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 11 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 68 68 69
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing User Experience 1,287 1,029 1,246
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.54% 3.24% 2.90%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.03% 3.65% 3.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 870 625 848
10th Percentile £300 £313 £325
25th Percentile £375 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -7.62%
75th Percentile £568 £588 £588
90th Percentile £650 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £454 £475
% change year-on-year -0.88% -4.42% -4.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 51 25 29
10th Percentile £15.50 £25.26 £22.85
25th Percentile £17.69 £30.44 £31.25
Median hourly rate £35.60 £41.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.17% -31.67% -5.88%
75th Percentile £59.75 £50.75 £72.90
90th Percentile £70.16 £66.50 £81.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.25 £30.44 £71.93
% change year-on-year +2.67% -57.68% +10.66%

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 31,966 28,176 37,671
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.84% 88.65% 87.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,158 17,120 25,014
10th Percentile £304 £306 £305
25th Percentile £406 £413 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £723 £744 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,974 895 1,590
10th Percentile £14.61 £15.62 £14.18
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.50 £18.35
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -19.75% +16.41%
75th Percentile £55.00 £62.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.59 £75.00 £77.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £30.41 £43.90
% change year-on-year -21.64% -30.74% +59.64%

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 11 January 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 11 January 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 11 January 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 +5 1,106 £475 -5.00% 995
London -9 571 £480 -8.57% 229
UK excluding London +3 568 £450 -0.88% 913
Work from Home -21 339 £465 -7.00% 483
North of England +22 202 £410 -8.89% 176
North West +17 132 £400 -11.11% 83
Midlands -3 107 £475 +17.28% 132
South East +5 103 £388 -22.50% 288
West Midlands -4 70 £443 -11.50% 70
South West +3 63 £513 -9.69% 114
Scotland -16 59 £466 +3.61% 34
Yorkshire -10 54 £500 +11.11% 65
East Midlands -1 37 £490 +37.64% 62
East of England -5 33 £460 +1.32% 131
North East +5 15 £410 - 28
Wales +8 12 £331 -22.08% 47
Northern Ireland -13 1 £625 +92.31% 19

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 (4.35%) Confluence
2 54 (4.20%) SharePoint
3 46 (3.57%) CMS
4 23 (1.79%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 12 (0.93%) Headless CMS
5 12 (0.93%) Microsoft Exchange
6 11 (0.85%) SugarCRM
7 10 (0.78%) Apache
8 8 (0.62%) Umbraco
9 7 (0.54%) Sitecore CMS
10 4 (0.31%) Jupyter
11 3 (0.23%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
11 3 (0.23%) Apache Spark
11 3 (0.23%) WordPress
12 2 (0.16%) Appian
12 2 (0.16%) Camunda
12 2 (0.16%) Drupal
