Product Owner Contract Job Trends

Product Owner
UK

The median Product Owner daily rate in the UK is £525, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 10 September 2026.

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

6 months to
10 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 374 341 347
Rank change year-on-year -33 +6 +36
Contract jobs requiring a Product Owner 322 214 223
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.59% 0.65% 0.58%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.64% 0.71% 0.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 187 149 153
10th Percentile £400 £357 £400
25th Percentile £490 £406 £506
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £588
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -14.89% -2.08%
75th Percentile £625 £594 £693
90th Percentile £716 £660 £785
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £463 £550
% change year-on-year +8.11% -15.91% -3.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 1 0
10th Percentile £71.48 - -
25th Percentile £83.00 - -
Median hourly rate £87.16 £43.00 -
Median % change year-on-year +102.70% - -
75th Percentile £102.80 - -
90th Percentile £104.50 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £87.16 - -

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 50,324 30,039 35,625
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.36% 91.06% 93.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,923 18,938 22,148
10th Percentile £325 £281 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.32%
75th Percentile £625 £622 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,732 1,556 1,742
10th Percentile £14.56 £13.67 £14.73
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.06 £20.50
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.84 £52.81 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.90 £70.16 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +12.50%

Product Owner
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Product Owner job vacancy trend 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 10 September 2026.

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
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Product Owner over the 6 months to 10 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Product Owner in the UK

Product Owner
Top 15 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 10 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 -30 288 £525 +5.00% 162
London -16 161 £536 +2.14% 94
UK excluding London -83 132 £500 +8.11% 73
Work from Home -35 87 £600 +14.29% 69
North of England -48 40 £507 +1.30% 21
South East -52 36 £550 +22.22% 13
Yorkshire -19 29 £550 +10.00% 9
Midlands -62 23 £509 +26.49% 6
West Midlands -32 22 £525 +10.53% 2
South West -34 21 £500 -11.97% 15
Scotland -38 12 £525 +23.53% 6
North West -57 10 £500 - 11
East of England -26 5 £488 +14.71% 13
East Midlands -36 1 £388 -0.51% 4
North East -46 1 £400 -15.79% 1

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

For the 6 months to 10 September 2026, Product Owner 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 Owner in the job title.

1 195 (60.56%) Agile
2 173 (53.73%) Roadmaps
3 145 (45.03%) Stakeholder Management
4 132 (40.99%) User Stories
5 131 (40.68%) Product Backlog
6 121 (37.58%) Backlog Prioritisation
7 92 (28.57%) Backlog Management
8 90 (27.95%) Product Roadmap
9 87 (27.02%) Acceptance Criteria
10 79 (24.53%) Continuous Improvement
11 71 (22.05%) Product Vision
12 66 (20.50%) Decision-Making
13 65 (20.19%) Scrum
14 59 (18.32%) JIRA
15 58 (18.01%) Sprint Planning
16 56 (17.39%) Security Cleared
17 50 (15.53%) AI
18 48 (14.91%) Epics
18 48 (14.91%) SC Cleared
19 47 (14.60%) Analytics
20 45 (13.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
21 44 (13.66%) Product Management
22 39 (12.11%) AWS
22 39 (12.11%) Problem-Solving
23 37 (11.49%) Confluence
24 36 (11.18%) Scaled Agile Framework
25 35 (10.87%) Requirements Gathering
26 34 (10.56%) DevOps
27 33 (10.25%) Strategic Roadmap
28 32 (9.94%) Azure

