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 19 June 2026.

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

6 months to
19 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 125 170 178
Rank change year-on-year +45 +8 -45
Contract jobs requiring a Designer 1,019 484 598
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.02% 1.62% 1.36%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.18% 1.76% 1.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 725 365 341
10th Percentile £350 £300 £313
25th Percentile £405 £360 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £450 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% -10.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £573
90th Percentile £600 £600 £625
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £435 £465
% change year-on-year +9.20% -6.45% -2.11%
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 46,676 27,509 40,765
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.36% 92.24% 92.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,368 17,700 26,113
10th Percentile £325 £290 £280
25th Percentile £413 £402 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £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 3,110 1,183 2,977
10th Percentile £15.24 £13.88 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.92 £17.47 £16.37
Median hourly rate £43.69 £27.21 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +60.57% -27.44% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £73.85
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 19 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 19 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 19 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 +48 859 £468 +3.89% 95
UK excluding London +56 449 £475 +9.20% 63
London +15 431 £450 -1.52% 58
Work from Home +36 279 £466 +3.56% 45
North of England 0 146 £469 +7.20% 21
Midlands +19 95 £425 +4.29% 6
West Midlands +12 89 £425 +3.66% 4
South East -23 66 £510 +20.00% 19
North West -12 58 £414 -7.49% 6
Yorkshire -27 52 £475 +18.75% 9
South West +11 50 £425 -4.71% 2
Scotland 0 47 £550 +15.79% 6
East of England +9 44 £500 +5.26% 4
North East -13 36 £448 -5.79% 6
East Midlands -14 6 £402 +24.69% 2
Wales -20 5 £600 +96.25% 2

Designer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 19 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.

1 326 (31.99%) Service Design
2 317 (31.11%) User Experience
3 254 (24.93%) Agile
4 250 (24.53%) UX Design
5 223 (21.88%) Accessibility
6 216 (21.20%) Security Cleared
7 215 (21.10%) Figma
8 211 (20.71%) User Research
9 176 (17.27%) Interaction Design
10 175 (17.17%) SC Cleared
11 158 (15.51%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
12 145 (14.23%) Prototyping
13 113 (11.09%) Journey Map
14 111 (10.89%) Workshop Facilitation
15 98 (9.62%) Wireframes
16 91 (8.93%) AI
17 89 (8.73%) Adobe
18 82 (8.05%) Stakeholder Management
19 76 (7.46%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 72 (7.07%) WCAG
21 67 (6.58%) Degree
22 62 (6.08%) Analytics
23 58 (5.69%) Inclusive Design
24 57 (5.59%) Collaborative Working
24 57 (5.59%) Roadmaps
25 56 (5.50%) Continuous Improvement
25 56 (5.50%) Customer Experience
25 56 (5.50%) Problem-Solving
25 56 (5.50%) Usability Testing
26 51 (5.00%) Storytelling

