Job Vacancy Trend Daily Rate Trend Daily Rate Histogram Hourly Rate Trend Hourly Rate Histogram Job Locations Skill Sets
Period
to 18 August 2019

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for PhD qualifications. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months to 18 August 2019 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

Note that daily and hourly rates are treated separately in these statistics. When calculating contractor rate percentiles, daily rates are never derived from quoted hourly rates or vice versa.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil, EngD, Doctorate)
UK
6 months to
18 Aug 2019		 Same period 2018 Same period 2017
Rank 591 690 677
Rank change year-on-year +99 -13 +59
Contract jobs citing PhD 257 217 192
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 0.28% 0.21% 0.20%
As % of the Qualifications category 1.49% 1.13% 1.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 185 124 154
UK median daily rate £600 £550 £600
Median daily rate % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -
10th Percentile £333 £407 £454
90th Percentile £825 £796 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% +29.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 12 4
UK median hourly rate £47.50 £40.75 £27.40
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year +16.56% +48.74% -39.12%
10th Percentile £19.03 £28.93 £16.64
90th Percentile £56.19 £50.88 £46.98
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £30.21 £19.30
% change year-on-year +57.26% +56.54% -

PhD is in the Academic Qualifications and Professional Certifications category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for academic qualifications or professional certifications.

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK
Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 17,261 19,259 18,757
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 19.11% 18.69% 19.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,458 11,411 11,371
UK median daily rate £473 £450 £425
Median daily rate % change year-on-year +5.00% +5.88% +3.66%
10th Percentile £263 £249 £250
90th Percentile £650 £625 £600
UK excluding London median daily rate £443 £414 £400
% change year-on-year +6.89% +3.50% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 837 934 950
UK median hourly rate £36.00 £22.93 £29.84
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year +57.00% -23.14% +8.02%
10th Percentile £13.75 £12.66 £12.00
90th Percentile £60.00 £50.00 £51.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £23.00 £31.25
% change year-on-year +63.04% -26.40% +11.61%

PhD
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing PhD as a percentage of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for PhD in the UK

PhD
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

This chart provides the 3-month moving average for daily rates quoted in contract jobs citing PhD.

Contractor daily rate trend for PhD in the UK

PhD
Contractor Daily Rate Histogram

The daily rate distribution of IT jobs citing PhD over the 6 months to 18 August 2019.

Contractor daily rate histogram for PhD in the UK

PhD
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

This chart provides the 3-month moving average for contractor hourly rates quoted in IT jobs citing PhD.

Contractor hourly rate trend for PhD in the UK

PhD
Contractor Hourly Rate Histogram

The hourly rate distribution of IT jobs citing PhD over the 6 months to 18 August 2019.

Contractor hourly rate histogram for PhD in the UK

PhD
Top 12 Contract Locations

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 over the 6 months to 18 August 2019. 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
Job
Vacancies
England +96 243 £605 +10.00% 169
London +70 182 £625 +8.70% 59
UK excluding London +49 61 £500 -4.76% 134
South East +30 26 £188 -65.91% 37
East of England +39 20 £600 +48.59% 42
North of England +22 8 £750 +36.36% 12
North West +17 8 £750 +30.43% 5
Wales - 3 £450 - 2
South West -20 2 - - 12
Scotland +32 1 - - 17
Midlands +26 1 - - 7
West Midlands +17 1 - - 1

For the 6 months to 18 August 2019, IT contractor jobs citing PhD also mentioned the following skills in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads with a requirement for PhD.

1 187 (72.76%) Python
2 173 (67.32%) Data Science
3 163 (63.42%) Machine Learning
4 115 (44.75%) Mathematics
5 105 (40.86%) Degree
6 101 (39.30%) Computer Science
7 96 (37.35%) Artificial Intelligence
8 90 (35.02%) Statistics
9 81 (31.52%) C++
10 78 (30.35%) R
11 76 (29.57%) Analytics
11 76 (29.57%) Algorithms
12 74 (28.79%) Finance
13 72 (28.02%) Natural Language Processing
14 71 (27.63%) SQL
15 66 (25.68%) Visualisation
16 56 (21.79%) Deep Learning
17 51 (19.84%) Apache Spark
18 49 (19.07%) Java
19 47 (18.29%) Analytical Skills
20 46 (17.90%) Software Engineering
21 44 (17.12%) Data Analysis
21 44 (17.12%) Big Data
22 39 (15.18%) Computer Vision
23 38 (14.79%) Master's Degree
24 30 (11.67%) Statistical Analysis
25 29 (11.28%) Banking
25 29 (11.28%) Physics
25 29 (11.28%) Amazon AWS
25 29 (11.28%) Data Analytics

