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 13 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 88 85 99
Rank change year-on-year -3 +14 -12
Contract jobs citing Service Management 1,584 974 904
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.91% 2.96% 2.35%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.45% 3.27% 2.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,039 587 591
10th Percentile £262 £205 £213
25th Percentile £413 £350 £379
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £505
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -0.99% -3.81%
75th Percentile £625 £575 £600
90th Percentile £725 £675 £681
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +5.00% -0.05% +0.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 80 76 16
10th Percentile £14.50 £12.62 £16.84
25th Percentile £18.10 £12.82 £24.31
Median hourly rate £55.00 £18.73 £36.25
Median % change year-on-year +193.65% -48.33% -34.09%
75th Percentile £85.00 £31.40 £49.06
90th Percentile £92.78 £50.75 £54.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £18.73 £36.25
% change year-on-year +193.65% -48.33% +61.11%

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 45,937 29,792 32,994
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.50% 90.51% 85.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,939 18,514 20,418
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £403 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
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 3,060 1,790 1,498
10th Percentile £13.85 £14.23 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.44 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.50 £43.94 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.10 £67.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.13 £22.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year +78.36% -47.67% +7.50%

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 13 September 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 13 September 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 13 September 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 -11 1,368 £525 +5.00% 980
UK excluding London -13 922 £525 +5.00% 723
London +20 494 £525 +5.00% 371
Work from Home +9 423 £515 +3.00% 619
South East +9 300 £575 +17.95% 235
North of England -13 258 £469 +2.80% 166
North West -15 156 £480 +3.11% 85
Midlands -34 113 £500 -0.50% 111
West Midlands -24 106 £500 -2.91% 65
South West -34 105 £575 +6.48% 80
Yorkshire -9 94 £443 +21.37% 69
Scotland +8 92 £520 +10.64% 37
East of England -3 51 £510 -7.27% 74
Wales -9 13 £800 +247.83% 20
Northern Ireland +7 8 - - 18
North East -42 8 £535 +174.36% 13
East Midlands -32 7 £206 -31.25% 46

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
1 120 (7.58%) SharePoint
2 62 (3.91%) Microsoft Exchange
3 58 (3.66%) Confluence
4 15 (0.95%) Skype for Business
5 5 (0.32%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.19%) CMS
7 2 (0.13%) CICS
8 1 (0.063%) Apache
8 1 (0.063%) Exchange Server 2010
8 1 (0.063%) HCL Notes
8 1 (0.063%) Mattermost
8 1 (0.063%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
8 1 (0.063%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 89 (5.62%) Microsoft Office
