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

6 months to
12 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 68 61 56
Rank change year-on-year -7 -5 +13
Contract jobs citing Service Management 696 485 730
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.25% 3.81% 3.44%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.92% 4.21% 4.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 460 314 535
10th Percentile £200 £215 £300
25th Percentile £325 £382 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £507 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -3.38% -1.87% +12.63%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £601
90th Percentile £738 £688 £708
UK median daily rate £510 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -2.95% -1.87% +7.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 70 30 14
10th Percentile £15.50 £12.62 £12.53
25th Percentile £16.17 £21.32 £15.46
Median hourly rate £36.48 £24.18 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +50.87% +38.15% -50.07%
75th Percentile £74.26 £32.98 £18.69
90th Percentile £84.13 £68.88 £39.83
UK median hourly rate £28.27 £26.50 £17.72
% change year-on-year +6.68% +49.55% -39.22%

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 17,764 11,528 18,161
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 83.03% 90.47% 85.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,764 7,217 11,122
10th Percentile £263 £231 £240
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 1,891 696 1,928
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.12 £12.50
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.09 £15.37
Median hourly rate £27.21 £32.00 £31.50
Median % change year-on-year -14.97% +1.59% -10.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.24 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £29.61 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year -8.89% - -7.14%

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 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 12 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 12 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 +30 201 £500 +8.11% 102
North of England -12 167 £513 +20.59% 71
South West -11 162 £575 +2.22% 38
Midlands -22 97 £425 -24.98% 50
North West -3 94 £550 +16.53% 40
West Midlands -40 74 £431 -24.44% 31
Yorkshire -28 63 £465 +101.63% 25
East of England -13 47 £452 -17.82% 32
Scotland -33 25 £500 - 8
East Midlands -13 23 £419 -9.95% 19
North East -9 13 £280 -27.27% 7
Wales -10 2 £245 -36.77% 6
Northern Ireland - 1 £500 - 1
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 71 (10.20%) Confluence
2 41 (5.89%) Microsoft Exchange
3 38 (5.46%) SharePoint
4 11 (1.58%) Skype for Business
5 5 (0.72%) Mattermost
6 3 (0.43%) SharePoint Server
7 2 (0.29%) Apache
7 2 (0.29%) IIS
7 2 (0.29%) 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 (11.06%) Microsoft Office
2 36 (5.17%) Microsoft Project
3 17 (2.44%) Microsoft Excel
4 5 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.57%) PTC Creo
6 3 (0.43%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.14%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 22 (3.16%) Remedy ITSM
2 13 (1.87%) Oracle EBS
3 9 (1.29%) SAP S/4HANA
4 6 (0.86%) Teamcenter
5 2 (0.29%) 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%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 102 (14.66%) Azure
2 65 (9.34%) AWS
3 59 (8.48%) Microsoft 365
4 42 (6.03%) GCP
5 29 (4.17%) Power Platform
6 25 (3.59%) Entra ID
7 20 (2.87%) SaaS
8 13 (1.87%) OneDrive
9 11 (1.58%) Azure DevOps
10 7 (1.01%) PowerApps
10 7 (1.01%) Salesforce Service Cloud
11 6 (0.86%) IaaS
11 6 (0.86%) OpenShift
12 5 (0.72%) Amazon EC2
12 5 (0.72%) Amazon S3
12 5 (0.72%) AWS Lambda
12 5 (0.72%) Dynamics 365
12 5 (0.72%) GitHub
12 5 (0.72%) PaaS
