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

6 months to
25 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 84 58 79
Rank change year-on-year -26 +21 -20
Contract jobs citing User Experience 1,499 1,135 1,165
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.95% 3.77% 2.67%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.47% 4.14% 3.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 946 741 766
10th Percentile £319 £300 £300
25th Percentile £405 £380 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £494 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.89% -5.00% -1.57%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £684 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £425 £475
% change year-on-year +11.76% -10.53% +2.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 70 34 46
10th Percentile £16.00 £32.92 £16.25
25th Percentile £23.04 £35.25 £25.00
Median hourly rate £33.99 £53.00 £30.86
Median % change year-on-year -35.87% +71.77% +16.43%
75th Percentile £63.86 £68.87 £64.75
90th Percentile £85.22 £85.50 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.99 £70.16 £27.50
% change year-on-year -51.55% +155.13% +55.19%

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 43,238 27,425 37,092
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.97% 91.06% 85.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,959 17,371 23,647
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.78% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,600 1,291 2,584
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.65
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.70 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +7.14%
75th Percentile £68.00 £54.88 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £71.25 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.04 £38.12
% change year-on-year +79.73% -34.32% +17.29%

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 June 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 June 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 June 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 -14 1,286 £488 +2.63% 431
UK excluding London -4 691 £475 +11.76% 363
London -28 651 £524 +4.80% 165
Work from Home -28 388 £500 +5.26% 201
North of England -25 194 £450 +0.67% 107
Midlands 0 152 £475 +18.16% 52
South East -19 135 £500 +5.26% 122
North West -16 113 £435 -2.68% 62
West Midlands -2 109 £475 -9.52% 31
Scotland +11 85 £525 +14.13% 11
South West -17 73 £475 +26.67% 36
Yorkshire -38 51 £519 +29.61% 23
East Midlands +3 43 £550 +54.49% 21
East of England -6 36 £410 -13.68% 38
North East -19 30 £440 -8.33% 23
Wales -6 17 £530 +73.20% 5
Northern Ireland 0 3 - - 1

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 67 (4.47%) SharePoint
2 47 (3.14%) CMS
2 47 (3.14%) Confluence
3 27 (1.80%) Microsoft Exchange
4 10 (0.67%) WordPress
5 7 (0.47%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 6 (0.40%) Mendix
7 5 (0.33%) Apache
7 5 (0.33%) Camunda
7 5 (0.33%) Drupal
7 5 (0.33%) Skype for Business
8 4 (0.27%) Ethereum
8 4 (0.27%) Hyperledger
8 4 (0.27%) Kentico
8 4 (0.27%) Umbraco
9 3 (0.20%) Headless CMS
9 3 (0.20%) nginx
10 2 (0.13%) HCL Notes
