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

6 months to
13 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 78 60 69
Rank change year-on-year -18 +9 -7
Contract jobs citing User Experience 1,410 1,087 1,271
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.07% 3.71% 2.90%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.60% 4.10% 3.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 969 747 850
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £486 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.21% -2.80% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £663 £688 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £438 £475
% change year-on-year +8.57% -7.89% +2.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 23 49
10th Percentile £17.21 £28.31 £16.25
25th Percentile £21.01 £41.58 £25.00
Median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +61.54% -13.91%
75th Percentile £62.94 £77.73 £61.75
90th Percentile £78.13 £93.50 £73.07
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.75 £61.75 £25.00
% change year-on-year -29.15% +147.00% -28.57%

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 39,116 26,529 37,908
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.14% 90.62% 86.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,739 17,190 24,534
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 £636 £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 2,321 1,019 2,394
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.99 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.34 £18.86 £16.00
Median hourly rate £36.71 £30.78 £33.31
Median % change year-on-year +19.27% -7.59% -7.48%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.00 £57.96
90th Percentile £78.00 £75.05 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.00 £29.00 £33.07
% change year-on-year +27.59% -12.29% -5.68%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 1,219 £485 -3.00% 844
London -19 624 £500 -2.91% 358
UK excluding London -8 614 £475 +8.57% 595
Work from Home -22 362 £475 -3.06% 479
North of England +3 207 £450 - 148
North West +4 131 £420 -6.67% 75
Midlands -18 128 £488 +21.27% 117
South East -12 119 £488 +1.30% 178
West Midlands -30 86 £475 +1.33% 82
South West -14 69 £475 +26.67% 62
Yorkshire -27 52 £500 +17.58% 47
Scotland -8 51 £500 +14.29% 16
East Midlands -6 42 £550 +53.63% 35
East of England -27 29 £425 -10.99% 70
North East -4 23 £405 -15.63% 28
Wales -7 15 £375 +22.55% 12
Northern Ireland -8 3 - - 6

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 (3.97%) SharePoint
2 47 (3.33%) Confluence
3 38 (2.70%) CMS
4 19 (1.35%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 19 (1.35%) Microsoft Exchange
5 9 (0.64%) Apache
6 6 (0.43%) Headless CMS
6 6 (0.43%) Sitecore CMS
6 6 (0.43%) Umbraco
7 5 (0.35%) Camunda
8 4 (0.28%) Drupal
8 4 (0.28%) Ethereum
8 4 (0.28%) Hyperledger
8 4 (0.28%) Mendix
9 3 (0.21%) Anypoint
9 3 (0.21%) Apache Spark
9 3 (0.21%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.21%) nginx
10 2 (0.14%) Appian
10 2 (0.14%) WordPress
Applications
1 44 (3.12%) Sketch
2 34 (2.41%) Adobe XD
3 27 (1.91%) Microsoft Excel
4 22 (1.56%) MS Visio
5 21 (1.49%) Chatbot
6 14 (0.99%) InVision
6 14 (0.99%) Microsoft Office
7 12 (0.85%) Photoshop
8 8 (0.57%) Adobe Illustrator
9 7 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
10 6 (0.43%) Adobe After Effects
10 6 (0.43%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 6 (0.43%) Spreadsheet
11 4 (0.28%) Trello
12 3 (0.21%) Adobe Captivate
12 3 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
12 3 (0.21%) UserZoom
12 3 (0.21%) UXPin
13 2 (0.14%) Autodesk Smoke
13 2 (0.14%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 16 (1.13%) Dynamics CRM
2 11 (0.78%) SAP S/4HANA
3 8 (0.57%) Shopify
4 7 (0.50%) Workday HCM
5 6 (0.43%) 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
