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 25 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
25 Mar 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 220 191 136
Rank change year-on-year -29 -55 +43
Contract jobs citing SLA 542 409 773
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.23% 1.41% 1.75%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 7.11% 9.23% 12.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 274 241 365
10th Percentile £200 £148 £150
25th Percentile £288 £192 £213
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £250 £350
Median % change year-on-year +80.00% -28.57% +16.67%
75th Percentile £529 £488 £513
90th Percentile £618 £588 £600
UK excluding London median daily rate £423 £235 £285
% change year-on-year +80.05% -17.54% +23.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 131 44 89
10th Percentile £16.10 £14.70 £11.07
25th Percentile £17.69 £18.02 £12.84
Median hourly rate £18.50 £22.21 £14.41
Median % change year-on-year -16.69% +54.09% -22.11%
75th Percentile £20.34 £24.66 £23.09
90th Percentile £26.11 £29.00 £32.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.50 £22.14 £14.00
% change year-on-year -16.44% +58.14% -23.76%

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 7,622 4,432 6,344
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.36% 15.24% 14.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,926 2,868 4,040
10th Percentile £337 £263 £300
25th Percentile £413 £379 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £620 £625
90th Percentile £700 £720 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £483
% change year-on-year +5.26% -1.66% +1.68%
Number of hourly rates quoted 410 176 372
10th Percentile £15.31 £17.24 £11.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £22.14 £13.33
Median hourly rate £29.77 £31.76 £22.01
Median % change year-on-year -6.28% +44.30% -44.98%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £45.00
90th Percentile £81.10 £78.58 £67.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.58 £31.76 £18.61
% change year-on-year -3.72% +70.66% -48.66%

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 25 March 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 25 March 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 25 March 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 -42 485 £450 +80.00% 233
UK excluding London -54 352 £423 +80.05% 191
London -16 158 £500 +56.25% 58
East of England +34 109 £475 +111.11% 25
Work from Home -11 109 £475 +102.13% 81
South East -59 74 £450 +80.36% 70
North of England -67 64 £365 +46.00% 48
Midlands -77 44 £296 +25.96% 28
North West -47 34 £438 +75.00% 34
South West -25 32 £316 -42.64% 15
West Midlands -63 31 £293 +24.68% 12
Scotland +19 27 £440 +131.58% 7
Yorkshire -54 23 £365 +58.70% 12
East Midlands -33 12 £534 +78.00% 16
North East - 7 £265 - 3
Northern Ireland -1 5 £500 +237.84% 2
Wales -12 1 - - 3

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 16 (2.95%) SharePoint
2 14 (2.58%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (1.29%) Confluence
4 5 (0.92%) Oracle Workflow
5 4 (0.74%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 3 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.55%) ArcGIS
7 2 (0.37%) SAS
8 1 (0.18%) GeoServer
8 1 (0.18%) IIS
8 1 (0.18%) LiveCycle
8 1 (0.18%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.18%) Oracle Spatial
8 1 (0.18%) Smallworld
8 1 (0.18%) WebSphere
8 1 (0.18%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 55 (10.15%) Microsoft Excel
2 46 (8.49%) Spreadsheet
3 32 (5.90%) Microsoft Office
4 5 (0.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.92%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.18%) Autodesk Inventor
5 1 (0.18%) MicroStation
5 1 (0.18%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 13 (2.40%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
1 13 (2.40%) Remedy ITSM
2 12 (2.21%) Oracle Payables
3 10 (1.85%) Oracle Assets
3 10 (1.85%) Oracle EBS
4 7 (1.29%) Oracle Receivables
5 6 (1.11%) Oracle ERP
6 5 (0.92%) Oracle General Ledger
7 3 (0.55%) Oracle Cash Management
8 2 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
8 2 (0.37%) IntelliMatch
8 2 (0.37%) Oracle E-Business Tax
