Product Owner Contract Job Trends

Product Owner
UK

The median Product Owner daily rate in the UK is £538, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 4 October 2026.

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

6 months to
4 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 395 334 333
Rank change year-on-year -61 -1 +33
Contract jobs requiring a Product Owner 314 215 235
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.57% 0.65% 0.62%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.62% 0.71% 0.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 177 148 158
10th Percentile £394 £357 £404
25th Percentile £482 £405 £511
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £500 £600
Median % change year-on-year +7.50% -16.67% -
75th Percentile £625 £591 £688
90th Percentile £725 £661 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £475 £550
% change year-on-year +7.89% -13.64% -1.70%
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 50,330 30,144 35,336
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.12% 90.83% 93.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,591 19,030 21,429
10th Percentile £325 £278 £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 £636 £623 £638
90th Percentile £736 £725 £741
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,999 1,630 1,541
10th Percentile £14.42 £13.75 £14.99
25th Percentile £19.77 £17.30 £20.75
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £42.91
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -41.39% -3.57%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.19 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.28 £74.87
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.74 £25.08 £43.00
% change year-on-year +66.44% -41.69% -2.82%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 -48 278 £535 +7.00% 454
London -38 151 £550 +5.77% 207
UK excluding London -69 131 £513 +7.89% 282
Work from Home -42 90 £600 +20.00% 242
North of England -48 37 £500 - 70
South East -52 32 £613 +36.11% 52
South West -15 27 £550 -14.06% 37
Yorkshire -19 25 £550 +10.00% 23
Midlands -54 19 £471 +17.02% 45
West Midlands -36 18 £492 +3.58% 20
Scotland -20 12 £474 +14.85% 23
North West -45 11 £500 - 45
East of England -16 7 £500 +17.65% 30
East Midlands -29 1 £388 -3.48% 25
North East -40 1 £400 -15.79% 5

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

For the 6 months to 4 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.

1 199 (63.38%) Agile
2 169 (53.82%) Roadmaps
3 152 (48.41%) Stakeholder Management
4 140 (44.59%) Product Backlog
5 134 (42.68%) Backlog Prioritisation
6 129 (41.08%) User Stories
7 103 (32.80%) Backlog Management
8 88 (28.03%) Acceptance Criteria
9 86 (27.39%) Product Roadmap
10 81 (25.80%) Continuous Improvement
11 80 (25.48%) Product Vision
12 75 (23.89%) Decision-Making
13 70 (22.29%) Scrum
14 58 (18.47%) Security Cleared
14 58 (18.47%) Sprint Planning
15 57 (18.15%) JIRA
16 53 (16.88%) AI
17 52 (16.56%) Epics
18 50 (15.92%) Product Management
18 50 (15.92%) SC Cleared
19 47 (14.97%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 45 (14.33%) Analytics
21 37 (11.78%) Requirements Gathering
21 37 (11.78%) Strategic Roadmap
22 36 (11.46%) AWS
23 35 (11.15%) Confluence
23 35 (11.15%) Problem-Solving
24 34 (10.83%) DevOps
24 34 (10.83%) Scaled Agile Framework
25 32 (10.19%) Azure

