Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil, EngD, Doctorate)
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for permanent job vacancies with a requirement for PhD qualifications. Included is a benchmarking guide to the salaries offered over the 6 months to 18 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
18 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 445 420 449
Rank change year-on-year -25 +29 -9
Permanent jobs citing PhD 544 747 1,318
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 0.54% 0.75% 0.82%
As % of the Qualifications category 1.98% 2.28% 3.04%
Number of salaries quoted 338 270 407
10th Percentile £37,500 £42,019 £42,500
25th Percentile £50,000 £51,875 £55,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £63,750 £75,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year -15.00% +7.14% +7.69%
75th Percentile £87,500 £99,375 £105,000
90th Percentile £112,375 £123,250 £137,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £60,000 £57,250
% change year-on-year - +4.80% +14.50%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK

PhD is in the Academic Qualifications and Professional Certifications category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies with a requirement for academic qualifications or professional certifications.

Permanent vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 27,486 32,730 43,417
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 27.51% 33.01% 27.01%
Number of salaries quoted 17,243 14,736 18,996
10th Percentile £28,500 £31,483 £31,000
25th Percentile £38,500 £42,000 £41,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £54,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +9.09% -
75th Percentile £71,000 £77,500 £73,750
90th Percentile £87,500 £95,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £52,350 £50,000
% change year-on-year -4.49% +4.70% +1.01%

PhD
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for PhD in the UK

PhD
Salary Trend

3-month moving average salary quoted in jobs citing PhD.

Salary trend for PhD in the UK

PhD
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing PhD over the 6 months to 18 May 2024.

Salary histogram for PhD in the UK

PhD
Top 17 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing PhD within the UK over the 6 months to 18 May 2024. 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England -9 451 £62,500 -16.67% 483
UK excluding London -86 384 £60,000 - 289
South East -11 164 £58,000 -3.33% 106
London +79 153 £90,000 +9.09% 225
Work from Home +28 138 £60,000 -27.27% 170
Scotland -47 74 £85,000 -15.00% 11
East of England -60 64 £70,000 -6.67% 72
North of England +41 34 £80,000 -8.57% 32
North West +23 22 £80,000 -8.57% 25
Midlands -3 17 £55,000 -4.35% 39
South West -57 16 £68,750 +50.27% 22
Northern Ireland - 13 - - 3
West Midlands +20 12 £55,000 - 27
Yorkshire +49 7 £37,500 - 7
East Midlands -10 5 £32,500 -43.48% 12
North East - 5 £55,000 -
Wales -35 2 £100,000 +100.00% 14

