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 18 August 2026.

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

6 months to
18 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 374 342 363
Rank change year-on-year -32 +21 +30
Contract jobs requiring a Product Owner 329 209 201
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.61% 0.64% 0.52%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.66% 0.70% 0.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 196 144 150
10th Percentile £400 £353 £398
25th Percentile £475 £405 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £600
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -16.67% -
75th Percentile £625 £614 £688
90th Percentile £726 £660 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £507 £465 £550
% change year-on-year +8.92% -15.45% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 0 0
10th Percentile £72.48 - -
25th Percentile £80.88 - -
Median hourly rate £87.16 - -
75th Percentile £102.45 - -
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 49,538 30,006 36,016
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.49% 91.28% 92.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,704 18,935 23,189
10th Percentile £325 £281 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
75th Percentile £625 £621 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,506 1,542 1,988
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.56 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.69 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -41.51% +3.61%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.83 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £44.02
% change year-on-year +68.99% -42.87% +22.28%

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 18 August 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 18 August 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 18 August 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 -37 297 £525 +4.90% 169
London -5 169 £538 +2.38% 102
UK excluding London -68 129 £507 +8.92% 82
Work from Home -11 93 £575 +9.52% 64
North of England -50 43 £528 -1.72% 21
South East -57 41 £588 +30.56% 25
Yorkshire -22 25 £507 +1.30% 5
Midlands -58 23 £525 +30.92% 11
West Midlands -36 20 £525 +5.00% 6
North West -40 17 £574 -2.88% 15
South West -43 12 £500 -11.97% 8
Scotland -12 9 £531 +25.00% 5
East of England -20 6 £475 +11.76% 11
East Midlands -34 3 £388 +2.11% 5
North East -39 1 £400 -15.79% 1

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

For the 6 months to 18 August 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.

1 191 (58.05%) Agile
2 171 (51.98%) Roadmaps
3 138 (41.95%) Stakeholder Management
4 136 (41.34%) User Stories
5 130 (39.51%) Product Backlog
6 116 (35.26%) Backlog Prioritisation
7 93 (28.27%) Product Roadmap
8 91 (27.66%) Backlog Management
9 86 (26.14%) Acceptance Criteria
10 77 (23.40%) Product Vision
11 73 (22.19%) Continuous Improvement
12 64 (19.45%) Decision-Making
13 62 (18.84%) Scrum
14 61 (18.54%) JIRA
15 59 (17.93%) Sprint Planning
16 56 (17.02%) Security Cleared
17 52 (15.81%) AI
18 48 (14.59%) SC Cleared
19 46 (13.98%) Epics
19 46 (13.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 45 (13.68%) Analytics
21 44 (13.37%) Product Management
22 43 (13.07%) AWS
23 42 (12.77%) Problem-Solving
24 41 (12.46%) Confluence
25 34 (10.33%) DevOps
25 34 (10.33%) Scaled Agile Framework
26 32 (9.73%) Azure
26 32 (9.73%) Kanban
26 32 (9.73%) Product Requirements

