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

6 months to
4 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 88 84 96
Rank change year-on-year -4 +12 -11
Contract jobs citing Service Management 1,641 974 905
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.00% 2.93% 2.38%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.56% 3.24% 2.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,070 590 574
10th Percentile £263 £200 £213
25th Percentile £431 £337 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £488 £514
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% -5.11% -2.14%
75th Percentile £625 £575 £603
90th Percentile £725 £649 £683
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +8.25% -3.00% -0.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 79 87 17
10th Percentile £14.50 £12.62 £20.03
25th Percentile £17.80 £14.35 £25.75
Median hourly rate £55.00 £21.28 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year +158.46% -40.89% -33.94%
75th Percentile £85.00 £33.75 £48.75
90th Percentile £92.10 £60.00 £54.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.53 £20.83 £40.50
% change year-on-year +70.57% -48.57% +80.00%

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 46,144 30,062 32,646
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.46% 90.58% 85.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,776 18,666 19,743
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £634 £625 £638
90th Percentile £736 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,300 1,877 1,341
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.33 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.12 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £38.62 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +53.57% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £65.06 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £65.18 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.00 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +74.77% -48.10% +1.18%

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 4 October 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 4 October 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 4 October 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 -5 1,410 £525 +5.00% 1,406
UK excluding London -8 953 £525 +8.25% 1,004
London +33 501 £525 +5.00% 527
Work from Home +2 440 £525 +8.58% 721
South East +12 304 £575 +28.64% 287
North of England -19 272 £480 +6.67% 238
North West -13 161 £483 +5.92% 126
Midlands -26 126 £525 +3.96% 134
West Midlands -16 119 £525 +1.94% 86
Yorkshire -10 106 £456 +21.67% 91
Scotland +21 100 £581 +24.61% 95
South West -39 96 £558 +1.36% 113
East of England +7 63 £550 - 108
Wales -8 13 £800 +247.83% 26
Northern Ireland +8 8 - - 16
East Midlands -23 7 £206 -34.83% 47
North East -43 5 £600 +207.69% 22

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
1 126 (7.68%) SharePoint
2 64 (3.90%) Microsoft Exchange
3 62 (3.78%) Confluence
4 15 (0.91%) Skype for Business
5 5 (0.30%) OpenStack
6 4 (0.24%) Apache
6 4 (0.24%) CMS
6 4 (0.24%) IBM Transformation Extender
6 4 (0.24%) IIS
7 3 (0.18%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.12%) CICS
9 1 (0.061%) Exchange Server 2010
