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 23 October 2024, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Oct 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 502 489 397
Rank change year-on-year -13 -92 +72
Permanent jobs citing PhD 292 283 1,270
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 0.39% 0.48% 0.90%
As % of the Qualifications category 1.21% 1.45% 3.14%
Number of salaries quoted 98 181 330
10th Percentile £44,950 £42,500 £40,842
25th Percentile £55,163 £52,500 £51,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £70,875 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year +12.87% +1.25% -
75th Percentile £99,973 £100,000 £90,000
90th Percentile £130,000 £137,500 £105,125
UK excluding London median annual salary £61,250 £55,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +11.36% -8.33% +2.13%

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 24,053 19,473 40,448
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 31.79% 32.75% 28.78%
Number of salaries quoted 8,835 11,703 17,713
10th Percentile £32,750 £31,750 £31,250
25th Percentile £44,738 £42,500 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £57,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year - +4.55% -
75th Percentile £75,000 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £92,500 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £54,793 £52,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +4.37% +5.00% +4.17%

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 23 October 2024.

Salary histogram for PhD in the UK

PhD
Top 16 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 23 October 2024. 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 -47 259 £80,000 +6.67% 363
UK excluding London -38 152 £61,250 +11.36% 265
London +14 135 £100,000 +25.00% 106
Work from Home +76 97 £78,750 +21.15% 934
South East +8 76 £62,500 +13.64% 74
East of England -72 19 £75,000 +15.38% 58
North of England -30 14 £56,509 +9.73% 54
Northern Ireland +37 12 - - 4
Yorkshire +33 9 - - 22
Scotland -3 9 £56,509 +34.54% 10
South West -11 8 £77,500 +3.33% 13
Wales +43 7 - - 2
Midlands -30 7 £50,000 +5.26% 53
North West -28 5 £56,509 +9.73% 28
West Midlands -36 4 £50,000 +5.26% 25
East Midlands -24 3 - - 28

