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 8 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 79 61 70
Rank change year-on-year -18 +9 -8
Contract jobs citing User Experience 1,423 1,073 1,265
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.11% 3.67% 2.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.64% 4.05% 3.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 975 733 838
10th Percentile £313 £308 £306
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -2.50% -
75th Percentile £575 £580 £600
90th Percentile £663 £688 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +5.56% -5.26% +2.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 23 48
10th Percentile £17.30 £28.31 £16.25
25th Percentile £20.90 £41.58 £24.69
Median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £32.11
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +63.53% -18.20%
75th Percentile £62.38 £77.73 £62.45
90th Percentile £77.36 £93.50 £73.15
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £61.75 £25.00
% change year-on-year -39.27% +147.00% -44.44%

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 39,061 26,469 37,905
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.38% 90.57% 86.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,736 17,183 24,573
10th Percentile £314 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £636 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.51% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,329 996 2,365
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.00 £12.77
25th Percentile £19.10 £19.99 £16.00
Median hourly rate £36.00 £31.51 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.25% -4.52% -11.17%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.38 £70.23
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.00 £30.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +20.00% -7.69% -10.34%

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 8 April 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 8 April 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 8 April 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 -15 1,233 £485 -3.00% 728
London -20 634 £500 -2.91% 296
UK excluding London -8 618 £475 +5.56% 522
Work from Home -27 367 £475 -3.85% 357
North of England +4 210 £450 - 176
North West +11 131 £420 -6.67% 94
Midlands -9 125 £500 +24.69% 93
South East -7 122 £490 -2.00% 122
West Midlands -33 84 £475 +9.51% 62
South West -13 70 £475 +26.67% 59
Yorkshire -17 54 £500 +24.84% 45
Scotland -10 51 £500 +14.29% 23
East Midlands -1 41 £550 +45.12% 31
East of England -21 29 £425 -10.99% 33
North East -4 24 £405 -15.63% 39
Wales -1 15 £375 -6.25% 19
Northern Ireland -9 3 - - 5

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 56 (3.94%) SharePoint
2 47 (3.30%) Confluence
3 41 (2.88%) CMS
4 20 (1.41%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 18 (1.26%) Microsoft Exchange
6 9 (0.63%) Apache
7 8 (0.56%) Headless CMS
8 6 (0.42%) Sitecore CMS
8 6 (0.42%) Umbraco
9 5 (0.35%) Camunda
10 4 (0.28%) Drupal
10 4 (0.28%) Ethereum
10 4 (0.28%) Hyperledger
10 4 (0.28%) Mendix
11 3 (0.21%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.21%) Apache Spark
11 3 (0.21%) Jupyter
