PhD Jobs in the South West

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

The table below provides summary statistics for permanent job vacancies advertised in the South West with a requirement for PhD qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the salaries offered over the 6 months leading up to 15 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 143 277 223
Rank change year-on-year +134 -54 +15
Permanent jobs citing PhD 32 16 46
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the South West 0.90% 0.17% 0.68%
As % of the Qualifications category 1.73% 0.49% 1.64%
Number of salaries quoted 15 14 36
10th Percentile £37,250 £49,750 £31,973
25th Percentile £41,375 £55,000 £42,019
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,000 £68,750 £45,750
Median % change year-on-year -34.55% +50.27% -23.75%
75th Percentile £57,500 £85,000 £82,500
90th Percentile £71,000 £87,625 £86,250
England median annual salary £80,000 £62,500 £75,000
% change year-on-year +28.00% -16.67% +7.14%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
South West

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 the South West.

Permanent vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 1,848 3,271 2,807
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the South West 51.87% 35.34% 41.75%
Number of salaries quoted 1,013 2,139 1,262
10th Percentile £29,750 £30,000 £30,268
25th Percentile £40,000 £39,759 £38,017
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,600 £53,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -1.68% +1.90% +5.00%
75th Percentile £61,250 £67,500 £70,000
90th Percentile £75,000 £81,250 £79,750
England median annual salary £55,000 £54,700 £60,000
% change year-on-year +0.55% -8.83% +9.09%

PhD
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

Job postings citing PhD as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the South West.

Job vacancy trend for PhD in the South West

PhD
Salary Trend in the South West

3-month moving average salary quoted in jobs citing PhD in the South West.

Salary trend for PhD in the South West

PhD
Salary Histogram in the South West

Salary distribution for jobs citing PhD in the South West over the 6 months to 15 May 2025.

Salary histogram for PhD in the South West

PhD
Job Locations in the South West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing PhD within the South West region over the 6 months to 15 May 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Bristol +54 12 £50,000 -37.50% 25
Gloucestershire +69 5 £42,500 -45.16% 14
Wiltshire +47 5 £55,000 -8.33% 2
Devon +24 4 - - 2
Dorset - 4 - - 2
Cornwall - 2 £42,500 -
PhD
England

PhD
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the South West by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 3 (9.38%) SAS
2 2 (6.25%) ArcGIS
3 1 (3.13%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 8 (25.00%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 8 (25.00%) AWS
1 8 (25.00%) Azure
1 8 (25.00%) GCP
2 6 (18.75%) AWS Lambda
2 6 (18.75%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 6 (18.75%) Broadband
2 1 (3.13%) Wideband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (6.25%) GIS
1 2 (6.25%) QGIS
Development Applications
1 1 (3.13%) Git
1 1 (3.13%) Subversion
General
1 15 (46.88%) Analytical Skills
2 8 (25.00%) Finance
3 6 (18.75%) Banking
4 3 (9.38%) Legal
4 3 (9.38%) Military
4 3 (9.38%) Retail
4 3 (9.38%) Social Skills
5 2 (6.25%) Environmental Health
5 2 (6.25%) Presentation Skills
6 1 (3.13%) Agriculture
Job Titles
1 8 (25.00%) Machine Learning Engineer
1 8 (25.00%) Trainer
2 6 (18.75%) Senior
3 5 (15.63%) Graduate
4 4 (12.50%) Research Scientist
5 3 (9.38%) Data Scientist
6 2 (6.25%) Remote Sensing Specialist
6 2 (6.25%) Research Engineer
6 2 (6.25%) Security Engineer
7 1 (3.13%) Biostatistician
7 1 (3.13%) Developer
7 1 (3.13%) Graduate Developer
7 1 (3.13%) Graduate Software Developer
7 1 (3.13%) Radio Engineer
7 1 (3.13%) RF Engineer
7 1 (3.13%) Software Developer
7 1 (3.13%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (12.50%) PyTorch
1 4 (12.50%) TensorFlow
2 2 (6.25%) HTML
2 2 (6.25%) Hugging Face
3 1 (3.13%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 9 (28.13%) Self-Motivation
2 3 (9.38%) Algorithms
2 3 (9.38%) e-Learning
2 3 (9.38%) Hackathon
2 3 (9.38%) Learning Management System
2 3 (9.38%) Mobile App
3 2 (6.25%) Lidar
3 2 (6.25%) Reinsurance
3 2 (6.25%) Virtual Team
4 1 (3.13%) Distributed Computing
4 1 (3.13%) FPGA
Processes & Methodologies
1 13 (40.63%) Artificial Intelligence
2 12 (37.50%) Agile
3 11 (34.38%) Data Science
3 11 (34.38%) Mathematics
4 10 (31.25%) Machine Learning
5 9 (28.13%) Computer Science
5 9 (28.13%) Problem-Solving
6 8 (25.00%) Conversational UI
6 8 (25.00%) Statistics
7 7 (21.88%) Analytics
7 7 (21.88%) Physics
8 6 (18.75%) CI/CD
8 6 (18.75%) Clean Code
8 6 (18.75%) Creative Thinking
8 6 (18.75%) Cybersecurity
8 6 (18.75%) Mentoring
8 6 (18.75%) Performance Metrics
8 6 (18.75%) Personalization
9 5 (15.63%) Chemistry
10 4 (12.50%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 17 (53.13%) Python
2 8 (25.00%) TypeScript
3 5 (15.63%) C
3 5 (15.63%) C++
3 5 (15.63%) JavaScript
4 4 (12.50%) Rust
5 3 (9.38%) C#
5 3 (9.38%) Java
5 3 (9.38%) Kotlin
6 2 (6.25%) Go
7 1 (3.13%) Embedded C
7 1 (3.13%) Embedded C++
7 1 (3.13%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 32 (100.00%) Degree
2 18 (56.25%) Master's Degree
3 5 (15.63%) Security Cleared
4 3 (9.38%) BPSS Clearance
5 1 (3.13%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (3.13%) DV Cleared
5 1 (3.13%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (3.13%) California Consumer Privacy Act
1 1 (3.13%) GDPR
Vendors
1 8 (25.00%) PayPal
2 3 (9.38%) Google
2 3 (9.38%) IBM
2 3 (9.38%) Microsoft
3 1 (3.13%) Databricks
3 1 (3.13%) Xilinx