SLA Job Trends in the South East

Service Level Agreement (SLA)
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the South East requiring SLA skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 17 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 138 130 101
Rank change year-on-year -8 -29 -6
Permanent jobs citing SLA 150 141 398
As % of all permanent jobs in the South East 1.22% 1.98% 2.76%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 11.02% 12.81% 17.74%
Number of salaries quoted 110 100 339
10th Percentile £26,725 £26,000 £23,500
25th Percentile £28,813 £31,250 £24,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £33,000 £42,250 £29,000
Median % change year-on-year -21.89% +45.69% -13.43%
75th Percentile £59,500 £60,000 £40,250
90th Percentile £59,550 £88,075 £52,500
England median annual salary £38,500 £34,750 £32,500
% change year-on-year +10.79% +6.92% -17.67%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
South East

SLA falls under the Quality Assurance and Compliance category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring quality assurance or compliance skills in the South East.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 1,361 1,101 2,243
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the South East 11.05% 15.46% 15.57%
Number of salaries quoted 812 610 1,493
10th Percentile £29,000 £31,250 £24,500
25th Percentile £37,500 £43,750 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £53,663 £55,000 £47,000
Median % change year-on-year -2.43% +17.02% -7.84%
75th Percentile £68,750 £75,938 £63,750
90th Percentile £87,500 £85,000 £77,500
England median annual salary £60,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year - +9.09% -4.35%

SLA
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing SLA relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the South East.

SLA job vacancy trend in the South East

SLA
Salary Trend in the South East

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing SLA.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing SLA

SLA
Salary Histogram in the South East

Salary distribution for jobs citing SLA in the South East over the 6 months to 17 March 2026.

Salary histogram for SLA in the South East

SLA
Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing SLA within the South East region over the 6 months to 17 March 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Hampshire +7 44 £54,000 +86.21% 14
Thames Valley -24 40 £40,000 -27.27% 35
Surrey -16 35 £30,000 -36.84% 8
Buckinghamshire -11 18 £55,000 -28.10% 12
Kent -18 16 £27,500 -67.65% 6
Berkshire -20 12 £40,000 -27.27% 20
Oxfordshire +5 10 £28,000 +1.82% 3
Sussex -2 9 £31,500 -
East Sussex - 4 £27,500 -
West Sussex -14 2 £31,500 +18.87% 2
SLA
England