11 3 (0.21%) nginx
12 2 (0.14%) Appian
12 2 (0.14%) WordPress
Applications
1 45 (3.16%) Sketch
2 35 (2.46%) Adobe XD
3 28 (1.97%) Microsoft Excel
4 23 (1.62%) MS Visio
5 22 (1.55%) Chatbot
6 17 (1.19%) Microsoft Office
7 14 (0.98%) InVision
8 11 (0.77%) Photoshop
9 7 (0.49%) Adobe Illustrator
9 7 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
10 6 (0.42%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 6 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.35%) Adobe After Effects
12 4 (0.28%) Trello
13 3 (0.21%) Adobe Captivate
13 3 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
13 3 (0.21%) UserZoom
13 3 (0.21%) UXPin
14 2 (0.14%) Autodesk Smoke
14 2 (0.14%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 16 (1.12%) Dynamics CRM
2 12 (0.84%) SAP S/4HANA
3 8 (0.56%) Shopify
4 7 (0.49%) Workday HCM
5 6 (0.42%) Sage X3
6 2 (0.14%) Magento
6 2 (0.14%) NEC Housing
6 2 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.14%) ResourceLink
6 2 (0.14%) SAP CO
6 2 (0.14%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.14%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.14%) SAP FI/CO
6 2 (0.14%) Sprinklr
7 1 (0.070%) assyst
7 1 (0.070%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.070%) Oracle Payroll
7 1 (0.070%) SAP CRM
7 1 (0.070%) SAP PP
7 1 (0.070%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 236 (16.58%) Azure
2 197 (13.84%) Figma
3 131 (9.21%) AWS
4 103 (7.24%) Power Platform
5 90 (6.32%) Microsoft 365
6 65 (4.57%) Azure DevOps
7 56 (3.94%) Entra ID
8 55 (3.87%) GCP
8 55 (3.87%) GitHub
9 43 (3.02%) SaaS
10 38 (2.67%) PowerApps
11 37 (2.60%) Power Automate
11 37 (2.60%) Serverless
12 32 (2.25%) GitHub Actions
13 29 (2.04%) Microsoft Copilot
14 24 (1.69%) Dynamics 365
15 23 (1.62%) Google Workspace
15 23 (1.62%) Miro
16 22 (1.55%) Cloud Computing
17 20 (1.41%) Google Sheets
Communications & Networking
1 18 (1.26%) DNS
2 15 (1.05%) Wireless
3 14 (0.98%) LAN
4 13 (0.91%) VPN
5 12 (0.84%) HTTP
5 12 (0.84%) Internet
5 12 (0.84%) SD-WAN
5 12 (0.84%) Wi-Fi
6 11 (0.77%) Firewall
6 11 (0.77%) Intranet
6 11 (0.77%) TCP/IP
6 11 (0.77%) WAN
7 10 (0.70%) DHCP
8 8 (0.56%) Network Security
8 8 (0.56%) SSL
9 7 (0.49%) Cisco Wireless
10 6 (0.42%) BGP
10 6 (0.42%) Cisco ISE
10 6 (0.42%) WLAN
11 5 (0.35%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 69 (4.85%) Power BI
2 33 (2.32%) NoSQL
2 33 (2.32%) Relational Database
3 29 (2.04%) PostgreSQL
4 25 (1.76%) Data Warehouse
5 24 (1.69%) SQL Server
6 22 (1.55%) MySQL
7 18 (1.26%) Metadata
7 18 (1.26%) Tableau
8 17 (1.19%) MongoDB
9 12 (0.84%) BigQuery
10 9 (0.63%) Looker
11 8 (0.56%) Power Query
12 7 (0.49%) Pinecone
12 7 (0.49%) Redis
13 6 (0.42%) DynamoDB
13 6 (0.42%) Oracle BI Publisher
13 6 (0.42%) ZAP BI
14 5 (0.35%) Big Data
14 5 (0.35%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 110 (7.73%) JIRA
2 85 (5.97%) Git
3 42 (2.95%) GitLab
4 28 (1.97%) Cypress.io
4 28 (1.97%) Jenkins
5 26 (1.83%) JUnit
6 20 (1.41%) Axure RP
7 14 (0.98%) Gradle
8 13 (0.91%) Selenium
9 12 (0.84%) Android Studio
9 12 (0.84%) CircleCI
10 11 (0.77%) Browser DevTools
11 10 (0.70%) Postman
11 10 (0.70%) Xcode
12 8 (0.56%) Eclipse
12 8 (0.56%) Mocha
12 8 (0.56%) Mockito
12 8 (0.56%) Visual Studio
12 8 (0.56%) Vite
