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

 6 months to
21 May 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 234 191 132
Rank change year-on-year -43 -59 +48
Contract jobs citing SLA 511 421 744
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.06% 1.45% 1.75%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 6.42% 9.17% 12.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 273 252 358
10th Percentile £210 £158 £150
25th Percentile £338 £200 £213
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £296 £330
Median % change year-on-year +56.12% -10.23% +10.92%
75th Percentile £525 £507 £488
90th Percentile £625 £603 £586
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £250 £285
% change year-on-year +80.00% -12.28% +14.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 96 37 91
10th Percentile £16.13 £14.70 £11.07
25th Percentile £17.69 £18.10 £12.83
Median hourly rate £18.67 £22.14 £14.70
Median % change year-on-year -15.70% +50.61% -20.54%
75th Percentile £20.35 £24.66 £23.45
90th Percentile £36.38 £33.75 £32.50
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 7,963 4,591 6,046
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.50% 15.77% 14.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,126 2,943 3,848
10th Percentile £344 £263 £280
25th Percentile £413 £400 £403
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £600 £619 £625
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £480
% change year-on-year +5.26% -1.04% +0.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 462 180 382
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.93 £10.95
25th Percentile £18.50 £22.14 £13.18
Median hourly rate £36.04 £34.50 £21.06
Median % change year-on-year +4.45% +63.84% -39.84%
75th Percentile £66.69 £67.50 £45.00
90th Percentile £81.70 £80.28 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £37.02 £18.27
% change year-on-year +8.05% +102.63% -43.78%

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 May 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 May 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 May 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 -56 455 £463 +55.46% 248
UK excluding London -69 319 £450 +80.00% 214
London -5 171 £475 +18.75% 65
Work from Home -35 113 £475 +102.13% 105
East of England +36 84 £492 +118.67% 19
North of England -54 73 £438 +75.00% 50
South East -75 67 £463 +85.00% 80
North West -32 42 £450 +80.00% 27
Midlands -77 37 £296 +25.96% 30
Scotland +14 33 £448 +45.10% 12
Yorkshire -46 27 £438 +2.94% 19
West Midlands -79 27 £296 +25.96% 19
South West -59 19 £431 +39.11% 24
East Midlands -26 9 £329 +9.50% 11
Wales -12 5 - - 3
North East -20 4 £270 - 4
Northern Ireland 0 2 £175 +18.24% 4

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 (2.94%) SharePoint
2 14 (2.74%) Microsoft Exchange
3 9 (1.76%) Confluence
4 7 (1.37%) OpenStack
5 5 (0.98%) Oracle Workflow
6 4 (0.78%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 4 (0.78%) IIS
7 3 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
7 3 (0.59%) SAS
8 2 (0.39%) ArcGIS
9 1 (0.20%) Apache
9 1 (0.20%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.20%) LiveCycle
9 1 (0.20%) Smallworld
9 1 (0.20%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.20%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 46 (9.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 38 (7.44%) Microsoft Office
3 27 (5.28%) Spreadsheet
4 6 (1.17%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 2 (0.39%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.20%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.20%) MicroStation
7 1 (0.20%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 13 (2.54%) Remedy ITSM
2 11 (2.15%) Oracle Payables
2 11 (2.15%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
3 9 (1.76%) Oracle Assets
4 6 (1.17%) Oracle ERP
4 6 (1.17%) Oracle Receivables
5 5 (0.98%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 4 (0.78%) Oracle General Ledger
7 3 (0.59%) Oracle EBS
8 2 (0.39%) Dynamics CRM
8 2 (0.39%) Dynamics GP
8 2 (0.39%) IntelliMatch
8 2 (0.39%) Oracle Applications
8 2 (0.39%) Oracle Cash Management
8 2 (0.39%) Oracle E-Business Tax
8 2 (0.39%) Oracle Financials
8 2 (0.39%) Payment Gateway
8 2 (0.39%) Temenos T24
