5 6 (3.30%) Microsoft Certification
6 5 (2.75%) BPSS Clearance
6 5 (2.75%) Master's Degree
6 5 (2.75%) PhD
7 2 (1.10%) Azure Certification
7 2 (1.10%) Tableau Certification
8 1 (0.55%) CTC Cleared
8 1 (0.55%) DBS Check
8 1 (0.55%) DV Cleared
8 1 (0.55%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (10.99%) Data Quality
2 11 (6.04%) Actionable Recommendations
3 8 (4.40%) QA
4 5 (2.75%) GDPR
5 3 (1.65%) Accessibility
6 2 (1.10%) WCAG
7 1 (0.55%) MiFID
7 1 (0.55%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 3 (1.65%) Docker
2 2 (1.10%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 8 (4.40%) Kubernetes
1 8 (4.40%) Terraform
Vendors
1 21 (11.54%) Databricks
2 18 (9.89%) Microsoft
3 7 (3.85%) Amplitude
4 5 (2.75%) Google
4 5 (2.75%) OpenAI
5 3 (1.65%) Informatica
5 3 (1.65%) Red Hat
5 3 (1.65%) ServiceNow
6 2 (1.10%) Oracle
6 2 (1.10%) SAP
6 2 (1.10%) Splunk
7 1 (0.55%) Adobe
7 1 (0.55%) Alteryx
7 1 (0.55%) Cognos
7 1 (0.55%) Pega
7 1 (0.55%) Salesforce