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 4 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 66 55 65
Rank change year-on-year -11 +10 +1
Contract jobs citing Service Management 902 621 539
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.27% 4.10% 3.04%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.03% 4.61% 3.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 616 363 377
10th Percentile £244 £188 £200
25th Percentile £413 £295 £376
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £524 £496 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.65% -0.80% -
75th Percentile £625 £575 £600
90th Percentile £725 £638 £649
UK median daily rate £525 £495 £502
% change year-on-year +6.06% -1.30% -4.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 73 70 14
10th Percentile £14.50 - £16.84
25th Percentile £16.09 £12.62 £25.69
Median hourly rate £35.53 £18.73 £36.25
Median % change year-on-year +89.70% -48.33% +61.11%
75th Percentile £85.00 £31.40 £48.75
90th Percentile £94.51 £54.35 £52.63
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £18.73 £36.25
% change year-on-year +193.65% -48.33% -33.49%

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 22,373 13,481 14,702
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 81.05% 89.10% 82.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,960 8,091 8,656
10th Percentile £300 £238 £250
25th Percentile £408 £368 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £600 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £653 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,519 1,379 1,296
10th Percentile £13.74 £13.85 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.25 £16.95 £17.69
Median hourly rate £42.50 £22.63 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +87.80% -47.37% +12.13%
75th Percentile £68.00 £43.75 £65.25
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +63.02% -40.82% +2.41%

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 4 September 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 4 September 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 4 September 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 +12 292 £565 +13.00% 298
North of England -17 253 £473 +5.00% 214
North West -13 151 £480 +3.23% 120
South West -33 110 £575 +6.48% 94
Midlands -40 108 £500 -0.99% 120
West Midlands -22 101 £525 +0.96% 72
Yorkshire -13 94 £443 +24.79% 77
Scotland +11 89 £520 +12.43% 67
East of England -6 47 £518 -5.91% 76
Wales -9 13 £800 +247.83% 18
Northern Ireland +8 8 - - 33
North East -37 8 £535 +174.36% 19
East Midlands -36 7 £206 -31.25% 48
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 52 (5.76%) SharePoint
2 33 (3.66%) Microsoft Exchange
3 28 (3.10%) Confluence
4 15 (1.66%) Skype for Business
5 3 (0.33%) CMS
5 3 (0.33%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.11%) CICS
6 1 (0.11%) Mattermost
Applications
1 67 (7.43%) Microsoft Office
2 24 (2.66%) Microsoft Excel
3 15 (1.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.55%) Chatbot
4 5 (0.55%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.11%) Maple
Business Applications
1 46 (5.10%) Remedy ITSM
2 5 (0.55%) ContrOCC
3 4 (0.44%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.44%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.33%) NEC Housing
4 3 (0.33%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.22%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.22%) Primavera
5 2 (0.22%) Remedy AR System
5 2 (0.22%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.11%) Cloudability
6 1 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.11%) SAP CX
6 1 (0.11%) SAP HR
6 1 (0.11%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 150 (16.63%) Azure
2 98 (10.86%) Microsoft 365
3 67 (7.43%) Entra ID
4 57 (6.32%) AWS
5 49 (5.43%) Power Platform
6 34 (3.77%) SaaS
7 24 (2.66%) Azure DevOps
8 21 (2.33%) OneDrive
9 19 (2.11%) GCP
10 11 (1.22%) Azure Monitor
10 11 (1.22%) Microsoft Copilot
11 9 (1.00%) GitHub
12 8 (0.89%) OCI
13 7 (0.78%) Dynamics 365
13 7 (0.78%) IaaS
14 6 (0.67%) Azure Sentinel
14 6 (0.67%) PaaS
15 5 (0.55%) Azure AKS
