PhD Contracts in England

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

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in England with a requirement for PhD qualifications. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months to 28 April 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
28 Apr 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 457 536 669
Rank change year-on-year +79 +133 -177
Contract jobs citing PhD 81 119 115
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 0.22% 0.24% 0.16%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.70% 0.85% 0.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 47 76 55
10th Percentile £375 £229 £420
25th Percentile £505 £579 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £813 £625
Median % change year-on-year -26.15% +30.00% +8.70%
75th Percentile £750 £950 £781
90th Percentile £810 £1,300 £825
UK median daily rate £600 £795 £600
% change year-on-year -24.53% +32.50% +4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 1 7
10th Percentile - - £18.50
25th Percentile - - £32.88
Median hourly rate £65.00 £20.47 £50.50
Median % change year-on-year +217.54% -59.47% +10.53%
75th Percentile - - £55.25
90th Percentile £73.25 - £69.24
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £20.47 £49.50
% change year-on-year +217.54% -58.65% +8.34%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
England

PhD is in the Academic Qualifications and Professional Certifications category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies advertised in England with a requirement for academic qualifications or professional certifications.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 11,584 14,001 15,355
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.33% 27.74% 21.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,111 9,375 10,071
10th Percentile £300 £330 £315
25th Percentile £425 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.27% +4.76% +7.14%
75th Percentile £650 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £713
UK median daily rate £535 £550 £525
% change year-on-year -2.73% +4.76% +8.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 980 748 693
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.15 £13.41
25th Percentile £18.00 £20.00 £18.75
Median hourly rate £40.00 £52.40 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.66% +39.73% -3.75%
75th Percentile £62.50 £68.25 £56.00
90th Percentile £77.04 £80.25 £67.50
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £54.00 £41.50
% change year-on-year -25.93% +30.12% +5.73%

PhD
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

Job vacancy trend for PhD in England

PhD
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing PhD in England.

Daily rate trend for PhD in England

PhD
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing PhD in England over the 6 months to 28 April 2024.

Daily rate histogram for PhD in England

PhD
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing PhD in England.

Hourly rate trend for PhD in England

PhD
Contract Job Locations in 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 England region over the 6 months to 28 April 2024. 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
London +63 44 £600 -33.33% 196
East of England +25 19 £800 - 66
South East +13 8 £625 +165.96% 78
West Midlands +33 3 £590 -12.59% 14
Midlands +29 3 £590 -12.59% 26
North West - 2 £550 - 29
North of England - 2 £550 - 37
South West +7 1 £750 +29.53% 20
PhD
UK

