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

6 months to
3 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 263 207 220
Rank change year-on-year -56 +13 -33
Contract jobs citing UX Design 508 438 422
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.96% 1.32% 1.08%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.13% 1.46% 1.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 306 286 284
10th Percentile £363 £313 £350
25th Percentile £406 £363 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £470 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.83% -6.10% -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £550 £600
90th Percentile £668 £631 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £425 £425
% change year-on-year +10.59% - -10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 18 6
10th Percentile £21.12 £33.14 £29.14
25th Percentile £26.31 £35.25 £32.05
Median hourly rate £38.15 £36.50 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year +4.52% +10.37% -46.01%
75th Percentile £70.63 £66.81 £39.65
90th Percentile £90.38 £70.71 £41.84
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.09 £49.00 -
% change year-on-year -42.67% - -

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 45,145 29,940 33,399
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.95% 90.42% 85.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,873 18,766 21,491
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £734 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,760 1,664 1,872
10th Percentile £14.50 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.50 £17.30 £18.14
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.33
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.63% -5.12%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £74.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.63 £40.94
% change year-on-year +86.03% -42.28% +2.35%

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 3 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 3 August 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 3 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 -49 433 £475 +1.17% 263
London -37 236 £513 +5.67% 152
UK excluding London -36 219 £470 +10.59% 148
Work from Home -68 124 £498 +17.06% 169
North of England -44 71 £450 +12.50% 52
South West -12 39 £475 +6.26% 26
Scotland +3 38 £525 +13.51% 13
Midlands -31 35 £550 +54.49% 16
West Midlands -41 29 £513 +41.38% 13
North West -49 28 £375 - 21
Yorkshire -36 27 £500 - 22
South East -80 23 £550 +10.00% 27
North East -24 16 £450 -7.69% 9
East of England -9 13 £410 -13.68% 6
East Midlands -18 6 £575 +61.52% 3
Wales -13 2 - - 2
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 7

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 29 (5.71%) CMS
2 20 (3.94%) Confluence
3 8 (1.57%) WordPress
4 4 (0.79%) Headless CMS
4 4 (0.79%) Kentico
5 3 (0.59%) Umbraco
6 2 (0.39%) Mendix
7 1 (0.20%) Apache
7 1 (0.20%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.20%) Camunda
7 1 (0.20%) Drupal
7 1 (0.20%) Moodle
7 1 (0.20%) nginx
7 1 (0.20%) Strapi
7 1 (0.20%) Traefik
Applications
1 29 (5.71%) Sketch
2 15 (2.95%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 15 (2.95%) Adobe XD
3 11 (2.17%) Adobe After Effects
4 10 (1.97%) Photoshop
5 9 (1.77%) Chatbot
6 8 (1.57%) Adobe Illustrator
7 6 (1.18%) Final Cut Pro
8 3 (0.59%) Microsoft Excel
8 3 (0.59%) MS Visio
9 2 (0.39%) InVision
9 2 (0.39%) Microsoft Office
10 1 (0.20%) Adobe Captivate
