Design Thinking Contract Job Trends

Design Thinking
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Design Thinking skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 14 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 491 508 511
Rank change year-on-year +17 +3 +60
Contract jobs citing Design Thinking 90 56 101
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.25% 0.16% 0.23%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.28% 0.18% 0.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 73 40 65
10th Percentile £365 £225 £397
25th Percentile £413 £263 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £438 £560
Median % change year-on-year +14.29% -21.88% -2.61%
75th Percentile £600 £608 £632
90th Percentile £698 £688 £726
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -13.64% - +7.32%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £27.03 £26.42 -
Median hourly rate £28.09 £27.67 £70.07
Median % change year-on-year +1.52% -60.51% +33.47%
75th Percentile £29.16 £28.93 -
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.09 £27.67 £70.07
% change year-on-year +1.52% -60.51% +27.40%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Design Thinking 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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 32,261 30,399 39,447
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.54% 87.91% 88.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,301 18,546 26,335
10th Percentile £300 £306 £310
25th Percentile £406 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £531
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.13% -3.45%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £744 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,097 1,021 1,510
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.53 £14.36
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.30 £18.95
Median hourly rate £25.15 £33.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.79% -22.35% +21.43%
75th Percentile £48.75 £63.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £32.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -29.23% -26.97% +37.98%

Design Thinking
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Design Thinking relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Design Thinking job vacancy trend in the UK

Design Thinking
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Design Thinking.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Design Thinking

Design Thinking
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Design Thinking over the 6 months to 14 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Design Thinking in the UK

Design Thinking
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Design Thinking.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Design Thinking

Design Thinking
Top 14 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Design Thinking within the UK over the 6 months to 14 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
England -19 68 £500 +14.29% 107
London 0 43 £525 +55.56% 22
Work from Home +25 29 £525 -4.55% 91
UK excluding London -26 29 £475 -13.64% 98
North of England -22 17 £454 -32.74% 25
North West - 7 £445 - 14
Scotland +6 6 £675 +64.63% 4
North East - 6 £450 - 3
Yorkshire -42 4 £568 -15.93% 8
West Midlands -34 3 £650 - 8
Midlands -36 3 £650 - 15
South East +3 2 £454 -19.65% 28
Northern Ireland -6 2 £625 +38.89% 1
East of England -22 1 £475 - 15

