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

6 months to
7 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 66 63 69
Rank change year-on-year -3 +6 0
Contract jobs citing User Experience 1,376 1,057 1,331
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.53% 3.40% 2.95%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.05% 3.80% 3.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 951 663 916
10th Percentile £306 £313 £313
25th Percentile £384 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £572 £588 £588
90th Percentile £650 £688 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £452 £475
% change year-on-year -0.44% -4.84% -1.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 23 39
10th Percentile £15.50 £25.26 £23.01
25th Percentile £17.69 £32.52 £25.00
Median hourly rate £35.55 £42.50 £46.06
Median % change year-on-year -16.35% -7.72% -24.81%
75th Percentile £60.66 £52.25 £72.70
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% -54.90%

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 33,986 27,793 39,321
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.08% 89.38% 87.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,549 16,924 25,862
10th Percentile £306 £306 £300
25th Percentile £406 £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 £716 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £477 £496 £500
% change year-on-year -3.88% -0.80% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,070 859 2,130
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.69 £21.00 £16.35
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -7.14% +7.69%
75th Percentile £58.75 £63.50 £61.13
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.51 £35.00
% change year-on-year -20.20% -9.97% +11.43%

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 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 7 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 7 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 +3 1,188 £475 -5.00% 813
London -10 625 £488 -6.70% 385
UK excluding London +5 589 £450 -0.44% 570
Work from Home -19 356 £475 -5.00% 421
North of England +17 210 £425 -5.56% 154
North West +21 142 £400 -11.11% 88
South East -5 113 £463 -7.50% 183
Midlands -10 110 £500 +25.00% 84
South West +3 66 £450 -14.29% 76
West Midlands -28 61 £463 -7.50% 54
Scotland -11 55 £450 - 18
Yorkshire -21 50 £513 +20.52% 50
East Midlands +3 49 £545 +53.09% 30
East of England -16 28 £457 +1.11% 41
North East -4 17 £410 -3.53% 17
Wales +11 15 £300 -29.41% 16
Northern Ireland -8 3 £625 +47.06% 5

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 63 (4.58%) Confluence
2 57 (4.14%) SharePoint
3 47 (3.42%) CMS
4 24 (1.74%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 13 (0.94%) Microsoft Exchange
6 12 (0.87%) Headless CMS
7 11 (0.80%) SugarCRM
8 9 (0.65%) Apache
9 8 (0.58%) Sitecore CMS
9 8 (0.58%) Umbraco
10 4 (0.29%) Camunda
10 4 (0.29%) Ethereum
10 4 (0.29%) Hyperledger
11 3 (0.22%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.22%) Apache Spark
11 3 (0.22%) Jupyter
12 2 (0.15%) Apache Airflow
12 2 (0.15%) Appian
12 2 (0.15%) Drupal
