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 30 September 2026.

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

6 months to
30 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 382 342 348
Rank change year-on-year -40 +6 +26
Contract jobs requiring a Product Owner 322 218 230
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.59% 0.66% 0.61%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.64% 0.73% 0.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 182 149 158
10th Percentile £400 £357 £404
25th Percentile £483 £405 £512
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £600
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -16.67% -
75th Percentile £625 £588 £688
90th Percentile £724 £661 £752
UK excluding London median daily rate £503 £475 £550
% change year-on-year +5.95% -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 50,615 29,871 34,958
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.21% 90.97% 92.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,878 18,887 21,169
10th Percentile £325 £275 £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 £630 £623 £638
90th Percentile £733 £725 £749
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,942 1,601 1,551
10th Percentile £14.50 £13.75 £14.85
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.30 £20.88
Median hourly rate £41.71 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.84% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.55 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.74 £25.08 £43.00
% change year-on-year +66.44% -41.69% -2.16%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 -46 285 £525 +5.00% 392
London -36 155 £550 +5.26% 197
UK excluding London -63 135 £503 +5.95% 204
Work from Home -38 91 £600 +18.52% 165
North of England -58 42 £503 +0.65% 55
South East -52 32 £613 +36.11% 35
Yorkshire -17 30 £550 +10.00% 13
South West -24 25 £525 -17.97% 37
Midlands -49 21 £471 +17.02% 26
West Midlands -36 20 £492 +3.58% 12
Scotland -14 13 £525 +27.27% 13
North West -51 11 £500 - 42
East of England -22 7 £500 +17.65% 22
East Midlands -37 1 £388 -3.48% 14
North East -40 1 £400 -15.79%

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

For the 6 months to 30 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.

