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

 6 months to
13 Jul 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 236 200 152
Rank change year-on-year -36 -48 +41
Contract jobs citing SLA 566 459 678
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.07% 1.40% 1.59%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 6.34% 8.53% 11.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 312 265 318
10th Percentile £200 £181 £156
25th Percentile £280 £215 £200
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £448 £350 £343
Median % change year-on-year +28.00% +2.19% +8.73%
75th Percentile £519 £540 £500
90th Percentile £600 £613 £586
UK excluding London median daily rate £440 £263 £291
% change year-on-year +67.62% -9.64% +5.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 92 58 87
10th Percentile £13.47 £16.04 £11.07
25th Percentile £17.55 £17.66 £12.75
Median hourly rate £18.67 £22.14 £16.19
Median % change year-on-year -15.70% +36.75% -11.83%
75th Percentile £20.92 £25.15 £23.80
90th Percentile £25.77 £36.45 £26.15
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.50 £22.14 £14.41
% change year-on-year -16.44% +53.64% -19.82%

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 8,933 5,381 5,893
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.96% 16.47% 13.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,729 3,457 3,634
10th Percentile £339 £280 £280
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £610 £620
90th Percentile £700 £717 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £475
% change year-on-year +6.38% -1.05% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 552 234 421
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.65 £11.66
25th Percentile £19.30 £18.15 £13.52
Median hourly rate £36.07 £30.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +20.23% +24.07% -37.54%
75th Percentile £68.75 £62.25 £50.00
90th Percentile £81.71 £82.99 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.72 £27.35 £24.18
% change year-on-year +41.57% +13.11% -31.40%

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 13 July 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 13 July 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 13 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 -63 481 £450 +28.57% 280
UK excluding London -66 349 £440 +67.62% 242
London -14 191 £450 +12.50% 91
Work from Home -8 135 £463 +32.14% 82
South East -87 83 £463 +85.00% 101
North of England -57 73 £438 +74.65% 39
Midlands -58 56 £288 -20.69% 18
Scotland +22 52 £358 +15.95% 18
East of England +10 52 £510 +126.67% 29
West Midlands -76 46 £288 -20.69% 13
North West -35 41 £436 +34.23% 25
Yorkshire -51 30 £444 +77.15% 10
South West -44 25 £400 +46.79% 34
Wales -10 12 £525 +100.00% 10
East Midlands -12 9 £363 - 5
Northern Ireland +3 2 £175 - 4
North East -33 2 £280 - 4

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 25 (4.42%) SharePoint
2 12 (2.12%) Microsoft Exchange
3 9 (1.59%) Confluence
4 7 (1.24%) OpenStack
5 5 (0.88%) IIS
5 5 (0.88%) SAS
6 4 (0.71%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 3 (0.53%) Apache Airflow
8 2 (0.35%) Anypoint
8 2 (0.35%) ArcGIS
8 2 (0.35%) Exchange Server 2010
8 2 (0.35%) Mule
9 1 (0.18%) Apache
9 1 (0.18%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.18%) LiveCycle
