Product Owner Contract Job Trends

Product Owner
UK

The median Product Owner daily rate in the UK is £550, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 9 October 2026.

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

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 390 351 338
Rank change year-on-year -39 -13 +15
Contract jobs requiring a Product Owner 318 209 237
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.58% 0.63% 0.62%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.63% 0.69% 0.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 177 144 158
10th Percentile £384 £355 £404
25th Percentile £481 £406 £511
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £500 £600
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -16.67% -
75th Percentile £636 £578 £675
90th Percentile £725 £660 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £470 £550
% change year-on-year +11.70% -14.55% -4.35%
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 50,176 30,117 35,319
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.07% 90.80% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,458 18,999 21,350
10th Percentile £325 £275 £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 £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £494
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.85% -1.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4,042 1,639 1,491
10th Percentile £14.32 £13.75 £14.85
25th Percentile £19.36 £17.30 £20.30
Median hourly rate £41.71 £25.15 £41.57
Median % change year-on-year +65.84% -39.49% -6.60%
75th Percentile £67.50 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £68.00 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.71 £25.00 £42.96
% change year-on-year +66.84% -41.80% -3.47%

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 9 October 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 9 October 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 9 October 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 -40 279 £550 +10.00% 382
London -46 150 £550 +5.26% 186
UK excluding London -59 133 £525 +11.70% 197
Work from Home -28 91 £600 +15.66% 167
North of England -44 38 £500 - 54
South East -52 32 £613 +36.11% 46
South West -12 28 £550 -14.06% 16
Yorkshire -12 26 £550 +10.00% 14
Midlands -54 19 £471 +15.23% 37
West Midlands -35 18 £492 +3.58% 16
Scotland -21 12 £474 +14.85% 9
North West -51 11 £500 +2.56% 38
East of England -24 7 £500 +17.65% 22
East Midlands -39 1 £388 -3.48% 21
North East -41 1 £400 -15.79% 2

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

For the 6 months to 9 October 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.

1 203 (63.84%) Agile
2 174 (54.72%) Roadmaps
3 155 (48.74%) Stakeholder Management
4 143 (44.97%) Product Backlog
5 138 (43.40%) Backlog Prioritisation
6 132 (41.51%) User Stories
7 108 (33.96%) Backlog Management
8 92 (28.93%) Acceptance Criteria
9 91 (28.62%) Product Roadmap
10 84 (26.42%) Product Vision
11 81 (25.47%) Continuous Improvement
12 76 (23.90%) Decision-Making
13 71 (22.33%) Scrum
14 60 (18.87%) Sprint Planning
15 57 (17.92%) JIRA
15 57 (17.92%) Security Cleared
16 54 (16.98%) Epics
17 53 (16.67%) AI
18 52 (16.35%) Product Management
19 50 (15.72%) SC Cleared
20 47 (14.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
21 44 (13.84%) Analytics
22 39 (12.26%) Strategic Roadmap
23 38 (11.95%) Requirements Gathering
24 36 (11.32%) Confluence
25 34 (10.69%) AWS
25 34 (10.69%) Backlog Refinement
25 34 (10.69%) Problem-Solving
26 33 (10.38%) DevOps
26 33 (10.38%) Scaled Agile Framework

