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 15 September 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 158 170 176
Rank change year-on-year +12 +6 -10
Contract jobs requiring a Designer 971 550 532
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.78% 1.69% 1.39%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.93% 1.86% 1.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 633 395 312
10th Percentile £360 £305 £303
25th Percentile £406 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £467 £470 £475
Median % change year-on-year -0.64% -1.05% -9.52%
75th Percentile £538 £575 £570
90th Percentile £588 £617 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £473 £438 £500
% change year-on-year +8.00% -12.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 24 38
10th Percentile £25.95 £22.75 £42.98
25th Percentile £32.50 £35.06 £53.40
Median hourly rate £37.41 £47.50 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year -21.24% -17.18% +4.84%
75th Percentile £62.00 £61.28 £61.30
90th Percentile £62.55 £69.65 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.00 £55.00 £57.35
% change year-on-year -32.73% -4.10% -0.68%

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 50,255 29,550 35,480
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.36% 91.04% 93.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,827 18,649 21,961
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 £625 £620 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,770 1,552 1,702
10th Percentile £14.59 £13.69 £14.73
25th Percentile £20.25 £17.00 £20.50
Median hourly rate £42.15 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.59% -41.51% -1.96%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.83 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +6.95%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 +16 854 £464 -1.38% 736
UK excluding London +34 439 £473 +8.00% 293
London -4 433 £464 -6.83% 499
Work from Home -10 243 £450 - 345
North of England -16 143 £475 +8.57% 77
Midlands +14 86 £425 -0.93% 41
West Midlands +7 83 £425 +0.12% 36
South West +9 78 £428 -18.57% 48
Yorkshire +4 59 £475 -1.04% 24
South East -46 50 £500 +18.34% 51
North West -50 42 £538 +22.86% 45
North East -12 41 £450 - 8
East of England +4 40 £410 +5.81% 16
Scotland +2 39 £550 +20.55% 26
Wales -18 6 £375 +17.71% 12
East Midlands -12 3 £575 +22.99% 5

Designer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 15 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.

1 315 (32.44%) User Experience
2 303 (31.20%) Service Design
3 258 (26.57%) Agile
4 236 (24.30%) UX Design
5 206 (21.22%) Accessibility
6 200 (20.60%) Security Cleared
7 186 (19.16%) Figma
8 179 (18.43%) User Research
9 177 (18.23%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
10 173 (17.82%) Interaction Design
11 160 (16.48%) SC Cleared
12 132 (13.59%) Stakeholder Management
13 129 (13.29%) Prototyping
14 121 (12.46%) Workshop Facilitation
15 110 (11.33%) Journey Map
16 92 (9.47%) AI
17 88 (9.06%) Wireframes
18 87 (8.96%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 82 (8.44%) Adobe
19 82 (8.44%) Problem-Solving
20 72 (7.42%) WCAG
21 61 (6.28%) BPSS Clearance
22 55 (5.66%) Digital Transformation Programme
23 53 (5.46%) Customer Experience
24 52 (5.36%) Continuous Improvement
25 50 (5.15%) Collaborative Working
25 50 (5.15%) Degree
25 50 (5.15%) Usability Testing
26 49 (5.05%) Inclusive Design
27 48 (4.94%) Analytics

