Product Owner Contract Job Trends

Product Owner
UK

The median Product Owner daily rate in the UK is £500, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 19 September 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 348 338 371
Rank change year-on-year -10 +33 +52
Contract jobs requiring a Product Owner 214 233 277
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.65% 0.60% 0.56%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.71% 0.65% 0.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 148 163 204
10th Percentile £357 £403 £450
25th Percentile £405 £511 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% - +4.35%
75th Percentile £596 £688 £650
90th Percentile £661 £761 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £464 £550 £569
% change year-on-year -15.68% -3.30% +8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £101.75
Median hourly rate £43.00 - £103.50
75th Percentile - - £105.25
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £103.50

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 30,009 35,817 46,695
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.07% 92.96% 94.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,949 22,029 31,957
10th Percentile £278 £300 £300
25th Percentile £400 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,585 1,680 1,499
10th Percentile £13.75 £14.73 £14.99
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.50 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -41.51% -3.37% +71.15%
75th Percentile £52.50 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £43.75
% change year-on-year -44.11% +2.86% +98.86%

Product Owner
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Product Owner in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Product Owner in the UK

Product Owner
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

Product Owner
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Product Owner over the 6 months to 19 September 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Product Owner in the UK

Product Owner
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

Product Owner
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 Product Owner within the UK over the 6 months to 19 September 2025. 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 -15 187 £500 -16.67% 166
London -25 100 £525 -19.23% 90
UK excluding London +23 96 £464 -15.68% 114
Work from Home -16 59 £525 -12.50% 78
Midlands -8 29 £402 -26.91% 13
South East +5 25 £450 -18.18% 60
East Midlands +6 19 £380 -20.00% 5
North of England -16 18 £500 -14.71% 27
North West 0 13 £500 -14.53% 21
South West +25 11 £633 +5.50% 11
West Midlands -10 10 £475 -13.64% 7
Scotland -6 9 £413 -25.00% 2
Yorkshire -15 4 £500 -14.89% 4
East of England - 3 £425 -
Wales - 3 £463 -
North East - 1 £475 - 2

Product Owner Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 19 September 2025, Product Owner contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Product Owner in the job title.

1 213 (99.53%) Product Ownership
2 160 (74.77%) Agile
3 104 (48.60%) Product Backlog
4 103 (48.13%) Roadmaps
5 101 (47.20%) User Stories
6 77 (35.98%) Backlog Management
7 76 (35.51%) Scrum
8 69 (32.24%) Social Skills
9 66 (30.84%) Finance
10 65 (30.37%) Product Roadmap
11 63 (29.44%) Backlog Prioritisation
11 63 (29.44%) Stakeholder Management
12 54 (25.23%) Product Vision
13 45 (21.03%) JIRA
14 38 (17.76%) Product Management
15 36 (16.82%) Acceptance Criteria
16 33 (15.42%) Product Strategy
17 32 (14.95%) Sprint Planning
17 32 (14.95%) Confluence
17 32 (14.95%) Analytical Skills
18 31 (14.49%) Continuous Improvement
18 31 (14.49%) Problem-Solving
19 30 (14.02%) Banking
20 27 (12.62%) Scaled Agile Framework
21 26 (12.15%) User Experience
22 24 (11.21%) Analytics
22 24 (11.21%) Stakeholder Engagement
22 24 (11.21%) Azure
22 24 (11.21%) Microsoft
23 23 (10.75%) Decision-Making

