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

 6 months to
21 Aug 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 242 198 178
Rank change year-on-year -44 -20 +8
Contract jobs citing SLA 579 462 552
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.08% 1.41% 1.42%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 6.27% 8.27% 10.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 343 262 262
10th Percentile £181 £198 £156
25th Percentile £250 £220 £200
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £350 £320
Median % change year-on-year +21.43% +9.38% -8.57%
75th Percentile £521 £544 £492
90th Percentile £600 £613 £588
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £325 £291
% change year-on-year +30.77% +11.88% -3.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 62 67 80
10th Percentile £13.45 £15.80 £11.79
25th Percentile £14.84 £17.48 £13.14
Median hourly rate £18.79 £22.14 £17.38
Median % change year-on-year -15.13% +27.42% -0.71%
75th Percentile £22.33 £25.15 £24.18
90th Percentile £27.86 £37.35 £31.69
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.79 £20.83 £14.70
% change year-on-year -9.79% +41.70% -16.00%

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 9,239 5,588 5,238
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.25% 17.05% 13.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,904 3,585 3,219
10th Percentile £325 £285 £290
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £511
Median % change year-on-year - -2.19% -2.63%
75th Percentile £600 £610 £625
90th Percentile £700 £716 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £480
% change year-on-year +3.58% -1.04% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 567 264 314
10th Percentile £13.98 £13.60 £11.18
25th Percentile £17.57 £17.24 £14.43
Median hourly rate £36.07 £28.59 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +26.16% +14.36% -28.57%
75th Percentile £70.00 £62.24 £54.84
90th Percentile £80.00 £85.60 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.07 £25.15 £25.00
% change year-on-year +43.42% +0.60% -28.06%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 -68 479 £425 +13.33% 246
UK excluding London -60 343 £425 +30.77% 205
London -25 201 £425 +2.41% 70
Work from Home -19 137 £463 +42.31% 76
North of England -51 92 £450 +79.64% 47
South East -81 77 £463 +46.13% 72
Scotland +40 67 £353 +3.68% 11
North West -10 63 £459 +41.23% 27
Midlands -60 53 £250 -28.57% 30
West Midlands -58 45 £250 -33.33% 19
East of England -7 29 £505 +44.29% 25
South West -59 29 £356 +9.54% 20
Yorkshire -51 26 £450 +87.87% 13
Wales -13 11 £525 +100.00% 6
East Midlands -21 7 £363 +174.62% 11
North East -34 3 £228 - 8
Northern Ireland +1 1 £175 - 2

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 39 (6.74%) SharePoint
2 27 (4.66%) Microsoft Exchange
3 8 (1.38%) Confluence
4 7 (1.21%) OpenStack
5 5 (0.86%) IIS
6 4 (0.69%) SAS
7 3 (0.52%) Apache Airflow
8 2 (0.35%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 2 (0.35%) Anypoint
8 2 (0.35%) Apache
8 2 (0.35%) Exchange Server 2010
8 2 (0.35%) Mule
9 1 (0.17%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.17%) ArcGIS
9 1 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2013
9 1 (0.17%) JBoss
9 1 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
