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

6 months to
22 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 184 221 285
Rank change year-on-year +37 +64 -104
Contract jobs citing Service Design 688 335 277
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.50% 1.21% 0.83%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.77% 1.34% 0.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 485 252 173
10th Percentile £405 £400 £429
25th Percentile £456 £450 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.65% -2.27% -3.51%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £675 £750
UK median daily rate £510 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.86% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 2 6
10th Percentile £15.89 £53.35 -
25th Percentile £44.21 £56.36 -
Median hourly rate £62.50 £62.06 £17.80
Median % change year-on-year +0.71% +248.65% -69.04%
75th Percentile £90.25 £67.09 £26.14
90th Percentile £102.95 £69.71 £31.34
UK median hourly rate £62.50 £62.06 £17.80
% change year-on-year +0.71% +248.65% -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 38,969 25,067 28,490
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.95% 90.85% 85.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,148 15,970 18,420
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 £630 £626 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £754
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,571 1,462 1,558
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.21 £14.05
25th Percentile £19.03 £17.87 £18.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -40.82% +2.41%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.05 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.92 £25.15 £40.50
% change year-on-year +66.68% -37.90% -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 22 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 22 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 22 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 +30 299 £525 -3.00% 175
South East -8 130 £531 -1.19% 36
North of England +8 128 £475 - 82
Yorkshire +11 63 £480 -6.34% 25
Midlands -7 54 £475 +5.91% 28
West Midlands -9 50 £481 +7.25% 26
South West -29 45 £575 +4.55% 44
North West -39 42 £475 - 45
North East -25 23 £420 -18.05% 12
East of England -26 7 £525 -4.55% 12
East Midlands - 4 £425 - 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 31 (4.51%) Confluence
2 10 (1.45%) SharePoint
3 8 (1.16%) 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 12 (1.74%) MS Visio
2 8 (1.16%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (0.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (0.87%) Sketch
4 4 (0.58%) Adobe XD
5 3 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.29%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.29%) Microsoft Office
6 2 (0.29%) Trello
7 1 (0.15%) Gliffy
7 1 (0.15%) InVision
7 1 (0.15%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 5 (0.73%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 2 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.15%) Adobe Campaign
3 1 (0.15%) Exchequer
3 1 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.15%) SAP CX
Cloud Services
1 56 (8.14%) Azure
2 51 (7.41%) AWS
3 34 (4.94%) Figma
4 30 (4.36%) SaaS
5 20 (2.91%) Miro
6 15 (2.18%) GitHub
7 14 (2.03%) Microsoft 365
8 13 (1.89%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 13 (1.89%) Datadog
8 13 (1.89%) Power Platform
9 12 (1.74%) Azure Monitor
10 9 (1.31%) Serverless
11 8 (1.16%) 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 5 (0.73%) PowerApps
15 4 (0.58%) Copilot Studio
15 4 (0.58%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 8 (1.16%) 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%) 3GPP
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
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (1.02%) Power BI
2 6 (0.87%) Metadata
3 4 (0.58%) Electronic Patient Records
3 4 (0.58%) 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%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 35 (5.09%) JIRA
2 7 (1.02%) Git
2 7 (1.02%) Jenkins
3 3 (0.44%) GitLab
3 3 (0.44%) Sonatype Nexus
3 3 (0.44%) Team Foundation Server
4 2 (0.29%) Appium
4 2 (0.29%) Postman
5 1 (0.15%) Artifactory
5 1 (0.15%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 1 (0.15%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.15%) Maven
