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

 6 months to
3 Jul 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 230 194 151
Rank change year-on-year -36 -43 +47
Contract jobs citing SLA 559 436 699
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.09% 1.39% 1.61%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 6.43% 8.53% 11.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 309 254 331
10th Percentile £200 £186 £156
25th Percentile £283 £217 £203
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £350 £340
Median % change year-on-year +28.57% +2.94% +14.29%
75th Percentile £519 £536 £492
90th Percentile £598 £613 £585
UK excluding London median daily rate £440 £270 £288
% change year-on-year +62.96% -6.17% +4.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 94 52 88
10th Percentile £13.52 £16.01 £11.07
25th Percentile £17.57 £18.33 £12.75
Median hourly rate £18.73 £22.14 £15.96
Median % change year-on-year -15.41% +38.72% -13.73%
75th Percentile £20.92 £25.15 £23.80
90th Percentile £25.77 £33.75 £28.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.50 £22.14 £14.16
% change year-on-year -16.44% +56.36% -22.30%

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 8,694 5,111 5,953
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.88% 16.34% 13.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,558 3,278 3,694
10th Percentile £340 £278 £282
25th Percentile £413 £400 £401
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £509
Median % change year-on-year - -1.82% -3.00%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +5.26% - -4.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 540 213 432
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.82 £11.07
25th Percentile £19.33 £18.50 £13.52
Median hourly rate £36.07 £30.00 £23.90
Median % change year-on-year +20.23% +25.52% -38.26%
75th Percentile £67.84 £63.75 £50.27
90th Percentile £80.19 £83.32 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £28.18 £21.69
% change year-on-year +33.07% +29.95% -42.17%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 -49 475 £450 +28.57% 269
UK excluding London -67 345 £440 +62.96% 247
London -12 188 £463 +23.33% 68
Work from Home +3 135 £475 +35.71% 87
South East -77 77 £463 +85.00% 92
North of England -50 74 £418 +28.46% 42
East of England +18 58 £496 +120.44% 27
Midlands -71 54 £288 -20.69% 29
Scotland +29 51 £358 +15.95% 19
West Midlands -72 45 £269 -25.86% 18
North West -24 42 £435 +2.35% 26
Yorkshire -49 30 £401 +60.18% 10
South West -40 23 £378 +38.72% 26
Wales -14 12 £525 +100.00% 14
East Midlands -13 8 £475 - 11
Northern Ireland +4 2 £175 - 6
North East -36 2 £280 - 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 25 (4.47%) SharePoint
2 13 (2.33%) Microsoft Exchange
3 9 (1.61%) Confluence
4 7 (1.25%) OpenStack
5 5 (0.89%) IIS
5 5 (0.89%) SAS
6 4 (0.72%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 3 (0.54%) Apache Airflow
8 2 (0.36%) ArcGIS
8 2 (0.36%) Exchange Server 2010
8 2 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
9 1 (0.18%) Apache
