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 27 May 2026.

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

6 months to
27 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 122 179 170
Rank change year-on-year +57 -9 -36
Contract jobs requiring a Designer 1,002 445 611
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.06% 1.56% 1.43%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.23% 1.69% 1.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 720 336 359
10th Percentile £350 £296 £325
25th Percentile £402 £360 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £459 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.50% -3.38% -8.65%
75th Percentile £538 £550 £556
90th Percentile £600 £606 £625
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £420 £450
% change year-on-year +13.10% -6.67% -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 11 49
10th Percentile £22.73 £22.75 £29.25
25th Percentile £29.19 £30.20 £45.00
Median hourly rate £33.99 £45.00 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year -24.47% -21.53% +20.74%
75th Percentile £49.38 £50.63 £61.30
90th Percentile £62.40 £54.01 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.99 £47.00 £57.35
% change year-on-year -27.68% -18.05% -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 44,984 26,371 39,600
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.30% 92.30% 92.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,456 17,159 25,763
10th Percentile £325 £290 £280
25th Percentile £413 £405 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -2.78%
75th Percentile £619 £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 2,981 1,009 2,752
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.04 £16.30
Median hourly rate £42.50 £27.53 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +54.38% -24.58% -18.89%
75th Percentile £66.50 £60.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +70.97% -37.13% -5.88%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 +47 841 £460 +0.66% 217
UK excluding London +57 449 £475 +13.10% 113
London +19 410 £438 -5.55% 129
Work from Home +49 286 £459 +2.00% 97
North of England +5 134 £459 +14.18% 43
Midlands +4 97 £425 +3.66% 17
West Midlands +11 91 £425 -2.58% 11
South East -16 68 £510 +12.71% 26
North West -6 56 £402 - 23
South West +10 55 £425 -7.31% 11
East of England +14 47 £454 -4.42% 6
Scotland +5 44 £550 +15.79% 1
Yorkshire -24 44 £500 +25.00% 13
North East -4 34 £433 -8.95% 7
Wales -18 8 £513 +67.63% 5
East Midlands -28 6 £402 +24.69% 6

Designer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 27 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.

1 316 (31.54%) User Experience
2 314 (31.34%) Service Design
3 263 (26.25%) Agile
4 250 (24.95%) UX Design
5 223 (22.26%) User Research
6 218 (21.76%) Accessibility
6 218 (21.76%) Security Cleared
7 211 (21.06%) Figma
8 178 (17.76%) Interaction Design
9 172 (17.17%) SC Cleared
10 161 (16.07%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
11 146 (14.57%) Prototyping
12 119 (11.88%) Workshop Facilitation
13 117 (11.68%) Journey Map
14 99 (9.88%) Wireframes
15 89 (8.88%) AI
16 86 (8.58%) Adobe
17 79 (7.88%) Stakeholder Management
18 76 (7.58%) WCAG
19 69 (6.89%) Usability Testing
20 66 (6.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
21 62 (6.19%) Degree
22 61 (6.09%) Analytics
23 59 (5.89%) Collaborative Working
23 59 (5.89%) Roadmaps
24 58 (5.79%) Continuous Improvement
24 58 (5.79%) Inclusive Design
24 58 (5.79%) Problem-Solving
25 50 (4.99%) Design Patterns
25 50 (4.99%) Design Thinking

