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 15 July 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 348 397 353
Rank change year-on-year +49 -44 +43
Contract jobs requiring a Product Owner 333 164 243
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.63% 0.51% 0.57%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.68% 0.55% 0.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 203 114 178
10th Percentile £413 £356 £398
25th Percentile £478 £405 £446
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £502 £575
Median % change year-on-year +4.58% -12.70% -4.17%
75th Percentile £625 £626 £675
90th Percentile £750 £671 £766
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £450 £550
% change year-on-year +13.89% -18.18% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 0 0
10th Percentile £72.48 - -
25th Percentile £80.88 - -
Median hourly rate £87.16 - -
75th Percentile £102.45 - -
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 48,692 29,793 39,772
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.54% 91.81% 93.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,483 18,982 25,593
10th Percentile £325 £288 £288
25th Percentile £419 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,276 1,398 2,720
10th Percentile £15.93 £13.75 £13.00
25th Percentile £21.35 £17.44 £17.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £26.45 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +70.13% -33.88% -5.88%
75th Percentile £67.84 £56.19 £63.41
90th Percentile £80.07 £73.75 £73.78
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.56 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +81.13% -37.13% +6.67%

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 15 July 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 15 July 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 15 July 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 +35 304 £525 +4.27% 135
London +14 159 £550 +4.76% 54
UK excluding London -35 145 £513 +13.89% 106
Work from Home -1 104 £550 +8.37% 103
North of England -32 52 £500 -10.31% 28
South East -32 47 £650 +44.44% 30
Yorkshire -25 30 £500 - 7
Midlands -46 30 £525 +46.65% 13
West Midlands -47 24 £525 +1.94% 4
North West -35 18 £537 -14.12% 19
South West -35 8 £500 -1.96% 12
Scotland -11 7 £531 +6.25% 14
East of England -18 6 £475 +15.15% 10
East Midlands -20 6 £490 +36.87% 9
North East -36 4 £450 -5.26% 2

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

For the 6 months to 15 July 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.

1 187 (56.16%) Agile
2 172 (51.65%) Roadmaps
3 132 (39.64%) User Stories
4 126 (37.84%) Product Backlog
5 121 (36.34%) Stakeholder Management
6 111 (33.33%) Backlog Prioritisation
7 101 (30.33%) Product Roadmap
8 87 (26.13%) Backlog Management
9 83 (24.92%) Acceptance Criteria
10 75 (22.52%) Product Vision
11 71 (21.32%) Decision-Making
12 70 (21.02%) Continuous Improvement
13 69 (20.72%) Security Cleared
14 57 (17.12%) Sprint Planning
15 55 (16.52%) SC Cleared
16 54 (16.22%) Scrum
17 53 (15.92%) JIRA
18 49 (14.71%) AI
18 49 (14.71%) Product Management
19 45 (13.51%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 43 (12.91%) Analytics
21 41 (12.31%) Epics
21 41 (12.31%) Problem-Solving
22 38 (11.41%) AWS
23 37 (11.11%) User Experience
24 34 (10.21%) Confluence
25 32 (9.61%) Product Requirements
26 31 (9.31%) Microsoft
26 31 (9.31%) Product Strategy
27 30 (9.01%) Kanban

