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

6 months to
3 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 442 358 389
Rank change year-on-year -84 +31 +25
Contract jobs citing R 189 172 200
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.40% 0.59% 0.46%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.47% 1.72% 1.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 131 117 136
10th Percentile £313 £355 £339
25th Percentile £406 £406 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £540 £546
Median % change year-on-year -12.04% -1.05% -0.77%
75th Percentile £575 £675 £638
90th Percentile £650 £774 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £380
% change year-on-year -5.26% +25.00% -20.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 6 11
10th Percentile £22.38 £21.88 £25.36
25th Percentile £25.21 £22.63 £25.87
Median hourly rate £43.00 £25.16 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +70.91% -40.80% -39.29%
75th Percentile £60.25 £46.89 £53.58
90th Percentile £60.37 £56.25 £77.50
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 12,896 10,004 12,825
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 27.21% 34.16% 29.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,532 6,796 9,114
10th Percentile £355 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £416 £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 £774 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £488
% change year-on-year - -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 560 249 486
10th Percentile £41.94 £22.50 £31.63
25th Percentile £54.55 £33.91 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +1.46% +2.67%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £79.59
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.87 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.77% +2.20% +2.97%

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 3 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 3 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for R in the UK

R
Top 14 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 3 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 -94 168 £475 -13.64% 168
London -49 97 £525 -4.55% 71
Work from Home -5 70 £525 +8.81% 63
UK excluding London -99 65 £450 -5.26% 115
North of England -50 17 £425 -6.59% 37
South East -49 15 £569 +55.29% 36
Midlands -69 14 £395 -10.07% 15
South West -24 11 £450 -32.84% 9
Yorkshire -41 10 £425 +21.43% 12
East Midlands -26 9 £385 -13.87% 7
East of England -47 8 £413 -36.54% 15
North West -36 6 £526 +15.66% 20
West Midlands -65 5 £438 +1.39% 8
North East - 1 £475 - 5

