PhD Contracts

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 1 June 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
1 Jun 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 493 548 681
Rank change year-on-year +55 +133 -97
Contract jobs citing PhD 82 134 157
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.19% 0.24% 0.18%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.64% 0.88% 0.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 45 82 83
10th Percentile £375 £231 £405
25th Percentile £505 £579 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £775 £590
Median % change year-on-year -22.58% +31.36% +2.61%
75th Percentile £775 £950 £738
90th Percentile £840 £1,000 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £625 £565 £557
% change year-on-year +10.72% +1.30% +10.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 0 10
10th Percentile £20.12 - £18.50
25th Percentile £20.97 - £18.85
Median hourly rate £39.68 - £49.50
75th Percentile £65.00 - £54.38
90th Percentile - - £61.37
UK excluding London median hourly rate £61.25 - £19.91
% change year-on-year - - -1.80%

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 12,872 15,254 19,038
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 29.89% 27.21% 21.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,011 10,183 12,699
10th Percentile £310 £338 £345
25th Percentile £425 £450 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.64% +4.76% +6.06%
75th Percentile £645 £650 £630
90th Percentile £738 £738 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £535 £525 £500
% change year-on-year +1.90% +5.00% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,100 745 759
10th Percentile £13.87 £14.67 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.13 £21.24 £19.52
Median hourly rate £40.00 £55.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -27.27% +23.60% +28.21%
75th Percentile £62.50 £68.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £76.32 £79.19 £67.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.25 £52.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -21.43% +50.00% +16.67%

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 1 June 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
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing PhD over the 6 months to 1 June 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for PhD in the UK

PhD
Top 12 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 1 June 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 +51 77 £600 -24.53% 420
London +50 41 £600 -33.33% 204
UK excluding London +48 34 £625 +10.72% 234
Work from Home +105 32 £600 +3.63% 154
East of England +23 19 £800 - 57
South East +7 9 £625 +165.96% 78
Wales - 2 - - 9
North of England - 2 £550 - 30
North West - 2 £550 - 25
Midlands +23 1 £550 -18.52% 30
West Midlands +14 1 £550 -18.52% 22
South West -2 1 £750 +29.53% 25

