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

The following table provides summary statistics for permanent job vacancies with a requirement for PhD qualifications. Included is a benchmarking guide to the salaries offered over the 6 months to 28 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
28 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 438 419 436
Rank change year-on-year -19 +17 +18
Permanent jobs citing PhD 558 721 1,376
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 0.54% 0.74% 0.82%
As % of the Qualifications category 2.01% 2.22% 3.03%
Number of salaries quoted 334 265 414
10th Percentile £37,500 £42,500 £41,347
25th Percentile £50,000 £53,750 £55,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £63,750 £75,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year -15.00% +7.14% +12.00%
75th Percentile £87,500 £100,000 £103,438
90th Percentile £110,875 £130,000 £137,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year - +9.09% +10.00%

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 permanent job vacancies with a requirement for academic qualifications or professional certifications.

Permanent vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 27,701 32,451 45,338
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 26.99% 33.33% 27.16%
Number of salaries quoted 17,227 14,614 19,248
10th Percentile £28,500 £32,000 £31,000
25th Percentile £38,500 £42,500 £40,853
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £53,555 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -10.74% +9.09% -
75th Percentile £71,000 £77,500 £73,750
90th Percentile £87,500 £95,000 £91,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -

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 28 May 2024.

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 28 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England -7 464 £62,500 -16.67% 430
UK excluding London -69 393 £60,000 - 258
South East -3 173 £58,000 -3.33% 77
London +120 158 £90,000 +9.09% 183
Work from Home +43 140 £60,000 -27.27% 174
Scotland -42 73 £70,000 -30.00% 12
East of England -64 63 £70,000 -6.67% 66
North of England +39 34 £80,000 -8.57% 37
North West +24 22 £80,000 -8.57% 31
Midlands +2 17 £55,000 -4.35% 35
South West -57 16 £68,750 +50.27% 32
Northern Ireland - 15 - - 1
West Midlands +18 12 £55,000 - 23
Yorkshire +47 7 £37,500 - 5
East Midlands -16 5 £32,500 -43.48% 12
North East - 5 £55,000 - 1
Wales -40 2 £100,000 +100.00% 10

