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

6 months to
1 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 77 59 70
Rank change year-on-year -18 +11 -8
Contract jobs citing User Experience 1,449 1,100 1,240
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.07% 3.76% 2.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.62% 4.14% 3.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 982 747 832
10th Percentile £313 £304 £305
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.56% -4.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £688 £700 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £425 £475
% change year-on-year +11.76% -10.53% +2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 22 49
10th Percentile £16.44 £26.78 £16.25
25th Percentile £21.12 £42.50 £23.75
Median hourly rate £50.00 £53.50 £31.71
Median % change year-on-year -6.54% +68.72% -9.40%
75th Percentile £62.38 £80.35 £61.75
90th Percentile £74.80 £94.50 £73.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.75 £70.00 £25.00
% change year-on-year -37.50% +180.00% +3.09%

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 39,989 26,597 37,605
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.62% 90.89% 86.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,206 17,155 24,229
10th Percentile £319 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +0.62% -3.10% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,387 1,068 2,445
10th Percentile £14.99 £14.65 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.96 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.65
Median % change year-on-year +43.29% -18.65% -4.42%
75th Percentile £66.00 £60.84 £59.95
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.69 £27.76 £37.18
% change year-on-year +57.38% -25.34% +3.28%

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 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 1 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 1 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 -16 1,250 £490 -2.00% 672
London -18 646 £513 -0.49% 323
UK excluding London 0 630 £475 +11.76% 439
Work from Home -27 377 £475 -1.04% 348
North of England +4 198 £450 +0.39% 117
Midlands -9 146 £500 +25.00% 84
North West +5 122 £420 -6.67% 74
South East -17 113 £480 +4.75% 122
West Midlands -19 96 £475 +1.33% 62
South West -11 71 £475 +26.67% 43
Scotland -9 58 £496 +10.28% 25
Yorkshire -20 52 £513 +28.04% 26
East Midlands +4 50 £550 +53.63% 22
East of England -15 30 £418 -12.11% 48
North East -9 22 £418 -7.73% 19
Wales -4 15 £375 +22.55% 7
Northern Ireland -2 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 52 (3.59%) Confluence
2 50 (3.45%) SharePoint
3 40 (2.76%) CMS
4 16 (1.10%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 16 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
5 7 (0.48%) Apache
6 6 (0.41%) Mendix
6 6 (0.41%) WordPress
7 5 (0.35%) Camunda
7 5 (0.35%) Drupal
7 5 (0.35%) Headless CMS
8 4 (0.28%) Ethereum
8 4 (0.28%) Hyperledger
8 4 (0.28%) Sitecore CMS
8 4 (0.28%) Umbraco
9 3 (0.21%) Anypoint
9 3 (0.21%) Apache Spark
9 3 (0.21%) nginx
10 2 (0.14%) Appian
10 2 (0.14%) Kentico
Applications
1 42 (2.90%) Sketch
2 29 (2.00%) Adobe XD
3 24 (1.66%) Microsoft Excel
4 20 (1.38%) Chatbot
5 18 (1.24%) MS Visio
6 13 (0.90%) Microsoft Office
6 13 (0.90%) Photoshop
7 11 (0.76%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 11 (0.76%) InVision
8 9 (0.62%) Adobe After Effects
9 8 (0.55%) Adobe Illustrator
10 6 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
11 5 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.35%) Trello
12 4 (0.28%) UserZoom
13 3 (0.21%) Adobe Captivate
13 3 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
13 3 (0.21%) UXPin
14 2 (0.14%) Blender
14 2 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 14 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (0.76%) Dynamics CRM
3 10 (0.69%) Shopify
4 8 (0.55%) Workday HCM
5 6 (0.41%) Sage X3
6 2 (0.14%) NEC Housing
6 2 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
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 CO
6 2 (0.14%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.14%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.14%) SAP FI/CO
