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

6 months to
19 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 276 207 242
Rank change year-on-year -69 +35 -53
Contract jobs citing UX Design 486 434 393
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.91% 1.32% 1.01%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.07% 1.46% 1.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 282 276 268
10th Percentile £363 £313 £350
25th Percentile £406 £365 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £463 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.86% -7.50% -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £538 £600
90th Percentile £667 £600 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £425 £450
% change year-on-year +8.24% -5.56% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 19 5
10th Percentile £21.45 £33.58 £28.11
25th Percentile £27.24 £35.25 £30.44
Median hourly rate £42.31 £36.50 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year +15.92% +10.37% -46.01%
75th Percentile £72.50 £63.46 -
90th Percentile £92.75 £70.53 £38.33
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.09 £49.00 £30.88
% change year-on-year -42.67% +58.70% -55.97%

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 45,377 29,691 33,202
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.71% 90.48% 85.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,881 18,495 21,183
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.58%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £727 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,839 1,731 1,775
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.38 £17.30 £18.15
Median hourly rate £41.56 £25.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +65.23% -38.57% +0.61%
75th Percentile £68.00 £49.63 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.30 £42.50
% change year-on-year +88.67% -45.18% +18.88%

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 19 August 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 19 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for UX Design in the UK

UX Design
Top 16 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 19 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 -57 417 £475 +3.50% 380
London -57 221 £520 +10.64% 229
UK excluding London -33 213 £460 +8.24% 214
Work from Home -83 118 £475 +11.76% 197
North of England -60 69 £450 +19.21% 64
South West -14 39 £475 +0.64% 27
Midlands -30 38 £550 +45.12% 36
Scotland -11 33 £538 +16.22% 20
West Midlands -43 32 £513 +0.59% 31
Yorkshire -30 31 £500 - 13
North West -58 24 £375 - 35
South East -77 22 £550 +29.41% 45
North East -27 14 £450 -4.00% 16
East of England -22 13 £410 -10.87% 7
East Midlands -17 6 £575 +63.82% 5
Wales -14 2 - - 4