PhD
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in 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 1 (1.23%) SAS
Applications
1 1 (1.23%) Chatbot
1 1 (1.23%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 2 (2.47%) SAP MDG
2 1 (1.23%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 6 (7.41%) AWS
2 5 (6.17%) Azure
3 2 (2.47%) Azure Machine Learning
3 2 (2.47%) GCP
3 2 (2.47%) Vertex AI
4 1 (1.23%) dbt
4 1 (1.23%) IBM Watson
4 1 (1.23%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 4 (4.94%) Wireless
2 2 (2.47%) SAN
3 1 (1.23%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (2.47%) Data Mining
2 1 (1.23%) Data Lake
2 1 (1.23%) Data Warehouse
2 1 (1.23%) Elasticsearch
2 1 (1.23%) KDB
2 1 (1.23%) Metadata
2 1 (1.23%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 7 (8.64%) GCC
1 7 (8.64%) Git
2 4 (4.94%) JIRA
2 4 (4.94%) Subversion
General
1 29 (35.80%) Finance
2 18 (22.22%) Social Skills
3 10 (12.35%) Analytical Skills
4 8 (9.88%) Front Office
4 8 (9.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 6 (7.41%) Marketing
5 6 (7.41%) Pharmaceutical
6 5 (6.17%) Telecoms
7 4 (4.94%) Aerospace
8 3 (3.70%) Advertising
8 3 (3.70%) Banking
8 3 (3.70%) Financial Institution
8 3 (3.70%) Presentation Skills
8 3 (3.70%) Publishing
8 3 (3.70%) Retail
9 2 (2.47%) Back Office
10 1 (1.23%) Electronics
10 1 (1.23%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (1.23%) Manufacturing
10 1 (1.23%) Multimedia
Job Titles
1 16 (19.75%) Architect
2 13 (16.05%) Software Engineer
3 12 (14.81%) Developer
4 10 (12.35%) Software Architect
5 8 (9.88%) Data Scientist
5 8 (9.88%) Senior
6 7 (8.64%) Compiler Engineer
6 7 (8.64%) Java Developer
7 6 (7.41%) Machine Learning Engineer
8 5 (6.17%) Consultant
8 5 (6.17%) Senior Architect
9 4 (4.94%) Embedded Engineer
9 4 (4.94%) Embedded Software Engineer
10 3 (3.70%) Econometrician
10 3 (3.70%) Quantitative Consultant
10 3 (3.70%) Quantitative Risk Consultant
10 3 (3.70%) Risk Consultant
10 3 (3.70%) Senior Solutions Architect
10 3 (3.70%) Solutions Architect
11 2 (2.47%) Senior Infrastructure Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (14.81%) DirectX
1 12 (14.81%) OpenGL
1 12 (14.81%) OpenGL ES
1 12 (14.81%) Vulkan
2 11 (13.58%) PyTorch
3 10 (12.35%) TensorFlow
4 7 (8.64%) LLVM
5 5 (6.17%) scikit-learn
6 4 (4.94%) NumPy
7 3 (3.70%) Pandas
8 2 (2.47%) Swagger
9 1 (1.23%) Dask
9 1 (1.23%) Elastic Stack
9 1 (1.23%) Hugging Face
9 1 (1.23%) JSON
9 1 (1.23%) Keras
9 1 (1.23%) Lucene
9 1 (1.23%) NLTK
9 1 (1.23%) PySpark
9 1 (1.23%) SpaCy
Miscellaneous
1 14 (17.28%) Algorithms
2 10 (12.35%) 3D Graphics
2 10 (12.35%) Ray Tracing
3 4 (4.94%) Device Driver
4 3 (3.70%) Derivative
4 3 (3.70%) Management Information System
5 2 (2.47%) Blockchain
5 2 (2.47%) Credit Risk
5 2 (2.47%) Data Centre
5 2 (2.47%) Photography
5 2 (2.47%) Tandem
6 1 (1.23%) Data Structures
6 1 (1.23%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (1.23%) Equities
6 1 (1.23%) FMCG
6 1 (1.23%) Life Science
6 1 (1.23%) Reference Data
6 1 (1.23%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (1.23%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 4 (4.94%) Linux
2 3 (3.70%) Android
3 2 (2.47%) Windows
4 1 (1.23%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 47 (58.02%) Computer Science
2 30 (37.04%) Problem-Solving
3 27 (33.33%) Machine Learning
4 22 (27.16%) Artificial Intelligence
5 19 (23.46%) Software Engineering
6 16 (19.75%) Statistics
7 15 (18.52%) Collaborative Culture
8 14 (17.28%) Data Governance
8 14 (17.28%) Decision-Making
9 13 (16.05%) Data Science
9 13 (16.05%) Mathematics
10 11 (13.58%) Data Lineage
11 10 (12.35%) Agile
11 10 (12.35%) Open Source
11 10 (12.35%) Software Architecture
12 9 (11.11%) Analytics
12 9 (11.11%) Validation
13 8 (9.88%) Economics
14 7 (8.64%) Deep Learning
14 7 (8.64%) Performance Analysis
Programming Languages
1 37 (45.68%) Python
2 31 (38.27%) C++
3 23 (28.40%) C
4 18 (22.22%) SQL
5 15 (18.52%) Java
6 8 (9.88%) R
7 7 (8.64%) Shell Script
8 6 (7.41%) C#
8 6 (7.41%) MATLAB
9 4 (4.94%) Assembly Language
10 2 (2.47%) Scala
Qualifications
1 74 (91.36%) Degree
2 66 (81.48%) Master's Degree
3 16 (19.75%) Computer Science Degree
4 5 (6.17%) Security Cleared
5 4 (4.94%) Numerate Degree
5 4 (4.94%) SC Cleared
6 3 (3.70%) MBA
7 1 (1.23%) DV Cleared
7 1 (1.23%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (4.94%) Data Quality
1 4 (4.94%) Dodd-Frank
1 4 (4.94%) JTAG
1 4 (4.94%) MiFID
2 3 (3.70%) GDPR
3 2 (2.47%) PCI DSS
4 1 (1.23%) PMO
System Software
1 4 (4.94%) Embedded Firmware
1 4 (4.94%) Firmware
2 2 (2.47%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (1.23%) Docker
Vendors
1 3 (3.70%) SAP
2 2 (2.47%) Databricks
2 2 (2.47%) VMware
3 1 (1.23%) Google
3 1 (1.23%) IBM
3 1 (1.23%) OpenLink
3 1 (1.23%) Oracle