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 25 September 2026.

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

6 months to
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 305 346 338
Rank change year-on-year +41 -8 +13
Contract jobs requiring a Product Manager 464 226 233
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.85% 0.68% 0.61%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.92% 0.75% 0.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 334 162 163
10th Percentile £400 £376 £358
25th Percentile £454 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -5.45% -3.08%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £700
90th Percentile £692 £699 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +3.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 1 0
10th Percentile £71.25 - -
25th Percentile £72.50 £32.25 -
Median hourly rate £75.00 £34.50 -
Median % change year-on-year +117.39% - -
75th Percentile £77.50 £36.75 -
90th Percentile £85.00 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £75.00 £34.50 -
% change year-on-year +117.39% - -

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 50,616 30,052 35,689
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.25% 91.07% 92.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,900 18,989 21,757
10th Percentile £325 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £731 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,913 1,614 1,619
10th Percentile £14.50 £13.75 £14.84
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.30 £20.88
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.70 £51.65 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.95 £69.65 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.90
% change year-on-year +69.02% -42.72% +0.34%

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 25 September 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
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Product Manager over the 6 months to 25 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Product Manager 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 25 September 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 +35 420 £525 - 1,690
UK excluding London +50 221 £515 +3.00% 615
London -56 178 £550 +4.27% 1,154
Work from Home -6 118 £500 -3.85% 681
North of England -1 76 £514 +0.29% 172
South East -30 47 £575 +47.06% 132
South West +4 45 £544 -1.09% 67
North West -21 39 £550 +7.32% 89
Yorkshire -10 31 £513 +2.60% 60
West Midlands -22 31 £463 -19.57% 61
Midlands -38 31 £463 +5.41% 101
East of England -13 21 £488 -27.78% 48
North East -37 12 £450 -12.20% 23
Scotland -26 4 £525 +9.38% 53

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

For the 6 months to 25 September 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.

1 311 (67.03%) Roadmaps
2 281 (60.56%) Agile
3 202 (43.53%) Stakeholder Management
4 200 (43.10%) Product Management
5 152 (32.76%) Product Roadmap
6 151 (32.54%) Backlog Prioritisation
7 144 (31.03%) Product Backlog
8 143 (30.82%) Product Vision
9 118 (25.43%) Continuous Improvement
9 118 (25.43%) Security Cleared
10 116 (25.00%) Product Strategy
11 97 (20.91%) Strategic Roadmap
12 93 (20.04%) SC Cleared
13 88 (18.97%) Decision-Making
14 83 (17.89%) User Stories
15 78 (16.81%) Backlog Management
16 76 (16.38%) Analytics
17 75 (16.16%) AI
18 72 (15.52%) Scrum
19 59 (12.72%) Azure
19 59 (12.72%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
20 58 (12.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
21 51 (10.99%) User Experience
22 49 (10.56%) Backlog Refinement
23 48 (10.34%) AWS
23 48 (10.34%) Business Case
24 47 (10.13%) Scaled Agile Framework
25 46 (9.91%) JIRA
26 45 (9.70%) User Research
27 44 (9.48%) Acceptance Criteria

