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 June 2026.

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

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 365 385 362
Rank change year-on-year +20 -23 +30
Contract jobs requiring a Product Owner 320 150 233
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.62% 0.49% 0.54%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.67% 0.53% 0.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 188 94 170
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 £626 £625 £675
90th Percentile £753 £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 47,423 28,164 40,143
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.41% 92.05% 92.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,738 18,025 25,769
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 3,196 1,261 2,867
10th Percentile £15.61 £13.78 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.23 £17.33 £16.50
Median hourly rate £43.00 £27.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.26% -28.00% -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 30 June 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 June 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 June 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 +33 292 £525 +4.27% 73
London -11 145 £550 +4.76% 34
UK excluding London -22 144 £510 +13.22% 46
Work from Home +13 98 £550 +5.77% 44
North of England -33 55 £500 -10.31% 13
South East -34 47 £675 +50.00% 17
Yorkshire -23 31 £503 +0.65% 7
Midlands -52 29 £525 +46.65% 6
West Midlands -39 23 £525 +1.94% 3
North West -34 21 £500 -20.00% 6
South West -28 8 £500 +8.23% 6
East Midlands -24 6 £490 +36.87% 3
Scotland -18 5 £466 -15.23% 2
East of England -22 5 £475 - 3
North East -32 3 £475 -

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

For the 6 months to 30 June 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.

