PHP Contract Job Trends

PHP
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring PHP skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 26 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 413 340 296
Rank change year-on-year -73 -44 +62
Contract jobs citing PHP 173 219 327
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.47% 0.65% 0.75%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.50% 1.99% 2.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 120 154 255
10th Percentile £300 £314 £263
25th Percentile £363 £345 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £450 £425
Median % change year-on-year -5.56% +5.88% -5.56%
75th Percentile £470 £550 £558
90th Percentile £563 £600 £633
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £475 £400
% change year-on-year -10.53% +18.75% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 2 6
10th Percentile - £35.05 £17.31
25th Percentile £43.84 £37.75 £19.82
Median hourly rate £44.90 £43.50 £27.77
Median % change year-on-year +3.21% +56.67% -66.75%
75th Percentile £45.95 £49.25 £49.84
90th Percentile - £51.95 £56.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £26.78
% change year-on-year - - +53.29%

All Programming Languages
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 11,520 10,978 13,357
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.98% 32.53% 30.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,624 7,035 9,504
10th Percentile £350 £350 £358
25th Percentile £413 £425 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.29% -4.55% -2.65%
75th Percentile £615 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £476 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.31% -2.50% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 380 250 416
10th Percentile £31.57 £21.25 £35.00
25th Percentile £50.81 £40.06 £47.31
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% - -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.56 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.25 £85.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year +1.97% -1.93% -

PHP
Job Vacancy Trend

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

PHP job vacancy trend in the UK

PHP
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

PHP
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing PHP over the 6 months to 26 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for PHP in the UK

PHP
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

PHP
Top 16 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing PHP within the UK over the 6 months to 26 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
England -86 145 £425 - 655
UK excluding London -70 84 £425 -10.53% 663
Work from Home -28 59 £420 +5.00% 441
London -45 49 £410 -2.96% 47
North of England -42 36 £425 -15.00% 188
Yorkshire -29 18 £450 -12.20% 91
East of England -18 16 £475 +31.94% 92
North West -24 15 £359 -27.47% 82
Midlands -43 13 £510 +27.50% 128
South East -35 9 £413 -19.51% 128
East Midlands -14 7 £515 +28.75% 54
South West -5 6 £638 +79.83% 85
West Midlands -34 6 £419 +8.06% 69
Scotland 0 3 £69 -83.45% 23
North East - 3 - - 16
Wales -14 1 £425 -20.93% 19

