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 7 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 69 71 70
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 -10
Contract jobs citing User Experience 1,274 1,093 1,335
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.51% 3.06% 2.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.95% 3.50% 3.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 846 658 928
10th Percentile £300 £300 £325
25th Percentile £375 £400 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -7.41%
75th Percentile £569 £588 £600
90th Percentile £663 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £456 £475
% change year-on-year -1.32% -4.00% -4.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 29 26
10th Percentile £15.50 £25.26 £17.72
25th Percentile £17.69 £30.00 £27.50
Median hourly rate £33.69 £41.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.84% -25.45% -12.00%
75th Percentile £44.75 £51.75 £72.83
90th Percentile £65.67 £74.00 £81.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £30.44 £58.79
% change year-on-year -17.37% -48.22% -9.56%

All Process and 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 32,247 31,236 40,271
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.88% 87.47% 88.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,285 18,990 26,947
10th Percentile £300 £308 £310
25th Percentile £405 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,090 1,084 1,559
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.25 £14.36
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.19 £18.94
Median hourly rate £25.13 £33.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.86% -22.35% +21.43%
75th Percentile £45.46 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £74.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.63 £32.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -30.37% -23.53% +30.77%

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 7 December 2025.

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 7 December 2025.

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 7 December 2025. 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 +9 1,098 £475 -5.00% 1,933
London -3 586 £475 -9.52% 295
UK excluding London +4 547 £450 -1.32% 1,849
Work from Home -15 345 £475 -1.30% 1,067
North of England +23 192 £425 -5.56% 399
North West +20 118 £401 -10.81% 193
South East -13 108 £475 +16.14% 508
Midlands -1 94 £450 -10.00% 367
West Midlands +5 67 £450 -16.28% 213
South West +8 64 £550 -4.35% 191
Yorkshire +2 59 £450 -5.26% 168
Scotland -16 58 £466 +3.61% 67
East of England -4 34 £468 +2.97% 267
East Midlands -11 27 £447 +11.75% 137
North East +9 14 £393 - 40
Wales +8 9 £282 -33.56% 44
Northern Ireland -10 1 £625 +19.05% 31

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 (4.47%) Confluence
2 52 (4.08%) CMS
3 48 (3.77%) SharePoint
4 15 (1.18%) Microsoft Exchange
5 13 (1.02%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 12 (0.94%) Headless CMS
7 11 (0.86%) SugarCRM
8 10 (0.78%) Sitecore CMS
9 8 (0.63%) Apache
9 8 (0.63%) Umbraco
10 5 (0.39%) WordPress
11 4 (0.31%) Apache Airflow
11 4 (0.31%) Jupyter
12 3 (0.24%) Apache Spark
12 3 (0.24%) Drupal
13 2 (0.16%) Cloud Foundry
