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

6 months to
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 596 385 326
Rank change year-on-year -211 -59 -2
Contract jobs citing PHP 79 172 260
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.15% 0.52% 0.65%
As % of the Programming Languages category 0.56% 1.59% 2.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 51 100 194
10th Percentile £350 £300 £300
25th Percentile £419 £352 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £430 £450
Median % change year-on-year +13.95% -4.44% +2.27%
75th Percentile £538 £534 £538
90th Percentile £638 £600 £575
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £436 £450
% change year-on-year +20.34% -3.06% +11.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 4 8
10th Percentile - - £22.50
25th Percentile - £33.25 £25.31
Median hourly rate - £34.50 £51.54
Median % change year-on-year - -33.06% +94.47%
75th Percentile - £35.75 £72.03
90th Percentile - - £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £48.75
% change year-on-year - - +204.69%

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 14,117 10,788 12,351
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.59% 32.89% 31.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,180 7,286 8,710
10th Percentile £363 £340 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.40% -4.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £498
% change year-on-year +3.58% -4.52% -0.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 528 256 418
10th Percentile £30.87 £27.97 £27.53
25th Percentile £50.56 £36.19 £46.18
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -11.54% +8.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £81.48 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +0.78% -0.77% +7.84%

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 31 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 31 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 -195 69 £525 +23.53% 130
UK excluding London -114 39 £525 +20.34% 118
Work from Home -86 27 £475 +10.47% 63
London -100 26 £450 +20.00% 34
South West -26 18 £525 +1.94% 14
North of England -76 14 £400 +12.99% 29
Yorkshire -48 9 £425 +20.06% 12
North West -63 3 £345 -2.54% 14
South East -70 3 £525 -12.50% 35
Scotland - 3 £463 - 6
North East -42 2 £375 - 3
Midlands -67 1 £650 +25.60% 19