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 42 (9.05%) Confluence
2 5 (1.08%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.43%) Apache
3 2 (0.43%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.43%) IBM Transformation Extender
3 2 (0.43%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.22%) Kinematics
Applications
1 6 (1.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.08%) Notion
3 3 (0.65%) Chatbot
3 3 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.22%) Trello
Business Applications
1 7 (1.51%) Shopify
2 6 (1.29%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.86%) Remedy ITSM
4 2 (0.43%) Payment Gateway
4 2 (0.43%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.43%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.22%) Aladdin
5 1 (0.22%) Dynamics GP
5 1 (0.22%) Maximo
5 1 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.22%) SAP EHS
5 1 (0.22%) SAP Retail
5 1 (0.22%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 59 (12.72%) Azure
2 48 (10.34%) AWS
3 15 (3.23%) Power Platform
3 15 (3.23%) SaaS
4 14 (3.02%) Azure DevOps
5 9 (1.94%) GCP
5 9 (1.94%) Snowflake
6 8 (1.72%) GitHub
7 6 (1.29%) dbt
7 6 (1.29%) Miro
8 4 (0.86%) Dynamics 365
8 4 (0.86%) GitHub Actions
8 4 (0.86%) Google Analytics
9 3 (0.65%) Azure Monitor
9 3 (0.65%) Microsoft 365
9 3 (0.65%) Microsoft Purview
9 3 (0.65%) Power Automate
10 2 (0.43%) Apple Pay
10 2 (0.43%) Collibra
10 2 (0.43%) Google Pay
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.43%) Broadband
1 2 (0.43%) SD-WAN
1 2 (0.43%) SMS
1 2 (0.43%) WAN
2 1 (0.22%) NFC
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (2.80%) Metadata
1 13 (2.80%) Power BI
2 11 (2.37%) Data Warehouse
3 9 (1.94%) Data Lake
4 5 (1.08%) Big Data
5 4 (0.86%) Delta Lake
5 4 (0.86%) Tableau
6 3 (0.65%) Semantic Layer
7 2 (0.43%) Amazon Redshift
7 2 (0.43%) BigQuery
7 2 (0.43%) Looker
8 1 (0.22%) Elasticsearch
8 1 (0.22%) Electronic Patient Records
8 1 (0.22%) Mixpanel
8 1 (0.22%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.22%) Redis
8 1 (0.22%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 46 (9.91%) JIRA
2 2 (0.43%) Team Foundation Server
3 1 (0.22%) CircleCI
3 1 (0.22%) Rational DOORS
General
1 132 (28.45%) Social Skills
2 88 (18.97%) Public Sector
3 82 (17.67%) Finance
4 54 (11.64%) Retail
5 51 (10.99%) Analytical Skills
6 44 (9.48%) Marketing
7 32 (6.90%) Influencing Skills
8 25 (5.39%) Aerospace
9 23 (4.96%) Banking
10 17 (3.66%) Legal
11 13 (2.80%) Manufacturing
12 9 (1.94%) Aviation
12 9 (1.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 8 (1.72%) Military
14 6 (1.29%) Local Government
14 6 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
15 5 (1.08%) Retail Banking
16 4 (0.86%) Billing
16 4 (0.86%) Electronics
16 4 (0.86%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (1.29%) RESTful
2 4 (0.86%) Middleware
3 3 (0.65%) Azure Blueprints
3 3 (0.65%) SOAP
3 3 (0.65%) Terraform
3 3 (0.65%) Web Services
4 2 (0.43%) Gherkin
4 2 (0.43%) JSON
4 2 (0.43%) OAuth
5 1 (0.22%) Django
5 1 (0.22%) FastAPI
5 1 (0.22%) Flutter
5 1 (0.22%) JSON Schema
5 1 (0.22%) MACH
5 1 (0.22%) Model Context Protocol
5 1 (0.22%) REST
5 1 (0.22%) Spring
5 1 (0.22%) Spring Boot
5 1 (0.22%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 105 (22.63%) Product Ownership
2 26 (5.60%) Legacy Systems
3 18 (3.88%) Virtual Team
4 14 (3.02%) Mobile App
4 14 (3.02%) Onboarding
5 13 (2.80%) Cloud Native
6 12 (2.59%) Data Protection Act
7 10 (2.16%) Analytical Mindset
8 8 (1.72%) Distributed Systems
9 7 (1.51%) Management Information System
10 6 (1.29%) NHS
11 5 (1.08%) Credit Risk
12 4 (0.86%) Educational Technology
12 4 (0.86%) Robotics
13 3 (0.65%) AI Agents
13 3 (0.65%) Distributed Architecture
13 3 (0.65%) FMCG
13 3 (0.65%) Security Posture
13 3 (0.65%) Self-Motivation
13 3 (0.65%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.65%) Android
1 3 (0.65%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 311 (67.03%) Roadmaps
2 281 (60.56%) Agile
3 202 (43.53%) Stakeholder Management
4 200 (43.10%) Product Management
5 152 (32.76%) Product Roadmap
6 151 (32.54%) Backlog Prioritisation
7 144 (31.03%) Product Backlog
8 143 (30.82%) Product Vision
9 118 (25.43%) Continuous Improvement
10 116 (25.00%) Product Strategy
11 97 (20.91%) Strategic Roadmap
12 88 (18.97%) Decision-Making
13 83 (17.89%) User Stories
14 78 (16.81%) Backlog Management
15 76 (16.38%) Analytics
16 75 (16.16%) AI
17 72 (15.52%) Scrum
18 59 (12.72%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
19 58 (12.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 51 (10.99%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 17 (3.66%) SQL
2 10 (2.16%) Python
3 3 (0.65%) Bash
4 2 (0.43%) Korn
5 1 (0.22%) Java
5 1 (0.22%) JavaScript
5 1 (0.22%) PL/SQL
5 1 (0.22%) Ruby
5 1 (0.22%) SPARQL
5 1 (0.22%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 118 (25.43%) Security Cleared
2 93 (20.04%) SC Cleared
3 42 (9.05%) Degree
4 35 (7.54%) BPSS Clearance
5 12 (2.59%) DV Cleared
6 7 (1.51%) PRINCE2 Certification
7 5 (1.08%) CSPO
7 5 (1.08%) PMI Certification
7 5 (1.08%) PMP
8 3 (0.65%) Master's Degree
9 2 (0.43%) Computer Science Degree
10 1 (0.22%) APMG
10 1 (0.22%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (4.31%) Data Quality
2 19 (4.09%) Accessibility
3 13 (2.80%) QA
4 8 (1.72%) WCAG
5 6 (1.29%) GDPR
6 2 (0.43%) GRC
6 2 (0.43%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.43%) PSD2
7 1 (0.22%) ARP4761
7 1 (0.22%) Basel III
7 1 (0.22%) DICOM
7 1 (0.22%) DO-160
7 1 (0.22%) DO-254
7 1 (0.22%) IEC 61508
7 1 (0.22%) IFRS
7 1 (0.22%) IFRS 9
7 1 (0.22%) ISO 26262
7 1 (0.22%) PMO
System Software
1 2 (0.43%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (0.86%) Tivoli
2 3 (0.65%) Ansible
2 3 (0.65%) Kubernetes
2 3 (0.65%) MOM
2 3 (0.65%) Single Sign-On
3 2 (0.43%) Tivoli Monitoring
4 1 (0.22%) Grafana
4 1 (0.22%) Kibana
4 1 (0.22%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 20 (4.31%) Microsoft
2 12 (2.59%) Google
3 8 (1.72%) Salesforce
4 6 (1.29%) IBM
4 6 (1.29%) SAP
5 5 (1.08%) Databricks
6 4 (0.86%) JDA
6 4 (0.86%) Planview
6 4 (0.86%) RedPrairie
6 4 (0.86%) Remedy
6 4 (0.86%) ServiceNow
6 4 (0.86%) Splunk
7 3 (0.65%) BMC
7 3 (0.65%) EMC
7 3 (0.65%) Oracle
7 3 (0.65%) UiPath
8 2 (0.43%) Klarna
8 2 (0.43%) MicroStrategy
8 2 (0.43%) OneLogin
8 2 (0.43%) PayPal