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

6 months to
25 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 66 66 68
Rank change year-on-year 0 +2 -1
Contract jobs citing User Experience 1,333 1,068 1,301
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.52% 3.39% 2.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.03% 3.80% 3.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 914 658 891
10th Percentile £300 £313 £313
25th Percentile £379 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -5.66%
75th Percentile £571 £588 £588
90th Percentile £650 £701 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £455 £475
% change year-on-year -1.10% -4.21% -3.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 25 36
10th Percentile £15.50 £25.26 £21.89
25th Percentile £17.69 £30.59 £25.00
Median hourly rate £35.55 £41.91 £48.75
Median % change year-on-year -15.18% -14.03% -22.00%
75th Percentile £60.31 £53.75 £72.90
90th Percentile £72.23 £74.26 £81.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.62 £32.21 £40.00
% change year-on-year -17.35% -19.48% -38.46%

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 33,102 28,081 38,688
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.38% 89.04% 87.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,974 17,044 25,480
10th Percentile £305 £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 £643
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,015 884 1,942
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £13.95
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.99 £17.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £36.33
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -10.55% +16.41%
75th Percentile £57.50 £62.50 £62.49
90th Percentile £70.00 £74.96 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.55 £30.45 £37.50
% change year-on-year -19.38% -18.80% +44.23%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 1,154 £475 -5.00% 1,060
London -10 599 £476 -9.29% 271
UK excluding London -1 583 £450 -1.10% 971
Work from Home -20 351 £475 -5.00% 605
North of England +12 207 £433 -3.78% 196
North West +17 136 £400 -11.11% 93
Midlands -1 113 £500 +17.65% 113
South East -6 107 £425 -15.00% 328
West Midlands -26 66 £456 -8.75% 51
South West +5 63 £500 -9.09% 118
Scotland -11 55 £463 +2.78% 40
Yorkshire -16 55 £500 +11.11% 67
East Midlands +6 47 £525 +47.47% 58
East of England -6 33 £468 +3.43% 134
North East -1 15 £410 -4.93% 36
Wales +6 14 £300 -29.41% 47
Northern Ireland -13 1 £625 +47.06% 20

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 58 (4.35%) Confluence
2 56 (4.20%) SharePoint
3 48 (3.60%) CMS
4 24 (1.80%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 13 (0.98%) Microsoft Exchange
6 12 (0.90%) Headless CMS
7 11 (0.83%) SugarCRM
8 8 (0.60%) Sitecore CMS
8 8 (0.60%) Umbraco
9 7 (0.53%) Apache
10 4 (0.30%) Camunda
10 4 (0.30%) Ethereum
10 4 (0.30%) Hyperledger
11 3 (0.23%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.23%) Apache Spark
11 3 (0.23%) Jupyter
12 2 (0.15%) Appian
12 2 (0.15%) Drupal
12 2 (0.15%) WordPress
