PhD Contract Job Trends

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 3 October 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 478 511 554
Rank change year-on-year +33 +43 +106
Contract jobs citing PhD 75 58 91
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.23% 0.15% 0.19%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.71% 0.52% 0.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 30 26 72
10th Percentile £450 £463 £516
25th Percentile £493 £549 £654
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £566 £663 £750
Median % change year-on-year -14.57% -11.67% +11.11%
75th Percentile £672 £844 £1,000
90th Percentile £684 £931 -
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £600 £616
% change year-on-year -15.83% -2.52% +17.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 12 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - £20.12 -
Median hourly rate £29.61 £20.87 -
Median % change year-on-year +41.90% - -
75th Percentile £44.28 £22.77 -
90th Percentile £86.25 £59.93 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.61 £20.24 -
% change year-on-year +46.33% - -

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 10,493 11,139 13,758
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.66% 29.29% 28.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,546 6,767 8,863
10th Percentile £290 £313 £325
25th Percentile £413 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £634 £650
90th Percentile £708 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £521 £538
% change year-on-year -4.08% -3.02% +3.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 884 610 726
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.99 £16.42
25th Percentile £18.87 £25.26 £24.31
Median hourly rate £25.15 £48.18 £53.58
Median % change year-on-year -47.80% -10.08% +19.07%
75th Percentile £42.25 £68.00 £68.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.02 £78.36
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £51.90
% change year-on-year -49.70% -3.66% +15.33%

PhD
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing PhD relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

PhD job vacancy trend in the UK

PhD
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

PhD
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing PhD over the 6 months to 3 October 2025.

Daily rate histogram for PhD in the UK

PhD
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

PhD
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing PhD over the 6 months to 3 October 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for PhD in the UK

PhD
Top 11 Contract Job 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 3 October 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 +20 66 £557 -15.92% 314
London +31 41 £575 -20.69% 110
Work from Home +47 36 £537 -6.81% 333
UK excluding London +8 25 £505 -15.83% 243
East of England 0 10 £456 - 28
South East +13 9 £500 -16.67% 60
North of England - 4 £537 - 81
Yorkshire - 4 £537 - 37
Midlands - 1 - - 39
West Midlands - 1 - - 24
Scotland - 1 £600 - 23

