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

The table below provides summary statistics for permanent job vacancies with a requirement for PhD qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the salaries offered over the 6 months leading up to 30 April 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 253 441 413
Rank change year-on-year +188 -28 +21
Permanent jobs citing PhD 608 531 799
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 1.17% 0.54% 0.77%
As % of the Qualifications category 2.39% 1.94% 2.35%
Number of salaries quoted 185 342 270
10th Percentile £40,750 £37,500 £41,625
25th Percentile £45,000 £47,841 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,810 £62,000 £75,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.15% -17.33% +7.14%
75th Percentile £100,000 £87,188 £97,500
90th Percentile £140,000 £109,750 £120,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £45,000 £60,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year -25.00% +4.35% -

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK

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.

Permanent vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 25,484 27,371 34,026
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 48.86% 27.83% 32.72%
Number of salaries quoted 11,203 17,308 15,226
10th Percentile £32,500 £28,250 £31,250
25th Percentile £44,000 £38,500 £41,776
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £54,000 £58,000
Median % change year-on-year +1.85% -6.90% +5.45%
75th Percentile £68,568 £71,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £85,000 £87,500 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,000 £50,000 £50,500
% change year-on-year +4.00% -0.99% +1.00%

PhD
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing PhD as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for PhD in the UK

PhD
Salary Trend

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

Salary trend for PhD in the UK

PhD
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing PhD over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Salary histogram for PhD in the UK

PhD
Top 17 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing PhD within the UK over the 6 months to 30 April 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
England +193 529 £70,000 +13.82% 670
Work from Home +346 417 £46,000 -16.36% 407
UK excluding London +173 412 £45,000 -25.00% 339
London +122 167 £107,500 +22.86% 375
North of England +196 155 £45,000 -43.75% 73
Yorkshire +138 77 £45,000 +20.00% 19
South East +29 77 £52,500 -9.48% 81
Midlands +110 68 £35,500 -32.37% 44
North West +70 58 £45,000 -43.75% 42
Scotland +96 41 £45,000 -47.06% 40
East Midlands +78 36 £40,000 - 25
West Midlands +72 32 £31,000 -43.64% 19
East of England +27 32 £50,000 -28.57% 76
South West +129 28 £45,000 -25.00% 23
North East +67 20 - - 12
Wales +46 8 £42,000 -58.00% 5
Northern Ireland +29 4 - - 6

