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

6 months to
16 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 80 60 70
Rank change year-on-year -20 +10 -7
Contract jobs citing User Experience 1,403 1,088 1,270
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.06% 3.71% 2.90%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.59% 4.09% 3.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 964 747 849
10th Percentile £313 £305 £300
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £486 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.30% -4.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £663 £690 £695
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £429 £475
% change year-on-year +10.79% -9.74% +2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 45 22 49
10th Percentile £17.11 £26.78 £16.25
25th Percentile £21.33 £41.42 £25.00
Median hourly rate £50.00 £51.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% +58.46% -13.91%
75th Percentile £63.50 £80.35 £61.75
90th Percentile £78.90 £94.50 £73.07
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £70.00 £25.00
% change year-on-year -28.57% +180.00% -28.57%

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 39,056 26,574 37,868
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.05% 90.71% 86.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,707 17,203 24,522
10th Percentile £316 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £635 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £488 £500
% change year-on-year - -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,310 1,024 2,401
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.93 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.54 £18.51 £15.89
Median hourly rate £37.16 £30.45 £33.55
Median % change year-on-year +22.04% -9.24% -7.45%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £57.83
90th Percentile £78.25 £75.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £29.00 £33.07
% change year-on-year +31.90% -12.29% -8.47%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 -19 1,212 £485 -3.00% 1,521
London -20 628 £500 -2.91% 609
UK excluding London -5 603 £475 +10.79% 1,008
Work from Home -27 361 £475 -2.56% 376
North of England +3 201 £449 -0.33% 349
Midlands -16 129 £500 +25.00% 133
North West +4 126 £420 -6.67% 244
South East -16 118 £490 -2.00% 276
West Midlands -23 88 £475 +2.70% 76
South West -14 66 £475 +26.67% 75
Scotland -7 51 £525 +20.00% 20
Yorkshire -26 51 £500 +24.84% 82
East Midlands -7 41 £550 +53.63% 57
East of England -26 26 £413 -13.61% 153
North East -6 22 £405 -15.63% 25
Wales -10 15 £375 +22.55% 10
Northern Ireland -7 3 - - 7

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 55 (3.92%) SharePoint
2 48 (3.42%) Confluence
3 38 (2.71%) CMS
4 19 (1.35%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 18 (1.28%) Microsoft Exchange
6 8 (0.57%) Apache
7 6 (0.43%) Headless CMS
7 6 (0.43%) Sitecore CMS
7 6 (0.43%) Umbraco
8 5 (0.36%) Camunda
9 4 (0.29%) Ethereum
9 4 (0.29%) Hyperledger
9 4 (0.29%) Mendix
10 3 (0.21%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.21%) Apache Spark
10 3 (0.21%) Drupal
10 3 (0.21%) Jupyter
10 3 (0.21%) nginx
11 2 (0.14%) IIS
11 2 (0.14%) WordPress
Applications
1 46 (3.28%) Sketch
2 34 (2.42%) Adobe XD
3 27 (1.92%) Microsoft Excel
4 22 (1.57%) MS Visio
5 19 (1.35%) Chatbot
6 14 (1.00%) InVision
6 14 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
7 11 (0.78%) Photoshop
8 7 (0.50%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 7 (0.50%) Adobe Illustrator
9 6 (0.43%) Adobe After Effects
9 6 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
9 6 (0.43%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.36%) Trello
11 3 (0.21%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
11 3 (0.21%) UserZoom
11 3 (0.21%) UXPin
12 2 (0.14%) Autodesk Smoke
12 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%) 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%) Elite 3E
