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 24 February 2026.

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

6 months to
24 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 378 333 297
Rank change year-on-year -45 -36 +86
Contract jobs requiring a Product Owner 233 199 309
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.57% 0.66% 0.70%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.62% 0.71% 0.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 146 111 206
10th Percentile £413 £460 £406
25th Percentile £463 £513 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% +4.35% +4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £675 £650
90th Percentile £736 £713 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £575 £500
% change year-on-year -13.04% +15.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 4 1
10th Percentile £47.10 £34.63 -
25th Percentile £48.86 £45.31 -
Median hourly rate £52.78 £72.25 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -26.96% +44.50% +42.86%
75th Percentile £60.61 £95.75 -
90th Percentile £68.08 £96.19 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.78 £52.50 £50.00
% change year-on-year +0.52% +5.00% -

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 37,601 28,063 41,310
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.77% 92.89% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,630 17,563 27,190
10th Percentile £306 £293 £275
25th Percentile £408 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +1.32% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,287 822 2,342
10th Percentile £14.61 £16.25 £13.15
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £16.30
Median hourly rate £32.00 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -8.57% - -10.88%
75th Percentile £63.75 £64.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £71.99
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -7.69% -7.14% -5.74%

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 24 February 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 24 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Product Owner in the UK

Product Owner
Top 14 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 24 February 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 -39 216 £525 -12.50% 83
UK excluding London -5 117 £500 -13.04% 70
London -71 94 £565 -11.20% 31
Work from Home -16 65 £525 -19.23% 51
North of England -16 59 £475 -20.83% 20
South East -37 31 £550 -4.35% 24
North West -9 28 £488 -18.75% 17
Yorkshire -33 25 £486 -18.96% 2
Midlands -43 21 £520 +26.06% 15
East Midlands -21 12 £525 +47.47% 7
West Midlands -49 9 £516 -1.67% 8
South West - 4 £449 - 8
North East - 4 £475 - 1
Scotland +8 2 - - 3

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

For the 6 months to 24 February 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.

