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

6 months to
11 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 108 87 78
Rank change year-on-year -21 -9 +10
Contract jobs citing Service Management 1,019 851 1,196
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.39% 2.89% 2.67%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.78% 3.20% 3.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 689 538 815
10th Percentile £200 £220 £285
25th Percentile £359 £402 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -2.33% +7.50%
75th Percentile £604 £613 £608
90th Percentile £723 £697 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% +12.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 77 33 17
10th Percentile £15.94 £12.62 £12.53
25th Percentile £16.72 £22.14 £15.46
Median hourly rate £32.50 £26.50 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year +22.64% +49.55% -39.22%
75th Percentile £74.26 £33.37 £20.00
90th Percentile £84.50 £68.50 £59.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £24.18 £17.50
% change year-on-year +88.01% +38.15% -50.07%

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 36,632 26,629 38,749
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.08% 90.34% 86.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,216 16,983 25,185
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £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 £725 £743 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -1.84% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,179 898 2,347
10th Percentile £14.64 £15.57 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £29.61 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -8.89% - -7.14%
75th Percentile £64.75 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £74.68 £76.53 £71.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.55 £32.00 £31.80
% change year-on-year -17.02% +0.63% -9.14%

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 11 March 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 March 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 March 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 -12 932 £510 -2.95% 312
UK excluding London -11 691 £500 -4.76% 276
London -47 250 £500 -4.76% 52
Work from Home -21 249 £475 -9.52% 128
South East +29 199 £500 +8.11% 88
North of England -14 164 £500 +17.65% 68
South West -10 163 £575 +2.22% 33
Midlands -25 98 £425 -24.98% 51
North West -5 91 £550 +16.53% 43
West Midlands -34 75 £438 -23.35% 30
Yorkshire -31 63 £465 +102.28% 18
East of England -8 47 £452 -17.82% 30
East Midlands -15 23 £419 -9.95% 21
Scotland -27 23 £500 - 10
North East -8 13 £280 -27.27% 8
Wales -9 2 £245 -36.77% 6
Northern Ireland - 1 £500 - 1

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 92 (9.03%) Confluence
2 50 (4.91%) Microsoft Exchange
3 47 (4.61%) SharePoint
4 11 (1.08%) Skype for Business
5 5 (0.49%) Mattermost
6 3 (0.29%) IIS
6 3 (0.29%) nginx
6 3 (0.29%) SharePoint Server
7 2 (0.20%) Apache
7 2 (0.20%) JBoss
8 1 (0.098%) HCL Notes
8 1 (0.098%) LiveCycle
8 1 (0.098%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.098%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 1 (0.098%) WebLogic
8 1 (0.098%) WebSphere
Applications
1 85 (8.34%) Microsoft Office
2 36 (3.53%) Microsoft Project
3 29 (2.85%) Microsoft Excel
4 9 (0.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.39%) Autodesk Inventor
6 4 (0.39%) PTC Creo
7 3 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.098%) Camtasia
8 1 (0.098%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 31 (3.04%) Remedy ITSM
2 14 (1.37%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (1.28%) Oracle EBS
4 7 (0.69%) Teamcenter
5 2 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.098%) assyst
6 1 (0.098%) Dynamics CRM
6 1 (0.098%) Dynamics NAV
6 1 (0.098%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.098%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.098%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.098%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.098%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.098%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.098%) SAP PM
6 1 (0.098%) SAP SM
6 1 (0.098%) SystmOne
6 1 (0.098%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 163 (16.00%) Azure
2 94 (9.22%) Microsoft 365
3 92 (9.03%) AWS
4 50 (4.91%) GCP