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 11 (1.97%) Apache Spark
2 7 (1.25%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (0.54%) Apache
3 3 (0.54%) SAS
4 1 (0.18%) Confluence
4 1 (0.18%) Luigi
Applications
1 11 (1.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (1.08%) Simulink
2 6 (1.08%) Stateflow
3 4 (0.72%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.18%) Blender
4 1 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.36%) Oracle Payroll
Cloud Services
1 46 (8.24%) AWS
2 32 (5.73%) Figma
2 32 (5.73%) SurveyMonkey
3 31 (5.56%) Azure
4 23 (4.12%) Cloud Computing
5 16 (2.87%) GCP
6 11 (1.97%) Power Platform
7 6 (1.08%) GitHub
8 4 (0.72%) Azure DevOps
8 4 (0.72%) Dagster
8 4 (0.72%) SaaS
9 2 (0.36%) Amazon S3
9 2 (0.36%) Azure Machine Learning
9 2 (0.36%) Microsoft 365
9 2 (0.36%) OCI
9 2 (0.36%) Serverless
9 2 (0.36%) Snowflake
9 2 (0.36%) WhatsApp
10 1 (0.18%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 1 (0.18%) Pulumi
Communications & Networking
1 15 (2.69%) TCP/IP
2 10 (1.79%) HTTP
2 10 (1.79%) MQTT
3 3 (0.54%) Software-Defined Radio
3 3 (0.54%) Wireless
4 2 (0.36%) Internet
4 2 (0.36%) RS-485
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (3.23%) Big Data
2 16 (2.87%) NoSQL
3 13 (2.33%) Tableau
4 11 (1.97%) Power BI
5 10 (1.79%) Hadoop
5 10 (1.79%) SQL Server
6 5 (0.90%) Elasticsearch
7 4 (0.72%) Data Mining
7 4 (0.72%) Data Warehouse
7 4 (0.72%) Neo4j
7 4 (0.72%) PostgreSQL
8 3 (0.54%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (0.36%) Amazon Athena
9 2 (0.36%) BigQuery
9 2 (0.36%) MongoDB
9 2 (0.36%) Relational Database
9 2 (0.36%) Text Mining
10 1 (0.18%) Metadata
10 1 (0.18%) MySQL
10 1 (0.18%) RethinkDB
Development Applications
1 33 (5.91%) Git
2 9 (1.61%) Jenkins
3 8 (1.43%) GitLab
4 6 (1.08%) JUnit
5 5 (0.90%) JIRA
5 5 (0.90%) Team Foundation Server
6 4 (0.72%) IntelliJ
6 4 (0.72%) Mockito
6 4 (0.72%) Snakemake
7 3 (0.54%) CMake
7 3 (0.54%) TestRail
8 2 (0.36%) GDB
8 2 (0.36%) MLflow
8 2 (0.36%) Rational DOORS
8 2 (0.36%) TensorBoard
9 1 (0.18%) Artifactory
9 1 (0.18%) CircleCI
General
1 170 (30.47%) Social Skills
2 106 (19.00%) Finance
3 99 (17.74%) Analytical Skills
4 77 (13.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 70 (12.54%) Law
6 68 (12.19%) Marketing
7 53 (9.50%) Pharmaceutical
8 40 (7.17%) Social Science
9 24 (4.30%) Electronics
10 13 (2.33%) Legal
11 11 (1.97%) Aerospace
11 11 (1.97%) Health Technology
12 10 (1.79%) Banking
13 9 (1.61%) Retail
14 8 (1.43%) Humanities
14 8 (1.43%) Telecoms
15 7 (1.25%) Games
15 7 (1.25%) Manufacturing
15 7 (1.25%) Organisational Skills
16 5 (0.90%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 114 (20.43%) Senior
2 84 (15.05%) Software Engineer
3 75 (13.44%) Data Scientist
4 66 (11.83%) Developer
5 53 (9.50%) Lead
6 49 (8.78%) Senior Data Scientist
7 34 (6.09%) Analyst
7 34 (6.09%) Graduate
8 27 (4.84%) Software Developer
9 23 (4.12%) Architect
10 21 (3.76%) Senior Software Engineer
11 18 (3.23%) Development Manager
12 16 (2.87%) Quantitative Developer
13 15 (2.69%) Junior
13 15 (2.69%) Senior Developer
14 14 (2.51%) Lead Data Scientist
15 13 (2.33%) User Experience Researcher
16 12 (2.15%) Physicist
17 11 (1.97%) Business Manager
17 11 (1.97%) Computer Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 54 (9.68%) PyTorch
2 47 (8.42%) TensorFlow
3 22 (3.94%) OpenMP
4 19 (3.41%) Kafka
5 18 (3.23%) scikit-learn
