PhD Contracts in the UK excluding London

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil, EngD, Doctorate)
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the UK excluding London with a requirement for PhD qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 27 August 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Aug 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 357 341 395
Rank change year-on-year -16 +54 +70
DemandTrendContract jobs citing PhD 14 23 28
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 0.091% 0.13% 0.13%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.26% 0.36% 0.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 5 6 21
10th Percentile - £500 £231
25th Percentile £379 £575 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £625 £579
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +7.94% +15.80%
75th Percentile £508 £650 £675
90th Percentile £578 £713 £825
UK median daily rate £575 £650 £767
% change year-on-year -11.54% -15.25% +27.83%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 10 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - £20.12 -
Median hourly rate £30.29 £20.24 -
Median % change year-on-year +49.69% - -
75th Percentile £61.40 £63.75 -
90th Percentile £80.06 £65.00 -
UK median hourly rate £82.50 £21.50 -
% change year-on-year +283.72% - -

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK excluding 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 the UK excluding London.

DemandTrendContract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 5,425 6,415 7,265
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 35.26% 35.32% 33.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,202 3,848 4,599
10th Percentile £220 £290 £300
25th Percentile £391 £415 £422
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - +3.60%
75th Percentile £600 £627 £638
90th Percentile £675 £713 £706
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% +0.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 676 670 558
10th Percentile £17.87 £13.97 £14.77
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.37 £21.31
Median hourly rate £25.15 £48.56 £51.89
Median % change year-on-year -48.21% -6.42% +15.31%
75th Percentile £47.52 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £73.75 £79.25 £79.19
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year -44.11% -18.18% +22.22%

PhD
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

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

Job vacancy trend for PhD in the UK excluding London

PhD
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing PhD.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing PhD

PhD
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing PhD in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 27 August 2025.

Daily rate histogram for PhD in the UK excluding London

PhD
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing PhD.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing PhD

PhD
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing PhD in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 27 August 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for PhD in the UK excluding London

PhD
DemandTrendContract Job Locations in the UK excluding 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 UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 27 August 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
DemandTrendContract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
East of England +5 8 £408 - 52
South East +10 2 £500 -20.00% 164
Scotland - 2 £600 - 35
North of England - 1 - - 56
West Midlands - 1 - - 11
Yorkshire - 1 - - 23
Midlands - 1 - - 16
PhD
UK

PhD
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding 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 5 (35.71%) Apache Spark
2 2 (14.29%) SAS
Applications
1 2 (14.29%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 5 (35.71%) AWS
1 5 (35.71%) Azure
Communications & Networking
1 1 (7.14%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (50.00%) Hadoop
2 5 (35.71%) Big Data
2 5 (35.71%) Tableau
3 2 (14.29%) Electronic Patient Records
3 2 (14.29%) Text Mining
Development Applications
1 1 (7.14%) Subversion
General
1 8 (57.14%) Analytical Skills
2 2 (14.29%) Pharmaceutical
3 1 (7.14%) Aerospace
3 1 (7.14%) Mandarin Language
3 1 (7.14%) Military
3 1 (7.14%) Social Skills
3 1 (7.14%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 6 (42.86%) Developer
2 5 (35.71%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
2 5 (35.71%) Data Science Developer
3 2 (14.29%) Information Scientist
3 2 (14.29%) Senior
3 2 (14.29%) Trainer
4 1 (7.14%) Analyst
4 1 (7.14%) Firmware Engineer
4 1 (7.14%) FPGA Engineer
4 1 (7.14%) Insight Analyst
4 1 (7.14%) Lead
4 1 (7.14%) Lead Developer
4 1 (7.14%) Lead Software Developer
4 1 (7.14%) Resource Analyst
4 1 (7.14%) Software Analyst
4 1 (7.14%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (35.71%) Matplotlib
1 5 (35.71%) PyTorch
1 5 (35.71%) scikit-learn
1 5 (35.71%) Seaborn
1 5 (35.71%) TensorFlow
2 4 (28.57%) NumPy
2 4 (28.57%) Pandas
3 1 (7.14%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 6 (42.86%) Algorithms
2 2 (14.29%) Life Science
3 1 (7.14%) Analytical Mindset
3 1 (7.14%) Cloud Native
3 1 (7.14%) FPGA
3 1 (7.14%) Verilog
3 1 (7.14%) VHDL
Operating Systems
1 1 (7.14%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 8 (57.14%) Data Science
2 7 (50.00%) Analytics
2 7 (50.00%) Artificial Intelligence
2 7 (50.00%) Decision-Making
2 7 (50.00%) Visualisation
3 5 (35.71%) Computer Science
3 5 (35.71%) Data Analysis
3 5 (35.71%) Data Munging
3 5 (35.71%) Feature Engineering
3 5 (35.71%) Generative AI
3 5 (35.71%) LLM
3 5 (35.71%) Machine Learning
3 5 (35.71%) Reinforcement Learning
3 5 (35.71%) Statistical Modelling
4 4 (28.57%) Data Analytics
4 4 (28.57%) Predictive Analytics
4 4 (28.57%) Time Series Forecasting
5 3 (21.43%) Economics
6 2 (14.29%) Operations Research
6 2 (14.29%) Statistical Analysis
Programming Languages
1 9 (64.29%) Python
2 5 (35.71%) R
3 2 (14.29%) MATLAB
3 2 (14.29%) SQL
4 1 (7.14%) C
4 1 (7.14%) C++
4 1 (7.14%) JavaScript
4 1 (7.14%) SystemVerilog
4 1 (7.14%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 14 (100.00%) Degree
2 11 (78.57%) Master's Degree
3 2 (14.29%) Security Cleared
4 1 (7.14%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (28.57%) Data Quality
2 1 (7.14%) QA
System Software
1 1 (7.14%) Firmware
Vendors
1 2 (14.29%) PayPal
1 2 (14.29%) SAP