7 1 (0.071%) Integrated Workplace Management System
7 1 (0.071%) iTrent
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
1 225 (16.04%) Azure
2 198 (14.11%) Figma
3 126 (8.98%) AWS
4 102 (7.27%) Power Platform
5 90 (6.41%) Microsoft 365
6 64 (4.56%) Azure DevOps
7 56 (3.99%) Entra ID
8 55 (3.92%) GitHub
9 53 (3.78%) GCP
10 40 (2.85%) SaaS
11 37 (2.64%) Power Automate
11 37 (2.64%) PowerApps
12 36 (2.57%) Serverless
13 32 (2.28%) GitHub Actions
14 31 (2.21%) Microsoft Copilot
15 24 (1.71%) Dynamics 365
16 23 (1.64%) Google Workspace
16 23 (1.64%) Miro
17 22 (1.57%) Cloud Computing
18 20 (1.43%) Google Sheets
Communications & Networking
1 18 (1.28%) DNS
2 14 (1.00%) LAN
2 14 (1.00%) Wireless
3 11 (0.78%) DHCP
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%) HTTP
4 10 (0.71%) VPN
4 10 (0.71%) WAN
5 9 (0.64%) Firewall
6 8 (0.57%) Network Security
6 8 (0.57%) SSL
6 8 (0.57%) TCP/IP
7 7 (0.50%) Cisco Wireless
8 6 (0.43%) Cisco ISE
8 6 (0.43%) WLAN
9 5 (0.36%) 5G
9 5 (0.36%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 72 (5.13%) Power BI
2 31 (2.21%) Relational Database
3 29 (2.07%) NoSQL
4 28 (2.00%) PostgreSQL
5 25 (1.78%) SQL Server
6 24 (1.71%) Data Warehouse
7 20 (1.43%) MySQL
8 18 (1.28%) Metadata
8 18 (1.28%) Tableau
9 16 (1.14%) MongoDB
10 11 (0.78%) BigQuery
11 10 (0.71%) Power Query
12 8 (0.57%) Looker
13 7 (0.50%) Pinecone
14 6 (0.43%) DynamoDB
14 6 (0.43%) Oracle BI Publisher
14 6 (0.43%) ZAP BI
15 5 (0.36%) Big Data
15 5 (0.36%) Hadoop
15 5 (0.36%) Redis
Development Applications
1 107 (7.63%) JIRA
2 82 (5.84%) Git
3 40 (2.85%) GitLab
4 28 (2.00%) Cypress.io
4 28 (2.00%) Jenkins
5 26 (1.85%) JUnit
6 20 (1.43%) Axure RP
7 14 (1.00%) Gradle
8 13 (0.93%) Selenium
9 12 (0.86%) CircleCI
10 11 (0.78%) Android Studio
11 10 (0.71%) Browser DevTools
12 9 (0.64%) Xcode
13 8 (0.57%) Mockito
13 8 (0.57%) Postman
13 8 (0.57%) Visual Studio
13 8 (0.57%) Vite
14 7 (0.50%) Artifactory
14 7 (0.50%) Jasmine
15 6 (0.43%) Mocha
General
1 453 (32.29%) Social Skills
2 266 (18.96%) Finance
3 198 (14.11%) Public Sector
4 168 (11.97%) Analytical Skills
5 116 (8.27%) Banking
6 54 (3.85%) Marketing
7 49 (3.49%) Retail
8 32 (2.28%) Legal
9 29 (2.07%) Influencing Skills
9 29 (2.07%) Presentation Skills
10 24 (1.71%) Manufacturing
11 21 (1.50%) Documentation Skills
12 20 (1.43%) Pharmaceutical
13 17 (1.21%) Games
14 15 (1.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 15 (1.07%) Publishing
15 14 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
16 13 (0.93%) Front Office
16 13 (0.93%) Investment Banking
17 12 (0.86%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 278 (19.81%) Designer
2 211 (15.04%) Senior
3 207 (14.75%) Developer
4 137 (9.76%) UX Designer
5 130 (9.27%) Analyst
6 68 (4.85%) Lead
7 66 (4.70%) Business Analyst
8 65 (4.63%) Consultant
9 61 (4.35%) Product Designer
10 60 (4.28%) Architect
11 56 (3.99%) Senior Designer
12 50 (3.56%) User Researcher
13 47 (3.35%) UI Designer
14 42 (2.99%) Service Designer
15 39 (2.78%) Senior Developer
16 36 (2.57%) Full-Stack Developer
16 36 (2.57%) IT Support
16 36 (2.57%) Software Engineer
16 36 (2.57%) Support Engineer
16 36 (2.57%) UI/UX Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 160 (11.40%) React
2 145 (10.33%) CSS
3 135 (9.62%) HTML
4 114 (8.13%) REST
5 83 (5.92%) RESTful
6 81 (5.77%) AngularJS
7 66 (4.70%) Spring
8 65 (4.63%) Spring Boot
9 59 (4.21%) .NET
10 41 (2.92%) HTML5
11 37 (2.64%) Node.js
12 36 (2.57%) CSS3
13 35 (2.49%) GraphQL
13 35 (2.49%) Redux
14 32 (2.28%) Jest
15 29 (2.07%) JSON
16 27 (1.92%) Next.js
17 25 (1.78%) Vue
18 22 (1.57%) Kafka
19 21 (1.50%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 137 (9.76%) Product Ownership
2 74 (5.27%) Mobile App
3 48 (3.42%) Onboarding
4 31 (2.21%) Enterprise Software
5 30 (2.14%) AI Agents
6 28 (2.00%) Data Structures
7 25 (1.78%) Analytical Mindset
8 19 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
