Designer Contract Job Trends

Designer
UK

The median Designer daily rate in the UK is £475, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 6 May 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
6 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 127 175 170
Rank change year-on-year +48 -5 -32
Contract jobs requiring a Designer 987 468 632
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.07% 1.60% 1.46%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.25% 1.73% 1.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 733 353 381
10th Percentile £350 £300 £325
25th Percentile £401 £360 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +2.70% -2.63% -9.52%
75th Percentile £547 £550 £558
90th Percentile £600 £611 £622
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £436 £450
% change year-on-year +8.94% -3.11% -6.74%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 9 49
10th Percentile £25.40 £22.75 £29.25
25th Percentile £28.05 £30.00 £45.00
Median hourly rate £35.00 £47.50 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year -26.32% -17.18% +27.44%
75th Percentile £54.08 £52.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £63.80 £63.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £49.00 £57.35
% change year-on-year -28.57% -14.56% -9.69%

All Contract IT Job Roles
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 43,929 27,125 40,035
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.25% 92.53% 92.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,003 17,719 26,065
10th Percentile £318 £300 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £514 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.75% -2.10% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,852 1,052 2,665
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.20 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.30
Median hourly rate £44.00 £29.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.72% -20.55% -18.89%
75th Percentile £66.25 £62.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £28.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +62.36% -30.00% -4.76%

Designer
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Designer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Designer job vacancy trend in the UK

Designer
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Designer job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Designer job vacancies in the UK

Designer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Designer over the 6 months to 6 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Designer in the UK

Designer
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Designer job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Designer job vacancies in the UK

Designer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Designer over the 6 months to 6 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Designer in the UK

Designer
Top 16 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Designer within the UK over the 6 months to 6 May 2026. 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 +48 824 £474 +3.23% 267
UK excluding London +57 429 £475 +8.94% 176
London +28 411 £450 -1.74% 121
Work from Home +38 284 £459 +1.44% 94
North of England +7 131 £457 +13.77% 47
Midlands -10 81 £425 +4.94% 35
South East +4 75 £525 +0.48% 37
West Midlands +2 75 £425 -2.02% 25
South West +4 57 £425 -10.53% 23
North West -14 52 £404 +0.37% 26
East of England +5 44 £500 +5.26% 21
Yorkshire -32 41 £500 +25.00% 13
Scotland +3 39 £550 +15.79% 5
North East +5 38 £454 +3.77% 9
Wales -16 8 £513 +67.77% 9
East Midlands -26 6 £402 +24.69% 10

Designer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 6 May 2026, Designer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Designer in the job title.

1 317 (32.12%) Service Design
2 309 (31.31%) User Experience
3 265 (26.85%) Agile
4 242 (24.52%) UX Design
5 235 (23.81%) User Research
6 222 (22.49%) Accessibility
7 212 (21.48%) Security Cleared
8 208 (21.07%) Figma
9 177 (17.93%) Interaction Design
10 170 (17.22%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
11 167 (16.92%) SC Cleared
12 149 (15.10%) Prototyping
13 132 (13.37%) Workshop Facilitation
14 127 (12.87%) Journey Map
15 102 (10.33%) Wireframes
16 87 (8.81%) AI
17 84 (8.51%) Adobe
18 80 (8.11%) Stakeholder Management
19 78 (7.90%) Usability Testing
19 78 (7.90%) WCAG
20 73 (7.40%) Problem-Solving
21 67 (6.79%) Analytics
22 65 (6.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
23 64 (6.48%) Design Thinking
24 60 (6.08%) Continuous Improvement
25 59 (5.98%) Storytelling
26 58 (5.88%) Collaborative Working
26 58 (5.88%) Roadmaps
27 56 (5.67%) Degree
28 55 (5.57%) Inclusive Design

