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 17 June 2026.

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

6 months to
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 127 174 170
Rank change year-on-year +47 -4 -39
Contract jobs requiring a Designer 1,013 478 596
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.01% 1.61% 1.37%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.18% 1.75% 1.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 725 359 340
10th Percentile £350 £300 £325
25th Percentile £402 £360 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £450 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% -10.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £538 £549 £573
90th Percentile £600 £600 £626
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £433 £468
% change year-on-year +9.83% -7.49% -1.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 15 48
10th Percentile £22.46 £22.75 £27.63
25th Percentile £28.09 £32.63 £45.00
Median hourly rate £33.99 £36.50 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year -6.88% -36.36% +20.74%
75th Percentile £47.50 £50.63 £61.30
90th Percentile £63.80 £57.60 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.99 £49.00 £57.35
% change year-on-year -30.63% -14.56% -10.04%

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 46,477 27,381 40,501
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.36% 92.25% 92.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,258 17,617 25,961
10th Percentile £325 £289 £280
25th Percentile £413 £402 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £624 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,104 1,172 2,957
10th Percentile £15.25 £13.87 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.86 £17.75 £16.37
Median hourly rate £43.61 £27.45 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +58.85% -26.80% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -1.45%

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 17 June 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 17 June 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 17 June 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 +44 854 £465 +3.33% 322
UK excluding London +63 453 £475 +9.83% 327
London +18 420 £438 -2.78% 88
Work from Home +31 282 £464 +3.06% 303
North of England +5 150 £459 +4.91% 76
Midlands +19 96 £425 +4.29% 40
West Midlands +19 90 £425 +3.66% 19
South East -13 67 £505 +19.53% 73
North West -5 64 £402 -10.07% 29
Yorkshire -25 51 £478 +19.38% 25
South West +8 50 £425 -3.85% 19
Scotland -4 45 £550 +15.79% 41
East of England +11 44 £500 +4.71% 42
North East -11 35 £445 -6.32% 22
East Midlands -17 6 £402 +24.69% 21
Wales -16 5 £600 +96.25% 16

Designer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 17 June 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.

1 324 (31.98%) Service Design
2 314 (31.00%) User Experience
3 257 (25.37%) Agile
4 251 (24.78%) UX Design
5 224 (22.11%) Accessibility
6 217 (21.42%) Security Cleared
7 212 (20.93%) User Research
8 210 (20.73%) Figma
9 175 (17.28%) Interaction Design
10 172 (16.98%) SC Cleared
11 160 (15.79%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
12 142 (14.02%) Prototyping
13 113 (11.15%) Journey Map
13 113 (11.15%) Workshop Facilitation
14 96 (9.48%) Wireframes
15 90 (8.88%) AI
16 87 (8.59%) Adobe
17 79 (7.80%) Stakeholder Management
18 76 (7.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 73 (7.21%) WCAG
20 68 (6.71%) Degree
21 63 (6.22%) Analytics
22 61 (6.02%) Usability Testing
23 58 (5.73%) Collaborative Working
24 57 (5.63%) Continuous Improvement
24 57 (5.63%) Inclusive Design
25 56 (5.53%) Roadmaps
26 54 (5.33%) Problem-Solving
27 52 (5.13%) Customer Experience
28 50 (4.94%) BPSS Clearance

