PHP Contracts

PHP
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring PHP skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited PHP over the 6 months leading up to 25 April 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 357 283 363
Rank change year-on-year -74 +80 -73
Contract jobs citing PHP 163 336 396
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.55% 0.77% 0.66%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.62% 2.62% 1.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 101 263 282
10th Percentile £295 £263 £306
25th Percentile £350 £313 £352
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £415 £425
Median % change year-on-year +2.53% -2.47% -5.56%
75th Percentile £506 £525 £498
90th Percentile £584 £585 £600
UK excluding London median daily rate £430 £413 £400
% change year-on-year +4.24% +3.13% -5.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 10 10
10th Percentile - £22.50 £24.47
25th Percentile £33.25 £28.44 £43.38
Median hourly rate £34.50 £62.50 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year -44.80% -21.88% +128.57%
75th Percentile £35.75 £72.34 £85.00
90th Percentile - £72.50 £87.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £45.00 £48.74
% change year-on-year -22.22% -7.66% +14.67%

All Programming Languages
UK

PHP falls under the Programming Languages category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring coding skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 10,046 12,821 21,193
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.02% 29.38% 35.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,803 9,116 15,304
10th Percentile £360 £350 £400
25th Percentile £419 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £650 £675
90th Percentile £763 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £479 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -1.80% -2.50% +3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 246 482 487
10th Percentile £22.49 £31.25 £26.25
25th Percentile £34.18 £46.25 £50.00
Median hourly rate £62.50 £60.00 £61.18
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -1.92% +22.35%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £78.68 £77.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £62.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +2.40% - +25.63%

PHP
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing PHP as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for PHP in the UK

PHP
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for PHP in the UK

PHP
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing PHP over the 6 months to 25 April 2025.

Daily rate histogram for PHP in the UK

PHP
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for PHP in the UK

PHP
Top 16 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing PHP within the UK over the 6 months to 25 April 2025. 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 -67 132 £435 +8.75% 573
Work from Home -31 78 £435 -3.33% 418
UK excluding London -32 71 £430 +4.24% 385
London -32 60 £423 +1.93% 217
Midlands +24 17 £435 +24.29% 84
South East +19 17 £363 -23.68% 86
North of England -18 16 £455 +30.00% 135
West Midlands +13 13 £435 +216.36% 42
Yorkshire +8 11 £455 +37.88% 57
East of England +38 8 £450 -5.26% 22
South West +30 6 £355 +1.29% 45
Wales -13 5 £500 -2.91% 8
East Midlands +11 4 £400 +14.29% 40
North West -11 4 - - 71
Scotland +10 2 £417 +7.61% 11
North East -1 1 - - 8

