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

 6 months to
10 Jun 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 236 184 144
Rank change year-on-year -52 -40 +38
Contract jobs citing SLA 532 438 723
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.08% 1.49% 1.66%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 6.42% 9.25% 12.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 289 253 348
10th Percentile £208 £175 £150
25th Percentile £313 £213 £214
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £325 £340
Median % change year-on-year +38.46% -4.41% +14.29%
75th Percentile £519 £530 £488
90th Percentile £594 £613 £583
UK excluding London median daily rate £448 £256 £293
% change year-on-year +74.83% -12.47% +6.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 92 45 88
10th Percentile £13.73 £15.70 £11.07
25th Percentile £17.69 £18.51 £12.75
Median hourly rate £18.50 £22.14 £14.75
Median % change year-on-year -16.44% +50.10% -19.07%
75th Percentile £21.22 £25.11 £23.85
90th Percentile £26.08 £39.15 £30.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.50 £22.14 £13.50
% change year-on-year -16.44% +64.00% -24.89%

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 8,281 4,734 5,997
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.73% 16.12% 13.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,303 3,009 3,752
10th Percentile £344 £275 £281
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
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 £717 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +5.26% - -2.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 487 196 428
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.12 £11.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.50 £13.18
Median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £23.30
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% +39.51% -39.82%
75th Percentile £67.50 £67.50 £48.75
90th Percentile £82.04 £83.08 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.79 £32.50 £19.17
% change year-on-year +13.18% +69.54% -50.27%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 -60 464 £450 +38.46% 222
UK excluding London -68 330 £448 +74.83% 196
London -24 178 £475 +26.67% 54
Work from Home -4 128 £475 +90.00% 78
North of England -55 75 £436 +74.50% 40
South East -86 75 £463 +68.18% 67
East of England +26 69 £492 +118.67% 31
North West -27 43 £438 +75.00% 29
Midlands -79 43 £299 +23.40% 31
Scotland +13 42 £440 +42.51% 12
West Midlands -70 33 £299 +27.34% 15
Yorkshire -47 30 £431 +11.13% 10
South West -46 23 £400 +35.59% 13
East Midlands -25 9 £329 +31.40% 17
Wales -16 5 - - 2
North East -22 2 £280 - 1
Northern Ireland - 2 £175 - 8

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 20 (3.76%) SharePoint
2 13 (2.44%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (1.88%) Confluence
4 7 (1.32%) OpenStack
5 5 (0.94%) Oracle Workflow
5 5 (0.94%) SAS
6 4 (0.75%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 4 (0.75%) IIS
7 3 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
8 2 (0.38%) ArcGIS
9 1 (0.19%) Apache
9 1 (0.19%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.19%) LiveCycle
9 1 (0.19%) Smallworld
Applications
1 49 (9.21%) Microsoft Office
2 48 (9.02%) Microsoft Excel
3 19 (3.57%) Spreadsheet
4 6 (1.13%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 2 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.19%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.19%) MicroStation
7 1 (0.19%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 14 (2.63%) Remedy ITSM
2 11 (2.07%) Oracle Payables
2 11 (2.07%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
3 9 (1.69%) Oracle Assets
4 6 (1.13%) Oracle ERP
4 6 (1.13%) Oracle Receivables
5 5 (0.94%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 4 (0.75%) Dynamics CRM
6 4 (0.75%) Oracle General Ledger
7 3 (0.56%) Oracle EBS
8 2 (0.38%) ContrOCC
8 2 (0.38%) Dynamics GP
8 2 (0.38%) IntelliMatch
8 2 (0.38%) Oracle Applications
8 2 (0.38%) Oracle Cash Management
8 2 (0.38%) Oracle E-Business Tax
8 2 (0.38%) Oracle Financials
8 2 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
9 1 (0.19%) Actimize
9 1 (0.19%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 97 (18.23%) Azure
