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 7 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 94 98 76
Rank change year-on-year +4 -22 +20
Contract jobs citing Service Management 994 797 1,186
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.69% 2.47% 2.78%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.05% 2.79% 3.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 687 474 832
10th Percentile £200 £215 £268
25th Percentile £350 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £528
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.57% +5.60%
75th Percentile £588 £618 £615
90th Percentile £720 £699 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% +10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 78 23 14
10th Percentile £13.25 £21.05 £15.46
25th Percentile £17.30 £24.97 £16.84
Median hourly rate £23.56 £30.40 £20.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.52% +48.29% -18.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £37.00 £53.44
90th Percentile £80.90 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.79 £30.43 £17.72
% change year-on-year -31.67% +71.70% -41.77%

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 32,541 28,533 37,398
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.91% 88.47% 87.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,569 17,345 24,861
10th Percentile £304 £308 £305
25th Percentile £406 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £720 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,000 921 1,535
10th Percentile £14.74 £15.62 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.30 £18.93
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -23.53% +21.43%
75th Percentile £55.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.65 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £30.45 £45.00
% change year-on-year -21.76% -32.33% +55.17%

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 7 January 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 7 January 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 7 January 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 +8 896 £505 -3.81% 277
UK excluding London +8 690 £500 - 242
Work from Home +3 257 £500 -4.76% 139
London -51 224 £500 -4.76% 81
South East +32 191 £500 - 70
North of England 0 157 £475 +18.75% 58
South West +5 145 £575 +4.55% 24
Midlands +14 122 £488 -11.44% 37
West Midlands +1 93 £515 -6.53% 23
North West -1 87 £550 +37.50% 31
Yorkshire -19 56 £453 +95.46% 19
East of England -12 39 £454 -14.42% 25
Scotland -9 35 £463 +2.78% 14
East Midlands -1 29 £413 -17.50% 13
North East -6 17 £280 -53.04% 8
Northern Ireland - 4 £325 - 6
Wales -4 3 £170 -46.44% 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 74 (7.44%) Confluence
2 66 (6.64%) Microsoft Exchange
3 57 (5.73%) SharePoint
4 16 (1.61%) Apache
5 15 (1.51%) WebLogic
6 10 (1.01%) Skype for Business
7 5 (0.50%) SharePoint Server
8 3 (0.30%) nginx
9 2 (0.20%) JBoss
9 2 (0.20%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.10%) CMS
10 1 (0.10%) Exchange Server 2010
10 1 (0.10%) Exchange Server 2013
10 1 (0.10%) HCL Notes
10 1 (0.10%) IIS
10 1 (0.10%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 93 (9.36%) Microsoft Office
2 35 (3.52%) Microsoft Project
3 34 (3.42%) Microsoft Excel
4 16 (1.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 8 (0.80%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.40%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 26 (2.62%) Remedy ITSM
2 13 (1.31%) Oracle EBS
3 5 (0.50%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.40%) Dynamics CRM
4 4 (0.40%) Oracle ERP
5 3 (0.30%) assyst
6 2 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
6 2 (0.20%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.10%) Cloudability
7 1 (0.10%) Integrated Workplace Management System
7 1 (0.10%) Maximo
7 1 (0.10%) Oracle Payables
7 1 (0.10%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 1 (0.10%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 1 (0.10%) SAP HR
7 1 (0.10%) SAP PM
7 1 (0.10%) SystmOne
7 1 (0.10%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 164 (16.50%) Azure
2 104 (10.46%) AWS
3 96 (9.66%) Microsoft 365
4 41 (4.12%) GCP
5 34 (3.42%) Entra ID
