Product Owner Contract Job Trends

Product Owner
UK

The median Product Owner daily rate in the UK is £535, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 October 2026.

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

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 387 350 344
Rank change year-on-year -37 -6 +24
Contract jobs requiring a Product Owner 320 218 230
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.58% 0.66% 0.61%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.63% 0.72% 0.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 179 149 158
10th Percentile £397 £357 £404
25th Percentile £481 £405 £512
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £500 £600
Median % change year-on-year +7.00% -16.67% -
75th Percentile £628 £588 £688
90th Percentile £725 £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 50,623 30,078 35,169
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.20% 90.98% 92.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,851 19,013 21,316
10th Percentile £325 £276 £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 £734 £725 £749
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,956 1,609 1,552
10th Percentile £14.50 £13.75 £14.86
25th Percentile £19.91 £17.30 £20.94
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -41.51% -2.82%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.31 £74.86
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.87 £25.08 £43.00
% change year-on-year +66.97% -41.69% -2.05%

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 October 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 October 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 October 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 -32 283 £525 +5.00% 433
London -34 153 £550 +5.26% 236
UK excluding London -60 135 £503 +5.95% 215
Work from Home -33 91 £600 +18.52% 176
North of England -50 42 £503 +0.65% 51
South East -52 32 £613 +36.11% 42
Yorkshire -14 30 £550 +10.00% 13
South West -20 25 £525 -17.97% 39
Midlands -59 21 £471 +17.02% 30
West Midlands -28 20 £492 +3.58% 15
Scotland -16 13 £525 +27.27% 11
North West -50 11 £500 - 38
East of England -22 7 £500 +17.65% 23
East Midlands -35 1 £388 -3.48% 15
North East -38 1 £400 -15.79%

