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 30 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 411 330 361
Rank change year-on-year -81 +31 +34
Contract jobs citing PhD 39 43 33
As % of all contract jobs in London 0.19% 0.32% 0.20%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.69% 1.22% 0.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 19 19 23
10th Percentile £415 £485 £501
25th Percentile £464 £537 £570
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £650 £625 £700
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -10.71% -22.22%
75th Percentile £743 £719 £838
90th Percentile £786 £763 £863
England median daily rate £575 £575 £675
% change year-on-year - -14.81% -11.99%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 2 0
10th Percentile £33.02 - -
25th Percentile - £78.75 -
Median hourly rate £36.00 £82.50 -
Median % change year-on-year -56.36% - -
75th Percentile £49.75 £86.25 -
90th Percentile £70.90 - -
England median hourly rate £39.25 £82.50 £39.50
% change year-on-year -52.42% +108.86% -

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 5,670 3,531 3,966
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 28.01% 26.22% 24.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,062 2,384 2,680
10th Percentile £371 £350 £350
25th Percentile £456 £430 £449
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £545 £530 £538
Median % change year-on-year +2.83% -1.40% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £654 £650
90th Percentile £737 £738 £763
England median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 94 82 65
10th Percentile £19.50 £18.87 £17.98
25th Percentile £25.44 - £22.00
Median hourly rate £52.75 £25.15 £32.29
Median % change year-on-year +109.74% -22.11% -41.29%
75th Percentile £73.00 £46.88 £48.75
90th Percentile £88.75 £65.00 £64.80
England median hourly rate £52.50 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +108.75% -49.70% -9.09%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 -24 3 £755 +0.67% 5
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 (12.82%) Apache Spark
2 1 (2.56%) Apache
2 1 (2.56%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 3 (7.69%) CPLEX
Cloud Services
1 11 (28.21%) GCP
2 6 (15.38%) AWS
2 6 (15.38%) Azure
3 4 (10.26%) Anthropic Claude
3 4 (10.26%) Google Gemini
4 1 (2.56%) Amazon Bedrock
4 1 (2.56%) Amazon SageMaker
4 1 (2.56%) AWS Fargate
4 1 (2.56%) AWS Lambda
4 1 (2.56%) Azure Machine Learning
4 1 (2.56%) GitHub
4 1 (2.56%) Serverless
4 1 (2.56%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 2 (5.13%) 3GPP
1 2 (5.13%) 5G
1 2 (5.13%) NGN
1 2 (5.13%) Radio Access Network
1 2 (5.13%) tcpdump
1 2 (5.13%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (10.26%) Data Mining
1 4 (10.26%) MongoDB
1 4 (10.26%) SQL Server
2 3 (7.69%) Big Data
2 3 (7.69%) Neo4j
3 2 (5.13%) NoSQL
4 1 (2.56%) Data Warehouse
4 1 (2.56%) KDB
4 1 (2.56%) Kdb+
4 1 (2.56%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (2.56%) Redis
4 1 (2.56%) Relational Database
4 1 (2.56%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 3 (7.69%) MLflow
2 1 (2.56%) Jenkins
General
1 16 (41.03%) Finance
2 11 (28.21%) Analytical Skills
3 9 (23.08%) Social Skills
4 5 (12.82%) Front Office
5 4 (10.26%) Manufacturing
6 3 (7.69%) Telecoms
7 2 (5.13%) Banking
7 2 (5.13%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (5.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 2 (5.13%) Public Sector
7 2 (5.13%) Retail
8 1 (2.56%) Aviation
8 1 (2.56%) Financial Institution
8 1 (2.56%) Investment Banking
