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

6 months to
15 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 242 205 203
Rank change year-on-year -37 -2 -27
Contract jobs citing UX Design 480 383 492
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.01% 1.32% 1.15%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.19% 1.45% 1.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 339 270 352
10th Percentile £363 £325 £350
25th Percentile £400 £400 £412
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £575 £570 £611
90th Percentile £650 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £425 £450
% change year-on-year +8.24% -5.56% -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 4 6
10th Percentile £20.58 £45.73 £29.14
25th Percentile £25.25 £46.06 £34.16
Median hourly rate £28.09 £70.35 £41.68
Median % change year-on-year -60.07% +68.79% -13.63%
75th Percentile £55.37 £97.00 £72.33
90th Percentile £69.50 £97.93 £92.69
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.67 £70.35 £91.44
% change year-on-year -60.67% -23.07% +53.45%

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 40,228 26,443 36,791
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.35% 90.98% 86.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,265 17,000 23,677
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £626 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.58% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,380 1,081 2,436
10th Percentile £14.89 £14.42 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.38 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +47.83% -21.23% +0.29%
75th Percentile £67.31 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £26.50 £38.00
% change year-on-year +69.81% -30.26% +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 15 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 15 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 15 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 -46 404 £475 -1.55% 217
London -33 226 £500 - 103
UK excluding London -13 190 £460 +8.24% 151
Work from Home -37 122 £460 +4.55% 124
North of England -17 66 £402 +0.50% 43
North West +2 45 £397 -0.88% 25
Midlands -39 37 £523 +46.77% 19
South West -13 31 £475 +11.76% 16
West Midlands -37 29 £475 +17.28% 16
Scotland -1 22 £500 +17.65% 16
South East -63 22 £525 +20.00% 38
Yorkshire -51 14 £513 +10.75% 11
East Midlands -25 8 £575 +61.52% 3
East of England -30 8 £410 -14.14% 11
North East -14 7 £367 -5.42% 7
Wales - 4 £450 - 4
Northern Ireland -1 1 - - 6

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 20 (4.17%) Confluence
2 16 (3.33%) CMS
3 5 (1.04%) SharePoint
4 4 (0.83%) Kentico
4 4 (0.83%) WordPress
5 3 (0.63%) Headless CMS
6 2 (0.42%) Appian
6 2 (0.42%) Umbraco
7 1 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 1 (0.21%) Camunda
7 1 (0.21%) Drupal
7 1 (0.21%) Mendix
7 1 (0.21%) Moodle
7 1 (0.21%) nginx
7 1 (0.21%) Strapi
7 1 (0.21%) Traefik
Applications
1 35 (7.29%) Sketch
2 26 (5.42%) Adobe XD
3 11 (2.29%) Chatbot
3 11 (2.29%) Photoshop
4 10 (2.08%) InVision
5 9 (1.88%) Adobe Illustrator
6 7 (1.46%) Adobe After Effects
7 4 (0.83%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 3 (0.63%) Microsoft Excel
8 3 (0.63%) MS Visio
9 2 (0.42%) Microsoft Office
9 2 (0.42%) Trello
9 2 (0.42%) UserZoom
10 1 (0.21%) Final Cut Pro
10 1 (0.21%) InDesign
10 1 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
