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

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 548 383 298
Rank change year-on-year -165 -85 +61
Contract jobs citing PHP 93 140 319
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.19% 0.49% 0.74%
As % of the Programming Languages category 0.71% 1.43% 2.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 65 85 246
10th Percentile £325 £294 £263
25th Percentile £425 £350 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £425 £411
Median % change year-on-year +11.76% +3.34% -6.00%
75th Percentile £550 £500 £521
90th Percentile £638 £575 £575
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £425 £400
% change year-on-year +11.76% +6.25% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 6 11
10th Percentile - - £22.50
25th Percentile - £33.25 £29.66
Median hourly rate - £34.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year - -37.27% -31.25%
75th Percentile - £35.75 £72.19
90th Percentile - - £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £35.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year - -22.22% -43.75%

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 13,165 9,808 12,901
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.91% 34.11% 30.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,605 6,680 9,183
10th Percentile £358 £358 £350
25th Percentile £415 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £626 £650
90th Percentile £713 £757 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +1.32% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 570 218 513
10th Percentile £36.25 £27.00 £32.25
25th Percentile £53.53 £34.12 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £62.36
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -7.79% -0.23%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.37 £62.50
% change year-on-year +2.57% +1.40% -

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 29 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 29 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 -161 75 £475 +9.20% 131
UK excluding London -109 50 £475 +11.76% 124
Work from Home -75 27 £500 +14.94% 46
London -102 23 £450 +2.86% 25
South West -13 20 £525 +1.94% 14
Yorkshire -41 18 £450 +25.70% 21
North of England -65 18 £450 +25.70% 37
South East -63 5 £275 -29.26% 35
Scotland - 4 £475 - 5
Midlands -72 2 £600 +37.93% 15
East of England -35 1 - - 13
West Midlands -71 1 £550 +26.44% 4

