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 10 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 103 99 78
Rank change year-on-year -4 -21 +17
Contract jobs citing Service Management 1,006 796 1,202
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.56% 2.59% 2.67%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.94% 2.90% 3.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 698 470 820
10th Percentile £200 £215 £280
25th Percentile £322 £409 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £529 £532
Median % change year-on-year -5.44% -0.52% +6.30%
75th Percentile £594 £623 £608
90th Percentile £720 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £531
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.13% +13.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 74 22 17
10th Percentile £14.00 £21.05 £12.53
25th Percentile £17.30 £24.57 £15.46
Median hourly rate £28.55 £30.20 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year -5.46% +70.43% -31.34%
75th Percentile £60.00 £36.19 £48.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £68.63 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.60 £30.40 £17.29
% change year-on-year -2.63% +75.88% -65.45%

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 34,251 27,445 39,124
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.02% 89.42% 87.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,718 16,700 25,680
10th Percentile £306 £306 £300
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £716 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.50% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,071 843 2,128
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.69 £21.05 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -1.71% +1.74%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £73.12
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.08 £35.00
% change year-on-year -19.08% -11.20% +10.55%

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 10 February 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 10 February 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 10 February 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 -1 909 £500 -6.37% 305
UK excluding London -4 679 £500 -4.76% 274
London -54 244 £500 -4.76% 71
Work from Home -17 237 £450 -14.29% 126
South East +31 179 £475 +5.56% 93
North of England -5 167 £500 +17.65% 67
South West -2 152 £575 - 31
Midlands -8 105 £431 -25.65% 41
North West -2 90 £550 +25.71% 42
West Midlands -21 78 £475 -18.10% 22
Yorkshire -19 62 £472 +105.00% 20
East of England 0 47 £452 -17.82% 34
Scotland -12 28 £488 -1.61% 8
East Midlands -8 27 £413 -11.29% 19
North East -4 18 £280 -53.04% 5
Northern Ireland - 4 £325 - 2
Wales -7 3 £160 -58.71% 7

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 78 (7.75%) Confluence
2 70 (6.96%) Microsoft Exchange
3 61 (6.06%) SharePoint
4 14 (1.39%) Skype for Business
5 5 (0.50%) SharePoint Server
6 4 (0.40%) Apache
6 4 (0.40%) WebLogic
7 3 (0.30%) nginx
8 2 (0.20%) JBoss
9 1 (0.099%) CMS
9 1 (0.099%) HCL Notes
9 1 (0.099%) LiveCycle
9 1 (0.099%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 1 (0.099%) WebSphere
Applications
1 95 (9.44%) Microsoft Office
2 36 (3.58%) Microsoft Project
3 31 (3.08%) Microsoft Excel
4 11 (1.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.50%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.40%) Autodesk Inventor
6 4 (0.40%) PTC Creo
7 3 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 26 (2.58%) Remedy ITSM
2 14 (1.39%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (1.29%) Oracle EBS
4 5 (0.50%) Teamcenter
5 4 (0.40%) Dynamics CRM
6 2 (0.20%) assyst
6 2 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
7 1 (0.099%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.099%) NetSuite
7 1 (0.099%) Oracle Payables
7 1 (0.099%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 1 (0.099%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.099%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 1 (0.099%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.099%) SAP PM
7 1 (0.099%) SAP SM
7 1 (0.099%) SystmOne
7 1 (0.099%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 168 (16.70%) Azure
