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

6 months to
3 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 188 216 263
Rank change year-on-year +28 +47 -78
Contract jobs citing Service Design 679 332 283
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.49% 1.21% 0.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.75% 1.34% 1.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 475 252 177
10th Percentile £406 £387 £420
25th Percentile £456 £450 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.19% -2.27% -2.22%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £645
90th Percentile £725 £675 £730
UK median daily rate £513 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.38% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 4 5
10th Percentile £15.89 - -
25th Percentile £60.83 £31.49 -
Median hourly rate £62.00 £42.08 £17.80
Median % change year-on-year +47.34% +136.40% -69.04%
75th Percentile £70.67 £58.37 £28.93
90th Percentile £102.58 £66.22 £31.82
UK median hourly rate £62.00 £42.08 £17.80
% change year-on-year +47.34% +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 38,735 24,846 28,143
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.90% 90.77% 85.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,900 15,805 17,939
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £634 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £751
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,596 1,469 1,428
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.38 £17.87 £18.50
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 £65.01
90th Percentile £80.00 £69.65 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +63.02% -40.82% +2.41%

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 3 September 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 3 September 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 3 September 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 +28 295 £525 - 250
North of England +14 127 £475 - 118
South East -13 124 £531 -1.19% 32
Yorkshire +4 59 £492 -6.29% 43
Midlands -6 55 £475 +5.91% 68
West Midlands -11 50 £487 +8.47% 65
South West -20 48 £575 +4.55% 51
North West -34 46 £475 - 66
North East -24 22 £420 -16.00% 9
East of England -25 7 £525 -4.55% 31
East Midlands - 5 £447 - 3
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 30 (4.42%) Confluence
2 10 (1.47%) SharePoint
3 9 (1.33%) CMS
4 5 (0.74%) LiveCycle
5 1 (0.15%) Apache Solr
5 1 (0.15%) Apache Superset
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 10 (1.47%) MS Visio
2 9 (1.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (1.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.74%) Sketch
5 4 (0.59%) Adobe XD
6 3 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
7 2 (0.29%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.29%) Microsoft Office
8 1 (0.15%) Gliffy
8 1 (0.15%) InVision
8 1 (0.15%) Trello
8 1 (0.15%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 5 (0.74%) 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 57 (8.39%) Azure
2 52 (7.66%) AWS
3 34 (5.01%) Figma
4 29 (4.27%) SaaS
5 21 (3.09%) Miro
6 17 (2.50%) GitHub
7 16 (2.36%) Datadog
8 14 (2.06%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 14 (2.06%) Microsoft 365
9 13 (1.91%) Azure Monitor
10 12 (1.77%) Power Platform
11 9 (1.33%) Serverless
12 8 (1.18%) Microsoft Copilot
13 7 (1.03%) AWS Lambda
13 7 (1.03%) GCP
14 6 (0.88%) Amazon S3
14 6 (0.88%) Azure AI
14 6 (0.88%) Azure DevOps
