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

6 months to
4 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 87 63 81
Rank change year-on-year -24 +18 -20
Contract jobs citing User Experience 1,538 1,230 1,036
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.91% 3.74% 2.64%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.43% 4.13% 3.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 936 791 655
10th Percentile £313 £303 £300
25th Percentile £400 £378 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -2.20%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £601
90th Percentile £688 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £470
% change year-on-year - -4.26% -1.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 73 44 32
10th Percentile £16.83 £21.68 £16.25
25th Percentile £25.50 £33.00 £29.14
Median hourly rate £33.99 £48.25 £41.68
Median % change year-on-year -29.55% +15.78% +54.35%
75th Percentile £67.84 £64.06 £71.29
90th Percentile £73.50 £72.35 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.99 £49.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year -30.63% -30.00% +295.03%

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 44,879 29,748 33,534
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.93% 90.41% 85.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,704 18,653 21,488
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,741 1,659 1,873
10th Percentile £14.50 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.50 £17.30 £18.14
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.90% -4.71%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £74.91
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.05 £40.94
% change year-on-year +90.72% -43.70% +3.38%

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 4 August 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 4 August 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 4 August 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 -22 1,334 £475 - 1,223
UK excluding London -10 718 £450 - 634
London -27 677 £525 +5.00% 727
Work from Home -34 387 £500 +2.56% 590
North of England -11 226 £440 -2.22% 181
Midlands -11 143 £475 +11.24% 92
South East -45 118 £444 -6.53% 158
West Midlands -15 114 £475 -7.32% 73
North West -30 110 £425 -5.56% 103
Scotland +19 95 £525 +13.51% 37
South West -22 75 £475 +18.75% 82
Yorkshire -26 64 £500 +25.00% 52
North East -2 51 £363 -24.48% 26
East of England +12 50 £410 -16.33% 54
East Midlands -4 29 £468 +31.32% 19
Wales -11 14 £640 +108.99% 18
Northern Ireland +5 2 - - 23

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 (4.10%) SharePoint
2 59 (3.84%) CMS
3 39 (2.54%) Confluence
4 28 (1.82%) Microsoft Exchange
5 16 (1.04%) WordPress
6 8 (0.52%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 8 (0.52%) Apache
7 6 (0.39%) Drupal
7 6 (0.39%) Mendix
7 6 (0.39%) Skype for Business
8 5 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
8 5 (0.33%) Headless CMS
9 4 (0.26%) Kentico
10 3 (0.20%) Moodle
10 3 (0.20%) Umbraco
11 2 (0.13%) Camunda
11 2 (0.13%) HCL Notes
11 2 (0.13%) IIS
11 2 (0.13%) nginx
11 2 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 39 (2.54%) Sketch