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 (9.68%) WordPress
2 6 (6.45%) Apache
3 5 (5.38%) Moodle
4 4 (4.30%) CMS
5 2 (2.15%) Drupal
5 2 (2.15%) nginx
Applications
1 6 (6.45%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (1.08%) Adobe Illustrator
2 1 (1.08%) Photoshop
2 1 (1.08%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 5 (5.38%) Magento
2 1 (1.08%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (1.08%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 26 (27.96%) AWS
2 16 (17.20%) Azure
3 13 (13.98%) GCP
4 5 (5.38%) GitHub
4 5 (5.38%) SaaS
5 3 (3.23%) Stripe
6 2 (2.15%) Apple Pay
6 2 (2.15%) GitHub Copilot
6 2 (2.15%) Google Pay
6 2 (2.15%) Power Platform
6 2 (2.15%) Serverless
7 1 (1.08%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 1 (1.08%) Amazon ECS
7 1 (1.08%) Amazon Lightsail
7 1 (1.08%) Amazon OpenSearch
7 1 (1.08%) AWS Fargate
7 1 (1.08%) AWS Lambda
7 1 (1.08%) Azure Machine Learning
7 1 (1.08%) Cloudflare
7 1 (1.08%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 4 (4.30%) BGP
1 4 (4.30%) Cisco ASA
1 4 (4.30%) Cisco IOS
1 4 (4.30%) MPLS
1 4 (4.30%) Network Security
1 4 (4.30%) TACACS
1 4 (4.30%) VPN
2 2 (2.15%) Firewall
2 2 (2.15%) FTP
3 1 (1.08%) HTTP
3 1 (1.08%) Internet
3 1 (1.08%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (31.18%) MySQL
2 10 (10.75%) PostgreSQL
3 8 (8.60%) MongoDB
3 8 (8.60%) SQL Server
4 6 (6.45%) NoSQL
4 6 (6.45%) Redis
4 6 (6.45%) Relational Database
5 5 (5.38%) BigQuery
5 5 (5.38%) Elasticsearch
6 2 (2.15%) Amazon Athena
6 2 (2.15%) Apache Cassandra
6 2 (2.15%) Neo4j
7 1 (1.08%) Amazon Aurora
7 1 (1.08%) DynamoDB
7 1 (1.08%) MariaDB
7 1 (1.08%) Metadata
7 1 (1.08%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 8 (8.60%) Git
1 8 (8.60%) Jenkins
1 8 (8.60%) JIRA
2 7 (7.53%) GitLab
3 6 (6.45%) Cucumber
3 6 (6.45%) Postman
3 6 (6.45%) REST Assured
3 6 (6.45%) Selenium
3 6 (6.45%) TestRail
4 2 (2.15%) JUnit
5 1 (1.08%) Bitbucket
5 1 (1.08%) Codeception
5 1 (1.08%) PHPUnit
5 1 (1.08%) Vite
General
1 17 (18.28%) Social Skills
2 12 (12.90%) Public Sector
3 11 (11.83%) Finance
4 7 (7.53%) Analytical Skills
5 4 (4.30%) Advertising
6 3 (3.23%) Marketing
7 2 (2.15%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (2.15%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (1.08%) Banking
8 1 (1.08%) iGaming
8 1 (1.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (1.08%) Legal
8 1 (1.08%) Manufacturing
8 1 (1.08%) Military
8 1 (1.08%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 43 (46.24%) Developer
2 25 (26.88%) PHP Developer
3 12 (12.90%) Senior
4 9 (9.68%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 6 (6.45%) Automation Engineer
5 6 (6.45%) PHP Software Engineer
5 6 (6.45%) Software Engineer
6 5 (5.38%) Architect
6 5 (5.38%) Lead
6 5 (5.38%) Moodle Developer
6 5 (5.38%) Security Engineer
6 5 (5.38%) Senior Developer
6 5 (5.38%) Software Developer
6 5 (5.38%) Test Automation Engineer
6 5 (5.38%) Test Engineer
7 4 (4.30%) Full-Stack Developer
7 4 (4.30%) Technical Architect
8 3 (3.23%) Infrastructure Security Engineer
8 3 (3.23%) Lead Test Engineer
8 3 (3.23%) Web Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (19.35%) REST
2 14 (15.05%) CSS
3 11 (11.83%) .NET
3 11 (11.83%) HTML
4 10 (10.75%) Laravel
4 10 (10.75%) RabbitMQ
5 9 (9.68%) LDAP
6 7 (7.53%) Node.js
6 7 (7.53%) OpenID
6 7 (7.53%) Vue
7 6 (6.45%) Kafka
7 6 (6.45%) OAuth
7 6 (6.45%) SOAP
8 5 (5.38%) SailPoint
8 5 (5.38%) Web Services
9 4 (4.30%) LAMP
9 4 (4.30%) Middleware
9 4 (4.30%) React
9 4 (4.30%) VML
10 2 (2.15%) Hibernate
Miscellaneous
1 7 (7.53%) Distributed Systems
2 4 (4.30%) Client/Server
2 4 (4.30%) PKI
3 3 (3.23%) Onboarding
4 2 (2.15%) AI Agents
4 2 (2.15%) Cloud Native
4 2 (2.15%) FMCG
4 2 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
4 2 (2.15%) Linux Command Line
4 2 (2.15%) Product Ownership
5 1 (1.08%) e-Learning
5 1 (1.08%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 16 (17.20%) Linux
2 4 (4.30%) Ubuntu
3 2 (2.15%) Unix
3 2 (2.15%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 20 (21.51%) Problem-Solving
2 17 (18.28%) Microservices
3 16 (17.20%) DevOps
4 15 (16.13%) CI/CD
5 14 (15.05%) Agile
6 12 (12.90%) Roadmaps
7 11 (11.83%) Code Quality
7 11 (11.83%) TDD
8 10 (10.75%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 10 (10.75%) Refactoring
8 10 (10.75%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 9 (9.68%) Containerisation
9 9 (9.68%) Mentoring
9 9 (9.68%) Observability
10 8 (8.60%) Deployment Automation
10 8 (8.60%) Migration
10 8 (8.60%) Software Engineering
10 8 (8.60%) User Acceptance Testing
11 7 (7.53%) Clean Code
11 7 (7.53%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 32 (34.41%) JavaScript
2 19 (20.43%) Python
3 13 (13.98%) SQL
4 12 (12.90%) Java
5 10 (10.75%) Go
6 6 (6.45%) C#
7 4 (4.30%) Perl
7 4 (4.30%) TypeScript
8 3 (3.23%) Kotlin
9 2 (2.15%) Bash
9 2 (2.15%) PowerShell
9 2 (2.15%) Scala
10 1 (1.08%) Korn
10 1 (1.08%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 18 (19.35%) Security Cleared
2 17 (18.28%) SC Cleared
3 4 (4.30%) APMG
3 4 (4.30%) CompTIA Security+
3 4 (4.30%) Degree
3 4 (4.30%) DV Cleared
3 4 (4.30%) GIAC
3 4 (4.30%) SSCP
4 3 (3.23%) Computer Science Degree
4 3 (3.23%) GSEC
5 2 (2.15%) AWS Certification
5 2 (2.15%) AWS Certified Developer
6 1 (1.08%) Azure Certification
6 1 (1.08%) CSSLP
6 1 (1.08%) GWAPT
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (15.05%) QA
2 4 (4.30%) Accessibility
2 4 (4.30%) Cyber Essentials
2 4 (4.30%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
2 4 (4.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 4 (4.30%) NIST
3 1 (1.08%) GDPR
3 1 (1.08%) HMG Security Policy Framework
3 1 (1.08%) PCI DSS
3 1 (1.08%) WCAG
System Software
1 14 (15.05%) Docker
2 5 (5.38%) Varnish
3 4 (4.30%) VMware ESXi
3 4 (4.30%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (1.08%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 11 (11.83%) Kubernetes
2 5 (5.38%) Terraform
3 4 (4.30%) vCenter Server
4 3 (3.23%) Ansible
4 3 (3.23%) SCOM
5 1 (1.08%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 8 (8.60%) Google
2 5 (5.38%) Adobe
2 5 (5.38%) Microsoft
2 5 (5.38%) ServiceNow
3 4 (4.30%) Cisco
3 4 (4.30%) VMware
4 2 (2.15%) Apple
4 2 (2.15%) Dynatrace
4 2 (2.15%) GoCardless
4 2 (2.15%) OpenAI
5 1 (1.08%) HubSpot
5 1 (1.08%) Oracle
5 1 (1.08%) Percona
5 1 (1.08%) Virgin Media
5 1 (1.08%) WooCommerce
5 1 (1.08%) Zend