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 29 August 2026.

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

6 months to
29 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 384 352 358
Rank change year-on-year -32 +6 +7
Contract jobs requiring a Product Owner 321 212 204
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.60% 0.64% 0.53%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.64% 0.71% 0.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 185 146 145
10th Percentile £400 £358 £385
25th Percentile £475 £407 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £588
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -14.89% -2.08%
75th Percentile £625 £599 £688
90th Percentile £719 £660 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £463 £550
% change year-on-year +8.11% -15.91% -1.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 0 0
10th Percentile £71.48 - -
25th Percentile £83.00 - -
Median hourly rate £87.16 - -
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 49,838 30,062 35,859
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.47% 91.24% 93.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,768 18,992 22,689
10th Percentile £325 £280 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.69%
75th Percentile £625 £621 £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 3,565 1,567 1,847
10th Percentile £14.96 £13.75 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.51 £17.04 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.81 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £44.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -42.84% +10.00%

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 29 August 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 29 August 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 29 August 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 -26 289 £520 +4.00% 122
London -13 164 £530 +0.95% 75
UK excluding London -64 127 £500 +8.11% 63
Work from Home -26 89 £600 +14.29% 48
South East -49 39 £550 +22.22% 18
North of England -49 37 £500 - 18
Yorkshire -21 26 £507 +1.30% 5
Midlands -54 23 £525 +30.60% 5
West Midlands -27 21 £525 +10.53% 1
South West -37 17 £500 -11.97% 12
Scotland -21 10 £525 +23.53% 3
North West -61 10 £500 - 11
East of England -20 6 £475 +11.76% 8
East Midlands -32 2 £388 -0.51% 4
North East -37 1 £400 -15.79% 2

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

For the 6 months to 29 August 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.

