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

6 months to
30 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 105 83 78
Rank change year-on-year -22 -5 +9
Contract jobs citing Service Management 1,053 867 1,176
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.37% 2.96% 2.66%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.77% 3.27% 3.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 719 552 788
10th Percentile £213 £221 £274
25th Percentile £382 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £528
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -0.47% +5.50%
75th Percentile £607 £606 £608
90th Percentile £725 £700 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £525 £528
% change year-on-year -2.95% -0.47% +11.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 68 37 20
10th Percentile £15.00 £12.62 £12.53
25th Percentile £16.17 £20.64 £16.27
Median hourly rate £27.00 £24.18 £18.36
Median % change year-on-year +11.66% +31.70% -47.54%
75th Percentile £74.26 £32.50 £26.63
90th Percentile £95.00 £68.00 £56.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.50 £22.14 £17.72
% change year-on-year +19.69% +24.94% -49.45%

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 38,014 26,489 38,263
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.62% 90.44% 86.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,062 17,216 24,858
10th Percentile £313 £308 £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 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £484 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.72% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,249 972 2,349
10th Percentile £14.96 £15.00 £12.84
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.26 £16.00
Median hourly rate £35.50 £31.88 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +11.36% -1.91% -9.72%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.25 £70.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £31.50 £31.50
% change year-on-year +3.17% - -12.26%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 -14 971 £515 -1.90% 367
UK excluding London -11 719 £510 -2.95% 317
London -54 260 £520 -0.95% 89
Work from Home -33 244 £500 -2.06% 157
South East +24 211 £520 +11.83% 109
North of England -5 174 £500 +6.61% 73
South West -13 165 £575 +3.28% 34
North West -2 100 £550 +9.89% 39
Midlands -27 99 £413 -25.14% 50
West Midlands -32 74 £408 -28.07% 35
Yorkshire -26 62 £468 +42.57% 28
East of England -16 48 £465 -15.55% 45
East Midlands -15 25 £419 +9.48% 15
Scotland -40 22 £475 -5.00% 13
North East -6 15 £420 +115.38% 7
Wales -12 3 £340 -25.48% 6
Northern Ireland - 1 £500 -

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 95 (9.02%) Confluence
2 46 (4.37%) Microsoft Exchange
3 38 (3.61%) SharePoint
4 9 (0.85%) Skype for Business
5 5 (0.47%) Mattermost
6 3 (0.28%) IIS
6 3 (0.28%) nginx
7 2 (0.19%) Apache
7 2 (0.19%) JBoss
7 2 (0.19%) SharePoint Server
8 1 (0.095%) HCL Notes
8 1 (0.095%) LiveCycle
8 1 (0.095%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.095%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 1 (0.095%) WebLogic
8 1 (0.095%) WebSphere
Applications
1 86 (8.17%) Microsoft Office
2 41 (3.89%) Microsoft Project
3 28 (2.66%) Microsoft Excel
4 11 (1.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.57%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.38%) PTC Creo
7 3 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.19%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.095%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 39 (3.70%) Remedy ITSM
2 13 (1.23%) Oracle EBS
3 12 (1.14%) SAP S/4HANA
4 7 (0.66%) Teamcenter
5 2 (0.19%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.095%) assyst
6 1 (0.095%) Dynamics CRM
6 1 (0.095%) Dynamics NAV
6 1 (0.095%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.095%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.095%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.095%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.095%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.095%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.095%) SAP HR
6 1 (0.095%) SAP Payroll
6 1 (0.095%) SAP PM
6 1 (0.095%) SystmOne
6 1 (0.095%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 154 (14.62%) Azure
2 99 (9.40%) Microsoft 365
3 79 (7.50%) AWS
4 46 (4.37%) Power Platform