Design Thinking
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 6 (6.67%) Confluence
Applications
1 7 (7.78%) Sketch
2 6 (6.67%) Adobe XD
3 5 (5.56%) InVision
3 5 (5.56%) Zeplin
4 2 (2.22%) Adobe After Effects
4 2 (2.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 2 (2.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (2.22%) Trello
5 1 (1.11%) Adobe Illustrator
5 1 (1.11%) InDesign
5 1 (1.11%) Microsoft Excel
5 1 (1.11%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (1.11%) MS Visio
5 1 (1.11%) Photoshop
Cloud Services
1 31 (34.44%) Figma
2 11 (12.22%) Miro
3 9 (10.00%) AWS
4 5 (5.56%) GitHub
5 4 (4.44%) Azure
6 3 (3.33%) Amazon ECS
6 3 (3.33%) AWS CloudFormation
6 3 (3.33%) AWS Lambda
6 3 (3.33%) GitHub Actions
6 3 (3.33%) SaaS
6 3 (3.33%) Serverless
7 2 (2.22%) Amazon S3
7 2 (2.22%) Asana
7 2 (2.22%) AWS CodePipeline
7 2 (2.22%) Cloud Computing
7 2 (2.22%) Slack
7 2 (2.22%) Smartsheet
8 1 (1.11%) Amazon EC2
8 1 (1.11%) Amazon EKS
8 1 (1.11%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 3 (3.33%) DNS
2 2 (2.22%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (2.22%) Data Hub
2 1 (1.11%) Amazon Aurora
2 1 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (1.11%) CouchDB
2 1 (1.11%) Delta Lake
2 1 (1.11%) MySQL
2 1 (1.11%) Redis
Development Applications
1 10 (11.11%) JIRA
2 5 (5.56%) Axure RP
3 2 (2.22%) Git
3 2 (2.22%) Postman
4 1 (1.11%) Bitbucket
4 1 (1.11%) Jenkins
General
1 28 (31.11%) Social Skills
2 19 (21.11%) Finance
3 18 (20.00%) Public Sector
4 13 (14.44%) Analytical Skills
5 12 (13.33%) Banking
6 8 (8.89%) Influencing Skills
7 6 (6.67%) Pharmaceutical
8 5 (5.56%) Marketing
9 4 (4.44%) Retail
10 3 (3.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (2.22%) Front Office
12 1 (1.11%) Aviation
12 1 (1.11%) Digital Healthcare
12 1 (1.11%) Investment Banking
12 1 (1.11%) Local Government
12 1 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
12 1 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (1.11%) Retail Banking
12 1 (1.11%) Social Science
12 1 (1.11%) Wearables
Job Titles
1 55 (61.11%) Designer
2 37 (41.11%) Service Designer
3 20 (22.22%) Senior
4 14 (15.56%) Lead
5 11 (12.22%) Senior Designer
6 10 (11.11%) Senior Service Designer
7 8 (8.89%) Digital Designer
8 7 (7.78%) Product Designer
9 6 (6.67%) User Experience Researcher
9 6 (6.67%) UX Designer
10 5 (5.56%) Digital Service Designer
11 4 (4.44%) Architect
11 4 (4.44%) UI Designer
12 3 (3.33%) AWS Engineer
12 3 (3.33%) Lead Architect
12 3 (3.33%) Lead Designer
12 3 (3.33%) Lead Solutions Architect
12 3 (3.33%) Senior Architect
12 3 (3.33%) Solutions Architect
13 2 (2.22%) UI/UX Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (2.22%) CSS
1 2 (2.22%) Framer.js
1 2 (2.22%) HTML
1 2 (2.22%) Middleware
1 2 (2.22%) OpenAPI
1 2 (2.22%) REST
1 2 (2.22%) Swagger
1 2 (2.22%) Web Services
2 1 (1.11%) Kafka
2 1 (1.11%) Memcached
2 1 (1.11%) PySpark
2 1 (1.11%) Streamlit
Miscellaneous
1 16 (17.78%) Product Ownership
2 5 (5.56%) NHS
2 5 (5.56%) Onboarding
3 4 (4.44%) Blog
4 3 (3.33%) Data Protection Act
4 3 (3.33%) Self-Motivation
5 2 (2.22%) Augmented Reality
5 2 (2.22%) Enterprise Software
5 2 (2.22%) Life Science
5 2 (2.22%) Low-Code
5 2 (2.22%) Virtual Reality
6 1 (1.11%) AI Agents
6 1 (1.11%) Blockchain
6 1 (1.11%) Cloud Native
6 1 (1.11%) Graphic Design
6 1 (1.11%) Management Information System
6 1 (1.11%) Replication
6 1 (1.11%) Social Media
6 1 (1.11%) W3C
Operating Systems
1 2 (2.22%) Linux
2 1 (1.11%) Android
2 1 (1.11%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 45 (50.00%) Service Design
1 45 (50.00%) User Experience
2 40 (44.44%) Agile
3 32 (35.56%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
4 31 (34.44%) UX Design
5 28 (31.11%) Journey Map
5 28 (31.11%) User Research
5 28 (31.11%) Workshop Facilitation
6 23 (25.56%) Problem-Solving
7 19 (21.11%) Usability Testing
8 15 (16.67%) Roadmaps
9 14 (15.56%) Customer Experience
9 14 (15.56%) Decision-Making
9 14 (15.56%) Human-Centred Design
10 13 (14.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 12 (13.33%) Prototyping
11 12 (13.33%) Storytelling
11 12 (13.33%) Wireframes
12 11 (12.22%) Collaborative Working
12 11 (12.22%) UX Research
Programming Languages
1 4 (4.44%) Python
2 2 (2.22%) C#
2 2 (2.22%) Java
2 2 (2.22%) Kotlin
2 2 (2.22%) Ruby
2 2 (2.22%) Scala
2 2 (2.22%) SQL
3 1 (1.11%) Bash
3 1 (1.11%) PHP
Qualifications
1 10 (11.11%) Degree
2 7 (7.78%) SC Cleared
2 7 (7.78%) Security Cleared
3 2 (2.22%) AWS Certification
3 2 (2.22%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
3 2 (2.22%) BPSS Clearance
3 2 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
4 1 (1.11%) IIBA
4 1 (1.11%) MCP
4 1 (1.11%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (25.56%) Accessibility
2 11 (12.22%) WCAG
3 4 (4.44%) Data Quality
4 1 (1.11%) QA
System Software
1 2 (2.22%) Virtual Machines
2 1 (1.11%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (4.44%) Terraform
2 2 (2.22%) Kubernetes
3 1 (1.11%) Ansible
Vendors
1 11 (12.22%) Adobe
2 9 (10.00%) Microsoft
3 3 (3.33%) Qualtrics
4 1 (1.11%) Atlassian
4 1 (1.11%) CA Agile Central
4 1 (1.11%) Databricks
4 1 (1.11%) Salesforce