2 35 (2.28%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 29 (1.89%) Microsoft Excel
4 21 (1.37%) Chatbot
5 19 (1.24%) Photoshop
6 18 (1.17%) Adobe After Effects
7 17 (1.11%) Adobe XD
7 17 (1.11%) Microsoft Office
8 15 (0.98%) Adobe Illustrator
9 9 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
10 7 (0.46%) MS Visio
11 6 (0.39%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.20%) Adobe Captivate
13 2 (0.13%) InVision
13 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
13 2 (0.13%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.13%) UserZoom
14 1 (0.065%) Camtasia
14 1 (0.065%) Spreadsheet
14 1 (0.065%) Trello
Business Applications
1 11 (0.72%) SAP S/4HANA
1 11 (0.72%) Workday HCM
2 7 (0.46%) Dynamics CRM
2 7 (0.46%) Shopify
3 6 (0.39%) Sage X3
4 4 (0.26%) NetSuite
4 4 (0.26%) Oracle iProcurement
5 3 (0.20%) iTrent
5 3 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
5 3 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
6 2 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
6 2 (0.13%) ResourceLink
7 1 (0.065%) Magento
7 1 (0.065%) Oracle EBS R12
7 1 (0.065%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.065%) SAP HR
7 1 (0.065%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 243 (15.80%) Azure
2 211 (13.72%) Figma
3 138 (8.97%) AWS
4 132 (8.58%) Microsoft 365
5 113 (7.35%) Power Platform
6 64 (4.16%) Entra ID
7 57 (3.71%) GitHub
8 56 (3.64%) Azure DevOps
9 51 (3.32%) SaaS
10 50 (3.25%) GCP
11 49 (3.19%) Microsoft Copilot
12 34 (2.21%) PowerApps
13 31 (2.02%) OneDrive
14 30 (1.95%) Serverless
15 27 (1.76%) Power Automate
16 24 (1.56%) Azure AI
16 24 (1.56%) Copilot Studio
17 22 (1.43%) GitHub Actions
18 17 (1.11%) Snowflake
19 13 (0.85%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 41 (2.67%) DNS
2 33 (2.15%) DHCP
3 29 (1.89%) TCP/IP
4 26 (1.69%) Wi-Fi
5 21 (1.37%) Wireless
6 20 (1.30%) LAN
7 14 (0.91%) Firewall
7 14 (0.91%) WAN
8 13 (0.85%) VPN
9 12 (0.78%) Internet
10 10 (0.65%) Intranet
10 10 (0.65%) SD-WAN
11 8 (0.52%) Cisco Wireless
11 8 (0.52%) Network Security
11 8 (0.52%) Skype
12 7 (0.46%) 5G
12 7 (0.46%) SNMP
13 6 (0.39%) WLAN
14 5 (0.33%) SMS
14 5 (0.33%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 71 (4.62%) Power BI
2 27 (1.76%) Metadata
3 20 (1.30%) NoSQL
4 19 (1.24%) PostgreSQL
5 18 (1.17%) Power Query
6 16 (1.04%) Relational Database
7 12 (0.78%) Data Warehouse
7 12 (0.78%) SQL Server
8 11 (0.72%) Big Data
8 11 (0.72%) MongoDB
8 11 (0.72%) Tableau
9 9 (0.59%) MySQL
10 8 (0.52%) Looker
11 7 (0.46%) BigQuery
11 7 (0.46%) Elasticsearch
11 7 (0.46%) Snowflake Schema
11 7 (0.46%) Star Schema
12 6 (0.39%) Azure SQL Database
12 6 (0.39%) Redis
12 6 (0.39%) ZAP BI
Development Applications
1 87 (5.66%) JIRA
2 79 (5.14%) Git
3 27 (1.76%) Jenkins
4 25 (1.63%) Cypress.io
5 24 (1.56%) Vite
6 19 (1.24%) GitLab
7 12 (0.78%) Claude Code
8 10 (0.65%) Android Studio
8 10 (0.65%) Browser DevTools
8 10 (0.65%) fastlane
9 9 (0.59%) Storybook
9 9 (0.59%) Xcode
10 8 (0.52%) Gradle
10 8 (0.52%) JUnit
10 8 (0.52%) Selenium
11 7 (0.46%) JMeter
11 7 (0.46%) webpack
12 6 (0.39%) Postman
13 5 (0.33%) Crashlytics
13 5 (0.33%) Jasmine
General
1 481 (31.27%) Social Skills
2 270 (17.56%) Finance
