SLA Contract Job Trends

Service Level Agreement (SLA)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring SLA skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 14 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
14 Aug 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 246 188 168
Rank change year-on-year -58 -20 +14
Contract jobs citing SLA 559 485 560
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.05% 1.47% 1.44%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 6.08% 8.64% 10.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 322 276 271
10th Percentile £182 £200 £156
25th Percentile £250 £225 £200
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £375 £325
Median % change year-on-year +13.33% +15.38% -7.14%
75th Percentile £515 £544 £493
90th Percentile £600 £623 £588
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £325 £276
% change year-on-year +23.08% +17.97% -7.39%
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 69 78
10th Percentile £13.45 £15.90 £11.77
25th Percentile £16.03 £17.48 £13.05
Median hourly rate £18.79 £22.14 £16.93
Median % change year-on-year -15.13% +30.77% -9.33%
75th Percentile £22.18 £25.15 £24.18
90th Percentile £27.86 £35.55 £32.82
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.79 £22.03 £14.70
% change year-on-year -14.71% +49.86% -18.33%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
UK

SLA falls under the Quality Assurance and Compliance category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring quality assurance or compliance skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 9,190 5,612 5,245
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.21% 17.05% 13.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,888 3,599 3,249
10th Percentile £325 £281 £291
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £508
Median % change year-on-year - -1.57% -3.24%
75th Percentile £600 £606 £625
90th Percentile £700 £716 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +3.58% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 563 262 315
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.60 £11.22
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.46 £14.46
Median hourly rate £38.72 £28.18 £26.68
Median % change year-on-year +37.40% +5.62% -27.40%
75th Percentile £70.00 £60.94 £55.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £85.70 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.72 £25.04 £25.77
% change year-on-year +54.65% -2.82% -27.42%

SLA
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing SLA relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

SLA job vacancy trend in the UK

SLA
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SLA.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SLA

SLA
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SLA over the 6 months to 14 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SLA in the UK

SLA
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SLA.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SLA

SLA
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SLA over the 6 months to 14 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SLA in the UK

SLA
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 SLA within the UK over the 6 months to 14 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 -73 461 £425 +6.25% 469
UK excluding London -76 330 £400 +23.08% 289
London -22 195 £425 -5.56% 223
Work from Home -11 133 £475 +26.67% 153
North of England -52 80 £400 +59.68% 53
South East -89 77 £463 +68.18% 91
Scotland +39 59 £313 +25.20% 16
Midlands -65 52 £250 -35.90% 55
North West -22 50 £400 +23.08% 35
West Midlands -68 44 £250 -37.50% 30
South West -58 29 £356 +5.48% 33
East of England -12 28 £505 +124.44% 35
Yorkshire -49 27 £444 +77.15% 12
Wales -12 11 £525 +100.00% 9
East Midlands -23 7 £363 +174.62% 25
North East -41 3 £228 - 6
Northern Ireland +5 1 £175 - 6

