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

6 months to
3 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 72 66 68
Rank change year-on-year -6 +2 -3
Contract jobs citing User Experience 1,381 1,042 1,282
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.31% 3.49% 2.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.83% 3.87% 3.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 960 681 866
10th Percentile £313 £313 £313
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% - -1.96%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £650 £688 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +5.56% -5.26% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 49 22 45
10th Percentile £15.50 £25.26 £19.25
25th Percentile £17.69 £32.63 £25.00
Median hourly rate £38.94 £42.50 £41.68
Median % change year-on-year -8.38% +1.98% -7.39%
75th Percentile £61.25 £53.00 £72.90
90th Percentile £70.85 £74.25 £80.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £34.06 £32.50
% change year-on-year -4.59% +4.81% -30.85%

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 36,085 26,903 38,687
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.50% 90.10% 86.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,893 16,856 25,223
10th Percentile £313 £305 £300
25th Percentile £412 £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 £725 £743 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £493 £500
% change year-on-year -2.28% -1.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,151 877 2,259
10th Percentile £14.68 £15.62 £13.25
25th Percentile £18.25 £21.24 £16.24
Median hourly rate £27.72 £32.50 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.71% -1.52% -5.71%
75th Percentile £63.75 £64.50 £59.00
90th Percentile £73.46 £75.10 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.88 £34.21
% change year-on-year -21.11% -6.81% -2.26%

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 3 March 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 3 March 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 3 March 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 1,188 £488 -2.50% 1,006
London -19 615 £500 -4.76% 353
UK excluding London -8 599 £475 +5.56% 784
Work from Home -30 357 £500 +0.91% 605
North of England +14 206 £465 +3.33% 190
North West +13 133 £420 -6.67% 98
South East +2 123 £485 -5.83% 237
Midlands -16 106 £523 +30.63% 118
South West +1 67 £450 +16.13% 94
Scotland -4 59 £473 +5.00% 26
West Midlands -37 58 £469 - 58
Yorkshire -25 52 £513 +28.04% 62
East Midlands +2 48 £550 +54.49% 59
East of England -20 30 £425 -10.99% 101
North East +1 20 £388 -8.82% 31
Wales +5 15 £300 -29.41% 27
Northern Ireland -6 4 £625 +92.31% 8

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 59 (4.27%) SharePoint
2 54 (3.91%) Confluence
3 38 (2.75%) CMS
4 24 (1.74%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 17 (1.23%) Microsoft Exchange
6 12 (0.87%) Headless CMS
7 10 (0.72%) Apache
8 9 (0.65%) SugarCRM
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
10 4 (0.29%) Mendix
11 3 (0.22%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.22%) Apache Spark
11 3 (0.22%) Drupal
11 3 (0.22%) Jupyter
12 2 (0.14%) Apache Airflow
12 2 (0.14%) WordPress
