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

6 months to
11 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 260 222 223
Rank change year-on-year -38 +1 -43
Contract jobs citing UX Design 452 356 487
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.06% 1.21% 1.09%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.23% 1.34% 1.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 338 238 332
10th Percentile £357 £313 £325
25th Percentile £400 £384 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £477 £493 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.20% -1.50% -9.09%
75th Percentile £569 £575 £600
90th Percentile £638 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £456 £425 £463
% change year-on-year +7.35% -8.11% -5.13%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 3 13
10th Percentile £25.42 £34.45 £33.67
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 36,632 26,629 38,749
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.08% 90.34% 86.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,216 16,983 25,185
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 £743 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -1.84% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,179 898 2,347
10th Percentile £14.64 £15.57 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £29.61 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -8.89% - -7.14%
75th Percentile £64.75 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £74.68 £76.53 £71.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.55 £32.00 £31.80
% change year-on-year -17.02% +0.63% -9.14%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 -32 366 £475 -5.00% 261
London -3 227 £488 -7.14% 66
UK excluding London -46 157 £456 +7.35% 183
Work from Home -48 117 £475 +5.56% 148
North of England -35 66 £402 +0.50% 55
North West -15 44 £401 +2.82% 26
Scotland +20 31 £550 +25.71% 8
South East -42 20 £525 -2.33% 61
Midlands -61 19 £444 +24.65% 11
West Midlands -48 15 £425 +4.94% 7
Yorkshire -61 14 £513 +13.83% 12
South West -17 13 £450 +20.00% 20
North East -7 8 £364 -6.06% 17
Wales -1 5 £450 - 13
East of England -26 4 £425 -10.99% 16
East Midlands -38 4 £595 +67.08% 4
Northern Ireland -3 2 £625 +28.21% 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 (3.54%) Confluence
2 13 (2.88%) CMS
3 8 (1.77%) 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%) Cloud Foundry
6 1 (0.22%) Drupal
6 1 (0.22%) Mendix
6 1 (0.22%) SugarCRM
Applications
1 42 (9.29%) Sketch
2 34 (7.52%) Adobe XD
3 14 (3.10%) InVision
4 12 (2.65%) Chatbot
5 5 (1.11%) Adobe Illustrator
5 5 (1.11%) Photoshop
6 4 (0.88%) Adobe After Effects
7 2 (0.44%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.44%) InDesign
7 2 (0.44%) OmniGraffle
7 2 (0.44%) Trello
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
1 143 (31.64%) Figma
2 53 (11.73%) Azure
3 46 (10.18%) AWS
4 25 (5.53%) SaaS
5 17 (3.76%) Power Platform
6 16 (3.54%) GCP
7 15 (3.32%) Miro
8 13 (2.88%) Azure DevOps
8 13 (2.88%) GitHub
9 11 (2.43%) GitHub Actions
10 6 (1.33%) Microsoft 365
10 6 (1.33%) Serverless
11 5 (1.11%) AWS Lambda
11 5 (1.11%) IaaS
11 5 (1.11%) PaaS
12 4 (0.88%) Amazon S3
12 4 (0.88%) AWS CloudFormation
12 4 (0.88%) PowerApps
13 3 (0.66%) CloudFront
13 3 (0.66%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.33%) Internet
2 2 (0.44%) HTTP
2 2 (0.44%) Intranet
3 1 (0.22%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (2.65%) NoSQL
2 10 (2.21%) Power BI
3 6 (1.33%) MongoDB
3 6 (1.33%) SQL Server
4 5 (1.11%) PostgreSQL
4 5 (1.11%) Relational Database
5 4 (0.88%) Mixpanel
6 3 (0.66%) DynamoDB
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%) 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 (8.19%) Git
2 29 (6.42%) JIRA
3 22 (4.87%) Axure RP
4 19 (4.20%) Cypress.io
5 18 (3.98%) GitLab
6 11 (2.43%) JUnit
7 10 (2.21%) Jenkins
8 9 (1.99%) CircleCI
9 6 (1.33%) Mocha
10 5 (1.11%) Visual Studio
11 4 (0.88%) Android Studio
11 4 (0.88%) Gradle
11 4 (0.88%) Selenium
11 4 (0.88%) Visual Website Optimizer
12 3 (0.66%) Balsamiq
12 3 (0.66%) Lerna
12 3 (0.66%) Xcode
13 2 (0.44%) SonarQube
13 2 (0.44%) TestRail
13 2 (0.44%) Vite
General
1 142 (31.42%) Social Skills
2 89 (19.69%) Finance
3 81 (17.92%) Public Sector
4 56 (12.39%) Banking
5 32 (7.08%) Analytical Skills
6 26 (5.75%) Marketing
7 18 (3.98%) Presentation Skills
8 12 (2.65%) Retail
9 10 (2.21%) Pharmaceutical
10 8 (1.77%) Financial Institution
10 8 (1.77%) Legal
11 6 (1.33%) Games