13 1 (0.075%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 49 (3.68%) Sketch
2 34 (2.55%) Adobe XD
3 22 (1.65%) Microsoft Office
3 22 (1.65%) MS Visio
4 18 (1.35%) Chatbot
5 14 (1.05%) InVision
5 14 (1.05%) Microsoft Excel
6 10 (0.75%) Adobe Illustrator
6 10 (0.75%) Photoshop
7 8 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
8 7 (0.53%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.45%) Trello
10 5 (0.38%) Adobe After Effects
10 5 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
11 4 (0.30%) Camtasia
11 4 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
11 4 (0.30%) UXPin
12 3 (0.23%) UserZoom
13 2 (0.15%) Snagit
13 2 (0.15%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 21 (1.58%) SAP S/4HANA
2 17 (1.28%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.30%) Shopify
4 3 (0.23%) SAP CO
4 3 (0.23%) SAP FI
4 3 (0.23%) SAP FI/CO
4 3 (0.23%) Teamcenter
5 2 (0.15%) Adobe Campaign
5 2 (0.15%) iTrent
5 2 (0.15%) Magento
5 2 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.15%) SAP SD
5 2 (0.15%) SAP Travel Management
6 1 (0.075%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.075%) Eloqua
6 1 (0.075%) NEC Housing
6 1 (0.075%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.075%) Sprinklr
6 1 (0.075%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 228 (17.10%) Azure
2 169 (12.68%) Figma
3 151 (11.33%) AWS
4 86 (6.45%) Power Platform
5 79 (5.93%) SaaS
6 73 (5.48%) Microsoft 365
7 61 (4.58%) GCP
8 51 (3.83%) Azure DevOps
8 51 (3.83%) Entra ID
9 49 (3.68%) GitHub
10 33 (2.48%) Miro
11 29 (2.18%) GitHub Actions
12 28 (2.10%) Serverless
13 25 (1.88%) Power Automate
14 24 (1.80%) Google Analytics
14 24 (1.80%) PowerApps
15 23 (1.73%) Google Workspace
16 19 (1.43%) Cloud Computing
16 19 (1.43%) Dynamics 365
17 17 (1.28%) Sauce Labs
Communications & Networking
1 27 (2.03%) DNS
2 24 (1.80%) Wireless
3 17 (1.28%) Internet
4 16 (1.20%) HTTP
5 10 (0.75%) VPN
5 10 (0.75%) Wi-Fi
6 9 (0.68%) DHCP
6 9 (0.68%) Intranet
6 9 (0.68%) TCP/IP
7 8 (0.60%) BGP
7 8 (0.60%) Cisco ISE
8 7 (0.53%) Cisco Wireless
8 7 (0.53%) Firewall
8 7 (0.53%) NX-OS
8 7 (0.53%) VXLAN
9 6 (0.45%) Unified Communications
9 6 (0.45%) WAN
10 5 (0.38%) SSL
11 4 (0.30%) HTTPS
11 4 (0.30%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (4.05%) Power BI
2 43 (3.23%) MySQL
3 38 (2.85%) Relational Database
4 30 (2.25%) PostgreSQL
5 27 (2.03%) NoSQL
6 25 (1.88%) SQL Server
7 18 (1.35%) Data Warehouse
8 16 (1.20%) MongoDB
9 15 (1.13%) Tableau
10 14 (1.05%) BigQuery
11 12 (0.90%) Looker
12 11 (0.83%) Metadata
13 8 (0.60%) SAP HANA
14 7 (0.53%) Mixpanel
15 6 (0.45%) Redis
16 5 (0.38%) DynamoDB
17 4 (0.30%) Pinecone
17 4 (0.30%) Power Query
18 3 (0.23%) Amazon Aurora
18 3 (0.23%) Qlik Sense
Development Applications
1 126 (9.45%) JIRA
2 94 (7.05%) Git
3 47 (3.53%) GitLab
4 40 (3.00%) Jenkins
5 34 (2.55%) Cypress.io
6 28 (2.10%) Xcode
7 25 (1.88%) Android Studio
7 25 (1.88%) JUnit
8 24 (1.80%) Eclipse
9 23 (1.73%) Axure RP
10 19 (1.43%) Browser DevTools
11 18 (1.35%) Gradle
12 14 (1.05%) Postman
13 11 (0.83%) CircleCI
14 9 (0.68%) Visual Website Optimizer
15 8 (0.60%) Appium
15 8 (0.60%) Artifactory
15 8 (0.60%) Mocha
15 8 (0.60%) Selenium
