Designer Contract Job Trends

Designer
UK

The median Designer daily rate in the UK is £488, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 31 March 2026.

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

6 months to
31 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 147 163 170
Rank change year-on-year +16 +7 -31
Contract jobs requiring a Designer 827 480 625
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.86% 1.65% 1.41%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.02% 1.78% 1.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 621 353 385
10th Percentile £350 £300 £325
25th Percentile £400 £360 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +5.41% -2.63% -9.09%
75th Percentile £550 £569 £560
90th Percentile £638 £638 £618
UK excluding London median daily rate £474 £435 £450
% change year-on-year +8.97% -3.39% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 8 40
10th Percentile £22.73 £30.28 £16.18
25th Percentile £26.26 £31.41 £45.00
Median hourly rate £40.83 £47.50 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year -14.05% -17.18% +19.48%
75th Percentile £55.04 £55.31 £61.30
90th Percentile £77.00 £75.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.05 £33.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year +16.55% -41.59% +0.17%

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 40,988 26,987 41,095
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.05% 92.82% 92.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,540 17,745 26,925
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -3.67%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +2.11% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,566 944 2,532
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.02 £12.86
25th Percentile £19.72 £20.92 £16.25
Median hourly rate £38.63 £32.50 £32.90
Median % change year-on-year +18.86% -1.20% -25.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.91 £71.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £31.88 £32.90
% change year-on-year +25.47% -3.09% -21.32%

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 31 March 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 31 March 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 31 March 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 +16 671 £475 +4.97% 293
London +13 361 £475 +3.32% 114
UK excluding London +4 328 £474 +8.97% 199
Work from Home +17 260 £475 +5.56% 133
North of England -8 114 £425 +6.25% 67
South East -12 70 £525 - 41
North West -3 51 £402 +0.50% 38
Midlands -47 47 £400 -0.62% 24
West Midlands -38 40 £400 -14.67% 14
Scotland +1 36 £450 -1.10% 10
Yorkshire -36 35 £513 +28.13% 15
South West -9 33 £505 +6.32% 26
North East +5 28 £413 +3.13% 14
East of England -21 24 £465 -2.72% 28
Wales -3 8 £513 +117.16% 3
East Midlands -36 7 £401 +6.08% 10

Designer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 31 March 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.

1 283 (34.22%) Service Design
2 266 (32.16%) User Experience
3 225 (27.21%) Agile
4 212 (25.63%) UX Design
5 209 (25.27%) User Research
6 197 (23.82%) Accessibility
7 192 (23.22%) Figma
8 190 (22.97%) Security Cleared
9 153 (18.50%) SC Cleared
10 152 (18.38%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
11 146 (17.65%) Prototyping
12 145 (17.53%) Interaction Design
13 117 (14.15%) Workshop Facilitation
14 114 (13.78%) Journey Map
15 94 (11.37%) Wireframes
16 78 (9.43%) Usability Testing
17 76 (9.19%) Adobe
18 70 (8.46%) AI
18 70 (8.46%) Analytics
18 70 (8.46%) Problem-Solving
19 69 (8.34%) Stakeholder Management
19 69 (8.34%) WCAG
20 60 (7.26%) Design Thinking
21 59 (7.13%) Inclusive Design
22 57 (6.89%) Roadmaps
22 57 (6.89%) Storytelling
23 52 (6.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
24 48 (5.80%) Continuous Improvement
24 48 (5.80%) Degree
25 46 (5.56%) Sketch

