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 5 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 403 313 365
Rank change year-on-year -90 +52 +39
Contract jobs citing PhD 35 48 40
As % of all contract jobs in London 0.18% 0.36% 0.23%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.65% 1.40% 0.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 16 20 30
10th Percentile £513 £488 £353
25th Percentile £557 £520 £505
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £663 £561 £600
Median % change year-on-year +18.09% -6.50% -33.33%
75th Percentile £746 £763 £763
90th Percentile £785 £850 £869
England median daily rate £601 £561 £600
% change year-on-year +7.17% -6.50% -20.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 2 1
10th Percentile £32.68 - -
25th Percentile £35.14 £78.75 £76.25
Median hourly rate £44.50 £82.50 £77.50
Median % change year-on-year -46.06% +6.45% -
75th Percentile £67.38 £86.25 £78.75
90th Percentile £77.95 - -
England median hourly rate £44.50 £82.50 £61.25
% change year-on-year -46.06% +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 5,387 3,424 4,154
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 27.77% 25.79% 23.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,881 2,304 2,858
10th Percentile £363 £350 £325
25th Percentile £450 £431 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -6.25%
75th Percentile £638 £661 £650
90th Percentile £728 £750 £771
England median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 76 77 107
10th Percentile £19.19 £18.48 £14.96
25th Percentile £25.94 £25.00 £20.50
Median hourly rate £54.00 £26.32 £25.50
Median % change year-on-year +105.17% +3.22% -52.78%
75th Percentile £73.19 £50.00 £42.75
90th Percentile £88.75 £66.34 £68.30
England median hourly rate £53.90 £28.18 £42.50
% change year-on-year +91.27% -33.69% -22.73%

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 5 July 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 5 July 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 5 July 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 -18 8 £650 -13.33% 25
West London - 2 £773 - 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 5 (14.29%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 1 (2.86%) CPLEX
Cloud Services
1 10 (28.57%) Azure
2 7 (20.00%) AWS
2 7 (20.00%) GCP
3 3 (8.57%) GitHub
3 3 (8.57%) GitHub Copilot
4 2 (5.71%) Amazon SageMaker
5 1 (2.86%) AWS Fargate
5 1 (2.86%) AWS Lambda
5 1 (2.86%) Azure Machine Learning
5 1 (2.86%) IBM Cloud
5 1 (2.86%) Power Platform
5 1 (2.86%) Serverless
5 1 (2.86%) Vertex AI
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (20.00%) MongoDB
2 5 (14.29%) NoSQL
3 4 (11.43%) SQL Server
4 3 (8.57%) Db2
4 3 (8.57%) Neo4j
4 3 (8.57%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (5.71%) Big Data
5 2 (5.71%) Data Mining
6 1 (2.86%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (2.86%) KDB
6 1 (2.86%) Kdb+
6 1 (2.86%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 4 (11.43%) MLflow
General
1 15 (42.86%) Finance
2 9 (25.71%) Social Skills
3 6 (17.14%) Analytical Skills
4 5 (14.29%) Marketing
5 4 (11.43%) Front Office
6 3 (8.57%) Banking
6 3 (8.57%) Retail
7 2 (5.71%) Aviation
7 2 (5.71%) Financial Institution
7 2 (5.71%) Influencing Skills
7 2 (5.71%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (2.86%) Investment Banking
8 1 (2.86%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 13 (37.14%) Data Scientist
2 8 (22.86%) Developer
3 6 (17.14%) Senior
4 5 (14.29%) Senior Data Scientist
5 4 (11.43%) C# Developer
5 4 (11.43%) Front Office Developer
5 4 (11.43%) Quantitative Developer
6 3 (8.57%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
6 3 (8.57%) Associate Director
6 3 (8.57%) Lead
6 3 (8.57%) Research Engineer
7 2 (5.71%) Lead Data Scientist
8 1 (2.86%) Hardware Engineer
8 1 (2.86%) Java Developer
8 1 (2.86%) Java Quantitative Developer
8 1 (2.86%) Machine Learning Scientist
8 1 (2.86%) Python Developer
8 1 (2.86%) Research Software Engineer
8 1 (2.86%) Security Engineer
8 1 (2.86%) Senior Quantitative Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (22.86%) PyTorch
2 7 (20.00%) Pandas
3 6 (17.14%) TensorFlow
4 5 (14.29%) .NET
4 5 (14.29%) Keras
4 5 (14.29%) PySpark
4 5 (14.29%) scikit-learn
5 4 (11.43%) Hugging Face
5 4 (11.43%) NumPy
5 4 (11.43%) React
6 3 (8.57%) AngularJS
6 3 (8.57%) Backbone.js
6 3 (8.57%) Bootstrap
6 3 (8.57%) Ember.js
6 3 (8.57%) jQuery
7 2 (5.71%) Kafka
7 2 (5.71%) Prophet
8 1 (2.86%) Google JAX
8 1 (2.86%) LangChain
8 1 (2.86%) Polars
Miscellaneous
1 9 (25.71%) Algorithms
1 9 (25.71%) Derivative
2 8 (22.86%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 4 (11.43%) Equities
3 4 (11.43%) Exotic Derivative
3 4 (11.43%) Fixed Income
3 4 (11.43%) Hedge funds
3 4 (11.43%) OTC Derivatives
4 3 (8.57%) Multi-touch
5 2 (5.71%) Product Ownership
5 2 (5.71%) Synthetic Data
5 2 (5.71%) Tandem
6 1 (2.86%) Data Protection Act
6 1 (2.86%) Distributed Computing
6 1 (2.86%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (2.86%) Equity Derivative
6 1 (2.86%) Legacy Systems
6 1 (2.86%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 4 (11.43%) Linux
2 3 (8.57%) Android
2 3 (8.57%) Apple iOS
2 3 (8.57%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 23 (65.71%) Computer Science
2 22 (62.86%) Machine Learning
3 19 (54.29%) AI
3 19 (54.29%) Mathematics
4 17 (48.57%) Data Science
5 14 (40.00%) Statistics
6 12 (34.29%) LLM
7 10 (28.57%) Analytics
7 10 (28.57%) Physics
8 9 (25.71%) Model Validation
9 8 (22.86%) Generative AI
10 7 (20.00%) Natural Language Processing
10 7 (20.00%) Validation
11 6 (17.14%) Business Development
11 6 (17.14%) CI/CD
11 6 (17.14%) Critical Thinking
11 6 (17.14%) Problem-Solving
12 5 (14.29%) Applied Mathematics
12 5 (14.29%) Prompt Engineering
12 5 (14.29%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 26 (74.29%) Python
2 13 (37.14%) SQL
3 7 (20.00%) Java
4 5 (14.29%) C#
4 5 (14.29%) R
5 4 (11.43%) C++
6 1 (2.86%) Bash
6 1 (2.86%) C
6 1 (2.86%) JavaScript
6 1 (2.86%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 35 (100.00%) Degree
2 25 (71.43%) Master's Degree
3 7 (20.00%) Computer Science Degree
4 3 (8.57%) BPSS Clearance
5 1 (2.86%) MPhil
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (5.71%) QA
2 1 (2.86%) Data Quality
2 1 (2.86%) GDPR
2 1 (2.86%) ISO/IEC 42001
2 1 (2.86%) NIST
System Software
1 4 (11.43%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (11.43%) Kubernetes
2 2 (5.71%) Terraform
Vendors
1 3 (8.57%) Databricks
2 1 (2.86%) Calypso
2 1 (2.86%) Google
2 1 (2.86%) IBM
2 1 (2.86%) Murex
2 1 (2.86%) OpenAI