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

6 months to
11 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 67 65 70
Rank change year-on-year -2 +5 -1
Contract jobs citing User Experience 1,404 1,048 1,306
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.54% 3.40% 2.93%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.06% 3.81% 3.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 973 662 897
10th Percentile £310 £313 £313
25th Percentile £388 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £571 £588 £588
90th Percentile £650 £688 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £454 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +0.89% -5.26% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 23 40
10th Percentile £15.50 £25.26 £23.38
25th Percentile £17.69 £32.52 £25.00
Median hourly rate £35.55 £42.50 £43.03
Median % change year-on-year -16.35% -1.23% -28.29%
75th Percentile £60.66 £52.25 £72.60
90th Percentile £71.28 £70.60 £81.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.30 £30.33 £28.75
% change year-on-year -0.12% +5.50% -54.00%

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 34,545 27,534 38,814
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.04% 89.45% 87.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,908 16,837 25,471
10th Percentile £306 £306 £300
25th Percentile £408 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £717 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.50% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,083 848 2,117
10th Percentile £14.51 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.78 £21.03 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £33.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -2.99% +2.48%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.38 £60.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £72.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.08 £35.00
% change year-on-year -19.08% -11.20% +8.53%

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 11 February 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 11 February 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 11 February 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 +5 1,213 £475 -5.00% 670
London -10 638 £494 -4.17% 290
UK excluding London -1 602 £454 +0.89% 515
Work from Home -23 363 £475 -5.00% 374
North of England +23 219 £425 -5.56% 139
North West +27 150 £402 -10.67% 81
South East -14 114 £469 -6.25% 174
Midlands -12 110 £505 +26.25% 78
South West 0 67 £450 -18.18% 66
West Midlands -31 62 £475 -5.00% 51
Scotland -9 55 £450 - 15
Yorkshire -25 50 £513 +20.52% 40
East Midlands +7 48 £545 +53.09% 27
East of England -14 29 £454 +0.44% 37
North East -2 18 £405 -4.71% 19
Wales +10 15 £300 -29.41% 11
Northern Ireland -9 4 £625 +47.06% 3

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 65 (4.63%) Confluence
2 57 (4.06%) SharePoint
3 47 (3.35%) CMS
4 24 (1.71%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 13 (0.93%) Microsoft Exchange
6 12 (0.85%) Headless CMS
7 11 (0.78%) SugarCRM
8 9 (0.64%) Apache
9 8 (0.57%) Sitecore CMS
9 8 (0.57%) Umbraco
10 4 (0.28%) Camunda
10 4 (0.28%) Ethereum
10 4 (0.28%) Hyperledger
11 3 (0.21%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.21%) Apache Spark