7 1 (0.069%) assyst
7 1 (0.069%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.069%) SAP CRM
7 1 (0.069%) SAP PP
7 1 (0.069%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 229 (15.80%) Azure
2 207 (14.29%) Figma
3 126 (8.70%) AWS
4 109 (7.52%) Power Platform
5 94 (6.49%) Microsoft 365
6 56 (3.86%) Azure DevOps
7 53 (3.66%) Entra ID
8 50 (3.45%) GCP
9 47 (3.24%) GitHub
10 40 (2.76%) SaaS
11 38 (2.62%) Microsoft Copilot
11 38 (2.62%) Power Automate
11 38 (2.62%) PowerApps
12 33 (2.28%) Serverless
13 26 (1.79%) GitHub Actions
14 23 (1.59%) Copilot Studio
14 23 (1.59%) Google Workspace
15 21 (1.45%) Miro
16 20 (1.38%) Google Sheets
17 19 (1.31%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 15 (1.04%) DNS
2 12 (0.83%) Internet
2 12 (0.83%) Intranet
2 12 (0.83%) LAN
2 12 (0.83%) Wi-Fi
3 11 (0.76%) HTTP
3 11 (0.76%) SD-WAN
3 11 (0.76%) Wireless
4 9 (0.62%) DHCP
4 9 (0.62%) VPN
5 8 (0.55%) WAN
6 7 (0.48%) TCP/IP
7 6 (0.41%) Cisco Wireless
7 6 (0.41%) Firewall
7 6 (0.41%) Network Security
7 6 (0.41%) SNMP
7 6 (0.41%) WLAN
8 5 (0.35%) 5G
8 5 (0.35%) SMS
8 5 (0.35%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 75 (5.18%) Power BI
2 27 (1.86%) NoSQL
2 27 (1.86%) Relational Database
3 25 (1.73%) PostgreSQL
4 22 (1.52%) SQL Server
5 19 (1.31%) Data Warehouse
6 18 (1.24%) Metadata
7 17 (1.17%) MySQL
8 16 (1.10%) MongoDB
9 13 (0.90%) Tableau
10 11 (0.76%) Power Query
11 10 (0.69%) Big Data
11 10 (0.69%) BigQuery
12 7 (0.48%) Looker
12 7 (0.48%) Oracle BI Publisher
12 7 (0.48%) Pinecone
13 6 (0.41%) DynamoDB
13 6 (0.41%) Oracle Database
13 6 (0.41%) Redis
13 6 (0.41%) ZAP BI
Development Applications
1 108 (7.45%) JIRA
2 88 (6.07%) Git
3 35 (2.42%) GitLab
4 30 (2.07%) Cypress.io
5 21 (1.45%) JUnit
6 20 (1.38%) Jenkins
7 17 (1.17%) Axure RP
8 13 (0.90%) Gradle
9 12 (0.83%) Selenium
10 11 (0.76%) Browser DevTools
10 11 (0.76%) CircleCI
11 10 (0.69%) Android Studio
11 10 (0.69%) Vite
12 9 (0.62%) Xcode
13 8 (0.55%) Visual Studio
14 7 (0.48%) Mockito
14 7 (0.48%) Postman
15 6 (0.41%) Eclipse
15 6 (0.41%) Mocha
16 5 (0.35%) Cucumber
General
1 455 (31.40%) Social Skills
2 267 (18.43%) Finance
3 205 (14.15%) Public Sector
4 153 (10.56%) Analytical Skills
5 111 (7.66%) Banking
6 58 (4.00%) Marketing
7 52 (3.59%) Retail
8 35 (2.42%) Legal
9 33 (2.28%) Presentation Skills
10 30 (2.07%) Influencing Skills
11 22 (1.52%) Manufacturing
12 20 (1.38%) Documentation Skills
12 20 (1.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 19 (1.31%) Pharmaceutical
14 18 (1.24%) Publishing
15 17 (1.17%) Games
16 16 (1.10%) Organisational Skills
17 14 (0.97%) Automotive
18 13 (0.90%) Investment Banking
19 11 (0.76%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 301 (20.77%) Designer
2 222 (15.32%) Senior
3 196 (13.53%) Developer
4 141 (9.73%) UX Designer
5 129 (8.90%) Analyst
6 75 (5.18%) Consultant
7 74 (5.11%) Lead
8 67 (4.62%) Business Analyst
9 66 (4.55%) Product Designer
10 63 (4.35%) Architect
11 58 (4.00%) Senior Designer
11 58 (4.00%) User Researcher
12 54 (3.73%) UI Designer
13 46 (3.17%) Content Designer
14 43 (2.97%) Service Designer
14 43 (2.97%) User Experience Researcher
15 40 (2.76%) UI/UX Designer
16 38 (2.62%) IT Support
16 38 (2.62%) Senior Developer
17 36 (2.48%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 162 (11.18%) React
2 142 (9.80%) CSS
3 130 (8.97%) HTML
4 105 (7.25%) REST
5 74 (5.11%) RESTful
6 72 (4.97%) AngularJS
7 57 (3.93%) Spring
8 56 (3.86%) Spring Boot
9 52 (3.59%) .NET
10 39 (2.69%) Node.js
11 36 (2.48%) HTML5
12 35 (2.42%) GraphQL
12 35 (2.42%) Redux
13 34 (2.35%) JSON
14 32 (2.21%) CSS3
15 30 (2.07%) Jest
16 28 (1.93%) Next.js
17 25 (1.73%) Kafka
18 22 (1.52%) Playwright
19 21 (1.45%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 140 (9.66%) Product Ownership
2 72 (4.97%) Mobile App
3 54 (3.73%) Onboarding
4 36 (2.48%) AI Agents
5 31 (2.14%) Data Structures
5 31 (2.14%) Enterprise Software
6 25 (1.73%) Cloud Native
7 22 (1.52%) Analytical Mindset
8 18 (1.24%) Data Protection Act
9 17 (1.17%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 16 (1.10%) Distributed Systems
10 16 (1.10%) Virtual Reality
11 15 (1.04%) Legacy Systems
12 14 (0.97%) Augmented Reality
12 14 (0.97%) NHS
13 13 (0.90%) Low-Code
