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 25 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 356 100 432
Rank change year-on-year -256 +332 +38
Permanent jobs citing PhD 40 549 139
As % of all permanent jobs with remote/hybrid work options 0.21% 3.76% 0.42%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.94% 11.17% 1.57%
Number of salaries quoted 12 70 83
10th Percentile - £40,000 £33,750
25th Percentile £52,500 £45,000 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year - -8.33% -27.27%
75th Percentile £85,000 £92,500 £90,625
90th Percentile £100,000 £175,000 £122,500
UK median annual salary £62,500 £77,500 £62,500
% change year-on-year -19.35% +24.00% -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 4,249 4,915 8,836
As % of all permanent jobs with a WFH option 22.52% 33.65% 26.95%
Number of salaries quoted 2,876 2,262 5,895
10th Percentile £33,250 £27,500 £32,500
25th Percentile £48,500 £42,500 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £60,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% +4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £78,750 £72,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £92,500 £88,750 £87,500
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £54,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% +1.85% -10.00%

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 25 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 (2.50%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 3 (7.50%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (2.50%) HFM
Cloud Services
1 13 (32.50%) AWS
2 3 (7.50%) AWS Lambda
2 3 (7.50%) Serverless
3 2 (5.00%) SaaS
4 1 (2.50%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 1 (2.50%) Amazon ECS
4 1 (2.50%) Amazon S3
4 1 (2.50%) AWS CloudFormation
4 1 (2.50%) Azure
4 1 (2.50%) Azure Machine Learning
4 1 (2.50%) Canva
4 1 (2.50%) GCP
4 1 (2.50%) Google Workspace
4 1 (2.50%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 7 (17.50%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (2.50%) Amazon Athena
1 1 (2.50%) Data Lake
1 1 (2.50%) Hadoop
1 1 (2.50%) Metadata
General
1 11 (27.50%) Finance
2 9 (22.50%) Games
3 7 (17.50%) Organisational Skills
4 6 (15.00%) Social Skills
5 5 (12.50%) Analytical Skills
6 2 (5.00%) Aerospace
6 2 (5.00%) Automotive
6 2 (5.00%) Electronics
6 2 (5.00%) Manufacturing
6 2 (5.00%) Marketing
6 2 (5.00%) Presentation Skills
7 1 (2.50%) iGaming
7 1 (2.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (2.50%) Legal
7 1 (2.50%) Public Sector
7 1 (2.50%) Retail
Job Titles
1 18 (45.00%) Senior
2 8 (20.00%) Senior Software Engineer
2 8 (20.00%) Software Engineer
3 6 (15.00%) Lecturer
4 5 (12.50%) Systems Engineer
5 3 (7.50%) Senior Systems Engineer
6 2 (5.00%) Analogue Design Engineer
6 2 (5.00%) Data Scientist
6 2 (5.00%) Design Engineer
6 2 (5.00%) Developer
6 2 (5.00%) Engineering Manager
6 2 (5.00%) Research Scientist
6 2 (5.00%) Robotics Engineer
6 2 (5.00%) Safety Engineer
6 2 (5.00%) Senior Data Scientist
6 2 (5.00%) Systems Safety Engineer
7 1 (2.50%) Architect
7 1 (2.50%) Consultant
7 1 (2.50%) Machine Learning Engineer
7 1 (2.50%) Senior Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (20.00%) PyTorch
2 6 (15.00%) scikit-learn
3 5 (12.50%) TensorFlow
4 4 (10.00%) XGBoost
5 3 (7.50%) Keras
5 3 (7.50%) OpenCV
6 2 (5.00%) Pandas
7 1 (2.50%) .NET
7 1 (2.50%) Flask
7 1 (2.50%) Java Concurrency
7 1 (2.50%) Lambda Expressions
7 1 (2.50%) LangChain
7 1 (2.50%) LangGraph
7 1 (2.50%) Matplotlib
7 1 (2.50%) NumPy
7 1 (2.50%) SciPy
Miscellaneous
1 9 (22.50%) Distributed Systems
2 8 (20.00%) Sports Betting
3 7 (17.50%) Algorithms
4 4 (10.00%) Robotics
5 3 (7.50%) Self-Motivation
6 2 (5.00%) CUDA
6 2 (5.00%) Embedded Systems
6 2 (5.00%) Lidar
6 2 (5.00%) Self-Driving Car
7 1 (2.50%) 3D Graphics
7 1 (2.50%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (2.50%) Data Structures
7 1 (2.50%) Greenfield Project
7 1 (2.50%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 9 (22.50%) Linux
2 2 (5.00%) Robot Operating System
Processes & Methodologies
1 23 (57.50%) AI
2 21 (52.50%) Computer Science
2 21 (52.50%) Machine Learning
3 15 (37.50%) Mathematics
4 13 (32.50%) Analytics
4 13 (32.50%) Physics
5 11 (27.50%) Software Engineering
6 10 (25.00%) Decision-Making
7 9 (22.50%) CI/CD
7 9 (22.50%) Data Science
7 9 (22.50%) LLM
8 8 (20.00%) Data Munging
8 8 (20.00%) DevOps
8 8 (20.00%) Generative AI
8 8 (20.00%) Market Making
8 8 (20.00%) Observability
8 8 (20.00%) Pair Programming
8 8 (20.00%) Problem-Solving
8 8 (20.00%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
8 8 (20.00%) Strategic Planning
Programming Languages
1 15 (37.50%) Python
2 12 (30.00%) C++
3 10 (25.00%) Java
4 9 (22.50%) C#
5 8 (20.00%) Go
5 8 (20.00%) Rust
6 2 (5.00%) C
7 1 (2.50%) Bash
7 1 (2.50%) R
7 1 (2.50%) SQL
Qualifications
1 40 (100.00%) Degree
2 28 (70.00%) Master's Degree
3 2 (5.00%) Postgraduate
4 1 (2.50%) AWS Certification
4 1 (2.50%) Azure Certification
4 1 (2.50%) DBS Check
4 1 (2.50%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (5.00%) DO-254
1 2 (5.00%) HAZOP
1 2 (5.00%) IEC 61508
1 2 (5.00%) ISO 26262
2 1 (2.50%) GDPR
2 1 (2.50%) QA
System Software
1 1 (2.50%) Docker
Vendors
1 2 (5.00%) Google
1 2 (5.00%) IBM
2 1 (2.50%) Hyperion
2 1 (2.50%) Oracle