UX Design Contract Job Trends

User Experience Design (UXD)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring UX Design skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 30 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 244 194 213
Rank change year-on-year -50 +19 -43
Contract jobs citing UX Design 516 397 485
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.05% 1.37% 1.13%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.24% 1.51% 1.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 352 270 342
10th Percentile £363 £321 £353
25th Percentile £402 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £575 £550 £620
90th Percentile £650 £638 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £425 £438
% change year-on-year +11.76% -2.86% -7.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 6 7
10th Percentile £20.85 £35.25 £29.65
25th Percentile £26.00 £37.81 £32.39
Median hourly rate £33.99 £48.25 £41.68
Median % change year-on-year -29.55% +15.78% -18.68%
75th Percentile £65.00 £85.49 £62.17
90th Percentile £92.00 £97.52 £90.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.67 £70.35 £91.44
% change year-on-year -60.67% -23.07% +37.83%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

UX Design 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 41,610 26,282 36,757
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.67% 91.03% 85.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,026 16,812 23,631
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £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 2,481 1,100 2,513
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.30 £27.97 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.26% -23.38% -1.35%
75th Percentile £67.84 £57.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £73.88 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -33.82% +8.57%

UX Design
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing UX Design relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

UX Design job vacancy trend in the UK

UX Design
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing UX Design.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing UX Design

UX Design
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing UX Design over the 6 months to 30 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for UX Design in the UK

UX Design
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing UX Design.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing UX Design

UX Design
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing UX Design over the 6 months to 30 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for UX Design in the UK

UX Design
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 UX Design within the UK over the 6 months to 30 May 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 -27 428 £475 - 108
London -32 233 £498 -0.50% 46
UK excluding London -17 216 £475 +11.76% 86
Work from Home -55 133 £475 +7.95% 71
North of England -34 74 £450 +12.50% 25
North West -15 50 £401 +0.25% 13
Midlands -32 41 £500 +40.45% 14
West Midlands -42 33 £463 +14.91% 10
South West -17 32 £475 +11.76% 9
Scotland -1 31 £518 +9.86% 1
South East -64 26 £550 +25.71% 27
Yorkshire -56 16 £513 +10.75% 4
East of England -27 9 £410 -14.58% 4
North East -20 8 £450 +5.88% 9
East Midlands -21 8 £575 +62.89% 4
Wales -9 4 £450 +2.86% 6
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 1

