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

6 months to
18 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 101 81 89
Rank change year-on-year -20 +8 -6
Contract jobs citing Service Management 1,316 943 1,025
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.49% 2.90% 2.43%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.92% 3.21% 2.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 854 570 701
10th Percentile £241 £209 £255
25th Percentile £401 £350 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £492 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.69% -6.29% +0.48%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £608
90th Percentile £697 £688 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £492 £525
% change year-on-year +3.56% -6.29% +7.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 84 68 19
10th Percentile £15.00 - £16.47
25th Percentile £20.06 £12.62 £18.75
Median hourly rate £60.00 £20.66 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year +190.42% -23.48% -44.33%
75th Percentile £85.00 £23.92 £48.75
90th Percentile £94.26 £55.05 £54.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.00 £19.74 £27.00
% change year-on-year +203.95% -26.89% +23.26%

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 45,026 29,407 35,968
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.11% 90.34% 85.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,974 18,494 23,016
10th Percentile £325 £300 £301
25th Percentile £419 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £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 2,654 1,554 2,302
10th Percentile £14.87 £14.20 £13.00
25th Percentile £20.01 £17.37 £16.71
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -5.88%
75th Percentile £68.50 £51.55 £62.00
90th Percentile £82.46 £70.00 £73.48
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £24.33 £38.20
% change year-on-year +84.96% -36.30% -4.51%

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 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 18 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 18 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 -15 1,148 £520 +4.31% 385
UK excluding London -20 796 £510 +3.56% 307
London +14 397 £525 +5.00% 118
Work from Home +7 385 £511 +2.25% 157
South East +37 263 £538 +29.52% 102
North of England -34 203 £475 +2.59% 89
South West -28 127 £500 -9.09% 38
North West -39 112 £496 +0.81% 44
Midlands -42 91 £486 +2.32% 47
Yorkshire -15 85 £447 +19.07% 35
West Midlands -45 80 £500 -1.48% 26
Scotland -23 58 £500 - 10
East of England -18 41 £525 -4.55% 27
Wales -6 13 £800 +188.29% 4
East Midlands -15 11 £250 -16.67% 21
Northern Ireland +7 7 - - 3
North East -33 6 £440 +125.64% 13

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 84 (6.38%) SharePoint
2 55 (4.18%) Confluence
3 37 (2.81%) Microsoft Exchange
4 8 (0.61%) Skype for Business
5 6 (0.46%) Mattermost
6 5 (0.38%) OpenStack
7 3 (0.23%) CMS
7 3 (0.23%) IIS
8 2 (0.15%) Apache
9 1 (0.076%) CICS
9 1 (0.076%) JBoss
9 1 (0.076%) LiveCycle
9 1 (0.076%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
9 1 (0.076%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 59 (4.48%) Microsoft Office
