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

6 months to
25 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 235 187 147
Rank change year-on-year -48 -40 +41
Contract jobs citing SLA 543 428 708
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.07% 1.42% 1.63%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 6.33% 8.71% 11.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 304 246 330
10th Percentile £200 £180 £150
25th Percentile £300 £213 £202
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £348 £340
Median % change year-on-year +29.50% +2.21% +14.29%
75th Percentile £520 £536 £488
90th Percentile £598 £613 £582
UK excluding London median daily rate £448 £264 £285
% change year-on-year +69.86% -7.46% +3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 88 47 87
10th Percentile £13.62 £15.80 £11.07
25th Percentile £17.57 £18.16 £12.75
Median hourly rate £18.73 £22.14 £14.80
Median % change year-on-year -15.41% +49.59% -19.40%
75th Percentile £21.22 £25.15 £23.80
90th Percentile £26.40 £33.75 £26.15
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.50 £22.14 £13.93
% change year-on-year -16.44% +58.99% -23.59%

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 8,583 4,916 5,975
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.87% 16.32% 13.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,508 3,141 3,724
10th Percentile £340 £273 £280
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 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £473 £475
% change year-on-year +5.70% -0.42% -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 522 199 431
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.11 £11.06
25th Percentile £19.33 £18.53 £13.28
Median hourly rate £36.07 £31.64 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year +14.00% +32.94% -34.79%
75th Percentile £67.50 £65.00 £49.38
90th Percentile £82.22 £83.78 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £31.64 £19.34
% change year-on-year +26.42% +63.60% -45.52%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 -53 465 £450 +28.57% 180
UK excluding London -67 333 £448 +69.86% 192
London -11 184 £450 +16.13% 30
Work from Home +5 135 £475 +35.71% 58
North of England -53 73 £435 +33.85% 30
South East -83 71 £463 +85.00% 71
East of England +17 62 £492 +118.67% 24
Midlands -71 51 £288 -13.01% 24
Scotland +21 47 £440 +42.51% 19
West Midlands -71 42 £269 -18.68% 10
North West -25 40 £438 +34.62% 18
Yorkshire -47 31 £365 -5.81% 6
South West -63 23 £378 +51.20% 18
Wales -9 10 £550 +109.52% 9
East Midlands -15 8 £475 - 14
Northern Ireland +2 2 £175 - 4
North East -34 2 £280 - 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 21 (3.87%) SharePoint
2 13 (2.39%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (1.84%) Confluence
4 7 (1.29%) OpenStack
5 5 (0.92%) IIS
5 5 (0.92%) Oracle Workflow
5 5 (0.92%) SAS
6 4 (0.74%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 3 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
8 2 (0.37%) ArcGIS
9 1 (0.18%) Apache
9 1 (0.18%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2010
9 1 (0.18%) LiveCycle
9 1 (0.18%) Smallworld
Applications
1 53 (9.76%) Microsoft Office
2 49 (9.02%) Microsoft Excel
3 15 (2.76%) Spreadsheet
4 7 (1.29%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 2 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.18%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.18%) MicroStation
7 1 (0.18%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 14 (2.58%) Remedy ITSM
2 12 (2.21%) Oracle Payables
3 11 (2.03%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 10 (1.84%) Oracle Assets
5 7 (1.29%) Oracle Receivables
6 6 (1.10%) ContrOCC
6 6 (1.10%) Oracle ERP
7 5 (0.92%) Dynamics CRM
7 5 (0.92%) Oracle Applications
7 5 (0.92%) Oracle General Ledger
7 5 (0.92%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 3 (0.55%) Oracle Cash Management
8 3 (0.55%) Oracle EBS
9 2 (0.37%) Dynamics GP
9 2 (0.37%) IntelliMatch
9 2 (0.37%) Oracle EBS R12
9 2 (0.37%) Oracle E-Business Tax
9 2 (0.37%) Oracle Financials
9 2 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
10 1 (0.18%) Veritas eDiscovery
Cloud Services
1 96 (17.68%) Azure
2 68 (12.52%) Microsoft 365