12 2 (0.15%) WordPress
Applications
1 51 (3.71%) Sketch
2 35 (2.54%) Adobe XD
3 25 (1.82%) MS Visio
4 23 (1.67%) Microsoft Office
5 19 (1.38%) Chatbot
6 16 (1.16%) Microsoft Excel
7 14 (1.02%) InVision
8 11 (0.80%) Photoshop
9 10 (0.73%) Adobe Illustrator
10 8 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
11 6 (0.44%) Trello
12 5 (0.36%) Adobe After Effects
12 5 (0.36%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 5 (0.36%) Spreadsheet
13 4 (0.29%) UXPin
14 3 (0.22%) Microsoft Project
14 3 (0.22%) UserZoom
15 2 (0.15%) Camtasia
15 2 (0.15%) InDesign
15 2 (0.15%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 20 (1.45%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (1.31%) SAP S/4HANA
3 5 (0.36%) Shopify
4 4 (0.29%) Workday HCM
5 3 (0.22%) SAP CO
5 3 (0.22%) SAP FI
5 3 (0.22%) SAP FI/CO
5 3 (0.22%) Teamcenter
6 2 (0.15%) Adobe Campaign
6 2 (0.15%) iTrent
6 2 (0.15%) Magento
6 2 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.15%) SAP SD
6 2 (0.15%) SAP Travel Management
7 1 (0.073%) Elite 3E
7 1 (0.073%) Eloqua
7 1 (0.073%) NEC Housing
7 1 (0.073%) NetSuite
7 1 (0.073%) Salesforce CRM
7 1 (0.073%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 234 (17.01%) Azure
2 182 (13.23%) Figma
3 151 (10.97%) AWS
4 92 (6.69%) Power Platform
5 75 (5.45%) Microsoft 365
5 75 (5.45%) SaaS
6 61 (4.43%) GCP
7 54 (3.92%) Azure DevOps
8 53 (3.85%) GitHub
9 52 (3.78%) Entra ID
10 34 (2.47%) Miro
11 32 (2.33%) GitHub Actions
12 31 (2.25%) Power Automate
13 30 (2.18%) PowerApps
14 27 (1.96%) Serverless
15 24 (1.74%) Google Workspace
16 23 (1.67%) Google Analytics
17 22 (1.60%) Cloud Computing
18 21 (1.53%) Dynamics 365
19 20 (1.45%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.89%) DNS
2 22 (1.60%) Wireless
3 17 (1.24%) HTTP
4 16 (1.16%) Internet
5 10 (0.73%) VPN
5 10 (0.73%) Wi-Fi
6 9 (0.65%) DHCP
6 9 (0.65%) TCP/IP
7 8 (0.58%) BGP
7 8 (0.58%) Cisco ISE
7 8 (0.58%) Intranet
8 7 (0.51%) Cisco Wireless
8 7 (0.51%) Firewall
8 7 (0.51%) NX-OS
8 7 (0.51%) VXLAN
9 6 (0.44%) Unified Communications
9 6 (0.44%) WAN
10 5 (0.36%) SSL
11 4 (0.29%) HTTPS
11 4 (0.29%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 58 (4.22%) Power BI
2 40 (2.91%) MySQL
3 39 (2.83%) Relational Database
4 31 (2.25%) PostgreSQL
5 28 (2.03%) NoSQL
6 26 (1.89%) SQL Server
7 19 (1.38%) Data Warehouse
8 18 (1.31%) Tableau
9 14 (1.02%) MongoDB
10 13 (0.94%) BigQuery
11 12 (0.87%) Looker
11 12 (0.87%) Metadata
12 7 (0.51%) Mixpanel
13 6 (0.44%) DynamoDB
14 5 (0.36%) Hadoop
14 5 (0.36%) Pinecone
14 5 (0.36%) Redis
14 5 (0.36%) SAP HANA
15 4 (0.29%) Oracle Reports
15 4 (0.29%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 128 (9.30%) JIRA
2 92 (6.69%) Git
3 47 (3.42%) GitLab
4 39 (2.83%) Jenkins
5 33 (2.40%) Cypress.io
6 25 (1.82%) Axure RP
6 25 (1.82%) JUnit
6 25 (1.82%) Xcode
7 22 (1.60%) Android Studio
7 22 (1.60%) Eclipse
8 18 (1.31%) Gradle
9 17 (1.24%) Browser DevTools
10 11 (0.80%) CircleCI
10 11 (0.80%) Postman
11 10 (0.73%) Selenium
12 9 (0.65%) Visual Website Optimizer
13 8 (0.58%) Artifactory
13 8 (0.58%) IntelliJ
13 8 (0.58%) Mocha
13 8 (0.58%) Mockito
General
1 466 (33.87%) Social Skills
