User Experience Contract Job Trends

UX
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring User Experience skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 30 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 84 67 80
Rank change year-on-year -17 +13 -21
Contract jobs citing User Experience 1,572 1,219 1,064
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.97% 3.71% 2.67%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.49% 4.11% 3.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 959 792 687
10th Percentile £313 £303 £306
25th Percentile £400 £380 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.05% -5.00% -1.57%
75th Percentile £578 £588 £600
90th Percentile £688 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +0.06% -5.26% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 74 39 33
10th Percentile £16.22 £19.30 £16.25
25th Percentile £25.13 £34.87 £26.56
Median hourly rate £33.99 £49.50 £41.68
Median % change year-on-year -31.33% +18.78% +51.55%
75th Percentile £67.75 £64.38 £70.39
90th Percentile £73.38 £74.59 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.99 £63.25 £66.00
% change year-on-year -46.26% -4.17% +272.46%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

User Experience falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 45,002 29,684 34,056
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.96% 90.46% 85.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,855 18,648 21,888
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.11%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £734 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,714 1,621 1,980
10th Percentile £14.64 £14.20 £13.69
25th Percentile £19.89 £17.33 £17.74
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.75 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.57 £40.33
% change year-on-year +86.55% -41.56% -

User Experience
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing User Experience relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

User Experience job vacancy trend in the UK

User Experience
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing User Experience.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing User Experience

User Experience
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing User Experience over the 6 months to 30 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for User Experience in the UK

User Experience
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing User Experience.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing User Experience

User Experience
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing User Experience over the 6 months to 30 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for User Experience in the UK

User Experience
Top 17 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing User Experience within the UK over the 6 months to 30 July 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 -16 1,365 £475 - 828
UK excluding London -10 728 £450 +0.06% 475
London -23 695 £525 +2.74% 467
Work from Home -29 397 £500 +2.56% 373
North of England -16 221 £439 -2.44% 124
Midlands -10 144 £475 +12.43% 58
South East -31 129 £490 +3.16% 130
West Midlands -15 115 £475 -5.00% 47
North West -30 112 £425 -5.56% 63
Scotland +10 94 £525 +13.51% 23
South West -11 79 £475 +22.58% 75
Yorkshire -34 59 £500 +25.00% 39
North East -7 50 £375 -21.88% 22
East of England +12 49 £410 -16.33% 54
East Midlands -7 29 £468 +31.32% 11
Wales -12 15 £579 +89.22% 9
Northern Ireland -1 2 - - 16

