SLA Contract Job Trends in the West Midlands

Service Level Agreement (SLA)
England > West Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the West Midlands requiring SLA skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 21 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 121 48 73
Rank change year-on-year -73 +25 +10
Contract jobs citing SLA 40 57 44
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 1.21% 3.88% 2.14%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 7.23% 20.80% 14.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 24 46 22
10th Percentile - £220 £156
25th Percentile £213 £235 £202
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £269 £331 £245
Median % change year-on-year -18.68% +34.90% -50.00%
75th Percentile £363 £475 £438
90th Percentile £517 £503 £507
England median daily rate £450 £348 £350
% change year-on-year +29.50% -0.71% +17.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 2 11
10th Percentile - £14.83 £13.00
25th Percentile £12.90 £15.03 £13.18
Median hourly rate £15.94 £15.35 £13.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.81% +13.70% -14.29%
75th Percentile £20.24 £15.68 £14.25
90th Percentile £20.92 £15.87 £14.70
England median hourly rate £18.67 £22.14 £14.49
% change year-on-year -15.70% +52.80% -20.49%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
West Midlands

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 in the West Midlands.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 553 274 311
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 16.76% 18.65% 15.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 379 193 207
10th Percentile £306 £235 £259
25th Percentile £365 £350 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £460 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.17% -8.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £540 £550 £612
90th Percentile £671 £660 £780
England median daily rate £501 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +0.10% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 8 30
10th Percentile £12.90 £15.61 £11.83
25th Percentile £13.20 £25.14 £13.20
Median hourly rate £20.62 £29.97 £14.60
Median % change year-on-year -31.21% +105.27% -46.55%
75th Percentile £33.98 £34.16 £49.73
90th Percentile £67.84 £42.49 £58.75
England median hourly rate £36.00 £32.66 £23.80
% change year-on-year +10.24% +37.21% -43.02%

SLA
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing SLA relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands.

SLA job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

SLA
Daily Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing SLA.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing SLA

SLA
Daily Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SLA in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 21 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SLA in the West Midlands

SLA
Hourly Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing SLA.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing SLA

SLA
Contract Job Locations in the West Midlands

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SLA within the West Midlands region over the 6 months to 21 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
Birmingham -23 9 £319 +6.25% 2
Coventry -15 6 £225 +2.27%
Warwickshire -43 6 £220 -6.38% 2
Shropshire -50 6 £369 +68.69%
Worcestershire - 4 - - 2
Wolverhampton -2 1 £250 -
Staffordshire - 1 - - 2
SLA
England

