3rd Line Support Contract Job Trends

Third Line Support
UK

The median Third Line Support daily rate in the UK is £500, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 18 September 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 508 491 507
Rank change year-on-year -17 +16 +155
Contract jobs requiring a 3rd Line Support 60 68 146
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.18% 0.18% 0.30%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.20% 0.19% 0.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 52 48 83
10th Percentile £263 £254 £251
25th Percentile £394 £304 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £400 £350
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% +14.29% -
75th Percentile £588 £439 £400
90th Percentile £600 £520 £450
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £383 £325
% change year-on-year +30.72% +17.69% -7.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 4 0
10th Percentile - £22.13 -
25th Percentile £29.00 £23.45 -
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.59 -
Median % change year-on-year +8.74% - -
75th Percentile £31.00 £39.38 -
90th Percentile - £51.75 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £24.18 -

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 30,003 35,798 46,379
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.06% 92.95% 94.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,960 22,064 31,748
10th Percentile £278 £300 £300
25th Percentile £400 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,577 1,684 1,483
10th Percentile £13.75 £14.73 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -41.51% -3.37% +71.15%
75th Percentile £52.50 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £43.00
% change year-on-year -44.11% +4.65% +95.45%

3rd Line Support
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured 3rd Line Support in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for 3rd Line Support in the UK

3rd Line Support
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for 3rd Line Support job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for 3rd Line Support job vacancies in the UK

3rd Line Support
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing 3rd Line Support over the 6 months to 18 September 2025.

Daily rate histogram for 3rd Line Support in the UK

3rd Line Support
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for 3rd Line Support job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for 3rd Line Support job vacancies in the UK

3rd Line Support
Top 11 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing 3rd Line Support within the UK over the 6 months to 18 September 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
England +19 54 £500 +30.72% 37
UK excluding London +1 48 £500 +30.72% 34
South East +40 24 £575 +58.62% 15
Work from Home +29 15 £275 -27.87% 14
West Midlands -11 13 £400 - 2
Midlands -18 13 £400 - 9
London +12 10 £510 +27.50% 4
Wales +9 5 £200 -
South West +28 4 £388 +14.81%
East of England +3 1 £350 -17.65% 1
Scotland -10 1 - - 1

3rd Line Support Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 18 September 2025, 3rd Line Support contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring 3rd Line Support in the job title.

1 38 (63.33%) Security Cleared
2 35 (58.33%) Active Directory
3 31 (51.67%) Windows
4 29 (48.33%) Microsoft
5 24 (40.00%) DV Cleared
6 23 (38.33%) VPN
7 21 (35.00%) PKI
8 20 (33.33%) Firewall
8 20 (33.33%) Windows Server
9 18 (30.00%) vCenter Server
9 18 (30.00%) VMware
9 18 (30.00%) DNS
9 18 (30.00%) Microsoft Exchange
9 18 (30.00%) WAN
9 18 (30.00%) Cisco
9 18 (30.00%) Azure
10 17 (28.33%) Juniper
10 17 (28.33%) DHCP
11 15 (25.00%) VMware Infrastructure
11 15 (25.00%) SC Cleared
12 14 (23.33%) Hyper-V
12 14 (23.33%) Microsoft 365
13 13 (21.67%) Junos
13 13 (21.67%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 12 (20.00%) Microsoft Intune
15 11 (18.33%) PowerShell
15 11 (18.33%) HP
15 11 (18.33%) Public Sector
16 10 (16.67%) Data Centre
16 10 (16.67%) Cybersecurity

