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 16 May 2026.

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

6 months to
16 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 120 175 167
Rank change year-on-year +55 -8 -35
Contract jobs requiring a Designer 997 471 617
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.08% 1.62% 1.45%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.25% 1.75% 1.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 732 353 371
10th Percentile £350 £300 £325
25th Percentile £401 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.52%
75th Percentile £538 £556 £553
90th Percentile £600 £625 £613
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £442 £450
% change year-on-year +7.47% -1.78% -5.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 10 49
10th Percentile £20.85 £22.75 £29.25
25th Percentile £27.51 £30.10 £45.00
Median hourly rate £33.99 £46.25 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year -26.51% -19.35% +24.00%
75th Percentile £51.08 £51.56 £61.30
90th Percentile £61.00 £54.60 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.99 £47.00 £57.35
% change year-on-year -27.68% -18.05% -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 44,326 26,919 39,482
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.29% 92.40% 92.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,149 17,544 25,684
10th Percentile £320 £295 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -2.78%
75th Percentile £615 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £498 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +4.74% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,891 1,039 2,653
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.83
25th Percentile £20.31 £18.20 £16.30
Median hourly rate £42.69 £28.18 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.47% -22.79% -18.89%
75th Percentile £66.38 £61.38 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £73.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £27.35 £40.00
% change year-on-year +64.53% -31.63% -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 16 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 16 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 16 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 +50 836 £463 -2.63% 187
UK excluding London +61 440 £475 +7.47% 112
London +18 416 £438 -7.89% 98
Work from Home +60 283 £460 +0.27% 137
North of England +8 135 £459 +13.75% 33
Midlands +3 90 £425 -2.02% 16
West Midlands +7 84 £425 -8.11% 13
South East -23 71 £525 +23.53% 24
North West -1 55 £404 -5.28% 18
South West -4 53 £425 -15.00% 14
East of England +9 45 £477 +0.42% 9
Yorkshire -28 43 £500 +25.00% 9
Scotland 0 42 £550 +15.79% 13
North East +2 37 £448 -5.79% 7
Wales -13 8 £513 +67.63% 2
East Midlands -22 6 £402 +24.69% 3

