User Research Job Trends in the West Midlands

User Research
England > West Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the West Midlands requiring User Research skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 14 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 173 189 152
Rank change year-on-year +16 -37 +88
Permanent jobs citing User Research 5 10 27
As % of all permanent jobs in the West Midlands 0.095% 0.24% 0.72%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.12% 0.26% 0.82%
Number of salaries quoted 3 8 27
10th Percentile £45,642 £42,200 £36,000
25th Percentile £51,218 £44,300 £38,625
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £63,076 £55,000 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year +14.68% -15.38% +44.44%
75th Percentile £66,570 £61,529 £68,750
90th Percentile £67,128 £62,365 £69,800
England median annual salary £55,000 £59,430 £60,000
% change year-on-year -7.45% -0.95% -1.64%

All Process & Methodology Skills
West Midlands

User Research falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in the West Midlands.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 4,341 3,795 3,285
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the West Midlands 82.12% 91.62% 87.09%
Number of salaries quoted 2,264 1,687 2,757
10th Percentile £29,000 £32,500 £26,500
25th Percentile £37,938 £41,563 £35,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £67,500 £70,000 £63,750
90th Percentile £82,500 £82,500 £77,500
England median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%

User Research
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing User Research relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands.

User Research job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

User Research
Salary Trend in the West Midlands

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing User Research.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing User Research

User Research
Salary Histogram in the West Midlands

Salary distribution for jobs citing User Research in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 14 January 2026.

Salary histogram for User Research in the West Midlands

User Research
Job Locations in the West Midlands

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing User Research within the West Midlands region over the 6 months to 14 January 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Birmingham +21 3 £64,038 +7.75% 1
Coventry 0 2 £42,750 -14.51% 1
User Research
England

User Research
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the West Midlands 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:

Cloud Services
1 1 (20.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
1 1 (20.00%) AWS
1 1 (20.00%) GitHub
1 1 (20.00%) Microsoft 365
1 1 (20.00%) OpenShift
1 1 (20.00%) Power Platform
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (20.00%) Geospatial Data
1 1 (20.00%) PostgreSQL
1 1 (20.00%) Relational Database
1 1 (20.00%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 1 (20.00%) Cucumber
1 1 (20.00%) Git
1 1 (20.00%) GitLab
1 1 (20.00%) Jenkins
1 1 (20.00%) JUnit
1 1 (20.00%) Selenium
General
1 2 (40.00%) Public Sector
1 2 (40.00%) Social Skills
2 1 (20.00%) Legal
Job Titles
1 3 (60.00%) User Researcher
2 1 (20.00%) Content Designer
2 1 (20.00%) Designer
2 1 (20.00%) Senior
2 1 (20.00%) Senior User Researcher
2 1 (20.00%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (20.00%) Django
1 1 (20.00%) Elastic Stack
1 1 (20.00%) Flask
1 1 (20.00%) pytest
1 1 (20.00%) Spring
1 1 (20.00%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 1 (20.00%) Cloud Native
1 1 (20.00%) Legacy Applications
1 1 (20.00%) Legacy Systems
Processes & Methodologies
1 5 (100.00%) Agile
2 4 (80.00%) Service Design
3 3 (60.00%) Actionable Insight
3 3 (60.00%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
4 2 (40.00%) Continuous Improvement
4 2 (40.00%) Qualitative Research
4 2 (40.00%) Quantitative Research
4 2 (40.00%) Usability Testing
5 1 (20.00%) Coaching
5 1 (20.00%) Continuous Integration
5 1 (20.00%) Decision-Making
5 1 (20.00%) DevOps
5 1 (20.00%) Interaction Design
5 1 (20.00%) Mentoring
5 1 (20.00%) SDLC
5 1 (20.00%) Secure Coding
5 1 (20.00%) Software Engineering
5 1 (20.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 1 (20.00%) TDD
5 1 (20.00%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 1 (20.00%) Delphi
1 1 (20.00%) Java
1 1 (20.00%) Python
Qualifications
1 2 (40.00%) SC Cleared
1 2 (40.00%) Security Cleared
2 1 (20.00%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (40.00%) Actionable Recommendations
2 1 (20.00%) Accessibility
System Software
1 1 (20.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 1 (20.00%) Grafana
1 1 (20.00%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 1 (20.00%) Microsoft
1 1 (20.00%) Oracle