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

6 months to
23 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 445 355 383
Rank change year-on-year -90 +28 +50
Contract jobs citing R 165 164 223
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.38% 0.55% 0.50%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.30% 1.63% 1.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 110 109 157
10th Percentile £313 £329 £314
25th Percentile £406 £400 £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 £779 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £461 £425
% change year-on-year +2.98% +8.53% -
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% -19.05%
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% -9.72%

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 12,660 10,052 12,894
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 28.93% 34.01% 29.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,419 6,691 9,119
10th Percentile £353 £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 £484 £485
% change year-on-year -1.76% -0.31% -3.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 499 245 486
10th Percentile £41.87 £22.09 £30.94
25th Percentile £54.55 £31.76 £46.20
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 £67.47
90th Percentile £77.00 £85.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.75 £61.60
% change year-on-year +1.97% +3.48% -5.23%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 -108 143 £510 -2.86% 184
London -39 83 £525 -4.55% 62
Work from Home -3 64 £525 +6.33% 37
UK excluding London -99 58 £475 +2.98% 150
South East -57 15 £588 +38.24% 39
Midlands -59 15 £395 +1.94% 21
North of England -59 14 £500 +9.89% 32
North West -20 11 £513 +12.77% 12
East Midlands -27 10 £385 +33.22% 14
South West -25 6 £450 +2.86% 20
East of England -34 5 £413 -36.54% 24
West Midlands -62 5 £438 +12.90% 7
Wales -5 3 £425 - 6
Yorkshire -62 2 - - 14
North East -14 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 (20.61%) Apache Spark
2 9 (5.45%) Apache
2 9 (5.45%) SAS
3 5 (3.03%) SharePoint
4 3 (1.82%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (1.82%) Apache Superset
5 1 (0.61%) Confluence
5 1 (0.61%) Jupyter
Applications
1 15 (9.09%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (2.42%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (1.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.61%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.61%) Salesforce CRM
1 1 (0.61%) SAP IBP
1 1 (0.61%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 61 (36.97%) Power Platform
2 51 (30.91%) AWS
3 47 (28.48%) Azure
4 22 (13.33%) GCP
5 9 (5.45%) Snowflake
6 8 (4.85%) Power Automate
6 8 (4.85%) PowerApps
7 6 (3.64%) Azure Data Factory
8 5 (3.03%) Azure DevOps
8 5 (3.03%) Microsoft Purview
9 4 (2.42%) dbt
10 3 (1.82%) Amazon Bedrock
10 3 (1.82%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 3 (1.82%) Copilot Studio
10 3 (1.82%) OpenShift
11 2 (1.21%) Amazon EMR
11 2 (1.21%) Amazon Kinesis
11 2 (1.21%) Amazon SageMaker
11 2 (1.21%) Cloud Computing
11 2 (1.21%) Google Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.21%) 2G
1 2 (1.21%) 5G
1 2 (1.21%) LTE
1 2 (1.21%) Mobile Backhaul
1 2 (1.21%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 61 (36.97%) Power BI
2 49 (29.70%) Tableau
3 33 (20.00%) Big Data
4 26 (15.76%) Hadoop
5 21 (12.73%) Data Warehouse
6 12 (7.27%) Looker
7 8 (4.85%) Power Query
8 7 (4.24%) Delta Lake
8 7 (4.24%) Mixpanel
8 7 (4.24%) Spark SQL
9 6 (3.64%) Data Lake
9 6 (3.64%) Metadata
9 6 (3.64%) NoSQL
9 6 (3.64%) Relational Database
10 5 (3.03%) Amazon Redshift
10 5 (3.03%) Data Mining
11 4 (2.42%) SQL Server
12 2 (1.21%) Snowflake Schema
12 2 (1.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 2 (1.21%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 11 (6.67%) Git
2 6 (3.64%) Jenkins
3 2 (1.21%) GoCD
3 2 (1.21%) MLflow
3 2 (1.21%) RStudio
3 2 (1.21%) SonarQube
3 2 (1.21%) Sonatype Nexus
3 2 (1.21%) TeamCity
4 1 (0.61%) Bitbucket
4 1 (0.61%) JIRA
4 1 (0.61%) Maven
General
1 50 (30.30%) Social Skills
2 49 (29.70%) Analytical Skills
3 37 (22.42%) Finance
4 30 (18.18%) Public Sector
5 12 (7.27%) Pharmaceutical
6 11 (6.67%) Marketing
7 10 (6.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 5 (3.03%) Banking
9 3 (1.82%) Telecoms
10 2 (1.21%) Financial Institution