SLA
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 36 (6.44%) SharePoint
2 25 (4.47%) Microsoft Exchange
3 8 (1.43%) Confluence
4 7 (1.25%) OpenStack
5 5 (0.89%) IIS
5 5 (0.89%) SAS
6 3 (0.54%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 3 (0.54%) Apache Airflow
7 2 (0.36%) Anypoint
7 2 (0.36%) Apache
7 2 (0.36%) Exchange Server 2010
7 2 (0.36%) Mule
8 1 (0.18%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.18%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2013
8 1 (0.18%) JBoss
8 1 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
8 1 (0.18%) Skype for Business
8 1 (0.18%) Smallworld
Applications
1 56 (10.02%) Microsoft Office
2 28 (5.01%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (1.07%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.89%) Spreadsheet
5 4 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 2 (0.36%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.18%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.18%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.18%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 14 (2.50%) Remedy ITSM
2 8 (1.43%) ContrOCC
3 5 (0.89%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.89%) Oracle Applications
4 4 (0.72%) Oracle Assets
4 4 (0.72%) Oracle Payables
4 4 (0.72%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 3 (0.54%) Oracle General Ledger
5 3 (0.54%) Oracle Receivables
5 3 (0.54%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 2 (0.36%) Dynamics GP
6 2 (0.36%) Oracle Cash Management
6 2 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.18%) Actimize
7 1 (0.18%) Adobe Campaign
7 1 (0.18%) OpenText VIM for SAP
7 1 (0.18%) Oracle EBS R12
7 1 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.18%) Oracle Financials
7 1 (0.18%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 111 (19.86%) Microsoft 365
2 105 (18.78%) Azure
3 54 (9.66%) Entra ID
4 52 (9.30%) AWS
5 23 (4.11%) OneDrive
6 20 (3.58%) Power Platform
7 17 (3.04%) Datadog
8 16 (2.86%) SaaS
9 15 (2.68%) Azure DevOps
10 12 (2.15%) IaaS
10 12 (2.15%) PaaS
11 11 (1.97%) OCI
12 10 (1.79%) Amazon S3
13 9 (1.61%) Azure Sentinel
13 9 (1.61%) Snowflake
14 8 (1.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 6 (1.07%) Amazon EC2
15 6 (1.07%) AWS CloudFormation
15 6 (1.07%) GCP
15 6 (1.07%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 39 (6.98%) DNS
2 36 (6.44%) VPN
3 31 (5.55%) DHCP
4 28 (5.01%) WAN
5 27 (4.83%) LAN
6 25 (4.47%) Firewall
7 24 (4.29%) Wi-Fi
8 20 (3.58%) TCP/IP
9 19 (3.40%) Network Security
10 17 (3.04%) SAN
11 13 (2.33%) SDH
12 12 (2.15%) VLAN
13 11 (1.97%) MPLS
14 10 (1.79%) Cisco IOS
15 8 (1.43%) Cisco ASA
15 8 (1.43%) Radio Access Network
15 8 (1.43%) Skype
15 8 (1.43%) Wireless
16 7 (1.25%) 5G
16 7 (1.25%) LTE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (3.94%) SQL Server
2 15 (2.68%) Power BI
3 8 (1.43%) Tableau
4 7 (1.25%) Oracle Reports
5 5 (0.89%) MySQL
5 5 (0.89%) Pentaho
5 5 (0.89%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (0.72%) Oracle Database
7 3 (0.54%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (0.54%) Amazon RDS
7 3 (0.54%) Big Data
7 3 (0.54%) Data Lake
7 3 (0.54%) Relational Database
8 2 (0.36%) Db2
8 2 (0.36%) Oracle Database 10g
8 2 (0.36%) Oracle Database 11g
8 2 (0.36%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 1 (0.18%) Data Warehouse
9 1 (0.18%) GIS
9 1 (0.18%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 47 (8.41%) JIRA