15 4 (0.59%) Copilot Studio
15 4 (0.59%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 9 (1.33%) Firewall
2 7 (1.03%) Cisco Nexus
3 5 (0.74%) 2G
3 5 (0.74%) 3G
3 5 (0.74%) 4G
3 5 (0.74%) Diameter Protocol
3 5 (0.74%) Network Security
3 5 (0.74%) SIGTRAN
3 5 (0.74%) SS7
4 4 (0.59%) BGP
4 4 (0.59%) OSPF
4 4 (0.59%) VPN
4 4 (0.59%) VXLAN
4 4 (0.59%) WAN
5 3 (0.44%) 3GPP
5 3 (0.44%) NX-OS
5 3 (0.44%) VLAN
6 2 (0.29%) 5G
6 2 (0.29%) TETRA
6 2 (0.29%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (1.03%) Metadata
2 6 (0.88%) Power BI
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%) Electronic Patient Records
6 1 (0.15%) Looker
6 1 (0.15%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.15%) PostgreSQL
6 1 (0.15%) Power Query
6 1 (0.15%) Redis
6 1 (0.15%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.15%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 34 (5.01%) JIRA
2 9 (1.33%) Git
3 7 (1.03%) Jenkins
4 5 (0.74%) Sonatype Nexus
5 3 (0.44%) GitLab
5 3 (0.44%) Maven
5 3 (0.44%) Team Foundation Server
6 2 (0.29%) Appium
6 2 (0.29%) Postman
6 2 (0.29%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.15%) Artifactory
7 1 (0.15%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 1 (0.15%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.15%) NUnit
7 1 (0.15%) REST Assured
7 1 (0.15%) Selenium
7 1 (0.15%) Subversion
7 1 (0.15%) Terragrunt
7 1 (0.15%) VersionOne
7 1 (0.15%) Vite
General
1 233 (34.32%) Social Skills
2 186 (27.39%) Public Sector
3 89 (13.11%) Finance
4 65 (9.57%) Analytical Skills
5 49 (7.22%) Influencing Skills
6 28 (4.12%) Documentation Skills
7 21 (3.09%) Banking
8 20 (2.95%) Military
9 19 (2.80%) Telecoms
10 18 (2.65%) Retail
11 17 (2.50%) Organisational Skills
11 17 (2.50%) Presentation Skills
12 15 (2.21%) Local Government
13 13 (1.91%) Legal
14 7 (1.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 6 (0.88%) Back Office
15 6 (0.88%) Publishing
16 5 (0.74%) Automotive
16 5 (0.74%) Financial Institution
16 5 (0.74%) Law
Job Titles
1 253 (37.26%) Designer
2 194 (28.57%) Service Designer
3 93 (13.70%) Architect
4 73 (10.75%) Lead
5 64 (9.43%) Senior
5 64 (9.43%) User Researcher
6 44 (6.48%) Analyst
6 44 (6.48%) Service Architect
7 31 (4.57%) Senior Designer
8 30 (4.42%) Business Analyst
9 27 (3.98%) Service Manager
10 22 (3.24%) Senior Service Designer
11 21 (3.09%) Product Manager
11 21 (3.09%) Service Transition Manager
11 21 (3.09%) Solutions Architect
11 21 (3.09%) Transition Manager
12 18 (2.65%) Service Design Manager
13 17 (2.50%) Content Designer
13 17 (2.50%) Service Owner
14 15 (2.21%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (1.77%) REST
1 12 (1.77%) Terraform
2 11 (1.62%) RESTful
3 7 (1.03%) .NET
3 7 (1.03%) SOAP
3 7 (1.03%) Web Services
4 6 (0.88%) HTML
5 5 (0.74%) STL
6 4 (0.59%) CSS
6 4 (0.59%) Swagger
6 4 (0.59%) VML
7 3 (0.44%) Node.js
7 3 (0.44%) OpenAPI
7 3 (0.44%) Playwright
8 2 (0.29%) .NET Framework
8 2 (0.29%) Kafka
8 2 (0.29%) Middleware
8 2 (0.29%) NestJS
8 2 (0.29%) Oracle Fusion
8 2 (0.29%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 59 (8.69%) Onboarding
2 46 (6.77%) Product Ownership
3 32 (4.71%) CMDB
4 28 (4.12%) Cloud Native
5 22 (3.24%) NHS
6 14 (2.06%) Legacy Systems
7 12 (1.77%) AI Agents
8 10 (1.47%) Data Centre
8 10 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
9 8 (1.18%) Analytical Mindset
10 7 (1.03%) Greenfield Project
10 7 (1.03%) Management Information System
10 7 (1.03%) Taxonomies
10 7 (1.03%) Virtual Team
