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

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for PhD qualifications. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months to 10 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
10 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 496 566 694
Rank change year-on-year +70 +128 -147
Contract jobs citing PhD 86 137 146
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.20% 0.24% 0.17%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.66% 0.87% 0.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 49 81 73
10th Percentile £375 £231 £425
25th Percentile £505 £579 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £795 £600
Median % change year-on-year -24.53% +32.50% -
75th Percentile £725 £950 £750
90th Percentile £805 £1,300 £820
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £557 £590
% change year-on-year +7.67% -5.55% +24.21%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 1 9
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £18.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £20.47 £48.50
Median % change year-on-year +217.54% -57.79% +15.48%
75th Percentile - - £55.25
90th Percentile £73.25 - £63.99
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £20.47 £19.91
% change year-on-year +217.54% +2.81% +22.52%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK

PhD is in the Academic Qualifications and Professional Certifications category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for academic qualifications or professional certifications.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 13,062 15,771 18,768
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.38% 27.24% 21.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,064 10,528 12,395
10th Percentile £307 £330 £331
25th Percentile £425 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.73% +4.76% +7.69%
75th Percentile £650 £650 £627
90th Percentile £738 £743 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £534 £525 £500
% change year-on-year +1.62% +5.00% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,069 814 765
10th Percentile £13.82 £15.25 £13.95
25th Percentile £17.80 £20.22 £19.52
Median hourly rate £40.00 £54.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -25.93% +27.06% +13.33%
75th Percentile £61.60 £68.06 £58.75
90th Percentile £75.45 £79.19 £67.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.94 £50.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -18.12% +42.86% +2.12%

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
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing PhD.

Daily rate trend for PhD in the UK

PhD
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing PhD over the 6 months to 10 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for PhD in the UK

PhD
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing PhD.

Hourly rate trend for PhD in the UK

PhD
Top 11 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing PhD within the UK over the 6 months to 10 May 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England +65 84 £600 -25.00% 420
London +55 46 £600 -33.33% 189
Work from Home +116 38 £613 +5.79% 167
UK excluding London +64 34 £600 +7.67% 244
East of England +32 20 £800 - 63
South East +14 8 £625 +165.96% 76
Midlands +28 3 £590 -12.59% 37
West Midlands +20 3 £590 -12.59% 22
North West - 2 £550 - 24
North of England - 2 £550 - 32
South West +11 1 £750 +29.53% 18

