Service Management Contract Job Trends

Service Management
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Service Management skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 1 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 105 82 83
Rank change year-on-year -23 +1 +2
Contract jobs citing Service Management 1,210 906 1,075
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.35% 2.95% 2.49%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.77% 3.24% 2.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 781 552 739
10th Percentile £230 £213 £263
25th Percentile £404 £350 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £499 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.31% -5.05% +0.96%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £608
90th Percentile £688 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £503 £497 £525
% change year-on-year +1.26% -5.33% +10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 75 55 18
10th Percentile £15.00 - £13.65
25th Percentile £19.82 £12.62 £17.02
Median hourly rate £60.00 £20.75 £23.37
Median % change year-on-year +189.16% -11.21% -33.70%
75th Percentile £84.50 £22.35 £42.81
90th Percentile £96.50 £33.75 £51.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.00 £20.75 £20.74
% change year-on-year +189.16% +0.05% -2.67%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Service Management 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 43,674 27,949 36,811
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.97% 90.88% 85.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,163 17,650 23,450
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £414 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.79% -4.57% -4.55%
75th Percentile £621 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,623 1,373 2,554
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.74
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.61 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +3.81%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.86 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.00 £38.12
% change year-on-year +75.84% -34.42% +8.91%

Service Management
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Service Management job vacancy trend in the UK

Service Management
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

Service Management
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Service Management over the 6 months to 1 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Service Management in the UK

Service Management
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

Service Management
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Service Management over the 6 months to 1 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Service Management in the UK

Service Management
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 Management within the UK over the 6 months to 1 July 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 -18 1,050 £520 +4.00% 471
UK excluding London -23 734 £503 +1.26% 390
Work from Home +3 355 £510 +7.37% 180
London -14 355 £550 +10.00% 130
South East +26 218 £534 +42.48% 120
North of England -24 205 £475 +1.06% 104
South West -31 119 £500 -11.11% 52
North West -16 115 £513 +4.17% 58
Midlands -43 84 £475 -5.00% 57
Yorkshire -21 83 £450 -5.26% 37
West Midlands -36 73 £486 -6.54% 37
Scotland -12 55 £500 - 17
East of England -19 42 £488 -11.36% 33
Wales -7 13 £800 +188.29% 13
East Midlands -12 11 £200 -54.13% 20
North East -30 7 £440 +125.64% 11
Northern Ireland +6 5 - - 8

