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

6 months to
31 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 93 83 90
Rank change year-on-year -10 +7 -3
Contract jobs citing Service Management 1,541 978 944
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.87% 2.97% 2.45%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.39% 3.28% 2.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,008 594 634
10th Percentile £262 £208 £222
25th Percentile £420 £345 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £490 £519
Median % change year-on-year +7.20% -5.54% -1.24%
75th Percentile £622 £575 £600
90th Percentile £725 £675 £683
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £493 £502
% change year-on-year +6.60% -1.79% +0.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 83 73 17
10th Percentile £14.50 - £17.17
25th Percentile £16.76 £12.62 £20.74
Median hourly rate £55.00 £18.73 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +193.65% -31.89% -49.07%
75th Percentile £85.00 £31.40 £48.75
90th Percentile £92.52 £44.75 £54.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.53 £18.73 £27.50
% change year-on-year +89.70% -31.89% +25.54%

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 45,455 29,807 32,988
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.58% 90.45% 85.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,783 18,569 20,737
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
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 2,905 1,767 1,609
10th Percentile £14.10 £14.20 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.75 £17.30 £18.89
Median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +63.02% -40.82% +3.56%
75th Percentile £67.84 £47.31 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.25 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.56 £22.63 £43.00
% change year-on-year +92.49% -47.37% +14.67%

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 31 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 31 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 31 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 -12 1,327 £525 +5.00% 656
UK excluding London -14 893 £525 +6.60% 513
London +34 485 £525 +5.00% 232
Work from Home +9 423 £520 +5.05% 266
South East +17 292 £568 +13.50% 192
North of England -20 250 £473 +4.30% 112
North West -18 149 £480 +3.11% 71
South West -36 110 £575 +6.48% 57
Midlands -45 102 £510 - 77
West Midlands -25 96 £520 -0.95% 53
Yorkshire -15 94 £443 +24.79% 32
Scotland +12 88 £520 +15.56% 14
East of England -6 47 £518 -5.91% 48
Wales -9 13 £800 +247.83% 12
Northern Ireland +7 8 - - 9
North East -37 7 £500 +156.41% 9
East Midlands -29 6 £250 -16.67% 25

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
1 111 (7.20%) SharePoint
2 57 (3.70%) Confluence
2 57 (3.70%) Microsoft Exchange
3 15 (0.97%) Skype for Business
4 6 (0.39%) OpenStack
5 3 (0.19%) CMS
5 3 (0.19%) IIS
6 2 (0.13%) Apache
7 1 (0.065%) CICS
7 1 (0.065%) Exchange Server 2010
7 1 (0.065%) HCL Notes
7 1 (0.065%) JBoss
7 1 (0.065%) Mattermost
7 1 (0.065%) Oracle Collaboration Suite
7 1 (0.065%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 86 (5.58%) Microsoft Office
2 37 (2.40%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (1.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 12 (0.78%) Microsoft Project
4 12 (0.78%) MS Visio
5 10 (0.65%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.065%) Maple
Business Applications
1 57 (3.70%) Remedy ITSM
2 11 (0.71%) SAP S/4HANA
3 7 (0.45%) Primavera
4 5 (0.32%) ContrOCC
4 5 (0.32%) NEC Housing
5 4 (0.26%) Workday HCM
6 3 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
6 3 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
6 3 (0.19%) SAP CO
6 3 (0.19%) SAP FI
6 3 (0.19%) SAP FI/CO
6 3 (0.19%) SAP SM
7 2 (0.13%) Exchequer
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle Applications
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
7 2 (0.13%) Remedy AR System
7 2 (0.13%) SAP PS
7 2 (0.13%) Teamcenter
8 1 (0.065%) Salesforce CRM
8 1 (0.065%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 279 (18.11%) Azure
2 198 (12.85%) Microsoft 365
