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 6 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 87 65 79
Rank change year-on-year -22 +14 -18
Contract jobs citing User Experience 1,543 1,230 1,021
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.89% 3.74% 2.61%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.41% 4.13% 3.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 937 789 642
10th Percentile £313 £305 £305
25th Percentile £400 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -2.20%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £608
90th Percentile £688 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £475
% change year-on-year - -5.26% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 74 44 32
10th Percentile £16.88 £21.68 £16.25
25th Percentile £26.06 £33.00 £29.14
Median hourly rate £33.99 £48.25 £41.68
Median % change year-on-year -29.55% +15.78% +54.35%
75th Percentile £67.84 £64.06 £71.29
90th Percentile £73.38 £72.35 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.99 £49.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year -30.63% -30.00% +295.03%

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 45,262 29,771 33,475
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.91% 90.46% 85.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,917 18,660 21,435
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £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 2,788 1,660 1,878
10th Percentile £14.46 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.30 £18.15
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.33
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.63% -5.12%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £64.13
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £74.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.30 £40.94
% change year-on-year +88.67% -43.09% +3.38%

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 6 August 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 6 August 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 6 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 -21 1,340 £475 - 1,149
UK excluding London -13 722 £450 - 585
London -24 677 £525 +5.00% 689
Work from Home -35 388 £495 +1.54% 538
North of England -12 228 £440 -2.22% 158
Midlands -13 143 £475 +11.24% 84
South East -37 120 £450 -5.26% 159
West Midlands -13 114 £475 -7.32% 68
North West -33 111 £425 -5.56% 85
Scotland +23 95 £525 +13.51% 32
South West -20 76 £475 +18.75% 74
Yorkshire -30 65 £500 +25.00% 46
North East -3 51 £363 -24.48% 27
East of England +9 50 £410 -16.33% 51
East Midlands -3 29 £468 +31.32% 16
Wales -8 14 £640 +108.99% 18
Northern Ireland +3 1 - - 20

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 64 (4.15%) SharePoint
2 58 (3.76%) CMS
3 39 (2.53%) Confluence
4 28 (1.81%) Microsoft Exchange
5 16 (1.04%) WordPress
6 8 (0.52%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 8 (0.52%) Apache
7 6 (0.39%) Drupal
7 6 (0.39%) Mendix
7 6 (0.39%) Skype for Business
8 5 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
8 5 (0.32%) Headless CMS
9 4 (0.26%) Kentico
10 3 (0.19%) Moodle
10 3 (0.19%) Umbraco
11 2 (0.13%) Camunda
11 2 (0.13%) HCL Notes
11 2 (0.13%) IIS
11 2 (0.13%) nginx
11 2 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 36 (2.33%) Sketch
2 35 (2.27%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 29 (1.88%) Microsoft Excel
4 21 (1.36%) Chatbot
5 19 (1.23%) Photoshop
6 18 (1.17%) Adobe After Effects
7 17 (1.10%) Microsoft Office
8 16 (1.04%) Adobe XD
9 15 (0.97%) Adobe Illustrator
10 9 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
11 7 (0.45%) MS Visio
12 6 (0.39%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.19%) Adobe Captivate
14 2 (0.13%) InVision
14 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
14 2 (0.13%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.13%) UserZoom
15 1 (0.065%) Camtasia
15 1 (0.065%) Spreadsheet
15 1 (0.065%) Trello
Business Applications
1 12 (0.78%) Workday HCM
2 11 (0.71%) SAP S/4HANA
3 7 (0.45%) Dynamics CRM
3 7 (0.45%) Shopify
4 6 (0.39%) Sage X3
5 4 (0.26%) NetSuite
5 4 (0.26%) Oracle iProcurement
6 3 (0.19%) iTrent
