Designer Contract Job Trends

Designer
UK

The median Designer daily rate in the UK is £480, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 14 April 2026.

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

6 months to
14 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 137 164 166
Rank change year-on-year +27 +2 -24
Contract jobs requiring a Designer 885 477 633
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.94% 1.63% 1.45%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.10% 1.76% 1.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 667 350 381
10th Percentile £350 £300 £325
25th Percentile £400 £360 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £456 £475
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -4.00% -9.52%
75th Percentile £550 £550 £574
90th Percentile £638 £613 £625
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £420 £464
% change year-on-year +13.23% -9.54% -6.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 7 54
10th Percentile £26.21 £30.24 £33.78
25th Percentile £29.88 £31.08 £45.05
Median hourly rate £35.00 £47.50 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year -26.32% -17.18% +20.74%
75th Percentile £56.00 £61.88 £61.30
90th Percentile £72.20 £75.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £33.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year +4.48% -41.59% -11.77%

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 42,188 27,123 40,371
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.27% 92.63% 92.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,193 17,821 26,390
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £407 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.80% -1.00% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £628 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +2.63% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,670 980 2,573
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.83 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.09 £19.91 £16.25
Median hourly rate £41.53 £31.42 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.16% -10.22% -22.22%
75th Percentile £65.25 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.03 £75.58 £72.43
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £30.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +41.67% -14.29% -17.38%

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 14 April 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 14 April 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 14 April 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 +36 730 £475 +3.94% 289
London +5 374 £475 +3.94% 107
UK excluding London +31 369 £475 +13.23% 209
Work from Home +23 269 £460 +3.43% 126
North of England -15 117 £452 +13.00% 65
South East +3 75 £525 +5.53% 42
Midlands -28 59 £404 -6.89% 34
West Midlands -29 52 £410 -11.35% 27
North West -5 51 £402 +0.50% 33
South West 0 48 £436 -4.91% 24
East of England -1 35 £500 +5.26% 29
North East +2 33 £452 +13.00% 19
Scotland -4 33 £493 +8.24% 10
Yorkshire -46 33 £513 +28.13% 14
Wales -13 8 £513 +67.77% 8
East Midlands -27 7 £401 +28.12% 7

Designer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 14 April 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.

1 295 (33.33%) Service Design
2 273 (30.85%) User Experience
3 233 (26.33%) Agile
4 219 (24.75%) UX Design
5 217 (24.52%) User Research
6 201 (22.71%) Accessibility
7 198 (22.37%) Security Cleared
8 197 (22.26%) Figma
9 161 (18.19%) Interaction Design
10 160 (18.08%) SC Cleared
11 158 (17.85%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
12 143 (16.16%) Prototyping
13 121 (13.67%) Journey Map
13 121 (13.67%) Workshop Facilitation
14 97 (10.96%) Wireframes
15 78 (8.81%) AI
16 77 (8.70%) Usability Testing
17 74 (8.36%) Adobe
18 72 (8.14%) Problem-Solving
18 72 (8.14%) Stakeholder Management
19 67 (7.57%) Analytics
19 67 (7.57%) WCAG
20 60 (6.78%) Roadmaps
21 59 (6.67%) Design Thinking
21 59 (6.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
22 57 (6.44%) Storytelling
23 53 (5.99%) Inclusive Design
24 51 (5.76%) Continuous Improvement
25 50 (5.65%) Degree
26 48 (5.42%) Design Patterns