Designer Skill Set
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 23 (2.33%) CMS
2 12 (1.22%) Confluence
3 10 (1.01%) CICS
4 6 (0.61%) SharePoint
5 5 (0.51%) Appian
5 5 (0.51%) LiveCycle
6 4 (0.41%) Drupal
6 4 (0.41%) Moodle
7 3 (0.30%) Camunda
7 3 (0.30%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.20%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.20%) Umbraco
8 2 (0.20%) WordPress
9 1 (0.10%) Headless CMS
9 1 (0.10%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
Applications
1 46 (4.66%) Sketch
2 33 (3.34%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 28 (2.84%) Adobe XD
3 28 (2.84%) Photoshop
4 24 (2.43%) Adobe Illustrator
5 18 (1.82%) Adobe After Effects
5 18 (1.82%) InVision
6 12 (1.22%) Chatbot
6 12 (1.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 10 (1.01%) Microsoft Excel
8 8 (0.81%) InDesign
9 6 (0.61%) CINEMA 4D
9 6 (0.61%) Zeplin
10 5 (0.51%) Adobe Premiere
10 5 (0.51%) AutoCAD
10 5 (0.51%) MS Visio
10 5 (0.51%) SOLIDWORKS
11 4 (0.41%) Revit
11 4 (0.41%) Trello
12 3 (0.30%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 5 (0.51%) SAP ERP
2 4 (0.41%) Oracle ERP
3 3 (0.30%) Dynamics GP
3 3 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
4 2 (0.20%) Oracle BRM
4 2 (0.20%) Shopify
5 1 (0.10%) Eloqua
5 1 (0.10%) Oracle CRM
5 1 (0.10%) SmartPlant
Cloud Services
1 208 (21.07%) Figma
2 28 (2.84%) AWS
3 23 (2.33%) SaaS
4 16 (1.62%) Azure
5 11 (1.11%) Miro
6 9 (0.91%) Adobe Creative Cloud
7 6 (0.61%) Power Platform
8 4 (0.41%) GCP
9 3 (0.30%) ChatGPT
9 3 (0.30%) Google Workspace
9 3 (0.30%) Microsoft 365
10 2 (0.20%) Asana
10 2 (0.20%) AWS CloudFormation
10 2 (0.20%) AWS KMS
10 2 (0.20%) Azure ExpressRoute
10 2 (0.20%) Azure Key Vault
10 2 (0.20%) dbt
10 2 (0.20%) GitHub
10 2 (0.20%) PowerApps
10 2 (0.20%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 24 (2.43%) Firewall
2 20 (2.03%) Wi-Fi
3 13 (1.32%) Network Security
4 11 (1.11%) IPsec
5 10 (1.01%) Broadband
6 6 (0.61%) 5G
6 6 (0.61%) Diameter Protocol
7 5 (0.51%) VLAN
7 5 (0.51%) VPN
8 3 (0.30%) 3G
8 3 (0.30%) 3GPP
8 3 (0.30%) 4G
8 3 (0.30%) DNS
8 3 (0.30%) HTTP
8 3 (0.30%) Internet
8 3 (0.30%) Intranet
8 3 (0.30%) IPv4
8 3 (0.30%) IPv6
8 3 (0.30%) LTE
8 3 (0.30%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (1.01%) DataStage
1 10 (1.01%) Metadata
2 4 (0.41%) Oracle ODI
3 3 (0.30%) Electronic Patient Records
3 3 (0.30%) Power BI
4 2 (0.20%) Amazon Aurora
4 2 (0.20%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (0.20%) Amazon Redshift
4 2 (0.20%) Data Vault
4 2 (0.20%) MySQL
4 2 (0.20%) NoSQL
4 2 (0.20%) PostgreSQL
5 1 (0.10%) Data Lake
5 1 (0.10%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (0.10%) Pinecone
5 1 (0.10%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 25 (2.53%) JIRA
2 22 (2.23%) Axure RP
3 3 (0.30%) Git
4 1 (0.10%) Balsamiq
4 1 (0.10%) Cypress.io
4 1 (0.10%) Dreamweaver
4 1 (0.10%) GitLab
4 1 (0.10%) Postman
4 1 (0.10%) SoapUI
4 1 (0.10%) Subversion
General
1 224 (22.70%) Public Sector
2 194 (19.66%) Social Skills
3 126 (12.77%) Finance
4 61 (6.18%) Banking
5 37 (3.75%) Marketing
6 32 (3.24%) Retail
7 26 (2.63%) Influencing Skills
8 24 (2.43%) Analytical Skills
8 24 (2.43%) Legal
9 23 (2.33%) Publishing
10 22 (2.23%) Telecoms
11 17 (1.72%) Manufacturing
12 16 (1.62%) Presentation Skills
13 14 (1.42%) Pharmaceutical
14 12 (1.22%) Automotive
15 10 (1.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 10 (1.01%) Local Government
16 9 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
17 7 (0.71%) Retail Banking
18 6 (0.61%) Wearables
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (4.36%) HTML
2 31 (3.14%) CSS
3 13 (1.32%) Middleware
4 8 (0.81%) REST
5 6 (0.61%) SOAP
6 5 (0.51%) .NET
6 5 (0.51%) React
6 5 (0.51%) Web Services
7 4 (0.41%) Lightning Web Components
8 3 (0.30%) AngularJS
8 3 (0.30%) CSS3
