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

6 months to
4 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 236 183 139
Rank change year-on-year -53 -44 +41
Contract jobs citing SLA 537 432 727
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.10% 1.50% 1.70%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 6.58% 9.33% 12.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 289 256 353
10th Percentile £209 £173 £150
25th Percentile £313 £211 £215
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £300 £330
Median % change year-on-year +50.00% -9.09% +10.92%
75th Percentile £520 £526 £488
90th Percentile £588 £613 £582
UK excluding London median daily rate £447 £250 £285
% change year-on-year +78.80% -12.28% +3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 98 39 85
10th Percentile £14.32 £15.90 £11.07
25th Percentile £17.69 £18.30 £12.75
Median hourly rate £18.50 £22.14 £14.70
Median % change year-on-year -16.44% +50.61% -20.54%
75th Percentile £21.66 £24.83 £23.80
90th Percentile £26.99 £35.55 £31.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.50 £22.14 £13.50
% change year-on-year -16.44% +64.00% -25.93%

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 8,158 4,629 5,967
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.67% 16.06% 13.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,220 2,959 3,762
10th Percentile £340 £263 £280
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £509
Median % change year-on-year - -1.72% -3.10%
75th Percentile £600 £616 £625
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +5.26% - -2.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 483 183 408
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.13 £10.99
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.75 £13.18
Median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £22.75
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% +42.86% -39.33%
75th Percentile £67.50 £66.56 £48.75
90th Percentile £82.20 £80.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £32.81 £18.97
% change year-on-year +21.91% +72.96% -49.41%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 -57 471 £460 +53.17% 303
UK excluding London -71 331 £447 +78.80% 247
London -13 183 £475 +18.75% 99
Work from Home -7 127 £475 +100.00% 114
East of England +25 77 £492 +118.67% 31
North of England -58 74 £436 +74.50% 48
South East -79 74 £463 +85.00% 87
North West -24 42 £438 +75.00% 30
Scotland +16 41 £440 +42.51% 13
Midlands -78 40 £293 +24.68% 31
Yorkshire -51 30 £431 +11.13% 15
West Midlands -81 30 £293 +24.68% 13
South West -59 21 £378 +21.94% 25
East Midlands -22 9 £329 +31.40% 19
Wales -18 5 - - 5
North East -27 2 £280 - 3
Northern Ireland - 2 £175 - 14

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 (3.72%) SharePoint
2 13 (2.42%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (1.86%) Confluence
4 7 (1.30%) OpenStack
5 5 (0.93%) Oracle Workflow
6 4 (0.74%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 4 (0.74%) IIS
6 4 (0.74%) SAS
7 3 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
8 2 (0.37%) 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 (9.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 47 (8.75%) Microsoft Office
3 22 (4.10%) Spreadsheet
4 6 (1.12%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 2 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.19%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.19%) MicroStation
7 1 (0.19%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 14 (2.61%) Remedy ITSM
2 11 (2.05%) Oracle Payables
2 11 (2.05%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
3 9 (1.68%) Oracle Assets
4 6 (1.12%) Oracle ERP
4 6 (1.12%) Oracle Receivables
5 5 (0.93%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 4 (0.74%) Dynamics CRM
6 4 (0.74%) Oracle General Ledger
7 3 (0.56%) Oracle EBS
8 2 (0.37%) Dynamics GP
8 2 (0.37%) IntelliMatch
8 2 (0.37%) Oracle Applications
8 2 (0.37%) Oracle Cash Management
8 2 (0.37%) Oracle E-Business Tax
8 2 (0.37%) Oracle Financials
8 2 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
