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 1 April 2026.

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

6 months to
1 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 375 360 347
Rank change year-on-year -15 -13 +37
Contract jobs requiring a Product Owner 266 161 267
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.60% 0.55% 0.60%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.65% 0.60% 0.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 170 91 182
10th Percentile £413 £413 £405
25th Percentile £463 £479 £476
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - +4.55%
75th Percentile £602 £674 £650
90th Percentile £735 £713 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 4 0
10th Percentile - £34.63 -
25th Percentile £48.86 £45.31 -
Median hourly rate £52.78 £72.25 -
Median % change year-on-year -26.96% - -
75th Percentile £60.61 £95.75 -
90th Percentile £70.57 £96.19 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.78 £52.50 -
% change year-on-year +0.52% - -

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 41,143 26,962 41,094
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.09% 92.84% 92.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,657 17,725 26,925
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -3.54%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +2.11% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,568 945 2,533
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.03 £12.86
25th Percentile £19.74 £20.94 £16.25
Median hourly rate £38.63 £32.50 £32.90
Median % change year-on-year +18.86% -1.20% -25.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.81 £71.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £31.76 £32.90
% change year-on-year +25.94% -3.45% -21.68%

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 1 April 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 1 April 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 1 April 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 -19 244 £525 -8.70% 93
UK excluding London -14 129 £525 +5.00% 62
London -54 109 £555 -10.84% 41
Work from Home -34 70 £525 -16.33% 53
North of England -14 61 £492 -18.00% 23
South East -35 38 £550 +4.41% 15
North West -14 30 £561 -6.58% 11
Yorkshire -31 26 £486 -18.96% 8
Midlands -61 20 £550 +33.33% 5
East Midlands -28 10 £550 +54.06% 1
West Midlands -52 10 £525 +1.94% 4
South West -25 5 £475 +5.56% 9
Scotland +4 3 £408 -18.50% 3
North East - 3 £475 - 4
East of England -27 2 £450 - 6

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

For the 6 months to 1 April 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.

1 132 (49.62%) Roadmaps
2 131 (49.25%) Agile
3 87 (32.71%) User Stories
4 85 (31.95%) Stakeholder Management
5 80 (30.08%) Product Backlog
6 65 (24.44%) Product Roadmap
7 60 (22.56%) Product Vision
8 57 (21.43%) Backlog Management
9 55 (20.68%) Security Cleared
10 48 (18.05%) Acceptance Criteria
11 47 (17.67%) Continuous Improvement
12 46 (17.29%) Backlog Prioritisation
13 45 (16.92%) Scrum
14 41 (15.41%) Sprint Planning
15 38 (14.29%) Decision-Making
15 38 (14.29%) JIRA
16 37 (13.91%) SC Cleared
17 36 (13.53%) Product Strategy
18 33 (12.41%) Microsoft
19 29 (10.90%) AWS
20 28 (10.53%) Product Management
21 27 (10.15%) Customer Experience
21 27 (10.15%) DevOps
21 27 (10.15%) User Experience
22 26 (9.77%) Problem-Solving
22 26 (9.77%) Stakeholder Engagement
23 25 (9.40%) Confluence
24 21 (7.89%) Salesforce
24 21 (7.89%) Scaled Agile Framework
25 20 (7.52%) Analytics