3 206 (13.39%) Public Sector
4 151 (9.82%) Analytical Skills
5 116 (7.54%) Banking
6 82 (5.33%) Retail
7 74 (4.81%) Marketing
8 51 (3.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 39 (2.54%) Legal
10 36 (2.34%) Influencing Skills
11 32 (2.08%) Publishing
12 27 (1.76%) Automotive
12 27 (1.76%) Presentation Skills
13 26 (1.69%) Manufacturing
13 26 (1.69%) Organisational Skills
14 22 (1.43%) Documentation Skills
15 17 (1.11%) Investment Banking
16 16 (1.04%) Military
17 12 (0.78%) Front Office
18 11 (0.72%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 338 (21.98%) Designer
2 224 (14.56%) Senior
3 200 (13.00%) Developer
4 143 (9.30%) UX Designer
5 116 (7.54%) Lead
6 105 (6.83%) Analyst
7 86 (5.59%) UI Designer
8 81 (5.27%) Consultant
9 67 (4.36%) Senior Designer
10 66 (4.29%) User Researcher
11 61 (3.97%) Architect
12 55 (3.58%) Business Analyst
13 53 (3.45%) Content Designer
14 50 (3.25%) UI/UX Designer
15 48 (3.12%) Product Designer
16 46 (2.99%) IT Support
17 45 (2.93%) Product Manager
17 45 (2.93%) Support Engineer
18 44 (2.86%) User Experience Researcher
19 33 (2.15%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 142 (9.23%) React
2 113 (7.35%) CSS
3 100 (6.50%) HTML
4 98 (6.37%) REST
5 63 (4.10%) RESTful
6 51 (3.32%) AngularJS
7 42 (2.73%) GraphQL
7 42 (2.73%) HTML5
8 41 (2.67%) .NET
9 39 (2.54%) CSS3
10 33 (2.15%) Jest
10 33 (2.15%) Node.js
10 33 (2.15%) Spring
11 32 (2.08%) Spring Boot
12 30 (1.95%) Kafka
13 29 (1.89%) Redux
14 25 (1.63%) Next.js
15 24 (1.56%) Playwright
16 23 (1.50%) JSON
16 23 (1.50%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 144 (9.36%) Product Ownership
2 97 (6.31%) Mobile App
3 84 (5.46%) Onboarding
4 48 (3.12%) Cloud Native
5 44 (2.86%) AI Agents
6 33 (2.15%) Self-Motivation
7 32 (2.08%) Enterprise Software
8 29 (1.89%) Data Structures
9 28 (1.82%) Data Protection Act
10 24 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
11 22 (1.43%) Animation
11 22 (1.43%) Data Centre
12 21 (1.37%) Social Media
13 18 (1.17%) Analytical Mindset
14 17 (1.11%) Educational Technology
14 17 (1.11%) Graphic Design
15 16 (1.04%) Management Information System
15 16 (1.04%) NHS
16 14 (0.91%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 14 (0.91%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 131 (8.52%) Windows
2 59 (3.84%) Android
3 55 (3.58%) Apple iOS
4 46 (2.99%) Windows 10
5 25 (1.63%) Mac OS
6 19 (1.24%) Windows Server
7 17 (1.11%) Linux
8 10 (0.65%) Unix
9 9 (0.59%) Windows 7
10 4 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
10 4 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
12 2 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 503 (32.70%) UX Design
2 449 (29.19%) Agile
3 303 (19.70%) AI
4 240 (15.60%) Problem-Solving
5 233 (15.15%) Stakeholder Management
6 215 (13.98%) Continuous Improvement
6 215 (13.98%) User Research
7 200 (13.00%) Analytics
8 185 (12.03%) CI/CD
9 176 (11.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 154 (10.01%) Roadmaps
11 145 (9.43%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
12 140 (9.10%) DevOps
12 140 (9.10%) Prototyping
13 139 (9.04%) Decision-Making
14 130 (8.45%) Wireframes
15 124 (8.06%) Service Design
16 116 (7.54%) Scrum
