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 7 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
7 May 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 224 192 132
Rank change year-on-year -32 -60 +57
Contract jobs citing SLA 530 403 751
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.11% 1.38% 1.73%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 6.63% 8.76% 12.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 278 236 354
10th Percentile £200 £150 £150
25th Percentile £313 £200 £213
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £250 £330
Median % change year-on-year +80.00% -24.24% +10.00%
75th Percentile £525 £502 £489
90th Percentile £608 £603 £587
UK excluding London median daily rate £439 £235 £285
% change year-on-year +86.70% -17.54% +14.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 37 94
10th Percentile £16.16 £14.70 £11.07
25th Percentile £17.69 £18.51 £12.83
Median hourly rate £18.50 £22.27 £14.75
Median % change year-on-year -16.93% +50.98% -20.27%
75th Percentile £20.35 £24.66 £23.80
90th Percentile £35.90 £30.90 £32.68
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.50 £23.16 £13.93
% change year-on-year -20.12% +66.32% -24.73%

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 7,990 4,603 6,219
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.75% 15.72% 14.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,152 2,934 3,947
10th Percentile £338 £263 £297
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 £620 £625
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £484
% change year-on-year +5.26% -1.76% +0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 470 179 384
10th Percentile £14.23 £18.04 £10.95
25th Percentile £18.50 £22.21 £13.18
Median hourly rate £34.50 £34.50 £21.06
Median % change year-on-year - +63.84% -39.84%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £45.00
90th Percentile £79.97 £82.79 £67.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.75 £46.30 £18.06
% change year-on-year -20.63% +156.44% -45.19%

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 7 May 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 7 May 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 7 May 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 -40 473 £455 +82.00% 224
UK excluding London -58 334 £439 +86.70% 195
London -2 173 £486 +29.60% 52
Work from Home -12 113 £480 +104.04% 95
East of England +31 95 £485 +115.56% 30
North of England -39 74 £400 +72.04% 37
South East -65 68 £463 +85.00% 64
North West -32 41 £450 +109.30% 27
Midlands -85 40 £296 +25.96% 36
Scotland +16 32 £447 +132.81% 9
West Midlands -72 30 £296 +25.96% 20
Yorkshire -44 27 £365 -14.12% 9
South West -50 18 £463 -15.91% 18
East Midlands -33 9 £329 +9.50% 16
North East -11 6 £270 - 1
Wales -15 5 - - 6
Northern Ireland +2 3 £338 +128.04% 4

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 17 (3.21%) SharePoint
2 16 (3.02%) Microsoft Exchange
3 9 (1.70%) Confluence
4 6 (1.13%) OpenStack
5 5 (0.94%) Oracle Workflow
6 4 (0.75%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 4 (0.75%) IIS
7 3 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
7 3 (0.57%) SAS
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
9 1 (0.19%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.19%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 46 (8.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 39 (7.36%) Spreadsheet
3 34 (6.42%) Microsoft Office
4 6 (1.13%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.94%) 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 14 (2.64%) Remedy ITSM
2 11 (2.08%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
3 10 (1.89%) Oracle Payables
4 8 (1.51%) Oracle Assets
5 6 (1.13%) Oracle ERP
6 5 (0.94%) Oracle Receivables
7 4 (0.75%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 3 (0.57%) Oracle EBS
8 3 (0.57%) Oracle General Ledger
9 2 (0.38%) Dynamics CRM
9 2 (0.38%) IntelliMatch
9 2 (0.38%) Oracle Applications
9 2 (0.38%) Oracle E-Business Tax
9 2 (0.38%) Oracle Financials
9 2 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
9 2 (0.38%) Temenos T24
