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 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 417 323 299
Rank change year-on-year -94 -24 +62
Contract jobs citing PHP 175 223 329
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.47% 0.65% 0.75%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.52% 2.01% 2.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 117 159 259
10th Percentile £300 £313 £263
25th Percentile £363 £344 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £450 £425
Median % change year-on-year -5.56% +5.88% -5.56%
75th Percentile £475 £550 £561
90th Percentile £563 £600 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £453 £400
% change year-on-year -6.08% +13.13% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 2 6
10th Percentile - £35.05 £17.31
25th Percentile £43.84 £37.75 £19.82
Median hourly rate £44.90 £43.50 £27.77
Median % change year-on-year +3.21% +56.67% -66.75%
75th Percentile £45.95 £49.25 £49.84
90th Percentile - £51.95 £56.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £26.78
% change year-on-year - - +53.29%

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 11,493 11,079 13,521
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.18% 32.51% 30.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,581 7,120 9,630
10th Percentile £350 £350 £360
25th Percentile £413 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -4.55% -3.08%
75th Percentile £619 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £477 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.26% -2.50% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 374 256 410
10th Percentile £31.25 £21.63 £34.73
25th Percentile £50.00 £40.06 £47.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% - -
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £85.00 £78.08
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.87 £65.00
% change year-on-year +1.77% -1.73% -

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 December 2025.

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 16 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 December 2025. 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 -75 146 £423 -0.59% 222
UK excluding London -58 81 £425 -6.08% 215
Work from Home -34 62 £420 +5.00% 93
London -40 52 £400 -4.76% 33
North of England -38 31 £389 -21.46% 71
East of England -17 18 £438 +21.53% 17
North West -22 15 £359 -15.53% 30
Midlands -33 13 £510 +27.50% 37
Yorkshire -44 13 £425 -17.07% 38
South East -43 9 £413 -13.16% 44
East Midlands -14 7 £515 +28.75% 14
South West -2 6 £638 +79.83% 39
West Midlands -31 6 £419 +8.06% 23
Scotland +2 3 £69 -83.45% 3
North East - 3 - - 4
Wales -12 1 £425 -20.93% 6

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 15 (8.57%) WebLogic
1 15 (8.57%) WebSphere
2 13 (7.43%) SugarCRM
3 11 (6.29%) WordPress
4 8 (4.57%) Drupal
5 5 (2.86%) Confluence
6 4 (2.29%) CMS
6 4 (2.29%) SharePoint
7 3 (1.71%) SAS
8 2 (1.14%) Apache
8 2 (1.14%) FileNet
9 1 (0.57%) nginx
Applications
1 8 (4.57%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (2.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (2.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 3 (1.71%) Magento
2 2 (1.14%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 65 (37.14%) AWS
2 38 (21.71%) Azure
3 21 (12.00%) GitHub
4 16 (9.14%) SaaS
5 12 (6.86%) GCP
6 9 (5.14%) GitHub Actions
