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

6 months to
14 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 69 71 70
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 -2
Contract jobs citing User Experience 1,293 1,030 1,239
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.50% 3.26% 2.91%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.98% 3.67% 3.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 873 621 841
10th Percentile £300 £313 £325
25th Percentile £375 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -7.41%
75th Percentile £568 £588 £588
90th Percentile £650 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £456 £475
% change year-on-year -1.32% -4.00% -4.28%
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 26 29
10th Percentile £15.50 £25.26 £23.75
25th Percentile £17.69 £30.48 £31.71
Median hourly rate £35.55 £41.46 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year -14.24% -31.48% -3.20%
75th Percentile £58.06 £53.00 £73.75
90th Percentile £70.02 £74.22 £81.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £30.88 £71.93
% change year-on-year -2.83% -57.08% +10.66%

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 32,475 28,042 37,290
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.84% 88.72% 87.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,506 17,042 24,746
10th Percentile £304 £306 £304
25th Percentile £406 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £638 £650
90th Percentile £723 £744 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,987 893 1,582
10th Percentile £14.52 £15.62 £14.18
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.50 £18.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -19.75% +15.71%
75th Percentile £56.00 £62.24 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.39 £74.97 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £30.45 £43.83
% change year-on-year -21.76% -30.52% +51.12%

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 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 14 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 14 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 +3 1,114 £475 -5.00% 917
London -14 576 £480 -8.57% 240
UK excluding London +6 568 £450 -1.32% 834
Work from Home -17 336 £461 -7.75% 465
North of England +14 201 £405 -10.00% 178
North West +19 129 £400 -11.11% 84
Midlands +2 108 £480 +18.52% 110
South East -3 105 £388 -22.50% 270
West Midlands -9 69 £435 -13.00% 60
South West -4 61 £500 -11.89% 101
Scotland -20 57 £470 +4.44% 34
Yorkshire -11 56 £500 +11.11% 63
East Midlands 0 39 £520 +46.07% 50
East of England -3 33 £460 +1.32% 105
North East +2 15 £410 - 31
Wales +4 12 £331 -22.08% 41
Northern Ireland -12 1 £625 +92.31% 16

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 (4.33%) Confluence
2 55 (4.25%) SharePoint
3 47 (3.63%) CMS
4 23 (1.78%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 13 (1.01%) Microsoft Exchange
6 12 (0.93%) Headless CMS
7 11 (0.85%) SugarCRM
8 10 (0.77%) Apache
9 8 (0.62%) Sitecore CMS
9 8 (0.62%) Umbraco
10 3 (0.23%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
10 3 (0.23%) Apache Spark
10 3 (0.23%) Jupyter
10 3 (0.23%) WordPress
11 2 (0.15%) Appian
