Windows Server Contract Job Trends in England

Microsoft Windows Server
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring Windows Server skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 16 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 163 181 120
Rank change year-on-year +18 -61 -44
Contract jobs citing Windows Server 812 442 665
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.73% 1.57% 2.07%
As % of the Operating Systems category 17.78% 11.10% 14.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 526 332 451
10th Percentile £261 £250 £250
25th Percentile £366 £400 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £484 £500 £470
Median % change year-on-year -3.30% +6.38% -1.05%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £650 £638
UK median daily rate £488 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -2.50% +5.26% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 62 14 7
10th Percentile £16.25 £12.97 £41.23
25th Percentile £26.00 £14.11 £47.50
Median hourly rate £63.31 £16.00 £69.38
Median % change year-on-year +295.67% -76.94% +27.15%
75th Percentile £72.25 £28.25 £106.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £39.19 £112.00
UK median hourly rate £61.73 £16.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year +285.83% -68.00% -8.36%

All Operating Systems
England

Windows Server falls under the Operating Systems category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring operating system skills in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 4,568 3,982 4,562
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.76% 14.12% 14.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,914 2,596 2,824
10th Percentile £193 £185 £201
25th Percentile £311 £275 £328
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.33% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £584
90th Percentile £675 £662 £688
UK median daily rate £469 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -4.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 359 295 208
10th Percentile £16.25 £15.50 £16.25
25th Percentile £19.33 £18.84 £23.12
Median hourly rate £32.29 £24.00 £60.72
Median % change year-on-year +34.54% -60.47% +25.44%
75th Percentile £65.61 £52.13 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £67.00 -
UK median hourly rate £25.75 £25.00 £54.00
% change year-on-year +3.00% -53.70% +18.84%

Windows Server
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Windows Server relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Windows Server job vacancy trend in England

Windows Server
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Windows Server.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Windows Server

Windows Server
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Windows Server in England over the 6 months to 16 October 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Windows Server in England

Windows Server
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Windows Server.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Windows Server

Windows Server
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Windows Server in England over the 6 months to 16 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Windows Server in England

Windows Server
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Windows Server within the England region over the 6 months to 16 October 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
London +7 256 £481 -3.75% 47
South East -2 197 £515 +0.24% 61
North of England +16 140 £450 +8.11% 57
East of England -7 79 £488 -11.36% 21
North West -2 77 £437 -0.23% 34
Midlands -12 71 £425 -12.82% 24
South West -31 58 £567 +8.05% 36
Yorkshire -5 43 £525 +40.00% 16
West Midlands -30 43 £425 -12.82% 16
East Midlands +16 28 £444 -11.25% 8
North East -20 21 £350 -30.00% 8
Windows Server
UK

