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 10 May 2026.

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

6 months to
10 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 125 176 171
Rank change year-on-year +51 -5 -38
Contract jobs requiring a Designer 981 477 626
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.05% 1.62% 1.45%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.23% 1.75% 1.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 725 363 377
10th Percentile £350 £300 £325
25th Percentile £400 £361 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £470 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.06% -1.05% -9.52%
75th Percentile £544 £550 £556
90th Percentile £600 £613 £613
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £428 £450
% change year-on-year +11.11% -5.00% -7.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 8 49
10th Percentile £23.00 £22.75 £29.25
25th Percentile £28.00 £28.19 £45.00
Median hourly rate £35.00 £38.95 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year -10.14% -32.08% +27.44%
75th Percentile £52.16 £49.69 £61.30
90th Percentile £61.00 £54.75 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £39.70 £57.35
% change year-on-year -11.84% -30.78% -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 44,077 27,186 39,942
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.24% 92.51% 92.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,083 17,732 26,002
10th Percentile £319 £300 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.46% -2.38% -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 +3.65% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,853 1,054 2,673
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.38 £18.50 £16.25
Median hourly rate £44.50 £28.68 £36.65
Median % change year-on-year +55.19% -21.76% -18.56%
75th Percentile £67.25 £62.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.78 £27.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +66.47% -31.25% -5.73%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 +43 825 £465 -1.59% 274
UK excluding London +55 431 £475 +11.11% 165
London +22 410 £438 -7.89% 135
Work from Home +42 280 £461 +1.37% 108
North of England +4 132 £459 +14.18% 50
Midlands +1 86 £425 -2.02% 29
West Midlands +6 80 £425 -8.11% 23
South East -17 71 £525 +16.02% 29
South West -1 55 £425 -10.53% 25
North West -10 53 £405 +0.37% 27
East of England +7 44 £500 +5.26% 19
Yorkshire -29 43 £500 +25.00% 14
Scotland +3 39 £550 +18.92% 8
North East +4 36 £450 +2.86% 10
Wales -11 8 £513 +67.77% 6
East Midlands -31 6 £402 +24.69% 6

Designer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 10 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.

1 311 (31.70%) Service Design
2 308 (31.40%) User Experience
3 261 (26.61%) Agile
4 242 (24.67%) UX Design
5 227 (23.14%) User Research
6 217 (22.12%) Accessibility
7 213 (21.71%) Security Cleared
8 205 (20.90%) Figma
9 177 (18.04%) Interaction Design
10 168 (17.13%) SC Cleared
11 161 (16.41%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
12 147 (14.98%) Prototyping
13 122 (12.44%) Workshop Facilitation
14 120 (12.23%) Journey Map
15 103 (10.50%) Wireframes
16 86 (8.77%) AI
17 84 (8.56%) Adobe
18 79 (8.05%) Stakeholder Management
19 74 (7.54%) Usability Testing
20 71 (7.24%) WCAG
21 67 (6.83%) Analytics
22 66 (6.73%) Problem-Solving
