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 14 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 55 75 62
Rank change year-on-year +20 -13 +3
Contract jobs citing Service Management 722 444 678
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 4.02% 2.93% 3.42%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.66% 3.38% 3.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 486 279 507
10th Percentile £185 £200 £225
25th Percentile £313 £359 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% +10.53%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £600
90th Percentile £725 £675 £682
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £529
% change year-on-year -3.85% -1.70% +5.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 80 25 12
10th Percentile £12.62 £21.05 £15.57
25th Percentile £16.51 £29.00 £17.43
Median hourly rate £20.79 £32.50 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -36.03% +54.76% -13.67%
75th Percentile £60.00 £48.75 £22.06
90th Percentile £74.83 £62.50 £46.25
UK median hourly rate £20.79 £31.35 £21.31
% change year-on-year -33.68% +47.10% -5.79%

All Process and 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 15,485 13,119 17,567
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 86.27% 86.67% 88.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,460 7,700 11,333
10th Percentile £219 £238 £250
25th Percentile £375 £381 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £575 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £531
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.13% -3.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,762 793 1,223
10th Percentile £14.26 £15.50 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.00 £17.72
Median hourly rate £23.00 £32.50 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -29.23% -26.97% +37.98%
75th Percentile £48.41 £64.73 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £71.77 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £33.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -23.79% -22.35% +21.43%

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 14 December 2025.

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 14 December 2025.

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 14 December 2025. 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 +30 195 £500 -0.99% 96
North of England +6 171 £450 +12.50% 77
South West +19 146 £575 - 35
Midlands +15 131 £475 -13.64% 49
West Midlands +2 103 £503 -9.99% 31
North West +5 100 £492 +23.00% 43
Yorkshire -16 56 £355 +53.85% 22
Scotland +2 40 £466 +3.61% 29
East of England -19 35 £452 -14.80% 20
East Midlands +4 28 £425 -15.00% 18
North East -3 18 £270 -54.72% 14
Northern Ireland - 5 £325 - 4
Wales -15 3 £170 -61.47% 17
Channel Islands - 2 £725 -
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 60 (8.31%) Confluence
2 52 (7.20%) Microsoft Exchange
3 43 (5.96%) SharePoint
4 18 (2.49%) Apache
5 14 (1.94%) WebLogic
6 10 (1.39%) Skype for Business
7 5 (0.69%) SharePoint Server
8 4 (0.55%) IIS
8 4 (0.55%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.28%) JBoss
10 1 (0.14%) CMS
10 1 (0.14%) HCL Notes
10 1 (0.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
10 1 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 85 (11.77%) Microsoft Office
2 36 (4.99%) Microsoft Project
3 21 (2.91%) Microsoft Excel
4 10 (1.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 8 (1.11%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 15 (2.08%) Remedy ITSM
2 13 (1.80%) Oracle EBS
3 6 (0.83%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.55%) Maximo
5 3 (0.42%) assyst
5 3 (0.42%) Dynamics CRM
6 2 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
7 1 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.14%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.14%) SAP HR
7 1 (0.14%) SAP PM
7 1 (0.14%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 108 (14.96%) Azure
2 78 (10.80%) AWS
3 64 (8.86%) Microsoft 365
4 33 (4.57%) GCP
5 22 (3.05%) Entra ID
5 22 (3.05%) Power Platform
