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

6 months to
3 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 482 341 293
Rank change year-on-year -141 -48 +71
Contract jobs citing PHP 134 187 336
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.32% 0.63% 0.75%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.08% 1.84% 2.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 106 132 257
10th Percentile £325 £296 £257
25th Percentile £400 £336 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £431 £425 £400
Median % change year-on-year +1.47% +6.25% -10.31%
75th Percentile £516 £550 £520
90th Percentile £581 £600 £609
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £388
% change year-on-year - +16.13% -3.13%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 15
10th Percentile - £33.43 £19.50
25th Percentile - £33.69 £24.38
Median hourly rate - £34.75 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year - -0.71% -56.25%
75th Percentile - £35.56 £71.87
90th Percentile - £35.68 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £35.00 £31.25
% change year-on-year - +12.00% -35.88%

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 12,410 10,160 13,038
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 29.75% 34.03% 29.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,269 6,603 9,200
10th Percentile £352 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -6.25%
75th Percentile £606 £638 £650
90th Percentile £720 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £479 £488 £498
% change year-on-year -1.74% -2.01% -1.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 482 236 510
10th Percentile £41.25 £21.25 £30.63
25th Percentile £53.81 £35.00 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -6.98%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £68.94
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.97% +1.99% -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 3 March 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 3 March 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 -127 109 £439 +9.69% 237
UK excluding London -95 62 £450 - 221
Work from Home -64 49 £425 +1.92% 122
London -92 35 £438 +10.76% 38
North of England -45 29 £450 -9.09% 58
Yorkshire -50 19 £450 -10.00% 31
South West -10 11 £540 +52.33% 44
South East -40 11 £413 +6.45% 39
Midlands -57 9 £510 +27.50% 39
North West -37 7 £392 -20.91% 18
West Midlands -50 6 £444 -19.32% 26
North East - 3 - - 9
East Midlands -34 2 £513 +28.13% 13
Scotland +7 1 £475 +13.91% 6
East of England -31 1 - - 26

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 11 (8.21%) SugarCRM
2 5 (3.73%) Drupal
2 5 (3.73%) WordPress
3 4 (2.99%) Apache
3 4 (2.99%) CMS
3 4 (2.99%) SharePoint
4 3 (2.24%) Confluence
4 3 (2.24%) Moodle
5 1 (0.75%) nginx
Applications
1 9 (6.72%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (2.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (2.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.75%) Adobe Illustrator
3 1 (0.75%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 5 (3.73%) Magento
2 3 (2.24%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 55 (41.04%) AWS
2 36 (26.87%) Azure
3 14 (10.45%) GitHub
4 12 (8.96%) GCP
5 9 (6.72%) SaaS
