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

6 months to
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 202 216 277
Rank change year-on-year +14 +61 -85
Contract jobs citing Service Design 681 350 279
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.47% 1.26% 0.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.73% 1.38% 0.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 477 270 173
10th Percentile £410 £382 £413
25th Percentile £458 £450 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.26% -2.27% -2.22%
75th Percentile £588 £619 £638
90th Percentile £725 £675 £720
UK median daily rate £513 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.38% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 4 3
10th Percentile £15.89 - £27.88
25th Percentile £60.50 £31.49 £30.08
Median hourly rate £62.00 £42.08 £33.75
Median % change year-on-year +47.34% +24.68% -41.30%
75th Percentile £62.88 £58.37 £35.38
90th Percentile £71.21 £66.22 £36.35
UK median hourly rate £62.00 £42.08 £33.75
% change year-on-year +47.34% +24.68% -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 39,332 25,280 28,365
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.86% 90.86% 86.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,139 16,057 17,805
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £650
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 2,708 1,495 1,348
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.36 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.85 £17.79 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +0.58%
75th Percentile £68.00 £49.88 £66.53
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.65 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +1.92%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 +22 301 £525 -1.41% 206
North of England -8 131 £475 - 79
South East -12 115 £531 -1.19% 63
Yorkshire +2 60 £492 -4.00% 34
Midlands -5 60 £487 +8.11% 55
West Midlands -8 55 £500 +11.11% 39
North West -37 48 £475 +2.70% 35
South West -26 45 £575 +4.55% 39
North East -28 23 £420 -16.00% 10
East of England -25 7 £525 -4.55% 30
East Midlands - 5 £447 - 16
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 34 (4.99%) Confluence
2 10 (1.47%) SharePoint
3 9 (1.32%) CMS
4 5 (0.73%) 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 11 (1.62%) MS Visio
2 9 (1.32%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (1.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.73%) 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%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 5 (0.73%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 2 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.29%) SAP CX
3 1 (0.15%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.15%) Exchequer
3 1 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 56 (8.22%) Azure
2 49 (7.20%) AWS
3 35 (5.14%) Figma
4 30 (4.41%) SaaS
5 21 (3.08%) Miro
6 17 (2.50%) GitHub
7 16 (2.35%) Datadog
8 14 (2.06%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 14 (2.06%) Microsoft 365
9 13 (1.91%) Azure Monitor
10 12 (1.76%) Power Platform
11 9 (1.32%) Serverless
12 8 (1.17%) 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 (1.32%) Firewall
2 7 (1.03%) Cisco Nexus
3 5 (0.73%) 2G
3 5 (0.73%) 3G
3 5 (0.73%) 4G
3 5 (0.73%) Diameter Protocol
3 5 (0.73%) Network Security
3 5 (0.73%) SIGTRAN
3 5 (0.73%) 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%) NX-OS
5 3 (0.44%) VLAN
6 2 (0.29%) 5G
6 2 (0.29%) Broadband
6 2 (0.29%) TCP/IP
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%) 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%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.15%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 37 (5.43%) JIRA
2 9 (1.32%) Git
3 6 (0.88%) Jenkins
4 5 (0.73%) 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
1 234 (34.36%) Social Skills
2 187 (27.46%) Public Sector
3 94 (13.80%) Finance
4 67 (9.84%) Analytical Skills