Service Management
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 67 (5.54%) SharePoint
2 53 (4.38%) Confluence
3 34 (2.81%) Microsoft Exchange
4 11 (0.91%) Skype for Business
5 6 (0.50%) Mattermost
6 4 (0.33%) OpenStack
7 3 (0.25%) IIS
8 1 (0.083%) Apache
8 1 (0.083%) CICS
8 1 (0.083%) CMS
8 1 (0.083%) JBoss
8 1 (0.083%) LiveCycle
8 1 (0.083%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
8 1 (0.083%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 56 (4.63%) Microsoft Office
2 25 (2.07%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (1.07%) MS Visio
4 10 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.83%) Microsoft Project
5 7 (0.58%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.33%) PTC Creo
7 2 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.083%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 52 (4.30%) Remedy ITSM
2 17 (1.40%) SAP S/4HANA
3 9 (0.74%) Teamcenter
4 7 (0.58%) Primavera
5 4 (0.33%) ContrOCC
5 4 (0.33%) SAP SM
6 3 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
6 3 (0.25%) SAP CO
6 3 (0.25%) SAP FI
6 3 (0.25%) SAP FI/CO
7 2 (0.17%) Oracle Applications
7 2 (0.17%) SAP PS
8 1 (0.083%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.083%) Misys Equation
8 1 (0.083%) Misys Midas
8 1 (0.083%) NetSuite
8 1 (0.083%) SAP HR
8 1 (0.083%) SAP Payroll
8 1 (0.083%) SAP PM
Cloud Services
1 186 (15.37%) Azure
2 130 (10.74%) Microsoft 365
3 73 (6.03%) AWS
4 59 (4.88%) Entra ID
5 56 (4.63%) Power Platform
6 43 (3.55%) SaaS
7 32 (2.64%) Azure DevOps
8 31 (2.56%) OneDrive
9 25 (2.07%) GCP
10 18 (1.49%) PaaS
11 14 (1.16%) GitHub
12 13 (1.07%) OCI
13 12 (0.99%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 12 (0.99%) Microsoft Copilot
14 11 (0.91%) AWS Lambda
14 11 (0.91%) Serverless
15 10 (0.83%) IaaS
16 9 (0.74%) Amazon S3
16 9 (0.74%) Google Workspace
17 8 (0.66%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 63 (5.21%) Firewall
2 48 (3.97%) DNS
3 40 (3.31%) WAN
4 37 (3.06%) LAN
5 33 (2.73%) VPN
6 25 (2.07%) DHCP
6 25 (2.07%) Network Security
7 24 (1.98%) TCP/IP
8 17 (1.40%) Wireless
9 16 (1.32%) BGP
10 14 (1.16%) Wi-Fi
11 13 (1.07%) OSPF
11 13 (1.07%) VLAN
12 12 (0.99%) BIG-IP
12 12 (0.99%) Cisco ISE
12 12 (0.99%) SD-WAN
13 11 (0.91%) Skype
13 11 (0.91%) VXLAN
14 10 (0.83%) Junos
15 8 (0.66%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 47 (3.88%) Power BI
2 17 (1.40%) SQL Server
3 8 (0.66%) Oracle Database
4 6 (0.50%) Oracle Database 11g
4 6 (0.50%) Oracle Reports
4 6 (0.50%) PostgreSQL
4 6 (0.50%) Relational Database
5 5 (0.41%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 4 (0.33%) MySQL
6 4 (0.33%) SQL Server Analysis Services
6 4 (0.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 3 (0.25%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (0.17%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (0.17%) Amazon Redshift
8 2 (0.17%) GIS
8 2 (0.17%) MariaDB
8 2 (0.17%) Microsoft Analysis Services
9 1 (0.083%) Db2
9 1 (0.083%) DTS
9 1 (0.083%) InfluxDB
Development Applications
1 139 (11.49%) JIRA
2 21 (1.74%) Jenkins
3 19 (1.57%) Git
4 13 (1.07%) Bitbucket
5 12 (0.99%) GitLab
6 5 (0.41%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 5 (0.41%) Browser DevTools
7 4 (0.33%) MLflow
7 4 (0.33%) ScriptRunner
8 3 (0.25%) Fiddler
8 3 (0.25%) Hudson
8 3 (0.25%) IntelliJ
9 2 (0.17%) Firebug
9 2 (0.17%) Selenium
10 1 (0.083%) Artifactory