10 1 (0.19%) OpenText VIM for SAP
10 1 (0.19%) Oracle FAH
10 1 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
10 1 (0.19%) Veritas eDiscovery
Cloud Services
1 69 (13.02%) Azure
2 58 (10.94%) AWS
3 51 (9.62%) Microsoft 365
4 21 (3.96%) Power Platform
5 18 (3.40%) GCP
6 17 (3.21%) IaaS
7 16 (3.02%) PaaS
8 15 (2.83%) SaaS
9 14 (2.64%) Amazon S3
10 12 (2.26%) Entra ID
10 12 (2.26%) OCI
11 11 (2.08%) Datadog
11 11 (2.08%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 10 (1.89%) Amazon EC2
12 10 (1.89%) AWS CloudFormation
13 9 (1.70%) Azure DevOps
13 9 (1.70%) Snowflake
14 7 (1.32%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 6 (1.13%) GitHub
15 6 (1.13%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 32 (6.04%) Firewall
2 30 (5.66%) DNS
3 22 (4.15%) DHCP
3 22 (4.15%) WAN
4 21 (3.96%) VPN
5 15 (2.83%) SAN
5 15 (2.83%) SD-WAN
6 14 (2.64%) LAN
6 14 (2.64%) Wi-Fi
7 13 (2.45%) Network Security
8 12 (2.26%) Cisco ASA
9 11 (2.08%) TCP/IP
9 11 (2.08%) VLAN
10 9 (1.70%) BGP
10 9 (1.70%) OSPF
11 7 (1.32%) Radio Access Network
11 7 (1.32%) Wireless
12 6 (1.13%) 5G
12 6 (1.13%) LTE
12 6 (1.13%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (3.40%) Power BI
2 15 (2.83%) SQL Server
3 10 (1.89%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (1.51%) Oracle Reports
5 5 (0.94%) Oracle Database
5 5 (0.94%) Relational Database
5 5 (0.94%) Tableau
6 4 (0.75%) MongoDB
6 4 (0.75%) MySQL
7 3 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (0.57%) GIS
7 3 (0.57%) Pentaho
7 3 (0.57%) SAP HANA
8 2 (0.38%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (0.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 1 (0.19%) Azure SQL Database
9 1 (0.19%) Hadoop
9 1 (0.19%) Oracle BI Publisher
9 1 (0.19%) Spatial Data
9 1 (0.19%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 39 (7.36%) JIRA
2 19 (3.58%) GitLab
3 17 (3.21%) Jenkins
4 16 (3.02%) Git
5 7 (1.32%) Chocolatey
6 4 (0.75%) Maven
6 4 (0.75%) Visual Studio
7 3 (0.57%) CircleCI
8 2 (0.38%) JMeter
8 2 (0.38%) Toad
9 1 (0.19%) Artifactory
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
1 236 (44.53%) Social Skills
2 103 (19.43%) Finance
3 78 (14.72%) Analytical Skills
4 38 (7.17%) Banking
5 36 (6.79%) Public Sector
6 30 (5.66%) Organisational Skills
7 23 (4.34%) Documentation Skills
7 23 (4.34%) Telecoms
8 20 (3.77%) Legal
9 19 (3.58%) Retail
10 10 (1.89%) Aerospace
11 9 (1.70%) Billing
11 9 (1.70%) Financial Institution
12 8 (1.51%) Investment Banking
13 7 (1.32%) Influencing Skills
14 6 (1.13%) Local Government
14 6 (1.13%) Manufacturing
14 6 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
15 5 (0.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 5 (0.94%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 67 (12.64%) IT Support
2 66 (12.45%) Analyst
3 40 (7.55%) Lead
4 39 (7.36%) Administrator
5 35 (6.60%) Service Manager
6 33 (6.23%) Senior
7 29 (5.47%) Service Analyst
8 28 (5.28%) Support Engineer
9 26 (4.91%) Technical Support
10 23 (4.34%) IT Engineer
11 20 (3.77%) Consultant
11 20 (3.77%) Desktop Support
12 18 (3.40%) Delivery Manager
13 17 (3.21%) Service Delivery Manager
14 15 (2.83%) Service Desk Analyst
15 14 (2.64%) Network Engineer
16 12 (2.26%) Architect
16 12 (2.26%) Azure Engineer
17 11 (2.08%) AWS Engineer
17 11 (2.08%) Site Reliability Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (2.64%) Oracle Fusion
2 12 (2.26%) Middleware
3 9 (1.70%) LDAP
3 9 (1.70%) REST
4 7 (1.32%) Web Services
5 5 (0.94%) .NET
5 5 (0.94%) AWS CDK
5 5 (0.94%) Spring
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 (0.57%) ADO
7 3 (0.57%) Software Packaging
8 2 (0.38%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 34 (6.42%) Onboarding
2 29 (5.47%) Data Centre
3 22 (4.15%) Product Ownership
4 21 (3.96%) Management Information System
5 11 (2.08%) CMDB
5 11 (2.08%) Self-Motivation
6 10 (1.89%) Cloud Native
7 8 (1.51%) Data Protection Act
8 7 (1.32%) Cyber Threat
8 7 (1.32%) Driving Licence
9 6 (1.13%) Distributed Systems
9 6 (1.13%) Enterprise Software
9 6 (1.13%) Equities
9 6 (1.13%) Public Cloud
9 6 (1.13%) Security Posture
10 5 (0.94%) BYOD
10 5 (0.94%) IoT
10 5 (0.94%) PKI
