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 8 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 231 223 237
Rank change year-on-year -8 +14 -67
Contract jobs citing UX Design 442 360 430
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.20% 1.12% 1.01%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.36% 1.26% 1.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 313 227 291
10th Percentile £350 £313 £340
25th Percentile £400 £395 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -9.09%
75th Percentile £545 £585 £600
90th Percentile £606 £650 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £438 £475
% change year-on-year +2.86% -7.89% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 4 9
10th Percentile £27.62 £30.76 £46.34
25th Percentile £35.60 £31.23 £70.07
Median hourly rate £44.50 £33.27 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year +33.75% -54.11% +33.03%
75th Percentile £63.75 £39.31 £81.25
90th Percentile £70.13 £47.98 £81.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.60 £32.21 £77.50
% change year-on-year +10.53% -58.44% +38.39%

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 32,425 28,554 37,166
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.87% 88.48% 87.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,478 17,360 24,692
10th Percentile £304 £308 £305
25th Percentile £406 £413 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £720 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,006 922 1,534
10th Percentile £14.75 £15.62 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.30 £18.93
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -23.53% +21.43%
75th Percentile £55.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.55 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £30.41 £45.00
% change year-on-year -21.65% -32.42% +55.17%

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 8 January 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 8 January 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 8 January 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 -8 356 £468 -9.22% 235
London -14 203 £475 -9.52% 102
UK excluding London -4 179 £450 +2.86% 171
Work from Home -17 124 £475 +5.56% 131
North of England -19 62 £400 -3.09% 41
North West -1 38 £388 +1.31% 22
Midlands -15 37 £425 +19.38% 20
Scotland +10 33 £475 +8.57% 6
West Midlands -16 31 £425 -24.44% 16
South East -22 21 £519 +22.06% 60
Yorkshire -39 18 £500 - 10
South West -1 12 £450 +2.86% 16
East of England -19 8 £460 +2.22% 21
Wales +4 7 £450 +5.88% 6
North East -5 6 £369 - 9
East Midlands -25 6 £455 +27.81% 4
Northern Ireland -10 1 £625 +16.28% 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 18 (4.07%) Confluence
2 17 (3.85%) CMS
3 7 (1.58%) SharePoint
4 6 (1.36%) SugarCRM
5 3 (0.68%) Jupyter
6 2 (0.45%) Appian
6 2 (0.45%) Headless CMS
6 2 (0.45%) Sitecore CMS
7 1 (0.23%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 1 (0.23%) Cloud Foundry
7 1 (0.23%) Drupal
7 1 (0.23%) Umbraco
7 1 (0.23%) WordPress
Applications
1 49 (11.09%) Sketch
2 31 (7.01%) Adobe XD
3 16 (3.62%) InVision
4 10 (2.26%) Chatbot
5 6 (1.36%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 6 (1.36%) Adobe Illustrator
6 5 (1.13%) Photoshop
7 4 (0.90%) Adobe After Effects
8 3 (0.68%) Microsoft Excel
8 3 (0.68%) Microsoft Office
8 3 (0.68%) OmniGraffle
8 3 (0.68%) Trello
9 2 (0.45%) Blender
9 2 (0.45%) CINEMA 4D
9 2 (0.45%) InDesign
9 2 (0.45%) MS Visio
9 2 (0.45%) UXPin
9 2 (0.45%) Zeplin
10 1 (0.23%) Adobe Premiere
