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

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 88 85 98
Rank change year-on-year -3 +13 -13
Contract jobs citing Service Management 1,647 978 880
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.00% 2.96% 2.33%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.55% 3.26% 2.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,077 591 560
10th Percentile £263 £200 £213
25th Percentile £434 £333 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £485 £504
Median % change year-on-year +8.25% -3.72% -4.05%
75th Percentile £625 £575 £602
90th Percentile £725 £649 £681
UK excluding London median daily rate £527 £478 £500
% change year-on-year +10.26% -4.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 79 86 16
10th Percentile £14.50 £12.62 £16.84
25th Percentile £17.80 £13.86 £23.40
Median hourly rate £55.00 £21.06 £36.25
Median % change year-on-year +161.22% -41.92% -34.09%
75th Percentile £85.00 £33.75 £49.06
90th Percentile £92.10 £60.00 £54.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.53 £20.83 £45.00
% change year-on-year +70.57% -53.71% +100.00%

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 46,382 29,970 32,481
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.48% 90.66% 85.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,008 18,622 19,630
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 £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £733 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,245 1,858 1,349
10th Percentile £13.70 £14.32 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.19 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £39.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +55.07% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £65.60 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.64 £65.00 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +77.01% -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 1 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 1 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 1 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 1,413 £525 +5.00% 1,438
UK excluding London -5 959 £527 +10.26% 1,024
London +42 501 £525 +5.00% 554
Work from Home +6 444 £525 +10.53% 698
South East +13 306 £575 +28.64% 284
North of England -16 273 £481 +6.78% 245
North West -13 160 £483 +5.17% 133
Midlands -38 125 £525 +3.96% 136
West Midlands -9 119 £525 +1.94% 84
Yorkshire -5 108 £463 +30.28% 93
Scotland +24 103 £566 +22.38% 94
South West -41 98 £570 +3.64% 123
East of England -1 62 £550 - 118
Wales -9 13 £800 +247.83% 22
Northern Ireland +11 8 - - 17
East Midlands -31 6 £163 -48.66% 51
North East -41 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 (7.65%) SharePoint
2 64 (3.89%) Microsoft Exchange
3 63 (3.83%) 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 (5.10%) Microsoft Office
2 39 (2.37%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (0.97%) 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 53 (3.22%) 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
1 287 (17.43%) Azure
2 213 (12.93%) Microsoft 365
3 140 (8.50%) AWS
4 135 (8.20%) Entra ID
5 73 (4.43%) Power Platform
6 72 (4.37%) SaaS
7 59 (3.58%) OneDrive
8 43 (2.61%) GCP
9 37 (2.25%) Azure DevOps
10 21 (1.28%) Azure Monitor
11 19 (1.15%) Microsoft Copilot
12 16 (0.97%) GitHub
12 16 (0.97%) Google Workspace
13 14 (0.85%) Dynamics 365
13 14 (0.85%) Power Automate
14 12 (0.73%) Serverless
15 10 (0.61%) IaaS
16 9 (0.55%) Amazon EC2
16 9 (0.55%) Amazon S3
16 9 (0.55%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 72 (4.37%) DNS
1 72 (4.37%) Firewall
2 58 (3.52%) VPN
3 54 (3.28%) DHCP
4 45 (2.73%) TCP/IP
5 43 (2.61%) Network Security
6 38 (2.31%) WAN
7 34 (2.06%) LAN
8 26 (1.58%) Wi-Fi
9 16 (0.97%) Skype
10 15 (0.91%) VLAN
10 15 (0.91%) Wireless
11 13 (0.79%) SD-WAN
12 11 (0.67%) BGP
12 11 (0.67%) Intrusion Detection