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 19 (1.88%) CMS
2 10 (0.99%) CICS
3 9 (0.89%) Confluence
4 5 (0.49%) LiveCycle
4 5 (0.49%) Moodle
4 5 (0.49%) SharePoint
5 4 (0.39%) Drupal
6 3 (0.30%) OpenStack
7 2 (0.20%) Headless CMS
7 2 (0.20%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
7 2 (0.20%) Umbraco
7 2 (0.20%) WordPress
8 1 (0.099%) Appian
8 1 (0.099%) Kentico
Applications
1 42 (4.15%) Sketch
2 40 (3.95%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 36 (3.55%) Photoshop
4 33 (3.26%) Adobe Illustrator
5 28 (2.76%) Adobe After Effects
6 16 (1.58%) Adobe XD
7 11 (1.09%) Chatbot
7 11 (1.09%) InVision
7 11 (1.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
8 10 (0.99%) Microsoft Excel
9 8 (0.79%) InDesign
10 5 (0.49%) AutoCAD
10 5 (0.49%) CINEMA 4D
10 5 (0.49%) Final Cut Pro
10 5 (0.49%) SOLIDWORKS
11 4 (0.39%) Adobe Premiere
11 4 (0.39%) MS Visio
11 4 (0.39%) Revit
12 3 (0.30%) Zeplin
13 2 (0.20%) Trello
Business Applications
1 4 (0.39%) Oracle ERP
2 2 (0.20%) Shopify
3 1 (0.099%) Eloqua
3 1 (0.099%) SmartPlant
Cloud Services
1 210 (20.73%) Figma
2 26 (2.57%) AWS
3 21 (2.07%) SaaS
4 19 (1.88%) Microsoft 365
5 18 (1.78%) Azure
6 15 (1.48%) Microsoft Copilot
7 14 (1.38%) Miro
8 7 (0.69%) Adobe Creative Cloud
8 7 (0.69%) Power Platform
9 4 (0.39%) Canva
9 4 (0.39%) GCP
10 3 (0.30%) Dynamics 365
10 3 (0.30%) PowerApps
11 2 (0.20%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 2 (0.20%) Copilot Studio
11 2 (0.20%) dbt
11 2 (0.20%) Entra ID
11 2 (0.20%) Google Workspace
11 2 (0.20%) Power Automate
11 2 (0.20%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 24 (2.37%) Firewall
2 20 (1.97%) Wi-Fi
3 13 (1.28%) Network Security
4 11 (1.09%) IPsec
5 9 (0.89%) Broadband
6 7 (0.69%) 5G
6 7 (0.69%) Diameter Protocol
7 5 (0.49%) 3G
7 5 (0.49%) 4G
8 4 (0.39%) VLAN
8 4 (0.39%) VPN
9 3 (0.30%) 3GPP
9 3 (0.30%) BGP
9 3 (0.30%) DNS
9 3 (0.30%) Ethernet
9 3 (0.30%) HTTP
9 3 (0.30%) Internet
9 3 (0.30%) LTE
9 3 (0.30%) SIGTRAN
9 3 (0.30%) SS7
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (1.09%) Metadata
2 10 (0.99%) DataStage
3 4 (0.39%) Oracle ODI
4 3 (0.30%) Electronic Patient Records
4 3 (0.30%) Power BI
5 2 (0.20%) Amazon Aurora
5 2 (0.20%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (0.20%) Amazon Redshift
5 2 (0.20%) Data Vault
5 2 (0.20%) MySQL
5 2 (0.20%) NoSQL
5 2 (0.20%) PostgreSQL
6 1 (0.099%) Data Lake
6 1 (0.099%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.099%) Pinecone
6 1 (0.099%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 14 (1.38%) JIRA
2 11 (1.09%) Axure RP
3 2 (0.20%) Git
4 1 (0.099%) Cypress.io
4 1 (0.099%) Dreamweaver
4 1 (0.099%) Subversion
General
1 221 (21.82%) Public Sector
2 200 (19.74%) Social Skills
3 113 (11.15%) Finance
4 52 (5.13%) Banking
5 41 (4.05%) Retail
6 40 (3.95%) Marketing
7 29 (2.86%) Telecoms
8 26 (2.57%) Automotive
8 26 (2.57%) Influencing Skills
9 21 (2.07%) Legal
10 20 (1.97%) Publishing
11 19 (1.88%) Manufacturing
12 15 (1.48%) Analytical Skills
13 13 (1.28%) Presentation Skills
14 10 (0.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 8 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
16 7 (0.69%) Local Government
17 6 (0.59%) Aerospace
17 6 (0.59%) Games
17 6 (0.59%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (3.36%) HTML
2 25 (2.47%) CSS
3 13 (1.28%) Middleware
4 8 (0.79%) REST
5 5 (0.49%) React
5 5 (0.49%) SOAP
5 5 (0.49%) Web Services
6 3 (0.30%) Lightning Web Components
6 3 (0.30%) Semantic HTML
6 3 (0.30%) Visualforce
7 2 (0.20%) AWS CDK
7 2 (0.20%) CSS3
7 2 (0.20%) Framer.js
7 2 (0.20%) HTML5
7 2 (0.20%) JSON
7 2 (0.20%) Kafka
7 2 (0.20%) OAuth
7 2 (0.20%) OpenID
7 2 (0.20%) React Native
