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

6 months to
21 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 190 215 280
Rank change year-on-year +25 +65 -94
Contract jobs citing Service Design 689 358 280
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.49% 1.30% 0.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.77% 1.43% 0.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 478 274 168
10th Percentile £410 £377 £413
25th Percentile £460 £450 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.37% -2.27% -3.72%
75th Percentile £588 £598 £638
90th Percentile £725 £675 £708
UK median daily rate £519 £520 £550
% change year-on-year -0.24% -5.45% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 9 3
10th Percentile £15.89 £31.49 £27.88
25th Percentile £60.50 £51.34 £30.08
Median hourly rate £62.00 £60.00 £33.75
Median % change year-on-year +3.33% +77.78% -41.30%
75th Percentile £62.88 - £35.38
90th Percentile £71.21 £62.29 £36.35
UK median hourly rate £62.00 £60.00 £33.75
% change year-on-year +3.33% +77.78% -41.30%

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 38,989 25,060 28,269
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.56% 90.87% 86.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,802 15,892 17,554
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £405 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £627 £645
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,803 1,513 1,284
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.74 £17.69 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -2.27%
75th Percentile £68.00 £48.71 £66.61
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +0.58%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 +19 318 £525 - 360
North of England -10 125 £475 - 180
South East -17 111 £550 +2.33% 70
Midlands +1 60 £481 +7.25% 94
Yorkshire +3 56 £475 -7.32% 61
West Midlands -4 55 £496 +10.59% 84
North West -44 47 £475 +1.33% 107
South West -22 44 £575 +4.55% 54
North East -25 22 £420 -9.19% 12
East of England -32 7 £525 -4.55% 41
East Midlands - 5 £447 - 10
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 35 (5.08%) Confluence
2 10 (1.45%) SharePoint
3 7 (1.02%) CMS
4 5 (0.73%) LiveCycle
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%) Umbraco
Applications
1 11 (1.60%) MS Visio
2 9 (1.31%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (1.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.87%) Adobe XD
4 6 (0.87%) Sketch
5 2 (0.29%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.29%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.15%) Gliffy
6 1 (0.15%) InVision
6 1 (0.15%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 5 (0.73%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 3 (0.44%) Exchequer
3 2 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.29%) SAP CX
4 1 (0.15%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 55 (7.98%) Azure
2 50 (7.26%) AWS
3 37 (5.37%) Figma
4 30 (4.35%) SaaS
5 22 (3.19%) Miro
6 16 (2.32%) Datadog
6 16 (2.32%) GitHub
7 14 (2.03%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 13 (1.89%) Azure Monitor
8 13 (1.89%) Microsoft 365
9 11 (1.60%) Power Platform
10 8 (1.16%) Microsoft Copilot
10 8 (1.16%) Serverless
11 7 (1.02%) AWS Lambda
11 7 (1.02%) GCP
12 6 (0.87%) Amazon S3
12 6 (0.87%) Azure AI
13 5 (0.73%) Azure DevOps
