Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil, EngD, Doctorate)
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for permanent job vacancies with a requirement for PhD qualifications. Included is a benchmarking guide to the salaries offered over the 6 months to 23 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
23 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 439 421 438
Rank change year-on-year -18 +17 +10
Permanent jobs citing PhD 551 734 1,349
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 0.55% 0.75% 0.82%
As % of the Qualifications category 2.00% 2.25% 3.03%
Number of salaries quoted 339 267 410
10th Percentile £37,500 £42,500 £42,500
25th Percentile £50,000 £53,750 £55,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £75,000 £71,250
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% +5.26% +14.00%
75th Percentile £87,500 £98,750 £105,000
90th Percentile £110,250 £130,000 £137,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £60,000 £57,000
% change year-on-year - +5.26% +14.00%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK

PhD is in the Academic Qualifications and Professional Certifications category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies with a requirement for academic qualifications or professional certifications.

Permanent vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 27,546 32,627 44,457
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 27.29% 33.12% 27.14%
Number of salaries quoted 17,214 14,683 19,092
10th Percentile £28,500 £31,750 £31,000
25th Percentile £38,573 £42,210 £40,967
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £54,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +9.09% -
75th Percentile £71,000 £77,500 £73,750
90th Percentile £87,500 £95,000 £92,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% +2.04%

PhD
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing PhD as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for PhD in the UK

PhD
Salary Trend

3-month moving average salary quoted in jobs citing PhD.

Salary trend for PhD in the UK

PhD
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing PhD over the 6 months to 23 May 2024.

Salary histogram for PhD in the UK

PhD
Top 17 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing PhD within the UK over the 6 months to 23 May 2024. 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England +4 458 £62,500 -16.67% 491
UK excluding London -74 387 £60,000 - 323
South East -6 167 £58,000 -3.33% 137
London +93 157 £90,000 +9.09% 229
Work from Home +31 139 £60,000 -27.27% 168
Scotland -44 73 £70,000 -30.00% 10
East of England -56 64 £70,000 -6.67% 75
North of England +30 34 £80,000 -8.57% 32
North West +19 22 £80,000 -8.57% 25
Midlands -2 17 £55,000 -4.35% 37
South West -47 16 £68,750 +50.27% 26
Northern Ireland - 14 - - 2
West Midlands +16 12 £55,000 - 25
Yorkshire +49 7 £37,500 - 6
East Midlands -7 5 £32,500 -43.48% 12
North East - 5 £55,000 - 1
Wales -34 2 £100,000 +100.00% 12

