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 31 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 344 315 364
Rank change year-on-year -29 +49 +75
Contract jobs citing PhD 41 35 38
As % of all contract jobs in London 0.28% 0.25% 0.20%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.95% 0.99% 0.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 23 16 21
10th Percentile £450 £500 £325
25th Percentile £619 £531 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £675 £700 £725
Median % change year-on-year -3.57% -3.45% -14.71%
75th Percentile £1,000 £834 £825
90th Percentile - £1,000 £1,000
England median daily rate £650 £638 £590
% change year-on-year +1.96% +8.05% -24.84%

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 4,336 3,544 4,555
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 29.28% 25.61% 24.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,042 2,201 3,044
10th Percentile £358 £352 £325
25th Percentile £430 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £638 £656 £650
90th Percentile £750 £775 £764
England median daily rate £520 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 76 63 126
10th Percentile £20.68 £21.50 £14.85
25th Percentile £25.15 £24.66 £19.99
Median hourly rate £31.14 £37.50 £35.57
Median % change year-on-year -16.97% +5.44% -1.51%
75th Percentile £65.06 £55.63 £64.88
90th Percentile £76.58 £78.40 £83.75
England median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £46.39
% change year-on-year -45.54% -0.45% +3.09%

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 31 January 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
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 31 January 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 -4 4 £650 +6.12% 13
West London - 3 £773 - 3
East London - 1 £1,000 - 1
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 12 (29.27%) Apache Spark
2 1 (2.44%) Apache Airflow
Cloud Services
1 15 (36.59%) Azure
2 10 (24.39%) AWS
3 5 (12.20%) Azure AI
4 4 (9.76%) Azure Machine Learning
4 4 (9.76%) Cloud Computing
5 3 (7.32%) Amazon ECS
5 3 (7.32%) Amazon S3
5 3 (7.32%) AWS Lambda
5 3 (7.32%) Serverless
5 3 (7.32%) Snowflake
6 2 (4.88%) Amazon SageMaker
6 2 (4.88%) GCP
7 1 (2.44%) Amazon Bedrock
7 1 (2.44%) Dagster
7 1 (2.44%) Google Gemini
7 1 (2.44%) Prefect
7 1 (2.44%) SuccessFactors
7 1 (2.44%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 2 (4.88%) 3GPP
1 2 (4.88%) HTTP
1 2 (4.88%) Intelligent Network
1 2 (4.88%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (7.32%) Big Data
2 2 (4.88%) Pinecone
3 1 (2.44%) Geospatial Data
3 1 (2.44%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 3 (7.32%) Git
1 3 (7.32%) Jenkins
2 1 (2.44%) Visual Studio
General
1 15 (36.59%) Social Skills
2 13 (31.71%) Finance
3 10 (24.39%) Banking
3 10 (24.39%) Front Office
4 7 (17.07%) Financial Institution
5 6 (14.63%) Investment Banking
6 5 (12.20%) Analytical Skills
7 3 (7.32%) Marketing
8 2 (4.88%) Aviation
8 2 (4.88%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (4.88%) Telecoms
9 1 (2.44%) Law
9 1 (2.44%) Legal
9 1 (2.44%) Presentation Skills
9 1 (2.44%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 12 (29.27%) Data Scientist
2 10 (24.39%) Lead
3 9 (21.95%) Machine Learning Engineer
4 5 (12.20%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
4 5 (12.20%) Developer
4 5 (12.20%) Quantitative Developer
4 5 (12.20%) Senior Data Scientist
5 4 (9.76%) Lead Data Scientist
6 3 (7.32%) AWS Engineer
7 2 (4.88%) Agentic Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 2 (4.88%) Gen AI Engineer
7 2 (4.88%) Python Developer
8 1 (2.44%) Data Engineer
8 1 (2.44%) Java Developer
8 1 (2.44%) Java Quantitative Developer
8 1 (2.44%) Senior
8 1 (2.44%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (21.95%) Pandas
2 6 (14.63%) Dask
2 6 (14.63%) LangChain
2 6 (14.63%) NumPy
2 6 (14.63%) PyTorch
2 6 (14.63%) TensorFlow
3 5 (12.20%) Model Context Protocol
4 4 (9.76%) Hugging Face
4 4 (9.76%) LangGraph
5 3 (7.32%) pydantic
5 3 (7.32%) scikit-learn
5 3 (7.32%) SciPy
6 2 (4.88%) A2A Protocol
6 2 (4.88%) Faiss
Miscellaneous
1 11 (26.83%) Distributed Computing
2 10 (24.39%) Derivative
3 9 (21.95%) Algorithms
3 9 (21.95%) Equities
4 7 (17.07%) Cloud Native
5 6 (14.63%) Fixed Income
5 6 (14.63%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 6 (14.63%) Hedge funds
6 4 (9.76%) AI Agents
6 4 (9.76%) Equity Derivative
7 3 (7.32%) Multi-touch
8 2 (4.88%) Data Protection Act
8 2 (4.88%) Distributed Systems
9 1 (2.44%) Enterprise Cloud
9 1 (2.44%) Onboarding
9 1 (2.44%) Reference Data
9 1 (2.44%) Renewable Energy
Processes & Methodologies
1 33 (80.49%) Computer Science
2 32 (78.05%) AI
2 32 (78.05%) Machine Learning
3 24 (58.54%) Mathematics
4 20 (48.78%) LLM
5 17 (41.46%) Generative AI
6 15 (36.59%) Data Science
7 13 (31.71%) Deep Learning
8 12 (29.27%) Statistics
9 11 (26.83%) Data Pipeline
9 11 (26.83%) Risk Management
10 10 (24.39%) Data Engineering
10 10 (24.39%) Physics
10 10 (24.39%) Prompt Engineering
11 9 (21.95%) Natural Language Processing
12 8 (19.51%) Analytics
12 8 (19.51%) Decision-Making
12 8 (19.51%) Software Engineering
13 7 (17.07%) MLOps
13 7 (17.07%) Quantitative Finance
Programming Languages
1 34 (82.93%) Python
2 6 (14.63%) Bash
2 6 (14.63%) PowerShell
3 5 (12.20%) SQL
4 4 (9.76%) C++
5 3 (7.32%) C#
5 3 (7.32%) Java
5 3 (7.32%) R
Qualifications
1 41 (100.00%) Degree
2 37 (90.24%) Master's Degree
3 4 (9.76%) Computer Science Degree
4 3 (7.32%) Microsoft Certified Professional
5 1 (2.44%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (7.32%) QA
2 1 (2.44%) SLA
System Software
1 4 (9.76%) Docker
Systems Management
1 6 (14.63%) Terraform
2 3 (7.32%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 6 (14.63%) Databricks
2 3 (7.32%) Google
3 1 (2.44%) OpenAI
3 1 (2.44%) SAP
3 1 (2.44%) Workday