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 4 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 77 58 72
Rank change year-on-year -19 +14 -11
Contract jobs citing User Experience 1,442 1,100 1,231
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.06% 3.76% 2.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.62% 4.13% 3.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 975 743 822
10th Percentile £313 £305 £305
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.56% -4.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £688 £702 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £425 £475
% change year-on-year +11.76% -10.53% +2.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 24 48
10th Percentile £16.36 £29.83 £16.25
25th Percentile £21.75 £45.00 £23.75
Median hourly rate £50.00 £53.50 £31.71
Median % change year-on-year -6.54% +68.72% -3.00%
75th Percentile £62.94 £75.12 £61.38
90th Percentile £76.00 £92.50 £73.36
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £70.00 £25.00
% change year-on-year -28.57% +180.00% +25.00%

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 39,853 26,632 37,270
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.47% 90.92% 86.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,078 17,168 24,015
10th Percentile £319 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £481 £500
% change year-on-year +1.46% -3.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,383 1,080 2,442
10th Percentile £14.84 £14.63 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.83
Median % change year-on-year +43.29% -19.06% -0.47%
75th Percentile £67.13 £61.69 £60.00
90th Percentile £79.40 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £27.57 £37.50
% change year-on-year +59.59% -26.48% +7.14%

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 4 May 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 4 May 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 4 May 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 -12 1,243 £488 -2.30% 1,609
London -20 643 £513 -0.49% 677
UK excluding London -3 626 £475 +11.76% 1,044
Work from Home -26 378 £475 -1.81% 426
North of England +5 197 £449 -0.33% 332
Midlands -6 148 £500 +25.00% 127
North West +5 122 £420 -6.67% 246
South East -22 110 £475 +2.70% 294
West Midlands -21 96 £475 +1.33% 65
South West -17 68 £475 +26.67% 89
Scotland -13 58 £493 +9.44% 34
East Midlands +3 52 £550 +53.63% 62
Yorkshire -16 51 £513 +28.04% 63
East of England -23 31 £410 -13.68% 164
North East -10 22 £418 -7.73% 24
Wales -8 15 £375 +22.55% 13
Northern Ireland -5 3 - - 10

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 51 (3.54%) Confluence
2 49 (3.40%) SharePoint
3 39 (2.70%) CMS
4 17 (1.18%) Microsoft Exchange
5 16 (1.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 7 (0.49%) Apache
7 6 (0.42%) Mendix
7 6 (0.42%) WordPress
8 5 (0.35%) Camunda
8 5 (0.35%) Drupal
8 5 (0.35%) Headless CMS
9 4 (0.28%) Ethereum
9 4 (0.28%) Hyperledger
9 4 (0.28%) Sitecore CMS
9 4 (0.28%) Umbraco
10 3 (0.21%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.21%) nginx
11 2 (0.14%) Apache Spark
11 2 (0.14%) Appian
11 2 (0.14%) Kentico
Applications
1 42 (2.91%) Sketch
