PhD Jobs in the UK excluding London

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

The table below provides summary statistics for permanent job vacancies advertised in the UK excluding London with a requirement for PhD qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the salaries offered over the 6 months leading up to 17 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 220 419 335
Rank change year-on-year +199 -84 +94
Permanent jobs citing PhD 533 385 551
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 1.34% 0.54% 0.93%
As % of the Qualifications category 2.44% 1.98% 2.54%
Number of salaries quoted 99 240 118
10th Percentile £40,000 £34,750 £34,637
25th Percentile £45,000 £45,313 £43,125
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,000 £60,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year -13.33% +4.35% -
75th Percentile £77,500 £85,000 £82,500
90th Percentile £80,000 £90,500 £100,000
UK median annual salary £75,000 £62,500 £75,000
% change year-on-year +20.00% -16.67% +7.14%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK excluding 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 the UK excluding London.

Permanent vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 21,811 19,490 21,727
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 54.94% 27.30% 36.66%
Number of salaries quoted 9,016 12,219 8,048
10th Percentile £31,250 £27,250 £28,000
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,250 £37,451
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,000 £50,000 £52,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% +4.00%
75th Percentile £63,750 £65,000 £67,500
90th Percentile £73,708 £78,750 £80,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £54,000 £59,563
% change year-on-year +1.85% -9.34% +8.30%

PhD
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings citing PhD as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for PhD in the UK excluding London

PhD
Salary Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average salary quoted in jobs citing PhD in the UK excluding London.

Salary trend for PhD in the UK excluding London

PhD
Salary Histogram in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution for jobs citing PhD in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 17 May 2025.

Salary histogram for PhD in the UK excluding London

PhD
Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing PhD within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 17 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
North of England +171 184 £45,000 -43.75% 123
South East +35 115 £67,905 +17.08% 183
Yorkshire +145 93 £45,000 +20.00% 43
Midlands +127 84 £31,000 -43.64% 57
North West +45 67 £45,500 -43.13% 62
East of England +45 63 £50,000 -28.57% 111
Scotland +89 44 £45,000 -47.06% 69
West Midlands +87 43 £31,000 -43.64% 30
East Midlands +56 41 - - 26
South West +128 33 £45,000 -34.55% 45
North East +60 24 - - 18
Wales +49 10 £80,000 -20.00% 15
PhD
UK