13 1 (0.078%) Mendix
13 1 (0.078%) Traefik
Applications
1 50 (3.89%) Sketch
2 33 (2.56%) Adobe XD
3 23 (1.79%) MS Visio
4 22 (1.71%) Microsoft Office
5 20 (1.55%) Chatbot
6 17 (1.32%) InVision
7 15 (1.17%) Microsoft Excel
8 12 (0.93%) Adobe Illustrator
8 12 (0.93%) Photoshop
9 8 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
9 8 (0.62%) Trello
10 7 (0.54%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 7 (0.54%) Microsoft Project
11 5 (0.39%) Adobe After Effects
11 5 (0.39%) Camtasia
12 3 (0.23%) Snagit
12 3 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
13 2 (0.16%) Autodesk Smoke
13 2 (0.16%) Blender
13 2 (0.16%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 22 (1.71%) SAP S/4HANA
2 15 (1.17%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
3 3 (0.23%) SAP CO
3 3 (0.23%) SAP FI
3 3 (0.23%) SAP FI/CO
3 3 (0.23%) Teamcenter
4 2 (0.16%) Adobe Campaign
4 2 (0.16%) iTrent
4 2 (0.16%) Magento
4 2 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.16%) SAP SD
4 2 (0.16%) SAP Travel Management
4 2 (0.16%) Shopify
5 1 (0.078%) Elite 3E
5 1 (0.078%) NEC Housing
5 1 (0.078%) NetSuite
5 1 (0.078%) SAP ERP
5 1 (0.078%) SAP PLM
5 1 (0.078%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 221 (17.17%) Azure
2 156 (12.12%) AWS
3 150 (11.66%) Figma
4 84 (6.53%) Power Platform
5 77 (5.98%) SaaS
6 74 (5.75%) Microsoft 365
7 61 (4.74%) GCP
8 47 (3.65%) Azure DevOps
8 47 (3.65%) Entra ID
9 45 (3.50%) GitHub
10 35 (2.72%) Miro
11 31 (2.41%) Serverless
12 26 (2.02%) GitHub Actions
13 25 (1.94%) Google Analytics
14 22 (1.71%) PowerApps
15 21 (1.63%) Power Automate
16 19 (1.48%) Sauce Labs
17 18 (1.40%) Google Workspace
18 17 (1.32%) AWS Lambda
18 17 (1.32%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 28 (2.18%) DNS
2 26 (2.02%) Wireless
3 15 (1.17%) Internet
4 14 (1.09%) HTTP
5 11 (0.85%) VPN
6 9 (0.70%) DHCP
6 9 (0.70%) TCP/IP
6 9 (0.70%) Wi-Fi
7 8 (0.62%) Firewall
7 8 (0.62%) Intranet
8 7 (0.54%) BGP
8 7 (0.54%) Cisco ISE
8 7 (0.54%) Cisco Wireless
8 7 (0.54%) NX-OS
8 7 (0.54%) VXLAN
9 6 (0.47%) Unified Communications
10 5 (0.39%) Network Security
10 5 (0.39%) SSL
10 5 (0.39%) WAN
11 4 (0.31%) PPP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (4.20%) Power BI
2 44 (3.42%) MySQL
3 41 (3.19%) Relational Database
4 34 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
5 28 (2.18%) SQL Server
6 24 (1.86%) NoSQL
7 20 (1.55%) Tableau
8 18 (1.40%) Data Warehouse
9 15 (1.17%) MongoDB
10 13 (1.01%) BigQuery
10 13 (1.01%) Metadata
11 12 (0.93%) Looker
12 9 (0.70%) Redis
12 9 (0.70%) SAP HANA
13 7 (0.54%) Mixpanel
14 5 (0.39%) DynamoDB
15 4 (0.31%) Big Data
15 4 (0.31%) Pinecone
16 3 (0.23%) Amazon Aurora
16 3 (0.23%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 126 (9.79%) JIRA
2 94 (7.30%) Git
3 45 (3.50%) GitLab
4 41 (3.19%) Jenkins
5 31 (2.41%) Cypress.io
6 30 (2.33%) Xcode
7 27 (2.10%) Android Studio
7 27 (2.10%) Eclipse
8 23 (1.79%) Axure RP
9 21 (1.63%) Browser DevTools
10 19 (1.48%) JUnit
11 18 (1.40%) Gradle
12 14 (1.09%) CircleCI
12 14 (1.09%) Postman
13 13 (1.01%) webpack
14 10 (0.78%) Artifactory
14 10 (0.78%) Selenium
15 9 (0.70%) Visual Website Optimizer
16 8 (0.62%) Cucumber
16 8 (0.62%) IntelliJ
General
1 451 (35.04%) Social Skills
2 243 (18.88%) Finance
