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 7 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 82 65 78
Rank change year-on-year -17 +13 -19
Contract jobs citing User Experience 1,556 1,172 1,173
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.99% 3.68% 2.71%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.52% 4.06% 3.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 963 762 769
10th Percentile £313 £305 £311
25th Percentile £403 £386 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% -1.96%
75th Percentile £585 £577 £600
90th Percentile £679 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £449 £470
% change year-on-year +5.91% -4.57% -1.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 71 37 46
10th Percentile £16.00 £18.35 £16.25
25th Percentile £24.08 £34.48 £25.00
Median hourly rate £33.99 £49.50 £30.86
Median % change year-on-year -31.33% +60.43% +4.26%
75th Percentile £67.84 £65.00 £54.19
90th Percentile £85.00 £85.50 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.99 £70.00 £25.00
% change year-on-year -51.44% +180.00% +41.08%

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 44,261 28,859 36,923
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.01% 90.68% 85.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,507 18,191 23,560
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £415 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £517 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.28% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,650 1,433 2,509
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.85 £17.50 £16.12
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% -3.85%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.32 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £24.83 £38.12
% change year-on-year +77.04% -34.86% +8.82%

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 7 July 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 7 July 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 7 July 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 -12 1,341 £475 -1.04% 973
UK excluding London -2 729 £475 +5.91% 599
London -24 668 £525 +5.00% 500
Work from Home -27 402 £510 +7.37% 947
North of England -17 209 £450 - 172
Midlands +1 155 £475 +13.10% 81
South East -20 138 £500 +5.26% 176
West Midlands -6 114 £475 -5.00% 41
North West -18 113 £437 -3.00% 84
Scotland +10 87 £510 +10.87% 31
South West -1 80 £475 +26.67% 54
Yorkshire -24 60 £500 +25.00% 45
East of England -3 44 £410 -13.68% 58
East Midlands +2 41 £550 +54.49% 38
North East -16 36 £413 -14.06% 43
Wales -12 17 £543 +77.29% 16
Northern Ireland +4 3 - - 22

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 68 (4.37%) SharePoint
2 51 (3.28%) CMS
3 45 (2.89%) Confluence
4 28 (1.80%) Microsoft Exchange
5 11 (0.71%) WordPress
6 8 (0.51%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 6 (0.39%) Drupal
7 6 (0.39%) Mendix
8 5 (0.32%) Apache
8 5 (0.32%) Skype for Business
9 4 (0.26%) Ethereum
9 4 (0.26%) Hyperledger
9 4 (0.26%) Kentico
9 4 (0.26%) Umbraco
10 3 (0.19%) Camunda
10 3 (0.19%) Headless CMS
10 3 (0.19%) Moodle
10 3 (0.19%) nginx
11 2 (0.13%) HCL Notes
11 2 (0.13%) IIS
Applications
1 34 (2.19%) Sketch
