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

6 months to
29 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 97 81 84
Rank change year-on-year -16 +3 0
Contract jobs citing Service Management 1,350 982 1,002
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.57% 2.99% 2.52%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.03% 3.31% 2.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 872 598 690
10th Percentile £263 £209 £254
25th Percentile £413 £350 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £492 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.69% -6.29% +0.96%
75th Percentile £610 £575 £608
90th Percentile £700 £679 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £495 £525
% change year-on-year +3.13% -5.81% +5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 87 72 20
10th Percentile £14.50 - £16.63
25th Percentile £19.82 £12.62 £18.88
Median hourly rate £60.00 £18.73 £27.25
Median % change year-on-year +220.34% -31.27% -43.81%
75th Percentile £85.13 £22.25 £48.75
90th Percentile £96.00 £53.35 £53.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £18.73 £27.25
% change year-on-year +206.99% -31.27% +27.87%

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 44,620 29,684 34,056
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.91% 90.46% 85.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,627 18,648 21,888
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.11%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £734 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,682 1,621 1,980
10th Percentile £14.64 £14.20 £13.69
25th Percentile £19.73 £17.33 £17.74
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £82.35 £68.75 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.57 £40.33
% change year-on-year +86.55% -41.56% -

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 29 July 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 29 July 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 29 July 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 1,172 £520 +4.00% 428
UK excluding London -18 808 £510 +3.13% 325
London +12 412 £525 +5.00% 155
Work from Home +1 397 £510 +2.00% 178
South East +24 273 £550 +10.00% 110
North of England -33 201 £456 +2.87% 78
South West -29 122 £500 -9.09% 36
North West -35 113 £488 +4.78% 36
Midlands -46 96 £476 -4.80% 51
West Midlands -41 87 £477 -7.38% 36
Yorkshire -23 83 £443 +26.84% 31
Scotland -25 61 £494 +2.54% 17
East of England -17 41 £563 +2.27% 32
Wales -8 13 £800 +247.83% 7
East Midlands -17 9 £450 +50.00% 15
Northern Ireland +7 8 - - 6
North East -47 5 £440 +125.64% 12

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 93 (6.89%) SharePoint
2 63 (4.67%) Confluence
3 40 (2.96%) Microsoft Exchange
4 8 (0.59%) 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 (0.074%) CICS
9 1 (0.074%) JBoss
9 1 (0.074%) LiveCycle
9 1 (0.074%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
9 1 (0.074%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 67 (4.96%) Microsoft Office
2 30 (2.22%) Microsoft Excel
3 15 (1.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 14 (1.04%) MS Visio
5 10 (0.74%) Microsoft Project
6 7 (0.52%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.074%) Camtasia
7 1 (0.074%) Maple
7 1 (0.074%) PTC Creo
7 1 (0.074%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 57 (4.22%) Remedy ITSM
2 15 (1.11%) SAP S/4HANA
3 7 (0.52%) Primavera
4 5 (0.37%) ContrOCC
4 5 (0.37%) Teamcenter
5 4 (0.30%) SAP SM
6 3 (0.22%) NEC Housing
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
7 2 (0.15%) Oracle Applications
7 2 (0.15%) SAP PS
8 1 (0.074%) Dynamics CRM
8 1 (0.074%) Misys Equation
8 1 (0.074%) Misys Midas
8 1 (0.074%) Remedy AR System
8 1 (0.074%) SAP HR
8 1 (0.074%) SAP Payroll
8 1 (0.074%) SAP PM
Cloud Services
1 220 (16.30%) Azure
2 154 (11.41%) Microsoft 365
3 90 (6.67%) AWS
4 82 (6.07%) Entra ID
5 63 (4.67%) Power Platform
6 53 (3.93%) SaaS
7 45 (3.33%) OneDrive
8 36 (2.67%) Azure DevOps
9 28 (2.07%) GCP
10 19 (1.41%) GitHub
11 16 (1.19%) OCI