10 2 (0.13%) IIS
10 2 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 36 (2.40%) Sketch
2 27 (1.80%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 26 (1.73%) Microsoft Excel
4 20 (1.33%) Photoshop
5 19 (1.27%) Adobe After Effects
6 18 (1.20%) Chatbot
7 16 (1.07%) Adobe Illustrator
8 15 (1.00%) Adobe XD
9 14 (0.93%) Microsoft Office
9 14 (0.93%) MS Visio
10 10 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
11 6 (0.40%) Final Cut Pro
12 4 (0.27%) Adobe Captivate
12 4 (0.27%) InVision
13 3 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
13 3 (0.20%) UserZoom
13 3 (0.20%) UXPin
14 2 (0.13%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.13%) Trello
15 1 (0.067%) Blender
Business Applications
1 13 (0.87%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (0.67%) Dynamics CRM
3 9 (0.60%) Workday HCM
4 8 (0.53%) Shopify
5 6 (0.40%) Sage X3
6 4 (0.27%) NetSuite
6 4 (0.27%) Oracle iProcurement
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
7 2 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
7 2 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
7 2 (0.13%) ResourceLink
8 1 (0.067%) Eloqua
8 1 (0.067%) Integrated Workplace Management System
8 1 (0.067%) Magento
8 1 (0.067%) NEC Housing
8 1 (0.067%) Oracle EBS R12
8 1 (0.067%) Salesforce CRM
8 1 (0.067%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 238 (15.88%) Azure
2 212 (14.14%) Figma
3 126 (8.41%) AWS
4 118 (7.87%) Microsoft 365
5 109 (7.27%) Power Platform
6 62 (4.14%) Entra ID
7 58 (3.87%) Azure DevOps
8 52 (3.47%) SaaS
9 48 (3.20%) GitHub
9 48 (3.20%) Microsoft Copilot
10 42 (2.80%) GCP
11 38 (2.54%) PowerApps
12 37 (2.47%) OneDrive
13 36 (2.40%) Power Automate
14 31 (2.07%) GitHub Actions
15 29 (1.93%) Serverless
16 26 (1.73%) Copilot Studio
17 18 (1.20%) Google Workspace
18 16 (1.07%) Azure AI
18 16 (1.07%) Google Sheets
Communications & Networking
1 31 (2.07%) DNS
2 27 (1.80%) DHCP
3 23 (1.53%) TCP/IP
3 23 (1.53%) Wi-Fi
4 20 (1.33%) Wireless
5 18 (1.20%) LAN
6 13 (0.87%) Internet
7 12 (0.80%) WAN
8 11 (0.73%) Firewall
8 11 (0.73%) Intranet
9 10 (0.67%) SD-WAN
10 9 (0.60%) HTTP
10 9 (0.60%) VPN
11 8 (0.53%) Cisco Wireless
12 7 (0.47%) 5G
12 7 (0.47%) Skype
12 7 (0.47%) WLAN
13 6 (0.40%) Network Security
13 6 (0.40%) SNMP
14 5 (0.33%) 802.11
Database & Business Intelligence
1 68 (4.54%) Power BI
2 27 (1.80%) PostgreSQL
3 25 (1.67%) Relational Database
4 24 (1.60%) NoSQL
5 23 (1.53%) SQL Server
6 22 (1.47%) Metadata
7 18 (1.20%) Power Query
8 14 (0.93%) MongoDB
9 13 (0.87%) Data Warehouse
10 11 (0.73%) Big Data
10 11 (0.73%) MySQL
11 9 (0.60%) Tableau
12 8 (0.53%) Redis
13 7 (0.47%) Oracle Database
14 6 (0.40%) DynamoDB
14 6 (0.40%) Elasticsearch
14 6 (0.40%) ZAP BI
15 5 (0.33%) Data Mining
15 5 (0.33%) Snowflake Schema
15 5 (0.33%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 95 (6.34%) JIRA
2 84 (5.60%) Git
3 26 (1.73%) Jenkins
4 23 (1.53%) Cypress.io
5 22 (1.47%) Vite
6 19 (1.27%) GitLab
7 14 (0.93%) JUnit
8 10 (0.67%) fastlane
8 10 (0.67%) Selenium
9 9 (0.60%) Android Studio
9 9 (0.60%) Browser DevTools
9 9 (0.60%) Claude Code
9 9 (0.60%) Gradle
9 9 (0.60%) Visual Studio
9 9 (0.60%) Xcode
10 8 (0.53%) Postman
11 7 (0.47%) webpack
12 5 (0.33%) Bitbucket