2 30 (1.93%) Microsoft Excel
3 29 (1.86%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 20 (1.29%) Chatbot
4 20 (1.29%) Photoshop
5 19 (1.22%) Adobe After Effects
6 16 (1.03%) Adobe Illustrator
7 15 (0.96%) Adobe XD
7 15 (0.96%) Microsoft Office
8 13 (0.84%) MS Visio
9 10 (0.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
10 6 (0.39%) Final Cut Pro
11 4 (0.26%) Adobe Captivate
12 3 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
12 3 (0.19%) UserZoom
12 3 (0.19%) UXPin
13 2 (0.13%) InVision
13 2 (0.13%) Oracle Smart View
14 1 (0.064%) Blender
14 1 (0.064%) Trello
Business Applications
1 13 (0.84%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (0.71%) Workday HCM
3 10 (0.64%) Dynamics CRM
4 9 (0.58%) Shopify
5 6 (0.39%) Sage X3
6 4 (0.26%) NetSuite
6 4 (0.26%) Oracle iProcurement
7 3 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
7 3 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
8 2 (0.13%) iTrent
8 2 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
8 2 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
8 2 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
8 2 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
8 2 (0.13%) ResourceLink
9 1 (0.064%) Eloqua
9 1 (0.064%) Magento
9 1 (0.064%) NEC Housing
9 1 (0.064%) Oracle EBS R12
9 1 (0.064%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 249 (16.00%) Azure
2 220 (14.14%) Figma
3 124 (7.97%) AWS
3 124 (7.97%) Microsoft 365
4 115 (7.39%) Power Platform
5 63 (4.05%) Entra ID
6 59 (3.79%) Azure DevOps
7 56 (3.60%) SaaS
8 54 (3.47%) Microsoft Copilot
9 53 (3.41%) GitHub
10 43 (2.76%) GCP
11 41 (2.63%) PowerApps
12 36 (2.31%) OneDrive
13 35 (2.25%) Power Automate
14 30 (1.93%) Copilot Studio
14 30 (1.93%) Serverless
15 29 (1.86%) GitHub Actions
16 25 (1.61%) Azure AI
17 17 (1.09%) Snowflake
18 16 (1.03%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 37 (2.38%) DNS
2 30 (1.93%) DHCP
3 26 (1.67%) TCP/IP
4 23 (1.48%) Wi-Fi
5 20 (1.29%) Wireless
6 19 (1.22%) LAN
7 14 (0.90%) Internet
8 13 (0.84%) WAN
9 12 (0.77%) Firewall
9 12 (0.77%) VPN
10 11 (0.71%) SD-WAN
11 10 (0.64%) Intranet
12 8 (0.51%) Cisco Wireless
13 7 (0.45%) 5G
13 7 (0.45%) HTTP
13 7 (0.45%) Network Security
13 7 (0.45%) Skype
13 7 (0.45%) SNMP
13 7 (0.45%) WLAN
14 5 (0.32%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 72 (4.63%) Power BI
2 24 (1.54%) NoSQL
2 24 (1.54%) PostgreSQL
3 23 (1.48%) Relational Database
4 22 (1.41%) Metadata
5 19 (1.22%) Power Query
6 18 (1.16%) SQL Server
7 13 (0.84%) Data Warehouse
7 13 (0.84%) MongoDB
8 11 (0.71%) Big Data
8 11 (0.71%) MySQL
9 9 (0.58%) Tableau
10 7 (0.45%) Oracle Database
10 7 (0.45%) Snowflake Schema
11 6 (0.39%) Azure SQL Database
11 6 (0.39%) DynamoDB
11 6 (0.39%) Elasticsearch
11 6 (0.39%) Redis
11 6 (0.39%) ZAP BI
12 5 (0.32%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 94 (6.04%) JIRA
2 84 (5.40%) Git
3 26 (1.67%) Jenkins
4 25 (1.61%) Cypress.io
4 25 (1.61%) Vite
5 20 (1.29%) GitLab
6 14 (0.90%) JUnit
7 11 (0.71%) Claude Code
8 10 (0.64%) Android Studio
8 10 (0.64%) Browser DevTools
8 10 (0.64%) fastlane
8 10 (0.64%) Selenium
9 9 (0.58%) Postman
9 9 (0.58%) webpack
9 9 (0.58%) Xcode
10 8 (0.51%) Gradle
10 8 (0.51%) Storybook
11 7 (0.45%) Visual Studio
