PhD Job Trends in England

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

The table below provides summary statistics for permanent job vacancies advertised in England with a requirement for PhD qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the salaries offered over the 6 months leading up to 6 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 501 99 457
Rank change year-on-year -402 +358 -24
Permanent jobs citing PhD 267 1,317 284
As % of all permanent jobs in England 0.26% 3.05% 0.43%
As % of the Qualifications category 1.48% 8.41% 1.50%
Number of salaries quoted 153 88 109
10th Percentile £41,950 £40,566 £34,750
25th Percentile £46,939 £65,000 £53,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £56,000 £92,500 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year -39.46% +15.63% +6.67%
75th Percentile £80,000 £116,250 £99,891
90th Percentile £100,000 £150,000 £124,000
UK median annual salary £56,000 £92,500 £75,000
% change year-on-year -39.46% +23.33% +5.82%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
England

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

Permanent vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 18,088 15,652 18,906
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in England 17.38% 36.23% 28.82%
Number of salaries quoted 10,507 6,682 8,080
10th Percentile £32,000 £29,000 £31,250
25th Percentile £43,750 £36,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% -1.71%
75th Percentile £80,000 £73,750 £75,000
90th Percentile £97,500 £90,000 £90,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% -0.86%

PhD
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing PhD relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in England.

PhD job vacancy trend in England

PhD
Salary Trend in England

Salary distribution trend for jobs in England citing PhD.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in England citing PhD

PhD
Salary Histogram in England

Salary distribution for jobs citing PhD in England over the 6 months to 6 October 2026.

Salary histogram for PhD in England

PhD
Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing PhD within the England region over the 6 months to 6 October 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
London -131 125 £55,000 -51.11% 828
South East -136 58 £57,500 -36.11% 202
East of England -72 35 £60,000 - 191
North of England -299 18 £55,000 -19.12% 125
Midlands -212 17 £45,000 - 51
East Midlands -101 14 £45,000 - 21
South West -143 13 £65,000 +85.71% 56
Yorkshire -155 11 £60,000 - 34
North West -163 6 £51,000 -25.00% 81
West Midlands -157 3 £51,000 - 30
North East -124 1 - - 10
PhD
UK

