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 15 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 256 207 207
Rank change year-on-year -49 0 -25
Contract jobs citing UX Design 460 375 495
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.00% 1.28% 1.14%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.18% 1.41% 1.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 333 268 345
10th Percentile £360 £313 £350
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £569 £571 £623
90th Percentile £638 £662 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £425 £450
% change year-on-year +8.82% -5.56% -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 3 9
10th Percentile £25.10 £53.97 £30.68
25th Percentile £26.77 £65.54 £31.71
Median hourly rate £36.30 £91.69 £41.68
Median % change year-on-year -60.42% +120.01% -12.26%
75th Percentile £55.37 £97.52 £73.75
90th Percentile £66.50 £98.14 £86.57
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.09 £91.69 £91.44
% change year-on-year -69.36% +0.28% +53.45%

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 39,015 26,568 37,622
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.08% 90.69% 86.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,668 17,198 24,355
10th Percentile £316 £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 £635 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £488 £500
% change year-on-year - -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,323 1,023 2,389
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.92 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.45 £18.51 £15.85
Median hourly rate £37.00 £30.78 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year +20.21% -6.91% -8.79%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £57.50
90th Percentile £78.25 £75.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.20 £29.00 £33.00
% change year-on-year +28.28% -12.12% -8.65%

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 15 April 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 15 April 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 15 April 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 -46 378 £475 -4.04% 155
London -28 224 £488 -2.50% 64
UK excluding London -35 167 £463 +8.82% 116
Work from Home -39 123 £444 +2.60% 79
North of England -36 61 £400 - 38
North West -16 43 £400 - 20
South West -13 26 £475 +26.67% 7
Scotland +2 24 £575 +35.29% 4
Midlands -47 24 £500 +40.45% 20
South East -52 24 £481 +13.24% 34
West Midlands -44 21 £425 +4.94% 15
Yorkshire -52 10 £531 +6.25% 12
North East -13 8 £364 -6.06% 7
East of England -30 5 £443 -7.33% 8
Wales - 5 £450 - 4
East Midlands -31 3 £600 +68.54% 5
Northern Ireland -1 1 - - 3

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 14 (3.04%) Confluence
2 12 (2.61%) CMS
3 7 (1.52%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.65%) Headless CMS
4 3 (0.65%) Jupyter
5 2 (0.43%) Appian
5 2 (0.43%) Sitecore CMS
5 2 (0.43%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.22%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 1 (0.22%) Camunda
6 1 (0.22%) Cloud Foundry
6 1 (0.22%) Drupal
6 1 (0.22%) Mendix
6 1 (0.22%) Moodle
6 1 (0.22%) nginx
6 1 (0.22%) Strapi
6 1 (0.22%) Traefik
Applications
1 39 (8.48%) Sketch
2 32 (6.96%) Adobe XD
3 13 (2.83%) InVision
4 12 (2.61%) Chatbot
5 5 (1.09%) Adobe After Effects
6 4 (0.87%) Microsoft Excel
6 4 (0.87%) Photoshop
7 3 (0.65%) Adobe Illustrator
7 3 (0.65%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.65%) Trello
