SLA Contracts

Service Level Agreement (SLA)
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for SLA skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited SLA over the 6 months to 5 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
5 May 2024		 Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 138 189 180
Rank change year-on-year +51 -9 +25
Contract jobs citing SLA 749 853 1,442
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 1.74% 1.44% 1.63%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 12.14% 10.79% 12.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 352 494 920
10th Percentile £150 £140 £138
25th Percentile £213 £185 £185
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £330 £300 £372
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -19.35% -7.00%
75th Percentile £491 £490 £525
90th Percentile £587 £588 £625
UK excluding London median daily rate £285 £250 £263
% change year-on-year +14.00% -4.76% -19.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 94 72 106
10th Percentile £11.07 £12.52 £11.36
25th Percentile £12.83 £14.42 £12.36
Median hourly rate £14.75 £18.50 £16.68
Median % change year-on-year -20.27% +10.94% +19.11%
75th Percentile £23.80 £29.30 £24.06
90th Percentile £32.68 £46.75 £47.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £13.93 £18.50 £16.38
% change year-on-year -24.73% +12.98% +17.89%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
UK

SLA is in the Quality Assurance and Compliance category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 6,170 7,903 11,826
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 14.30% 13.38% 13.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,917 5,433 8,103
10th Percentile £297 £280 £297
25th Percentile £403 £413 £404
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £514
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% +2.24% +8.11%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £623
90th Percentile £750 £738 £712
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £479 £450
% change year-on-year +1.77% +6.44% +5.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 383 236 302
10th Percentile £10.95 £13.29 £12.02
25th Percentile £13.18 £18.50 £16.50
Median hourly rate £21.00 £35.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -40.00% +27.27% +30.95%
75th Percentile £45.00 £59.46 £49.25
90th Percentile £67.50 £77.50 £66.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.00 £32.50 £21.05
% change year-on-year -44.62% +54.43% +0.10%

SLA
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing SLA as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for SLA in the UK

SLA
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing SLA.

Daily rate trend for SLA in the UK

SLA
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SLA over the 6 months to 5 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for SLA in the UK

SLA
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing SLA.

Hourly rate trend for SLA in the UK

SLA
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SLA over the 6 months to 5 May 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for SLA in the UK

SLA
Top 16 Contract 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 5 May 2024. 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 +34 659 £330 +10.00% 504
UK excluding London +24 498 £285 +14.00% 393
London +89 215 £400 +6.67% 133
Work from Home +114 202 £375 -15.73% 151
South East -4 150 £290 +20.83% 117
North of England +26 136 £493 +31.47% 105
North West +49 99 £538 +15.28% 62
South West +38 67 £275 +57.14% 37
Midlands +17 59 £245 -15.52% 61
West Midlands +14 47 £240 -21.95% 39
Scotland +60 38 £282 +65.88% 20
Yorkshire -14 36 £425 +61.90% 32
Wales +28 28 £135 -50.91% 14
East of England -37 21 £265 +6.00% 45
East Midlands +16 12 £270 +42.11% 22
North East +14 1 - - 12

