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 17 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 582 373 312
Rank change year-on-year -209 -61 +41
Contract jobs citing PHP 79 174 296
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.15% 0.53% 0.70%
As % of the Programming Languages category 0.56% 1.61% 2.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 52 103 222
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £422 £350 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £425 £440
Median % change year-on-year +20.59% -3.41% -2.22%
75th Percentile £538 £529 £529
90th Percentile £630 £595 £575
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £435 £450
% change year-on-year +20.69% -3.33% +6.51%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 4 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% +98.11%
75th Percentile - £35.75 £72.34
90th Percentile - - £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £35.00
% change year-on-year - - +118.75%

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 14,143 10,777 12,962
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.86% 33.13% 30.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,198 7,257 9,168
10th Percentile £360 £350 £350
25th Percentile £421 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.49% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £612 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.16% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 525 259 495
10th Percentile £34.01 £28.14 £30.88
25th Percentile £52.00 £36.37 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -8.00% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £80.59 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +1.56% -1.54% +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 17 July 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 17 July 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 -196 69 £525 +23.53% 70
UK excluding London -134 38 £525 +20.69% 65
London -116 27 £450 +16.13% 17
Work from Home -104 24 £475 +9.20% 45
South West -25 20 £525 +1.94% 8
North of England -81 10 £425 +19.38% 14
Yorkshire -39 8 £425 +19.38% 8
South East -75 4 £400 -30.43% 20
Scotland - 3 £463 - 4
North East -37 1 £375 - 1
North West -59 1 - - 5
Midlands -74 1 £650 +26.21% 9

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 12 (15.19%) WordPress
2 7 (8.86%) CMS
3 6 (7.59%) Apache
3 6 (7.59%) Moodle
4 2 (2.53%) Drupal
5 1 (1.27%) Apache Solr
5 1 (1.27%) Confluence
5 1 (1.27%) nginx
Applications
1 2 (2.53%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (1.27%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 1 (1.27%) Magento
1 1 (1.27%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 17 (21.52%) AWS
2 9 (11.39%) Azure
2 9 (11.39%) GCP
3 3 (3.80%) GitHub
4 2 (2.53%) GitHub Copilot
4 2 (2.53%) Power Platform
4 2 (2.53%) Serverless
4 2 (2.53%) Stripe
5 1 (1.27%) Algolia
5 1 (1.27%) Amazon OpenSearch
5 1 (1.27%) Apple Pay
5 1 (1.27%) AWS Lambda
5 1 (1.27%) Azure Machine Learning
5 1 (1.27%) Cloudflare
5 1 (1.27%) Google Pay
Communications & Networking
1 3 (3.80%) BGP
1 3 (3.80%) Cisco ASA
1 3 (3.80%) Cisco IOS
1 3 (3.80%) MPLS
1 3 (3.80%) Network Security
1 3 (3.80%) TACACS
1 3 (3.80%) VPN
2 2 (2.53%) Firewall
2 2 (2.53%) FTP
3 1 (1.27%) HTTP
3 1 (1.27%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (27.85%) MySQL
2 14 (17.72%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (13.92%) MongoDB
4 9 (11.39%) NoSQL
5 6 (7.59%) BigQuery
6 3 (3.80%) Redis
7 2 (2.53%) Amazon Athena
7 2 (2.53%) Apache Cassandra
7 2 (2.53%) Neo4j
7 2 (2.53%) Relational Database
7 2 (2.53%) SQL Server
8 1 (1.27%) Couchbase
8 1 (1.27%) Elasticsearch
8 1 (1.27%) MariaDB
8 1 (1.27%) Metadata
8 1 (1.27%) Oracle Database
8 1 (1.27%) phpMyAdmin
Development Applications
1 6 (7.59%) Git
2 3 (3.80%) GitLab
2 3 (3.80%) JIRA
3 2 (2.53%) Jenkins
3 2 (2.53%) JUnit
4 1 (1.27%) Bitbucket
4 1 (1.27%) Codeception
4 1 (1.27%) PHPUnit
General
1 13 (16.46%) Finance
2 11 (13.92%) Social Skills
3 7 (8.86%) Public Sector
4 5 (6.33%) Advertising
5 4 (5.06%) Analytical Skills
5 4 (5.06%) Marketing
