Hybrid/Remote PhD Job Trends

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil, EngD, Doctorate)
UK > Work from Home

The table below provides summary statistics for remote or hybrid work with a requirement for PhD qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the salaries offered over the 6 months leading up to 11 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 337 111 437
Rank change year-on-year -226 +326 +23
Permanent jobs citing PhD 59 449 136
As % of all permanent jobs with remote/hybrid work options 0.32% 3.07% 0.42%
As % of the Qualifications category 1.38% 9.91% 1.55%
Number of salaries quoted 11 100 84
10th Percentile - £40,750 £33,750
25th Percentile £52,500 £45,000 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £48,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +35.42% -20.00% -27.27%
75th Percentile £86,875 £71,563 £90,313
90th Percentile £100,000 £175,000 £122,500
UK median annual salary £62,500 £70,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year -10.71% +12.00% -16.67%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
Work from Home

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 with remote or hybrid options requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications.

Permanent vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 4,270 4,529 8,800
As % of all permanent jobs with a WFH option 23.16% 30.98% 27.04%
Number of salaries quoted 2,883 2,459 5,905
10th Percentile £32,500 £28,800 £32,500
25th Percentile £48,115 £42,500 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £60,000 £57,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £78,750 £72,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £92,500 £90,000 £87,500
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £54,296
% change year-on-year +9.09% +1.30% -7.19%

PhD
Job Vacancy Trend for Remote/Hybrid Jobs

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing PhD and offering remote or hybrid work options relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

PhD job vacancy trend for remote/hybrid jobs

PhD
Salary Trend for Remote/Hybrid Jobs

Salary distribution trend for jobs with remote/hybrid work options citing PhD.

Salary distribution trend for jobs with remote/hybrid work options citing PhD

PhD
Salary Histogram for Remote/Hybrid Jobs

Salary distribution for jobs with remote/hybrid work options citing PhD over the 6 months to 11 May 2026.

PhD salary histogram for jobs with remote/hybrid work options

PhD
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Remote/Hybrid Jobs 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 1 (1.69%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 24 (40.68%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 13 (22.03%) AWS
2 3 (5.08%) AWS Lambda
2 3 (5.08%) Azure
2 3 (5.08%) Serverless
3 2 (3.39%) Power Automate
3 2 (3.39%) Zapier
4 1 (1.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 1 (1.69%) Amazon ECS
4 1 (1.69%) Amazon S3
4 1 (1.69%) AWS CloudFormation
4 1 (1.69%) Azure Machine Learning
4 1 (1.69%) Canva
4 1 (1.69%) GCP
4 1 (1.69%) Google Workspace
4 1 (1.69%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 7 (11.86%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (1.69%) Amazon Athena
1 1 (1.69%) Hadoop
General
1 25 (42.37%) Analytical Skills
2 12 (20.34%) Finance
3 9 (15.25%) Games
4 8 (13.56%) Social Skills
5 7 (11.86%) Organisational Skills
6 2 (3.39%) Aerospace
6 2 (3.39%) Automotive
6 2 (3.39%) Electronics
6 2 (3.39%) Manufacturing
7 1 (1.69%) iGaming
7 1 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (1.69%) Legal
7 1 (1.69%) Marketing
7 1 (1.69%) Presentation Skills
7 1 (1.69%) Retail
Job Titles
1 21 (35.59%) Trainer
2 15 (25.42%) Senior
3 8 (13.56%) Senior Software Engineer
3 8 (13.56%) Software Engineer
4 7 (11.86%) Lecturer
5 5 (8.47%) Systems Engineer
6 4 (6.78%) Developer
7 3 (5.08%) C# Developer
7 3 (5.08%) Senior Systems Engineer
8 2 (3.39%) Analogue Design Engineer
8 2 (3.39%) Data Scientist
8 2 (3.39%) Design Engineer
8 2 (3.39%) Engineering Manager
8 2 (3.39%) Integration Developer
8 2 (3.39%) Research Scientist
8 2 (3.39%) Robotics Engineer
8 2 (3.39%) Safety Engineer
8 2 (3.39%) Senior Data Scientist
8 2 (3.39%) Systems Safety Engineer
9 1 (1.69%) Distributed Systems Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (13.56%) PyTorch
2 5 (8.47%) scikit-learn
2 5 (8.47%) TensorFlow
3 4 (6.78%) XGBoost
4 3 (5.08%) .NET
4 3 (5.08%) OpenCV
5 2 (3.39%) ASP.NET Web API
5 2 (3.39%) Keras
5 2 (3.39%) OpenAPI
5 2 (3.39%) REST
5 2 (3.39%) Swagger
6 1 (1.69%) Flask
6 1 (1.69%) Java Concurrency
6 1 (1.69%) Lambda Expressions
6 1 (1.69%) LangChain
6 1 (1.69%) LangGraph
6 1 (1.69%) Matplotlib
6 1 (1.69%) NumPy
6 1 (1.69%) Pandas
6 1 (1.69%) SciPy
Miscellaneous
1 9 (15.25%) Distributed Systems
2 8 (13.56%) Sports Betting
3 5 (8.47%) Algorithms
4 4 (6.78%) Robotics
5 3 (5.08%) Self-Motivation
6 2 (3.39%) CUDA
6 2 (3.39%) Embedded Systems
6 2 (3.39%) IoT
6 2 (3.39%) Lidar
6 2 (3.39%) Self-Driving Car
7 1 (1.69%) 3D Graphics
7 1 (1.69%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (1.69%) Data Structures
7 1 (1.69%) Greenfield Project
7 1 (1.69%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 8 (13.56%) Linux
2 2 (3.39%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 41 (69.49%) AI
2 28 (47.46%) Conversational UI
3 22 (37.29%) Computer Science
4 20 (33.90%) Chemistry
5 19 (32.20%) Machine Learning
6 15 (25.42%) Mathematics
7 13 (22.03%) Physics
8 12 (20.34%) Analytics
9 11 (18.64%) Software Engineering
10 10 (16.95%) Decision-Making
11 9 (15.25%) CI/CD
11 9 (15.25%) LLM
12 8 (13.56%) Data Munging
12 8 (13.56%) DevOps
12 8 (13.56%) Generative AI
12 8 (13.56%) Market Making
12 8 (13.56%) Observability
12 8 (13.56%) Pair Programming
12 8 (13.56%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
12 8 (13.56%) Strategic Planning
Programming Languages
1 14 (23.73%) Python
2 12 (20.34%) C++
3 11 (18.64%) C#
4 10 (16.95%) Java
5 8 (13.56%) Go
5 8 (13.56%) Rust
6 2 (3.39%) C
7 1 (1.69%) R
7 1 (1.69%) SQL
Qualifications
1 59 (100.00%) Degree
2 49 (83.05%) Master's Degree
3 1 (1.69%) AWS Certification
3 1 (1.69%) Azure Certification
3 1 (1.69%) DBS Check
3 1 (1.69%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (5.08%) GDPR
2 2 (3.39%) DO-254
2 2 (3.39%) HAZOP
2 2 (3.39%) IEC 61508
2 2 (3.39%) ISO 26262
Vendors
1 21 (35.59%) PayPal
2 2 (3.39%) Google
3 1 (1.69%) IBM