2 10 (1.79%) GitLab
3 9 (1.61%) Chocolatey
4 8 (1.43%) Jenkins
5 6 (1.07%) Git
6 3 (0.54%) Maven
6 3 (0.54%) Visual Studio
7 2 (0.36%) Artifactory
7 2 (0.36%) Toad
8 1 (0.18%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.18%) WiX
General
1 236 (42.22%) Social Skills
2 108 (19.32%) Finance
3 101 (18.07%) Analytical Skills
4 37 (6.62%) Public Sector
5 31 (5.55%) Banking
6 29 (5.19%) Telecoms
7 23 (4.11%) Organisational Skills
8 21 (3.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 20 (3.58%) Documentation Skills
10 18 (3.22%) Legal
11 15 (2.68%) Local Government
11 15 (2.68%) Retail
12 11 (1.97%) Manufacturing
13 9 (1.61%) Influencing Skills
14 8 (1.43%) Financial Institution
15 7 (1.25%) Billing
16 5 (0.89%) Aerospace
16 5 (0.89%) Marketing
17 4 (0.72%) French Language
18 3 (0.54%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 73 (13.06%) Analyst
2 59 (10.55%) Support Engineer
3 45 (8.05%) IT Support
4 44 (7.87%) Senior
5 35 (6.26%) IT Engineer
6 32 (5.72%) Lead
7 30 (5.37%) Service Manager
8 27 (4.83%) Service Analyst
9 25 (4.47%) Network Engineer
10 24 (4.29%) Desktop Support
10 24 (4.29%) Field Engineer
10 24 (4.29%) IT Support Engineer
11 23 (4.11%) Consultant
12 20 (3.58%) Service Desk Analyst
13 19 (3.40%) Administrator
13 19 (3.40%) Delivery Manager
14 18 (3.22%) Applications Support
14 18 (3.22%) Desktop Engineer
15 16 (2.86%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 16 (2.86%) Service Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (1.97%) .NET
2 10 (1.79%) REST
3 8 (1.43%) LDAP
3 8 (1.43%) Oracle Fusion
4 6 (1.07%) XML
5 5 (0.89%) Middleware
5 5 (0.89%) Software Packaging
6 4 (0.72%) Jakarta EE
6 4 (0.72%) Kafka
6 4 (0.72%) Web Services
7 3 (0.54%) .NET Framework
7 3 (0.54%) AngularJS
7 3 (0.54%) Bootstrap
7 3 (0.54%) CSS
7 3 (0.54%) Java RMI
7 3 (0.54%) JSON
7 3 (0.54%) Sass
7 3 (0.54%) SOAP
7 3 (0.54%) Spring
7 3 (0.54%) Spring MVC
Miscellaneous
1 60 (10.73%) Onboarding
2 29 (5.19%) Data Centre
3 22 (3.94%) CMDB
4 18 (3.22%) Enterprise Software
5 14 (2.50%) PKI
6 13 (2.33%) Smartphone
7 12 (2.15%) Cyber Threat
8 11 (1.97%) Virtual Team
9 10 (1.79%) Product Ownership
10 8 (1.43%) BYOD
10 8 (1.43%) Data Protection Act
10 8 (1.43%) Driving Licence
10 8 (1.43%) iPhone
10 8 (1.43%) Self-Motivation
11 7 (1.25%) Video Conferencing
12 6 (1.07%) Fat Client
12 6 (1.07%) Fibre Optics
12 6 (1.07%) Thin Client
13 5 (0.89%) Analytical Mindset
13 5 (0.89%) Cloud Native
Operating Systems
1 157 (28.09%) Windows
2 58 (10.38%) Windows 10
3 37 (6.62%) Windows Server
4 31 (5.55%) Linux
5 30 (5.37%) Android
6 14 (2.50%) Unix
7 11 (1.97%) Windows 7
8 9 (1.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 8 (1.43%) Mac OS
10 7 (1.25%) Apple iOS
11 5 (0.89%) Windows Server 2012
12 4 (0.72%) CentOS
13 3 (0.54%) Windows Server 2019
13 3 (0.54%) Windows XP
14 1 (0.18%) OpenVMS
14 1 (0.18%) Solaris
14 1 (0.18%) Ubuntu
14 1 (0.18%) VMS
14 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2003
14 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 213 (38.10%) ITIL
2 133 (23.79%) ITSM
3 123 (22.00%) Problem-Solving
4 121 (21.65%) Continuous Improvement
5 118 (21.11%) Customer Service
6 109 (19.50%) Service Management
7 102 (18.25%) Stakeholder Management
8 95 (16.99%) Service Delivery
9 94 (16.82%) Change Management
10 65 (11.63%) Agile
11 63 (11.27%) Root Cause Analysis
12 57 (10.20%) Problem Management
