PhD Contract Job Trends in London

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

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in London with a requirement for PhD qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 2 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 401 336 361
Rank change year-on-year -65 +25 +34
Contract jobs citing PhD 42 48 34
As % of all contract jobs in London 0.21% 0.35% 0.21%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.75% 1.35% 0.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 21 20 23
10th Percentile £415 £488 £368
25th Percentile £500 £528 £539
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £650 £575 £650
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -11.54% -27.78%
75th Percentile £738 £763 £813
90th Percentile £785 £771 £863
England median daily rate £575 £575 £650
% change year-on-year - -11.54% -13.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 2 1
10th Percentile £33.02 - -
25th Percentile - £78.75 £76.25
Median hourly rate £36.00 £82.50 £77.50
Median % change year-on-year -56.36% +6.45% -
75th Percentile £49.75 £86.25 £78.75
90th Percentile £70.90 - -
England median hourly rate £39.25 £82.50 £61.25
% change year-on-year -52.42% +34.69% -

All Academic and Professional Certifications
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 London.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 5,567 3,564 3,892
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 27.60% 25.97% 23.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,023 2,417 2,701
10th Percentile £375 £338 £334
25th Percentile £453 £430 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year +2.38% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £638 £659 £650
90th Percentile £734 £750 £775
England median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 89 87 65
10th Percentile £19.50 £17.62 £17.98
25th Percentile £26.00 £25.02 £22.00
Median hourly rate £54.00 £25.15 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year +114.71% -6.85% -50.91%
75th Percentile £73.00 £41.88 £43.75
90th Percentile £88.75 £63.45 £68.45
England median hourly rate £54.00 £25.15 £46.03
% change year-on-year +114.71% -45.36% -16.31%

PhD
Job Vacancy Trend in London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing PhD relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in London.

PhD job vacancy trend in London

PhD
Daily Rate Trend in London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing PhD.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing PhD

PhD
Daily Rate Histogram in London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing PhD in London over the 6 months to 2 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for PhD in London

PhD
Hourly Rate Trend in London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing PhD.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing PhD

PhD
Hourly Rate Histogram in London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing PhD in London over the 6 months to 2 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for PhD in London

PhD
Contract Job Locations in London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing PhD within the London region over the 6 months to 2 August 2026. 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
Central London -13 8 £650 -13.33% 27
PhD
England

