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

6 months to
24 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 79 59 71
Rank change year-on-year -20 +12 -9
Contract jobs citing User Experience 1,412 1,105 1,239
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.04% 3.74% 2.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.58% 4.12% 3.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 967 755 825
10th Percentile £313 £305 £302
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 £594
90th Percentile £675 £702 £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 23 49
10th Percentile £16.36 £28.31 £16.25
25th Percentile £21.01 £41.58 £23.75
Median hourly rate £47.25 £53.50 £31.71
Median % change year-on-year -11.68% +68.72% -9.40%
75th Percentile £61.25 £77.73 £64.53
90th Percentile £76.00 £93.50 £73.89
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £70.00 £25.00
% change year-on-year -46.43% +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 39,397 26,809 37,691
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.78% 90.76% 86.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,864 17,328 24,353
10th Percentile £319 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.31% -0.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £739 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £485 £500
% change year-on-year - -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,354 1,060 2,429
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.83 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £29.07 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.60% -16.94% -6.67%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.24 £58.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £71.98
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.56 £28.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +48.41% -20.00% -6.17%

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 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 24 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 24 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 -18 1,223 £489 -2.25% 733
London -22 629 £513 -0.49% 185
UK excluding London -3 617 £475 +11.76% 638
Work from Home -28 357 £475 -1.81% 279
North of England +1 197 £450 - 296
Midlands -1 141 £500 +24.69% 107
North West +4 121 £425 -5.56% 227
South East -17 117 £488 +6.38% 111
West Midlands -20 92 £475 +1.33% 58
South West -18 64 £463 +23.33% 50
Scotland +2 54 £513 +15.49% 16
Yorkshire -21 51 £500 +24.84% 53
East Midlands -2 49 £550 +53.63% 49
East of England -19 31 £425 -10.53% 47
North East -4 23 £410 -9.39% 18
Wales -8 15 £375 +22.55% 11
Northern Ireland -4 3 - - 15

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 51 (3.61%) SharePoint
2 45 (3.19%) Confluence
3 37 (2.62%) CMS
4 19 (1.35%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 17 (1.20%) Microsoft Exchange
6 7 (0.50%) Apache
7 6 (0.42%) Headless CMS
7 6 (0.42%) Mendix
7 6 (0.42%) Sitecore CMS
7 6 (0.42%) Umbraco
8 5 (0.35%) Camunda
9 4 (0.28%) Ethereum
9 4 (0.28%) Hyperledger
10 3 (0.21%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.21%) Apache Spark
10 3 (0.21%) Drupal
10 3 (0.21%) nginx
11 2 (0.14%) Appian
11 2 (0.14%) IIS
11 2 (0.14%) WordPress
Applications
1 46 (3.26%) Sketch
2 33 (2.34%) Adobe XD
3 24 (1.70%) Microsoft Excel
4 19 (1.35%) Chatbot
4 19 (1.35%) MS Visio
5 13 (0.92%) InVision
5 13 (0.92%) Microsoft Office
6 10 (0.71%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 10 (0.71%) Photoshop
7 8 (0.57%) Adobe After Effects
8 6 (0.42%) Adobe Illustrator
8 6 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
9 5 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.35%) Trello
10 4 (0.28%) UserZoom
11 3 (0.21%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
11 3 (0.21%) UXPin
12 2 (0.14%) Blender
12 2 (0.14%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 16 (1.13%) Dynamics CRM
2 14 (0.99%) SAP S/4HANA
