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

6 months to
4 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 68 66 70
Rank change year-on-year -2 +4 -3
Contract jobs citing User Experience 1,361 1,045 1,307
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.48% 3.38% 2.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.00% 3.78% 3.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 939 651 902
10th Percentile £303 £313 £313
25th Percentile £381 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £572 £588 £588
90th Percentile £650 £695 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £475
% change year-on-year - -5.26% -0.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 24 39
10th Percentile £15.50 £25.26 £23.01
25th Percentile £17.69 £30.55 £25.00
Median hourly rate £35.50 £41.46 £46.06
Median % change year-on-year -14.36% -9.99% -24.81%
75th Percentile £59.38 £51.50 £72.70
90th Percentile £71.70 £68.68 £81.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.62 £30.88 £28.75
% change year-on-year -13.78% +7.39% -54.90%

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 34,038 27,619 38,984
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.15% 89.27% 87.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,556 16,812 25,649
10th Percentile £306 £306 £300
25th Percentile £406 £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 £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £497 £500
% change year-on-year -3.34% -0.69% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,054 864 2,107
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.69 £21.00 £16.40
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -7.14% +9.38%
75th Percentile £58.75 £62.50 £61.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £31.29 £35.00
% change year-on-year -20.10% -10.60% +20.69%

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 February 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 February 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 February 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 -2 1,172 £475 -5.00% 860
London -13 612 £490 -6.22% 417
UK excluding London +4 588 £450 - 599
Work from Home -20 358 £475 -5.00% 470
North of England +20 208 £425 -5.56% 168
North West +21 138 £400 -11.11% 98
South East -7 115 £450 -10.00% 193
Midlands -11 111 £500 +23.46% 76
South West +5 65 £450 -14.29% 77
West Midlands -27 62 £450 -10.00% 47
Scotland -8 55 £450 - 22
Yorkshire -17 52 £506 +12.50% 52
East Midlands +5 49 £545 +53.09% 29
East of England -19 28 £457 +1.11% 44
North East -2 17 £410 +2.50% 19
Wales +13 15 £300 -29.41% 19
Northern Ireland -10 2 £625 +47.06% 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 60 (4.41%) Confluence
2 58 (4.26%) SharePoint
3 45 (3.31%) CMS
4 24 (1.76%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 13 (0.96%) Microsoft Exchange
6 12 (0.88%) Headless CMS
7 11 (0.81%) SugarCRM
8 9 (0.66%) Apache
9 8 (0.59%) Sitecore CMS
9 8 (0.59%) Umbraco
10 4 (0.29%) Camunda
10 4 (0.29%) Ethereum
10 4 (0.29%) Hyperledger
11 3 (0.22%) Anypoint
11 3 (0.22%) Apache Spark
11 3 (0.22%) Jupyter
12 2 (0.15%) Apache Airflow
12 2 (0.15%) Appian