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 (1.96%) CMS
2 13 (1.34%) Confluence
3 6 (0.62%) SharePoint
4 5 (0.51%) Drupal
4 5 (0.51%) LiveCycle
5 4 (0.41%) Moodle
5 4 (0.41%) WordPress
6 2 (0.21%) CICS
6 2 (0.21%) Headless CMS
6 2 (0.21%) OpenStack
6 2 (0.21%) Umbraco
7 1 (0.10%) Kentico
7 1 (0.10%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
Applications
1 45 (4.63%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 32 (3.30%) Photoshop
3 31 (3.19%) Adobe Illustrator
4 30 (3.09%) Sketch
5 25 (2.57%) Adobe After Effects
6 11 (1.13%) Adobe XD
6 11 (1.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 10 (1.03%) InDesign
8 8 (0.82%) AutoCAD
9 7 (0.72%) Microsoft Excel
9 7 (0.72%) Revit
10 6 (0.62%) Chatbot
10 6 (0.62%) Final Cut Pro
11 5 (0.51%) SOLIDWORKS
12 3 (0.31%) Microsoft Office
13 2 (0.21%) Adobe Premiere
13 2 (0.21%) InVision
13 2 (0.21%) Navisworks
14 1 (0.10%) Siemens NX
14 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
1 186 (19.16%) Figma
2 33 (3.40%) Azure
3 25 (2.57%) AWS
4 21 (2.16%) Miro
4 21 (2.16%) SaaS
5 18 (1.85%) Microsoft 365
6 17 (1.75%) Microsoft Copilot
7 12 (1.24%) Power Platform
8 6 (0.62%) GCP
9 5 (0.51%) Adobe Creative Cloud
9 5 (0.51%) Dynamics 365
10 4 (0.41%) Azure AI
10 4 (0.41%) Canva
10 4 (0.41%) Copilot Studio
10 4 (0.41%) Google Analytics
10 4 (0.41%) PowerApps
11 3 (0.31%) Azure Data Factory
11 3 (0.31%) Azure Databricks
11 3 (0.31%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 3 (0.31%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 18 (1.85%) Wi-Fi
2 16 (1.65%) 4G
2 16 (1.65%) Diameter Protocol
3 15 (1.54%) 5G
4 14 (1.44%) 3G
5 13 (1.34%) 2G
5 13 (1.34%) Firewall
5 13 (1.34%) SIGTRAN
5 13 (1.34%) SS7
6 9 (0.93%) Broadband
7 8 (0.82%) BGP
8 7 (0.72%) IPsec
9 6 (0.62%) HTTP
9 6 (0.62%) OSPF
10 5 (0.51%) Network Security
11 4 (0.41%) Ethernet
12 3 (0.31%) DNS
12 3 (0.31%) EIGRP
12 3 (0.31%) LAN
12 3 (0.31%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (1.34%) Metadata
2 7 (0.72%) Power BI
3 4 (0.41%) Qlik Sense
3 4 (0.41%) 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%) Data Lake
6 1 (0.10%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 14 (1.44%) JIRA
2 6 (0.62%) 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
1 214 (22.04%) Social Skills
2 187 (19.26%) Public Sector
3 114 (11.74%) Finance
4 52 (5.36%) Banking
5 48 (4.94%) Retail
6 42 (4.33%) Analytical Skills
7 40 (4.12%) Marketing
8 38 (3.91%) Telecoms
9 26 (2.68%) Automotive
10 22 (2.27%) Publishing
11 21 (2.16%) Manufacturing
12 20 (2.06%) Legal
13 16 (1.65%) Influencing Skills
14 14 (1.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 14 (1.44%) Local Government
15 10 (1.03%) Military
15 10 (1.03%) Presentation Skills
16 8 (0.82%) Games
16 8 (0.82%) Organisational Skills
17 7 (0.72%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (2.68%) HTML
2 18 (1.85%) CSS
3 10 (1.03%) REST
4 6 (0.62%) React
4 6 (0.62%) SOAP
4 6 (0.62%) Terraform
4 6 (0.62%) Web Services
5 5 (0.51%) React Native
6 4 (0.41%) Ajax
6 4 (0.41%) AngularJS
6 4 (0.41%) PySpark
6 4 (0.41%) XML
7 3 (0.31%) CSS3
7 3 (0.31%) HTML5
8 2 (0.21%) JSON
8 2 (0.21%) Kafka
8 2 (0.21%) OAuth
8 2 (0.21%) OpenID
8 2 (0.21%) Vue
8 2 (0.21%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 47 (4.84%) Mobile App
2 39 (4.02%) Product Ownership
3 30 (3.09%) Animation
3 30 (3.09%) Onboarding
4 27 (2.78%) NHS
5 26 (2.68%) Graphic Design
6 25 (2.57%) Self-Motivation
7 14 (1.44%) Cloud Native
8 12 (1.24%) AI Agents
8 12 (1.24%) Greenfield Project
9 11 (1.13%) CMDB
9 11 (1.13%) Data Protection Act
10 10 (1.03%) Social Media
11 9 (0.93%) e-Learning
12 8 (0.82%) Data Centre
12 8 (0.82%) Management Information System
13 7 (0.72%) IoT
13 7 (0.72%) Legacy Systems
13 7 (0.72%) Taxonomies
14 5 (0.51%) Motion Graphics
Operating Systems
1 16 (1.65%) Android
2 15 (1.54%) 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
1 315 (32.44%) User Experience
2 303 (31.20%) Service Design
3 258 (26.57%) Agile
4 236 (24.30%) UX Design
5 179 (18.43%) User Research
6 177 (18.23%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
7 173 (17.82%) Interaction Design
8 132 (13.59%) Stakeholder Management
9 129 (13.29%) Prototyping
10 121 (12.46%) Workshop Facilitation
11 110 (11.33%) Journey Map
12 92 (9.47%) AI
13 88 (9.06%) Wireframes
14 87 (8.96%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 82 (8.44%) Problem-Solving
16 55 (5.66%) Digital Transformation Programme
17 53 (5.46%) Customer Experience
18 52 (5.36%) Continuous Improvement
19 50 (5.15%) Collaborative Working
19 50 (5.15%) Usability Testing
Programming Languages
1 12 (1.24%) SQL
2 9 (0.93%) Python
3 6 (0.62%) JavaScript
4 4 (0.41%) 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
1 200 (20.60%) Security Cleared
2 160 (16.48%) SC Cleared
3 61 (6.28%) BPSS Clearance
4 50 (5.15%) Degree
5 15 (1.54%) DV Cleared
6 7 (0.72%) 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%) CCNP
9 1 (0.10%) CEH
9 1 (0.10%) CISM
9 1 (0.10%) Computer Science Degree
9 1 (0.10%) JNCIE
9 1 (0.10%) JNCIP
9 1 (0.10%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 206 (21.22%) Accessibility
2 72 (7.42%) WCAG
3 15 (1.54%) Data Quality
4 6 (0.62%) QA
5 5 (0.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (0.41%) GDPR
6 4 (0.41%) GxP
7 3 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 3 (0.31%) NCSC
7 3 (0.31%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
8 2 (0.21%) GMP
8 2 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
8 2 (0.21%) GRC
8 2 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 42001
8 2 (0.21%) NIST
9 1 (0.10%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 1 (0.10%) SLA
9 1 (0.10%) WAI
9 1 (0.10%) WAI-ARIA
System Software
1 6 (0.62%) IAG
2 4 (0.41%) 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 (8.44%) Adobe
2 37 (3.81%) Microsoft
3 26 (2.68%) ServiceNow
4 15 (1.54%) Cisco
5 10 (1.03%) IBM
6 9 (0.93%) Google
7 7 (0.72%) Databricks
7 7 (0.72%) SAP
8 6 (0.62%) Ericsson
8 6 (0.62%) Juniper
9 5 (0.51%) Oracle
10 4 (0.41%) EMC
10 4 (0.41%) Foundry
10 4 (0.41%) Nokia
10 4 (0.41%) Virgin Media
11 3 (0.31%) BMC
11 3 (0.31%) F5
11 3 (0.31%) Openreach
11 3 (0.31%) SolarWinds
11 3 (0.31%) Zscaler