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 22 December 2025.

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

6 months to
22 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 354 316 339
Rank change year-on-year -38 +23 +82
Contract jobs requiring a Product Owner 252 231 287
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.69% 0.68% 0.66%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.75% 0.74% 0.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 171 137 187
10th Percentile £400 £428 £425
25th Percentile £458 £513 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £600 £590
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% +1.69% +7.27%
75th Percentile £599 £675 £675
90th Percentile £675 £713 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -9.09% - +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 2 1
10th Percentile £46.51 £29.88 -
25th Percentile £48.86 £33.44 -
Median hourly rate £52.78 £40.25 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +31.12% -19.50% +42.86%
75th Percentile £58.65 £47.44 -
90th Percentile £60.61 £51.23 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.78 £40.25 £50.00
% change year-on-year +31.12% -19.50% -

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 33,457 31,336 40,748
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.03% 92.78% 93.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,148 19,251 27,411
10th Percentile £291 £300 £285
25th Percentile £404 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £640
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,983 978 1,439
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.52 £15.16
25th Percentile £18.18 £21.05 £19.21
Median hourly rate £25.25 £33.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.48% -26.67% +50.00%
75th Percentile £57.50 £62.54 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.60 £72.99 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £45.88
% change year-on-year -22.62% -29.16% +84.29%

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 22 December 2025.

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 22 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Product Owner in the UK

Product Owner
Top 16 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 22 December 2025. 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 -19 228 £525 -12.50% 197
UK excluding London +14 116 £500 -9.09% 162
London -32 113 £550 -12.87% 57
Work from Home -14 74 £525 -17.97% 104
North of England -3 44 £496 -6.42% 42
South East -36 27 £525 -8.70% 51
Yorkshire -22 22 £488 +5.98% 12
Midlands -28 22 £478 -11.16% 32
North West -12 19 £500 -16.67% 29
East Midlands -8 16 £490 -20.00% 16
South West - 12 £640 - 11
Scotland +9 7 £513 +24.24% 8
West Midlands -27 6 £475 +1.33% 14
East of England - 3 £425 - 15
Wales - 2 £463 - 3
North East - 1 - - 1

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

For the 6 months to 22 December 2025, 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.

1 167 (66.27%) Agile
2 123 (48.81%) Roadmaps
3 111 (44.05%) Product Backlog
4 103 (40.87%) User Stories
5 82 (32.54%) Stakeholder Management
6 81 (32.14%) Backlog Management
7 76 (30.16%) Scrum
8 59 (23.41%) Product Vision
9 58 (23.02%) Backlog Prioritisation
10 56 (22.22%) JIRA
11 55 (21.83%) Product Roadmap
12 45 (17.86%) Acceptance Criteria
13 43 (17.06%) Sprint Planning
14 40 (15.87%) Confluence
14 40 (15.87%) Continuous Improvement
15 39 (15.48%) Problem-Solving
15 39 (15.48%) Product Strategy
16 35 (13.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 29 (11.51%) Security Cleared
18 28 (11.11%) Decision-Making
18 28 (11.11%) Sprint Review
19 27 (10.71%) DevOps
19 27 (10.71%) Sprint Retrospective
20 26 (10.32%) Product Management
20 26 (10.32%) Scaled Agile Framework
21 25 (9.92%) Backlog Refinement
22 24 (9.52%) User Experience
23 23 (9.13%) AWS
23 23 (9.13%) Azure
23 23 (9.13%) Microsoft