3 10 (0.71%) Shopify
4 8 (0.57%) Workday HCM
5 6 (0.42%) 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 QM
Cloud Services
1 230 (16.29%) Azure
2 202 (14.31%) Figma
3 122 (8.64%) AWS
4 107 (7.58%) Power Platform
5 92 (6.52%) Microsoft 365
6 65 (4.60%) Azure DevOps
7 55 (3.90%) Entra ID
8 52 (3.68%) GCP
8 52 (3.68%) GitHub
9 39 (2.76%) SaaS
10 38 (2.69%) PowerApps
11 37 (2.62%) Power Automate
12 36 (2.55%) Microsoft Copilot
13 34 (2.41%) Serverless
14 30 (2.12%) GitHub Actions
15 24 (1.70%) Dynamics 365
16 23 (1.63%) Google Workspace
17 22 (1.56%) Miro
18 21 (1.49%) Copilot Studio
19 20 (1.42%) Google Sheets
Communications & Networking
1 16 (1.13%) DNS
2 12 (0.85%) LAN
2 12 (0.85%) Wireless
3 11 (0.78%) HTTP
3 11 (0.78%) Internet
3 11 (0.78%) Intranet
3 11 (0.78%) SD-WAN
3 11 (0.78%) Wi-Fi
4 10 (0.71%) DHCP
5 9 (0.64%) VPN
6 8 (0.57%) WAN
7 7 (0.50%) TCP/IP
8 6 (0.42%) Cisco Wireless
8 6 (0.42%) Firewall
8 6 (0.42%) Network Security
8 6 (0.42%) SSL
8 6 (0.42%) WLAN
9 5 (0.35%) 5G
9 5 (0.35%) Cisco ISE
9 5 (0.35%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 73 (5.17%) Power BI
2 28 (1.98%) NoSQL
3 27 (1.91%) PostgreSQL
3 27 (1.91%) Relational Database
4 24 (1.70%) SQL Server
5 19 (1.35%) Data Warehouse
5 19 (1.35%) MySQL
6 16 (1.13%) MongoDB
7 15 (1.06%) Metadata
7 15 (1.06%) Tableau
8 11 (0.78%) BigQuery
9 10 (0.71%) Power Query
10 9 (0.64%) Big Data
11 8 (0.57%) Looker
12 7 (0.50%) Oracle BI Publisher
12 7 (0.50%) Pinecone
13 6 (0.42%) DynamoDB
13 6 (0.42%) Oracle Database
13 6 (0.42%) ZAP BI
14 5 (0.35%) Redis
Development Applications
1 105 (7.44%) JIRA
2 84 (5.95%) Git
3 38 (2.69%) GitLab
4 27 (1.91%) Cypress.io
5 26 (1.84%) Jenkins
6 25 (1.77%) JUnit
7 19 (1.35%) Axure RP
8 13 (0.92%) Gradle
8 13 (0.92%) Selenium
9 11 (0.78%) Browser DevTools
9 11 (0.78%) CircleCI
10 9 (0.64%) Android Studio
11 8 (0.57%) Visual Studio
11 8 (0.57%) Xcode
12 7 (0.50%) Mockito
12 7 (0.50%) Postman
12 7 (0.50%) Vite
13 6 (0.42%) Eclipse
13 6 (0.42%) Jasmine
13 6 (0.42%) Mocha
General
1 456 (32.29%) Social Skills
2 273 (19.33%) Finance
3 193 (13.67%) Public Sector
4 158 (11.19%) Analytical Skills
5 115 (8.14%) Banking
6 58 (4.11%) Marketing
7 53 (3.75%) Retail
8 35 (2.48%) Legal
9 31 (2.20%) Presentation Skills
10 27 (1.91%) Influencing Skills
11 23 (1.63%) Documentation Skills
11 23 (1.63%) Manufacturing
12 19 (1.35%) Pharmaceutical
13 17 (1.20%) Games
14 15 (1.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 15 (1.06%) Organisational Skills
14 15 (1.06%) Publishing
15 14 (0.99%) Investment Banking
16 12 (0.85%) Automotive
16 12 (0.85%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 289 (20.47%) Designer
2 212 (15.01%) Senior
3 196 (13.88%) Developer
4 136 (9.63%) UX Designer
5 128 (9.07%) Analyst
6 71 (5.03%) Consultant
7 67 (4.75%) Business Analyst
8 66 (4.67%) Lead
9 65 (4.60%) Architect
10 64 (4.53%) Product Designer
11 56 (3.97%) Senior Designer
12 54 (3.82%) User Researcher
13 50 (3.54%) UI Designer
14 42 (2.97%) Service Designer
15 38 (2.69%) Content Designer
15 38 (2.69%) UI/UX Designer
15 38 (2.69%) User Experience Researcher
16 36 (2.55%) Full-Stack Developer
16 36 (2.55%) IT Support
16 36 (2.55%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 156 (11.05%) React
2 143 (10.13%) CSS
3 132 (9.35%) HTML
4 107 (7.58%) REST
5 78 (5.52%) AngularJS
5 78 (5.52%) RESTful
6 64 (4.53%) Spring
7 63 (4.46%) Spring Boot
8 60 (4.25%) .NET
9 37 (2.62%) HTML5
9 37 (2.62%) Node.js
10 34 (2.41%) Redux
11 33 (2.34%) GraphQL
11 33 (2.34%) JSON
12 32 (2.27%) CSS3
13 30 (2.12%) Jest
14 27 (1.91%) Next.js
15 25 (1.77%) Kafka
16 21 (1.49%) Playwright
16 21 (1.49%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 133 (9.42%) Product Ownership
2 74 (5.24%) Mobile App
3 52 (3.68%) Onboarding
4 34 (2.41%) Enterprise Software
5 31 (2.20%) AI Agents
6 30 (2.12%) Data Structures
7 24 (1.70%) Analytical Mindset
8 23 (1.63%) Cloud Native
9 18 (1.27%) Distributed Systems
