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

6 months to
11 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 97 82 92
Rank change year-on-year -15 +10 -8
Contract jobs citing Service Management 1,402 975 948
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.63% 2.96% 2.43%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.09% 3.27% 2.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 912 590 662
10th Percentile £263 £213 £250
25th Percentile £413 £350 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £492 £525
Median % change year-on-year +6.71% -6.29% +1.41%
75th Percentile £613 £575 £608
90th Percentile £725 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £518 £493 £525
% change year-on-year +5.23% -6.19% +10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 85 74 18
10th Percentile £14.50 - £17.50
25th Percentile £20.31 £12.62 £19.44
Median hourly rate £60.00 £18.73 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +220.34% -31.89% -34.33%
75th Percentile £85.00 £22.14 £48.75
90th Percentile £92.52 £52.05 £54.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £18.37 £27.50
% change year-on-year +199.48% -33.22% +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 45,312 29,789 33,296
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.84% 90.47% 85.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,886 18,626 21,285
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £421 £404 £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 £727 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,829 1,693 1,837
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.30 £18.35
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -38.57% -1.35%
75th Percentile £68.00 £48.13 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.74 £42.50
% change year-on-year +93.36% -46.51% +17.24%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 -16 1,222 £525 +5.00% 652
UK excluding London -18 830 £518 +5.23% 467
London +15 442 £525 +5.00% 229
Work from Home +7 400 £516 +3.10% 237
South East +17 282 £563 +12.50% 169
North of England -34 209 £450 +1.47% 113
South West -26 122 £538 -0.46% 43
North West -28 120 £481 +3.44% 66
Midlands -45 100 £500 +3.09% 68
West Midlands -40 93 £500 -1.96% 43
Yorkshire -23 84 £443 +26.57% 34
Scotland -11 65 £500 +1.42% 17
East of England -22 39 £525 -4.55% 46
Wales -6 12 £800 +247.83% 12
Northern Ireland +13 8 - - 8
East Midlands -20 7 £450 +50.00% 26
North East -43 5 £440 +125.64% 14

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 95 (6.78%) SharePoint
2 60 (4.28%) Confluence
3 52 (3.71%) Microsoft Exchange
4 14 (1.00%) Skype for Business
5 6 (0.43%) Mattermost
5 6 (0.43%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.21%) CMS
6 3 (0.21%) IIS
7 2 (0.14%) Apache
8 1 (0.071%) CICS
8 1 (0.071%) Exchange Server 2010
8 1 (0.071%) HCL Notes
8 1 (0.071%) JBoss
8 1 (0.071%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
8 1 (0.071%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 75 (5.35%) Microsoft Office
2 29 (2.07%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (1.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 15 (1.07%) MS Visio
