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

6 months to
7 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 180 257 260
Rank change year-on-year +77 +3 -85
Contract jobs citing Service Design 669 266 343
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.51% 1.00% 0.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.77% 1.10% 1.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 485 197 228
10th Percentile £397 £400 £400
25th Percentile £448 £453 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.14%
75th Percentile £580 £638 £632
90th Percentile £691 £700 £729
UK median daily rate £505 £525 £539
% change year-on-year -3.81% -2.60% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 1 10
10th Percentile £40.99 - -
25th Percentile £60.33 £51.34 £17.80
Median hourly rate £95.50 £52.67 £30.37
Median % change year-on-year +81.32% +73.44% -47.19%
75th Percentile £103.25 £54.01 £34.53
90th Percentile £106.25 - -
UK median hourly rate £95.50 £52.67 £30.37
% change year-on-year +81.32% +73.44% -47.19%

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 37,874 24,162 31,847
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 85.36% 90.93% 85.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,840 15,529 20,666
10th Percentile £325 £300 £305
25th Percentile £419 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £524 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.80% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £730 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £517 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +2.28% -3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,373 1,216 2,288
10th Percentile £15.32 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.75 £17.95 £16.06
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +86.88% -34.02% -4.70%
75th Percentile £68.55 £55.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% -3.85%

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 7 July 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 7 July 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 7 July 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 +50 291 £520 -5.45% 86
North of England +8 128 £475 -6.17% 36
South East +6 110 £525 -2.33% 28
Midlands +3 72 £475 +5.56% 7
West Midlands -2 70 £475 +5.56% 5
Yorkshire +5 61 £500 -11.11% 12
North West -28 47 £475 -1.76% 13
South West -28 37 £583 +7.13% 11
North East -20 21 £420 -20.00% 11
East of England -32 6 £500 -9.09% 5
East Midlands - 2 £516 - 2
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 28 (4.19%) Confluence
2 14 (2.09%) SharePoint
3 8 (1.20%) CMS
4 6 (0.90%) LiveCycle
5 2 (0.30%) Drupal
5 2 (0.30%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.15%) Anypoint
6 1 (0.15%) Apache Solr
6 1 (0.15%) Mule
6 1 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
6 1 (0.15%) Oracle Coherence
6 1 (0.15%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.15%) Umbraco
Applications
1 11 (1.64%) Microsoft Excel
1 11 (1.64%) MS Visio
2 9 (1.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (0.90%) Sketch
4 5 (0.75%) Chatbot
4 5 (0.75%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (0.45%) Adobe XD
5 3 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.30%) InVision
6 2 (0.30%) Trello
7 1 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.15%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 4 (0.60%) SAP S/4HANA
1 4 (0.60%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 2 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.15%) Adobe Campaign
Cloud Services
1 47 (7.03%) Azure
2 37 (5.53%) AWS
3 30 (4.48%) Figma
4 23 (3.44%) SaaS
5 17 (2.54%) Microsoft 365
6 13 (1.94%) Miro
6 13 (1.94%) Power Platform