10 1 (0.21%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 5 (1.04%) Shopify
2 1 (0.21%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.21%) Eloqua
2 1 (0.21%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.21%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 154 (32.08%) Figma
2 53 (11.04%) Azure
3 27 (5.63%) AWS
4 20 (4.17%) Azure DevOps
5 17 (3.54%) Power Platform
6 15 (3.13%) SaaS
7 12 (2.50%) GitHub
7 12 (2.50%) GitHub Actions
8 9 (1.88%) Miro
9 8 (1.67%) GCP
10 7 (1.46%) Serverless
11 6 (1.25%) AWS CloudFormation
11 6 (1.25%) AWS Lambda
12 5 (1.04%) Amazon S3
12 5 (1.04%) Firebase
12 5 (1.04%) Slack
13 4 (0.83%) BigCommerce
14 3 (0.63%) Amazon Bedrock
14 3 (0.63%) Anthropic Claude
14 3 (0.63%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.21%) HTTP
1 1 (0.21%) Internet
1 1 (0.21%) Intranet
1 1 (0.21%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (1.88%) Power BI
2 8 (1.67%) SQL Server
3 7 (1.46%) NoSQL
4 5 (1.04%) PostgreSQL
4 5 (1.04%) Power Query
5 4 (0.83%) MongoDB
6 3 (0.63%) Elasticsearch
6 3 (0.63%) Metadata
6 3 (0.63%) Pinecone
6 3 (0.63%) Relational Database
7 2 (0.42%) CockroachDB
7 2 (0.42%) DynamoDB
7 2 (0.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 2 (0.42%) Star Schema
8 1 (0.21%) Amazon RDS
8 1 (0.21%) Azure SQL Database
8 1 (0.21%) Data Warehouse
8 1 (0.21%) MySQL
8 1 (0.21%) Redis
8 1 (0.21%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 34 (7.08%) JIRA
2 33 (6.88%) Git
3 21 (4.38%) Cypress.io
4 14 (2.92%) Axure RP
4 14 (2.92%) GitLab
5 9 (1.88%) Jenkins
6 8 (1.67%) CircleCI
7 7 (1.46%) JUnit
8 6 (1.25%) Mocha
9 4 (0.83%) fastlane
9 4 (0.83%) Gradle
9 4 (0.83%) Visual Studio
10 3 (0.63%) Android Studio
10 3 (0.63%) Crashlytics
10 3 (0.63%) Selenium
10 3 (0.63%) Vite
11 2 (0.42%) Balsamiq
11 2 (0.42%) TestRail
11 2 (0.42%) webpack
11 2 (0.42%) Xcode
General
1 138 (28.75%) Social Skills
2 93 (19.38%) Public Sector
3 83 (17.29%) Finance
4 60 (12.50%) Banking
5 29 (6.04%) Analytical Skills
6 20 (4.17%) Presentation Skills
7 18 (3.75%) Retail
8 16 (3.33%) Marketing
9 13 (2.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 10 (2.08%) Automotive
11 9 (1.88%) Pharmaceutical
11 9 (1.88%) Publishing
12 8 (1.67%) Legal
13 7 (1.46%) Influencing Skills
14 6 (1.25%) Games
14 6 (1.25%) Local Government
15 5 (1.04%) Documentation Skills
15 5 (1.04%) Retail Banking
16 4 (0.83%) Advertising
16 4 (0.83%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 244 (50.83%) Designer
2 139 (28.96%) UX Designer
3 78 (16.25%) Senior
4 64 (13.33%) Developer
5 51 (10.63%) UI Designer
6 40 (8.33%) Content Designer
6 40 (8.33%) Senior Designer
7 39 (8.13%) UI/UX Designer
8 35 (7.29%) Product Designer
9 34 (7.08%) Service Designer
10 31 (6.46%) Lead
11 29 (6.04%) Senior UX Designer
12 21 (4.38%) Analyst
12 21 (4.38%) User Researcher
13 16 (3.33%) Architect
13 16 (3.33%) Business Analyst
14 15 (3.13%) Full-Stack Developer
15 14 (2.92%) User Experience Researcher
16 13 (2.71%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
17 12 (2.50%) React Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (14.17%) React
2 59 (12.29%) CSS
3 58 (12.08%) HTML
4 40 (8.33%) RESTful
5 27 (5.63%) AngularJS
5 27 (5.63%) HTML5
6 26 (5.42%) .NET
6 26 (5.42%) CSS3
7 20 (4.17%) REST
8 16 (3.33%) Jest
8 16 (3.33%) Node.js
9 14 (2.92%) Spring
10 13 (2.71%) Spring Boot
11 12 (2.50%) Redux
12 11 (2.29%) OAuth
13 10 (2.08%) Playwright
13 10 (2.08%) Vue
14 9 (1.88%) JSON
15 8 (1.67%) GraphQL
16 7 (1.46%) Unity (Game Engine)