11 2 (0.15%) Camunda
11 2 (0.15%) Drupal
12 1 (0.077%) Moodle
12 1 (0.077%) SharePoint 2010
Applications
1 50 (3.87%) Sketch
2 33 (2.55%) Adobe XD
3 24 (1.86%) MS Visio
4 22 (1.70%) Microsoft Office
5 20 (1.55%) Chatbot
6 17 (1.31%) InVision
7 15 (1.16%) Microsoft Excel
8 12 (0.93%) Adobe Illustrator
8 12 (0.93%) Photoshop
9 8 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
9 8 (0.62%) Trello
10 7 (0.54%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 7 (0.54%) Microsoft Project
11 5 (0.39%) Adobe After Effects
11 5 (0.39%) Camtasia
12 3 (0.23%) Snagit
12 3 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
13 2 (0.15%) Autodesk Smoke
13 2 (0.15%) Blender
13 2 (0.15%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 22 (1.70%) SAP S/4HANA
2 15 (1.16%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
3 3 (0.23%) SAP CO
3 3 (0.23%) SAP FI
3 3 (0.23%) SAP FI/CO
3 3 (0.23%) Teamcenter
4 2 (0.15%) Adobe Campaign
4 2 (0.15%) iTrent
4 2 (0.15%) Magento
4 2 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.15%) SAP SD
4 2 (0.15%) SAP Travel Management
4 2 (0.15%) Shopify
5 1 (0.077%) Elite 3E
5 1 (0.077%) NEC Housing
5 1 (0.077%) NetSuite
5 1 (0.077%) SAP ERP
5 1 (0.077%) SAP PLM
5 1 (0.077%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 221 (17.09%) Azure
2 154 (11.91%) AWS
3 152 (11.76%) Figma
4 84 (6.50%) Power Platform
5 77 (5.96%) SaaS
6 75 (5.80%) Microsoft 365
7 60 (4.64%) GCP
8 49 (3.79%) Entra ID
9 47 (3.63%) Azure DevOps
10 44 (3.40%) GitHub
11 35 (2.71%) Miro
12 30 (2.32%) Serverless
13 25 (1.93%) GitHub Actions
13 25 (1.93%) Google Analytics
14 22 (1.70%) PowerApps
15 21 (1.62%) Power Automate
16 19 (1.47%) Google Workspace
16 19 (1.47%) Sauce Labs
17 17 (1.31%) Dynamics 365
18 16 (1.24%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 28 (2.17%) DNS
2 26 (2.01%) Wireless
3 15 (1.16%) Internet
4 13 (1.01%) HTTP
5 11 (0.85%) VPN
6 9 (0.70%) DHCP
6 9 (0.70%) TCP/IP
6 9 (0.70%) Wi-Fi
7 8 (0.62%) Firewall
7 8 (0.62%) Intranet
8 7 (0.54%) BGP
8 7 (0.54%) Cisco ISE
8 7 (0.54%) Cisco Wireless
8 7 (0.54%) NX-OS
8 7 (0.54%) VXLAN
9 6 (0.46%) Unified Communications
10 5 (0.39%) Network Security
10 5 (0.39%) SSL
10 5 (0.39%) WAN
11 4 (0.31%) PPP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (4.18%) Power BI
2 44 (3.40%) MySQL
3 41 (3.17%) Relational Database
4 34 (2.63%) PostgreSQL
5 27 (2.09%) SQL Server
6 24 (1.86%) NoSQL
7 20 (1.55%) Tableau
8 18 (1.39%) Data Warehouse
9 15 (1.16%) MongoDB
10 13 (1.01%) BigQuery
11 12 (0.93%) Looker
11 12 (0.93%) Metadata
12 9 (0.70%) Redis
12 9 (0.70%) SAP HANA
13 7 (0.54%) Mixpanel
14 5 (0.39%) DynamoDB
15 4 (0.31%) Big Data
15 4 (0.31%) Pinecone
16 3 (0.23%) Power Query
16 3 (0.23%) Qlik Sense
Development Applications
1 126 (9.74%) JIRA
2 95 (7.35%) Git
3 45 (3.48%) GitLab
4 40 (3.09%) Jenkins
5 31 (2.40%) Cypress.io
6 30 (2.32%) Xcode
7 27 (2.09%) Android Studio
7 27 (2.09%) Eclipse
8 23 (1.78%) Axure RP
9 21 (1.62%) Browser DevTools
10 19 (1.47%) JUnit
11 18 (1.39%) Gradle
12 14 (1.08%) Postman
13 13 (1.01%) CircleCI
14 12 (0.93%) webpack
15 10 (0.77%) Artifactory
15 10 (0.77%) Selenium
16 9 (0.70%) Visual Website Optimizer
17 8 (0.62%) Cucumber
17 8 (0.62%) IntelliJ
General
1 452 (34.96%) Social Skills