2 29 (2.01%) Adobe XD
3 24 (1.66%) Microsoft Excel
4 20 (1.39%) Chatbot
5 18 (1.25%) MS Visio
6 14 (0.97%) Microsoft Office
6 14 (0.97%) Photoshop
7 11 (0.76%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 11 (0.76%) InVision
8 10 (0.69%) Adobe After Effects
9 9 (0.62%) Adobe Illustrator
10 6 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
11 5 (0.35%) Trello
12 4 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
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%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 13 (0.90%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (0.69%) Shopify
3 9 (0.62%) Dynamics CRM
4 8 (0.55%) Workday HCM
5 6 (0.42%) Sage X3
6 2 (0.14%) NEC Housing
6 2 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
6 2 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
6 2 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
6 2 (0.14%) ResourceLink
6 2 (0.14%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.069%) assyst
7 1 (0.069%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.069%) Oracle Payroll
7 1 (0.069%) SAP CO
7 1 (0.069%) SAP FI
7 1 (0.069%) SAP FI/CO
7 1 (0.069%) SAP PP
7 1 (0.069%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 224 (15.53%) Azure
2 208 (14.42%) Figma
3 121 (8.39%) AWS
4 109 (7.56%) Power Platform
5 94 (6.52%) Microsoft 365
6 55 (3.81%) Azure DevOps
7 51 (3.54%) Entra ID
8 47 (3.26%) GCP
9 44 (3.05%) GitHub
10 40 (2.77%) SaaS
11 39 (2.70%) Microsoft Copilot
12 38 (2.64%) Power Automate
12 38 (2.64%) PowerApps
13 33 (2.29%) Serverless
14 24 (1.66%) Copilot Studio
14 24 (1.66%) GitHub Actions
15 23 (1.60%) Google Workspace
16 21 (1.46%) Miro
17 20 (1.39%) Google Sheets
18 19 (1.32%) Google Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 14 (0.97%) DNS
2 12 (0.83%) Internet
2 12 (0.83%) Intranet
2 12 (0.83%) LAN
2 12 (0.83%) Wi-Fi
3 11 (0.76%) HTTP
3 11 (0.76%) SD-WAN
4 10 (0.69%) Wireless
5 9 (0.62%) DHCP
5 9 (0.62%) VPN
6 8 (0.55%) WAN
7 7 (0.49%) TCP/IP
8 6 (0.42%) Cisco Wireless
8 6 (0.42%) Firewall
8 6 (0.42%) Network Security
8 6 (0.42%) SNMP
8 6 (0.42%) WLAN
9 5 (0.35%) 5G
9 5 (0.35%) SMS
9 5 (0.35%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 75 (5.20%) Power BI
2 27 (1.87%) Relational Database
3 26 (1.80%) NoSQL
4 23 (1.60%) PostgreSQL
5 21 (1.46%) SQL Server
6 19 (1.32%) Data Warehouse
7 17 (1.18%) Metadata
8 16 (1.11%) MongoDB
9 15 (1.04%) MySQL
10 12 (0.83%) Tableau
11 11 (0.76%) Power Query
12 10 (0.69%) Big Data
12 10 (0.69%) BigQuery
13 7 (0.49%) Looker
13 7 (0.49%) Oracle BI Publisher
13 7 (0.49%) Pinecone
14 6 (0.42%) DynamoDB
14 6 (0.42%) Oracle Database
14 6 (0.42%) Redis
14 6 (0.42%) ZAP BI
Development Applications
1 107 (7.42%) JIRA
2 89 (6.17%) Git
3 33 (2.29%) GitLab
4 29 (2.01%) Cypress.io
5 18 (1.25%) Jenkins
5 18 (1.25%) JUnit
6 17 (1.18%) Axure RP
7 13 (0.90%) Gradle
8 12 (0.83%) Selenium
9 11 (0.76%) Browser DevTools
9 11 (0.76%) CircleCI
10 10 (0.69%) Android Studio
10 10 (0.69%) Vite
11 9 (0.62%) Xcode
12 8 (0.55%) Visual Studio
13 7 (0.49%) Mockito
13 7 (0.49%) Postman
14 6 (0.42%) Eclipse
14 6 (0.42%) Mocha
15 5 (0.35%) Cucumber
General
1 445 (30.86%) Social Skills
2 262 (18.17%) Finance
3 204 (14.15%) Public Sector
