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

6 months to
20 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 103 95 79
Rank change year-on-year -8 -16 +13
Contract jobs citing Service Management 1,030 822 1,174
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.52% 2.66% 2.64%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.90% 2.97% 3.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 696 493 802
10th Percentile £200 £220 £285
25th Percentile £331 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% +7.00%
75th Percentile £600 £619 £608
90th Percentile £721 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £520 £535
% change year-on-year -3.85% -2.80% +12.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 80 26 16
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.83 £12.53
25th Percentile £17.15 £22.65 £15.46
Median hourly rate £29.60 £30.00 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year -1.33% +69.30% -39.22%
75th Percentile £64.87 £36.19 £50.31
90th Percentile £84.13 £69.38 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.60 £30.00 £17.11
% change year-on-year -1.33% +75.34% -73.68%

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 35,472 27,688 38,644
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.86% 89.76% 87.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,461 17,051 25,269
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £410 £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 £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -1.84% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,140 862 2,156
10th Percentile £14.61 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.87 £21.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.64 £32.50 £34.77
Median % change year-on-year -21.12% -6.52% -0.67%
75th Percentile £60.25 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £72.00 £75.00 £72.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £30.45 £35.00
% change year-on-year -17.41% -13.00% -

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 20 February 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 20 February 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 20 February 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 -5 931 £500 -4.76% 414
UK excluding London -7 690 £500 -3.85% 352
London -53 253 £500 -4.76% 112
Work from Home -23 239 £450 -14.29% 162
South East +30 187 £488 +8.33% 105
North of England -10 165 £500 +17.65% 98
South West -4 157 £575 +1.77% 58
Midlands -6 106 £425 -23.94% 55
North West +1 89 £550 +25.71% 68
West Midlands -24 79 £431 -23.88% 37
Yorkshire -29 61 £468 +108.00% 28
East of England -12 47 £452 -17.82% 30
Scotland -19 30 £488 -2.11% 13
East Midlands -3 27 £419 -9.95% 17
North East -8 18 £280 -53.04% 2
Wales -4 2 £160 -58.71% 6
Northern Ireland - 2 £325 - 1

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 82 (7.96%) Confluence
2 69 (6.70%) Microsoft Exchange
3 63 (6.12%) SharePoint
4 14 (1.36%) Skype for Business
5 5 (0.49%) Mattermost
5 5 (0.49%) SharePoint Server
6 4 (0.39%) Apache
6 4 (0.39%) WebLogic
7 3 (0.29%) nginx
8 2 (0.19%) JBoss
9 1 (0.097%) CMS
9 1 (0.097%) HCL Notes
9 1 (0.097%) LiveCycle
9 1 (0.097%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 1 (0.097%) WebSphere
Applications
1 97 (9.42%) Microsoft Office
2 36 (3.50%) Microsoft Project
3 33 (3.20%) Microsoft Excel
4 13 (1.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.39%) Autodesk Inventor
5 4 (0.39%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.39%) PTC Creo
6 3 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.097%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 30 (2.91%) Remedy ITSM
2 15 (1.46%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (1.26%) Oracle EBS
4 7 (0.68%) Teamcenter
5 3 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
6 2 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
7 1 (0.097%) assyst
7 1 (0.097%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.097%) NetSuite
7 1 (0.097%) Oracle Payables
7 1 (0.097%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 1 (0.097%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.097%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 1 (0.097%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.097%) SAP PM
