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 12 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 74 54 61
Rank change year-on-year -20 +7 +4
Contract jobs citing Service Management 835 635 569
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.05% 4.16% 3.11%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.75% 4.66% 3.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 552 376 416
10th Percentile £250 £195 £210
25th Percentile £413 £311 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £492 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.69% -6.29% +10.53%
75th Percentile £613 £575 £600
90th Percentile £725 £643 £650
UK median daily rate £525 £486 £525
% change year-on-year +7.97% -7.38% +1.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 75 72 16
10th Percentile £14.50 - £17.09
25th Percentile £18.24 £12.62 £20.31
Median hourly rate £55.00 £18.37 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +199.48% -33.22% +29.05%
75th Percentile £85.00 £22.14 £48.75
90th Percentile £94.01 £51.98 £51.88
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £18.73 £27.50
% change year-on-year +220.34% -31.89% -34.33%

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 22,271 13,627 15,207
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 81.46% 89.25% 83.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,022 8,218 9,110
10th Percentile £300 £241 £250
25th Percentile £406 £368 £387
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £594 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,439 1,341 1,552
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.85 £13.76
25th Percentile £18.09 £17.00 £16.82
Median hourly rate £43.96 £22.84 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +92.47% -46.26% +17.24%
75th Percentile £68.00 £44.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £41.08
% change year-on-year +68.99% -38.77% -1.96%

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 12 August 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 12 August 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 12 August 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 +19 284 £565 +13.00% 226
North of England -26 211 £450 +1.47% 177
South West -24 123 £544 +0.69% 78
North West -31 123 £481 +3.39% 106
Midlands -40 101 £500 +3.09% 98
West Midlands -29 94 £500 -1.96% 58
Yorkshire -21 83 £443 +25.67% 54
Scotland -6 65 £500 +1.42% 46
East of England -23 39 £525 -4.55% 60
Wales -6 12 £800 +247.83% 14
Northern Ireland +14 8 - - 22
East Midlands -17 7 £450 +50.00% 41
North East -43 5 £440 +125.64% 21
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 44 (5.27%) SharePoint
2 34 (4.07%) Microsoft Exchange
3 29 (3.47%) Confluence
4 15 (1.80%) Skype for Business
5 6 (0.72%) Mattermost
6 4 (0.48%) OpenStack
7 3 (0.36%) CMS
8 2 (0.24%) IIS
9 1 (0.12%) Apache
9 1 (0.12%) JBoss
Applications
1 62 (7.43%) Microsoft Office
2 20 (2.40%) Microsoft Excel
3 15 (1.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.48%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.24%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.24%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.12%) Camtasia
6 1 (0.12%) Maple
Business Applications
1 51 (6.11%) Remedy ITSM
2 5 (0.60%) ContrOCC
2 5 (0.60%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.36%) NEC Housing
3 3 (0.36%) Teamcenter
4 2 (0.24%) Oracle Applications
4 2 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.24%) Primavera
4 2 (0.24%) Remedy AR System
5 1 (0.12%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.12%) SAP CX
5 1 (0.12%) SAP HR
5 1 (0.12%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 129 (15.45%) Azure
2 88 (10.54%) Microsoft 365
3 54 (6.47%) Entra ID
4 45 (5.39%) AWS
4 45 (5.39%) Power Platform
5 26 (3.11%) SaaS
6 20 (2.40%) Azure DevOps
6 20 (2.40%) OneDrive
7 18 (2.16%) GCP
8 12 (1.44%) Microsoft Copilot
9 11 (1.32%) OCI
10 10 (1.20%) Azure Monitor
11 9 (1.08%) GitHub
12 7 (0.84%) PaaS
13 6 (0.72%) Azure AKS
13 6 (0.72%) Google App Engine
13 6 (0.72%) IaaS
14 5 (0.60%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 5 (0.60%) Azure Sentinel
