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

 6 months to
20 Aug 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 243 197 172
Rank change year-on-year -46 -25 +11
Contract jobs citing SLA 577 466 548
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.08% 1.42% 1.41%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 6.25% 8.31% 10.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 339 261 264
10th Percentile £181 £200 £156
25th Percentile £250 £220 £200
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £375 £331
Median % change year-on-year +13.33% +13.21% -5.36%
75th Percentile £519 £544 £495
90th Percentile £600 £613 £588
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £325 £291
% change year-on-year +26.92% +11.88% -3.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 63 69 79
10th Percentile £13.45 £15.90 £11.78
25th Percentile £15.22 £17.48 £13.09
Median hourly rate £18.79 £22.14 £17.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.13% +30.24% -2.86%
75th Percentile £22.26 £25.15 £24.18
90th Percentile £27.86 £35.55 £32.26
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 9,228 5,605 5,204
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.25% 17.07% 13.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,907 3,594 3,214
10th Percentile £325 £285 £290
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £605 £625
90th Percentile £703 £713 £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 568 266 311
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.60 £11.07
25th Percentile £17.72 £17.38 £14.42
Median hourly rate £36.07 £28.18 £25.77
Median % change year-on-year +28.00% +9.37% -26.39%
75th Percentile £70.00 £61.99 £55.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £85.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.79 £25.08 £25.00
% change year-on-year +46.70% +0.30% -28.57%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -69 477 £425 +13.33% 303
UK excluding London -72 339 £413 +26.92% 234
London -23 203 £425 -2.86% 106
Work from Home -18 136 £463 +42.31% 101
North of England -34 88 £438 +74.65% 54
South East -71 77 £463 +54.17% 77
Scotland +39 64 £325 -4.41% 17
North West -7 59 £443 +36.15% 33
Midlands -65 52 £250 -31.03% 36
West Midlands -62 44 £250 -34.64% 22
East of England -11 29 £505 +75.65% 28
South West -49 29 £356 +9.54% 22
Yorkshire -49 26 £450 +79.64% 16
Wales -12 11 £525 +100.00% 6
East Midlands -20 7 £363 +174.62% 14
North East -36 3 £228 - 5
Northern Ireland +5 1 £175 - 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 39 (6.76%) SharePoint
2 27 (4.68%) Microsoft Exchange
3 8 (1.39%) Confluence
4 7 (1.21%) OpenStack
5 5 (0.87%) IIS
6 4 (0.69%) SAS
7 3 (0.52%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 3 (0.52%) Apache Airflow
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 (9.71%) Microsoft Office
2 28 (4.85%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (1.04%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.87%) Spreadsheet
5 4 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 2 (0.35%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.17%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.17%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.17%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 14 (2.43%) Remedy ITSM
2 8 (1.39%) ContrOCC
3 5 (0.87%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.87%) 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%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 116 (20.10%) Microsoft 365
2 106 (18.37%) Azure
3 54 (9.36%) AWS
3 54 (9.36%) Entra ID
4 23 (3.99%) OneDrive
5 21 (3.64%) Power Platform
6 19 (3.29%) SaaS
