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 27 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
27 Jun 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 190 135 94
Rank change year-on-year -55 -41 -13
Contract jobs citing Windows Server 615 519 893
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.41% 2.05% 2.39%
As % of the Operating Systems category 14.76% 14.56% 17.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 416 370 655
10th Percentile £263 £349 £213
25th Percentile £400 £425 £348
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £550 £480
Median % change year-on-year -12.73% +14.58% -4.00%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £588
90th Percentile £668 £688 £675
UK median daily rate £480 £526 £470
% change year-on-year -8.66% +11.81% -6.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 4 19
10th Percentile £19.25 £14.15 £15.18
25th Percentile £20.79 £14.91 £16.13
Median hourly rate £26.00 £24.05 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.11% -37.53% +31.40%
75th Percentile £67.84 £43.95 £61.60
90th Percentile £74.00 £64.08 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £24.00 £17.63 £38.50
% change year-on-year +36.17% -54.22% +31.40%

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 4,166 3,565 5,177
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.58% 14.11% 13.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,712 2,403 3,424
10th Percentile £190 £200 £190
25th Percentile £313 £313 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year -0.76% -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £652 £688 £700
UK median daily rate £463 £463 £475
% change year-on-year - -2.63% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 277 186 396
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.12 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.22 £17.27 £16.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £19.32 £24.34
Median % change year-on-year +68.26% -20.65% -44.37%
75th Percentile £65.00 £48.06 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.70 £67.50 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £26.83 £22.25 £24.34
% change year-on-year +20.58% -8.59% -44.59%

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 27 June 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 27 June 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 27 June 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 -47 190 £489 -6.90% 60
South East -36 140 £515 -5.50% 102
North of England -70 89 £466 -9.95% 72
Midlands -19 72 £450 - 49
South West -36 63 £504 -12.39% 35
East of England -12 58 £450 -18.18% 31
North West -53 52 £448 -7.63% 36
West Midlands -42 42 £438 +2.94% 25
Yorkshire -40 33 £625 +16.28% 27
East Midlands +7 28 £450 -10.00% 24
North East -37 4 £350 -30.00% 12
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 71 (11.54%) Microsoft Exchange
2 29 (4.72%) SharePoint
3 26 (4.23%) IIS
4 10 (1.63%) nginx
4 10 (1.63%) Tomcat
5 6 (0.98%) Apache
6 3 (0.49%) CloudStack
6 3 (0.49%) WebLogic
7 2 (0.33%) SAS
7 2 (0.33%) Skype for Business
8 1 (0.16%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.16%) Confluence
8 1 (0.16%) OpenStack
Applications
1 10 (1.63%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.33%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 14 (2.28%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.16%) Veritas eDiscovery
Cloud Services
1 244 (39.67%) Azure
2 102 (16.59%) Entra ID
3 101 (16.42%) Microsoft 365
4 78 (12.68%) AWS
5 23 (3.74%) IaaS
6 21 (3.41%) Azure Monitor
7 18 (2.93%) Power Platform
8 17 (2.76%) GCP
9 13 (2.11%) PaaS
10 12 (1.95%) GitHub
11 11 (1.79%) Azure DevOps
12 9 (1.46%) Nutanix
13 8 (1.30%) Amazon EC2
13 8 (1.30%) Azure Sentinel
13 8 (1.30%) SaaS
14 7 (1.14%) GitHub Actions
15 6 (0.98%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 6 (0.98%) Cohesity
15 6 (0.98%) OpenShift
16 5 (0.81%) Azure Stack
Communications & Networking
1 202 (32.85%) DNS
2 138 (22.44%) DHCP
3 96 (15.61%) Firewall