23 63 (6.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
24 59 (6.01%) Continuous Improvement
24 59 (6.01%) Roadmaps
25 58 (5.91%) Collaborative Working
25 58 (5.91%) Degree
26 56 (5.71%) Design Thinking
27 55 (5.61%) Inclusive Design
28 52 (5.30%) 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 23 (2.34%) CMS
2 12 (1.22%) Confluence
3 10 (1.02%) CICS
4 6 (0.61%) SharePoint
5 5 (0.51%) LiveCycle
6 4 (0.41%) Appian
6 4 (0.41%) Drupal
6 4 (0.41%) Moodle
7 3 (0.31%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.20%) Camunda
8 2 (0.20%) Headless CMS
8 2 (0.20%) Umbraco
8 2 (0.20%) WordPress
9 1 (0.10%) Kentico
9 1 (0.10%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
Applications
1 44 (4.49%) Sketch
2 33 (3.36%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 30 (3.06%) Photoshop
4 26 (2.65%) Adobe Illustrator
4 26 (2.65%) Adobe XD
5 19 (1.94%) Adobe After Effects
6 16 (1.63%) InVision
7 12 (1.22%) Chatbot
7 12 (1.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
8 10 (1.02%) Microsoft Excel
9 8 (0.82%) InDesign
10 6 (0.61%) CINEMA 4D
11 5 (0.51%) Adobe Premiere
11 5 (0.51%) AutoCAD
11 5 (0.51%) MS Visio
11 5 (0.51%) SOLIDWORKS
12 4 (0.41%) Revit
12 4 (0.41%) Trello
12 4 (0.41%) Zeplin
13 3 (0.31%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 4 (0.41%) Oracle ERP
1 4 (0.41%) SAP ERP
2 3 (0.31%) Dynamics GP
2 3 (0.31%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.20%) Shopify
4 1 (0.10%) Eloqua
4 1 (0.10%) SmartPlant
Cloud Services
1 205 (20.90%) Figma
2 27 (2.75%) AWS
3 23 (2.34%) SaaS
4 16 (1.63%) Azure
5 11 (1.12%) Miro
6 9 (0.92%) Adobe Creative Cloud
7 6 (0.61%) Power Platform
8 4 (0.41%) GCP
9 3 (0.31%) ChatGPT
9 3 (0.31%) Google Workspace
9 3 (0.31%) Microsoft 365
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%) Google Analytics
10 2 (0.20%) PowerApps
10 2 (0.20%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 25 (2.55%) Firewall
2 20 (2.04%) Wi-Fi
3 14 (1.43%) Network Security
4 11 (1.12%) IPsec
5 8 (0.82%) Broadband
6 6 (0.61%) 5G
6 6 (0.61%) Diameter Protocol
7 5 (0.51%) VLAN
7 5 (0.51%) VPN
8 3 (0.31%) 3G
8 3 (0.31%) 3GPP
8 3 (0.31%) BGP
8 3 (0.31%) DNS
8 3 (0.31%) HTTP
8 3 (0.31%) Internet
8 3 (0.31%) Intranet
8 3 (0.31%) IPv4
8 3 (0.31%) IPv6
8 3 (0.31%) LTE
8 3 (0.31%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (1.12%) Metadata
2 10 (1.02%) DataStage
3 4 (0.41%) Oracle ODI
4 3 (0.31%) Electronic Patient Records
4 3 (0.31%) 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 (0.10%) Data Lake
6 1 (0.10%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.10%) Pinecone
6 1 (0.10%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 25 (2.55%) JIRA
2 20 (2.04%) Axure RP
3 3 (0.31%) 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
1 219 (22.32%) Public Sector
2 189 (19.27%) Social Skills
3 126 (12.84%) Finance
4 61 (6.22%) Banking
5 38 (3.87%) Marketing
6 33 (3.36%) Retail
7 25 (2.55%) Influencing Skills
8 24 (2.45%) Analytical Skills
8 24 (2.45%) Legal
9 23 (2.34%) Telecoms
10 22 (2.24%) Publishing
11 18 (1.83%) Manufacturing
12 17 (1.73%) Automotive
13 16 (1.63%) Presentation Skills
14 13 (1.33%) Pharmaceutical
15 11 (1.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 10 (1.02%) Local Government
17 9 (0.92%) Organisational Skills
18 7 (0.71%) Retail Banking
19 6 (0.61%) Advertising
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (4.49%) HTML
