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

 6 months to
2 Apr 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 216 192 136
Rank change year-on-year -24 -56 +42
Contract jobs citing SLA 549 402 767
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.23% 1.38% 1.74%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 7.07% 9.06% 12.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 284 241 353
10th Percentile £200 £147 £150
25th Percentile £298 £185 £213
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £250 £350
Median % change year-on-year +80.00% -28.57% +16.67%
75th Percentile £525 £494 £500
90th Percentile £618 £588 £600
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £235 £285
% change year-on-year +80.85% -17.54% +23.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 128 39 87
10th Percentile £16.18 £14.70 £11.07
25th Percentile £17.69 £18.30 £12.84
Median hourly rate £18.50 £22.27 £14.48
Median % change year-on-year -16.93% +53.80% -21.73%
75th Percentile £20.15 £24.66 £22.69
90th Percentile £25.87 £29.95 £32.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.50 £22.14 £14.16
% change year-on-year -16.44% +56.36% -23.46%

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 7,762 4,439 6,324
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.34% 15.27% 14.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,005 2,878 4,028
10th Percentile £336 £263 £300
25th Percentile £413 £385 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £619 £625
90th Percentile £700 £716 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% +2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 423 174 373
10th Percentile £14.29 £17.67 £10.95
25th Percentile £18.50 £22.14 £13.25
Median hourly rate £30.50 £32.25 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -5.43% +53.57% -47.50%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £43.75
90th Percentile £81.00 £83.13 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.58 £31.88 £18.00
% change year-on-year -4.08% +77.11% -50.34%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 -32 491 £450 +78.22% 233
UK excluding London -50 350 £425 +80.85% 191
London 0 168 £497 +32.53% 58
Work from Home -13 111 £475 +102.13% 81
East of England +39 110 £477 +111.78% 25
South East -71 74 £450 +80.36% 70
North of England -61 66 £365 +46.00% 48
Midlands -73 41 £296 +25.96% 28
North West -42 35 £438 +75.00% 34
South West -32 30 £356 -35.27% 15
West Midlands -73 29 £293 +24.68% 12
Scotland +18 27 £440 +134.67% 7
Yorkshire -48 24 £365 +82.50% 12
East Midlands -34 11 £534 +78.00% 16
North East - 7 £265 - 3
Northern Ireland +2 5 £500 +237.84% 2
Wales -14 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 (2.91%) SharePoint
2 15 (2.73%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (1.28%) Confluence
4 5 (0.91%) Oracle Workflow
5 4 (0.73%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 3 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.55%) ArcGIS
6 3 (0.55%) SAS
7 1 (0.18%) GeoServer
7 1 (0.18%) IIS
7 1 (0.18%) LiveCycle
7 1 (0.18%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.18%) Oracle Spatial
7 1 (0.18%) Smallworld
7 1 (0.18%) WebSphere
7 1 (0.18%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 53 (9.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 46 (8.38%) Spreadsheet
3 32 (5.83%) Microsoft Office
4 6 (1.09%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.18%) Autodesk Inventor
6 1 (0.18%) MicroStation
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 13 (2.37%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
1 13 (2.37%) Remedy ITSM
2 12 (2.19%) Oracle Payables
3 10 (1.82%) Oracle Assets
3 10 (1.82%) Oracle EBS
4 7 (1.28%) Oracle Receivables
5 6 (1.09%) Oracle ERP
6 5 (0.91%) Oracle General Ledger
7 3 (0.55%) Oracle Cash Management
8 2 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
8 2 (0.36%) IntelliMatch
8 2 (0.36%) Oracle E-Business Tax
8 2 (0.36%) Payment Gateway
8 2 (0.36%) 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 61 (11.11%) Azure