13 2 (0.16%) SharePoint Server
13 2 (0.16%) WebLogic
14 1 (0.078%) Moodle
14 1 (0.078%) SharePoint 2010
Applications
1 52 (4.08%) Sketch
2 27 (2.12%) Adobe XD
3 21 (1.65%) Microsoft Office
4 20 (1.57%) Chatbot
4 20 (1.57%) MS Visio
5 16 (1.26%) InVision
6 15 (1.18%) Microsoft Excel
7 13 (1.02%) Adobe Illustrator
8 12 (0.94%) Photoshop
9 10 (0.78%) Trello
10 9 (0.71%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 9 (0.71%) Microsoft Project
11 8 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
12 5 (0.39%) Adobe After Effects
12 5 (0.39%) Camtasia
13 4 (0.31%) Siemens NX
14 3 (0.24%) Adobe Premiere
14 3 (0.24%) Snagit
14 3 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
14 3 (0.24%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 21 (1.65%) SAP S/4HANA
2 19 (1.49%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.47%) Teamcenter
4 5 (0.39%) Workday HCM
5 4 (0.31%) Magento
6 3 (0.24%) Salesforce CRM
6 3 (0.24%) SAP CO
6 3 (0.24%) SAP FI
6 3 (0.24%) SAP FI/CO
6 3 (0.24%) Shopify
7 2 (0.16%) iTrent
7 2 (0.16%) Maximo
7 2 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
7 2 (0.16%) SAP SD
7 2 (0.16%) SAP Travel Management
8 1 (0.078%) Adobe Campaign
8 1 (0.078%) Eloqua
8 1 (0.078%) NEC Housing
8 1 (0.078%) NetSuite
8 1 (0.078%) SAP PLM
Cloud Services
1 219 (17.19%) Azure
2 154 (12.09%) AWS
3 142 (11.15%) Figma
4 86 (6.75%) SaaS
5 83 (6.51%) Microsoft 365
6 78 (6.12%) Power Platform
7 69 (5.42%) GCP
8 55 (4.32%) Entra ID
9 47 (3.69%) Azure DevOps
10 37 (2.90%) GitHub
11 36 (2.83%) Miro
12 29 (2.28%) Serverless
13 26 (2.04%) Google Analytics
14 24 (1.88%) Power Automate
15 22 (1.73%) PowerApps
16 21 (1.65%) GitHub Actions
17 19 (1.49%) Dynamics 365
17 19 (1.49%) Google Workspace
17 19 (1.49%) Sauce Labs
18 16 (1.26%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 31 (2.43%) Wireless
2 30 (2.35%) DNS
3 18 (1.41%) Internet
4 12 (0.94%) VPN
5 11 (0.86%) HTTP
6 10 (0.78%) DHCP
6 10 (0.78%) Wi-Fi
7 9 (0.71%) Firewall
7 9 (0.71%) TCP/IP
8 8 (0.63%) SSL
9 7 (0.55%) BGP
9 7 (0.55%) Cisco ISE
9 7 (0.55%) Cisco Wireless
9 7 (0.55%) Network Security
9 7 (0.55%) NX-OS
9 7 (0.55%) VXLAN
10 6 (0.47%) Intranet
10 6 (0.47%) NFC
10 6 (0.47%) PPP
10 6 (0.47%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 49 (3.85%) Power BI
2 43 (3.38%) MySQL
3 38 (2.98%) PostgreSQL
3 38 (2.98%) Relational Database
4 28 (2.20%) SQL Server
5 24 (1.88%) Tableau
6 23 (1.81%) NoSQL
7 21 (1.65%) MongoDB
8 16 (1.26%) Data Warehouse
9 12 (0.94%) BigQuery
9 12 (0.94%) Looker
9 12 (0.94%) Redis
10 9 (0.71%) Metadata
11 8 (0.63%) SAP HANA
12 6 (0.47%) Mixpanel
13 5 (0.39%) DynamoDB
14 4 (0.31%) Amazon Aurora
14 4 (0.31%) Big Data
15 3 (0.24%) Amazon Athena
15 3 (0.24%) Qlik Sense
Development Applications
1 126 (9.89%) JIRA
2 92 (7.22%) Git
3 45 (3.53%) Jenkins
4 38 (2.98%) GitLab
5 31 (2.43%) Xcode
6 29 (2.28%) Eclipse
7 27 (2.12%) Android Studio
8 26 (2.04%) Axure RP
9 24 (1.88%) Cypress.io
10 21 (1.65%) Browser DevTools
11 20 (1.57%) webpack
12 15 (1.18%) Postman
13 14 (1.10%) JUnit
14 11 (0.86%) Selenium
15 9 (0.71%) Gradle
15 9 (0.71%) Visual Website Optimizer
16 8 (0.63%) Artifactory
17 7 (0.55%) Appium
17 7 (0.55%) CircleCI
18 6 (0.47%) Bitbucket
General
1 439 (34.46%) Social Skills
