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

 6 months to
9 Apr 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 219 195 130
Rank change year-on-year -24 -65 +50
Contract jobs citing SLA 538 403 768
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.18% 1.38% 1.74%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 6.84% 9.00% 12.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 282 244 352
10th Percentile £200 £149 £150
25th Percentile £300 £194 £213
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £251 £350
Median % change year-on-year +79.10% -28.21% +16.67%
75th Percentile £529 £500 £500
90th Percentile £600 £602 £600
UK excluding London median daily rate £438 £235 £285
% change year-on-year +86.17% -17.54% +23.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 121 39 89
10th Percentile £16.25 £14.70 £11.07
25th Percentile £17.69 £18.30 £12.82
Median hourly rate £18.50 £22.27 £14.41
Median % change year-on-year -16.93% +54.55% -22.11%
75th Percentile £20.35 £24.66 £22.29
90th Percentile £26.11 £29.95 £32.55
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 7,866 4,476 6,281
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.18% 15.32% 14.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,101 2,898 4,010
10th Percentile £337 £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 £620 £625
90th Percentile £700 £720 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% +2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 433 175 375
10th Percentile £14.29 £17.69 £10.95
25th Percentile £18.50 £22.14 £13.18
Median hourly rate £31.00 £32.00 £20.61
Median % change year-on-year -3.13% +55.30% -48.49%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £43.75
90th Percentile £82.20 £83.10 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £32.00 £18.00
% change year-on-year +9.38% +77.78% -52.00%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 -40 478 £450 +69.49% 233
UK excluding London -44 342 £438 +86.17% 191
London -6 168 £500 +25.00% 58
Work from Home -20 110 £475 +102.13% 81
East of England +30 104 £478 +112.44% 25
South East -67 73 £444 +77.50% 70
North of England -59 68 £424 +69.50% 48
Midlands -75 39 £293 +24.68% 28
North West -36 36 £450 +80.00% 34
Scotland +23 31 £440 +134.67% 7
West Midlands -71 28 £290 +23.40% 12
South West -38 25 £400 -27.27% 15
Yorkshire -45 25 £394 +46.06% 12
East Midlands -34 10 £534 +78.00% 16
North East - 7 £265 - 3
Northern Ireland +1 5 £500 +237.84% 2
Wales -16 1 - - 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 15 (2.79%) Microsoft Exchange
2 14 (2.60%) SharePoint
3 8 (1.49%) Confluence
4 5 (0.93%) Oracle Workflow
5 4 (0.74%) 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 49 (9.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 43 (7.99%) Spreadsheet
3 30 (5.58%) Microsoft Office
4 6 (1.12%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.74%) 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 (2.42%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
1 13 (2.42%) Remedy ITSM
2 12 (2.23%) Oracle Payables
3 10 (1.86%) Oracle Assets
3 10 (1.86%) Oracle EBS
4 7 (1.30%) 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%) Actimize
9 1 (0.19%) Adobe Campaign
9 1 (0.19%) Oracle Applications
9 1 (0.19%) Oracle EBS R12
9 1 (0.19%) Oracle Financials
9 1 (0.19%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 60 (11.15%) Azure
2 50 (9.29%) AWS
3 49 (9.11%) Microsoft 365
4 20 (3.72%) Power Platform
5 18 (3.35%) GCP
6 15 (2.79%) IaaS
6 15 (2.79%) PaaS
7 14 (2.60%) Amazon S3
8 13 (2.42%) SaaS
9 11 (2.04%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 10 (1.86%) Amazon EC2