2 61 (11.47%) Microsoft 365
3 58 (10.90%) AWS
4 23 (4.32%) Power Platform
5 22 (4.14%) Entra ID
6 17 (3.20%) Azure DevOps
6 17 (3.20%) GCP
7 16 (3.01%) IaaS
8 15 (2.82%) PaaS
8 15 (2.82%) SaaS
9 14 (2.63%) Amazon S3
10 12 (2.26%) OCI
10 12 (2.26%) OneDrive
11 11 (2.07%) AWS CloudFormation
11 11 (2.07%) Datadog
11 11 (2.07%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 10 (1.88%) Amazon EC2
13 9 (1.69%) Azure Sentinel
13 9 (1.69%) Snowflake
14 8 (1.50%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 34 (6.39%) DNS
2 32 (6.02%) Firewall
3 26 (4.89%) DHCP
4 25 (4.70%) VPN
5 20 (3.76%) WAN
6 15 (2.82%) SAN
6 15 (2.82%) Wi-Fi
7 13 (2.44%) Network Security
7 13 (2.44%) TCP/IP
8 12 (2.26%) Cisco ASA
8 12 (2.26%) LAN
8 12 (2.26%) SD-WAN
9 11 (2.07%) VLAN
10 10 (1.88%) Wireless
11 8 (1.50%) Cisco IOS
12 7 (1.32%) 5G
12 7 (1.32%) LTE
12 7 (1.32%) MPLS
12 7 (1.32%) OSPF
12 7 (1.32%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (3.57%) Power BI
2 16 (3.01%) SQL Server
3 9 (1.69%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (1.50%) Oracle Reports
4 8 (1.50%) Tableau
5 5 (0.94%) Oracle Database
5 5 (0.94%) Pentaho
6 4 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
6 4 (0.75%) MongoDB
6 4 (0.75%) MySQL
6 4 (0.75%) Relational Database
7 3 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (0.56%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 2 (0.38%) GIS
8 2 (0.38%) SAP HANA
8 2 (0.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 1 (0.19%) Azure SQL Database
9 1 (0.19%) Data Warehouse
9 1 (0.19%) Db2
9 1 (0.19%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 49 (9.21%) JIRA
2 22 (4.14%) GitLab
3 20 (3.76%) Jenkins
4 18 (3.38%) Git
5 7 (1.32%) Chocolatey
6 4 (0.75%) Maven
7 3 (0.56%) CircleCI
7 3 (0.56%) Visual Studio
8 2 (0.38%) Artifactory
8 2 (0.38%) JMeter
8 2 (0.38%) Toad
9 1 (0.19%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.19%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.19%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 1 (0.19%) WiX
General
1 238 (44.74%) Social Skills
2 103 (19.36%) Finance
3 86 (16.17%) Analytical Skills
4 41 (7.71%) Public Sector
5 36 (6.77%) Banking
6 30 (5.64%) Organisational Skills
7 26 (4.89%) Documentation Skills
8 22 (4.14%) Telecoms
9 19 (3.57%) Legal
10 13 (2.44%) Billing
11 12 (2.26%) Retail
12 11 (2.07%) Aerospace
13 9 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 9 (1.69%) Local Government
13 9 (1.69%) Manufacturing
14 7 (1.32%) Financial Institution
14 7 (1.32%) Investment Banking
15 6 (1.13%) Influencing Skills
15 6 (1.13%) Marketing
15 6 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 68 (12.78%) Analyst
2 56 (10.53%) IT Support
3 37 (6.95%) Lead
4 36 (6.77%) Administrator
4 36 (6.77%) Support Engineer
5 32 (6.02%) Service Manager
6 31 (5.83%) Senior
7 30 (5.64%) Service Analyst
8 23 (4.32%) IT Engineer
9 22 (4.14%) Technical Support
10 20 (3.76%) Consultant
10 20 (3.76%) Delivery Manager
11 18 (3.38%) Service Delivery Manager
12 16 (3.01%) Azure Engineer
12 16 (3.01%) Desktop Engineer
12 16 (3.01%) Desktop Support
12 16 (3.01%) Service Desk Analyst
13 15 (2.82%) Network Engineer
14 14 (2.63%) Coordinator
15 12 (2.26%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (2.82%) Oracle Fusion
2 13 (2.44%) Middleware
3 11 (2.07%) LDAP
4 10 (1.88%) REST
5 8 (1.50%) .NET
5 8 (1.50%) Web Services
6 6 (1.13%) Software Packaging
7 5 (0.94%) ARM Templates
7 5 (0.94%) AWS CDK
7 5 (0.94%) Spring
8 4 (0.75%) 802.1X
8 4 (0.75%) AngularJS
8 4 (0.75%) Bootstrap
8 4 (0.75%) CSS
8 4 (0.75%) J2EE
8 4 (0.75%) jQuery
8 4 (0.75%) Kafka
8 4 (0.75%) Sass
8 4 (0.75%) Spring MVC
9 3 (0.56%) ADO
Miscellaneous
1 42 (7.89%) Onboarding
2 32 (6.02%) Data Centre
3 17 (3.20%) CMDB
4 16 (3.01%) Product Ownership
5 15 (2.82%) Management Information System
6 11 (2.07%) Cloud Native
7 10 (1.88%) Smartphone
8 9 (1.69%) Cyber Threat
8 9 (1.69%) Enterprise Software
9 8 (1.50%) Data Protection Act
10 7 (1.32%) BYOD
10 7 (1.32%) Virtual Team
11 6 (1.13%) Analytical Mindset
11 6 (1.13%) Driving Licence
11 6 (1.13%) PKI
11 6 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
12 5 (0.94%) IoT
12 5 (0.94%) Security Posture
13 4 (0.75%) Hybrid Cloud
13 4 (0.75%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 112 (21.05%) Windows
