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

6 months to
12 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 107 87 79
Rank change year-on-year -20 -8 +9
Contract jobs citing Service Management 1,019 852 1,195
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.39% 2.90% 2.68%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.77% 3.20% 3.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 688 538 812
10th Percentile £204 £220 £282
25th Percentile £362 £401 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -2.95% -1.87% +7.00%
75th Percentile £604 £611 £608
90th Percentile £725 £697 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £507 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -3.38% -1.87% +12.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 78 33 17
10th Percentile £15.97 £12.62 £12.53
25th Percentile £16.17 £22.14 £15.46
Median hourly rate £28.27 £26.50 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year +6.68% +49.55% -39.22%
75th Percentile £74.13 £33.37 £20.00
90th Percentile £84.38 £68.50 £59.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.48 £24.18 £17.50
% change year-on-year +50.87% +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 36,752 26,590 38,671
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.07% 90.35% 86.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,283 16,983 25,150
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 £744 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -2.04% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,192 900 2,342
10th Percentile £14.82 £15.49 £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 £65.00 £64.79 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £76.34 £70.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.21 £32.00 £31.50
% change year-on-year -14.97% +1.59% -10.00%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 -16 930 £510 -2.86% 334
UK excluding London -7 696 £507 -3.38% 293
Work from Home -19 247 £475 -9.52% 137
London -51 245 £508 -3.33% 73
South East +30 201 £500 +8.11% 101
North of England -12 167 £513 +20.59% 71
South West -11 162 £575 +2.22% 38
Midlands -22 97 £425 -24.98% 51
North West -3 94 £550 +16.53% 40
West Midlands -40 74 £431 -24.44% 30
Yorkshire -28 63 £465 +101.63% 25
East of England -13 47 £452 -17.82% 32
Scotland -33 25 £500 - 8
East Midlands -13 23 £419 -9.95% 21
North East -9 13 £280 -27.27% 7
Wales -10 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%) PTC Creo
7 3 (0.29%) Autodesk Inventor
7 3 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.098%) Camtasia
8 1 (0.098%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 29 (2.85%) 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
1 165 (16.19%) Azure
2 94 (9.22%) AWS
3 93 (9.13%) Microsoft 365
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 67 (6.58%) Firewall
2 65 (6.38%) DNS
3 37 (3.63%) LAN
4 36 (3.53%) WAN
5 35 (3.43%) DHCP
6 34 (3.34%) VPN
7 28 (2.75%) Network Security
8 22 (2.16%) TCP/IP
9 21 (2.06%) VLAN
10 19 (1.86%) BGP
11 18 (1.77%) Cisco ISE
12 17 (1.67%) Skype
13 16 (1.57%) Junos
14 15 (1.47%) Wi-Fi
15 13 (1.28%) OSPF
16 12 (1.18%) BIG-IP
17 11 (1.08%) Cisco Firepower
17 11 (1.08%) WebEx
18 10 (0.98%) SD-WAN
19 9 (0.88%) Cisco IOS
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%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.098%) IntelliJ
9 1 (0.098%) JMeter
9 1 (0.098%) JUnit
9 1 (0.098%) Postman
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
1 382 (37.49%) Social Skills
2 162 (15.90%) Analytical Skills
3 131 (12.86%) Finance
4 125 (12.27%) Public Sector
5 56 (5.50%) Legal
6 46 (4.51%) Military
7 34 (3.34%) Influencing Skills
8 33 (3.24%) Organisational Skills
9 32 (3.14%) Banking
10 31 (3.04%) Documentation Skills
11 23 (2.26%) Retail
12 19 (1.86%) Telecoms
13 11 (1.08%) Aerospace