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 22 (2.20%) CMS
2 11 (1.10%) Confluence
3 10 (1.00%) CICS
4 6 (0.60%) SharePoint
5 5 (0.50%) LiveCycle
6 4 (0.40%) Appian
6 4 (0.40%) Drupal
6 4 (0.40%) Moodle
7 3 (0.30%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.20%) Camunda
8 2 (0.20%) Headless CMS
8 2 (0.20%) Umbraco
8 2 (0.20%) WordPress
9 1 (0.100%) Kentico
9 1 (0.100%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
Applications
1 43 (4.29%) Sketch
2 37 (3.69%) Photoshop
3 34 (3.39%) Adobe Illustrator
4 32 (3.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 27 (2.69%) Adobe After Effects
6 21 (2.10%) Adobe XD
7 14 (1.40%) InVision
8 12 (1.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
9 11 (1.10%) Chatbot
10 10 (1.00%) Microsoft Excel
11 9 (0.90%) InDesign
12 5 (0.50%) AutoCAD
12 5 (0.50%) CINEMA 4D
12 5 (0.50%) MS Visio
12 5 (0.50%) SOLIDWORKS
13 4 (0.40%) Adobe Premiere
13 4 (0.40%) Revit
14 3 (0.30%) Trello
14 3 (0.30%) Zeplin
15 2 (0.20%) Final Cut Pro
Business Applications
1 4 (0.40%) Oracle ERP
2 2 (0.20%) Shopify
3 1 (0.100%) Eloqua
3 1 (0.100%) SmartPlant
Cloud Services
1 211 (21.06%) Figma
2 28 (2.79%) AWS
3 23 (2.30%) SaaS
4 18 (1.80%) Azure
5 10 (1.00%) Miro
6 8 (0.80%) Adobe Creative Cloud
7 7 (0.70%) Microsoft 365
8 6 (0.60%) Power Platform
9 5 (0.50%) Microsoft Copilot
10 4 (0.40%) Canva
10 4 (0.40%) GCP
11 3 (0.30%) Dynamics 365
12 2 (0.20%) AWS CloudFormation
12 2 (0.20%) AWS KMS
12 2 (0.20%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 2 (0.20%) GitHub
12 2 (0.20%) Google Workspace
12 2 (0.20%) PowerApps
12 2 (0.20%) Serverless
12 2 (0.20%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 25 (2.50%) Firewall
2 20 (2.00%) Wi-Fi
3 14 (1.40%) Network Security
4 11 (1.10%) IPsec
5 9 (0.90%) Broadband
6 6 (0.60%) 5G
6 6 (0.60%) Diameter Protocol
7 5 (0.50%) VLAN
7 5 (0.50%) VPN
8 3 (0.30%) 3G
8 3 (0.30%) 3GPP
8 3 (0.30%) DNS
8 3 (0.30%) Ethernet
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 11 (1.10%) Metadata
2 10 (1.00%) DataStage
3 4 (0.40%) 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 (0.100%) Data Lake
6 1 (0.100%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.100%) Pinecone
6 1 (0.100%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 21 (2.10%) JIRA
2 15 (1.50%) Axure RP
3 4 (0.40%) Git
4 1 (0.100%) Balsamiq
4 1 (0.100%) Cypress.io
4 1 (0.100%) Dreamweaver
4 1 (0.100%) GitLab
4 1 (0.100%) Postman
4 1 (0.100%) SoapUI
4 1 (0.100%) Subversion
General
1 215 (21.46%) Public Sector
2 190 (18.96%) Social Skills
3 119 (11.88%) Finance
4 56 (5.59%) Banking
5 41 (4.09%) Marketing
6 36 (3.59%) Retail
7 27 (2.69%) Telecoms
8 26 (2.59%) Automotive
9 24 (2.40%) Influencing Skills
10 22 (2.20%) Analytical Skills
10 22 (2.20%) Manufacturing
11 21 (2.10%) Legal
12 20 (2.00%) Publishing
13 16 (1.60%) Presentation Skills
14 13 (1.30%) Pharmaceutical
15 11 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 9 (0.90%) Local Government
17 8 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
18 7 (0.70%) Games
18 7 (0.70%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (4.19%) HTML
2 30 (2.99%) CSS
3 13 (1.30%) Middleware
4 9 (0.90%) REST
5 7 (0.70%) React
6 6 (0.60%) SOAP
7 5 (0.50%) Web Services
8 4 (0.40%) CSS3
8 4 (0.40%) HTML5
9 3 (0.30%) AngularJS
9 3 (0.30%) Framer.js
9 3 (0.30%) JSON
9 3 (0.30%) Lightning Web Components
9 3 (0.30%) OAuth
9 3 (0.30%) Semantic HTML
9 3 (0.30%) Visualforce
10 2 (0.20%) AWS CDK
10 2 (0.20%) OpenID
10 2 (0.20%) React Native
10 2 (0.20%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 55 (5.49%) Product Ownership