6 30 (3.02%) Power Platform
7 27 (2.72%) OneDrive
8 25 (2.52%) Azure DevOps
9 22 (2.21%) SaaS
10 18 (1.81%) Azure Monitor
11 11 (1.11%) PowerApps
12 10 (1.01%) GitHub
12 10 (1.01%) IaaS
13 8 (0.80%) Nutanix
13 8 (0.80%) Salesforce Service Cloud
14 7 (0.70%) Dynamics 365
15 6 (0.60%) OpenShift
15 6 (0.60%) Power Automate
15 6 (0.60%) Serverless
16 5 (0.50%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 63 (6.34%) DNS
2 57 (5.73%) Firewall
3 37 (3.72%) DHCP
4 32 (3.22%) VPN
5 29 (2.92%) TCP/IP
6 22 (2.21%) VLAN
7 21 (2.11%) WAN
8 20 (2.01%) LAN
8 20 (2.01%) Skype
9 19 (1.91%) Network Security
10 18 (1.81%) Cisco IOS
11 17 (1.71%) Cisco Firepower
11 17 (1.71%) Cisco ISE
11 17 (1.71%) Junos
12 13 (1.31%) SSH
13 10 (1.01%) HTTP
13 10 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
14 8 (0.80%) WebEx
14 8 (0.80%) Wireless
15 7 (0.70%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (2.01%) Power BI
2 16 (1.61%) Relational Database
3 14 (1.41%) SQL Server
4 7 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
4 7 (0.70%) PostgreSQL
5 6 (0.60%) Tableau
6 5 (0.50%) Metadata
7 4 (0.40%) Data Mining
7 4 (0.40%) InfluxDB
8 3 (0.30%) Elasticsearch
9 2 (0.20%) Azure SQL Database
9 2 (0.20%) Big Data
9 2 (0.20%) MongoDB
9 2 (0.20%) Oracle Reports
9 2 (0.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 1 (0.10%) BusinessObjects
10 1 (0.10%) DB2
10 1 (0.10%) MariaDB
10 1 (0.10%) Oracle Discoverer
10 1 (0.10%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 134 (13.48%) JIRA
2 18 (1.81%) Jenkins
3 13 (1.31%) Git
4 10 (1.01%) Bitbucket
5 9 (0.91%) GitLab
6 5 (0.50%) webpack
7 4 (0.40%) ScriptRunner
8 2 (0.20%) TestRail
9 1 (0.10%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 1 (0.10%) Cypress.io
9 1 (0.10%) MLflow
9 1 (0.10%) Selenium
9 1 (0.10%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 410 (41.25%) Social Skills
2 173 (17.40%) Analytical Skills
3 140 (14.08%) Finance
4 133 (13.38%) Public Sector
5 45 (4.53%) Military
6 40 (4.02%) Legal
7 39 (3.92%) Organisational Skills
8 36 (3.62%) Telecoms
9 32 (3.22%) Influencing Skills
10 29 (2.92%) Banking
10 29 (2.92%) Documentation Skills
10 29 (2.92%) Manufacturing
11 19 (1.91%) Retail
12 16 (1.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 15 (1.51%) Presentation Skills
14 13 (1.31%) Marketing
15 12 (1.21%) Electronics
16 9 (0.91%) Investment Banking
17 7 (0.70%) Billing
17 7 (0.70%) Police
Job Titles
1 141 (14.19%) Analyst
2 121 (12.17%) Architect
3 113 (11.37%) Lead
4 69 (6.94%) Service Architect
5 67 (6.74%) Service Manager
6 65 (6.54%) Support Engineer
7 49 (4.93%) Consultant
8 43 (4.33%) IT Support
8 43 (4.33%) Service Analyst
9 39 (3.92%) Senior
10 37 (3.72%) Support Analyst
11 34 (3.42%) 2nd Line Support
12 31 (3.12%) Desktop Support
13 30 (3.02%) Platform Engineer
14 29 (2.92%) Network Engineer
15 27 (2.72%) IT Analyst
16 26 (2.62%) Business Analyst
17 25 (2.52%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 22 (2.21%) Developer
18 22 (2.21%) Service Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (3.52%) REST
2 17 (1.71%) SOAP
3 10 (1.01%) .NET
3 10 (1.01%) CSS
3 10 (1.01%) Web Services
4 9 (0.91%) HTML
4 9 (0.91%) LDAP
4 9 (0.91%) RFC 2544
5 8 (0.80%) XMPP
6 7 (0.70%) Elastic Stack
6 7 (0.70%) React
7 5 (0.50%) CSS3
7 5 (0.50%) HTML5
7 5 (0.50%) Lightning Web Components
7 5 (0.50%) Node.js
7 5 (0.50%) Redux
7 5 (0.50%) RESTful
8 4 (0.40%) RabbitMQ
9 3 (0.30%) AngularJS
9 3 (0.30%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 70 (7.04%) Product Ownership
2 47 (4.73%) CMDB
3 44 (4.43%) Data Centre
4 40 (4.02%) Management Information System
5 32 (3.22%) Onboarding
6 24 (2.41%) PKI
7 21 (2.11%) Analytical Mindset
8 19 (1.91%) Driving Licence
8 19 (1.91%) Self-Motivation
9 18 (1.81%) Virtual Team
10 13 (1.31%) Mainframe
11 11 (1.11%) NHS
12 10 (1.01%) PMI
13 9 (0.91%) Enterprise Software
14 8 (0.80%) Data Protection Act
14 8 (0.80%) Fibre Optics
14 8 (0.80%) Video Conferencing
15 7 (0.70%) Public Cloud
15 7 (0.70%) Tandem
16 6 (0.60%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 220 (22.13%) Windows
2 79 (7.95%) Linux
3 64 (6.44%) Windows Server
4 54 (5.43%) Windows 10
5 26 (2.62%) Unix
6 14 (1.41%) Mac OS
7 13 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 10 (1.01%) Android
