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 14 September 2026.

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

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 377 349 345
Rank change year-on-year -28 -4 +47
Contract jobs requiring a Product Owner 317 213 228
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.59% 0.65% 0.59%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.63% 0.72% 0.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 182 149 159
10th Percentile £400 £357 £400
25th Percentile £489 £406 £511
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £600
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -16.67% -
75th Percentile £625 £594 £688
90th Percentile £710 £660 £778
UK excluding London median daily rate £507 £463 £550
% change year-on-year +9.51% -15.91% -4.35%
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 49,990 29,768 35,726
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.35% 91.07% 93.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,655 18,799 22,146
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 £625 £620 £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 3,750 1,555 1,711
10th Percentile £14.59 £13.69 £14.73
25th Percentile £20.27 £17.00 £20.50
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% -1.71%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.72 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +8.43%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 -32 282 £525 +5.00% 403
London -28 155 £543 +3.33% 216
UK excluding London -67 132 £507 +9.51% 196
Work from Home -30 89 £593 +12.86% 159
North of England -53 40 £507 +1.30% 54
South East -41 36 £550 +22.22% 35
Yorkshire -9 29 £550 +10.00% 15
Midlands -54 23 £509 +26.49% 26
West Midlands -34 22 £525 +10.53% 12
South West -38 21 £500 -11.97% 36
Scotland -18 13 £525 +23.53% 14
North West -55 10 £500 - 39
East of England -29 4 £500 +17.65% 26
East Midlands -35 1 £388 -0.51% 14
North East -39 1 £400 -15.79%

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

For the 6 months to 14 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.