5 47 (4.61%) Entra ID
6 37 (3.63%) Power Platform
7 36 (3.53%) SaaS
8 28 (2.75%) Azure DevOps
9 21 (2.06%) OneDrive
10 15 (1.47%) IaaS
10 15 (1.47%) PaaS
11 13 (1.28%) GitHub
12 11 (1.08%) Serverless
13 10 (0.98%) AWS Lambda
14 8 (0.79%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 8 (0.79%) Dynamics 365
14 8 (0.79%) OpenShift
14 8 (0.79%) PowerApps
15 7 (0.69%) Salesforce Service Cloud
16 6 (0.59%) Slack
Communications & Networking
1 66 (6.48%) Firewall
2 64 (6.28%) DNS
3 34 (3.34%) DHCP
3 34 (3.34%) LAN
3 34 (3.34%) VPN
4 33 (3.24%) WAN
5 25 (2.45%) Network Security
6 21 (2.06%) VLAN
7 20 (1.96%) TCP/IP
8 17 (1.67%) Skype
9 16 (1.57%) BGP
10 15 (1.47%) Cisco ISE
10 15 (1.47%) Junos
10 15 (1.47%) Wi-Fi
11 11 (1.08%) WebEx
12 10 (0.98%) OSPF
13 9 (0.88%) BIG-IP
13 9 (0.88%) Cisco Firepower
13 9 (0.88%) Cisco IOS
13 9 (0.88%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (2.65%) Power BI
2 13 (1.28%) SQL Server
3 11 (1.08%) Relational Database
4 6 (0.59%) PostgreSQL
5 5 (0.49%) Metadata
6 4 (0.39%) Amazon RDS
6 4 (0.39%) Elasticsearch
6 4 (0.39%) InfluxDB
7 3 (0.29%) Tableau
8 2 (0.20%) Big Data
8 2 (0.20%) GIS
8 2 (0.20%) MongoDB
9 1 (0.098%) Azure SQL Database
9 1 (0.098%) Data Mining
9 1 (0.098%) Electronic Patient Records
9 1 (0.098%) KNIME
9 1 (0.098%) OpenStack Swift
9 1 (0.098%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.098%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 1 (0.098%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 143 (14.03%) JIRA
2 18 (1.77%) Jenkins
3 17 (1.67%) Git
4 14 (1.37%) Bitbucket
4 14 (1.37%) GitLab
5 6 (0.59%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 4 (0.39%) ScriptRunner
7 3 (0.29%) MLflow
7 3 (0.29%) Selenium
7 3 (0.29%) TestRail
8 2 (0.20%) Cypress.io
9 1 (0.098%) Artifactory
9 1 (0.098%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.098%) IntelliJ
9 1 (0.098%) JMeter
9 1 (0.098%) JUnit
9 1 (0.098%) Protractor
9 1 (0.098%) Rational DOORS
9 1 (0.098%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.098%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 381 (37.39%) Social Skills
2 161 (15.80%) Analytical Skills
3 133 (13.05%) Finance
4 126 (12.37%) Public Sector
5 56 (5.50%) Legal
6 46 (4.51%) Military
7 34 (3.34%) Influencing Skills
7 34 (3.34%) Organisational Skills
8 32 (3.14%) Banking
9 31 (3.04%) Documentation Skills
10 22 (2.16%) Retail
11 21 (2.06%) Telecoms
12 12 (1.18%) Manufacturing
13 11 (1.08%) Aerospace
14 9 (0.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 9 (0.88%) Presentation Skills
15 8 (0.79%) Law
16 7 (0.69%) Investment Banking
16 7 (0.69%) Local Government
17 6 (0.59%) Police
Job Titles
1 134 (13.15%) Analyst
2 124 (12.17%) Lead
3 117 (11.48%) Architect
4 92 (9.03%) Service Manager
5 59 (5.79%) Consultant
5 59 (5.79%) Senior
6 55 (5.40%) Service Architect
7 53 (5.20%) Service Analyst
8 41 (4.02%) IT Manager
9 38 (3.73%) IT Support
10 37 (3.63%) Support Engineer
11 34 (3.34%) Hardware Engineer
12 28 (2.75%) Delivery Manager
13 27 (2.65%) Business Analyst
13 27 (2.65%) IT Analyst
13 27 (2.65%) Network Engineer
14 25 (2.45%) Administrator
14 25 (2.45%) Platform Engineer
15 24 (2.36%) 2nd Line Support
16 23 (2.26%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (4.42%) REST
2 19 (1.86%) SOAP
3 11 (1.08%) XMPP
4 9 (0.88%) Web Services
5 8 (0.79%) 802.1X
5 8 (0.79%) Elastic Stack
6 7 (0.69%) LDAP
7 6 (0.59%) Middleware
8 4 (0.39%) .NET
8 4 (0.39%) ARM Templates
8 4 (0.39%) JSON
8 4 (0.39%) RabbitMQ
8 4 (0.39%) RFC 2544
9 3 (0.29%) CSS
9 3 (0.29%) EDI
9 3 (0.29%) Lightning Web Components
9 3 (0.29%) Microsoft Graph
9 3 (0.29%) OAuth
9 3 (0.29%) Oracle Fusion
10 2 (0.20%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 93 (9.13%) Product Ownership
2 63 (6.18%) CMDB
3 49 (4.81%) Onboarding
4 42 (4.12%) Data Centre
5 37 (3.63%) Management Information System
6 28 (2.75%) Virtual Team
7 24 (2.36%) PKI
8 18 (1.77%) Driving Licence
9 17 (1.67%) Analytical Mindset
10 16 (1.57%) Self-Motivation
11 14 (1.37%) PMI
12 12 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
13 11 (1.08%) Enterprise Software
14 10 (0.98%) Clustering
15 8 (0.79%) Hybrid Cloud
16 7 (0.69%) Algorithms
16 7 (0.69%) NHS
17 6 (0.59%) Cloud Native
17 6 (0.59%) Replication
17 6 (0.59%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 198 (19.43%) Windows
2 62 (6.08%) Linux
3 55 (5.40%) Windows Server
4 47 (4.61%) Windows 10