8 10 (1.01%) Apple iOS
9 7 (0.70%) Windows Server 2012
10 6 (0.60%) Windows Server 2019
11 5 (0.50%) Windows 7
11 5 (0.50%) Windows Server 2003
12 4 (0.40%) Ubuntu
12 4 (0.40%) Windows Server 2008
12 4 (0.40%) Windows Server 2016
13 3 (0.30%) CentOS
14 2 (0.20%) VMS
15 1 (0.10%) Mac OS X
15 1 (0.10%) Windows XP
Processes & Methodologies
1 569 (57.24%) ITIL
2 427 (42.96%) ITSM
3 206 (20.72%) Problem-Solving
4 174 (17.51%) Agile
5 165 (16.60%) Continuous Improvement
6 161 (16.20%) Change Management
7 144 (14.49%) Stakeholder Management
8 134 (13.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 132 (13.28%) Service Delivery
9 132 (13.28%) Service Design
10 119 (11.97%) Customer Service
11 97 (9.76%) Project Management
12 92 (9.26%) Incident Management
13 87 (8.75%) DevOps
14 83 (8.35%) Project Delivery
15 69 (6.94%) Problem Management
16 64 (6.44%) Knowledge Transfer
17 59 (5.94%) Business Continuity
18 58 (5.84%) Analytics
18 58 (5.84%) Configuration Management
Programming Languages
1 82 (8.25%) PowerShell
2 66 (6.64%) SQL
3 59 (5.94%) Python
4 26 (2.62%) JavaScript
5 15 (1.51%) Java
5 15 (1.51%) Perl
5 15 (1.51%) Shell Script
6 13 (1.31%) Bash
7 6 (0.60%) TypeScript
8 5 (0.50%) VB
8 5 (0.50%) VBScript
9 4 (0.40%) Go
10 3 (0.30%) Apex Code
10 3 (0.30%) Bicep
11 2 (0.20%) ActionScript
11 2 (0.20%) ActionScript 2.0
11 2 (0.20%) C#
11 2 (0.20%) PHP
12 1 (0.10%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.10%) VBA
Qualifications
1 410 (41.25%) Security Cleared
2 336 (33.80%) SC Cleared
3 127 (12.78%) Degree
4 67 (6.74%) DV Cleared
5 50 (5.03%) ITIL Certification
6 39 (3.92%) Microsoft Certification
7 30 (3.02%) TOGAF Certification
8 24 (2.41%) BPSS Clearance
9 19 (1.91%) A+ Certification
10 18 (1.81%) PMI Certification
11 17 (1.71%) Cisco Certification
11 17 (1.71%) Computer Science Degree
11 17 (1.71%) MCSE
12 16 (1.61%) Azure Certification
12 16 (1.61%) PMP
13 14 (1.41%) Server+ Certification
14 13 (1.31%) CCNP
15 12 (1.21%) CCNA
15 12 (1.21%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 11 (1.11%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 51 (5.13%) SLA
2 31 (3.12%) ISO/IEC 20000
3 18 (1.81%) GDPR
4 16 (1.61%) Data Quality
4 16 (1.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 13 (1.31%) QA
6 12 (1.21%) PMO
7 9 (0.91%) Accessibility
8 6 (0.60%) GRC
8 6 (0.60%) NIST
8 6 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 5 (0.50%) COBIT
9 5 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
9 5 (0.50%) Disclosure Scotland
10 4 (0.40%) HIPAA
10 4 (0.40%) ISO 9001
11 2 (0.20%) NCSC
12 1 (0.10%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 1 (0.10%) ITGC
12 1 (0.10%) NIST 800
System Software
1 122 (12.27%) Active Directory
2 45 (4.53%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (2.11%) VMware NSX
4 16 (1.61%) Docker
4 16 (1.61%) Hyper-V
5 11 (1.11%) Virtual Desktop
6 6 (0.60%) Virtual Servers
7 5 (0.50%) BitLocker
7 5 (0.50%) Microsoft Virtual Server
7 5 (0.50%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.40%) NDS
8 4 (0.40%) NetIQ eDirectory
9 3 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
10 1 (0.10%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 1 (0.10%) Terminal Services
10 1 (0.10%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 32 (3.22%) OPNET
2 28 (2.82%) Ansible
2 28 (2.82%) SCCM
3 27 (2.72%) Terraform
4 26 (2.62%) vCenter Server
5 24 (2.41%) Kubernetes
5 24 (2.41%) Microsoft Intune
6 16 (1.61%) WSUS
7 11 (1.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 8 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
9 6 (0.60%) Grafana
9 6 (0.60%) SCOM
10 5 (0.50%) Prometheus
11 4 (0.40%) FortiGate
11 4 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
11 4 (0.40%) Nessus
11 4 (0.40%) Packer
11 4 (0.40%) Progress Chef
12 2 (0.20%) PowerCLI
12 2 (0.20%) Puppet
Vendors
1 245 (24.65%) ServiceNow
2 177 (17.81%) Microsoft
3 83 (8.35%) Cisco
4 65 (6.54%) Remedy
5 62 (6.24%) Atlassian
6 58 (5.84%) VMware
7 54 (5.43%) Oracle
8 35 (3.52%) Splunk
9 34 (3.42%) Google
10 31 (3.12%) SolarWinds
11 29 (2.92%) SAP
12 27 (2.72%) HP
13 21 (2.11%) AppDynamics
14 20 (2.01%) Dynatrace
14 20 (2.01%) Salesforce
15 19 (1.91%) Juniper
16 14 (1.41%) Citrix
16 14 (1.41%) Palo Alto
16 14 (1.41%) Red Hat
16 14 (1.41%) Veeam