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 22 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 524 386 292
Rank change year-on-year -138 -94 +73
Contract jobs citing PHP 95 138 315
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.20% 0.48% 0.74%
As % of the Programming Languages category 0.74% 1.41% 2.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 69 82 244
10th Percentile £310 £294 £263
25th Percentile £413 £350 £322
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £468 £425 £411
Median % change year-on-year +10.12% +3.34% -4.64%
75th Percentile £550 £497 £517
90th Percentile £638 £573 £575
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £414 £400
% change year-on-year +14.80% +3.44% -0.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 5 10
10th Percentile - - £22.50
25th Percentile - £33.25 £28.44
Median hourly rate - £34.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year - -44.80% +6.84%
75th Percentile - £35.75 £72.34
90th Percentile - - £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £35.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year - -22.22% -7.66%

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 12,899 9,807 12,745
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.69% 34.04% 30.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,454 6,659 9,081
10th Percentile £356 £357 £350
25th Percentile £414 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £526
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -1.14% -4.36%
75th Percentile £600 £636 £650
90th Percentile £711 £763 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +1.68% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 557 226 495
10th Percentile £37.25 £26.75 £32.25
25th Percentile £53.75 £35.25 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.84% -0.80% +2.97%
75th Percentile £70.00 £69.69 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £78.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.56% +2.40% -

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 22 May 2026.

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 12 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 22 May 2026. 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 -144 77 £468 +8.84% 156
UK excluding London -115 50 £475 +14.80% 145
Work from Home -71 31 £475 +9.20% 53
London -83 25 £450 +4.65% 31
South West -11 19 £531 +3.16% 13
Yorkshire -38 19 £450 +25.70% 24
North of England -61 19 £450 +25.70% 43
South East -67 5 £275 -24.14% 39
Scotland - 4 £475 - 6
Midlands -81 2 £600 +37.93% 20
East of England -35 1 - - 17
West Midlands -66 1 £550 +26.44% 6

