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

6 months to
14 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 76 58 74
Rank change year-on-year -18 +16 -13
Contract jobs citing User Experience 1,468 1,094 1,214
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.09% 3.78% 2.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.66% 4.15% 3.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 979 739 810
10th Percentile £313 £305 £306
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.08% -4.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £578 £600
90th Percentile £688 £714 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £425 £475
% change year-on-year +11.76% -10.53% +2.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 57 24 46
10th Percentile £16.44 £35.25 £16.25
25th Percentile £23.00 £46.25 £23.75
Median hourly rate £34.00 £53.50 £29.14
Median % change year-on-year -36.45% +83.63% -1.55%
75th Percentile £61.25 £75.12 £61.63
90th Percentile £74.80 £92.50 £73.67
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.99 £76.00 £25.00
% change year-on-year -55.28% +204.00% +42.86%

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 40,111 26,361 36,876
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.33% 90.96% 86.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,183 16,941 23,723
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £516 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.13% -1.71% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £626 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +2.71% -4.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,380 1,073 2,431
10th Percentile £14.89 £14.41 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.38 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.60 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +48.60% -21.64% +1.39%
75th Percentile £67.25 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.78 £38.00
% change year-on-year +74.59% -32.17% +8.57%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 -8 1,274 £490 -2.00% 753
UK excluding London -2 655 £475 +11.76% 521
London -19 651 £513 -0.49% 340
Work from Home -24 391 £475 -1.04% 416
North of England +6 201 £450 +0.33% 143
Midlands +3 157 £488 +21.88% 76
North West +6 125 £420 -6.67% 88
South East -21 120 £480 +3.34% 144
West Midlands -10 106 £475 +1.33% 53
South West -16 67 £475 +26.67% 49
Scotland +7 65 £493 +9.44% 37
Yorkshire -20 53 £513 +28.04% 32
East Midlands +6 51 £550 +54.06% 21
East of England -23 30 £410 -13.68% 60
North East -8 21 £445 -1.66% 23
Wales -10 13 £450 +47.06% 12
Northern Ireland -5 3 - - 9

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 53 (3.61%) SharePoint
2 51 (3.47%) Confluence
3 39 (2.66%) CMS
4 20 (1.36%) Microsoft Exchange
5 14 (0.95%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 7 (0.48%) Apache
6 7 (0.48%) WordPress
7 5 (0.34%) Camunda
7 5 (0.34%) Drupal
7 5 (0.34%) Mendix
8 4 (0.27%) Ethereum
8 4 (0.27%) Hyperledger
8 4 (0.27%) Kentico
9 3 (0.20%) Anypoint
9 3 (0.20%) Headless CMS
9 3 (0.20%) nginx
9 3 (0.20%) Skype for Business
9 3 (0.20%) Umbraco
10 2 (0.14%) Apache Spark
10 2 (0.14%) Appian