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 4 (1.37%) Apache Spark
2 2 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
2 2 (0.68%) Confluence
3 1 (0.34%) Apache
3 1 (0.34%) Luigi
3 1 (0.34%) SAS
Applications
1 3 (1.03%) Maple
2 2 (0.68%) Simulink
3 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 14 (4.79%) Ripple
Cloud Services
1 31 (10.62%) Azure
2 29 (9.93%) AWS
3 17 (5.82%) Cloud Computing
4 10 (3.42%) GCP
5 6 (2.05%) Amazon SageMaker
6 5 (1.71%) Power Platform
7 2 (0.68%) Amazon EC2
7 2 (0.68%) Amazon S3
7 2 (0.68%) Azure Cosmos DB
7 2 (0.68%) Azure Monitor
7 2 (0.68%) GitHub
8 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Copilot
8 1 (0.34%) Pulumi
8 1 (0.34%) SaaS
8 1 (0.34%) Snowflake
8 1 (0.34%) WhatsApp
Communications & Networking
1 14 (4.79%) Internet
2 11 (3.77%) TCP/IP
3 8 (2.74%) HTTP
4 6 (2.05%) MQTT
5 3 (1.03%) Firewall
6 2 (0.68%) Network Security
7 1 (0.34%) DNS
7 1 (0.34%) IPv6
7 1 (0.34%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (3.77%) Big Data
2 7 (2.40%) NoSQL
3 5 (1.71%) Power BI
4 4 (1.37%) PostgreSQL
5 3 (1.03%) Data Lake
6 2 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
6 2 (0.68%) Neo4j
6 2 (0.68%) Redis
7 1 (0.34%) Bigtable
7 1 (0.34%) CouchDB
7 1 (0.34%) Elasticsearch
7 1 (0.34%) Hadoop
7 1 (0.34%) KDB
7 1 (0.34%) RethinkDB
7 1 (0.34%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 10 (3.42%) Git
2 5 (1.71%) GitLab
3 4 (1.37%) JIRA
4 3 (1.03%) TensorBoard
5 2 (0.68%) MLflow
5 2 (0.68%) Mocha
6 1 (0.34%) GoogleTest
6 1 (0.34%) Subversion
6 1 (0.34%) Visual Studio
General
1 101 (34.59%) Social Skills
2 66 (22.60%) Analytical Skills
3 54 (18.49%) Finance
4 44 (15.07%) Pharmaceutical
5 26 (8.90%) Law
6 19 (6.51%) Electronics
7 16 (5.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 16 (5.48%) Legal
8 14 (4.79%) Financial Institution
9 12 (4.11%) Aerospace
10 9 (3.08%) Manufacturing
11 8 (2.74%) Automotive
11 8 (2.74%) Humanities
11 8 (2.74%) Public Sector
11 8 (2.74%) Social Science
12 7 (2.40%) Advertising
12 7 (2.40%) Presentation Skills
13 4 (1.37%) Banking
14 2 (0.68%) Marketing
15 1 (0.34%) Retail
Job Titles
1 74 (25.34%) Senior
2 65 (22.26%) Software Engineer
3 42 (14.38%) Data Scientist
3 42 (14.38%) Developer
4 40 (13.70%) Analyst
5 33 (11.30%) Senior Data Scientist
6 26 (8.90%) Software Developer
7 20 (6.85%) Senior Software Engineer
8 15 (5.14%) Lead
9 14 (4.79%) Architect
9 14 (4.79%) Senior Developer
10 13 (4.45%) Qualitative Analyst
10 13 (4.45%) Quantitative Analyst
11 12 (4.11%) Senior Software Developer
12 10 (3.42%) Quantitative Developer
13 9 (3.08%) Embedded Engineer
13 9 (3.08%) Graduate
14 8 (2.74%) Development Manager
14 8 (2.74%) Programmer
14 8 (2.74%) Research Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (6.16%) PyTorch
2 17 (5.82%) TensorFlow
3 14 (4.79%) .NET
4 9 (3.08%) Node.js
4 9 (3.08%) NumPy
5 8 (2.74%) RESTful
5 8 (2.74%) scikit-learn
6 7 (2.40%) AngularJS
6 7 (2.40%) Kafka
6 7 (2.40%) Pandas
7 6 (2.05%) RabbitMQ
7 6 (2.05%) Web Services
8 5 (1.71%) GStreamer
8 5 (1.71%) Qt
9 4 (1.37%) Flask
9 4 (1.37%) Keras
9 4 (1.37%) OpenCL
9 4 (1.37%) PySpark
9 4 (1.37%) QML
9 4 (1.37%) SciPy
Miscellaneous
1 150 (51.37%) Algorithms
2 56 (19.18%) Life Science
3 20 (6.85%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 18 (6.16%) Blockchain
5 12 (4.11%) Self-Motivation
6 10 (3.42%) FPGA
6 10 (3.42%) VHDL
7 9 (3.08%) Molecular Biology
8 8 (2.74%) Greenfield Project
8 8 (2.74%) Linux Command Line
9 7 (2.40%) Analytical Mindset
9 7 (2.40%) CUDA
9 7 (2.40%) IoT
10 6 (2.05%) Analogue Electronics
10 6 (2.05%) Renewable Energy
10 6 (2.05%) Video\Live Streaming
11 5 (1.71%) Distributed Systems
11 5 (1.71%) Hedge funds
11 5 (1.71%) Virtual Team
12 4 (1.37%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 47 (16.10%) Linux
2 31 (10.62%) Unix
3 7 (2.40%) Debian
4 5 (1.71%) Windows
5 3 (1.03%) VMS
6 1 (0.34%) Android
6 1 (0.34%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 183 (62.67%) Computer Science
2 142 (48.63%) Software Engineering
3 124 (42.47%) Mathematics
4 102 (34.93%) Physics
5 95 (32.53%) Data Science
6 83 (28.42%) Analytics
6 83 (28.42%) Statistics
7 75 (25.68%) Machine Learning
8 74 (25.34%) Artificial Intelligence
9 54 (18.49%) Problem-Solving
10 49 (16.78%) Informatics
10 49 (16.78%) Visualisation
11 44 (15.07%) Biotechnology
11 44 (15.07%) Process Improvement
12 42 (14.38%) Analytical Thinking
12 42 (14.38%) Business Analytics
12 42 (14.38%) Data Modelling
12 42 (14.38%) Data Visualisation
13 41 (14.04%) Open Source
14 35 (11.99%) Statistical Modelling
Programming Languages
1 144 (49.32%) Python
2 83 (28.42%) C++
3 59 (20.21%) C
4 42 (14.38%) C#
5 41 (14.04%) Fortran
6 40 (13.70%) Java
7 33 (11.30%) Bash
8 22 (7.53%) SQL
9 19 (6.51%) MATLAB
10 16 (5.48%) TypeScript
11 15 (5.14%) JavaScript
12 13 (4.45%) R
13 8 (2.74%) Rust
14 3 (1.03%) C-shell
14 3 (1.03%) Embedded C
15 2 (0.68%) Shell Script
15 2 (0.68%) SystemVerilog
16 1 (0.34%) AWK
16 1 (0.34%) Embedded C++
16 1 (0.34%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 287 (98.29%) Degree
2 207 (70.89%) Master's Degree
3 46 (15.75%) Security Cleared
4 15 (5.14%) Computer Science Degree
5 14 (4.79%) Numerate Degree
6 13 (4.45%) SC Cleared
7 9 (3.08%) DV Cleared
8 5 (1.71%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (1.71%) CCNA
8 5 (1.71%) Cisco Certification
9 4 (1.37%) MBA
10 3 (1.03%) Azure Certification
10 3 (1.03%) CompTIA Security+
11 2 (0.68%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.68%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 1 (0.34%) CISM
12 1 (0.34%) DBS Check
12 1 (0.34%) RIBA
12 1 (0.34%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (5.82%) QA
2 2 (0.68%) DO-254
3 1 (0.34%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.34%) Data Quality
3 1 (0.34%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 12 (4.11%) Docker
2 9 (3.08%) Firmware
3 3 (1.03%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 2 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 7 (2.40%) Kubernetes
2 1 (0.34%) Terraform
Vendors
1 30 (10.27%) Microsoft
2 14 (4.79%) Google
3 13 (4.45%) ANSYS
4 9 (3.08%) IBM
5 5 (1.71%) Databricks
6 3 (1.03%) Lotus
7 2 (0.68%) Actel
7 2 (0.68%) Altera
7 2 (0.68%) Cisco
7 2 (0.68%) Intel
7 2 (0.68%) Mentor Graphics
7 2 (0.68%) Microsemi
7 2 (0.68%) Xilinx
8 1 (0.34%) BiZZdesign
8 1 (0.34%) Qubit
8 1 (0.34%) Sun
8 1 (0.34%) Veracode