SLA
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 40 (5.34%) Microsoft Exchange
2 21 (2.80%) SharePoint
3 3 (0.40%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 3 (0.40%) IIS
3 3 (0.40%) OpenStack
4 2 (0.27%) Alfresco
4 2 (0.27%) Confluence
4 2 (0.27%) Exchange Server 2007
4 2 (0.27%) JBoss
4 2 (0.27%) Skype for Business
5 1 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2010
5 1 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
5 1 (0.13%) Red Hat Fuse
5 1 (0.13%) Tomcat
Applications
1 105 (14.02%) Microsoft Office
2 66 (8.81%) Microsoft Excel
3 24 (3.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 13 (1.74%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.80%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.40%) Adobe Creative Suite
Business Applications
1 7 (0.93%) Remedy ITSM
1 7 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.67%) Oracle General Ledger
3 3 (0.40%) NEC Housing
3 3 (0.40%) Oracle AGIS
3 3 (0.40%) Oracle Applications
3 3 (0.40%) Oracle Assets
3 3 (0.40%) Oracle Cash Management
3 3 (0.40%) Oracle Financials
3 3 (0.40%) Oracle Payables
3 3 (0.40%) Oracle Receivables
3 3 (0.40%) Shopify
4 2 (0.27%) assyst
4 2 (0.27%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.27%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 1 (0.13%) Dynamics GP
5 1 (0.13%) SAP APO
5 1 (0.13%) SAP IBP
5 1 (0.13%) SAP MM
5 1 (0.13%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 124 (16.56%) Microsoft 365
2 58 (7.74%) Azure
3 37 (4.94%) Power Platform
4 36 (4.81%) AWS
5 18 (2.40%) OneDrive
6 17 (2.27%) Entra ID
7 13 (1.74%) SuccessFactors
8 9 (1.20%) Power Automate
9 7 (0.93%) GCP
9 7 (0.93%) WhatsApp
10 6 (0.80%) IaaS
11 5 (0.67%) Cloud Computing
11 5 (0.67%) Dynamics 365
11 5 (0.67%) Lucidchart
11 5 (0.67%) PaaS
11 5 (0.67%) SaaS
11 5 (0.67%) Serverless
12 4 (0.53%) IBM Blueworks
13 3 (0.40%) Amazon EKS
13 3 (0.40%) Mimecast
Communications & Networking
1 63 (8.41%) LAN
2 51 (6.81%) VPN
3 43 (5.74%) WAN
4 42 (5.61%) Firewall
4 42 (5.61%) Wireless
5 17 (2.27%) Remote Desktop
5 17 (2.27%) TCP/IP
6 16 (2.14%) VoIP
7 15 (2.00%) Internet
8 14 (1.87%) SAN
9 13 (1.74%) DNS
9 13 (1.74%) MPLS
10 11 (1.47%) PSTN
10 11 (1.47%) Wi-Fi
11 10 (1.34%) DHCP
11 10 (1.34%) SD-WAN
12 9 (1.20%) BGP
12 9 (1.20%) DWDM
12 9 (1.20%) IPsec
13 8 (1.07%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (3.20%) Power BI
2 13 (1.74%) SQL Server
3 10 (1.34%) Data Warehouse
4 8 (1.07%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 7 (0.93%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 6 (0.80%) Tableau
7 5 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
7 5 (0.67%) PostgreSQL
8 3 (0.40%) MySQL
9 2 (0.27%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.27%) Big Data
9 2 (0.27%) Data Lake
9 2 (0.27%) Data Mining
9 2 (0.27%) GIS
10 1 (0.13%) Elasticsearch
10 1 (0.13%) HDInsight
10 1 (0.13%) InterSystems Cache
10 1 (0.13%) MongoDB
10 1 (0.13%) NoSQL
10 1 (0.13%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 15 (2.00%) JIRA
2 5 (0.67%) Git
3 4 (0.53%) Mocha
4 3 (0.40%) Maven
5 1 (0.13%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.13%) Cypress.io
