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

6 months to
5 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 93 78 89
Rank change year-on-year -15 +11 -6
Contract jobs citing Service Management 1,369 984 972
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.57% 2.99% 2.48%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.03% 3.31% 2.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 885 596 676
10th Percentile £263 £213 £250
25th Percentile £413 £350 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £494 £525
Median % change year-on-year +6.28% -5.90% +0.96%
75th Percentile £610 £575 £608
90th Percentile £713 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% +6.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 86 73 18
10th Percentile £14.50 - £17.50
25th Percentile £19.57 £12.62 £19.44
Median hourly rate £57.50 £18.73 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +206.99% -31.89% -43.30%
75th Percentile £85.00 £22.14 £48.75
90th Percentile £92.52 £52.70 £54.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £18.73 £27.50
% change year-on-year +193.65% -31.89% +29.05%

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 45,167 29,748 33,534
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.91% 90.41% 85.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,886 18,653 21,488
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,759 1,659 1,873
10th Percentile £14.50 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.47 £17.30 £18.14
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.90% -4.71%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £74.91
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.05 £40.94
% change year-on-year +90.72% -43.70% +3.38%

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 5 August 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 5 August 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 5 August 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 -21 1,184 £520 +4.00% 670
UK excluding London -25 811 £513 +2.50% 484
London +22 421 £525 +5.00% 244
Work from Home +5 398 £510 +2.00% 276
South East +19 275 £550 +10.00% 149
North of England -31 202 £443 -0.11% 124
South West -32 119 £513 -6.82% 59
North West -39 113 £480 +3.17% 71
Midlands -50 97 £486 -2.80% 72
West Midlands -40 90 £486 -5.63% 47
Yorkshire -25 84 £443 +26.84% 39
Scotland -11 64 £500 +1.11% 26
East of England -13 41 £525 -4.55% 44
Wales -6 12 £800 +247.83% 12
Northern Ireland +12 8 - - 10
East Midlands -18 7 £450 +50.00% 26
North East -40 5 £440 +125.64% 15

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 92 (6.72%) SharePoint
2 59 (4.31%) Confluence
3 41 (2.99%) Microsoft Exchange
4 8 (0.58%) Skype for Business
5 6 (0.44%) Mattermost
6 5 (0.37%) OpenStack
7 3 (0.22%) CMS
7 3 (0.22%) IIS
8 2 (0.15%) Apache
9 1 (0.073%) CICS
9 1 (0.073%) Exchange Server 2010
9 1 (0.073%) HCL Notes
9 1 (0.073%) JBoss
9 1 (0.073%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
9 1 (0.073%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 67 (4.89%) Microsoft Office
2 28 (2.05%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (1.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 14 (1.02%) MS Visio
