User Research Contract Job Trends in the City of London

User Research
Central London > City of London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the City of London requiring User Research skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 3 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 81 101 116
Rank change year-on-year +20 +15 +28
Contract jobs citing User Research 43 12 13
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 2.30% 0.65% 0.54%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.59% 0.71% 0.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 35 6 8
10th Percentile £400 £481 £449
25th Percentile £425 £509 £501
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £563 £550
Median % change year-on-year -11.11% +2.27% +4.76%
75th Percentile £586 £659 £631
90th Percentile £638 £675 £695
Central London median daily rate £500 £563 £550
% change year-on-year -11.11% +2.27% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £50.72 - £71.25
Median hourly rate £51.44 - £72.50
75th Percentile £52.16 - £73.75
90th Percentile - - -
Central London median hourly rate £51.44 - £72.50

All Process & Methodology Skills
City of 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 the City of London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,661 1,695 2,167
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 89.01% 91.82% 89.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,158 1,017 1,550
10th Percentile £356 £363 £350
25th Percentile £429 £463 £459
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £536 £575 £566
Median % change year-on-year -6.74% +1.59% -4.87%
75th Percentile £675 £679 £688
90th Percentile £775 £783 £800
Central London median daily rate £540 £575 £560
% change year-on-year -6.09% +2.68% -4.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 8 14
10th Percentile £19.98 £19.60 £17.00
25th Percentile £20.66 £22.00 £19.18
Median hourly rate £31.00 £35.50 £31.50
Median % change year-on-year -12.68% +12.70% -10.00%
75th Percentile £42.65 £60.81 £45.06
90th Percentile £49.83 £112.00 £66.70
Central London median hourly rate £26.11 £35.00 £27.81
% change year-on-year -25.40% +25.85% -17.60%

User Research
Job Vacancy Trend in the City of London

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

User Research job vacancy trend in the City of London

User Research
Daily Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing User Research.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing User Research

User Research
Daily Rate Histogram in the City of London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing User Research in the City of London over the 6 months to 3 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for User Research in the City of London

User Research
Hourly Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing User Research.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing User Research

User Research
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the City of 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 2 (4.65%) CMS
2 1 (2.33%) Apache
2 1 (2.33%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (2.33%) SharePoint
Cloud Services
1 4 (9.30%) Figma
1 4 (9.30%) SaaS
2 3 (6.98%) AWS
2 3 (6.98%) ChatGPT
2 3 (6.98%) GitHub
3 2 (4.65%) Anthropic Claude
3 2 (4.65%) AWS Elastic Beanstalk
3 2 (4.65%) Power Platform
4 1 (2.33%) Amazon Bedrock
4 1 (2.33%) Amazon S3
4 1 (2.33%) AWS CloudFormation
4 1 (2.33%) AWS Lambda
4 1 (2.33%) Azure AI
4 1 (2.33%) Dagster
4 1 (2.33%) dbt
4 1 (2.33%) Microsoft Copilot
4 1 (2.33%) Miro
4 1 (2.33%) Prefect
4 1 (2.33%) Serverless
4 1 (2.33%) Vertex AI
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (2.33%) Amazon Athena
1 1 (2.33%) Amazon QuickSight
1 1 (2.33%) Amazon Redshift
1 1 (2.33%) Data Lake
1 1 (2.33%) Data Warehouse
1 1 (2.33%) MySQL
1 1 (2.33%) PostgreSQL
1 1 (2.33%) Power BI
1 1 (2.33%) Relational Database
1 1 (2.33%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 1 (2.33%) Git
General
1 15 (34.88%) Public Sector
2 14 (32.56%) Social Skills
3 5 (11.63%) Analytical Skills
4 3 (6.98%) Finance
4 3 (6.98%) Publishing
5 2 (4.65%) Legal
5 2 (4.65%) Marketing
5 2 (4.65%) Presentation Skills
6 1 (2.33%) Banking
6 1 (2.33%) Influencing Skills
6 1 (2.33%) Local Government
6 1 (2.33%) Military
6 1 (2.33%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 17 (39.53%) User Researcher
2 13 (30.23%) Senior
3 11 (25.58%) Designer
4 5 (11.63%) Senior Designer
4 5 (11.63%) Senior User Researcher
5 4 (9.30%) Content Designer
5 4 (9.30%) Developer
6 3 (6.98%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
6 3 (6.98%) UX Designer
7 2 (4.65%) Analyst
7 2 (4.65%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
7 2 (4.65%) Business Analyst
7 2 (4.65%) Data Scientist
7 2 (4.65%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
7 2 (4.65%) Senior Analyst
7 2 (4.65%) Senior Business Analyst
7 2 (4.65%) Senior Content Designer
7 2 (4.65%) Service Designer
8 1 (2.33%) Procurement Manager
8 1 (2.33%) Security Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (4.65%) AngularJS
1 2 (4.65%) D3.js
1 2 (4.65%) FastAPI
1 2 (4.65%) React
1 2 (4.65%) SQLAlchemy
1 2 (4.65%) Vue
2 1 (2.33%) AWS CDK
2 1 (2.33%) LangChain
2 1 (2.33%) LangGraph
Miscellaneous
1 5 (11.63%) Product Ownership
2 2 (4.65%) Data Structures
2 2 (4.65%) Management Information System
2 2 (4.65%) Marketing Technology
2 2 (4.65%) NHS
3 1 (2.33%) Analytical Mindset
3 1 (2.33%) Greenfield Project
3 1 (2.33%) Low-Code
3 1 (2.33%) Security Posture
Processes & Methodologies
1 17 (39.53%) Agile
2 12 (27.91%) AI
3 11 (25.58%) Analytics
4 8 (18.60%) Decision-Making
4 8 (18.60%) Usability Testing
4 8 (18.60%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
5 7 (16.28%) Actionable Insight
5 7 (16.28%) Data Science
5 7 (16.28%) Prototyping
5 7 (16.28%) Qualitative Research
6 6 (13.95%) Generative AI
6 6 (13.95%) Quantitative Research
6 6 (13.95%) User Experience
7 5 (11.63%) Journey Map
7 5 (11.63%) LLM
7 5 (11.63%) Service Design
7 5 (11.63%) Storytelling
7 5 (11.63%) Visualisation
8 4 (9.30%) Data Visualisation
8 4 (9.30%) UX Design
Programming Languages
1 5 (11.63%) Python
2 2 (4.65%) JavaScript
3 1 (2.33%) SQL
Qualifications
1 20 (46.51%) Security Cleared
2 19 (44.19%) SC Cleared
3 4 (9.30%) Degree
4 2 (4.65%) BPSS Clearance
4 2 (4.65%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (2.33%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (25.58%) Accessibility
2 4 (9.30%) WCAG
3 1 (2.33%) Data Quality
Systems Management
1 1 (2.33%) Terraform
Vendors
1 2 (4.65%) Salesforce
2 1 (2.33%) Foundry
2 1 (2.33%) Microsoft
2 1 (2.33%) Qualtrics