13 13 (0.90%) Management Information System
13 13 (0.90%) Self-Motivation
14 12 (0.83%) Algorithms
15 11 (0.76%) Graphic Design
Operating Systems
1 97 (6.69%) Windows
2 42 (2.90%) Android
3 36 (2.48%) Windows 10
4 35 (2.42%) Apple iOS
5 21 (1.45%) Mac OS
6 14 (0.97%) Linux
7 9 (0.62%) Windows Server
8 6 (0.41%) Unix
9 5 (0.35%) Windows Server 2016
10 4 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.069%) Windows 7
12 1 (0.069%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 477 (32.92%) UX Design
2 469 (32.37%) Agile
3 228 (15.73%) AI
4 220 (15.18%) User Research
5 218 (15.04%) Problem-Solving
6 206 (14.22%) Analytics
7 173 (11.94%) CI/CD
8 172 (11.87%) Stakeholder Management
9 171 (11.80%) Continuous Improvement
10 168 (11.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 161 (11.11%) Roadmaps
12 160 (11.04%) DevOps
13 147 (10.14%) Prototyping
14 137 (9.45%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
15 132 (9.11%) UX Research
16 130 (8.97%) Service Design
16 130 (8.97%) Wireframes
17 120 (8.28%) Decision-Making
18 113 (7.80%) Usability Testing
19 112 (7.73%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 171 (11.80%) JavaScript
2 129 (8.90%) SQL
3 124 (8.56%) Python
4 120 (8.28%) Java
5 115 (7.94%) TypeScript
6 57 (3.93%) C#
7 43 (2.97%) PowerShell
8 27 (1.86%) Kotlin
9 19 (1.31%) Bash
10 17 (1.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 11 (0.76%) C++
12 9 (0.62%) Lua
12 9 (0.62%) Swift
13 7 (0.48%) Korn
14 6 (0.41%) Go
14 6 (0.41%) Perl
14 6 (0.41%) Scala
14 6 (0.41%) VBA
15 5 (0.35%) PL/SQL
15 5 (0.35%) R
Qualifications
1 198 (13.66%) Security Cleared
2 146 (10.08%) SC Cleared
3 124 (8.56%) Degree
4 34 (2.35%) BPSS Clearance
5 31 (2.14%) Computer Science Degree
6 26 (1.79%) DV Cleared
7 21 (1.45%) Microsoft Certification
8 14 (0.97%) Master's Degree
9 13 (0.90%) Azure Certification
10 12 (0.83%) Cisco Certification
11 9 (0.62%) CCNP
12 8 (0.55%) PMI Certification
13 7 (0.48%) CCA
14 6 (0.41%) CCIE
14 6 (0.41%) Citrix Certification
15 4 (0.28%) CCNA
15 4 (0.28%) ITIL Certification
15 4 (0.28%) OCA
15 4 (0.28%) Oracle Certification
15 4 (0.28%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 259 (17.87%) Accessibility
2 125 (8.63%) QA
3 81 (5.59%) WCAG
4 45 (3.11%) Data Quality
5 38 (2.62%) GDPR
6 26 (1.79%) Actionable Recommendations
7 17 (1.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 10 (0.69%) SLA
9 8 (0.55%) PMO
10 6 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
10 6 (0.41%) GMP
10 6 (0.41%) GxP
11 5 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 4 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 4 (0.28%) GRC
13 3 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
13 3 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 3 (0.21%) NCSC
13 3 (0.21%) NIST
13 3 (0.21%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 72 (4.97%) Active Directory
2 54 (3.73%) Docker
3 19 (1.31%) Virtual Desktop
4 18 (1.24%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (0.41%) Firmware
6 5 (0.35%) Hyper-V
7 3 (0.21%) XenApp
7 3 (0.21%) XenDesktop
8 2 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
9 1 (0.069%) ISA Server
9 1 (0.069%) Varnish
9 1 (0.069%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 58 (4.00%) Kubernetes
2 48 (3.31%) Terraform
3 35 (2.42%) Grafana
4 33 (2.28%) Microsoft Intune
5 27 (1.86%) SCCM
6 18 (1.24%) Ansible
7 16 (1.10%) Single Sign-On
8 12 (0.83%) Prometheus
9 5 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
10 4 (0.28%) Podman
11 3 (0.21%) Argo
11 3 (0.21%) HP ALM
11 3 (0.21%) Nagios
11 3 (0.21%) Rancher
11 3 (0.21%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
12 2 (0.14%) Failover Clustering
12 2 (0.14%) SysTrack
12 2 (0.14%) WSUS
13 1 (0.069%) AirWatch
13 1 (0.069%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 208 (14.35%) Microsoft
2 87 (6.00%) Adobe
3 69 (4.76%) Google
4 52 (3.59%) ServiceNow
5 51 (3.52%) SAP
6 47 (3.24%) Oracle
7 43 (2.97%) Salesforce
8 23 (1.59%) Citrix
9 21 (1.45%) Splunk
10 18 (1.24%) VMware
11 17 (1.17%) Workday
12 15 (1.04%) Cisco
13 14 (0.97%) Apple
13 14 (0.97%) Databricks
14 9 (0.62%) Aruba
14 9 (0.62%) Dynatrace
14 9 (0.62%) Foundry
14 9 (0.62%) MuleSoft
14 9 (0.62%) OpenAI
14 9 (0.62%) Zscaler