3 185 (14.37%) Public Sector
4 163 (12.67%) Analytical Skills
5 95 (7.38%) Banking
6 83 (6.45%) Marketing
7 38 (2.95%) Influencing Skills
8 28 (2.18%) Legal
9 26 (2.02%) Presentation Skills
9 26 (2.02%) Retail
10 23 (1.79%) Manufacturing
11 22 (1.71%) Pharmaceutical
12 21 (1.63%) Documentation Skills
13 20 (1.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 15 (1.17%) Financial Institution
15 14 (1.09%) Telecoms
16 13 (1.01%) Investment Banking
17 12 (0.93%) Automotive
18 10 (0.78%) Organisational Skills
19 9 (0.70%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 230 (17.87%) Developer
2 218 (16.94%) Designer
3 171 (13.29%) Senior
4 121 (9.40%) UX Designer
5 104 (8.08%) Analyst
6 95 (7.38%) Lead
7 58 (4.51%) Business Analyst
7 58 (4.51%) Consultant
8 47 (3.65%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
9 45 (3.50%) Senior Designer
10 43 (3.34%) Architect
11 42 (3.26%) Service Designer
12 39 (3.03%) Product Designer
13 38 (2.95%) Support Engineer
14 34 (2.64%) User Researcher
15 33 (2.56%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
15 33 (2.56%) Senior Developer
15 33 (2.56%) UI Designer
16 32 (2.49%) Full-Stack Developer
17 30 (2.33%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 184 (14.30%) CSS
2 176 (13.68%) React
3 168 (13.05%) HTML
4 110 (8.55%) REST
5 95 (7.38%) RESTful
6 91 (7.07%) AngularJS
7 54 (4.20%) Node.js
8 51 (3.96%) HTML5
9 49 (3.81%) .NET
9 49 (3.81%) GraphQL
10 38 (2.95%) Jest
10 38 (2.95%) Spring
11 35 (2.72%) CSS3
11 35 (2.72%) Spring Boot
12 28 (2.18%) Redux
13 27 (2.10%) SOAP
14 26 (2.02%) JSON
15 25 (1.94%) Playwright
16 24 (1.86%) Next.js
17 23 (1.79%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 123 (9.56%) Product Ownership
2 105 (8.16%) Mobile App
3 65 (5.05%) Onboarding
4 28 (2.18%) Analytical Mindset
5 27 (2.10%) Enterprise Software
6 22 (1.71%) Management Information System
7 21 (1.63%) Data Structures
8 20 (1.55%) e-Learning
9 19 (1.48%) Low-Code
10 18 (1.40%) NHS
11 16 (1.24%) Cloud Native
12 15 (1.17%) Data Centre
12 15 (1.17%) Learning Management System
13 14 (1.09%) Distributed Systems
13 14 (1.09%) Legacy Systems
14 13 (1.01%) CMDB
15 12 (0.93%) AI Agents
15 12 (0.93%) Graphic Design
15 12 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
15 12 (0.93%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 130 (10.10%) Windows
2 72 (5.59%) Android
3 58 (4.51%) Apple iOS
4 38 (2.95%) Linux
5 35 (2.72%) Windows 10
6 25 (1.94%) Unix
7 22 (1.71%) Mac OS
8 8 (0.62%) Windows Server
9 4 (0.31%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.16%) VMS
11 1 (0.078%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 1 (0.078%) tvOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 480 (37.30%) Agile
2 434 (33.72%) UX Design
3 215 (16.71%) Problem-Solving
4 209 (16.24%) Analytics
5 178 (13.83%) CI/CD
6 175 (13.60%) User Research
7 155 (12.04%) Stakeholder Management
8 153 (11.89%) DevOps
9 138 (10.72%) AI
10 137 (10.64%) Continuous Improvement
10 137 (10.64%) Roadmaps
11 131 (10.18%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 131 (10.18%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
12 124 (9.63%) Service Design
13 120 (9.32%) Front End Development
14 105 (8.16%) Decision-Making
