PhD Contracts in England

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

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in England with a requirement for PhD qualifications. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months to 19 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
19 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 450 525 656
Rank change year-on-year +75 +131 -143
Contract jobs citing PhD 83 115 118
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 0.23% 0.24% 0.17%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.74% 0.86% 0.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 48 77 55
10th Percentile £375 £230 £435
25th Percentile £504 £579 £519
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £595 £795 £600
Median % change year-on-year -25.16% +32.50% +4.35%
75th Percentile £738 £950 £781
90th Percentile £808 £1,120 £825
UK median daily rate £595 £775 £600
% change year-on-year -23.23% +29.17% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 1 9
10th Percentile £42.56 - -
25th Percentile - - £18.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £20.47 £50.50
Median % change year-on-year +217.54% -59.47% +50.75%
75th Percentile - - £55.25
90th Percentile £71.88 - £63.99
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £20.47 £49.50
% change year-on-year +217.54% -58.65% +47.76%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
England

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 contract job vacancies advertised in England with a requirement for academic qualifications or professional certifications.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 11,195 13,355 15,333
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 30.75% 27.55% 21.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,954 8,953 10,146
10th Percentile £313 £335 £325
25th Percentile £425 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.27% +4.76% +5.00%
75th Percentile £650 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £719
UK median daily rate £533 £550 £525
% change year-on-year -3.09% +4.76% +7.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 970 676 680
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.38 £13.41
25th Percentile £17.91 £21.00 £19.06
Median hourly rate £40.00 £52.93 £41.36
Median % change year-on-year -24.42% +27.98% +10.28%
75th Percentile £61.60 £68.25 £56.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £80.25 £68.35
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £54.99 £44.23
% change year-on-year -27.26% +24.34% +21.16%

PhD
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

Job vacancy trend for PhD in England

PhD
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing PhD in England.

Daily rate trend for PhD in England

PhD
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing PhD in England over the 6 months to 19 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for PhD in England

PhD
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing PhD in England.

Hourly rate trend for PhD in England

PhD
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing PhD in England over the 6 months to 19 May 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for PhD in England

PhD
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing PhD within the England region over the 6 months to 19 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
London +55 45 £600 -33.33% 222
East of England +29 19 £800 - 76
South East +16 9 £625 +165.96% 104
West Midlands +26 3 £590 -12.59% 28
Midlands +25 3 £590 -12.59% 40
North West - 2 £550 - 25
North of England - 2 £550 - 32
South West +4 1 £750 +29.53% 25
PhD
UK