3rd Line Support Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 18 (30.00%) Microsoft Exchange
2 7 (11.67%) SharePoint
3 6 (10.00%) SharePoint Server
4 5 (8.33%) Exchange Server 2003
4 5 (8.33%) Exchange Server 2007
4 5 (8.33%) Exchange Server 2010
4 5 (8.33%) Exchange Server 2013
4 5 (8.33%) Office Communications Server
4 5 (8.33%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 7 (11.67%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (1.67%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 18 (30.00%) Azure
2 14 (23.33%) Microsoft 365
3 10 (16.67%) IaaS
3 10 (16.67%) PaaS
4 9 (15.00%) AWS
4 9 (15.00%) Entra ID
5 8 (13.33%) GCP
5 8 (13.33%) OpenShift
6 1 (1.67%) Google Workspace
6 1 (1.67%) Microsoft Purview
6 1 (1.67%) OneDrive
6 1 (1.67%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 23 (38.33%) VPN
2 20 (33.33%) Firewall
3 18 (30.00%) DNS
3 18 (30.00%) WAN
4 17 (28.33%) DHCP
5 13 (21.67%) Junos
6 9 (15.00%) BGP
6 9 (15.00%) IPsec
6 9 (15.00%) MPLS
6 9 (15.00%) SAN
6 9 (15.00%) SMTP
7 8 (13.33%) Cisco Firepower
7 8 (13.33%) Cisco IOS
7 8 (13.33%) Cisco ISE
8 6 (10.00%) LAN
9 5 (8.33%) DDNS
10 2 (3.33%) Fibre Channel
10 2 (3.33%) TCP/IP
10 2 (3.33%) Wi-Fi
11 1 (1.67%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (13.33%) Amazon RDS
1 8 (13.33%) Big Data
1 8 (13.33%) Elasticsearch
2 3 (5.00%) SQL Server
3 1 (1.67%) SQL Server Reporting Services
General
1 11 (18.33%) Public Sector
2 5 (8.33%) Social Skills
3 2 (3.33%) Banking
3 2 (3.33%) Finance
3 2 (3.33%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (3.33%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 21 (35.00%) PKI
2 10 (16.67%) Data Centre
3 9 (15.00%) Clustering
4 5 (8.33%) Replication
5 4 (6.67%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 31 (51.67%) Windows
2 20 (33.33%) Windows Server
3 10 (16.67%) Linux
4 9 (15.00%) Windows Server 2003
5 3 (5.00%) Mac OS
5 3 (5.00%) Windows 10
6 1 (1.67%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 13 (21.67%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 10 (16.67%) Cybersecurity
2 10 (16.67%) DevOps
2 10 (16.67%) Software Deployment
3 9 (15.00%) Load Balancing
3 9 (15.00%) Service Management
4 8 (13.33%) Artificial Intelligence
4 8 (13.33%) ITIL
4 8 (13.33%) ITSM
4 8 (13.33%) Machine Learning
5 7 (11.67%) Migration
6 6 (10.00%) Network Design
7 5 (8.33%) Architectural Design
7 5 (8.33%) Business Intelligence
7 5 (8.33%) Content Management
7 5 (8.33%) Enterprise Content Management
7 5 (8.33%) Enterprise Search
7 5 (8.33%) High Availability
7 5 (8.33%) Problem-Solving
8 4 (6.67%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 11 (18.33%) PowerShell
2 2 (3.33%) Bash
3 1 (1.67%) SQL
Qualifications
1 38 (63.33%) Security Cleared
2 24 (40.00%) DV Cleared
3 15 (25.00%) SC Cleared
4 8 (13.33%) Degree
5 2 (3.33%) Microsoft Certification
6 1 (1.67%) Azure Certification
6 1 (1.67%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (6.67%) SLA
System Software
1 35 (58.33%) Active Directory
2 15 (25.00%) VMware Infrastructure
3 14 (23.33%) Hyper-V
4 9 (15.00%) BitLocker
4 9 (15.00%) Microsoft App-V
4 9 (15.00%) Terminal Services
4 9 (15.00%) VMware ESXi
4 9 (15.00%) VMware NSX
5 8 (13.33%) Docker
6 5 (8.33%) Brightmail
6 5 (8.33%) ISA Server
7 4 (6.67%) vSphere
8 2 (3.33%) DFS Replication
Systems Management
1 18 (30.00%) vCenter Server
2 12 (20.00%) Microsoft Intune
3 9 (15.00%) vMotion
4 8 (13.33%) Ansible
4 8 (13.33%) Kubernetes
4 8 (13.33%) Nagios
4 8 (13.33%) Puppet
5 5 (8.33%) Microsoft Clustering
6 3 (5.00%) AirWatch
6 3 (5.00%) Jamf Pro
6 3 (5.00%) SCCM
7 2 (3.33%) FortiGate
7 2 (3.33%) SCOM
8 1 (1.67%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 1 (1.67%) Terraform
Vendors
1 29 (48.33%) Microsoft
2 18 (30.00%) Cisco
2 18 (30.00%) VMware
3 17 (28.33%) Juniper
4 11 (18.33%) HP
5 9 (15.00%) Citrix
5 9 (15.00%) SolarWinds
6 8 (13.33%) Google
6 8 (13.33%) Symantec
7 5 (8.33%) Sophos
8 3 (5.00%) Apple
9 2 (3.33%) Adobe
9 2 (3.33%) CheckPoint
9 2 (3.33%) Palo Alto
10 1 (1.67%) Fortinet
10 1 (1.67%) Red Hat
10 1 (1.67%) Veeam
10 1 (1.67%) Veritas