10 17 (1.20%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 16 (1.13%) Data Protection Act
12 14 (0.99%) NHS
12 14 (0.99%) Virtual Reality
13 13 (0.92%) Augmented Reality
13 13 (0.92%) Legacy Systems
13 13 (0.92%) Self-Motivation
14 12 (0.85%) Algorithms
14 12 (0.85%) Low-Code
14 12 (0.85%) Management Information System
15 10 (0.71%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 98 (6.94%) Windows
2 39 (2.76%) Windows 10
3 37 (2.62%) Android
4 30 (2.12%) Apple iOS
5 21 (1.49%) Mac OS
6 12 (0.85%) Linux
7 8 (0.57%) Windows Server
8 6 (0.42%) Unix
9 5 (0.35%) Windows Server 2016
10 4 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.071%) Windows 7
12 1 (0.071%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 461 (32.65%) Agile
2 459 (32.51%) UX Design
3 218 (15.44%) AI
3 218 (15.44%) Problem-Solving
4 212 (15.01%) User Research
5 205 (14.52%) Analytics
6 178 (12.61%) CI/CD
7 171 (12.11%) DevOps
7 171 (12.11%) Stakeholder Management
8 167 (11.83%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 163 (11.54%) Continuous Improvement
10 154 (10.91%) Roadmaps
11 144 (10.20%) Prototyping
12 132 (9.35%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
13 130 (9.21%) Wireframes
14 126 (8.92%) Service Design
14 126 (8.92%) UX Research
15 117 (8.29%) Decision-Making
16 108 (7.65%) Workshop Facilitation
17 107 (7.58%) Usability Testing
Programming Languages
1 175 (12.39%) JavaScript
2 135 (9.56%) SQL
3 125 (8.85%) Java
4 119 (8.43%) Python
5 107 (7.58%) TypeScript
6 66 (4.67%) C#
7 44 (3.12%) PowerShell
8 27 (1.91%) Kotlin
9 20 (1.42%) Bash
10 15 (1.06%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 11 (0.78%) C++
12 9 (0.64%) Lua
13 8 (0.57%) Swift
14 7 (0.50%) Korn
14 7 (0.50%) PHP
14 7 (0.50%) PL/SQL
15 6 (0.42%) Go
15 6 (0.42%) Perl
15 6 (0.42%) Scala
15 6 (0.42%) VBA
Qualifications
1 180 (12.75%) Security Cleared
2 134 (9.49%) SC Cleared
3 119 (8.43%) Degree
4 35 (2.48%) BPSS Clearance
5 29 (2.05%) Computer Science Degree
6 20 (1.42%) Microsoft Certification
7 16 (1.13%) DV Cleared
8 13 (0.92%) Azure Certification
8 13 (0.92%) Master's Degree
9 12 (0.85%) Cisco Certification
10 10 (0.71%) CCNP
11 8 (0.57%) PMI Certification
12 6 (0.42%) CCA
12 6 (0.42%) CCIE
12 6 (0.42%) Citrix Certification
12 6 (0.42%) OCA
12 6 (0.42%) Oracle Certification
13 4 (0.28%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 4 (0.28%) ITIL Certification
13 4 (0.28%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 246 (17.42%) Accessibility
2 126 (8.92%) QA
3 74 (5.24%) WCAG
4 47 (3.33%) Data Quality
5 40 (2.83%) GDPR
6 24 (1.70%) Actionable Recommendations
7 16 (1.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 10 (0.71%) SLA
9 8 (0.57%) PMO
10 6 (0.42%) GMP
10 6 (0.42%) GxP
11 5 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials
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 75 (5.31%) Active Directory
2 56 (3.97%) Docker
3 19 (1.35%) Virtual Desktop
4 18 (1.27%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (0.42%) Firmware
6 4 (0.28%) Hyper-V
7 3 (0.21%) XenApp
7 3 (0.21%) XenDesktop
8 2 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
9 1 (0.071%) ISA Server
9 1 (0.071%) Varnish
9 1 (0.071%) Virtual Machines
9 1 (0.071%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 58 (4.11%) Kubernetes
2 48 (3.40%) Terraform
3 34 (2.41%) Microsoft Intune
4 33 (2.34%) Grafana
5 28 (1.98%) SCCM
6 17 (1.20%) Ansible
7 16 (1.13%) Single Sign-On
8 11 (0.78%) Prometheus
9 5 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
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
1 210 (14.87%) Microsoft
2 91 (6.44%) Adobe
3 68 (4.82%) Google
4 51 (3.61%) ServiceNow
5 50 (3.54%) Oracle
6 49 (3.47%) SAP
7 42 (2.97%) Salesforce
8 24 (1.70%) Citrix
9 20 (1.42%) Splunk
10 18 (1.27%) VMware
11 17 (1.20%) Workday
12 14 (0.99%) Apple
12 14 (0.99%) Cisco
13 13 (0.92%) Databricks
14 10 (0.71%) Sitecore
15 9 (0.64%) Foundry
15 9 (0.64%) MuleSoft
16 8 (0.57%) Dynatrace
16 8 (0.57%) OpenAI
16 8 (0.57%) Zscaler