Product Owner Contract Job Trends

Product Owner
UK

The median Product Owner daily rate in the UK is £550, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 10 October 2026.

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

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 382 346 340
Rank change year-on-year -36 -6 +9
Contract jobs requiring a Product Owner 322 212 238
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.59% 0.64% 0.63%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.64% 0.70% 0.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 182 147 159
10th Percentile £386 £356 £405
25th Percentile £484 £407 £511
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £500 £600
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -16.67% -
75th Percentile £638 £603 £675
90th Percentile £724 £667 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £475 £550
% change year-on-year +10.53% -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 50,251 30,087 35,271
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.06% 90.83% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,471 18,979 21,309
10th Percentile £325 £275 £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 £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £494
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.75% -1.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4,065 1,640 1,482
10th Percentile £14.31 £13.75 £14.85
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.30 £20.30
Median hourly rate £41.71 £25.15 £42.03
Median % change year-on-year +65.84% -40.16% -5.55%
75th Percentile £67.50 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £68.00 £74.37
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.71 £25.00 £42.91
% change year-on-year +66.84% -41.74% -3.03%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 -50 281 £550 +10.00% 346
London -37 153 £550 +4.76% 172
UK excluding London -52 132 £525 +10.53% 176
Work from Home -27 91 £600 +14.29% 150
North of England -55 37 £500 - 49
South East -62 32 £613 +36.11% 38
South West -10 28 £550 -14.06% 15
Yorkshire -8 25 £550 +10.00% 12
Midlands -55 18 £471 +15.23% 34
West Midlands -37 17 £492 +3.58% 16
Scotland -15 12 £474 +14.85% 7
North West -51 11 £500 +2.56% 35
East of England -30 7 £500 +17.65% 21
East Midlands -34 1 £388 -3.48% 18
North East -43 1 £400 -15.79% 2

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

For the 6 months to 10 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.

1 204 (63.35%) Agile
2 177 (54.97%) Roadmaps
3 160 (49.69%) Stakeholder Management
4 144 (44.72%) Product Backlog
5 139 (43.17%) Backlog Prioritisation
6 133 (41.30%) User Stories
7 110 (34.16%) Backlog Management
8 93 (28.88%) Acceptance Criteria
9 92 (28.57%) Product Roadmap
10 85 (26.40%) Product Vision
11 82 (25.47%) Continuous Improvement
12 77 (23.91%) Decision-Making
13 71 (22.05%) Scrum
14 60 (18.63%) Sprint Planning
15 57 (17.70%) JIRA
15 57 (17.70%) Security Cleared
16 54 (16.77%) AI
16 54 (16.77%) Epics
16 54 (16.77%) Product Management
17 50 (15.53%) SC Cleared
18 49 (15.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 43 (13.35%) Analytics
20 40 (12.42%) Strategic Roadmap
21 39 (12.11%) Requirements Gathering
22 36 (11.18%) Confluence
23 35 (10.87%) Backlog Refinement
24 34 (10.56%) AWS
24 34 (10.56%) Problem-Solving
24 34 (10.56%) Product Requirements
25 33 (10.25%) DevOps