2 113 (11.23%) Microsoft 365
3 99 (9.84%) AWS
4 46 (4.57%) Entra ID
5 45 (4.47%) GCP
6 34 (3.38%) Power Platform
7 30 (2.98%) OneDrive
7 30 (2.98%) SaaS
8 25 (2.49%) Azure DevOps
9 11 (1.09%) GitHub
9 11 (1.09%) IaaS
10 10 (0.99%) PowerApps
10 10 (0.99%) Serverless
11 9 (0.89%) AWS Lambda
11 9 (0.89%) Dynamics 365
11 9 (0.89%) PaaS
12 8 (0.80%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 8 (0.80%) Azure Monitor
13 7 (0.70%) Nutanix
13 7 (0.70%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 66 (6.56%) DNS
2 49 (4.87%) Firewall
3 39 (3.88%) DHCP
4 32 (3.18%) VPN
5 27 (2.68%) TCP/IP
5 27 (2.68%) VLAN
6 22 (2.19%) LAN
6 22 (2.19%) Skype
7 21 (2.09%) WAN
8 19 (1.89%) Network Security
9 18 (1.79%) Wi-Fi
10 16 (1.59%) Cisco IOS
11 15 (1.49%) Cisco Firepower
11 15 (1.49%) Cisco ISE
11 15 (1.49%) Junos
12 10 (0.99%) HTTP
13 9 (0.89%) SSH
14 8 (0.80%) WebEx
15 7 (0.70%) BGP
15 7 (0.70%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (2.29%) Power BI
2 14 (1.39%) Relational Database
2 14 (1.39%) SQL Server
3 7 (0.70%) PostgreSQL
4 5 (0.50%) Amazon RDS
4 5 (0.50%) Metadata
5 4 (0.40%) Elasticsearch
5 4 (0.40%) InfluxDB
5 4 (0.40%) Tableau
6 2 (0.20%) Azure SQL Database
6 2 (0.20%) Big Data
6 2 (0.20%) Data Mining
6 2 (0.20%) GIS
6 2 (0.20%) MongoDB
6 2 (0.20%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.099%) BusinessObjects
7 1 (0.099%) Oracle Discoverer
7 1 (0.099%) RDBMS
7 1 (0.099%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 1 (0.099%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 128 (12.72%) JIRA
2 15 (1.49%) Jenkins
3 12 (1.19%) Git
4 10 (0.99%) GitLab
5 7 (0.70%) Bitbucket
6 3 (0.30%) ScriptRunner
6 3 (0.30%) TestRail
7 2 (0.20%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.20%) Selenium
8 1 (0.099%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 1 (0.099%) MLflow
8 1 (0.099%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 400 (39.76%) Social Skills
2 176 (17.50%) Analytical Skills
3 144 (14.31%) Finance
4 141 (14.02%) Public Sector
5 48 (4.77%) Legal
6 44 (4.37%) Military
7 36 (3.58%) Organisational Skills
8 34 (3.38%) Documentation Skills
9 33 (3.28%) Banking
10 32 (3.18%) Influencing Skills
11 29 (2.88%) Telecoms
12 25 (2.49%) Retail
13 20 (1.99%) Manufacturing
14 11 (1.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 10 (0.99%) Investment Banking
16 9 (0.89%) Presentation Skills
17 8 (0.80%) Law
18 7 (0.70%) Electronics
18 7 (0.70%) Marketing
18 7 (0.70%) Police
Job Titles
1 143 (14.21%) Analyst
2 116 (11.53%) Lead
3 109 (10.83%) Architect
4 81 (8.05%) Service Manager
5 61 (6.06%) Support Engineer
6 53 (5.27%) Consultant
7 49 (4.87%) Service Analyst
8 48 (4.77%) Service Architect
9 42 (4.17%) IT Support
10 40 (3.98%) Senior
11 34 (3.38%) Support Analyst
12 32 (3.18%) 2nd Line Support
12 32 (3.18%) Desktop Support
12 32 (3.18%) IT Manager
13 30 (2.98%) Hardware Engineer
14 29 (2.88%) IT Analyst
15 28 (2.78%) Business Analyst
16 25 (2.49%) Platform Engineer
17 24 (2.39%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 22 (2.19%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (3.78%) REST
2 17 (1.69%) SOAP
3 10 (0.99%) LDAP
4 8 (0.80%) Elastic Stack
4 8 (0.80%) Web Services
4 8 (0.80%) XMPP
5 6 (0.60%) .NET
6 5 (0.50%) RFC 2544
7 4 (0.40%) ARM Templates
7 4 (0.40%) RabbitMQ
8 3 (0.30%) CSS
8 3 (0.30%) EDI
8 3 (0.30%) JSON
8 3 (0.30%) Microsoft Graph
8 3 (0.30%) Middleware
9 2 (0.20%) AngularJS
9 2 (0.20%) HTML
9 2 (0.20%) Lightning Web Components
9 2 (0.20%) Oracle Fusion
9 2 (0.20%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 75 (7.46%) Product Ownership
2 60 (5.96%) CMDB
3 46 (4.57%) Onboarding
4 38 (3.78%) Management Information System
5 33 (3.28%) Data Centre
6 25 (2.49%) Analytical Mindset
7 23 (2.29%) PKI
7 23 (2.29%) Virtual Team
8 22 (2.19%) Self-Motivation
9 18 (1.79%) Driving Licence
10 13 (1.29%) PMI
11 11 (1.09%) Enterprise Software
12 10 (0.99%) Data Protection Act
12 10 (0.99%) NHS
13 8 (0.80%) Smartphone
14 7 (0.70%) Hybrid Cloud
14 7 (0.70%) Mainframe
15 6 (0.60%) Algorithms
15 6 (0.60%) Data Structures
16 5 (0.50%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 233 (23.16%) Windows
2 72 (7.16%) Linux
3 66 (6.56%) Windows 10
