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

6 months to
15 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 69 69 71
Rank change year-on-year 0 +2 -4
Contract jobs citing User Experience 1,306 1,035 1,232
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.52% 3.25% 2.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.01% 3.66% 3.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 883 624 836
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 £564 £588 £588
90th Percentile £650 £699 £697
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £456 £475
% change year-on-year -1.32% -4.00% -4.52%
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 32,585 28,260 37,041
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.84% 88.76% 87.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,582 17,185 24,531
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 £742 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,992 898 1,578
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £14.17
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.56 £18.04
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -19.75% +15.71%
75th Percentile £55.89 £62.24 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.75 £75.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £30.45 £43.33
% change year-on-year -21.76% -29.73% +46.88%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 +1 1,126 £475 -5.00% 786
London -9 584 £475 -9.52% 225
UK excluding London -3 571 £450 -1.32% 705
Work from Home -22 338 £461 -7.75% 418
North of England +22 203 £410 -8.89% 155
North West +21 129 £400 -11.11% 72
Midlands -1 107 £480 +18.52% 89
South East -4 105 £400 -20.00% 233
West Midlands -8 68 £435 -13.00% 51
South West -2 63 £475 -16.30% 82
Yorkshire -8 58 £500 +11.11% 57
Scotland -17 57 £470 +4.44% 30
East Midlands -4 39 £520 +46.07% 38
East of England -8 33 £460 +1.32% 87
North East +3 15 £410 - 26
Wales +5 12 £331 -22.08% 34
Northern Ireland -12 1 £625 +92.31% 13

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 57 (4.36%) Confluence
2 55 (4.21%) SharePoint
3 47 (3.60%) CMS
4 23 (1.76%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 13 (1.00%) Microsoft Exchange
6 12 (0.92%) Headless CMS
7 11 (0.84%) SugarCRM
8 10 (0.77%) Apache
9 8 (0.61%) Sitecore CMS
9 8 (0.61%) 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 Server
Applications
1 50 (3.83%) Sketch
2 35 (2.68%) Adobe XD
3 24 (1.84%) MS Visio
4 22 (1.68%) Microsoft Office
5 20 (1.53%) Chatbot
6 17 (1.30%) InVision
7 15 (1.15%) Microsoft Excel
8 12 (0.92%) Adobe Illustrator
8 12 (0.92%) Photoshop
9 8 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
9 8 (0.61%) Trello
10 7 (0.54%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 7 (0.54%) Microsoft Project
11 5 (0.38%) Adobe After Effects
11 5 (0.38%) 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 (1.68%) SAP S/4HANA
2 15 (1.15%) 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
1 224 (17.15%) Azure
2 158 (12.10%) Figma
3 157 (12.02%) AWS
4 84 (6.43%) Power Platform
5 77 (5.90%) SaaS
6 75 (5.74%) Microsoft 365
7 60 (4.59%) GCP
8 49 (3.75%) Entra ID
9 47 (3.60%) Azure DevOps
10 44 (3.37%) GitHub
11 34 (2.60%) Miro
12 30 (2.30%) Serverless
13 25 (1.91%) GitHub Actions
13 25 (1.91%) Google Analytics
14 22 (1.68%) PowerApps
15 21 (1.61%) Power Automate
16 19 (1.45%) Google Workspace
17 18 (1.38%) Sauce Labs
18 17 (1.30%) Dynamics 365
19 16 (1.23%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 28 (2.14%) DNS