9 1 (0.18%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.18%) LiveCycle
9 1 (0.18%) Smallworld
Applications
1 54 (9.66%) Microsoft Office
2 50 (8.94%) Microsoft Excel
3 15 (2.68%) Spreadsheet
4 8 (1.43%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 2 (0.36%) 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 16 (2.86%) Remedy ITSM
2 8 (1.43%) ContrOCC
2 8 (1.43%) Oracle Payables
3 7 (1.25%) Oracle Assets
3 7 (1.25%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 6 (1.07%) Oracle Receivables
5 5 (0.89%) Dynamics CRM
5 5 (0.89%) Oracle Applications
5 5 (0.89%) Oracle General Ledger
5 5 (0.89%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 3 (0.54%) Oracle Cash Management
6 3 (0.54%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.54%) Oracle ERP
7 2 (0.36%) Dynamics GP
7 2 (0.36%) IntelliMatch
7 2 (0.36%) Oracle EBS R12
7 2 (0.36%) Oracle Financials
7 2 (0.36%) Payment Gateway
8 1 (0.18%) Adobe Campaign
8 1 (0.18%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 99 (17.71%) Azure
2 75 (13.42%) Microsoft 365
3 55 (9.84%) AWS
4 28 (5.01%) Entra ID
5 24 (4.29%) Power Platform
6 18 (3.22%) Azure DevOps
7 16 (2.86%) SaaS
8 15 (2.68%) OneDrive
9 14 (2.50%) Amazon S3
9 14 (2.50%) Datadog
9 14 (2.50%) OCI
10 13 (2.33%) IaaS
10 13 (2.33%) PaaS
11 11 (1.97%) Amazon EC2
11 11 (1.97%) GCP
11 11 (1.97%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 10 (1.79%) Snowflake
13 9 (1.61%) Azure Sentinel
14 8 (1.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 8 (1.43%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 28 (5.01%) DNS
1 28 (5.01%) VPN
2 23 (4.11%) DHCP
3 22 (3.94%) Firewall
3 22 (3.94%) WAN
4 17 (3.04%) LAN
4 17 (3.04%) Wi-Fi
5 14 (2.50%) Network Security
5 14 (2.50%) SAN
6 10 (1.79%) Cisco IOS
7 9 (1.61%) Cisco ASA
7 9 (1.61%) MPLS
7 9 (1.61%) SD-WAN
8 8 (1.43%) SDH
8 8 (1.43%) TCP/IP
8 8 (1.43%) VLAN
8 8 (1.43%) Wireless
9 7 (1.25%) 5G
9 7 (1.25%) LTE
9 7 (1.25%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (3.58%) Power BI
2 17 (3.04%) SQL Server
3 8 (1.43%) Oracle Reports
3 8 (1.43%) Tableau
4 7 (1.25%) Oracle Database
5 5 (0.89%) Pentaho
5 5 (0.89%) Relational Database
6 4 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
6 4 (0.72%) MySQL
6 4 (0.72%) PostgreSQL
7 3 (0.54%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (0.54%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 2 (0.36%) GIS
8 2 (0.36%) Oracle Database 10g
8 2 (0.36%) Oracle Database 11g
8 2 (0.36%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 1 (0.18%) Apache Iceberg
9 1 (0.18%) Data Warehouse
9 1 (0.18%) Db2
9 1 (0.18%) Oracle BI Publisher
Development Applications
1 46 (8.23%) JIRA
2 14 (2.50%) GitLab
3 12 (2.15%) Jenkins
4 11 (1.97%) Git
5 7 (1.25%) Chocolatey
6 4 (0.72%) Maven
7 3 (0.54%) Visual Studio
8 2 (0.36%) Artifactory
8 2 (0.36%) JMeter
8 2 (0.36%) Toad
9 1 (0.18%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.18%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 1 (0.18%) WiX
General
1 250 (44.72%) Social Skills
2 113 (20.21%) Finance
3 97 (17.35%) Analytical Skills
4 41 (7.33%) Public Sector
5 35 (6.26%) Banking
