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

6 months to
25 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 107 84 77
Rank change year-on-year -23 -7 +11
Contract jobs citing Service Management 1,037 867 1,172
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.36% 2.98% 2.65%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.75% 3.29% 3.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 710 553 781
10th Percentile £210 £221 £280
25th Percentile £378 £403 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -0.94% +6.00%
75th Percentile £610 £608 £608
90th Percentile £725 £699 £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 67 37 20
10th Percentile £14.75 £12.62 £12.53
25th Percentile £16.17 £21.05 £16.27
Median hourly rate £26.50 £24.18 £18.36
Median % change year-on-year +9.59% +31.70% -47.58%
75th Percentile £74.26 £32.50 £26.63
90th Percentile £86.35 £68.00 £56.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.75 £23.16 £17.72
% change year-on-year +2.55% +30.70% -57.58%

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 37,704 26,329 38,303
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.90% 90.53% 86.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,901 17,073 24,878
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 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -1.13% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,218 942 2,338
10th Percentile £14.94 £15.20 £12.85
25th Percentile £18.50 £20.75 £16.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.72%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.31 £57.75
90th Percentile £75.12 £77.10 £71.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £31.76 £31.50
% change year-on-year -5.54% +0.83% -12.50%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 -19 952 £520 -0.95% 360
UK excluding London -17 705 £510 -2.95% 312
London -61 257 £520 -0.95% 85
Work from Home -29 241 £500 -4.76% 156
South East +28 207 £514 +5.38% 109
North of England -9 168 £500 +11.11% 72
South West -14 162 £575 +2.22% 32
Midlands -29 98 £414 -26.97% 50
North West +2 97 £550 +10.00% 40
West Midlands -33 73 £411 -27.95% 34
Yorkshire -24 62 £468 +102.16% 27
East of England -18 48 £475 -13.64% 44
East Midlands -12 25 £419 -9.95% 16
Scotland -41 22 £500 - 11
North East -8 12 £280 +43.59% 6
Wales -11 3 £340 -25.48% 4
Northern Ireland - 1 £500 - 2

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 94 (9.06%) Confluence
2 46 (4.44%) Microsoft Exchange
3 40 (3.86%) SharePoint
4 9 (0.87%) Skype for Business
5 5 (0.48%) Mattermost
6 3 (0.29%) IIS
6 3 (0.29%) nginx
7 2 (0.19%) Apache
7 2 (0.19%) JBoss
7 2 (0.19%) SharePoint Server
8 1 (0.096%) HCL Notes
8 1 (0.096%) LiveCycle
8 1 (0.096%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.096%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 1 (0.096%) WebLogic
8 1 (0.096%) WebSphere
Applications
1 83 (8.00%) Microsoft Office
2 40 (3.86%) Microsoft Project
3 27 (2.60%) Microsoft Excel
4 10 (0.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.58%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.39%) PTC Creo
7 3 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.19%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.096%) Autodesk Inventor
9 1 (0.096%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 38 (3.66%) Remedy ITSM
2 13 (1.25%) Oracle EBS
2 13 (1.25%) SAP S/4HANA
3 7 (0.68%) Teamcenter
4 2 (0.19%) Oracle Applications
4 2 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.096%) assyst
5 1 (0.096%) Dynamics CRM
5 1 (0.096%) Dynamics NAV
5 1 (0.096%) NetSuite
5 1 (0.096%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.096%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.096%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.096%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 1 (0.096%) SAP ERP
5 1 (0.096%) SAP HR
5 1 (0.096%) SAP Payroll
5 1 (0.096%) SAP PM
5 1 (0.096%) SystmOne
5 1 (0.096%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 158 (15.24%) Azure
2 97 (9.35%) Microsoft 365
3 83 (8.00%) AWS
4 45 (4.34%) GCP
5 43 (4.15%) Power Platform
6 42 (4.05%) Entra ID
7 39 (3.76%) SaaS
8 31 (2.99%) Azure DevOps
9 18 (1.74%) GitHub
10 17 (1.64%) OneDrive
10 17 (1.64%) PaaS
11 15 (1.45%) IaaS