2 25 (1.91%) Wireless
3 15 (1.15%) Internet
4 13 (1.00%) HTTP
5 11 (0.84%) VPN
6 9 (0.69%) DHCP
6 9 (0.69%) TCP/IP
6 9 (0.69%) Wi-Fi
7 8 (0.61%) Firewall
7 8 (0.61%) 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 (0.38%) Network Security
10 5 (0.38%) SSL
10 5 (0.38%) WAN
11 4 (0.31%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (4.13%) Power BI
2 43 (3.29%) MySQL
3 40 (3.06%) Relational Database
4 33 (2.53%) PostgreSQL
5 26 (1.99%) SQL Server
6 24 (1.84%) NoSQL
7 20 (1.53%) Tableau
8 18 (1.38%) Data Warehouse
9 14 (1.07%) MongoDB
10 13 (1.00%) BigQuery
11 12 (0.92%) Looker
11 12 (0.92%) Metadata
12 9 (0.69%) SAP HANA
13 8 (0.61%) Redis
14 7 (0.54%) Mixpanel
15 5 (0.38%) DynamoDB
16 4 (0.31%) Big Data
16 4 (0.31%) Pinecone
17 3 (0.23%) Power Query
17 3 (0.23%) Qlik Sense
Development Applications
1 127 (9.72%) JIRA
2 95 (7.27%) Git
3 48 (3.68%) GitLab
4 43 (3.29%) Jenkins
5 31 (2.37%) Cypress.io
6 29 (2.22%) Xcode
7 26 (1.99%) Android Studio
7 26 (1.99%) Eclipse
8 23 (1.76%) Axure RP
9 20 (1.53%) Browser DevTools
10 19 (1.45%) JUnit
11 18 (1.38%) Gradle
12 14 (1.07%) Postman
13 13 (1.00%) CircleCI
14 11 (0.84%) webpack
15 10 (0.77%) Artifactory
15 10 (0.77%) Selenium
16 9 (0.69%) Visual Website Optimizer
17 8 (0.61%) Cucumber
17 8 (0.61%) IntelliJ
General
1 450 (34.46%) Social Skills
2 248 (18.99%) Finance
3 185 (14.17%) Public Sector
4 159 (12.17%) Analytical Skills
5 100 (7.66%) Banking
6 86 (6.58%) Marketing
7 36 (2.76%) Influencing Skills
8 29 (2.22%) Legal
9 25 (1.91%) Presentation Skills
9 25 (1.91%) Retail
10 23 (1.76%) Manufacturing
11 22 (1.68%) Pharmaceutical
12 19 (1.45%) Documentation Skills
12 19 (1.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 15 (1.15%) Financial Institution
13 15 (1.15%) Telecoms
14 13 (1.00%) Investment Banking
15 12 (0.92%) Automotive
16 10 (0.77%) Organisational Skills
17 9 (0.69%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 234 (17.92%) Developer
2 225 (17.23%) Designer
3 177 (13.55%) Senior
4 125 (9.57%) UX Designer
5 109 (8.35%) Analyst
6 95 (7.27%) Lead
7 61 (4.67%) Business Analyst
8 54 (4.13%) Consultant
9 48 (3.68%) Senior Designer
10 47 (3.60%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
11 42 (3.22%) Architect
11 42 (3.22%) Product Designer
12 41 (3.14%) Service Designer
13 37 (2.83%) Support Engineer
14 35 (2.68%) Full-Stack Developer
14 35 (2.68%) User Researcher
15 34 (2.60%) UI Designer
16 33 (2.53%) Senior Developer
17 32 (2.45%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
18 31 (2.37%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 183 (14.01%) CSS
2 176 (13.48%) React
3 168 (12.86%) HTML
4 110 (8.42%) REST
5 97 (7.43%) RESTful
6 93 (7.12%) AngularJS
7 55 (4.21%) Node.js
8 51 (3.91%) HTML5
9 49 (3.75%) .NET
10 48 (3.68%) GraphQL
11 41 (3.14%) Spring
12 38 (2.91%) Jest
12 38 (2.91%) Spring Boot
13 37 (2.83%) CSS3
14 27 (2.07%) Redux
14 27 (2.07%) SOAP
15 25 (1.91%) JSON
15 25 (1.91%) Playwright
16 24 (1.84%) Next.js
17 23 (1.76%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 124 (9.49%) Product Ownership
2 104 (7.96%) Mobile App
3 65 (4.98%) Onboarding
4 27 (2.07%) Enterprise Software
5 26 (1.99%) Analytical Mindset
6 21 (1.61%) Data Structures
6 21 (1.61%) Management Information System
7 20 (1.53%) e-Learning
8 19 (1.45%) Low-Code
9 18 (1.38%) NHS
10 15 (1.15%) Data Centre
10 15 (1.15%) Learning Management System
11 14 (1.07%) AI Agents
11 14 (1.07%) Distributed Systems
12 13 (1.00%) CMDB
12 13 (1.00%) Graphic Design