2 37 (2.34%) Microsoft Excel
3 15 (0.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 13 (0.82%) Microsoft Project
5 12 (0.76%) MS Visio
6 9 (0.57%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.063%) Maple
Business Applications
1 55 (3.47%) Remedy ITSM
2 11 (0.69%) SAP S/4HANA
3 7 (0.44%) Dynamics CRM
3 7 (0.44%) Primavera
4 5 (0.32%) ContrOCC
4 5 (0.32%) NEC Housing
4 5 (0.32%) Workday HCM
5 3 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
5 3 (0.19%) SAP CO
5 3 (0.19%) SAP FI
5 3 (0.19%) SAP FI/CO
5 3 (0.19%) SAP SM
6 2 (0.13%) Exchequer
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle Applications
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.13%) Remedy AR System
6 2 (0.13%) Salesforce CRM
6 2 (0.13%) SAP CX
6 2 (0.13%) SAP PS
6 2 (0.13%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 275 (17.36%) Azure
2 203 (12.82%) Microsoft 365
3 131 (8.27%) AWS
4 119 (7.51%) Entra ID
5 70 (4.42%) Power Platform
5 70 (4.42%) SaaS
6 57 (3.60%) OneDrive
7 37 (2.34%) Azure DevOps
8 33 (2.08%) GCP
9 20 (1.26%) Microsoft Copilot
10 17 (1.07%) GitHub
11 16 (1.01%) Azure Monitor
12 14 (0.88%) OCI
13 12 (0.76%) Power Automate
13 12 (0.76%) Serverless
14 11 (0.69%) Google Workspace
15 10 (0.63%) Dynamics 365
16 9 (0.57%) Azure Sentinel
16 9 (0.57%) IaaS
16 9 (0.57%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 76 (4.80%) Firewall
2 69 (4.36%) DNS
3 55 (3.47%) VPN
4 51 (3.22%) DHCP
5 45 (2.84%) TCP/IP
6 40 (2.53%) WAN
7 38 (2.40%) Network Security
8 32 (2.02%) LAN
9 24 (1.52%) Wi-Fi
10 18 (1.14%) Wireless
11 16 (1.01%) Skype
12 15 (0.95%) SD-WAN
13 14 (0.88%) VLAN
14 11 (0.69%) Intrusion Detection
15 10 (0.63%) 5G
15 10 (0.63%) BGP
15 10 (0.63%) SSH
16 9 (0.57%) Internet
16 9 (0.57%) SSL
17 8 (0.51%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 45 (2.84%) Power BI
2 33 (2.08%) SQL Server
3 21 (1.33%) Metadata
4 9 (0.57%) Oracle Database
5 8 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 7 (0.44%) Oracle Database 11g
7 6 (0.38%) MySQL
7 6 (0.38%) Oracle Reports
7 6 (0.38%) PostgreSQL
7 6 (0.38%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 5 (0.32%) Amazon RDS
8 5 (0.32%) MariaDB
8 5 (0.32%) Relational Database
8 5 (0.32%) SQL Server Analysis Services
9 3 (0.19%) Amazon Aurora
10 2 (0.13%) Amazon Redshift
10 2 (0.13%) Azure SQL Database
10 2 (0.13%) Looker
10 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Analysis Services
10 2 (0.13%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 154 (9.72%) JIRA
2 26 (1.64%) Git
3 21 (1.33%) Jenkins
4 17 (1.07%) Bitbucket
5 12 (0.76%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 6 (0.38%) GitLab
7 5 (0.32%) Browser DevTools
8 4 (0.25%) Maven
8 4 (0.25%) webpack
9 3 (0.19%) Fiddler
9 3 (0.19%) Gradle
9 3 (0.19%) Hudson
9 3 (0.19%) Rational DOORS
9 3 (0.19%) ScriptRunner
10 2 (0.13%) Firebug
10 2 (0.13%) MLflow
10 2 (0.13%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.063%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.063%) IntelliJ
11 1 (0.063%) MSI
General
1 630 (39.77%) Social Skills
2 257 (16.22%) Analytical Skills
3 255 (16.10%) Finance
4 195 (12.31%) Public Sector
5 75 (4.73%) Telecoms
6 63 (3.98%) Organisational Skills
