Product Owner Contract Job Trends

Product Owner
UK

The median Product Owner daily rate in the UK is £548, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 9 March 2026.

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

6 months to
9 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 374 349 323
Rank change year-on-year -25 -26 +78
Contract jobs requiring a Product Owner 250 176 302
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.59% 0.59% 0.68%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.64% 0.64% 0.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 155 100 204
10th Percentile £413 £413 £406
25th Percentile £464 £505 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £548 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.75% +4.35% +4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £675 £650
90th Percentile £737 £713 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £550 £525
% change year-on-year -4.55% +4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 4 1
10th Percentile - £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 £70.57 £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 38,836 27,659 41,539
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.96% 92.95% 92.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,338 17,830 27,237
10th Percentile £310 £294 £270
25th Percentile £409 £406 £406
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 +1.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,391 872 2,505
10th Percentile £14.82 £15.81 £13.00
25th Percentile £19.00 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £34.95 £33.75 £32.69
Median % change year-on-year +3.54% +3.24% -20.33%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £76.25 £71.89
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.50 £32.50 £32.90
% change year-on-year +3.08% -1.20% -17.30%

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 9 March 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 9 March 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 9 March 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 -15 230 £549 -8.54% 127
UK excluding London -12 122 £525 -4.55% 87
London -43 101 £564 -11.91% 57
Work from Home -28 68 £525 -18.70% 91
North of England -4 61 £492 -18.00% 25
South East -36 35 £575 +4.55% 28
North West -1 30 £561 -6.58% 19
Yorkshire -35 25 £486 -18.96% 3
Midlands -46 21 £525 +13.21% 12
East Midlands -24 13 £538 +50.98% 8
West Midlands -49 8 £520 - 4
North East - 4 £475 - 3
South West -27 3 £449 - 10
Scotland +4 2 - - 3