Windows Server
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 83 (10.22%) Microsoft Exchange
2 59 (7.27%) SharePoint
3 23 (2.83%) IIS
4 7 (0.86%) Confluence
5 6 (0.74%) Apache
5 6 (0.74%) nginx
6 5 (0.62%) FactoryTalk
6 5 (0.62%) Tomcat
7 4 (0.49%) Exchange Server 2013
8 3 (0.37%) CloudStack
9 2 (0.25%) Skype for Business
10 1 (0.12%) Apache Airflow
10 1 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2010
10 1 (0.12%) OpenStack
10 1 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
10 1 (0.12%) SharePoint 2010
10 1 (0.12%) SharePoint Server
10 1 (0.12%) WebLogic
Applications
1 12 (1.48%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 3 (0.37%) Microsoft Excel
4 2 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 12 (1.48%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.25%) OpenText MBPM
2 2 (0.25%) Oracle BPM
Cloud Services
1 349 (42.98%) Azure
2 181 (22.29%) Entra ID
3 174 (21.43%) Microsoft 365
4 99 (12.19%) AWS
5 51 (6.28%) Azure Monitor
6 36 (4.43%) GCP
7 35 (4.31%) Azure DevOps
8 25 (3.08%) IaaS
9 24 (2.96%) Azure Sentinel
10 22 (2.71%) Power Platform
11 20 (2.46%) GitHub
11 20 (2.46%) OpenShift
12 12 (1.48%) OneDrive
13 11 (1.35%) PaaS
14 9 (1.11%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 9 (1.11%) Nutanix
14 9 (1.11%) SaaS
15 8 (0.99%) Datadog
15 8 (0.99%) GitHub Actions
16 7 (0.86%) Azure ExpressRoute
Communications & Networking
1 252 (31.03%) DNS
2 164 (20.20%) DHCP
3 145 (17.86%) Firewall
4 83 (10.22%) TCP/IP
5 70 (8.62%) VPN
6 55 (6.77%) SAN
7 48 (5.91%) LAN
8 47 (5.79%) VLAN
9 46 (5.67%) WAN
10 44 (5.42%) Network Security
11 30 (3.69%) SSL
12 23 (2.83%) NetScaler
13 21 (2.59%) Wireless
14 18 (2.22%) Wi-Fi
15 16 (1.97%) NAS
15 16 (1.97%) SSH
16 12 (1.48%) BGP
16 12 (1.48%) VoIP
17 11 (1.35%) HTTP
18 10 (1.23%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 144 (17.73%) SQL Server
2 22 (2.71%) Power BI
3 15 (1.85%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 13 (1.60%) MySQL
5 12 (1.48%) Amazon RDS
6 11 (1.35%) PostgreSQL
7 10 (1.23%) Oracle Database
8 6 (0.74%) Relational Database
9 5 (0.62%) Azure SQL Database
9 5 (0.62%) Elasticsearch
9 5 (0.62%) NoSQL
10 3 (0.37%) Big Data
10 3 (0.37%) GIS
10 3 (0.37%) Metadata
10 3 (0.37%) Oracle BI EE
10 3 (0.37%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 2 (0.25%) MongoDB
11 2 (0.25%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 1 (0.12%) SAP Data Services
12 1 (0.12%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 17 (2.09%) Git
1 17 (2.09%) Jenkins
2 16 (1.97%) JIRA
3 10 (1.23%) GitLab
4 6 (0.74%) Visual Studio
5 5 (0.62%) Artifactory
5 5 (0.62%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
6 4 (0.49%) Octopus Deploy
7 3 (0.37%) Bitbucket
7 3 (0.37%) MSI
8 2 (0.25%) AdminStudio
8 2 (0.25%) InstallShield
8 2 (0.25%) MSBuild
8 2 (0.25%) Robot Framework
8 2 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
8 2 (0.25%) TeamCity
9 1 (0.12%) NUnit
9 1 (0.12%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.12%) Subversion
9 1 (0.12%) Vagrant
General
1 200 (24.63%) Social Skills
2 101 (12.44%) Analytical Skills
3 88 (10.84%) Finance
4 45 (5.54%) Documentation Skills
5 44 (5.42%) Banking
6 33 (4.06%) Public Sector
7 21 (2.59%) Law
8 16 (1.97%) Legal
9 15 (1.85%) Manufacturing