14 5 (0.60%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 48 (5.75%) Firewall
2 44 (5.27%) DNS
3 30 (3.59%) DHCP
4 29 (3.47%) LAN
4 29 (3.47%) VPN
5 24 (2.87%) Network Security
5 24 (2.87%) WAN
6 20 (2.40%) TCP/IP
7 18 (2.16%) BGP
8 16 (1.92%) OSPF
9 15 (1.80%) Skype
10 14 (1.68%) Wireless
11 13 (1.56%) VLAN
12 12 (1.44%) Cisco ISE
13 11 (1.32%) BIG-IP
13 11 (1.32%) VXLAN
14 10 (1.20%) Junos
14 10 (1.20%) SSH
14 10 (1.20%) Wi-Fi
15 9 (1.08%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (4.43%) Power BI
2 19 (2.28%) SQL Server
3 7 (0.84%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 6 (0.72%) MySQL
5 5 (0.60%) MariaDB
5 5 (0.60%) Oracle Reports
5 5 (0.60%) PostgreSQL
5 5 (0.60%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 4 (0.48%) Amazon RDS
6 4 (0.48%) Relational Database
6 4 (0.48%) SQL Server Analysis Services
7 3 (0.36%) Amazon Aurora
7 3 (0.36%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (0.24%) Looker
8 2 (0.24%) Microsoft Analysis Services
8 2 (0.24%) Oracle Database
9 1 (0.12%) Data Warehouse
9 1 (0.12%) DTS
9 1 (0.12%) EDRMS
9 1 (0.12%) Oracle Database 11g
Development Applications
1 76 (9.10%) JIRA
2 17 (2.04%) Git
3 13 (1.56%) Bitbucket
4 12 (1.44%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 10 (1.20%) Jenkins
6 7 (0.84%) GitLab
7 5 (0.60%) Browser DevTools
8 4 (0.48%) MLflow
8 4 (0.48%) Rational DOORS
8 4 (0.48%) webpack
9 3 (0.36%) Fiddler
9 3 (0.36%) Gradle
9 3 (0.36%) Maven
10 2 (0.24%) Firebug
10 2 (0.24%) IntelliJ
10 2 (0.24%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.12%) Hudson
11 1 (0.12%) IBM UrbanCode
11 1 (0.12%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 314 (37.60%) Social Skills
2 120 (14.37%) Analytical Skills
3 115 (13.77%) Finance
4 82 (9.82%) Public Sector
5 36 (4.31%) Influencing Skills
6 35 (4.19%) Documentation Skills
7 31 (3.71%) Legal
8 25 (2.99%) Military
9 21 (2.51%) Organisational Skills
10 20 (2.40%) Telecoms
11 16 (1.92%) Aerospace
11 16 (1.92%) Banking
12 15 (1.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 15 (1.80%) Presentation Skills
13 14 (1.68%) Local Government
14 4 (0.48%) Financial Institution
14 4 (0.48%) Law
15 3 (0.36%) Police
15 3 (0.36%) Publishing
15 3 (0.36%) Retail
Job Titles
1 96 (11.50%) Analyst
1 96 (11.50%) Lead
2 75 (8.98%) Service Manager
3 74 (8.86%) Senior
4 58 (6.95%) Architect
5 46 (5.51%) IT Manager
5 46 (5.51%) Service Analyst
6 33 (3.95%) Support Engineer
7 30 (3.59%) Delivery Manager
7 30 (3.59%) Service Architect
8 29 (3.47%) Project Manager
9 28 (3.35%) Network Engineer
10 26 (3.11%) Consultant
11 24 (2.87%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 21 (2.51%) IT Services Manager
13 20 (2.40%) Administrator
13 20 (2.40%) IT Analyst
13 20 (2.40%) Service Delivery Manager
13 20 (2.40%) Transition Manager
14 19 (2.28%) 2nd Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (3.59%) REST
2 12 (1.44%) SOAP
3 9 (1.08%) OAuth
4 8 (0.96%) 802.1X
4 8 (0.96%) SAML
5 6 (0.72%) Middleware
6 5 (0.60%) ARM Templates
6 5 (0.60%) OpenID
6 5 (0.60%) Oracle Fusion
6 5 (0.60%) Web Services
6 5 (0.60%) XML
7 4 (0.48%) .NET
7 4 (0.48%) AngularJS
7 4 (0.48%) Node.js
7 4 (0.48%) OAuth2
7 4 (0.48%) React
7 4 (0.48%) Redux
7 4 (0.48%) RESTful
7 4 (0.48%) XMPP
8 3 (0.36%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 73 (8.74%) Onboarding
2 38 (4.55%) Management Information System
3 36 (4.31%) CMDB
3 36 (4.31%) Product Ownership
4 32 (3.83%) PKI
5 26 (3.11%) Data Centre
6 25 (2.99%) Clustering
7 22 (2.63%) Enterprise Software
8 16 (1.92%) Operational Technology
9 15 (1.80%) Hybrid Cloud
10 14 (1.68%) Analytical Mindset
10 14 (1.68%) Data Protection Act
11 12 (1.44%) Self-Motivation
11 12 (1.44%) Virtual Team
12 10 (1.20%) Cloud Native
13 8 (0.96%) Cyber Threat
13 8 (0.96%) Replication
14 7 (0.84%) SCADA
14 7 (0.84%) Security Posture
14 7 (0.84%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 190 (22.75%) Windows
2 53 (6.35%) Windows Server
3 48 (5.75%) Linux
4 38 (4.55%) Windows 10
5 17 (2.04%) Windows 7
6 13 (1.56%) Unix
7 9 (1.08%) Mac OS
8 8 (0.96%) Android
8 8 (0.96%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 3 (0.36%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.24%) Solaris