6 16 (2.22%) OneDrive
7 14 (1.94%) Azure Monitor
8 12 (1.66%) SaaS
9 10 (1.39%) Azure DevOps
10 9 (1.25%) PowerApps
11 7 (0.97%) Salesforce Service Cloud
12 6 (0.83%) Power Automate
13 5 (0.69%) Amazon S3
13 5 (0.69%) IaaS
13 5 (0.69%) OpenShift
14 4 (0.55%) Amazon EC2
14 4 (0.55%) AWS Lambda
14 4 (0.55%) Dynamics 365
14 4 (0.55%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 43 (5.96%) DNS
2 29 (4.02%) DHCP
3 28 (3.88%) Firewall
4 22 (3.05%) LAN
4 22 (3.05%) VLAN
5 21 (2.91%) WAN
6 20 (2.77%) Skype
6 20 (2.77%) TCP/IP
7 17 (2.35%) Cisco Firepower
7 17 (2.35%) Cisco IOS
7 17 (2.35%) Cisco ISE
7 17 (2.35%) Junos
7 17 (2.35%) VPN
8 11 (1.52%) Network Security
9 9 (1.25%) Wi-Fi
10 8 (1.11%) WebEx
11 6 (0.83%) SSH
11 6 (0.83%) Wireless
12 5 (0.69%) BGP
12 5 (0.69%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (2.35%) Relational Database
2 15 (2.08%) Power BI
3 12 (1.66%) SQL Server
4 9 (1.25%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (0.55%) Data Mining
5 4 (0.55%) DB2
5 4 (0.55%) InfluxDB
5 4 (0.55%) Metadata
6 3 (0.42%) Oracle Reports
7 2 (0.28%) Amazon Aurora
7 2 (0.28%) Azure SQL Database
7 2 (0.28%) Big Data
7 2 (0.28%) MariaDB
7 2 (0.28%) MySQL
7 2 (0.28%) PostgreSQL
8 1 (0.14%) Amazon Athena
8 1 (0.14%) Electronic Patient Records
8 1 (0.14%) MongoDB
8 1 (0.14%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.14%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 98 (13.57%) JIRA
2 16 (2.22%) Jenkins
3 5 (0.69%) Bitbucket
3 5 (0.69%) Git
3 5 (0.69%) webpack
4 3 (0.42%) GitLab
5 1 (0.14%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 1 (0.14%) Cucumber
5 1 (0.14%) MLflow
5 1 (0.14%) Selenium
5 1 (0.14%) SoapUI
5 1 (0.14%) Visual Studio Code
5 1 (0.14%) WebDriver
General
1 288 (39.89%) Social Skills
2 145 (20.08%) Analytical Skills
3 91 (12.60%) Public Sector
4 83 (11.50%) Finance
5 47 (6.51%) Military
6 32 (4.43%) Legal
7 28 (3.88%) Manufacturing
8 27 (3.74%) Organisational Skills
9 24 (3.32%) Telecoms
10 19 (2.63%) Banking
11 16 (2.22%) Documentation Skills
12 14 (1.94%) Influencing Skills
12 14 (1.94%) Marketing
13 12 (1.66%) Electronics
13 12 (1.66%) Retail
14 11 (1.52%) Presentation Skills
15 10 (1.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 8 (1.11%) Investment Banking
17 6 (0.83%) Police
18 5 (0.69%) Billing
Job Titles
1 97 (13.43%) Analyst
2 92 (12.74%) Architect
3 68 (9.42%) Lead
4 63 (8.73%) Service Architect
5 58 (8.03%) Support Engineer
6 49 (6.79%) Service Manager
7 37 (5.12%) IT Support
8 33 (4.57%) 2nd Line Support
8 33 (4.57%) Support Analyst
9 25 (3.46%) Network Engineer
10 24 (3.32%) Consultant
10 24 (3.32%) Desktop Support
11 23 (3.19%) IT Analyst
11 23 (3.19%) Platform Engineer
12 21 (2.91%) Data Analyst
12 21 (2.91%) Senior
13 20 (2.77%) Delivery Manager
13 20 (2.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 20 (2.77%) Project Manager
14 19 (2.63%) Service Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (2.91%) REST
2 11 (1.52%) SOAP
3 9 (1.25%) RFC 2544
4 8 (1.11%) CSS
4 8 (1.11%) HTML
4 8 (1.11%) XMPP
5 7 (0.97%) Web Services
6 6 (0.83%) RESTful
7 5 (0.69%) .NET
7 5 (0.69%) CSS3
7 5 (0.69%) HTML5
7 5 (0.69%) Node.js
7 5 (0.69%) React
7 5 (0.69%) Redux
7 5 (0.69%) XML
8 4 (0.55%) Elastic Stack
8 4 (0.55%) RabbitMQ
9 3 (0.42%) Lightning Web Components
10 2 (0.28%) GraphQL
10 2 (0.28%) ModSecurity
Miscellaneous
1 55 (7.62%) Product Ownership
2 34 (4.71%) Data Centre
3 27 (3.74%) Management Information System
4 24 (3.32%) CMDB
5 21 (2.91%) PKI
6 19 (2.63%) Onboarding
6 19 (2.63%) Self-Motivation
7 15 (2.08%) Analytical Mindset
7 15 (2.08%) Driving Licence
8 14 (1.94%) Virtual Team
9 13 (1.80%) Mainframe
10 12 (1.66%) NHS
11 7 (0.97%) PMI
12 6 (0.83%) Fibre Optics
12 6 (0.83%) Public Cloud
12 6 (0.83%) Tandem
12 6 (0.83%) Video Conferencing
13 5 (0.69%) Distributed Systems
14 4 (0.55%) Enterprise Software
14 4 (0.55%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 170 (23.55%) Windows
2 63 (8.73%) Linux
3 54 (7.48%) Windows Server
4 37 (5.12%) Windows 10
5 24 (3.32%) Unix
6 12 (1.66%) Mac OS
6 12 (1.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 7 (0.97%) Apple iOS