10 14 (1.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 13 (1.60%) Aerospace
12 12 (1.48%) Military
12 12 (1.48%) Telecoms
13 9 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
13 9 (1.11%) Pharmaceutical
14 6 (0.74%) Financial Institution
14 6 (0.74%) Games
15 5 (0.62%) Local Government
15 5 (0.62%) Police
16 4 (0.49%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 197 (24.26%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 103 (12.68%) Senior
3 83 (10.22%) Support Engineer
4 57 (7.02%) Cloud Engineer
5 50 (6.16%) 3rd Line Engineer
6 46 (5.67%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
7 45 (5.54%) IT Engineer
7 45 (5.54%) Lead
7 45 (5.54%) Windows Engineer
8 42 (5.17%) Architect
9 35 (4.31%) IT Support
10 31 (3.82%) Administrator
11 30 (3.69%) Wintel Engineer
12 29 (3.57%) Azure Engineer
12 29 (3.57%) IT Support Engineer
13 28 (3.45%) Server Engineer
14 27 (3.33%) Storage Engineer
14 27 (3.33%) Systems Engineer
14 27 (3.33%) VMware Engineer
15 26 (3.20%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 97 (11.95%) Terraform
2 34 (4.19%) .NET
3 25 (3.08%) REST
4 22 (2.71%) ARM Templates
5 17 (2.09%) LDAP
6 14 (1.72%) .NET Framework
7 9 (1.11%) JSON
8 8 (0.99%) OAuth
9 7 (0.86%) Elastic Stack
9 7 (0.86%) RabbitMQ
9 7 (0.86%) YAML
10 6 (0.74%) Middleware
10 6 (0.74%) SailPoint
11 5 (0.62%) ASP.NET
11 5 (0.62%) Azure Blueprints
11 5 (0.62%) SAML
12 4 (0.49%) OpenID
12 4 (0.49%) React
12 4 (0.49%) Software Packaging
12 4 (0.49%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 77 (9.48%) PKI
2 72 (8.87%) Data Centre
3 66 (8.13%) Hybrid Cloud
4 54 (6.65%) Onboarding
5 51 (6.28%) Clustering
6 47 (5.79%) Management Information System
7 46 (5.67%) Replication
8 28 (3.45%) Security Posture
9 17 (2.09%) Enterprise Storage
10 16 (1.97%) Driving Licence
11 15 (1.85%) Cloud Native
11 15 (1.85%) Self-Motivation
11 15 (1.85%) Smartcard
12 14 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
13 12 (1.48%) ARM Cortex
13 12 (1.48%) Public Cloud
14 11 (1.35%) Linux Command Line
14 11 (1.35%) Operational Technology
15 10 (1.23%) Virtual Team
16 9 (1.11%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 812 (100.00%) Windows
2 226 (27.83%) Linux
3 72 (8.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 58 (7.14%) Windows 10
5 50 (6.16%) Windows Server 2019
6 31 (3.82%) Ubuntu
7 29 (3.57%) CentOS
8 28 (3.45%) Windows Server 2012
9 26 (3.20%) Unix
9 26 (3.20%) Windows Server 2016
10 14 (1.72%) Rocky
11 13 (1.60%) macOS
12 9 (1.11%) Windows Server 2008
13 8 (0.99%) VMS
13 8 (0.99%) Windows 7
14 5 (0.62%) Alpine Linux
14 5 (0.62%) Windows Server 2003
15 4 (0.49%) OpenVMS
15 4 (0.49%) Solaris
16 3 (0.37%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 252 (31.03%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 194 (23.89%) Problem-Solving
3 173 (21.31%) ITIL
4 144 (17.73%) Disaster Recovery
5 120 (14.78%) Root Cause Analysis
6 117 (14.41%) Migration
7 105 (12.93%) Continuous Improvement
8 103 (12.68%) Infrastructure as Code
9 99 (12.19%) Change Management
10 91 (11.21%) DevOps
11 86 (10.59%) Service Management
12 81 (9.98%) ITSM
12 81 (9.98%) Stakeholder Management
13 75 (9.24%) Vulnerability Remediation
14 74 (9.11%) High Availability
14 74 (9.11%) Technical Leadership
15 71 (8.74%) Project Delivery
16 69 (8.50%) Cybersecurity
17 67 (8.25%) Validation