11 6 (0.88%) Self-Motivation
12 4 (0.59%) Distributed Systems
12 4 (0.59%) Hybrid Cloud
12 4 (0.59%) Reference Data
12 4 (0.59%) Security Posture
13 3 (0.44%) Symmetrix DMX
Operating Systems
1 10 (1.47%) Windows
2 7 (1.03%) Unix
3 6 (0.88%) Linux
4 2 (0.29%) Android
4 2 (0.29%) Apple iOS
4 2 (0.29%) VMS
5 1 (0.15%) Mac OS
5 1 (0.15%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 250 (36.82%) Agile
2 170 (25.04%) User Research
3 165 (24.30%) Stakeholder Management
4 147 (21.65%) ITIL
5 139 (20.47%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
6 132 (19.44%) Continuous Improvement
7 127 (18.70%) Workshop Facilitation
8 121 (17.82%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 109 (16.05%) Decision-Making
10 107 (15.76%) Journey Map
11 103 (15.17%) Service Management
12 99 (14.58%) User Experience
13 97 (14.29%) Roadmaps
14 72 (10.60%) AI
15 67 (9.87%) ITSM
16 65 (9.57%) Problem-Solving
17 60 (8.84%) Interaction Design
17 60 (8.84%) Service Delivery
18 58 (8.54%) UX Design
19 57 (8.39%) Digital Transformation Programme
Programming Languages
1 17 (2.50%) SQL
2 7 (1.03%) Bash
2 7 (1.03%) Java
2 7 (1.03%) JavaScript
2 7 (1.03%) Python
3 6 (0.88%) PowerShell
4 5 (0.74%) C#
5 3 (0.44%) Shell Script
5 3 (0.44%) T-SQL
6 2 (0.29%) Bicep
6 2 (0.29%) Groovy
7 1 (0.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 1 (0.15%) Go
7 1 (0.15%) Kotlin
7 1 (0.15%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 247 (36.38%) Security Cleared
2 164 (24.15%) SC Cleared
3 70 (10.31%) DV Cleared
4 43 (6.33%) BPSS Clearance
5 20 (2.95%) Degree
6 19 (2.80%) ITIL Certification
7 5 (0.74%) AWS Certification
7 5 (0.74%) 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%) APMG
10 1 (0.15%) CBAP
10 1 (0.15%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 101 (14.87%) Accessibility
2 24 (3.53%) QA
3 23 (3.39%) WCAG
4 21 (3.09%) ISO/IEC 20000
5 20 (2.95%) SLA
6 14 (2.06%) Actionable Recommendations
7 13 (1.91%) Data Quality
8 7 (1.03%) NCSC
9 5 (0.74%) GDPR
10 4 (0.59%) PMO
11 3 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 3 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 3 (0.44%) NIST
12 2 (0.29%) Government Security Classifications
13 1 (0.15%) COBIT
13 1 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials
13 1 (0.15%) GRC
13 1 (0.15%) ISO 31000
13 1 (0.15%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 17 (2.50%) IAG
2 8 (1.18%) Docker
3 5 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (0.59%) Active Directory
5 3 (0.44%) EMC RecoverPoint
5 3 (0.44%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.29%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 21 (3.09%) Ansible
2 19 (2.80%) Kubernetes
3 5 (0.74%) Grafana
4 3 (0.44%) Avamar
4 3 (0.44%) EMC VPLEX
5 2 (0.29%) BMC PATROL
5 2 (0.29%) BMC Performance Manager
5 2 (0.29%) Istio
5 2 (0.29%) Perfmon
5 2 (0.29%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.15%) Argo
6 1 (0.15%) Kibana
6 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.15%) Network Intrusion Detection System
6 1 (0.15%) Progress Chef
6 1 (0.15%) Puppet
6 1 (0.15%) SysTrack
Vendors
1 66 (9.72%) ServiceNow
2 30 (4.42%) Microsoft
3 12 (1.77%) Nexthink
4 10 (1.47%) Dynatrace
5 9 (1.33%) Cisco
5 9 (1.33%) Google
5 9 (1.33%) Salesforce
5 9 (1.33%) SAP
6 7 (1.03%) Oracle
7 6 (0.88%) Adobe
7 6 (0.88%) BMC
8 5 (0.74%) F5
8 5 (0.74%) Foundry
8 5 (0.74%) Sparx
8 5 (0.74%) VMware
9 4 (0.59%) AppDynamics
9 4 (0.59%) IBM
9 4 (0.59%) Virgin Media
10 3 (0.44%) EMC
10 3 (0.44%) Ericsson