What does it cost to hire a service desk analyst in the UK?

An employer pays around £40,514 a year for a full-time service desk analyst at the median pay of the ONS group that holds the job, once about £4,519 in employer National Insurance and £867 in minimum pension contributions are added, and about £42,514 in the first year with recruitment, before tooling, certifications and cover. The ONS counts service desk analysts among IT user support technicians, a group whose full-time median was £35,128 in the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2025, with the middle half between £29,206 and £44,720. A first-line analyst sits in the lower half.

How much is a service desk analyst paid?

The title has no ONS line of its own. The coding index puts it, with helpdesk analyst, IT support analyst and helpdesk administrator, in the group "IT user support technicians" (SOC 2020 code 3132). Table 14.7a of ASHE 2025, the provisional edition published on 23 October 2025, gives that group's gross annual pay for full-time jobs: a median of £35,128, a 25th percentile of £29,206 and a 75th percentile of £44,720. The National Careers Service profile for an IT support technician gives £24,000 for a starter and £36,000 when experienced. The group is wide: it holds the first-line analyst who resets passwords and the second-line engineer who fixes servers, so a pure first-line hire sits in the lower half of the range. The figures are UK-wide and pay varies by region.

What does an employer pay on top of the salary?

• Employer National Insurance. In the 2026 to 2027 tax year an employer pays 15% on earnings above the secondary threshold, £5,000 a year, so £4,519 on the median. An MSP that qualifies for the Employment Allowance takes up to £10,500 off its employer NI for the year; one with a desk of engineers on the payroll will have used it already.

• Pension. Automatic enrolment requires at least 3% from the employer on qualifying earnings (the slice of pay between £6,240 and £50,270 a year). That is £867 a year on the median.

• Holiday. Every full-time worker is owed 5.6 weeks' paid holiday, 28 days at the least. The salary buys about 46 working weeks, and a desk with a response target in its contracts has to be covered for the other six.

• Recruitment. The CIPD's Resourcing and talent planning report 2026 reports a median of £2,000 a hire below senior management, covering in-house time, advertising, agency fees, vetting and onboarding. It is a survey median from a small sample, 223 employers estimating to within a fifth. It takes the first year to about £42,514.

The sum leaves out a seat in ConnectWise, Autotask or HaloPSA, the remote tooling, the certifications a good analyst expects you to fund, and the weeks in which a new person learns your clients' names, their sites and which of them has a contract that says one hour. The rules behind each on-cost are set out in what it costs to employ anyone in the UK.

What a service desk analyst does all day

The National Careers Service profile for an IT support technician lists responding to requests for help, recording each issue on a tracking system, finding and fixing faults or assigning them to the right team, setting up user accounts and keeping the knowledge base current. On a desk that is a day of two halves. One half is fixing: the password reset, the printer, the mailbox that will not sync, the laptop build. The other half is the ticket itself: reading it, working out which client and which site it belongs to, asking for the details the user left out, setting the priority against the contract, routing it to an engineer and telling the user what is happening. Then the time entry, so the work can be billed. On a busy MSP desk the second half eats the first, and the analyst who was hired to fix things spends the day sorting.

Can AI do part of a service desk analyst's job?

On a service desk an AI worker can take the sorting, by reading every new ticket, matching it to the client and the site, filling in what is missing and routing it under rules you set, answering the "what is happening with my ticket" messages from the record, and chasing engineers for the time entries before the invoice run. The same work exists on the support desk of an IT consultancy and on the helpdesk of a facilities company, where the ticket is a broken door rather than a broken laptop. It is scoped to work inside the PSA you already run, and it drafts and routes rather than fixes.

What stays with a person

A person keeps:

• every fix;

• every phone call, which your team takes and logs;

• major incidents, suspected security incidents and complaints, which go straight to the person you name;

• choosing the engineer, unless you have set a rule for it, and changing a priority a person has set;

• anything about risk, money or a client relationship.

The hire you make for first line is still a hire for a technician; the AI worker makes sure the tickets that reach them are complete.

How to read a week of tickets before you hire

Look at a week of tickets and ask how many needed hands on a keyboard and how many needed sorting, chasing or a status update. The second group is the case for an AI worker. If it is large, the next first-line hire can wait, or the analyst you have gets their fixing time back. You will find our starting price on the homepage, our comparison of AI staff with hiring an administrator, and the sum for a general admin role in what it costs to hire an administrator.

On a first-line desk the AI worker's role would be the triage, the status replies and the time-entry chasing, agreed with you first, and every fix and every call would remain your team's. How many tickets on your desk need sorting rather than fixing? Talk to our agent.