12 15 (1.11%) Microsoft Copilot
13 14 (1.04%) Azure Monitor
13 14 (1.04%) PaaS
14 11 (0.81%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 11 (0.81%) AWS Lambda
14 11 (0.81%) Serverless
15 9 (0.67%) Amazon S3
15 9 (0.67%) IaaS
16 8 (0.59%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 77 (5.70%) Firewall
2 64 (4.74%) DNS
3 42 (3.11%) TCP/IP
4 40 (2.96%) VPN
5 39 (2.89%) WAN
6 38 (2.81%) Network Security
7 37 (2.74%) DHCP
8 36 (2.67%) LAN
9 21 (1.56%) BGP
10 19 (1.41%) Wireless
11 16 (1.19%) OSPF
12 12 (0.89%) BIG-IP
12 12 (0.89%) Cisco ISE
12 12 (0.89%) SD-WAN
12 12 (0.89%) VXLAN
13 11 (0.81%) VLAN
13 11 (0.81%) Wi-Fi
14 10 (0.74%) Junos
15 9 (0.67%) Ethernet VPN
15 9 (0.67%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 50 (3.70%) Power BI
2 25 (1.85%) SQL Server
3 8 (0.59%) Oracle Database
3 8 (0.59%) 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%) Microsoft Analysis Services
7 2 (0.15%) SQLite
8 1 (0.074%) Amazon Aurora
8 1 (0.074%) Looker
Development Applications
1 152 (11.26%) JIRA
2 24 (1.78%) Git
2 24 (1.78%) Jenkins
3 23 (1.70%) Bitbucket
4 15 (1.11%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 12 (0.89%) GitLab
6 5 (0.37%) Browser DevTools
7 4 (0.30%) MLflow
7 4 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
7 4 (0.30%) ScriptRunner
8 3 (0.22%) Fiddler
8 3 (0.22%) Hudson
8 3 (0.22%) IntelliJ
9 2 (0.15%) Firebug
9 2 (0.15%) Maven
9 2 (0.15%) Selenium
9 2 (0.15%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.15%) webpack
10 1 (0.074%) Protractor
10 1 (0.074%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 492 (36.44%) Social Skills
2 214 (15.85%) Finance
3 209 (15.48%) Analytical Skills
4 152 (11.26%) Public Sector
5 63 (4.67%) Telecoms
6 47 (3.48%) Banking
6 47 (3.48%) Legal
7 46 (3.41%) Influencing Skills
8 38 (2.81%) Organisational Skills
9 37 (2.74%) Documentation Skills
10 29 (2.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 29 (2.15%) Military
11 22 (1.63%) Local Government
12 19 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
13 17 (1.26%) Aerospace
14 14 (1.04%) Police
15 13 (0.96%) Financial Institution
16 12 (0.89%) Retail
17 8 (0.59%) Manufacturing
18 7 (0.52%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 156 (11.56%) Analyst
2 125 (9.26%) Lead
3 122 (9.04%) Architect
3 122 (9.04%) Senior
4 110 (8.15%) Service Manager
5 92 (6.81%) Consultant
6 80 (5.93%) IT Manager
7 66 (4.89%) Project Manager
8 59 (4.37%) Service Analyst
9 56 (4.15%) Developer
10 47 (3.48%) Delivery Manager
11 44 (3.26%) Support Engineer
12 36 (2.67%) Network Engineer
12 36 (2.67%) ServiceNow Developer
13 35 (2.59%) Solutions Architect
14 34 (2.52%) IT Analyst
15 33 (2.44%) Business Analyst
15 33 (2.44%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 33 (2.44%) Service Architect
16 31 (2.30%) Transition Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 72 (5.33%) REST
2 34 (2.52%) SOAP
3 18 (1.33%) HTML
4 17 (1.26%) CSS
5 13 (0.96%) Web Services
6 12 (0.89%) Middleware
7 11 (0.81%) XML
8 10 (0.74%) JSON
9 9 (0.67%) 802.1X
9 9 (0.67%) OAuth
10 7 (0.52%) SAML
11 6 (0.44%) AngularJS
11 6 (0.44%) Elastic Stack
12 5 (0.37%) ARM Templates
12 5 (0.37%) Lightning Web Components
12 5 (0.37%) Microsoft Graph
12 5 (0.37%) OpenID
12 5 (0.37%) Oracle Fusion
13 4 (0.30%) Ajax
13 4 (0.30%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 135 (10.00%) Onboarding
2 107 (7.93%) CMDB
3 66 (4.89%) Product Ownership
4 51 (3.78%) Management Information System
5 44 (3.26%) Data Centre
6 34 (2.52%) Enterprise Software
6 34 (2.52%) PKI
7 30 (2.22%) Virtual Team
8 25 (1.85%) Clustering
9 24 (1.78%) Operational Technology
10 19 (1.41%) Data Protection Act
11 17 (1.26%) Self-Motivation
12 14 (1.04%) Analytical Mindset
12 14 (1.04%) Cloud Native
12 14 (1.04%) Hybrid Cloud
13 13 (0.96%) AI Agents
14 11 (0.81%) Greenfield Project
14 11 (0.81%) Video Conferencing
15 10 (0.74%) Driving Licence
15 10 (0.74%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 245 (18.15%) Windows
2 66 (4.89%) Linux
3 62 (4.59%) Windows Server
4 41 (3.04%) Windows 10
5 19 (1.41%) Mac OS
5 19 (1.41%) Unix