12 5 (0.33%) CircleCI
12 5 (0.33%) Crashlytics
General
1 456 (30.42%) Social Skills
2 262 (17.48%) Finance
3 188 (12.54%) Public Sector
4 141 (9.41%) Analytical Skills
5 119 (7.94%) Banking
6 77 (5.14%) Retail
7 58 (3.87%) Marketing
8 40 (2.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 37 (2.47%) Legal
10 30 (2.00%) Influencing Skills
11 28 (1.87%) Automotive
11 28 (1.87%) Presentation Skills
12 25 (1.67%) Publishing
13 23 (1.53%) Manufacturing
14 19 (1.27%) Documentation Skills
15 18 (1.20%) Investment Banking
16 17 (1.13%) Organisational Skills
17 13 (0.87%) Games
18 12 (0.80%) Front Office
19 11 (0.73%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 319 (21.28%) Designer
2 224 (14.94%) Senior
3 198 (13.21%) Developer
4 139 (9.27%) UX Designer
5 113 (7.54%) Analyst
6 107 (7.14%) Lead
7 83 (5.54%) UI Designer
8 76 (5.07%) Consultant
9 70 (4.67%) Senior Designer
10 63 (4.20%) Product Designer
11 61 (4.07%) Architect
12 58 (3.87%) Business Analyst
13 52 (3.47%) User Researcher
14 51 (3.40%) Content Designer
15 47 (3.14%) UI/UX Designer
16 46 (3.07%) User Experience Researcher
17 44 (2.94%) IT Support
18 39 (2.60%) Product Manager
19 38 (2.54%) Full-Stack Engineer
20 34 (2.27%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 148 (9.87%) React
2 113 (7.54%) CSS
3 101 (6.74%) HTML
4 93 (6.20%) REST
5 69 (4.60%) RESTful
6 58 (3.87%) AngularJS
7 57 (3.80%) .NET
8 47 (3.14%) Spring
9 46 (3.07%) Spring Boot
10 37 (2.47%) GraphQL
11 31 (2.07%) Node.js
11 31 (2.07%) Redux
12 29 (1.93%) JSON
12 29 (1.93%) Kafka
13 28 (1.87%) HTML5
14 27 (1.80%) Jest
15 26 (1.73%) ASP.NET
15 26 (1.73%) CSS3
15 26 (1.73%) Next.js
16 23 (1.53%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 162 (10.81%) Product Ownership
2 76 (5.07%) Mobile App
3 64 (4.27%) Onboarding
4 37 (2.47%) AI Agents
4 37 (2.47%) Cloud Native
5 31 (2.07%) Enterprise Software
6 29 (1.93%) Data Structures
7 27 (1.80%) Self-Motivation
8 26 (1.73%) Legacy Systems
9 23 (1.53%) Animation
9 23 (1.53%) Data Protection Act
10 20 (1.33%) Data Centre
11 19 (1.27%) Analytical Mindset
12 17 (1.13%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 16 (1.07%) Graphic Design
13 16 (1.07%) Taxonomies
14 15 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
15 14 (0.93%) Algorithms
15 14 (0.93%) Social Media
16 13 (0.87%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 111 (7.40%) Windows
2 51 (3.40%) Apple iOS
3 46 (3.07%) Android
4 32 (2.13%) Windows 10
5 23 (1.53%) Mac OS
6 14 (0.93%) Linux
6 14 (0.93%) Windows Server
7 6 (0.40%) Unix
7 6 (0.40%) Windows 7
8 5 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
9 4 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.067%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 498 (33.22%) UX Design
2 453 (30.22%) Agile
3 264 (17.61%) AI
4 224 (14.94%) Problem-Solving
5 204 (13.61%) Stakeholder Management
6 192 (12.81%) User Research
7 190 (12.68%) Continuous Improvement
8 188 (12.54%) Analytics
9 168 (11.21%) CI/CD
10 160 (10.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 159 (10.61%) Roadmaps
12 144 (9.61%) DevOps
13 143 (9.54%) Prototyping
14 129 (8.61%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
15 128 (8.54%) Decision-Making
