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

6 months to
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 514 382 294
Rank change year-on-year -132 -88 +60
Contract jobs citing PHP 107 148 326
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.23% 0.51% 0.76%
As % of the Programming Languages category 0.83% 1.49% 2.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 82 89 253
10th Percentile £314 £295 £263
25th Percentile £403 £350 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £420 £415
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% +1.33% -2.47%
75th Percentile £550 £475 £523
90th Percentile £630 £575 £575
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £403 £425
% change year-on-year +11.80% -5.29% +6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 3 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% -21.88%
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 12,831 9,909 12,749
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 27.04% 34.05% 29.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,448 6,729 9,065
10th Percentile £353 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £415 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £713 £774 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £488
% change year-on-year - -2.71% -2.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 563 247 489
10th Percentile £41.94 £25.01 £32.25
25th Percentile £54.55 £35.00 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +1.46% +2.20%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £79.34
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.56% +2.40% +2.97%

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 8 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 13 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 8 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 -142 88 £450 +5.88% 169
UK excluding London -103 56 £450 +11.80% 155
Work from Home -65 37 £475 +10.47% 67
London -84 30 £450 +6.82% 33
North of England -49 25 £450 +12.50% 55
Yorkshire -34 21 £450 +12.50% 35
South West -28 15 £538 +51.62% 17
South East -74 9 £425 +17.24% 35
Scotland -5 4 £475 +13.91% 8
North West -39 4 £358 - 16
Midlands -83 2 £600 +37.93% 18
East of England -37 1 - - 18
West Midlands -67 1 £550 +26.44% 8

