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

6 months to
18 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 250 213 207
Rank change year-on-year -37 -6 -28
Contract jobs citing UX Design 457 379 500
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.99% 1.29% 1.14%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.17% 1.42% 1.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 329 272 350
10th Percentile £362 £313 £350
25th Percentile £400 £398 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £569 £550 £624
90th Percentile £638 £650 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £425 £450
% change year-on-year +8.82% -5.56% -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 3 8
10th Percentile £25.10 £53.97 £30.17
25th Percentile £26.77 £65.54 £31.71
Median hourly rate £36.30 £91.69 £41.68
Median % change year-on-year -60.42% +120.01% -12.26%
75th Percentile £55.37 £97.52 £75.94
90th Percentile £66.50 £98.14 £88.61
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.09 £91.69 £91.44
% change year-on-year -69.36% +0.28% +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 39,180 26,703 37,785
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.95% 90.74% 86.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,749 17,293 24,471
10th Percentile £316 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.31% -0.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +0.41% -3.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,327 1,032 2,410
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.85 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.80 £18.51 £15.85
Median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £33.78
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -11.18% -5.92%
75th Percentile £65.25 £62.50 £57.83
90th Percentile £78.10 £75.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £28.75 £34.21
% change year-on-year +39.13% -15.96% -2.26%

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 18 April 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 18 April 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 18 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 -45 376 £475 -0.52% 213
London -25 223 £490 -2.00% 92
UK excluding London -34 165 £463 +8.82% 150
Work from Home -58 121 £438 +2.94% 124
North of England -32 61 £400 - 46
North West -17 43 £400 - 24
Midlands -50 26 £500 +40.45% 29
South West -15 24 £475 +26.67% 12
South East -45 24 £481 +13.24% 38
Scotland -1 23 £575 +35.29% 7
West Midlands -47 22 £425 +4.94% 24
Yorkshire -55 10 £531 +6.25% 12
North East -7 8 £364 -6.06% 11
Wales - 5 £450 - 6
East of England -34 4 £443 -7.33% 9
East Midlands -35 4 £600 +68.54% 5
Northern Ireland +3 1 - - 5

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 14 (3.06%) Confluence
2 12 (2.63%) CMS
3 5 (1.09%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.66%) Headless CMS
5 2 (0.44%) Appian
5 2 (0.44%) Sitecore CMS
5 2 (0.44%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.22%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 1 (0.22%) Camunda
6 1 (0.22%) Cloud Foundry
6 1 (0.22%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.22%) Mendix
6 1 (0.22%) Moodle
6 1 (0.22%) nginx
6 1 (0.22%) Strapi
6 1 (0.22%) Traefik
Applications
1 40 (8.75%) Sketch
2 32 (7.00%) Adobe XD
3 13 (2.84%) InVision
4 12 (2.63%) Chatbot
5 6 (1.31%) Adobe After Effects
6 5 (1.09%) Photoshop
7 4 (0.88%) Adobe Illustrator
8 3 (0.66%) Microsoft Excel
8 3 (0.66%) MS Visio
8 3 (0.66%) Trello
9 2 (0.44%) Microsoft Office
9 2 (0.44%) UserZoom
