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

6 months to
27 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 68 62 58
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 +11
Contract jobs citing Service Management 700 474 679
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.39% 3.55% 3.27%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 4.04% 3.95% 3.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 464 305 504
10th Percentile £193 £209 £283
25th Percentile £313 £384 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% +12.63%
75th Percentile £600 £601 £608
90th Percentile £738 £688 £722
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% +7.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 74 25 12
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.99 £12.53
25th Percentile £16.17 £22.14 £14.73
Median hourly rate £29.60 £29.00 £17.11
Median % change year-on-year +2.07% +69.49% -73.68%
75th Percentile £69.62 £37.00 £17.73
90th Percentile £82.80 £69.50 £45.65
UK median hourly rate £29.60 £29.50 £17.72
% change year-on-year +0.34% +66.48% -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 17,342 12,006 17,870
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 83.88% 89.83% 86.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,554 7,269 11,038
10th Percentile £256 £231 £250
25th Percentile £394 £375 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £482 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.58% -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 1,843 666 1,805
10th Percentile £14.32 £15.50 £13.05
25th Percentile £17.42 £20.25 £15.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £31.64 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.51% -9.60% -
75th Percentile £63.75 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £72.00 £75.00 £71.87
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £33.07
% change year-on-year -15.38% -1.71% -5.53%

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 February 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 February 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 February 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 +35 196 £500 +11.11% 54
North of England -7 170 £500 +17.65% 52
South West -10 159 £571 +1.11% 27
Midlands -10 101 £425 -24.98% 42
North West -3 91 £550 +22.22% 38
West Midlands -21 75 £425 -25.54% 27
Yorkshire -28 66 £472 +109.56% 13
East of England -15 47 £452 -16.87% 23
Scotland -15 30 £500 -1.04% 4
East Midlands -3 26 £419 -9.95% 13
North East -10 16 £280 -53.04% 1
Wales -7 2 £245 -36.77% 5
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 68 (9.71%) Confluence
2 51 (7.29%) Microsoft Exchange
3 46 (6.57%) SharePoint
4 14 (2.00%) Skype for Business
5 5 (0.71%) Mattermost
5 5 (0.71%) SharePoint Server
6 2 (0.29%) Apache
6 2 (0.29%) WebLogic
7 1 (0.14%) CMS
7 1 (0.14%) HCL Notes
7 1 (0.14%) JBoss
7 1 (0.14%) LiveCycle
Applications
1 87 (12.43%) Microsoft Office
2 36 (5.14%) Microsoft Project
3 19 (2.71%) Microsoft Excel
4 7 (1.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.57%) PTC Creo
6 3 (0.43%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.14%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 22 (3.14%) Remedy ITSM
2 13 (1.86%) 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
1 107 (15.29%) Azure
2 70 (10.00%) AWS
3 69 (9.86%) Microsoft 365
4 41 (5.86%) GCP
5 26 (3.71%) Entra ID
5 26 (3.71%) Power Platform
6 20 (2.86%) SaaS
7 16 (2.29%) OneDrive
8 10 (1.43%) Azure DevOps
9 7 (1.00%) PowerApps
9 7 (1.00%) Salesforce Service Cloud
10 6 (0.86%) IaaS
11 5 (0.71%) Amazon EC2
11 5 (0.71%) AWS Lambda
11 5 (0.71%) Dynamics 365
11 5 (0.71%) GitHub
11 5 (0.71%) OpenShift
11 5 (0.71%) PaaS
11 5 (0.71%) Power Automate
