Service Design Contract Job Trends in England

Service Design
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring Service Design skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 25 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 192 219 272
Rank change year-on-year +27 +53 -90
Contract jobs citing Service Design 683 338 281
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.50% 1.23% 0.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.76% 1.35% 0.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 477 253 175
10th Percentile £405 £400 £433
25th Percentile £456 £450 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.65% -2.27% -3.08%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £675 £750
UK median daily rate £510 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.86% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 4 6
10th Percentile £15.89 - -
25th Percentile £60.50 £31.49 -
Median hourly rate £62.25 £42.08 £17.80
Median % change year-on-year +47.93% +136.40% -69.04%
75th Percentile £76.06 £58.37 £26.14
90th Percentile £102.73 £66.22 £31.34
UK median hourly rate £62.25 £42.08 £17.80
% change year-on-year +47.93% +136.40% -69.04%

All Process & Methodology Skills
England

Service Design 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 England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 38,748 25,020 28,500
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.82% 90.83% 85.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,949 15,925 18,341
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £511 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.74% -2.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £627 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £753
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,582 1,471 1,520
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.25 £14.05
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.87 £18.13
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.56 £25.15 £40.94
% change year-on-year +65.23% -38.57% -3.67%

Service Design
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Service Design relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Service Design job vacancy trend in England

Service Design
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Service Design.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Service Design

Service Design
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Service Design in England over the 6 months to 25 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Service Design in England

Service Design
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Service Design.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Service Design

Service Design
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Service Design in England over the 6 months to 25 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Service Design in England

Service Design
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Service Design within the England region over the 6 months to 25 August 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
London +24 296 £525 -3.00% 81
South East -9 129 £531 -1.19% 24
North of England +7 127 £475 - 19
Yorkshire +10 62 £480 -6.34% 8
Midlands -21 53 £475 +5.91% 13
West Midlands -8 49 £481 +7.25% 13
South West -27 48 £575 +4.55% 29
North West -30 42 £475 +1.33% 4
North East -21 23 £420 -18.05% 7
East of England -26 7 £525 -4.55% 3
East Midlands - 4 £425 -
Service Design
UK