Applications
1 41 (2.79%) Sketch
2 27 (1.84%) Adobe XD
3 25 (1.70%) Microsoft Excel
4 20 (1.36%) Photoshop
5 19 (1.29%) Chatbot
6 17 (1.16%) MS Visio
7 15 (1.02%) Adobe Illustrator
7 15 (1.02%) Microsoft Office
8 13 (0.89%) Adobe After Effects
9 12 (0.82%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 10 (0.68%) InVision
11 7 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
12 4 (0.27%) Trello
13 3 (0.20%) Adobe Captivate
13 3 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
13 3 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
13 3 (0.20%) UserZoom
13 3 (0.20%) UXPin
14 2 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
15 1 (0.068%) Blender
Business Applications
1 13 (0.89%) SAP S/4HANA
2 9 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
2 9 (0.61%) Shopify
3 8 (0.54%) Workday HCM
4 6 (0.41%) Sage X3
5 3 (0.20%) NetSuite
5 3 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.14%) NEC Housing
6 2 (0.14%) Oracle iProcurement
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 (0.068%) Adobe Campaign
7 1 (0.068%) Eloqua
7 1 (0.068%) Integrated Workplace Management System
7 1 (0.068%) iTrent
7 1 (0.068%) Salesforce CRM
7 1 (0.068%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 229 (15.60%) Azure
2 209 (14.24%) Figma
3 123 (8.38%) AWS
4 114 (7.77%) Power Platform
5 100 (6.81%) Microsoft 365
6 56 (3.81%) Azure DevOps
7 55 (3.75%) Entra ID
8 48 (3.27%) GCP
9 46 (3.13%) GitHub
10 44 (3.00%) SaaS
11 38 (2.59%) Power Automate
12 37 (2.52%) Microsoft Copilot
12 37 (2.52%) PowerApps
13 33 (2.25%) Serverless
14 27 (1.84%) GitHub Actions
15 24 (1.63%) Google Workspace
15 24 (1.63%) OneDrive
16 23 (1.57%) Copilot Studio
17 21 (1.43%) Google Sheets
18 20 (1.36%) Miro
Communications & Networking
1 17 (1.16%) DNS
2 16 (1.09%) Wi-Fi
3 13 (0.89%) DHCP
4 12 (0.82%) Internet
4 12 (0.82%) LAN
5 11 (0.75%) Intranet
5 11 (0.75%) SD-WAN
5 11 (0.75%) Wireless
6 10 (0.68%) HTTP
6 10 (0.68%) TCP/IP
6 10 (0.68%) VPN
7 8 (0.54%) WAN
8 6 (0.41%) 5G
8 6 (0.41%) Cisco Wireless
8 6 (0.41%) Firewall
8 6 (0.41%) Network Security
8 6 (0.41%) SNMP
8 6 (0.41%) WLAN
9 5 (0.34%) Skype
9 5 (0.34%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 80 (5.45%) Power BI
2 27 (1.84%) Relational Database
3 25 (1.70%) NoSQL
3 25 (1.70%) PostgreSQL
4 22 (1.50%) SQL Server
5 19 (1.29%) Data Warehouse
5 19 (1.29%) Metadata
6 15 (1.02%) MongoDB
6 15 (1.02%) MySQL
7 14 (0.95%) Power Query
8 12 (0.82%) Tableau
9 11 (0.75%) Big Data
10 10 (0.68%) BigQuery
11 7 (0.48%) DynamoDB
11 7 (0.48%) Oracle BI Publisher
11 7 (0.48%) Pinecone
12 6 (0.41%) Looker
12 6 (0.41%) Oracle Database
12 6 (0.41%) Redis
12 6 (0.41%) ZAP BI
Development Applications
1 106 (7.22%) JIRA
2 84 (5.72%) Git
3 33 (2.25%) GitLab
4 27 (1.84%) Cypress.io
5 20 (1.36%) Jenkins
6 18 (1.23%) JUnit
7 16 (1.09%) Axure RP
8 14 (0.95%) Gradle
9 13 (0.89%) Vite
10 12 (0.82%) Browser DevTools
11 11 (0.75%) Android Studio
12 10 (0.68%) CircleCI
12 10 (0.68%) Selenium
12 10 (0.68%) Xcode
13 8 (0.54%) Visual Studio
14 7 (0.48%) Postman
15 6 (0.41%) Eclipse
15 6 (0.41%) fastlane
15 6 (0.41%) Mocha
15 6 (0.41%) Mockito
General
1 440 (29.97%) Social Skills
2 262 (17.85%) Finance