9 1 (0.20%) Actimize
9 1 (0.20%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 78 (15.26%) Azure
2 59 (11.55%) AWS
3 47 (9.20%) Microsoft 365
4 22 (4.31%) Power Platform
5 18 (3.52%) GCP
6 17 (3.33%) Entra ID
6 17 (3.33%) IaaS
7 16 (3.13%) PaaS
8 15 (2.94%) SaaS
9 14 (2.74%) Amazon S3
10 12 (2.35%) OCI
11 11 (2.15%) Azure DevOps
11 11 (2.15%) Datadog
11 11 (2.15%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 10 (1.96%) Amazon EC2
12 10 (1.96%) AWS CloudFormation
13 9 (1.76%) Snowflake
14 7 (1.37%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 7 (1.37%) Azure Sentinel
14 7 (1.37%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 32 (6.26%) DNS
2 31 (6.07%) Firewall
3 24 (4.70%) DHCP
4 22 (4.31%) VPN
5 19 (3.72%) WAN
6 15 (2.94%) SAN
7 14 (2.74%) Wi-Fi
8 13 (2.54%) SD-WAN
9 11 (2.15%) Cisco ASA
9 11 (2.15%) LAN
9 11 (2.15%) Network Security
9 11 (2.15%) TCP/IP
9 11 (2.15%) VLAN
10 8 (1.57%) Radio Access Network
11 7 (1.37%) 5G
11 7 (1.37%) BGP
11 7 (1.37%) LTE
11 7 (1.37%) OSPF
11 7 (1.37%) Wireless
12 6 (1.17%) VoWiFi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (3.52%) Power BI
2 15 (2.94%) SQL Server
3 10 (1.96%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (1.57%) Oracle Reports
5 6 (1.17%) Tableau
6 5 (0.98%) Oracle Database
6 5 (0.98%) Relational Database
7 4 (0.78%) MongoDB
7 4 (0.78%) MySQL
8 3 (0.59%) Amazon Athena
8 3 (0.59%) Amazon RDS
8 3 (0.59%) GIS
8 3 (0.59%) Pentaho
8 3 (0.59%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 2 (0.39%) SAP HANA
9 2 (0.39%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 1 (0.20%) Azure SQL Database
10 1 (0.20%) Hadoop
10 1 (0.20%) Parquet
10 1 (0.20%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 40 (7.83%) JIRA
2 21 (4.11%) GitLab
3 19 (3.72%) Jenkins
4 18 (3.52%) Git
5 7 (1.37%) Chocolatey
6 6 (1.17%) Visual Studio
7 4 (0.78%) Maven
8 3 (0.59%) CircleCI
9 2 (0.39%) JMeter
9 2 (0.39%) Toad
10 1 (0.20%) Artifactory
10 1 (0.20%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.20%) Cucumber
10 1 (0.20%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 1 (0.20%) WiX
General
1 221 (43.25%) Social Skills
2 108 (21.14%) Finance
3 78 (15.26%) Analytical Skills
4 40 (7.83%) Banking
5 32 (6.26%) Public Sector
6 27 (5.28%) Organisational Skills
7 26 (5.09%) Documentation Skills
8 22 (4.31%) Telecoms
9 21 (4.11%) Legal
10 16 (3.13%) Retail
11 11 (2.15%) Aerospace
12 10 (1.96%) Billing
13 8 (1.57%) Financial Institution
13 8 (1.57%) Investment Banking
14 7 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
14 7 (1.37%) Manufacturing
15 6 (1.17%) Local Government
15 6 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
16 5 (0.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 5 (0.98%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 62 (12.13%) Analyst
2 54 (10.57%) IT Support
3 38 (7.44%) Administrator
4 37 (7.24%) Lead
5 35 (6.85%) Service Manager
6 31 (6.07%) Senior
7 29 (5.68%) Support Engineer
8 28 (5.48%) Service Analyst
9 22 (4.31%) Technical Support
10 21 (4.11%) IT Engineer
11 20 (3.91%) Consultant
12 19 (3.72%) Delivery Manager
13 18 (3.52%) Service Delivery Manager
14 16 (3.13%) Desktop Support
15 14 (2.74%) Service Desk Analyst
16 13 (2.54%) Network Engineer
17 12 (2.35%) Architect
17 12 (2.35%) Azure Engineer
18 11 (2.15%) AWS Engineer
18 11 (2.15%) Site Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (2.94%) Oracle Fusion
2 14 (2.74%) Middleware
3 11 (2.15%) LDAP
3 11 (2.15%) REST
4 8 (1.57%) Web Services
5 7 (1.37%) .NET
6 5 (0.98%) AWS CDK
6 5 (0.98%) Spring
7 4 (0.78%) 802.1X
7 4 (0.78%) AngularJS
7 4 (0.78%) ARM Templates
7 4 (0.78%) Bootstrap
7 4 (0.78%) CSS
7 4 (0.78%) J2EE
7 4 (0.78%) jQuery
7 4 (0.78%) Kafka
7 4 (0.78%) Sass
7 4 (0.78%) Spring MVC
8 3 (0.59%) ADO
8 3 (0.59%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 34 (6.65%) Onboarding
2 32 (6.26%) Data Centre
3 20 (3.91%) Product Ownership
4 18 (3.52%) Management Information System
5 10 (1.96%) Cloud Native
6 9 (1.76%) CMDB
6 9 (1.76%) Cyber Threat
7 8 (1.57%) Data Protection Act
8 7 (1.37%) BYOD
8 7 (1.37%) Enterprise Software
8 7 (1.37%) Self-Motivation
9 6 (1.17%) Analytical Mindset
9 6 (1.17%) Distributed Systems
9 6 (1.17%) Equities
9 6 (1.17%) PKI
9 6 (1.17%) Public Cloud
9 6 (1.17%) Security Posture