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

For the 6 months to 9 March 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 (52.40%) Agile
2 117 (46.80%) Roadmaps
3 82 (32.80%) Product Backlog
4 78 (31.20%) Stakeholder Management
4 78 (31.20%) User Stories
5 58 (23.20%) Product Vision
6 56 (22.40%) Backlog Management
7 53 (21.20%) Product Roadmap
8 51 (20.40%) Security Cleared
9 46 (18.40%) Scrum
10 44 (17.60%) Backlog Prioritisation
11 43 (17.20%) Continuous Improvement
12 42 (16.80%) Acceptance Criteria
13 35 (14.00%) JIRA
13 35 (14.00%) Sprint Planning
14 34 (13.60%) Product Strategy
14 34 (13.60%) SC Cleared
15 33 (13.20%) Decision-Making
16 31 (12.40%) Microsoft
17 28 (11.20%) Product Management
17 28 (11.20%) User Experience
18 27 (10.80%) Problem-Solving
19 26 (10.40%) AWS
20 25 (10.00%) DevOps
20 25 (10.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
21 24 (9.60%) Customer Experience
22 23 (9.20%) Confluence
23 22 (8.80%) Scaled Agile Framework
24 19 (7.60%) AI
24 19 (7.60%) 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 23 (9.20%) Confluence
2 8 (3.20%) Microsoft Exchange
3 5 (2.00%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.80%) CMS
5 1 (0.40%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.40%) Appian
5 1 (0.40%) Mendix
5 1 (0.40%) Mule
5 1 (0.40%) Mule ESB
5 1 (0.40%) nginx
5 1 (0.40%) WebSphere
Applications
1 2 (0.80%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.40%) Adobe Illustrator
2 1 (0.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.40%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.40%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 6 (2.40%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.80%) Finacle
2 2 (0.80%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.80%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.40%) Adobe Campaign
3 1 (0.40%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.40%) Oracle Payroll
3 1 (0.40%) ProductWriter
3 1 (0.40%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.40%) SAP HR
3 1 (0.40%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 26 (10.40%) AWS
2 19 (7.60%) Azure
3 11 (4.40%) GCP
4 7 (2.80%) Dynamics 365
4 7 (2.80%) Power Platform
5 6 (2.40%) Azure DevOps
5 6 (2.40%) SaaS
6 5 (2.00%) Microsoft 365
7 4 (1.60%) Amazon S3
7 4 (1.60%) OpenShift
7 4 (1.60%) Power Automate
8 3 (1.20%) Amazon Bedrock
8 3 (1.20%) Amazon OpenSearch
8 3 (1.20%) AWS Lambda
8 3 (1.20%) Serverless
8 3 (1.20%) SuccessFactors
9 2 (0.80%) Amazon EventBridge
9 2 (0.80%) Amazon SageMaker
9 2 (0.80%) Apigee
9 2 (0.80%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 6 (2.40%) DNS
1 6 (2.40%) Firewall
2 5 (2.00%) Network Security
3 3 (1.20%) NGFW
4 1 (0.40%) Cisco IPT
4 1 (0.40%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (2.40%) Power BI
2 2 (0.80%) Data Lake
2 2 (0.80%) Data Warehouse
2 2 (0.80%) Delta Lake
2 2 (0.80%) GIS
2 2 (0.80%) Pinecone
2 2 (0.80%) SAP HANA
2 2 (0.80%) SQL Server
3 1 (0.40%) Amazon Redshift
3 1 (0.40%) Big Data
3 1 (0.40%) Geospatial Data
3 1 (0.40%) Metadata
3 1 (0.40%) MySQL
3 1 (0.40%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 35 (14.00%) JIRA
2 1 (0.40%) Cucumber
2 1 (0.40%) Git
2 1 (0.40%) JUnit
2 1 (0.40%) Postman
2 1 (0.40%) REST Assured
2 1 (0.40%) Team Foundation Server
2 1 (0.40%) Vite
General
1 81 (32.40%) Social Skills
2 74 (29.60%) Finance
3 33 (13.20%) Analytical Skills
4 24 (9.60%) Banking
5 14 (5.60%) Public Sector
6 12 (4.80%) Marketing
7 10 (4.00%) Legal
8 8 (3.20%) Retail
9 7 (2.80%) Influencing Skills
9 7 (2.80%) Law
10 6 (2.40%) Military
11 5 (2.00%) Pharmaceutical
12 4 (1.60%) Organisational Skills
12 4 (1.60%) Police
12 4 (1.60%) Telecoms
13 2 (0.80%) Corporate Banking
14 1 (0.40%) Documentation Skills
14 1 (0.40%) Manufacturing
14 1 (0.40%) Presentation Skills
14 1 (0.40%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (1.60%) JSON
