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 17 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 70 67 54
Rank change year-on-year -3 -13 +11
Contract jobs citing Service Management 682 445 678
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.40% 3.34% 3.24%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.05% 3.75% 3.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 455 278 499
10th Percentile £185 £209 £280
25th Percentile £308 £382 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% +13.11%
75th Percentile £594 £613 £608
90th Percentile £738 £688 £715
UK median daily rate £500 £530 £535
% change year-on-year -5.66% -0.93% +7.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 71 20 12
10th Percentile £13.25 £20.16 £12.53
25th Percentile £16.44 £24.18 £14.73
Median hourly rate £29.60 £30.43 £17.11
Median % change year-on-year -2.71% +77.82% -65.80%
75th Percentile £60.00 £44.63 £17.73
90th Percentile £74.26 £70.00 £45.65
UK median hourly rate £29.60 £30.40 £17.72
% change year-on-year -2.63% +71.56% -31.34%

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 16,850 11,877 18,058
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 84.12% 89.15% 86.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,260 7,054 11,177
10th Percentile £240 £232 £250
25th Percentile £382 £375 £389
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £493 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.59% -1.45% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,816 633 1,753
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.50 £13.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £20.12 £15.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £30.78 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.29% -12.06% +7.63%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £61.25
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £72.90
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £34.00
% change year-on-year -22.62% -4.41% -2.86%

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 17 February 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 17 February 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 17 February 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 +32 183 £488 +8.33% 107
North of England -6 167 £500 +17.65% 74
South West -7 151 £575 - 48
Midlands -5 106 £438 -23.91% 44
North West -1 92 £550 +25.71% 47
West Midlands -22 79 £475 -17.75% 29
Yorkshire -17 60 £475 +106.52% 23
East of England -7 46 £452 -16.87% 40
Scotland -18 30 £488 -2.11% 11
East Midlands 0 27 £419 -9.95% 14
North East -5 18 £280 -53.04% 4
Wales -6 3 £160 -58.71% 10
Northern Ireland - 2 £325 - 2
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 63 (9.24%) Confluence
2 55 (8.06%) Microsoft Exchange
3 48 (7.04%) SharePoint
4 14 (2.05%) Skype for Business
5 5 (0.73%) SharePoint Server
6 4 (0.59%) Apache
6 4 (0.59%) WebLogic
7 2 (0.29%) JBoss
8 1 (0.15%) CMS
8 1 (0.15%) HCL Notes
8 1 (0.15%) LiveCycle
Applications
1 85 (12.46%) Microsoft Office
2 36 (5.28%) Microsoft Project
3 17 (2.49%) Microsoft Excel
4 5 (0.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.59%) PTC Creo
6 3 (0.44%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 15 (2.20%) Remedy ITSM
2 13 (1.91%) Oracle EBS
3 8 (1.17%) SAP S/4HANA
4 5 (0.73%) Teamcenter
5 2 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.15%) assyst
6 1 (0.15%) Dynamics CRM
6 1 (0.15%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.15%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.15%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 106 (15.54%) Azure
2 72 (10.56%) Microsoft 365
3 71 (10.41%) AWS
4 39 (5.72%) GCP
5 26 (3.81%) Entra ID
6 24 (3.52%) Power Platform
7 18 (2.64%) OneDrive
8 16 (2.35%) SaaS
9 8 (1.17%) Azure DevOps
10 7 (1.03%) PowerApps
10 7 (1.03%) Salesforce Service Cloud
11 6 (0.88%) IaaS
12 5 (0.73%) Dynamics 365
12 5 (0.73%) OpenShift
12 5 (0.73%) PaaS
12 5 (0.73%) Power Automate
