Designer Contract Job Trends

Designer
UK

The median Designer daily rate in the UK is £467, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 25 September 2026.

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

6 months to
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 160 180 177
Rank change year-on-year +20 -3 -10
Contract jobs requiring a Designer 957 540 541
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.74% 1.64% 1.41%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.89% 1.80% 1.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 616 390 319
10th Percentile £358 £307 £304
25th Percentile £406 £400 £382
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £467 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -1.63% - -7.32%
75th Percentile £538 £575 £573
90th Percentile £588 £625 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £439 £500
% change year-on-year +7.12% -12.25% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 24 25
10th Percentile £27.50 £22.75 £32.92
25th Percentile £33.25 £35.06 £45.00
Median hourly rate £39.00 £48.25 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year -19.17% -15.87% +15.39%
75th Percentile £62.00 £64.10 £61.30
90th Percentile £62.60 £69.65 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.00 £55.00 £57.35
% change year-on-year -29.09% -4.10% -0.26%

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 50,616 30,052 35,689
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.25% 91.07% 92.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,900 18,989 21,757
10th Percentile £325 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £731 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,913 1,614 1,619
10th Percentile £14.50 £13.75 £14.84
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.30 £20.88
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.70 £51.65 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.95 £69.65 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.90
% change year-on-year +69.02% -42.72% +0.34%

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 25 September 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 25 September 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 25 September 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 +17 844 £464 -2.42% 668
London -5 440 £464 -6.36% 429
UK excluding London +31 420 £470 +7.12% 291
Work from Home 0 235 £450 - 306
North of England -8 138 £475 +8.57% 81
Midlands +15 85 £425 -0.93% 45
West Midlands +21 83 £425 +0.12% 39
South West +15 75 £425 -19.05% 55
Yorkshire 0 60 £475 -1.04% 25
North West -58 42 £525 +20.00% 48
South East -61 41 £500 +15.61% 52
Scotland -6 40 £550 +18.92% 16
East of England -2 38 £410 +5.81% 15
North East -18 35 £433 -3.89% 8
Wales -19 6 £375 +17.71% 14
East Midlands -13 2 £575 +22.99% 6

Designer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 25 September 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.

1 311 (32.50%) User Experience
2 302 (31.56%) Service Design
3 266 (27.80%) Agile
4 232 (24.24%) UX Design
5 216 (22.57%) Accessibility
6 215 (22.47%) Security Cleared
7 190 (19.85%) User Research
8 184 (19.23%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
9 183 (19.12%) Figma
10 179 (18.70%) Interaction Design
11 171 (17.87%) SC Cleared
12 142 (14.84%) Stakeholder Management
13 135 (14.11%) Prototyping
14 126 (13.17%) Workshop Facilitation
15 114 (11.91%) Journey Map
16 94 (9.82%) AI
17 91 (9.51%) Wireframes
18 90 (9.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 83 (8.67%) Problem-Solving
20 82 (8.57%) Adobe
21 70 (7.31%) WCAG
22 65 (6.79%) Digital Transformation Programme
23 61 (6.37%) BPSS Clearance
24 55 (5.75%) Collaborative Working
25 54 (5.64%) Continuous Improvement
25 54 (5.64%) Inclusive Design
26 53 (5.54%) Usability Testing
27 48 (5.02%) Design Thinking
28 47 (4.91%) Analytics
28 47 (4.91%) Degree

