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

6 months to
13 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 254 226 222
Rank change year-on-year -28 -4 -42
Contract jobs citing UX Design 449 355 482
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.05% 1.20% 1.08%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.22% 1.33% 1.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 336 241 331
10th Percentile £358 £313 £325
25th Percentile £400 £382 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £476 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.96% -2.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £568 £575 £600
90th Percentile £616 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £450
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.56% -7.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 3 11
10th Percentile £25.42 £34.45 £31.71
25th Percentile £35.64 £38.88 £41.51
Median hourly rate £51.44 £47.50 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.29% -34.48% +61.11%
75th Percentile £64.38 £72.62 £81.25
90th Percentile £67.00 £86.94 £82.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 - £77.50
% change year-on-year - - +58.16%

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 36,854 26,627 38,581
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.05% 90.37% 86.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,339 16,995 25,088
10th Percentile £313 £306 £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 £744 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -2.04% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,197 898 2,338
10th Percentile £14.82 £15.48 £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 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.36 £32.50 £31.50
% change year-on-year -15.82% +3.17% -10.00%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 -25 362 £475 -5.00% 256
London -12 223 £489 -6.90% 121
UK excluding London -50 156 £450 +5.88% 170
Work from Home -44 117 £475 +5.56% 147
North of England -31 66 £402 +1.77% 61
North West -12 44 £400 +2.56% 29
Scotland +12 31 £550 +25.71% 8
South East -52 20 £525 -4.55% 52
Midlands -61 18 £425 +19.38% 12
West Midlands -52 15 £425 +4.94% 10
Yorkshire -50 14 £513 +27.97% 12
South West -25 13 £450 +20.00% 17
North East -7 8 £364 -6.06% 20
Wales -3 5 £450 - 12
East of England -27 5 £443 -7.33% 8
East Midlands -38 3 £545 +53.09% 2
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 16 (3.56%) Confluence
2 13 (2.90%) CMS
3 8 (1.78%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.67%) Headless CMS
4 3 (0.67%) Jupyter
5 2 (0.45%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 2 (0.45%) Appian
5 2 (0.45%) Sitecore CMS
5 2 (0.45%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.22%) Cloud Foundry
6 1 (0.22%) Drupal
6 1 (0.22%) Mendix
6 1 (0.22%) SugarCRM
Applications
1 41 (9.13%) Sketch
2 33 (7.35%) Adobe XD
3 13 (2.90%) InVision
4 12 (2.67%) Chatbot
5 5 (1.11%) Photoshop
6 4 (0.89%) Adobe After Effects
6 4 (0.89%) Adobe Illustrator
7 2 (0.45%) InDesign
7 2 (0.45%) OmniGraffle
7 2 (0.45%) Trello
8 1 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.22%) Blender
8 1 (0.22%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.22%) Microsoft Excel
8 1 (0.22%) Microsoft Office