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 20 (2.26%) CMS
2 11 (1.24%) Confluence
3 10 (1.13%) CICS
4 8 (0.90%) Appian
5 6 (0.68%) Camunda
6 5 (0.56%) LiveCycle
7 4 (0.45%) Moodle
8 3 (0.34%) OpenStack
8 3 (0.34%) SharePoint
8 3 (0.34%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.23%) Umbraco
10 1 (0.11%) Drupal
10 1 (0.11%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
Applications
1 45 (5.08%) Sketch
2 29 (3.28%) Adobe XD
3 27 (3.05%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 21 (2.37%) InVision
5 20 (2.26%) Photoshop
6 17 (1.92%) Adobe Illustrator
7 14 (1.58%) Adobe After Effects
8 12 (1.36%) Chatbot
9 11 (1.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
10 9 (1.02%) InDesign
10 9 (1.02%) Microsoft Excel
11 7 (0.79%) CINEMA 4D
12 6 (0.68%) Zeplin
13 5 (0.56%) Adobe Premiere
14 4 (0.45%) MS Visio
15 3 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
15 3 (0.34%) Trello
16 2 (0.23%) Blender
16 2 (0.23%) UserZoom
17 1 (0.11%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 7 (0.79%) SAP ERP
2 5 (0.56%) Dynamics GP
2 5 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.45%) Oracle ERP
4 3 (0.34%) Oracle BRM
5 1 (0.11%) Oracle CRM
5 1 (0.11%) Shopify
5 1 (0.11%) SmartPlant
Cloud Services
1 197 (22.26%) Figma
2 26 (2.94%) AWS
3 23 (2.60%) SaaS
4 18 (2.03%) Azure
5 13 (1.47%) Miro
6 10 (1.13%) Power Platform
7 8 (0.90%) Adobe Creative Cloud
8 4 (0.45%) Copilot Studio
8 4 (0.45%) GCP
8 4 (0.45%) Microsoft Copilot
8 4 (0.45%) PowerApps
9 3 (0.34%) ChatGPT
9 3 (0.34%) dbt
9 3 (0.34%) Google Workspace
10 2 (0.23%) AWS CloudFormation
10 2 (0.23%) AWS KMS
10 2 (0.23%) Azure Key Vault
10 2 (0.23%) Contentful
10 2 (0.23%) Microsoft 365
10 2 (0.23%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 23 (2.60%) Firewall
2 17 (1.92%) Wi-Fi
3 13 (1.47%) Network Security
4 10 (1.13%) Broadband
4 10 (1.13%) IPsec
5 6 (0.68%) 5G
5 6 (0.68%) Diameter Protocol
5 6 (0.68%) SMS
6 4 (0.45%) VLAN
6 4 (0.45%) VPN
7 3 (0.34%) 3G
7 3 (0.34%) 3GPP
7 3 (0.34%) 4G
7 3 (0.34%) GPRS
7 3 (0.34%) GSM
7 3 (0.34%) HTTP
7 3 (0.34%) IPv4
7 3 (0.34%) IPv6
7 3 (0.34%) LTE
7 3 (0.34%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (1.13%) DataStage
2 8 (0.90%) Metadata
3 5 (0.56%) Power BI
4 4 (0.45%) Oracle ODI
5 3 (0.34%) Electronic Patient Records
6 2 (0.23%) Amazon Aurora
6 2 (0.23%) Amazon RDS
6 2 (0.23%) Amazon Redshift
6 2 (0.23%) Data Vault
6 2 (0.23%) MySQL
6 2 (0.23%) NoSQL
6 2 (0.23%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (0.23%) Tableau
7 1 (0.11%) BigQuery
7 1 (0.11%) Data Lake
7 1 (0.11%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.11%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 26 (2.94%) JIRA
2 24 (2.71%) Axure RP
3 3 (0.34%) Git
4 1 (0.11%) Balsamiq
4 1 (0.11%) GitLab
4 1 (0.11%) Postman
4 1 (0.11%) SoapUI
General
1 203 (22.94%) Public Sector
2 181 (20.45%) Social Skills
3 125 (14.12%) Finance
4 61 (6.89%) Banking
5 31 (3.50%) Marketing
6 26 (2.94%) Analytical Skills
6 26 (2.94%) Influencing Skills
7 22 (2.49%) Retail
8 19 (2.15%) Legal
9 18 (2.03%) Publishing
10 17 (1.92%) Telecoms
11 14 (1.58%) Pharmaceutical
11 14 (1.58%) Presentation Skills
12 11 (1.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 10 (1.13%) Billing
14 9 (1.02%) Manufacturing
15 8 (0.90%) Organisational Skills
16 7 (0.79%) Advertising
16 7 (0.79%) Local Government
17 6 (0.68%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (4.86%) HTML
2 32 (3.62%) CSS
3 13 (1.47%) Middleware
4 8 (0.90%) REST
5 6 (0.68%) SOAP
6 5 (0.56%) .NET
6 5 (0.56%) Framer.js
6 5 (0.56%) Web Services
7 4 (0.45%) Lightning Web Components
8 3 (0.34%) AngularJS
8 3 (0.34%) JSON
8 3 (0.34%) OAuth
8 3 (0.34%) React
8 3 (0.34%) Semantic HTML