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 (1.86%) CMS
2 10 (0.98%) CICS
3 9 (0.88%) Confluence
4 5 (0.49%) LiveCycle
4 5 (0.49%) Moodle
4 5 (0.49%) SharePoint
5 4 (0.39%) Drupal
6 3 (0.29%) 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 (0.098%) Appian
8 1 (0.098%) Kentico
Applications
1 43 (4.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 42 (4.12%) Sketch
3 36 (3.53%) Photoshop
4 33 (3.24%) Adobe Illustrator
5 29 (2.85%) Adobe After Effects
6 15 (1.47%) Adobe XD
7 11 (1.08%) Chatbot
7 11 (1.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
8 10 (0.98%) InVision
8 10 (0.98%) Microsoft Excel
9 8 (0.79%) InDesign
10 6 (0.59%) Final Cut Pro
11 5 (0.49%) AutoCAD
11 5 (0.49%) CINEMA 4D
11 5 (0.49%) SOLIDWORKS
12 4 (0.39%) Adobe Premiere
12 4 (0.39%) MS Visio
12 4 (0.39%) Revit
13 2 (0.20%) Trello
13 2 (0.20%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 4 (0.39%) Oracle ERP
2 2 (0.20%) Shopify
3 1 (0.098%) Eloqua
3 1 (0.098%) SmartPlant
Cloud Services
1 215 (21.10%) Figma
2 26 (2.55%) AWS
3 24 (2.36%) SaaS
4 19 (1.86%) Microsoft 365
5 18 (1.77%) Azure
6 15 (1.47%) Microsoft Copilot
7 14 (1.37%) Miro
8 7 (0.69%) Adobe Creative Cloud
9 6 (0.59%) Power Platform
10 4 (0.39%) Canva
10 4 (0.39%) Dynamics 365
10 4 (0.39%) GCP
11 2 (0.20%) AWS CloudFormation
11 2 (0.20%) AWS KMS
11 2 (0.20%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 2 (0.20%) Entra ID
11 2 (0.20%) GitHub
11 2 (0.20%) Google Workspace
11 2 (0.20%) Serverless
11 2 (0.20%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 24 (2.36%) Firewall
2 20 (1.96%) Wi-Fi
3 13 (1.28%) Network Security
4 11 (1.08%) IPsec
5 9 (0.88%) 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 (0.29%) 2G
9 3 (0.29%) 3GPP
9 3 (0.29%) BGP
9 3 (0.29%) DNS
9 3 (0.29%) Ethernet
9 3 (0.29%) HTTP
9 3 (0.29%) Internet
9 3 (0.29%) SIGTRAN
9 3 (0.29%) SS7
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (1.08%) Metadata
2 10 (0.98%) DataStage
3 4 (0.39%) Oracle ODI
4 3 (0.29%) Electronic Patient Records
4 3 (0.29%) 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 (0.098%) Data Lake
6 1 (0.098%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.098%) Pinecone
6 1 (0.098%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 14 (1.37%) JIRA
2 10 (0.98%) Axure RP
3 2 (0.20%) Git
4 1 (0.098%) Claude Code
4 1 (0.098%) Cypress.io
4 1 (0.098%) Dreamweaver
4 1 (0.098%) Subversion
General
1 218 (21.39%) Public Sector
2 204 (20.02%) Social Skills
3 115 (11.29%) Finance
4 54 (5.30%) Banking
5 43 (4.22%) Retail
6 40 (3.93%) Marketing
7 29 (2.85%) Telecoms
8 26 (2.55%) Automotive
8 26 (2.55%) Influencing Skills
9 21 (2.06%) Legal
10 20 (1.96%) Publishing
11 19 (1.86%) Manufacturing
12 15 (1.47%) Analytical Skills
13 11 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
14 10 (0.98%) 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 32 (3.14%) HTML
2 23 (2.26%) 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 (0.29%) Lightning Web Components
6 3 (0.29%) Semantic HTML
6 3 (0.29%) 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 51 (5.00%) Product Ownership
2 39 (3.83%) Mobile App
3 31 (3.04%) Onboarding
4 27 (2.65%) Animation
5 22 (2.16%) NHS
6 21 (2.06%) Graphic Design
7 16 (1.57%) Cloud Native
7 16 (1.57%) Data Centre
8 15 (1.47%) IoT
8 15 (1.47%) Self-Motivation
9 13 (1.28%) AI Agents
10 11 (1.08%) BYOD
10 11 (1.08%) Taxonomies
11 10 (0.98%) Mainframe
11 10 (0.98%) VSAM
12 8 (0.79%) CMDB
13 7 (0.69%) Data Protection Act
13 7 (0.69%) Greenfield Project
13 7 (0.69%) Management Information System
14 6 (0.59%) Motion Graphics
Operating Systems
1 14 (1.37%) Android
2 13 (1.28%) Apple iOS
3 10 (0.98%) AIX
3 10 (0.98%) Linux
3 10 (0.98%) Solaris
3 10 (0.98%) Unix
4 1 (0.098%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 326 (31.99%) Service Design
2 317 (31.11%) User Experience
3 254 (24.93%) Agile
4 250 (24.53%) UX Design
5 211 (20.71%) User Research
6 176 (17.27%) Interaction Design
7 158 (15.51%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
8 145 (14.23%) Prototyping
9 113 (11.09%) Journey Map
10 111 (10.89%) Workshop Facilitation
11 98 (9.62%) Wireframes
12 91 (8.93%) AI
13 82 (8.05%) Stakeholder Management
14 76 (7.46%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 62 (6.08%) Analytics
16 58 (5.69%) Inclusive Design
17 57 (5.59%) Collaborative Working
17 57 (5.59%) Roadmaps
18 56 (5.50%) Customer Experience
18 56 (5.50%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 10 (0.98%) COBOL
2 8 (0.79%) Python
3 7 (0.69%) JavaScript
4 4 (0.39%) Korn
5 3 (0.29%) Apex Code
5 3 (0.29%) Java
5 3 (0.29%) PowerShell
5 3 (0.29%) SOQL
5 3 (0.29%) SQL
6 2 (0.20%) Bash
6 2 (0.20%) Ruby
6 2 (0.20%) TypeScript
7 1 (0.098%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 216 (21.20%) Security Cleared
2 175 (17.17%) SC Cleared
3 67 (6.58%) Degree
4 49 (4.81%) BPSS Clearance
5 36 (3.53%) DV Cleared
6 10 (0.98%) 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 (0.29%) CCNA
10 3 (0.29%) Master's Degree
11 2 (0.20%) ITIL Certification
11 2 (0.20%) JNCIS
12 1 (0.098%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 1 (0.098%) AWS Certification
12 1 (0.098%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 1 (0.098%) JNCIE
12 1 (0.098%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 223 (21.88%) Accessibility
2 72 (7.07%) 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%) GDPR
7 4 (0.39%) QA
8 3 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
8 3 (0.29%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.20%) GMP
9 2 (0.20%) GxP
9 2 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 1 (0.098%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 1 (0.098%) HL7
10 1 (0.098%) SLA
10 1 (0.098%) WAI
10 1 (0.098%) WAI-ARIA
System Software
1 4 (0.39%) Virtual Machines
1 4 (0.39%) VMware Infrastructure
2 3 (0.29%) Firmware
3 2 (0.20%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.20%) IAG
4 1 (0.098%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 4 (0.39%) Terraform
2 3 (0.29%) Kubernetes
3 2 (0.20%) Ansible
3 2 (0.20%) FortiGate
3 2 (0.20%) Nagios
4 1 (0.098%) Microsoft Intune
4 1 (0.098%) Network Intrusion Detection System
Vendors
1 89 (8.73%) Adobe
2 38 (3.73%) Microsoft
3 14 (1.37%) ServiceNow
4 12 (1.18%) Cisco
5 11 (1.08%) IBM
6 10 (0.98%) VMware
7 9 (0.88%) Google
8 8 (0.79%) Oracle
8 8 (0.79%) Salesforce
9 7 (0.69%) Juniper
10 5 (0.49%) BiZZdesign
10 5 (0.49%) Ericsson
10 5 (0.49%) Nokia
11 4 (0.39%) EMC
11 4 (0.39%) F5
11 4 (0.39%) Virgin Media
12 3 (0.29%) Databricks
12 3 (0.29%) Fortinet
12 3 (0.29%) Huawei
12 3 (0.29%) SAP