8 2 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
8 2 (0.37%) Temenos T24
9 1 (0.18%) Adobe Campaign
9 1 (0.18%) Oracle Applications
9 1 (0.18%) Oracle EBS R12
9 1 (0.18%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 1 (0.18%) SAP Payroll
9 1 (0.18%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 62 (11.44%) Azure
2 55 (10.15%) Microsoft 365
3 47 (8.67%) AWS
4 21 (3.87%) Power Platform
5 18 (3.32%) GCP
6 15 (2.77%) IaaS
6 15 (2.77%) PaaS
7 13 (2.40%) SaaS
8 12 (2.21%) Entra ID
8 12 (2.21%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 11 (2.03%) Amazon EC2
9 11 (2.03%) Amazon S3
9 11 (2.03%) Datadog
10 9 (1.66%) AWS CloudFormation
10 9 (1.66%) Snowflake
11 8 (1.48%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 8 (1.48%) Azure DevOps
11 8 (1.48%) OCI
12 6 (1.11%) GitHub
13 5 (0.92%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 31 (5.72%) Firewall
2 29 (5.35%) WAN
3 21 (3.87%) DNS
3 21 (3.87%) VPN
4 18 (3.32%) SD-WAN
5 17 (3.14%) LAN
6 16 (2.95%) DHCP
7 15 (2.77%) Network Security
8 14 (2.58%) Wi-Fi
9 13 (2.40%) SAN
10 12 (2.21%) Cisco ASA
10 12 (2.21%) MPLS
11 10 (1.85%) BGP
11 10 (1.85%) OSPF
11 10 (1.85%) VLAN
12 8 (1.48%) Cisco IOS
12 8 (1.48%) PABX
12 8 (1.48%) TCP/IP
13 7 (1.29%) Broadband
13 7 (1.29%) SDH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (3.32%) Power BI
2 17 (3.14%) SQL Server
3 11 (2.03%) Oracle Database
4 9 (1.66%) MySQL
5 6 (1.11%) PostgreSQL
6 5 (0.92%) MongoDB
6 5 (0.92%) Oracle Reports
6 5 (0.92%) Relational Database
7 4 (0.74%) GIS
7 4 (0.74%) Tableau
8 3 (0.55%) SAP HANA
9 2 (0.37%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.37%) Azure SQL Database
9 2 (0.37%) Pentaho
9 2 (0.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 1 (0.18%) Data Warehouse
10 1 (0.18%) DB2
10 1 (0.18%) Oracle BI Publisher
10 1 (0.18%) Oracle Database 12c
10 1 (0.18%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 31 (5.72%) JIRA
2 17 (3.14%) Jenkins
3 16 (2.95%) GitLab
4 15 (2.77%) Git
5 7 (1.29%) Chocolatey
6 5 (0.92%) Visual Studio
7 4 (0.74%) Maven
8 3 (0.55%) CircleCI
9 2 (0.37%) JMeter
10 1 (0.18%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.18%) Cucumber
10 1 (0.18%) Metasploit
10 1 (0.18%) Selenium
10 1 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 252 (46.49%) Social Skills
2 110 (20.30%) Finance
3 71 (13.10%) Analytical Skills
4 49 (9.04%) Public Sector
5 37 (6.83%) Banking
6 33 (6.09%) Organisational Skills
7 31 (5.72%) Telecoms
8 23 (4.24%) Documentation Skills
9 19 (3.51%) Legal
9 19 (3.51%) Retail
10 10 (1.85%) Financial Institution
10 10 (1.85%) Investment Banking
10 10 (1.85%) Marketing
11 9 (1.66%) Billing
12 7 (1.29%) Aerospace
13 6 (1.11%) Law
13 6 (1.11%) Local Government
13 6 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
14 4 (0.74%) Aviation
14 4 (0.74%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 77 (14.21%) IT Support
2 64 (11.81%) Analyst
3 46 (8.49%) Lead
4 42 (7.75%) Administrator
5 35 (6.46%) Senior
6 33 (6.09%) Service Manager
7 30 (5.54%) Technical Support
8 29 (5.35%) Support Engineer
9 28 (5.17%) Desktop Support
10 22 (4.06%) Service Analyst
11 21 (3.87%) IT Engineer
12 19 (3.51%) Consultant
13 18 (3.32%) Delivery Manager
14 17 (3.14%) Support Analyst
15 16 (2.95%) Developer
15 16 (2.95%) IT Administrator
15 16 (2.95%) Service Delivery Manager
15 16 (2.95%) Team Leader
16 13 (2.40%) Service Desk Analyst
17 12 (2.21%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (2.95%) Oracle Fusion
2 11 (2.03%) Middleware
3 9 (1.66%) REST
4 8 (1.48%) Web Services
5 7 (1.29%) LDAP
6 6 (1.11%) CSS
7 5 (0.92%) AWS CDK
7 5 (0.92%) jQuery
7 5 (0.92%) Spring
8 4 (0.74%) 802.1X
8 4 (0.74%) AngularJS
8 4 (0.74%) Bootstrap
8 4 (0.74%) J2EE
8 4 (0.74%) Kafka
8 4 (0.74%) RESTful
8 4 (0.74%) Sass
8 4 (0.74%) Spring MVC
9 3 (0.55%) .NET
9 3 (0.55%) OAuth
9 3 (0.55%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 37 (6.83%) Onboarding
2 26 (4.80%) Management Information System
3 25 (4.61%) Data Centre
4 20 (3.69%) Product Ownership
5 17 (3.14%) Self-Motivation
6 13 (2.40%) Cloud Native
7 11 (2.03%) Data Protection Act
7 11 (2.03%) Driving Licence
8 10 (1.85%) CMDB
8 10 (1.85%) Enterprise Cloud
8 10 (1.85%) Smartphone
9 7 (1.29%) Cyber Threat
