Service Management Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Service Management
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the UK excluding London requiring Service Management skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 1 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 81 58 57
Rank change year-on-year -23 -1 +7
Contract jobs citing Service Management 734 555 662
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 2.79% 4.01% 3.14%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.40% 4.45% 3.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 484 329 480
10th Percentile £213 £204 £224
25th Percentile £399 £308 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £497 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.26% -5.33% +10.53%
75th Percentile £593 £588 £600
90th Percentile £650 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £520 £499 £525
% change year-on-year +4.31% -5.05% +0.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 65 53 17
10th Percentile £15.00 - £13.49
25th Percentile £16.17 £12.62 £16.79
Median hourly rate £60.00 £20.75 £20.74
Median % change year-on-year +189.16% +0.05% -2.67%
75th Percentile £83.75 £22.14 £28.75
90th Percentile £103.80 £33.75 £49.25
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £20.75 £23.37
% change year-on-year +189.16% -11.21% -33.70%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK excluding London

Service Management 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 in the UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 21,583 12,482 17,450
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 81.92% 90.14% 82.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,784 7,649 10,254
10th Percentile £300 £235 £250
25th Percentile £405 £365 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £590 £575 £600
90th Percentile £685 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £515 £501 £525
% change year-on-year +2.79% -4.57% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,276 1,056 2,168
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.16 £12.50
25th Percentile £19.33 £16.95 £15.50
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.00 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +75.84% -34.42% +8.91%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.75 £61.60
90th Percentile £81.05 £72.50 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +3.81%

Service Management
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Service Management relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Service Management job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Service Management
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Service Management.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Service Management

Service Management
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Service Management in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 1 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Service Management in the UK excluding London

Service Management
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Service Management.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Service Management

Service Management
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Service Management in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 1 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Service Management in the UK excluding London

Service Management
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Service Management within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 1 July 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
South East +26 218 £534 +42.48% 119
North of England -24 205 £475 +1.06% 104
South West -31 119 £500 -11.11% 53
North West -16 115 £513 +4.17% 58
Midlands -43 84 £475 -5.00% 54
Yorkshire -21 83 £450 -5.26% 37
West Midlands -36 73 £486 -6.54% 36
Scotland -12 55 £500 - 17
East of England -19 42 £488 -11.36% 32
Wales -7 13 £800 +188.29% 12
East Midlands -12 11 £200 -54.13% 18
North East -30 7 £440 +125.64% 11
Northern Ireland +6 5 - - 8
Service Management
UK