5 16 (1.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 12 (1.18%) Mac OS
7 11 (1.08%) Android
7 11 (1.08%) Windows 7
8 9 (0.88%) Apple iOS
9 8 (0.79%) Windows Server 2012
10 7 (0.69%) Ubuntu
11 6 (0.59%) Unix
12 5 (0.49%) VMS
13 4 (0.39%) Windows Server 2003
14 3 (0.29%) CentOS
14 3 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
14 3 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
15 1 (0.098%) Data ONTAP
15 1 (0.098%) Rocky
15 1 (0.098%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 584 (57.31%) ITIL
2 452 (44.36%) ITSM
3 229 (22.47%) Agile
4 210 (20.61%) Problem-Solving
5 203 (19.92%) Continuous Improvement
6 190 (18.65%) Stakeholder Management
7 154 (15.11%) Service Delivery
8 151 (14.82%) Change Management
9 140 (13.74%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 113 (11.09%) DevOps
11 112 (10.99%) Customer Service
12 108 (10.60%) Service Design
13 86 (8.44%) Problem Management
14 82 (8.05%) Incident Management
15 79 (7.75%) Configuration Management
16 76 (7.46%) Acceptance Criteria
16 76 (7.46%) Project Management
17 72 (7.07%) Knowledge Transfer
18 63 (6.18%) Performance Metrics
19 62 (6.08%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 90 (8.83%) PowerShell
2 60 (5.89%) Python
3 43 (4.22%) SQL
4 24 (2.36%) JavaScript
5 20 (1.96%) Java
6 19 (1.86%) Bash
7 12 (1.18%) Perl
8 10 (0.98%) Shell Script
9 9 (0.88%) VB
9 9 (0.88%) VBScript
10 6 (0.59%) Kotlin
11 4 (0.39%) C#
11 4 (0.39%) Go
12 2 (0.20%) ActionScript
12 2 (0.20%) ActionScript 2.0
12 2 (0.20%) Apex Code
12 2 (0.20%) Bicep
12 2 (0.20%) PHP
12 2 (0.20%) PL/SQL
13 1 (0.098%) Scala
Qualifications
1 420 (41.22%) Security Cleared
2 314 (30.81%) SC Cleared
3 126 (12.37%) Degree
4 119 (11.68%) DV Cleared
5 54 (5.30%) ITIL Certification
6 30 (2.94%) TOGAF Certification
7 28 (2.75%) BPSS Clearance
8 27 (2.65%) PMI Certification
9 25 (2.45%) Microsoft Certification
10 24 (2.36%) PMP
11 23 (2.26%) Cisco Certification
12 15 (1.47%) CCNP
12 15 (1.47%) Computer Science Degree
13 13 (1.28%) A+ Certification
13 13 (1.28%) CCNA
13 13 (1.28%) MCSE
14 9 (0.88%) Azure Certification
15 8 (0.79%) JNCIA
15 8 (0.79%) JNCIP
15 8 (0.79%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 43 (4.22%) SLA
2 28 (2.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 26 (2.55%) Data Quality
4 24 (2.36%) QA
5 22 (2.16%) GDPR
6 14 (1.37%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 13 (1.28%) PMO
8 11 (1.08%) Accessibility
9 10 (0.98%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 9 (0.88%) COBIT
10 9 (0.88%) NCSC
10 9 (0.88%) NIST
11 7 (0.69%) GRC
12 6 (0.59%) PCI DSS
13 5 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
13 5 (0.49%) Government Security Classifications
14 4 (0.39%) HIPAA
15 3 (0.29%) Disclosure Scotland
15 3 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 3 (0.29%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 119 (11.68%) Active Directory
2 35 (3.43%) VMware Infrastructure
3 19 (1.86%) Docker
4 11 (1.08%) VMware NSX
5 9 (0.88%) BitLocker
6 8 (0.79%) Hyper-V
7 4 (0.39%) NDS
7 4 (0.39%) NetIQ eDirectory
7 4 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.29%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 3 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
8 3 (0.29%) Virtual Servers
8 3 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.20%) NFS
10 1 (0.098%) iptables
10 1 (0.098%) Samba
10 1 (0.098%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 37 (3.63%) SCCM
2 31 (3.04%) Microsoft Intune
3 30 (2.94%) OPNET
4 28 (2.75%) Ansible
5 26 (2.55%) Kubernetes
6 25 (2.45%) Terraform
7 13 (1.28%) WSUS
8 12 (1.18%) vCenter Server
9 11 (1.08%) FortiGate
10 10 (0.98%) Grafana
11 8 (0.79%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 8 (0.79%) Jamf Pro
12 7 (0.69%) Progress Chef
12 7 (0.69%) Prometheus
13 6 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
14 5 (0.49%) Puppet
14 5 (0.49%) SCOM
15 4 (0.39%) Nessus
15 4 (0.39%) Packer
16 3 (0.29%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 266 (26.10%) ServiceNow
2 160 (15.70%) Microsoft
3 70 (6.87%) Atlassian
4 65 (6.38%) Remedy
5 57 (5.59%) Cisco
6 52 (5.10%) VMware
7 37 (3.63%) Google
7 37 (3.63%) HP
8 34 (3.34%) Oracle
9 29 (2.85%) SAP
10 27 (2.65%) Splunk
11 25 (2.45%) SolarWinds
12 18 (1.77%) Citrix
13 17 (1.67%) Juniper
13 17 (1.67%) Salesforce
14 16 (1.57%) Dell
14 16 (1.57%) Red Hat
15 13 (1.28%) Canon
15 13 (1.28%) IFS
16 12 (1.18%) BMC