Service Delivery Contract Job Trends

Service Delivery
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Service Delivery skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 14 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 130 131 105
Rank change year-on-year +1 -26 +13
Contract jobs citing Service Delivery 914 640 940
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.12% 2.17% 2.11%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.46% 2.40% 2.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 519 396 603
10th Percentile £207 £221 £200
25th Percentile £331 £375 £309
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.04% -4.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £482
% change year-on-year - -6.64% -10.74%
Number of hourly rates quoted 156 57 87
10th Percentile £13.33 £14.93 £13.36
25th Percentile £16.00 £15.44 £14.16
Median hourly rate £17.87 £21.46 £14.80
Median % change year-on-year -16.73% +45.00% -43.25%
75th Percentile £28.50 £28.00 £24.38
90th Percentile £59.38 £33.75 £58.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.69 £19.75 £14.80
% change year-on-year -10.43% +33.45% -42.01%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Service Delivery 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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 37,150 26,655 38,571
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.07% 90.32% 86.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,527 17,023 25,087
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £612 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -2.04% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,218 906 2,334
10th Percentile £14.88 £15.39 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% - -7.14%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £31.65
% change year-on-year -15.38% +2.69% -9.57%

Service Delivery
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Service Delivery job vacancy trend in the UK

Service Delivery
Daily Rate Trend

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Service Delivery

Service Delivery
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Service Delivery over the 6 months to 14 March 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Service Delivery in the UK

Service Delivery
Hourly Rate Trend

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Service Delivery

Service Delivery
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Service Delivery over the 6 months to 14 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Service Delivery in the UK

Service Delivery
Top 17 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Service Delivery within the UK over the 6 months to 14 March 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 -2 771 £475 -3.06% 523
UK excluding London +1 571 £450 - 449
London -18 269 £500 -9.09% 152
Work from Home +14 218 £496 +4.42% 207
South East +15 151 £475 +2.15% 171
North of England -21 125 £450 +8.70% 107
South West +21 103 £455 +1.06% 35
Midlands -31 88 £530 +17.78% 73
North West -15 72 £350 -14.06% 52
West Midlands -49 52 £550 +17.58% 44
Scotland +7 48 £450 -4.26% 12
East Midlands -15 36 £425 +21.43% 29
Yorkshire -33 36 £450 - 41
East of England -48 29 £425 +6.25% 44
Wales +14 28 £160 -64.44% 19
North East -1 17 £450 -43.75% 15
Northern Ireland -3 3 £475 +220.95% 2

