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

 6 months to
12 Apr 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 225 194 130
Rank change year-on-year -31 -64 +49
Contract jobs citing SLA 536 406 772
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.17% 1.39% 1.76%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 6.83% 9.00% 12.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 281 248 352
10th Percentile £200 £150 £150
25th Percentile £313 £195 £213
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £251 £330
Median % change year-on-year +79.10% -23.86% +10.00%
75th Percentile £525 £500 £500
90th Percentile £600 £601 £590
UK excluding London median daily rate £438 £235 £285
% change year-on-year +86.17% -17.54% +18.75%
Number of hourly rates quoted 121 38 93
10th Percentile £16.25 £14.70 £11.07
25th Percentile £17.69 £18.20 £12.82
Median hourly rate £18.50 £22.21 £14.48
Median % change year-on-year -16.69% +53.35% -21.73%
75th Percentile £20.35 £24.66 £23.09
90th Percentile £26.11 £30.43 £32.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.50 £22.14 £14.08
% change year-on-year -16.44% +57.24% -23.89%

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 7,850 4,509 6,289
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.12% 15.41% 14.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,085 2,905 4,005
10th Percentile £336 £263 £300
25th Percentile £413 £398 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £623 £630
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% +3.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 437 174 374
10th Percentile £14.02 £17.67 £10.95
25th Percentile £18.50 £22.14 £13.00
Median hourly rate £31.00 £32.66 £20.49
Median % change year-on-year -5.07% +59.41% -46.09%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £43.75
90th Percentile £81.40 £82.90 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.50 £32.96 £17.59
% change year-on-year +4.67% +87.38% -49.74%

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 12 April 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 12 April 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 12 April 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 -38 475 £450 +69.49% 217
UK excluding London -50 341 £438 +86.17% 186
London -15 167 £494 +23.50% 60
Work from Home -22 109 £475 +102.13% 91
East of England +31 104 £478 +112.44% 23
South East -69 73 £444 +77.50% 65
North of England -62 68 £424 +62.98% 36
Midlands -77 39 £293 +24.68% 34
North West -40 36 £450 +80.00% 23
Scotland +19 32 £440 +134.67% 8
West Midlands -76 28 £290 +23.40% 22
Yorkshire -48 25 £394 +46.06% 10
South West -38 23 £463 -15.91% 15
East Midlands -35 10 £534 +78.00% 12
North East - 7 £265 - 4
Northern Ireland 0 5 £500 +237.84% 5
Wales -13 1 - - 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 15 (2.80%) Microsoft Exchange
2 14 (2.61%) SharePoint
3 8 (1.49%) Confluence
4 5 (0.93%) Oracle Workflow
5 4 (0.75%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 3 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.56%) SAS
7 2 (0.37%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.19%) Apache
8 1 (0.19%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.19%) IIS
8 1 (0.19%) LiveCycle
8 1 (0.19%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.19%) Smallworld
8 1 (0.19%) WebSphere
8 1 (0.19%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 48 (8.96%) Microsoft Excel
2 43 (8.02%) Spreadsheet
3 30 (5.60%) Microsoft Office
4 6 (1.12%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.19%) Autodesk Inventor
6 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.19%) MicroStation
6 1 (0.19%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 13 (2.43%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
1 13 (2.43%) Remedy ITSM
2 12 (2.24%) Oracle Payables
3 10 (1.87%) Oracle Assets
3 10 (1.87%) Oracle EBS
4 7 (1.31%) Oracle Receivables
5 6 (1.12%) Oracle ERP
6 5 (0.93%) Oracle General Ledger
7 3 (0.56%) Oracle Cash Management
8 2 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
8 2 (0.37%) IntelliMatch
8 2 (0.37%) Oracle E-Business Tax
8 2 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
