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

6 months to
17 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 253 220 210
Rank change year-on-year -33 -10 -24
Contract jobs citing UX Design 454 357 485
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.05% 1.22% 1.09%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.22% 1.35% 1.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 342 247 334
10th Percentile £358 £313 £325
25th Percentile £400 £386 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £477 £495 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.69% -1.00% -7.19%
75th Percentile £569 £575 £600
90th Percentile £623 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £450
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.56% -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 4 10
10th Percentile £25.42 £35.93 £31.71
25th Percentile £35.64 £42.56 £41.51
Median hourly rate £51.44 £69.60 £61.25
Median % change year-on-year -26.09% +13.62% +36.11%
75th Percentile £64.38 £97.00 £80.63
90th Percentile £67.00 £97.93 £84.54
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £91.69 £78.75
% change year-on-year -29.11% +16.43% +60.71%

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 37,130 26,538 38,501
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.00% 90.38% 86.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,530 17,031 25,049
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £610 £638 £638
90th Percentile £723 £745 £744
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -2.04% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,210 919 2,337
10th Percentile £14.89 £15.25 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% - -7.14%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.62 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.50 £70.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £31.76 £31.50
% change year-on-year -13.41% +0.83% -10.07%

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 17 March 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 17 March 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 17 March 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 -41 365 £475 -5.00% 232
London -13 225 £493 -5.74% 108
UK excluding London -54 157 £450 +5.88% 159
Work from Home -44 119 £475 +5.56% 136
North of England -34 66 £402 +1.77% 56
North West -10 44 £400 +2.56% 27
Scotland +14 31 £550 +25.71% 10
South East -41 20 £525 - 50
Midlands -51 18 £425 +19.38% 13
West Midlands -55 15 £425 +4.94% 10
South West -24 14 £450 +20.00% 12
Yorkshire -49 14 £513 +27.97% 9
North East -5 8 £364 -6.06% 20
Wales -5 5 £450 - 10
East of England -29 5 £443 -7.33% 8
East Midlands -36 3 £545 +53.09% 3
Northern Ireland -7 1 - - 2

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 15 (3.30%) Confluence
2 13 (2.86%) CMS
3 8 (1.76%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.66%) Headless CMS
4 3 (0.66%) Jupyter
5 2 (0.44%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 2 (0.44%) Appian
5 2 (0.44%) Sitecore CMS
5 2 (0.44%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.22%) Camunda
6 1 (0.22%) Cloud Foundry
6 1 (0.22%) Drupal
6 1 (0.22%) Mendix
6 1 (0.22%) Moodle
6 1 (0.22%) Strapi
6 1 (0.22%) SugarCRM
Applications
1 41 (9.03%) Sketch
2 34 (7.49%) Adobe XD
3 13 (2.86%) Chatbot
3 13 (2.86%) InVision
4 5 (1.10%) Photoshop
5 4 (0.88%) Adobe After Effects
5 4 (0.88%) Adobe Illustrator
6 2 (0.44%) InDesign
6 2 (0.44%) OmniGraffle
6 2 (0.44%) Trello