1 230 (16.31%) Azure
2 196 (13.90%) Figma
3 128 (9.08%) AWS
4 101 (7.16%) Power Platform
5 91 (6.45%) Microsoft 365
6 65 (4.61%) Azure DevOps
7 58 (4.11%) Entra ID
8 54 (3.83%) GCP
8 54 (3.83%) GitHub
9 41 (2.91%) SaaS
10 38 (2.70%) Power Automate
10 38 (2.70%) PowerApps
11 37 (2.62%) Serverless
12 31 (2.20%) GitHub Actions
13 30 (2.13%) Microsoft Copilot
14 25 (1.77%) Dynamics 365
15 23 (1.63%) Google Workspace
16 22 (1.56%) Cloud Computing
16 22 (1.56%) Miro
17 20 (1.42%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 16 (1.13%) DNS
2 15 (1.06%) Wireless
3 14 (0.99%) LAN
4 12 (0.85%) HTTP
4 12 (0.85%) VPN
5 11 (0.78%) Firewall
5 11 (0.78%) Internet
5 11 (0.78%) Intranet
5 11 (0.78%) SD-WAN
5 11 (0.78%) Wi-Fi
6 10 (0.71%) TCP/IP
6 10 (0.71%) WAN
7 9 (0.64%) DHCP
8 8 (0.57%) Network Security
8 8 (0.57%) SSL
9 7 (0.50%) Cisco Wireless
10 6 (0.43%) BGP
10 6 (0.43%) Cisco ISE
10 6 (0.43%) WLAN
11 5 (0.35%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 69 (4.89%) Power BI
2 32 (2.27%) NoSQL
2 32 (2.27%) Relational Database
3 28 (1.99%) PostgreSQL
4 25 (1.77%) Data Warehouse
5 24 (1.70%) SQL Server
6 22 (1.56%) MySQL
7 18 (1.28%) Metadata
7 18 (1.28%) Tableau
8 17 (1.21%) MongoDB
9 11 (0.78%) BigQuery
10 9 (0.64%) Power Query
11 8 (0.57%) Looker
12 7 (0.50%) Pinecone
13 6 (0.43%) DynamoDB
13 6 (0.43%) Oracle BI Publisher
13 6 (0.43%) Redis
13 6 (0.43%) ZAP BI
14 5 (0.35%) Big Data
14 5 (0.35%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 109 (7.73%) JIRA
2 84 (5.96%) Git
3 41 (2.91%) GitLab
4 28 (1.99%) Cypress.io
4 28 (1.99%) Jenkins
5 26 (1.84%) JUnit
6 20 (1.42%) 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 (0.57%) Eclipse
12 8 (0.57%) Mockito
12 8 (0.57%) Visual Studio
12 8 (0.57%) Vite
13 7 (0.50%) Artifactory
13 7 (0.50%) Jasmine
General
1 454 (32.20%) Social Skills
2 270 (19.15%) Finance
3 198 (14.04%) Public Sector
4 170 (12.06%) Analytical Skills
5 115 (8.16%) Banking
6 55 (3.90%) Marketing
7 50 (3.55%) Retail
8 32 (2.27%) Legal
9 30 (2.13%) Presentation Skills
10 29 (2.06%) Influencing Skills
11 24 (1.70%) Manufacturing
12 21 (1.49%) Documentation Skills
13 20 (1.42%) Pharmaceutical
14 17 (1.21%) Games
15 15 (1.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 15 (1.06%) Publishing
16 14 (0.99%) Front Office
16 14 (0.99%) Investment Banking
16 14 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
17 13 (0.92%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 275 (19.50%) Designer
2 215 (15.25%) Developer
3 212 (15.04%) Senior
4 137 (9.72%) UX Designer
5 130 (9.22%) Analyst
6 68 (4.82%) Lead
7 67 (4.75%) Consultant
8 66 (4.68%) Business Analyst
9 60 (4.26%) Product Designer
10 59 (4.18%) Architect
11 56 (3.97%) Senior Designer
12 50 (3.55%) User Researcher
13 48 (3.40%) UI Designer
14 41 (2.91%) Service Designer
15 40 (2.84%) Senior Developer
16 38 (2.70%) Software Engineer
17 37 (2.62%) Full-Stack Developer
17 37 (2.62%) Support Engineer
17 37 (2.62%) UI/UX Designer
18 36 (2.55%) IT Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 166 (11.77%) React
2 147 (10.43%) CSS
3 136 (9.65%) HTML
4 117 (8.30%) REST
5 86 (6.10%) RESTful
6 83 (5.89%) AngularJS
7 65 (4.61%) Spring
8 64 (4.54%) Spring Boot
9 59 (4.18%) .NET
10 42 (2.98%) Node.js
11 41 (2.91%) HTML5
12 36 (2.55%) CSS3
12 36 (2.55%) GraphQL
13 35 (2.48%) Redux
14 33 (2.34%) Jest
15 31 (2.20%) JSON
16 27 (1.91%) Next.js
17 26 (1.84%) Vue
18 22 (1.56%) Kafka
19 20 (1.42%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 137 (9.72%) Product Ownership
2 77 (5.46%) Mobile App
3 49 (3.48%) Onboarding
4 31 (2.20%) Enterprise Software
5 30 (2.13%) AI Agents
6 29 (2.06%) Data Structures
7 25 (1.77%) Analytical Mindset
8 18 (1.28%) Cloud Native
8 18 (1.28%) Data Protection Act
9 17 (1.21%) Distributed Systems
9 17 (1.21%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 15 (1.06%) NHS
11 13 (0.92%) Algorithms