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 (4.88%) SAS
2 2 (2.44%) Apache Spark
2 2 (2.44%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (3.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (2.44%) MS Visio
3 1 (1.22%) Chatbot
3 1 (1.22%) SPSS
3 1 (1.22%) Stata
Business Applications
1 2 (2.44%) SAP MDG
2 1 (1.22%) Endur
2 1 (1.22%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 6 (7.32%) AWS
1 6 (7.32%) Azure
2 3 (3.66%) Azure Machine Learning
3 2 (2.44%) GCP
3 2 (2.44%) Vertex AI
4 1 (1.22%) Amazon SageMaker
4 1 (1.22%) dbt
4 1 (1.22%) IBM Watson
4 1 (1.22%) Power Platform
4 1 (1.22%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 4 (4.88%) Wireless
2 2 (2.44%) RS-485
2 2 (2.44%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (3.66%) Data Mining
2 2 (2.44%) Data Warehouse
2 2 (2.44%) Tableau
3 1 (1.22%) Data Lake
3 1 (1.22%) Elasticsearch
3 1 (1.22%) Looker
3 1 (1.22%) Metadata
3 1 (1.22%) Parquet
3 1 (1.22%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 14 (17.07%) Git
2 4 (4.88%) JIRA
2 4 (4.88%) Subversion
3 3 (3.66%) GCC
4 1 (1.22%) Team Foundation Server
4 1 (1.22%) Visual Studio
General
1 26 (31.71%) Finance
2 21 (25.61%) Social Skills
3 14 (17.07%) Analytical Skills
4 11 (13.41%) Marketing
5 8 (9.76%) Front Office
6 6 (7.32%) Telecoms
7 5 (6.10%) Banking
7 5 (6.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 4 (4.88%) Advertising
8 4 (4.88%) Aerospace
8 4 (4.88%) Electronics
8 4 (4.88%) Pharmaceutical
9 3 (3.66%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (3.66%) Public Sector
9 3 (3.66%) Publishing
9 3 (3.66%) Retail
10 2 (2.44%) Back Office
10 2 (2.44%) Financial Institution
10 2 (2.44%) Manufacturing
10 2 (2.44%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 17 (20.73%) Architect
2 14 (17.07%) Data Scientist
3 11 (13.41%) Developer
3 11 (13.41%) Software Engineer
4 10 (12.20%) Senior
4 10 (12.20%) Software Architect
5 6 (7.32%) Consultant
5 6 (7.32%) Java Developer
6 4 (4.88%) Analyst
6 4 (4.88%) Econometrician
6 4 (4.88%) Embedded Engineer
6 4 (4.88%) Embedded Software Engineer
6 4 (4.88%) Machine Learning Engineer
6 4 (4.88%) Senior Architect
6 4 (4.88%) Solutions Architect
7 3 (3.66%) Compiler Engineer
7 3 (3.66%) Quantitative Consultant
7 3 (3.66%) Quantitative Risk Consultant
7 3 (3.66%) Risk Consultant
7 3 (3.66%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (14.63%) DirectX
1 12 (14.63%) OpenGL
1 12 (14.63%) OpenGL ES
1 12 (14.63%) Vulkan
2 9 (10.98%) PyTorch
3 8 (9.76%) TensorFlow
4 4 (4.88%) Pandas
4 4 (4.88%) scikit-learn
5 3 (3.66%) LLVM
5 3 (3.66%) NumPy
6 2 (2.44%) Swagger
7 1 (1.22%) .NET
7 1 (1.22%) .NET Framework
7 1 (1.22%) Entity Framework
7 1 (1.22%) JSON
7 1 (1.22%) Lucene
7 1 (1.22%) Managed Extensibility Framework
7 1 (1.22%) Silverlight
7 1 (1.22%) WCF
7 1 (1.22%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 13 (15.85%) Algorithms
2 10 (12.20%) 3D Graphics
2 10 (12.20%) Ray Tracing
3 4 (4.88%) Credit Risk
3 4 (4.88%) Device Driver
4 3 (3.66%) Data Structures
4 3 (3.66%) Derivative
5 2 (2.44%) Blockchain
5 2 (2.44%) Data Centre
5 2 (2.44%) FPGA
5 2 (2.44%) Management Information System
5 2 (2.44%) Multi-touch
5 2 (2.44%) Photography
5 2 (2.44%) Social Media
5 2 (2.44%) Tandem
6 1 (1.22%) Blog
6 1 (1.22%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (1.22%) Life Science
6 1 (1.22%) Virtual Reality
6 1 (1.22%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 7 (8.54%) Linux
2 3 (3.66%) Android
2 3 (3.66%) Windows
3 1 (1.22%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 51 (62.20%) Computer Science
2 28 (34.15%) Problem-Solving
3 26 (31.71%) Statistics
4 25 (30.49%) Machine Learning
5 21 (25.61%) Mathematics
6 20 (24.39%) Artificial Intelligence
7 19 (23.17%) Data Science
8 18 (21.95%) Software Engineering
9 13 (15.85%) Economics
9 13 (15.85%) Validation
10 12 (14.63%) Agile
10 12 (14.63%) Analytics
10 12 (14.63%) Data Analysis
10 12 (14.63%) Data Governance
10 12 (14.63%) Decision-Making
10 12 (14.63%) Open Source
11 11 (13.41%) Collaborative Culture
11 11 (13.41%) Physics
12 10 (12.20%) Software Architecture
13 9 (10.98%) Model Validation
Programming Languages
1 44 (53.66%) Python
2 25 (30.49%) C++
3 21 (25.61%) SQL
4 18 (21.95%) C
5 16 (19.51%) R
6 13 (15.85%) Java
7 8 (9.76%) C#
8 7 (8.54%) Shell Script
9 4 (4.88%) Assembly Language
9 4 (4.88%) MATLAB
10 2 (2.44%) Rust
10 2 (2.44%) Scala
11 1 (1.22%) Bash
11 1 (1.22%) Julia
11 1 (1.22%) SystemVerilog
11 1 (1.22%) Tcl
11 1 (1.22%) XAML
Qualifications
1 78 (95.12%) Degree
2 69 (84.15%) Master's Degree
3 14 (17.07%) Computer Science Degree
4 6 (7.32%) Security Cleared
5 5 (6.10%) SC Cleared
6 4 (4.88%) MBA
6 4 (4.88%) Numerate Degree
7 3 (3.66%) BPSS Clearance
8 1 (1.22%) DV Cleared
8 1 (1.22%) PMP
8 1 (1.22%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (6.10%) JTAG
2 4 (4.88%) Data Quality
2 4 (4.88%) Dodd-Frank
2 4 (4.88%) MiFID
3 3 (3.66%) GDPR
4 2 (2.44%) PCI DSS
5 1 (1.22%) PMO
System Software
1 5 (6.10%) Embedded Firmware
1 5 (6.10%) Firmware
2 2 (2.44%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (1.22%) Docker
Vendors
1 4 (4.88%) SAP
2 2 (2.44%) Adobe
2 2 (2.44%) CA
2 2 (2.44%) Databricks
2 2 (2.44%) VMware
3 1 (1.22%) Alteryx
3 1 (1.22%) Brandwatch
3 1 (1.22%) Google
3 1 (1.22%) IBM
3 1 (1.22%) OpenLink
3 1 (1.22%) Oracle
3 1 (1.22%) Siemens