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 28 January 2026.

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

6 months to
28 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 337 287 365
Rank change year-on-year -50 +78 -11
Contract jobs requiring a Product Manager 273 250 248
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.71% 0.80% 0.56%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.78% 0.86% 0.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 209 164 183
10th Percentile £396 £414 £409
25th Percentile £435 £480 £476
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% -4.35% -1.50%
75th Percentile £638 £713 £675
90th Percentile £726 £774 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £516 £506
% change year-on-year -5.08% +1.98% -11.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 3
10th Percentile - - £52.25
25th Percentile - £51.25 £53.75
Median hourly rate - £52.50 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year - -8.70% -
75th Percentile - £53.75 £63.75
90th Percentile - - £66.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - -

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 35,104 29,073 41,093
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.45% 92.88% 93.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,171 17,758 27,208
10th Percentile £300 £291 £275
25th Percentile £405 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £477 £495
% change year-on-year -0.42% -3.64% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,077 858 2,114
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.98 £13.29
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £17.23
Median hourly rate £29.60 £32.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -8.92% -13.33% +7.14%
75th Percentile £61.18 £62.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £74.53 £73.93
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £30.98 £40.00
% change year-on-year -11.23% -22.56% +33.33%

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 28 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 28 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 -48 251 £530 -7.83% 120
London -39 159 £550 -8.33% 57
Work from Home +1 85 £550 -5.01% 79
UK excluding London -16 82 £490 -5.08% 91
North of England -26 39 £473 -14.09% 17
South East -14 21 £525 +21.39% 43
North East +1 19 £450 -10.00% 2
Midlands -44 13 £415 -19.02% 12
Yorkshire -40 11 £525 -5.62% 10
North West -21 10 £500 -20.00% 5
West Midlands -36 7 £600 +6.67% 9
South West -16 6 £525 +28.05% 6
East Midlands -27 6 £378 -8.48% 3
East of England -9 4 £633 -9.64% 8

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

For the 6 months to 28 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.

1 151 (55.31%) Roadmaps
2 141 (51.65%) Agile
3 122 (44.69%) Product Management
4 82 (30.04%) Product Roadmap
5 79 (28.94%) Stakeholder Management
6 73 (26.74%) Product Strategy
7 70 (25.64%) Product Vision
8 49 (17.95%) AI
9 41 (15.02%) Product Backlog
10 39 (14.29%) Decision-Making
10 39 (14.29%) User Stories
11 37 (13.55%) Security Cleared
12 33 (12.09%) Scrum
13 32 (11.72%) Backlog Management
14 31 (11.36%) Continuous Improvement
15 30 (10.99%) Strategic Roadmap
16 29 (10.62%) Analytics
16 29 (10.62%) Backlog Prioritisation
16 29 (10.62%) Problem-Solving
16 29 (10.62%) SC Cleared
16 29 (10.62%) User Experience
16 29 (10.62%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
17 27 (9.89%) Machine Learning
18 26 (9.52%) User Research
19 25 (9.16%) Product Requirements
19 25 (9.16%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 23 (8.42%) Data Science
20 23 (8.42%) Fintech
21 22 (8.06%) Scaled Agile Framework
22 20 (7.33%) Business Case