11 5 (0.71%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 52 (7.43%) DNS
2 37 (5.29%) DHCP
3 29 (4.14%) Firewall
4 28 (4.00%) VLAN
5 25 (3.57%) LAN
6 22 (3.14%) Skype
6 22 (3.14%) WAN
7 21 (3.00%) VPN
8 19 (2.71%) Junos
8 19 (2.71%) Network Security
9 18 (2.57%) Cisco ISE
10 17 (2.43%) TCP/IP
11 15 (2.14%) BGP
11 15 (2.14%) Wi-Fi
12 12 (1.71%) Cisco Firepower
12 12 (1.71%) Cisco IOS
13 10 (1.43%) WebEx
14 9 (1.29%) OSPF
15 8 (1.14%) BIG-IP
16 7 (1.00%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (2.43%) Power BI
2 14 (2.00%) Relational Database
3 10 (1.43%) SQL Server
4 4 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (0.57%) InfluxDB
4 4 (0.57%) Metadata
4 4 (0.57%) PostgreSQL
5 3 (0.43%) Azure SQL Database
6 2 (0.29%) Big Data
6 2 (0.29%) GIS
6 2 (0.29%) MongoDB
7 1 (0.14%) Data Mining
7 1 (0.14%) Electronic Patient Records
7 1 (0.14%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 102 (14.57%) JIRA
2 13 (1.86%) Jenkins
3 10 (1.43%) Git
4 9 (1.29%) Bitbucket
5 6 (0.86%) GitLab
6 3 (0.43%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 2 (0.29%) ScriptRunner
8 1 (0.14%) MLflow
8 1 (0.14%) Rational DOORS
8 1 (0.14%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 283 (40.43%) Social Skills
2 131 (18.71%) Analytical Skills
3 86 (12.29%) Public Sector
4 73 (10.43%) Finance
5 46 (6.57%) Legal
6 43 (6.14%) Military
7 29 (4.14%) Organisational Skills
8 18 (2.57%) Retail
9 16 (2.29%) Influencing Skills
10 15 (2.14%) Banking
10 15 (2.14%) Documentation Skills
11 11 (1.57%) Aerospace
11 11 (1.57%) Telecoms
12 10 (1.43%) Manufacturing
13 6 (0.86%) Investment Banking
13 6 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
14 5 (0.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 3 (0.43%) Financial Institution
15 3 (0.43%) Publishing
16 1 (0.14%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 83 (11.86%) Analyst
2 80 (11.43%) Architect
3 78 (11.14%) Lead
4 72 (10.29%) Service Manager
5 44 (6.29%) Support Engineer
6 43 (6.14%) Service Architect
7 33 (4.71%) Hardware Engineer
8 32 (4.57%) IT Support
9 27 (3.86%) IT Manager
9 27 (3.86%) Network Engineer
9 27 (3.86%) Senior
10 26 (3.71%) Service Analyst
11 24 (3.43%) Consultant
12 22 (3.14%) 2nd Line Support
12 22 (3.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 21 (3.00%) Delivery Manager
13 21 (3.00%) Field Engineer
13 21 (3.00%) Support Analyst
14 20 (2.86%) Platform Engineer
15 19 (2.71%) Field Hardware Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (4.29%) REST
2 10 (1.43%) SOAP
2 10 (1.43%) XMPP
3 7 (1.00%) 802.1X
4 5 (0.71%) Web Services
5 4 (0.57%) .NET
5 4 (0.57%) RabbitMQ
5 4 (0.57%) RFC 2544
6 3 (0.43%) Elastic Stack
7 2 (0.29%) CSS
7 2 (0.29%) JSON
7 2 (0.29%) Middleware
7 2 (0.29%) OAuth
7 2 (0.29%) Spring Boot
8 1 (0.14%) Flash
8 1 (0.14%) HTML
8 1 (0.14%) LDAP
8 1 (0.14%) Oracle Fusion
8 1 (0.14%) Software Packaging
8 1 (0.14%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 61 (8.71%) Product Ownership
2 33 (4.71%) CMDB
3 30 (4.29%) Data Centre
4 27 (3.86%) Management Information System
4 27 (3.86%) Onboarding
5 26 (3.71%) Virtual Team
6 25 (3.57%) PKI
7 17 (2.43%) Analytical Mindset
7 17 (2.43%) Driving Licence
7 17 (2.43%) Self-Motivation
8 11 (1.57%) PMI
9 10 (1.43%) Clustering
10 8 (1.14%) Enterprise Software
11 7 (1.00%) Data Protection Act
11 7 (1.00%) NHS
12 6 (0.86%) Smartphone
13 5 (0.71%) Hybrid Cloud
13 5 (0.71%) Mainframe
14 4 (0.57%) Data Structures
14 4 (0.57%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 175 (25.00%) Windows
2 58 (8.29%) Linux
3 51 (7.29%) Windows Server
4 43 (6.14%) Windows 10
5 13 (1.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (1.57%) Windows 7
7 9 (1.29%) Mac OS
8 7 (1.00%) Unix
8 7 (1.00%) Windows Server 2012
9 5 (0.71%) Android
