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 18 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 67 64 70
Rank change year-on-year -3 +6 -2
Contract jobs citing User Experience 1,411 1,065 1,296
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.48% 3.47% 2.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.00% 3.87% 3.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 985 680 883
10th Percentile £313 £313 £315
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £650 £688 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +5.56% -5.26% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 23 41
10th Percentile £15.50 £25.26 £23.75
25th Percentile £17.69 £32.52 £25.00
Median hourly rate £37.22 £42.50 £41.68
Median % change year-on-year -12.42% +1.98% -20.62%
75th Percentile £61.25 £52.25 £72.50
90th Percentile £71.28 £70.60 £81.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.30 £30.33 £28.75
% change year-on-year -0.12% +5.50% -41.33%

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 35,252 27,502 38,622
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.92% 89.66% 87.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,364 16,881 25,241
10th Percentile £310 £306 £300
25th Percentile £410 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -2.04% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,119 838 2,150
10th Percentile £14.53 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.87 £21.05 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -7.14% -
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.75 £60.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.08 £72.97
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £30.78 £35.00
% change year-on-year -18.29% -12.06% +6.22%

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 18 February 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 18 February 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 18 February 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 -2 1,215 £476 -4.90% 685
London -11 637 £500 -3.38% 295
UK excluding London -1 608 £475 +5.56% 530
Work from Home -24 371 £475 -4.81% 342
North of England +18 215 £450 - 131
North West +26 146 £408 -9.44% 74
South East -6 120 £475 -5.00% 191
Midlands -14 107 £510 +27.50% 85
South West 0 68 £450 -13.54% 65
Scotland -7 60 £460 +2.22% 14
West Midlands -38 59 £456 -3.95% 55
Yorkshire -20 50 £513 +20.52% 38
East Midlands +9 48 £550 +54.49% 30
East of England -18 30 £432 -9.38% 37
North East -1 18 £388 -8.82% 20
Wales +7 15 £300 -29.41% 10
Northern Ireland -7 4 £625 +92.31% 3

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 57 (4.04%) Confluence
1 57 (4.04%) SharePoint
2 40 (2.83%) CMS
3 23 (1.63%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 12 (0.85%) Microsoft Exchange
5 11 (0.78%) Headless CMS
5 11 (0.78%) SugarCRM
6 9 (0.64%) Apache
7 8 (0.57%) Sitecore CMS
7 8 (0.57%) Umbraco
8 4 (0.28%) Camunda
8 4 (0.28%) Ethereum
8 4 (0.28%) Hyperledger
9 3 (0.21%) Anypoint
9 3 (0.21%) Apache Spark
9 3 (0.21%) Jupyter
10 2 (0.14%) Apache Airflow
10 2 (0.14%) Appian
10 2 (0.14%) Drupal
10 2 (0.14%) WordPress
Applications
1 52 (3.69%) Sketch
2 37 (2.62%) Adobe XD
3 25 (1.77%) MS Visio