7 62 (3.91%) Documentation Skills
8 56 (3.54%) Banking
9 54 (3.41%) Influencing Skills
10 45 (2.84%) Legal
11 38 (2.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 34 (2.15%) Aerospace
13 32 (2.02%) Military
14 23 (1.45%) Presentation Skills
15 21 (1.33%) Local Government
16 17 (1.07%) Retail
17 16 (1.01%) Manufacturing
18 15 (0.95%) Police
19 10 (0.63%) Financial Institution
19 10 (0.63%) Law
Job Titles
1 170 (10.73%) Architect
2 155 (9.79%) Analyst
3 152 (9.60%) Lead
4 115 (7.26%) Senior
5 113 (7.13%) Service Manager
6 106 (6.69%) Consultant
7 76 (4.80%) Support Engineer
8 73 (4.61%) IT Manager
9 72 (4.55%) Project Manager
10 64 (4.04%) Developer
11 61 (3.85%) Delivery Manager
12 54 (3.41%) Solutions Architect
13 53 (3.35%) IT Support
14 48 (3.03%) Service Analyst
15 41 (2.59%) Service Architect
15 41 (2.59%) ServiceNow Developer
16 40 (2.53%) Transition Manager
17 39 (2.46%) ServiceNow Architect
18 36 (2.27%) IT Engineer
19 33 (2.08%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 78 (4.92%) REST
2 50 (3.16%) Terraform
3 33 (2.08%) SOAP
4 21 (1.33%) XML
5 20 (1.26%) HTML
6 19 (1.20%) CSS
7 18 (1.14%) Web Services
8 15 (0.95%) JSON
9 14 (0.88%) Middleware
10 10 (0.63%) SAML
11 9 (0.57%) AngularJS
11 9 (0.57%) Elastic Stack
12 8 (0.51%) .NET
13 7 (0.44%) ARM Templates
14 6 (0.38%) OAuth
14 6 (0.38%) XSLT
15 5 (0.32%) Ajax
15 5 (0.32%) LDAP
15 5 (0.32%) Node.js
15 5 (0.32%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 166 (10.48%) Onboarding
2 125 (7.89%) CMDB
3 85 (5.37%) Management Information System
4 56 (3.54%) Enterprise Software
5 54 (3.41%) Product Ownership
6 51 (3.22%) Data Centre
7 34 (2.15%) PKI
8 28 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
8 28 (1.77%) Virtual Team
9 27 (1.70%) Operational Technology
10 24 (1.52%) Hybrid Cloud
11 23 (1.45%) Security Operations Centre
12 18 (1.14%) Cloud Native
13 17 (1.07%) Analytical Mindset
13 17 (1.07%) Clustering
13 17 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
14 16 (1.01%) AI Agents
15 15 (0.95%) Video Conferencing
16 14 (0.88%) Cyber Threat
16 14 (0.88%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 315 (19.89%) Windows
2 91 (5.74%) Windows Server
3 83 (5.24%) Linux
4 70 (4.42%) Windows 10
5 32 (2.02%) Apple iOS
6 30 (1.89%) Mac OS
7 21 (1.33%) Unix
8 20 (1.26%) Windows 7
9 17 (1.07%) Android
10 10 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 6 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
12 3 (0.19%) zOS
13 2 (0.13%) Solaris
13 2 (0.13%) Windows XP
14 1 (0.063%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 838 (52.90%) ITIL
2 697 (44.00%) ITSM
3 496 (31.31%) Stakeholder Management
4 430 (27.15%) Continuous Improvement
5 334 (21.09%) Service Delivery
6 327 (20.64%) Agile
7 317 (20.01%) Problem-Solving
8 249 (15.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 240 (15.15%) Change Management
10 209 (13.19%) Roadmaps
11 185 (11.68%) Customer Service
12 169 (10.67%) Incident Management
13 164 (10.35%) DevOps
14 157 (9.91%) Cybersecurity
15 142 (8.96%) Project Delivery
16 141 (8.90%) Decision-Making
17 133 (8.40%) AI
18 124 (7.83%) Migration
19 120 (7.58%) Risk Management
20 115 (7.26%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 141 (8.90%) PowerShell