7 1 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.22%) Blender
7 1 (0.22%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.22%) Microsoft Excel
7 1 (0.22%) Microsoft Office
7 1 (0.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.22%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.22%) UserZoom
7 1 (0.22%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 1 (0.22%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (0.22%) SAP CO
1 1 (0.22%) SAP FI
1 1 (0.22%) SAP FI/CO
1 1 (0.22%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 142 (31.28%) Figma
2 51 (11.23%) Azure
3 45 (9.91%) AWS
4 24 (5.29%) SaaS
5 17 (3.74%) Power Platform
6 15 (3.30%) Miro
7 14 (3.08%) Azure DevOps
8 13 (2.86%) GCP
9 11 (2.42%) GitHub
10 10 (2.20%) GitHub Actions
11 7 (1.54%) Serverless
12 5 (1.10%) AWS Lambda
12 5 (1.10%) IaaS
12 5 (1.10%) Microsoft 365
12 5 (1.10%) PaaS
13 4 (0.88%) Amazon S3
13 4 (0.88%) AWS CloudFormation
13 4 (0.88%) PowerApps
14 3 (0.66%) Contentful
14 3 (0.66%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.32%) Internet
2 2 (0.44%) HTTP
2 2 (0.44%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (2.64%) NoSQL
2 10 (2.20%) Power BI
3 7 (1.54%) SQL Server
4 6 (1.32%) MongoDB
5 5 (1.10%) PostgreSQL
5 5 (1.10%) Relational Database
6 3 (0.66%) DynamoDB
6 3 (0.66%) Mixpanel
6 3 (0.66%) MySQL
6 3 (0.66%) Pinecone
7 2 (0.44%) CockroachDB
7 2 (0.44%) Elasticsearch
8 1 (0.22%) Amazon RDS
8 1 (0.22%) Azure SQL Database
8 1 (0.22%) Data Warehouse
8 1 (0.22%) Metadata
8 1 (0.22%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.22%) SAP BW
8 1 (0.22%) SAP HANA
8 1 (0.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 37 (8.15%) Git
2 28 (6.17%) JIRA
3 22 (4.85%) Axure RP
4 19 (4.19%) Cypress.io
5 18 (3.96%) GitLab
6 11 (2.42%) JUnit
7 9 (1.98%) CircleCI
7 9 (1.98%) Jenkins
8 6 (1.32%) Mocha
9 5 (1.10%) Visual Studio
10 4 (0.88%) Gradle
10 4 (0.88%) Selenium
11 3 (0.66%) Android Studio
11 3 (0.66%) Balsamiq
11 3 (0.66%) Lerna
11 3 (0.66%) Visual Website Optimizer
12 2 (0.44%) Maven
12 2 (0.44%) TestRail
12 2 (0.44%) Vite
12 2 (0.44%) webpack
General
1 137 (30.18%) Social Skills
2 88 (19.38%) Finance
3 83 (18.28%) Public Sector
4 55 (12.11%) Banking
5 30 (6.61%) Analytical Skills
6 24 (5.29%) Marketing
7 18 (3.96%) Presentation Skills
8 10 (2.20%) Retail
9 9 (1.98%) Pharmaceutical
10 8 (1.76%) Legal
11 7 (1.54%) Financial Institution
12 6 (1.32%) Games
13 5 (1.10%) Documentation Skills
13 5 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (1.10%) Local Government
14 4 (0.88%) Influencing Skills
15 3 (0.66%) Advertising
15 3 (0.66%) Retail Banking
15 3 (0.66%) Telecoms
16 2 (0.44%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 199 (43.83%) Designer
2 131 (28.85%) UX Designer
3 81 (17.84%) Senior
4 73 (16.08%) Developer
5 39 (8.59%) Senior Designer
6 33 (7.27%) Service Designer
6 33 (7.27%) UI Designer
7 32 (7.05%) Product Designer
7 32 (7.05%) Senior UX Designer
8 27 (5.95%) UI/UX Designer
9 26 (5.73%) User Researcher
10 18 (3.96%) Content Designer
10 18 (3.96%) Lead
11 16 (3.52%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
12 14 (3.08%) Analyst
13 13 (2.86%) Full-Stack Developer
14 12 (2.64%) Product Manager
14 12 (2.64%) React Developer
14 12 (2.64%) Senior Developer
15 11 (2.42%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 70 (15.42%) React
2 67 (14.76%) HTML
3 66 (14.54%) CSS
4 48 (10.57%) RESTful
5 30 (6.61%) HTML5
6 27 (5.95%) AngularJS
6 27 (5.95%) CSS3
7 26 (5.73%) Node.js
