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 1 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 78 62 70
Rank change year-on-year -16 +8 -8
Contract jobs citing User Experience 1,407 1,060 1,264
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.15% 3.65% 2.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.68% 4.03% 3.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 975 729 840
10th Percentile £313 £307 £306
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £486 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.31% -2.80% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £654 £688 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £447 £475
% change year-on-year +6.26% -5.89% +2.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 24 46
10th Percentile £17.01 £29.83 £16.25
25th Percentile £17.69 £41.75 £24.06
Median hourly rate £47.25 £51.00 £31.71
Median % change year-on-year -7.35% +60.83% -19.21%
75th Percentile £61.81 £75.12 £61.63
90th Percentile £79.68 £92.50 £73.32
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.75 £61.75 £25.00
% change year-on-year -42.11% +147.00% -44.44%

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 38,255 26,278 38,264
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.62% 90.49% 86.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,265 17,064 24,859
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £636 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £485 £500
% change year-on-year - -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,246 966 2,352
10th Percentile £14.96 £15.00 £12.84
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.26 £16.00
Median hourly rate £35.50 £32.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +10.94% -1.54% -11.33%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.72 £70.64
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.07 £31.50 £31.65
% change year-on-year +8.14% -0.47% -12.69%

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 1 April 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 1 April 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 1 April 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 -14 1,217 £489 -2.25% 728
London -23 627 £500 -3.85% 296
UK excluding London -8 608 £475 +6.26% 522
Work from Home -28 374 £478 -3.24% 357
North of England +4 211 £450 - 176
North West +8 132 £420 -6.67% 94
South East -9 123 £490 -2.49% 122
Midlands -22 118 £500 +25.00% 93
West Midlands -30 77 £475 +9.51% 62
South West -12 67 £450 +20.00% 59
Yorkshire -19 55 £513 +28.04% 45
Scotland -6 51 £496 +13.43% 23
East Midlands -7 41 £550 +54.49% 31
East of England -18 29 £425 -10.99% 33
North East 0 23 £405 -15.63% 39
Wales -1 15 £375 -6.25% 19
Northern Ireland -5 3 - - 5

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 (3.98%) SharePoint
2 48 (3.41%) Confluence
3 42 (2.99%) CMS
4 21 (1.49%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 17 (1.21%) Microsoft Exchange
6 11 (0.78%) Headless CMS
7 10 (0.71%) Apache
8 7 (0.50%) Sitecore CMS
8 7 (0.50%) Umbraco
9 5 (0.36%) Camunda
10 4 (0.28%) Ethereum
10 4 (0.28%) Hyperledger
10 4 (0.28%) Mendix
11 3 (0.21%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.21%) Apache Spark
11 3 (0.21%) Drupal
