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 20 May 2026.

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

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 357 393 347
Rank change year-on-year +36 -46 +38
Contract jobs requiring a Product Owner 281 136 241
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.58% 0.47% 0.57%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.63% 0.50% 0.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 173 85 171
10th Percentile £413 £394 £405
25th Percentile £463 £456 £481
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -8.70% -
75th Percentile £597 £638 £675
90th Percentile £707 £704 £753
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% +2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 2 0
10th Percentile - £88.62 -
25th Percentile £48.86 £88.79 -
Median hourly rate £52.78 £92.54 -
Median % change year-on-year -42.97% - -
75th Percentile £60.61 £96.24 -
90th Percentile £75.54 £96.39 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.78 £92.00 -
% change year-on-year -42.64% - -

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 44,449 26,943 39,487
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.32% 92.37% 92.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,215 17,536 25,722
10th Percentile £325 £293 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -3.23%
75th Percentile £615 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,895 1,057 2,674
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.83
25th Percentile £20.31 £18.13 £16.30
Median hourly rate £42.69 £28.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +52.45% -23.29% -18.89%
75th Percentile £66.13 £61.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £77.80 £75.00 £72.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £27.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +62.96% -32.50% -5.88%

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 20 May 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 20 May 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 20 May 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 +13 258 £525 - 100
UK excluding London -5 133 £525 +5.00% 77
London -6 123 £550 -2.22% 40
Work from Home -19 69 £500 -14.46% 43
North of England -11 60 £500 -16.67% 19
South East -45 35 £525 +4.27% 19
North West -15 28 £561 -10.32% 12
Yorkshire -33 27 £500 -16.67% 4
Midlands -52 26 £538 +29.52% 19
West Midlands -41 19 £538 +3.37% 15
South West -34 9 £500 +9.65% 8
East Midlands -27 7 £520 +45.25% 4
Scotland -10 5 £466 -15.23% 8
North East -21 3 £475 - 3
East of England -27 3 £450 - 4

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

For the 6 months to 20 May 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.

1 146 (51.96%) Agile
2 143 (50.89%) Roadmaps
3 104 (37.01%) User Stories
4 96 (34.16%) Stakeholder Management
5 91 (32.38%) Product Backlog
6 79 (28.11%) Product Roadmap
7 67 (23.84%) Backlog Prioritisation
8 62 (22.06%) Acceptance Criteria
9 57 (20.28%) Backlog Management
10 50 (17.79%) Product Vision
11 49 (17.44%) Decision-Making
12 46 (16.37%) Sprint Planning
13 45 (16.01%) Security Cleared
14 44 (15.66%) JIRA
15 42 (14.95%) Continuous Improvement
16 37 (13.17%) Scrum
17 34 (12.10%) AI
18 33 (11.74%) Analytics
19 32 (11.39%) Microsoft
20 28 (9.96%) Customer Experience
20 28 (9.96%) Product Management
21 27 (9.61%) Problem-Solving
21 27 (9.61%) Product Strategy
22 26 (9.25%) SC Cleared
22 26 (9.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
23 25 (8.90%) Confluence
23 25 (8.90%) Salesforce
23 25 (8.90%) User Experience
24 24 (8.54%) AWS
24 24 (8.54%) Epics