6 30 (5.37%) Organisational Skills
7 27 (4.83%) Documentation Skills
8 26 (4.65%) Telecoms
9 24 (4.29%) Legal
10 14 (2.50%) Billing
11 13 (2.33%) Local Government
12 12 (2.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 12 (2.15%) Retail
13 9 (1.61%) Financial Institution
13 9 (1.61%) Manufacturing
14 8 (1.43%) Aerospace
15 7 (1.25%) Influencing Skills
15 7 (1.25%) Investment Banking
16 6 (1.07%) Marketing
17 5 (0.89%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 74 (13.24%) Analyst
2 51 (9.12%) IT Support
3 39 (6.98%) Support Engineer
4 36 (6.44%) Lead
5 34 (6.08%) Senior
5 34 (6.08%) Service Manager
6 31 (5.55%) Administrator
7 26 (4.65%) Service Analyst
8 25 (4.47%) IT Engineer
9 22 (3.94%) Consultant
9 22 (3.94%) Delivery Manager
10 20 (3.58%) Technical Support
11 19 (3.40%) Service Delivery Manager
12 18 (3.22%) Desktop Support
13 17 (3.04%) Azure Engineer
13 17 (3.04%) Desktop Engineer
13 17 (3.04%) Network Engineer
14 16 (2.86%) Applications Support
14 16 (2.86%) Coordinator
15 15 (2.68%) Service Desk Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (1.97%) Middleware
1 11 (1.97%) Oracle Fusion
2 9 (1.61%) .NET
2 9 (1.61%) REST
3 8 (1.43%) LDAP
3 8 (1.43%) Web Services
4 6 (1.07%) Software Packaging
5 5 (0.89%) ARM Templates
5 5 (0.89%) AWS CDK
5 5 (0.89%) Spring
6 4 (0.72%) AngularJS
6 4 (0.72%) Bootstrap
6 4 (0.72%) CSS
6 4 (0.72%) J2EE
6 4 (0.72%) jQuery
6 4 (0.72%) Sass
6 4 (0.72%) Spring MVC
7 3 (0.54%) ADO
8 2 (0.36%) SOAP
8 2 (0.36%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 51 (9.12%) Onboarding
2 33 (5.90%) Data Centre
3 18 (3.22%) CMDB
4 14 (2.50%) Enterprise Software
5 12 (2.15%) Smartphone
6 11 (1.97%) Product Ownership
7 10 (1.79%) Cloud Native
7 10 (1.79%) Management Information System
8 9 (1.61%) Cyber Threat
9 8 (1.43%) BYOD
9 8 (1.43%) Driving Licence
9 8 (1.43%) PKI
9 8 (1.43%) Self-Motivation
9 8 (1.43%) Virtual Team
10 7 (1.25%) Analytical Mindset
10 7 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
11 5 (0.89%) Fibre Optics
11 5 (0.89%) IoT
12 4 (0.72%) Enterprise Cloud
12 4 (0.72%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 126 (22.54%) Windows
2 43 (7.69%) Linux
3 41 (7.33%) Windows 10
4 25 (4.47%) Windows Server
5 20 (3.58%) Android
6 18 (3.22%) Unix
7 12 (2.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 8 (1.43%) CentOS
9 6 (1.07%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.89%) Apple iOS
10 5 (0.89%) Windows 7
11 4 (0.72%) Windows Server 2012
11 4 (0.72%) Windows XP
12 2 (0.36%) 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
1 188 (33.63%) ITIL
2 118 (21.11%) ITSM
3 115 (20.57%) Problem-Solving
4 109 (19.50%) Continuous Improvement
5 105 (18.78%) Customer Service
6 101 (18.07%) Stakeholder Management
7 89 (15.92%) Change Management
7 89 (15.92%) Service Delivery
8 84 (15.03%) Service Management
9 81 (14.49%) Agile
10 68 (12.16%) Root Cause Analysis
11 55 (9.84%) Incident Management
12 51 (9.12%) Problem Management
13 45 (8.05%) Migration
13 45 (8.05%) Time Management
14 41 (7.33%) Asset Management
14 41 (7.33%) DevOps
14 41 (7.33%) Roadmaps