10 1 (0.083%) Cypress.io
10 1 (0.083%) JMeter
10 1 (0.083%) JUnit
10 1 (0.083%) Maven
10 1 (0.083%) MSI
General
1 413 (34.13%) Social Skills
2 202 (16.69%) Finance
3 170 (14.05%) Analytical Skills
4 128 (10.58%) Public Sector
5 51 (4.21%) Telecoms
6 48 (3.97%) Legal
7 45 (3.72%) Banking
8 33 (2.73%) Influencing Skills
8 33 (2.73%) Organisational Skills
9 31 (2.56%) Documentation Skills
10 22 (1.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 21 (1.74%) Military
12 17 (1.40%) Local Government
13 16 (1.32%) Retail
14 15 (1.24%) Aerospace
15 13 (1.07%) Financial Institution
15 13 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
16 11 (0.91%) Police
17 9 (0.74%) Manufacturing
18 8 (0.66%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 143 (11.82%) Analyst
2 117 (9.67%) Service Manager
3 116 (9.59%) Lead
4 105 (8.68%) Architect
5 99 (8.18%) Senior
6 88 (7.27%) Consultant
7 75 (6.20%) IT Manager
8 57 (4.71%) Project Manager
9 54 (4.46%) Service Analyst
10 44 (3.64%) Delivery Manager
10 44 (3.64%) Developer
11 34 (2.81%) IT Analyst
11 34 (2.81%) Support Engineer
12 31 (2.56%) Network Engineer
13 30 (2.48%) IT Services Manager
14 29 (2.40%) Administrator
14 29 (2.40%) ServiceNow Architect
15 28 (2.31%) Service Delivery Manager
16 27 (2.23%) Transition Manager
17 26 (2.15%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 54 (4.46%) REST
2 29 (2.40%) SOAP
3 13 (1.07%) HTML
4 12 (0.99%) CSS
4 12 (0.99%) Middleware
5 9 (0.74%) 802.1X
5 9 (0.74%) JSON
5 9 (0.74%) OAuth
6 7 (0.58%) Elastic Stack
6 7 (0.58%) Web Services
6 7 (0.58%) XML
7 6 (0.50%) Oracle Fusion
8 5 (0.41%) AngularJS
8 5 (0.41%) Lightning Web Components
8 5 (0.41%) Microsoft Graph
8 5 (0.41%) OpenID
8 5 (0.41%) SAML
9 4 (0.33%) .NET
9 4 (0.33%) Software Packaging
9 4 (0.33%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 102 (8.43%) Onboarding
2 101 (8.35%) CMDB
3 62 (5.12%) Product Ownership
4 47 (3.88%) Data Centre
5 42 (3.47%) Management Information System
6 31 (2.56%) Virtual Team
7 29 (2.40%) Enterprise Software
8 28 (2.31%) PKI
9 22 (1.82%) Clustering
10 19 (1.57%) Data Protection Act
10 19 (1.57%) Operational Technology
11 14 (1.16%) Analytical Mindset
11 14 (1.16%) Driving Licence
12 12 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
13 10 (0.83%) Algorithms
13 10 (0.83%) Cloud Native
13 10 (0.83%) PMI
13 10 (0.83%) Security Posture
14 9 (0.74%) Cyber Threat
14 9 (0.74%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 218 (18.02%) Windows
2 56 (4.63%) Linux
3 43 (3.55%) Windows 10
4 37 (3.06%) Windows Server
5 18 (1.49%) Unix
6 16 (1.32%) Mac OS
7 15 (1.24%) Windows 7
8 12 (0.99%) Apple iOS
9 11 (0.91%) Android
10 10 (0.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 5 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
12 4 (0.33%) VMS
13 3 (0.25%) Ubuntu
13 3 (0.25%) Windows XP
14 2 (0.17%) Solaris
14 2 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
14 2 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.17%) zOS
15 1 (0.083%) Rocky
15 1 (0.083%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 632 (52.23%) ITIL
2 527 (43.55%) ITSM
3 303 (25.04%) Stakeholder Management
4 296 (24.46%) Continuous Improvement
5 253 (20.91%) Agile
6 237 (19.59%) Problem-Solving
7 233 (19.26%) Service Delivery
8 179 (14.79%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 168 (13.88%) Change Management
10 133 (10.99%) DevOps