2 262 (19.04%) Finance
3 192 (13.95%) Public Sector
4 165 (11.99%) Analytical Skills
5 105 (7.63%) Banking
6 81 (5.89%) Marketing
7 34 (2.47%) Influencing Skills
8 32 (2.33%) Retail
9 26 (1.89%) Presentation Skills
10 24 (1.74%) Legal
11 20 (1.45%) Pharmaceutical
12 17 (1.24%) Financial Institution
12 17 (1.24%) Manufacturing
13 16 (1.16%) Telecoms
14 15 (1.09%) Documentation Skills
15 14 (1.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 14 (1.02%) Investment Banking
16 9 (0.65%) Front Office
17 8 (0.58%) Games
17 8 (0.58%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 242 (17.59%) Developer
2 239 (17.37%) Designer
3 195 (14.17%) Senior
4 132 (9.59%) UX Designer
5 125 (9.08%) Analyst
6 89 (6.47%) Lead
7 65 (4.72%) Business Analyst
8 60 (4.36%) Senior Designer
9 55 (4.00%) Product Designer
10 51 (3.71%) Architect
10 51 (3.71%) Consultant
11 46 (3.34%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
12 40 (2.91%) User Researcher
13 38 (2.76%) Full-Stack Developer
13 38 (2.76%) Senior Developer
14 37 (2.69%) Service Designer
14 37 (2.69%) UI Designer
15 36 (2.62%) Support Engineer
16 35 (2.54%) Senior UX Designer
17 34 (2.47%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 183 (13.30%) React
2 181 (13.15%) CSS
3 165 (11.99%) HTML
4 113 (8.21%) REST
5 95 (6.90%) AngularJS
5 95 (6.90%) RESTful
6 58 (4.22%) Spring
7 56 (4.07%) .NET
7 56 (4.07%) Node.js
7 56 (4.07%) Spring Boot
8 43 (3.13%) GraphQL
9 42 (3.05%) HTML5
10 35 (2.54%) Jest
11 34 (2.47%) CSS3
12 28 (2.03%) JSON
12 28 (2.03%) Playwright
13 27 (1.96%) Redux
13 27 (1.96%) SOAP
14 26 (1.89%) Next.js
15 23 (1.67%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 139 (10.10%) Product Ownership
2 97 (7.05%) Mobile App
3 60 (4.36%) Onboarding
4 28 (2.03%) Analytical Mindset
4 28 (2.03%) Enterprise Software
5 24 (1.74%) AI Agents
6 23 (1.67%) Data Structures
7 18 (1.31%) Low-Code
8 17 (1.24%) Distributed Systems
9 16 (1.16%) Cloud Native
9 16 (1.16%) NHS
10 15 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
10 15 (1.09%) Legacy Systems
11 14 (1.02%) e-Learning
11 14 (1.02%) Management Information System
11 14 (1.02%) Virtual Team
12 13 (0.94%) CMDB
12 13 (0.94%) Data Centre
12 13 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
13 11 (0.80%) Mobile Banking
Operating Systems
1 125 (9.08%) Windows
2 66 (4.80%) Android
3 50 (3.63%) Apple iOS
4 36 (2.62%) Windows 10
5 35 (2.54%) Linux
6 24 (1.74%) Mac OS
7 20 (1.45%) Unix
8 7 (0.51%) Windows Server
9 3 (0.22%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.15%) VMS
11 1 (0.073%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 1 (0.073%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 493 (35.83%) Agile
2 468 (34.01%) UX Design
3 226 (16.42%) Analytics
4 224 (16.28%) Problem-Solving
5 190 (13.81%) User Research
6 181 (13.15%) CI/CD
7 180 (13.08%) Stakeholder Management
8 161 (11.70%) DevOps
9 160 (11.63%) AI
10 156 (11.34%) Continuous Improvement
11 147 (10.68%) Roadmaps
12 142 (10.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 139 (10.10%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
14 121 (8.79%) Decision-Making
