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 6 April 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 360 292 385
Rank change year-on-year -68 +93 -90
Contract jobs citing PHP 170 342 400
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.58% 0.78% 0.64%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.71% 2.67% 1.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 111 265 279
10th Percentile £295 £263 £306
25th Percentile £350 £313 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £435 £413 £425
Median % change year-on-year +5.45% -2.94% -4.49%
75th Percentile £538 £525 £500
90th Percentile £623 £604 £613
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £400 £400
% change year-on-year +6.25% - -5.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 10 10
10th Percentile £33.43 £22.50 £24.47
25th Percentile £33.69 £28.44 £43.38
Median hourly rate £34.75 £62.50 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year -44.40% -21.88% +128.57%
75th Percentile £35.56 £72.34 £85.00
90th Percentile £35.68 £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 9,926 12,821 22,129
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.93% 29.22% 35.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,678 9,095 15,983
10th Percentile £356 £350 £400
25th Percentile £415 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £650 £676
90th Percentile £763 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -1.95% -2.50% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 243 478 497
10th Percentile £22.27 £30.63 £26.39
25th Percentile £32.51 £46.18 £50.00
Median hourly rate £62.50 £60.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% +25.00%
75th Percentile £68.25 £67.29 £69.50
90th Percentile £85.00 £74.61 £75.85
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £60.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +5.79% -3.20% +25.00%

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 6 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 6 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 -62 136 £435 +8.75% 454
Work from Home -20 85 £435 -3.33% 276
UK excluding London -21 74 £425 +6.25% 267
London -38 64 £425 +2.53% 210
South East +29 19 £363 -19.44% 78
Midlands +17 17 £418 +19.29% 42
North of England -7 15 £475 +35.71% 78
West Midlands +10 12 £435 +216.36% 23
Yorkshire +14 10 £478 +44.70% 22
East of England +35 8 £450 -21.74% 22
Wales -9 8 £550 +6.80% 4
South West +18 5 £355 +1.29% 36
East Midlands +4 5 £400 +14.29% 18
North West -22 4 £460 +16.83% 54
Scotland +3 2 £417 -0.42% 7
North East -2 1 - - 2

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 18 (10.59%) CMS
2 17 (10.00%) WordPress
3 16 (9.41%) Drupal
4 14 (8.24%) Apache
5 11 (6.47%) Confluence
6 6 (3.53%) Tomcat
7 4 (2.35%) Moodle
8 2 (1.18%) Apache Solr
8 2 (1.18%) IIS
9 1 (0.59%) Joomla!
9 1 (0.59%) nginx
Applications
1 3 (1.76%) Trello
2 2 (1.18%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (1.18%) Shopify
2 1 (0.59%) Magento
2 1 (0.59%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.59%) Sage 200
Cloud Services
1 44 (25.88%) AWS
2 20 (11.76%) Azure
3 18 (10.59%) GitHub
4 14 (8.24%) SaaS
5 10 (5.88%) Azure DevOps
5 10 (5.88%) GCP