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

For the 6 months to 1 October 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 (62.50%) Agile
2 173 (54.06%) Roadmaps
3 152 (47.50%) Stakeholder Management
4 139 (43.44%) Product Backlog
5 133 (41.56%) Backlog Prioritisation
6 130 (40.63%) User Stories
7 100 (31.25%) Backlog Management
8 88 (27.50%) Acceptance Criteria
8 88 (27.50%) Product Roadmap
9 83 (25.94%) Product Vision
10 81 (25.31%) Continuous Improvement
11 73 (22.81%) Decision-Making
12 69 (21.56%) Scrum
13 58 (18.13%) Sprint Planning
14 57 (17.81%) JIRA
14 57 (17.81%) Security Cleared
15 52 (16.25%) AI
16 51 (15.94%) Epics
16 51 (15.94%) Product Management
17 49 (15.31%) SC Cleared
18 47 (14.69%) Analytics
18 47 (14.69%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 39 (12.19%) Strategic Roadmap
20 37 (11.56%) Requirements Gathering
21 36 (11.25%) AWS
21 36 (11.25%) Confluence
21 36 (11.25%) Problem-Solving
22 34 (10.63%) DevOps
22 34 (10.63%) Scaled Agile Framework
23 32 (10.00%) 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 (11.25%) Confluence
2 5 (1.56%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 4 (1.25%) CMS
4 2 (0.63%) 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 (1.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.94%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.63%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 2 (0.63%) Productboard
4 1 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.31%) Notion
Business Applications
1 8 (2.50%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (1.56%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.94%) 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%) Workfront
5 1 (0.31%) IBM Planning Analytics
5 1 (0.31%) ResourceLink
5 1 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.31%) SAP BRIM
5 1 (0.31%) SAP IS-U
5 1 (0.31%) Sonata
Cloud Services
1 36 (11.25%) AWS
2 32 (10.00%) Azure
3 10 (3.13%) GCP
4 9 (2.81%) Collibra
4 9 (2.81%) Power Platform
4 9 (2.81%) SaaS
5 7 (2.19%) Azure DevOps
5 7 (2.19%) Dynamics 365
5 7 (2.19%) OpenShift
6 6 (1.88%) Entra ID
6 6 (1.88%) GitHub
7 5 (1.56%) Figma
8 4 (1.25%) Adobe Analytics
8 4 (1.25%) Miro
8 4 (1.25%) PaaS
8 4 (1.25%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
9 3 (0.94%) Azure Data Factory
9 3 (0.94%) CloudFront
9 3 (0.94%) dbt
9 3 (0.94%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 18 (5.63%) Broadband
2 2 (0.63%) Wireless
3 1 (0.31%) NGN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (5.63%) Metadata
2 8 (2.50%) Delta Lake
2 8 (2.50%) Parquet
3 7 (2.19%) Power BI
4 5 (1.56%) Data Lake
4 5 (1.56%) DTS
5 3 (0.94%) Big Data
6 2 (0.63%) 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 (17.81%) JIRA
2 2 (0.63%) Postman
General
1 97 (30.31%) Social Skills
2 95 (29.69%) Finance
3 48 (15.00%) Banking
4 42 (13.13%) Analytical Skills
5 26 (8.13%) Influencing Skills
6 25 (7.81%) Public Sector
7 24 (7.50%) Retail
8 19 (5.94%) Marketing
9 18 (5.63%) Aerospace
10 15 (4.69%) Legal
11 14 (4.38%) Retail Banking
12 13 (4.06%) Corporate Banking
13 11 (3.44%) Investment Banking
14 9 (2.81%) Manufacturing
15 8 (2.50%) Pharmaceutical
15 8 (2.50%) Presentation Skills
16 3 (0.94%) Financial Institution
16 3 (0.94%) Front Office
17 2 (0.63%) Billing
17 2 (0.63%) Games
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (3.13%) SailPoint
2 9 (2.81%) OAuth
3 6 (1.88%) OpenID
3 6 (1.88%) SAML
4 4 (1.25%) LDAP
5 3 (0.94%) Terraform
6 2 (0.63%) ADO
6 2 (0.63%) Azure Blueprints
6 2 (0.63%) FHIR
6 2 (0.63%) Gherkin
6 2 (0.63%) 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
1 318 (99.38%) Product Ownership
2 21 (6.56%) Onboarding
3 11 (3.44%) Data Protection Act
4 10 (3.13%) Analytical Mindset
5 9 (2.81%) Life Science
5 9 (2.81%) Marketing Technology
6 8 (2.50%) Distributed Computing
6 8 (2.50%) Management Information System
7 7 (2.19%) Data Fabric
7 7 (2.19%) Social Media
8 5 (1.56%) Cloud Native
8 5 (1.56%) Credit Risk
8 5 (1.56%) Enterprise Software
8 5 (1.56%) Virtual Team
9 4 (1.25%) CCTV
9 4 (1.25%) Legacy Systems
9 4 (1.25%) Self-Motivation
10 3 (0.94%) Hybrid Cloud
10 3 (0.94%) Mobile App
10 3 (0.94%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 2 (0.63%) Linux
2 1 (0.31%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 200 (62.50%) Agile
2 173 (54.06%) Roadmaps
3 152 (47.50%) Stakeholder Management
4 139 (43.44%) Product Backlog
5 133 (41.56%) Backlog Prioritisation
6 130 (40.63%) User Stories
7 100 (31.25%) Backlog Management
8 88 (27.50%) Acceptance Criteria
8 88 (27.50%) Product Roadmap
9 83 (25.94%) Product Vision
10 81 (25.31%) Continuous Improvement
11 73 (22.81%) Decision-Making
12 69 (21.56%) Scrum
13 58 (18.13%) Sprint Planning
14 52 (16.25%) AI
15 51 (15.94%) Epics
15 51 (15.94%) Product Management
16 47 (14.69%) Analytics
16 47 (14.69%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 39 (12.19%) Strategic Roadmap
Programming Languages
1 23 (7.19%) SQL
2 18 (5.63%) 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 (17.81%) Security Cleared
2 49 (15.31%) SC Cleared
3 21 (6.56%) Degree
4 15 (4.69%) CSPO
5 7 (2.19%) CISSP
5 7 (2.19%) Computer Science Degree
6 5 (1.56%) DV Cleared
7 4 (1.25%) AWS Certification
8 3 (0.94%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.63%) PMI Certification
9 2 (0.63%) TOGAF Certification
10 1 (0.31%) CBAP
10 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.31%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (7.50%) Data Quality
2 20 (6.25%) QA
3 8 (2.50%) GxP
4 6 (1.88%) 21 CFR Part 11
5 5 (1.56%) GRC
6 4 (1.25%) GDPR
7 2 (0.63%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.63%) EU AI Act
7 2 (0.63%) 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 (1.88%) Ceph
1 6 (1.88%) Virtual Machines
2 4 (1.25%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.31%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 4 (1.25%) Single Sign-On
2 3 (0.94%) Kubernetes
3 2 (0.63%) Ansible
3 2 (0.63%) Argo
4 1 (0.31%) PingFederate
4 1 (0.31%) Tivoli
4 1 (0.31%) Tivoli Monitoring
Vendors
1 21 (6.56%) Microsoft
2 13 (4.06%) Salesforce
3 12 (3.75%) Adobe
4 9 (2.81%) Atlassian
5 8 (2.50%) SAP
5 8 (2.50%) ServiceNow
6 6 (1.88%) Databricks
6 6 (1.88%) Okta
6 6 (1.88%) Pega
6 6 (1.88%) Ping Identity
7 5 (1.56%) ForgeRock
7 5 (1.56%) Google
7 5 (1.56%) Oracle
8 4 (1.25%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
9 3 (0.94%) IBM
10 2 (0.63%) Veritas
11 1 (0.31%) Anaplan
11 1 (0.31%) Avaya
11 1 (0.31%) CyberArk
11 1 (0.31%) VMware