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 1 July 2026.

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

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 359 383 371
Rank change year-on-year +24 -12 +17
Contract jobs requiring a Product Owner 322 152 233
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.63% 0.49% 0.54%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.68% 0.54% 0.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 189 95 170
10th Percentile £413 £356 £400
25th Percentile £475 £408 £466
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £504 £575
Median % change year-on-year +4.27% -12.43% -4.17%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £675
90th Percentile £752 £675 £776
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £450 £550
% change year-on-year +13.22% -18.18% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 2 0
10th Percentile £71.48 £88.62 -
25th Percentile £80.75 £88.79 -
Median hourly rate £87.16 £92.54 -
Median % change year-on-year -5.81% - -
75th Percentile £102.80 £96.24 -
90th Percentile £104.50 £96.39 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £87.16 £92.00 -
% change year-on-year -5.26% - -

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 47,495 28,303 40,138
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.41% 92.03% 92.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,760 18,119 25,771
10th Percentile £325 £288 £283
25th Percentile £415 £401 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,210 1,268 2,866
10th Percentile £15.72 £13.77 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.41 £16.50
Median hourly rate £43.00 £26.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +62.26% -29.33% -12.79%
75th Percentile £67.50 £56.25 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -

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 1 July 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 1 July 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 1 July 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 +30 295 £525 +4.27% 152
London +5 147 £550 +4.76% 81
UK excluding London -22 145 £510 +13.22% 91
Work from Home +14 100 £550 +4.76% 83
North of England -32 55 £500 -10.31% 24
South East -31 48 £675 +50.00% 24
Yorkshire -21 31 £503 +0.65% 10
Midlands -50 29 £525 +46.65% 13
West Midlands -36 23 £525 +1.94% 8
North West -27 21 £500 -20.00% 14
South West -29 8 £500 +8.23% 8
East Midlands -20 6 £490 +36.87% 5
Scotland -11 5 £466 -15.23% 5
East of England -17 5 £475 - 10
North East -30 3 £475 -

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

For the 6 months to 1 July 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.

1 179 (55.59%) Agile
2 164 (50.93%) Roadmaps
3 124 (38.51%) User Stories
4 123 (38.20%) Product Backlog
5 116 (36.02%) Stakeholder Management
6 104 (32.30%) Backlog Prioritisation
7 95 (29.50%) Product Roadmap
8 81 (25.16%) Backlog Management
9 77 (23.91%) Acceptance Criteria
10 71 (22.05%) Product Vision
11 70 (21.74%) Continuous Improvement
12 69 (21.43%) Decision-Making
13 67 (20.81%) Security Cleared
14 57 (17.70%) Sprint Planning
15 52 (16.15%) JIRA
15 52 (16.15%) SC Cleared
16 48 (14.91%) AI
16 48 (14.91%) Scrum
17 47 (14.60%) Product Management
18 42 (13.04%) Analytics
19 39 (12.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 38 (11.80%) Problem-Solving
21 36 (11.18%) AWS
21 36 (11.18%) Epics
22 33 (10.25%) Confluence
23 32 (9.94%) User Experience
24 31 (9.63%) Product Requirements
25 30 (9.32%) Scaled Agile Framework
26 28 (8.70%) Customer Experience
26 28 (8.70%) Kanban