Applications
1 46 (3.33%) Sketch
2 38 (2.75%) Adobe XD
3 24 (1.74%) MS Visio
4 23 (1.67%) Microsoft Excel
5 17 (1.23%) Microsoft Office
6 16 (1.16%) Chatbot
7 14 (1.01%) InVision
8 11 (0.80%) Photoshop
9 10 (0.72%) Adobe Illustrator
10 6 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
10 6 (0.43%) Spreadsheet
10 6 (0.43%) Trello
11 5 (0.36%) Adobe After Effects
11 5 (0.36%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 4 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
12 4 (0.29%) UXPin
13 3 (0.22%) Adobe Captivate
13 3 (0.22%) UserZoom
14 2 (0.14%) Camtasia
14 2 (0.14%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 22 (1.59%) SAP S/4HANA
2 15 (1.09%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.43%) Sage X3
4 5 (0.36%) Shopify
4 5 (0.36%) Workday HCM
5 3 (0.22%) SAP CO
5 3 (0.22%) SAP FI
5 3 (0.22%) SAP FI/CO
6 2 (0.14%) iTrent
6 2 (0.14%) Magento
6 2 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.14%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.14%) SAP SD
6 2 (0.14%) SAP Travel Management
7 1 (0.072%) Elite 3E
7 1 (0.072%) Eloqua
7 1 (0.072%) Integrated Workplace Management System
7 1 (0.072%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.072%) Oracle Payroll
7 1 (0.072%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 227 (16.44%) Azure
2 184 (13.32%) Figma
3 152 (11.01%) AWS
4 102 (7.39%) Power Platform
5 82 (5.94%) Microsoft 365
6 69 (5.00%) SaaS
7 68 (4.92%) GCP
8 56 (4.06%) Entra ID
9 55 (3.98%) Azure DevOps
10 51 (3.69%) GitHub
11 36 (2.61%) Power Automate
12 34 (2.46%) PowerApps
13 32 (2.32%) GitHub Actions
13 32 (2.32%) Serverless
14 29 (2.10%) Miro
15 23 (1.67%) Google Workspace
16 22 (1.59%) Cloud Computing
16 22 (1.59%) Dynamics 365
16 22 (1.59%) Microsoft Copilot
17 20 (1.45%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.67%) DNS
2 19 (1.38%) Wireless
3 16 (1.16%) Internet
4 15 (1.09%) HTTP
5 12 (0.87%) Wi-Fi
6 11 (0.80%) VPN
7 10 (0.72%) DHCP
7 10 (0.72%) Intranet
8 9 (0.65%) TCP/IP
9 8 (0.58%) BGP
9 8 (0.58%) Cisco ISE
9 8 (0.58%) Firewall
10 7 (0.51%) Cisco Wireless
10 7 (0.51%) NX-OS
10 7 (0.51%) VXLAN
10 7 (0.51%) WAN
11 6 (0.43%) Unified Communications
12 5 (0.36%) Network Security
12 5 (0.36%) SD-WAN
12 5 (0.36%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 67 (4.85%) Power BI
2 36 (2.61%) MySQL
2 36 (2.61%) Relational Database
3 30 (2.17%) NoSQL
4 27 (1.96%) PostgreSQL
5 23 (1.67%) Data Warehouse
6 21 (1.52%) SQL Server
7 17 (1.23%) Tableau
8 15 (1.09%) Metadata
8 15 (1.09%) MongoDB
9 14 (1.01%) BigQuery
10 11 (0.80%) Looker
11 8 (0.58%) Power Query
12 7 (0.51%) DynamoDB
12 7 (0.51%) Mixpanel
12 7 (0.51%) Pinecone
13 6 (0.43%) Redis
13 6 (0.43%) ZAP BI
14 5 (0.36%) Hadoop
14 5 (0.36%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 119 (8.62%) JIRA
2 91 (6.59%) Git
3 47 (3.40%) GitLab
4 32 (2.32%) Jenkins
5 29 (2.10%) Cypress.io
6 26 (1.88%) JUnit
7 24 (1.74%) Axure RP
8 20 (1.45%) Android Studio
9 19 (1.38%) Xcode
10 16 (1.16%) Eclipse
10 16 (1.16%) Gradle
11 14 (1.01%) Browser DevTools
12 12 (0.87%) CircleCI
13 10 (0.72%) Postman
14 9 (0.65%) Artifactory
15 8 (0.58%) Mocha
15 8 (0.58%) Mockito
16 7 (0.51%) Selenium
17 6 (0.43%) Cucumber
17 6 (0.43%) IntelliJ
General
1 464 (33.60%) Social Skills