4 51 (8.29%) VPN
5 47 (7.64%) WAN
6 40 (6.50%) LAN
6 40 (6.50%) TCP/IP
7 34 (5.53%) SAN
8 22 (3.58%) Network Security
8 22 (3.58%) VLAN
9 18 (2.93%) SSL
10 15 (2.44%) SMTP
10 15 (2.44%) VoIP
11 14 (2.28%) Kerberos
11 14 (2.28%) NAS
11 14 (2.28%) Wi-Fi
12 13 (2.11%) FTP
13 11 (1.79%) SSH
14 8 (1.30%) NetScaler
14 8 (1.30%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 125 (20.33%) SQL Server
2 18 (2.93%) Power BI
3 13 (2.11%) Elasticsearch
4 12 (1.95%) Amazon RDS
4 12 (1.95%) Oracle Database
4 12 (1.95%) PostgreSQL
5 9 (1.46%) NoSQL
5 9 (1.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 6 (0.98%) Db2
7 5 (0.81%) Big Data
7 5 (0.81%) MySQL
8 4 (0.65%) GIS
8 4 (0.65%) Oracle BI EE
9 3 (0.49%) Data Mining
9 3 (0.49%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 2 (0.33%) MongoDB
10 2 (0.33%) SQL Server Analysis Services
11 1 (0.16%) Oracle Database 11g
11 1 (0.16%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 9 (1.46%) JIRA
2 8 (1.30%) Visual Studio
3 7 (1.14%) Git
3 7 (1.14%) Jenkins
4 5 (0.81%) GitLab
5 4 (0.65%) Robot Framework
6 3 (0.49%) MSI
6 3 (0.49%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.33%) AdminStudio
7 2 (0.33%) InstallShield
8 1 (0.16%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.16%) eggPlant
8 1 (0.16%) GoCD
8 1 (0.16%) Octopus Deploy
8 1 (0.16%) Postman
General
1 125 (20.33%) Social Skills
2 62 (10.08%) Finance
3 61 (9.92%) Public Sector
4 48 (7.80%) Analytical Skills
5 28 (4.55%) Banking
5 28 (4.55%) Documentation Skills
6 16 (2.60%) Legal
7 14 (2.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 14 (2.28%) Military
8 11 (1.79%) Law
9 9 (1.46%) Organisational Skills
10 5 (0.81%) Local Government
10 5 (0.81%) Retail
11 4 (0.65%) Marketing
11 4 (0.65%) Police
12 3 (0.49%) Manufacturing
12 3 (0.49%) Telecoms
13 2 (0.33%) Front Office
13 2 (0.33%) Pharmaceutical
14 1 (0.16%) Games
Job Titles
1 156 (25.37%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 48 (7.80%) Support Engineer
3 45 (7.32%) Senior
4 41 (6.67%) Cloud Engineer
5 34 (5.53%) Analyst
6 33 (5.37%) Architect
7 31 (5.04%) Lead
8 30 (4.88%) 3rd Line Engineer
9 27 (4.39%) IT Support
10 26 (4.23%) IT Engineer
11 25 (4.07%) Administrator
12 24 (3.90%) Server Engineer
12 24 (3.90%) Wintel Engineer
13 21 (3.41%) Infrastructure Support
14 20 (3.25%) Developer
14 20 (3.25%) Windows Engineer
15 18 (2.93%) IT Infrastructure Engineer
16 17 (2.76%) Azure Engineer
16 17 (2.76%) Infrastructure Support Engineer
16 17 (2.76%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (4.88%) .NET
2 26 (4.23%) .NET Framework
3 20 (3.25%) OAuth
4 18 (2.93%) LDAP
5 17 (2.76%) REST
5 17 (2.76%) SAML
6 8 (1.30%) Elastic Stack
7 7 (1.14%) JSON
8 6 (0.98%) RabbitMQ
9 5 (0.81%) Keycloak
9 5 (0.81%) OAuth2
9 5 (0.81%) OpenID
9 5 (0.81%) Software Packaging
10 4 (0.65%) ADO
10 4 (0.65%) Azure Blueprints
10 4 (0.65%) EJB
10 4 (0.65%) YAML
11 3 (0.49%) ARM Templates
11 3 (0.49%) Java EE
11 3 (0.49%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 60 (9.76%) PKI
2 43 (6.99%) Clustering
3 37 (6.02%) Replication
4 36 (5.85%) Data Centre
5 33 (5.37%) Hybrid Cloud
5 33 (5.37%) Onboarding
6 23 (3.74%) Management Information System
7 20 (3.25%) Legacy Systems
8 13 (2.11%) Linux Command Line
9 12 (1.95%) Self-Motivation
10 11 (1.79%) Enterprise Software
10 11 (1.79%) Virtual Team
11 10 (1.63%) Enterprise Storage
11 10 (1.63%) Security Posture
12 9 (1.46%) Cloud Native
12 9 (1.46%) Driving Licence
12 9 (1.46%) Product Ownership
12 9 (1.46%) Smartcard
13 8 (1.30%) NHS
14 7 (1.14%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 615 (100.00%) Windows
2 165 (26.83%) Linux
3 52 (8.46%) Windows Server 2019
4 46 (7.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 40 (6.50%) Windows 10
6 37 (6.02%) Windows Server 2016
7 35 (5.69%) Unix
8 30 (4.88%) Windows Server 2012
9 22 (3.58%) Ubuntu
10 10 (1.63%) CentOS
11 9 (1.46%) AIX
11 9 (1.46%) VMS
11 9 (1.46%) Windows Server 2003
11 9 (1.46%) Windows Server 2008
12 8 (1.30%) Solaris
13 6 (0.98%) Mac OS