8 1 (0.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
8 1 (0.22%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.22%) UserZoom
8 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
1 139 (30.96%) Figma
2 52 (11.58%) Azure
3 46 (10.24%) AWS
4 23 (5.12%) SaaS
5 16 (3.56%) Power Platform
6 15 (3.34%) Miro
7 14 (3.12%) Azure DevOps
7 14 (3.12%) GCP
8 12 (2.67%) GitHub
9 10 (2.23%) GitHub Actions
10 7 (1.56%) Serverless
11 5 (1.11%) AWS Lambda
11 5 (1.11%) IaaS
11 5 (1.11%) Microsoft 365
11 5 (1.11%) PaaS
12 4 (0.89%) Amazon S3
12 4 (0.89%) AWS CloudFormation
12 4 (0.89%) PowerApps
13 3 (0.67%) ChatGPT
13 3 (0.67%) Contentful
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.34%) Internet
2 2 (0.45%) HTTP
2 2 (0.45%) Intranet
3 1 (0.22%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (2.67%) NoSQL
2 9 (2.00%) Power BI
3 7 (1.56%) SQL Server
4 6 (1.34%) MongoDB
5 5 (1.11%) PostgreSQL
5 5 (1.11%) Relational Database
6 3 (0.67%) DynamoDB
6 3 (0.67%) Mixpanel
6 3 (0.67%) MySQL
6 3 (0.67%) Pinecone
7 2 (0.45%) CockroachDB
7 2 (0.45%) 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 38 (8.46%) Git
2 29 (6.46%) JIRA
3 22 (4.90%) Axure RP
4 19 (4.23%) Cypress.io
5 18 (4.01%) GitLab
6 11 (2.45%) JUnit
7 10 (2.23%) Jenkins
8 9 (2.00%) CircleCI
9 6 (1.34%) Mocha
10 5 (1.11%) Visual Studio
11 4 (0.89%) Android Studio
11 4 (0.89%) Gradle
11 4 (0.89%) Selenium
12 3 (0.67%) Balsamiq
12 3 (0.67%) Lerna
12 3 (0.67%) Visual Website Optimizer
12 3 (0.67%) Xcode
13 2 (0.45%) SonarQube
13 2 (0.45%) Vite
13 2 (0.45%) webpack
General
1 138 (30.73%) Social Skills
2 87 (19.38%) Finance
3 82 (18.26%) Public Sector
4 55 (12.25%) Banking
5 31 (6.90%) Analytical Skills
6 24 (5.35%) Marketing
7 19 (4.23%) Presentation Skills
8 12 (2.67%) Retail
9 9 (2.00%) Pharmaceutical
10 8 (1.78%) Legal
11 7 (1.56%) Financial Institution
12 6 (1.34%) Games
13 5 (1.11%) Documentation Skills
13 5 (1.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (1.11%) Local Government
14 4 (0.89%) Influencing Skills
15 3 (0.67%) Advertising
15 3 (0.67%) Retail Banking
15 3 (0.67%) Telecoms
16 2 (0.45%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 192 (42.76%) Designer
2 128 (28.51%) UX Designer
3 82 (18.26%) Senior
4 75 (16.70%) Developer
5 40 (8.91%) Senior Designer
6 33 (7.35%) Senior UX Designer
6 33 (7.35%) Service Designer
7 31 (6.90%) Product Designer
7 31 (6.90%) UI Designer
8 26 (5.79%) UI/UX Designer
8 26 (5.79%) User Researcher
9 17 (3.79%) Lead
10 16 (3.56%) Content Designer
10 16 (3.56%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
11 14 (3.12%) Analyst
12 13 (2.90%) Full-Stack Developer
13 12 (2.67%) Product Manager
13 12 (2.67%) React Developer
13 12 (2.67%) Senior Developer
14 11 (2.45%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (15.37%) React
2 68 (15.14%) HTML
3 67 (14.92%) CSS
4 49 (10.91%) RESTful
5 31 (6.90%) HTML5
6 27 (6.01%) CSS3
7 26 (5.79%) AngularJS
7 26 (5.79%) Node.js
8 24 (5.35%) REST
9 22 (4.90%) .NET
10 21 (4.68%) Jest
11 19 (4.23%) Spring
11 19 (4.23%) Spring Boot
12 14 (3.12%) Playwright
12 14 (3.12%) Redux
13 13 (2.90%) Next.js
14 10 (2.23%) JSON
14 10 (2.23%) OAuth
15 9 (2.00%) GraphQL
16 6 (1.34%) Unity (Game Engine)
Miscellaneous
1 49 (10.91%) Product Ownership
2 41 (9.13%) Mobile App
3 13 (2.90%) Onboarding
