PHP Contract Job Trends

PHP
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring PHP skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 11 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 547 387 304
Rank change year-on-year -160 -83 +39
Contract jobs citing PHP 93 140 313
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.19% 0.48% 0.72%
As % of the Programming Languages category 0.69% 1.40% 2.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 65 87 238
10th Percentile £325 £295 £263
25th Percentile £425 £344 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £425 £400
Median % change year-on-year +11.76% +6.25% -10.71%
75th Percentile £538 £501 £500
90th Percentile £630 £575 £551
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £435 £400
% change year-on-year +9.20% +8.75% -1.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 5 10
10th Percentile - - £22.50
25th Percentile - £33.25 £27.96
Median hourly rate - £34.50 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year - -34.29% -34.38%
75th Percentile - £35.75 £72.34
90th Percentile - - £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year - - -56.25%

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 13,405 10,013 13,127
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.87% 34.09% 30.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,743 6,790 9,257
10th Percentile £358 £355 £350
25th Percentile £416 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.46% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £601 £625 £650
90th Percentile £716 £752 £764
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +2.63% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 554 234 531
10th Percentile £36.25 £26.52 £31.25
25th Percentile £53.53 £34.05 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -12.00% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +4.00% - -

PHP
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing PHP relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

PHP job vacancy trend in the UK

PHP
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing PHP.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing PHP

PHP
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing PHP over the 6 months to 11 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for PHP in the UK

PHP
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing PHP.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing PHP

PHP
Top 12 Contract Job 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 11 June 2026. 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 -145 76 £488 +13.37% 81
UK excluding London -104 48 £475 +9.20% 80
Work from Home -95 24 £500 +14.94% 45
London -103 24 £450 +20.00% 14
South West -7 19 £525 +1.94% 17
Yorkshire -39 18 £450 +25.70% 6
North of England -69 18 £450 +25.70% 20
South East -70 5 £275 -50.00% 21
Scotland - 3 £463 - 2
Midlands -79 2 £600 +37.93% 12
East of England -31 1 - - 6
West Midlands -69 1 £550 +26.44% 5