9 1 (0.061%) HCL Notes
9 1 (0.061%) Mattermost
9 1 (0.061%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
9 1 (0.061%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 84 (5.12%) Microsoft Office
2 40 (2.44%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (0.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 13 (0.79%) MS Visio
5 8 (0.49%) Chatbot
5 8 (0.49%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.061%) Maple
Business Applications
1 51 (3.11%) Remedy ITSM
2 12 (0.73%) SAP S/4HANA
3 9 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
4 7 (0.43%) Primavera
5 5 (0.30%) ContrOCC
5 5 (0.30%) NEC Housing
5 5 (0.30%) Workday HCM
6 3 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
6 3 (0.18%) SAP CO
6 3 (0.18%) SAP FI
6 3 (0.18%) SAP FI/CO
6 3 (0.18%) SAP SM
7 2 (0.12%) Exchequer
7 2 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
7 2 (0.12%) Remedy AR System
7 2 (0.12%) Salesforce CRM
7 2 (0.12%) SAP CX
7 2 (0.12%) SAP PS
7 2 (0.12%) SystmOne
7 2 (0.12%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 284 (17.31%) Azure
2 214 (13.04%) Microsoft 365
3 140 (8.53%) AWS
4 134 (8.17%) Entra ID
5 74 (4.51%) Power Platform
6 69 (4.20%) SaaS
7 57 (3.47%) OneDrive
8 43 (2.62%) GCP
9 37 (2.25%) Azure DevOps
10 21 (1.28%) Azure Monitor
11 19 (1.16%) Microsoft Copilot
12 17 (1.04%) GitHub
13 16 (0.98%) Google Workspace
14 14 (0.85%) Dynamics 365
14 14 (0.85%) Power Automate
15 13 (0.79%) Serverless
16 10 (0.61%) IaaS
17 9 (0.55%) Amazon EC2
17 9 (0.55%) Amazon S3
17 9 (0.55%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 72 (4.39%) Firewall
2 71 (4.33%) DNS
3 56 (3.41%) VPN
4 53 (3.23%) DHCP
5 45 (2.74%) TCP/IP
6 43 (2.62%) Network Security
7 38 (2.32%) WAN
8 34 (2.07%) LAN
9 26 (1.58%) Wi-Fi
10 16 (0.98%) Skype
11 14 (0.85%) VLAN
11 14 (0.85%) Wireless
12 13 (0.79%) SD-WAN
13 11 (0.67%) BGP
13 11 (0.67%) Intrusion Detection
14 10 (0.61%) SAN
14 10 (0.61%) SSH
15 8 (0.49%) 5G
15 8 (0.49%) Internet
16 7 (0.43%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 44 (2.68%) Power BI
2 31 (1.89%) SQL Server
3 24 (1.46%) Metadata
4 8 (0.49%) MySQL
5 7 (0.43%) Amazon RDS
5 7 (0.43%) Looker
6 6 (0.37%) Oracle Database
6 6 (0.37%) PostgreSQL
6 6 (0.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 5 (0.30%) BigQuery
7 5 (0.30%) MariaDB
7 5 (0.30%) Relational Database
8 4 (0.24%) Oracle Database 11g
8 4 (0.24%) Oracle Reports
8 4 (0.24%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 3 (0.18%) Amazon Aurora
9 3 (0.18%) SQL Server Analysis Services
10 2 (0.12%) Data Warehouse
10 2 (0.12%) EDRMS
10 2 (0.12%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 150 (9.14%) JIRA
2 33 (2.01%) Git
3 20 (1.22%) Jenkins
4 17 (1.04%) Bitbucket
5 13 (0.79%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 7 (0.43%) GitLab
7 4 (0.24%) Browser DevTools
7 4 (0.24%) Maven
7 4 (0.24%) webpack
8 3 (0.18%) Gradle
8 3 (0.18%) Rational DOORS
9 2 (0.12%) Fiddler
9 2 (0.12%) Firebug
9 2 (0.12%) Sonatype Nexus
10 1 (0.061%) Gemini Tracker
10 1 (0.061%) Hudson
10 1 (0.061%) IBM UrbanCode
10 1 (0.061%) IntelliJ
10 1 (0.061%) MLflow
10 1 (0.061%) Snyk
General
1 665 (40.52%) Social Skills
2 275 (16.76%) Analytical Skills
3 267 (16.27%) Finance
4 199 (12.13%) Public Sector
5 77 (4.69%) Organisational Skills