Service Delivery
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 35 (3.83%) Microsoft Exchange
2 29 (3.17%) Confluence
3 25 (2.74%) SharePoint
4 4 (0.44%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 3 (0.33%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.11%) Camunda
6 1 (0.11%) CMS
6 1 (0.11%) HCL Notes
6 1 (0.11%) LiveCycle
6 1 (0.11%) Moodle
6 1 (0.11%) nginx
6 1 (0.11%) SAS
6 1 (0.11%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 56 (6.13%) Microsoft Office
2 48 (5.25%) Microsoft Excel
3 20 (2.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 9 (0.98%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.55%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.55%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.33%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.22%) Adobe After Effects
7 2 (0.22%) Adobe XD
7 2 (0.22%) InVision
7 2 (0.22%) Sketch
7 2 (0.22%) Trello
8 1 (0.11%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 21 (2.30%) Remedy ITSM
2 14 (1.53%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.66%) Maximo
3 6 (0.66%) SAP IS-U
4 4 (0.44%) NEC Housing
5 2 (0.22%) assyst
5 2 (0.22%) iTrent
5 2 (0.22%) Kondor
5 2 (0.22%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.22%) SAP ERP
5 2 (0.22%) SAP HCM
6 1 (0.11%) Alphatax
6 1 (0.11%) ContrOCC
6 1 (0.11%) Dynamics GP
6 1 (0.11%) SAP Payroll
6 1 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 1 (0.11%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 115 (12.58%) Azure
2 108 (11.82%) Microsoft 365
3 66 (7.22%) AWS
4 40 (4.38%) Power Platform
5 28 (3.06%) SaaS
6 25 (2.74%) GCP
7 21 (2.30%) Azure DevOps
8 17 (1.86%) Entra ID
9 13 (1.42%) SuccessFactors
10 12 (1.31%) Power Automate
11 8 (0.88%) Microsoft Copilot
11 8 (0.88%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 7 (0.77%) Dynamics 365
12 7 (0.77%) GitHub
12 7 (0.77%) OCI
12 7 (0.77%) PaaS
13 6 (0.66%) Google Workspace
13 6 (0.66%) OpenShift
14 5 (0.55%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 5 (0.55%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 35 (3.83%) Firewall
2 29 (3.17%) WAN
3 25 (2.74%) VPN
4 22 (2.41%) LAN
5 20 (2.19%) DNS
6 17 (1.86%) DHCP
6 17 (1.86%) TCP/IP
7 15 (1.64%) SD-WAN
8 13 (1.42%) PABX
8 13 (1.42%) Wi-Fi
9 12 (1.31%) Network Security
10 9 (0.98%) MPLS
10 9 (0.98%) Wireless
11 8 (0.88%) Cisco IOS
11 8 (0.88%) Skype
12 6 (0.66%) BGP
12 6 (0.66%) Internet
13 5 (0.55%) VLAN
14 4 (0.44%) SAN
14 4 (0.44%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (3.28%) Power BI
2 18 (1.97%) SQL Server
3 12 (1.31%) MySQL
4 9 (0.98%) Relational Database
5 7 (0.77%) Metadata
5 7 (0.77%) MongoDB
5 7 (0.77%) Tableau
6 6 (0.66%) Data Warehouse
6 6 (0.66%) Oracle Database
6 6 (0.66%) PostgreSQL
7 5 (0.55%) Electronic Patient Records
8 4 (0.44%) RDBMS
9 3 (0.33%) Elasticsearch
9 3 (0.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 2 (0.22%) Amazon RDS
10 2 (0.22%) Crystal Reports
10 2 (0.22%) Data Mining
10 2 (0.22%) DTS
10 2 (0.22%) SQL Server Analysis Services
10 2 (0.22%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 70 (7.66%) JIRA
2 15 (1.64%) Git
3 10 (1.09%) Jenkins
4 7 (0.77%) GitLab
4 7 (0.77%) Maven
5 3 (0.33%) TestRail
6 2 (0.22%) Axure RP
6 2 (0.22%) CircleCI
6 2 (0.22%) Cypress.io
6 2 (0.22%) Robot Framework
6 2 (0.22%) Selenium
7 1 (0.11%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.11%) Cucumber
7 1 (0.11%) Gatling
7 1 (0.11%) gulp
7 1 (0.11%) MLflow
7 1 (0.11%) Postman
7 1 (0.11%) Snyk
7 1 (0.11%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.11%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 383 (41.90%) Social Skills
2 154 (16.85%) Finance
2 154 (16.85%) Public Sector
3 135 (14.77%) Analytical Skills
4 33 (3.61%) Telecoms
5 31 (3.39%) Legal
5 31 (3.39%) Local Government
6 29 (3.17%) Retail
7 25 (2.74%) Banking
7 25 (2.74%) Organisational Skills
8 23 (2.52%) Marketing
9 21 (2.30%) Documentation Skills
10 20 (2.19%) Influencing Skills
10 20 (2.19%) Manufacturing
11 15 (1.64%) Electronics
12 14 (1.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 14 (1.53%) Presentation Skills
13 10 (1.09%) Billing
13 10 (1.09%) Military
14 8 (0.88%) Police
Job Titles
1 146 (15.97%) Analyst
2 114 (12.47%) Service Manager
3 95 (10.39%) Lead
4 91 (9.96%) Delivery Manager
5 75 (8.21%) Service Delivery Manager
6 64 (7.00%) Senior
7 44 (4.81%) Architect
8 40 (4.38%) IT Manager
9 39 (4.27%) IT Support
10 38 (4.16%) Service Analyst
11 30 (3.28%) Support Analyst
12 29 (3.17%) Administrator
12 29 (3.17%) Business Analyst
13 28 (3.06%) Consultant
14 27 (2.95%) Desktop Support
14 27 (2.95%) Project Manager
14 27 (2.95%) Support Engineer
15 23 (2.52%) 2nd Line Support
16 21 (2.30%) Coordinator
16 21 (2.30%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (3.28%) REST
2 17 (1.86%) CSS
3 12 (1.31%) HTML
4 11 (1.20%) Oracle Fusion
5 10 (1.09%) AngularJS
5 10 (1.09%) Spring
6 9 (0.98%) SOAP
7 8 (0.88%) Bootstrap
7 8 (0.88%) XML
8 7 (0.77%) Middleware