6 3 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
6 3 (0.19%) Remedy ITSM
6 3 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
7 2 (0.13%) ResourceLink
8 1 (0.065%) Eloqua
8 1 (0.065%) Magento
8 1 (0.065%) Oracle EBS R12
8 1 (0.065%) SAP HR
8 1 (0.065%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 242 (15.68%) Azure
2 207 (13.42%) Figma
3 137 (8.88%) AWS
4 135 (8.75%) Microsoft 365
5 116 (7.52%) Power Platform
6 65 (4.21%) Entra ID
7 58 (3.76%) GitHub
8 55 (3.56%) Azure DevOps
9 51 (3.31%) SaaS
10 50 (3.24%) GCP
10 50 (3.24%) Microsoft Copilot
11 34 (2.20%) PowerApps
12 31 (2.01%) OneDrive
13 30 (1.94%) Serverless
14 27 (1.75%) Power Automate
15 24 (1.56%) Azure AI
15 24 (1.56%) Copilot Studio
16 22 (1.43%) GitHub Actions
17 17 (1.10%) Snowflake
18 14 (0.91%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 42 (2.72%) DNS
2 34 (2.20%) DHCP
3 29 (1.88%) TCP/IP
4 27 (1.75%) Wi-Fi
5 21 (1.36%) Wireless
6 20 (1.30%) LAN
7 14 (0.91%) Firewall
7 14 (0.91%) WAN
8 13 (0.84%) VPN
9 12 (0.78%) Internet
10 10 (0.65%) Intranet
10 10 (0.65%) SD-WAN
11 8 (0.52%) Cisco Wireless
11 8 (0.52%) Network Security
11 8 (0.52%) Skype
12 7 (0.45%) 5G
12 7 (0.45%) SNMP
13 6 (0.39%) WLAN
14 5 (0.32%) SMS
14 5 (0.32%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 73 (4.73%) Power BI
2 27 (1.75%) Metadata
3 20 (1.30%) NoSQL
4 19 (1.23%) PostgreSQL
5 18 (1.17%) Power Query
6 16 (1.04%) Relational Database
7 13 (0.84%) Data Warehouse
8 12 (0.78%) SQL Server
8 12 (0.78%) Tableau
9 11 (0.71%) Big Data
9 11 (0.71%) MongoDB
10 9 (0.58%) MySQL
11 8 (0.52%) Looker
12 7 (0.45%) BigQuery
12 7 (0.45%) Elasticsearch
12 7 (0.45%) Snowflake Schema
12 7 (0.45%) Star Schema
13 6 (0.39%) Azure SQL Database
13 6 (0.39%) Qlik Sense
13 6 (0.39%) Redis
Development Applications
1 86 (5.57%) JIRA
2 78 (5.06%) Git
3 26 (1.69%) Cypress.io
3 26 (1.69%) Jenkins
4 24 (1.56%) Vite
5 18 (1.17%) GitLab
6 12 (0.78%) Claude Code
7 10 (0.65%) Android Studio
7 10 (0.65%) Browser DevTools
7 10 (0.65%) fastlane
7 10 (0.65%) Storybook
8 9 (0.58%) Xcode
9 8 (0.52%) Gradle
9 8 (0.52%) JUnit
9 8 (0.52%) Selenium
10 7 (0.45%) JMeter
10 7 (0.45%) webpack
11 6 (0.39%) Postman
12 5 (0.32%) Crashlytics
12 5 (0.32%) Jasmine
General
1 484 (31.37%) Social Skills
2 273 (17.69%) Finance
3 205 (13.29%) Public Sector
4 153 (9.92%) Analytical Skills
5 115 (7.45%) Banking
6 82 (5.31%) Retail
7 75 (4.86%) Marketing
8 51 (3.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 39 (2.53%) Legal
10 36 (2.33%) Influencing Skills
11 32 (2.07%) Publishing
12 27 (1.75%) Automotive
12 27 (1.75%) Manufacturing
12 27 (1.75%) Presentation Skills
13 26 (1.69%) Organisational Skills
14 22 (1.43%) Documentation Skills
15 18 (1.17%) Investment Banking
16 16 (1.04%) Military
17 12 (0.78%) Front Office
18 11 (0.71%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 338 (21.91%) Designer
2 222 (14.39%) Senior
3 199 (12.90%) Developer
4 142 (9.20%) UX Designer
5 118 (7.65%) Lead
6 107 (6.93%) Analyst
7 85 (5.51%) UI Designer
8 82 (5.31%) Consultant
9 68 (4.41%) User Researcher
10 66 (4.28%) Senior Designer
11 61 (3.95%) Architect
12 56 (3.63%) Business Analyst
13 52 (3.37%) Content Designer
14 49 (3.18%) UI/UX Designer
15 48 (3.11%) IT Support
15 48 (3.11%) Product Designer
16 47 (3.05%) Support Engineer
17 45 (2.92%) Product Manager
18 44 (2.85%) User Experience Researcher
19 32 (2.07%) IT Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 138 (8.94%) React
2 112 (7.26%) CSS
3 99 (6.42%) HTML
3 99 (6.42%) REST
4 63 (4.08%) RESTful
5 50 (3.24%) AngularJS
6 42 (2.72%) GraphQL
6 42 (2.72%) HTML5
7 40 (2.59%) .NET
8 39 (2.53%) CSS3
9 34 (2.20%) Jest
10 32 (2.07%) Node.js
11 30 (1.94%) Spring
12 29 (1.88%) Kafka
12 29 (1.88%) Redux
12 29 (1.88%) Spring Boot
13 25 (1.62%) Playwright
14 24 (1.56%) Next.js
14 24 (1.56%) OAuth
15 23 (1.49%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 143 (9.27%) Product Ownership
2 98 (6.35%) Mobile App
3 86 (5.57%) Onboarding
4 48 (3.11%) Cloud Native
5 43 (2.79%) AI Agents
6 33 (2.14%) Self-Motivation
7 32 (2.07%) Enterprise Software
8 28 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
9 27 (1.75%) Data Structures
10 24 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