2 253 (19.86%) Finance
3 176 (13.81%) Public Sector
4 161 (12.64%) Analytical Skills
5 105 (8.24%) Banking
6 90 (7.06%) Marketing
7 36 (2.83%) Legal
8 34 (2.67%) Influencing Skills
9 31 (2.43%) Retail
10 27 (2.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 24 (1.88%) Documentation Skills
12 20 (1.57%) Manufacturing
12 20 (1.57%) Presentation Skills
13 18 (1.41%) Telecoms
14 17 (1.33%) Financial Institution
15 16 (1.26%) Investment Banking
15 16 (1.26%) Pharmaceutical
16 14 (1.10%) Publishing
17 13 (1.02%) Automotive
17 13 (1.02%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 234 (18.37%) Developer
2 214 (16.80%) Designer
3 168 (13.19%) Senior
4 114 (8.95%) UX Designer
5 104 (8.16%) Lead
6 101 (7.93%) Analyst
7 65 (5.10%) Business Analyst
8 59 (4.63%) Consultant
9 43 (3.38%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
10 42 (3.30%) Architect
11 40 (3.14%) Senior Designer
12 37 (2.90%) Support Engineer
13 35 (2.75%) UI Designer
14 33 (2.59%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
14 33 (2.59%) Service Designer
14 33 (2.59%) User Researcher
15 32 (2.51%) Senior Developer
16 30 (2.35%) Full-Stack Developer
17 29 (2.28%) React Developer
17 29 (2.28%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 174 (13.66%) CSS
2 158 (12.40%) HTML
2 158 (12.40%) React
3 95 (7.46%) RESTful
4 93 (7.30%) REST
5 73 (5.73%) AngularJS
6 66 (5.18%) Node.js
7 55 (4.32%) HTML5
8 51 (4.00%) .NET
9 47 (3.69%) GraphQL
10 36 (2.83%) CSS3
11 35 (2.75%) Jest
12 34 (2.67%) Redux
13 26 (2.04%) Bootstrap
13 26 (2.04%) Next.js
13 26 (2.04%) Web Services
14 25 (1.96%) SOAP
14 25 (1.96%) Spring
15 23 (1.81%) Spring Boot
15 23 (1.81%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 127 (9.97%) Product Ownership
2 119 (9.34%) Mobile App
3 70 (5.49%) Onboarding
4 27 (2.12%) Analytical Mindset
4 27 (2.12%) Enterprise Software
5 25 (1.96%) Management Information System
6 21 (1.65%) Low-Code
7 18 (1.41%) Data Structures
7 18 (1.41%) Hybrid Cloud
8 17 (1.33%) Data Centre
9 16 (1.26%) AI Agents
9 16 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
9 16 (1.26%) e-Learning
9 16 (1.26%) Learning Management System
9 16 (1.26%) Legacy Systems
10 14 (1.10%) Cloud Native
11 13 (1.02%) Greenfield Project
11 13 (1.02%) NHS
11 13 (1.02%) Virtual Team
12 11 (0.86%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 130 (10.20%) Windows
2 84 (6.59%) Android
3 72 (5.65%) Apple iOS
4 44 (3.45%) Linux
5 31 (2.43%) Windows 10
6 28 (2.20%) Mac OS
7 25 (1.96%) Unix
8 10 (0.78%) Windows Server
9 6 (0.47%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.16%) tvOS
10 2 (0.16%) VMS
11 1 (0.078%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 1 (0.078%) watchOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 482 (37.83%) Agile
2 422 (33.12%) UX Design
3 225 (17.66%) Problem-Solving
4 198 (15.54%) Analytics
5 175 (13.74%) CI/CD
6 157 (12.32%) DevOps
7 150 (11.77%) User Research
8 144 (11.30%) AI
9 139 (10.91%) Stakeholder Management
10 136 (10.68%) Roadmaps
11 130 (10.20%) Continuous Improvement
12 126 (9.89%) Front End Development
13 119 (9.34%) Service Design
14 116 (9.11%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
15 113 (8.87%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 100 (7.85%) Decision-Making