4 151 (10.47%) Analytical Skills
5 111 (7.70%) Banking
6 54 (3.74%) Marketing
7 52 (3.61%) Retail
8 33 (2.29%) Legal
9 31 (2.15%) Presentation Skills
10 30 (2.08%) Influencing Skills
11 20 (1.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 20 (1.39%) Manufacturing
12 19 (1.32%) Documentation Skills
12 19 (1.32%) Pharmaceutical
13 18 (1.25%) Publishing
14 17 (1.18%) Games
15 16 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
16 15 (1.04%) Automotive
17 14 (0.97%) Investment Banking
18 11 (0.76%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 304 (21.08%) Designer
2 220 (15.26%) Senior
3 194 (13.45%) Developer
4 143 (9.92%) UX Designer
5 128 (8.88%) Analyst
6 76 (5.27%) Consultant
7 72 (4.99%) Lead
8 66 (4.58%) Business Analyst
8 66 (4.58%) Product Designer
9 61 (4.23%) Architect
10 59 (4.09%) Senior Designer
11 57 (3.95%) UI Designer
11 57 (3.95%) User Researcher
12 46 (3.19%) Content Designer
13 43 (2.98%) Service Designer
13 43 (2.98%) User Experience Researcher
14 42 (2.91%) UI/UX Designer
15 37 (2.57%) Senior Developer
16 36 (2.50%) IT Support
17 34 (2.36%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 158 (10.96%) React
2 139 (9.64%) CSS
3 127 (8.81%) HTML
4 103 (7.14%) REST
5 71 (4.92%) RESTful
6 70 (4.85%) AngularJS
7 54 (3.74%) Spring
8 53 (3.68%) Spring Boot
9 51 (3.54%) .NET
10 39 (2.70%) Node.js
11 36 (2.50%) HTML5
12 35 (2.43%) GraphQL
12 35 (2.43%) Redux
13 34 (2.36%) JSON
14 32 (2.22%) CSS3
15 29 (2.01%) Jest
16 28 (1.94%) Next.js
17 26 (1.80%) Kafka
18 22 (1.53%) Playwright
19 20 (1.39%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 140 (9.71%) Product Ownership
2 72 (4.99%) Mobile App
3 51 (3.54%) Onboarding
4 37 (2.57%) AI Agents
5 32 (2.22%) Data Structures
6 29 (2.01%) Enterprise Software
7 25 (1.73%) Cloud Native
8 22 (1.53%) Analytical Mindset
9 18 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
10 17 (1.18%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 16 (1.11%) Distributed Systems
11 16 (1.11%) Virtual Reality
12 14 (0.97%) Augmented Reality
12 14 (0.97%) Legacy Systems
12 14 (0.97%) NHS
13 13 (0.90%) Low-Code
13 13 (0.90%) Management Information System
13 13 (0.90%) Self-Motivation
14 12 (0.83%) Algorithms
15 11 (0.76%) Graphic Design
Operating Systems
1 95 (6.59%) Windows
2 42 (2.91%) Android
3 35 (2.43%) Apple iOS
3 35 (2.43%) Windows 10
4 21 (1.46%) Mac OS
5 14 (0.97%) Linux
6 9 (0.62%) Windows Server
7 6 (0.42%) Unix
8 5 (0.35%) Windows Server 2016
9 4 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.14%) Windows 7
10 2 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.069%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 479 (33.22%) UX Design
2 459 (31.83%) Agile
3 227 (15.74%) AI
4 219 (15.19%) User Research
5 215 (14.91%) Problem-Solving
6 206 (14.29%) Analytics
7 173 (12.00%) Continuous Improvement
8 170 (11.79%) Stakeholder Management
9 169 (11.72%) CI/CD
10 164 (11.37%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 159 (11.03%) Roadmaps
12 154 (10.68%) DevOps
13 147 (10.19%) Prototyping
14 136 (9.43%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
15 132 (9.15%) UX Research
16 129 (8.95%) Service Design
16 129 (8.95%) Wireframes
17 120 (8.32%) Decision-Making