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 28 (5.76%) CMS
2 22 (4.53%) Confluence
3 8 (1.65%) WordPress
4 4 (0.82%) Headless CMS
4 4 (0.82%) Kentico
5 3 (0.62%) Umbraco
6 2 (0.41%) Camunda
6 2 (0.41%) Mendix
7 1 (0.21%) Apache
7 1 (0.21%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.21%) ColdFusion
7 1 (0.21%) Drupal
7 1 (0.21%) Moodle
7 1 (0.21%) nginx
7 1 (0.21%) Strapi
7 1 (0.21%) Traefik
Applications
1 23 (4.73%) Sketch
2 15 (3.09%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 12 (2.47%) Adobe XD
4 10 (2.06%) Adobe After Effects
5 9 (1.85%) Photoshop
6 8 (1.65%) Adobe Illustrator
6 8 (1.65%) Chatbot
7 6 (1.23%) Final Cut Pro
8 3 (0.62%) Microsoft Excel
8 3 (0.62%) MS Visio
9 2 (0.41%) InVision
9 2 (0.41%) Microsoft Office
10 1 (0.21%) Adobe Captivate
10 1 (0.21%) Trello
10 1 (0.21%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 4 (0.82%) Dynamics CRM
1 4 (0.82%) Shopify
2 2 (0.41%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.21%) Eloqua
3 1 (0.21%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.21%) SAP HR
3 1 (0.21%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 127 (26.13%) Figma
2 53 (10.91%) Azure
3 29 (5.97%) AWS
4 26 (5.35%) Azure DevOps
5 20 (4.12%) Power Platform
6 16 (3.29%) GitHub
7 13 (2.67%) GCP
7 13 (2.67%) SaaS
8 11 (2.26%) Firebase
8 11 (2.26%) GitHub Actions
9 10 (2.06%) Microsoft Copilot
10 7 (1.44%) Slack
11 6 (1.23%) Google Play
11 6 (1.23%) Serverless
12 5 (1.03%) Azure AI
12 5 (1.03%) Copilot Studio
13 4 (0.82%) BigCommerce
13 4 (0.82%) Microsoft 365
13 4 (0.82%) Miro
13 4 (0.82%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.21%) Bluetooth
1 1 (0.21%) NFC
1 1 (0.21%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (2.88%) Power BI
2 10 (2.06%) PostgreSQL
3 7 (1.44%) SQL Server
4 6 (1.23%) Elasticsearch
4 6 (1.23%) Metadata
4 6 (1.23%) Power Query
5 5 (1.03%) MongoDB
5 5 (1.03%) NoSQL
5 5 (1.03%) Redis
6 4 (0.82%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (0.62%) Azure SQL Database
7 3 (0.62%) Relational Database
7 3 (0.62%) Star Schema
8 2 (0.41%) DynamoDB
8 2 (0.41%) MySQL
8 2 (0.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 2 (0.41%) SQLite
9 1 (0.21%) Amazon QuickSight
9 1 (0.21%) Amazon RDS
9 1 (0.21%) Db2
Development Applications
1 32 (6.58%) JIRA
2 27 (5.56%) Git
3 15 (3.09%) Jenkins
4 14 (2.88%) Cypress.io
5 10 (2.06%) fastlane
6 6 (1.23%) Android Studio
6 6 (1.23%) GitLab
6 6 (1.23%) Gradle
7 5 (1.03%) Crashlytics
7 5 (1.03%) Storybook
7 5 (1.03%) Vite
7 5 (1.03%) Xcode
8 4 (0.82%) Claude Code
8 4 (0.82%) webpack
9 3 (0.62%) JUnit
10 2 (0.41%) Babel
10 2 (0.41%) Jasmine
10 2 (0.41%) Karma Test Runner
11 1 (0.21%) REST Assured
11 1 (0.21%) rollup.js
General
1 139 (28.60%) Social Skills
2 90 (18.52%) Finance
2 90 (18.52%) Public Sector
3 47 (9.67%) Banking
4 29 (5.97%) Retail
5 26 (5.35%) Analytical Skills
6 23 (4.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 19 (3.91%) Publishing
8 16 (3.29%) Presentation Skills
9 15 (3.09%) Automotive
10 12 (2.47%) Marketing
10 12 (2.47%) Military
11 10 (2.06%) Influencing Skills
12 9 (1.85%) Legal
13 6 (1.23%) Pharmaceutical
14 5 (1.03%) Advertising
14 5 (1.03%) Law
15 4 (0.82%) Aerospace
15 4 (0.82%) Investment Banking
15 4 (0.82%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 244 (50.21%) Designer
2 127 (26.13%) UX Designer
3 93 (19.14%) Senior
4 75 (15.43%) Developer
5 60 (12.35%) UI Designer
6 44 (9.05%) Content Designer
6 44 (9.05%) Senior Designer
7 43 (8.85%) UI/UX Designer
8 42 (8.64%) Lead
9 27 (5.56%) Senior UX Designer
10 24 (4.94%) Product Designer
11 22 (4.53%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
12 18 (3.70%) User Experience Researcher
12 18 (3.70%) User Researcher
13 17 (3.50%) Analyst
14 16 (3.29%) Senior Developer
14 16 (3.29%) Service Designer
15 15 (3.09%) Business Analyst
15 15 (3.09%) Consultant