12 2 (0.15%) Drupal
12 2 (0.15%) WordPress
Applications
1 48 (3.53%) Sketch
2 34 (2.50%) Adobe XD
3 23 (1.69%) Microsoft Office
3 23 (1.69%) MS Visio
4 18 (1.32%) Chatbot
5 16 (1.18%) Microsoft Excel
6 14 (1.03%) InVision
7 10 (0.73%) Adobe Illustrator
7 10 (0.73%) Photoshop
8 8 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
9 6 (0.44%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.44%) Trello
10 5 (0.37%) Adobe After Effects
10 5 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
11 4 (0.29%) UXPin
12 3 (0.22%) Camtasia
12 3 (0.22%) Microsoft Project
12 3 (0.22%) UserZoom
13 2 (0.15%) Blender
13 2 (0.15%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 20 (1.47%) SAP S/4HANA
2 19 (1.40%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.29%) Shopify
4 3 (0.22%) SAP CO
4 3 (0.22%) SAP FI
4 3 (0.22%) SAP FI/CO
4 3 (0.22%) Teamcenter
5 2 (0.15%) Adobe Campaign
5 2 (0.15%) iTrent
5 2 (0.15%) Magento
5 2 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.15%) SAP SD
5 2 (0.15%) SAP Travel Management
6 1 (0.073%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.073%) Eloqua
6 1 (0.073%) NEC Housing
6 1 (0.073%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.073%) Sprinklr
6 1 (0.073%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 232 (17.05%) Azure
2 174 (12.78%) Figma
3 150 (11.02%) AWS
4 90 (6.61%) Power Platform
5 78 (5.73%) SaaS
6 77 (5.66%) Microsoft 365
7 61 (4.48%) GCP
8 53 (3.89%) GitHub
9 52 (3.82%) Azure DevOps
9 52 (3.82%) Entra ID
10 33 (2.42%) Miro
11 32 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
12 30 (2.20%) Power Automate
13 29 (2.13%) PowerApps
14 28 (2.06%) Serverless
15 24 (1.76%) Google Analytics
15 24 (1.76%) Google Workspace
16 22 (1.62%) Cloud Computing
17 21 (1.54%) Dynamics 365
18 19 (1.40%) Google Sheets
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.91%) DNS
2 23 (1.69%) Wireless
3 18 (1.32%) HTTP
4 17 (1.25%) Internet
5 10 (0.73%) VPN
5 10 (0.73%) Wi-Fi
6 9 (0.66%) DHCP
6 9 (0.66%) Intranet
6 9 (0.66%) TCP/IP
7 8 (0.59%) BGP
7 8 (0.59%) Cisco ISE
8 7 (0.51%) Cisco Wireless
8 7 (0.51%) Firewall
8 7 (0.51%) NX-OS
8 7 (0.51%) VXLAN
9 6 (0.44%) Unified Communications
9 6 (0.44%) WAN
10 5 (0.37%) SSL
11 4 (0.29%) HTTPS
11 4 (0.29%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 56 (4.11%) Power BI
2 41 (3.01%) MySQL
3 40 (2.94%) Relational Database
4 30 (2.20%) PostgreSQL
5 29 (2.13%) NoSQL
6 27 (1.98%) SQL Server
7 19 (1.40%) Data Warehouse
8 17 (1.25%) Tableau
9 15 (1.10%) MongoDB
10 13 (0.96%) BigQuery
11 12 (0.88%) Looker
11 12 (0.88%) Metadata
12 7 (0.51%) Mixpanel
13 6 (0.44%) DynamoDB
13 6 (0.44%) Redis
14 5 (0.37%) Hadoop
14 5 (0.37%) Pinecone
14 5 (0.37%) SAP HANA
15 4 (0.29%) Oracle Reports
15 4 (0.29%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 125 (9.18%) JIRA
2 94 (6.91%) Git
3 46 (3.38%) GitLab
4 38 (2.79%) Jenkins
5 33 (2.42%) Cypress.io
6 26 (1.91%) JUnit
6 26 (1.91%) Xcode
7 23 (1.69%) Android Studio
7 23 (1.69%) Axure RP
7 23 (1.69%) Eclipse
8 18 (1.32%) Browser DevTools
8 18 (1.32%) Gradle
9 12 (0.88%) Postman
10 11 (0.81%) CircleCI
11 9 (0.66%) Visual Website Optimizer
12 8 (0.59%) Artifactory