PhD
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 10 (1.81%) Apache Spark
2 8 (1.45%) Apache Airflow
3 4 (0.73%) SAS
4 3 (0.54%) Apache
5 1 (0.18%) Confluence
5 1 (0.18%) Luigi
Applications
1 11 (2.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (1.09%) Simulink
2 6 (1.09%) Stateflow
3 4 (0.73%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.18%) Blender
4 1 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.36%) Oracle Payroll
Cloud Services
1 45 (8.17%) AWS
2 32 (5.81%) Figma
2 32 (5.81%) SurveyMonkey
3 30 (5.44%) Azure
4 22 (3.99%) Cloud Computing
5 18 (3.27%) GCP
6 11 (2.00%) Power Platform
7 7 (1.27%) GitHub
8 4 (0.73%) Azure DevOps
8 4 (0.73%) Dagster
8 4 (0.73%) SaaS
9 3 (0.54%) Serverless
10 2 (0.36%) Amazon S3
10 2 (0.36%) Azure Machine Learning
10 2 (0.36%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 2 (0.36%) Microsoft 365
10 2 (0.36%) OCI
10 2 (0.36%) Snowflake
10 2 (0.36%) WhatsApp
11 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 14 (2.54%) TCP/IP
2 9 (1.63%) HTTP
2 9 (1.63%) MQTT
3 3 (0.54%) Software-Defined Radio
3 3 (0.54%) Wireless
4 2 (0.36%) Internet
4 2 (0.36%) RS-485
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (3.09%) Big Data
2 15 (2.72%) NoSQL
3 14 (2.54%) Tableau
4 11 (2.00%) Power BI
5 10 (1.81%) SQL Server
6 9 (1.63%) Hadoop
7 5 (0.91%) Data Warehouse
7 5 (0.91%) Elasticsearch
7 5 (0.91%) Neo4j
8 4 (0.73%) Data Mining
8 4 (0.73%) PostgreSQL
9 3 (0.54%) Amazon Redshift
9 3 (0.54%) BigQuery
10 2 (0.36%) Amazon Athena
10 2 (0.36%) MongoDB
10 2 (0.36%) Relational Database
10 2 (0.36%) Text Mining
11 1 (0.18%) Bigtable
11 1 (0.18%) CouchDB
11 1 (0.18%) Redis
Development Applications
1 34 (6.17%) Git
2 9 (1.63%) GitLab
2 9 (1.63%) Jenkins
3 6 (1.09%) JUnit
4 5 (0.91%) JIRA
4 5 (0.91%) Team Foundation Server
5 4 (0.73%) IntelliJ
5 4 (0.73%) Mockito
5 4 (0.73%) Snakemake
6 3 (0.54%) CMake
6 3 (0.54%) TestRail
7 2 (0.36%) GDB
7 2 (0.36%) MLflow
7 2 (0.36%) Rational DOORS
7 2 (0.36%) TensorBoard
8 1 (0.18%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.18%) CircleCI
General
1 171 (31.03%) Social Skills
2 105 (19.06%) Finance
3 98 (17.79%) Analytical Skills
4 76 (13.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 68 (12.34%) Marketing
6 67 (12.16%) Law
7 54 (9.80%) Pharmaceutical
8 38 (6.90%) Social Science
9 25 (4.54%) Electronics
10 13 (2.36%) Legal
11 12 (2.18%) Health Technology
12 11 (2.00%) Aerospace
13 9 (1.63%) Banking
13 9 (1.63%) Retail
14 8 (1.45%) Games
14 8 (1.45%) Manufacturing
14 8 (1.45%) Telecoms
15 7 (1.27%) Organisational Skills
16 6 (1.09%) Humanities
17 5 (0.91%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 108 (19.60%) Senior
2 77 (13.97%) Software Engineer
3 76 (13.79%) Data Scientist
4 65 (11.80%) Developer
5 53 (9.62%) Lead
6 49 (8.89%) Senior Data Scientist
7 36 (6.53%) Graduate
8 34 (6.17%) Analyst
9 27 (4.90%) Software Developer
10 22 (3.99%) Architect
11 17 (3.09%) Development Manager
12 16 (2.90%) Junior
12 16 (2.90%) Senior Software Engineer
13 15 (2.72%) Quantitative Developer
13 15 (2.72%) Senior Developer
14 14 (2.54%) Lead Data Scientist
15 13 (2.36%) User Experience Researcher
16 12 (2.18%) Business Manager
16 12 (2.18%) Physicist
17 11 (2.00%) Principal Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 55 (9.98%) PyTorch
2 48 (8.71%) TensorFlow
3 22 (3.99%) OpenMP
4 19 (3.45%) Kafka
4 19 (3.45%) scikit-learn