2 247 (19.10%) Finance
3 183 (14.15%) Public Sector
4 159 (12.30%) Analytical Skills
5 96 (7.42%) Banking
6 85 (6.57%) Marketing
7 36 (2.78%) Influencing Skills
8 29 (2.24%) Legal
9 26 (2.01%) Presentation Skills
10 25 (1.93%) Retail
11 23 (1.78%) Manufacturing
12 22 (1.70%) Pharmaceutical
13 19 (1.47%) Documentation Skills
13 19 (1.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 15 (1.16%) Financial Institution
15 14 (1.08%) Telecoms
16 13 (1.01%) Investment Banking
17 12 (0.93%) Automotive
18 10 (0.77%) Organisational Skills
19 9 (0.70%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 229 (17.71%) Developer
2 221 (17.09%) Designer
3 174 (13.46%) Senior
4 123 (9.51%) UX Designer
5 108 (8.35%) Analyst
6 95 (7.35%) Lead
7 61 (4.72%) Business Analyst
8 54 (4.18%) Consultant
9 46 (3.56%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
9 46 (3.56%) Senior Designer
10 42 (3.25%) Architect
10 42 (3.25%) Service Designer
11 40 (3.09%) Product Designer
12 38 (2.94%) Support Engineer
13 35 (2.71%) User Researcher
14 34 (2.63%) UI Designer
15 33 (2.55%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
15 33 (2.55%) Senior Developer
16 32 (2.47%) Full-Stack Developer
17 31 (2.40%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 182 (14.08%) CSS
2 175 (13.53%) React
3 166 (12.84%) HTML
4 110 (8.51%) REST
5 94 (7.27%) RESTful
6 91 (7.04%) AngularJS
7 52 (4.02%) Node.js
8 49 (3.79%) .NET
8 49 (3.79%) GraphQL
8 49 (3.79%) HTML5
9 38 (2.94%) Jest
9 38 (2.94%) Spring
10 35 (2.71%) Spring Boot
11 34 (2.63%) CSS3
12 27 (2.09%) Redux
12 27 (2.09%) SOAP
13 25 (1.93%) JSON
13 25 (1.93%) Playwright
14 24 (1.86%) Next.js
15 23 (1.78%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 122 (9.44%) Product Ownership
2 105 (8.12%) Mobile App
3 65 (5.03%) Onboarding
4 27 (2.09%) Enterprise Software
5 26 (2.01%) Analytical Mindset
6 22 (1.70%) Management Information System
7 21 (1.62%) Data Structures
8 20 (1.55%) e-Learning
9 19 (1.47%) Low-Code
10 18 (1.39%) NHS
11 15 (1.16%) Data Centre
11 15 (1.16%) Learning Management System
12 14 (1.08%) Distributed Systems
13 13 (1.01%) CMDB
13 13 (1.01%) Legacy Systems
13 13 (1.01%) Virtual Team
14 12 (0.93%) AI Agents
14 12 (0.93%) Cloud Native
14 12 (0.93%) Graphic Design
14 12 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 128 (9.90%) Windows
2 72 (5.57%) Android
3 58 (4.49%) Apple iOS
4 38 (2.94%) Linux
5 36 (2.78%) Windows 10
6 25 (1.93%) Unix
7 22 (1.70%) Mac OS
8 8 (0.62%) Windows Server
9 4 (0.31%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.15%) VMS
11 1 (0.077%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 1 (0.077%) tvOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 481 (37.20%) Agile
2 439 (33.95%) UX Design
3 214 (16.55%) Problem-Solving
4 210 (16.24%) Analytics
5 177 (13.69%) CI/CD
6 176 (13.61%) User Research
7 156 (12.06%) Stakeholder Management
8 154 (11.91%) DevOps
9 137 (10.60%) Continuous Improvement
10 136 (10.52%) Roadmaps
11 133 (10.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 132 (10.21%) AI
13 131 (10.13%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
14 124 (9.59%) Service Design
15 119 (9.20%) Front End Development
16 106 (8.20%) Decision-Making
16 106 (8.20%) Wireframes
