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 17 September 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 322 356 386
Rank change year-on-year +34 +30 +97
Contract jobs citing PhD 40 32 59
As % of all contract jobs advertised in London 0.30% 0.20% 0.27%
As % of the Qualifications category 1.13% 0.81% 1.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 17 21 50
10th Percentile £479 £500 £653
25th Percentile £537 £540 £700
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £700 £875
Median % change year-on-year -17.86% -20.00% +25.00%
75th Percentile £675 £825 £1,000
90th Percentile £763 £863 -
England median daily rate £566 £650 £750
% change year-on-year -12.92% -13.33% +20.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £78.75 - -
Median hourly rate £82.50 - -
75th Percentile £86.25 - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £82.50 £21.50 -
% change year-on-year +283.72% - -

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 3,543 3,934 5,046
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 26.38% 24.36% 23.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,385 2,571 3,485
10th Percentile £355 £350 £355
25th Percentile £436 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -2.27% -4.35%
75th Percentile £653 £650 £675
90th Percentile £738 £760 £785
England median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 57 87
10th Percentile £18.87 £18.03 £19.06
25th Percentile - £22.00 £23.63
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.29 £54.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.11% -40.20% +21.20%
75th Percentile £35.00 £53.75 £65.05
90th Percentile £65.00 £66.20 £78.50
England median hourly rate £25.15 £54.00 £54.44
% change year-on-year -53.43% -0.81% +20.98%

PhD
Job Vacancy Trend in London

Job postings citing PhD as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in London.

Job vacancy trend for PhD 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 17 September 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 17 September 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 +6 6 £663 +9.28% 45
PhD
England

PhD
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in London by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 21 (52.50%) Apache Spark
Cloud Services
1 11 (27.50%) AWS
1 11 (27.50%) Azure
2 1 (2.50%) Amazon Bedrock
2 1 (2.50%) Amazon SageMaker
2 1 (2.50%) Azure AI
2 1 (2.50%) Azure Machine Learning
2 1 (2.50%) GCP
2 1 (2.50%) Google Gemini
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (12.50%) Hadoop
2 4 (10.00%) Big Data
2 4 (10.00%) Data Mining
2 4 (10.00%) Geospatial Data
3 3 (7.50%) Apache Hive
4 1 (2.50%) MySQL
4 1 (2.50%) Pinecone
4 1 (2.50%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 2 (5.00%) MLflow
2 1 (2.50%) Bitbucket
2 1 (2.50%) Git
2 1 (2.50%) JIRA
2 1 (2.50%) TeamCity
General
1 15 (37.50%) Finance
2 10 (25.00%) Marketing
3 6 (15.00%) Analytical Skills
4 5 (12.50%) Public Sector
5 4 (10.00%) Banking
5 4 (10.00%) Social Skills
6 3 (7.50%) Electronics
6 3 (7.50%) Financial Institution
6 3 (7.50%) Front Office
6 3 (7.50%) Manufacturing
6 3 (7.50%) Telecoms
7 1 (2.50%) Retail
Job Titles
1 15 (37.50%) Data Scientist
2 9 (22.50%) Machine Learning Engineer
3 5 (12.50%) AWS Engineer
4 4 (10.00%) Senior
5 3 (7.50%) Developer
5 3 (7.50%) FPGA Engineer
5 3 (7.50%) Senior Data Scientist
6 2 (5.00%) Analyst
6 2 (5.00%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
6 2 (5.00%) Big Data Engineer
6 2 (5.00%) Gen AI Specialist
6 2 (5.00%) Java Engineer
6 2 (5.00%) Qualitative Analyst
6 2 (5.00%) Quantitative Analyst
7 1 (2.50%) Data Science Developer
7 1 (2.50%) Firmware Engineer
7 1 (2.50%) Gen AI Engineer
7 1 (2.50%) Lead
7 1 (2.50%) Lead Data Scientist
7 1 (2.50%) Research Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (27.50%) Pandas
2 8 (20.00%) TensorFlow
3 5 (12.50%) PySpark
3 5 (12.50%) PyTorch
4 4 (10.00%) scikit-learn
5 3 (7.50%) REST
6 2 (5.00%) LangChain
7 1 (2.50%) Faiss
7 1 (2.50%) FIX Protocol
7 1 (2.50%) Hugging Face
7 1 (2.50%) Matplotlib
7 1 (2.50%) NumPy
7 1 (2.50%) Protocol Buffers
7 1 (2.50%) Seaborn
Miscellaneous
1 9 (22.50%) Distributed Computing
2 8 (20.00%) Algorithms
3 7 (17.50%) Derivative
3 7 (17.50%) Equity Derivative
4 6 (15.00%) Multi-touch
5 4 (10.00%) Distributed Systems
6 3 (7.50%) Credit Risk
6 3 (7.50%) FPGA
6 3 (7.50%) Verilog
6 3 (7.50%) VHDL
7 2 (5.00%) AI Agents
7 2 (5.00%) Data Structures
7 2 (5.00%) Social Media
8 1 (2.50%) Data Protection Act
8 1 (2.50%) Distributed Architecture
8 1 (2.50%) Exotic Derivative
8 1 (2.50%) FMCG
8 1 (2.50%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 1 (2.50%) Reference Data
Processes & Methodologies
1 25 (62.50%) Computer Science
1 25 (62.50%) Machine Learning
2 24 (60.00%) Mathematics
3 20 (50.00%) Data Science
4 16 (40.00%) Validation
5 14 (35.00%) Artificial Intelligence
5 14 (35.00%) Model Validation
6 11 (27.50%) Deep Learning
7 10 (25.00%) Data Analysis
7 10 (25.00%) Statistics
8 9 (22.50%) Statistical Modelling
9 8 (20.00%) Data Extraction
9 8 (20.00%) LLM
10 7 (17.50%) Bayesian Methods
10 7 (17.50%) Generative AI
10 7 (17.50%) Marketing Mix
11 6 (15.00%) Applied Mathematics
11 6 (15.00%) Data Collection
11 6 (15.00%) Low Latency
11 6 (15.00%) Physics
Programming Languages
1 34 (85.00%) Python
2 13 (32.50%) SQL
3 10 (25.00%) C++
4 8 (20.00%) Java
4 8 (20.00%) R
5 5 (12.50%) C
6 3 (7.50%) SystemVerilog
7 2 (5.00%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 40 (100.00%) Degree
2 27 (67.50%) Master's Degree
3 4 (10.00%) Computer Science Degree
4 1 (2.50%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (2.50%) Data Quality
1 1 (2.50%) QA
System Software
1 4 (10.00%) Docker
2 3 (7.50%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 2 (5.00%) Kubeflow
1 2 (5.00%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 3 (7.50%) SAP
2 2 (5.00%) Microsoft
3 1 (2.50%) OpenAI