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 21 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
21 Apr 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 217 193 133
Rank change year-on-year -24 -60 +43
Contract jobs citing SLA 534 402 755
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.15% 1.37% 1.74%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 6.81% 8.83% 12.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 275 243 345
10th Percentile £200 £150 £150
25th Percentile £301 £195 £206
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £250 £330
Median % change year-on-year +80.00% -24.24% +10.92%
75th Percentile £525 £506 £500
90th Percentile £615 £603 £588
UK excluding London median daily rate £438 £235 £285
% change year-on-year +86.17% -17.54% +18.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 118 38 95
10th Percentile £16.18 £14.70 £11.07
25th Percentile £17.69 £18.20 £12.79
Median hourly rate £18.50 £22.27 £14.48
Median % change year-on-year -16.93% +53.80% -21.73%
75th Percentile £20.35 £24.66 £23.90
90th Percentile £26.11 £30.43 £32.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.50 £22.14 £14.00
% change year-on-year -16.44% +58.14% -24.32%

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 7,841 4,551 6,239
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.94% 15.45% 14.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,067 2,925 3,943
10th Percentile £336 £263 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £619 £628
90th Percentile £700 £720 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% +4.21%
Number of hourly rates quoted 445 174 379
10th Percentile £14.02 £17.89 £10.95
25th Percentile £18.50 £22.14 £13.00
Median hourly rate £31.86 £32.96 £20.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.34% +60.78% -48.49%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £43.75
90th Percentile £81.00 £82.90 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.00 £34.06 £17.72
% change year-on-year +5.71% +92.18% -52.75%

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 21 April 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 21 April 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 21 April 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 -34 477 £461 +70.83% 270
UK excluding London -57 337 £438 +86.17% 230
London -7 171 £486 +18.54% 85
Work from Home -15 114 £480 +104.04% 133
East of England +35 101 £478 +112.44% 45
North of England -43 75 £400 +60.00% 27
South East -73 70 £456 +82.68% 89
North West -47 40 £450 +80.00% 15
Midlands -76 39 £296 +25.96% 33
Scotland +15 31 £440 +134.67% 5
West Midlands -74 28 £293 +24.68% 22
Yorkshire -54 26 £365 +16.80% 9
South West -47 20 £463 -15.91% 26
East Midlands -35 10 £534 +78.00% 11
North East - 9 £270 - 4
Northern Ireland +3 4 £338 +128.04% 7
Wales -12 1 - - 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 15 (2.81%) Microsoft Exchange
2 14 (2.62%) SharePoint
3 8 (1.50%) Confluence
4 5 (0.94%) Oracle Workflow
5 4 (0.75%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 3 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.56%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.56%) SAS
7 2 (0.37%) ArcGIS
7 2 (0.37%) IIS
8 1 (0.19%) Apache
8 1 (0.19%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.19%) LiveCycle
8 1 (0.19%) Smallworld
8 1 (0.19%) WebSphere
8 1 (0.19%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 48 (8.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 41 (7.68%) Spreadsheet
3 34 (6.37%) Microsoft Office
4 6 (1.12%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.19%) Autodesk Inventor
6 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.19%) MicroStation
6 1 (0.19%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 13 (2.43%) Remedy ITSM
2 11 (2.06%) Oracle EBS
2 11 (2.06%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
3 10 (1.87%) Oracle Payables
4 8 (1.50%) Oracle Assets
5 6 (1.12%) Oracle ERP
6 5 (0.94%) Oracle Receivables
7 4 (0.75%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 3 (0.56%) Oracle General Ledger
9 2 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
9 2 (0.37%) IntelliMatch
9 2 (0.37%) Oracle Applications
9 2 (0.37%) Oracle E-Business Tax
9 2 (0.37%) Oracle Financials