11 2 (0.24%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.24%) Windows XP
12 1 (0.12%) Rocky
12 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
12 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
12 1 (0.12%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 473 (56.65%) ITIL
2 379 (45.39%) ITSM
3 223 (26.71%) Continuous Improvement
4 221 (26.47%) Stakeholder Management
5 202 (24.19%) Service Delivery
6 166 (19.88%) Problem-Solving
7 164 (19.64%) Agile
8 130 (15.57%) Change Management
9 124 (14.85%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 94 (11.26%) Customer Service
11 88 (10.54%) DevOps
12 85 (10.18%) Incident Management
13 78 (9.34%) Cybersecurity
14 72 (8.62%) Project Delivery
15 71 (8.50%) Service Design
16 62 (7.43%) Risk Management
16 62 (7.43%) Roadmaps
17 58 (6.95%) Project Management
18 55 (6.59%) CI/CD
18 55 (6.59%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 86 (10.30%) PowerShell
2 55 (6.59%) Python
3 41 (4.91%) SQL
4 30 (3.59%) Bash
5 23 (2.75%) JavaScript
6 15 (1.80%) VB
6 15 (1.80%) VBScript
7 10 (1.20%) Java
8 6 (0.72%) Bicep
9 4 (0.48%) C
9 4 (0.48%) PL/SQL
9 4 (0.48%) Shell Script
9 4 (0.48%) T-SQL
9 4 (0.48%) TypeScript
10 3 (0.36%) C#
10 3 (0.36%) Groovy
10 3 (0.36%) Lua
10 3 (0.36%) Perl
11 2 (0.24%) Apex Code
11 2 (0.24%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 398 (47.66%) Security Cleared
2 244 (29.22%) SC Cleared
3 136 (16.29%) DV Cleared
4 89 (10.66%) Degree
5 36 (4.31%) ITIL Certification
6 26 (3.11%) BPSS Clearance
6 26 (3.11%) PMP
7 25 (2.99%) Cisco Certification
7 25 (2.99%) PMI Certification
8 17 (2.04%) Computer Science Degree
9 15 (1.80%) Microsoft Certification
10 13 (1.56%) DBS Check
10 13 (1.56%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 12 (1.44%) CCNA
12 10 (1.20%) A+ Certification
12 10 (1.20%) Azure Certification
12 10 (1.20%) CCNP
13 9 (1.08%) CISM
13 9 (1.08%) CISSP
13 9 (1.08%) JNCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 56 (6.71%) SLA
2 31 (3.71%) ISO/IEC 20000
3 25 (2.99%) Data Quality
4 22 (2.63%) PMO
5 21 (2.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 20 (2.40%) QA
7 19 (2.28%) GRC
7 19 (2.28%) NCSC
8 15 (1.80%) ISO 9001
9 12 (1.44%) GDPR
10 10 (1.20%) COBIT
11 9 (1.08%) Disclosure Scotland
12 7 (0.84%) Cyber Essentials
12 7 (0.84%) Government Security Classifications
13 6 (0.72%) ISO 31000
13 6 (0.72%) ISO/IEC 27005
14 5 (0.60%) Accessibility
14 5 (0.60%) JSP 440
14 5 (0.60%) NIST
15 4 (0.48%) GMP
System Software
1 97 (11.62%) Active Directory
2 49 (5.87%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (2.51%) VMware ESXi
4 16 (1.92%) BitLocker
4 16 (1.92%) Docker
5 15 (1.80%) VMware NSX
6 12 (1.44%) Hyper-V
7 10 (1.20%) vCloud
7 10 (1.20%) vSphere
8 9 (1.08%) Virtual Desktop
9 5 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
10 4 (0.48%) NFS
11 3 (0.36%) Firmware
11 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Virtual Server
11 3 (0.36%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.24%) GPFS
12 2 (0.24%) KVM
13 1 (0.12%) iptables
13 1 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 1 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 49 (5.87%) SCCM
2 44 (5.27%) Microsoft Intune
3 32 (3.83%) Terraform
4 29 (3.47%) Ansible
5 15 (1.80%) SCOM
6 14 (1.68%) Kubernetes
7 13 (1.56%) vCenter Server
8 9 (1.08%) Single Sign-On
9 8 (0.96%) FortiGate
10 6 (0.72%) Jamf Pro
11 5 (0.60%) Progress Chef
12 4 (0.48%) PowerCLI
12 4 (0.48%) Puppet
12 4 (0.48%) vMotion
13 3 (0.36%) Cisco Prime
13 3 (0.36%) Dell DRAC
13 3 (0.36%) Grafana
13 3 (0.36%) NetBackup
13 3 (0.36%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
13 3 (0.36%) vRealize
Vendors
1 213 (25.51%) ServiceNow
2 180 (21.56%) Microsoft
3 70 (8.38%) VMware
4 53 (6.35%) Remedy
5 42 (5.03%) Cisco
6 30 (3.59%) BMC
7 22 (2.63%) Oracle
8 19 (2.28%) SolarWinds
8 19 (2.28%) Splunk
9 18 (2.16%) Atlassian
10 16 (1.92%) CyberArk
11 15 (1.80%) Juniper
12 14 (1.68%) Dynatrace
13 13 (1.56%) SAP
14 12 (1.44%) F5
14 12 (1.44%) IBM
15 11 (1.32%) Palo Alto
16 10 (1.20%) Qualys
17 9 (1.08%) Citrix
18 8 (0.96%) Dell