PhD
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in 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 5 (11.90%) Apache Spark
2 1 (2.38%) Apache
2 1 (2.38%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 3 (7.14%) CPLEX
Cloud Services
1 14 (33.33%) GCP
2 9 (21.43%) AWS
2 9 (21.43%) Azure
3 4 (9.52%) Anthropic Claude
3 4 (9.52%) GitHub
3 4 (9.52%) Google Gemini
4 3 (7.14%) GitHub Copilot
5 2 (4.76%) Amazon SageMaker
6 1 (2.38%) Amazon Bedrock
6 1 (2.38%) AWS Fargate
6 1 (2.38%) AWS Lambda
6 1 (2.38%) Azure Machine Learning
6 1 (2.38%) IBM Cloud
6 1 (2.38%) Power Platform
6 1 (2.38%) Serverless
6 1 (2.38%) Vertex AI
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (16.67%) MongoDB
2 5 (11.90%) NoSQL
3 4 (9.52%) Data Mining
3 4 (9.52%) PostgreSQL
3 4 (9.52%) SQL Server
4 3 (7.14%) Big Data
4 3 (7.14%) Db2
4 3 (7.14%) Neo4j
5 1 (2.38%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (2.38%) KDB
5 1 (2.38%) Kdb+
5 1 (2.38%) Redis
5 1 (2.38%) Relational Database
5 1 (2.38%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 4 (9.52%) MLflow
2 1 (2.38%) Jenkins
General
1 16 (38.10%) Finance
2 10 (23.81%) Analytical Skills
3 9 (21.43%) Social Skills
4 4 (9.52%) Banking
4 4 (9.52%) Front Office
4 4 (9.52%) Retail
5 3 (7.14%) Marketing
6 2 (4.76%) Financial Institution
7 1 (2.38%) Aviation
7 1 (2.38%) Influencing Skills
7 1 (2.38%) Investment Banking
7 1 (2.38%) Manufacturing
7 1 (2.38%) Presentation Skills
7 1 (2.38%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 12 (28.57%) Data Scientist
2 10 (23.81%) Developer
3 8 (19.05%) Senior
4 6 (14.29%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 5 (11.90%) Quantitative Developer
5 5 (11.90%) Senior Data Scientist
6 4 (9.52%) C# Developer
6 4 (9.52%) Front Office Developer
7 3 (7.14%) Associate Director
7 3 (7.14%) Full-Stack Engineer
7 3 (7.14%) Research Engineer
7 3 (7.14%) Software Engineer
8 1 (2.38%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
8 1 (2.38%) Lead
8 1 (2.38%) Machine Learning Scientist
8 1 (2.38%) Principal Architect
8 1 (2.38%) Principal Data Scientist
8 1 (2.38%) Python Engineer
8 1 (2.38%) Research Software Engineer
8 1 (2.38%) Senior Quantitative Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (28.57%) PyTorch
2 8 (19.05%) TensorFlow
3 7 (16.67%) LangChain
4 6 (14.29%) .NET
4 6 (14.29%) scikit-learn
5 5 (11.90%) Keras
5 5 (11.90%) Pandas
5 5 (11.90%) PySpark
6 4 (9.52%) Hugging Face
6 4 (9.52%) JSON
6 4 (9.52%) JSON Schema
6 4 (9.52%) LangGraph
6 4 (9.52%) NumPy
6 4 (9.52%) pydantic
6 4 (9.52%) React
7 3 (7.14%) AngularJS
7 3 (7.14%) Backbone.js
7 3 (7.14%) Ember.js
7 3 (7.14%) jQuery
7 3 (7.14%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 12 (28.57%) Algorithms
2 10 (23.81%) Derivative
3 9 (21.43%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 8 (19.05%) AI Agents
5 5 (11.90%) Distributed Systems
5 5 (11.90%) Equities
5 5 (11.90%) Exotic Derivative
5 5 (11.90%) OTC Derivatives
6 4 (9.52%) Cloud Native
6 4 (9.52%) Fixed Income
6 4 (9.52%) Hedge funds
7 2 (4.76%) Analytical Mindset
7 2 (4.76%) Product Ownership
7 2 (4.76%) Synthetic Data
7 2 (4.76%) Tandem
8 1 (2.38%) Distributed Computing
8 1 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
8 1 (2.38%) Multi-touch
8 1 (2.38%) Operational Technology
8 1 (2.38%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 5 (11.90%) Linux
1 5 (11.90%) Windows
2 3 (7.14%) Android
2 3 (7.14%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 30 (71.43%) Computer Science
2 26 (61.90%) Machine Learning
3 25 (59.52%) Mathematics
4 24 (57.14%) AI
5 18 (42.86%) Data Science
5 18 (42.86%) LLM
6 15 (35.71%) Analytics
7 14 (33.33%) Physics
7 14 (33.33%) Statistics
8 12 (28.57%) CI/CD
9 11 (26.19%) Generative AI
9 11 (26.19%) Software Engineering
10 9 (21.43%) Model Validation
10 9 (21.43%) Validation
11 8 (19.05%) Natural Language Processing
12 7 (16.67%) Decision-Making
12 7 (16.67%) Roadmaps
13 6 (14.29%) Critical Thinking
13 6 (14.29%) Problem-Solving
13 6 (14.29%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Programming Languages
1 34 (80.95%) Python
2 12 (28.57%) SQL
3 6 (14.29%) C#
4 5 (11.90%) C++
4 5 (11.90%) Java
5 4 (9.52%) R
6 2 (4.76%) Bash
6 2 (4.76%) JavaScript
6 2 (4.76%) PowerShell
7 1 (2.38%) C
7 1 (2.38%) MATLAB
7 1 (2.38%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 41 (97.62%) Degree
2 26 (61.90%) Master's Degree
3 11 (26.19%) Computer Science Degree
4 3 (7.14%) BPSS Clearance
5 1 (2.38%) Microsoft Certified Professional
5 1 (2.38%) MPhil
5 1 (2.38%) SC Cleared
5 1 (2.38%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (2.38%) Actionable Recommendations
1 1 (2.38%) Data Quality
1 1 (2.38%) GDPR
1 1 (2.38%) ISO/IEC 42001
1 1 (2.38%) NIST
System Software
1 8 (19.05%) Docker
Systems Management
1 7 (16.67%) Kubernetes
2 3 (7.14%) Terraform
3 1 (2.38%) Ansible
3 1 (2.38%) MOM
Vendors
1 6 (14.29%) Google
2 5 (11.90%) OpenAI
3 4 (9.52%) Databricks
4 1 (2.38%) AVEVA
4 1 (2.38%) Calypso
4 1 (2.38%) Foundry
4 1 (2.38%) IBM
4 1 (2.38%) Murex
4 1 (2.38%) Siemens