7 2 (0.20%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 53 (5.23%) Product Ownership
2 38 (3.75%) Mobile App
3 28 (2.76%) Onboarding
4 26 (2.57%) Animation
5 22 (2.17%) NHS
6 21 (2.07%) Graphic Design
7 16 (1.58%) Cloud Native
7 16 (1.58%) Data Centre
8 15 (1.48%) IoT
9 13 (1.28%) AI Agents
9 13 (1.28%) Self-Motivation
10 12 (1.18%) Taxonomies
11 11 (1.09%) BYOD
12 10 (0.99%) Mainframe
12 10 (0.99%) VSAM
13 8 (0.79%) CMDB
14 7 (0.69%) Management Information System
15 6 (0.59%) Data Protection Act
15 6 (0.59%) Greenfield Project
15 6 (0.59%) Motion Graphics
Operating Systems
1 13 (1.28%) Android
2 12 (1.18%) Apple iOS
3 10 (0.99%) AIX
3 10 (0.99%) Linux
3 10 (0.99%) Solaris
3 10 (0.99%) Unix
4 1 (0.099%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 324 (31.98%) Service Design
2 314 (31.00%) User Experience
3 257 (25.37%) Agile
4 251 (24.78%) UX Design
5 212 (20.93%) User Research
6 175 (17.28%) Interaction Design
7 160 (15.79%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
8 142 (14.02%) Prototyping
9 113 (11.15%) Journey Map
9 113 (11.15%) Workshop Facilitation
10 96 (9.48%) Wireframes
11 90 (8.88%) AI
12 79 (7.80%) Stakeholder Management
13 76 (7.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 63 (6.22%) Analytics
15 61 (6.02%) Usability Testing
16 58 (5.73%) Collaborative Working
17 57 (5.63%) Continuous Improvement
17 57 (5.63%) Inclusive Design
18 56 (5.53%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 10 (0.99%) COBOL
2 8 (0.79%) Python
3 7 (0.69%) JavaScript
4 4 (0.39%) Korn
5 3 (0.30%) Apex Code
5 3 (0.30%) Java
5 3 (0.30%) PowerShell
5 3 (0.30%) SOQL
5 3 (0.30%) SQL
6 2 (0.20%) Bash
6 2 (0.20%) Ruby
6 2 (0.20%) TypeScript
7 1 (0.099%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 217 (21.42%) Security Cleared
2 172 (16.98%) SC Cleared
3 68 (6.71%) Degree
4 50 (4.94%) BPSS Clearance
5 37 (3.65%) DV Cleared
6 10 (0.99%) Cisco Certification
7 8 (0.79%) CCNP
8 5 (0.49%) CISSP
9 4 (0.39%) CISM
9 4 (0.39%) Computer Science Degree
9 4 (0.39%) TOGAF Certification
10 3 (0.30%) CCNA
10 3 (0.30%) Master's Degree
11 2 (0.20%) ITIL Certification
11 2 (0.20%) JNCIS
12 1 (0.099%) CEH
12 1 (0.099%) JNCIE
12 1 (0.099%) JNCIP
12 1 (0.099%) PMI Certification
12 1 (0.099%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 224 (22.11%) Accessibility
2 73 (7.21%) WCAG
3 8 (0.79%) ISO/IEC 20000
3 8 (0.79%) NCSC
4 7 (0.69%) Data Quality
4 7 (0.69%) Government Security Classifications
5 6 (0.59%) NIST
6 5 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 4 (0.39%) QA
8 3 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
8 3 (0.30%) GDPR
8 3 (0.30%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.20%) GMP
9 2 (0.20%) GxP
9 2 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 1 (0.099%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 1 (0.099%) HL7
10 1 (0.099%) SLA
10 1 (0.099%) WAI
10 1 (0.099%) WAI-ARIA
System Software
1 4 (0.39%) Virtual Machines
1 4 (0.39%) VMware Infrastructure
2 3 (0.30%) Firmware
3 2 (0.20%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.20%) IAG
4 1 (0.099%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 4 (0.39%) Terraform
2 3 (0.30%) Kubernetes
3 2 (0.20%) Ansible
3 2 (0.20%) FortiGate
3 2 (0.20%) Nagios
4 1 (0.099%) Microsoft Intune
4 1 (0.099%) Network Intrusion Detection System
Vendors
1 87 (8.59%) Adobe
2 37 (3.65%) Microsoft
3 14 (1.38%) ServiceNow
4 12 (1.18%) Cisco
5 10 (0.99%) IBM
5 10 (0.99%) VMware
6 9 (0.89%) Google
7 8 (0.79%) Oracle
7 8 (0.79%) Salesforce
8 7 (0.69%) Juniper
9 5 (0.49%) BiZZdesign
9 5 (0.49%) Ericsson
9 5 (0.49%) Nokia
10 4 (0.39%) EMC
10 4 (0.39%) F5
10 4 (0.39%) Virgin Media
11 3 (0.30%) Databricks
11 3 (0.30%) Fortinet
11 3 (0.30%) Huawei
11 3 (0.30%) SAP