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

6 months to
24 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 96 83 91
Rank change year-on-year -13 +8 -6
Contract jobs citing Service Management 1,485 966 947
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.77% 2.93% 2.44%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.27% 3.24% 2.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 976 583 646
10th Percentile £253 £210 £225
25th Percentile £413 £350 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £492 £525
Median % change year-on-year +6.71% -6.29% +0.96%
75th Percentile £620 £575 £603
90th Percentile £725 £675 £686
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £497 £525
% change year-on-year +5.74% -5.43% +5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 75 18
10th Percentile £14.50 - £17.50
25th Percentile £17.21 £12.62 £19.44
Median hourly rate £55.00 £18.73 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +193.65% -31.89% -46.34%
75th Percentile £85.00 £29.33 £48.75
90th Percentile £92.53 £42.00 £54.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £18.73 £27.50
% change year-on-year +193.65% -31.89% +29.05%

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 45,360 29,849 33,165
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.57% 90.48% 85.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,797 18,603 21,010
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,875 1,763 1,706
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £13.87
25th Percentile £18.27 £17.30 £18.13
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -38.57% -3.67%
75th Percentile £67.89 £47.81 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.74 £42.50
% change year-on-year +93.36% -46.51% +7.39%

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 24 August 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 24 August 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 24 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 -13 1,282 £525 +5.00% 471
UK excluding London -14 878 £525 +5.74% 400
London +24 458 £525 +5.00% 132
Work from Home +2 418 £515 +2.90% 186
South East +17 285 £565 +13.00% 143
North of England -18 243 £475 +5.56% 85
North West -20 147 £483 +3.76% 53
South West -31 118 £550 +4.76% 43
Midlands -41 98 £500 -1.96% 68
West Midlands -31 93 £500 -4.76% 47
Yorkshire -12 89 £443 +24.79% 27
Scotland +9 84 £521 +11.64% 12
East of England -17 46 £525 -4.55% 34
Wales -10 13 £800 +247.83% 9
Northern Ireland +8 8 - - 13
North East -39 7 £500 +156.41% 5
East Midlands -26 5 £250 -16.67% 22

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
1 104 (7.00%) SharePoint
2 61 (4.11%) Confluence
3 56 (3.77%) Microsoft Exchange
4 15 (1.01%) Skype for Business
5 6 (0.40%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.20%) CMS
6 3 (0.20%) IIS
7 2 (0.13%) Apache
8 1 (0.067%) CICS
8 1 (0.067%) Exchange Server 2010
8 1 (0.067%) HCL Notes
8 1 (0.067%) JBoss
8 1 (0.067%) Mattermost
8 1 (0.067%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
8 1 (0.067%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 82 (5.52%) Microsoft Office