PhD
Co-occurring IT Skills by Category

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

Application Platforms
1 51 (19.84%) Apache Spark
2 13 (5.06%) Jupyter
3 9 (3.50%) SAS
4 6 (2.33%) Apache
4 6 (2.33%) BizTalk Server
5 4 (1.56%) Cloud Foundry
6 1 (0.39%) Apache Pig
6 1 (0.39%) Elasticsearch
6 1 (0.39%) Ethereum
Applications
1 2 (0.78%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.39%) Maya
2 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.39%) Stata
Business Applications
1 4 (1.56%) Distributed Ledger
2 1 (0.39%) Quorum
Cloud Services
1 29 (11.28%) Amazon AWS
2 26 (10.12%) Google Cloud Platform
3 23 (8.95%) Microsoft Azure
4 18 (7.00%) Power Platform
5 6 (2.33%) Cloud Computing
5 6 (2.33%) GitHub
6 4 (1.56%) AWS CloudFormation
7 3 (1.17%) Amazon Neptune
7 3 (1.17%) Azure Data Factory
7 3 (1.17%) Azure Stack
8 2 (0.78%) AWS Lambda
8 2 (0.78%) Azure Active Directory
8 2 (0.78%) Mimecast
8 2 (0.78%) Serverless
9 1 (0.39%) Azure Machine Learning
9 1 (0.39%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 9 (3.50%) Internet
2 1 (0.39%) VSAT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 44 (17.12%) Big Data
2 28 (10.89%) Hadoop
3 19 (7.39%) Text Mining
4 18 (7.00%) Data Mining
4 18 (7.00%) Power BI
5 16 (6.23%) QlikView
6 13 (5.06%) BusinessObjects
7 12 (4.67%) NoSQL
8 10 (3.89%) PostgreSQL
9 8 (3.11%) Apache Hive
9 8 (3.11%) Triplestore
10 7 (2.72%) Data Warehouse
11 6 (2.33%) BigQuery
12 5 (1.95%) MySQL
13 4 (1.56%) Data Lake
13 4 (1.56%) MongoDB
14 3 (1.17%) HBase
14 3 (1.17%) Pentaho
14 3 (1.17%) SQL Server
15 2 (0.78%) CouchDB
Development Applications
1 16 (6.23%) Git (software)
2 5 (1.95%) Jenkins
2 5 (1.95%) Metasploit
2 5 (1.95%) Snyk
2 5 (1.95%) SonarQube
3 4 (1.56%) Artifactory
3 4 (1.56%) Bitbucket
3 4 (1.56%) Cobertura
3 4 (1.56%) Gradle
4 2 (0.78%) ERwin
5 1 (0.39%) LabVIEW
5 1 (0.39%) Subversion
5 1 (0.39%) Visual Studio
5 1 (0.39%) VSS/SourceSafe
General
1 74 (28.79%) Finance
2 29 (11.28%) Banking
3 19 (7.39%) Front Office
4 17 (6.61%) Retail
5 16 (6.23%) Marketing
6 15 (5.84%) Investment Banking
7 14 (5.45%) Advertising
8 9 (3.50%) Legal
9 6 (2.33%) Retail Banking
10 5 (1.95%) Pharmaceutical
10 5 (1.95%) Public Sector
11 4 (1.56%) Automotive
11 4 (1.56%) Financial Institution
11 4 (1.56%) Manufacturing
12 3 (1.17%) Aerospace
12 3 (1.17%) Telecoms
13 2 (0.78%) Games
13 2 (0.78%) Law
14 1 (0.39%) Electronics
14 1 (0.39%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 135 (52.53%) Data Scientist
2 20 (7.78%) Developer
2 20 (7.78%) Senior Data Scientist
3 14 (5.45%) Analyst
4 12 (4.67%) Machine Learning Engineer
5 11 (4.28%) Data Engineer
6 10 (3.89%) C++ Developer
6 10 (3.89%) Computer Scientist
6 10 (3.89%) Computer Vision Scientist
6 10 (3.89%) Machine Learning Scientist
6 10 (3.89%) Quantitative Developer
7 9 (3.50%) Qualitative Analyst
7 9 (3.50%) Quantitative Analyst
8 7 (2.72%) C++ Quantitative Developer
8 7 (2.72%) Graduate
8 7 (2.72%) Python Developer
8 7 (2.72%) Statistical Researcher
9 6 (2.33%) Investment Banking C++ Developer
10 5 (1.95%) C# Developer - Investment Banking
10 5 (1.95%) C# Quant Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 72 (28.02%) Natural Language Processing
2 27 (10.51%) TensorFlow
3 22 (8.56%) Pandas
4 12 (4.67%) Keras
5 11 (4.28%) Caffe
6 8 (3.11%) Flask
7 7 (2.72%) .NET
8 6 (2.33%) JSON
8 6 (2.33%) NumPy