Service Management
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 39 (5.31%) SharePoint
2 29 (3.95%) Microsoft Exchange
3 23 (3.13%) Confluence
4 11 (1.50%) Skype for Business
5 6 (0.82%) Mattermost
6 2 (0.27%) IIS
6 2 (0.27%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.14%) Apache
7 1 (0.14%) CMS
7 1 (0.14%) JBoss
7 1 (0.14%) LiveCycle
Applications
1 50 (6.81%) Microsoft Office
2 17 (2.32%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (1.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.54%) Chatbot
4 4 (0.54%) PTC Creo
5 3 (0.41%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.27%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.14%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 46 (6.27%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (1.36%) SAP S/4HANA
3 8 (1.09%) Teamcenter
4 4 (0.54%) ContrOCC
5 2 (0.27%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.27%) Primavera
6 1 (0.14%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.14%) SAP HR
6 1 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 107 (14.58%) Azure
2 72 (9.81%) Microsoft 365
3 44 (5.99%) Power Platform
4 35 (4.77%) Entra ID
5 32 (4.36%) AWS
6 19 (2.59%) OneDrive
7 18 (2.45%) Azure DevOps
7 18 (2.45%) SaaS
8 17 (2.32%) GCP
9 9 (1.23%) PaaS
10 7 (0.95%) Microsoft Copilot
10 7 (0.95%) OCI
11 5 (0.68%) Azure Machine Learning
11 5 (0.68%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 5 (0.68%) Google App Engine
12 4 (0.54%) Azure AKS
12 4 (0.54%) GitHub
12 4 (0.54%) IaaS
13 3 (0.41%) Azure Cosmos DB
13 3 (0.41%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 32 (4.36%) Firewall
2 30 (4.09%) DNS
3 28 (3.81%) LAN
4 21 (2.86%) WAN
5 20 (2.72%) DHCP
6 15 (2.04%) VPN
7 14 (1.91%) BGP
7 14 (1.91%) Network Security
7 14 (1.91%) Wireless
8 13 (1.77%) OSPF
9 12 (1.63%) BIG-IP
9 12 (1.63%) Cisco ISE
9 12 (1.63%) Wi-Fi
10 11 (1.50%) Skype
10 11 (1.50%) VLAN
11 10 (1.36%) Junos
12 9 (1.23%) TCP/IP
12 9 (1.23%) VXLAN
13 8 (1.09%) Ethernet VPN
14 5 (0.68%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 39 (5.31%) Power BI
2 14 (1.91%) SQL Server
3 5 (0.68%) Oracle Reports
3 5 (0.68%) PostgreSQL
3 5 (0.68%) Relational Database
4 4 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 3 (0.41%) Azure SQL Database
5 3 (0.41%) MySQL
5 3 (0.41%) SQL Server Analysis Services
5 3 (0.41%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 2 (0.27%) MariaDB
6 2 (0.27%) Microsoft Analysis Services
6 2 (0.27%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.14%) Amazon RDS
7 1 (0.14%) DTS
7 1 (0.14%) GIS
7 1 (0.14%) InfluxDB
7 1 (0.14%) OpenStack Swift
7 1 (0.14%) Oracle Database 11g
Development Applications
1 71 (9.67%) JIRA
2 13 (1.77%) Git
3 6 (0.82%) Bitbucket
3 6 (0.82%) GitLab
3 6 (0.82%) Jenkins
4 5 (0.68%) Atlassian Bamboo
4 5 (0.68%) Browser DevTools
5 4 (0.54%) MLflow
6 3 (0.41%) Fiddler
7 2 (0.27%) Firebug
7 2 (0.27%) IntelliJ
8 1 (0.14%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.14%) Gemini Tracker
8 1 (0.14%) Hudson
8 1 (0.14%) IBM UrbanCode
8 1 (0.14%) MSI
8 1 (0.14%) Rational DOORS
8 1 (0.14%) Visual Studio Code
8 1 (0.14%) webpack
General
1 252 (34.33%) Social Skills
2 109 (14.85%) Finance