7 16 (2.77%) Datadog
8 15 (2.60%) Azure DevOps
9 12 (2.08%) IaaS
9 12 (2.08%) PaaS
10 10 (1.73%) Amazon S3
10 10 (1.73%) OCI
11 9 (1.56%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 9 (1.56%) Azure Sentinel
11 9 (1.56%) Snowflake
12 8 (1.39%) Serverless
13 7 (1.21%) AWS CloudFormation
13 7 (1.21%) GCP
14 6 (1.04%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 42 (7.28%) DNS
2 38 (6.59%) VPN
3 33 (5.72%) DHCP
4 28 (4.85%) WAN
5 27 (4.68%) LAN
6 25 (4.33%) Firewall
7 24 (4.16%) Wi-Fi
8 23 (3.99%) TCP/IP
9 18 (3.12%) Network Security
10 17 (2.95%) SAN
11 14 (2.43%) SDH
12 13 (2.25%) VLAN
13 11 (1.91%) MPLS
14 9 (1.56%) Cisco IOS
15 8 (1.39%) Radio Access Network
15 8 (1.39%) Skype
15 8 (1.39%) Wireless
16 7 (1.21%) 5G
16 7 (1.21%) Cisco ASA
16 7 (1.21%) LTE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (3.81%) SQL Server
2 16 (2.77%) Power BI
3 8 (1.39%) Tableau
4 7 (1.21%) Oracle Reports
5 5 (0.87%) MySQL
5 5 (0.87%) PostgreSQL
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%) Data Warehouse
9 1 (0.17%) GIS
Development Applications
1 47 (8.15%) JIRA
2 10 (1.73%) GitLab
3 8 (1.39%) Chocolatey
3 8 (1.39%) Jenkins
4 6 (1.04%) Git
5 3 (0.52%) Maven
5 3 (0.52%) RStudio
5 3 (0.52%) Visual Studio
6 2 (0.35%) Artifactory
6 2 (0.35%) Toad
7 1 (0.17%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.17%) WiX
General
1 240 (41.59%) Social Skills
2 110 (19.06%) Finance
3 107 (18.54%) Analytical Skills
4 38 (6.59%) Public Sector
5 31 (5.37%) Banking
6 29 (5.03%) Telecoms
7 26 (4.51%) Organisational Skills
8 21 (3.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 20 (3.47%) Documentation Skills
10 16 (2.77%) Legal
11 15 (2.60%) Local Government
11 15 (2.60%) Retail
12 13 (2.25%) Manufacturing
13 10 (1.73%) Billing
14 8 (1.39%) Influencing Skills
15 7 (1.21%) Financial Institution
16 5 (0.87%) Aerospace
17 4 (0.69%) French Language
17 4 (0.69%) Marketing
18 3 (0.52%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 76 (13.17%) Analyst
2 63 (10.92%) Support Engineer
3 49 (8.49%) IT Support
4 44 (7.63%) Senior
5 36 (6.24%) IT Engineer
6 34 (5.89%) Lead
7 31 (5.37%) Service Manager
8 28 (4.85%) Service Analyst
9 26 (4.51%) Consultant
9 26 (4.51%) Network Engineer
10 25 (4.33%) Desktop Support
10 25 (4.33%) Field Engineer
10 25 (4.33%) IT Support Engineer
11 21 (3.64%) Service Desk Analyst
12 20 (3.47%) Architect
12 20 (3.47%) Delivery Manager
13 18 (3.12%) Administrator
13 18 (3.12%) Applications Support
13 18 (3.12%) Desktop Engineer
14 17 (2.95%) Service Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (3.12%) Terraform
2 13 (2.25%) REST
3 11 (1.91%) .NET
4 8 (1.39%) LDAP
5 7 (1.21%) Oracle Fusion
6 6 (1.04%) XML
7 5 (0.87%) Middleware
7 5 (0.87%) Software Packaging
8 4 (0.69%) Jakarta EE
8 4 (0.69%) Kafka
8 4 (0.69%) PySpark
8 4 (0.69%) Web Services
9 3 (0.52%) .NET Framework
9 3 (0.52%) AngularJS
9 3 (0.52%) ARM Templates
9 3 (0.52%) CSS
9 3 (0.52%) Java RMI
9 3 (0.52%) Sass
9 3 (0.52%) SOAP
9 3 (0.52%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 64 (11.09%) Onboarding
2 28 (4.85%) Data Centre
3 24 (4.16%) CMDB
4 19 (3.29%) Enterprise Software
5 14 (2.43%) PKI
5 14 (2.43%) Smartphone
6 12 (2.08%) Virtual Team
7 11 (1.91%) Cyber Threat
7 11 (1.91%) Video Conferencing
8 10 (1.73%) Product Ownership
9 8 (1.39%) BYOD
9 8 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
9 8 (1.39%) Driving Licence
9 8 (1.39%) iPhone
9 8 (1.39%) Self-Motivation
10 7 (1.21%) Fat Client
10 7 (1.21%) Thin Client
11 6 (1.04%) Fibre Optics
12 5 (0.87%) Analytical Mindset
12 5 (0.87%) Cloud Native
Operating Systems
1 163 (28.25%) Windows
2 61 (10.57%) Windows 10
3 36 (6.24%) Windows Server
