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 19 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 67 59 56
Rank change year-on-year -8 -3 +10
Contract jobs citing Service Management 703 490 720
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.23% 3.86% 3.42%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.90% 4.26% 4.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 470 317 523
10th Percentile £200 £214 £288
25th Percentile £350 £381 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% +12.63%
75th Percentile £600 £601 £600
90th Percentile £738 £688 £713
UK median daily rate £510 £525 £536
% change year-on-year -2.95% -2.10% +7.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 33 17
10th Percentile £14.00 £12.62 £12.53
25th Percentile £16.17 £21.05 £15.46
Median hourly rate £27.00 £24.18 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year +11.66% +36.46% -57.58%
75th Percentile £74.26 £30.68 £20.74
90th Percentile £84.88 £68.50 £35.70
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £25.34 £18.36
% change year-on-year +8.52% +38.02% -43.51%

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 18,033 11,490 18,014
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 82.92% 90.52% 85.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,974 7,247 11,028
10th Percentile £263 £240 £244
25th Percentile £400 £375 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.04% -2.00% -
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 1,889 715 1,922
10th Percentile £14.45 £15.00 £12.49
25th Percentile £17.87 £19.99 £15.29
Median hourly rate £27.50 £31.76 £30.91
Median % change year-on-year -13.41% +2.74% -11.68%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £57.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £76.25 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £32.12
% change year-on-year -7.69% +1.20% -8.24%

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 19 March 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 19 March 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 19 March 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 +30 207 £510 +9.87% 115
North of England -13 167 £500 +17.65% 77
South West -10 163 £575 +2.22% 32
Midlands -26 100 £420 -25.86% 51
North West +2 94 £550 +10.66% 45
West Midlands -36 75 £420 -26.41% 35
Yorkshire -21 64 £468 +102.82% 28
East of England -10 45 £450 -18.18% 42
East Midlands -14 25 £419 -9.95% 16
Scotland -39 22 £500 - 12
North East -5 12 £280 +43.59% 5
Wales -13 2 £245 -36.77% 4
Northern Ireland - 1 £500 - 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 72 (10.24%) Confluence
2 39 (5.55%) Microsoft Exchange
3 35 (4.98%) SharePoint
4 10 (1.42%) Skype for Business
5 5 (0.71%) Mattermost
6 3 (0.43%) SharePoint Server
7 2 (0.28%) Apache
7 2 (0.28%) IIS
7 2 (0.28%) JBoss
8 1 (0.14%) HCL Notes
8 1 (0.14%) LiveCycle
8 1 (0.14%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.14%) WebLogic
Applications
1 77 (10.95%) Microsoft Office
2 36 (5.12%) Microsoft Project
3 19 (2.70%) Microsoft Excel
4 8 (1.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.57%) PTC Creo
6 3 (0.43%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.14%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 26 (3.70%) Remedy ITSM
2 13 (1.85%) Oracle EBS
3 9 (1.28%) SAP S/4HANA
4 6 (0.85%) Teamcenter
5 2 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.14%) assyst
6 1 (0.14%) Dynamics CRM
6 1 (0.14%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.14%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.14%) SAP HR
6 1 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
6 1 (0.14%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 101 (14.37%) Azure
2 64 (9.10%) AWS
3 57 (8.11%) Microsoft 365
4 42 (5.97%) GCP
5 37 (5.26%) Power Platform
6 22 (3.13%) Entra ID
7 20 (2.84%) SaaS
8 11 (1.56%) Azure DevOps
9 10 (1.42%) OneDrive
10 7 (1.00%) PowerApps
10 7 (1.00%) Salesforce Service Cloud
