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 18 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
18 Aug 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 248 193 172
Rank change year-on-year -55 -21 +13
Contract jobs citing SLA 571 479 551
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.07% 1.46% 1.42%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 6.19% 8.56% 10.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 330 271 266
10th Percentile £181 £198 £157
25th Percentile £250 £220 £200
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £375 £331
Median % change year-on-year +13.33% +13.21% -5.36%
75th Percentile £515 £539 £493
90th Percentile £600 £613 £588
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £300 £282
% change year-on-year +33.33% +6.38% -5.21%
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 70 79
10th Percentile £13.45 £15.95 £11.78
25th Percentile £15.62 £17.49 £13.09
Median hourly rate £18.79 £22.14 £17.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.13% +30.24% -2.86%
75th Percentile £22.18 £25.15 £24.18
90th Percentile £27.86 £34.65 £32.26
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.79 £22.03 £14.70
% change year-on-year -14.71% +49.86% -16.00%

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 9,231 5,596 5,200
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.24% 17.02% 13.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,901 3,579 3,217
10th Percentile £325 £281 £294
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £606 £625
90th Percentile £700 £715 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £480
% change year-on-year +3.58% -1.04% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 572 266 312
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.60 £11.11
25th Percentile £18.05 £17.48 £14.44
Median hourly rate £36.07 £28.18 £26.16
Median % change year-on-year +28.00% +7.71% -25.25%
75th Percentile £70.00 £61.99 £55.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £86.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.72 £25.08 £25.77
% change year-on-year +54.42% -2.68% -25.86%

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 18 August 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 18 August 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 18 August 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 -73 471 £425 +13.33% 253
UK excluding London -71 338 £400 +33.33% 222
London -21 199 £425 -2.86% 66
Work from Home -7 135 £463 +35.63% 78
North of England -62 86 £438 +74.65% 49
South East -92 75 £463 +85.00% 71
Scotland +41 65 £325 +30.00% 14
North West -20 57 £443 +36.15% 32
Midlands -67 52 £250 -33.33% 36
West Midlands -60 44 £250 -35.90% 22
East of England -15 30 £505 +124.44% 27
South West -51 30 £356 +5.48% 24
Yorkshire -56 26 £450 +79.64% 11
Wales -15 11 £525 +100.00% 7
East Midlands -21 7 £363 +174.62% 14
North East -37 3 £228 - 6
Northern Ireland +4 1 £175 - 5

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 38 (6.65%) SharePoint
2 27 (4.73%) Microsoft Exchange
3 8 (1.40%) Confluence
4 7 (1.23%) OpenStack
5 5 (0.88%) IIS
5 5 (0.88%) SAS
6 3 (0.53%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 3 (0.53%) Apache Airflow
7 2 (0.35%) Anypoint
7 2 (0.35%) Apache
7 2 (0.35%) Exchange Server 2010
7 2 (0.35%) Mule