13 52 (9.30%) Incident Management
14 44 (7.87%) Migration
15 43 (7.69%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 39 (6.98%) Asset Management
17 38 (6.80%) DevOps
17 38 (6.80%) Validation
18 36 (6.44%) Roadmaps
19 35 (6.26%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 42 (7.51%) SQL
2 40 (7.16%) PowerShell
3 34 (6.08%) Python
4 13 (2.33%) Bash
5 11 (1.97%) JavaScript
6 9 (1.61%) Java
7 6 (1.07%) PL/SQL
7 6 (1.07%) Shell Script
8 5 (0.89%) C#
9 4 (0.72%) Bicep
9 4 (0.72%) MATLAB
10 2 (0.36%) DataWeave
10 2 (0.36%) Korn
10 2 (0.36%) X++
11 1 (0.18%) ActionScript 2.0
11 1 (0.18%) COBOL
11 1 (0.18%) Go
11 1 (0.18%) Perl
11 1 (0.18%) RPG
11 1 (0.18%) Scala
Qualifications
1 141 (25.22%) Security Cleared
2 112 (20.04%) SC Cleared
3 48 (8.59%) Degree
4 26 (4.65%) DV Cleared
5 19 (3.40%) Microsoft Certification
6 18 (3.22%) ITIL Certification
7 17 (3.04%) BPSS Clearance
7 17 (3.04%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 16 (2.86%) Cisco Certification
9 10 (1.79%) Azure Certification
9 10 (1.79%) CCNP
10 9 (1.61%) A+ Certification
10 9 (1.61%) PMI Certification
11 8 (1.43%) Computer Science Degree
11 8 (1.43%) MCSE
12 7 (1.25%) CCNA
13 6 (1.07%) CCSE
13 6 (1.07%) DBS Check
14 5 (0.89%) CCSM
14 5 (0.89%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (2.50%) Data Quality
2 12 (2.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 10 (1.79%) NIST
3 10 (1.79%) QA
4 9 (1.61%) PMO
5 8 (1.43%) ISO/IEC 20000
6 6 (1.07%) Cyber Essentials
6 6 (1.07%) GDPR
6 6 (1.07%) GRC
7 5 (0.89%) COBIT
7 5 (0.89%) ISO 9001
8 4 (0.72%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 3 (0.54%) JSP 440
10 2 (0.36%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.18%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (0.18%) GxP
11 1 (0.18%) HIPAA
11 1 (0.18%) HL7
11 1 (0.18%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 116 (20.75%) Active Directory
2 27 (4.83%) VMware Infrastructure
3 17 (3.04%) Virtual Desktop
4 15 (2.68%) VMware ESXi
5 9 (1.61%) Docker
6 8 (1.43%) Hyper-V
7 7 (1.25%) vSphere
8 4 (0.72%) Firmware
8 4 (0.72%) Virtual Machines
9 2 (0.36%) ACF2
9 2 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
9 2 (0.36%) RACF
9 2 (0.36%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.18%) Apache ZooKeeper
10 1 (0.18%) BitLocker
10 1 (0.18%) Ceph
10 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Virtual Server
10 1 (0.18%) VMware Workstation
10 1 (0.18%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 52 (9.30%) Microsoft Intune
2 31 (5.55%) SCCM
3 19 (3.40%) Kubernetes
4 16 (2.86%) Terraform
5 12 (2.15%) Single Sign-On
6 10 (1.79%) Ansible
6 10 (1.79%) Grafana
6 10 (1.79%) vCenter Server
7 6 (1.07%) Prometheus
8 5 (0.89%) Jamf Pro
9 4 (0.72%) Check_MK
9 4 (0.72%) Podman
9 4 (0.72%) Red Hat Satellite
10 3 (0.54%) FortiGate
10 3 (0.54%) Oracle Identity Management
10 3 (0.54%) Oracle Identity Manager
10 3 (0.54%) vMotion
11 2 (0.36%) Data Guard
11 2 (0.36%) SCOM
11 2 (0.36%) WSUS
Vendors
1 199 (35.60%) Microsoft
2 112 (20.04%) ServiceNow
3 47 (8.41%) Cisco
3 47 (8.41%) VMware
4 36 (6.44%) Oracle
5 20 (3.58%) Apple
6 18 (3.22%) HP
6 18 (3.22%) Remedy
7 13 (2.33%) Zscaler
8 12 (2.15%) Tenable
9 11 (1.97%) Nokia
10 10 (1.79%) Dynatrace
10 10 (1.79%) Fortinet
11 9 (1.61%) AppDynamics
11 9 (1.61%) Citrix
11 9 (1.61%) Okta
11 9 (1.61%) Salesforce
11 9 (1.61%) SAP
11 9 (1.61%) Splunk
12 8 (1.43%) Liquidlogic
536 SLA jobs Nationwide