11 6 (0.85%) GitHub
11 6 (0.85%) IaaS
11 6 (0.85%) OpenShift
12 5 (0.71%) Amazon EC2
12 5 (0.71%) AWS Lambda
12 5 (0.71%) Dynamics 365
12 5 (0.71%) PaaS
12 5 (0.71%) Power Automate
12 5 (0.71%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 38 (5.41%) DNS
2 34 (4.84%) Firewall
3 28 (3.98%) LAN
4 25 (3.56%) WAN
5 24 (3.41%) DHCP
6 22 (3.13%) Network Security
7 21 (2.99%) VPN
8 20 (2.84%) VLAN
9 19 (2.70%) BGP
10 18 (2.56%) Cisco ISE
11 16 (2.28%) Junos
11 16 (2.28%) Skype
12 13 (1.85%) OSPF
12 13 (1.85%) Wi-Fi
13 12 (1.71%) BIG-IP
14 11 (1.56%) Cisco Firepower
14 11 (1.56%) TCP/IP
14 11 (1.56%) WebEx
15 8 (1.14%) Ethernet VPN
15 8 (1.14%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (3.98%) Power BI
2 10 (1.42%) Relational Database
3 9 (1.28%) SQL Server
4 4 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (0.57%) InfluxDB
4 4 (0.57%) Metadata
5 3 (0.43%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (0.28%) Azure SQL Database
6 2 (0.28%) Big Data
6 2 (0.28%) GIS
6 2 (0.28%) MongoDB
7 1 (0.14%) Data Mining
7 1 (0.14%) Electronic Patient Records
7 1 (0.14%) OpenStack Swift
Development Applications
1 106 (15.08%) JIRA
2 13 (1.85%) Jenkins
3 12 (1.71%) Bitbucket
3 12 (1.71%) Git
4 8 (1.14%) GitLab
5 6 (0.85%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 4 (0.57%) MLflow
7 2 (0.28%) ScriptRunner
8 1 (0.14%) IntelliJ
8 1 (0.14%) Rational DOORS
8 1 (0.14%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 272 (38.69%) Social Skills
2 113 (16.07%) Analytical Skills
3 84 (11.95%) Public Sector
4 70 (9.96%) Finance
5 49 (6.97%) Legal
6 44 (6.26%) Military
7 26 (3.70%) Organisational Skills
8 18 (2.56%) Retail
9 17 (2.42%) Influencing Skills
10 16 (2.28%) Documentation Skills
11 12 (1.71%) Banking
12 11 (1.56%) Aerospace
13 10 (1.42%) Telecoms
14 9 (1.28%) Manufacturing
15 6 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
16 4 (0.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 3 (0.43%) Financial Institution
17 3 (0.43%) Investment Banking
18 2 (0.28%) Publishing
19 1 (0.14%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 81 (11.52%) Analyst
1 81 (11.52%) Architect
2 80 (11.38%) Service Manager
3 79 (11.24%) Lead
4 45 (6.40%) Service Architect
5 37 (5.26%) Senior
6 35 (4.98%) Hardware Engineer
7 30 (4.27%) IT Support
8 27 (3.84%) Consultant
8 27 (3.84%) IT Manager
8 27 (3.84%) Network Engineer
9 26 (3.70%) Service Analyst
9 26 (3.70%) Support Engineer
10 25 (3.56%) Delivery Manager
11 23 (3.27%) Field Engineer
12 22 (3.13%) Service Delivery Manager
13 21 (2.99%) Field Hardware Engineer
14 20 (2.84%) Administrator
14 20 (2.84%) IT Analyst
15 19 (2.70%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (4.55%) REST
2 11 (1.56%) XMPP
3 10 (1.42%) SOAP
4 8 (1.14%) 802.1X
5 5 (0.71%) Web Services
6 4 (0.57%) .NET
6 4 (0.57%) RabbitMQ
7 3 (0.43%) Elastic Stack
7 3 (0.43%) OAuth
8 2 (0.28%) CSS
8 2 (0.28%) JSON
8 2 (0.28%) Middleware
8 2 (0.28%) RFC 2544
8 2 (0.28%) Spring Boot
9 1 (0.14%) Flash
9 1 (0.14%) HTML
9 1 (0.14%) LDAP
9 1 (0.14%) Oracle Fusion
9 1 (0.14%) Software Packaging
9 1 (0.14%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 70 (9.96%) Product Ownership
2 34 (4.84%) CMDB
3 31 (4.41%) Onboarding
4 27 (3.84%) Virtual Team
5 26 (3.70%) Data Centre
6 25 (3.56%) Management Information System
7 20 (2.84%) PKI
8 19 (2.70%) Driving Licence
9 14 (1.99%) Self-Motivation
10 11 (1.56%) Clustering
10 11 (1.56%) PMI
11 9 (1.28%) Analytical Mindset
11 9 (1.28%) Data Protection Act
11 9 (1.28%) Enterprise Software
12 7 (1.00%) NHS
13 5 (0.71%) Fat Client
13 5 (0.71%) Hybrid Cloud
13 5 (0.71%) Mainframe
13 5 (0.71%) Thin Client
14 4 (0.57%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 148 (21.05%) Windows
2 47 (6.69%) Linux
3 46 (6.54%) Windows Server
4 34 (4.84%) Windows 10
5 14 (1.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (1.56%) Windows 7
7 7 (1.00%) Windows Server 2012
8 6 (0.85%) Ubuntu
8 6 (0.85%) Unix
9 5 (0.71%) Mac OS