13 10 (0.61%) SAN
13 10 (0.61%) SSH
14 8 (0.49%) 5G
14 8 (0.49%) Internet
15 7 (0.43%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (2.61%) Power BI
2 33 (2.00%) SQL Server
3 24 (1.46%) Metadata
4 8 (0.49%) MySQL
5 7 (0.43%) Amazon RDS
5 7 (0.43%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (0.43%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 6 (0.36%) Looker
6 6 (0.36%) Oracle Database
7 5 (0.30%) MariaDB
7 5 (0.30%) Relational Database
7 5 (0.30%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 4 (0.24%) BigQuery
8 4 (0.24%) Oracle Database 11g
8 4 (0.24%) Oracle Reports
8 4 (0.24%) SQL Server Analysis Services
9 3 (0.18%) Amazon Aurora
10 2 (0.12%) Data Warehouse
10 2 (0.12%) Db2
10 2 (0.12%) EDRMS
Development Applications
1 152 (9.23%) JIRA
2 33 (2.00%) Git
3 20 (1.21%) Jenkins
4 16 (0.97%) Bitbucket
5 12 (0.73%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 7 (0.43%) GitLab
7 5 (0.30%) Browser DevTools
8 4 (0.24%) Maven
8 4 (0.24%) webpack
9 3 (0.18%) Fiddler
9 3 (0.18%) Gradle
9 3 (0.18%) Rational DOORS
10 2 (0.12%) Firebug
10 2 (0.12%) Hudson
10 2 (0.12%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.061%) Gemini Tracker
11 1 (0.061%) IBM UrbanCode
11 1 (0.061%) MLflow
11 1 (0.061%) Snyk
11 1 (0.061%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 663 (40.26%) Social Skills
2 273 (16.58%) Analytical Skills
3 270 (16.39%) Finance
4 199 (12.08%) Public Sector
5 74 (4.49%) Organisational Skills
6 70 (4.25%) Documentation Skills
6 70 (4.25%) Telecoms
7 61 (3.70%) Banking
7 61 (3.70%) Influencing Skills
8 43 (2.61%) Legal
9 42 (2.55%) Aerospace
10 40 (2.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 29 (1.76%) Presentation Skills
12 28 (1.70%) Military
13 23 (1.40%) Local Government
14 22 (1.34%) Manufacturing
15 16 (0.97%) Police
15 16 (0.97%) Retail
16 11 (0.67%) Law
17 10 (0.61%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 182 (11.05%) Architect
2 155 (9.41%) Analyst
3 151 (9.17%) Lead
4 124 (7.53%) Consultant
5 119 (7.23%) Senior
6 111 (6.74%) Service Manager
7 74 (4.49%) Delivery Manager
7 74 (4.49%) Support Engineer
8 72 (4.37%) Developer
9 67 (4.07%) Project Manager
10 66 (4.01%) IT Manager
11 57 (3.46%) Solutions Architect
12 51 (3.10%) IT Support
13 49 (2.98%) Service Analyst
14 43 (2.61%) Service Architect
15 42 (2.55%) ServiceNow Architect
16 40 (2.43%) ServiceNow Developer
17 38 (2.31%) IT Engineer
18 37 (2.25%) Transition Manager
19 34 (2.06%) Desktop Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 79 (4.80%) REST
2 57 (3.46%) Terraform
3 31 (1.88%) SOAP
4 26 (1.58%) XML
5 23 (1.40%) Middleware
5 23 (1.40%) Web Services
6 20 (1.21%) HTML
7 19 (1.15%) CSS
7 19 (1.15%) JSON
8 10 (0.61%) LDAP
8 10 (0.61%) SAML
9 9 (0.55%) Elastic Stack
10 8 (0.49%) AngularJS
10 8 (0.49%) XSLT
11 7 (0.43%) .NET
11 7 (0.43%) ARM Templates
11 7 (0.43%) OAuth
12 6 (0.36%) Ajax
13 5 (0.30%) Node.js
13 5 (0.30%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 179 (10.87%) Onboarding
2 134 (8.14%) CMDB
3 95 (5.77%) Management Information System
4 63 (3.83%) Enterprise Software
5 56 (3.40%) Product Ownership
6 55 (3.34%) Data Centre
7 40 (2.43%) PKI
8 31 (1.88%) Data Protection Act
9 29 (1.76%) Hybrid Cloud
10 28 (1.70%) Operational Technology
11 27 (1.64%) Security Operations Centre
11 27 (1.64%) Virtual Team
12 23 (1.40%) Cloud Native
13 18 (1.09%) Cyber Threat
14 17 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
15 16 (0.97%) Analytical Mindset
15 16 (0.97%) Security Posture
16 15 (0.91%) AI Agents
16 15 (0.91%) Clustering
16 15 (0.91%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 332 (20.16%) Windows
2 92 (5.59%) Linux
3 91 (5.53%) Windows Server
4 74 (4.49%) Windows 10
5 37 (2.25%) Apple iOS
6 35 (2.13%) Mac OS
7 22 (1.34%) Android
8 20 (1.21%) Unix
8 20 (1.21%) Windows 7
9 17 (1.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 6 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