11 3 (0.21%) Jupyter
12 2 (0.14%) Appian
12 2 (0.14%) nginx
13 1 (0.071%) Moodle
Applications
1 44 (3.13%) Sketch
2 35 (2.49%) Adobe XD
3 28 (1.99%) Microsoft Excel
4 24 (1.71%) Chatbot
4 24 (1.71%) MS Visio
5 16 (1.14%) Microsoft Office
6 14 (1.00%) InVision
7 12 (0.85%) Photoshop
8 8 (0.57%) Adobe Illustrator
9 7 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
10 6 (0.43%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.36%) Adobe After Effects
11 5 (0.36%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 4 (0.28%) Trello
12 4 (0.28%) UXPin
13 3 (0.21%) Adobe Captivate
13 3 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
13 3 (0.21%) UserZoom
14 2 (0.14%) Camtasia
14 2 (0.14%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 16 (1.14%) Dynamics CRM
2 12 (0.85%) SAP S/4HANA
3 7 (0.50%) Shopify
3 7 (0.50%) Workday HCM
4 6 (0.43%) Sage X3
5 3 (0.21%) Magento
5 3 (0.21%) SAP CO
5 3 (0.21%) SAP FI
5 3 (0.21%) SAP FI/CO
6 2 (0.14%) NEC Housing
6 2 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.14%) ResourceLink
6 2 (0.14%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.14%) Sprinklr
7 1 (0.071%) Adobe Campaign
7 1 (0.071%) NetSuite
7 1 (0.071%) Oracle Payables
7 1 (0.071%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.071%) Payment Gateway
7 1 (0.071%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 235 (16.70%) Azure
2 194 (13.79%) Figma
3 137 (9.74%) AWS
4 103 (7.32%) Power Platform
5 86 (6.11%) Microsoft 365
6 67 (4.76%) Azure DevOps
7 57 (4.05%) GCP
8 52 (3.70%) Entra ID
8 52 (3.70%) GitHub
9 48 (3.41%) SaaS
10 40 (2.84%) PowerApps
11 37 (2.63%) Power Automate
12 35 (2.49%) Serverless
13 32 (2.27%) GitHub Actions
14 27 (1.92%) Microsoft Copilot
15 23 (1.63%) Dynamics 365
15 23 (1.63%) Google Workspace
15 23 (1.63%) Miro
16 22 (1.56%) Cloud Computing
17 20 (1.42%) Google Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 17 (1.21%) DNS
2 16 (1.14%) Wireless
3 14 (1.00%) Internet
4 12 (0.85%) HTTP
5 11 (0.78%) Intranet
5 11 (0.78%) LAN
5 11 (0.78%) VPN
5 11 (0.78%) Wi-Fi
6 9 (0.64%) DHCP
6 9 (0.64%) Firewall
6 9 (0.64%) SD-WAN
6 9 (0.64%) TCP/IP
6 9 (0.64%) WAN
7 7 (0.50%) BGP
7 7 (0.50%) Cisco ISE
7 7 (0.50%) Cisco Wireless
8 6 (0.43%) Network Security
8 6 (0.43%) SSL
9 5 (0.36%) VXLAN
9 5 (0.36%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 69 (4.90%) Power BI
2 34 (2.42%) NoSQL
2 34 (2.42%) Relational Database
3 28 (1.99%) PostgreSQL
4 25 (1.78%) Data Warehouse
5 23 (1.63%) MySQL
5 23 (1.63%) SQL Server
6 18 (1.28%) Tableau
7 17 (1.21%) Metadata
7 17 (1.21%) MongoDB
8 12 (0.85%) BigQuery
9 9 (0.64%) Looker
10 8 (0.57%) Power Query
11 7 (0.50%) Pinecone
11 7 (0.50%) Redis
12 6 (0.43%) DynamoDB
12 6 (0.43%) ZAP BI
13 5 (0.36%) Hadoop
14 4 (0.28%) Azure SQL Database
14 4 (0.28%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 113 (8.03%) JIRA
2 89 (6.33%) Git
3 43 (3.06%) GitLab
4 32 (2.27%) Jenkins
5 29 (2.06%) Cypress.io
6 26 (1.85%) JUnit
7 23 (1.63%) Axure RP
8 14 (1.00%) Gradle
9 13 (0.92%) Android Studio
9 13 (0.92%) Selenium
10 12 (0.85%) CircleCI
11 11 (0.78%) Xcode
12 10 (0.71%) Browser DevTools
12 10 (0.71%) Postman
13 9 (0.64%) Eclipse
14 8 (0.57%) Artifactory
14 8 (0.57%) Mocha
14 8 (0.57%) Mockito
14 8 (0.57%) Visual Studio
