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

6 months to
4 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 105 87 78
Rank change year-on-year -18 -9 +9
Contract jobs citing Service Management 1,066 835 1,155
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.26% 2.85% 2.68%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.67% 3.14% 3.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 721 506 770
10th Percentile £220 £235 £282
25th Percentile £382 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% - +5.00%
75th Percentile £613 £601 £608
90th Percentile £725 £698 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £527 £525
% change year-on-year -5.08% +0.33% +10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 61 32 21
10th Percentile £16.09 - £12.53
25th Percentile £16.17 £12.62 £15.46
Median hourly rate £60.00 £22.14 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year +171.00% +24.94% -65.76%
75th Percentile £84.00 £30.10 £20.74
90th Percentile £108.00 £33.28 £48.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.00 £22.14 £17.50
% change year-on-year +171.00% +26.50% -63.91%

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 39,853 26,632 37,270
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.47% 90.92% 86.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,078 17,168 24,015
10th Percentile £319 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £481 £500
% change year-on-year +1.46% -3.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,383 1,080 2,442
10th Percentile £14.84 £14.63 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.83
Median % change year-on-year +43.29% -19.06% -0.47%
75th Percentile £67.13 £61.69 £60.00
90th Percentile £79.40 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £27.57 £37.50
% change year-on-year +59.59% -26.48% +7.14%

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 4 May 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 May 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 May 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 -13 952 £510 -2.86% 378
UK excluding London -11 704 £500 -5.08% 317
London -37 272 £520 -0.95% 105
Work from Home -8 271 £500 - 146
South East +34 211 £510 +10.27% 102
North of England -19 164 £497 +4.63% 77
South West -19 154 £575 +4.36% 32
Midlands -31 95 £403 -26.88% 44
North West -2 88 £550 +6.40% 33
West Midlands -38 74 £403 -26.95% 31
Yorkshire -29 65 £475 +11.76% 42
East of England -21 43 £475 -13.64% 44
Scotland -37 30 £500 -2.44% 14
East Midlands -15 21 £405 +5.88% 13
North East -16 11 £280 +43.59% 3
Wales -8 7 £340 -12.26% 14
Northern Ireland - 4 £500 - 3

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 83 (7.79%) Confluence
2 34 (3.19%) Microsoft Exchange
3 27 (2.53%) SharePoint
4 7 (0.66%) Skype for Business
5 6 (0.56%) Mattermost
6 3 (0.28%) IIS
6 3 (0.28%) nginx
7 1 (0.094%) Apache
7 1 (0.094%) CICS
7 1 (0.094%) CMS
7 1 (0.094%) HCL Notes
7 1 (0.094%) JBoss
7 1 (0.094%) LiveCycle
7 1 (0.094%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.094%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 1 (0.094%) WebSphere
Applications
1 83 (7.79%) Microsoft Office
2 41 (3.85%) Microsoft Project
3 27 (2.53%) Microsoft Excel
4 13 (1.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.66%) Chatbot
5 7 (0.66%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.38%) PTC Creo
7 2 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.094%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 42 (3.94%) Remedy ITSM
2 12 (1.13%) SAP S/4HANA
3 8 (0.75%) Oracle EBS
4 7 (0.66%) Teamcenter
5 2 (0.19%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.094%) Dynamics NAV
6 1 (0.094%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.094%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.094%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.094%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.094%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.094%) SAP HR
6 1 (0.094%) SAP Payroll
6 1 (0.094%) SAP PM
6 1 (0.094%) SAP SM
6 1 (0.094%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 154 (14.45%) Azure
2 93 (8.72%) Microsoft 365
3 78 (7.32%) AWS
4 49 (4.60%) Power Platform
5 47 (4.41%) SaaS
6 39 (3.66%) GCP
7 33 (3.10%) Entra ID
8 28 (2.63%) Azure DevOps
9 19 (1.78%) GitHub
9 19 (1.78%) PaaS
10 17 (1.59%) IaaS