3 54 (9.94%) AWS
4 27 (4.97%) Entra ID
5 21 (3.87%) Power Platform
6 19 (3.50%) Azure DevOps
7 16 (2.95%) SaaS
8 15 (2.76%) OCI
8 15 (2.76%) OneDrive
9 14 (2.58%) Amazon S3
10 13 (2.39%) Datadog
10 13 (2.39%) IaaS
10 13 (2.39%) PaaS
11 12 (2.21%) GCP
12 11 (2.03%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 10 (1.84%) Amazon EC2
14 9 (1.66%) Azure Sentinel
14 9 (1.66%) Snowflake
15 8 (1.47%) AWS CloudFormation
16 7 (1.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 27 (4.97%) DNS
2 25 (4.60%) VPN
3 23 (4.24%) DHCP
3 23 (4.24%) Firewall
4 21 (3.87%) WAN
5 17 (3.13%) Wi-Fi
6 15 (2.76%) LAN
6 15 (2.76%) SAN
7 13 (2.39%) Network Security
8 10 (1.84%) Cisco ASA
8 10 (1.84%) Cisco IOS
8 10 (1.84%) SD-WAN
9 9 (1.66%) VLAN
10 8 (1.47%) MPLS
10 8 (1.47%) TCP/IP
10 8 (1.47%) Wireless
11 7 (1.29%) 5G
11 7 (1.29%) LTE
11 7 (1.29%) Radio Access Network
12 6 (1.10%) VoLTE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (3.13%) Power BI
1 17 (3.13%) SQL Server
2 8 (1.47%) Oracle Reports
2 8 (1.47%) Tableau
3 5 (0.92%) Oracle Database
3 5 (0.92%) Pentaho
3 5 (0.92%) Relational Database
4 4 (0.74%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (0.74%) MySQL
4 4 (0.74%) PostgreSQL
5 3 (0.55%) Amazon Athena
5 3 (0.55%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 2 (0.37%) GIS
6 2 (0.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 1 (0.18%) Apache Iceberg
7 1 (0.18%) Azure SQL Database
7 1 (0.18%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.18%) Db2
7 1 (0.18%) Hadoop
7 1 (0.18%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 48 (8.84%) JIRA
2 17 (3.13%) GitLab
3 15 (2.76%) Jenkins
4 14 (2.58%) Git
5 7 (1.29%) Chocolatey
6 4 (0.74%) Maven
7 3 (0.55%) Visual Studio
8 2 (0.37%) Artifactory
8 2 (0.37%) JMeter
8 2 (0.37%) Toad
9 1 (0.18%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.18%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 1 (0.18%) WiX
General
1 239 (44.01%) Social Skills
2 112 (20.63%) Finance
3 93 (17.13%) Analytical Skills
4 43 (7.92%) Public Sector
5 34 (6.26%) Banking
6 30 (5.52%) Documentation Skills
6 30 (5.52%) Organisational Skills
7 25 (4.60%) Telecoms
8 22 (4.05%) Legal
9 13 (2.39%) Billing
10 12 (2.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 12 (2.21%) Retail
11 11 (2.03%) Aerospace
11 11 (2.03%) Local Government
12 9 (1.66%) Manufacturing
13 8 (1.47%) Financial Institution
14 7 (1.29%) Investment Banking
15 6 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
15 6 (1.10%) Marketing
15 6 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 72 (13.26%) Analyst
2 51 (9.39%) IT Support
3 38 (7.00%) Support Engineer
4 36 (6.63%) Lead
5 33 (6.08%) Administrator
5 33 (6.08%) Senior
6 31 (5.71%) Service Manager
7 25 (4.60%) Service Analyst
8 23 (4.24%) IT Engineer
9 22 (4.05%) Delivery Manager
10 21 (3.87%) Consultant
11 20 (3.68%) Technical Support
12 19 (3.50%) Service Delivery Manager
13 17 (3.13%) Azure Engineer
13 17 (3.13%) Desktop Engineer
14 16 (2.95%) Desktop Support
15 15 (2.76%) Coordinator
15 15 (2.76%) Network Engineer
16 14 (2.58%) Applications Support
17 13 (2.39%) Service Desk Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (2.58%) Oracle Fusion
2 13 (2.39%) Middleware
3 11 (2.03%) LDAP
4 10 (1.84%) REST
5 8 (1.47%) .NET
5 8 (1.47%) Web Services
6 6 (1.10%) Software Packaging
7 5 (0.92%) ARM Templates
7 5 (0.92%) AWS CDK
7 5 (0.92%) Spring
8 4 (0.74%) AngularJS
8 4 (0.74%) Bootstrap
8 4 (0.74%) CSS
8 4 (0.74%) J2EE
8 4 (0.74%) jQuery
8 4 (0.74%) Sass
8 4 (0.74%) Spring MVC
9 3 (0.55%) ADO
10 2 (0.37%) SOAP
10 2 (0.37%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 44 (8.10%) Onboarding
2 34 (6.26%) Data Centre
3 19 (3.50%) CMDB
4 13 (2.39%) Management Information System
4 13 (2.39%) Product Ownership
5 12 (2.21%) Smartphone
6 11 (2.03%) Cloud Native
6 11 (2.03%) Enterprise Software
7 9 (1.66%) BYOD
7 9 (1.66%) Cyber Threat
8 8 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
8 8 (1.47%) PKI
9 7 (1.29%) Driving Licence
9 7 (1.29%) Self-Motivation
9 7 (1.29%) Virtual Team
10 6 (1.10%) Analytical Mindset
11 5 (0.92%) IoT
12 4 (0.74%) Augmented Reality
12 4 (0.74%) Enterprise Cloud
12 4 (0.74%) iPhone
Operating Systems
1 114 (20.99%) Windows