User Experience
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 65 (4.13%) SharePoint
2 58 (3.69%) CMS
3 41 (2.61%) Confluence
4 27 (1.72%) Microsoft Exchange
5 15 (0.95%) WordPress
6 8 (0.51%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 8 (0.51%) Apache
7 6 (0.38%) Drupal
7 6 (0.38%) Mendix
7 6 (0.38%) Skype for Business
8 5 (0.32%) Headless CMS
9 4 (0.25%) Apache Airflow
9 4 (0.25%) Kentico
10 3 (0.19%) Moodle
10 3 (0.19%) Umbraco
11 2 (0.13%) HCL Notes
11 2 (0.13%) IIS
11 2 (0.13%) nginx
11 2 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
11 2 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 39 (2.48%) Sketch
2 35 (2.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 31 (1.97%) Microsoft Excel
4 22 (1.40%) Chatbot
5 20 (1.27%) Photoshop
6 19 (1.21%) Adobe After Effects
7 17 (1.08%) Adobe XD
7 17 (1.08%) Microsoft Office
8 15 (0.95%) Adobe Illustrator
9 10 (0.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
10 9 (0.57%) MS Visio
11 6 (0.38%) Final Cut Pro
12 4 (0.25%) Adobe Captivate
13 2 (0.13%) InVision
13 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
13 2 (0.13%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
13 2 (0.13%) UserZoom
14 1 (0.064%) Camtasia
14 1 (0.064%) Trello
Business Applications
1 13 (0.83%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (0.70%) Workday HCM
3 8 (0.51%) Dynamics CRM
4 7 (0.45%) Shopify
5 6 (0.38%) Sage X3
6 4 (0.25%) NetSuite
6 4 (0.25%) Oracle iProcurement
7 3 (0.19%) iTrent
7 3 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
7 3 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
8 2 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
8 2 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
8 2 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
8 2 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
8 2 (0.13%) ResourceLink
9 1 (0.064%) Eloqua
9 1 (0.064%) Magento
9 1 (0.064%) Oracle EBS R12
9 1 (0.064%) SAP ERP
9 1 (0.064%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 246 (15.65%) Azure
2 220 (13.99%) Figma
3 134 (8.52%) AWS
4 130 (8.27%) Microsoft 365
5 116 (7.38%) Power Platform
6 65 (4.13%) Entra ID
7 58 (3.69%) Azure DevOps
8 56 (3.56%) GitHub
9 52 (3.31%) SaaS
10 50 (3.18%) GCP
10 50 (3.18%) Microsoft Copilot
11 36 (2.29%) PowerApps
12 31 (1.97%) OneDrive
13 29 (1.84%) Power Automate
13 29 (1.84%) Serverless
14 26 (1.65%) Copilot Studio
15 24 (1.53%) Azure AI
16 22 (1.40%) GitHub Actions
17 17 (1.08%) Snowflake
18 13 (0.83%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 41 (2.61%) DNS
2 33 (2.10%) DHCP
3 28 (1.78%) TCP/IP
4 25 (1.59%) Wi-Fi
5 20 (1.27%) Wireless
6 19 (1.21%) LAN
7 13 (0.83%) Firewall
7 13 (0.83%) VPN
7 13 (0.83%) WAN
8 12 (0.76%) Internet
9 10 (0.64%) Intranet
9 10 (0.64%) SD-WAN
10 8 (0.51%) Cisco Wireless
10 8 (0.51%) Network Security
10 8 (0.51%) Skype
11 7 (0.45%) SNMP
12 6 (0.38%) 5G
12 6 (0.38%) WLAN
13 5 (0.32%) SMS
13 5 (0.32%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 73 (4.64%) Power BI
2 25 (1.59%) Metadata
3 21 (1.34%) PostgreSQL
4 20 (1.27%) NoSQL
5 19 (1.21%) Relational Database
6 18 (1.15%) Power Query
7 15 (0.95%) SQL Server
8 14 (0.89%) Data Warehouse
9 13 (0.83%) Tableau
10 11 (0.70%) Big Data
11 10 (0.64%) MySQL
12 9 (0.57%) MongoDB
13 7 (0.45%) Elasticsearch
13 7 (0.45%) Looker
13 7 (0.45%) Snowflake Schema
14 6 (0.38%) Azure SQL Database
14 6 (0.38%) BigQuery
14 6 (0.38%) DynamoDB
14 6 (0.38%) Redis
14 6 (0.38%) ZAP BI
