SLA Contracts in the North West

Service Level Agreement (SLA)
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the North West requiring SLA skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited SLA over the 6 months leading up to 2 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 89 49 100
Rank change year-on-year -40 +51 -26
Contract jobs citing SLA 36 101 67
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North West 1.83% 3.68% 2.11%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 13.24% 21.09% 14.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 23 20 18
10th Percentile £143 £338 £309
25th Percentile £150 £459 £436
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £215 £538 £479
Median % change year-on-year -60.00% +12.27% +112.78%
75th Percentile £444 £582 £530
90th Percentile £475 £588 £550
England median daily rate £250 £330 £300
% change year-on-year -24.24% +10.00% -15.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 18 17
10th Percentile - £10.95 £29.06
25th Percentile - £10.98 £29.30
Median hourly rate £29.00 £11.60 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +150.05% -72.71% +237.57%
75th Percentile - £16.21 £47.00
90th Percentile - £17.74 £49.52
England median hourly rate £22.39 £14.70 £18.50
% change year-on-year +52.28% -20.54% +12.12%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
North West

SLA falls under the Quality Assurance and Compliance category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring quality assurance or compliance skills in the North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 272 479 473
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 13.82% 17.46% 14.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 183 264 298
10th Percentile £274 £325 £298
25th Percentile £375 £425 £393
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £514 £475
Median % change year-on-year -7.54% +8.16% +2.70%
75th Percentile £586 £598 £588
90th Percentile £700 £694 £650
England median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.38% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 71 31
10th Percentile £13.50 - £28.70
25th Percentile £16.20 £10.95 £30.54
Median hourly rate £30.38 £12.84 £39.60
Median % change year-on-year +136.60% -67.58% +120.00%
75th Percentile £65.31 £26.66 £48.76
90th Percentile £84.33 £43.75 £67.00
England median hourly rate £35.00 £22.34 £41.25
% change year-on-year +56.67% -45.84% +50.00%

SLA
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Job postings citing SLA as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Job vacancy trend for SLA in the North West

SLA
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the North West

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing SLA in the North West.

Daily rate trend for SLA in the North West

SLA
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SLA in the North West over the 6 months to 2 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for SLA in the North West

SLA
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing SLA in the North West.

Hourly rate trend for SLA in the North West

SLA
Contract Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SLA within the North West region over the 6 months to 2 May 2025. 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
Cheshire -10 12 £250 +104.92% 14
Merseyside +8 10 £150 - 6
Manchester -20 9 £450 +0.56% 43
Cumbria -19 4 - -
SLA
England