Product Owner Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 32 (14.95%) Confluence
2 8 (3.74%) CMS
3 5 (2.34%) WordPress
4 3 (1.40%) Drupal
5 2 (0.93%) Sitecore CMS
5 2 (0.93%) WebSphere
6 1 (0.47%) Apache
6 1 (0.47%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.47%) Appian
6 1 (0.47%) SharePoint
Applications
1 2 (0.93%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.47%) Adobe XD
2 1 (0.47%) InVision
2 1 (0.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.47%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.47%) Sketch
2 1 (0.47%) Trello
Business Applications
1 8 (3.74%) Dynamics CRM
2 7 (3.27%) Oracle ERP
2 7 (3.27%) Oracle SCM
3 4 (1.87%) Payment Gateway
4 2 (0.93%) Primavera
5 1 (0.47%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 24 (11.21%) Azure
2 14 (6.54%) AWS
3 10 (4.67%) Dynamics 365
4 9 (4.21%) SaaS
5 7 (3.27%) Figma
5 7 (3.27%) Miro
5 7 (3.27%) OCI
6 6 (2.80%) Microsoft 365
7 5 (2.34%) Azure DevOps
8 4 (1.87%) Entra ID
8 4 (1.87%) GCP
8 4 (1.87%) GitHub
8 4 (1.87%) Power Platform
9 2 (0.93%) Microsoft Purview
9 2 (0.93%) Slack
10 1 (0.47%) Amazon S3
10 1 (0.47%) AWS Lambda
10 1 (0.47%) Azure Data Factory
10 1 (0.47%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
10 1 (0.47%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.87%) Firewall
2 3 (1.40%) Network Security
3 2 (0.93%) BGP
3 2 (0.93%) DHCP
3 2 (0.93%) DNS
3 2 (0.93%) EIGRP
3 2 (0.93%) HTTP
3 2 (0.93%) IPsec
3 2 (0.93%) OSPF
3 2 (0.93%) Software-Defined Networking
3 2 (0.93%) SSL
3 2 (0.93%) TACACS
3 2 (0.93%) VLAN
3 2 (0.93%) VPN
3 2 (0.93%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (1.40%) Data Lake
1 3 (1.40%) Data Warehouse
2 2 (0.93%) Elasticsearch
2 2 (0.93%) Power BI
3 1 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
3 1 (0.47%) Data Hub
3 1 (0.47%) DynamoDB
3 1 (0.47%) GIS
3 1 (0.47%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (0.47%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 45 (21.03%) JIRA
2 3 (1.40%) GitLab
3 1 (0.47%) git-flow
3 1 (0.47%) Storybook
General
1 69 (32.24%) Social Skills
2 66 (30.84%) Finance
3 32 (14.95%) Analytical Skills
4 30 (14.02%) Banking
5 15 (7.01%) Marketing
6 14 (6.54%) Public Sector
7 13 (6.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 12 (5.61%) Retail
9 7 (3.27%) Influencing Skills
10 6 (2.80%) Aerospace
10 6 (2.80%) Investment Banking
11 5 (2.34%) Telecoms
12 3 (1.40%) Front Office
12 3 (1.40%) Legal
12 3 (1.40%) Presentation Skills
13 2 (0.93%) Back Office
13 2 (0.93%) Games
13 2 (0.93%) Retail Banking
14 1 (0.47%) Corporate Banking
14 1 (0.47%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (1.87%) EDI
1 4 (1.87%) LDAP
1 4 (1.87%) SailPoint
2 3 (1.40%) FIDO
2 3 (1.40%) HTML
3 2 (0.93%) .NET
3 2 (0.93%) AngularJS
3 2 (0.93%) CSS
3 2 (0.93%) Flash
3 2 (0.93%) Flutter
3 2 (0.93%) RESTful
4 1 (0.47%) ADO
4 1 (0.47%) HTML5
4 1 (0.47%) Kafka
4 1 (0.47%) MapLibre
4 1 (0.47%) Pandas
4 1 (0.47%) React
Miscellaneous
1 213 (99.53%) Product Ownership
2 11 (5.14%) Onboarding
