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 20 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 436 320 298
Rank change year-on-year -116 -22 +53
Contract jobs citing PHP 150 202 309
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.40% 0.65% 0.71%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.31% 1.95% 2.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 112 143 239
10th Percentile £300 £300 £263
25th Percentile £362 £340 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £425 £400
Median % change year-on-year - +6.25% -11.11%
75th Percentile £456 £550 £528
90th Percentile £548 £600 £603
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £425 £375
% change year-on-year - +13.33% -6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 3 7
10th Percentile - £33.60 £17.35
25th Percentile £43.84 £34.13 £22.14
Median hourly rate £44.90 £35.00 £28.75
Median % change year-on-year +28.27% +21.74% -64.83%
75th Percentile £45.95 £44.75 £45.63
90th Percentile - £50.15 £56.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £35.00 £30.89
% change year-on-year - +13.31% -36.62%

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 11,428 10,385 13,060
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.66% 33.20% 30.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,602 6,582 9,246
10th Percentile £350 £355 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.90% -4.55% -3.08%
75th Percentile £614 £640 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £491 £500
% change year-on-year -1.99% -1.80% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 414 246 454
10th Percentile £36.08 £21.25 £35.50
25th Percentile £52.50 £35.19 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +3.31% -6.92%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £85.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +3.17% +0.80% -3.85%

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 20 January 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 15 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 20 January 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 -96 122 £425 +5.92% 342
UK excluding London -71 71 £425 - 337
Work from Home -44 52 £420 +5.00% 168
London -74 41 £400 -4.76% 41
North of England -37 36 £425 -14.57% 77
Yorkshire -37 21 £450 -10.00% 31
North West -23 12 £359 -27.47% 37
South East -32 11 £375 -16.67% 86
Midlands -44 9 £463 +15.63% 51
South West 0 8 £563 +58.67% 55
West Midlands -33 7 £425 +9.68% 23
East of England -28 4 £475 +31.94% 42
Scotland +4 3 £69 -83.45% 10
North East - 3 - - 10
East Midlands -29 2 £513 +28.13% 28

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 (8.67%) SugarCRM
2 8 (5.33%) WordPress
3 6 (4.00%) Drupal
4 4 (2.67%) CMS
4 4 (2.67%) SharePoint
5 3 (2.00%) Confluence
5 3 (2.00%) SAS
6 2 (1.33%) FileNet
6 2 (1.33%) nginx
6 2 (1.33%) WebLogic
6 2 (1.33%) WebSphere
Applications
1 8 (5.33%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (2.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (2.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.67%) Adobe Illustrator
3 1 (0.67%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 6 (4.00%) Magento
2 3 (2.00%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 60 (40.00%) AWS
2 35 (23.33%) Azure
3 16 (10.67%) GitHub