7 10 (1.49%) Microsoft Copilot
8 9 (1.35%) GitHub
9 8 (1.20%) Datadog
10 7 (1.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 7 (1.05%) Azure AI
10 7 (1.05%) Azure Monitor
11 5 (0.75%) Entra ID
11 5 (0.75%) PowerApps
12 4 (0.60%) Copilot Studio
12 4 (0.60%) OCI
13 3 (0.45%) Dynamics 365
13 3 (0.45%) Microsoft Purview
13 3 (0.45%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 6 (0.90%) Cisco Nexus
1 6 (0.90%) Firewall
2 3 (0.45%) 2G
2 3 (0.45%) 3G
2 3 (0.45%) 3GPP
2 3 (0.45%) 4G
2 3 (0.45%) BGP
2 3 (0.45%) Diameter Protocol
2 3 (0.45%) Network Security
2 3 (0.45%) NX-OS
2 3 (0.45%) OSPF
2 3 (0.45%) SIGTRAN
2 3 (0.45%) SS7
2 3 (0.45%) VLAN
2 3 (0.45%) VPN
2 3 (0.45%) VXLAN
3 2 (0.30%) 5G
3 2 (0.30%) Radio Access Network
3 2 (0.30%) TETRA
3 2 (0.30%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (1.05%) Power BI
2 5 (0.75%) Metadata
3 4 (0.60%) Electronic Patient Records
3 4 (0.60%) SQL Server
4 2 (0.30%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (0.30%) Azure SQL Database
4 2 (0.30%) Geospatial Data
4 2 (0.30%) Oracle Reports
4 2 (0.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 1 (0.15%) BigQuery
5 1 (0.15%) Data Lake
5 1 (0.15%) Looker
5 1 (0.15%) Oracle Database
5 1 (0.15%) Oracle Exadata
5 1 (0.15%) Power Query
5 1 (0.15%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 30 (4.48%) JIRA
2 8 (1.20%) Jenkins
3 5 (0.75%) Git
4 4 (0.60%) GitLab
5 3 (0.45%) Team Foundation Server
6 2 (0.30%) Appium
6 2 (0.30%) Postman
6 2 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.15%) Artifactory
7 1 (0.15%) Axure RP
7 1 (0.15%) Cucumber
7 1 (0.15%) JUnit
7 1 (0.15%) Maven
7 1 (0.15%) Mockito
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%) VersionOne
7 1 (0.15%) Vite
General
1 199 (29.75%) Public Sector
2 197 (29.45%) Social Skills
3 93 (13.90%) Finance
4 49 (7.32%) Analytical Skills
5 41 (6.13%) Influencing Skills
6 20 (2.99%) Presentation Skills
7 19 (2.84%) Banking
8 18 (2.69%) Retail
9 17 (2.54%) Telecoms
10 15 (2.24%) Documentation Skills
11 14 (2.09%) Legal
11 14 (2.09%) Organisational Skills
12 13 (1.94%) Local Government
12 13 (1.94%) Military
13 9 (1.35%) Financial Institution
14 7 (1.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 6 (0.90%) Law
16 5 (0.75%) Police
17 4 (0.60%) Automotive
17 4 (0.60%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 267 (39.91%) Designer
2 207 (30.94%) Service Designer
3 83 (12.41%) Lead
4 72 (10.76%) Architect
5 67 (10.01%) Senior
6 64 (9.57%) User Researcher
7 54 (8.07%) Analyst
8 38 (5.68%) Business Analyst
9 36 (5.38%) Senior Designer
10 29 (4.33%) Lead Designer
11 28 (4.19%) Lead Service Designer
12 26 (3.89%) Service Manager
13 25 (3.74%) Senior Service Designer
13 25 (3.74%) Service Architect
14 21 (3.14%) Consultant
15 17 (2.54%) Interaction Designer
15 17 (2.54%) Service Design Manager
15 17 (2.54%) Service Transition Manager
15 17 (2.54%) Transition Manager
16 16 (2.39%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (2.09%) REST
2 12 (1.79%) SOAP
3 8 (1.20%) HTML
3 8 (1.20%) RESTful
4 6 (0.90%) .NET
4 6 (0.90%) CSS
4 6 (0.90%) Web Services
5 5 (0.75%) Microsoft Graph
6 4 (0.60%) Spring Boot
6 4 (0.60%) STL
6 4 (0.60%) VML
7 3 (0.45%) Node.js
7 3 (0.45%) Playwright
7 3 (0.45%) Spring
7 3 (0.45%) Swagger
8 2 (0.30%) GeoJSON
8 2 (0.30%) NestJS
8 2 (0.30%) OpenAPI
8 2 (0.30%) React Native
8 2 (0.30%) TanStack
Miscellaneous
1 52 (7.77%) Onboarding
2 47 (7.03%) Product Ownership
3 26 (3.89%) CMDB
4 24 (3.59%) NHS
5 14 (2.09%) Cloud Native
5 14 (2.09%) Data Centre
6 13 (1.94%) Legacy Systems
7 11 (1.64%) AI Agents
7 11 (1.64%) Data Protection Act
8 7 (1.05%) Management Information System
9 5 (0.75%) Greenfield Project
9 5 (0.75%) Security Posture