UX Design
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 22 (4.26%) CMS
2 19 (3.68%) Confluence
3 5 (0.97%) SharePoint
4 4 (0.78%) Kentico
4 4 (0.78%) Umbraco
4 4 (0.78%) WordPress
5 3 (0.58%) Headless CMS
6 2 (0.39%) Appian
7 1 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 1 (0.19%) Apache
7 1 (0.19%) Camunda
7 1 (0.19%) Drupal
7 1 (0.19%) Mendix
7 1 (0.19%) Moodle
7 1 (0.19%) nginx
7 1 (0.19%) Strapi
7 1 (0.19%) Traefik
Applications
1 37 (7.17%) Sketch
2 25 (4.84%) Adobe XD
3 11 (2.13%) Photoshop
4 10 (1.94%) Chatbot
4 10 (1.94%) InVision
5 9 (1.74%) Adobe After Effects
5 9 (1.74%) Adobe Illustrator
6 6 (1.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 3 (0.58%) Final Cut Pro
7 3 (0.58%) Microsoft Excel
7 3 (0.58%) MS Visio
8 2 (0.39%) Microsoft Office
8 2 (0.39%) Trello
8 2 (0.39%) UserZoom
9 1 (0.19%) Adobe Captivate
9 1 (0.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
9 1 (0.19%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 5 (0.97%) Shopify
2 2 (0.39%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.19%) Eloqua
3 1 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.19%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 154 (29.84%) Figma
2 57 (11.05%) Azure
3 30 (5.81%) AWS
4 22 (4.26%) Azure DevOps
5 17 (3.29%) Power Platform
6 15 (2.91%) GitHub
6 15 (2.91%) GitHub Actions
7 14 (2.71%) SaaS
8 9 (1.74%) GCP
9 8 (1.55%) Firebase
9 8 (1.55%) Serverless
10 7 (1.36%) AWS Lambda
11 6 (1.16%) Amazon S3
11 6 (1.16%) AWS CloudFormation
11 6 (1.16%) Miro
12 5 (0.97%) Google Play
12 5 (0.97%) Slack
13 4 (0.78%) BigCommerce
13 4 (0.78%) Microsoft 365
13 4 (0.78%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.19%) HTTP
1 1 (0.19%) Internet
1 1 (0.19%) Intranet
1 1 (0.19%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (1.74%) Power BI
1 9 (1.74%) SQL Server
2 6 (1.16%) NoSQL
2 6 (1.16%) PostgreSQL
3 5 (0.97%) Metadata
3 5 (0.97%) Power Query
4 4 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
4 4 (0.78%) MongoDB
5 3 (0.58%) DynamoDB
5 3 (0.58%) Pinecone
5 3 (0.58%) Relational Database
5 3 (0.58%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 2 (0.39%) CockroachDB
6 2 (0.39%) Star Schema
7 1 (0.19%) Amazon RDS
7 1 (0.19%) Azure SQL Database
7 1 (0.19%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.19%) MySQL
7 1 (0.19%) Redis
7 1 (0.19%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 34 (6.59%) Git
2 32 (6.20%) JIRA
3 19 (3.68%) Cypress.io
4 16 (3.10%) GitLab
5 14 (2.71%) Jenkins
6 11 (2.13%) Axure RP
7 8 (1.55%) CircleCI
8 7 (1.36%) fastlane
8 7 (1.36%) JUnit
9 6 (1.16%) Gradle
9 6 (1.16%) Mocha
10 5 (0.97%) Android Studio
10 5 (0.97%) Crashlytics
11 4 (0.78%) Visual Studio
12 3 (0.58%) Vite
12 3 (0.58%) webpack
12 3 (0.58%) Xcode
13 2 (0.39%) Balsamiq
13 2 (0.39%) REST Assured
13 2 (0.39%) Storybook
General
1 147 (28.49%) Social Skills
2 96 (18.60%) Public Sector
3 83 (16.09%) Finance
4 58 (11.24%) Banking
5 31 (6.01%) Analytical Skills
6 22 (4.26%) Presentation Skills
6 22 (4.26%) Retail
7 18 (3.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 17 (3.29%) Marketing
9 13 (2.52%) Automotive
10 11 (2.13%) Publishing
11 9 (1.74%) Pharmaceutical
12 8 (1.55%) Influencing Skills
12 8 (1.55%) Legal
13 6 (1.16%) Games
13 6 (1.16%) Local Government
14 5 (0.97%) Documentation Skills
14 5 (0.97%) Retail Banking
15 4 (0.78%) Advertising
15 4 (0.78%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 256 (49.61%) Designer
2 140 (27.13%) UX Designer
3 89 (17.25%) Senior
4 75 (14.53%) Developer
5 58 (11.24%) UI Designer
6 45 (8.72%) Senior Designer
7 43 (8.33%) Content Designer
7 43 (8.33%) UI/UX Designer
8 39 (7.56%) Lead
9 36 (6.98%) Product Designer
10 30 (5.81%) Senior UX Designer
10 30 (5.81%) Service Designer
11 20 (3.88%) Analyst
11 20 (3.88%) User Researcher
12 19 (3.68%) User Experience Researcher
13 17 (3.29%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
14 16 (3.10%) Architect
14 16 (3.10%) Business Analyst
15 15 (2.91%) Full-Stack Developer