6 70 (4.27%) Telecoms
7 69 (4.20%) Documentation Skills
8 62 (3.78%) Banking
9 60 (3.66%) Influencing Skills
10 43 (2.62%) Aerospace
10 43 (2.62%) Legal
11 40 (2.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 28 (1.71%) Military
12 28 (1.71%) Presentation Skills
13 23 (1.40%) Local Government
13 23 (1.40%) Manufacturing
14 16 (0.98%) Police
14 16 (0.98%) Retail
15 12 (0.73%) Law
16 10 (0.61%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 180 (10.97%) Architect
2 159 (9.69%) Analyst
3 152 (9.26%) Lead
4 121 (7.37%) Consultant
5 115 (7.01%) Senior
6 114 (6.95%) Service Manager
7 76 (4.63%) Delivery Manager
8 75 (4.57%) Developer
8 75 (4.57%) Support Engineer
9 66 (4.02%) IT Manager
9 66 (4.02%) Project Manager
10 57 (3.47%) Solutions Architect
11 51 (3.11%) IT Support
12 49 (2.99%) Service Analyst
13 42 (2.56%) Service Architect
13 42 (2.56%) ServiceNow Architect
14 40 (2.44%) ServiceNow Developer
15 39 (2.38%) IT Engineer
16 37 (2.25%) Transition Manager
17 35 (2.13%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 76 (4.63%) REST
2 55 (3.35%) Terraform
3 29 (1.77%) SOAP
4 26 (1.58%) XML
5 24 (1.46%) Middleware
6 23 (1.40%) Web Services
7 18 (1.10%) HTML
7 18 (1.10%) JSON
8 17 (1.04%) CSS
9 10 (0.61%) LDAP
10 9 (0.55%) Elastic Stack
10 9 (0.55%) SAML
11 8 (0.49%) XSLT
12 7 (0.43%) .NET
12 7 (0.43%) ARM Templates
13 6 (0.37%) Ajax
13 6 (0.37%) AngularJS
13 6 (0.37%) Node.js
13 6 (0.37%) OAuth
14 5 (0.30%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 177 (10.79%) Onboarding
2 136 (8.29%) CMDB
3 96 (5.85%) Management Information System
4 64 (3.90%) Enterprise Software
5 55 (3.35%) Data Centre
5 55 (3.35%) Product Ownership
6 38 (2.32%) PKI
7 30 (1.83%) Data Protection Act
8 29 (1.77%) Hybrid Cloud
9 27 (1.65%) Security Operations Centre
10 26 (1.58%) Virtual Team
11 25 (1.52%) Operational Technology
12 23 (1.40%) Cloud Native
13 18 (1.10%) Cyber Threat
14 17 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
15 16 (0.98%) Security Posture
16 15 (0.91%) AI Agents
16 15 (0.91%) Analytical Mindset
16 15 (0.91%) Video Conferencing
17 14 (0.85%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 331 (20.17%) Windows
2 92 (5.61%) Linux
3 89 (5.42%) Windows Server
4 74 (4.51%) Windows 10
5 37 (2.25%) Apple iOS
6 35 (2.13%) Mac OS
7 22 (1.34%) Android
8 21 (1.28%) Unix
9 20 (1.22%) Windows 7
10 17 (1.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 6 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
12 4 (0.24%) AIX
12 4 (0.24%) Solaris
12 4 (0.24%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 3 (0.18%) zOS
14 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
14 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
14 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.12%) Windows XP
15 1 (0.061%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 873 (53.20%) ITIL
2 713 (43.45%) ITSM
3 540 (32.91%) Stakeholder Management
4 470 (28.64%) Continuous Improvement
5 354 (21.57%) Service Delivery
6 329 (20.05%) Problem-Solving
7 328 (19.99%) Agile
8 246 (14.99%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 241 (14.69%) Roadmaps
10 238 (14.50%) Change Management
11 194 (11.82%) Cybersecurity
12 190 (11.58%) Customer Service
13 188 (11.46%) Incident Management
14 165 (10.05%) DevOps