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 (2.30%) CMS
2 13 (1.57%) Confluence
3 8 (0.97%) Appian
3 8 (0.97%) CICS
4 6 (0.73%) Camunda
5 4 (0.48%) Moodle
6 3 (0.36%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.24%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.24%) Umbraco
8 1 (0.12%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.12%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
Applications
1 46 (5.56%) Sketch
2 32 (3.87%) Adobe XD
3 26 (3.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 22 (2.66%) Photoshop
5 20 (2.42%) InVision
6 19 (2.30%) Adobe Illustrator
7 14 (1.69%) Adobe After Effects
8 11 (1.33%) Chatbot
8 11 (1.33%) InDesign
9 8 (0.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
10 7 (0.85%) CINEMA 4D
11 6 (0.73%) Microsoft Excel
11 6 (0.73%) Zeplin
12 5 (0.60%) Adobe Premiere
13 4 (0.48%) MS Visio
14 3 (0.36%) Adobe Captivate
14 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Office
14 3 (0.36%) Spreadsheet
14 3 (0.36%) Trello
15 2 (0.24%) Blender
Business Applications
1 7 (0.85%) SAP ERP
2 5 (0.60%) Dynamics GP
2 5 (0.60%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.48%) Oracle ERP
4 3 (0.36%) Oracle BRM
5 1 (0.12%) Oracle CRM
5 1 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
5 1 (0.12%) Shopify
5 1 (0.12%) SmartPlant
5 1 (0.12%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 192 (23.22%) Figma
2 22 (2.66%) AWS
3 20 (2.42%) SaaS
4 13 (1.57%) Miro
5 12 (1.45%) Power Platform
6 11 (1.33%) Azure
7 9 (1.09%) Adobe Creative Cloud
8 5 (0.60%) PowerApps
9 4 (0.48%) ChatGPT
9 4 (0.48%) Copilot Studio
9 4 (0.48%) Microsoft Copilot
10 3 (0.36%) dbt
10 3 (0.36%) Google Analytics
10 3 (0.36%) Google Workspace
10 3 (0.36%) Microsoft 365
11 2 (0.24%) AWS CloudFormation
11 2 (0.24%) Contentful
11 2 (0.24%) GCP
11 2 (0.24%) Power Automate
11 2 (0.24%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 19 (2.30%) Firewall
2 11 (1.33%) Network Security
3 8 (0.97%) Broadband
3 8 (0.97%) IPsec
3 8 (0.97%) Wi-Fi
4 6 (0.73%) SMS
5 5 (0.60%) 5G
6 4 (0.48%) 4G
6 4 (0.48%) VLAN
6 4 (0.48%) VPN
7 3 (0.36%) 2G
7 3 (0.36%) 3G
7 3 (0.36%) Diameter Protocol
7 3 (0.36%) GPRS
7 3 (0.36%) GSM
7 3 (0.36%) IPv4
7 3 (0.36%) IPv6
7 3 (0.36%) TCP/IP
8 2 (0.24%) Internet
8 2 (0.24%) SIGTRAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (0.97%) DataStage
2 7 (0.85%) Metadata
3 5 (0.60%) Power BI
4 4 (0.48%) Oracle ODI
5 3 (0.36%) Electronic Patient Records
6 2 (0.24%) Amazon Aurora
6 2 (0.24%) Amazon RDS
6 2 (0.24%) Amazon Redshift
6 2 (0.24%) Data Vault
6 2 (0.24%) MySQL
6 2 (0.24%) NoSQL
6 2 (0.24%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (0.24%) Tableau
7 1 (0.12%) BigQuery
7 1 (0.12%) Data Lake
7 1 (0.12%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.12%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 28 (3.39%) JIRA
2 27 (3.26%) Axure RP
3 3 (0.36%) Git
4 2 (0.24%) Balsamiq
5 1 (0.12%) Dreamweaver
5 1 (0.12%) GitLab
5 1 (0.12%) Postman
5 1 (0.12%) SoapUI
General
1 202 (24.43%) Public Sector
2 177 (21.40%) Social Skills
3 128 (15.48%) Finance
4 64 (7.74%) Banking
5 31 (3.75%) Marketing
6 24 (2.90%) Analytical Skills
7 23 (2.78%) Influencing Skills
8 16 (1.93%) Publishing
9 15 (1.81%) Retail
9 15 (1.81%) Telecoms
10 13 (1.57%) Legal
11 12 (1.45%) Pharmaceutical
11 12 (1.45%) Presentation Skills
12 11 (1.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 10 (1.21%) Billing
14 8 (0.97%) Organisational Skills
15 7 (0.85%) Advertising
16 6 (0.73%) Local Government
16 6 (0.73%) Retail Banking
17 5 (0.60%) Wearables
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (5.44%) HTML
2 38 (4.59%) CSS
3 11 (1.33%) Middleware
4 8 (0.97%) REST
5 6 (0.73%) Framer.js
5 6 (0.73%) SOAP
6 5 (0.60%) .NET
6 5 (0.60%) Web Services
