SCOM Contract Job Trends

Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring SCOM skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 29 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 590 499 455
Rank change year-on-year -91 -44 +49
Contract jobs citing SCOM 95 61 102
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.18% 0.19% 0.26%
As % of the Systems Management category 1.60% 1.34% 2.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 67 27 70
10th Percentile £400 £314 £400
25th Percentile £463 £413 £477
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £488 £550
Median % change year-on-year +10.26% -11.36% +18.28%
75th Percentile £629 £550 £608
90th Percentile £725 £620 £608
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £469 £605
% change year-on-year +14.67% -22.52% +34.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 3
Median hourly rate - £38.00 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year - +59.66% -51.49%
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - -

All Systems Management Skills
UK

SCOM falls under the Systems Management category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring systems management skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for systems management skills 5,937 4,569 4,598
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.02% 13.87% 11.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,951 2,963 3,173
10th Percentile £313 £281 £300
25th Percentile £418 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year +3.50% -3.85% -5.45%
75th Percentile £603 £600 £619
90th Percentile £688 £681 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 203 80 65
10th Percentile £18.25 £13.75 £20.00
25th Percentile £31.00 £18.87 £23.80
Median hourly rate £63.48 £30.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +111.60% -20.00% -30.23%
75th Percentile £71.22 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £84.72 £78.83 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.31 £55.00 £38.50
% change year-on-year +15.10% +42.86% -16.63%

SCOM
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing SCOM relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

SCOM job vacancy trend in the UK

SCOM
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SCOM.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SCOM

SCOM
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SCOM over the 6 months to 29 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SCOM in the UK

SCOM
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SCOM.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SCOM

SCOM
Top 12 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SCOM within the UK over the 6 months to 29 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
England -84 89 £538 +9.36% 22
UK excluding London -60 74 £538 +14.67% 15
South East -31 58 £538 +13.16% 6
London -76 16 £463 -6.66% 7
Work from Home -64 12 £514 -6.97% 7
North West -59 7 - - 3
North of England -71 7 - - 4
East of England -22 3 £675 +8.00% 2
Midlands -46 3 £385 +22.22% 1
Scotland - 3 £675 -
East Midlands -14 2 £411 +30.56%
West Midlands - 1 £265 - 1