14 41 (7.33%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 39 (6.98%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 47 (8.41%) SQL
2 34 (6.08%) Python
3 25 (4.47%) PowerShell
4 17 (3.04%) Bash
5 11 (1.97%) Shell Script
6 9 (1.61%) Java
7 8 (1.43%) MATLAB
7 8 (1.43%) PL/SQL
8 7 (1.25%) JavaScript
9 4 (0.72%) Bicep
10 2 (0.36%) C#
10 2 (0.36%) Korn
10 2 (0.36%) Scala
10 2 (0.36%) VB
10 2 (0.36%) X++
11 1 (0.18%) Apex Code
11 1 (0.18%) COBOL
11 1 (0.18%) Groovy
11 1 (0.18%) RPG
11 1 (0.18%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 121 (21.65%) Security Cleared
2 98 (17.53%) SC Cleared
3 51 (9.12%) Degree
4 20 (3.58%) DV Cleared
4 20 (3.58%) ITIL Certification
5 17 (3.04%) BPSS Clearance
5 17 (3.04%) Cisco Certification
6 15 (2.68%) Microsoft Certification
7 11 (1.97%) CCNP
7 11 (1.97%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 9 (1.61%) PMI Certification
9 8 (1.43%) MCSE
10 7 (1.25%) CCNA
11 6 (1.07%) Azure Certification
11 6 (1.07%) CCSE
11 6 (1.07%) Master's Degree
12 5 (0.89%) CCSM
12 5 (0.89%) PMP
13 4 (0.72%) CISA
13 4 (0.72%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (3.22%) Data Quality
2 16 (2.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 15 (2.68%) PMO
4 14 (2.50%) QA
5 11 (1.97%) NIST
6 10 (1.79%) GDPR
7 9 (1.61%) COBIT
7 9 (1.61%) GRC
8 7 (1.25%) PCI DSS
9 5 (0.89%) Cyber Essentials
10 3 (0.54%) ISO 20022
10 3 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 20000
10 3 (0.54%) JSP 440
10 3 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 2 (0.36%) ISO 31000
11 2 (0.36%) ISO 8583
11 2 (0.36%) ISO 9001
11 2 (0.36%) SOC 2
12 1 (0.18%) NCSC
System Software
1 81 (14.49%) Active Directory
2 24 (4.29%) VMware Infrastructure
3 15 (2.68%) VMware ESXi
4 10 (1.79%) Virtual Desktop
5 8 (1.43%) Hyper-V
6 7 (1.25%) Docker
7 6 (1.07%) vSphere
8 4 (0.72%) Virtual Machines
9 3 (0.54%) Oracle RAC
10 2 (0.36%) Firmware
11 1 (0.18%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.18%) Ceph
11 1 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.18%) VMware Workstation
11 1 (0.18%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 35 (6.26%) Microsoft Intune
2 32 (5.72%) SCCM
3 20 (3.58%) Terraform
4 18 (3.22%) Ansible
5 16 (2.86%) Kubernetes
6 11 (1.97%) Single Sign-On
7 10 (1.79%) vCenter Server
8 9 (1.61%) Grafana
8 9 (1.61%) ServiceCenter
9 8 (1.43%) Check_MK
9 8 (1.43%) Podman
9 8 (1.43%) Red Hat Satellite
10 6 (1.07%) Jamf Pro
11 5 (0.89%) Prometheus
12 3 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 3 (0.54%) FortiGate
12 3 (0.54%) Oracle Identity Management
12 3 (0.54%) Oracle Identity Manager
12 3 (0.54%) TeamSite
12 3 (0.54%) vMotion
Vendors
1 175 (31.31%) Microsoft
2 94 (16.82%) ServiceNow
3 49 (8.77%) Oracle
4 44 (7.87%) Cisco
5 43 (7.69%) VMware
6 28 (5.01%) HP
7 27 (4.83%) Apple
8 23 (4.11%) Remedy
9 19 (3.40%) Dell
10 16 (2.86%) SAP
11 11 (1.97%) Tenable
12 10 (1.79%) Red Hat
12 10 (1.79%) Zscaler
13 9 (1.61%) CheckPoint
13 9 (1.61%) Fortinet
13 9 (1.61%) IBM
13 9 (1.61%) Nokia
13 9 (1.61%) Palo Alto
13 9 (1.61%) Salesforce
13 9 (1.61%) Splunk
328 SLA jobs Nationwide