9 5 (0.75%) Self-Motivation
9 5 (0.75%) Virtual Team
10 4 (0.60%) Analytical Mindset
10 4 (0.60%) Hybrid Cloud
10 4 (0.60%) Taxonomies
11 3 (0.45%) Celerra
11 3 (0.45%) IBM XIV
11 3 (0.45%) Symmetrix DMX
Operating Systems
1 5 (0.75%) Windows
2 2 (0.30%) Android
2 2 (0.30%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.15%) Linux
3 1 (0.15%) MVS
3 1 (0.15%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 255 (38.12%) Agile
2 185 (27.65%) User Research
3 136 (20.33%) ITIL
4 131 (19.58%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
5 126 (18.83%) Stakeholder Management
6 111 (16.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 108 (16.14%) Continuous Improvement
7 108 (16.14%) Workshop Facilitation
8 103 (15.40%) Journey Map
9 102 (15.25%) User Experience
10 92 (13.75%) Decision-Making
11 90 (13.45%) Roadmaps
12 74 (11.06%) Service Management
13 66 (9.87%) UX Design
14 59 (8.82%) Interaction Design
15 58 (8.67%) Collaborative Working
16 57 (8.52%) AI
17 56 (8.37%) ITSM
18 51 (7.62%) Problem-Solving
19 50 (7.47%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 14 (2.09%) SQL
2 9 (1.35%) PowerShell
3 7 (1.05%) Java
3 7 (1.05%) JavaScript
4 6 (0.90%) Bash
4 6 (0.90%) Python
5 4 (0.60%) C#
5 4 (0.60%) T-SQL
6 3 (0.45%) Kusto Query Language
7 2 (0.30%) Bicep
8 1 (0.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 1 (0.15%) DataWeave
8 1 (0.15%) Go
8 1 (0.15%) Groovy
8 1 (0.15%) PL/SQL
8 1 (0.15%) Scala
8 1 (0.15%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 216 (32.29%) Security Cleared
2 159 (23.77%) SC Cleared
3 60 (8.97%) DV Cleared
4 41 (6.13%) BPSS Clearance
5 26 (3.89%) Degree
6 12 (1.79%) ITIL Certification
7 4 (0.60%) AWS Certification
7 4 (0.60%) TOGAF Certification
8 3 (0.45%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 3 (0.45%) Azure Certification
8 3 (0.45%) CISM
8 3 (0.45%) CISSP
8 3 (0.45%) CRISC
8 3 (0.45%) IIBA
9 2 (0.30%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 2 (0.30%) CTC Cleared
9 2 (0.30%) PMI Certification
10 1 (0.15%) Computer Science Degree
10 1 (0.15%) CSPO
10 1 (0.15%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 113 (16.89%) Accessibility
2 23 (3.44%) WCAG
3 16 (2.39%) ISO/IEC 20000
4 15 (2.24%) QA
5 12 (1.79%) Actionable Recommendations
5 12 (1.79%) NCSC
5 12 (1.79%) SLA
6 10 (1.49%) Data Quality
7 7 (1.05%) GDPR
7 7 (1.05%) Government Security Classifications
8 6 (0.90%) PMO
9 4 (0.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 3 (0.45%) COBIT
10 3 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 3 (0.45%) NIST
11 2 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials
11 2 (0.30%) GRC
12 1 (0.15%) FINRA
12 1 (0.15%) ISO 31000
12 1 (0.15%) MiFID
System Software
1 9 (1.35%) IAG
2 5 (0.75%) Docker
3 3 (0.45%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.45%) EMC RecoverPoint
3 3 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
5 1 (0.15%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 14 (2.09%) Ansible
2 10 (1.49%) Kubernetes
3 8 (1.20%) Terraform
4 3 (0.45%) Avamar
4 3 (0.45%) EMC VPLEX
4 3 (0.45%) vRealize
5 2 (0.30%) Grafana
5 2 (0.30%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.30%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.15%) Argo
6 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.15%) SysTrack
6 1 (0.15%) VxRail
Vendors
1 50 (7.47%) ServiceNow
2 36 (5.38%) Microsoft
3 9 (1.35%) SAP
4 8 (1.20%) Adobe
5 7 (1.05%) Cisco
5 7 (1.05%) Oracle
6 6 (0.90%) Foundry
6 6 (0.90%) Nexthink
7 5 (0.75%) Salesforce
7 5 (0.75%) VMware
8 4 (0.60%) Dynatrace
8 4 (0.60%) Google
8 4 (0.60%) IBM
8 4 (0.60%) Sparx
8 4 (0.60%) Virgin Media
9 3 (0.45%) 3PAR
9 3 (0.45%) Brocade
9 3 (0.45%) EMC
9 3 (0.45%) NetApp
9 3 (0.45%) Veeam