2 33 (2.22%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (0.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 14 (0.94%) MS Visio
4 10 (0.67%) Chatbot
4 10 (0.67%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.067%) Maple
Business Applications
1 57 (3.84%) Remedy ITSM
2 11 (0.74%) SAP S/4HANA
3 7 (0.47%) Primavera
4 5 (0.34%) ContrOCC
4 5 (0.34%) NEC Housing
5 4 (0.27%) Workday HCM
6 3 (0.20%) Oracle ERP
6 3 (0.20%) SAP CO
6 3 (0.20%) SAP FI
6 3 (0.20%) SAP FI/CO
6 3 (0.20%) SAP SM
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle Applications
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
7 2 (0.13%) Remedy AR System
7 2 (0.13%) SAP PS
7 2 (0.13%) Teamcenter
8 1 (0.067%) Cloudability
8 1 (0.067%) iTrent
8 1 (0.067%) Salesforce CRM
8 1 (0.067%) SAP CX
Cloud Services
1 258 (17.37%) Azure
2 190 (12.79%) Microsoft 365
3 118 (7.95%) AWS
4 106 (7.14%) Entra ID
5 65 (4.38%) Power Platform
6 57 (3.84%) SaaS
7 51 (3.43%) OneDrive
8 33 (2.22%) GCP
9 29 (1.95%) Azure DevOps
10 21 (1.41%) GitHub
11 20 (1.35%) Microsoft Copilot
12 15 (1.01%) Azure Monitor
13 14 (0.94%) OCI
14 12 (0.81%) PaaS
15 10 (0.67%) Google Workspace
15 10 (0.67%) IaaS
16 8 (0.54%) Amazon S3
16 8 (0.54%) Azure AKS
17 7 (0.47%) Azure Sentinel
17 7 (0.47%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 82 (5.52%) Firewall
2 67 (4.51%) DNS
3 50 (3.37%) VPN
4 46 (3.10%) TCP/IP
5 45 (3.03%) DHCP
6 43 (2.90%) WAN
7 41 (2.76%) Network Security
8 36 (2.42%) LAN
9 19 (1.28%) Wi-Fi
9 19 (1.28%) Wireless
10 17 (1.14%) SD-WAN
11 15 (1.01%) Skype
12 14 (0.94%) VLAN
13 13 (0.88%) BGP
14 11 (0.74%) Intrusion Detection
14 11 (0.74%) SSH
15 9 (0.61%) OSPF
15 9 (0.61%) SSL
16 8 (0.54%) HTTP
17 7 (0.47%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 47 (3.16%) Power BI
2 26 (1.75%) SQL Server
3 8 (0.54%) Oracle Database
4 7 (0.47%) MySQL
4 7 (0.47%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (0.47%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 6 (0.40%) Oracle Database 11g
5 6 (0.40%) Oracle Reports
5 6 (0.40%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 5 (0.34%) Amazon RDS
6 5 (0.34%) MariaDB
6 5 (0.34%) Relational Database
6 5 (0.34%) SQL Server Analysis Services
7 3 (0.20%) Amazon Aurora
7 3 (0.20%) Metadata
8 2 (0.13%) Amazon Redshift
8 2 (0.13%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (0.13%) Looker
8 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Analysis Services
8 2 (0.13%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 144 (9.70%) JIRA
2 26 (1.75%) Jenkins
3 25 (1.68%) Bitbucket
3 25 (1.68%) Git
4 17 (1.14%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 10 (0.67%) GitLab
6 5 (0.34%) Browser DevTools
7 4 (0.27%) Maven
7 4 (0.27%) MLflow
7 4 (0.27%) ScriptRunner
7 4 (0.27%) webpack
8 3 (0.20%) Fiddler
8 3 (0.20%) Gradle
8 3 (0.20%) Hudson
8 3 (0.20%) IntelliJ
8 3 (0.20%) Rational DOORS
8 3 (0.20%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.13%) Artifactory
9 2 (0.13%) Firebug
10 1 (0.067%) MSI
General
1 574 (38.65%) Social Skills
2 242 (16.30%) Finance
3 237 (15.96%) Analytical Skills
4 173 (11.65%) Public Sector
5 72 (4.85%) Telecoms
6 58 (3.91%) Organisational Skills
7 57 (3.84%) Documentation Skills
8 52 (3.50%) Banking
9 51 (3.43%) Influencing Skills
10 48 (3.23%) Legal