14 105 (8.16%) Wireframes
15 103 (8.00%) Usability Testing
16 94 (7.30%) Prototyping
17 93 (7.23%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 207 (16.08%) JavaScript
2 121 (9.40%) Python
3 120 (9.32%) Java
4 114 (8.86%) SQL
5 102 (7.93%) TypeScript
6 59 (4.58%) PowerShell
7 47 (3.65%) C#
8 34 (2.64%) Kotlin
9 26 (2.02%) Swift
10 24 (1.86%) Perl
11 23 (1.79%) Bash
12 19 (1.48%) PHP
13 11 (0.85%) C++
13 11 (0.85%) Objective-C
13 11 (0.85%) PL/SQL
14 10 (0.78%) Go
15 9 (0.70%) Scala
16 7 (0.54%) Lisp
17 6 (0.47%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 5 (0.39%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 172 (13.36%) Security Cleared
2 124 (9.63%) SC Cleared
3 120 (9.32%) Degree
4 40 (3.11%) BPSS Clearance
5 28 (2.18%) Computer Science Degree
6 19 (1.48%) DV Cleared
7 17 (1.32%) Master's Degree
8 13 (1.01%) PMI Certification
9 12 (0.93%) Microsoft Certification
10 11 (0.85%) MOS
11 9 (0.70%) OCA
11 9 (0.70%) Oracle Certification
12 8 (0.62%) CCNP
12 8 (0.62%) Cisco Certification
13 6 (0.47%) MCP
13 6 (0.47%) PMP
14 3 (0.23%) AWS Certification
14 3 (0.23%) CISSP
14 3 (0.23%) ISTQB
14 3 (0.23%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 240 (18.65%) Accessibility
2 140 (10.88%) QA
3 65 (5.05%) WCAG
4 62 (4.82%) GDPR
5 36 (2.80%) Data Quality
6 25 (1.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 18 (1.40%) SLA
8 16 (1.24%) Actionable Recommendations
9 8 (0.62%) GxP
10 6 (0.47%) NCSC
10 6 (0.47%) PMO
11 5 (0.39%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 5 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 4 (0.31%) PCI DSS
13 3 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
13 3 (0.23%) GMP
13 3 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
13 3 (0.23%) NIST
13 3 (0.23%) SOC 2
14 2 (0.16%) GRC
System Software
1 68 (5.28%) Active Directory
2 60 (4.66%) Docker
3 21 (1.63%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (0.70%) Virtual Desktop
5 3 (0.23%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.16%) ProxySG
6 2 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.078%) BitLocker
7 1 (0.078%) Firmware
7 1 (0.078%) ISA Server
7 1 (0.078%) Microsoft App-V
7 1 (0.078%) XenApp
7 1 (0.078%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 49 (3.81%) Kubernetes
2 46 (3.57%) Microsoft Intune
3 36 (2.80%) SCCM
4 35 (2.72%) Terraform
5 19 (1.48%) Ansible
6 18 (1.40%) Grafana
7 16 (1.24%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (0.54%) FortiGate
8 7 (0.54%) Prometheus
9 6 (0.47%) Jamf Pro
10 4 (0.31%) Argo
11 3 (0.23%) HP ALM
11 3 (0.23%) Nagios
11 3 (0.23%) Rancher
12 2 (0.16%) PingFederate
12 2 (0.16%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
12 2 (0.16%) SysTrack
13 1 (0.078%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 1 (0.078%) Istio
13 1 (0.078%) Podman
Vendors
1 212 (16.47%) Microsoft
2 92 (7.15%) Adobe
3 80 (6.22%) Google
4 77 (5.98%) ServiceNow
5 55 (4.27%) Oracle
6 50 (3.89%) SAP
7 45 (3.50%) Salesforce
8 29 (2.25%) Splunk
9 22 (1.71%) VMware
10 18 (1.40%) Apple
11 16 (1.24%) Citrix
12 13 (1.01%) Cisco
12 13 (1.01%) Red Hat
13 12 (0.93%) Hotjar
13 12 (0.93%) Optimizely
13 12 (0.93%) Zscaler
14 10 (0.78%) Amplitude
14 10 (0.78%) MuleSoft
15 8 (0.62%) OpenAI
15 8 (0.62%) Workday