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 35 (11.15%) Confluence
2 4 (1.27%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 4 (1.27%) CMS
3 2 (0.64%) Headless CMS
4 1 (0.32%) Apache
4 1 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.32%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.32%) IBM Transformation Extender
4 1 (0.32%) Moodle
Applications
1 4 (1.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.64%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 2 (0.64%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.64%) Productboard
3 1 (0.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.32%) Notion
Business Applications
1 8 (2.55%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (1.59%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.96%) SAP SD
4 2 (0.64%) Oracle ERP
4 2 (0.64%) Oracle Payables
4 2 (0.64%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.64%) Workfront
5 1 (0.32%) IBM Planning Analytics
5 1 (0.32%) ResourceLink
5 1 (0.32%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.32%) SAP BRIM
5 1 (0.32%) SAP IS-U
5 1 (0.32%) Sonata
Cloud Services
1 36 (11.46%) AWS
2 32 (10.19%) Azure
3 10 (3.18%) GCP
4 9 (2.87%) Collibra
4 9 (2.87%) Power Platform
5 8 (2.55%) SaaS
6 7 (2.23%) Azure DevOps
6 7 (2.23%) Dynamics 365
7 6 (1.91%) Entra ID
8 5 (1.59%) Figma
8 5 (1.59%) GitHub
9 4 (1.27%) Miro
9 4 (1.27%) OpenShift
9 4 (1.27%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
10 3 (0.96%) Adobe Analytics
10 3 (0.96%) Azure Data Factory
10 3 (0.96%) CloudFront
10 3 (0.96%) dbt
10 3 (0.96%) Microsoft Purview
10 3 (0.96%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 18 (5.73%) Broadband
2 2 (0.64%) Wireless
3 1 (0.32%) NGN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (5.73%) Metadata
2 8 (2.55%) Delta Lake
2 8 (2.55%) Parquet
3 7 (2.23%) Power BI
4 5 (1.59%) Data Lake
4 5 (1.59%) DTS
5 3 (0.96%) Big Data
6 2 (0.64%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.32%) Amazon Redshift
7 1 (0.32%) BigQuery
7 1 (0.32%) Hadoop
7 1 (0.32%) Looker
7 1 (0.32%) MongoDB
7 1 (0.32%) Semantic Layer
7 1 (0.32%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 57 (18.15%) JIRA
2 2 (0.64%) Postman
General
1 97 (30.89%) Social Skills
2 91 (28.98%) Finance
3 47 (14.97%) Banking
4 43 (13.69%) Analytical Skills
5 27 (8.60%) Influencing Skills
6 25 (7.96%) Public Sector
7 23 (7.32%) Retail
8 18 (5.73%) Aerospace
8 18 (5.73%) Marketing
9 15 (4.78%) Legal
10 13 (4.14%) Retail Banking
11 12 (3.82%) Corporate Banking
12 10 (3.18%) Investment Banking
13 9 (2.87%) Manufacturing
14 8 (2.55%) Pharmaceutical
15 7 (2.23%) Presentation Skills
16 3 (0.96%) Financial Institution
16 3 (0.96%) Front Office
17 2 (0.64%) Billing
17 2 (0.64%) Games
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (3.18%) SailPoint
2 9 (2.87%) OAuth
3 6 (1.91%) OpenID
3 6 (1.91%) SAML
4 4 (1.27%) LDAP
5 3 (0.96%) Terraform
6 2 (0.64%) ADO
6 2 (0.64%) Azure Blueprints
6 2 (0.64%) FHIR
6 2 (0.64%) Gherkin
6 2 (0.64%) OAuth2
7 1 (0.32%) AngularJS
7 1 (0.32%) JSON
7 1 (0.32%) Keycloak
7 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Graph
7 1 (0.32%) Middleware
7 1 (0.32%) WebAuthn
Miscellaneous
1 312 (99.36%) Product Ownership
2 21 (6.69%) Onboarding
3 10 (3.18%) Analytical Mindset
3 10 (3.18%) Data Protection Act
4 9 (2.87%) Life Science
4 9 (2.87%) Marketing Technology
5 8 (2.55%) Distributed Computing
5 8 (2.55%) Management Information System
6 7 (2.23%) Data Fabric
6 7 (2.23%) Social Media
7 5 (1.59%) Cloud Native
7 5 (1.59%) Credit Risk
7 5 (1.59%) Enterprise Software
8 4 (1.27%) Legacy Systems
8 4 (1.27%) Self-Motivation
8 4 (1.27%) Virtual Team
9 3 (0.96%) FMCG
9 3 (0.96%) Hybrid Cloud
9 3 (0.96%) IVR
9 3 (0.96%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 2 (0.64%) Linux
2 1 (0.32%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 199 (63.38%) Agile
2 169 (53.82%) Roadmaps
3 152 (48.41%) Stakeholder Management
4 140 (44.59%) Product Backlog
5 134 (42.68%) Backlog Prioritisation
6 129 (41.08%) User Stories
7 103 (32.80%) Backlog Management
8 88 (28.03%) Acceptance Criteria
9 86 (27.39%) Product Roadmap
10 81 (25.80%) Continuous Improvement
11 80 (25.48%) Product Vision
12 75 (23.89%) Decision-Making
13 70 (22.29%) Scrum
14 58 (18.47%) Sprint Planning
15 53 (16.88%) AI
16 52 (16.56%) Epics
17 50 (15.92%) Product Management
18 47 (14.97%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 45 (14.33%) Analytics
20 37 (11.78%) Strategic Roadmap
Programming Languages
1 23 (7.32%) SQL
2 18 (5.73%) Python
3 1 (0.32%) ABAP
3 1 (0.32%) Java
3 1 (0.32%) PHP
3 1 (0.32%) PL/SQL
3 1 (0.32%) PowerShell
3 1 (0.32%) R
Qualifications
1 58 (18.47%) Security Cleared
2 50 (15.92%) SC Cleared
3 20 (6.37%) Degree
4 16 (5.10%) CSPO
5 7 (2.23%) CISSP
5 7 (2.23%) Computer Science Degree
6 5 (1.59%) DV Cleared
7 4 (1.27%) AWS Certification
8 3 (0.96%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.64%) PMI Certification
9 2 (0.64%) TOGAF Certification
10 1 (0.32%) CBAP
10 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.32%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (7.64%) Data Quality
2 21 (6.69%) QA
3 8 (2.55%) GxP
4 6 (1.91%) 21 CFR Part 11
5 5 (1.59%) GRC
6 4 (1.27%) GDPR
7 2 (0.64%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.64%) EU AI Act
7 2 (0.64%) SLA
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 4 (1.27%) Active Directory
2 3 (0.96%) Ceph
2 3 (0.96%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 3 (0.96%) Single Sign-On
2 2 (0.64%) Kubernetes
3 1 (0.32%) Argo
3 1 (0.32%) PingFederate
3 1 (0.32%) Tivoli
3 1 (0.32%) Tivoli Monitoring
Vendors
1 21 (6.69%) Microsoft
2 11 (3.50%) Adobe
2 11 (3.50%) Salesforce
3 9 (2.87%) Atlassian
4 8 (2.55%) Pega
4 8 (2.55%) ServiceNow
5 7 (2.23%) SAP
6 6 (1.91%) Databricks
6 6 (1.91%) Okta
6 6 (1.91%) Ping Identity
7 5 (1.59%) ForgeRock
7 5 (1.59%) Google
8 4 (1.27%) Oracle
8 4 (1.27%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
9 3 (0.96%) IBM
10 2 (0.64%) Veritas
11 1 (0.32%) Avaya
11 1 (0.32%) Cognos
11 1 (0.32%) Genesys
11 1 (0.32%) Progress