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 September 2026.

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

6 months to
1 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 376 352 385
Rank change year-on-year -24 +33 +6
Contract jobs requiring a Product Owner 317 211 202
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.59% 0.64% 0.52%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.64% 0.71% 0.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 184 145 143
10th Percentile £400 £358 £380
25th Percentile £480 £406 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £588
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -14.89% -2.08%
75th Percentile £625 £600 £690
90th Percentile £721 £660 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £463 £550
% change year-on-year +8.11% -15.91% -1.17%
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 49,606 29,880 35,937
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.46% 91.25% 93.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,580 18,873 22,662
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% -1.69%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £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 3,581 1,559 1,838
10th Percentile £14.96 £13.69 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.53 £17.04 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.81 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.33 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.95
% change year-on-year +68.99% -42.78% +11.13%

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 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 1 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 1 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 -34 285 £520 +4.00% 212
London -11 162 £525 - 118
UK excluding London -69 126 £500 +8.11% 106
Work from Home -18 89 £600 +14.29% 75
South East -45 38 £575 +27.78% 25
North of England -49 37 £500 - 33
Yorkshire -14 26 £507 +1.30% 12
Midlands -61 23 £525 +30.60% 11
West Midlands -38 21 £525 +10.53% 4
South West -36 17 £500 -11.97% 18
Scotland -20 10 £525 +23.53% 4
North West -58 10 £500 - 18
East of England -19 6 £475 +11.76% 16
East Midlands -32 2 £388 -0.51% 7
North East -45 1 £400 -15.79% 3

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

For the 6 months to 1 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.

1 187 (58.99%) Agile
2 171 (53.94%) Roadmaps
3 139 (43.85%) Stakeholder Management
4 130 (41.01%) Product Backlog
4 130 (41.01%) User Stories
5 117 (36.91%) Backlog Prioritisation
6 91 (28.71%) Backlog Management
6 91 (28.71%) Product Roadmap
7 85 (26.81%) Acceptance Criteria
8 75 (23.66%) Continuous Improvement
9 72 (22.71%) Product Vision
10 65 (20.50%) Decision-Making
11 62 (19.56%) Scrum
12 59 (18.61%) Sprint Planning
13 58 (18.30%) JIRA
14 55 (17.35%) Security Cleared
15 50 (15.77%) AI
16 48 (15.14%) SC Cleared
17 47 (14.83%) Analytics
17 47 (14.83%) Epics
18 43 (13.56%) Product Management
18 43 (13.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 40 (12.62%) AWS
20 39 (12.30%) Problem-Solving
21 37 (11.67%) Confluence
22 35 (11.04%) Scaled Agile Framework
23 34 (10.73%) DevOps
24 32 (10.09%) Backlog Refinement
24 32 (10.09%) Data Governance
24 32 (10.09%) Product Requirements