8 2 (0.37%) Temenos T24
9 1 (0.19%) Adobe Campaign
9 1 (0.19%) OpenText VIM for SAP
9 1 (0.19%) Oracle EBS R12
9 1 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
9 1 (0.19%) Veritas eDiscovery
9 1 (0.19%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 60 (11.19%) Azure
2 51 (9.51%) AWS
3 48 (8.96%) Microsoft 365
4 20 (3.73%) Power Platform
5 18 (3.36%) GCP
6 15 (2.80%) IaaS
6 15 (2.80%) PaaS
7 14 (2.61%) Amazon S3
8 13 (2.43%) SaaS
9 11 (2.05%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 10 (1.87%) Amazon EC2
10 10 (1.87%) AWS CloudFormation
10 10 (1.87%) Datadog
10 10 (1.87%) OCI
11 9 (1.68%) Azure DevOps
11 9 (1.68%) Snowflake
12 8 (1.49%) Entra ID
13 7 (1.31%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 6 (1.12%) dbt
14 6 (1.12%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 31 (5.78%) Firewall
2 27 (5.04%) WAN
3 24 (4.48%) DNS
4 20 (3.73%) VPN
5 18 (3.36%) SD-WAN
6 16 (2.99%) DHCP
6 16 (2.99%) LAN
7 15 (2.80%) SAN
8 14 (2.61%) Network Security
9 13 (2.43%) Wi-Fi
10 12 (2.24%) Cisco ASA
11 11 (2.05%) MPLS
12 10 (1.87%) BGP
12 10 (1.87%) OSPF
12 10 (1.87%) VLAN
13 9 (1.68%) TCP/IP
14 7 (1.31%) Broadband
14 7 (1.31%) Cisco IOS
15 6 (1.12%) NX-OS
15 6 (1.12%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (3.36%) Power BI
2 16 (2.99%) SQL Server
3 9 (1.68%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (1.49%) Oracle Database
4 8 (1.49%) Oracle Reports
5 7 (1.31%) MySQL
6 5 (0.93%) Relational Database
7 4 (0.75%) MongoDB
7 4 (0.75%) Tableau
8 3 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
8 3 (0.56%) GIS
8 3 (0.56%) Pentaho
8 3 (0.56%) SAP HANA
9 2 (0.37%) Azure SQL Database
9 2 (0.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 1 (0.19%) Data Warehouse
10 1 (0.19%) DB2
10 1 (0.19%) Hadoop
10 1 (0.19%) Metadata
10 1 (0.19%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 34 (6.34%) JIRA
2 18 (3.36%) GitLab
3 17 (3.17%) Jenkins
4 16 (2.99%) Git
5 7 (1.31%) Chocolatey
6 4 (0.75%) Maven
6 4 (0.75%) Visual Studio
7 3 (0.56%) CircleCI
8 2 (0.37%) JMeter
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
1 247 (46.08%) Social Skills
2 113 (21.08%) Finance
3 78 (14.55%) Analytical Skills
4 45 (8.40%) Public Sector
5 37 (6.90%) Banking
6 32 (5.97%) Organisational Skills
7 28 (5.22%) Telecoms
8 23 (4.29%) Documentation Skills
9 19 (3.54%) Legal
10 18 (3.36%) Retail
11 11 (2.05%) Financial Institution
12 9 (1.68%) Aerospace
12 9 (1.68%) Billing
12 9 (1.68%) Investment Banking
13 7 (1.31%) Marketing
14 6 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
14 6 (1.12%) Local Government
14 6 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
15 5 (0.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 5 (0.93%) Law
Job Titles
1 71 (13.25%) IT Support
2 65 (12.13%) Analyst
3 44 (8.21%) Administrator
4 43 (8.02%) Lead
5 39 (7.28%) Senior
6 36 (6.72%) Service Manager
7 27 (5.04%) Support Engineer
8 26 (4.85%) Service Analyst
8 26 (4.85%) Technical Support
9 24 (4.48%) Desktop Support
10 22 (4.10%) IT Engineer
11 19 (3.54%) Consultant
11 19 (3.54%) Delivery Manager
12 18 (3.36%) Service Delivery Manager
13 14 (2.61%) IT Administrator
13 14 (2.61%) Team Leader
14 13 (2.43%) Applications Support
14 13 (2.43%) Developer
14 13 (2.43%) Service Desk Analyst
15 12 (2.24%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (3.17%) Oracle Fusion
2 12 (2.24%) Middleware
3 9 (1.68%) LDAP
3 9 (1.68%) REST
4 7 (1.31%) Web Services
5 5 (0.93%) AWS CDK
5 5 (0.93%) Spring
6 4 (0.75%) .NET
6 4 (0.75%) 802.1X
6 4 (0.75%) AngularJS
6 4 (0.75%) Bootstrap
6 4 (0.75%) CSS
6 4 (0.75%) J2EE
6 4 (0.75%) jQuery
6 4 (0.75%) Kafka
6 4 (0.75%) Sass
6 4 (0.75%) Spring MVC
7 3 (0.56%) ADO
8 2 (0.37%) JSON
8 2 (0.37%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 34 (6.34%) Onboarding
2 27 (5.04%) Data Centre
3 26 (4.85%) Management Information System
4 21 (3.92%) Product Ownership
5 13 (2.43%) Cloud Native
5 13 (2.43%) Self-Motivation
6 11 (2.05%) Data Protection Act
7 10 (1.87%) CMDB
8 9 (1.68%) Driving Licence
9 8 (1.49%) Enterprise Cloud
10 7 (1.31%) Cyber Threat
11 6 (1.12%) Equities
11 6 (1.12%) Public Cloud
11 6 (1.12%) Security Posture
12 5 (0.93%) Distributed Systems