PHP
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 13 (7.51%) SugarCRM
1 13 (7.51%) WebLogic
1 13 (7.51%) WebSphere
2 10 (5.78%) WordPress
3 7 (4.05%) Drupal
4 4 (2.31%) CMS
4 4 (2.31%) SharePoint
5 3 (1.73%) Confluence
5 3 (1.73%) SAS
6 2 (1.16%) FileNet
7 1 (0.58%) nginx
Applications
1 8 (4.62%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (2.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (2.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 3 (1.73%) Magento
2 2 (1.16%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 63 (36.42%) AWS
2 38 (21.97%) Azure
3 21 (12.14%) GitHub
4 16 (9.25%) SaaS
5 12 (6.94%) GCP
6 9 (5.20%) GitHub Actions
7 7 (4.05%) Azure DevOps
7 7 (4.05%) Serverless
8 6 (3.47%) PaaS
9 5 (2.89%) Azure Functions
9 5 (2.89%) ChatGPT
9 5 (2.89%) GitHub Copilot
9 5 (2.89%) IaaS
9 5 (2.89%) OpenShift
10 3 (1.73%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 3 (1.73%) Azure API Management
10 3 (1.73%) Azure Monitor
10 3 (1.73%) Entra ID
11 2 (1.16%) Amazon ECS
11 2 (1.16%) Intacct
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.16%) Firewall
1 2 (1.16%) HTTP
1 2 (1.16%) SSL
2 1 (0.58%) DNS
2 1 (0.58%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 50 (28.90%) MySQL
2 26 (15.03%) PostgreSQL
3 17 (9.83%) Relational Database
3 17 (9.83%) SQL Server
4 5 (2.89%) Oracle Database
4 5 (2.89%) Redis
5 4 (2.31%) RDBMS
5 4 (2.31%) SQLPlus
6 3 (1.73%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (1.16%) Amazon Aurora
7 2 (1.16%) Amazon RDS
7 2 (1.16%) ImageNet
7 2 (1.16%) MongoDB
8 1 (0.58%) BigQuery
8 1 (0.58%) CouchDB
8 1 (0.58%) DynamoDB
8 1 (0.58%) MariaDB
8 1 (0.58%) Power BI
8 1 (0.58%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 27 (15.61%) Git
2 23 (13.29%) JIRA
3 14 (8.09%) Jenkins
4 9 (5.20%) Postman
5 7 (4.05%) Selenium
6 6 (3.47%) Cucumber
6 6 (3.47%) GitLab
6 6 (3.47%) PHPUnit
6 6 (3.47%) REST Assured
6 6 (3.47%) TestRail
7 4 (2.31%) Bitbucket
7 4 (2.31%) Toad
8 3 (1.73%) JUnit
9 2 (1.16%) JMeter
10 1 (0.58%) Cypress.io
General
1 43 (24.86%) Social Skills
2 23 (13.29%) Public Sector
3 13 (7.51%) Finance
4 12 (6.94%) Analytical Skills
4 12 (6.94%) Marketing
5 5 (2.89%) Games
6 4 (2.31%) Military
7 3 (1.73%) Billing
7 3 (1.73%) Telecoms
8 2 (1.16%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (1.16%) Presentation Skills
8 2 (1.16%) Retail
9 1 (0.58%) Banking
9 1 (0.58%) Financial Institution
9 1 (0.58%) Law
9 1 (0.58%) Legal
9 1 (0.58%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.58%) Organisational Skills
9 1 (0.58%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 93 (53.76%) Developer
2 42 (24.28%) PHP Developer
3 21 (12.14%) Senior
4 15 (8.67%) Software Engineer
5 12 (6.94%) Consultant
6 10 (5.78%) Lead
6 10 (5.78%) Senior Developer
7 8 (4.62%) Full-Stack Developer
7 8 (4.62%) Oracle Developer
8 7 (4.05%) .NET Developer
9 6 (3.47%) Architect
10 5 (2.89%) Automation Engineer
10 5 (2.89%) Backend Developer
10 5 (2.89%) C# Developer
10 5 (2.89%) DevOps Engineer
10 5 (2.89%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 5 (2.89%) Senior DevOps
10 5 (2.89%) Software Developer
10 5 (2.89%) Test Automation Engineer
10 5 (2.89%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (27.75%) HTML
2 46 (26.59%) .NET
3 38 (21.97%) REST
4 34 (19.65%) CSS
5 28 (16.18%) Node.js
6 18 (10.40%) Laravel
6 18 (10.40%) SOAP
7 14 (8.09%) Middleware
7 14 (8.09%) Vue
8 12 (6.94%) React
9 10 (5.78%) GraphQL
10 8 (4.62%) OpenID
10 8 (4.62%) RESTful
10 8 (4.62%) Symfony