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 (8.90%) Confluence
2 8 (2.85%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (1.07%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 3 (1.07%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.36%) Appian
4 1 (0.36%) CMS
4 1 (0.36%) Mendix
4 1 (0.36%) Mule
4 1 (0.36%) Mule ESB
4 1 (0.36%) nginx
Applications
1 2 (0.71%) Chatbot
1 2 (0.71%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.36%) Adobe Illustrator
2 1 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.36%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 7 (2.49%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (1.42%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.71%) Finacle
3 2 (0.71%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.71%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.36%) Adobe Campaign
4 1 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.36%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.36%) Oracle Payroll
4 1 (0.36%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.36%) SAP HR
4 1 (0.36%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 24 (8.54%) AWS
2 13 (4.63%) SaaS
3 12 (4.27%) Azure
4 10 (3.56%) OpenShift
5 9 (3.20%) Dynamics 365
5 9 (3.20%) GCP
6 6 (2.14%) Power Platform
7 5 (1.78%) Collibra
7 5 (1.78%) Figma
8 4 (1.42%) Amazon S3
8 4 (1.42%) GitHub
8 4 (1.42%) PaaS
9 3 (1.07%) Amazon Bedrock
9 3 (1.07%) Amazon OpenSearch
9 3 (1.07%) AWS Lambda
9 3 (1.07%) Microsoft 365
9 3 (1.07%) Serverless
10 2 (0.71%) Amazon ECR
10 2 (0.71%) Microsoft Purview
10 2 (0.71%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 6 (2.14%) DNS
1 6 (2.14%) Firewall
2 5 (1.78%) Network Security
3 3 (1.07%) NGFW
4 2 (0.71%) Wireless
5 1 (0.36%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (2.85%) Metadata
2 7 (2.49%) Delta Lake
3 5 (1.78%) Parquet
3 5 (1.78%) Power BI
4 3 (1.07%) Data Lake
4 3 (1.07%) Data Warehouse
5 2 (0.71%) GIS
5 2 (0.71%) Pinecone
6 1 (0.36%) Amazon Redshift
6 1 (0.36%) Big Data
6 1 (0.36%) Geospatial Data
6 1 (0.36%) MySQL
6 1 (0.36%) SAP HANA
6 1 (0.36%) SQL Server
6 1 (0.36%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 44 (15.66%) JIRA
2 1 (0.36%) Cucumber
2 1 (0.36%) Git
2 1 (0.36%) JUnit
2 1 (0.36%) Postman
2 1 (0.36%) REST Assured
2 1 (0.36%) Team Foundation Server
2 1 (0.36%) Vite
General
1 92 (32.74%) Finance
2 73 (25.98%) Social Skills
3 45 (16.01%) Banking
4 34 (12.10%) Analytical Skills
5 23 (8.19%) Marketing
6 19 (6.76%) Public Sector
7 18 (6.41%) Retail
8 14 (4.98%) Legal
9 12 (4.27%) Retail Banking
10 10 (3.56%) Corporate Banking
11 8 (2.85%) Investment Banking
12 7 (2.49%) Pharmaceutical
13 6 (2.14%) Military
14 4 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
14 4 (1.42%) Manufacturing
14 4 (1.42%) Telecoms
15 3 (1.07%) Front Office
15 3 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
16 2 (0.71%) Organisational Skills
17 1 (0.36%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (1.42%) JSON
1 4 (1.42%) XML
2 3 (1.07%) 802.1X
2 3 (1.07%) REST
3 2 (0.71%) AngularJS
3 2 (0.71%) Faiss
3 2 (0.71%) Flutter
3 2 (0.71%) LangChain
3 2 (0.71%) LangGraph
3 2 (0.71%) React
4 1 (0.36%) cloud-init
4 1 (0.36%) Django
4 1 (0.36%) Laravel
4 1 (0.36%) LEMP Stack
4 1 (0.36%) OAuth
4 1 (0.36%) RESTful
4 1 (0.36%) Ruby on Rails
4 1 (0.36%) Tailwind CSS
4 1 (0.36%) Vue