PhD
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities 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 8 (1.32%) Apache Spark
2 3 (0.49%) Jupyter
2 3 (0.49%) SAS
3 2 (0.33%) Apache
3 2 (0.33%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 294 (48.36%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.16%) Maple
2 1 (0.16%) OrCAD
2 1 (0.16%) Photoshop
2 1 (0.16%) Pipeline Pilot
2 1 (0.16%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 1 (0.16%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 48 (7.89%) AWS
2 37 (6.09%) Azure
3 16 (2.63%) Amazon EC2
3 16 (2.63%) GCP
4 15 (2.47%) Amazon SageMaker
5 4 (0.66%) Serverless
6 3 (0.49%) Azure DevOps
6 3 (0.49%) SaaS
7 2 (0.33%) Amazon S3
7 2 (0.33%) AWS Lambda
7 2 (0.33%) Dynamics 365
7 2 (0.33%) GitHub
7 2 (0.33%) Power Platform
8 1 (0.16%) Azure AKS
8 1 (0.16%) Azure API Management
8 1 (0.16%) Azure Event Grid
8 1 (0.16%) Azure Logic Apps
8 1 (0.16%) Azure Service Bus
8 1 (0.16%) GitHub Actions
8 1 (0.16%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.66%) DNS
1 4 (0.66%) Firewall
1 4 (0.66%) IPv6
1 4 (0.66%) Reverse Proxy
2 1 (0.16%) Ethernet
2 1 (0.16%) Network Security
2 1 (0.16%) TCP/IP
2 1 (0.16%) Wideband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (2.47%) PostgreSQL
2 7 (1.15%) Hadoop
3 4 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
3 4 (0.66%) Apache Hive
3 4 (0.66%) Big Data
3 4 (0.66%) GIS
3 4 (0.66%) SQL Server
4 3 (0.49%) Relational Database
5 2 (0.33%) Metadata
5 2 (0.33%) QGIS
5 2 (0.33%) RDBMS
5 2 (0.33%) Spatial Data
6 1 (0.16%) DynamoDB
6 1 (0.16%) Elasticsearch
6 1 (0.16%) KNIME
6 1 (0.16%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.16%) MySQL
6 1 (0.16%) Pinecone
6 1 (0.16%) Power BI
6 1 (0.16%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 19 (3.13%) Git
2 14 (2.30%) IntelliJ
3 3 (0.49%) Subversion
4 2 (0.33%) GitLab
4 2 (0.33%) Jenkins
4 2 (0.33%) LabVIEW
5 1 (0.16%) MLflow
5 1 (0.16%) Qt Creator
5 1 (0.16%) Visual Studio
General
1 207 (34.05%) Analytical Skills
2 93 (15.30%) Finance
3 77 (12.66%) Social Skills
4 47 (7.73%) Legal
5 46 (7.57%) Banking
6 28 (4.61%) Pharmaceutical
7 27 (4.44%) Manufacturing
8 20 (3.29%) Aerospace
8 20 (3.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 19 (3.13%) Law
10 14 (2.30%) Retail
11 13 (2.14%) Agriculture
11 13 (2.14%) Publishing
12 12 (1.97%) Games
12 12 (1.97%) Presentation Skills
13 10 (1.64%) Front Office
14 8 (1.32%) Automotive
15 7 (1.15%) Aeronautics
15 7 (1.15%) Electronics
16 6 (0.99%) Military
Job Titles
1 295 (48.52%) Trainer
2 49 (8.06%) Analyst
3 42 (6.91%) Senior
4 39 (6.41%) Graduate
5 34 (5.59%) Developer
6 32 (5.26%) Data Scientist
7 23 (3.78%) Lead
7 23 (3.78%) Qualitative Analyst
7 23 (3.78%) Quantitative Analyst
8 22 (3.62%) Software Engineer
9 19 (3.13%) Research Scientist
10 16 (2.63%) Data Science Graduate
10 16 (2.63%) Java Engineer
11 14 (2.30%) Senior Java Engineer
12 13 (2.14%) Quantitative Developer
13 12 (1.97%) Biostatistician
13 12 (1.97%) Senior Data Scientist
14 10 (1.64%) Software Developer
15 9 (1.48%) Applications Support
15 9 (1.48%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 51 (8.39%) PyTorch
2 46 (7.57%) NumPy
3 38 (6.25%) TensorFlow
4 29 (4.77%) Pandas
5 26 (4.28%) scikit-learn
6 23 (3.78%) SciPy