11 13 (0.92%) Legacy Systems
12 12 (0.85%) Data Centre
12 12 (0.85%) Self-Motivation
12 12 (0.85%) Virtual Team
13 11 (0.78%) Augmented Reality
13 11 (0.78%) Graphic Design
13 11 (0.78%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 113 (8.01%) Windows
2 42 (2.98%) Android
3 41 (2.91%) Windows 10
4 31 (2.20%) Apple iOS
5 22 (1.56%) Mac OS
6 21 (1.49%) Linux
7 8 (0.57%) Unix
7 8 (0.57%) 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
1 462 (32.77%) Agile
2 459 (32.55%) UX Design
3 230 (16.31%) Problem-Solving
4 207 (14.68%) User Research
5 204 (14.47%) Analytics
6 201 (14.26%) AI
7 177 (12.55%) CI/CD
8 170 (12.06%) DevOps
8 170 (12.06%) Stakeholder Management
9 164 (11.63%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 163 (11.56%) Continuous Improvement
11 142 (10.07%) Roadmaps
12 140 (9.93%) Prototyping
13 135 (9.57%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
14 129 (9.15%) Wireframes
15 125 (8.87%) Service Design
16 122 (8.65%) Decision-Making
17 117 (8.30%) UX Research
18 104 (7.38%) Usability Testing
19 96 (6.81%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 180 (12.77%) JavaScript
2 141 (10.00%) SQL
3 126 (8.94%) Java
4 124 (8.79%) Python
5 110 (7.80%) TypeScript
6 64 (4.54%) C#
7 54 (3.83%) PowerShell
8 30 (2.13%) Kotlin
9 19 (1.35%) 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 (0.57%) PHP
15 7 (0.50%) PL/SQL
16 6 (0.43%) Go
16 6 (0.43%) Korn
16 6 (0.43%) Scala
16 6 (0.43%) VBA
Qualifications
1 191 (13.55%) Security Cleared
2 140 (9.93%) SC Cleared
3 121 (8.58%) Degree
4 34 (2.41%) BPSS Clearance
5 28 (1.99%) Computer Science Degree
6 20 (1.42%) Microsoft Certification
7 19 (1.35%) 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 (0.57%) PMI Certification
12 6 (0.43%) Citrix Certification
12 6 (0.43%) OCA
12 6 (0.43%) Oracle Certification
13 5 (0.35%) CCA
13 5 (0.35%) CCIE
13 5 (0.35%) MOS
14 4 (0.28%) ISTQB
14 4 (0.28%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 246 (17.45%) Accessibility
2 128 (9.08%) QA
3 74 (5.25%) WCAG
4 47 (3.33%) Data Quality
5 39 (2.77%) GDPR
6 22 (1.56%) Actionable Recommendations
7 17 (1.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 12 (0.85%) SLA
9 8 (0.57%) PMO
10 6 (0.43%) GMP
10 6 (0.43%) GxP
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
13 3 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
13 3 (0.21%) HIPAA
13 3 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 3 (0.21%) NCSC
13 3 (0.21%) NIST
System Software
1 75 (5.32%) Active Directory
2 65 (4.61%) Docker
3 20 (1.42%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (1.21%) Virtual Desktop
5 5 (0.35%) Firmware
6 4 (0.28%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.14%) ProxySG
8 1 (0.071%) ISA Server
8 1 (0.071%) Varnish
8 1 (0.071%) Virtual Machines
8 1 (0.071%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.071%) XenApp
8 1 (0.071%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 61 (4.33%) Kubernetes
2 43 (3.05%) Terraform
3 37 (2.62%) Microsoft Intune
4 25 (1.77%) SCCM
5 24 (1.70%) Grafana
6 15 (1.06%) Single Sign-On
7 14 (0.99%) Ansible
8 7 (0.50%) Jamf Pro
9 6 (0.43%) Prometheus
10 4 (0.28%) FortiGate
11 3 (0.21%) Argo
11 3 (0.21%) HP ALM
11 3 (0.21%) Nagios
11 3 (0.21%) Podman
11 3 (0.21%) Rancher
12 2 (0.14%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
12 2 (0.14%) SysTrack
13 1 (0.071%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 1 (0.071%) SCOM
13 1 (0.071%) WMI
Vendors
1 212 (15.04%) Microsoft
2 88 (6.24%) Adobe
3 70 (4.96%) Google
4 61 (4.33%) ServiceNow
5 44 (3.12%) SAP
6 43 (3.05%) Oracle
7 36 (2.55%) Salesforce
8 23 (1.63%) Citrix
9 20 (1.42%) VMware
10 19 (1.35%) Cisco
11 18 (1.28%) Splunk
12 15 (1.06%) Workday
13 14 (0.99%) Apple
14 11 (0.78%) Zscaler
15 9 (0.64%) Databricks
15 9 (0.64%) Ekahau
15 9 (0.64%) Foundry
15 9 (0.64%) MuleSoft
15 9 (0.64%) OpenAI
15 9 (0.64%) Red Hat