PhD Contract Job Trends in the East of England

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

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the East of England with a requirement for PhD qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 18 September 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 81 89 110
Rank change year-on-year +8 +21 +1
Contract jobs citing PhD 10 7 3
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the East of England 0.77% 0.46% 0.16%
As % of the Qualifications category 2.42% 1.62% 0.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 4 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £379 - £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £456 - £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -25.80%
75th Percentile £546 - £538
90th Percentile £616 - -
England median daily rate £566 £650 £750
% change year-on-year -12.92% -13.33% +15.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 2 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £77.50 £51.25 -
Median hourly rate £85.00 £57.50 -
Median % change year-on-year +47.83% - -
75th Percentile £92.50 £63.75 -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £82.50 £21.50 -
% change year-on-year +283.72% - -

All Academic and Professional Certifications
East of England

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 East of England.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 413 431 623
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the East of England 31.84% 28.17% 33.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 160 153 300
10th Percentile £198 £200 £272
25th Percentile £363 £306 £412
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £528 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.60% -9.09% +10.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £675
90th Percentile £676 £588 £738
England median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 140 131 154
10th Percentile £16.30 £16.30 £13.41
25th Percentile £18.87 £28.21 £15.63
Median hourly rate £25.32 £43.00 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year -41.12% +95.45% +4.76%
75th Percentile £62.63 £65.00 £61.25
90th Percentile £85.08 £67.50 £73.75
England median hourly rate £25.15 £54.00 £54.53
% change year-on-year -53.43% -0.97% +21.18%

PhD
Job Vacancy Trend in the East of England

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

Job vacancy trend for PhD in the East of England

PhD
Daily Rate Trend in the East of England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the East of England citing PhD.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the East of England citing PhD

PhD
Daily Rate Histogram in the East of England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing PhD in the East of England over the 6 months to 18 September 2025.

Daily rate histogram for PhD in the East of England

PhD
Hourly Rate Trend in the East of England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the East of England citing PhD.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the East of England citing PhD

PhD
Contract Job Locations in the East of 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 East of England region over the 6 months to 18 September 2025. 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
Hertfordshire - 7 £565 - 1
Cambridgeshire -4 2 £408 - 24
Bedfordshire - 1 - - 2
PhD
England

PhD
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the East of 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 5 (50.00%) Apache Spark
2 2 (20.00%) SAS
Cloud Services
1 6 (60.00%) AWS
1 6 (60.00%) Azure
2 1 (10.00%) GCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (70.00%) Hadoop
2 5 (50.00%) Big Data
2 5 (50.00%) Tableau
3 2 (20.00%) Electronic Patient Records
3 2 (20.00%) Text Mining
4 1 (10.00%) GIS
General
1 5 (50.00%) Analytical Skills
2 2 (20.00%) Pharmaceutical
3 1 (10.00%) Agriculture
3 1 (10.00%) Agrochemical
3 1 (10.00%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 5 (50.00%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
1 5 (50.00%) Data Science Developer
1 5 (50.00%) Developer
2 2 (20.00%) Information Scientist
2 2 (20.00%) Senior
3 1 (10.00%) Data Scientist
3 1 (10.00%) Firmware Engineer
3 1 (10.00%) FPGA Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (50.00%) Matplotlib
1 5 (50.00%) PyTorch
1 5 (50.00%) scikit-learn
1 5 (50.00%) Seaborn
1 5 (50.00%) TensorFlow
2 4 (40.00%) NumPy
2 4 (40.00%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 6 (60.00%) Algorithms
2 2 (20.00%) Life Science
3 1 (10.00%) FPGA
3 1 (10.00%) IoT
3 1 (10.00%) Verilog
3 1 (10.00%) VHDL
3 1 (10.00%) Video\Live Streaming
Processes & Methodologies
1 9 (90.00%) Data Science
2 8 (80.00%) Visualisation
3 6 (60.00%) Analytics
3 6 (60.00%) Artificial Intelligence
3 6 (60.00%) Decision-Making
3 6 (60.00%) Generative AI
3 6 (60.00%) LLM
3 6 (60.00%) Machine Learning
3 6 (60.00%) Reinforcement Learning
4 5 (50.00%) Computer Science
4 5 (50.00%) Data Analysis
4 5 (50.00%) Data Munging
4 5 (50.00%) Feature Engineering
4 5 (50.00%) Statistical Modelling
5 4 (40.00%) Data Analytics
5 4 (40.00%) Predictive Analytics
5 4 (40.00%) Time Series Forecasting
6 2 (20.00%) Data Visualisation
6 2 (20.00%) Health Informatics
6 2 (20.00%) Visual Analytics
Programming Languages
1 8 (80.00%) Python
2 6 (60.00%) R
3 2 (20.00%) MATLAB
3 2 (20.00%) SQL
4 1 (10.00%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 10 (100.00%) Degree
2 8 (80.00%) Master's Degree
3 1 (10.00%) SC Cleared
3 1 (10.00%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (50.00%) Data Quality
System Software
1 1 (10.00%) Firmware
Vendors
1 2 (20.00%) SAP