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 23 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 62 68 63
Rank change year-on-year +6 -5 0
Contract jobs citing Service Management 686 440 637
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.64% 3.17% 3.18%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.28% 3.59% 3.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 475 273 483
10th Percentile £185 £213 £255
25th Percentile £313 £375 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% +10.53%
75th Percentile £591 £613 £600
90th Percentile £725 £687 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £532
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.22% +6.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 65 20 11
10th Percentile £13.25 £20.16 £12.53
25th Percentile £16.72 £24.18 £14.00
Median hourly rate £21.00 £30.43 £16.94
Median % change year-on-year -30.98% +79.66% -44.35%
75th Percentile £60.00 £39.94 £19.61
90th Percentile £74.26 £68.88 £48.75
UK median hourly rate £26.11 £30.40 £17.72
% change year-on-year -14.11% +71.56% -30.25%

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 16,018 12,254 17,380
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 84.95% 88.42% 86.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,833 7,178 10,945
10th Percentile £230 £232 £250
25th Percentile £380 £380 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.50% - -
75th Percentile £575 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £676 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,727 684 1,514
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.50 £13.41
25th Percentile £17.14 £20.09 £16.15
Median hourly rate £24.00 £30.62 £39.55
Median % change year-on-year -21.61% -22.59% +52.12%
75th Percentile £57.50 £64.50 £62.54
90th Percentile £68.75 £74.31 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £37.01
% change year-on-year -22.62% -12.19% +15.66%

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 23 January 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 23 January 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 23 January 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 +28 175 £500 +11.11% 77
North of England +3 170 £496 +24.00% 51
South West +1 153 £571 -0.65% 20
Midlands +2 114 £475 -18.10% 37
North West +2 95 £550 +37.50% 25
West Midlands -12 86 £508 -12.50% 24
Yorkshire -14 61 £468 +102.16% 17
East of England -11 43 £330 -40.00% 24
Scotland -4 30 £484 +0.05% 11
East Midlands -3 28 £419 -16.25% 13
North East -6 17 £280 -53.04% 10
Northern Ireland - 4 £325 - 3
Wales -6 3 £170 -46.44% 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 61 (8.89%) Confluence
2 55 (8.02%) Microsoft Exchange
3 43 (6.27%) SharePoint
4 14 (2.04%) Apache
4 14 (2.04%) Skype for Business
4 14 (2.04%) WebLogic
5 5 (0.73%) SharePoint Server
6 2 (0.29%) JBoss
7 1 (0.15%) CMS
7 1 (0.15%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 87 (12.68%) Microsoft Office
2 35 (5.10%) Microsoft Project
3 21 (3.06%) Microsoft Excel
4 10 (1.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.87%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.29%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 14 (2.04%) Remedy ITSM
2 13 (1.90%) Oracle EBS
3 5 (0.73%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.44%) assyst
4 3 (0.44%) Teamcenter
5 2 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
5 2 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.15%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.15%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 111 (16.18%) Azure
2 80 (11.66%) AWS
3 69 (10.06%) Microsoft 365
4 38 (5.54%) GCP
5 25 (3.64%) Entra ID
6 22 (3.21%) Power Platform
7 15 (2.19%) OneDrive
8 14 (2.04%) Azure Monitor
8 14 (2.04%) SaaS
9 9 (1.31%) Azure DevOps
9 9 (1.31%) PowerApps
10 7 (1.02%) Salesforce Service Cloud
11 5 (0.73%) Dynamics 365
11 5 (0.73%) IaaS
11 5 (0.73%) OpenShift