2 32 (3.26%) CSS
3 13 (1.33%) Middleware
4 8 (0.82%) REST
5 6 (0.61%) .NET
5 6 (0.61%) React
5 6 (0.61%) SOAP
6 5 (0.51%) Web Services
7 3 (0.31%) AngularJS
7 3 (0.31%) CSS3
7 3 (0.31%) Framer.js
7 3 (0.31%) HTML5
7 3 (0.31%) JSON
7 3 (0.31%) Lightning Web Components
7 3 (0.31%) OAuth
7 3 (0.31%) Semantic HTML
7 3 (0.31%) Visualforce
8 2 (0.20%) AWS CDK
8 2 (0.20%) Kafka
8 2 (0.20%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 56 (5.71%) Product Ownership
2 38 (3.87%) Mobile App
3 27 (2.75%) Onboarding
4 24 (2.45%) NHS
5 19 (1.94%) Animation
6 17 (1.73%) Data Centre
7 15 (1.53%) Cloud Native
7 15 (1.53%) Graphic Design
7 15 (1.53%) IoT
7 15 (1.53%) Mainframe
8 13 (1.33%) AI Agents
8 13 (1.33%) Taxonomies
9 11 (1.12%) BYOD
10 10 (1.02%) Management Information System
10 10 (1.02%) VSAM
11 8 (0.82%) CMDB
11 8 (0.82%) Data Protection Act
12 7 (0.71%) e-Learning
12 7 (0.71%) Motion Graphics
13 5 (0.51%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 10 (1.02%) AIX
1 10 (1.02%) Linux
1 10 (1.02%) Solaris
1 10 (1.02%) Unix
2 7 (0.71%) Android
3 6 (0.61%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.10%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 311 (31.70%) Service Design
2 308 (31.40%) User Experience
3 261 (26.61%) Agile
4 242 (24.67%) UX Design
5 227 (23.14%) User Research
6 177 (18.04%) Interaction Design
7 161 (16.41%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
8 147 (14.98%) Prototyping
9 122 (12.44%) Workshop Facilitation
10 120 (12.23%) Journey Map
11 103 (10.50%) Wireframes
12 86 (8.77%) AI
13 79 (8.05%) Stakeholder Management
14 74 (7.54%) Usability Testing
15 67 (6.83%) Analytics
16 66 (6.73%) Problem-Solving
17 63 (6.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 59 (6.01%) Continuous Improvement
18 59 (6.01%) Roadmaps
19 58 (5.91%) Collaborative Working
Programming Languages
1 11 (1.12%) JavaScript
2 10 (1.02%) COBOL
2 10 (1.02%) Python
3 3 (0.31%) Apex Code
3 3 (0.31%) Java
3 3 (0.31%) Korn
3 3 (0.31%) SOQL
3 3 (0.31%) SQL
4 2 (0.20%) Bash
4 2 (0.20%) PowerShell
4 2 (0.20%) Ruby
4 2 (0.20%) TypeScript
5 1 (0.10%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 213 (21.71%) Security Cleared
2 168 (17.13%) SC Cleared
3 58 (5.91%) Degree
4 41 (4.18%) BPSS Clearance
5 39 (3.98%) DV Cleared
6 11 (1.12%) Cisco Certification
7 9 (0.92%) 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 (0.31%) JNCIS
10 3 (0.31%) 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
1 217 (22.12%) Accessibility
2 71 (7.24%) WCAG
3 8 (0.82%) ISO/IEC 20000
3 8 (0.82%) NCSC
4 7 (0.71%) Government Security Classifications
5 6 (0.61%) GDPR
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 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
8 3 (0.31%) 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 (0.31%) 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 (0.31%) Kubernetes
2 3 (0.31%) Nagios
3 2 (0.20%) Ansible
3 2 (0.20%) FortiGate
4 1 (0.10%) Network Intrusion Detection System
Vendors
1 84 (8.56%) Adobe
2 23 (2.34%) Microsoft
3 16 (1.63%) ServiceNow
4 13 (1.33%) Cisco
4 13 (1.33%) Oracle
5 10 (1.02%) IBM
5 10 (1.02%) VMware
6 8 (0.82%) Juniper
6 8 (0.82%) Salesforce
6 8 (0.82%) SAP
7 6 (0.61%) Google
8 5 (0.51%) BiZZdesign
8 5 (0.51%) Ericsson
8 5 (0.51%) F5
8 5 (0.51%) Nokia
9 3 (0.31%) Fortinet
9 3 (0.31%) Huawei
9 3 (0.31%) MuleSoft
9 3 (0.31%) Sage
9 3 (0.31%) SolarWinds