18 113 (7.84%) Usability Testing
19 111 (7.70%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 167 (11.58%) JavaScript
2 128 (8.88%) SQL
3 122 (8.46%) Python
4 116 (8.04%) Java
5 112 (7.77%) TypeScript
6 56 (3.88%) C#
7 43 (2.98%) PowerShell
8 27 (1.87%) Kotlin
9 18 (1.25%) Bash
10 17 (1.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 11 (0.76%) C++
12 9 (0.62%) Lua
12 9 (0.62%) Swift
13 7 (0.49%) Korn
14 6 (0.42%) Go
14 6 (0.42%) Perl
14 6 (0.42%) Scala
14 6 (0.42%) VBA
15 5 (0.35%) PL/SQL
15 5 (0.35%) R
Qualifications
1 195 (13.52%) Security Cleared
2 144 (9.99%) SC Cleared
3 124 (8.60%) Degree
4 34 (2.36%) BPSS Clearance
5 30 (2.08%) Computer Science Degree
6 25 (1.73%) DV Cleared
7 21 (1.46%) Microsoft Certification
8 14 (0.97%) Master's Degree
9 12 (0.83%) Azure Certification
9 12 (0.83%) Cisco Certification
10 9 (0.62%) CCNP
11 8 (0.55%) PMI Certification
12 7 (0.49%) CCA
13 6 (0.42%) CCIE
13 6 (0.42%) Citrix Certification
14 4 (0.28%) CCNA
14 4 (0.28%) ITIL Certification
14 4 (0.28%) OCA
14 4 (0.28%) Oracle Certification
14 4 (0.28%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 259 (17.96%) Accessibility
2 124 (8.60%) QA
3 81 (5.62%) WCAG
4 45 (3.12%) Data Quality
5 38 (2.64%) GDPR
6 25 (1.73%) Actionable Recommendations
7 18 (1.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 9 (0.62%) SLA
9 7 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
10 6 (0.42%) GMP
10 6 (0.42%) GxP
10 6 (0.42%) PMO
11 5 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 4 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 4 (0.28%) GRC
13 3 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
13 3 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 3 (0.21%) NCSC
13 3 (0.21%) NIST
13 3 (0.21%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 68 (4.72%) Active Directory
2 52 (3.61%) Docker
3 19 (1.32%) Virtual Desktop
4 18 (1.25%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (0.42%) Firmware
6 5 (0.35%) Hyper-V
7 3 (0.21%) XenApp
7 3 (0.21%) XenDesktop
8 2 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
9 1 (0.069%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.069%) ISA Server
9 1 (0.069%) Varnish
9 1 (0.069%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 56 (3.88%) Kubernetes
2 46 (3.19%) Terraform
3 35 (2.43%) Grafana
4 33 (2.29%) Microsoft Intune
5 28 (1.94%) SCCM
6 16 (1.11%) Ansible
6 16 (1.11%) Single Sign-On
7 11 (0.76%) Prometheus
8 5 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
9 4 (0.28%) Podman
10 3 (0.21%) HP ALM
10 3 (0.21%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
11 2 (0.14%) Argo
11 2 (0.14%) Failover Clustering
11 2 (0.14%) Nagios
11 2 (0.14%) Rancher
11 2 (0.14%) SysTrack
11 2 (0.14%) WSUS
12 1 (0.069%) AirWatch
12 1 (0.069%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 204 (14.15%) Microsoft
2 88 (6.10%) Adobe
3 68 (4.72%) Google
4 53 (3.68%) ServiceNow
5 47 (3.26%) Oracle
5 47 (3.26%) SAP
6 44 (3.05%) Salesforce
7 23 (1.60%) Citrix
8 20 (1.39%) Splunk
9 18 (1.25%) VMware
10 17 (1.18%) Workday
11 15 (1.04%) Cisco
11 15 (1.04%) Databricks
12 14 (0.97%) Apple
13 10 (0.69%) Foundry
14 9 (0.62%) Aruba
14 9 (0.62%) Dynatrace
14 9 (0.62%) MuleSoft
14 9 (0.62%) OpenAI
14 9 (0.62%) Zscaler