PhD Contracts in England

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

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in England with a requirement for PhD qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 21 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 433 448 531
Rank change year-on-year +15 +83 +126
Contract jobs citing PhD 55 83 115
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 0.23% 0.23% 0.24%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.72% 0.74% 0.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 30 48 77
10th Percentile £495 £375 £230
25th Percentile £513 £504 £579
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £638 £595 £795
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% -25.16% +32.50%
75th Percentile £675 £738 £950
90th Percentile £771 £808 £1,120
UK median daily rate £625 £595 £775
% change year-on-year +5.04% -23.23% +29.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 6 1
10th Percentile £77.63 £42.56 -
25th Percentile £77.81 - -
Median hourly rate £83.75 £65.00 £20.47
Median % change year-on-year +28.85% +217.54% -59.47%
75th Percentile £90.94 - -
90th Percentile £91.88 £71.88 -
UK median hourly rate £63.75 £65.00 £20.47
% change year-on-year -1.92% +217.54% -58.65%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
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 England.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 7,623 11,179 13,347
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.46% 30.71% 27.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,841 6,938 8,950
10th Percentile £281 £313 £335
25th Percentile £413 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% +4.76%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £713 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 437 970 675
10th Percentile £18.13 £14.00 £14.35
25th Percentile £22.50 £18.00 £21.00
Median hourly rate £37.00 £40.00 £53.35
Median % change year-on-year -7.50% -25.02% +30.35%
75th Percentile £67.50 £62.28 £68.25
90th Percentile £81.15 £77.50 £80.25
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £40.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year -12.50% -27.27% +25.14%

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 21 May 2025.