11 30 (2.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 27 (1.82%) Military
13 23 (1.55%) Local Government
13 23 (1.55%) Presentation Skills
14 18 (1.21%) Aerospace
15 15 (1.01%) Retail
16 13 (0.88%) Police
17 11 (0.74%) Financial Institution
18 9 (0.61%) Manufacturing
19 8 (0.54%) Law
Job Titles
1 163 (10.98%) Analyst
2 142 (9.56%) Lead
3 141 (9.49%) Architect
4 110 (7.41%) Senior
5 107 (7.21%) Consultant
6 103 (6.94%) Service Manager
7 73 (4.92%) IT Manager
8 68 (4.58%) Project Manager
9 67 (4.51%) Support Engineer
10 58 (3.91%) Developer
11 55 (3.70%) Service Analyst
12 47 (3.16%) IT Support
13 44 (2.96%) Delivery Manager
13 44 (2.96%) Solutions Architect
14 41 (2.76%) ServiceNow Developer
15 37 (2.49%) Business Analyst
15 37 (2.49%) Service Architect
16 36 (2.42%) Transition Manager
17 35 (2.36%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 34 (2.29%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 79 (5.32%) REST
2 46 (3.10%) Terraform
3 34 (2.29%) SOAP
4 18 (1.21%) HTML
5 17 (1.14%) CSS
6 15 (1.01%) Web Services
7 14 (0.94%) Middleware
8 12 (0.81%) XML
9 10 (0.67%) SAML
10 9 (0.61%) AngularJS
10 9 (0.61%) JSON
11 8 (0.54%) Elastic Stack
12 7 (0.47%) OAuth
13 6 (0.40%) .NET
13 6 (0.40%) ARM Templates
13 6 (0.40%) Node.js
14 5 (0.34%) OpenID
14 5 (0.34%) RESTful
15 4 (0.27%) Ajax
15 4 (0.27%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 157 (10.57%) Onboarding
2 111 (7.47%) CMDB
3 64 (4.31%) Management Information System
4 62 (4.18%) Product Ownership
5 46 (3.10%) Enterprise Software
6 44 (2.96%) Data Centre
7 31 (2.09%) PKI
8 28 (1.89%) Operational Technology
9 25 (1.68%) Data Protection Act
10 23 (1.55%) Hybrid Cloud
10 23 (1.55%) Security Operations Centre
10 23 (1.55%) Virtual Team
11 20 (1.35%) Cloud Native
11 20 (1.35%) Clustering
12 17 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
13 16 (1.08%) AI Agents
14 15 (1.01%) Analytical Mindset
15 14 (0.94%) NHS
16 13 (0.88%) Cyber Threat
16 13 (0.88%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 293 (19.73%) Windows
2 83 (5.59%) Windows Server
3 78 (5.25%) Linux
4 64 (4.31%) Windows 10
5 28 (1.89%) Apple iOS
6 26 (1.75%) Mac OS
7 20 (1.35%) Unix
7 20 (1.35%) Windows 7
8 15 (1.01%) Android
9 12 (0.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 6 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.20%) VMS
11 3 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
12 2 (0.13%) Solaris
12 2 (0.13%) Ubuntu
12 2 (0.13%) Windows XP
12 2 (0.13%) zOS
13 1 (0.067%) Rocky
13 1 (0.067%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 784 (52.79%) ITIL
2 664 (44.71%) ITSM
3 426 (28.69%) Stakeholder Management
4 384 (25.86%) Continuous Improvement
5 327 (22.02%) Service Delivery
6 308 (20.74%) Agile
7 300 (20.20%) Problem-Solving
8 225 (15.15%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 223 (15.02%) Change Management
10 173 (11.65%) Customer Service
11 161 (10.84%) Roadmaps
12 157 (10.57%) Incident Management
13 153 (10.30%) DevOps
14 147 (9.90%) Cybersecurity
15 131 (8.82%) Project Delivery
16 126 (8.48%) Migration
17 123 (8.28%) Decision-Making
18 120 (8.08%) AI
19 112 (7.54%) Service Design
20 108 (7.27%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 131 (8.82%) PowerShell