12 6 (0.39%) JMeter
13 5 (0.32%) Fiddler
General
1 483 (31.04%) Social Skills
2 275 (17.67%) Finance
3 202 (12.98%) Public Sector
4 155 (9.96%) Analytical Skills
5 121 (7.78%) Banking
6 81 (5.21%) Retail
7 71 (4.56%) Marketing
8 43 (2.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 39 (2.51%) Legal
10 34 (2.19%) Influencing Skills
11 30 (1.93%) Presentation Skills
12 27 (1.74%) Automotive
13 26 (1.67%) Publishing
14 25 (1.61%) Manufacturing
15 23 (1.48%) Organisational Skills
16 21 (1.35%) Documentation Skills
17 18 (1.16%) Investment Banking
18 14 (0.90%) Military
19 13 (0.84%) Games
20 12 (0.77%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 333 (21.40%) Designer
2 227 (14.59%) Senior
3 206 (13.24%) Developer
4 147 (9.45%) UX Designer
5 115 (7.39%) Analyst
5 115 (7.39%) Lead
6 86 (5.53%) UI Designer
7 77 (4.95%) Consultant
8 71 (4.56%) Senior Designer
9 67 (4.31%) Architect
10 62 (3.98%) Product Designer
11 61 (3.92%) Business Analyst
12 59 (3.79%) User Researcher
13 52 (3.34%) Content Designer
14 51 (3.28%) UI/UX Designer
15 47 (3.02%) User Experience Researcher
16 46 (2.96%) IT Support
16 46 (2.96%) Product Manager
17 40 (2.57%) Full-Stack Engineer
18 38 (2.44%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 151 (9.70%) React
2 113 (7.26%) CSS
3 100 (6.43%) REST
4 99 (6.36%) HTML
5 75 (4.82%) RESTful
6 56 (3.60%) AngularJS
7 52 (3.34%) .NET
8 46 (2.96%) Spring
9 45 (2.89%) Spring Boot
10 40 (2.57%) GraphQL
11 34 (2.19%) Redux
12 33 (2.12%) Node.js
13 32 (2.06%) HTML5
13 32 (2.06%) Jest
14 30 (1.93%) CSS3
15 29 (1.86%) Kafka
16 28 (1.80%) JSON
17 27 (1.74%) Next.js
18 24 (1.54%) Playwright
19 23 (1.48%) ASP.NET
Miscellaneous
1 162 (10.41%) Product Ownership
2 85 (5.46%) Mobile App
3 71 (4.56%) Onboarding
4 48 (3.08%) AI Agents
5 43 (2.76%) Cloud Native
6 33 (2.12%) Enterprise Software
7 32 (2.06%) Self-Motivation
8 30 (1.93%) Data Structures
9 27 (1.74%) Data Protection Act
10 25 (1.61%) Legacy Systems
11 23 (1.48%) Animation
12 20 (1.29%) Data Centre
13 18 (1.16%) Analytical Mindset
14 17 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 17 (1.09%) Social Media
14 17 (1.09%) Taxonomies
15 16 (1.03%) Graphic Design
16 15 (0.96%) Algorithms
16 15 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
17 14 (0.90%) Educational Technology
Operating Systems
1 123 (7.90%) Windows
2 54 (3.47%) Apple iOS
3 52 (3.34%) Android
4 37 (2.38%) Windows 10
5 25 (1.61%) Mac OS
6 17 (1.09%) Linux
6 17 (1.09%) Windows Server
7 7 (0.45%) Unix
8 6 (0.39%) Windows 7
9 5 (0.32%) Windows Server 2016
10 4 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.064%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 520 (33.42%) UX Design
2 465 (29.88%) Agile
3 293 (18.83%) AI
4 236 (15.17%) Problem-Solving
5 219 (14.07%) Stakeholder Management
6 206 (13.24%) Continuous Improvement
7 204 (13.11%) User Research
8 201 (12.92%) Analytics
9 179 (11.50%) CI/CD
10 175 (11.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 164 (10.54%) Roadmaps
12 151 (9.70%) Prototyping
13 149 (9.58%) DevOps
14 146 (9.38%) Decision-Making
15 137 (8.80%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
16 131 (8.42%) Wireframes
17 128 (8.23%) UX Research
18 125 (8.03%) Service Design
19 115 (7.39%) Workshop Facilitation
