Hybrid/Remote Design Thinking Contract Job Trends

Design Thinking
UK > Work from Home

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for remote or hybrid contract work requiring Design Thinking skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 16 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 288 296 354
Rank change year-on-year +8 +58 +80
Contract jobs citing Design Thinking 29 21 27
As % of all contract jobs with remote/hybrid work options 0.28% 0.18% 0.16%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.31% 0.20% 0.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 25 15 17
10th Percentile £384 - £379
25th Percentile £450 £225 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £669 £588
90th Percentile £705 £695 £600
UK median daily rate £500 £438 £560
% change year-on-year +14.29% -21.88% -2.61%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £27.03 - -
Median hourly rate £28.09 - £70.07
75th Percentile £29.16 - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £28.09 £27.67 £70.07
% change year-on-year +1.52% -60.51% +33.47%

All Process and Methodology Skills
Work from Home

Design Thinking falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with remote or hybrid options requiring process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 9,307 10,398 15,211
As % of all contract jobs with a WFH option 90.96% 89.03% 88.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,155 6,534 10,383
10th Percentile £330 £325 £340
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £750 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 328 212 370
10th Percentile £15.27 £17.58 £19.91
25th Percentile £20.47 £22.00 £27.06
Median hourly rate £42.50 £37.00 £53.50
Median % change year-on-year +14.86% -30.84% -2.73%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.63 £71.44
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £87.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £43.85
% change year-on-year -22.62% -25.88% +25.29%

Design Thinking
Job Vacancy Trend for Remote/Hybrid Jobs

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Design Thinking and offering remote or hybrid work options relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Design Thinking job vacancy trend for remote/hybrid jobs

Design Thinking
Daily Rate Trend for Remote/Hybrid Jobs

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs with remote/hybrid work options citing Design Thinking.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs with remote/hybrid work options citing Design Thinking

Design Thinking
Daily Rate Histogram for Remote/Hybrid Jobs

Daily rate distribution for jobs with remote/hybrid work options citing Design Thinking over the 6 months to 16 December 2025.

Design Thinking daily rate histogram for jobs with remote/hybrid work options

Design Thinking
Hourly Rate Trend for Remote/Hybrid Jobs

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs with remote/hybrid work options citing Design Thinking.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs with remote/hybrid work options citing Design Thinking

Design Thinking
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Remote/Hybrid Jobs 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 1 (3.45%) Confluence
Applications
1 4 (13.79%) Sketch
1 4 (13.79%) Zeplin
2 2 (6.90%) Adobe XD
2 2 (6.90%) InVision
3 1 (3.45%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 1 (3.45%) Adobe Illustrator
3 1 (3.45%) InDesign
3 1 (3.45%) Photoshop
Cloud Services
1 7 (24.14%) Figma
2 3 (10.34%) Amazon ECS
2 3 (10.34%) AWS
2 3 (10.34%) GitHub
2 3 (10.34%) GitHub Actions
3 2 (6.90%) AWS CloudFormation
3 2 (6.90%) AWS CodePipeline
3 2 (6.90%) AWS Lambda
3 2 (6.90%) Miro
3 2 (6.90%) Serverless
4 1 (3.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 1 (3.45%) Amazon EC2
4 1 (3.45%) Amazon EKS
4 1 (3.45%) Amazon S3
4 1 (3.45%) AWS CloudTrail
4 1 (3.45%) Azure
4 1 (3.45%) Datadog
4 1 (3.45%) Sumo Logic
4 1 (3.45%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 3 (10.34%) DNS
2 2 (6.90%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (6.90%) Data Hub
2 1 (3.45%) Amazon Aurora
2 1 (3.45%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (3.45%) CouchDB
2 1 (3.45%) Delta Lake
2 1 (3.45%) MySQL
2 1 (3.45%) Redis
Development Applications
1 2 (6.90%) Axure RP
1 2 (6.90%) Git
2 1 (3.45%) Bitbucket
2 1 (3.45%) Jenkins
2 1 (3.45%) JIRA
General
1 9 (31.03%) Public Sector
2 7 (24.14%) Finance
3 5 (17.24%) Social Skills
4 4 (13.79%) Analytical Skills
5 3 (10.34%) Pharmaceutical
6 2 (6.90%) Banking
6 2 (6.90%) Front Office
6 2 (6.90%) Influencing Skills
7 1 (3.45%) Digital Healthcare
7 1 (3.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (3.45%) Local Government
7 1 (3.45%) Organisational Skills
7 1 (3.45%) Retail
7 1 (3.45%) Social Science
Job Titles
1 21 (72.41%) Designer
2 19 (65.52%) Service Designer
3 6 (20.69%) Senior
4 5 (17.24%) Digital Designer
4 5 (17.24%) Digital Service Designer
4 5 (17.24%) Senior Designer
4 5 (17.24%) Senior Service Designer
5 3 (10.34%) AWS Engineer
5 3 (10.34%) Lead
5 3 (10.34%) UX Designer
6 2 (6.90%) Linux Engineer
6 2 (6.90%) Python Engineer
6 2 (6.90%) Site Engineer
6 2 (6.90%) Site Reliability Engineer
6 2 (6.90%) User Experience Researcher
7 1 (3.45%) Product Manager
7 1 (3.45%) Senior Architect
7 1 (3.45%) Senior Data Architect
7 1 (3.45%) UI Designer
7 1 (3.45%) User Experience Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (3.45%) Memcached
1 1 (3.45%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 4 (13.79%) NHS
2 2 (6.90%) Product Ownership
3 1 (3.45%) Graphic Design
3 1 (3.45%) Onboarding
3 1 (3.45%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 2 (6.90%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 21 (72.41%) Service Design
2 14 (48.28%) Journey Map
3 13 (44.83%) User Experience
3 13 (44.83%) User Research
3 13 (44.83%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
4 12 (41.38%) Agile
4 12 (41.38%) Workshop Facilitation
5 9 (31.03%) Problem-Solving
6 8 (27.59%) Human-Centred Design
6 8 (27.59%) Usability Testing
6 8 (27.59%) UX Design
7 6 (20.69%) Co-Creation
7 6 (20.69%) Ethnography
7 6 (20.69%) User Journey Map
8 5 (17.24%) Acceptance Criteria
8 5 (17.24%) Data Analysis
8 5 (17.24%) Decision-Making
8 5 (17.24%) Ergonomics
8 5 (17.24%) Human Factors
8 5 (17.24%) User Stories
Programming Languages
1 3 (10.34%) Python
2 2 (6.90%) Ruby
3 1 (3.45%) Bash
3 1 (3.45%) PHP
3 1 (3.45%) SQL
Qualifications
1 3 (10.34%) Degree
1 3 (10.34%) SC Cleared
1 3 (10.34%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (37.93%) Accessibility
2 6 (20.69%) WCAG
3 3 (10.34%) Data Quality
System Software
1 2 (6.90%) Virtual Machines
2 1 (3.45%) Docker
Systems Management
1 3 (10.34%) Terraform
2 2 (6.90%) Kubernetes
3 1 (3.45%) Ansible
Vendors
1 5 (17.24%) Adobe
2 2 (6.90%) Qualtrics
3 1 (3.45%) Atlassian
3 1 (3.45%) Databricks