18 64 (7.88%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 328 (40.39%) PowerShell
2 110 (13.55%) SQL
3 80 (9.85%) Python
4 75 (9.24%) Bash
5 39 (4.80%) T-SQL
6 35 (4.31%) Bicep
7 30 (3.69%) C#
8 15 (1.85%) PL/SQL
9 12 (1.48%) Java
10 9 (1.11%) JavaScript
11 5 (0.62%) Go
12 3 (0.37%) Korn
12 3 (0.37%) Shell Script
13 2 (0.25%) CodeQL
13 2 (0.25%) Groovy
13 2 (0.25%) TypeScript
14 1 (0.12%) F#
14 1 (0.12%) Kusto Query Language
14 1 (0.12%) Ladder Logic
14 1 (0.12%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 348 (42.86%) Security Cleared
2 180 (22.17%) DV Cleared
3 176 (21.67%) SC Cleared
4 79 (9.73%) Degree
5 49 (6.03%) Microsoft Certification
6 41 (5.05%) Azure Certification
7 23 (2.83%) Cisco Certification
8 22 (2.71%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 20 (2.46%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 17 (2.09%) MCSE
11 16 (1.97%) CISSP
12 14 (1.72%) AWS Certification
12 14 (1.72%) CISM
12 14 (1.72%) MCSA
13 13 (1.60%) BPSS Clearance
14 12 (1.48%) CCNA
14 12 (1.48%) CCNP
15 10 (1.23%) Computer Science Degree
16 9 (1.11%) ITIL Certification
17 8 (0.99%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 46 (5.67%) SLA
2 28 (3.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 22 (2.71%) NIST
4 20 (2.46%) QA
5 14 (1.72%) Cyber Essentials
6 8 (0.99%) PCI DSS
7 7 (0.86%) GRC
7 7 (0.86%) GxP
8 6 (0.74%) 21 CFR Part 11
8 6 (0.74%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 6 (0.74%) ISO 9001
8 6 (0.74%) NCSC
8 6 (0.74%) SOC 2
9 5 (0.62%) GDPR
9 5 (0.62%) ISO 31000
9 5 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 27005
10 3 (0.37%) HIPAA
11 2 (0.25%) Government Security Classifications
11 2 (0.25%) JSP 440
12 1 (0.12%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 481 (59.24%) Active Directory
2 294 (36.21%) VMware Infrastructure
3 151 (18.60%) Hyper-V
4 115 (14.16%) VMware ESXi
5 105 (12.93%) vSphere
6 55 (6.77%) Virtual Machines
7 40 (4.93%) Docker
8 38 (4.68%) Virtual Desktop
9 31 (3.82%) VMware NSX
10 24 (2.96%) vCloud
11 18 (2.22%) Virtual Servers
12 15 (1.85%) Citrix Hypervisor
13 12 (1.48%) Firmware
14 10 (1.23%) XenApp
15 8 (0.99%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 8 (0.99%) XenDesktop
16 6 (0.74%) Microsoft App-V
16 6 (0.74%) VMware Server
17 5 (0.62%) ISA Server
17 5 (0.62%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 101 (12.44%) Microsoft Intune
2 98 (12.07%) Ansible
3 93 (11.45%) SCCM
4 91 (11.21%) vCenter Server
5 72 (8.87%) SCOM
6 50 (6.16%) Kubernetes
7 28 (3.45%) WSUS
8 19 (2.34%) Grafana
9 18 (2.22%) NetBackup
10 17 (2.09%) Prometheus
11 14 (1.72%) Avamar
11 14 (1.72%) Nagios
12 13 (1.60%) Failover Clustering
13 10 (1.23%) Nessus
13 10 (1.23%) vMotion
14 8 (0.99%) SysTrack
15 7 (0.86%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 7 (0.86%) FortiGate
15 7 (0.86%) Jamf Pro
15 7 (0.86%) WMI
Vendors
1 442 (54.43%) Microsoft
2 376 (46.31%) VMware
3 88 (10.84%) Cisco
4 68 (8.37%) Citrix
5 59 (7.27%) Oracle
6 53 (6.53%) ServiceNow
7 33 (4.06%) Red Hat
8 32 (3.94%) CyberArk
8 32 (3.94%) Dell
9 31 (3.82%) Splunk
9 31 (3.82%) Veeam
10 29 (3.57%) BeyondTrust
11 28 (3.45%) CrowdStrike
12 24 (2.96%) Google
13 23 (2.83%) NetApp
14 22 (2.71%) Qualys
14 22 (2.71%) Tenable
15 20 (2.46%) SolarWinds
16 19 (2.34%) Fortinet
16 19 (2.34%) Okta