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

6 months to
26 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 599 375 324
Rank change year-on-year -224 -51 +3
Contract jobs citing PHP 79 179 261
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.14% 0.54% 0.68%
As % of the Programming Languages category 0.55% 1.64% 2.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 48 111 189
10th Percentile £338 £308 £300
25th Percentile £411 £357 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £473 £423 £415
Median % change year-on-year +11.83% +1.93% -7.89%
75th Percentile £538 £523 £538
90th Percentile - £575 £575
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £425 £438
% change year-on-year +23.53% -2.86% +3.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 5 2
10th Percentile - - £34.89
25th Percentile - £33.25 £37.62
Median hourly rate - £34.50 £42.79
Median % change year-on-year - -19.36% +144.49%
75th Percentile - £35.75 £48.58
90th Percentile - £41.87 £51.68
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - -

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 14,311 10,910 12,269
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.08% 32.98% 32.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,300 7,204 8,174
10th Percentile £363 £343 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £507 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.65% -3.52% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 550 295 344
10th Percentile £24.97 £29.00 £26.06
25th Percentile £46.39 £41.25 £44.87
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +3.17%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.25 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £77.75 £78.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 September 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 10 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 September 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 -185 73 £465 +12.73% 310
UK excluding London -129 41 £525 +23.53% 232
London -115 30 £450 +12.50% 116
Work from Home -83 28 £450 +5.88% 161
South West -20 21 £525 +1.94% 29
North of England -81 16 £375 +4.46% 63
Yorkshire -34 11 £425 +9.32% 24
South East -72 4 £413 -31.25% 47
North West -59 3 £345 -2.54% 28
North East -41 2 £375 - 12