11 5 (0.73%) Power Automate
12 4 (0.58%) Amazon EC2
12 4 (0.58%) AWS Lambda
12 4 (0.58%) GitHub
12 4 (0.58%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 42 (6.12%) DNS
2 28 (4.08%) DHCP
3 25 (3.64%) VLAN
4 24 (3.50%) Skype
5 22 (3.21%) Firewall
6 20 (2.92%) VPN
7 17 (2.48%) Cisco Firepower
7 17 (2.48%) Cisco IOS
7 17 (2.48%) Cisco ISE
7 17 (2.48%) Junos
7 17 (2.48%) TCP/IP
8 16 (2.33%) LAN
8 16 (2.33%) WAN
9 15 (2.19%) Network Security
10 11 (1.60%) Wi-Fi
11 8 (1.17%) WebEx
12 5 (0.73%) BGP
12 5 (0.73%) SAN
12 5 (0.73%) Software-Defined Networking
12 5 (0.73%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (2.33%) Relational Database
2 15 (2.19%) Power BI
3 7 (1.02%) SQL Server
4 5 (0.73%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (0.58%) Data Mining
5 4 (0.58%) InfluxDB
5 4 (0.58%) Metadata
6 3 (0.44%) PostgreSQL
7 2 (0.29%) Azure SQL Database
7 2 (0.29%) Big Data
7 2 (0.29%) GIS
7 2 (0.29%) MongoDB
8 1 (0.15%) Amazon Aurora
8 1 (0.15%) Electronic Patient Records
8 1 (0.15%) MariaDB
8 1 (0.15%) MySQL
8 1 (0.15%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.15%) Oracle Discoverer
8 1 (0.15%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.15%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 88 (12.83%) JIRA
2 14 (2.04%) Jenkins
3 6 (0.87%) Bitbucket
4 5 (0.73%) Git
5 4 (0.58%) GitLab
6 2 (0.29%) ScriptRunner
6 2 (0.29%) webpack
7 1 (0.15%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 1 (0.15%) MLflow
7 1 (0.15%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 289 (42.13%) Social Skills
2 137 (19.97%) Analytical Skills
3 94 (13.70%) Public Sector
4 82 (11.95%) Finance
5 42 (6.12%) Military
6 35 (5.10%) Legal
7 30 (4.37%) Organisational Skills
8 27 (3.94%) Manufacturing
9 23 (3.35%) Telecoms
10 19 (2.77%) Documentation Skills
11 17 (2.48%) Banking
11 17 (2.48%) Retail
12 13 (1.90%) Influencing Skills
13 12 (1.75%) Electronics
13 12 (1.75%) Marketing
14 11 (1.60%) Presentation Skills
15 6 (0.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 6 (0.87%) Investment Banking
16 5 (0.73%) Billing
17 3 (0.44%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 86 (12.54%) Analyst
1 86 (12.54%) Architect
2 72 (10.50%) Lead
3 54 (7.87%) Support Engineer
4 53 (7.73%) Service Manager
5 51 (7.43%) Service Architect
6 41 (5.98%) IT Support
7 30 (4.37%) Support Analyst
8 26 (3.79%) 2nd Line Support
9 25 (3.64%) Hardware Engineer
10 23 (3.35%) Consultant
10 23 (3.35%) Platform Engineer
11 22 (3.21%) Desktop Support
11 22 (3.21%) IT Analyst
11 22 (3.21%) Network Engineer
12 20 (2.92%) 3rd Line Support
13 19 (2.77%) 3rd Line Engineer
13 19 (2.77%) Break Fix Engineer
13 19 (2.77%) Data Analyst
13 19 (2.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (3.06%) REST
2 8 (1.17%) XMPP
3 6 (0.87%) RFC 2544
3 6 (0.87%) SOAP
4 5 (0.73%) CSS
5 4 (0.58%) .NET
5 4 (0.58%) Elastic Stack
5 4 (0.58%) HTML
5 4 (0.58%) RabbitMQ
6 3 (0.44%) Web Services
7 2 (0.29%) CSS3
7 2 (0.29%) HTML5
7 2 (0.29%) Middleware
7 2 (0.29%) ModSecurity
7 2 (0.29%) Node.js
7 2 (0.29%) React
7 2 (0.29%) Redux
7 2 (0.29%) RESTful
7 2 (0.29%) Spring Boot
8 1 (0.15%) Lightning Web Components
Miscellaneous
1 53 (7.73%) Product Ownership
2 34 (4.96%) Data Centre
3 28 (4.08%) CMDB
4 26 (3.79%) Onboarding
5 25 (3.64%) Management Information System
6 18 (2.62%) PKI
6 18 (2.62%) Self-Motivation
6 18 (2.62%) Virtual Team
7 17 (2.48%) Driving Licence
8 14 (2.04%) Analytical Mindset
9 13 (1.90%) Mainframe
10 10 (1.46%) PMI
11 8 (1.17%) NHS
12 7 (1.02%) Enterprise Software
13 6 (0.87%) Distributed Systems
13 6 (0.87%) Fibre Optics
13 6 (0.87%) Public Cloud
14 4 (0.58%) Data Structures
14 4 (0.58%) Hybrid Cloud
14 4 (0.58%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 183 (26.68%) Windows
2 68 (9.91%) Linux
3 52 (7.58%) Windows Server
4 48 (7.00%) Windows 10
5 23 (3.35%) Unix
6 12 (1.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 10 (1.46%) Windows 7
8 8 (1.17%) Apple iOS