PHP
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 8 (8.60%) WordPress
2 6 (6.45%) Apache
3 5 (5.38%) Moodle
4 4 (4.30%) CMS
5 2 (2.15%) Drupal
5 2 (2.15%) nginx
Applications
1 2 (2.15%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (1.08%) Adobe Illustrator
2 1 (1.08%) Photoshop
2 1 (1.08%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 5 (5.38%) Magento
2 1 (1.08%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (1.08%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 26 (27.96%) AWS
2 16 (17.20%) Azure
3 13 (13.98%) GCP
4 5 (5.38%) GitHub
4 5 (5.38%) SaaS
5 2 (2.15%) GitHub Copilot
5 2 (2.15%) Power Platform
5 2 (2.15%) Serverless
5 2 (2.15%) Stripe
6 1 (1.08%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 1 (1.08%) Amazon ECS
6 1 (1.08%) Amazon Lightsail
6 1 (1.08%) Amazon OpenSearch
6 1 (1.08%) Apple Pay
6 1 (1.08%) AWS Fargate
6 1 (1.08%) AWS Lambda
6 1 (1.08%) Azure Machine Learning
6 1 (1.08%) Cloudflare
6 1 (1.08%) GitHub Actions
6 1 (1.08%) Google Pay
Communications & Networking
1 4 (4.30%) BGP
1 4 (4.30%) Cisco ASA
1 4 (4.30%) Cisco IOS
1 4 (4.30%) MPLS
1 4 (4.30%) Network Security
1 4 (4.30%) TACACS
1 4 (4.30%) VPN
2 2 (2.15%) Firewall
2 2 (2.15%) FTP
3 1 (1.08%) HTTP
3 1 (1.08%) Internet
3 1 (1.08%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (31.18%) MySQL
2 12 (12.90%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (10.75%) MongoDB
4 8 (8.60%) NoSQL
4 8 (8.60%) SQL Server
5 7 (7.53%) Redis
6 6 (6.45%) BigQuery
6 6 (6.45%) Relational Database
7 5 (5.38%) Elasticsearch
8 2 (2.15%) Amazon Athena
8 2 (2.15%) Apache Cassandra
8 2 (2.15%) Neo4j
9 1 (1.08%) Amazon Aurora
9 1 (1.08%) DynamoDB
9 1 (1.08%) MariaDB
9 1 (1.08%) Metadata
9 1 (1.08%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 8 (8.60%) Jenkins
1 8 (8.60%) JIRA
2 7 (7.53%) Git
2 7 (7.53%) GitLab
3 6 (6.45%) Cucumber
3 6 (6.45%) Postman
3 6 (6.45%) REST Assured
3 6 (6.45%) Selenium
3 6 (6.45%) TestRail
4 2 (2.15%) JUnit
5 1 (1.08%) Bitbucket
5 1 (1.08%) Codeception
5 1 (1.08%) PHPUnit
5 1 (1.08%) Vite
General
1 13 (13.98%) Finance
1 13 (13.98%) Social Skills
2 7 (7.53%) Public Sector
3 4 (4.30%) Advertising
3 4 (4.30%) Analytical Skills
3 4 (4.30%) Marketing
4 2 (2.15%) Documentation Skills
4 2 (2.15%) Spanish Language
5 1 (1.08%) Banking
5 1 (1.08%) iGaming
5 1 (1.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 1 (1.08%) Legal
5 1 (1.08%) Manufacturing
5 1 (1.08%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 43 (46.24%) Developer
2 26 (27.96%) PHP Developer
3 11 (11.83%) Senior
4 10 (10.75%) PHP Software Engineer
4 10 (10.75%) Software Engineer
5 5 (5.38%) Architect
5 5 (5.38%) Lead
5 5 (5.38%) Moodle Developer
5 5 (5.38%) Security Engineer
5 5 (5.38%) Software Developer
5 5 (5.38%) Test Automation Engineer
5 5 (5.38%) Test Engineer
6 4 (4.30%) Full-Stack Developer
6 4 (4.30%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 4 (4.30%) Senior Developer
6 4 (4.30%) Technical Architect
7 3 (3.23%) Infrastructure Security Engineer
7 3 (3.23%) MySQL Developer
7 3 (3.23%) PHP MySQL Developer
7 3 (3.23%) Web Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (13.98%) CSS
1 13 (13.98%) REST
2 11 (11.83%) .NET
2 11 (11.83%) Laravel
2 11 (11.83%) RabbitMQ
3 10 (10.75%) HTML
4 9 (9.68%) LDAP
5 7 (7.53%) Kafka
5 7 (7.53%) Node.js
5 7 (7.53%) OpenID
5 7 (7.53%) Vue
6 5 (5.38%) OAuth
6 5 (5.38%) SailPoint
7 4 (4.30%) LAMP
7 4 (4.30%) React
7 4 (4.30%) VML
8 3 (3.23%) Middleware
8 3 (3.23%) Symfony
8 3 (3.23%) Twig
9 2 (2.15%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 9 (9.68%) Distributed Systems
2 4 (4.30%) Client/Server
2 4 (4.30%) PKI
3 3 (3.23%) AI Agents
3 3 (3.23%) Onboarding
4 2 (2.15%) Cloud Native
4 2 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
4 2 (2.15%) Linux Command Line
4 2 (2.15%) Product Ownership
5 1 (1.08%) e-Learning
5 1 (1.08%) FMCG
5 1 (1.08%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 15 (16.13%) Linux
2 4 (4.30%) Ubuntu
3 2 (2.15%) Unix
3 2 (2.15%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 19 (20.43%) Microservices
2 18 (19.35%) Problem-Solving
3 17 (18.28%) DevOps
4 13 (13.98%) CI/CD
5 12 (12.90%) Agile
5 12 (12.90%) Roadmaps
5 12 (12.90%) Software Engineering
6 11 (11.83%) Code Quality
6 11 (11.83%) TDD
7 10 (10.75%) Refactoring
7 10 (10.75%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 9 (9.68%) Containerisation
8 9 (9.68%) Mentoring
8 9 (9.68%) Observability
9 8 (8.60%) Fintech
9 8 (8.60%) Migration
9 8 (8.60%) User Acceptance Testing
9 8 (8.60%) Wealth Management
10 7 (7.53%) API Testing
10 7 (7.53%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 26 (27.96%) JavaScript
2 18 (19.35%) Python
3 13 (13.98%) SQL
4 12 (12.90%) Java
5 11 (11.83%) Go
6 6 (6.45%) C#
7 4 (4.30%) Perl
7 4 (4.30%) TypeScript
8 3 (3.23%) Kotlin
9 2 (2.15%) Scala
10 1 (1.08%) Bash
10 1 (1.08%) Korn
10 1 (1.08%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 13 (13.98%) Security Cleared
2 12 (12.90%) SC Cleared
3 4 (4.30%) APMG
3 4 (4.30%) CompTIA Security+
3 4 (4.30%) DV Cleared
3 4 (4.30%) GIAC
3 4 (4.30%) SSCP
4 3 (3.23%) GSEC
5 2 (2.15%) AWS Certification
5 2 (2.15%) AWS Certified Developer
5 2 (2.15%) Degree
6 1 (1.08%) Azure Certification
6 1 (1.08%) Computer Science Degree
6 1 (1.08%) CSSLP
6 1 (1.08%) GWAPT
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (16.13%) QA
2 4 (4.30%) Accessibility
2 4 (4.30%) Cyber Essentials
2 4 (4.30%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
2 4 (4.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 4 (4.30%) NIST
3 1 (1.08%) GDPR
3 1 (1.08%) HMG Security Policy Framework
3 1 (1.08%) PCI DSS
3 1 (1.08%) WCAG
System Software
1 15 (16.13%) Docker
2 5 (5.38%) Varnish
3 4 (4.30%) VMware ESXi
3 4 (4.30%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (1.08%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 11 (11.83%) Kubernetes
2 4 (4.30%) Terraform
2 4 (4.30%) vCenter Server
3 3 (3.23%) SCOM
4 2 (2.15%) Ansible
5 1 (1.08%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 7 (7.53%) Google
2 5 (5.38%) Adobe
2 5 (5.38%) ServiceNow
3 4 (4.30%) Cisco
3 4 (4.30%) VMware
4 3 (3.23%) Microsoft
5 2 (2.15%) Dynatrace
5 2 (2.15%) OpenAI
6 1 (1.08%) Apple
6 1 (1.08%) GoCardless
6 1 (1.08%) HubSpot
6 1 (1.08%) Oracle
6 1 (1.08%) Percona
6 1 (1.08%) Virgin Media
6 1 (1.08%) WooCommerce
6 1 (1.08%) Zend