9 1 (0.19%) Actimize
9 1 (0.19%) Oracle EBS R12
9 1 (0.19%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 96 (17.88%) Azure
2 62 (11.55%) AWS
3 60 (11.17%) Microsoft 365
4 23 (4.28%) Power Platform
5 21 (3.91%) Entra ID
6 18 (3.35%) GCP
7 16 (2.98%) Azure DevOps
7 16 (2.98%) IaaS
8 15 (2.79%) PaaS
8 15 (2.79%) SaaS
9 14 (2.61%) Amazon S3
10 12 (2.23%) OCI
11 11 (2.05%) AWS CloudFormation
11 11 (2.05%) Datadog
11 11 (2.05%) OneDrive
11 11 (2.05%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 10 (1.86%) Amazon EC2
13 9 (1.68%) Azure Sentinel
13 9 (1.68%) Snowflake
14 8 (1.49%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 34 (6.33%) DNS
2 32 (5.96%) Firewall
3 26 (4.84%) DHCP
4 24 (4.47%) VPN
5 20 (3.72%) WAN
6 15 (2.79%) SAN
6 15 (2.79%) Wi-Fi
7 13 (2.42%) Network Security
7 13 (2.42%) TCP/IP
8 12 (2.23%) Cisco ASA
8 12 (2.23%) LAN
8 12 (2.23%) SD-WAN
9 11 (2.05%) VLAN
10 10 (1.86%) Wireless
11 8 (1.49%) Radio Access Network
12 7 (1.30%) 5G
12 7 (1.30%) BGP
12 7 (1.30%) LTE
12 7 (1.30%) MPLS
12 7 (1.30%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (3.54%) Power BI
2 16 (2.98%) SQL Server
3 9 (1.68%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (1.49%) Oracle Reports
4 8 (1.49%) Tableau
5 5 (0.93%) Oracle Database
5 5 (0.93%) Relational Database
6 4 (0.74%) Amazon RDS
6 4 (0.74%) MongoDB
6 4 (0.74%) MySQL
6 4 (0.74%) Pentaho
7 3 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (0.56%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 2 (0.37%) GIS
8 2 (0.37%) SAP HANA
8 2 (0.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 1 (0.19%) Azure SQL Database
9 1 (0.19%) InfluxDB
9 1 (0.19%) Parquet
9 1 (0.19%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 50 (9.31%) JIRA
2 22 (4.10%) GitLab
3 20 (3.72%) Jenkins
4 18 (3.35%) Git
5 7 (1.30%) Chocolatey
6 4 (0.74%) Maven
6 4 (0.74%) Visual Studio
7 3 (0.56%) CircleCI
8 2 (0.37%) Artifactory
8 2 (0.37%) JMeter
8 2 (0.37%) 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
1 239 (44.51%) Social Skills
2 106 (19.74%) Finance
3 85 (15.83%) Analytical Skills
4 38 (7.08%) Public Sector
5 37 (6.89%) Banking
6 33 (6.15%) Organisational Skills
7 26 (4.84%) Documentation Skills
8 23 (4.28%) Telecoms
9 19 (3.54%) Legal
10 12 (2.23%) Billing
10 12 (2.23%) Retail
11 11 (2.05%) Aerospace
12 9 (1.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 9 (1.68%) Manufacturing
13 8 (1.49%) Investment Banking
14 7 (1.30%) Financial Institution
14 7 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
14 7 (1.30%) Local Government
15 6 (1.12%) Marketing
15 6 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 66 (12.29%) Analyst
2 59 (10.99%) IT Support
3 37 (6.89%) Administrator
4 36 (6.70%) Support Engineer
5 35 (6.52%) Lead
6 33 (6.15%) Service Manager
7 31 (5.77%) Senior
8 29 (5.40%) Service Analyst
9 23 (4.28%) IT Engineer
9 23 (4.28%) Technical Support
10 19 (3.54%) Delivery Manager
11 18 (3.35%) Consultant
11 18 (3.35%) Service Delivery Manager
12 17 (3.17%) Desktop Support
13 16 (2.98%) Azure Engineer
13 16 (2.98%) Desktop Engineer
14 15 (2.79%) Network Engineer
14 15 (2.79%) Service Desk Analyst
15 13 (2.42%) Architect
15 13 (2.42%) Coordinator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (2.79%) Oracle Fusion
2 13 (2.42%) Middleware
3 11 (2.05%) LDAP
3 11 (2.05%) REST
4 8 (1.49%) .NET
4 8 (1.49%) Web Services
5 6 (1.12%) Software Packaging
6 5 (0.93%) ARM Templates
6 5 (0.93%) AWS CDK
6 5 (0.93%) Spring
7 4 (0.74%) 802.1X
7 4 (0.74%) AngularJS
7 4 (0.74%) Bootstrap
7 4 (0.74%) CSS
7 4 (0.74%) J2EE
7 4 (0.74%) jQuery
7 4 (0.74%) Kafka
7 4 (0.74%) Sass
7 4 (0.74%) Spring MVC
8 3 (0.56%) ADO
Miscellaneous
1 44 (8.19%) Onboarding
2 33 (6.15%) Data Centre
3 17 (3.17%) Product Ownership
4 16 (2.98%) CMDB
5 15 (2.79%) Management Information System
6 11 (2.05%) Cloud Native
7 9 (1.68%) Cyber Threat
7 9 (1.68%) Smartphone
8 8 (1.49%) Data Protection Act
8 8 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
9 7 (1.30%) BYOD
9 7 (1.30%) Driving Licence
9 7 (1.30%) Virtual Team
10 6 (1.12%) Analytical Mindset
10 6 (1.12%) PKI