SCOM
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 8 (8.42%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (6.32%) Confluence
3 1 (1.05%) OpenStack
Applications
1 3 (3.16%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 9 (9.47%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 27 (28.42%) Azure
2 15 (15.79%) Azure Monitor
3 11 (11.58%) Power Platform
4 6 (6.32%) Azure DevOps
4 6 (6.32%) Rubrik
5 4 (4.21%) Entra ID
5 4 (4.21%) Microsoft 365
6 2 (2.11%) AWS
7 1 (1.05%) Datadog
7 1 (1.05%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 35 (36.84%) DNS
2 10 (10.53%) DHCP
3 7 (7.37%) SSL
4 4 (4.21%) Firewall
5 3 (3.16%) NetScaler
5 3 (3.16%) Network Security
6 2 (2.11%) TCP/IP
6 2 (2.11%) VPN
7 1 (1.05%) Cisco Nexus
7 1 (1.05%) Intrusion Detection
7 1 (1.05%) NAS
7 1 (1.05%) SAN
7 1 (1.05%) Unified Communications
7 1 (1.05%) VLAN
7 1 (1.05%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (17.89%) SQL Server
2 14 (14.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 11 (11.58%) Power BI
4 8 (8.42%) MySQL
5 6 (6.32%) SQL Server Analysis Services
5 6 (6.32%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 3 (3.16%) Data Mining
7 1 (1.05%) Azure SQL Database
7 1 (1.05%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 6 (6.32%) JIRA
2 1 (1.05%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 26 (27.37%) Analytical Skills
2 14 (14.74%) Social Skills
3 5 (5.26%) Documentation Skills
4 2 (2.11%) Finance
4 2 (2.11%) Law
5 1 (1.05%) Banking
5 1 (1.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 1 (1.05%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 23 (24.21%) Cloud Engineer
2 22 (23.16%) Support Engineer
3 19 (20.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 18 (18.95%) 3rd Line Engineer
5 16 (16.84%) Lead
6 13 (13.68%) Storage Engineer
7 12 (12.63%) DBA
7 12 (12.63%) SQL DBA
8 8 (8.42%) Administrator
8 8 (8.42%) Monitoring Engineer
9 7 (7.37%) Technical Leader
10 6 (6.32%) Senior
10 6 (6.32%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 5 (5.26%) SC Cleared DBA
12 4 (4.21%) Server Specialist
13 3 (3.16%) 3rd Line Infrastructure Engineer
13 3 (3.16%) Systems Administrator
13 3 (3.16%) Windows Systems Administrator
13 3 (3.16%) Wintel Administrator
14 2 (2.11%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (5.26%) REST
2 3 (3.16%) OAuth
2 3 (3.16%) Software Packaging
3 1 (1.05%) .NET
3 1 (1.05%) Terraform
Miscellaneous
1 14 (14.74%) Clustering
2 13 (13.68%) PKI
3 10 (10.53%) Data Centre
3 10 (10.53%) Management Information System
4 7 (7.37%) Hybrid Cloud
4 7 (7.37%) Replication
5 2 (2.11%) Onboarding
5 2 (2.11%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (1.05%) Cloud Native
6 1 (1.05%) CMDB
6 1 (1.05%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (1.05%) Enterprise Cloud
6 1 (1.05%) Enterprise Storage
6 1 (1.05%) NVMe
6 1 (1.05%) PMI
6 1 (1.05%) Private Cloud
6 1 (1.05%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 92 (96.84%) Windows
2 67 (70.53%) Windows Server
3 11 (11.58%) Linux
3 11 (11.58%) Windows Server 2019
4 4 (4.21%) Windows Server 2008
5 3 (3.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (3.16%) Windows Server 2012
6 2 (2.11%) Windows 10
6 2 (2.11%) Windows 7
6 2 (2.11%) Windows Server 2016
7 1 (1.05%) AIX
7 1 (1.05%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 48 (50.53%) ITSM
2 40 (42.11%) Problem-Solving
3 33 (34.74%) Technical Leadership
4 32 (33.68%) ITIL
5 29 (30.53%) Change Management
6 21 (22.11%) Service Management
7 20 (21.05%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 16 (16.84%) Software Distribution
9 15 (15.79%) Service Delivery
10 14 (14.74%) Task Automation
11 13 (13.68%) Capacity Management
12 11 (11.58%) Infrastructure Monitoring
13 10 (10.53%) Problem Management
14 9 (9.47%) Business Intelligence
14 9 (9.47%) DevOps
14 9 (9.47%) Incident Management
14 9 (9.47%) Network Virtualisation
14 9 (9.47%) Project Delivery
14 9 (9.47%) Runbook
15 8 (8.42%) Log Analytics
Programming Languages
1 63 (66.32%) PowerShell
2 34 (35.79%) SQL
3 8 (8.42%) T-SQL
4 6 (6.32%) Bash
5 1 (1.05%) C#
5 1 (1.05%) Korn
5 1 (1.05%) Python
5 1 (1.05%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 84 (88.42%) Security Cleared
2 53 (55.79%) DV Cleared
3 33 (34.74%) SC Cleared
4 13 (13.68%) Microsoft Certification
5 9 (9.47%) Degree
6 7 (7.37%) Azure Certification
7 5 (5.26%) BPSS Clearance
7 5 (5.26%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 5 (5.26%) MCSE
8 3 (3.16%) CCA
8 3 (3.16%) Citrix Certification
8 3 (3.16%) MCSA
8 3 (3.16%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 2 (2.11%) Computer Science Degree
10 1 (1.05%) Cisco Certification
10 1 (1.05%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (5.26%) SLA
2 4 (4.21%) QA
3 1 (1.05%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 56 (58.95%) VMware Infrastructure
2 52 (54.74%) Active Directory
3 35 (36.84%) VMware ESXi
4 22 (23.16%) vCloud
5 21 (22.11%) VMware NSX
6 11 (11.58%) Hyper-V
6 11 (11.58%) Virtual Machines
7 6 (6.32%) vSphere
8 1 (1.05%) Docker
8 1 (1.05%) Firmware
8 1 (1.05%) KVM
8 1 (1.05%) Virtual Desktop
8 1 (1.05%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 48 (50.53%) vCenter Server
2 22 (23.16%) SCCM
3 13 (13.68%) Avamar
4 6 (6.32%) Microsoft Clustering
4 6 (6.32%) NetBackup
5 4 (4.21%) SCOrch
6 3 (3.16%) Ansible
6 3 (3.16%) Microsoft Intune
6 3 (3.16%) PowerCLI
6 3 (3.16%) SCSM
7 2 (2.11%) Failover Clustering
7 2 (2.11%) Nagios
7 2 (2.11%) vMotion
8 1 (1.05%) Grafana
8 1 (1.05%) Kubernetes
8 1 (1.05%) Prometheus
8 1 (1.05%) SCVMM
8 1 (1.05%) SQL Sentry
8 1 (1.05%) WMI
8 1 (1.05%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 75 (78.95%) VMware
2 47 (49.47%) Microsoft
3 21 (22.11%) SolarWinds
4 19 (20.00%) ServiceNow
5 13 (13.68%) Dell
5 13 (13.68%) Thales
6 10 (10.53%) Citrix
7 9 (9.47%) Broadcom
7 9 (9.47%) Remedy
7 9 (9.47%) Splunk
8 7 (7.37%) BMC
9 6 (6.32%) Commvault
9 6 (6.32%) CyberArk
10 4 (4.21%) Veeam
11 3 (3.16%) Trend Micro
12 2 (2.11%) Cisco
12 2 (2.11%) Juniper
13 1 (1.05%) Intel
13 1 (1.05%) Oracle
13 1 (1.05%) Red Hat