7 21 (3.45%) React
8 20 (3.29%) OpenCV
9 17 (2.80%) Keras
10 15 (2.47%) REST
11 12 (1.97%) AngularJS
12 9 (1.48%) Flask
13 8 (1.32%) HTML
14 7 (1.15%) Plotly
15 5 (0.82%) .NET
15 5 (0.82%) Google JAX
15 5 (0.82%) JAX
15 5 (0.82%) Node.js
15 5 (0.82%) Qt
16 4 (0.66%) HTML5
Miscellaneous
1 117 (19.24%) Algorithms
2 44 (7.24%) Robotics
3 37 (6.09%) Learning Management System
4 19 (3.13%) Virtual Team
5 18 (2.96%) Life Science
6 17 (2.80%) Hackathon
6 17 (2.80%) Mobile App
6 17 (2.80%) Self-Motivation
7 16 (2.63%) Credit Risk
8 15 (2.47%) Molecular Biology
9 9 (1.48%) Manufacturing Execution System
10 6 (0.99%) Data Structures
11 5 (0.82%) Linux Command Line
11 5 (0.82%) Management Information System
11 5 (0.82%) Video\Live Streaming
12 4 (0.66%) Cloud Native
12 4 (0.66%) Distributed Systems
12 4 (0.66%) Embedded Systems
12 4 (0.66%) FPGA
12 4 (0.66%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 39 (6.41%) Linux
2 10 (1.64%) Unix
3 5 (0.82%) Debian
3 5 (0.82%) Windows
4 2 (0.33%) Mac OS
5 1 (0.16%) Android
5 1 (0.16%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 437 (71.88%) Artificial Intelligence
2 294 (48.36%) Conversational UI
3 230 (37.83%) Mathematics
4 205 (33.72%) Computer Science
5 162 (26.64%) Statistics
6 160 (26.32%) Physics
7 137 (22.53%) Chemistry
8 130 (21.38%) Data Science
9 113 (18.59%) Machine Learning
10 110 (18.09%) Analytics
11 86 (14.14%) Software Engineering
12 75 (12.34%) Problem-Solving
13 67 (11.02%) Agile
14 65 (10.69%) Visualisation
15 55 (9.05%) Data Visualisation
16 47 (7.73%) Containerisation
17 39 (6.41%) Statistical Modelling
18 37 (6.09%) Decision-Making
19 34 (5.59%) Data Analytics
19 34 (5.59%) Open Source
Programming Languages
1 197 (32.40%) Python
2 69 (11.35%) C++
3 46 (7.57%) Java
4 40 (6.58%) C#
4 40 (6.58%) SQL
5 27 (4.44%) C
6 21 (3.45%) JavaScript
7 20 (3.29%) MATLAB
8 17 (2.80%) Kotlin
9 12 (1.97%) Fortran
10 11 (1.81%) Bash
11 9 (1.48%) C-shell
11 9 (1.48%) Korn
11 9 (1.48%) R
11 9 (1.48%) Shell Script
12 7 (1.15%) PL/SQL
12 7 (1.15%) TypeScript
13 6 (0.99%) Rust
14 5 (0.82%) Go
15 3 (0.49%) Perl
Qualifications
1 589 (96.88%) Degree
2 541 (88.98%) Master's Degree
3 25 (4.11%) Security Cleared
4 18 (2.96%) Computer Science Degree
5 16 (2.63%) SC Cleared
6 15 (2.47%) DV Cleared
7 9 (1.48%) Postgraduate
8 6 (0.99%) Numerate Degree
9 4 (0.66%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (0.49%) AWS Certification
11 2 (0.33%) MPhil
12 1 (0.16%) DBS Check
12 1 (0.16%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (0.82%) Data Quality
2 4 (0.66%) QA
3 2 (0.33%) GDPR
3 2 (0.33%) HIPAA
4 1 (0.16%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.16%) Actionable Recommendations
4 1 (0.16%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 29 (4.77%) Docker
2 3 (0.49%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 31 (5.10%) Kubernetes
2 2 (0.33%) Grafana
2 2 (0.33%) Prometheus
3 1 (0.16%) Bugsnag
3 1 (0.16%) Kubeflow
3 1 (0.16%) Terraform
Vendors
1 292 (48.03%) PayPal
2 24 (3.95%) Microsoft
3 22 (3.62%) Google
4 18 (2.96%) IBM
5 9 (1.48%) Oracle
6 4 (0.66%) ANSYS
6 4 (0.66%) Veracode
7 3 (0.49%) Qubit
8 2 (0.33%) ESRI
8 2 (0.33%) SAP
8 2 (0.33%) Xilinx
9 1 (0.16%) Adobe
9 1 (0.16%) Capita
9 1 (0.16%) Databricks
9 1 (0.16%) Genesys
9 1 (0.16%) Lotus
9 1 (0.16%) OpenAI