PhD
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 10 (1.84%) Apache Spark
2 8 (1.47%) Apache Airflow
3 4 (0.74%) SAS
4 3 (0.55%) Apache
5 1 (0.18%) Confluence
5 1 (0.18%) Luigi
Applications
1 11 (2.02%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (1.10%) Simulink
2 6 (1.10%) Stateflow
3 4 (0.74%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.18%) Blender
4 1 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.37%) Oracle Payroll
Cloud Services
1 44 (8.09%) AWS
2 32 (5.88%) Figma
2 32 (5.88%) SurveyMonkey
3 29 (5.33%) Azure
4 21 (3.86%) Cloud Computing
5 19 (3.49%) GCP
6 11 (2.02%) Power Platform
7 7 (1.29%) GitHub
8 4 (0.74%) Azure DevOps
8 4 (0.74%) Dagster
8 4 (0.74%) SaaS
9 3 (0.55%) Serverless
10 2 (0.37%) Amazon S3
10 2 (0.37%) Azure Machine Learning
10 2 (0.37%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 2 (0.37%) Microsoft 365
10 2 (0.37%) OCI
10 2 (0.37%) Snowflake
10 2 (0.37%) WhatsApp
11 1 (0.18%) ChatGPT
Communications & Networking
1 13 (2.39%) TCP/IP
2 8 (1.47%) HTTP
2 8 (1.47%) MQTT
3 3 (0.55%) Software-Defined Radio
3 3 (0.55%) Wireless
4 2 (0.37%) Internet
4 2 (0.37%) RS-485
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (3.13%) Big Data
2 14 (2.57%) NoSQL
2 14 (2.57%) Tableau
3 11 (2.02%) Power BI
4 10 (1.84%) SQL Server
5 9 (1.65%) Hadoop
6 5 (0.92%) Data Warehouse
6 5 (0.92%) Elasticsearch
6 5 (0.92%) Neo4j
7 4 (0.74%) Data Mining
7 4 (0.74%) PostgreSQL
8 3 (0.55%) Amazon Redshift
8 3 (0.55%) BigQuery
9 2 (0.37%) Amazon Athena
9 2 (0.37%) MongoDB
9 2 (0.37%) Relational Database
9 2 (0.37%) Text Mining
10 1 (0.18%) Bigtable
10 1 (0.18%) CouchDB
10 1 (0.18%) Redis
Development Applications
1 33 (6.07%) Git
2 9 (1.65%) GitLab
2 9 (1.65%) Jenkins
3 6 (1.10%) JUnit
4 5 (0.92%) Team Foundation Server
5 4 (0.74%) IntelliJ
5 4 (0.74%) JIRA
5 4 (0.74%) Mockito
5 4 (0.74%) Snakemake
6 3 (0.55%) CMake
6 3 (0.55%) TestRail
7 2 (0.37%) GDB
7 2 (0.37%) MLflow
7 2 (0.37%) Rational DOORS
7 2 (0.37%) TensorBoard
8 1 (0.18%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.18%) CircleCI
General
1 171 (31.43%) Social Skills
2 104 (19.12%) Finance
3 94 (17.28%) Analytical Skills
4 76 (13.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 68 (12.50%) Marketing
6 63 (11.58%) Law
7 55 (10.11%) Pharmaceutical
8 34 (6.25%) Social Science
9 24 (4.41%) Electronics
10 13 (2.39%) Legal
11 12 (2.21%) Health Technology
12 11 (2.02%) Aerospace
13 9 (1.65%) Banking
13 9 (1.65%) Manufacturing
13 9 (1.65%) Retail
14 8 (1.47%) Games
14 8 (1.47%) Telecoms
15 7 (1.29%) Organisational Skills
16 5 (0.92%) Front Office
17 4 (0.74%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 106 (19.49%) Senior
2 77 (14.15%) Data Scientist
3 75 (13.79%) Software Engineer
4 62 (11.40%) Developer
5 54 (9.93%) Lead
6 50 (9.19%) Senior Data Scientist
7 35 (6.43%) Analyst
7 35 (6.43%) Graduate
8 25 (4.60%) Software Developer
9 21 (3.86%) Architect
10 17 (3.13%) Junior
11 15 (2.76%) Lead Data Scientist
11 15 (2.76%) Senior Software Engineer
12 14 (2.57%) Development Manager
12 14 (2.57%) Quantitative Developer
12 14 (2.57%) Senior Developer
13 13 (2.39%) Business Manager
13 13 (2.39%) User Experience Researcher
14 12 (2.21%) Business Development Manager
14 12 (2.21%) Physicist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 54 (9.93%) PyTorch
2 47 (8.64%) TensorFlow
3 22 (4.04%) OpenMP
4 19 (3.49%) scikit-learn
