R (Programming Language)
Also written as R Programming, R Language, RStudio, Tidyverse, ggplot2, R Shiny
A programming language built for statistics and data analysis, widely used in academia, pharma and clinical research, public health and finance. RStudio (now Posit) is its main editor; the tidyverse and ggplot2 are its most-used packages for cleaning data and drawing charts. In most industry data science roles, Python is more common.
Think of it like
A statistician's specialist workshop, where Python is the general-purpose garage that also does statistics.
Junior or senior?
Strongest in research-heavy and regulated fields; pharma has traditionally used SAS and increasingly uses R. Moving from R to Python is common and quick for a real analyst.
Senior sounds like
Has written reusable packages or production reports, not just one-off scripts.
Ask them
“What was the most complex analysis you did in R, and did anyone other than you run that code afterwards?”