9 2 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
9 2 (0.37%) Temenos T24
10 1 (0.19%) OpenText VIM for SAP
10 1 (0.19%) Oracle FAH
10 1 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
10 1 (0.19%) Veritas eDiscovery
Cloud Services
1 60 (11.24%) Azure
2 51 (9.55%) AWS
3 47 (8.80%) Microsoft 365
4 22 (4.12%) Power Platform
5 18 (3.37%) GCP
6 16 (3.00%) IaaS
7 15 (2.81%) PaaS
8 14 (2.62%) Amazon S3
9 13 (2.43%) SaaS
10 12 (2.25%) OCI
11 11 (2.06%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 10 (1.87%) Amazon EC2
12 10 (1.87%) AWS CloudFormation
12 10 (1.87%) Datadog
13 9 (1.69%) Azure DevOps
13 9 (1.69%) Snowflake
14 7 (1.31%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 7 (1.31%) Entra ID
15 6 (1.12%) dbt
15 6 (1.12%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 32 (5.99%) Firewall
2 29 (5.43%) WAN
3 25 (4.68%) DNS
4 22 (4.12%) VPN
5 19 (3.56%) SD-WAN
6 17 (3.18%) DHCP
7 16 (3.00%) LAN
8 15 (2.81%) SAN
8 15 (2.81%) Wi-Fi
9 14 (2.62%) Network Security
10 12 (2.25%) Cisco ASA
11 11 (2.06%) MPLS
12 10 (1.87%) BGP
12 10 (1.87%) OSPF
12 10 (1.87%) TCP/IP
12 10 (1.87%) VLAN
13 7 (1.31%) Broadband
13 7 (1.31%) Cisco IOS
14 6 (1.12%) NX-OS
14 6 (1.12%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (3.56%) Power BI
2 15 (2.81%) SQL Server
3 9 (1.69%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (1.50%) Oracle Reports
5 7 (1.31%) Oracle Database
6 6 (1.12%) MySQL
7 5 (0.94%) Relational Database
7 5 (0.94%) Tableau
8 4 (0.75%) MongoDB
9 3 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
9 3 (0.56%) GIS
9 3 (0.56%) Pentaho
9 3 (0.56%) SAP HANA
10 2 (0.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 1 (0.19%) Apache Iceberg
11 1 (0.19%) Data Warehouse
11 1 (0.19%) DB2
11 1 (0.19%) Hadoop
11 1 (0.19%) Metadata
11 1 (0.19%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 34 (6.37%) JIRA
2 18 (3.37%) GitLab
3 17 (3.18%) Jenkins
4 16 (3.00%) Git
5 7 (1.31%) Chocolatey
6 4 (0.75%) Maven
6 4 (0.75%) Visual Studio
7 3 (0.56%) CircleCI
8 2 (0.37%) JMeter
8 2 (0.37%) Toad
9 1 (0.19%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.19%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.19%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 1 (0.19%) WiX
General
1 245 (45.88%) Social Skills
2 109 (20.41%) Finance
3 81 (15.17%) Analytical Skills
4 42 (7.87%) Public Sector
5 37 (6.93%) Banking
6 32 (5.99%) Organisational Skills
7 30 (5.62%) Telecoms
8 21 (3.93%) Documentation Skills
9 20 (3.75%) Legal
10 19 (3.56%) Retail
11 11 (2.06%) Financial Institution
12 10 (1.87%) Aerospace
13 9 (1.69%) Billing
13 9 (1.69%) Investment Banking
14 7 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
15 6 (1.12%) Local Government
15 6 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
16 5 (0.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 5 (0.94%) Manufacturing
16 5 (0.94%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 70 (13.11%) IT Support
2 65 (12.17%) Analyst
3 45 (8.43%) Lead
4 43 (8.05%) Administrator
5 40 (7.49%) Senior
6 35 (6.55%) Service Manager
7 27 (5.06%) Service Analyst
8 26 (4.87%) Support Engineer
8 26 (4.87%) Technical Support
9 24 (4.49%) IT Engineer
10 21 (3.93%) Desktop Support
11 20 (3.75%) Consultant
12 18 (3.37%) Delivery Manager
13 17 (3.18%) Service Delivery Manager
14 15 (2.81%) Team Leader
15 14 (2.62%) Architect
15 14 (2.62%) Service Desk Analyst
16 13 (2.43%) Applications Support
16 13 (2.43%) IT Administrator
17 12 (2.25%) IT Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (2.62%) Oracle Fusion
2 12 (2.25%) Middleware
3 9 (1.69%) LDAP
3 9 (1.69%) REST
4 7 (1.31%) Web Services
5 5 (0.94%) AWS CDK
5 5 (0.94%) Spring
6 4 (0.75%) 802.1X
6 4 (0.75%) AngularJS
6 4 (0.75%) Bootstrap
6 4 (0.75%) CSS
6 4 (0.75%) J2EE
6 4 (0.75%) jQuery
6 4 (0.75%) Kafka
6 4 (0.75%) Sass
6 4 (0.75%) Spring MVC
7 3 (0.56%) .NET
7 3 (0.56%) ADO
7 3 (0.56%) Software Packaging
8 2 (0.37%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 32 (5.99%) Onboarding
2 27 (5.06%) Data Centre
3 24 (4.49%) Management Information System
4 21 (3.93%) Product Ownership
5 13 (2.43%) Cloud Native
6 11 (2.06%) Self-Motivation
7 10 (1.87%) CMDB
8 9 (1.69%) Data Protection Act
8 9 (1.69%) Driving Licence
9 7 (1.31%) Cyber Threat
9 7 (1.31%) Enterprise Cloud
10 6 (1.12%) Enterprise Software