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 34 (10.21%) Confluence
2 7 (2.10%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (0.90%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 1 (0.30%) Apache
4 1 (0.30%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.30%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.30%) CMS
4 1 (0.30%) Mendix
4 1 (0.30%) Moodle
4 1 (0.30%) Mule
4 1 (0.30%) Mule ESB
4 1 (0.30%) nginx
4 1 (0.30%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (0.90%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.60%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.30%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 1 (0.30%) Adobe Illustrator
3 1 (0.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.30%) Notion
3 1 (0.30%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 9 (2.70%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (1.80%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.60%) Oracle ERP
3 2 (0.60%) Oracle Payables
3 2 (0.60%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 2 (0.60%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.60%) SAP SD
4 1 (0.30%) Adobe Campaign
4 1 (0.30%) SAP IS-U
4 1 (0.30%) Shopify
4 1 (0.30%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 38 (11.41%) AWS
2 26 (7.81%) Azure
3 11 (3.30%) GCP
4 10 (3.00%) SaaS
5 9 (2.70%) Dynamics 365
6 8 (2.40%) Collibra
7 7 (2.10%) OpenShift
7 7 (2.10%) Power Platform
8 6 (1.80%) GitHub
9 5 (1.50%) Amazon S3
9 5 (1.50%) Entra ID
10 4 (1.20%) Azure DevOps
10 4 (1.20%) PaaS
11 3 (0.90%) Amazon OpenSearch
11 3 (0.90%) AWS Lambda
11 3 (0.90%) Figma
11 3 (0.90%) Microsoft Purview
11 3 (0.90%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
11 3 (0.90%) Serverless
12 2 (0.60%) Amazon Bedrock
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.80%) DNS
1 6 (1.80%) Firewall
2 5 (1.50%) Network Security
3 3 (0.90%) NGFW
4 2 (0.60%) Broadband
4 2 (0.60%) Wireless
5 1 (0.30%) Intrusion Detection
5 1 (0.30%) NGN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (4.80%) Metadata
2 8 (2.40%) Delta Lake
3 7 (2.10%) Parquet
4 6 (1.80%) Data Lake
5 5 (1.50%) Power BI
6 4 (1.20%) DTS
7 3 (0.90%) Big Data
7 3 (0.90%) Data Warehouse
8 2 (0.60%) Amazon Redshift
8 2 (0.60%) GIS
8 2 (0.60%) Pinecone
9 1 (0.30%) BigQuery
9 1 (0.30%) Geospatial Data
9 1 (0.30%) Hadoop
9 1 (0.30%) Looker
9 1 (0.30%) MySQL
9 1 (0.30%) Semantic Layer
9 1 (0.30%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 1 (0.30%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 53 (15.92%) JIRA
2 1 (0.30%) Cucumber
2 1 (0.30%) Git
2 1 (0.30%) JUnit
2 1 (0.30%) REST Assured
2 1 (0.30%) Vite
General
1 87 (26.13%) Social Skills
2 84 (25.23%) Finance
3 51 (15.32%) Analytical Skills
4 39 (11.71%) Banking
5 28 (8.41%) Public Sector
6 26 (7.81%) Marketing
7 24 (7.21%) Retail
8 16 (4.80%) Legal
9 15 (4.50%) Aerospace
9 15 (4.50%) Pharmaceutical
10 12 (3.60%) Retail Banking
11 11 (3.30%) Influencing Skills
12 9 (2.70%) Manufacturing
13 8 (2.40%) Corporate Banking
13 8 (2.40%) Investment Banking
14 6 (1.80%) Military
15 5 (1.50%) Presentation Skills
16 3 (0.90%) Financial Institution
16 3 (0.90%) Front Office
16 3 (0.90%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (3.00%) SailPoint
2 7 (2.10%) OAuth
3 5 (1.50%) OpenID
3 5 (1.50%) SAML
4 4 (1.20%) LDAP
5 3 (0.90%) 802.1X
5 3 (0.90%) JSON
6 2 (0.60%) AngularJS
6 2 (0.60%) Azure Blueprints
6 2 (0.60%) Faiss
6 2 (0.60%) FHIR
6 2 (0.60%) Gherkin
6 2 (0.60%) LangChain
6 2 (0.60%) LangGraph
6 2 (0.60%) XML
7 1 (0.30%) CSS
7 1 (0.30%) HTML
7 1 (0.30%) J2EE