5 1 (0.13%) GoCD
5 1 (0.13%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.13%) JUnit
5 1 (0.13%) Octopus Deploy
5 1 (0.13%) TeamCity
5 1 (0.13%) Visual Studio
5 1 (0.13%) Yeoman
General
1 331 (44.19%) Social Skills
2 140 (18.69%) Finance
3 110 (14.69%) Analytical Skills
4 74 (9.88%) Public Sector
5 48 (6.41%) Telecoms
6 37 (4.94%) Banking
7 31 (4.14%) Organisational Skills
8 23 (3.07%) Marketing
9 20 (2.67%) Retail
10 19 (2.54%) Legal
11 17 (2.27%) Mandarin Language
12 15 (2.00%) Billing
12 15 (2.00%) Manufacturing
12 15 (2.00%) Police
13 14 (1.87%) Financial Institution
13 14 (1.87%) Presentation Skills
14 9 (1.20%) Investment Banking
15 8 (1.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 7 (0.93%) French Language
16 7 (0.93%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 140 (18.69%) Analyst
2 85 (11.35%) Service Analyst
3 71 (9.48%) Service Desk Analyst
4 65 (8.68%) Support Engineer
5 49 (6.54%) Service Desk Agent
6 36 (4.81%) 1st Line Support
6 36 (4.81%) Lead
7 30 (4.01%) Architect
7 30 (4.01%) IT Support
8 26 (3.47%) Consultant
8 26 (3.47%) Network Engineer
9 25 (3.34%) IT Engineer
9 25 (3.34%) Technical Support
10 24 (3.20%) Desktop Support
11 23 (3.07%) Senior
11 23 (3.07%) Service Manager
12 21 (2.80%) 2nd Line Support
12 21 (2.80%) Desktop Engineer
13 19 (2.54%) Delivery Manager
13 19 (2.54%) Support Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (0.80%) .NET
1 6 (0.80%) Web Services
2 5 (0.67%) Jest
2 5 (0.67%) Node.js
2 5 (0.67%) React
2 5 (0.67%) REST
2 5 (0.67%) XMPP
3 4 (0.53%) AngularJS
3 4 (0.53%) Redux
3 4 (0.53%) Spring
4 3 (0.40%) CSS
4 3 (0.40%) J2EE
4 3 (0.40%) jQuery
4 3 (0.40%) Ruby on Rails
4 3 (0.40%) Sass
4 3 (0.40%) Software Packaging
4 3 (0.40%) Spring Boot
4 3 (0.40%) Spring MVC
4 3 (0.40%) Twitter Bootstrap
4 3 (0.40%) VML
Miscellaneous
1 53 (7.08%) Data Centre
2 39 (5.21%) Management Information System
3 16 (2.14%) Public Cloud
4 14 (1.87%) Self-Motivation
5 12 (1.60%) CMDB
6 11 (1.47%) Distributed Systems
7 10 (1.34%) BYOD
7 10 (1.34%) Hedge funds
8 9 (1.20%) Analytical Mindset
8 9 (1.20%) FMCG
8 9 (1.20%) Video Conferencing
9 8 (1.07%) Driving Licence
9 8 (1.07%) Onboarding
9 8 (1.07%) Virtual Team
10 6 (0.80%) Digital Signage
10 6 (0.80%) Private Cloud
11 5 (0.67%) Data Protection Act
11 5 (0.67%) PKI
12 4 (0.53%) CCTV
12 4 (0.53%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 201 (26.84%) Windows
2 90 (12.02%) Windows 10
3 33 (4.41%) Linux
4 32 (4.27%) Windows 7
5 28 (3.74%) Windows Server
6 27 (3.60%) Unix
7 22 (2.94%) Apple iOS
8 16 (2.14%) Mac OS
9 12 (1.60%) Android
10 7 (0.93%) Mac OS X
11 6 (0.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 6 (0.80%) Windows Server 2016
12 4 (0.53%) Windows Server 2012
13 3 (0.40%) Solaris
13 3 (0.40%) Ubuntu
13 3 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
14 1 (0.13%) AIX
14 1 (0.13%) Windows XP
Processes & Methodologies
1 223 (29.77%) Problem-Solving
2 212 (28.30%) Customer Service
3 157 (20.96%) ITIL
4 125 (16.69%) Service Delivery
5 83 (11.08%) Agile
6 70 (9.35%) Service Management
7 65 (8.68%) ITSM
8 53 (7.08%) Continuous Improvement