9 1 (0.17%) Skype for Business
9 1 (0.17%) Smallworld
Applications
1 56 (9.67%) Microsoft Office
2 28 (4.84%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (1.04%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.86%) Spreadsheet
5 4 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 2 (0.35%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.17%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.17%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.17%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 14 (2.42%) Remedy ITSM
2 8 (1.38%) ContrOCC
3 5 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.86%) Oracle Applications
4 4 (0.69%) Oracle Assets
4 4 (0.69%) Oracle Payables
4 4 (0.69%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 3 (0.52%) Oracle General Ledger
5 3 (0.52%) Oracle Receivables
5 3 (0.52%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 2 (0.35%) Dynamics GP
6 2 (0.35%) Oracle Cash Management
6 2 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.17%) Actimize
7 1 (0.17%) Adobe Campaign
7 1 (0.17%) OpenText VIM for SAP
7 1 (0.17%) Oracle EBS R12
7 1 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.17%) Oracle Financials
7 1 (0.17%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 117 (20.21%) Microsoft 365
2 105 (18.13%) Azure
3 54 (9.33%) Entra ID
4 53 (9.15%) AWS
5 23 (3.97%) OneDrive
6 21 (3.63%) Power Platform
7 19 (3.28%) SaaS
8 16 (2.76%) Datadog
9 15 (2.59%) Azure DevOps
10 12 (2.07%) IaaS
10 12 (2.07%) PaaS
11 10 (1.73%) Amazon S3
11 10 (1.73%) OCI
12 9 (1.55%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 9 (1.55%) Azure Sentinel
12 9 (1.55%) Snowflake
13 8 (1.38%) Serverless
14 7 (1.21%) AWS CloudFormation
14 7 (1.21%) GCP
15 6 (1.04%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 42 (7.25%) DNS
2 39 (6.74%) VPN
3 33 (5.70%) DHCP
4 27 (4.66%) WAN
5 26 (4.49%) LAN
6 24 (4.15%) Firewall
6 24 (4.15%) Wi-Fi
7 23 (3.97%) TCP/IP
8 17 (2.94%) Network Security
8 17 (2.94%) SAN
9 14 (2.42%) SDH
10 13 (2.25%) VLAN
11 11 (1.90%) MPLS
12 8 (1.38%) Cisco IOS
12 8 (1.38%) Radio Access Network
12 8 (1.38%) Skype
12 8 (1.38%) Wireless
13 7 (1.21%) 5G
13 7 (1.21%) LTE
13 7 (1.21%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (3.80%) SQL Server
2 16 (2.76%) Power BI
3 8 (1.38%) Tableau
4 7 (1.21%) Oracle Reports
5 5 (0.86%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (0.69%) MySQL
6 4 (0.69%) Pentaho
7 3 (0.52%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (0.52%) Amazon RDS
7 3 (0.52%) Big Data
7 3 (0.52%) Data Lake
7 3 (0.52%) Delta Lake
7 3 (0.52%) Oracle Database
7 3 (0.52%) Relational Database
8 2 (0.35%) Db2
8 2 (0.35%) Oracle Database 10g
8 2 (0.35%) Oracle Database 11g
8 2 (0.35%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 1 (0.17%) Apache Iceberg
9 1 (0.17%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 46 (7.94%) JIRA
2 10 (1.73%) GitLab
3 8 (1.38%) Chocolatey
3 8 (1.38%) Jenkins
4 6 (1.04%) Git
5 3 (0.52%) RStudio
5 3 (0.52%) Visual Studio
6 2 (0.35%) Artifactory
6 2 (0.35%) Maven
6 2 (0.35%) Toad
7 1 (0.17%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.17%) WiX
General
1 239 (41.28%) Social Skills
2 108 (18.65%) Analytical Skills
3 107 (18.48%) Finance
4 38 (6.56%) Public Sector
5 32 (5.53%) Banking