7 7 (4.00%) Azure DevOps
7 7 (4.00%) Serverless
8 6 (3.43%) PaaS
9 5 (2.86%) Azure Functions
9 5 (2.86%) ChatGPT
9 5 (2.86%) GitHub Copilot
9 5 (2.86%) IaaS
9 5 (2.86%) OpenShift
10 3 (1.71%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 3 (1.71%) Azure API Management
10 3 (1.71%) Azure Monitor
10 3 (1.71%) Entra ID
11 2 (1.14%) Intacct
11 2 (1.14%) Stripe
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.14%) Firewall
1 2 (1.14%) HTTP
1 2 (1.14%) SSL
2 1 (0.57%) DNS
2 1 (0.57%) Internet
2 1 (0.57%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (29.71%) MySQL
2 26 (14.86%) PostgreSQL
3 17 (9.71%) Relational Database
3 17 (9.71%) SQL Server
4 5 (2.86%) Oracle Database
4 5 (2.86%) Redis
5 4 (2.29%) RDBMS
5 4 (2.29%) SQLPlus
6 3 (1.71%) Elasticsearch
6 3 (1.71%) MariaDB
7 2 (1.14%) Amazon Aurora
7 2 (1.14%) Amazon RDS
7 2 (1.14%) ImageNet
7 2 (1.14%) MongoDB
8 1 (0.57%) BigQuery
8 1 (0.57%) CouchDB
8 1 (0.57%) DynamoDB
8 1 (0.57%) Power BI
8 1 (0.57%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 31 (17.71%) Git
2 25 (14.29%) JIRA
3 16 (9.14%) Jenkins
4 9 (5.14%) Postman
5 7 (4.00%) Selenium
6 6 (3.43%) Bitbucket
6 6 (3.43%) Cucumber
6 6 (3.43%) GitLab
6 6 (3.43%) PHPUnit
6 6 (3.43%) REST Assured
6 6 (3.43%) TestRail
7 4 (2.29%) Toad
8 3 (1.71%) JUnit
9 2 (1.14%) Cypress.io
9 2 (1.14%) JMeter
9 2 (1.14%) Vagrant
10 1 (0.57%) Mercurial
10 1 (0.57%) Subversion
General
1 45 (25.71%) Social Skills
2 25 (14.29%) Public Sector
3 14 (8.00%) Finance
4 13 (7.43%) Marketing
5 12 (6.86%) Analytical Skills
6 5 (2.86%) Games
7 4 (2.29%) Military
7 4 (2.29%) Telecoms
8 3 (1.71%) Billing
8 3 (1.71%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (1.14%) Documentation Skills
9 2 (1.14%) Manufacturing
9 2 (1.14%) Retail
10 1 (0.57%) Banking
10 1 (0.57%) Electronics
10 1 (0.57%) Financial Institution
10 1 (0.57%) Law
10 1 (0.57%) Legal
10 1 (0.57%) Organisational Skills
10 1 (0.57%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 90 (51.43%) Developer
2 39 (22.29%) PHP Developer
3 21 (12.00%) Senior
4 15 (8.57%) Software Engineer
5 14 (8.00%) Consultant
6 10 (5.71%) Lead
6 10 (5.71%) Senior Developer
7 8 (4.57%) Full-Stack Developer
7 8 (4.57%) Oracle Developer
8 7 (4.00%) .NET Developer
9 6 (3.43%) Architect
10 5 (2.86%) Automation Engineer
10 5 (2.86%) Backend Developer
10 5 (2.86%) C# Developer
10 5 (2.86%) DevOps Engineer
10 5 (2.86%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 5 (2.86%) Senior DevOps
10 5 (2.86%) Software Developer
10 5 (2.86%) Test Automation Engineer
10 5 (2.86%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (28.57%) HTML
2 48 (27.43%) .NET
3 39 (22.29%) REST
4 34 (19.43%) CSS
5 32 (18.29%) Node.js
6 19 (10.86%) Laravel
7 18 (10.29%) SOAP
8 16 (9.14%) Middleware
9 15 (8.57%) Vue
10 12 (6.86%) React
11 10 (5.71%) GraphQL
12 9 (5.14%) Symfony
13 8 (4.57%) OpenID
13 8 (4.57%) RESTful
13 8 (4.57%) Web Services
14 7 (4.00%) HTML5
15 6 (3.43%) CSS3
16 5 (2.86%) AngularJS
16 5 (2.86%) Unity (Game Engine)
16 5 (2.86%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 9 (5.14%) Legacy Systems
2 7 (4.00%) Linux Command Line
3 5 (2.86%) Legacy Code
3 5 (2.86%) Virtual Team
4 4 (2.29%) Data Protection Act
4 4 (2.29%) Enterprise Software
4 4 (2.29%) Virtual Reality
5 3 (1.71%) NHS
6 2 (1.14%) 3D Graphics
6 2 (1.14%) e-Learning
6 2 (1.14%) Greenfield Project
6 2 (1.14%) Mixed Reality