6 15 (2.69%) NumPy
6 15 (2.69%) Web Services
7 14 (2.51%) .NET
7 14 (2.51%) OpenACC
8 13 (2.33%) AngularJS
8 13 (2.33%) RESTful
9 11 (1.97%) Node.js
9 11 (1.97%) OpenCV
9 11 (1.97%) REST
10 10 (1.79%) RabbitMQ
11 9 (1.61%) Keras
12 7 (1.25%) OpenCL
12 7 (1.25%) Pandas
13 6 (1.08%) Vulkan
14 5 (0.90%) FFmpeg
Miscellaneous
1 207 (37.10%) Algorithms
2 58 (10.39%) Life Science
3 34 (6.09%) CUDA
4 33 (5.91%) Data Structures
5 29 (5.20%) Analytical Mindset
6 27 (4.84%) Market Risk
7 22 (3.94%) FPGA
8 18 (3.23%) Self-Motivation
8 18 (3.23%) VHDL
9 16 (2.87%) Client/Server
10 15 (2.69%) Greenfield Project
11 14 (2.51%) IoT
11 14 (2.51%) Product Ownership
12 12 (2.15%) Analogue Electronics
12 12 (2.15%) Biopharmaceutical
12 12 (2.15%) Embedded Systems
13 11 (1.97%) Distributed Systems
13 11 (1.97%) Hedge funds
14 9 (1.61%) Distributed Computing
14 9 (1.61%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 77 (13.80%) Linux
2 41 (7.35%) Unix
3 5 (0.90%) Embedded Linux
4 4 (0.72%) Windows
5 2 (0.36%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 259 (46.42%) Computer Science
2 219 (39.25%) Mathematics
3 166 (29.75%) Machine Learning
4 149 (26.70%) Physics
5 142 (25.45%) Software Engineering
6 140 (25.09%) Data Science
7 134 (24.01%) Artificial Intelligence
8 129 (23.12%) Problem-Solving
9 84 (15.05%) Statistics
10 77 (13.80%) Analytics
11 62 (11.11%) Deep Learning
12 61 (10.93%) Fintech
13 60 (10.75%) Parallel Programming
14 55 (9.86%) Decision-Making
15 54 (9.68%) Agile
15 54 (9.68%) Psychology
16 49 (8.78%) Actionable Insight
17 48 (8.60%) Data Analysis
18 46 (8.24%) User Experience
19 45 (8.06%) Anthropology
Programming Languages
1 295 (52.87%) Python
2 119 (21.33%) C++
3 109 (19.53%) C
4 90 (16.13%) R
5 82 (14.70%) Java
5 82 (14.70%) SQL
6 70 (12.54%) Fortran
7 54 (9.68%) C#
8 35 (6.27%) Bash
9 30 (5.38%) MATLAB
10 18 (3.23%) JavaScript
11 14 (2.51%) Rust
12 7 (1.25%) Go
13 6 (1.08%) Haskell
13 6 (1.08%) Perl
14 4 (0.72%) AWK
14 4 (0.72%) sed
14 4 (0.72%) Shell Script
14 4 (0.72%) VB
15 3 (0.54%) C-shell
Qualifications
1 546 (97.85%) Degree
2 380 (68.10%) Master's Degree
3 67 (12.01%) Security Cleared
4 49 (8.78%) Computer Science Degree
5 23 (4.12%) SC Cleared
6 19 (3.41%) MBA
7 14 (2.51%) DV Cleared
8 10 (1.79%) CFA
8 10 (1.79%) CIMA
9 6 (1.08%) Numerate Degree
10 5 (0.90%) BPSS Clearance
11 2 (0.36%) CREST Certified
11 2 (0.36%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.36%) OSCE
11 2 (0.36%) OSCP
12 1 (0.18%) Postgraduate
12 1 (0.18%) RIBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (4.48%) QA
2 11 (1.97%) Accessibility
2 11 (1.97%) Data Quality
3 10 (1.79%) GDPR
4 9 (1.61%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 2 (0.36%) ECSS
5 2 (0.36%) GLP
5 2 (0.36%) Good Clinical Practice
6 1 (0.18%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 32 (5.73%) Docker
2 5 (0.90%) Firmware
3 2 (0.36%) IAG
4 1 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 36 (6.45%) Kubernetes
2 8 (1.43%) Terraform
3 7 (1.25%) Kubeflow
4 4 (0.72%) Ansible
4 4 (0.72%) Argo
5 2 (0.36%) Core Impact
Vendors
1 37 (6.63%) Microsoft
2 32 (5.73%) Qualtrics
3 17 (3.05%) Google
4 10 (1.79%) OpenAI
5 8 (1.43%) ANSYS
6 6 (1.08%) NVIDIA
7 3 (0.54%) Databricks
8 2 (0.36%) Oracle
8 2 (0.36%) SAP
9 1 (0.18%) Alteryx
9 1 (0.18%) Interwoven
9 1 (0.18%) Keysight
9 1 (0.18%) Qubit
9 1 (0.18%) Samsung
9 1 (0.18%) Thales
9 1 (0.18%) YouTube