1 190 (59.19%) Agile
2 170 (52.96%) Roadmaps
3 140 (43.61%) Stakeholder Management
4 131 (40.81%) Product Backlog
4 131 (40.81%) User Stories
5 117 (36.45%) Backlog Prioritisation
6 93 (28.97%) Backlog Management
7 90 (28.04%) Product Roadmap
8 86 (26.79%) Acceptance Criteria
9 76 (23.68%) Continuous Improvement
10 72 (22.43%) Product Vision
11 65 (20.25%) Decision-Making
12 63 (19.63%) Scrum
13 60 (18.69%) JIRA
14 59 (18.38%) Sprint Planning
15 56 (17.45%) Security Cleared
16 50 (15.58%) AI
17 49 (15.26%) SC Cleared
18 48 (14.95%) Epics
19 46 (14.33%) Analytics
20 44 (13.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
21 43 (13.40%) Product Management
22 41 (12.77%) AWS
23 39 (12.15%) Confluence
23 39 (12.15%) Problem-Solving
24 35 (10.90%) Scaled Agile Framework
25 34 (10.59%) DevOps
26 32 (9.97%) Backlog Refinement
26 32 (9.97%) Product Requirements
27 31 (9.66%) 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 39 (12.15%) Confluence
2 5 (1.56%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 4 (1.25%) 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%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.31%) Moodle
5 1 (0.31%) SharePoint
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 9 (2.80%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (1.87%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.93%) Salesforce CRM
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%) 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 41 (12.77%) AWS
2 31 (9.66%) Azure
3 11 (3.43%) Collibra
4 10 (3.12%) GCP
5 9 (2.80%) Dynamics 365
5 9 (2.80%) SaaS
6 7 (2.18%) Azure DevOps
6 7 (2.18%) Figma
6 7 (2.18%) OpenShift
6 7 (2.18%) Power Platform
7 6 (1.87%) GitHub
8 5 (1.56%) Entra ID
9 4 (1.25%) Miro
9 4 (1.25%) PaaS
9 4 (1.25%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
10 3 (0.93%) Adobe Analytics
10 3 (0.93%) Azure Data Factory
10 3 (0.93%) CloudFront
10 3 (0.93%) Microsoft Purview
11 2 (0.62%) iPaaS
Communications & Networking
1 12 (3.74%) Broadband
2 2 (0.62%) Wireless
3 1 (0.31%) DNS
3 1 (0.31%) Firewall
3 1 (0.31%) Network Security
3 1 (0.31%) NGFW
3 1 (0.31%) NGN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (6.23%) Metadata
2 10 (3.12%) Delta Lake
2 10 (3.12%) Parquet
3 5 (1.56%) Data Lake
3 5 (1.56%) DTS
3 5 (1.56%) Power BI
4 3 (0.93%) Big Data
4 3 (0.93%) Data Warehouse
5 2 (0.62%) GIS
6 1 (0.31%) Amazon Redshift
6 1 (0.31%) BigQuery
6 1 (0.31%) Geospatial Data
6 1 (0.31%) Hadoop
6 1 (0.31%) Looker
6 1 (0.31%) Semantic Layer
6 1 (0.31%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 60 (18.69%) JIRA
2 2 (0.62%) Postman
General
1 90 (28.04%) Social Skills
2 89 (27.73%) Finance
3 46 (14.33%) Banking
4 45 (14.02%) Analytical Skills
5 26 (8.10%) Marketing
5 26 (8.10%) Retail
6 22 (6.85%) Public Sector
7 18 (5.61%) Influencing Skills
8 17 (5.30%) Aerospace
8 17 (5.30%) Legal
9 14 (4.36%) Retail Banking
10 11 (3.43%) Corporate Banking
10 11 (3.43%) Manufacturing
10 11 (3.43%) Pharmaceutical
11 10 (3.12%) Investment Banking
12 6 (1.87%) Presentation Skills
13 3 (0.93%) Financial Institution
13 3 (0.93%) Telecoms
14 2 (0.62%) Front Office
14 2 (0.62%) Games
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (3.12%) SailPoint
2 8 (2.49%) OAuth
3 5 (1.56%) OpenID
3 5 (1.56%) SAML
4 4 (1.25%) LDAP
4 4 (1.25%) Terraform
5 2 (0.62%) Azure Blueprints
5 2 (0.62%) FHIR
5 2 (0.62%) Gherkin
6 1 (0.31%) 802.1X
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%) OAuth2
6 1 (0.31%) Ruby on Rails
6 1 (0.31%) WebAuthn
Miscellaneous
1 319 (99.38%) Product Ownership
2 21 (6.54%) Onboarding
3 13 (4.05%) Marketing Technology
4 12 (3.74%) Data Protection Act
5 11 (3.43%) Analytical Mindset
5 11 (3.43%) Life Science
6 10 (3.12%) Distributed Computing
7 6 (1.87%) Management Information System
7 6 (1.87%) Social Media
8 5 (1.56%) Cloud Native
8 5 (1.56%) Credit Risk
8 5 (1.56%) Data Fabric
8 5 (1.56%) FMCG
8 5 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
8 5 (1.56%) Virtual Team
9 4 (1.25%) CCTV
9 4 (1.25%) Enterprise Software
10 3 (0.93%) IVR
10 3 (0.93%) Mobile App
10 3 (0.93%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.93%) Linux
2 2 (0.62%) Windows
3 1 (0.31%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 190 (59.19%) Agile
2 170 (52.96%) Roadmaps
3 140 (43.61%) Stakeholder Management
4 131 (40.81%) Product Backlog
4 131 (40.81%) User Stories
5 117 (36.45%) Backlog Prioritisation
6 93 (28.97%) Backlog Management
7 90 (28.04%) Product Roadmap
8 86 (26.79%) Acceptance Criteria
9 76 (23.68%) Continuous Improvement
10 72 (22.43%) Product Vision
11 65 (20.25%) Decision-Making
12 63 (19.63%) Scrum
13 59 (18.38%) Sprint Planning
14 50 (15.58%) AI
15 48 (14.95%) Epics
16 46 (14.33%) Analytics
17 44 (13.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 43 (13.40%) Product Management
19 39 (12.15%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 24 (7.48%) SQL
2 20 (6.23%) Python
3 2 (0.62%) ABAP
4 1 (0.31%) PHP
4 1 (0.31%) R
Qualifications
1 56 (17.45%) Security Cleared
2 49 (15.26%) SC Cleared
3 16 (4.98%) Degree
4 15 (4.67%) CSPO
5 7 (2.18%) CISSP
5 7 (2.18%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (1.25%) AWS Certification
6 4 (1.25%) DV Cleared
7 3 (0.93%) Azure Certification
8 2 (0.62%) TOGAF Certification
9 1 (0.31%) CBAP
9 1 (0.31%) Master's Degree
9 1 (0.31%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (8.10%) Data Quality
2 21 (6.54%) QA
3 10 (3.12%) GxP
4 8 (2.49%) 21 CFR Part 11
5 6 (1.87%) GRC
6 4 (1.25%) GDPR
7 2 (0.62%) EU AI Act
7 2 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.62%) NIST
7 2 (0.62%) SLA
8 1 (0.31%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.31%) Basel II
8 1 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 1 (0.31%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.31%) PERC
8 1 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 6 (1.87%) Ceph
1 6 (1.87%) Virtual Machines
2 4 (1.25%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.31%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.31%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 3 (0.93%) Ansible
1 3 (0.93%) Kubernetes
1 3 (0.93%) Single Sign-On
2 2 (0.62%) Argo
3 1 (0.31%) CASB
3 1 (0.31%) PingFederate
3 1 (0.31%) PowerCLI
3 1 (0.31%) vCenter Server
3 1 (0.31%) vRealize
3 1 (0.31%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 23 (7.17%) Microsoft
1 23 (7.17%) Salesforce
2 11 (3.43%) Adobe
3 10 (3.12%) SAP
4 9 (2.80%) Atlassian
4 9 (2.80%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
5 7 (2.18%) ServiceNow
6 6 (1.87%) Okta
6 6 (1.87%) Ping Identity
7 5 (1.56%) Databricks
7 5 (1.56%) ForgeRock
7 5 (1.56%) Google
8 4 (1.25%) Oracle
9 3 (0.93%) VMware
10 2 (0.62%) ESRI
10 2 (0.62%) IBM
10 2 (0.62%) Pega
10 2 (0.62%) Veritas
11 1 (0.31%) Avaya
11 1 (0.31%) Genesys