2 53 (9.65%) Microsoft 365
3 50 (9.11%) AWS
4 20 (3.64%) Power Platform
5 17 (3.10%) GCP
6 15 (2.73%) IaaS
6 15 (2.73%) PaaS
7 14 (2.55%) Amazon S3
8 13 (2.37%) SaaS
9 12 (2.19%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 11 (2.00%) Amazon EC2
10 11 (2.00%) Datadog
11 10 (1.82%) Entra ID
12 9 (1.64%) AWS CloudFormation
12 9 (1.64%) Snowflake
13 8 (1.46%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 8 (1.46%) Azure DevOps
13 8 (1.46%) OCI
14 6 (1.09%) dbt
14 6 (1.09%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 31 (5.65%) Firewall
2 28 (5.10%) WAN
3 23 (4.19%) DNS
4 21 (3.83%) VPN
5 18 (3.28%) SD-WAN
6 17 (3.10%) LAN
7 16 (2.91%) DHCP
8 14 (2.55%) SAN
8 14 (2.55%) Wi-Fi
9 13 (2.37%) Network Security
10 12 (2.19%) Cisco ASA
11 11 (2.00%) MPLS
12 10 (1.82%) BGP
12 10 (1.82%) OSPF
12 10 (1.82%) VLAN
13 8 (1.46%) Cisco IOS
13 8 (1.46%) TCP/IP
14 7 (1.28%) Broadband
15 6 (1.09%) SDH
15 6 (1.09%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (3.10%) Power BI
1 17 (3.10%) SQL Server
2 11 (2.00%) Oracle Database
3 9 (1.64%) MySQL
4 8 (1.46%) PostgreSQL
5 5 (0.91%) MongoDB
5 5 (0.91%) Oracle Reports
5 5 (0.91%) Relational Database
6 4 (0.73%) GIS
6 4 (0.73%) Tableau
7 3 (0.55%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (0.55%) Pentaho
7 3 (0.55%) SAP HANA
8 2 (0.36%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (0.36%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (0.36%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 1 (0.18%) Data Warehouse
9 1 (0.18%) DB2
9 1 (0.18%) Oracle Database 12c
9 1 (0.18%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 31 (5.65%) JIRA
2 18 (3.28%) GitLab
2 18 (3.28%) Jenkins
3 16 (2.91%) Git
4 7 (1.28%) Chocolatey
5 6 (1.09%) Visual Studio
6 4 (0.73%) Maven
7 3 (0.55%) CircleCI
8 2 (0.36%) JMeter
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
1 254 (46.27%) Social Skills
2 113 (20.58%) Finance
3 75 (13.66%) Analytical Skills
4 48 (8.74%) Public Sector
5 38 (6.92%) Banking
6 33 (6.01%) Organisational Skills
7 29 (5.28%) Telecoms
8 25 (4.55%) Documentation Skills
9 19 (3.46%) Legal
9 19 (3.46%) Retail
10 10 (1.82%) Financial Institution
10 10 (1.82%) Investment Banking
11 9 (1.64%) Aerospace
11 9 (1.64%) Billing
11 9 (1.64%) Marketing
12 6 (1.09%) Law
12 6 (1.09%) Local Government
12 6 (1.09%) Presentation Skills
13 5 (0.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (0.91%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 76 (13.84%) IT Support
2 68 (12.39%) Analyst
3 45 (8.20%) Administrator
3 45 (8.20%) Lead
4 39 (7.10%) Senior
5 34 (6.19%) Service Manager
6 29 (5.28%) Technical Support
7 28 (5.10%) Support Engineer
8 27 (4.92%) Desktop Support
9 24 (4.37%) Service Analyst
10 21 (3.83%) IT Engineer
11 19 (3.46%) Consultant
12 18 (3.28%) Delivery Manager
13 16 (2.91%) IT Administrator
13 16 (2.91%) Service Delivery Manager
13 16 (2.91%) Support Analyst
14 15 (2.73%) Team Leader
15 13 (2.37%) Developer
15 13 (2.37%) Service Desk Analyst
16 12 (2.19%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (2.91%) Oracle Fusion
2 13 (2.37%) Middleware
3 9 (1.64%) LDAP
3 9 (1.64%) REST
4 7 (1.28%) Web Services
5 5 (0.91%) AWS CDK
5 5 (0.91%) CSS
5 5 (0.91%) jQuery
5 5 (0.91%) Spring
6 4 (0.73%) .NET
6 4 (0.73%) 802.1X
6 4 (0.73%) AngularJS
6 4 (0.73%) Bootstrap
6 4 (0.73%) J2EE
6 4 (0.73%) Kafka
6 4 (0.73%) Sass
6 4 (0.73%) Spring MVC
7 2 (0.36%) .NET Framework
7 2 (0.36%) ADO
7 2 (0.36%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 36 (6.56%) Onboarding
2 27 (4.92%) Data Centre
2 27 (4.92%) Management Information System
3 20 (3.64%) Product Ownership
4 16 (2.91%) Self-Motivation
5 13 (2.37%) Cloud Native
6 11 (2.00%) Data Protection Act
7 10 (1.82%) Driving Licence
7 10 (1.82%) Enterprise Cloud
8 9 (1.64%) CMDB
9 8 (1.46%) Smartphone
10 7 (1.28%) Cyber Threat
11 6 (1.09%) Enterprise Software
11 6 (1.09%) Equities
11 6 (1.09%) Public Cloud
12 5 (0.91%) IoT
12 5 (0.91%) Security Posture
13 4 (0.73%) Analytical Mindset