15 154 (9.38%) Project Delivery
16 148 (9.02%) Decision-Making
17 140 (8.53%) AI
18 132 (8.04%) Migration
19 129 (7.86%) Risk Management
20 124 (7.56%) Service Design
Programming Languages
1 146 (8.90%) PowerShell
2 93 (5.67%) Python
3 59 (3.60%) SQL
4 57 (3.47%) JavaScript
5 56 (3.41%) Bash
6 19 (1.16%) VBScript
7 16 (0.98%) Java
8 15 (0.91%) VB
9 12 (0.73%) C#
10 9 (0.55%) Bicep
10 9 (0.55%) Shell Script
11 6 (0.37%) C
12 5 (0.30%) Groovy
12 5 (0.30%) Perl
13 4 (0.24%) PL/SQL
13 4 (0.24%) T-SQL
13 4 (0.24%) TypeScript
14 3 (0.18%) COBOL
14 3 (0.18%) Lua
14 3 (0.18%) RPG
Qualifications
1 629 (38.33%) Security Cleared
2 435 (26.51%) SC Cleared
3 155 (9.45%) Degree
4 150 (9.14%) DV Cleared
5 63 (3.84%) PMP
6 60 (3.66%) BPSS Clearance
7 59 (3.60%) PMI Certification
8 56 (3.41%) ITIL Certification
9 40 (2.44%) Microsoft Certification
10 36 (2.19%) CISSP
11 34 (2.07%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 31 (1.89%) CISM
13 28 (1.71%) Cisco Certification
14 27 (1.65%) Computer Science Degree
15 26 (1.58%) A+ Certification
16 24 (1.46%) DBS Check
17 19 (1.16%) Azure Certification
18 15 (0.91%) AWS Certification
19 11 (0.67%) CCNA
20 9 (0.55%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 144 (8.78%) SLA
2 63 (3.84%) QA
3 56 (3.41%) Data Quality
4 48 (2.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 40 (2.44%) GRC
6 37 (2.25%) NCSC
7 35 (2.13%) GDPR
7 35 (2.13%) ISO/IEC 20000
8 33 (2.01%) NIST
9 23 (1.40%) PMO
10 18 (1.10%) ISO 9001
11 16 (0.98%) Accessibility
12 13 (0.79%) COBIT
13 12 (0.73%) Cyber Essentials
14 10 (0.61%) PCI DSS
15 8 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 8 (0.49%) Disclosure Scotland
15 8 (0.49%) WCAG
16 7 (0.43%) ISO 22301
17 5 (0.30%) JSP 440
System Software
1 188 (11.46%) Active Directory
2 85 (5.18%) VMware Infrastructure
3 37 (2.25%) Hyper-V
4 28 (1.71%) VMware ESXi
5 22 (1.34%) Virtual Desktop
5 22 (1.34%) vSphere
6 21 (1.28%) Docker
7 17 (1.04%) VMware NSX
8 16 (0.98%) BitLocker
9 13 (0.79%) vCloud
10 9 (0.55%) Firmware
11 7 (0.43%) Citrix Hypervisor
11 7 (0.43%) XenApp
11 7 (0.43%) XenDesktop
12 6 (0.37%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.30%) IAG
14 4 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
15 3 (0.18%) KVM
15 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 3 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 99 (6.03%) Microsoft Intune
2 84 (5.12%) SCCM
3 52 (3.17%) Ansible
4 26 (1.58%) Kubernetes
5 24 (1.46%) SCOM
5 24 (1.46%) Single Sign-On
6 18 (1.10%) vCenter Server
7 15 (0.91%) Jamf Pro
8 11 (0.67%) WSUS
9 8 (0.49%) Grafana
9 8 (0.49%) NetBackup
10 7 (0.43%) Progress Chef
10 7 (0.43%) Puppet
11 5 (0.30%) Data Guard
11 5 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
11 5 (0.30%) Prometheus
11 5 (0.30%) Tivoli
11 5 (0.30%) Tivoli Monitoring
12 4 (0.24%) PowerCLI
12 4 (0.24%) vMotion
Vendors
1 461 (28.09%) ServiceNow
2 409 (24.92%) Microsoft
3 112 (6.83%) VMware
4 55 (3.35%) Remedy
5 50 (3.05%) Cisco
6 48 (2.93%) BMC
7 38 (2.32%) Atlassian
7 38 (2.32%) SAP
8 34 (2.07%) Oracle
9 32 (1.95%) Dynatrace
10 30 (1.83%) Google
11 27 (1.65%) IBM
12 26 (1.58%) Apple
13 24 (1.46%) Splunk
14 21 (1.28%) Citrix
15 20 (1.22%) CyberArk
15 20 (1.22%) SolarWinds
16 19 (1.16%) Salesforce
17 16 (0.98%) Zscaler
18 13 (0.79%) Qualys