PhD Contracts

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil, EngD, Doctorate)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for PhD qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 5 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 465 495 536
Rank change year-on-year +30 +41 +151
Contract jobs citing PhD 85 79 143
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.27% 0.18% 0.25%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.87% 0.61% 0.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 35 39 95
10th Percentile £474 £373 £435
25th Percentile £508 £515 £623
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £565 £600 £750
Median % change year-on-year -5.83% -20.00% +27.12%
75th Percentile £675 £775 £950
90th Percentile £763 £875 £1,000
UK excluding London median daily rate £638 £650 £579
% change year-on-year -1.92% +12.26% +10.39%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 15 0
10th Percentile £30.29 - -
25th Percentile £37.65 £20.12 -
Median hourly rate £45.00 £21.86 -
Median % change year-on-year +105.86% - -
75th Percentile £86.25 £65.00 -
90th Percentile £88.75 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £57.50 -
% change year-on-year -21.74% - -

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK

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.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 9,820 12,922 15,172
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.88% 29.81% 26.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,076 8,015 10,048
10th Percentile £275 £310 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £521 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.81% -4.55% +3.77%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £703 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £527 £525
% change year-on-year -5.12% +0.38% +5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 657 1,098 739
10th Percentile £17.87 £14.00 £15.24
25th Percentile £20.15 £20.12 £22.51
Median hourly rate £27.53 £40.97 £55.25
Median % change year-on-year -32.80% -25.85% +24.16%
75th Percentile £59.00 £65.00 £68.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.24 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.23 £43.00 £53.35
% change year-on-year -41.34% -19.40% +51.99%

PhD
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for PhD in the UK

PhD
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing PhD.

Daily rate trend for PhD in the UK

PhD
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing PhD over the 6 months to 5 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for PhD in the UK

PhD
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing PhD.

Hourly rate trend for PhD in the UK

PhD
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing PhD over the 6 months to 5 July 2025.

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 5 July 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
England +49 68 £561 -6.50% 2,194
London +53 48 £561 -6.50% 1,162
Work from Home +41 36 £549 -15.62% 1,066
UK excluding London +35 27 £638 -1.92% 1,175
East of England +23 13 £650 -27.78% 272
Wales +10 9 - - 42
South East +28 2 £563 -10.00% 299
Midlands +9 1 - - 140
West Midlands +7 1 - - 85
North of England +4 1 - - 198
Scotland - 1 - - 110
Yorkshire - 1 - - 58

