Business and project management
Research and development manager jobs
Leading the work on what the business sells next: the research programme, the budget and the scientists or engineers on it.
£55,519 median full-time pay, UK, ONS 2025
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Research and development manager jobs across the UK
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Research and development manager jobs across the UK: be first to hear
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Published pay
What research and development manager jobs pay
Median full-time pay for research and development (r&d) managers was £55,519 across the UK in 2025. Full-time work of every kind had a median of £39,039, so this occupation sits about 1.4 times that. It is a median, so half of those jobs paid less, and it describes the occupation nationally rather than any advert on this page.
That figure is the reason this role is on the board. Every role here has a published ONS median full-time salary at or above £50,000, and it is checked against the ONS table each time the site is built rather than asserted in the copy. A role that stopped clearing it would stop the build.
Pay varies more by region than most people expect. ONS publishes it for groups of related occupations rather than single job titles, so the table beside this covers research and development managers and other research professionals, not research and development manager jobs alone.
Median full-time pay by region, 2025
| Region | Median full-time pay |
|---|---|
| London | £52,697 |
| South East | £54,828 |
| East of England | £52,826 |
| South West | £61,251 |
| West Midlands | £62,584 |
| East Midlands | £54,649 |
| Yorkshire and The Humber | £49,878 |
| North West | £51,982 |
| North East | £53,100 |
| Wales | £41,050 |
| Scotland | £42,911 |
What the local data covers
Adding up the published local figures across the 175 areas with data gives 85,245 people in work in this occupation group at the 2021 census. The middle area records 305. That is arithmetic over local releases, not a national statistic, and areas the publisher withholds are simply absent from it.
The largest are Oxfordshire at 4,856, Cambridgeshire at 4,499, Hertfordshire at 2,112, Surrey at 2,099, Bristol, City of at 1,648. Coverage runs across 10 regions of England and Wales.
Census counts follow where people live, not where the jobs are, and they are not a count of vacancies. The business survey figures on each area page count employee jobs located in that area in 2024, which is a different population again. Neither is ever divided by the other.
Research and development manager: the full picture
Managing researchers is its own problem
Research resists the tools that work on other projects. You cannot schedule a discovery, and a plan that assumes you can will either be wrong or will quietly become development work with a research label on it.
The job is mostly about deciding what to stop. Portfolio decisions, stage gates, and the judgement to kill a promising line before it consumes a year are what the role is actually for.
Where the roles are
Pharmaceuticals, engineering, electronics, materials, food science, automotive and aerospace account for most of them, and they cluster hard: a handful of regions carry a disproportionate share of the country's research employment.
A doctorate is common and not universal. In engineering and manufacturing settings, deep applied experience frequently substitutes, and hiring managers tend to care more about whether you have taken something from lab to line.
Before you apply
- A technical or scientific background, usually to postgraduate level
- Right to work in the UK
Research and development manager jobs: common questions
Does research and development manager work pay more than £50,000 a year?
On the national figures, yes, and that is why the role is on this board at all. Median full-time pay for research and development (r&d) managers was £55,519 across the UK in 2025, against £39,039 for full-time work of every kind. It is a median, so half of those jobs paid less, and it says nothing about what any individual advert pays.
What qualifications do I need to work as a research and development manager?
A technical or scientific background, usually to postgraduate level. Right to work in the UK.
Where does AboveMedian have local figures for research and development manager jobs?
In 175 county and unitary areas across England and Wales, from the 2021 census. Scotland ran a separate census in 2022 through National Records of Scotland which is not published in the same place, so Scottish areas have no local figure. Adverts themselves are UK wide.
Do you decide who gets sent to an employer?
No. You read the adverts, you choose one, and you apply to that employer yourself. Nothing on this site forwards a person to a job they did not apply to, and no employer is given a list of people.
What does it cost to use?
Nothing, ever. It is always free for job seekers, and employers pay to advertise. There is no premium account, no paid profile and no fee of any kind on the job seeker side.