5 9 (0.64%) Microsoft Project
6 8 (0.57%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.071%) Camtasia
7 1 (0.071%) Maple
Business Applications
1 59 (4.21%) Remedy ITSM
2 12 (0.86%) SAP S/4HANA
3 7 (0.50%) Primavera
4 5 (0.36%) ContrOCC
4 5 (0.36%) NEC Housing
5 4 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 3 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
6 3 (0.21%) SAP CO
6 3 (0.21%) SAP FI
6 3 (0.21%) SAP FI/CO
6 3 (0.21%) SAP SM
7 2 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
7 2 (0.14%) Remedy AR System
7 2 (0.14%) SAP PS
8 1 (0.071%) Dynamics CRM
8 1 (0.071%) iTrent
8 1 (0.071%) Misys Equation
8 1 (0.071%) Misys Midas
8 1 (0.071%) SAP HR
8 1 (0.071%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 233 (16.62%) Azure
2 174 (12.41%) Microsoft 365
3 97 (6.92%) AWS
4 94 (6.70%) Entra ID
5 62 (4.42%) Power Platform
6 56 (3.99%) SaaS
7 47 (3.35%) OneDrive
8 32 (2.28%) Azure DevOps
9 28 (2.00%) GCP
10 20 (1.43%) GitHub
11 19 (1.36%) Microsoft Copilot
12 17 (1.21%) OCI
13 14 (1.00%) Azure Monitor
13 14 (1.00%) PaaS
14 11 (0.78%) IaaS
15 10 (0.71%) Google Workspace
16 9 (0.64%) Amazon S3
17 8 (0.57%) Amazon EC2
17 8 (0.57%) Azure AKS
18 7 (0.50%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 85 (6.06%) Firewall
2 71 (5.06%) DNS
3 48 (3.42%) VPN
4 46 (3.28%) DHCP
4 46 (3.28%) WAN
5 44 (3.14%) TCP/IP
6 40 (2.85%) LAN
7 39 (2.78%) Network Security
8 20 (1.43%) BGP
9 19 (1.36%) Wireless
10 16 (1.14%) OSPF
11 15 (1.07%) SD-WAN
11 15 (1.07%) Wi-Fi
12 14 (1.00%) Skype
12 14 (1.00%) VLAN
13 13 (0.93%) VXLAN
14 12 (0.86%) Cisco ISE
15 11 (0.78%) BIG-IP
16 10 (0.71%) Junos
16 10 (0.71%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 46 (3.28%) Power BI
2 26 (1.85%) SQL Server
3 8 (0.57%) Oracle Database
3 8 (0.57%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (0.50%) MySQL
4 7 (0.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 6 (0.43%) Oracle Database 11g
5 6 (0.43%) Oracle Reports
5 6 (0.43%) Relational Database
5 6 (0.43%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 5 (0.36%) Amazon RDS
6 5 (0.36%) MariaDB
6 5 (0.36%) SQL Server Analysis Services
7 3 (0.21%) Amazon Aurora
7 3 (0.21%) Azure SQL Database
7 3 (0.21%) Metadata
8 2 (0.14%) Amazon Redshift
8 2 (0.14%) Microsoft Analysis Services
8 2 (0.14%) SQLite
9 1 (0.071%) Db2
Development Applications
1 146 (10.41%) JIRA
2 25 (1.78%) Git
2 25 (1.78%) Jenkins
3 23 (1.64%) Bitbucket
4 15 (1.07%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 12 (0.86%) GitLab
6 5 (0.36%) Browser DevTools
7 4 (0.29%) Maven
7 4 (0.29%) MLflow
7 4 (0.29%) Rational DOORS
7 4 (0.29%) ScriptRunner
7 4 (0.29%) webpack
8 3 (0.21%) Fiddler
8 3 (0.21%) Gradle
8 3 (0.21%) Hudson
8 3 (0.21%) IntelliJ
8 3 (0.21%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.14%) Firebug
10 1 (0.071%) JMeter
10 1 (0.071%) MSI
General
1 532 (37.95%) Social Skills
2 221 (15.76%) Finance
3 212 (15.12%) Analytical Skills
4 163 (11.63%) Public Sector
5 65 (4.64%) Telecoms
6 49 (3.50%) Banking
7 48 (3.42%) Legal
8 47 (3.35%) Influencing Skills
9 45 (3.21%) Documentation Skills
10 43 (3.07%) Organisational Skills
11 31 (2.21%) Military
