PhD Contract Job Trends in the City of London

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil, EngD, Doctorate)
Central London > City of London

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the City of London with a requirement for PhD qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 8 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 137 116 124
Rank change year-on-year -21 +8 +17
Contract jobs citing PhD 5 10 4
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 0.21% 0.54% 0.19%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.81% 2.18% 0.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 3 6 2
10th Percentile £575 £527 £621
25th Percentile £594 £606 £653
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £650 £750 £738
Median % change year-on-year -13.33% +1.69% -10.61%
75th Percentile £729 £763 £853
90th Percentile £761 - £904
Central London median daily rate £650 £750 £738
% change year-on-year -13.33% +1.69% -10.61%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £31.03 - -
Median hourly rate £32.07 - -
75th Percentile £33.10 - -
90th Percentile - - -
Central London median hourly rate £32.07 - -

All Academic and Professional Certifications
City of London

PhD falls under the Academic Qualifications and Professional Certifications category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications in the City of London.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 618 458 484
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 25.66% 24.54% 23.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 451 313 307
10th Percentile £408 £340 £403
25th Percentile £463 £461 £478
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £550 £568
Median % change year-on-year -2.27% -3.08% -1.30%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £675
90th Percentile £734 £763 £775
Central London median daily rate £544 £550 £565
% change year-on-year -1.09% -2.65% +2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 7 4
10th Percentile £19.42 £22.28 £20.31
25th Percentile £21.88 £26.00 £20.43
Median hourly rate £31.03 £28.15 £24.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.24% +17.29% -31.91%
75th Percentile £57.02 £64.66 £27.00
90th Percentile £70.88 £79.34 -
Central London median hourly rate £42.53 £31.78 £27.00
% change year-on-year +33.86% +17.69% -23.40%

PhD
Job Vacancy Trend in the City of London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing PhD relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London.

PhD job vacancy trend in the City of London

PhD
Daily Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing PhD.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing PhD

PhD
Daily Rate Histogram in the City of London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing PhD in the City of London over the 6 months to 8 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for PhD in the City of London

PhD
Hourly Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing PhD.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing PhD

PhD
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the City of London 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:

Cloud Services
1 2 (40.00%) AWS
1 2 (40.00%) Azure
1 2 (40.00%) GCP
1 2 (40.00%) GitHub
1 2 (40.00%) GitHub Copilot
2 1 (20.00%) Power Platform
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (40.00%) Db2
1 2 (40.00%) MongoDB
1 2 (40.00%) NoSQL
1 2 (40.00%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (20.00%) Data Mining
General
1 2 (40.00%) Finance
1 2 (40.00%) Social Skills
2 1 (20.00%) Analytical Skills
2 1 (20.00%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 2 (40.00%) Data Scientist
2 1 (20.00%) Hardware Engineer
2 1 (20.00%) Research Engineer
2 1 (20.00%) Security Engineer
2 1 (20.00%) Senior
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (60.00%) PyTorch
2 2 (40.00%) AngularJS
2 2 (40.00%) Backbone.js
2 2 (40.00%) Bootstrap
2 2 (40.00%) Ember.js
2 2 (40.00%) Hugging Face
2 2 (40.00%) jQuery
2 2 (40.00%) Keras
2 2 (40.00%) React
2 2 (40.00%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 1 (20.00%) Algorithms
1 1 (20.00%) Derivative
1 1 (20.00%) Distributed Systems
1 1 (20.00%) Exotic Derivative
1 1 (20.00%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
1 1 (20.00%) Legacy Systems
1 1 (20.00%) OTC Derivatives
1 1 (20.00%) Tandem
Operating Systems
1 2 (40.00%) Android
1 2 (40.00%) Apple iOS
1 2 (40.00%) Linux
1 2 (40.00%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 4 (80.00%) Computer Science
2 3 (60.00%) AI
2 3 (60.00%) Analytics
2 3 (60.00%) LLM
2 3 (60.00%) Machine Learning
3 2 (40.00%) Business Development
3 2 (40.00%) Data Science
3 2 (40.00%) Generative AI
3 2 (40.00%) Image Processing
3 2 (40.00%) Natural Language Processing
3 2 (40.00%) Prototyping
3 2 (40.00%) Stakeholder Management
3 2 (40.00%) Statistics
3 2 (40.00%) Video Processing
4 1 (20.00%) Information Security
4 1 (20.00%) Mathematics
4 1 (20.00%) Monte Carlo Method
4 1 (20.00%) Physics
4 1 (20.00%) Problem-Solving
4 1 (20.00%) Statistical Analysis
Programming Languages
1 4 (80.00%) Python
2 2 (40.00%) SQL
3 1 (20.00%) C++
3 1 (20.00%) Java
Qualifications
1 5 (100.00%) Degree
2 2 (40.00%) Master's Degree
3 1 (20.00%) BPSS Clearance
3 1 (20.00%) Computer Science Degree
Systems Management
1 1 (20.00%) Kubernetes