Designer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 16 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 (31.70%) Service Design
2 314 (31.49%) User Experience
3 261 (26.18%) Agile
4 248 (24.87%) UX Design
5 224 (22.47%) User Research
6 216 (21.66%) Accessibility
6 216 (21.66%) Security Cleared
7 207 (20.76%) Figma
8 177 (17.75%) Interaction Design
9 171 (17.15%) SC Cleared
10 161 (16.15%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
11 146 (14.64%) Prototyping
12 122 (12.24%) Workshop Facilitation
13 118 (11.84%) Journey Map
14 101 (10.13%) Wireframes
15 84 (8.43%) Adobe
15 84 (8.43%) AI
16 82 (8.22%) Stakeholder Management
17 72 (7.22%) Usability Testing
18 71 (7.12%) WCAG
19 65 (6.52%) Analytics
19 65 (6.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 64 (6.42%) Problem-Solving
21 61 (6.12%) Roadmaps
22 59 (5.92%) Collaborative Working
22 59 (5.92%) Continuous Improvement
23 58 (5.82%) Degree
24 56 (5.62%) Inclusive Design
25 54 (5.42%) Design Thinking
26 51 (5.12%) 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 24 (2.41%) CMS
2 12 (1.20%) 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
7 3 (0.30%) Umbraco
8 2 (0.20%) Camunda
8 2 (0.20%) Headless CMS
8 2 (0.20%) WordPress
9 1 (0.10%) Kentico
9 1 (0.10%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
Applications
1 43 (4.31%) Sketch
2 34 (3.41%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 32 (3.21%) Photoshop
4 28 (2.81%) Adobe Illustrator
5 23 (2.31%) Adobe XD
6 20 (2.01%) Adobe After Effects
7 14 (1.40%) InVision
8 12 (1.20%) Chatbot
8 12 (1.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
9 10 (1.00%) Microsoft Excel
10 8 (0.80%) InDesign
11 6 (0.60%) CINEMA 4D
12 5 (0.50%) Adobe Premiere
12 5 (0.50%) AutoCAD
12 5 (0.50%) MS Visio
12 5 (0.50%) SOLIDWORKS
13 4 (0.40%) Revit
14 3 (0.30%) Trello
14 3 (0.30%) Zeplin
15 2 (0.20%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 4 (0.40%) Oracle ERP
2 2 (0.20%) Dynamics GP
2 2 (0.20%) SAP ERP
2 2 (0.20%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.20%) Shopify
3 1 (0.10%) Eloqua
3 1 (0.10%) SmartPlant
Cloud Services
1 207 (20.76%) Figma
2 27 (2.71%) AWS
3 24 (2.41%) SaaS
4 16 (1.60%) Azure
5 11 (1.10%) Miro
6 9 (0.90%) Adobe Creative Cloud
7 6 (0.60%) Power Platform
8 4 (0.40%) GCP
9 3 (0.30%) ChatGPT
9 3 (0.30%) Dynamics 365
9 3 (0.30%) Google Workspace
9 3 (0.30%) 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%) PowerApps
10 2 (0.20%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 25 (2.51%) Firewall
2 20 (2.01%) 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%) BGP
8 3 (0.30%) DNS
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 (0.10%) Data Lake
6 1 (0.10%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.10%) Pinecone
6 1 (0.10%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 24 (2.41%) JIRA
2 18 (1.81%) Axure RP
3 3 (0.30%) 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
1 221 (22.17%) Public Sector
2 191 (19.16%) Social Skills
3 129 (12.94%) Finance
4 60 (6.02%) Banking
5 40 (4.01%) Marketing
6 33 (3.31%) Retail
7 25 (2.51%) Telecoms
8 24 (2.41%) Influencing Skills
9 23 (2.31%) Analytical Skills
9 23 (2.31%) Legal
10 20 (2.01%) Automotive
10 20 (2.01%) Publishing
11 18 (1.81%) Manufacturing
12 15 (1.50%) Presentation Skills
13 13 (1.30%) Pharmaceutical
14 11 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 10 (1.00%) Local Government
16 9 (0.90%) Organisational Skills
17 7 (0.70%) Aerospace
17 7 (0.70%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 41 (4.11%) HTML
2 29 (2.91%) CSS
3 13 (1.30%) Middleware
4 8 (0.80%) REST
5 6 (0.60%) .NET
5 6 (0.60%) React
5 6 (0.60%) SOAP
6 5 (0.50%) Web Services
7 3 (0.30%) CSS3
7 3 (0.30%) Framer.js
7 3 (0.30%) HTML5
7 3 (0.30%) JSON
7 3 (0.30%) Lightning Web Components
7 3 (0.30%) OAuth
7 3 (0.30%) Semantic HTML
7 3 (0.30%) Visualforce
8 2 (0.20%) Kafka
8 2 (0.20%) OpenID
8 2 (0.20%) RESTful
8 2 (0.20%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 56 (5.62%) Product Ownership
2 35 (3.51%) Mobile App
3 27 (2.71%) Onboarding
4 25 (2.51%) NHS
5 21 (2.11%) Animation
6 17 (1.71%) Data Centre
7 15 (1.50%) Cloud Native
7 15 (1.50%) Graphic Design
7 15 (1.50%) IoT
7 15 (1.50%) Mainframe
8 13 (1.30%) AI Agents
8 13 (1.30%) Taxonomies
9 11 (1.10%) BYOD
10 10 (1.00%) Management Information System
10 10 (1.00%) VSAM
11 8 (0.80%) CMDB
11 8 (0.80%) Data Protection Act
12 7 (0.70%) Motion Graphics
13 6 (0.60%) e-Learning
14 5 (0.50%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 10 (1.00%) AIX
1 10 (1.00%) Linux
1 10 (1.00%) Solaris
1 10 (1.00%) Unix
2 9 (0.90%) Android
3 8 (0.80%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.10%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 316 (31.70%) Service Design
2 314 (31.49%) User Experience
3 261 (26.18%) Agile
4 248 (24.87%) UX Design
5 224 (22.47%) User Research
6 177 (17.75%) Interaction Design
7 161 (16.15%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
8 146 (14.64%) Prototyping
9 122 (12.24%) Workshop Facilitation
10 118 (11.84%) Journey Map
11 101 (10.13%) Wireframes
12 84 (8.43%) AI
13 82 (8.22%) Stakeholder Management
14 72 (7.22%) Usability Testing
15 65 (6.52%) Analytics
15 65 (6.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 64 (6.42%) Problem-Solving
17 61 (6.12%) Roadmaps
18 59 (5.92%) Collaborative Working
18 59 (5.92%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 10 (1.00%) COBOL
1 10 (1.00%) JavaScript
1 10 (1.00%) Python
2 3 (0.30%) Apex Code
2 3 (0.30%) Java
2 3 (0.30%) Korn
2 3 (0.30%) SOQL
2 3 (0.30%) SQL
3 2 (0.20%) Bash
3 2 (0.20%) PowerShell
3 2 (0.20%) Ruby
3 2 (0.20%) TypeScript
4 1 (0.10%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 216 (21.66%) Security Cleared
2 171 (17.15%) SC Cleared
3 58 (5.82%) Degree
4 46 (4.61%) BPSS Clearance
5 39 (3.91%) DV Cleared
6 11 (1.10%) Cisco Certification
7 9 (0.90%) CCNP
8 5 (0.50%) CISSP
8 5 (0.50%) Master's Degree
9 4 (0.40%) CCNA
9 4 (0.40%) CISM
9 4 (0.40%) Computer Science Degree
9 4 (0.40%) TOGAF Certification
10 3 (0.30%) JNCIS
11 2 (0.20%) ITIL Certification
11 2 (0.20%) SAP 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
1 216 (21.66%) Accessibility
2 71 (7.12%) 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
6 5 (0.50%) QA
7 4 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 3 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
8 3 (0.30%) 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 (0.40%) VMware Infrastructure
2 3 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.20%) Firmware
3 2 (0.20%) IAG
4 1 (0.10%) Active Directory
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 (0.10%) Network Intrusion Detection System
Vendors
1 84 (8.43%) Adobe
2 23 (2.31%) Microsoft
3 16 (1.60%) ServiceNow
4 13 (1.30%) Cisco
4 13 (1.30%) Oracle
5 10 (1.00%) IBM
5 10 (1.00%) VMware
6 8 (0.80%) Juniper
6 8 (0.80%) Salesforce
7 6 (0.60%) SAP
8 5 (0.50%) BiZZdesign
8 5 (0.50%) Ericsson
8 5 (0.50%) F5
8 5 (0.50%) Google
8 5 (0.50%) Nokia
9 3 (0.30%) Databricks
9 3 (0.30%) Huawei
9 3 (0.30%) MuleSoft
9 3 (0.30%) SolarWinds
9 3 (0.30%) Virgin Media