8 1 (0.18%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.18%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2013
8 1 (0.18%) JBoss
8 1 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
8 1 (0.18%) Skype for Business
8 1 (0.18%) Smallworld
Applications
1 56 (9.81%) Microsoft Office
2 28 (4.90%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (1.05%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.88%) Spreadsheet
5 4 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 2 (0.35%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.18%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.18%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.18%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 14 (2.45%) Remedy ITSM
2 8 (1.40%) ContrOCC
3 5 (0.88%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.88%) Oracle Applications
4 4 (0.70%) Oracle Assets
4 4 (0.70%) Oracle Payables
4 4 (0.70%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 3 (0.53%) Oracle General Ledger
5 3 (0.53%) Oracle Receivables
5 3 (0.53%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 2 (0.35%) Dynamics GP
6 2 (0.35%) Oracle Cash Management
6 2 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.18%) Actimize
7 1 (0.18%) OpenText VIM for SAP
7 1 (0.18%) Oracle EBS R12
7 1 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.18%) Oracle Financials
7 1 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
7 1 (0.18%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 115 (20.14%) Microsoft 365
2 104 (18.21%) Azure
3 54 (9.46%) AWS
3 54 (9.46%) Entra ID
4 23 (4.03%) OneDrive
5 20 (3.50%) Power Platform
6 16 (2.80%) Datadog
6 16 (2.80%) SaaS
7 15 (2.63%) Azure DevOps
8 12 (2.10%) IaaS
8 12 (2.10%) PaaS
9 11 (1.93%) OCI
10 10 (1.75%) Amazon S3
11 9 (1.58%) Azure Sentinel
11 9 (1.58%) Snowflake
12 8 (1.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 7 (1.23%) AWS CloudFormation
13 7 (1.23%) GCP
14 6 (1.05%) Dynamics 365
14 6 (1.05%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 42 (7.36%) DNS
2 38 (6.65%) VPN
3 33 (5.78%) DHCP
4 28 (4.90%) LAN
4 28 (4.90%) WAN
5 26 (4.55%) Firewall
6 24 (4.20%) Wi-Fi
7 23 (4.03%) TCP/IP
8 19 (3.33%) Network Security
9 17 (2.98%) SAN
10 14 (2.45%) SDH
11 12 (2.10%) VLAN
12 11 (1.93%) MPLS
13 10 (1.75%) Cisco IOS
14 8 (1.40%) Cisco ASA
14 8 (1.40%) Radio Access Network
14 8 (1.40%) Skype
14 8 (1.40%) Wireless
15 7 (1.23%) 5G
15 7 (1.23%) LTE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (3.85%) SQL Server
2 15 (2.63%) Power BI
3 8 (1.40%) Tableau
4 7 (1.23%) Oracle Reports
5 5 (0.88%) MySQL
5 5 (0.88%) Pentaho
5 5 (0.88%) PostgreSQL
6 3 (0.53%) Amazon Athena
6 3 (0.53%) Amazon RDS
6 3 (0.53%) Big Data
6 3 (0.53%) Data Lake
6 3 (0.53%) Oracle Database
6 3 (0.53%) Relational Database
7 2 (0.35%) Db2
7 2 (0.35%) Oracle Database 10g
7 2 (0.35%) Oracle Database 11g
7 2 (0.35%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 1 (0.18%) Data Warehouse
8 1 (0.18%) GIS
8 1 (0.18%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 47 (8.23%) JIRA
2 10 (1.75%) GitLab
3 8 (1.40%) Chocolatey
3 8 (1.40%) Jenkins
4 6 (1.05%) Git
5 3 (0.53%) Maven
5 3 (0.53%) Visual Studio
6 2 (0.35%) Artifactory
6 2 (0.35%) Toad
7 1 (0.18%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.18%) WiX
General
1 239 (41.86%) Social Skills
2 110 (19.26%) Finance
3 103 (18.04%) Analytical Skills