12 30 (2.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 24 (1.71%) Local Government
14 21 (1.50%) Presentation Skills
15 18 (1.28%) Aerospace
16 14 (1.00%) Retail
17 12 (0.86%) Financial Institution
17 12 (0.86%) Police
18 10 (0.71%) Manufacturing
19 7 (0.50%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 149 (10.63%) Analyst
2 133 (9.49%) Lead
3 128 (9.13%) Architect
4 118 (8.42%) Senior
5 109 (7.77%) Service Manager
6 97 (6.92%) Consultant
7 75 (5.35%) IT Manager
8 65 (4.64%) Project Manager
9 56 (3.99%) Support Engineer
10 55 (3.92%) Developer
11 54 (3.85%) Service Analyst
12 47 (3.35%) Delivery Manager
13 41 (2.92%) IT Support
13 41 (2.92%) ServiceNow Developer
14 39 (2.78%) Solutions Architect
15 37 (2.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 37 (2.64%) Service Architect
16 36 (2.57%) Network Engineer
16 36 (2.57%) Transition Manager
17 33 (2.35%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 77 (5.49%) REST
2 35 (2.50%) SOAP
3 18 (1.28%) HTML
4 17 (1.21%) CSS
5 15 (1.07%) Web Services
6 14 (1.00%) Middleware
7 11 (0.78%) XML
8 9 (0.64%) 802.1X
8 9 (0.64%) AngularJS
8 9 (0.64%) JSON
8 9 (0.64%) OAuth
9 8 (0.57%) Elastic Stack
9 8 (0.57%) SAML
10 6 (0.43%) ARM Templates
10 6 (0.43%) Node.js
11 5 (0.36%) .NET
11 5 (0.36%) OpenID
11 5 (0.36%) Oracle Fusion
11 5 (0.36%) RESTful
12 4 (0.29%) Ajax
Miscellaneous
1 143 (10.20%) Onboarding
2 107 (7.63%) CMDB
3 64 (4.56%) Product Ownership
4 58 (4.14%) Management Information System
5 43 (3.07%) Data Centre
6 40 (2.85%) Enterprise Software
7 34 (2.43%) PKI
8 26 (1.85%) Operational Technology
8 26 (1.85%) Virtual Team
9 25 (1.78%) Clustering
10 21 (1.50%) Hybrid Cloud
11 19 (1.36%) Cloud Native
11 19 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
12 16 (1.14%) AI Agents
13 15 (1.07%) Analytical Mindset
13 15 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
14 12 (0.86%) Video Conferencing
15 11 (0.78%) Greenfield Project
15 11 (0.78%) Security Operations Centre
16 10 (0.71%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 271 (19.33%) Windows
2 74 (5.28%) Linux
3 73 (5.21%) Windows Server
4 52 (3.71%) Windows 10
5 25 (1.78%) Mac OS
6 24 (1.71%) Apple iOS
7 20 (1.43%) Unix
8 19 (1.36%) Windows 7
9 14 (1.00%) Android
10 13 (0.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 6 (0.43%) Windows Server 2019
12 4 (0.29%) VMS
13 3 (0.21%) Ubuntu
13 3 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
13 3 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.14%) Solaris
14 2 (0.14%) Windows XP
14 2 (0.14%) zOS
15 1 (0.071%) Rocky
15 1 (0.071%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 746 (53.21%) ITIL
2 646 (46.08%) ITSM
3 385 (27.46%) Stakeholder Management
4 364 (25.96%) Continuous Improvement
5 315 (22.47%) Service Delivery
6 295 (21.04%) Agile
7 285 (20.33%) Problem-Solving
8 220 (15.69%) Change Management
9 204 (14.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 161 (11.48%) DevOps
11 157 (11.20%) Customer Service
12 139 (9.91%) Roadmaps
13 138 (9.84%) Incident Management
14 123 (8.77%) Project Delivery
15 119 (8.49%) Cybersecurity
16 116 (8.27%) Migration
17 108 (7.70%) Service Design
18 107 (7.63%) AI
18 107 (7.63%) Decision-Making