3 7 (3.27%) Mobile App
4 6 (2.80%) Analytical Mindset
4 6 (2.80%) Data Protection Act
5 5 (2.34%) Greenfield Project
5 5 (2.34%) Self-Motivation
6 4 (1.87%) Derivative
6 4 (1.87%) Reinsurance
7 3 (1.40%) Legacy Systems
7 3 (1.40%) OTC Derivatives
7 3 (1.40%) Reference Data
7 3 (1.40%) Virtual Team
8 2 (0.93%) AI Agents
8 2 (0.93%) Cloud Native
8 2 (0.93%) Equities
8 2 (0.93%) Fixed Income
8 2 (0.93%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 2 (0.93%) Management Information System
8 2 (0.93%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 2 (0.93%) Android
1 2 (0.93%) Apple iOS
1 2 (0.93%) Windows
2 1 (0.47%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 160 (74.77%) Agile
2 104 (48.60%) Product Backlog
3 103 (48.13%) Roadmaps
4 101 (47.20%) User Stories
5 77 (35.98%) Backlog Management
6 76 (35.51%) Scrum
7 65 (30.37%) Product Roadmap
8 63 (29.44%) Backlog Prioritisation
8 63 (29.44%) Stakeholder Management
9 54 (25.23%) Product Vision
10 38 (17.76%) Product Management
11 36 (16.82%) Acceptance Criteria
12 33 (15.42%) Product Strategy
13 32 (14.95%) Sprint Planning
14 31 (14.49%) Continuous Improvement
14 31 (14.49%) Problem-Solving
15 27 (12.62%) Scaled Agile Framework
16 26 (12.15%) User Experience
17 24 (11.21%) Analytics
17 24 (11.21%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 14 (6.54%) SQL
2 4 (1.87%) JavaScript
2 4 (1.87%) Python
3 2 (0.93%) C#
3 2 (0.93%) Java
3 2 (0.93%) Korn
4 1 (0.47%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 13 (6.07%) CSPO
2 9 (4.21%) Degree
2 9 (4.21%) Security Cleared
3 4 (1.87%) SC Cleared
4 2 (0.93%) BPSS Clearance
4 2 (0.93%) Cisco Certification
4 2 (0.93%) OCP
4 2 (0.93%) Oracle Certification
5 1 (0.47%) (ISC)2 CCSP
5 1 (0.47%) CBAP
5 1 (0.47%) CCNA
5 1 (0.47%) CCSP
5 1 (0.47%) CISM
5 1 (0.47%) CISMP
5 1 (0.47%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (0.47%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (6.07%) QA
2 8 (3.74%) GDPR
3 5 (2.34%) Accessibility
4 4 (1.87%) GRC
4 4 (1.87%) HIPAA
4 4 (1.87%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 3 (1.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 3 (1.40%) NIST
5 3 (1.40%) NIST 800
5 3 (1.40%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.93%) Data Quality
6 2 (0.93%) MiFID
6 2 (0.93%) PSD2
7 1 (0.47%) EMIR
7 1 (0.47%) FATCA
7 1 (0.47%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.47%) SEPA
System Software
1 2 (0.93%) Docker
Systems Management
1 8 (3.74%) Single Sign-On
2 2 (0.93%) Kubernetes
2 2 (0.93%) Nagios
3 1 (0.47%) Netcool
3 1 (0.47%) SCCM
3 1 (0.47%) Terraform
Vendors
1 24 (11.21%) Microsoft
2 9 (4.21%) Salesforce
3 8 (3.74%) Databricks
4 7 (3.27%) Oracle
5 6 (2.80%) SAP
6 4 (1.87%) Cisco
6 4 (1.87%) CyberArk
6 4 (1.87%) IBM
6 4 (1.87%) Okta
7 3 (1.40%) SolarWinds
8 2 (0.93%) Adobe
8 2 (0.93%) Arista
8 2 (0.93%) CA Agile Central
8 2 (0.93%) Google
8 2 (0.93%) HubSpot
8 2 (0.93%) Juniper
8 2 (0.93%) ServiceNow
8 2 (0.93%) Sitecore
8 2 (0.93%) Spotify
9 1 (0.47%) Ariba