12 5 (0.72%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 40 (5.75%) DNS
2 34 (4.89%) Firewall
3 28 (4.02%) LAN
4 26 (3.74%) DHCP
5 25 (3.59%) WAN
6 22 (3.16%) Network Security
7 21 (3.02%) VLAN
7 21 (3.02%) VPN
8 19 (2.73%) BGP
9 18 (2.59%) Cisco ISE
10 17 (2.44%) Skype
11 16 (2.30%) Junos
12 13 (1.87%) OSPF
12 13 (1.87%) Wi-Fi
13 12 (1.72%) BIG-IP
13 12 (1.72%) TCP/IP
14 11 (1.58%) Cisco Firepower
14 11 (1.58%) WebEx
15 8 (1.15%) Ethernet VPN
15 8 (1.15%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (2.87%) Power BI
2 11 (1.58%) Relational Database
3 8 (1.15%) SQL Server
4 4 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (0.57%) InfluxDB
4 4 (0.57%) Metadata
5 2 (0.29%) Big Data
5 2 (0.29%) GIS
5 2 (0.29%) MongoDB
5 2 (0.29%) PostgreSQL
6 1 (0.14%) Azure SQL Database
6 1 (0.14%) Data Mining
6 1 (0.14%) Electronic Patient Records
6 1 (0.14%) OpenStack Swift
Development Applications
1 104 (14.94%) JIRA
2 13 (1.87%) Jenkins
3 12 (1.72%) Bitbucket
3 12 (1.72%) Git
4 7 (1.01%) GitLab
5 6 (0.86%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 3 (0.43%) MLflow
7 2 (0.29%) ScriptRunner
8 1 (0.14%) Rational DOORS
8 1 (0.14%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 275 (39.51%) Social Skills
2 115 (16.52%) Analytical Skills
3 84 (12.07%) Public Sector
4 67 (9.63%) Finance
5 48 (6.90%) Legal
6 43 (6.18%) Military
7 27 (3.88%) Organisational Skills
8 19 (2.73%) Influencing Skills
9 18 (2.59%) Retail
10 15 (2.16%) Documentation Skills
11 12 (1.72%) Banking
12 11 (1.58%) Aerospace
13 10 (1.44%) Telecoms
14 9 (1.29%) Manufacturing
15 7 (1.01%) Presentation Skills
16 4 (0.57%) Investment Banking
17 3 (0.43%) Financial Institution
17 3 (0.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 3 (0.43%) Publishing
18 1 (0.14%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 81 (11.64%) Architect
1 81 (11.64%) Lead
2 79 (11.35%) Analyst
3 74 (10.63%) Service Manager
4 44 (6.32%) Service Architect
5 35 (5.03%) Hardware Engineer
6 33 (4.74%) Senior
7 32 (4.60%) IT Support
8 29 (4.17%) Network Engineer
9 27 (3.88%) IT Manager
9 27 (3.88%) Support Engineer
10 26 (3.74%) Consultant
10 26 (3.74%) Service Analyst
11 23 (3.30%) Field Engineer
12 21 (3.02%) Delivery Manager
12 21 (3.02%) Field Hardware Engineer
13 20 (2.87%) 2nd Line Support
13 20 (2.87%) Administrator
14 19 (2.73%) Break Fix Engineer
14 19 (2.73%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (4.45%) REST
2 11 (1.58%) XMPP
3 10 (1.44%) SOAP
4 8 (1.15%) 802.1X
5 5 (0.72%) Web Services
6 4 (0.57%) .NET
6 4 (0.57%) RabbitMQ
6 4 (0.57%) RFC 2544
7 3 (0.43%) Elastic Stack
7 3 (0.43%) OAuth
8 2 (0.29%) CSS
8 2 (0.29%) JSON
8 2 (0.29%) Middleware
8 2 (0.29%) Spring Boot
9 1 (0.14%) ARM Templates
9 1 (0.14%) Flash
9 1 (0.14%) HTML
9 1 (0.14%) Lightning Web Components
9 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Graph
9 1 (0.14%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 66 (9.48%) Product Ownership
2 32 (4.60%) CMDB
3 30 (4.31%) Data Centre
4 27 (3.88%) Management Information System
4 27 (3.88%) Onboarding
5 26 (3.74%) Virtual Team
6 20 (2.87%) PKI
7 19 (2.73%) Driving Licence
8 15 (2.16%) Self-Motivation
9 11 (1.58%) Clustering
9 11 (1.58%) PMI
10 9 (1.29%) Analytical Mindset
10 9 (1.29%) Enterprise Software
11 8 (1.15%) Data Protection Act
12 7 (1.01%) NHS
13 5 (0.72%) Fat Client
13 5 (0.72%) Hybrid Cloud
13 5 (0.72%) Mainframe
13 5 (0.72%) Thin Client
14 4 (0.57%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 149 (21.41%) Windows
2 46 (6.61%) Linux
3 44 (6.32%) Windows Server
4 35 (5.03%) Windows 10
5 14 (2.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (1.58%) Windows 7
7 7 (1.01%) Windows Server 2012
8 6 (0.86%) Mac OS
8 6 (0.86%) Ubuntu
8 6 (0.86%) Unix
9 4 (0.57%) Windows Server 2003
10 3 (0.43%) CentOS
11 2 (0.29%) Android
11 2 (0.29%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
