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

6 months to
21 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 251 214 211
Rank change year-on-year -37 -3 -24
Contract jobs citing UX Design 466 363 492
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.06% 1.24% 1.11%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.24% 1.37% 1.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 351 252 339
10th Percentile £363 £314 £325
25th Percentile £400 £388 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -4.00% -7.41%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £611
90th Percentile £638 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £425 £425
% change year-on-year +8.24% - -10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 4 10
10th Percentile £24.80 £35.93 £31.71
25th Percentile £26.51 £42.56 £41.51
Median hourly rate £44.50 £69.60 £61.25
Median % change year-on-year -36.06% +13.62% +36.11%
75th Percentile £58.58 £97.00 £80.63
90th Percentile £67.00 £97.93 £84.54
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.55 £91.69 £78.75
% change year-on-year -49.24% +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 37,710 26,528 38,308
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.02% 90.44% 86.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,926 17,086 24,905
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 £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -1.28% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,216 926 2,329
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.25 £12.98
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.00 £16.00
Median hourly rate £30.32 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -6.71% - -7.14%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.51 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £76.72 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.50 £31.76 £31.25
% change year-on-year -10.26% +1.63% -10.71%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 -32 379 £476 -4.90% 230
London -15 228 £500 -3.85% 102
UK excluding London -35 167 £460 +8.24% 157
Work from Home -39 124 £475 +5.56% 162
North of England -33 66 £402 +0.50% 61
North West -5 43 £400 - 37
Scotland +10 30 £550 +27.54% 11
South East -44 25 £513 +2.50% 45
Midlands -55 21 £444 +24.65% 12
West Midlands -50 18 £425 +4.94% 9
South West -22 17 £450 +20.00% 12
Yorkshire -49 15 £513 +27.97% 8
North East -9 8 £364 -6.06% 16
Wales -2 5 £450 - 8
East of England -22 5 £443 -7.33% 7
East Midlands -38 3 £545 +53.09% 3
Northern Ireland -3 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 (3.22%) Confluence
2 13 (2.79%) CMS
3 8 (1.72%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.64%) Headless CMS
4 3 (0.64%) Jupyter
5 2 (0.43%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 2 (0.43%) Appian
5 2 (0.43%) Sitecore CMS
5 2 (0.43%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.21%) Camunda
6 1 (0.21%) Cloud Foundry
6 1 (0.21%) Drupal
6 1 (0.21%) Mendix
6 1 (0.21%) Moodle
6 1 (0.21%) Strapi
6 1 (0.21%) SugarCRM
Applications
1 39 (8.37%) Sketch
2 33 (7.08%) Adobe XD
3 13 (2.79%) Chatbot
3 13 (2.79%) InVision
4 4 (0.86%) Adobe After Effects
4 4 (0.86%) Photoshop
5 3 (0.64%) Adobe Illustrator
5 3 (0.64%) Microsoft Excel
5 3 (0.64%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (0.64%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.43%) OmniGraffle
6 2 (0.43%) Trello