11 4 (0.75%) Enterprise Cloud
11 4 (0.75%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 89 (16.79%) Windows
2 42 (7.92%) Linux
3 29 (5.47%) Windows 10
4 20 (3.77%) Unix
5 15 (2.83%) Windows Server
6 10 (1.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 9 (1.70%) CentOS
8 4 (0.75%) Android
8 4 (0.75%) Mac OS
9 3 (0.57%) Apple iOS
9 3 (0.57%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.38%) Windows 7
10 2 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.19%) Mac OS X
11 1 (0.19%) Solaris
11 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.19%) Windows XP
Processes & Methodologies
1 144 (27.17%) ITIL
2 88 (16.60%) ITSM
2 88 (16.60%) Service Delivery
3 84 (15.85%) Customer Service
4 79 (14.91%) Continuous Improvement
5 78 (14.72%) Stakeholder Management
6 74 (13.96%) Problem-Solving
7 71 (13.40%) Root Cause Analysis
8 69 (13.02%) Time Management
9 64 (12.08%) Change Management
10 62 (11.70%) Incident Management
11 61 (11.51%) Agile
11 61 (11.51%) Service Management
12 47 (8.87%) Problem Management
13 42 (7.92%) Roadmaps
14 39 (7.36%) CI/CD
14 39 (7.36%) Migration
15 37 (6.98%) Asset Management
16 33 (6.23%) DevOps
16 33 (6.23%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 41 (7.74%) SQL
2 34 (6.42%) Python
3 17 (3.21%) PowerShell
4 16 (3.02%) Shell Script
5 15 (2.83%) Bash
6 13 (2.45%) Java
7 9 (1.70%) MATLAB
8 5 (0.94%) JavaScript
8 5 (0.94%) PL/SQL
9 3 (0.57%) C++
9 3 (0.57%) Go
10 2 (0.38%) Scala
10 2 (0.38%) VB
11 1 (0.19%) Apex Code
11 1 (0.19%) Bicep
11 1 (0.19%) Groovy
11 1 (0.19%) Korn
Qualifications
1 111 (20.94%) Security Cleared
2 87 (16.42%) SC Cleared
3 51 (9.62%) Degree
4 19 (3.58%) DV Cleared
5 15 (2.83%) BPSS Clearance
6 13 (2.45%) ITIL Certification
7 11 (2.08%) Cisco Certification
8 9 (1.70%) Microsoft Certification
9 7 (1.32%) CCNP
9 7 (1.32%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 6 (1.13%) Master's Degree
11 4 (0.75%) CCNA
11 4 (0.75%) CCSE
11 4 (0.75%) CISA
11 4 (0.75%) MBA
11 4 (0.75%) RIBA
12 3 (0.57%) CCA
12 3 (0.57%) CISSP
12 3 (0.57%) MCSE
12 3 (0.57%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (2.83%) Data Quality
2 14 (2.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 14 (2.64%) PMO
3 13 (2.45%) QA
4 10 (1.89%) GDPR
4 10 (1.89%) GRC
5 9 (1.70%) NIST
6 6 (1.13%) PCI DSS
7 4 (0.75%) COBIT
7 4 (0.75%) Cyber Essentials
8 3 (0.57%) ISO 20022
8 3 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 20000
8 3 (0.57%) JSP 440
8 3 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 2 (0.38%) ISO 31000
9 2 (0.38%) ISO 8583
9 2 (0.38%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.19%) DICOM
10 1 (0.19%) HL7
10 1 (0.19%) NIST 800
System Software
1 64 (12.08%) Active Directory
2 19 (3.58%) VMware Infrastructure
3 12 (2.26%) VMware ESXi
4 11 (2.08%) Docker
5 8 (1.51%) vSphere
6 5 (0.94%) Hyper-V
7 4 (0.75%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.57%) DFS Replication
9 2 (0.38%) Firmware
10 1 (0.19%) BitLocker
10 1 (0.19%) Ceph
10 1 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.19%) Virtual Machines
10 1 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.19%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 25 (4.72%) SCCM
2 21 (3.96%) Ansible
3 20 (3.77%) Microsoft Intune
3 20 (3.77%) Terraform
4 14 (2.64%) Kubernetes
5 12 (2.26%) Grafana
5 12 (2.26%) ServiceCenter
6 9 (1.70%) Check_MK
6 9 (1.70%) Podman
6 9 (1.70%) Red Hat Satellite
6 9 (1.70%) Single Sign-On
6 9 (1.70%) vCenter Server
7 5 (0.94%) FortiGate
8 4 (0.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 4 (0.75%) Prometheus
8 4 (0.75%) TeamSite
9 3 (0.57%) Oracle Identity Management
9 3 (0.57%) Oracle Identity Manager
10 2 (0.38%) AirWatch
10 2 (0.38%) vMotion
Vendors
1 158 (29.81%) Microsoft
2 82 (15.47%) ServiceNow
3 47 (8.87%) Oracle
4 37 (6.98%) VMware
5 32 (6.04%) HP
6 31 (5.85%) Cisco
7 25 (4.72%) Dell
8 22 (4.15%) SAP
9 20 (3.77%) Apple
9 20 (3.77%) Remedy
10 15 (2.83%) Splunk
11 11 (2.08%) IBM
11 11 (2.08%) Tenable
12 10 (1.89%) AppDynamics
12 10 (1.89%) Red Hat
13 9 (1.70%) Fortinet
13 9 (1.70%) Zscaler
14 7 (1.32%) Dynatrace
14 7 (1.32%) Huawei
14 7 (1.32%) Palo Alto
250 SLA jobs Nationwide