5 9 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
6 7 (0.51%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.073%) Camtasia
7 1 (0.073%) Maple
Business Applications
1 58 (4.24%) Remedy ITSM
2 11 (0.80%) SAP S/4HANA
3 7 (0.51%) Primavera
4 5 (0.37%) ContrOCC
5 4 (0.29%) NEC Housing
5 4 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 3 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
6 3 (0.22%) SAP CO
6 3 (0.22%) SAP FI
6 3 (0.22%) SAP FI/CO
6 3 (0.22%) SAP SM
7 2 (0.15%) Oracle Applications
7 2 (0.15%) SAP PS
8 1 (0.073%) Dynamics CRM
8 1 (0.073%) iTrent
8 1 (0.073%) Misys Equation
8 1 (0.073%) Misys Midas
8 1 (0.073%) Remedy AR System
8 1 (0.073%) SAP HR
8 1 (0.073%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 225 (16.44%) Azure
2 162 (11.83%) Microsoft 365
3 93 (6.79%) AWS
4 88 (6.43%) Entra ID
5 61 (4.46%) Power Platform
6 54 (3.94%) SaaS
7 44 (3.21%) OneDrive
8 33 (2.41%) Azure DevOps
9 27 (1.97%) GCP
10 21 (1.53%) GitHub
11 17 (1.24%) Microsoft Copilot
11 17 (1.24%) OCI
12 14 (1.02%) Azure Monitor
12 14 (1.02%) PaaS
13 11 (0.80%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 11 (0.80%) AWS Lambda
13 11 (0.80%) Serverless
14 9 (0.66%) Amazon S3
14 9 (0.66%) IaaS
15 8 (0.58%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 81 (5.92%) Firewall
2 66 (4.82%) DNS
3 42 (3.07%) TCP/IP
4 41 (2.99%) VPN
5 40 (2.92%) DHCP
6 38 (2.78%) Network Security
6 38 (2.78%) WAN
7 35 (2.56%) LAN
8 21 (1.53%) BGP
9 19 (1.39%) Wireless
10 16 (1.17%) OSPF
11 12 (0.88%) Cisco ISE
11 12 (0.88%) SD-WAN
11 12 (0.88%) VXLAN
12 11 (0.80%) BIG-IP
12 11 (0.80%) VLAN
13 10 (0.73%) Junos
13 10 (0.73%) Wi-Fi
14 9 (0.66%) Ethernet VPN
14 9 (0.66%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 47 (3.43%) Power BI
2 26 (1.90%) SQL Server
3 8 (0.58%) Oracle Database
3 8 (0.58%) PostgreSQL
4 6 (0.44%) Oracle Database 11g
4 6 (0.44%) Oracle Reports
4 6 (0.44%) Relational Database
4 6 (0.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 6 (0.44%) SQL Server Reporting Services
5 5 (0.37%) MySQL
5 5 (0.37%) SQL Server Analysis Services
6 3 (0.22%) Amazon RDS
6 3 (0.22%) Azure SQL Database
6 3 (0.22%) MariaDB
7 2 (0.15%) Amazon Redshift
7 2 (0.15%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.15%) Metadata
7 2 (0.15%) Microsoft Analysis Services
7 2 (0.15%) SQLite
8 1 (0.073%) InfluxDB
Development Applications
1 148 (10.81%) JIRA
2 24 (1.75%) Git
2 24 (1.75%) Jenkins
3 23 (1.68%) Bitbucket
4 15 (1.10%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 12 (0.88%) GitLab
6 5 (0.37%) Browser DevTools
7 4 (0.29%) MLflow
7 4 (0.29%) Rational DOORS
7 4 (0.29%) ScriptRunner
8 3 (0.22%) Fiddler
8 3 (0.22%) Hudson
8 3 (0.22%) IntelliJ
8 3 (0.22%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.15%) Firebug
9 2 (0.15%) Maven
9 2 (0.15%) webpack
10 1 (0.073%) Artifactory
10 1 (0.073%) Cucumber
10 1 (0.073%) Gradle
General
1 512 (37.40%) Social Skills
2 217 (15.85%) Finance
3 211 (15.41%) Analytical Skills
4 153 (11.18%) Public Sector
5 63 (4.60%) Telecoms
6 48 (3.51%) Banking
6 48 (3.51%) Legal
7 46 (3.36%) Influencing Skills
8 43 (3.14%) Documentation Skills