10 1 (0.20%) Trello
10 1 (0.20%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 5 (0.98%) Shopify
2 4 (0.79%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.39%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.20%) Eloqua
4 1 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.20%) SAP HR
4 1 (0.20%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 147 (28.94%) Figma
2 57 (11.22%) Azure
3 31 (6.10%) AWS
4 28 (5.51%) Azure DevOps
5 21 (4.13%) Power Platform
6 15 (2.95%) GitHub
7 14 (2.76%) SaaS
8 11 (2.17%) Firebase
8 11 (2.17%) GCP
9 10 (1.97%) GitHub Actions
10 9 (1.77%) Microsoft Copilot
11 7 (1.38%) Serverless
11 7 (1.38%) Slack
12 6 (1.18%) Google Play
12 6 (1.18%) Miro
13 5 (0.98%) Azure AI
14 4 (0.79%) AWS Lambda
14 4 (0.79%) BigCommerce
14 4 (0.79%) Copilot Studio
14 4 (0.79%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.20%) Bluetooth
1 1 (0.20%) NFC
1 1 (0.20%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (2.95%) Power BI
2 10 (1.97%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (1.18%) Metadata
3 6 (1.18%) NoSQL
3 6 (1.18%) Power Query
4 5 (0.98%) SQL Server
5 4 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
5 4 (0.79%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.79%) Redis
6 3 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
6 3 (0.59%) MySQL
6 3 (0.59%) Relational Database
6 3 (0.59%) Star Schema
7 2 (0.39%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.39%) DynamoDB
7 2 (0.39%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 2 (0.39%) SQLite
8 1 (0.20%) Amazon QuickSight
8 1 (0.20%) Pinecone
8 1 (0.20%) Qlik Sense
Development Applications
1 33 (6.50%) JIRA
2 24 (4.72%) Git
3 16 (3.15%) Jenkins
4 15 (2.95%) Cypress.io
5 10 (1.97%) fastlane
6 7 (1.38%) GitLab
7 6 (1.18%) Android Studio
7 6 (1.18%) Gradle
8 5 (0.98%) Crashlytics
8 5 (0.98%) Vite
8 5 (0.98%) Xcode
9 4 (0.79%) Claude Code
9 4 (0.79%) Storybook
9 4 (0.79%) webpack
10 3 (0.59%) Axure RP
10 3 (0.59%) JUnit
11 2 (0.39%) Babel
11 2 (0.39%) Jasmine
11 2 (0.39%) Karma Test Runner
11 2 (0.39%) Selenium
General
1 162 (31.89%) Social Skills
2 103 (20.28%) Public Sector
3 93 (18.31%) Finance
4 50 (9.84%) Banking
5 29 (5.71%) Retail
6 28 (5.51%) Analytical Skills
7 23 (4.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 19 (3.74%) Publishing
9 18 (3.54%) Presentation Skills
10 15 (2.95%) Automotive
11 12 (2.36%) Marketing
12 11 (2.17%) Influencing Skills
13 10 (1.97%) Legal
13 10 (1.97%) Military
14 7 (1.38%) Pharmaceutical
15 6 (1.18%) Documentation Skills
16 5 (0.98%) Law
17 4 (0.79%) Games
18 3 (0.59%) Advertising
18 3 (0.59%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 262 (51.57%) Designer
2 142 (27.95%) UX Designer
3 92 (18.11%) Senior
4 70 (13.78%) Developer
5 65 (12.80%) UI Designer
6 48 (9.45%) UI/UX Designer
7 46 (9.06%) Senior Designer
8 45 (8.86%) Content Designer
9 41 (8.07%) Lead
10 30 (5.91%) Product Designer
11 29 (5.71%) Senior UX Designer
12 22 (4.33%) User Researcher
13 19 (3.74%) Analyst
14 18 (3.54%) Service Designer
14 18 (3.54%) User Experience Researcher
15 17 (3.35%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
16 16 (3.15%) Business Analyst
16 16 (3.15%) Senior Developer
17 15 (2.95%) Consultant
18 13 (2.56%) Junior
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (11.81%) React
2 59 (11.61%) CSS
3 55 (10.83%) HTML
4 30 (5.91%) RESTful
5 27 (5.31%) AngularJS
6 24 (4.72%) HTML5
7 23 (4.53%) CSS3
8 20 (3.94%) REST
9 14 (2.76%) .NET
10 13 (2.56%) Redux
11 12 (2.36%) Jest
