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 27 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 71 61 53
Rank change year-on-year -10 -8 +13
Contract jobs citing Service Management 722 478 725
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.04% 3.75% 3.49%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.74% 4.14% 4.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 490 295 523
10th Percentile £209 £217 £301
25th Percentile £365 £389 £439
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £506 £538 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.91% +2.38% +10.53%
75th Percentile £613 £610 £600
90th Percentile £738 £696 £723
UK median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.38% - +5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 57 31 19
10th Percentile £15.45 - £12.53
25th Percentile £16.17 £12.62 £15.32
Median hourly rate £60.00 £22.14 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year +171.00% +24.94% -65.76%
75th Percentile £85.00 £30.54 £19.87
90th Percentile £136.30 £68.75 £31.35
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £22.14 £17.72
% change year-on-year +159.71% +24.94% -67.78%

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 19,326 11,533 17,615
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 81.37% 90.45% 84.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,725 7,259 10,550
10th Percentile £285 £235 £247
25th Percentile £400 £378 £378
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -3.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £663 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £523 £525
% change year-on-year -4.40% -0.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,036 817 2,038
10th Percentile £14.50 £14.50 £12.30
25th Percentile £19.00 £18.10 £15.24
Median hourly rate £42.00 £28.00 £36.27
Median % change year-on-year +50.00% -22.81% +3.64%
75th Percentile £66.25 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.10 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £40.54 £29.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year +39.07% -16.71% -5.41%

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 27 April 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 27 April 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 27 April 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 +29 210 £510 +5.97% 98
North of England -14 167 £500 +5.26% 77
South West -14 165 £600 +8.89% 35
Midlands -18 97 £406 -26.20% 43
North West +4 95 £550 +5.26% 36
West Midlands -31 75 £406 -26.27% 30
Yorkshire -44 61 £472 +10.94% 36
East of England -20 46 £475 -13.64% 49
Scotland -25 32 £500 -3.94% 13
East Midlands -19 22 £405 +5.88% 13
North East -15 11 £280 +43.59% 5
Wales -6 5 £340 -12.26% 14
Northern Ireland - 4 £500 - 11
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 59 (8.17%) Confluence
2 32 (4.43%) Microsoft Exchange
3 19 (2.63%) SharePoint
4 9 (1.25%) Skype for Business
5 6 (0.83%) Mattermost
6 2 (0.28%) Apache
6 2 (0.28%) IIS
7 1 (0.14%) HCL Notes
7 1 (0.14%) JBoss
7 1 (0.14%) LiveCycle
7 1 (0.14%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.14%) WebLogic
Applications
1 80 (11.08%) Microsoft Office
2 34 (4.71%) Microsoft Project
3 16 (2.22%) Microsoft Excel
4 9 (1.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.55%) PTC Creo
6 3 (0.42%) MS Visio
7 2 (0.28%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.14%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 36 (4.99%) Remedy ITSM
2 11 (1.52%) Oracle EBS
3 9 (1.25%) SAP S/4HANA
4 6 (0.83%) Teamcenter
5 2 (0.28%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.14%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.14%) SAP HR
6 1 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 95 (13.16%) Azure
2 55 (7.62%) AWS
2 55 (7.62%) Microsoft 365
3 40 (5.54%) Power Platform
4 33 (4.57%) GCP
5 24 (3.32%) SaaS
6 14 (1.94%) Entra ID
7 10 (1.39%) Azure DevOps
8 8 (1.11%) IaaS
8 8 (1.11%) OneDrive
8 8 (1.11%) PaaS
9 7 (0.97%) GitHub
9 7 (0.97%) OCI
10 6 (0.83%) OpenShift
10 6 (0.83%) PowerApps
11 5 (0.69%) Amazon EC2
11 5 (0.69%) Amazon S3
11 5 (0.69%) Azure Machine Learning
11 5 (0.69%) Dynamics 365