4 15 (10.00%) SaaS
5 11 (7.33%) GCP
6 7 (4.67%) Azure DevOps
6 7 (4.67%) GitHub Actions
6 7 (4.67%) Serverless
7 6 (4.00%) PaaS
8 5 (3.33%) Azure Functions
8 5 (3.33%) IaaS
8 5 (3.33%) OpenShift
9 3 (2.00%) Azure API Management
9 3 (2.00%) Azure Monitor
9 3 (2.00%) Entra ID
10 2 (1.33%) Amazon ECS
10 2 (1.33%) Azure AKS
10 2 (1.33%) ChatGPT
10 2 (1.33%) GitHub Copilot
10 2 (1.33%) Stripe
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.33%) SSL
2 1 (0.67%) BGP
2 1 (0.67%) Cisco ASA
2 1 (0.67%) Cisco IOS
2 1 (0.67%) DNS
2 1 (0.67%) Internet
2 1 (0.67%) MPLS
2 1 (0.67%) Network Security
2 1 (0.67%) TACACS
2 1 (0.67%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (34.00%) MySQL
2 20 (13.33%) Relational Database
3 19 (12.67%) PostgreSQL
4 16 (10.67%) SQL Server
5 8 (5.33%) Redis
6 7 (4.67%) Elasticsearch
7 4 (2.67%) Oracle Database
7 4 (2.67%) RDBMS
7 4 (2.67%) SQLPlus
8 2 (1.33%) Amazon Aurora
8 2 (1.33%) ImageNet
8 2 (1.33%) MariaDB
8 2 (1.33%) MongoDB
9 1 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
9 1 (0.67%) BigQuery
9 1 (0.67%) CouchDB
9 1 (0.67%) DynamoDB
9 1 (0.67%) Power BI
9 1 (0.67%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 25 (16.67%) Git
2 22 (14.67%) JIRA
3 13 (8.67%) Jenkins
4 8 (5.33%) Postman
5 6 (4.00%) Cucumber
5 6 (4.00%) GitLab
5 6 (4.00%) PHPUnit
5 6 (4.00%) REST Assured
5 6 (4.00%) Selenium
5 6 (4.00%) TestRail
6 4 (2.67%) Toad
7 3 (2.00%) Bitbucket
7 3 (2.00%) JUnit
8 1 (0.67%) Cypress.io
8 1 (0.67%) JMeter
8 1 (0.67%) Vite
General
1 38 (25.33%) Social Skills
2 21 (14.00%) Public Sector
3 11 (7.33%) Marketing
4 10 (6.67%) Analytical Skills
5 8 (5.33%) Finance
6 5 (3.33%) Games
7 3 (2.00%) Billing
7 3 (2.00%) Telecoms
8 2 (1.33%) Military
8 2 (1.33%) Presentation Skills
8 2 (1.33%) Retail
9 1 (0.67%) Banking
9 1 (0.67%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.67%) Law
9 1 (0.67%) Legal
9 1 (0.67%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.67%) Organisational Skills
9 1 (0.67%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 80 (53.33%) Developer
2 41 (27.33%) PHP Developer
3 15 (10.00%) Senior
3 15 (10.00%) Software Engineer
4 8 (5.33%) Architect
4 8 (5.33%) Lead
5 6 (4.00%) Full-Stack Developer
5 6 (4.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 6 (4.00%) Senior Developer
6 5 (3.33%) Automation Engineer
6 5 (3.33%) DevOps Engineer
6 5 (3.33%) Software Developer
6 5 (3.33%) Technical Architect
6 5 (3.33%) Test Automation Engineer
6 5 (3.33%) Test Engineer
7 4 (2.67%) .NET Developer
7 4 (2.67%) Delphi Software Engineer
7 4 (2.67%) Oracle Developer
7 4 (2.67%) PHP Software Engineer
7 4 (2.67%) Principal Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (26.00%) REST
2 35 (23.33%) HTML
3 33 (22.00%) CSS
4 28 (18.67%) .NET
5 18 (12.00%) SOAP
6 16 (10.67%) Laravel
7 15 (10.00%) Node.js
8 12 (8.00%) Vue
9 10 (6.67%) GraphQL
10 8 (5.33%) OpenID
10 8 (5.33%) RESTful
10 8 (5.33%) Web Services
11 7 (4.67%) React
11 7 (4.67%) Symfony
12 6 (4.00%) HTML5
12 6 (4.00%) LDAP
12 6 (4.00%) OAuth
12 6 (4.00%) RabbitMQ
12 6 (4.00%) Tailwind CSS
13 5 (3.33%) VML
Miscellaneous
1 7 (4.67%) Linux Command Line
2 5 (3.33%) Client/Server
3 4 (2.67%) Data Protection Act
3 4 (2.67%) Enterprise Software
3 4 (2.67%) Legacy Code
3 4 (2.67%) Legacy Systems
3 4 (2.67%) Virtual Reality
3 4 (2.67%) Virtual Team