8 3 (0.30%) Framer.js
8 3 (0.30%) HTML5
8 3 (0.30%) JSON
8 3 (0.30%) OAuth
8 3 (0.30%) Semantic HTML
8 3 (0.30%) Visualforce
9 2 (0.20%) OpenID
9 2 (0.20%) RESTful
9 2 (0.20%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 56 (5.67%) Product Ownership
2 39 (3.95%) Mobile App
3 27 (2.74%) Onboarding
4 22 (2.23%) NHS
5 16 (1.62%) Animation
5 16 (1.62%) Data Centre
6 15 (1.52%) Cloud Native
6 15 (1.52%) Graphic Design
6 15 (1.52%) IoT
6 15 (1.52%) Mainframe
7 13 (1.32%) AI Agents
8 12 (1.22%) Taxonomies
9 11 (1.11%) BYOD
10 10 (1.01%) Management Information System
10 10 (1.01%) VSAM
11 8 (0.81%) CMDB
11 8 (0.81%) Data Protection Act
12 7 (0.71%) e-Learning
12 7 (0.71%) Motion Graphics
13 5 (0.51%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 12 (1.22%) Unix
2 10 (1.01%) AIX
2 10 (1.01%) Linux
2 10 (1.01%) Solaris
3 7 (0.71%) Android
4 6 (0.61%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.10%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 317 (32.12%) Service Design
2 309 (31.31%) User Experience
3 265 (26.85%) Agile
4 242 (24.52%) UX Design
5 235 (23.81%) User Research
6 177 (17.93%) Interaction Design
7 170 (17.22%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
8 149 (15.10%) Prototyping
9 132 (13.37%) Workshop Facilitation
10 127 (12.87%) Journey Map
11 102 (10.33%) Wireframes
12 87 (8.81%) AI
13 80 (8.11%) Stakeholder Management
14 78 (7.90%) Usability Testing
15 73 (7.40%) Problem-Solving
16 67 (6.79%) Analytics
17 65 (6.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 64 (6.48%) Design Thinking
19 60 (6.08%) Continuous Improvement
20 59 (5.98%) Storytelling
Programming Languages
1 11 (1.11%) Python
2 10 (1.01%) COBOL
2 10 (1.01%) JavaScript
3 5 (0.51%) Java
3 5 (0.51%) SQL
4 3 (0.30%) Apex Code
4 3 (0.30%) Korn
4 3 (0.30%) SOQL
5 2 (0.20%) Bash
5 2 (0.20%) PL/SQL
5 2 (0.20%) PowerShell
5 2 (0.20%) Ruby
6 1 (0.10%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 1 (0.10%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 212 (21.48%) Security Cleared
2 167 (16.92%) SC Cleared
3 56 (5.67%) Degree
4 40 (4.05%) BPSS Clearance
5 39 (3.95%) DV Cleared
6 11 (1.11%) Cisco Certification
7 9 (0.91%) CCNP
8 5 (0.51%) CISSP
8 5 (0.51%) Master's Degree
9 4 (0.41%) CCNA
9 4 (0.41%) CISM
9 4 (0.41%) Computer Science Degree
9 4 (0.41%) TOGAF Certification
10 3 (0.30%) JNCIS
10 3 (0.30%) SAP Certification
11 2 (0.20%) ITIL Certification
12 1 (0.10%) JNCIE
12 1 (0.10%) JNCIP
12 1 (0.10%) PMI Certification
12 1 (0.10%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 222 (22.49%) Accessibility
2 78 (7.90%) WCAG
3 8 (0.81%) ISO/IEC 20000
3 8 (0.81%) NCSC
4 7 (0.71%) GDPR
4 7 (0.71%) Government Security Classifications
5 6 (0.61%) NIST
6 5 (0.51%) Data Quality
6 5 (0.51%) GMP
6 5 (0.51%) GxP
6 5 (0.51%) QA
7 4 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 3 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
8 3 (0.30%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.10%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 1 (0.10%) HL7
9 1 (0.10%) SLA
9 1 (0.10%) WAI
9 1 (0.10%) WAI-ARIA
System Software
1 4 (0.41%) VMware Infrastructure
2 3 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.20%) Firmware
3 2 (0.20%) IAG
4 1 (0.10%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 4 (0.41%) Terraform
2 3 (0.30%) Kubernetes
2 3 (0.30%) Nagios
3 2 (0.20%) Ansible
3 2 (0.20%) FortiGate
4 1 (0.10%) Network Intrusion Detection System
Vendors
1 84 (8.51%) Adobe
2 24 (2.43%) Microsoft
3 16 (1.62%) ServiceNow
4 15 (1.52%) Oracle
5 12 (1.22%) Cisco
6 10 (1.01%) IBM
6 10 (1.01%) Salesforce
6 10 (1.01%) VMware
7 9 (0.91%) SAP
8 8 (0.81%) Juniper
9 6 (0.61%) Google
10 5 (0.51%) BiZZdesign
10 5 (0.51%) Ericsson
10 5 (0.51%) F5
10 5 (0.51%) Nokia
11 4 (0.41%) Sage
12 3 (0.30%) Huawei
12 3 (0.30%) MuleSoft
12 3 (0.30%) Pega
12 3 (0.30%) SolarWinds