1 194 (61.20%) Agile
2 167 (52.68%) Roadmaps
3 147 (46.37%) Stakeholder Management
4 132 (41.64%) Product Backlog
5 127 (40.06%) User Stories
6 121 (38.17%) Backlog Prioritisation
7 92 (29.02%) Backlog Management
8 85 (26.81%) Acceptance Criteria
9 84 (26.50%) Product Roadmap
10 77 (24.29%) Continuous Improvement
11 71 (22.40%) Product Vision
12 68 (21.45%) Decision-Making
13 65 (20.50%) Scrum
14 59 (18.61%) JIRA
15 55 (17.35%) Sprint Planning
16 54 (17.03%) Security Cleared
17 52 (16.40%) AI
18 48 (15.14%) Analytics
18 48 (15.14%) Epics
19 47 (14.83%) SC Cleared
20 44 (13.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
21 43 (13.56%) Product Management
22 38 (11.99%) AWS
22 38 (11.99%) Problem-Solving
23 36 (11.36%) Confluence
23 36 (11.36%) Requirements Gathering
23 36 (11.36%) Scaled Agile Framework
24 34 (10.73%) DevOps
24 34 (10.73%) Strategic Roadmap
25 32 (10.09%) 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 36 (11.36%) 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%) Moodle
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 8 (2.52%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (1.89%) SAP S/4HANA
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%) Salesforce CRM
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 38 (11.99%) AWS
2 32 (10.09%) Azure
3 11 (3.47%) Collibra
4 10 (3.15%) GCP
4 10 (3.15%) SaaS
5 8 (2.52%) Dynamics 365
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%) Entra ID
7 6 (1.89%) GitHub
8 4 (1.26%) Adobe Analytics
8 4 (1.26%) Miro
8 4 (1.26%) PaaS
8 4 (1.26%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
9 3 (0.95%) Azure Data Factory
9 3 (0.95%) CloudFront
9 3 (0.95%) dbt
9 3 (0.95%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 17 (5.36%) Broadband
2 2 (0.63%) Wireless
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
5 2 (0.63%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.32%) Amazon Redshift
6 1 (0.32%) BigQuery
6 1 (0.32%) Hadoop
6 1 (0.32%) Looker
6 1 (0.32%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.32%) Semantic Layer
6 1 (0.32%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 59 (18.61%) JIRA
2 2 (0.63%) Postman
General
1 92 (29.02%) Finance
2 90 (28.39%) Social Skills
3 47 (14.83%) Banking
4 40 (12.62%) Analytical Skills
5 25 (7.89%) Retail
6 23 (7.26%) Public Sector
7 22 (6.94%) Marketing
8 21 (6.62%) Influencing Skills
9 18 (5.68%) Aerospace
10 15 (4.73%) Legal
11 14 (4.42%) Retail Banking
12 11 (3.47%) Corporate Banking
13 10 (3.15%) Investment Banking
14 9 (2.84%) Manufacturing
14 9 (2.84%) Pharmaceutical
15 6 (1.89%) Presentation Skills
16 3 (0.95%) Financial Institution
16 3 (0.95%) Front Office
16 3 (0.95%) Telecoms
17 2 (0.63%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (3.15%) SailPoint
2 9 (2.84%) OAuth
3 6 (1.89%) OpenID
3 6 (1.89%) 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
6 2 (0.63%) OAuth2
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%) Microsoft Graph
7 1 (0.32%) Ruby on Rails
7 1 (0.32%) WebAuthn
Miscellaneous
1 315 (99.37%) Product Ownership
2 22 (6.94%) Onboarding
3 12 (3.79%) Data Protection Act
4 11 (3.47%) Marketing Technology
5 10 (3.15%) Analytical Mindset
5 10 (3.15%) Distributed Computing
6 9 (2.84%) Life Science
7 7 (2.21%) Data Fabric
7 7 (2.21%) Management Information System
7 7 (2.21%) Social Media
8 5 (1.58%) Cloud Native
8 5 (1.58%) Credit Risk
8 5 (1.58%) Enterprise Software
8 5 (1.58%) Virtual Team
9 4 (1.26%) CCTV
9 4 (1.26%) FMCG
9 4 (1.26%) Legacy Systems
9 4 (1.26%) Self-Motivation
10 3 (0.95%) IVR
10 3 (0.95%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.32%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 194 (61.20%) Agile
2 167 (52.68%) Roadmaps
3 147 (46.37%) Stakeholder Management
4 132 (41.64%) Product Backlog
5 127 (40.06%) User Stories
6 121 (38.17%) Backlog Prioritisation
7 92 (29.02%) Backlog Management
8 85 (26.81%) Acceptance Criteria
9 84 (26.50%) Product Roadmap
10 77 (24.29%) Continuous Improvement
11 71 (22.40%) Product Vision
12 68 (21.45%) Decision-Making
13 65 (20.50%) Scrum
14 55 (17.35%) Sprint Planning
15 52 (16.40%) AI
16 48 (15.14%) Analytics
16 48 (15.14%) Epics
17 44 (13.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 43 (13.56%) Product Management
19 38 (11.99%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 25 (7.89%) SQL
2 20 (6.31%) Python
3 2 (0.63%) ABAP
4 1 (0.32%) Java
4 1 (0.32%) PHP
4 1 (0.32%) PL/SQL
4 1 (0.32%) PowerShell
4 1 (0.32%) R
Qualifications
1 54 (17.03%) Security Cleared
2 47 (14.83%) SC Cleared
3 19 (5.99%) Degree
4 15 (4.73%) 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%) PMI Certification
8 2 (0.63%) TOGAF Certification
9 1 (0.32%) CBAP
9 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Certification
9 1 (0.32%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (8.20%) Data Quality
2 18 (5.68%) QA
3 8 (2.52%) GxP
4 6 (1.89%) 21 CFR Part 11
5 5 (1.58%) 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 1 (0.32%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 4 (1.26%) Single Sign-On
2 3 (0.95%) Kubernetes
3 2 (0.63%) Ansible
3 2 (0.63%) Argo
4 1 (0.32%) PingFederate
Vendors
1 20 (6.31%) Microsoft
2 16 (5.05%) Salesforce
3 12 (3.79%) Adobe
4 9 (2.84%) Atlassian
5 8 (2.52%) SAP
6 7 (2.21%) ServiceNow
7 6 (1.89%) Databricks
7 6 (1.89%) Okta
7 6 (1.89%) Ping Identity
7 6 (1.89%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
8 5 (1.58%) ForgeRock
8 5 (1.58%) Google
8 5 (1.58%) Oracle
9 4 (1.26%) Pega
10 2 (0.63%) IBM
10 2 (0.63%) Veritas
11 1 (0.32%) Avaya
11 1 (0.32%) Cognos
11 1 (0.32%) Progress
11 1 (0.32%) VMware