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 18 (1.88%) CMS
2 13 (1.36%) Confluence
3 6 (0.63%) SharePoint
4 5 (0.52%) Drupal
4 5 (0.52%) LiveCycle
5 4 (0.42%) WordPress
6 3 (0.31%) Moodle
7 2 (0.21%) CICS
7 2 (0.21%) Headless CMS
7 2 (0.21%) OpenStack
7 2 (0.21%) Umbraco
8 1 (0.10%) Appian
8 1 (0.10%) Kentico
8 1 (0.10%) Mendix
8 1 (0.10%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
Applications
1 44 (4.60%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 31 (3.24%) Sketch
3 30 (3.13%) Photoshop
4 29 (3.03%) Adobe Illustrator
5 25 (2.61%) Adobe After Effects
6 13 (1.36%) Adobe XD
7 12 (1.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
8 8 (0.84%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.84%) InDesign
8 8 (0.84%) Microsoft Excel
9 7 (0.73%) Revit
10 6 (0.63%) Final Cut Pro
11 5 (0.52%) SOLIDWORKS
12 4 (0.42%) Chatbot
13 3 (0.31%) Microsoft Office
14 2 (0.21%) Adobe Premiere
14 2 (0.21%) InVision
14 2 (0.21%) Navisworks
15 1 (0.10%) Siemens NX
15 1 (0.10%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 2 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.10%) Dynamics NAV
2 1 (0.10%) Eloqua
2 1 (0.10%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.10%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 183 (19.12%) Figma
2 33 (3.45%) Azure
3 25 (2.61%) AWS
4 23 (2.40%) SaaS
5 22 (2.30%) Miro
6 18 (1.88%) Microsoft 365
7 17 (1.78%) Microsoft Copilot
8 11 (1.15%) Power Platform
9 6 (0.63%) GCP
10 5 (0.52%) Adobe Creative Cloud
10 5 (0.52%) Dynamics 365
11 4 (0.42%) Azure AI
11 4 (0.42%) Canva
11 4 (0.42%) Copilot Studio
11 4 (0.42%) Google Analytics
11 4 (0.42%) PowerApps
12 3 (0.31%) Azure Databricks
12 3 (0.31%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 3 (0.31%) Entra ID
12 3 (0.31%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 16 (1.67%) Wi-Fi
2 15 (1.57%) 4G
2 15 (1.57%) Diameter Protocol
3 14 (1.46%) 5G
4 13 (1.36%) 3G
5 12 (1.25%) 2G
5 12 (1.25%) SIGTRAN
5 12 (1.25%) SS7
6 11 (1.15%) Firewall
7 8 (0.84%) BGP
7 8 (0.84%) Broadband
8 6 (0.63%) HTTP
8 6 (0.63%) OSPF
9 5 (0.52%) IPsec
10 4 (0.42%) Ethernet
10 4 (0.42%) Network Security
11 3 (0.31%) EIGRP
11 3 (0.31%) LAN
11 3 (0.31%) SMS
11 3 (0.31%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (1.36%) Metadata
2 6 (0.63%) Power BI
3 4 (0.42%) Qlik Sense
3 4 (0.42%) Tableau
4 3 (0.31%) Data Warehouse
4 3 (0.31%) Delta Lake
4 3 (0.31%) QlikView
5 2 (0.21%) Amazon Aurora
5 2 (0.21%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (0.21%) Amazon Redshift
5 2 (0.21%) Data Vault
5 2 (0.21%) DataStage
5 2 (0.21%) MySQL
5 2 (0.21%) NoSQL
5 2 (0.21%) Oracle ODI
5 2 (0.21%) PostgreSQL
6 1 (0.10%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 14 (1.46%) JIRA
2 7 (0.73%) Claude Code
3 3 (0.31%) ER Studio
3 3 (0.31%) ERwin
3 3 (0.31%) Git
4 1 (0.10%) Axure RP
4 1 (0.10%) Cypress.io
4 1 (0.10%) Dreamweaver
4 1 (0.10%) Subversion
4 1 (0.10%) Visual Studio
General
1 221 (23.09%) Social Skills
2 191 (19.96%) Public Sector
3 112 (11.70%) Finance
4 49 (5.12%) Retail
5 45 (4.70%) Banking
6 42 (4.39%) Analytical Skills
7 40 (4.18%) Marketing
8 36 (3.76%) Telecoms
9 26 (2.72%) Automotive
10 21 (2.19%) Manufacturing
10 21 (2.19%) Publishing
11 20 (2.09%) Legal
12 17 (1.78%) Influencing Skills
13 14 (1.46%) Local Government
14 13 (1.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 13 (1.36%) Military
15 10 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
16 8 (0.84%) Games
17 7 (0.73%) Investment Banking
18 6 (0.63%) Aerospace
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (2.72%) HTML
2 19 (1.99%) CSS
3 8 (0.84%) REST
4 7 (0.73%) React
5 6 (0.63%) Terraform
6 5 (0.52%) React Native
7 4 (0.42%) Ajax
7 4 (0.42%) AngularJS
7 4 (0.42%) PySpark
7 4 (0.42%) SOAP
7 4 (0.42%) Web Services
7 4 (0.42%) XML
8 3 (0.31%) CSS3
8 3 (0.31%) HTML5
9 2 (0.21%) AWS CDK
9 2 (0.21%) Framer.js
9 2 (0.21%) JSON
9 2 (0.21%) Kafka