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 10 (3.66%) Confluence
2 6 (2.20%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (1.10%) PowerFactory
4 2 (0.73%) CMS
Applications
1 5 (1.83%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 4 (1.47%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.73%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.73%) SAP GRC
3 1 (0.37%) Distributed Ledger
3 1 (0.37%) Exchequer
3 1 (0.37%) Shopify
3 1 (0.37%) Sonata
Cloud Services
1 17 (6.23%) SaaS
2 8 (2.93%) GCP
3 7 (2.56%) AWS
4 6 (2.20%) Azure
4 6 (2.20%) dbt
5 5 (1.83%) Microsoft 365
6 4 (1.47%) IaaS
6 4 (1.47%) PaaS
6 4 (1.47%) Vertex AI
7 3 (1.10%) Microsoft Copilot
7 3 (1.10%) Power Platform
8 2 (0.73%) Alation
8 2 (0.73%) Azure DevOps
8 2 (0.73%) Dynamics 365
8 2 (0.73%) Fivetran
8 2 (0.73%) Microsoft Purview
8 2 (0.73%) Power Automate
9 1 (0.37%) Figma
9 1 (0.37%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
9 1 (0.37%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.47%) Firewall
2 2 (0.73%) ISDN
2 2 (0.73%) OpenScape
3 1 (0.37%) Internet
3 1 (0.37%) Network Security
3 1 (0.37%) SD-WAN
3 1 (0.37%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (2.93%) Data Warehouse
2 7 (2.56%) BigQuery
3 3 (1.10%) Data Lake
4 2 (0.73%) Power BI
4 2 (0.73%) Relational Database
4 2 (0.73%) Tableau
5 1 (0.37%) Amazon Redshift
5 1 (0.37%) Looker
5 1 (0.37%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 15 (5.49%) JIRA
2 4 (1.47%) MLflow
General
1 107 (39.19%) Social Skills
2 66 (24.18%) Finance
3 61 (22.34%) Public Sector
4 40 (14.65%) Analytical Skills
5 22 (8.06%) Marketing
6 21 (7.69%) Banking
7 19 (6.96%) Retail
8 16 (5.86%) Legal
9 11 (4.03%) Influencing Skills
10 6 (2.20%) Advertising
10 6 (2.20%) Investment Banking
11 4 (1.47%) Aviation
11 4 (1.47%) Digital Health
11 4 (1.47%) Local Government
11 4 (1.47%) Military
11 4 (1.47%) Pharmaceutical
11 4 (1.47%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (1.10%) Automotive
12 3 (1.10%) Front Office
12 3 (1.10%) Publishing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (0.73%) Flash
1 2 (0.73%) React
2 1 (0.37%) HTML
2 1 (0.37%) HTML5
2 1 (0.37%) Hugging Face
2 1 (0.37%) OAuth
2 1 (0.37%) OAuth2
2 1 (0.37%) OpenID
2 1 (0.37%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 45 (16.48%) Product Ownership
2 11 (4.03%) Analytical Mindset
3 10 (3.66%) Onboarding
4 9 (3.30%) Derivative
5 8 (2.93%) Mobile App
6 7 (2.56%) Digital Media
7 5 (1.83%) AI Agents
7 5 (1.83%) Cloud Native
7 5 (1.83%) IoT
7 5 (1.83%) Marketing Technology
7 5 (1.83%) Virtual Team
8 4 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
8 4 (1.47%) Legacy Systems
9 3 (1.10%) Blockchain
9 3 (1.10%) Data Structures
9 3 (1.10%) Educational Technology
9 3 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
9 3 (1.10%) Media Streaming
9 3 (1.10%) NHS
10 2 (0.73%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.37%) Android
1 1 (0.37%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 151 (55.31%) Roadmaps
2 141 (51.65%) Agile
3 122 (44.69%) Product Management
4 82 (30.04%) Product Roadmap
5 79 (28.94%) Stakeholder Management
6 73 (26.74%) Product Strategy
7 70 (25.64%) Product Vision
8 49 (17.95%) AI
9 41 (15.02%) Product Backlog
10 39 (14.29%) Decision-Making
10 39 (14.29%) User Stories
11 33 (12.09%) Scrum
12 32 (11.72%) Backlog Management
13 31 (11.36%) Continuous Improvement
14 30 (10.99%) Strategic Roadmap
15 29 (10.62%) Analytics
15 29 (10.62%) Backlog Prioritisation
15 29 (10.62%) Problem-Solving
15 29 (10.62%) User Experience
15 29 (10.62%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
Programming Languages
1 8 (2.93%) SQL
2 1 (0.37%) Java
2 1 (0.37%) JavaScript
2 1 (0.37%) Korn
2 1 (0.37%) MATLAB
2 1 (0.37%) Python
Qualifications
1 37 (13.55%) Security Cleared
2 29 (10.62%) SC Cleared
3 12 (4.40%) Degree
4 10 (3.66%) BPSS Clearance
5 4 (1.47%) CSPO
6 3 (1.10%) DV Cleared
6 3 (1.10%) Master's Degree
6 3 (1.10%) MBA
7 1 (0.37%) APMP
7 1 (0.37%) CCNA
7 1 (0.37%) Cisco Certification
7 1 (0.37%) Computer Science Degree
7 1 (0.37%) PMI Certification
7 1 (0.37%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (4.40%) QA
2 7 (2.56%) Accessibility
3 4 (1.47%) Data Quality
3 4 (1.47%) GDPR
3 4 (1.47%) NCSC
4 2 (0.73%) GRC
5 1 (0.37%) EU AI Act
5 1 (0.37%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.37%) NIST
5 1 (0.37%) SLA
5 1 (0.37%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1 (0.37%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (1.47%) Kubeflow
2 1 (0.37%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 16 (5.86%) Microsoft
2 12 (4.40%) Salesforce
3 4 (1.47%) Palo Alto
3 4 (1.47%) ServiceNow
4 3 (1.10%) Fortinet
4 3 (1.10%) Google
5 2 (0.73%) Atlassian
5 2 (0.73%) Avature
5 2 (0.73%) Databricks
5 2 (0.73%) DIgSILENT
5 2 (0.73%) Mitel
5 2 (0.73%) OpenAI
5 2 (0.73%) Oracle
5 2 (0.73%) SAP
5 2 (0.73%) Virgin Media
5 2 (0.73%) Zscaler
6 1 (0.37%) Apple
6 1 (0.37%) FXall
6 1 (0.37%) OneTrust
6 1 (0.37%) Spotify