10 1 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 1 (0.22%) Blender
10 1 (0.22%) Camtasia
10 1 (0.22%) CINEMA 4D
10 1 (0.22%) InDesign
10 1 (0.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
10 1 (0.22%) OmniGraffle
10 1 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 5 (1.09%) Shopify
2 2 (0.44%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.22%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 151 (33.04%) Figma
2 50 (10.94%) Azure
3 35 (7.66%) AWS
4 17 (3.72%) Azure DevOps
5 15 (3.28%) Power Platform
6 14 (3.06%) SaaS
7 13 (2.84%) Miro
8 10 (2.19%) GitHub
8 10 (2.19%) GitHub Actions
9 7 (1.53%) GCP
10 6 (1.31%) Serverless
11 5 (1.09%) AWS Lambda
12 4 (0.88%) Amazon S3
12 4 (0.88%) AWS CloudFormation
12 4 (0.88%) BigCommerce
13 3 (0.66%) Amazon Bedrock
13 3 (0.66%) Anthropic Claude
13 3 (0.66%) CloudFront
13 3 (0.66%) Contentful
13 3 (0.66%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.44%) HTTP
2 1 (0.22%) Internet
2 1 (0.22%) Intranet
2 1 (0.22%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (1.75%) NoSQL
2 7 (1.53%) Power BI
3 6 (1.31%) SQL Server
4 5 (1.09%) MongoDB
4 5 (1.09%) PostgreSQL
5 3 (0.66%) Elasticsearch
5 3 (0.66%) Pinecone
5 3 (0.66%) Relational Database
6 2 (0.44%) CockroachDB
6 2 (0.44%) DynamoDB
6 2 (0.44%) Power Query
7 1 (0.22%) Amazon RDS
7 1 (0.22%) Azure SQL Database
7 1 (0.22%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.22%) Metadata
7 1 (0.22%) MySQL
7 1 (0.22%) SAP BW
7 1 (0.22%) SAP HANA
7 1 (0.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 1 (0.22%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 29 (6.35%) Git
2 28 (6.13%) JIRA
3 18 (3.94%) Axure RP
3 18 (3.94%) Cypress.io
4 14 (3.06%) GitLab
5 10 (2.19%) JUnit
6 9 (1.97%) CircleCI
6 9 (1.97%) Jenkins
7 6 (1.31%) Mocha
8 5 (1.09%) Visual Studio
9 4 (0.88%) Selenium
9 4 (0.88%) Vite
10 3 (0.66%) Gradle
11 2 (0.44%) Android Studio
11 2 (0.44%) Balsamiq
11 2 (0.44%) Crashlytics
11 2 (0.44%) fastlane
11 2 (0.44%) TestRail
11 2 (0.44%) webpack
12 1 (0.22%) Mockito
General
1 141 (30.85%) Social Skills
2 90 (19.69%) Public Sector
3 84 (18.38%) Finance
4 61 (13.35%) Banking
5 33 (7.22%) Analytical Skills
6 18 (3.94%) Presentation Skills
7 16 (3.50%) Marketing
7 16 (3.50%) Retail
8 10 (2.19%) Pharmaceutical
9 9 (1.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 7 (1.53%) Legal
11 6 (1.31%) Documentation Skills
11 6 (1.31%) Games
11 6 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
12 5 (1.09%) Automotive
12 5 (1.09%) Local Government
13 4 (0.88%) Advertising
13 4 (0.88%) Publishing
13 4 (0.88%) Retail Banking
14 3 (0.66%) Corporate Banking
Job Titles
1 227 (49.67%) Designer
2 135 (29.54%) UX Designer
3 74 (16.19%) Senior
4 62 (13.57%) Developer
5 41 (8.97%) UI Designer
6 40 (8.75%) Senior Designer
7 35 (7.66%) Service Designer
8 34 (7.44%) UI/UX Designer
9 32 (7.00%) Content Designer
9 32 (7.00%) Product Designer
9 32 (7.00%) Senior UX Designer
10 25 (5.47%) User Researcher
11 20 (4.38%) Lead
12 18 (3.94%) Analyst
13 14 (3.06%) Architect
13 14 (3.06%) Full-Stack Developer
14 13 (2.84%) Business Analyst
14 13 (2.84%) React Developer
15 10 (2.19%) Consultant
15 10 (2.19%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 64 (14.00%) React
2 57 (12.47%) CSS
2 57 (12.47%) HTML
3 39 (8.53%) RESTful
4 27 (5.91%) HTML5
5 26 (5.69%) AngularJS
6 25 (5.47%) CSS3
7 22 (4.81%) .NET
8 19 (4.16%) REST
9 18 (3.94%) Spring
10 17 (3.72%) Node.js
10 17 (3.72%) Spring Boot
11 16 (3.50%) Jest
12 14 (3.06%) Redux
13 11 (2.41%) Next.js
14 10 (2.19%) Playwright
15 9 (1.97%) GraphQL
15 9 (1.97%) JSON
16 8 (1.75%) OAuth