8 3 (0.34%) Visualforce
9 2 (0.23%) CSS3
9 2 (0.23%) HTML5
9 2 (0.23%) Kafka
9 2 (0.23%) OpenID
9 2 (0.23%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 50 (5.65%) Product Ownership
2 37 (4.18%) Mobile App
3 27 (3.05%) Onboarding
4 18 (2.03%) NHS
5 15 (1.69%) Mainframe
6 14 (1.58%) Data Centre
6 14 (1.58%) IoT
7 13 (1.47%) AI Agents
8 11 (1.24%) Cloud Native
8 11 (1.24%) Graphic Design
9 10 (1.13%) Animation
9 10 (1.13%) BYOD
9 10 (1.13%) VSAM
10 9 (1.02%) Data Protection Act
10 9 (1.02%) Taxonomies
11 8 (0.90%) CMDB
11 8 (0.90%) e-Learning
11 8 (0.90%) Management Information System
12 7 (0.79%) Motion Graphics
13 6 (0.68%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 13 (1.47%) Unix
2 10 (1.13%) AIX
2 10 (1.13%) Linux
2 10 (1.13%) Solaris
3 4 (0.45%) Android
4 3 (0.34%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.11%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 295 (33.33%) Service Design
2 273 (30.85%) User Experience
3 233 (26.33%) Agile
4 219 (24.75%) UX Design
5 217 (24.52%) User Research
6 161 (18.19%) Interaction Design
7 158 (17.85%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
8 143 (16.16%) Prototyping
9 121 (13.67%) Journey Map
9 121 (13.67%) Workshop Facilitation
10 97 (10.96%) Wireframes
11 78 (8.81%) AI
12 77 (8.70%) Usability Testing
13 72 (8.14%) Problem-Solving
13 72 (8.14%) Stakeholder Management
14 67 (7.57%) Analytics
15 60 (6.78%) Roadmaps
16 59 (6.67%) Design Thinking
16 59 (6.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 57 (6.44%) Storytelling
Programming Languages
1 14 (1.58%) Python
2 10 (1.13%) COBOL
2 10 (1.13%) JavaScript
3 9 (1.02%) SQL
4 4 (0.45%) Java
5 3 (0.34%) Apex Code
5 3 (0.34%) Korn
5 3 (0.34%) PL/SQL
5 3 (0.34%) SOQL
6 2 (0.23%) Bash
6 2 (0.23%) PowerShell
6 2 (0.23%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 198 (22.37%) Security Cleared
2 160 (18.08%) SC Cleared
3 50 (5.65%) Degree
4 34 (3.84%) DV Cleared
5 32 (3.62%) BPSS Clearance
6 9 (1.02%) Cisco Certification
7 8 (0.90%) CCNP
8 5 (0.56%) CISSP
8 5 (0.56%) Master's Degree
8 5 (0.56%) SAP Certification
9 4 (0.45%) CISM
9 4 (0.45%) Computer Science Degree
9 4 (0.45%) TOGAF Certification
10 3 (0.34%) CCNA
10 3 (0.34%) JNCIS
11 2 (0.23%) ITIL Certification
12 1 (0.11%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 1 (0.11%) CEH
12 1 (0.11%) PMI Certification
12 1 (0.11%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 201 (22.71%) Accessibility
2 67 (7.57%) WCAG
3 10 (1.13%) GDPR
4 8 (0.90%) ISO/IEC 20000
4 8 (0.90%) NCSC
5 7 (0.79%) Government Security Classifications
6 6 (0.68%) NIST
7 5 (0.56%) GMP
7 5 (0.56%) GxP
8 4 (0.45%) Data Quality
8 4 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 4 (0.45%) QA
9 3 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
9 3 (0.34%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.23%) SLA
11 1 (0.11%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 1 (0.11%) HL7
System Software
1 4 (0.45%) VMware Infrastructure
2 2 (0.23%) IAG
2 2 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.11%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.11%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 3 (0.34%) Kubernetes
1 3 (0.34%) Nagios
1 3 (0.34%) Terraform
2 1 (0.11%) Ansible
2 1 (0.11%) FortiGate
2 1 (0.11%) Network Intrusion Detection System
Vendors
1 74 (8.36%) Adobe
2 26 (2.94%) Microsoft
3 18 (2.03%) ServiceNow
4 16 (1.81%) Oracle
5 11 (1.24%) SAP
6 10 (1.13%) IBM
6 10 (1.13%) Salesforce
6 10 (1.13%) VMware
7 9 (1.02%) Cisco
8 7 (0.79%) Pega
9 6 (0.68%) Google
9 6 (0.68%) Juniper
9 6 (0.68%) Sage
10 5 (0.56%) BiZZdesign
10 5 (0.56%) Ericsson
10 5 (0.56%) Nokia
11 4 (0.45%) F5
12 3 (0.34%) Databricks
12 3 (0.34%) Huawei
12 3 (0.34%) SolarWinds