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

6 months to
24 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 68 67 70
Rank change year-on-year -1 +3 -3
Contract jobs citing User Experience 1,339 1,066 1,293
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.52% 3.37% 2.93%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.03% 3.79% 3.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 916 656 883
10th Percentile £300 £313 £325
25th Percentile £380 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -6.10%
75th Percentile £573 £588 £588
90th Percentile £650 £708 £699
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £454 £475
% change year-on-year -0.88% -4.42% -4.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 26 35
10th Percentile £15.50 £25.26 £21.52
25th Percentile £17.69 £30.48 £25.00
Median hourly rate £35.55 £41.46 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.24% -17.09% -20.00%
75th Percentile £60.31 £53.00 £72.90
90th Percentile £72.23 £74.22 £81.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.62 £30.88 £47.50
% change year-on-year -13.78% -35.00% -26.92%

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 33,264 28,130 38,528
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.54% 88.98% 87.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,071 17,089 25,387
10th Percentile £305 £306 £300
25th Percentile £408 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £644
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,016 886 1,898
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £13.91
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.96 £17.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £36.42
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -10.76% +16.69%
75th Percentile £57.50 £62.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £69.82 £74.93 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.00 £30.41 £37.50
% change year-on-year -21.08% -18.91% +44.23%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 -1 1,160 £475 -5.00% 1,206
London -7 603 £478 -9.05% 264
UK excluding London +3 586 £450 -0.88% 1,138
Work from Home -22 355 £475 -5.00% 567
North of England +15 207 £433 -3.78% 232
North West +15 136 £400 -11.11% 101
Midlands 0 114 £500 +12.36% 146
South East -6 107 £425 -15.00% 358
West Midlands -26 68 £463 -9.76% 59
South West +4 64 £500 -9.09% 147
Scotland -19 56 £456 +1.39% 47
Yorkshire -24 55 £500 +11.11% 90
East Midlands +5 46 £525 +47.47% 84
East of England -5 33 £468 +3.43% 159
North East 0 15 £410 +17.14% 41
Wales +4 14 £300 -29.41% 54
Northern Ireland -14 1 £625 +47.06% 24

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 60 (4.48%) Confluence
2 57 (4.26%) SharePoint
3 48 (3.58%) CMS
4 24 (1.79%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 13 (0.97%) Microsoft Exchange
6 12 (0.90%) Headless CMS
7 11 (0.82%) SugarCRM
8 8 (0.60%) Sitecore CMS
8 8 (0.60%) Umbraco
9 7 (0.52%) Apache
10 4 (0.30%) Camunda
10 4 (0.30%) Ethereum
10 4 (0.30%) Hyperledger
11 3 (0.22%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.22%) Apache Spark
11 3 (0.22%) Jupyter
12 2 (0.15%) Appian
12 2 (0.15%) Drupal
12 2 (0.15%) WordPress