11 6 (1.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 5 (1.11%) Documentation Skills
12 5 (1.11%) Local Government
13 4 (0.88%) Influencing Skills
14 3 (0.66%) Advertising
14 3 (0.66%) Investment Banking
14 3 (0.66%) Retail Banking
14 3 (0.66%) Wearables
Job Titles
1 197 (43.58%) Designer
2 130 (28.76%) UX Designer
3 83 (18.36%) Senior
4 73 (16.15%) Developer
5 41 (9.07%) Senior Designer
6 34 (7.52%) Service Designer
7 33 (7.30%) Senior UX Designer
8 31 (6.86%) Product Designer
8 31 (6.86%) UI Designer
9 26 (5.75%) UI/UX Designer
10 25 (5.53%) User Researcher
11 17 (3.76%) Content Designer
12 16 (3.54%) Lead
13 15 (3.32%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
14 14 (3.10%) Analyst
15 12 (2.65%) Full-Stack Developer
15 12 (2.65%) Product Manager
15 12 (2.65%) React Developer
15 12 (2.65%) Senior Developer
16 11 (2.43%) UX Service Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (15.27%) React
2 68 (15.04%) HTML
3 67 (14.82%) CSS
4 48 (10.62%) RESTful
5 31 (6.86%) HTML5
6 27 (5.97%) CSS3
7 26 (5.75%) Node.js
8 25 (5.53%) AngularJS
9 24 (5.31%) REST
10 21 (4.65%) .NET
10 21 (4.65%) Jest
11 19 (4.20%) Spring
11 19 (4.20%) Spring Boot
12 15 (3.32%) Redux
13 14 (3.10%) Next.js
13 14 (3.10%) Playwright
14 10 (2.21%) GraphQL
14 10 (2.21%) JSON
14 10 (2.21%) OAuth
15 6 (1.33%) Unity (Game Engine)
Miscellaneous
1 48 (10.62%) Product Ownership
2 41 (9.07%) Mobile App
3 16 (3.54%) Onboarding
4 12 (2.65%) Virtual Team
5 8 (1.77%) NHS
6 7 (1.55%) Cloud Native
6 7 (1.55%) Data Protection Act
6 7 (1.55%) Distributed Systems
7 6 (1.33%) Animation
7 6 (1.33%) Graphic Design
7 6 (1.33%) 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 (0.88%) Augmented Reality
9 4 (0.88%) Data Structures
9 4 (0.88%) Mobile Banking
9 4 (0.88%) Team-Oriented Environment
10 3 (0.66%) Digital Media
Operating Systems
1 11 (2.43%) Android
2 8 (1.77%) Apple iOS
3 5 (1.11%) Windows
4 3 (0.66%) Windows 10
5 2 (0.44%) Linux
5 2 (0.44%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.22%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 452 (100.00%) User Experience
2 204 (45.13%) Agile
3 141 (31.19%) User Research
4 99 (21.90%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
5 96 (21.24%) Prototyping
6 90 (19.91%) Usability Testing
7 87 (19.25%) Wireframes
8 86 (19.03%) Service Design
9 71 (15.71%) Problem-Solving
9 71 (15.71%) UX Research
10 68 (15.04%) CI/CD
11 60 (13.27%) Analytics
11 60 (13.27%) Interaction Design
12 53 (11.73%) Front End Development
13 50 (11.06%) AI
13 50 (11.06%) DevOps
13 50 (11.06%) Workshop Facilitation
14 49 (10.84%) Journey Map
15 44 (9.73%) Continuous Improvement
16 42 (9.29%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 73 (16.15%) JavaScript
2 47 (10.40%) TypeScript
3 29 (6.42%) Java
4 22 (4.87%) Python
5 17 (3.76%) C#
5 17 (3.76%) SQL
6 7 (1.55%) Kotlin
7 5 (1.11%) C++
7 5 (1.11%) Lua
8 4 (0.88%) Korn
9 3 (0.66%) Swift
10 2 (0.44%) Objective-C
10 2 (0.44%) PHP
10 2 (0.44%) PowerShell
11 1 (0.22%) Apex Code
11 1 (0.22%) Bash
11 1 (0.22%) BeanShell
11 1 (0.22%) Ruby
11 1 (0.22%) Scala
11 1 (0.22%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 51 (11.28%) Degree
2 44 (9.73%) Security Cleared
3 25 (5.53%) SC Cleared
4 13 (2.88%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (2.21%) 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 (32.96%) Accessibility
2 52 (11.50%) WCAG
3 38 (8.41%) QA
4 10 (2.21%) Actionable Recommendations
5 7 (1.55%) GDPR
6 3 (0.66%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 3 (0.66%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.22%) EU AI Act
8 1 (0.22%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 30 (6.64%) Docker
2 2 (0.44%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
3 1 (0.22%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 22 (4.87%) Kubernetes
2 16 (3.54%) Terraform
3 5 (1.11%) 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%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.22%) Podman
6 1 (0.22%) SCCM
6 1 (0.22%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
Vendors
1 46 (10.18%) Adobe
2 26 (5.75%) Microsoft
3 15 (3.32%) Google
4 14 (3.10%) Salesforce
5 10 (2.21%) ServiceNow
6 5 (1.11%) Hotjar
6 5 (1.11%) MuleSoft
6 5 (1.11%) Optimizely
7 4 (0.88%) Amplitude
7 4 (0.88%) SAP
7 4 (0.88%) Xamarin
8 3 (0.66%) Dataiku
8 3 (0.66%) Oracle
9 2 (0.44%) Apple
9 2 (0.44%) Citrix
9 2 (0.44%) HP
9 2 (0.44%) OpenAI
9 2 (0.44%) OutSystems
9 2 (0.44%) Sitecore
10 1 (0.22%) VMware