4 3 (2.00%) NHS
4 3 (2.00%) Product Ownership
5 2 (1.33%) 3D Graphics
5 2 (1.33%) Greenfield Project
5 2 (1.33%) Mixed Reality
5 2 (1.33%) PACS
5 2 (1.33%) Replication
5 2 (1.33%) TM Forum
6 1 (0.67%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (0.67%) Legacy Applications
6 1 (0.67%) Low-Code
6 1 (0.67%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 22 (14.67%) Linux
2 15 (10.00%) Windows
3 9 (6.00%) Unix
4 4 (2.67%) Android
5 3 (2.00%) Apple iOS
6 2 (1.33%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.67%) Ubuntu
7 1 (0.67%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 49 (32.67%) CI/CD
2 39 (26.00%) Agile
3 31 (20.67%) Problem-Solving
4 22 (14.67%) DevOps
4 22 (14.67%) Migration
5 20 (13.33%) Containerisation
5 20 (13.33%) User Experience
6 19 (12.67%) API Integration
6 19 (12.67%) Software Engineering
7 18 (12.00%) CRM
7 18 (12.00%) Microservices
8 16 (10.67%) MVC
9 15 (10.00%) TDD
10 14 (9.33%) ETL
11 13 (8.67%) AI
11 13 (8.67%) Clean Code
11 13 (8.67%) Code Quality
11 13 (8.67%) Roadmaps
11 13 (8.67%) Test Automation
12 12 (8.00%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 58 (38.67%) JavaScript
2 45 (30.00%) Python
3 37 (24.67%) SQL
4 25 (16.67%) C#
5 19 (12.67%) Java
6 10 (6.67%) Bash
7 8 (5.33%) C++
7 8 (5.33%) PowerShell
8 6 (4.00%) PL/SQL
9 5 (3.33%) Delphi
10 4 (2.67%) Perl
10 4 (2.67%) TypeScript
11 2 (1.33%) C
11 2 (1.33%) Go
11 2 (1.33%) Ruby
11 2 (1.33%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.67%) Apex Code
12 1 (0.67%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 16 (10.67%) Security Cleared
2 13 (8.67%) SC Cleared
3 9 (6.00%) BPSS Clearance
4 3 (2.00%) AWS Certification
4 3 (2.00%) Degree
5 2 (1.33%) Computer Science Degree
6 1 (0.67%) APMG
6 1 (0.67%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
6 1 (0.67%) CompTIA Security+
6 1 (0.67%) DV Cleared
6 1 (0.67%) GIAC
6 1 (0.67%) GSEC
6 1 (0.67%) PMI Certification
6 1 (0.67%) PMP
6 1 (0.67%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (16.67%) QA
2 4 (2.67%) Accessibility
3 3 (2.00%) Data Quality
4 2 (1.33%) GDPR
5 1 (0.67%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 1 (0.67%) Cyber Essentials
5 1 (0.67%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 1 (0.67%) HL7
5 1 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (0.67%) NIST
5 1 (0.67%) WCAG
System Software
1 31 (20.67%) Docker
2 6 (4.00%) Varnish
3 5 (3.33%) Active Directory
4 2 (1.33%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (1.33%) Xen
5 1 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
5 1 (0.67%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 21 (14.00%) Kubernetes
2 11 (7.33%) Grafana
3 9 (6.00%) Terraform
4 4 (2.67%) Ansible
5 2 (1.33%) Kibana
5 2 (1.33%) logstash
6 1 (0.67%) Bitnami
6 1 (0.67%) SCOM
6 1 (0.67%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.67%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 14 (9.33%) Microsoft
1 14 (9.33%) Oracle
2 5 (3.33%) Adobe
2 5 (3.33%) AppDynamics
2 5 (3.33%) Salesforce
2 5 (3.33%) ServiceNow
3 4 (2.67%) Google
4 3 (2.00%) Zend
5 2 (1.33%) Dynatrace
5 2 (1.33%) Genesys
5 2 (1.33%) KANA
6 1 (0.67%) Apple
6 1 (0.67%) Atlassian
6 1 (0.67%) Cisco
6 1 (0.67%) GoCardless
6 1 (0.67%) OneLogin
6 1 (0.67%) OpenAI
6 1 (0.67%) Sage
6 1 (0.67%) SAP
6 1 (0.67%) Virgin Media