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

6 months to
22 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 74 59 77
Rank change year-on-year -15 +18 -17
Contract jobs citing User Experience 1,487 1,084 1,198
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.08% 3.76% 2.82%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.65% 4.13% 3.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 979 734 802
10th Percentile £313 £305 £306
25th Percentile £400 £400 £402
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.08% -4.00% -1.57%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £698 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £425 £475
% change year-on-year +11.76% -10.53% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 26 45
10th Percentile £16.00 £34.13 £16.25
25th Percentile £23.08 £46.75 £23.75
Median hourly rate £33.99 £53.50 £26.56
Median % change year-on-year -36.47% +101.43% -18.75%
75th Percentile £61.25 £70.63 £61.25
90th Percentile £72.40 £90.50 £73.82
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.99 £76.00 £25.00
% change year-on-year -55.28% +204.00% +42.86%

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 40,767 26,234 36,547
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.37% 91.05% 86.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,562 16,839 23,562
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £497 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.66% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,395 1,067 2,440
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.36 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.96 £18.30 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.18 £36.05
Median % change year-on-year +50.82% -21.82% +0.13%
75th Percentile £67.50 £59.95 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -33.82% +8.57%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 -3 1,284 £490 -2.00% 685
UK excluding London +4 675 £475 +11.76% 457
London -16 653 £513 -0.97% 346
Work from Home -24 398 £498 +3.65% 361
North of England +3 200 £450 +0.67% 134
Midlands +7 161 £475 +18.16% 52
South East -10 125 £488 +14.71% 132
North West +7 122 £420 -6.04% 93
West Midlands +1 110 £475 -7.32% 36
Scotland +3 74 £500 +11.11% 25
South West -11 67 £469 +25.00% 39
Yorkshire -16 54 £513 +28.04% 23
East Midlands +9 51 £550 +53.63% 14
East of England -15 32 £410 -13.68% 46
North East -17 24 £450 -0.55% 19
Wales -12 14 £450 +47.06% 13
Northern Ireland -5 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 53 (3.56%) SharePoint
2 52 (3.50%) Confluence
3 41 (2.76%) CMS
4 20 (1.34%) Microsoft Exchange
5 14 (0.94%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 7 (0.47%) Apache
6 7 (0.47%) WordPress
7 5 (0.34%) Camunda
7 5 (0.34%) Drupal
7 5 (0.34%) Mendix
8 4 (0.27%) Ethereum
8 4 (0.27%) Hyperledger
8 4 (0.27%) Kentico
9 3 (0.20%) Anypoint
9 3 (0.20%) Headless CMS
9 3 (0.20%) nginx
9 3 (0.20%) Skype for Business
9 3 (0.20%) Umbraco
10 2 (0.13%) Appian
10 2 (0.13%) IIS
Applications
1 41 (2.76%) Sketch
2 25 (1.68%) Adobe XD
3 24 (1.61%) Microsoft Excel
4 21 (1.41%) Photoshop
5 19 (1.28%) Chatbot
6 16 (1.08%) Adobe After Effects