7 1 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.21%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.21%) InDesign
7 1 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.21%) UserZoom
7 1 (0.21%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 2 (0.43%) Shopify
2 1 (0.21%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.21%) SAP CO
2 1 (0.21%) SAP FI
2 1 (0.21%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 143 (30.69%) Figma
2 57 (12.23%) Azure
3 45 (9.66%) AWS
4 24 (5.15%) SaaS
5 18 (3.86%) Azure DevOps
6 14 (3.00%) GCP
6 14 (3.00%) Miro
6 14 (3.00%) Power Platform
7 11 (2.36%) GitHub
7 11 (2.36%) GitHub Actions
8 7 (1.50%) Serverless
9 5 (1.07%) AWS Lambda
9 5 (1.07%) IaaS
9 5 (1.07%) Microsoft 365
9 5 (1.07%) PaaS
10 4 (0.86%) Amazon S3
10 4 (0.86%) AWS CloudFormation
10 4 (0.86%) Google Play
10 4 (0.86%) PowerApps
11 3 (0.64%) Google Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.29%) Internet
2 2 (0.43%) HTTP
2 2 (0.43%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (2.58%) NoSQL
2 7 (1.50%) Power BI
2 7 (1.50%) SQL Server
3 6 (1.29%) MongoDB
4 5 (1.07%) PostgreSQL
4 5 (1.07%) Relational Database
5 3 (0.64%) DynamoDB
5 3 (0.64%) Mixpanel
5 3 (0.64%) MySQL
5 3 (0.64%) Pinecone
6 2 (0.43%) CockroachDB
6 2 (0.43%) Elasticsearch
7 1 (0.21%) Amazon RDS
7 1 (0.21%) Azure SQL Database
7 1 (0.21%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.21%) Metadata
7 1 (0.21%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.21%) SAP BW
7 1 (0.21%) SAP HANA
7 1 (0.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 38 (8.15%) Git
2 29 (6.22%) JIRA
3 21 (4.51%) Axure RP
4 20 (4.29%) Cypress.io
5 18 (3.86%) GitLab
6 11 (2.36%) Jenkins
6 11 (2.36%) JUnit
7 9 (1.93%) CircleCI
8 6 (1.29%) Mocha
9 5 (1.07%) Gradle
9 5 (1.07%) Visual Studio
10 4 (0.86%) Android Studio
10 4 (0.86%) Selenium
11 3 (0.64%) Balsamiq
11 3 (0.64%) Lerna
11 3 (0.64%) Visual Website Optimizer
11 3 (0.64%) Vite
11 3 (0.64%) Xcode
12 2 (0.43%) Crashlytics
12 2 (0.43%) TestRail
General
1 141 (30.26%) Social Skills
2 90 (19.31%) Finance
3 88 (18.88%) Public Sector
4 60 (12.88%) Banking
5 33 (7.08%) Analytical Skills
6 23 (4.94%) Marketing
7 18 (3.86%) Presentation Skills
8 11 (2.36%) Retail
9 9 (1.93%) Pharmaceutical
10 8 (1.72%) Financial Institution
10 8 (1.72%) Legal
11 7 (1.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 6 (1.29%) Games
13 5 (1.07%) Documentation Skills
13 5 (1.07%) Local Government
14 4 (0.86%) Advertising
14 4 (0.86%) Influencing Skills
15 3 (0.64%) Retail Banking
15 3 (0.64%) Telecoms
16 2 (0.43%) Corporate Banking
Job Titles
1 203 (43.56%) Designer
2 131 (28.11%) UX Designer
3 87 (18.67%) Senior
4 75 (16.09%) Developer
5 39 (8.37%) Senior Designer
6 36 (7.73%) UI Designer
7 35 (7.51%) Service Designer
8 32 (6.87%) Product Designer
8 32 (6.87%) Senior UX Designer
9 29 (6.22%) UI/UX Designer
10 26 (5.58%) User Researcher
11 19 (4.08%) Content Designer
12 18 (3.86%) Lead
13 16 (3.43%) Analyst
13 16 (3.43%) Senior Developer
14 15 (3.22%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
15 13 (2.79%) Business Analyst
15 13 (2.79%) Full-Stack Developer
16 12 (2.58%) Architect
16 12 (2.58%) React Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 74 (15.88%) React
2 65 (13.95%) HTML
3 64 (13.73%) CSS
4 49 (10.52%) RESTful
5 30 (6.44%) HTML5
6 28 (6.01%) AngularJS
6 28 (6.01%) CSS3
7 26 (5.58%) Node.js
8 25 (5.36%) REST
9 22 (4.72%) .NET
10 21 (4.51%) Jest
11 19 (4.08%) Spring
11 19 (4.08%) Spring Boot
12 15 (3.22%) Playwright