10 5 (0.98%) Driving Licence
10 5 (0.98%) IoT
10 5 (0.98%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 95 (18.59%) Windows
2 47 (9.20%) Linux
3 31 (6.07%) Windows 10
4 21 (4.11%) Unix
5 17 (3.33%) Windows Server
6 13 (2.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 11 (2.15%) CentOS
8 6 (1.17%) Android
9 3 (0.59%) Apple iOS
9 3 (0.59%) Mac OS
9 3 (0.59%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.39%) Windows 7
10 2 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.20%) Solaris
11 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
11 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.20%) Windows XP
Processes & Methodologies
1 149 (29.16%) ITIL
2 89 (17.42%) ITSM
3 86 (16.83%) Service Delivery
4 84 (16.44%) Continuous Improvement
5 82 (16.05%) Stakeholder Management
6 80 (15.66%) Problem-Solving
7 74 (14.48%) Root Cause Analysis
8 73 (14.29%) Customer Service
9 67 (13.11%) Change Management
10 62 (12.13%) Service Management
11 61 (11.94%) Agile
12 59 (11.55%) Incident Management
13 54 (10.57%) Time Management
14 46 (9.00%) Problem Management
15 41 (8.02%) Migration
16 40 (7.83%) Roadmaps
17 39 (7.63%) CI/CD
18 36 (7.05%) DevOps
19 35 (6.85%) Asset Management
19 35 (6.85%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 44 (8.61%) SQL
2 35 (6.85%) Python
3 18 (3.52%) PowerShell
3 18 (3.52%) Shell Script
4 16 (3.13%) Bash
5 13 (2.54%) Java
6 11 (2.15%) MATLAB
7 7 (1.37%) JavaScript
8 5 (0.98%) PL/SQL
9 3 (0.59%) Bicep
9 3 (0.59%) C++
9 3 (0.59%) Go
10 2 (0.39%) C#
10 2 (0.39%) Scala
10 2 (0.39%) VB
10 2 (0.39%) X++
11 1 (0.20%) Apex Code
11 1 (0.20%) Groovy
11 1 (0.20%) Korn
Qualifications
1 105 (20.55%) Security Cleared
2 81 (15.85%) SC Cleared
3 51 (9.98%) Degree
4 21 (4.11%) DV Cleared
5 12 (2.35%) BPSS Clearance
5 12 (2.35%) Cisco Certification
5 12 (2.35%) ITIL Certification
6 11 (2.15%) Microsoft Certification
7 8 (1.57%) CCNP
8 6 (1.17%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 6 (1.17%) Master's Degree
8 6 (1.17%) PMI Certification
9 5 (0.98%) CCSE
9 5 (0.98%) MCSE
10 4 (0.78%) CCNA
10 4 (0.78%) CCSM
10 4 (0.78%) CISA
10 4 (0.78%) MBA
10 4 (0.78%) RIBA
11 3 (0.59%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (2.94%) Data Quality
2 14 (2.74%) PMO
3 13 (2.54%) QA
4 12 (2.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 10 (1.96%) GRC
5 10 (1.96%) NIST
6 9 (1.76%) GDPR
7 6 (1.17%) PCI DSS
8 4 (0.78%) COBIT
8 4 (0.78%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.59%) ISO 20022
9 3 (0.59%) ISO/IEC 20000
9 3 (0.59%) JSP 440
9 3 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 2 (0.39%) ISO 31000
10 2 (0.39%) ISO 8583
10 2 (0.39%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.20%) DICOM
11 1 (0.20%) HL7
11 1 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 66 (12.92%) Active Directory
2 22 (4.31%) VMware Infrastructure
3 13 (2.54%) VMware ESXi
4 11 (2.15%) Docker
5 8 (1.57%) vSphere
6 7 (1.37%) Hyper-V
7 6 (1.17%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.59%) DFS Replication
9 2 (0.39%) Firmware
10 1 (0.20%) BitLocker
10 1 (0.20%) Ceph
10 1 (0.20%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
10 1 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.20%) VMware Workstation
10 1 (0.20%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 25 (4.89%) SCCM
2 23 (4.50%) Ansible
3 22 (4.31%) Microsoft Intune
4 20 (3.91%) Terraform
5 15 (2.94%) Kubernetes
6 12 (2.35%) Grafana
6 12 (2.35%) ServiceCenter
7 11 (2.15%) Check_MK
7 11 (2.15%) Podman
7 11 (2.15%) Red Hat Satellite
8 10 (1.96%) Single Sign-On
9 9 (1.76%) vCenter Server
10 4 (0.78%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 4 (0.78%) Prometheus
10 4 (0.78%) TeamSite
11 3 (0.59%) FortiGate
11 3 (0.59%) Oracle Identity Management
11 3 (0.59%) Oracle Identity Manager
12 2 (0.39%) HP Quality Center
12 2 (0.39%) SCOM
Vendors
1 144 (28.18%) Microsoft
2 85 (16.63%) ServiceNow
3 49 (9.59%) Oracle
4 43 (8.41%) VMware
5 32 (6.26%) HP
6 30 (5.87%) Cisco
7 24 (4.70%) Dell
8 21 (4.11%) Apple
8 21 (4.11%) SAP
9 19 (3.72%) Remedy
10 15 (2.94%) Splunk
11 12 (2.35%) Red Hat
12 11 (2.15%) IBM
12 11 (2.15%) Tenable
13 10 (1.96%) AppDynamics
14 8 (1.57%) CheckPoint
14 8 (1.57%) Ericsson
14 8 (1.57%) Fortinet
14 8 (1.57%) Huawei
14 8 (1.57%) Palo Alto
277 SLA jobs Nationwide