10 1 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (0.90%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.45%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.23%) Maximo
3 1 (0.23%) SAP CO
3 1 (0.23%) SAP FI
3 1 (0.23%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 123 (27.83%) Figma
2 56 (12.67%) Azure
3 54 (12.22%) AWS
4 32 (7.24%) SaaS
5 20 (4.52%) Miro
6 19 (4.30%) GCP
7 14 (3.17%) Power Platform
8 13 (2.94%) GitHub
9 10 (2.26%) Azure DevOps
9 10 (2.26%) GitHub Actions
10 6 (1.36%) Firebase
10 6 (1.36%) Microsoft 365
10 6 (1.36%) Serverless
11 5 (1.13%) PaaS
11 5 (1.13%) PowerApps
12 4 (0.90%) AWS Lambda
12 4 (0.90%) Contentful
12 4 (0.90%) Entra ID
12 4 (0.90%) Google Analytics
12 4 (0.90%) Google Gemini
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.13%) Internet
2 3 (0.68%) HTTP
3 2 (0.45%) Intranet
4 1 (0.23%) HTTPS
4 1 (0.23%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (2.94%) NoSQL
2 10 (2.26%) MySQL
3 8 (1.81%) MongoDB
3 8 (1.81%) Power BI
3 8 (1.81%) SQL Server
4 7 (1.58%) Relational Database
5 5 (1.13%) Mixpanel
5 5 (1.13%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (0.90%) DynamoDB
7 2 (0.45%) Amazon RDS
7 2 (0.45%) CockroachDB
7 2 (0.45%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.45%) Metadata
7 2 (0.45%) Pinecone
8 1 (0.23%) Amazon Aurora
8 1 (0.23%) Azure SQL Database
8 1 (0.23%) BigQuery
8 1 (0.23%) Elasticsearch
8 1 (0.23%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.23%) SAP BW
Development Applications
1 50 (11.31%) Git
2 36 (8.14%) JIRA
3 22 (4.98%) Axure RP
4 16 (3.62%) Cypress.io
5 14 (3.17%) Jenkins
6 11 (2.49%) GitLab
7 10 (2.26%) JUnit
8 7 (1.58%) CircleCI
8 7 (1.58%) Gradle
9 6 (1.36%) Xcode
10 5 (1.13%) Visual Website Optimizer
11 4 (0.90%) Android Studio
11 4 (0.90%) Balsamiq
11 4 (0.90%) Eclipse
11 4 (0.90%) Visual Studio
11 4 (0.90%) webpack
12 3 (0.68%) Lerna
12 3 (0.68%) Mocha
13 2 (0.45%) Maven
13 2 (0.45%) Selenium
General
1 151 (34.16%) Social Skills
2 106 (23.98%) Finance
3 69 (15.61%) Public Sector
4 54 (12.22%) Banking
5 43 (9.73%) Analytical Skills
6 30 (6.79%) Marketing
7 13 (2.94%) Influencing Skills
8 12 (2.71%) Financial Institution
9 10 (2.26%) Legal
10 9 (2.04%) Pharmaceutical
10 9 (2.04%) Presentation Skills
11 8 (1.81%) Retail
12 7 (1.58%) Automotive
13 6 (1.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 4 (0.90%) Publishing
15 3 (0.68%) Aerospace
15 3 (0.68%) Front Office
15 3 (0.68%) Investment Banking
15 3 (0.68%) Local Government
15 3 (0.68%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 178 (40.27%) Designer
2 123 (27.83%) UX Designer
3 88 (19.91%) Developer
4 78 (17.65%) Senior
5 36 (8.14%) Senior Designer
6 33 (7.47%) Service Designer
7 32 (7.24%) UI Designer
8 29 (6.56%) Lead
9 26 (5.88%) Senior UX Designer
10 25 (5.66%) UI/UX Designer
11 24 (5.43%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
12 22 (4.98%) Product Designer
13 21 (4.75%) User Researcher
14 15 (3.39%) Analyst
15 13 (2.94%) Business Analyst
16 12 (2.71%) Content Designer
16 12 (2.71%) Senior Developer
16 12 (2.71%) UX Service Designer
17 11 (2.49%) React Developer
18 10 (2.26%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 84 (19.00%) CSS
1 84 (19.00%) HTML
2 67 (15.16%) React
3 50 (11.31%) RESTful
4 31 (7.01%) HTML5
5 30 (6.79%) REST
6 25 (5.66%) AngularJS
7 24 (5.43%) CSS3
8 21 (4.75%) Node.js
9 20 (4.52%) .NET
10 19 (4.30%) Spring
11 18 (4.07%) Jest
12 16 (3.62%) Next.js
12 16 (3.62%) Playwright
12 16 (3.62%) Redux
12 16 (3.62%) Spring Boot
13 12 (2.71%) GraphQL
14 10 (2.26%) jQuery
14 10 (2.26%) OAuth
14 10 (2.26%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 49 (11.09%) Product Ownership
2 43 (9.73%) Mobile App