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 33 (10.25%) Confluence
2 7 (2.17%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (0.93%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 1 (0.31%) Apache
4 1 (0.31%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.31%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.31%) Appian
4 1 (0.31%) CMS
4 1 (0.31%) Mendix
4 1 (0.31%) Moodle
4 1 (0.31%) Mule
4 1 (0.31%) Mule ESB
4 1 (0.31%) nginx
4 1 (0.31%) SharePoint
Applications
1 2 (0.62%) Chatbot
1 2 (0.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.31%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 1 (0.31%) Adobe Illustrator
2 1 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.31%) Notion
2 1 (0.31%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 7 (2.17%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (1.55%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.62%) Finacle
3 2 (0.62%) Oracle ERP
3 2 (0.62%) Oracle Payables
3 2 (0.62%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 2 (0.62%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.62%) SAP SD
4 1 (0.31%) Adobe Campaign
4 1 (0.31%) Shopify
4 1 (0.31%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 36 (11.18%) AWS
2 23 (7.14%) Azure
3 10 (3.11%) GCP
3 10 (3.11%) SaaS
4 7 (2.17%) Collibra
4 7 (2.17%) Dynamics 365
4 7 (2.17%) OpenShift
5 6 (1.86%) GitHub
6 5 (1.55%) Amazon S3
6 5 (1.55%) Entra ID
6 5 (1.55%) Power Platform
7 4 (1.24%) PaaS
8 3 (0.93%) Amazon OpenSearch
8 3 (0.93%) AWS Lambda
8 3 (0.93%) Azure DevOps
8 3 (0.93%) Figma
8 3 (0.93%) Serverless
9 2 (0.62%) Amazon Bedrock
9 2 (0.62%) Amazon ECR
9 2 (0.62%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.86%) DNS
1 6 (1.86%) Firewall
2 5 (1.55%) Network Security
3 3 (0.93%) NGFW
4 2 (0.62%) Broadband
4 2 (0.62%) Wireless
5 1 (0.31%) Intrusion Detection
5 1 (0.31%) NGN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (4.04%) Metadata
2 7 (2.17%) Delta Lake
3 6 (1.86%) Parquet
4 5 (1.55%) Data Lake
5 4 (1.24%) Power BI
6 3 (0.93%) Big Data
6 3 (0.93%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.62%) Amazon Redshift
7 2 (0.62%) DTS
7 2 (0.62%) GIS
7 2 (0.62%) Pinecone
8 1 (0.31%) BigQuery
8 1 (0.31%) Geospatial Data
8 1 (0.31%) Hadoop
8 1 (0.31%) Looker
8 1 (0.31%) MySQL
8 1 (0.31%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 1 (0.31%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 52 (16.15%) JIRA
2 1 (0.31%) Cucumber
2 1 (0.31%) Git
2 1 (0.31%) JUnit
2 1 (0.31%) REST Assured
2 1 (0.31%) Vite
General
1 86 (26.71%) Finance
2 81 (25.16%) Social Skills
3 48 (14.91%) Analytical Skills
4 42 (13.04%) Banking
5 25 (7.76%) Marketing
5 25 (7.76%) Public Sector
6 23 (7.14%) Retail
7 15 (4.66%) Legal
8 14 (4.35%) Pharmaceutical
9 13 (4.04%) Aerospace
10 12 (3.73%) Retail Banking
11 10 (3.11%) Corporate Banking
12 9 (2.80%) Influencing Skills
13 8 (2.48%) Investment Banking
13 8 (2.48%) Manufacturing
14 6 (1.86%) Military
15 4 (1.24%) Presentation Skills
16 3 (0.93%) Financial Institution
16 3 (0.93%) Front Office
16 3 (0.93%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (2.80%) SailPoint
2 7 (2.17%) OAuth
3 5 (1.55%) OpenID
3 5 (1.55%) SAML
4 4 (1.24%) LDAP
5 3 (0.93%) 802.1X
5 3 (0.93%) JSON
6 2 (0.62%) AngularJS
6 2 (0.62%) Azure Blueprints
6 2 (0.62%) Faiss
6 2 (0.62%) FHIR
6 2 (0.62%) Gherkin
6 2 (0.62%) LangChain
6 2 (0.62%) LangGraph
6 2 (0.62%) XML
7 1 (0.31%) Django
7 1 (0.31%) Laravel
7 1 (0.31%) REST
7 1 (0.31%) Ruby on Rails