2 256 (18.54%) Finance
3 201 (14.55%) Public Sector
4 158 (11.44%) Analytical Skills
5 104 (7.53%) Banking
6 75 (5.43%) Marketing
7 40 (2.90%) Retail
8 30 (2.17%) Influencing Skills
8 30 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
9 27 (1.96%) Legal
10 24 (1.74%) Manufacturing
11 20 (1.45%) Pharmaceutical
12 17 (1.23%) Financial Institution
12 17 (1.23%) Investment Banking
13 16 (1.16%) Documentation Skills
14 14 (1.01%) Games
14 14 (1.01%) Telecoms
15 13 (0.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 11 (0.80%) Front Office
17 10 (0.72%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 242 (17.52%) Designer
2 232 (16.80%) Developer
3 205 (14.84%) Senior
4 136 (9.85%) UX Designer
5 124 (8.98%) Analyst
6 75 (5.43%) Lead
7 61 (4.42%) Business Analyst
8 59 (4.27%) Consultant
9 57 (4.13%) Product Designer
9 57 (4.13%) Senior Designer
10 51 (3.69%) Architect
11 47 (3.40%) User Researcher
12 40 (2.90%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
12 40 (2.90%) Senior Developer
12 40 (2.90%) Service Designer
12 40 (2.90%) Software Engineer
13 38 (2.75%) Full-Stack Developer
13 38 (2.75%) UI Designer
14 37 (2.68%) Support Engineer
15 35 (2.53%) Senior UX Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 174 (12.60%) React
2 168 (12.17%) CSS
3 153 (11.08%) HTML
4 119 (8.62%) REST
5 92 (6.66%) AngularJS
5 92 (6.66%) RESTful
6 60 (4.34%) Spring
6 60 (4.34%) Spring Boot
7 55 (3.98%) .NET
8 52 (3.77%) Node.js
9 41 (2.97%) HTML5
10 40 (2.90%) GraphQL
11 35 (2.53%) Jest
12 33 (2.39%) CSS3
12 33 (2.39%) JSON
13 29 (2.10%) Redux
14 26 (1.88%) Next.js
15 24 (1.74%) SOAP
16 22 (1.59%) OAuth
17 21 (1.52%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 141 (10.21%) Product Ownership
2 94 (6.81%) Mobile App
3 57 (4.13%) Onboarding
4 29 (2.10%) Analytical Mindset
5 27 (1.96%) AI Agents
5 27 (1.96%) Enterprise Software
6 26 (1.88%) Data Structures
7 17 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
7 17 (1.23%) Distributed Systems
8 16 (1.16%) Low-Code
9 15 (1.09%) Data Centre
9 15 (1.09%) Legacy Systems
9 15 (1.09%) Virtual Team
10 14 (1.01%) Cloud Native
10 14 (1.01%) NHS
11 13 (0.94%) CMDB
12 12 (0.87%) Algorithms
12 12 (0.87%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 10 (0.72%) e-Learning
13 10 (0.72%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 132 (9.56%) Windows
2 52 (3.77%) Android
3 41 (2.97%) Windows 10
4 38 (2.75%) Apple iOS
5 30 (2.17%) Linux
6 24 (1.74%) Mac OS
7 17 (1.23%) Unix
8 6 (0.43%) Windows Server
9 3 (0.22%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.14%) VMS
11 1 (0.072%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 1 (0.072%) Windows 7
11 1 (0.072%) Windows Server 2008
11 1 (0.072%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 472 (34.18%) Agile
2 456 (33.02%) UX Design
3 221 (16.00%) Problem-Solving
4 218 (15.79%) Analytics
5 216 (15.64%) User Research
6 183 (13.25%) CI/CD
7 168 (12.17%) DevOps
7 168 (12.17%) Stakeholder Management
8 163 (11.80%) AI
9 159 (11.51%) Continuous Improvement
10 151 (10.93%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 145 (10.50%) Roadmaps
12 143 (10.35%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
13 133 (9.63%) Prototyping
14 126 (9.12%) Wireframes
15 123 (8.91%) Service Design