7 7 (0.97%) Windows Server 2012
8 6 (0.83%) Android
9 5 (0.69%) Windows 7
10 4 (0.55%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.55%) Windows Server 2003
10 4 (0.55%) Windows Server 2016
10 4 (0.55%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.42%) CentOS
11 3 (0.42%) Windows Server 2008
12 1 (0.14%) AIX
12 1 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
12 1 (0.14%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 435 (60.25%) ITIL
2 314 (43.49%) ITSM
3 148 (20.50%) Problem-Solving
4 122 (16.90%) Change Management
5 113 (15.65%) Agile
6 103 (14.27%) Continuous Improvement
6 103 (14.27%) Service Design
7 99 (13.71%) Stakeholder Management
8 93 (12.88%) Customer Service
9 85 (11.77%) Service Delivery
10 83 (11.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 71 (9.83%) Incident Management
12 65 (9.00%) Project Management
13 63 (8.73%) Project Delivery
14 55 (7.62%) Knowledge Transfer
15 53 (7.34%) Acceptance Criteria
16 51 (7.06%) DevOps
17 49 (6.79%) Problem Management
18 47 (6.51%) Business Continuity
19 45 (6.23%) Critical Thinking
Programming Languages
1 64 (8.86%) SQL
2 59 (8.17%) PowerShell
3 52 (7.20%) Python
4 17 (2.35%) JavaScript
5 15 (2.08%) Perl
5 15 (2.08%) Shell Script
6 12 (1.66%) Bash
7 9 (1.25%) Java
8 5 (0.69%) TypeScript
8 5 (0.69%) VB
8 5 (0.69%) VBScript
9 4 (0.55%) Go
10 3 (0.42%) Apex Code
11 2 (0.28%) PHP
12 1 (0.14%) C#
12 1 (0.14%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.14%) T-SQL
12 1 (0.14%) VBA
Qualifications
1 332 (45.98%) Security Cleared
2 267 (36.98%) SC Cleared
3 105 (14.54%) Degree
4 66 (9.14%) DV Cleared
5 44 (6.09%) ITIL Certification
6 37 (5.12%) Microsoft Certification
7 30 (4.16%) TOGAF Certification
8 18 (2.49%) A+ Certification
9 17 (2.35%) Cisco Certification
10 16 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
11 15 (2.08%) Azure Certification
11 15 (2.08%) MCSE
12 14 (1.94%) CCNP
12 14 (1.94%) PMP
12 14 (1.94%) Server+ Certification
13 13 (1.80%) BPSS Clearance
13 13 (1.80%) PMI Certification
14 11 (1.52%) CCNA
14 11 (1.52%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 11 (1.52%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (5.26%) SLA
2 32 (4.43%) ISO/IEC 20000
3 14 (1.94%) GDPR
4 10 (1.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 10 (1.39%) QA
5 9 (1.25%) PMO
6 8 (1.11%) Data Quality
7 7 (0.97%) NCSC
8 6 (0.83%) Disclosure Scotland
9 5 (0.69%) GxP
9 5 (0.69%) ISO 9001
9 5 (0.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 3 (0.42%) Accessibility
11 2 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials
12 1 (0.14%) Actionable Recommendations
12 1 (0.14%) COBIT
12 1 (0.14%) GRC
12 1 (0.14%) NIST
12 1 (0.14%) PCI DSS
12 1 (0.14%) WCAG
System Software
1 86 (11.91%) Active Directory
2 29 (4.02%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (2.91%) VMware NSX
4 14 (1.94%) Hyper-V
5 7 (0.97%) Docker
6 6 (0.83%) Virtual Desktop
6 6 (0.83%) Virtual Servers
7 5 (0.69%) BitLocker
7 5 (0.69%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 4 (0.55%) VMware ESXi
9 3 (0.42%) Virtual Machines
10 1 (0.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 32 (4.43%) OPNET
2 26 (3.60%) vCenter Server
3 19 (2.63%) SCCM
4 18 (2.49%) Ansible
4 18 (2.49%) Terraform
5 15 (2.08%) Kubernetes
6 14 (1.94%) Microsoft Intune
7 11 (1.52%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 11 (1.52%) WSUS
8 4 (0.55%) Grafana
8 4 (0.55%) Nessus
8 4 (0.55%) Packer
8 4 (0.55%) Progress Chef
8 4 (0.55%) Prometheus
9 3 (0.42%) Check_MK
10 2 (0.28%) Docker Swarm
10 2 (0.28%) FortiGate
10 2 (0.28%) Jamf Pro
10 2 (0.28%) PowerCLI
10 2 (0.28%) Puppet
Vendors
1 161 (22.30%) ServiceNow
2 143 (19.81%) Microsoft
3 80 (11.08%) Cisco
4 54 (7.48%) Atlassian
5 51 (7.06%) Remedy
6 46 (6.37%) Oracle
7 42 (5.82%) VMware
8 34 (4.71%) Splunk
9 31 (4.29%) SolarWinds
10 29 (4.02%) Google
10 29 (4.02%) SAP
11 22 (3.05%) Juniper
12 19 (2.63%) AppDynamics
12 19 (2.63%) Dynatrace
13 14 (1.94%) HP
13 14 (1.94%) Salesforce
14 13 (1.80%) Red Hat
14 13 (1.80%) Veeam
15 12 (1.66%) IBM
16 10 (1.39%) Citrix