Product Manager Contract Job Trends

Product Manager
UK

The median Product Manager daily rate in the UK is £525, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 4 January 2026.

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

6 months to
4 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 338 299 365
Rank change year-on-year -39 +66 -30
Contract jobs requiring a Product Manager 250 252 242
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.68% 0.78% 0.56%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.74% 0.84% 0.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 190 171 182
10th Percentile £400 £409 £409
25th Percentile £436 £456 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% -4.35% -0.43%
75th Percentile £638 £713 £700
90th Percentile £701 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +0.53% -5.00% -13.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 2
10th Percentile - - £51.75
25th Percentile £32.25 - £52.50
Median hourly rate £34.50 - £55.00
75th Percentile £36.75 - £57.50
90th Percentile - - £58.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.50 - -

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 33,575 30,034 40,144
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.24% 92.68% 93.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,287 18,380 26,866
10th Percentile £300 £291 £281
25th Percentile £405 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £500
% change year-on-year -1.04% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,949 935 1,589
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.51 £14.18
25th Percentile £18.25 £21.05 £19.06
Median hourly rate £26.50 £32.50 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.46% -26.97% +36.92%
75th Percentile £60.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.00 £73.75 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -20.16% -30.00% +73.08%

Product Manager
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Product Manager' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Product Manager job vacancy trend in the UK

Product Manager
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Product Manager job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Product Manager job vacancies in the UK

Product Manager
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Product Manager over the 6 months to 4 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Product Manager in the UK

Product Manager
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Product Manager job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Product Manager job vacancies in the UK

Product Manager
Top 14 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Product Manager within the UK over the 6 months to 4 January 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 -46 231 £525 -9.95% 244
London -37 149 £550 -8.33% 121
Work from Home +7 77 £550 +4.76% 114
UK excluding London -24 74 £478 +0.53% 144
North of England -25 36 £463 -7.50% 33
North East +5 19 £450 +0.56% 1
South East -20 15 £425 -1.73% 49
Midlands -37 14 £514 +0.24% 20
North West -19 9 £475 -5.00% 15
Yorkshire -38 9 £500 -10.11% 17
West Midlands -41 8 £655 +16.44% 13
South West -5 7 £550 +34.47% 12
East Midlands -19 6 £378 -8.48% 6
East of England -11 3 £650 +8.33% 20

Product Manager Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 4 January 2026, Product Manager 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 Product Manager in the job title.

1 141 (56.40%) Roadmaps
2 130 (52.00%) Agile
3 109 (43.60%) Product Management
4 77 (30.80%) Product Roadmap
5 74 (29.60%) Stakeholder Management
6 70 (28.00%) Product Strategy
7 66 (26.40%) Product Vision
8 45 (18.00%) AI
9 39 (15.60%) Decision-Making
10 36 (14.40%) Product Backlog
11 35 (14.00%) Security Cleared
12 31 (12.40%) Analytics
13 29 (11.60%) Backlog Management
13 29 (11.60%) Continuous Improvement
13 29 (11.60%) Scrum
13 29 (11.60%) User Stories
14 28 (11.20%) SC Cleared
15 27 (10.80%) Strategic Roadmap
16 26 (10.40%) Backlog Prioritisation
16 26 (10.40%) Machine Learning
16 26 (10.40%) Problem-Solving
16 26 (10.40%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
17 25 (10.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 24 (9.60%) User Experience
19 23 (9.20%) Data Science
19 23 (9.20%) Fintech
19 23 (9.20%) User Research
20 21 (8.40%) Scaled Agile Framework
21 19 (7.60%) Customer Experience
21 19 (7.60%) Product Requirements