9 41 (2.99%) Organisational Skills
10 30 (2.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 30 (2.19%) Military
11 23 (1.68%) Local Government
12 21 (1.53%) Presentation Skills
13 18 (1.31%) Aerospace
14 15 (1.10%) Police
15 12 (0.88%) Financial Institution
15 12 (0.88%) Retail
16 9 (0.66%) Manufacturing
17 8 (0.58%) Law
Job Titles
1 152 (11.10%) Analyst
2 131 (9.57%) Lead
3 124 (9.06%) Senior
4 122 (8.91%) Architect
5 107 (7.82%) Service Manager
6 95 (6.94%) Consultant
7 77 (5.62%) IT Manager
8 63 (4.60%) Project Manager
9 58 (4.24%) Developer
10 57 (4.16%) Service Analyst
11 50 (3.65%) Support Engineer
12 47 (3.43%) Delivery Manager
13 38 (2.78%) ServiceNow Developer
14 37 (2.70%) Solutions Architect
15 36 (2.63%) IT Support
15 36 (2.63%) Network Engineer
16 35 (2.56%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 33 (2.41%) Business Analyst
17 33 (2.41%) Service Architect
17 33 (2.41%) Transition Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 74 (5.41%) REST
2 34 (2.48%) SOAP
3 18 (1.31%) HTML
4 17 (1.24%) CSS
5 14 (1.02%) Web Services
6 12 (0.88%) Middleware
7 11 (0.80%) XML
8 9 (0.66%) 802.1X
8 9 (0.66%) JSON
8 9 (0.66%) OAuth
9 8 (0.58%) SAML
10 7 (0.51%) AngularJS
10 7 (0.51%) Elastic Stack
11 6 (0.44%) ARM Templates
12 5 (0.37%) .NET
12 5 (0.37%) Lightning Web Components
12 5 (0.37%) OpenID
12 5 (0.37%) Oracle Fusion
13 4 (0.29%) Ajax
13 4 (0.29%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 140 (10.23%) Onboarding
2 104 (7.60%) CMDB
3 63 (4.60%) Product Ownership
4 54 (3.94%) Management Information System
5 44 (3.21%) Data Centre
6 38 (2.78%) Enterprise Software
7 34 (2.48%) PKI
8 29 (2.12%) Virtual Team
9 25 (1.83%) Clustering
9 25 (1.83%) Operational Technology
10 20 (1.46%) Data Protection Act
11 18 (1.31%) Hybrid Cloud
12 17 (1.24%) Cloud Native
12 17 (1.24%) Self-Motivation
13 15 (1.10%) AI Agents
13 15 (1.10%) Analytical Mindset
14 11 (0.80%) Greenfield Project
14 11 (0.80%) Video Conferencing
15 10 (0.73%) Driving Licence
15 10 (0.73%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 257 (18.77%) Windows
2 73 (5.33%) Linux
3 70 (5.11%) Windows Server
4 44 (3.21%) Windows 10
5 20 (1.46%) Apple iOS
5 20 (1.46%) Mac OS
6 19 (1.39%) Unix
7 14 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 12 (0.88%) Android
8 12 (0.88%) Windows 7
9 6 (0.44%) Windows Server 2019
10 4 (0.29%) VMS
11 3 (0.22%) Ubuntu
11 3 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
12 2 (0.15%) Solaris
12 2 (0.15%) Windows XP
12 2 (0.15%) zOS
13 1 (0.073%) Rocky
13 1 (0.073%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 732 (53.47%) ITIL
2 624 (45.58%) ITSM
3 366 (26.73%) Stakeholder Management
4 352 (25.71%) Continuous Improvement
5 311 (22.72%) Service Delivery
6 289 (21.11%) Agile
7 282 (20.60%) Problem-Solving
8 216 (15.78%) Change Management
9 190 (13.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 160 (11.69%) DevOps
11 150 (10.96%) Customer Service
12 135 (9.86%) Incident Management
13 130 (9.50%) Roadmaps
14 117 (8.55%) Project Delivery
15 111 (8.11%) Migration
16 108 (7.89%) Cybersecurity
17 105 (7.67%) Project Management
18 102 (7.45%) AI
19 101 (7.38%) Problem Management