2 43 (7.92%) Linux
3 37 (6.81%) Windows 10
4 22 (4.05%) Windows Server
5 19 (3.50%) Android
6 16 (2.95%) Unix
7 14 (2.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 11 (2.03%) CentOS
9 5 (0.92%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.92%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.92%) Windows 7
10 4 (0.74%) Windows XP
11 3 (0.55%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
13 1 (0.18%) Solaris
13 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2003
13 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 173 (31.86%) ITIL
2 108 (19.89%) Problem-Solving
3 105 (19.34%) ITSM
4 99 (18.23%) Continuous Improvement
5 97 (17.86%) Customer Service
6 96 (17.68%) Stakeholder Management
7 83 (15.29%) Service Delivery
8 81 (14.92%) Agile
9 80 (14.73%) Change Management
10 77 (14.18%) Service Management
11 68 (12.52%) Root Cause Analysis
12 52 (9.58%) Incident Management
13 51 (9.39%) Problem Management
14 45 (8.29%) Migration
15 43 (7.92%) Roadmaps
15 43 (7.92%) Time Management
16 42 (7.73%) Asset Management
16 42 (7.73%) DevOps
17 38 (7.00%) CI/CD
17 38 (7.00%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 44 (8.10%) SQL
2 32 (5.89%) Python
3 23 (4.24%) PowerShell
4 16 (2.95%) Bash
5 14 (2.58%) Shell Script
6 11 (2.03%) MATLAB
7 9 (1.66%) Java
8 7 (1.29%) JavaScript
9 6 (1.10%) PL/SQL
10 4 (0.74%) Bicep
11 2 (0.37%) C#
11 2 (0.37%) Scala
11 2 (0.37%) VB
11 2 (0.37%) X++
12 1 (0.18%) Apex Code
12 1 (0.18%) COBOL
12 1 (0.18%) Groovy
12 1 (0.18%) Korn
12 1 (0.18%) RPG
12 1 (0.18%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 120 (22.10%) Security Cleared
2 96 (17.68%) SC Cleared
3 50 (9.21%) Degree
4 23 (4.24%) DV Cleared
5 19 (3.50%) ITIL Certification
6 17 (3.13%) BPSS Clearance
7 15 (2.76%) Cisco Certification
7 15 (2.76%) Microsoft Certification
8 10 (1.84%) CCNP
9 9 (1.66%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 8 (1.47%) MCSE
10 8 (1.47%) PMI Certification
11 6 (1.10%) Azure Certification
11 6 (1.10%) CCSE
11 6 (1.10%) Master's Degree
12 5 (0.92%) CCNA
12 5 (0.92%) CCSM
13 4 (0.74%) CCA
13 4 (0.74%) CISSP
13 4 (0.74%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (3.31%) Data Quality
2 15 (2.76%) PMO
3 14 (2.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 14 (2.58%) QA
4 11 (2.03%) NIST
5 9 (1.66%) COBIT
5 9 (1.66%) GDPR
5 9 (1.66%) GRC
6 6 (1.10%) PCI DSS
7 3 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials
7 3 (0.55%) ISO 20022
7 3 (0.55%) JSP 440
7 3 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 2 (0.37%) ISO 31000
8 2 (0.37%) ISO 8583
8 2 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 20000
8 2 (0.37%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.18%) DICOM
9 1 (0.18%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.18%) HL7
System Software
1 76 (14.00%) Active Directory
2 23 (4.24%) VMware Infrastructure
3 15 (2.76%) VMware ESXi
4 8 (1.47%) Hyper-V
4 8 (1.47%) Virtual Desktop
5 7 (1.29%) Docker
6 6 (1.10%) vSphere
7 3 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (0.37%) Firmware
9 1 (0.18%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.18%) Ceph
9 1 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.18%) VMware Workstation
9 1 (0.18%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 34 (6.26%) Microsoft Intune
2 31 (5.71%) SCCM
3 21 (3.87%) Ansible
4 20 (3.68%) Terraform
5 16 (2.95%) Kubernetes
6 11 (2.03%) Check_MK
6 11 (2.03%) Podman
6 11 (2.03%) Red Hat Satellite
6 11 (2.03%) Single Sign-On
7 10 (1.84%) ServiceCenter
7 10 (1.84%) vCenter Server
8 8 (1.47%) Grafana
9 6 (1.10%) Jamf Pro
10 5 (0.92%) Prometheus
11 4 (0.74%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 3 (0.55%) FortiGate
12 3 (0.55%) Oracle Identity Management
12 3 (0.55%) Oracle Identity Manager
12 3 (0.55%) TeamSite
12 3 (0.55%) vMotion
Vendors
1 165 (30.39%) Microsoft
2 83 (15.29%) ServiceNow
3 51 (9.39%) Oracle
4 45 (8.29%) VMware
5 42 (7.73%) Cisco
6 29 (5.34%) HP
7 28 (5.16%) Apple
8 20 (3.68%) Dell
9 19 (3.50%) Remedy
10 15 (2.76%) SAP
11 13 (2.39%) Red Hat
12 11 (2.03%) Tenable
13 10 (1.84%) Zscaler
14 9 (1.66%) CheckPoint
14 9 (1.66%) Fortinet
14 9 (1.66%) IBM
14 9 (1.66%) Palo Alto
14 9 (1.66%) Salesforce
14 9 (1.66%) Splunk
15 8 (1.47%) Nokia