5 42 (3.99%) GCP
6 41 (3.89%) Entra ID
7 40 (3.80%) SaaS
8 29 (2.75%) Azure DevOps
9 18 (1.71%) GitHub
10 17 (1.61%) OneDrive
10 17 (1.61%) PaaS
11 15 (1.42%) IaaS
12 11 (1.04%) AWS Lambda
12 11 (1.04%) Serverless
13 10 (0.95%) OCI
14 9 (0.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 8 (0.76%) Dynamics 365
15 8 (0.76%) OpenShift
16 7 (0.66%) PowerApps
16 7 (0.66%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 70 (6.65%) Firewall
2 57 (5.41%) DNS
3 37 (3.51%) VPN
3 37 (3.51%) WAN
4 36 (3.42%) LAN
5 31 (2.94%) DHCP
5 31 (2.94%) Network Security
6 21 (1.99%) TCP/IP
7 19 (1.80%) BGP
8 18 (1.71%) VLAN
9 17 (1.61%) Cisco ISE
10 15 (1.42%) Wi-Fi
11 14 (1.33%) Junos
12 13 (1.23%) OSPF
12 13 (1.23%) Skype
13 12 (1.14%) BIG-IP
13 12 (1.14%) SD-WAN
14 11 (1.04%) WebEx
15 9 (0.85%) Cisco Firepower
15 9 (0.85%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (3.42%) Power BI
2 14 (1.33%) SQL Server
3 9 (0.85%) Relational Database
4 6 (0.57%) PostgreSQL
5 5 (0.47%) Metadata
6 4 (0.38%) Amazon RDS
6 4 (0.38%) Elasticsearch
6 4 (0.38%) InfluxDB
7 3 (0.28%) Oracle Reports
7 3 (0.28%) Tableau
8 2 (0.19%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (0.19%) Big Data
8 2 (0.19%) GIS
8 2 (0.19%) MongoDB
8 2 (0.19%) Oracle Database
8 2 (0.19%) Oracle Database 11g
8 2 (0.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 2 (0.19%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 1 (0.095%) Amazon Redshift
9 1 (0.095%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 152 (14.43%) JIRA
2 18 (1.71%) Jenkins
3 16 (1.52%) GitLab
4 15 (1.42%) Bitbucket
5 13 (1.23%) Git
6 7 (0.66%) ScriptRunner
7 6 (0.57%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 4 (0.38%) MLflow
9 3 (0.28%) Selenium
9 3 (0.28%) TestRail
10 2 (0.19%) Cypress.io
10 2 (0.19%) IntelliJ
11 1 (0.095%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.095%) Cucumber
11 1 (0.095%) Hudson
11 1 (0.095%) Postman
11 1 (0.095%) Protractor
11 1 (0.095%) Rational DOORS
11 1 (0.095%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.095%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 376 (35.71%) Social Skills
2 161 (15.29%) Analytical Skills
3 147 (13.96%) Finance
4 119 (11.30%) Public Sector
5 61 (5.79%) Legal
6 48 (4.56%) Military
7 36 (3.42%) Banking
8 32 (3.04%) Documentation Skills
8 32 (3.04%) Organisational Skills
9 29 (2.75%) Influencing Skills
10 21 (1.99%) Retail
10 21 (1.99%) Telecoms
11 11 (1.04%) Aerospace
11 11 (1.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 11 (1.04%) Manufacturing
12 9 (0.85%) Investment Banking
13 8 (0.76%) Law
13 8 (0.76%) Local Government
14 7 (0.66%) Front Office
15 6 (0.57%) Police
Job Titles
1 128 (12.16%) Analyst
2 119 (11.30%) Architect
3 115 (10.92%) Lead
4 104 (9.88%) Service Manager
5 69 (6.55%) Senior
6 65 (6.17%) Consultant
7 58 (5.51%) Service Architect
8 52 (4.94%) Service Analyst
9 46 (4.37%) IT Manager
10 36 (3.42%) Hardware Engineer
10 36 (3.42%) IT Support
11 34 (3.23%) IT Analyst
11 34 (3.23%) Support Engineer
12 33 (3.13%) Delivery Manager
12 33 (3.13%) Project Manager
13 31 (2.94%) Administrator
14 28 (2.66%) Network Engineer
15 27 (2.56%) Service Delivery Manager
16 24 (2.28%) Developer
16 24 (2.28%) Field Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 46 (4.37%) REST
2 16 (1.52%) SOAP
3 11 (1.04%) XMPP
4 9 (0.85%) 802.1X
5 7 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
5 7 (0.66%) Middleware
6 5 (0.47%) .NET
6 5 (0.47%) Oracle Fusion
6 5 (0.47%) Web Services
7 4 (0.38%) ARM Templates
7 4 (0.38%) JSON
7 4 (0.38%) LDAP
7 4 (0.38%) RabbitMQ
8 3 (0.28%) CSS
8 3 (0.28%) Lightning Web Components
8 3 (0.28%) Microsoft Graph
8 3 (0.28%) OAuth
9 2 (0.19%) HTML
9 2 (0.19%) Spring Boot
9 2 (0.19%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 97 (9.21%) Product Ownership
2 69 (6.55%) CMDB
3 59 (5.60%) Onboarding
4 42 (3.99%) Data Centre
5 35 (3.32%) Management Information System
6 32 (3.04%) Virtual Team
7 24 (2.28%) PKI
8 20 (1.90%) Driving Licence
9 15 (1.42%) Self-Motivation
10 14 (1.33%) Analytical Mindset
10 14 (1.33%) Clustering
10 14 (1.33%) PMI
11 13 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
12 11 (1.04%) Enterprise Software
13 8 (0.76%) Hybrid Cloud
13 8 (0.76%) NHS
13 8 (0.76%) Replication
14 7 (0.66%) Algorithms
15 6 (0.57%) Cloud Native
15 6 (0.57%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 195 (18.52%) Windows
2 66 (6.27%) Linux