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 41 (12.46%) Confluence
2 5 (1.52%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 4 (1.22%) CMS
4 3 (0.91%) Microsoft Exchange
5 2 (0.61%) Headless CMS
6 1 (0.30%) Apache
6 1 (0.30%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.30%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.30%) Mendix
6 1 (0.30%) Moodle
6 1 (0.30%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (0.91%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.61%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.30%) Notion
Business Applications
1 10 (3.04%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (1.82%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.91%) SAP SD
4 2 (0.61%) Oracle ERP
4 2 (0.61%) Oracle Payables
4 2 (0.61%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.61%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.61%) Workfront
5 1 (0.30%) Adobe Campaign
5 1 (0.30%) IBM Planning Analytics
5 1 (0.30%) ResourceLink
5 1 (0.30%) SAP IS-U
5 1 (0.30%) Sonata
Cloud Services
1 43 (13.07%) AWS
2 32 (9.73%) Azure
3 11 (3.34%) GCP
4 10 (3.04%) Collibra
5 9 (2.74%) Dynamics 365
5 9 (2.74%) SaaS
6 8 (2.43%) Power Platform
7 7 (2.13%) Azure DevOps
7 7 (2.13%) Figma
7 7 (2.13%) OpenShift
8 6 (1.82%) GitHub
9 5 (1.52%) Entra ID
10 4 (1.22%) Amazon S3
10 4 (1.22%) Miro
10 4 (1.22%) PaaS
11 3 (0.91%) Amazon OpenSearch
11 3 (0.91%) CloudFront
11 3 (0.91%) Microsoft Purview
11 3 (0.91%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
12 2 (0.61%) Amazon Bedrock
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.13%) Broadband
2 6 (1.82%) Firewall
3 5 (1.52%) Network Security
4 3 (0.91%) DNS
4 3 (0.91%) NGFW
5 2 (0.61%) Wireless
6 1 (0.30%) Intrusion Detection
6 1 (0.30%) NGN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (5.78%) Metadata
2 9 (2.74%) Delta Lake
2 9 (2.74%) Parquet
3 6 (1.82%) Power BI
4 5 (1.52%) Data Lake
4 5 (1.52%) DTS
5 3 (0.91%) Big Data
5 3 (0.91%) Data Warehouse
6 2 (0.61%) GIS
6 2 (0.61%) Pinecone
7 1 (0.30%) Amazon Redshift
7 1 (0.30%) BigQuery
7 1 (0.30%) Geospatial Data
7 1 (0.30%) Hadoop
7 1 (0.30%) Looker
7 1 (0.30%) Semantic Layer
7 1 (0.30%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 61 (18.54%) JIRA
2 2 (0.61%) Postman
General
1 93 (28.27%) Social Skills
2 86 (26.14%) Finance
3 49 (14.89%) Analytical Skills
4 42 (12.77%) Banking
5 29 (8.81%) Marketing
6 27 (8.21%) Retail
7 22 (6.69%) Public Sector
8 17 (5.17%) Legal
9 16 (4.86%) Aerospace
9 16 (4.86%) Influencing Skills
10 14 (4.26%) Pharmaceutical
11 13 (3.95%) Retail Banking
12 11 (3.34%) Manufacturing
13 10 (3.04%) Corporate Banking
14 9 (2.74%) Investment Banking
15 5 (1.52%) Presentation Skills
16 3 (0.91%) Financial Institution
16 3 (0.91%) Military
16 3 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
16 3 (0.91%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (3.04%) SailPoint
2 8 (2.43%) OAuth
3 5 (1.52%) OpenID
3 5 (1.52%) SAML
4 4 (1.22%) LDAP
5 3 (0.91%) 802.1X
6 2 (0.61%) Azure Blueprints
6 2 (0.61%) Faiss
6 2 (0.61%) FHIR
6 2 (0.61%) Gherkin
6 2 (0.61%) LangChain
6 2 (0.61%) LangGraph
7 1 (0.30%) AngularJS
7 1 (0.30%) cloud-init
7 1 (0.30%) JSON
7 1 (0.30%) Keycloak
7 1 (0.30%) OAuth2
7 1 (0.30%) Ruby on Rails
7 1 (0.30%) WebAuthn
Miscellaneous
1 327 (99.39%) Product Ownership
2 21 (6.38%) Onboarding
3 13 (3.95%) Data Protection Act
4 12 (3.65%) Analytical Mindset
4 12 (3.65%) Marketing Technology
5 11 (3.34%) Life Science
6 9 (2.74%) Distributed Computing
6 9 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
7 6 (1.82%) Management Information System
8 5 (1.52%) Cloud Native
8 5 (1.52%) Data Fabric
8 5 (1.52%) FMCG
8 5 (1.52%) Security Posture
8 5 (1.52%) Social Media
8 5 (1.52%) Virtual Team
9 4 (1.22%) AI Agents
9 4 (1.22%) CCTV
9 4 (1.22%) Credit Risk
9 4 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
9 4 (1.22%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 5 (1.52%) Linux
2 4 (1.22%) Windows
3 3 (0.91%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 191 (58.05%) Agile
2 171 (51.98%) Roadmaps
3 138 (41.95%) Stakeholder Management
4 136 (41.34%) User Stories
5 130 (39.51%) Product Backlog
6 116 (35.26%) Backlog Prioritisation
7 93 (28.27%) Product Roadmap
8 91 (27.66%) Backlog Management
9 86 (26.14%) Acceptance Criteria
10 77 (23.40%) Product Vision
11 73 (22.19%) Continuous Improvement
12 64 (19.45%) Decision-Making
13 62 (18.84%) Scrum
14 59 (17.93%) Sprint Planning
15 52 (15.81%) AI
16 46 (13.98%) Epics
16 46 (13.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 45 (13.68%) Analytics
18 44 (13.37%) Product Management
19 42 (12.77%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 22 (6.69%) SQL
2 19 (5.78%) Python
3 2 (0.61%) ABAP
4 1 (0.30%) PHP
4 1 (0.30%) R
Qualifications
1 56 (17.02%) Security Cleared
2 48 (14.59%) SC Cleared
3 16 (4.86%) CSPO
3 16 (4.86%) Degree
4 7 (2.13%) CISSP
4 7 (2.13%) Computer Science Degree
5 4 (1.22%) AWS Certification
5 4 (1.22%) DV Cleared
6 3 (0.91%) Azure Certification
7 2 (0.61%) TOGAF Certification
8 1 (0.30%) CBAP
8 1 (0.30%) Master's Degree
8 1 (0.30%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (7.60%) Data Quality
2 22 (6.69%) QA
3 10 (3.04%) GxP
4 8 (2.43%) 21 CFR Part 11
5 5 (1.52%) GDPR
5 5 (1.52%) GRC
6 4 (1.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (1.22%) NIST
7 3 (0.91%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
7 3 (0.91%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.61%) Accessibility
8 2 (0.61%) EU AI Act
8 2 (0.61%) SLA
8 2 (0.61%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.30%) Basel II
9 1 (0.30%) PERC
9 1 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 6 (1.82%) Active Directory
1 6 (1.82%) Ceph
1 6 (1.82%) Virtual Machines
2 5 (1.52%) VMware Infrastructure
3 3 (0.91%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.30%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 4 (1.22%) Terraform
2 3 (0.91%) Ansible
2 3 (0.91%) CASB
2 3 (0.91%) Kubernetes
2 3 (0.91%) Single Sign-On
3 2 (0.61%) Argo
4 1 (0.30%) PingFederate
4 1 (0.30%) PowerCLI
4 1 (0.30%) vCenter Server
4 1 (0.30%) vRealize
4 1 (0.30%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 27 (8.21%) Microsoft
2 23 (6.99%) Salesforce
3 11 (3.34%) Adobe
4 10 (3.04%) SAP
5 9 (2.74%) Atlassian
5 9 (2.74%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
5 9 (2.74%) ServiceNow
6 6 (1.82%) Okta
6 6 (1.82%) Ping Identity
7 5 (1.52%) Databricks
7 5 (1.52%) ForgeRock
7 5 (1.52%) Google
7 5 (1.52%) VMware
8 4 (1.22%) Cisco
8 4 (1.22%) ForeScout
8 4 (1.22%) Fortinet
8 4 (1.22%) Infoblox
8 4 (1.22%) Oracle
8 4 (1.22%) Splunk
8 4 (1.22%) Zscaler