5 18 (3.31%) Kafka
6 16 (2.94%) NumPy
7 14 (2.57%) OpenACC
8 13 (2.39%) .NET
8 13 (2.39%) Web Services
9 11 (2.02%) AngularJS
9 11 (2.02%) OpenCV
9 11 (2.02%) REST
9 11 (2.02%) RESTful
10 10 (1.84%) Keras
11 9 (1.65%) Node.js
12 8 (1.47%) RabbitMQ
13 7 (1.29%) HTML
13 7 (1.29%) Pandas
14 6 (1.10%) OpenCL
14 6 (1.10%) Vulkan
Miscellaneous
1 197 (36.21%) Algorithms
2 54 (9.93%) Life Science
3 33 (6.07%) CUDA
3 33 (6.07%) Data Structures
4 28 (5.15%) Analytical Mindset
5 27 (4.96%) Market Risk
6 22 (4.04%) FPGA
7 18 (3.31%) VHDL
8 16 (2.94%) Client/Server
9 14 (2.57%) Biopharmaceutical
9 14 (2.57%) Greenfield Project
9 14 (2.57%) Product Ownership
10 12 (2.21%) Analogue Electronics
10 12 (2.21%) Embedded Systems
10 12 (2.21%) IoT
10 12 (2.21%) Self-Motivation
11 11 (2.02%) Hedge funds
12 10 (1.84%) Distributed Systems
13 9 (1.65%) Distributed Computing
13 9 (1.65%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 68 (12.50%) Linux
2 32 (5.88%) Unix
3 5 (0.92%) Embedded Linux
4 4 (0.74%) Windows
5 2 (0.37%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 254 (46.69%) Computer Science
2 204 (37.50%) Mathematics
3 169 (31.07%) Machine Learning
4 142 (26.10%) Data Science
5 139 (25.55%) Physics
6 134 (24.63%) Artificial Intelligence
7 130 (23.90%) Software Engineering
8 122 (22.43%) Problem-Solving
9 85 (15.63%) Statistics
10 73 (13.42%) Analytics
11 61 (11.21%) Deep Learning
11 61 (11.21%) Fintech
12 52 (9.56%) Agile
13 51 (9.38%) Decision-Making
14 50 (9.19%) Parallel Programming
15 49 (9.01%) Actionable Insight
16 48 (8.82%) Data Analysis
16 48 (8.82%) Psychology
17 45 (8.27%) Anthropology
17 45 (8.27%) Cognitive Science
Programming Languages
1 287 (52.76%) Python
2 114 (20.96%) C++
3 101 (18.57%) C
4 90 (16.54%) R
5 82 (15.07%) SQL
6 81 (14.89%) Java
7 61 (11.21%) Fortran
8 52 (9.56%) C#
9 31 (5.70%) MATLAB
10 26 (4.78%) Bash
11 17 (3.13%) JavaScript
12 15 (2.76%) Rust
13 7 (1.29%) Go
13 7 (1.29%) Haskell
14 6 (1.10%) Perl
15 4 (0.74%) AWK
15 4 (0.74%) sed
15 4 (0.74%) Shell Script
15 4 (0.74%) VB
16 3 (0.55%) C-shell
Qualifications
1 533 (97.98%) Degree
2 373 (68.57%) Master's Degree
3 58 (10.66%) Security Cleared
4 51 (9.38%) Computer Science Degree
5 22 (4.04%) SC Cleared
6 19 (3.49%) MBA
7 13 (2.39%) DV Cleared
8 10 (1.84%) CFA
8 10 (1.84%) CIMA
9 5 (0.92%) BPSS Clearance
9 5 (0.92%) Numerate Degree
10 2 (0.37%) CREST Certified
10 2 (0.37%) DBS Check
10 2 (0.37%) OSCE
10 2 (0.37%) OSCP
11 1 (0.18%) Postgraduate
11 1 (0.18%) RIBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (4.23%) QA
2 11 (2.02%) Accessibility
2 11 (2.02%) Data Quality
3 10 (1.84%) GDPR
4 9 (1.65%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 2 (0.37%) ECSS
5 2 (0.37%) GLP
5 2 (0.37%) Good Clinical Practice
6 1 (0.18%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 33 (6.07%) Docker
2 5 (0.92%) Firmware
3 2 (0.37%) IAG
4 1 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 35 (6.43%) Kubernetes
2 9 (1.65%) Terraform
3 8 (1.47%) Kubeflow
4 5 (0.92%) Argo
5 4 (0.74%) Ansible
6 2 (0.37%) Core Impact
Vendors
1 32 (5.88%) Qualtrics
2 28 (5.15%) Microsoft
3 16 (2.94%) Google
4 10 (1.84%) OpenAI
5 8 (1.47%) ANSYS
6 6 (1.10%) NVIDIA
7 3 (0.55%) Databricks
8 2 (0.37%) Oracle
8 2 (0.37%) SAP
9 1 (0.18%) Alteryx
9 1 (0.18%) Interwoven
9 1 (0.18%) Keysight
9 1 (0.18%) Qubit
9 1 (0.18%) Samsung
9 1 (0.18%) Thales
9 1 (0.18%) YouTube