17 103 (7.97%) Usability Testing
18 95 (7.35%) Prototyping
18 95 (7.35%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 205 (15.85%) JavaScript
2 120 (9.28%) Python
3 119 (9.20%) Java
4 117 (9.05%) SQL
5 100 (7.73%) TypeScript
6 60 (4.64%) PowerShell
7 48 (3.71%) C#
8 34 (2.63%) Kotlin
9 26 (2.01%) Swift
10 24 (1.86%) Perl
11 23 (1.78%) Bash
12 19 (1.47%) PHP
13 12 (0.93%) C++
14 11 (0.85%) Objective-C
14 11 (0.85%) PL/SQL
15 10 (0.77%) Go
16 9 (0.70%) Scala
17 7 (0.54%) Lisp
18 6 (0.46%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 5 (0.39%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 169 (13.07%) Security Cleared
2 121 (9.36%) Degree
2 121 (9.36%) SC Cleared
3 39 (3.02%) BPSS Clearance
4 28 (2.17%) Computer Science Degree
5 17 (1.31%) DV Cleared
6 16 (1.24%) Master's Degree
7 13 (1.01%) PMI Certification
8 11 (0.85%) MOS
9 10 (0.77%) Microsoft Certification
10 9 (0.70%) OCA
10 9 (0.70%) Oracle Certification
11 8 (0.62%) CCNP
11 8 (0.62%) Cisco Certification
12 6 (0.46%) MCP
12 6 (0.46%) PMP
13 3 (0.23%) Azure Certification
13 3 (0.23%) CISSP
13 3 (0.23%) ISTQB
13 3 (0.23%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 242 (18.72%) Accessibility
2 141 (10.90%) QA
3 65 (5.03%) WCAG
4 63 (4.87%) GDPR
5 35 (2.71%) Data Quality
6 25 (1.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 18 (1.39%) SLA
8 16 (1.24%) Actionable Recommendations
9 8 (0.62%) GxP
10 6 (0.46%) NCSC
10 6 (0.46%) PMO
11 5 (0.39%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 5 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 4 (0.31%) PCI DSS
13 3 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
13 3 (0.23%) GMP
13 3 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
13 3 (0.23%) NIST
13 3 (0.23%) SOC 2
14 2 (0.15%) GRC
System Software
1 71 (5.49%) Active Directory
2 60 (4.64%) Docker
3 21 (1.62%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
5 3 (0.23%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.15%) ProxySG
6 2 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.077%) BitLocker
7 1 (0.077%) Firmware
7 1 (0.077%) ISA Server
7 1 (0.077%) Microsoft App-V
7 1 (0.077%) XenApp
7 1 (0.077%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 48 (3.71%) Kubernetes
2 43 (3.33%) Microsoft Intune
3 34 (2.63%) Terraform
4 32 (2.47%) SCCM
5 19 (1.47%) Ansible
6 17 (1.31%) Grafana
7 16 (1.24%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (0.54%) FortiGate
9 6 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
9 6 (0.46%) Prometheus
10 4 (0.31%) Argo
11 3 (0.23%) HP ALM
11 3 (0.23%) Nagios
11 3 (0.23%) Rancher
12 2 (0.15%) PingFederate
12 2 (0.15%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
12 2 (0.15%) SysTrack
13 1 (0.077%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 1 (0.077%) Istio
13 1 (0.077%) Podman
Vendors
1 209 (16.16%) Microsoft
2 93 (7.19%) Adobe
3 81 (6.26%) Google
4 76 (5.88%) ServiceNow
5 54 (4.18%) Oracle
6 48 (3.71%) SAP
7 45 (3.48%) Salesforce
8 29 (2.24%) Splunk
9 22 (1.70%) VMware
10 18 (1.39%) Apple
11 16 (1.24%) Citrix
12 13 (1.01%) Cisco
12 13 (1.01%) Red Hat
13 12 (0.93%) Hotjar
13 12 (0.93%) Optimizely
13 12 (0.93%) Zscaler
14 10 (0.77%) Amplitude
14 10 (0.77%) MuleSoft
15 8 (0.62%) OpenAI
15 8 (0.62%) Sitecore