6 16 (1.08%) Adobe Illustrator
7 15 (1.01%) MS Visio
8 14 (0.94%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 14 (0.94%) Microsoft Office
9 10 (0.67%) InVision
10 7 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
11 4 (0.27%) Trello
12 3 (0.20%) Adobe Captivate
12 3 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
12 3 (0.20%) UXPin
13 2 (0.13%) Final Cut Pro
13 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
13 2 (0.13%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.13%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 13 (0.87%) SAP S/4HANA
2 9 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
2 9 (0.61%) Shopify
3 8 (0.54%) Workday HCM
4 6 (0.40%) Sage X3
5 4 (0.27%) NetSuite
6 2 (0.13%) NEC Housing
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle iProcurement
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
6 2 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
6 2 (0.13%) ResourceLink
6 2 (0.13%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.067%) Adobe Campaign
7 1 (0.067%) Eloqua
7 1 (0.067%) Integrated Workplace Management System
7 1 (0.067%) iTrent
7 1 (0.067%) Oracle EBS R12
7 1 (0.067%) Salesforce CRM
7 1 (0.067%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 230 (15.47%) Azure
2 212 (14.26%) Figma
3 122 (8.20%) AWS
4 112 (7.53%) Power Platform
5 103 (6.93%) Microsoft 365
6 57 (3.83%) Entra ID
7 56 (3.77%) Azure DevOps
8 49 (3.30%) GCP
9 47 (3.16%) GitHub
10 46 (3.09%) SaaS
11 38 (2.56%) Microsoft Copilot
12 35 (2.35%) Power Automate
13 34 (2.29%) PowerApps
14 31 (2.08%) Serverless
15 29 (1.95%) GitHub Actions
16 25 (1.68%) OneDrive
17 24 (1.61%) Copilot Studio
17 24 (1.61%) Google Workspace
18 21 (1.41%) Google Sheets
19 19 (1.28%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 18 (1.21%) Wi-Fi
2 17 (1.14%) DNS
3 14 (0.94%) DHCP
4 13 (0.87%) Wireless
5 12 (0.81%) Internet
5 12 (0.81%) LAN
6 11 (0.74%) Intranet
7 10 (0.67%) HTTP
7 10 (0.67%) SD-WAN
7 10 (0.67%) TCP/IP
8 8 (0.54%) VPN
9 7 (0.47%) Cisco Wireless
9 7 (0.47%) WAN
10 6 (0.40%) 5G
10 6 (0.40%) SNMP
10 6 (0.40%) WLAN
11 5 (0.34%) Network Security
11 5 (0.34%) Skype
11 5 (0.34%) SMS
12 4 (0.27%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 77 (5.18%) Power BI
2 27 (1.82%) Relational Database
3 25 (1.68%) NoSQL
3 25 (1.68%) PostgreSQL
4 22 (1.48%) SQL Server
5 20 (1.34%) Metadata
6 19 (1.28%) Data Warehouse
7 15 (1.01%) MongoDB
7 15 (1.01%) MySQL
7 15 (1.01%) Power Query
8 12 (0.81%) Tableau
9 11 (0.74%) Big Data
10 9 (0.61%) BigQuery
11 7 (0.47%) DynamoDB
12 6 (0.40%) Oracle BI Publisher
12 6 (0.40%) Oracle Database
12 6 (0.40%) Pinecone
12 6 (0.40%) Redis
12 6 (0.40%) ZAP BI
13 5 (0.34%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 103 (6.93%) JIRA
2 89 (5.99%) Git
3 33 (2.22%) GitLab
4 28 (1.88%) Cypress.io
5 23 (1.55%) Jenkins
6 17 (1.14%) JUnit
7 15 (1.01%) Gradle
8 14 (0.94%) Axure RP
9 13 (0.87%) Vite
10 12 (0.81%) Android Studio
10 12 (0.81%) Browser DevTools
11 11 (0.74%) Xcode
12 10 (0.67%) CircleCI
12 10 (0.67%) Selenium
13 8 (0.54%) fastlane
13 8 (0.54%) Visual Studio
14 7 (0.47%) Postman
15 6 (0.40%) Eclipse
15 6 (0.40%) Mocha
15 6 (0.40%) Mockito