4 33 (5.72%) Android
5 31 (5.37%) Linux
6 14 (2.43%) Unix
7 12 (2.08%) Windows 7
8 10 (1.73%) Mac OS
9 9 (1.56%) Apple iOS
9 9 (1.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 5 (0.87%) 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
1 226 (39.17%) ITIL
2 134 (23.22%) ITSM
3 125 (21.66%) Problem-Solving
4 124 (21.49%) Customer Service
5 122 (21.14%) Continuous Improvement
6 117 (20.28%) Service Management
7 103 (17.85%) Stakeholder Management
8 96 (16.64%) Service Delivery
9 95 (16.46%) Change Management
10 66 (11.44%) Root Cause Analysis
11 64 (11.09%) Agile
12 61 (10.57%) Problem Management
13 57 (9.88%) Incident Management
14 49 (8.49%) Validation
15 47 (8.15%) Migration
16 42 (7.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 41 (7.11%) DevOps
18 40 (6.93%) Asset Management
19 38 (6.59%) CI/CD
20 36 (6.24%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 44 (7.63%) SQL
2 41 (7.11%) PowerShell
3 38 (6.59%) Python
4 12 (2.08%) Bash
4 12 (2.08%) JavaScript
5 10 (1.73%) Java
6 7 (1.21%) Shell Script
7 6 (1.04%) PL/SQL
8 5 (0.87%) C#
9 4 (0.69%) Bicep
9 4 (0.69%) MATLAB
10 3 (0.52%) R
11 2 (0.35%) DataWeave
11 2 (0.35%) Korn
11 2 (0.35%) X++
12 1 (0.17%) ActionScript
12 1 (0.17%) ActionScript 2.0
12 1 (0.17%) Go
12 1 (0.17%) Scala
12 1 (0.17%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 148 (25.65%) Security Cleared
2 118 (20.45%) SC Cleared
3 50 (8.67%) Degree
4 26 (4.51%) DV Cleared
5 20 (3.47%) ITIL Certification
5 20 (3.47%) Microsoft Certification
6 17 (2.95%) BPSS Clearance
6 17 (2.95%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 16 (2.77%) Cisco Certification
8 11 (1.91%) Azure Certification
9 10 (1.73%) CCNP
10 9 (1.56%) A+ Certification
10 9 (1.56%) PMI Certification
11 8 (1.39%) Computer Science Degree
11 8 (1.39%) MCSE
12 7 (1.21%) CCNA
12 7 (1.21%) DBS Check
13 6 (1.04%) CCSE
14 5 (0.87%) CCSM
14 5 (0.87%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (3.12%) Data Quality
2 11 (1.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 10 (1.73%) NIST
3 10 (1.73%) PMO
3 10 (1.73%) QA
4 9 (1.56%) ISO/IEC 20000
5 6 (1.04%) GDPR
6 5 (0.87%) COBIT
6 5 (0.87%) Cyber Essentials
6 5 (0.87%) GRC
6 5 (0.87%) ISO 9001
7 4 (0.69%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 3 (0.52%) JSP 440
9 2 (0.35%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.17%) DICOM
10 1 (0.17%) Disclosure Scotland
10 1 (0.17%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.17%) HL7
10 1 (0.17%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 121 (20.97%) Active Directory
2 27 (4.68%) VMware Infrastructure
3 19 (3.29%) Virtual Desktop
4 15 (2.60%) VMware ESXi
5 10 (1.73%) Docker
6 8 (1.39%) 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 (9.53%) Microsoft Intune
2 33 (5.72%) SCCM
3 21 (3.64%) Kubernetes
4 12 (2.08%) Single Sign-On
5 10 (1.73%) Ansible
5 10 (1.73%) Grafana
5 10 (1.73%) vCenter Server
6 6 (1.04%) Prometheus
7 5 (0.87%) Jamf Pro
8 4 (0.69%) Check_MK
8 4 (0.69%) Podman
8 4 (0.69%) Red Hat Satellite
9 3 (0.52%) Oracle Identity Management
9 3 (0.52%) Oracle Identity Manager
9 3 (0.52%) vMotion
10 2 (0.35%) Data Guard
10 2 (0.35%) FortiGate
10 2 (0.35%) SCOM
10 2 (0.35%) ServiceCenter
10 2 (0.35%) WSUS
Vendors
1 206 (35.70%) Microsoft
2 114 (19.76%) ServiceNow
3 47 (8.15%) VMware
4 46 (7.97%) Cisco
5 33 (5.72%) Oracle
6 20 (3.47%) Apple
7 18 (3.12%) HP
7 18 (3.12%) Remedy
8 13 (2.25%) Zscaler
9 11 (1.91%) Nokia
9 11 (1.91%) Tenable
10 10 (1.73%) Citrix
10 10 (1.73%) Dynatrace
10 10 (1.73%) Fortinet
11 9 (1.56%) Databricks
11 9 (1.56%) Okta
11 9 (1.56%) Salesforce
11 9 (1.56%) Splunk
12 8 (1.39%) CheckPoint
12 8 (1.39%) Liquidlogic
345 SLA jobs Nationwide