9 1 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
9 1 (0.18%) Smallworld
Applications
1 54 (9.54%) Microsoft Office
2 47 (8.30%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (2.30%) Spreadsheet
4 8 (1.41%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 2 (0.35%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.18%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.18%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.18%) MicroStation
7 1 (0.18%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 18 (3.18%) Remedy ITSM
2 8 (1.41%) ContrOCC
3 6 (1.06%) Oracle Assets
3 6 (1.06%) Oracle Payables
4 5 (0.88%) Dynamics CRM
4 5 (0.88%) Oracle Applications
4 5 (0.88%) Oracle General Ledger
4 5 (0.88%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 5 (0.88%) Oracle Receivables
4 5 (0.88%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 3 (0.53%) Oracle Cash Management
5 3 (0.53%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.35%) Dynamics GP
6 2 (0.35%) IntelliMatch
6 2 (0.35%) Oracle EBS R12
6 2 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.35%) Oracle Financials
6 2 (0.35%) Payment Gateway
7 1 (0.18%) OpenText VIM for SAP
7 1 (0.18%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 99 (17.49%) Azure
2 79 (13.96%) Microsoft 365
3 53 (9.36%) AWS
4 34 (6.01%) Entra ID
5 26 (4.59%) Power Platform
6 18 (3.18%) SaaS
7 17 (3.00%) Azure DevOps
8 16 (2.83%) Datadog
8 16 (2.83%) OneDrive
9 14 (2.47%) Amazon S3
9 14 (2.47%) IaaS
9 14 (2.47%) PaaS
10 13 (2.30%) OCI
11 11 (1.94%) Amazon EC2
11 11 (1.94%) Snowflake
11 11 (1.94%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 9 (1.59%) Azure Sentinel
12 9 (1.59%) GCP
13 8 (1.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 8 (1.41%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 32 (5.65%) DNS
2 28 (4.95%) VPN
3 27 (4.77%) DHCP
4 20 (3.53%) Firewall
4 20 (3.53%) WAN
5 18 (3.18%) LAN
5 18 (3.18%) Wi-Fi
6 15 (2.65%) SAN
7 14 (2.47%) Network Security
8 11 (1.94%) TCP/IP
9 10 (1.77%) Cisco IOS
10 9 (1.59%) MPLS
10 9 (1.59%) SDH
11 8 (1.41%) Cisco ASA
11 8 (1.41%) Radio Access Network
11 8 (1.41%) VLAN
12 7 (1.24%) 5G
12 7 (1.24%) LTE
13 6 (1.06%) Diameter Protocol
13 6 (1.06%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (3.89%) Power BI
2 19 (3.36%) SQL Server
3 9 (1.59%) Tableau
4 8 (1.41%) Oracle Reports
5 6 (1.06%) Oracle Database
6 5 (0.88%) Pentaho
6 5 (0.88%) Relational Database
7 4 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
7 4 (0.71%) MySQL
7 4 (0.71%) PostgreSQL
8 3 (0.53%) Amazon Athena
8 3 (0.53%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 2 (0.35%) Big Data
9 2 (0.35%) Data Lake
9 2 (0.35%) Db2
9 2 (0.35%) GIS
9 2 (0.35%) Oracle Database 10g
9 2 (0.35%) Oracle Database 11g
9 2 (0.35%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 1 (0.18%) Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 44 (7.77%) JIRA
2 11 (1.94%) GitLab
3 9 (1.59%) Git
3 9 (1.59%) Jenkins
4 8 (1.41%) Chocolatey
5 4 (0.71%) Maven
6 3 (0.53%) Visual Studio
7 2 (0.35%) Artifactory
7 2 (0.35%) JMeter
7 2 (0.35%) Toad
8 1 (0.18%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.18%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 1 (0.18%) WiX
General
1 251 (44.35%) Social Skills
2 111 (19.61%) Finance