14 8 (0.57%) Vite
General
1 455 (32.34%) Social Skills
2 269 (19.12%) Finance
3 204 (14.50%) Public Sector
4 168 (11.94%) Analytical Skills
5 115 (8.17%) Banking
6 60 (4.26%) Marketing
7 46 (3.27%) Retail
8 29 (2.06%) Presentation Skills
9 28 (1.99%) Influencing Skills
9 28 (1.99%) Legal
10 22 (1.56%) Manufacturing
11 20 (1.42%) Documentation Skills
12 18 (1.28%) Pharmaceutical
13 17 (1.21%) Games
14 14 (1.00%) Financial Institution
14 14 (1.00%) Investment Banking
14 14 (1.00%) Publishing
15 13 (0.92%) Front Office
15 13 (0.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 13 (0.92%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 269 (19.12%) Designer
2 220 (15.64%) Developer
3 212 (15.07%) Senior
4 137 (9.74%) Analyst
4 137 (9.74%) UX Designer
5 68 (4.83%) Lead
6 66 (4.69%) Business Analyst
7 64 (4.55%) Consultant
8 60 (4.26%) Architect
9 59 (4.19%) Product Designer
9 59 (4.19%) Senior Designer
10 49 (3.48%) User Researcher
11 44 (3.13%) UI Designer
12 41 (2.91%) Full-Stack Developer
12 41 (2.91%) Senior Developer
12 41 (2.91%) Service Designer
13 39 (2.77%) Software Engineer
13 39 (2.77%) Support Engineer
14 36 (2.56%) IT Support
15 35 (2.49%) Senior UX Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 173 (12.30%) React
2 157 (11.16%) CSS
3 144 (10.23%) HTML
4 116 (8.24%) REST
5 88 (6.25%) AngularJS
5 88 (6.25%) RESTful
6 66 (4.69%) Spring
7 65 (4.62%) Spring Boot
8 59 (4.19%) .NET
9 50 (3.55%) Node.js
10 43 (3.06%) HTML5
11 37 (2.63%) CSS3
12 35 (2.49%) GraphQL
13 34 (2.42%) Jest
13 34 (2.42%) JSON
13 34 (2.42%) Redux
14 27 (1.92%) Next.js
15 25 (1.78%) Vue
16 23 (1.63%) Playwright
17 21 (1.49%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 140 (9.95%) Product Ownership
2 80 (5.69%) Mobile App
3 51 (3.62%) Onboarding
4 30 (2.13%) AI Agents
5 28 (1.99%) Data Structures
5 28 (1.99%) Enterprise Software
6 24 (1.71%) Analytical Mindset
7 17 (1.21%) Cloud Native
7 17 (1.21%) Data Protection Act
7 17 (1.21%) Distributed Systems
8 16 (1.14%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 15 (1.07%) NHS
9 15 (1.07%) Virtual Team
10 14 (1.00%) Algorithms
10 14 (1.00%) Legacy Systems
11 13 (0.92%) Data Centre
12 12 (0.85%) Management Information System
13 11 (0.78%) CMDB
13 11 (0.78%) Graphic Design
13 11 (0.78%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 117 (8.32%) Windows
2 42 (2.99%) Android
3 41 (2.91%) Windows 10
4 31 (2.20%) Apple iOS
5 23 (1.63%) Linux
6 20 (1.42%) Mac OS
7 9 (0.64%) Unix
8 7 (0.50%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.071%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.071%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.071%) Windows 7
9 1 (0.071%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.071%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 469 (33.33%) Agile
2 461 (32.76%) UX Design
3 227 (16.13%) Problem-Solving
4 206 (14.64%) Analytics
5 205 (14.57%) User Research
6 199 (14.14%) AI
7 184 (13.08%) CI/CD
8 174 (12.37%) DevOps
9 171 (12.15%) Stakeholder Management
10 163 (11.58%) Continuous Improvement
11 161 (11.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 139 (9.88%) Prototyping
13 137 (9.74%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
14 134 (9.52%) Roadmaps
15 125 (8.88%) Service Design