4 38 (6.65%) Public Sector
5 31 (5.43%) Banking
6 29 (5.08%) Telecoms
7 26 (4.55%) Organisational Skills
8 21 (3.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 20 (3.50%) Documentation Skills
10 18 (3.15%) Legal
11 15 (2.63%) Local Government
11 15 (2.63%) Retail
12 12 (2.10%) Manufacturing
13 8 (1.40%) Financial Institution
13 8 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
14 7 (1.23%) Billing
15 5 (0.88%) Aerospace
15 5 (0.88%) Marketing
16 4 (0.70%) French Language
17 3 (0.53%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 75 (13.13%) Analyst
2 62 (10.86%) Support Engineer
3 48 (8.41%) IT Support
4 44 (7.71%) Senior
5 36 (6.30%) IT Engineer
6 32 (5.60%) Lead
7 31 (5.43%) Service Manager
8 27 (4.73%) Service Analyst
9 26 (4.55%) Network Engineer
10 25 (4.38%) Consultant
10 25 (4.38%) Desktop Support
10 25 (4.38%) Field Engineer
10 25 (4.38%) IT Support Engineer
11 20 (3.50%) Delivery Manager
11 20 (3.50%) Service Desk Analyst
12 19 (3.33%) Administrator
13 18 (3.15%) Applications Support
13 18 (3.15%) Desktop Engineer
14 17 (2.98%) Service Delivery Manager
15 16 (2.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (1.93%) .NET
2 10 (1.75%) REST
3 8 (1.40%) LDAP
3 8 (1.40%) Oracle Fusion
4 6 (1.05%) XML
5 5 (0.88%) Middleware
5 5 (0.88%) Software Packaging
6 4 (0.70%) Jakarta EE
6 4 (0.70%) Kafka
6 4 (0.70%) Web Services
7 3 (0.53%) .NET Framework
7 3 (0.53%) AngularJS
7 3 (0.53%) Bootstrap
7 3 (0.53%) CSS
7 3 (0.53%) Java RMI
7 3 (0.53%) JSON
7 3 (0.53%) Sass
7 3 (0.53%) SOAP
7 3 (0.53%) Spring
7 3 (0.53%) Spring MVC
Miscellaneous
1 60 (10.51%) Onboarding
2 28 (4.90%) Data Centre
3 23 (4.03%) CMDB
4 18 (3.15%) Enterprise Software
5 14 (2.45%) PKI
5 14 (2.45%) Smartphone
6 11 (1.93%) Cyber Threat
6 11 (1.93%) Virtual Team
7 10 (1.75%) Product Ownership
7 10 (1.75%) Video Conferencing
8 8 (1.40%) BYOD
8 8 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
8 8 (1.40%) Driving Licence
8 8 (1.40%) iPhone
8 8 (1.40%) Self-Motivation
9 7 (1.23%) Fat Client
9 7 (1.23%) Thin Client
10 6 (1.05%) Fibre Optics
11 5 (0.88%) Analytical Mindset
11 5 (0.88%) Cloud Native
Operating Systems
1 162 (28.37%) Windows
2 61 (10.68%) Windows 10
3 37 (6.48%) Windows Server
4 32 (5.60%) Android
5 31 (5.43%) Linux
6 14 (2.45%) Unix
7 12 (2.10%) Windows 7
8 10 (1.75%) Mac OS
9 9 (1.58%) Apple iOS
9 9 (1.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 5 (0.88%) Windows Server 2012
11 4 (0.70%) CentOS
12 3 (0.53%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.53%) Windows XP
13 1 (0.18%) OpenVMS
13 1 (0.18%) Solaris
13 1 (0.18%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.18%) VMS
13 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2003
13 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 221 (38.70%) ITIL
2 133 (23.29%) ITSM
3 123 (21.54%) Problem-Solving
4 122 (21.37%) Customer Service
5 120 (21.02%) Continuous Improvement
6 114 (19.96%) Service Management
7 102 (17.86%) Stakeholder Management
8 96 (16.81%) Service Delivery
9 94 (16.46%) Change Management
10 65 (11.38%) Agile
10 65 (11.38%) Root Cause Analysis
11 59 (10.33%) Problem Management
12 57 (9.98%) Incident Management
13 44 (7.71%) Migration
13 44 (7.71%) Validation
14 43 (7.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 40 (7.01%) Asset Management
15 40 (7.01%) DevOps
16 36 (6.30%) Roadmaps