4 20 (1.42%) Chatbot
4 20 (1.42%) Microsoft Excel
5 19 (1.35%) Microsoft Office
6 14 (0.99%) InVision
7 11 (0.78%) Photoshop
8 10 (0.71%) Adobe Illustrator
9 7 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
10 6 (0.43%) Spreadsheet
10 6 (0.43%) Trello
11 5 (0.35%) Adobe After Effects
11 5 (0.35%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 4 (0.28%) Microsoft Project
12 4 (0.28%) UXPin
13 3 (0.21%) UserZoom
14 2 (0.14%) Autodesk Smoke
14 2 (0.14%) InDesign
14 2 (0.14%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 21 (1.49%) SAP S/4HANA
2 16 (1.13%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.35%) Shopify
4 4 (0.28%) Workday HCM
5 3 (0.21%) SAP CO
5 3 (0.21%) SAP FI
5 3 (0.21%) SAP FI/CO
6 2 (0.14%) iTrent
6 2 (0.14%) Magento
6 2 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.14%) Sage X3
6 2 (0.14%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.14%) SAP SD
6 2 (0.14%) SAP Travel Management
6 2 (0.14%) Teamcenter
7 1 (0.071%) Elite 3E
7 1 (0.071%) Integrated Workplace Management System
7 1 (0.071%) NEC Housing
7 1 (0.071%) Salesforce CRM
7 1 (0.071%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 238 (16.87%) Azure
2 198 (14.03%) Figma
3 152 (10.77%) AWS
4 99 (7.02%) Power Platform
5 79 (5.60%) SaaS
6 75 (5.32%) Microsoft 365
7 68 (4.82%) GCP
8 57 (4.04%) Azure DevOps
9 55 (3.90%) GitHub
10 51 (3.61%) Entra ID
11 35 (2.48%) Miro
12 34 (2.41%) GitHub Actions
12 34 (2.41%) Power Automate
13 32 (2.27%) PowerApps
13 32 (2.27%) Serverless
14 24 (1.70%) Google Workspace
15 23 (1.63%) Google Analytics
16 22 (1.56%) Cloud Computing
17 21 (1.49%) Dynamics 365
17 21 (1.49%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.77%) DNS
2 22 (1.56%) Wireless
3 16 (1.13%) HTTP
3 16 (1.13%) Internet
4 11 (0.78%) VPN
4 11 (0.78%) Wi-Fi
5 9 (0.64%) DHCP
5 9 (0.64%) Intranet
5 9 (0.64%) TCP/IP
6 8 (0.57%) BGP
6 8 (0.57%) Cisco ISE
6 8 (0.57%) Firewall
7 7 (0.50%) Cisco Wireless
7 7 (0.50%) NX-OS
7 7 (0.50%) VXLAN
7 7 (0.50%) WAN
8 6 (0.43%) Unified Communications
9 5 (0.35%) Network Security
9 5 (0.35%) SD-WAN
9 5 (0.35%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 64 (4.54%) Power BI
2 42 (2.98%) MySQL
3 41 (2.91%) Relational Database
4 32 (2.27%) PostgreSQL
5 30 (2.13%) NoSQL
6 24 (1.70%) SQL Server
7 20 (1.42%) Data Warehouse
8 16 (1.13%) MongoDB
9 15 (1.06%) Tableau
10 14 (0.99%) BigQuery
10 14 (0.99%) Metadata
11 12 (0.85%) Looker
12 7 (0.50%) DynamoDB
12 7 (0.50%) Mixpanel
13 6 (0.43%) Pinecone
14 5 (0.35%) Hadoop
14 5 (0.35%) Oracle Reports
14 5 (0.35%) Power Query
14 5 (0.35%) Redis
14 5 (0.35%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 126 (8.93%) JIRA
2 96 (6.80%) Git
3 45 (3.19%) GitLab
4 35 (2.48%) Jenkins
5 32 (2.27%) Cypress.io
6 27 (1.91%) JUnit
7 25 (1.77%) Axure RP
8 22 (1.56%) Android Studio
8 22 (1.56%) Eclipse
8 22 (1.56%) Xcode
9 17 (1.20%) Browser DevTools
10 16 (1.13%) Gradle
11 12 (0.85%) CircleCI
12 11 (0.78%) Postman
13 8 (0.57%) Artifactory
13 8 (0.57%) Mocha
13 8 (0.57%) Mockito
13 8 (0.57%) Selenium
13 8 (0.57%) Visual Website Optimizer
14 7 (0.50%) IntelliJ
General
1 479 (33.95%) Social Skills
2 264 (18.71%) Finance
3 203 (14.39%) Public Sector
4 163 (11.55%) Analytical Skills