Miscellaneous
1 58 (12.08%) Product Ownership
2 33 (6.88%) Mobile App
3 11 (2.29%) Onboarding
4 10 (2.08%) Animation
5 9 (1.88%) Cloud Native
5 9 (1.88%) Data Protection Act
5 9 (1.88%) Graphic Design
6 8 (1.67%) Enterprise Software
7 7 (1.46%) Greenfield Project
7 7 (1.46%) Self-Motivation
7 7 (1.46%) Virtual Team
8 6 (1.25%) NHS
8 6 (1.25%) Virtual Reality
9 5 (1.04%) Digital Wallet
9 5 (1.04%) Taxonomies
10 4 (0.83%) AI Agents
10 4 (0.83%) Augmented Reality
10 4 (0.83%) Data Structures
11 3 (0.63%) Low-Code
11 3 (0.63%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 9 (1.88%) Android
2 6 (1.25%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.21%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 480 (100.00%) User Experience
2 205 (42.71%) Agile
3 136 (28.33%) User Research
4 102 (21.25%) Prototyping
5 89 (18.54%) Wireframes
6 87 (18.13%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
7 83 (17.29%) Service Design
8 80 (16.67%) Usability Testing
9 73 (15.21%) UX Research
10 66 (13.75%) AI
11 62 (12.92%) Interaction Design
12 61 (12.71%) CI/CD
12 61 (12.71%) Problem-Solving
13 53 (11.04%) Stakeholder Management
13 53 (11.04%) Workshop Facilitation
14 49 (10.21%) Analytics
15 47 (9.79%) DevOps
16 43 (8.96%) Continuous Improvement
17 42 (8.75%) Journey Map
18 39 (8.13%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 61 (12.71%) JavaScript
2 46 (9.58%) TypeScript
3 27 (5.63%) Python
4 26 (5.42%) Java
5 18 (3.75%) C#
6 15 (3.13%) SQL
7 6 (1.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 6 (1.25%) Kotlin
8 5 (1.04%) C++
8 5 (1.04%) Lua
9 4 (0.83%) Korn
10 2 (0.42%) Apex Code
10 2 (0.42%) Bicep
10 2 (0.42%) PowerShell
10 2 (0.42%) Swift
11 1 (0.21%) Gremlin
11 1 (0.21%) Objective-C
11 1 (0.21%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.21%) SPARQL
11 1 (0.21%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 71 (14.79%) Security Cleared
2 52 (10.83%) SC Cleared
3 46 (9.58%) Degree
4 12 (2.50%) BPSS Clearance
5 11 (2.29%) Master's Degree
6 9 (1.88%) DV Cleared
7 5 (1.04%) Computer Science Degree
8 3 (0.63%) CCA
8 3 (0.63%) DBS Check
8 3 (0.63%) Microsoft Certification
9 1 (0.21%) Azure Certification
9 1 (0.21%) Citrix Certification
9 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 1 (0.21%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 162 (33.75%) Accessibility
2 63 (13.13%) WCAG
3 32 (6.67%) QA
4 6 (1.25%) Actionable Recommendations
5 5 (1.04%) Data Quality
6 2 (0.42%) GDPR
7 1 (0.21%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 1 (0.21%) EU AI Act
7 1 (0.21%) GMP
7 1 (0.21%) GxP
7 1 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 42001
7 1 (0.21%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.21%) WAI
7 1 (0.21%) WAI-ARIA
System Software
1 19 (3.96%) Docker
2 1 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 16 (3.33%) Kubernetes
2 14 (2.92%) Terraform
3 2 (0.42%) HP ALM
3 2 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
4 1 (0.21%) Ansible
4 1 (0.21%) Grafana
4 1 (0.21%) Podman
Vendors
1 46 (9.58%) Adobe
2 21 (4.38%) Salesforce
3 17 (3.54%) Microsoft
4 8 (1.67%) SAP
5 7 (1.46%) Google
6 6 (1.25%) MuleSoft
7 5 (1.04%) ServiceNow
8 4 (0.83%) Dynatrace
8 4 (0.83%) Sitecore
9 3 (0.63%) Progress
9 3 (0.63%) Xamarin
10 2 (0.42%) Apple
10 2 (0.42%) Blue Prism
10 2 (0.42%) Databricks
10 2 (0.42%) HP
10 2 (0.42%) OpenAI
11 1 (0.21%) Automation Anywhere
11 1 (0.21%) CODA
11 1 (0.21%) Qualtrics
11 1 (0.21%) UiPath