10 6 (1.12%) Equities
10 6 (1.12%) Public Cloud
10 6 (1.12%) Security Posture
11 5 (0.94%) Distributed Systems
11 5 (0.94%) IoT
11 5 (0.94%) PMI
12 4 (0.75%) BYOD
12 4 (0.75%) PropTech
Operating Systems
1 82 (15.36%) Windows
2 38 (7.12%) Linux
3 26 (4.87%) Windows 10
4 18 (3.37%) Unix
5 14 (2.62%) Windows Server
6 10 (1.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 9 (1.69%) CentOS
8 4 (0.75%) Mac OS
9 3 (0.56%) Android
9 3 (0.56%) Apple iOS
10 2 (0.37%) Windows 7
10 2 (0.37%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.19%) Mac OS X
11 1 (0.19%) Solaris
11 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.19%) Windows XP
Processes & Methodologies
1 152 (28.46%) ITIL
2 93 (17.42%) Customer Service
3 86 (16.10%) Service Delivery
4 84 (15.73%) Continuous Improvement
5 80 (14.98%) ITSM
6 78 (14.61%) Stakeholder Management
7 75 (14.04%) Problem-Solving
8 72 (13.48%) Time Management
9 66 (12.36%) Root Cause Analysis
10 65 (12.17%) Agile
10 65 (12.17%) Change Management
11 63 (11.80%) Incident Management
12 56 (10.49%) Service Management
13 45 (8.43%) Roadmaps
14 43 (8.05%) Problem Management
15 38 (7.12%) Migration
16 37 (6.93%) Asset Management
17 36 (6.74%) CI/CD
18 33 (6.18%) Disaster Recovery
18 33 (6.18%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 38 (7.12%) SQL
2 33 (6.18%) Python
3 18 (3.37%) Shell Script
4 17 (3.18%) PowerShell
5 15 (2.81%) Bash
6 13 (2.43%) Java
7 9 (1.69%) MATLAB
8 5 (0.94%) JavaScript
9 4 (0.75%) PL/SQL
10 3 (0.56%) C++
10 3 (0.56%) Go
11 2 (0.37%) Scala
11 2 (0.37%) VB
12 1 (0.19%) Apex Code
12 1 (0.19%) Bicep
12 1 (0.19%) Groovy
12 1 (0.19%) Korn
Qualifications
1 113 (21.16%) Security Cleared
2 89 (16.67%) SC Cleared
3 51 (9.55%) Degree
4 18 (3.37%) BPSS Clearance
5 15 (2.81%) DV Cleared
6 14 (2.62%) ITIL Certification
7 9 (1.69%) Microsoft Certification
8 7 (1.31%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 6 (1.12%) Cisco Certification
9 6 (1.12%) Master's Degree
9 6 (1.12%) PMI Certification
10 5 (0.94%) CCNP
11 4 (0.75%) CISA
11 4 (0.75%) MBA
11 4 (0.75%) MOS
11 4 (0.75%) RIBA
12 3 (0.56%) Azure Certification
12 3 (0.56%) CCSE
12 3 (0.56%) DBS Check
12 3 (0.56%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (2.81%) Data Quality
1 15 (2.81%) PMO
2 14 (2.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 13 (2.43%) QA
4 10 (1.87%) GRC
5 9 (1.69%) GDPR
5 9 (1.69%) NIST
6 6 (1.12%) PCI DSS
7 4 (0.75%) COBIT
8 3 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials
8 3 (0.56%) ISO 20022
8 3 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 20000
8 3 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 2 (0.37%) ISO 31000
9 2 (0.37%) ISO 8583
9 2 (0.37%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.19%) Disclosure Scotland
10 1 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 1 (0.19%) NIST 800
System Software
1 58 (10.86%) Active Directory
2 15 (2.81%) VMware Infrastructure
3 11 (2.06%) Docker
4 9 (1.69%) VMware ESXi
4 9 (1.69%) vSphere
5 3 (0.56%) DFS Replication
5 3 (0.56%) Hyper-V
5 3 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
6 1 (0.19%) BitLocker
6 1 (0.19%) Ceph
6 1 (0.19%) Firmware
6 1 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
6 1 (0.19%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 25 (4.68%) SCCM
2 21 (3.93%) Ansible
3 20 (3.75%) Terraform
4 17 (3.18%) Microsoft Intune
5 12 (2.25%) ServiceCenter
6 11 (2.06%) Grafana
6 11 (2.06%) Kubernetes
7 9 (1.69%) Check_MK
7 9 (1.69%) Podman
7 9 (1.69%) Red Hat Satellite
8 8 (1.50%) vCenter Server
9 6 (1.12%) FortiGate
9 6 (1.12%) Single Sign-On
10 4 (0.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 4 (0.75%) TeamSite
11 3 (0.56%) Oracle Identity Management
11 3 (0.56%) Oracle Identity Manager
11 3 (0.56%) Prometheus
12 2 (0.37%) AirWatch
12 2 (0.37%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 153 (28.65%) Microsoft
2 75 (14.04%) ServiceNow
3 55 (10.30%) Oracle
4 34 (6.37%) VMware
5 31 (5.81%) Cisco
5 31 (5.81%) HP
6 26 (4.87%) Dell
6 26 (4.87%) SAP
7 19 (3.56%) Apple
8 18 (3.37%) Remedy
9 15 (2.81%) Splunk
10 11 (2.06%) IBM
10 11 (2.06%) Tenable
11 10 (1.87%) AppDynamics
11 10 (1.87%) Fortinet
11 10 (1.87%) Red Hat
12 9 (1.69%) Zscaler
13 7 (1.31%) Dynatrace
14 6 (1.12%) Databricks
14 6 (1.12%) Juniper
292 SLA jobs Nationwide