3 26 (5.88%) Onboarding
4 11 (2.49%) Low-Code
5 10 (2.26%) NHS
5 10 (2.26%) Virtual Team
6 8 (1.81%) Distributed Systems
7 6 (1.36%) Cloud Native
7 6 (1.36%) Enterprise Software
7 6 (1.36%) Greenfield Project
7 6 (1.36%) W3C
8 5 (1.13%) Digital Wallet
8 5 (1.13%) Mobile Banking
8 5 (1.13%) RIA
9 4 (0.90%) Blog
9 4 (0.90%) Data Protection Act
9 4 (0.90%) Data Structures
9 4 (0.90%) Digital Media
9 4 (0.90%) Learning Management System
9 4 (0.90%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 18 (4.07%) Android
1 18 (4.07%) Apple iOS
2 5 (1.13%) Windows
3 4 (0.90%) Linux
4 3 (0.68%) Windows 10
5 2 (0.45%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.23%) VMS
6 1 (0.23%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 442 (100.00%) User Experience
2 205 (46.38%) Agile
3 121 (27.38%) User Research
4 97 (21.95%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
5 87 (19.68%) Usability Testing
6 84 (19.00%) Service Design
7 82 (18.55%) Problem-Solving
8 77 (17.42%) Wireframes
9 73 (16.52%) CI/CD
10 72 (16.29%) Prototyping
11 68 (15.38%) Front End Development
12 59 (13.35%) Analytics
13 54 (12.22%) UX Research
14 49 (11.09%) Interaction Design
15 46 (10.41%) DevOps
16 44 (9.95%) Continuous Improvement
16 44 (9.95%) Workshop Facilitation
17 41 (9.28%) AI
18 40 (9.05%) Microservices
18 40 (9.05%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 80 (18.10%) JavaScript
2 49 (11.09%) TypeScript
3 44 (9.95%) Java
4 21 (4.75%) SQL
5 17 (3.85%) Python
6 15 (3.39%) C#
7 14 (3.17%) Kotlin
8 13 (2.94%) Swift
9 9 (2.04%) Objective-C
10 7 (1.58%) PHP
11 5 (1.13%) Ruby
11 5 (1.13%) Scala
12 4 (0.90%) C++
13 3 (0.68%) C
14 2 (0.45%) Bash
14 2 (0.45%) COBOL
14 2 (0.45%) Groovy
14 2 (0.45%) PL/SQL
15 1 (0.23%) PowerShell
15 1 (0.23%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 48 (10.86%) Degree
2 40 (9.05%) Security Cleared
3 22 (4.98%) SC Cleared
4 16 (3.62%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (2.26%) Computer Science Degree
6 5 (1.13%) Master's Degree
7 4 (0.90%) MCP
8 3 (0.68%) DV Cleared
9 2 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
9 2 (0.45%) PMI Certification
10 1 (0.23%) AWS Certification
10 1 (0.23%) Azure Certification
10 1 (0.23%) CCA
10 1 (0.23%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 126 (28.51%) Accessibility
2 41 (9.28%) WCAG
3 40 (9.05%) QA
4 12 (2.71%) GDPR
5 8 (1.81%) Actionable Recommendations
6 5 (1.13%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 4 (0.90%) Data Quality
7 4 (0.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 3 (0.68%) SLA
9 1 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.23%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 31 (7.01%) Docker
2 3 (0.68%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.23%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 18 (4.07%) Kubernetes
2 13 (2.94%) Terraform
3 6 (1.36%) Ansible
3 6 (1.36%) Grafana
4 3 (0.68%) Single Sign-On
5 2 (0.45%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
6 1 (0.23%) Consul
6 1 (0.23%) HP ALM
6 1 (0.23%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.23%) Podman
6 1 (0.23%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.23%) SCCM
Vendors
1 45 (10.18%) Adobe
2 37 (8.37%) Microsoft
3 22 (4.98%) Google
4 16 (3.62%) Salesforce
5 11 (2.49%) ServiceNow
6 8 (1.81%) Oracle
6 8 (1.81%) SAP
7 7 (1.58%) Hotjar
7 7 (1.58%) Optimizely
8 6 (1.36%) Hopewiser
9 5 (1.13%) Amplitude
9 5 (1.13%) Apple
9 5 (1.13%) MuleSoft
9 5 (1.13%) OutSystems
10 3 (0.68%) Dataiku
10 3 (0.68%) OpenAI
11 2 (0.45%) HP
11 2 (0.45%) OneTrust
11 2 (0.45%) Palantir
11 2 (0.45%) Sitecore