10 4 (0.57%) Windows Server 2003
11 3 (0.43%) CentOS
12 2 (0.28%) Android
12 2 (0.28%) Apple iOS
12 2 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
13 1 (0.14%) Rocky
13 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
13 1 (0.14%) Windows XP
Processes & Methodologies
1 432 (61.45%) ITIL
2 312 (44.38%) ITSM
3 159 (22.62%) Agile
4 147 (20.91%) Continuous Improvement
5 146 (20.77%) Problem-Solving
6 112 (15.93%) Stakeholder Management
7 110 (15.65%) Service Delivery
8 108 (15.36%) Change Management
9 94 (13.37%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 77 (10.95%) Service Design
11 75 (10.67%) Customer Service
12 71 (10.10%) DevOps
13 63 (8.96%) Acceptance Criteria
14 58 (8.25%) Configuration Management
15 55 (7.82%) Problem Management
16 54 (7.68%) Performance Metrics
17 51 (7.25%) Incident Management
17 51 (7.25%) Knowledge Transfer
18 46 (6.54%) Business Continuity
18 46 (6.54%) TOGAF
Programming Languages
1 68 (9.67%) PowerShell
2 49 (6.97%) Python
3 37 (5.26%) SQL
4 16 (2.28%) Bash
5 13 (1.85%) JavaScript
6 10 (1.42%) Perl
7 9 (1.28%) VB
7 9 (1.28%) VBScript
8 8 (1.14%) Shell Script
9 7 (1.00%) Java
10 5 (0.71%) C#
11 4 (0.57%) Go
12 3 (0.43%) PL/SQL
13 2 (0.28%) PHP
14 1 (0.14%) Apex Code
14 1 (0.14%) Scala
14 1 (0.14%) Search Processing Language
14 1 (0.14%) T-SQL
14 1 (0.14%) VBA
Qualifications
1 373 (53.06%) Security Cleared
2 272 (38.69%) SC Cleared
3 117 (16.64%) DV Cleared
4 101 (14.37%) Degree
5 36 (5.12%) ITIL Certification
6 30 (4.27%) TOGAF Certification
7 23 (3.27%) Cisco Certification
8 22 (3.13%) PMI Certification
9 21 (2.99%) PMP
10 20 (2.84%) Microsoft Certification
11 17 (2.42%) BPSS Clearance
12 15 (2.13%) Computer Science Degree
13 14 (1.99%) CCNP
14 12 (1.71%) CCNA
14 12 (1.71%) MCSE
15 10 (1.42%) A+ Certification
16 9 (1.28%) JNCIA
16 9 (1.28%) JNCIP
16 9 (1.28%) JNCIS
17 7 (1.00%) MAPM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (3.41%) SLA
2 20 (2.84%) Data Quality
3 16 (2.28%) ISO/IEC 20000
4 15 (2.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 11 (1.56%) PMO
6 10 (1.42%) NCSC
7 9 (1.28%) GDPR
7 9 (1.28%) QA
8 7 (1.00%) Government Security Classifications
9 6 (0.85%) Accessibility
9 6 (0.85%) Cyber Essentials
10 3 (0.43%) Disclosure Scotland
10 3 (0.43%) ISO 9001
11 2 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
11 2 (0.28%) GxP
11 2 (0.28%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 2 (0.28%) NIST
12 1 (0.14%) COBIT
12 1 (0.14%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 1 (0.14%) GRC
System Software
1 75 (10.67%) Active Directory
2 29 (4.13%) VMware Infrastructure
3 11 (1.56%) VMware NSX
4 10 (1.42%) Docker
5 9 (1.28%) BitLocker
6 5 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
7 4 (0.57%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.14%) iptables
9 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Virtual Server
9 1 (0.14%) NFS
9 1 (0.14%) Samba
9 1 (0.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 1 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 30 (4.27%) OPNET
2 26 (3.70%) SCCM
3 22 (3.13%) Ansible
4 18 (2.56%) Kubernetes
5 17 (2.42%) Microsoft Intune
5 17 (2.42%) Terraform
6 12 (1.71%) vCenter Server
7 10 (1.42%) FortiGate
8 8 (1.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 7 (1.00%) Grafana
9 7 (1.00%) Progress Chef
10 6 (0.85%) WSUS
11 5 (0.71%) Puppet
12 4 (0.57%) Jamf Pro
12 4 (0.57%) Nessus
12 4 (0.57%) Packer
12 4 (0.57%) Prometheus
13 2 (0.28%) Docker Swarm
13 2 (0.28%) PowerCLI
13 2 (0.28%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 153 (21.76%) ServiceNow
2 115 (16.36%) Microsoft
3 63 (8.96%) Atlassian
4 60 (8.53%) Remedy
5 54 (7.68%) Cisco
6 45 (6.40%) VMware
7 34 (4.84%) HP
8 32 (4.55%) Google
9 29 (4.13%) Oracle
10 25 (3.56%) SolarWinds
11 20 (2.84%) Splunk
12 19 (2.70%) SAP
13 18 (2.56%) Juniper
14 16 (2.28%) Dell
15 15 (2.13%) Canon
15 15 (2.13%) Red Hat
16 14 (1.99%) Citrix
17 13 (1.85%) Salesforce
18 12 (1.71%) F5
18 12 (1.71%) Palo Alto