3 127 (8.24%) AWS
4 117 (7.59%) Entra ID
5 70 (4.54%) Power Platform
6 64 (4.15%) SaaS
7 54 (3.50%) OneDrive
8 35 (2.27%) Azure DevOps
9 33 (2.14%) GCP
10 21 (1.36%) GitHub
11 20 (1.30%) Microsoft Copilot
12 16 (1.04%) Azure Monitor
13 14 (0.91%) OCI
14 11 (0.71%) PaaS
15 10 (0.65%) Google Workspace
15 10 (0.65%) IaaS
16 9 (0.58%) Azure Sentinel
17 8 (0.52%) Azure AKS
17 8 (0.52%) Power Automate
17 8 (0.52%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 83 (5.39%) Firewall
2 67 (4.35%) DNS
3 53 (3.44%) VPN
4 47 (3.05%) DHCP
4 47 (3.05%) TCP/IP
5 43 (2.79%) WAN
6 42 (2.73%) Network Security
7 35 (2.27%) LAN
8 21 (1.36%) Wi-Fi
9 19 (1.23%) Wireless
10 18 (1.17%) SD-WAN
11 15 (0.97%) Skype
11 15 (0.97%) VLAN
12 13 (0.84%) BGP
13 11 (0.71%) Intrusion Detection
13 11 (0.71%) SSH
14 9 (0.58%) 5G
14 9 (0.58%) OSPF
14 9 (0.58%) SSL
15 8 (0.52%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 49 (3.18%) Power BI
2 28 (1.82%) SQL Server
3 14 (0.91%) Metadata
4 9 (0.58%) Oracle Database
5 8 (0.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 7 (0.45%) MySQL
6 7 (0.45%) Oracle Database 11g
6 7 (0.45%) PostgreSQL
7 6 (0.39%) Oracle Reports
7 6 (0.39%) 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
1 145 (9.41%) JIRA
2 24 (1.56%) Git
2 24 (1.56%) Jenkins
3 19 (1.23%) Bitbucket
4 12 (0.78%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 9 (0.58%) GitLab
6 5 (0.32%) Browser DevTools
7 4 (0.26%) Maven
7 4 (0.26%) MLflow
7 4 (0.26%) ScriptRunner
7 4 (0.26%) webpack
8 3 (0.19%) Fiddler
8 3 (0.19%) Gradle
8 3 (0.19%) Hudson
8 3 (0.19%) IntelliJ
8 3 (0.19%) Rational DOORS
8 3 (0.19%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.13%) Artifactory
9 2 (0.13%) Firebug
10 1 (0.065%) Selenium
General
1 605 (39.26%) Social Skills
2 254 (16.48%) Finance
3 245 (15.90%) Analytical Skills
4 191 (12.39%) Public Sector
5 76 (4.93%) Telecoms
6 61 (3.96%) Organisational Skills
7 59 (3.83%) Documentation Skills
8 54 (3.50%) Banking
9 53 (3.44%) Influencing Skills
10 46 (2.99%) Legal
11 32 (2.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 30 (1.95%) Military
13 26 (1.69%) Aerospace
14 23 (1.49%) Local Government
15 21 (1.36%) Presentation Skills
16 18 (1.17%) Retail
17 14 (0.91%) Police
18 12 (0.78%) Manufacturing
19 10 (0.65%) Financial Institution
19 10 (0.65%) Law
Job Titles
1 160 (10.38%) Analyst
2 159 (10.32%) Architect
3 150 (9.73%) Lead
4 116 (7.53%) Senior
5 110 (7.14%) Consultant
6 105 (6.81%) Service Manager
7 75 (4.87%) IT Manager
8 71 (4.61%) Project Manager
9 69 (4.48%) Support Engineer
10 61 (3.96%) Developer
11 52 (3.37%) Delivery Manager
12 50 (3.24%) IT Support
12 50 (3.24%) Service Analyst
13 49 (3.18%) Solutions Architect
14 42 (2.73%) Service Architect
15 41 (2.66%) ServiceNow Developer
16 36 (2.34%) Transition Manager
17 34 (2.21%) Designer
17 34 (2.21%) IT Analyst
18 33 (2.14%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 76 (4.93%) REST
2 49 (3.18%) Terraform
3 32 (2.08%) SOAP
4 18 (1.17%) HTML
5 17 (1.10%) CSS
6 14 (0.91%) Web Services
6 14 (0.91%) XML
7 13 (0.84%) Middleware
8 11 (0.71%) JSON
9 10 (0.65%) SAML
10 9 (0.58%) AngularJS
10 9 (0.58%) Elastic Stack
11 7 (0.45%) ARM Templates
12 6 (0.39%) .NET
12 6 (0.39%) Node.js
12 6 (0.39%) OAuth
13 5 (0.32%) OpenID
13 5 (0.32%) RESTful
14 4 (0.26%) Bootstrap
14 4 (0.26%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 161 (10.45%) Onboarding
2 121 (7.85%) CMDB
3 73 (4.74%) Management Information System
4 62 (4.02%) Product Ownership
5 51 (3.31%) Enterprise Software
6 47 (3.05%) Data Centre
7 30 (1.95%) PKI
8 28 (1.82%) Operational Technology
9 27 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
9 27 (1.75%) Virtual Team
10 24 (1.56%) Hybrid Cloud
11 23 (1.49%) Security Operations Centre
12 21 (1.36%) Cloud Native
13 18 (1.17%) Clustering
14 17 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
15 16 (1.04%) AI Agents
15 16 (1.04%) Analytical Mindset
16 14 (0.91%) NHS
16 14 (0.91%) Video Conferencing
17 13 (0.84%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 301 (19.53%) Windows
2 85 (5.52%) Windows Server
3 84 (5.45%) Linux
4 67 (4.35%) Windows 10
5 30 (1.95%) Apple iOS
6 27 (1.75%) Mac OS