1 131 (56.22%) Agile
2 115 (49.36%) Roadmaps
3 83 (35.62%) Product Backlog
4 79 (33.91%) Stakeholder Management
4 79 (33.91%) User Stories
5 55 (23.61%) Product Vision
6 54 (23.18%) Backlog Management
7 51 (21.89%) Product Roadmap
8 48 (20.60%) Backlog Prioritisation
8 48 (20.60%) Scrum
8 48 (20.60%) Security Cleared
9 43 (18.45%) Continuous Improvement
10 42 (18.03%) Acceptance Criteria
11 36 (15.45%) JIRA
11 36 (15.45%) Sprint Planning
12 33 (14.16%) Decision-Making
13 31 (13.30%) Product Strategy
14 30 (12.88%) SC Cleared
14 30 (12.88%) User Experience
15 29 (12.45%) Product Management
16 26 (11.16%) Customer Experience
16 26 (11.16%) DevOps
16 26 (11.16%) Problem-Solving
16 26 (11.16%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 25 (10.73%) AWS
17 25 (10.73%) Microsoft
18 24 (10.30%) Confluence
18 24 (10.30%) Scaled Agile Framework
19 22 (9.44%) Sprint Retrospective
20 19 (8.15%) 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 24 (10.30%) Confluence
2 6 (2.58%) Microsoft Exchange
3 4 (1.72%) SharePoint
4 3 (1.29%) CMS
5 1 (0.43%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.43%) Appian
5 1 (0.43%) Mendix
5 1 (0.43%) Mule
5 1 (0.43%) Mule ESB
5 1 (0.43%) nginx
5 1 (0.43%) WebSphere
Applications
1 2 (0.86%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.43%) Adobe Illustrator
2 1 (0.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.43%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.43%) Photoshop
2 1 (0.43%) Trello
Business Applications
1 4 (1.72%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.86%) Finacle
2 2 (0.86%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.86%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.43%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.43%) Oracle Payroll
3 1 (0.43%) ProductWriter
3 1 (0.43%) SAP HR
3 1 (0.43%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 25 (10.73%) AWS
2 19 (8.15%) Azure
3 11 (4.72%) GCP
4 6 (2.58%) Azure DevOps
4 6 (2.58%) Dynamics 365
4 6 (2.58%) Power Platform
4 6 (2.58%) SaaS
5 4 (1.72%) Microsoft 365
5 4 (1.72%) OpenShift
6 3 (1.29%) Amazon Bedrock
6 3 (1.29%) Amazon S3
6 3 (1.29%) AWS Lambda
6 3 (1.29%) Power Automate
6 3 (1.29%) Serverless
6 3 (1.29%) SuccessFactors
7 2 (0.86%) Amazon ECS
7 2 (0.86%) Amazon EKS
7 2 (0.86%) Amazon EventBridge
7 2 (0.86%) Figma
7 2 (0.86%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.72%) DNS
2 1 (0.43%) Cisco IPT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (2.15%) Power BI
2 2 (0.86%) Data Lake
2 2 (0.86%) Data Warehouse
2 2 (0.86%) Delta Lake
2 2 (0.86%) Pinecone
2 2 (0.86%) SAP HANA
2 2 (0.86%) SQL Server
3 1 (0.43%) Amazon Redshift
3 1 (0.43%) Big Data
3 1 (0.43%) Metadata
3 1 (0.43%) MySQL
3 1 (0.43%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 36 (15.45%) JIRA
2 1 (0.43%) Cucumber
2 1 (0.43%) Git
2 1 (0.43%) JUnit
2 1 (0.43%) Postman
2 1 (0.43%) REST Assured
2 1 (0.43%) Team Foundation Server
2 1 (0.43%) Vite
General
1 79 (33.91%) Social Skills
2 78 (33.48%) Finance
3 33 (14.16%) Analytical Skills
4 23 (9.87%) Banking
5 14 (6.01%) Public Sector
6 10 (4.29%) Influencing Skills
7 9 (3.86%) Marketing
8 8 (3.43%) Legal
9 7 (3.00%) Law
9 7 (3.00%) Retail
10 5 (2.15%) Military
10 5 (2.15%) Telecoms
11 4 (1.72%) Organisational Skills
11 4 (1.72%) Pharmaceutical
11 4 (1.72%) Police
12 2 (0.86%) Corporate Banking
13 1 (0.43%) Documentation Skills
13 1 (0.43%) Investment Banking
13 1 (0.43%) Presentation Skills
13 1 (0.43%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (1.72%) JSON
1 4 (1.72%) XML
2 3 (1.29%) REST
3 2 (0.86%) Faiss
3 2 (0.86%) Flutter
3 2 (0.86%) LangChain
3 2 (0.86%) LangGraph
3 2 (0.86%) React
4 1 (0.43%) AngularJS
4 1 (0.43%) Django
4 1 (0.43%) HTML
4 1 (0.43%) Kafka
4 1 (0.43%) Laravel
4 1 (0.43%) LEMP Stack
4 1 (0.43%) OAuth
4 1 (0.43%) Pandas
4 1 (0.43%) RESTful
4 1 (0.43%) Tailwind CSS
4 1 (0.43%) Vue
4 1 (0.43%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 233 (100.00%) Product Ownership
2 15 (6.44%) Onboarding
3 9 (3.86%) Cloud Native
3 9 (3.86%) Data Protection Act
3 9 (3.86%) Legacy Systems
3 9 (3.86%) Mobile App
4 7 (3.00%) CMDB
5 6 (2.58%) Analytical Mindset
5 6 (2.58%) Greenfield Project
5 6 (2.58%) Public Cloud
6 4 (1.72%) Hybrid Cloud
7 3 (1.29%) AI Agents
7 3 (1.29%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 3 (1.29%) SWIFT Messaging Network
8 2 (0.86%) Credit Risk
8 2 (0.86%) Low-Code
8 2 (0.86%) Self-Motivation
9 1 (0.43%) FMCG
9 1 (0.43%) Learning Management System
9 1 (0.43%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 11 (4.72%) Windows
2 6 (2.58%) Windows Server
3 5 (2.15%) Linux
4 1 (0.43%) Android
4 1 (0.43%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.43%) Mac OS
4 1 (0.43%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 131 (56.22%) Agile
2 115 (49.36%) Roadmaps
3 83 (35.62%) Product Backlog
4 79 (33.91%) Stakeholder Management
4 79 (33.91%) User Stories
5 55 (23.61%) Product Vision
6 54 (23.18%) Backlog Management
7 51 (21.89%) Product Roadmap
8 48 (20.60%) Backlog Prioritisation
8 48 (20.60%) Scrum
9 43 (18.45%) Continuous Improvement
10 42 (18.03%) Acceptance Criteria
11 36 (15.45%) Sprint Planning
12 33 (14.16%) Decision-Making
13 31 (13.30%) Product Strategy
14 30 (12.88%) User Experience
15 29 (12.45%) Product Management
16 26 (11.16%) Customer Experience
16 26 (11.16%) DevOps
16 26 (11.16%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 11 (4.72%) SQL
2 5 (2.15%) Python
3 3 (1.29%) Java
3 3 (1.29%) JavaScript
4 2 (0.86%) Korn
4 2 (0.86%) Kotlin
5 1 (0.43%) Bash
5 1 (0.43%) C#
5 1 (0.43%) PHP
5 1 (0.43%) PL/SQL
5 1 (0.43%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 48 (20.60%) Security Cleared
2 30 (12.88%) SC Cleared
3 14 (6.01%) CSPO
4 10 (4.29%) BPSS Clearance
5 9 (3.86%) Degree
6 5 (2.15%) DV Cleared
7 3 (1.29%) CBAP
7 3 (1.29%) Master's Degree
8 2 (0.86%) AWS Certification
9 1 (0.43%) ACCA
9 1 (0.43%) APMP
9 1 (0.43%) Azure Certification
9 1 (0.43%) OCP
9 1 (0.43%) Oracle Certification
9 1 (0.43%) PMI Certification
9 1 (0.43%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (7.30%) QA
2 8 (3.43%) Data Quality
3 7 (3.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 7 (3.00%) SLA
4 6 (2.58%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
4 6 (2.58%) ISO/IEC 27005
4 6 (2.58%) NCSC
5 5 (2.15%) GDPR
6 3 (1.29%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.43%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.43%) NIST
7 1 (0.43%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.43%) PERC
7 1 (0.43%) SEPA
System Software
1 6 (2.58%) Active Directory
2 5 (2.15%) Docker
3 4 (1.72%) Hyper-V
3 4 (1.72%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 8 (3.43%) Kubernetes
2 1 (0.43%) CASB
2 1 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
2 1 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 25 (10.73%) Microsoft
2 14 (6.01%) SAP
3 12 (5.15%) Salesforce
4 8 (3.43%) ServiceNow
5 6 (2.58%) Databricks
6 4 (1.72%) VMware
6 4 (1.72%) Workday
7 3 (1.29%) Oracle
8 2 (0.86%) CA Agile Central
8 2 (0.86%) Cognizant
8 2 (0.86%) IBM
8 2 (0.86%) IBM Sterling
8 2 (0.86%) MuleSoft
9 1 (0.43%) Adobe
9 1 (0.43%) Apple
9 1 (0.43%) DocuSign
9 1 (0.43%) Epicor
9 1 (0.43%) Netskope
9 1 (0.43%) Xero
9 1 (0.43%) Zscaler