11 3 (0.21%) Jupyter
12 2 (0.14%) Apache Airflow
12 2 (0.14%) Appian
12 2 (0.14%) Drupal
12 2 (0.14%) WordPress
Applications
1 52 (3.70%) Sketch
2 36 (2.56%) Adobe XD
3 26 (1.85%) MS Visio
4 22 (1.57%) Microsoft Office
5 19 (1.35%) Chatbot
6 18 (1.28%) Microsoft Excel
7 14 (1.00%) InVision
8 11 (0.78%) Photoshop
9 10 (0.71%) Adobe Illustrator
10 8 (0.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
11 6 (0.43%) Spreadsheet
11 6 (0.43%) Trello
12 5 (0.36%) Adobe After Effects
12 5 (0.36%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 4 (0.28%) UXPin
14 3 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
14 3 (0.21%) UserZoom
15 2 (0.14%) Autodesk Smoke
15 2 (0.14%) InDesign
15 2 (0.14%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 19 (1.35%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (1.21%) SAP S/4HANA
3 5 (0.36%) Shopify
3 5 (0.36%) Workday HCM
4 3 (0.21%) SAP CO
4 3 (0.21%) SAP FI
4 3 (0.21%) SAP FI/CO
5 2 (0.14%) iTrent
5 2 (0.14%) Magento
5 2 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.14%) SAP SD
5 2 (0.14%) SAP Travel Management
5 2 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.071%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.071%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.071%) NEC Housing
6 1 (0.071%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.071%) Sage X3
6 1 (0.071%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.071%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 238 (16.95%) Azure
2 193 (13.75%) Figma
3 155 (11.04%) AWS
4 93 (6.62%) Power Platform
5 77 (5.48%) Microsoft 365
6 76 (5.41%) SaaS
7 68 (4.84%) GCP
8 56 (3.99%) Entra ID
9 55 (3.92%) Azure DevOps
10 53 (3.77%) GitHub
11 34 (2.42%) Miro
12 32 (2.28%) GitHub Actions
12 32 (2.28%) Power Automate
13 30 (2.14%) PowerApps
14 27 (1.92%) Serverless
15 24 (1.71%) Google Workspace
16 23 (1.64%) Google Analytics
17 22 (1.57%) Cloud Computing
18 20 (1.42%) Dynamics 365
18 20 (1.42%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.85%) DNS
2 22 (1.57%) Wireless
3 17 (1.21%) HTTP
4 16 (1.14%) Internet
5 10 (0.71%) VPN
5 10 (0.71%) Wi-Fi
6 9 (0.64%) DHCP
6 9 (0.64%) TCP/IP
7 8 (0.57%) BGP
7 8 (0.57%) Cisco ISE
7 8 (0.57%) Intranet
8 7 (0.50%) Cisco Wireless
8 7 (0.50%) Firewall
8 7 (0.50%) NX-OS
8 7 (0.50%) VXLAN
9 6 (0.43%) Unified Communications
9 6 (0.43%) WAN
10 5 (0.36%) SSL
11 4 (0.28%) HTTPS
11 4 (0.28%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 59 (4.20%) Power BI
2 42 (2.99%) MySQL
3 40 (2.85%) Relational Database
4 34 (2.42%) PostgreSQL
5 30 (2.14%) NoSQL
6 27 (1.92%) SQL Server
7 21 (1.50%) Data Warehouse
8 18 (1.28%) Tableau
9 15 (1.07%) MongoDB
10 14 (1.00%) BigQuery
11 12 (0.85%) Looker
11 12 (0.85%) Metadata
12 7 (0.50%) DynamoDB
12 7 (0.50%) Mixpanel
13 5 (0.36%) Hadoop
13 5 (0.36%) Oracle Reports
13 5 (0.36%) Pinecone
13 5 (0.36%) Power Query
13 5 (0.36%) Redis
13 5 (0.36%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 130 (9.26%) JIRA
2 96 (6.84%) Git
3 46 (3.28%) GitLab
4 39 (2.78%) Jenkins
5 32 (2.28%) Cypress.io
6 26 (1.85%) JUnit
7 25 (1.78%) Axure RP
7 25 (1.78%) Xcode
8 22 (1.57%) Android Studio
8 22 (1.57%) Eclipse
9 18 (1.28%) Gradle
10 17 (1.21%) Browser DevTools
11 12 (0.85%) Postman
12 11 (0.78%) CircleCI
13 9 (0.64%) Selenium