2 27 (2.05%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (1.06%) MS Visio
4 13 (0.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 10 (0.76%) Microsoft Project
6 7 (0.53%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.23%) PTC Creo
8 2 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
9 1 (0.076%) Camtasia
9 1 (0.076%) Maple
Business Applications
1 55 (4.18%) Remedy ITSM
2 15 (1.14%) SAP S/4HANA
3 8 (0.61%) Teamcenter
4 7 (0.53%) Primavera
5 5 (0.38%) ContrOCC
6 4 (0.30%) SAP SM
7 3 (0.23%) Oracle ERP
7 3 (0.23%) SAP CO
7 3 (0.23%) SAP FI
7 3 (0.23%) SAP FI/CO
8 2 (0.15%) Oracle Applications
8 2 (0.15%) SAP PS
9 1 (0.076%) Dynamics NAV
9 1 (0.076%) Misys Equation
9 1 (0.076%) Misys Midas
9 1 (0.076%) NetSuite
9 1 (0.076%) SAP HR
9 1 (0.076%) SAP Payroll
9 1 (0.076%) SAP PM
Cloud Services
1 214 (16.26%) Azure
2 147 (11.17%) Microsoft 365
3 86 (6.53%) AWS
4 79 (6.00%) Entra ID
5 63 (4.79%) Power Platform
6 51 (3.88%) SaaS
7 39 (2.96%) OneDrive
8 37 (2.81%) Azure DevOps
9 28 (2.13%) GCP
10 17 (1.29%) GitHub
10 17 (1.29%) PaaS
11 14 (1.06%) OCI
12 13 (0.99%) Microsoft Copilot
13 12 (0.91%) Azure Monitor
14 11 (0.84%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 11 (0.84%) AWS Lambda
14 11 (0.84%) IaaS
14 11 (0.84%) Serverless
15 9 (0.68%) Amazon S3
16 8 (0.61%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 71 (5.40%) Firewall
2 58 (4.41%) DNS
3 39 (2.96%) VPN
4 37 (2.81%) LAN
4 37 (2.81%) WAN
5 35 (2.66%) TCP/IP
6 32 (2.43%) Network Security
7 31 (2.36%) DHCP
8 19 (1.44%) BGP
9 18 (1.37%) Wireless
10 15 (1.14%) OSPF
11 12 (0.91%) BIG-IP
11 12 (0.91%) Cisco ISE
11 12 (0.91%) VLAN
11 12 (0.91%) Wi-Fi
12 11 (0.84%) SD-WAN
12 11 (0.84%) VXLAN
13 10 (0.76%) Junos
14 8 (0.61%) Skype
14 8 (0.61%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (3.88%) Power BI
2 19 (1.44%) SQL Server
3 8 (0.61%) Oracle Database
3 8 (0.61%) PostgreSQL
4 6 (0.46%) Oracle Database 11g
4 6 (0.46%) Oracle Reports
4 6 (0.46%) Relational Database
4 6 (0.46%) SQL Server Reporting Services
5 5 (0.38%) MySQL
5 5 (0.38%) SQL Server Analysis Services
5 5 (0.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 3 (0.23%) Amazon RDS
6 3 (0.23%) Azure SQL Database
6 3 (0.23%) MariaDB
7 2 (0.15%) Amazon Redshift
7 2 (0.15%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.15%) Microsoft Analysis Services
7 2 (0.15%) SQLite
8 1 (0.076%) Data Warehouse
8 1 (0.076%) Db2
Development Applications
1 146 (11.09%) JIRA
2 24 (1.82%) Git
3 23 (1.75%) Jenkins
4 13 (0.99%) Bitbucket
5 11 (0.84%) GitLab
6 5 (0.38%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 5 (0.38%) Browser DevTools
7 4 (0.30%) MLflow
7 4 (0.30%) ScriptRunner
8 3 (0.23%) Fiddler
8 3 (0.23%) Hudson
8 3 (0.23%) IntelliJ
8 3 (0.23%) Rational DOORS
9 2 (0.15%) Firebug
9 2 (0.15%) Maven
9 2 (0.15%) Selenium
9 2 (0.15%) webpack
10 1 (0.076%) Protractor
10 1 (0.076%) Sonatype Nexus
10 1 (0.076%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 473 (35.94%) Social Skills
2 202 (15.35%) Finance
3 194 (14.74%) Analytical Skills
4 145 (11.02%) Public Sector
5 60 (4.56%) Telecoms
6 54 (4.10%) Legal
7 41 (3.12%) Banking
8 39 (2.96%) Documentation Skills
8 39 (2.96%) Influencing Skills
9 34 (2.58%) Organisational Skills