2 35 (3.49%) Mobile App
3 27 (2.69%) NHS
4 26 (2.59%) Onboarding
5 24 (2.40%) Animation
6 20 (2.00%) Graphic Design
7 17 (1.70%) Data Centre
8 15 (1.50%) Cloud Native
8 15 (1.50%) IoT
9 13 (1.30%) AI Agents
10 12 (1.20%) Taxonomies
11 11 (1.10%) BYOD
11 11 (1.10%) Mainframe
12 10 (1.00%) Management Information System
12 10 (1.00%) VSAM
13 8 (0.80%) CMDB
14 6 (0.60%) Data Protection Act
14 6 (0.60%) Motion Graphics
14 6 (0.60%) Self-Motivation
14 6 (0.60%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 11 (1.10%) Android
2 10 (1.00%) AIX
2 10 (1.00%) Apple iOS
2 10 (1.00%) Linux
2 10 (1.00%) Solaris
2 10 (1.00%) Unix
3 1 (0.100%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 316 (31.54%) User Experience
2 314 (31.34%) Service Design
3 263 (26.25%) Agile
4 250 (24.95%) UX Design
5 223 (22.26%) User Research
6 178 (17.76%) Interaction Design
7 161 (16.07%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
8 146 (14.57%) Prototyping
9 119 (11.88%) Workshop Facilitation
10 117 (11.68%) Journey Map
11 99 (9.88%) Wireframes
12 89 (8.88%) AI
13 79 (7.88%) Stakeholder Management
14 69 (6.89%) Usability Testing
15 66 (6.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 61 (6.09%) Analytics
17 59 (5.89%) Collaborative Working
17 59 (5.89%) Roadmaps
18 58 (5.79%) Inclusive Design
18 58 (5.79%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 10 (1.00%) COBOL
1 10 (1.00%) JavaScript
1 10 (1.00%) Python
2 4 (0.40%) Korn
3 3 (0.30%) Apex Code
3 3 (0.30%) Java
3 3 (0.30%) SOQL
3 3 (0.30%) SQL
4 2 (0.20%) Bash
4 2 (0.20%) PowerShell
4 2 (0.20%) Ruby
4 2 (0.20%) TypeScript
5 1 (0.100%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 218 (21.76%) Security Cleared
2 172 (17.17%) SC Cleared
3 62 (6.19%) Degree
4 47 (4.69%) BPSS Clearance
5 38 (3.79%) DV Cleared
6 11 (1.10%) Cisco Certification
7 9 (0.90%) CCNP
8 5 (0.50%) CISSP
9 4 (0.40%) CCNA
9 4 (0.40%) CISM
9 4 (0.40%) Computer Science Degree
9 4 (0.40%) Master's Degree
9 4 (0.40%) TOGAF Certification
10 3 (0.30%) JNCIS
11 2 (0.20%) ITIL Certification
12 1 (0.100%) CCIE
12 1 (0.100%) JNCIE
12 1 (0.100%) JNCIP
12 1 (0.100%) PMI Certification
12 1 (0.100%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 218 (21.76%) Accessibility
2 76 (7.58%) WCAG
3 8 (0.80%) ISO/IEC 20000
3 8 (0.80%) NCSC
4 7 (0.70%) Government Security Classifications
5 6 (0.60%) GDPR
5 6 (0.60%) NIST
6 5 (0.50%) Data Quality
6 5 (0.50%) GMP
6 5 (0.50%) GxP
7 4 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 4 (0.40%) QA
8 3 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
8 3 (0.30%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.100%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 1 (0.100%) HL7
9 1 (0.100%) SLA
9 1 (0.100%) WAI
9 1 (0.100%) WAI-ARIA
System Software
1 4 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
1 4 (0.40%) VMware Infrastructure
2 3 (0.30%) Firmware
3 2 (0.20%) IAG
4 1 (0.100%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.100%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 4 (0.40%) Terraform
2 3 (0.30%) Kubernetes
2 3 (0.30%) Nagios
3 2 (0.20%) Ansible
3 2 (0.20%) FortiGate
4 1 (0.100%) Network Intrusion Detection System
Vendors
1 86 (8.58%) Adobe
2 27 (2.69%) Microsoft
3 16 (1.60%) ServiceNow
4 13 (1.30%) Cisco
5 10 (1.00%) IBM
5 10 (1.00%) VMware
6 9 (0.90%) Google
6 9 (0.90%) Oracle
7 8 (0.80%) Juniper
7 8 (0.80%) Salesforce
8 5 (0.50%) BiZZdesign
8 5 (0.50%) Ericsson
8 5 (0.50%) F5
8 5 (0.50%) Nokia
9 4 (0.40%) EMC
9 4 (0.40%) Virgin Media
10 3 (0.30%) Databricks
10 3 (0.30%) MuleSoft
10 3 (0.30%) SAP
10 3 (0.30%) SolarWinds