2 49 (9.21%) Linux
3 33 (6.20%) Windows 10
4 21 (3.95%) Unix
5 19 (3.57%) Windows Server
6 17 (3.20%) Android
7 14 (2.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 11 (2.07%) CentOS
9 6 (1.13%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.94%) Apple iOS
10 5 (0.94%) Windows 7
11 4 (0.75%) Windows XP
12 3 (0.56%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
14 1 (0.19%) Solaris
14 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2003
14 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 162 (30.45%) ITIL
2 98 (18.42%) ITSM
3 96 (18.05%) Problem-Solving
4 88 (16.54%) Continuous Improvement
4 88 (16.54%) Stakeholder Management
5 85 (15.98%) Customer Service
6 82 (15.41%) Service Delivery
7 75 (14.10%) Service Management
8 74 (13.91%) Agile
8 74 (13.91%) Root Cause Analysis
9 72 (13.53%) Change Management
10 56 (10.53%) Incident Management
11 52 (9.77%) Problem Management
12 47 (8.83%) Time Management
13 46 (8.65%) Migration
14 45 (8.46%) DevOps
15 44 (8.27%) Asset Management
16 42 (7.89%) CI/CD
17 40 (7.52%) Roadmaps
18 34 (6.39%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 48 (9.02%) SQL
2 35 (6.58%) Python
3 20 (3.76%) PowerShell
4 19 (3.57%) Bash
5 17 (3.20%) Shell Script
6 14 (2.63%) Java
7 11 (2.07%) MATLAB
8 7 (1.32%) JavaScript
9 6 (1.13%) PL/SQL
10 4 (0.75%) Bicep
10 4 (0.75%) Go
11 2 (0.38%) C#
11 2 (0.38%) Scala
11 2 (0.38%) VB
11 2 (0.38%) X++
12 1 (0.19%) Apex Code
12 1 (0.19%) Groovy
12 1 (0.19%) Korn
Qualifications
1 122 (22.93%) Security Cleared
2 94 (17.67%) SC Cleared
3 49 (9.21%) Degree
4 24 (4.51%) DV Cleared
5 17 (3.20%) ITIL Certification
6 13 (2.44%) BPSS Clearance
6 13 (2.44%) Cisco Certification
7 12 (2.26%) Microsoft Certification
8 9 (1.69%) CCNP
9 7 (1.32%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 7 (1.32%) PMI Certification
10 6 (1.13%) CCSE
10 6 (1.13%) Master's Degree
10 6 (1.13%) MCSE
11 5 (0.94%) Azure Certification
11 5 (0.94%) CCSM
12 4 (0.75%) CCNA
12 4 (0.75%) CISA
12 4 (0.75%) MBA
12 4 (0.75%) RIBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (3.57%) Data Quality
2 14 (2.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 14 (2.63%) PMO
3 13 (2.44%) QA
4 11 (2.07%) NIST
5 9 (1.69%) GDPR
5 9 (1.69%) GRC
6 8 (1.50%) COBIT
7 6 (1.13%) PCI DSS
8 3 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials
8 3 (0.56%) ISO 20022
8 3 (0.56%) JSP 440
8 3 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 2 (0.38%) ISO 31000
9 2 (0.38%) ISO 8583
9 2 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 20000
9 2 (0.38%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.19%) HL7
10 1 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 1 (0.19%) NCSC
System Software
1 73 (13.72%) Active Directory
2 24 (4.51%) VMware Infrastructure
3 15 (2.82%) VMware ESXi
4 12 (2.26%) Docker
5 9 (1.69%) vSphere
6 8 (1.50%) Hyper-V
6 8 (1.50%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.56%) DFS Replication
8 2 (0.38%) Firmware
8 2 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
9 1 (0.19%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.19%) Ceph
9 1 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.19%) VMware Workstation
9 1 (0.19%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 31 (5.83%) Microsoft Intune
2 29 (5.45%) SCCM
3 26 (4.89%) Ansible
4 23 (4.32%) Terraform
5 20 (3.76%) Kubernetes
6 13 (2.44%) Grafana
7 11 (2.07%) Check_MK
7 11 (2.07%) Podman
7 11 (2.07%) Red Hat Satellite
7 11 (2.07%) Single Sign-On
8 10 (1.88%) ServiceCenter
8 10 (1.88%) vCenter Server
9 6 (1.13%) Jamf Pro
10 5 (0.94%) Prometheus
11 4 (0.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 3 (0.56%) FortiGate
12 3 (0.56%) Oracle Identity Management
12 3 (0.56%) Oracle Identity Manager
12 3 (0.56%) TeamSite
12 3 (0.56%) vMotion
Vendors
1 165 (31.02%) Microsoft
2 85 (15.98%) ServiceNow
3 53 (9.96%) Oracle
4 46 (8.65%) VMware
5 38 (7.14%) Cisco
6 30 (5.64%) HP
7 27 (5.08%) Apple
8 21 (3.95%) Dell
9 19 (3.57%) Remedy
10 17 (3.20%) SAP
11 14 (2.63%) Splunk
12 13 (2.44%) Red Hat
13 11 (2.07%) Tenable
14 10 (1.88%) AppDynamics
15 9 (1.69%) CheckPoint
15 9 (1.69%) Fortinet
15 9 (1.69%) Palo Alto
15 9 (1.69%) Zscaler
16 8 (1.50%) IBM
16 8 (1.50%) Salesforce
259 SLA jobs Nationwide