10 8 (4.62%) Web Services
11 7 (4.05%) HTML5
12 6 (3.47%) CSS3
13 5 (2.89%) AngularJS
13 5 (2.89%) Unity (Game Engine)
13 5 (2.89%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 9 (5.20%) Legacy Systems
2 7 (4.05%) Linux Command Line
3 5 (2.89%) Legacy Code
3 5 (2.89%) Virtual Team
4 4 (2.31%) Data Protection Act
4 4 (2.31%) Enterprise Software
4 4 (2.31%) Virtual Reality
5 3 (1.73%) NHS
6 2 (1.16%) 3D Graphics
6 2 (1.16%) Greenfield Project
6 2 (1.16%) Mixed Reality
6 2 (1.16%) PACS
6 2 (1.16%) Product Ownership
6 2 (1.16%) Replication
6 2 (1.16%) TM Forum
7 1 (0.58%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (0.58%) Distributed Systems
7 1 (0.58%) Legacy Applications
7 1 (0.58%) Low-Code
7 1 (0.58%) Marketing Technology
Operating Systems
1 20 (11.56%) Linux
2 14 (8.09%) Windows
3 9 (5.20%) Unix
4 4 (2.31%) Android
5 3 (1.73%) Apple iOS
6 2 (1.16%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.58%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 55 (31.79%) CI/CD
2 45 (26.01%) Agile
3 38 (21.97%) Problem-Solving
4 28 (16.18%) DevOps
5 26 (15.03%) Migration
6 23 (13.29%) Containerisation
7 20 (11.56%) API Integration
7 20 (11.56%) User Experience
8 19 (10.98%) CRM
8 19 (10.98%) Microservices
8 19 (10.98%) Software Engineering
9 17 (9.83%) AI
10 16 (9.25%) MVC
11 15 (8.67%) ETL
11 15 (8.67%) Full-Stack Development
11 15 (8.67%) Requirements Gathering
11 15 (8.67%) TDD
12 14 (8.09%) Test Automation
13 11 (6.36%) Performance Tuning
13 11 (6.36%) Refactoring
Programming Languages
1 61 (35.26%) JavaScript
2 50 (28.90%) Python
3 47 (27.17%) SQL
4 33 (19.08%) Java
5 32 (18.50%) C#
6 19 (10.98%) C++
7 13 (7.51%) C
8 12 (6.94%) PL/SQL
9 11 (6.36%) Bash
10 10 (5.78%) PowerShell
11 6 (3.47%) TypeScript
12 5 (2.89%) Delphi
13 4 (2.31%) Perl
13 4 (2.31%) Ruby
14 3 (1.73%) VB
15 2 (1.16%) Go
15 2 (1.16%) Kotlin
15 2 (1.16%) Shell Script
16 1 (0.58%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 18 (10.40%) Security Cleared
2 12 (6.94%) SC Cleared
3 9 (5.20%) BPSS Clearance
4 5 (2.89%) Degree
5 4 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (1.73%) AWS Certification
7 2 (1.16%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 2 (1.16%) CEH
7 2 (1.16%) Cisco Certification
7 2 (1.16%) CISSP
7 2 (1.16%) Master's Degree
8 1 (0.58%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
8 1 (0.58%) PMI Certification
8 1 (0.58%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (15.61%) QA
2 4 (2.31%) Accessibility
2 4 (2.31%) GDPR
3 3 (1.73%) Data Quality
4 2 (1.16%) California Consumer Privacy Act
4 2 (1.16%) HIPAA
4 2 (1.16%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.58%) HL7
5 1 (0.58%) Software Quality Assurance
5 1 (0.58%) WCAG
System Software
1 35 (20.23%) Docker
2 4 (2.31%) Active Directory
3 2 (1.16%) Varnish
3 2 (1.16%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (1.16%) Xen
Systems Management
1 26 (15.03%) Kubernetes
2 11 (6.36%) Grafana
3 9 (5.20%) Terraform
4 4 (2.31%) Ansible
5 2 (1.16%) Kibana
5 2 (1.16%) logstash
6 1 (0.58%) Bitnami
Vendors
1 21 (12.14%) Oracle
2 17 (9.83%) Microsoft
3 13 (7.51%) Dynatrace
4 6 (3.47%) Salesforce
5 5 (2.89%) AppDynamics
5 5 (2.89%) Google
5 5 (2.89%) ServiceNow
6 3 (1.73%) Zend
7 2 (1.16%) Genesys
7 2 (1.16%) KANA
8 1 (0.58%) Adobe
8 1 (0.58%) Apple
8 1 (0.58%) Atlassian
8 1 (0.58%) GoCardless
8 1 (0.58%) Percona
8 1 (0.58%) Sage
8 1 (0.58%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
8 1 (0.58%) SAP
8 1 (0.58%) Sitecore
8 1 (0.58%) Virgin Media