SLA
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North West by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 8 (22.22%) Skype for Business
2 7 (19.44%) Microsoft Exchange
2 7 (19.44%) SharePoint
3 4 (11.11%) Exchange Server 2010
3 4 (11.11%) IIS
4 2 (5.56%) Confluence
Applications
1 9 (25.00%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (2.78%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 12 (33.33%) Microsoft 365
2 3 (8.33%) AWS
2 3 (8.33%) Azure
2 3 (8.33%) Entra ID
3 2 (5.56%) SaaS
4 1 (2.78%) Amazon EC2
4 1 (2.78%) Amazon S3
4 1 (2.78%) AWS CloudFormation
4 1 (2.78%) Nutanix
4 1 (2.78%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 8 (22.22%) Skype
2 6 (16.67%) DNS
3 4 (11.11%) DHCP
3 4 (11.11%) Firewall
3 4 (11.11%) PSTN
3 4 (11.11%) SMTP
4 3 (8.33%) Internet
4 3 (8.33%) iSCSI
4 3 (8.33%) LAN
4 3 (8.33%) Remote Desktop
4 3 (8.33%) WAN
4 3 (8.33%) Wi-Fi
4 3 (8.33%) Wireless
5 2 (5.56%) TCP/IP
5 2 (5.56%) VPN
6 1 (2.78%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (8.33%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 3 (8.33%) JIRA
General
1 18 (50.00%) Social Skills
2 5 (13.89%) Public Sector
3 3 (8.33%) Analytical Skills
4 2 (5.56%) Telecoms
5 1 (2.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 16 (44.44%) Analyst
1 16 (44.44%) Service Analyst
1 16 (44.44%) Service Desk Analyst
2 4 (11.11%) Collaboration Engineer
3 3 (8.33%) Administrator
3 3 (8.33%) Exchange Engineer
3 3 (8.33%) Support Engineer
3 3 (8.33%) Technical Engineer
3 3 (8.33%) VMWare Administrator
3 3 (8.33%) Wintel Administrator
4 2 (5.56%) IT Analyst
4 2 (5.56%) Lead
4 2 (5.56%) Network Manager
4 2 (5.56%) Network Operations Manager
4 2 (5.56%) Operations Manager
4 2 (5.56%) Service Management Analyst
4 2 (5.56%) Technical Support
4 2 (5.56%) Technical Support Engineer
5 1 (2.78%) Head of Delivery
5 1 (2.78%) Head of Service Operations
Miscellaneous
1 7 (19.44%) Enterprise Software
1 7 (19.44%) Management Information System
2 4 (11.11%) Blackberry
2 4 (11.11%) Handset
3 3 (8.33%) IVR
4 2 (5.56%) Analytical Mindset
5 1 (2.78%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 18 (50.00%) Windows
2 8 (22.22%) Windows 10
3 7 (19.44%) Android
3 7 (19.44%) Windows Server
3 7 (19.44%) Windows Server 2016
3 7 (19.44%) Windows Server 2019
4 4 (11.11%) Linux
5 3 (8.33%) Windows Server 2012
6 1 (2.78%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 24 (66.67%) ITIL
2 12 (33.33%) Customer Service
3 9 (25.00%) ITSM
4 8 (22.22%) Incident Management
4 8 (22.22%) Problem-Solving
5 7 (19.44%) Performance Tuning
6 6 (16.67%) Performance Monitoring
7 5 (13.89%) Problem Management
7 5 (13.89%) Service Delivery
8 4 (11.11%) Change Management
8 4 (11.11%) Patch Management
8 4 (11.11%) Process Improvement
8 4 (11.11%) Service Management
9 3 (8.33%) CRM
9 3 (8.33%) Disaster Recovery
9 3 (8.33%) High Availability
9 3 (8.33%) Information Security
9 3 (8.33%) Resource Management
9 3 (8.33%) Root Cause Analysis
9 3 (8.33%) Vulnerability Remediation
Qualifications
1 17 (47.22%) Security Cleared
2 16 (44.44%) SC Cleared
3 4 (11.11%) Degree
3 4 (11.11%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (2.78%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 16 (44.44%) Active Directory
2 4 (11.11%) VMware ESXi
2 4 (11.11%) VMware Infrastructure
3 3 (8.33%) Hyper-V
3 3 (8.33%) Microsoft Virtual Server
3 3 (8.33%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (8.33%) Virtual Servers
4 1 (2.78%) Virtual Desktop
4 1 (2.78%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 3 (8.33%) Microsoft Clustering
1 3 (8.33%) NetApp OnCommand
1 3 (8.33%) vCenter Server
1 3 (8.33%) vMotion
1 3 (8.33%) WSUS
2 1 (2.78%) Ansible
2 1 (2.78%) Nagios
2 1 (2.78%) Prometheus
2 1 (2.78%) SCCM
2 1 (2.78%) Terraform
2 1 (2.78%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 13 (36.11%) Microsoft
2 11 (30.56%) ServiceNow
3 4 (11.11%) Clearswift
3 4 (11.11%) Ribbon
3 4 (11.11%) VMware
4 3 (8.33%) Apple
5 1 (2.78%) Dell
5 1 (2.78%) HP
5 1 (2.78%) IBM
5 1 (2.78%) SolarWinds