Service Design
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 31 (4.54%) Confluence
2 10 (1.46%) SharePoint
3 9 (1.32%) CMS
4 5 (0.73%) LiveCycle
5 1 (0.15%) Apache Solr
5 1 (0.15%) Drupal
5 1 (0.15%) nginx
5 1 (0.15%) Oracle Coherence
5 1 (0.15%) Tomcat
5 1 (0.15%) Umbraco
Applications
1 12 (1.76%) MS Visio
2 8 (1.17%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (0.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (0.88%) Sketch
4 4 (0.59%) Adobe XD
5 3 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.29%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.29%) Trello
7 1 (0.15%) Gliffy
7 1 (0.15%) InVision
7 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Office
7 1 (0.15%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 5 (0.73%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 1 (0.15%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.15%) Exchequer
2 1 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
2 1 (0.15%) SAP CX
Cloud Services
1 56 (8.20%) Azure
2 51 (7.47%) AWS
3 34 (4.98%) Figma
4 29 (4.25%) SaaS
5 20 (2.93%) Miro
6 15 (2.20%) GitHub
7 14 (2.05%) Microsoft 365
8 13 (1.90%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 13 (1.90%) Datadog
9 12 (1.76%) Azure Monitor
9 12 (1.76%) Power Platform
10 9 (1.32%) Serverless
11 8 (1.17%) Microsoft Copilot
12 7 (1.02%) AWS Lambda
13 6 (0.88%) Amazon S3
13 6 (0.88%) Azure AI
13 6 (0.88%) Azure DevOps
14 4 (0.59%) Copilot Studio
14 4 (0.59%) OCI
14 4 (0.59%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.02%) Cisco Nexus
1 7 (1.02%) Firewall
2 5 (0.73%) Network Security
3 4 (0.59%) 2G
3 4 (0.59%) 3G
3 4 (0.59%) 4G
3 4 (0.59%) BGP
3 4 (0.59%) Diameter Protocol
3 4 (0.59%) OSPF
3 4 (0.59%) SIGTRAN
3 4 (0.59%) SS7
3 4 (0.59%) VPN
3 4 (0.59%) VXLAN
3 4 (0.59%) WAN
4 3 (0.44%) 3GPP
4 3 (0.44%) NX-OS
4 3 (0.44%) VLAN
5 2 (0.29%) Broadband
5 2 (0.29%) LAN
5 2 (0.29%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (1.02%) Metadata
2 6 (0.88%) Power BI
3 4 (0.59%) Electronic Patient Records
3 4 (0.59%) SQL Server
4 3 (0.44%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (0.44%) DynamoDB
5 2 (0.29%) Azure SQL Database
5 2 (0.29%) Geospatial Data
5 2 (0.29%) Oracle Reports
5 2 (0.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 1 (0.15%) BigQuery
6 1 (0.15%) Data Lake
6 1 (0.15%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.15%) Looker
6 1 (0.15%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.15%) Oracle Database
6 1 (0.15%) PostgreSQL
6 1 (0.15%) Power Query
6 1 (0.15%) Redis
6 1 (0.15%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 35 (5.12%) JIRA
2 7 (1.02%) Git
2 7 (1.02%) Jenkins
3 3 (0.44%) GitLab
3 3 (0.44%) Sonatype Nexus
3 3 (0.44%) Team Foundation Server
4 2 (0.29%) Appium
4 2 (0.29%) Postman
5 1 (0.15%) Artifactory
5 1 (0.15%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 1 (0.15%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.15%) Maven
5 1 (0.15%) NUnit
5 1 (0.15%) REST Assured
5 1 (0.15%) Selenium
5 1 (0.15%) Subversion
5 1 (0.15%) Terragrunt
5 1 (0.15%) VersionOne
5 1 (0.15%) Vite
General
1 220 (32.21%) Social Skills
2 191 (27.96%) Public Sector
3 94 (13.76%) Finance
4 64 (9.37%) Analytical Skills
5 51 (7.47%) Influencing Skills
6 25 (3.66%) Documentation Skills
7 22 (3.22%) Banking
8 19 (2.78%) Military
9 18 (2.64%) Presentation Skills
9 18 (2.64%) Retail
9 18 (2.64%) Telecoms
10 16 (2.34%) Organisational Skills
11 15 (2.20%) Local Government
12 12 (1.76%) Legal
13 8 (1.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 6 (0.88%) Back Office
14 6 (0.88%) Financial Institution
15 5 (0.73%) Automotive
15 5 (0.73%) Law
15 5 (0.73%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 260 (38.07%) Designer
2 201 (29.43%) Service Designer
3 88 (12.88%) Architect
4 76 (11.13%) Lead
5 62 (9.08%) User Researcher
6 61 (8.93%) Senior
7 51 (7.47%) Analyst
8 39 (5.71%) Service Architect
9 33 (4.83%) Business Analyst
10 32 (4.69%) Senior Designer
11 25 (3.66%) Service Manager
12 24 (3.51%) Senior Service Designer
13 20 (2.93%) Product Manager
13 20 (2.93%) Solutions Architect
14 19 (2.78%) Consultant
14 19 (2.78%) Content Designer
14 19 (2.78%) Service Transition Manager
14 19 (2.78%) Transition Manager
15 18 (2.64%) Lead Designer
16 17 (2.49%) Lead Service Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (2.34%) REST
2 11 (1.61%) RESTful
2 11 (1.61%) SOAP
3 9 (1.32%) Terraform
4 7 (1.02%) .NET
5 6 (0.88%) HTML
5 6 (0.88%) Web Services
6 5 (0.73%) STL