6 29 (5.01%) Telecoms
7 27 (4.66%) Organisational Skills
8 21 (3.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 20 (3.45%) Documentation Skills
10 17 (2.94%) Legal
11 15 (2.59%) Local Government
12 14 (2.42%) Retail
13 13 (2.25%) Manufacturing
14 10 (1.73%) Billing
15 8 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
16 6 (1.04%) Financial Institution
17 5 (0.86%) Aerospace
18 4 (0.69%) French Language
18 4 (0.69%) Marketing
19 3 (0.52%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 78 (13.47%) Analyst
2 63 (10.88%) Support Engineer
3 49 (8.46%) IT Support
4 43 (7.43%) Senior
5 36 (6.22%) IT Engineer
6 35 (6.04%) Lead
7 30 (5.18%) Consultant
7 30 (5.18%) Service Manager
8 28 (4.84%) Service Analyst
9 25 (4.32%) Desktop Support
9 25 (4.32%) Field Engineer
9 25 (4.32%) IT Support Engineer
9 25 (4.32%) Network Engineer
10 21 (3.63%) Service Desk Analyst
11 20 (3.45%) Architect
12 19 (3.28%) Delivery Manager
13 18 (3.11%) Administrator
13 18 (3.11%) Applications Support
13 18 (3.11%) Desktop Engineer
14 16 (2.76%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (3.11%) Terraform
2 12 (2.07%) REST
3 11 (1.90%) .NET
4 8 (1.38%) LDAP
5 7 (1.21%) Oracle Fusion
6 6 (1.04%) XML
7 5 (0.86%) Middleware
7 5 (0.86%) Software Packaging
8 4 (0.69%) Kafka
8 4 (0.69%) PySpark
9 3 (0.52%) .NET Framework
9 3 (0.52%) ARM Templates
9 3 (0.52%) Jakarta EE
9 3 (0.52%) Java RMI
9 3 (0.52%) JSON
9 3 (0.52%) RESTful
9 3 (0.52%) SOAP
9 3 (0.52%) Web Services
10 2 (0.35%) CSS
10 2 (0.35%) EDI
Miscellaneous
1 64 (11.05%) Onboarding
2 26 (4.49%) Data Centre
3 23 (3.97%) CMDB
4 20 (3.45%) Enterprise Software
5 14 (2.42%) PKI
5 14 (2.42%) Smartphone
6 12 (2.07%) Virtual Team
7 11 (1.90%) Cyber Threat
7 11 (1.90%) Video Conferencing
8 10 (1.73%) Product Ownership
9 8 (1.38%) BYOD
9 8 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
9 8 (1.38%) Driving Licence
9 8 (1.38%) iPhone
9 8 (1.38%) Self-Motivation
10 7 (1.21%) Fat Client
10 7 (1.21%) Thin Client
11 6 (1.04%) Fibre Optics
12 5 (0.86%) Analytical Mindset
12 5 (0.86%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 161 (27.81%) Windows
2 61 (10.54%) Windows 10
3 36 (6.22%) Windows Server
4 33 (5.70%) Android
5 30 (5.18%) Linux
6 13 (2.25%) Unix
7 12 (2.07%) Windows 7
8 11 (1.90%) Mac OS
9 9 (1.55%) Apple iOS
9 9 (1.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 5 (0.86%) Windows Server 2012
11 4 (0.69%) CentOS
12 3 (0.52%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.52%) Windows XP
13 1 (0.17%) OpenVMS
13 1 (0.17%) Solaris
13 1 (0.17%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.17%) VMS
13 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2003
13 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 229 (39.55%) ITIL
2 134 (23.14%) ITSM
3 125 (21.59%) Problem-Solving
4 123 (21.24%) Continuous Improvement
4 123 (21.24%) Customer Service
5 119 (20.55%) Service Management
6 101 (17.44%) Stakeholder Management
7 95 (16.41%) Service Delivery
8 91 (15.72%) Change Management
9 66 (11.40%) Root Cause Analysis
10 63 (10.88%) Agile
11 62 (10.71%) Incident Management
12 60 (10.36%) Problem Management
13 51 (8.81%) Validation
14 47 (8.12%) Migration
15 43 (7.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 41 (7.08%) Asset Management
16 41 (7.08%) DevOps
17 37 (6.39%) CI/CD
