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 3 October 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 113 124 146
Rank change year-on-year +11 +22 +22
Contract jobs citing PhD 7 3 10
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 0.40% 0.14% 0.34%
As % of the Qualifications category 1.59% 0.57% 1.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 5 2 9
10th Percentile £519 £601 £325
25th Percentile £563 £602 £663
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £650 £606 £750
Median % change year-on-year +7.22% -19.17% +66.67%
75th Percentile £763 £614 £875
90th Percentile - £617 £958
Central London median daily rate £650 £606 £750
% change year-on-year +7.22% -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 441 525 594
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 25.34% 24.80% 20.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 299 316 354
10th Percentile £331 £363 £342
25th Percentile £453 £463 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.35%
75th Percentile £668 £652 £694
90th Percentile £738 £765 £825
Central London median daily rate £550 £550 £550
% change year-on-year - - -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 5 3
10th Percentile £21.41 £23.10 £16.89
25th Percentile £25.88 - £17.31
Median hourly rate £27.83 £27.00 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.06% +50.00% -58.26%
75th Percentile £56.41 £112.00 £47.75
90th Percentile £82.79 - £65.60
Central London median hourly rate £31.32 £27.00 £18.00
% change year-on-year +15.98% +50.00% -58.26%

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 3 October 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 4 (57.14%) Apache Spark
Cloud Services
1 1 (14.29%) Azure
1 1 (14.29%) SuccessFactors
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (28.57%) Apache Hive
1 2 (28.57%) Hadoop
2 1 (14.29%) Big Data
2 1 (14.29%) Pinecone
2 1 (14.29%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 1 (14.29%) Bitbucket
1 1 (14.29%) Git
1 1 (14.29%) JIRA
1 1 (14.29%) MLflow
1 1 (14.29%) TeamCity
General
1 4 (57.14%) Finance
2 3 (42.86%) Financial Institution
3 2 (28.57%) Analytical Skills
3 2 (28.57%) Banking
3 2 (28.57%) Social Skills
4 1 (14.29%) Front Office
4 1 (14.29%) Law
4 1 (14.29%) Legal
4 1 (14.29%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 2 (28.57%) Data Scientist
2 1 (14.29%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
2 1 (14.29%) Developer
2 1 (14.29%) Gen AI Engineer
2 1 (14.29%) Gen AI Specialist
2 1 (14.29%) Java Developer
2 1 (14.29%) Lead
2 1 (14.29%) Lead Data Scientist
2 1 (14.29%) Low Latency Java Developer
2 1 (14.29%) Machine Learning Engineer
2 1 (14.29%) Quantitative Specialist
2 1 (14.29%) Senior
2 1 (14.29%) Senior Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (57.14%) TensorFlow
2 2 (28.57%) Pandas
2 2 (28.57%) PySpark
2 2 (28.57%) PyTorch
2 2 (28.57%) REST
3 1 (14.29%) Faiss
3 1 (14.29%) FIX Protocol
3 1 (14.29%) LangChain
3 1 (14.29%) LangGraph
3 1 (14.29%) Protocol Buffers
3 1 (14.29%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 3 (42.86%) Algorithms
2 2 (28.57%) Credit Risk
2 2 (28.57%) Distributed Computing
3 1 (14.29%) Data Structures
3 1 (14.29%) Derivative
3 1 (14.29%) Distributed Architecture
3 1 (14.29%) Distributed Systems
3 1 (14.29%) Equity Derivative
3 1 (14.29%) Exotic Derivative
3 1 (14.29%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 1 (14.29%) Multi-touch
3 1 (14.29%) Onboarding
Processes & Methodologies
1 6 (85.71%) Computer Science
2 5 (71.43%) Machine Learning
2 5 (71.43%) Mathematics
3 4 (57.14%) Data Science
4 3 (42.86%) Artificial Intelligence
4 3 (42.86%) Data Extraction
4 3 (42.86%) Generative AI
4 3 (42.86%) LLM
4 3 (42.86%) Risk Management
5 2 (28.57%) Analytics
5 2 (28.57%) Credit Risk Management
5 2 (28.57%) Data Analytics
5 2 (28.57%) Model Validation
5 2 (28.57%) Natural Language Processing
5 2 (28.57%) Statistical Modelling
5 2 (28.57%) Validation
6 1 (14.29%) Deep Learning
6 1 (14.29%) Dialogue System
6 1 (14.29%) Low Latency
6 1 (14.29%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Programming Languages
1 6 (85.71%) Python
2 4 (57.14%) SQL
3 1 (14.29%) C++
3 1 (14.29%) Java
3 1 (14.29%) R
Qualifications
1 7 (100.00%) Degree
2 5 (71.43%) Master's Degree
3 1 (14.29%) Computer Science Degree
System Software
1 2 (28.57%) Docker
Systems Management
1 1 (14.29%) Kubeflow
1 1 (14.29%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 1 (14.29%) Microsoft
1 1 (14.29%) SAP
1 1 (14.29%) Workday