7 1 (0.097%) SAP SM
7 1 (0.097%) SystmOne
7 1 (0.097%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 173 (16.80%) Azure
2 112 (10.87%) Microsoft 365
3 101 (9.81%) AWS
4 48 (4.66%) Entra ID
5 45 (4.37%) GCP
6 34 (3.30%) Power Platform
7 32 (3.11%) SaaS
8 31 (3.01%) OneDrive
9 25 (2.43%) Azure DevOps
10 12 (1.17%) GitHub
10 12 (1.17%) IaaS
11 11 (1.07%) PaaS
11 11 (1.07%) Serverless
12 10 (0.97%) AWS Lambda
13 9 (0.87%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 9 (0.87%) Dynamics 365
13 9 (0.87%) PowerApps
14 8 (0.78%) Azure Monitor
15 7 (0.68%) Nutanix
15 7 (0.68%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 76 (7.38%) DNS
2 58 (5.63%) Firewall
3 45 (4.37%) DHCP
4 34 (3.30%) VPN
5 30 (2.91%) LAN
6 29 (2.82%) WAN
7 28 (2.72%) VLAN
8 27 (2.62%) TCP/IP
9 22 (2.14%) Skype
10 20 (1.94%) Network Security
11 19 (1.84%) Junos
12 18 (1.75%) Cisco ISE
12 18 (1.75%) Wi-Fi
13 14 (1.36%) BGP
13 14 (1.36%) Cisco IOS
14 13 (1.26%) Cisco Firepower
15 10 (0.97%) HTTP
15 10 (0.97%) WebEx
16 9 (0.87%) SSH
17 8 (0.78%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (2.23%) Power BI
2 14 (1.36%) Relational Database
2 14 (1.36%) SQL Server
3 7 (0.68%) PostgreSQL
4 5 (0.49%) Amazon RDS
4 5 (0.49%) Metadata
5 4 (0.39%) Elasticsearch
5 4 (0.39%) InfluxDB
5 4 (0.39%) Tableau
6 2 (0.19%) Azure SQL Database
6 2 (0.19%) Big Data
6 2 (0.19%) GIS
6 2 (0.19%) MongoDB
7 1 (0.097%) Data Mining
7 1 (0.097%) Electronic Patient Records
7 1 (0.097%) KNIME
7 1 (0.097%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.097%) RDBMS
7 1 (0.097%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 1 (0.097%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 135 (13.11%) JIRA
2 15 (1.46%) Jenkins
3 13 (1.26%) Git
4 10 (0.97%) GitLab
5 7 (0.68%) Bitbucket
6 3 (0.29%) ScriptRunner
6 3 (0.29%) TestRail
7 2 (0.19%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.19%) Selenium
8 1 (0.097%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 1 (0.097%) MLflow
8 1 (0.097%) Rational DOORS
8 1 (0.097%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 405 (39.32%) Social Skills
2 170 (16.50%) Analytical Skills
3 147 (14.27%) Finance
4 137 (13.30%) Public Sector
5 55 (5.34%) Legal
6 48 (4.66%) Military
7 34 (3.30%) Banking
7 34 (3.30%) Organisational Skills
8 33 (3.20%) Influencing Skills
9 31 (3.01%) Documentation Skills
10 25 (2.43%) Retail
11 24 (2.33%) Telecoms
12 16 (1.55%) Manufacturing
13 11 (1.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 10 (0.97%) Aerospace
14 10 (0.97%) Investment Banking
15 8 (0.78%) Law
16 7 (0.68%) Police
16 7 (0.68%) Presentation Skills
17 6 (0.58%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 142 (13.79%) Analyst
2 122 (11.84%) Lead
3 111 (10.78%) Architect
4 87 (8.45%) Service Manager
5 59 (5.73%) Support Engineer
6 52 (5.05%) Consultant
7 51 (4.95%) Service Analyst
8 50 (4.85%) Senior
9 48 (4.66%) Service Architect
10 41 (3.98%) IT Support
11 36 (3.50%) IT Manager
12 33 (3.20%) Hardware Engineer
13 31 (3.01%) Desktop Support
14 30 (2.91%) IT Analyst
15 29 (2.82%) Business Analyst
15 29 (2.82%) Support Analyst
16 27 (2.62%) 2nd Line Support
16 27 (2.62%) Network Engineer
17 26 (2.52%) Delivery Manager
18 25 (2.43%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (3.79%) REST
2 17 (1.65%) SOAP
3 10 (0.97%) LDAP
3 10 (0.97%) XMPP
4 8 (0.78%) Elastic Stack
4 8 (0.78%) Web Services
5 6 (0.58%) .NET
5 6 (0.58%) 802.1X
6 5 (0.49%) RFC 2544
7 4 (0.39%) ARM Templates
7 4 (0.39%) JSON
7 4 (0.39%) RabbitMQ
8 3 (0.29%) CSS
8 3 (0.29%) EDI
8 3 (0.29%) Lightning Web Components
8 3 (0.29%) Microsoft Graph
8 3 (0.29%) Oracle Fusion
8 3 (0.29%) XML
9 2 (0.19%) AngularJS
9 2 (0.19%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 78 (7.57%) Product Ownership
2 61 (5.92%) CMDB
3 47 (4.56%) Onboarding
4 42 (4.08%) Management Information System
5 39 (3.79%) Data Centre
6 28 (2.72%) PKI
6 28 (2.72%) Virtual Team
7 25 (2.43%) Analytical Mindset
8 20 (1.94%) Driving Licence
9 19 (1.84%) Self-Motivation
10 14 (1.36%) PMI
11 12 (1.17%) Data Protection Act
12 11 (1.07%) Enterprise Software
13 9 (0.87%) NHS
14 8 (0.78%) Smartphone
15 7 (0.68%) Algorithms
15 7 (0.68%) Clustering
15 7 (0.68%) Hybrid Cloud
16 6 (0.58%) Data Structures
17 5 (0.49%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 236 (22.91%) Windows