11 5 (0.69%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 36 (4.99%) DNS
2 34 (4.71%) Firewall
3 29 (4.02%) LAN
4 26 (3.60%) WAN
5 23 (3.19%) DHCP
5 23 (3.19%) Network Security
5 23 (3.19%) VPN
6 15 (2.08%) VLAN
7 14 (1.94%) BGP
7 14 (1.94%) Wi-Fi
8 13 (1.80%) OSPF
9 12 (1.66%) BIG-IP
10 11 (1.52%) Cisco ISE
10 11 (1.52%) Skype
10 11 (1.52%) TCP/IP
11 9 (1.25%) Wireless
12 8 (1.11%) Ethernet VPN
12 8 (1.11%) Junos
12 8 (1.11%) VXLAN
13 5 (0.69%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (4.16%) Power BI
2 11 (1.52%) SQL Server
3 7 (0.97%) Relational Database
4 5 (0.69%) Oracle Reports
4 5 (0.69%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (0.55%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (0.55%) InfluxDB
6 3 (0.42%) Azure SQL Database
6 3 (0.42%) SQL Server Analysis Services
6 3 (0.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 3 (0.42%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 2 (0.28%) GIS
7 2 (0.28%) Microsoft Analysis Services
7 2 (0.28%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.14%) DTS
8 1 (0.14%) MariaDB
8 1 (0.14%) Metadata
8 1 (0.14%) MongoDB
8 1 (0.14%) OpenStack Swift
8 1 (0.14%) Oracle Database 11g
Development Applications
1 106 (14.68%) JIRA
2 12 (1.66%) Git
3 11 (1.52%) Bitbucket
3 11 (1.52%) Jenkins
4 8 (1.11%) GitLab
5 6 (0.83%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 5 (0.69%) MLflow
7 3 (0.42%) Browser DevTools
8 2 (0.28%) Fiddler
8 2 (0.28%) IntelliJ
8 2 (0.28%) ScriptRunner
9 1 (0.14%) Firebug
9 1 (0.14%) Hudson
9 1 (0.14%) IBM UrbanCode
9 1 (0.14%) MSI
9 1 (0.14%) Rational DOORS
9 1 (0.14%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 280 (38.78%) Social Skills
2 103 (14.27%) Analytical Skills
3 85 (11.77%) Finance
4 72 (9.97%) Public Sector
5 49 (6.79%) Legal
6 43 (5.96%) Military
7 26 (3.60%) Organisational Skills
8 18 (2.49%) Telecoms
9 16 (2.22%) Retail
10 14 (1.94%) Documentation Skills
10 14 (1.94%) Influencing Skills
11 11 (1.52%) Aerospace
12 10 (1.39%) Banking
13 7 (0.97%) Presentation Skills
14 6 (0.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 4 (0.55%) Manufacturing
16 3 (0.42%) Financial Institution
17 2 (0.28%) Pharmaceutical
17 2 (0.28%) Publishing
18 1 (0.14%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 88 (12.19%) Service Manager
2 85 (11.77%) Architect
3 76 (10.53%) Analyst
4 74 (10.25%) Lead
5 47 (6.51%) Service Architect
6 46 (6.37%) Senior
7 41 (5.68%) IT Manager
8 35 (4.85%) Hardware Engineer
9 28 (3.88%) Service Analyst
10 26 (3.60%) Consultant
10 26 (3.60%) Delivery Manager
11 25 (3.46%) Project Manager
12 24 (3.32%) IT Analyst
13 23 (3.19%) Field Engineer
13 23 (3.19%) Network Engineer
14 22 (3.05%) IT Services Manager
15 21 (2.91%) Field Hardware Engineer
15 21 (2.91%) IT Support
15 21 (2.91%) Service Delivery Manager
16 19 (2.63%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (3.88%) REST
2 12 (1.66%) SOAP
3 8 (1.11%) 802.1X
4 6 (0.83%) OAuth
5 5 (0.69%) .NET
5 5 (0.69%) Oracle Fusion
5 5 (0.69%) XMPP
6 4 (0.55%) RabbitMQ
6 4 (0.55%) Web Services
7 3 (0.42%) Microsoft Graph
7 3 (0.42%) Middleware
7 3 (0.42%) OAuth2
7 3 (0.42%) OpenID
7 3 (0.42%) SAML
7 3 (0.42%) XML
8 2 (0.28%) CSS
8 2 (0.28%) FIDO
8 2 (0.28%) HTML
8 2 (0.28%) Lightning Web Components
8 2 (0.28%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 63 (8.73%) Product Ownership
2 43 (5.96%) Onboarding
3 37 (5.12%) CMDB
4 24 (3.32%) Data Centre
5 21 (2.91%) Virtual Team
6 20 (2.77%) PKI
7 19 (2.63%) Clustering
7 19 (2.63%) Driving Licence
7 19 (2.63%) Management Information System
8 14 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
9 13 (1.80%) PMI
10 10 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
11 9 (1.25%) Operational Technology
12 8 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
13 6 (0.83%) Analytical Mindset
13 6 (0.83%) Cloud Native
14 5 (0.69%) Fat Client
14 5 (0.69%) Hybrid Cloud
14 5 (0.69%) Replication
14 5 (0.69%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 137 (18.98%) Windows
2 42 (5.82%) Linux
3 37 (5.12%) Windows 10
4 34 (4.71%) Windows Server
5 11 (1.52%) Windows 7
6 9 (1.25%) Unix
7 6 (0.83%) Ubuntu
8 5 (0.69%) Mac OS