3 203 (13.83%) Public Sector
4 149 (10.15%) Analytical Skills
5 114 (7.77%) Banking
6 58 (3.95%) Marketing
7 55 (3.75%) Retail
8 35 (2.38%) Legal
9 32 (2.18%) Influencing Skills
10 30 (2.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 30 (2.04%) Presentation Skills
11 23 (1.57%) Manufacturing
12 21 (1.43%) Automotive
13 20 (1.36%) Publishing
14 18 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
15 17 (1.16%) Games
15 17 (1.16%) Pharmaceutical
16 16 (1.09%) Documentation Skills
17 15 (1.02%) Investment Banking
18 12 (0.82%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 308 (20.98%) Designer
2 221 (15.05%) Senior
3 192 (13.08%) Developer
4 141 (9.60%) UX Designer
5 128 (8.72%) Analyst
6 81 (5.52%) Lead
7 78 (5.31%) Consultant
8 65 (4.43%) Business Analyst
9 64 (4.36%) Architect
9 64 (4.36%) Product Designer
10 62 (4.22%) UI Designer
11 60 (4.09%) Senior Designer
12 49 (3.34%) User Researcher
13 47 (3.20%) Content Designer
14 44 (3.00%) Service Designer
14 44 (3.00%) User Experience Researcher
15 41 (2.79%) UI/UX Designer
16 39 (2.66%) IT Support
17 35 (2.38%) Product Manager
17 35 (2.38%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 157 (10.69%) React
2 131 (8.92%) CSS
3 119 (8.11%) HTML
4 102 (6.95%) REST
5 71 (4.84%) RESTful
6 70 (4.77%) AngularJS
7 55 (3.75%) Spring
8 54 (3.68%) Spring Boot
9 53 (3.61%) .NET
10 38 (2.59%) GraphQL
11 36 (2.45%) Node.js
12 34 (2.32%) JSON
13 32 (2.18%) HTML5
13 32 (2.18%) Redux
14 30 (2.04%) CSS3
15 29 (1.98%) Next.js
16 28 (1.91%) Jest
17 26 (1.77%) Kafka
18 22 (1.50%) OAuth
19 21 (1.43%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 146 (9.95%) Product Ownership
2 70 (4.77%) Mobile App
3 55 (3.75%) Onboarding
4 34 (2.32%) AI Agents
5 33 (2.25%) Data Structures
6 29 (1.98%) Enterprise Software
7 26 (1.77%) Cloud Native
8 19 (1.29%) Analytical Mindset
9 18 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
10 17 (1.16%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 17 (1.16%) Legacy Systems
11 15 (1.02%) Animation
11 15 (1.02%) Virtual Reality
12 14 (0.95%) Distributed Systems
12 14 (0.95%) Self-Motivation
13 13 (0.89%) Algorithms
13 13 (0.89%) Augmented Reality
13 13 (0.89%) Management Information System
13 13 (0.89%) NHS
14 12 (0.82%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 103 (7.02%) Windows
2 48 (3.27%) Android
3 42 (2.86%) Apple iOS
4 35 (2.38%) Windows 10
5 24 (1.63%) Mac OS
6 16 (1.09%) Linux
7 9 (0.61%) Windows Server
8 6 (0.41%) Unix
9 5 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
10 4 (0.27%) Windows 7
10 4 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.068%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 477 (32.49%) UX Design
2 456 (31.06%) Agile
3 229 (15.60%) AI
4 215 (14.65%) Problem-Solving
5 210 (14.31%) User Research
6 207 (14.10%) Analytics
7 182 (12.40%) Continuous Improvement
8 175 (11.92%) Stakeholder Management
9 170 (11.58%) CI/CD
10 163 (11.10%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 161 (10.97%) Roadmaps
12 153 (10.42%) DevOps
13 146 (9.95%) Prototyping
14 133 (9.06%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
15 129 (8.79%) UX Research
16 127 (8.65%) Decision-Making