15 8 (0.60%) webpack
General
1 457 (34.28%) Social Skills
2 249 (18.68%) Finance
3 188 (14.10%) Public Sector
4 163 (12.23%) Analytical Skills
5 99 (7.43%) Banking
6 87 (6.53%) Marketing
7 37 (2.78%) Influencing Skills
8 28 (2.10%) Legal
8 28 (2.10%) Retail
9 25 (1.88%) Presentation Skills
10 22 (1.65%) Pharmaceutical
11 20 (1.50%) Manufacturing
12 16 (1.20%) Telecoms
13 15 (1.13%) Documentation Skills
13 15 (1.13%) Financial Institution
13 15 (1.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 13 (0.98%) Investment Banking
15 11 (0.83%) Automotive
16 9 (0.68%) Front Office
16 9 (0.68%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 243 (18.23%) Developer
2 232 (17.40%) Designer
3 182 (13.65%) Senior
4 130 (9.75%) UX Designer
5 114 (8.55%) Analyst
6 92 (6.90%) Lead
7 63 (4.73%) Business Analyst
8 52 (3.90%) Consultant
9 51 (3.83%) Senior Designer
10 48 (3.60%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
11 45 (3.38%) Architect
11 45 (3.38%) Product Designer
12 39 (2.93%) Full-Stack Developer
12 39 (2.93%) User Researcher
13 37 (2.78%) Service Designer
14 36 (2.70%) Support Engineer
14 36 (2.70%) UI Designer
15 35 (2.63%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
15 35 (2.63%) Senior Developer
16 30 (2.25%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 186 (13.95%) CSS
2 183 (13.73%) React
3 170 (12.75%) HTML
4 111 (8.33%) REST
5 99 (7.43%) AngularJS
6 96 (7.20%) RESTful
7 56 (4.20%) .NET
8 54 (4.05%) Node.js
9 49 (3.68%) HTML5
10 48 (3.60%) Spring
11 47 (3.53%) GraphQL
12 46 (3.45%) Spring Boot
13 40 (3.00%) Jest
14 38 (2.85%) CSS3
15 28 (2.10%) Playwright
15 28 (2.10%) Redux
16 27 (2.03%) Next.js
16 27 (2.03%) SOAP
17 25 (1.88%) JSON
18 23 (1.73%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 130 (9.75%) Product Ownership
2 101 (7.58%) Mobile App
3 64 (4.80%) Onboarding
4 27 (2.03%) Analytical Mindset
4 27 (2.03%) Enterprise Software
5 20 (1.50%) AI Agents
6 19 (1.43%) Data Structures
7 18 (1.35%) Low-Code
7 18 (1.35%) Management Information System
7 18 (1.35%) NHS
8 15 (1.13%) e-Learning
9 14 (1.05%) Data Protection Act
9 14 (1.05%) Distributed Systems
9 14 (1.05%) Legacy Systems
10 13 (0.98%) Cloud Native
10 13 (0.98%) CMDB
10 13 (0.98%) Data Centre
10 13 (0.98%) Virtual Team
11 12 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
11 12 (0.90%) Learning Management System
Operating Systems
1 121 (9.08%) Windows
2 72 (5.40%) Android
3 54 (4.05%) Apple iOS
4 36 (2.70%) Windows 10
5 35 (2.63%) Linux
6 22 (1.65%) Unix
7 21 (1.58%) Mac OS
8 6 (0.45%) Windows Server
9 3 (0.23%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.15%) VMS
11 1 (0.075%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 490 (36.76%) Agile
2 464 (34.81%) UX Design
3 220 (16.50%) Problem-Solving
4 219 (16.43%) Analytics
5 185 (13.88%) User Research
6 183 (13.73%) CI/CD
7 165 (12.38%) Stakeholder Management
8 157 (11.78%) DevOps
9 143 (10.73%) Continuous Improvement
10 142 (10.65%) AI
11 139 (10.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 138 (10.35%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
13 137 (10.28%) Roadmaps
14 116 (8.70%) Front End Development