Development Applications
1 88 (5.60%) JIRA
2 80 (5.09%) Git
3 27 (1.72%) Cypress.io
3 27 (1.72%) Jenkins
4 25 (1.59%) Vite
5 19 (1.21%) GitLab
6 12 (0.76%) Claude Code
7 10 (0.64%) Android Studio
7 10 (0.64%) Browser DevTools
7 10 (0.64%) fastlane
7 10 (0.64%) Selenium
7 10 (0.64%) Storybook
8 9 (0.57%) webpack
8 9 (0.57%) Xcode
9 8 (0.51%) Gradle
10 7 (0.45%) JMeter
10 7 (0.45%) JUnit
11 6 (0.38%) Postman
11 6 (0.38%) Visual Studio
12 5 (0.32%) Crashlytics
General
1 497 (31.62%) Social Skills
2 276 (17.56%) Finance
3 211 (13.42%) Public Sector
4 158 (10.05%) Analytical Skills
5 120 (7.63%) Banking
6 83 (5.28%) Retail
7 75 (4.77%) Marketing
8 49 (3.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 40 (2.54%) Legal
10 38 (2.42%) Influencing Skills
11 30 (1.91%) Publishing
12 29 (1.84%) Presentation Skills
13 27 (1.72%) Automotive
14 26 (1.65%) Manufacturing
14 26 (1.65%) Organisational Skills
15 22 (1.40%) Documentation Skills
16 18 (1.15%) Investment Banking
17 16 (1.02%) Military
18 12 (0.76%) Front Office
19 11 (0.70%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 344 (21.88%) Designer
2 225 (14.31%) Senior
3 203 (12.91%) Developer
4 145 (9.22%) UX Designer
5 121 (7.70%) Lead
6 115 (7.32%) Analyst
7 89 (5.66%) UI Designer
8 80 (5.09%) Consultant
9 66 (4.20%) Senior Designer
10 65 (4.13%) User Researcher
11 63 (4.01%) Architect
12 58 (3.69%) Business Analyst
13 56 (3.56%) Product Designer
14 53 (3.37%) Content Designer
15 51 (3.24%) UI/UX Designer
16 46 (2.93%) Product Manager
17 44 (2.80%) IT Support
17 44 (2.80%) User Experience Researcher
18 42 (2.67%) Support Engineer
19 35 (2.23%) Product Owner
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 148 (9.41%) React
2 117 (7.44%) CSS
3 104 (6.62%) HTML
4 99 (6.30%) REST
5 66 (4.20%) RESTful
6 53 (3.37%) AngularJS
7 42 (2.67%) .NET
7 42 (2.67%) GraphQL
7 42 (2.67%) HTML5
8 39 (2.48%) CSS3
9 35 (2.23%) Node.js
10 33 (2.10%) Jest
11 31 (1.97%) Redux
12 30 (1.91%) Spring
13 29 (1.84%) Kafka
13 29 (1.84%) Spring Boot
14 25 (1.59%) Next.js
14 25 (1.59%) Playwright
15 23 (1.46%) JSON
15 23 (1.46%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 153 (9.73%) Product Ownership
2 100 (6.36%) Mobile App
3 83 (5.28%) Onboarding
4 46 (2.93%) Cloud Native
5 45 (2.86%) AI Agents
6 33 (2.10%) Self-Motivation
7 32 (2.04%) Enterprise Software
8 31 (1.97%) Data Structures
9 29 (1.84%) Data Protection Act
10 25 (1.59%) Legacy Systems
11 22 (1.40%) Animation
12 21 (1.34%) Data Centre
12 21 (1.34%) Social Media
13 19 (1.21%) Analytical Mindset
14 17 (1.08%) Graphic Design
15 16 (1.02%) Educational Technology
15 16 (1.02%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 16 (1.02%) NHS
16 15 (0.95%) Management Information System
17 14 (0.89%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 131 (8.33%) Windows
2 61 (3.88%) Android
3 58 (3.69%) Apple iOS
4 43 (2.74%) Windows 10
5 27 (1.72%) Mac OS
6 19 (1.21%) Windows Server
7 18 (1.15%) Linux
8 9 (0.57%) Unix
8 9 (0.57%) Windows 7
9 5 (0.32%) Windows Server 2016
10 4 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.19%) Windows Server 2008
12 2 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 512 (32.57%) UX Design
2 457 (29.07%) Agile
3 307 (19.53%) AI
4 248 (15.78%) Problem-Solving
5 236 (15.01%) Stakeholder Management
6 225 (14.31%) Continuous Improvement
7 214 (13.61%) User Research
8 210 (13.36%) Analytics
9 188 (11.96%) CI/CD
10 177 (11.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 162 (10.31%) Roadmaps