6 9 (5.29%) Amazon ECS
6 9 (5.29%) IaaS
6 9 (5.29%) PaaS
7 6 (3.53%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 6 (3.53%) Amazon Lightsail
7 6 (3.53%) AWS Fargate
7 6 (3.53%) Serverless
8 5 (2.94%) Amazon Bedrock
9 4 (2.35%) Cloudflare
9 4 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
9 4 (2.35%) Kong
9 4 (2.35%) OCI
10 3 (1.76%) Azure Monitor
10 3 (1.76%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 8 (4.71%) DNS
2 6 (3.53%) Internet
3 4 (2.35%) SMTP
3 4 (2.35%) SSL
4 3 (1.76%) TCP/IP
5 2 (1.18%) Firewall
6 1 (0.59%) HTTPS
6 1 (0.59%) IPsec
6 1 (0.59%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (30.59%) MySQL
2 20 (11.76%) MongoDB
3 13 (7.65%) Relational Database
4 12 (7.06%) SQL Server
5 11 (6.47%) NoSQL
6 7 (4.12%) PostgreSQL
7 5 (2.94%) Oracle Database
7 5 (2.94%) Redis
8 4 (2.35%) DynamoDB
8 4 (2.35%) RDBMS
9 3 (1.76%) Apache Cassandra
9 3 (1.76%) Cloud Spanner
10 2 (1.18%) Amazon RDS
10 2 (1.18%) Amazon Redshift
10 2 (1.18%) Parquet
11 1 (0.59%) Couchbase
11 1 (0.59%) InterSystems Cache
11 1 (0.59%) MariaDB
11 1 (0.59%) SQLPlus
Development Applications
1 40 (23.53%) Git
2 15 (8.82%) Jenkins
3 12 (7.06%) JIRA
4 10 (5.88%) PHPUnit
4 10 (5.88%) Postman
5 7 (4.12%) Cypress.io
5 7 (4.12%) GitLab
5 7 (4.12%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (3.53%) Bitbucket
6 6 (3.53%) Bitbucket Server
6 6 (3.53%) JMeter
6 6 (3.53%) Selenium
7 5 (2.94%) Subversion
8 4 (2.35%) Appium
8 4 (2.35%) Cucumber
8 4 (2.35%) Gatling
8 4 (2.35%) NeoLoad
8 4 (2.35%) SonarQube
8 4 (2.35%) SpecFlow
8 4 (2.35%) Vagrant
General
1 46 (27.06%) Social Skills
2 20 (11.76%) Finance
3 10 (5.88%) Analytical Skills
4 8 (4.71%) Advertising
4 8 (4.71%) Public Sector
5 7 (4.12%) Banking
5 7 (4.12%) Retail
6 5 (2.94%) Legal
7 4 (2.35%) Marketing
8 3 (1.76%) Documentation Skills
9 2 (1.18%) Games
9 2 (1.18%) Investment Banking
9 2 (1.18%) Korean Language
9 2 (1.18%) Law
10 1 (0.59%) Automotive
10 1 (0.59%) Local Government
10 1 (0.59%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 103 (60.59%) Developer
2 46 (27.06%) PHP Developer
3 23 (13.53%) Full-Stack Developer
4 17 (10.00%) Senior
5 16 (9.41%) Software Developer
6 14 (8.24%) Software Engineer
7 13 (7.65%) Support Engineer
8 10 (5.88%) Symfony Developer
9 9 (5.29%) PHP Software Engineer
9 9 (5.29%) PHP Symfony Developer
10 8 (4.71%) React Developer
11 7 (4.12%) DevOps Engineer
11 7 (4.12%) Senior Developer
12 6 (3.53%) Lead
13 5 (2.94%) Full-Stack Engineer
13 5 (2.94%) Full-Stack PHP Developer
13 5 (2.94%) JavaScript Engineer
13 5 (2.94%) PHP Laravel Developer
13 5 (2.94%) Platform Engineer
13 5 (2.94%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (26.47%) Laravel
2 41 (24.12%) CSS
3 38 (22.35%) React
4 35 (20.59%) HTML
5 27 (15.88%) Symfony
6 23 (13.53%) Vue
7 21 (12.35%) .NET
8 19 (11.18%) AngularJS
9 14 (8.24%) REST
9 14 (8.24%) RESTful
10 13 (7.65%) JSON
11 12 (7.06%) Tailwind CSS
11 12 (7.06%) Web Services
12 11 (6.47%) LAMP
13 10 (5.88%) Node.js
14 9 (5.29%) HTML5
14 9 (5.29%) Kafka
14 9 (5.29%) SOAP
15 8 (4.71%) Alpine.js
16 7 (4.12%) CSS3
Miscellaneous
1 9 (5.29%) Data Protection Act
2 8 (4.71%) Cloud Native
3 6 (3.53%) Legacy Code
3 6 (3.53%) Public Cloud
4 5 (2.94%) Cyber Defence