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 9 (9.47%) WordPress
2 6 (6.32%) Apache
3 4 (4.21%) CMS
3 4 (4.21%) Moodle
4 2 (2.11%) Drupal
4 2 (2.11%) nginx
Applications
1 6 (6.32%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (1.05%) Adobe Illustrator
2 1 (1.05%) Photoshop
2 1 (1.05%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 5 (5.26%) Magento
2 1 (1.05%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (1.05%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 28 (29.47%) AWS
2 16 (16.84%) Azure
3 14 (14.74%) GCP
4 5 (5.26%) GitHub
4 5 (5.26%) SaaS
5 3 (3.16%) Stripe
6 2 (2.11%) Apple Pay
6 2 (2.11%) GitHub Copilot
6 2 (2.11%) Google Pay
6 2 (2.11%) Power Platform
6 2 (2.11%) Serverless
7 1 (1.05%) Algolia
7 1 (1.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 1 (1.05%) Amazon ECS
7 1 (1.05%) AWS Fargate
7 1 (1.05%) AWS Lambda
7 1 (1.05%) Azure DevOps
7 1 (1.05%) Azure Machine Learning
7 1 (1.05%) Cloudflare
7 1 (1.05%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 4 (4.21%) BGP
1 4 (4.21%) Cisco ASA
1 4 (4.21%) Cisco IOS
1 4 (4.21%) MPLS
1 4 (4.21%) Network Security
1 4 (4.21%) TACACS
1 4 (4.21%) VPN
2 2 (2.11%) Firewall
2 2 (2.11%) FTP
3 1 (1.05%) HTTP
3 1 (1.05%) Internet
3 1 (1.05%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (30.53%) MySQL
2 10 (10.53%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (9.47%) SQL Server
4 7 (7.37%) MongoDB
5 6 (6.32%) Redis
5 6 (6.32%) Relational Database
6 5 (5.26%) Elasticsearch
6 5 (5.26%) NoSQL
7 4 (4.21%) BigQuery
8 2 (2.11%) Amazon Athena
8 2 (2.11%) Apache Cassandra
8 2 (2.11%) Neo4j
9 1 (1.05%) Amazon Aurora
9 1 (1.05%) DynamoDB
9 1 (1.05%) MariaDB
9 1 (1.05%) Metadata
9 1 (1.05%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 9 (9.47%) Jenkins
2 8 (8.42%) Git
2 8 (8.42%) GitLab
2 8 (8.42%) JIRA
3 6 (6.32%) Cucumber
3 6 (6.32%) Postman
3 6 (6.32%) REST Assured
3 6 (6.32%) Selenium
3 6 (6.32%) TestRail
4 2 (2.11%) JUnit
5 1 (1.05%) Bitbucket
5 1 (1.05%) Codeception
5 1 (1.05%) PHPUnit
5 1 (1.05%) Vite
General
1 18 (18.95%) Social Skills
2 13 (13.68%) Public Sector
3 10 (10.53%) Finance
4 8 (8.42%) Analytical Skills
5 4 (4.21%) Advertising
6 3 (3.16%) Marketing
7 2 (2.11%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (1.05%) Banking
8 1 (1.05%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (1.05%) iGaming
8 1 (1.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (1.05%) Legal
8 1 (1.05%) Manufacturing
8 1 (1.05%) Military
8 1 (1.05%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 46 (48.42%) Developer
2 26 (27.37%) PHP Developer
3 11 (11.58%) Senior
4 9 (9.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 6 (6.32%) Automation Engineer
5 6 (6.32%) Software Engineer
6 5 (5.26%) Architect
6 5 (5.26%) Full-Stack Developer
6 5 (5.26%) Lead
6 5 (5.26%) PHP Software Engineer
6 5 (5.26%) Security Engineer
6 5 (5.26%) Software Developer
6 5 (5.26%) Test Automation Engineer
6 5 (5.26%) Test Engineer
7 4 (4.21%) Moodle Developer
7 4 (4.21%) Senior Developer
7 4 (4.21%) Technical Architect
8 3 (3.16%) Infrastructure Security Engineer
8 3 (3.16%) MySQL Developer
8 3 (3.16%) PHP MySQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (22.11%) REST
2 14 (14.74%) CSS
3 12 (12.63%) .NET
3 12 (12.63%) Laravel
4 11 (11.58%) HTML
5 10 (10.53%) RabbitMQ
6 9 (9.47%) LDAP
6 9 (9.47%) Vue
7 7 (7.37%) Node.js
7 7 (7.37%) OpenID
8 6 (6.32%) Kafka
8 6 (6.32%) OAuth
8 6 (6.32%) SOAP
9 5 (5.26%) SailPoint
9 5 (5.26%) Web Services
10 4 (4.21%) LAMP
10 4 (4.21%) Middleware
10 4 (4.21%) React
10 4 (4.21%) VML
11 3 (3.16%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 7 (7.37%) Distributed Systems
2 4 (4.21%) Client/Server
2 4 (4.21%) PKI
3 3 (3.16%) Onboarding
4 2 (2.11%) AI Agents
4 2 (2.11%) Cloud Native
4 2 (2.11%) FMCG
4 2 (2.11%) Greenfield Project
4 2 (2.11%) Legacy Systems
4 2 (2.11%) Linux Command Line
4 2 (2.11%) Product Ownership
5 1 (1.05%) e-Learning
5 1 (1.05%) IoT
5 1 (1.05%) Legacy Code
5 1 (1.05%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 17 (17.89%) Linux
2 4 (4.21%) Ubuntu
3 3 (3.16%) Windows
4 2 (2.11%) Unix
5 1 (1.05%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 20 (21.05%) Problem-Solving
2 17 (17.89%) Agile
2 17 (17.89%) CI/CD
2 17 (17.89%) DevOps
2 17 (17.89%) Microservices
3 12 (12.63%) Roadmaps
3 12 (12.63%) TDD
4 11 (11.58%) Containerisation
4 11 (11.58%) Refactoring
5 10 (10.53%) Code Quality
5 10 (10.53%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 10 (10.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 9 (9.47%) Mentoring
6 9 (9.47%) Migration
6 9 (9.47%) Observability
7 8 (8.42%) Clean Code
7 8 (8.42%) Deployment Automation
7 8 (8.42%) Software Engineering
7 8 (8.42%) User Acceptance Testing
8 7 (7.37%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 32 (33.68%) JavaScript
2 19 (20.00%) Python
3 14 (14.74%) SQL
4 12 (12.63%) Java
5 9 (9.47%) Go
6 7 (7.37%) C#
7 5 (5.26%) TypeScript
8 4 (4.21%) Perl
9 3 (3.16%) Kotlin
10 2 (2.11%) Bash
10 2 (2.11%) PowerShell
10 2 (2.11%) Scala
11 1 (1.05%) Delphi
11 1 (1.05%) Korn
11 1 (1.05%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 18 (18.95%) Security Cleared
2 17 (17.89%) SC Cleared
3 4 (4.21%) APMG
3 4 (4.21%) CompTIA Security+
3 4 (4.21%) Degree
3 4 (4.21%) DV Cleared
3 4 (4.21%) GIAC
3 4 (4.21%) SSCP
4 3 (3.16%) Computer Science Degree
4 3 (3.16%) GSEC
5 2 (2.11%) AWS Certification
5 2 (2.11%) AWS Certified Developer
6 1 (1.05%) Azure Certification
6 1 (1.05%) CSSLP
6 1 (1.05%) GWAPT
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (14.74%) QA
2 4 (4.21%) Accessibility
2 4 (4.21%) Cyber Essentials
2 4 (4.21%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
2 4 (4.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 4 (4.21%) NIST
3 1 (1.05%) GDPR
3 1 (1.05%) HL7
3 1 (1.05%) HMG Security Policy Framework
3 1 (1.05%) PCI DSS
3 1 (1.05%) WCAG
System Software
1 15 (15.79%) Docker
2 5 (5.26%) Varnish
3 4 (4.21%) VMware ESXi
3 4 (4.21%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (1.05%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 11 (11.58%) Kubernetes
2 5 (5.26%) Terraform
3 4 (4.21%) vCenter Server
4 3 (3.16%) Ansible
4 3 (3.16%) SCOM
5 1 (1.05%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 8 (8.42%) Google
2 5 (5.26%) Adobe
2 5 (5.26%) Microsoft
2 5 (5.26%) ServiceNow
3 4 (4.21%) Cisco
3 4 (4.21%) VMware
4 2 (2.11%) Apple
4 2 (2.11%) Dynatrace
4 2 (2.11%) GoCardless
4 2 (2.11%) OpenAI
5 1 (1.05%) HubSpot
5 1 (1.05%) Oracle
5 1 (1.05%) Percona
5 1 (1.05%) Virgin Media
5 1 (1.05%) WooCommerce
5 1 (1.05%) Zend