5 105 (7.44%) Banking
6 79 (5.60%) Marketing
7 39 (2.76%) Retail
8 33 (2.34%) Influencing Skills
9 28 (1.98%) Legal
10 26 (1.84%) Presentation Skills
11 20 (1.42%) Manufacturing
12 19 (1.35%) Pharmaceutical
13 18 (1.28%) Financial Institution
14 16 (1.13%) Documentation Skills
15 15 (1.06%) Investment Banking
15 15 (1.06%) Telecoms
16 12 (0.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 11 (0.78%) Front Office
18 10 (0.71%) Games
18 10 (0.71%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 253 (17.93%) Designer
2 239 (16.94%) Developer
3 203 (14.39%) Senior
4 143 (10.13%) UX Designer
5 127 (9.00%) Analyst
6 83 (5.88%) Lead
7 64 (4.54%) Business Analyst
8 62 (4.39%) Senior Designer
9 59 (4.18%) Product Designer
10 58 (4.11%) Consultant
11 51 (3.61%) Architect
12 45 (3.19%) User Researcher
13 42 (2.98%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
13 42 (2.98%) Full-Stack Developer
14 41 (2.91%) UI Designer
15 39 (2.76%) Senior Developer
15 39 (2.76%) Service Designer
15 39 (2.76%) Software Engineer
16 37 (2.62%) Senior UX Designer
16 37 (2.62%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 181 (12.83%) CSS
1 181 (12.83%) React
2 164 (11.62%) HTML
3 120 (8.50%) REST
4 98 (6.95%) AngularJS
5 95 (6.73%) RESTful
6 65 (4.61%) Spring
7 63 (4.46%) Spring Boot
8 60 (4.25%) .NET
9 55 (3.90%) Node.js
10 44 (3.12%) GraphQL
11 42 (2.98%) HTML5
12 37 (2.62%) Jest
13 34 (2.41%) CSS3
14 31 (2.20%) JSON
15 29 (2.06%) Redux
16 27 (1.91%) Next.js
17 26 (1.84%) SOAP
18 23 (1.63%) OAuth
18 23 (1.63%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 143 (10.13%) Product Ownership
2 99 (7.02%) Mobile App
3 57 (4.04%) Onboarding
4 28 (1.98%) Enterprise Software
5 27 (1.91%) Analytical Mindset
6 26 (1.84%) AI Agents
7 23 (1.63%) Data Structures
8 18 (1.28%) Low-Code
9 17 (1.20%) Distributed Systems
10 16 (1.13%) Data Protection Act
10 16 (1.13%) NHS
11 15 (1.06%) Data Centre
11 15 (1.06%) Legacy Systems
11 15 (1.06%) Virtual Team
12 14 (0.99%) Cloud Native
13 13 (0.92%) CMDB
14 12 (0.85%) e-Learning
15 11 (0.78%) Algorithms
15 11 (0.78%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 11 (0.78%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 124 (8.79%) Windows
2 60 (4.25%) Android
3 43 (3.05%) Apple iOS
4 36 (2.55%) Windows 10
5 35 (2.48%) Linux
6 24 (1.70%) Mac OS
7 20 (1.42%) Unix
8 7 (0.50%) Windows Server
9 3 (0.21%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.14%) VMS
11 1 (0.071%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 1 (0.071%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 494 (35.01%) Agile
2 474 (33.59%) UX Design
3 227 (16.09%) Problem-Solving
4 225 (15.95%) Analytics
5 209 (14.81%) User Research
6 192 (13.61%) CI/CD
7 177 (12.54%) Stakeholder Management
8 170 (12.05%) DevOps
9 165 (11.69%) AI
10 162 (11.48%) Continuous Improvement
11 148 (10.49%) Roadmaps
12 144 (10.21%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
13 142 (10.06%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 130 (9.21%) Prototyping
15 129 (9.14%) Wireframes
16 126 (8.93%) Decision-Making
17 122 (8.65%) Service Design
18 121 (8.58%) Usability Testing
19 114 (8.08%) UX Research
20 107 (7.58%) Front End Development