16 123 (8.21%) Wireframes
17 122 (8.14%) UX Research
18 119 (7.94%) Service Design
19 107 (7.14%) Scrum
20 104 (6.94%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 141 (9.41%) JavaScript
2 119 (7.94%) Python
3 118 (7.87%) SQL
4 117 (7.81%) TypeScript
5 105 (7.00%) Java
6 61 (4.07%) C#
7 50 (3.34%) PowerShell
8 27 (1.80%) Kotlin
9 22 (1.47%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 14 (0.93%) Swift
11 13 (0.87%) Bash
12 12 (0.80%) C++
13 9 (0.60%) Lua
14 8 (0.53%) Korn
15 6 (0.40%) Apex Code
15 6 (0.40%) Go
15 6 (0.40%) R
15 6 (0.40%) VBA
15 6 (0.40%) VBScript
16 5 (0.33%) VB
Qualifications
1 206 (13.74%) Security Cleared
2 157 (10.47%) SC Cleared
3 148 (9.87%) Degree
4 33 (2.20%) Computer Science Degree
5 26 (1.73%) BPSS Clearance
6 23 (1.53%) DV Cleared
7 22 (1.47%) Microsoft Certification
8 20 (1.33%) Azure Certification
9 11 (0.73%) Cisco Certification
10 10 (0.67%) Master's Degree
11 9 (0.60%) ITIL Certification
12 8 (0.53%) CCA
12 8 (0.53%) CCNP
13 7 (0.47%) AWS Certification
13 7 (0.47%) CCIE
13 7 (0.47%) Citrix Certification
13 7 (0.47%) PMP
13 7 (0.47%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 6 (0.40%) DBS Check
15 5 (0.33%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 254 (16.94%) Accessibility
2 99 (6.60%) QA
3 85 (5.67%) WCAG
4 44 (2.94%) Data Quality
5 24 (1.60%) GDPR
6 18 (1.20%) Actionable Recommendations
7 11 (0.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 8 (0.53%) SLA
9 7 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 7 (0.47%) PMO
10 6 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
11 4 (0.27%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 3 (0.20%) GMP
12 3 (0.20%) GRC
12 3 (0.20%) GxP
13 2 (0.13%) HIPAA
13 2 (0.13%) NCSC
13 2 (0.13%) NIST
13 2 (0.13%) PCI DSS
13 2 (0.13%) PSD2
System Software
1 73 (4.87%) Active Directory
2 49 (3.27%) Docker
3 24 (1.60%) Virtual Desktop
4 13 (0.87%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (0.40%) Firmware
6 5 (0.33%) BitLocker
7 4 (0.27%) Microsoft App-V
8 3 (0.20%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
9 2 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.13%) VMware Workstation
9 2 (0.13%) vSphere
9 2 (0.13%) XenApp
9 2 (0.13%) XenDesktop
10 1 (0.067%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 48 (3.20%) Kubernetes
2 45 (3.00%) Microsoft Intune
2 45 (3.00%) Terraform
3 34 (2.27%) SCCM
4 30 (2.00%) Grafana
5 17 (1.13%) Single Sign-On
6 14 (0.93%) Jamf Pro
7 13 (0.87%) Ansible
8 9 (0.60%) Prometheus
9 4 (0.27%) Clonezilla
10 3 (0.20%) Podman
10 3 (0.20%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
10 3 (0.20%) WSUS
11 2 (0.13%) Failover Clustering
11 2 (0.13%) HP ALM
11 2 (0.13%) Packer
11 2 (0.13%) SCOM
11 2 (0.13%) vCenter Server
11 2 (0.13%) vMotion
12 1 (0.067%) Argo
Vendors
1 245 (16.34%) Microsoft
2 87 (5.80%) Adobe
3 72 (4.80%) ServiceNow
4 52 (3.47%) Google
5 43 (2.87%) SAP
6 38 (2.54%) Oracle
6 38 (2.54%) Salesforce
7 21 (1.40%) Databricks
8 20 (1.33%) Dynatrace
9 19 (1.27%) Citrix
10 18 (1.20%) Splunk
11 17 (1.13%) Apple
11 17 (1.13%) Cisco
11 17 (1.13%) Workday
12 13 (0.87%) Foundry
12 13 (0.87%) VMware
13 12 (0.80%) Aruba
14 11 (0.73%) OpenAI
15 10 (0.67%) Zscaler
16 8 (0.53%) Okta