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

 6 months to
30 Jun 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 244 195 147
Rank change year-on-year -49 -48 +51
Contract jobs citing SLA 546 428 697
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.06% 1.40% 1.61%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 6.32% 8.55% 11.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 304 250 328
10th Percentile £200 £181 £154
25th Percentile £300 £217 £200
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £350 £340
Median % change year-on-year +28.57% +2.94% +13.81%
75th Percentile £520 £536 £491
90th Percentile £600 £613 £586
UK excluding London median daily rate £448 £270 £288
% change year-on-year +65.93% -6.17% +4.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 90 48 88
10th Percentile £13.67 £15.85 £11.07
25th Percentile £17.57 £17.75 £12.75
Median hourly rate £18.73 £22.14 £15.24
Median % change year-on-year -15.41% +45.28% -17.62%
75th Percentile £20.92 £25.15 £23.80
90th Percentile £25.98 £36.45 £26.15
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.50 £22.14 £14.00
% change year-on-year -16.44% +58.14% -23.18%

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 8,645 5,004 5,915
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.85% 16.35% 13.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,537 3,212 3,668
10th Percentile £340 £279 £281
25th Percentile £413 £400 £402
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £475
% change year-on-year +6.38% -1.05% -4.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 527 208 432
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.78 £11.07
25th Percentile £19.33 £18.50 £13.50
Median hourly rate £36.07 £31.57 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year +14.27% +32.63% -36.95%
75th Percentile £67.50 £64.06 £50.00
90th Percentile £82.04 £83.96 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.79 £29.00 £20.47
% change year-on-year +26.84% +41.71% -45.43%

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 30 June 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 30 June 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 30 June 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 -49 468 £450 +20.00% 202
UK excluding London -71 337 £448 +65.93% 200
London -27 184 £450 +12.50% 39
Work from Home +4 134 £475 +26.67% 70
South East -83 75 £463 +85.00% 70
North of England -55 73 £435 +33.85% 34
East of England +14 58 £496 +120.44% 31
Midlands -70 53 £288 -20.69% 19
Scotland +19 47 £440 +42.51% 14
West Midlands -68 44 £269 -25.86% 12
North West -30 40 £438 +2.94% 20
Yorkshire -48 31 £365 +45.71% 8
South West -42 24 £400 +46.79% 25
Wales -10 11 £538 +104.76% 9
East Midlands -14 8 £475 - 7
Northern Ireland +3 2 £175 - 7
North East -33 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 21 (3.85%) SharePoint
2 13 (2.38%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (1.83%) Confluence
4 7 (1.28%) OpenStack
5 5 (0.92%) IIS
5 5 (0.92%) Oracle Workflow
5 5 (0.92%) SAS
6 4 (0.73%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 3 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
8 2 (0.37%) ArcGIS
8 2 (0.37%) Exchange Server 2010
9 1 (0.18%) Apache
9 1 (0.18%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.18%) LiveCycle
9 1 (0.18%) Smallworld
Applications
1 53 (9.71%) Microsoft Office
2 50 (9.16%) Microsoft Excel
3 15 (2.75%) Spreadsheet
4 8 (1.47%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 2 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.18%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.18%) MicroStation
7 1 (0.18%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 14 (2.56%) Remedy ITSM
2 11 (2.01%) Oracle Payables
3 10 (1.83%) Oracle Assets
3 10 (1.83%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 7 (1.28%) ContrOCC
5 6 (1.10%) Oracle ERP
5 6 (1.10%) Oracle Receivables
6 5 (0.92%) Dynamics CRM
6 5 (0.92%) Oracle Applications
6 5 (0.92%) Oracle General Ledger
6 5 (0.92%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 3 (0.55%) Oracle Cash Management
7 3 (0.55%) Oracle EBS
8 2 (0.37%) Dynamics GP
8 2 (0.37%) IntelliMatch
8 2 (0.37%) Oracle EBS R12
8 2 (0.37%) Oracle Financials
8 2 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