12 12 (1.16%) Serverless
13 11 (1.06%) AWS Lambda
14 9 (0.87%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 9 (0.87%) OCI
15 8 (0.77%) Dynamics 365
15 8 (0.77%) OpenShift
16 7 (0.68%) Google Workspace
16 7 (0.68%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 67 (6.46%) Firewall
2 58 (5.59%) DNS
3 37 (3.57%) VPN
3 37 (3.57%) WAN
4 36 (3.47%) LAN
5 31 (2.99%) DHCP
6 28 (2.70%) Network Security
7 21 (2.03%) TCP/IP
8 19 (1.83%) BGP
8 19 (1.83%) VLAN
9 18 (1.74%) Cisco ISE
10 16 (1.54%) Junos
11 15 (1.45%) Wi-Fi
12 14 (1.35%) Skype
13 13 (1.25%) OSPF
14 12 (1.16%) BIG-IP
14 12 (1.16%) SD-WAN
15 11 (1.06%) Cisco Firepower
15 11 (1.06%) WebEx
16 9 (0.87%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (3.18%) Power BI
2 14 (1.35%) SQL Server
3 9 (0.87%) Relational Database
4 6 (0.58%) PostgreSQL
5 5 (0.48%) Metadata
6 4 (0.39%) Amazon RDS
6 4 (0.39%) Elasticsearch
6 4 (0.39%) InfluxDB
7 3 (0.29%) Oracle Reports
7 3 (0.29%) 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%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 2 (0.19%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 1 (0.096%) Amazon Redshift
9 1 (0.096%) KNIME
9 1 (0.096%) OpenStack Swift
9 1 (0.096%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 147 (14.18%) JIRA
2 19 (1.83%) Jenkins
3 16 (1.54%) Bitbucket
3 16 (1.54%) GitLab
4 15 (1.45%) Git
5 6 (0.58%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 4 (0.39%) MLflow
6 4 (0.39%) ScriptRunner
7 3 (0.29%) Selenium
7 3 (0.29%) TestRail
8 2 (0.19%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.19%) IntelliJ
9 1 (0.096%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.096%) Hudson
9 1 (0.096%) JMeter
9 1 (0.096%) JUnit
9 1 (0.096%) Protractor
9 1 (0.096%) Rational DOORS
9 1 (0.096%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.096%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 375 (36.16%) Social Skills
2 157 (15.14%) Analytical Skills
3 145 (13.98%) Finance
4 121 (11.67%) Public Sector
5 59 (5.69%) Legal
6 47 (4.53%) Military
7 34 (3.28%) Banking
8 32 (3.09%) Documentation Skills
9 31 (2.99%) Influencing Skills
9 31 (2.99%) Organisational Skills
10 22 (2.12%) Retail
11 19 (1.83%) Telecoms
12 11 (1.06%) Aerospace
12 11 (1.06%) Manufacturing
13 10 (0.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 8 (0.77%) Investment Banking
14 8 (0.77%) Law
14 8 (0.77%) Local Government
15 7 (0.68%) Front Office
16 6 (0.58%) Police
Job Titles
1 130 (12.54%) Analyst
2 121 (11.67%) Architect
3 119 (11.48%) Lead
4 96 (9.26%) Service Manager
5 67 (6.46%) Senior
6 64 (6.17%) Consultant
7 58 (5.59%) Service Architect
8 52 (5.01%) Service Analyst
9 38 (3.66%) IT Manager
10 36 (3.47%) Hardware Engineer
10 36 (3.47%) Support Engineer
11 34 (3.28%) IT Support
12 32 (3.09%) Delivery Manager
13 31 (2.99%) IT Analyst
14 30 (2.89%) Project Manager
15 29 (2.80%) Network Engineer
16 27 (2.60%) Service Delivery Manager
17 26 (2.51%) Administrator
18 24 (2.31%) Field Engineer
18 24 (2.31%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (4.34%) REST
2 17 (1.64%) SOAP
3 11 (1.06%) XMPP
4 9 (0.87%) 802.1X
5 8 (0.77%) Elastic Stack
6 7 (0.68%) Middleware
7 6 (0.58%) Web Services
8 5 (0.48%) .NET
8 5 (0.48%) LDAP
8 5 (0.48%) Oracle Fusion
9 4 (0.39%) ARM Templates
9 4 (0.39%) JSON
9 4 (0.39%) RabbitMQ
10 3 (0.29%) CSS
10 3 (0.29%) Lightning Web Components
10 3 (0.29%) Microsoft Graph
10 3 (0.29%) OAuth
11 2 (0.19%) HTML
11 2 (0.19%) RFC 2544
11 2 (0.19%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 98 (9.45%) Product Ownership
2 66 (6.36%) CMDB
3 54 (5.21%) Onboarding
4 41 (3.95%) Data Centre
5 36 (3.47%) Management Information System
6 32 (3.09%) Virtual Team
7 24 (2.31%) PKI
8 20 (1.93%) Driving Licence
9 15 (1.45%) Analytical Mindset
9 15 (1.45%) Self-Motivation
10 14 (1.35%) Clustering
11 13 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
11 13 (1.25%) PMI
12 11 (1.06%) Enterprise Software
13 8 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
13 8 (0.77%) Replication
14 7 (0.68%) Algorithms
14 7 (0.68%) Cloud Native
14 7 (0.68%) NHS
15 6 (0.58%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 198 (19.09%) Windows
2 64 (6.17%) Linux
3 60 (5.79%) Windows Server
4 45 (4.34%) Windows 10