PhD
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 28 (37.33%) Apache Spark
2 3 (4.00%) Confluence
2 3 (4.00%) SAS
Applications
1 9 (12.00%) Chatbot
2 1 (1.33%) Simulink
Cloud Services
1 21 (28.00%) AWS
2 20 (26.67%) Azure
3 3 (4.00%) GCP
4 2 (2.67%) Amazon SageMaker
4 2 (2.67%) Azure AI
4 2 (2.67%) Cloud Computing
4 2 (2.67%) GitHub
5 1 (1.33%) Amazon Bedrock
5 1 (1.33%) Azure Machine Learning
5 1 (1.33%) Google Gemini
5 1 (1.33%) SuccessFactors
5 1 (1.33%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 2 (2.67%) Kerberos
2 1 (1.33%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (16.00%) Hadoop
2 9 (12.00%) Big Data
3 6 (8.00%) Tableau
4 4 (5.33%) Data Mining
4 4 (5.33%) Geospatial Data
5 3 (4.00%) Apache Hive
6 2 (2.67%) Electronic Patient Records
6 2 (2.67%) Pinecone
6 2 (2.67%) Text Mining
7 1 (1.33%) GIS
7 1 (1.33%) MySQL
7 1 (1.33%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 4 (5.33%) JIRA
2 2 (2.67%) MLflow
3 1 (1.33%) Bitbucket
3 1 (1.33%) Git
3 1 (1.33%) Subversion
3 1 (1.33%) TeamCity
General
1 21 (28.00%) Analytical Skills
2 18 (24.00%) Finance
3 12 (16.00%) Marketing
4 6 (8.00%) Social Skills
5 5 (6.67%) Public Sector
6 4 (5.33%) Banking
6 4 (5.33%) Telecoms
7 3 (4.00%) Electronics
7 3 (4.00%) Financial Institution
7 3 (4.00%) Front Office
7 3 (4.00%) Legal
7 3 (4.00%) Manufacturing
8 2 (2.67%) Pharmaceutical
9 1 (1.33%) Aerospace
9 1 (1.33%) Agriculture
9 1 (1.33%) Agrochemical
9 1 (1.33%) Law
9 1 (1.33%) Military
9 1 (1.33%) Retail
Job Titles
1 18 (24.00%) Data Scientist
2 10 (13.33%) Developer
3 9 (12.00%) Machine Learning Engineer
3 9 (12.00%) Trainer
4 8 (10.67%) Senior
5 6 (8.00%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
5 6 (8.00%) Data Science Developer
6 5 (6.67%) AWS Engineer
6 5 (6.67%) Senior Data Scientist
7 3 (4.00%) Architect
7 3 (4.00%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 3 (4.00%) FPGA Engineer
7 3 (4.00%) Lead
8 2 (2.67%) Analyst
8 2 (2.67%) Artificial Intelligence Specialist
8 2 (2.67%) Design Engineer
8 2 (2.67%) Information Scientist
8 2 (2.67%) Java Engineer
8 2 (2.67%) Qualitative Analyst
8 2 (2.67%) Quantitative Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (22.67%) Pandas
2 15 (20.00%) TensorFlow
3 12 (16.00%) PyTorch
4 9 (12.00%) scikit-learn
5 6 (8.00%) Matplotlib
5 6 (8.00%) Seaborn
6 5 (6.67%) NumPy
6 5 (6.67%) PySpark
7 3 (4.00%) LangChain
7 3 (4.00%) REST
8 2 (2.67%) Faiss
8 2 (2.67%) OAuth
8 2 (2.67%) SAML
9 1 (1.33%) AWS CDK
9 1 (1.33%) FIX Protocol
9 1 (1.33%) HTML
9 1 (1.33%) Hugging Face
9 1 (1.33%) LangGraph
9 1 (1.33%) Protocol Buffers
Miscellaneous
1 19 (25.33%) Algorithms
2 10 (13.33%) Distributed Computing
3 8 (10.67%) Multi-touch
4 7 (9.33%) Derivative
4 7 (9.33%) Equity Derivative
5 4 (5.33%) Distributed Systems
6 3 (4.00%) AI Agents
6 3 (4.00%) Credit Risk
6 3 (4.00%) FPGA
6 3 (4.00%) Verilog
6 3 (4.00%) VHDL
7 2 (2.67%) Cloud Native
7 2 (2.67%) Data Structures
7 2 (2.67%) Life Science
7 2 (2.67%) Management Information System
7 2 (2.67%) Omics
7 2 (2.67%) Social Media
8 1 (1.33%) Acoustics
8 1 (1.33%) Analytical Mindset
8 1 (1.33%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 3 (4.00%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 42 (56.00%) Computer Science
2 37 (49.33%) Machine Learning
3 34 (45.33%) Data Science
4 33 (44.00%) Artificial Intelligence
5 29 (38.67%) Mathematics
6 20 (26.67%) Validation
7 18 (24.00%) Data Analysis
8 17 (22.67%) LLM
9 16 (21.33%) Generative AI
9 16 (21.33%) Model Validation
9 16 (21.33%) Statistical Modelling
10 13 (17.33%) Deep Learning
10 13 (17.33%) Visualisation
11 12 (16.00%) Analytics
11 12 (16.00%) Decision-Making
11 12 (16.00%) Statistics
12 10 (13.33%) Conversational UI
12 10 (13.33%) Data Extraction
13 9 (12.00%) Chemistry
13 9 (12.00%) Marketing Mix
Programming Languages
1 53 (70.67%) Python
2 17 (22.67%) SQL
3 16 (21.33%) R
4 12 (16.00%) C++
5 8 (10.67%) Java
6 7 (9.33%) C
7 3 (4.00%) MATLAB
7 3 (4.00%) SystemVerilog
8 2 (2.67%) Bash
8 2 (2.67%) Shell Script
8 2 (2.67%) TypeScript
9 1 (1.33%) JavaScript
Qualifications
1 74 (98.67%) Degree
2 55 (73.33%) Master's Degree
3 5 (6.67%) Computer Science Degree
4 4 (5.33%) Security Cleared
5 3 (4.00%) CISM
5 3 (4.00%) CISSP
5 3 (4.00%) TOGAF Certification
6 2 (2.67%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (8.00%) Data Quality
2 2 (2.67%) NIST
2 2 (2.67%) QA
System Software
1 4 (5.33%) Docker
2 3 (4.00%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 2 (2.67%) Kubeflow
1 2 (2.67%) Kubernetes
1 2 (2.67%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 9 (12.00%) PayPal
2 6 (8.00%) SAP
3 3 (4.00%) BiZZdesign
4 2 (2.67%) Microsoft
5 1 (1.33%) Centrify
5 1 (1.33%) CyberArk
5 1 (1.33%) OpenAI
5 1 (1.33%) Workday