8 24 (5.29%) REST
9 21 (4.63%) Jest
10 20 (4.41%) .NET
11 19 (4.19%) Spring
11 19 (4.19%) Spring Boot
12 14 (3.08%) Playwright
12 14 (3.08%) Redux
13 13 (2.86%) Next.js
14 9 (1.98%) GraphQL
14 9 (1.98%) JSON
14 9 (1.98%) OAuth
15 6 (1.32%) Unity (Game Engine)
Miscellaneous
1 49 (10.79%) Product Ownership
2 41 (9.03%) Mobile App
3 14 (3.08%) Onboarding
4 12 (2.64%) Virtual Team
5 8 (1.76%) Cloud Native
5 8 (1.76%) NHS
6 7 (1.54%) Distributed Systems
7 6 (1.32%) Animation
7 6 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
7 6 (1.32%) Graphic Design
7 6 (1.32%) W3C
8 5 (1.10%) Digital Wallet
8 5 (1.10%) Enterprise Software
8 5 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
8 5 (1.10%) RIA
9 4 (0.88%) Augmented Reality
9 4 (0.88%) Data Structures
9 4 (0.88%) Low-Code
9 4 (0.88%) Team-Oriented Environment
10 3 (0.66%) Digital Media
Operating Systems
1 11 (2.42%) Android
2 8 (1.76%) Apple iOS
3 4 (0.88%) Windows
4 2 (0.44%) Linux
4 2 (0.44%) Windows 10
5 1 (0.22%) Mac OS
5 1 (0.22%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 454 (100.00%) User Experience
2 203 (44.71%) Agile
3 142 (31.28%) User Research
4 99 (21.81%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
5 97 (21.37%) Prototyping
6 89 (19.60%) Usability Testing
7 86 (18.94%) Service Design
8 85 (18.72%) Wireframes
9 73 (16.08%) UX Research
10 68 (14.98%) Problem-Solving
11 67 (14.76%) CI/CD
12 61 (13.44%) Interaction Design
13 58 (12.78%) Analytics
14 54 (11.89%) Front End Development
15 52 (11.45%) AI
16 50 (11.01%) DevOps
17 49 (10.79%) Workshop Facilitation
18 47 (10.35%) Journey Map
19 43 (9.47%) Continuous Improvement
20 40 (8.81%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 72 (15.86%) JavaScript
2 45 (9.91%) TypeScript
3 28 (6.17%) Java
4 22 (4.85%) Python
5 17 (3.74%) C#
6 16 (3.52%) SQL
7 6 (1.32%) Kotlin
8 5 (1.10%) C++
8 5 (1.10%) Lua
9 4 (0.88%) Korn
10 2 (0.44%) PHP
10 2 (0.44%) Swift
11 1 (0.22%) Apex Code
11 1 (0.22%) BeanShell
11 1 (0.22%) Gremlin
11 1 (0.22%) Objective-C
11 1 (0.22%) PowerShell
11 1 (0.22%) Ruby
11 1 (0.22%) Scala
11 1 (0.22%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 48 (10.57%) Degree
2 45 (9.91%) Security Cleared
3 26 (5.73%) SC Cleared
4 14 (3.08%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (2.20%) Master's Degree
6 4 (0.88%) 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%) PMI Certification
9 1 (0.22%) CCA
9 1 (0.22%) Citrix Certification
9 1 (0.22%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 149 (32.82%) Accessibility
2 54 (11.89%) WCAG
3 38 (8.37%) QA
4 10 (2.20%) Actionable Recommendations
5 5 (1.10%) 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%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 29 (6.39%) Docker
2 1 (0.22%) Active Directory
2 1 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 22 (4.85%) Kubernetes
2 16 (3.52%) Terraform
3 5 (1.10%) Grafana
4 4 (0.88%) Ansible
5 2 (0.44%) HP ALM
5 2 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.22%) Consul
6 1 (0.22%) Podman
6 1 (0.22%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
Vendors
1 44 (9.69%) Adobe
2 25 (5.51%) Microsoft
3 14 (3.08%) Google
3 14 (3.08%) Salesforce
4 10 (2.20%) ServiceNow
5 5 (1.10%) MuleSoft
6 4 (0.88%) Hotjar
6 4 (0.88%) Optimizely
6 4 (0.88%) SAP
7 3 (0.66%) Amplitude
7 3 (0.66%) Dataiku
7 3 (0.66%) Oracle
7 3 (0.66%) Xamarin
8 2 (0.44%) Apple
8 2 (0.44%) HP
8 2 (0.44%) Sitecore
9 1 (0.22%) Citrix
9 1 (0.22%) Progress
9 1 (0.22%) Sybase
9 1 (0.22%) Telerik