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 18 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 108 85 82
Rank change year-on-year -23 -3 +4
Contract jobs citing Service Management 1,067 850 1,113
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.22% 2.89% 2.61%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.64% 3.18% 3.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 707 513 752
10th Percentile £220 £226 £263
25th Percentile £400 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% +5.00%
75th Percentile £610 £600 £607
90th Percentile £700 £695 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - +10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 33 18
10th Percentile £16.11 - £12.53
25th Percentile £19.98 £12.62 £15.24
Median hourly rate £60.00 £21.28 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year +181.95% +20.09% -65.76%
75th Percentile £83.81 £28.00 £19.75
90th Percentile £105.60 £33.75 £26.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.00 £21.28 £17.50
% change year-on-year +181.95% +21.58% -63.91%

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 40,423 26,734 36,712
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.29% 90.97% 86.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,371 17,185 23,631
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £493 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.68% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,395 1,096 2,442
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.35 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.72 £18.22 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.18 £36.02
Median % change year-on-year +50.82% -21.77% +1.04%
75th Percentile £67.50 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.23 £37.50
% change year-on-year +78.39% -32.73% +7.14%

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 18 May 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 18 May 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 18 May 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 -13 948 £513 -2.38% 368
UK excluding London -14 700 £500 -4.76% 288
London -40 274 £520 +3.17% 115
Work from Home -11 264 £500 +0.60% 165
South East +26 208 £520 +15.56% 100
North of England -17 181 £500 +5.26% 78
South West -22 139 £550 - 27
North West +5 101 £550 +7.57% 33
Midlands -28 86 £413 -25.00% 43
Yorkshire -34 73 £475 +11.76% 38
West Midlands -37 65 £420 -23.77% 34
East of England -17 44 £475 -13.64% 32
Scotland -28 35 £500 -2.44% 8
East Midlands -11 21 £405 -7.11% 9
Wales -8 7 £340 -4.56% 7
North East -19 7 £440 +125.64% 8
Northern Ireland - 4 - - 3

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 72 (6.75%) Confluence
2 36 (3.37%) Microsoft Exchange
3 31 (2.91%) SharePoint
4 9 (0.84%) Skype for Business
5 6 (0.56%) Mattermost
6 3 (0.28%) IIS
6 3 (0.28%) nginx
7 1 (0.094%) Apache
7 1 (0.094%) CICS
7 1 (0.094%) CMS
7 1 (0.094%) JBoss
7 1 (0.094%) LiveCycle
7 1 (0.094%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.094%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 1 (0.094%) WebSphere
Applications
1 77 (7.22%) Microsoft Office
2 32 (3.00%) Microsoft Project
3 27 (2.53%) Microsoft Excel
4 13 (1.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.66%) Chatbot
6 6 (0.56%) MS Visio
7 4 (0.37%) PTC Creo
8 2 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
9 1 (0.094%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 45 (4.22%) Remedy ITSM
2 14 (1.31%) SAP S/4HANA
3 9 (0.84%) Teamcenter
4 4 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.19%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.19%) SAP PS
6 1 (0.094%) Dynamics NAV
6 1 (0.094%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.094%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.094%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.094%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.094%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.094%) SAP HR
6 1 (0.094%) SAP Payroll
6 1 (0.094%) SAP PM
6 1 (0.094%) SAP SM
6 1 (0.094%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 154 (14.43%) Azure
2 88 (8.25%) Microsoft 365
3 74 (6.94%) AWS
4 52 (4.87%) Power Platform
5 40 (3.75%) SaaS
6 34 (3.19%) Entra ID
6 34 (3.19%) GCP
7 28 (2.62%) Azure DevOps
8 20 (1.87%) PaaS
9 19 (1.78%) GitHub
10 17 (1.59%) OneDrive
11 15 (1.41%) IaaS