5 48 (7.05%) Influencing Skills
6 27 (3.96%) Documentation Skills
7 22 (3.23%) Banking
8 21 (3.08%) Retail
9 20 (2.94%) Military
10 19 (2.79%) Telecoms
11 18 (2.64%) Organisational Skills
12 16 (2.35%) Local Government
13 15 (2.20%) Legal
13 15 (2.20%) Presentation Skills
14 7 (1.03%) Back Office
15 6 (0.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 6 (0.88%) Law
15 6 (0.88%) Publishing
16 5 (0.73%) Automotive
16 5 (0.73%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 249 (36.56%) Designer
2 191 (28.05%) Service Designer
3 89 (13.07%) Architect
4 76 (11.16%) Lead
5 66 (9.69%) Senior
6 63 (9.25%) User Researcher
7 47 (6.90%) Analyst
8 43 (6.31%) Service Architect
9 33 (4.85%) Business Analyst
10 31 (4.55%) Senior Designer
11 26 (3.82%) Service Manager
12 22 (3.23%) Product Manager
12 22 (3.23%) Senior Service Designer
13 21 (3.08%) Solutions Architect
14 20 (2.94%) Service Transition Manager
14 20 (2.94%) Transition Manager
15 17 (2.50%) Content Designer
15 17 (2.50%) Service Design Manager
15 17 (2.50%) Service Owner
16 16 (2.35%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (1.76%) Terraform
2 11 (1.62%) RESTful
3 9 (1.32%) REST
4 7 (1.03%) .NET
5 6 (0.88%) HTML
6 5 (0.73%) STL
6 5 (0.73%) Web Services
7 4 (0.59%) CSS
7 4 (0.59%) SOAP
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 59 (8.66%) Onboarding
2 49 (7.20%) Product Ownership
3 29 (4.26%) CMDB
4 25 (3.67%) Cloud Native
5 21 (3.08%) NHS
6 15 (2.20%) Legacy Systems
7 13 (1.91%) AI Agents
8 11 (1.62%) Data Protection Act
9 9 (1.32%) Data Centre
10 8 (1.17%) Analytical Mindset
10 8 (1.17%) Management Information System
11 7 (1.03%) Greenfield Project
11 7 (1.03%) Taxonomies
11 7 (1.03%) Virtual Team
12 6 (0.88%) Distributed Systems
12 6 (0.88%) Self-Motivation
13 4 (0.59%) Hybrid Cloud
13 4 (0.59%) Reference Data
14 3 (0.44%) Celerra
14 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
1 252 (37.00%) Agile
2 175 (25.70%) Stakeholder Management
3 167 (24.52%) User Research
4 150 (22.03%) ITIL
5 138 (20.26%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
6 131 (19.24%) Workshop Facilitation
7 130 (19.09%) Continuous Improvement
8 125 (18.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 109 (16.01%) Journey Map
10 108 (15.86%) Decision-Making
11 105 (15.42%) Service Management
12 100 (14.68%) User Experience
13 91 (13.36%) Roadmaps
14 75 (11.01%) AI
15 66 (9.69%) Problem-Solving
16 65 (9.54%) ITSM
17 61 (8.96%) Service Delivery
18 59 (8.66%) Digital Transformation Programme
19 58 (8.52%) Interaction Design
19 58 (8.52%) UX Design
Programming Languages
1 17 (2.50%) SQL
2 7 (1.03%) Java
2 7 (1.03%) JavaScript
3 6 (0.88%) Bash
3 6 (0.88%) Python
4 5 (0.73%) C#
4 5 (0.73%) PowerShell
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
1 238 (34.95%) Security Cleared
2 156 (22.91%) SC Cleared
3 63 (9.25%) DV Cleared
4 45 (6.61%) BPSS Clearance
5 23 (3.38%) ITIL Certification
6 17 (2.50%) Degree
7 4 (0.59%) 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%) CCA
9 1 (0.15%) CCIE
9 1 (0.15%) CCSP
9 1 (0.15%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 99 (14.54%) Accessibility
2 24 (3.52%) QA
3 23 (3.38%) WCAG
4 22 (3.23%) ISO/IEC 20000
5 20 (2.94%) SLA
6 15 (2.20%) Actionable Recommendations
7 12 (1.76%) Data Quality
8 7 (1.03%) NCSC
9 6 (0.88%) 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
13 1 (0.15%) PERC
System Software
1 17 (2.50%) IAG
2 8 (1.17%) Docker
3 5 (0.73%) 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 20 (2.94%) Ansible
2 19 (2.79%) 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
6 1 (0.15%) SysTrack
Vendors
1 65 (9.54%) ServiceNow
2 30 (4.41%) Microsoft
3 12 (1.76%) Nexthink
4 11 (1.62%) Salesforce
5 10 (1.47%) Dynatrace
5 10 (1.47%) SAP
6 9 (1.32%) Cisco
6 9 (1.32%) Google
7 7 (1.03%) Oracle
8 6 (0.88%) Adobe
9 5 (0.73%) BMC
9 5 (0.73%) F5
9 5 (0.73%) Foundry
9 5 (0.73%) Sparx
9 5 (0.73%) VMware
10 4 (0.59%) AppDynamics
10 4 (0.59%) Atlassian
10 4 (0.59%) IBM
10 4 (0.59%) Virgin Media
11 3 (0.44%) EMC