16 13 (2.52%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 76 (14.73%) React
2 65 (12.60%) CSS
2 65 (12.60%) HTML
3 42 (8.14%) RESTful
4 32 (6.20%) AngularJS
5 29 (5.62%) HTML5
6 28 (5.43%) CSS3
7 26 (5.04%) .NET
8 23 (4.46%) REST
9 16 (3.10%) Jest
9 16 (3.10%) Node.js
9 16 (3.10%) Spring
10 15 (2.91%) Spring Boot
11 14 (2.71%) Redux
12 13 (2.52%) OAuth
13 11 (2.13%) Vue
14 10 (1.94%) Playwright
15 9 (1.74%) JSON
16 8 (1.55%) ASP.NET
16 8 (1.55%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 64 (12.40%) Product Ownership
2 38 (7.36%) Mobile App
3 13 (2.52%) Onboarding
4 12 (2.33%) Animation
5 11 (2.13%) Cloud Native
6 10 (1.94%) Graphic Design
6 10 (1.94%) Self-Motivation
7 8 (1.55%) Data Protection Act
7 8 (1.55%) NHS
8 7 (1.36%) Greenfield Project
8 7 (1.36%) Taxonomies
8 7 (1.36%) Virtual Team
9 6 (1.16%) Enterprise Software
9 6 (1.16%) Virtual Reality
10 5 (0.97%) Digital Wallet
11 4 (0.78%) Augmented Reality
11 4 (0.78%) Data Structures
11 4 (0.78%) Distributed Systems
11 4 (0.78%) Legacy Systems
11 4 (0.78%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 11 (2.13%) Android
2 7 (1.36%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.19%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 516 (100.00%) User Experience
2 218 (42.25%) Agile
3 137 (26.55%) User Research
4 102 (19.77%) Prototyping
5 95 (18.41%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
5 95 (18.41%) Wireframes
6 84 (16.28%) Service Design
7 80 (15.50%) Usability Testing
8 74 (14.34%) AI
9 73 (14.15%) UX Research
10 69 (13.37%) CI/CD
11 65 (12.60%) Problem-Solving
12 61 (11.82%) Interaction Design
13 55 (10.66%) Analytics
13 55 (10.66%) Stakeholder Management
14 53 (10.27%) Workshop Facilitation
15 52 (10.08%) DevOps
16 46 (8.91%) Journey Map
17 42 (8.14%) Front End Development
17 42 (8.14%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 67 (12.98%) JavaScript
2 52 (10.08%) TypeScript
3 32 (6.20%) Java
4 27 (5.23%) Python
5 19 (3.68%) C#
6 15 (2.91%) SQL
7 9 (1.74%) Kotlin
8 6 (1.16%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 5 (0.97%) C++
9 5 (0.97%) Korn
9 5 (0.97%) Lua
10 3 (0.58%) Swift
11 2 (0.39%) Apex Code
11 2 (0.39%) Bicep
11 2 (0.39%) PowerShell
12 1 (0.19%) C
12 1 (0.19%) Objective-C
12 1 (0.19%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.19%) SPARQL
12 1 (0.19%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 73 (14.15%) Security Cleared
2 54 (10.47%) SC Cleared
3 50 (9.69%) Degree
4 13 (2.52%) Master's Degree
5 10 (1.94%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (1.94%) DV Cleared
6 5 (0.97%) Computer Science Degree
7 3 (0.58%) CCA
7 3 (0.58%) DBS Check
8 2 (0.39%) Microsoft Certification
9 1 (0.19%) Azure Certification
9 1 (0.19%) Citrix Certification
9 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 1 (0.19%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 176 (34.11%) Accessibility
2 71 (13.76%) WCAG
3 30 (5.81%) QA
4 5 (0.97%) Actionable Recommendations
4 5 (0.97%) Data Quality
5 2 (0.39%) GDPR
6 1 (0.19%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 1 (0.19%) EU AI Act
6 1 (0.19%) GMP
6 1 (0.19%) GxP
6 1 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 42001
6 1 (0.19%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.19%) PMO
6 1 (0.19%) WAI
6 1 (0.19%) WAI-ARIA
System Software
1 20 (3.88%) Docker
2 1 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 17 (3.29%) Kubernetes
2 15 (2.91%) Terraform
3 2 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
4 1 (0.19%) Ansible
4 1 (0.19%) Grafana
4 1 (0.19%) HP ALM
4 1 (0.19%) Podman
Vendors
1 47 (9.11%) Adobe
2 22 (4.26%) Microsoft
3 20 (3.88%) Salesforce
4 9 (1.74%) Google
5 7 (1.36%) Dynatrace
5 7 (1.36%) SAP
6 6 (1.16%) MuleSoft
6 6 (1.16%) ServiceNow
7 4 (0.78%) Sitecore
8 3 (0.58%) Apple
8 3 (0.58%) Progress
8 3 (0.58%) Xamarin
9 2 (0.39%) Blue Prism
9 2 (0.39%) Databricks
9 2 (0.39%) OpenAI
9 2 (0.39%) Oracle
10 1 (0.19%) Automation Anywhere
10 1 (0.19%) CODA
10 1 (0.19%) Qualtrics
10 1 (0.19%) UiPath