11 15 (1.41%) OneDrive
12 13 (1.22%) OCI
13 12 (1.13%) AWS Lambda
13 12 (1.13%) Serverless
14 10 (0.94%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 9 (0.84%) Microsoft Copilot
15 9 (0.84%) OpenShift
16 8 (0.75%) Dynamics 365
16 8 (0.75%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 62 (5.82%) Firewall
2 49 (4.60%) DNS
3 36 (3.38%) WAN
4 34 (3.19%) LAN
4 34 (3.19%) VPN
5 30 (2.81%) Network Security
6 24 (2.25%) DHCP
7 22 (2.06%) TCP/IP
8 14 (1.31%) BGP
9 13 (1.22%) OSPF
9 13 (1.22%) SD-WAN
10 12 (1.13%) BIG-IP
11 11 (1.03%) Cisco ISE
11 11 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
12 10 (0.94%) VLAN
12 10 (0.94%) Wireless
13 8 (0.75%) Ethernet VPN
13 8 (0.75%) Junos
13 8 (0.75%) Skype
13 8 (0.75%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (3.47%) Power BI
2 14 (1.31%) SQL Server
3 8 (0.75%) Relational Database
4 7 (0.66%) PostgreSQL
5 6 (0.56%) Oracle Reports
6 5 (0.47%) Oracle Database
7 4 (0.38%) Amazon RDS
7 4 (0.38%) Elasticsearch
7 4 (0.38%) InfluxDB
7 4 (0.38%) Oracle Database 11g
7 4 (0.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 4 (0.38%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 3 (0.28%) Azure SQL Database
8 3 (0.28%) MySQL
8 3 (0.28%) SQL Server Analysis Services
9 2 (0.19%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (0.19%) GIS
9 2 (0.19%) MariaDB
9 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Analysis Services
9 2 (0.19%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 144 (13.51%) JIRA
2 18 (1.69%) Jenkins
3 16 (1.50%) GitLab
4 15 (1.41%) Bitbucket
4 15 (1.41%) Git
5 7 (0.66%) ScriptRunner
6 6 (0.56%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 4 (0.38%) Browser DevTools
7 4 (0.38%) MLflow
8 3 (0.28%) Hudson
8 3 (0.28%) IntelliJ
8 3 (0.28%) Selenium
8 3 (0.28%) TestRail
9 2 (0.19%) Cypress.io
9 2 (0.19%) Fiddler
9 2 (0.19%) Firebug
10 1 (0.094%) Artifactory
10 1 (0.094%) Cucumber
10 1 (0.094%) Protractor
10 1 (0.094%) Rational DOORS
General
1 378 (35.46%) Social Skills
2 169 (15.85%) Finance
3 161 (15.10%) Analytical Skills
4 109 (10.23%) Public Sector
5 62 (5.82%) Legal
6 44 (4.13%) Military
7 37 (3.47%) Banking
8 33 (3.10%) Organisational Skills
9 28 (2.63%) Documentation Skills
10 27 (2.53%) Telecoms
11 22 (2.06%) Influencing Skills
12 21 (1.97%) Retail
13 13 (1.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 12 (1.13%) Aerospace
15 9 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
16 8 (0.75%) Front Office
16 8 (0.75%) Investment Banking
16 8 (0.75%) Local Government
17 7 (0.66%) Police
18 6 (0.56%) Law
Job Titles
1 126 (11.82%) Analyst
2 124 (11.63%) Architect
3 110 (10.32%) Service Manager
4 108 (10.13%) Lead
5 80 (7.50%) Senior
6 62 (5.82%) Consultant
7 58 (5.44%) IT Manager
8 57 (5.35%) Service Architect
9 52 (4.88%) Service Analyst
10 44 (4.13%) Project Manager
11 36 (3.38%) Hardware Engineer
12 35 (3.28%) Delivery Manager
13 32 (3.00%) IT Analyst
14 30 (2.81%) IT Services Manager
15 29 (2.72%) Support Engineer
16 27 (2.53%) Developer
16 27 (2.53%) Service Delivery Manager
17 26 (2.44%) Designer
18 25 (2.35%) Administrator
18 25 (2.35%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (3.47%) REST
2 20 (1.88%) SOAP
3 9 (0.84%) 802.1X
3 9 (0.84%) Middleware
4 7 (0.66%) CSS
4 7 (0.66%) HTML
4 7 (0.66%) Oracle Fusion
5 6 (0.56%) Elastic Stack
5 6 (0.56%) JSON
5 6 (0.56%) OAuth
6 5 (0.47%) .NET
6 5 (0.47%) Lightning Web Components
6 5 (0.47%) XML
6 5 (0.47%) XMPP
7 4 (0.38%) LDAP
7 4 (0.38%) Microsoft Graph
7 4 (0.38%) RabbitMQ
7 4 (0.38%) Web Services
8 3 (0.28%) OAuth2
8 3 (0.28%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 87 (8.16%) Product Ownership
2 69 (6.47%) Onboarding
3 65 (6.10%) CMDB
4 46 (4.32%) Data Centre
5 27 (2.53%) Management Information System
6 25 (2.35%) Virtual Team
7 23 (2.16%) PKI
8 20 (1.88%) Driving Licence
9 19 (1.78%) Clustering
10 15 (1.41%) Enterprise Software
10 15 (1.41%) PMI
11 13 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
12 10 (0.94%) Analytical Mindset
12 10 (0.94%) Cloud Native
13 9 (0.84%) Algorithms
13 9 (0.84%) Operational Technology
13 9 (0.84%) Replication
14 8 (0.75%) Self-Motivation
15 6 (0.56%) Hybrid Cloud
15 6 (0.56%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 175 (16.42%) Windows
2 56 (5.25%) Linux
3 44 (4.13%) Windows Server
4 40 (3.75%) Windows 10
5 12 (1.13%) Unix
6 11 (1.03%) Mac OS
7 9 (0.84%) Windows 7