PhD
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England 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 4 (4.82%) SAS
2 2 (2.41%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (3.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (2.41%) MS Visio
3 1 (1.20%) Chatbot
3 1 (1.20%) SPSS
3 1 (1.20%) Stata
Business Applications
1 2 (2.41%) SAP MDG
2 1 (1.20%) Endur
2 1 (1.20%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 5 (6.02%) AWS
2 4 (4.82%) Azure
3 2 (2.41%) Azure Machine Learning
3 2 (2.41%) Vertex AI
4 1 (1.20%) dbt
4 1 (1.20%) GCP
4 1 (1.20%) IBM Watson
4 1 (1.20%) Power Platform
4 1 (1.20%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 4 (4.82%) Wireless
2 2 (2.41%) RS-485
2 2 (2.41%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (2.41%) Data Mining
1 2 (2.41%) Data Warehouse
1 2 (2.41%) Tableau
2 1 (1.20%) Data Lake
2 1 (1.20%) Elasticsearch
2 1 (1.20%) KDB
2 1 (1.20%) Looker
2 1 (1.20%) Metadata
2 1 (1.20%) Parquet
2 1 (1.20%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 8 (9.64%) Git
2 4 (4.82%) GCC
2 4 (4.82%) JIRA
2 4 (4.82%) Subversion
3 1 (1.20%) Team Foundation Server
3 1 (1.20%) Visual Studio
General
1 30 (36.14%) Finance
2 21 (25.30%) Social Skills
3 12 (14.46%) Analytical Skills
4 9 (10.84%) Marketing
5 8 (9.64%) Front Office
6 6 (7.23%) Pharmaceutical
6 6 (7.23%) Telecoms
7 5 (6.02%) Banking
7 5 (6.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 4 (4.82%) Advertising
8 4 (4.82%) Aerospace
9 3 (3.61%) Electronics
9 3 (3.61%) Financial Institution
9 3 (3.61%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (3.61%) Presentation Skills
9 3 (3.61%) Publishing
9 3 (3.61%) Retail
10 2 (2.41%) Back Office
10 2 (2.41%) Manufacturing
10 2 (2.41%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 16 (19.28%) Architect
2 13 (15.66%) Developer
3 12 (14.46%) Software Engineer
4 11 (13.25%) Senior
5 10 (12.05%) Software Architect
6 9 (10.84%) Data Scientist
7 7 (8.43%) Java Developer
8 6 (7.23%) Consultant
9 5 (6.02%) Senior Architect
10 4 (4.82%) Analyst
10 4 (4.82%) Compiler Engineer
10 4 (4.82%) Embedded Engineer
10 4 (4.82%) Embedded Software Engineer
10 4 (4.82%) Machine Learning Engineer
11 3 (3.61%) Econometrician
11 3 (3.61%) Quantitative Consultant
11 3 (3.61%) Quantitative Risk Consultant
11 3 (3.61%) Senior Software Engineer
11 3 (3.61%) Senior Solutions Architect
11 3 (3.61%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (14.46%) DirectX
1 12 (14.46%) OpenGL
1 12 (14.46%) OpenGL ES
1 12 (14.46%) Vulkan
2 10 (12.05%) PyTorch
3 9 (10.84%) TensorFlow
4 4 (4.82%) LLVM
4 4 (4.82%) scikit-learn
5 3 (3.61%) NumPy
6 2 (2.41%) Pandas
6 2 (2.41%) Swagger
7 1 (1.20%) .NET
7 1 (1.20%) .NET Framework
7 1 (1.20%) Entity Framework
7 1 (1.20%) JSON
7 1 (1.20%) Lucene
7 1 (1.20%) Managed Extensibility Framework
7 1 (1.20%) Silverlight
7 1 (1.20%) WCF
7 1 (1.20%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 14 (16.87%) Algorithms
2 10 (12.05%) 3D Graphics
2 10 (12.05%) Ray Tracing
3 4 (4.82%) Credit Risk
3 4 (4.82%) Device Driver
4 3 (3.61%) Data Structures
4 3 (3.61%) Derivative
5 2 (2.41%) Blockchain
5 2 (2.41%) Data Centre
5 2 (2.41%) FPGA
5 2 (2.41%) Management Information System
5 2 (2.41%) Photography
5 2 (2.41%) Tandem
6 1 (1.20%) Data Protection Act
6 1 (1.20%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (1.20%) Equities
6 1 (1.20%) Life Science
6 1 (1.20%) Mobile App
6 1 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (1.20%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 6 (7.23%) Linux
2 3 (3.61%) Android
2 3 (3.61%) Windows
3 1 (1.20%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 48 (57.83%) Computer Science
2 30 (36.14%) Problem-Solving
3 24 (28.92%) Machine Learning
4 21 (25.30%) Artificial Intelligence
5 20 (24.10%) Statistics
6 18 (21.69%) Mathematics
6 18 (21.69%) Software Engineering
7 14 (16.87%) Collaborative Culture
8 13 (15.66%) Data Governance
8 13 (15.66%) Data Science
8 13 (15.66%) Decision-Making
8 13 (15.66%) Economics
9 12 (14.46%) Agile
10 11 (13.25%) Analytics
10 11 (13.25%) Validation
11 10 (12.05%) Data Lineage
11 10 (12.05%) Software Architecture
12 7 (8.43%) Model Validation
12 7 (8.43%) Quantitative Finance
12 7 (8.43%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 41 (49.40%) Python
2 29 (34.94%) C++
3 20 (24.10%) SQL
4 19 (22.89%) C
5 15 (18.07%) Java
6 9 (10.84%) C#
6 9 (10.84%) R
7 7 (8.43%) Shell Script
8 6 (7.23%) MATLAB
9 4 (4.82%) Assembly Language
10 2 (2.41%) Rust
10 2 (2.41%) Scala
11 1 (1.20%) XAML
Qualifications
1 79 (95.18%) Degree
2 70 (84.34%) Master's Degree
3 16 (19.28%) Computer Science Degree
4 6 (7.23%) Security Cleared
5 5 (6.02%) MBA
5 5 (6.02%) SC Cleared
6 4 (4.82%) Numerate Degree
7 1 (1.20%) BPSS Clearance
7 1 (1.20%) DV Cleared
7 1 (1.20%) PMP
7 1 (1.20%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (4.82%) Data Quality
1 4 (4.82%) Dodd-Frank
1 4 (4.82%) JTAG
1 4 (4.82%) MiFID
2 3 (3.61%) GDPR
3 2 (2.41%) PCI DSS
4 1 (1.20%) PMO
System Software
1 4 (4.82%) Embedded Firmware
1 4 (4.82%) Firmware
2 2 (2.41%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (1.20%) Docker
Vendors
1 4 (4.82%) SAP
2 2 (2.41%) Adobe
2 2 (2.41%) CA
2 2 (2.41%) Databricks
2 2 (2.41%) VMware
3 1 (1.20%) Alteryx
3 1 (1.20%) Brandwatch
3 1 (1.20%) Google
3 1 (1.20%) IBM
3 1 (1.20%) OpenLink
3 1 (1.20%) Oracle