2 85 (5.37%) Python
3 70 (4.42%) SQL
4 58 (3.66%) JavaScript
5 46 (2.90%) Bash
6 17 (1.07%) VBScript
7 15 (0.95%) Java
7 15 (0.95%) VB
8 11 (0.69%) C#
8 11 (0.69%) PL/SQL
9 10 (0.63%) Bicep
10 8 (0.51%) Groovy
11 7 (0.44%) Shell Script
12 6 (0.38%) C
13 5 (0.32%) Apex Code
13 5 (0.32%) Perl
13 5 (0.32%) T-SQL
14 4 (0.25%) TypeScript
15 3 (0.19%) Lua
16 2 (0.13%) ActionScript 2.0
Qualifications
1 595 (37.56%) Security Cleared
2 406 (25.63%) SC Cleared
3 156 (9.85%) Degree
4 150 (9.47%) DV Cleared
5 62 (3.91%) ITIL Certification
6 60 (3.79%) PMP
7 55 (3.47%) PMI Certification
8 53 (3.35%) BPSS Clearance
9 39 (2.46%) Microsoft Certification
10 37 (2.34%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 33 (2.08%) CISSP
12 30 (1.89%) CISM
13 29 (1.83%) Computer Science Degree
14 28 (1.77%) Cisco Certification
15 26 (1.64%) A+ Certification
16 18 (1.14%) Azure Certification
17 16 (1.01%) DBS Check
18 14 (0.88%) CCNA
19 13 (0.82%) AWS Certification
20 10 (0.63%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 126 (7.95%) SLA
2 58 (3.66%) QA
3 52 (3.28%) Data Quality
4 48 (3.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 33 (2.08%) GDPR
6 32 (2.02%) GRC
7 31 (1.96%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 31 (1.96%) NCSC
8 30 (1.89%) PMO
9 22 (1.39%) NIST
10 16 (1.01%) COBIT
10 16 (1.01%) ISO 9001
11 14 (0.88%) Accessibility
11 14 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
12 9 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 9 (0.57%) Disclosure Scotland
13 7 (0.44%) PCI DSS
14 6 (0.38%) ISO 31000
14 6 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27005
14 6 (0.38%) WCAG
System Software
1 181 (11.43%) Active Directory
2 83 (5.24%) VMware Infrastructure
3 34 (2.15%) Hyper-V
4 27 (1.70%) VMware ESXi
5 20 (1.26%) Virtual Desktop
6 19 (1.20%) Docker
6 19 (1.20%) vSphere
7 17 (1.07%) VMware NSX
8 16 (1.01%) BitLocker
9 13 (0.82%) vCloud
10 6 (0.38%) Citrix Hypervisor
10 6 (0.38%) Firmware
10 6 (0.38%) IAG
10 6 (0.38%) Virtual Servers
10 6 (0.38%) XenApp
10 6 (0.38%) XenDesktop
11 5 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
11 5 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
12 3 (0.19%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 3 (0.19%) NFS
Systems Management
1 92 (5.81%) Microsoft Intune
2 78 (4.92%) SCCM
3 50 (3.16%) Ansible
4 23 (1.45%) SCOM
4 23 (1.45%) Single Sign-On
5 22 (1.39%) Kubernetes
6 18 (1.14%) vCenter Server
7 13 (0.82%) Jamf Pro
8 12 (0.76%) WSUS
9 8 (0.51%) Data Guard
9 8 (0.51%) Oracle RMAN
10 5 (0.32%) Grafana
10 5 (0.32%) NetBackup
11 4 (0.25%) PowerCLI
11 4 (0.25%) Progress Chef
11 4 (0.25%) Puppet
11 4 (0.25%) vMotion
12 3 (0.19%) Cisco Prime
12 3 (0.19%) Nagios
12 3 (0.19%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
Vendors
1 454 (28.66%) ServiceNow
2 381 (24.05%) Microsoft
3 113 (7.13%) VMware
4 60 (3.79%) Remedy
5 53 (3.35%) BMC
6 49 (3.09%) Cisco
7 47 (2.97%) Oracle
8 36 (2.27%) Atlassian
9 33 (2.08%) SAP
10 29 (1.83%) Dynatrace
11 26 (1.64%) Splunk
12 22 (1.39%) Citrix
12 22 (1.39%) CyberArk
12 22 (1.39%) Salesforce
13 21 (1.33%) Apple
14 20 (1.26%) IBM
15 18 (1.14%) Google
16 17 (1.07%) IFS
16 17 (1.07%) SolarWinds
17 15 (0.95%) Zscaler