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 3 (3.49%) SAS
2 2 (2.33%) Apache Spark
2 2 (2.33%) SharePoint
Applications
1 2 (2.33%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (2.33%) MS Visio
2 1 (1.16%) Chatbot
2 1 (1.16%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 2 (2.33%) SAP MDG
2 1 (1.16%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 7 (8.14%) Azure
2 6 (6.98%) AWS
3 2 (2.33%) Azure Machine Learning
3 2 (2.33%) GCP
3 2 (2.33%) Vertex AI
4 1 (1.16%) dbt
4 1 (1.16%) IBM Watson
4 1 (1.16%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 4 (4.65%) Wireless
2 2 (2.33%) RS-485
2 2 (2.33%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (2.33%) Data Mining
1 2 (2.33%) Data Warehouse
2 1 (1.16%) Data Lake
2 1 (1.16%) Elasticsearch
2 1 (1.16%) KDB
2 1 (1.16%) Metadata
2 1 (1.16%) Parquet
2 1 (1.16%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 8 (9.30%) Git
2 5 (5.81%) GCC
3 4 (4.65%) JIRA
3 4 (4.65%) Subversion
4 1 (1.16%) Team Foundation Server
4 1 (1.16%) Visual Studio
General
1 32 (37.21%) Finance
2 21 (24.42%) Social Skills
3 11 (12.79%) Analytical Skills
4 10 (11.63%) Marketing
5 8 (9.30%) Front Office
6 6 (6.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 6 (6.98%) Pharmaceutical
6 6 (6.98%) Telecoms
7 5 (5.81%) Banking
8 4 (4.65%) Advertising
8 4 (4.65%) Aerospace
9 3 (3.49%) Electronics
9 3 (3.49%) Financial Institution
9 3 (3.49%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (3.49%) Presentation Skills
9 3 (3.49%) Publishing
9 3 (3.49%) Retail
10 2 (2.33%) Back Office
10 2 (2.33%) Manufacturing
10 2 (2.33%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 16 (18.60%) Architect
2 13 (15.12%) Developer
2 13 (15.12%) Software Engineer
3 10 (11.63%) Data Scientist
3 10 (11.63%) Senior
3 10 (11.63%) Software Architect
4 7 (8.14%) Java Developer
5 6 (6.98%) Consultant
6 5 (5.81%) Compiler Engineer
6 5 (5.81%) Machine Learning Engineer
6 5 (5.81%) Senior Architect
7 4 (4.65%) Econometrician
7 4 (4.65%) Embedded Engineer
7 4 (4.65%) Embedded Software Engineer
8 3 (3.49%) Analyst
8 3 (3.49%) Quantitative Consultant
8 3 (3.49%) Quantitative Risk Consultant
8 3 (3.49%) Senior Software Engineer
8 3 (3.49%) Senior Solutions Architect
8 3 (3.49%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (13.95%) DirectX
1 12 (13.95%) OpenGL
1 12 (13.95%) OpenGL ES
1 12 (13.95%) Vulkan
2 11 (12.79%) PyTorch
3 10 (11.63%) TensorFlow
4 5 (5.81%) LLVM
4 5 (5.81%) Pandas
4 5 (5.81%) scikit-learn
5 4 (4.65%) NumPy
6 2 (2.33%) Swagger
7 1 (1.16%) .NET
7 1 (1.16%) .NET Framework
7 1 (1.16%) Elastic Stack
7 1 (1.16%) Entity Framework
7 1 (1.16%) JSON
7 1 (1.16%) Managed Extensibility Framework
7 1 (1.16%) Silverlight
7 1 (1.16%) WCF
7 1 (1.16%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 15 (17.44%) Algorithms
2 10 (11.63%) 3D Graphics
2 10 (11.63%) Ray Tracing
3 4 (4.65%) Credit Risk
3 4 (4.65%) Device Driver
4 3 (3.49%) Data Structures
4 3 (3.49%) Derivative
5 2 (2.33%) Blockchain
5 2 (2.33%) Data Centre
5 2 (2.33%) FPGA
5 2 (2.33%) Management Information System
5 2 (2.33%) Multi-touch
5 2 (2.33%) Photography
5 2 (2.33%) Tandem
6 1 (1.16%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (1.16%) FMCG
6 1 (1.16%) Mobile App
6 1 (1.16%) Reference Data
6 1 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (1.16%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 6 (6.98%) Linux
2 3 (3.49%) Android
2 3 (3.49%) Windows
3 1 (1.16%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 51 (59.30%) Computer Science
2 30 (34.88%) Problem-Solving
3 28 (32.56%) Machine Learning
4 22 (25.58%) Artificial Intelligence
5 20 (23.26%) Statistics
6 19 (22.09%) Software Engineering
7 18 (20.93%) Mathematics
8 16 (18.60%) Data Science
9 15 (17.44%) Collaborative Culture
10 14 (16.28%) Data Governance
10 14 (16.28%) Decision-Making
11 13 (15.12%) Validation
12 12 (13.95%) Agile
13 11 (12.79%) Data Lineage
13 11 (12.79%) Economics
14 10 (11.63%) Analytics
14 10 (11.63%) Software Architecture
15 9 (10.47%) Model Validation
16 8 (9.30%) Data Analysis
16 8 (9.30%) Open Source
Programming Languages
1 43 (50.00%) Python
2 30 (34.88%) C++
3 22 (25.58%) SQL
4 20 (23.26%) C
5 15 (17.44%) Java
6 10 (11.63%) R
7 9 (10.47%) C#
8 7 (8.14%) Shell Script
9 6 (6.98%) MATLAB
10 4 (4.65%) Assembly Language
11 2 (2.33%) Rust
11 2 (2.33%) Scala
12 1 (1.16%) XAML
Qualifications
1 81 (94.19%) Degree
2 70 (81.40%) Master's Degree
3 16 (18.60%) Computer Science Degree
4 5 (5.81%) MBA
4 5 (5.81%) Security Cleared
5 4 (4.65%) Numerate Degree
5 4 (4.65%) SC Cleared
6 1 (1.16%) DV Cleared
6 1 (1.16%) PMP
6 1 (1.16%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (4.65%) Data Quality
1 4 (4.65%) Dodd-Frank
1 4 (4.65%) JTAG
1 4 (4.65%) MiFID
2 3 (3.49%) GDPR
3 2 (2.33%) PCI DSS
4 1 (1.16%) PMO
System Software
1 4 (4.65%) Embedded Firmware
1 4 (4.65%) Firmware
2 2 (2.33%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (1.16%) Docker
Vendors
1 4 (4.65%) SAP
2 2 (2.33%) CA
2 2 (2.33%) Databricks
2 2 (2.33%) VMware
3 1 (1.16%) Adobe
3 1 (1.16%) Google
3 1 (1.16%) IBM
3 1 (1.16%) OpenLink
3 1 (1.16%) Oracle