15 5 (0.55%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 5 (0.55%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 45 (4.99%) Firewall
2 41 (4.55%) DNS
3 33 (3.66%) VPN
4 29 (3.22%) DHCP
5 27 (2.99%) Network Security
6 23 (2.55%) TCP/IP
7 22 (2.44%) LAN
8 18 (2.00%) WAN
9 16 (1.77%) Skype
10 15 (1.66%) Wireless
11 11 (1.22%) VLAN
11 11 (1.22%) Wi-Fi
12 10 (1.11%) BGP
12 10 (1.11%) SSH
13 8 (0.89%) OSPF
14 7 (0.78%) Intrusion Detection
15 6 (0.67%) Cisco ISE
15 6 (0.67%) Software-Defined Networking
15 6 (0.67%) SSL
16 5 (0.55%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (4.10%) Power BI
2 25 (2.77%) SQL Server
3 14 (1.55%) Metadata
4 8 (0.89%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 6 (0.67%) MySQL
6 5 (0.55%) MariaDB
6 5 (0.55%) Oracle Reports
6 5 (0.55%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 4 (0.44%) Amazon RDS
7 4 (0.44%) PostgreSQL
7 4 (0.44%) Relational Database
7 4 (0.44%) SQL Server Analysis Services
8 3 (0.33%) Amazon Aurora
9 2 (0.22%) Azure SQL Database
9 2 (0.22%) EDRMS
9 2 (0.22%) Looker
9 2 (0.22%) Microsoft Analysis Services
9 2 (0.22%) Oracle Database
10 1 (0.11%) InfluxDB
10 1 (0.11%) Oracle Database 11g
Development Applications
1 70 (7.76%) JIRA
2 16 (1.77%) Git
3 9 (1.00%) Jenkins
4 8 (0.89%) Atlassian Bamboo
4 8 (0.89%) Bitbucket
5 5 (0.55%) Browser DevTools
6 4 (0.44%) GitLab
6 4 (0.44%) webpack
7 3 (0.33%) Fiddler
7 3 (0.33%) Gradle
7 3 (0.33%) Maven
7 3 (0.33%) MLflow
7 3 (0.33%) Rational DOORS
8 2 (0.22%) Firebug
8 2 (0.22%) IntelliJ
8 2 (0.22%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.11%) Artifactory
9 1 (0.11%) Hudson
9 1 (0.11%) IBM UrbanCode
9 1 (0.11%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 356 (39.47%) Social Skills
2 142 (15.74%) Analytical Skills
3 129 (14.30%) Finance
4 101 (11.20%) Public Sector
5 43 (4.77%) Documentation Skills
6 38 (4.21%) Influencing Skills
7 35 (3.88%) Organisational Skills
8 29 (3.22%) Legal
9 24 (2.66%) Telecoms
10 23 (2.55%) Military
11 21 (2.33%) Aerospace
12 20 (2.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 18 (2.00%) Banking
14 14 (1.55%) Local Government
14 14 (1.55%) Presentation Skills
15 6 (0.67%) Manufacturing
16 5 (0.55%) Retail
17 4 (0.44%) Law
18 3 (0.33%) Police
19 2 (0.22%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 105 (11.64%) Lead
2 101 (11.20%) Analyst
3 73 (8.09%) Architect
4 68 (7.54%) Service Manager
5 67 (7.43%) Senior
6 44 (4.88%) Service Analyst
7 42 (4.66%) IT Manager
8 39 (4.32%) Support Engineer
9 36 (3.99%) Delivery Manager
10 33 (3.66%) Consultant
10 33 (3.66%) Project Manager
11 32 (3.55%) Service Architect
12 25 (2.77%) Developer
13 23 (2.55%) IT Analyst
14 22 (2.44%) Administrator
14 22 (2.44%) Desktop Engineer
14 22 (2.44%) Technical Leader
15 21 (2.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 21 (2.33%) Network Engineer
16 20 (2.22%) Service Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (3.88%) Terraform
2 29 (3.22%) REST
3 12 (1.33%) XML
4 10 (1.11%) SAML
5 9 (1.00%) SOAP
6 8 (0.89%) Middleware
7 7 (0.78%) .NET
7 7 (0.78%) JSON
7 7 (0.78%) Web Services
8 6 (0.67%) ARM Templates
8 6 (0.67%) OAuth
9 5 (0.55%) OpenID
10 4 (0.44%) AngularJS
10 4 (0.44%) Node.js
10 4 (0.44%) OAuth2
10 4 (0.44%) Oracle Fusion
10 4 (0.44%) React
10 4 (0.44%) Redux
10 4 (0.44%) RESTful
10 4 (0.44%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 82 (9.09%) Onboarding
2 48 (5.32%) Management Information System
3 44 (4.88%) CMDB
4 33 (3.66%) Enterprise Software
5 28 (3.10%) PKI
6 27 (2.99%) Data Centre
7 26 (2.88%) Product Ownership
8 23 (2.55%) Data Protection Act
9 17 (1.88%) Hybrid Cloud
9 17 (1.88%) Operational Technology
10 16 (1.77%) Clustering
11 14 (1.55%) Analytical Mindset
11 14 (1.55%) Virtual Team
12 13 (1.44%) Self-Motivation
13 12 (1.33%) Security Operations Centre
14 10 (1.11%) Cloud Native
14 10 (1.11%) Cyber Threat
15 9 (1.00%) NHS
16 8 (0.89%) Replication
16 8 (0.89%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 209 (23.17%) Windows
2 63 (6.98%) Windows Server
3 52 (5.76%) Linux
4 46 (5.10%) Windows 10
5 17 (1.88%) Windows 7
6 14 (1.55%) Unix
7 10 (1.11%) Mac OS
