PHP Contract Job Trends in the South East

PHP
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the South East requiring PHP skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 13 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 178 145 174
Rank change year-on-year -33 +29 +29
Contract jobs citing PHP 11 30 37
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 0.26% 0.76% 0.71%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.16% 2.79% 3.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 9 15 27
10th Percentile £338 £380 £320
25th Percentile £375 £444 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £550 £405
Median % change year-on-year -22.73% +35.80% +1.25%
75th Percentile £438 £664 £544
90th Percentile £600 £671 £660
England median daily rate £403 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -5.29% - -5.56%

All Programming Languages
South East

PHP falls under the Programming Languages category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring coding skills in the South East.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 951 1,076 1,208
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 22.42% 27.16% 23.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 667 680 856
10th Percentile £250 £318 £350
25th Percentile £375 £409 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £504 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.23% -4.05% -2.33%
75th Percentile £575 £621 £615
90th Percentile £638 £663 £675
England median daily rate £513 £543 £550
% change year-on-year -5.57% -1.32% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 43 58
10th Percentile £40.00 £27.15 £43.97
25th Percentile £46.25 £49.25 £50.00
Median hourly rate £55.00 £62.50 £57.41
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% +8.87% -4.32%
75th Percentile £57.50 £70.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £58.60 £75.00 £76.53
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.18
% change year-on-year - +4.54% -1.04%

PHP
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing PHP relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East.

PHP job vacancy trend in the South East

PHP
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing PHP.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing PHP

PHP
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing PHP in the South East over the 6 months to 13 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for PHP in the South East

PHP
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing PHP.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing PHP

PHP
Contract Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing PHP within the South East region over the 6 months to 13 December 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
Thames Valley -8 9 £413 -35.67% 11
Berkshire -2 6 £425 -35.48% 5
Buckinghamshire -1 2 £369 -32.95% 5
Hampshire -13 2 £600 +26.32% 13
Oxfordshire - 1 £275 - 1
PHP
England

PHP
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 2 (18.18%) Apache
2 1 (9.09%) WordPress
Cloud Services
1 5 (45.45%) Azure
1 5 (45.45%) Azure DevOps
1 5 (45.45%) Azure Functions
1 5 (45.45%) GitHub
1 5 (45.45%) GitHub Actions
1 5 (45.45%) Serverless
2 3 (27.27%) AWS
2 3 (27.27%) Azure API Management
2 3 (27.27%) Azure Monitor
2 3 (27.27%) Entra ID
3 2 (18.18%) Azure AKS
4 1 (9.09%) PaaS
4 1 (9.09%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 2 (18.18%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (18.18%) MySQL
2 1 (9.09%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (9.09%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 5 (45.45%) Jenkins
2 2 (18.18%) Git
2 2 (18.18%) MSI
2 2 (18.18%) Robot Framework
2 2 (18.18%) Sonatype Nexus
3 1 (9.09%) PHPUnit
General
1 4 (36.36%) Social Skills
2 3 (27.27%) Analytical Skills
2 3 (27.27%) Billing
3 1 (9.09%) Documentation Skills
3 1 (9.09%) Finance
3 1 (9.09%) Public Sector
3 1 (9.09%) Retail
3 1 (9.09%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 5 (45.45%) DevOps Engineer
2 4 (36.36%) Senior
2 4 (36.36%) Senior DevOps
2 4 (36.36%) Senior DevOps Engineer
3 3 (27.27%) Active Directory Engineer
3 3 (27.27%) Azure DevOps Engineer
3 3 (27.27%) Azure Engineer
4 2 (18.18%) 3rd Line Engineer
4 2 (18.18%) Developer
4 2 (18.18%) Integration Engineer
4 2 (18.18%) PHP Developer
4 2 (18.18%) Senior Active Directory Engineer
5 1 (9.09%) Architect
5 1 (9.09%) Delphi Software Engineer
5 1 (9.09%) PHP WordPress Developer
5 1 (9.09%) Software Engineer
5 1 (9.09%) Solutions Architect
5 1 (9.09%) WordPress Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (54.55%) .NET
1 6 (54.55%) REST
2 5 (45.45%) .NET Core
2 5 (45.45%) GraphQL
3 3 (27.27%) ARM Templates
3 3 (27.27%) OAuth
3 3 (27.27%) OAuth2
3 3 (27.27%) OpenID
3 3 (27.27%) SAML
4 2 (18.18%) .NET Framework
4 2 (18.18%) ASP.NET
4 2 (18.18%) Microsoft Graph
5 1 (9.09%) CSS
5 1 (9.09%) CSS3
5 1 (9.09%) HTML
5 1 (9.09%) HTML5
5 1 (9.09%) Laravel
5 1 (9.09%) Symfony
5 1 (9.09%) Vue
5 1 (9.09%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 3 (27.27%) Linux Command Line
2 2 (18.18%) PKI
3 1 (9.09%) Legacy Code
3 1 (9.09%) TM Forum
Operating Systems
1 3 (27.27%) Linux
1 3 (27.27%) Windows
1 3 (27.27%) Windows Server
2 2 (18.18%) CentOS
2 2 (18.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 2 (18.18%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 7 (63.64%) DevOps
2 5 (45.45%) Agile
2 5 (45.45%) AI
2 5 (45.45%) CI/CD
2 5 (45.45%) DevSecOps
3 4 (36.36%) Data Governance
3 4 (36.36%) Test Automation
4 3 (27.27%) Analytics
4 3 (27.27%) API Management
4 3 (27.27%) B2C
4 3 (27.27%) CRM
4 3 (27.27%) Identity Management
4 3 (27.27%) Infrastructure as Code
4 3 (27.27%) Log Analytics
4 3 (27.27%) MLOps
4 3 (27.27%) Problem-Solving
4 3 (27.27%) RBAC
4 3 (27.27%) User Experience
5 2 (18.18%) Containerisation
5 2 (18.18%) Knowledge Transfer
Programming Languages
1 8 (72.73%) Python
2 7 (63.64%) JavaScript
2 7 (63.64%) PowerShell
3 6 (54.55%) C#
4 5 (45.45%) Bash
5 2 (18.18%) Java
6 1 (9.09%) Delphi
6 1 (9.09%) SQL
Qualifications
1 3 (27.27%) Security Cleared
2 2 (18.18%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (27.27%) Data Quality
System Software
1 4 (36.36%) Active Directory
2 3 (27.27%) Docker
3 2 (18.18%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 5 (45.45%) Terraform
2 2 (18.18%) Ansible
2 2 (18.18%) Kubernetes
2 2 (18.18%) WMI
Vendors
1 4 (36.36%) Microsoft
2 2 (18.18%) VMware