18 107 (7.63%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 122 (8.70%) PowerShell
2 82 (5.85%) Python
3 70 (4.99%) SQL
4 55 (3.92%) JavaScript
5 45 (3.21%) Bash
6 15 (1.07%) Java
7 14 (1.00%) VB
7 14 (1.00%) VBScript
8 11 (0.78%) PL/SQL
9 9 (0.64%) Groovy
10 8 (0.57%) Bicep
11 6 (0.43%) C
11 6 (0.43%) Shell Script
12 5 (0.36%) Apex Code
12 5 (0.36%) Perl
12 5 (0.36%) T-SQL
13 4 (0.29%) C#
13 4 (0.29%) TypeScript
14 3 (0.21%) Lua
15 2 (0.14%) Korn
Qualifications
1 519 (37.02%) Security Cleared
2 343 (24.47%) SC Cleared
3 155 (11.06%) DV Cleared
4 135 (9.63%) Degree
5 62 (4.42%) ITIL Certification
6 51 (3.64%) PMP
7 46 (3.28%) PMI Certification
8 39 (2.78%) BPSS Clearance
9 31 (2.21%) Cisco Certification
10 28 (2.00%) Computer Science Degree
11 26 (1.85%) Microsoft Certification
12 24 (1.71%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 23 (1.64%) A+ Certification
14 22 (1.57%) CISM
14 22 (1.57%) CISSP
15 14 (1.00%) CCNA
15 14 (1.00%) DBS Check
16 13 (0.93%) Master's Degree
17 12 (0.86%) Azure Certification
18 10 (0.71%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 108 (7.70%) SLA
2 45 (3.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 45 (3.21%) QA
3 34 (2.43%) Data Quality
4 32 (2.28%) ISO/IEC 20000
5 30 (2.14%) PMO
6 28 (2.00%) GRC
6 28 (2.00%) NCSC
7 24 (1.71%) GDPR
8 18 (1.28%) COBIT
9 16 (1.14%) ISO 9001
9 16 (1.14%) NIST
10 12 (0.86%) Cyber Essentials
11 9 (0.64%) Disclosure Scotland
12 8 (0.57%) Accessibility
12 8 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 7 (0.50%) Government Security Classifications
13 7 (0.50%) PCI DSS
14 6 (0.43%) ISO 31000
14 6 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 27005
System Software
1 159 (11.34%) Active Directory
2 64 (4.56%) VMware Infrastructure
3 24 (1.71%) Hyper-V
4 22 (1.57%) VMware ESXi
5 18 (1.28%) Docker
6 16 (1.14%) VMware NSX
7 15 (1.07%) BitLocker
7 15 (1.07%) Virtual Desktop
8 13 (0.93%) vSphere
9 10 (0.71%) vCloud
10 6 (0.43%) IAG
11 5 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
11 5 (0.36%) Virtual Servers
12 4 (0.29%) NFS
12 4 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.21%) Firmware
14 2 (0.14%) GPFS
14 2 (0.14%) KVM
14 2 (0.14%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 1 (0.071%) iptables
Systems Management
1 77 (5.49%) Microsoft Intune
2 63 (4.49%) SCCM
3 46 (3.28%) Terraform
4 43 (3.07%) Ansible
5 20 (1.43%) Kubernetes
6 17 (1.21%) SCOM
6 17 (1.21%) Single Sign-On
7 14 (1.00%) vCenter Server
8 13 (0.93%) Jamf Pro
9 8 (0.57%) FortiGate
9 8 (0.57%) WSUS
10 7 (0.50%) Data Guard
10 7 (0.50%) Grafana
10 7 (0.50%) Oracle RMAN
10 7 (0.50%) Puppet
11 5 (0.36%) NetBackup
11 5 (0.36%) Progress Chef
12 4 (0.29%) PowerCLI
12 4 (0.29%) Prometheus
12 4 (0.29%) vMotion
Vendors
1 409 (29.17%) ServiceNow
2 305 (21.75%) Microsoft
3 92 (6.56%) VMware
4 63 (4.49%) Remedy
5 57 (4.07%) Cisco
6 43 (3.07%) BMC
7 39 (2.78%) Oracle
8 35 (2.50%) Atlassian
9 31 (2.21%) SAP
9 31 (2.21%) Splunk
10 24 (1.71%) Dynatrace
11 22 (1.57%) IFS
11 22 (1.57%) SolarWinds
12 20 (1.43%) Zscaler
13 19 (1.36%) Salesforce
14 18 (1.28%) Apple
14 18 (1.28%) Citrix
15 17 (1.21%) CyberArk
15 17 (1.21%) Juniper
16 16 (1.14%) IBM