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 12 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 119 125 134
Rank change year-on-year +6 +9 +40
Contract jobs citing PhD 5 3 8
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 0.29% 0.14% 0.29%
As % of the Qualifications category 1.06% 0.56% 1.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 4 2 7
10th Percentile £512 £601 £325
25th Percentile £545 £602 £494
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £613 £606 £750
Median % change year-on-year +1.03% -19.17% +66.67%
75th Percentile £697 £614 £800
90th Percentile £736 £617 £860
Central London median daily rate £613 £606 £750
% change year-on-year +1.03% -19.17% +66.67%

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 472 532 561
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 27.11% 25.43% 20.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 346 316 344
10th Percentile £325 £352 £354
25th Percentile £425 £463 £448
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £555 £569
Median % change year-on-year -0.90% -2.46% -3.15%
75th Percentile £667 £657 £694
90th Percentile £744 £769 £800
Central London median daily rate £539 £539 £550
% change year-on-year - -2.05% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 5 4
10th Percentile £20.55 £23.10 £18.28
25th Percentile £25.75 £27.00 £18.70
Median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £45.72
Median % change year-on-year -15.38% -28.91% +6.02%
75th Percentile £29.50 £112.00 £74.69
90th Percentile £51.14 - £76.38
Central London median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £39.47
% change year-on-year -15.38% -17.65% -8.48%

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 12 November 2025.

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:

Application Platforms
1 3 (60.00%) Apache Spark
Cloud Services
1 1 (20.00%) Azure
1 1 (20.00%) SuccessFactors
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (20.00%) Apache Hive
1 1 (20.00%) Hadoop
1 1 (20.00%) Pinecone
1 1 (20.00%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 1 (20.00%) MLflow
General
1 2 (40.00%) Finance
2 1 (20.00%) Analytical Skills
2 1 (20.00%) Banking
2 1 (20.00%) Financial Institution
2 1 (20.00%) Front Office
2 1 (20.00%) Law
2 1 (20.00%) Legal
2 1 (20.00%) Marketing
2 1 (20.00%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 1 (20.00%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
1 1 (20.00%) Data Scientist
1 1 (20.00%) Gen AI Engineer
1 1 (20.00%) Gen AI Specialist
1 1 (20.00%) Machine Learning Engineer
1 1 (20.00%) Quantitative Specialist
1 1 (20.00%) Senior
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (60.00%) TensorFlow
2 2 (40.00%) Pandas
2 2 (40.00%) PyTorch
3 1 (20.00%) Faiss
3 1 (20.00%) LangChain
3 1 (20.00%) LangGraph
3 1 (20.00%) PySpark
3 1 (20.00%) REST
3 1 (20.00%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 2 (40.00%) Algorithms
2 1 (20.00%) Credit Risk
2 1 (20.00%) Data Structures
2 1 (20.00%) Derivative
2 1 (20.00%) Distributed Computing
2 1 (20.00%) Equity Derivative
2 1 (20.00%) Exotic Derivative
2 1 (20.00%) Multi-touch
2 1 (20.00%) Onboarding
Processes & Methodologies
1 4 (80.00%) Computer Science
1 4 (80.00%) Machine Learning
1 4 (80.00%) Mathematics
2 3 (60.00%) Data Science
3 2 (40.00%) AI
3 2 (40.00%) Data Extraction
3 2 (40.00%) Generative AI
3 2 (40.00%) LLM
3 2 (40.00%) Model Validation
3 2 (40.00%) Natural Language Processing
3 2 (40.00%) Risk Management
3 2 (40.00%) Validation
4 1 (20.00%) Applied Mathematics
4 1 (20.00%) Data Analysis
4 1 (20.00%) Data Governance
4 1 (20.00%) Open Source
4 1 (20.00%) Physics
4 1 (20.00%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
4 1 (20.00%) Software Engineering
4 1 (20.00%) Statistics
Programming Languages
1 5 (100.00%) Python
2 3 (60.00%) SQL
3 1 (20.00%) C++
3 1 (20.00%) R
Qualifications
1 5 (100.00%) Degree
2 3 (60.00%) Master's Degree
System Software
1 1 (20.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 1 (20.00%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 1 (20.00%) Microsoft
1 1 (20.00%) SAP
1 1 (20.00%) Workday