9 7 (1.02%) Android
9 7 (1.02%) Mac OS
9 7 (1.02%) Windows Server 2012
10 4 (0.58%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.58%) Windows Server 2003
10 4 (0.58%) Windows Server 2016
10 4 (0.58%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.44%) CentOS
11 3 (0.44%) Windows Server 2008
12 1 (0.15%) AIX
12 1 (0.15%) Solaris
12 1 (0.15%) Windows XP
Processes & Methodologies
1 410 (59.77%) ITIL
2 300 (43.73%) ITSM
3 141 (20.55%) Problem-Solving
4 122 (17.78%) Continuous Improvement
5 118 (17.20%) Change Management
6 107 (15.60%) Agile
7 98 (14.29%) Stakeholder Management
8 95 (13.85%) Customer Service
9 93 (13.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 83 (12.10%) Service Delivery
11 80 (11.66%) Service Design
12 68 (9.91%) Incident Management
13 62 (9.04%) Project Management
14 58 (8.45%) Knowledge Transfer
15 54 (7.87%) Problem Management
16 51 (7.43%) Acceptance Criteria
17 50 (7.29%) DevOps
18 47 (6.85%) Performance Metrics
18 47 (6.85%) Project Delivery
19 45 (6.56%) Critical Thinking
Programming Languages
1 65 (9.48%) PowerShell
2 55 (8.02%) SQL
3 48 (7.00%) Python
4 15 (2.19%) Perl
4 15 (2.19%) Shell Script
5 12 (1.75%) Bash
6 9 (1.31%) Java
6 9 (1.31%) VB
6 9 (1.31%) VBScript
7 8 (1.17%) JavaScript
8 4 (0.58%) Go
9 2 (0.29%) PHP
9 2 (0.29%) TypeScript
10 1 (0.15%) Apex Code
10 1 (0.15%) C#
10 1 (0.15%) PL/SQL
10 1 (0.15%) T-SQL
10 1 (0.15%) VBA
Qualifications
1 333 (48.54%) Security Cleared
2 262 (38.19%) SC Cleared
3 98 (14.29%) Degree
4 80 (11.66%) DV Cleared
5 37 (5.39%) ITIL Certification
6 34 (4.96%) Microsoft Certification
7 30 (4.37%) TOGAF Certification
8 16 (2.33%) A+ Certification
8 16 (2.33%) Computer Science Degree
8 16 (2.33%) MCSE
8 16 (2.33%) PMI Certification
9 15 (2.19%) PMP
10 14 (2.04%) BPSS Clearance
10 14 (2.04%) Network+ Certification
10 14 (2.04%) Server+ Certification
11 13 (1.90%) Azure Certification
11 13 (1.90%) Cisco Certification
12 12 (1.75%) CCNP
13 11 (1.60%) CCNA
14 9 (1.31%) APMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (4.23%) SLA
2 15 (2.19%) ISO/IEC 20000
3 12 (1.75%) Data Quality
4 9 (1.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 9 (1.31%) PMO
5 7 (1.02%) GDPR
6 6 (0.87%) QA
7 5 (0.73%) Cyber Essentials
8 4 (0.58%) Disclosure Scotland
9 3 (0.44%) Accessibility
9 3 (0.44%) ISO 9001
9 3 (0.44%) NCSC
10 2 (0.29%) GRC
10 2 (0.29%) GxP
10 2 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 2 (0.29%) NIST
11 1 (0.15%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.15%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.15%) WCAG
System Software
1 85 (12.39%) Active Directory
2 34 (4.96%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (3.06%) VMware NSX
4 13 (1.90%) Hyper-V
5 9 (1.31%) BitLocker
6 8 (1.17%) Docker
7 6 (0.87%) Virtual Desktop
7 6 (0.87%) Virtual Servers
8 5 (0.73%) Microsoft Virtual Server
9 3 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
10 2 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.15%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 32 (4.66%) OPNET
2 26 (3.79%) SCCM
3 24 (3.50%) vCenter Server
4 18 (2.62%) Ansible
5 16 (2.33%) Microsoft Intune
6 15 (2.19%) Kubernetes
6 15 (2.19%) Terraform
7 11 (1.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 11 (1.60%) WSUS
8 5 (0.73%) Grafana
9 4 (0.58%) Nessus
9 4 (0.58%) Packer
9 4 (0.58%) Progress Chef
9 4 (0.58%) Prometheus
10 3 (0.44%) Jamf Pro
11 2 (0.29%) Docker Swarm
11 2 (0.29%) FortiGate
11 2 (0.29%) PowerCLI
11 2 (0.29%) Puppet
11 2 (0.29%) SCOM
Vendors
1 153 (22.30%) ServiceNow
2 137 (19.97%) Microsoft
3 68 (9.91%) Cisco
4 56 (8.16%) Atlassian
5 52 (7.58%) Remedy
6 46 (6.71%) VMware
7 43 (6.27%) Oracle
8 33 (4.81%) SolarWinds
9 32 (4.66%) Google
9 32 (4.66%) Splunk
10 27 (3.94%) HP
11 25 (3.64%) SAP
12 21 (3.06%) Dynatrace
13 20 (2.92%) AppDynamics
14 19 (2.77%) Juniper
15 13 (1.90%) Red Hat
15 13 (1.90%) Veeam
16 12 (1.75%) Salesforce
17 10 (1.46%) Citrix
18 9 (1.31%) Palo Alto