10 26 (1.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 26 (1.98%) Military
11 20 (1.52%) Local Government
12 16 (1.22%) Aerospace
13 15 (1.14%) Retail
14 14 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
15 13 (0.99%) Financial Institution
16 11 (0.84%) Police
17 9 (0.68%) Manufacturing
18 7 (0.53%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 156 (11.85%) Analyst
2 120 (9.12%) Lead
3 119 (9.04%) Service Manager
4 117 (8.89%) Architect
5 114 (8.66%) Senior
6 91 (6.91%) Consultant
7 79 (6.00%) IT Manager
8 62 (4.71%) Project Manager
9 61 (4.64%) Service Analyst
10 51 (3.88%) Developer
11 47 (3.57%) Delivery Manager
12 43 (3.27%) Support Engineer
13 35 (2.66%) IT Analyst
14 33 (2.51%) Network Engineer
14 33 (2.51%) Solutions Architect
15 31 (2.36%) Administrator
15 31 (2.36%) ServiceNow Architect
15 31 (2.36%) ServiceNow Developer
16 30 (2.28%) Business Analyst
17 29 (2.20%) Service Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 62 (4.71%) REST
2 32 (2.43%) SOAP
3 17 (1.29%) HTML
4 16 (1.22%) CSS
5 11 (0.84%) Web Services
6 10 (0.76%) Middleware
6 10 (0.76%) XML
7 9 (0.68%) 802.1X
7 9 (0.68%) JSON
7 9 (0.68%) OAuth
8 7 (0.53%) Elastic Stack
8 7 (0.53%) SAML
9 6 (0.46%) AngularJS
9 6 (0.46%) Oracle Fusion
10 5 (0.38%) Lightning Web Components
10 5 (0.38%) Microsoft Graph
10 5 (0.38%) OpenID
11 4 (0.30%) ARM Templates
11 4 (0.30%) Bootstrap
11 4 (0.30%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 127 (9.65%) Onboarding
2 109 (8.28%) CMDB
3 65 (4.94%) Product Ownership
4 48 (3.65%) Management Information System
5 43 (3.27%) Data Centre
6 33 (2.51%) Enterprise Software
7 32 (2.43%) PKI
8 31 (2.36%) Virtual Team
9 24 (1.82%) Clustering
9 24 (1.82%) Operational Technology
10 19 (1.44%) Data Protection Act
11 13 (0.99%) Analytical Mindset
11 13 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
12 12 (0.91%) Cloud Native
12 12 (0.91%) Driving Licence
13 11 (0.84%) Video Conferencing
14 10 (0.76%) Algorithms
14 10 (0.76%) Hybrid Cloud
14 10 (0.76%) Linux Command Line
14 10 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 234 (17.78%) Windows
2 62 (4.71%) Linux
3 44 (3.34%) Windows Server
4 42 (3.19%) Windows 10
5 23 (1.75%) Mac OS
6 17 (1.29%) Unix
7 15 (1.14%) Apple iOS
8 12 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 11 (0.84%) Windows 7
10 9 (0.68%) Android
11 6 (0.46%) Windows Server 2019
12 4 (0.30%) VMS
13 3 (0.23%) Ubuntu
13 3 (0.23%) Windows Server 2012
13 3 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.15%) Solaris
14 2 (0.15%) Windows XP
14 2 (0.15%) zOS
15 1 (0.076%) Rocky
15 1 (0.076%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 709 (53.88%) ITIL
2 589 (44.76%) ITSM
3 339 (25.76%) Stakeholder Management
4 332 (25.23%) Continuous Improvement
5 283 (21.50%) Service Delivery
6 270 (20.52%) Agile
7 259 (19.68%) Problem-Solving
8 203 (15.43%) Change Management
9 195 (14.82%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 148 (11.25%) DevOps
11 144 (10.94%) Customer Service
12 132 (10.03%) Incident Management
13 122 (9.27%) Roadmaps
14 106 (8.05%) Problem Management
14 106 (8.05%) Project Delivery
15 95 (7.22%) Cybersecurity
16 93 (7.07%) Migration
17 92 (6.99%) Project Management
18 89 (6.76%) Decision-Making
