Does remote working level out ServiceNow salaries across the UK?

Partly. The gap is narrowing, but it hasn’t closed, and the way it’s narrowing catches a lot of hiring plans out.

If you’re setting pay bands for ServiceNow roles, the detail matters more than the headline. Here’s what the numbers say, and what they mean for how you hire.

The London premium is still real

On paper, London still pays more. The median ServiceNow Developer salary in London sits around £78,000. Across the UK excluding London, the median is closer to £70,000. That’s a premium of roughly 10 to 15%, which fits the wider pattern: London salaries typically run 10 to 25% ahead of the rest of the country.

So if you benchmark purely on advertised salaries, the regional discount looks alive and well. The problem is that advertised salaries no longer describe how the market actually behaves.

What remote work has changed

Fully remote roles have broken the link between where someone lives and what they can earn. London-headquartered employers now hire ServiceNow talent nationally, and for fully remote positions they’re paying at or near London rates.

A concrete example. A senior ServiceNow developer in Manchester earning £65,000 at a local employer can move to £80,000 or £90,000 working remotely for a London fintech. That’s a 20 to 35% increase in real terms, before you factor in that their cost of living hasn’t moved an inch.

That candidate exists, and your local pay band is competing with the offer they just received.

Who actually benefits

Here’s the part most employers get wrong. Remote work is levelling salaries, but the benefit lands almost entirely with the regional candidate, not the employer.

Going remote doesn’t buy you cheaper ServiceNow talent. The same national market that lets you hire from anywhere lets every London employer bid for the same people. What going remote buys you is a bigger pool, and that’s worth a lot, but it’s a different thing from a saving.

Flexibility is the new London weighting

The reverse is also now priced in. Mandating three or more days in the office shrinks your pool to people within commuting distance, and those people are fielding remote offers at equal or better money. In practice, flexibility has replaced the old London weighting as part of the package. If you take the flexibility away, you pay a premium to compensate.

This is the trade most office-attendance policies never cost out. The policy gets set on culture grounds, the pay bands stay where they were, and six months later the business is asking why every senior shortlist needs a salary exception.

The caveat: location still shows up in some pay bands

It’s not total levelling, and it’s worth being precise about this. A number of employers have introduced location-based pay adjustments, cutting salaries by 10 to 20% for staff who relocate away from London. Some firms still build location into their bands and defend it.

So the honest position is this: the direction of travel is towards levelling, but the market is mixed, and you’ll find both models in play when you benchmark.

What this means for your pay bands

Three practical conclusions fall out of the data.

First, benchmark against the market your candidates are actually in, not the city your office is in. A regional candidate for a remote role is comparing you with London money, whatever your postcode says.

Second, decide what your office policy is worth and price it. If you need people in three days a week, that’s a constraint candidates will charge you for. Budget for it rather than discovering it offer by offer.

Third, treat the regional discount as a closing assumption, not a standing one. It still exists in parts of the market, but every quarter it explains less of what candidates accept.

One note on the data

The ServiceNow salary medians above come from job-advert samples that get fairly small once you split by region. Treat them as directional rather than precise. The direction, though, is consistent across every source: the gap is narrowing, the candidate is the one capturing the difference, and flexibility is now part of the price.

If you’re setting ServiceNow pay bands and want a second opinion on the numbers, book a meeting with me below