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

6 months to
28 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 189 220 273
Rank change year-on-year +31 +53 -90
Contract jobs citing Service Design 686 334 285
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.50% 1.21% 0.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.77% 1.34% 1.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 480 251 178
10th Percentile £405 £385 £421
25th Percentile £456 £450 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.19% -2.27% -2.65%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £649
90th Percentile £725 £675 £741
UK median daily rate £513 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.38% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 4 6
10th Percentile £15.89 - -
25th Percentile £60.67 £31.49 -
Median hourly rate £62.00 £42.08 £17.80
Median % change year-on-year +47.34% +136.40% -69.04%
75th Percentile £73.37 £58.37 £26.14
90th Percentile £102.65 £66.22 £31.34
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 38,831 25,009 28,459
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.83% 90.78% 85.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,961 15,919 18,268
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £421
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £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 2,587 1,463 1,501
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.25 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.68 £17.87 £18.11
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £69.47 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £40.50
% change year-on-year +63.02% -37.90% -4.71%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 +17 298 £525 -1.87% 228
South East -4 129 £531 -1.19% 39
North of England +5 125 £475 - 91
Yorkshire +3 59 £480 -6.34% 33
Midlands -4 56 £475 +5.91% 52
West Midlands -15 51 £481 +7.25% 48
South West -12 49 £575 +4.55% 49
North West -35 43 £475 - 47
North East -20 23 £420 -16.00% 11
East of England -23 7 £525 -4.55% 12
East Midlands - 5 £447 - 4
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 29 (4.23%) Confluence
2 10 (1.46%) SharePoint
3 9 (1.31%) 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 10 (1.46%) MS Visio
2 9 (1.31%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (1.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.87%) Sketch
5 4 (0.58%) 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 (0.73%) 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 57 (8.31%) Azure
2 52 (7.58%) AWS
3 35 (5.10%) Figma
4 30 (4.37%) SaaS
5 19 (2.77%) Miro
6 16 (2.33%) GitHub
7 14 (2.04%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 14 (2.04%) Datadog
7 14 (2.04%) Microsoft 365
8 13 (1.90%) Azure Monitor
9 12 (1.75%) Power Platform
10 9 (1.31%) Serverless
11 8 (1.17%) Microsoft Copilot
12 7 (1.02%) AWS Lambda
13 6 (0.87%) Amazon S3
13 6 (0.87%) Azure AI
13 6 (0.87%) Azure DevOps
14 4 (0.58%) Copilot Studio
14 4 (0.58%) OCI
14 4 (0.58%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.02%) Cisco Nexus
1 7 (1.02%) Firewall
2 5 (0.73%) Network Security
3 4 (0.58%) 2G
3 4 (0.58%) 3G
3 4 (0.58%) 4G
3 4 (0.58%) BGP
3 4 (0.58%) Diameter Protocol
3 4 (0.58%) OSPF
3 4 (0.58%) SIGTRAN
3 4 (0.58%) SS7
3 4 (0.58%) VPN
3 4 (0.58%) VXLAN
3 4 (0.58%) 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 (0.87%) Power BI
3 4 (0.58%) SQL Server
4 3 (0.44%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (0.44%) DynamoDB
4 3 (0.44%) Electronic Patient Records
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%) Redis
6 1 (0.15%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.15%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 33 (4.81%) JIRA
2 7 (1.02%) Git
3 6 (0.87%) Jenkins
4 3 (0.44%) GitLab
4 3 (0.44%) Sonatype Nexus
4 3 (0.44%) Team Foundation Server
5 2 (0.29%) Appium
5 2 (0.29%) Postman
6 1 (0.15%) Artifactory
6 1 (0.15%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 1 (0.15%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.15%) Maven
6 1 (0.15%) NUnit
6 1 (0.15%) REST Assured
6 1 (0.15%) Selenium
6 1 (0.15%) Subversion
6 1 (0.15%) Terragrunt
6 1 (0.15%) VersionOne
6 1 (0.15%) Vite
General
1 224 (32.65%) Social Skills
2 194 (28.28%) Public Sector
3 93 (13.56%) Finance
4 62 (9.04%) Analytical Skills
5 52 (7.58%) Influencing Skills
6 27 (3.94%) Documentation Skills
7 21 (3.06%) Banking
8 20 (2.92%) Military
