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

6 months to
9 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 79 61 68
Rank change year-on-year -18 +7 -6
Contract jobs citing User Experience 1,416 1,075 1,268
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.09% 3.68% 2.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.62% 4.06% 3.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 974 735 841
10th Percentile £313 £308 £306
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -2.50% -
75th Percentile £575 £585 £600
90th Percentile £663 £688 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +5.56% -5.26% +2.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 23 48
10th Percentile £17.21 £28.31 £16.25
25th Percentile £21.01 £41.58 £24.69
Median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £32.11
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +63.53% -18.20%
75th Percentile £62.94 £77.73 £62.45
90th Percentile £78.13 £93.50 £73.15
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.75 £61.75 £25.00
% change year-on-year -29.15% +147.00% -44.44%

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 39,074 26,483 37,997
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.36% 90.62% 86.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,751 17,195 24,633
10th Percentile £315 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £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 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.10% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,316 997 2,379
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.00 £12.79
25th Percentile £19.34 £20.00 £16.00
Median hourly rate £36.70 £31.64 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year +15.99% -4.31% -8.15%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.91
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.80 £70.41
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.71 £30.00 £33.00
% change year-on-year +22.37% -9.09% -8.08%

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 9 April 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 9 April 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 9 April 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 -18 1,225 £486 -2.75% 728
London -19 627 £500 -2.91% 296
UK excluding London -5 617 £475 +5.56% 522
Work from Home -30 365 £475 -3.85% 357
North of England +1 211 £450 - 176
North West +9 132 £420 -6.67% 94
Midlands -15 126 £500 +24.38% 93
South East -16 120 £490 -2.00% 122
West Midlands -25 84 £475 +2.70% 62
South West -10 69 £475 +26.67% 59
Yorkshire -20 54 £500 +24.84% 45
Scotland -5 51 £500 +14.29% 23
East Midlands -3 42 £550 +45.12% 31
East of England -25 29 £425 -10.99% 33
North East -3 24 £405 -15.63% 39
Wales -2 15 £375 -6.25% 19
Northern Ireland -7 3 - - 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 56 (3.95%) SharePoint
2 47 (3.32%) Confluence
3 40 (2.82%) CMS
4 19 (1.34%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 19 (1.34%) Microsoft Exchange
5 9 (0.64%) Apache
6 7 (0.49%) Headless CMS
7 6 (0.42%) Sitecore CMS
7 6 (0.42%) Umbraco
8 5 (0.35%) Camunda
9 4 (0.28%) Drupal
9 4 (0.28%) Ethereum
9 4 (0.28%) Hyperledger
9 4 (0.28%) Mendix