7 1 (0.30%) OAuth2
7 1 (0.30%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 331 (99.40%) Product Ownership
2 19 (5.71%) Onboarding
3 14 (4.20%) Legacy Systems
4 13 (3.90%) Analytical Mindset
5 12 (3.60%) Data Protection Act
6 11 (3.30%) Life Science
7 10 (3.00%) Marketing Technology
8 7 (2.10%) Distributed Computing
9 6 (1.80%) Greenfield Project
9 6 (1.80%) Management Information System
10 5 (1.50%) Virtual Team
11 4 (1.20%) CCTV
11 4 (1.20%) Cloud Native
11 4 (1.20%) Credit Risk
11 4 (1.20%) FMCG
11 4 (1.20%) Mobile App
11 4 (1.20%) Security Posture
12 3 (0.90%) AI Agents
12 3 (0.90%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 3 (0.90%) IVR
Operating Systems
1 10 (3.00%) Windows
2 9 (2.70%) Linux
3 7 (2.10%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 187 (56.16%) Agile
2 172 (51.65%) Roadmaps
3 132 (39.64%) User Stories
4 126 (37.84%) Product Backlog
5 121 (36.34%) Stakeholder Management
6 111 (33.33%) Backlog Prioritisation
7 101 (30.33%) Product Roadmap
8 87 (26.13%) Backlog Management
9 83 (24.92%) Acceptance Criteria
10 75 (22.52%) Product Vision
11 71 (21.32%) Decision-Making
12 70 (21.02%) Continuous Improvement
13 57 (17.12%) Sprint Planning
14 54 (16.22%) Scrum
15 49 (14.71%) AI
15 49 (14.71%) Product Management
16 45 (13.51%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 43 (12.91%) Analytics
18 41 (12.31%) Epics
18 41 (12.31%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 20 (6.01%) SQL
2 18 (5.41%) Python
3 2 (0.60%) ABAP
3 2 (0.60%) Java
3 2 (0.60%) JavaScript
3 2 (0.60%) PHP
4 1 (0.30%) Bash
4 1 (0.30%) C#
4 1 (0.30%) Kotlin
4 1 (0.30%) PL/SQL
4 1 (0.30%) R
Qualifications
1 69 (20.72%) Security Cleared
2 55 (16.52%) SC Cleared
3 15 (4.50%) Degree
4 14 (4.20%) CSPO
5 7 (2.10%) CISSP
6 6 (1.80%) Computer Science Degree
6 6 (1.80%) DV Cleared
7 4 (1.20%) AWS Certification
7 4 (1.20%) BPSS Clearance
8 3 (0.90%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.60%) Master's Degree
9 2 (0.60%) TOGAF Certification
10 1 (0.30%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (7.81%) Data Quality
2 24 (7.21%) QA
3 10 (3.00%) GxP
4 8 (2.40%) 21 CFR Part 11
5 6 (1.80%) GDPR
6 4 (1.20%) GRC
7 3 (0.90%) Accessibility
7 3 (0.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (0.90%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
7 3 (0.90%) NIST
7 3 (0.90%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.60%) EU AI Act
8 2 (0.60%) SLA
8 2 (0.60%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.30%) Basel II
9 1 (0.30%) PERC
System Software
1 10 (3.00%) Active Directory
2 8 (2.40%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (1.80%) Ceph
3 6 (1.80%) Hyper-V
3 6 (1.80%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.30%) Docker
4 1 (0.30%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 4 (1.20%) Terraform
2 3 (0.90%) Ansible
2 3 (0.90%) CASB
2 3 (0.90%) Kubernetes
3 2 (0.60%) Argo
3 2 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
4 1 (0.30%) PingFederate
4 1 (0.30%) PowerCLI
4 1 (0.30%) vCenter Server
4 1 (0.30%) vRealize
4 1 (0.30%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 31 (9.31%) Microsoft
2 28 (8.41%) Salesforce
3 9 (2.70%) Atlassian
3 9 (2.70%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
3 9 (2.70%) SAP
4 8 (2.40%) Adobe
4 8 (2.40%) VMware
5 7 (2.10%) ServiceNow
6 5 (1.50%) Databricks
6 5 (1.50%) Google
6 5 (1.50%) Okta
6 5 (1.50%) Ping Identity
7 4 (1.20%) Cisco
7 4 (1.20%) ForeScout
7 4 (1.20%) ForgeRock
7 4 (1.20%) Fortinet
7 4 (1.20%) Infoblox
7 4 (1.20%) Oracle
7 4 (1.20%) Splunk
7 4 (1.20%) Zscaler