PHP
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 16 (9.82%) CMS
2 15 (9.20%) Apache
3 14 (8.59%) WordPress
4 11 (6.75%) Drupal
5 9 (5.52%) Confluence
6 6 (3.68%) Tomcat
7 5 (3.07%) Moodle
8 2 (1.23%) IIS
9 1 (0.61%) Apache Solr
9 1 (0.61%) Joomla!
Applications
1 3 (1.84%) Trello
2 2 (1.23%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 3 (1.84%) Magento
1 3 (1.84%) Sage 200
2 2 (1.23%) Shopify
3 1 (0.61%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 43 (26.38%) AWS
2 19 (11.66%) Azure
3 15 (9.20%) GitHub
4 14 (8.59%) SaaS
5 9 (5.52%) Amazon ECS
5 9 (5.52%) IaaS
5 9 (5.52%) PaaS
6 8 (4.91%) Azure DevOps
7 7 (4.29%) GCP
8 6 (3.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 6 (3.68%) Amazon Lightsail
8 6 (3.68%) AWS Fargate
8 6 (3.68%) Serverless
9 5 (3.07%) Amazon Bedrock
10 4 (2.45%) Cloudflare
10 4 (2.45%) GitHub Actions
10 4 (2.45%) Kong
10 4 (2.45%) OCI
11 3 (1.84%) Figma
11 3 (1.84%) Slack
Communications & Networking
1 7 (4.29%) DNS
2 4 (2.45%) Firewall
2 4 (2.45%) Internet
2 4 (2.45%) SMTP
2 4 (2.45%) SSL
3 2 (1.23%) HTTP
3 2 (1.23%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.61%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 48 (29.45%) MySQL
2 18 (11.04%) MongoDB
3 11 (6.75%) Relational Database
4 10 (6.13%) NoSQL
4 10 (6.13%) SQL Server
5 7 (4.29%) PostgreSQL
6 5 (3.07%) Oracle Database
7 4 (2.45%) RDBMS
7 4 (2.45%) Redis
8 3 (1.84%) Apache Cassandra
8 3 (1.84%) Cloud Spanner
9 2 (1.23%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (1.23%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (1.23%) DynamoDB
9 2 (1.23%) Parquet
10 1 (0.61%) GIS
10 1 (0.61%) MariaDB
10 1 (0.61%) SQLPlus
Development Applications
1 37 (22.70%) Git
2 15 (9.20%) Jenkins
3 10 (6.13%) JIRA
3 10 (6.13%) PHPUnit
3 10 (6.13%) Postman
4 7 (4.29%) GitLab
4 7 (4.29%) Sonatype Nexus
5 6 (3.68%) Bitbucket
5 6 (3.68%) Selenium
6 5 (3.07%) Subversion
7 4 (2.45%) Appium
7 4 (2.45%) CircleCI
7 4 (2.45%) Cucumber
7 4 (2.45%) Cypress.io
7 4 (2.45%) Gatling
7 4 (2.45%) JMeter
7 4 (2.45%) NeoLoad
7 4 (2.45%) SonarQube
7 4 (2.45%) SpecFlow
7 4 (2.45%) Vagrant
General
1 45 (27.61%) Social Skills
2 19 (11.66%) Finance
3 10 (6.13%) Analytical Skills
4 8 (4.91%) Advertising
5 7 (4.29%) Banking
5 7 (4.29%) Public Sector
6 6 (3.68%) Retail
7 5 (3.07%) Legal
8 4 (2.45%) Marketing
9 2 (1.23%) Documentation Skills
9 2 (1.23%) Investment Banking
9 2 (1.23%) Korean Language
9 2 (1.23%) Law
10 1 (0.61%) Automotive
10 1 (0.61%) Local Government
10 1 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 97 (59.51%) Developer
2 41 (25.15%) PHP Developer
3 21 (12.88%) Full-Stack Developer
4 19 (11.66%) Senior
5 16 (9.82%) Software Developer
6 13 (7.98%) Support Engineer
7 11 (6.75%) Software Engineer
8 9 (5.52%) Architect
8 9 (5.52%) DevOps Engineer
8 9 (5.52%) Symfony Developer
9 8 (4.91%) PHP Symfony Developer
9 8 (4.91%) Senior Developer
10 7 (4.29%) PHP Software Engineer
10 7 (4.29%) React Developer
11 5 (3.07%) Full-Stack Engineer
11 5 (3.07%) JavaScript Engineer
11 5 (3.07%) Moodle Developer
11 5 (3.07%) Senior Tester
11 5 (3.07%) Tester
12 4 (2.45%) Software Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (24.54%) CSS
2 39 (23.93%) Laravel
3 36 (22.09%) React
4 32 (19.63%) HTML
5 24 (14.72%) Symfony
6 22 (13.50%) .NET
7 21 (12.88%) Vue
8 15 (9.20%) AngularJS
9 14 (8.59%) REST
10 12 (7.36%) RESTful
10 12 (7.36%) Tailwind CSS
11 11 (6.75%) JSON
11 11 (6.75%) LAMP
11 11 (6.75%) Node.js
12 9 (5.52%) Kafka
12 9 (5.52%) Web Services
13 8 (4.91%) Alpine.js
14 7 (4.29%) CSS3
