PHP: market
PHP is the language behind a huge part of the web: e-commerce, CMS, marketplaces and SaaS products. We track 2 060 open positions listing PHP, 1 910 of them fresh. Modern PHP (8.x) with Laravel and Symfony is typed and fast, and the market rests on a large volume of live products that evolve for years. Most of the demand comes from Backend, Fullstack and DevOps roles. It most often appears next to JavaScript, MySQL and Laravel. 57% of the postings allow fully remote work. Below is a live slice of PHP developer demand.
The PHP market currently has 2,060 open roles, 1,910 of them freshly observed. Median salary $5,040/mo. Observed candidate pool — 2,534.
57% of PHP postings allow fully remote work; the share counts only postings that state the work format.
⚠ salary known for 116 of 2060 jobs; remote share from 1401 with a stated format; 1910 counted as fresh observations; trend and hiring difficulty are not shown
Demand and observed supply
| Open demand | 2,060 |
| Observed supply | 2,534 |
⚠ candidates matching a vacancy are not counted yet: demand and the observed pool are shown
Salary distribution
One in ten earns under $2,081, one in ten over $11,236. Half the market falls between $3,500 and $7,125. Sample: 116.
The range histogram for PHP postings uses only postings with an explicit compensation range; the median is computed over the same sample.
Demand geography
| country | jobs |
|---|---|
| PL | 266 |
| US | 207 |
| RU | 194 |
| DE | 152 |
| IN | 76 |
| UA | 61 |
| PH | 59 |
| GB | 54 |
| HK | 46 |
| SG | 32 |
The top country for PHP demand is Poland (266 positions).
⚠ job counts only: salary by country is not published
Used together with
PHP most often appears next to JavaScript, MySQL and Laravel.
Roles that use it
| role | jobs |
|---|---|
| Backend | 720 |
| Fullstack | 418 |
| DevOps | 160 |
| Frontend | 144 |
| Architect | 87 |
| PM | 48 |
| Design | 29 |
| Data | 28 |
| QA | 26 |
| Security | 20 |
⚠ the `Other` and `IT` buckets are excluded as non-roles
Demand by grade
| grade | jobs |
|---|---|
| senior | 537 |
| middle | 219 |
| junior | 96 |
| lead | 93 |
| principal | 41 |
Senior-and-above is about 68% of 986 graded PHP postings. PHP is one of the most accessible backend markets to enter.
⚠ demand side only: the grade of the observed pool is unknown for most of it
Employers
Demand is spread across 1,069 employers. The largest accounts for 4.8%, the top ten for 14.1%; the remaining 86.0% is long tail.
| share | value |
|---|---|
| top-1 | 4.8% |
| top-3 | 9.1% |
| top-10 | 14.1% |
| long tail | 86.0% |
⚠ names are not shown: staffing agencies and end employers are not yet told apart by the classifier
Where Zorky sees this market
Observed across 133 sources; the largest accounts for 15.9% — this market does not rest on a single channel.
PHP postings arrive mostly from job boards & aggregators and ATS & career sites.
Recent openings
- Senior Full Stack Software Engineer (Drupal) · PL · $7,000
- Senior AI/ML Engineer (LLM / CV / OCR) · HK
- Full Stack Developer · PL · $4,375
- Senior PHP&Node Developer · PL
- Senior Programista PHP (Laravel) · PL
- Software Engineer - Ruby · UA
- Koordynator / Koordynatorka ochrony informacji Devops (php, .net) · PL
- SAP Portal Administrator · US
Adjacent markets
⚠ adjacent markets for comparison are not defined yet
How this is measured
- Vacancy
- an open job that cleared the quality gate and lists at least two technologies
- Observed candidate
- a candidate whose stack contains this technology; an aggregate — not a single record leaves the perimeter
- Matchable candidate
- not counted yet
- Window
- jobs open at the moment the snapshot was built
About the data
- Some breakdowns are hidden: their data coverage is not yet sufficient.
- Statistics are shown only where the sample clears a quality gate.
- A missing block does not mean a value of zero.
Breakdowns currently hidden: 7.
Data as of 2026-10-20
Frequently asked questions
Common questions about the PHP market — short answers from the same data slice.
Is PHP still in demand?
Yes: the slice tracks 2 060 open PHP positions. New products more often start on other stacks, but there are so many live PHP systems that demand for evolving them stays steady.
Laravel or Symfony?
Laravel is more common in product teams and startups, Symfony — in enterprise and long-lived systems. Symfony components also underlie Laravel, so switching is easy.
What is asked of a PHP developer beyond the language?
MySQL or PostgreSQL, queues and cache (Redis), Docker, tests (PHPUnit), frontend basics — many PHP postings are fullstack.