4 1 (0.36%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 280 (99.64%) Product Ownership
2 14 (4.98%) Legacy Systems
3 13 (4.63%) Onboarding
4 11 (3.91%) Data Protection Act
5 9 (3.20%) Marketing Technology
6 8 (2.85%) CMDB
7 6 (2.14%) Cloud Native
7 6 (2.14%) Greenfield Project
7 6 (2.14%) Mobile App
8 5 (1.78%) Analytical Mindset
8 5 (1.78%) Distributed Computing
9 4 (1.42%) CCTV
9 4 (1.42%) Credit Risk
9 4 (1.42%) Hybrid Cloud
9 4 (1.42%) Virtual Team
10 3 (1.07%) AI Agents
10 3 (1.07%) FMCG
10 3 (1.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 2 (0.71%) LIMS
11 2 (0.71%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 14 (4.98%) Windows
2 9 (3.20%) Linux
3 8 (2.85%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 146 (51.96%) Agile
2 143 (50.89%) Roadmaps
3 104 (37.01%) User Stories
4 96 (34.16%) Stakeholder Management
5 91 (32.38%) Product Backlog
6 79 (28.11%) Product Roadmap
7 67 (23.84%) Backlog Prioritisation
8 62 (22.06%) Acceptance Criteria
9 57 (20.28%) Backlog Management
10 50 (17.79%) Product Vision
11 49 (17.44%) Decision-Making
12 46 (16.37%) Sprint Planning
13 42 (14.95%) Continuous Improvement
14 37 (13.17%) Scrum
15 34 (12.10%) AI
16 33 (11.74%) Analytics
17 28 (9.96%) Customer Experience
17 28 (9.96%) Product Management
18 27 (9.61%) Problem-Solving
18 27 (9.61%) Product Strategy
Programming Languages
1 13 (4.63%) SQL
2 10 (3.56%) Python
3 3 (1.07%) Java
3 3 (1.07%) JavaScript
4 2 (0.71%) ABAP
4 2 (0.71%) Kotlin
5 1 (0.36%) Bash
5 1 (0.36%) C#
5 1 (0.36%) PHP
5 1 (0.36%) PL/SQL
5 1 (0.36%) R
5 1 (0.36%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 45 (16.01%) Security Cleared
2 26 (9.25%) SC Cleared
3 12 (4.27%) Degree
4 8 (2.85%) BPSS Clearance
5 6 (2.14%) CSPO
6 4 (1.42%) DV Cleared
6 4 (1.42%) Master's Degree
7 2 (0.71%) AWS Certification
8 1 (0.36%) ACCA
8 1 (0.36%) APMP
8 1 (0.36%) Azure Certification
8 1 (0.36%) CBAP
8 1 (0.36%) PMI Certification
8 1 (0.36%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (5.69%) Data Quality
2 13 (4.63%) QA
3 7 (2.49%) SLA
4 4 (1.42%) GDPR
4 4 (1.42%) NIST
5 3 (1.07%) Accessibility
5 3 (1.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 3 (1.07%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
5 3 (1.07%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.71%) 21 CFR Part 11
6 2 (0.71%) GRC
6 2 (0.71%) GxP
6 2 (0.71%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.36%) Basel II
System Software
1 9 (3.20%) Active Directory
2 8 (2.85%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (2.14%) Ceph
3 6 (2.14%) Hyper-V
3 6 (2.14%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.36%) Docker
4 1 (0.36%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 5 (1.78%) Kubernetes
2 4 (1.42%) CASB
3 3 (1.07%) Ansible
3 3 (1.07%) Single Sign-On
3 3 (1.07%) Terraform
4 1 (0.36%) Argo
4 1 (0.36%) PingFederate
4 1 (0.36%) PowerCLI
4 1 (0.36%) vCenter Server
4 1 (0.36%) vRealize
4 1 (0.36%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 32 (11.39%) Microsoft
2 25 (8.90%) Salesforce
3 12 (4.27%) SAP
3 12 (4.27%) ServiceNow
4 8 (2.85%) VMware
5 7 (2.49%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
6 6 (2.14%) Databricks
7 5 (1.78%) Cisco
7 5 (1.78%) Oracle
7 5 (1.78%) Splunk
7 5 (1.78%) Zscaler
8 4 (1.42%) Adobe
8 4 (1.42%) ForeScout
8 4 (1.42%) Fortinet
8 4 (1.42%) Infoblox
9 3 (1.07%) Epicor
9 3 (1.07%) MuleSoft
10 2 (0.71%) Cognizant
10 2 (0.71%) ESRI
10 2 (0.71%) Sage