8 5 (0.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (0.55%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.28%) CentOS
10 2 (0.28%) Solaris
10 2 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.14%) Android
11 1 (0.14%) Rocky
11 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2003
11 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
11 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.14%) Windows XP
11 1 (0.14%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 429 (59.42%) ITIL
2 311 (43.07%) ITSM
3 165 (22.85%) Continuous Improvement
4 160 (22.16%) Agile
5 143 (19.81%) Stakeholder Management
6 127 (17.59%) Problem-Solving
7 118 (16.34%) Service Delivery
8 101 (13.99%) Change Management
9 99 (13.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 83 (11.50%) Customer Service
11 77 (10.66%) DevOps
12 75 (10.39%) Service Design
13 58 (8.03%) Acceptance Criteria
13 58 (8.03%) Configuration Management
14 57 (7.89%) Problem Management
15 54 (7.48%) Incident Management
16 51 (7.06%) Knowledge Transfer
17 46 (6.37%) Project Delivery
18 44 (6.09%) Business Continuity
18 44 (6.09%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 56 (7.76%) PowerShell
2 38 (5.26%) SQL
3 32 (4.43%) Python
4 16 (2.22%) JavaScript
5 9 (1.25%) VB
5 9 (1.25%) VBScript
6 6 (0.83%) Bash
6 6 (0.83%) Java
7 5 (0.69%) C#
7 5 (0.69%) Shell Script
8 4 (0.55%) Go
8 4 (0.55%) PL/SQL
8 4 (0.55%) T-SQL
9 3 (0.42%) Apex Code
10 2 (0.28%) PHP
11 1 (0.14%) Bicep
11 1 (0.14%) REXX
11 1 (0.14%) Scala
11 1 (0.14%) Search Processing Language
11 1 (0.14%) VBA
Qualifications
1 372 (51.52%) Security Cleared
2 275 (38.09%) SC Cleared
3 110 (15.24%) DV Cleared
4 101 (13.99%) Degree
5 37 (5.12%) ITIL Certification
6 30 (4.16%) TOGAF Certification
7 26 (3.60%) PMI Certification
8 25 (3.46%) PMP
9 23 (3.19%) Cisco Certification
10 19 (2.63%) BPSS Clearance
11 18 (2.49%) Microsoft Certification
12 16 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
13 12 (1.66%) A+ Certification
13 12 (1.66%) CCNA
14 11 (1.52%) CCNP
15 9 (1.25%) JNCIA
15 9 (1.25%) JNCIP
15 9 (1.25%) JNCIS
15 9 (1.25%) MAPM
15 9 (1.25%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (4.85%) SLA
2 23 (3.19%) Data Quality
3 15 (2.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 15 (2.08%) PMO
4 14 (1.94%) ISO/IEC 20000
5 11 (1.52%) QA
6 10 (1.39%) NCSC
7 9 (1.25%) GDPR
7 9 (1.25%) GRC
8 7 (0.97%) COBIT
8 7 (0.97%) Cyber Essentials
8 7 (0.97%) Government Security Classifications
9 6 (0.83%) Accessibility
9 6 (0.83%) Disclosure Scotland
9 6 (0.83%) ISO 31000
9 6 (0.83%) ISO/IEC 27005
10 5 (0.69%) ISO 9001
11 4 (0.55%) GMP
12 2 (0.28%) GxP
12 2 (0.28%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 65 (9.00%) Active Directory
2 29 (4.02%) VMware Infrastructure
3 9 (1.25%) BitLocker
4 8 (1.11%) Docker
5 4 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.42%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.42%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.28%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (0.14%) iptables
8 1 (0.14%) NFS
8 1 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
8 1 (0.14%) Samba
8 1 (0.14%) Virtual Desktop
8 1 (0.14%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 30 (4.16%) OPNET
2 25 (3.46%) Ansible
3 21 (2.91%) SCCM
4 20 (2.77%) Terraform
5 16 (2.22%) Kubernetes
6 12 (1.66%) Microsoft Intune
7 8 (1.11%) FortiGate
8 7 (0.97%) Grafana
8 7 (0.97%) Progress Chef
9 5 (0.69%) Puppet
10 4 (0.55%) Jamf Pro
10 4 (0.55%) Nessus
10 4 (0.55%) Packer
10 4 (0.55%) Prometheus
10 4 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
11 3 (0.42%) Cisco Prime
11 3 (0.42%) vCenter Server
12 2 (0.28%) Nagios
12 2 (0.28%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
12 2 (0.28%) WSUS
Vendors
1 168 (23.27%) ServiceNow
2 120 (16.62%) Microsoft
3 70 (9.70%) Remedy
4 53 (7.34%) Atlassian
5 41 (5.68%) Cisco
6 40 (5.54%) VMware
7 34 (4.71%) HP
8 33 (4.57%) Oracle
9 23 (3.19%) Google
10 20 (2.77%) Splunk
11 17 (2.35%) Dell
12 15 (2.08%) BMC
12 15 (2.08%) Canon
12 15 (2.08%) SAP
13 14 (1.94%) SolarWinds
14 12 (1.66%) F5
15 11 (1.52%) Juniper
16 10 (1.39%) Palo Alto
17 9 (1.25%) IFS
17 9 (1.25%) Salesforce