PhD Job Trends in London

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

The table below provides summary statistics for permanent job vacancies advertised in London with a requirement for PhD qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the salaries offered over the 6 months leading up to 18 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 95 249 349
Rank change year-on-year +154 +100 +101
Permanent jobs citing PhD 462 164 144
As % of all permanent jobs in London 2.39% 1.27% 0.62%
As % of the Qualifications category 10.25% 3.71% 2.21%
Number of salaries quoted 46 80 95
10th Percentile £46,939 £65,000 £45,750
25th Percentile £53,688 £83,750 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £108,750 £85,000
Median % change year-on-year -31.03% +27.94% -
75th Percentile £111,250 £137,500 £115,000
90th Percentile £145,000 £175,000 £133,000
England median annual salary £65,000 £70,000 £61,500
% change year-on-year -7.14% +13.82% -18.00%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
London

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 London.

Permanent vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 4,509 4,425 6,502
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in London 23.36% 34.28% 28.06%
Number of salaries quoted 2,429 2,046 4,243
10th Percentile £36,750 £40,951 £36,250
25th Percentile £54,000 £52,500 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £70,000 £67,500
Median % change year-on-year - +3.70% -
75th Percentile £90,000 £92,500 £87,500
90th Percentile £110,000 £116,250 £105,000
England median annual salary £58,497 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +1.73% +4.55% -4.35%

PhD
Job Vacancy Trend in London

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

PhD job vacancy trend in London

PhD
Salary Trend in London

Salary distribution trend for jobs in London citing PhD.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in London citing PhD

PhD
Salary Histogram in London

Salary distribution for jobs citing PhD in London over the 6 months to 18 April 2026.

Salary histogram for PhD in London

PhD
Job Locations in London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing PhD within the London region over the 6 months to 18 April 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
South London - 133 - - 38
West London - 120 £30,000 - 37
East London - 66 - - 25
Central London -35 23 £102,500 -2.38% 42
North London - 22 - - 10
PhD
England