7 4 (0.48%) AngularJS
7 4 (0.48%) Lightning Web Components
8 3 (0.36%) HTML5
8 3 (0.36%) JSON
8 3 (0.36%) React
8 3 (0.36%) Semantic HTML
8 3 (0.36%) Visualforce
9 2 (0.24%) AWS CDK
9 2 (0.24%) CSS3
9 2 (0.24%) Kafka
9 2 (0.24%) RESTful
9 2 (0.24%) Sass
Miscellaneous
1 49 (5.93%) Product Ownership
2 35 (4.23%) Mobile App
3 24 (2.90%) Onboarding
4 18 (2.18%) NHS
5 13 (1.57%) AI Agents
5 13 (1.57%) Mainframe
6 12 (1.45%) Data Centre
7 11 (1.33%) Graphic Design
8 10 (1.21%) Data Protection Act
8 10 (1.21%) IoT
9 9 (1.09%) Animation
9 9 (1.09%) Management Information System
9 9 (1.09%) Taxonomies
10 8 (0.97%) BYOD
10 8 (0.97%) e-Learning
10 8 (0.97%) VSAM
11 7 (0.85%) CMDB
11 7 (0.85%) Motion Graphics
12 6 (0.73%) Cloud Native
12 6 (0.73%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 11 (1.33%) Unix
2 8 (0.97%) AIX
2 8 (0.97%) Linux
2 8 (0.97%) Solaris
3 4 (0.48%) Android
4 3 (0.36%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.12%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 283 (34.22%) Service Design
2 266 (32.16%) User Experience
3 225 (27.21%) Agile
4 212 (25.63%) UX Design
5 209 (25.27%) User Research
6 152 (18.38%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
7 146 (17.65%) Prototyping
8 145 (17.53%) Interaction Design
9 117 (14.15%) Workshop Facilitation
10 114 (13.78%) Journey Map
11 94 (11.37%) Wireframes
12 78 (9.43%) Usability Testing
13 70 (8.46%) AI
13 70 (8.46%) Analytics
13 70 (8.46%) Problem-Solving
14 69 (8.34%) Stakeholder Management
15 60 (7.26%) Design Thinking
16 59 (7.13%) Inclusive Design
17 57 (6.89%) Roadmaps
17 57 (6.89%) Storytelling
Programming Languages
1 14 (1.69%) Python
2 11 (1.33%) JavaScript
3 10 (1.21%) SQL
4 8 (0.97%) COBOL
5 3 (0.36%) Apex Code
5 3 (0.36%) Java
5 3 (0.36%) Korn
5 3 (0.36%) PL/SQL
5 3 (0.36%) SOQL
6 2 (0.24%) Bash
6 2 (0.24%) PowerShell
6 2 (0.24%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 190 (22.97%) Security Cleared
2 153 (18.50%) SC Cleared
3 48 (5.80%) Degree
4 31 (3.75%) DV Cleared
5 26 (3.14%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (0.97%) CCNP
6 8 (0.97%) Cisco Certification
7 5 (0.60%) Master's Degree
7 5 (0.60%) SAP Certification
8 4 (0.48%) CISM
8 4 (0.48%) CISSP
8 4 (0.48%) Computer Science Degree
8 4 (0.48%) TOGAF Certification
9 3 (0.36%) CCNA
9 3 (0.36%) JNCIS
10 2 (0.24%) ITIL Certification
11 1 (0.12%) AWS Certification
11 1 (0.12%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 1 (0.12%) PMI Certification
11 1 (0.12%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 197 (23.82%) Accessibility
2 69 (8.34%) WCAG
3 11 (1.33%) GDPR
4 8 (0.97%) ISO/IEC 20000
4 8 (0.97%) NCSC
5 7 (0.85%) Government Security Classifications
6 5 (0.60%) QA
7 4 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
7 4 (0.48%) Data Quality
7 4 (0.48%) NIST
8 3 (0.36%) GMP
8 3 (0.36%) GxP
9 2 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 2 (0.24%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.24%) SLA
10 1 (0.12%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 1 (0.12%) HL7
System Software
1 2 (0.24%) VMware Infrastructure
2 1 (0.12%) Firmware
2 1 (0.12%) IAG
2 1 (0.12%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 3 (0.36%) Nagios
1 3 (0.36%) Terraform
2 1 (0.12%) Ansible
2 1 (0.12%) FortiGate
2 1 (0.12%) Kubernetes
2 1 (0.12%) Network Intrusion Detection System
Vendors
1 76 (9.19%) Adobe
2 30 (3.63%) Microsoft
3 16 (1.93%) Oracle
3 16 (1.93%) ServiceNow
4 10 (1.21%) Salesforce
5 9 (1.09%) SAP
6 8 (0.97%) Cisco
6 8 (0.97%) Google
6 8 (0.97%) IBM
6 8 (0.97%) VMware
7 7 (0.85%) Juniper
7 7 (0.85%) Pega
8 6 (0.73%) Sage
9 5 (0.60%) BiZZdesign
10 4 (0.48%) F5
11 3 (0.36%) MuleSoft
11 3 (0.36%) Palo Alto
11 3 (0.36%) SolarWinds
12 2 (0.24%) Databricks
12 2 (0.24%) Hotjar