13 7 (0.49%) Jasmine
General
1 459 (32.26%) Social Skills
2 274 (19.26%) Finance
3 201 (14.13%) Public Sector
4 171 (12.02%) Analytical Skills
5 117 (8.22%) Banking
6 58 (4.08%) Marketing
7 51 (3.58%) Retail
8 32 (2.25%) Legal
9 31 (2.18%) Presentation Skills
10 29 (2.04%) Influencing Skills
11 24 (1.69%) Manufacturing
12 21 (1.48%) Documentation Skills
12 21 (1.48%) Pharmaceutical
13 17 (1.19%) Games
14 15 (1.05%) Financial Institution
14 15 (1.05%) Organisational Skills
15 14 (0.98%) Front Office
15 14 (0.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 14 (0.98%) Investment Banking
15 14 (0.98%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 275 (19.33%) Designer
2 219 (15.39%) Developer
3 212 (14.90%) Senior
4 136 (9.56%) UX Designer
5 134 (9.42%) Analyst
6 69 (4.85%) Lead
7 68 (4.78%) Business Analyst
8 66 (4.64%) Consultant
9 63 (4.43%) Product Designer
10 62 (4.36%) Architect
11 57 (4.01%) Senior Designer
12 51 (3.58%) User Researcher
13 47 (3.30%) UI Designer
14 41 (2.88%) Senior Developer
14 41 (2.88%) Service Designer
15 40 (2.81%) Full-Stack Developer
16 38 (2.67%) Support Engineer
17 37 (2.60%) Software Engineer
18 36 (2.53%) IT Support
18 36 (2.53%) UI/UX Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 170 (11.95%) React
2 149 (10.47%) CSS
3 138 (9.70%) HTML
4 115 (8.08%) REST
5 86 (6.04%) RESTful
6 82 (5.76%) AngularJS
7 66 (4.64%) Spring
8 65 (4.57%) Spring Boot
9 59 (4.15%) .NET
10 48 (3.37%) Node.js
11 43 (3.02%) HTML5
12 37 (2.60%) CSS3
13 35 (2.46%) GraphQL
13 35 (2.46%) Jest
13 35 (2.46%) Redux
14 31 (2.18%) JSON
15 27 (1.90%) Next.js
16 26 (1.83%) Vue
17 22 (1.55%) Kafka
17 22 (1.55%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 141 (9.91%) Product Ownership
2 80 (5.62%) Mobile App
3 50 (3.51%) Onboarding
4 31 (2.18%) Enterprise Software
5 30 (2.11%) AI Agents
6 29 (2.04%) Data Structures
7 25 (1.76%) Analytical Mindset
8 19 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
9 18 (1.26%) Cloud Native
10 17 (1.19%) Distributed Systems
10 17 (1.19%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 15 (1.05%) NHS
12 13 (0.91%) Algorithms
12 13 (0.91%) Legacy Systems
12 13 (0.91%) Virtual Team
13 12 (0.84%) Data Centre
13 12 (0.84%) Self-Motivation
14 11 (0.77%) Graphic Design
14 11 (0.77%) Low-Code
14 11 (0.77%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 118 (8.29%) Windows
2 44 (3.09%) Android
3 43 (3.02%) Windows 10
4 32 (2.25%) Apple iOS
5 23 (1.62%) Linux
5 23 (1.62%) Mac OS
6 8 (0.56%) Unix
6 8 (0.56%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.070%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.070%) Ubuntu
7 1 (0.070%) Windows 7
7 1 (0.070%) Windows Server 2008
7 1 (0.070%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 473 (33.24%) Agile
2 459 (32.26%) UX Design
3 231 (16.23%) Problem-Solving
4 210 (14.76%) User Research
5 204 (14.34%) Analytics
6 201 (14.13%) AI
7 179 (12.58%) CI/CD
8 174 (12.23%) DevOps
9 170 (11.95%) Stakeholder Management
10 166 (11.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 161 (11.31%) Continuous Improvement
12 143 (10.05%) Prototyping
13 141 (9.91%) Roadmaps
14 137 (9.63%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
15 129 (9.07%) Wireframes
16 125 (8.78%) Service Design
