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

6 months to
21 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 82 58 70
Rank change year-on-year -24 +12 -10
Contract jobs citing User Experience 1,399 1,103 1,238
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.02% 3.75% 2.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.56% 4.13% 3.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 957 759 827
10th Percentile £313 £305 £300
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 £591
90th Percentile £675 £695 £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 46 22 48
10th Percentile £17.21 £26.78 £16.25
25th Percentile £21.75 £41.42 £24.69
Median hourly rate £50.00 £51.50 £32.11
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% +60.41% -8.27%
75th Percentile £62.94 £80.35 £64.65
90th Percentile £78.13 £94.50 £73.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.75 £70.00 £25.00
% change year-on-year -37.50% +180.00% -3.85%

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 39,258 26,720 37,503
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.83% 90.74% 86.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,768 17,301 24,236
10th Percentile £318 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £521 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.03% -0.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £484 £500
% change year-on-year +0.31% -3.30% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,351 1,041 2,413
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.80 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -14.29% -6.67%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.50 £58.69
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.00 £71.89
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £29.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +37.93% -17.14% -6.67%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 -20 1,210 £488 -2.40% 1,559
London -21 625 £513 -0.24% 571
UK excluding London -8 604 £475 +11.76% 1,096
Work from Home -31 349 £475 -1.04% 392
North of England +2 199 £450 - 417
Midlands -11 136 £500 +25.00% 135
North West +2 124 £423 -6.11% 330
South East -20 115 £488 +5.41% 278
West Midlands -22 92 £475 +2.70% 77
South West -12 64 £469 +25.84% 77
Scotland -14 51 £533 +20.00% 21
Yorkshire -34 51 £500 +24.84% 63
East Midlands -4 44 £550 +53.63% 58
East of England -22 26 £418 -12.11% 156
North East -4 22 £405 -10.50% 25
Wales -4 15 £375 +22.55% 9
Northern Ireland -4 3 - - 18

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 53 (3.79%) SharePoint
2 47 (3.36%) Confluence
3 37 (2.64%) CMS
4 19 (1.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 18 (1.29%) Microsoft Exchange
6 7 (0.50%) Apache
7 6 (0.43%) Headless CMS
7 6 (0.43%) Sitecore CMS
7 6 (0.43%) Umbraco
8 5 (0.36%) Camunda
8 5 (0.36%) Mendix
9 4 (0.29%) Ethereum
9 4 (0.29%) Hyperledger
10 3 (0.21%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.21%) Apache Spark
10 3 (0.21%) nginx
11 2 (0.14%) Appian
11 2 (0.14%) Drupal
11 2 (0.14%) IIS
12 1 (0.071%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 46 (3.29%) Sketch
2 34 (2.43%) Adobe XD
3 25 (1.79%) Microsoft Excel
4 21 (1.50%) MS Visio
5 19 (1.36%) Chatbot
6 14 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
7 13 (0.93%) InVision
8 12 (0.86%) Photoshop
9 8 (0.57%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.57%) Adobe Illustrator
10 7 (0.50%) Adobe After Effects
11 6 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
12 5 (0.36%) Spreadsheet
12 5 (0.36%) Trello
13 4 (0.29%) UserZoom
14 3 (0.21%) Adobe Captivate
14 3 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
14 3 (0.21%) UXPin
15 2 (0.14%) Autodesk Smoke
15 2 (0.14%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 16 (1.14%) Dynamics CRM
2 12 (0.86%) SAP S/4HANA
3 9 (0.64%) Shopify
4 8 (0.57%) Workday HCM
5 6 (0.43%) 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
6 2 (0.14%) Sprinklr
7 1 (0.071%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.071%) Oracle Payroll
7 1 (0.071%) SAP CRM
7 1 (0.071%) SAP PP
Cloud Services
1 226 (16.15%) Azure
2 202 (14.44%) Figma
3 119 (8.51%) AWS