10 10 (1.86%) AWS CloudFormation
10 10 (1.86%) Datadog
11 9 (1.67%) Azure DevOps
11 9 (1.67%) OCI
11 9 (1.67%) Snowflake
12 8 (1.49%) Entra ID
13 7 (1.30%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 6 (1.12%) dbt
14 6 (1.12%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 31 (5.76%) Firewall
2 27 (5.02%) WAN
3 24 (4.46%) DNS
4 20 (3.72%) VPN
5 18 (3.35%) SD-WAN
6 16 (2.97%) DHCP
6 16 (2.97%) LAN
7 15 (2.79%) SAN
8 14 (2.60%) Network Security
9 13 (2.42%) Wi-Fi
10 12 (2.23%) Cisco ASA
11 11 (2.04%) MPLS
12 10 (1.86%) BGP
12 10 (1.86%) OSPF
12 10 (1.86%) VLAN
13 9 (1.67%) TCP/IP
14 7 (1.30%) Broadband
14 7 (1.30%) Cisco IOS
15 6 (1.12%) NX-OS
15 6 (1.12%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (3.35%) Power BI
2 16 (2.97%) SQL Server
3 8 (1.49%) Oracle Database
3 8 (1.49%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (1.30%) MySQL
4 7 (1.30%) Oracle Reports
5 5 (0.93%) Relational Database
6 4 (0.74%) MongoDB
6 4 (0.74%) Tableau
7 3 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (0.56%) GIS
7 3 (0.56%) Pentaho
7 3 (0.56%) SAP HANA
8 2 (0.37%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (0.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 1 (0.19%) Data Warehouse
9 1 (0.19%) DB2
9 1 (0.19%) Hadoop
9 1 (0.19%) Metadata
9 1 (0.19%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 33 (6.13%) JIRA
2 18 (3.35%) GitLab
3 17 (3.16%) Jenkins
4 16 (2.97%) Git
5 7 (1.30%) Chocolatey
6 5 (0.93%) Visual Studio
7 4 (0.74%) Maven
8 3 (0.56%) CircleCI
9 2 (0.37%) JMeter
10 1 (0.19%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.19%) Cucumber
10 1 (0.19%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 1 (0.19%) WiX
General
1 248 (46.10%) Social Skills
2 114 (21.19%) Finance
3 77 (14.31%) Analytical Skills
4 45 (8.36%) Public Sector
5 38 (7.06%) Banking
6 32 (5.95%) Organisational Skills
7 28 (5.20%) Telecoms
8 25 (4.65%) Documentation Skills
9 19 (3.53%) Legal
9 19 (3.53%) Retail
10 11 (2.04%) Financial Institution
11 10 (1.86%) Investment Banking
12 9 (1.67%) Aerospace
12 9 (1.67%) Billing
13 7 (1.30%) 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 (13.20%) IT Support
2 66 (12.27%) Analyst
3 44 (8.18%) Administrator
4 43 (7.99%) Lead
5 39 (7.25%) Senior
6 36 (6.69%) Service Manager
7 28 (5.20%) Support Engineer
8 26 (4.83%) Technical Support
9 25 (4.65%) Desktop Support
9 25 (4.65%) Service Analyst
10 22 (4.09%) IT Engineer
11 19 (3.53%) Delivery Manager
12 18 (3.35%) Consultant
12 18 (3.35%) Service Delivery Manager
13 14 (2.60%) IT Administrator
13 14 (2.60%) Team Leader
14 13 (2.42%) Developer
14 13 (2.42%) Service Desk Analyst
14 13 (2.42%) Support Analyst
15 12 (2.23%) Applications Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (3.16%) Oracle Fusion
2 12 (2.23%) Middleware
3 9 (1.67%) LDAP
3 9 (1.67%) REST
4 7 (1.30%) Web Services
5 5 (0.93%) AWS CDK
5 5 (0.93%) Spring
6 4 (0.74%) 802.1X
6 4 (0.74%) AngularJS
6 4 (0.74%) Bootstrap
6 4 (0.74%) CSS
6 4 (0.74%) J2EE
6 4 (0.74%) jQuery
6 4 (0.74%) Kafka
6 4 (0.74%) Sass
6 4 (0.74%) Spring MVC
7 3 (0.56%) .NET
7 3 (0.56%) ADO
8 2 (0.37%) JSON
8 2 (0.37%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 34 (6.32%) Onboarding
2 27 (5.02%) Data Centre
3 26 (4.83%) Management Information System
4 21 (3.90%) Product Ownership
5 15 (2.79%) Self-Motivation
6 13 (2.42%) Cloud Native
7 11 (2.04%) Data Protection Act
8 10 (1.86%) CMDB
9 9 (1.67%) Driving Licence
10 8 (1.49%) Enterprise Cloud
11 7 (1.30%) Cyber Threat
12 6 (1.12%) Equities
12 6 (1.12%) Public Cloud
12 6 (1.12%) Security Posture
12 6 (1.12%) Smartphone