Product Owner 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 37 (11.49%) Confluence
2 5 (1.55%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 4 (1.24%) CMS
4 2 (0.62%) Headless CMS
5 1 (0.31%) Apache
5 1 (0.31%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.31%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.31%) Moodle
Applications
1 3 (0.93%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.62%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 2 (0.62%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.31%) Notion
Business Applications
1 8 (2.48%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (1.86%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.93%) SAP SD
4 2 (0.62%) Oracle ERP
4 2 (0.62%) Oracle Payables
4 2 (0.62%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.62%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.62%) Workfront
5 1 (0.31%) IBM Planning Analytics
5 1 (0.31%) ResourceLink
5 1 (0.31%) SAP IS-U
5 1 (0.31%) Sonata
Cloud Services
1 39 (12.11%) AWS
2 32 (9.94%) Azure
3 11 (3.42%) Collibra
4 10 (3.11%) GCP
4 10 (3.11%) SaaS
5 9 (2.80%) Dynamics 365
6 7 (2.17%) Azure DevOps
6 7 (2.17%) Figma
6 7 (2.17%) OpenShift
6 7 (2.17%) Power Platform
7 6 (1.86%) Entra ID
7 6 (1.86%) GitHub
8 4 (1.24%) Miro
8 4 (1.24%) PaaS
8 4 (1.24%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
9 3 (0.93%) Adobe Analytics
9 3 (0.93%) Azure Data Factory
9 3 (0.93%) CloudFront
9 3 (0.93%) dbt
9 3 (0.93%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 15 (4.66%) Broadband
2 2 (0.62%) Wireless
3 1 (0.31%) NGN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (6.52%) Metadata
2 10 (3.11%) Delta Lake
2 10 (3.11%) Parquet
3 5 (1.55%) Data Lake
3 5 (1.55%) DTS
3 5 (1.55%) Power BI
4 3 (0.93%) Big Data
4 3 (0.93%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (0.31%) Amazon Redshift
5 1 (0.31%) BigQuery
5 1 (0.31%) Hadoop
5 1 (0.31%) Looker
5 1 (0.31%) MongoDB
5 1 (0.31%) Semantic Layer
5 1 (0.31%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 59 (18.32%) JIRA
2 2 (0.62%) Postman
General
1 93 (28.88%) Finance
2 90 (27.95%) Social Skills
3 47 (14.60%) Banking
4 43 (13.35%) Analytical Skills
5 25 (7.76%) Marketing
5 25 (7.76%) Retail
6 24 (7.45%) Public Sector
7 20 (6.21%) Influencing Skills
8 18 (5.59%) Aerospace
9 15 (4.66%) Legal
10 14 (4.35%) Retail Banking
11 11 (3.42%) Corporate Banking
12 10 (3.11%) Investment Banking
12 10 (3.11%) Manufacturing
12 10 (3.11%) Pharmaceutical
13 6 (1.86%) Presentation Skills
14 3 (0.93%) Financial Institution
14 3 (0.93%) Telecoms
15 2 (0.62%) Front Office
15 2 (0.62%) Games
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (3.11%) SailPoint
2 9 (2.80%) OAuth
3 6 (1.86%) OpenID
3 6 (1.86%) SAML
4 4 (1.24%) LDAP
4 4 (1.24%) Terraform
5 2 (0.62%) Azure Blueprints
5 2 (0.62%) FHIR
5 2 (0.62%) Gherkin
5 2 (0.62%) OAuth2
6 1 (0.31%) AngularJS
6 1 (0.31%) cloud-init
6 1 (0.31%) JSON
6 1 (0.31%) Keycloak
6 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Graph
6 1 (0.31%) Ruby on Rails
6 1 (0.31%) WebAuthn
Miscellaneous
1 320 (99.38%) Product Ownership
2 22 (6.83%) Onboarding
3 13 (4.04%) Marketing Technology
4 12 (3.73%) Data Protection Act
5 11 (3.42%) Analytical Mindset
6 10 (3.11%) Distributed Computing
6 10 (3.11%) Life Science
7 7 (2.17%) Data Fabric
7 7 (2.17%) Management Information System
8 6 (1.86%) Social Media
9 5 (1.55%) Cloud Native
9 5 (1.55%) Credit Risk
9 5 (1.55%) Enterprise Software
9 5 (1.55%) Virtual Team
10 4 (1.24%) CCTV
10 4 (1.24%) FMCG
10 4 (1.24%) Legacy Systems
10 4 (1.24%) Self-Motivation
11 3 (0.93%) IVR
11 3 (0.93%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.31%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 195 (60.56%) Agile
2 173 (53.73%) Roadmaps
3 145 (45.03%) Stakeholder Management
4 132 (40.99%) User Stories
5 131 (40.68%) Product Backlog
6 121 (37.58%) Backlog Prioritisation
7 92 (28.57%) Backlog Management
8 90 (27.95%) Product Roadmap
9 87 (27.02%) Acceptance Criteria
10 79 (24.53%) Continuous Improvement
11 71 (22.05%) Product Vision
12 66 (20.50%) Decision-Making
13 65 (20.19%) Scrum
14 58 (18.01%) Sprint Planning
15 50 (15.53%) AI
16 48 (14.91%) Epics
17 47 (14.60%) Analytics
18 45 (13.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 44 (13.66%) Product Management
20 39 (12.11%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 25 (7.76%) SQL
2 20 (6.21%) Python
3 2 (0.62%) ABAP
4 1 (0.31%) PHP
4 1 (0.31%) PowerShell
4 1 (0.31%) R
Qualifications
1 56 (17.39%) Security Cleared
2 48 (14.91%) SC Cleared
3 18 (5.59%) Degree
4 14 (4.35%) CSPO
5 7 (2.17%) CISSP
5 7 (2.17%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (1.24%) AWS Certification
6 4 (1.24%) DV Cleared
7 3 (0.93%) Azure Certification
8 2 (0.62%) TOGAF Certification
9 1 (0.31%) CBAP
9 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Certification
9 1 (0.31%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (8.39%) Data Quality
2 19 (5.90%) QA
3 9 (2.80%) GxP
4 7 (2.17%) 21 CFR Part 11
5 5 (1.55%) GRC
6 4 (1.24%) GDPR
7 2 (0.62%) EU AI Act
7 2 (0.62%) SLA
8 1 (0.31%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.31%) Basel II
8 1 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.31%) NIST
8 1 (0.31%) PERC
8 1 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 6 (1.86%) Ceph
1 6 (1.86%) Virtual Machines
2 4 (1.24%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.31%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 4 (1.24%) Single Sign-On
2 3 (0.93%) Kubernetes
3 2 (0.62%) Ansible
3 2 (0.62%) Argo
4 1 (0.31%) PingFederate
Vendors
1 21 (6.52%) Microsoft
2 20 (6.21%) Salesforce
3 11 (3.42%) Adobe
4 9 (2.80%) Atlassian
4 9 (2.80%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
5 8 (2.48%) SAP
6 7 (2.17%) ServiceNow
7 6 (1.86%) Databricks
7 6 (1.86%) Okta
7 6 (1.86%) Ping Identity
8 5 (1.55%) ForgeRock
8 5 (1.55%) Google
9 4 (1.24%) Oracle
10 3 (0.93%) Pega
11 2 (0.62%) IBM
11 2 (0.62%) Veritas
12 1 (0.31%) Avaya
12 1 (0.31%) Cognos
12 1 (0.31%) Genesys
12 1 (0.31%) Progress