5 17 (1.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (1.06%) Mac OS
6 11 (1.06%) Windows 7
7 10 (0.96%) Android
8 8 (0.77%) Apple iOS
8 8 (0.77%) Unix
8 8 (0.77%) Windows Server 2012
9 7 (0.68%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.48%) VMS
11 4 (0.39%) Windows Server 2003
12 3 (0.29%) CentOS
12 3 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
14 1 (0.096%) Data ONTAP
14 1 (0.096%) Rocky
14 1 (0.096%) Windows XP
Processes & Methodologies
1 579 (55.83%) ITIL
2 445 (42.91%) ITSM
3 236 (22.76%) Agile
4 207 (19.96%) Continuous Improvement
5 205 (19.77%) Problem-Solving
6 195 (18.80%) Stakeholder Management
7 165 (15.91%) Service Delivery
8 153 (14.75%) Change Management
9 144 (13.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 123 (11.86%) DevOps
11 101 (9.74%) Customer Service
12 100 (9.64%) Service Design
13 90 (8.68%) Problem Management
14 88 (8.49%) Incident Management
15 78 (7.52%) Configuration Management
15 78 (7.52%) Project Management
16 76 (7.33%) Acceptance Criteria
17 69 (6.65%) Knowledge Transfer
18 65 (6.27%) CI/CD
18 65 (6.27%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 93 (8.97%) PowerShell
2 57 (5.50%) Python
3 47 (4.53%) SQL
4 24 (2.31%) JavaScript
5 19 (1.83%) Bash
6 18 (1.74%) Java
7 9 (0.87%) Perl
7 9 (0.87%) VB
7 9 (0.87%) VBScript
8 7 (0.68%) Shell Script
9 6 (0.58%) Kotlin
10 5 (0.48%) C#
10 5 (0.48%) PL/SQL
11 4 (0.39%) Apex Code
11 4 (0.39%) Go
12 2 (0.19%) Bicep
12 2 (0.19%) PHP
12 2 (0.19%) T-SQL
13 1 (0.096%) C
13 1 (0.096%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 442 (42.62%) Security Cleared
2 330 (31.82%) SC Cleared
3 131 (12.63%) Degree
3 131 (12.63%) DV Cleared
4 50 (4.82%) ITIL Certification
5 30 (2.89%) TOGAF Certification
6 28 (2.70%) PMI Certification
7 26 (2.51%) PMP
8 24 (2.31%) BPSS Clearance
9 23 (2.22%) Microsoft Certification
10 22 (2.12%) Cisco Certification
11 17 (1.64%) Computer Science Degree
12 13 (1.25%) A+ Certification
12 13 (1.25%) CCNP
13 11 (1.06%) CCNA
13 11 (1.06%) MCSE
14 9 (0.87%) JNCIA
14 9 (0.87%) JNCIP
14 9 (0.87%) JNCIS
15 8 (0.77%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 50 (4.82%) SLA
2 31 (2.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 29 (2.80%) Data Quality
4 23 (2.22%) GDPR
5 21 (2.03%) QA
6 19 (1.83%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 18 (1.74%) PMO
8 11 (1.06%) Accessibility
8 11 (1.06%) NCSC
9 10 (0.96%) COBIT
10 9 (0.87%) NIST
11 8 (0.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 7 (0.68%) Government Security Classifications
12 7 (0.68%) GRC
13 6 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials
13 6 (0.58%) PCI DSS
14 4 (0.39%) Disclosure Scotland
14 4 (0.39%) ISO 9001
15 3 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 2 (0.19%) HIPAA
System Software
1 116 (11.19%) Active Directory
2 32 (3.09%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (1.74%) Docker
4 11 (1.06%) VMware NSX
5 9 (0.87%) BitLocker
6 5 (0.48%) Hyper-V
7 4 (0.39%) Virtual Machines
8 3 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.19%) NDS
9 2 (0.19%) NetIQ eDirectory
9 2 (0.19%) NFS
9 2 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 1 (0.096%) iptables
10 1 (0.096%) Microsoft Virtual Server
10 1 (0.096%) Samba
10 1 (0.096%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 38 (3.66%) SCCM
2 30 (2.89%) OPNET
3 28 (2.70%) Microsoft Intune
4 27 (2.60%) Ansible
4 27 (2.60%) Terraform
5 25 (2.41%) Kubernetes
6 12 (1.16%) FortiGate
6 12 (1.16%) WSUS
7 11 (1.06%) vCenter Server
8 10 (0.96%) Grafana
9 8 (0.77%) Jamf Pro
10 7 (0.68%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 7 (0.68%) Progress Chef
10 7 (0.68%) Prometheus
11 5 (0.48%) Puppet
11 5 (0.48%) SCOM
12 4 (0.39%) Nessus
12 4 (0.39%) Packer
12 4 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
13 3 (0.29%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 261 (25.17%) ServiceNow
2 162 (15.62%) Microsoft
3 74 (7.14%) Remedy
4 72 (6.94%) Atlassian
5 55 (5.30%) Cisco
6 52 (5.01%) VMware
7 41 (3.95%) Oracle
8 39 (3.76%) HP
9 33 (3.18%) Google
10 27 (2.60%) SAP
11 23 (2.22%) SolarWinds
11 23 (2.22%) Splunk
12 21 (2.03%) Citrix
13 20 (1.93%) Salesforce
14 19 (1.83%) Red Hat
15 18 (1.74%) Dell
15 18 (1.74%) Juniper
16 15 (1.45%) BMC
16 15 (1.45%) Canon
16 15 (1.45%) IFS