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 16 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 125 109 129
Rank change year-on-year -16 +20 +23
Contract jobs citing PhD 7 5 4
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 0.32% 0.29% 0.18%
As % of the Qualifications category 1.18% 1.14% 0.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 2 3 2
10th Percentile £569 - £801
25th Percentile £578 £738 £803
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £613 £750 £838
Median % change year-on-year -18.33% -10.45% +1.52%
75th Percentile £653 £881 £903
90th Percentile £666 £953 £924
Central London median daily rate £650 £750 £838
% change year-on-year -13.33% -10.45% +1.52%
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 594 440 453
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 26.78% 25.16% 20.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 437 294 297
10th Percentile £383 £383 £367
25th Percentile £450 £462 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £638 £673 £663
90th Percentile £738 £763 £775
Central London median daily rate £525 £538 £530
% change year-on-year -2.33% +1.42% -5.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 3 5
10th Percentile £18.71 £29.85 £19.45
25th Percentile £24.16 £41.63 £20.22
Median hourly rate £30.03 £62.50 £20.82
Median % change year-on-year -51.95% +200.26% -54.75%
75th Percentile £55.37 £81.88 £27.00
90th Percentile £68.53 £92.75 £55.05
Central London median hourly rate £25.77 £45.79 £27.00
% change year-on-year -43.72% +69.57% -41.30%

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
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 3 (42.86%) AWS
1 3 (42.86%) Azure
1 3 (42.86%) GCP
1 3 (42.86%) GitHub
1 3 (42.86%) GitHub Copilot
2 1 (14.29%) Amazon SageMaker
2 1 (14.29%) IBM Cloud
2 1 (14.29%) Power Platform
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (42.86%) DB2
1 3 (42.86%) MongoDB
1 3 (42.86%) NoSQL
1 3 (42.86%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (14.29%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 1 (14.29%) MLflow
General
1 3 (42.86%) Finance
1 3 (42.86%) Social Skills
2 2 (28.57%) Banking
3 1 (14.29%) Analytical Skills
3 1 (14.29%) Financial Institution
3 1 (14.29%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 3 (42.86%) Data Scientist
2 1 (14.29%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
2 1 (14.29%) Hardware Engineer
2 1 (14.29%) Research Engineer
2 1 (14.29%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (71.43%) PyTorch
2 4 (57.14%) Hugging Face
2 4 (57.14%) TensorFlow
3 3 (42.86%) AngularJS
3 3 (42.86%) Backbone.js
3 3 (42.86%) Bootstrap
3 3 (42.86%) Ember.js
3 3 (42.86%) jQuery
3 3 (42.86%) Keras
3 3 (42.86%) React
4 1 (14.29%) Google JAX
4 1 (14.29%) JAX
Miscellaneous
1 2 (28.57%) Synthetic Data
2 1 (14.29%) Tandem
Operating Systems
1 3 (42.86%) Android
1 3 (42.86%) Apple iOS
1 3 (42.86%) Linux
1 3 (42.86%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 6 (85.71%) AI
1 6 (85.71%) LLM
1 6 (85.71%) Machine Learning
2 4 (57.14%) Computer Science
3 3 (42.86%) Analytics
3 3 (42.86%) Business Development
3 3 (42.86%) Data Science
3 3 (42.86%) Generative AI
3 3 (42.86%) Image Processing
3 3 (42.86%) Natural Language Processing
3 3 (42.86%) Prototyping
3 3 (42.86%) Stakeholder Management
3 3 (42.86%) Statistics
4 2 (28.57%) Model Validation
4 2 (28.57%) Open Source
4 2 (28.57%) Red Team
4 2 (28.57%) Statistical Analysis
4 2 (28.57%) Test Automation
4 2 (28.57%) Validation
4 2 (28.57%) Video Processing
Programming Languages
1 6 (85.71%) Python
2 3 (42.86%) SQL
Qualifications
1 7 (100.00%) Degree
2 3 (42.86%) Master's Degree
3 2 (28.57%) BPSS Clearance
4 1 (14.29%) Computer Science Degree
4 1 (14.29%) MPhil
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (14.29%) ISO/IEC 42001
1 1 (14.29%) NIST
Systems Management
1 2 (28.57%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 1 (14.29%) IBM