General
1 440 (29.59%) Social Skills
2 259 (17.42%) Finance
3 194 (13.05%) Public Sector
4 146 (9.82%) Analytical Skills
5 114 (7.67%) Banking
6 62 (4.17%) Marketing
7 60 (4.03%) Retail
8 35 (2.35%) Legal
9 34 (2.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 33 (2.22%) Influencing Skills
11 31 (2.08%) Presentation Skills
12 26 (1.75%) Manufacturing
13 24 (1.61%) Automotive
14 19 (1.28%) Publishing
15 17 (1.14%) Organisational Skills
15 17 (1.14%) Pharmaceutical
16 16 (1.08%) Documentation Skills
16 16 (1.08%) Games
16 16 (1.08%) Investment Banking
17 12 (0.81%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 317 (21.32%) Designer
2 229 (15.40%) Senior
3 200 (13.45%) Developer
4 147 (9.89%) UX Designer
5 125 (8.41%) Analyst
6 88 (5.92%) Lead
7 74 (4.98%) Consultant
8 69 (4.64%) UI Designer
9 67 (4.51%) Senior Designer
10 66 (4.44%) Product Designer
11 63 (4.24%) Architect
11 63 (4.24%) Business Analyst
12 48 (3.23%) User Researcher
13 46 (3.09%) Content Designer
14 45 (3.03%) User Experience Researcher
15 44 (2.96%) UI/UX Designer
16 41 (2.76%) Service Designer
17 40 (2.69%) IT Support
18 37 (2.49%) Product Manager
19 36 (2.42%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 159 (10.69%) React
2 131 (8.81%) CSS
3 119 (8.00%) HTML
4 104 (6.99%) REST
5 74 (4.98%) RESTful
6 71 (4.77%) AngularJS
7 54 (3.63%) Spring
8 53 (3.56%) .NET
8 53 (3.56%) Spring Boot
9 39 (2.62%) GraphQL
10 36 (2.42%) Node.js
11 33 (2.22%) JSON
12 32 (2.15%) HTML5
13 30 (2.02%) CSS3
13 30 (2.02%) Redux
14 28 (1.88%) Jest
15 27 (1.82%) Kafka
16 25 (1.68%) Next.js
17 23 (1.55%) OAuth
18 22 (1.48%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 145 (9.75%) Product Ownership
2 71 (4.77%) Mobile App
3 54 (3.63%) Onboarding
4 34 (2.29%) AI Agents
5 33 (2.22%) Data Structures
6 28 (1.88%) Enterprise Software
7 27 (1.82%) Cloud Native
8 20 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
9 19 (1.28%) Legacy Systems
10 18 (1.21%) Analytical Mindset
10 18 (1.21%) Animation
11 17 (1.14%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 15 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
12 15 (1.01%) Virtual Reality
13 14 (0.94%) NHS
14 13 (0.87%) Algorithms
14 13 (0.87%) Augmented Reality
14 13 (0.87%) Distributed Systems
14 13 (0.87%) Management Information System
14 13 (0.87%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 105 (7.06%) Windows
2 47 (3.16%) Android
3 42 (2.82%) Apple iOS
4 34 (2.29%) Windows 10
5 25 (1.68%) Mac OS
6 16 (1.08%) Linux
7 9 (0.61%) Windows Server
8 6 (0.40%) Unix
9 5 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
10 4 (0.27%) Windows 7
10 4 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.067%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 500 (33.62%) UX Design
2 455 (30.60%) Agile
3 238 (16.01%) AI
4 214 (14.39%) Problem-Solving
5 204 (13.72%) User Research
6 202 (13.58%) Analytics
7 182 (12.24%) Continuous Improvement
8 177 (11.90%) Stakeholder Management
9 170 (11.43%) CI/CD
10 161 (10.83%) Roadmaps
11 160 (10.76%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 148 (9.95%) DevOps
13 142 (9.55%) Prototyping
14 136 (9.15%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