11 4 (0.24%) AIX
11 4 (0.24%) Solaris
11 4 (0.24%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 3 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
12 3 (0.18%) zOS
13 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
13 2 (0.12%) Windows XP
14 1 (0.061%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 880 (53.43%) ITIL
2 713 (43.29%) ITSM
3 537 (32.60%) Stakeholder Management
4 466 (28.29%) Continuous Improvement
5 357 (21.68%) Service Delivery
6 331 (20.10%) Agile
6 331 (20.10%) Problem-Solving
7 248 (15.06%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 240 (14.57%) Change Management
9 239 (14.51%) Roadmaps
10 192 (11.66%) Cybersecurity
11 191 (11.60%) Customer Service
12 188 (11.41%) Incident Management
13 165 (10.02%) DevOps
14 152 (9.23%) Project Delivery
15 145 (8.80%) Decision-Making
16 139 (8.44%) AI
17 133 (8.08%) Migration
17 133 (8.08%) Risk Management
18 126 (7.65%) Service Design
Programming Languages
1 150 (9.11%) PowerShell
2 93 (5.65%) Python
3 61 (3.70%) SQL
4 59 (3.58%) JavaScript
5 56 (3.40%) Bash
6 19 (1.15%) VBScript
7 16 (0.97%) Java
8 15 (0.91%) VB
9 12 (0.73%) C#
10 10 (0.61%) Bicep
11 9 (0.55%) Shell Script
12 6 (0.36%) C
13 5 (0.30%) Groovy
13 5 (0.30%) Perl
13 5 (0.30%) T-SQL
14 4 (0.24%) PL/SQL
14 4 (0.24%) TypeScript
15 3 (0.18%) COBOL
15 3 (0.18%) Google Apps Script
15 3 (0.18%) RPG
Qualifications
1 631 (38.31%) Security Cleared
2 435 (26.41%) SC Cleared
3 157 (9.53%) Degree
4 152 (9.23%) DV Cleared
5 62 (3.76%) PMP
6 58 (3.52%) PMI Certification
7 57 (3.46%) BPSS Clearance
7 57 (3.46%) ITIL Certification
8 40 (2.43%) Microsoft Certification
9 36 (2.19%) CISSP
10 35 (2.13%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 31 (1.88%) CISM
12 28 (1.70%) Cisco Certification
13 27 (1.64%) Computer Science Degree
14 26 (1.58%) A+ Certification
15 24 (1.46%) DBS Check
16 21 (1.28%) Azure Certification
17 15 (0.91%) AWS Certification
18 11 (0.67%) CCNA
19 9 (0.55%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 144 (8.74%) SLA
2 62 (3.76%) QA
3 55 (3.34%) Data Quality
4 48 (2.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 42 (2.55%) GRC
6 37 (2.25%) NCSC
7 34 (2.06%) GDPR
7 34 (2.06%) ISO/IEC 20000
8 33 (2.00%) NIST
9 23 (1.40%) PMO
10 17 (1.03%) ISO 9001
11 16 (0.97%) Accessibility
11 16 (0.97%) COBIT
12 13 (0.79%) Cyber Essentials
13 10 (0.61%) PCI DSS
14 8 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 8 (0.49%) Disclosure Scotland
14 8 (0.49%) WCAG
15 7 (0.43%) ISO 22301
15 7 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 27005
System Software
1 190 (11.54%) Active Directory
2 85 (5.16%) VMware Infrastructure
3 37 (2.25%) Hyper-V
4 28 (1.70%) VMware ESXi
5 22 (1.34%) Virtual Desktop
5 22 (1.34%) vSphere
6 21 (1.28%) Docker
7 17 (1.03%) VMware NSX
8 16 (0.97%) BitLocker
9 13 (0.79%) vCloud
10 8 (0.49%) Firmware
11 7 (0.43%) Citrix Hypervisor
11 7 (0.43%) XenApp
11 7 (0.43%) XenDesktop
12 6 (0.36%) 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
1 100 (6.07%) Microsoft Intune
2 84 (5.10%) SCCM
3 52 (3.16%) Ansible
4 27 (1.64%) Kubernetes
5 25 (1.52%) Single Sign-On
6 24 (1.46%) SCOM
7 18 (1.09%) vCenter Server
8 15 (0.91%) Jamf Pro
9 11 (0.67%) WSUS
10 8 (0.49%) Grafana
10 8 (0.49%) NetBackup
11 7 (0.43%) Progress Chef
11 7 (0.43%) Puppet
12 5 (0.30%) Data Guard
12 5 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
12 5 (0.30%) Prometheus
12 5 (0.30%) Tivoli
12 5 (0.30%) Tivoli Monitoring
13 4 (0.24%) PowerCLI
13 4 (0.24%) vMotion
Vendors
1 467 (28.35%) ServiceNow
2 410 (24.89%) Microsoft
3 113 (6.86%) VMware
4 57 (3.46%) Remedy
5 50 (3.04%) BMC
5 50 (3.04%) Cisco
6 37 (2.25%) Atlassian
7 36 (2.19%) SAP
8 34 (2.06%) Oracle
9 32 (1.94%) Dynatrace
10 30 (1.82%) Google
11 27 (1.64%) IBM
12 26 (1.58%) Apple
13 24 (1.46%) Splunk
14 21 (1.28%) CyberArk
15 20 (1.21%) Citrix
15 20 (1.21%) Salesforce
15 20 (1.21%) SolarWinds
16 16 (0.97%) Zscaler
17 13 (0.79%) IFS