PhD Contract Job Trends in the West Midlands

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil, EngD, Doctorate)
England > West Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the West Midlands with a requirement for PhD qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 18 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 136 - 113
Rank change year-on-year - - -
Contract jobs citing PhD 1 0 4
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 0.045% - 0.22%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.12% - 0.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 0 0 4
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £570
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) - - £590
75th Percentile - - £615
90th Percentile - - £624
England median daily rate £650 £650 £700
% change year-on-year - -7.14% -3.45%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
West Midlands

PhD falls under the Academic Qualifications and Professional Certifications category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications in the West Midlands.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 837 487 563
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 37.37% 29.28% 30.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 574 326 349
10th Percentile £294 £219 £300
25th Percentile £423 £406 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.44% -0.48% +5.00%
75th Percentile £576 £612 £600
90th Percentile £675 £706 £675
England median daily rate £525 £528 £550
% change year-on-year -0.47% -4.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 55 15 30
10th Percentile £14.00 £20.20 £17.46
25th Percentile £18.87 £24.58 £23.00
Median hourly rate £23.58 £35.00 £34.75
Median % change year-on-year -32.64% +0.72% +73.75%
75th Percentile £28.08 £46.88 £67.50
90th Percentile £46.18 £52.50 £70.75
England median hourly rate £25.15 £48.56 £52.50
% change year-on-year -48.21% -7.50% +16.67%

PhD
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing PhD relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands.

PhD job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

PhD
Daily Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing PhD.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing PhD

PhD
Hourly Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing PhD.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing PhD

PhD
Contract Job Locations in the West Midlands

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing PhD within the West Midlands region over the 6 months to 18 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
Coventry - 1 - -
PhD
England

PhD
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the West Midlands 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:

Cloud Services
1 1 (100.00%) Azure
1 1 (100.00%) Azure Machine Learning
1 1 (100.00%) Azure Synapse Analytics
1 1 (100.00%) Power Platform
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (100.00%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 1 (100.00%) MLflow
Job Titles
1 1 (100.00%) Data Scientist
1 1 (100.00%) Senior
1 1 (100.00%) Senior Data Scientist
Processes & Methodologies
1 1 (100.00%) A/B Testing
1 1 (100.00%) Agile
1 1 (100.00%) AI
1 1 (100.00%) Business Intelligence
1 1 (100.00%) CI/CD
1 1 (100.00%) Computer Science
1 1 (100.00%) Containerisation
1 1 (100.00%) CRISP-DM
1 1 (100.00%) Data Pipeline
1 1 (100.00%) Data Science
1 1 (100.00%) Experimental Design
1 1 (100.00%) ITIL
1 1 (100.00%) Mathematics
1 1 (100.00%) MLOps
1 1 (100.00%) Performance Optimisation
1 1 (100.00%) Service Management
1 1 (100.00%) Software Engineering
1 1 (100.00%) Statistics
1 1 (100.00%) Thought Leadership
1 1 (100.00%) Time Series Forecasting
Programming Languages
1 1 (100.00%) Python
1 1 (100.00%) SQL
Qualifications
1 1 (100.00%) Degree
1 1 (100.00%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (100.00%) Data Quality
System Software
1 1 (100.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 1 (100.00%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 1 (100.00%) Databricks
1 1 (100.00%) Microsoft