10 6 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
11 5 (0.93%) IoT
11 5 (0.93%) Public Cloud
11 5 (0.93%) Security Posture
12 4 (0.74%) PropTech
Operating Systems
1 111 (20.67%) Windows
2 50 (9.31%) Linux
3 33 (6.15%) Windows 10
4 22 (4.10%) Unix
5 19 (3.54%) Windows Server
6 15 (2.79%) Android
7 14 (2.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 11 (2.05%) CentOS
9 6 (1.12%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.93%) Apple iOS
10 5 (0.93%) Windows 7
11 4 (0.74%) Windows XP
12 3 (0.56%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
14 1 (0.19%) Solaris
14 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2003
14 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 161 (29.98%) ITIL
2 100 (18.62%) ITSM
3 94 (17.50%) Problem-Solving
4 93 (17.32%) Continuous Improvement
5 89 (16.57%) Stakeholder Management
6 83 (15.46%) Customer Service
7 81 (15.08%) Service Delivery
8 74 (13.78%) Root Cause Analysis
9 71 (13.22%) Service Management
10 70 (13.04%) Change Management
11 69 (12.85%) Agile
12 56 (10.43%) Incident Management
13 53 (9.87%) Time Management
14 50 (9.31%) Problem Management
15 46 (8.57%) Migration
16 44 (8.19%) Asset Management
16 44 (8.19%) CI/CD
16 44 (8.19%) DevOps
17 39 (7.26%) Roadmaps
18 35 (6.52%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 47 (8.75%) SQL
2 36 (6.70%) Python
3 20 (3.72%) PowerShell
4 18 (3.35%) Bash
4 18 (3.35%) Shell Script
5 14 (2.61%) Java
6 11 (2.05%) MATLAB
7 7 (1.30%) JavaScript
8 6 (1.12%) PL/SQL
9 4 (0.74%) Bicep
9 4 (0.74%) Go
10 2 (0.37%) C#
10 2 (0.37%) Scala
10 2 (0.37%) VB
10 2 (0.37%) X++
11 1 (0.19%) Apex Code
11 1 (0.19%) C++
11 1 (0.19%) Groovy
11 1 (0.19%) Korn
Qualifications
1 120 (22.35%) Security Cleared
2 93 (17.32%) SC Cleared
3 49 (9.12%) Degree
4 23 (4.28%) DV Cleared
5 16 (2.98%) ITIL Certification
6 14 (2.61%) BPSS Clearance
7 13 (2.42%) Cisco Certification
8 12 (2.23%) Microsoft Certification
9 9 (1.68%) CCNP
10 7 (1.30%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 7 (1.30%) PMI Certification
11 6 (1.12%) CCSE
11 6 (1.12%) Master's Degree
11 6 (1.12%) MCSE
12 5 (0.93%) Azure Certification
12 5 (0.93%) CCSM
13 4 (0.74%) CCA
13 4 (0.74%) CCNA
13 4 (0.74%) MBA
13 4 (0.74%) RIBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (3.35%) Data Quality
2 15 (2.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 14 (2.61%) PMO
4 13 (2.42%) QA
5 10 (1.86%) NIST
6 9 (1.68%) GDPR
6 9 (1.68%) GRC
7 8 (1.49%) COBIT
8 6 (1.12%) PCI DSS
9 4 (0.74%) Cyber Essentials
10 3 (0.56%) ISO 20022
10 3 (0.56%) JSP 440
10 3 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.37%) ISO 31000
11 2 (0.37%) ISO 8583
11 2 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 20000
11 2 (0.37%) SOC 2
12 1 (0.19%) DICOM
12 1 (0.19%) Disclosure Scotland
12 1 (0.19%) HL7
System Software
1 72 (13.41%) Active Directory
2 24 (4.47%) VMware Infrastructure
3 15 (2.79%) VMware ESXi
4 13 (2.42%) Docker
5 9 (1.68%) vSphere
6 8 (1.49%) Hyper-V
6 8 (1.49%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.56%) DFS Replication
8 2 (0.37%) Firmware
8 2 (0.37%) 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 30 (5.59%) Microsoft Intune
2 28 (5.21%) SCCM
3 26 (4.84%) Ansible
4 24 (4.47%) Terraform
5 21 (3.91%) Kubernetes
6 13 (2.42%) Grafana
7 12 (2.23%) ServiceCenter
8 11 (2.05%) Check_MK
8 11 (2.05%) Podman
8 11 (2.05%) Red Hat Satellite
8 11 (2.05%) Single Sign-On
9 10 (1.86%) vCenter Server
10 6 (1.12%) Jamf Pro
11 5 (0.93%) Prometheus
12 4 (0.74%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 4 (0.74%) TeamSite
13 3 (0.56%) FortiGate
13 3 (0.56%) Oracle Identity Management
13 3 (0.56%) Oracle Identity Manager
13 3 (0.56%) vMotion
Vendors
1 170 (31.66%) Microsoft
2 90 (16.76%) ServiceNow
3 51 (9.50%) Oracle
4 46 (8.57%) VMware
5 37 (6.89%) Cisco
6 32 (5.96%) HP
7 28 (5.21%) Apple
8 23 (4.28%) Dell
9 20 (3.72%) Remedy
10 18 (3.35%) SAP
11 14 (2.61%) Splunk
12 13 (2.42%) Red Hat
13 11 (2.05%) Tenable
14 10 (1.86%) AppDynamics
14 10 (1.86%) IBM
15 9 (1.68%) CheckPoint
15 9 (1.68%) Fortinet
15 9 (1.68%) Palo Alto
15 9 (1.68%) Zscaler
16 8 (1.49%) Huawei