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 13 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 330 342 380
Rank change year-on-year +12 +38 +78
Contract jobs citing PhD 48 35 44
As % of all contract jobs in London 0.34% 0.22% 0.22%
As % of the Qualifications category 1.23% 0.88% 0.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 24 20 34
10th Percentile £471 £500 £666
25th Percentile £537 £600 £696
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £650 £750 £784
Median % change year-on-year -13.33% -4.28% +4.47%
75th Percentile £981 £863 £1,000
90th Percentile £1,000 £1,000 -
England median daily rate £613 £700 £725
% change year-on-year -12.50% -3.45% +3.02%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £78.75 - -
Median hourly rate £82.50 - -
75th Percentile £86.25 - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £29.61 £23.25 -
% change year-on-year +27.35% - -

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 3,909 3,958 4,634
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 27.79% 25.30% 23.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,695 2,522 3,146
10th Percentile £353 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £450 £453
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £541 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.64% -1.64% -4.35%
75th Percentile £660 £650 £672
90th Percentile £750 £763 £775
England median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 98 58 104
10th Percentile £19.44 £20.35 £19.00
25th Percentile - £30.06 £22.88
Median hourly rate £25.15 £39.25 £53.25
Median % change year-on-year -35.92% -26.29% +13.30%
75th Percentile £41.71 £60.56 £68.50
90th Percentile £65.17 £76.90 £86.50
England median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year -49.70% -4.76% +16.67%

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 13 November 2025.

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
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 13 November 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
Central London +13 5 £613 +1.03% 70
East London - 1 £1,000 - 3
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 22 (45.83%) Apache Spark
2 1 (2.08%) Apache Airflow
Cloud Services
1 16 (33.33%) Azure
2 13 (27.08%) AWS
3 4 (8.33%) Cloud Computing
4 2 (4.17%) Amazon SageMaker
4 2 (4.17%) Azure AI
4 2 (4.17%) GCP
5 1 (2.08%) Amazon Bedrock
5 1 (2.08%) Azure Machine Learning
5 1 (2.08%) Dagster
5 1 (2.08%) Google Gemini
5 1 (2.08%) Prefect
5 1 (2.08%) SuccessFactors
5 1 (2.08%) Vertex AI
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (8.33%) Geospatial Data
2 3 (6.25%) Big Data
2 3 (6.25%) Data Mining
3 2 (4.17%) Hadoop
3 2 (4.17%) Pinecone
4 1 (2.08%) Apache Hive
4 1 (2.08%) Tableau
4 1 (2.08%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 2 (4.17%) MLflow
2 1 (2.08%) Visual Studio
General
1 19 (39.58%) Finance
2 9 (18.75%) Front Office
3 8 (16.67%) Banking
3 8 (16.67%) Social Skills
4 7 (14.58%) Financial Institution
4 7 (14.58%) Marketing
5 5 (10.42%) Analytical Skills
5 5 (10.42%) Investment Banking
6 3 (6.25%) Public Sector
7 1 (2.08%) Electronics
7 1 (2.08%) Law
7 1 (2.08%) Legal
7 1 (2.08%) Manufacturing
7 1 (2.08%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 14 (29.17%) Machine Learning Engineer
2 13 (27.08%) Data Scientist
3 6 (12.50%) Lead
4 5 (10.42%) AWS Engineer
5 3 (6.25%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 3 (6.25%) Developer
5 3 (6.25%) Senior
6 2 (4.17%) Analyst
6 2 (4.17%) Big Data Engineer
6 2 (4.17%) Gen AI Engineer
6 2 (4.17%) Java Engineer
6 2 (4.17%) Qualitative Analyst
6 2 (4.17%) Quantitative Analyst
6 2 (4.17%) Quantitative Developer
6 2 (4.17%) Senior Data Scientist
7 1 (2.08%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
7 1 (2.08%) FPGA Engineer
7 1 (2.08%) Gen AI Specialist
7 1 (2.08%) Lead Data Scientist
7 1 (2.08%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (18.75%) Pandas
2 8 (16.67%) TensorFlow
3 7 (14.58%) PyTorch
4 5 (10.42%) Dask
5 3 (6.25%) LangChain
5 3 (6.25%) PySpark
5 3 (6.25%) scikit-learn
6 2 (4.17%) Faiss
6 2 (4.17%) REST
7 1 (2.08%) Hugging Face
7 1 (2.08%) LangGraph
7 1 (2.08%) Matplotlib
7 1 (2.08%) NumPy
7 1 (2.08%) Seaborn
Miscellaneous
1 15 (31.25%) Distributed Computing
2 13 (27.08%) Derivative
3 10 (20.83%) Algorithms
4 8 (16.67%) Equity Derivative
5 6 (12.50%) Cloud Native
5 6 (12.50%) Multi-touch
6 5 (10.42%) Equities
6 5 (10.42%) Fixed Income
6 5 (10.42%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 5 (10.42%) Hedge funds
7 3 (6.25%) Distributed Systems
8 2 (4.17%) AI Agents
8 2 (4.17%) Data Structures
8 2 (4.17%) Social Media
9 1 (2.08%) Data Protection Act
9 1 (2.08%) Enterprise Cloud
9 1 (2.08%) Exotic Derivative
9 1 (2.08%) FPGA
9 1 (2.08%) Verilog
9 1 (2.08%) VHDL
Processes & Methodologies
1 34 (70.83%) Computer Science
1 34 (70.83%) Machine Learning
2 28 (58.33%) Mathematics
3 24 (50.00%) AI
4 19 (39.58%) Data Science
5 17 (35.42%) LLM
6 16 (33.33%) Deep Learning
7 15 (31.25%) Validation
8 13 (27.08%) Generative AI
9 12 (25.00%) Model Validation
9 12 (25.00%) Statistics
10 11 (22.92%) Natural Language Processing
10 11 (22.92%) Physics
10 11 (22.92%) Risk Management
11 9 (18.75%) Data Analysis
11 9 (18.75%) Software Engineering
12 7 (14.58%) Data Extraction
12 7 (14.58%) Data Pipeline
12 7 (14.58%) Open Source
12 7 (14.58%) Statistical Modelling
Programming Languages
1 44 (91.67%) Python
2 11 (22.92%) C++
3 9 (18.75%) SQL
4 7 (14.58%) Java
4 7 (14.58%) R
5 5 (10.42%) Bash
5 5 (10.42%) C
5 5 (10.42%) PowerShell
6 2 (4.17%) Shell Script
7 1 (2.08%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 48 (100.00%) Degree
2 37 (77.08%) Master's Degree
3 3 (6.25%) Computer Science Degree
4 1 (2.08%) MBA
4 1 (2.08%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (2.08%) Data Quality
1 1 (2.08%) QA
1 1 (2.08%) SLA
System Software
1 4 (8.33%) Docker
2 1 (2.08%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 5 (10.42%) Terraform
2 2 (4.17%) Kubeflow
3 1 (2.08%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 2 (4.17%) SAP
2 1 (2.08%) Microsoft
2 1 (2.08%) OpenAI
2 1 (2.08%) Workday