PhD
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in London 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 (1.95%) Jupyter
2 7 (1.52%) Apache Spark
3 5 (1.08%) Kinematics
4 2 (0.43%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.22%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 5 (1.08%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 4 (0.87%) Distributed Ledger
Cloud Services
1 369 (79.87%) Cloud Computing
2 16 (3.46%) AWS
3 8 (1.73%) GitHub
4 7 (1.52%) Anthropic Claude
4 7 (1.52%) GitHub Copilot
5 6 (1.30%) Azure
5 6 (1.30%) GCP
6 2 (0.43%) AWS Lambda
6 2 (0.43%) Azure Machine Learning
6 2 (0.43%) Copilot Studio
6 2 (0.43%) Dynamics 365
6 2 (0.43%) Google Compute Engine
6 2 (0.43%) Microsoft 365
6 2 (0.43%) Microsoft Copilot
6 2 (0.43%) Power Platform
6 2 (0.43%) Serverless
7 1 (0.22%) Amazon ECS
7 1 (0.22%) dbt
7 1 (0.22%) LangSmith
7 1 (0.22%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 366 (79.22%) Internet
2 5 (1.08%) Broadband
3 4 (0.87%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (1.08%) Hadoop
1 5 (1.08%) Semantic Layer
2 2 (0.43%) Amazon Redshift
2 2 (0.43%) BigQuery
3 1 (0.22%) Amazon Athena
3 1 (0.22%) Apache Hive
3 1 (0.22%) Data Mining
3 1 (0.22%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 7 (1.52%) Claude Code
2 1 (0.22%) MLflow
General
1 386 (83.55%) Social Skills
2 381 (82.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 369 (79.87%) Banking
4 24 (5.19%) Finance
5 14 (3.03%) Games
6 13 (2.81%) Analytical Skills
7 12 (2.60%) Law
8 6 (1.30%) Organisational Skills
9 3 (0.65%) Aerospace
9 3 (0.65%) Automotive
10 2 (0.43%) Financial Institution
11 1 (0.22%) Electronics
11 1 (0.22%) Front Office
11 1 (0.22%) iGaming
11 1 (0.22%) Legal
11 1 (0.22%) Presentation Skills
11 1 (0.22%) Retail
Job Titles
1 308 (66.67%) Lecturer
2 30 (6.49%) Senior
3 18 (3.90%) Data Scientist
4 13 (2.81%) Research Scientist
5 12 (2.60%) Senior Data Scientist
6 11 (2.38%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 9 (1.95%) Software Engineer
8 8 (1.73%) Principal Data Scientist
8 8 (1.73%) Senior Software Engineer
9 7 (1.52%) Principal Engineer
10 6 (1.30%) Machine Learning Scientist
11 5 (1.08%) Developer
11 5 (1.08%) Lead
11 5 (1.08%) Systems Engineer
12 4 (0.87%) Architect
13 3 (0.65%) Engineering Manager
13 3 (0.65%) Machine Learning Engineer
13 3 (0.65%) Quantitative Developer
13 3 (0.65%) Research Engineer
13 3 (0.65%) Trainer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (5.19%) PyTorch
2 9 (1.95%) TensorFlow
3 5 (1.08%) Open3D
4 4 (0.87%) EDI
4 4 (0.87%) Google JAX
4 4 (0.87%) JAX
5 3 (0.65%) scikit-learn
5 3 (0.65%) XGBoost
6 2 (0.43%) Node.js
6 2 (0.43%) SpaCy
7 1 (0.22%) .NET
7 1 (0.22%) Java Concurrency
7 1 (0.22%) Lambda Expressions
7 1 (0.22%) LangChain
7 1 (0.22%) LangGraph
Miscellaneous
1 366 (79.22%) IoT
2 18 (3.90%) Algorithms
3 12 (2.60%) Distributed Systems
4 8 (1.73%) Robotics
4 8 (1.73%) Sports Betting
5 5 (1.08%) Data Structures
5 5 (1.08%) GNSS
5 5 (1.08%) Lidar
6 4 (0.87%) Blockchain
7 2 (0.43%) Cloud Native
7 2 (0.43%) Data Protection Act
7 2 (0.43%) Derivative
7 2 (0.43%) Driving Licence
7 2 (0.43%) e-Learning
7 2 (0.43%) Legacy Systems
7 2 (0.43%) Self-Motivation
7 2 (0.43%) VHDL
8 1 (0.22%) Autonomous Agent
8 1 (0.22%) Distributed Computing
8 1 (0.22%) RISC-V
Operating Systems
1 9 (1.95%) Linux
2 1 (0.22%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 432 (93.51%) AI
2 415 (89.83%) Machine Learning
3 368 (79.65%) Cybersecurity
3 368 (79.65%) User Experience
4 366 (79.22%) Web Development
5 58 (12.55%) Computer Science
6 43 (9.31%) Mathematics
7 31 (6.71%) Data Science
8 30 (6.49%) Analytics
9 29 (6.28%) Physics
10 28 (6.06%) Software Engineering
10 28 (6.06%) Statistics
11 20 (4.33%) LLM
12 19 (4.11%) Deep Learning
12 19 (4.11%) Technical Leadership
13 17 (3.68%) Generative AI
14 16 (3.46%) DevOps
15 14 (3.03%) Computer Vision
15 14 (3.03%) Mentoring
15 14 (3.03%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 57 (12.34%) Python
2 14 (3.03%) C++
3 12 (2.60%) Java
4 10 (2.16%) C#
4 10 (2.16%) Go
5 8 (1.73%) Rust
6 3 (0.65%) Bash
7 2 (0.43%) PowerShell
7 2 (0.43%) R
7 2 (0.43%) Ruby
7 2 (0.43%) SQL
8 1 (0.22%) Scala
8 1 (0.22%) SystemVerilog
8 1 (0.22%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 459 (99.35%) Degree
2 418 (90.48%) Master's Degree
3 370 (80.09%) Postgraduate
4 25 (5.41%) Security Cleared
5 15 (3.25%) SC Cleared
6 10 (2.16%) DV Cleared
7 2 (0.43%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (0.43%) MBA
7 2 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
7 2 (0.43%) Numerate Degree
8 1 (0.22%) AWS Certification
8 1 (0.22%) Azure Certification
8 1 (0.22%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (0.65%) DO-254
1 3 (0.65%) HAZOP
1 3 (0.65%) IEC 61508
1 3 (0.65%) ISO 26262
System Software
1 1 (0.22%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 3 (0.65%) Terraform
2 2 (0.43%) Ansible
2 2 (0.43%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 4 (0.87%) Google
2 3 (0.65%) Microsoft
2 3 (0.65%) PayPal
3 1 (0.22%) Databricks
3 1 (0.22%) IBM
3 1 (0.22%) Intel