17 115 (7.48%) Workshop Facilitation
18 114 (7.41%) UX Research
Programming Languages
1 131 (8.52%) JavaScript
2 122 (7.93%) Python
3 111 (7.22%) TypeScript
4 104 (6.76%) SQL
5 102 (6.63%) Java
6 52 (3.38%) PowerShell
7 41 (2.67%) C#
8 37 (2.41%) Kotlin
9 24 (1.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 18 (1.17%) Bash
11 17 (1.11%) Swift
12 11 (0.72%) C++
13 8 (0.52%) Go
13 8 (0.52%) Korn
13 8 (0.52%) Lua
13 8 (0.52%) PHP
14 7 (0.46%) Apex Code
14 7 (0.46%) VBScript
15 6 (0.39%) Scala
15 6 (0.39%) VB
Qualifications
1 240 (15.60%) Security Cleared
2 182 (11.83%) SC Cleared
3 140 (9.10%) Degree
4 38 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
5 33 (2.15%) BPSS Clearance
6 29 (1.89%) DV Cleared
7 23 (1.50%) Azure Certification
8 21 (1.37%) Microsoft Certification
9 12 (0.78%) PMP
10 11 (0.72%) Cisco Certification
11 8 (0.52%) AWS Certification
11 8 (0.52%) CCA
11 8 (0.52%) Citrix Certification
11 8 (0.52%) ITIL Certification
11 8 (0.52%) Master's Degree
11 8 (0.52%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 7 (0.46%) CCNP
13 6 (0.39%) CCIE
13 6 (0.39%) DBS Check
13 6 (0.39%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 271 (17.62%) Accessibility
2 97 (6.31%) WCAG
3 93 (6.05%) QA
4 46 (2.99%) Data Quality
5 19 (1.24%) GDPR
6 14 (0.91%) Actionable Recommendations
7 12 (0.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 9 (0.59%) PMO
9 8 (0.52%) SLA
10 7 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
10 7 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 4 (0.26%) GRC
11 4 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 3 (0.20%) GMP
12 3 (0.20%) GxP
13 2 (0.13%) NIST
13 2 (0.13%) PCI DSS
13 2 (0.13%) PSD2
14 1 (0.065%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 1 (0.065%) EU AI Act
System Software
1 89 (5.79%) Active Directory
2 49 (3.19%) Docker
3 28 (1.82%) Virtual Desktop
4 16 (1.04%) VMware Infrastructure
5 7 (0.46%) vSphere
6 6 (0.39%) BitLocker
6 6 (0.39%) Firmware
7 5 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.26%) Hyper-V
8 4 (0.26%) Microsoft App-V
9 3 (0.20%) UAG
9 3 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
10 2 (0.13%) VMware NSX
10 2 (0.13%) VMware Workstation
10 2 (0.13%) XenApp
10 2 (0.13%) XenDesktop
11 1 (0.065%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 53 (3.45%) Terraform
2 47 (3.06%) Kubernetes
3 44 (2.86%) Microsoft Intune
4 39 (2.54%) Grafana
5 31 (2.02%) SCCM
6 17 (1.11%) Ansible
6 17 (1.11%) Single Sign-On
7 14 (0.91%) Jamf Pro
7 14 (0.91%) Prometheus
8 5 (0.33%) vCenter Server
9 4 (0.26%) Clonezilla
9 4 (0.26%) Podman
10 3 (0.20%) Kibana
10 3 (0.20%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
10 3 (0.20%) WSUS
11 2 (0.13%) Argo
11 2 (0.13%) Failover Clustering
11 2 (0.13%) Packer
11 2 (0.13%) SCOM
11 2 (0.13%) vMotion
Vendors
1 259 (16.84%) Microsoft
2 93 (6.05%) Adobe
3 80 (5.20%) ServiceNow
4 57 (3.71%) Google
5 39 (2.54%) Oracle
5 39 (2.54%) SAP
6 33 (2.15%) Salesforce
7 28 (1.82%) Splunk
8 25 (1.63%) Dynatrace
9 24 (1.56%) Citrix
10 22 (1.43%) Databricks
11 21 (1.37%) Workday
12 19 (1.24%) Cisco
12 19 (1.24%) VMware
13 16 (1.04%) Apple
13 16 (1.04%) OpenAI
14 15 (0.98%) Foundry
14 15 (0.98%) Zscaler
15 12 (0.78%) Aruba
16 10 (0.65%) Okta