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 25 (9.40%) Confluence
2 8 (3.01%) Microsoft Exchange
3 5 (1.88%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.75%) CMS
5 1 (0.38%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.38%) Appian
5 1 (0.38%) Mendix
5 1 (0.38%) Mule
5 1 (0.38%) Mule ESB
5 1 (0.38%) nginx
Applications
1 1 (0.38%) Adobe Illustrator
1 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 1 (0.38%) MS Visio
1 1 (0.38%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 6 (2.26%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (1.13%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.75%) Finacle
3 2 (0.75%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.75%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.38%) Adobe Campaign
4 1 (0.38%) NetSuite
4 1 (0.38%) Oracle Payroll
4 1 (0.38%) ProductWriter
4 1 (0.38%) SAP HR
4 1 (0.38%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 29 (10.90%) AWS
2 19 (7.14%) Azure
3 11 (4.14%) GCP
4 9 (3.38%) Dynamics 365
5 7 (2.63%) Power Platform
6 6 (2.26%) Azure DevOps
6 6 (2.26%) SaaS
7 5 (1.88%) Microsoft 365
7 5 (1.88%) OpenShift
8 4 (1.50%) Amazon S3
8 4 (1.50%) Figma
8 4 (1.50%) Power Automate
9 3 (1.13%) Amazon Bedrock
9 3 (1.13%) Amazon OpenSearch
9 3 (1.13%) AWS Lambda
9 3 (1.13%) Serverless
9 3 (1.13%) SuccessFactors
10 2 (0.75%) Amazon ECR
10 2 (0.75%) Amazon SageMaker
10 2 (0.75%) Apigee
Communications & Networking
1 6 (2.26%) DNS
1 6 (2.26%) Firewall
2 5 (1.88%) Network Security
3 3 (1.13%) NGFW
4 1 (0.38%) Cisco IPT
4 1 (0.38%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (2.26%) Power BI
2 4 (1.50%) Delta Lake
2 4 (1.50%) Metadata
3 3 (1.13%) Data Warehouse
4 2 (0.75%) Data Lake
4 2 (0.75%) GIS
4 2 (0.75%) Parquet
4 2 (0.75%) Pinecone
4 2 (0.75%) SAP HANA
4 2 (0.75%) SQL Server
5 1 (0.38%) Amazon Redshift
5 1 (0.38%) Big Data
5 1 (0.38%) Geospatial Data
5 1 (0.38%) MySQL
5 1 (0.38%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 38 (14.29%) JIRA
2 1 (0.38%) Cucumber
2 1 (0.38%) Git
2 1 (0.38%) JUnit
2 1 (0.38%) Postman
2 1 (0.38%) REST Assured
2 1 (0.38%) Team Foundation Server
2 1 (0.38%) Vite
General
1 82 (30.83%) Social Skills
2 73 (27.44%) Finance
3 36 (13.53%) Analytical Skills
4 25 (9.40%) Banking
5 18 (6.77%) Marketing
6 16 (6.02%) Public Sector
7 11 (4.14%) Legal
8 9 (3.38%) Retail
9 8 (3.01%) Pharmaceutical
10 7 (2.63%) Law
11 6 (2.26%) Military
11 6 (2.26%) Telecoms
12 5 (1.88%) Influencing Skills
13 4 (1.50%) Organisational Skills
13 4 (1.50%) Police
14 3 (1.13%) Manufacturing
15 2 (0.75%) Corporate Banking
15 2 (0.75%) Front Office
16 1 (0.38%) Documentation Skills
16 1 (0.38%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (1.50%) JSON
1 4 (1.50%) XML
2 3 (1.13%) 802.1X
2 3 (1.13%) REST
3 2 (0.75%) Faiss
3 2 (0.75%) Flutter
3 2 (0.75%) LangChain
3 2 (0.75%) LangGraph
3 2 (0.75%) React
4 1 (0.38%) AngularJS
4 1 (0.38%) cloud-init
4 1 (0.38%) Django
4 1 (0.38%) Laravel
4 1 (0.38%) LEMP Stack
4 1 (0.38%) OAuth
4 1 (0.38%) RESTful
4 1 (0.38%) Ruby on Rails
4 1 (0.38%) Tailwind CSS
4 1 (0.38%) Vue
4 1 (0.38%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 266 (100.00%) Product Ownership
2 16 (6.02%) Onboarding
3 11 (4.14%) Legacy Systems
4 10 (3.76%) Data Protection Act
5 9 (3.38%) Cloud Native
6 8 (3.01%) Mobile App
7 7 (2.63%) CMDB
8 6 (2.26%) Marketing Technology