11 127 (10.50%) Customer Service
12 117 (9.67%) Roadmaps
13 105 (8.68%) Incident Management
14 94 (7.77%) Problem Management
15 89 (7.36%) Project Delivery
16 88 (7.27%) Decision-Making
17 85 (7.02%) Configuration Management
18 84 (6.94%) Migration
19 83 (6.86%) Cybersecurity
20 77 (6.36%) AI
Programming Languages
1 89 (7.36%) PowerShell
2 65 (5.37%) Python
3 59 (4.88%) SQL
4 48 (3.97%) JavaScript
5 23 (1.90%) Bash
6 16 (1.32%) Java
7 11 (0.91%) PL/SQL
7 11 (0.91%) VB
7 11 (0.91%) VBScript
8 6 (0.50%) Apex Code
8 6 (0.50%) Groovy
9 5 (0.41%) C#
9 5 (0.41%) Kotlin
9 5 (0.41%) T-SQL
10 4 (0.33%) C
10 4 (0.33%) Perl
10 4 (0.33%) Shell Script
11 3 (0.25%) SOQL
12 2 (0.17%) ActionScript 2.0
12 2 (0.17%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 427 (35.29%) Security Cleared
2 291 (24.05%) SC Cleared
3 138 (11.40%) DV Cleared
4 104 (8.60%) Degree
5 62 (5.12%) ITIL Certification
6 35 (2.89%) PMI Certification
7 33 (2.73%) PMP
8 28 (2.31%) Cisco Certification
9 26 (2.15%) BPSS Clearance
10 24 (1.98%) Computer Science Degree
11 20 (1.65%) Microsoft Certification
12 15 (1.24%) A+ Certification
12 15 (1.24%) CCNA
12 15 (1.24%) CISM
13 14 (1.16%) CISSP
13 14 (1.16%) Master's Degree
14 12 (0.99%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 10 (0.83%) CCNP
15 10 (0.83%) Network+ Certification
16 9 (0.74%) JNCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 81 (6.69%) SLA
2 47 (3.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 37 (3.06%) Data Quality
3 37 (3.06%) QA
4 29 (2.40%) PMO
5 26 (2.15%) GDPR
6 23 (1.90%) NCSC
7 21 (1.74%) COBIT
8 20 (1.65%) GRC
8 20 (1.65%) ISO/IEC 20000
9 14 (1.16%) NIST
10 12 (0.99%) ISO 9001
11 9 (0.74%) Cyber Essentials
11 9 (0.74%) PCI DSS
12 8 (0.66%) Accessibility
13 7 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 7 (0.58%) Government Security Classifications
14 6 (0.50%) ISO 31000
14 6 (0.50%) ISO/IEC 27005
15 5 (0.41%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 120 (9.92%) Active Directory
2 41 (3.39%) VMware Infrastructure
3 16 (1.32%) VMware ESXi
4 12 (0.99%) BitLocker
4 12 (0.99%) Docker
5 8 (0.66%) Hyper-V
5 8 (0.66%) VMware NSX
6 7 (0.58%) Virtual Desktop
6 7 (0.58%) vSphere
7 6 (0.50%) vCloud
8 5 (0.41%) NFS
8 5 (0.41%) Virtual Machines
9 4 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
10 3 (0.25%) Firmware
10 3 (0.25%) IAG
11 2 (0.17%) GPFS
11 2 (0.17%) KVM
12 1 (0.083%) iptables
12 1 (0.083%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 1 (0.083%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 52 (4.30%) SCCM
2 47 (3.88%) Microsoft Intune
3 29 (2.40%) Ansible
4 23 (1.90%) Terraform
5 15 (1.24%) Kubernetes
6 14 (1.16%) Jamf Pro
7 13 (1.07%) Single Sign-On
8 9 (0.74%) FortiGate
8 9 (0.74%) SCOM
9 8 (0.66%) vCenter Server
10 7 (0.58%) Data Guard
10 7 (0.58%) Grafana
10 7 (0.58%) Oracle RMAN
10 7 (0.58%) WSUS
11 6 (0.50%) Puppet
12 5 (0.41%) Prometheus
12 5 (0.41%) vMotion
13 4 (0.33%) PowerCLI
13 4 (0.33%) Progress Chef
14 3 (0.25%) Packer
Vendors
1 341 (28.18%) ServiceNow
2 214 (17.69%) Microsoft
3 57 (4.71%) Remedy
3 57 (4.71%) VMware
4 43 (3.55%) Cisco
5 37 (3.06%) Oracle
6 32 (2.64%) SAP
7 31 (2.56%) BMC
8 25 (2.07%) Atlassian
9 23 (1.90%) IFS
9 23 (1.90%) Splunk
10 20 (1.65%) SolarWinds
11 17 (1.40%) HP
11 17 (1.40%) Salesforce
12 15 (1.24%) Citrix
12 15 (1.24%) Dynatrace
13 14 (1.16%) Dell
14 13 (1.07%) F5
14 13 (1.07%) Juniper
14 13 (1.07%) Zscaler