13 9 (0.64%) Visual Website Optimizer
14 8 (0.57%) Artifactory
14 8 (0.57%) Cucumber
14 8 (0.57%) IntelliJ
14 8 (0.57%) Mockito
General
1 473 (33.69%) Social Skills
2 270 (19.23%) Finance
3 195 (13.89%) Public Sector
4 168 (11.97%) Analytical Skills
5 110 (7.83%) Banking
6 81 (5.77%) Marketing
7 38 (2.71%) Retail
8 34 (2.42%) Influencing Skills
9 27 (1.92%) Legal
10 26 (1.85%) Presentation Skills
11 22 (1.57%) Pharmaceutical
12 19 (1.35%) Manufacturing
13 18 (1.28%) Financial Institution
14 16 (1.14%) Investment Banking
14 16 (1.14%) Telecoms
15 15 (1.07%) Documentation Skills
16 13 (0.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 12 (0.85%) Front Office
18 8 (0.57%) Local Government
18 8 (0.57%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 246 (17.52%) Developer
2 243 (17.31%) Designer
3 198 (14.10%) Senior
4 134 (9.54%) UX Designer
5 131 (9.33%) Analyst
6 90 (6.41%) Lead
7 68 (4.84%) Business Analyst
8 61 (4.34%) Senior Designer
9 59 (4.20%) Product Designer
10 53 (3.77%) Consultant
11 51 (3.63%) Architect
12 46 (3.28%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
13 42 (2.99%) User Researcher
14 39 (2.78%) Full-Stack Developer
14 39 (2.78%) Senior Developer
14 39 (2.78%) UI Designer
15 38 (2.71%) Service Designer
16 36 (2.56%) Software Engineer
16 36 (2.56%) Support Engineer
17 35 (2.49%) Senior UX Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 186 (13.25%) React
2 183 (13.03%) CSS
3 167 (11.89%) HTML
4 117 (8.33%) REST
5 96 (6.84%) RESTful
6 95 (6.77%) AngularJS
7 63 (4.49%) Spring
8 61 (4.34%) Spring Boot
9 57 (4.06%) Node.js
10 56 (3.99%) .NET
11 43 (3.06%) GraphQL
12 42 (2.99%) HTML5
13 35 (2.49%) Jest
14 34 (2.42%) CSS3
15 28 (1.99%) JSON
15 28 (1.99%) Playwright
15 28 (1.99%) Redux
16 26 (1.85%) Next.js
16 26 (1.85%) SOAP
17 23 (1.64%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 142 (10.11%) Product Ownership
2 104 (7.41%) Mobile App
3 59 (4.20%) Onboarding
4 29 (2.07%) Analytical Mindset
5 28 (1.99%) Enterprise Software
6 24 (1.71%) AI Agents
7 23 (1.64%) Data Structures
8 18 (1.28%) Low-Code
9 17 (1.21%) Distributed Systems
10 16 (1.14%) Cloud Native
10 16 (1.14%) NHS
11 15 (1.07%) Data Protection Act
11 15 (1.07%) Legacy Systems
12 14 (1.00%) Management Information System
12 14 (1.00%) Virtual Team
13 13 (0.93%) CMDB
13 13 (0.93%) Data Centre
13 13 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
14 12 (0.85%) e-Learning
15 11 (0.78%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 126 (8.97%) Windows
2 66 (4.70%) Android
3 50 (3.56%) Apple iOS
4 36 (2.56%) Windows 10
5 35 (2.49%) Linux
6 25 (1.78%) Mac OS
7 20 (1.42%) Unix
8 7 (0.50%) Windows Server
9 3 (0.21%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.14%) VMS
11 1 (0.071%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 1 (0.071%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 500 (35.61%) Agile
2 476 (33.90%) UX Design
3 228 (16.24%) Analytics
4 227 (16.17%) Problem-Solving
5 199 (14.17%) User Research
6 187 (13.32%) CI/CD
7 180 (12.82%) Stakeholder Management
8 165 (11.75%) DevOps
9 160 (11.40%) AI
10 158 (11.25%) Continuous Improvement
11 148 (10.54%) Roadmaps
12 146 (10.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 141 (10.04%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
14 127 (9.05%) Prototyping