8 8 (0.75%) Android
8 8 (0.75%) Apple iOS
9 7 (0.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 7 (0.66%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.38%) VMS
11 3 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.19%) Solaris
12 2 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
12 2 (0.19%) zOS
13 1 (0.094%) CentOS
13 1 (0.094%) Windows Server 2008
13 1 (0.094%) Windows XP
Processes & Methodologies
1 583 (54.69%) ITIL
2 448 (42.03%) ITSM
3 235 (22.05%) Agile
4 223 (20.92%) Continuous Improvement
5 221 (20.73%) Stakeholder Management
6 204 (19.14%) Problem-Solving
7 174 (16.32%) Service Delivery
8 145 (13.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 141 (13.23%) Change Management
10 124 (11.63%) DevOps
11 114 (10.69%) Customer Service
12 102 (9.57%) Service Design
13 83 (7.79%) Problem Management
14 80 (7.50%) Roadmaps
15 76 (7.13%) Incident Management
16 74 (6.94%) Configuration Management
17 71 (6.66%) Knowledge Transfer
18 70 (6.57%) Project Management
19 67 (6.29%) Acceptance Criteria
20 65 (6.10%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 68 (6.38%) PowerShell
2 52 (4.88%) SQL
3 37 (3.47%) Python
4 33 (3.10%) JavaScript
5 16 (1.50%) Java
6 11 (1.03%) Bash
7 9 (0.84%) PL/SQL
8 7 (0.66%) VB
8 7 (0.66%) VBScript
9 6 (0.56%) Apex Code
9 6 (0.56%) Kotlin
10 5 (0.47%) C#
10 5 (0.47%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.38%) Go
11 4 (0.38%) Groovy
11 4 (0.38%) T-SQL
12 3 (0.28%) C
13 2 (0.19%) ActionScript
13 2 (0.19%) PHP
13 2 (0.19%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 437 (40.99%) Security Cleared
2 330 (30.96%) SC Cleared
3 125 (11.73%) Degree
4 119 (11.16%) DV Cleared
5 48 (4.50%) ITIL Certification
6 34 (3.19%) PMI Certification
7 32 (3.00%) PMP
8 30 (2.81%) TOGAF Certification
9 28 (2.63%) Cisco Certification
10 21 (1.97%) Microsoft Certification
11 20 (1.88%) BPSS Clearance
12 19 (1.78%) Computer Science Degree
13 14 (1.31%) CCNA
14 12 (1.13%) A+ Certification
15 11 (1.03%) CCNP
15 11 (1.03%) Master's Degree
16 9 (0.84%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 9 (0.84%) MAPM
16 9 (0.84%) Network+ Certification
16 9 (0.84%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 61 (5.72%) SLA
2 33 (3.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 32 (3.00%) Data Quality
4 24 (2.25%) QA
5 22 (2.06%) PMO
6 21 (1.97%) GDPR
7 16 (1.50%) COBIT
7 16 (1.50%) ISO/IEC 20000
8 15 (1.41%) GRC
9 14 (1.31%) NCSC
10 10 (0.94%) NIST
11 9 (0.84%) Accessibility
12 8 (0.75%) Cyber Essentials
13 7 (0.66%) Government Security Classifications
14 6 (0.56%) ISO 31000
14 6 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 27005
14 6 (0.56%) PCI DSS
14 6 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 5 (0.47%) Disclosure Scotland
15 5 (0.47%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 101 (9.47%) Active Directory
2 35 (3.28%) VMware Infrastructure
3 14 (1.31%) Docker
4 8 (0.75%) VMware ESXi
5 7 (0.66%) BitLocker
6 5 (0.47%) Hyper-V
7 4 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
7 4 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
7 4 (0.38%) vSphere
8 3 (0.28%) VMware NSX
9 2 (0.19%) IAG
9 2 (0.19%) NFS
9 2 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.094%) iptables
10 1 (0.094%) Microsoft Virtual Server
10 1 (0.094%) Samba
10 1 (0.094%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 1 (0.094%) vCloud
10 1 (0.094%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 33 (3.10%) Ansible
2 30 (2.81%) OPNET
3 29 (2.72%) SCCM
4 28 (2.63%) Terraform
5 21 (1.97%) Kubernetes
5 21 (1.97%) Microsoft Intune
6 11 (1.03%) Grafana
7 10 (0.94%) FortiGate
7 10 (0.94%) WSUS
8 8 (0.75%) Jamf Pro
8 8 (0.75%) Prometheus
9 7 (0.66%) Progress Chef
10 6 (0.56%) PowerCLI
11 5 (0.47%) Puppet
11 5 (0.47%) SCOM
11 5 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
11 5 (0.47%) vMotion
12 4 (0.38%) Data Guard
12 4 (0.38%) Nessus
12 4 (0.38%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 279 (26.17%) ServiceNow
2 159 (14.92%) Microsoft
3 78 (7.32%) Remedy
4 60 (5.63%) Atlassian
5 53 (4.97%) VMware
6 43 (4.03%) Oracle
7 41 (3.85%) Cisco
8 39 (3.66%) HP
9 27 (2.53%) Google
10 26 (2.44%) SAP
11 22 (2.06%) IFS
12 20 (1.88%) BMC
12 20 (1.88%) Splunk
13 19 (1.78%) Dell
14 16 (1.50%) Citrix
15 15 (1.41%) Canon
15 15 (1.41%) Salesforce
15 15 (1.41%) SolarWinds
16 13 (1.22%) F5
17 11 (1.03%) Workday