10 2 (1.21%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (1.21%) Manufacturing
10 2 (1.21%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (1.21%) Retail
10 2 (1.21%) Social Science
11 1 (0.61%) Documentation Skills
11 1 (0.61%) Local Government
11 1 (0.61%) Private Banking
11 1 (0.61%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 53 (32.12%) Data Scientist
2 30 (18.18%) Analyst
3 26 (15.76%) Data Analyst
4 24 (14.55%) Senior
5 17 (10.30%) Senior Data Scientist
6 16 (9.70%) Data Engineer
6 16 (9.70%) Developer
7 12 (7.27%) Architect
8 11 (6.67%) Lead
9 6 (3.64%) Business Intelligence Developer
9 6 (3.64%) Lead Data Scientist
10 5 (3.03%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 5 (3.03%) Azure Engineer
10 5 (3.03%) Consultant
10 5 (3.03%) Power BI Developer
11 4 (2.42%) Java Developer
11 4 (2.42%) Software Engineer
12 3 (1.82%) Senior Analyst
12 3 (1.82%) Senior Software Engineer
12 3 (1.82%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (7.88%) TensorFlow
2 10 (6.06%) PyTorch
3 9 (5.45%) Pandas
3 9 (5.45%) PySpark
3 9 (5.45%) scikit-learn
4 7 (4.24%) JSON
5 6 (3.64%) Keras
6 5 (3.03%) Kafka
6 5 (3.03%) YAML
7 4 (2.42%) LangChain
7 4 (2.42%) Matplotlib
7 4 (2.42%) Seaborn
7 4 (2.42%) Shiny
8 3 (1.82%) FastAPI
8 3 (1.82%) Hugging Face
8 3 (1.82%) NumPy
8 3 (1.82%) Plotly
9 2 (1.21%) Node.js
9 2 (1.21%) SciPy
9 2 (1.21%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 18 (10.91%) Algorithms
2 9 (5.45%) Cloud Native
3 7 (4.24%) Credit Risk
4 6 (3.64%) CRISPR
4 6 (3.64%) Data Structures
4 6 (3.64%) Product Ownership
5 5 (3.03%) Self-Motivation
6 3 (1.82%) AI Agents
6 3 (1.82%) Hybrid Cloud
6 3 (1.82%) Management Information System
6 3 (1.82%) Multi-touch
7 2 (1.21%) Distributed Computing
7 2 (1.21%) IoT
7 2 (1.21%) Mobile App
7 2 (1.21%) Onboarding
8 1 (0.61%) Data Fabric
8 1 (0.61%) Distributed Systems
8 1 (0.61%) Greenfield Project
8 1 (0.61%) Legacy Systems
8 1 (0.61%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 2 (1.21%) Linux
2 1 (0.61%) Unix
2 1 (0.61%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 94 (56.97%) Data Science
2 91 (55.15%) Analytics
3 72 (43.64%) Visualisation
4 71 (43.03%) Machine Learning
5 59 (35.76%) Business Intelligence
6 47 (28.48%) Decision-Making
7 42 (25.45%) Data Analysis
8 40 (24.24%) Data Visualisation
9 37 (22.42%) Statistical Modelling
10 36 (21.82%) Actionable Insight
10 36 (21.82%) Data Modelling
11 35 (21.21%) Data Pipeline
12 34 (20.61%) Problem-Solving
13 31 (18.79%) Agile
13 31 (18.79%) AI
14 30 (18.18%) Data Governance
15 27 (16.36%) Data Analytics
16 25 (15.15%) Statistics
17 24 (14.55%) Dashboard Development
18 23 (13.94%) Mathematics
Programming Languages
1 157 (95.15%) Python
2 121 (73.33%) SQL
3 12 (7.27%) Java
4 10 (6.06%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 7 (4.24%) Scala
6 6 (3.64%) JavaScript
7 5 (3.03%) C++
8 4 (2.42%) C#
9 3 (1.82%) TypeScript
10 2 (1.21%) Ada
10 2 (1.21%) Go
10 2 (1.21%) Rust
10 2 (1.21%) VBA
11 1 (0.61%) LookML
11 1 (0.61%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 43 (26.06%) Security Cleared
2 36 (21.82%) SC Cleared
3 32 (19.39%) Degree
4 8 (4.85%) Computer Science Degree
4 8 (4.85%) Master's Degree
5 6 (3.64%) Microsoft Certification
6 5 (3.03%) PhD
7 3 (1.82%) Azure Certification
7 3 (1.82%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (1.21%) Tableau Certification
9 1 (0.61%) CIMA
9 1 (0.61%) CTC Cleared
9 1 (0.61%) DBS Check
9 1 (0.61%) DV Cleared
9 1 (0.61%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (13.33%) Data Quality
2 11 (6.67%) Actionable Recommendations
3 7 (4.24%) QA
4 6 (3.64%) GDPR
5 2 (1.21%) Accessibility
5 2 (1.21%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.61%) MiFID
6 1 (0.61%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (0.61%) WCAG
System Software
1 7 (4.24%) Docker
2 2 (1.21%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 11 (6.67%) Kubernetes
2 4 (2.42%) Terraform
3 2 (1.21%) rkt
4 1 (0.61%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 22 (13.33%) Databricks
2 18 (10.91%) Microsoft
3 7 (4.24%) Amplitude
3 7 (4.24%) Pega
4 5 (3.03%) OpenAI
5 4 (2.42%) ServiceNow
6 3 (1.82%) Google
6 3 (1.82%) Informatica
6 3 (1.82%) Oracle
6 3 (1.82%) Red Hat
7 2 (1.21%) Dynatrace
7 2 (1.21%) SAP
7 2 (1.21%) Splunk
7 2 (1.21%) TIBCO
8 1 (0.61%) Adobe
8 1 (0.61%) Alteryx
8 1 (0.61%) Arqiva
8 1 (0.61%) Cognos
8 1 (0.61%) Salesforce
8 1 (0.61%) UiPath