14 4 (0.65%) Alpine Linux
15 3 (0.49%) Android
15 3 (0.49%) Windows 7
16 2 (0.33%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 188 (30.57%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 105 (17.07%) Problem-Solving
3 101 (16.42%) High Availability
4 98 (15.93%) Disaster Recovery
5 84 (13.66%) ITIL
6 70 (11.38%) Migration
7 57 (9.27%) Change Management
8 55 (8.94%) ITSM
9 52 (8.46%) DevOps
10 50 (8.13%) Infrastructure as Code
11 47 (7.64%) Project Delivery
12 43 (6.99%) Root Cause Analysis
12 43 (6.99%) Runbook
12 43 (6.99%) Vulnerability Remediation
13 40 (6.50%) Agile
13 40 (6.50%) Patch Management
13 40 (6.50%) Technical Leadership
14 39 (6.34%) Continuous Improvement
15 38 (6.18%) CI/CD
15 38 (6.18%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 224 (36.42%) PowerShell
2 93 (15.12%) SQL
3 61 (9.92%) Python
4 30 (4.88%) Bash
5 27 (4.39%) C#
6 24 (3.90%) PL/SQL
7 21 (3.41%) T-SQL
8 16 (2.60%) JavaScript
9 10 (1.63%) Java
10 8 (1.30%) Bicep
11 3 (0.49%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.33%) JCL
12 2 (0.33%) REXX
13 1 (0.16%) Groovy
13 1 (0.16%) Korn
13 1 (0.16%) Ladder Logic
13 1 (0.16%) Perl
13 1 (0.16%) TypeScript
13 1 (0.16%) VB
Qualifications
1 246 (40.00%) Security Cleared
2 139 (22.60%) SC Cleared
3 106 (17.24%) DV Cleared
4 69 (11.22%) Degree
5 47 (7.64%) Microsoft Certification
6 25 (4.07%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 23 (3.74%) MCSE
8 16 (2.60%) MCSA
9 14 (2.28%) Cisco Certification
9 14 (2.28%) VCAP
10 13 (2.11%) Azure Certification
11 11 (1.79%) BPSS Clearance
12 10 (1.63%) CISSP
13 8 (1.30%) CCNA
13 8 (1.30%) CCNP
13 8 (1.30%) CISM
14 7 (1.14%) AWS Certification
15 5 (0.81%) ITIL Certification
16 4 (0.65%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 4 (0.65%) MCTS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (6.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 29 (4.72%) QA
3 25 (4.07%) NIST
4 21 (3.41%) GDPR
5 15 (2.44%) SLA
6 13 (2.11%) Cyber Essentials
6 13 (2.11%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 5 (0.81%) SOC 2
8 3 (0.49%) NCSC
9 2 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 2 (0.33%) Government Security Classifications
9 2 (0.33%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.33%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.16%) Accessibility
10 1 (0.16%) Disclosure Scotland
10 1 (0.16%) ISO 9001
10 1 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 1 (0.16%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 352 (57.24%) Active Directory
2 219 (35.61%) VMware Infrastructure
3 101 (16.42%) Hyper-V
4 80 (13.01%) VMware ESXi
5 75 (12.20%) vSphere
6 51 (8.29%) Virtual Machines
7 35 (5.69%) Docker
7 35 (5.69%) VMware NSX
8 17 (2.76%) Virtual Desktop
9 12 (1.95%) vCloud
10 11 (1.79%) KVM
10 11 (1.79%) Microsoft App-V
11 10 (1.63%) BitLocker
12 6 (0.98%) Virtual Servers
12 6 (0.98%) VMware Workstation
12 6 (0.98%) XenApp
13 5 (0.81%) XenDesktop
14 4 (0.65%) Firmware
14 4 (0.65%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.65%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 82 (13.33%) Ansible
2 72 (11.71%) vCenter Server
3 64 (10.41%) Microsoft Intune
4 58 (9.43%) SCCM
5 51 (8.29%) Terraform
6 39 (6.34%) Kubernetes
6 39 (6.34%) SCOM
7 29 (4.72%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 28 (4.55%) WSUS
9 27 (4.39%) Single Sign-On
10 14 (2.28%) vMotion
11 12 (1.95%) Nessus
12 11 (1.79%) Puppet
13 8 (1.30%) Avamar
13 8 (1.30%) Grafana
13 8 (1.30%) Prometheus
14 7 (1.14%) VxRail
15 6 (0.98%) FortiGate
15 6 (0.98%) IBM BigFix
15 6 (0.98%) WMI
Vendors
1 273 (44.39%) Microsoft
2 262 (42.60%) VMware
3 68 (11.06%) Cisco
4 66 (10.73%) Citrix
5 54 (8.78%) Oracle
6 42 (6.83%) ServiceNow
7 28 (4.55%) Dell
8 27 (4.39%) Red Hat
9 22 (3.58%) Okta
10 21 (3.41%) Tenable
11 20 (3.25%) BeyondTrust
12 16 (2.60%) CyberArk
12 16 (2.60%) Veeam
13 15 (2.44%) HP
13 15 (2.44%) IBM
14 14 (2.28%) Remedy
14 14 (2.28%) Splunk
15 13 (2.11%) BMC
15 13 (2.11%) Qualys
15 13 (2.11%) Thales
317 Windows Server jobs in England