2 88 (5.93%) Python
3 71 (4.78%) SQL
4 53 (3.57%) JavaScript
5 47 (3.16%) Bash
6 17 (1.14%) VBScript
7 16 (1.08%) Java
8 15 (1.01%) VB
9 11 (0.74%) PL/SQL
10 9 (0.61%) Bicep
10 9 (0.61%) Groovy
11 7 (0.47%) Shell Script
12 6 (0.40%) C
13 5 (0.34%) Apex Code
13 5 (0.34%) Perl
13 5 (0.34%) T-SQL
14 4 (0.27%) C#
14 4 (0.27%) TypeScript
15 3 (0.20%) Lua
16 2 (0.13%) ActionScript 2.0
Qualifications
1 541 (36.43%) Security Cleared
2 367 (24.71%) SC Cleared
3 145 (9.76%) DV Cleared
4 141 (9.49%) Degree
5 60 (4.04%) ITIL Certification
6 51 (3.43%) PMP
7 45 (3.03%) PMI Certification
8 43 (2.90%) BPSS Clearance
9 34 (2.29%) CISSP
10 32 (2.15%) CISM
10 32 (2.15%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 30 (2.02%) Cisco Certification
12 29 (1.95%) Computer Science Degree
13 28 (1.89%) Microsoft Certification
14 25 (1.68%) A+ Certification
15 16 (1.08%) DBS Check
16 14 (0.94%) Azure Certification
16 14 (0.94%) CCNA
17 13 (0.88%) Master's Degree
18 12 (0.81%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 122 (8.22%) SLA
2 50 (3.37%) QA
3 49 (3.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 42 (2.83%) Data Quality
5 34 (2.29%) NCSC
6 32 (2.15%) GRC
7 31 (2.09%) ISO/IEC 20000
8 30 (2.02%) PMO
9 27 (1.82%) GDPR
10 20 (1.35%) NIST
11 17 (1.14%) COBIT
12 16 (1.08%) ISO 9001
13 14 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
14 9 (0.61%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 9 (0.61%) Disclosure Scotland
15 8 (0.54%) Accessibility
16 7 (0.47%) Government Security Classifications
16 7 (0.47%) PCI DSS
17 6 (0.40%) ISO 31000
17 6 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 27005
System Software
1 170 (11.45%) Active Directory
2 76 (5.12%) VMware Infrastructure
3 30 (2.02%) Hyper-V
4 25 (1.68%) VMware ESXi
5 21 (1.41%) Docker
6 18 (1.21%) VMware NSX
7 16 (1.08%) BitLocker
7 16 (1.08%) Virtual Desktop
8 15 (1.01%) vSphere
9 12 (0.81%) vCloud
10 6 (0.40%) IAG
10 6 (0.40%) Virtual Servers
11 5 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
12 4 (0.27%) NFS
12 4 (0.27%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.20%) Citrix Hypervisor
13 3 (0.20%) Firmware
13 3 (0.20%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 3 (0.20%) XenApp
13 3 (0.20%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 83 (5.59%) Microsoft Intune
2 71 (4.78%) SCCM
3 46 (3.10%) Ansible
4 23 (1.55%) Kubernetes
5 20 (1.35%) SCOM
5 20 (1.35%) Single Sign-On
6 16 (1.08%) vCenter Server
7 11 (0.74%) Jamf Pro
8 10 (0.67%) WSUS
9 7 (0.47%) Data Guard
9 7 (0.47%) Oracle RMAN
9 7 (0.47%) Puppet
10 6 (0.40%) Grafana
10 6 (0.40%) Progress Chef
11 5 (0.34%) NetBackup
12 4 (0.27%) PowerCLI
12 4 (0.27%) Prometheus
12 4 (0.27%) vMotion
13 3 (0.20%) Dell DRAC
13 3 (0.20%) vRealize
Vendors
1 417 (28.08%) ServiceNow
2 342 (23.03%) Microsoft
3 107 (7.21%) VMware
4 62 (4.18%) Remedy
5 53 (3.57%) Cisco
6 51 (3.43%) BMC
7 45 (3.03%) Oracle
8 35 (2.36%) Atlassian
9 33 (2.22%) SAP
10 26 (1.75%) Splunk
11 24 (1.62%) Dynatrace
12 20 (1.35%) Citrix
12 20 (1.35%) CyberArk
12 20 (1.35%) Salesforce
13 19 (1.28%) Apple
13 19 (1.28%) IBM
13 19 (1.28%) IFS
13 19 (1.28%) Zscaler
14 17 (1.14%) Google
15 16 (1.08%) SolarWinds