15 124 (8.83%) Decision-Making
16 122 (8.69%) Service Design
16 122 (8.69%) Wireframes
17 117 (8.33%) Usability Testing
18 114 (8.12%) Front End Development
19 113 (8.05%) UX Research
Programming Languages
1 215 (15.31%) JavaScript
2 138 (9.83%) SQL
3 133 (9.47%) Java
4 123 (8.76%) TypeScript
5 117 (8.33%) Python
6 60 (4.27%) PowerShell
7 56 (3.99%) C#
8 34 (2.42%) Kotlin
9 24 (1.71%) Bash
10 20 (1.42%) Perl
10 20 (1.42%) PHP
11 18 (1.28%) Swift
12 12 (0.85%) PL/SQL
13 10 (0.71%) C++
13 10 (0.71%) Scala
14 9 (0.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 9 (0.64%) Go
15 7 (0.50%) Lisp
15 7 (0.50%) Objective-C
16 6 (0.43%) R
Qualifications
1 167 (11.89%) Security Cleared
2 126 (8.97%) Degree
3 122 (8.69%) SC Cleared
4 41 (2.92%) BPSS Clearance
5 20 (1.42%) Computer Science Degree
6 17 (1.21%) Master's Degree
7 12 (0.85%) DV Cleared
8 11 (0.78%) Microsoft Certification
8 11 (0.78%) MOS
9 9 (0.64%) CCNP
9 9 (0.64%) Cisco Certification
9 9 (0.64%) OCA
9 9 (0.64%) Oracle Certification
10 8 (0.57%) PMI Certification
11 3 (0.21%) Azure Certification
11 3 (0.21%) ITIL Certification
12 2 (0.14%) AWS Certification
12 2 (0.14%) ISTQB
12 2 (0.14%) PMP
12 2 (0.14%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 257 (18.30%) Accessibility
2 143 (10.19%) QA
3 74 (5.27%) WCAG
4 61 (4.34%) GDPR
5 42 (2.99%) Data Quality
6 25 (1.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 22 (1.57%) Actionable Recommendations
8 18 (1.28%) SLA
9 6 (0.43%) NCSC
9 6 (0.43%) PMO
10 5 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 5 (0.36%) GxP
11 3 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
11 3 (0.21%) GMP
11 3 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
11 3 (0.21%) HIPAA
11 3 (0.21%) NIST
11 3 (0.21%) SOC 2
12 2 (0.14%) EU AI Act
12 2 (0.14%) GRC
System Software
1 72 (5.13%) Active Directory
2 66 (4.70%) Docker
3 23 (1.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (0.64%) Virtual Desktop
5 3 (0.21%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.14%) ProxySG
7 1 (0.071%) BitLocker
7 1 (0.071%) ISA Server
7 1 (0.071%) Microsoft App-V
7 1 (0.071%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.071%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.071%) XenApp
7 1 (0.071%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 58 (4.13%) Kubernetes
2 46 (3.28%) Microsoft Intune
3 38 (2.71%) SCCM
3 38 (2.71%) Terraform
4 22 (1.57%) Grafana
5 16 (1.14%) Ansible
5 16 (1.14%) Single Sign-On
6 7 (0.50%) FortiGate
7 6 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
7 6 (0.43%) Prometheus
8 4 (0.28%) Argo
8 4 (0.28%) HP ALM
9 3 (0.21%) Nagios
9 3 (0.21%) Rancher
10 2 (0.14%) PingFederate
10 2 (0.14%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
10 2 (0.14%) SysTrack
11 1 (0.071%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 1 (0.071%) Istio
11 1 (0.071%) Podman
Vendors
1 235 (16.74%) Microsoft
2 91 (6.48%) Adobe
3 86 (6.13%) Google
4 73 (5.20%) ServiceNow
5 48 (3.42%) Oracle
6 47 (3.35%) SAP
7 42 (2.99%) Salesforce
8 30 (2.14%) Splunk
9 24 (1.71%) VMware
10 19 (1.35%) Citrix
11 14 (1.00%) Zscaler
12 13 (0.93%) Apple
12 13 (0.93%) Cisco
13 11 (0.78%) Hotjar
13 11 (0.78%) Optimizely
13 11 (0.78%) Red Hat
14 10 (0.71%) Amplitude
14 10 (0.71%) OpenAI
14 10 (0.71%) Workday
15 9 (0.64%) MuleSoft