9 1 (0.18%) OpenText VIM for SAP
9 1 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 95 (17.40%) Azure
2 67 (12.27%) Microsoft 365
3 54 (9.89%) AWS
4 27 (4.95%) Entra ID
5 21 (3.85%) Power Platform
6 18 (3.30%) Azure DevOps
7 16 (2.93%) SaaS
8 15 (2.75%) OneDrive
9 14 (2.56%) Amazon S3
9 14 (2.56%) OCI
10 13 (2.38%) Datadog
10 13 (2.38%) IaaS
10 13 (2.38%) PaaS
11 11 (2.01%) GCP
11 11 (2.01%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 10 (1.83%) Amazon EC2
13 9 (1.65%) Azure Sentinel
13 9 (1.65%) Snowflake
14 8 (1.47%) AWS CloudFormation
15 7 (1.28%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 28 (5.13%) DNS
2 25 (4.58%) VPN
3 23 (4.21%) DHCP
3 23 (4.21%) Firewall
4 22 (4.03%) WAN
5 17 (3.11%) Wi-Fi
6 16 (2.93%) LAN
7 14 (2.56%) Network Security
7 14 (2.56%) SAN
8 10 (1.83%) Cisco ASA
8 10 (1.83%) Cisco IOS
8 10 (1.83%) SD-WAN
9 9 (1.65%) MPLS
9 9 (1.65%) VLAN
9 9 (1.65%) Wireless
10 8 (1.47%) TCP/IP
11 7 (1.28%) 5G
11 7 (1.28%) LTE
11 7 (1.28%) Radio Access Network
11 7 (1.28%) SDH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (3.11%) Power BI
1 17 (3.11%) SQL Server
2 8 (1.47%) Oracle Reports
2 8 (1.47%) Tableau
3 5 (0.92%) Oracle Database
3 5 (0.92%) Pentaho
3 5 (0.92%) Relational Database
4 4 (0.73%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (0.73%) MySQL
4 4 (0.73%) PostgreSQL
5 3 (0.55%) Amazon Athena
5 3 (0.55%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 2 (0.37%) GIS
6 2 (0.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 1 (0.18%) Apache Iceberg
7 1 (0.18%) Azure SQL Database
7 1 (0.18%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.18%) Db2
7 1 (0.18%) Hadoop
7 1 (0.18%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 47 (8.61%) JIRA
2 14 (2.56%) GitLab
3 12 (2.20%) Jenkins
4 11 (2.01%) Git
5 7 (1.28%) Chocolatey
6 4 (0.73%) Maven
7 3 (0.55%) Visual Studio
8 2 (0.37%) Artifactory
8 2 (0.37%) JMeter
8 2 (0.37%) 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
1 243 (44.51%) Social Skills
2 112 (20.51%) Finance
3 94 (17.22%) Analytical Skills
4 43 (7.88%) Public Sector
5 34 (6.23%) Banking
6 30 (5.49%) Organisational Skills
7 26 (4.76%) Documentation Skills
8 25 (4.58%) Telecoms
9 22 (4.03%) Legal
10 13 (2.38%) Billing
11 12 (2.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 12 (2.20%) Local Government
11 12 (2.20%) Retail
12 9 (1.65%) Manufacturing
13 8 (1.47%) Aerospace
13 8 (1.47%) Financial Institution
14 7 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
14 7 (1.28%) Investment Banking
15 6 (1.10%) Marketing
16 5 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 72 (13.19%) Analyst
2 50 (9.16%) IT Support
3 38 (6.96%) Support Engineer
4 36 (6.59%) Lead
5 34 (6.23%) Senior
6 33 (6.04%) Service Manager
7 31 (5.68%) Administrator
8 25 (4.58%) Service Analyst
9 24 (4.40%) IT Engineer
10 22 (4.03%) Delivery Manager
11 20 (3.66%) Consultant
12 19 (3.48%) Service Delivery Manager
12 19 (3.48%) Technical Support
13 17 (3.11%) Azure Engineer
13 17 (3.11%) Desktop Engineer
14 16 (2.93%) Desktop Support
14 16 (2.93%) Network Engineer
15 15 (2.75%) Applications Support
15 15 (2.75%) Coordinator
16 13 (2.38%) Service Desk Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (2.56%) Oracle Fusion
2 10 (1.83%) Middleware
3 9 (1.65%) .NET
3 9 (1.65%) REST
4 8 (1.47%) LDAP
4 8 (1.47%) Web Services
5 6 (1.10%) Software Packaging
6 5 (0.92%) ARM Templates
6 5 (0.92%) AWS CDK
6 5 (0.92%) Spring
7 4 (0.73%) AngularJS
7 4 (0.73%) Bootstrap
7 4 (0.73%) CSS
7 4 (0.73%) J2EE
7 4 (0.73%) jQuery
7 4 (0.73%) Sass
7 4 (0.73%) Spring MVC
8 3 (0.55%) ADO
9 2 (0.37%) RESTful
9 2 (0.37%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 47 (8.61%) Onboarding
2 32 (5.86%) Data Centre
3 18 (3.30%) CMDB
4 12 (2.20%) Product Ownership
4 12 (2.20%) Smartphone
5 11 (2.01%) Enterprise Software
6 10 (1.83%) Cloud Native
6 10 (1.83%) Management Information System
7 9 (1.65%) Cyber Threat
7 9 (1.65%) PKI
8 8 (1.47%) BYOD
9 7 (1.28%) Data Protection Act
9 7 (1.28%) Driving Licence
9 7 (1.28%) Self-Motivation
9 7 (1.28%) Virtual Team
10 6 (1.10%) Analytical Mindset
11 5 (0.92%) IoT
12 4 (0.73%) Augmented Reality
12 4 (0.73%) Enterprise Cloud
12 4 (0.73%) iPhone
Operating Systems
1 117 (21.43%) Windows
2 40 (7.33%) Linux