17 96 (7.54%) Wireframes
18 93 (7.30%) Scrum
19 86 (6.75%) Prototyping
19 86 (6.75%) User Stories
Programming Languages
1 194 (15.23%) JavaScript
2 134 (10.52%) Python
3 112 (8.79%) Java
4 105 (8.24%) SQL
5 95 (7.46%) TypeScript
6 56 (4.40%) PowerShell
7 52 (4.08%) C#
8 30 (2.35%) Kotlin
9 28 (2.20%) Swift
10 27 (2.12%) Bash
11 24 (1.88%) Perl
12 20 (1.57%) PHP
13 13 (1.02%) C++
14 12 (0.94%) Objective-C
15 11 (0.86%) PL/SQL
16 9 (0.71%) Go
17 7 (0.55%) Lisp
17 7 (0.55%) Scala
18 6 (0.47%) Apex Code
18 6 (0.47%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 183 (14.36%) Security Cleared
2 139 (10.91%) SC Cleared
3 117 (9.18%) Degree
4 41 (3.22%) BPSS Clearance
5 25 (1.96%) Computer Science Degree
6 20 (1.57%) Master's Degree
7 19 (1.49%) DV Cleared
8 15 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
9 13 (1.02%) PMI Certification
10 11 (0.86%) MOS
11 9 (0.71%) OCA
11 9 (0.71%) Oracle Certification
11 9 (0.71%) PMP
12 8 (0.63%) CCNP
12 8 (0.63%) Cisco Certification
13 6 (0.47%) ITIL Certification
14 4 (0.31%) Citrix Certification
15 3 (0.24%) AWS Certification
15 3 (0.24%) CISSP
15 3 (0.24%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 227 (17.82%) Accessibility
2 122 (9.58%) QA
3 62 (4.87%) GDPR
4 49 (3.85%) WCAG
5 39 (3.06%) Data Quality
6 23 (1.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 21 (1.65%) SLA
8 14 (1.10%) Actionable Recommendations
9 8 (0.63%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 5 (0.39%) GxP
10 5 (0.39%) PMO
10 5 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 4 (0.31%) NCSC
12 3 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
12 3 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
12 3 (0.24%) NIST
12 3 (0.24%) PCI DSS
12 3 (0.24%) PERC
12 3 (0.24%) SOC 2
13 2 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 70 (5.49%) Active Directory
2 59 (4.63%) Docker
3 22 (1.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (0.78%) Virtual Desktop
5 4 (0.31%) VMware ESXi
6 3 (0.24%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.16%) ProxySG
8 1 (0.078%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.078%) Firmware
8 1 (0.078%) Microsoft App-V
8 1 (0.078%) XenApp
8 1 (0.078%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 50 (3.92%) Microsoft Intune
2 45 (3.53%) Kubernetes
3 36 (2.83%) SCCM
4 35 (2.75%) Terraform
5 17 (1.33%) Ansible
6 14 (1.10%) Single Sign-On
7 12 (0.94%) Grafana
7 12 (0.94%) Jamf Pro
8 7 (0.55%) FortiGate
8 7 (0.55%) Prometheus
9 4 (0.31%) Argo
10 3 (0.24%) Nagios
10 3 (0.24%) Rancher
10 3 (0.24%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
11 2 (0.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 2 (0.16%) HP ALM
11 2 (0.16%) McAfee ePO
11 2 (0.16%) NSN NetAct
11 2 (0.16%) PingFederate
11 2 (0.16%) SysTrack
Vendors
1 220 (17.27%) Microsoft
2 85 (6.67%) Google
3 81 (6.36%) Adobe
4 71 (5.57%) ServiceNow
5 58 (4.55%) Oracle
6 53 (4.16%) SAP
7 44 (3.45%) Salesforce
8 29 (2.28%) Splunk
9 24 (1.88%) VMware
10 23 (1.81%) Apple
11 17 (1.33%) Citrix
12 16 (1.26%) Cisco
13 14 (1.10%) Optimizely
14 13 (1.02%) Hotjar
14 13 (1.02%) Zscaler
15 10 (0.78%) Sitecore
15 10 (0.78%) Workday
16 9 (0.71%) Amplitude
16 9 (0.71%) OpenAI
17 8 (0.63%) Ekahau