16 121 (8.76%) Decision-Making
17 118 (8.54%) Usability Testing
18 115 (8.33%) UX Research
19 101 (7.31%) Front End Development
Programming Languages
1 200 (14.48%) JavaScript
2 137 (9.92%) SQL
3 122 (8.83%) Python
4 118 (8.54%) Java
5 111 (8.04%) TypeScript
6 67 (4.85%) PowerShell
7 58 (4.20%) C#
8 34 (2.46%) Kotlin
9 23 (1.67%) Bash
10 17 (1.23%) Perl
10 17 (1.23%) PHP
11 15 (1.09%) Swift
12 13 (0.94%) C++
12 13 (0.94%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 8 (0.58%) PL/SQL
14 7 (0.51%) Go
14 7 (0.51%) Lisp
14 7 (0.51%) Lua
15 6 (0.43%) Scala
15 6 (0.43%) VBA
Qualifications
1 188 (13.61%) Security Cleared
2 137 (9.92%) SC Cleared
3 133 (9.63%) Degree
4 40 (2.90%) BPSS Clearance
5 24 (1.74%) Computer Science Degree
6 18 (1.30%) Master's Degree
7 17 (1.23%) DV Cleared
8 14 (1.01%) Microsoft Certification
9 11 (0.80%) MOS
10 10 (0.72%) CCNP
10 10 (0.72%) Cisco Certification
11 8 (0.58%) PMI Certification
12 7 (0.51%) OCA
12 7 (0.51%) Oracle Certification
13 5 (0.36%) CCA
13 5 (0.36%) Citrix Certification
14 4 (0.29%) Azure Certification
15 3 (0.22%) CESG Certified Professional
15 3 (0.22%) ITIL Certification
16 2 (0.14%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 244 (17.67%) Accessibility
2 136 (9.85%) QA
3 73 (5.29%) WCAG
4 47 (3.40%) Data Quality
5 44 (3.19%) GDPR
6 25 (1.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 23 (1.67%) Actionable Recommendations
8 20 (1.45%) SLA
9 8 (0.58%) PMO
10 6 (0.43%) NCSC
11 5 (0.36%) GxP
12 4 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 3 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials
13 3 (0.22%) Disclosure Scotland
13 3 (0.22%) GMP
13 3 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
13 3 (0.22%) HIPAA
13 3 (0.22%) NIST
13 3 (0.22%) SOC 2
14 2 (0.14%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 79 (5.72%) Active Directory
2 65 (4.71%) Docker
3 23 (1.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 13 (0.94%) Virtual Desktop
5 4 (0.29%) Firmware
6 3 (0.22%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.14%) ProxySG
8 1 (0.072%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.072%) ISA Server
8 1 (0.072%) Microsoft App-V
8 1 (0.072%) Virtual Machines
8 1 (0.072%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.072%) XenApp
8 1 (0.072%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 59 (4.27%) Kubernetes
2 51 (3.69%) Microsoft Intune
3 40 (2.90%) Terraform
4 39 (2.82%) SCCM
5 25 (1.81%) Grafana
6 16 (1.16%) Ansible
7 12 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (0.51%) FortiGate
8 7 (0.51%) Prometheus
9 6 (0.43%) 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 (0.14%) PingFederate
12 2 (0.14%) SysTrack
13 1 (0.072%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 1 (0.072%) Istio
13 1 (0.072%) Kibana
13 1 (0.072%) Podman
Vendors
1 231 (16.73%) Microsoft
2 92 (6.66%) Adobe
3 84 (6.08%) Google
4 80 (5.79%) ServiceNow
5 51 (3.69%) SAP
6 40 (2.90%) Oracle
7 36 (2.61%) Salesforce
8 27 (1.96%) Splunk
9 24 (1.74%) VMware
10 23 (1.67%) Citrix
11 15 (1.09%) Cisco
12 14 (1.01%) Apple
13 12 (0.87%) Red Hat
13 12 (0.87%) Zscaler
14 10 (0.72%) Amplitude
14 10 (0.72%) Hotjar
15 9 (0.65%) MuleSoft
15 9 (0.65%) OpenAI
15 9 (0.65%) Workday
16 8 (0.58%) Optimizely