9 6 (0.66%) .NET
9 6 (0.66%) Kafka
9 6 (0.66%) Web Services
10 5 (0.55%) Spring Boot
11 4 (0.44%) J2EE
11 4 (0.44%) jQuery
11 4 (0.44%) JSON
11 4 (0.44%) Sass
11 4 (0.44%) Spring MVC
12 3 (0.33%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 50 (5.47%) Onboarding
2 40 (4.38%) Management Information System
3 34 (3.72%) Self-Motivation
4 33 (3.61%) Product Ownership
5 29 (3.17%) Virtual Team
6 23 (2.52%) CMDB
7 22 (2.41%) Data Centre
8 20 (2.19%) Smartphone
9 19 (2.08%) Driving Licence
10 13 (1.42%) Enterprise Software
11 12 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
11 12 (1.31%) Public Cloud
12 11 (1.20%) Cloud Native
13 10 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
13 10 (1.09%) NHS
14 8 (0.88%) Analytical Mindset
14 8 (0.88%) Mobile App
15 7 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
15 7 (0.77%) PKI
15 7 (0.77%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 139 (15.21%) Windows
2 31 (3.39%) Linux
2 31 (3.39%) Windows Server
3 26 (2.84%) Windows 10
4 19 (2.08%) Android
5 14 (1.53%) Unix
6 13 (1.42%) Mac OS
7 8 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 7 (0.77%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.44%) VMS
10 3 (0.33%) CentOS
11 1 (0.11%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 290 (31.73%) ITIL
2 237 (25.93%) Continuous Improvement
3 225 (24.62%) Agile
4 198 (21.66%) Problem-Solving
5 169 (18.49%) Stakeholder Management
6 165 (18.05%) ITSM
7 161 (17.61%) Service Management
8 134 (14.66%) Customer Service
9 122 (13.35%) Change Management
10 108 (11.82%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 88 (9.63%) Project Delivery
11 88 (9.63%) Project Management
12 81 (8.86%) DevOps
13 78 (8.53%) Service Design
14 77 (8.42%) Roadmaps
15 65 (7.11%) Decision-Making
16 59 (6.46%) Incident Management
17 57 (6.24%) Migration
17 57 (6.24%) User Experience
18 54 (5.91%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 40 (4.38%) SQL
2 39 (4.27%) PowerShell
3 38 (4.16%) Python
4 34 (3.72%) Java
5 25 (2.74%) JavaScript
6 7 (0.77%) Bash
7 6 (0.66%) Kotlin
8 5 (0.55%) C#
8 5 (0.55%) Shell Script
9 4 (0.44%) Scala
10 3 (0.33%) Perl
11 2 (0.22%) Bicep
11 2 (0.22%) C++
11 2 (0.22%) Go
11 2 (0.22%) Kusto Query Language
11 2 (0.22%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.22%) T-SQL
11 2 (0.22%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.11%) VB.NET
12 1 (0.11%) VBA
Qualifications
1 250 (27.35%) Security Cleared
2 203 (22.21%) SC Cleared
3 82 (8.97%) Degree
4 48 (5.25%) DV Cleared
5 43 (4.70%) ITIL Certification
6 22 (2.41%) BPSS Clearance
6 22 (2.41%) PMP
7 20 (2.19%) PMI Certification
8 15 (1.64%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
9 14 (1.53%) Microsoft Certification
10 12 (1.31%) Azure Certification
11 10 (1.09%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 9 (0.98%) Cisco Certification
12 9 (0.98%) Master's Degree
13 8 (0.88%) DBS Check
13 8 (0.88%) MOS
14 7 (0.77%) CCNA
14 7 (0.77%) Computer Science Degree
14 7 (0.77%) ISTQB
15 6 (0.66%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 100 (10.94%) SLA
2 29 (3.17%) GDPR
3 21 (2.30%) Data Quality
4 19 (2.08%) QA
5 15 (1.64%) Accessibility
6 14 (1.53%) PMO
7 13 (1.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 8 (0.88%) NCSC
9 6 (0.66%) ISO/IEC 20000
10 5 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
10 5 (0.55%) COBIT
10 5 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials
10 5 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 5 (0.55%) WCAG
11 4 (0.44%) GRC
12 3 (0.33%) NIST
12 3 (0.33%) P3O
12 3 (0.33%) PCI DSS
13 2 (0.22%) ITGC
14 1 (0.11%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 71 (7.77%) Active Directory
2 13 (1.42%) VMware Infrastructure
3 11 (1.20%) Docker
4 7 (0.77%) Hyper-V
5 5 (0.55%) VMware NSX
6 3 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.33%) vSphere
7 2 (0.22%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 1 (0.11%) NFS
8 1 (0.11%) Virtual Desktop
8 1 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.11%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 32 (3.50%) Microsoft Intune
2 21 (2.30%) SCCM
3 14 (1.53%) Ansible
4 13 (1.42%) Terraform
5 11 (1.20%) Grafana
6 9 (0.98%) Kubernetes
7 5 (0.55%) Prometheus
8 4 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
9 3 (0.33%) Amdocs OSS
9 3 (0.33%) HP ALM
10 2 (0.22%) Jamf Pro
10 2 (0.22%) Nagios
10 2 (0.22%) NetBackup
10 2 (0.22%) SCOM
10 2 (0.22%) SCOrch
10 2 (0.22%) WSUS
11 1 (0.11%) FortiGate
11 1 (0.11%) SCSM
11 1 (0.11%) SnapMirror
11 1 (0.11%) WMI
Vendors
1 155 (16.96%) Microsoft
2 120 (13.13%) ServiceNow
3 52 (5.69%) SAP
4 33 (3.61%) Oracle
5 27 (2.95%) Cisco
6 24 (2.63%) Remedy
7 23 (2.52%) VMware
8 21 (2.30%) Salesforce
9 16 (1.75%) Citrix
10 12 (1.31%) Google
10 12 (1.31%) Zscaler
11 10 (1.09%) Adobe
11 10 (1.09%) Palo Alto
12 9 (0.98%) BMC
13 7 (0.77%) Apple
13 7 (0.77%) Atlassian
13 7 (0.77%) Veeam
14 6 (0.66%) Genesys
14 6 (0.66%) HP
14 6 (0.66%) Red Hat