1 200 (62.11%) Agile
2 174 (54.04%) Roadmaps
3 153 (47.52%) Stakeholder Management
4 140 (43.48%) Product Backlog
5 133 (41.30%) Backlog Prioritisation
6 130 (40.37%) User Stories
7 101 (31.37%) Backlog Management
8 89 (27.64%) Product Roadmap
9 87 (27.02%) Acceptance Criteria
10 83 (25.78%) Product Vision
11 82 (25.47%) Continuous Improvement
12 74 (22.98%) Decision-Making
13 69 (21.43%) Scrum
14 58 (18.01%) Sprint Planning
15 57 (17.70%) JIRA
15 57 (17.70%) Security Cleared
16 52 (16.15%) AI
16 52 (16.15%) Epics
17 51 (15.84%) Product Management
18 49 (15.22%) SC Cleared
19 48 (14.91%) Analytics
20 47 (14.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
21 39 (12.11%) Strategic Roadmap
22 37 (11.49%) AWS
22 37 (11.49%) Problem-Solving
23 36 (11.18%) Confluence
23 36 (11.18%) Requirements Gathering
24 35 (10.87%) DevOps
25 34 (10.56%) Scaled Agile Framework
26 32 (9.94%) 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 (11.18%) Confluence
2 5 (1.55%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 4 (1.24%) CMS
4 2 (0.62%) Headless CMS
5 1 (0.31%) Apache
5 1 (0.31%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.31%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.31%) IBM Transformation Extender
5 1 (0.31%) Moodle
Applications
1 4 (1.24%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.93%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.62%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 2 (0.62%) Productboard
4 1 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.31%) Notion
Business Applications
1 8 (2.48%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (1.55%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.93%) SAP SD
4 2 (0.62%) Oracle ERP
4 2 (0.62%) Oracle Payables
4 2 (0.62%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.62%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.62%) Workfront
5 1 (0.31%) IBM Planning Analytics
5 1 (0.31%) ResourceLink
5 1 (0.31%) SAP BRIM
5 1 (0.31%) SAP IS-U
5 1 (0.31%) Sonata
Cloud Services
1 37 (11.49%) AWS
2 32 (9.94%) Azure
3 10 (3.11%) Collibra
3 10 (3.11%) GCP
4 9 (2.80%) Power Platform
4 9 (2.80%) SaaS
5 7 (2.17%) Azure DevOps
5 7 (2.17%) Dynamics 365
5 7 (2.17%) OpenShift
6 6 (1.86%) Entra ID
6 6 (1.86%) GitHub
7 5 (1.55%) Figma
8 4 (1.24%) Adobe Analytics
8 4 (1.24%) Miro
8 4 (1.24%) PaaS
8 4 (1.24%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
9 3 (0.93%) Azure Data Factory
9 3 (0.93%) CloudFront
9 3 (0.93%) dbt
9 3 (0.93%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 18 (5.59%) Broadband
2 2 (0.62%) Wireless
3 1 (0.31%) NGN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (5.90%) Metadata
2 9 (2.80%) Delta Lake
2 9 (2.80%) Parquet
3 7 (2.17%) Power BI
4 5 (1.55%) Data Lake
4 5 (1.55%) DTS
5 3 (0.93%) Big Data
6 2 (0.62%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.31%) Amazon Redshift
7 1 (0.31%) BigQuery
7 1 (0.31%) Hadoop
7 1 (0.31%) Looker
7 1 (0.31%) MongoDB
7 1 (0.31%) Semantic Layer
7 1 (0.31%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 57 (17.70%) JIRA
2 2 (0.62%) Postman
General
1 96 (29.81%) Social Skills
2 95 (29.50%) Finance
3 47 (14.60%) Banking
4 42 (13.04%) Analytical Skills
5 26 (8.07%) Influencing Skills
6 25 (7.76%) Public Sector
6 25 (7.76%) Retail
7 21 (6.52%) Marketing
8 18 (5.59%) Aerospace
9 15 (4.66%) Legal
10 14 (4.35%) Retail Banking
11 13 (4.04%) Corporate Banking
12 10 (3.11%) Investment Banking
13 9 (2.80%) Manufacturing
14 8 (2.48%) Pharmaceutical
14 8 (2.48%) Presentation Skills
15 3 (0.93%) Financial Institution
16 2 (0.62%) Front Office
16 2 (0.62%) Games
16 2 (0.62%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (3.11%) SailPoint
2 9 (2.80%) OAuth
3 6 (1.86%) OpenID
3 6 (1.86%) SAML
4 4 (1.24%) LDAP
5 3 (0.93%) Terraform
6 2 (0.62%) ADO
6 2 (0.62%) Azure Blueprints
6 2 (0.62%) FHIR
6 2 (0.62%) Gherkin
6 2 (0.62%) OAuth2
7 1 (0.31%) AngularJS
7 1 (0.31%) cloud-init
7 1 (0.31%) JSON
7 1 (0.31%) Keycloak
7 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Graph
7 1 (0.31%) Middleware
7 1 (0.31%) WebAuthn
Miscellaneous
1 320 (99.38%) Product Ownership
2 22 (6.83%) Onboarding
3 11 (3.42%) Data Protection Act
4 10 (3.11%) Analytical Mindset
4 10 (3.11%) Marketing Technology
5 9 (2.80%) Distributed Computing
5 9 (2.80%) Life Science
6 8 (2.48%) Management Information System
7 7 (2.17%) Data Fabric
7 7 (2.17%) Social Media
8 5 (1.55%) Cloud Native
8 5 (1.55%) Credit Risk
8 5 (1.55%) Enterprise Software
8 5 (1.55%) Virtual Team
9 4 (1.24%) CCTV
9 4 (1.24%) FMCG
9 4 (1.24%) Legacy Systems
9 4 (1.24%) Self-Motivation
10 3 (0.93%) IVR
10 3 (0.93%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 2 (0.62%) Linux
2 1 (0.31%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 200 (62.11%) Agile
2 174 (54.04%) Roadmaps
3 153 (47.52%) Stakeholder Management
4 140 (43.48%) Product Backlog
5 133 (41.30%) Backlog Prioritisation
6 130 (40.37%) User Stories
7 101 (31.37%) Backlog Management
8 89 (27.64%) Product Roadmap
9 87 (27.02%) Acceptance Criteria
10 83 (25.78%) Product Vision
11 82 (25.47%) Continuous Improvement
12 74 (22.98%) Decision-Making
13 69 (21.43%) Scrum
14 58 (18.01%) Sprint Planning
15 52 (16.15%) AI
15 52 (16.15%) Epics
16 51 (15.84%) Product Management
17 48 (14.91%) Analytics
18 47 (14.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 39 (12.11%) Strategic Roadmap
Programming Languages
1 24 (7.45%) SQL
2 19 (5.90%) Python
3 1 (0.31%) ABAP
3 1 (0.31%) Java
3 1 (0.31%) PHP
3 1 (0.31%) PL/SQL
3 1 (0.31%) PowerShell
3 1 (0.31%) R
Qualifications
1 57 (17.70%) Security Cleared
2 49 (15.22%) SC Cleared
3 21 (6.52%) Degree
4 15 (4.66%) CSPO
5 7 (2.17%) CISSP
5 7 (2.17%) Computer Science Degree
6 5 (1.55%) DV Cleared
7 4 (1.24%) AWS Certification
8 3 (0.93%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.62%) PMI Certification
9 2 (0.62%) TOGAF Certification
10 1 (0.31%) CBAP
10 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.31%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (7.76%) Data Quality
2 20 (6.21%) QA
3 8 (2.48%) GxP
4 6 (1.86%) 21 CFR Part 11
5 5 (1.55%) GRC
6 4 (1.24%) GDPR
7 2 (0.62%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.62%) EU AI Act
7 2 (0.62%) SLA
8 1 (0.31%) Basel II
8 1 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.31%) NIST
8 1 (0.31%) PERC
8 1 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 6 (1.86%) Ceph
1 6 (1.86%) Virtual Machines
2 4 (1.24%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.31%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 4 (1.24%) Single Sign-On
2 3 (0.93%) Kubernetes
3 2 (0.62%) Ansible
3 2 (0.62%) Argo
4 1 (0.31%) PingFederate
4 1 (0.31%) Tivoli
4 1 (0.31%) Tivoli Monitoring
Vendors
1 21 (6.52%) Microsoft
2 15 (4.66%) Salesforce
3 12 (3.73%) Adobe
4 9 (2.80%) Atlassian
5 8 (2.48%) SAP
5 8 (2.48%) ServiceNow
6 6 (1.86%) Databricks
6 6 (1.86%) Okta
6 6 (1.86%) Pega
6 6 (1.86%) Ping Identity
7 5 (1.55%) ForgeRock
7 5 (1.55%) Google
7 5 (1.55%) Oracle
7 5 (1.55%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
8 3 (0.93%) IBM
9 2 (0.62%) Veritas
10 1 (0.31%) Anaplan
10 1 (0.31%) Avaya
10 1 (0.31%) CyberArk
10 1 (0.31%) VMware