PhD
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 (0.56%) SAS
2 2 (0.38%) ArcGIS
3 1 (0.19%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (0.19%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 325 (60.98%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.38%) OrCAD
3 1 (0.19%) Pipeline Pilot
Cloud Services
1 81 (15.20%) AWS
2 72 (13.51%) Azure
3 69 (12.95%) GCP
4 67 (12.57%) Serverless
5 66 (12.38%) AWS Lambda
6 12 (2.25%) Amazon SageMaker
7 4 (0.75%) Power Platform
8 2 (0.38%) Azure DevOps
8 2 (0.38%) Dynamics 365
9 1 (0.19%) Amazon EC2
9 1 (0.19%) Amazon S3
9 1 (0.19%) Azure API Management
9 1 (0.19%) Azure Event Grid
9 1 (0.19%) Azure Functions
9 1 (0.19%) Azure Logic Apps
9 1 (0.19%) Azure Machine Learning
9 1 (0.19%) Azure Service Bus
9 1 (0.19%) dbt
9 1 (0.19%) GitHub
9 1 (0.19%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 65 (12.20%) Broadband
2 2 (0.38%) Network Security
3 1 (0.19%) Wideband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (0.56%) Power BI
2 2 (0.38%) GIS
2 2 (0.38%) Metadata
2 2 (0.38%) QGIS
2 2 (0.38%) RDBMS
2 2 (0.38%) Relational Database
3 1 (0.19%) Big Data
3 1 (0.19%) KNIME
3 1 (0.19%) MySQL
3 1 (0.19%) Pinecone
3 1 (0.19%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (0.19%) Tableau
3 1 (0.19%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 7 (1.31%) Git
2 4 (0.75%) Subversion
3 2 (0.38%) MLflow
4 1 (0.19%) GitLab
4 1 (0.19%) Jenkins
4 1 (0.19%) Visual Studio
General
1 253 (47.47%) Analytical Skills
2 39 (7.32%) Finance
3 31 (5.82%) Social Skills
4 27 (5.07%) Legal
5 26 (4.88%) Manufacturing
6 22 (4.13%) Banking
7 20 (3.75%) Aerospace
8 16 (3.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 16 (3.00%) Retail
9 10 (1.88%) Pharmaceutical
10 9 (1.69%) Agriculture
10 9 (1.69%) Presentation Skills
11 8 (1.50%) Front Office
12 7 (1.31%) Aeronautics
12 7 (1.31%) Automotive
12 7 (1.31%) Law
12 7 (1.31%) Telecoms
13 6 (1.13%) Electronics
13 6 (1.13%) Military
14 3 (0.56%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 324 (60.79%) Trainer
2 72 (13.51%) Senior
3 69 (12.95%) Machine Learning Engineer
4 23 (4.32%) Analyst
5 21 (3.94%) Graduate
6 20 (3.75%) Research Scientist
7 18 (3.38%) Developer
8 16 (3.00%) Data Scientist
9 15 (2.81%) Software Engineer
10 14 (2.63%) Biostatistician
11 11 (2.06%) Software Developer
12 10 (1.88%) Data Science Graduate
13 9 (1.69%) Applications Support
13 9 (1.69%) Applications Support Analyst
13 9 (1.69%) Data Analyst
13 9 (1.69%) Mathematician
13 9 (1.69%) Statistician
13 9 (1.69%) Support Analyst
14 8 (1.50%) Lead
14 8 (1.50%) Lecturer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (3.94%) TensorFlow
2 20 (3.75%) PyTorch
3 15 (2.81%) scikit-learn
4 12 (2.25%) NumPy
5 11 (2.06%) Keras
6 5 (0.94%) HTML
7 3 (0.56%) Google JAX
7 3 (0.56%) JAX
8 2 (0.38%) Hugging Face
8 2 (0.38%) OpenCV
8 2 (0.38%) Qt
8 2 (0.38%) WinForms
8 2 (0.38%) WPF
9 1 (0.19%) .NET
9 1 (0.19%) Flask
9 1 (0.19%) Matplotlib
9 1 (0.19%) Pandas
9 1 (0.19%) REST
9 1 (0.19%) RESTful
9 1 (0.19%) SciPy
Miscellaneous
1 84 (15.76%) Self-Motivation
2 53 (9.94%) Algorithms
3 20 (3.75%) Molecular Biology
4 19 (3.56%) Learning Management System
5 10 (1.88%) Credit Risk
6 9 (1.69%) Hackathon
6 9 (1.69%) Manufacturing Execution System
6 9 (1.69%) Mobile App
7 5 (0.94%) Linux Command Line
8 4 (0.75%) FPGA
8 4 (0.75%) Management Information System
8 4 (0.75%) Renewable Energy
9 3 (0.56%) Acoustics
9 3 (0.56%) Device Driver
9 3 (0.56%) Distributed Computing
9 3 (0.56%) e-Learning
9 3 (0.56%) Robotics
9 3 (0.56%) VHDL
10 2 (0.38%) Lidar
10 2 (0.38%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 38 (7.13%) Linux
2 10 (1.88%) Unix
3 5 (0.94%) Debian
3 5 (0.94%) Windows
4 2 (0.38%) Mac OS
5 1 (0.19%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 370 (69.42%) Artificial Intelligence
2 325 (60.98%) Conversational UI
3 191 (35.83%) Mathematics
4 165 (30.96%) Chemistry
5 130 (24.39%) Computer Science
6 119 (22.33%) Physics
7 117 (21.95%) Data Science
8 112 (21.01%) Statistics
9 108 (20.26%) Machine Learning
10 95 (17.82%) Problem-Solving
11 92 (17.26%) Agile
12 72 (13.51%) Mentoring
13 66 (12.38%) CI/CD
13 66 (12.38%) Creative Thinking
14 65 (12.20%) Clean Code
14 65 (12.20%) Performance Metrics
14 65 (12.20%) Personalization
15 40 (7.50%) Software Engineering
16 33 (6.19%) Analytics
17 30 (5.63%) Biology
Programming Languages
1 153 (28.71%) Python
2 69 (12.95%) TypeScript
3 36 (6.75%) C++
4 27 (5.07%) SQL
5 25 (4.69%) C
6 14 (2.63%) JavaScript
7 13 (2.44%) C#
7 13 (2.44%) Java
8 12 (2.25%) Fortran
9 11 (2.06%) Bash
10 9 (1.69%) C-shell
10 9 (1.69%) Korn
10 9 (1.69%) Kotlin
10 9 (1.69%) R
10 9 (1.69%) Shell Script
11 7 (1.31%) MATLAB
11 7 (1.31%) PL/SQL
12 6 (1.13%) Rust
13 4 (0.75%) Go
14 3 (0.56%) Perl
Qualifications
1 533 (100.00%) Degree
2 429 (80.49%) Master's Degree
3 23 (4.32%) Security Cleared
4 19 (3.56%) BPSS Clearance
5 13 (2.44%) DV Cleared
6 12 (2.25%) Computer Science Degree
6 12 (2.25%) SC Cleared
7 7 (1.31%) Chartered Engineer
8 2 (0.38%) Numerate Degree
9 1 (0.19%) DBS Check
9 1 (0.19%) Postgraduate
9 1 (0.19%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (2.81%) ISO/IEC 15288
2 2 (0.38%) Accessibility
2 2 (0.38%) Data Quality
3 1 (0.19%) California Consumer Privacy Act
3 1 (0.19%) GDPR
System Software
1 3 (0.56%) Docker
1 3 (0.56%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 2 (0.38%) Kubernetes
2 1 (0.19%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 325 (60.98%) PayPal
2 11 (2.06%) Microsoft
3 9 (1.69%) Google
3 9 (1.69%) IBM
3 9 (1.69%) Oracle
4 4 (0.75%) ANSYS
5 1 (0.19%) Capita
5 1 (0.19%) Databricks
5 1 (0.19%) Facebook
5 1 (0.19%) SAP
5 1 (0.19%) Xilinx
5 1 (0.19%) YouTube