12 8 (0.59%) IntelliJ
12 8 (0.59%) Mocha
12 8 (0.59%) Mockito
12 8 (0.59%) Selenium
General
1 463 (34.02%) Social Skills
2 259 (19.03%) Finance
3 187 (13.74%) Public Sector
4 167 (12.27%) Analytical Skills
5 101 (7.42%) Banking
6 82 (6.02%) Marketing
7 36 (2.65%) Influencing Skills
8 30 (2.20%) Retail
9 25 (1.84%) Legal
9 25 (1.84%) Presentation Skills
10 20 (1.47%) Pharmaceutical
11 17 (1.25%) Financial Institution
11 17 (1.25%) Manufacturing
12 16 (1.18%) Telecoms
13 14 (1.03%) Documentation Skills
13 14 (1.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 13 (0.96%) Investment Banking
15 9 (0.66%) Automotive
15 9 (0.66%) Front Office
15 9 (0.66%) Games
Job Titles
1 241 (17.71%) Developer
2 231 (16.97%) Designer
3 189 (13.89%) Senior
4 129 (9.48%) UX Designer
5 118 (8.67%) Analyst
6 90 (6.61%) Lead
7 64 (4.70%) Business Analyst
8 57 (4.19%) Senior Designer
9 53 (3.89%) Consultant
10 50 (3.67%) Product Designer
11 49 (3.60%) Architect
12 47 (3.45%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
13 39 (2.87%) Full-Stack Developer
13 39 (2.87%) User Researcher
14 38 (2.79%) Support Engineer
15 36 (2.65%) Senior Developer
15 36 (2.65%) Service Designer
15 36 (2.65%) UI Designer
16 33 (2.42%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
16 33 (2.42%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 182 (13.37%) CSS
2 180 (13.23%) React
3 163 (11.98%) HTML
4 115 (8.45%) REST
5 97 (7.13%) RESTful
6 96 (7.05%) AngularJS
7 56 (4.11%) .NET
7 56 (4.11%) Spring
8 54 (3.97%) Spring Boot
9 53 (3.89%) Node.js
10 45 (3.31%) GraphQL
11 43 (3.16%) HTML5
12 38 (2.79%) Jest
13 34 (2.50%) CSS3
14 29 (2.13%) Playwright
15 28 (2.06%) JSON
15 28 (2.06%) Next.js
16 27 (1.98%) Redux
16 27 (1.98%) SOAP
17 24 (1.76%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 135 (9.92%) Product Ownership
2 98 (7.20%) Mobile App
3 61 (4.48%) Onboarding
4 29 (2.13%) Analytical Mindset
5 28 (2.06%) Enterprise Software
6 22 (1.62%) AI Agents
7 20 (1.47%) Data Structures
8 18 (1.32%) Low-Code
9 16 (1.18%) Cloud Native
9 16 (1.18%) NHS
10 15 (1.10%) Distributed Systems
10 15 (1.10%) Legacy Systems
10 15 (1.10%) Management Information System
11 14 (1.03%) Data Protection Act
11 14 (1.03%) e-Learning
11 14 (1.03%) Virtual Team
12 13 (0.96%) CMDB
12 13 (0.96%) Data Centre
13 11 (0.81%) Greenfield Project
13 11 (0.81%) Mobile Banking
Operating Systems
1 126 (9.26%) Windows
2 67 (4.92%) Android
3 50 (3.67%) Apple iOS
4 36 (2.65%) Linux
4 36 (2.65%) Windows 10
5 23 (1.69%) Mac OS
6 21 (1.54%) Unix
7 7 (0.51%) Windows Server
8 3 (0.22%) Ubuntu
9 2 (0.15%) VMS
10 1 (0.073%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 1 (0.073%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 487 (35.78%) Agile
2 465 (34.17%) UX Design
3 227 (16.68%) Problem-Solving
4 220 (16.16%) Analytics
5 191 (14.03%) User Research
6 177 (13.01%) CI/CD
7 176 (12.93%) Stakeholder Management
8 158 (11.61%) DevOps
9 153 (11.24%) AI
9 153 (11.24%) Continuous Improvement
10 146 (10.73%) Roadmaps
11 138 (10.14%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 137 (10.07%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
13 119 (8.74%) Decision-Making