8 2 (0.43%) Microsoft Office
9 1 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.22%) Blender
9 1 (0.22%) Camtasia
9 1 (0.22%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.22%) InDesign
9 1 (0.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
9 1 (0.22%) OmniGraffle
9 1 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
9 1 (0.22%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 5 (1.09%) Shopify
2 2 (0.43%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.22%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 147 (31.96%) Figma
2 53 (11.52%) Azure
3 38 (8.26%) AWS
4 18 (3.91%) Azure DevOps
4 18 (3.91%) Power Platform
5 14 (3.04%) SaaS
6 13 (2.83%) Miro
7 10 (2.17%) GitHub
7 10 (2.17%) GitHub Actions
8 8 (1.74%) GCP
9 6 (1.30%) Serverless
10 5 (1.09%) AWS Lambda
11 4 (0.87%) Amazon S3
11 4 (0.87%) AWS CloudFormation
11 4 (0.87%) BigCommerce
12 3 (0.65%) Amazon Bedrock
12 3 (0.65%) Anthropic Claude
12 3 (0.65%) Contentful
12 3 (0.65%) Firebase
12 3 (0.65%) Google Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.43%) HTTP
1 2 (0.43%) Intranet
2 1 (0.22%) Internet
2 1 (0.22%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (2.17%) Power BI
2 9 (1.96%) NoSQL
3 7 (1.52%) SQL Server
4 6 (1.30%) MongoDB
4 6 (1.30%) PostgreSQL
5 5 (1.09%) Relational Database
6 3 (0.65%) Elasticsearch
6 3 (0.65%) Pinecone
7 2 (0.43%) CockroachDB
7 2 (0.43%) DynamoDB
7 2 (0.43%) MySQL
7 2 (0.43%) Power Query
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 HANA
8 1 (0.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 1 (0.22%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 34 (7.39%) Git
2 29 (6.30%) JIRA
3 18 (3.91%) Axure RP
3 18 (3.91%) Cypress.io
4 15 (3.26%) GitLab
5 11 (2.39%) Jenkins
6 10 (2.17%) JUnit
7 9 (1.96%) CircleCI
8 6 (1.30%) Mocha
9 5 (1.09%) Visual Studio
10 4 (0.87%) Selenium
10 4 (0.87%) Vite
11 3 (0.65%) Gradle
12 2 (0.43%) Android Studio
12 2 (0.43%) Balsamiq
12 2 (0.43%) Crashlytics
12 2 (0.43%) fastlane
12 2 (0.43%) Maven
12 2 (0.43%) TestRail
12 2 (0.43%) webpack
General
1 144 (31.30%) Social Skills
2 90 (19.57%) Public Sector
3 83 (18.04%) Finance
4 62 (13.48%) Banking
5 36 (7.83%) Analytical Skills
6 19 (4.13%) Presentation Skills
7 16 (3.48%) Marketing
8 14 (3.04%) Retail
9 10 (2.17%) Pharmaceutical
10 9 (1.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 7 (1.52%) Legal
12 6 (1.30%) Documentation Skills
12 6 (1.30%) Games
12 6 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
13 5 (1.09%) Financial Institution
13 5 (1.09%) Local Government
13 5 (1.09%) Publishing
14 4 (0.87%) Advertising
15 3 (0.65%) Automotive
15 3 (0.65%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 222 (48.26%) Designer
2 135 (29.35%) UX Designer
3 75 (16.30%) Senior
4 68 (14.78%) Developer
5 41 (8.91%) UI Designer
6 39 (8.48%) Senior Designer
7 35 (7.61%) UI/UX Designer
8 34 (7.39%) Service Designer
9 32 (6.96%) Product Designer
9 32 (6.96%) Senior UX Designer
10 30 (6.52%) Content Designer
11 25 (5.43%) User Researcher
12 20 (4.35%) Lead
13 18 (3.91%) Analyst
14 14 (3.04%) Architect
14 14 (3.04%) Full-Stack Developer
15 13 (2.83%) Business Analyst
15 13 (2.83%) React Developer
16 12 (2.61%) Senior Developer
17 11 (2.39%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 66 (14.35%) React
2 58 (12.61%) CSS
2 58 (12.61%) HTML
3 41 (8.91%) RESTful
4 29 (6.30%) HTML5
5 27 (5.87%) CSS3
6 26 (5.65%) AngularJS
7 22 (4.78%) .NET
7 22 (4.78%) REST
8 19 (4.13%) Node.js
8 19 (4.13%) Spring
9 18 (3.91%) Spring Boot
10 17 (3.70%) Jest
11 14 (3.04%) Redux