5 16 (2.90%) NumPy
6 14 (2.54%) .NET
6 14 (2.54%) OpenACC
6 14 (2.54%) Web Services
7 12 (2.18%) AngularJS
7 12 (2.18%) RESTful
8 11 (2.00%) OpenCV
8 11 (2.00%) REST
9 10 (1.81%) Keras
9 10 (1.81%) Node.js
10 9 (1.63%) RabbitMQ
11 7 (1.27%) OpenCL
11 7 (1.27%) Pandas
12 6 (1.09%) HTML
12 6 (1.09%) Vulkan
Miscellaneous
1 200 (36.30%) Algorithms
2 57 (10.34%) Life Science
3 34 (6.17%) CUDA
4 33 (5.99%) Data Structures
5 29 (5.26%) Analytical Mindset
6 27 (4.90%) Market Risk
7 23 (4.17%) FPGA
8 19 (3.45%) VHDL
9 16 (2.90%) Client/Server
9 16 (2.90%) Self-Motivation
10 15 (2.72%) Greenfield Project
11 14 (2.54%) Product Ownership
12 13 (2.36%) Analogue Electronics
12 13 (2.36%) Biopharmaceutical
12 13 (2.36%) IoT
13 12 (2.18%) Embedded Systems
14 11 (2.00%) Distributed Systems
14 11 (2.00%) Hedge funds
15 9 (1.63%) Distributed Computing
15 9 (1.63%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 69 (12.52%) Linux
2 33 (5.99%) Unix
3 5 (0.91%) Embedded Linux
4 4 (0.73%) Windows
5 2 (0.36%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 255 (46.28%) Computer Science
2 209 (37.93%) Mathematics
3 167 (30.31%) Machine Learning
4 141 (25.59%) Physics
5 140 (25.41%) Data Science
6 135 (24.50%) Artificial Intelligence
7 133 (24.14%) Software Engineering
8 127 (23.05%) Problem-Solving
9 83 (15.06%) Statistics
10 75 (13.61%) Analytics
11 61 (11.07%) Fintech
12 60 (10.89%) Deep Learning
13 54 (9.80%) Decision-Making
14 53 (9.62%) Agile
15 52 (9.44%) Parallel Programming
15 52 (9.44%) Psychology
16 49 (8.89%) Actionable Insight
17 48 (8.71%) Data Analysis
18 45 (8.17%) Anthropology
18 45 (8.17%) Cognitive Science
Programming Languages
1 287 (52.09%) Python
2 115 (20.87%) C++
3 102 (18.51%) C
4 90 (16.33%) R
5 83 (15.06%) Java
6 82 (14.88%) SQL
7 62 (11.25%) Fortran
8 53 (9.62%) C#
9 31 (5.63%) MATLAB
10 27 (4.90%) Bash
11 18 (3.27%) JavaScript
12 14 (2.54%) Rust
13 7 (1.27%) Go
14 6 (1.09%) Haskell
14 6 (1.09%) Perl
15 4 (0.73%) AWK
15 4 (0.73%) sed
15 4 (0.73%) Shell Script
15 4 (0.73%) VB
16 3 (0.54%) C-shell
Qualifications
1 539 (97.82%) Degree
2 374 (67.88%) Master's Degree
3 60 (10.89%) Security Cleared
4 51 (9.26%) Computer Science Degree
5 23 (4.17%) SC Cleared
6 19 (3.45%) MBA
7 14 (2.54%) DV Cleared
8 10 (1.81%) CFA
8 10 (1.81%) CIMA
9 6 (1.09%) Numerate Degree
10 5 (0.91%) BPSS Clearance
11 2 (0.36%) CREST Certified
11 2 (0.36%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.36%) OSCE
11 2 (0.36%) OSCP
12 1 (0.18%) Postgraduate
12 1 (0.18%) RIBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (4.36%) QA
2 11 (2.00%) Accessibility
2 11 (2.00%) Data Quality
3 10 (1.81%) GDPR
4 9 (1.63%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 2 (0.36%) ECSS
5 2 (0.36%) GLP
5 2 (0.36%) Good Clinical Practice
6 1 (0.18%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 33 (5.99%) Docker
2 5 (0.91%) Firmware
3 2 (0.36%) IAG
4 1 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 36 (6.53%) Kubernetes
2 9 (1.63%) Terraform
3 8 (1.45%) Kubeflow
4 5 (0.91%) Argo
5 4 (0.73%) Ansible
6 2 (0.36%) Core Impact
Vendors
1 32 (5.81%) Qualtrics
2 29 (5.26%) Microsoft
3 17 (3.09%) Google
4 10 (1.81%) OpenAI
5 8 (1.45%) ANSYS
6 6 (1.09%) NVIDIA
7 3 (0.54%) Databricks
8 2 (0.36%) Oracle
8 2 (0.36%) SAP
9 1 (0.18%) Alteryx
9 1 (0.18%) Interwoven
9 1 (0.18%) Keysight
9 1 (0.18%) Qubit
9 1 (0.18%) Samsung
9 1 (0.18%) Thales
9 1 (0.18%) YouTube