5 1 (0.15%) NUnit
5 1 (0.15%) REST Assured
5 1 (0.15%) Selenium
5 1 (0.15%) Subversion
5 1 (0.15%) Terragrunt
5 1 (0.15%) VersionOne
5 1 (0.15%) Vite
General
1 223 (32.41%) Social Skills
2 195 (28.34%) Public Sector
3 97 (14.10%) Finance
4 65 (9.45%) Analytical Skills
5 53 (7.70%) Influencing Skills
6 25 (3.63%) Documentation Skills
7 22 (3.20%) Banking
8 19 (2.76%) Military
9 18 (2.62%) Presentation Skills
9 18 (2.62%) Telecoms
10 17 (2.47%) Retail
11 16 (2.33%) Organisational Skills
12 15 (2.18%) Local Government
13 12 (1.74%) Legal
14 8 (1.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 7 (1.02%) Financial Institution
16 6 (0.87%) Back Office
16 6 (0.87%) Publishing
17 5 (0.73%) Law
18 4 (0.58%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 260 (37.79%) Designer
2 201 (29.22%) Service Designer
3 90 (13.08%) Architect
4 74 (10.76%) Lead
5 63 (9.16%) User Researcher
6 61 (8.87%) Senior
7 51 (7.41%) Analyst
8 40 (5.81%) Service Architect
9 33 (4.80%) Business Analyst
10 32 (4.65%) Senior Designer
11 26 (3.78%) Service Manager
12 24 (3.49%) Senior Service Designer
13 20 (2.91%) Consultant
13 20 (2.91%) Service Transition Manager
13 20 (2.91%) Solutions Architect
13 20 (2.91%) Transition Manager
14 19 (2.76%) Content Designer
14 19 (2.76%) Product Manager
15 18 (2.62%) Lead Designer
16 17 (2.47%) Service Owner
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (2.33%) REST
2 11 (1.60%) RESTful
2 11 (1.60%) SOAP
3 9 (1.31%) Terraform
4 7 (1.02%) .NET
5 6 (0.87%) HTML
5 6 (0.87%) Web Services
6 5 (0.73%) STL
7 4 (0.58%) CSS
7 4 (0.58%) Swagger
7 4 (0.58%) 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 57 (8.28%) Onboarding
2 50 (7.27%) Product Ownership
3 31 (4.51%) CMDB
4 25 (3.63%) NHS
5 23 (3.34%) Cloud Native
6 15 (2.18%) Legacy Systems
7 13 (1.89%) AI Agents
8 11 (1.60%) Data Centre
9 10 (1.45%) Management Information System
10 9 (1.31%) Data Protection Act
11 7 (1.02%) Analytical Mindset
11 7 (1.02%) Greenfield Project
12 6 (0.87%) Self-Motivation
12 6 (0.87%) Taxonomies
13 5 (0.73%) Reference Data
13 5 (0.73%) Security Posture
13 5 (0.73%) Virtual Team
14 4 (0.58%) Distributed Systems
15 3 (0.44%) EMC VMAX
15 3 (0.44%) EMC VNX
Operating Systems
1 8 (1.16%) 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
1 258 (37.50%) Agile
2 173 (25.15%) User Research
3 162 (23.55%) Stakeholder Management
4 149 (21.66%) ITIL
5 136 (19.77%) Continuous Improvement
6 135 (19.62%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
7 127 (18.46%) Workshop Facilitation
8 119 (17.30%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 110 (15.99%) Journey Map
10 108 (15.70%) Service Management
11 107 (15.55%) Decision-Making
12 99 (14.39%) User Experience
13 97 (14.10%) Roadmaps
14 74 (10.76%) AI
15 67 (9.74%) ITSM
16 64 (9.30%) Problem-Solving
17 60 (8.72%) Interaction Design
17 60 (8.72%) Service Delivery
18 58 (8.43%) Collaborative Working
19 57 (8.28%) UX Design
Programming Languages
1 16 (2.33%) SQL
2 9 (1.31%) PowerShell
3 7 (1.02%) Bash
3 7 (1.02%) JavaScript
3 7 (1.02%) Python
4 5 (0.73%) C#
4 5 (0.73%) Java
5 3 (0.44%) T-SQL
6 2 (0.29%) Bicep
7 1 (0.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 1 (0.15%) Go
7 1 (0.15%) Kotlin
7 1 (0.15%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 250 (36.34%) Security Cleared
2 165 (23.98%) SC Cleared
3 73 (10.61%) DV Cleared
4 43 (6.25%) BPSS Clearance
5 25 (3.63%) Degree
6 17 (2.47%) 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
1 101 (14.68%) Accessibility
2 25 (3.63%) ISO/IEC 20000
3 23 (3.34%) QA
4 22 (3.20%) WCAG
5 18 (2.62%) SLA
6 16 (2.33%) Actionable Recommendations
7 12 (1.74%) Data Quality
7 12 (1.74%) NCSC
8 7 (1.02%) Government Security Classifications
9 6 (0.87%) 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 16 (2.33%) 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 (2.91%) Ansible
2 15 (2.18%) 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 62 (9.01%) ServiceNow
2 30 (4.36%) Microsoft
3 11 (1.60%) Nexthink
4 9 (1.31%) Cisco
4 9 (1.31%) Dynatrace
4 9 (1.31%) SAP
5 8 (1.16%) Salesforce
6 7 (1.02%) Adobe
7 6 (0.87%) Oracle
8 5 (0.73%) BMC
8 5 (0.73%) F5
8 5 (0.73%) Foundry
8 5 (0.73%) Google
8 5 (0.73%) Sparx
9 4 (0.58%) IBM
9 4 (0.58%) Virgin Media
9 4 (0.58%) VMware
10 3 (0.44%) Brocade
10 3 (0.44%) EMC
10 3 (0.44%) NetApp