8 1 (2.56%) Marketing
8 1 (2.56%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (2.56%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 10 (25.64%) Developer
2 7 (17.95%) Data Scientist
3 6 (15.38%) Senior
4 5 (12.82%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
4 5 (12.82%) Quantitative Developer
5 4 (10.26%) C# Developer
5 4 (10.26%) Front Office Developer
6 3 (7.69%) Associate Director
6 3 (7.69%) Full-Stack Engineer
6 3 (7.69%) Research Engineer
6 3 (7.69%) Senior Data Scientist
6 3 (7.69%) Software Engineer
7 2 (5.13%) Technologist
8 1 (2.56%) Analyst
8 1 (2.56%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
8 1 (2.56%) Machine Learning Scientist
8 1 (2.56%) Principal Architect
8 1 (2.56%) Python Engineer
8 1 (2.56%) Qualitative Analyst
8 1 (2.56%) Senior Quantitative Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (17.95%) LangChain
2 6 (15.38%) .NET
2 6 (15.38%) PyTorch
3 5 (12.82%) Pandas
3 5 (12.82%) PySpark
4 4 (10.26%) JSON
4 4 (10.26%) JSON Schema
4 4 (10.26%) LangGraph
4 4 (10.26%) NumPy
4 4 (10.26%) pydantic
4 4 (10.26%) scikit-learn
5 3 (7.69%) Kafka
5 3 (7.69%) Terraform
6 2 (5.13%) TensorFlow
7 1 (2.56%) ASP.NET Core
7 1 (2.56%) FastAPI
7 1 (2.56%) FIX Protocol
7 1 (2.56%) RabbitMQ
7 1 (2.56%) React
7 1 (2.56%) ZeroMQ
Miscellaneous
1 10 (25.64%) Algorithms
1 10 (25.64%) Derivative
1 10 (25.64%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 8 (20.51%) AI Agents
3 5 (12.82%) Distributed Systems
3 5 (12.82%) Equities
3 5 (12.82%) Exotic Derivative
3 5 (12.82%) Fixed Income
3 5 (12.82%) OTC Derivatives
4 4 (10.26%) Cloud Native
4 4 (10.26%) Hedge funds
5 2 (5.13%) Analytical Mindset
5 2 (5.13%) Operational Technology
5 2 (5.13%) Tandem
6 1 (2.56%) Distributed Computing
6 1 (2.56%) Equity Derivative
6 1 (2.56%) Industry 4.0
6 1 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
6 1 (2.56%) Multi-touch
6 1 (2.56%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 2 (5.13%) Linux
1 2 (5.13%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 28 (71.79%) Computer Science
2 24 (61.54%) Mathematics
3 20 (51.28%) AI
4 19 (48.72%) Machine Learning
5 15 (38.46%) Physics
6 13 (33.33%) Data Science
6 13 (33.33%) LLM
7 12 (30.77%) CI/CD
7 12 (30.77%) Software Engineering
8 10 (25.64%) Analytics
8 10 (25.64%) Generative AI
8 10 (25.64%) Statistics
9 8 (20.51%) Roadmaps
10 7 (17.95%) Technical Leadership
10 7 (17.95%) Validation
11 6 (15.38%) Containerisation
11 6 (15.38%) MLOps
11 6 (15.38%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
12 5 (12.82%) Model Validation
12 5 (12.82%) Multi-Agent System
Programming Languages
1 28 (71.79%) Python
2 7 (17.95%) C#
2 7 (17.95%) SQL
3 5 (12.82%) C++
3 5 (12.82%) Java
4 2 (5.13%) Bash
4 2 (5.13%) JavaScript
4 2 (5.13%) PowerShell
4 2 (5.13%) R
5 1 (2.56%) C
5 1 (2.56%) MATLAB
5 1 (2.56%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 37 (94.87%) Degree
2 27 (69.23%) Master's Degree
3 11 (28.21%) Computer Science Degree
4 3 (7.69%) BPSS Clearance
5 1 (2.56%) Microsoft Certified Professional
5 1 (2.56%) Postgraduate
5 1 (2.56%) SC Cleared
5 1 (2.56%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (2.56%) Actionable Recommendations
1 1 (2.56%) Data Quality
1 1 (2.56%) GDPR
System Software
1 8 (20.51%) Docker
2 1 (2.56%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 5 (12.82%) Kubernetes
2 2 (5.13%) MOM
3 1 (2.56%) Ansible
Vendors
1 6 (15.38%) Google
2 5 (12.82%) OpenAI
3 2 (5.13%) AVEVA
3 2 (5.13%) Databricks
3 2 (5.13%) Siemens
4 1 (2.56%) Calypso
4 1 (2.56%) Foundry
4 1 (2.56%) Microsoft
4 1 (2.56%) Murex