1 176 (55.00%) Agile
2 160 (50.00%) Roadmaps
3 122 (38.13%) User Stories
4 121 (37.81%) Product Backlog
5 115 (35.94%) Stakeholder Management
6 103 (32.19%) Backlog Prioritisation
7 93 (29.06%) Product Roadmap
8 81 (25.31%) Backlog Management
9 77 (24.06%) Acceptance Criteria
10 68 (21.25%) Continuous Improvement
10 68 (21.25%) Product Vision
10 68 (21.25%) Security Cleared
11 67 (20.94%) Decision-Making
12 56 (17.50%) Sprint Planning
13 52 (16.25%) JIRA
13 52 (16.25%) SC Cleared
14 48 (15.00%) AI
14 48 (15.00%) Scrum
15 45 (14.06%) Product Management
16 42 (13.13%) Analytics
17 38 (11.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 36 (11.25%) Problem-Solving
19 35 (10.94%) AWS
19 35 (10.94%) Epics
20 33 (10.31%) Confluence
21 32 (10.00%) User Experience
22 30 (9.38%) Product Requirements
23 29 (9.06%) Microsoft
23 29 (9.06%) Scaled Agile Framework
24 28 (8.75%) 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 (10.31%) Confluence
2 7 (2.19%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (0.94%) 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 (0.63%) Chatbot
1 2 (0.63%) Microsoft Excel
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 (2.19%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (1.56%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.63%) Finacle
3 2 (0.63%) Oracle ERP
3 2 (0.63%) Oracle Payables
3 2 (0.63%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 2 (0.63%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.63%) SAP SD
4 1 (0.31%) Adobe Campaign
4 1 (0.31%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 35 (10.94%) AWS
2 23 (7.19%) Azure
3 10 (3.13%) GCP
3 10 (3.13%) SaaS
4 7 (2.19%) Dynamics 365
4 7 (2.19%) OpenShift
5 6 (1.88%) Collibra
5 6 (1.88%) GitHub
6 5 (1.56%) Amazon S3
6 5 (1.56%) Entra ID
6 5 (1.56%) Power Platform
7 4 (1.25%) PaaS
8 3 (0.94%) Amazon OpenSearch
8 3 (0.94%) AWS Lambda
8 3 (0.94%) Azure DevOps
8 3 (0.94%) Figma
8 3 (0.94%) Serverless
9 2 (0.63%) Amazon Bedrock
9 2 (0.63%) Amazon ECR
9 2 (0.63%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.88%) DNS
1 6 (1.88%) Firewall
2 5 (1.56%) Network Security
3 3 (0.94%) NGFW
4 2 (0.63%) Wireless
5 1 (0.31%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (3.44%) Metadata
2 6 (1.88%) Delta Lake
3 5 (1.56%) Data Lake
3 5 (1.56%) Parquet
4 4 (1.25%) Power BI
5 3 (0.94%) Big Data
5 3 (0.94%) Data Warehouse
6 2 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
6 2 (0.63%) DTS
6 2 (0.63%) GIS
6 2 (0.63%) Pinecone
7 1 (0.31%) BigQuery
7 1 (0.31%) Geospatial Data
7 1 (0.31%) Hadoop
7 1 (0.31%) Looker
7 1 (0.31%) MySQL
7 1 (0.31%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 1 (0.31%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 52 (16.25%) 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 (26.88%) Finance
2 80 (25.00%) Social Skills
3 46 (14.38%) Analytical Skills
4 42 (13.13%) Banking
5 25 (7.81%) Public Sector
6 23 (7.19%) Marketing
6 23 (7.19%) Retail
7 15 (4.69%) Legal
8 14 (4.38%) Pharmaceutical
9 13 (4.06%) Aerospace
10 12 (3.75%) Retail Banking
11 10 (3.13%) Corporate Banking
12 8 (2.50%) Influencing Skills
12 8 (2.50%) Investment Banking
12 8 (2.50%) Manufacturing
13 6 (1.88%) Military
14 4 (1.25%) Presentation Skills
15 3 (0.94%) Financial Institution
15 3 (0.94%) Front Office
15 3 (0.94%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (2.81%) SailPoint
2 7 (2.19%) OAuth
3 5 (1.56%) OpenID
3 5 (1.56%) SAML
4 4 (1.25%) LDAP
5 3 (0.94%) 802.1X
5 3 (0.94%) JSON
6 2 (0.63%) AngularJS
6 2 (0.63%) Azure Blueprints
6 2 (0.63%) Faiss
6 2 (0.63%) FHIR
6 2 (0.63%) Gherkin
6 2 (0.63%) LangChain
6 2 (0.63%) LangGraph
6 2 (0.63%) XML
7 1 (0.31%) CSS
7 1 (0.31%) HTML
7 1 (0.31%) J2EE
7 1 (0.31%) Ruby on Rails
7 1 (0.31%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 318 (99.38%) Product Ownership
2 15 (4.69%) Onboarding
3 14 (4.38%) Legacy Systems
4 13 (4.06%) Data Protection Act
5 12 (3.75%) Analytical Mindset
6 9 (2.81%) Life Science
6 9 (2.81%) Marketing Technology
7 6 (1.88%) Greenfield Project
7 6 (1.88%) Management Information System
8 5 (1.56%) Cloud Native
8 5 (1.56%) Distributed Computing
8 5 (1.56%) FMCG
8 5 (1.56%) Virtual Team
9 4 (1.25%) CCTV
9 4 (1.25%) Mobile App
9 4 (1.25%) Security Posture
10 3 (0.94%) Credit Risk
10 3 (0.94%) Data Fabric
10 3 (0.94%) Enterprise Software
10 3 (0.94%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 13 (4.06%) Windows
2 9 (2.81%) Linux
3 7 (2.19%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 176 (55.00%) Agile
2 160 (50.00%) Roadmaps
3 122 (38.13%) User Stories
4 121 (37.81%) Product Backlog
5 115 (35.94%) Stakeholder Management
6 103 (32.19%) Backlog Prioritisation
7 93 (29.06%) Product Roadmap
8 81 (25.31%) Backlog Management
9 77 (24.06%) Acceptance Criteria
10 68 (21.25%) Continuous Improvement
10 68 (21.25%) Product Vision
11 67 (20.94%) Decision-Making
12 56 (17.50%) Sprint Planning
13 48 (15.00%) AI
13 48 (15.00%) Scrum
14 45 (14.06%) Product Management
15 42 (13.13%) Analytics
16 38 (11.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 36 (11.25%) Problem-Solving
18 35 (10.94%) Epics
Programming Languages
1 15 (4.69%) SQL
2 14 (4.38%) Python
3 2 (0.63%) ABAP
3 2 (0.63%) Java
3 2 (0.63%) JavaScript
3 2 (0.63%) 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 68 (21.25%) Security Cleared
2 52 (16.25%) SC Cleared
3 13 (4.06%) CSPO
3 13 (4.06%) Degree
4 7 (2.19%) CISSP
5 6 (1.88%) Computer Science Degree
5 6 (1.88%) DV Cleared
6 5 (1.56%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (1.25%) AWS Certification
8 3 (0.94%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.63%) Master's Degree
9 2 (0.63%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (7.19%) Data Quality
2 22 (6.88%) QA
3 9 (2.81%) GxP
4 7 (2.19%) 21 CFR Part 11
5 5 (1.56%) GDPR
6 4 (1.25%) GRC
7 3 (0.94%) Accessibility
7 3 (0.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (0.94%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
7 3 (0.94%) NIST
7 3 (0.94%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.63%) EU AI Act
8 2 (0.63%) SLA
8 2 (0.63%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.31%) Basel II
System Software
1 10 (3.13%) Active Directory
2 8 (2.50%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (1.88%) Ceph
3 6 (1.88%) Hyper-V
3 6 (1.88%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.31%) Docker
4 1 (0.31%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 4 (1.25%) Terraform
2 3 (0.94%) Ansible
2 3 (0.94%) CASB
2 3 (0.94%) Kubernetes
3 2 (0.63%) Argo
3 2 (0.63%) 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 29 (9.06%) Microsoft
2 27 (8.44%) Salesforce
3 9 (2.81%) Atlassian
4 8 (2.50%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
4 8 (2.50%) SAP
4 8 (2.50%) VMware
5 7 (2.19%) Adobe
5 7 (2.19%) ServiceNow
6 5 (1.56%) Databricks
6 5 (1.56%) Okta
6 5 (1.56%) Ping Identity
7 4 (1.25%) Cisco
7 4 (1.25%) ForeScout
7 4 (1.25%) ForgeRock
7 4 (1.25%) Fortinet
7 4 (1.25%) Google
7 4 (1.25%) Infoblox
7 4 (1.25%) Oracle
7 4 (1.25%) Splunk
7 4 (1.25%) Zscaler