4 64 (6.36%) Windows Server
5 15 (1.49%) Mac OS
6 14 (1.39%) Android
6 14 (1.39%) Apple iOS
6 14 (1.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 11 (1.09%) Windows 7
8 9 (0.89%) Unix
9 8 (0.80%) Windows Server 2012
10 5 (0.50%) Windows Server 2016
10 5 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
11 4 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.40%) Windows Server 2003
12 3 (0.30%) CentOS
13 2 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
14 1 (0.099%) Data ONTAP
14 1 (0.099%) VMS
14 1 (0.099%) Windows XP
Processes & Methodologies
1 562 (55.86%) ITIL
2 446 (44.33%) ITSM
3 217 (21.57%) Problem-Solving
4 189 (18.79%) Continuous Improvement
5 188 (18.69%) Agile
6 169 (16.80%) Stakeholder Management
7 161 (16.00%) Change Management
8 148 (14.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 142 (14.12%) Service Delivery
10 123 (12.23%) Customer Service
11 100 (9.94%) Service Design
12 89 (8.85%) DevOps
12 89 (8.85%) Project Management
13 88 (8.75%) Incident Management
14 83 (8.25%) Problem Management
15 72 (7.16%) Knowledge Transfer
16 66 (6.56%) Configuration Management
17 62 (6.16%) Performance Metrics
18 59 (5.86%) Acceptance Criteria
18 59 (5.86%) Critical Thinking
Programming Languages
1 94 (9.34%) PowerShell
2 63 (6.26%) Python
3 48 (4.77%) SQL
4 20 (1.99%) Java
4 20 (1.99%) JavaScript
5 16 (1.59%) Perl
6 15 (1.49%) Bash
6 15 (1.49%) Shell Script
7 9 (0.89%) VB
7 9 (0.89%) VBScript
8 6 (0.60%) Kotlin
9 4 (0.40%) Go
10 3 (0.30%) C#
11 2 (0.20%) ActionScript
11 2 (0.20%) ActionScript 2.0
11 2 (0.20%) Bicep
11 2 (0.20%) PHP
11 2 (0.20%) VBA
12 1 (0.099%) C
12 1 (0.099%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 389 (38.67%) Security Cleared
2 300 (29.82%) SC Cleared
3 125 (12.43%) Degree
4 96 (9.54%) DV Cleared
5 50 (4.97%) ITIL Certification
6 37 (3.68%) Microsoft Certification
7 30 (2.98%) TOGAF Certification
8 26 (2.58%) BPSS Clearance
9 21 (2.09%) PMI Certification
10 17 (1.69%) A+ Certification
10 17 (1.69%) Azure Certification
10 17 (1.69%) Computer Science Degree
10 17 (1.69%) PMP
11 16 (1.59%) MCSE
12 15 (1.49%) Cisco Certification
13 14 (1.39%) CCNP
13 14 (1.39%) Network+ Certification
14 13 (1.29%) CCNA
15 11 (1.09%) Server+ Certification
16 9 (0.89%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 50 (4.97%) SLA
2 24 (2.39%) Data Quality
3 23 (2.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 22 (2.19%) QA
5 20 (1.99%) GDPR
6 12 (1.19%) PMO
7 9 (0.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 8 (0.80%) Accessibility
8 8 (0.80%) COBIT
8 8 (0.80%) NIST
9 7 (0.70%) ISO/IEC 20000
10 6 (0.60%) GRC
11 5 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
12 4 (0.40%) Disclosure Scotland
12 4 (0.40%) HIPAA
12 4 (0.40%) ISO 9001
13 3 (0.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 3 (0.30%) NCSC
13 3 (0.30%) PCI DSS
14 2 (0.20%) GxP
System Software
1 139 (13.82%) Active Directory
2 45 (4.47%) VMware Infrastructure
3 19 (1.89%) VMware NSX
4 17 (1.69%) Docker
5 15 (1.49%) Hyper-V
6 12 (1.19%) Virtual Desktop
7 9 (0.89%) BitLocker
8 7 (0.70%) Virtual Servers
9 6 (0.60%) Microsoft Virtual Server
10 4 (0.40%) NDS
10 4 (0.40%) NetIQ eDirectory
11 3 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
12 1 (0.099%) NFS
12 1 (0.099%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 42 (4.17%) SCCM
2 30 (2.98%) OPNET
3 28 (2.78%) Ansible
3 28 (2.78%) Microsoft Intune
4 26 (2.58%) Terraform
5 25 (2.49%) Kubernetes
6 20 (1.99%) vCenter Server
7 17 (1.69%) WSUS
8 10 (0.99%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 9 (0.89%) Jamf Pro
9 9 (0.89%) Single Sign-On
10 7 (0.70%) Grafana
10 7 (0.70%) Prometheus
11 6 (0.60%) SCOM
12 4 (0.40%) FortiGate
12 4 (0.40%) Nessus
12 4 (0.40%) Packer
12 4 (0.40%) Progress Chef
13 3 (0.30%) HP ALM
14 2 (0.20%) PowerCLI
Vendors
1 258 (25.65%) ServiceNow
2 181 (17.99%) Microsoft
3 63 (6.26%) Remedy
4 61 (6.06%) Atlassian
5 59 (5.86%) VMware
6 57 (5.67%) Cisco
7 38 (3.78%) Google
7 38 (3.78%) Oracle
8 34 (3.38%) HP
9 32 (3.18%) SAP
10 31 (3.08%) SolarWinds
11 25 (2.49%) Splunk
12 18 (1.79%) Salesforce
13 17 (1.69%) Juniper
14 16 (1.59%) Citrix
15 15 (1.49%) Red Hat
16 13 (1.29%) Veeam
17 12 (1.19%) Dell
17 12 (1.19%) Dynatrace
18 10 (0.99%) BMC