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 14 (17.72%) WordPress
2 8 (10.13%) CMS
3 2 (2.53%) Moodle
4 1 (1.27%) Apache
4 1 (1.27%) Apache Solr
4 1 (1.27%) Confluence
4 1 (1.27%) Drupal
4 1 (1.27%) nginx
4 1 (1.27%) Umbraco
Applications
1 1 (1.27%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 1 (1.27%) Magento
1 1 (1.27%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 18 (22.78%) AWS
2 8 (10.13%) GCP
3 4 (5.06%) Azure
4 3 (3.80%) GitHub
5 2 (2.53%) Power Platform
5 2 (2.53%) Serverless
6 1 (1.27%) Amazon OpenSearch
6 1 (1.27%) AWS Lambda
6 1 (1.27%) GitHub Actions
6 1 (1.27%) GitHub Copilot
6 1 (1.27%) Stripe
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.27%) HTTP
1 1 (1.27%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (24.05%) MySQL
2 12 (15.19%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (13.92%) MongoDB
4 10 (12.66%) NoSQL
5 8 (10.13%) BigQuery
5 8 (10.13%) SQL Server
6 5 (6.33%) Redis
7 2 (2.53%) Pentaho
8 1 (1.27%) Amazon Athena
8 1 (1.27%) Apache Cassandra
8 1 (1.27%) Couchbase
8 1 (1.27%) Elasticsearch
8 1 (1.27%) Neo4j
8 1 (1.27%) phpMyAdmin
8 1 (1.27%) Power BI
8 1 (1.27%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 3 (3.80%) Git
2 2 (2.53%) GitLab
3 1 (1.27%) Claude Code
3 1 (1.27%) Codeception
3 1 (1.27%) Jenkins
3 1 (1.27%) PHPUnit
3 1 (1.27%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 15 (18.99%) Finance
2 11 (13.92%) Social Skills
3 6 (7.59%) Public Sector
4 5 (6.33%) Advertising
4 5 (6.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 4 (5.06%) Marketing
6 3 (3.80%) Analytical Skills
6 3 (3.80%) Publishing
7 2 (2.53%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (2.53%) Influencing Skills
7 2 (2.53%) Law
7 2 (2.53%) Spanish Language
8 1 (1.27%) Banking
8 1 (1.27%) Financial Institution
8 1 (1.27%) Health Technology
8 1 (1.27%) Legal
8 1 (1.27%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 34 (43.04%) Developer
2 17 (21.52%) PHP Developer
3 15 (18.99%) Software Engineer
4 14 (17.72%) Senior
5 12 (15.19%) PHP Software Engineer
6 11 (13.92%) Full-Stack Developer
7 7 (8.86%) Senior Developer
8 5 (6.33%) Full-Stack PHP Developer
8 5 (6.33%) SQL Server Developer
9 4 (5.06%) Architect
9 4 (5.06%) E-Commerce Architect
9 4 (5.06%) E-Commerce Solution Architect
9 4 (5.06%) ERP Architect
9 4 (5.06%) Lead
9 4 (5.06%) PHP Architect
9 4 (5.06%) Solutions Architect
9 4 (5.06%) WordPress Developer
10 3 (3.80%) Senior PHP Developer
10 3 (3.80%) Software Developer
10 3 (3.80%) Web Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (25.32%) HTML
2 19 (24.05%) CSS
3 13 (16.46%) Laravel
4 9 (11.39%) RabbitMQ
4 9 (11.39%) React
5 8 (10.13%) Kafka
5 8 (10.13%) Node.js
5 8 (10.13%) Symfony
6 7 (8.86%) HTML5
6 7 (8.86%) jQuery
7 6 (7.59%) .NET
7 6 (7.59%) CSS3
7 6 (7.59%) Vue
8 5 (6.33%) Ajax
8 5 (6.33%) Kendo UI
8 5 (6.33%) REST
9 4 (5.06%) RESTful
9 4 (5.06%) Sass
10 3 (3.80%) OAuth
10 3 (3.80%) Semantic HTML
Miscellaneous
1 11 (13.92%) Distributed Systems
2 5 (6.33%) Cloud Native
3 4 (5.06%) Legacy Systems
4 3 (3.80%) Onboarding
4 3 (3.80%) Product Ownership
5 2 (2.53%) AI Agents
6 1 (1.27%) Algorithms
6 1 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
6 1 (1.27%) Data Structures
6 1 (1.27%) Greenfield Project
6 1 (1.27%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 7 (8.86%) Linux
2 3 (3.80%) Windows
3 1 (1.27%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 21 (26.58%) Software Engineering
2 20 (25.32%) Problem-Solving
3 15 (18.99%) CI/CD
4 13 (16.46%) Full-Stack Development
5 12 (15.19%) Microservices
6 11 (13.92%) DevOps
7 9 (11.39%) Code Quality
7 9 (11.39%) Containerisation
7 9 (11.39%) Observability
8 8 (10.13%) Agile
8 8 (10.13%) Continuous Improvement
8 8 (10.13%) Event-Driven
8 8 (10.13%) Event-Driven Architecture
8 8 (10.13%) Mentoring
8 8 (10.13%) User Experience
8 8 (10.13%) Wealth Management
9 7 (8.86%) Fintech
10 6 (7.59%) AI
10 6 (7.59%) E-Commerce
10 6 (7.59%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 20 (25.32%) JavaScript
2 12 (15.19%) SQL
3 10 (12.66%) Go
4 9 (11.39%) TypeScript
5 8 (10.13%) C#
6 5 (6.33%) Java
6 5 (6.33%) Python
7 3 (3.80%) Kotlin
8 2 (2.53%) PowerShell
9 1 (1.27%) Dart
9 1 (1.27%) Scala
Qualifications
1 6 (7.59%) SC Cleared
1 6 (7.59%) Security Cleared
2 2 (2.53%) CREST Certified
2 2 (2.53%) OSCP
3 1 (1.27%) BPSS Clearance
3 1 (1.27%) CSSLP
3 1 (1.27%) GWAPT
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (12.66%) QA
2 9 (11.39%) Accessibility
3 4 (5.06%) WCAG
4 1 (1.27%) ISO 20022
4 1 (1.27%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 12 (15.19%) Docker
2 2 (2.53%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 8 (10.13%) Kubernetes
2 2 (2.53%) Grafana
2 2 (2.53%) Prometheus
3 1 (1.27%) Ansible
Vendors
1 6 (7.59%) Google
2 3 (3.80%) Oracle
3 2 (2.53%) Dynatrace
3 2 (2.53%) Microsoft
4 1 (1.27%) Adobe
4 1 (1.27%) HubSpot
4 1 (1.27%) MuleSoft
4 1 (1.27%) OpenAI
4 1 (1.27%) Salesforce
4 1 (1.27%) Splunk
4 1 (1.27%) Zend