Product Manager 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 9 (3.60%) Confluence
2 6 (2.40%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (1.20%) PowerFactory
4 2 (0.80%) CMS
Applications
1 5 (2.00%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.40%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.40%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (0.40%) Trello
Business Applications
1 4 (1.60%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.80%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.80%) SAP GRC
3 1 (0.40%) Distributed Ledger
3 1 (0.40%) Shopify
3 1 (0.40%) Sonata
Cloud Services
1 13 (5.20%) SaaS
2 10 (4.00%) AWS
3 8 (3.20%) GCP
4 7 (2.80%) dbt
5 5 (2.00%) Azure
6 4 (1.60%) Vertex AI
7 3 (1.20%) IaaS
7 3 (1.20%) Microsoft 365
7 3 (1.20%) Microsoft Copilot
7 3 (1.20%) PaaS
7 3 (1.20%) Power Platform
8 2 (0.80%) Alation
8 2 (0.80%) AWS Step Functions
8 2 (0.80%) Azure DevOps
8 2 (0.80%) Dynamics 365
8 2 (0.80%) Fivetran
8 2 (0.80%) Microsoft Purview
8 2 (0.80%) Power Automate
9 1 (0.40%) Anthropic Claude
9 1 (0.40%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.20%) Firewall
2 2 (0.80%) ISDN
2 2 (0.80%) OpenScape
3 1 (0.40%) Network Security
3 1 (0.40%) SD-WAN
3 1 (0.40%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (3.60%) Data Warehouse
2 7 (2.80%) BigQuery
3 3 (1.20%) Data Lake
4 2 (0.80%) Amazon Redshift
4 2 (0.80%) Power BI
4 2 (0.80%) Relational Database
4 2 (0.80%) Tableau
5 1 (0.40%) Looker
5 1 (0.40%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 14 (5.60%) JIRA
2 4 (1.60%) MLflow
General
1 98 (39.20%) Social Skills
2 62 (24.80%) Finance
3 54 (21.60%) Public Sector
4 33 (13.20%) Analytical Skills
5 22 (8.80%) Banking
6 20 (8.00%) Marketing
7 19 (7.60%) Retail
8 15 (6.00%) Legal
9 10 (4.00%) Influencing Skills
10 7 (2.80%) Investment Banking
11 6 (2.40%) Advertising
12 5 (2.00%) Front Office
13 4 (1.60%) Digital Health
13 4 (1.60%) Pharmaceutical
13 4 (1.60%) Presentation Skills
14 3 (1.20%) Automotive
14 3 (1.20%) Local Government
15 2 (0.80%) Billing
15 2 (0.80%) Military
15 2 (0.80%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (0.80%) Flash
1 2 (0.80%) React
2 1 (0.40%) HTML
2 1 (0.40%) HTML5
2 1 (0.40%) Hugging Face
2 1 (0.40%) OAuth
2 1 (0.40%) OAuth2
2 1 (0.40%) OpenID
2 1 (0.40%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 39 (15.60%) Product Ownership
2 11 (4.40%) Analytical Mindset
3 10 (4.00%) Derivative
4 8 (3.20%) Mobile App
4 8 (3.20%) Onboarding
5 6 (2.40%) Digital Media
6 5 (2.00%) Cloud Native
6 5 (2.00%) Marketing Technology
7 4 (1.60%) AI Agents
7 4 (1.60%) IoT
7 4 (1.60%) Virtual Team
8 3 (1.20%) Blockchain
8 3 (1.20%) Data Protection Act
8 3 (1.20%) Data Structures
8 3 (1.20%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 3 (1.20%) Greenfield Project
8 3 (1.20%) NHS
9 2 (0.80%) Handset
9 2 (0.80%) Management Information System
9 2 (0.80%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.40%) Android
1 1 (0.40%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 141 (56.40%) Roadmaps
2 130 (52.00%) Agile
3 109 (43.60%) Product Management
4 77 (30.80%) Product Roadmap
5 74 (29.60%) Stakeholder Management
6 70 (28.00%) Product Strategy
7 66 (26.40%) Product Vision
8 45 (18.00%) AI
9 39 (15.60%) Decision-Making
10 36 (14.40%) Product Backlog
11 31 (12.40%) Analytics
12 29 (11.60%) Backlog Management
12 29 (11.60%) Continuous Improvement
12 29 (11.60%) Scrum
12 29 (11.60%) User Stories
13 27 (10.80%) Strategic Roadmap
14 26 (10.40%) Backlog Prioritisation
14 26 (10.40%) Machine Learning
14 26 (10.40%) Problem-Solving
14 26 (10.40%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
Programming Languages
1 7 (2.80%) SQL
2 1 (0.40%) Java
2 1 (0.40%) JavaScript
2 1 (0.40%) Korn
2 1 (0.40%) MATLAB
2 1 (0.40%) Python
Qualifications
1 35 (14.00%) Security Cleared
2 28 (11.20%) SC Cleared
3 14 (5.60%) Degree
4 8 (3.20%) BPSS Clearance
5 4 (1.60%) CSPO
6 3 (1.20%) DV Cleared
6 3 (1.20%) Master's Degree
6 3 (1.20%) MBA
7 1 (0.40%) APMP
7 1 (0.40%) CCNA
7 1 (0.40%) Cisco Certification
7 1 (0.40%) Computer Science Degree
7 1 (0.40%) PMI Certification
7 1 (0.40%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (3.20%) QA
2 5 (2.00%) Accessibility
2 5 (2.00%) Data Quality
3 4 (1.60%) GDPR
4 3 (1.20%) NCSC
5 2 (0.80%) GRC
6 1 (0.40%) EU AI Act
6 1 (0.40%) HIPAA
6 1 (0.40%) NIST
6 1 (0.40%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1 (0.40%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (1.60%) Kubeflow
2 1 (0.40%) Kubernetes
2 1 (0.40%) Terraform
Vendors
1 13 (5.20%) Microsoft
2 11 (4.40%) Salesforce
3 4 (1.60%) Palo Alto
4 3 (1.20%) Fortinet
4 3 (1.20%) ServiceNow
5 2 (0.80%) Atlassian
5 2 (0.80%) Avature
5 2 (0.80%) Databricks
5 2 (0.80%) DIgSILENT
5 2 (0.80%) Google
5 2 (0.80%) Mitel
5 2 (0.80%) OneLogin
5 2 (0.80%) OpenAI
5 2 (0.80%) Oracle
5 2 (0.80%) SAP
5 2 (0.80%) Zscaler
6 1 (0.40%) OneTrust
6 1 (0.40%) Spotify