3 100 (13.62%) Analytical Skills
4 68 (9.26%) Public Sector
5 36 (4.90%) Legal
6 24 (3.27%) Influencing Skills
7 21 (2.86%) Organisational Skills
8 20 (2.72%) Documentation Skills
8 20 (2.72%) Telecoms
9 18 (2.45%) Military
10 15 (2.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 13 (1.77%) Aerospace
12 12 (1.63%) Banking
12 12 (1.63%) Presentation Skills
13 10 (1.36%) Local Government
14 9 (1.23%) Retail
15 5 (0.68%) Financial Institution
16 3 (0.41%) Publishing
17 1 (0.14%) Automotive
17 1 (0.14%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 95 (12.94%) Analyst
2 91 (12.40%) Service Manager
3 76 (10.35%) Lead
4 58 (7.90%) Senior
5 45 (6.13%) Architect
5 45 (6.13%) IT Manager
5 45 (6.13%) Service Analyst
6 29 (3.95%) Delivery Manager
6 29 (3.95%) Project Manager
7 25 (3.41%) Network Engineer
8 23 (3.13%) Consultant
8 23 (3.13%) IT Analyst
9 22 (3.00%) IT Services Manager
10 21 (2.86%) Service Delivery Manager
10 21 (2.86%) Support Engineer
11 19 (2.59%) Administrator
11 19 (2.59%) Service Transition Manager
11 19 (2.59%) Transition Manager
12 17 (2.32%) Designer
12 17 (2.32%) Service Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (2.86%) REST
2 9 (1.23%) OAuth
2 9 (1.23%) SOAP
3 8 (1.09%) 802.1X
4 5 (0.68%) OpenID
4 5 (0.68%) Oracle Fusion
4 5 (0.68%) SAML
4 5 (0.68%) XML
5 4 (0.54%) Middleware
5 4 (0.54%) OAuth2
5 4 (0.54%) Software Packaging
5 4 (0.54%) XMPP
6 3 (0.41%) .NET
6 3 (0.41%) CSS
6 3 (0.41%) Elastic Stack
6 3 (0.41%) FIDO
6 3 (0.41%) Flash
6 3 (0.41%) HTML
6 3 (0.41%) JSON
6 3 (0.41%) Microsoft Graph
Miscellaneous
1 53 (7.22%) Onboarding
2 45 (6.13%) CMDB
3 37 (5.04%) Product Ownership
4 29 (3.95%) Management Information System
5 28 (3.81%) Data Centre
6 26 (3.54%) PKI
7 22 (3.00%) Clustering
8 18 (2.45%) Virtual Team
9 16 (2.18%) Enterprise Software
10 15 (2.04%) Data Protection Act
11 12 (1.63%) Operational Technology
12 11 (1.50%) Analytical Mindset
12 11 (1.50%) Driving Licence
12 11 (1.50%) Self-Motivation
13 8 (1.09%) Cyber Threat
13 8 (1.09%) PMI
13 8 (1.09%) Replication
13 8 (1.09%) Security Posture
14 6 (0.82%) Distributed Systems
14 6 (0.82%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 165 (22.48%) Windows
2 37 (5.04%) Windows 10
3 35 (4.77%) Linux
4 31 (4.22%) Windows Server
5 15 (2.04%) Windows 7
6 11 (1.50%) Unix
7 8 (1.09%) Mac OS
8 5 (0.68%) Android
8 5 (0.68%) Apple iOS
8 5 (0.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 3 (0.41%) Windows XP
10 2 (0.27%) Solaris
10 2 (0.27%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.14%) Rocky
11 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
11 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.14%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 416 (56.68%) ITIL
2 324 (44.14%) ITSM
3 190 (25.89%) Continuous Improvement
4 177 (24.11%) Stakeholder Management
5 155 (21.12%) Service Delivery
6 144 (19.62%) Agile
7 142 (19.35%) Problem-Solving
8 109 (14.85%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 102 (13.90%) Change Management
10 84 (11.44%) Customer Service
11 72 (9.81%) DevOps
12 61 (8.31%) Incident Management
12 61 (8.31%) Problem Management
13 60 (8.17%) Configuration Management
13 60 (8.17%) Cybersecurity