6 3 (3.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 2 (2.53%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (2.53%) Spanish Language
8 1 (1.27%) iGaming
8 1 (1.27%) Legal
8 1 (1.27%) Manufacturing
8 1 (1.27%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (1.27%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 37 (46.84%) Developer
2 15 (18.99%) PHP Developer
3 14 (17.72%) Senior
3 14 (17.72%) Software Engineer
4 12 (15.19%) PHP Software Engineer
5 6 (7.59%) Full-Stack Developer
5 6 (7.59%) Moodle Developer
5 6 (7.59%) Senior Developer
6 5 (6.33%) MySQL Developer
6 5 (6.33%) PHP MySQL Developer
6 5 (6.33%) Software Developer
7 4 (5.06%) Security Engineer
7 4 (5.06%) WordPress Developer
8 3 (3.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 3 (3.80%) Python Developer
9 2 (2.53%) Applications Support
9 2 (2.53%) Applications Support Analyst
9 2 (2.53%) Principal Engineer
9 2 (2.53%) Software Manager
9 2 (2.53%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (16.46%) CSS
1 13 (16.46%) Laravel
2 11 (13.92%) HTML
3 9 (11.39%) Node.js
3 9 (11.39%) REST
4 8 (10.13%) RabbitMQ
4 8 (10.13%) Vue
5 7 (8.86%) Kafka
5 7 (8.86%) React
6 4 (5.06%) .NET
6 4 (5.06%) HTML5
6 4 (5.06%) LAMP
6 4 (5.06%) OAuth
6 4 (5.06%) Symfony
7 3 (3.80%) AngularJS
7 3 (3.80%) CSS3
7 3 (3.80%) jQuery
7 3 (3.80%) LDAP
7 3 (3.80%) Middleware
7 3 (3.80%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 10 (12.66%) Distributed Systems
2 3 (3.80%) AI Agents
2 3 (3.80%) Onboarding
2 3 (3.80%) PKI
3 2 (2.53%) Cloud Native
3 2 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
3 2 (2.53%) Linux Command Line
3 2 (2.53%) Product Ownership
4 1 (1.27%) e-Learning
4 1 (1.27%) FMCG
4 1 (1.27%) Greenfield Project
4 1 (1.27%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 14 (17.72%) Linux
2 3 (3.80%) Ubuntu
2 3 (3.80%) Windows
3 2 (2.53%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 19 (24.05%) Problem-Solving
2 17 (21.52%) Software Engineering
3 15 (18.99%) Microservices
4 12 (15.19%) DevOps
5 11 (13.92%) Mentoring
6 10 (12.66%) Agile
6 10 (12.66%) CI/CD
6 10 (12.66%) Code Quality
6 10 (12.66%) Containerisation
6 10 (12.66%) Observability
7 9 (11.39%) Full-Stack Development
8 8 (10.13%) Fintech
8 8 (10.13%) Wealth Management
9 7 (8.86%) Event-Driven
9 7 (8.86%) Event-Driven Architecture
10 6 (7.59%) AI
10 6 (7.59%) TDD
11 5 (6.33%) Cost Optimisation
11 5 (6.33%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 5 (6.33%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 20 (25.32%) JavaScript
2 12 (15.19%) Python
3 10 (12.66%) Go
4 7 (8.86%) SQL
5 6 (7.59%) Java
5 6 (7.59%) TypeScript
6 5 (6.33%) C#
7 4 (5.06%) Perl
8 3 (3.80%) Kotlin
9 2 (2.53%) Scala
10 1 (1.27%) Korn
10 1 (1.27%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 13 (16.46%) Security Cleared
2 12 (15.19%) SC Cleared
3 3 (3.80%) APMG
3 3 (3.80%) CompTIA Security+
3 3 (3.80%) DV Cleared
3 3 (3.80%) GIAC
3 3 (3.80%) SSCP
4 2 (2.53%) AWS Certification
4 2 (2.53%) AWS Certified Developer
4 2 (2.53%) Degree
4 2 (2.53%) GSEC
5 1 (1.27%) Azure Certification
5 1 (1.27%) BPSS Clearance
5 1 (1.27%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (1.27%) CSSLP
5 1 (1.27%) GWAPT
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (13.92%) QA
2 6 (7.59%) Accessibility
3 3 (3.80%) Cyber Essentials
3 3 (3.80%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
3 3 (3.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 3 (3.80%) NIST
4 2 (2.53%) WCAG
5 1 (1.27%) GDPR
5 1 (1.27%) HMG Security Policy Framework
5 1 (1.27%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 15 (18.99%) Docker
2 3 (3.80%) VMware ESXi
2 3 (3.80%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (1.27%) Active Directory
3 1 (1.27%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 11 (13.92%) Kubernetes
2 4 (5.06%) Terraform
3 3 (3.80%) vCenter Server
4 2 (2.53%) Ansible
4 2 (2.53%) SCOM
5 1 (1.27%) Grafana
5 1 (1.27%) Prometheus
5 1 (1.27%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 8 (10.13%) Google
2 3 (3.80%) Cisco
2 3 (3.80%) Dynatrace
2 3 (3.80%) Microsoft
2 3 (3.80%) VMware
3 2 (2.53%) OpenAI
4 1 (1.27%) Adobe
4 1 (1.27%) Apple
4 1 (1.27%) GoCardless
4 1 (1.27%) HubSpot
4 1 (1.27%) Oracle
4 1 (1.27%) Percona
4 1 (1.27%) WooCommerce