6 2 (1.14%) Onboarding
6 2 (1.14%) PACS
6 2 (1.14%) Product Ownership
6 2 (1.14%) Replication
6 2 (1.14%) TM Forum
7 1 (0.57%) AI Agents
7 1 (0.57%) Legacy Applications
7 1 (0.57%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 23 (13.14%) Linux
2 16 (9.14%) Windows
3 9 (5.14%) Unix
4 4 (2.29%) Android
5 3 (1.71%) Apple iOS
6 2 (1.14%) CentOS
6 2 (1.14%) Debian
6 2 (1.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (1.14%) Ubuntu
6 2 (1.14%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.57%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 58 (33.14%) CI/CD
2 48 (27.43%) Agile
3 38 (21.71%) Problem-Solving
4 31 (17.71%) DevOps
5 26 (14.86%) Migration
6 24 (13.71%) Containerisation
7 20 (11.43%) API Integration
7 20 (11.43%) User Experience
8 19 (10.86%) CRM
8 19 (10.86%) Microservices
8 19 (10.86%) Software Engineering
9 18 (10.29%) AI
10 17 (9.71%) Requirements Gathering
11 16 (9.14%) MVC
12 15 (8.57%) ETL
12 15 (8.57%) Full-Stack Development
12 15 (8.57%) TDD
12 15 (8.57%) Test Automation
13 11 (6.29%) Observability
13 11 (6.29%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 63 (36.00%) JavaScript
2 53 (30.29%) Python
3 46 (26.29%) SQL
4 36 (20.57%) Java
5 32 (18.29%) C#
6 22 (12.57%) C++
7 15 (8.57%) C
8 13 (7.43%) Bash
9 12 (6.86%) PL/SQL
10 10 (5.71%) PowerShell
11 7 (4.00%) TypeScript
12 6 (3.43%) Perl
13 5 (2.86%) Delphi
14 4 (2.29%) Ruby
15 3 (1.71%) Go
15 3 (1.71%) VB
16 2 (1.14%) Kotlin
16 2 (1.14%) Shell Script
17 1 (0.57%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 19 (10.86%) Security Cleared
2 13 (7.43%) SC Cleared
3 9 (5.14%) BPSS Clearance
4 5 (2.86%) Degree
5 4 (2.29%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (1.71%) AWS Certification
6 3 (1.71%) Cisco Certification
7 2 (1.14%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 2 (1.14%) CEH
7 2 (1.14%) CISSP
7 2 (1.14%) Master's Degree
8 1 (0.57%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
8 1 (0.57%) CCNA
8 1 (0.57%) CCNP
8 1 (0.57%) PMI Certification
8 1 (0.57%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (17.14%) QA
2 5 (2.86%) Accessibility
3 4 (2.29%) GDPR
4 3 (1.71%) Data Quality
5 2 (1.14%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 2 (1.14%) HIPAA
5 2 (1.14%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.57%) HL7
6 1 (0.57%) Software Quality Assurance
6 1 (0.57%) WCAG
System Software
1 38 (21.71%) Docker
2 4 (2.29%) Active Directory
3 3 (1.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (1.14%) Varnish
4 2 (1.14%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (1.14%) VirtualBox
4 2 (1.14%) Xen
5 1 (0.57%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 27 (15.43%) Kubernetes
2 11 (6.29%) Grafana
3 10 (5.71%) Terraform
4 7 (4.00%) Ansible
5 3 (1.71%) Puppet
6 2 (1.14%) Icinga
6 2 (1.14%) Kibana
6 2 (1.14%) logstash
6 2 (1.14%) Nagios
6 2 (1.14%) Progress Chef
6 2 (1.14%) Salt
7 1 (0.57%) Bitnami
7 1 (0.57%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 21 (12.00%) Oracle
2 17 (9.71%) Microsoft
3 15 (8.57%) Dynatrace
4 6 (3.43%) Salesforce
5 5 (2.86%) AppDynamics
5 5 (2.86%) Google
5 5 (2.86%) ServiceNow
5 5 (2.86%) Zend
6 3 (1.71%) VMware
7 2 (1.14%) Genesys
7 2 (1.14%) KANA
7 2 (1.14%) New Relic
7 2 (1.14%) Rackspace
7 2 (1.14%) SAP
8 1 (0.57%) Cisco
8 1 (0.57%) GoCardless
8 1 (0.57%) mParticle
8 1 (0.57%) OneLogin
8 1 (0.57%) OpenAI
8 1 (0.57%) Virgin Media