PhD
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities 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 44 (51.76%) Apache Spark
2 3 (3.53%) SAS
3 2 (2.35%) Apache
4 1 (1.18%) Ethereum
4 1 (1.18%) Hyperledger
4 1 (1.18%) MetaMask
Applications
1 2 (2.35%) Chatbot
2 1 (1.18%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 1 (1.18%) R3 Corda
Cloud Services
1 27 (31.76%) Azure
2 23 (27.06%) AWS
3 2 (2.35%) Azure DevOps
4 1 (1.18%) Azure Machine Learning
4 1 (1.18%) GCP
4 1 (1.18%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 4 (4.71%) Firewall
2 2 (2.35%) Network Security
3 1 (1.18%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (25.88%) Hadoop
2 16 (18.82%) Big Data
3 10 (11.76%) Tableau
4 7 (8.24%) Apache Hive
5 5 (5.88%) Data Mining
6 3 (3.53%) MySQL
7 2 (2.35%) Electronic Patient Records
7 2 (2.35%) Text Mining
8 1 (1.18%) MongoDB
8 1 (1.18%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 4 (4.71%) Git
2 2 (2.35%) MLflow
2 2 (2.35%) Visual Studio
3 1 (1.18%) Bitbucket
3 1 (1.18%) Hardhat
3 1 (1.18%) JIRA
3 1 (1.18%) ReSharper
3 1 (1.18%) TeamCity
General
1 22 (25.88%) Analytical Skills
2 21 (24.71%) Finance
3 17 (20.00%) Marketing
4 10 (11.76%) Banking
5 9 (10.59%) Social Skills
6 7 (8.24%) Presentation Skills
7 6 (7.06%) Telecoms
8 5 (5.88%) Financial Institution
8 5 (5.88%) Public Sector
9 4 (4.71%) Digital Health
9 4 (4.71%) Electronics
9 4 (4.71%) Front Office
9 4 (4.71%) Manufacturing
10 2 (2.35%) Pharmaceutical
11 1 (1.18%) Investment Banking
11 1 (1.18%) Legal
11 1 (1.18%) Mandarin Language
11 1 (1.18%) Retail
Job Titles
1 26 (30.59%) Senior
2 16 (18.82%) Developer
3 15 (17.65%) Data Scientist
4 14 (16.47%) Machine Learning Engineer
5 11 (12.94%) Data Science Developer
6 8 (9.41%) Senior Data Scientist
7 7 (8.24%) AWS Engineer
8 5 (5.88%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
8 5 (5.88%) Gen AI Specialist
8 5 (5.88%) Research Scientist
8 5 (5.88%) Senior Developer
9 4 (4.71%) FPGA Engineer
9 4 (4.71%) Java Engineer
9 4 (4.71%) Senior User Experience Researcher
9 4 (4.71%) User Experience Researcher
10 3 (3.53%) Analyst
10 3 (3.53%) Artificial Intelligence Specialist
10 3 (3.53%) Big Data Engineer
10 3 (3.53%) Security Researcher
11 2 (2.35%) Trainer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (25.88%) TensorFlow
2 21 (24.71%) Pandas
3 15 (17.65%) PyTorch
3 15 (17.65%) scikit-learn
4 10 (11.76%) Matplotlib
4 10 (11.76%) PySpark
4 10 (11.76%) Seaborn
5 9 (10.59%) NumPy
6 3 (3.53%) REST
7 2 (2.35%) .NET
7 2 (2.35%) .NET Core
7 2 (2.35%) .NET Framework
7 2 (2.35%) React
7 2 (2.35%) WCF
7 2 (2.35%) WPF
8 1 (1.18%) AWS CDK
8 1 (1.18%) RESTful
8 1 (1.18%) Silverlight
8 1 (1.18%) Vue
8 1 (1.18%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 24 (28.24%) Algorithms
2 15 (17.65%) Distributed Computing
3 10 (11.76%) Multi-touch
4 8 (9.41%) Derivative
5 7 (8.24%) Equity Derivative
6 6 (7.06%) Credit Risk
6 6 (7.06%) Distributed Systems
6 6 (7.06%) Life Science
7 4 (4.71%) Cyberattack
7 4 (4.71%) FPGA
7 4 (4.71%) Verilog
7 4 (4.71%) VHDL
8 3 (3.53%) Blog
9 2 (2.35%) Cloud Native
9 2 (2.35%) Data Structures
9 2 (2.35%) Onboarding
9 2 (2.35%) Self-Motivation
10 1 (1.18%) Acoustics
10 1 (1.18%) AI Agents
10 1 (1.18%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 1 (1.18%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 53 (62.35%) Machine Learning
2 52 (61.18%) Computer Science
3 35 (41.18%) Artificial Intelligence
3 35 (41.18%) Data Science
4 33 (38.82%) Mathematics
5 26 (30.59%) Data Analysis
6 22 (25.88%) Analytics
6 22 (25.88%) Statistical Modelling
7 20 (23.53%) Deep Learning
7 20 (23.53%) LLM
8 19 (22.35%) Generative AI
9 17 (20.00%) Validation
10 16 (18.82%) Statistics
11 15 (17.65%) Data Analytics
11 15 (17.65%) Visualisation
12 14 (16.47%) Data Extraction
12 14 (16.47%) Decision-Making
12 14 (16.47%) Model Validation
13 12 (14.12%) Feature Engineering
13 12 (14.12%) Physics
Programming Languages
1 65 (76.47%) Python
2 24 (28.24%) SQL
3 20 (23.53%) R
4 18 (21.18%) C++
5 13 (15.29%) Java
6 11 (12.94%) C
7 6 (7.06%) Rust
8 5 (5.88%) Shell Script
9 4 (4.71%) SystemVerilog
10 3 (3.53%) MATLAB
11 2 (2.35%) C#
12 1 (1.18%) Go
12 1 (1.18%) JavaScript
12 1 (1.18%) Solidity
12 1 (1.18%) TypeScript
12 1 (1.18%) XAML
Qualifications
1 84 (98.82%) Degree
2 67 (78.82%) Master's Degree
3 11 (12.94%) Computer Science Degree
4 4 (4.71%) CCNA
4 4 (4.71%) Cisco Certification
5 3 (3.53%) BPSS Clearance
5 3 (3.53%) Security Cleared
6 2 (2.35%) SC Cleared
7 1 (1.18%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (10.59%) Data Quality
2 2 (2.35%) QA
System Software
1 5 (5.88%) Docker
2 4 (4.71%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 3 (3.53%) Kubernetes
2 2 (2.35%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 6 (7.06%) SAP
2 4 (4.71%) Cisco
3 2 (2.35%) Microsoft
3 2 (2.35%) OpenAI
3 2 (2.35%) PayPal
4 1 (1.18%) Databricks
4 1 (1.18%) Oracle
4 1 (1.18%) Salesforce