12 1 (0.14%) Rocky
12 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
12 1 (0.14%) Windows XP
Processes & Methodologies
1 432 (62.07%) ITIL
2 312 (44.83%) ITSM
3 156 (22.41%) Agile
4 144 (20.69%) Problem-Solving
5 138 (19.83%) Continuous Improvement
6 109 (15.66%) Stakeholder Management
7 105 (15.09%) Change Management
8 103 (14.80%) Service Delivery
9 92 (13.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 79 (11.35%) Customer Service
10 79 (11.35%) Service Design
11 68 (9.77%) DevOps
12 63 (9.05%) Acceptance Criteria
13 59 (8.48%) Configuration Management
14 53 (7.61%) Problem Management
15 52 (7.47%) Knowledge Transfer
15 52 (7.47%) Performance Metrics
16 49 (7.04%) Incident Management
17 46 (6.61%) Business Continuity
17 46 (6.61%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 69 (9.91%) PowerShell
2 49 (7.04%) Python
3 33 (4.74%) SQL
4 16 (2.30%) Bash
5 12 (1.72%) JavaScript
5 12 (1.72%) Perl
6 10 (1.44%) Shell Script
7 9 (1.29%) VB
7 9 (1.29%) VBScript
8 7 (1.01%) Java
9 4 (0.57%) C#
9 4 (0.57%) Go
10 2 (0.29%) PHP
11 1 (0.14%) Apex Code
11 1 (0.14%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.14%) Scala
11 1 (0.14%) Search Processing Language
11 1 (0.14%) T-SQL
11 1 (0.14%) VBA
Qualifications
1 364 (52.30%) Security Cleared
2 266 (38.22%) SC Cleared
3 113 (16.24%) DV Cleared
4 97 (13.94%) Degree
5 41 (5.89%) ITIL Certification
6 30 (4.31%) TOGAF Certification
7 24 (3.45%) Cisco Certification
8 22 (3.16%) Microsoft Certification
9 21 (3.02%) PMI Certification
10 20 (2.87%) PMP
11 17 (2.44%) BPSS Clearance
12 15 (2.16%) CCNP
13 14 (2.01%) Computer Science Degree
14 13 (1.87%) CCNA
14 13 (1.87%) MCSE
15 10 (1.44%) A+ Certification
16 9 (1.29%) JNCIA
16 9 (1.29%) JNCIP
16 9 (1.29%) JNCIS
17 7 (1.01%) MAPM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (3.16%) SLA
2 17 (2.44%) Data Quality
3 13 (1.87%) ISO/IEC 20000
3 13 (1.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 10 (1.44%) PMO
4 10 (1.44%) QA
5 9 (1.29%) GDPR
6 8 (1.15%) NCSC
7 5 (0.72%) Accessibility
7 5 (0.72%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (0.72%) Government Security Classifications
8 3 (0.43%) Disclosure Scotland
8 3 (0.43%) ISO 9001
9 2 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.29%) GxP
9 2 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 2 (0.29%) NIST
10 1 (0.14%) GRC
10 1 (0.14%) PCI DSS
10 1 (0.14%) WCAG
System Software
1 76 (10.92%) Active Directory
2 28 (4.02%) VMware Infrastructure
3 11 (1.58%) VMware NSX
4 9 (1.29%) BitLocker
4 9 (1.29%) Docker
5 5 (0.72%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.29%) Microsoft Virtual Server
7 2 (0.29%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.14%) iptables
8 1 (0.14%) NFS
8 1 (0.14%) Samba
8 1 (0.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (0.14%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 30 (4.31%) OPNET
2 27 (3.88%) SCCM
3 22 (3.16%) Ansible
4 19 (2.73%) Microsoft Intune
5 17 (2.44%) Kubernetes
6 16 (2.30%) Terraform
7 12 (1.72%) vCenter Server
8 10 (1.44%) FortiGate
9 8 (1.15%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 7 (1.01%) Grafana
10 7 (1.01%) Progress Chef
10 7 (1.01%) WSUS
11 5 (0.72%) Puppet
12 4 (0.57%) Jamf Pro
12 4 (0.57%) Nessus
12 4 (0.57%) Packer
12 4 (0.57%) Prometheus
13 2 (0.29%) Docker Swarm
13 2 (0.29%) PowerCLI
13 2 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 157 (22.56%) ServiceNow
2 115 (16.52%) Microsoft
3 62 (8.91%) Atlassian
4 57 (8.19%) Cisco
5 56 (8.05%) Remedy
6 43 (6.18%) VMware
7 34 (4.89%) HP
8 32 (4.60%) Google
9 27 (3.88%) Oracle
10 26 (3.74%) SolarWinds
11 23 (3.30%) Splunk
12 18 (2.59%) Juniper
12 18 (2.59%) SAP
13 16 (2.30%) Dell
14 15 (2.16%) Canon
14 15 (2.16%) Red Hat
15 14 (2.01%) Citrix
16 13 (1.87%) Salesforce
17 12 (1.72%) F5
17 12 (1.72%) Palo Alto