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 (11.67%) Confluence
2 5 (1.58%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 4 (1.26%) CMS
4 2 (0.63%) Headless CMS
5 1 (0.32%) Apache
5 1 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.32%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.32%) Moodle
5 1 (0.32%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (0.95%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.63%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 2 (0.63%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.32%) Notion
Business Applications
1 9 (2.84%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (1.89%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.95%) Salesforce CRM
3 3 (0.95%) 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 (0.32%) IBM Planning Analytics
5 1 (0.32%) ResourceLink
5 1 (0.32%) SAP IS-U
5 1 (0.32%) Sonata
Cloud Services
1 40 (12.62%) AWS
2 31 (9.78%) Azure
3 11 (3.47%) Collibra
4 10 (3.15%) GCP
5 9 (2.84%) Dynamics 365
5 9 (2.84%) SaaS
6 7 (2.21%) Azure DevOps
6 7 (2.21%) Figma
6 7 (2.21%) OpenShift
6 7 (2.21%) Power Platform
7 6 (1.89%) GitHub
8 5 (1.58%) Entra ID
9 4 (1.26%) Miro
9 4 (1.26%) PaaS
9 4 (1.26%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
10 3 (0.95%) Adobe Analytics
10 3 (0.95%) Azure Data Factory
10 3 (0.95%) CloudFront
10 3 (0.95%) Microsoft Purview
11 2 (0.63%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 12 (3.79%) Broadband
2 2 (0.63%) Wireless
3 1 (0.32%) DNS
3 1 (0.32%) NGN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (6.31%) Metadata
2 10 (3.15%) Delta Lake
2 10 (3.15%) Parquet
3 5 (1.58%) Data Lake
3 5 (1.58%) DTS
3 5 (1.58%) Power BI
4 3 (0.95%) Big Data
4 3 (0.95%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (0.32%) Amazon Redshift
5 1 (0.32%) BigQuery
5 1 (0.32%) GIS
5 1 (0.32%) Hadoop
5 1 (0.32%) Looker
5 1 (0.32%) Semantic Layer
5 1 (0.32%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 58 (18.30%) JIRA
2 2 (0.63%) Postman
General
1 89 (28.08%) Finance
1 89 (28.08%) Social Skills
2 45 (14.20%) Banking
3 44 (13.88%) Analytical Skills
4 26 (8.20%) Marketing
4 26 (8.20%) Retail
5 22 (6.94%) Public Sector
6 18 (5.68%) Influencing Skills
7 17 (5.36%) Aerospace
8 16 (5.05%) Legal
9 14 (4.42%) Retail Banking
10 11 (3.47%) Corporate Banking
10 11 (3.47%) Manufacturing
10 11 (3.47%) Pharmaceutical
11 10 (3.15%) Investment Banking
12 6 (1.89%) Presentation Skills
13 3 (0.95%) Financial Institution
13 3 (0.95%) Telecoms
14 2 (0.63%) Front Office
14 2 (0.63%) Games
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (3.15%) SailPoint
2 8 (2.52%) OAuth
3 5 (1.58%) OpenID
3 5 (1.58%) SAML
4 4 (1.26%) LDAP
5 3 (0.95%) Terraform
6 2 (0.63%) Azure Blueprints
6 2 (0.63%) FHIR
6 2 (0.63%) Gherkin
7 1 (0.32%) AngularJS
7 1 (0.32%) cloud-init
7 1 (0.32%) JSON
7 1 (0.32%) Keycloak
7 1 (0.32%) OAuth2
7 1 (0.32%) Ruby on Rails
7 1 (0.32%) WebAuthn
Miscellaneous
1 315 (99.37%) Product Ownership
2 21 (6.62%) Onboarding
3 13 (4.10%) Marketing Technology
4 12 (3.79%) Data Protection Act
5 11 (3.47%) Analytical Mindset
5 11 (3.47%) Life Science
6 10 (3.15%) Distributed Computing
7 6 (1.89%) Management Information System
7 6 (1.89%) Social Media
8 5 (1.58%) Cloud Native
8 5 (1.58%) Credit Risk
8 5 (1.58%) Data Fabric
8 5 (1.58%) FMCG
8 5 (1.58%) Legacy Systems
8 5 (1.58%) Virtual Team
9 4 (1.26%) CCTV
9 4 (1.26%) Enterprise Software
9 4 (1.26%) Self-Motivation
10 3 (0.95%) IVR
10 3 (0.95%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 2 (0.63%) Linux
2 1 (0.32%) Windows
2 1 (0.32%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 187 (58.99%) Agile
2 171 (53.94%) Roadmaps
3 139 (43.85%) Stakeholder Management
4 130 (41.01%) Product Backlog
4 130 (41.01%) User Stories
5 117 (36.91%) Backlog Prioritisation
6 91 (28.71%) Backlog Management
6 91 (28.71%) Product Roadmap
7 85 (26.81%) Acceptance Criteria
8 75 (23.66%) Continuous Improvement
9 72 (22.71%) Product Vision
10 65 (20.50%) Decision-Making
11 62 (19.56%) Scrum
12 59 (18.61%) Sprint Planning
13 50 (15.77%) AI
14 47 (14.83%) Analytics
14 47 (14.83%) Epics
15 43 (13.56%) Product Management
15 43 (13.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 39 (12.30%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 24 (7.57%) SQL
2 19 (5.99%) Python
3 2 (0.63%) ABAP
4 1 (0.32%) PHP
4 1 (0.32%) R
Qualifications
1 55 (17.35%) Security Cleared
2 48 (15.14%) SC Cleared
3 15 (4.73%) Degree
4 14 (4.42%) CSPO
5 7 (2.21%) CISSP
5 7 (2.21%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (1.26%) AWS Certification
6 4 (1.26%) DV Cleared
7 3 (0.95%) Azure Certification
8 2 (0.63%) TOGAF Certification
9 1 (0.32%) CBAP
9 1 (0.32%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (8.20%) Data Quality
2 20 (6.31%) QA
3 10 (3.15%) GxP
4 8 (2.52%) 21 CFR Part 11
5 6 (1.89%) GRC
6 4 (1.26%) GDPR
7 2 (0.63%) EU AI Act
7 2 (0.63%) SLA
8 1 (0.32%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.32%) Basel II
8 1 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.32%) NIST
8 1 (0.32%) PERC
8 1 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 6 (1.89%) Ceph
1 6 (1.89%) Virtual Machines
2 4 (1.26%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.63%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.32%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 3 (0.95%) Kubernetes
1 3 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
2 2 (0.63%) Ansible
2 2 (0.63%) Argo
3 1 (0.32%) PingFederate
Vendors
1 22 (6.94%) Salesforce
2 21 (6.62%) Microsoft
3 11 (3.47%) Adobe
4 9 (2.84%) Atlassian
4 9 (2.84%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
4 9 (2.84%) SAP
5 6 (1.89%) Okta
5 6 (1.89%) Ping Identity
5 6 (1.89%) ServiceNow
6 5 (1.58%) Databricks
6 5 (1.58%) ForgeRock
6 5 (1.58%) Google
7 4 (1.26%) Oracle
8 2 (0.63%) IBM
8 2 (0.63%) Pega
8 2 (0.63%) Veritas
8 2 (0.63%) VMware
9 1 (0.32%) CyberArk
9 1 (0.32%) MuleSoft
9 1 (0.32%) Talend