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 40 (21.16%) Apache Spark
2 12 (6.35%) Apache
3 5 (2.65%) SharePoint
4 4 (2.12%) Apache Superset
4 4 (2.12%) SAS
5 2 (1.06%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (1.06%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.53%) Confluence
6 1 (0.53%) R Markdown
Applications
1 20 (10.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.53%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.53%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 1 (0.53%) Salesforce CRM
1 1 (0.53%) SAP APO
1 1 (0.53%) SAP IBP
1 1 (0.53%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 72 (38.10%) Power Platform
2 52 (27.51%) AWS
3 49 (25.93%) Azure
4 17 (8.99%) GCP
5 8 (4.23%) Snowflake
6 7 (3.70%) Azure DevOps
6 7 (3.70%) Power Automate
6 7 (3.70%) PowerApps
7 6 (3.17%) Azure Data Factory
8 5 (2.65%) Microsoft Purview
9 3 (1.59%) Amazon S3
9 3 (1.59%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 3 (1.59%) Copilot Studio
9 3 (1.59%) dbt
9 3 (1.59%) OpenShift
9 3 (1.59%) Serverless
10 2 (1.06%) Amazon EMR
10 2 (1.06%) Amazon Kinesis
10 2 (1.06%) GitHub
10 2 (1.06%) Google Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.53%) 2G
1 1 (0.53%) 5G
1 1 (0.53%) LTE
1 1 (0.53%) Mobile Backhaul
1 1 (0.53%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 71 (37.57%) Power BI
2 57 (30.16%) Tableau
3 35 (18.52%) Big Data
4 25 (13.23%) Hadoop
5 19 (10.05%) Data Warehouse
6 12 (6.35%) Looker
7 10 (5.29%) Power Query
7 10 (5.29%) Relational Database
8 7 (3.70%) Delta Lake
8 7 (3.70%) Metadata
8 7 (3.70%) Mixpanel
8 7 (3.70%) Spark SQL
9 6 (3.17%) Data Lake
9 6 (3.17%) NoSQL
10 5 (2.65%) SQL Server
11 4 (2.12%) Amazon Athena
11 4 (2.12%) Amazon Redshift
11 4 (2.12%) BigQuery
12 3 (1.59%) Data Mining
12 3 (1.59%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 9 (4.76%) Git
2 3 (1.59%) Jenkins
3 2 (1.06%) MLflow
4 1 (0.53%) RStudio
General
1 60 (31.75%) Analytical Skills
2 52 (27.51%) Social Skills
3 34 (17.99%) Finance
4 33 (17.46%) Public Sector
5 13 (6.88%) Pharmaceutical
6 12 (6.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 11 (5.82%) Marketing
8 6 (3.17%) Telecoms
9 4 (2.12%) Banking
9 4 (2.12%) Influencing Skills
9 4 (2.12%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (1.59%) Front Office
11 2 (1.06%) Documentation Skills
11 2 (1.06%) Financial Institution
11 2 (1.06%) Publishing
11 2 (1.06%) Retail
11 2 (1.06%) Social Science
12 1 (0.53%) Billing
12 1 (0.53%) Local Government
12 1 (0.53%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 58 (30.69%) Data Scientist
2 41 (21.69%) Analyst
3 35 (18.52%) Data Analyst
4 27 (14.29%) Senior
5 19 (10.05%) Data Engineer
6 17 (8.99%) Developer
7 16 (8.47%) Senior Data Scientist
8 11 (5.82%) Lead
9 9 (4.76%) Consultant
9 9 (4.76%) Technical Analyst
10 8 (4.23%) Architect
11 7 (3.70%) Lead Data Scientist
12 6 (3.17%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 6 (3.17%) Business Intelligence Developer
12 6 (3.17%) Data Consultant
12 6 (3.17%) Senior Analyst
13 5 (2.65%) Azure Engineer
13 5 (2.65%) Java Developer
13 5 (2.65%) SQL Analyst
13 5 (2.65%) SQL Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (7.94%) TensorFlow
2 12 (6.35%) Pandas
2 12 (6.35%) PyTorch
3 9 (4.76%) PySpark
3 9 (4.76%) scikit-learn
4 7 (3.70%) JSON
5 6 (3.17%) Keras
6 5 (2.65%) NumPy
6 5 (2.65%) Shiny
6 5 (2.65%) YAML
7 4 (2.12%) LangChain
7 4 (2.12%) Matplotlib
7 4 (2.12%) Seaborn
8 3 (1.59%) Kafka
8 3 (1.59%) Plotly
9 2 (1.06%) CrewAI
9 2 (1.06%) Hugging Face
9 2 (1.06%) LangGraph
9 2 (1.06%) NLTK
9 2 (1.06%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 16 (8.47%) Algorithms
2 8 (4.23%) Cloud Native
2 8 (4.23%) CRISPR
3 7 (3.70%) Product Ownership
4 5 (2.65%) Data Protection Act
4 5 (2.65%) Self-Motivation
5 4 (2.12%) Multi-touch
6 3 (1.59%) AI Agents
6 3 (1.59%) Credit Risk
6 3 (1.59%) Data Structures
6 3 (1.59%) Hybrid Cloud
6 3 (1.59%) Legacy Systems
6 3 (1.59%) Management Information System
6 3 (1.59%) Onboarding
7 2 (1.06%) Analytical Mindset
7 2 (1.06%) Derivative
7 2 (1.06%) Distributed Computing
7 2 (1.06%) Distributed Systems
7 2 (1.06%) Mainframe
8 1 (0.53%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 3 (1.59%) Linux
2 2 (1.06%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 100 (52.91%) Data Science
2 98 (51.85%) Analytics
3 85 (44.97%) Visualisation
4 71 (37.57%) Machine Learning
5 70 (37.04%) Business Intelligence
6 58 (30.69%) Decision-Making
7 52 (27.51%) Data Pipeline
8 48 (25.40%) Problem-Solving
9 47 (24.87%) Actionable Insight
9 47 (24.87%) Data Visualisation
10 39 (20.63%) Statistical Modelling
11 38 (20.11%) Agile
12 34 (17.99%) AI
13 33 (17.46%) Data Analytics
13 33 (17.46%) Data Modelling
13 33 (17.46%) Statistics
14 32 (16.93%) Data Analysis
14 32 (16.93%) Mathematics
14 32 (16.93%) Validation
15 31 (16.40%) Statistical Analysis
Programming Languages
1 181 (95.77%) Python
2 138 (73.02%) SQL
3 16 (8.47%) Java
4 11 (5.82%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 9 (4.76%) C++
6 8 (4.23%) Scala
7 7 (3.70%) C#
8 6 (3.17%) JavaScript
9 3 (1.59%) TypeScript
10 2 (1.06%) Ada
10 2 (1.06%) VBA
11 1 (0.53%) LookML
11 1 (0.53%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 50 (26.46%) Security Cleared
2 43 (22.75%) SC Cleared
3 33 (17.46%) Degree
4 7 (3.70%) Computer Science Degree
5 6 (3.17%) Master's Degree
5 6 (3.17%) Microsoft Certification
5 6 (3.17%) PhD
6 5 (2.65%) BPSS Clearance
7 3 (1.59%) Azure Certification
8 2 (1.06%) Tableau Certification
9 1 (0.53%) CTC Cleared
9 1 (0.53%) DBS Check
9 1 (0.53%) DV Cleared
9 1 (0.53%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (11.64%) Data Quality
2 10 (5.29%) Actionable Recommendations
3 8 (4.23%) QA
4 7 (3.70%) GDPR
5 3 (1.59%) Accessibility
6 2 (1.06%) PCI DSS
6 2 (1.06%) WCAG
7 1 (0.53%) MiFID
7 1 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 4 (2.12%) Docker
2 2 (1.06%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 9 (4.76%) Kubernetes
2 8 (4.23%) Terraform
Vendors
1 21 (11.11%) Databricks
2 19 (10.05%) Microsoft
3 7 (3.70%) Amplitude
4 5 (2.65%) Google
4 5 (2.65%) OpenAI
5 3 (1.59%) Informatica
5 3 (1.59%) Oracle
5 3 (1.59%) Red Hat
5 3 (1.59%) ServiceNow
6 2 (1.06%) Pega
6 2 (1.06%) SAP
6 2 (1.06%) Splunk
7 1 (0.53%) Adobe
7 1 (0.53%) Alteryx
7 1 (0.53%) Cognos
7 1 (0.53%) Salesforce
7 1 (0.53%) UiPath