10 3 (0.21%) Anypoint
10 3 (0.21%) Apache Spark
10 3 (0.21%) Jupyter
10 3 (0.21%) nginx
11 2 (0.14%) Appian
11 2 (0.14%) WordPress
Applications
1 44 (3.11%) Sketch
2 34 (2.40%) Adobe XD
3 27 (1.91%) Microsoft Excel
4 23 (1.62%) MS Visio
5 21 (1.48%) Chatbot
6 16 (1.13%) Microsoft Office
7 14 (0.99%) InVision
8 11 (0.78%) Photoshop
9 7 (0.49%) Adobe Illustrator
9 7 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
10 6 (0.42%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 6 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.35%) Adobe After Effects
12 4 (0.28%) Trello
13 3 (0.21%) Adobe Captivate
13 3 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
13 3 (0.21%) UserZoom
13 3 (0.21%) UXPin
14 2 (0.14%) Autodesk Smoke
14 2 (0.14%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 16 (1.13%) Dynamics CRM
2 11 (0.78%) SAP S/4HANA
3 8 (0.56%) Shopify
4 7 (0.49%) Workday HCM
5 6 (0.42%) Sage X3
6 2 (0.14%) NEC Housing
6 2 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.14%) ResourceLink
6 2 (0.14%) SAP CO
6 2 (0.14%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.14%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.14%) SAP FI/CO
6 2 (0.14%) Sprinklr
7 1 (0.071%) assyst
7 1 (0.071%) Magento
7 1 (0.071%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.071%) Oracle Payroll
7 1 (0.071%) SAP CRM
7 1 (0.071%) SAP PP
7 1 (0.071%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 236 (16.67%) Azure
2 198 (13.98%) Figma
3 133 (9.39%) AWS
4 102 (7.20%) Power Platform
5 92 (6.50%) Microsoft 365
6 65 (4.59%) Azure DevOps
7 58 (4.10%) Entra ID
8 55 (3.88%) GCP
8 55 (3.88%) GitHub
9 42 (2.97%) SaaS
10 38 (2.68%) Power Automate
10 38 (2.68%) PowerApps
11 37 (2.61%) Serverless
12 32 (2.26%) GitHub Actions
13 30 (2.12%) Microsoft Copilot
14 25 (1.77%) Dynamics 365
15 23 (1.62%) Google Workspace
15 23 (1.62%) Miro
16 22 (1.55%) Cloud Computing
17 20 (1.41%) Google Sheets
Communications & Networking
1 17 (1.20%) DNS
2 15 (1.06%) Wireless
3 14 (0.99%) LAN
4 13 (0.92%) VPN
5 12 (0.85%) HTTP
5 12 (0.85%) SD-WAN
6 11 (0.78%) Firewall
6 11 (0.78%) Internet
6 11 (0.78%) Intranet
6 11 (0.78%) TCP/IP
6 11 (0.78%) WAN
6 11 (0.78%) Wi-Fi
7 10 (0.71%) DHCP
8 8 (0.56%) Network Security
8 8 (0.56%) SSL
9 7 (0.49%) Cisco Wireless
10 6 (0.42%) BGP
10 6 (0.42%) Cisco ISE
10 6 (0.42%) WLAN
11 5 (0.35%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 70 (4.94%) Power BI
2 33 (2.33%) NoSQL
2 33 (2.33%) Relational Database
3 29 (2.05%) PostgreSQL
4 25 (1.77%) Data Warehouse
5 24 (1.69%) SQL Server
6 22 (1.55%) MySQL
7 18 (1.27%) Metadata
7 18 (1.27%) Tableau
8 17 (1.20%) MongoDB
9 12 (0.85%) BigQuery
10 9 (0.64%) Looker
10 9 (0.64%) Power Query
11 7 (0.49%) Pinecone
11 7 (0.49%) Redis
12 6 (0.42%) DynamoDB
12 6 (0.42%) Oracle BI Publisher
12 6 (0.42%) ZAP BI
13 5 (0.35%) Big Data
13 5 (0.35%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 109 (7.70%) JIRA
2 85 (6.00%) Git
3 42 (2.97%) GitLab
4 28 (1.98%) Cypress.io
4 28 (1.98%) Jenkins
5 26 (1.84%) JUnit
6 20 (1.41%) Axure RP
7 14 (0.99%) Gradle
8 13 (0.92%) Selenium
9 12 (0.85%) Android Studio
9 12 (0.85%) CircleCI
10 11 (0.78%) Browser DevTools
11 10 (0.71%) Postman
11 10 (0.71%) Xcode
12 8 (0.56%) Eclipse