9 18 (1.28%) Cloud Native
9 18 (1.28%) Distributed Systems
9 18 (1.28%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 15 (1.07%) NHS
11 13 (0.93%) Algorithms
11 13 (0.93%) Legacy Systems
11 13 (0.93%) Self-Motivation
12 12 (0.86%) Augmented Reality
12 12 (0.86%) Virtual Reality
13 11 (0.78%) Graphic Design
13 11 (0.78%) Management Information System
14 10 (0.71%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 106 (7.56%) Windows
2 41 (2.92%) Android
3 39 (2.78%) Windows 10
4 31 (2.21%) Apple iOS
5 22 (1.57%) Mac OS
6 14 (1.00%) Linux
7 8 (0.57%) Windows Server
8 6 (0.43%) Unix
9 3 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.071%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 1 (0.071%) Windows 7
11 1 (0.071%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 459 (32.72%) Agile
2 457 (32.57%) UX Design
3 224 (15.97%) Problem-Solving
4 208 (14.83%) User Research
5 204 (14.54%) Analytics
6 203 (14.47%) AI
7 176 (12.54%) CI/CD
8 170 (12.12%) Stakeholder Management
9 168 (11.97%) DevOps
10 164 (11.69%) Continuous Improvement
10 164 (11.69%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 145 (10.33%) Roadmaps
12 141 (10.05%) Prototyping
13 135 (9.62%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
14 130 (9.27%) Wireframes
15 127 (9.05%) Service Design
16 120 (8.55%) Decision-Making
17 118 (8.41%) UX Research
18 105 (7.48%) Usability Testing
19 95 (6.77%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 177 (12.62%) JavaScript
2 137 (9.76%) SQL
3 126 (8.98%) Java
4 118 (8.41%) Python
5 111 (7.91%) TypeScript
6 63 (4.49%) C#
7 48 (3.42%) PowerShell
8 29 (2.07%) Kotlin
9 17 (1.21%) Bash
10 15 (1.07%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 11 (0.78%) C++
12 9 (0.64%) Lua
13 8 (0.57%) Perl
13 8 (0.57%) Swift
14 7 (0.50%) Korn
14 7 (0.50%) PHP
14 7 (0.50%) PL/SQL
15 6 (0.43%) Go
15 6 (0.43%) Scala
15 6 (0.43%) VBA
Qualifications
1 185 (13.19%) Security Cleared
2 135 (9.62%) SC Cleared
3 117 (8.34%) Degree
4 35 (2.49%) BPSS Clearance
5 28 (2.00%) Computer Science Degree
6 20 (1.43%) Microsoft Certification
7 18 (1.28%) DV Cleared
8 15 (1.07%) Master's Degree
9 13 (0.93%) Azure Certification
9 13 (0.93%) Cisco Certification
10 11 (0.78%) CCNP
11 8 (0.57%) PMI Certification
12 6 (0.43%) CCA
12 6 (0.43%) CCIE
12 6 (0.43%) Citrix Certification
12 6 (0.43%) OCA
12 6 (0.43%) Oracle Certification
13 4 (0.29%) ISTQB
13 4 (0.29%) MOS
13 4 (0.29%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 247 (17.61%) Accessibility
2 126 (8.98%) QA
3 75 (5.35%) WCAG
4 46 (3.28%) Data Quality
5 39 (2.78%) GDPR
6 23 (1.64%) Actionable Recommendations
7 16 (1.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 11 (0.78%) 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 (5.42%) Active Directory
2 60 (4.28%) Docker
3 20 (1.43%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (1.21%) Virtual Desktop
5 5 (0.36%) Firmware
6 4 (0.29%) Hyper-V
7 3 (0.21%) XenApp
7 3 (0.21%) XenDesktop
8 2 (0.14%) ProxySG
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 60 (4.28%) Kubernetes
2 43 (3.06%) Terraform
3 35 (2.49%) Microsoft Intune
4 26 (1.85%) SCCM
5 24 (1.71%) Grafana
6 15 (1.07%) Single Sign-On
7 13 (0.93%) Ansible
8 7 (0.50%) Jamf Pro
9 6 (0.43%) Prometheus
10 3 (0.21%) Argo
10 3 (0.21%) FortiGate
10 3 (0.21%) HP ALM
10 3 (0.21%) Nagios
10 3 (0.21%) Podman
10 3 (0.21%) Rancher
11 2 (0.14%) Failover Clustering
11 2 (0.14%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
11 2 (0.14%) SysTrack
11 2 (0.14%) WSUS
12 1 (0.071%) WMI
Vendors
1 211 (15.04%) Microsoft
2 90 (6.41%) Adobe
3 69 (4.92%) Google
4 57 (4.06%) ServiceNow
5 46 (3.28%) SAP
6 44 (3.14%) Oracle
7 37 (2.64%) Salesforce
8 25 (1.78%) Citrix
9 20 (1.43%) VMware
10 17 (1.21%) Cisco
11 16 (1.14%) Workday
12 15 (1.07%) Splunk
13 14 (1.00%) Apple
14 11 (0.78%) Zscaler
15 10 (0.71%) Sitecore
16 9 (0.64%) Databricks
16 9 (0.64%) Foundry
16 9 (0.64%) MuleSoft
16 9 (0.64%) OpenAI
17 8 (0.57%) Ekahau