8 6 (2.33%) OpenCV
8 6 (2.33%) scikit-learn
8 6 (2.33%) SciPy
9 5 (1.95%) JSON-LD
9 5 (1.95%) OAuth
9 5 (1.95%) OpenID
9 5 (1.95%) PySpark
9 5 (1.95%) SAML
10 4 (1.56%) boto
10 4 (1.56%) Kafka
10 4 (1.56%) OpenMP
Miscellaneous
1 76 (29.57%) Algorithms
2 47 (18.29%) Analytical Skills
3 9 (3.50%) Credit Risk
3 9 (3.50%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 9 (3.50%) Greenfield Project
3 9 (3.50%) User Experience
4 8 (3.11%) Data Protection Act
5 7 (2.72%) Data Structures
6 6 (2.33%) FMCG
6 6 (2.33%) Internet of Things
6 6 (2.33%) Market Risk
6 6 (2.33%) Semantic Web
7 5 (1.95%) Derivative
8 4 (1.56%) Data Centre
8 4 (1.56%) Hedge funds
8 4 (1.56%) Marketing Technology
8 4 (1.56%) PKI
8 4 (1.56%) Public Cloud
9 3 (1.17%) Management Information System
9 3 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 21 (8.17%) Linux
2 10 (3.89%) Unix
3 6 (2.33%) Solaris
4 5 (1.95%) Kali Linux
5 4 (1.56%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 173 (67.32%) Data Science
2 163 (63.42%) Machine Learning
3 115 (44.75%) Mathematics
4 101 (39.30%) Computer Science
5 96 (37.35%) Artificial Intelligence
6 90 (35.02%) Statistics
7 76 (29.57%) Analytics
8 66 (25.68%) Visualisation
9 56 (21.79%) Deep Learning
10 46 (17.90%) Software Engineering
11 44 (17.12%) Data Analysis
12 39 (15.18%) Computer Vision
13 30 (11.67%) Statistical Analysis
14 29 (11.28%) Data Analytics
14 29 (11.28%) Physics
15 22 (8.56%) Data Visualisation
16 19 (7.39%) Agile Software Development
17 18 (7.00%) Microservices
18 16 (6.23%) Business Intelligence
18 16 (6.23%) Neural Network
Programming Languages
1 187 (72.76%) Python
2 81 (31.52%) C++
3 78 (30.35%) R
4 71 (27.63%) SQL
5 49 (19.07%) Java
6 25 (9.73%) Scala
7 16 (6.23%) C#
8 14 (5.45%) MATLAB
9 13 (5.06%) C
10 6 (2.33%) JavaScript
11 5 (1.95%) Go
11 5 (1.95%) SHACL
11 5 (1.95%) SPARQL
12 4 (1.56%) Perl
12 4 (1.56%) PL/SQL
13 3 (1.17%) Fortran
13 3 (1.17%) Gremlin
14 2 (0.78%) F#
14 2 (0.78%) ML
14 2 (0.78%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 105 (40.86%) Degree
2 38 (14.79%) Master's Degree
3 14 (5.45%) Security Cleared
4 8 (3.11%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (2.72%) SC Cleared
6 3 (1.17%) Numerate Degree
7 2 (0.78%) CISA
7 2 (0.78%) CISM
7 2 (0.78%) CISSP
7 2 (0.78%) GCFA
7 2 (0.78%) GCIH
7 2 (0.78%) MBA
7 2 (0.78%) Postgraduate
8 1 (0.39%) DBS Check
8 1 (0.39%) HND
8 1 (0.39%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (2.33%) Data Quality
2 5 (1.95%) GxP
3 4 (1.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 3 (1.17%) QA
5 1 (0.39%) Basel III
5 1 (0.39%) CRD IV
5 1 (0.39%) SLA
System Software
1 14 (5.45%) Docker
2 3 (1.17%) Apache Flume
3 2 (0.78%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 6 (2.33%) Kubernetes
2 5 (1.95%) Nessus
2 5 (1.95%) Nmap
2 5 (1.95%) Sysdig
3 4 (1.56%) Mesos
3 4 (1.56%) Opscode Chef
3 4 (1.56%) Puppet
3 4 (1.56%) Rancher
4 3 (1.17%) Kibana
5 2 (0.78%) CASB
6 1 (0.39%) Ambari
6 1 (0.39%) Oozie
Vendors
1 26 (10.12%) Tableau
2 10 (3.89%) Microsoft
3 7 (2.72%) Google
4 6 (2.33%) Hortonworks
5 5 (1.95%) Qualys
6 4 (1.56%) Oracle
7 3 (1.17%) Cognos
7 3 (1.17%) MapR
8 2 (0.78%) Darktrace
8 2 (0.78%) EXASOL
8 2 (0.78%) Thycotic
9 1 (0.39%) Ab Initio
9 1 (0.39%) Agilent
9 1 (0.39%) Alteryx
9 1 (0.39%) Informatica
9 1 (0.39%) Murex
9 1 (0.39%) Sun
9 1 (0.39%) Sybase
9 1 (0.39%) Talend