8 6 (2.26%) Public Cloud
9 5 (1.88%) Analytical Mindset
9 5 (1.88%) Greenfield Project
10 4 (1.50%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 4 (1.50%) Hybrid Cloud
11 3 (1.13%) FMCG
11 3 (1.13%) Life Science
12 2 (0.75%) Credit Risk
12 2 (0.75%) Reference Data
12 2 (0.75%) Security Posture
12 2 (0.75%) Self-Motivation
12 2 (0.75%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 14 (5.26%) Windows
2 8 (3.01%) Linux
2 8 (3.01%) Windows Server
3 1 (0.38%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 132 (49.62%) Roadmaps
2 131 (49.25%) Agile
3 87 (32.71%) User Stories
4 85 (31.95%) Stakeholder Management
5 80 (30.08%) Product Backlog
6 65 (24.44%) Product Roadmap
7 60 (22.56%) Product Vision
8 57 (21.43%) Backlog Management
9 48 (18.05%) Acceptance Criteria
10 47 (17.67%) Continuous Improvement
11 46 (17.29%) Backlog Prioritisation
12 45 (16.92%) Scrum
13 41 (15.41%) Sprint Planning
14 38 (14.29%) Decision-Making
15 36 (13.53%) Product Strategy
16 28 (10.53%) Product Management
17 27 (10.15%) Customer Experience
17 27 (10.15%) DevOps
17 27 (10.15%) User Experience
18 26 (9.77%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 10 (3.76%) SQL
2 6 (2.26%) Python
3 3 (1.13%) Java
3 3 (1.13%) JavaScript
4 2 (0.75%) Kotlin
5 1 (0.38%) ABAP
5 1 (0.38%) Bash
5 1 (0.38%) C#
5 1 (0.38%) Korn
5 1 (0.38%) PHP
5 1 (0.38%) PL/SQL
5 1 (0.38%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 55 (20.68%) Security Cleared
2 37 (13.91%) SC Cleared
3 11 (4.14%) CSPO
3 11 (4.14%) Degree
4 10 (3.76%) BPSS Clearance
5 4 (1.50%) DV Cleared
5 4 (1.50%) Master's Degree
6 2 (0.75%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.38%) ACCA
7 1 (0.38%) APMP
7 1 (0.38%) Azure Certification
7 1 (0.38%) CBAP
7 1 (0.38%) PMI Certification
7 1 (0.38%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (6.77%) QA
2 15 (5.64%) Data Quality
3 10 (3.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 9 (3.38%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
5 8 (3.01%) SLA
6 6 (2.26%) ISO/IEC 27005
6 6 (2.26%) NCSC
7 4 (1.50%) NIST
8 3 (1.13%) Accessibility
8 3 (1.13%) GDPR
8 3 (1.13%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.75%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 2 (0.75%) GxP
9 2 (0.75%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.38%) GRC
10 1 (0.38%) PERC
System Software
1 8 (3.01%) Active Directory
1 8 (3.01%) VMware Infrastructure
2 6 (2.26%) Hyper-V
3 5 (1.88%) Docker
4 1 (0.38%) Ceph
4 1 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.38%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 9 (3.38%) Kubernetes
2 4 (1.50%) CASB
3 2 (0.75%) Ansible
3 2 (0.75%) Terraform
4 1 (0.38%) Argo
4 1 (0.38%) Jamf Pro
4 1 (0.38%) PowerCLI
4 1 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
4 1 (0.38%) vCenter Server
4 1 (0.38%) vRealize
4 1 (0.38%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 33 (12.41%) Microsoft
2 21 (7.89%) Salesforce
3 16 (6.02%) SAP
4 12 (4.51%) ServiceNow
5 8 (3.01%) VMware
6 6 (2.26%) Databricks
7 5 (1.88%) Cisco
7 5 (1.88%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7 5 (1.88%) Splunk
7 5 (1.88%) Zscaler
8 4 (1.50%) ForeScout
8 4 (1.50%) Fortinet
8 4 (1.50%) Infoblox
9 3 (1.13%) Epicor
9 3 (1.13%) MuleSoft
9 3 (1.13%) Oracle
10 2 (0.75%) Adobe
10 2 (0.75%) CA Agile Central
10 2 (0.75%) Cognizant
10 2 (0.75%) ESRI