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 40 (15.87%) Confluence
2 5 (1.98%) CMS
2 5 (1.98%) SharePoint
3 3 (1.19%) Drupal
3 3 (1.19%) WordPress
4 2 (0.79%) WebSphere
5 1 (0.40%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 2 (0.79%) Chatbot
1 2 (0.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.40%) Adobe XD
2 1 (0.40%) InVision
2 1 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.40%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.40%) Sketch
2 1 (0.40%) Trello
Business Applications
1 10 (3.97%) Dynamics CRM
2 7 (2.78%) Oracle ERP
2 7 (2.78%) Oracle SCM
3 4 (1.59%) Payment Gateway
4 2 (0.79%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.40%) Endur
5 1 (0.40%) NetSuite
5 1 (0.40%) Oracle Payroll
5 1 (0.40%) ProductWriter
5 1 (0.40%) SAP HR
5 1 (0.40%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 23 (9.13%) AWS
1 23 (9.13%) Azure
2 14 (5.56%) Dynamics 365
3 10 (3.97%) Azure DevOps
3 10 (3.97%) GCP
4 9 (3.57%) OCI
5 6 (2.38%) Power Platform
5 6 (2.38%) SaaS
6 5 (1.98%) Entra ID
6 5 (1.98%) Figma
6 5 (1.98%) Microsoft 365
7 4 (1.59%) GitHub
7 4 (1.59%) Miro
7 4 (1.59%) OpenShift
7 4 (1.59%) Power Automate
8 3 (1.19%) SuccessFactors
9 2 (0.79%) Apigee
9 2 (0.79%) PowerApps
10 1 (0.40%) Cloudflare
10 1 (0.40%) Slack
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.40%) Cisco IPT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (2.38%) Power BI
2 4 (1.59%) Data Warehouse
3 3 (1.19%) Data Lake
3 3 (1.19%) SQL Server
4 2 (0.79%) SAP HANA
5 1 (0.40%) Amazon Redshift
5 1 (0.40%) Big Data
5 1 (0.40%) Delta Lake
5 1 (0.40%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 56 (22.22%) JIRA
2 1 (0.40%) Postman
2 1 (0.40%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 94 (37.30%) Social Skills
2 85 (33.73%) Finance
3 43 (17.06%) Analytical Skills
4 29 (11.51%) Banking
5 13 (5.16%) Marketing
6 11 (4.37%) Influencing Skills
6 11 (4.37%) Retail
7 8 (3.17%) Public Sector
8 7 (2.78%) Law
8 7 (2.78%) Legal
9 6 (2.38%) Aerospace
9 6 (2.38%) Telecoms
10 5 (1.98%) Investment Banking
11 4 (1.59%) Police
12 3 (1.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 3 (1.19%) Retail Banking
13 2 (0.79%) Documentation Skills
13 2 (0.79%) Front Office
13 2 (0.79%) Games
13 2 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (1.59%) LDAP
1 4 (1.59%) SailPoint
2 3 (1.19%) Flutter
2 3 (1.19%) HTML
2 3 (1.19%) RESTful
3 2 (0.79%) .NET
3 2 (0.79%) AngularJS
3 2 (0.79%) CSS
3 2 (0.79%) JSON
3 2 (0.79%) React
3 2 (0.79%) XML
4 1 (0.40%) ADO
4 1 (0.40%) HTML5
4 1 (0.40%) Kafka
4 1 (0.40%) OAuth
4 1 (0.40%) Pandas
4 1 (0.40%) REST
4 1 (0.40%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 251 (99.60%) Product Ownership
2 19 (7.54%) Onboarding
3 11 (4.37%) Data Protection Act
3 11 (4.37%) Mobile App
4 9 (3.57%) Analytical Mindset
4 9 (3.57%) Cloud Native
5 6 (2.38%) CMDB
5 6 (2.38%) Public Cloud
6 5 (1.98%) Reinsurance
7 4 (1.59%) Derivative
7 4 (1.59%) Greenfield Project
7 4 (1.59%) Hybrid Cloud
7 4 (1.59%) Self-Motivation
8 3 (1.19%) Legacy Systems
8 3 (1.19%) OTC Derivatives
9 2 (0.79%) AI Agents
9 2 (0.79%) Equities
9 2 (0.79%) Fixed Income
9 2 (0.79%) Low-Code
9 2 (0.79%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 2 (0.79%) Android
1 2 (0.79%) Apple iOS
2 1 (0.40%) Mac OS
2 1 (0.40%) VMS
2 1 (0.40%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 167 (66.27%) Agile
2 123 (48.81%) Roadmaps
3 111 (44.05%) Product Backlog
4 103 (40.87%) User Stories
5 82 (32.54%) Stakeholder Management
6 81 (32.14%) Backlog Management
7 76 (30.16%) Scrum
8 59 (23.41%) Product Vision
9 58 (23.02%) Backlog Prioritisation
10 55 (21.83%) Product Roadmap
11 45 (17.86%) Acceptance Criteria
12 43 (17.06%) Sprint Planning
13 40 (15.87%) Continuous Improvement
14 39 (15.48%) Problem-Solving
14 39 (15.48%) Product Strategy
15 35 (13.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 28 (11.11%) Decision-Making
16 28 (11.11%) Sprint Review
17 27 (10.71%) DevOps
17 27 (10.71%) Sprint Retrospective
Programming Languages
1 16 (6.35%) SQL
2 5 (1.98%) Python
3 4 (1.59%) JavaScript
4 2 (0.79%) C#
4 2 (0.79%) Java
4 2 (0.79%) Korn
5 1 (0.40%) Kotlin
5 1 (0.40%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 29 (11.51%) Security Cleared
2 23 (9.13%) SC Cleared
3 22 (8.73%) CSPO
4 9 (3.57%) Degree
5 6 (2.38%) BPSS Clearance
6 3 (1.19%) CBAP
7 2 (0.79%) DV Cleared
7 2 (0.79%) Master's Degree
7 2 (0.79%) OCP
7 2 (0.79%) Oracle Certification
8 1 (0.40%) ACCA
8 1 (0.40%) APMP
8 1 (0.40%) AWS Certification
8 1 (0.40%) Azure Certification
8 1 (0.40%) CCNA
8 1 (0.40%) Cisco Certification
8 1 (0.40%) Computer Science Degree
8 1 (0.40%) PMI Certification
8 1 (0.40%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (7.94%) QA
2 9 (3.57%) GDPR
3 7 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 6 (2.38%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
4 6 (2.38%) ISO/IEC 27005
4 6 (2.38%) NCSC
4 6 (2.38%) SLA
5 4 (1.59%) Data Quality
5 4 (1.59%) HIPAA
5 4 (1.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 3 (1.19%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.79%) PSD2
8 1 (0.40%) EMIR
8 1 (0.40%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.40%) MiFID
8 1 (0.40%) NIST
8 1 (0.40%) PERC
8 1 (0.40%) SEPA
System Software
1 4 (1.59%) Docker
Systems Management
1 8 (3.17%) Kubernetes
2 5 (1.98%) Single Sign-On
3 1 (0.40%) CASB
3 1 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 23 (9.13%) Microsoft
2 17 (6.75%) SAP
3 9 (3.57%) Oracle
4 8 (3.17%) ServiceNow
5 6 (2.38%) Salesforce
6 4 (1.59%) CyberArk
6 4 (1.59%) Databricks
6 4 (1.59%) Okta
6 4 (1.59%) Workday
7 3 (1.19%) Adobe
8 2 (0.79%) HubSpot
9 1 (0.40%) Ariba
9 1 (0.40%) CA Agile Central
9 1 (0.40%) Cisco
9 1 (0.40%) DocuSign
9 1 (0.40%) IBM
9 1 (0.40%) MuleSoft
9 1 (0.40%) Netskope
9 1 (0.40%) Spotify
9 1 (0.40%) Zscaler