12 11 (2.17%) Android SDK
13 10 (1.97%) GraphQL
13 10 (1.97%) Vue
14 9 (1.77%) Node.js
15 8 (1.57%) Next.js
15 8 (1.57%) VML
16 7 (1.38%) FastAPI
16 7 (1.38%) Playwright
16 7 (1.38%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 67 (13.19%) Product Ownership
2 51 (10.04%) Mobile App
3 14 (2.76%) Animation
3 14 (2.76%) Self-Motivation
4 13 (2.56%) Onboarding
5 12 (2.36%) Cloud Native
6 11 (2.17%) AI Agents
7 9 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
8 8 (1.57%) Graphic Design
8 8 (1.57%) Greenfield Project
8 8 (1.57%) Taxonomies
9 7 (1.38%) Enterprise Software
10 6 (1.18%) Legacy Systems
10 6 (1.18%) NHS
10 6 (1.18%) Social Media
11 5 (0.98%) Virtual Reality
12 4 (0.79%) Algorithms
12 4 (0.79%) Data Structures
12 4 (0.79%) Distributed Systems
13 3 (0.59%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 15 (2.95%) Android
2 9 (1.77%) Apple iOS
3 2 (0.39%) Windows
4 1 (0.20%) Linux
4 1 (0.20%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 508 (100.00%) User Experience
2 216 (42.52%) Agile
3 129 (25.39%) User Research
4 106 (20.87%) Prototyping
5 104 (20.47%) Wireframes
6 97 (19.09%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
7 96 (18.90%) AI
8 79 (15.55%) Service Design
9 76 (14.96%) Usability Testing
10 69 (13.58%) Stakeholder Management
11 67 (13.19%) CI/CD
12 66 (12.99%) UX Research
13 65 (12.80%) Analytics
14 64 (12.60%) Interaction Design
15 59 (11.61%) Problem-Solving
16 52 (10.24%) Customer Experience
17 51 (10.04%) DevOps
17 51 (10.04%) Journey Map
18 49 (9.65%) Workshop Facilitation
19 48 (9.45%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 54 (10.63%) JavaScript
2 48 (9.45%) TypeScript
3 27 (5.31%) Java
4 25 (4.92%) Python
5 21 (4.13%) SQL
6 13 (2.56%) Kotlin
7 10 (1.97%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 9 (1.77%) C#
9 5 (0.98%) Korn
9 5 (0.98%) Swift
10 4 (0.79%) Apex Code
10 4 (0.79%) C++
10 4 (0.79%) Lua
11 3 (0.59%) PHP
12 2 (0.39%) Bicep
12 2 (0.39%) PowerShell
12 2 (0.39%) Ruby
13 1 (0.20%) Gremlin
13 1 (0.20%) SPARQL
13 1 (0.20%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 88 (17.32%) Security Cleared
2 63 (12.40%) SC Cleared
3 50 (9.84%) Degree
4 13 (2.56%) BPSS Clearance
5 12 (2.36%) DV Cleared
6 9 (1.77%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (1.57%) Master's Degree
8 3 (0.59%) Azure Certification
8 3 (0.59%) DBS Check
9 2 (0.39%) CCA
10 1 (0.20%) Citrix Certification
10 1 (0.20%) CTC Cleared
10 1 (0.20%) IIBA
10 1 (0.20%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 1 (0.20%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 174 (34.25%) Accessibility
2 67 (13.19%) WCAG
3 27 (5.31%) QA
4 11 (2.17%) Data Quality
5 3 (0.59%) Actionable Recommendations
5 3 (0.59%) ISO/IEC 42001
6 2 (0.39%) GDPR
7 1 (0.20%) EU AI Act
7 1 (0.20%) GMP
7 1 (0.20%) GRC
7 1 (0.20%) GxP
7 1 (0.20%) PMO
7 1 (0.20%) WAI
7 1 (0.20%) WAI-ARIA
System Software
1 15 (2.95%) Docker
2 1 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 12 (2.36%) Kubernetes
2 11 (2.17%) Terraform
3 2 (0.39%) Grafana
4 1 (0.20%) HP ALM
4 1 (0.20%) Kibana
Vendors
1 44 (8.66%) Adobe
2 34 (6.69%) Microsoft
3 16 (3.15%) Salesforce
4 11 (2.17%) Dynatrace
4 11 (2.17%) Google
5 8 (1.57%) SAP
5 8 (1.57%) ServiceNow
6 5 (0.98%) Apple
6 5 (0.98%) Foundry
7 4 (0.79%) Databricks
7 4 (0.79%) Oracle
7 4 (0.79%) Sitecore
8 3 (0.59%) Progress
9 2 (0.39%) Anaplan
9 2 (0.39%) Blue Prism
9 2 (0.39%) IBM
9 2 (0.39%) OpenAI
9 2 (0.39%) Optimizely
10 1 (0.20%) AppDynamics
10 1 (0.20%) MuleSoft