13 4 (0.59%) Amazon EC2
13 4 (0.59%) Amazon S3
13 4 (0.59%) Azure Monitor
13 4 (0.59%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 49 (7.18%) DNS
2 35 (5.13%) DHCP
3 28 (4.11%) VLAN
4 26 (3.81%) Firewall
5 23 (3.37%) LAN
6 22 (3.23%) Skype
7 21 (3.08%) VPN
8 20 (2.93%) Junos
8 20 (2.93%) WAN
9 19 (2.79%) Cisco ISE
10 17 (2.49%) Network Security
10 17 (2.49%) TCP/IP
11 15 (2.20%) Cisco Firepower
11 15 (2.20%) Cisco IOS
11 15 (2.20%) Wi-Fi
12 13 (1.91%) BGP
13 9 (1.32%) WebEx
14 7 (1.03%) OSPF
15 6 (0.88%) BIG-IP
15 6 (0.88%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (2.20%) Power BI
2 14 (2.05%) Relational Database
3 8 (1.17%) SQL Server
4 4 (0.59%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (0.59%) InfluxDB
4 4 (0.59%) Metadata
5 3 (0.44%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (0.29%) Azure SQL Database
6 2 (0.29%) Big Data
6 2 (0.29%) GIS
6 2 (0.29%) MongoDB
7 1 (0.15%) BusinessObjects
7 1 (0.15%) Data Mining
7 1 (0.15%) Electronic Patient Records
7 1 (0.15%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.15%) Oracle Discoverer
7 1 (0.15%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.15%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 91 (13.34%) JIRA
2 12 (1.76%) Jenkins
3 6 (0.88%) Bitbucket
3 6 (0.88%) Git
4 4 (0.59%) GitLab
5 2 (0.29%) ScriptRunner
6 1 (0.15%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 1 (0.15%) MLflow
6 1 (0.15%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 279 (40.91%) Social Skills
2 136 (19.94%) Analytical Skills
3 93 (13.64%) Public Sector
4 74 (10.85%) Finance
5 44 (6.45%) Legal
5 44 (6.45%) Military
6 30 (4.40%) Organisational Skills
7 18 (2.64%) Retail
8 17 (2.49%) Documentation Skills
8 17 (2.49%) Telecoms
9 16 (2.35%) Manufacturing
10 14 (2.05%) Influencing Skills
11 13 (1.91%) Banking
12 6 (0.88%) Aerospace
12 6 (0.88%) Investment Banking
13 5 (0.73%) Electronics
13 5 (0.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (0.73%) Marketing
14 4 (0.59%) Presentation Skills
15 2 (0.29%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 84 (12.32%) Analyst
2 76 (11.14%) Architect
2 76 (11.14%) Lead
3 63 (9.24%) Service Manager
4 51 (7.48%) Support Engineer
5 42 (6.16%) Service Architect
6 36 (5.28%) IT Support
7 31 (4.55%) Hardware Engineer
8 26 (3.81%) Network Engineer
8 26 (3.81%) Support Analyst
9 24 (3.52%) 2nd Line Support
10 23 (3.37%) Consultant
10 23 (3.37%) IT Manager
11 22 (3.23%) Desktop Support
11 22 (3.23%) IT Analyst
12 21 (3.08%) Senior
13 20 (2.93%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 19 (2.79%) Break Fix Engineer
14 19 (2.79%) Field Engineer
14 19 (2.79%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (3.52%) REST
2 9 (1.32%) XMPP
3 7 (1.03%) SOAP
4 5 (0.73%) 802.1X
4 5 (0.73%) RFC 2544
5 4 (0.59%) .NET
5 4 (0.59%) Elastic Stack
5 4 (0.59%) RabbitMQ
6 3 (0.44%) Web Services
7 2 (0.29%) CSS
7 2 (0.29%) Middleware
7 2 (0.29%) Spring Boot
8 1 (0.15%) ARM Templates
8 1 (0.15%) HTML
8 1 (0.15%) JSON
8 1 (0.15%) LDAP
8 1 (0.15%) Lightning Web Components
8 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Graph
8 1 (0.15%) Oracle GoldenGate
8 1 (0.15%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 57 (8.36%) Product Ownership
2 35 (5.13%) CMDB
3 28 (4.11%) Onboarding
4 27 (3.96%) Data Centre
5 25 (3.67%) Management Information System
6 23 (3.37%) Virtual Team
7 21 (3.08%) PKI
8 18 (2.64%) Driving Licence
8 18 (2.64%) Self-Motivation
9 16 (2.35%) Analytical Mindset
10 11 (1.61%) PMI
11 8 (1.17%) Enterprise Software
11 8 (1.17%) NHS
12 6 (0.88%) Clustering
12 6 (0.88%) Data Protection Act
12 6 (0.88%) Mainframe
12 6 (0.88%) Smartphone
13 5 (0.73%) Data Structures
13 5 (0.73%) Fibre Optics
14 4 (0.59%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 180 (26.39%) Windows
2 58 (8.50%) Linux
3 52 (7.62%) Windows Server
4 47 (6.89%) Windows 10
5 13 (1.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (1.61%) Windows 7
7 10 (1.47%) Mac OS
8 8 (1.17%) Apple iOS
8 8 (1.17%) Unix