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 21 May 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
London +27 33 £575 -4.17% 488
East of England +23 15 £650 -18.75% 142
South East +34 1 £625 - 194
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 40 (72.73%) Apache Spark
2 3 (5.45%) SAS
3 2 (3.64%) Apache
4 1 (1.82%) Ethereum
4 1 (1.82%) Hyperledger
4 1 (1.82%) MetaMask
Applications
1 1 (1.82%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 1 (1.82%) R3 Corda
Cloud Services
1 25 (45.45%) Azure
2 22 (40.00%) AWS
3 1 (1.82%) Azure Machine Learning
3 1 (1.82%) GCP
3 1 (1.82%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.82%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (41.82%) Hadoop
2 17 (30.91%) Big Data
3 12 (21.82%) Tableau
4 6 (10.91%) Apache Hive
5 3 (5.45%) Data Mining
5 3 (5.45%) MySQL
6 2 (3.64%) Electronic Patient Records
6 2 (3.64%) Text Mining
7 1 (1.82%) MongoDB
7 1 (1.82%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 2 (3.64%) Git
2 1 (1.82%) Bitbucket
2 1 (1.82%) Hardhat
2 1 (1.82%) JIRA
2 1 (1.82%) MLflow
2 1 (1.82%) TeamCity
General
1 18 (32.73%) Analytical Skills
2 12 (21.82%) Finance
2 12 (21.82%) Marketing
3 8 (14.55%) Banking
4 4 (7.27%) Digital Health
4 4 (7.27%) Financial Institution
4 4 (7.27%) Telecoms
5 3 (5.45%) Electronics
5 3 (5.45%) Manufacturing
5 3 (5.45%) Public Sector
5 3 (5.45%) Social Skills
6 2 (3.64%) Pharmaceutical
7 1 (1.82%) Front Office
7 1 (1.82%) Investment Banking
7 1 (1.82%) Legal
7 1 (1.82%) Retail
Job Titles
1 25 (45.45%) Senior
2 16 (29.09%) Developer
3 13 (23.64%) Data Science Developer
4 12 (21.82%) Data Scientist
5 11 (20.00%) Machine Learning Engineer
6 9 (16.36%) Senior Data Scientist
6 9 (16.36%) Senior Developer
7 6 (10.91%) AWS Engineer
8 4 (7.27%) Gen AI Specialist
8 4 (7.27%) Senior User Experience Researcher
8 4 (7.27%) User Experience Researcher
9 3 (5.45%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
9 3 (5.45%) FPGA Engineer
9 3 (5.45%) Java Engineer
10 2 (3.64%) Artificial Intelligence Specialist
10 2 (3.64%) Big Data Engineer
10 2 (3.64%) Firmware Engineer
10 2 (3.64%) Information Scientist
11 1 (1.82%) Marketing Specialist
11 1 (1.82%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (40.00%) TensorFlow
2 18 (32.73%) Pandas
3 16 (29.09%) PyTorch
3 16 (29.09%) scikit-learn
4 12 (21.82%) Matplotlib
4 12 (21.82%) NumPy
4 12 (21.82%) Seaborn
5 8 (14.55%) PySpark
6 2 (3.64%) REST
7 1 (1.82%) AngularJS
7 1 (1.82%) FIX Protocol
7 1 (1.82%) Protocol Buffers
7 1 (1.82%) Ray
7 1 (1.82%) React
7 1 (1.82%) Smart Contracts
7 1 (1.82%) Truffle
7 1 (1.82%) Vue
7 1 (1.82%) web3js
Miscellaneous
1 18 (32.73%) Algorithms
2 12 (21.82%) Distributed Computing
3 8 (14.55%) Multi-touch
4 6 (10.91%) Life Science
5 5 (9.09%) Credit Risk
6 4 (7.27%) Distributed Systems
7 3 (5.45%) FPGA
7 3 (5.45%) Verilog
7 3 (5.45%) VHDL
8 1 (1.82%) Acoustics
8 1 (1.82%) Blockchain
8 1 (1.82%) Cloud Native
8 1 (1.82%) Data Structures
8 1 (1.82%) Derivative
8 1 (1.82%) Distributed Architecture
8 1 (1.82%) FMCG
8 1 (1.82%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 1 (1.82%) Interest Rate Derivative
Processes & Methodologies
1 41 (74.55%) Computer Science
1 41 (74.55%) Machine Learning
2 33 (60.00%) Data Science
3 25 (45.45%) Data Analysis
4 24 (43.64%) Artificial Intelligence
5 22 (40.00%) Statistical Modelling
6 20 (36.36%) LLM
7 19 (34.55%) Generative AI
7 19 (34.55%) Mathematics
8 17 (30.91%) Analytics
9 16 (29.09%) Deep Learning
9 16 (29.09%) Visualisation
10 15 (27.27%) Decision-Making
11 14 (25.45%) Data Analytics
11 14 (25.45%) Feature Engineering
11 14 (25.45%) Reinforcement Learning
12 13 (23.64%) Statistics
13 12 (21.82%) Data Munging
13 12 (21.82%) Predictive Analytics
13 12 (21.82%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 44 (80.00%) Python
2 20 (36.36%) R
3 19 (34.55%) SQL
4 13 (23.64%) C++
5 11 (20.00%) Java
6 10 (18.18%) C
7 6 (10.91%) Shell Script
8 3 (5.45%) MATLAB
8 3 (5.45%) SystemVerilog
9 1 (1.82%) Go
9 1 (1.82%) Rust
9 1 (1.82%) Solidity
Qualifications
1 55 (100.00%) Degree
2 42 (76.36%) Master's Degree
3 7 (12.73%) Computer Science Degree
4 2 (3.64%) SC Cleared
4 2 (3.64%) Security Cleared
5 1 (1.82%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (21.82%) Data Quality
System Software
1 4 (7.27%) Docker
2 3 (5.45%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 3 (5.45%) Kubernetes
2 1 (1.82%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 5 (9.09%) SAP
2 2 (3.64%) OpenAI
3 1 (1.82%) Databricks
3 1 (1.82%) Microsoft
3 1 (1.82%) Oracle
3 1 (1.82%) Salesforce