3 98 (17.31%) Analytical Skills
4 39 (6.89%) Public Sector
5 33 (5.83%) Banking
6 30 (5.30%) Organisational Skills
7 28 (4.95%) Telecoms
8 24 (4.24%) Documentation Skills
9 23 (4.06%) Legal
10 14 (2.47%) Billing
10 14 (2.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 14 (2.47%) Retail
11 13 (2.30%) Local Government
12 9 (1.59%) Financial Institution
12 9 (1.59%) Manufacturing
13 8 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
14 6 (1.06%) Aerospace
14 6 (1.06%) Marketing
15 4 (0.71%) Aviation
15 4 (0.71%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 75 (13.25%) Analyst
2 50 (8.83%) IT Support
3 42 (7.42%) Support Engineer
4 35 (6.18%) Senior
5 34 (6.01%) Lead
6 33 (5.83%) Service Manager
7 28 (4.95%) Administrator
8 27 (4.77%) IT Engineer
9 26 (4.59%) Service Analyst
10 21 (3.71%) Delivery Manager
11 20 (3.53%) Consultant
11 20 (3.53%) Technical Support
12 18 (3.18%) Azure Engineer
12 18 (3.18%) Desktop Support
12 18 (3.18%) Service Delivery Manager
13 17 (3.00%) Applications Support
13 17 (3.00%) Desktop Engineer
14 16 (2.83%) IT Support Engineer
14 16 (2.83%) Network Engineer
15 15 (2.65%) Service Desk Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (1.94%) REST
2 10 (1.77%) Oracle Fusion
3 9 (1.59%) .NET
4 8 (1.41%) Middleware
4 8 (1.41%) Web Services
5 5 (0.88%) ARM Templates
5 5 (0.88%) AWS CDK
5 5 (0.88%) LDAP
5 5 (0.88%) Software Packaging
5 5 (0.88%) Spring
6 4 (0.71%) AngularJS
6 4 (0.71%) Bootstrap
6 4 (0.71%) CSS
6 4 (0.71%) J2EE
6 4 (0.71%) jQuery
6 4 (0.71%) JSON
6 4 (0.71%) RESTful
6 4 (0.71%) Sass
6 4 (0.71%) Spring MVC
6 4 (0.71%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 54 (9.54%) Onboarding
2 32 (5.65%) Data Centre
3 19 (3.36%) CMDB
4 14 (2.47%) Enterprise Software
5 11 (1.94%) Product Ownership
5 11 (1.94%) Smartphone
6 10 (1.77%) Cyber Threat
7 9 (1.59%) Cloud Native
7 9 (1.59%) Driving Licence
7 9 (1.59%) Virtual Team
8 8 (1.41%) BYOD
8 8 (1.41%) Data Protection Act
8 8 (1.41%) PKI
8 8 (1.41%) Self-Motivation
9 7 (1.24%) Management Information System
10 6 (1.06%) Analytical Mindset
10 6 (1.06%) Fibre Optics
10 6 (1.06%) iPhone
11 5 (0.88%) Enterprise Cloud
11 5 (0.88%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 130 (22.97%) Windows
2 46 (8.13%) Windows 10
3 38 (6.71%) Linux
4 25 (4.42%) Windows Server
5 21 (3.71%) Android
6 15 (2.65%) Unix
7 9 (1.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 6 (1.06%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.88%) CentOS
10 4 (0.71%) Apple iOS
10 4 (0.71%) Windows 7
10 4 (0.71%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (0.53%) Windows XP
12 2 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
13 1 (0.18%) Solaris
13 1 (0.18%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2003
13 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 194 (34.28%) ITIL
2 122 (21.55%) ITSM
3 118 (20.85%) Problem-Solving
4 112 (19.79%) Continuous Improvement
5 109 (19.26%) Customer Service
6 100 (17.67%) Stakeholder Management
7 91 (16.08%) Service Delivery
8 90 (15.90%) Service Management
9 89 (15.72%) Change Management
10 76 (13.43%) Agile
11 64 (11.31%) Root Cause Analysis
12 57 (10.07%) Incident Management
13 49 (8.66%) Problem Management
14 45 (7.95%) Migration
14 45 (7.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 43 (7.60%) Time Management