12 8 (0.56%) Mocha
12 8 (0.56%) Mockito
12 8 (0.56%) Visual Studio
12 8 (0.56%) Vite
13 7 (0.49%) Jasmine
General
1 458 (32.34%) Social Skills
2 275 (19.42%) Finance
3 199 (14.05%) Public Sector
4 170 (12.01%) Analytical Skills
5 117 (8.26%) Banking
6 57 (4.03%) Marketing
7 51 (3.60%) Retail
8 32 (2.26%) Legal
9 30 (2.12%) Presentation Skills
10 29 (2.05%) Influencing Skills
11 24 (1.69%) Manufacturing
12 20 (1.41%) Documentation Skills
12 20 (1.41%) Pharmaceutical
13 17 (1.20%) Games
14 15 (1.06%) Publishing
15 14 (0.99%) Financial Institution
15 14 (0.99%) Front Office
15 14 (0.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 14 (0.99%) Investment Banking
15 14 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 275 (19.42%) Designer
2 217 (15.32%) Developer
3 209 (14.76%) Senior
4 135 (9.53%) UX Designer
5 133 (9.39%) Analyst
6 68 (4.80%) Lead
7 67 (4.73%) Business Analyst
7 67 (4.73%) Consultant
8 62 (4.38%) Architect
8 62 (4.38%) Product Designer
9 55 (3.88%) Senior Designer
10 50 (3.53%) User Researcher
11 47 (3.32%) UI Designer
12 41 (2.90%) Senior Developer
12 41 (2.90%) Service Designer
13 39 (2.75%) Full-Stack Developer
14 38 (2.68%) Software Engineer
15 37 (2.61%) Support Engineer
16 36 (2.54%) IT Support
16 36 (2.54%) UI/UX Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 169 (11.94%) React
2 149 (10.52%) CSS
3 138 (9.75%) HTML
4 118 (8.33%) REST
5 86 (6.07%) RESTful
6 83 (5.86%) AngularJS
7 66 (4.66%) Spring
8 65 (4.59%) Spring Boot
9 59 (4.17%) .NET
10 46 (3.25%) Node.js
11 41 (2.90%) HTML5
12 36 (2.54%) CSS3
12 36 (2.54%) GraphQL
13 35 (2.47%) Jest
13 35 (2.47%) Redux
14 31 (2.19%) JSON
15 28 (1.98%) Next.js
16 26 (1.84%) Vue
17 22 (1.55%) Kafka
18 21 (1.48%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 142 (10.03%) Product Ownership
2 78 (5.51%) Mobile App
3 49 (3.46%) Onboarding
4 30 (2.12%) AI Agents
4 30 (2.12%) Enterprise Software
5 29 (2.05%) Data Structures
6 25 (1.77%) Analytical Mindset
7 19 (1.34%) Cloud Native
7 19 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
8 17 (1.20%) Distributed Systems
8 17 (1.20%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 15 (1.06%) NHS
10 13 (0.92%) Algorithms
10 13 (0.92%) Legacy Systems
11 12 (0.85%) Data Centre
11 12 (0.85%) Self-Motivation
11 12 (0.85%) Virtual Team
12 11 (0.78%) Graphic Design
12 11 (0.78%) Low-Code
12 11 (0.78%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 115 (8.12%) Windows
2 43 (3.04%) Android
3 42 (2.97%) Windows 10
4 31 (2.19%) Apple iOS
5 23 (1.62%) Mac OS
6 22 (1.55%) Linux
7 8 (0.56%) Unix
7 8 (0.56%) Windows Server
8 1 (0.071%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.071%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.071%) Windows 7
8 1 (0.071%) Windows Server 2008
8 1 (0.071%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 471 (33.26%) Agile
2 458 (32.34%) UX Design
3 232 (16.38%) Problem-Solving
4 209 (14.76%) User Research
5 204 (14.41%) Analytics
6 203 (14.34%) AI
7 179 (12.64%) CI/CD
8 172 (12.15%) DevOps
9 171 (12.08%) Stakeholder Management
10 166 (11.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 163 (11.51%) Continuous Improvement
12 143 (10.10%) Roadmaps
13 142 (10.03%) Prototyping