14 116 (8.70%) Wireframes
15 115 (8.63%) Service Design
16 110 (8.25%) Decision-Making
17 109 (8.18%) Usability Testing
18 107 (8.03%) Prototyping
19 100 (7.50%) UX Research
Programming Languages
1 214 (16.05%) JavaScript
2 125 (9.38%) SQL
3 122 (9.15%) Java
4 115 (8.63%) TypeScript
5 110 (8.25%) Python
6 58 (4.35%) PowerShell
7 55 (4.13%) C#
8 33 (2.48%) Kotlin
9 24 (1.80%) Bash
10 22 (1.65%) Perl
10 22 (1.65%) Swift
11 20 (1.50%) PHP
12 11 (0.83%) C++
12 11 (0.83%) PL/SQL
13 10 (0.75%) Go
13 10 (0.75%) Objective-C
14 9 (0.68%) Scala
15 7 (0.53%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 7 (0.53%) Lisp
16 5 (0.38%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 159 (11.93%) Security Cleared
2 121 (9.08%) Degree
3 117 (8.78%) SC Cleared
4 37 (2.78%) BPSS Clearance
5 26 (1.95%) Computer Science Degree
6 17 (1.28%) Master's Degree
7 11 (0.83%) DV Cleared
7 11 (0.83%) Microsoft Certification
7 11 (0.83%) MOS
7 11 (0.83%) PMI Certification
8 9 (0.68%) CCNP
8 9 (0.68%) Cisco Certification
8 9 (0.68%) OCA
8 9 (0.68%) Oracle Certification
9 6 (0.45%) MCP
10 5 (0.38%) PMP
11 3 (0.23%) Azure Certification
12 2 (0.15%) AWS Certification
12 2 (0.15%) CSPO
12 2 (0.15%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 247 (18.53%) Accessibility
2 137 (10.28%) QA
3 72 (5.40%) WCAG
4 64 (4.80%) GDPR
5 35 (2.63%) Data Quality
6 25 (1.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 19 (1.43%) Actionable Recommendations
8 16 (1.20%) SLA
9 8 (0.60%) GxP
10 6 (0.45%) NCSC
10 6 (0.45%) PMO
11 5 (0.38%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 5 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
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
13 2 (0.15%) PSD2
System Software
1 68 (5.10%) Active Directory
2 66 (4.95%) Docker
3 20 (1.50%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
5 3 (0.23%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.15%) ProxySG
7 1 (0.075%) BitLocker
7 1 (0.075%) ISA Server
7 1 (0.075%) Microsoft App-V
7 1 (0.075%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.075%) XenApp
7 1 (0.075%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 50 (3.75%) Kubernetes
2 42 (3.15%) Microsoft Intune
3 34 (2.55%) Terraform
4 33 (2.48%) SCCM
5 17 (1.28%) Ansible
6 16 (1.20%) Grafana
7 15 (1.13%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (0.53%) FortiGate
9 6 (0.45%) Prometheus
10 5 (0.38%) Jamf Pro
11 4 (0.30%) Argo
12 3 (0.23%) HP ALM
12 3 (0.23%) Nagios
12 3 (0.23%) Rancher
13 2 (0.15%) PingFederate
13 2 (0.15%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
13 2 (0.15%) SysTrack
14 1 (0.075%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 1 (0.075%) Istio
14 1 (0.075%) Podman
Vendors
1 212 (15.90%) Microsoft
2 93 (6.98%) Adobe
3 84 (6.30%) Google
4 73 (5.48%) ServiceNow
5 49 (3.68%) Oracle
6 47 (3.53%) SAP
7 46 (3.45%) Salesforce
8 27 (2.03%) Splunk
9 21 (1.58%) VMware
10 18 (1.35%) Apple
11 16 (1.20%) Citrix
12 13 (0.98%) Cisco
12 13 (0.98%) Zscaler
13 12 (0.90%) Optimizely
14 11 (0.83%) Hotjar
14 11 (0.83%) Red Hat
15 10 (0.75%) Amplitude
15 10 (0.75%) MuleSoft
16 9 (0.68%) OpenAI
17 8 (0.60%) Ekahau