3 59 (5.60%) Windows Server
4 47 (4.46%) Windows 10
5 17 (1.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (1.04%) Mac OS
6 11 (1.04%) Windows 7
7 10 (0.95%) Android
8 8 (0.76%) Apple iOS
8 8 (0.76%) Unix
8 8 (0.76%) Windows Server 2012
9 7 (0.66%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.47%) VMS
11 4 (0.38%) Windows Server 2003
12 3 (0.28%) CentOS
12 3 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
14 1 (0.095%) Data ONTAP
14 1 (0.095%) Rocky
14 1 (0.095%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 593 (56.32%) ITIL
2 460 (43.68%) ITSM
3 239 (22.70%) Agile
4 209 (19.85%) Problem-Solving
5 206 (19.56%) Continuous Improvement
6 201 (19.09%) Stakeholder Management
7 169 (16.05%) Service Delivery
8 159 (15.10%) Change Management
9 147 (13.96%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 124 (11.78%) DevOps
11 102 (9.69%) Customer Service
12 100 (9.50%) Service Design
13 96 (9.12%) Problem Management
14 86 (8.17%) Incident Management
15 81 (7.69%) Configuration Management
16 79 (7.50%) Project Management
17 76 (7.22%) Acceptance Criteria
18 70 (6.65%) Knowledge Transfer
19 64 (6.08%) Migration
19 64 (6.08%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 92 (8.74%) PowerShell
2 58 (5.51%) Python
3 50 (4.75%) SQL
4 27 (2.56%) JavaScript
5 19 (1.80%) Bash
6 18 (1.71%) Java
7 9 (0.85%) Perl
7 9 (0.85%) VB
7 9 (0.85%) VBScript
8 8 (0.76%) PL/SQL
9 7 (0.66%) Shell Script
10 6 (0.57%) Kotlin
11 5 (0.47%) C#
12 4 (0.38%) Apex Code
12 4 (0.38%) Go
12 4 (0.38%) Groovy
13 2 (0.19%) PHP
13 2 (0.19%) T-SQL
14 1 (0.095%) C
14 1 (0.095%) VBA
Qualifications
1 450 (42.74%) Security Cleared
2 339 (32.19%) SC Cleared
3 136 (12.92%) Degree
4 131 (12.44%) DV Cleared
5 50 (4.75%) ITIL Certification
6 31 (2.94%) PMI Certification
7 30 (2.85%) TOGAF Certification
8 29 (2.75%) PMP
9 25 (2.37%) Cisco Certification
10 24 (2.28%) BPSS Clearance
11 23 (2.18%) Microsoft Certification
12 17 (1.61%) Computer Science Degree
13 16 (1.52%) CCNP
14 15 (1.42%) A+ Certification
15 14 (1.33%) CCNA
16 10 (0.95%) MCSE
17 9 (0.85%) JNCIA
17 9 (0.85%) JNCIP
17 9 (0.85%) JNCIS
18 8 (0.76%) MAPM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 50 (4.75%) SLA
2 34 (3.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 32 (3.04%) Data Quality
4 22 (2.09%) GDPR
5 20 (1.90%) PMO
5 20 (1.90%) QA
6 19 (1.80%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 11 (1.04%) Accessibility
7 11 (1.04%) NCSC
8 10 (0.95%) COBIT
8 10 (0.95%) GRC
9 9 (0.85%) NIST
10 8 (0.76%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 7 (0.66%) Government Security Classifications
12 6 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials
12 6 (0.57%) PCI DSS
13 4 (0.38%) Disclosure Scotland
13 4 (0.38%) ISO 9001
14 3 (0.28%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 2 (0.19%) HIPAA
System Software
1 116 (11.02%) Active Directory
2 33 (3.13%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (1.71%) Docker
4 9 (0.85%) BitLocker
4 9 (0.85%) VMware NSX
5 5 (0.47%) Hyper-V
5 5 (0.47%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
6 3 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.19%) NDS
7 2 (0.19%) NetIQ eDirectory
7 2 (0.19%) NFS
7 2 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (0.095%) IAG
8 1 (0.095%) iptables
8 1 (0.095%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 1 (0.095%) Oracle RAC
8 1 (0.095%) Samba
8 1 (0.095%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 38 (3.61%) SCCM
2 30 (2.85%) OPNET
3 28 (2.66%) Ansible
3 28 (2.66%) Microsoft Intune
4 25 (2.37%) Kubernetes
4 25 (2.37%) Terraform
5 12 (1.14%) FortiGate
5 12 (1.14%) WSUS
6 10 (0.95%) Grafana
7 9 (0.85%) vCenter Server
8 8 (0.76%) Jamf Pro
9 7 (0.66%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 7 (0.66%) Progress Chef
9 7 (0.66%) Prometheus
10 5 (0.47%) Puppet
10 5 (0.47%) SCOM
11 4 (0.38%) Nessus
11 4 (0.38%) Packer
12 3 (0.28%) HP ALM
12 3 (0.28%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 268 (25.45%) ServiceNow
2 164 (15.57%) Microsoft
3 75 (7.12%) Atlassian
3 75 (7.12%) Remedy
4 56 (5.32%) Cisco
5 52 (4.94%) VMware
6 44 (4.18%) Oracle
7 39 (3.70%) HP
8 30 (2.85%) Google
9 27 (2.56%) SAP
10 26 (2.47%) Splunk
11 21 (1.99%) Citrix
12 20 (1.90%) Salesforce
12 20 (1.90%) SolarWinds
13 19 (1.80%) Red Hat
14 18 (1.71%) Dell
15 16 (1.52%) Juniper
16 15 (1.42%) BMC
16 15 (1.42%) Canon
17 14 (1.33%) IFS