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 36 (11.32%) Confluence
2 4 (1.26%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 4 (1.26%) CMS
3 2 (0.63%) Headless CMS
4 1 (0.31%) Apache
4 1 (0.31%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.31%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.31%) IBM Transformation Extender
4 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.31%) Moodle
4 1 (0.31%) SharePoint
Applications
1 5 (1.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.94%) Productboard
3 2 (0.63%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 2 (0.63%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.31%) Notion
Business Applications
1 8 (2.52%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (1.26%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.94%) SAP SD
4 2 (0.63%) Oracle ERP
4 2 (0.63%) Oracle Payables
4 2 (0.63%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.63%) Workfront
5 1 (0.31%) IBM Planning Analytics
5 1 (0.31%) ResourceLink
5 1 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.31%) SAP BRIM
5 1 (0.31%) SAP IS-U
5 1 (0.31%) SAP PLM
5 1 (0.31%) Sonata
Cloud Services
1 34 (10.69%) AWS
2 31 (9.75%) Azure
3 10 (3.14%) Power Platform
4 9 (2.83%) GCP
5 8 (2.52%) Collibra
6 7 (2.20%) Azure DevOps
6 7 (2.20%) Entra ID
6 7 (2.20%) SaaS
7 6 (1.89%) Dynamics 365
7 6 (1.89%) Microsoft Purview
8 5 (1.57%) Figma
8 5 (1.57%) GitHub
9 4 (1.26%) Miro
9 4 (1.26%) OpenShift
9 4 (1.26%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
10 3 (0.94%) Adobe Analytics
10 3 (0.94%) Azure Data Factory
10 3 (0.94%) CloudFront
10 3 (0.94%) dbt
10 3 (0.94%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 18 (5.66%) Broadband
2 2 (0.63%) Wireless
3 1 (0.31%) NGN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (5.35%) Metadata
2 8 (2.52%) Power BI
3 7 (2.20%) Delta Lake
3 7 (2.20%) Parquet
4 5 (1.57%) Data Lake
4 5 (1.57%) DTS
5 3 (0.94%) Big Data
6 2 (0.63%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.31%) Amazon Redshift
7 1 (0.31%) BigQuery
7 1 (0.31%) Hadoop
7 1 (0.31%) Looker
7 1 (0.31%) MongoDB
7 1 (0.31%) Semantic Layer
7 1 (0.31%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 57 (17.92%) JIRA
2 2 (0.63%) Postman
General
1 101 (31.76%) Social Skills
2 92 (28.93%) Finance
3 47 (14.78%) Banking
4 46 (14.47%) Analytical Skills
5 26 (8.18%) Influencing Skills
6 25 (7.86%) Public Sector
7 22 (6.92%) Retail
8 18 (5.66%) Aerospace
9 17 (5.35%) Marketing
10 15 (4.72%) Legal
11 13 (4.09%) Retail Banking
12 12 (3.77%) Corporate Banking
13 10 (3.14%) Investment Banking
14 9 (2.83%) Manufacturing
14 9 (2.83%) Presentation Skills
15 8 (2.52%) Pharmaceutical
16 3 (0.94%) Financial Institution
16 3 (0.94%) Front Office
16 3 (0.94%) Telecoms
17 2 (0.63%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (3.14%) SailPoint
2 9 (2.83%) OAuth
3 6 (1.89%) OpenID
3 6 (1.89%) SAML
4 4 (1.26%) LDAP
5 3 (0.94%) ADO
5 3 (0.94%) Terraform
6 2 (0.63%) Azure Blueprints
6 2 (0.63%) FHIR
6 2 (0.63%) Gherkin
6 2 (0.63%) OAuth2
7 1 (0.31%) AngularJS
7 1 (0.31%) JSON
7 1 (0.31%) Keycloak
7 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Graph
7 1 (0.31%) Middleware
7 1 (0.31%) WebAuthn
Miscellaneous
1 316 (99.37%) Product Ownership
2 20 (6.29%) Onboarding
3 12 (3.77%) Analytical Mindset
3 12 (3.77%) Data Protection Act
4 9 (2.83%) Life Science
5 8 (2.52%) Management Information System
5 8 (2.52%) Marketing Technology
6 7 (2.20%) Data Fabric
6 7 (2.20%) Distributed Computing
6 7 (2.20%) Social Media
7 5 (1.57%) Credit Risk
7 5 (1.57%) Enterprise Software
7 5 (1.57%) Legacy Systems
8 4 (1.26%) Cloud Native
8 4 (1.26%) Self-Motivation
8 4 (1.26%) Virtual Team
9 3 (0.94%) FMCG
9 3 (0.94%) Hybrid Cloud
9 3 (0.94%) IVR
9 3 (0.94%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 2 (0.63%) Linux
2 1 (0.31%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 203 (63.84%) Agile
2 174 (54.72%) Roadmaps
3 155 (48.74%) Stakeholder Management
4 143 (44.97%) Product Backlog
5 138 (43.40%) Backlog Prioritisation
6 132 (41.51%) User Stories
7 108 (33.96%) Backlog Management
8 92 (28.93%) Acceptance Criteria
9 91 (28.62%) Product Roadmap
10 84 (26.42%) Product Vision
11 81 (25.47%) Continuous Improvement
12 76 (23.90%) Decision-Making
13 71 (22.33%) Scrum
14 60 (18.87%) Sprint Planning
15 54 (16.98%) Epics
16 53 (16.67%) AI
17 52 (16.35%) Product Management
18 47 (14.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 44 (13.84%) Analytics
20 39 (12.26%) Strategic Roadmap
Programming Languages
1 22 (6.92%) SQL
2 17 (5.35%) Python
3 1 (0.31%) Java
3 1 (0.31%) PHP
3 1 (0.31%) PL/SQL
3 1 (0.31%) PowerShell
3 1 (0.31%) R
Qualifications
1 57 (17.92%) Security Cleared
2 50 (15.72%) SC Cleared
3 20 (6.29%) Degree
4 16 (5.03%) CSPO
5 7 (2.20%) CISSP
5 7 (2.20%) Computer Science Degree
6 5 (1.57%) DV Cleared
7 4 (1.26%) AWS Certification
8 3 (0.94%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.63%) PMI Certification
9 2 (0.63%) TOGAF Certification
10 1 (0.31%) CBAP
10 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.31%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (7.55%) Data Quality
2 22 (6.92%) QA
3 8 (2.52%) GxP
4 6 (1.89%) 21 CFR Part 11
5 5 (1.57%) GRC
6 3 (0.94%) GDPR
7 2 (0.63%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.63%) EU AI Act
7 2 (0.63%) SLA
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 4 (1.26%) Active Directory
2 3 (0.94%) Ceph
2 3 (0.94%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 3 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
2 2 (0.63%) Kubernetes
3 1 (0.31%) Argo
3 1 (0.31%) PingFederate
3 1 (0.31%) Tivoli
3 1 (0.31%) Tivoli Monitoring
Vendors
1 23 (7.23%) Microsoft
2 11 (3.46%) Adobe
3 10 (3.14%) Salesforce
4 9 (2.83%) Atlassian
4 9 (2.83%) Pega
5 8 (2.52%) ServiceNow
6 7 (2.20%) SAP
7 6 (1.89%) Databricks
7 6 (1.89%) Okta
7 6 (1.89%) Ping Identity
8 5 (1.57%) ForgeRock
8 5 (1.57%) Google
9 4 (1.26%) Oracle
9 4 (1.26%) Veritas
10 3 (0.94%) IBM
10 3 (0.94%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
11 1 (0.31%) Avaya
11 1 (0.31%) CyberArk
11 1 (0.31%) Genesys
11 1 (0.31%) Optimizely