4 102 (7.29%) Power Platform
5 91 (6.50%) Microsoft 365
6 65 (4.65%) Azure DevOps
7 56 (4.00%) Entra ID
8 54 (3.86%) GCP
8 54 (3.86%) GitHub
9 38 (2.72%) PowerApps
9 38 (2.72%) SaaS
10 37 (2.64%) Power Automate
11 34 (2.43%) Microsoft Copilot
11 34 (2.43%) Serverless
12 31 (2.22%) GitHub Actions
13 24 (1.72%) Dynamics 365
13 24 (1.72%) Miro
14 23 (1.64%) Google Workspace
15 20 (1.43%) Copilot Studio
15 20 (1.43%) Google Sheets
Communications & Networking
1 16 (1.14%) DNS
2 12 (0.86%) LAN
2 12 (0.86%) Wireless
3 11 (0.79%) Internet
3 11 (0.79%) SD-WAN
3 11 (0.79%) Wi-Fi
4 10 (0.71%) DHCP
4 10 (0.71%) HTTP
4 10 (0.71%) Intranet
5 9 (0.64%) VPN
6 8 (0.57%) WAN
7 7 (0.50%) TCP/IP
8 6 (0.43%) Cisco Wireless
8 6 (0.43%) Firewall
8 6 (0.43%) Network Security
8 6 (0.43%) SSL
8 6 (0.43%) WLAN
9 5 (0.36%) 5G
9 5 (0.36%) Cisco ISE
9 5 (0.36%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 71 (5.08%) Power BI
2 29 (2.07%) NoSQL
3 27 (1.93%) PostgreSQL
3 27 (1.93%) Relational Database
4 24 (1.72%) SQL Server
5 21 (1.50%) Data Warehouse
6 18 (1.29%) MySQL
7 17 (1.22%) Tableau
8 16 (1.14%) Metadata
8 16 (1.14%) MongoDB
9 11 (0.79%) BigQuery
10 10 (0.71%) Power Query
11 8 (0.57%) Looker
12 7 (0.50%) Pinecone
13 6 (0.43%) Big Data
13 6 (0.43%) DynamoDB
13 6 (0.43%) Oracle BI Publisher
13 6 (0.43%) ZAP BI
14 5 (0.36%) Hadoop
14 5 (0.36%) Redis
Development Applications
1 106 (7.58%) JIRA
2 78 (5.58%) Git
3 38 (2.72%) GitLab
4 28 (2.00%) Cypress.io
5 26 (1.86%) Jenkins
6 25 (1.79%) JUnit
7 20 (1.43%) Axure RP
8 13 (0.93%) Gradle
8 13 (0.93%) Selenium
9 11 (0.79%) CircleCI
10 10 (0.71%) Browser DevTools
11 8 (0.57%) Android Studio
11 8 (0.57%) Visual Studio
11 8 (0.57%) Vite
12 7 (0.50%) Jasmine
12 7 (0.50%) Mockito
12 7 (0.50%) Postman
12 7 (0.50%) Xcode
13 6 (0.43%) Mocha
14 5 (0.36%) Cucumber
General
1 445 (31.81%) Social Skills
2 270 (19.30%) Finance
3 196 (14.01%) Public Sector
4 159 (11.37%) Analytical Skills
5 113 (8.08%) Banking
6 55 (3.93%) Marketing
7 51 (3.65%) Retail
8 34 (2.43%) Legal
9 31 (2.22%) Presentation Skills
10 28 (2.00%) Influencing Skills
11 25 (1.79%) Manufacturing
12 22 (1.57%) Documentation Skills
13 20 (1.43%) Pharmaceutical
14 17 (1.22%) Games
15 15 (1.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 15 (1.07%) Organisational Skills
15 15 (1.07%) Publishing
16 13 (0.93%) Front Office
16 13 (0.93%) Investment Banking
17 11 (0.79%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 286 (20.44%) Designer
2 212 (15.15%) Senior
3 201 (14.37%) Developer
4 138 (9.86%) UX Designer
5 129 (9.22%) Analyst
6 68 (4.86%) Business Analyst
7 66 (4.72%) Lead
8 65 (4.65%) Consultant
9 62 (4.43%) Product Designer
10 59 (4.22%) Architect
11 57 (4.07%) Senior Designer
12 52 (3.72%) User Researcher
13 49 (3.50%) UI Designer
14 42 (3.00%) Service Designer
15 38 (2.72%) Content Designer
15 38 (2.72%) UI/UX Designer
16 36 (2.57%) Full-Stack Developer
16 36 (2.57%) IT Support
17 35 (2.50%) Software Engineer
17 35 (2.50%) User Experience Researcher
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 157 (11.22%) React
2 142 (10.15%) CSS
3 133 (9.51%) HTML
4 108 (7.72%) REST
5 81 (5.79%) RESTful
6 79 (5.65%) AngularJS
7 64 (4.57%) Spring
8 63 (4.50%) Spring Boot
9 59 (4.22%) .NET
10 39 (2.79%) HTML5
11 37 (2.64%) Node.js
12 35 (2.50%) Redux
13 34 (2.43%) CSS3
14 33 (2.36%) JSON
15 32 (2.29%) GraphQL
16 31 (2.22%) Jest
17 27 (1.93%) Next.js
18 25 (1.79%) Vue
19 23 (1.64%) Kafka
20 20 (1.43%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 136 (9.72%) Product Ownership
2 73 (5.22%) Mobile App
3 51 (3.65%) Onboarding
4 34 (2.43%) Enterprise Software
5 30 (2.14%) AI Agents
6 29 (2.07%) Data Structures
7 25 (1.79%) Analytical Mindset
8 18 (1.29%) Cloud Native
8 18 (1.29%) Distributed Systems
8 18 (1.29%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 16 (1.14%) Data Protection Act
10 15 (1.07%) NHS
11 14 (1.00%) Virtual Reality
12 13 (0.93%) Augmented Reality
12 13 (0.93%) Legacy Systems
12 13 (0.93%) Self-Motivation
13 12 (0.86%) Algorithms
13 12 (0.86%) Management Information System
14 11 (0.79%) Graphic Design
14 11 (0.79%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 101 (7.22%) Windows