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 8 (7.48%) WordPress
2 6 (5.61%) Apache
3 5 (4.67%) CMS
4 4 (3.74%) Moodle
4 4 (3.74%) SharePoint
5 3 (2.80%) Drupal
6 2 (1.87%) nginx
Applications
1 10 (9.35%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (3.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (3.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.93%) Adobe Illustrator
3 1 (0.93%) Photoshop
3 1 (0.93%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (5.61%) Magento
2 2 (1.87%) Shopify
3 1 (0.93%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 36 (33.64%) AWS
2 19 (17.76%) Azure
3 11 (10.28%) GCP
4 7 (6.54%) GitHub
5 6 (5.61%) SaaS
6 4 (3.74%) Serverless
7 3 (2.80%) Azure DevOps
7 3 (2.80%) GitHub Actions
7 3 (2.80%) Stripe
8 2 (1.87%) Apple Pay
8 2 (1.87%) Azure AKS
8 2 (1.87%) Azure Functions
8 2 (1.87%) GitHub Copilot
8 2 (1.87%) Google Pay
8 2 (1.87%) Power Platform
9 1 (0.93%) Amazon ECS
9 1 (0.93%) Amazon Lightsail
9 1 (0.93%) Amazon OpenSearch
9 1 (0.93%) AWS Fargate
9 1 (0.93%) BigCommerce
Communications & Networking
1 4 (3.74%) BGP
1 4 (3.74%) Cisco ASA
1 4 (3.74%) Cisco IOS
1 4 (3.74%) MPLS
1 4 (3.74%) Network Security
1 4 (3.74%) TACACS
1 4 (3.74%) VPN
2 2 (1.87%) Firewall
2 2 (1.87%) FTP
3 1 (0.93%) HTTP
3 1 (0.93%) Internet
3 1 (0.93%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (29.91%) MySQL
2 13 (12.15%) PostgreSQL
2 13 (12.15%) SQL Server
3 12 (11.21%) Relational Database
4 8 (7.48%) Redis
5 6 (5.61%) Elasticsearch
6 5 (4.67%) Oracle Database
7 4 (3.74%) RDBMS
7 4 (3.74%) SQLPlus
8 3 (2.80%) MongoDB
9 2 (1.87%) Amazon Athena
9 2 (1.87%) Apache Cassandra
9 2 (1.87%) ImageNet
9 2 (1.87%) Neo4j
10 1 (0.93%) Amazon Aurora
10 1 (0.93%) DynamoDB
10 1 (0.93%) MariaDB
10 1 (0.93%) Metadata
10 1 (0.93%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 11 (10.28%) Git
1 11 (10.28%) Jenkins
2 9 (8.41%) JIRA
3 8 (7.48%) GitLab
4 6 (5.61%) Cucumber
4 6 (5.61%) Postman
4 6 (5.61%) REST Assured
4 6 (5.61%) Selenium
4 6 (5.61%) TestRail
5 4 (3.74%) Toad
6 2 (1.87%) JUnit
7 1 (0.93%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.93%) Codeception
7 1 (0.93%) PHPUnit
7 1 (0.93%) Vite
General
1 25 (23.36%) Social Skills
2 14 (13.08%) Public Sector
3 12 (11.21%) Finance
4 9 (8.41%) Analytical Skills
5 4 (3.74%) Advertising
6 2 (1.87%) Documentation Skills
6 2 (1.87%) Legal
6 2 (1.87%) Marketing
6 2 (1.87%) Organisational Skills
6 2 (1.87%) Telecoms
7 1 (0.93%) Banking
7 1 (0.93%) Billing
7 1 (0.93%) iGaming
7 1 (0.93%) Manufacturing
7 1 (0.93%) Military
7 1 (0.93%) Retail
7 1 (0.93%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 49 (45.79%) Developer
2 26 (24.30%) PHP Developer
3 13 (12.15%) Senior
4 9 (8.41%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 8 (7.48%) Architect
6 7 (6.54%) Software Engineer
7 6 (5.61%) Automation Engineer
8 5 (4.67%) Full-Stack Developer
8 5 (4.67%) Lead
8 5 (4.67%) Security Engineer
8 5 (4.67%) Software Developer
8 5 (4.67%) Technical Architect
8 5 (4.67%) Test Automation Engineer
8 5 (4.67%) Test Engineer
9 4 (3.74%) Delphi Software Engineer
9 4 (3.74%) DevOps Engineer
9 4 (3.74%) Moodle Developer
9 4 (3.74%) Oracle Developer
9 4 (3.74%) PHP Software Engineer
9 4 (3.74%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (23.36%) REST
2 19 (17.76%) .NET
3 14 (13.08%) CSS
4 12 (11.21%) Laravel
5 11 (10.28%) HTML
6 9 (8.41%) LDAP
6 9 (8.41%) Vue
7 7 (6.54%) OpenID
7 7 (6.54%) RabbitMQ
8 6 (5.61%) Node.js
8 6 (5.61%) OAuth
8 6 (5.61%) SOAP
9 5 (4.67%) React
9 5 (4.67%) SailPoint
9 5 (4.67%) VML
9 5 (4.67%) Web Services
9 5 (4.67%) WebSockets
10 4 (3.74%) GraphQL
10 4 (3.74%) LAMP
10 4 (3.74%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 5 (4.67%) Client/Server
2 4 (3.74%) Linux Command Line
2 4 (3.74%) PKI
3 3 (2.80%) Distributed Systems
3 3 (2.80%) Legacy Code
3 3 (2.80%) NHS
3 3 (2.80%) Onboarding
4 2 (1.87%) AI Agents
4 2 (1.87%) FMCG
4 2 (1.87%) Greenfield Project
4 2 (1.87%) PACS
4 2 (1.87%) Product Ownership
4 2 (1.87%) TM Forum
5 1 (0.93%) Analytical Mindset
5 1 (0.93%) Cloud Native
5 1 (0.93%) IoT
5 1 (0.93%) Legacy Applications
5 1 (0.93%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (0.93%) Replication
5 1 (0.93%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 27 (25.23%) Linux
2 10 (9.35%) Unix
3 7 (6.54%) Windows
4 4 (3.74%) Ubuntu
5 2 (1.87%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.93%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 23 (21.50%) Agile
1 23 (21.50%) Problem-Solving
2 20 (18.69%) CI/CD
2 20 (18.69%) DevOps
3 17 (15.89%) Migration
4 15 (14.02%) Microservices
5 13 (12.15%) Containerisation
5 13 (12.15%) Refactoring
5 13 (12.15%) Roadmaps
6 12 (11.21%) TDD
7 11 (10.28%) Code Quality
7 11 (10.28%) Mentoring
8 10 (9.35%) Deployment Automation
8 10 (9.35%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 10 (9.35%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 9 (8.41%) Clean Code
9 9 (8.41%) ETL
9 9 (8.41%) Software Engineering
10 8 (7.48%) Design Patterns
10 8 (7.48%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 36 (33.64%) JavaScript
2 27 (25.23%) Python
3 22 (20.56%) SQL
4 15 (14.02%) Java
5 13 (12.15%) C#
6 8 (7.48%) Perl
7 6 (5.61%) Bash
8 5 (4.67%) Delphi
8 5 (4.67%) TypeScript
9 4 (3.74%) Go
9 4 (3.74%) PL/SQL
9 4 (3.74%) PowerShell
10 3 (2.80%) Shell Script
11 2 (1.87%) Kotlin
11 2 (1.87%) Scala
12 1 (0.93%) Korn
Qualifications
1 19 (17.76%) Security Cleared
2 17 (15.89%) SC Cleared
3 5 (4.67%) Degree
4 4 (3.74%) APMG
4 4 (3.74%) CompTIA Security+
4 4 (3.74%) DV Cleared
4 4 (3.74%) GIAC
4 4 (3.74%) SSCP
5 3 (2.80%) AWS Certification
5 3 (2.80%) Computer Science Degree
5 3 (2.80%) GSEC
6 2 (1.87%) AWS Certified Developer
7 1 (0.93%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
7 1 (0.93%) Azure Certification
7 1 (0.93%) BPSS Clearance
7 1 (0.93%) CSSLP
7 1 (0.93%) GWAPT
7 1 (0.93%) PMI Certification
7 1 (0.93%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (14.02%) QA
2 4 (3.74%) Cyber Essentials
2 4 (3.74%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
2 4 (3.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 4 (3.74%) NIST
3 3 (2.80%) Accessibility
4 2 (1.87%) GDPR
5 1 (0.93%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 1 (0.93%) HL7
5 1 (0.93%) HMG Security Policy Framework
5 1 (0.93%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.93%) WCAG
System Software
1 21 (19.63%) Docker
2 7 (6.54%) Varnish
3 4 (3.74%) VMware ESXi
3 4 (3.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (2.80%) Active Directory
5 2 (1.87%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (1.87%) Xen
Systems Management
1 13 (12.15%) Kubernetes
2 5 (4.67%) Ansible
2 5 (4.67%) Terraform
3 4 (3.74%) Grafana
3 4 (3.74%) vCenter Server
4 3 (2.80%) SCOM
5 1 (0.93%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 12 (11.21%) Microsoft
2 7 (6.54%) Google
3 6 (5.61%) Adobe
4 5 (4.67%) Oracle
4 5 (4.67%) ServiceNow
5 4 (3.74%) Cisco
5 4 (3.74%) VMware
6 2 (1.87%) Apple
6 2 (1.87%) Dynatrace
6 2 (1.87%) GoCardless
6 2 (1.87%) OpenAI
6 2 (1.87%) Percona
7 1 (0.93%) Salesforce
7 1 (0.93%) SAP
7 1 (0.93%) Sitecore
7 1 (0.93%) Virgin Media
7 1 (0.93%) WooCommerce
7 1 (0.93%) Zend