10 6 (1.11%) Enterprise Software
10 6 (1.11%) Equities
10 6 (1.11%) Public Cloud
11 5 (0.92%) IoT
12 4 (0.74%) Analytical Mindset
12 4 (0.74%) BYOD
12 4 (0.74%) PropTech
12 4 (0.74%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 93 (17.16%) Windows
2 32 (5.90%) Linux
3 25 (4.61%) Windows 10
4 18 (3.32%) Unix
5 11 (2.03%) Windows Server
6 7 (1.29%) CentOS
6 7 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 5 (0.92%) Android
7 5 (0.92%) Mac OS
8 4 (0.74%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.18%) Mac OS X
9 1 (0.18%) Windows 7
9 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.18%) Windows XP
Processes & Methodologies
1 145 (26.75%) ITIL
2 107 (19.74%) Customer Service
3 97 (17.90%) Service Delivery
4 84 (15.50%) Continuous Improvement
5 83 (15.31%) Time Management
6 81 (14.94%) ITSM
7 70 (12.92%) Stakeholder Management
8 67 (12.36%) Problem-Solving
9 63 (11.62%) Incident Management
10 62 (11.44%) Agile
11 59 (10.89%) Change Management
12 58 (10.70%) Root Cause Analysis
13 50 (9.23%) Service Management
14 41 (7.56%) Problem Management
15 40 (7.38%) Roadmaps
16 37 (6.83%) Asset Management
17 35 (6.46%) CI/CD
17 35 (6.46%) Migration
18 33 (6.09%) Disaster Recovery
19 29 (5.35%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 34 (6.27%) SQL
2 33 (6.09%) Python
3 19 (3.51%) PowerShell
4 18 (3.32%) Shell Script
5 14 (2.58%) Java
6 12 (2.21%) Bash
7 7 (1.29%) JavaScript
7 7 (1.29%) MATLAB
8 6 (1.11%) PL/SQL
9 4 (0.74%) C++
10 3 (0.55%) Go
11 2 (0.37%) VB
12 1 (0.18%) Apex Code
12 1 (0.18%) C#
12 1 (0.18%) Groovy
12 1 (0.18%) Korn
12 1 (0.18%) Scala
Qualifications
1 126 (23.25%) Security Cleared
2 101 (18.63%) SC Cleared
3 43 (7.93%) Degree
4 17 (3.14%) BPSS Clearance
5 14 (2.58%) DV Cleared
6 11 (2.03%) ITIL Certification
7 8 (1.48%) MOS
8 6 (1.11%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (0.92%) Cisco Certification
9 5 (0.92%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 5 (0.92%) Master's Degree
10 4 (0.74%) Azure Certification
10 4 (0.74%) CCNP
10 4 (0.74%) CISA
10 4 (0.74%) PMI Certification
10 4 (0.74%) RIBA
11 3 (0.55%) CCA
11 3 (0.55%) CCSE
11 3 (0.55%) MCSE
11 3 (0.55%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (3.14%) GDPR
1 17 (3.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 15 (2.77%) PMO
3 13 (2.40%) QA
4 12 (2.21%) Data Quality
5 9 (1.66%) NIST
6 7 (1.29%) GRC
7 6 (1.11%) PCI DSS
7 6 (1.11%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (0.74%) COBIT
9 3 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 20000
10 2 (0.37%) ISO 20022
10 2 (0.37%) ISO 31000
10 2 (0.37%) ISO 8583
10 2 (0.37%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.37%) PSD2
10 2 (0.37%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.18%) ISO 9001
11 1 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 49 (9.04%) Active Directory
2 12 (2.21%) Docker
3 10 (1.85%) VMware Infrastructure
3 10 (1.85%) vSphere
4 6 (1.11%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (0.55%) DFS Replication
5 3 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.37%) Firmware
6 2 (0.37%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.18%) BitLocker
7 1 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.18%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 25 (4.61%) SCCM
2 20 (3.69%) Microsoft Intune
3 19 (3.51%) Terraform
4 17 (3.14%) Ansible
5 12 (2.21%) ServiceCenter
6 9 (1.66%) Grafana
6 9 (1.66%) Kubernetes
6 9 (1.66%) Single Sign-On
7 7 (1.29%) Check_MK
7 7 (1.29%) Podman
7 7 (1.29%) Red Hat Satellite
8 6 (1.11%) FortiGate
9 4 (0.74%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 4 (0.74%) Prometheus
9 4 (0.74%) TeamSite
9 4 (0.74%) vCenter Server
10 2 (0.37%) HP ALM
10 2 (0.37%) HP Quality Center
10 2 (0.37%) RSA Archer
10 2 (0.37%) SCOM
Vendors
1 156 (28.78%) Microsoft
2 73 (13.47%) ServiceNow
3 54 (9.96%) Oracle
4 32 (5.90%) Cisco
5 30 (5.54%) HP
5 30 (5.54%) VMware
6 28 (5.17%) SAP
7 25 (4.61%) Dell
8 18 (3.32%) Apple
9 17 (3.14%) Remedy
10 14 (2.58%) Splunk
11 11 (2.03%) IBM
11 11 (2.03%) Tenable
12 10 (1.85%) AppDynamics
12 10 (1.85%) Fortinet
13 9 (1.66%) Zscaler
14 7 (1.29%) Dynatrace
14 7 (1.29%) Red Hat
15 5 (0.92%) Juniper
15 5 (0.92%) Nokia
255 SLA jobs Nationwide