15 125 (8.88%) Wireframes
16 124 (8.81%) Decision-Making
17 112 (7.96%) UX Research
18 103 (7.32%) Usability Testing
19 96 (6.82%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 189 (13.43%) JavaScript
2 144 (10.23%) SQL
3 127 (9.03%) Python
4 123 (8.74%) Java
5 113 (8.03%) TypeScript
6 64 (4.55%) C#
7 58 (4.12%) PowerShell
8 28 (1.99%) Kotlin
9 18 (1.28%) Bash
10 14 (1.00%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 12 (0.85%) C++
11 12 (0.85%) Perl
12 9 (0.64%) Lua
12 9 (0.64%) Swift
13 8 (0.57%) PHP
14 7 (0.50%) PL/SQL
15 6 (0.43%) Go
15 6 (0.43%) Korn
15 6 (0.43%) Scala
15 6 (0.43%) VBA
Qualifications
1 191 (13.57%) Security Cleared
2 139 (9.88%) SC Cleared
3 124 (8.81%) Degree
4 35 (2.49%) BPSS Clearance
5 29 (2.06%) Computer Science Degree
6 19 (1.35%) DV Cleared
7 18 (1.28%) Microsoft Certification
8 16 (1.14%) Master's Degree
9 12 (0.85%) Cisco Certification
10 11 (0.78%) CCNP
11 9 (0.64%) Azure Certification
12 8 (0.57%) PMI Certification
13 7 (0.50%) MOS
14 6 (0.43%) Citrix Certification
14 6 (0.43%) OCA
14 6 (0.43%) Oracle Certification
15 5 (0.36%) CCA
16 4 (0.28%) CCIE
16 4 (0.28%) ISTQB
16 4 (0.28%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 250 (17.77%) Accessibility
2 130 (9.24%) QA
3 81 (5.76%) WCAG
4 47 (3.34%) Data Quality
5 38 (2.70%) GDPR
6 21 (1.49%) Actionable Recommendations
7 18 (1.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 15 (1.07%) SLA
9 8 (0.57%) PMO
10 6 (0.43%) NCSC
11 5 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 4 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 4 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials
12 4 (0.28%) GMP
12 4 (0.28%) GxP
12 4 (0.28%) NIST
13 3 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
13 3 (0.21%) GRC
13 3 (0.21%) HIPAA
13 3 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 73 (5.19%) Active Directory
2 68 (4.83%) Docker
3 19 (1.35%) VMware Infrastructure
4 16 (1.14%) Virtual Desktop
5 5 (0.36%) Firmware
6 4 (0.28%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.14%) ProxySG
8 1 (0.071%) ISA Server
8 1 (0.071%) Varnish
8 1 (0.071%) Virtual Machines
8 1 (0.071%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.071%) XenApp
8 1 (0.071%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 61 (4.34%) Kubernetes
2 43 (3.06%) Terraform
3 36 (2.56%) Microsoft Intune
4 24 (1.71%) Grafana
4 24 (1.71%) SCCM
5 15 (1.07%) Ansible
6 12 (0.85%) Single Sign-On
7 6 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
7 6 (0.43%) Prometheus
8 5 (0.36%) FortiGate
9 4 (0.28%) Argo
10 3 (0.21%) HP ALM
10 3 (0.21%) Nagios
10 3 (0.21%) Rancher
11 2 (0.14%) Podman
11 2 (0.14%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
11 2 (0.14%) SysTrack
12 1 (0.071%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 1 (0.071%) Consul
12 1 (0.071%) WMI
Vendors
1 221 (15.71%) Microsoft
2 87 (6.18%) Adobe
3 75 (5.33%) Google
4 68 (4.83%) ServiceNow
5 45 (3.20%) SAP
6 42 (2.99%) Oracle
7 35 (2.49%) Salesforce
8 21 (1.49%) Citrix
9 20 (1.42%) VMware
10 19 (1.35%) Splunk
11 18 (1.28%) Cisco
12 15 (1.07%) Apple
13 13 (0.92%) Workday
14 12 (0.85%) Zscaler
15 11 (0.78%) Red Hat
16 9 (0.64%) Ekahau
16 9 (0.64%) MuleSoft
16 9 (0.64%) OpenAI
16 9 (0.64%) Sitecore
17 8 (0.57%) Databricks