13 5 (0.93%) Distributed Systems
13 5 (0.93%) Enterprise Software
13 5 (0.93%) IoT
14 4 (0.74%) BYOD
14 4 (0.74%) PropTech
Operating Systems
1 86 (15.99%) Windows
2 36 (6.69%) Linux
3 26 (4.83%) Windows 10
4 17 (3.16%) Unix
5 13 (2.42%) Windows Server
6 10 (1.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 9 (1.67%) 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
1 147 (27.32%) ITIL
2 97 (18.03%) Customer Service
3 91 (16.91%) Service Delivery
4 85 (15.80%) Continuous Improvement
5 79 (14.68%) ITSM
6 77 (14.31%) Time Management
7 76 (14.13%) Stakeholder Management
8 75 (13.94%) Problem-Solving
9 65 (12.08%) Agile
10 63 (11.71%) Incident Management
11 62 (11.52%) Root Cause Analysis
12 61 (11.34%) Change Management
13 55 (10.22%) Service Management
14 43 (7.99%) Roadmaps
15 41 (7.62%) Problem Management
16 37 (6.88%) Migration
17 36 (6.69%) CI/CD
18 35 (6.51%) Asset Management
19 33 (6.13%) Disaster Recovery
19 33 (6.13%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 38 (7.06%) SQL
2 32 (5.95%) Python
3 18 (3.35%) Shell Script
4 17 (3.16%) PowerShell
5 15 (2.79%) Bash
6 13 (2.42%) Java
7 9 (1.67%) MATLAB
8 5 (0.93%) JavaScript
8 5 (0.93%) PL/SQL
9 4 (0.74%) C++
10 3 (0.56%) Go
11 2 (0.37%) Scala
11 2 (0.37%) VB
12 1 (0.19%) Apex Code
12 1 (0.19%) Bicep
12 1 (0.19%) Groovy
12 1 (0.19%) Korn
Qualifications
1 118 (21.93%) Security Cleared
2 93 (17.29%) SC Cleared
3 46 (8.55%) Degree
4 16 (2.97%) BPSS Clearance
5 15 (2.79%) DV Cleared
6 13 (2.42%) ITIL Certification
7 7 (1.30%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 7 (1.30%) Microsoft Certification
8 5 (0.93%) Cisco Certification
8 5 (0.93%) Master's Degree
8 5 (0.93%) MOS
8 5 (0.93%) PMI Certification
9 4 (0.74%) CCNP
9 4 (0.74%) CISA
9 4 (0.74%) RIBA
10 3 (0.56%) Azure Certification
10 3 (0.56%) CCA
10 3 (0.56%) CCSE
10 3 (0.56%) CISSP
10 3 (0.56%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (2.97%) Data Quality
1 16 (2.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 15 (2.79%) PMO
3 13 (2.42%) GDPR
3 13 (2.42%) QA
4 10 (1.86%) GRC
4 10 (1.86%) NIST
5 6 (1.12%) PCI DSS
6 4 (0.74%) COBIT
7 3 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials
7 3 (0.56%) ISO 20022
7 3 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 3 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 2 (0.37%) ISO 31000
8 2 (0.37%) ISO 8583
8 2 (0.37%) NIST 800
8 2 (0.37%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.19%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 53 (9.85%) Active Directory
2 13 (2.42%) VMware Infrastructure
3 11 (2.04%) Docker
4 10 (1.86%) vSphere
5 9 (1.67%) 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 (4.46%) SCCM
2 21 (3.90%) Ansible
3 19 (3.53%) Terraform
4 18 (3.35%) Microsoft Intune
5 12 (2.23%) ServiceCenter
6 11 (2.04%) Grafana
7 9 (1.67%) Check_MK
7 9 (1.67%) Kubernetes
7 9 (1.67%) Podman
7 9 (1.67%) Red Hat Satellite
8 7 (1.30%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (1.30%) vCenter Server
9 6 (1.12%) FortiGate
10 4 (0.74%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 4 (0.74%) TeamSite
11 3 (0.56%) Prometheus
12 2 (0.37%) HP ALM
12 2 (0.37%) Nessus
12 2 (0.37%) RSA Archer
12 2 (0.37%) SCOM
Vendors
1 152 (28.25%) Microsoft
2 74 (13.75%) ServiceNow
3 55 (10.22%) Oracle
4 33 (6.13%) VMware
5 30 (5.58%) HP
6 29 (5.39%) Cisco
7 26 (4.83%) SAP
8 25 (4.65%) Dell
9 17 (3.16%) Apple
9 17 (3.16%) Remedy
10 15 (2.79%) Splunk
11 11 (2.04%) IBM
11 11 (2.04%) Tenable
12 10 (1.86%) AppDynamics
12 10 (1.86%) Fortinet
12 10 (1.86%) Red Hat
13 8 (1.49%) Zscaler
14 7 (1.30%) Dynatrace
15 5 (0.93%) Databricks
15 5 (0.93%) F5
255 SLA jobs Nationwide