14 137 (9.68%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
15 129 (9.11%) Wireframes
16 125 (8.83%) Service Design
17 123 (8.69%) Decision-Making
18 118 (8.33%) UX Research
19 104 (7.34%) Usability Testing
20 96 (6.78%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 182 (12.85%) JavaScript
2 143 (10.10%) SQL
3 125 (8.83%) Java
4 124 (8.76%) Python
5 111 (7.84%) TypeScript
6 64 (4.52%) C#
7 55 (3.88%) PowerShell
8 30 (2.12%) Kotlin
9 19 (1.34%) Bash
10 14 (0.99%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 12 (0.85%) C++
12 11 (0.78%) Perl
13 9 (0.64%) Lua
13 9 (0.64%) Swift
14 8 (0.56%) PHP
15 7 (0.49%) PL/SQL
16 6 (0.42%) Go
16 6 (0.42%) Korn
16 6 (0.42%) Scala
16 6 (0.42%) VBA
Qualifications
1 196 (13.84%) Security Cleared
2 144 (10.17%) SC Cleared
3 120 (8.47%) Degree
4 35 (2.47%) BPSS Clearance
5 28 (1.98%) Computer Science Degree
6 20 (1.41%) Microsoft Certification
7 19 (1.34%) DV Cleared
8 16 (1.13%) Master's Degree
9 13 (0.92%) Azure Certification
9 13 (0.92%) Cisco Certification
10 11 (0.78%) CCNP
11 8 (0.56%) PMI Certification
12 6 (0.42%) Citrix Certification
12 6 (0.42%) OCA
12 6 (0.42%) Oracle Certification
13 5 (0.35%) CCA
13 5 (0.35%) CCIE
13 5 (0.35%) MOS
14 4 (0.28%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 4 (0.28%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 250 (17.66%) Accessibility
2 131 (9.25%) QA
3 76 (5.37%) WCAG
4 47 (3.32%) Data Quality
5 39 (2.75%) GDPR
6 22 (1.55%) Actionable Recommendations
7 18 (1.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 12 (0.85%) SLA
9 8 (0.56%) PMO
10 6 (0.42%) GMP
10 6 (0.42%) GxP
10 6 (0.42%) NCSC
11 5 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials
11 5 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 4 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 4 (0.28%) GRC
12 4 (0.28%) NIST
13 3 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
13 3 (0.21%) HIPAA
13 3 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 76 (5.37%) Active Directory
2 68 (4.80%) Docker
3 20 (1.41%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (1.20%) Virtual Desktop
5 5 (0.35%) Firmware
5 5 (0.35%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.14%) ProxySG
7 1 (0.071%) ISA Server
7 1 (0.071%) Varnish
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 62 (4.38%) Kubernetes
2 44 (3.11%) Terraform
3 37 (2.61%) Microsoft Intune
4 25 (1.77%) Grafana
4 25 (1.77%) SCCM
5 16 (1.13%) Single Sign-On
6 15 (1.06%) Ansible
7 7 (0.49%) Jamf Pro
8 6 (0.42%) Prometheus
9 4 (0.28%) Argo
9 4 (0.28%) FortiGate
10 3 (0.21%) HP ALM
10 3 (0.21%) Nagios
10 3 (0.21%) Podman
10 3 (0.21%) Rancher
11 2 (0.14%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
11 2 (0.14%) SysTrack
12 1 (0.071%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 1 (0.071%) Consul
12 1 (0.071%) WMI
Vendors
1 214 (15.11%) Microsoft
2 87 (6.14%) Adobe
3 71 (5.01%) Google
4 63 (4.45%) ServiceNow
5 44 (3.11%) Oracle
5 44 (3.11%) SAP
6 35 (2.47%) Salesforce
7 23 (1.62%) Citrix
8 21 (1.48%) VMware
9 19 (1.34%) Cisco
10 18 (1.27%) Splunk
11 15 (1.06%) Apple
11 15 (1.06%) Workday
12 11 (0.78%) Zscaler
13 10 (0.71%) Red Hat
14 9 (0.64%) Databricks
14 9 (0.64%) Ekahau
14 9 (0.64%) Foundry
14 9 (0.64%) MuleSoft
14 9 (0.64%) Sitecore