1 4 (1.60%) XML
2 3 (1.20%) 802.1X
2 3 (1.20%) REST
3 2 (0.80%) Faiss
3 2 (0.80%) Flutter
3 2 (0.80%) LangChain
3 2 (0.80%) LangGraph
3 2 (0.80%) React
4 1 (0.40%) AngularJS
4 1 (0.40%) Django
4 1 (0.40%) HTML
4 1 (0.40%) J2EE
4 1 (0.40%) Laravel
4 1 (0.40%) LEMP Stack
4 1 (0.40%) OAuth
4 1 (0.40%) RESTful
4 1 (0.40%) Tailwind CSS
4 1 (0.40%) Vue
4 1 (0.40%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 250 (100.00%) Product Ownership
2 14 (5.60%) Onboarding
3 11 (4.40%) Legacy Systems
4 9 (3.60%) Cloud Native
4 9 (3.60%) Data Protection Act
4 9 (3.60%) Mobile App
5 7 (2.80%) CMDB
6 6 (2.40%) Analytical Mindset
6 6 (2.40%) Greenfield Project
6 6 (2.40%) Public Cloud
7 4 (1.60%) Hybrid Cloud
8 3 (1.20%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 2 (0.80%) AI Agents
9 2 (0.80%) Credit Risk
9 2 (0.80%) FMCG
9 2 (0.80%) Low-Code
9 2 (0.80%) Security Posture
9 2 (0.80%) Self-Motivation
9 2 (0.80%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 1 (0.40%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 14 (5.60%) Windows
2 8 (3.20%) Linux
2 8 (3.20%) Windows Server
3 1 (0.40%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 131 (52.40%) Agile
2 117 (46.80%) Roadmaps
3 82 (32.80%) Product Backlog
4 78 (31.20%) Stakeholder Management
4 78 (31.20%) User Stories
5 58 (23.20%) Product Vision
6 56 (22.40%) Backlog Management
7 53 (21.20%) Product Roadmap
8 46 (18.40%) Scrum
9 44 (17.60%) Backlog Prioritisation
10 43 (17.20%) Continuous Improvement
11 42 (16.80%) Acceptance Criteria
12 35 (14.00%) Sprint Planning
13 34 (13.60%) Product Strategy
14 33 (13.20%) Decision-Making
15 28 (11.20%) Product Management
15 28 (11.20%) User Experience
16 27 (10.80%) Problem-Solving
17 25 (10.00%) DevOps
17 25 (10.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 11 (4.40%) SQL
2 5 (2.00%) Python
3 3 (1.20%) Java
3 3 (1.20%) JavaScript
4 2 (0.80%) Korn
4 2 (0.80%) Kotlin
5 1 (0.40%) Bash
5 1 (0.40%) C#
5 1 (0.40%) PHP
5 1 (0.40%) PL/SQL
5 1 (0.40%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 51 (20.40%) Security Cleared
2 34 (13.60%) SC Cleared
3 14 (5.60%) CSPO
4 11 (4.40%) Degree
5 10 (4.00%) BPSS Clearance
6 4 (1.60%) DV Cleared
6 4 (1.60%) Master's Degree
7 2 (0.80%) AWS Certification
7 2 (0.80%) CBAP
8 1 (0.40%) ACCA
8 1 (0.40%) APMP
8 1 (0.40%) Azure Certification
8 1 (0.40%) OCP
8 1 (0.40%) Oracle Certification
8 1 (0.40%) PMI Certification
8 1 (0.40%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (7.20%) QA
2 11 (4.40%) Data Quality
3 10 (4.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 9 (3.60%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
5 8 (3.20%) SLA
6 6 (2.40%) ISO/IEC 27005
6 6 (2.40%) NCSC
7 5 (2.00%) GDPR
8 4 (1.60%) NIST
9 3 (1.20%) Accessibility
9 3 (1.20%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.80%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.40%) GRC
11 1 (0.40%) PERC
System Software
1 8 (3.20%) Active Directory
2 7 (2.80%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (2.40%) Hyper-V
4 5 (2.00%) Docker
5 1 (0.40%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 8 (3.20%) Kubernetes
2 4 (1.60%) CASB
3 1 (0.40%) Ansible
3 1 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
3 1 (0.40%) PowerCLI
3 1 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
3 1 (0.40%) Terraform
3 1 (0.40%) vCenter Server
3 1 (0.40%) vRealize
3 1 (0.40%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 31 (12.40%) Microsoft
2 15 (6.00%) Salesforce
2 15 (6.00%) SAP
3 12 (4.80%) ServiceNow
4 7 (2.80%) VMware
5 6 (2.40%) Databricks
6 5 (2.00%) Cisco
6 5 (2.00%) Splunk
6 5 (2.00%) Zscaler
7 4 (1.60%) ForeScout
7 4 (1.60%) Fortinet
7 4 (1.60%) Infoblox
8 3 (1.20%) Epicor
8 3 (1.20%) Oracle
8 3 (1.20%) Workday
9 2 (0.80%) Adobe
9 2 (0.80%) Cognizant
9 2 (0.80%) ESRI
9 2 (0.80%) MuleSoft
9 2 (0.80%) Sage