6 16 (1.19%) Apple iOS
7 13 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 13 (0.96%) Windows 7
8 9 (0.67%) Android
9 6 (0.44%) Windows Server 2019
10 4 (0.30%) 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 (0.074%) Rocky
13 1 (0.074%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 727 (53.85%) ITIL
2 613 (45.41%) ITSM
3 360 (26.67%) Stakeholder Management
4 346 (25.63%) Continuous Improvement
5 300 (22.22%) Service Delivery
6 293 (21.70%) Agile
7 273 (20.22%) Problem-Solving
8 212 (15.70%) Change Management
9 193 (14.30%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 161 (11.93%) DevOps
11 148 (10.96%) Customer Service
12 136 (10.07%) Incident Management
13 130 (9.63%) Roadmaps
14 116 (8.59%) Project Delivery
15 108 (8.00%) Migration
16 104 (7.70%) Cybersecurity
17 102 (7.56%) Problem Management
17 102 (7.56%) Project Management
18 98 (7.26%) Service Design
19 96 (7.11%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 106 (7.85%) PowerShell
2 78 (5.78%) Python
3 68 (5.04%) SQL
4 56 (4.15%) JavaScript
5 37 (2.74%) Bash
6 19 (1.41%) Java
7 11 (0.81%) PL/SQL
8 8 (0.59%) VB
8 8 (0.59%) VBScript
9 7 (0.52%) Bicep
9 7 (0.52%) 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%) Shell Script
11 5 (0.37%) T-SQL
12 3 (0.22%) Lua
12 3 (0.22%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 493 (36.52%) Security Cleared
2 320 (23.70%) SC Cleared
3 154 (11.41%) DV Cleared
4 125 (9.26%) Degree
5 67 (4.96%) ITIL Certification
6 48 (3.56%) PMP
7 44 (3.26%) PMI Certification
8 38 (2.81%) BPSS Clearance
9 31 (2.30%) Cisco Certification
10 26 (1.93%) Computer Science Degree
11 23 (1.70%) Microsoft Certification
12 21 (1.56%) A+ Certification
13 19 (1.41%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 18 (1.33%) CISM
14 18 (1.33%) CISSP
15 15 (1.11%) CCNA
16 14 (1.04%) DBS Check
16 14 (1.04%) Master's Degree
17 11 (0.81%) CCNP
18 9 (0.67%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 107 (7.93%) SLA
2 45 (3.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 42 (3.11%) QA
4 34 (2.52%) Data Quality
5 31 (2.30%) ISO/IEC 20000
6 30 (2.22%) PMO
7 27 (2.00%) GRC
8 26 (1.93%) GDPR
9 25 (1.85%) NCSC
10 19 (1.41%) COBIT
11 16 (1.19%) ISO 9001
11 16 (1.19%) NIST
12 11 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials
13 8 (0.59%) Accessibility
13 8 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 8 (0.59%) Disclosure Scotland
14 7 (0.52%) Government Security Classifications
14 7 (0.52%) PCI DSS
15 6 (0.44%) ISO 31000
15 6 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 27005
System Software
1 146 (10.81%) Active Directory
2 55 (4.07%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (1.56%) VMware ESXi
4 16 (1.19%) Docker
5 14 (1.04%) Hyper-V
5 14 (1.04%) VMware NSX
6 12 (0.89%) vSphere
7 11 (0.81%) Virtual Desktop
8 9 (0.67%) BitLocker
8 9 (0.67%) vCloud
9 6 (0.44%) IAG
10 5 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
11 4 (0.30%) NFS
11 4 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.22%) Firmware
13 2 (0.15%) GPFS
13 2 (0.15%) KVM
13 2 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
14 1 (0.074%) iptables
14 1 (0.074%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 70 (5.19%) Microsoft Intune
2 56 (4.15%) SCCM
3 39 (2.89%) Ansible
3 39 (2.89%) Terraform
4 18 (1.33%) Kubernetes
5 14 (1.04%) SCOM
6 13 (0.96%) Single Sign-On
6 13 (0.96%) vCenter Server
7 11 (0.81%) Jamf Pro
8 8 (0.59%) FortiGate
9 7 (0.52%) Data Guard
9 7 (0.52%) Oracle RMAN
9 7 (0.52%) Puppet
10 6 (0.44%) Grafana
10 6 (0.44%) WSUS
11 5 (0.37%) Progress Chef
12 4 (0.30%) PowerCLI
12 4 (0.30%) Prometheus
12 4 (0.30%) vMotion
13 3 (0.22%) Dell DRAC
Vendors
1 394 (29.19%) ServiceNow
2 265 (19.63%) Microsoft
3 80 (5.93%) VMware
4 61 (4.52%) Remedy
5 53 (3.93%) Cisco
6 37 (2.74%) Oracle
7 36 (2.67%) Atlassian
7 36 (2.67%) BMC
8 33 (2.44%) SAP
9 25 (1.85%) Splunk
10 22 (1.63%) IFS
11 20 (1.48%) Salesforce
12 19 (1.41%) SolarWinds
12 19 (1.41%) Zscaler
13 17 (1.26%) Citrix
13 17 (1.26%) Juniper
14 15 (1.11%) Dynatrace
14 15 (1.11%) IBM
15 13 (0.96%) F5
15 13 (0.96%) HP