14 4 (0.58%) Entra ID
14 4 (0.58%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 9 (1.31%) Firewall
2 7 (1.02%) Cisco Nexus
3 5 (0.73%) Network Security
4 4 (0.58%) 2G
4 4 (0.58%) 3G
4 4 (0.58%) 4G
4 4 (0.58%) BGP
4 4 (0.58%) Diameter Protocol
4 4 (0.58%) OSPF
4 4 (0.58%) SIGTRAN
4 4 (0.58%) SS7
4 4 (0.58%) VPN
4 4 (0.58%) VXLAN
4 4 (0.58%) WAN
5 3 (0.44%) NX-OS
5 3 (0.44%) VLAN
6 2 (0.29%) Broadband
6 2 (0.29%) LAN
6 2 (0.29%) TCP/IP
6 2 (0.29%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (0.87%) Metadata
2 5 (0.73%) Power BI
3 3 (0.44%) Amazon RDS
3 3 (0.44%) DynamoDB
4 2 (0.29%) Azure SQL Database
4 2 (0.29%) Geospatial Data
4 2 (0.29%) Oracle Database
4 2 (0.29%) Oracle Reports
5 1 (0.15%) Data Lake
5 1 (0.15%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (0.15%) MongoDB
5 1 (0.15%) PostgreSQL
5 1 (0.15%) Power Query
5 1 (0.15%) Redis
5 1 (0.15%) Relational Database
5 1 (0.15%) SQL Server
5 1 (0.15%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 36 (5.22%) JIRA
2 7 (1.02%) Git
3 6 (0.87%) Jenkins
4 5 (0.73%) Sonatype Nexus
5 3 (0.44%) GitLab
6 2 (0.29%) Appium
6 2 (0.29%) Maven
6 2 (0.29%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.29%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.15%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 1 (0.15%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.15%) NUnit
7 1 (0.15%) Postman
7 1 (0.15%) Selenium
7 1 (0.15%) Terragrunt
7 1 (0.15%) Vite
General
1 244 (35.41%) Social Skills
2 194 (28.16%) Public Sector
3 97 (14.08%) Finance
4 64 (9.29%) Analytical Skills
5 52 (7.55%) Influencing Skills
6 26 (3.77%) Documentation Skills
7 22 (3.19%) Banking
7 22 (3.19%) Military
8 21 (3.05%) Retail
9 19 (2.76%) Organisational Skills
10 18 (2.61%) Telecoms
11 17 (2.47%) Local Government
11 17 (2.47%) Presentation Skills
12 15 (2.18%) Legal
13 7 (1.02%) Back Office
14 6 (0.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 6 (0.87%) Law
14 6 (0.87%) Publishing
15 5 (0.73%) Automotive
15 5 (0.73%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 246 (35.70%) Designer
2 187 (27.14%) Service Designer
3 93 (13.50%) Architect
4 79 (11.47%) Lead
5 70 (10.16%) User Researcher
6 67 (9.72%) Senior
7 46 (6.68%) Analyst
8 45 (6.53%) Service Architect
9 33 (4.79%) Business Analyst
10 29 (4.21%) Senior Designer
11 28 (4.06%) Service Manager
12 21 (3.05%) Product Manager
12 21 (3.05%) Service Transition Manager
12 21 (3.05%) Solutions Architect
12 21 (3.05%) Transition Manager
13 20 (2.90%) Senior Service Designer
14 18 (2.61%) Service Owner
15 17 (2.47%) Consultant
15 17 (2.47%) Service Design Manager
16 16 (2.32%) Interaction Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (1.60%) Terraform
2 9 (1.31%) REST
3 7 (1.02%) RESTful
4 6 (0.87%) HTML
5 5 (0.73%) Web Services
6 4 (0.58%) .NET
6 4 (0.58%) CSS
6 4 (0.58%) SOAP
6 4 (0.58%) STL
6 4 (0.58%) Swagger
6 4 (0.58%) VML
7 3 (0.44%) Node.js
7 3 (0.44%) OpenAPI
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%) Playwright
8 2 (0.29%) Spring Boot
8 2 (0.29%) TanStack
Miscellaneous
1 56 (8.13%) Onboarding
2 48 (6.97%) Product Ownership
3 29 (4.21%) CMDB
4 25 (3.63%) Cloud Native
5 20 (2.90%) NHS
6 15 (2.18%) Legacy Systems
7 11 (1.60%) AI Agents
8 10 (1.45%) Data Centre
8 10 (1.45%) Data Protection Act
9 8 (1.16%) Management Information System
9 8 (1.16%) Taxonomies