13 11 (1.08%) Manufacturing
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
1 133 (13.05%) Analyst
2 123 (12.07%) Lead
3 117 (11.48%) Architect
4 92 (9.03%) Service Manager
5 62 (6.08%) Senior
6 61 (5.99%) Consultant
7 55 (5.40%) Service Architect
8 53 (5.20%) Service Analyst
9 41 (4.02%) IT Manager
10 38 (3.73%) IT Support
11 37 (3.63%) Support Engineer
12 36 (3.53%) Hardware Engineer
13 30 (2.94%) Network Engineer
14 28 (2.75%) Delivery Manager
15 27 (2.65%) IT Analyst
16 26 (2.55%) Business Analyst
17 25 (2.45%) Administrator
17 25 (2.45%) Platform Engineer
18 24 (2.36%) 2nd Line Support
18 24 (2.36%) Field Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (4.22%) REST
2 17 (1.67%) SOAP
3 11 (1.08%) XMPP
4 9 (0.88%) 802.1X
5 8 (0.79%) Elastic Stack
5 8 (0.79%) Web Services
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 62 (6.08%) CMDB
3 49 (4.81%) Onboarding
4 44 (4.32%) Data Centre
5 37 (3.63%) Management Information System
6 30 (2.94%) Virtual Team
7 25 (2.45%) PKI
8 20 (1.96%) 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%) Clustering
13 11 (1.08%) Enterprise Software
14 8 (0.79%) Hybrid Cloud
15 7 (0.69%) Algorithms
15 7 (0.69%) NHS
16 6 (0.59%) Renewable Energy
16 6 (0.59%) Replication
16 6 (0.59%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 200 (19.63%) 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
1 582 (57.11%) ITIL
2 450 (44.16%) ITSM
3 227 (22.28%) Agile
4 209 (20.51%) Problem-Solving
5 203 (19.92%) Continuous Improvement
6 189 (18.55%) Stakeholder Management
7 153 (15.01%) Service Delivery
8 149 (14.62%) Change Management
9 140 (13.74%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 113 (11.09%) DevOps
11 112 (10.99%) Customer Service
12 107 (10.50%) Service Design
13 85 (8.34%) Problem Management
14 83 (8.15%) Incident Management
15 79 (7.75%) Configuration Management
16 77 (7.56%) Project Management
17 76 (7.46%) Acceptance Criteria
18 72 (7.07%) Knowledge Transfer
19 63 (6.18%) Performance Metrics
20 62 (6.08%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 90 (8.83%) PowerShell
2 60 (5.89%) Python
3 43 (4.22%) SQL
4 23 (2.26%) 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%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 426 (41.81%) Security Cleared
2 316 (31.01%) SC Cleared
3 126 (12.37%) Degree
4 122 (11.97%) DV Cleared
5 55 (5.40%) 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%) Cisco Certification
10 24 (2.36%) PMP
11 15 (1.47%) CCNP
11 15 (1.47%) Computer Science Degree
12 13 (1.28%) A+ Certification
12 13 (1.28%) CCNA
12 13 (1.28%) MCSE
13 9 (0.88%) Azure Certification
13 9 (0.88%) JNCIA
13 9 (0.88%) JNCIP
13 9 (0.88%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 43 (4.22%) SLA
2 28 (2.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 26 (2.55%) Data Quality
4 23 (2.26%) 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 37 (3.63%) VMware Infrastructure
3 19 (1.86%) Docker
4 12 (1.18%) 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%) FortiGate
8 12 (1.18%) vCenter Server
9 10 (0.98%) Grafana
10 8 (0.79%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 8 (0.79%) Jamf Pro
11 7 (0.69%) Progress Chef
11 7 (0.69%) Prometheus
12 6 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
13 5 (0.49%) Puppet
13 5 (0.49%) SCOM
14 4 (0.39%) Nessus
14 4 (0.39%) Packer
15 3 (0.29%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 263 (25.81%) ServiceNow
2 157 (15.41%) Microsoft
3 70 (6.87%) Atlassian
4 63 (6.18%) Remedy
5 60 (5.89%) Cisco
6 55 (5.40%) VMware
7 39 (3.83%) HP
8 37 (3.63%) Google
9 34 (3.34%) Oracle
10 28 (2.75%) SAP
10 28 (2.75%) Splunk
11 26 (2.55%) SolarWinds
12 18 (1.77%) Citrix
12 18 (1.77%) Dell
12 18 (1.77%) Juniper
13 17 (1.67%) Salesforce
14 16 (1.57%) Red Hat
15 15 (1.47%) Canon
16 13 (1.28%) IFS
16 13 (1.28%) Palo Alto