14 115 (8.45%) Prototyping
14 115 (8.45%) Service Design
14 115 (8.45%) Wireframes
15 113 (8.30%) Front End Development
16 111 (8.16%) Usability Testing
17 107 (7.86%) UX Research
Programming Languages
1 212 (15.58%) JavaScript
2 130 (9.55%) SQL
3 125 (9.18%) Java
4 117 (8.60%) Python
4 117 (8.60%) TypeScript
5 59 (4.34%) PowerShell
6 58 (4.26%) C#
7 29 (2.13%) Kotlin
8 23 (1.69%) Bash
9 21 (1.54%) Perl
10 20 (1.47%) PHP
11 18 (1.32%) Swift
12 12 (0.88%) PL/SQL
13 11 (0.81%) C++
14 10 (0.73%) Scala
15 9 (0.66%) Go
16 8 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 7 (0.51%) Lisp
17 7 (0.51%) Objective-C
18 5 (0.37%) R
Qualifications
1 165 (12.12%) Security Cleared
2 121 (8.89%) SC Cleared
3 120 (8.82%) Degree
4 40 (2.94%) BPSS Clearance
5 20 (1.47%) Computer Science Degree
6 17 (1.25%) Master's Degree
7 11 (0.81%) DV Cleared
7 11 (0.81%) Microsoft Certification
7 11 (0.81%) MOS
8 9 (0.66%) CCNP
8 9 (0.66%) Cisco Certification
8 9 (0.66%) OCA
8 9 (0.66%) Oracle Certification
9 8 (0.59%) PMI Certification
10 3 (0.22%) Azure Certification
10 3 (0.22%) ITIL Certification
11 2 (0.15%) AWS Certification
11 2 (0.15%) CISM
11 2 (0.15%) PMP
11 2 (0.15%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 251 (18.44%) Accessibility
2 133 (9.77%) QA
3 72 (5.29%) WCAG
4 61 (4.48%) GDPR
5 40 (2.94%) Data Quality
6 25 (1.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 20 (1.47%) Actionable Recommendations
8 18 (1.32%) SLA
9 6 (0.44%) NCSC
9 6 (0.44%) PMO
10 5 (0.37%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 5 (0.37%) GxP
11 3 (0.22%) Disclosure Scotland
11 3 (0.22%) GMP
11 3 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
11 3 (0.22%) HIPAA
11 3 (0.22%) NIST
11 3 (0.22%) SOC 2
12 2 (0.15%) GRC
12 2 (0.15%) PSD2
System Software
1 71 (5.22%) Active Directory
2 65 (4.78%) Docker
3 22 (1.62%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (0.59%) Virtual Desktop
5 3 (0.22%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.15%) ProxySG
7 1 (0.073%) BitLocker
7 1 (0.073%) ISA Server
7 1 (0.073%) Microsoft App-V
7 1 (0.073%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.073%) XenApp
7 1 (0.073%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 56 (4.11%) Kubernetes
2 44 (3.23%) Microsoft Intune
3 39 (2.87%) Terraform
4 37 (2.72%) SCCM
5 17 (1.25%) Ansible
5 17 (1.25%) Grafana
6 15 (1.10%) Single Sign-On
7 7 (0.51%) FortiGate
8 6 (0.44%) Prometheus
9 5 (0.37%) Jamf Pro
10 4 (0.29%) Argo
11 3 (0.22%) HP ALM
11 3 (0.22%) Nagios
11 3 (0.22%) Rancher
12 2 (0.15%) PingFederate
12 2 (0.15%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
12 2 (0.15%) SysTrack
13 1 (0.073%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 1 (0.073%) Istio
13 1 (0.073%) Podman
Vendors
1 226 (16.61%) Microsoft
2 92 (6.76%) Adobe
3 82 (6.02%) Google
4 73 (5.36%) ServiceNow
5 50 (3.67%) Oracle
6 49 (3.60%) SAP
7 43 (3.16%) Salesforce
8 26 (1.91%) Splunk
9 23 (1.69%) VMware
10 18 (1.32%) Citrix
11 14 (1.03%) Apple
12 13 (0.96%) Cisco
12 13 (0.96%) Zscaler
13 11 (0.81%) Hotjar
13 11 (0.81%) Optimizely
13 11 (0.81%) Red Hat
14 10 (0.73%) Amplitude
15 9 (0.66%) MuleSoft
15 9 (0.66%) OpenAI
16 8 (0.59%) Sitecore