6 7 (5.22%) GitHub Actions
7 6 (4.48%) Azure DevOps
7 6 (4.48%) Serverless
8 5 (3.73%) Azure Functions
9 3 (2.24%) Azure API Management
9 3 (2.24%) Azure Monitor
9 3 (2.24%) Entra ID
9 3 (2.24%) GitHub Copilot
10 2 (1.49%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 2 (1.49%) Amazon ECS
10 2 (1.49%) Azure AKS
10 2 (1.49%) ChatGPT
10 2 (1.49%) Intacct
10 2 (1.49%) PaaS
10 2 (1.49%) Stripe
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.99%) BGP
1 4 (2.99%) Cisco ASA
1 4 (2.99%) Cisco IOS
1 4 (2.99%) MPLS
1 4 (2.99%) Network Security
1 4 (2.99%) TACACS
1 4 (2.99%) VPN
2 2 (1.49%) SSL
3 1 (0.75%) DNS
3 1 (0.75%) Firewall
3 1 (0.75%) FTP
3 1 (0.75%) Internet
3 1 (0.75%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 47 (35.07%) MySQL
2 16 (11.94%) PostgreSQL
3 15 (11.19%) Relational Database
3 15 (11.19%) SQL Server
4 7 (5.22%) Redis
5 5 (3.73%) Elasticsearch
5 5 (3.73%) Oracle Database
6 4 (2.99%) RDBMS
6 4 (2.99%) SQLPlus
7 3 (2.24%) MongoDB
8 2 (1.49%) Amazon Aurora
8 2 (1.49%) ImageNet
8 2 (1.49%) MariaDB
9 1 (0.75%) Amazon Athena
9 1 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
9 1 (0.75%) Apache Cassandra
9 1 (0.75%) CouchDB
9 1 (0.75%) DynamoDB
9 1 (0.75%) Neo4j
Development Applications
1 23 (17.16%) Git
2 20 (14.93%) JIRA
3 14 (10.45%) Jenkins
4 8 (5.97%) Postman
5 6 (4.48%) Cucumber
5 6 (4.48%) GitLab
5 6 (4.48%) PHPUnit
5 6 (4.48%) REST Assured
5 6 (4.48%) Selenium
5 6 (4.48%) TestRail
6 4 (2.99%) Toad
7 3 (2.24%) Bitbucket
8 2 (1.49%) JUnit
9 1 (0.75%) Vite
General
1 39 (29.10%) Social Skills
2 22 (16.42%) Public Sector
3 11 (8.21%) Analytical Skills
4 9 (6.72%) Finance
4 9 (6.72%) Marketing
5 3 (2.24%) Billing
5 3 (2.24%) Telecoms
6 2 (1.49%) Presentation Skills
6 2 (1.49%) Retail
7 1 (0.75%) Banking
7 1 (0.75%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (0.75%) Law
7 1 (0.75%) Legal
7 1 (0.75%) Manufacturing
7 1 (0.75%) Military
7 1 (0.75%) Organisational Skills
7 1 (0.75%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 74 (55.22%) Developer
2 40 (29.85%) PHP Developer
3 14 (10.45%) Senior
4 8 (5.97%) Architect
4 8 (5.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 8 (5.97%) Software Engineer
5 6 (4.48%) DevOps Engineer
5 6 (4.48%) Lead
5 6 (4.48%) Senior Developer
5 6 (4.48%) Software Developer
6 5 (3.73%) Automation Engineer
6 5 (3.73%) Technical Architect
6 5 (3.73%) Test Automation Engineer
6 5 (3.73%) Test Engineer
7 4 (2.99%) Delphi Software Engineer
7 4 (2.99%) MySQL Developer
7 4 (2.99%) Oracle Developer
7 4 (2.99%) PHP MySQL Developer
7 4 (2.99%) PHP Software Engineer
7 4 (2.99%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (27.61%) REST
2 29 (21.64%) CSS
3 27 (20.15%) .NET
3 27 (20.15%) HTML
4 16 (11.94%) SOAP
5 13 (9.70%) Laravel
6 9 (6.72%) GraphQL
6 9 (6.72%) LDAP
6 9 (6.72%) Vue
7 8 (5.97%) Node.js
7 8 (5.97%) OpenID
7 8 (5.97%) Web Services
8 7 (5.22%) Symfony
9 6 (4.48%) RabbitMQ
9 6 (4.48%) RESTful
10 5 (3.73%) HTML5
10 5 (3.73%) LAMP
10 5 (3.73%) OAuth
10 5 (3.73%) SailPoint
10 5 (3.73%) VML
Miscellaneous
1 9 (6.72%) Linux Command Line
2 5 (3.73%) Client/Server
3 4 (2.99%) Data Protection Act
3 4 (2.99%) Legacy Code
3 4 (2.99%) Legacy Systems
3 4 (2.99%) PKI
4 3 (2.24%) NHS
4 3 (2.24%) Product Ownership