11 22 (1.43%) Animation
11 22 (1.43%) Data Centre
11 22 (1.43%) Social Media
12 18 (1.17%) Analytical Mindset
13 17 (1.10%) Educational Technology
13 17 (1.10%) Graphic Design
13 17 (1.10%) Management Information System
14 16 (1.04%) NHS
15 14 (0.91%) Taxonomies
16 13 (0.84%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 133 (8.62%) Windows
2 60 (3.89%) Android
3 55 (3.56%) Apple iOS
4 47 (3.05%) Windows 10
5 25 (1.62%) Mac OS
6 20 (1.30%) Windows Server
7 17 (1.10%) Linux
8 10 (0.65%) Unix
9 9 (0.58%) Windows 7
10 4 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
10 4 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.19%) Windows Server 2008
12 2 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 503 (32.60%) UX Design
2 444 (28.78%) Agile
3 300 (19.44%) AI
4 242 (15.68%) Problem-Solving
5 234 (15.17%) Stakeholder Management
6 216 (14.00%) User Research
7 215 (13.93%) Continuous Improvement
8 202 (13.09%) Analytics
9 184 (11.92%) CI/CD
10 174 (11.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 155 (10.05%) Roadmaps
12 141 (9.14%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
13 139 (9.01%) Prototyping
14 138 (8.94%) Decision-Making
14 138 (8.94%) DevOps
15 126 (8.17%) Wireframes
16 125 (8.10%) Service Design
17 115 (7.45%) Scrum
18 112 (7.26%) Workshop Facilitation
19 110 (7.13%) UX Research
Programming Languages
1 130 (8.43%) JavaScript
2 122 (7.91%) Python
3 109 (7.06%) TypeScript
4 105 (6.80%) SQL
5 99 (6.42%) Java
6 52 (3.37%) PowerShell
7 41 (2.66%) C#
8 38 (2.46%) Kotlin
9 24 (1.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 18 (1.17%) Bash
11 17 (1.10%) Swift
12 11 (0.71%) C++
13 8 (0.52%) Go
13 8 (0.52%) Lua
13 8 (0.52%) PHP
14 7 (0.45%) Apex Code
14 7 (0.45%) VBScript
15 6 (0.39%) Scala
15 6 (0.39%) VB
15 6 (0.39%) VBA
Qualifications
1 242 (15.68%) Security Cleared
2 183 (11.86%) SC Cleared
3 141 (9.14%) Degree
4 38 (2.46%) Computer Science Degree
5 34 (2.20%) BPSS Clearance
6 29 (1.88%) DV Cleared
7 23 (1.49%) Azure Certification
8 21 (1.36%) Microsoft Certification
9 12 (0.78%) PMP
10 11 (0.71%) Cisco Certification
11 8 (0.52%) AWS Certification
11 8 (0.52%) CCA
11 8 (0.52%) Citrix Certification
11 8 (0.52%) ITIL Certification
11 8 (0.52%) Master's Degree
11 8 (0.52%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 7 (0.45%) CCNP
13 6 (0.39%) CCIE
13 6 (0.39%) DBS Check
13 6 (0.39%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 267 (17.30%) Accessibility
2 96 (6.22%) WCAG
3 93 (6.03%) QA
4 48 (3.11%) Data Quality
5 19 (1.23%) GDPR
6 14 (0.91%) Actionable Recommendations
7 12 (0.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 9 (0.58%) PMO
9 8 (0.52%) SLA
10 7 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials
10 7 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 4 (0.26%) GRC
11 4 (0.26%) 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 (0.065%) ISO 20022
14 1 (0.065%) SEPA
System Software
1 91 (5.90%) Active Directory
2 49 (3.18%) Docker
3 28 (1.81%) Virtual Desktop
4 16 (1.04%) VMware Infrastructure
5 7 (0.45%) vSphere
6 6 (0.39%) BitLocker
6 6 (0.39%) Firmware
7 5 (0.32%) Hyper-V
7 5 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.26%) 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 (0.065%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 53 (3.43%) Terraform
2 47 (3.05%) Kubernetes
3 45 (2.92%) Microsoft Intune
4 40 (2.59%) Grafana
5 31 (2.01%) SCCM
6 17 (1.10%) Ansible
6 17 (1.10%) Single Sign-On
7 15 (0.97%) Prometheus
8 14 (0.91%) Jamf Pro
9 5 (0.32%) vCenter Server
10 4 (0.26%) Clonezilla
10 4 (0.26%) Podman
11 3 (0.19%) Kibana
11 3 (0.19%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
11 3 (0.19%) WSUS
12 2 (0.13%) Argo
12 2 (0.13%) Failover Clustering
12 2 (0.13%) Packer
12 2 (0.13%) SCOM
12 2 (0.13%) vMotion
Vendors
1 261 (16.92%) Microsoft
2 93 (6.03%) Adobe
3 82 (5.31%) ServiceNow
4 57 (3.69%) Google
5 40 (2.59%) Oracle
6 39 (2.53%) SAP
7 34 (2.20%) Salesforce
8 28 (1.81%) Splunk
9 25 (1.62%) Dynatrace
10 24 (1.56%) Citrix
11 22 (1.43%) Databricks
11 22 (1.43%) Workday
12 19 (1.23%) Cisco
12 19 (1.23%) VMware
13 16 (1.04%) Apple
13 16 (1.04%) OpenAI
14 15 (0.97%) Foundry
14 15 (0.97%) Zscaler
15 12 (0.78%) Aruba
16 10 (0.65%) Okta