User Research Contract Job Trends in Central London

User Research
London > Central London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in Central London requiring User Research skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 21 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 102 111 124
Rank change year-on-year +9 +13 +41
Contract jobs citing User Research 27 16 21
As % of all contract jobs in Central London 1.35% 0.68% 0.77%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.49% 0.74% 0.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 23 9 12
10th Percentile £400 £493 £419
25th Percentile £419 £525 £501
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year - - +9.52%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £631
90th Percentile £750 £675 £710
London median daily rate £500 £520 £538
% change year-on-year -3.85% -3.26% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £52.25 - £71.25
Median hourly rate £54.50 - £72.50
75th Percentile £56.75 - £73.75
90th Percentile - - -
London median hourly rate £54.50 £32.50 £72.50
% change year-on-year +67.69% -55.17% -4.92%

All Process and Methodology Skills
Central London

User Research falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in Central London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,816 2,154 2,423
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Central London 90.57% 92.09% 89.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,269 1,350 1,739
10th Percentile £343 £363 £359
25th Percentile £425 £465 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% - -
75th Percentile £670 £679 £688
90th Percentile £750 £788 £800
London median daily rate £525 £550 £565
% change year-on-year -4.55% -2.65% -4.24%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 27 16
10th Percentile £19.90 £18.34 £17.00
25th Percentile £24.31 £28.32 £18.93
Median hourly rate £26.31 £35.00 £25.50
Median % change year-on-year -24.84% +37.25% -37.04%
75th Percentile £37.44 £52.50 £51.31
90th Percentile £51.88 £112.00 £69.38
London median hourly rate £30.00 £36.50 £32.69
% change year-on-year -17.81% +11.65% -15.91%

User Research
Job Vacancy Trend in Central London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing User Research relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in Central London.

User Research job vacancy trend in Central London

User Research
Daily Rate Trend in Central London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Central London citing User Research.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Central London citing User Research

User Research
Daily Rate Histogram in Central London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing User Research in Central London over the 6 months to 21 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for User Research in Central London

User Research
Hourly Rate Trend in Central London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Central London citing User Research.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Central London citing User Research

User Research
Contract Job Locations in Central London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing User Research within the Central London region over the 6 months to 21 December 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
City of London +9 27 £575 - 3
User Research
London

User Research
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Central London 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 1 (3.70%) Apache
1 1 (3.70%) Apache Airflow
1 1 (3.70%) CMS
1 1 (3.70%) Confluence
1 1 (3.70%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (3.70%) Sketch
Cloud Services
1 3 (11.11%) AWS
1 3 (11.11%) ChatGPT
1 3 (11.11%) GitHub
2 2 (7.41%) Anthropic Claude
2 2 (7.41%) AWS Elastic Beanstalk
2 2 (7.41%) Figma
2 2 (7.41%) Power Platform
3 1 (3.70%) Amazon Bedrock
3 1 (3.70%) Amazon S3
3 1 (3.70%) AWS CloudFormation
3 1 (3.70%) AWS Lambda
3 1 (3.70%) Azure AI
3 1 (3.70%) Dagster
3 1 (3.70%) dbt
3 1 (3.70%) Microsoft Copilot
3 1 (3.70%) Miro
3 1 (3.70%) Prefect
3 1 (3.70%) SaaS
3 1 (3.70%) Serverless
3 1 (3.70%) Vertex AI
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (3.70%) Amazon Athena
1 1 (3.70%) Amazon QuickSight
1 1 (3.70%) Amazon Redshift
1 1 (3.70%) Data Lake
1 1 (3.70%) Data Warehouse
1 1 (3.70%) MySQL
1 1 (3.70%) PostgreSQL
1 1 (3.70%) Power BI
1 1 (3.70%) Relational Database
1 1 (3.70%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 1 (3.70%) Git
1 1 (3.70%) JIRA
General
1 10 (37.04%) Public Sector
2 9 (33.33%) Social Skills
3 5 (18.52%) Analytical Skills
4 2 (7.41%) Finance
4 2 (7.41%) Legal
5 1 (3.70%) Influencing Skills
5 1 (3.70%) Local Government
5 1 (3.70%) Pharmaceutical
5 1 (3.70%) Publishing
5 1 (3.70%) Retail
Job Titles
1 8 (29.63%) Senior
2 7 (25.93%) Designer
3 6 (22.22%) User Researcher
4 4 (14.81%) Developer
5 3 (11.11%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 3 (11.11%) Senior Designer
6 2 (7.41%) Analyst
6 2 (7.41%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
6 2 (7.41%) Business Analyst
6 2 (7.41%) Content Designer
6 2 (7.41%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
6 2 (7.41%) Senior Analyst
6 2 (7.41%) Senior Business Analyst
6 2 (7.41%) Senior User Researcher
6 2 (7.41%) Service Designer
6 2 (7.41%) UX Designer
7 1 (3.70%) Lead
7 1 (3.70%) Procurement Business Analyst
7 1 (3.70%) Product Designer
7 1 (3.70%) Senior Product Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (7.41%) AngularJS
1 2 (7.41%) D3.js
1 2 (7.41%) FastAPI
1 2 (7.41%) React
1 2 (7.41%) SQLAlchemy
1 2 (7.41%) Vue
2 1 (3.70%) AWS CDK
2 1 (3.70%) LangChain
2 1 (3.70%) LangGraph
Miscellaneous
1 5 (18.52%) Product Ownership
2 2 (7.41%) Data Structures
3 1 (3.70%) Analytical Mindset
3 1 (3.70%) Low-Code
3 1 (3.70%) Management Information System
3 1 (3.70%) NHS
3 1 (3.70%) Security Posture
Processes & Methodologies
1 13 (48.15%) Agile
2 8 (29.63%) AI
3 6 (22.22%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
4 5 (18.52%) Decision-Making
4 5 (18.52%) LLM
4 5 (18.52%) Qualitative Research
4 5 (18.52%) Roadmaps
4 5 (18.52%) Service Design
4 5 (18.52%) Storytelling
4 5 (18.52%) Visualisation
5 4 (14.81%) Analytics
5 4 (14.81%) Data Pipeline
5 4 (14.81%) Data Science
5 4 (14.81%) Data Visualisation
5 4 (14.81%) Generative AI
5 4 (14.81%) Prompt Engineering
5 4 (14.81%) Quantitative Research
5 4 (14.81%) Usability Testing
5 4 (14.81%) User Experience
6 3 (11.11%) Prototyping
Programming Languages
1 5 (18.52%) Python
2 2 (7.41%) JavaScript
3 1 (3.70%) SQL
Qualifications
1 12 (44.44%) Security Cleared
2 11 (40.74%) SC Cleared
3 3 (11.11%) Degree
4 2 (7.41%) BPSS Clearance
4 2 (7.41%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (22.22%) Accessibility
2 3 (11.11%) WCAG
3 2 (7.41%) Data Quality
Systems Management
1 1 (3.70%) Terraform
Vendors
1 1 (3.70%) Adobe
1 1 (3.70%) Foundry
1 1 (3.70%) Microsoft
1 1 (3.70%) Qualtrics
1 1 (3.70%) Salesforce
1 1 (3.70%) Workday