3 38 (6.96%) Windows 10
4 24 (4.40%) Windows Server
5 19 (3.48%) Android
6 16 (2.93%) Unix
7 11 (2.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 8 (1.47%) CentOS
9 5 (0.92%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.92%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.92%) Windows 7
10 4 (0.73%) Windows Server 2012
10 4 (0.73%) Windows XP
11 2 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
12 1 (0.18%) Solaris
12 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2003
12 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 178 (32.60%) ITIL
2 110 (20.15%) Problem-Solving
3 108 (19.78%) ITSM
4 105 (19.23%) Continuous Improvement
5 98 (17.95%) Stakeholder Management
6 97 (17.77%) Customer Service
7 86 (15.75%) Service Delivery
8 83 (15.20%) Change Management
9 82 (15.02%) Agile
10 81 (14.84%) Service Management
11 68 (12.45%) Root Cause Analysis
12 52 (9.52%) Incident Management
13 51 (9.34%) Problem Management
14 45 (8.24%) Migration
15 43 (7.88%) Time Management
16 42 (7.69%) Roadmaps
17 41 (7.51%) Asset Management
17 41 (7.51%) DevOps
18 40 (7.33%) Project Management
19 38 (6.96%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 44 (8.06%) SQL
2 32 (5.86%) Python
3 23 (4.21%) PowerShell
4 16 (2.93%) Bash
5 11 (2.01%) Shell Script
6 9 (1.65%) Java
7 8 (1.47%) MATLAB
8 7 (1.28%) JavaScript
9 6 (1.10%) PL/SQL
10 4 (0.73%) Bicep
11 2 (0.37%) C#
11 2 (0.37%) Scala
11 2 (0.37%) VB
11 2 (0.37%) X++
12 1 (0.18%) Apex Code
12 1 (0.18%) COBOL
12 1 (0.18%) Groovy
12 1 (0.18%) Korn
12 1 (0.18%) RPG
12 1 (0.18%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 122 (22.34%) Security Cleared
2 99 (18.13%) SC Cleared
3 50 (9.16%) Degree
4 23 (4.21%) DV Cleared
5 19 (3.48%) ITIL Certification
6 17 (3.11%) BPSS Clearance
6 17 (3.11%) Cisco Certification
7 15 (2.75%) Microsoft Certification
8 11 (2.01%) CCNP
9 9 (1.65%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 8 (1.47%) MCSE
10 8 (1.47%) PMI Certification
11 7 (1.28%) CCNA
12 6 (1.10%) Azure Certification
12 6 (1.10%) CCSE
12 6 (1.10%) Master's Degree
13 5 (0.92%) CCSM
14 4 (0.73%) CISA
14 4 (0.73%) MBA
14 4 (0.73%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (3.48%) Data Quality
2 15 (2.75%) PMO
3 14 (2.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 14 (2.56%) QA
4 11 (2.01%) NIST
5 9 (1.65%) COBIT
5 9 (1.65%) GDPR
5 9 (1.65%) GRC
6 6 (1.10%) PCI DSS
7 3 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials
7 3 (0.55%) ISO 20022
7 3 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 3 (0.55%) JSP 440
7 3 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 2 (0.37%) ISO 31000
8 2 (0.37%) ISO 8583
8 2 (0.37%) ISO 9001
8 2 (0.37%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.18%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.18%) HL7
System Software
1 73 (13.37%) Active Directory
2 24 (4.40%) VMware Infrastructure
3 15 (2.75%) VMware ESXi
4 8 (1.47%) Hyper-V
4 8 (1.47%) Virtual Desktop
5 7 (1.28%) Docker
6 6 (1.10%) vSphere
7 3 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (0.37%) Firmware
9 1 (0.18%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.18%) Ceph
9 1 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.18%) VMware Workstation
9 1 (0.18%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 33 (6.04%) Microsoft Intune
2 31 (5.68%) SCCM
3 20 (3.66%) Terraform
4 18 (3.30%) Ansible
5 16 (2.93%) Kubernetes
6 12 (2.20%) Single Sign-On
7 10 (1.83%) vCenter Server
8 9 (1.65%) ServiceCenter
9 8 (1.47%) Check_MK
9 8 (1.47%) Grafana
9 8 (1.47%) Podman
9 8 (1.47%) Red Hat Satellite
10 6 (1.10%) Jamf Pro
11 5 (0.92%) Prometheus
12 3 (0.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 3 (0.55%) FortiGate
12 3 (0.55%) Oracle Identity Management
12 3 (0.55%) Oracle Identity Manager
12 3 (0.55%) TeamSite
12 3 (0.55%) vMotion
Vendors
1 167 (30.59%) Microsoft
2 86 (15.75%) ServiceNow
3 50 (9.16%) Oracle
4 44 (8.06%) Cisco
5 43 (7.88%) VMware
6 28 (5.13%) HP
7 27 (4.95%) Apple
8 19 (3.48%) Dell
8 19 (3.48%) Remedy
9 15 (2.75%) SAP
10 11 (2.01%) Tenable
11 10 (1.83%) Red Hat
11 10 (1.83%) Zscaler
12 9 (1.65%) CheckPoint
12 9 (1.65%) Fortinet
12 9 (1.65%) IBM
12 9 (1.65%) Nokia
12 9 (1.65%) Palo Alto
12 9 (1.65%) Salesforce
12 9 (1.65%) Splunk
241 SLA jobs Nationwide