17 123 (8.64%) Decision-Making
18 119 (8.36%) UX Research
19 105 (7.38%) Usability Testing
20 95 (6.68%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 183 (12.86%) JavaScript
2 146 (10.26%) SQL
3 124 (8.71%) Java
3 124 (8.71%) Python
4 112 (7.87%) TypeScript
5 64 (4.50%) C#
6 54 (3.79%) PowerShell
7 30 (2.11%) Kotlin
8 19 (1.34%) Bash
9 13 (0.91%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 12 (0.84%) C++
11 11 (0.77%) Perl
12 9 (0.63%) Lua
12 9 (0.63%) Swift
13 8 (0.56%) PHP
14 7 (0.49%) PL/SQL
15 6 (0.42%) Go
15 6 (0.42%) Korn
15 6 (0.42%) Scala
15 6 (0.42%) VBA
Qualifications
1 198 (13.91%) Security Cleared
2 146 (10.26%) SC Cleared
3 122 (8.57%) Degree
4 35 (2.46%) BPSS Clearance
5 28 (1.97%) Computer Science Degree
6 21 (1.48%) Microsoft Certification
7 19 (1.34%) DV Cleared
8 16 (1.12%) Master's Degree
9 13 (0.91%) Azure Certification
9 13 (0.91%) Cisco Certification
10 11 (0.77%) CCNP
11 8 (0.56%) PMI Certification
12 6 (0.42%) Citrix Certification
12 6 (0.42%) MOS
12 6 (0.42%) OCA
12 6 (0.42%) Oracle Certification
13 5 (0.35%) CCA
13 5 (0.35%) CCIE
14 4 (0.28%) ISTQB
14 4 (0.28%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 250 (17.57%) Accessibility
2 133 (9.35%) QA
3 78 (5.48%) WCAG
4 46 (3.23%) Data Quality
5 40 (2.81%) GDPR
6 22 (1.55%) Actionable Recommendations
7 18 (1.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 14 (0.98%) SLA
9 8 (0.56%) PMO
10 6 (0.42%) GMP
10 6 (0.42%) GxP
10 6 (0.42%) NCSC
11 5 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials
11 5 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 4 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 4 (0.28%) GRC
12 4 (0.28%) NIST
13 3 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
13 3 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
13 3 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 77 (5.41%) Active Directory
2 68 (4.78%) Docker
3 20 (1.41%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (1.19%) Virtual Desktop
5 5 (0.35%) Firmware
5 5 (0.35%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.14%) ProxySG
7 1 (0.070%) ISA Server
7 1 (0.070%) Varnish
7 1 (0.070%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.070%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.070%) XenApp
7 1 (0.070%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 61 (4.29%) Kubernetes
2 44 (3.09%) Terraform
3 37 (2.60%) Microsoft Intune
4 26 (1.83%) SCCM
5 25 (1.76%) Grafana
6 16 (1.12%) Single Sign-On
7 15 (1.05%) Ansible
8 7 (0.49%) Jamf Pro
9 6 (0.42%) Prometheus
10 4 (0.28%) Argo
10 4 (0.28%) FortiGate
11 3 (0.21%) HP ALM
11 3 (0.21%) Nagios
11 3 (0.21%) Podman
11 3 (0.21%) Rancher
12 2 (0.14%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
12 2 (0.14%) SysTrack
13 1 (0.070%) AirWatch
13 1 (0.070%) Consul
13 1 (0.070%) Kibana
Vendors
1 216 (15.18%) Microsoft
2 89 (6.25%) Adobe
3 72 (5.06%) Google
4 62 (4.36%) ServiceNow
5 45 (3.16%) SAP
6 44 (3.09%) Oracle
7 36 (2.53%) Salesforce
8 23 (1.62%) Citrix
9 21 (1.48%) VMware
10 19 (1.34%) Cisco
11 18 (1.26%) Splunk
12 15 (1.05%) Apple
13 13 (0.91%) Workday
14 11 (0.77%) Zscaler
15 10 (0.70%) Red Hat
16 9 (0.63%) Databricks
16 9 (0.63%) Ekahau
16 9 (0.63%) Foundry
16 9 (0.63%) MuleSoft
16 9 (0.63%) Sitecore