12 149 (9.48%) Prototyping
13 147 (9.35%) Decision-Making
14 146 (9.29%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
15 143 (9.10%) DevOps
16 133 (8.46%) Wireframes
17 125 (7.95%) Service Design
18 120 (7.63%) UX Research
19 116 (7.38%) Workshop Facilitation
20 114 (7.25%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 138 (8.78%) JavaScript
2 129 (8.21%) Python
3 117 (7.44%) TypeScript
4 111 (7.06%) SQL
5 102 (6.49%) Java
6 51 (3.24%) PowerShell
7 42 (2.67%) C#
8 37 (2.35%) Kotlin
9 25 (1.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 18 (1.15%) Bash
11 17 (1.08%) Swift
12 11 (0.70%) C++
13 8 (0.51%) Go
13 8 (0.51%) Korn
13 8 (0.51%) Lua
14 7 (0.45%) Apex Code
14 7 (0.45%) PHP
14 7 (0.45%) R
14 7 (0.45%) VBScript
15 6 (0.38%) VB
Qualifications
1 246 (15.65%) Security Cleared
2 187 (11.90%) SC Cleared
3 142 (9.03%) Degree
4 37 (2.35%) Computer Science Degree
5 35 (2.23%) BPSS Clearance
6 29 (1.84%) DV Cleared
7 23 (1.46%) Azure Certification
8 21 (1.34%) Microsoft Certification
9 12 (0.76%) PMP
10 11 (0.70%) Cisco Certification
11 9 (0.57%) ITIL Certification
12 8 (0.51%) AWS Certification
12 8 (0.51%) CCA
12 8 (0.51%) Citrix Certification
12 8 (0.51%) Master's Degree
12 8 (0.51%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 7 (0.45%) CCNP
14 6 (0.38%) CCIE
14 6 (0.38%) DBS Check
14 6 (0.38%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 279 (17.75%) Accessibility
2 98 (6.23%) QA
3 96 (6.11%) WCAG
4 50 (3.18%) Data Quality
5 20 (1.27%) GDPR
6 16 (1.02%) Actionable Recommendations
7 12 (0.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 10 (0.64%) SLA
9 9 (0.57%) PMO
10 7 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials
10 7 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 4 (0.25%) GRC
11 4 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 3 (0.19%) GMP
12 3 (0.19%) GxP
13 2 (0.13%) NIST
13 2 (0.13%) PCI DSS
13 2 (0.13%) PSD2
14 1 (0.064%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 1 (0.064%) EU AI Act
System Software
1 88 (5.60%) Active Directory
2 49 (3.12%) Docker
3 30 (1.91%) Virtual Desktop
4 19 (1.21%) VMware Infrastructure
5 7 (0.45%) vSphere
6 6 (0.38%) BitLocker
6 6 (0.38%) Firmware
7 5 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.25%) Hyper-V
8 4 (0.25%) Microsoft App-V
9 3 (0.19%) UAG
9 3 (0.19%) Virtual Machines
10 2 (0.13%) VMware NSX
10 2 (0.13%) VMware Workstation
10 2 (0.13%) XenApp
10 2 (0.13%) XenDesktop
11 1 (0.064%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 51 (3.24%) Terraform
2 47 (2.99%) Kubernetes
2 47 (2.99%) Microsoft Intune
3 38 (2.42%) Grafana
4 35 (2.23%) SCCM
5 18 (1.15%) Single Sign-On
6 17 (1.08%) Ansible
7 14 (0.89%) Jamf Pro
7 14 (0.89%) Prometheus
8 5 (0.32%) vCenter Server
9 4 (0.25%) Clonezilla
9 4 (0.25%) Podman
10 3 (0.19%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
10 3 (0.19%) WSUS
11 2 (0.13%) Argo
11 2 (0.13%) Failover Clustering
11 2 (0.13%) Kibana
11 2 (0.13%) Packer
11 2 (0.13%) SCOM
11 2 (0.13%) vMotion
Vendors
1 270 (17.18%) Microsoft
2 95 (6.04%) Adobe
3 81 (5.15%) ServiceNow
4 57 (3.63%) Google
5 43 (2.74%) SAP
6 38 (2.42%) Oracle
7 33 (2.10%) Salesforce
8 26 (1.65%) Citrix
8 26 (1.65%) Splunk
9 24 (1.53%) Dynatrace
10 23 (1.46%) Databricks
11 22 (1.40%) VMware
12 21 (1.34%) Workday
13 18 (1.15%) Cisco
14 16 (1.02%) Apple
14 16 (1.02%) Foundry
14 16 (1.02%) OpenAI
15 14 (0.89%) Zscaler
16 11 (0.70%) Aruba
17 9 (0.57%) Okta