9 2 (0.21%) OpenID
9 2 (0.21%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 47 (4.91%) Mobile App
2 33 (3.45%) Product Ownership
3 30 (3.13%) Animation
4 25 (2.61%) Onboarding
5 24 (2.51%) NHS
5 24 (2.51%) Self-Motivation
6 23 (2.40%) Graphic Design
7 15 (1.57%) Cloud Native
8 12 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
9 11 (1.15%) AI Agents
10 10 (1.04%) Data Protection Act
10 10 (1.04%) Social Media
11 9 (0.94%) CMDB
11 9 (0.94%) e-Learning
12 8 (0.84%) Data Centre
12 8 (0.84%) Management Information System
13 7 (0.73%) Legacy Systems
13 7 (0.73%) Taxonomies
14 6 (0.63%) IoT
15 5 (0.52%) Learning Management System
Operating Systems
1 15 (1.57%) Android
2 14 (1.46%) Apple iOS
3 3 (0.31%) Linux
3 3 (0.31%) Unix
4 2 (0.21%) AIX
4 2 (0.21%) Solaris
4 2 (0.21%) Windows
5 1 (0.10%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 311 (32.50%) User Experience
2 302 (31.56%) Service Design
3 266 (27.80%) Agile
4 232 (24.24%) UX Design
5 190 (19.85%) User Research
6 184 (19.23%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
7 179 (18.70%) Interaction Design
8 142 (14.84%) Stakeholder Management
9 135 (14.11%) Prototyping
10 126 (13.17%) Workshop Facilitation
11 114 (11.91%) Journey Map
12 94 (9.82%) AI
13 91 (9.51%) Wireframes
14 90 (9.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 83 (8.67%) Problem-Solving
16 65 (6.79%) Digital Transformation Programme
17 55 (5.75%) Collaborative Working
18 54 (5.64%) Continuous Improvement
18 54 (5.64%) Inclusive Design
19 53 (5.54%) Usability Testing
Programming Languages
1 12 (1.25%) SQL
2 8 (0.84%) Python
3 7 (0.73%) JavaScript
4 4 (0.42%) Java
5 3 (0.31%) PowerShell
6 2 (0.21%) Bash
6 2 (0.21%) COBOL
6 2 (0.21%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 2 (0.21%) Ruby
6 2 (0.21%) TypeScript
7 1 (0.10%) Korn
7 1 (0.10%) PL/SQL
7 1 (0.10%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 215 (22.47%) Security Cleared
2 171 (17.87%) SC Cleared
3 61 (6.37%) BPSS Clearance
4 47 (4.91%) Degree
5 12 (1.25%) DV Cleared
6 6 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
7 3 (0.31%) Cisco Certification
8 2 (0.21%) Azure Certification
8 2 (0.21%) CISSP
9 1 (0.10%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 1 (0.10%) AWS Certification
9 1 (0.10%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 1 (0.10%) CCIE
9 1 (0.10%) CCNA
9 1 (0.10%) CCNP
9 1 (0.10%) CEH
9 1 (0.10%) CISM
9 1 (0.10%) JNCIE
9 1 (0.10%) JNCIP
9 1 (0.10%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 216 (22.57%) Accessibility
2 70 (7.31%) WCAG
3 15 (1.57%) Data Quality
4 5 (0.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 5 (0.52%) QA
5 4 (0.42%) GDPR
5 4 (0.42%) GxP
6 3 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
6 3 (0.31%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.21%) GMP
7 2 (0.21%) GRC
7 2 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 42001
7 2 (0.21%) NIST
8 1 (0.10%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 1 (0.10%) WAI
8 1 (0.10%) WAI-ARIA
System Software
1 6 (0.63%) IAG
2 4 (0.42%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (0.31%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.31%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.21%) Firmware
5 1 (0.10%) Virtual Desktop
5 1 (0.10%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 3 (0.31%) Kubernetes
2 2 (0.21%) Ansible
2 2 (0.21%) FortiGate
3 1 (0.10%) Kibana
3 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Intune
3 1 (0.10%) SCCM
Vendors
1 82 (8.57%) Adobe
2 38 (3.97%) Microsoft
3 25 (2.61%) ServiceNow
4 14 (1.46%) Cisco
5 10 (1.04%) IBM
6 9 (0.94%) Google
7 7 (0.73%) Databricks
7 7 (0.73%) Oracle
7 7 (0.73%) SAP
8 6 (0.63%) Ericsson
9 5 (0.52%) Juniper
10 4 (0.42%) EMC
10 4 (0.42%) Foundry
10 4 (0.42%) Nokia
10 4 (0.42%) Salesforce
10 4 (0.42%) Virgin Media
11 3 (0.31%) BT
11 3 (0.31%) F5
11 3 (0.31%) Fortinet
11 3 (0.31%) SolarWinds