14 59 (8.04%) Roadmaps
15 58 (7.90%) Project Delivery
16 46 (6.27%) Decision-Making
16 46 (6.27%) Risk Management
17 44 (5.99%) Data Protection
Programming Languages
1 62 (8.45%) PowerShell
2 39 (5.31%) Python
3 38 (5.18%) SQL
4 20 (2.72%) JavaScript
5 13 (1.77%) Bash
6 11 (1.50%) VB
6 11 (1.50%) VBScript
7 4 (0.54%) C#
7 4 (0.54%) Java
7 4 (0.54%) Perl
7 4 (0.54%) PL/SQL
7 4 (0.54%) T-SQL
8 2 (0.27%) Apex Code
8 2 (0.27%) Search Processing Language
8 2 (0.27%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.14%) Bicep
9 1 (0.14%) C
9 1 (0.14%) REXX
9 1 (0.14%) Scala
9 1 (0.14%) VBA
Qualifications
1 335 (45.64%) Security Cleared
2 215 (29.29%) SC Cleared
3 121 (16.49%) DV Cleared
4 64 (8.72%) Degree
5 37 (5.04%) ITIL Certification
6 24 (3.27%) Cisco Certification
7 18 (2.45%) PMI Certification
8 17 (2.32%) BPSS Clearance
9 16 (2.18%) Computer Science Degree
9 16 (2.18%) PMP
10 14 (1.91%) Microsoft Certification
11 13 (1.77%) CCNA
12 12 (1.63%) A+ Certification
13 10 (1.36%) CCNP
14 9 (1.23%) DBS Check
14 9 (1.23%) JNCIA
14 9 (1.23%) JNCIP
14 9 (1.23%) JNCIS
14 9 (1.23%) Network+ Certification
15 7 (0.95%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 46 (6.27%) SLA
2 30 (4.09%) Data Quality
3 22 (3.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 22 (3.00%) PMO
4 19 (2.59%) ISO/IEC 20000
5 17 (2.32%) QA
6 16 (2.18%) NCSC
7 13 (1.77%) GDPR
7 13 (1.77%) GRC
8 11 (1.50%) ISO 9001
9 9 (1.23%) COBIT
10 7 (0.95%) Government Security Classifications
11 6 (0.82%) Cyber Essentials
11 6 (0.82%) ISO 31000
11 6 (0.82%) ISO/IEC 27005
12 5 (0.68%) Accessibility
12 5 (0.68%) Disclosure Scotland
13 4 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 4 (0.54%) GMP
13 4 (0.54%) NIST
System Software
1 84 (11.44%) Active Directory
2 34 (4.63%) VMware Infrastructure
3 16 (2.18%) VMware ESXi
4 12 (1.63%) BitLocker
5 8 (1.09%) Docker
6 7 (0.95%) VMware NSX
6 7 (0.95%) vSphere
7 6 (0.82%) vCloud
8 5 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
9 4 (0.54%) NFS
10 3 (0.41%) Firmware
10 3 (0.41%) Hyper-V
10 3 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
11 2 (0.27%) GPFS
11 2 (0.27%) KVM
12 1 (0.14%) iptables
12 1 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
12 1 (0.14%) Samba
12 1 (0.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 42 (5.72%) SCCM
2 34 (4.63%) Microsoft Intune
3 19 (2.59%) Ansible
4 11 (1.50%) Terraform
5 9 (1.23%) Kubernetes
6 8 (1.09%) FortiGate
6 8 (1.09%) SCOM
6 8 (1.09%) Single Sign-On
6 8 (1.09%) vCenter Server
7 7 (0.95%) Jamf Pro
8 4 (0.54%) PowerCLI
8 4 (0.54%) Progress Chef
8 4 (0.54%) vMotion
9 3 (0.41%) Cisco Prime
9 3 (0.41%) Dell DRAC
9 3 (0.41%) Grafana
9 3 (0.41%) Puppet
9 3 (0.41%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
9 3 (0.41%) vRealize
10 2 (0.27%) Nagios
Vendors
1 175 (23.84%) ServiceNow
2 133 (18.12%) Microsoft
3 49 (6.68%) Remedy
4 46 (6.27%) VMware
5 34 (4.63%) Cisco
6 25 (3.41%) BMC
7 18 (2.45%) SolarWinds
8 17 (2.32%) Oracle
8 17 (2.32%) Splunk
9 16 (2.18%) SAP
10 15 (2.04%) HP
11 12 (1.63%) Dell
11 12 (1.63%) F5
11 12 (1.63%) Juniper
12 10 (1.36%) Atlassian
12 10 (1.36%) Canon
12 10 (1.36%) Dynatrace
12 10 (1.36%) Qualys
13 9 (1.23%) IFS
14 8 (1.09%) Extreme Networks