Programming Languages
1 214 (15.17%) JavaScript
2 140 (9.92%) SQL
3 127 (9.00%) Java
4 119 (8.43%) TypeScript
5 117 (8.29%) Python
6 62 (4.39%) C#
7 60 (4.25%) PowerShell
8 35 (2.48%) Kotlin
9 23 (1.63%) Bash
10 20 (1.42%) Perl
10 20 (1.42%) PHP
11 15 (1.06%) Swift
12 11 (0.78%) PL/SQL
13 10 (0.71%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 9 (0.64%) C++
14 9 (0.64%) Go
15 7 (0.50%) Lisp
15 7 (0.50%) Scala
16 4 (0.28%) Korn
16 4 (0.28%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 178 (12.62%) Security Cleared
2 132 (9.36%) SC Cleared
3 129 (9.14%) Degree
4 41 (2.91%) BPSS Clearance
5 20 (1.42%) Computer Science Degree
6 17 (1.20%) Master's Degree
7 13 (0.92%) DV Cleared
8 12 (0.85%) Microsoft Certification
9 11 (0.78%) MOS
10 10 (0.71%) CCNP
10 10 (0.71%) Cisco Certification
11 8 (0.57%) OCA
11 8 (0.57%) Oracle Certification
11 8 (0.57%) PMI Certification
12 4 (0.28%) Azure Certification
13 3 (0.21%) ITIL Certification
14 2 (0.14%) A+ Certification
14 2 (0.14%) CCA
14 2 (0.14%) Citrix Certification
14 2 (0.14%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 264 (18.71%) Accessibility
2 144 (10.21%) QA
3 77 (5.46%) WCAG
4 55 (3.90%) GDPR
5 45 (3.19%) Data Quality
6 27 (1.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 23 (1.63%) Actionable Recommendations
8 20 (1.42%) SLA
9 7 (0.50%) PMO
10 6 (0.43%) NCSC
11 5 (0.35%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 5 (0.35%) GxP
12 4 (0.28%) NIST
13 3 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials
13 3 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
13 3 (0.21%) GMP
13 3 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
13 3 (0.21%) HIPAA
13 3 (0.21%) SOC 2
14 2 (0.14%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 70 (4.96%) Active Directory
2 67 (4.75%) Docker
3 22 (1.56%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.71%) Virtual Desktop
5 3 (0.21%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.14%) ProxySG
7 1 (0.071%) BitLocker
7 1 (0.071%) ISA Server
7 1 (0.071%) Microsoft App-V
7 1 (0.071%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.071%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.071%) XenApp
7 1 (0.071%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 57 (4.04%) Kubernetes
2 43 (3.05%) Microsoft Intune
3 39 (2.76%) Terraform
4 36 (2.55%) SCCM
5 24 (1.70%) Grafana
6 16 (1.13%) Ansible
6 16 (1.13%) Single Sign-On
7 7 (0.50%) FortiGate
8 6 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
8 6 (0.43%) Prometheus
9 4 (0.28%) Argo
9 4 (0.28%) HP ALM
10 3 (0.21%) Nagios
10 3 (0.21%) Rancher
11 2 (0.14%) PingFederate
11 2 (0.14%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
11 2 (0.14%) SysTrack
12 1 (0.071%) Consul
12 1 (0.071%) Istio
12 1 (0.071%) Kibana
Vendors
1 230 (16.30%) Microsoft
2 91 (6.45%) Adobe
3 90 (6.38%) Google
4 78 (5.53%) ServiceNow
5 52 (3.69%) SAP
6 47 (3.33%) Oracle
7 43 (3.05%) Salesforce
8 31 (2.20%) Splunk
9 23 (1.63%) VMware
10 19 (1.35%) Citrix
11 15 (1.06%) Cisco
12 13 (0.92%) Apple
12 13 (0.92%) Zscaler
13 11 (0.78%) Hotjar
13 11 (0.78%) OpenAI
13 11 (0.78%) Optimizely
13 11 (0.78%) Red Hat
14 10 (0.71%) Amplitude
15 9 (0.64%) MuleSoft
16 8 (0.57%) Workday