12 11 (2.39%) Next.js
13 10 (2.17%) Playwright
14 9 (1.96%) GraphQL
14 9 (1.96%) JSON
15 8 (1.74%) OAuth
16 7 (1.52%) Unity (Game Engine)
Miscellaneous
1 47 (10.22%) Product Ownership
2 34 (7.39%) Mobile App
3 13 (2.83%) Onboarding
4 9 (1.96%) Cloud Native
5 8 (1.74%) Enterprise Software
6 7 (1.52%) Animation
6 7 (1.52%) Data Protection Act
7 6 (1.30%) Distributed Systems
7 6 (1.30%) Graphic Design
7 6 (1.30%) NHS
7 6 (1.30%) Self-Motivation
7 6 (1.30%) Virtual Team
8 5 (1.09%) Augmented Reality
8 5 (1.09%) Data Structures
8 5 (1.09%) Digital Wallet
8 5 (1.09%) Greenfield Project
8 5 (1.09%) Virtual Reality
9 4 (0.87%) Algorithms
9 4 (0.87%) Team-Oriented Environment
10 3 (0.65%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 8 (1.74%) Android
2 5 (1.09%) Apple iOS
3 3 (0.65%) Windows
4 2 (0.43%) Linux
4 2 (0.43%) Windows 10
5 1 (0.22%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 460 (100.00%) User Experience
2 202 (43.91%) Agile
3 138 (30.00%) User Research
4 96 (20.87%) Prototyping
5 95 (20.65%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
6 89 (19.35%) Service Design
7 86 (18.70%) Wireframes
8 81 (17.61%) Usability Testing
9 74 (16.09%) Problem-Solving
10 72 (15.65%) UX Research
11 64 (13.91%) CI/CD
11 64 (13.91%) Interaction Design
12 60 (13.04%) AI
13 49 (10.65%) Analytics
14 48 (10.43%) DevOps
15 47 (10.22%) Front End Development
15 47 (10.22%) Journey Map
16 46 (10.00%) Stakeholder Management
17 45 (9.78%) Continuous Improvement
17 45 (9.78%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 65 (14.13%) JavaScript
2 42 (9.13%) TypeScript
3 31 (6.74%) Java
4 28 (6.09%) Python
5 19 (4.13%) C#
6 18 (3.91%) SQL
7 5 (1.09%) C++
7 5 (1.09%) Kotlin
7 5 (1.09%) Lua
8 4 (0.87%) Korn
9 3 (0.65%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 2 (0.43%) Apex Code
10 2 (0.43%) PowerShell
11 1 (0.22%) BeanShell
11 1 (0.22%) Gremlin
11 1 (0.22%) Objective-C
11 1 (0.22%) Ruby
11 1 (0.22%) Scala
11 1 (0.22%) SPARQL
11 1 (0.22%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 58 (12.61%) Security Cleared
2 42 (9.13%) Degree
3 39 (8.48%) SC Cleared
4 13 (2.83%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (2.17%) Master's Degree
6 5 (1.09%) Computer Science Degree
7 3 (0.65%) DV Cleared
7 3 (0.65%) Microsoft Certification
8 2 (0.43%) Azure Certification
8 2 (0.43%) 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 (32.39%) Accessibility
2 52 (11.30%) WCAG
3 33 (7.17%) QA
4 10 (2.17%) Actionable Recommendations
5 4 (0.87%) GDPR
6 3 (0.65%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 3 (0.65%) Data Quality
7 1 (0.22%) EU AI Act
7 1 (0.22%) GMP
7 1 (0.22%) GxP
7 1 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 42001
7 1 (0.22%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 22 (4.78%) Docker
2 1 (0.22%) Active Directory
2 1 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 16 (3.48%) Kubernetes
2 14 (3.04%) Terraform
3 3 (0.65%) Ansible
4 2 (0.43%) Grafana
4 2 (0.43%) HP ALM
4 2 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
5 1 (0.22%) Consul
5 1 (0.22%) Podman
5 1 (0.22%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
Vendors
1 44 (9.57%) Adobe
2 21 (4.57%) Salesforce
3 18 (3.91%) Microsoft
4 9 (1.96%) Google
5 8 (1.74%) SAP
5 8 (1.74%) ServiceNow
6 6 (1.30%) MuleSoft
6 6 (1.30%) Sitecore
7 4 (0.87%) Oracle
8 3 (0.65%) Dataiku
8 3 (0.65%) Xamarin
9 2 (0.43%) Blue Prism
9 2 (0.43%) Databricks
9 2 (0.43%) Dynatrace
9 2 (0.43%) HP
9 2 (0.43%) OpenAI
10 1 (0.22%) Apple
10 1 (0.22%) Citrix
10 1 (0.22%) Progress
10 1 (0.22%) Sybase