12 5 (0.93%) Enterprise Software
12 5 (0.93%) IoT
13 4 (0.75%) Analytical Mindset
13 4 (0.75%) Cloud Security Posture
13 4 (0.75%) PropTech
Operating Systems
1 84 (15.67%) Windows
2 36 (6.72%) Linux
3 26 (4.85%) Windows 10
4 17 (3.17%) Unix
5 13 (2.43%) Windows Server
6 10 (1.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 9 (1.68%) CentOS
8 3 (0.56%) Android
8 3 (0.56%) Mac OS
9 2 (0.37%) Apple iOS
9 2 (0.37%) Windows 7
10 1 (0.19%) Mac OS X
10 1 (0.19%) Solaris
10 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.19%) Windows XP
Processes & Methodologies
1 148 (27.61%) ITIL
2 95 (17.72%) Customer Service
3 89 (16.60%) Service Delivery
4 85 (15.86%) Continuous Improvement
5 80 (14.93%) ITSM
6 77 (14.37%) Time Management
7 76 (14.18%) Problem-Solving
7 76 (14.18%) Stakeholder Management
8 65 (12.13%) Agile
9 64 (11.94%) Root Cause Analysis
10 63 (11.75%) Incident Management
11 62 (11.57%) Change Management
12 55 (10.26%) Service Management
13 43 (8.02%) Roadmaps
14 41 (7.65%) Problem Management
15 37 (6.90%) Migration
16 35 (6.53%) Asset Management
16 35 (6.53%) CI/CD
17 33 (6.16%) Disaster Recovery
17 33 (6.16%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 39 (7.28%) SQL
2 31 (5.78%) Python
3 18 (3.36%) Shell Script
4 17 (3.17%) PowerShell
5 15 (2.80%) Bash
6 13 (2.43%) Java
7 9 (1.68%) MATLAB
8 5 (0.93%) JavaScript
8 5 (0.93%) PL/SQL
9 3 (0.56%) C++
9 3 (0.56%) Go
10 2 (0.37%) Scala
10 2 (0.37%) VB
11 1 (0.19%) Apex Code
11 1 (0.19%) Bicep
11 1 (0.19%) Groovy
11 1 (0.19%) Korn
Qualifications
1 116 (21.64%) Security Cleared
2 91 (16.98%) SC Cleared
3 45 (8.40%) Degree
4 16 (2.99%) BPSS Clearance
5 15 (2.80%) DV Cleared
6 13 (2.43%) ITIL Certification
7 7 (1.31%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 7 (1.31%) Microsoft Certification
8 5 (0.93%) Cisco Certification
8 5 (0.93%) MOS
8 5 (0.93%) PMI Certification
9 4 (0.75%) CCNP
9 4 (0.75%) CISA
9 4 (0.75%) Master's Degree
9 4 (0.75%) RIBA
10 3 (0.56%) Azure Certification
10 3 (0.56%) CCA
10 3 (0.56%) CCSE
10 3 (0.56%) CRISC
10 3 (0.56%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (2.99%) Data Quality
1 16 (2.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 15 (2.80%) PMO
3 13 (2.43%) QA
4 12 (2.24%) GDPR
5 10 (1.87%) GRC
5 10 (1.87%) NIST
6 6 (1.12%) PCI DSS
7 4 (0.75%) COBIT
8 3 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials
8 3 (0.56%) ISO 20022
8 3 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 20000
8 3 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 2 (0.37%) ISO 31000
9 2 (0.37%) ISO 8583
9 2 (0.37%) NIST 800
9 2 (0.37%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.19%) Disclosure Scotland
10 1 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 53 (9.89%) Active Directory
2 13 (2.43%) VMware Infrastructure
3 11 (2.05%) Docker
4 10 (1.87%) vSphere
5 9 (1.68%) VMware ESXi
6 3 (0.56%) DFS Replication
6 3 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.37%) Firmware
8 1 (0.19%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.19%) Ceph
8 1 (0.19%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
8 1 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.19%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 24 (4.48%) SCCM
2 21 (3.92%) Ansible
3 19 (3.54%) Terraform
4 18 (3.36%) Microsoft Intune
5 12 (2.24%) ServiceCenter
6 11 (2.05%) Grafana
7 9 (1.68%) Check_MK
7 9 (1.68%) Kubernetes
7 9 (1.68%) Podman
7 9 (1.68%) Red Hat Satellite
8 7 (1.31%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (1.31%) vCenter Server
9 6 (1.12%) FortiGate
10 4 (0.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 4 (0.75%) TeamSite
11 3 (0.56%) Prometheus
12 2 (0.37%) HP Quality Center
12 2 (0.37%) Nessus
12 2 (0.37%) RSA Archer
12 2 (0.37%) SCOM
Vendors
1 152 (28.36%) Microsoft
2 75 (13.99%) ServiceNow
3 56 (10.45%) Oracle
4 33 (6.16%) VMware
5 30 (5.60%) HP
6 29 (5.41%) Cisco
7 26 (4.85%) SAP
8 25 (4.66%) Dell
9 17 (3.17%) Apple
9 17 (3.17%) Remedy
10 15 (2.80%) Splunk
11 11 (2.05%) IBM
11 11 (2.05%) Tenable
12 10 (1.87%) AppDynamics
12 10 (1.87%) Fortinet
12 10 (1.87%) Red Hat
13 8 (1.49%) Zscaler
14 7 (1.31%) Dynatrace
15 5 (0.93%) Databricks
15 5 (0.93%) F5
244 SLA jobs Nationwide