17 35 (6.13%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 42 (7.36%) SQL
2 41 (7.18%) PowerShell
3 36 (6.30%) Python
4 13 (2.28%) Bash
5 12 (2.10%) JavaScript
6 10 (1.75%) Java
7 7 (1.23%) Shell Script
8 6 (1.05%) PL/SQL
9 5 (0.88%) C#
10 4 (0.70%) Bicep
10 4 (0.70%) MATLAB
11 2 (0.35%) DataWeave
11 2 (0.35%) Korn
11 2 (0.35%) X++
12 1 (0.18%) ActionScript
12 1 (0.18%) ActionScript 2.0
12 1 (0.18%) COBOL
12 1 (0.18%) Go
12 1 (0.18%) Scala
12 1 (0.18%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 145 (25.39%) Security Cleared
2 116 (20.32%) SC Cleared
3 49 (8.58%) Degree
4 26 (4.55%) DV Cleared
5 19 (3.33%) Microsoft Certification
6 18 (3.15%) ITIL Certification
7 17 (2.98%) BPSS Clearance
7 17 (2.98%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 16 (2.80%) Cisco Certification
9 11 (1.93%) Azure Certification
10 10 (1.75%) CCNP
11 9 (1.58%) A+ Certification
11 9 (1.58%) PMI Certification
12 8 (1.40%) Computer Science Degree
12 8 (1.40%) MCSE
13 7 (1.23%) CCNA
13 7 (1.23%) DBS Check
14 6 (1.05%) CCSE
15 5 (0.88%) CCSM
15 5 (0.88%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (2.45%) Data Quality
2 11 (1.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 10 (1.75%) NIST
3 10 (1.75%) QA
4 9 (1.58%) PMO
5 8 (1.40%) ISO/IEC 20000
6 6 (1.05%) GDPR
6 6 (1.05%) GRC
7 5 (0.88%) COBIT
7 5 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (0.88%) ISO 9001
8 4 (0.70%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 3 (0.53%) JSP 440
10 2 (0.35%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.18%) DICOM
11 1 (0.18%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (0.18%) HIPAA
11 1 (0.18%) HL7
11 1 (0.18%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 120 (21.02%) Active Directory
2 27 (4.73%) VMware Infrastructure
3 19 (3.33%) Virtual Desktop
4 15 (2.63%) VMware ESXi
5 10 (1.75%) Docker
6 8 (1.40%) Hyper-V
7 7 (1.23%) vSphere
8 5 (0.88%) Firmware
9 4 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
10 2 (0.35%) ACF2
10 2 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
10 2 (0.35%) RACF
10 2 (0.35%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.18%) Apache ZooKeeper
11 1 (0.18%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.18%) Ceph
11 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Virtual Server
11 1 (0.18%) VMware Workstation
11 1 (0.18%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 55 (9.63%) Microsoft Intune
2 32 (5.60%) SCCM
3 21 (3.68%) Kubernetes
4 18 (3.15%) Terraform
5 12 (2.10%) Single Sign-On
6 10 (1.75%) Ansible
6 10 (1.75%) Grafana
6 10 (1.75%) vCenter Server
7 6 (1.05%) Prometheus
8 5 (0.88%) Jamf Pro
9 4 (0.70%) Check_MK
9 4 (0.70%) Podman
9 4 (0.70%) Red Hat Satellite
10 3 (0.53%) FortiGate
10 3 (0.53%) Oracle Identity Management
10 3 (0.53%) Oracle Identity Manager
10 3 (0.53%) vMotion
11 2 (0.35%) Data Guard
11 2 (0.35%) Oracle RMAN
11 2 (0.35%) SCOM
Vendors
1 204 (35.73%) Microsoft
2 113 (19.79%) ServiceNow
3 47 (8.23%) Cisco
3 47 (8.23%) VMware
4 35 (6.13%) Oracle
5 20 (3.50%) Apple
6 18 (3.15%) HP
6 18 (3.15%) Remedy
7 13 (2.28%) Zscaler
8 11 (1.93%) Nokia
8 11 (1.93%) Tenable
9 10 (1.75%) Citrix
9 10 (1.75%) Dynatrace
9 10 (1.75%) Fortinet
10 9 (1.58%) Okta
10 9 (1.58%) Salesforce
10 9 (1.58%) SAP
10 9 (1.58%) Splunk
11 8 (1.40%) CheckPoint
11 8 (1.40%) Liquidlogic
285 SLA jobs Nationwide