10 7 (1.02%) Greenfield Project
11 6 (0.87%) Analytical Mindset
11 6 (0.87%) Distributed Systems
11 6 (0.87%) Virtual Team
12 5 (0.73%) Self-Motivation
13 4 (0.58%) Hybrid Cloud
13 4 (0.58%) Reference Data
14 3 (0.44%) Celerra
14 3 (0.44%) Symmetrix DMX
Operating Systems
1 10 (1.45%) Windows
2 7 (1.02%) Unix
3 6 (0.87%) Linux
4 3 (0.44%) Android
4 3 (0.44%) Apple iOS
5 2 (0.29%) VMS
6 1 (0.15%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.15%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 256 (37.16%) Agile
2 183 (26.56%) Stakeholder Management
3 180 (26.12%) User Research
4 150 (21.77%) ITIL
5 148 (21.48%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
6 133 (19.30%) Continuous Improvement
7 132 (19.16%) Workshop Facilitation
8 130 (18.87%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 113 (16.40%) Decision-Making
10 109 (15.82%) Service Management
11 107 (15.53%) Journey Map
12 99 (14.37%) User Experience
13 90 (13.06%) Roadmaps
14 71 (10.30%) AI
15 67 (9.72%) Interaction Design
16 66 (9.58%) Digital Transformation Programme
17 64 (9.29%) Problem-Solving
18 63 (9.14%) ITSM
19 61 (8.85%) Service Delivery
20 60 (8.71%) Qualitative Research
Programming Languages
1 14 (2.03%) SQL
2 6 (0.87%) Bash
2 6 (0.87%) Python
3 5 (0.73%) Java
3 5 (0.73%) JavaScript
4 4 (0.58%) PowerShell
5 3 (0.44%) Shell Script
6 2 (0.29%) Bicep
6 2 (0.29%) C#
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%) T-SQL
7 1 (0.15%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 251 (36.43%) Security Cleared
2 165 (23.95%) SC Cleared
3 63 (9.14%) DV Cleared
4 48 (6.97%) BPSS Clearance
5 22 (3.19%) ITIL Certification
6 16 (2.32%) Degree
7 3 (0.44%) Master's Degree
8 2 (0.29%) AWS Certification
8 2 (0.29%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 2 (0.29%) Azure Certification
8 2 (0.29%) Cisco Certification
8 2 (0.29%) CTC Cleared
8 2 (0.29%) IIBA
8 2 (0.29%) PMI Certification
8 2 (0.29%) SANS
8 2 (0.29%) TOGAF Certification
9 1 (0.15%) APMG
9 1 (0.15%) CRISC
9 1 (0.15%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 1 (0.15%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 105 (15.24%) Accessibility
2 24 (3.48%) WCAG
3 22 (3.19%) QA
4 20 (2.90%) ISO/IEC 20000
4 20 (2.90%) SLA
5 17 (2.47%) Actionable Recommendations
6 12 (1.74%) Data Quality
7 6 (0.87%) GDPR
8 4 (0.58%) NCSC
9 3 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 3 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 3 (0.44%) NIST
9 3 (0.44%) PMO
10 1 (0.15%) COBIT
10 1 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials
10 1 (0.15%) GRC
10 1 (0.15%) GxP
10 1 (0.15%) ISO 31000
10 1 (0.15%) ISO 9001
10 1 (0.15%) PERC
System Software
1 17 (2.47%) IAG
2 8 (1.16%) Docker
3 5 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (0.58%) 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 20 (2.90%) Ansible
2 19 (2.76%) Kubernetes
3 5 (0.73%) 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
Vendors
1 65 (9.43%) ServiceNow
2 28 (4.06%) Microsoft
3 11 (1.60%) Nexthink
3 11 (1.60%) Salesforce
4 10 (1.45%) Dynatrace
4 10 (1.45%) SAP
5 9 (1.31%) Cisco
5 9 (1.31%) Google
6 8 (1.16%) Adobe
7 7 (1.02%) Oracle
8 5 (0.73%) BMC
8 5 (0.73%) F5
8 5 (0.73%) Foundry
8 5 (0.73%) Sparx
9 4 (0.58%) AppDynamics
9 4 (0.58%) Atlassian
9 4 (0.58%) IBM
9 4 (0.58%) Virgin Media
9 4 (0.58%) VMware
10 3 (0.44%) Brocade