13 4 (0.73%) BYOD
13 4 (0.73%) PropTech
Operating Systems
1 92 (16.76%) Windows
2 35 (6.38%) Linux
3 25 (4.55%) Windows 10
4 18 (3.28%) Unix
5 12 (2.19%) Windows Server
6 10 (1.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 9 (1.64%) CentOS
8 5 (0.91%) Android
8 5 (0.91%) Mac OS
9 3 (0.55%) Apple iOS
10 1 (0.18%) Mac OS X
10 1 (0.18%) Windows 7
10 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.18%) Windows XP
Processes & Methodologies
1 149 (27.14%) ITIL
2 102 (18.58%) Customer Service
3 92 (16.76%) Service Delivery
4 85 (15.48%) Continuous Improvement
5 82 (14.94%) ITSM
6 81 (14.75%) Time Management
7 75 (13.66%) Stakeholder Management
8 73 (13.30%) Problem-Solving
9 64 (11.66%) Incident Management
10 63 (11.48%) Agile
11 61 (11.11%) Change Management
12 60 (10.93%) Root Cause Analysis
13 52 (9.47%) Service Management
14 43 (7.83%) Problem Management
14 43 (7.83%) Roadmaps
15 37 (6.74%) Asset Management
15 37 (6.74%) Migration
16 35 (6.38%) CI/CD
17 33 (6.01%) Disaster Recovery
18 31 (5.65%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 39 (7.10%) SQL
2 34 (6.19%) Python
3 20 (3.64%) Shell Script
4 17 (3.10%) PowerShell
5 14 (2.55%) Bash
5 14 (2.55%) Java
6 9 (1.64%) MATLAB
7 6 (1.09%) JavaScript
7 6 (1.09%) PL/SQL
8 4 (0.73%) C++
9 3 (0.55%) Go
10 2 (0.36%) VB
11 1 (0.18%) Apex Code
11 1 (0.18%) C#
11 1 (0.18%) Groovy
11 1 (0.18%) Korn
11 1 (0.18%) Scala
Qualifications
1 127 (23.13%) Security Cleared
2 101 (18.40%) SC Cleared
3 45 (8.20%) Degree
4 16 (2.91%) BPSS Clearance
5 14 (2.55%) DV Cleared
6 12 (2.19%) ITIL Certification
7 7 (1.28%) Microsoft Certification
7 7 (1.28%) MOS
8 6 (1.09%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 5 (0.91%) Cisco Certification
9 5 (0.91%) Master's Degree
9 5 (0.91%) PMI Certification
10 4 (0.73%) Azure Certification
10 4 (0.73%) CCNP
10 4 (0.73%) CISA
10 4 (0.73%) RIBA
11 3 (0.55%) CCA
11 3 (0.55%) CCSE
11 3 (0.55%) CRISC
11 3 (0.55%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (3.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 15 (2.73%) Data Quality
2 15 (2.73%) PMO
3 14 (2.55%) GDPR
4 13 (2.37%) QA
5 9 (1.64%) NIST
6 7 (1.28%) GRC
7 6 (1.09%) PCI DSS
8 4 (0.73%) COBIT
9 3 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 20000
9 3 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 2 (0.36%) ISO 20022
10 2 (0.36%) ISO 31000
10 2 (0.36%) ISO 8583
10 2 (0.36%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.36%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.18%) ISO 9001
11 1 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 53 (9.65%) Active Directory
2 12 (2.19%) Docker
2 12 (2.19%) VMware Infrastructure
3 10 (1.82%) vSphere
4 7 (1.28%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (0.55%) DFS Replication
5 3 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.36%) Firmware
6 2 (0.36%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.18%) BitLocker
7 1 (0.18%) Ceph
7 1 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
7 1 (0.18%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 25 (4.55%) SCCM
2 20 (3.64%) Ansible
2 20 (3.64%) Microsoft Intune
3 19 (3.46%) Terraform
4 12 (2.19%) Grafana
4 12 (2.19%) ServiceCenter
5 9 (1.64%) Check_MK
5 9 (1.64%) Kubernetes
5 9 (1.64%) Podman
5 9 (1.64%) Red Hat Satellite
6 7 (1.28%) Single Sign-On
7 6 (1.09%) FortiGate
8 5 (0.91%) vCenter Server
9 4 (0.73%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 4 (0.73%) Prometheus
9 4 (0.73%) TeamSite
10 2 (0.36%) HP ALM
10 2 (0.36%) HP Quality Center
10 2 (0.36%) Puppet
10 2 (0.36%) SCOM
Vendors
1 157 (28.60%) Microsoft
2 74 (13.48%) ServiceNow
3 55 (10.02%) Oracle
4 33 (6.01%) VMware
5 32 (5.83%) Cisco
6 30 (5.46%) HP
7 28 (5.10%) SAP
8 25 (4.55%) Dell
9 18 (3.28%) Apple
10 17 (3.10%) Remedy
11 14 (2.55%) Splunk
12 11 (2.00%) IBM
13 10 (1.82%) AppDynamics
13 10 (1.82%) Fortinet
13 10 (1.82%) Red Hat
13 10 (1.82%) Tenable
14 9 (1.64%) Zscaler
15 7 (1.28%) Dynatrace
16 5 (0.91%) Databricks
16 5 (0.91%) F5
255 SLA jobs Nationwide