7 21 (1.36%) Unix
8 20 (1.30%) Windows 7
9 17 (1.10%) Android
10 12 (0.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 6 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.13%) Solaris
13 2 (0.13%) Ubuntu
13 2 (0.13%) VMS
13 2 (0.13%) Windows XP
13 2 (0.13%) zOS
14 1 (0.065%) Rocky
14 1 (0.065%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 813 (52.76%) ITIL
2 693 (44.97%) ITSM
3 465 (30.18%) Stakeholder Management
4 408 (26.48%) Continuous Improvement
5 331 (21.48%) Service Delivery
6 311 (20.18%) Agile
7 309 (20.05%) Problem-Solving
8 238 (15.44%) Change Management
8 238 (15.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 187 (12.13%) Roadmaps
10 181 (11.75%) Customer Service
11 164 (10.64%) Incident Management
12 156 (10.12%) DevOps
13 154 (9.99%) Cybersecurity
14 137 (8.89%) Project Delivery
15 136 (8.83%) Decision-Making
16 133 (8.63%) AI
17 126 (8.18%) Migration
18 115 (7.46%) Service Design
19 113 (7.33%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 132 (8.57%) PowerShell
2 89 (5.78%) Python
3 71 (4.61%) SQL
4 53 (3.44%) JavaScript
5 47 (3.05%) Bash
6 17 (1.10%) VBScript
7 16 (1.04%) Java
8 15 (0.97%) VB
9 12 (0.78%) PL/SQL
10 10 (0.65%) Bicep
11 9 (0.58%) Groovy
12 7 (0.45%) Shell Script
13 6 (0.39%) C
14 5 (0.32%) Apex Code
14 5 (0.32%) C#
14 5 (0.32%) Perl
14 5 (0.32%) T-SQL
15 4 (0.26%) TypeScript
16 3 (0.19%) Lua
17 2 (0.13%) Korn
Qualifications
1 567 (36.79%) Security Cleared
2 388 (25.18%) SC Cleared
3 148 (9.60%) Degree
3 148 (9.60%) DV Cleared
4 65 (4.22%) ITIL Certification
5 58 (3.76%) PMP
6 52 (3.37%) PMI Certification
7 45 (2.92%) BPSS Clearance
8 35 (2.27%) CISSP
9 34 (2.21%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 33 (2.14%) Microsoft Certification
11 32 (2.08%) CISM
12 29 (1.88%) Computer Science Degree
13 28 (1.82%) Cisco Certification
14 25 (1.62%) A+ Certification
15 17 (1.10%) Azure Certification
16 16 (1.04%) DBS Check
17 14 (0.91%) CCNA
18 13 (0.84%) Master's Degree
19 10 (0.65%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 128 (8.31%) SLA
2 52 (3.37%) QA
3 49 (3.18%) Data Quality
4 48 (3.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 35 (2.27%) ISO/IEC 20000
6 34 (2.21%) NCSC
7 31 (2.01%) GRC
7 31 (2.01%) PMO
8 30 (1.95%) GDPR
9 20 (1.30%) NIST
10 17 (1.10%) COBIT
11 16 (1.04%) ISO 9001
12 14 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
13 10 (0.65%) Accessibility
14 9 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 9 (0.58%) Disclosure Scotland
15 8 (0.52%) PCI DSS
16 7 (0.45%) Government Security Classifications
17 6 (0.39%) ISO 31000
17 6 (0.39%) ISO/IEC 27005
System Software
1 173 (11.23%) Active Directory
2 78 (5.06%) VMware Infrastructure
3 32 (2.08%) Hyper-V
4 25 (1.62%) VMware ESXi
5 21 (1.36%) Docker
6 18 (1.17%) VMware NSX
7 17 (1.10%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (1.04%) BitLocker
8 16 (1.04%) vSphere
9 13 (0.84%) vCloud
10 6 (0.39%) IAG
10 6 (0.39%) Virtual Servers
11 5 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
11 5 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
12 4 (0.26%) Citrix Hypervisor
12 4 (0.26%) Firmware
12 4 (0.26%) NFS
12 4 (0.26%) XenApp
12 4 (0.26%) XenDesktop
13 3 (0.19%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 85 (5.52%) Microsoft Intune
2 72 (4.67%) SCCM
3 48 (3.11%) Ansible
4 24 (1.56%) Kubernetes
5 22 (1.43%) SCOM
6 20 (1.30%) Single Sign-On
7 16 (1.04%) vCenter Server
8 11 (0.71%) Jamf Pro
9 10 (0.65%) WSUS
10 8 (0.52%) Data Guard
10 8 (0.52%) Oracle RMAN
11 7 (0.45%) Grafana
12 5 (0.32%) NetBackup
13 4 (0.26%) PowerCLI
13 4 (0.26%) Progress Chef
13 4 (0.26%) Prometheus
13 4 (0.26%) Puppet
13 4 (0.26%) vMotion
14 3 (0.19%) systemd
14 3 (0.19%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 436 (28.29%) ServiceNow
2 360 (23.36%) Microsoft
3 109 (7.07%) VMware
4 62 (4.02%) Remedy
5 51 (3.31%) Cisco
6 50 (3.24%) BMC
7 46 (2.99%) Oracle
8 35 (2.27%) Atlassian
9 32 (2.08%) SAP
10 28 (1.82%) Dynatrace
11 26 (1.69%) Splunk
12 21 (1.36%) Salesforce
13 20 (1.30%) Citrix
13 20 (1.30%) CyberArk
14 19 (1.23%) Apple
14 19 (1.23%) IBM
15 17 (1.10%) Google
15 17 (1.10%) IFS
15 17 (1.10%) SolarWinds
16 15 (0.97%) Zscaler