15 129 (8.68%) UX Research
16 124 (8.34%) Service Design
16 124 (8.34%) Wireframes
17 123 (8.27%) Decision-Making
18 111 (7.46%) Workshop Facilitation
19 102 (6.86%) Usability Testing
Programming Languages
1 159 (10.69%) JavaScript
2 128 (8.61%) Python
3 125 (8.41%) SQL
4 115 (7.73%) Java
5 109 (7.33%) TypeScript
6 53 (3.56%) C#
7 48 (3.23%) PowerShell
8 33 (2.22%) Kotlin
9 21 (1.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 19 (1.28%) Bash
11 14 (0.94%) Swift
12 11 (0.74%) C++
13 9 (0.61%) Lua
14 8 (0.54%) Korn
15 6 (0.40%) Perl
15 6 (0.40%) VBA
16 5 (0.34%) Apex Code
16 5 (0.34%) R
16 5 (0.34%) Scala
17 4 (0.27%) PHP
Qualifications
1 195 (13.11%) Security Cleared
2 145 (9.75%) SC Cleared
3 134 (9.01%) Degree
4 29 (1.95%) BPSS Clearance
4 29 (1.95%) Computer Science Degree
5 25 (1.68%) DV Cleared
6 21 (1.41%) Microsoft Certification
7 13 (0.87%) Azure Certification
7 13 (0.87%) Master's Degree
8 10 (0.67%) Cisco Certification
9 7 (0.47%) CCNP
9 7 (0.47%) ITIL Certification
10 6 (0.40%) CCA
10 6 (0.40%) CCIE
11 5 (0.34%) Citrix Certification
11 5 (0.34%) PMI Certification
11 5 (0.34%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 4 (0.27%) DBS Check
12 4 (0.27%) ISTQB
12 4 (0.27%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 257 (17.28%) Accessibility
2 112 (7.53%) QA
3 84 (5.65%) WCAG
4 49 (3.30%) Data Quality
5 33 (2.22%) GDPR
6 20 (1.34%) Actionable Recommendations
7 18 (1.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 7 (0.47%) Cyber Essentials
8 7 (0.47%) PMO
8 7 (0.47%) SLA
9 6 (0.40%) GMP
9 6 (0.40%) GxP
10 4 (0.27%) GRC
10 4 (0.27%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 4 (0.27%) PCI DSS
11 3 (0.20%) Disclosure Scotland
11 3 (0.20%) HIPAA
11 3 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 3 (0.20%) NCSC
11 3 (0.20%) NIST
System Software
1 69 (4.64%) Active Directory
2 53 (3.56%) Docker
3 20 (1.34%) Virtual Desktop
4 17 (1.14%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (0.40%) Firmware
6 4 (0.27%) Hyper-V
6 4 (0.27%) Microsoft App-V
7 3 (0.20%) BitLocker
8 2 (0.13%) VMware Workstation
8 2 (0.13%) XenApp
8 2 (0.13%) XenDesktop
9 1 (0.067%) ISA Server
9 1 (0.067%) Varnish
9 1 (0.067%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 56 (3.77%) Kubernetes
2 48 (3.23%) Terraform
3 39 (2.62%) Microsoft Intune
4 35 (2.35%) Grafana
5 33 (2.22%) SCCM
6 18 (1.21%) Single Sign-On
7 17 (1.14%) Ansible
8 10 (0.67%) Prometheus
9 8 (0.54%) Jamf Pro
10 4 (0.27%) Podman
11 3 (0.20%) HP ALM
11 3 (0.20%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
12 2 (0.13%) Clonezilla
12 2 (0.13%) Failover Clustering
12 2 (0.13%) Packer
12 2 (0.13%) SysTrack
12 2 (0.13%) WSUS
13 1 (0.067%) AirWatch
13 1 (0.067%) Argo
13 1 (0.067%) Rancher
Vendors
1 218 (14.66%) Microsoft
2 92 (6.19%) Adobe
3 65 (4.37%) Google
4 62 (4.17%) ServiceNow
5 42 (2.82%) Oracle
5 42 (2.82%) Salesforce
6 39 (2.62%) SAP
7 22 (1.48%) Citrix
8 20 (1.34%) Splunk
9 19 (1.28%) Databricks
10 17 (1.14%) VMware
10 17 (1.14%) Workday
11 16 (1.08%) Apple
11 16 (1.08%) Cisco
11 16 (1.08%) Dynatrace
12 11 (0.74%) Aruba
13 9 (0.61%) Foundry
13 9 (0.61%) MuleSoft
13 9 (0.61%) OpenAI
14 7 (0.47%) HP