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 (11.18%) Confluence
2 4 (1.24%) CMS
3 3 (0.93%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 2 (0.62%) 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%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.31%) Moodle
5 1 (0.31%) SharePoint
Applications
1 5 (1.55%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.93%) Productboard
3 2 (0.62%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 1 (0.31%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.31%) Notion
Business Applications
1 8 (2.48%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (1.86%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.93%) SAP SD
4 2 (0.62%) Oracle ERP
4 2 (0.62%) Oracle Payables
4 2 (0.62%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.62%) 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%) SAP PLM
5 1 (0.31%) Sonata
Cloud Services
1 34 (10.56%) AWS
2 31 (9.63%) Azure
3 10 (3.11%) Power Platform
4 9 (2.80%) GCP
5 8 (2.48%) Collibra
6 7 (2.17%) Azure DevOps
6 7 (2.17%) Entra ID
6 7 (2.17%) SaaS
7 6 (1.86%) Dynamics 365
7 6 (1.86%) Microsoft Purview
8 5 (1.55%) Figma
8 5 (1.55%) GitHub
9 4 (1.24%) Miro
9 4 (1.24%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
10 3 (0.93%) Azure Data Factory
10 3 (0.93%) CloudFront
10 3 (0.93%) dbt
10 3 (0.93%) Microsoft 365
10 3 (0.93%) OpenShift
11 2 (0.62%) Adobe Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 18 (5.59%) Broadband
2 2 (0.62%) Wireless
3 1 (0.31%) NGN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (5.28%) Metadata
2 8 (2.48%) Power BI
3 7 (2.17%) Delta Lake
3 7 (2.17%) Parquet
4 5 (1.55%) Data Lake
4 5 (1.55%) DTS
5 3 (0.93%) Big Data
6 2 (0.62%) 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 (17.70%) JIRA
2 2 (0.62%) Postman
General
1 102 (31.68%) Social Skills
2 93 (28.88%) Finance
3 46 (14.29%) Analytical Skills
3 46 (14.29%) Banking
4 26 (8.07%) Influencing Skills
5 25 (7.76%) Public Sector
6 22 (6.83%) Retail
7 18 (5.59%) Aerospace
8 16 (4.97%) Legal
8 16 (4.97%) Marketing
9 12 (3.73%) Retail Banking
10 11 (3.42%) Corporate Banking
11 9 (2.80%) Investment Banking
11 9 (2.80%) Manufacturing
11 9 (2.80%) Presentation Skills
12 8 (2.48%) Pharmaceutical
13 3 (0.93%) Financial Institution
13 3 (0.93%) Front Office
13 3 (0.93%) Telecoms
14 2 (0.62%) Billing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (3.11%) SailPoint
2 9 (2.80%) OAuth
3 6 (1.86%) OpenID
3 6 (1.86%) SAML
4 4 (1.24%) LDAP
5 3 (0.93%) ADO
5 3 (0.93%) Terraform
6 2 (0.62%) Azure Blueprints
6 2 (0.62%) FHIR
6 2 (0.62%) Gherkin
6 2 (0.62%) OAuth2
7 1 (0.31%) AngularJS
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
1 320 (99.38%) Product Ownership
2 20 (6.21%) Onboarding
3 12 (3.73%) Analytical Mindset
3 12 (3.73%) Data Protection Act
4 9 (2.80%) Life Science
5 8 (2.48%) Management Information System
5 8 (2.48%) Marketing Technology
6 7 (2.17%) Data Fabric
6 7 (2.17%) Distributed Computing
6 7 (2.17%) Social Media
7 6 (1.86%) Enterprise Software
7 6 (1.86%) Legacy Systems
8 5 (1.55%) Cloud Native
8 5 (1.55%) Credit Risk
9 4 (1.24%) Self-Motivation
9 4 (1.24%) Virtual Team
10 3 (0.93%) FMCG
10 3 (0.93%) Hybrid Cloud
10 3 (0.93%) LIMS
10 3 (0.93%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 2 (0.62%) Linux
2 1 (0.31%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 204 (63.35%) Agile
2 177 (54.97%) Roadmaps
3 160 (49.69%) Stakeholder Management
4 144 (44.72%) Product Backlog
5 139 (43.17%) Backlog Prioritisation
6 133 (41.30%) User Stories
7 110 (34.16%) Backlog Management
8 93 (28.88%) Acceptance Criteria
9 92 (28.57%) Product Roadmap
10 85 (26.40%) Product Vision
11 82 (25.47%) Continuous Improvement
12 77 (23.91%) Decision-Making
13 71 (22.05%) Scrum
14 60 (18.63%) Sprint Planning
15 54 (16.77%) AI
15 54 (16.77%) Epics
15 54 (16.77%) Product Management
16 49 (15.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 43 (13.35%) Analytics
18 40 (12.42%) Strategic Roadmap
Programming Languages
1 22 (6.83%) SQL
2 18 (5.59%) Python
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 (17.70%) Security Cleared
2 50 (15.53%) SC Cleared
3 20 (6.21%) Degree
4 16 (4.97%) CSPO
5 7 (2.17%) CISSP
5 7 (2.17%) Computer Science Degree
6 5 (1.55%) DV Cleared
7 4 (1.24%) AWS Certification
8 3 (0.93%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.62%) PMI Certification
9 2 (0.62%) TOGAF Certification
10 1 (0.31%) CBAP
10 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.31%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (7.45%) Data Quality
2 22 (6.83%) QA
3 8 (2.48%) GxP
4 6 (1.86%) 21 CFR Part 11
5 5 (1.55%) GRC
6 3 (0.93%) GDPR
7 2 (0.62%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.62%) EU AI Act
7 2 (0.62%) 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 4 (1.24%) Active Directory
2 2 (0.62%) Ceph
2 2 (0.62%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 3 (0.93%) Single Sign-On
2 2 (0.62%) Kubernetes
3 1 (0.31%) Argo
3 1 (0.31%) PingFederate
3 1 (0.31%) Tivoli
3 1 (0.31%) Tivoli Monitoring
Vendors
1 23 (7.14%) Microsoft
2 10 (3.11%) Adobe
2 10 (3.11%) Salesforce
3 9 (2.80%) Atlassian
3 9 (2.80%) Pega
3 9 (2.80%) SAP
4 8 (2.48%) ServiceNow
5 6 (1.86%) Databricks
5 6 (1.86%) Okta
5 6 (1.86%) Ping Identity
6 5 (1.55%) ForgeRock
6 5 (1.55%) Google
7 4 (1.24%) Oracle
7 4 (1.24%) Veritas
8 3 (0.93%) IBM
8 3 (0.93%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
9 1 (0.31%) Avaya
9 1 (0.31%) CyberArk
9 1 (0.31%) Genesys
9 1 (0.31%) Optimizely