14 7 (4.29%) HTML5
14 7 (4.29%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 8 (4.91%) Data Protection Act
2 6 (3.68%) Public Cloud
3 5 (3.07%) Cyber Defence
3 5 (3.07%) Cyber Kill Chain
3 5 (3.07%) e-Learning
3 5 (3.07%) Legacy Code
3 5 (3.07%) VLE
4 4 (2.45%) Cloud Native
4 4 (2.45%) Enterprise Software
4 4 (2.45%) Management Information System
4 4 (2.45%) Onboarding
5 3 (1.84%) Self-Motivation
6 2 (1.23%) Greenfield Project
6 2 (1.23%) Product Ownership
6 2 (1.23%) Team-Oriented Environment
7 1 (0.61%) Data Centre
7 1 (0.61%) Distributed Systems
7 1 (0.61%) Hybrid Cloud
7 1 (0.61%) PropTech
7 1 (0.61%) W3C
Operating Systems
1 22 (13.50%) Linux
2 8 (4.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 8 (4.91%) Unix
3 4 (2.45%) VMS
4 3 (1.84%) Android
4 3 (1.84%) Apple iOS
5 2 (1.23%) Windows
6 1 (0.61%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 48 (29.45%) Agile
2 43 (26.38%) Problem-Solving
3 35 (21.47%) DevOps
3 35 (21.47%) Full-Stack Development
4 33 (20.25%) CI/CD
5 25 (15.34%) API Development
6 22 (13.50%) Design Patterns
6 22 (13.50%) OO
7 21 (12.88%) Project Management
7 21 (12.88%) Software Engineering
7 21 (12.88%) Test Automation
8 17 (10.43%) Stakeholder Management
9 16 (9.82%) Front End Development
9 16 (9.82%) Scrum
10 15 (9.20%) Computer Science
10 15 (9.20%) Microservices
10 15 (9.20%) MVC
11 14 (8.59%) E-Commerce
12 13 (7.98%) Containerisation
13 12 (7.36%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 69 (42.33%) JavaScript
2 46 (28.22%) Python
3 37 (22.70%) SQL
4 26 (15.95%) Java
5 20 (12.27%) TypeScript
6 17 (10.43%) Ruby
7 16 (9.82%) C#
8 6 (3.68%) C++
8 6 (3.68%) Go
8 6 (3.68%) Perl
9 5 (3.07%) PL/SQL
9 5 (3.07%) Rust
9 5 (3.07%) Shell Script
10 4 (2.45%) Scala
11 3 (1.84%) PowerShell
11 3 (1.84%) R
12 2 (1.23%) Bash
12 2 (1.23%) Lua
13 1 (0.61%) Dart
Qualifications
1 18 (11.04%) Degree
2 17 (10.43%) Security Cleared
3 16 (9.82%) SC Cleared
4 8 (4.91%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (4.29%) CEH
6 5 (3.07%) CCSAS
6 5 (3.07%) CREST Certified
6 5 (3.07%) GIAC
6 5 (3.07%) GPEN
6 5 (3.07%) GWAPT
6 5 (3.07%) OSCP
7 4 (2.45%) AWS Certification
7 4 (2.45%) Azure Certification
8 3 (1.84%) CISSP
9 2 (1.23%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 2 (1.23%) Cisco Certification
10 1 (0.61%) BPSS Clearance
10 1 (0.61%) CISA
10 1 (0.61%) CISM
10 1 (0.61%) GCIH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (6.75%) QA
2 10 (6.13%) Accessibility
3 3 (1.84%) PCI DSS
4 2 (1.23%) Data Quality
4 2 (1.23%) GDPR
4 2 (1.23%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (0.61%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.61%) SOC 2
System Software
1 27 (16.56%) Docker
2 4 (2.45%) VirtualBox
2 4 (2.45%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (1.23%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.61%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.61%) Embedded Firmware
4 1 (0.61%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 22 (13.50%) Kubernetes
2 18 (11.04%) Terraform
3 9 (5.52%) Ansible
4 7 (4.29%) Puppet
5 4 (2.45%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
6 3 (1.84%) Packer
6 3 (1.84%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.61%) Grafana
Vendors
1 13 (7.98%) Oracle
2 10 (6.13%) Microsoft
2 10 (6.13%) Zend
3 6 (3.68%) Google
4 4 (2.45%) F5
4 4 (2.45%) SAP
4 4 (2.45%) Splunk
4 4 (2.45%) VMware
5 3 (1.84%) Sage
5 3 (1.84%) Virgin Media
6 2 (1.23%) Adobe
6 2 (1.23%) Salesforce
6 2 (1.23%) Sitecore
7 1 (0.61%) GoCardless
7 1 (0.61%) Red Hat