13 1 (0.075%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 49 (3.66%) Sketch
2 34 (2.54%) Adobe XD
3 24 (1.79%) MS Visio
4 22 (1.64%) Microsoft Office
5 18 (1.34%) Chatbot
6 14 (1.05%) InVision
6 14 (1.05%) Microsoft Excel
7 11 (0.82%) Adobe Illustrator
7 11 (0.82%) Photoshop
8 9 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
9 7 (0.52%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 6 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
10 6 (0.45%) Trello
11 5 (0.37%) Adobe After Effects
11 5 (0.37%) Camtasia
12 4 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
12 4 (0.30%) UXPin
13 3 (0.22%) Snagit
13 3 (0.22%) UserZoom
14 2 (0.15%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 21 (1.57%) SAP S/4HANA
2 17 (1.27%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.30%) Shopify
4 3 (0.22%) SAP CO
4 3 (0.22%) SAP FI
4 3 (0.22%) SAP FI/CO
4 3 (0.22%) Teamcenter
5 2 (0.15%) Adobe Campaign
5 2 (0.15%) iTrent
5 2 (0.15%) Magento
5 2 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.15%) SAP SD
5 2 (0.15%) SAP Travel Management
6 1 (0.075%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.075%) Eloqua
6 1 (0.075%) NEC Housing
6 1 (0.075%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.075%) Sprinklr
6 1 (0.075%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 231 (17.25%) Azure
2 170 (12.70%) Figma
3 153 (11.43%) AWS
4 88 (6.57%) Power Platform
5 80 (5.97%) SaaS
6 75 (5.60%) Microsoft 365
7 61 (4.56%) GCP
8 51 (3.81%) Azure DevOps
8 51 (3.81%) Entra ID
9 49 (3.66%) GitHub
10 33 (2.46%) Miro
11 29 (2.17%) GitHub Actions
12 28 (2.09%) Serverless
13 25 (1.87%) Power Automate
14 24 (1.79%) Google Analytics
14 24 (1.79%) PowerApps
15 22 (1.64%) Google Workspace
16 19 (1.42%) Dynamics 365
17 18 (1.34%) Cloud Computing
18 17 (1.27%) Sauce Labs
Communications & Networking
1 27 (2.02%) DNS
2 24 (1.79%) Wireless
3 17 (1.27%) Internet
4 16 (1.19%) HTTP
5 10 (0.75%) VPN
5 10 (0.75%) Wi-Fi
6 9 (0.67%) DHCP
6 9 (0.67%) Intranet
6 9 (0.67%) TCP/IP
7 8 (0.60%) BGP
7 8 (0.60%) Cisco ISE
8 7 (0.52%) Cisco Wireless
8 7 (0.52%) Firewall
8 7 (0.52%) NX-OS
8 7 (0.52%) VXLAN
9 6 (0.45%) Unified Communications
9 6 (0.45%) WAN
10 5 (0.37%) SSL
11 4 (0.30%) HTTPS
11 4 (0.30%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (4.11%) Power BI
2 43 (3.21%) MySQL
3 38 (2.84%) Relational Database
4 31 (2.32%) PostgreSQL
5 27 (2.02%) NoSQL
5 27 (2.02%) SQL Server
6 18 (1.34%) Data Warehouse
7 16 (1.19%) MongoDB
7 16 (1.19%) Tableau
8 14 (1.05%) BigQuery
9 12 (0.90%) Looker
10 11 (0.82%) Metadata
11 8 (0.60%) SAP HANA
12 7 (0.52%) Mixpanel
13 6 (0.45%) Redis
14 5 (0.37%) DynamoDB
15 4 (0.30%) Pinecone
15 4 (0.30%) Power Query
16 3 (0.22%) Amazon Athena
16 3 (0.22%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 130 (9.71%) JIRA
2 94 (7.02%) Git
3 47 (3.51%) GitLab
4 41 (3.06%) Jenkins
5 34 (2.54%) Cypress.io
6 28 (2.09%) Xcode
7 25 (1.87%) Android Studio
7 25 (1.87%) JUnit
8 24 (1.79%) Eclipse
9 23 (1.72%) Axure RP
10 19 (1.42%) Browser DevTools
11 18 (1.34%) Gradle
12 14 (1.05%) Postman
13 11 (0.82%) CircleCI
14 9 (0.67%) Selenium
14 9 (0.67%) Visual Website Optimizer
15 8 (0.60%) Appium
15 8 (0.60%) Artifactory