12 13 (1.22%) OCI
13 11 (1.03%) AWS Lambda
13 11 (1.03%) Serverless
14 10 (0.94%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 10 (0.94%) Microsoft Copilot
15 8 (0.75%) Dynamics 365
16 7 (0.66%) OpenShift
16 7 (0.66%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 56 (5.25%) Firewall
2 44 (4.12%) DNS
3 35 (3.28%) WAN
4 33 (3.09%) LAN
5 31 (2.91%) VPN
6 30 (2.81%) Network Security
7 21 (1.97%) DHCP
8 17 (1.59%) TCP/IP
9 14 (1.31%) BGP
10 13 (1.22%) OSPF
10 13 (1.22%) SD-WAN
11 12 (1.12%) BIG-IP
12 11 (1.03%) Cisco ISE
12 11 (1.03%) VLAN
12 11 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
13 10 (0.94%) Wireless
14 9 (0.84%) Skype
15 8 (0.75%) Ethernet VPN
15 8 (0.75%) Junos
15 8 (0.75%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 38 (3.56%) Power BI
2 15 (1.41%) SQL Server
3 7 (0.66%) PostgreSQL
3 7 (0.66%) Relational Database
4 6 (0.56%) Oracle Database
4 6 (0.56%) Oracle Reports
5 5 (0.47%) Oracle Database 11g
6 4 (0.37%) Elasticsearch
6 4 (0.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 4 (0.37%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 3 (0.28%) Amazon RDS
7 3 (0.28%) Azure SQL Database
7 3 (0.28%) InfluxDB
7 3 (0.28%) MySQL
7 3 (0.28%) SQL Server Analysis Services
8 2 (0.19%) Amazon Redshift
8 2 (0.19%) GIS
8 2 (0.19%) MariaDB
8 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Analysis Services
8 2 (0.19%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 132 (12.37%) JIRA
2 18 (1.69%) GitLab
3 17 (1.59%) Git
4 16 (1.50%) Jenkins
5 13 (1.22%) Bitbucket
6 7 (0.66%) ScriptRunner
7 6 (0.56%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 5 (0.47%) Browser DevTools
9 4 (0.37%) MLflow
10 3 (0.28%) Fiddler
10 3 (0.28%) Hudson
10 3 (0.28%) IntelliJ
10 3 (0.28%) Selenium
10 3 (0.28%) TestRail
11 2 (0.19%) Cypress.io
11 2 (0.19%) Firebug
11 2 (0.19%) Visual Studio Code
12 1 (0.094%) Claude Code
12 1 (0.094%) IBM UrbanCode
12 1 (0.094%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 367 (34.40%) Social Skills
2 178 (16.68%) Finance
3 147 (13.78%) Analytical Skills
4 112 (10.50%) Public Sector
5 60 (5.62%) Legal
6 38 (3.56%) Military
7 36 (3.37%) Banking
8 35 (3.28%) Organisational Skills
9 31 (2.91%) Telecoms
10 25 (2.34%) Documentation Skills
11 24 (2.25%) Influencing Skills
12 17 (1.59%) Retail
13 12 (1.12%) Aerospace
14 9 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
15 8 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 8 (0.75%) Local Government
16 7 (0.66%) Police
17 6 (0.56%) Front Office
17 6 (0.56%) Investment Banking
17 6 (0.56%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 120 (11.25%) Analyst
2 115 (10.78%) Architect
3 114 (10.68%) Service Manager
4 105 (9.84%) Lead
5 80 (7.50%) Senior
6 62 (5.81%) IT Manager
7 61 (5.72%) Consultant
8 48 (4.50%) Service Analyst
9 47 (4.40%) Service Architect
10 43 (4.03%) Project Manager
11 37 (3.47%) Delivery Manager
12 36 (3.37%) Hardware Engineer
13 31 (2.91%) Developer
14 30 (2.81%) IT Analyst
14 30 (2.81%) Support Engineer
15 29 (2.72%) IT Services Manager
16 27 (2.53%) Service Delivery Manager
17 25 (2.34%) Designer
17 25 (2.34%) Network Engineer
17 25 (2.34%) Transition Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (3.66%) REST
2 24 (2.25%) SOAP
3 9 (0.84%) 802.1X
3 9 (0.84%) Middleware
4 8 (0.75%) HTML
4 8 (0.75%) OAuth
5 7 (0.66%) CSS
5 7 (0.66%) Oracle Fusion
6 6 (0.56%) Elastic Stack
6 6 (0.56%) XML
7 5 (0.47%) .NET
7 5 (0.47%) JSON
7 5 (0.47%) LDAP
7 5 (0.47%) Web Services
8 4 (0.37%) Lightning Web Components
8 4 (0.37%) Microsoft Graph
8 4 (0.37%) OAuth2
8 4 (0.37%) OpenID
8 4 (0.37%) SAML
8 4 (0.37%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 76 (7.12%) Product Ownership
2 70 (6.56%) Onboarding
3 67 (6.28%) CMDB
4 45 (4.22%) Data Centre
5 28 (2.62%) Management Information System
6 27 (2.53%) PKI
7 26 (2.44%) Virtual Team
8 20 (1.87%) Clustering
9 18 (1.69%) Driving Licence
10 17 (1.59%) Enterprise Software
11 15 (1.41%) Data Protection Act
11 15 (1.41%) PMI
12 12 (1.12%) Operational Technology
13 10 (0.94%) Analytical Mindset
14 9 (0.84%) Algorithms
14 9 (0.84%) Cloud Native
15 8 (0.75%) Legacy Systems
15 8 (0.75%) Replication
16 7 (0.66%) Self-Motivation
17 5 (0.47%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 172 (16.12%) Windows
2 54 (5.06%) Linux
3 41 (3.84%) Windows 10
4 39 (3.66%) Windows Server
5 15 (1.41%) Unix