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 15 (18.99%) WordPress
2 9 (11.39%) CMS
3 6 (7.59%) Apache
3 6 (7.59%) Moodle
4 1 (1.27%) Apache Solr
4 1 (1.27%) Confluence
4 1 (1.27%) Drupal
4 1 (1.27%) nginx
4 1 (1.27%) Umbraco
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 19 (24.05%) AWS
2 10 (12.66%) Azure
3 9 (11.39%) GCP
4 4 (5.06%) GitHub
5 2 (2.53%) GitHub Copilot
5 2 (2.53%) Power Platform
5 2 (2.53%) Serverless
5 2 (2.53%) Stripe
6 1 (1.27%) Algolia
6 1 (1.27%) Amazon OpenSearch
6 1 (1.27%) Apple Pay
6 1 (1.27%) AWS Lambda
6 1 (1.27%) Azure Machine Learning
6 1 (1.27%) Cloudflare
6 1 (1.27%) GitHub Actions
6 1 (1.27%) Google Pay
Communications & Networking
1 2 (2.53%) Firewall
1 2 (2.53%) FTP
2 1 (1.27%) BGP
2 1 (1.27%) Cisco ASA
2 1 (1.27%) Cisco IOS
2 1 (1.27%) HTTP
2 1 (1.27%) Intranet
2 1 (1.27%) MPLS
2 1 (1.27%) Network Security
2 1 (1.27%) TACACS
2 1 (1.27%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (30.38%) MySQL
2 12 (15.19%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (13.92%) MongoDB
4 9 (11.39%) NoSQL
5 6 (7.59%) BigQuery
6 4 (5.06%) Redis
7 2 (2.53%) Amazon Athena
7 2 (2.53%) Apache Cassandra
7 2 (2.53%) Neo4j
7 2 (2.53%) SQL Server
8 1 (1.27%) Couchbase
8 1 (1.27%) Elasticsearch
8 1 (1.27%) Metadata
8 1 (1.27%) Oracle Database
8 1 (1.27%) phpMyAdmin
Development Applications
1 5 (6.33%) Git
2 3 (3.80%) GitLab
2 3 (3.80%) JIRA
3 2 (2.53%) Jenkins
4 1 (1.27%) Bitbucket
4 1 (1.27%) Claude Code
4 1 (1.27%) Codeception
4 1 (1.27%) PHPUnit
4 1 (1.27%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 15 (18.99%) Finance
2 13 (16.46%) Social Skills
3 8 (10.13%) Public Sector
4 5 (6.33%) Advertising
5 4 (5.06%) Analytical Skills
5 4 (5.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 4 (5.06%) Marketing
6 2 (2.53%) Documentation Skills
6 2 (2.53%) Publishing
6 2 (2.53%) Spanish Language
7 1 (1.27%) iGaming
7 1 (1.27%) Influencing Skills
7 1 (1.27%) Legal
7 1 (1.27%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 40 (50.63%) Developer
2 16 (20.25%) Senior
3 15 (18.99%) PHP Developer
4 14 (17.72%) Software Engineer
5 12 (15.19%) PHP Software Engineer
6 8 (10.13%) Senior Developer
7 6 (7.59%) Full-Stack Developer
7 6 (7.59%) Moodle Developer
7 6 (7.59%) WordPress Developer
8 5 (6.33%) MySQL Developer
8 5 (6.33%) PHP MySQL Developer
8 5 (6.33%) Software Developer
9 4 (5.06%) Web Developer
10 3 (3.80%) Python Developer
11 2 (2.53%) DevOps Engineer
11 2 (2.53%) Engineering Manager
11 2 (2.53%) Security Engineer
11 2 (2.53%) Senior PHP Developer
11 2 (2.53%) Senior WordPress Developer
11 2 (2.53%) Software Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (20.25%) CSS
2 14 (17.72%) HTML
3 12 (15.19%) Laravel
4 9 (11.39%) Node.js
4 9 (11.39%) React
5 8 (10.13%) RabbitMQ
6 7 (8.86%) Kafka
7 6 (7.59%) HTML5
7 6 (7.59%) REST
7 6 (7.59%) Vue
8 5 (6.33%) CSS3
9 4 (5.06%) .NET
9 4 (5.06%) LAMP
9 4 (5.06%) OAuth
9 4 (5.06%) Sass
9 4 (5.06%) Symfony
10 3 (3.80%) AngularJS
10 3 (3.80%) GraphQL
10 3 (3.80%) RESTful
10 3 (3.80%) Twig
Miscellaneous
1 10 (12.66%) Distributed Systems
2 3 (3.80%) Cloud Native
2 3 (3.80%) Legacy Systems
2 3 (3.80%) Onboarding
3 2 (2.53%) AI Agents
3 2 (2.53%) Linux Command Line
3 2 (2.53%) Product Ownership
4 1 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
4 1 (1.27%) e-Learning
4 1 (1.27%) FMCG
4 1 (1.27%) Greenfield Project
4 1 (1.27%) Legacy Applications
4 1 (1.27%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 12 (15.19%) Linux
2 2 (2.53%) Unix
2 2 (2.53%) Windows
3 1 (1.27%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 21 (26.58%) Problem-Solving
2 18 (22.78%) Software Engineering
3 14 (17.72%) CI/CD
4 12 (15.19%) Microservices
5 11 (13.92%) DevOps
6 10 (12.66%) Code Quality
6 10 (12.66%) Containerisation
7 9 (11.39%) Agile
7 9 (11.39%) Mentoring
8 8 (10.13%) Fintech
8 8 (10.13%) Full-Stack Development
8 8 (10.13%) Observability
8 8 (10.13%) Wealth Management
9 7 (8.86%) Event-Driven
9 7 (8.86%) Event-Driven Architecture
9 7 (8.86%) User Experience
10 6 (7.59%) AI
10 6 (7.59%) Continuous Improvement
11 5 (6.33%) Migration
11 5 (6.33%) Web Development
Programming Languages
1 21 (26.58%) JavaScript
2 10 (12.66%) Go
3 9 (11.39%) Python
4 7 (8.86%) SQL
4 7 (8.86%) TypeScript
5 5 (6.33%) Java
6 4 (5.06%) C#
6 4 (5.06%) Perl
7 3 (3.80%) Kotlin
8 2 (2.53%) Scala
9 1 (1.27%) Korn
9 1 (1.27%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 11 (13.92%) Security Cleared
2 10 (12.66%) SC Cleared
3 2 (2.53%) AWS Certification
3 2 (2.53%) AWS Certified Developer
3 2 (2.53%) Degree
4 1 (1.27%) APMG
4 1 (1.27%) Azure Certification
4 1 (1.27%) BPSS Clearance
4 1 (1.27%) CompTIA Security+
4 1 (1.27%) Computer Science Degree
4 1 (1.27%) CSSLP
4 1 (1.27%) DV Cleared
4 1 (1.27%) GIAC
4 1 (1.27%) GWAPT
4 1 (1.27%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (13.92%) QA
2 9 (11.39%) Accessibility
3 4 (5.06%) WCAG
4 1 (1.27%) Cyber Essentials
4 1 (1.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 1 (1.27%) HMG Security Policy Framework
4 1 (1.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (1.27%) NIST
4 1 (1.27%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 13 (16.46%) Docker
2 2 (2.53%) Varnish
3 1 (1.27%) VMware ESXi
3 1 (1.27%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 9 (11.39%) Kubernetes
2 2 (2.53%) Ansible
2 2 (2.53%) Terraform
3 1 (1.27%) Grafana
3 1 (1.27%) Prometheus
3 1 (1.27%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 8 (10.13%) Google
2 3 (3.80%) Dynatrace
2 3 (3.80%) Microsoft
3 2 (2.53%) OpenAI
3 2 (2.53%) Oracle
4 1 (1.27%) Adobe
4 1 (1.27%) Apple
4 1 (1.27%) Cisco
4 1 (1.27%) GoCardless
4 1 (1.27%) HubSpot
4 1 (1.27%) MuleSoft
4 1 (1.27%) Percona
4 1 (1.27%) Salesforce
4 1 (1.27%) VMware
4 1 (1.27%) WooCommerce
4 1 (1.27%) Zend