7 4 (0.59%) CSS
7 4 (0.59%) Swagger
7 4 (0.59%) VML
8 3 (0.44%) Node.js
8 3 (0.44%) OpenAPI
8 3 (0.44%) Playwright
9 2 (0.29%) .NET Framework
9 2 (0.29%) Kafka
9 2 (0.29%) Middleware
9 2 (0.29%) NestJS
9 2 (0.29%) Oracle Fusion
9 2 (0.29%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 56 (8.20%) Onboarding
2 49 (7.17%) Product Ownership
3 32 (4.69%) CMDB
4 24 (3.51%) NHS
5 23 (3.37%) Cloud Native
6 14 (2.05%) Legacy Systems
7 13 (1.90%) AI Agents
8 11 (1.61%) Data Centre
9 9 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
9 9 (1.32%) Management Information System
10 7 (1.02%) Analytical Mindset
10 7 (1.02%) Greenfield Project
10 7 (1.02%) Taxonomies
11 6 (0.88%) Self-Motivation
12 5 (0.73%) Reference Data
12 5 (0.73%) Security Posture
12 5 (0.73%) Virtual Team
13 4 (0.59%) Distributed Systems
14 3 (0.44%) EMC VMAX
14 3 (0.44%) EMC VNX
Operating Systems
1 8 (1.17%) Windows
2 3 (0.44%) Linux
2 3 (0.44%) Unix
3 2 (0.29%) Android
3 2 (0.29%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.15%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 252 (36.90%) Agile
2 171 (25.04%) User Research
3 160 (23.43%) Stakeholder Management
4 148 (21.67%) ITIL
5 135 (19.77%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
6 134 (19.62%) Continuous Improvement
7 125 (18.30%) Workshop Facilitation
8 118 (17.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 107 (15.67%) Journey Map
9 107 (15.67%) Service Management
10 106 (15.52%) Decision-Making
11 100 (14.64%) User Experience
12 94 (13.76%) Roadmaps
13 75 (10.98%) AI
14 67 (9.81%) ITSM
15 64 (9.37%) Problem-Solving
16 60 (8.78%) Interaction Design
17 59 (8.64%) Service Delivery
18 57 (8.35%) Collaborative Working
18 57 (8.35%) UX Design
Programming Languages
1 16 (2.34%) SQL
2 9 (1.32%) PowerShell
3 7 (1.02%) Bash
3 7 (1.02%) JavaScript
3 7 (1.02%) Python
4 5 (0.73%) C#
4 5 (0.73%) Java
5 3 (0.44%) T-SQL
6 2 (0.29%) Bicep
7 1 (0.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 1 (0.15%) Go
7 1 (0.15%) Kotlin
7 1 (0.15%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 249 (36.46%) Security Cleared
2 165 (24.16%) SC Cleared
3 72 (10.54%) DV Cleared
4 43 (6.30%) BPSS Clearance
5 24 (3.51%) Degree
6 16 (2.34%) ITIL Certification
7 5 (0.73%) AWS Certification
7 5 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
8 4 (0.59%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 4 (0.59%) Master's Degree
9 2 (0.29%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 2 (0.29%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.29%) Cisco Certification
9 2 (0.29%) CTC Cleared
9 2 (0.29%) IIBA
9 2 (0.29%) PMI Certification
9 2 (0.29%) SANS
10 1 (0.15%) CCA
10 1 (0.15%) CISM
10 1 (0.15%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 101 (14.79%) Accessibility
2 24 (3.51%) ISO/IEC 20000
3 22 (3.22%) QA
3 22 (3.22%) WCAG
4 17 (2.49%) SLA
5 16 (2.34%) Actionable Recommendations
6 12 (1.76%) Data Quality
6 12 (1.76%) NCSC
7 7 (1.02%) Government Security Classifications
8 5 (0.73%) GDPR
9 4 (0.59%) PMO
10 3 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 2 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 2 (0.29%) NIST
12 1 (0.15%) COBIT
12 1 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials
12 1 (0.15%) GRC
12 1 (0.15%) ISO 31000
12 1 (0.15%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 16 (2.34%) IAG
2 5 (0.73%) Docker
3 4 (0.59%) Active Directory
4 3 (0.44%) EMC RecoverPoint
4 3 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.29%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.29%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 20 (2.93%) Ansible
2 15 (2.20%) Kubernetes
3 3 (0.44%) Avamar
3 3 (0.44%) EMC VPLEX
4 2 (0.29%) Grafana
4 2 (0.29%) Istio
4 2 (0.29%) Prometheus
4 2 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
5 1 (0.15%) Argo
5 1 (0.15%) BMC PATROL
5 1 (0.15%) BMC Performance Manager
5 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Intune
5 1 (0.15%) Network Intrusion Detection System
5 1 (0.15%) Perfmon
5 1 (0.15%) Progress Chef
5 1 (0.15%) Puppet
5 1 (0.15%) SysTrack
Vendors
1 62 (9.08%) ServiceNow
2 28 (4.10%) Microsoft
3 11 (1.61%) Nexthink
4 9 (1.32%) Cisco
4 9 (1.32%) Dynatrace
4 9 (1.32%) SAP
5 8 (1.17%) Salesforce
6 6 (0.88%) Adobe
6 6 (0.88%) Oracle
7 5 (0.73%) BMC
7 5 (0.73%) F5
7 5 (0.73%) Foundry
7 5 (0.73%) Google
7 5 (0.73%) Sparx
8 4 (0.59%) IBM
8 4 (0.59%) Virgin Media
8 4 (0.59%) VMware
9 3 (0.44%) Brocade
9 3 (0.44%) EMC
9 3 (0.44%) NetApp