9 18 (2.62%) Presentation Skills
9 18 (2.62%) Retail
9 18 (2.62%) Telecoms
10 17 (2.48%) Organisational Skills
11 14 (2.04%) Local Government
12 12 (1.75%) Legal
13 7 (1.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 6 (0.87%) Back Office
14 6 (0.87%) Financial Institution
15 5 (0.73%) Automotive
15 5 (0.73%) Law
15 5 (0.73%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 263 (38.34%) Designer
2 202 (29.45%) Service Designer
3 93 (13.56%) Architect
4 76 (11.08%) Lead
5 64 (9.33%) Senior
6 62 (9.04%) User Researcher
7 45 (6.56%) Analyst
8 44 (6.41%) Service Architect
9 33 (4.81%) Senior Designer
10 32 (4.66%) Business Analyst
11 26 (3.79%) Service Manager
12 23 (3.35%) Senior Service Designer
13 21 (3.06%) Product Manager
14 20 (2.92%) Service Transition Manager
14 20 (2.92%) Solutions Architect
14 20 (2.92%) Transition Manager
15 19 (2.77%) Consultant
15 19 (2.77%) Content Designer
16 17 (2.48%) Lead Designer
16 17 (2.48%) Service Owner
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (2.19%) REST
2 11 (1.60%) RESTful
3 10 (1.46%) SOAP
4 9 (1.31%) Terraform
5 7 (1.02%) .NET
6 6 (0.87%) HTML
6 6 (0.87%) Web Services
7 5 (0.73%) STL
8 4 (0.58%) CSS
8 4 (0.58%) Swagger
8 4 (0.58%) VML
9 3 (0.44%) Node.js
9 3 (0.44%) OpenAPI
9 3 (0.44%) Playwright
10 2 (0.29%) .NET Framework
10 2 (0.29%) Kafka
10 2 (0.29%) Middleware
10 2 (0.29%) NestJS
10 2 (0.29%) Oracle Fusion
10 2 (0.29%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 56 (8.16%) Onboarding
2 50 (7.29%) Product Ownership
3 33 (4.81%) CMDB
4 24 (3.50%) Cloud Native
5 23 (3.35%) NHS
6 14 (2.04%) Legacy Systems
7 13 (1.90%) AI Agents
8 10 (1.46%) Data Centre
9 9 (1.31%) Data Protection Act
9 9 (1.31%) Management Information System
10 7 (1.02%) Analytical Mindset
10 7 (1.02%) Greenfield Project
10 7 (1.02%) Taxonomies
11 6 (0.87%) Self-Motivation
11 6 (0.87%) Virtual Team
12 5 (0.73%) Security Posture
13 4 (0.58%) Distributed Systems
13 4 (0.58%) Reference Data
14 3 (0.44%) Celerra
14 3 (0.44%) Symmetrix DMX
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
1 253 (36.88%) Agile
2 171 (24.93%) User Research
3 162 (23.62%) Stakeholder Management
4 149 (21.72%) ITIL
5 140 (20.41%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
6 133 (19.39%) Continuous Improvement
7 126 (18.37%) Workshop Facilitation
8 119 (17.35%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 109 (15.89%) Decision-Making
10 108 (15.74%) Journey Map
10 108 (15.74%) Service Management
11 102 (14.87%) User Experience
12 95 (13.85%) Roadmaps
13 75 (10.93%) AI
14 72 (10.50%) ITSM
15 63 (9.18%) Interaction Design
16 62 (9.04%) Problem-Solving
17 59 (8.60%) UX Design
18 57 (8.31%) Collaborative Working
18 57 (8.31%) Digital Transformation Programme
Programming Languages
1 15 (2.19%) SQL
2 8 (1.17%) PowerShell
3 7 (1.02%) JavaScript
4 6 (0.87%) Bash
4 6 (0.87%) Python
5 5 (0.73%) C#
5 5 (0.73%) Java
6 3 (0.44%) T-SQL
7 2 (0.29%) Bicep
8 1 (0.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 1 (0.15%) Go
8 1 (0.15%) Kotlin
8 1 (0.15%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 252 (36.73%) Security Cleared
2 168 (24.49%) SC Cleared
3 73 (10.64%) DV Cleared
4 43 (6.27%) BPSS Clearance
5 24 (3.50%) Degree
6 18 (2.62%) ITIL Certification
7 5 (0.73%) AWS Certification
7 5 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
8 4 (0.58%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 4 (0.58%) 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
1 103 (15.01%) Accessibility
2 27 (3.94%) ISO/IEC 20000
3 24 (3.50%) QA
4 22 (3.21%) WCAG
5 20 (2.92%) SLA
6 14 (2.04%) Actionable Recommendations
7 12 (1.75%) Data Quality
7 12 (1.75%) NCSC
8 7 (1.02%) Government Security Classifications
9 5 (0.73%) GDPR
10 4 (0.58%) PMO
11 3 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 2 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 2 (0.29%) NIST
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 (2.48%) IAG
2 5 (0.73%) Docker
3 4 (0.58%) 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 (2.92%) Ansible
2 16 (2.33%) 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 67 (9.77%) ServiceNow
2 30 (4.37%) Microsoft
3 12 (1.75%) Nexthink
4 10 (1.46%) Dynatrace
5 9 (1.31%) Cisco
5 9 (1.31%) Salesforce
5 9 (1.31%) SAP
6 6 (0.87%) Adobe
6 6 (0.87%) 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 (0.58%) IBM
8 4 (0.58%) Virgin Media
8 4 (0.58%) VMware
9 3 (0.44%) Brocade
9 3 (0.44%) EMC
9 3 (0.44%) NetApp