15 8 (0.60%) Cucumber
15 8 (0.60%) Mocha
General
1 458 (34.20%) Social Skills
2 251 (18.75%) Finance
3 188 (14.04%) Public Sector
4 164 (12.25%) Analytical Skills
5 100 (7.47%) Banking
6 88 (6.57%) Marketing
7 37 (2.76%) Influencing Skills
8 29 (2.17%) Legal
9 28 (2.09%) Retail
10 25 (1.87%) Presentation Skills
11 22 (1.64%) Pharmaceutical
12 21 (1.57%) Manufacturing
13 16 (1.19%) Telecoms
14 15 (1.12%) Documentation Skills
14 15 (1.12%) Financial Institution
14 15 (1.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 13 (0.97%) Investment Banking
16 11 (0.82%) Automotive
17 9 (0.67%) Front Office
17 9 (0.67%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 246 (18.37%) Developer
2 232 (17.33%) Designer
3 181 (13.52%) Senior
4 130 (9.71%) UX Designer
5 114 (8.51%) Analyst
6 93 (6.95%) Lead
7 63 (4.71%) Business Analyst
8 52 (3.88%) Consultant
9 50 (3.73%) Senior Designer
10 48 (3.58%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
11 47 (3.51%) Architect
12 45 (3.36%) Product Designer
13 39 (2.91%) Full-Stack Developer
13 39 (2.91%) User Researcher
14 37 (2.76%) Service Designer
15 36 (2.69%) Support Engineer
16 35 (2.61%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
16 35 (2.61%) Senior Developer
16 35 (2.61%) UI Designer
17 30 (2.24%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 188 (14.04%) CSS
2 184 (13.74%) React
3 172 (12.85%) HTML
4 112 (8.36%) REST
5 99 (7.39%) AngularJS
6 97 (7.24%) RESTful
7 57 (4.26%) .NET
8 55 (4.11%) Node.js
9 49 (3.66%) HTML5
10 48 (3.58%) Spring
11 47 (3.51%) GraphQL
12 46 (3.44%) Spring Boot
13 40 (2.99%) Jest
14 38 (2.84%) CSS3
15 28 (2.09%) Playwright
15 28 (2.09%) Redux
16 27 (2.02%) Next.js
16 27 (2.02%) SOAP
17 25 (1.87%) JSON
18 23 (1.72%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 132 (9.86%) Product Ownership
2 102 (7.62%) Mobile App
3 65 (4.85%) Onboarding
4 27 (2.02%) Analytical Mindset
4 27 (2.02%) Enterprise Software
5 20 (1.49%) AI Agents
6 19 (1.42%) Data Structures
6 19 (1.42%) Management Information System
7 18 (1.34%) Low-Code
7 18 (1.34%) NHS
8 17 (1.27%) e-Learning
9 15 (1.12%) Data Centre
10 14 (1.05%) Data Protection Act
10 14 (1.05%) Distributed Systems
10 14 (1.05%) Greenfield Project
10 14 (1.05%) Learning Management System
10 14 (1.05%) Legacy Systems
11 13 (0.97%) Cloud Native
11 13 (0.97%) CMDB
11 13 (0.97%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 121 (9.04%) Windows
2 73 (5.45%) Android
3 55 (4.11%) Apple iOS
4 36 (2.69%) Windows 10
5 35 (2.61%) Linux
6 22 (1.64%) Unix
7 21 (1.57%) Mac OS
8 6 (0.45%) Windows Server
9 3 (0.22%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.15%) VMS
11 1 (0.075%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 499 (37.27%) Agile
2 463 (34.58%) UX Design
3 223 (16.65%) Problem-Solving
4 219 (16.36%) Analytics
5 186 (13.89%) User Research
6 184 (13.74%) CI/CD
7 165 (12.32%) Stakeholder Management
8 158 (11.80%) DevOps
9 144 (10.75%) Continuous Improvement
10 142 (10.60%) AI
11 140 (10.46%) Roadmaps
12 139 (10.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 138 (10.31%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
14 117 (8.74%) Front End Development