20 112 (7.20%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 139 (8.93%) JavaScript
2 125 (8.03%) TypeScript
3 122 (7.84%) Python
4 120 (7.71%) SQL
5 110 (7.07%) Java
6 56 (3.60%) C#
7 49 (3.15%) PowerShell
8 32 (2.06%) Kotlin
9 25 (1.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 17 (1.09%) Swift
11 15 (0.96%) Bash
12 13 (0.84%) C++
13 9 (0.58%) Lua
14 8 (0.51%) Korn
15 7 (0.45%) Apex Code
15 7 (0.45%) R
16 6 (0.39%) Go
16 6 (0.39%) VBA
16 6 (0.39%) VBScript
17 5 (0.32%) VB
Qualifications
1 226 (14.52%) Security Cleared
2 171 (10.99%) SC Cleared
3 152 (9.77%) Degree
4 35 (2.25%) Computer Science Degree
5 29 (1.86%) BPSS Clearance
6 25 (1.61%) DV Cleared
7 24 (1.54%) Azure Certification
8 22 (1.41%) Microsoft Certification
9 11 (0.71%) Cisco Certification
10 10 (0.64%) Master's Degree
11 9 (0.58%) ITIL Certification
12 8 (0.51%) CCNP
12 8 (0.51%) PMP
13 7 (0.45%) AWS Certification
13 7 (0.45%) CCA
13 7 (0.45%) CCIE
13 7 (0.45%) Citrix Certification
13 7 (0.45%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 6 (0.39%) DBS Check
15 5 (0.32%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 269 (17.29%) Accessibility
2 97 (6.23%) QA
3 90 (5.78%) WCAG
4 46 (2.96%) Data Quality
5 27 (1.74%) GDPR
6 20 (1.29%) Actionable Recommendations
7 11 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 9 (0.58%) PMO
9 8 (0.51%) SLA
10 7 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 6 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
12 4 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 3 (0.19%) GMP
13 3 (0.19%) GRC
13 3 (0.19%) GxP
14 2 (0.13%) HIPAA
14 2 (0.13%) NIST
14 2 (0.13%) PCI DSS
14 2 (0.13%) PSD2
15 1 (0.064%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 80 (5.14%) Active Directory
2 49 (3.15%) Docker
3 24 (1.54%) Virtual Desktop
4 14 (0.90%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (0.39%) Firmware
6 5 (0.32%) BitLocker
6 5 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
6 5 (0.32%) vSphere
7 4 (0.26%) Microsoft App-V
8 3 (0.19%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.19%) UAG
8 3 (0.19%) Virtual Machines
9 2 (0.13%) VMware NSX
9 2 (0.13%) VMware Workstation
9 2 (0.13%) XenApp
9 2 (0.13%) XenDesktop
10 1 (0.064%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 48 (3.08%) Kubernetes
2 47 (3.02%) Microsoft Intune
3 43 (2.76%) Terraform
4 34 (2.19%) SCCM
5 32 (2.06%) Grafana
6 17 (1.09%) Single Sign-On
7 14 (0.90%) Jamf Pro
8 13 (0.84%) Ansible
9 10 (0.64%) Prometheus
10 5 (0.32%) vCenter Server
11 4 (0.26%) Clonezilla
12 3 (0.19%) Podman
12 3 (0.19%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
12 3 (0.19%) WSUS
13 2 (0.13%) Argo
13 2 (0.13%) Failover Clustering
13 2 (0.13%) Packer
13 2 (0.13%) SCOM
13 2 (0.13%) vMotion
14 1 (0.064%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 263 (16.90%) Microsoft
2 89 (5.72%) Adobe
3 70 (4.50%) ServiceNow
4 57 (3.66%) Google
5 46 (2.96%) SAP
6 41 (2.63%) Oracle
7 39 (2.51%) Salesforce
8 21 (1.35%) Databricks
8 21 (1.35%) Dynatrace
9 20 (1.29%) Citrix
9 20 (1.29%) Workday
10 19 (1.22%) Splunk
11 18 (1.16%) Cisco
12 17 (1.09%) Foundry
12 17 (1.09%) OpenAI
12 17 (1.09%) VMware
13 16 (1.03%) Apple
14 12 (0.77%) Aruba
15 11 (0.71%) Zscaler
16 8 (0.51%) Okta