9 52 (6.94%) Incident Management
10 49 (6.54%) Customer Requirements
11 48 (6.41%) Time Management
12 46 (6.14%) Root Cause Analysis
13 42 (5.61%) Project Delivery
14 41 (5.47%) Stakeholder Management
15 40 (5.34%) Change Management
16 39 (5.21%) Decision-Making
17 38 (5.07%) Coaching
17 38 (5.07%) Customer Experience
17 38 (5.07%) Problem Management
18 29 (3.87%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 38 (5.07%) SQL
2 34 (4.54%) PowerShell
3 16 (2.14%) Java
4 11 (1.47%) Python
5 7 (0.93%) JavaScript
5 7 (0.93%) T-SQL
6 6 (0.80%) C#
7 4 (0.53%) Kusto Query Language
7 4 (0.53%) Search Processing Language
8 3 (0.40%) C++
8 3 (0.40%) Ruby
8 3 (0.40%) VB.NET
9 2 (0.27%) VBScript
10 1 (0.13%) Bash
10 1 (0.13%) R
10 1 (0.13%) TypeScript
10 1 (0.13%) VB
Qualifications
1 184 (24.57%) Security Cleared
2 123 (16.42%) SC Cleared
3 74 (9.88%) Degree
4 48 (6.41%) DV Cleared
5 33 (4.41%) Cisco Certification
6 27 (3.60%) BPSS Clearance
7 23 (3.07%) CCNP
8 22 (2.94%) CCNA
9 21 (2.80%) ITIL Certification
10 15 (2.00%) Microsoft Certification
11 11 (1.47%) MCSE
12 9 (1.20%) Computer Science Degree
13 5 (0.67%) CCSA
13 5 (0.67%) JNCIA
13 5 (0.67%) Master's Degree
14 4 (0.53%) BC Cleared
14 4 (0.53%) MCP
14 4 (0.53%) MCSA
14 4 (0.53%) RHCE
15 3 (0.40%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (3.34%) QA
2 11 (1.47%) Disclosure Scotland
3 10 (1.34%) Data Quality
4 7 (0.93%) ISO/IEC 20000
5 5 (0.67%) Accessibility
5 5 (0.67%) GDPR
6 4 (0.53%) NIST
7 3 (0.40%) ISO 9001
8 2 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.13%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 106 (14.15%) Active Directory
2 31 (4.14%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (2.40%) Hyper-V
4 8 (1.07%) Firmware
5 7 (0.93%) Virtual Machines
6 5 (0.67%) Virtual Desktop
6 5 (0.67%) vSphere
7 4 (0.53%) BitLocker
7 4 (0.53%) KVM
8 3 (0.40%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 3 (0.40%) Virtual Servers
9 2 (0.27%) Microsoft App-V
10 1 (0.13%) Docker
10 1 (0.13%) Terminal Services
10 1 (0.13%) vCloud
10 1 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.13%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 60 (8.01%) SCCM
2 30 (4.01%) Microsoft Intune
3 7 (0.93%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 6 (0.80%) AirWatch
4 6 (0.80%) Kubernetes
4 6 (0.80%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
5 5 (0.67%) SCOM
5 5 (0.67%) WSUS
6 4 (0.53%) Ansible
6 4 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
6 4 (0.53%) Terraform
6 4 (0.53%) WhatsUp Gold
7 3 (0.40%) OPNET
8 2 (0.27%) Jamf Pro
8 2 (0.27%) NetBackup
8 2 (0.27%) Progress Chef
8 2 (0.27%) Salt
8 2 (0.27%) SCVMM
8 2 (0.27%) SysTrack
8 2 (0.27%) VxRail
Vendors
1 253 (33.78%) Microsoft
2 93 (12.42%) ServiceNow
3 51 (6.81%) Cisco
4 39 (5.21%) VMware
5 36 (4.81%) SAP
6 27 (3.60%) HP
7 22 (2.94%) Apple
8 18 (2.40%) Citrix
9 17 (2.27%) Dell
9 17 (2.27%) Juniper
10 11 (1.47%) F5
10 11 (1.47%) Remedy
11 10 (1.34%) BT
11 10 (1.34%) Infoblox
11 10 (1.34%) Oracle
11 10 (1.34%) Palo Alto
12 9 (1.20%) Avaya
12 9 (1.20%) Blue Coat
12 9 (1.20%) CheckPoint
12 9 (1.20%) Computacenter
555 SLA jobs Nationwide