16 127 (8.65%) Service Design
17 126 (8.58%) Wireframes
18 113 (7.70%) Workshop Facilitation
19 106 (7.22%) Usability Testing
Programming Languages
1 158 (10.76%) JavaScript
2 127 (8.65%) Python
2 127 (8.65%) SQL
3 116 (7.90%) Java
4 111 (7.56%) TypeScript
5 54 (3.68%) C#
6 47 (3.20%) PowerShell
7 32 (2.18%) Kotlin
8 20 (1.36%) Bash
8 20 (1.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 12 (0.82%) C++
9 12 (0.82%) Swift
10 9 (0.61%) Lua
11 7 (0.48%) Korn
12 6 (0.41%) Perl
12 6 (0.41%) VBA
13 5 (0.34%) Apex Code
13 5 (0.34%) PL/SQL
13 5 (0.34%) R
13 5 (0.34%) Scala
Qualifications
1 196 (13.35%) Security Cleared
2 145 (9.88%) SC Cleared
3 132 (8.99%) Degree
4 32 (2.18%) BPSS Clearance
5 30 (2.04%) Computer Science Degree
6 25 (1.70%) DV Cleared
7 22 (1.50%) Microsoft Certification
8 14 (0.95%) Master's Degree
9 13 (0.89%) Azure Certification
10 11 (0.75%) Cisco Certification
11 8 (0.54%) CCNP
12 7 (0.48%) CCA
13 6 (0.41%) CCIE
13 6 (0.41%) Citrix Certification
13 6 (0.41%) ITIL Certification
13 6 (0.41%) PMI Certification
14 5 (0.34%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 4 (0.27%) OCA
15 4 (0.27%) Oracle Certification
15 4 (0.27%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 261 (17.78%) Accessibility
2 122 (8.31%) QA
3 82 (5.59%) WCAG
4 49 (3.34%) Data Quality
5 36 (2.45%) GDPR
6 20 (1.36%) Actionable Recommendations
7 18 (1.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 8 (0.54%) SLA
9 7 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials
9 7 (0.48%) PMO
10 6 (0.41%) GMP
10 6 (0.41%) GxP
11 4 (0.27%) GRC
11 4 (0.27%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 3 (0.20%) Disclosure Scotland
12 3 (0.20%) HIPAA
12 3 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 3 (0.20%) NCSC
12 3 (0.20%) NIST
12 3 (0.20%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 69 (4.70%) Active Directory
2 53 (3.61%) Docker
3 20 (1.36%) Virtual Desktop
4 18 (1.23%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (0.41%) Firmware
6 4 (0.27%) Hyper-V
6 4 (0.27%) Microsoft App-V
7 3 (0.20%) BitLocker
7 3 (0.20%) XenApp
7 3 (0.20%) XenDesktop
8 2 (0.14%) VMware Workstation
9 1 (0.068%) ISA Server
9 1 (0.068%) Varnish
9 1 (0.068%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 56 (3.81%) Kubernetes
2 48 (3.27%) Terraform
3 35 (2.38%) Grafana
3 35 (2.38%) Microsoft Intune
4 32 (2.18%) SCCM
5 18 (1.23%) Ansible
5 18 (1.23%) Single Sign-On
6 11 (0.75%) Prometheus
7 7 (0.48%) Jamf Pro
8 4 (0.27%) Podman
9 3 (0.20%) HP ALM
9 3 (0.20%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
10 2 (0.14%) Argo
10 2 (0.14%) Failover Clustering
10 2 (0.14%) Nagios
10 2 (0.14%) Packer
10 2 (0.14%) Rancher
10 2 (0.14%) SysTrack
10 2 (0.14%) WSUS
11 1 (0.068%) Clonezilla
Vendors
1 214 (14.58%) Microsoft
2 91 (6.20%) Adobe
3 66 (4.50%) Google
4 57 (3.88%) ServiceNow
5 47 (3.20%) Oracle
6 42 (2.86%) Salesforce
6 42 (2.86%) SAP
7 23 (1.57%) Citrix
8 20 (1.36%) Splunk
9 18 (1.23%) VMware
10 17 (1.16%) Databricks
10 17 (1.16%) Workday
11 16 (1.09%) Cisco
12 15 (1.02%) Dynatrace
13 14 (0.95%) Apple
14 11 (0.75%) Aruba
15 9 (0.61%) Foundry
15 9 (0.61%) MuleSoft
15 9 (0.61%) OpenAI
16 8 (0.54%) Zscaler