12 13 (1.00%) Legacy Systems
12 13 (1.00%) Virtual Team
13 12 (0.92%) Data Protection Act
13 12 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 128 (9.80%) Windows
2 72 (5.51%) Android
3 59 (4.52%) Apple iOS
4 37 (2.83%) Linux
5 36 (2.76%) Windows 10
6 24 (1.84%) Unix
7 22 (1.68%) Mac OS
8 8 (0.61%) 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
1 487 (37.29%) Agile
2 445 (34.07%) UX Design
3 216 (16.54%) Problem-Solving
4 214 (16.39%) Analytics
5 180 (13.78%) CI/CD
6 179 (13.71%) User Research
7 156 (11.94%) DevOps
7 156 (11.94%) Stakeholder Management
8 140 (10.72%) Continuous Improvement
9 138 (10.57%) Roadmaps
10 135 (10.34%) AI
11 133 (10.18%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 133 (10.18%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
12 123 (9.42%) Service Design
13 118 (9.04%) Front End Development
14 112 (8.58%) Wireframes
15 106 (8.12%) Decision-Making
15 106 (8.12%) Usability Testing
16 100 (7.66%) Prototyping
17 95 (7.27%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 208 (15.93%) JavaScript
2 121 (9.26%) Java
3 119 (9.11%) Python
4 118 (9.04%) SQL
5 101 (7.73%) TypeScript
6 60 (4.59%) PowerShell
7 48 (3.68%) C#
8 34 (2.60%) Kotlin
9 26 (1.99%) Swift
10 23 (1.76%) Bash
10 23 (1.76%) Perl
11 19 (1.45%) PHP
12 12 (0.92%) C++
13 11 (0.84%) Objective-C
13 11 (0.84%) PL/SQL
14 10 (0.77%) Go
15 9 (0.69%) Scala
16 7 (0.54%) Lisp
17 6 (0.46%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 5 (0.38%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 170 (13.02%) Security Cleared
2 121 (9.26%) Degree
2 121 (9.26%) SC Cleared
3 39 (2.99%) BPSS Clearance
4 28 (2.14%) Computer Science Degree
5 17 (1.30%) DV Cleared
6 16 (1.23%) Master's Degree
7 13 (1.00%) PMI Certification
8 11 (0.84%) MOS
9 10 (0.77%) Microsoft Certification
10 9 (0.69%) OCA
10 9 (0.69%) Oracle Certification
11 8 (0.61%) CCNP
11 8 (0.61%) Cisco Certification
12 6 (0.46%) MCP
12 6 (0.46%) PMP
13 3 (0.23%) AWS Certification
13 3 (0.23%) CISSP
13 3 (0.23%) ISTQB
13 3 (0.23%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 245 (18.76%) Accessibility
2 140 (10.72%) QA
3 65 (4.98%) WCAG
4 63 (4.82%) GDPR
5 34 (2.60%) Data Quality
6 25 (1.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 18 (1.38%) Actionable Recommendations
7 18 (1.38%) SLA
8 8 (0.61%) GxP
9 6 (0.46%) NCSC
9 6 (0.46%) PMO
10 5 (0.38%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 5 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 4 (0.31%) PCI DSS
12 3 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
12 3 (0.23%) GMP
12 3 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
12 3 (0.23%) NIST
12 3 (0.23%) SOC 2
13 2 (0.15%) GRC
System Software
1 71 (5.44%) Active Directory
2 62 (4.75%) Docker
3 21 (1.61%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (0.38%) 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 50 (3.83%) Kubernetes
2 44 (3.37%) Microsoft Intune
3 34 (2.60%) Terraform
4 33 (2.53%) SCCM
5 19 (1.45%) Ansible
6 17 (1.30%) Grafana
7 16 (1.23%) 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 (16.00%) Microsoft
2 95 (7.27%) Adobe
3 82 (6.28%) Google
4 76 (5.82%) ServiceNow
5 52 (3.98%) Oracle
6 48 (3.68%) SAP
7 45 (3.45%) Salesforce
8 28 (2.14%) Splunk
9 22 (1.68%) VMware
10 18 (1.38%) Apple
11 16 (1.23%) Citrix
12 13 (1.00%) Cisco
12 13 (1.00%) Red Hat
13 12 (0.92%) Hotjar
13 12 (0.92%) Optimizely
13 12 (0.92%) Zscaler
14 10 (0.77%) Amplitude
14 10 (0.77%) MuleSoft
15 8 (0.61%) OpenAI
15 8 (0.61%) Sitecore