6 12 (1.12%) Mac OS
7 11 (1.03%) Windows 7
8 8 (0.75%) Android
8 8 (0.75%) Apple iOS
9 7 (0.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 5 (0.47%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.37%) VMS
12 3 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.19%) Solaris
13 2 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.19%) zOS
14 1 (0.094%) Data ONTAP
14 1 (0.094%) Windows Server 2008
14 1 (0.094%) Windows XP
Processes & Methodologies
1 569 (53.33%) ITIL
2 450 (42.17%) ITSM
3 224 (20.99%) Stakeholder Management
4 223 (20.90%) Agile
4 223 (20.90%) Continuous Improvement
5 203 (19.03%) Problem-Solving
6 181 (16.96%) Service Delivery
7 151 (14.15%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 137 (12.84%) Change Management
9 119 (11.15%) DevOps
10 115 (10.78%) Customer Service
11 93 (8.72%) Service Design
12 84 (7.87%) Problem Management
13 83 (7.78%) Roadmaps
14 81 (7.59%) Incident Management
15 75 (7.03%) Project Management
16 74 (6.94%) Configuration Management
17 67 (6.28%) Decision-Making
18 65 (6.09%) CI/CD
19 64 (6.00%) Knowledge Transfer
Programming Languages
1 60 (5.62%) PowerShell
2 56 (5.25%) SQL
3 37 (3.47%) JavaScript
4 36 (3.37%) Python
5 15 (1.41%) Java
6 12 (1.12%) Bash
7 10 (0.94%) PL/SQL
8 9 (0.84%) VB
8 9 (0.84%) VBScript
9 6 (0.56%) Apex Code
9 6 (0.56%) Kotlin
10 5 (0.47%) C#
11 4 (0.37%) Groovy
11 4 (0.37%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.37%) T-SQL
12 3 (0.28%) C
12 3 (0.28%) Go
13 2 (0.19%) Bicep
13 2 (0.19%) Search Processing Language
13 2 (0.19%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 423 (39.64%) Security Cleared
2 305 (28.58%) SC Cleared
3 126 (11.81%) DV Cleared
4 114 (10.68%) Degree
5 52 (4.87%) ITIL Certification
6 34 (3.19%) PMI Certification
7 32 (3.00%) PMP
8 28 (2.62%) Cisco Certification
9 21 (1.97%) Computer Science Degree
9 21 (1.97%) TOGAF Certification
10 20 (1.87%) BPSS Clearance
11 17 (1.59%) Microsoft Certification
12 14 (1.31%) CCNA
13 12 (1.12%) A+ Certification
13 12 (1.12%) Master's Degree
14 11 (1.03%) CCNP
15 9 (0.84%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 9 (0.84%) JNCIA
15 9 (0.84%) JNCIS
15 9 (0.84%) MAPM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 60 (5.62%) SLA
2 32 (3.00%) Data Quality
3 31 (2.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 26 (2.44%) PMO
5 25 (2.34%) GDPR
5 25 (2.34%) QA
6 16 (1.50%) COBIT
6 16 (1.50%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 15 (1.41%) GRC
7 15 (1.41%) NCSC
8 10 (0.94%) Accessibility
9 9 (0.84%) Cyber Essentials
9 9 (0.84%) NIST
10 7 (0.66%) Government Security Classifications
11 6 (0.56%) ISO 31000
11 6 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 27005
11 6 (0.56%) PCI DSS
11 6 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 5 (0.47%) ISO 9001
13 4 (0.37%) GMP
System Software
1 96 (9.00%) Active Directory
2 34 (3.19%) VMware Infrastructure
3 14 (1.31%) Docker
4 13 (1.22%) VMware ESXi
5 9 (0.84%) BitLocker
6 6 (0.56%) VMware NSX
6 6 (0.56%) vSphere
7 5 (0.47%) NFS
8 4 (0.37%) Hyper-V
8 4 (0.37%) vCloud
8 4 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
9 3 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.19%) GPFS
10 2 (0.19%) IAG
10 2 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
11 1 (0.094%) iptables
11 1 (0.094%) Microsoft Virtual Server
11 1 (0.094%) Samba
11 1 (0.094%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 1 (0.094%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 27 (2.53%) Ansible
1 27 (2.53%) SCCM
2 22 (2.06%) Terraform
3 21 (1.97%) OPNET
4 20 (1.87%) Microsoft Intune
5 17 (1.59%) Kubernetes
6 10 (0.94%) FortiGate
6 10 (0.94%) Grafana
7 8 (0.75%) Jamf Pro
7 8 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (0.66%) Prometheus
8 7 (0.66%) vCenter Server
8 7 (0.66%) WSUS
9 6 (0.56%) Progress Chef
10 5 (0.47%) Data Guard
10 5 (0.47%) Oracle RMAN
10 5 (0.47%) Puppet
10 5 (0.47%) SCOM
10 5 (0.47%) vMotion
11 4 (0.37%) PowerCLI
Vendors
1 282 (26.43%) ServiceNow
2 157 (14.71%) Microsoft
3 72 (6.75%) Remedy
4 52 (4.87%) VMware
5 50 (4.69%) Atlassian
6 43 (4.03%) Cisco
7 40 (3.75%) Oracle
8 39 (3.66%) HP
9 30 (2.81%) SAP
10 22 (2.06%) BMC
10 22 (2.06%) IFS
11 20 (1.87%) Google
11 20 (1.87%) Splunk
12 19 (1.78%) Dell
13 15 (1.41%) Canon
14 14 (1.31%) Salesforce
15 13 (1.22%) F5
16 12 (1.12%) SolarWinds
17 11 (1.03%) Juniper
17 11 (1.03%) Workday