8 9 (1.00%) Android
8 9 (1.00%) Apple iOS
9 3 (0.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 3 (0.33%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.22%) Solaris
10 2 (0.22%) Windows XP
10 2 (0.22%) zOS
11 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
11 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 502 (55.65%) ITIL
2 389 (43.13%) ITSM
3 262 (29.05%) Stakeholder Management
4 257 (28.49%) Continuous Improvement
5 205 (22.73%) Service Delivery
6 170 (18.85%) Problem-Solving
7 166 (18.40%) Agile
8 147 (16.30%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 145 (16.08%) Change Management
10 108 (11.97%) Customer Service
11 104 (11.53%) Incident Management
12 101 (11.20%) Cybersecurity
13 93 (10.31%) Roadmaps
14 82 (9.09%) DevOps
15 80 (8.87%) Project Delivery
16 69 (7.65%) Decision-Making
17 68 (7.54%) Risk Management
18 67 (7.43%) Service Design
19 66 (7.32%) Data Protection
20 63 (6.98%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 93 (10.31%) PowerShell
2 55 (6.10%) Python
3 42 (4.66%) SQL
4 30 (3.33%) Bash
5 24 (2.66%) JavaScript
6 17 (1.88%) VBScript
7 15 (1.66%) VB
8 11 (1.22%) Java
9 8 (0.89%) C#
10 7 (0.78%) Bicep
11 5 (0.55%) Shell Script
12 4 (0.44%) C
12 4 (0.44%) PL/SQL
12 4 (0.44%) T-SQL
12 4 (0.44%) TypeScript
13 3 (0.33%) Groovy
13 3 (0.33%) Lua
13 3 (0.33%) Perl
14 2 (0.22%) Apex Code
14 2 (0.22%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 415 (46.01%) Security Cleared
2 261 (28.94%) SC Cleared
3 133 (14.75%) DV Cleared
4 94 (10.42%) Degree
5 36 (3.99%) ITIL Certification
6 30 (3.33%) BPSS Clearance
7 28 (3.10%) PMP
8 27 (2.99%) PMI Certification
9 22 (2.44%) Microsoft Certification
10 18 (2.00%) Computer Science Degree
11 17 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
12 16 (1.77%) CISSP
13 15 (1.66%) DBS Check
13 15 (1.66%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 13 (1.44%) Azure Certification
14 13 (1.44%) CISM
15 11 (1.22%) A+ Certification
16 9 (1.00%) CCNA
16 9 (1.00%) CCNP
17 8 (0.89%) BC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 71 (7.87%) SLA
2 36 (3.99%) Data Quality
3 27 (2.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 25 (2.77%) QA
5 24 (2.66%) ISO/IEC 20000
6 23 (2.55%) PMO
7 22 (2.44%) GRC
8 18 (2.00%) GDPR
8 18 (2.00%) NCSC
9 15 (1.66%) ISO 9001
10 11 (1.22%) NIST
11 9 (1.00%) COBIT
11 9 (1.00%) Disclosure Scotland
12 8 (0.89%) Accessibility
13 7 (0.78%) Cyber Essentials
14 6 (0.67%) ISO 31000
14 6 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 27005
15 5 (0.55%) ISO 22301
15 5 (0.55%) JSP 440
16 4 (0.44%) WCAG
System Software
1 103 (11.42%) Active Directory
2 61 (6.76%) VMware Infrastructure
3 22 (2.44%) VMware ESXi
4 19 (2.11%) Hyper-V
5 17 (1.88%) Docker
5 17 (1.88%) VMware NSX
6 16 (1.77%) BitLocker
7 13 (1.44%) vCloud
8 12 (1.33%) Virtual Desktop
9 10 (1.11%) vSphere
10 5 (0.55%) Citrix Hypervisor
10 5 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
10 5 (0.55%) XenApp
10 5 (0.55%) XenDesktop
11 4 (0.44%) Firmware
12 3 (0.33%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 3 (0.33%) NFS
12 3 (0.33%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.22%) GPFS
13 2 (0.22%) KVM
Systems Management
1 54 (5.99%) SCCM
2 45 (4.99%) Microsoft Intune
3 32 (3.55%) Ansible
4 20 (2.22%) SCOM
5 16 (1.77%) Kubernetes
6 15 (1.66%) vCenter Server
7 14 (1.55%) Single Sign-On
8 6 (0.67%) Jamf Pro
9 4 (0.44%) PowerCLI
9 4 (0.44%) Progress Chef
9 4 (0.44%) vMotion
10 3 (0.33%) Cisco Prime
10 3 (0.33%) Dell DRAC
10 3 (0.33%) NetBackup
10 3 (0.33%) OPNET
10 3 (0.33%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
10 3 (0.33%) vRealize
10 3 (0.33%) WSUS
11 2 (0.22%) Istio
11 2 (0.22%) SysTrack
Vendors
1 220 (24.39%) ServiceNow
2 212 (23.50%) Microsoft
3 83 (9.20%) VMware
4 49 (5.43%) Remedy
5 33 (3.66%) BMC
6 31 (3.44%) Cisco
7 24 (2.66%) Oracle
8 19 (2.11%) CyberArk
9 16 (1.77%) Atlassian
10 14 (1.55%) Dynatrace
10 14 (1.55%) SAP
11 12 (1.33%) Citrix
11 12 (1.33%) IBM
11 12 (1.33%) Palo Alto
11 12 (1.33%) SolarWinds
11 12 (1.33%) Splunk
12 10 (1.11%) Qualys
13 9 (1.00%) IFS
14 8 (0.89%) BeyondTrust
14 8 (0.89%) Juniper