14 121 (8.79%) Prototyping
15 119 (8.65%) Wireframes
16 115 (8.36%) Service Design
17 112 (8.14%) Front End Development
18 111 (8.07%) Usability Testing
19 110 (7.99%) UX Research
Programming Languages
1 215 (15.63%) JavaScript
2 135 (9.81%) SQL
3 126 (9.16%) Java
4 122 (8.87%) TypeScript
5 116 (8.43%) Python
6 59 (4.29%) PowerShell
7 57 (4.14%) C#
8 29 (2.11%) Kotlin
9 23 (1.67%) Bash
10 20 (1.45%) Perl
10 20 (1.45%) PHP
11 18 (1.31%) Swift
12 12 (0.87%) PL/SQL
13 11 (0.80%) C++
14 10 (0.73%) Scala
15 9 (0.65%) Go
16 8 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 7 (0.51%) Lisp
17 7 (0.51%) Objective-C
18 6 (0.44%) R
Qualifications
1 165 (11.99%) Security Cleared
2 121 (8.79%) Degree
2 121 (8.79%) SC Cleared
3 40 (2.91%) BPSS Clearance
4 20 (1.45%) Computer Science Degree
5 17 (1.24%) Master's Degree
6 11 (0.80%) DV Cleared
6 11 (0.80%) Microsoft Certification
6 11 (0.80%) MOS
7 9 (0.65%) CCNP
7 9 (0.65%) Cisco Certification
7 9 (0.65%) OCA
7 9 (0.65%) Oracle Certification
8 8 (0.58%) PMI Certification
9 3 (0.22%) Azure Certification
9 3 (0.22%) ITIL Certification
10 2 (0.15%) AWS Certification
10 2 (0.15%) CISM
10 2 (0.15%) PMP
10 2 (0.15%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 254 (18.46%) Accessibility
2 139 (10.10%) QA
3 74 (5.38%) WCAG
4 62 (4.51%) GDPR
5 41 (2.98%) Data Quality
6 25 (1.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 22 (1.60%) Actionable Recommendations
8 18 (1.31%) SLA
9 6 (0.44%) NCSC
9 6 (0.44%) PMO
10 5 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 5 (0.36%) GxP
11 3 (0.22%) Disclosure Scotland
11 3 (0.22%) GMP
11 3 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
11 3 (0.22%) HIPAA
11 3 (0.22%) NIST
11 3 (0.22%) SOC 2
12 2 (0.15%) GRC
12 2 (0.15%) PSD2
System Software
1 71 (5.16%) Active Directory
2 66 (4.80%) Docker
3 23 (1.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (0.65%) Virtual Desktop
5 3 (0.22%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.15%) ProxySG
7 1 (0.073%) BitLocker
7 1 (0.073%) ISA Server
7 1 (0.073%) Microsoft App-V
7 1 (0.073%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.073%) XenApp
7 1 (0.073%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 58 (4.22%) Kubernetes
2 45 (3.27%) Microsoft Intune
3 38 (2.76%) SCCM
3 38 (2.76%) Terraform
4 17 (1.24%) Grafana
5 16 (1.16%) Ansible
6 15 (1.09%) Single Sign-On
7 7 (0.51%) FortiGate
8 6 (0.44%) Prometheus
9 5 (0.36%) Jamf Pro
10 4 (0.29%) Argo
10 4 (0.29%) HP ALM
11 3 (0.22%) Nagios
11 3 (0.22%) Rancher
12 2 (0.15%) PingFederate
12 2 (0.15%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
12 2 (0.15%) SysTrack
13 1 (0.073%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 1 (0.073%) Istio
13 1 (0.073%) Podman
Vendors
1 227 (16.50%) Microsoft
2 91 (6.61%) Adobe
3 81 (5.89%) Google
4 73 (5.31%) ServiceNow
5 48 (3.49%) Oracle
5 48 (3.49%) SAP
6 43 (3.13%) Salesforce
7 25 (1.82%) Splunk
8 24 (1.74%) VMware
9 19 (1.38%) Citrix
10 13 (0.94%) Apple
10 13 (0.94%) Cisco
10 13 (0.94%) Zscaler
11 11 (0.80%) Hotjar
11 11 (0.80%) Optimizely
11 11 (0.80%) Red Hat
12 10 (0.73%) Amplitude
13 9 (0.65%) MuleSoft
13 9 (0.65%) OpenAI
13 9 (0.65%) Workday