4 5 (2.94%) Cyber Kill Chain
4 5 (2.94%) Enterprise Software
5 4 (2.35%) e-Learning
5 4 (2.35%) Management Information System
5 4 (2.35%) VLE
6 3 (1.76%) Greenfield Project
6 3 (1.76%) Onboarding
6 3 (1.76%) Product Ownership
6 3 (1.76%) Self-Motivation
7 2 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
7 2 (1.18%) Team-Oriented Environment
8 1 (0.59%) Data Centre
8 1 (0.59%) Data Structures
8 1 (0.59%) Enterprise Cloud
8 1 (0.59%) PropTech
Operating Systems
1 21 (12.35%) Linux
2 10 (5.88%) Unix
3 5 (2.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (2.35%) Apple iOS
4 4 (2.35%) VMS
5 3 (1.76%) Android
6 2 (1.18%) Windows
7 1 (0.59%) CentOS
7 1 (0.59%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 55 (32.35%) Agile
2 45 (26.47%) Problem-Solving
3 39 (22.94%) Full-Stack Development
4 35 (20.59%) DevOps
5 32 (18.82%) CI/CD
6 27 (15.88%) Test Automation
7 26 (15.29%) API Development
7 26 (15.29%) Design Patterns
7 26 (15.29%) OO
8 24 (14.12%) Software Engineering
9 21 (12.35%) Project Management
10 20 (11.76%) Scrum
11 18 (10.59%) Front End Development
12 17 (10.00%) MVC
13 16 (9.41%) Stakeholder Management
14 15 (8.82%) Computer Science
14 15 (8.82%) Microservices
15 14 (8.24%) E-Commerce
16 13 (7.65%) Kanban
16 13 (7.65%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 74 (43.53%) JavaScript
2 44 (25.88%) Python
3 37 (21.76%) SQL
4 27 (15.88%) Java
5 19 (11.18%) TypeScript
6 16 (9.41%) C#
6 16 (9.41%) Ruby
7 7 (4.12%) C++
8 6 (3.53%) Go
8 6 (3.53%) Perl
9 5 (2.94%) PL/SQL
9 5 (2.94%) Shell Script
10 4 (2.35%) Rust
10 4 (2.35%) Scala
11 3 (1.76%) R
12 2 (1.18%) Lua
13 1 (0.59%) Bash
13 1 (0.59%) Bicep
13 1 (0.59%) Dart
13 1 (0.59%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 19 (11.18%) Degree
2 14 (8.24%) Security Cleared
3 13 (7.65%) SC Cleared
4 8 (4.71%) Computer Science Degree
5 5 (2.94%) CCSAS
5 5 (2.94%) CEH
5 5 (2.94%) CREST Certified
5 5 (2.94%) GIAC
5 5 (2.94%) GPEN
5 5 (2.94%) GWAPT
5 5 (2.94%) OSCP
6 4 (2.35%) AWS Certification
6 4 (2.35%) Azure Certification
7 1 (0.59%) BPSS Clearance
7 1 (0.59%) CISA
7 1 (0.59%) CISM
7 1 (0.59%) CISSP
7 1 (0.59%) GCIH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (8.82%) QA
2 10 (5.88%) Accessibility
3 2 (1.18%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.59%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 1 (0.59%) SOC 2
System Software
1 27 (15.88%) Docker
2 4 (2.35%) VirtualBox
2 4 (2.35%) VMware Infrastructure
3 3 (1.76%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.59%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.59%) Embedded Firmware
4 1 (0.59%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 21 (12.35%) Kubernetes
2 19 (11.18%) Terraform
3 11 (6.47%) Ansible
4 7 (4.12%) Puppet
5 4 (2.35%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
6 3 (1.76%) Packer
6 3 (1.76%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 14 (8.24%) Microsoft
2 13 (7.65%) Oracle
3 12 (7.06%) Zend
4 7 (4.12%) Google
5 4 (2.35%) F5
5 4 (2.35%) SAP
5 4 (2.35%) Splunk
5 4 (2.35%) VMware
6 3 (1.76%) Sage
6 3 (1.76%) Virgin Media
7 2 (1.18%) Adobe
7 2 (1.18%) Salesforce
7 2 (1.18%) ServiceNow
7 2 (1.18%) Sitecore
8 1 (0.59%) Databricks
8 1 (0.59%) Facebook
8 1 (0.59%) GoCardless