16 12 (2.47%) Junior
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 62 (12.76%) React
2 59 (12.14%) CSS
3 54 (11.11%) HTML
4 28 (5.76%) RESTful
5 26 (5.35%) AngularJS
6 23 (4.73%) HTML5
7 22 (4.53%) CSS3
8 21 (4.32%) REST
9 14 (2.88%) .NET
10 12 (2.47%) Android SDK
10 12 (2.47%) Jest
11 11 (2.26%) Next.js
11 11 (2.26%) Redux
12 10 (2.06%) Vue
13 9 (1.85%) GraphQL
14 8 (1.65%) OAuth
14 8 (1.65%) VML
15 7 (1.44%) .NET Framework
15 7 (1.44%) Node.js
15 7 (1.44%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 62 (12.76%) Product Ownership
2 49 (10.08%) Mobile App
3 14 (2.88%) Cloud Native
3 14 (2.88%) Self-Motivation
4 12 (2.47%) AI Agents
4 12 (2.47%) Animation
5 11 (2.26%) Onboarding
6 8 (1.65%) Data Protection Act
6 8 (1.65%) Graphic Design
7 7 (1.44%) Greenfield Project
7 7 (1.44%) NHS
7 7 (1.44%) Taxonomies
7 7 (1.44%) Virtual Reality
8 6 (1.23%) Algorithms
8 6 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
8 6 (1.23%) Legacy Systems
8 6 (1.23%) Social Media
9 5 (1.03%) IoT
10 4 (0.82%) Augmented Reality
10 4 (0.82%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 15 (3.09%) Android
2 8 (1.65%) Apple iOS
3 2 (0.41%) Windows
4 1 (0.21%) Linux
4 1 (0.21%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 486 (100.00%) User Experience
2 200 (41.15%) Agile
3 112 (23.05%) User Research
4 94 (19.34%) Prototyping
5 92 (18.93%) AI
6 91 (18.72%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
6 91 (18.72%) Wireframes
7 72 (14.81%) Service Design
8 67 (13.79%) CI/CD
9 65 (13.37%) Usability Testing
10 62 (12.76%) Analytics
11 61 (12.55%) Problem-Solving
11 61 (12.55%) Stakeholder Management
12 56 (11.52%) Interaction Design
13 55 (11.32%) UX Research
14 51 (10.49%) Customer Experience
14 51 (10.49%) Workshop Facilitation
15 47 (9.67%) Scrum
16 46 (9.47%) DevOps
17 44 (9.05%) Journey Map
Programming Languages
1 58 (11.93%) JavaScript
2 49 (10.08%) TypeScript
3 28 (5.76%) Java
4 23 (4.73%) Python
4 23 (4.73%) SQL
5 13 (2.67%) Kotlin
6 10 (2.06%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 9 (1.85%) C#
8 5 (1.03%) Swift
9 3 (0.62%) Apex Code
9 3 (0.62%) PHP
10 2 (0.41%) Bicep
10 2 (0.41%) C++
10 2 (0.41%) Lua
10 2 (0.41%) Ruby
11 1 (0.21%) CFML
11 1 (0.21%) JSX
11 1 (0.21%) Korn
11 1 (0.21%) PowerShell
11 1 (0.21%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 82 (16.87%) Security Cleared
2 55 (11.32%) SC Cleared
3 44 (9.05%) Degree
4 14 (2.88%) DV Cleared
5 11 (2.26%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (2.06%) Computer Science Degree
7 7 (1.44%) Master's Degree
8 3 (0.62%) DBS Check
9 2 (0.41%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.41%) CCA
10 1 (0.21%) CTC Cleared
10 1 (0.21%) IIBA
10 1 (0.21%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 1 (0.21%) MBA
10 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 1 (0.21%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 156 (32.10%) Accessibility
2 60 (12.35%) WCAG
3 26 (5.35%) QA
4 11 (2.26%) Data Quality
5 3 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 42001
6 2 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
6 2 (0.41%) GDPR
7 1 (0.21%) GMP
7 1 (0.21%) GRC
7 1 (0.21%) GxP
7 1 (0.21%) PMO
7 1 (0.21%) WAI
7 1 (0.21%) WAI-ARIA
System Software
1 16 (3.29%) Docker
Systems Management
1 15 (3.09%) Kubernetes
2 8 (1.65%) Terraform
3 2 (0.41%) Grafana
4 1 (0.21%) Istio
4 1 (0.21%) Kibana
4 1 (0.21%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 41 (8.44%) Adobe
2 35 (7.20%) Microsoft
3 13 (2.67%) Salesforce
4 11 (2.26%) Dynatrace
4 11 (2.26%) ServiceNow
5 9 (1.85%) Google
6 8 (1.65%) SAP
7 6 (1.23%) Apple
7 6 (1.23%) Oracle
8 5 (1.03%) Foundry
9 4 (0.82%) Anaplan
9 4 (0.82%) Databricks
9 4 (0.82%) Sitecore
10 3 (0.62%) OpenAI
10 3 (0.62%) Progress
11 2 (0.41%) Blue Prism
11 2 (0.41%) IBM
11 2 (0.41%) Optimizely
12 1 (0.21%) Automation Anywhere
12 1 (0.21%) Qualtrics