9 7 (1.03%) Android
9 7 (1.03%) Windows Server 2012
10 4 (0.59%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.59%) Windows Server 2003
10 4 (0.59%) Windows Server 2016
11 3 (0.44%) CentOS
12 2 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 1 (0.15%) AIX
13 1 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
13 1 (0.15%) Solaris
13 1 (0.15%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 414 (60.70%) ITIL
2 308 (45.16%) ITSM
3 149 (21.85%) Problem-Solving
4 130 (19.06%) Continuous Improvement
5 122 (17.89%) Agile
6 112 (16.42%) Change Management
7 96 (14.08%) Stakeholder Management
8 92 (13.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 87 (12.76%) Service Delivery
10 86 (12.61%) Customer Service
11 69 (10.12%) Service Design
12 57 (8.36%) Problem Management
13 55 (8.06%) Incident Management
14 53 (7.77%) Acceptance Criteria
15 52 (7.62%) Knowledge Transfer
15 52 (7.62%) Performance Metrics
16 50 (7.33%) DevOps
17 49 (7.18%) Project Management
18 48 (7.04%) Configuration Management
19 43 (6.30%) Critical Thinking
Programming Languages
1 72 (10.56%) PowerShell
2 51 (7.48%) Python
3 40 (5.87%) SQL
4 16 (2.35%) Perl
5 15 (2.20%) Shell Script
6 12 (1.76%) Bash
7 9 (1.32%) VB
7 9 (1.32%) VBScript
8 8 (1.17%) Java
9 7 (1.03%) JavaScript
10 4 (0.59%) Go
11 2 (0.29%) C#
11 2 (0.29%) PHP
11 2 (0.29%) VBA
12 1 (0.15%) Apex Code
12 1 (0.15%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.15%) Scala
12 1 (0.15%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 335 (49.12%) Security Cleared
2 252 (36.95%) SC Cleared
3 99 (14.52%) DV Cleared
4 93 (13.64%) Degree
5 40 (5.87%) ITIL Certification
6 34 (4.99%) Microsoft Certification
7 30 (4.40%) TOGAF Certification
8 20 (2.93%) Cisco Certification
9 18 (2.64%) PMI Certification
10 17 (2.49%) PMP
11 16 (2.35%) MCSE
12 15 (2.20%) BPSS Clearance
12 15 (2.20%) CCNP
13 14 (2.05%) Azure Certification
13 14 (2.05%) CCNA
13 14 (2.05%) Computer Science Degree
13 14 (2.05%) Network+ Certification
14 13 (1.91%) A+ Certification
15 11 (1.61%) Server+ Certification
16 7 (1.03%) MAPM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (4.11%) SLA
2 16 (2.35%) Data Quality
3 12 (1.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 10 (1.47%) GDPR
4 10 (1.47%) PMO
4 10 (1.47%) QA
5 6 (0.88%) ISO/IEC 20000
6 5 (0.73%) Cyber Essentials
7 4 (0.59%) Disclosure Scotland
8 3 (0.44%) ISO 9001
8 3 (0.44%) NCSC
9 2 (0.29%) Accessibility
9 2 (0.29%) GxP
9 2 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 2 (0.29%) NIST
10 1 (0.15%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.15%) COBIT
10 1 (0.15%) GRC
10 1 (0.15%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 91 (13.34%) Active Directory
2 34 (4.99%) VMware Infrastructure
3 19 (2.79%) VMware NSX
4 13 (1.91%) Hyper-V
5 9 (1.32%) BitLocker
6 7 (1.03%) Docker
7 6 (0.88%) Virtual Desktop
7 6 (0.88%) Virtual Servers
8 5 (0.73%) Microsoft Virtual Server
9 3 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
10 1 (0.15%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 31 (4.55%) SCCM
2 30 (4.40%) OPNET
3 20 (2.93%) Ansible
3 20 (2.93%) vCenter Server
4 17 (2.49%) Microsoft Intune
5 16 (2.35%) Terraform
6 15 (2.20%) Kubernetes
7 11 (1.61%) WSUS
8 10 (1.47%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 7 (1.03%) FortiGate
10 6 (0.88%) Jamf Pro
11 5 (0.73%) Grafana
12 4 (0.59%) Nessus
12 4 (0.59%) Packer
12 4 (0.59%) Progress Chef
12 4 (0.59%) Prometheus
13 2 (0.29%) Docker Swarm
13 2 (0.29%) Puppet
13 2 (0.29%) SCOM
13 2 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 147 (21.55%) ServiceNow
2 136 (19.94%) Microsoft
3 62 (9.09%) Cisco
4 56 (8.21%) Atlassian
5 51 (7.48%) Remedy
6 47 (6.89%) VMware
7 36 (5.28%) SolarWinds
8 32 (4.69%) Google
9 31 (4.55%) HP
9 31 (4.55%) Oracle
10 27 (3.96%) Splunk
11 22 (3.23%) Juniper
12 21 (3.08%) SAP
13 14 (2.05%) Red Hat
14 13 (1.91%) Salesforce
14 13 (1.91%) Veeam
15 12 (1.76%) Citrix
15 12 (1.76%) Dell
16 11 (1.61%) Canon
16 11 (1.61%) Dynatrace