20 99 (7.23%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 114 (8.33%) PowerShell
2 78 (5.70%) Python
3 70 (5.11%) SQL
4 54 (3.94%) JavaScript
5 41 (2.99%) Bash
6 19 (1.39%) Java
7 11 (0.80%) PL/SQL
8 8 (0.58%) Bicep
8 8 (0.58%) VB
8 8 (0.58%) VBScript
9 7 (0.51%) Groovy
10 6 (0.44%) Apex Code
10 6 (0.44%) C
10 6 (0.44%) Perl
11 5 (0.37%) C#
11 5 (0.37%) Kotlin
11 5 (0.37%) T-SQL
12 4 (0.29%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.22%) Lua
13 3 (0.22%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 502 (36.67%) Security Cleared
2 328 (23.96%) SC Cleared
3 153 (11.18%) DV Cleared
4 132 (9.64%) Degree
5 66 (4.82%) ITIL Certification
6 48 (3.51%) PMP
7 44 (3.21%) PMI Certification
8 38 (2.78%) BPSS Clearance
9 32 (2.34%) Cisco Certification
10 26 (1.90%) Computer Science Degree
10 26 (1.90%) Microsoft Certification
11 22 (1.61%) A+ Certification
12 21 (1.53%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 20 (1.46%) CISM
13 20 (1.46%) CISSP
14 16 (1.17%) CCNA
15 14 (1.02%) DBS Check
15 14 (1.02%) Master's Degree
16 11 (0.80%) CCNP
17 10 (0.73%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 105 (7.67%) SLA
2 44 (3.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 42 (3.07%) QA
4 32 (2.34%) Data Quality
5 31 (2.26%) ISO/IEC 20000
6 30 (2.19%) PMO
7 28 (2.05%) GRC
8 26 (1.90%) NCSC
9 24 (1.75%) GDPR
10 18 (1.31%) COBIT
11 16 (1.17%) ISO 9001
12 15 (1.10%) NIST
13 12 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
14 8 (0.58%) Accessibility
14 8 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 8 (0.58%) Disclosure Scotland
15 7 (0.51%) Government Security Classifications
15 7 (0.51%) PCI DSS
16 6 (0.44%) ISO 31000
16 6 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 27005
System Software
1 158 (11.54%) Active Directory
2 61 (4.46%) VMware Infrastructure
3 22 (1.61%) VMware ESXi
4 21 (1.53%) Hyper-V
5 17 (1.24%) Docker
6 16 (1.17%) VMware NSX
7 13 (0.95%) vSphere
8 11 (0.80%) Virtual Desktop
9 10 (0.73%) vCloud
10 9 (0.66%) BitLocker
11 6 (0.44%) IAG
12 5 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
13 4 (0.29%) NFS
13 4 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
14 3 (0.22%) Firmware
14 3 (0.22%) Virtual Servers
15 2 (0.15%) GPFS
15 2 (0.15%) KVM
16 1 (0.073%) Samba
16 1 (0.073%) Squid
Systems Management
1 72 (5.26%) Microsoft Intune
2 58 (4.24%) SCCM
3 44 (3.21%) Terraform
4 41 (2.99%) Ansible
5 21 (1.53%) Kubernetes
6 17 (1.24%) SCOM
7 14 (1.02%) Single Sign-On
7 14 (1.02%) vCenter Server
8 11 (0.80%) Jamf Pro
9 8 (0.58%) FortiGate
10 7 (0.51%) Data Guard
10 7 (0.51%) Grafana
10 7 (0.51%) Oracle RMAN
10 7 (0.51%) Puppet
10 7 (0.51%) WSUS
11 5 (0.37%) NetBackup
11 5 (0.37%) Progress Chef
11 5 (0.37%) Prometheus
12 4 (0.29%) PowerCLI
12 4 (0.29%) vMotion
Vendors
1 397 (29.00%) ServiceNow
2 280 (20.45%) Microsoft
3 87 (6.36%) VMware
4 62 (4.53%) Remedy
5 56 (4.09%) Cisco
6 39 (2.85%) BMC
6 39 (2.85%) Oracle
7 35 (2.56%) Atlassian
8 30 (2.19%) SAP
8 30 (2.19%) Splunk
9 22 (1.61%) Dynatrace
9 22 (1.61%) IFS
10 21 (1.53%) SolarWinds
11 20 (1.46%) Salesforce
12 19 (1.39%) Citrix
12 19 (1.39%) Zscaler
13 17 (1.24%) Juniper
14 15 (1.10%) IBM
15 13 (0.95%) Apple
15 13 (0.95%) CyberArk