18 36 (6.22%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 44 (7.60%) SQL
2 41 (7.08%) PowerShell
3 39 (6.74%) Python
4 13 (2.25%) Bash
5 11 (1.90%) JavaScript
6 9 (1.55%) Java
7 7 (1.21%) Shell Script
8 6 (1.04%) PL/SQL
9 5 (0.86%) C#
10 4 (0.69%) Bicep
10 4 (0.69%) MATLAB
11 3 (0.52%) R
12 2 (0.35%) DataWeave
12 2 (0.35%) Korn
12 2 (0.35%) X++
13 1 (0.17%) ActionScript
13 1 (0.17%) ActionScript 2.0
13 1 (0.17%) Go
13 1 (0.17%) Scala
13 1 (0.17%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 153 (26.42%) Security Cleared
2 123 (21.24%) SC Cleared
3 50 (8.64%) Degree
4 26 (4.49%) DV Cleared
5 20 (3.45%) ITIL Certification
5 20 (3.45%) Microsoft Certification
6 17 (2.94%) BPSS Clearance
6 17 (2.94%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 16 (2.76%) Cisco Certification
8 11 (1.90%) Azure Certification
9 10 (1.73%) CCNP
10 9 (1.55%) A+ Certification
11 8 (1.38%) Computer Science Degree
11 8 (1.38%) MCSE
11 8 (1.38%) PMI Certification
12 7 (1.21%) CCNA
12 7 (1.21%) DBS Check
13 6 (1.04%) CCSE
14 5 (0.86%) CCSM
15 4 (0.69%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (3.63%) Data Quality
2 14 (2.42%) NIST
3 12 (2.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 10 (1.73%) PMO
4 10 (1.73%) QA
5 9 (1.55%) ISO/IEC 20000
6 6 (1.04%) GDPR
6 6 (1.04%) GRC
7 5 (0.86%) COBIT
7 5 (0.86%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (0.86%) ISO 9001
7 5 (0.86%) NCSC
8 4 (0.69%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 3 (0.52%) JSP 440
10 2 (0.35%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.17%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (0.17%) GxP
11 1 (0.17%) HIPAA
11 1 (0.17%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 121 (20.90%) Active Directory
2 27 (4.66%) VMware Infrastructure
3 19 (3.28%) Virtual Desktop
4 15 (2.59%) VMware ESXi
5 10 (1.73%) Docker
6 8 (1.38%) Hyper-V
7 7 (1.21%) vSphere
8 6 (1.04%) Firmware
9 4 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
10 2 (0.35%) ACF2
10 2 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
10 2 (0.35%) RACF
10 2 (0.35%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.17%) Apache ZooKeeper
11 1 (0.17%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.17%) Ceph
11 1 (0.17%) Microsoft Virtual Server
11 1 (0.17%) VMware Workstation
11 1 (0.17%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 55 (9.50%) Microsoft Intune
2 33 (5.70%) SCCM
3 21 (3.63%) Kubernetes
4 12 (2.07%) Single Sign-On
5 10 (1.73%) Ansible
5 10 (1.73%) Grafana
5 10 (1.73%) vCenter Server
6 6 (1.04%) Jamf Pro
6 6 (1.04%) Prometheus
7 4 (0.69%) Check_MK
7 4 (0.69%) Podman
7 4 (0.69%) Red Hat Satellite
8 3 (0.52%) Oracle Identity Management
8 3 (0.52%) Oracle Identity Manager
8 3 (0.52%) vMotion
9 2 (0.35%) AirWatch
9 2 (0.35%) CloudHub
9 2 (0.35%) Data Guard
9 2 (0.35%) Istio
9 2 (0.35%) SCOM
Vendors
1 207 (35.75%) Microsoft
2 114 (19.69%) ServiceNow
3 46 (7.94%) VMware
4 45 (7.77%) Cisco
5 33 (5.70%) Oracle
6 21 (3.63%) Apple
7 18 (3.11%) Remedy
8 17 (2.94%) HP
9 12 (2.07%) Zscaler
10 11 (1.90%) Nokia
10 11 (1.90%) Tenable
11 10 (1.73%) Citrix
11 10 (1.73%) Dynatrace
11 10 (1.73%) Fortinet
12 9 (1.55%) Databricks
12 9 (1.55%) Okta
12 9 (1.55%) Salesforce
12 9 (1.55%) Splunk
13 8 (1.38%) CheckPoint
13 8 (1.38%) Liquidlogic
278 SLA jobs Nationwide