4 12 (2.67%) Virtual Team
5 8 (1.78%) Cloud Native
5 8 (1.78%) NHS
6 7 (1.56%) Distributed Systems
7 6 (1.34%) Animation
7 6 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
7 6 (1.34%) Graphic Design
7 6 (1.34%) W3C
8 5 (1.11%) Digital Wallet
8 5 (1.11%) Enterprise Software
8 5 (1.11%) Low-Code
8 5 (1.11%) RIA
9 4 (0.89%) Augmented Reality
9 4 (0.89%) Data Structures
9 4 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
9 4 (0.89%) Mobile Banking
9 4 (0.89%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 11 (2.45%) Android
2 8 (1.78%) Apple iOS
3 4 (0.89%) Windows
4 2 (0.45%) Linux
4 2 (0.45%) Windows 10
5 1 (0.22%) Mac OS
5 1 (0.22%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 449 (100.00%) User Experience
2 204 (45.43%) Agile
3 141 (31.40%) User Research
4 99 (22.05%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
5 97 (21.60%) Prototyping
6 89 (19.82%) Usability Testing
7 86 (19.15%) Service Design
8 84 (18.71%) Wireframes
9 72 (16.04%) UX Research
10 70 (15.59%) Problem-Solving
11 68 (15.14%) CI/CD
12 59 (13.14%) Analytics
12 59 (13.14%) Interaction Design
13 54 (12.03%) Front End Development
14 51 (11.36%) DevOps
15 49 (10.91%) Workshop Facilitation
16 48 (10.69%) AI
17 47 (10.47%) Journey Map
18 44 (9.80%) Continuous Improvement
19 40 (8.91%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 74 (16.48%) JavaScript
2 46 (10.24%) TypeScript
3 29 (6.46%) Java
4 22 (4.90%) Python
5 18 (4.01%) C#
6 17 (3.79%) SQL
7 7 (1.56%) Kotlin
8 5 (1.11%) C++
8 5 (1.11%) Lua
9 4 (0.89%) Korn
10 3 (0.67%) Swift
11 2 (0.45%) Objective-C
11 2 (0.45%) PHP
12 1 (0.22%) Apex Code
12 1 (0.22%) BeanShell
12 1 (0.22%) Gremlin
12 1 (0.22%) PowerShell
12 1 (0.22%) Ruby
12 1 (0.22%) Scala
12 1 (0.22%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 50 (11.14%) Degree
2 44 (9.80%) Security Cleared
3 25 (5.57%) SC Cleared
4 14 (3.12%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (2.23%) Master's Degree
6 4 (0.89%) Computer Science Degree
7 3 (0.67%) DV Cleared
7 3 (0.67%) Microsoft Certification
8 2 (0.45%) Azure Certification
8 2 (0.45%) PMI Certification
9 1 (0.22%) CCA
9 1 (0.22%) Citrix Certification
9 1 (0.22%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 148 (32.96%) Accessibility
2 53 (11.80%) WCAG
3 38 (8.46%) QA
4 10 (2.23%) Actionable Recommendations
5 5 (1.11%) GDPR
6 3 (0.67%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 3 (0.67%) Data Quality
7 1 (0.22%) EU AI Act
7 1 (0.22%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 30 (6.68%) Docker
2 1 (0.22%) Active Directory
2 1 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 23 (5.12%) Kubernetes
2 16 (3.56%) Terraform
3 5 (1.11%) Grafana
4 4 (0.89%) Ansible
5 2 (0.45%) HP ALM
5 2 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.22%) Consul
6 1 (0.22%) Podman
6 1 (0.22%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
Vendors
1 43 (9.58%) Adobe
2 26 (5.79%) Microsoft
3 14 (3.12%) Google
3 14 (3.12%) Salesforce
4 10 (2.23%) ServiceNow
5 5 (1.11%) MuleSoft
6 4 (0.89%) Hotjar
6 4 (0.89%) Optimizely
6 4 (0.89%) SAP
6 4 (0.89%) Xamarin
7 3 (0.67%) Amplitude
7 3 (0.67%) Dataiku
7 3 (0.67%) Oracle
8 2 (0.45%) Apple
8 2 (0.45%) HP
8 2 (0.45%) OutSystems
8 2 (0.45%) Sitecore
9 1 (0.22%) Citrix
9 1 (0.22%) Sybase
9 1 (0.22%) Telerik