2 72 (6.99%) Linux
3 64 (6.21%) Windows 10
4 60 (5.83%) Windows Server
5 16 (1.55%) Android
6 15 (1.46%) Mac OS
6 15 (1.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 14 (1.36%) Apple iOS
8 11 (1.07%) Windows 7
9 10 (0.97%) Unix
10 8 (0.78%) Windows Server 2012
11 5 (0.49%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.49%) Windows Server 2016
11 5 (0.49%) Windows Server 2019
12 4 (0.39%) Windows Server 2003
13 3 (0.29%) CentOS
14 2 (0.19%) VMS
14 2 (0.19%) Windows Server 2008
15 1 (0.097%) Data ONTAP
15 1 (0.097%) Windows XP
Processes & Methodologies
1 575 (55.83%) ITIL
2 453 (43.98%) ITSM
3 219 (21.26%) Problem-Solving
4 203 (19.71%) Continuous Improvement
5 202 (19.61%) Agile
6 177 (17.18%) Stakeholder Management
7 161 (15.63%) Change Management
8 146 (14.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 145 (14.08%) Service Delivery
10 120 (11.65%) Customer Service
11 101 (9.81%) DevOps
12 97 (9.42%) Service Design
13 91 (8.83%) Incident Management
14 85 (8.25%) Project Management
15 84 (8.16%) Problem Management
16 73 (7.09%) Configuration Management
17 70 (6.80%) Knowledge Transfer
18 64 (6.21%) Performance Metrics
19 61 (5.92%) Acceptance Criteria
20 59 (5.73%) Business Continuity
Programming Languages
1 98 (9.51%) PowerShell
2 61 (5.92%) Python
3 48 (4.66%) SQL
4 21 (2.04%) Java
5 20 (1.94%) JavaScript
6 15 (1.46%) Bash
7 13 (1.26%) Perl
8 12 (1.17%) Shell Script
9 9 (0.87%) VB
9 9 (0.87%) VBScript
10 6 (0.58%) Kotlin
11 4 (0.39%) Go
12 3 (0.29%) C#
13 2 (0.19%) ActionScript
13 2 (0.19%) ActionScript 2.0
13 2 (0.19%) Apex Code
13 2 (0.19%) Bicep
13 2 (0.19%) PHP
14 1 (0.097%) Scala
14 1 (0.097%) VBA
Qualifications
1 416 (40.39%) Security Cleared
2 313 (30.39%) SC Cleared
3 122 (11.84%) Degree
4 109 (10.58%) DV Cleared
5 53 (5.15%) ITIL Certification
6 37 (3.59%) Microsoft Certification
7 30 (2.91%) TOGAF Certification
8 28 (2.72%) BPSS Clearance
9 25 (2.43%) PMI Certification
10 22 (2.14%) Cisco Certification
11 21 (2.04%) PMP
12 17 (1.65%) Azure Certification
13 16 (1.55%) A+ Certification
13 16 (1.55%) CCNP
13 16 (1.55%) Computer Science Degree
13 16 (1.55%) MCSE
14 15 (1.46%) CCNA
15 14 (1.36%) Network+ Certification
16 11 (1.07%) Server+ Certification
17 7 (0.68%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 48 (4.66%) SLA
2 25 (2.43%) Data Quality
2 25 (2.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 22 (2.14%) QA
4 21 (2.04%) GDPR
5 12 (1.17%) PMO
6 10 (0.97%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 9 (0.87%) COBIT
8 8 (0.78%) Accessibility
8 8 (0.78%) ISO/IEC 20000
8 8 (0.78%) NIST
9 6 (0.58%) GRC
10 5 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
11 4 (0.39%) Disclosure Scotland
11 4 (0.39%) HIPAA
11 4 (0.39%) ISO 9001
11 4 (0.39%) NCSC
11 4 (0.39%) PCI DSS
12 3 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 2 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 144 (13.98%) Active Directory
2 45 (4.37%) VMware Infrastructure
3 17 (1.65%) Docker
3 17 (1.65%) VMware NSX
4 15 (1.46%) Hyper-V
5 13 (1.26%) Virtual Desktop
6 9 (0.87%) BitLocker
7 7 (0.68%) Virtual Servers
8 6 (0.58%) Microsoft Virtual Server
9 4 (0.39%) NDS
9 4 (0.39%) NetIQ eDirectory
10 3 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
11 1 (0.097%) NFS
11 1 (0.097%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 41 (3.98%) SCCM
2 30 (2.91%) Microsoft Intune
2 30 (2.91%) OPNET
3 28 (2.72%) Ansible
3 28 (2.72%) Terraform
4 25 (2.43%) Kubernetes
5 18 (1.75%) vCenter Server
6 17 (1.65%) WSUS
7 11 (1.07%) Jamf Pro
8 10 (0.97%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 10 (0.97%) FortiGate
9 9 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
10 8 (0.78%) Grafana
11 7 (0.68%) Prometheus
12 5 (0.49%) SCOM
13 4 (0.39%) Nessus
13 4 (0.39%) Packer
13 4 (0.39%) Progress Chef
14 3 (0.29%) HP ALM
15 2 (0.19%) PowerCLI
Vendors
1 257 (24.95%) ServiceNow
2 179 (17.38%) Microsoft
3 66 (6.41%) Remedy
4 64 (6.21%) Atlassian
4 64 (6.21%) Cisco
5 59 (5.73%) VMware
6 38 (3.69%) Google
6 38 (3.69%) Oracle
7 36 (3.50%) HP
8 34 (3.30%) SolarWinds
9 29 (2.82%) SAP
9 29 (2.82%) Splunk
10 21 (2.04%) Juniper
11 18 (1.75%) Citrix
12 17 (1.65%) Salesforce
13 15 (1.46%) Dell
13 15 (1.46%) Red Hat
14 13 (1.26%) Veeam
15 12 (1.17%) Canon
15 12 (1.17%) Dynatrace