SLA
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the West Midlands 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 6 (15.00%) SharePoint
2 5 (12.50%) SAS
3 2 (5.00%) Confluence
4 1 (2.50%) LiveCycle
4 1 (2.50%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 13 (32.50%) Microsoft Excel
1 13 (32.50%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (2.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 4 (10.00%) ContrOCC
Cloud Services
1 13 (32.50%) Microsoft 365
2 12 (30.00%) Azure
3 9 (22.50%) Entra ID
3 9 (22.50%) OneDrive
4 8 (20.00%) AWS
5 3 (7.50%) Power Platform
6 2 (5.00%) Azure DevOps
6 2 (5.00%) Azure Sentinel
7 1 (2.50%) AWS Data Pipeline
7 1 (2.50%) IaaS
7 1 (2.50%) Matillion
7 1 (2.50%) PaaS
7 1 (2.50%) SaaS
7 1 (2.50%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 10 (25.00%) VPN
2 6 (15.00%) Cisco IOS
3 4 (10.00%) DHCP
3 4 (10.00%) DNS
4 3 (7.50%) Wi-Fi
5 2 (5.00%) TCP/IP
6 1 (2.50%) NaaS
6 1 (2.50%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (12.50%) Pentaho
2 2 (5.00%) Power BI
2 2 (5.00%) Relational Database
2 2 (5.00%) Tableau
3 1 (2.50%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (2.50%) Data Warehouse
3 1 (2.50%) Semantic Layer
3 1 (2.50%) Spark SQL
3 1 (2.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 7 (17.50%) JIRA
2 2 (5.00%) Artifactory
2 2 (5.00%) GitLab
2 2 (5.00%) JMeter
General
1 20 (50.00%) Social Skills
2 6 (15.00%) Analytical Skills
3 5 (12.50%) Public Sector
4 4 (10.00%) Finance
4 4 (10.00%) Local Government
5 1 (2.50%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 9 (22.50%) Data Engineer
2 6 (15.00%) Help Desk Support
2 6 (15.00%) Help Desk Support Technician
2 6 (15.00%) Help Desk Technician
2 6 (15.00%) Support Technician
3 4 (10.00%) 1st Line Support
3 4 (10.00%) Applications Support
3 4 (10.00%) IT Support
3 4 (10.00%) Lead
3 4 (10.00%) Service Desk Agent
3 4 (10.00%) Service Desk Support
3 4 (10.00%) Support Officer
4 3 (7.50%) AWS Data Engineer
4 3 (7.50%) AWS Engineer
4 3 (7.50%) Gen AI Engineer
4 3 (7.50%) Support Engineer
5 2 (5.00%) Analyst
5 2 (5.00%) Desktop Support
5 2 (5.00%) Service Analyst
5 2 (5.00%) Service Desk Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (5.00%) ADO
2 1 (2.50%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 8 (20.00%) Onboarding
2 7 (17.50%) Smartphone
3 2 (5.00%) BYOD
3 2 (5.00%) Enterprise Software
4 1 (2.50%) CMDB
4 1 (2.50%) Data Centre
4 1 (2.50%) Digital Signage
4 1 (2.50%) Mobile App
4 1 (2.50%) Product Ownership
4 1 (2.50%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 13 (32.50%) Windows
2 7 (17.50%) Windows 10
3 6 (15.00%) Android
4 2 (5.00%) Unix
4 2 (5.00%) Windows Server
5 1 (2.50%) Linux
5 1 (2.50%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 15 (37.50%) Customer Service
2 14 (35.00%) Agile
3 12 (30.00%) Problem-Solving
4 10 (25.00%) ITSM
5 9 (22.50%) ITIL
6 8 (20.00%) Data Engineering
6 8 (20.00%) Data Modelling
6 8 (20.00%) Data Pipeline
6 8 (20.00%) ETL
6 8 (20.00%) Mentoring
6 8 (20.00%) Problem Management
7 7 (17.50%) Asset Management
7 7 (17.50%) Customer Experience
7 7 (17.50%) Data Integration
8 5 (12.50%) Community of Practice
8 5 (12.50%) Continuous Improvement
8 5 (12.50%) Generative AI
8 5 (12.50%) Incident Management
9 4 (10.00%) Case Management
9 4 (10.00%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 11 (27.50%) SQL
2 5 (12.50%) Bash
2 5 (12.50%) Python
3 4 (10.00%) PL/SQL
4 2 (5.00%) Java
4 2 (5.00%) VB
5 1 (2.50%) Scala
Qualifications
1 11 (27.50%) Security Cleared
2 9 (22.50%) SC Cleared
3 7 (17.50%) BPSS Clearance
4 4 (10.00%) Degree
5 2 (5.00%) ISTQB
5 2 (5.00%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
5 2 (5.00%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
5 2 (5.00%) Microsoft Certified Professional
5 2 (5.00%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
6 1 (2.50%) ITIL Certification
6 1 (2.50%) MCSE
6 1 (2.50%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (7.50%) PMO
2 2 (5.00%) Data Quality
3 1 (2.50%) NCSC
3 1 (2.50%) NIST
3 1 (2.50%) QA
System Software
1 11 (27.50%) Active Directory
2 1 (2.50%) Firmware
2 1 (2.50%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 9 (22.50%) Microsoft Intune
2 7 (17.50%) SCCM
3 2 (5.00%) HP ALM
3 2 (5.00%) HP Quality Center
4 1 (2.50%) Terraform
Vendors
1 14 (35.00%) Microsoft
2 9 (22.50%) Oracle
3 7 (17.50%) Cisco
3 7 (17.50%) Talend
4 6 (15.00%) Canon
4 6 (15.00%) Informatica
4 6 (15.00%) ServiceNow
5 5 (12.50%) Cloudera
6 4 (10.00%) HP
6 4 (10.00%) Liquidlogic
7 3 (7.50%) Atlassian
7 3 (7.50%) SAP
8 2 (5.00%) Dell
8 2 (5.00%) Denodo
9 1 (2.50%) Adobe
9 1 (2.50%) Apple
9 1 (2.50%) Databricks
9 1 (2.50%) Logi
9 1 (2.50%) Logitech
9 1 (2.50%) Remedy