19 88 (6.69%) Service Design
Programming Languages
1 102 (7.75%) PowerShell
2 76 (5.78%) Python
3 65 (4.94%) SQL
4 54 (4.10%) JavaScript
5 34 (2.58%) Bash
6 18 (1.37%) Java
7 11 (0.84%) PL/SQL
8 8 (0.61%) VB
8 8 (0.61%) VBScript
9 7 (0.53%) Groovy
10 6 (0.46%) Apex Code
10 6 (0.46%) C
10 6 (0.46%) Perl
11 5 (0.38%) Bicep
11 5 (0.38%) C#
11 5 (0.38%) Kotlin
11 5 (0.38%) Shell Script
11 5 (0.38%) T-SQL
12 3 (0.23%) SOQL
13 2 (0.15%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 474 (36.02%) Security Cleared
2 311 (23.63%) SC Cleared
3 155 (11.78%) DV Cleared
4 116 (8.81%) Degree
5 66 (5.02%) ITIL Certification
6 45 (3.42%) PMP
7 42 (3.19%) PMI Certification
8 34 (2.58%) BPSS Clearance
9 29 (2.20%) Cisco Certification
10 24 (1.82%) Computer Science Degree
11 22 (1.67%) Microsoft Certification
12 18 (1.37%) A+ Certification
12 18 (1.37%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 16 (1.22%) CISM
13 16 (1.22%) CISSP
14 15 (1.14%) CCNA
15 14 (1.06%) Master's Degree
16 12 (0.91%) DBS Check
17 10 (0.76%) CCNP
18 9 (0.68%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 97 (7.37%) SLA
2 45 (3.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 39 (2.96%) QA
4 35 (2.66%) Data Quality
5 30 (2.28%) PMO
6 26 (1.98%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 25 (1.90%) GRC
8 24 (1.82%) GDPR
8 24 (1.82%) NCSC
9 20 (1.52%) COBIT
10 15 (1.14%) ISO 9001
10 15 (1.14%) NIST
11 10 (0.76%) Cyber Essentials
12 8 (0.61%) Accessibility
12 8 (0.61%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 8 (0.61%) Disclosure Scotland
13 7 (0.53%) Government Security Classifications
13 7 (0.53%) PCI DSS
14 6 (0.46%) ISO 31000
14 6 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 27005
System Software
1 141 (10.71%) Active Directory
2 50 (3.80%) VMware Infrastructure
3 19 (1.44%) VMware ESXi
4 14 (1.06%) Docker
5 12 (0.91%) Virtual Desktop
5 12 (0.91%) VMware NSX
6 10 (0.76%) Hyper-V
6 10 (0.76%) vSphere
7 9 (0.68%) BitLocker
8 8 (0.61%) vCloud
9 5 (0.38%) IAG
9 5 (0.38%) NFS
9 5 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
10 4 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
11 3 (0.23%) Firmware
12 2 (0.15%) GPFS
12 2 (0.15%) KVM
13 1 (0.076%) iptables
13 1 (0.076%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 1 (0.076%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 59 (4.48%) Microsoft Intune
2 54 (4.10%) SCCM
3 37 (2.81%) Ansible
3 37 (2.81%) Terraform
4 17 (1.29%) Kubernetes
5 15 (1.14%) Jamf Pro
5 15 (1.14%) Single Sign-On
6 13 (0.99%) SCOM
7 11 (0.84%) vCenter Server
8 8 (0.61%) FortiGate
9 7 (0.53%) Data Guard
9 7 (0.53%) Oracle RMAN
10 6 (0.46%) Grafana
10 6 (0.46%) Puppet
10 6 (0.46%) WSUS
11 5 (0.38%) vMotion
12 4 (0.30%) PowerCLI
12 4 (0.30%) Progress Chef
12 4 (0.30%) Prometheus
13 3 (0.23%) Dell DRAC
Vendors
1 382 (29.03%) ServiceNow
2 250 (19.00%) Microsoft
3 69 (5.24%) VMware
4 59 (4.48%) Remedy
5 46 (3.50%) Cisco
6 36 (2.74%) Oracle
7 33 (2.51%) BMC
8 30 (2.28%) SAP
9 27 (2.05%) Atlassian
10 25 (1.90%) Splunk
11 22 (1.67%) IFS
12 19 (1.44%) SolarWinds
13 17 (1.29%) Citrix
13 17 (1.29%) Salesforce
14 16 (1.22%) Juniper
15 15 (1.14%) Dynatrace
15 15 (1.14%) Zscaler
16 14 (1.06%) Apple
16 14 (1.06%) IBM
17 13 (0.99%) F5