SLA
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 24 (16.00%) Microsoft Exchange
2 22 (14.67%) Exchange Server 2003
3 16 (10.67%) SharePoint
4 3 (2.00%) IIS
5 2 (1.33%) Apache
5 2 (1.33%) Confluence
Applications
1 23 (15.33%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (5.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (4.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 10 (6.67%) Dynamics AX
2 7 (4.67%) Sage 200
3 5 (3.33%) Sage X3
4 2 (1.33%) IBM Planning Analytics
4 2 (1.33%) Q-Pulse
Cloud Services
1 51 (34.00%) Microsoft 365
2 26 (17.33%) Azure
3 16 (10.67%) Entra ID
4 15 (10.00%) Power Platform
5 13 (8.67%) AWS
6 9 (6.00%) Nutanix
7 5 (3.33%) Intacct
7 5 (3.33%) PowerApps
8 1 (0.67%) Azure Sentinel
8 1 (0.67%) GitHub
8 1 (0.67%) GitHub Actions
8 1 (0.67%) PaaS
8 1 (0.67%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
8 1 (0.67%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 50 (33.33%) DNS
2 49 (32.67%) DHCP
3 21 (14.00%) Firewall
4 18 (12.00%) VPN
5 11 (7.33%) VoIP
6 10 (6.67%) Remote Desktop
7 9 (6.00%) TCP/IP
8 7 (4.67%) Wi-Fi
9 6 (4.00%) LAN
9 6 (4.00%) WAN
9 6 (4.00%) Wireless
10 3 (2.00%) 5G
10 3 (2.00%) PBX
11 2 (1.33%) iSCSI
11 2 (1.33%) Network Security
11 2 (1.33%) SAN
11 2 (1.33%) Structured Cabling
12 1 (0.67%) Cisco ASA
12 1 (0.67%) Cisco Nexus
12 1 (0.67%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (15.33%) Oracle Database
1 23 (15.33%) Oracle Database 10g
2 19 (12.67%) SQL Server
3 10 (6.67%) Power BI
4 7 (4.67%) MySQL
5 2 (1.33%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (1.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 11 (7.33%) JIRA
2 1 (0.67%) Git
General
1 51 (34.00%) Social Skills
2 22 (14.67%) Finance
3 11 (7.33%) Analytical Skills
3 11 (7.33%) Manufacturing
4 8 (5.33%) Documentation Skills
5 7 (4.67%) Telecoms
6 6 (4.00%) Back Office
7 3 (2.00%) Law
7 3 (2.00%) Marketing
7 3 (2.00%) Organisational Skills
8 2 (1.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (1.33%) Legal
9 1 (0.67%) Advertising
9 1 (0.67%) Aviation
9 1 (0.67%) Front Office
9 1 (0.67%) Retail
Job Titles
1 31 (20.67%) Support Engineer
2 28 (18.67%) 2nd Line Support
3 27 (18.00%) Analyst
4 23 (15.33%) IT Support
4 23 (15.33%) Systems Support
5 22 (14.67%) 3rd Line Support
5 22 (14.67%) Support Technician
6 17 (11.33%) 1st Line Support
7 15 (10.00%) IT Engineer
8 14 (9.33%) Applications Support
8 14 (9.33%) IT Support Engineer
8 14 (9.33%) Support Analyst
9 12 (8.00%) 2nd Line Support Technician
10 9 (6.00%) Applications Engineer
10 9 (6.00%) Applications Support Engineer
10 9 (6.00%) Service Analyst
10 9 (6.00%) Service Desk Analyst
11 8 (5.33%) 1st/2nd Line Support
11 8 (5.33%) Cloud Engineer
11 8 (5.33%) ERP Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (3.33%) .NET
1 5 (3.33%) CSS
1 5 (3.33%) HTML
2 2 (1.33%) EDI
3 1 (0.67%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 17 (11.33%) Driving Licence
2 10 (6.67%) NHS
3 9 (6.00%) Public Cloud
4 8 (5.33%) Hybrid Cloud
5 6 (4.00%) EPoS
6 5 (3.33%) Onboarding
7 3 (2.00%) Client/Server
7 3 (2.00%) Cybercrime
7 3 (2.00%) Data Centre
7 3 (2.00%) IoT
7 3 (2.00%) Self-Motivation
8 2 (1.33%) Credit Risk
8 2 (1.33%) Management Information System
8 2 (1.33%) Security Operations Centre
8 2 (1.33%) Video Conferencing
9 1 (0.67%) Clustering
9 1 (0.67%) Device Driver
9 1 (0.67%) Product Ownership
9 1 (0.67%) Replication
9 1 (0.67%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 83 (55.33%) Windows
2 25 (16.67%) Windows Server
3 23 (15.33%) HPUX
3 23 (15.33%) Solaris
3 23 (15.33%) Unix
4 22 (14.67%) Windows 7
4 22 (14.67%) Windows Server 2003
4 22 (14.67%) Windows Server 2008
5 14 (9.33%) Windows 10
6 5 (3.33%) Linux
7 3 (2.00%) Android
7 3 (2.00%) Apple iOS
8 2 (1.33%) CentOS
8 2 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.67%) FreeBSD
9 1 (0.67%) OpenBSD
Processes & Methodologies
1 47 (31.33%) Customer Service
2 42 (28.00%) ITIL
3 34 (22.67%) Incident Management
4 25 (16.67%) ITSM
5 24 (16.00%) Problem-Solving
6 17 (11.33%) Change Management
7 16 (10.67%) Asset Management
8 15 (10.00%) Continuous Improvement
8 15 (10.00%) ERP
9 14 (9.33%) Process Improvement
9 14 (9.33%) Stakeholder Management
10 13 (8.67%) Problem Management
11 11 (7.33%) Coaching
11 11 (7.33%) Customer Experience
11 11 (7.33%) High Availability
12 10 (6.67%) Business Intelligence
12 10 (6.67%) IT Governance
12 10 (6.67%) Logistics
12 10 (6.67%) Order to Cash
12 10 (6.67%) Procure-to-Pay
Programming Languages
1 33 (22.00%) PowerShell
2 22 (14.67%) Perl
3 8 (5.33%) SQL
4 5 (3.33%) C#
4 5 (3.33%) JavaScript
5 3 (2.00%) Bash
6 2 (1.33%) C
7 1 (0.67%) Python
Qualifications
1 33 (22.00%) Security Cleared
2 26 (17.33%) SC Cleared
3 22 (14.67%) DV Cleared
4 14 (9.33%) Degree
5 5 (3.33%) ITIL Certification
6 3 (2.00%) DBS Check
7 2 (1.33%) CREST Certified
7 2 (1.33%) GIAC
7 2 (1.33%) RHCE
7 2 (1.33%) RHCSA
8 1 (0.67%) CCNP
8 1 (0.67%) CCSE
8 1 (0.67%) CCSM
8 1 (0.67%) Cisco Certification
8 1 (0.67%) CompTIA Security+
8 1 (0.67%) HND
8 1 (0.67%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (6.67%) QA
2 4 (2.67%) Cyber Essentials
3 1 (0.67%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.67%) ITGC
System Software
1 76 (50.67%) Active Directory
2 17 (11.33%) Hyper-V
3 10 (6.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (2.00%) Docker
5 2 (1.33%) Citrix Hypervisor
5 2 (1.33%) Samba
6 1 (0.67%) KVM
6 1 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
6 1 (0.67%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 16 (10.67%) SCCM
2 11 (7.33%) Microsoft Intune
3 3 (2.00%) Jamf Pro
4 2 (1.33%) Kubernetes
4 2 (1.33%) Terraform
5 1 (0.67%) Ansible
5 1 (0.67%) Failover Clustering
5 1 (0.67%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 81 (54.00%) Microsoft
2 32 (21.33%) VMware
3 24 (16.00%) Oracle
4 12 (8.00%) HP
5 10 (6.67%) Dell
6 8 (5.33%) Dell Compellent
6 8 (5.33%) Nimble Storage
7 7 (4.67%) Sage
8 6 (4.00%) Palo Alto
8 6 (4.00%) ServiceNow
9 5 (3.33%) Epicor
9 5 (3.33%) Infor
9 5 (3.33%) Qualys
9 5 (3.33%) WatchGuard
10 3 (2.00%) Apple
10 3 (2.00%) Ruckus Wireless
10 3 (2.00%) Salesforce
10 3 (2.00%) Samsung
11 2 (1.33%) D-Link
11 2 (1.33%) OpenText