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International audience; A method is introduced for the measurements of strain exploiting the interaction between ultrasound waves and characteristics of the insonified specimen. First, the response of obliquely incident harmonic waves to a deterministic surface roughness is utilized. Analysis of backscattered amplitudes in Bragg diffraction geometry then yields a measure for the in-plane strain field by mapping any shift in angular dependency. Secondly, the analysis of the reflection characteristics of normal incidence pulsed waves in frequency domain provides the out-of-plane normal strain field component, simply by tracking any change in the stimulation condition for a thickness resonance. As such, the developed method yields an absolute, contactless and single-sided mapping of a local 3D strain field, in which both sample preparation and alignment procedure are ubiquitous. The ultrasonic strain gauge is applicable to any material, though under the restriction that a deterministic surface roughness is present. Results are presented for cold-rolled DC06 steel samples onto which skin passing of the work rolls is applied. The samples have been mechanically loaded, introducing plastic strain levels ranging from 2% to 35%. The ultrasonically measured strains have been validated with other strain measurement techniques, yielding good agreement. As the ultrasonic strain gauge provides all three strain field components, we extracted Lankford ratios for the DC06 steel sheet at different applied plastic strain levels revealing a strain dependent plastic anisotropy of the DC06 steel.