4 3 (2.24%) Virtual Team
5 2 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
5 2 (1.49%) Greenfield Project
5 2 (1.49%) Onboarding
5 2 (1.49%) PACS
5 2 (1.49%) Replication
5 2 (1.49%) TM Forum
6 1 (0.75%) AI Agents
6 1 (0.75%) Analytical Mindset
6 1 (0.75%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (0.75%) Legacy Applications
6 1 (0.75%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 24 (17.91%) Linux
2 9 (6.72%) Unix
3 7 (5.22%) Windows
4 4 (2.99%) Ubuntu
5 2 (1.49%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.75%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 39 (29.10%) Agile
2 36 (26.87%) CI/CD
3 32 (23.88%) Problem-Solving
4 23 (17.16%) DevOps
5 22 (16.42%) Migration
6 18 (13.43%) Containerisation
7 17 (12.69%) User Experience
8 16 (11.94%) CRM
8 16 (11.94%) Microservices
9 15 (11.19%) API Integration
10 14 (10.45%) MVC
11 13 (9.70%) Clean Code
11 13 (9.70%) Roadmaps
11 13 (9.70%) TDD
12 12 (8.96%) AI
12 12 (8.96%) Code Quality
12 12 (8.96%) Refactoring
12 12 (8.96%) Software Engineering
13 11 (8.21%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 11 (8.21%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 53 (39.55%) JavaScript
2 37 (27.61%) Python
3 29 (21.64%) SQL
4 18 (13.43%) C#
5 17 (12.69%) Java
6 10 (7.46%) Bash
7 7 (5.22%) Perl
7 7 (5.22%) PowerShell
8 6 (4.48%) PL/SQL
9 5 (3.73%) Delphi
10 4 (2.99%) TypeScript
11 3 (2.24%) Go
11 3 (2.24%) Shell Script
12 2 (1.49%) Ruby
13 1 (0.75%) Korn
13 1 (0.75%) Scala
Qualifications
1 17 (12.69%) Security Cleared
2 15 (11.19%) SC Cleared
3 5 (3.73%) AWS Certification
3 5 (3.73%) BPSS Clearance
3 5 (3.73%) Degree
4 4 (2.99%) APMG
4 4 (2.99%) CompTIA Security+
4 4 (2.99%) DV Cleared
4 4 (2.99%) GIAC
4 4 (2.99%) SSCP
5 3 (2.24%) Computer Science Degree
5 3 (2.24%) GSEC
6 2 (1.49%) AWS Certified Developer
7 1 (0.75%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
7 1 (0.75%) Azure Certification
7 1 (0.75%) PMI Certification
7 1 (0.75%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (15.67%) QA
2 4 (2.99%) Cyber Essentials
2 4 (2.99%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
2 4 (2.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 4 (2.99%) NIST
3 3 (2.24%) Accessibility
3 3 (2.24%) Data Quality
4 2 (1.49%) GDPR
5 1 (0.75%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 1 (0.75%) HL7
5 1 (0.75%) HMG Security Policy Framework
5 1 (0.75%) WCAG
System Software
1 26 (19.40%) Docker
2 6 (4.48%) Varnish
3 5 (3.73%) Active Directory
4 4 (2.99%) VMware ESXi
4 4 (2.99%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (1.49%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (1.49%) Xen
Systems Management
1 16 (11.94%) Kubernetes
2 8 (5.97%) Terraform
3 5 (3.73%) Ansible
3 5 (3.73%) Grafana
4 4 (2.99%) vCenter Server
5 3 (2.24%) SCOM
6 1 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 14 (10.45%) Microsoft
2 9 (6.72%) Oracle
3 5 (3.73%) Adobe
3 5 (3.73%) Google
3 5 (3.73%) ServiceNow
4 4 (2.99%) Cisco
4 4 (2.99%) Salesforce
4 4 (2.99%) VMware
5 3 (2.24%) Zend
6 2 (1.49%) OpenAI
6 2 (1.49%) Percona
7 1 (0.75%) AppDynamics
7 1 (0.75%) Apple
7 1 (0.75%) Atlassian
7 1 (0.75%) Dynatrace
7 1 (0.75%) GoCardless
7 1 (0.75%) Sage
7 1 (0.75%) SAP
7 1 (0.75%) Sitecore
7 1 (0.75%) Virgin Media