7 1 (0.31%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 320 (99.38%) Product Ownership
2 16 (4.97%) Onboarding
3 14 (4.35%) Legacy Systems
4 13 (4.04%) Data Protection Act
5 12 (3.73%) Analytical Mindset
6 10 (3.11%) Marketing Technology
7 9 (2.80%) Life Science
8 6 (1.86%) Distributed Computing
8 6 (1.86%) Greenfield Project
8 6 (1.86%) Management Information System
9 5 (1.55%) Cloud Native
9 5 (1.55%) FMCG
9 5 (1.55%) Virtual Team
10 4 (1.24%) CCTV
10 4 (1.24%) Mobile App
10 4 (1.24%) Security Posture
11 3 (0.93%) AI Agents
11 3 (0.93%) Credit Risk
11 3 (0.93%) Data Fabric
11 3 (0.93%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 12 (3.73%) Windows
2 9 (2.80%) Linux
3 7 (2.17%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 179 (55.59%) Agile
2 164 (50.93%) Roadmaps
3 124 (38.51%) User Stories
4 123 (38.20%) Product Backlog
5 116 (36.02%) Stakeholder Management
6 104 (32.30%) Backlog Prioritisation
7 95 (29.50%) Product Roadmap
8 81 (25.16%) Backlog Management
9 77 (23.91%) Acceptance Criteria
10 71 (22.05%) Product Vision
11 70 (21.74%) Continuous Improvement
12 69 (21.43%) Decision-Making
13 57 (17.70%) Sprint Planning
14 48 (14.91%) AI
14 48 (14.91%) Scrum
15 47 (14.60%) Product Management
16 42 (13.04%) Analytics
17 39 (12.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 38 (11.80%) Problem-Solving
19 36 (11.18%) Epics
Programming Languages
1 16 (4.97%) SQL
2 15 (4.66%) Python
3 2 (0.62%) ABAP
3 2 (0.62%) Java
3 2 (0.62%) JavaScript
3 2 (0.62%) PHP
4 1 (0.31%) Bash
4 1 (0.31%) C#
4 1 (0.31%) Kotlin
4 1 (0.31%) PL/SQL
4 1 (0.31%) R
Qualifications
1 67 (20.81%) Security Cleared
2 52 (16.15%) SC Cleared
3 13 (4.04%) CSPO
3 13 (4.04%) Degree
4 7 (2.17%) CISSP
5 6 (1.86%) Computer Science Degree
5 6 (1.86%) DV Cleared
6 5 (1.55%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (1.24%) AWS Certification
8 3 (0.93%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.62%) Master's Degree
9 2 (0.62%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (7.45%) Data Quality
2 23 (7.14%) QA
3 9 (2.80%) GxP
4 7 (2.17%) 21 CFR Part 11
5 6 (1.86%) GDPR
6 4 (1.24%) GRC
7 3 (0.93%) Accessibility
7 3 (0.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (0.93%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
7 3 (0.93%) NIST
7 3 (0.93%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.62%) EU AI Act
8 2 (0.62%) SLA
8 2 (0.62%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.31%) Basel II
9 1 (0.31%) PERC
System Software
1 10 (3.11%) Active Directory
2 8 (2.48%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (1.86%) Ceph
3 6 (1.86%) Hyper-V
3 6 (1.86%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.31%) Docker
4 1 (0.31%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 4 (1.24%) Terraform
2 3 (0.93%) Ansible
2 3 (0.93%) CASB
2 3 (0.93%) Kubernetes
3 2 (0.62%) Argo
3 2 (0.62%) Single Sign-On
4 1 (0.31%) PingFederate
4 1 (0.31%) PowerCLI
4 1 (0.31%) vCenter Server
4 1 (0.31%) vRealize
4 1 (0.31%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 28 (8.70%) Microsoft
1 28 (8.70%) Salesforce
2 9 (2.80%) Atlassian
2 9 (2.80%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
3 8 (2.48%) Adobe
3 8 (2.48%) SAP
3 8 (2.48%) VMware
4 7 (2.17%) ServiceNow
5 5 (1.55%) Databricks
5 5 (1.55%) Okta
5 5 (1.55%) Ping Identity
6 4 (1.24%) Cisco
6 4 (1.24%) ForeScout
6 4 (1.24%) ForgeRock
6 4 (1.24%) Fortinet
6 4 (1.24%) Google
6 4 (1.24%) Infoblox
6 4 (1.24%) Oracle
6 4 (1.24%) Splunk
6 4 (1.24%) Zscaler