2 39 (2.79%) Android
3 38 (2.72%) Windows 10
4 32 (2.29%) Apple iOS
5 23 (1.64%) Mac OS
6 12 (0.86%) Linux
7 9 (0.64%) Windows Server
8 5 (0.36%) Unix
8 5 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
9 4 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.071%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 1 (0.071%) Windows 7
11 1 (0.071%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 461 (32.95%) Agile
2 459 (32.81%) UX Design
3 213 (15.23%) Problem-Solving
4 212 (15.15%) User Research
5 209 (14.94%) AI
6 199 (14.22%) Analytics
7 175 (12.51%) CI/CD
8 168 (12.01%) Stakeholder Management
9 165 (11.79%) DevOps
10 163 (11.65%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 161 (11.51%) Continuous Improvement
12 143 (10.22%) Prototyping
13 142 (10.15%) Roadmaps
14 134 (9.58%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
15 130 (9.29%) Wireframes
16 127 (9.08%) Service Design
17 125 (8.93%) UX Research
18 119 (8.51%) Decision-Making
19 107 (7.65%) Usability Testing
20 101 (7.22%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 177 (12.65%) JavaScript
2 132 (9.44%) SQL
3 123 (8.79%) Java
4 111 (7.93%) Python
5 108 (7.72%) TypeScript
6 64 (4.57%) C#
7 45 (3.22%) PowerShell
8 27 (1.93%) Kotlin
9 16 (1.14%) Bash
10 15 (1.07%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 11 (0.79%) C++
12 9 (0.64%) Lua
13 8 (0.57%) Swift
14 7 (0.50%) Korn
14 7 (0.50%) PL/SQL
15 6 (0.43%) Go
15 6 (0.43%) Perl
15 6 (0.43%) PHP
15 6 (0.43%) Scala
15 6 (0.43%) VBA
Qualifications
1 179 (12.79%) Security Cleared
2 131 (9.36%) SC Cleared
3 118 (8.43%) Degree
4 35 (2.50%) BPSS Clearance
5 28 (2.00%) Computer Science Degree
6 20 (1.43%) Microsoft Certification
7 16 (1.14%) DV Cleared
8 14 (1.00%) Master's Degree
9 13 (0.93%) Azure Certification
10 12 (0.86%) Cisco Certification
11 10 (0.71%) CCNP
12 8 (0.57%) PMI Certification
13 6 (0.43%) CCA
13 6 (0.43%) CCIE
13 6 (0.43%) Citrix Certification
13 6 (0.43%) OCA
13 6 (0.43%) Oracle Certification
14 4 (0.29%) ISTQB
14 4 (0.29%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 4 (0.29%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 247 (17.66%) Accessibility
2 125 (8.93%) QA
3 75 (5.36%) WCAG
4 47 (3.36%) Data Quality
5 39 (2.79%) GDPR
6 24 (1.72%) Actionable Recommendations
7 16 (1.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 11 (0.79%) SLA
9 8 (0.57%) PMO
10 6 (0.43%) GMP
10 6 (0.43%) GxP
11 5 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
11 5 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 4 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 4 (0.29%) GRC
13 3 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
13 3 (0.21%) HIPAA
13 3 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 3 (0.21%) NCSC
13 3 (0.21%) NIST
System Software
1 76 (5.43%) Active Directory
2 57 (4.07%) Docker
3 19 (1.36%) Virtual Desktop
3 19 (1.36%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (0.36%) Firmware
5 4 (0.29%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.21%) XenApp
6 3 (0.21%) XenDesktop
7 2 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
8 1 (0.071%) ISA Server
8 1 (0.071%) Varnish
8 1 (0.071%) Virtual Machines
8 1 (0.071%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 59 (4.22%) Kubernetes
2 42 (3.00%) Terraform
3 37 (2.64%) Microsoft Intune
4 28 (2.00%) SCCM
5 25 (1.79%) Grafana
6 15 (1.07%) Single Sign-On
7 12 (0.86%) Ansible
8 7 (0.50%) Jamf Pro
9 6 (0.43%) Prometheus
10 3 (0.21%) Argo
10 3 (0.21%) HP ALM
10 3 (0.21%) Nagios
10 3 (0.21%) Podman
10 3 (0.21%) Rancher
10 3 (0.21%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
11 2 (0.14%) Failover Clustering
11 2 (0.14%) FortiGate
11 2 (0.14%) SysTrack
11 2 (0.14%) WSUS
12 1 (0.071%) AirWatch
Vendors
1 209 (14.94%) Microsoft
2 90 (6.43%) Adobe
3 67 (4.79%) Google
4 55 (3.93%) ServiceNow
5 48 (3.43%) SAP
6 45 (3.22%) Oracle
7 37 (2.64%) Salesforce
8 25 (1.79%) Citrix
9 19 (1.36%) VMware
10 16 (1.14%) Workday
11 15 (1.07%) Apple
11 15 (1.07%) Cisco
12 14 (1.00%) Splunk
13 11 (0.79%) Zscaler
14 10 (0.71%) Databricks
14 10 (0.71%) Sitecore
15 9 (0.64%) Foundry
15 9 (0.64%) MuleSoft
15 9 (0.64%) OpenAI
16 8 (0.57%) Aruba