9 5 (0.71%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.71%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.57%) Windows Server 2003
10 4 (0.57%) Windows Server 2016
11 3 (0.43%) CentOS
12 2 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 1 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
13 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
13 1 (0.14%) Windows XP
Processes & Methodologies
1 431 (61.57%) ITIL
2 313 (44.71%) ITSM
3 151 (21.57%) Problem-Solving
4 145 (20.71%) Agile
5 140 (20.00%) Continuous Improvement
6 110 (15.71%) Change Management
7 103 (14.71%) Stakeholder Management
8 98 (14.00%) Service Delivery
9 94 (13.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 83 (11.86%) Customer Service
11 74 (10.57%) Service Design
12 63 (9.00%) DevOps
13 59 (8.43%) Configuration Management
14 57 (8.14%) Acceptance Criteria
15 54 (7.71%) Problem Management
16 53 (7.57%) Knowledge Transfer
17 52 (7.43%) Incident Management
18 51 (7.29%) Performance Metrics
19 48 (6.86%) Project Management
20 43 (6.14%) Critical Thinking
Programming Languages
1 76 (10.86%) PowerShell
2 52 (7.43%) Python
3 40 (5.71%) SQL
4 15 (2.14%) Bash
5 13 (1.86%) Perl
6 11 (1.57%) JavaScript
6 11 (1.57%) Shell Script
7 9 (1.29%) VB
7 9 (1.29%) VBScript
8 7 (1.00%) 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
1 358 (51.14%) Security Cleared
2 263 (37.57%) SC Cleared
3 111 (15.86%) DV Cleared
4 96 (13.71%) Degree
5 41 (5.86%) ITIL Certification
6 34 (4.86%) Microsoft Certification
7 30 (4.29%) TOGAF Certification
8 26 (3.71%) Cisco Certification
9 20 (2.86%) PMI Certification
10 19 (2.71%) PMP
11 18 (2.57%) CCNP
12 16 (2.29%) CCNA
12 16 (2.29%) MCSE
13 15 (2.14%) BPSS Clearance
14 14 (2.00%) Azure Certification
14 14 (2.00%) Computer Science Degree
14 14 (2.00%) Network+ Certification
15 11 (1.57%) Server+ Certification
16 10 (1.43%) A+ Certification
17 8 (1.14%) JNCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (3.57%) SLA
2 16 (2.29%) Data Quality
3 12 (1.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 10 (1.43%) GDPR
4 10 (1.43%) PMO
4 10 (1.43%) QA
5 7 (1.00%) ISO/IEC 20000
6 5 (0.71%) Cyber Essentials
7 4 (0.57%) Disclosure Scotland
8 3 (0.43%) ISO 9001
8 3 (0.43%) NCSC
9 2 (0.29%) Accessibility
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%) COBIT
10 1 (0.14%) GRC
10 1 (0.14%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 92 (13.14%) Active Directory
2 36 (5.14%) VMware Infrastructure
3 17 (2.43%) VMware NSX
4 13 (1.86%) Hyper-V
5 9 (1.29%) BitLocker
6 7 (1.00%) Docker
7 6 (0.86%) Virtual Servers
8 5 (0.71%) Microsoft Virtual Server
9 4 (0.57%) Virtual Desktop
10 3 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
11 1 (0.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 1 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 30 (4.29%) OPNET
1 30 (4.29%) SCCM
2 22 (3.14%) Ansible
3 18 (2.57%) Microsoft Intune
3 18 (2.57%) Terraform
3 18 (2.57%) vCenter Server
4 15 (2.14%) Kubernetes
5 11 (1.57%) WSUS
6 10 (1.43%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 9 (1.29%) FortiGate
8 7 (1.00%) Progress Chef
9 6 (0.86%) Grafana
9 6 (0.86%) Jamf Pro
10 5 (0.71%) Puppet
11 4 (0.57%) Nessus
11 4 (0.57%) Packer
11 4 (0.57%) Prometheus
12 2 (0.29%) Docker Swarm
12 2 (0.29%) PowerCLI
12 2 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 161 (23.00%) ServiceNow
2 136 (19.43%) Microsoft
3 61 (8.71%) Cisco
4 59 (8.43%) Atlassian
5 56 (8.00%) Remedy
6 51 (7.29%) VMware
7 34 (4.86%) SolarWinds
8 32 (4.57%) Google
8 32 (4.57%) HP
9 29 (4.14%) Oracle
10 26 (3.71%) Splunk
11 21 (3.00%) Juniper
12 18 (2.57%) SAP
13 15 (2.14%) Red Hat
14 14 (2.00%) Dell
15 13 (1.86%) Canon
15 13 (1.86%) Citrix
15 13 (1.86%) Salesforce
15 13 (1.86%) Veeam
16 9 (1.29%) Dynatrace