15 116 (8.66%) Service Design
15 116 (8.66%) Wireframes
16 111 (8.29%) Decision-Making
17 110 (8.22%) Usability Testing
18 107 (7.99%) Prototyping
19 99 (7.39%) UX Research
Programming Languages
1 215 (16.06%) JavaScript
2 125 (9.34%) SQL
3 123 (9.19%) Java
4 115 (8.59%) TypeScript
5 111 (8.29%) Python
6 58 (4.33%) PowerShell
7 56 (4.18%) C#
8 33 (2.46%) Kotlin
9 24 (1.79%) Bash
10 22 (1.64%) Perl
10 22 (1.64%) Swift
11 20 (1.49%) PHP
12 11 (0.82%) C++
12 11 (0.82%) PL/SQL
13 10 (0.75%) Go
13 10 (0.75%) Objective-C
14 9 (0.67%) Scala
15 7 (0.52%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 7 (0.52%) Lisp
16 5 (0.37%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 161 (12.02%) Security Cleared
2 121 (9.04%) Degree
3 119 (8.89%) SC Cleared
4 37 (2.76%) BPSS Clearance
5 26 (1.94%) Computer Science Degree
6 17 (1.27%) Master's Degree
7 13 (0.97%) DV Cleared
8 12 (0.90%) PMI Certification
9 11 (0.82%) Microsoft Certification
9 11 (0.82%) MOS
10 9 (0.67%) CCNP
10 9 (0.67%) Cisco Certification
10 9 (0.67%) OCA
10 9 (0.67%) Oracle Certification
11 6 (0.45%) MCP
11 6 (0.45%) PMP
12 3 (0.22%) Azure Certification
13 2 (0.15%) AWS Certification
13 2 (0.15%) CSPO
13 2 (0.15%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 247 (18.45%) Accessibility
2 137 (10.23%) QA
3 72 (5.38%) WCAG
4 64 (4.78%) GDPR
5 35 (2.61%) Data Quality
6 25 (1.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 19 (1.42%) Actionable Recommendations
8 16 (1.19%) SLA
9 8 (0.60%) GxP
10 6 (0.45%) NCSC
10 6 (0.45%) PMO
11 5 (0.37%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 5 (0.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 3 (0.22%) Disclosure Scotland
12 3 (0.22%) GMP
12 3 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
12 3 (0.22%) NIST
12 3 (0.22%) SOC 2
13 2 (0.15%) GRC
13 2 (0.15%) PSD2
System Software
1 68 (5.08%) Active Directory
2 67 (5.00%) Docker
3 20 (1.49%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
5 3 (0.22%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.15%) ProxySG
7 1 (0.075%) BitLocker
7 1 (0.075%) ISA Server
7 1 (0.075%) Microsoft App-V
7 1 (0.075%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.075%) XenApp
7 1 (0.075%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 51 (3.81%) Kubernetes
2 42 (3.14%) Microsoft Intune
3 34 (2.54%) Terraform
4 33 (2.46%) SCCM
5 17 (1.27%) Ansible
6 16 (1.19%) Grafana
7 15 (1.12%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (0.52%) FortiGate
9 6 (0.45%) Prometheus
10 5 (0.37%) Jamf Pro
11 4 (0.30%) Argo
12 3 (0.22%) HP ALM
12 3 (0.22%) Nagios
12 3 (0.22%) Rancher
13 2 (0.15%) PingFederate
13 2 (0.15%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
13 2 (0.15%) SysTrack
14 1 (0.075%) Istio
14 1 (0.075%) Kibana
14 1 (0.075%) SCOM
Vendors
1 212 (15.83%) Microsoft
2 94 (7.02%) Adobe
3 83 (6.20%) Google
4 73 (5.45%) ServiceNow
5 49 (3.66%) Oracle
6 47 (3.51%) SAP
7 46 (3.44%) Salesforce
8 27 (2.02%) Splunk
9 21 (1.57%) VMware
10 18 (1.34%) Apple
11 16 (1.19%) Citrix
12 13 (0.97%) Cisco
12 13 (0.97%) Zscaler
13 12 (0.90%) Optimizely
14 11 (0.82%) Hotjar
14 11 (0.82%) Red Hat
15 10 (0.75%) Amplitude
15 10 (0.75%) MuleSoft
16 9 (0.67%) OpenAI
17 8 (0.60%) Ekahau