13 13 (2.79%) Next.js
13 13 (2.79%) Redux
14 10 (2.15%) GraphQL
15 9 (1.93%) JSON
15 9 (1.93%) OAuth
16 7 (1.50%) ASP.NET
Miscellaneous
1 52 (11.16%) Product Ownership
2 43 (9.23%) Mobile App
3 16 (3.43%) Onboarding
4 12 (2.58%) Virtual Team
5 8 (1.72%) Cloud Native
5 8 (1.72%) NHS
6 7 (1.50%) Distributed Systems
6 7 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
7 6 (1.29%) Animation
7 6 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
7 6 (1.29%) Graphic Design
7 6 (1.29%) W3C
8 5 (1.07%) Algorithms
8 5 (1.07%) Augmented Reality
8 5 (1.07%) Data Structures
8 5 (1.07%) Digital Wallet
8 5 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
8 5 (1.07%) Low-Code
8 5 (1.07%) RIA
9 4 (0.86%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 11 (2.36%) Android
2 8 (1.72%) Apple iOS
3 3 (0.64%) Windows
4 2 (0.43%) Linux
4 2 (0.43%) Windows 10
5 1 (0.21%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 466 (100.00%) User Experience
2 207 (44.42%) Agile
3 139 (29.83%) User Research
4 97 (20.82%) Prototyping
4 97 (20.82%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
5 88 (18.88%) Usability Testing
6 86 (18.45%) Service Design
7 84 (18.03%) Wireframes
8 73 (15.67%) Problem-Solving
8 73 (15.67%) UX Research
9 71 (15.24%) CI/CD
10 63 (13.52%) Analytics
11 60 (12.88%) Interaction Design
12 58 (12.45%) AI
13 56 (12.02%) DevOps
14 53 (11.37%) Front End Development
15 49 (10.52%) Journey Map
16 48 (10.30%) Workshop Facilitation
17 44 (9.44%) Stakeholder Management
18 43 (9.23%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 73 (15.67%) JavaScript
2 46 (9.87%) TypeScript
3 33 (7.08%) Java
4 27 (5.79%) Python
5 20 (4.29%) C#
6 17 (3.65%) SQL
7 7 (1.50%) Kotlin
8 5 (1.07%) C++
8 5 (1.07%) Lua
9 4 (0.86%) Korn
10 3 (0.64%) Swift
11 2 (0.43%) PHP
11 2 (0.43%) PowerShell
12 1 (0.21%) Apex Code
12 1 (0.21%) BeanShell
12 1 (0.21%) Objective-C
12 1 (0.21%) Ruby
12 1 (0.21%) Scala
12 1 (0.21%) SPARQL
12 1 (0.21%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 48 (10.30%) Degree
2 46 (9.87%) Security Cleared
3 27 (5.79%) SC Cleared
4 14 (3.00%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (2.15%) Master's Degree
6 4 (0.86%) Computer Science Degree
7 3 (0.64%) DV Cleared
7 3 (0.64%) Microsoft Certification
8 2 (0.43%) Azure Certification
8 2 (0.43%) PMI Certification
9 1 (0.21%) CCA
9 1 (0.21%) Citrix Certification
9 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 152 (32.62%) Accessibility
2 57 (12.23%) WCAG
3 39 (8.37%) QA
4 10 (2.15%) Actionable Recommendations
5 5 (1.07%) GDPR
6 3 (0.64%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 1 (0.21%) EU AI Act
7 1 (0.21%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 29 (6.22%) Docker
2 1 (0.21%) Active Directory
2 1 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 23 (4.94%) Kubernetes
2 16 (3.43%) Terraform
3 5 (1.07%) Grafana
4 4 (0.86%) Ansible
5 2 (0.43%) HP ALM
5 2 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.21%) Consul
6 1 (0.21%) Podman
6 1 (0.21%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
Vendors
1 43 (9.23%) Adobe
2 26 (5.58%) Microsoft
3 15 (3.22%) Salesforce
4 14 (3.00%) Google
5 10 (2.15%) ServiceNow
6 6 (1.29%) MuleSoft
7 5 (1.07%) SAP
8 4 (0.86%) Hotjar
8 4 (0.86%) Optimizely
8 4 (0.86%) Oracle
9 3 (0.64%) Amplitude
9 3 (0.64%) Apple
9 3 (0.64%) Dataiku
9 3 (0.64%) Sitecore
9 3 (0.64%) Xamarin
10 2 (0.43%) Blue Prism
10 2 (0.43%) Databricks
10 2 (0.43%) Dynatrace
10 2 (0.43%) HP
11 1 (0.21%) Automation Anywhere