PhD
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 34 (12.73%) Apache Spark
2 7 (2.62%) Jupyter
3 5 (1.87%) Apache Pig
4 4 (1.50%) SAS
5 3 (1.12%) ArcGIS
5 3 (1.12%) R Markdown
6 1 (0.37%) Kinematics
6 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.37%) PowerFactory
Applications
1 15 (5.62%) Simulink
2 6 (2.25%) LaTeX
2 6 (2.25%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (1.50%) Mathcad
3 4 (1.50%) Mathematica
4 1 (0.37%) SOLIDWORKS
4 1 (0.37%) Stata
4 1 (0.37%) Zemax
Business Applications
1 1 (0.37%) Dynamics GP
1 1 (0.37%) HFM
Cloud Services
1 55 (20.60%) AWS
2 37 (13.86%) Azure
2 37 (13.86%) GCP
3 26 (9.74%) Cloud Computing
4 7 (2.62%) SaaS
5 5 (1.87%) Amazon EMR
5 5 (1.87%) Amazon Kinesis
5 5 (1.87%) Serverless
6 4 (1.50%) Power Platform
7 3 (1.12%) GitHub
8 1 (0.37%) Amazon Bedrock
8 1 (0.37%) Amazon SageMaker
8 1 (0.37%) Azure AI
8 1 (0.37%) Azure Machine Learning
8 1 (0.37%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 18 (6.74%) Internet
2 5 (1.87%) Ethernet
3 2 (0.75%) 5G
3 2 (0.75%) HTTP
4 1 (0.37%) DHCP
4 1 (0.37%) DNS
4 1 (0.37%) Kerberos
4 1 (0.37%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (9.36%) Amazon Redshift
2 12 (4.49%) Big Data
3 9 (3.37%) PostgreSQL
4 6 (2.25%) Hadoop
5 5 (1.87%) Apache Hive
5 5 (1.87%) Elasticsearch
5 5 (1.87%) NoSQL
6 4 (1.50%) Power BI
6 4 (1.50%) Tableau
7 2 (0.75%) MongoDB
8 1 (0.37%) Data Lake
8 1 (0.37%) Data Mining
8 1 (0.37%) Metadata
8 1 (0.37%) Neo4j
8 1 (0.37%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 12 (4.49%) LabVIEW
2 9 (3.37%) Git
3 4 (1.50%) Rational DOORS
4 2 (0.75%) MLflow
5 1 (0.37%) Subversion
General
1 93 (34.83%) Social Skills
2 56 (20.97%) Finance
3 55 (20.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 42 (15.73%) Banking
5 33 (12.36%) Electronics
6 31 (11.61%) Analytical Skills
7 26 (9.74%) Aerospace
7 26 (9.74%) Financial Institution
8 14 (5.24%) Marketing
9 11 (4.12%) Law
9 11 (4.12%) Organisational Skills
10 10 (3.75%) Automotive
11 8 (3.00%) Manufacturing
11 8 (3.00%) Presentation Skills
12 5 (1.87%) Pharmaceutical
12 5 (1.87%) Public Sector
12 5 (1.87%) Retail
13 4 (1.50%) Legal
14 3 (1.12%) Publishing
15 2 (0.75%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 76 (28.46%) Senior
2 38 (14.23%) Software Engineer
3 37 (13.86%) Research Scientist
4 33 (12.36%) Data Scientist
5 31 (11.61%) Senior Data Scientist
6 24 (8.99%) Lecturer
7 20 (7.49%) C++ Software Engineer
8 19 (7.12%) Systems Engineer
9 17 (6.37%) Python Engineer
9 17 (6.37%) Python Software Engineer
10 13 (4.87%) C# Software Engineer
10 13 (4.87%) Consultant
11 11 (4.12%) Senior Software Engineer
12 10 (3.75%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 10 (3.75%) Lead
13 8 (3.00%) Senior C++ Software Engineer
13 8 (3.00%) Senior Systems Engineer
14 7 (2.62%) Applications Engineer
14 7 (2.62%) Design Engineer
15 6 (2.25%) Research Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (11.99%) PyTorch
2 25 (9.36%) SpaCy
2 25 (9.36%) TensorFlow
3 14 (5.24%) Google JAX
3 14 (5.24%) JAX
3 14 (5.24%) NumPy
4 13 (4.87%) Pandas
4 13 (4.87%) scikit-learn
5 7 (2.62%) .NET
6 6 (2.25%) Django
6 6 (2.25%) Vue
7 5 (1.87%) ASP.NET
7 5 (1.87%) ASP.NET Core
7 5 (1.87%) Kafka
7 5 (1.87%) Keras
8 3 (1.12%) EDI
8 3 (1.12%) gRPC
8 3 (1.12%) OpenCV
9 2 (0.75%) React
9 2 (0.75%) Terraform
Miscellaneous
1 32 (11.99%) Algorithms
2 25 (9.36%) e-Learning
3 17 (6.37%) Blog
4 13 (4.87%) FPGA
5 10 (3.75%) IoT
6 9 (3.37%) AI Agents
6 9 (3.37%) Data Structures
6 9 (3.37%) Onboarding
7 8 (3.00%) Distributed Systems
7 8 (3.00%) Fibre Optics
8 7 (2.62%) Distributed Computing
8 7 (2.62%) Embedded Systems
8 7 (2.62%) Management Information System
8 7 (2.62%) VHDL
9 6 (2.25%) Robotics
9 6 (2.25%) Synthetic Data
10 5 (1.87%) Enterprise Cloud
11 4 (1.50%) Cloud Native
11 4 (1.50%) Self-Motivation
12 3 (1.12%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 16 (5.99%) Linux
2 4 (1.50%) Windows
3 1 (0.37%) CentOS
3 1 (0.37%) Debian
3 1 (0.37%) Mac OS X
3 1 (0.37%) Unix
3 1 (0.37%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 127 (47.57%) Machine Learning
2 115 (43.07%) AI
3 70 (26.22%) Software Engineering
4 64 (23.97%) Data Science
5 62 (23.22%) Physics
6 59 (22.10%) Mathematics
7 56 (20.97%) Mentoring
8 53 (19.85%) Computer Science
9 44 (16.48%) Analytics
10 41 (15.36%) Validation
11 39 (14.61%) Natural Language Processing
12 34 (12.73%) MLOps
13 32 (11.99%) CI/CD
14 30 (11.24%) Cybersecurity
14 30 (11.24%) Data Engineering
15 27 (10.11%) Collaborative Culture
15 27 (10.11%) DevOps
15 27 (10.11%) Problem-Solving
16 25 (9.36%) Technical Leadership
17 24 (8.99%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 126 (47.19%) Python
2 43 (16.10%) MATLAB
3 37 (13.86%) C++
4 22 (8.24%) SQL
5 21 (7.87%) C#
6 12 (4.49%) Java
6 12 (4.49%) R
7 11 (4.12%) JavaScript
8 10 (3.75%) C
9 8 (3.00%) Julia
9 8 (3.00%) TypeScript
10 4 (1.50%) Embedded C
11 3 (1.12%) Bash
11 3 (1.12%) Rust
12 1 (0.37%) Gremlin
12 1 (0.37%) Haskell
12 1 (0.37%) OCaml
12 1 (0.37%) Scala
12 1 (0.37%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.37%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 267 (100.00%) Degree
2 145 (54.31%) Master's Degree
3 54 (20.22%) Security Cleared
4 27 (10.11%) SC Cleared
5 23 (8.61%) Postgraduate
6 20 (7.49%) DV Cleared
7 18 (6.74%) Computer Science Degree
8 9 (3.37%) BPSS Clearance
9 5 (1.87%) AWS Certification
9 5 (1.87%) DBS Check
10 2 (0.75%) HND
11 1 (0.37%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.37%) Chartered Engineer
11 1 (0.37%) CTC Cleared
11 1 (0.37%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (5.24%) QA
2 9 (3.37%) Accessibility
3 2 (0.75%) CDISC
3 2 (0.75%) Data Quality
3 2 (0.75%) GLP
4 1 (0.37%) MISRA
System Software
1 4 (1.50%) Docker
2 2 (0.75%) Firmware
3 1 (0.37%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.37%) Ceph
3 1 (0.37%) Lustre
3 1 (0.37%) NFS
3 1 (0.37%) Samba
3 1 (0.37%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 9 (3.37%) Kubernetes
2 1 (0.37%) Ansible
2 1 (0.37%) Kubeflow
2 1 (0.37%) Oracle ZFS
Vendors
1 23 (8.61%) Google
2 7 (2.62%) Microsoft
2 7 (2.62%) Thales
3 4 (1.50%) Siemens
3 4 (1.50%) YouTube
4 3 (1.12%) EMC
4 3 (1.12%) OpenAI
5 2 (0.75%) Databricks
6 1 (0.37%) Altera
6 1 (0.37%) Apple
6 1 (0.37%) DIgSILENT
6 1 (0.37%) Hyperion
6 1 (0.37%) IBM
6 1 (0.37%) Intel
6 1 (0.37%) MathWorks
6 1 (0.37%) Microsemi
6 1 (0.37%) Oracle
6 1 (0.37%) Red Hat
6 1 (0.37%) Xilinx