16 39 (6.89%) Asset Management
16 39 (6.89%) Project Management
16 39 (6.89%) Roadmaps
16 39 (6.89%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 46 (8.13%) SQL
2 34 (6.01%) Python
3 30 (5.30%) PowerShell
4 17 (3.00%) Bash
5 9 (1.59%) Java
6 8 (1.41%) PL/SQL
7 7 (1.24%) JavaScript
8 5 (0.88%) MATLAB
8 5 (0.88%) Shell Script
9 4 (0.71%) Bicep
10 2 (0.35%) C#
10 2 (0.35%) DataWeave
10 2 (0.35%) Korn
10 2 (0.35%) Scala
10 2 (0.35%) VB
10 2 (0.35%) X++
11 1 (0.18%) Apex Code
11 1 (0.18%) COBOL
11 1 (0.18%) RPG
11 1 (0.18%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 122 (21.55%) Security Cleared
2 97 (17.14%) SC Cleared
3 51 (9.01%) Degree
4 20 (3.53%) DV Cleared
5 18 (3.18%) BPSS Clearance
5 18 (3.18%) ITIL Certification
6 17 (3.00%) Cisco Certification
6 17 (3.00%) Microsoft Certification
7 12 (2.12%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 11 (1.94%) CCNP
9 9 (1.59%) PMI Certification
10 8 (1.41%) MCSE
11 7 (1.24%) Azure Certification
11 7 (1.24%) CCNA
12 6 (1.06%) CCSE
12 6 (1.06%) Master's Degree
13 5 (0.88%) A+ Certification
13 5 (0.88%) CCSM
13 5 (0.88%) PMP
14 4 (0.71%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (3.18%) Data Quality
2 15 (2.65%) PMO
2 15 (2.65%) QA
3 14 (2.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 11 (1.94%) NIST
5 9 (1.59%) GRC
6 8 (1.41%) GDPR
7 7 (1.24%) COBIT
8 5 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
8 5 (0.88%) ISO 9001
8 5 (0.88%) PCI DSS
9 4 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 20000
10 3 (0.53%) ISO 20022
10 3 (0.53%) JSP 440
11 2 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 2 (0.35%) ISO 31000
11 2 (0.35%) ISO 8583
11 2 (0.35%) SOC 2
12 1 (0.18%) Disclosure Scotland
12 1 (0.18%) NCSC
System Software
1 82 (14.49%) Active Directory
2 24 (4.24%) VMware Infrastructure
3 15 (2.65%) VMware ESXi
4 10 (1.77%) Virtual Desktop
5 8 (1.41%) Hyper-V
6 6 (1.06%) Docker
6 6 (1.06%) vSphere
7 4 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (0.35%) Firmware
8 2 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.18%) ACF2
9 1 (0.18%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.18%) Ceph
9 1 (0.18%) RACF
9 1 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.18%) VMware Workstation
9 1 (0.18%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 38 (6.71%) Microsoft Intune
2 34 (6.01%) SCCM
3 19 (3.36%) Terraform
4 15 (2.65%) Ansible
4 15 (2.65%) Kubernetes
5 11 (1.94%) Single Sign-On
6 10 (1.77%) vCenter Server
7 9 (1.59%) Grafana
8 8 (1.41%) ServiceCenter
9 5 (0.88%) Check_MK
9 5 (0.88%) Jamf Pro
9 5 (0.88%) Podman
9 5 (0.88%) Prometheus
9 5 (0.88%) Red Hat Satellite
10 3 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 3 (0.53%) FortiGate
10 3 (0.53%) Oracle Identity Management
10 3 (0.53%) Oracle Identity Manager
10 3 (0.53%) TeamSite
10 3 (0.53%) vMotion
Vendors
1 179 (31.63%) Microsoft
2 97 (17.14%) ServiceNow
3 46 (8.13%) Oracle
4 42 (7.42%) Cisco
5 41 (7.24%) VMware
6 27 (4.77%) HP
7 25 (4.42%) Apple
7 25 (4.42%) Remedy
8 18 (3.18%) Dell
9 17 (3.00%) SAP
10 12 (2.12%) Tenable
11 10 (1.77%) IBM
11 10 (1.77%) Nokia
11 10 (1.77%) Zscaler
12 9 (1.59%) CheckPoint
12 9 (1.59%) Fortinet
12 9 (1.59%) Palo Alto
12 9 (1.59%) Salesforce
12 9 (1.59%) Splunk
13 8 (1.41%) Dynatrace
333 SLA jobs Nationwide