17 7 (1.53%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 47 (10.28%) Product Ownership
2 35 (7.66%) Mobile App
3 12 (2.63%) Onboarding
4 9 (1.97%) Cloud Native
5 8 (1.75%) Animation
5 8 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
5 8 (1.75%) Enterprise Software
6 6 (1.31%) Distributed Systems
6 6 (1.31%) Graphic Design
6 6 (1.31%) NHS
6 6 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
6 6 (1.31%) Virtual Reality
6 6 (1.31%) Virtual Team
7 5 (1.09%) Augmented Reality
7 5 (1.09%) Data Structures
7 5 (1.09%) Digital Wallet
7 5 (1.09%) Greenfield Project
8 4 (0.88%) Team-Oriented Environment
9 3 (0.66%) AI Agents
9 3 (0.66%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 8 (1.75%) Android
2 5 (1.09%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.22%) Windows
3 1 (0.22%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 457 (100.00%) User Experience
2 203 (44.42%) Agile
3 140 (30.63%) User Research
4 97 (21.23%) Prototyping
5 95 (20.79%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
6 91 (19.91%) Service Design
7 87 (19.04%) Wireframes
8 82 (17.94%) Usability Testing
9 74 (16.19%) UX Research
10 67 (14.66%) Problem-Solving
11 66 (14.44%) Interaction Design
12 63 (13.79%) AI
13 61 (13.35%) CI/CD
14 48 (10.50%) Journey Map
15 47 (10.28%) Analytics
15 47 (10.28%) Workshop Facilitation
16 46 (10.07%) DevOps
16 46 (10.07%) Stakeholder Management
17 45 (9.85%) Continuous Improvement
17 45 (9.85%) Front End Development
Programming Languages
1 65 (14.22%) JavaScript
2 40 (8.75%) TypeScript
3 28 (6.13%) Java
4 25 (5.47%) Python
5 19 (4.16%) C#
6 14 (3.06%) SQL
7 5 (1.09%) C++
7 5 (1.09%) Kotlin
7 5 (1.09%) Lua
8 4 (0.88%) Korn
9 3 (0.66%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 2 (0.44%) Apex Code
10 2 (0.44%) PowerShell
11 1 (0.22%) Gremlin
11 1 (0.22%) Objective-C
11 1 (0.22%) Scala
11 1 (0.22%) SPARQL
11 1 (0.22%) Swift
11 1 (0.22%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 57 (12.47%) Security Cleared
2 44 (9.63%) Degree
3 38 (8.32%) SC Cleared
4 13 (2.84%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (2.19%) Master's Degree
6 5 (1.09%) Computer Science Degree
7 3 (0.66%) DV Cleared
7 3 (0.66%) Microsoft Certification
8 2 (0.44%) Azure Certification
8 2 (0.44%) CCA
8 2 (0.44%) PMI Certification
9 1 (0.22%) Citrix Certification
9 1 (0.22%) DBS Check
9 1 (0.22%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 152 (33.26%) Accessibility
2 54 (11.82%) WCAG
3 32 (7.00%) QA
4 11 (2.41%) Actionable Recommendations
5 4 (0.88%) GDPR
6 3 (0.66%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 3 (0.66%) Data Quality
7 1 (0.22%) EU AI Act
7 1 (0.22%) GMP
7 1 (0.22%) GxP
7 1 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 42001
7 1 (0.22%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 20 (4.38%) Docker
2 1 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 15 (3.28%) Kubernetes
2 14 (3.06%) Terraform
3 3 (0.66%) Ansible
4 2 (0.44%) Grafana
4 2 (0.44%) HP ALM
4 2 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
5 1 (0.22%) Podman
5 1 (0.22%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
Vendors
1 45 (9.85%) Adobe
2 21 (4.60%) Salesforce
3 17 (3.72%) Microsoft
4 8 (1.75%) Google
4 8 (1.75%) SAP
5 7 (1.53%) ServiceNow
6 6 (1.31%) MuleSoft
6 6 (1.31%) Sitecore
7 3 (0.66%) Oracle
7 3 (0.66%) Xamarin
8 2 (0.44%) Blue Prism
8 2 (0.44%) Databricks
8 2 (0.44%) Dynatrace
8 2 (0.44%) HP
8 2 (0.44%) OpenAI
9 1 (0.22%) Automation Anywhere
9 1 (0.22%) Dataiku
9 1 (0.22%) OneTrust
9 1 (0.22%) Qualtrics
9 1 (0.22%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud